Lo Terciario / The Tertiary

Lo Terciario/The Tertiary is a poetry collection by Raquel Salas Rivera. Rivera wrote the poems in response to Puerto Rico’s Oversight, Management, and Economic Stability Bill. Published in 2018, the collection won the 2019 Lambda Literary Award for Transgender Poetry. Rivera chose the book’s title from El Capital, a 1976 translation of Karl Marx’s work. A Puerto Rican translator, poet, and literary critic, Rivera served as the 2018-2019 Poet Laureate of Philadelphia. Rivera has a Ph.D. in Comparative Literature and Literary Theory from the University of Philadelphia and has secured numerous literary fellowships.

In Lo Terciario/The Tertiary, Rivera asks us to reflect on the Puerto Rican debt crisis, urging us to remember the violence and colonialism that plagued the country for decades. Lo Terciario/The Tertiary considers the debt crisis from a queer perspective as Rivera explores what it means to be queer or transgender in this ravaged country.

The book has a unique layout and narrative style. For example, it has both a Spanish and an English front cover. Throughout the book, Spanish and English versions of a poem are laid out side-by-side. Rivera uses this duality to remind us that we only ever read one side of the story. We form opinions without understanding the full picture.



Rivera firmly believes in Marxism, exploring his ideology throughout the collection. For example, Lo Terciario/The Tertiary begins by making us aware of its own status as an object. The book is a commodity. It is the product of labor and industrialization. Poetry is art, but it is commodified and turned into a product. In some cases, poetry is an afterthought. Readers should be conscious of this dilemma when they are reading the poems.

Rivera divides the book into three sections: “The Debt-Production Process,” “The Debt-Circulation Process,” and “Notes on a Derailed Circulation.” Taking these section titles from Marxist ideology, Rivera doesn’t comment on Marx’s own book, Das Kapital or the 1976 translation. Rather, Rivera deconstructs Das Kapital as a comment on right-wing brutality against socialism.

The first poem in the collection, “All their sensible properties have blended away,” begins by paraphrasing a Marxist definition of value and labor. Although labor isn’t a commodity, it’s the process by which things achieve their value. Labor is capitalism. Both capitalism and labor are violent. The poem highlights this violence through aggressive word choice. The use of limited punctuation reminds us that capitalism is an overpowering force that dominates everything. Just as capitalism sweeps through Puerto Rico, so it sweeps through this poem.



Critics regard “Coats are not exchanged for coats” as a defining poem in the collection. In this poem, Rivera scrutinizes the Puerto Rican debt crisis, a debt that Puerto Rico can never repay because there’s an imbalance between the colonizer and the colonized. The colonizer expects the colonized to pay in labor for the rest of their lives. No matter what the colonized offers the colonizer—be it limestone, birth certificates, or coats—it’s never enough. This is a comment on Puerto Rico’s relationship with the USA.

Some poems in Lo Terciario/The Tertiary are a call to action. For example, “The conversion of a sum of money into commodities” encourages us to speak out against injustices. The poem doesn’t simply focus on Puerto Rico; it also considers the queer and trans experience. Whenever we believe survivors and support them, we are spreading love throughout the world. Whenever we question hate speak or colonialist ideology, we lift the oppressed.
Rivera dedicated this poem to a late friend, Ivan Trinidad. Murdered by a hate mob in Puerto Rico, the police ignored the crime. Rivera urges readers to remember Ivan because only by remembering injustices can we end them. Rivera turns Ivan into a ghost-like figure who wreaks havoc on homophobic and transphobic people.

Rivera dedicates another poem in the collection to the victims of the 2016 Pulse gay nightclub shooting. The atrocity reminded Rivera that the fight against homophobia is never over. The poem highlights how difficult it is to be both gay and Puerto Rican in twenty-first-century America. A celebratory song, it encourages queer and trans individuals to embrace their identity and thrive in the world despite the challenges they face.



Lo Terciario/The Tertiary asks readers to accept the possibility of a decolonized future, particularly among the gay and trans communities. We each must accept that we have our own limited view of the world and can’t understand what other people are going through without opening ourselves to new ideas. This logic applies whether readers are gay, straight, or trans, but it is especially important to the queer communities. Only by supporting each other can they erase colonialism, fight hate crime, and build a better world for future generations. Rivera ends the poetry collection on a hopeful note.