We are a different kind of refugee. Charco-crossers of a different exodus.
I have been here nine years, but I have been Rematriating my whole life. From my Brooklyn birth to my move to Borikén. From my conflict with all things, my inability to fit anywhere over there. Hell, even for my inability to fit here. I have always been working to align to some ancestral dimension of another time.
How much ancestral medicine and personal decolonizing will it take to restore ourselves, restore how it was and what we were before conquest? And is that the mission? Or are we to envision something more expansive, born from what we now know on top of all the ancestral wisdom resurrected from their bones and our own?
To live liberation when the colonizers have long been experts at inflicting death and we the colonized have long been experts in dying. Embodying the archipelago is taking into our bodies and becoming the very transcendent expanse that this network of islands, water and wisdom have long been…. Embodying the archipelago, I become ungovernable, autonomous in my own essence.
This land has been both my mother and greatest teacher so this anniversary is always a celebration of having returned to her womb. The video below captures my freestyle reflection/ meditation on these seven years...
...an internationalist liberation struggle shifts our gaze away from the falling empire to the north, turns our sights sideways and south to our greater Caribbean and Latin American family./ una lucha libertaria internacionalista aleja nuestra mirada del imperio estadounidense, reenfocándola hacia nuestra gran familia caribeña y latinoamericana.
Many say we cannot sustain ourselves here, yet many of us are not able to sustain ourselves stateside either. Why aren’t we talking more about this?
…these pandemic times of exponential loss, of losses still looming from government neglect. Of eyes threatened by quarantine, seldom breathing in daylight, seldom squinting at soaring hawks and clouds. Glued to the nearsighted-inducing numbness of devices and small screens. Tired eye muscles long scrolling with your newsfeed. Liberation never looked so lovely, so necessary.
The vast expanse of charco that separates you from your loved ones dissipates in the glow of parranda lights. They serpentine through las carreteras del valle del pueblo de Moca and up this hill. The sound of sadness is swallowed by sirens that guide aguinaldo asaltos blaring music and song from barrio to barrio. Your... Continue Reading →
It happens at random, unexpected, un-welcomed times. It happens with flashes of images, of sites, of memories imprinted in your mind. Flash of a desolate Atlantic Avenue heading into Jamaica, Queens. Flash of bunnies hopping over ancestral graves in Cypress Hills cemetery where Schomburg, Houdini and your whole departed family are buried. Flash of the... Continue Reading →
I took a break from this blog… because deadlines happen; because other projects happen; because life happens; because sometimes you lose light and water. Here, we have an agreement. All work/ art/ architecture related deadlines coming through this home/ office/ studio space are to be completed the day before or earlier. We must allow at... Continue Reading →
Worth Her Weight in Gold. Her as in Boricua, Olympic Gold Medalist Monica Puig. Her as in this goddess land of Borikén. This title, an expression dating back to roman times, used for centuries by the British, known to me as the title of a song by the reggae band, Steel Pulse. Last night as... Continue Reading →
Every migration has its push and pull factors. The current Puerto Rican migration narrative mostly speaks of a colonial fiscal crisis pushing people in droves to US cities in search of jobs and opportunities. My maternal grandparents were part of the last mass migration. They crossed el charco from Ponce to East Harlem in 1950.... Continue Reading →
It has taken me two years to do this. Two years to begin the process of opening up, sharing very intimate rants, reflections and revelations about my time here, my repatriation of Borikén. We arrived on May 15, 2014 from New York City-- my husband, a colombiano born and raised in Queens; myself, a boricua... Continue Reading →
Rematriating Borikén 