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.

On the news...

The latest topic in PR is our suicide rate.

Well, that and the gay penguins adopting a chick.

But I want to talk about this suicide thing, 'cause I suspect the penguins are getting more media coverage than they want.

Anyways, according to Primera Hora, after the mass layoffs were announced, the Linea PAS hotline started getting about a 25% increase in calls every month. Oh, holy Sherlock! Do you think it might be related?

Then the Suicide Prevention Commission announces their new campaign.

Last campaign was called NO TE QUITES or Do Not Remove Yourself. The first time I heard it I thought they were kidding.

After the mass of factors that push a human being to despair, to consider the unspeakable act, to condemn themselves to hell for all eternity (this being a mainly Catholic country) and all they have to say to say was Do Not Remove Yourself?

And I imagined the would-be-suicide asking back: " Why? Why the bother, why the pain, why the emptiness and the sense of being a failure? Why should I be made to withstand that which is beyond my will to withstand? Why shouldn't I remove myself?"

Would they have an answer for him?

The new campaign is called I Love Life 24/7. I think it is even worse than the last one. This one does not even invite dialogue. The would-be-suicide could just mutter "good for you" and continue adjusting the noose. How is that supposed to be helpful?

Blah! I am not a suicide apologist. I am not the one to push the suicidal guy off the bridge. But I do believe that when to end your life is a personal desicion and one we are not entitled to make for him.

Put a safety system in place! By all means, do. Hot lines and support groups and stupid ad campaings. Go ahead and try to save some lives!

But do not try to hide the fact that there is sometimes more dignity in a death you have chosen yourself than in a life lived against your will.


____________________________________________

As a little side note, the article noted that 90% of successful suicides are men. Women make more attempts, but they usually survive. Why is that?

Basic MO

• Suicidal female: will clean the house, take a bath, wash her hair, shaves her legs, perfumes herself. She puts on something that she knows will look good on her. After she has made sure that she will look good, she swallows half a bottle of sleeping pills or cuts her wrists
• Suicidal male: Shoots himself in the head and fuck the clean-up!
  

Political doom and gloom (is there any other kind?)

I am not smart enough to get all this economic stuff that’s on the news lately.

But it looks bad.

I see people in the net bemoaning the current rate of inflation, and how much it is about to raise.

And I think, in Puerto Rico we are screwed. You have no idea...

Our inflationary rates have always been way, way above the USA.

Same with the unemployment rates. Ours was 12% in January 2009.
The same date in the USofA, it was 7.6%. Topped off in April 2009 at 8.9%


And it is going to get worse.

The governor of Puerto Rico, Luis “Milhouse” Fortuño is planning on massive layoffs to prevent the collapse of our economy. Turns out the government is grossly overstuffed with employees that paid for their jobs with votes. Decades, possibly centuries of paying for political favors with confy government jobs. We call them "batatas politicas", political yams because you bury them in the ground and let them just grow there. No more effort necesary.

Anyways. We can’t pay for all of them, says Luis. So out they go.

This is the idiot.
Except I doubt the political yams are the ones that should be worried.
Noooo.

Living as I have lived in Puerto Rico all my life, I would wager the political nobodies would go first. You know, the ones that refuse to say or craftily avoid a direct answer when asked for their affiliation. They can't cry Discrimination, can they? But they are not that many, so out will go the guy with the PIP decal on the car, the lady with the pava earrings.

You know how it is in unions, right? When there has to be layoffs, seniority is all that matters. They could spend the day drinking beer and playing dominoes, but they have spent so many years with us that they have to stay.

Something similar. Our political critters will find a way to save their constituents, whether or not they are qualified, interested, or actually bothers to show up at the office.

The unemployment rate is going to spike quite sharply this year.

Which means there will be less revenue from sales and such…

Which means next year around he might feel forced to repeat the performance.

Way to go, Luis!

Agüeybaná

Agüeybaná was our old warrior king.

He fought to keep the Spaniards from taking this land, his land. Legend has it that he died early in battle from a bullet aimed at the gold guanín he wore on his chest as a status symbol. He died a failure, brought down by the very symbol of his heathen ways, his deification and impersonation of the Sun.

Legend has been enshrined in history books. It makes a powerful image.

Truth rarely does.

Agüeybaná was a family name. It belonged to the ruling family only. Personal names were something else altogether. They were mutable, temporary only.

The Tainos had a custom of exchanging names to cement good relations and family ties. If your name is X and mine is Y, let’s exchange them, and your family will be like mine, and mine shall be like yours. When the Spaniards first came, Agüeybaná the First, uncle and predecessor of the one we are talking about, called for a name exchanging ceremony with the newcomers. The ceremony was called a Guaitiao. He exchanged his own with Ponce de Leon. His nephew and heir, future Agüeybaná II, exchanged his own with Luis de Whatever. (This was read in history books, out of my reach at the moment. And I could not find the proper links to the net. So my research is not impecable today. )

Thereafter his name would have been Luis Agüeybaná.

According to the records, there was a Taino king called Luquillo or Luisillo who kept with the war after Agüeybaná’s death. He was also associated with the “Carib” revolt. At a certain point he brought the European population to less than 50, all huddled together in the city of Caparra. Then the Hurricane hit, and the stone-house dwellers fared much better than the wattle-bohio dwellers. That was the moment that broke the native resistance.

Weather. A mere roll of the dice.

Why do I care for this?

We are taught that Agüeybaná died a failure. He, often used as a symbol of our national spirit, was put out of action on the first round. Disregarding the evidence, we are told of his defeat, and the end of his line.

Just like in the Arthurian myth, the King is wounded and dying, and the kingdom dies around him.

There is a link between them. They are one and the same.

By killing our king, in story, if not if fact, they kill Borinken.

In the inner kingdom of a Boricua’s mind, the king has failed. He is wounded and dying; collapsing. And just like in the Arthurian myth, his land dies around him.

The answer?

The passing of the Grail.

A new king must come out of the mists to awaken the land to its glorious past and still more glorious future. The only hope is a hero who will take up the throne, cut the ties to the failed king and build a new kingdom out of old materials.

No one has proved pure of heart, yet.

And still, I wait for Persifal…

I harbour conflicting feelings for my land

I am an Independentist.
I believe Puerto Rico should be free.

But when confronted I cannot easily explain it. Europe and America are moving towards a union. I want my land separate.

And in part I think it has to do with identity. Who do you think you are? How do you define yourself? In 3 words, who are you? I mean, can you answer this? The part of your identity that belongs in the root.

And we cannot. Too much meddling. We have never been Puerto Rico by our own rights. The Taino times are lost in pre-history. We longed to be Spaniards for 400 years. For the last 100 we have longed to be gringos.

Do you know that in the last census, most Puertorricans claimed to be white?

Our put-down phrase, when someone is getting too uppity is " Se cree blanquito" or "He thinks he is white".

It irks me when a guy, born and raised in the mists of the mountains of Orocovis, proclaims himself happily to be an Estadounidense. Does he speaks English? Hell no. Does he speak Spanish? Not really, but close enough. What the hell does this guy think he is claiming for himself when he claims being a gringo?
He claims what he views as a superior existence, a better person.

The Americans are good. They brought us the welfare. They brought us the projects, and the manufacturing plants, and a lot of money for us to be happy.
And our island, blessed with fertile ground and abundant rain, became ghetto. The farmland grew wasted. We lost our pride. The son of our neighbor got tattoos and a golden grille for his teeth, imitating his foreign idols.

And I know there is a certain element of hypocrisy in my thinking. Too fine of me, to talk about this corruption, when my children are not dying of diarrhea and malnutrition.

But couldn’t we keep the pride? Surely, those things are not in conflict. Not the pride in the land, for the land is nothing but a rock protruding from the ocean, a dead volcano in a seam of tectonic plaques. I mean the pride in ourselves, each of us, in the fruit of our labor. The kind of feeling that sees beauty and wishes to add to it.

We see ourselves as a failed country. Every decision is made looking at Los Niuyores (The New Yorks, this is how people used to see USA. My cousin went to live at Los Niuyores. She could be in Ohio, for all they cared. She was in Los Niuyores.)

Don’t worry if you can’t understand this. It confuses me too.
Sometimes I love this island so much that I would not live anywhere else. Sometimes I truly feel blessed to live in such a beautiful place. People are generous and like to laugh. Waiting in line is just a chance to meet interesting people.

And sometimes I feel like I choke in here. I look around me and I see nothing but ugliness. Stupid people, lazy people, irresponsible people, all drowning in their drug of choice.

Puerto Rican people should be free.
At least that much I have clear.

I wonder if the FBI will come to get me now.