Nico Treanor Ont etre Sete fet CAE aL Sepreaches to the historical experience of Puerto Ricans of color Seve been overwhelmed by the urgency of confronting racism, recurrent claims that Puerto Ricans uniformly practice emocracy.”! The debate on racial prejudice in Puerto Rico experienced “a profound repression.”? Racism in Puerto Rico silken or rough,” and it is often subtler and more complex, less toxic—especially among the upper strata—than in the S*Much remains to be said about racism in Puerto Rico, with d to its almost perverse semantic richness and strategic am- nd to its prime location in matters of Pucrto Rican na- ntity.® Yet phenotypical boundaries among Puerto Ricans of the larger whole that is the historical experience of Ricans of color.’ in Puerto Rican culture. At issue is the broader AfroPuerto Rican histo woven with other aspects of AfroPuerto Rican and Puerto Rican larger patterns that we need to bring to the fore. x manage." "This refrain simultaneously recognizes the deep Aitican di f Puerto Rico while waving aside (or, pezhaps, laughing away) further discus AUST1 CORDERO isan assistant professor of history at the University of Puerto cedras, where he teaches Caribbean and African history: His dissertation (State New York at Binghamton, 1994) is on the history of labor and ecology in the Puerto Rico, The author wishes to thank Amilcar Tirado Avilés and the“The boundaries of Puerto Rican culture, which i best described as both colonial snd \ migrant, are chemselves ambiguous and far-flung.” Bur itis a national culture nonetheless, \and it demonstrates broad coherences and pattems that would be senseless to ignore. In- a erreant years, even statchood supporters have recognized that Puerto Rien isa funally a nation." What the nationalists may have greater difficulty in recogni is that, Tike all parfonal cultures, Puerto Rican culeure is heterogeneous and has many vars a ae culture, spatial class, gender, age, and others—that are demonstrated nos ony By ra pals and groupe, but across coneexts and situations. These variations, onc of which ars characterized by culture, range from subtle Sssures to virtual social warfae aor ereisformed by the discernible, changing pattern of thinking and ating of a group! Iris dough culture that group guns awareness of itself and orhers of its poten- aera e proup and as individuals, There is no need ro equatceulrura strictly witha national ae arene with any given inaicuions or steucrutes:Ceure exists at al levels #2 Triple forms: hoxeever, these forms mingle and connect. Determining the conpestems cele the ephemeral and particular (known as “pratices”) and the general and ones ce mown as “partern,” “contexts,” “spaces,” and “social relations”) espe historians busy and perplexed. ‘Speci historical conditions, mediated by cultural and political cuneate and projects ofparticular groups. and premised on inclusion and exclusion, alliance an hegemony shape Sei ah Bek! of national culeare. Broader levels of definition ae inked integrss t9 aoe neal eearer sscvidenced in sch termsas “Caribbean,” “African-American.” “asia aa ana cre? National culture is protean and problematic, bur then what isn? Come plexity does not mean we need to rule ut al coherence and all att ‘buc that we should aoe oes sely, Perhaps it will be useful, in this regard, to consider the cultura! and political projects of fur ngride and anillanismo—the #0 major ACP HSA Rican move- eons in the ewentieth century—as permeable cultural and sociohistorical practices, spaces and contexts. Cultura negroide Partly due to cencuries of interaction, cultural contexts in Puerto Rico in are less like key= ar ca ike unstable gases. Concepts such a8 syneretism,transeulturation: ang sone rom seek to grasp chat dynamism Artempts to isolate, within Puerto Rian culeue < Redrock of hispanidad" are as futile as those that would elaborate a Tino nation oF 20 ‘Ahican essence. However, AfroPuerto Rican culture has been especially prone Seat, Abrcan es norte though subordinate eld: and dhis was done caries in the paradizm of serra nepoide (or afo-egride), a name that [employ somewhat arbitrarily to designate the frst epoch of public AffoPuerto Rican cultural expression in this e=neury. arr een “enlura negroide” is evidently loaded. “Cultura” by itself chrows up fences, srherons“negnide” focuses attention 100 narrowly on colo" Moreover, the "de ending veces negronde with a sense of artificiality and inerioricy, che nearest equivalent oc M0 intase® Ferion, when a wricer addressed the difference between being “human” and being seers” But the term “cultura negroide,” and especially poesia neeride, was Cunens Paco already in the 1930s," As in other representations of “Afficansm” in the ames eae Refs half of ehe ewentieth cencury.” including the thrust of Néritde and Han Spatgnisme, Puerto Rico’ cultura neroide sought in Puerto Rico relatively ‘pine ” “Aftie cre parerns and eats surviving among people of African descent, though pefhaps the fazer fame of reference was not Africa but something closer: blackness, i negroide, and teozraphicaly, an impressionistic Caribbean. Blackness, whareves it 98 of deemed to be, Te ee root of lo ngoide, the exclusively African, eather than Indian ot flk-Basopesn pedigree of many tris in particular the determination of their specif: origins and mean- gin given zones within the continent rended co requite further rseateh Taras in literature, and especially in poetry, that aunira megroide ateained its most ¢- plc arieulation. ‘The ewo leading poets are Luis Palés Matos and F 9tanas® Virearrondo, Mit fon ote mos of thet egroide pocty inthe 1920sand 1950s, Palés was the ealict of aorne to publish, Both authors, I should note, might have taken issue with the eerms“rmitere” and “negrside”: Palés used the additives “afra-antillana” and “antillana” to de~ seribe his poetry ara time when the term “wfacubaniomo” was current in Cuba. Yet the ‘work of Palés, even more than Vizcarrondo, is at the center of popular definitions of poesia seeprvide Palés’ poetry is full of onomatopoeic plays on word sounds, c.g,, of Caribbean and Agrican geography, and of AftoPuerto Rican words. Most of Vizearrondo’s poetry, on the ‘other hand, fully depend on AfroPuerto Rican speech. Beside Palés Matos and Vizearrondo, there are some thirty other poets who wrote in ‘che egrvide vein, oon AfroPuerto Rican themes, in the 1920s-1960s (Palés, to be sure, is among the very carliest in Latin America as a whole). For most well-known Puerto Rican poets it became fashionable to have at least one or two negroide pieces. Then again, there ‘were also other black poets such as Vietorio Llanos Allende, who like Vizearrondo was also Som Carolina, His poem “La Negra Gora” is nvgroide not in speech, but definitely in con- Batendo su cuerpo entero ‘alcompds dela tambora se muece fa negra Cora ‘on un caivénsandanguero* “The main negroide waits include sensuality (sandunguerta, sabrosura), indeed a heightened experience and deployment of all the senses, directly cortesponding to a deemphasis on the rational, and an appeal to the “primitive”; festiveness (Bachata) to the point of sel conscious primitiveness; sensual and fluid body movement; upbeat musie and rhythm, es pecially on hand drums: enchantment with the coastal landscape; idealization of the tradi- ‘Sonal, rustic lifestyle ofthe megras dela cst In Palés Matos’ 1926 poem “Pueblo Negro” (originally titled “AVrica"), and one of his ccarliest “black” poems, he offers a compelling image of a village reminiscent of Mediania: Fata noche me obsede la remota icin de un pueblo negro —Mussumbia, Tombucti, Farafangana— sun pueblo de suet, tunbado alld en mis brumas ineriores «ala sombra de claros cocoter... Ald entre las pabmeras cextétendido el pueblo. Mussumba, Tombucti, Farafangana Caserto irreal de pac y suet.” Cultura negroide is also significant fos its celebration of black and sometimes mulatto beauty" chough often caicaturing “primitive” sensuality. Is cultural representations raise issues of race, gender, and class that require closer discussion, as it was Women, and espe- cially black women from the working classes, who were deemed to be most erotic, and whose persona was entirely eroticized." Finally, there i also in cxdtara negroide social and political comment from a democratic perspective, made with deft irony and razor-sharp imagery. In Vizearrondo's poetry there is {series of eighteen such poems. By far the best known of chese is “ZY fu agiela ‘onde etd?” ‘The current of social and political comment, almost entirely absent from Palés Matos’ work, ‘was important in poesta negroide Ic was as well as one ofthe key currents of in Puerto Rican socially aware poety as a whole. Partly because Palés did not practice that subgente, itis not usually seen as part and parcel of the definition of cultura aegroide, ot asa social mani- port In the explicitly racist eonceprions of the period, itis important to note, there were only certain fields of expression open to negraide poetry; even though a “black” poet like| Puerto Rico—the literary canons Vizearrondo could write “white” poetry—this is, after al tJemanded thar the themes of one and another genre remain distinct, The call fora poesia or on the cultural roots of Pucito Rican tole religious practices such as santigua ot epiiewao, ave literally self-effacing Zenén akes up the matter of the wcano versus the ‘ucxr0 only in a Footnote. There he relies largely on the authority of Roger Baste ois, himself appeals co specialists on the gnélophone Caribucun. The quotes from Baste ore len without comment.” In becoming Fe ccconding to Bastide, the afrcano disappeared: Slavery was too brutal and long: laste ine (Bastde and Zenén do no take nove ofthe ise ian Particularitics of Puerto Rico and ihe hispanophone Caribbean, where slavery was taht strong only in some regions, during mule sites ofthe nineteenth century Inother regions vg old, creole, peasant, free black. ‘mulattoowhite population contexcualized slavery n ‘ways very different from the anglophone