La mulatez en la dramaturgia puertorriquena de Tapia y Rivera, Arrivi y Rosario Quiles

The topic of race in the Caribbean has been much discussed in the past. This dissertation analyzes the projection of race-mixing as depicted in Puerto Rican drama, focusing on the theater of three authors and their depictions of mulattos in that society.;Chapter I reviews Afrocentricity in the context of Puerto Rican theater while examining the cultural context of drama in Puerto Rico in both the nineteenth and the twentieth centuries. Chapter II analyzes the life and work of Alejandro Tapia y Rivera (1826-1882), the best known dramatist of the nineteenth century in Puerto Rico. It focuses in particular on the projection of "mulatez" in La cuarterona (1867). Chapter III takes as its subject the life and work of Francisco Arrivi Alegria (1915), Puerto Rico's best known dramatist of the twentieth century. It deals with the projection of race in his trilogy Mascara puertorriquena (1971) and some of his as yet unpublished works.;Chapter IV examines Rosario Quiles' La movida de Victor Campolo (1972) and Cimarron (1985), the two dramas which best reflect race-mixing and the problem of identity in Puerto Rico.;This dissertation contains five appendixes in which Arrivi and Rosario Quiles contributed their opinions in several interviews carried out in situ in Puerto Rico. The study concludes that in Puerto Rico there have been three defined stages in the depiction of the mulatto race in Puerto Rican drama, the first of which occurs in the pre-independence period (1860-1898) and demonstrates racism, the second of which takes place during the period 1898-1960 and is best described as a transitional period, and the third of which stretches from 1960 to the present day and expresses a new ideology, one in which the mask of race has finally been removed.