Luis Rafael Sánchez is the most renowned author in contemporary Puerto Rican literature. Playwright, essayist, and fiction writer, in his most significant work he harshly criticizes the island's colonial situation through the use of a baroque language that is significantly related to the carnival tradition. For him the carnival does not mean a celebration of life in Rabelaisian fashion but a farcical way to confront the excessiveness of political colonialism. His work forms a metaphoric way of describing the political and social chaos of the so-called Free Associate State of Puerto Rico. En cuerpo de camisa (In Short Sleeves, 1966; revised and enlarged, 1984) and La guaracha del Macho Camacho (1976; translated as Macho Camacho's Beat, 1980) are Sánchez's main fictional works. In these, linguistic degradation presents a fresh new style that opposes the euphemism and "purism" of the leading figure of the 1950s in Puerto Rican literature...