Troubled Affinities: Feminist Reading of Intercolonial Relations in Emilio Díaz Valcárcel’s Puerto Rican Narratives of the Korean War

This article examines the representation of intercolonial relations between Puerto Rican soldiers and Koreans during the Korean War in Emilio Díaz Valcárcel’s “Andrés” (1956) and “El soldado Damián Sánchez” (1955) from a feminist perspective. Moving beyond interpretations that frame Puerto Rican military participation in the Korean War solely as a reconfiguration of colonial relations between Puerto Rico and the U.S., it considers the war as an intercolonial space where Puerto Ricans and Koreans, differently colonized peoples under U.S. militarism, encounter each other. Focusing on the militarized sexual dynamics of occupied Korea, the article demonstrates how intercolonial relations in Díaz Valcárcel’s stories emerge as troubled affinities that, despite interpersonal and geopolitical resonances among the colonized under transnational U.S. militarism, ultimately reproduce imperial sexual violence toward women from occupied territories. Through an intercolonial and feminist approach that attends to multiple power dynamics within an imperial enterprise, the article highlights the complex positionality of colonized soldiers within the intersecting racist and patriarchal structures of imperial power.