128
play, Antfgona addresses the victims of tyranny by chanting in verse, "America, no cedas; America, no sufras; A:nerica, no pierdas; America, no mueras; America, prosique; America, despierta; America, tranquila; P.rnerica, alerta. " 27
Pilditch's translation of this passage reads:
"America, don't yield; America, don't wait; Arrerica, don't loose, America, don't die; America, be calm; A.-rerica, watch out. "28
Perhaps
the cadence and meaning of the original is better captured in the foll01-1ing:
''Don't yield America; don't suffer, America; don't loose,
America; don't die, America; ahead, America; aNake America; be calm, Arrerica;
be1o~are,
Arrericu."
of "America" remains.
Still, the confusion created by the meaning
This is the subject of Fiet's article
"Luis Rafael Sanchez's The Passion of Antigona Perez: Puerto Rican orama in North American Performance." Was Antfgona sending a message to the United States (the audience's America) to intervene in her Latin American howeland? Was she boldly rejecting the assumed right of the United States to characterize itself as America? Or, 1vas she \iarning U.S. citizens that what \'l'as happening in the fictionj;~l country of 1-lolina was possible in their own nation?.:9 And he concludes, Although Antfgona's "America" does not dil¡ectly include the United States, the play assumes additional thematic qualities \vhen performed for North American audiences. What we in the United States egotistically consider America is redefined and Ant1gona Pe1¡ez calls to the people of all Western Hemisphere nations--All American
27 Ibid., p. 104. 28 Luis Rafael Sanchez, The Passion of Antigona Perez (Unpublished translation by Charles Pilditch) Act II, scene~ 29 Lowell. Fiet, "Luis Rafael Sanchez's The Passion of Anti'gona Perez." p. 97.