"Los boricuas, comparados a otros grupos latinos de NYC, son los que más sufren". Foto por Ed Morales.
Esta es una meditación sobre como nos ven y como, de algún modo, estamos.
Two recent headlines from two very different newspapers caught my attention recently, y, como casi nunca salimos en titulares por acá (outside of the usual sports, narcotrafficking, or birth certificate stories) no pude resistir contemplarlas.
When
The New York Times, the nation’s preeminent “liberal” news organ, runs a story with the headline “
Report Shows Plight of Puerto Rican Youth,” nuestra comunidad nuyorriqueña tiene varias opciones sobre cómo reaccionar. First, there’s the shock of recognition (“They’re talking about us!), then almost como una nostalgia (Isn’t this why they started
the Young Lords, anyway?), and finally, a kind of angry resignation.
The shocking, stark picture painted is not necessarily negative for Latinos, la minoría más grande de los estados unidos, it’s a scary revelation about el fenómeno Boricua. Comparado a otros grupos Latinos en la ciudad más chévere del mundo, somos los que más sufren:
Roughly 17 percent of young Puerto Rican men were not in school, employed or looking for work, compared with 9 percent of Dominicans and 8 percent of Mexicans. Of those Latinos born in the United States, only 55 percent of Puerto Rican youth were enrolled in school, compared with 68 percent of Dominicans and 67 percent of Mexicans. Regardless of birthplace, about 33 percent of Puerto Rican families lived below the poverty line, compared with 29 percent of Dominicans and 27 percent of Mexicans.
En este momento estoy enseñando una clase en Hunter College, parte de la universidad de la ciudad de Nueva York, sobre estudios puertorriqueños. Y puedo decir que casi 50% de los estudiantes
no son puertorriqueños. Son ecuatorianos, afro-americanos, jamaiquinos, colombianos, irlandeses, judíos, chinos, y por supuesto, dominicanos. So week after week I introduce them to El Grito de Lares, La carreta, Manos a la obra, Down These Mean Streets…I even show them “
La Operación,” with its salsa commercials about la píldora and its grisly scenes of tubal mutilation, and they gasp and are amazed by todo lo que ha soportado el pueblo puertorriqueño, y allí se queda. En los textos, y los museos, como esta obra de Antonio Martorell sobre La Guagua Aérea en El Museo del Barrio:
Pieza "From here to there" de Antonio Martorell. Foto por Chester Higgins, Jr./New York Times
En El Barrio, y
siguen empujándonos hacia el Norte para el Bronx y beyond, esta realidad del tiempo suspendido se queda en nuestros huesos, the Boricua body bearing the permanent state of poverty made so famous by the
Daniel Moynihan apologists for the failure of industrial capitalism. Lo claro es que the concentration of capital and the subsequent hegemony of the financial sector has its flip side, and it is us.
I wondered why
The New York Times focused on the plight of Nuyoricans when there were so many angles one could take on this
report, which has the hopeful, “pa’lante”-ish splash-text, almost like an advertising teaser: “NEW YORK CITY’S FUTURE LOOKS LATINO.” (The actual title is “Latino Youth in New York City: School, Work, and Income Trends for New York’s Largest Group of Young People.”) El futuro es tan brillante que nos tenemos que poner los lentes oscuros.
Perhaps the old-school liberals at the Times had a bout of nostalgia as well for the good old days, when men were men, Puerto Ricans were poor, and there was revolution in the air. This ancient history doesn’t seem to be relevant for other Latino groups, who have an “entrepreneurial motivation” that Boricuas “may not have anymore,” because, as Angelo Falcón says, “they’ve been, ironically, Americanized.”
While Falcón is referring to a multi-layered Americanization process, i.e., identifying with the African-American struggle, an unwillingness to work for less than minimum wage, a growing cynicism about the “American dream,” there is another kind of Americanization evident in an article that appeared recently in The Washington Times, a Rupert Murdoch-owned vessel for right-wing conservative free marketeers.
“
Puerto Rico’s Hazy Identity” is yet another refashioning of a classic Americanizing narrative about Puerto Rico. Taking its cue from comedian Larry David’s comment, “What Is Puerto Rico, anyway?” the article speaks in a language Americans outside of the liberal elite feel comfortable with. The most obvious answer to the question is, of course, “it’s a colony.” But in the language of the middle American, it’s “technically a Commonwealth.” Even more sinister, it is a place that Apple snubbed by refusing to send free cases to rectify problems with the release of IPhone 4. In a nutshell, esto es Puerto Rico:
Puerto Rico has been under U.S. jurisdiction since 1898, and its people have been citizens since 1917. The island is home to 150,000 military veterans, and three-quarters of its National Guard troops have been deployed overseas since the Sept. 11 attacks. The island shuts down and shoots off fireworks on the Fourth of July.
Yet Puerto Ricans can’t vote for president, and their representative in Congress can’t vote, either. They pay Social Security and Medicare payroll taxes but not federal income tax. (They pay Puerto Rican income tax instead, so it’s no paradise.) Associated Press considers its reporters in Puerto Rico foreign correspondents.
How quirky. Que situación tan interesante. De repente, llegaron los americanos. Se quedó así. No pagan esto y sí pagan esto.Celebran el 4 de julio. ¿Qué carajo es este sitio?
“You got your fast food and your Costco. It’s neither here nor there.”
Face it, ‘mano. It’s hazy.
Hazy como el hecho que la victoria Republicana el martes va a poner en peligro las reformas de salud de Obama, bien significativa para Fortuño, y también en peligro el proyecto del plebiscito, bien importante para Fortuño.
So what is really important for El Gobernador? Probably making sure that Marco Rubio got elected. That much seems clear.
Articulo tomado de: http://www.80grados.net/2010/11/claro-que-es-hazy/
