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6-SA16 Wilkinson Haciendo Patria: The Puerto Rican Flag in the Art of Juan Sánchez Michelle Joan Wilkinson uerto Rico is an island adrift in the predominantly postcolonial Caribbean sphere that is its topographic equivalent. Lying between the North Americas and the Nuestras Américas, Puerto Rico epitomizes the historical reality of a “divided nation”: nearly Pone-half of the Puerto Rican population lives on the US mainland.¹ Some scholars have used the phrases “commuter nation” and “translocal nation” to illuminate the transit of bodies on fl ights between San Juan and cities such as New York, Miami, and Chicago.² Th ese terms—divided nation, commuter nation, translocal nation—affi x paradigms of nationality, albeit a transitory nationality, onto the people of this nonsovereign nation. Puerto Rican nationality is thus rendered vis-à-vis the dynamics of Puerto Rican migra- tion and, specifi cally, migration to the US mainland. As such, Puerto Rican nationality and nationalism operate in relational modes that emphasize the self-positioning and 1. On “the divided nation” see Kal Wagenheim and Olga Jímenez de Wagenheim, eds., Th e Puerto Ricans: A Documentary History (Princeton, NJ: Markus Wiener Publishers, 1994), 283. 2. On “the commuter nation” see Carlos Antonio Torre, Hugo Rodríguez-Vecchini, and William Burgos, eds. Th e Commuter Nation: Perspectives on Puerto Rican Migration (Río Piedras: Editorial de la Universidad de Puerto Rico, 1994). On “translocal nation” see Mayra Santos-Febre quoted in Agustín Lao-Montes, “Islands at the Crossroads: Puerto Ricanness Travelling between the Translocal Nation and the Global City,” in Puerto Rican Jam: Rethinking Colonialism and Nationalism, ed. Frances Negrón-Muntaner and Ramón Grosfoguel (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1997), 177. Small Axe 16, September 2004: pp. 61–83 ISSN 0799-0537 Downloaded from http://read.dukeupress.edu/small-axe/article-pdf/8/2/61/696353/6-sa16+wilkinson+(61-83).pdf by guest on 28 September 2021 the multiple locations of the Puerto Rican subject within the diaspora. Migratory fl ow, then, functions as the defi nitive narrative of nation. As the anthropologist Jorge Duany notes in the title of his 2002 book, Puerto Rico and Puerto Ricans are a “nation on the ssmallmall move.”³ aaxexe Just as discussions of the national question are part of daily life on the island, expres- sions of nationalism are de rigueur in mainland Puerto Rican communities. In New York City, for example, the omnipresence of the Puerto Rican fl ag is striking given the city’s infi nitely international population. Puerto Rican fl ags decorate apartment win- dows in Brooklyn, hang from car rearview mirrors in Queens, cling to backpacks in the Bronx, and fl ash on tattooed bodies striding down Fifth Avenue during the annual Puerto Rican Day parade. Th e fl ag miniatures are vestiges of the national emblem that have been re-sourced from and reinserted into the city’s landscape; they give viewing pleasure to the urban dwellers and passersby, many of whom regard the fl ags as visual affi rmations of cultural pride, if not physical demarcations of nation-space. Th is essay considers the ways the placing of and playing with Puerto Rican fl ags constitutes a visual praxis of “haciendo patria”—a term loosely translated here to mean nation building.⁴ Amid the rhetoric of a transitory nationality, the planting of the fl ag signals Puerto Rican rootedness and belonging within mainland communities, even as it evokes emotional connections to an island past. For outside of the communal, diasporic spaces maintained by mainland Puerto Ricans, the nation’s past, present, and future is something of a void—or something avoided. HACIENDO PATRIA IN THE DIASPORA Puerto Rico, the shining star, the great lap dog of the Caribbean. —Abraham Rodriguez, “Th e Boy Without a Flag” A former Spanish colony, Puerto Rico became a protectorate of the United States of America in 1898, following the Spanish-American War. In 1917, under the Jones Act, Puerto Ricans on the island were granted US citizenship. Citizenship allowed Puerto 3. Jorge Duany, Th e Puerto Rican Nation on the Move: Identities on the Island and in the United States (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2002). 4. I borrow the term “haciendo patria” from the theme and title of a Puerto Rican Studies Association (PRSA) conference. Th e conference, and an accompanying art exhibition with the same title, was held in Chicago, Illinois, in October 2002. 6622 Downloaded from http://read.dukeupress.edu/small-axe/article-pdf/8/2/61/696353/6-sa16+wilkinson+(61-83).pdf by guest on 28 September 2021 Ricans to enlist in the US Army—a boon in 1917, as the United States entered World War I.⁵ In 1952, under the leadership of Luis Muñoz Marin and his Popular Dem- ocratic Party (Partido Popular Democrático), Puerto Rico became a “free associated state” (Estado Libre Asociado). As a commonwealth of the United States but not a state, MMichelleichelle JJoanoan Puerto Rico receives limited benefi ts in the form of federal assistance from its so-called WWilkinsonilkinson free association.⁶ In contrast to the neighboring Caribbean islands that produced revo- lutions or affi rmed themselves as republics or nation-states, Puerto Rico uses nonbind- ing polls, called plebiscites, to determine whether island residents prefer to pursue US statehood, independence, or maintain their commonwealth status. Since 1952 common- wealth supporters have outweighed the other groups, exposing the willingness of the Puerto Rican people to remain in between, to be “free” and “associated.”⁷ Indeed, Puerto Rico’s unique relationship with the United States, arguably a kind of exceptionalism, fuels the island’s exemption and erasure from the rest of the Americas. Consider, for example, the experience that the cultural scholar Jean Franco recounts. On a visit to a folk museum in São Paulo, Brazil, she observed “a huge relief map of Latin America.”⁸ Stressing the point that the museum was housed within a complex erected as a tribute to “Latin American solidarity,” Franco recalls, As I walked alongside the map tracing the waterways, cities and mountains from the Tierra del Fuego to Cuba I noticed something odd about the Caribbean—Puerto Rico was missing. It was not on the map of Latin America. Both in Latin America and the United States, Puerto Rico stands for something which cannot be assimilated.⁹ Th e cartographic exclusion of Puerto Rico pointedly captures its amorphous existence somewhere between the United States, Latin America, and the Caribbean. Puerto Rican islanders do retain some level of autonomy. Islanders elect a local gov- ernor and a resident commissioner, who presents their interests to the US Congress. Yet these representatives are not allowed to vote—or to “represent”—Puerto Rican islanders 5. Referring to the connection between the bestowing of US citizenship to Puerto Ricans and their immediate entry into military service, Marimar Benítez notes, “It was no coincidence that until 1934 the Bureau of Insular Aff airs of the War Department was the agency charged with the island’s administration.” “Th e Special Case of Puerto Rico,” Th e Latin American Spirit: Art and Artists in the United States, 1920–1970 (New York: Th e Bronx Museum of the Arts in association with Harry N. Abrams, 1988), 73. 6. For example, island residents do not pay US federal income tax; likewise, they are not permitted to vote in US presidential elections. 7. Th e rival portion of the island’s population wants to be a state—specifi cally, the fi fty-fi rst state. Advocates of independence represent only a small fraction of the island’s population; although there are many artists and intellectuals who support independence, the group often accounts for no more than 5 percent of the vote. 8. Jean Franco, foreword to Juan Flores, Divided Borders: Essays on Puerto Rican Identity (Houston: Arte Público Press, 1993), 9. 9. Ibid., 9. 6633 Downloaded from http://read.dukeupress.edu/small-axe/article-pdf/8/2/61/696353/6-sa16+wilkinson+(61-83).pdf by guest on 28 September 2021 in the same way that elected offi cials from the Commonwealth of Virginia would repre- sent Virginians. On the other side of the equation, the United States benefi ts from the geopolitical value the island has aff orded US military and defense interests. Scholars like ssmallmall Ramon Grosfoguel note that “Puerto Rico’s geopolitical location was strategically impor- aaxexe tant for the U.S. government’s defense against possible European aggression against the Panama Canal and the U.S. mainland.”¹⁰ Indeed, military bases occupy prime areas on the hundred-mile-long by thirty-fi ve-mile-wide main island, and US armed forces have conducted hazardous missile testing on the smaller surrounding islands of Culebra and Vieques. Th e unequal alignment between Puerto Rico and the United States relegates Puerto Rican islanders to the margins, just as the term “mainland” suggests their distance from the center. Th e same unwieldy positioning can be said to dislodge Puerto Rican visual art from the art historical axes that traditionally would frame it. Whether described as anomalous, ambiguous, or exceptional, Puerto Rico presents a “special case,” accord- ing to the art historian Marimar Benítez. In her foundational essay, titled “Th e Special Case of Puerto Rico,” Benítez comments that Puerto Ricans’ “resistance to Anglo-Saxon culture” and “constant movement back and forth between the mainland and the island” reinforce a sense of history and culture for US residents.¹¹ Yet for non–Puerto Ricans, the island and its art remain among the invisible and the unknown. Analogously, then, we might read Puerto Rico’s absence from the “huge” map of Latin America as akin to Puerto Rican art’s absence from the vast tomes of “Latin American art.” Mainland Puerto Rican art is likewise underrepresented in canonical histories of “American art,” a fact that mirrors the diminished representation of Puerto Rican communities in cul- tural histories of the United States.¹² In tidily removing Puerto Rico from its locus on the map, the architects of “Latin American solidarity” (described by Franco)—as well as the arbiters of US imperialism—casually erase the national identity that Puerto Ricans 10.
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