The Island and the Eclipse of Civilization: A Conversation between María Zambrano and the Puerto Rican Politician Luis Muñoz Marín in 1940

Abstract

This essay revisits the endearing relation of María Zambrano with Puerto Rico —“an island that resembles a perfume”— where she establishes a long lasting with politician Luis Muñoz Marín and his wife, Inés María Mendoza. In Puerto Rico, Zambrano finds the “solitude” that she needs in order to bear a cruel exile from war-torn Europe and to renew her writing in that “time of eclipse” for humanity. For the Puerto Rican leader, it is also a crucial moment in which he launches a modernizing and democratic reform for the island, a poor and neglected colonial possession of the United States. The friendship between Zambrano and the Puerto Rican couple would last for many years after the war, until another moment of darkness prompted by the nuclearization of the world appears in the horizon.