A viral melody has stirred the Caribbean. A song, an anthem of sorts, has swept through Puerto Rico, triggering a soul-searching of Homeric proportions. The British commentariat, ever eager to diagnose the ailments of others while ignoring our own creeping decline, has descended upon the phenomenon.
They speak of 'identity.' They murmur about 'colonial legacy.' They nod sagely at the 'complexities of cultural hybridity.
' But what do they really see? A mirror, I suspect. For the Puerto Rican dilemma is our own, writ large in Spanish and salsa.
The island is neither fully American nor wholly independent: a political purgatory. Sound familiar? It is the condition of the modern liberal, caught between the ghost of empire and the spectre of globalism.
The song itself, a wistful cry for a lost homeland, is simply the latest iteration of a centuries-old lament. From the Welsh bards to the Scottish Jacobites, we have heard this tune before. The British analysts, however, miss the point.
They intellectualise what is visceral. Puerto Ricans are not debating definitions; they are grieving. And we, the jaded observers of a post-imperial twilight, watch with the detached fascination of a man studying his own funeral.
The fall of Rome began with a song, too.
