Arizoñando
Desde adentro de la galería, cerca de la esquina de la 119 con la Tercera avenida, puedes mirar por la ventana y ver lo típico del Barrio, estilo Nueva York. La constante de la guagua de mantecado Mr. Softee alborotando sus cantos pregrabados que muchos denuncian como el gran enemigo de la paz. Pero esta ventana, en el primer piso del nuevo edificio del Hunter College School of Social Work no es muy típica, de hecho es un portal que funciona como máquina de tiempo del viejo Star Trek, estilo bomba-Cortijo.
“The project began with the bike,” said Miguel Luciano, whose installation is part of an exhibition called “Labor,” produced by the Centro de Estudios Puertorriqueños and also features work by Melissa Calderón, Antonio Martorell, Juan Sánchez, and Nitza Tufiño. “I was talking with the Puerto Rico Schwinn Club about the history of the Schwinn bike in Puerto Rico and associations between the bicycle and Puerto Rican culture. Julio Clavijo, the PRSC president recalled that his earliest bicycle memories were of his father’s bicycle. The kids weren’t allowed to ride it because their father used it for transportation to work in the cane fields in La Cantera (de Ponce). This intrigued me, the association between the Schwinn bike and labor in Puerto Rico.»
“Those bicycles were from the 1950’s. I was interested in doing a project connected to the Schwinn bicycles of my generation (1970’s), focusing on the Stingray Krate series. This series of bicycles was produced between 1968-1972 and all the names of the bikes were color-coded, relating to agriculture or produce. The Apple Krate was red, the Orange Krate orange, the Lemon Peeler yellow, etc. Many of these bikes are also popular in the Puerto Rican Schwinn clubs in New York. But Schwinn also made the Pea Picker (green) and the Cotton Picker (white) during these years, whose names were still color-coded, but made more specific reference to the labor(er).»
“I was curious, so I started to research associations between Puerto Ricans and pea pickers and cotton pickers, which led me to Labor Union journals that documented various protests involving Puerto Rican laborers in California and Arizona.”
El rostro de Felícita Méndez se puede ver casi sonriendo frente a la bicicleta “Cotton Picker,” nunca imaginó que iba llegar al Barrio. Podría ser una de las caras lindas de Tite Curet Alonso, pero ella ya estaba fuera de la isla cuando él nació. Podría ser una de esas salseras de los años ’70s discutiendo si era La Lupe o Celia Cruz la reina verdadera, pero ella no fue parte de esa famosa Gran Migración. Felícita formó parte de una historia bastante desconocida de obreros puertorriqueños reclutados para trabajar sembrando algodón en Arizona.
Felícita was a precursor of what some of us call “Other Ricans,” that is Boricuas who migrated to places outside our traditional U.S. strongholds of New York, Philly, Boston, Hartford, Cleveland…Tampa. How dignified she appears next to the crude misspelling in the headline, “Further Entry of Porto Ricans Protested.” ”Porto-Rican,” not far off from Piri Thomas’s “Porty-Rican,” was the sobriquet affixed to la isla in the first half of the 20th century, symbolic of the attempt to Anglicize our identity, and make it easier for enterprising imperialist minds to read the name of their new possession as it appeared on maps and public records. More than 80 years before Arizona’s heinous law against Latino being, there was palpable disgust directed against Puerto Rican migrant workers brought in to replace Mexican workers who had fled further north.
“The fact that Arizona was the site of such immigration and labor related controversy in the 1920’s seems all the more relevant today,” comentó Luciano. “What was especially significant to me about the story is the fact that Puerto Ricans protested their mistreatment almost immediately. As much as it was a story of exploitation it was also a story of resistance among Puerto Rican laborers who refused to be taken advantage of.”
El estado de Arizona se ha convertido en un símbolo de la reacción xenofóbica de las fuerzas conservadoras en los Estados Unidos contra los inmigrantes latinos, y algunas veces llega a niveles absurdos, como el caso de esta maestra de escuela, que enfrenta discriminación debido a su acento cuando habla inglés. Esta farsa en Arizona fue replicada recientemente en Alabama, el estado que aprobó un proyecto legislativo que es tan oneroso que el mismo Departamento de Justicia está tratando de bloquear algunas partes de la ley. Pero lo que le pasó a Felícita después de abandonar Arizona es hasta más sorprendente.
“In 1935, she married Gonzalo Méndez, a native of Mexico who had naturalized as a U.S. citizen,” writes Luciano in his artist’s statement for the show. Together they ran a small farm in Orange County on land they leased from a Japanese- American family that had been put in an internment camp during World War II. In 1946, they took their children to register in the local elementary school, but their children were denied entry based on their skin color and ethnicity. The Méndez family refused to accept this policy of discrimination and took the school district to court. In what became a landmark case, Méndez v. Westminster would reach the highest courts in California. The Méndez family paid for the lawyer themselves, with money earned from their farm. In 1947, the courts would rule in favor of the Méndez, and California became the first state in U.S. history to desegregate public schools. It was an important precursor to Brown v. Board of Education (1954), the case that would end the segregation of schools nationwide.”
Lo fascinante de esto es que Méndez vs. Westminster es mencionado mucho por los mexicanos en Estados Unidos como un ejemplo de su historia de lucha contra el racismo en Estados Unidos paralelo a la de los afroamericanos. Pero lo que no es tan conocido es el hecho de que los hijos Méndez nacieron de una mamá puertorriqueña. Esto es una manifestación clásica del otro-rriqueño–y una prueba de que es casi imposible aislar la esencia de un grupo étnico o una raza.
“I myself am Other Rican,” Luciano explained, born on the island but grew up primarily between Seattle and Miami, and now based in New York. “I’m interested in questioning both the stereotypes that have been placed upon us, as well as those we place upon ourselves.”
¿Y cuáles son esos? ¿El acento, el baile, la comida, el machismo, la sensualidad, el coco, la felicidad? Alguien me dijo una vez que la música de los países pobres se hace para levantar la felicidad porque la gente está sufriendo y necesita olvidar. Pero prohibido olvidar, chacho/a. Lo que me parece que necesitamos ahora es un poco más de horizontalidad.
Eso fue lo que pasó cuando conocí por primera vez a los líderes estudiantiles Adriana Mulero, René Reyes, y Giovanni Roberto después de una charla en la Universidad de Rutgers. Los de la iupi no permitieron business as usual–la entrevista se convirtió en una discusión en donde no había objetos ni sujetos. Era un intercambio de ideas. Y cuando esa noche llegaron al Occupy en el parque Zuccotti y hablaron a la asamblea general, en inglés, se oyó el mensaje de Puerto Rico en la era de globalización:
Porto Rico? Pepper spray, just like New York!
En ese momento, nos ocupamos de la ocupación: todos somos otrorriqueños. Lo “otro” es lo que nos hace lo mismo. Creo que eso es lo que estaba planteando José Luis González en “La Noche que Volvimos a Ser Gente,” allí en los rufos de Martorell, que se pueden ver también en la galería del Barrio. Somos una gente que puede aprovechar las estrellas cuando se va la supuesta luz.
“Having the bike in the window was deliberate and something I appealed for,” said Luciano. “It’s a beautiful shiny bike from the outside, and directly reflects the bike culture of El Barrio. I want it to invite the community to come inside and see more.”