Nationalistic Rant

There is a topic that obsesses me lately, but in a minor way has been part of me since I had use of reason and it will probably haunt me forever. I suppose the problem could be the same for all Puerto Ricans, but I don’t see a national dialogue going on. Or, if there is such a dialogue, it is taking all the wrong ways about it, asking all the wrong questions.

I mean the problem of the National Identity.

I hear the argument: “We are not a Nation!” “We are, too!”

I hear them discuss whether the official governmental language should be English or Spanish.

Lately they have even dragged our flag into it, since different parties and ideologies use different kinds of blue for the triangle part. ( Just for the record, I am squarely on the side of light blue. The flag was created and used by the Nationalistic Movement long before the rest of the country appropriated it. Also for the record, I think the argument is stupid. Three versions of the same flag were used in conjunction for decades, and most of the public never even noticed.)

So , you can see, there is a national dialogue going on. But they are discussing the wrong things. Or at least, they are not addressing my concerns.

Not that they should, you know. I am only one (admittedly weird) citizen. But I don’t think that I am so unique that I am alone in wondering about the part of me that is “Puerto Rican” and what it means to be one, of what is entailed in my identification with this land and its people, with this mongrel blood, with this convoluted history.

And possibly the topic is just too large, as I am having trouble organizing my thoughts to convey my meaning….

But possibly, too, it is not quite large enough, since I keep on finding parts that add to the size of the puzzle, leaving as many empty parts as it had before.

Let me see if I can explain…

GOLDEN AGE

There is a phenomenon in folklore and literature called The Golden Age.

It refers to a distant past (purely mythical or with some factual base) that embodies the most cherished values of a nation.

Often it is a land in disorder in which a hero can grow and seek to make orderly. It is a landscape filled with perils, that threatens with death or worse, should the hero fail. It is an era that allow men and women to test their mettle and show their true character. It allows them to fail miserably, or emerge victorious, in virtue of their own efforts.

Examples that come easily to mind are : Arthurian England, cowboy Wild West, and the Japanese feudal (Samurai) age.

In our literature, they use the Jibaro mountain men in a similar fashion, but I doubt the relevance of the symbol in this context.

The Jibaro, for those of you who are not Puerto Rican, is the native mountain man, our Hillbilly so to speak. Descendant of Taino (Eyeri) Indians escaped to the mountains, the escaped black population they harbored, and the white men who raped or kept mistresses among the lower classes, they became field laborers in the plantations. Theirs was a meager, dirty existence. Their children suffered from anemia and parasites.

Hardly a heroic image, don’t you think?

Mind you, I realize that things were not all peaches and cream in the Wild West, feudal Japan, or Medieval England. They surely had their own share of thugs, diseases, and mysery. But they have been polished by age into a sheen. Stories have turned these places and eras into what they never were. And these stories shape the national consiousness in a way that cannot be measured. They transmit a sense of land, of identity, of pride.

This cannot happen with the Jibaro. The very essence of a Jibaro story is that of a victim of circumstance, a virtuous, honest, hard-working people, trapped by hunger and ignorance into back-breaking labor. (In Bagazo, one of the most famous stories about Jibaro, the lead character is booted out of his job in the sugarcane plantation because he is old and not as efficient as he used to be. He confronts his boss, and the white man shoots him. And he dies, he ends up describing himself as “bagazo” the fibrous remains of sugarcane after all the juice has been pressed out.)

And they can not be reworked into something different, because they are historically recent. Their ragged clothes cannot be fashioned into armor. The Jibaro is too permeated by the smell of defeat, of resignation, to ever be useful as a national symbol.

But it keeps on being used that way, and that seriously pisses me off!

What kind of a nation chooses for itself such symbols? Why identify ourselves with an ox, a workhorse, a whipped dog? What do we see in ourselves that we accept such symbols? Don’t we aspire to more?

I want stories about warriors fighting to make a better world. I want us to identify ourselves with the pitirre bird, a little bird so territorial that it will fight dogs, large animals, and even guaraguao hawks, in defense of its nest. Now, THERE is an image!!!!

This picture was taken by my husband. It is a very young pitirre that fell down from its nest. And still you can see the spirit. “What are you looking at?” Heh!

More appropriate to the task of being a national symbol are the times immediately after the first contact between Spaniards and Taino (Eyeri). Right there, there’s narrative gold. Two sides locked in conflict over a land, both sides convinced of the justice of their cause. A hardly idyllic age that has the potential to drag into the sunlight the heroes and the monsters that inhabit the hearts of men.

Why hasn’t it been used??

I suppose it is not a mythology agreeable to any of our past or present governments. It stinks to high heaven of Nationalism, and that, simply, will not do.

But we don’t have literature like that. Or at least, I have not found it, and I am a fairly prolific reader. I have searched for this literature. The nearest I have read that resembles what I envision is El Ultimo Sonido del Caracol by Tina Casanova, which is excellent and I would recommend it to everyone, but is so obscure that even if you Google the title, you will get only 3 correct hits. It is about our Taino (Eyeri) heritage and how it endures and lives in us.

I will stop for now. I am not finished, but I need some time to organize my thoughts into coherence.

Paro Nacional en Puerto Rico- UPR

So, the governor went ahead and performed the mass layoffs.

Thousands and thousands of i-am-kicking-you-outta-here letters in one day.

Then an egg flies, smashes innocently behind its target. But the attitude of the egg thrower was applauded throughout the land. It lifted our morale. Even those of us who still have a job felt righteous anger at the way all this has been done. I think we all wish the egg had hit the governor on his head, and that we were the throwers.

And then, today, the people went to the streets to stage a mass demonstration. All well and cool, I am behind them 100%.

But I am so fucking pissed with the students of the UPR( Universidad de Puerto Rico- Rio Piedras campus).

They feel the need to stage a protest or strike every goddamn semester. EVERY SEMESTER. It seems like a rite of passage; kids newly out of their parents house and supervision stretch the bound of their freedom for the first time. But they have to be so stuuupid about it I feel ashamed sometimes in their stead.

Like now. They went to the protest to add their numbers and help the laid-off.And they act so stupid and take the chance to commit many kinds of petty crimes, that they detract rather than add to the merit of the main protest. I saw some of them throwing empty beer bottles against a building facade. There was some tire burning. Many walls now sport graffitti they did not have yesterday: "Socialism or death!"

Like, seriosly? Is that a threat? Are you saying YOU chose to die over living under capitalism, or that you want ME to die for your economic preference?

Sometimes I despair over the levels of sheer stupidity and irresponsability that grace the halls and classrooms on this, the best university on the island.

Anyways, my husband is over there right now, working in the university. He slept only 2 hours last night, and has been working for more than 24 hours now. And I won't be seeing him soon, it seems, because the students went into overtime-stupid and decided that though the demonstration had ended (for the adults were tired already and had responsabilities at home) they were not tired at all and were ready for some mayhem. So they headed for the University.

To break some more bottles and spray paint slogans on all available surfaces, no doubt. I tell you, this happens all semesters. We know the drill.

The campus guard was ready, and with the police they resisted the students. There were rocks thrown. Eggs, of course. There was violence, and for a second there it looked pretty bad.

My husband called to tell me he would be staying in campus today. He remains on call.