| Sumario: | Exiled in 1953, and spending most of his career in Mexico, José Luis González has long been seen as a central yet anomalous figure in modern Puerto Rican letters: a Marxist critic of both colonialism and nationalism, a Communist Party member, and a polarizing voice within the Puerto Rican Left. This paper reexamines that view by focusing on his early, formative years in New York, where his ideas were shaped through cross-fertilization with diasporic networks of radical writers and activists. Rather than at the margins, González emerges at the crux of a suppressed Puerto Rican radical tradition. While the young González's time in New York has been overlooked by most critics, often mentioned only in passing as a biographical detail, this essay shows how this experience was pivotal, shaping his political outlook and the emblematic themes of his formidable literary career while also providing a point of entry to reconstruct Puerto Rican radical networks and traditions across the island and the diaspora.
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