Posted: Mon 14 Jul 2008 04:08 Post subject: Statistical Genocide in Puerto Rico
The author claims that trigueño and jabao are pejorative. Is this the general consensus in Latin America or Puerto Rico? I was under the impression that these were simply descriptors for people. Anyway here's the article. Provide comments.
Statistical Genocide in Puerto Rico
Posted on June 26, 2008
Every time I read Puerto Rico’s 2000 Census results, the undeniable reality hits me in the face with the power of an upstart boxer forcing a veteran to realize his glory days are over.
Based on the current rate, Afro-Puerto Ricans will statistically disappear at the end of the current century. This has happened in Argentina and Mexico, where leadership in both countries publicly stated they have no Black populations despite the presence of very active Black organizations fighting for political inclusion. We are witnessing the beginning of statistical genocide—Latin American style. In the most recent census, more than 80 percent of the Puerto Rican population self-identified itself as White, 9 percent as Black, 4 percent as other and 7 percent as mixed race.
I have read various studies by academicians who argue that definitions of race have changed markedly on the island since the Census was taken in Puerto Rico in the early 20th century. The census taken then, immediately after the United States’ colonization of the island, clearly indicated people of African descent comprised 50 percent of the population.
Many academicians state that many who filled out the 2000 Census form were confused about how to self-identify under racially confusing categories used for stateside Americans. How can you ask a Puerto Rican his or her race or ethnic group when pejorative terms such as trigueño, prieto, negro, negro fino, jabao, mulato, Indio and café con leche are normally used to describe individuals of African descendant.
Afrocentrists have weaved conspiracy theories about the White Puerto Rican elite re-writing history to disassociate the island from their African ancestry and legacy. They attribute the current statistical results to the rate of Americanization of Puerto Rican culture—colonization, migration and miscegenation. The theory that oppressed people take on the qualities of their colonial masters as documented by Frantz Fanon in his seminal book “The Wretched of the Earth” and Carter G. Woodson’s “Mis-Education of the Negro” further sheds light to the mindset behind the need to assimilate into the U.S. way of life.
I firmly believe that the 19th century Spanish policies of “Blanqueamento” or Whitening the population through European immigration by offering land grants to poor Whites from the Canary Islands, Corsica and mainland Spain proved to be perversely successful. Puerto Rican plantation owners strategically imported poor Whites because of the constant fear of slave revolts, particularly after the Haitian revolution. The theory of maintaining economic stability on the island through racial miscegenation created a workforce where slaves and indentured servants worked side by side in the sugar cane fields. Eventually, Puerto Rico became a Hispanicized society with Puerto Rican-born “criollos” who emphasized maintaining their cultural ties to the mother country or “La Madre Patria”—Spain.
There is still a gnawing feeling in my soul.
I am a 56-year-old man who witnessed the civil rights struggle and the riots while growing up in 1960s Harlem. I graduated from a university—Wesleyan—in 1974 with one of the first classes of that institution to include students of color. I remember when Puerto Ricans and African Americans were not allowed in trade unions without major court battles taking place for the right to work for living wages. I have spent a lifetime working in Latino and African American communities where I have seen many community champions risk their careers and lives to boldly advocate for these communities.
Does the present generation think we were fighting for the right to call ourselves White? The reality that 80 percent of Puerto Ricans consider themselves White has serious political and economic implications for U.S. communities of color in the future. Census statistics impact the distribution of critical resources to local communities by the federal government. This census data also impacts the redistricting of voting locations and communities may be gerrymandered to empower majority White communities.
It frightens me to think that I might one day have to concede to right-wing journalists like Patrick Buchanan, who prophesized that Latinos will be assimilated as another White ethnic group in the coming years? It is inevitable that some will be totally assimilated, but questions will always be posed which force individuals to look back at their roots.
For example, as a third-generation U.S. citizen who now lives in Washington D.C., I still get questions based on my last name such as, “Where are you from?”
My response is always, “I am from Harlem, N.Y.”
“No, no, where are you really from?”
“Really, I was born and raised in New York,” I explain. I can see the sense of frustration and I end the guessing game by saying Puerto Rico.
Light-skinned Puerto Ricans with African ancestry who are able to pass for White will choose the “safety” of being White under any political system. As most conscious Afro-Latinos know, the act of acknowledging your African roots is still viewed as an act of rebellion in the Puerto Rican mainstream.
Unless a Black consciousness movement grips Puerto Rico, I predict that under the current political structure and educational system, the Afro-Puerto Rican will be further marginalized and become nearly extinct as have the indigenous peoples of the U.S. And with open migration of Afro-Puerto Ricans to the U.S., they will find refuge in the African-American Diaspora.
There are so many pressing issues and challenges throughout the Afro-Latino Diaspora on which we need to focus. I want to see the residents of Puerto Rico stop playing this game of statistical genocide.
Christopher Rodriguez is a lecturer, trainer and author of “Latino Manifesto: A Critique of the Race Debate in the U.S. Latino Community.” He can be reached at Latino.Manifesto@yahoo.com.
Joined: 02 May 2006 {Posts: 360 } Location: Île-de-France
Posted: Mon 14 Jul 2008 07:10 Post subject:
Quote:
How can you ask a Puerto Rican his or her race or ethnic group when pejorative terms such as trigueño, prieto, negro, negro fino, jabao, mulato, Indio and café con leche are normally used to describe individuals of African descendant.
I think this question misses the point. How can you ask a Puerto Rican his or her race or ethnic group when your question answers itself: the vast majority would likely say Puerto Rican.
With respect to the terms he uses, people use them to describe themselves, and I have not heard them used pejoritively. I have never heard anyone use the term "negro fino" to describe anyone, and jabao only once or twice. I think alot of people who in the past may have been called jabao in Puerto Rico are now simply blanco. Jabao, best as I can tell, is a very light skinned person with frizzy hair. I have also heard trigueño and prieto to describe darkskinned people who are neither Puerto Rican nor of African descent. Another one of the point he's missing is that people also normally use "blanco" to describe individuals of African descent. Without the one drop rule it becomes a desciptive term. To use a morbid example, when the police find an unidentified body in Puerto Rico the news will discibe the person by saying the body is a man with white skin or a man with "trigueña" skin (un hombe de tez blaca o triguenã) not a white man or a trigueño man.
There are many other problems with his article. He mixes the political asperations of those who grew up in NY and live in the US with those who live on the island. They are not the same. He grew up in NY "witnessing" the civil rights movement. There was not a civil rights movement in Puerto Rico. For the purpose of what people pay attention to in polictics and civil rights, Puerto Rico is closer to a foreign country that the 51st state.
Quote:
the act of acknowledging your African roots is still viewed as an act of rebellion in the Puerto Rican mainstream.
I find that hard to believe when Puerto Rican elementary school children are taught that they are a mix of three races.
In Puerto Rico one can acknolwedge their african ancestry without calling oneself black, and even while calling oneself white. I think the author either doesn't understand this concept or finds it disturbing.
Last edited by MisterLawyer on Mon 14 Jul 2008 11:20; edited 1 time in total
Posted: Mon 14 Jul 2008 10:42 Post subject: Re: Statistical Genocide in Puerto Rico
G-Man wrote:
The author claims that trigueño and jabao are pejorative. Is this the general consensus in Latin America or Puerto Rico? I was under the impression that these were simply descriptors for people. Anyway here's the article. Provide comments.
If this person were to post such a claim here, he would be challenged to back it up. Since he is obviously ignorant of Latin-American culture, he would be unable to do so and would be suspended.
I agree with everything that MisterLawyer wrote, except that I still use "jabao" as a descriptive term now and then. My latest grandchildren's other grandfather is jabao. This may be an age-gap thing, since I seldom hear others use it, and the term may be in the process of becoming extinct.
I am especially especially disgusted by the man's claim that, "the act of acknowledging your African roots is still viewed as an act of rebellion in the Puerto Rican mainstream." This is ludicrous. Not only do schools teach it, but mainstream art and sculpture throughout the island glories in PR's three-part cultural heritage. See, for example, this photo taken in my own home town. Festivals around the island have maintained West African traditions (music, dance, costume) that have vanished in North America. That one line convinces me that the man is either a deliberate fraud or that he has never set foot in PR.
As far as I am concerned, the article's title already says it all. It violates 3.3.13, even without the counterfactual and unsubstantiated claims.
He does live in DC and many Latinos like him do develop a mentality like his after living here for a while.
Since he says that he "was born and raised in New York" I agree that he has definitely lived in the 'States "for a while." About as much of a while as you can get.
Many Latinos I've met with visible Afican ancestry, whether they were born and raised in the U.S. or not, who reside in the DC metro area embrace views similar to his.
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