Defendiendo la (Agri)Cultura: Reterritorializing Culture in the Puerto Rican Décima

Abstract

Through the improvisation of songs based on a sixteenth-century Spanish poetic form in contemporary Puerto Rico, singers symbolically reterritorialize Puerto Rican culture, returning it to its agrarian roots. Cultural reflexivity, born of a series of cultural displacements, has led to both the rigidification of the décima form and an emphasis on the Puerto Rican countryside and rural lifestyle in its lyrics. The article focuses on 58 verses that were improvised for a contest outside of Comerío.

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