Diálogo

Volume 5 Number 1 Article 4

2001

Allá y Acá: Locating Puerto Ricans in the Diaspora(s)

Miriam Jiménez Román

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Recommended Citation Jiménez Román, Miriam (2001) "Allá y Acá: Locating Puerto Ricans in the Diaspora(s)," Diálogo: Vol. 5 : No. 1 , Article 4. Available at: https://via.library.depaul.edu/dialogo/vol5/iss1/4

This Article is brought to you for free and open access by the Center for Latino Research at Via Sapientiae. It has been accepted for inclusion in Diálogo by an authorized editor of Via Sapientiae. For more information, please contact [email protected]. Allá y Acá: Locating Puerto Ricans in the Diaspora(s)

Cover Page Footnote This article is from an earlier iteration of Diálogo which had the subtitle "A Bilingual Journal." The publication is now titled "Diálogo: An Interdisciplinary Studies Journal."

This article is available in Diálogo: https://via.library.depaul.edu/dialogo/vol5/iss1/4 IN THE DIASPORA(S) Acá:AlláRicansLocatingPuertoy M ra Jmnz Román Jiménez©Miriam Yo soy Nuyorican.1 Puerto Rico there was rarely a reference Rico, I was assured that "aquí eso no es Así es—vengo de allá. to los de afuera that wasn't, on some un problema" and counseled as to the Soy producto de la migración level, derogatory, so that even danger of imposing "las cosas de allá, puertorriqueña, miembro de la otra compliments ("Hay, pero tu no pareces acá." Little wonder, then, that twenty- mitad de la nación. Lo digo con ser de allá") only reinforced this sense five years after Isabelo Zenón Cruz of undesirable otherness. The image of orgullo, concierte de que para published his biting exposé on racism in Nuyoricans as immoral, violent, dirty, Puerto Rico2, there is still no official muchos es una condición lazy, welfare-dependent, drug-addicted acknowledgment of its existence on the desgraciada. Para muchos no hay felons was not restricted to the United island; newspapers, magazines and the que hablar de “diáspora” de ningun States; to this day, both countries broadcast media continue to ask if tipo—y mucho menos de sus produce media images that depict state­ racism exists, rather than affirming that side Puerto Ricans as overwhelmingly it does, a tactic followed by the island's implicaciones. engaged in some type of objectionable Civil Rights Commission in its recently behavior. Even by the most sympathetic published booklet, "Somos racistas?"3 Puerto Ricans and so-called Nuyoricans of accounts, it's assumed that living in Nor is it surprising that Black Puerto will understand the import of this the entrañas del monstro ruins Puerto Rican women, so long ignored as seemingly simple statement of otherness. Ricans, robs them of language and women and as Blacks, have found Many will reject it as an inappropriate culture and leaves them susceptible to themselves compelled to establish their identifier, viewing it as an admission of destructive influencias ajenas. own organization, la Unión de Mujeres lesser status, of authenticity, of illegitimacy Puertorriqueñas Negras, as a vehicle for and even, perhaps, a s an act of betrayal. Certainly among the most disturbing of fighting the silence, invisibility and To proudly claim membership in that those influences for the island Puerto racism that marks their participation en community of Puerto Ricans whose Ricans has been the Nuyorican apparent la gran familia puertorriqueña. formative years have been lived in the obsession with race and racism and, United States—and worse yet, in the most particularly, their identification This reluctance to engage racism as very pit of the imperialist monster's with African-Americans. This rejection anything other than an imported belly—is still a rarity in the island, of Nuyoricans and their ideas about "Gringo" problem is consistent with the where an atmosphere of discomfort race cannot simply be attributed to an exceptionalist posture typical throughout pervades the very subject of the affirmation of Puerto Rican nationalism Latin America, where the myth of racial diaspora. To be de allá would seem to as against the colonizing metropole democracy has continued to dominate represent only failure: beyond the because some ideas de allá have clearly national discourse despite well- island's inability to provide a viable met with higher degrees of receptivity documented evidence to the contrary. homeland for more than half of its on the island. For example, in the late Puerto Rico, identifying as culturally people is the equally painful reality that 1960s and early 1970s, the Black Power "Hispanic," has looked to an increasingly the majority of the diaspora community and feminist movements were both Europeanized Spain4 and to other lives in poverty, stigmatized as a racialized viewed with skepticism—if not outright Spanish-speaking countries, ignoring minority and expressing perspectives rejection—by most of the island's the neighboring Caribbean islands full wrought from that experience. The intellectual and political elite as "alien" of "negros de verdad," and instead struggles and achievements of Puerto notions, potentially divisive intrusions focusing on a Hispanoamérica ostensibly Ricans in the United States make up a into Puerto Rican national life. Within a full of mestizos, indios and blancos— still largely unknown history; what decade, however, and despite continued and just as reluctant to acknowledge its prevails is a distorted notion of the hostility from some sectors, the island strong African roots. Puerto Rico as a consequences of those experiences, boasted a number of feminist "Latin" country exempts itself from shrouded in the language of pathology organizations, as well as the official racism even as it distances itself from its and the belief that those experiences endorsement of the Commonwealth Blackness, identifying "real" Blackness have been overwhelmingly negative and, government. At the Comisión Para los as somehow inconsistent with Hispanic by implication, possibly anti-Puerto Rican. Asuntos de la Mujer, for example, history and culture. This view has found programs and literature developed in support in a long trail of academic and One of the very first lessons I learned the United States barely underwent any lay publications that insist on the when I followed my parents' dream and alteration in their transit(ion) to Puerto relative racial harmony among Puerto took the guagua aérea back to the land Rico, most merely translated into Ricans, born of the mestizaje that of my birth was that to be de allá was Spanish. Not only were these "foreign characterizes its people. akin to suffering from a social disability, ideas" acceptable but so too was the a condition that los de acá believed I format—neither message (middle-class In this scenario, Puerto Ricans, defined had best overcome por el bien de la feminism) nor messenger (in the main, as neither Black nor white, arrive in the nación, if not my own accommodation. white women) met with the easy United States devoid of racial prejudice That was in the 1970s, when Puerto Rico dismissal affected against Nuyoricans only to be accosted by it in their new was being invaded by a seeming horde who talked about race and racism. Nor home. Puerto Ricans are presumably of return migrants, and the children of were those Puerto Ricans de acá who taught racism allá and forced to choose the diaspora were beginning to be espoused the new ideas about women's between Black or white identity, to the perceived as a problem, one that taxed place in society any more receptive to detriment of their "true" cultural selves.5 the island's already scarce resources and the new ideas about race than was the This perspective, prevalent in the presented perspectives that seemed general population. Thus, in a meeting scholarship produced since the 1930s, is antithetical to long-cherished ideas with the then director of the Comisión, also expressed in the more recent about Puerto Rican identity. Throughout during which I described my own literary writings of Puerto Ricans such as my many years living and working in research on race and racism in Puerto Judith Ortiz Cofer who claims that she "was born a white girl in Puerto Rico those influences. It extends far beyond these millions of Africans and their but became a brown girl" in the United the short lived trendiness of the descendants to the making of Nuestra States. Years earlier, in the auto­ African-inspired dress and hairdos or América cannot be exaggerated. Nor biographical novel Down These Mean the continuing fascination with the should we relegate the African Streets, the dark-skinned Piri Thomas musical innovations that we know as presence to a distant past—in myriad anguishes over being "caught up "salsa"and its "cocolo" aficionados, or forms Africa infuses almost every between two sticks."7 Yet, it would be even the growing intellectual interest in cultural space of this hemisphere, more accurate to say that Thomas and identifying the African influences—or, whether directly or indirectly, whether the others are actually stuck between at another level, foundations—of acknowledged or ignored. the myth of racial democracy with its Puerto Rican culture. Less obvious, or at implicit preference for mestizaje, and least less commented upon, is the effect the reality of African descent and on the educational life of Puerto Rico, racism. The choice, if choice there were, where the astounding growth of post­ is not between Black and white but secondary educational institutions on Africa lives on in Mexico’s between the myth of race-free color the island can be directly attributed to blindness and the reality of white programs implemented under federally- Costa Chica where we supremacy—tanto acá como allá. mandated Affirmative Action guidelines. can point to people who Inter-American University, Sagrado Nuyoricans were "infected" with las Corazón, and the countless technical “look” African, and wherever; colleges that opened their doors in the ideas de allá. But the newer ideas found mejicanos play and dance to fertile ground in the practical experiences 1970s were able to develop precisely of Puerto Ricans at both destinations of because Puerto Rican students acá th e s o n j a r o c h o . the guagua aérea. The generation that qualified for federal assistance programs came of age in the 1960s and 1970s saw designed to help racialized minorities what earlier migrants have seen from allá. By definition, all Puerto Ricans— Africa lives among the the beginning of the Latino presence in acá y allá—met this racial criterion; even the United States. Since the turn of the as Puerto Ricans, especially on the Arawak-speaking Garifunas century people such as Arturo Schomburg island, rejected the stigma of of Central America. have confronted overt racism, but with its racialization, they still accepted— open acknowledgment they have also indeed, actively sought out—the found the political space to fight benefits of this racialization. That so Africa lives in the zam acueca, against it. The shared experiences of many of the beneficiaries—again, acá y racial discrimination and the concrete allá—were often the children of the the national dance of Peru. conditions flowing from it—deficient more economically privileged sectors of educational, health, and employment our various communities does not opportunities—confronted the more diminish the significance of those race- Africa lives am ong Bolivia’s subtly phrased, but no less destructive based reforms. How many of those in ideology of racial democracy, learned this room today, de acá, can deny that Aymara-speaking Blacks,: from our parents and our community, their education was made possible by descendants of the Potosí and it became clear that something was the programs instituted as a result of off kilter. The very language of racism— the struggles de los negros y nuyoricans miners who enriched the "pelo bueno," "pelo malo," "Negro de allá? The very existence in Puerto Spanish coffers during the pero inteligente," etc., etc, etc.—which Rico of a Commission on Civil Rights— we heard in Spanish and English, left like that of the Comisión Para los earliest years of the colonial little doubt that the similarities Asuntos de la Mujer— is a by-product of c o n q u e s t , between us were actually greater than that Black movement of thirty years ago the differences. The counter-hegemonic and of the role played by Puertorriqueños ideas that flowed from the Civil Rights de allá in those struggles. Africa lives in the tango— movement affected all those in the United States who were racially And yet Puerto Ricans continue to born in the Black ghettos of subordinated—African Americans, Puerto ignore this more recent history and Ricans, Mexicans, Native Americans, depend instead on a distorted past Buenos Aires. Asians, etc.—in the United States and that distinguishes them from African throughout the world. Nuyoricans were Americans, specifically, and Blacks, particularly receptive to the new more generally. We find, then, that the And Africa, of course, lives in discourses that arose from these African diaspora has received even less Puerto Rico— este pedacito struggles because, located at the very attention than the Puerto Rican bottom of the social and economic diaspora. But the fact remains that over d e tierra which, proportionately, hierarchy of the City, they realized there 95% of the diaspora from Africa ended received 1000% times as was much to be gained and little to be up in Latin America and the Caribbean; lost in de-mystifying the role of race in South America received 50% of those many Africans as did the our lives. enslaved Africans, and throughout the United States!8 colonial period Black people represented The effect of the US antiracist movement majority populations in all the major on Puerto Ricans acá has received less cities of the Spanish territories. The attention but there is ample evidence of material and social contributions of The growing recognition throughout akin to the supernatural claims made 5.The oft-cited work of Clara Rodriguez, for Latin America of its profound African about the Bermuda Triangle? Or is it example, rests precisely on this belief in the roots is much more than a rediscovery simply that ellos—al igual que yo—son distinctiveness of Puerto Rican racial of the past but an attempt to negros y son de allál dynamics, which is contrasted with the so- called bi-polar racial classification system of understand our present and assure a the U.S. More problematic is her assessment more dignified future. It is not a rigid, Clearly there are differences among that "trigueños," i.e. those who are neither stagnant Africa of 500 or 300 years ago, us—centuries of particular experiences Black nor white, are the true Puerto Rican or of yesterday, but the product of the have forged countless variations on culture bearers. See Puerto Ricans: Born in years lived allá y acá. We seek neither similar themes. But acá y allá should not the USA, Boston: Unwin Hyman, 1989. an Africa nor a Puerto Rico locked in the continue to carry the dismissive tone past— but one nourished by that past. that we still hear voiced whenever the 6. Judith Ortiz Cofer, "The Story of My Body," subject of race comes up. Perhaps we in The Latin Deli: Telling the Lives of Barrio Women, NY: Norton & Company, 1993. Whether or not we are identifiably can take a cue from an understanding carriers of the continent's genes, Africa that mutual respect comes out of the 7. Piri Thomas, Down These Mean Streets, is part of us— individually and as a practice of sharing and the recognition NY: Knopf, 1967. nation. This is documented fact, an that our stories, our histories, are incontrovertible truth. Africa is as much inextricably joined. It signals, as well, 8. As is the case in most of the hemisphere, a part of us as is our legacy of our growing awareness of Puerto Ricans there are no reliable figures on the colonialism and racism. Y eso es así para as a Caribbean people and Puerto Rican descendant African population of Puerto los que estamos allá y para los que viven history as but one more expression of Rico. The U.S. Census Bureau eliminated the racial classification category for Puerto acá. Quinientos años después de la the strength and creativity that has Rico in 1950, upon determining that the conquista de Borikén, y cien años always characterized diasporic peoples. results in previous censuses were largely después de la invasión yanqui de Puerto For all of us here today— Puerto Ricans, useless: Puerto Rican rejection of Blackness Rico—ambos atropellos racionalizados African Americans, Dominicans—are people meant that, given a choice, ever greater con argumentos racistas—hemos of the diaspora, indeed of multiple, and numbers opted to identify as "white" llegado a este momento histórico: al multi-layered, diasporas. Todos en un irregardless of ancestry or actual phenotype. reconocimiento que Africa vive en momento y otro somos de acá y de allá. The 2000 census reinstated the racial nosotros, que formamos parte de esa category but the results will not be available for some years. diaspora, que ya no podemos hablar de allá y acá. De la misma manera que tenemos que aceptar a los Nuyoricans NOTES como parte íntegra de la nación, 1. While the term "Nuyorican" is often used también tenemos que reconocer to encompass all Puerto Ricans who have nuestros lazos con Africa y todos sus lived their formative years in the United Note to Readers, This essay is a version of States, I am using it in its original sense, as descendientes. Más allá de ser un acto remarks which I made as a participant in specific to those raised in New York City. de solidaridad, es apreciar que es parte the conference, "Race and the Construction de lo que somos. Of course, Puerto Ricans in Chicago, Boston, San Francisco, etc., may identify of the (sic) Puerto Rican Identity: New with much of what follows. Paradigms on Race, Identity and Power", Certainly such a perspective would held in New York City (April 22-24, 1998) begin to counter the racism that 2. The two-volume work, Narciso descubre continues to dominate so much of our su trasero, Humacao, (Puerto Rico: and San Juan, Puerto Rico (April 30, identity discourse. Perhaps it might Editorial Furidi, 1975), was self-published, 1998). Organized by concerned scholars even open up the possibility of suggesting the resistance on the part of and activists in both cities, the conference island publishers to critical discussion of accepting, as part of that diaspora, was one of many activities held in the those dominicanos who increasingly racism in Puerto Rico; the book quickly sold out and remains out of print. centennial year of the U.S. occupation of speak the language of acá y allá as they Puerto Rico that attempted to assess the make their homes among us, here in 3. A representative article is "So, Are We past and propose viable alternatives to Puerto Rico and there, in the U.S. Racists? A Conspiracy of Silence: Racism in continuing problems. Its primary objective Because the last two decades have Puerto Rico" by Eneid Routté Gómez (San exposed the hypocrisy of proclaiming Juan, Vol.IV, No.VIII, San Juan, Puerto Rico, was to initiate a dialogue that would lead the Dominican Republic as our hermana 1995). Similarly, a publication by the to future projects addressing race and antillana while simultaneously rejecting Comisión de Derechos Civiles de Puerto racism in various areas, including the that island's immigrants as " negros Rico, ¿Somos racistas?: Como podemos media, education, community organizing, combatir el Racismo (sic), (San Juan, cafres." Why is that solidarity so much advocacy and research. The speech was Puerto Rico, 1997), assertively asks the in rhetorical evidence and so absent in question but only implies a response in the made in San Juan before an overwhelmingly the practical matters of every day life? affirmative, suggesting a perceived need Puerto Rican audience, the majority of How do a colonized people who insist to be as non-confrontational as possible. whom were raised in the U.S. Thus, allá, on their latinidad, mestizaje and racial refers to the United States and acá is tolerance dare to cast aspersions on a 4. I refer to Spain's recent inclusion in the similarly oppressed nation with the European community after centuries of Puerto Rico. Though it refers specifically same ideological constructs? When did rejection ostensibly because of its location to the Puerto Rican experience, some of on the "wrong side" of the Pyrenees, i.e., it's Dominicans stop being antillanos? the issues discussed may well resonate proximity to, and strong ties with, Africa. When did the culture that presumably among other diasporic "children," that is, unite us stop carrying any weight? Is the notion of being "de allá" or "de acá" this transformation attributable to the crosses ethnic boundaries. affects of the Mona Passage—something