Allá y Acá: Locating Puerto Ricans
in the Diaspora(s)
Miriam Jiménez Román
Yo soy Nuyorican. 1
Así es --vengo de allá.
Soy producto de la migración puertorriqueña,
miembro de la otra mitad de la nación. Lo digo con orgullo, conciente
de que para muchos no hay que hablar de "diáspora" de
ningun tipo--y mucho menos de sus implicatiónes.
Puerto Ricans and so-called Nuyoricans will understand the import of
this seemingly simple statement of otherness. Many will reject it as an
inappropriate identifier, viewing it as an admission of lesser status,
of authenticity, of illegitimacy and even, perhaps, as an act of betrayal.
To proudly claim membership in that community of Puerto Ricans whose formative
years have been lived in the United States--and worse yet, in the very
pit of the imperialist monster's belly--still a rarity in the island,
where an atmosphere of discomfort pervades the very subject of the diaspora.
To be de allá would seem to represent
only failure: beyond the island's inability to provide a viable homeland
for more than half of its people is the equally painful reality that the
majority of the diaspora community lives in poverty, stigmatized as a
racialized minority and expressing perspectives wrought from that experience.
The struggles and achievements of Puerto Ricans in the United States make
up a still largely unknown history; what prevails is a distorted notion
of the consequences of those experiences, shrouded in the language of
pathology and the belief that those experiences have been overwhelmingly
negative and, by implication, possibly anti-Puerto Rican.
One of the very first lessons I learned when I followed my parents' dream
and took the guagua aérea back to the land of my birth was that
to be de allá was akin to suffering
from a social disability, a condition that los de acá believed
I had best overcome por el bien de la nación,
if not my own accommodation. That was in the 1970's, when Puerto Rico
was being invaded by a seeming horde of return migrants, and the children
of the diaspora were beginning to be perceived as a problem, one that
taxed the island's already scarce resources and presented perspectives
that seemed antithetical to long-cherished ideas about Puerto Rican identity.
Throughout my many years living and working in Puerto Rico there was rarely
a reference to los de afuera that wasn't,
on some level, derogatory, so that even compliments (ìHay,
pero tu no pareces ser de allá) only reinforced this sense
of undesirable otherness. The image of Nuyoricans as immoral, violent,
dirty, lazy, welfare-dependent, drug-addicted felons was not restricted
to the United States; to this day, both countries produce media images
that depict state-side Puerto Ricans as overwhelmingly engaged in some
type of objectionable behavior. Even by the most sympathetic of accounts,
it's assumed that living in the entrañas del
monstro ruins Puerto Ricans, robs them of language and culture
and leaves them susceptible to destructive influencias
ajenas.
Certainly among the most disturbing of those influences for the island
Puerto Ricans has been the Nuyorican apparent obsession with race and
racism and, most particularly, their identification with African-Americans.
This rejection of Nuyoricans and their ideas about race cannot simply
be attributed to an affirmation of Puerto Rican nationalism as against
the colonizing metropole because some ideas de allá
have clearly met with higher degrees of receptivity on the island. For
example, in the late 1960s and early 1970s, the Black Power and feminist
movements were both viewed with skepticism--if not outright rejection--by
most of the island's intellectual and political elite as "alien"
notions, potentially divisive intrusions into Puerto Rican national life.
Within a decade, however, and despite continued hostility from some sectors,
the island boasted a number of feminist organizations, as well as the
official endorsement of the Commonwealth government. At the Comisión
Para los Asuntos de la Mujer, for example, programs and literature
developed in the United States barely underwent any alteration in their
transit(ion) to Puerto Rico, most merely translated into Spanish. Not
only were these "foreign ideas" acceptable but so too was the
format--neither message (middle-class feminism) nor messenger (in the
main, white women) met with the easy dismissal affected against Nuyoricans
who talked about race and racism. Nor were those Puerto Ricans
de acá who espoused the new ideas about women's place in
society any more receptive to the new ideas about race than was the general
population. Thus, in a meeting with the then director of the Comisión,
during which I described my own research on race and racism in Puerto
Rico, I was assured that "aquí eso no
es un problema" and counseled as to the danger of imposing
"las cosas de allá, acá."
Little wonder, then, that twenty-five years after Isabelo Zenón
Cruz published his biting exposé on racism in Puerto Rico2,
there is still no official acknowledgment of its existence on the island;
newspapers, magazines and the broadcast media continue to ask if racism
exists, rather than affirming that it does, a tactic followed by the island's
Civil Rights Commission in its recently published booklet, "Somos
racistas?"3 Nor is it surprising that Black Puerto
Rican women, so long ignored as women and as Blacks, have found themselves
compelled to establish their own organization, la
Unión de Mujeres Puertorriqueñas Negras, as a vehicle
for fighting the silence, invisibility and racism that marks their participation
en la gran familia puertorriqueña.
This reluctance to engage racism as anything other than an imported "Gringo"problem
is consistent with the exceptionalist posture typical throughout Latin
America, where the myth of racial democracy has continued to dominate
national discourse despite well-documented evidence to the contrary. Puerto
Rico, identifying as culturally "Hispanic," has looked to an
increasingly Europeanized Spain4 and to other Spanish-speaking
countries, ignoring the neighboring Caribbean islands full of "negros
de verdad," and instead focusing on a Hispanoamérica
ostensibly full of mestizos, indios and blancos--and just as reluctant
to acknowledge its strong African roots. Puerto Rico as a "Latin"
country exempts itself from racism even as it distances itself from its
Blackness, identifying "real" Blackness as somehow inconsistent
with Hispanic history and culture. This view has found support in a long
trail of academic and lay publications that insist on the relative racial
harmony among Puerto Ricans, born of the mestizaje
that characterizes its people.
In this scenario, Puerto Ricans, defined as neither Black nor white,
arrive in the United States devoid of racial prejudice only to be accosted
by it in their new home. Puerto Ricans are presumably taught racism
allá and forced to choose between Black or white identity,
to the detriment of their "true" cultural selves.5
This perspective, prevalent in the scholarship produced since the 1930s,
is also expressed in the more recent literary writings of Puerto Ricans
such as Judith Ortíz Cofer who claims that she "was born a
white girl in Puerto Rico but became a brown girl" in the United
States. Years earlier, in the auto-biographical novel Down
These Mean Streets, the dark-skinned Piri Thomas anguishes over
being "caught up between two sticks."7 Yet, it would
be more accurate to say that Thomas and the others are actually stuck
between the myth of racial democracy with its implicit preference for
mestizaje, and the reality of African descent
and racism. The choice, if choice there were, is not between Black and
white but between the myth of race-free color blindness and the reality
of white supremacy--tanto acá como allá.
Nuyoricans were "infected" with las
ideas de allá. But the newer ideas found fertile ground
in the practical experiences of Puerto Ricans at both destinations of
the guagua aérea. The generation that
came of age in the 1960s and 1970s saw what earlier migrants have seen
from the beginning of the Latino presence in the United States. Since
the turn of the century people such as Arturo Schomburg have confronted
overt racism, but with its open acknowledgment they have also found the
political space to fight against it. The shared experiences of racial
discrimination and the concrete conditions flowing from it--deficient
educational, health, and employment opportunities--confronted the more
subtly phrased, but no less destructive ideology of racial democracy,
learned from our parents and our community, and it became clear that something
was off kilter. The very language of racism--"pelo bueno," "pelo
malo," "Negro pero inteligente," etc., etc, etc.--which
we heard in Spanish and English, left little doubt that the similarities
between us were actually greater than the differences. The counter-hegemonic
ideas that flowed from the Civil Rights movement affected all those in
the United States who were racially subordinated--African Americans, Puerto
Ricans, Mexicans, Native Americans, Asians, etc.--in the United States
and throughout the world. Nuyoricans were particularly receptive to the
new discourses that arose from these struggles because, located at the
very bottom of the social and economic hierarchy of the City, they realized
there was much to be gained and little to be lost in de-mystifying the
role of race in our lives.
The effect of the US antiracist movement on Puerto Ricans acá
has received less attention but there is ample evidence of those influences.
It extends far beyond the short lived trendiness of the African-inspired
dress and hairdos or the continuing fascination with the musical innovations
that we know as "salsa" and its "cocolo" aficionados,
or even the growing intellectual interest in identifying the African influences--or,
at another level, foundations--of Puerto Rican culture. Less obvious,
or at least less commented upon, is the effect on the educational life
of Puerto Rico, where the astounding growth of post-secondary educational
institutions on the island can be directly attributed to programs implemented
under federally-mandated Affirmative Action guidelines. Inter-American
University, Sagrado Corazón, and the countless technical colleges
that opened their doors in the 1970s were able to develop precisely because
Puerto Rican students acá qualified
for federal assistance programs designed to help racialized minorities
allá. By definition, all Puerto Ricans--acá
y allá--met this racial criterion; even as Puerto Ricans,
especially on the island, rejected the stigma of racialization, they still
accepted--indeed, actively sought out--the benefits of this racialization.
That so many of the beneficiaries--again, acá
y allá--were often the children of the more economically
privileged sectors of our various communities does not diminish the significance
of those race-based reforms. How many of those in this room today, de
acá, can deny that their education was made possible by
the programs instituted as a result of the struggles de
los negros y nuyoricans de allá? The very existence in Puerto
Rico of a Commission on Civil Rights--like that of the Comisión
Para los Asuntos de la Mujer--is a by-product of that Black movement
of thirty years ago and of the role played by Puertorriqueños de
allá in those struggles.
And yet Puerto Ricans continue to ignore this more recent history and
depend instead on a distorted past that distinguishes them from African
Americans, specifically, and Blacks, more generally. We find, then, that
the African diaspora has received even less attention than the Puerto
Rican diaspora. But the fact remains that over 95% of the diaspora from
Africa ended up in Latin America and the Caribbean; South America received
50% of those enslaved Africans, and throughout the colonial period Black
people represented majority populations in all the major cities of the
Spanish territories. The material and social contributions of these millions
of Africans and their descendants to the making of Nuestra América
cannot be exaggerated. Nor should we relegate the African presence to
a distant past--in myriad forms Africa infuses almost every cultural space
of this hemisphere, whether directly or indirectly, whether acknowledged
or ignored.
Africa lives on in Mexico's Costa Chica where we can
point to people who "look" African, and wherever mejicanos play
and dance to the son jarocho.
Africa lives among the Arawak-speaking Garifunas of
Central America.
Africa lives in the zamacueca, the national dance of
Peru.
Africa lives among Bolivia's Aymara-speaking Blacks,
descendants of the Potosi miners who enriched the Spanish coffers during
the earliest years of the colonial conquest.
Africa lives in the tango--born in the Black ghettos
of Buenos Aires.
And Africa, of course, lives in Puerto Rico--este pedacito
de tierra which, proportionately, received 1000% times as many Africans
as did the United States!8
The growing recognition throughout Latin America of its profound African
roots is much more than a rediscovery of the past but an attempt to understand
our present and assure a more dignified future. It is not a rigid, stagnant
Africa of 500 or 300 years ago, or of yesterday, but the product of the
years lived allá y acá. We seek
neither an Africa nor a Puerto Rico locked in the past--but one nourished
by that past.
Whether or not we are identifiably carriers of the continentís
genes, Africa is part of us--individually and as a nation. This is documented
fact, an incontrovertible truth. Africa is as much a part of us as is
our legacy of colonialism and racism. Y eso es así
para los que estamos allá y para los que viven acá. Quinientos
años después de la conquista de Borikén, y cien años
después de la invasión yanqui de Puerto Rico--ambos atropellos
racionalizados con argumentos racistas--hemos llegado a este momento histórico:
al reconocimiento que Africa vive en nosotros, que formamos parte de esa
diaspora, que ya no podemos hablar de allá y acá. De la
misma manera que tenemos que aceptar a los Nuyoricans como parte íntegra
de la nación, también tenemos que reconocer nuestros lazos
con Africa y todos sus descendientes. Más allá de ser un
acto de solidaridad, es apreciar que es parte de lo que somos.
Certainly such a perspective would begin to counter the racism that continues
to dominate so much of our identity discourse. Perhaps it might even open
up the possibility of accepting, as part of that diaspora, those dominicanos
who increasingly speak the language of acá
y allá as they make their homes among us, here in Puerto
Rico and there, in the U.S. Because the last two decades have exposed
the hypocrisy of proclaiming the Dominican Republic as our hermana
antillana while simultaneously rejecting that island's immigrants as "negros
cafres." Why is that solidarity so much in rhetorical evidence and
so absent in the practical matters of every day life? How do a colonized
people who insist on their latinidad, mestizaje
and racial tolerance dare to cast aspersions on a similarly oppressed
nation with the same ideological constructs? When did Dominicans stop
being antillanos? When did the culture that presumably unite us stop carrying
any weight? Is this transformation attributable to the affects of the
Mona Passage--something akin to the supernatural claims made about the
Bermuda Triangle? Or is it simply that ellos--al
igual que yo--son negros y son de allá?
Clearly there are differences among us--centuries of particular experiences
have forged countless variations on similar themes. But acá
y allá should not continue to carry the dismissive tone
that we still hear voiced whenever the subject of race comes up. Perhaps
we can take a cue from an understanding that mutual respect comes out
of the practice of sharing and the recognition that our stories, our histories,
are inextricably joined. It signals, as well, our growing awareness of
Puerto Ricans as a Caribbean people and Puerto Rican history as but one
more expression of the strength and creativity that has always characterized
diasporic peoples. For all of us here today--Puerto Ricans, African Americans,
Dominicans--are people of the diaspora, indeed of multiple, and multi-layered,
diasporas. Todos en un momento y otro somos de acá
y allá.
NOTES
1. While the term "Nuyorican" is often used to encompass all
Puerto Ricans who have lived their formative years in the United States,
I am using it in its original sense, as specific to those raised in New
York City. Of course, Puerto Ricans in Chicago, Boston, San Francisco,
etc., may identify with much of what follows.
2. The two-volume work, Narciso descubre su trasero, Humacao,
(Puerto Rico: Editorial Furidi, 1975), was self-published, suggesting
the resistance on the part of island publishers to critical discussion
of racism in Puerto Rico; the book quickly sold out and remains out of
print.
3. A representative article is "So, Are We Racists? A Conspiracy
of Silence: Racism in Puerto Rico" by Eneid Routté Gómez
(San Juan, Vol.IV, No.VIII, San Juan, Puerto Rico, 1995). Similarly, a
publication by the Comisión de Derechos Civiles
de Puerto Rico, ?Somos racistas?: Como podemos
combatir el Racismo (sic), (San Juan, Puerto Rico, 1997), assertively
asks the question but only implies a response in the affirmative, suggesting
a perceived need to be as non-confrontational as possible.
4. I refer to Spain's recent inclusion in the European community after
centuries of rejection ostensibly because of its location on the "wrong
side" of the Pyrenees, i.e., it's proximity to, and strong ties with,
Africa.
5.The oft-cited work of Clara Rodriguez, for example, rests precisely
on this belief in the distinctiveness of Puerto Rican racial dynamics,
which is contrasted with the so-called bi-polar racial classification
system of the U.S. More problematic is her assessment that "trigueños,"
i.e. those who are neither Black nor white, are the true Puerto Rican
culture bearers. See Puerto Ricans: Born in the USA, Boston: Unwin
Hyman, 1989.
6. Judith Ortíz Cofer, "The Story of My Body," in The
Latin Deli: Telling the Lives of Barrio Women, NY: Norton & Company,
1993.
7. Piri Thomas, Down These Mean Streets, NY: Knopf, 1967.
8. As is the case in most of the hemisphere, there are no reliable figures
on the descendant African population of Puerto Rico. The U.S. Census Bureau
eliminated the racial classification category for Puerto Rico in 1950,
upon determining that the results in previous censuses were largely useless:
Puerto Rican rejection of Blackness meant that, given a choice, ever greater
numbers opted to identify as "white" irregardless of ancestry
or actual phenotype. The 2000 census reinstated the racial category but
the results will not be available for some years.
Note to Readers: This essay is a version of remarks which I made
as a participant in the conference, "Race and the Construction of
the (sic) Puerto Rican Identity: New Paradigms on Race, Identity and Power",
held in New York City (April 22-24, 1998) and San Juan, Puerto Rico (April
30, 1998). Organized by concerned scholars and activists in both cities,
the conference was one of many activities held in the centennial year
of the U.S. occupation of Puerto Rico that attempted to assess the past
and propose viable alternatives to continuing problems. Its primary objective
was to initiate a dialogue that would lead to future projects addressing
race and racism in various areas, including the media, education, community
organizing, advocacy and research. The speech was made in San Juan before
an overwhelmingly Puerto Rican audience, the majority of whom were raised
in the U.S. Thus, allá, refers to the United States and acá
is Puerto Rico. Though it refers specifically to the Puerto Rican experience,
some of the issues discussed may well resonate among other diasporic "children,"
that is, the notion of being "de allá·" or "de
acá" crosses ethnic boundaries.
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