80 Grados

Quién es George Zimmerman?

George Zimmerman, el acusado del asesinato del joven Trayvon Martin en un pueblo bastante desconocido Sanford, Florida, ha dado la ocasión para reflejar en como se interpreta la “raza Latina” en los Estados Unidos. La tema que ha caracterizado la drama esencial de los estados unidos es el conflicto entre blancos y negros, sea violento o un mero competencia para fama, empleos, parejas sexuales, o dinero. Pero ahora hay otro factor–el Latino, o el Latino mezclado con norteamericano–que indica que el narrativo de lo que se llama el “racial binary” está cambiando.

Los hechos del caso son bastante conocidos: George Zimmerman estaba en patrulla como una guardia informal (se llama “neighborhood watch”) en una comunidad privada en una sección del pueblo de Sanford y encontró un teenager de raza negra caminando solo y para él parecía “sospechoso.” Llamó al departamento de policía y le dijeron que lo dejaba quieto, pero insistió confrontar a Trayvon, y entre unos minutos sacó su revolver y lo mató a balas. Trayvon no estaba armado y no había razón para esta confrontación pero la policía no iniciaron cargos contra Zimmerman y el caso se convirtió en el úlitmo capítulo de la drama nacional norteamericano, 24-7 en la tele, hasta que la semana pasada por fín arrestaron y cargaron a Zimmerman.

Se puede decir que es posible que George Zimmerman no es racista y que fue un accidente trágico que ocurrió entre él y Trayvon. Pero examinamos el contexto de este evento. El joven Trayvon no llevaba armas, existe una ley que se refiera como “Stand Your Ground,” impulsado por dinero y políticas derechistas que prácticamente hace legal asesinar alguien si te sientes amenazado, y la prensa derechista se ha ocupado exageradamente en el defenso de Zimmerman. Hasta que el mismo Zimmerman, unos días antes de su arresto, procuró especificamente y solamente al nefario comentarista de Fox News Sean Hannity como confiador, y lanzó un website cubierta de la bandera de los estados unidos, y un foto de grafitti racista pintada en un centro africano-americano de la universidad de Ohio State en defensa de George Zimmerman. En la sección titulada “My Race,” o “Mi Raza,” aparece esta citación de Thomas Paine: “”The world is my country, all mankind are my brethren, and to do good is my religion.”

La oposición entre George Zimmerman y Trayvon Martin no es simplemente entre blanco y negro. En los primeros días de la controversia de que se debe o no arrestar a Zimmerman, su papá–aparentemente un norteamericano anglosajón–anunció a la prensa que George no era racista, sino que era hispano de los raices peruanas de su mamá, y se crío en una familia “multicultural.” La lógica presentada aquí trata de disminuir evidencia como la grabación de una llamada telefónica en la cual George se queja de que “ellos [referiendo a negros jóvenes encapuchados como Trayvon] siempre escapan.” Además, la prensa de la derecha trataron en unos instantes de caracterizar el conflicto entre latinos y negros, eliminando completamente la historia de ataques contra negros de parte de blancos en estados sureños desde los tiempos de esclavitud.

Pero desgraciadamente recordamos que había muchísima esclavitud en Nuestra América, y formas de racismo que los proponentes de la gran familia Latina, sea mestiza o mulata, no  quieren admitir. Ahora en el Norte, la invocación de la defensa que uno puedo ser racista porque eres de orígenes latinos se está convirtiendo en la retórica del estado “pos-racial” que han inventado los que borran la historia y están ciegos de la realidad de como sigue el racismo en el presente.

Criatura Mestizo-Mestiza, Perú

No se sabe en que manera que George Zimmerman se identifica como Peruano, pero se puede decir que Peru es un país muy contradictoria en el aspecto de asuntos raciales. En el 2009, el gobierno declaró una apología por siglos de abuso y discriminación contra la población de ascendencia africana, algo no común entre los países de las américas. Pero todavía persisten cosas como este programa de televisión, llamado “Negro Mama,” que no tiene vergüenza en presentar caricaturas racistas como estas:

Cómo sentirá George Zimmerman, con su appellido alemán, sobre su identidad peruana-norteaméricana? Parte de un mestizaje o algunas veces aceptado como blanco, o será lo mismo? La socióloga  Jennifer Lee, en su libro The Diversity Paradox, implica que los hijos de un matrimonio asiático-blanco o latino-blanco pueden “prender o apagar su identidad étnica cuando quieran,” y que estas identidades son efectivamente simbólicas. Enfrentamos la posibilidad de un especie de patología en la cual se puede abrazar el negro adentro cuando es ventajoso, o matar el negro externo cuando se siente amenazado.

¿Qué podemos esperar del mestizaje que se está formando en los últimos 50 años en los estados unidos? Parece que se nota un cambio de la oposición histórica entre blanco y negro, que se está convirtiendo en algo más parecido al modelo latinoamericano, la dicotomía sutil entre el mestizo y el negro.

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                

 

Héctor Xavier Monsegur, a/k/a Sabu

Sobre El Pícaro Nuyorriqueño

El programa de televisión Naked City, en plena gloria de blanco y negro presentando su narrativo documental-policier, siempre terminaba con esta frase: “Hay 8 milliones de historias en la [Naked City]. Esta fue una de ellas.” Hace como tres semanas que apareció una de esas historias a la misma vez increíbles y típicas, la de Héctor Xavier Monsegur, también conocido como Sabu, el líder de el grupo LulzSec, famoso en la brega de “hacking” la infraestructura technológica de los websites de, entre otros, la CIA, News Corp, y Sony Pictures. Sabu se parece en esto foto como cualquier joven rebelde, haciendo una broma elaborada para expresar una enajenación profunda de la vida del megalópolis, pero era alguien que me despertó la curiosidad. Porque es Boricua.

El grupo del LulzSec (corto para “Lulz Security”) se encontró bajo un ataque severo de las fuerzas del gobierno en las semanas después que se revelaron una grán cantidad de memoranda adquirido de un grupo super-secreto que se llama Stratfor. Esta información se hizo disponible a través deWikileaks, y contiene mucha evidencia que Stratfor es una forma de CIA escondida, haciendo recomendaciones en como se podría cambiar condiciones políticas en países pasando por momentos delicados. Como “líder” de LulzSec, Sabu supuestamente estaba en cargo de varios miembros de ellos, quienes se pueden considerar una rama de el más conocido grupo Anonymous, establecidos en varios países en Europa e América Latina. Pero un lo que se puede interpretar como una trama de tragedia, se reveló que Sabu lo cogieron el verano pasado el FBI en un momento de descuido de parte de el nuyorriqueño, y estaba funcionando como un agente de informe hasta ahora.

Pero quién era Sabu, o Héctor Xavier Monsegur? El New York Times lo pinta como un especie de Robin Hood del siglo 21, secuestrado un su apartamento en un complejo de residenciales en el Lower East Side de Manhattan (re-nombrado Loisaida por el estimado poeta Bimbo Rivas), haciendo sus tareas de sabotaje contra lo que le parecía a él enemigos del pueblo, y también dándole una mano de ayuda a sus vecinos que se encontraba con problemas de mal crédtio. Resulta que su papá y tía fueron arrestados en el 1997 por vender heroina, y Héctor se mudó con su abuela, y se puso en cargo de las dos hijas de su tía.

Algunos vecinos se quejaron de que lo que salía del apartamento era un alboroto constante de música a todo volumen y la fragrancia de marijuana. Pero afuera de eso era alguien con quien casi nadie tenía odio. De hecho, los vecinos fueron donde el para hacer “ajustes” en lo que parecía en los reportes de crédito logrado por sus talentos especiales. Como Miguel Piñero, que hice robos en la calle mientras manteniendo una carrera de escritor, Sabu le importaba regalar un poco de sus ganancias–en este caso los secretos del hackismo–a gente que lo necesitaba.

Y como en la grán tradición del pícaro, era una figura que utilizó prácticas cuestionables para lograr algo que consideraba una causa moral y justa. En una entrevista con la revista NewScientist, reveló como llego a la vida de ser “hacktivista”:

I got involved about 11 years ago when the US navy was using Vieques Island in Puerto Rico as a bombing range for exercises. There were lots of protests going on and I got involved in supporting the Puerto Rican government by disrupting communications.

En otras palabras, metió mano debido a su identidad Boricua. El movimiento de Vieques, tan clave para levantar la consciencia puertorriqueña en los dos lados del charco también agarró a Sabu. Más luego llegó a decidir atacar a otros símbolos de poder, finalmente compartiendo con LulzSec en sus esfuerzos de proteger Wikileaks y su líder Julian Assange. Defendiendo sus hechos en la misma entrevista, dijo esto:

What would you like to say to people who say that you and other Antisec/Anonymous/LulzSec members are just troublemakers who have caused untold damage and loss to people for no apparent reason?
Would you rather your millions of emails, passwords, dox [personal information] and credit cards be exposed to the wild to be used by nefarious dealers of private information? Or would you rather have someone expose the hole and tell you your data was exploitable and that it’s time to change your passwords? I’m sure we are seen as evil for exposing Sony and others, but at the end of the day, we motivated a giant to upgrade its security.

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Pero resulta, irónicamente, que su papel como informante para la FBI quizás podría ser el último pedazo del rompecabezas para acusar Assange por las grandes crimines que les quisieran culpar. Como implica un ex-miembro de Anonymous en el reporte de Democracy Now, puede ser que el episodio entero de la diseminación de los memoranda de Stratfor fue sancionado por la FBI para poder atrapar a Assange:

AMY GOODMAN: Were you surprised? Were you shocked? And what does this mean for your organizing?

GREGG HOUSH: I was surprised, definitely. I mean, the most surprising thing to me, though, was, you know, something that you just mentioned, the fact that theFBI basically allowed LulzSec/Anonymous to hack Stratfor and to dump all that data to WikiLeaks. They pretty much sacrificed Stratfor in the name of hunting down Julian Assange. And that’s the strangest thing of all of this to me so far.

No se sabe si la comunidad de hackers podrían perdonar a Sabu, pero como dice este artículo de follow up en NewScientist, que propone que la misma entrevista que le dio Sabu fue parte de o se llevó a cabo al servicio de la investigación de la FBI, puede ser que quería proteger su familia. A la periodista Samantha Murphy, Sabu recomendó escuchar este track del rapero Nuyorquino Immortal Technique, también de raíces Latinas, posiblemente para explicar su posición. La tema, nombrada “Point of Return,” se declama en la voz de un hombre enfrentando a la cárcel. “Putting himself at risk of reprisals for cooperating with authorities – done to avoid a prison sentence that would leave his young family alone – may give this message new meaning, but so much remains a mystery,” escribió Murphy.

En ese sentido entiendo un poco la dilema de ser el comunicador. Cuando era joven alguien me dijo que el periodista siempre traiciona a su sujeto–eso de una manera era parte de su funcionamiento. Sabu, como raperos, pregoneros, poetas de la calle, y otros periodistas modernas, tenía su forma de narrativo–pícaro al extremo, quizá–que al fin lo llevó a la traición. Podemos dudar sus métodos, pero el cuentos de Sabu se nos presenta como otra historia de un puertorriqueño viviendo en el estómago de la bestia, llamada Nueva York, donde mi pueblo se nace y se muere, día tras día.

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                             

Celebrando Piri Thomas y el Permiso que nos Dio

Para la area metropolitana de Nueva York, era un día para recordar los muertos. En Newark, New Jersey, la farándula de la música afro-americana cantaron y lloraron por Whitney Houston. En el Bronx, la comunidad afro-caribeña (apoyado por el reverendo Al Sharpton) celebraron un “emotivo adiós” al joven Ramarley Graham, un joven de 18 años que fue baleado por policias en el baño de su casa porque pensaban que estaba armado.

Pensaban.

Y en el Barrio de Manhattan se reunieron una diaspora-riqueña para dar tributo al gigante de letras Piri Thomas, que falleció el octubre pasado y dejó un legato que formó la basis de la identidad de un pueblo. Thomas hubiese entendido el dolor que se sentaba para la familia de Ramarley, así que lo comentó en esta entrevista con Carmen Dolores Hernández en 1995:

The violence, the sirens, the police cars and the stories that you heard and the brutalities that you saw led you to arrive at the conclusion that we didn’t need police protection, what we did need was protection from the police. 

Pero esta noche no era para gritos, lágrimas, ni coraje. Era una noche en donde una nación imaginaria Boricua/Latina recordaron a su príncipe negro. Hermano/as poetas como Martin Espada, Papoleto Meléndez, Nancy Mercado, Willie Perdomo, Mayda del Valle, Junot Díaz, Emmanuel Xavier, Lemon Anderson, y Rich Villar reflejaron en sus memorias, compartiendo la tarima con los líderes comunitarios Felipe Luciano y Marta Moreno Vega. Como comentó Luciano, lo maravilloso era ver todos esos seres que no se han visto por años.

Y todos estaban de acuerdo que aunque Piri tenía todo el derecho de haberse ser consumido de amargura, abrazó a la vida con amor.

Thomas tocó “la música de un mundo que no se ve,” dijo Espada, invocando el espiritu de Piri  a traves de las palabras de la poeta Lucille Clifton: “Ven, celebra conmigo que cada día algo ha tratado de matarme y falló.” Culminó su tributo con su poem “Imagine the Angels of Bread,” que soñaba de un mundo virado al revés, uno en el que los pobres ganan.

Una tema recurrente era el gratitud de los escritores a Piri para darlos el “permiso” de contar sus historias. Antes de que se publicó “Down These Mean Streets,” la colección que le dio Thomas su inmortalidad, existía una población masiva que no tenía voz. Las historias alborotadas y agridulces que contó Piri significó el amanecer del siglo nuyorriqueño. Se puede leer como una tropicalización de las calles, o simplemente un nuevo otro-narrativo norteaméricano, o un baile entre los dos.

Pero como nos acordó Luciano, en su manera de reverendo de la iglesia del Corazón del Barrio, lo más reveladora del trabajo de Piri era la confrontación con la severa política de categorías raciales que se imponía en los estados unidos, y como esa experencía desnudó el racismo escondido de su cultura ancestral. “That’s me–a skinny dark-skinned, curly haired Puerto Rican,” murmuró Papoleto Meléndez, mirando al las proyecciones de fotos de Piri con Pedro Pietri, con Miguel Algarín, con “Fried Neckbones and Home Fries,” el bugalú de Willie Bobo tocando a volumen bajito.

“El conocía el dolor del color,” insistió Luciano. “Hablaba de ser negro, y como todavía no podemos admitir que tenemos un pasado Africano. El momento que admitimos eso empezamos a sanarnos de nuevo.”

En el panel encabezado por Moreno Vega se habló del coraje como energía positiva, de las leyes que se inventan en Arizona para sacar libros de las bibliotecas, del peligro de fascismos emergentes. Y también se habló de la industria de prisiones y una generación de juventud encarcelado, y el famoso “stop and frisk” de la ciudad que hacen criminales a los inocentes. Todo de lo que siempre hablaba Piri.

En el tercer acto, Junot Díaz nos recordó que el espíritu de Piri era inclusivo y diverso, otra escencia de la identidad Boricua-Latina. Como la familia de las islas que se repiten, Thomas también tuvo raíces en Cuba, y por eso nuestra nación no se limitaba a puertorriqueños y así Díaz el dominicano, bromeando lo profano, se manifestaba el cien por ciento boricua como en esos días que lo conocí en reuniones organizado por el ex-Young Lord Richie Pérez contra la brutalidad policiaca. Su colección “Drown” se podría considerar como una versión suburbana de “Down These Mean Streets,” y Díaz no faltaba de darle el crédito a Thomas.

Mayda del Valle lució radiante como la estrella del “slam poetry” que era, con su poema de la búsqueda de identidad espiritual, y otra tema de la noche: como resolver la pérdida de un ser querido. Para ella, era un encuentro con las tradiciones africanas que busca el díalogo con los antepasados para aprender lo que debemos hacer con el futuro. Le dio el permiso Piri de investigar como los espiritus se traducen como todo en la historia que se ha perdido.

Willie Perdomo, el heredero verdadero de la tradición Piri Thomaseña, nos contó en palabras sencillas y directas de la fraternidad literaría que surgió en compartir palabras e ideas que enseño su maestro. Como era su costumbre, una noche en la decada de los ’90s, en Hunter College con Willie y Pedro Pietri, Piri recitó las poemas de sus compañeros. “Esa noche Piri leyó ‘Puerto Rican Obituary’ y ‘Nigger-Reecan Blues,’ y en ese momento sabía que estaba listo para poner esa poema a descansar,” recordó Perdomo. Era la poema que hizo Perdomo famoso, otra reflexión en las aguas turbias de la identidad afr0-latina, de un joven en las calles brutales y amorosas, y ya era tiempo para buscar la madurez.

“Me pregunté, ‘hay una manera de hacerse un hombre sin pasar por el infierno?”

Todos que llevan el Barrio en el corazón saben la respuesta. Al despedirse, Perdomo escogió una poema que la dedicó a su hijo–”Leer es ser libre,” entonó, y mientras pronunciaba esas palabras se escuchaba en la audiencia un infante llorando. Eran lágrimas de alegría.

Solamente faltaba el organizador del evento, Gary Santana, a presentar la viuda, Suzie Dod Thomas, quien lo conoció en 1986 en el proceso de traducir “Down These Mean Streets” al español. Y al asegurarnos que no se podía dudar que Piri estaba, de una manera o otra, presente, acabó el tributo con la palabra que el le gustaba usar en momentos como estos:

“Punto.”

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                            

Verdades Útiles

En Marzo del año 1894, pregonando desde Nueva York, José Martí concluyó su ensayo titulado “La Verdad Sobre los Estados Unidos” con una invocación de “las dos verdades útiles a nuestra América: el carácter crudo, desigual y decadente de los Estados Unidos, y la existencia en ellos continua, de todas las violencias, discordias, inmoralidades y desórdenes de que se culpa a los pueblos hispanoamericanos.” Martí no se imaginaba que 54 años después, unos marineros de la marina estadounidense se iban a orinar encima de una estatua de el mismo en la habana, como se ve en esta foto. Es casi imposible ser tan pesimista.

Claro que hablar de Martí es–para nosotros gozando del discurso del siglo 21–sumamente pre-histórico, pero no se puede negar la fuerza de su palabras, que todavía son peleadas entre los polémicos de Miami y la habana. Y tenemos que admitir que en “Nuestra América” siguen violencias, discordias, inmoralidades y desórdenes de que nos pueden culpar. Pero te puedo asegurar que reportando desde acá en el América de Ellos se puede sentir algo quizás peor.

La imagen de tropas del imperio orinando sobre el “otro” renació en los medios al empezar el fín de semana que se celebra el cumpleaños del gran líder de la causa de derechos civiles, el reverendo Martin Luther King, Jr. Pero aunque era claro que cualquier ser humana estaría molestado con este acto, empezaron los comentarios que no era la gran cosa. Incluso esta transmisión de radio de una voz conservador que se llama Dana Loesch:

Esa misma noche, el sábado, vino otro debate para seleccionar el candidato Republicano que luchará con Obama, y fuimos testigo al gran locutor Rick Perry, gobernador de Tejas. Perry, dejando atrás por el momento sus advertencias que Obama esta promulgando una guerra contra la religión con un ejercito de homosexuales, admitió que el escuadrón de orina contra el Taliban debían ser castigados, pero existía un crimen mucho más grave, perpetrada por el gobierno Demócrata:

Este tono, de los imágenes de cuellos cortados, de las rabias de sangre, también se manifestó en este comentario de Gingrich, invocando a Andrew Jackson, el autor de una campaña para justificar desalojamiento brutal de los indios (Native Americans) de sus tierras.

Mátanlos. To’itos. En esta lucha desesperada entre los Republicanos para evitar la nominación de Romney (hijo de un “mejicano”), hay una confrontación entre los evangélicos y los demagogos. Mientras el candidato de los evangélicos, Rick Santorum, se dedica a acabar con matrimonios homosexuales y el derecho a aborto, los demagogos han sacado los puñales. ¿Quien crees que va a ganar?

Este tipo de estrategia recuerda a la campaña de 1988, cuando los Republicanos atacaron al candidato Demócrata por no estar en favor de la sentencia de muerte. Empezó con esta pregunta de un locutor de CNN en un debate:

En los meses siguientes, aparecieron anuncios aprovechando del miedo del público norteamericano incluyendo uno sancionado por Bush Primero, producido por el futuro director de Fox News, Roger Ailes:

Y otro, negado por Ailes, producido por un PAC “no necesariamente afiliado con la campaña Bush”:

Regresamos al wikén del cumpleaños de Martin Luther King. Aparece otro locutor, esta vez empleado por el Fox News dirigido por Ailes, tratando de provocar a Gingrich a admitir que lo que dijo sobre poner niños pobres a trabajar en escuelas limpiando inodoros fue un isulto a la comunidad Africana-Americana. Se nota la indignación del público de South Carolina, contra el locutor, Juan Williams.

Fíjate del tono de Gingrich con el locutor: “First of all, Juan…” [Ademas que ser Africano-Americano, el tipo tiene nombre hispano!] “The fact is…that more people have been put on food stamps by Barack Obama…than any president in American history!” Y dice esto sin comentar que la mayoria que reciben cupones en los estados unidos son blancos, y que están recibiendo cupones debido a la recesión causado por los republicanos. Este es el imagen creado por Gingrich: Obama, sentado en su escritorio con una sonrisa amplia, registrando uno por uno miles de nombres de recipientes de cupones en una computadora nuevecita y cara, comprada con las contribuciones de los que pagan impuestos!

Y la cámara se directa a la audiencia, encantada de la vida gritando, alzando la bandera, El Sur se Levanta de Nuevo!

En los próximos días, los locutores de Fox News estaban delirantes. El Newt se botó. Este es el hombre. El Maestro.

Eso fue así. Un porcentaje significativa del público norteamericano celebró la fiesta de Martin Luther King con un espectáculo de racismo y amenazas de violencia. Verdades útiles para su consideración.

                                                                                                                                 

El Bronx de Verdad

Un amigo me contó de la leyenda de un fotógrafo, Robert Capa, que a los 22 años tomó este foto, llamado “Falling Soldier,” Un Soldado Cayendo. Capa estaba cubriendo la Guerra Civil en España y tuvo la “suerte” que al momento que viró a tomar la foto, el soldado estaba en el momento de absorber el impacto de la bala. Esta casualidad, o en inglés, “serendipity” era tan favorable que hace varios años algunos observadores lo han acusado a Capa de inventar o escenificar el evento, y engañar el públco.
Mi amigo estaba reaccionando a los 15 minutos de fama que viví resultando del hecho que varias fuentes de los medios me estaban nombrando como el bloguero que destapó a J-Lo en el acto de engañar el público con un comercial que reclamaba que López, la estrella boricua más grande de la planeta, era callejera, es-street-fighter de pura sepa.

Cuando vino el equipo de filmar el anuncio de Fiat estaba más molestado que no pude estacionar un carro que tenía prestao en la calle y esa molestia me hizo poner atención a la grabación y noté que la que estaba guiando el Fiat parecía una estrella al mirar su cabello y su blusa pero tenía como una cara en blanco, un perfil borrado, como una de esas películas sci-fi en donde la gente ya no tienen identidad. Entonces pensé, ¿porque están grabando esto con equipo y crew costoso y la protagonista era una fantasma, pero bien mediocre?

Ah, eso fué la casualidad, el serendipity, que yo me puse a mirar exactamente en el momento cuando nos estaban metafóricamente lanzando un tiro a la comunidad–el engaño de la autenticidad de J-Lo, protagonizada por un advertising robot, un simulacrum. Cuando ví los anuncios en la tele, me di cuenta de lo que pasó. Hice un post en mi blog con solamente la intención de reirme otra vez de la única entrevista que tuve con ella, en la cual se reveló que estaba registrada en un hotel famoso en el Upper East debajo del nombre Jessica Rabbit.

Pero un mes después, cuando López salió en los American Music Awards perreando con Pitbull, tomó la oportunidad de convertir parte del escenario en un anuncio de Fiat, un co-branding con los comericales, levantó mucho coraje. El website Smoking Gun estaban tan empantalonado que descubrieron que durante el shoot Jenny no se presentó en el “block” que romanticizaba, y esa nota lo vió mi amigo del vecindario y él me mandó un email y hice un comentario. El editor me conocía de antes, fuimos “periodistas” por un tiempo, y cuando lo presté esta foto, tomado en un momento que yo no sabía el propósito de la grabación, la prensa tuvo prueba de hipocresía: La J-Lo ni estaba en el Bronx, y el carro, ni siquiera funcionaba:

Empezó una ola fuerte de historias en el New York Times, Slate, hasta Anderson Cooper de CNN comentó. Se aumenta el tráfico, y sientes que quizá hiciste algo. Pero mucho se pierde en la reacción de un mundo cibernético que no conoce el Bronx, ni la circunstancias de nuyorriqueños en general ni J Lo en particular. Ella viene de un vecindario en la cual viví yo por un tiempo cuando estaba en escuela superior. Era un barrio de bajo clase media, y sus papás eran dueños de una casa–no se pudieron llamar pobres, pero a la misma vez se puede entender que J Lo tenía una identificación con la cultura de la calle que fue establecida por puertorriqueños y africano-americanos en los años 60 y 70.

La nostalgia que ella siente para un pueblo de resistencia aunque no sufrió tanto como ellos lo encuentro algo positivo. El proceso de asimilar a o obtener éxito en esta tierra norteña muchas veces involucra negar la mancha de plátano. En los términos más favorables, el imagen que J Lo quiere proyectar es alguien que acepta la “radicalización” que impone la cultura dominante y decir, “sí, soy alborotosa, manifiesto resistencia al proceso que quiere borrar el sabor del país de cuatro pisos.” En el Castle Hill del Bronx, aunque eres dueño de casa, nunca vas a ser el ejemplo del sueño Americano, en la portada de la revista Mainstream American.

La trayectoria de la identidad puertorriqueña y como se transmitió desde la isla a esta ciudad se encuentra en lamentos borincanos que se componieron en barrios lejanos, reformándose con una alianza con varios Latinos, caribeños, y en el caso de los afro-americanos, sureño que se juntaron en las mismas calles. Por esto J-Lo nos quiere convencer que nunca era de la cultura de Hollywood, aunque logró acumular el dinero de Hollywood.

El problema es que aunque quizás tuvo buenas intenciones de celebrar los laberintos navegado por Willie Colón, Mon Rivera, Julia de Burgos, Maelo, Sammy Tanco, Sandra María Esteves, Clemente Soto Vélez, Antonia Pantoja, Juan Sánchez, no lo vió necesario dar cara en la calle. Muchas contradicciones entre lo más afortunados y los que están luchando se resuelven con 15 minutos de ofrecer su presencia. Pero en este momento del aumento de la ruptura entre las clases sociales, Jennifer se encuentra en una plataforma aislada, lejos de las calles de la que quería hacer homenaje.
Qué es la identidad puertorriqueña? Un jíbaro casi-negro casi-mulato casi-blanco que se enfrenta a la sistema bancaria de nueva york y sale con su asalto navideño sin necesitar la casa en Long Island? Sobrevivir una breve adición a sustancias prohibidas y conseguir un trabajo de la ciudad con pensión y beneficios y marchar en la parada en la Quinta Avenida cada Junio con anuncios de productos Goya? Estar, como yo estaba, en un soiree del vecindario con una casa lleno de boricuas gritando “empújalo!” cuando parecía que Margarito tenía Coto atrapado contra las cuerdas?
Son varios las definiciones. Es que en este momento, en la que pudiéramos ser vanguardia por casualidad, a J-Lo no le pertenecía ninguna. Y así es que desaparecen las simulacra.

Detrás de las Balas

Una bala perdida pasó por la ventana del cuarto desocupado este wikén pasado. Rompió el vidrio, hizo un roto característico, voló por la pared y paró en las latas de pintura de otra temporada y proyectos no completidos. Por un momento me ocurrió una memoria de mi niñez, el robo del lado, la vecina muerta. El dolor de ausencia, el Life in New York.

Vinieron La Jara para investigar, incluso una boricua que me habló en español como alguien que tiene familia en la isla, hicieron su reporte y se fueron, y se calló el ruido del helicóptero que nos vigila como un buitre vigilando el campo de batalla. A lo mejor eran unos títeres, niños con armas que se peliaron mas temprano en otra esquina, y al dar la vuelta a la manzana, la grán manzana, se econtraron perdiendo su inocencia debajo de mi ventana, con balas de 9mm.

Hay poco dinero…pero hay muchas balas

Hay poca comida…pero hay muchas balas

Hay poca gente bueno por eso hay muchas balas

Cuida’o que ahí viene una-PLA PLA PLA

–El Residente

In the absence of hard cash, bullets are replacing dollars as perhaps a more meaningful currency here in the Great Recession, the way the dollar supplants the currency of Caribbean nations. They are communicating where the words of the existing order fail us. Of course, the obfuscation is premeditated. It’s no surprise that Herman Cain’s “performance art candidacy” has so spectacularly imploded in a way that not only sells newspapers and advertising, but blows Occupy Oakland’s pseudo-shutdown off the front page.

Race and sexual scandal have become the primary subject of mainstream media discourse, so the Cain brain drain, which satisfies both imperatives, usurps any discussion about little things like the increasing use of drone attacks killing civilians in Afghanistan and Pakistan, the blocking of any serious legislation by Republicans in the Senate, and shoddy handling of the Keystone Tarsands Pipeline project. We have our own Gasoducto scandal y nadie se da cuenta!

En términos de la política racial del Grán Occupy, se han hecho algunos comentarios que por lo menos establecen la importancia de destacar el polémico de gente de color. Dos operativos de la policia, el “Stop and Frisk” y arrestos masivos por posesión de cantidades pequeñas de marijuana han entrado la discusión con más frecuencia. Pero ni hemos mencionado los problemas persistentes de desempleo, educación pública inferior, y bueno, un racismo tal vez más sutil y la de que nadie quiere hablar.

Fue significativo que el “juicio” llevado a cabo la semana pasada contra el cuerpo corporativo de infamia Goldman Sachs, era dirigida en parte por Cornell West, y muchos testimonios surgieron de la clase obrera de color, combatiendo el estereotipo de que los Occupantes representan solamente una clase privilegieda de tendencia bohemia y posmoderno blanquito. Puedes mirar el juicio entero aquí.

Una muy interesante intervención por Ocupantes en un una reuníón de un panel de burócratas del departamento de educación instalado por el alcalde Bloomberg se puede ver aquí. Y el lunes, una marcha que empezó desde el barrio Latino de Washington Heights caminaron 11 millas para llegar al campamento de OWS. El liderazgo incluyó figuras como Adriano Espaillat, Guillermo Linares, y el Reverendo Luis Barrios.

The violence inflicted on the people by the severity and the austerity is now inevitably revealed by slow-burn non-violence of street resistance. But the flip side, the byproduct of a cowboy culture of entrepreneurship and gun worship, has been growing more menacing over the years. We can call for more midnight basketball and promote gang truces but how long will it take to reverse the damage done by mass incarceration, among many other policies that have pushed youth into desperate, violent strategies for survival?

Esperamos el tipping point cuando las malas energías se revierten. Mientras tanto, siguen las balas, la lingua franca de la relación disfuncional entre el un por ciento y la 99. Por un lado se practica resistencia sin violencia y por la otra las balas caen con más frecuencia en las ventanas, los carros, los cuerpos de nosotros. Forman una lluvia fuerte que parece que tiene que caer antes de que se aclara la cosa.

Arizoñando

Desde adentro de la galería, cerca de la esquina de la 119 con la 3a avenida, puedes mirar por la ventana y ver lo típico del Barrio, estilo nuevayork. Por ejemplo, la constancia del Mr. Softee alborotando sus cantos pre-grabados que muchos denuncian como el gran enemigo de la paz. Pero esta ventana, en el primer piso del nuevo edificio del Hunter College School of Social Work no es muy  típica, de hecho es un portal que funciona como máquina de tiempo del viejo Estar Trek, estilo bomba-Cortijo.

“The project began with the bike,” said Miguel Luciano, whose installation is part of an exhibition called “Labor,” produced by the Centro de Estudios Puertorriqueños and also features work by Melissa Calderón, Antonio Martorell, Juan Sánchez, and Nitza Tufiño. “I was talking with the Puerto Rico Schwinn Club about the history of the Schwinn bike in Puerto Rico and associations between the bicycle and Puerto Rican culture. Julio Clavijo, the PRSC president recalled that his earliest bicycle memories were of his father’s bicycle. The kids weren’t allowed to ride it because their father used it for transportation to work in the cane fields in La Cantera (de Ponce). This intrigued me, the association between the Schwinn bike and labor in Puerto Rico.

“Those bicycles were from the 1950’s. I was interested in doing a project connected to the Schwinn bicycles of my generation (1970’s), focusing on the Stingray Krate series. This series of bicycles was produced between 1968-1972 and all the names of the bikes were color-coded, relating to agriculture or produce. The Apple Krate was red, the Orange Krate orange, the Lemon Peeler yellow, etc. Many of these bikes are also popular in the Puerto Rican Schwinn clubs in New York. But Schwinn also made the Pea Picker (green) and the Cotton Picker (white) during these years, whose names were still color-coded, but made more specific reference to the labor(er).

“I was curious, so I started to research associations between Puerto Ricans and pea pickers and cotton pickers, which led me to Labor Union journals that documented various protests involving Puerto Rican laborers in California and Arizona.”

El rostro de Felícita Méndez se puede ver casi sonriendo en frente de la bicicleta “Cotton Picker,” nunca imaginando que iba llegar al Barrio. Podría ser una de las caras lindas de Tite Curet Alonso, pero ella ya estaba fuera de la isla cuando el nació. Podría ser una de esas salseras de los años ’70s discutiendo si era La Lupe o Celia Cruz la reina verdadera, pero ella no fue parte de esa famosa Gran Migración. Felícita actualmente formó parte de una historia bastante desconocida de obreros puertorriqueños reclutado para trabajar sembrando algodón en Arizona.

Felicíta was a precursor of what some of us call “Other Ricans,” that is Boricuas who migrated to places outside our traditional U.S. strongholds of New York, Philly, Boston, Hartford, Cleveland…Tampa. How dignified she appears next to the crude misspelling in the headline, “Further Entry of Porto Ricans Protested.” ”Porto-Rican,” not far off from Piri Thomas’s “Porty-Rican,” was the sobriquet affixed to la isla in the first half of the 20th century, symbolic of the attempt to Anglicize our identity, and make it easier for enterprising imperialist minds to read the name of their new possession as it appeared on maps and public records. More than 80 yeas before Arizona’s heinous law against Latino being, there was palpable disgust directed against Puerto Rican migrant workers brought in to replace Mexican workers who had fled further north.

“The fact that Arizona was the site of such immigration and labor related controversy in the 1920’s seems all the more relevant today,” comentó Luciano. “What was especially significant to me about the story is the fact that Puerto Ricans protested their mistreatment almost immediately. As much as it was a story of exploitation it was also a story of resistance among Puerto Rican laborers who refused to be taken advantage of.”

El estado de Arizona se ha convertido en un símbolo de la reacción xenofóbica de las fuerzas conservadores en los Estados Unidos contra los imigrantes Latinos, y algunas veces llega a niveles absurdos, como el caso deesta maestra de escuela, que enfrenta discriminación debido a su acento cuando habla inglés. Esta farsa en Arizonza fue replicada recientemente en Alabama, el estado que pasó un proyecto legislativo que es tan oneroso que el mismo Departamento de Justicia  están tratando de bloquear algunas partes de la ley. Pero lo que pasó a Felícita después de abandonar Arizona era hasta más sorprendente.

“In 1935, she married Gonzalo Méndez, a native of Mexico who had naturalized as a U.S. citizen,” writes Luciano in his artist’s statement for the show. Together they ran a small farm in Orange County on land they leased from a Japanese- American family that had been put in an internment camp during World War II. In 1946, they took their children to register in the local elementary school, but their children were denied entry based on their skin color and ethnicity. The Méndez family refused to accept this policy of discrimination and took the school district to court. In what became a landmark case, Méndez v. Westminster would reach the highest courts in California. The Méndez family paid for the lawyer themselves, with money earned from their farm. In 1947, the courts would rule in favor of the Méndezes, and California became the first state in U.S. history to desegregate public schools. It was an important precursor to Brown v. Board of Education (1954), the case that would end the segregation of schools nationwide.”

Lo fascinante de esto es que Méndez vs. Westminster es mencionado mucho por Mexicanos-Americanos como un ejemplo que han tenido una historia de luchar contra el racismo en los Estados Unidos paralelo a la de los Africanos-Americanos. Pero lo que no es tan conocido es el hecho de que los hijos Méndez nacieron de una mamá puertorriqueña. Esto es una manifestación clásica del otro-rriqueño–y una prueba que es casi imposible aislar la escencia de un grupo étnico o una raza.

“I myself am Other Rican,” Luciano explained, born on the island but grew up primarily between Seattle and Miami, and now based in New York. “I’m interested in questioning both the stereotypes that have been placed upon us, as well as those we place upon ourselves.”

Y cuales son ellos? El acento, el baile, la comida, el machismo, la sensualidad, el coco, la felicidad? Alguien me dijo una vez que la música de los paises pobres se hace para levantar la felicidad porque la gente están sufriendo y necesitan olvidar. Pero prohibido olvidar, chacho/a. Lo que me parece que necesitamos ahora es un poco más horizontalidad.

Eso es lo que pasó cuando por primera vez conocí a los líderes estudiantiles Adriana Mulero, René Reyes, y Giovanni Roberto después de una charla en Rutgers Universidad. Los yupis no permitieron business as usual–la entrevista se convirtió en una discusión en donde no había objetos ni sujetos. Era un intercambio de ideas. Y cuando esa noche llegaron al Occupy en el parque Zuccotti y hablaron a la asamblea general, en inglés, se oyó el mensaje de Puerto Rico en la era de globalización:

Porto Rico? Pepper spray, just like New York!

En ese momento, nos ocupamos de ocupación: todos somos otrorriqueños. Lo “otro” es lo que nos hace lo mismo. Creo que eso es lo que estaba planteando José Luis González en “La Noche que Volvimos a Ser Gente,” allí en los rufos de Martorell, que se pueden ver también en la galería del Barrio. Somos una gente que pueden aprovechar de las estrellas cuando se va la supuesta luz.

“Having the bike in the window was deliberate and something I appealed for,” said Luciano. “It’s a beautiful shiny bike from the outside, and directly reflects the bike culture of El Barrio. I want it to invite the community to come inside and see more.”

Latinos, Repórtense

Yo tuve una amiga que cuando vivía en Puerto Rico le pregunté, “¿te consideras una Latina?” y dijo, “no, que va. yo? no. Yo soy puerrrrtorriqueña.”  Pero después cuando se mudó a Nueva York se puso muy orgullosa de ser Latina. Y así es por la mayor parte con nosotros, los supuestamente Latinos del Norte, y me imagino que es porque por un lado sentimos como una solidaridad más amplia con hispanoparlantes y por el otro los medios no nos deja olvidar que sí, somos Latinos, carajo.

Sometimes it can be difficult to embrace the Latino thing because that quest for common ground with the rest of our brothers and sisters can constitute a rather insipid watering down of our individual cultures. In fact sometimes I think that Latino, the feeling, the attitude, the identity has become transformed from algo que refleja el corazón de donde venimos into a way of being, or state of mind that involves “Latinos” constantly explaining how confusing it is to deal with our Americanization and, our frankly eroding Spanish skill set.

Entonces cuando sale un proyecto como “The Latino List,” que se estrena al fín de Septiembre en HBO (Hispanic Broadcasting Opportunity), provoca una curiosidad intensa sobre que puede ser la última versión de lo Latino. Por una hora, la pantalla pequeña se llenará con imágenes y voces de nuestra gente, hablando de sus vidas, explicando lo rico de tener una conexión con el misterio de ser distinto, diferente.

              Conceptually, “The Latino List” is an alternate version of “The Blacklist,” which appeared on HBO in 2008, the product of a collaboration between photographer Timothy Greenfield-Saunders and African-American ex-New York Times film critic Elvis Mitchell. The idea is, Greenfield Saunders brings famous African Americans to a studio and takes portraits of them, and at the same time they are interviewed for a documentary, which makes it feel like you are sitting in the room while the portraits are being taken. Mitchell appears here and there on “The Blacklist” with his imposing set of dreadlocks and engaging manner.

“The Latino List” is directed solely by Greenfield-Saunders and says that it uses interviews conducted by PBS reporter Maria Hinojosa, but she is entirely offscreen and her voice is not heard except at the beginning, when she introduces the documentary. The entire premise of “The Blacklist” is a charged, confrontational atmosphere, where African American figures like Chris Rock and Al Sharpton engage you with the black experience with a degree of intimate revelation. The slogan on the documentary’s website (“An answer to the persistent taint that Western culture has applied to the word “black”) explains how Mitchell wanted to take the idea of the word “blacklist,” which means a list of people whose views and way of being are rejected, and take pride in being an outsider.

La página de “The Latino List” dice que el documental “offers a unique glimpse into the vibrant and burgeoning culture of Hispanic America.” Un unique glimpse na’ ma’. La historia nuestra se presenta más como la historia de un grupo imigrante que quiere ser parte de lo “americano,” no un grupo dinámico y combativo que nunca se asimilará. Sale America Ferrara, empieza hablar de Betty la Fea, no menciona que la novela originó en Colombia, y dijo que lo que lo hizo Ugly Betty tener éxito fue que era una historia de una familia Hispana que eran Hispanos por casualidad, y no era el foco del narrativo.

It’s one of those things many Latinos say. “I don’t want to be known as a Latino writer, I want to be a writer who happens to be Latino.” Porque la polítca de affirmative action ya tiene la genre tan loca que tienen miedo de que si afirman su identidad Latina, el mainstream va a pensar que son un token. Van a pensar que eres un bobo que le dieron trabajo para que pueden decir que pusieron un Latino allí y no son racistas. Alguien que en realidad no tiene talento. Por eso, la estrategia se convierte en insistir que uno no es un “Latino writer” porque un “Latino writer” no es un “writer” verdadero.

Déjame decirte algo. Yo siempre he sido orgulloso de ser un Latino writer y no me van a quitar ese apodo. No voy a dejar que ganen los mainstreamistas.

But you know, America comes off pretty well explaining how embarrassing it was for her to grow up in an Anglo neighborhood in the San Fernando Valley and how she finally became a success. You can tell she was born to play that role, Ugly Betty, en inglés. Much of the Latino List is about success, and the stories the subjects tell about their parents or their neighbors telling them that they have to work their Latino butts off if they expect to become a success, and then almost every single one of them say, you know, they were right, I worked my butt off and I’m a success, and I owe all of my success to them. With a little help from my driving ambition.

Para mi, uno de los cuentos que lucieron lo mejor fue la historia de Anthony Romero, el jefe de la ACLU en Nueva York. Habló del racismo sutil en la gran familia puertorriqueña, y también la dificultad de enfrentar prejuicios contra gays. Pero el cuento de como se evaporó la crítica de su papa sobre su masculinidad en el hospital, en los momentos finales de la vida era algo en que todos podemos identificar.

Did we have to see Gloria Estefan again, with Emilio, and that photo with the Obamas where he looks like Henry Kissinger? Like Pitbull, whose pained nostalgia for Cuba was bookended by stories of reading José Martí poems at a bar and revealing that his mother was a stripper, the Estefans pronounced another classic “Latino” narrative: We were too Anglo for the Hispanics and too Hispanic for the Anglos. The tragic mulatto in-between two cultures story that maybe most of us can’t seem to shake but that doesn’t mean we aren’t trying hard to.

Which brings us to the professional Latino, John Leguizamo. My man has it all down, the Spanish conquest, the Jewish schoolteacher, the hard-knock life in the streets, Bajando Estas Calles Espantosas! Esto sí es lo auténtico. No me importa un carajo que no tiene sangre puertorriqueña. Este muchacho, como Ismael y Kako, está por el libro! He may just be the chingón that Sandra Cisneros claimed to be looking for in her segment. (I loved the way she claimed to forever be a chingnona like we were all supposed to know what that meant.)

Not far behind in this regard is Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor. Before the camera she came alive with a certain charm that can only be found in the projects in Soundview, da Bronx. This was real. She told the story about learning how to dance salsa like it was the true test of being Latino and the image of her floating past Supreme Court justices like it was the Copa on Saturday night was priceless. Y ni mencionó lo del mofongo.

She seemed like the greatest single reason to vote for Obama again. No other Latino/a can claim that.

Como Pasé Mi Verano

En la montaña la internet se cae cada 15 minutos, entonces me sentí suspendido entre el tiempo real y el tiempo surreal. El superintendente de la policia dice que no hay investigación cuando hay investigación. Y después de semanas cuando pensaba que todo estaba perdido, los carritos traicioneros  del Amigo de repente re-aparecieron todos nuevos, luciendo un plástico brillante. Pero no estuve de acuerdo que este milagrito resultó del balancear el presupuesto.

I turned on the televised hearings of media mogul Rupert Murdoch being questioned by Members of Parliament in London at top volume to drown out the coquís, who seem to have built an evangelical church down the street from my house. (Señor, ten piedad.) My favorite part was when Murdoch had a pie thrown in his face by a comedian/activist nicknamed Jonnie Marbles. The emperor-in-chief of right-wing propaganda “news” got off too easy. He should have been forced into a public square to explain how his agenda of tax cuts for the rich and debasement of poor people of color was a root cause of the August riots in London and other English cities.

Marc y J-Lo se separaron. “A mi me importa un carajo,” dijo el loco que se encuentra en la carretera, subiendo y bajando la montaña con un par de Nikes nuevecitos. “Yo siempre era de la opinión que el Puff Daddy era la pareja ideal para ella porque los dos fueron a escuelas superiores católicas en sectores de la clase media en el norte del Bronx y Marc era un títere del Barrio. Ese matrimonio fue orquestrado por los intereses de las grandes corporaciones y no tuvo nada que ver con el amor. Eso fue un merger, nada más, y el pobre Puffy se quedó en los Hamptons pretendiendo que sabía algo de ser colector de arte.”

I found myself hanging around a lot of lawyers who were very passionate about what they were doing. They were very busy filing lawsuits and claiming damages, and they were always careful to set the stage for the big hammer they were about to drop. It was great writing technique. The sections all had numbers, and as the numbers increased, so did the dramatic tension of the story.  After reading through about five of these lawsuits I felt kind of shell-shocked. At lunch one day, one of the lawyers looked me right in the eye and made me very nervous when, after a pregnant pause he said, “In constitutional law, we call that a chilling effect.”

Titi Tata me trajó unas carambolas que acaba de sembrar. Yo nunca he visto esta fruta, y me acordó de lo que dijo la maestra que conocí en el pueblo. “Yo creo que el orgullo que uno tiene de su país tiene que ver con lo que se puede sembrar de la tierra detrás de tu casa,” dijo ella. Una variación de un clásico de Héctor Lavoe y Willie Colón me entró en la cabeza. “Tú no está en na’/ si no sabes sembra’.” Y entonces mi mamá me dijo, “ah pero no es tan fácil, tiene que bregar con los insectos, sabe!”

It was almost midnight when I saw my friend the painter in Rivera Hermanos en la San Sebastián hanging by the bar like he usually does, trickster grin and sombrerito. He looked all around my shoulders and out toward the street where he expected to see her. “Y tú, estás solo?” like it was the first time he’d seen me alone in five years but I looked back like you know that’s not true I’ve been known to find trouble in a back room en un social club de after hours de vez en cuando. “Embustero,” he said, and he knew I wasn’t going to explain. We were being drowned out by this woman who was singing “Ah Ah/O No” like she was Violeta Parra doing a promotional tour for Medalla Lite. Suddenly this group of middle-aged ravers with fire in their eyes start a conga line and the whole place is shouting “Yo Soy Boricua! Pa Que tú lo Sepa!” And then, like a professional journalist, I passed out.

Tres días después, la vecina del lado tocó en la puerta y nos dice que se encontró con una fantasma mientras estaba limpiando la casa de alguien en el pueblo ya abajo.

La vió parada en la plena sala vestida en un traje que siempre llevaba. “Pero que tú haces aquí, tú estás muerta!” le dijo al fantasma, aterrorizada, y salió corriendo.

Yo no me paso viendo películas de suspenso pero a mi me afectará cabrón, pensé.

“Yo creo que yo vi uno también,” le dije. “Estaba en el lobby del Colegio de Abogados.”

Suspension of Disbelief

There we were, watching the situation room, where the inner circle of the United States’ executive branch and military command was watching the virtual assassination of someone deemed eligible for assassination because he is technically not a leader of a “state” and because “we” said so. We were watching this days after we watched the President release his birth certificate–the object of the most popular of the many conspiracy theories vying to rise to the top of the Conspiracy Theory Charts–and then, at a banquet meant to celebrate political journalists but filled with entertainment celebrities he humiliated a virtual presidential candidate who was actually a real estate developer whose main source of income was probably from being the host of a “reality” show called The Apprentice.

These were startling coincidences that required what Hollywood used to (and still does) call “suspension of disbelief.” Its roots go back to Romantic poets trying to create a space for enlightened readers to accept or even believe supernatural narratives. What happened at the centers of the corridors of power in the Western world (the Situation Room, not “the Situation“) shows how far we have traveled from the Age of Enlightenment.

By pulling the trigger on this search and destroy spectacle Obama has invited a flood of new conspiracy theories about whether or not the act actually happened, whether or not there was a firefight, which one of his wives or daughters had witnessed the act, whether the original motive was death and not capture, whether the burial at sea was an honest attempt to honor Islamic beliefs or an excuse for not producing the body, habeus corpus, hay cuerpo? es lo que preguntan. 

Have we entered the age of the conspiracy theory as the dominant driver of political discourse? It’s possible to conceive that they aren’t conspiracy theories at all, but just truths suppressed by the “ruling class” to mask the contradictions of exercising political power. They offer a narrative convergence between the extremes of right and the left, and while it can be reassuring to dismiss them, it’s possible to feel like you’re looking the other way, ignoring uncomfortable truths if you don’t consider them.

Richard Hofstader saw this all coming in 1964 with his essay “The Paranoid Style in American Politics.” In it, he ties together McCarthysim, anti-Masonism, anti-Catholicism, and Populism as willful participants in creating all-powerful menaces and threats to the Real America. It was the manifestation of a virulent streak of Puritan paranoia. Following the New Deal, the modern era of paranoid conspiracy theorists began isolating the income tax structure, the idea that President Eisenhower was connected to the Communist Party, and the UN as targets of their conspiracy theories. It doesn’t take much of a stretch to connect the dots with the Tea Party and birtherism. Even a young Cuban-American, has joined the fray by echoing alarms about a conspiracy by the richest people in the world to enforce population control (no wonderCathie Black made that ill-conceived comment).

This hegemony of conspiracy theory discourse is the climactic phase of a crisis in authenticity. It is symptomatic of an inability to get meaning from a shared narrative, which is the source of the construction of our identity. So it’s an identity crisis, too, like when media commentators agree that more “Americans” trust comedy shows like Jon Stewart’s “The Daily Show” to be more truthful about the news than the mainstream media. And when both Stewart and anti-reality reality show queen Sarah Palin both call for the release of the Bin Laden death photos. Have you re-tweeted this yet?

As actors in the marginalized world,  we often look to the center, which is no longer the center of commodity production, but the center of media production, to set the stage. The location and authenticity of the Bin Laden cuerpo is just as much the subject of debate as what Ana Cacho told El Nuevo Día and El Vocero today, the bochinche speculation about what family member of what powerful family was in the room with Lorenzo and how La Comay can actually drive a virtual protest rally like a reality show truck through la Ponce de León just days after real students were arrested at the real University for real political and economic reasons.

The truth is as Puerto/Diaspo-Ricans we had figured this out thirty years ago when we were dancing to “Plástico,” the most important song on Willie Colón/Rubén Blades’s Siembra (not “Pedro Navaja”). Paraphrasing: Los que vendieron su razón de ser vivían en un mundo de pura ilusión. Se ven las caras, pero nunca el corazón. In a sense it wasn’t really that big a revelation because everyone from Rafael Hernández to Arsenio Rodríguez and Maelo had been telling us the same thing for years, it’s just that the message needed to be reinforced in the center of media production at the dawn of the postmodern age.

I was thinking about this while chatting with Frances Negrón Muntaner in a café across the street from Columbia University, where she is the director of the Center for the Study of Ethnicity and Race. While her most recent book–None of the Above: Puerto Ricans in the Global Era–a collection of essays by scholarly contributors that she edited–does point out that our consumer identities help to mitigate the angst of our colonial identity, the central message is clear. “Boricua everyday practice is constituted less by an overwhelming acceptance of colonial impositions than by an impressive capacity to circumvent or re-signify the state laws.”

The clearly farcical aspects of Puerto Rico’s colonial free association and its citizens’ pseudo-citizenship has made “suspension of disbelief” irrelevant for us, and freed us to move on to other things. The crisis of authenticity does not afflict us–it’s just another tiresome display of gringería. The New World Order is nothing new, and as Frances and I discussed everything from Arturo Schomburg’s Masonic leanings to the reasons for the mixed reaction to the Radical Statehood Manifesto, Osama bin Laden didn’t come up once.

Calma pueblo, whatever. We know that Via Verde is neither “green” nor “natural” and our Iphones cannot be traced because there aren’t enough cell phone towers in El Yunque to trace us (this is because of the extra-terrestrials that have a base there). No matter how many times you see Tomás Rivera Schatz en la televisión,  por aquí todavía se ven las caras y el corazón.

La Nación Imaginaria

Fort Apache Band at FB Lounge

Podía haber sido que me encontré en La Fonda Boricua Lounge–el semi-famoso Latin jazz antro del Barrio de Nueva York-para olvidarme de algo. Pero no fue así. Cuando los hermanos Andy y Jerry González, el corazón del conjunto llamado Fort Apache, se botaron interpretando el “Nefertiti” de Miles, y quizas más importante, el “Evidence” de Monk, se puso claro que esta noche no era una para olvidar, sino para revivir la historia, y re-hacerla a la misma vez.

Andy is always the bass, the interpolator between Barretto-Palmieri and bebop, cool, walking bass, and Jerry is two people at once. Jerry is the height of modernist blues, the cool jazz superstructure breathing through the flugel horn like someone at the midpoint between eternal life and slow death, like Miles at Birdland, only Birdland was in Spanish Harlem, and when he cradles the congas it’s because the rumba guaguancó needed to be imported from La Habana by way of New Orleans and all the way up the Mississippi to 106th Street, and the express train was not running–it never does on weekends.

Hasta acá llegó la nación imaginaria de Puerto Rico.

Typical Nuyorican, is what my friends from la isla sometimes say when they don’t understand why so much of our nation, speaking English and fighting with the marginalization of exile into El Barrio and El Bronx, wave those flags en la parada puertorriqueña–which should be el desfile puertorriqueño–gritando yes I’m proud y que?

Just last week Felipe Luciano–once a leader of the Young Lords, who (without Felipe’s approval) made that naive attempt in 1971 to bring independence to the island while trying to be Marxist-Leninist Maoist bugaloo salseros bilingues and redefining hybrid Latino identity in the middle of a “revolution”–had sent out an open letter asking for new ways to restore solidarity in nuestra nación imaginaria:

PUERTO RICO!  Let’s be perfectly frank with each other.  We’re not getting along. Most of the time we live in myopic isolation regardless of how many times we visit each other.

For the most part, the message reads like a letter to an estranged family member. He touches on the misunderstandings over language, the brain drain, the elitism of the professional classes. He employs the term AmeRican (probably first used by Nuyorican poet Tato Laviera) to acknowledge that the diaspora has spread far beyond Nueva York. Finally, he sounds this alarm:

We’re at a crossroads now. AmeRican children are not identifying with the island as much, and, we, here, are fighting a last ditch battle to keep them from falling into the abyss of white, corporate American values or the opposite, the lack of purpose or committment to family and community associated with a permanent, marginalized underclass.

It would be wonderful if we could do this together. But, we see ourselves as distant cousins, friendly, but, hardly close or intimate.  And it’s time, we let you, on the island, know that.

I called Angelo Falcón, the head of an organization called the National Institute for Latino Policy (formerly the National Institute for Puerto Rican Policy), to ask him about this. He said that when he started publishing findings from the census that the majority of Puerto Ricans lived outside the island, he got the same kind of resistance from academics as when he published figures that whites were no longer the majority population in New York. He felt that institutional relationships between mainland Puerto Ricans and island Puerto Ricans took a turn for the worse when Rafael Hernández Colón’s Department of Puerto Rican Affairs was abandoned for Pedro Roselló’s “lobbying operation” the Puerto Rican Federal Affairs Administration.

Falcón thinks that what is lacking is an institutional commitment to encourage different aspects of political, cultural, and economic interaction to happen.

In his message, Luciano proposes a “Puerto Rican Fresh Air Fund, that plucks kids from the streets of New York, every summer, and plants them in the campos of the island,” as well as bringing children from Puerto Rico to live with families who are  ”politically, culturally and spiritually active in their communities.” He also proposes the development of a museum that celebrates the diaspora, as well as la herencia africana, and a yearly conference that brings thinkers and activists from the island and the mainland together.

(Artist: Daniel Behar)

An art show called “Sorta Rican” at Taller Boricua, a few blocks down from La Fonda Boricua, reminded me of the last time there was a sustained feeling of interaction between the diaspora y la isla. Vieques was the kind of issue that got everybody together–it created a dialog between la poeta Mariposa (“Yo no nací en Puerto Rico; Puerto Rico nació en mi”) y el poeta Gallego (“Yo no nací en Nueva York; Nueva York nació en mi”). The Nuyorican Café thrived in Nueva York y San Juan, reggaetón linked Tego and 50 (Cent), and the Yankees were no longer Yanquis.  Many would agree that Viento de Agua did their best playing in the Bronx and Miguel Zenón his best thinking in Washington Heights.

Adál Maldonado, a visual artist who recently moved back to la isla after living in New York or California for most of his life, and who has an exhibition that just opened at Museo de Arte de Puerto Rico, is still trying to figure out why there is even una discusión.

We are so multi-dimenesional as a group that many sources haven’t even begun to be explored and people are hung up on a Puerto Rican Canon. I personally don’t get it, the Canon should be based on the multiplicity of cultural, gender, social and political experiences available to us within our own culture.

Que hacer? Luciano has a problem with the most popular phrase in Puerto Rico: Eso es así. “It is not that way,” he insists “If we accept a secular pragmatism we will lose the magic and essence of who we are. We were under attack. We saw the blood on the street. We fought back.”

Recently, NYU and the Julia de Burgos cultural center in El Barrio showed support for the striking UPR students. They sure fought back. Falcón expressed surprise about Nueva York’s fascination with issues outside of the immediate challenges we face here. But while there is every bit of solidarity with the strike’s basic issues, the inflammatory nature of the Fortuño/NPP repression of the strikers may have struck a chord with those of us who remember names like Diallo and Giuliani. With those of us who see the unfettered violence in word and deed that characterizes the hard Republican right. The kind of politics that makes us wonder why anyone on the island would want to become a part of what the increasingly undemocratic United States calls “America.”

Luis Gutiérrez wondered aloud on the floor of the U.S. Congress if the statehood party in Puerto Rico had any conception of American democracy. The NPP questioned how un extranjero would dare to say this. Gutiérrez insisted he wouldn’t be silenced. It seems clear that most people en la isla agree with the Representative from Illinois.

But, in the end, as Luciano admits (and we all know) Spanish is the only way to a Puerto Rican heart.

Yo casi ni pienso en español. Yo lo busco en mi alma, y a veces lo encuentro. Está lleno de pena y nostalgia, música y alegría. A veces de repente me salen disparates que se interpetan como gestiones. No se puede reducir la naturaleza de la isla a algunas palabras, algunos sentimientos. Pero cuando oigo el canto de Andy y Jerry, el ritmo me cuenta que cultura es textura y la vida es fricción. Que sigue el diálogo.

(Artist: Charles Beronio)

Fear and Loathing in San Juan

A few weeks ago, Johnny Depp gave a press conference during a junket for his new film Rango, during which he announced that he was no longer in the running to play Pancho Villa in Serbian director Emir Kusturica’s upcoming film about the Mexican revolutionary. “I feel like [he] should be played by a Mexican and not some mutt from Kentucky,” he was quoted as saying. The competition to play Villa (opposite the Lebanese Mexican Salma Hayek) is now said to be between a Mexican actor, Gael García Bernal, and a Puerto Rican, Benicio Del Toro, both of whom have starred previously as the Argentine revolutionary Che Guevara.

The mutt reference being to various reports of his ethnicity–which includes Irish, German, French, and Cherokee–and not to his character in Rango, described in press materials as “an ordinary chamaelon.” By alluding to his mongrelization, Depp reveals why Latino roles have often been played by “American” actors in films ranging fromWest Side Story to Scarface.

In 1939, Yiddish theater actor Paul Muni played Benito Juárez and 13 years later, Marlon Brando once played Emiliano Zapata. Natalie Wood, of Russian extraction, persists in the memory of many deluded moviegoers as the symbol of virtuous, youthful Nuyorican womanhood. Critics have called this regressive casting phenomenon “brownface” (referring to the now-banished blackface) but sometimes it’s Mediterranean-face, olive-face, Asian-face, and even Afro-Latino-face, in the case of the 2000 Shaftremake, where African-American Jeffrey Wright plays Peoples Hernandez, a Dominican drug lord.

Still, if Depp is to be commended for stepping aside in favor of Gael or Benicio, I’m wondering how much influence, if at all, he had in rehabilitating the screenplay for Hunter S. Thompson’s novel The Rum Diary. It’s a novel that is quite frankly filled with so much invective toward Puerto Ricans that it seems to be a dry run for the Fear and Loathing he experienced in Las Vegas. (Those experiences, which became a classic narrative of both alternative journalism and countercultural drug use, were made into a movie in 1998 starring Depp as Thompson and Del Toro as Oscar “Zeta” Acosta, a Mexican-American civil rights lawyer who eventually sued Thompson over who invented the term “gonzo” journalism. The settlement of that suit included the publication of two books written by Acosta.)

To say that Thompson’s prose is condescending is giving him credit. From the start, he is tormented by a faceless brigade of Puerto Rican passengers on the plane to San Juan, who stand between him and his object of desire, a petite blonde traveling alone. When not referring to the moneyed class, which is seen as shifty and decadent, his favorite word for typical isleños is “the natives,” as in loud drunks and killers of small animals.  In Old San Juan, demonstrators in front of the offices of his newspaper (modeled on the old San Juan Star) are a “dirty mob.” Puerto Ricans migrating to New York to make way for the Showcase of the Caribbean economy (the last spurt of Operation Bootstrap) are “naive and ignorant–they hadn’t read the travel brochures and the rum advertisements, they knew nothing of The Boom.”

In San Juan: Memoir of a City, Edgardo Rodríguez Juliá offers an explanation for Thompson’s Fear and Loathing. The budding gonzo journalist and his crew of misfit “gringo” journalists acted “like colonists in their scorn of a place they had come to because they were second-class citizens in their own countries.” So the turmoil Thompson felt over not “fitting in” (which was brilliantly channeled later on in his stunning diatribes against the repression of the counterculture and the ascendency of Republican conservatism) was turned against an easy target, a subjugated, colonized people.

How will Depp, who plays Thompson’s alter ego Paul Kemp in the screen adaptation, handle this? In a conversation I had with Del Toro in 1998, while promoting Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, he assured me that he, Thompson and Depp were friends, that Thompson, who died in 2005, would call him and say things like “You’re one of those New Age actors with a Rio Piedras mentality.”

The Rum Diary, whose release date is still not set, was filmed in Puerto Rico with some benefit from tax incentives that predated the Fortuño administration, have been recently increased. According to the Puerto Rico Film Commission, films made in Puerto Rico in 2009 and 2010 generated $188 million economic activity, and tens of thousands of (temporary) jobs. Some edgy independent films have taken advantage of this–Soderbergh’s Che biopic; The Men Who State at Goats, a comedy about a CIA program for psychic intelligence starring George Clooney; Del Toro’s venture as a producer Maldeamores. And there’s been mind-numbing stuff like The Losers, Fast Five, and, ironically Dirty Dancing 2: Havana Nights. It’s nice to see new projects like Sonia Fritz’s America get a push but I’m not sure if this constitutes something resembling the birth of a Puerto Rican National Cinema.

It’s no surprise that Fortuño was beaming when Jennifer Lopez and Marc Anthony, who are thinking of building a studio complex on the island, made a recent appearance promoting the new incentive. With less tax revenue, Puerto Rico’s government budget would shrink and large corporations would make most of the profit generated by the films. With the new law expanding the law to TV programs and documentaries, perhaps the best way to take advantage of this is to pitch a reality show or documentary about the thousands of government job layoffs and the UPR student strike’s attempt to shed light on passing on costs to students and the government’s privatization agenda. This way a filmmaker would get a tax break to make a film about why we shouldn’t be giving tax breaks to Hollywood production companies and other multinational conglomerates.

Any Miguel Moores in the house?

Narcissus and the Internet Revolution

Twenty years ago Brazilian cantautor Caetano Veloso wrote a song called “Santa Clara, Padroeira de Televisao” in which he prays to Santa Clara, the Patron Saint of Television, that “Video be a pool where Narcissus/Shall be a god who will also know how to resurrect.”

For many years, since the days that television transmitted images of turmoil in Vietnam, Paris, Mexico City, Newark, and Los Angeles, it seems that Pablo Pueblo, Pedro Pedreiro, has been in a narc-oleptic in a dream state, unable to Act Up, waiting for the next organizing tool–la internet que despierta.

And so, in Egipto, the emergence of cyber-pragmatism as a central element in the downfall of a U.S.-backed dictator in the Middle East has become a defining discourse. Like it or not, the internet revolution has set off a storm of analysis that seems to pit younger against older generaciones to debate the merits of inherently narcissistic capitalist tools like Facebook and Twitter as political organizers.

On the surface, the skepticism of writers like Frank Rich and Malcolm Gladwell is well-founded. The material conditions of oppression, which had more to do with high-unemployment, inflation of commodity prices, and the deadening atmosphere of 30 years of dictatorship were undeniably the basis for the Egyptian Insurrection.  When Gladwell casts doubt on social networking’s ability to sustain “high-risk” activism, he seems to have a point.

Consider, for instance, the young people chosen by the U.S. media and the forbidden news network Al Jazeera as the “heroes” of the Egyptian Insurrection. Wael Ghonim, the marketing director for Google in North Africa and the Middle East, who started a Facebook page called “We Are All Khaled Said,” in honor of a martyred youth who protested police brutality, has been widely lionized as “the face of the Egypt revolt,” and a casual google news search reveals upwards of 1700 mentions of him in current news stories. But when you search for Ahmed Maher, who co-founded the equally important April 6 Youth Movement, named after a labor strike in an industrial Egyptian town, you get about 30 stories.

When Ghonim, whose company took a year to figure out it shouldn’t cooperate with the Chinese government censorship before it finally pulled out, was asked for his response to Mubarak’s departure, he said, “I want to meet [Facebook founder] Mark Zuckerberg one day and thank him.” When Maher was asked about the use of Facebook and other social networking sites in Egypt, he said:

“We have a considerable influence on Egyptian and foreign media as well as the capacity to disseminate information rapidly using the internet, and through some independent media sources that publish our news continuously.  But we need to reach other groups of people who do not use the internet or Twitter or Facebook, including members of the old generation as well as many young people.  We need to interact directly with these individuals in clubs, universities and neighborhoods. It is important to note that reaching these people is relatively expensive in comparison to the low cost of using the internet, where we can write articles and publish blogs and videos that rapidly influence the thinking of many young people and motivate them to participate in our movement.  Reaching out to populations that do not use the internet requires going directly to the streets, which is expensive and could lead to the arrest or torture of some of our members. However, we are tying hard to develop innovative strategies in accordance with the principles of non-violent change.”

Maher was making reference to the “high-risk activism” Gladwell speaks of. It’s also more “expensive,” an interesting observation, almost bringing to mind the difference between traditional television programming (expensive) and reality shows (inexpensive). So cyber pragmatism has the advantage of avoiding arrest and being cost-effective. But what about the rolling-up-your-sleeves-and getting your-cliched-fingernails-dirty work to be done now that the emperor has fled? Note that both leaders cited here are “young,” and although they have both used Facebook and Twitter, they seem to assign different levels of importance to them.

Which brings us back to Narcissus, and the messages we can receive when we stare into the reflective pool of the internet revolution. Whether it is Wikileaks, and the influence it had on Tunisia, which also affects Egypt, or the translation of the comic book Martin Luther King and the Montgomery Story into Arabic by Dalla Ziada, yet another Egyptian cyber-activist, or video of Serbian activist instruction in nonviolent demonstration techniques, there is a flood of information on the internet that is allowing people to stare long enough to see themselves, and their own situations more clearly.

Inevitably, gazing into cyberspace is a narcissistic act, but what if that moment allowed us to see Martin Luther King speaking in Arabic, or allowed us to see the crumpled bodies, of striking UPR students, writhing in handcuffs on the ground, as our own? Why is it that–just two years after his rigged re-election–when we think of the mayor of New York, he is so quickly and easily transmuted into Hosni Mubarak? While it is true there are strong currents manipulating what we see in the pool, we must continue to trust in our ability to read around the filter and get to the truth, which has always been there, plain for all to see. And hope our bodies can catch up to our vision.

Discurso Civil and the End Times

When I landed at Luis Muñoz Marín Airport at around 9 PM on noche buena I got an email from a friend in New York that read: “The earth shook from Rincón to Fajardo on Crhrismas Eve in Puerto Rico. No casualties reported thus far. Happy Holiday.” It seemed like no one waiting at the baggage carousel even had an idea. Later that evening, when my mother described being so afraid she scooted under the dinner table, it didn’t seem real.

An earthquake in the middle of las navidades in Puerto Rico is bound to cause some serious speculation about  What Is to Become of Us. The dawn of the new millennium came and went over 10 years ago, but it still has people un poco nervioso. Maybe you remember La Comay’s infantile titteringabout the terremoto in May, where she flipped over a piece of paper that gave the time, 1:16, so that it read 91:1. Even my mother’s cousin, a born-again zealot, who came to the hospital with me to visit my father, who was in intensive care, was warning everyone (the nurse in the ICU, the parking lot attendant, anyone I introduced him to),  ”Acuérdate que El Señor viene pronto!”

I think I first became aware of this millennial fever when a Manhattan cab driver who dodged the Vietnam War draft waxed poetic about how Zbignew Bresinski started the muhajadeen during the Jimmy Carter administration to get the godless Russians out of Afghanistan. It always goes back to the Middle East, doesn’t it? I used to think that El Señor would probably show up there first, giving me a few hours to confess my sins before he got to this side of the Atlantic.

Scripture tells us that there is evil in the world, and that terrible things happen for reasons that defy human understanding. In the words of Job, “When I looked for light, then came darkness.” Bad things happen, and we have to guard against simple explanations in the aftermath.

–Barack Obama, speaking in Arizona at a ceremony honoring those wounded in Tucson, Arizona on January 8.

But how inexplicable was this event? Haven’t we just lived through a series of mass shootings on college campuses and workplaces carried out by young people with pathological disorders and disgruntled workers at the end of their rope? Didn’t Congress let the Federal Assault Weapons Ban expire during the Bush administration in 2004? Wasn’t “Call of Duty: Black Ops” the top-selling video game in the US last year, selling over 12 million copies in two months?

Once again, Obama calls for “civil discourse”:

…What we cannot do is use this tragedy as one more occasion to turn on each other…Rather than pointing fingers or assigning blame, let’s use this occasion to expand our moral imaginations, to listen to each other more carefully, to sharpen our instincts for empathy and remind ourselves of all the ways that our hopes and dreams are bound together.

But besides perhaps alluding to Sarah Palin’s grotesque “blood libel” video, the President’s comments seem more directed toward legitimate criticism of the incendiary rhetoric used by the right wing of the Republican Party, and not as much the “conservative” interpretation of the Second Amendment that allows someones like the Tucson shooter to buy a semi-automatic weapon almost as easily as a cell phone.

The use of violence and intimidation by the hard right wing of the Republican Party, at least in its current manifestation goes back to a “riot” in Miami over a ballot recount in the election dispute that got Bush wrongly installed in the White House as the millennium turned. Sharon Angle, Tea Party candidate for governor of Nevada in 2010, suggested that the American people bring down “an out of control Congress” with “Second Amendment remedies.” It is the only form of “negotiation” currently being used by the government of Luis Fortuño.

The Tucson shooter is probably best described as someone with very deep psychological problems, and his political logic is twisted and in many ways irrelevant to the crime he committed. But he is a product of a time where real physical violence and a more subtle form of psychological violence takes a daily toll on our lives. Despite his short-lived passion for the music of Charlie Parker, he became, asthis New York Times profile theorizes, “an echo chamber for stray ideas, amplifying, for example, certain grandiose tenets of a number of extremist right-wing groups — including the need for a new money system and the government’s mind-manipulation of the masses through language.”

The idea that language is being re-shaped by some hegemonic force or that the supremacy of the U.S. dollar is in doubt is occasionally used by the left as a critique of tangible crises, not as a call to violence. These crises reveal that problems of inequality in “American” democracy are becoming so glaring as to provoke a deterioration in society in general and “civil” discourse in particular. The result is increasing authoritarianism, and more talk about coincidence (one of the victims of the shooting, a 9-year-old girl, was born on September 11, 2001) and El Señor.

In the hallway outside of Intensivo a woman holding a stuffed doll was waiting for her grandmother to be moved out to a regular room in the hospital, like my father would a few days later. She had that look on her face, and it wasn’t just about her mother. “Con todo lo que está pasando, sabe, y el terremoto…” “Estamos en tiempos difíciles,” I said.

“Eso es así,” she said.

Páginas en Blanco

The Wikileaks phenomenon is remarkable because it seems to overtake whatever passes for “the discourse” (el discurso) and explodes from within any notion of a temporal news cycle, illuminating a hidden speech that we have always known exists, but could only rely on paranoia to imagine. The sheer volume of the documents cause revelations to burst in a strange, unpredictable rhythm, like the pyrotechnics of a Fourth of July fireworks show observed from a Spanish Harlem rooftop. Los Saudis son los que más apoyan a grupos como Al Qaeda? Why are we in Afghanistan, then? But you knew that. And what’s this about Cristina Kirschner being stressed out?

If Facebook revealed the hopelessly adolescent character of the early 21st century, then the Wikileaks cables seem to paint a picture of a world of competing high school gangs mired in a kind of toxic gossip death match, with the U.S. leading the way in trying to imbue it with a “moral” yet “pragmatic” clarity.
But the scariest thing about all this is how we have all become writers now–spies, generals, diplomats, schoolteachers, roqueros, cocolos–and permanent records of thoughts and opinions we may have wanted to reserve in private are escaping wildly all over the Internet. Todo el mundo ahora sabe que tu crees que tu vecino es un comemierda y tiene una chilla y tambien sabemos el horario de cuando y adonde se encuentren.
The Wikileaks documents are dangerous gossip some times, and others full-fledged indictments of the kind of corrupt and controlling foreign policy that the U.S. and other countries engage in, clearly out of touch with the interests of “the people.” The fact that commentators as “diverse” as Bill O’Reilly and Hillary Clinton have strongly denounced the release of the material show how liberating and subversive the documents are.

There have even been reports of an email sent out to students of Columbia University’s School of International and Public Affairs giving this advice to students thinking of applying for jobs in the federal government:

“DO NOT post links to these documents nor make comments on social media sites such as Facebook or through Twitter. Engaging in these activities would call into question your ability to deal with confidential information, which is part of most positions with the federal government.”

The leaked documents are on the surface an exposure of “secrets,” but how secret are they to those who don’t control the discourse? Does their cynical nature prove, finally, how extremely flawed the projects of “exporting democracy,” or “identifying and containing nuclear threats” are? By being able to examine this hidden, inner voice of “the powers that be” that directs traffic behind an increasingly fraying media curtain, we might be able to finally confront their motives and goals.

But consider that this may be a runaway freight train that wants to be caught. The amount of information is so massive that it may be forgotten before it is sufficiently absorbed and analyzed. This already seemed to happen after the first bonanza of Wikileak offerings. Most importantly, while we can see a “dark side” in detail, it’s still just a spectacle of slightly embarrassed hegemonic power. It’s still up to us to fill the páginas en blanco that are our history, that are the world’s history.

Feliz Reyes, y’all.

Claro Que Es Hazy

Esta es una meditación sobre como nos ven y como, en una manera, estamos.

Two recent headlines from two very different newspapers caught my attention recently, y como casi nunca salimos en titulares por acá (outside of the usual sports, narcotrafficking, or birth certificate stories) no pude resistir contemplarlas.

When The New York Times, the nation’s preeminent “liberal” news organ, runs a story with the headline “Report Shows Plight of Puerto Rican Youth,” nuestra comunidad nuyorriqueña tiene varias opciones en como reaccionar. First, there’s the shock of recognition (“They’re talking about us!), then almost como una nostagia (Isn’t this why they started the Young Lords, anyway?), and finally, a kind of angry resignation.

The shocking, stark picture painted is not necessarily negative for Latinos, la minoría más grande de los estados unidos, it’s a scary revelation about el fenómeno Boricua. Comparado a otros grupos Latinos en la ciudad más chévere del mundo, somos los que más sufren:

Roughly 17 percent of young Puerto Rican men were not in school, employed or looking for work, compared with 9 percent of Dominicans and 8 percent of Mexicans. Of those Latinos born in the United States, only 55 percent of Puerto Rican youth were enrolled in school, compared with 68 percent of Dominicans and 67 percent of Mexicans. Regardless of birthplace, about 33 percent of Puerto Rican families lived below the poverty line, compared with 29 percent of Dominicans and 27 percent of Mexicans.

En este momento estoy enseñando una clase en Hunter College, parte de la universidad de la ciudad de Nueva York, sobre estudios puertorriqueños. Y te puedo decir que casi 50% de los estudiantes no son puertorriqueños. Son ecuatorianos, afro-americanos, jamaicanos, colombianos, irlandeses, judíos, chinos, y por supuesto, dominicanos. So week after week I introduce them to El Grito de Lares, La carreta, Manos a la obra, Down These Mean Streets…I even show them “La Operación,” with its salsa commercials about la píldora and its grisly scenes of tubal mutilation, and they gasp and are amazed by todo lo que ha soportado el pueblo puertorriqueño, y allí se queda. En los textos, y los museos, como esta obra de Antonio Martorell sobre La Guagua Area en El Museo del Barrio:

En El Barrio, y siguen empujándonos hacia el Norte para el Bronx y beyond, esta realidad del tiempo suspendido se queda en nuestros huesos, the Boricua body bearing the permanent state of poverty made so famous by the Daniel Moynihan apologists for the failure of industrial capitalism. Lo claro es que the concentration of capital and the subsequent hegemony of the financial sector has its flip side, and it is us.

I wondered why The New York Times focused on the plight of Nuyoricans when there were so many angles one could take on this report, which has the hopeful, “pa’lante”-ish splash-text, almost like an advertising teaser: “NEW YORK CITY’S FUTURE LOOKS LATINO.” (The actual title is “Latino Youth in New York City: School, Work, and Income Trends for New York’s Largest Group of Young People.”) El futuro es tan brillante que nos tenemos que poner los lentes oscuros.

Perhaps the old-school liberals at the Times had a bout of nostalgia as well for the good old days, when men were men, Puerto Ricans were poor, and there was revolution in the air. This ancient history doesn’t seem to be relevant for other Latino groups, who have an “entrepreneurial motivation” that Boricuas “may not have anymore,” because, as Angelo Falcón says, “they’ve been, ironically, Americanized.”

While Falcón is referring to a multi-layered Americanization process, i.e., identifying with the African-American struggle, an unwillingness to work for less than minimum wage, a growing cynicism about the “American dream,” there is another kind of Americanization evident in an article that appeared recently in The Washington Times, a Rupert Murdoch-owned vessel for right-wing conservative free marketeers.

“Puerto Rico’s Hazy Identity” is yet another refashioning of a classic Americanizing narrative about Puerto Rico. Taking its cue from comedian Larry David’s comment, “What Is Puerto Rico, anyway?” the article speaks in a language Americans outside of the liberal elite feel comfortable with. The most obvious answer to the question is, of course, “it’s a colony.” But in the language of the middle American, it’s “technically a Commonwealth.” Even more sinister, it is a place that Apple snubbed by refusing to send free cases to rectify problems with the release of IPhone 4. In a nutshell, esto es Puerto Rico:

Puerto Rico has been under U.S. jurisdiction since 1898, and its people have been citizens since 1917. The island is home to 150,000 military veterans, and three-quarters of its National Guard troops have been deployed overseas since the Sept. 11 attacks. The island shuts down and shoots off fireworks on the Fourth of July.

Yet Puerto Ricans can’t vote for president, and their representative in Congress can’t vote, either. They pay Social Security and Medicare payroll taxes but not federal income tax. (They pay Puerto Rican income tax instead, so it’s no paradise.) Associated Press considers its reporters in Puerto Rico foreign correspondents.

How quirky. Que situación tan interesante. De repente, llegaron los americanos. Se quedó así. No pagan esto y sí pagan esto. Celebran el 4 de julio. Que carajo es este sitio?

“You got your fast food and your Costco. It’s neither here nor there.”

Face it, ‘mano. It’s hazy.

Hazy como la convergencias y divergenicias de las posiciones de Pierlusi y Fortuño, hazy como la ley para importar trabajadores para la cosecha del café, hazy como la conección entre Jack Abramhoff, Ralph Reed, Grover Norquist, y Luis Fortuño.

Hazy como el hecho que la victoria Republicana el martes va a poner en peligro las reformas de salud de Obama, bien significativa para Fortuño, y tambien en peligro el proyecto del plebiscito, bien importante para Fortuño.

So what is really important for El Gobernador? Probably making sure that Marco Rubio got elected. That much seems clear.

El Negocio de la Comunidad

Saludos desde Nuyorico, el capital del diaspora puertorriqueño dónde vivimos la crisis de globalización en plena calle. The unforgiving streets where la lucha continua contra lo que planteamos como “la comunidad.”

Exhibit A: September 25th’s cover story of the Daily News, written by Joanna Molloy, one of the photo-driven tabloid’s long-time gossip columnists.

“Jenny Disses the Block” pregone el titular, criticando la reina de fantasias sexuales Anglo-Americanos por no tener suficiente amor por su neighborhood in the northeast corner of the Boogie-Down Bronx. No matter what you think of her, La Jenny, through her insistence on representing “real” Nuyorican, is one of our most enduring symbols.

Molloy, who says she grew up in the same block, accuses Lopez of never contributing any part of her vast fortune to their alma mater, Holy Family School. Dónde trabajaba su mamá por muchos años.

Qué bonchinche!

It’s true, the fact that Lopez, who apparently is worth “anywhere from $110 million to $260 million,” depending on whether you read Forbes or Fortune magazine, dice Molloy, and hasn’t contributed to her old school is newsworthy.

Pero salir así en la portada, semi-desnuda–is this really necessary? The only thing missing was her famous post-racial posterior!

Just when we are catching our breath from this highly sexualized image of one of our own, Molloy begins a new assault on her lack of authenticity, mentioning an 8-year–old incident in the Bronx while Jennifer apparently dodged autograph seekers while being interviewed by Dianne Sawyer for 60 Minutes:

She didn’t even give autographs to the kids in 2002, when she rolled up in the back of a black Lincoln Navigator.

“She doesn’t represent,” one kid said then.

Aparentemente y alegadamente Jennifer, who sold millions of records by announcing that she was “Jenny From the Block,” una Bronxqueña de reputacion impecable, feels free to “play the race card” to profit on the backs of the little people.

Pero casi escondido en este reporte escandaloso is the inconvenient truth. Jennifer Lopez and her mega-trasero was being used to obfuscate the ambivalence we might feel about an emerging phenomenon: mega-rich philanthropy. As if to say, “well this isn’t so important, but I’ll say it anyway,” Molloy comments:

Hey, I’m not saying Lopez should give $100 million, as Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg is doing with Newark’s schools – and he’s not even from New Jersey!

Okay, so J-Lo, worth anywhere from $110 million – $260 million, whose philanthropy profile is barely investigated on in this piece, is compared to Zuckerberg, worth, according to Forbes magazine, $6.5 billion.That’s at least 30 times as much as Lopez, and possibly 60 times as much. In fact, the money that Zuckerberg donated to Newark public schools could be equal to J-Lo’s entire net wealth. But for him it’s 1/60th of his holdings. Chump change.

So, La Jennifer is compared to someone who is 60 times as wealthy as she, who announced the Newark school donation deal the same week he was 1) named one of the richest people in the world and 2) the subject of a film that is notorious for having a pretty negative view of him.

How much money would go to public schools in the U.S. if people like Zuckerberg, the wealthiest people in the country, were taxed at the same rate they were before the Bush tax cuts? We don’t know that. But we do know that in August, dozens of U.S. billionaires pledged to give at least half their fortunes to charity.

One can argue that the billionaires are donating the money to avoid taxes, but under the current tax laws, which Democrats are too afraid to change even though they got a mandate from the American voter, they hardly seem vulnerable. What the billionaire’s pledge really means is that very wealthy individuals and very wealthy corporations will have the largest voice in creating public policy, not us. And in the long run, that control over public policy has a great potential to create larger and more enduring profit streams.

At least through representative democracy we had the illusion that we were electing public officials who would then use tax dollars to implement policy. Now it’s about very wealthy individuals and corporations evading, for the most part, their fair rate of taxation and taking it upon themselves to shape public policy.

Take education for instance. Last month, unironically premiering in tandem with, Oliver Stone’s Wall Street 2, was Waiting for Superman, a corporate commercial, backed at least philosophically by Bill and Melinda Gates, the authors of the aforementioned “Giving Pledge,” intended as a rhetorical device to convince moviegoers that teacher’s unions, and not public disinvestment, are the reasons for the deterioration of public education. Don’t take my word for it, read this and this and this. I think you can even find a Facebook page for the last one.

“The Giving Pledge,” “Pledge to America,” “pledge” to see Waiting for Superman! [Check it out, the "non-profit" responsible for the "pledge" to see Waiting for Superman is called donorschoose.org. There are some friendly faces here, most notably celebrity liberal hero Stephen Colbert. But the chairman of this non-profit organization is someone called Peter Bloom, managing director of General Atlantic, LLC. You tell me, is this Main Street or Wall Street?]

Have corporate control and its total privatization agenda ever been so transparent? Will anyone notice?

Parece que algunos de la comunidad del Barrio (el famoso vecindario “Spanish Harlem”) si se están dando cuenta. No se sabe por seguro cual es el motivo pero el EDC (Economic Development Corporation) de Nueva York has begun a process to take control of a space in a place called The Julia de Burgos Cultural Center (“La Julia,” como se refiere en la calle) currently used by an organization known as Taller Boricua. El Taller was founded by activists like the current directors, Fernando Salicrup and Marcos Dimas, and the group houses art galleries, discussions, and more recently, to offset declining revenue, a weekly baile llamado “Salsa Wednesdays.”

According to Juan González, Nuyorico’s most influential newspaper columnist, the neighborhood has been “swept into a bitter controversy, one that has divided supporters of those old-time artists and backers of a newer generation of more professional and technocratic Latinos.”

When I called the EDC to ask them why they were taking the step of opening up the “Salsa Wednesdays” space to new organizations to present a “vision” (the galleries remain in control of Taller Boricua), they said the prime mover of the action was City Councilwoman Melissa Mark-Viverito, previously well known as a union activist and a key figure in the Nuyorico contingent to get the U.S. Navy out of Vieques.

Whether or not Mark-Viverito represents a “newer generation of more professional and technocratic Latinos” remains to be seen, but there is a slow and painful awakening among la comunidad that the old way of doing things ya no vale. The professionalization of attracting funding sources and speaking the language of high-end philanthropy has in this case placed some of our most treasured elders in peril.

The EDC, regardless of Melissa Mark-Viverito’s involvement in this case, speaks for one of the world’s richest men, New York’s Mayor Michael Bloomberg.

Who will speak for the business of the community? El negocio…de la comunidad?