Prepare, process, package

Since Alejo Carpentier's 1944 encounter with the "real maravilloso" in the ruins of the Citadelle La Ferriáere, Haiti has been linked with the notion of Latin American identity, in particular, and American identity, in general. Interesting to me are the ways and the means by which Haiti resurfaces in Cuban and Puerto Rican narratives and what allusions to Haiti in these texts imply about its relationship to the Hispanic Caribbean. I will combine the ideas of John Beverley, Sybille Fischer, and Mimi Sheller to discuss how representations of Haiti work to perpetuate its disavowal and render it a consumable product for the rest of the Caribbean as a whole, and for the Hispanic Caribbean specifically. I will focus on works by Cuban and Puerto Rican authors who have prepared, processed, and packaged Haiti in such a way that its culture, language, and even sexuality are able to satisfy long-held cravings for that which is local and exotic. Thus, I hope to explain how it has been and will continue to be possible for the Hispanic Caribbean to consume Haiti positively as a symbol of its marvelous reality and negatively as an Afro-Caribbean personification of racial, cultural, and political decadence in literature.