The war of the flags: Conflicting national loyalties in a modern colonial situation

The importance of myths, rituals, and symbols for the nation as a social group has been highlighted by different nationalism theorists. The rituals that deal with the national flag have a special place among rituals of power. In Puerto Rico people′s national loyalties are divided, and that is expressed in the predilection of one flag being favored over the other among different political opponents. U.S. statehood advocates have recently expressed alarm about what they have felt as a growth in Puerto Rican nationalism. This has let to different incidents of mass political confrontation that the press has called the War of the Flags. I examine this so-called war as a case of ritual combat, a struggle on the symbolic plane. Puerto Rico provides the opportunity to observe symbolic struggles for power concerning the national flag in a stateless nation that belongs to the United States of America