ABSTRACT
In 1983, Luis López Nieves published Seva: Historia de la primera invasión norteamericana de la isla de Puerto Rico ocurrida en mayo de 1898 (“Seva: A History of the First North American Invasion of the Island of Puerto Rico, Having Occurred in May 1898”), and he changed Puerto Rican literary history. The historical fiction, published in a newspaper along with ostensibly corroborating photographs and manuscripts, purported to unearth the buried story of the first U.S. invasion of the island through the coastal town of Seva, whose inhabitants valiantly repelled the U.S. invaders, only to be annihilated and have their town leveled. In explaining why he wrote Seva, López Nieves has said that “because I didn’t like the history of Puerto Rico that I was sold, I decided to change it. I decided to write it the way I thought it should be” (2012). López Nieves has added that he found the history he was forced to consume about Puerto Ricans to be defeatist and depressing, so he crafted his own heroic figure—the professor who investigates and writes the story but vanishes without a trace. The fictional work became a “cultural happening” in Puerto Rico, with politicians and public figures demanding that the government begin an investigation into the whereabouts of López Nieves’ disappeared researcher. To many islanders, Seva supplied the brave, self-sacrificing, anti-colonial heroes who are absent from the official history of the U.S. invasion, which tells of how no armed Puerto Ricans repelled the invading troops in July 1898. On the contrary, historical records suggest that many on the island welcomed U.S. forces, relieved that the northern nation that purported to represent freedom and republican government had come to rescue them from a decaying, repressive, and neglectful Spanish empire.
