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This thesis analyzes the construc on of Puerto Rican cultural iden ty in the superhero comic book, La Borinqueña. Through an analysis of histories from both the island and diaspora, the author-ar st puts forth ideas about the Puerto Rican “na on,” which centers blackness and the diaspora, ul mately countering tradi onal discourse. Addi onally, along with other La nx comic book creator, Edgardo Miranda-Rodriguez deployed several cultural symbols to cue in his target audiences. The mixture of historical imagery and cultural symbols dis nguish themain character Marisol as a complex character. Overall the way that Marisol performs her Puerto Ricanness and the manner of her release allow her to be a more representa ve Afro- La na character in popular culture.
1 of 2 Signatures Redacted
Up, Up, and A-Wepa: Performing Puerto Rican Identities in La Borinqueña
by
Katrina Martínez
Professor María Elena Cepeda Ph.D., Advisor
A thesis submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the Degree of Bachelor of Arts with Honors in Latina/o Studies
WILLIAMS COLLEGE
Williamstown, Massachusetts
26 January 2018
2
To my fellow Boricuas across la isla and the diaspora, we are our greatest strengths. Y pa’lante, siempre pa’lante.
3
Acknowledgements I want to begin by thanking the amazing people who have paved the way for me to be at an institution like Williams College, especially the many academics of color and Puerto Rican activists before me. Thank you to everyone who has made Latina/o Studies possible at Williams, for giving me an outlet to explore myself and my histories in the classroom.
A huge thank you to Edgardo Miranda-Rodríguez for creating La Borniqueña and giving us the story of Marisol Ríos de la Luz. I am so appreciative of the time he took to sit down with me for two interviews, offering me valuable insight into the first and future issues. She has been one of my greatest sources of inspiration from the first time I saw her decked out in the flag.
Without the support of my friends and family, I would not be where I am today. To my abuelita Gigi, her courage to cross an ocean and start a life in the US has been my inspiration my entire life. To my siblings, Nichole and Ruben Martínez, as well as Lily the pup, for keeping me grounded and laughing. You’re all phenomenal ones. Additionally, thank you so very much to my amazing and supportive friends Alex Carter, Eva Cordero, Shelby Schwartz, Yvonne Shih, Dalia Luque, Claudia Reyes, Cecilia Pou Jové, Isabel Peña, Carol Almonte, Kristina Hwang, Anna Pomper, Zeke King, and all of my Pokémon. And lastly, thank you to everyone who followed my thesis writing experience on Snapchat.
I would like to thank the Leadership Alliance program at Columbia University for granting me the opportunity to conduct the research this past summer that would grow into my senior thesis. I would like to especially thank my cohort mentors, Laina Dawes and César Colón-Montijo for encouraging me to keep pursuing research and academia when I felt ready to quit. Their guidance and belief in my potential as a researcher continue to stay with me even now.
Finally, I would like to thank some of the amazing professors and mentors I have had at Williams. Thank you to Professor Roger Kittleson for allowing me to explore new ideas in class and helping me develop as an intellectual. Thank you to Professor Tyler Rogers for believing in me during the short time we have known each other, always encouraging me to “put things out into the universe” and believing in me. Thank you to Professor Nelly Rosario for pushing my creative side and helping me understand the depth and power of graphic novels and for making sure I was able to interview Edgardo when he came to speak to our class. And finally, thank you to my very first advisor Professor Leslie Brown, who kept me grounded during my first two years at Williams and always reminded me to not sweat the small stuff.
My deepest gratitude goes to my amazing mentor and advisor, Professor María Elena Cepeda for her unwavering belief in me and my work. She constantly reminded me not to get too frustrated with my research progressing, because everything would come “paso a paso.” Her support and words of wisdom allowed me to focus and refine my research skills. Through her senior seminar on Transnationalism I was able to complete my first independent research project, which has helped me in every research project since. She introduced me to the world of cultural and media studies, ultimately sparking my interest in utilizing popular culture as an analytical lens. Professor Cepeda, you have been a shining light throughout this entire process and I cannot thank you enough for all that you done for me. You are truly an inspirational mujer.
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Up, Up, and A-Wepa: Performing Puerto Rican Identities in La Borinqueña
Table of Contents
Introduction: “It’s a Bird It’s a Plane--It’s La Borinqueña!:” Marisol’s Origins………...... 5 Chapter 1: “Nothing Quite Like Nueva York:” Puerto Rican Placemaking………….…….18 Chapter 2: Leaving the Gutter Space: Graphic AfroLatinidades in La Borinqueña……....49 Conclusion: Graphic Futurities and Puerto Rican Possibilities….………………………….76
References……………………………………………………………………………………….82
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Introduction: “It’s a Bird It’s a Plane--It’s La Borinqueña!:” Marisol’s Origins “Given everything that’s going on in Puerto Rico right now with the financial crisis…I thought to myself, now more than ever, Puerto Rico and Puerto Ricans in the diaspora need a symbol to rally around.” -- Edgardo Miranda-Rodríguez, quoted by Tanisha Love Ramirez in the Huffington Post
When Marisol Ríos de la Luz, aka “La Borinqueña,” flew onto the comic book scene in
June 2016 at the National Puerto Rican Day Parade in New York City, she immediately garnered attention as an Afro-Puerto Rican superheroine. The creator of La Borinqueña, Edgardo Miranda-Rodríguez (1970-) designed Marisol to unite Puerto Ricans both on the island and in the diaspora. A self-identified Nuyorican, Miranda-Rodríguez grew up in the South Bronx before moving to Puerto Rico for a short time during his teenage years. Having previously worked as a writer for Marvel Entertainment, he has also curated numerous shows involving comic book art including The Santerians: The Art of Joe Quesada and Café con Comics: Boricuas in the Comic Book Industry. He founded the Brooklyn-based independent publishing company, Somos Arte (We Are Art) in 2010. Through Somos Arte he created La Borinqueña and the story of Marisol, largely in response to the burgeoning economic debt on the island and a desire to bring awareness to the ongoing crisis. As stated in the interview above with the Huffington Post, he believes that Puerto Ricans across the island and diaspora “need a symbol to rally around.” For him, Marisol as “La Borinqueña” reflects an opportunity to fuse comic book artistry and narrative abilities with deeply personal topics such as the current state of Puerto Rico.
The first issue of La Borinqueña follows Marisol, an Afro-Nuyorican college student at Columbia University, as she becomes a superhero during her semester abroad with the
University of Puerto Rico. Marisol lives in the Los Sures neighborhood in Williamsburg,
Brooklyn with her parents, an Afro-Puerto Rican father and a lighter-complexioned Puerto Rican
6 mother. Her maternal grandparents live in San Juan, Puerto Rico and house her during her semester “abroad” in Puerto Rico. Marisol effectively occupies the middle space of having roots in New York City but still having another “home” on the island. At Columbia, she is an environmental studies major, with a specific research focus on rock and crystal formations. On the island, she collects five crystals from various caves, which summon the Taíno mother goddess and the goddess of water, Atabex. During their encounter, Atabex shows Marisol various images of Puerto Rican history from the island and diaspora before calling on the spirit of Yúcahu and Juracán to bestow her with super strength and the ability to fly by controlling winds. After Marisol leaves Atabex, she immediately springs into action to save the city of
Aguadilla from flooding. During the introduction of the comic book, Marisol reveals that few people aside from her Chinese-Dominican best friend La La Liu know about her superhero identity.
Considering the written narrative of La Borinqueña along with the visual allows audiences to frequently
reaffirm Marisol’s
identity as an
Afro-Puerto Rican
woman. The aesthetics
of comic books require
a close understanding of
not only the visual
narrative, but also the
7 written narrative. The relationship between image and text allow for numerous interpretations and points of analysis from font, bubble shape, and color intensity, among other comic book narrative conventions. The written story progresses ultimately alongside the visual story and vice versa. Figure 1 illustrates an instance in which Marisol directly claims her identity. In the introduction to the comic book, Marisol appears in costume as “La Borinqueña,” at a party dancing with other Puerto Ricans. The man to her right calls her “negrita” (little black girl) before remarking that she possesses “tumbao.” The word “tumbao” references an inherently
African rhythm or swing. Marisol excitedly responds with “es que yo soy grifa y pura negra” (is that I am curly-haired and pure black). She continues with a statement about her love for bomba, an Afro-Caribbean style of music and sancocho, a stew-like dish comprised of various meats and vegetables. The man’s comment, the emphasis on her hair texture and skin color, as well as the references to bomba and sancocho mark her as an Afro-Puerto Rican woman for the reader-viewers, a term used to describe comic book audiences. Figure 1 deploys numerous cultural symbols not only to confirm Marisol’s identity for the reader-viewers, but also situate the narrative as heavily influenced by Puerto Rican cultures.
As an Afro-Nuyorican woman, Marisol’s physical appearance impacts how the audience understands the comic book. Immediately, her blackness and Puerto Ricanness leave little room for ambiguity, as exemplified in Figure 1. Additionally, her status as a student at Columbia
University informs why the spirits choose her as the protector of the Puerto Rican people, because she is still learning about the world around her. Decked out in her superhero suit modeled after the light blue Puerto Rican flag, Marisol’s deep brown skin and curly black hair effectively confirm her identity to the audience. Miranda-Rodríguez purposefully uses the
8 original light blue “independentista” (independence) Puerto Rican flag rather than the navy or royal blue flags, which represent different political affiliations. The navy and royal blue variations reflect either pro-Commonwealth or pro-statehood sentiments, while the light blue is associated with the independence movement. He also prefers the light blue flag, because of the historical ban on the flag under the Gag Law and the official change from light blue to a darker blue after attaining commonwealth status (personal communication 2017).
Marisol also possesses an athletic build with thick thighs and a wider overall frame
compared to her superheroine
predecessors, like Wonder Woman. In
a personal interview with
Miranda-Rodríguez, he revealed that he
modeled her thicker body frame after
the women in his own family as well as
his mentors (personal communication
2017). During her semester in Puerto
Rico, she wears a fabric pin made from
the original Puerto Rican flag flown
during “El Grito de Lares,” which
eventually unwinds to become her suit.
Figure 2 shows one of the three available covers for the first issue of La Borinqueña, Marisol flexing in her suit with a close up of the Puerto Rican flag as the
9 background. When the cloth from the flag expands, the light blue triangle comes to a point past her chest with the star resting on her left side. The flag on the star subsequently shines whenever she springs into action to save the day. Marisol’s suit as “La Borinqueña” heavily reflects the light blue Puerto Rican flag. From the point below her chest, red and white stripes waterfall down around her body until they reach her red boots. A billowing light blue cape completes her look and effectively reinforces her Puerto Rican identity for the audience. Unlike previous superheroines before her, Marisol’s suit also covers her entire body. From her neck down to her feet, the only visible parts of her body aside from her face are her hands. During an interview with Miranda-Rodríguez, he revealed that he deliberately modeled her full body suit after
Superman’s suit, fully covering her body to not only reduce the potential of hypersexualization, but also functionally serve her whenever she springs into action (personal communication 2017).
While the reader-viewer might still focus on her curvy body shape, their eyes ultimately land on the Puerto Rican flag. Throughout the first issue, the flag’s star rests on her chest, only illuminating when she springs into action.
Her full name, “Marisol Ríos de la Luz” translates to “sea and sun, rivers of light” and
“La Borinqueña” translates to
“the Puerto Rican woman.”
The use of “la” or “the”
suggests a title as well as a
name. Marisol dons the title
and embodies the cultural
essence behind the phrase as
10 a title. Overall, her actual name reflects her environmental studies background while her
superhero name references
her Puerto Rican identity. She stands as a symbol of hope or the figurative and literal “Puerto Rican woman.” Although Figure
3 appears towards the end of the first issue, the panels represent the culmination of Marisol’s first act as a superhero. The bottom two panels from the larger page show Marisol and a crowd of people from Aguadilla from two different angles. Marisol stands in the background of the top panel, pointed towards the crowd calling out to her. As for the bottom panel, she appears already in flight, looking back as the crowd continues cheering for her. In saving Aguadilla, the people now grant her the title of “La Borinqueña.” The people represent her source of power and pride, so their act of naming her solidifies such a narrative. More broadly, the act of naming rejects the colonization of the Americas and Caribbean. “Borinqueña” comes from “Borikén,” the island’s name before Spain colonized it. Thus, the choice of “La Borinqueña” counters the traditional colonial project, which aimed to strip the island of their agency entirely.
“La Borinqueña” is also the name of the current Puerto Rican national anthem. However, the words for the current version of the national anthem differ from a previous version. In a personal interview with Miranda-Rodríguez he revealed that he drew inspiration for the character and her superhero identity from the 1868 version of “La Borinqueña.” The 1868 version emerged during one of Puerto Rico’s first attempts to rebel against Spanish rule, El Grito de Lares. While both versions of “La Borinqueña” reflect on the beauty of the island and express profound pride in being Puerto Rican, the current national anthem contains verses in celebration of Christopher
Columbus arriving on the beaches of the island. Alternatively, the 1868 verses prioritize freedom
11 for the island from Spanish colonization, which originated with Columbus. The citizens of
Aguadilla express their gratitude in the top panel of Figure 3 by singing: “[d]espierta de ese sueño que es hora de luchar” before someone explicitly names Marisol as “La Borinqueña” and the crowd finishes their singing with “[e]s Borinquen la hija, la hija del mar y el sol.” (“Wake up from this dream, it is time to fight/It is the daughter of Borinquen, the daughter of the sea and the sun”). The bottom panel shows Marisol flying away with her head turned back, thinking to herself “Wow” and a smile painted on her face. The overall importance of Marisol’s name represents a driving force throughout the first issue of La Borinqueña. Similar to his Latinx comic creator predecessors, Miranda-Rodríguez deploys numerous visual and verbal symbols to personalize and guide the narrative for his audiences.
Latinx Comic Books: Conventions and Representation
Marisol and La Borinqueña reflect a highly underrepresented narrative in the comic book world. Comic books and other forms of sequential art possess the ability to tell a story both visually and verbally. Whether through the actual characters or the creators themselves, representations of race in comic books and graphic novels historically drew from racist stereotypes and prejudices. In cartoonist and comic theorist Scott McCloud’s Understanding Comics, he defines the comic creator as an author-artist and the audience as reader-viewer to reflect the dual nature of comic books and graphic novels. The visual and written narratives work together in constant conversation, but the requisite terms should reflect such duality.
Additionally, McCloud posits that a simple caricature serves to generalize the character for the audience. The shape of a face acts as the basic unit of recognition for the reader-viewer, so that a smiley face that does not look like an actual person allows the audience the opportunity to place
12 themselves as the main character (McCloud 1993). Such a level of visual relatability for the audience actually distinguishes the comic book from other literary structures.
However, historic representations of race have consistently deployed the use of simple icons to further promote negative stereotypes. According to comic theorist Andrew Kunka in
“Comics, Race, and Ethnicity,” these reducible stereotyped images “are a natural outcome of a medium that requires the reader to possess visual information quickly and easily” (Kunka 2010,
277). The creator often exaggerates the phenotypic markers of racial difference, further strengthening negative stereotypes for non-white characters such as in Bobby London’s “Why
Bobbie Seal is Not Black,” which depicted the co-founder of the Black Panther Party, Seal, as an alcoholic humanoid with exaggerated lips. The caricature of Seal mocked the Black Panther
Party as well as other New Left groups for taking offense at racial stereotypes in print media
(Rifas 2010). As reader-viewers may more easily process a simplistic representation, such images can prove damaging for non-white audiences. They must constantly confront a dehumanizing narrative ultimately aimed at erasing them from the literal fantasy worlds created by comic books and graphic novels.
Within historical graphic representations of race, Latinx characters written by white creators often fall under the “Latin lover” or drug dealer narratives such as in El Diablo and Avengers West Coast. Likewise, Black characters tended to appear as the “African prince” or gangbanger such as in Mandrake the Magician and the section entitled “White Man’s Burden” in Slow Death #6. Additionally, the “Latinx” and “Black” character categories remained separate and rarely overlapped. Afro-Latinx characters existed in the metaphorical and literal comic book gutter space, invisible. The gutter space of a comic book represents the often white spaces
13 between panels and remains a site of metaphorical and literal silencing. While contemporary comics depart from those historically damaging narratives, the number of characters of color pales in comparison to white characters. If comic books purportedly allow audience members the chance to envision themselves in a fantasy world, then only framing characters of color as hypersexual, criminals, or primitive beings denies access to that world for non-white reader-viewers. The history of such damaging narratives consistently framed non-white characters as the villains with only the help of the main white character to save the day. Comic scholar Leonard Rifas maintains that “cases in which a white character was dominated by a character who is not white were usually a temporary inversion of the natural order of things that the story shows being put right” (Rifas 2010, 28). Using a phrase such as “natural order” suggests that the narrative technique of villainous non-white characters measured against heroic white characters deeply impacted the writing of early comics. Non-white creators received the opportunity to attempt to reverse damaging narratives, but representation for non-white characters continues to lack when compared to the vast representations of white characters.
Although the history of race in comics proves complicated, the physical nature of comic books and graphic novels subsequently encourages the reader-viewer to understand the story through a visual and verbal narrative. In Black Women in Sequence, Deborah Whaley qualifies comic art as “significant for its ability to appeal to everyday life and culture given its unique ability to combine the image, text, space, action, and humor” (Whaley 2015, 31). The possibilities of a visual narrative subsequently allow the creator the opportunity to reimagine historical images while simultaneously grounding the narrative in the present. In Frederick Luis
Aldama’s Your Brain on Latino Comics, he analyzes the primary tools Latinx author-artists use
14 to best convey their stories. The “language” of the sequential art often includes multiple images of a country or a nation’s flag, stills from ancestral creation myths, or even writing whole sections in Spanish, English, or both with no accompanying translation (Aldama 2009). Such an act ultimately privileges a bilingual audience, linking constructions of Latinidad in comic books to the ability to speak Spanish and English. Additionally, graphic Latinidades invariably become tied to biculturalism. These narratives effectively center these types of bilingual and bicultural readers. The author-artist’s community is frequently foregrounded in the narrative and serves as the main setting. Representations of Latinx characters and author-artists in comic books heavily rely on the presence of easily recognizable cultural markers such as flags, food, and regional spaces like the West or East Coast. Comic theorist Jonathan Risner uses Isabel Molina Guzmán’s framing of Latinidad as a performative with various signifiers like “language, linguistic accents, religious symbols, tropical and spicy foods, and brown skin as a phenotypic marker of racial identity” (Risner 2010, 52). While the multitude of Latinx communities throughout the US have different cultural community markers, the simplicity of a symbol like a flag or mythical hero allows the creator to reach not only their immediate community, but perhaps others as well.
The Puerto Rican Nation and “La Borinqueña”
Frederick Luis Aldama characterizes cultural community markers for Latinx author-artists as a “visual genealogy.” The juxtaposition of historical imagery from colonial periods with imagery from the contemporary work together to create that historical connection.
Latinx author-artists effectively bring the visual historical into conversation with the visual contemporary. These author-artists rely not only on their respective histories, but also their audience’s ability to locate such visual clues. Aldama believes that a visual genealogy
15 subsequently stirs emotions within their desired reader-viewer audience and allows them to better “read” the narrative (Aldama 2009). When audiences possess the ability to accurately
“read” a Latinx character, they subsequently recognize the cultural visuals from the creator. Any person ultimately possesses the ability to read a specifically Latinx comic book. However, images from an author-artist’s community may signal various intents for their audience. In La Borinqueña, the creator ultimately offers no translation for pieces of the written narrative in Spanish and directly utilizes the light blue Puerto Rican flag as a unifying symbol. He purposefully uses the light blue Puerto Rican flag given its history with respect to US imperialism and occupation of the island. The island Puerto Rican government’s ban of the light blue flag which symbolized protest movements for independence, further pushed
Miranda-Rodríguez to opt for the lighter blue (personal communication 2017). While he assumes the reader knows the differences between the light and dark blue Puerto Rican flags, he places the official dark blue flag throughout the narrative to contrast with Marisol’s light blue suit.
The gendered and raced implications of an Afro-Puerto Rican woman as the symbol of nationhood directly counters traditional ideas of Puerto Rican cultural nationalism from the early
1900s that continue today on the island and in the diaspora. With that said, the following chapters analyze: how does Edgardo Miranda-Rodríguez conceptualize a Puerto Rican cultural
“nation” throughout the first issue? Additionally, how does La Borinqueña perform and portray mainland and diasporic Puerto Rican identities? What are both the cultural and historical implications of deploying such a racialized and gendered national symbol, given Puerto Rico’s complicated political status and colonial history? Through a textual analysis of the comic book, the following chapters address how La Borinqueña has emerged as a narrative for Puerto Ricans
16 in the island and on the US mainland. Textual analysis requires closer analysis of the content across various formats that align within the comic book format. Just as Marisol literally wears the light blue version of the contemporary flag as her suit, Miranda-Rodríguez directly centers the flag as an overarching cultural marker for all Puerto Rican audiences.
The first chapter begins in the diaspora much like La Borinqueña itself, with an analysis of how Edgardo Miranda-Rodríguez conceptualizes the influence of Puerto Rican diaspora in understandings of the Puerto Rican nation. In understanding how he visualizes the Puerto Rican nation, the chapter makes a claim about the book’s historical importance given the relationship between the US and Puerto Rico. Beginning in Marisol’s Los Sures neighborhood in Brooklyn, the chapter follows her journey through Puerto Rican history in New York City. While reader-viewer audiences needed varying levels of knowledge about Puerto Rican migration to
New York City, he still situated the city as a diasporic space, integral to contemporary understandings of some Puerto Rican cultural identities. Leaving New York City, the chapter shifts to historicizing traditional discourse surrounding Puerto Rican nationalism from the early
1990s. The latter section of the chapter juxtaposes the comic book with the historic legacy of la gran familia puertorriqueña (the Great Puerto Rican Family/Society) with its emphasis on phenotypic and social blanqueamiento (whitening). The chapter ends with a consideration of the broader implications about the island’s current political status and the importance of cultural identity.
Along a similar vein regarding the impact of reaffirming cultural identities, the second chapter locates La Borinqueña in the Latinx comic book canon to further analyze its broader cultural impact. The importance of visual cues in a comic book serve to locate the desired
17 audiences as well as personalize the narrative for the creator. For creators of color, the use of specific cultural and racial symbols further personalize their narratives and subsequent audiences. The chapter necessarily includes analysis of underrepresentation for Afro-Latinx characters in comic books, especially within the superhero genre. Building from that analysis, the chapter analyzes examples of previous Afro-Latinx characters before moving to how Marisol differs. The chapter ends with a section on how Miranda-Rodríguez’s independent publishing company means Marisol can perform her Afro-Latina identity differently from the other corporate created characters. Again, given the island’s political status and current overall state post-Hurricane María, a complex character like Marisol allows for a powerful unifying symbol.
As stated in the Huffington Post interview cited above, while Marisol hails from the Nuyorican diaspora, her story connects the Puerto Rican island and diaspora to call attention to the island’s current state. She represents a narrative of hope and strength in the face of uncertainty.
18
Chapter 1: “Nothing Quite Like Nueva York:” Puerto Rican Placemaking Introduction:
Edgardo Miranda-Rodríguez begins La Borinqueña in New York City with a brief introductory overview, showing Marisol in her superhero costume in Puerto Rico as she introduces herself and sets up her story. The first chapter begins in the Los Sures neighborhood of Williamsburg, Brooklyn before weaving a brief Nuyorican history of long-standing Puerto
Rican neighborhoods. Miranda-Rodríguez constructs a “Puerto Ricanness” that begins in the diaspora, ultimately departing from traditional ideas about cultural nationalism and belonging.
Historically, authentic Puerto Ricanness originated exclusively on the island. Along with island centrism, constructions of nationalism prioritized the Spanish language and valorized physical and social processes of whitening that similarly centered Spain’s influence in the culture.
Marisol’s identity as an Afro-Nuyorican woman disrupts previous cultural discourses which excluded people like her. In La Borinqueña, a Puerto Rican diasporic experience ultimately remains central to Marisol and her story. Throughout the first issue, Miranda-Rodríguez deploys an understanding of Puerto Ricanness which centers an Afro-Puerto Rican woman from New
York City as the symbol that bridges Puerto Rican cultures across the island and mainland.
Through a textual analysis of the historical processes behind island Puerto Rican cultural nationalism and constructions of Nuyorican identity, I lay a foundation for my analysis of La Borinqueña as a visual and discursive text that historically connects and contextualizes the island and mainland. My examination begins in the Puerto Rican diaspora to New York City before moving to the island, following the narrative of the first issue. The first sections consider the historic role of Puerto Rican migrants in New York City, leading to the term “Nuyorican,” used
19 in reference to people of Puerto Rican descent and the resultant diasporic culture. While the term has been used to refer to anyone of Puerto Rican descent in the US, it now solely refers to people and culture of Puerto Rican descent in New York. Much like the first issue of La Borinqueña, the subsequent sections focus on the historic role of the island and the perpetuation of cultural nationalism as a method for defining authentic Puerto Ricanness. Within my analysis, I address: how does Edgardo Miranda-Rodríguez conceptualize a Puerto Rican cultural “nation” throughout the first issue? What are the historical implications of deploying such a racialized and gendered national symbol, given Puerto Rico’s complicated political status and colonial history?
Nuyoricans and El Vaivén “The Puerto Rican diaspora hails from a nation that has languished in a dependent and tightly controlled political status for its entire history, a condition that has persisted throughout the twentieth century.” -- Juan Flores in From Bomba to Hip Hop Theorizing Diaspora
To understand the Puerto Rican diaspora means to understand their migration as that of still colonized peoples. As an unincorporated territory of the US, Puerto Ricans who migrate from the island to the mainland never completely move out from under US government influence. When Juan Flores characterizes the diaspora as “hail[ing] from a nation that has languished in a dependent and tightly controlled political status,” he emphasizes how regardless of political status, Puerto Rican people nonetheless conceptualize themselves as a nation outside of the US. Their migration to the US mainland led to diasporic communities that nearly outnumber the island’s population. The question of where to locate a singular “real” diaspora becomes further complicated when considering the frequent conversations and discourse surrounding race, gender, culture, and even people themselves. In “Cultural Identity and
20
Diaspora,” Stuart Hall theorizes that cultural identity never stems from a single idea, being, or greater entity. He further qualifies that “identities are the names we give to the different ways we are positioned by, and position ourselves within, the narratives of the past” (Hall 2003, 236). The framing of identity as a constantly changing set of ideas effectively describes how Puerto Rican migrants negotiate their place with regard to the island and the broader diaspora. The Puerto
Rican diaspora in the US has further complicated traditional understandings of cultural identity because the population of the diaspora will soon outnumber those on the island. Since traditional understandings of Puerto Rican identity centered the island as the “source” of authentic Puerto
Ricanness, massive demographics shifts will force a recognition of the role of the diaspora in identity formation.
Numerically, before Hurricane María devastated the island in September 2017, 3.4 million Puerto Ricans resided on the island with an increasing percentage of people migrating to the US yearly, mainly due to little to no available employment. Hurricane María is drastically accelerating this demographic shift as the US federal government’s inaction and the overall uncertainty about the future of the island’s infrastructure and ability to rebuild are forcing people to migrate to the US (Jarvie 2017). When the population of Puerto Ricans in the US inevitably outnumbers the population of Puerto Ricans on the island, the question will arise as to where
“authentic” Puerto Ricanness actually resides. Both Stuart Hall and Jorge Duany construct identities as nebulous, vaguely collective idea with different relationships to and interpretations of the past. According to Duany, “contemporary diasporas undermine the traditional anchoring of identities in a single territory, government, citizenship, and language” (Duany 2002, 37).
Regarding the Puerto Rican diaspora to the US, the island’s territorial status and form of
21 government, both of which ultimately fall under US federal jurisdiction, undermines traditional understandings of identity entirely. US citizenship locates those on the island more as a legal extension of the US rather than a sovereign entity, which forces Puerto Ricans to conceptualize identity differently overall.
Throughout the late nineteenth century and well into the twenty-first century, the Puerto
Rican diaspora to the US has deeply impacted racial and cultural landscapes on the island and mainland. Additionally, Puerto Rican migration to the US not only complicated ideas about
“authentic” Puerto Rican cultural identity, but also understandings of race. Race exists on both the island and US-mainland. However, the apparent black/white racial binary in the US has challenged Puerto Rican migrants’ perception of their own race. According to Petra R.
Rivera-Rideau, Jennifer A. Jones, and Tianna S. Paschel in the introduction to Afro-Latin@s in Movement, Nuyoricans “were, alternatively, valued for their whiteness and derided for their blackness, and at times imagined to be a distinct racial group” (Jones et al. 2016, 9). Regardless of their status as US citizenship, non-black and black Puerto Ricans alike often remained on the peripheries of dominant white US society. Afro-Puerto Ricans definitely experienced anti-black racism in addition to the racism associated with being “othered” in the US. The valorization of white Puerto Ricans ultimately allowed them liminal access to dominant US society and the impacts of colorism further marginalized darker complexioned Puerto Rican migrants.
When Puerto Ricans migrate to the US, they face fewer legal obstacles than compared to other migrant groups, but still confront challenges associated with displacement and living in an unfamiliar environment. From even before the Great Migration of Puerto Ricans to the US during the 1940s and 1950s, New York City has played a key role in Puerto Rican history. Once
22 migrants found employment and sent economic remittances to family members on the island, more people would move into the same neighborhoods in the US. Through a constant movement between the island and mainland, they heavily engage in “circular migration” which defines the constant movement of Puerto Ricans to and from the island or mainland. The continuous migration subsequently creates a transnational flow of people, culture, and ideas. Since transnationalism implies movement across nations, including Puerto Ricans in transnational discourse implicitly categorizes Puerto Rican people as a “nation.” While not independently sovereign, the Puerto Rican nation on the island and in the diaspora nonetheless represents specific groups of people. In the introduction to The Near Northwest Side Story, Gina Pérez argues for the inclusion of Puerto Ricans in transnational discourse because of their frequent
“coming and going,” otherwise known as “el va y ven” or “el vaivén.” (Pérez 2004). The constant process of “coming and going” implies that no singular place should/can represent
Puerto Ricans on the island and in the diaspora. Along with Juan Flores’ use of a Puerto Rican
“nation” in the introductory quote, the never-ending movement of “el vaivén” has thus come to define Puerto Rican migration narratives.
Nuyorican Space and Place
For diasporic Puerto Ricans in New York City or Nuyoricans, they faced criticism from island communities “for their failure to achieve economic success, for their poverty, unemployment, lack of educational attainment, moral laxity, and criminality” (Jiménez Román
1999, 89). Such a framing attempted to distance the diaspora as a space of degradation. In The Diaspora Strikes Back, Juan Flores describes diasporic Puerto Rican communities as a “bi-cultural mixture of nostalgia for their ancestral island homeland and assertive pride in the
23 fabled ‘mean streets’ of the Bronx and other inner city neighborhoods” (Flores 2009, 2). A self-identified Nuyorican, Edgardo Miranda-Rodríguez, centers the Puerto Rican diaspora in La Borinqueña to emphasize the role of the diaspora in Puerto
Rican history more broadly.
He directly connects the
Puerto Rican diaspora in New
York City to African-
]Americans in shared urban
spaces around the city.
Whereas traditional island
Puerto Rican identity
discourse valorized whitening,
Miranda-Rodríguez’s
construction of Puerto
Ricanness posits blackness as
crucial to Nuyorican history
and identity formation.
During her bike ride to Columbia, the panels in Figure 4 lay out a visual overview of Nuyorican history, focusing on neighborhoods where Puerto Rican migrants predominantly live(d). As depicted, Marisol bikes through Loisaida, “El Barrio” or East Harlem, and through
24
West Harlem before finally arriving at Columbia University. The first panel shows Marisol biking to a crosswalk in Loisaida, which comes from a Hispanicized way of saying “Lower East
Side.” The walls covered in graffiti behind her, she thinks “[i]t’s so nice out today! I should totally take the scenic route!” The graffiti covered walls juxtaposed with her thought about the scenic beauty of the route equates the two. Whereas outsiders might view the graffiti as offensive or gaudy, Marisol views it as a source of beauty in Loisaida. To Marisol, the “scenic route” represents a celebration of her history and identity as a Puerto Rican woman rather than a sign of criminality or failure. The beauty stems from the historic Puerto Rican presence and cultural influence in Loisaida.
Gliding through Loisaida, Marisol reaches “El Barrio” otherwise known as Spanish or
East Harlem. Like Loisaida, “El Barrio,” or “The Neighborhood” reflects the historic Puerto
Rican presence and influence in the neighborhood. Miranda-Rodríguez does not translate “El
Barrio” or use a different name, leaving the reader-viewer audience to either know about the neighborhood or do the research themselves. He demands a more active reader-viewer in the reading process. He prioritizes the neighborhood’s Spanish name to reflect the historical presence of Puerto Ricans. During the Great Migration of Puerto Ricans from the island to the
US mainland, the vast majority settled in East Harlem, forming communities in close proximity to African-American communities located in West Harlem. Despite the current gentrification of
El Barrio, the historical importance of Puerto Ricans in the neighborhood runs deep. In Figure 4, as Marisol passes a building, the early morning sun shines and she ruminates “[y]eah I’m going to miss this city. Nothing quite like Nueva York.” She laments leaving the city, knowing no other city lives up to her home, New York City. Through bolding and italicizing,
25
Miranda-Rodríguez emphasizes “Nueva York” against the white background of the second thought bubble. Again, the use of an Hispanicized way of saying “New York” centers the historic influence of Puerto Rican communities in the city and their hybrid cultural and linguistic practices.
While each neighborhood holds a specific historical connection to the Puerto Rican diaspora, the third panel showing a close up of Marisol biking past the Apollo Theater in West
Harlem, which directly ties the experiences of Puerto Rican migrants to those of
African-Americans in New York City. In From Bomba to Hip-Hop, Juan Flores maintains that “since the 1960s, the issue of Puerto Rican identity has been entwined with the social and cultural experience of African Americans, and with the problematics of Blackness” (Flores 2000,
163). Flores does not distinguish between non-black and Afro-Puerto Ricans in his analysis of identity formation. Instead, he connects the social and cultural experiences of African-Americans and all Puerto Ricans as ultimately vital to Puerto Rican understandings of place in US society.
As Flores considers Puerto Rican experiences in the US regardless of race, his statement also draws attention to the impact of shared spaces on Puerto Rican diasporic communities in New
York City. In Figure 4, Miranda-Rodríguez visually alludes to these shared urban spaces between Puerto Ricans and African-Americans during Marisol’s bike ride. As Marisol passes, the sign on the Apollo Theater advertises jazz musician Eddie Palmieri’s upcoming 80th birthday celebration. A Nuyorican from the South Bronx, Palmieri’s music incorporates both Latin jazz and salsa influences. The placement of his name on the Apollo Theater in West Harlem, a traditionally African-American community, intrinsically connects the histories of both
26 communities. Palmieri’s music represents a syncretism of African-American and Puerto Rican music with distinct influences from both.
As Marisol bikes past the theater she sings an excerpt of Palmieri’s song “Vámonos pa'l monte” (“Let’s Go to the Mountain”) aloud. Unlike the previous panels which show her thinking about her route, the panel showing her biking through West Harlem has her actively verbal. She sings “Vámonos pa'l monte pa'l monte pa ¡Guarachar! Vámonos pa'l monte que el monte ¡Me Gusta Más!” (“Let's go to the mountain to the mountain to have a good time! Let's go to the mountain 'cause I like the mountain more!”). The song’s heavy use of trumpet reveals a strong jazz influence and reinforces why Marisol sings this particular song in front of the Apollo
Theater. “The mountain” mentioned in the song symbolizes the island of Puerto Rico and similar to Palmieri singing, Marisol will soon go to “the mountain” herself, where the nationalist figure of the jíbaro resides. While the jíbaro represents a traditional version of Puerto Rican identity dependent on Hispanicized whiteness Marisol never refers to herself as a jíbara, and instead associates her journey with the mountains. Her singing recalls a potential mythico-historical figure for Puerto Rico in the black jíbara, as conceptualized by Arlene Torres in her work on reimagining the “Great Puerto Rican Family” as black (Torres 1998). According to Torres and other scholars, Afro-Puerto Ricans are vital to the development of the nation despite historic erasure. “El monte” ultimately represents a reprieve from the busy urban environment of New
York City. The process of traveling to “el monte” symbolizes the process of “circular migration,” in which Puerto Ricans engage. Additionally, Puerto Rico represents the destination or object of focus, reinforcing its difference from New York City, where Marisol lives.
27
As attempting to locate and define the diaspora represents an impossible task, depictions of Puerto Rican processes of circular migration in a New York context offer grounded understandings of physical movement and relationships to place. The visual representation of la guagua aérea (the airbus) flying Marisol from JFK Airport in New York City to her grandparents in San Juan, PR reflects a component of Puerto Rican circular migration. In Figure
5 from La Borinqueña, the first panel close up on Marisol’s face shows her looking out through the plane window with the chapter title “La Bombera de Brooklyn” under her face. Despite the chapter taking place in Puerto Rico, the title still centers Marisol’s roots in Brooklyn. The title implies that she is “la bombera de Brooklyn” and will visually “prove” and “perform” that identity to the reader-viewer audience in the coming pages.
In Figure 5, Miranda-Rodríguez also includes panels depicting his own experience with
flying from New York to
Puerto Rico (personal
communication 2017). As the
flight attendant announces
“Bienvenidos a San Juan,
Puerto Rico!” (Welcome to
San Juan, Puerto Rico!), the
people on the plan erupt in
excited cheers of “¡Juepa!”
“¡Vaya!”, and “¡Eso!” with verbal markers to indicate clapping. The crowd on the plane also reflects a wide range of hues
28 with various hair textures as well. During a personal interview with Miranda-Rodríguez, he emphasized how he wanted to represent Puerto Ricans as diverse as possible in terms of skin tone. As a lighter-complexioned Puerto Rican man, he wanted to center darker-complexioned
Puerto Ricans in the graphic narrative to counter dominant anti-black ideas about who can “look”
Puerto Rican. He emphasized how for too long, US mainland and island media have prioritized non-black Puerto Ricans, perpetuating anti-blackness and the erasure of Afro-Puerto Ricans.
In the bottom panel as Marisol greets her grandparents in the airport she exclaims
“¡Bendición Abuelo y Abuela!” (“Blessings Grandpa and Grandma!”). Her grandmother replies
“Welcome home Marisol!” and her grandfather replies “¡Que dios te bendiga y te guarde!”
(“God bless you and guard you!”). In using “home,” Miranda-Rodríguez locates Marisol’s home as not tied to a single place. Rather, “home” represents an abstract concept, tied more to the presence of family members like her grandparents than a physical place. Throughout the first issue of La Borinuqueña, Miranda-Rodríguez never labels Marisol religiously nor does he provide a translation of any Spanish in the panels. Thus, Marisol’s greeting in Spanish to her grandparents reflects a cultural influence rather than overtly religious. Her grandfather reciprocates her blessing in his greeting as well. The cultural symbolism in the exchange between Marisol and her grandfather reflects a familiar scene for some audiences which distinguishes La Borinqueña from mainstream narratives. Additionally, when Marisol’s grandmother welcomes her “home,” she acknowledges that while Marisol lives in the US, Puerto
Rico is still a home for her.
Much like in the cycle of “el vaivén,” Marisol retains pieces of New York despite her physical presence in Puerto Rico. Both “circular migration” and “el vaivén” characterize Puerto
29
Rican migration as cyclical in nature, a continuous process with no set beginning or end. The tradition of “el vaivén” additionally represents “a flexible survival strategy enhancing migrants’ socioeconomic status” (Pérez 2004, 12). Migration overall becomes associated with upward mobility and a dual occupation of different spaces. Marisol in La Borinqueña engages in the processes of “coming and going” as she lives and attends school in New York City, but decides to study abroad in Puerto Rico. Through her independent study she will also indirectly enhance her own socioeconomic status by being college educated. On the island, she lives with her grandparents and works in her grandfather’s café, which distinguishes her study abroad narrative as one of “returning to” rather than a student visiting for the first time. Her heritage similarly proves her status of belonging on the island. As her grandmother immediately reminds her,
Puerto Rico is still her home. The narrative’s positioning of Puerto Rico as a study abroad destination approaches questions of domesticity and foreignness.
While the island retains their political relationship to the US as an unincorporated territory, Miranda-Rodríguez frames the island as an inherently foreign and outside of the US.
Rather than understanding Puerto Rican identity in political terms, he emphasizes cultural distinctions. A tension exists between the island existing as a territory of the US and so, not an entirely domestic or foreign space. For Marisol, the island similarly represents a pseudo-foreign space which she can still claim as a home. Miranda-Rodríguez’s conceptualization of a Puerto
Rican “nation” reflects complicated understandings of the diaspora’s role and history. Diasporas move and expand nations, a point which Miranda-Rodríguez visually narrativizes via La Borinqueña. The political and cultural boundaries between the “sending” and “receiving” nations becomes blurred as the definitions of both change across generations.
30
Nuyoricans and Forces of Belonging
Marisol and La Borinqueña more broadly attempts to unite Puerto Ricans and encourage them to recognize that regardless of where they live, Puerto Ricans are suffering whether from an increasing debt crisis and/or merely existing as a racialized “other.” Her story necessarily highlights the historic and contemporary contributions of Nuyoricans. As a return migrant to
Puerto Rico, Marisol maintains an obvious distance because she grew up in the US. However,
her complicated identity as a
Nuyorican manifests in her
interactions with other Puerto
Ricans on the island. In Figure 6,
Marisol meets up to go out with the
young adults she previously
interacted with in her grandfather’s
café. The page shows Marisol and
Sofia dancing bomba at night club,
the drum beat spilling out into the
words of the song. The top panel
shows a hand tapping with words
spilling out from the middle of the
drum. As the panels reveal
snapshots of the night, Marisol’s
poses emphasize how her hips and
31 arms move in sync to replicate traditional bomba dance patterns. At the end of the night, Sofia and Marisol appear outside of the other panels, walking with their arms around each other like reunited friends.
After witnessing Marisol dance throughout the evening, Sofia accepts Marisol and asks where she learned to dance bomba. Marisol casually responds “Brooklyn! Where else?” The juxtaposition of Brooklyn and bomba in Figure 6 locates the diaspora within Puerto Rican cultural formation. Marisol’s question ultimately challenges traditional narratives of authentic
Puerto Rican cultural formation because in her experience, bomba and Brooklyn are not mutually exclusive. For her, the two are directly intertwined and connected to her identity as an
Afro-Nuyorican woman. Whereas Sofia initially questioned Marisol’s Puerto Rican identity because of her focus on Marisol’s Nuyorican identity, she now recognizes Marisol as another
Puerto Rican. Although Sofia does not represent the arbiter of Puerto Rican identity, her shift in attitude toward Marisol after a night of bomba raises questions about how people conceptualize
Puerto Rican island and diasporic cultures. The diaspora ultimately does not have to exist as entirely separate from the island and vice versa. Marisol’s story begins in the Los Sures neighborhood of Williamsburg in Brooklyn and moves to the island only after visually rooting the narrative in New York.
Historicizing Puerto Rican Nationalism
“The paternalist image of the Great Puerto Rican Family presupposes the harmonious integration among the three main roots of the Island’s population: Amerindian, European, and African. This traditional conception considers Africans the third root of Puerto Rican identity not only in chronological terms but also ranked according to their avowed contributions to the Island’s contemporary culture.” --Jorge Duany in The Puerto Rican Nation on the Move
32
Traditional nationalist discourse on the island heavily relied on anti-blackness and misogyny, historically excluded an Afro-Puerto Rican woman like Marisol from the dominant national culture. Colonialist ideology first from Spain and then later reinforced by the US drives one of the founding myths of Puerto Rican nationalism. From the late 1400s to now in 2018,
Puerto Rico has operated under a colonial or imperial power with a brief period of self-government in 1898. In The Puerto Rican Nation on the Move, Jorge Duany defines the contemporary Puerto Rican nation as “not a well-bounded sovereign state but as a translocal community based on a collective consciousness of a shared history, language, and culture”
(Duany 2002, 4). However, prior to 1898 Spain retained colonial control over Puerto Rico along with most of Latin America and a handful of areas in the Caribbean. When the
Spanish-American War ended with the Treaty of Paris, the US ceded control over Puerto Rico along with Guam, while Cuba gained their independence. Although Spanish colonialism in the
Caribbean ended, the US immediately assumed a colonial role on the island. So, the cession of the island by the US effectively exchanged one colonial power (Spain) for another (the US).
Puerto Rico currently operates as an “unincorporated territory” with the powers of local governance, but with final jurisdiction under the purview of the US federal government. In 1952, the island gained the official status of “commonwealth,” otherwise known as the Estado Libre Asociado de Puerto Rico (Free Associated State of Puerto Rico). So, while the island retains local governments, the US federal government holds ultimate jurisdiction. Essentially, the island votes for its own governor but cannot vote in national US elections.
When the US first began its colonial projects on the island during the 1930s-40s, individuals from the elite class scrambled to define a distinctively Puerto Rican national identity.
33
Massive industrialization programs imposed on the island by the US federal government and the
US-backed island government under Operation Bootstrap (Operación Manos a la Obra) during the late 1940s-60s, spurred widespread unemployment and migration. As thousands of displaced
Puerto Ricans sought refuge in the mainland US, nationalist discourses would forever prove multifaceted. As the population of Puerto Ricans in the diaspora continues to grow because of the current economic debt or post-Hurricane María, the Puerto Rican “nation” becomes even more difficult to pinpoint. Overall, the rapid and immediate transition from agriculture to industry during the mid-twentieth century forced mass migrations of Puerto Ricans to the US mainland, further prompting political elites to clearly define Puerto Rican nationalism. The island continues to feel the impacts of rapid industrialization and the continuous strengthening of the tourist industry. The lack of economic diversification and historic US intervention have severely constrained the island’s economy, forcing widespread budget cuts and propelling ongoing circular migration.
Once Marisol’s semester in Puerto Rico begins, she immediately confronts the manifestation of decades of economic control over the island by the US government, when the
university cuts several of her
classes. Due to education budget
cuts, the University of Puerto
Rico no longer has enough faculty
to help Marisol with her project.
Marisol’s situation mirrors the
real life education cuts made on
34 the island which would lead to student protests in 2017. In Figure 7, the top panel locates the reader-viewer in the “Administración Central” (Central Administration) at the University of
Puerto Rico. During her meeting
with Señor Mercado, he suggests
to Marisol that she “do [her] part” to get by with fewer resources. The background of his office reveals a mounted Puerto Rican flag with a dark blue triangle, reflective of a pro-statehood or pro-Commonwealth political ideology depending on the exact shade of the triangle.
While the dialogue never confirms statehood or Commonwealth, the sentiment remains that Señor Mercado aligns with pro-US influence instead of the pro-independence stance implied by a light blue flag. The last two panels show a defiant Marisol leaving his office, determined to not let the budget cuts stop her from conducting her research and completing her credits.
Through Marisol, Miranda-Rodríguez calls attention to the extensive damage caused by the debt crisis and its immediate impact on education, specifically the island’s university system. He likens the white Puerto Rican man in an academic position of power over Marisol to the US in a position of power over Puerto Rico. Señor Mercado’s whiteness recalls the damage caused by
US influence and control over the island. As a lighter-complexioned Puerto Rican man in a position of power, he nonetheless maintains political ties to the US as exhibited by his flag.
In addition to economic projects, US government officials continued Americanization programs on the island in the 1940s-50s to exert more political and economic control. Esmeralda
Santiago’s autobiography When I Was Puerto Rican (1993) outlines the various types of programs pushed onto mothers for the supposed betterment of their families. Her chapter “The
35
American Invasion of Macún” recalls how Americanization officials swapped out her family’s traditional staple foods like rice, beans, plantains, and mangoes for lettuce, apples, yellow cheese, and other goods not native to Puerto Rico. She also remembers how her teacher taught them English through songs like “America the Beautiful” (Santiago 1993). Forcing Puerto
Ricans on the island to import fruits and vegetables ultimately benefited the US economy through the taxes collected via the Jones Act, making the island more dependent on the US.
Regardless of the attempts to frame these programs as beneficial, Santiago’s use of the phrase
“American invasion” emphasizes the negative intentions behind Americanization in Puerto Rico.
The imposition of English in schools restricted the use of Spanish to the household and the forced introduction of food staples grown in the US during the early twentieth century reflected an even stronger need for a distinct Puerto Rican cultural identity (Rodriguez 1989).
The island elites ultimately not only wanted to distinguish a uniquely Puerto Rican identity despite the US-American presence, but also maintain their own status on the island at the top of the social hierarchy. According to Isar Godreau in her chapter on populist politics and race, “racial mixture and the rhetoric of harmonious synthesis was more than an attractive selling point for North American investment” (Godreau 2009, 181). The exchange in colonial powers forced a more concrete understanding of cultural and national identity for Puerto Ricans on the island. Puerto Ricans from the elite class struggled to maintain their position, so they placed a heady emphasis on nationalist ideologies which kept them in control. The end result reflected a narrowly constructed understanding of cultural nationalism in Puerto Rico that attempted to homogenize the island’s peoples. However, the homogenizing effects of any definition of
36 nationalism are often overlooked in the interests of group cohesion. Elitist understandings of identity essentially dominated any discourse about belonging on the island.
Given the island’s complicated political relationship with the US during the early 1900s, cultural nationalism proved useful to the construction of traditional Puerto Rican identity. The
Jones Act of 1917 officially made Puerto Ricans on the island US citizens, further complicating questions of Puerto Rican national identity. The Jones Act not only devalued any form of island
Puerto Rican citizenship, but also encouraged circular migration from the island to the US mainland with no set destination, again challenging traditional ideas about nationalism. If all
Puerto Ricans have US-American citizenship, then Puerto Rican citizenship is considered unnecessary. Cultural nationalism thus allows for “a serious (though perhaps limited) attempt to assert Puerto Rico’s distinctive collective identity, within the context of continued political and economic dependence on the United States” (Duany 2002, 17).
Cultural nationalism also proved vital for constructing a national identity during the early
1900s. As the Jones Act and US presence initially encouraged a more distinct Puerto Rican national identity, that identity became homogenized. Original constructions of Puerto Rican nationalism centered whiteness and overall proximity to Hispanicity, the Spanish language, and physical presence on the island. Thus, traditional ideas would have excluded someone like
Marisol who proudly declares her blackness and grew up outside of the island in Brooklyn. Her phenotypical and ancestral distance from the founding nationalist myths separate her from previously held notions about “authentic” Puerto Rican identity.
Nationalist Mythologies: La Gran Familia and the Three Roots
37
For Puerto Rico in the wake of US occupation, the myths of la gran familia puertorriqueña (the Great Puerto Rican Family/Society) and the three roots of Puerto Rican culture dominated the nationalist discourse, which resulted in a highly exclusive understanding of identity. Primarily through the “three roots” myth, traditional Puerto Rican nationalism centered the narrative of the Spanish, Indigenous, and African influences mixing to create not only a unique Puerto Rican national identity, but also contemporary Puerto Rican people in general. The 1950s witnessed a shift to citing the racial mixture as a source of national pride.
Realistically, elite island nationalist ideologies frequently prioritized the contributions from the
Spanish in terms of three roots. In Tony Castanha’s article about indigenous Caribbean resistance in Puerto Rico, he maintains that “[t]hose who set the political or neocolonial boundaries of the Puerto Rican national consciousness were the colonial Spanish and Puerto Rican criollo elite” (Castanha 2010, 323). Prioritizing the Spanish influences represented an act of self-preservation for the island’s Creole elites who maintained their position within the hierarchy and intrinsically connected them to an “authentic” Puerto Ricanness and a broader Hispanicized whiteness.
Ultimately, the nationalist founding myths failed to serve non-white Puerto Ricans on the island. For the most part, they remained excluded from nationalist discourse until elite Puerto
Ricans allowed them limited access. Figure 8 reflects the contemporary implications of the founding nationalist myths in La Borinqueña when Marisol meets Sofia, a tall white Puerto Rican girl from the island. Their first meeting at Marisol’s grandfather's café begins rather awkwardly as Sofia attempts to guess where Marisol is from because of her accent. In the left middle panel when Marisol tells Sofia that she is from the Los Sures neighborhood in Brooklyn,
Sofia gasps “[y]ou’re a Nuyorican?! Looking to reconnect con la isla [with the island]?” During
38 their exchange, Sofia others Marisol as an outsider from New York and limits her Puerto Rican identity to an attempted reconnection with the island. Sofia’s attitude ultimately changes when
Marisol’s grandfather enters and effectively “authenticates” Marisol’s Puerto Ricanness. The look of confusion on Marisol’s face in the bottom panel on the left reflects that confusion to the reader-viewer. Although Sofia invites Marisol to a club later that night, she brushes Marisol off when she asks other questions about activities in the area, claiming that during her off time she prefers to not act as a guide for tourists. Therefore, restrictive nationalist myths distance non-white Puerto Ricans from fully belonging and grant white Puerto Ricans the ability to decide who belongs and when/where they belong. The power lies in one’s proximity to whiteness.
Nationalist discourses in general often attempt to “embrace an essentialist and
homogenizing image of collective
identity that silences the multiple
voices of the nation, based on class,
race, ethnicity, gender” among others
(Duany 2002, 3). To illustrate, the
founding national myth of la gran familia puertorriqueña conceives of contemporary Puerto Ricans as pieces
of an all-encompassing
heteronormative family. La gran familia cast “Creole landowners as benevolent father figures and
39 subsistence farmers as their grateful peons, obscur[ing] important conflicts and tensions” (Duany
2002, 20). The processes of
blanqueamiento (whitening), phenotypically as well as socially through anti-black notions of societal progress proved a major driving force in legitimizing la gran familia. Family economics thus depended on the father, so “a crisis in the family, [was] interpreted as a failure of fatherly responsibilities, both by the individual men and by the paternalist Puerto Rican state and governor” (Suárez-Findlay 2014, 5).
The patriarchal undertones of reproducing the heteronormative Great Puerto Rican Family silenced women within nationalist discourses. Rather than maintain an active role in politics, women needed to play active roles primarily within heteropatriarchal family structures.
The heavy emphasis on paternalism and white hetero-patriarchy contributed to the silencing of Puerto Rican women in discussions about island nationalism. In La Borinqueña, Marisol’s family complicates traditional understandings of the Great Puerto Rican Family.
Figure 9 shows Marisol along with
her parents, an Afro-Puerto Rican
father and a light-complexioned
Puerto Rican mother. While the
audience recognizes the possibility
of racial mixture between Marisol’s
parents, her complexion matches
her father’s. Additionally, her hair
texture more closely matches her
40 father’s than her mother’s. The following page shows Marisol biking to Columbia University and
she explains how her father stays at
home while her mother works as a doctor. Throughout the dialogue in the panels, her father assumes the more domestic, caretaker role, reminding Marisol to pick up her asthma medication. She even lovingly refers to her father as the “Mother Hen” on the following page to echo his more domestic role compares to her mother. The inversion of the traditional racial and gender roles explicit in the rhetoric of la gran familia represents a departure from tradition. While the heteronormative family structure still exists, Marisol’s family fails to completely align with the ideas put forth by la gran familia. The island elites in control of the US-backed local governments pushed for racial mixture in order to continuously reproduce la gran familia with increasingly lighter-complexioned individuals who maintained an ethnic ambiguity compared to white US-Americans. Thus, “the process of mixing could be seen as progressive whitening of the population“ (Wade 2010, 32). Blanqueamiento becomes a crucial method of understanding how the elite class framed Puerto Rican national identity. The resultant colorism placed higher social value on and offered more access for lighter-complexioned Puerto Ricans. Such individuals maintained a distinguishable yet palatable “Puerto Ricanness.” In Scripts of Blackness, Isar Godreau asserts that Americanization programs and attempts to “modernize” the island through colonial projects further ingrained blanqueamiento as a nationalist ideology (Godreau 2009). Puerto Rican culture and identity more broadly comes to erase blackness. In “La Gran Familia Puertorriqueña ‘Ej
Prieta de Beldá’ (The Great Puerto Rican Family is Really Truly Black),” Arlene Torres considers an alternative understanding of contemporary Puerto Rican culture as dependent on
41 blackness. She posits that the association of blackness to enslavement attempts to assimilate
Afro-Puerto Ricans as members of the nation and erase their phenotypical blackness. Along with her ideas about the black jíbara, she invites an ideology of blackness that understands the “most dark-complexioned people as part of the Puerto Rican cultural construction of nation” (Torres
1998, 330). La Borinqueña offers such a centering of blackness as key to the construction of Puerto Rican culture and identity.
Utilizing mothers as the entry for Americanization programs directed at Latinxs bolsters hetero-patriarchal understandings of the family in which the woman only occupies the domestic space. George Sanchéz’s article “‘Go After the Women’: Americanization and the Mexican
Immigrant Woman, 1915-1929” revealed how the officials who implemented these programs believed mothers acted as the “glue” that held the family together (Sánchez 1994, 285). For
Mexican immigrant families, mothers would most likely continue to uphold traditional cultural values. In response, Americanization officials imbued immigrant women with US-American patriotic values and deployed similar tactics as outlined by Esmeralda Santiago in her chapter
“The American Invasion of Macún.” Americanization programs in general propagated gendered ideas about culture and who carries culture into future generations. In conjunction with the rhetoric behind physically whitening the Great Puerto Rican Family, mothers represented a major point of entry. The white patriarchal undertones in reproducing la gran familia wholly permeated nationalist discourse and served to solidify the elites’ position as the “benevolent father figures,” who only wanted the best for Puerto Rico.
In addition to the myth of la gran familia, elites conceptualized Puerto Rico as comprised of three distinct roots--the white Spaniard, the indigenous Taíno, and the enslaved African.
42
Again, blanqueamiento offers a useful framework of understanding how nationalism manifested on the island. The island elites often prioritized the influences from Spain at the expense of
Taíno and especially African influences. The Hispanophile approach allowed the elites to propagate a distinctive “Puerto Rican” national identity, yet maintain the privileges afforded to a close proximity to whiteness. Juxtaposed with the pro-Spanish rhetoric, characteristics associated with blackness prove heavily fraught. Blackness remains selectively deployed, usually whitewashed and their historical importance erased (Godreau 2009). Specifically, the presence of black Puerto Ricans reflected a source of embarrassment for upper-class white Puerto Ricans who attempted to “forget” their ancestral pasts mired by enslavement. The physical appearance of blackness in Puerto Rico denoted slavery and “to be a person of African descent meant that one had enslaved ancestors” (Roy-Féquière 2004, 26). Whiteness, on the other hand, came to represent societal progress. Despite the shame from upper-class Puerto Ricans, they still attempted to frame enslavement in Puerto Rico as less harsh than enslavement in the US. Along with the emphasis on Spain, traditional nationalist discourses connected an “authentic” Puerto
Rican identity to the ability to speak Spanish. By centering Spanish, neither individuals residing in the diaspora who might not know Spanish nor individuals on the island who speak other languages can access a national identity. While Puerto Rican dialects of Spanish differ from other Spanish dialects, Spanish more broadly remains privileged and valued.
Becoming “La Borinqueña”
While early incantations of Puerto Rican nationalist ideology devalued both indigeneity and blackness, the nationalist project in Puerto Rico eventually located Taíno indigeneity as the authentic beginnings of the island. In confining the island’s indigenous history to the Taínos,
43 traditional nationalist discourses erased the presence of the darker-skinned Carib indigenous peoples. The Spanish perceived the Taínos as less aggressive than the Caribs, reinforcing narratives about the “noble savage” during the Spanish colonial era (Castanha 2010). An easily recognizable yet not physically “tangible” or present body resulted in lighter-skinned Taíno occupied a higher position in the nationalist mythology hierarchy. In La Borinqueña, Miranda-Rodríguez similarly conceptualizes the island’s beginnings in Taíno mythology. His use of the Taíno mother goddess, Atabex, as the original protector of Puerto Rican people complicates traditional temporalities about the island’s history before Spanish colonization.
When Marisol first summons Atabex,
the image of a Taíno spirit appears
right above the star on the current
Puerto Rican flag. Figure 4 shows the
full page of when Marisol brings
together the pieces she has collected,
which immediately form a star. The
bottom panels not only connect
contemporary Puerto Rico to the past
Borikén, but also result in an
Afro-Puerto Rican woman becoming
the face of alternative understandings
of Puerto Rican identity. Marisol
caused the star to come together and
44 subsequently conjured the image of Atabex. The following pages show Atabex and Marisol meeting in an otherworldly third space. Atabex continuously refers to the island as both the contemporary name, Puerto Rico and the indigenous name, Borinquén. She calls herself the
“mother” of all Puerto Ricans and retains the ability to pass on superpowers to Marisol so she can physically protect her fellow Puerto Rican people. Figure 4 and the subsequent pages reinforce notions of Taíno originality but do not attempt to propagate “pure” Taíno indigeneity.
A few pages after Marisol summons Atabex, Atabex shows her a number of different images from Puerto Rican history across the island and diaspora to explain the importance of her becoming “La Borinqueña.” Figure 11 reflects the two pages in the book’s centerfold flow as one
collective image with the star on the Puerto Rican flag as the center. Beams of blue light flow out
45 from each point on the star with an accompanying image of both island and diasporic Puerto
Rican history to reconstruct traditional ideas about nationalism. Those beams of blue light flow like rivers, which references Marisol’s last name, “Ríos de la Luz” (rivers of light). Repeating the same lit up star image from when Marisol first brought the crystal pieces together, the reader-viewer now fully associates the star with Marisol. Not only will the star empower her, but she will return that power through her role as “La Borinqueña.” Offering a brief history, the top left panel shows indigenous Taínos attempting to ward off Spanish colonizers as Atabex tells
Marisol “when my island suffers...my children suffer.” The top right panel subsequently shows a potential image from “El Grito de Lares,” one of the first attempts to rebel against the Spanish in
1868. Mariana Bracetti appears in a close up sewing the flag of Lares, considered to be the first flag of Puerto Rico. The ribbon Marisol wears, given to her by her mother, is also made from the cloth of the Lares flag during the rebellion. As the Puerto Rican patriot rides through on his horse, proudly waving the first flag, Atabex continues “[t]hey need hope, inspiration...a champion.” Like her predecessors during their respective time periods, Marisol represents that hope and inspiration for her contemporary Puerto Ricans. The resiliency of Puerto Ricans throughout history acts as the source of her powers.
In addition to historical images, the bottom left panel shows a crowd of people commemorating the June 2016 Pulse Massacre in Orlando, FL. Pulse occurred on the club’s
“Latin Night,” representing a direct attack against the queer Latinx community. The heteropatriarchal overtones of la gran familia and the emphasis on men and women reproducing together distance queer Puerto Ricans from traditional nationalism. Additionally, the panel draws attention to the growing diasporic Puerto Rican community in Orlando and reminds the audience
46 of how the majority of the Pulse victims were of Puerto Rican descent. Traditional Puerto Rican nationalist ideologies would have excluded such an event because the attack occurred in the diaspora and not on the island in a specifically queer space. The author-artist directly counters such an exclusive narrative in placing the image so prominently as part of the historical traumas the star connects together. The panel features two men, one wearing a Puerto Rican flag shirt next to another man wearing a shirt with the rainbow Pride flag to again remind the reader-viewer of the important connection between Puerto Ricans and Pulse.
In the background of the image, the Puerto Rican flag waves next to the US flag again to contextualize Pulse as an event that occurred on the mainland. Atabex finally reveals to Marisol of how she is the champion Puerto Ricans need. When Marisol questions Atabex’s statement, she responds “[n]o my sea-and-sun, you chose me.” Referring to Marisol as the English translation of her first name, “sea-and-sun” she becomes connected to Atabex who not only represents the
Taíno mother goddess, but also the goddess of the Sea and water. Like Atabex, “Mar y Sol”
(sea-and-sun) can serve as the protector of all Puerto Rican people. Atabex’s response overall clearly solidifies Marisol’s title as “La Borinqueña.”
The next panel shows an image of the Borinqueneers, an all island Puerto Rican infantry regiment, indicative of historical US military influence and presence on the island. With numerous medals and accolades, the Borinqueneers fought in World War I, World War II, the
Korean War, and current military conflicts. Atabex further establishes Marisol’s new title in linking her status as a student to her ability to protect her fellow Puerto Rican people. As a
“student of life,” Marisol is still learning from her surroundings. Her main goal of symbolizing hope and inspiration for all Puerto Ricans guides her rather than a specific political agenda. The
47 final image in the story order shows an image from the Ponce Massacre of 1937 in which the
US-backed island government attempted to stop a protest. The political Nationalist Party marched not only in commemoration of the abolition of slavery on the island, but also to protest the imprisonment of Pedro Albizu Campos by the US government. Similar to the Pulse image, traditional Puerto Rican nationalist narratives would not have emphasized the island government’s role in the massacre, with police officers standing over the bodies of dead civilians. The majority of the victims came from the Nationalist Party as the panel shows police pointing guns at unarmed protesters while dead bodies lay in a pool of blood.
Atabex subsequently finishes her history by telling Marisol, “[y]ou must keep the star safe. You must use its light.” Atabex finishes her overview of Puerto Rican history with the
Ponce Massacre, the image with the most visible violence and death, which subsequently juxtaposes that violence with survival. While Puerto Ricans both on the island and mainland have previously faced immeasurable violence, they continue to survive. Marisol will thus act as their symbol of hope, their beaming “rivers of light” amidst the violence. Through the power of the star and its light, she will guide her fellow Puerto Ricans to safety and serve as a symbol of the collective, re-constructed Puerto Rican “nation.”
Historically contextualizing traditional twentieth century Puerto Rican nationalism along with a visual understanding of Nuyorican identity ultimately better defines Marisol’s positionality within the comic book. As an Afro-Nuyorican woman, traditional twentieth century models of national identity would have excluded Marisol as representative of the island’s fraught past when slavery existed. In countering such an exclusionist narrative, Marisol assumes the title of “La Borinqueña.” When Marisol questions Atabex about why she picked her, Atabex remarks
48 that Marisol is “[a] student of life. [She] will know what to do when called upon.” To Atabex,
Marisol represents the future of the Puerto Rican people. She carries the historical weight of violence inflicted on all Puerto Ricans in addition to the legacy of anti-blackness which aimed to exclude her and her blackness from the national narrative. Instead, her blackness becomes synonymous with the future of Puerto Ricans.
Conclusion
During a congressional hearing on the status of Puerto Rico in 1914, Luis M. Rivera stressed the importance of a strong nationalist sentiment regardless of whether the island would become a territory, independent nation, or eventually seek statehood. He emphasized how
“national independence is a sentiment, a very natural sentiment, in the hearts of all people”
(Rivera 1914, 59). The implicit power dynamics in conferring US-American citizenship on
Puerto Ricans prevents any potential feelings of national independence. Although contemporary
Puerto Rico maintains the status of “unincorporated territory,” the US still holds control over the island economically and politically, prompting some scholars to invoke definitions of colonialism over territory. Juan Flores deploys the phrase “lite colonial” to describe the relationship between the US mainland and the island. He defines the “‘lite colonial’ [as] eminently discursive colonialism, a thickly symbolic form of transnationalism” (Flores 2000,
38). The “lite colonial” ultimately addresses a blanket, assumed Puerto Rican identity in addition to multifaceted understandings of Puerto Rican identity. Questions continue to arise about the island’s precarious political status, especially as more Puerto Ricans migrate from the island to the mainland, effectively further blurring ideas about traditional Puerto Rican political and cultural identities.
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Chapter 2: Leaving the Gutter Space: Graphic AfroLatinidades in La Borinqueña Introduction:
In the independently published comic book La Borinqueña (2016), Edgardo Miranda-Rodríguez introduces an Afro-Nuyorican college student named Marisol Ríos de la Luz as the superhero, “La Borinqueña.” Designed to unite Puerto Ricans on the island and in the diaspora, Marisol represents a symbol of cultural nationalism. With the island currently facing a massive and seemingly insurmountable debt combined with the recent natural disasters, Marisol shines through as a beacon of hope for the promise of a Puerto Rican future in the 21st century, whether that happens for people on the island or in the diaspora. The growing number of Puerto
Ricans in the diaspora is projected to outnumber Puerto Ricans on the island especially in the wake of Hurricanes Irma and María, further complicating ideas about “authentic” Puerto
Ricanness. Overall, she stands prominently in a larger Latinx comic cannon as a deeply political character, emerging out of Puerto Rico’s growing economic debt as a way to bridge conversations about events happening on the island and in the diaspora.
Through a textual, historically situated analysis of previous Latinx comic creators from the late 1970s to the present, this chapter addresses the specific comic book conventions and techniques Miranda-Rodríguez deploys in the first issue of La Borinqueña. The first sections briefly outline how previous Latinx comic creators have incorporated their cultural histories into their work as well as how major comic book companies have dealt with racialized characters.
While Miranda-Rodríguez’s comic book form mirrors traditional superhero narratives, he maintains distinctive characteristics of island and mainland Puerto Rican identities. He
50 acknowledges positive contributions from the island and diaspora and marks neither as superior to the other. Placing Marisol from La Borinqueña (2016) in conversation with previous Afro-Latinx superheroes such as the Santerians in Daredevil: Father (2004) and Miles Morales in Ultimate Spider-Man (2011), I plan to address how Marisol performs an Afro-Puerto Rican identity with various purposeful cultural markers, distinguishing her from previous characters such as Miles and the Santerians. Whereas the previous chapter highlighted the island’s complicated political history and relation to the diaspora, I contextualize Marisol within the broader comic book canon as a politicized character from an independent publisher with his own vision of how to properly represent her. Essentially, how does La Borinqueña perform mainland and diasporic Puerto Rican identities? What are the cultural implications of deploying such a racialized and gendered national symbol via a superhero, given Puerto Rico’s complicated political status? A character like Marisol who can unapologetically represent her identity as an
Afro-Latina rarely occurs. Designed to reflect hope and futurity, Marisol as “La Borinqueña” emerged during a key moment in island and diasporic Puerto Rican cultural history.
Constructing Graphic (Afro)Latinidades
“In reading the sign posts laid out by Latino comic book and comic strip author-artists, we are cued to reexperience or reconstruct our core selves in complex and specifically directed ways: ways that direct us to realize a fuller experience of US ethnicity--specifically Latino and Latina identity.” -- Frederick Luis Aldama in Your Brain on Latino Comics
Within the broader Latinx comic canon, La Borinqueña reflects a continuation of creators deploying graphic narratives rife with cultural symbols to tell a story that closely matches their own personal narratives. As Aldama’s above quote states, Latinx comic creators work from culturally specific sign posts in their narratives. In the process of “reconstructing [their] core
51 selves,” they cue in their desired audiences to similarly experience that process of inner identity reconstruction. Additionally, his use of “fuller experience of US identity” suggests that no perfect “full” experience exists because each Latinx experience differs. Latinx comic creators ultimately reflect a performativity of identity, directed at understanding Latinidad in the US. In
“Who Needs ‘Identity’?” Stuart Hall theorizes about the construction of identities within discourse and representation. He maintains that identities “are more the product of the marking of difference and exclusion, than they are the sign of an identical, naturally-constituted unity”
(Hall 1996, 4). Thus, identity does not represent a natural process of unification or belonging.
Instead, difference and exclusion from the mainstream necessitate identity and identification more broadly. Given the contextual variations of defining differences from the mainstream, identity similarly proves fluid and not at all fixed or stable. Identity invariably means a process of becoming associated with a performance of ideas about excluded group definitions. For Latinx comic book creators, their exclusion from mainstream representation encourages them to construct their own graphic narratives that mirror personal, familial, or ancestral histories.
Within the comic book genre, renowned Latinx comic creators such as Jaime, Gilbert, and Mario Hernandez, Laura Molina, Wilfred Santiago, and Ivan Velez Jr, among numerous others, consistently draw upon their own histories to deconstruct issues of identity and conceptions of Latinidad in their works. In the introduction to Multicultural Comics: From Zap to Blue Beetle, Frederick Luis Aldama maintains that “author-artists of color talk about real, biographical experiences living at the margins of a xenophobic society” that ultimately informs which audiences read their works (Aldama 2010, 2). Los Bros. Hernandez remain key figures in
Latinx comic author-artist history as some of the first creators to engage directly with cultural
52 symbols as narrative devices. During an interview that I conducted with Edgardo
Miranda-Rodríguez, he cited the influence of Los Bros. Hernandez in revolutionizing the comic book world and carving out a space for Latinx creators. Their graphic narratives primarily featured Central American or Chicanx characters with various cultural references to their own hometown of Oxnard, California. The success they achieved through their stories and overall characters such as Hopey and Maggie effectively paved the way for future Latinx comic creators to utilize their own personal narratives in constructing graphic stories. As the work of Los Bros.
Hernandez demonstrates, the verbal and visual narratives of graphic novels ultimately allow the audience room for interpretation in connecting themselves to the content.
Additionally, Miranda-Rodríguez drew inspiration from the work of fellow Nuyorican comic artist, George Pérez, who has illustrated for both Marvel and DC Comics during his lifetime (personal communication 2017). Aldama notes in the introduction a recognition of how marginalized creators and audiences possess the ability to “feel outside of themselves” with regard to representation. According to this theory, people of color rarely find someone who looks like them in mainstream media such as television or films. Subsequently, they must project onto the available characters and visualize themselves in the place of that specific character. For women of color, their experience with representation and recognition mean they “have to engage in extra work to engage in any pleasure or identification” (Valdivia 2000, 169). The ability of recognition through an absence of representation represents an additional layer of labor for audiences of color. Where Latinx comic creators construct blueprints within their works, Latinx audiences can more easily recognize themselves and fill in the graphic gaps cognitively. La
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Borinqueña follows the tradition as Marisol’s Puerto Rican identity allows specific Latinx audiences the ability to place themselves within her narrative.
In the panel for Figure 12, Marisol gazes excitedly at a plate of pasteles made by her grandparents on her first day in Puerto Rico. The scene shows Marisol sitting next to her
grandmother, across the table
from her grandfather. The
table filled with various green
foods aesthetically matches
the beach view behind the
family. Even her body
language, leaning forward
over the table visualizes her
feelings in the moment. With an open smile on her face, Marisol gushes “I looooove pasteles!” The extra o’s emphasize her excitement at the food in front of her and theoretically provide a relatable moment for the reader-viewer. Her grandmother then exclaims “Joaquin was cooking all week, just for you!” which flips traditional expectations of gender in the family. Much like the relationship between
Marisol’s parents, her grandparents represent another switch. Cooking for the family is usually considered a more maternal act. However, Marisol’s grandfather actually cooked the food, and for several days before her arrival.
The performance of Puerto Rican identity in Figure 12 similarly aligns with Hall’s ideas about “the practices of self-production” or a performativity of identity (Hall 1996, 13). For
54
Puerto Ricans in particular, pasteles mean seasoned beef or chicken in a fried dough shell. The image replicates such a practice of “self-production” for Marisol and a rendering of a piece of her Puerto Rican identity. The use of the term specifically signals the audience who might relate to that type of food. Placing pasteles on the table and directly naming them reinforces Marisol’s
Puerto Rican identity for the reader-viewer. The meaning behind the food possesses a deeply cultural importance. However, Miranda-Rodríguez purposefully does not provide a comparative definition of pasteles for non-Puerto Rican contexts. Instead, he has her grandfather begin with
“Los vecinos brought me all the viandas I needed!” Again, Miranda-Rodríguez offers no translation for the words in Spanish. As “los vecinos” means neighbors, “viandas” can mean a starchy root or tuber or food in general. Marisol’s grandfather then lists the ingredients the neighbors brought, before trailing off and finishing with “¡Ya tú sabes!” (“You already know!”) to indicate that he no longer needs to explain, because Marisol and by extension, the various audiences should already know. Although a small detail within the larger narrative, the presence of pasteles reinforces Marisol’s Puerto Rican identity for the reader-viewers.
Miranda-Rodríguez’s use of a cultural symbol such as Puerto Rican pasteles aims to personalize the narrative for Puerto Rican audiences. Through the forces of cultural recognition via food, she exudes a graphic Puerto Rican performative. However, the relatability of the scene extends outside of only Puerto Rican audiences to also include others who might have their own cultural foods similar to pasteles and made of similar ingredients, but referred to as a different name.
Along with audience recognition, graphic narrative storytelling allows for a dual occupation of an ancestral past and present that recognizes the promises of the future. In Your Brain on Latino Comics, Frederick Luis Aldama specifies that the multi-temporality offered by
55 comics proves especially useful for Latinx author-artists who consistently deploy cultural symbols to distinguish their works for specific audiences (Aldama 2009). In Figure 13, the full page image from La Borinqueña shows Marisol meeting the Taíno mother goddess, Atabex. Along with her title as the mother goddess, Atabex also represents the goddess of water and fertility. She represents one of the two major deities in Taíno spiritual practices. Marisol and
Atabex appear in a third-dimensional space, denoted by the mixture of pink clouds and dark purple hues dotted by stars. Atabex appears much larger compared to Marisol to also reinforce her importance for audiences. The indigo oblong shapes represent Atabex speaking and she essentially introduces herself to
Marisol as “the mother of Borikén.”
After the introduction in Figure 13
Atabex states “I am the ancient spirit of your deep past” and “I am the water that flows through your consciousness.” In connecting herself to Marisol through intangible ideas such as one’s spirit or consciousness, Atabex establishes the importance of Marisol and sets up the following scene in which she asks her to become a superhero for the Puerto Rican people. The deep connection between
56
Atabex and Marisol stems from the beginnings, when Puerto Rico was referred to as “Borikén.”
While the privileging of the island’s indigenous history often results in contemporary forms of anti-black racism, Atabex uses “your” when speaking to Marisol to root her just as much a part of the island’s history as Atabex herself. The “past” exists for Marisol and represents a piece of her and her consciousness. Atabex continues with “I am the love for my people” to imply that love drives her as a spiritual force. She either uses “my people” or “my Puerto Rican children” to describe why she exists and how she manifests. Atabex finishes the page by referring to Marisol as “Mar y sol, my sea and sun” emphasizing Marisol’s connection to the elements and grounding her to the physical world around her. The separation of her name into the two different words, provided both in English and Spanish again privileges a bilingual Latinidad. Additionally,
Atabex’s use of “my sea and sun” when speaking to Marisol directly positions her as the contemporary manifestation of Atabex and the love she represents for her people. The final oblong shape of Figure 13 shows larger, bolded text with Atabex declaring “I am Atabex.” The first meeting between Marisol and Atabex represents an instance of the ancestral past existing in tandem with the present while simultaneously thinking about the future.
At this point in the narrative, Marisol has collected five crystals which congealed to make the star on the Puerto Rican flag and summoned Atabex. The multi-temporal planes offered in
Figure 13 reflect the graphic novel’s ability to inhabit both a past and present space. In the following pages, Atabex reveals that she has selected Marisol to protect all Puerto Rican people and ensure their respective futures in the face of economic, environmental, and social uncertainty. By juxtaposing an ancient spiritual figure like Atabex with Marisol as they occupy a separate otherworldly space, Miranda-Rodríguez utilizes a graphic novel’s ability to play on
57 constructions of time and place. Through visual cues such as pink clouds or haphazard spirals, an author-artist can place the narrative in alternative dimensions and times. Additionally, the presence of a spiritual figure like Atabex allows for any number of possibilities, because her powers are endless. As the mother goddess, Atabex can take Marisol to any point in history.
Comic books offer visual representations of multi-temporal crossings that recognize an inherent and inevitable futurity. For Latinx comic creators, direct cultural symbols and unique narrative storytelling techniques distinguish their stories from the mainstream.
Afro-Latinidades in the Gutter Space
“One must reject the internal impulse or socially acceptable tendency to indulge in imagining an exotic mix of backgrounds and feel a sense of dubious pride by volunteering a long list of ethnic backgrounds that place black/African at the end (if at all) of that list.” -- Adilifu Nama and Maya Haddad in “Mapping the Blatino Badlands and Borderlands”
Despite the vast arsenal of narrative techniques available to Latinx comic creators, representations of Afro-Latinx characters have consistently proven flat. In the essay quoted above, Nama and Haddad draw attention to the erasure of blackness as integral to the creation of
Afro-Latinx characters in comic books. Their statement parallels Jorge Duany’s understanding of traditional Puerto Rican nationalism which consistently devalued and deemphasized the African
“root” of contemporary Puerto Rico. They criticize the idea that in order to exist in mainstream comic book companies, Afro-Latinx characters must sacrifice parts of their identity. Although characters and storylines representing Afro-Latinxs already exist, the amount of narratives remain abysmally low compared to representation for non-black Latinxs. For the few stories which exist, the characters stay marginalized and rarely retain a solo series. Narratives relegate them to the “gutter space” of the physical comic book. The “gutter space” represents the physical spaces in between comic panels and an alternative narrative as imagined by the reader-viewer
58
(McCloud 1993). The metaphorical gutter space for Afro-Latinx characters has literally white washed them and exiled them to the outer margins in between the panels rather than physically in the panels. The Black Latinx characters who do exist must often “decide” between a homogenous Latinx or Black identity, which leaves little room for intersectionality.
In “Commodifying Black Latinidad in US Film and Television,” Isabel Molina Guzmán analyzes how Black Latinx actors engage in a constant ethnic and racial negotiation heavily dependent on colorism and the effects of racial capital. As dominant culture constructs Latinidad as “brown” within the white/black racial binary already present in the US, Afro-Latinxs remain even further marginalized. Pervasive and restrictive ideologies force a distinction between
Latinidad and Blackness. US Black identity subsequently becomes framed as static and unchanging while non-black Latinidad prioritizes brownness at the expense of blackness. Molina
Guzmán critiques traditional constructs of Latinidad for aligning closer to whiteness and how that relationship “is maintained through narratives of racial mixture or trigueñidad grounded in uncomplicated notions of hybridity” (Molina Guzmán 2013, 223). Defining Latinidades as products of mixture tends to erase the visible phenotypic markers of blackness within Latinx communities that breed anti-blackness and colorism. Within the comic book universe, “Blatino” identity similarly negotiates a tense ethnic and racial relationship as characters are written to neatly fit either a homogenous Black or Latinx identity. Characters such as members from the
Santerians superhero team and Miles Morales as an alternative Spider-Man reflect such attempts to subscribe Afro-Latinidad to narrow, homogenous representations.
The presence of Afro-Latinx characters and especially superheroes remains contestatory in the broader comic book universe. Joe Quesada’s 2005 Santerians tells the story of a team of
59 superheroes all named after various orisha deities from Santeria, a Cuban religious tradition that combined elements of the West African Yoruba religion with Roman Catholicism. While
Quesada coded most of the team members as Afro-Latinx, only Ogun fails to rely on non-black conceptions of Latinidad. As Figure 14 shows, Ogun possesses the darkest complexion and dreadlocks, phenotypically symbolizing his blackness. However, Ogun’s superhuman strength
“literally represented by a giant physique and extreme muscularity, mak[es] hyper-masculinity the go-to trope of choice that marks his racial blackness” (Haddad and Nama 2016, 259). Their
short lived run in Marvel’s Daredevil: Father (2004) storyline ultimately never amounted to a solo series. Instead, the storyline ended with
an agreement between the Santerians and
Daredevil to protect different parts of New
York City from crime. The agreement
effectively relegates the Santerians to the
comic book gutter space, physically and
metaphorically marginalizing and erasing
them. For the Santerians, the gutter space acts
to silence and restrict them spatially within
New York City. Their section of the city
remains brown and thus lacking in superheroes good enough for their own independent storyline. The white section of Daredevil’s city deserves saving and a strong superhero. Ultimately when Daredevil exiles them out of his series and the
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Santerians can only continue to exist through the white gutter space without direct representation.
The erasure and silencing of Afro-Latinidades in the comic book universe continued with the introduction of Miles Morales as the new Spider-Man. In 2000, Marvel launched their
Ultimate Marvel series, which reimagined the origin stories of various superheroes including The Fantastic Four, Spider-Man, and the X-Men among others. Later in 2011, The Ultimate Spider-Man series introduced Miles Morales, a Black and Puerto Rican teenager from Brooklyn, as the new Spider-Man who replaces Peter Parker after he dies. Peter Parker emerged out of
1960s Cold War anxieties
surrounding radioactive
mutation when a mutated
spider bites him during a class
visit to a science laboratory.
The spider bite ultimately gives
him the powers to become
Spider-Man, allowing him to
shoot webs from his wrists as
well as super strength, speed, stamina among others. One version of Peter Parker, pictured in Figure 15, shows him as a young white man with medium brown hair. The use of the phrase “our hero” blurs who the Spider-Man character is actually for and who he should protect. While the various Peter Parker as
Spider-Man storylines might alter his hair color from medium brown to light or slightly darker
61 brown, he consistently appears as a white male teenager. Despite the numerous incantations of the white Peter Parker, audiences of color only receive representation via flattened characters who cannot read as “too ethnic.”
Unlike ethnically Latinx comic creators who purposefully include cultural symbols, the creators of Miles Morales primarily rely on his physical appearance and his urban home neighborhood to act as codes for his blackness. Once Miles swung into the comic book universe, massive backlash ensued from comic traditionalists who expressed outrage with the purportedly
“sudden” attempt at political correctness implied by the changes to Spider-Man. As Figure 16 shows, Miles dons a red and black suit in contrast to Peter’s red and blue. Miles’ suit actually looks similar to Peter’s suit when the infectious alien goo, “symbiote,” latches onto him and makes his suit entirely black. Brian Montes’ essay “The Paradox of Miles Morales: Social
Gatekeeping and the Browning of America’s
Spider-Man,” outlines how white comic book fans especially took offense to a non-white
Spider-Man and claimed that he amounted to appropriation of white superheroes by
“minorities” (Montes 2016). Media outlets further contributed to Miles’ erasure by only referring to him as Black or Latino, but never both. Therefore in the comic book, Afro-Latinidad can never fully exist. Again, Afro-Latinx characters remain confined to the gutter space even
62 though they might have a form of physical representation like Miles. Within the series, Miles comes from a lower income neighborhood and gains a spot in an exclusive charter school which later allows him to become Spider-Man. Ultimately, blackness in the Spider-Man universe connotes literal alienness like with the symbiote goo and an offensive attempt to infiltrate the comic book universe as revealed after Miles’ introduction in the Ultimate Marvel (2000) series. Rather than align Miles with a homogenous Black or Puerto Rican identity, the creators coded him as a poor, urban youth, which ultimately meant only Black American. Despite Miles’ identity as an Afro-Latino youth, his only Puerto Rican cultural marker comes from him taking his mother’s last name, Morales. He never interacts with outwardly Puerto Rican characters nor code switches between English and Spanish like other Latinx characters. Specifically, “Miles, for all intents and purposes, remains culturally unmarked: a sanitized version of multiculturalism that ought to remain palatable to a white, normative America” (Montes 2016, 275). As a visibly
Afro-Latino youth who assumes a major role like Spider-Man, Miles must ultimately appear for white consumption. As a Marvel character, Miles must appeal to the widest potential markets for the most profit, which means he cannot be coded as an Afro-Latino teenager. In her essay on
Latinx media aesthetics, Frances Negrón-Muntaner implicates non-Latinxs “as more prone to see images of [Latinxs] as transparently representative, particularly if these are in sync with dominant social discourse” (Negrón-Muntaner 2000, 122). Such dominant social discourse often relies on xenophobic stereotypes that define Latinidad as abject foreignness compared to
US-American culture. As a derivative of the traditionally white Peter Parker Spider-Man, Miles represents that “transparently representative” image of ethnic diversity. With his only Puerto
Rican cultural marker coming from his last name, he aligns with dominant social discourses
63 which aim to completely separate Latinidad and Blackness, effectively erasing Afro-Latinx individuals.
Interestingly, a note in Brian Montes’ article reveals that a licensing agreement between
Marvel Entertainment and Sony Pictures Entertainment legally requires any production of Peter
Parker and his alter ego Spider-Man to only be portrayed as “white, straight, and male” (Montes
2016, 279). Essentially, the Miles Morales version of Spider-Man will never receive his own movie franchise on the same scale as the other series. Additionally, the licensing agreement prevents any attempts to reimagine the Peter Parker Spider-Man as someone other than a white, heterosexual, able-bodied man. Peter Parker’s version of white Spider-Man effectively become institutionalized, safe from any non-white invaders. Much like Peter Parker’s origin story, Miles loses a family member and initially balks at the responsibilities of being a superhero. However,
Peter comes from the more affluent Forest Hills neighborhood in Queens whereas Miles comes from a lower income unnamed Brooklyn neighborhood most likely below the poverty line. Miles albeit crosses an economic border when he gains entrance into the prestigious fictional Brooklyn
Visions Academy, but still comes from a lower income neighborhood. Peter exists simply as a brainy, white nerd while Miles only accesses his charter school through a raffle system. The politics of space and place in the comic book universe, especially among the various Marvel series reflect a “divided metropolis,” according to Montes. As the marginalization of the
Santerians by Daredevil already revealed, racial segregation consistently defines comic depictions of New York City. Within the graphic narrative form, the city can only appear as white and in need of superheroes to keep up with that standard. Additionally, the majority of the
64 characters from the Peter Parker Spider-Man series are white reinforcing a vision New York City defined primarily by Eurocentricity and whiteness (Montes 2016).
During an interview with Edgardo Miranda-Rodríguez, a former writer for Marvel, he maintained that Miles ultimately represents a corporate brand produced by white people, so
“[w]hy would [the creators] reflect our narrative? Why would they reflect our culture? They’re just filling a diversity quota” (personal communication 2017). His questioning of the intent behind Marvel creators and their desire to simply fulfill a diversity quota comes from his own experience with how the brand handled narratives for characters of color. The Ultimate Marvel series ultimately reflects the company’s attempt to repackage and rebrand historically white characters rather than create characters of color with their own storylines. Thus, characters of color remain mere extensions of traditionally white comic book characters rather than their own individual selves. He outlined numerous other storylines Marvel created decades ago that originally centered characters of color but were abandoned such as the White Tiger (2003) or
Anya Corazón (2004). However, he emphasized that regardless of the representation offered via
White Tiger and Anya Corazón, they emerged out of a controlled, corporate environment.
Marisol ultimately represents a departure from traditional images of Afro-Latinx characters because she emerged as an inherently political response to the economic crisis occurring on the island and as a way to unite Puerto Ricans across the island and in the diaspora.
Transcending Graphic Borders as “La Borinqueña”
Whereas Miles Morales as Spider-Man effectively represents a flattened attempt at diversity that might hold physical representation for people, his Latinidad begins and ends with his name. Marisol as a character constantly exudes a Puerto Rican identity that centers histories
65 from the island and diaspora and the light blue Puerto Rican flag, as exhibited in Figure 17. For the most part, she transcends the graphic borders put into place from previous representations of
Afro-Latinx characters in comic books. The direct incorporation of alternative understandings of
Puerto Rican cultures across the island and diaspora reify her importance as a character. Rather
than being confined solely to the metaphorical
and literal gutter space, she stands
prominently as the main character with a
multidimensional identity as an
Afro-Nuyorican woman. In Figure 17, the top
three panels show close ups of various parts
of Marisol’s body with a red, white, and light
blue ribbon wrapping around her body. The
ribbon came from a pin, given to Marisol by
her mother before going to study in Puerto
Rico. The ribbon came from a piece of the
original Puerto Rican flag, sewn during El
Grito de Lares (The Cry of Lares), one of the
first attempts to rebel from Spain. In Figure
17, the first image zooms in on her face with her exclaiming “The ribbon!” The top middle panel shows the fabric beginning to wrap her from the back and she continues with “it’s expanding into…” with the third top panel focusing solely
66 on her feet and the final bottom image revealing a fully suited Marisol as she finishes with “¡La
Bandera!”
The physical manifestation of the light blue Puerto Rican flag as Marisol’s superhero costume directly implicates Marisol in a larger understanding of Puerto Rican history. Overall, she now physically embodies pieces of that history in wearing the flag. The flag becomes part of her physical body. Not only does she represent the literal “Puerto Rican woman” as “La
Boriqueña,” but she also embodies the essence of the Puerto Rican nation. Cultural theorist
Stuart Hall maintained that “[a] national culture is the whole body of efforts made by a people in the sphere of thought to describe, justify, and praise the action through which that people has created itself and keeps itself in existence” (Hall 2003, 246). Miranda-Rodríguez’s reliance on broader Puerto Rican history from the diaspora and island reference such efforts made by past generations to preserve the Puerto Rican “nation.” He subsequently implicates the flag as a marker of Puerto Ricanness without specifying island or mainland. In his lack of specificity lies the potential for inclusion.
As stated in the previous chapter, the symbolism behind the use of the light blue Puerto
Rican flag as opposed to the “official” darker blue reflects a left leaning political stance. The contemporary Puerto Rican flag actually originated in New York City in 1895 amongst a group of Puerto Ricans attempting to rally support for independence from Spain. Only after the US ceded control over the island from Spain in 1898 and the island officially attained commonwealth status did the island government adopt the dark blue Puerto Rican flag. Whereas the dark blue flag represents attachment to US structures of government and broader influence, the light blue flag represents an historical revolutionary context that actually originated in the
67
US. Miranda-Rodríguez attempts to bring the history of the Puerto Rican flag to the forefront by modeling Marisol’s costume after the light blue Puerto Rican flag. In contrast to the dark blue flag behind Señor Mercado’s desk in Figure 7, Marisol’s light blue cape prioritizes a history of
Puerto Rican independence that includes Puerto Ricans in the US mainland.
When Marisol’s pin expands into her superhero costume in Figure 17 after she receives her powers, the resulting outfit mirrors the design of the flag with a star in a light blue triangle and red and white stripes descending from the triangle. For reader-viewers, she visually and physically embodies the flag and thus exudes a Puerto Rican performativity which incorporates histories from the island and the diaspora. Additionally, the use of English in the top panels and
Spanish in the bottom panel, without a translation further privileges bilingual speaking audiences, constructing Latinidad in terms of English and Spanish. Her cultural identity represents the source of her powers, similar to the previously mentioned superhero team, the
Santerians. Compared to Miles Morales, Marisol Ríos de la Luz also unapologetically exudes
Puerto Ricanness by literally wearing the flag as her superhero suit and act as one of the main sources of her power.
Again similar to Miles, Marisol of La Borinqueña hails from Brooklyn, specifically the Los Sures neighborhood in Williamsburg. The action of directly naming the neighborhood
Marisol resides in contrasts with how the creators of Miles Morales described his home as simply, “Brooklyn.” Given the contemporary connotation of Williamsburg as an area dominated by young, white, hipsters and gentrification, Miranda-Rodríguez’s use of Los Sures in particular distinguishes Marisol. Her story begins in the historically Puerto Rican and Dominican neighborhood of Williamsburg. Early on, he also directly situates Marisol in New York City
68 when she appears biking to Columbia University via the Williamsburg Bridge as shown in
Figure 18. Gaining access to an elite
institution like Columbia similarly
mirrors Miles’ entry into the private
charter school. Unlike Miles, who lives
with his single mother, Marisol lives
with both of her parents. She holds
class privilege over Miles since her
mother is a doctor and her father does
not necessarily have to work. As
portrayed in Figure 18, the light shines
bright on the bridge and Marisol as she
commutes to school. The blue
rectangles represent her inner thoughts
to the reader-viewer during the bike
ride.
Throughout the first issue of the comic book, Miranda-Rodríguez distinguishes inner thoughts from spoken dialogue through blue rectangles like in Figure 18. The stylistic choice also visually separates components of the written narrative, which further animates the pages. The reader-viewer ultimately gains insight into pieces of Marisol’s history and can potentially better understand her characterization.
Starting from the left and moving in descending order in Figure 18, the first two rectangles
69 recount Marisol’s relationship to her parents. She reflects on how her mother works as a doctor and refers to her father as the “mother hen,” because he always worries about her health, specifically her asthma. The third rectangle reveals that her many health problems made her a rather “sickly child.” She continues in the following thought that she “never let [her] health define or confine [her].” Instead, her health problems such as her asthma encouraged her to work harder than most, which she claims she has. Moving down the panels, the middle rectangle reveals that for her, biking represented an opportunity to build up her stamina. In the second to last piece of her inner thoughts she measures her success through finally being able to bike to the
Palisades, a mall in upstate New York. For the final rectangle on the page, she circles back to her parents and reflects on how her father “freaks out” that she might push herself too hard while her mother must constantly reassure him of Marisol’s strength. Figure 18 not only visualizes Marisol in the context of Williamsburg, but also offers depth to her character. The pieces of her backstory set her up as tenacious with the backdrop of alternative understandings of Brooklyn that contrast from contemporary narratives of gentrification. Essentially, Marisol quite literally embodies the history of Los Sures.
In addition to the symbolism of Marisol as a resident of Los Sures, she also represents a recognition of the broader positionality of Puerto Ricans in the diaspora. While
Miranda-Rodríguez’s quote from the Huffington Post in the introduction alludes to the responsibility of Puerto Ricans in the diaspora to recognize the current events on the island, the first issue also calls attention to the historical context for Puerto Ricans in New York City.
During a personal interview with Miranda-Rodríguez, he revealed that Marisol’s asthma references the historic industrialization of Brooklyn which led to generations of health problems
70 for the residents, mostly people of color. Much like the suit she wears as “La Borinqueña” which is the Puerto Rican flag, her body physically reflects the impacts of environmental racism in
Puerto Rican communities in New York City. Her asthma and placement in Brooklyn also reference how “down the street from where [Miranda-Rodríguez] live[s], there is actually a toxic waste transfer station that many activists in the community, particularly Puerto Rican activists have been fighting for years to get rid of” (personal communication 2017). Marisol represents a visual manifestation of environmental racism and its long term impact on a community. His statement reveals an often erased narrative of Williamsburg as a dangerous place for communities of color as opposed to a gentrified haven for young, white professionals. Marisol clearly lives in the affected, still Puerto Rican and Dominican part of Williamsburg that suffers from environmental racism and the forces of industrialization.
Through a “study away” program, Marisol receives the opportunity to study in Puerto
Rico, which sets the stage for her encounter with Atabex and receiving her powers. Puerto Rico becomes framed as an inherently un-American space despite their status as a US territory. For
Marisol as a Puerto Rican in the diaspora to the US, the island ultimately represents an unfamiliar space to her. She receives the background and broader history from her encounter with Atabex, that positions her as the primary protector of a Puerto Rican future both on the island and on the mainland. While US citizenship for Puerto Ricans facilitates travel between the island and US mainland, the island still maintains an inherently “foreign space” in which a student might “study abroad.” During her semester, she stays with her grandparents in San Juan while working at her grandfather’s café and conducting independent research. While the narrative never outright labels her class status and she does have the opportunity to study abroad,
71 she must work while there and she lives with her grandparents, presumably at little personal monetary cost. In his depictions of Marisol, Miranda-Rodríguez consistently places her within historically Nuyorican contexts such as Williamsburg, but similarly reinforces her authentic island Puerto Rican identity because her grandparents still live on the island. Ultimately,
Marisol’s ability to occupy that dual space on both the island and US mainland distinguishes her as an Afro-Latinx comic book character. The cultural importance of Marisol comes from her ability to bring awareness to the state of Puerto Ricans on both the island and US mainland. The histories of both the island and diaspora play a major role in her origin story and put forth ideas about “Puerto Ricanness” which contrast with traditional ideas about the identity itself. Marisol represents a more complex and in-depth understanding of identity as a constantly shifting performative that exists differently in certain contexts over others. She differs from previous representations of Afro-Latinx characters because of the circumstances of her release.
Independent Media and Marketing
“So I do my best to look for [Latino] journalists, look for these writers, look for the media outlets and particularly the institutions they are working within and there are very very very few of us. And once I reach out to them, I sell my book, I sell my concept, I sell my narrative.” -- Edgardo Miranda-Rodríguez, Personal Interview
During the initial marketing campaigns for La Borinqueña, Miranda-Rodríguez heavily relied on Latinx allies in the media, as stated in the quote from a personal interview with him.
Despite previously working for Marvel Entertainment, he now acts as the artistic director of his own independent publishing company, Somos Arte (We Are Art). Miranda-Rodríguez thus deployed a combination of targeted marketing and self-publishing for the first issue of La Borinqueña. While independent publishing allows for more creative control, the potential for a smaller company to fail looms. However, corporate characters tend to exist as prepackaged
72 diversity requirements without a strong independent narrative of their own. As previously stated, many Latinx comic book superheroes come from changes to already existing white characters.
Thus, Miranda-Rodríguez recognizes the value and necessity of Marisol as a character in terms of representation, because Marisol is the first of the La Borinqueña narrative. Although Miranda-Rodrgíuez does not identify as an Afro-Puerto Rican woman, he heavily relies on his personal narrative as a Nuyorican to enhance the story’s credibility. Marisol thus stands out as an
Afro-Latinx character because she comes from an independent brand, created by someone of
Puerto Rican descent, albeit with wildly different experiences because of race and gender.
Overall Miranda-Rodríguez “sells his narrative” as a Puerto Rican man in order to also sell
Marisol’s story, which makes her more relatable to certain audiences.
During a personal interview with him, he revealed that he fronted much of the initial capital for the project himself, only after working as an artistic director for a major corporation
(personal communication 2017). He began marketing Marisol and La Borinqueña six months before the release of the first issue. From Summer 2016 until the release on December 22, 2016 he completed numerous interviews with various media outlets such as The Washington Post, Huffington Post, Remezcla, Latina, The Guardian, among others. For the marketing of the comic book itself, he tapped into Latinx journalists and media personalities. He officially debuted her at the National Puerto Rican Day Parade in New York City in June 2016 on a “La Borinqueña” float. In the same personal interview, he revealed how he primarily sought out Latinx journalists because he believed they would more easily recognize his goals with La Borinqueña. He aimed to call attention to the political and economic situation in Puerto Rico and urge all Puerto Ricans to unite in solidarity and recognition. As opposed to writing, drawing, coloring, and marketing
73 the entire comic book by himself, Miranda-Rodríguez relies on a creative team. For La Borinqueña, he stated “I pulled together every professional Puerto Rican that’s ever worked in the industry that I could reach to work with me on La Borinqueña. And they’ve never worked with each other” (personal communication 2017). Given the larger corporate attempts to fulfill diversity quotas, creators of similar ethnic backgrounds rarely receive the opportunity to work together on a project as prominently Puerto Rican as La Borinqueña. Tokenization often leads to only one Puerto Rican if any, and behind the scenes at all. However, he wanted the majority of the team working on La Borinqueña to be of Puerto Rican descent. While Miranda-Rodríguez maintains the status as the artistic director for his independent publishing company Somos Arte, he works extensively with a team to create the comic book.
Unlike larger corporate comic book companies, Edgardo Miranda-Rodríguez’s independent publishing company Somos Arte, produced La Borinqueña and the story of Marisol Ríos de la Luz. As a smaller publisher, he recounted how all of the first issue’s marketing responsibilities fell on him as he reached out to numerous media outlets about his project. When asked about his marketing approach for La Borinqueña, he stated that “in order for this book to get some level of credibility, I knew I needed to tap into mainstream press” (personal communication 2017). So, mainstream comic book audiences definitely play a role in how he markets the book and impact how he reaches out to journalists. During the interview he further maintained that locating writers of Latinx descent within mainstream press organizations allowed his book to reach a wider audience. In securing not only contacts from the industry but also exposure as an artistic director, could the project expand (personal communication 2017). Given the restrictive whiteness held up by mainstream comic book audiences, Miranda-Rodríguez
74 purposefully sought out Latinx journalists of any particular genre because he believed they might recognize his political message. La Borinqueña ultimately reflects a deeply political attempt to reimagine the superhero genre with an Afro-Puerto Rican female college student as the main character. Where Miranda-Rodríguez can directly code Marisol as Afro-Puerto Rican and provide significant cultural markers for her, he does so within an independent company context.
The future of Afro-Latinx superheroes remains in a tense and precarious position as observed with the licensing agreements legally prohibiting the Miles Morales Spider-Man from receiving any theatrical production. While the complicated stories of the Santerians and Miles
Morales by no means reflect the entirety of graphic representations of Latinidades, the silences they face within the broader comic book universe as specifically Afro-Latinx characters works against the success of characters like Marisol. She ultimately represents a character not wholly devoid of corporate influence given Miranda-Rodríguez’s professional history, but still working within his personal goals for Puerto Rican culture. As previously stated, he views Marisol as a symbol for all Puerto Ricans to unite behind and for Puerto Ricans in the diaspora to recognize the economic state of the island. As a character Marisol can never represent the perfect version of an Afro-Latina character, because no perfect character exists. However, she does introduce a highly underrepresented narrative for Afro-Latina women in the superhero genre. From the process of creation in an independent company to self-marketing to media outlets of color,
Marisol represents an alternative understanding of Afro-Latinx comic book characters.
Conclusion
The cultural implications of a character like Marisol extends outside of just the comic book world. She exists as an independent character instead of a character dependent on previous
75 storylines or corporate understandings of difference. Since Hurricanes Irma and María, representations of Puerto Ricans in mainstream media dehumanize them and ignore the role of the US in the island’s current economic state. In the aftermath, the current president has blamed
Puerto Ricans on the island for a lack of strong infrastructure, a growing economic debt, and a failing power grid, ultimately not acknowledging the role of the US. As politicians debated on whether Puerto Rico could qualify for federal aid, they disregarded the people on the island. La Borinqueña and Marisol work to counter such a narrative and instead center the strength and resiliency of the communities. Given the history of depictions of race in comic books, a story like La Borinqueña, created by an author-artist of color with his own publishing company, Marisol truly represents a new narrative.
During the almost two years since her release, Marisol has grown immensely in popularity across the island and in the diaspora. From the massive amount of fanart to the numerous comic book reviews and interviews as well as her own mural in the Bronx, NY, she differs from the standard. Similar to other Latinx comic book creators, Miranda-Rodríguez draws from his own familial and cultural history in order to tell a graphic story. He deploys cultural symbols and includes both English and Spanish in the first issue to visually construct his definition of Latinidad. Through the use of images from Puerto Rican history that include both the island and diaspora, he constructs an alternative contemporary cultural identity. Marisol subsequently performs that identity and introduces a more inclusive narrative into the comic book superhero genre. Her popularity can only grow with more issues of La Borinqueña to come as well as more exposure.
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Conclusion: Graphic Futurities and Puerto Rican Possibilities
“She’s here to remind you that the power of our people comes from our people. We don’t have to ask for something when it is already within us. It’s a narrative that’s going to remind us of ourselves. We’ve always had that power. Being Puerto Rican is our superpower.” -- Edgardo Miranda-Rodríguez, quoted by David Betancourt in The Washington Post
Marisol and the larger narrative within La Borinqueña recognizes and emphasizes the collective power of the Puerto Rican people while simultaneously countering traditional discourse about belonging. In doing so, sequential art possesses the ability to tell a multifaceted story of resistance. As Miranda-Rodríguez states in the above quote from The Washington Post, the inherent power behind “[b]eing Puerto Rican is our superpower.” He wanted Marisol as “La
Borinqueña” to always reflect that sentiment and reinforce the strength of communities.
According to comic theorist Joseph Witek in Comic Books as History: The Narrative Art of Jack Jackson, Art Spiegelman, and Harvey Pekar, “comic books can and have been used as the vehicle for scrupulously accurate history and realistic fiction and for politically committed narratives which make overt their ideological dimensions” (Witek 1989, 44).
Miranda-Rodríguez’s deployment of historical images, recognizable landscapes, and outright use of political symbols such as the light blue Puerto Rican flag marks La Borinqueña as overtly political. Emerging from the purely political act of alerting people of the current economic state of the island, Marisol and La Borinqueña counter traditions of silence and erasure in the mainstream. She nonetheless represents the continuation of a much larger goal of making graphic storytelling more inclusive and encompassing of numerous identities.
In the aftermath of devastating hurricanes and prolonged federal government inaction, the power of Puerto Rican communities has become a metaphorical light in the midst of uncertainty.
As Puerto Ricans continue to migrate from the island to the US mainland, they will invariably
77 impact understandings of Puerto Rican cultural identity in the US as well as disrupt political scapes in their mainland communities. Figure 19 illustrates such a potential political disruption caused by the current presidential administration’s inaction and outright disregard for the island.
Cartoonist Rangy of the comic strip series De la Nada!, frequently creates Puerto Rican specific political cartoons and posts
them on Facebook. Posted in
October 2017, Figure 19 shows
a long line of dejected Puerto
Ricans about to board a plane
to Florida, as shown on the
ticket in the right hand corner.
The specific use of Florida, a
heavily contested battleground
state which has historically been understood as the state a candidate “needs” to win, points to the political power of these new diasporic communities. Although Florida went Republican in the 2016 Presidential election, the influx of Puerto Rican migrants might cause a shift in 2020.
The Puerto Rican flag remains visible on luggage, t-shirts, or hats sporadically throughout the line of people. Towards the back of the line, the Puerto Rican flag hangs next to the US flag, a reminder of the island’s status as a US territory. The television screen shows a quote from the current president with a scrunched up face shouting “Puerto Rico! You threw our budget out of whack!” A young man towards the front of the line sharply responds “[g]uess now
78 we’ll have to throw your re-election out of whack!” As the political cartoon suggests, the political power in Puerto Rican communities migrating to the US mainland may prove formidable for the current administration. The president’s placing of blame on the Puerto Rican people for the island’s post-Hurricane state might “throw [a] re-election out of whack” just as the young man states. His narrow-minded comments entirely ignore the economic destruction caused by the US from the cession of the island in 1898. Because Puerto Ricans have US citizenship, they possess the power to vote in US presidential elections if they hold residency on the mainland. The historic relationship between the US and Puerto Rico remains evermore complicated in the contemporary as debates about the federal government’s role in the rebuilding process go unanswered. These changes may heavily impact understandings of cultural identity.
During the months after the hurricanes, Miranda-Rodríguez immediately set out to raise
money for relief
organizations on the
island. In a partnership
with Casita María
Center for Arts and
Education in the South
Bronx, he collected
various pieces of La Borinqueña donated fanart along with pieces of his own work for an art show in December 2017. All of the proceeds from the sales went to Puerto Rican relief organizations on the island to aid in the rebuilding
79 process. Figure 20 offers one piece in particular from the show made by Miranda-Rodríguez, which features Marisol in her suit, arms raised up in triumph with the word “Ricanstruction” underneath her. The word “Ricanstruction” exemplifies Miranda-Rodríguez’s previous statement with Betancourt. He believes the true superpower lies within the Puerto Rican people. Thus, the use of “Ricanstruction” similarly locates the power to rebuild with the people themselves.
Additionally, his play on the word “reconstruction” targets specific Puerto Rican cultural audiences. The illuminated star on her suit shines bright like in the comic book to signify that she is coming to save the day. Her hair has expanded and now appears as the roots of the
“Ricanstruction” period. The vibrant green grass and trees behind her suggest the potential for new life and reaffirm that the island will survive. Next to the three beige towers flies the Puerto
Rican flag, again reinforcing the rebuilding narrative. Overall Figure 20 illustrates a flexing
Marisol offering strength and hope during the people led “Ricanstruction.”
Before I began my work with La Borinqueña, news stories constantly reported on the increasing debt leading to increasing migration of people from the island to the mainland.
Marisol stood out as a comic book superhero precisely because she donned a light blue suit modeled after the Puerto Rican flag and unapologetically claimed her identity as an Afro-Puerto
Rican woman. She visually represented the necessity in knowing and understanding histories from both the island and the US mainland. From the first periods of migration to the contemporary, the nature of Puerto Rican cultural identities has constantly been in flux. La Borinqueña encourages reader-viewer audiences to make those historical connections and attempt to better understand the multiplicity of available narratives. Marisol represents one potential story amidst countless others. However, she also represents a positive step for future
80
Afro-Latinx comic book narratives. With all of the positivity surrounding her character, I must acknowledge the impact of Hurricanes Irma and María not only on the immediate present, but also on the long term future as the island continues to rebuild. Despite the progress made since
September 2017, much of the island is still suffering from a lack of electricity, gasoline, and access to adequate medical services, among other issues. Marisol cannot solve the debt crisis nor can she physically rebuild the island. However, she can act as a powerful unifying political symbol amidst widespread uncertainty. Marisol cannot solve the debt crisis nor can she physically rebuild the island. However, she can act as a unifying political symbol amidst widespread uncertainty.
Through an alternative understanding of Puerto Rican cultural nationalism which directly centers blackness and the diaspora, Miranda-Rodríguez offers a more inclusive graphic narrative.
Sequential art overall allows for a multitude of possibilities with graphic storytelling. Reiterating
Witek, the purposeful use of visual history in comic books encourages readings which recognize political subtext. As for the physical form, the relationship between the visual and verbal narratives requires a constant duality in experiences for reader-viewers. Latinx comic book creators have historically utilized the ability to tell stories visually and verbally to incorporate culturally specific tropes and imagery to offer relatively reflective and complex characters. La Borinqueña mirrors such a history while attempting to expand the canon for Afro-Latinx representation. While Marisol cannot reflect a perfect representation of Afro-Latinidad, she presents a more complex identity than previous Afro-Latinx characters, especially within the superhero genre. Drawing from moments of historical trauma, Miranda-Rodríguez reminds audiences of the strength and resiliency of Puerto Rican communities across the island and
81 diaspora. His immediate goal of creating a unifying character to call attention to the economic debt crisis on the island has expanded into the aftermath of the hurricanes and offered visuals for hope. “La Borinqueña” serves as a constant reminder of the inherent power behind recognizing a people’s inner strength and ability.
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