Fortuño's Administration is Now Banning Books...

It's official, Fortuño's administration in Puerto Rico is approaching Rosselló-type decadence and intellectual retardation.

Not only is he an avid statehooder and right-wing member of the U.S. Republican Party (a friend of mine once described him as someone who just happens to have a Spanish suriname, to his own lament, of course), has thrown thousands of people onto the streets and into the unemployment lines, is promoting a military-style police force (to beat-up university students, of course), he now promotes the banning of books! (For more information, click here, here, and here)

In a theater review, I described "la isla del encanto" as "a land in the clouds, bordering the unreal and the fantastic - that to fathom it is to envision a dream dancing with a nightmare." With this most recent occurrence by the Fortuño administration to hinder the political, social, and intellectual development of the island, I believe my description is evermore accurate and relevant.

Any society that begins to censor books, especially under the mantle of "protecting young minds" must prepare itself for the advent of a long, treacherous nightmare.

Books, especially from our Boricua masters Edgardo Rodríguez Juliá and José Luis González, enable humanity to produce a critical eye onto our contemporary and historic realities - to understand the complexities of being human and the urgent issues that affect us. And, hopefully, to find solutions to those problems. "El entierro de Cortijo," by Rodríguez Juliá, for example, is one of my favorite books and actively seeks to portray the sometimes painful intersection between class, race, popular culture, political corruption, and sexism in the colonial urban Puerto Rican context. Just because there is one sex scene (between a Senator and a poor mulata, at that!) in this, one of the most popular pieces of Boricua literature, is, I believe, not the real motive of Fortuño's regime. It is because it deals with all the aforementioned issues.

Censorship has no place in Puerto Rico, Señor Fortuño!

A Chicago Puerto Rican in Nueva York

“Sí no me lo cuento, me muero” – “If I don’t tell the tale, I’ll die” - says the aging black boricua actor in an iconic Puerto Rican accent in a tone that borders laughter and sadness. It is a line that stays stuck in the mind of a compañero, Justino Rodríguez, who I accompanied to the theatrical production.

The play, “Cuento que me cuentan” by Pregones Theater of the South Bronx told the story of a group of poor and desperate, but strikingly hopeful and resilient farmers at turn of the 20th century Puerto Rico as they are recruited to work for a sugarcane company in Hawaii. They are cramped with thousands of their compatriotas in a small ship with very little food or sympathy, watching their friends and families escape in route until they rebel and take over the ship from its gringo crew. While for many in the audience this obra teatral invoked a submerged history, for me, in the context of my recent trip to New York City, it did so much more. It set the stage, so to speak, for the idea that the history of Puerto Ricans of the Diaspora (in the United States) cannot reside in the unspoken past, but must live forever in the hearts and minds of our communities and inform our future. If not, we will surely collectively die.

When the major writings of Jesús Colón, a Puerto Rican migrant to La Gran Manzana in the early decades of the 20th century, were compiled in a book called “A Puerto Rican in New York,” a nascent community of struggling tobacco workers came alive for the first time to many Boricuas living in the city in the 1960s. This written history echoed in a conversation I had with Lucila Rodríguez, who allowed me to stay at her home during my trip. While overlooking the neighborhood in Queens of my adolescence across the East River from a park in Manhattan, she recollected the story of her aunt who came to the city in a cargo ship in 1926. With a big smile that betrayed a sparkle in her eyes, she sounded out in a deliberate boricua accent the ship’s name – “the Marine Tiger,” following it with laughter. Lucila, herself, was born in one of the Diaspora’s oldest communities – El Barrio/ East Harlem - only a few blocks away from where our island’s national poet, Julia de Burgos, died in the 1950s. This location is now adorned with a mosaic while across the street there is a cultural center named after her. History is indeed, all around us.

While taking the Bronx bus #2 down the Grand Concourse, from Fordham Road, only a few blocks from where my parents met in the 1980s, I could not help but think of Paseo Boricua as I saw Puerto Rican flags flying from window after window. Nonetheless, Puerto Rican New York is in a sad state of affairs, as Justino laments. Its institutions are moving more into the “mainstream” and shaking off thier Puerto Rican-focuses. The Puerto Rican Day Parade, the largest in the country, is becoming more of a showcase of the latest brands and corporations instead of our cultural traditions and nuances. The Puerto Rican university organizations are disappearing and losing their connection to the community. And, of course, the Puerto Rican community itself is being displaced, as expensive high-rises are eclipsing the brownstones that Boricuas resided in for decades. This is not just in New York, but in every place Puerto Ricans have struggled to create community, from New Haven to San Francisco. There are still groups of dedicated and brilliant Boricuas in these cities willing to develop their communities, but for the most part the Diaspora, its institutions, and with it, our history are eroding.

The slogan of this newspaper is “Advocating for the Preservation of our ‘pedacito de patria’ – our piece of motherland, a piece of Puerto Rico away from home. When those poor farmers from Puerto Rico were persuaded, under false pretenses, to slave in Hawaii, they turned around and created a lasting community that, after over a hundred years, still exists and claims its puertorriqueñidad. The same is detailed in the New York chronicles of Jesús Colón. But it is slowly dying. Walking down Paseo Boricua, the Puerto Ricans of Chicago have created a community like no other, from age-old institutions like the Puerto Rican Cultural Center to new ones like the Institute for Puerto Rican Arts & Culture and with so many young people leading the way. And of course nowhere can you find two 59-foot Puerto Rican Flags and so many Puerto Rican-owned businesses in one street. Some might see this as a ghetto in comparison to neighborhoods of the rich and privileged, but we must see it as a shinning star of communities that have struggled and that continue to struggle. But as we enter intense and trying times, as our rents and property taxes go higher and pessimism takes hold on some of our people, one thing must remain certain: that a Puerto Rican community must exist on Paseo Boricua and Humboldt Park, and can only do so with the support of our people and our leaders. Hopefully, in decades to come, when someone asks what is the story of Paseo Boricua, we will not just be a story to be told but a history that is still living.

Originally published in the "Fíjate" column of the August 2009 edition of La Voz del Paseo Boricua newspaper

Love in the Time of Migration

Some say that Puerto Rico is a land in the clouds, bordering the unreal and the fantastic - that to fathom it is to envision a dream dancing with a nightmare.

It is thus a daunting task, especially for artists, to capture and creatively express this island of contradictions. The Puerto Rican playwright José Rivera, who with his recent play Boleros for the Disenchanted, has come as close as anyone to portraying the surreal Puerto Rican experience in the 20^th century. The theatrical piece, which had a run at the Goodman Theatre from June 20-July 26 detailed, through a love affair between Flora and Eusebio, the trials and tribulations of being on an island “on the move” in the 1950s.

The first act we are introduced to Flora, who like many jíbaras of her day, her entire world is only a small barrio in her town – Miraflores. The expectations for her are simple: get married, have a family, and stay true to God's word. And this she does, marrying a national guardsman, Eusebio, whom she met in Santurce. However, the political and economic forces that guide the island (which are subtly mentioned in the play) shakes-up the narrative of what Flora life was suppose to be. Everyday, thousands of the island's young are migrating to the United States since the island's resources and land have been toyed with by the very country they are escaping to, as lamented in angry bursts by Flora's father, Don Fermín. “Good people flee the material poverty on the island only to find the spiritual poverty up North is worse than anything they ever imagined,” he says in a strong but uncertain tone.

The second act takes place in rural Alabama, 1992. We find the couple living alienated in moderate poverty, their children scattered around the world. Eusebio is bedridden without legs due to his diabetes, but Flora is as devout to him as she is to God, even after learning of his infidelities. The irony is that her cousin Petra was the one who wanted to migrate to the U.S. when they were young, but a letter to Flora reveals a happy old woman surrounded by her grandchildren. Flora finally knew what her father meant when she tells her only friend, with a tone of sadness, of her brother who left to the U.S.“I never heard from my brother again. We only heard stories of a handsome man in the Bronx, playing his guitar, with a smile on his face.” Flora probably wishes she could be her brother of these stories, even if they are not true. Migration changed Flora and Eusebio forever, but at the end, even in sickness, they remain together every moment of their day, because the only piece of Puerto Rico they have is each other.

Originally published in the August 2009 edition of La Voz del Paseo Boricua newspaper

Does Pro-Boricua Community = Anti-White?

I am a leader in an anti-gentrification campaign in the community that I live in and we're constantly being labeled by (the mostly and small) reactionary elements in our community as "racist" or anti-white. This is echoed in such social networking forums like the Logan Square yahoo group. Here is my response:

The ¡Humboldt Park NO SE VENDE! campaign has never explicitly said "No white people in Humboldt Park" 

This is an assumption that some people create (some maliciously, while other do it out of ignorance) that subconsciously reveal their own fears/ notions of what is involved in the process of gentrification. In other words, when people see an anti-gentrification campaign picking up speed they automatically assume its about white hate... why? Well because it is obvious that most of the "new residents" a.k.a. yuppies are white. You don't have to publish an article or host an event or do anything for someone to understand that obvious dynamic. Yes there has been graffiti, signs, and even things people have said in this community that are speak to that antagonism, but as a vision and in our work we have never publically said or done anything along those lines. We are about preserving the Puerto Rican community on Paseo Boricua and in Humboldt Park. We are pro-Boricua community as opposed to anti-white. However, most reactionary folks would automatically define that as racist anyway.

Nonetheless, in order to understand gentrification you must understand the history of racism and inequality and white-skin privilege in this country, which is where some people get uncomfortable.

The Happy Little Rainbow of Gentrification

"To say that it is a pr community that welcomes all is also incorrect. It is an all community that welcomes all. We should not be fighting to keep "white people" out, we should be fighting to keep minorities in. Bringing awareness and business to the minority owned businesses and events being thrown in the park. If we say we are fighting to kick people out then we would be the same as them. Unity Unity Unity" says a Facebook commenter to an upcoming anti-gentrification event (look above).

My response: No one is denying that there are other latinas/os and people of color living in Humboldt Park. Nonetheless, this community is the cultural, economic, and political heart of the Puerto Rican people in Chicago. One way to combat gentrification is to stake a claim to an area - one that is rooted in the historical memory of its longtime residents. Therefore, with the strategy of Paseo Boricua (Division St.) this community is able to claim space in a myriad of way, whether it is with those two large flags or the murals on the walls. This a community that welcomes all, but also recognizes its historical and contemporary identity. I have met time and time again non-Puerto Rican residents of Humboldt Park who enjoy and participate what this community has done despite its Puerto Rican focus. This is also why we stand in solidarity with other communities of color facing gentrification, such as Pilsen and Bronzeville, the cultural hearts of the Mexican and Black communities, respectively.

Unity is also important that is why Elvira Arellano and Flor Crisóstomo - two undocumented Mexican mothers - stood in sanctuary in Adalberto Methodist Church right here on Paseo Boricua with the full support and protection of the Puerto Rican Cultural Center across the street. We accepted them wholeheartedly because we stand in SOLIDARITY with our Latina/o fellow sisters and brothers. They did not stay in 26th Street or in Pilsen but right here, in what they understood (and everyone in this city) understands to be the heart of the Puerto Rican community. Elvira said many times that she was proud to be on Paseo Boricua and thanked all the support she received from the Puerto Rican community. There is a difference between solidarity and respecting spaces than a multicultural farce where "we are all one." A huge difference.

There are blacks and Mexicans and other groups in Humboldt Park just as there are Puerto Ricans in Little Village and Cicero, but that is not the same as building entire monuments, institutions, festivities, social and political networks...etc in those particular places that represent a particular group. That is why there is not a Puerto Rican-focused effort to rally around gentrification in Logan Square (where there are plenty of Boricuas). It is in Humboldt Park because it is our historic center and fighting gentrification is just more than saying we need housing for all, but that there are things here worth defending.