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<h1 id="reader-title">Paradise Lost: Borikén</h1>
<span class="post_author" itemprop="author"><a
href="https://www.counterpunch.org/author/andres-castro/"
rel="nofollow">Andrés Castro</a> - June 6, 2017</span></div>
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<p>The New York City Puerto Rican Day Parade is on June
11th; but as a member of the island’s diaspora, I will
find it difficult to celebrate, knowing of Puerto Rico’s
twisted relationship with the U.S. and that the island’s
government is going bankrupt because of it. My venting
follows without supporting citations; so if preferred,
skip this exorcism and scroll down to a relevant poem.
In the poem’s endnotes, I mention a couple of highly
praised books that should keep me from sounding like
just one more conspiracy theorist; of course, nothing
will stop the heckler armed with “alternative facts.”
Supportive references and detractors aside, this brief
personal essay is meant primarily for those who don’t
know the sad history of Puerto Rico, as well as for
those who do. The island is just a dot in a troubled
world that, as dots go, remains neglected and
misunderstood. Ultimately, I only wish for this
beautiful little island nation to receive the critical
analysis and care for its people that it deserves.</p>
<p>Robin in the Hood: Taking from The Poor and Giving to
The Rich</p>
<p>No matter the many years of propaganda about Puerto
Rico being blessed as a self-governing U.S.
“Commonwealth,” it has never been autonomous but
exploited instead. It is more widely known as “the
world’s oldest colony;” and as we all know, colonization
is not harmless: dig up Thomas Jefferson, his
land-owning colleagues, and their people’s revolutionary
guerrilla army to see how strongly colonial North
Americans objected to it; for sublime hypocrisy, see how
U.S. independence meant genocide for the Native
American. Puerto Rico, known as <em>Borikén</em> by its
indigenous population, was recognized early as a rich
unspoiled resource, well-positioned for free trade with
much of the world, and so it was invaded by the U.S. in
1898 when Spain could no longer defend it. Good bye free
trade and the charter of genuine freedom Spain had
granted Puerto Rico shortly before being occupied.
Colonization 101: create self-serving fictions that
enable the subjugation of a people; take their land;
profit at their expense.</p>
<p>The U.S. government has never allowed Puerto Rico to
manage its own affairs, especially in terms of economic
policies that would benefit its people more than outside
interests; instead, it has been brutally raped for the
benefit of U.S. corporations and ruling class elites.
The local government now bankrupt, the island is
bleeding to death; as expected, Wall Street vultures
(and other lovely assorted businessmen) and their
lawyers are swooping in for pieces of the island’s
desecrated body. As a Nuyorican, a member of a diaspora
who proudly sees his roots stretching back into the
history of Borikén’s Native American, African, and
Spanish cultures, it disgusts me to watch the carnage.
Whatever economic benefits the U.S. has laid on the
island, they have been little compared to the amount of
wealth and human life extracted.</p>
<p>The calculated exploitation has gotten so bad that the
island is experiencing a significant exodus and brain
drain: people are leaving the island rather than sink
with it. Regrettably, the corrupt class that has
historically sold out the poor majority and working
classes—is sticking around; the most articulate of them
continue to craft odes to the status quo and have
buildings named after them. The strongest voices for
resistance were silenced—to put it mildly—by the 1960s.
The life-long imprisonment and crippling of
Albizu Campos—our Nelson Mandela—should never be
forgotten. This is the island’s history in a poison
capsule its people is forced to swallow. It’s hard to
believe how thousands of lives have been destroyed and
what future generations have in store: if only knowledge
led to courageous moral evolution.</p>
<p><strong>Dissent?</strong></p>
<p>Not everyone can sympathize with those who saw a
never-ending U.S. military occupation for what it was
and fought against it. As I write this, the NYPD
Hispanic Society has pulled out of the Puerto Rican Day
Parade because Oscar López Rivera, labeled a “terrorist”
was recently released from prison after 36 years and is
being honored as a “National Freedom Hero.” Rivera was
not directly responsible for killing anyone, but was
implicated in several deaths caused by a New York City
restaurant bombing and charged with plotting to
“overthrow the U.S. government.”</p>
<p>I cannot imagine the life-long pain that comes with
losing totally innocent loved ones because of any
political agenda; this would probably unravel me.
However, I also know that the greatest killer—by far—of
innocent men, women, and children has always been the
occupying state—not the colonized. Like many, I wonder
what options are left to a captured defenseless people
who can only see humiliation and death ahead for
themselves and their families. You have probably heard
that one man’s terrorist is another’s freedom fighter; a
study of U.S. and world history confirms this, but how
many people actually learn about imperialism and
state-produced terrorism?</p>
<p><strong>More Madness</strong></p>
<p>So what can make things even worse for Puerto Rico?
Please do not laugh: a U.S./P.R corporate and political
cabal is destroying the island’s public education system
from kindergarten to its historically rich university.
How dare anyone read the right books or think beyond
what is necessary to go into the service industry or
work in a factory? This process should seem familiar
since the corporate privatization of public schools has
broken ground on the U.S. mainland. Puerto Rico has
always been a test case for U.S. corporations and
elites: unlike a strong full-grown Cuba, the island was
simply too small, young, and isolated to keep from being
overpowered and turned into a dependent welfare state.
And you would think, like with every society colonized
and economically enslaved by Western white powers, that
the race of the victims matter.</p>
<p><strong>Black & White Cookies</strong></p>
<p>I read Malcolm X believed that for capitalism to work
you have to believe in the whites’ racism against
non-whites. Looking at what is going on in Puerto Rico
and recently re-watching <em>Aristocrats</em>, as well
as Pasolini’s startling classic <em>Salo: 120 Days of
Sodom</em>, reminds me again that Malcolm was close to
the truth but wrong. The “owners” (as my Irish-American
hero, George Carlin, called them) of the U.S. will abuse
and screw their own into the ground whenever profits are
at stake. I am reading Nancy Isenberg’s <em>White
Trash: The Four-Hundred-Year History of Class
in America</em>; and I assume it will unsettle anyone
who believes in the inherent superiority of the
capitalist white male and his cold-blooded objectivist
siren Ayn Rand. True, it helps if the one you want to
dehumanize and subjugate looks different from you—I
really have to stop spouting clichés.</p>
<p><strong>Hero Sandwiches</strong></p>
<p>To be clear: The pale Spanish Conquistadors, mounted
on their stallions and protected by layers of armor,
were never my heroes; I was always more attracted to the
native Tainos and Africans who were killed and forced
into slavery by them and yet still fought back. So,
whenever I have heard the phrase “<em>Que Sera, Sera</em>”
coming from a Latino or Latina, especially if they are
white, it sounds repugnant. I can take it from others,
say the glowing moon-faced Doris Day singing the phrase
in the 1950s—what did she know back then?—and she was
sweet with a pretty voice. I am happy her mother was
finally given the privilege to vote and wear pants
before dying. It is a good thing her mother did not try
to wear pants in Puerto Rico. In 1919, <a
href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Luisa_Capetillo">Luisa
Capetillo</a>, a writer, anarchist, and one of Puerto
Rico’s most respected labor organizers, challenged
society by becoming the first woman on the island to
wear trousers in public. Capetillo was put in jail for
what was then considered to be a “crime.” I can look up
to Capetillo. I have ridiculed my share of Puerto
Ricans; but I can always hold in high esteem many more <em>Boricuas</em>—past,
present, and those to come. Nationalism of any kind has
never really left a great impression on me: whatever
pride I have in a homeland, whether I think of the U.S.
or Puerto Rico, has to do with looking at the lives of
individuals in these places. When I go to the parade,
because after writing this what else can I do, it will
be to celebrate individuals—past, present, and those in
the making who I know will do great things in the
future—no matter how bleak it may look, not only for our
island but for the U.S. and the world right now.</p>
<p><strong>Abuelo’s Last Wish: Independence</strong></p>
<p><em>The Mainland: 1955-1970
</em></p>
<p>Abuelo <em>w</em>as tall, skeletal-thin, with thick
wavy black hair,<br>
dark brown eyes set deep above his nose and square
jowls,<br>
shaven with marbled soap, straight razor, aseptic bay
rum.<br>
He wore Chinese laundered shirts, Bogart-grey cuffed
suits,<br>
a vested timepiece, Fedora, and brown wing-tipped shoes;<br>
but shirtless, he would climb jerry-built wooden
scaffolds<br>
set against his old wooden two-story home in the Bronx.<br>
Seemed his happiest days were spent gardening, painting,<br>
or shingling the roof; maybe Sundays were best:
breakfast,<br>
<em>La Iglesia Christiana</em>, singing hymns softly on
the porch.</p>
<p><em>Oh si yo quiero viver con Cristo, Oh si yo quiero<br>
andar con Cristo, Oh si yo quiero morir con Cristo,<br>
Quiero serle un testigo fiel.</em></p>
<p><em>Borik</em><em>é</em><em>n: </em>1971-1973</p>
<p>Yearning, he returned to a dirt road that snaked by
fields,<br>
abandoned plantations, palm trees, finally disappearing<br>
in a lagoon. His corrugated tin-roofed shack sat atop
stilts<br>
on a stony plot of farmland fenced in by thin uneven
slats<br>
and chicken wire. Black-spotted mangoes hung from short<br>
bushy trees; an orange-red rooster trotted around
piglets;<br>
little green lizards played tag on the brown outhouse
doors;<br>
the old goat with wise feminine eyes nibbled at the rope<br>
that collared her. Behind a large screened porch window<br>
<em>Abuelo</em>, shirtless, hunched over a sun-bleached
workbench,<br>
listening to an antique radio, smiled at me; his long
gnarled<br>
fingers rolling cigars…he would never get…to sell in
town.</p>
<p>Notes: <em>Borik</em><em>é</em><em>n is the </em>pre-Columbian
name given to Puerto Rico by its indigenous Taino
people. Spain’s colony for 400 years, 8 days after being
granted autonomy, it becomes a de facto colony of the
U.S. after the invasion of 1898. Due to the island’s
easy to occupy small size, it is ground zero for brutal
experimentation and exploitation of every kind by what
President Eisenhower first labeled the U.S.
industrial/government/military complex. By 1960, U.S.
Government subsidized corporations, banks, and ruling
elites owned most of the island’s wealth producing land,
resources—poor & working class were fully
subjugated. The Puerto Rican Government is now bankrupt.
Over 45% of the population lives below U.S. poverty
line. On December 9, 2015, the GOP blocked a proposed
bankruptcy bill that would allow P.R. to restructure its
debt. Austerity schemes including cuts to public
services and primary to higher education are being
employed. Check my facts. Please read Nelson A. Denis’ <em>War
Against All Puerto Ricans </em>and David Talbot’s <em>The
Devil’s Chessboard</em>.</p>
<p>* A version of this poem first appeared in <em>Acentos</em>.</p>
<p>* This essay first appeared on the author’s personal
blog, <a href="https://thepracticingpoet.edublogs.org/">https://thepracticingpoet.edublogs.org/</a></p>
<p><em><strong>Andrés Castro</strong> is a PEN
member/volunteer and is also listed in the Directory
of Poets and Writers.</em></p>
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