Arlene Davila is a cultural anthropologist interested in urban and ethnic studies, the political economy of culture and media and consumption studies. Her work focuses on Puerto Ricans in the eastern U.S., and Latinos nationwide. She is currently working on a collection of essays on the production and circulation of contemporary representations of Latinidad examining current debates about the so called "mainstreaming" and "republicanization" of U/S. Latinos. She is especially interested the politics of culture and representation as they play out in a variety of institutional settings as varied as museums and contemporary culture industries. Prof. Davila teaches courses on comparative ethnic studies, race and nation in the Americas, Latino/a popular culture, global ethnography and consumption studies.

The belief that things can't ever be bad as long as people shop is at the core of Puerto Rico's economic deficit-consumption puzzle, or the enigma that the island can maintain such a seemingly strong retail profile, even when it is mired in unemployment and underemployment. Indeed, that Puerto Ricans like to shop is a common cliché. Whenever I describe my research on shopping culture in Puerto Rico, I am met with similar responses often voiced with a mix of pride and embarrassment: "Of course shopping is our national pastime," or "Puerto Rico is the country that most consumes throughout Latin America," as I was reminded that Puerto Rico had one of the largest shopping malls (Plaza las Americas) and the greatest number of shopping centers per square mile in the United States.

People were quick to recall statistics, but no one could point me to sources for these statements. These "facts" were simply presented as common knowledge, as Puerto Ricans were quick to describe themselves and others as the most avid of conspicuous consumers. "Vicious," "impulsive," "novelistas" (easily swayed by the new), and "despilfarrador" or money squandering are among the adjectives most easily summoned. In sum, consumption was seen as the greatest cause of Puerto Rico's economic ills, but also as the greatest sign of Puerto Rican's optimism and sense of humor, that another day is yet to come.

As a Puerto Rican anthropologist who has lived for over twenty one years in New York, visiting the island on a repeated basis, I have grown both accustomed to this dominant myth of the Puerto Rican "shop til you drop" consumer and quite skeptical of it. For one, my previous research on American consumption culture has long sensitized me to the ways in which consumption by marginal groups in society is often pathologized as aberrant, irrational and out of control in reference to an imagined and non-existent rational consuming subject who is thrifty, savvy and immune to the seductions and deceptions of the market. In other words, consumption has always been a contested territory on which societies debate status, merit, class and identity, around notions of proper and improper types of consumption, with marginal groups in society often the most policed, scrutinized and disparaged.

One may ask, why should this not be so? Should not the most marginal among us deter from shopping in the first place? In this paper, I will argue that we don't know enough about the consumption practices of the Puerto Rican consumer to be summoning such quick generalizations about her, and that when we do so, we may be disparaging the consumption of the sectors of society that are regularly misunderstood. I also provide a word of caution that when generalizing notions of Puerto Rican as uncontrolled supra plus shoppers, Puerto Ricans may hence be self-subscribing, and subjugating themselves to dominant discourses often circulated about those regarded to be less "modern" or equipped for modernity, in not dissimilar ways to how colonized groups do when they blame their status on their own indolence and lack of entrepreneurship.