Diasporic Pitfalls: Puerto Rico and the Irreconcilability of Colonialism’s Aftermath
Contributors: Shellyne Rodriguez.
Published
“As horrible as it sounds, we have to accept that the Tainos are no longer there.” These haunting words pronounced by Shellyne Rodriguez in a Bronx lunch with Léopold motivated the commission of this text, in which she articulates the condition of the Puerto Rican diaspora (the Diasporican) in the United States in relation to Puerto Rico. She deploys the various political traps into which this diaspora is incentivized to fall, and the necessary reckoning with the irreparability of what the colonial atrocity destroyed.
“The structure of this drawing is based on the common religious image of Las Siete Potencias. In the original image, each oval carries the name of an Orisha accompanied by an image of the Christian saint is it synchronized with. I have intervened on this synchronization, instead placing an elemental aspect related to each orisha, to center the African roots of the deities rather than retain the christian iconography which could obscure rather than camouflage, which was its original intent. I do not name the orishas, I allow the elemental representation to invoke them. This invocation is then directed at seven colonial impositions made upon the Puerto Rican people, so that each orisha is facing an opponent. Centered in the work is 96-year-old Carmen Reyes, from Carolina. She stands at the ready with machete in hand. She has replaced The Crucifixion from the original image. Instead of pacifism and martyrdom, this abuelita is confrontational and at the ready. There is, as Frantz Fanon says of the native in full revolt against their colonizers, ‘no compromise, and no possibility of concession.’ The skull, of course, cites mortality and death. The ladder represents the ancestral links between the past and present. We are our ancestors. We carry them with us. We are ancestors in training. The rooster represents the dawn of a new day and the fighting gallo. Flanking both sides of the ribbon, are the words ‘Vicios y Virtudes’ referencing the seven vices and virtues of the christian tradition. Together with the seven potencies this gives us three 7s which calls attention again to the synchronization of Christian philosophies with African Spiritual technologies in an aesthetic that references the 777 slot machine winning number.”
“The Muslim’s ‘X’ symbolized the true African family name that he never could know. For me, my ‘X’ replaced the white slavemaster name of ‘Little’ which some blue-eyed devil named Little had imposed upon my paternal forebears.”
The Autobiography of Malcolm X, 1965.
It’s almost a rite of passage. The bright-eyed Diasporican arrives in Puerto Rico to “find themselves” and discovers the brutal reality of their estrangement. This lament is an experience familiar for most diasporic peoples. How we engage with our cultural identity and our mother country (mother’s country), continues to be fraught with tension and trauma for both the diaspora coming from the United States and Puerto Ricans who continue to live under US colonial occupation. This text is an attempt to sketch out an anti-colonial and anti-imperial politic in alignment with Puerto Ricans at a time when the diaspora is the target market alongside white settlers, for both cultural tourism and land appropriation in the wake of the 2017 Hurricane Maria, as well as the neoliberal austerity measures imposed by the fiscal control board of PROMESA (“Puerto Rico Oversight, Management, and Economic Stability Act”).