MILKING

Hard to remember the night when a glass of milk before going to bed was not part of the ritual, nor it was ever even an issue o asked about before this night, after a busy day packing books to throw away, getting rid of old clothes that will be useless in the tropics, an afternoon and a long very sociable late lunch with a friend, and then, a walk around the empty space with the few pieces of furniture to be donated and the future life in a different place; and, finally, the usual glass of milk before going to bed; except this time, I started to gasp and cry like babies do. I hope I am not becoming intolerant to lactose. 

CORTESÍA

Ni debatible -dijo la señora en el barco- la idea de que en Puerto Rico la gente es más cortés que en Nueva York -por eso se mudó a Orlando; jubilada, treinta años trabajando como “senior clerk” en “Housing”, para la ciudad, en Nueva York.

"Con los ‘buenos días’, hasta en Rio Piedras se nota la diferencia. En Nueva York no dan paso ni espacio, menos van a dar unos ‘buenos dias’: continuó sin parar, comparando a Rio Piedras con el Bronx; las oficinas cerca de City Hall, el apuro; mucho apuro que no da tiempo para la cortesía; logrando entrar en lo más profundo de la persona, llevando a la señora en cuestión a sonreír cuando logró meterse en un huequito entre dos llenos de asombro ante la osadia de la señora: se coló en la fila de los hamburguersas, en área de la piscina del crucero one-way San Juan-Miami.  

AMABILIDAD

De que la hay, la hay, en distintas proporciones y contextos variados; nada que ver la amabilidad en Santurce con la que poco abunda en Manhattan. Mucho menos que ver con las intenciones: “que de que las hay, las hay”. La sonrisa de la señora parada en la acera, directamente bajo mi balcón en el condominio, tijera en mano, robando espigas de los jardines que adornan la proviedad privada y también sirven para camuflar el parking. 

Amables no son los tantos de asaltos a personas mayores en Manhattan, por jòvenes pobres negros, pardos con pocas posibilidades de salir adelante, en un país que los controla -dónde pueden vivir y cuidado cuando viajan-, una ciudad que pierde población y provee menos oportunidades para quienes ni dominan el lenguaje clases medias que hoy se requiere. Ni amable es la historia de muchos en Manhattan o Santurce.

THE GRINGA WHO TREATED THE MAN OF COLOR LIKE A CAT

According to her criteria she was not one of those arrogant and patronizing white American women many men of color have to face every day, though she behaved like one, as she seems to see only color or brand on the person's body, a sub-species in front of them, and not a man. Using her hands to dismiss the man of color’s question, shaking them, a copy of a broom sweeping the air while pointing at the floor, looking at him with disgust, to get rid of an annoying cat. 

WHY ARE THEY STILL WEARING BLACK

So-Ho was gone, bought by the artsy rich and decadent who love to hang out with artists while displacing them from their studios and attics, blocking the possibilities of the younger generation to be able to live where artists once created and acted; disco music was reduced to the working class outer and suburban ghettos; and there was a retrospective of 1950-60’s existentialist films by the likes of John Cassavettes, Jean Luc Godard; Breathess was the hit among the post-disco generation who wanted to live non orthodox existences, a copy of the ones portrayed in the cult cinema house par excellence, at the time in New York City: the Film Forum. The generation that could not afford the lofts south of Houston went black.

Jean Seberg’s short hair, black tight pants, and sort of free and dependable character was copied by the kids moving into the East Village, the new frontier; who also added a touch here and there: Converse tennis were a piece to be worn, the brand. Black jeans and tight black t-shirts were everywhere -downtown, mostly- until la Klein and others culturally appropriated the trend; including the use of drugged looking skniny models. Existentialism went the way of Boutiques and Madison Avenue. But why, close to four decades, two generations later, are they still wearing black?  

YOU KNOW I LOVE YOU

"And if you now, that he/she knows that you love them, why do you say it?", was the response to the need to share a belief and, at times, a sincere sensation, at an unrequested moment, given without any trace of the bewilderment felt internally, by a mature, well educated man, including thirty years of different and contextualized therapies, able to show his vulnerabilities and never ashamed to do so, unless people use them to let out -unintentionally, one hopes- their paternalism or maternalism or maintain a sense of distanced self or simply are not that sure they love without conditions and have to say it aloud, used the other as a target to channel their own fear that they truly only love at times and often contaminated by/with history.

LA INTRATRANSCULTURACIÓN BURGUESA LATINOAMERICANA EN MIAMI: INTRODUCCIÓN

Que no los asuste el título, que Miami ni es posmodernista enredador de frases ni traqueteador con palabras ni enjudioso estudio sobre las nuevos modos de ser latinoamericano exluyentes del tener que bregar directamente, de día a día, con las masas en masas, olorosas a grasa, cual caderamen palesiano por las calles de Caracas. 

En Miami han recreado la ciudad deseada sin las frituras en la esquina, mudadas a los food carts con su propio park, el grafiti controlado dentro del espacio-mala-copia-slumming a lo East Village; paredes para que grafiteros (comisionados) con nombre pinten el placer de estar en el gueto sin los guetis, asombrando tipo Mimi in Disneylandia a las clases medias y altas latinoamericanas de cultura avanzada; por alli pasean. 

Bien avanzada. en español neutralizado; nada de “sonar” estancado en los muelles de la Habana ni silbar demasiado las /S/ -vayan a pensar que somos paisas con rastros blancos en las narices.

Para nada se asusten, que en Miami hay otras historias en la antigua cancha de Jai alai, Jaialea; en la fila de Fema;  en la galería de arte naif regida por un tal Maurice, exiliado de Niuyor, contador de historias que hablan de los Ton Ton Makoute. 

THE NIUYORICAN AND THE JÍBARO IDENTITY

These days, talking about identities has been claimed as a distraction from the “real issues”, a feeding into the ultra right’s discourse, and plain and simply, intellectually pasée, by recent articles on Then Nation, The Guardian. Not my position since identities is a real issue and a nice one quite often. Just tell my USARican grandnephew about his relationship with “alcapurrias”: it goes beyond epidurean plesaures. It attests to his grandmother’s -my oldest sister- excellent cuisine and a pleasing sense of continuity, without ever becoming an assault n the other (one of the reasons behind much of the fear felt by those trying to clean up discourses and certain ways of being). Identitites like alacpurrias can be troublesome, but to negate their existence... oh well!!! 

Alcapurrias are the children of African green bananas brought to the Caribbean hidden, to maintain a connection to the past, land and -given the animistic beliefs of the Yorubas, Congos slaves during the early 16th Century- to the larger cosmological view of life; as it was also claimed by their new slaved companions: the Arawaks, life never ends; it is always manifested in different degrees of density; like one of those old pots that have been burning for decades and decades, where some islanders keep “powers” to enter into healing and damaging rituals. The sofrito and diverse fillings -juicy and sublime inside- of the crispy fritter brings it to lands and ports beyond Africa, as far as Hamburg, for good German sausages to fill them. 

My parents and their relatives and friends would take a deep breath, expand their chests and said loud -it often happened: “Soy un jíbaro de pura cepa”. They knew it would annoy those other Puerto Ricans who felt very urban or saw themselves, worse, as “blanquitos”. My parents and selected circle from Jájome didn’t know the history of the nomenclature, demonym, label, its relationship to the caste theories where it fist appeared in the 18th Century, to place those called jíbaros as mestizos of a lower caste; the brand used later on by the Partido Popular, without any sense of shame, to promote their politics; including the jíbaro as the ideal Puerto Rican and “white”. Not only the Partido Popular “nos encasquetó” the image of the man with a pava hat seen in every flag and homes of their loyalists, but built on top of the mountain, next to the highway that crosses the island from north to south, a big statue of a jíbaro couple.  Anyone who goes to the Guaynabo and Caparra suburbs in the Metropolitan area of San Juan can see the results of those policies: who was able to used the rapidly growing 1950-70’s economy and move up the ladder: shades of color hiding historical shades as “created” by history and powers and desires.

“I hated it, when my parents would listen to all that horrible music” said the young woman in my office; after asking me where I was from and telling me where her parents were from in Puerto Rico, another small mountain town. At some point I said: “Jíbaros de pura cepa”.  Her Christmas at home, music, food, and then the remark -said without any concern as to how I felt about those glorious centuries old décimas and controversias o cadenas or La Calandria, La Alondra, Chuito, Ramito. She was my student, majoring in education and languages, and I consciously, politely, and academically suggested to her to take a course on fundamentals of music. It was obvious she needed to start from ground zero; was not ready to read about 19th Century Espronceda and the history of Jíbaro music; a content she needed to master later on, if she planned to teach in her own old community: the South Bronx. 

“LEARN TO LEARN”, THE TEACHERS COLLEGES AND THE MERCHANDIZING OF EDUCATION

It would devalued the idea of buying and selling education, to place its origin in the USA Teachers Colleges; but there is no question that during the 20th Century the professors and related teachers in schools of education have made it into a sink or swim situation; more so. in those autonomous enough, with doctoral programs in their offerings, to be identified as the Teachers College of this or that prestigious university; a rather pathetic relationship, since few of them were ever to interact with each other; placing the given Teachers College -with the exception of few independent schools of serious pedagogy; i.e Bank Street- in a lower academic rank, caste; a syndrome and malady that is spreading to other disciplines; as more millenials prefer to go on the Whatasp self-centered multi spatial and virtual route to learning and doing  without having to be forced to hear such idiocies as “learning to learn”.

It has always been -and still is- an idea that is important, but it is not only poorly phrased, named, it is sold under false information that is a new one, branded with the name of the person/professor selling it, embodied in some kind of programatic recycling of ancient methods and ways of going around exploring and reconstructing the world or in one of those regulated, atomatized, systematized, hierachisized, and pausterized educational materials, unquestioned and bought by educational buyers/customers. The given “educational product/system” are hardly original; much less the one, quite fashionable a few decades ago, that says: children must be taught how to learn to learn. Really! And what were humans and others -and how- doing for over a large amount of years, a lot, before the particular professor in Teachers College, IV League U, decided to recycle and sell it as new?

Of course, people need to learn how to study using certain established and quite old methods and languages, codes, so they become skilled and knowledgable on how to explore, understand, review, critique and reflect, perhaps transform, a particular phenomema or simply accept that they are like poets and mystics, and prefer to wait for “revelations”; but teachers colleges are not monasteries nor rich Parisian ladies salons supporting 19th Century poets. Learning to learn what and how or learning to reflect on our own approaches when we go around the world and follow the maxim, “using it to our advantage and share it with others”, or to compose, theorize, reflect and find new ways or not are who we are; not separate from us; though, we often change it. 

It seems as if knowing the history of how we have gone around learning -no to learn since we always knew the fundamental “how”- even if one refuses to do it; like some of my young students used to, when responding to each other and not even be willing to listen -“Whatever!”- and then raising their right hand and placing it close to the face of the other in a unique “stop sign”:  whatever method or style or content signifier used by the other. Whatever approach is used, we learn and we have known how to reflect upon it before the Teachers College professor -quite popular during the Compensatory Education movement based on behaviorist/positivist ideas on perception and repetition- repackaged and sold it to a very much ahistorical educational market. 

No wonder, schools of education and teachers colleges are leading the way into a post Prussian mass education approach: not only were they hard core militaristic imperialistic generals; these cuasi-robotic leaders created the “perfect” mass education system for their peoples and times; to deliver to large and normalized groups, skills and contents. A mass educational system later on reduced to the lowest common denominator, and polished by the marketing industry in the USA. A system that is not working anymore, including the old professors selling “learning to learn” packages or phonics diskettes aimed at changing sounds in kids mouths. Young millenials are not going after studying education -a trend that many universities are becoming aware of and changing their ways and focus.... to be seen... 

THE PLURINATIONAL BOLIVIAN STATE TAKES OVER CHILE AND ARGENTINA

Why not? The State is made up of the following groups who also live in Chile, Argentina, Brasil, Paraguay, Perú, Ecuador, Colombia, Uruguay, and Cayey: Araona, Aymara, Ayoreo, Baure (descendants from the Arawaks who moved down there a while ago), Bororo, Callawalla, Canichana, Cavineña, Cayubaba, Chácobo, Chané, Chipaya, Chiquitano, Ese, Guaraní, Guarayu, Ignaciano, Itene, Itonama, Kolla, Jorá, Leco, Machinere, Movima, Nivacié, Pachahuara, Paunaka, Pausema, Quechua, Reyesano, Saraveca, Shinabo, Sirionó, Tacana, Tapieté, Toba, Toromona, Trinitario, Tsmmané, Uru, Wichí, Yaminawá, Yuqui, Yuracare and mestizos, eurocéntricos and bolivarianos.

EGO, NATIONALITIES, THE NEWYORICAN AND THE PERCEPTION OF THE PUERTO RICAN

While speaking with certainty and strong convictions against racism and the false constructs on race that sustain it, and the need for civil rights and actions against racism and discrimination, the young Newyorican let out certain statements on Puerto Ricans that seemed as if he/she had internalized values and formed certain ideas that she/he was not aware of, with regards to the people of Puerto Rico; among them, that she/he could claim to be “white” but did not because he/she -as an educated person- was helping to transform the perception the Americans had of Puerto Ricans. And then, when she/he used the “Them, down there” and gave a speech dismissing the situation of “Them, down there”, what was suspected became a truism: her/his anti racist positions were more of a defense mechanism to protect her/his ego than a clear analysis of race and ethnic and colonization dynamics and politics. 

It was to be expected. He/she grew up in the USA, educated by a system that taught her/him how exceptional those who go to school and grow up in the States are; how the peoples “down there” are “underdeveloped” and in need of the “big brother or sister”; and, furthermore, she/he had limited knowledge and experience on the larger and more encompassing life and education a Puerto Rican born and raised in the island would have, on the ways, languages, history and cultures (there are quite a few down there, not just one, from the jibaros in the mountains to the estates in Caparra) in the islands (there are three that makeup the country called Puerto Rico). A degree in Puerto Rican studies will never be able to replace the education received and experiences had by a similar person growing up and studying in the island. She/He could not handled an island born Puerto Rican pointing to her/him the fact that, although, different from the one provided in the island, he/she had also gone thru a colonization process; including, the feeding and nurturing of egos and a related sense of national or ethnic superiority. And when told that a great deal of lLatin American literature studied in the island dealt with the idea that North Americans were very industrious, well educated technically but very limited in the study of cultures, languages and over all general knowledge, in opposition to the one received by similar students in Puerto Rico; listening to this other ego trip, her/his face looked as if in a state of disbelief. 

WHEN CHRIST GOT PISSED OFF AND WAS MADE A MAN OF STATE BY THE EMPEROR

Christ was not always that loving and tender: he whipped real badly and pushed out all the merchants that were using the Temple of Jerusalem as a shopping mall; almost beat the shit out of the men who were planning to stone the woman living on the border of socially and religiously accepted behavior; rose his fist and threatened, laughed, made fun of, called hypocrites and embarrassed publicly the Pharisees; and was made a man of State by the Emperor who edited the Bible and did not include a lot of stories about the Messiah not being so nice; for obvious reasons: keep the Christians thinking they are full of love.

CUANDO CRISTO SE EMPERRÓ Y EL EMPERADOR LO HIZO HOMBRE DE ESTADO

El Cristo lleno de amor, a veces, no era muy tolerante: sacó del Gran Templo de Jerusalem a los mercaderes, no por las buenas,  a foetazo limpio; retó con el puño en alto a los hipócritas que querían caerle a pedradas a la mujer al borde de la "decencia"; por poco, le suelta una gaznatá a los fariseos por farfulleros y babosos vestidos de inteligencia; y a saber qué más hizo, ya que la Biblia fue editada  por el Emperador que hizo de Jesús un hombre de Estado o de Imperio Romano y no quería presentarlo como muy violento, que no fuese que los cristianos imitaran a Jesús y sacaran por las malas al Emperador de su palacio.

EL PUERTORRIQUEÑO DÓCIL, LOS “AMERICANOS” Y LA CUBANA BURGUESA

Por más que tratara de dejarle saber que si ella podÍa vivir en Queen, en un barrio de irlandeses e italianos, era porque los puertorriqueños pobres, algunos trigueños y otros jincho papujos, desde tiempos inmemoriales, uno a uno, pero masivamente comenzando en los treinta, habían ido a vivir a esos barrios, y cuando los trataron de sacar, se organizaron en pandillas y defendieron su derecho a vivir donde les diera la gana. No eran pandillas de criminales, aaunque el Estado así los quiso englobar a todos. Ella, con el típico racismo de su clase y con la necesidad que tienen muchos inmigrantes latinos no boricuas -”que no somos iguales a ellos”- de desligarse de lo discrinminado y estereotipado, continuaba con el mismo cuento; armado desde mediado del siglo XIX por los EEUU para justificar la invasión en Puerto Rico; una distorsión que muchos burgueses y literatos puertorriqueños, incluyendo a Pedreira y Marqués,  continuaron difundiendo. Que ella creyese ese disparate soprendia porque después de todo, uno espera que una sociolingüista esté más alerta ante los recovecos, sutilesas, aberraciones y politiquerías del idioma. No lo estaba o no quería o no le convenía; mucho más, cuando muchos de los “americanos” liberales prefieren reemplazar los boricuas, "usando" a otros "latinos", pues, no les gusta tener que enfrentarse a los hijos de sus colonias con versiones distintas de la historia. En ese renglón, los educadores bilingües puertorriqueños hemos sido demasiado generosos con "nuestros hermanos latinoamericanos". 

SOLES TRUNCOS: LA CASA MÍA NO ESTÁ CLAUSURADA NI ES UN CHISTE

El cuento  desapareció de los estantes como una vez desapareció (no de mi vida o estantes; murió a causa de las complicaciones que el Sida arma dentro de algunos cuerpos) su autor Manuel Ramos Otero. Aquella gran casa de burgués de pueblo de provincia en colonia de ultramar era tan distinta a la casucha en la que yo me crié, que cuando leí el cuento -tan poético y proustiano- sólo disfruté del estilo. Las preocupaciones del autor eran tan ajenas a mí como lo fueron las reflexiones de su modelo, Proust, y de la anécdota que una poeta, también burguesa de pueblo de provincia de colonia de ultramar, y muy amiga de Ramos Otero, cual personaje en Los Soles Truncos (René Marqués) contaba como si fuese un chiste: su papá le tenía prohibido que hablase frente a su casa, con un nene pobre que estudiaba en la escuela pública. El nene se paraba frente al balcón y hablaban. Las casas sólo son templos para los que siempre las han tenido que proteger o porque ofrecen suficientes comodidades e historias románticas o góticas, llenas de cuartos, para convertirlas en personajes de un relato. Otros no crecen en ambientes donde las casas son su historia; son eso: un sitio donde uno -unos cuantos durmiendo en una misma cama- vive nada distinto de otro espacio, fuera de las comodidades que otra casa pueda ofrecer. Quizás con la educación y presiones de grupo, empiece uno a apreciar los soles truncos en las puertas, llenar las paredes de espiritus, recuerdos de tías "jamonas" tejiendo por gusto (mamá tejía para vender) o de platos de porcelana cayendo sobre las losetas hechas a mano por los obreros, padres de los nenes con quien algunas poetas no pueden hablar, que luego cuentan como si fuese un chiste.

NO TE RECHAZO, PERO NO TE APRUEBO EN PÚBLICO Y NI SE ENTERA

No me quedó duda que me dijo que no me rechazaba, pero que no me aprobaba, porque su mujer, acostumbrada a lidiar con peluqueros y no con profesores universitarios, no tolera que una “loca vieja” (así sentí sus vibras cuando nos conocimos por primera vez) no le haya permitido que lo trate como si fuese una marioneta. Soy homosexual, pero no soy el bastón de mujeres heterosexuales que gustan de usar a los gays como si fuesen sus lacayos o bufones de la corte. No me queda duda que fue ella quien lo llevó a que me dijera pùblicamnete eso, delante de otra persona y sabrá Dios, a quien más le habrá dicho lo mismo, “yo no lo apruebo pero no lo rechazo”, después de cincuenta años de que mis padres fueran informados y que la familia lo sabía; yo se lo había comunicado a mis padres y mi sobrina mayor -con quien siempre he tenido una relación muy estrecha y de mucha confianza- se aseguró que entienderan mi condición. Me sentí que me estaba usando para lucir como tremendo “macho” o para demostrar...

Con el pecho lleno de emociones encontradas (vergüenza porque es otra forma de acoso; dolor porque no esperas que a esta edad, despuês de tato sacrificio para mejorar tu vida y haber ayudado y protegido a tus padres y familia, te sigan despreciando por algo que uno -carajo- no tiene control, ni los científicos entienden y los reverendos de panderata explotan para su propio beneficio; ira porque el continuo abuso causa mucha ira; asombro porque hasta  siquitras, líderes religisoso han sostenido que ni somos enfermos ni vamos para el infierno) le respondí con una cátedra, comenzando con preguntas, y obvio -como muchos que andan dando opiniones sobre la homosexualidad, no sabía sobre hombres o mujeres cuyos cuerpos externos no corresponden a sensaciones y órganos internos, opuestos. Dije el término estándar, intersexuales, y no lo conocía. Tampoco sabía lo que hermafrodita, el término popular, queria decir; ni quien fue el eunuco que el apóstol Felipe encontró en su camino y no dijo nada sobre ese tipo de hombre, pues para esa época, lo castigado era la sodomía, y no ser un intersexual. Allí, además de tratar de avergonzarme para satisfacer su ego, demostró una vez más, que los ignorantes hacen daño, y ni se enteran.

CRÍTICA

“.....con una sintaxis enrarecida, exquisita y fragmentaria, que hace estallar los vestigios del lenguaje para diseminarlos y ponerlos a brillar de otra manera, a contrapelo del 'como debe ser' de una escritura literaria correcta, consensuada y domesticada por el mercado...." 

LLERARDO SO MANY TIMES FOR SO MANY REASONS, INCLUDING THE CAPITAL OF LATIN AMERICA IN THE USA: MI_ AMI

The young woman in the counter looked at me and repeated my name twice with the English sound of the /g/ when facing an /e/ or an /i/. I said nothing, smiled at what was obvious a USA based so called “hispanic” pinching another “herpanic”(In Puerto Rico “hispanicos” or “hispanistas” are those who adore and study Spain’s culture; and claim to be  direct descendants of Spaniards “sin mezcla”). It was not the first time it happened with a USA “latina” -who most probably speaks English like a “native”- or with an anglo who cannot switch that quickly from how he or she had learned to say the name in English. Some used the opportunity to learn to roll the “Rs”, learning right away. Others kept calling me “Llerardo” and I had no problem with their limitations. Since most were not interested -or seemed that way- to annoy me, I had no issue with the mispronunciation. I also did it (still do) so many times with my colleagues and friends: Günter became Goonter; Sherrin became Sharon; Gaari instead of Gaerie, and Madelon was Madelin, like Proustian pastries in my mouth. I was very tired and dizzy after a week in a ship, and too old to pay attention to a young fool who could have bought into the racist construct: “if you have an accent, you are not their equals” (not that they could ever be; much less if you are clerk behind a counter from 9 to 5). My “Rs” (two in the name and four in the last names) are strong, and I roll them with pleasure. Was she reacting to my explosive and roaring “Rs” was the question that appeared in my retired full of free time and leisure oriented mind, seven days later, leading me to wonder, if the reason I had to go back twice to her, to get help with the elevator, so I could go up to meet my hosts, was due to my name been said with clarity in Spanish: Gerardo Torres Rivera. 

.

TWO RICH CHINESE AMERICAN KIDS AND THE BIG BLACK MAMA CONTROLLING FEAR

At the limited space restaurant in the train from Miami to New York tables are filled, as people come in, one by one, with four diners per table. There is no space for solo or couple dining. I went early to lunch and was seated in the first table with three chatty ladies in their fifties; and soon, an older black man was led to the next empty table. Two young Chinese guys on their twenties, stylish, and projecting the self assurance of people who are used to give orders, came in and were led by the waiter into the next table to be filled. I had seen them before, when they entered the train and into their car, and it was obvious that they had to have some money, for each of them to travel in two private rooms. When the waiter pointed to the table with the older black man, they said no, and without asking if they could sit on the next table, went ahead and sat facing each other. The waiter did not say anything. It was lunch time and some tables were not completely filled, so no issue with having a table taken over by two rather cocky millenials.

At dinner time it was a different story. I went early to eat, and again, got my three ladies companions to eat with me,  frozen Amtrak haute cuisine. The older black man was led to the same table, and a line began to form, waiting to be seated. The story again happened, as the two Chinese young men decided to sit by themselves and refused to sit next to the man previously described, except, this time, the waiter had a surprise for them. Behind the Chinese guys there was a Latino couple who sat on the table with the man already described, and behind the Latino couple, there was a big black mama who was asked by the waiter to sit next to the two fashionable, self centered young men. The face of disgust of the one where the lady was going to be seated could be seen from a mile afar, and the lady saw it. Well, did she have a great time sitting next to him and pushing him to the edge of the table, against the wall. Not only did she stand her ground, she kept exchanging smiles of triumph with the older black man on the other table. By the way, when the kid saw the exchange of smiles, he gradually changed his disgusted demeanor to one of controlled fear.

I hope you do not believe for a minute, that I enjoyed scaring young guys who seem to be developmentally challenged, suffering of arrested emotional growth, with false ideas of grandeur and over blown value of the self. Not me. 

CH'ULL AND THE HURRICANE

This Puerto Rican woman -all dressed-up in a combination of outfits a la gypsy women in a Hollywood film and mixed Mayan and Taino looks- spoke on the energy force called ch’ull by the Mayans and others, saying how that energy was everywhere and in everything and everybody, including rocks, peoples, walls, gases; and then she spoke of how the hurricane Maria was the embodiment of that force, in order to let Puerto Ricans know that they were spending too much time in the mall and needed to change their ways, a long  new-age and moralistic speech, until, without prior information, she let out a fart.

EL CH’ULL DE LOS ARAHUACOS Y EL HURACÁN MARÍA EN GUAYNABO

“La creencia entre los arahuacos, mayas, y otros pueblos que poblaban -y siguen por ahí viviendo bajo distintas nominaciones- la región geográfica que circunda el mar Caribe, desde Yucatán en el México de hoy hasta Yukiyú en el Puerto Rico contemporáneo, sostiene que la energía vital, primigenia, que es la fuente de toda la creación no necesita de una entidad particular para controlarla o tener forma estática. Está impregnada en todo, y se manifiesta en distintos grados, perceptible o no, dependiendo de la densidad del medio usado para corporizarse. Entre más denso, más concreto el medio, sea un humano o una piedra o un árbol o un charco o una casa o un mineral o un gas. Todo está impregnado por el ch’ull. María, el huracán como la madre de Jesús, también fue un cuerpo formado por esa energía vital, con el propósito de que los puertorriqueños dejaran de ir tanto al mall, y que cogieran vergüenza”:  dijo la mentalista vestida con collares de camándulas, pulseras de caracoles y campanitas, pañuelo de seda en la cabeza, flores en el pecho, detrás de las orejas, falda étnica, tejida a mano por señoras en la capital de los hilos, Ciales, desde su casa en Torrimar, Guaynabo. Puerto Rico, antes de -sin querer- soltar un inesperado pedo.

MAESTRO NORMALISTA EN GUAYAMA

1962: graduación como maestro normalista.  En el Puerto Rico de antes -hasta mediados de los sesenta- era un docente que había completado un programa de dos años en pedagogía en alguna de las tres universidades de la isla, permtiendo trabajar como maestro de primaria en escuelas rurales, mientras completaba su título. Hoy sesenta años más tarde me pregunto cómo lo hice.

1958: Escuela secundaria (la high) de Guayama. A los catorce años estaba en décimo grado -dos años más joven que el estudiante promedio- y me enteré que a los dieciseis iba a ser beneficiario, como menor de edad, de lo que mi padre había aportado al Seguro Social. Sin decirle nada a nadie, fui donde el director de la escuela y pedí permiso especial para graduarme antes, tomando clases de verano, que sólo estaban disponibles para estudiantes con un excelente record académico. Yo no lo tenía, aunque los maestros me llamaban aparte, de vez en cuando, porque consideraban que podía salir mejor, como era un pueblo pequeño, no me ponían mucha presión; algunos eran vecinos y conocían muy bien la miseria, alcoholismo y violencia que me rodeaba. Mis dos hermanos habían estudiado con ellos y en un pueblo pequeño todo se sabe. 

Le expliqué al director, Mister Paonesa -vivía a cuatro calles de mi casa, cuáles eran mis planes y recursos; y que si no los aprovechaba, los iba a perder. Me dio permiso, y no olvido su sonrisa. A los diesciseis me gradué, con mejores notas de las que hasta aquel momento había logrado. A los dieciocho completé los estudios como normalista, y en agosto del 1962 comencé a dar clases en el barrio más pobre y aislado de Guayama, Las Mareas (véase otros escritos en este blog sobre esa escuela y barrio; y su relación con mis padres; ya que papá había picado caña junto a algunos de los padres y abuelos de mis estudiantes): una escuela de dos salones al lado del mar y un manglar con “casas” montadas sobre “socos” al borde del mismo. Unos años más tarde, sus moradores fueron trasladados como reses a otra zona del municipio, porque iban a drenar el manglar para construir farmaceúticas y la central eléctrica más grande de la isla.  

Tomé dinero prestado, compré una corbata y un gabán y a trabajar como maestro en la escuelita de dos salones en la orilla del mar. Las puertas abiertas de par en par disminuían el furor de la brisa, y del efecto que junto a la sal del mar tenían sobre el deseo de caminar, hablar sobre política, filosofía, todo menos dar clases. A lo lejos, la marea del Mar Caribe se llevaba el compromiso que se requería para impartir conocimientos a más de treinta niños con pocas ansias de estar allí aquel agosto caluroso, húmedo, salado.

Primera tarea de los estudiantes: escribir el encabezamiento en sus libretas, nombre y apellidos, grado, nombre de la escuela, nombre del maestro, año escolar. Las únicas tareas que, después de repetirlas por tres años, no requerían mucha supervisión. Para la mayoría, los que nunca habían fracasado desde su primer grado hasta el tercero de sus vidas en aquella barriada de pescadores, era tarea rutinaria, año tras año; otros, los menos, un grupo selecto, los que tardaban hasta cinco o seis años en completar los primeros tres grados de aquella escuela de dos aulas, esperaban que el maestro se le acercase y les señalara donde escribir qué, copiar qué, cómo. Algunos extendían sus manos en espera por la de del maestro para guiarle las suyas hasta formar cada letra, palabra. 

La marea regresaba dando golpes, botando espumas, rugiendo, apropiándose del terreno que era suyo, desviando la vista de los niños hacia el inmenso mar y los botes de los pescadores, sus padres, sus hermanos, su futuro. Para los estudiantes, era preferible continuar con las vacaciones de verano a tener que oír al joven maestro, recién graduado de escuela normal, encorbatado y enchaquetado – vestuario exigido por el súper centralizado y burocratizado sistema de instrucción pública. 

La primera tarea del maetro: dar instrucciones sobre libretas, libros materias, responsabilidades, asignaciones. Para los estudiantes, el jugar, pescar, broncearse eran alternativas mucho más atractivas que las ofrecidas por los treinta y pico de pupitres, organizados en filas, apuntando todos en dirección a la negra y recientemente pintada pizarra.

El trabajo de maestro, con tantos estudiantes de niveles tan variados, no era labor para un novato de dieciocho años y mucho menos para quien deseaba conocer el mundo y no terminar encerrado en un caluroso salón de clases. O trabajar de maestro o terminar en una fábrica eran las únicas opciones que se podían explorar, no se conocían otras posibilidades para un joven pobre en aquel pueblo al que pertenecía la villa de pescadores. Ciencias, ingeniería, teatro, letras eran carreras que los muchachos de las clases medias y altas podían explorar. Para los pobres, poder ir a la universidad era un lujo; estudiar por gusto, una extravagancia. El magisterio aseguraba un puesto inmediatamente. 

La pizarra se iba llenando de palabras, frases, oraciones, ejercicios. Los niños seguían instrucciones, alzaban la mano, miraban hacia el mar, sonreían. La calma del mar llegaba cuando la marea regresaba y se acercaba a sus origenes, y dejaba al descubierto el cascajo que cubría la playa caribeña, residuos de conchas, redes de pescadores, cabezas de pescados, sin las arenas blancas de postales para turistas o anuncios al idilio de resorts con todo incluido. 

El bochorno de la tarde disminuía las habilidades intelectuales de los estudiantes, aumentaba el sudor y ofrecía la mejor oportunidad para cubrir las asignaturas fáciles: arte, música, educación física frente a la escuela, en el patio que separaba la escuela del pantano donde se encontraban las casas de los pescadores. Una carrera, un salto en la cuica a las dos de la tarde bajo un sol incandescente puede matar al más fuerte de los hombres criados en otras latitudes, no en el poblado conocido como Las Mareas. Sus pescadores vivían y trabajaban bajo el sol, no conocían otros climas. Sus hijos tampoco. 

Las caras de felicidad les delataba. No tenían ni que multiplicar manzanas o peras(los libros de ejercicios matemáticos estaban publicados en países con climas donde se podían sembrar frutas distintas a las que ellos conocían: los cocos, quenepas, hicacos, uvas playas), el recreo les permitía poder correr y sltar en el patio. Tampoco tenían que contestar preguntas de comprensión sobre hadas madrinas o niños con padres blancos y rubios vestidos con camisas blancas y corbatas.

La tranquila espuma que servía de borde entre el cascajo de la playa y el verde esmeralda de las aguas se fue alejando hasta enrolarse en si misma y regresar cargada de una abundancia y volumen de agua que se llevó consigo pupitres, libretas, pizarra, escritorio. La cara de asombro del joven maestro sirvió como excusa para que uno de los estudiantes más atrevidos le dijese, “Mister, por eso el otro maestro no abría las puertas, por la tarde el mar siempre hace eso. “

Un juego más; el mar se unia al grupo, quien preferia pescar con los papás, broncearse, recoger cangrejos en el mangle; alternativas mucho más atractivas que las ofrecidas por un maestro del pueblo, vestido como los papás de los libros de texto. 

La marea nos hizo reir sin tener que pensar en libretas, pizarras, pupitres, tareas.....

Trabajé como maestro rural por cinco años; terminé mi BSED, mis padres habían dejado el alcoholismo (siempre he creído que al ver que conmigo tenían un techo -les construí una casa pequeña; por primera vez en su vida vivían sobre piso y paredes de concreto, tenían comida segura, dejaron de beber). Cogí pa’l norte. 

NO QUIERO MORIR EN INVIERNO

Descartes prefirió vivir en Suecia: dicen

Acurrucaba el cuerpo con lanas y plumas: soñaba

Exploraba modos de pensar con hechos y métodos: escribía

Rechazó datos, plumas y lanas no protegen contra el catarro: se murió.

LA MUERTE LLEGÓ EN MEDIO DEL AMOR DE ALGUNOS

Más que amantes, fuimos grandes y controvertidos amigos. Fuimos parte de un grupo, solidarios unos con otros que no escatimaron dar cara por nosotros cuando fue necesario. Abrí los ojos y sonreí, pero no me sorprendió que el grupo de excéntricos, poetas, contra-cultura, politicos conocidos progresistas, amigos viajaran desde Frankfurt para asistir al entierro, y que Bárbara, en la pequeñita iglesia luterana de la aldea de dos calles y pocas casas en la Baja Sajonia de Alemania, pusiera un ramo de flores con mi nombre al lado del resto puesto por la familia en el altar de la iglesia. No era lo esperado, pero ella no preguntó, y obligó al sacerdote a reconocer nuestro amor, aunque hizo la salvedad, que ellos en sus pueblitos no entendían bien esas cosas. 

En Nueva York ofrecí una misa en su nombre -era la segunda que ofrecía en menos de dos años porque mi ex compañero de apartamento había muerto poco antes (suicidó porque no toleraba más la enfermedad y sus cuerpo estaba hecho leña). Fue en una iglesia de mi barrio en el Village (una iglesia
Jesuita en la 16 y Sexta que abergaba grupos de apoyo a los homosexuales, y uno en particular -al que yo asistia- para personas infectadas por la plaga. Era la misa en español, y estaba solo, junto a un grupo de señoras puertorriqueñas, una de ellas era la lectora en el altar -tuvo dificultad con el nombre alemán, trató dos veces. Mis amigos ateos -todos- no iban a misas, y pensé que una ex estudiante convertida en amiga (resultó ser un fraude,una vividora y mentirosa de la peor calaña) que sí iba a misas, me acompanaría. No fue. Me imagino que como en ese momento estaba con las Latinas Feministas de Teachers Collge, no iba a ir a una misa de homosexuales; a menos que como yo en CCNY, le pudieran servir en su carrera de parásita arribista. Luego tuvo la osadía de preguntar por qué no la apoyé cuando hubo una plaza disponible en la facultad. Además de que como muchos buenos estudiantes, ahí terminaba su talento: en lo bien informada que estaba y en como sabía aprovecharse de los demás. Genio creador no era ni es. Para esa época, los heteros latinos de izquierda percibían la homosexualidad igual que los no de izquierda: mal informados, y algunos.... La muerte llegó en medio del amor; de algunos. 

MY FRIENDS AND MY STATUS WERE THERE

When I found out my HIV status, my friends were there for me. They went crazy, hysterical, emotionally uncontrollable, in need of therapy. They called each other for support after finding out from me, listening to me face to face, “I am not going to follow the traditional medicine; and if I die, I want to do it like the song, my way”. “Noooo!!!!” was their primal scream. “Yes” was my secured self’s answer. 

I am so grateful to have had and have such good friends that suffered for me the fear of dying because I would not take medicines to cure my Elvira syndrome (the name Ariel and I had for the ever changing and adaptable to different bodies’ virus.)  There were a few moments of collective crying: my friends and I letting the inner pains come out all at once;  without losing track of a lot of political and social awareness, consciousnes raising: Elvira was not only a plague; it was/is a political statement; including the possibilities that it was an experiment gone awry or a genocide act planned by sinister forces. Who knows! My friends were there.  

There was Barbara in Germany making sure no one saw my ex lover Günter, truly sick, peeing publicly inside a department store; and if you know her, there is not doubt, no one noticed the skeleton (he was truly emaciated) urinating on top of the expensive oriental rugs. With her ability to make rough things look smoothly, she took him out and walked away without any major commotion. 

And Robert going with me to the office of the leading researcher on the virus and blindness, sitting in that office surrounded by men who were blind, some of them looked like bags of bones, listening to me saying, “If I get to this point, euthanasia, please.” His coolness and level headed mentality allowed him to smiled at what was not a nice joke, but he smiled. 

These are two anecdotes -among many- that attest to my friends’ support and generosity during very difficult times. I write about them now, triggered by the lack of compassion that seems to guide todays political and health and caring for each other’s discussions.

There were also many friends who were sick and died. 

MIS RASTROS SON SUS BIOGRAFÍAS

Cuando revisen mis rastros, escribirán relatos que no cuentan lo que pude haber vivido; expresarán capacidades, deseos, miedos, proyecciones, los astutos lectores, armadores de vidas que no son las suyas, ni fueron las mías. 

ALBIZU (THE MUSICAL)

LA LETRA CON SANGRE NO ENTRA: LOS MAESTROS BILINGÜES DE ESPAÑOL EN NY

Un sondeo informal y unas pruebas recogidas durante un ejercicio de corrección de textos escritos por estudiantes de escuelas primarias y secundarias, comenzaron el destape de los maestros de español que estudiaban en el Departameento de Lenguas de un colegio urbano ligado a una universidad pública en NYC: anteponían la correción de los elementos formales y “faux” estándares aplicados a modismos y vocablos en los textos, a las ideas y estilos experimentales de los estudiantes/escritores.

Una vez distribuidos lo escrito por los estudiantes de primaria y secundaria -un ejercicio que llevé a cabo por unas cuantos años, los docentes hablaban sobre los “valores”, lo que les gustaba o no en dichos textos; corregían, y tenían que explicar al resto de la clase por qué apreciaban tal o cual idea o estilo, corrigieron tal o cual “error”, las posibles causas y cómo ayudarían a los estudiantes a superar el “error”.

Después de los informes en clase (pocos se fijaban en las ideas y estilos; la mayoria en aspectos formales de la escritura) y haberse familiarizado con las lecturas y estudios llevados a cabo por autores que iban desde las biografías de grandes escritores latinoamericanos, exponiendo sus ideas sobre la escritura como obra personal, ingeniosa, hasta los estudios que han explorado y documentado las ideas y los procesos mentales y afectivos de los estudiantes que están aprendiendo o mejorando su escritura, unos cuantos aceptaron que “la letra con sangre no entra”.

(Si desean conocer más detalles sobre lo descrito anteriormente, pueden navegar este blog; encontrarán informes, crónicas, referencias y datos que abundan sobre lo anteriormente expuesto)

MARIO VARGAS LLOSA, LA FERIA DEL LIBRO Y LOS YOUTUBERS CON LOS PULGARES MÁS LARGOS DEL MUNDO

El antropólogo Néstor García Canclini (en una entrevista para un diario argentino que no fiché) sostuvo que la literarura estaba muy viva y dinámica; que los libros seguían siendo leídos, aunque, abordados de otra forma, incluso, lecturas comunales tipo época pre-imprenta; usando como evidencia, la diferencia en la cantidad de público que asistió a dos conferencias o happenings tecnos; ofrecidas por el escritor peruano Mario Vargas Llosa y por unos youtubers que escriben o arman, bajan y suben, transmiten a través de la red cibernética. Las sala de Vargas Llosa casi vacía, con una audiencia bastante predecible. La de los youtubers, abarrotada: tatuados, veganos y antiganos, iteractuando entre ellos y con los dispositivos y todos a la vez y cada uno por su lado, vuelvo y repito, a la vez. 

No debe sorprender, dada la educación de masas que depende de medidas de masas e intenciones para neutralizr masas que sirve de substancia en las escuelas, cómo los maestros, administradores y facultades de educación en las universidades, enfrentan y usan estos nuevos modos de hacer pedagogía interactiva, literatura crítica, intertextualizada e intermodal, multifuncional y rica en fuentes y algoritmos. No se han enterado.  

(García Canglini estudia los comportamientos de esas tribus literarias -cómo puedan ser nombradas esas nueva modalidades sociales y académicas, ya sea en cafés pseudoexistencialistas con wifi o en las aulas, los miembros de esa subespecie, cuyos descendientes van a tener los pulgares más largos del mundo)

CON TRANS CARIBBEAN AIRWAYS LA CULPA SE FUE PA'L CARAJO

No había cangrejos corriendo por los corredores de la difunta línea aérea Trans Caribbean, ni vulgar chusma escandalizando los valores pequeños burgueses de las urbanizaciones de clases medias puertorriqueñas o sus “uropeizados” intelectuales en los pasillos de Humanidades en la UPR. Ni tampoco hablábamos como el muy acartonado personaje en el cuento Pollito Chicken; mucho menos, descubríamos nuestra identidad en un hotel cinco estrellas por medio de una follada.

Viajamos desde Puerto Rico a Nueva York en el avión de la mítica línea aérea, personas respetuosas y con muy buenos modales en busca de diferentes horizontes. De parte mía, dejaba la vida sofocante y opresiva de un pueblo pequeño de la isla, donde la homofobia era pan nuestro de cada día. No me iba por razones económicas. Había terminado la universidad y oportunidades de trabajo se encontraban por doquier. Me fui porque la homofobia, abierta o latente, no permitía una vida tranquila. Nadie quiere salir a la calle con la expectativa de que alguien se va a burlar de uno o que te puedan atacar físicamente.

Nadie escoge ser homosexual. Se escoge con quien tienes relaciones sexuales.

Me fui permanentemente de la isla en el sesenta siete, a los veinte y tres años, y tuve la enorme suerte de poder vivir el sesenta y ocho en Nueva York: el de las protestas en las Universidades de Berkeley, Columbia, City College, el de los Young Lords, Black Panthers, El Comité del UWS, las marchas contra la guerra y a favor de los estudios étnicos. Es en esa época tan dinámica cuando me entero de que los contenidos de los cursos no consisten en verdades universales, absolutas; que las historias están sujetas a intereses que van más allá de lo académico; que muchas historias distorsionan y excluyen; que hay que demandar que la historia, los cuerpos que la viven, el tuyo, el mío sean estudiados, discutidos, documentados.

Lo menos que esperaba cuando cogí el vuelo kikiriki de Trans Caribbean Airways, decorado con verde cotorra, dibujos de palmeras -el trópico como marca- era que no iba a poder dejar al racista, elitista y peor que provinciano, estancado Guayama; con la diferencia, que en Nueva York, donde aterricė, lo iba a conocer sin miedos ni hipocrecias: de frente, obligado y con gusto por los estudiantes, maestros, políticos, negros, chicanos, mujeres, homosexuales que de pronto estaban en las calles cuestionando los valores y mores y leyes e ideas que regían, desde "saecula saeculorum", al Estado y la familia.

Aprendí que no podía separar la colonización nacional rampante que viví en PR (véase otros escritos en este blog sobre ese tema) de la colonización destructiva que viven el homosexual, las mujeres, los pardos, los negros, los jabaos, los indígenas, los sudacas, los morochos, todos los que viven al margen de la historia oficial. Todo eso me ayudó más alla de lo mental o emocional. Me ayudó a conocer mi cuerpo dentro de la historia que informó su formación.

Es en esa época tan revoltosa cuando me doy cuenta de que si yo no escogí ser homosexual -escogí con quien me acostaba, con buen gusto, "of course", muy buen gusto y mutuo acuerdo- no tenía que sentirme mal. La culpa se fue pa'carajo.

Cuán linda y paradisiaca puede ser la adolescencia dicen algunos. Cuán triste la alta tasa de suicidios entre jóvenes adolescentes con inclinaciones homosexuales. No me suicidé, pero lo pensé.

Tendría alrededor de catorce años cuando por primera vez descubrí que sentía una atracción especial por los hombres, hasta reconocer solo, sin el apoyo de nadie, que lo que sentía era una atracción sexual.

Horror! De noche no sólo pedía a Dios que me quitara “eso”, sentía el terror de ser descubierto, y pronto empezó mi cuerpo a llenarse de llagas, a sufrir de problemas estomacales, a pretender que me atraían las muchachas, a llorar, lleno de miedo, mientras le pedía a Dios que me quitara “eso”. Nunca me lo quitó.

En Nueva York las discusiones religiosas no se limitaban a los discursos de reverendos de pandereta o sacerdotes ensimismados en ritos medievales con quemas en el infierno; de frente, sin miramientos,  los planteamientos de otras tradiciones espirituales, otras versiones sobre la condición humana, que la naturaleza incluía la capacidad para desear hombres y que esta capacidad evolucionaría de la misma manera que ha evolucionado la especie, los individuos. Ningún adulto percibe el mundo como lo percibe un bebé.

Trans Caribbean ayudó a despojarme de mucho más que la culpa.

MY NIUYORICAN AWAKENING: “THAT’S HOW RUMORS START” WITH JOEY PASTRANA AND JOHNNY COLÓN’S “BOOGALOO BLUES”

No, I am not a Niuyorican; though, I once told a borderline-fascist island Puerto Rican friend that I was, in order to annoy him -he could have not stood the idea that I would be so. He knew that I was born, raised and university educated in the island and -according to his limited vision- could not be a Niuyorican: my  Spanish was not  like “theirs’” (had he been better informed, he would have known that many Niuyoricans spoke Spanish with more fluency and ranges than he did, and become aware that the formulation of a concept/idea/slogan never exists in a vacumn, including his poorly informed conceptualization of the Puerto Rican communities in the USA: “That’s how rumors start.”

Summers 1965, 1966: vacation trips that changed my life forever. At my uncle’s house in -currently sanitized and made fashionable by dressed up Millenials in 1980’s black outfits- Bushwick, Brooklyn, I met my cousins. They were born and raised in New York, and when I met them, they were dancing to Johnny Colón and Joey Pastrana’s boogaloo’s; not much later, replaced by the more commercialized salsa -mass produced, cleaned and depoliticized by the Fania mentality, eliminating self reflection, “LSD got hold on me”, remembering the time “when I felt the world was mine” or their social criticisms, “don’t listen to them, beeiibi, beeeibi; don’t listen them now.”

Colón and Pastrana’s boogaloos had a different mood; a mixture of Black America’s musical sadness, “a la blues”, and a great deal of diverse voices,”why don’t you leave him alone”, and stories “a lo  plena puertorriqueña en una barriada de Ponce”, where “bochinche de la calle’ was integrated into the story, lyrics, “did you hear about that thing, man, did you hear about that thing”; became part of a song, a dance. 

And yes, they/we danced; and how my cousins and their friends were dancing also made a mark in me, to never again follow the basic plena and guarachas’ steps I used to master back in the island. Suddenly, my arms and feet were following intricate arms and body movements that were -without losing the freedom- more geometric, interwoven and creative on the floor. My cousins were not only dancing, they were bringing what I knew to a different  sense of joy, pleasure, and body possibilities, “what you talking about?”

Talking about a place where I found links to my past and open spaces for my future sense of my "self": from conservative, rigid, homophonic Guayama to the search for freedom in the City, even if it meant facing the past and transforming my views and ways of being or identifying its worth and be grateful for having been exposed to it. 

I realized that I was educated with stories -Guanina, Tembandumba, cimarrones and arahuaco; crónicas de conquistadores, cuentos sobre revueltas de esclavos; Alonso, Hostos, Betances, Bracetti, Capetillo, Sarmiento, Rodó, Gallegos, Martí, Ibarbourou, Rodríguez de Tio, Palés Matos, Vasconcelos- recreating, describing, criticizing colonization, defending mestizaje as the foundation of our history and culture- was quite different from the black-white binary opposition told in USA narratives that were used to educate my cousins in the USA. And yet all those differences fusionned and became one, when Pastrana sang, “we’ve got to get together, beiiibi.”

Boogaloo Blues: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qXQm-QzJ7ig

That’s how rumors start: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NXrF3zttGC8

THE WALL IN CONSTATINOPLA DID NOT KEEP THE OTTOMANS OUT AND THEY ALL BECAME US

-By engaging in minority issues discussion, you have enraged majority powers or you have annoyed those who felt they had power in the hinterland and lost it; and now, when the New World Order offers them salvation and they do not get it, then, you (transexuals, faggots of all shades and sizes, albinos and midgets, cripples and over weight beings) are to be blamed for the coming of The New World Order. 

-Say what! 

-But do not worry, once The New World Order is gone (trust me, it has happened before), you can go back to be a darkie, a shorty, a sexual deviant, a fattie, a one legged woman and ask for your rights in the kitchen, bathrooms, schools, city halls; and why not. 

-What about the homogenous people in the hinterlands.

-Ok, I forgot about the people in the hinterlands who also have homos, transgenders, transcolors, transeuntes, trasnochados living the life of all of us; not just them. Remember, they are getting media attention, protesting. After those protests, they will never be able to go back to their previous life as they knew it; when they thought that the cripples, the homos, the one legged lesbians, the hungry kids in the ghettos or barrios had taken over them, and supported The New World Order, allowing it to take hold of them and us; forcing the walls in Constantinopla to fall instead, to crumble around them, and them becoming us. 

MY ACCENT IS MY ACCENT AND I AM GLAD IS MINE

My mouth and tongue and larynx and history shape my accent and is not yours to talk about. It's mine. Do not imitate it because you look like a fool and is not nice for your image. Avoid using it to categorize different accents, and placing them in a specific level of development. Accept that my accent results from a particular colonial history; wherein you as a daughter or son of colonized peoples can be used by the same powers who place me in an accent-related and very accented discussion, to keep you busy with sounds and intonations while distracting you from attending to important issues.

GERTRUDE STEIN ON INTELLIGENCE, FACULTIES, HUMORS AND TEMPERAMENTS WHERE THERE IS NO THERE THERE

It has been argued that there are non bias, non linguistic determined, non culturally constructed IQ testing items which have proven that blacks in a rural village in Africa are intelligently -not necessarily intellectually- inferior to middle class whites in NYC. The same scientists, when they went into the intercity, needed people over there, from the community to help them navigate human dynamics and diverse linguistic and related coding systems. 

One can be so universal, categorical, reductionist and abstract that not longer exists as an entity in a given place; a there with no there. Intelligence is a mental construct, just like “temperament” and “humors” were for the philosophers and scientists during antiquity and the Middle Ages or faculties were for the more enlightened renaissance society of learners. Intelligence is not an organism nor a particulate set of neurons, and if you believe it exists in a given mass, then find out how it has been used by humans in all of kinds of different moments in history and particular place. 

Anyway, as my opinionated amateur “farfullero” friend -who has a temperament inclined towards beauty and inner child expressions says, “if the species that came from Africa were the first homo sapiens, who then fucked with the Neanderthals in Europe, eliminating their species from the planet, then those who resulted from the intercourse, new European mestizos, were more intelligent than the previous Europeans.” Whatever! 

I know, my friend’s faculties do not include in their intelligence a capacity to do cross cultural and historical analysis; different theres; so wacko that it does not make intelligent sense. Perhaps, it makes intuitive sense or statistical sense or spiritual sense or .... perhaps, Paulo Freire’s anecdote on the peasant who, after going through a literacy class where isolated sentences, words and  phrases taken from published texts had been studied and explained, said: those sentences and words and phrases were about the same thing they -the pesants- spoke with each other in their own words. No IQ test could have examined the sum of that peasant’s ideas and capacity to interconnect them. 

A leading Colombian educator wanted to find out why Puerto Rican children in her school were doing worse than the rest of the school population. She insisted in changing their pronunciation, so -she believed- they could then properly read aloud, as if mastering certain phonemes were prerequisites to learn to read. Luckily, she had no mutes in her school. By the way, she did not try to change the Argentinean kids who also attended the school. Wonder why!? Nor she was ever to realize that in general terms, Puerto Ricans were doing educationally and economically better than the Colombians. Ok, no ethnic or racial wars here, though, they are there where there is no there.

LA CARMEN DE LOISAIDA AND THE LITTLE GIRL IN HER MOTHER’S ARMS

Carmen was born in the late nineteen forties in a typical small sugar cane town in the South East Coast of Puerto Rico; its plaza and streets divided by the economic classes and phenotypes, the "pigmentocracy" that characterized much of life in the island at the time. When she was around ten years of age, her single mother  moved with her and siblings to the Lower East Side neighborhood in New York City. Roots were once more planted in a place and she never left it, making Loisaida (the Puerto Rican name for the “notorious” politically and culturally charged community) her permanent home. 

Growing up in such neighborhood marked Carmen; her ideas and view of the world, gradually modified by age and education, but with strong foundations on the urban culture that was formed and transformed by the kinds of immigrants, artists and diverse characters on the fringes of society who also made that community their home. In time she graduated from college, obtaining two masters degrees in education and social work. She was also a trained actress.

Carmen was a member of diverse cultural, political and community activism groups, including the very dynamic Niuyorican poet’s movement (a lover of one of them), Teatro Pobre de América (this is how I first met her) and the leftist pro-Puerto Rican independence movement organization known as MPI -a dangerous membership, making her a target for harassment by the police and other more sinister security forces. When she had her own children, and they became adolescents, they were also harassed by the police; one of her children ended moving out of the USA. 

Her mother had been a maid for one of the “blanquito” families in the town where she was born and spent part of her childhood. As it was quite common in Puerto Rico, the service or lower class peoples were not allowed to go into the blanquito houses thru the elegant and elaborate front porches, with their “balaustres” holding the rails and its “sillones de caoba y pajilla” swinging their status on the losetas that served as floors, from where the ruling and colonial administrative classes looked down on the “jíbaros, negros, jabaos, pobres” and other groups that were considered lower castes. This was not the “En mi Viejo San Juan” environment ideally dreamed by the very popular tear jerker old Puerto Rican song. Carmen knew this and had no romantic notion or nostalgia for the life she left back in the island. 

Loisaida was her country. In that NYC  neighborhood she had very powerful experiences and reflections that enabled her to tell stories about her childhood, with little sadness in her soul, but with the clarity of someone who is separated enough from what once was a mark in the conscience, a milestone in learning about humanity and society. As a child, walking home one day, she decided to stop by the house where her  mother was working. She could not go into the house unless it was an emergency and if she had to, it had to be through the backyard. She just wanted to see where her mother worked and decided to look through the balcony’s “balaustres”; and there was her mother, in the living room full of “muebles isabelinos de medallón”, playing with, and holding and caressing a girl around her age.  

THE BLACK SOUTH AFRICAN HOMOPHOBE AND THE LIBERAL WHITE WOMEN WHO SUPPORTED HIM

A report on a black man who had to abandon his country, and then came to NYC to work in a supposedly inclusive institution, to end up discriminating against a homosexual at work, and the white progressive women who supported him, without none of them ever realizing how contradictory and hypocritical their "progressive" ideas were. They were not the only ones. My so called multicultural specialists Latino colleagues did not support me when I brought the issue up; with the exception of three female Puerto Rican professors who questioned his actions- and one of those Puerto Ricans made sure he got a dosage of his own medicine.

ONE MUST NOT TALK ABOUT THEM

There was a group of two Puerto Ricans, one African-American couple, and myself, in the ship’a elevator. We were all on route back to NYC. A Puerto Rican man in the group with a rather loud and unpleasant sound in his voice kept talking about the music that was being played in the lobby of the ship. He found it sad and wanted to hear some salsa. His companions laughed as he kept making sarcastic remarks. I had previoulsy seen the two Americans also talking loud with some people by the bar at the pool. And they were very much into their loud ebonics. At the elevator, the Americans were not happy with this man's monologue; continuously looked at each other, smiled and made facial gestures showing their disgust. It was obvious they were not enjoying the man’s high speech in Puerto Rican’s Spanish nor his lecture on music; or was it another form of “racism”, expressed by gringos (I should not use such a pejorative term, black or white) who cannot speak anything else but American English..... No, perhaps not. Once must not talk about them.

TEATRO POBRE DE AMÉRICA Y EL DE ORILLA (1968-1972) AND THE METAMORPHOSIS OF MY MASSES

After moving to New York in 1967, I joined a group of Puerto Rican “teatreros” that were integrating political activism with theater presentations. First, the group  called itself Teatro Pobre de América and then became Teatro de Orilla. I had begun my graduate work at Teachers College, Columbia on communications and education, while participating in the “consciousness raising” movement that was in vogue among the more progressive, leftist and irreverent members of society, including a bunch of Puerto Rican students (we were all students, except the director of the troupe who was a permanent college dropout) who wanted to help make the world a -if not better- a fun place to live in; and fun we had with our theatrical endeavors. 

Our work was produced collectively, except that the final decisions were made by the director, and it was consciously and politically based on the ideas of troupes, authors and directors like Osvaldo Dragún, Richard Teschner, Augusto Boal, the Living Theater Collective, Grotowsky, Teatro de la Candelaria. Our work and ourselves also responded to the mood of the times. 

Of all the presentations, the one the stuck the most in my memory was the staging of passages from the Mayan Popol Vuh. Entering into a world of ideas and cosmologies that were quite separate from our own controlled/educated understanding of issues such as death and nature, gave us an opening into a view that was not to close ever again; consequently, the ideas on people and education were also transformed. 

In one scene, dancing to Death as an entity -not necessarily a body in spirituals language, the metamorphosis that the corpse goes through, when the person enters into a new “life, form, or whatever death can be called”, was celebrated and performed for New York City Latinos in the barrios of the city (not even off Broadway theaters, but in community centers and on the streets during the Summer). The work intended to explored the Judeo Christian ideas on suffering and possible infernos for the dead body in opposition to the ideas on death presented in the Pool Vuh; shown thru dance, body movements and selected passages from the Mayan book, a new way of “being”, a metamorphosis.

The difficulties presented during the performance were not caused by the theatrics or complex production, but because, after all, we did not stop believing in the old view of death over night, and the public was there to have fun and not to be elevated culturally or politically. Since the metamorphosis of the dead needed to be recreated using different anthropomorphic figures, immediately after we began our screams and howls and crawling all over each other and the floor, creating all kinds of surrealistic images, the kids in the audience started to join us in the stage; and without shame imitated us, dancing and howling and making strange face gestures. 

How we reacted was -luckily- part of our belief in integration: we expected it, so we also had a good laugh afterwards,  On the raising of consciousness, too late in my life, with so much body, theatrical, historical mass holding me, to even pretend I know much about it. 

HATE WAS COOLED BY AN OCEAN BREEZE

The sudden breeze -a miracle- moved me from feeling the hate I woke up with to a sense of internal peace that did not last long. At 5:30 a.m., the first emotion felt after a long night full of nightmares was pure, unfocused, without a target or source, hate.

Hate on its own going thru each of my cels, hormones, brain and heart. Hate as a system that get its power from the net it creates using different parts of the organism; an abstract sensation that can, later on, acquire substance and purpose. It did. Two happy twenty year olds, sitting next to me at the pool of the ship on route to Nirvana, USA, were laughing, jumping, hugging each other, screaming, giving hate its reason to be. Had I not been aware of the feeling being larger than a particular person or a given event, I would have engaged in mental games where I drowned and dismembered the two young lovers, but I did not. Instead, I appealed to my inner capacity for love and compassion, until the desires to apply cruelty techniques were blown away, and replaced by pure hate; unpasteurized hate; as if the burning sensation had taken control of the self. Then, the miracle, the breeze came over and blew hate away.  

WE WERE NOT TRANSPARENT DURING MY 50TH BIRTHDAY IN A CHIC FRENCH OR, PERHAPS, IN LA CARIDAD, A CARIBBEAN SPANISH SPEAKING CHINESE FONDA IN CHELSEA

Yes, my voice speaks to my soul, history, body, intentions.

No, my similarities with you are not the point to start a conversation on us since it is you who wants to talk about what unite us. Really!

Yes, I am not so transparent that my sense of the world will be determined by your need to be so universal; to be so above petite ethnic, sexual, racial, identity politics; that you dismiss these concerns, valid or not, as you disregard those who talk about them. Remember you are who you are, for better or for worse, a product of those politics. Dismiss them is not going to eliminate the desires, needs and ways of seeing the world that you claim to have been able to transcend. 

No, I am not so stupid as to see me as a fixed entity. If you would listen to learn and not to judge and look for ways to dismantle the ideas pf the other, then a world would have opened for you. In the end, it is the likes of you trying to negate the existence of the other that create the conflict between those who claim to be transparent and those are trying to understand their place in the world, and also make a comfortable life for themselves. 

Yes, blaming  multculturalism or ethnic politics as the reason for the neo-fascists and populist reactionary governments coming into power, is to fall into the trap of people whose histories, identities, voices are very clear, in unison with their purposes: to eliminate any differences, to protect their similarities, which, when closely observed, have very little in common with mine; and a lot with money and the obsessive need to control those who are different, who enjoy their differences.

No, had I included my colleagues when celebrating my 50th  birthday, I would have not invited the white faculty only. But I did not.  I did not invite colleagues, “y punto”,  much less heteros, to my soirée. There were white, black, blue, brown, pink, jinchos, jabaos, prietos, sambos, gringos, boricuas, franceses, cubanos, sureños, norteños, and all of them were my friends: gay men who served as mirrors and “agentes freirianos problematizadores” when I was working at the City College’s Bilingual Multicultural Teacher Education Program, a year after I found out my positive hiv status, and a few years after my friends Gunter, Gary, Guillermo, Joachim, Paul, Alfredo and many acquaintances died; and  no, we were not transparent.

* Similar situations happened at the College where exclusion was the norm; a particular birthday of a Cuban colleague comes to mind: when it was celebrated, only selected "white Faculty" was invited to the party; and we -two Ricans- had enough "material" and history, not to be surprised by the quality of the colleagues. Once more, the conflicting story between Cubans and Puerto Ricans in the USA continued at the City College. 

A KISS IS JUST A KISS

I left so I can remember; to have a memory as a source of some kind of pleasure that cannot be replaced by its reality counterpart; a pleasure that can be as painful as when the event took place and redemptive when what is recalled forms part of a  larger set of related reflections and actions that became joyful new memories. “....as you remember me, a kiss is just a kiss, a sentimental journey, as time goes by.” Separation remembers the kisses; the drive to have as much pleasure as one could, because it was known that love was/is a memory.  

A CITY COLLEGE DEAN, OTHERS AND THEIR LANGUAGE LIMITATIONS

It could be any city college in any urban environment, where I could have taught, with multiple linguistic codes determining communication possibilities and ways to establish power; and my dean used to do it with me, by turning to a third person, anyone who was with us, and asking in response to any comment I would have made with my thick Puerto Rican Spanish accent, including “sonidos velares”, “What did he say?”. 

This is the same man who once asked another Puerto Rican professor and me (1990s in New York City) after we had a meeting with visiting Mexican academicians, if we understood each other. Should I have asked if he had read La Raza Cósmica, among many Latin American and Iberian classics, which I had to study and “intertextualize” (before the post moderns coined the term) as an undergrad at the Universidad Pontificia Santa María better known as La Católica Ponce or did he know that San Juan had academies run by Jesuist before there was a New York City. Civilization had arrived in the island of Puerto Rico before it did in the island of Mahattan, colony or not. Worse of all, he was responsible for not granting tenure to an excellent, well educated and in command of her field, leading Puerto Rican educator with a long history of social, political activism, who would have been an asset to School of Education, and project what the institution was about; instead, tenure was granted to a white woman, with a very mediocre record except she was good at writing reports.

Snce I was a member of the Committee reviewing the candidates, I know what kind of dirty politics against the Puerto Rican female candidate for tenure were played by another Puerto Rican, who spoke against granting tenure, simply because -like a great deal of colonials- she did not want to be seen as a person who would support another Puerto Rican (unless she could control them). She thought, I was under her control. That is when I decided to leave the place. And for the rest of the Committee, a bunch of white "progressive" women, it was quite easy to convince them to support the other white female candidate -a nice person, but could not compete with the Puerto Rican. It was a strange form of racism combined with a great deal of dishonesty, betrayal and parasitism. A very sad moment in the history of bilingual education at the City College.

It should not surprise anyone that such mediocre man -his own field included; trust me; I was there; he only published textbooks- would be a dean; though, this one -like many New York children of working class parents who make it into elite schools and IV league colleges- loved to brag about his “upper crust education” without ever realizing that the “standards” he met were very limited in scope - “una vida sin reflexión”-, otherwise, he would have been able to reflect like Augustine once suggested, be cautious, and ask in private for translation from the same people who were with us in the conversation, most of them “his own people”, who understood me. 

He was not the only one with linguistic limitations: there was the constructivist who taught like a behaviorist and corrected continuously my very “hispanized” open vowels, until I told another colleague that the constructivist-behaviorist did not have a clue, understood issues on language acquisition and development, much less when there was a “colonial” in the “bochinche”, and that she should stick to programmed pseudo open learning activities, to be sold as constructvist but were not, instead of entering into a discussion on language, colonization, racism, and her own inability to understand  theoretical constructs beyond her own limited and provincial education. She had never read the work of well known Latin American constructivists,  published in translation; much less, the educational classics from South of the border and their positions on "la barbarie".

"La barbarie": a topic when studying Latin American authors. As illusory as it sounds, yes, those of us educated (1950s Puerto Rico) with the ideas discussed by authors such as Sarmiento, Hostos, Rodó, Vasconcelos, Gallegos and their European peers at the time -"what the industrious North had in machine power lacked in civilized culture"-   did not come into the ring where my ex dean used to "rule" with a subordinate mentality. Colonials might not be colonized in the ways the "colonizer" thinks it should be or it has been". 

Never to be forgotten, the  professor of psychology who studied anxiety in the classroom and used to repeat, making fun of, what non-native speakers of English would say in class, until one African-American male student challenged him to apologize to the class or face consequences. The professor did apologize. Quick redemption when your job and limited vision of the world and its place in the City College is exposed. 

*From the book in progress There were not Soles Truncos in Academia

ALBACEAS Y VIEJOS EN CORTE

"Cuidado con la codicia, el paternalismo o actitud despectiva debe tener todo viejo frente a las sugerencias y cuidados de aquellos que no lo son: controles e intereses vestidos de compasión y caridad pueden hacer un infierno de los últimos años de uno": fue la conclusion que dejó lo contado con mucha tristeza y preoccupación por una amiga que ha descubierto que su pariente/albacea ha estado traqueteando con escrituras y otras herencias para quedarse con ellas. Todo un andamio, que de ella comprobarlo, van a terminar en corte unas cuantas personas. Arrepetntida por no haber viajado después de jubilada y gozar como quería de sus bienes y recursos, incluyendo su cuerpo que hoy a los 83 años mueve con dificultad, lleno de angustia y furiosa por tener que defender mucho más que herencias y propiedades.