PERSONAL AND STATE SPONSORED FEAR

“When you live next to someone, you share with him a set of circumstances. My family’s immigrant journey and Ray’s path to murder are part of the history of a neighborhood and a country. Whereas Ray denied any commonality with the black people around him, I believe I have no choice but to study the white people around me, and to understand them as part of my American story—even the men and women who hate and slander my people. Like many other Latino residents of this country, I derive a sense of power from observing the lives of people who cannot see the full measure of my humanity.” (Héctor Tobar. "The Assassin Next Door", The New Yorker. 2019/07/29.) As a Puerto Rican gay man, I also study the people around me -my parents, siblings, friends, colleagues: how I respond to them or how -I believe- they view me. Often, I reflect as to the relationship between their perceptions, responses or mine and personal agendas, larger bodies of ideas, institutions. 

Fear was always with me. I knew it very well; went to therapy to deal with it, shared my feelings with friends to alleviate the disturbing sensation, the overwhelming emotion. Some people could detect it and were very supportive: frIends, colleagues, even students. Others used it against me: to  enjoy the reaction expressed on my face, like little kids who get pleasure out of scaring away their siblings with a sudden unexpected scream. Some used fear to gain or prove how powerful they were, like "la española cuando besa”, in order to impress a Puerto Rican colleague who was her mentor, at a meeting when I was Program Head and she dismissed a request I made of the faculty (she was only a member of the staff being paid with non campus monies.) She used an arrogant tone refusing to follow my request -she also  laughed while speaking and expressing her “atrevimiento”. I will never forget the moment, leading me to think at the time, if this woman comes to work here, I am gone, “si se atreve hacer eso, qué más no se atreve”. I should have exposed some of her other fraudulent and "gusanería" actions but did not. Her dismissal of my authority and my own history in regards to developing the Program she had benefitted from did not happen as an isolated incident. What she did was part of a larger agenda. Fear used to gain power. Fear was always part of what homosexuals, black and brown peoples, women in certain domestic and work environments  experience in the USA. Fear at the micro-violence level was not new to me. It is part of a continuum linking what we do to others to larger events, ideas, how we view humanity and is currently, becoming, somehow, State sponsored.