The decisive role that Latin America’s literary intellectuals have played in defining a nation’s, even a continent’s, cultural identity in the postindependence period is no secret. As the classic works of such luminaries as Domingo Faustino Sarmiento, José Hernández, and Ricardo Güiraldes have helped shape Argentine national identity, so have Uruguayan José Enríque Rodó, Nicaraguan Rubén Darío, and Cuban José Martí contributed to the self-image of all of Latin America as unique and meritorious. Now Nina Gerassi-Navarro has uncovered some overlooked or unappreciated nineteenth-century melodramatic historical novels focusing on pirates. And she’s provided an imaginative and intriguing interpretation suggesting that these too should be given serious consideration as influential tools deliberately intended by their authors to help build cultural and political nationalism in their respective states.
Gerassi-Navarro notes the fictional treatment of pirates as romantic heroes that became fashionable in poetry, novels, and opera in early-nineteenth-century Europe, with the exception...
