None of the Above: Puerto Ricans in the Global Era

281 Pages·2007·1.68 MB·English

by  Frances Negrón-Muntaner (eds.)

NEW DIRECTIONS IN LATINO AMERICAN CULTURES
A Series Edited by Licia Fiol-Matta and José Quiroga
None of the Above: Puerto Ricans in the Global Era,
edited by Frances Negrón-Muntaner
AnIntellectual History of the Caribbean,
by Silvio Torres-Saillant
New Tendencies in Mexican Art,
by Rubén Gallo
Jose Martí: An Introduction,
by Oscar Montero
The Letter of Violence: Essays on Narrative and Theory,
by Idelber Avelar
The Masters and the Slaves: Plantation Relations and Mestizaje
in American Imaginaries,
edited by Alexandra Isfahani-Hammond
Bilingual Games: Some Literary Investigations,
edited by Doris Sommer
Tongue Ties: Logo-Eroticism in Anglo-Hispanic Literature,
by Gustavo Perez-Firmat
Velvet Barrios:Popular Culture &Chicana/o Sexualities,
edited by Alicia Gaspar de Alba, with a foreword by Tomás Ybarra Frausto
The Famous 41:Sexuality and Social Control in Mexico, 1901,
edited by Robert McKee Irwin, Edward J. McCaughan, and Michele Rocío
Nasser
New York Ricans from the Hip Hop Zone,
by Raquel Z. Rivera
Forthcoming titles
Puerto Ricans in America: 30 Years of Activism and Change,
edited by Xavier F. Totti and Félix Matos Rodríguez
NEWCONCEPTSINLATINOAMERICANCULTURES
Cosmopolitanisms and Latin America: Against the Destiny of Place,
by Jacqueline Loss
Ciphers of History:Latin American Readings for a “Cultural” Age,
by Enrico Mario Santí
Remembering Maternal Bodies:Melancholy in Latina and Latin American
Women’s Writing,
by Benigno Trigo
NONE OFTHE ABOVE:
PUERTO RICANS INTHE GLOBAL ERA
Edited by
Frances Negrón-Muntaner
NONEOFTHEABOVE
© Frances Negrón-Muntaner,2007.
Softcover reprint of the hardcover 1st edition 2007 978-1-4039-6245-4
All rights reserved.No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any
manner whatsoever without written permission except in the case of brief
quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews.
First published in 2007 by
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Union and other countries.
ISBN 978-1-4039-6246-1 ISBN 978-0-230-60436-0 (eBook)
DOI 10.1057/9780230604360
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
None of the above :Puerto Ricans in the global era / edited by
Frances Negrón-Muntaner.
p.cm.—(New directions in Latino American cultures)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
1.Puerto Rico—Politics and government—1952– 2.Puerto
Rico—Relations—United States.3.United States—Relations—
Puerto Rico.4.Political culture—Puerto Rico.5.Nationalism—Puerto Rico.
6.Identity (Psychology)—Puerto Rico.I.Negrón-Muntaner,Frances.
II.Series.
F1976.N66 2006
306.2097295—dc22 2005057421
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
Design by Newgen Imaging Systems (P) Ltd.,Chennai,India.
First edition:April 2007
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
Contents
List of Figures vii
Preface ix
Introduction 1
Frances Negrón-Muntaner
Part I The Politics of Ambiguity
1 The Absent State 21
Fernando Picó
2 Sailing on the USS Titanic: Puerto Rico’s Unique
Insertion to Global Economic Trends 29
Jaime Benson Arias
3 Space out of Place: Consumer Culture in Puerto Rico 39
Laura L. Ortiz-Negrón
4 Nation and Migration: Rethinking Puerto Rican
Identity in a Transnational Context 51
Jorge Duany
5 The Political Status of Puerto Rico: A Nonsense Dilemma 65
Carlos Pabón
6 “None of the Above” Means More of the Same: Why
Solving Puerto Rico’s Status Problem Matters 73
Christina Duffy Burnett
Part II Politics as Spectacle and the
Spectacle of Politics
7 Vieques: Protest as a Consensual Spectacle 87
Juan Duchesne Winter
8 Entertainment Tonight! Puerto Rican Media and
the Privatization of Politics 99
Silvia Alvarez-Curbelo
vi CONTENTS
9 Beauty Salons: Consumption and the Production of
the Self 109
María Isabel Quiñones Arocho
10 Getting F****d in Puerto Rico: Metaphoric
Provocations and Queer Activist Interventions 129
Juana María Rodríguez
11 Imagining Puerto Rican Queer Citizenship:
Frances Negrón-Muntaner’s Brincando el charco:
Portrait of a Puerto Rican 147
Alberto Sandoval-Sánchez
12 Exposed Bodies: Media and U.S. Puerto Ricans in
Public Space 165
Frances R. Aparicio
Part III BORICUA Borderlines
13 Transing the Standard: The Case of Puerto Rican Spanish 183
Gloria D. Prosper-Sánchez
14 Boricua(Between) Borders: On the Possibility
of Translating Bilingual Narratives 195
Yolanda Martínez-San Miguel
15 The Diaspora Strikes Back: Nation and Location 211
Juan Flores
16 Will the “Real” Puerto Rican Culture Please
Stand Up? Thoughts on Cultural Nationalism 217
Raquel Z. Rivera
17 Salsa, Bad Boys, and Brass 233
José Quiroga
18 [a. k. a.: The Sex/Salsa/Identity Show] 241
Félix Jiménez
Part IV Coda
Living La Vida Global: The Case of Jose Padilla/Abdullah
Al Muhajir 255
Frances Negrón-Muntaner
Notes on Contributors 271
Index 275
List of Figures
10.1 Reverend Margarita Sánchez de León, left, with her
lawyer Nora Vargas Acosta 139
11.1 “Father flashback” in Brincando el charco 151
16.1 Obanilú Iré Allende, a member of Yerbabuena and
Alma Mayó, dances at a bombazoat El Maestro
Cultural and Educational Center, October 2004 223
16.2 Julia Loíza Gutiérrez-Rivera dances at a bombazoat
El Maestro Cultural and Educational Center, October 2004.
To her right, Camilo Molina-Gaetán responds to
her movements on the primodrum. To Camilo’s right,
his mother Mercedes Molina looks on, smiling.
In front of the flag, Julia’s father, Juango Gutiérrez,
director of Los Pleneros de la 21, plays the güiro, and
Jorge Vázquez plays the buleadordrum. Photo
by Raquel Z. Rivera 224
16.3 Promotional flyer for a bombazoat El Maestro Cultural and
Educational Center, November 27, 2004, The Bronx,
NY. Dancing, from left to right, Pedro “Unico” Noguet,
Julia Loíza Gutiérrez-Rivera, and Obanilú Iré Allende.
Flyer design by Tato Torres for Yerbabuena, Inc. 225
Coda Mugshot of Jose Padilla following his October 1991 arrest in
Broward Country (CBS/AP) 256
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Preface
“...no nation now but the imagination.”
Derek Walcott, “The Schooner Flight”
Since the mid-1980s, I have lived in and out of four different cities that form
part of what could be thought of as a Puerto Rican archipelago: San Juan,
Philadelphia, Miami, and New York. In New York, however, the unexpected
happened. I heard something crack. Loud. Even if throughout my many
years as an intellectual migrant worker, I have felt home sick, or unsettled,
this was different. It was as if once I arrived to this new, post-9/11 and re-
Latinized Nueva York, I had lost pieces of my prior self in the move and never
bothered to claim this baggage. I felt like a Caribbean Humpty Dumpty,
broken and disoriented, with my yolk slowly oozing out onto the thumping
sidewalk.
Until one day a colleague invited me to lunch. We talked about the
university where we both taught, how I was (or was not) adapting to
New York and the incongruities of life in general. Perhaps because my
colleague is also part of a different diaspora, I felt free to inquire about my
anxiety: “How are people to survive when they no longer essentially see
themselves as nationals, ethnics, or natives?” My colleague suggested that we
get some chocolate after lunch, but before we left the restaurant, he put it
simply: “When you get to that point, you start needing friends.”
Tellingly, this book is based on efforts to carve out new spaces for intel-
lectual dialogue, a form of friendship. From 2000 to 2004, I organized a
series of symposia on Puerto Rico, Puerto Ricans, and U.S. Latinos at
Rutgers University, University of Miami, and Columbia University. The main
purpose of these gatherings was to pose alternative questions and develop
innovative approaches to the study of Puerto Rican and Latino cultural and
political practices. In contrast to other similar events, there was no ideologi-
cal, disciplinary, or methodological litmus tests. The conferences hosted par-
ticipants who were journalists, filmmakers, dancers, politicians, public
servants, writers, and academics across the political spectrum. The main cri-
terion for inviting participants was their willingness to take a risk, including
sitting next to people who they ordinarily would not want to.
Each conference had a different emphasis that also marked a level of
dissatisfaction with the still-prevalent tendency of framing Puerto Rican
practices as a fixed contest between nationalist and colonialist ideologies.1