From Bomba to Hip-Hop: Puerto Rican
culture and Latino identity. Juan Flores lays
bare the heart and soul of the Puerto Rican people
from
Puerto Rico to New York vis-à-vis the Latino-American's Diaspora.
I'm just fascinated by his treatment of the subject
matter: The sociological dept and the relationship to
popular culture. John Flores is Professor of Black
and Puerto Rican studies at Hunter College and
Professor of Sociology at CUNY Graduate center.Anyone who chooses to read this book, is
bound
to appreciate
the complex nature of the New York
Puerto Rican community. Unique,
even in compar-
ison to other Spanish speaking immigrants; as well
as,
their relation to other minority groups, Afro-
Americans in particular.
In
this piece Juan Flores takes an in-depth look at
Puerto Rican popular
culture, and interestingly
enough, approaches it from it's very roots -- the
music.
From Puerto Rico to The American main land Juan
Flores takes us
back to the origins of the 'Boogaloo'
an innovation of Johnny Colon at
Los Guineitos
(banana) club in east Harlem in the 1960s. A beat
Tito
Puente referred to as "sounding like a Coca-Cola
commercial."
Juan
Flores runs the historical gamut of
Puerto Rican
musical innovations
in Cha-Cha-Cha,
Boogaloo, Salsa,
Bomba, Plana, Hip-hop and Rap
in
exciting detail. From
this wonderful nostalgia he
transitions to an
informative
exploration of Puerto
Rican pop-culture.
In chapter four "Salvacion Casita: space, performance, and
community." Flores expresses the
emotion he experienced entering
the Smithsonian in
Washington D.C, and came four square with a
casita
(a casita is a traditional lodging found in rural
Puerto Rico)
sitting there in the museum. He then
explores in finite detail the
meaning of casita culture
to Puerto Ricans in the East Bronx.
I'll never forget the feeling I had as I made my
way through the
crowds of art world professio-
nals and museum officials hobnobbing
in the
huge domed rotunda and first set my eyes on
that spanking,
bright turquoise casita.
"Ricon
Criollo (roughly, Hometown Corner"),
so
familiar
to me from my forays to Brooks Avenue in
the
South
Bronx transplanted to such an unlikely
site... "a living space of
rescued images that
reinforces Puerto Rican cultural identity."
Clearly the innovation was not just that of a
gallery staff but of the
people who built the casita
"environment"...The little building assumed an
imposing but somehow uncomfortable presence
there in the center of that gaping,
uncluttered
space
and seemed intruded upon by oohs and
ahs of it's sophisticated
visitors as
they filed up
the porch and into the "quaint" interior.
Lining the walls the life size photos of real
casitas in their "real" home
settings helped
bridge the gap somewhat, as did the explanatory
captions, the decorative and functional "objects"
of casita culture ....
But what made the difference, and brought
this experimental
representation in the nations
capital back in touch with the South
Bronx was
the presence of the casita people themselves...
"The Latin Imaginary Meanings of community and Identity."
In this chapter Juan debunks the stereotypical
notions of the Hispanic
community held by
politicians, marketers and the American comm-
unity
at large, as homogenous, and gives us a
first-rate education on what
he calls an
"imagined community"-- our misconceptions of
the Hispanic
parts relative to the whole.
Is that Hispanic or Latino? What's in a name?
A bewildered public
puzzled over alternative
signifiers, and even over who is being sodesig-
nated, and how.
"What do we call them? What
do they want to be
called? What do they call
themselves?" Or, as the
title of a thoughtful
article on just this problem of
mega labels has it,
"What's the problem with
'Hispanics'? Just ask a
'Latino."
|
The broadest identifying term, of course, long
used as shorthand
even by many Latinos them-
selves, has been "Spanish," as in Spanish
restau-
rant or Spanish television, where the idea of a unif-
ying language culture conspires with the suggestion
of Iberian origins and characteristics.
The ideological undertones of that Label, which
are of course
retained in slight variations in both
"Hispanic" and "Latino," go unquestioned, as does
the reality that many of those so designated do not
even speak Spanish as a first language, or at all....
With all the slippages and evident arbitrariness,
though, what seem
a terminology free-for-all actu-
ally does mark off limits and contexts,
and pressing issues of power. Where I come from,
in New Mexico,
nobody uses Latino, most people
never even heard the term. We are
Mexicanos,
Chicanos, Mexican-Americans, Raza, Hispanic, but
never
Latino....
The "Latino community" is an "imagined commu-
nity"-- to summon
Benedict Anderson's well-worn
thought useful phrase -- a compelling
present-day
example of a social group being etched and compo-
sed
out of a larger, impinging geopolitical landscape.
The role of social
imagination and imaginary in the
self-conception of nationality, ethnically, and racially"
kindred groups [are] of course central, but must
always be assessed with a view toward how they
are being imagined
(i.e., from "within" or "without")
and to what ends and out comes....
...given that in the case of Latinos the outside repre-
sentation is the dominate one, any instance of
cultural expression by Latinos themselves
may
serve as a healthy corrective to the ceaseless
barrage of stereotypes that go to define what is
"Latino" in the public mind.
The demographic conception of Latinos, or of a
"Latino community,"
refers to a aggregate of people
who's existence is established on the
basis of
numerical presence: count them, therefore they are.
Here
Latinos--or more commonly at this level
Hispanics--compromise
not so much a commun-
ity as a "population", a quantified slice of the
social
whole.
As limited as such a means of identification
may seem, it is never the less a dominate one,
serving as it does both government bureaucracies
and corporate researchers in setting public tastes
and policies....
From this angle, Latinos appear as a differentia-
tion or
possible social agency itself geared toward
those same pragmatic
goals of electoral or commer-
cial utility.
...The demographic label thus aims not only to
buy the Hispanic package but to sell it; it targets not
only potential customers but merchandise, or even
movers of merchandise.
Whatever the specific purpose,
though, the means
and results are usually the same stereo-typed
images offering up distorted, usually offensive and in
any case, superficial portrayals of Latino people.
And these are the only images
Latinos that many
people in the United States, and around the world
are ever exposed to, which makes it difficult for the
public to gauge they accuracy.
:
This Site promises all you want to know about Puerto Rico.
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