A review of the news, journals can lead to the conclusion that talking about identities is a distraction from the “real issues”. By placing the topic on the defensive is to enter into the ultra right’s discourse on diversity and multiple ways to be “to be”. Recent articles on The Nation, The Guardian have suggested that “identities” and their supporters are one of the reasons leading the “masses” into moving to the political sphere of the “right”.
Identities are not fixed, and for the migrants, immigrants sorting out new environments, new ways to be “to be”, the need to understand their inner mechanisms is a constant struggle. A look at a kid learning a second language in "host" country, translating for his parents is enough material to start a discussion on identities, how they develop, change, and what it means to be “to be”.
Arawaks believed that life never ends; it is always manifesting itself in different degrees of density. The Yorubas slaves brought with them pots thad had been burning for decades (a practice that later on became part of the belief system of quite a few Caribbean islanders) to keep “powers” that would help with healing and damaging rituals. The pots include all kinds of roots and herbs and bones of a specific dead body. Christians brought the Inquisition laws to their colonization enterprises in the Americas.
“Identities” is a real issue and a nice one to explore and enjoy. Just tell my USARican grandnephew about his relationship with “alcapurrias”. It goes beyond epidurean plesaures. It serves to attests to his grandmother’s -my oldest sister- excellent cuisine, and to experience a sense of historical and personal continuity. Quite spiritual is his reaction whenever he goes to Puerto Rico and makes his first stop at some “chinchorro.”
Alcapurrias, las décimas, un seis chorrea’o are not only cultural expressions, they are part of the fabric of the Puerto Rican cosmology; like the burning pot or the degrees of density or the Christian idea of unity with an entity called God.
Alcapurrias and my spoken and written English, are historical coordinates, a Creole experience. Whenever an American tries to “understand” my English, I remind him or her, that such “accent” is part of their country’s colonization imposition over mine. Alcapuurias also have that conflicted history: fusion cuisine and culture, expressions and projections of those always evolving political, social, conceptual dynamics that continuously create new codes and narratives.
Resulting from the mixing of African green bananas and European and Arawaks ingredients and cooking styles, alcapurrias are not only used to feed the hungry masses, satisfy the palate, but to maintain a connection to the past, lands. And given the animistic beliefs of its peoples, starting with the first inhabitants of the islands, Tainos, then the new colonizers, Spaniards, and Yorubas or Congos slaves, bananas, yuca, herbs, pigs, goats were -and still are-, in many ways, integrated within the larger view of life and transformations in the islands of enchantment.
Often, without no one asking or making a remark about the issue, my parents, their relatives and friends would take a deep breath, expand their chests and said loud, “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, origins of the word “jíbaro”, its relationship to the 18th Century’s caste theories where the word first appeared, that at the time, served to place those called “jíbaros” as mestizos of a lower caste. Had they known, it would have made no difference, their connection to their lives in the Puerto Rican mountains, clans and unique cultural ways and expressions was stronger than placement in any scale.
A couple of centuries later, the Partido Popular, without any sense of shame, used the word and a particular image -“jíbaro wearing a pava hat”- to promote their politics; the ideal Puerto Rican; not accidentally, labeled as “white”. Not only the Partido Popular “encasquetó” the image of the man with a pava hat seen in every flag and homes of their loyalists, it 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 use the rapidly growing 1950-70’s economy and move up the ladder; shades of skin color hiding historical forces, “created” by political powers and colonial settings, class and race related 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 joy describing Christmas at home, music, food was in contrast to her remark about those glorious centuries old décimas and controversias or cadenas or La Calandria, La Alondra, Chuito, Ramito, Maso Rivera.
She was my student, majoring in education and languages, first and second languages. 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.
None of the joys and benefits provided by a sense of belonging, a common identity, are an assault on the other (one of the reasons behind much of the fear felt by those trying to clean up discourses and certain ways of to be “to be”). Identities, like alcapurrias or colonial accents can be troublesome -powerful histories behind them-, but to negate their existence, pleasures, sense of communal extensions and history ... oh well!!!
