Tag: Puerto Rico

Vulnerability & Bravery/ Vulnerabilidad, y Valentía

Vulnerability in bravery means pushing forward with all your wounds, gripping a shovel tight with bloody hands, digging past the mud to find the spaces and hearts where our ancestral ways thrive, where new liberatory ways are being weaved into existence./ Vulnerabilidad en valentía significa seguir palante con todas las heridas, agarrando la pala, manos ensangrentadas, excavando la tierra para encontrar los espacios y los corazones en donde nuestras tradiciones ancestrales prosperan, donde se tejen nuevas existencias libertas.

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Repatriation Rant

We the colonized work to decolonize ourselves, then turn on one another from wounds too vulnerable, too raw to bear.  We lash out at one another.  The enemy is too far, too inaccessible.  We realize.  In shame, we retreat. 

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Repatriate your body

My broken body colonized Was the space of incubation In which I myself Had to craft and manifest their liberation Through it I could envision doing the same for myself

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The Colony is Dead

The colony was formerly on life support with enough real estate, restaurants, casinos and electric lights to mask its reality. It was kept breathing by a machine so that when the lights went out, it would signal the end.  The lights have been out for 7 months.

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Maria: Photos from home

Most moments of my day I’m trying to figure out a plan to acquire my own piece of land, to make my lifestyle completely sustainable, to embody the liberation that I strive to practice daily until we can acquire it fully.  But sometimes the spirit needs to stop and look at the photos. Honor the moments, the memories, the lessons.

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Death by Colonialism

"...you be colonial man You done be slave man before They done release you now But you never release yourself" -lyrics from "Colonial Mentality" by Nigerian musician Fela Anikulapo Kuti My people are yet to be released. We are three times colonized: by Spain, by the United States and by our own selves. Colonialism is... Continue Reading →

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Borikén Holidays Repatriated

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 →

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Diasporic Homesick

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 →

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Let There Be Light!

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 →

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July 25th

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 →

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