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.
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