SOURCE: Rodriguez, Maria Cristina. “Women Writers of the Spanish-Speaking Caribbean: An Overview.” In Caribbean Women Writers: Essays from the First International Conference, edited by Selwyn R. Cudjoe, pp. 339-45. Wellesley, Mass.: Calaloux Publications, 1990.

In the following essay, Rodriguez provides a brief literary and political history of the Caribbean, focusing mainly on its female writers and their place in traditional Caribbean cultural society.

If we agree that the Caribbean is a fragmented, small region because of its political, economic, and language differences, we must also agree that even within so-called common language sectors, great differences exist. The countries of this region were formed by European economic enterprises in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries: Spain, England, France, and Holland determined the ethnic groups, the economy, and the political system that would prevail in the twentieth century.

After Spain had lost the last of its colonies in the New World in...