ON THE NEW YORK TIMES’ ARTICLE: HOW LATINOS CAN WIN THE CULTURE WAR - QUE QUÉ?

The title of this essay is partially taken from an article that appeared in the NYT on 2nd of September 2020 (https://www.nytimes.com/2020/09/02/opinion/latinos-trump-election.html?action=click&module=Opinion&pgtype=Homepage). What the authors fail to understand or rather not deal with it, has to do with the fact that while Puerto Ricans can be considered “Latinos”, they are not immigrants. Puerto Ricans are colonials and, contrary to other USA colonies, we are winning the “culture war”. To place the discussion on what happens in the continental USA overlooks what Puerto Ricans have achieved and stood for during the last 122 years of USA colonization, and must not be limited to the “continent”. It has to include “la isla del encanto -o ‘del espanto’ como dicen los fanáticos de Bad Bunny”; and a good “ueeepa” can begin to further explain the idea. 

For the authors of the New York Times’ article, the “culture wars” are won if Latinos get to be hired by the stuffy New Yorker or the “hollywodense” Los Angeles Times. While it is a noble and enriching move and goal, it is quite limiting to reduce the “culture wars” to the climbing of the career ladder or to be able to participate in the dissemination of information from the pulpits of the large media conglomerates, and this “reductivism” plays into a certain mentality that can serve to justify a particular form of colonization; therefore, “encabuyen y vuelvan y tiren, que les salio batata”. The “culture wars” have also been fought from the bases, and as far Puerto Ricans go, they have done a very good job: beginning with the defense and continuous use of the Spanish language, development of rich and quite unique cultural expressions (not to forget the tattoed hipsters serving “pastelillos rellenos de morcillas o alcapurrias with salsa bechamel” in La Alcapurria Quemá, near La Placita de Santurce); and, in Niuyork, setting up the “Clubes de Pueblos” and many other long lasting institutions during the forties, fifties. 

On Latinos with specific identities (racial ethnic, class) and the effects these have on how they relate with each other, “pues, al pan, pan, y al vino, vino”; but not here: the “borujos” formed by these social dynamics deserve a much longer essay and would require “sacarle en cara”, challenge those who otherwise would not face the words of Fortunato Vizcarrondo: “y tu abuela, dónde está?”. At the College where I worked for over thirty years, I met quite a few Latinos who were not that “solldarios” nor willing to face their double standards, “caras de yagrumos”, but I will not expose them in this essay, since so many of them are leading multiculturalists, antiracists in the fields of education and linguistics, and would not look nice if I do so, and my readers will have to change their perceptions and say, “Que qué?”