What, How, and Who is SHE? in La guaracha del Macho
Camacho: An analysis of the Female Role

“I THINK there is a good connection between the world of my stories, the street world, to be exact, and that of my novel " confessed once the Puerto Rican writer Luis Rafael Sánchez1. It is this connection, manifested through the use of humor, parody and cartoon-like characters which defines the narrative of La Guaracha del Macho Camacho. Sánchez's novel has been called the novela del lenguage2 or novela experimental3 because of the use and manipulation of language by introducing and incorporating idioms, coloquialisms and mass media lenguage in the former and for breaking the conventionalisms of narrative by experimenting with the presentation of time, location and levels of action, in the last one. It has also been called obra abierta4 due to the necessary intervention of the reader with the writer to give a significance5 to the text, and obra agresiva6 because, in an enterprising fashion, Sánchez brakes the conventions of Spanish language by using the Spanish of Puerto Rico as a mean of literary expression. It is the purpose of this study however, not to define what kind of novel La Guaracha del Macho Camacho is, but rather to bring into the open certain aspects of the text that perhaps have been overlooked or even ignored. I will make a comparison between what I called The Problem of the Colonized and the Colonization of Woman as an Island, followed by and study of woma(e)n; her re(mis)presentation, her function as agent, actant, and her position in order to determine what is her role, how she conducts it, and who she is or has to become to do so. The historical background of the island of Puerto Rico has been characterized by constant domination of colonial forces, first the Spanish and later the United States. From colony to neo-colony little has changed the marginal position of the island in respect to the centers of an industrialized society. The North-South association -new world order- where North constitutes the oppressor, the invader, the controlling force, and South the oppressed, the invaded, and controlled, creates the Master-Slave relation or the colonizer and colonized position clearly represented by The United States and Puerto Rico. The island has been controlled and dominated by an external power which acts, in Hegelian terms, as the Herr or master. In the novel, Vicente Reinosa represents if not the oppressor, the mechanism of oppression since he favors the United States' interventionist pressence. Vicente carries a political title which reveals his political afiliation. He is the agent of the colonizer, he welcomes "Yankees, this is home"(29)7 rather than the well known expression "Yankees, go home." Just as Vicente represents the North through his privileged position, the island of Puerto Rico, la Isla in Spanish, and with the article la preceeding the noun, can be identified with la Mujer, Woman8. The use of the same femenine article, la, along with the situation of dependency and oppression, position these two signifieds -Woman/Island- in the same level of reference, the South. Therefore, la Isla or la Mujer represents Hegel's Knecht(in), servant or slave. The United States, los Estados Unidos, could thus be associated with Man9, but by carrying the article los the pluralization of man into men implies a stronger position of dominance since los estados and not el estado have control over la Isla. Puerto Rico, Sánchez writes, is "ingenio colonizado"(47), "paraizo cerrado del relajo"(49). A nation that "no funciona"(21), as if it were one more piece of industrial machinery which, from the periphery, mantains the progress of its colonizer. The binary relationship where North is equated to Man and South to Woman is also a situation of mutual dependence. The former needs raw materials and cheap labor and the last one protection and economic support. Can one do without the other? Interdependence is clearly the basis for this union which from its incertion has been questioned and criticized by those in favor or against such political maneuvers. The malfunctioning of the island can also be equated with the malfunctioning of the female reproductive role whose product is el Nene. El Nene, as the offspring of La Madre has been conceived malformed, hydrocefalic, retarted, "ES BOBO"(118). This character is not confined to be the son of La Madre, but, in broader terms, he is the progeny of la Isla; a barren place whose innability to generate healthy children, future strong citizens who will question their colonial status, is thus associated with the problems of interdependence. The country is fertile just like the mother, but only to bear hydrocefalic children, symbolizing the deterioration, devaluation and degradation of a group of people. It is important to make these paralelisms since a Lebenswelt10 of Puerto Rico is presented in the novel. Though it is a sarcastic, ironic, caricaturist, and humoristic representation, an analysis of the social and cultural context brings us closer to the Puerto Rican reality11 making possible to define where historie ends and Geschichte12 begins. It is not mere coincidence that woman is the first character introduced in the novel which revolves and resolves around her. Woman as la querida opens the courtains of this violent and tragic guachafista text. Violent in the sense that there is a dominant, determinant force which trascends all boundaries and is, like la guaracha, present throughout the text. Violence which at an individual and collective level monopolizes the evolution of the plot. Tragic as a result of this violence which is, according to Figueroa; "la realidad que define a Puerto Rico y tónica sobre la cual se ha construido La Guaracha del Macho Camacho [... violencia como] el producto más deplorable de las incongruencias coloniales" (82). Guachafosa or guachafista, novela lúdica y lúbrica, because of the use of an ironic humoristic tone which distinguishes the novel from a realist or naturalist style13. Woman14 is introduced without a proper name. She is unidentified. She is an Object which is there waiting to be taken, to be possesed, to be used: Sentada en un sofá : los brazos abiertos,
pulseras en los brazos, relojito en un
brazo, sortijas en los dedos, en el tobillo
izquierdo un valentino con dije, en cada
pierna una rodilla, en cada pie un
zapatón singular.Cuerpo de desconcierto
tiene, cuerpo de ay deja eso, ¿ven?,
cuerpo que ella sienta, tiende y amontona
[...]

She is described as a decorative object one on which all other bibelots are attached transforming her into the epitome of Kitsch. As an adornment, she serves, as Silverman writes, not as "mechanism for tyrannizing over rather than surrendering to the gaze of the (class) other" (Herrmann, 77), but to be dominated and subjugated to male gaze. It is five o'clock in the evening and this woman a sort of call girl waits for the client. She waits for the provider, the man who will pay for her sexual services so she can purchase better living conditions. La China Hereje who at the same time is La Madre, is one representation of the creole Puerto Rican Woman15. She is introduced without an identity, hence she is an illegal (id)entity lacking all political, social and economic power. Even after her pseudonym, la China Hereje, is revealed: "a Mother no le gustaba que me dijeran la China Hereje porque Mother decía que la China hereje parecía nombre de mujer de la vida" (63), the omission of a proper name is a symbol of her illegality. Semas are not, contrary to what Barthes16 elaborates, legalizing agents but calificative terms that help create a character but do not have licit power. Although there are characters in the novel like Doña17 Chon, another semi-identified actant18, but who carries the strong title of Doña, and Benny , whose last names one can infer, thus we know his legal status and his line of descent, la China as well as el Nene are incomplete subjects, both proceeding from Mother, a very general term perhaps associated with mother nature but that in this case is very unspecific even if capitalized. For every definition of mother or a
mother combination term which
contains connotacions of love,
respect and reverence there seem to
be another connoting fear, hatred or
disrespect of this ambivalence.
Simone de Beauvoir wrote: 'The
respect that haloes the Mother, the
prohibitions that surround her,
suppress the hostile disgust that is
mingled spontaneously with the
carnal tenderness she inspires.
A certain horror of maternity
survives, however." (Mills, 171) La China Hereje is a denomination, a nick name for this Woman who has no other power but that of her own sexuality19 and over her body which for Dallery is "already colonized by the hegemony of male desire" (Herrmann, 290). La China, a "sexually liberated" woman, is still under this hegemonic control where, as MacKinnon writes; "[d]ominance eroticized defines the imperatives of [...] masculinity, submission eroticized defines [...] femininity" (Herrmann, 260). She is free to choose her object of pleasure, her jouissance "beyond the phallus" (Lacan, 145). She selects the man who will satisfy her necessities: "ella lo vio antes, ligona, pendiente a la machería siempre, [... .] Y planeó una estrategia rápida de conquista: esperó que El Viejo cruzara, pavo que se pavonea, frente a la nevera de las chinas de Florida para dar un grito llamativo de atención" (204). She objectifies men, and as a woman not only "becomes a total object of fantasy (or an object of total fantasy), elevated into the place of the Other"20, but adopts an Otherness equivalent to God where for Lacan "the more man may ascribe to the woman confusion with God, that is in confusion what it is she comes from, the less [...] he is" (160). Man will either serve her economic needs or her sexual desires. La China is with Vicente for money, not because she enjoys the sexual act with El Viejo, as she calls him: "No es que vaya a pasarse la vida con el Viejo, El Viejo le produce náuseas. Pero El Viejo le remite el chequecito verde de las esperanzas"(201). On the other hand, she enjoys the erotic encounters with her cousin, el primo bombero: "Peste a chulo tenía. Ella, divertida, como quien gira en un carrusel, le respondió, con arrobo interdental: bandido, hombre malo, aprovechado, muñecote" (197). She validates her desire by choosing the Object of this one, and selects the place where her pleasure21 must be appeased: "Ella, humedecida de labios, seductora, lo detuvo con un susurro cálido [...] aquí no22, sweetie pie, [... . e]l primo bombero le prometió un tumbaíto [...]. Promesa que cumplió, con creces e intereses" (198). This last sentence positions man as indebted to woman. He has to pay for the pleasure of having her, for possessing her. He is being looked at by the Other -woman- who, in the words of Eagleton, "is not just an other beyond his ken, but an other intimately related to him as the image of what he is not, and therefore as an essential reminder of what he is. Man therefore needs this other even as he spurns it, is constrained to give a positive identity to what he regards as nothing" (133). She is a sexual agent in her totality, she not only liga, in the sense that she sexually binds or unites with one man, but does so with her cousin's other two brothers in an incestous act which can be taking to the levels of sexual compulsion23 as this passage, that carries a pornograhic24 tone, shows it: Desglose selectivo del cerebro que
ella hace con sus primos de La
Cantera con los que tiene un ajuste
quincenal de aquello [...] Secuencia
de los tres macharranes tendidos en
una cama [...] Advertencia: repítase
la lectura de la escena anterior tras la
sustitución del cerebrado macharrán
mayor por el macharrán intermedio
y el macharrán menor: los primos
macharranes de LA Cantera son trillizos
idénticos, la diferencia de edad se
computa a base de minutos, no hay
diferencia fálica alguna.(142) She represents a Woman but not a whore in all the sense of the word as la Metafísica does. She is una mujer chavacana, a liberated woman who is at the border of becoming a libertine, but does not do so nor she transgresses the power of her sexuality or brakes completely the conventionalisms of the so called "female behavior". Is she an ordinary woman or a super-woman? One who can be compared with la Isla because it is embeded in her by representing the relationship of convenience that also characterizes Puerto Rico and The Unites States. A convenient alliance where the Other self-identifies with an industrialized society because of its economic dependence, but when it comes to identify itself it simply retakes its position of colonized or tercermundista. La China is paid for her services, la Isla is given economic support and protection hence creating two poles: the giver and the receiver, the dominant and the passive, the master-slave, the colonizer and the colonized equation. Graciela Alcántara y López de Montefrío, note the grandiosity of the name of this actant, who unlike la China, is introduced with all the titles and lineage which reveal her social and economic status. As Sánchez writes: "todo apellido inscrito sueña la corona de un esplendor" (43), thus Graciela is a legal agent possesing political, social and economical power merit to her complete identity. None the less, her power is limited because she, as Irigaray writes, is "allowed a certain social power as long as she is reduced with her own complicity, to sexual impotence" (Marks, 104). Graciela is a white woman, her description; "zona facial donde los vasos capilares se azulan" (42), reveals a white face where all traces of mestizaje have, willingly or not, been erased, and where her blood by turning blue, semiotically25 mutates the redness of the element into blue, sangre azul. She is not a colored woman like la China or Doña Chon. She considers herself superior, above that "pueblo orillero, repulsivo, populachero" (226) which she despises: "Y estoy aquí. Como barco a la deriva, como barco que zarpa sin rumbo" (232). Her attitude towards some colors and clothes, as symbols, a "cultural flag" (Herrmann, 85), is also a contrast to the colorful prints that are typically used by the people: [M]iembro integrante del Comité
Para el Diseño del Traje Típico
Puertorriqueño: abandonó el Club
enojada porque su diseño fue
rechazado, diseño que exoneraba
el traje típico del lastre de volantes
y camándulas. Porque era un diseño
de gran vestir: traje sastre de cuello
cerrado en piel de becerro manchado:
triunfo del gusto cosmopolitano
sobre el lelolai: mueran las
gardenias, mueran las amapolas,
mueran las faldas de campana." (230)
She is incapable of identifying with the Other Woman,26 one who discredits all her Being. So she puts on a mask, a shield, and dresses herself in a different fashion because of the fear of becoming like Her. Bell states that "the history of fashionable dress is tied to the competition between classes" (23-24), competition which relegates to the oppresion by an oppresed, in this case woman vs. woman. Graciela is, on the surface, uninterested in sex, "muerta antes que entregada a festejos libidinosos," (46) she declares. She is frigid, unable to reach the jouissance, unable to stablish her own sexuality and to rejoice her sexual experience. She performs the sexual role only for mere purposes of reproduction27 and to placate Vincente's desires, the man whose virility is endangered by her lack of sexual drive. Must a woman be all sexual to be a woman? Must she satisfy her partner to project herself desirable, "sexually alive," or otherwise be condemned as the cause of male impotence? Her marital status inflicts the societal and cultural pressure to behave as a sexual machine, open and always serviceable to male penetration. In any case, Graciela is not shown as a tool for breaking sexual code by refusing the phallus, her resistance28 as well as other "women's 'resistance' to sex [writes MacKinnon] is an imposed cultural stereotype, not a form of political struggle." (Herrmann, 263). Graciela is frigid, but it seems, only with Vicente who is not sensual with her or simply because he follows the ideosincracy that sexually with the wife a man can't explore sex in its totality but that, on the contrary, everything is possible with another woman, with la corteja: Qué cambio con la querida [...] qué
recibimientos cálidos a las peticiones
insospechadas: qué talento en la
pirueta: pirueta de la cama, pirueta
de la butaca, pirueta del suelo,
pirueta del borde del lavabo, pirueta
de la bañera: precursoras dignísimas
del Ultimo tango en París" (156).
This change of attitude towards the practice of sex goes even further if this querida is a colored woman, "[n]egra o mulata el requisit29 y la esposa tanta peca y blancura." (156) "Las hembras de color me acaloran," (94) Vincente declares, obviously making a distinction between his white wife -cold woman-, and her colored mistress -hot woman-. Graciella, wife, has being relegated to a position of motherhood, and not of lover. The concretization of experimenting sexual activities is left for the Other Woman and not for the wife who is
blamed for being frigid, unrespondant, non sexual and non sensual. In this sense she is almost virginal as she is given the image of the virgen mother, symbols of chastity and purity, Graciela "se siente pura, invencible" (233). She, however is a sexual being. She creates, unconsciously, erotic dreams and sensual moments even if she edits her libido that for Cixous is "cosmic, just as her uncouscious" (Marks, 259). "Graciela edita orgasmos inéditos, Graciela edita calorizos uterinos, Graciela edita secreciones mucosas," (162) editing does not necessarily mean lack of sexual drive, it simply represents condensation, selection of one's Objects of desire. In this sense she re-assumes her jouissance even if it is to the point of ideals or fetishism.30 She physically re-takes control; "da saltos de mona en celo o saltos monos, da saltos de gorila en celo o saltos gorilos, eso es vivir" (163). Her lavishous jumpings, mimicking those of a gorila, expose her concealed sexual drive which animalized and weighed to the drive of a female monkey in heat, carry the strenght of her libido. Graciela is another mujer sancheana who re-takes her sexual role but is left short since there is no sign of her breaking the socio-cultural bourgeois codes of mother/Woman presented in the novel. Graciela, in many ways, is the antithesis of la China. She is analogous to Switzerland where she was educated while the Other Woman is comparable to Puerto Rico. Graciela's whiteness resemble the cleanliness of the industrialized country. Her inhibited nature, preference for sobriety, even her supposed frigidity are stereotypes of a northern culture. On the other hand, the contaminated, colorful and fervent spirit of the island's people is represented by the gregariousness and passion of la China who, with her espíritu chavacano, is a symbolic prototype of the Antillean island of Puerto Rico. It is possible to create another binomial representation based on the relation culture-nature, la China-Graciela, brought together by Materialism31 in terms of consumerism and mass culture "defined in opposition to academic and other cultures" (Herrmann, 340). Culture represented by the center, the industrialized world; Graciela, and nature32 as the periphery, the undeveloped southern region; la China. The equation white Woman vs. colored Woman is present in the text in terms of materialism. Materialism in the sense that both, North and South, have, as a common element, the merchandising of goods, objects of desire and possession. The trading of merchandise goes in either direction benefiting each respectively, but at different levels. In this sense, Graciela and la China turn to the notion of exchange of goods or merchandise. While the former acquires luxury items, never turning herself into one, the last one commercializes her body in order to acquire the goods she desires. Irigaray writes about this commerce, this exchange of services and goods (goods for services and viceversa) in the sense that a woman "constantly trades herself for the other without any possible identification of either one of them" (Marks, 105). Graciela and la China prostitute themselves relegating their productivity for the same purpose, consumerism. Graciela endures being married so she can buy merchandise with the money that her husband earns; "perfumes por la mañana; vestidos ayer [...] la boutique de Marysol, la colección invernal de Fernando Peña, [...] joyas mañana [...]" (229), and la China provides sexual services33 to the same man so she can acquire merchandise she desires; "comprarme las pelucas" or "un lineleum, jueguito de cromiun o algo más presentable" and "pantalones que me hizo La Paloma." (206) Vicente, in neither case, is sexually desired as he would like to be. "[M]e siento aliviada cuando mi esposo se duerme sin acudir a la insinuación mínima de interés en eso" (168) Graciela admits. Almost in the same manner, la China accepts him; "fusilamiento y no otra cosa era la acceptación de que El Viejo la poseyera" (205), both women reveal their desire to alleviate the provider's34 carnal oppresion. He merely serves the consumerist spirit of la esposa and la querida. La China only wants to finish paying her debts, "[c]uestión de unos pagarés y el linolium y el jueguito de comedor" (201), "[s]algo de deudas y lo mando a que se" (207), send him to ... it's understood to take a walk as it is commonly said in English. Graciela treats Vicente with the same regard; "para pedirme perdón, para regalarme el permiso para comprar doscientos dólares en perfumes" (228). The idealization of other female figures is another sign which positions Graciela and la China closer than how they are presented in the text. The idealization of other woma(e)n by these two characters is the desire to become the Other; not the Other in the sense of competing with the male, but of identifying themselves with the Female Other35. Graciela reads about Jackie O. and Liz Taylor, figures of American high society and Hollywood, la China wants to become like Iris Chacón, the famous Puertorican vedette of the seventies. Even though their goals are in accordance with their social class, there is an aspiration of becoming someone else to escape their stagnant reality; one looks up to the American elite or to a Hollywood star, and the other admires the kitschy figure of entertainment. Motherhood binds them together. Graciela, and la China have a son. El Nene as well as Benny, "children of a candid creature murdered by society" (Duras, 55), are unuseful. The boy is mentally and physically impeded; "[c]horreados tiene los ojos. Atrapado: en la oscura red de sus tres años demoronados e inútiles. Atrapado: por la piedad anímica" (238). The teenager, likewise, is trapped in his own unidimensional existence; "costrado por la indiferencia y la antipatía" (127), can't think of anything but his car, a symbol of a consumerist society. The tragic ending of the novel in which el tapón, ephemerally broken by Benny and by the death of El Nene, is the semantic pairing of two women who share the same man, and whose commonalities are expressed by the explicificity of their goals, needs, desires, sexuality, and motherhood36. Doña Chon, contrary to Graciela or la China, is a character that completely lacks sexual drive, sexual desire. She is striped of her erotic self inasmuch as there is no sign of her sexuality which for Freud "is itself a 'perversion' a 'swerving away' of a natural self-preservative instinct towards another goal." (Eagleton, 153) She, like the angels or as W218, the woman of the future, in Puig's Boquitas Pintadas and Pubis angelical respectively, is non-sexual, a Being incapable of expressing her libido or experiencing her jouissance. Doña Chon as non-sexual agent represents more the mother figure37 than La Madre. She is the Matron who symbolises motherhood hence carrying the wisdom of life which is expressed via her philosophical reflections. As a semantic agent she comes closer to the image of virgen/mother38, chaste/devoted, not affected by the music of la guaracha, and consequently immune to el tapón that has inmobilized physically and spiritually the island. Doña Chon seems to be the only autonomous character in the novel. However, just like the other two women, she doesn't get too far. Doña Chon hears the music but doesn't listen to it, she looks39 but doesn't see. In other words, she exists but is not present because she would rather accept than confront. As a passive agent, this woman, "academica y juiciosa," (180) criticizes but never asumes a position of action through which she could reinvindicate herself nor serve as an example to other women. On revindication Simone de Beauvoir says; " [i]f woman seems to be the inessential which never becomes the essential, it is because she herself fails to bring about this change." (Marks, 46) Doña Chon, like no other character, is shielded from reality by her religious fervor and antiquated values. As a beatiffied mother she seems to transgress and to convey the denunciatory message of the author but her innefectivennes, as an agent, encapsulates her in a privileged position of religious rethoric.40 She is a conformist, a character who, introduced as philosopher, reflects on the problems of society. She is conscious, aware, but to the point of convenience. She continues with her life unaffected by la guaracha as if this one was far from her reality. Her reaction to el tapón, expressed by the spirit of a guaracha that embeds every aspect of the island, is of neglect. The phrase "la vida es una cosa fenomenal" is changed by her to "lío de ropa sucia que es la vida" (243), creating what Baralt considers: the anti-guaracha. The guaracha, in the same fashion as the tango and bolero used by Manuel Puig in Boquitas Pintadas, serves as agency of oppression rather than salvation. The guaracha maintains the status quo: men consume, women are consumed in this society of consumption. The determinist41 mode of the novel keeps those oppressed under the continuos control of those who dominate the means of production and politics. The embotellamiento, el tapón, is a clear signifier of the stagnation of the island, its economy and its citizens as well. There is no movement, though the novel seems to move back and forth, everyone is, as in Zeno Gandía's La charca, stuck in one place. La charca, more of a natural cause, and el tapón, produced by development, monopolize the tone of each novel. In short, and to conclude, I nor anyone else could define what is to be woman, how woman is or where woman belongs or should be. However, one can explore the codification, patriarchal in this case, of the feminine entity in literature(s) as well as in society, politics, arts and life in general. We live in a codified world where roles designate the value of individuals. The commercializations of images, the consumerism of ideas, are projected over our culture making us vulnerable to the capitalization of our identity. Sánchez's novel sends a message. Though it does it through humorous language, it speaks of colonial imperialism which expands to the cultural level objectifying those in less favorable places in society. The message of la guaracha is like a beacon into the night but it's almost lost due to its guachafista character. Woman as caricature sketches the Puertorican female experience, but are these sketches capable of transcending the boundaries created by the male colonizer hence proclaim a liberation not only of woman but of la isla to the next millennium? The question remains so does the objectified position of woman in the text. Just as in el tapón, where physically nothing moves, women in Sánchez's work are immobilized, taponeadas, embotelladas, they, charqueadas remain in the puddle.

Works Cited

Bell, Quentin. On Human Finery. London: Hogart, 1976. Barradas, Efraín. Para leer en puertorriqueño: acercamiento a la obra de Luis Rafael Sánchez. Río Piedras: Editorial Cultural, 1981.

_____________. Rev. of La guaracha del Macho Camacho, by Luis Rafael Sánchez. Revista Iberoamericana 44.102-103 (enero-junio, 1978): 231-234.
Calaf de Aguera, Helen. "Luis Rafael Sánchez speaks about Macho Camacho's Beat." Trans. Jo Anne Engelbert. Latin American Literature and Arts Review 28 (January-April 1981): 39-41.

Duras, Marguerite. The Lover. New York: Harper and Row, 1985.

Eagleton, Terry. Literary Theory: An Introduction. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1983.

Figueroa, Alvin Joaquín. La prosa de Luis Rafael Sánchez: texto y contexto. New York: Peter Lang Publishing Inc., 1988.

Hawkes, Terence. Structuralism and Semiotics. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1977.

Hegel, Georg Wilhem Friedrich. Hegel Selections. Ed. J. Loewenberg. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1929.

Herrmann, Anne C., and Abigail J. Stewart, eds. Theorizing Feminism: Parallel Trends in the Humanities and Social Sciencies. Boulder: Westview Press, Inc., 1994.

Lacan, Jacques. Feminine Sexuality. "Jacques Lacan and the ‚cole freudienne." Trans. Jacqueline Rose. Ed. Juliet Mitchell and Jacqueline Rose. New York: W.W. Norton and Company. 1982.

López Baralt, Luce. Rev. of La guaracha del Macho Camacho, by Luis Rafael Sánchez. Revista Sin Nombre 8.1 (Abril-Junio, 1977): 62-68 .

Marks, Elaine and Isabelle de Courtivron. Introduction, eds. New French Feminisms: an Anthology. New York: Schocken Books, 1981.

Mills, Jane. Womanwords: A Dictionary of Words About Women. New York: Henry Holt and Company, Inc., 1989.

Moi, Toril. Teoría Literaria Feminista. Trad. Amaia Bárcena. Madrid: Ediciones Cátedra, S.A., 1988.

Morales, Angel Luis. "Consideraciones sobre La Guaracha del Macho Camacho de Luis Rafael Sánchez." Revista de Estudios Hispánicos 5 (1978): 7-28.

Puig, Manuel. Boquitas Pintadas. 1969. Barcelona: Editorial Seix Barral, S.A., 1972.

__________. Pubis Angelical. Barcelona: Editorial Seix Barral, S.A., 1979.

Sánchez. Luis Rafael. La guaracha del Macho Camacho. 1976. Buenos Aires: Ediciones de la Flor, S.R.L., 1991.

Zeno Gandía, Manuel. La Charca. Dominican Republic: Talleres Gráficos de Editora Corripio, C.x.A., 1992.