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American Latino Heritage
Casa Dra. Concha Meléndez Ramírez
San Juan, Puerto Rico
Doctora Concha Meléndez Ramírez is synonymous with major trends in Puerto Rican literature, in particular the legacy of the Generación del Treinta (Generation of 1930), a 1930s middle-class creole literary movement that, in response to U.S. control over the island, shaped Puerto Rico’s 20th-century national cultural identity. This house was the primary residence and workspace of Doctora Concha Meléndez Ramírez (1895-1983), a prolific literary critic and one of the most prominent female voices in the Generación del Treinta and subsequent 20th-century Puerto Rican literary criticism. Meléndez, one of Puerto Rico’s most important intellectual figures, resided here for 43 years. Her house continues to serve as a forefront for the promotion of Puerto Rican literature.
Concha Meléndez Ramírez was born in Caguas, Puerto Rico on January 21, 1895. In 1902, Meléndez and her family moved to San Juan, Puerto Rico’s largest city and the center of cultural and political life. She graduated from the University of Puerto Rico’s high school in 1915, received her bachelor’s degree in 1922, and started teaching high school. In the early 1930s, Meléndez became the first woman ever to graduate with a doctorate from the National Autonomous University of Mexico’s prestigious Department of Philosophy and Letters. Meléndez remained in San Juan until her death.
In 1898, during the Spanish-American War, the United States invaded and took control of Puerto Rico, which started a strained relationship between Puerto Ricans and the U.S. government. The working class, creole elites, and women of all social classes experienced turmoil as pre-1898 social roles shifted accompanied by simultaneous expansions and retractions of social possibility, which paved the way for the Generación del Treinta. Meléndez grew up during Puerto Rico’s transition from Spanish to American rule, a period characterized by much political, economic, and social upheaval.
During this period, rapid industrialization, American-implemented trade liberalization, and a cultural Americanization program resulted in drastic changes for Puerto Rican elites, the working class, and women. These events are crucial to understanding the broad historical trends associated with Puerto Ricans, the second largest Latino group in the U.S. The Generación del Treinta emerged as a conscious effort by Puerto Rican writers and intellectuals to question the cultural imperialism of the United States and define Puerto Rican national identity in the face of these changes. These writers imagined a Puerto Rican national cultural identity built upon a literary canon of 19th and early 20th century Puerto Rican literature, a history firmly rooted in a romanticized Hispanic past, and with the jíbaro, or country peasant, as a symbol of the essence of Puerto Rico. Meléndez was one of the few female voices in the Generación del Treinta, a movement that criticized the U.S. Federal Government plans to “Americanize” Puerto Ricans and imposes English as the primary language.
The first decades of the 20th century also saw intense mobilization and lobbying for women’s suffrage and rights in the United States and Latin America. Distinct women’s movements emerged among the Puerto Rican bourgeois and working class circles between 1900 and 1930. Working class women tended to participate with the Federación Libre de Trabajadores or the Partido Socialista, and displayed a more radical feminism that advocated for equal rights for all women. Middle and upper class women formed groups such as the Liga Femínea, a troupe of professional women suffragists that included Meléndez as a founding member. The Liga was created in 1917 in response to a provision of the Jones Act that granted limited US citizenship to all Puerto Ricans, but only gave Puerto Rican men the right to vote. Unlike the working class feminists, however, conservative feminists like Meléndez and members of the Liga contended that creole women were not a threat to male dominance or traditional Puerto Rican culture, and simply deserved the chance to share power. As a result of these efforts, literate women were allowed to vote in Puerto Rico in 1932, and all women were granted suffrage in 1936.
Meléndez built and resided at this property from 1940 until her death in 1983. Considered the mother of Puerto Rican literature, Meléndez did the majority of her writing here, publishing over 200 essays. Even today, her house continues to be a center of Puerto Rican literary culture. Upon her death in 1983, Meléndez left ownership of the house to the Institute of Puerto Rican Culture (ICP), which has not made any alterations to the building. Since the 1990s, the house has been used as a library and museum that hosts literary workshops and readings in an attempt to preserve the island’s literary traditions.
Built in 1940 in a Spanish revival style, the Casa Dra. Concha Meléndez Ramírez has a two-story square layout and an adobe-colored concrete exterior with a covered balcony on the second floor of the front façade. Meléndez’s office space has remained unaltered since her death. Many books remain on the shelves; her diplomas, medals, and personal photos are still on display; and her typewriter still stands on the desk in her upper-level workspace. A garden trail of stone chips embellished with native plants and geometric planters surrounds the house.