Puerto Rico- The Pleasures and Traumas of Race

8/16/2019 Puerto Rico- The Pleasures and Traumas of Race

http://slidepdf.com/reader/full/puerto-rico-the-pleasures-and-traumas-of-race 1/24

CENTRO

JOURNAL

VO UM

XVH

ZOO5

Puerto Rico

The pleasures and traumas

of race

AT.AN

W F , S T - n i K A N

ABSTRACT

Writers and thinkers as diverse as Tomas Bianco, Luis Pales

M atos, Jose Luis Gonzalez, and Isabelo Zeno n Cruz have

grappled with the issue of the island's Afro-Caribhean

iden tity, ranging from denial (Blanco) to full affirmation

(Gonzalez). Apart from some historical backgrtiund, this

paper will focus on perceptions of race in Puerto Rican

literature (and music) from the island and the U.S. The latter

is crucial not only because of US. colonial history on the

island, but also because of the racial experiences of Puerto

Ricans who have emigrated to (or were raised in) the

U.S.

T he

paper w ll exam ine th e jfbaro myth . Pales Matos's poetry, and

the representation of racial identities in authors such as

Alejandro Tapia y Rivera, Tato Laviera, Rosario Ferre,

Edgardo Rodriguez Julia, and Mayra Santos Febre. It will



UERTO R ICO S RACIAL HISTO RY IS

centuries old, som etimes troubled, always intricately layered, plagued by misund er

standings and d enials, laced with insights, and just plain vexing. In what follows we

will examine some of those baffling complexities through some canonical works of

literature: La cuarterona by Alejandro Tapia y Rivera, M ulata A ntilla by Luis Pal

Matos, M aldito Amor by Rosario Ferre, Negrito by Tato Laviera, Fdg ardo Rodrigue

Julia's El entierro de Cortijo and Mayra Santos Febre's short story Marina. These wo

will be discussed in the light of Zizek's analysis of the Lacanian Real as it pertains to

ndtionalist Jou issance Foucault's no tion of bio-power, and Bauman's analysis of how

societies deal with otherness.

This a rticle addresses only six autho rs spanning th e last one hun dred thirty years,

and so it would be misleading to think that what follows is either exhaustive or

representative. Each work or autho r has som ething im portan t to say about race

and identity in the construction of Puerto Rican national consciousness, and they

have been chosen because as writers their views are not only steeped in history,

but also are engagingly nuanced with regard to the island's racial plight.

In

1937,

Tomas Blanco, one of the island's seminal writers and thinkers, wrote the

following: Com pared to th e most intense explosions of that virulent behavior, our

racial prejudice is the innocen t game of a child (Blanco 1985: 103). Blanco was

contrasting P uerto R ico with the southern United States, and the com parison made

several references to lynch ings, segregation, and Jim Crow. Blanco's criticisms are all

true with regard t o his analysis of the U.S., bu t when looking hom eward, his critical

perspective is conspicuously a bsen t. During most of his essay, Racial Prejudice in

Pu erto Rico , he offers a benign (and inaccurate) racial history of the island,

drawing a po rtrait suffused with Hispano-C atholic com passion, if not c onde-

scension. Two years earlier, in a classic essay, Elogio de la plena, Blanco had writt en :

We have abundan t black blood in us, and this should no t m ake us feel ashamed;

bu t, in honoring the t ru th , we cann ot be classified as a black peop le (Blanco 1975:

1004).

The inconsistencies and racism of Blanco's insights have not held up well,

even though his views are still echoed by some.'

Thirty-seven years later Isabelo Zeno n Cruz spoke of the hypocrisy of th e

expression negro puertorriqueno where Pu erto Rican has becom e an adjective.

W hy

s

a black P uerto Rican identified as black before he is considered Puerto

Rican, he sarcastically asks in his monumental two-volume study Narciso descubre



controversy, and to date it still remains—whatever its tlaws—a crucial reference in

the intellectual discourse on race and identity.

These writers reflect the tensions antl con tradictions in examining the racial dimen-

sions of Puerto Rican identity, and could he broadly described as

I

lispanicist (with racist

overttjnes), anti-racist, and Afrocentric. Most borictias would claim a mixed-raced

heritage in a cultural sense, but a more w hitened definition in a strictly racial sense.

Some of this ambiguity migbt be partially explained by the most recent census (2000),

since for the first time since 1950 Puerto Ricans answered questions about race in an

official census. The country's racial re;ility, however, might be too elusive to capture on

a governm ental form. Social scientist Jorg e Duany, trying to imagine this incongruity,

alludes to the racial complexities of the island by offering

a

long hut by no means exhaus-

tive list of terms most commonly used: bianco (wbite), blanqttito (upper class or well-to-do

white), colorao

(white with rctldish

hair), rubio (l)l()nde), cuno

(person with grey or whiten-

ing hair and light skin

color ,

Ji icho (pasty or fiour-colored wh ite), bianco con raja

(white w ith a streak

oico\oT Jabao

(mixed race with light skin and chestnut or hlond

hiiir but u ith other hiack physical features), melao (honey-tolored). trigtteiio (wheat-colored,

light brown), morcno (dark skinned-mulatto or black), mulato, indio (Indian, bronze

colored), cafe con leche (coffee with

mi\k ,pielcanela

(cinamon-skinned),;^/'//^ (kinky-

haired, black), de color (of color), negro (black), and negrito (a small or Unle hlack person).

Many ol these terms, depending on attitud e and tone, can be expressions of endear-

ment, grudging acceptance, con tempt, or condescension (Duany 2000; see also Stephens

ii)t)t)). D esp ite th is complexity, whiteness is still considered the norm, as will he

argued further on, given hoth sociological data and literary examples.

What Blanco, /enon, (Gonzalez, and Duany atldress, directly or indirectly, is a

complex racial history that is both local and yet intersects with tbe racial dynamics

of two imperial powers: Spain (1493-1898) and th e United S tates (1898 to th e

prese nt). Before analyzing the literary works previously mentioned, it is germane

to retrace some of the salient features of the island's racial history.

Spanish colonization and slavery

Puerto Rico, unlike the French, Dutch, and English-speaking Caribbean, developed

its sugar planta tion system late (1795-1850). From 1600 on , the island never had a

slave population that was greater than

5

perc ent of tbe total population, and usually

the figure hovered trom

5

percent to 9 percen t. In the

I

rench islands it averaged

from 80 percen t to 90 pe rcent; in the British colonies, from

75

percent to

95

percent.

From 775 to 1873, the year slavery was abolished, th e racial composition of Pue rto

Rican society was roughly as follows: whites , 40 to

55

percent; free non-whites,

40 to 50 percen t; and slaves,

5

to

5

percent (West-Duran 2003).

Th ese percen tages reflect several realities: Pue rto Rico experienced g reater racial



had becom e free of their former masters by tbe end of tbe nin etee nth century,

while in tbe rest of tbe Caribbean independence would be acbieved from tbe 1950s

tbroug b tbe 1980s. Tbe D utcb , Englisb, and French C aribbean abolisbcd slavery

witbout making national sovereignty a part of tbe agenda. Tbe one exception,

of course, is an imp ortan t one, since Ha iti's independen ce resulted from a slave

revolt tb at abolisbed slavery Tb is confluence of independence and ab olition

catalyzed tb e bistorical and econom ic transformations of Cuba and Pue rto R ico in

tbe 19th century, not to m ention the panic it caused in tbe C aribbean plantocracy.

Unlike slaves, the free colored could travel freely on the island, gathe r publicly in

groups, dance in tbe streets, and own stores. Free non-wbites could acquire land in

wba tever qu antities, as well as inberit prop erty w itbou t restrictions. Tbey could

enter tbe crafts, acquire an education, even if rudimentary, and serve in tbe militia,

albeit in segregated units. Serving in tbe militia allowed tbem to bear arms —

normally probibited to free coloreds or slaves—but tbose arms were primarily used

against slaves. Despite tbese possibilities, tbere were many activities and

opportunitie s only enjoyed

by

wh ites: a university education , public offices or

bonors, being notaries or bolding positions in tbe Ch urcb . Of course, tbe free

colored were still part of tbe contam inated castes, according to tbe racial bierarcby

under Spanisb colonialism. How ever, for eitber free coloreds or slaves, bravery in

battle or similar sucb deeds could ease any (or all) of tbcsc restrictions. For example,

slaves wb o fougbt bravely repelling the British attac k on San Jua n in 797 were freed

T be dem ograpbic, social, and cultural importan ce of a free colored popu lation

migbt explain a painter like Jose C am pecbe (1751-1809), tbe m ulatto son of an

ema ncipated slave. Cam pecbe's work d epicts governm ent officials, tbe ruling elite,

and religious tbeme s witb g reat nuance, detail, and use of color. Given tbe

dem ograpbic, racial, and social realities of tbe Englisb, Frencb, and D utcb

Caribbean, it is bard to conceive of a Campecbe-Iike figure, except for maybe in

Trinidad or Cura(;ao, wb icb also bad bigb rates of free-colored populations.

The nineteenth century Sugar and slaves

W itb rougbly balf of tbe population w bitc and a slave population of between

5

percent

and

5

percent during tbe years of Spanish control, can P uerto Rico be assumed to be a

C^bbean exception,

a

country wbere slavery mattered little and wbose culture and societ

is not Afro-Antillean? Many bave argued tb at p oin t, using

the

J/Baro or tbe rugged

mountain peasant of the interior (presumed to be wbite, since tbe black populations

allegedly lived mostly in tbe coastal areas), as tbe cultural and national symbol of tbe island.^

A

closer look reveals a different reality. Rougbly balf tbe population was still black

and m ulatto in 1830, when tbe island bad tb ree times as many slaves tban in [790.

Tbree bistorical events gave slavery in Puerto Rico greater importance tban statistics



since some were thwarted by informers) (Barak 1982: 156-7). In 1826 local legislation

was enacted to curtail this rebelliousness. Unlike the 1789 Spanish Slave Code,

which the Spanish Crown crafted to protect certain rights of slaves (even if often ignored),

the 1826 edict, Regulations concerning the Edu cation, Treatm ent and Occup ations

that O wners and Overseers should give to the ir Slaves on this Island, was meant to

pro tect slave masters and their underlings. For example, ma chetes and o the r work

tools had to be sto red away every day, slaves were told w hen and where th ey could

rest, and there w ere prohihitions against visiting slaves from oth er p lantation s.

Even worse was the Edict against the African Race of

1848,

which virtually erased

any distinc tion between Africans who were free and those who were slaves. Africans w ho

were found guilty of striking

a

white person lost their right hand. Threatening

a

white

person could earn non-whites a five year ail sentence. Fortunately, this edict lasted only

six m onths and was abolished under a new governor, but its psychological and social

aftermath must have been a chilling rem inder that whites were in control and could

unleash a brutal, racialized repression any time they felt threa tene d (West-Duran 2003).

Mulatas, madness and miscege nation)

y the mid-i86os. It was clear tha t slavery's days were num bered. Th e play L^

cu rteron

(1867), by Alejandro Tapia y Rivera

(1826-1882),

seems simultaneously to belie that reality

and prophesy its demise. The play deals with a romance between an upper class white male

and a quadroon servant, revealing the human, psychological, and emotional destructiveness

of racism and slavery Because of censorship Tapia placed the action in Havana.

Arguably th e best play of nineteen th-cen tury Pue rto Rico, Tapia's work, which

in English would read Th e Quad roon (or, mo re accurately, Julia, The Quad roon ),

is a complex and em blematic po rtrait of Puerto Rico's tangled social, racial, and

sexual politics unde r Spanish colonialism in th e w aning years of slavery

Tapia eclectically p laces lyrical flights of rom anticism within a realist dramaturgy,

which keeps the work from becoming overly melodramatic. The author wastes no

time in presenting the amorous problem s unleashed by racial injustice. T he first

scene is between Carlos, a young, wh ite a ristocrat, and Jorge , his servant, a black slave.

Carlos has recently returned from France, and they speak about Julia, the quadroon,

whom Carlos is in love with . Julia is not a slave. H e does not adm it this love to the

slave, but instead pumps him for information about Julia's behavior in his absence.

Jorge , the ever-obedient slave, tells his master about Julia's tears and her emotional

volatility Despite the stereotypical submissiveness ofJorge , Tapia has skillfully set

up a racial and social triangle tha t will later be eehoed by an amorous triangle as well.

Interestingly Jorge's information abou t his master comes byway ofJulia, a route

analogous to the way Julia's information is provided to Carlos through Jorg e. This is

understandable since Carlos has been physically absent, and a first reminder that



the baugbty countess will see Julia as just

a

"poor

mestiza."

Tbe monologue ends witb

a return to tbe tbem c of madness, a madness tbat begins to plot his misfortune.

Tapia sets up one of the oppositions that will define the play: tbe tension between

sense and non-sense, madness and reason, wbim and

will,

wbicb not only bave a

personal, but social, racial, and etb ical dimensions as well. Carlos's love for Julia is seen

by bis moth er (tbe C ountess) and even by Julia as crazy, irrational, and foolisb. One of

tbe most often used words in tbeir argum ents isjuicio wbicb bas ricb associations in

Spanisb: sense, commonsense, judgment, sanity, discernment, and trial, in tbe strict

legal sense. All of tbese meanings will crop up at different mom ents, during Carlos's

and Julia s trials and tribu lations. But Tapia construc ts bis play to belp us reconsider

and reverse tbe meanings of the terms as well, wbere,

o f

course prejuicio (prejudice,

pre-judgment) plays an imp ortan t role; and wbere tbe racial prejudices and fears of

bis motber, bis future and imposed fiancee (Emilia), and fatber-in-law (Don Cn'spulo)

are made to be seen as irrational, and mean-spirited. Tbis is skillfully syntbcsized in

a m om ent when Carlos, saying he will protec t Julia, invokes the law, but quickly

corrects himself and says justice: "La ley..digo mal: la justicia...." W ha t seems "rational"

as stated by the law is seen as unjust by tbose w bo oppose racism and slavery.

Despite bis antipatby towards racism and his altruism, Carlos's worldview is still

class bound and not entirely free of an implicit racial superiority Indeed, Carlos's

wh iteness is so ingrained, so "natural," and so transp arent that h e can't see bow

wbiteness implies dom inance, tbe reby le tting bim avoid asking some difficult

questions. Carlos's motber is a countess, but tbey belong to an aristocracy in ruins.

We find out at tbe end of tbe Act I that a central reason for bis motber's interest in

ber son's betrotbal to Emilia is ber fatber's wealtb. Because of tbeir debts, their last

sugar mill will be sold or auctioned off, and by marrying D on Cnspulo's daug hter

tbey can stave off financial ruin. Don Crispulo is a nouveau ricbc , and would benefit

socially from bis daugb ter marrying into tb e aristocracy

Carlos's aristocratic background is even belied in his early monologue mentioned

earlier. H e says be is "above certain vile concern s." Tb ose vile concerns are not only

avarice, bu t social appearances, and racial prejudice. O n several occasions be suggest

to Julia tba t tbey go and live in ano tber country, free of obsessions related to color

and race. A true cbild of the E nlightenm ent, but imbued witb the quintessential

Romantic etbos, Carlos, is pbysically above tbe fray Epistemologically be embraces

the objectivity that stands outside the subject-object relationship, the value-free

stan dpo int, the "view from now here." By believing himself to be above the fray, he

will clash witb not only Julia, but tb ose around him.

Julia reminds bim tba t they are from two different worlds, especially in a country

like Cuba (read Puerto Rico). She is mucb more grounded in seeing and living botb racia

and class difference. Sbe bas neitb er tbe pbysical m obility (class position) of Carlos,



(Tapia 1993:138). It would be difficult to find a more apt illustration ofW E.B. D u Bois's

concep t of double consciousness... of always looking at one's self through the eyes of

others, of the ttirmoil in living as two souls, two thoughts, two unreconciled strivings;

two warring ideals in one dark body (Du Bois 1999:11).

Julia's words admirably capture Foucault's term of bio-power, an intersection of

the religious, sexual, and socio-racial gazes tbat und erpin the visibility of power, as

well as th e pow er o f visibility. Althoug h Julia is free, unlike Jorg e, wbo is still a slave,

he r existence is still severely circum scribed (her mo ther, a m ulata, was a slave,

her father white). It will eventually cost her her life.

This b io power is synthesized in the figure of Do n Oi'spu lo. At the very end of the

play Jorge , the slave, provides im portant information: Julia is the offspring of none

other than Don Crispulo. Plotwise this might seem pat or predictable, but its effect

is devastating: the social, econo mic, personal, and erotic dimensions of racism all

converge on this character, thereby making Tapia's critique mu ltidimen sional.

Do n Crispulo's power (econom ic, male, and white) and desire have unleashed

their destructiveness on Julia's life,

o

Carlos's dreams of happiness and Emilia's

indepe ndence, on the Condesa's hopes for fmancial

relief

and has even turned on

his own yearning for social respectability

Th e strength of Tapia's play is in how it atta cks slavery in its widest repercussions,

since after all Julia (and n ot Jorge) is the pivotal character, along with Carlos, of

course . Tapia's critique overlaps with that of abo litionists like Segundo Ruiz Belvis,

Jose Julian A costa, and Francisco M ariano Quinon es, who outlined the ripple effects

of slavery of how it pervades a society even when m ost of its mem bers are free :

What has slavery not corrupted in the societies of the Americas?

In the realm of the material it has degraded work, a principle

so crucial to realizing human potential; in the economic order,

by converting men into property it has provoked the depreciation

of all other property; in the civil order, by viola ting a slave s

personhood, by nega ting even the consolation of a family, it has

created a corruption at the very core of privileged families; In the

administrative order it has made omnipotent power necessary,

indispensab le, because wherever the rule of law has been

sacrilegiously overturned, order cannot be created except out of

the fear of those who suffer and the violence of those who rule;

in the political order it has enthroned a state of affairs in which

the energy of an individual is extinguished and the viri l i ty of



Still, Tapia's play could be criticized for being too indirec t, as well as som ewhat

fatalistic. Carlos indeed suffers, but unlike Julia be does no t d ie. And wbile the last

line of the play has the slave Jorge utte r "God will deliver justice ". Tapia's reformism

is what prevails, one tbat dovetails with a fairly common occurrence in Caribbean

and

U.S.

literature of the n ineteenth century: the tragic mulatta figure, most notably

depic ted in works like Cecilia Valde s (Villaverde) or C/otel by William W ells Brown

a former

slave.

Th is tragic figure, am biguous, was seen as the ep itom e of sensuality,

a social climber, a symbol of the frustrations and a spirations of a racially divided

society, and visual remind er of miscegenation (not to mentio n an undercurrent of

sexual violence). Tbe mu latto, more often the m ulatta, could be interpreted in either

positive or negative ways: as a symbol

of m estizaje

a new natio nal subject, or as

someone w ho combined the wo rst of bo th races, or in the best of cases as someone

who was neither one th ing (white) or an otbe r (black), a being who wavered in his/her

search for self definition.

A year after Tapia's play, on S epte m ber 23, 1868, the G rito de Lares (Rallying

Cry of Lares), a revolutionary insurrection , shook the island. Led by the

revolutionary m ulatto doctor, Ram on Em eterio Betances (1827-1898), it was

based on the Ten Commandments of Free Men written by Betances a year before

The document called for the abolition of slavery (and the labor notebook system)

the right to reject all taxes, freedom of speech, press, and com m erce, the right to

assemble and bear arms, the inviolability of the citizen, and the right to elect

their own authorities. Despite the failure of the insurrection, it marked an

im porta nt m om ent in forging a consciousness of nationho od on the island, as we

as instigating local and foreign (Spanish) forces to formally abolisb slavery by 1873

but only in Puerto Rico, not Cuba. Spain and its proslavery island allies did not

act solely out of altruism: the sugar industry was suffering (production was

shifting to tobacco and coffee), and wage labor was becoming more profitable an

productive. But more important, they were trying to forestall a repeat of Cuba,

em broiled in a Ten Years W ar (1868-1878) for ab olition and in dep en den ce th at

eventually cost more than a quarter of

million lives and more than $300 million

in economic damage. In the last quarter of the nineteenth century, both political

and literary discourses (sometim es, but no t always con stitu ted by tbe same elites

focused on issues of nationality and sovereignty.

Like many Caribbe an soc ieties, Puerto Rico has "defmed blackness by

negotiating degrees of wbiteness" (Guerra 1998: 214). Although whiteness is still

upheld as the norm, its definition is more inclusive tban in the

U.S.

Typically in

the Caribbe an if you are not black you are wh ite, whe reas in No rth A merica it is

the reverse. During the eolonial era it was possible to be legally declared white

through bureau cratic skill and/or money; however, it was by no means a sm ooth



HispanophiUa and mulata on display, or

How to wiggle your flag in search of the lost m other)

In 1898 Puerto Rico became a US. colony wben the Spanish-Cuban-Am erican W ar

ended. Puerto Ricans quickly became aware of U S. racial attitude s, wb ich they found

barsb and polarized. Yet at the same time th e size and dynamism of the U S. econom y

provided jobs to many dark-skinned Puerto R icans, either on tbe island or to those

who emigrated. Under the US., Puerto Rico's sugar economy expanded again, with

absentee owners buying the land of many small local producers. T he U.S. bad no t

satisfactorily resolved issues of autonomy and citizenship, a failing tbat was deeply

resented by Puerto Ricans. Finally, the US. unilaterally imposed citizenship in the

1917 Jon es Act. But resen tme nt did no t recede since governors (the sup reme

executive official) were still picked by tbe U.S., and Englisb was imposed as the

official language in the school system. Successfully resisted, English was eventually

eliminated in 1930, and represents an importan t example of Puerto Rican linguistic

and cultural sovereignty in resisting U S. colonialism. Tb is re sentm ent flared up

during W W I , when Pu erto Ricans who considered themselves white witbin the

broad er island definition of race were placed in segregated Negro un its of the U S.

army. To many Pue rto Ricans this was an outrage; the U S. solution w as to create a

Puerto Rican white category, viewed by many islanders as unsatisfactory

Even a revo lutionary nation alist like P edro A lbizu Ca mpos (1891-1965), jailed

several times for bis views and actions calling for the violent overthrow of th e island's

colonial system, did n ot give racial issues their due. Albizu, in a famous speech from

October 12, 1933, speaks proudly of the fact that he had black blood (as well as Indian

and Spanish) in his veins and vehemently criticized the racial realities of the US. as

being barbaric (Albizu Cam pos 1972: 191-218). However, he ultim ately saw race as

divisive to his political goals and subsum ed race unde r the overarching concept of

Pue rto R ican culture. Albizu shared a po int in comm on w ith intellectuals of the

Th irties Gene ration, such as Tomas Blanco (1900-1975) and A nton io S. Pedreira

(1899-1939): in trying to counteract US. cultural and ideological influence in Puerto

Rico, tbey fell back on an acritical and ahistorical Hispanophilia, which had a strong

racial (and anti-black) undercurrent.3

One of the few intellectuals who resisted tha t H ispanoph ilia was po et Luis Pales

M atos (1898-1959). Pales was born in Guayama, an area historically populated by

Puerto Ricans of African desce nt. Altbougb bis poetry was thematically wide-

ranging, it is his A fro-Antillean poetry that earne d his fame, particularly his Tuntiin de

p s y

griferta [Kinky-haired and carousing drum beat], written between

925

and

1937. Intensely rhythmic, onomatopoeic, playful, and sensual, Pales's poetry explored

the cultural, religious, historical, and sexual dimensions of Puerto Rico's African

iden tity For tbe first time a publicly known figure not only pointed out but



Totnas Blanco, Fcdcrico de O nis, and M argot Arcc. Actually, V 3\e^\poemas negros

were being criticized since at least

1932,

and the criticisms ranged from exoticism,

primitivism, and romanticism, to stereotyp ing and evasion. Oth er readings,

contextualized (Diaz Quinones) or pos t-m odern and Lacanian (Ri os Avila),

evoke a more complex, ironic, carnivalesquc, destabilizing Pales.4 Even a ccep ting

the important insights of a postmodern reading, there are moments (and not only

a few) in his poetry where the irony or the implied reversal of stereotypes continue

to reinforce black ste reo types. Still, Pales s Afro-Antillean verses are complex; to

dismiss them entirely would be lose sight of their critical edge. However, to claim

tha t his irony freed him from racist stereo type s would be naive, even allowing for

the mitigating circumstances of the time. After all, the likes of Nicolas Guillen,

Claude M cKay, Langston Hughes, and oth ers of the Harlem Renaissance were

writing with a negrista ethos that avoided or openly combated such stereotypes.

To those who define patriotism platonically (and white-hued), Pales irreverently

conjoined nationalism with eroticism, also unequivocally stating tha t mulatez was

positive. Following Zizek, one could say tha t enjoym ent is at the he art (or gut) of

the Palesian ethos, and tha t enjoyment is som ething that b oth resists symbolic

identification, and is beyond the pleasure principle (Zizek 1993:

201,

28off).

Of course Pales offers a symbolic identification with the island s (at tha t poin t)

long ignored African-ness; but at the same time he seems to draw a more radical

conclusion: tha t th e national being includes the O ther (blackness), and not only as

a social-racial construct, but both as national pleasure and enjoyment (jouissance).

Pales s overturns the issue of national identity as being abstract, idealistic not only

politically but philosophically as well, in that his poetry implies a materialistic, corporeal,

and visceral outlook. Yet, at the same tim e Pales s Afro-Antillean world is highly

mythologized, em blematic, and nonrealistic. Again, the Lacanian notion s of the Real

(the Thing) seem to impinge on Pales s no tion of

race,

its ideological performativity

For Lacan, the c oncep t of the Th ing {das Ding is the lost object of desire,

una ttainable, forbidden, the re turn of the repressed. T he Real is considered wha t is

incapable of being incorporated into the symbolic order (not only family and society,

but into a chain of meanings). In resisting symbolization it contains something

traumatic about it, the Real is fraught with nonsignification and danger. lowever,

human subjects unavoidably try and give expression of the Real through language

(the Symbolic) and through image, wholeness, and similarity (the Imaginary).

The Real has a material, or physical connotation, including objective, external reality,

but also includes more m ental or ethereal dim ensions: hallucinations and traum atic

dreams (Evans 1996: 160). It is bo th interior and ex terior, and deeply em bedd ed

within the ideological realm:



it is precisely this non-integrated surplus of senseless

traumatism which confers on the Law its unconditional

authority: in other words, which —in so far as it escapes

ideological sense-sustains what we might call the ideological

jouis-sense, enjoyment-in-sense enjoy-meant), proper to

i d e o l o g y

[ZIZEK

1989:43-4].

Pales captu res beautifully this double dimension of wh at can't be articulated and

the enjoyment-in sense of ideology in a poem like M ulata-Antilla. The beg inning

stanzas are an erotic-celebratory (albeit sexist) reconstruction of the mulata. In the first

stanza. Pales makes one of his most common associations of the mulata with honey

(miel o melaza), as well as using marine imagery (associations w ith

Venus).

In the

second, the author likens himself to a boat traversing the mulata antilla's curves

(or coast lines). In th e th ird music is evoked along with the smells of the islands:

lime, tobacco, and pineapple. The fourth stanza is bo th a summing up and a transition

tha t again evokes not only fruit and song, but also the presence of tourists. The fifth

lovingly links the joining of two races (African and E uropean), celebrating mestizaje,

and then spawns a series of analogies between the mulata and the biblical Song of

Songs. The final stanza invokes several of the Caribbean islands ...all united/ dreaming,

suffering, and struggling/against p lagues, cyclones, and greed and ends with a

metap hor of the mulata as freedom singing in my Antilles (Pales M atos 1978: 173).

Much has been written about the image of the mulata in Caribbean literature,

popular music and culture, rightly criticizing its sexism and racism.^ For some critics,

mestizaje or m ulatez have been used as symbols of racial democracy in all of Latin

Am erica, often to sidestep or deny the existence of

racism.

Here Pales is treading

on thin, and, ultimately, indefensible ground. Tbis can be seen in the use of nature

(earth, sea, cyclones, fiowers), food (milk, honey, sugar, coconu t, etc.), and animal

imagery (cats, horses), all used to enhance the m ulata's sensuality, tastiness, and

sexuality Even when Pales in the fourth stanza ostensibly uses the word

c ting

(a word to d eno te the strong, read negative odo r of either indigenous people or

Africans) in a positive sense, one cannot help but wonder if

he

is not resurrecting

racial stereotypes. So, despite Pales's analogy of the mulata and freedom, the mulata

as sexual objec t, as personified in the q uote by G ilbe rto Freyre, la negra para

trabajar; la mulata para fornicar, la blanca para casar (black women are [good] for

slaving and sweating; mulattas for bedding; white women for wedding) is still present

in the poem , although it is does not exhaust the poem 's meaning. Indeed, the m ulata-

islands who are as one dreaming, suffering, and striving/against p lagues, hurricanes

and greed become the freedom singing in the An tilles (Pales M atos 1978: 173).



the foreign and the homegrown, are constructed. Both are needed for domination

of the social space, as a way of giving hope (but no t too much) to these strangers.

Th ese conflicting and com plem entary strategies, however, can lead to what Bauman

also term s prote oph ohia, defined as ...the presence of multiform, allotropic phen om -

ena, whieh stubbornly elide assignment and sap the familiar classifieatory grids....

Proteophobia refers to the dislike of situations in whieh one feels lost, confused,

or disempow ered (Bauman 199s: i8 o-i) . Isn't mulatez a racial, national, cultural kind

of prote oph obia? N o small wonde r why Stuart Hall says race is a floating signifier

or Isar Godreau speaks of racial terminology as a semdntku

fugitiva

or fugitive

semantics (I would suggest a semdntic cim rron tnaroon semantics). Palcs's po etry

tries to engage in a kind of maroon semantics by giving old exp ressions surprising

and new possibilites of meaning; his use of irony, which always bo rders on self-parody,

suggests that p roteopho pia ean be an oppo rtunity to reshape national ide ntity

for new purposes, an identity that is not elitist, nor paternalistic, Hispanophile,

nor concerned with racial purity.

The Puerto Riean (or Caribbean) social fantasy of the mulata is part of a cultural

mem ory (different from merely personal mem ory or history). It is a field of d isputed

signs in national consciousness—especially when it deals with traumatic events—and

where the continuities and ruptures of a society are revealed (see Sturken 1997: r-17)

A fantasy is the staging of an unconscious desire: as a result, we have com prom ise

formations, where the idea or trauma to be expressed is distorted and

unrecognizable, and these formations try to sm ooth over the gaps in the Real.

The realm of the Laeanian Real, that which resists symbolization, is present, but

disguised. Th e m ulata is bo th the hyperaetivity of tha t symbolic mode trying to dress

(or is it undress?) the gaps in the Real that will not go away.

The mulata fantasy is Utopian because it wants to present her as national symbol,

as an emblem of conciliation, a visual token that ignores all the symptom s of

a

divided society (race, class, and gender). However, the re is instability in he r meaning,

in her image. H er eroticization presents a dilemma by confusing pleasure (located on

her body) and desire (atopic, proliferative), between pleasure and enjoyment

(Jouissance). Pleasure is related to proh ibitio n, to the law, and to regulation, it is

clearly on the side of the symbolic (Evans 1996: 148). Pleasure t ries to ma intain

a low level of tension of the psyehie apparatus. Jouissance is disruptive, traumatic,

and tries to break through the pleasure principle, toward an enjoyment of the Oth er.

Something similar happens racially: in not embracing blackness (jouissanee) com pletely

a m ore w hitened (pleasure) version of blackness is presen ted: mulatez (pleasure m as-

querad ing as enjoym ent). M ulatez is a way of keeping enjoymen t under the law,

under the pleasure principle, under W hiten ess. And yet m ulatez is always a reminder

of how pleasure gave way to jouissance, of the Other, of the presence of trauma

(miseegenation as rape), of the return of the wound that we have refiased to heal.



pleasure and enjoyment, but just as significantly she belongs to the Symbolic

(as explanatory myth), to the Imaginary (as Utopian fantasy of reconeiliation),

and to the Real (as traum a, as historical and sexual violence), as well as to a

transcultured and often bloody history and to the return of the repressed.

Th e nation, which often trum ps race in the C aribbean, demonstrates these same

traits, and Zizek shows how the race and nation becom e intertwined in defining

national enjoyment;

Nationalism thus presents a privi leged domain of enjoyment

into the social

f ie ld.

The national Cause is ultimately nothing

but the way subjects of a given ethnic community organize

their enjoyment through national myths. What is therefore at

stake in ethnic tensions is always the possession of the

na tiona l Th ing. We always impute to the other an excessive

enjoym ent: he wants to steal our enjoyment (by ruining our

way of life) and/or he has access to some secret, perverse

enjoym ent. In short, what really bothers us about the othe r

is the peculiar way he organizes his enjoyment, precisely the

surp lus, the excess that pertains to this way: the sme ll of

their

food,

*their noisy songs and dances, *their strange

manners, the ir attitude to work. To the racist, the othe r is

either a workaholic stealing our jobs, or an idler living on our

labor, and it is quite amusing to notice the haste with which

one passes from reproaching the other with a refusal to work

to reproaching him for the theft of work. The basic paradox is

that our Thing is conceived as something inaccessible to the

other and at the same time threatened by him [1993:202-3].

Revenge of the mulatas: Patriarchy s myths exposed

Rosario Ferre's

aldito amor

1986

—Sweet Diamond Dust

1996) examines both the

gender, sexual, and racial underpinnings of this national enjoyment. Ostensibly the

story of a great national (and local) hero, don Ubaldino, as told by a narrator,

Don Hermenegildo Martinez (the town notary and lawyer), Ferre overturns the

narrative w ith successive revelations by the women characters (Titina, Laura, Gloria),

ultimately debunking the founding father. Gloria Cam pubn ' is a traffic stopping



Again, there is a mulata figure who disrupts the racial, sexual, and social tranquility

of an elite family, obsessed with their pedig ree and social standing , as well as their

eeonomic power, whieh has been threatened by U.S. firms who are gobbling up land

and sugar refineries as the new colonial power on the island. One of the interesting

details revealed late in the novel hy Laura is that the grandfather of her children was

also black. The so-called "purity" and "reputation" of the family was a myth, and its

final debunking (which ends the novel) encompasses the words of Gloria

herself

speaking to Titina Rivera, the daughter of

a

freed slave. She and her b roth er Nestor

had lived in a little house in the backyard of the family hom e, and they had hoped to

inherit it after living there for forty

years.

Ubaldino has died, but his children,

An'stedes and his sisters, will not let them inherit the little house either. It is a

stinging finale abo ut pernicious racism, all the more po ignant since it ends with the

words to "M aldito Am or" by the m ulatto com poser Juan Morel Cam pos, the island's

greatest com poser of the n inete enth century. Ferrc- takes on the "tragic m ulata

figure" head on, and although she has suffered greatly at the hands of the de la Valle

family, her "au thorial voice" at the end of the narrative (as well as dona Laura's wish

for her to be the sole inheritor of the family), ultimately shifts the his/her-story

being told. Gender-wise and racially, Ferre seems to suggest that Caribbean national

narratives, instead of focusing on "founding fathers," need to tell the story of its vast

majorities: the mulatos

and mulatas

the daughters and sons.

Th e P uerto R ican danza, like its Cuban co unte rpart the dan zon, is considered an

archetypical image of cultural mulataje, a harmonious synthesis of European and

African musical forms. The island's national an them is a danza (written by Felix

Astol, lyrics were added later by Manuel Fernandez Juncos), and the mulata's virtues

are extolled in decidedly gendered form: a flowery garden, placid murmurings of the

waves, being the daughter of the sun and the sea. Ferre's narrative suggests that the

emblematic form of the danza, for many decades the national musical form and a symbol

of Euro-African reconciliation, did n ot quite reflect the social realities of a racially

divided cou ntry faced with th e incipient imperial presence of the U S . It also fore-

shadows the concerns expressed in E l enticrro de ortijo (discussed later), and the ri

of musical genres th at are m ore Afro-Puerto Rican (bom ba, plena, salsa).

Whitening and racial self perception: Mulattoes and blacks disappear

At the beginning of the twentieth century Pu erto Rico still perceived itself as

whitening . In the 1899 census the figures are as follows: 62 percen t w hite ,

32

pereent

m ulatto, 6 percent black. In 1910 the figures are 65 perce nt w hite, 30 percent

mulatto,

5

perce nt black. Ten years later (1920) it is

73

percent white,

23 5

percent

mu latto, and

3.5

pereen t black. In 1930, wh ere no differentiation betwee n m ulatto

and black is reported, we see the following: 74 percent white and 26 percent colored.



These contrasting perceptions reflect the radically different worlds of racial

categorization used as reference p oints by U.S. observers compared to Puerto Rican

subjectivity. In Puerto Rico's own racial history under Spanish colonialism, misce-

gena tion was viewed as wh itening, no t a darkening process. Also, Pue rto R icans

continued to resist the imposition of U.S. racial classifications. Inde ed, many dark-

skinned Puerto Ricans were often identified as African-Americans, a label they

rejected not only for racial reasons, but also out of nationalism and culture. It is not

tha t P uerto Ricans are no t race conscious, but cultural belonging supersedes it,

a common enough attitude throughout the Caribbean. Moreover, the uniqueness of

the island's history often makes racial sclf-defmition an expression of resistance t o U.S.

colonialism. Puerto Ricans in the U.S., when asked what they

are,

respond that they

are Puerto Ricans, not black or white. Sociologist Clara Rodriguez states the dilemma

as follows: W ithin the U.S. perspective, Puerto Ricans, racially speaking, belonged

to both groups; however, ethnically, they belonged to neither Thus placed, Puerto

Ricans soon found themselves caught between two polarities and dialectically at a

distance from bo th. Pu erto R icans were W hi te and Black; Pue rto Ricans were ne ither

W hi te nor Black. From th e Pu erto Rican perspective, Puerto Ricans were more than

White and Black

{1989:

51). Rodriguez tries to explain race attitudes on the island

with a family example: an interracial couple has two children, one Anglo-looking, the

othe r dark skinned. Both go to the same school. On e is considered white, the o ther

trigueno oscuro (dark brown); in the U.S. bo th children would be considered black.

These complexities arc eloquently descrihed in Piri Thom as's celebrated

own

These ean Streets (1967) or in Tato Laviera's poem Negrito . Interestingly,

many black and mu latto P ue rto R ican writers bo rn or raised from infancy in th e

U.S. have taken on issues of race in their literature: aside from Thomas and Laviera,

there is Nicholasa Mohr, Ed Vega, Louis Reyes Rivera, F^smcralda Santiago,

and Jack Agiieros. Th e shocking experience of moving through two worlds of race —

one n uanced and complex, the oth er cruelly absolute — stimulates a struggle often

expressed through art or political activism.

In Laviera's Negrito , a young , dark-skinned Pu erto Rican boy has just moved

to New York and converses with his aun t. The aunt tells him No tc juntes con los

prietos , neg rito (Don't hang out with black folks, negrito) (Laviera 1985: 41).

He says to his aunt th at h e is as dark as the black folks she has warned him about.

She keeps insisting on his whiteness, wh ich only brings on sadness and confusion to

the young boy Laviera, who a dm its the poem is autobiographical, keenly underlines

the different perceptions of race between the U.S. and P uerto Rico, beginning with

the title of the poem . Ne grito can literally refer to a small black boy, who is the

subject of the p oem. But negrito and negrita have other connota tions as well: they

can be expressions of affection to a friend, family mem ber, or loved one, regardless



awareness of his Afro-Puerto Rican heritage. (Curiously the two worlds are not

echoed linguistically, and unlike many of his poem s, Negrito is entirely in Spanish.)

Laviera, instead of heed ing the aun t's words, has chosen to affirm his A froboricua

heritage (and its links to a grea ter Afrodiasporic dialogue), be it through the use of

certain rhythm ic stru ctures, them es, or drawing on stre et vernaculars. In an

interview, Laviera admits that half of his poetry readings are for black constituencies

(Hernandez 1997: 81).

Th e fact th at many Pu erto Ricans are living in places like New York, in close

physical proximity w ith African Am ericans and othe r peoples from the Caribbean ,

has resulted in drawing boricuas into the orb it of other African-based cultures.

In dress and language, many Puerto Ricans show the influences of U.S. African-

Americans and many identify with hip-hop culture. There are Puerto Rican rappers

(like Big Pun, Rick Rodn'guez, Anthony Boston , Charlie Chase, Tony Touch, Angie

Martinez) who sing in English and/or Spanish, and many others who are graffiti

artists, like the legendary Lee Quinon es. This does no t include the extraordinary

boricua presence in the evolution of break dancing (Rock Steady Crew, Th e Furious

Rockers, Th e New York C ity Breakers and o thers). Th is intercultural effervescence

is happe ning on the island as well, with rappers such as Vico C, Lisa M, Francheska,

Ruben DJ, W elmo, and Tego Calderon.*^ W ha t is particularly inte restin g about island

rappers is that they invoke and celebrate island culture, but no longer buy into th e

portrait of Puerto Rico as a big, happy multiracial family (Calderon 2002).''

Cortijo salsa and afroboricua pride: Mulattoes own the streets

Since the 1960s there has been greater awareness and debate of racial issues, and

increasing pride in

eing

Jrohorkua (Afro-Puerto Rican). The new self-esteem came

through music, not literature . One of the turn ing poin ts in that new consciousness was

the work of bandleader Rafael Cortijo (1928-1982) and singer Ismael Rivera (1931-1987),

who teamed up in the mid-fifties to create som e of the island's greatest music, based on

the traditions of bom ba and plena, bo th Afro-Puerto Rican musical traditions. C ortijo's

sound became known internationally just as before him th e songs of Rafael Hernandez

(1893-1965) were greatly admired throughout all Latin America and the Caribbean.

(One could argue that R ivera's version of Tite Curet Alonso's Mi gente negra did more

for shaping

positive image of Afroboricua pride than all of Pales Matos's poem s.)

Cortijo's music (along with Afro-Cuban musical traditions) formed the basis of salsa,

a hybrid genre that grew out of the u rban experience of many Afro-Puerto Ricans in

New York City and dealt with themes of poverty, racism, social violence, education,

and drugs. It was equally

period of great community mobilizations, the creation of

the Young Lords, and the Nuyorican P oets Cafe. Th e experience of American style

racism gave many boricuas a new sense of their Afroboricua roo ts, which had they



the seventies and eighties and a host of scholars since the n ineties (Frances Aparicio,

Ruth Cilasser, Fdgardo Diaz Di'az).

In part this reflects th e im portance of two au thors who polemically brought issues

of race to the forefront: Isabelo Zenon Cruz (1939-2002) and Jose Luis Gonzalez

(1926-1996). Zenon's exhaustive 1974 two-volume study,

Narciso desctibre su trasero

[Narcissus D iscovers his Backside], is subtitled

1

he Black in Puerto Rican Culture.

Although the autho r draws heavily on literature and the arts, Zenon's book includes

much historical, political, and educational material, even government reports. His work

was controversial because it attacked much of the hypocrisy around race on the island,

drawing on uncxamined assumptions from popular culture, such as jokes, sayings, and

proverbs, to prove his point. Z enon spares no one in his meticulously documented study

Gonza lez's 1979 essay was first pub lished in Pu erto R ico in

1980.

Althougb the

Four Storeyed-C oun try has been criticized b oth for what it says (or does not say),

the essay brought tbe discussion of the country's African roots to the fore.'

M ost im porta ntly after Zeno n and Go nzalez, it was impossible for intellectuals,

historians, and literary scholars to ignore racism and its insidious consequences.

Secondly, Elentierro de ortijo shows how racial discrimination is now indirectly

expressed through concern about crime. The author, from the beginning, shows

apprehension, knowing th at he is a middle-class and w hite, in a neighborhood where

mo st are dark-skinned and poor. H e even men tions a street th at divides Llorens

Torres (described as lumpen) from the next neighborhood. Villa Palmeras, whieh is

working-class and also the site where the chronicle ends. The crime is real enough

(the island has high murder and armed robbery figures), but it has been racialized,

with black and darker-skinned m ulattoes suffering tbe b runt of arrests, even though

the police do not keep statistics on race (Santiago-Valles 1995).

To his credit, Rodriguez Julia never claims to be merely an observer, but

acknowledges that he is situated socially and racially, although he clearly is an

outsider in tha t particular neighborho od. Th is is perfectly summed up when he

mentions the act of recreating this event through the written word:

Dark-skinned folks , dark-skinne d folks a ll round and all I have

is a Mont Blanc to w rite with.,..No, tha t eigh teen th century craft

of the ch ronicler forbids it: not even a no tebook, a tape

recorder, not even a Minox camera. prefer to write the

chron icle passing it before my eyes and ears, I m stubb orn ly

underdeveloped

[ ]

The chronicler s f ilter is mem ory, pe rsona l

and collec tive, and also one*s p rejudices, why not? You try and

save what can be saved between the lived moment and the



Since he is a wrirer and no t a sociologist or po litician, Rodriguez Julia offers no

neat, tidy, and consoling sum mations. H e debunks the patriarchal m yth of the great

Pu erto Rican family, constantly invoked by politicians and p und its; and shows how

the old class order is being ov erturned , exemplified in how th e burial turns in to a

street party, to the alarm of some. Although he knows the old ways were often

repugnantly racist and classist, the emerging situation can be confusing, disruptive,

and disorienting, reminding one oi^Awm ain sproteophobia. Not surprisingly, the bo

ends with the following: Again, we are living in a tim e of ghostly inten tion s and

unburied gestures, tradition explodes in a thousand conflictive p ieces.

low to

reconcile so much waywardness with so much tende rness.' (Rodriguez Julia 1983:

96 —author's translation).

Rodriguez Julia's cronica, desp ite th e obvious focus on Cortijo's life and work ,

seems to have as a historical soun dtrack two landmark songs, one Pu erto Rican,

ano ther C uban. Both songs are steeped in Afro-Caribbean working class culture:

Los entierros de mi gente pob re by Tite C uret Alonso (made famous by singer Cheo

Feliciano) and Los funerales del Papa M ontero by Enrique Byron and Manuel Corona

The first, written by the recently deceased great Afro Puerto Rican composer,

Rodriguez Julia, seems to have appropriated the spirit, authenticity, and humility of

lower class life in the island, where funerals are genuine outpourings of grief thankfully

bereft of hypocrisy In the latter, we find the kind of raucous and irreverent humor from

the guaracha tradition tha t can turn even a funeral into a celebration.

But even more remarkably, Rodriguez Julia's book seems to exemplify centra l

tenets of Yoruba philosophy, where character, coolness, and beauty are intimately

intertwined within a contex t of po st-W W II social mobility, and later post munocista

Puerto Rico. Th is might seem a con tradicto ry assertion given the excessive, almost

chaotic denouement of the funeral, but the deeper forces brougbt to the fore are

those th at em phasize generosity and the surfacing of a beauty tha t is neither too

beautiful nor too ugly, of captu ring a certain

ache

that suffuses the text between the

Hnes (Thom pson

1993:

3-18).

Black and proud: In your face and nose)

Mayra Santos Febre, a fiction w riter, helped form the Union of Afro-Puerto Rican

W omen along with Ana Rivera, Rayda C ot to , Celia M. Rom ano, and Marie Ramos

Rosado. \ ler book

ez de vidrio

won the 1994 Letras de O ro award, and was publishe

in Pue rto Rico in 1996. One story from this book, Marina

y

su olor [Marina and her

odors], openly confronts a racist stereotype with humor and poetic flair.

Marina, now forty-nine years old, narrates he r experiences growing up. The story

focuses on M arina's odors in a kind of fairy tale of retributio n. As

a

girl she helps out by

cooking in her paren ts' small eatery From eight to thirteen her smells were spicy salty,



a slut, indecent, a stinking black, you stink " (Santos Fcbrcs 1996: 48). One

day,

using

her ability to create smells and gauging the direction of the wind, she is able to bring

Eladio to her, and they begin kissing each othe r joyfully. H er bliss is short-lived since

she is discovered by H ipolito. e offers not to tell he r employer if he can suck her

breas ts. Marina becomes so incensed tha t she gives offa powerful smell tha t literally

knocks Hipolito ou t. Th en she proceeds to deal with Georgina, "fumigating her room

with an aroma of desperate melancholy (which she had picked up from her father)"

(Santos Febres:

50).

Th e rest of the house was left with an odo r so disorienting that no

one in the town ever visited the Velazquez house again. Triumphantly, Marina leaves the

house uttering: "There So you can now say tha t b lacks stink " (Santos Febres 1996: 50).

Santos Pebres has taken a persistent racist stereotype about smell and turned it

around, alm ost as if to say "You wan t to raise a stink? I'll show w hat raising a stink

is "

Of all the five senses, smell is seen as the lowliest, the most "animal." Sniffing is

an activity we associate with animals (dogs, cats). Th is an imality is also linked to

racist stereotypes of lack of intelligence, hyper sexuality, and moral turpitude.

Rodriguez Julia, in his El entierro de Cortijo, talks about a characteristic island trait,

husme r

Literally, of course, it means to

sniff

but in a more social context it means

to size up, find out things, to be curious in an almost gossipy

way.

Santos Febres

seems to be hmme ndo into th e he art of racial attitu de s on the island, echoing,

perhaps, Fernand o O rtiz's etymological investigations into th e word race {raza ,

Ortiz said, quo ting U nam uno, tha t the word was first used in cattle breeding:

This now ominous word race is of Spanish origin and an

analogous expression is caste. And since those words were

first used in cattle-b reed ing they s ti l l have an animal-like

flavor to them. Racist conceptions tend to be zoologically

con cep tual tha t is when they are not zootech nical or related

to cattle-breeding. Racists whether they want to or not

knowing ly or unknow ingly consider peoples as flocks

generally as sheep to be fleeced [1975:390].

Marina is able to take th at "animalness" and make it a weapon of self-defense.

Odor is linked to n otions of power as when expressed in phrases like "the lower

classes don 't wash, they stnell," or Th om as Jefferson's remark that "blaeks have a

strong, disagreeable odor," or male jokes about wom en's genitalia. All these notion s

of odor undergird sexism, racism, and classism. In M arina's case, her odors have a

symbolic reson ance w ith class, race, and gender (Synnott 1993: 194-9).



or the racism (with class and gender overtones) of Georgina. M arina's fumigating

refusal has the whiff of justice: she escapes the house, and the lingering odors keep

away visitors (the family has been isolated from the com munity).

Santos Febres's story illustrates perfectly the theft of enjoyment from the previous

Zizek quote on nationalism and racism. Georgina clearly saw Marina in terms of that

excess of enjoyment: her smells (body and food), her sexuality, her autono my as

human and social subject. She was punished for th at: she was prohib ited from seeing

Eladio, and her salary was cut. The se events make the ending all the more gratifying

and ironic: if previously Georgina had made Marina into the other (racially, socially

sexually), it is now Georgina who will be the oth er (shunned by her com munity).

Conclusion: Still conflicted, stil l struggling

Thou gh Pue rto Rico has long been called a racial democracy, the whitest of the

Spanish speaking islands, a country free of prejudice, these claims are no longer

voiced with the same self-assuredness as before. Even its best minds have found race

an elusive topic, bu t as the p revious literary examples diseussed show, many of these

myths are unsustainable and are being debunked or confronted by its artists, writers,

and musicians.

Although the new racial awareness of the last decades has been transformative

and has revealed a greater com plexity in defining national (and racial) identity, the

political and economic elites of the country are still mostly white or light-skinned

mulattoes. Puerto Rico's racial dynamics show both great nuance and fiuidity,

and at the same tim e a certain avoidance or denial. The major political and social issues

still are expressed in term s of either nation (political status) or class (economic oppor-

tunity) or education (social mobility) or negotiation of public space (crime).

Despite pervasive and subtle forms of racial prejudice and discrimination,

the country is ever more aware of its changing and evolving Afro (^^aribbcan iden tity

and culture, whieh it also increasingly celebrates. Its writers, artists, musicians,

and rappers are in the forefront of both t he critique of racism and the celebration

of the island's Afroboricua roots. But the more subtle forms of discrimination,

much like what happens in the U .S., are still pervasive (limited access to housing,

poo r educational op portun ities, limited bank loans, poore r health); the racial self

pereep tion is increasingly wh itened, and th en th ere is the p ersistence of the myth

of the mestizaje. U these factors point to the fact th at Pu erto R ico still needs

to examine its racial inequities with g reater insight, creativity, and honesty.

Tego Calderon (2002) reminds us of the challenge:

Yo no tengo na' Don't go tta th ing

solo esta letra encabrona Just these wo rds of goddam rage



NOT S

' See the excellent intr od uc tor y essay by Arc adio Diaz Q uin on es (1985) for an analysis

of his views o n race. See also Ap aricio (1998: 38-44).

^ For critiques

of the Jiharo

myth (and its claim for whiteness) see Gonzalez (1976,

1993).

See also G uerra

(1998:

45-122).

< For a critiq ue of Ped reira, sec Flores {1993:13-57)- O Blanco , see Di'az-Qu inones

(1985:13-83).

4 See the mag azine Nomada, no. 4, mayo 1999, San Juan , Pu erto Rico, Dossier: Luis

Pales M atos, pp . 1-44 (of the do ssier, wh ich beg ins after page 54 in the maga zine), for

articles by An tonio Benitez Rojo, Ruben Rios Avila, Hu go Rodriguez Vccchini, Jose Luis

Vega, Lilhana Ramos Collado, Mercedes Lopez Baralt, and GabrielaTineo. See also Diaz

Quinones (1982: 73-129).

^ See Fran ces A pa ricio (1998), Vera K utz ins ki (1993), and Rob in M oo re (1997). Clearly,

many poems or songs written about mulatas are racist and sexist and don't need too much

commentary. But for the likes of Pales Matos, Guillen, Villaverde (and others), there is

considerable more complexity (not to mention irony) and a need to sort out that

complexity with n uance.

'' O ne could claim tha t Tapia y Rivera's La

cuarterona

is a tragedy by virtue of wanting

to refute Frcyre's quote , w ithou t C arlos truly seeing the social power th at enforces such a

percept ion.

7 See Go dreau (2000). She credits A nto nio Diaz-Ro yo for the term .

^

For mo re on Puerto Rican hip-ho p see Flores (2000 ), Santos Fcbres (1997), and

Rivera (2003).

'' In the song Loiza Ca ldero n addres ses issues of racism, identity, police brutality, and

equality (or lack oO before t he law. H er e is an excerpt: M e quie re hacer pen sar/qu e soy

parte de una trilogia racial/donde todo el mundo es igual/sin trato especial/Se

perdo nar/eres tu quien no sabe disculpar/no hay com o justificar tan to m al./Es que tu

historia/ es vergonzosa, en tre otras cosas/cam biaste las cadena s/por esposas. [Wann a

make me th ink /I 'm part of the racial trilogy/That we are all equal/No body treated

special/I know how to forgive/you don't know how/no way no how/to justify so much

evil/Your history is a shame/that can name/instead of chains/you use handcuffs .}

(Calderon 2002).

'° For a critiq ue of Go nzalez 's essay, see Fiores

(1993:

61-70) and Carrion (1996: 46 -6 6) .

R F R N S

Albizu Ca mp os, Ped ro. 1972.

La conciencia nacional puertorriquena.

Introduccion y

recopilacion de Manuel Maldonado-Denis. Mexico, D.F.: Siglo XXL

Aparicio, Frances. 1998. Listeningto Salsa, Han over, N H : University Press of New

England/Weslcyan University Press.

Bara l t , Gu i l l e rmo A. 1982 . Esclavos rebeldes: conspiracionesy sublevaciones de esclavos en Puerto



Caldcron, Tego, 2002. Loiza. In ElAbayarde. Whi te L ion Music , W L0 04 .

Carrion, Juan M anuel. 1996. Voluntadde

nacion:

ensayos sobre el nacionalismo en Puerto R

San Juan : Ed iciones N ueva A urora.

Code , Lorraine.

1993.

Taking Subjectivity in to Acco unt. I n Feminist

Epistemologies

eds.

Linda Alcoff and Elizabeth Potter, 15-48. New York; Routledge.

Diaz Q uino nes, Arcadio. 1982.

Elalmuerzo

sobre

la

hierba. Rio Piedras; Ediciones Huraca

1985.

Introduccion. Tn

Elprejuicio

racial en Puerto Rico

TomAS

Blanco,

13-83.

Rio

Piedras; Ediciones Huracan.

Diaz Soler, Luis. 1970. Historia de

la

esclavitudnegra en Puerto Rico. Rio P iedras: Editorial

de la Universidad de Pu erto R ico,

Duany,

Jorge . 20 00 . El censo, la raza y Ios pue rtorriqu eno s. El nuevo dia t8 de febrero.

Du Bois, W .E.B. 1999 {1903}. The Souls of Black Folks. Critical edition by H.L. Gates and

Terri Hu m e O liver. New

York

W.W. Nor ton.

Evans, Dylan. 1996.

An Introductory Dictionary of lacanian Psychoanalysis.

New York;

Routledge.

Eerre, R osa rio. 1998 [1986I.

M aldito amory otros cuentos.

N ew York: Vintag e Espafiol.

Elores, Juan .

1993.

Divided Borders: Essays on Puerto Rican Identity. Housto n: Arte Public

Press.

2000 . From Bomba to Hip-Hop: Puerto Rican Culture and Latino Identity. N ew Yor

Columbia University Press.

G od reau , Isar. 20 00 . La sem antica fugitiva: raza , color y vida cotidian a en Pue rto Ric o.

Revista de Ciencias Sociales (Nueva Epoca ) 9; 52-72.

G onz alez, Jos e Luis. 1976. Literatura y sociedad en Puerto

Rico.

Mexico: Eondo de Cultura

Economica.

1993.

The Four-Storeyed Country. Princeton: Markus W iener Publishers.

(iue rra, Lillian. 1998. Popular Expression and National Identity in Puerto

Rico:

The Struggle f

Self Com munity and Nation.

Gainesville: University Press of Florida.

Hernandez, Carmen Dolores. 1997. Puerto

Rican

Voices

in English: Interviews W ith Writers

Westport, CT: Prager Publishers.

Kutzinski, Vera.

1993.

Sugar s Secrets: The Erotics of Cuban Nationalism. Cha rlottesville, V

University P ress of Virginia.

Laviera.Tato.

1985.

AmeRkan. Ho uston: Arte Publico Press.

Maldonado-Denis, Manuel. 1972. Puerto Rico: A Socio-Historical Interpretation. New York

Vintage Press.

M atthews , Tho ma s G. 1974. Th e Q uestion of Color in Puerto R ico.

\n Slavery and Race



Ortiz, Fernando. 1975 [1946]. Elengano de las

razas.

La Habana: Editorial Ciencias Sociales.

Pales M atos, Luis. 1978. Poesia completay prosa selecta. Caracas: Biblioteca Ayacucho.

Pico, Fernando. 1988. Historia general de Puerto

Rico.

Rio Piedras: Edicioties H uracan .

Rivera, Raquel.

2003. New

Tork

Ricans from the Hip

Hop 7.one. New York: Palgrave

Macmillan.

Rodriguez, Clara E. 1989. Puerto Ricans: Bom in the

U.S.A.

Boston; Unwin Hyman.

Rodriguez, Victor M. 1997. The Racialization of Puerto Rican Ethnicity in the United

States. In Ethnicity, R ace,

and

Nationality

in

the Caribi'ean, ed. Juan M anuel Carrion,

233-73.

San

Juan:

Institute for Caribbean Studies, University of Puerto Rico.

Rodriguez Julia, Edg ardo.

1983. El entierro de Cortijo,

Rio Piedras: Ediciones Hu racan.

Santiago-Valles, Kelvin A . 1995. Pu ert o Ric o. In No Longer Invisible: Afro-Latins Today^ ed.

Minori ty Rights Group, t39-6t . London: Minori ty Rights Publicat ions.

Santos Febres, Mayra. 1996. Pez de

vidrio,

Ri o Piedras: Ediciones Hu racan.

1997- Geografia en decibeles: Utopias pan-caribenas y el territorio del rap. In

Primer Simposio de Caribe 2000 : Re-Definiciones: Espacio—global/nacional/

cultural/personal—caribeno, eds. Lowell Fiet andjanette Becerra, 121-36. Rio

Piedras: Facultad de Iumanidades, Universidad de Puerto Rico.

Stephens, Tho ma s M . 1999.

Dictionary of Latin Am erican Racial and Ethnic Terminology.

2nd edition. Gainesville: University Press of Florida.

Sturken, Marita. 1997.

Tangled Mem ories: The Vietnam

War

the AIDS

Epidemic

and

the Politics

of Remembering. Berkeley: University of California Press.

Sued B adillo, Jalil and Angel Lo pez C an tos . 1986.

Puerto Rico negro.

Ri o Piedras : Ed itorial

(Cultural.

Synnott, Anthony. 1993.

The

Body

Social: Symbolism, Self and

Society. N ew

York

Routledge.

Tapia y Rivera, A lejand ro. 1993 [1867].

La

cuarterona. Prologo por Edgardo Quiles. Rio

Piedras: Editorial de la Universidad de Puerto Rico/Instituto de Cultura

Puertorriquefia.

Thompson, Robert Farris. 1983. Flash o f the

Spirit:

African and Afro American Art

Philosophy. New York: Vintage Book s.

W agenheitn, Kai and Olga Jim enez de Wag enheim , eds. 1994.

The Puerto Ricans:

A Documentary H istory.

Pr inceton: M arkus W iener Publishers.

Ze no n C ruz, Isabelo. 1974. Narciso descubre su trasero: el negro en la cultura puertorriquen a.

2 vols. Hutnac ao, P uer to R ico: Editorial Euridi.

Zizek, Slavoj. 1989. T he Sublime Object of Ideology. London: Verso.

1993-

Tarrying

With

the

Nega tive:

Kant

Hegel and

the

Critique of Ideology.

Durham:



Date post:	06-Jul-2018
Category:	Documents
Upload:	rachel-mcclain
View:	214 times
Download:	0 times

Puerto Rico- The Pleasures and Traumas of Race

Documents