On historical forces, the diaspora, and why the island can no longer assume a single “we.”
Open up the app for the third time today, and there it is: another diaspora viewpoint revealing the disparity between how the diaspora understands Puerto Ricanness and how those of us from the island understand it.
One point must be made clear. Undoubtedly, the diaspora has been influenced by the United States education system and by the communities in which it grew up. That is precisely one of the main points.
I, a jíbaro, did not grow up surrounded by communities other than Puerto Ricans. I grew up among my own people. Contrast that with the diaspora, which grew up surrounded by other populations and inherited edited views of Puerto Ricanness. Over time, that environment reshaped its relationship with our ancestry, our values, our culture and everything else that once formed the Puerto Rican social world. In practice, our heritage was abandoned for new inheritances.
There is nothing inherently immoral about this. It is simply human behavior, and we see it repeatedly throughout history. But to those of us who value the continuity of our people, these things matter, just as much as others could not care any less about them.
Plenty of times, more than enough to make the point clear, they respond by saying that we are simply different. They call it difference, as though giving it a softer name makes the process disappear.
But the same historical forces that formed Puerto Ricans out of earlier ancestral populations can, when repeated in the diaspora, gradually form another people out of Puerto Rican descendants.
If mixture, separation, new institutions, new communities and new social conditions transformed Indigenous, European and African populations into Puerto Ricans, why would those same forces suddenly stop producing new populations once Puerto Ricans entered the United States?
The process that made us Puerto Ricans also broke the continuity of our ancestors with the peoples from whom they came. They did not remain continuous Indigenous, European or African populations. Through time, mixture, separation and a new shared society, they became Puerto Ricans, a new people and the successors of those who came before them.
That same process is now occurring again.
The forces that once made our ancestors into Puerto Ricans are now unmaking their descendants as Puerto Ricans and forming them into another people. The circumstances are different, but the process and its effect remain the same: one population becomes the foundation of another.
So I have a question for those who fight against this conclusion, especially those who hate the Spanish part of our history.
How is it that the process which transformed Indigenous, Europeans and Africans into Puerto Ricans does not also transform you into the populations and communities with which you now live, mix, identify and build your lives?
How can that process be powerful enough to create Puerto Ricans, yet somehow become powerless when applied to Puerto Rican descendants in the United States?
It does not become powerless.
It is precisely those accumulated differences in ancestry, community, education, values, culture and historical experience that have made the diaspora into a new people. A people broken off from us, one that has retained certain attributes of Puerto Ricanness, but no longer possesses the same continuity.
Its identity is made safe by redefining Puerto Ricanness around what the diaspora has become. That may protect the label, but protecting the label does not preserve the people from whom it came.
I have lost faith in the belief I was raised with: that we Puertorriqueños are one people. Since learning all of this, I can no longer accept that belief. It is simply not true.
I no longer see an unquestionable “we.” I see you, and I see us. The “we” was deconstructed long ago to accommodate new identities, new communities and new definitions of what it means to be Puertorriqueño.
Can we continue as a people, regardless of where we go, and remain an authentic “we,” the Puerto Rican people?
To me, it is doubtful.
But I do believe this: if there is a way, it must completely reject the notion that what is not Puerto Rican is somehow of greater value than what is.
I once believed that all we needed was each other. Clearly, that was not true.
To my successors, if you are still here, know that I have always valued you wholly, never partially.
Will you value one another enough to remain a people?