Las fronteras culturales y textuales: “Cuento en camino” de Ana Lydia Vega

Among the writers of the Caribbean countries, the notion of the border is related to the discourse of insularity. This concept goes beyond geographical limits, because it designates a historical-cultural experience and a peculiar identifying perspective that have generated a heterogeneous writing. Based on these premises, the essay proposes the analysis of “Cuento en camino” written by the Puerto Rican writer Ana Lydia Vega, text included in Falsas crónicas del Sur (1991). The story emerges as the synthesis of the narrative poetics developed throughout the collection, in which the stories are installed in the imprecise border between the chronicle and the fiction, between the legend and the oral tradition of the Puerto Rican peoples. It is also presented as a metaliterary story, since the author reveals the narrative and narratological instruments used to construct the story.