Proa libre sobre mar gruesa de Enrique A. Laguerre: inventado la tradición para construir una comunidad imaginada.

Abstract

This paper tries to demonstrate that, with the historical novel Proa libre sobre mar gruesa, Enrique Laguerre finishes a literary project of the Puerto Rican national consciousness construction. In this project he uses concepts that later circulated in the post-colonial studies space, such as Benedict Anderson‘s imagined community and Eric Hobshawn‘s tradition invention. Laguerre is aware of the construction this this implies and he agrees with it from his first essay and journalistic publication, up to the moment he inserts it in the novel‘s metafiction.