Jacobo’s two dreams: Nnation and cinema in the films of Jacobo Morales

In this classic essay, scholar and film-maker Frances Negrón-Muntaner examines four key films by Jacobo Morales, Puerto Rico's most influential film director of the twentieth century. First published in 2002 and the only extensive engagement with Morales' work to date, Negrón-Muntaner argues that the director's founding corpus can be analysed as part of a single effort to provide a narrative solution to the contradictions of segments of Puerto Rico's urban middle class, a group that has tended to culturally identify with the island's rural Spanish past while viewing its future as economically tied to the United States.