Puerto Rican Nationhood, Ethnicity, and Literature

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Frances R. Aparicio
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
New York ◽  
Puerto Rican ◽  
Urban Space ◽  
Skin Color ◽  
Puerto Ricans ◽  
The United States ◽  
Island Population ◽  
And Gender ◽  
Global Identities

Given Puerto Rico’s long colonial history, Puerto Ricans both on the island and in the diaspora have had to grapple with contested notions of nationhood. Having been described as a “divided nation” and a “commuter nation” due to the geographical divides between the island population and those who have migrated to cities in the United States, Puerto Ricans have deployed literature to forge and re-imagine a space for belonging and community informed by the experiences of living in between the island and New York, in between Spanish and English, and in between racial notions of skin color, social class, and gender and sexualities. Challenging and unsettling the foundational discourses of national identity on the island, “Diasporican” literature proposes alternative imaginaries that resist power inequalities. This essay argues that Diasporican literature has come into its own, contributing new understandings of the fissures of Puerto Rican national, ethnic, and cultural identities. Puerto Rican writers in the United States have textualized their experiences of migration and transnationalism through their poetry as well as fiction, memoirs, and autobiographical narratives. They have contested traditional notions of home and have explored the failures and limitations of a sense of belonging. Rejecting both the island of Puerto Rico as the geographical site for Puerto Rican authenticity and the dominant urban imaginaries of New York City that have long excluded their working-poor communities, Puerto Rican writers in the United States have represented el barrio as an urban space that offers them a sense of community despite the mainstream notions of hyper-masculinity, violence, and illegal practices. Afro-Boricua and Diasporican writers have also reflected on the fissures of racial belonging, as their dark skin color is not always integrated into dominant notions of the Puerto Rican and U.S. national imaginaries. Their deployment, in poetry, of English, Spanish, and “Spanglish” speaks mostly to the centrality of orality and sounds in the formation of nationhood, while challenging the homology of Puerto Rican nationality to Spanish. Exploration of the ways in which female, feminist, and queer Diasporican writers grapple with issues of belonging, gender, and sexuality foregrounds how these categories of identity continue to go against the grain of traditional masculine narratives of nationhood. It is essential to acknowledge the geographic dispersion of Diasporican voices away from New York and the transcultural alliances and global identities that are being produced in Morocco, Hawaii, and other far regions of the world. A short discussion of Lin Manuel Miranda’s “In the Heights” focuses on an example of staging a return home to New York, in a performance that celebrates community, family, and the neighborhood for second- and third-generation Puerto Ricans among other Latino and Latina groups. The multiple and complicated ways in which Diasporican literary voices, from poetry to theater to fiction, textualize notions of home, belonging, and community are examined within the larger frameworks of nationhood and ethnicity.

Puerto Ricans in the United States

2015 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lorrin Thomas
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
New York ◽  
Puerto Rican ◽  
Community Organizing ◽  
Local Politics ◽  
Puerto Ricans ◽  
The United States ◽  
Basic Material ◽  
Community Control ◽  
The Political

Puerto Rican migrants have resided in the United States since before the Spanish-Cuban-American War of 1898, when the United States took possession of the island of Puerto Rico as part of the Treaty of Paris. After the war, groups of Puerto Ricans began migrating to the United States as contract laborers, first to sugarcane plantations in Hawaii, and then to other destinations on the mainland. After the Jones Act of 1917 extended U.S. citizenship to islanders, Puerto Ricans migrated to the United States in larger numbers, establishing their largest base in New York City. Over the course of the 1920s and 1930s, a vibrant and heterogeneous colonia developed there, and Puerto Ricans participated actively both in local politics and in the increasingly contentious politics of their homeland, whose status was indeterminate until it became a commonwealth in 1952. The Puerto Rican community in New York changed dramatically after World War II, accommodating up to fifty thousand new migrants per year during the peak of the “great migration” from the island. Newcomers faced intense discrimination and marginalization in this era, defined by both a Cold War ethos and liberal social scientists’ interest in the “Puerto Rican problem.” Puerto Rican migrant communities in the 1950s and 1960s—now rapidly expanding into the Midwest, especially Chicago, and into New Jersey, Connecticut, and Philadelphia—struggled with inadequate housing and discrimination in the job market. In local schools, Puerto Rican children often faced a lack of accommodation of their need for English language instruction. Most catastrophic for Puerto Rican communities, on the East Coast particularly, was the deindustrialization of the labor market over the course of the 1960s. By the late 1960s, in response to these conditions and spurred by the civil rights, Black Power, and other social movements, young Puerto Ricans began organizing and protesting in large numbers. Their activism combined a radical approach to community organizing with Puerto Rican nationalism and international anti-imperialism. The youth were not the only activists in this era. Parents in New York had initiated, together with their African American neighbors, a “community control” movement that spanned the late 1960s and early 1970s; and many other adult activists pushed the politics of the urban social service sector—the primary institutions in many impoverished Puerto Rican communities—further to the left. By the mid-1970s, urban fiscal crises and the rising conservative backlash in national politics dealt another blow to many Puerto Rican communities in the United States. The Puerto Rican population as a whole was now widely considered part of a national “underclass,” and much of the political energy of Puerto Rican leaders focused on addressing the paucity of both basic material stability and social equality in their communities. Since the 1980s, however, Puerto Ricans have achieved some economic gains, and a growing college-educated middle class has managed to gain more control over the cultural representations of their communities. More recently, the political salience of Puerto Ricans as a group has begun to shift. For the better part of the 20th century, Puerto Ricans in the United States were considered numerically insignificant or politically impotent (or both); but in the last two presidential elections (2008 and 2012), their growing populations in the South, especially in Florida, have drawn attention to their demographic significance and their political sensibilities.

The Movement and Settlement of Puerto Rican Migrants within the United States, 1950–1960

1968 ◽  
Vol 2 (2) ◽  
pp. 40-52
Author(s):  
J. Hernández-Alvarez
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
New York ◽  
New York City ◽  
Puerto Rican ◽  
York City ◽  
Metropolitan Areas ◽  
Puerto Ricans ◽  
The United States ◽  
Future Trend ◽  
The U.S

This article presents a concise summary of the geographic movement and settlement of Puerto Ricans within the United States from 1950 to 1960, based on data drawn from the Census taken on the latter date. The Author observes that a shift away from New York City occurred both in terms of migration from Puerto Rico and internal movements between states. This resulted in the development of major Puerto Rican communities in eight other metropolitan areas of the U.S. The Puerto Rican population was found highly mobile within the U.S., especially from neighborhood to neighborhood within the same city and usually in the direction of neighborhoods marked by out-migration of non-Puerto Ricans. The analysis is then extended to the different patterns of settlement outside New York City and the present evolution of the migrant colonias and to the diaspora of a small portion of the Puerto Rican population throughout the U.S. In the final remarks, the Author discusses the future trend of dispersion of the second generation population, especially, and the correlation between economically favored cities and the setlement of Puerto Ricans on the mainland.

The Puerto Rican Diaspora to the United States

Puerto Rico ◽  
2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jorge Duany
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
New York ◽  
Puerto Rico ◽  
Puerto Rican ◽  
York City ◽  
Puerto Ricans ◽  
The United States ◽  
Late Nineteenth Century ◽  
Puerto Rican Diaspora ◽  
Late Nineteenth

Who were some of the most prominent Puerto Ricans who moved to the United States during the late nineteenth century? Several political exiles from Puerto Rico sought refuge abroad, mainly in New York City, after the failure of the Grito de Lares, the Island’s insurrection...

Latinos and Latinas: Puerto Ricans

2013 ◽  
Author(s):  
Angel P. Campos
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
New York ◽  
Puerto Rico ◽  
Puerto Rican ◽  
Puerto Ricans ◽  
The United States ◽  
Fourth Generation ◽  
Government Printing ◽  
Hispanic Origin ◽  
Census 2000

The 2000 census counted 3,406,178 Puerto Ricans living in the United States, bringing the total for those living in Puerto Rico and the United States to 7,333,403 million (U.S. Bureau of Census. (2000). Overview of race and Hispanic origin. We the people: Hispanics in the United States. Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office). The label “Puerto Rican” is not a race but a self-identifier. A Puerto Rican might be born in Puerto Rico or in the United States from Puerto Rican parents. A Puerto Rican might be first-, second-, third-, or even fourth-generation in the Unites States or 20th-generation in Puerto Rico. As long as they identify themselves as Puerto Rican, they are Puerto Rican. The label Puerto Rican has many different connotations to both Puerto Ricans and non–Puerto Ricans. For the purpose of this entry, Puerto Ricans, whether born in Puerto Rico or in the United States, are defined as a multiracial and multicultural ethnic group with more than 500 years of history. The discussion in this entry provides a brief overview; for more in-depth reviews please see the following references: (Anderson, R. W. (1965). Party politics in Puerto Rico. Stanmford, CA: Stanford University Press.; Fitzpatrick, J. P. (1987). Puerto Rican Americans: The meaning of migration to the mainland (2nd ed.). Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall; Lewis, G. K. (1963). Puerto Rico: Freedom and power in the Caribbean. New York: Harper & Row; Morales. (1986). Puerto Rican poverty and migration: We just have to try elsewhere. New York: Praeger).

Becoming Julia de Burgos

2014 ◽  
Author(s):  
Vanessa Pérez Rosario
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
New York ◽  
New York City ◽  
Visual Culture ◽  
Puerto Rican ◽  
York City ◽  
Puerto Ricans ◽  
The United States ◽  
Political Dynamics ◽  
Political Activist

While it is rare for a poet to become a cultural icon, Julia de Burgos has evoked feelings of bonding and identification in Puerto Ricans and Latinos in the United States for over half a century. This book, the first book-length study written in English, examines poet and political activist Julia de Burgos's development as a writer, her experience of migration, and her legacy in New York City. The book situates de Burgos as part of a transitional generation that helps to bridge the historical divide between Puerto Rican nationalist writers of the 1930s and the Nuyorican writers of the 1970s. Focusing on the poet's contributions to New York Latino/a literary and visual culture, the book moves beyond the tragedy-centered narratives of de Burgos's life to examine her place within a nuanced historical understanding of Puerto Rico's peoples and culture. The book unravels the cultural and political dynamics at work when contemporary Latina/o writers and artists in New York revise, reinvent, and riff off of Julia de Burgos as they imagine new possibilities for themselves and their communities.

Mexican Immigrant Understandings of Empire, Race, and Gender

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
John H. Flores
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Religious Freedom ◽  
Puerto Ricans ◽  
Gender Norms ◽  
The United States ◽  
Mexican Immigrant ◽  
Race And Gender ◽  
Mexican Culture ◽  
And Gender

This chapter compares liberal and traditionalist understandings of empire, race, and gender to explain why liberals often declined U.S. citizenship and why traditionalists became more amenable to U.S. naturalization. Mexican liberals defined themselves as anti-imperialist mestizos and, in Chicago, they joined with Puerto Ricans and Nicaraguans to protest U.S. imperialism. Most liberals rebuffed U.S. naturalization, in part, because they were put off by U.S. imperialism, racism, and gender norms. By contrast, traditionalists celebrated the United States for granting them religious freedom, and challenged the liberals by exalting all that was Catholic and thus Spanish and white in Mexican culture. In so doing, traditionalists became more open to a U.S. understanding of whiteness and citizenship, and many traditionalists decided they could create new lives for themselves in the United States.

The Puerto Rican Diaspora to the United States

Puerto Rico ◽  
2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jorge Duany
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
New York ◽  
New York City ◽  
Puerto Rican ◽  
York City ◽  
The United States ◽  
Puerto Rican Diaspora

What is the Puerto Rican Day Parade? The Puerto Rican Day Parade (Desfile Puertorriqueño) in New York City is the most visible display of Puerto Rican identity in the United States. The parade was first held in 1959 as an offshoot of the...

Charanga Embalao

2021 ◽  
pp. 144-168
Author(s):  
Sue Miller
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
New York ◽  
Puerto Rican ◽  
The United States ◽  
Latin Music

This chapter features the work of charanga flute player Johnny Pacheco in New York before he became known as the creator of the Fania All Stars, and also the work of pianist Charlie Palmieri and his Charanga La Duboney. The Puerto-Rican brothers Eddie and Charlie Palmieri have been highly influential in the development of Latin music in the United States. While Eddie Palmieri’s La Perfecta utilized the charanga flute of George Castro, Charlie Palmieri’s charanga (one of the first to play the Palladium), featured flautists Johnny Pacheco and Rod Lewis Sánchez. Flute solos by Pacheco and Sánchez on the Charanga Duboney recordings of ‘Bronx Pachanga’ and ‘Mack the Knife’ are analyzed here to ascertain whether a distinctive New York sabor is present.

The Making of American Catholicism

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael Pfeifer
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
New York ◽  
Los Angeles ◽  
The United States ◽  
Regional Culture ◽  
American Catholicism ◽  
Race And Gender ◽  
History Of ◽  
And Gender ◽  
American Catholic

The Making of American Catholicism: Regional Culture and the Catholic Experience argues that regional and transnational relationships have been central to the making of American Catholicism. The book traces the development of Catholic cultures in the South, the Midwest, the West, and the Northeast and their contribution to larger patterns of Catholicism in the United States. Exploring the history of Catholic cultures in New Orleans, Iowa, Wisconsin, Los Angeles, and New York City, the book carefully explores the history of American Catholic cultures across regions and their relation to factors such as national origin, ethnicity, race, and gender. The chapters include close analysis of the historical experiences of Latinx and African American Catholics as well as European immigrant Catholics. Eschewing a national or nationalistic focus that might elide or neglect global connections or local complexity, the book offers an interpretation of the American Catholic experience that encompasses local, national, and transnational histories by emphasizing the diverse origins of Catholics in the United States, their long-standing ties to transnational communities of Catholic believers, and the role of region in shaping the contours of American Catholic religiosity. Drawing on extensive archival research, the book argues that regional American Catholic cultures and a larger American Catholicism developed as transnational Catholic laity and clergy ecclesiastically linked to and by Rome in a hierarchical, authoritarian, and communalistic “universal Church” creatively adapted their devotional and ideological practices in particular American regional contexts that emphasized notions of republicanism, religious liberty, individualistic capitalism, race, ethnicity, and gender.

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