Recently, rapper/singer Bad Bunny released his sixth solo album DeBÍ TiRAR MáS FOToS, a homage to his homeland Puerto Rico. Upon first listen, it took me back to my elementary school years in a moment I’ll never forget. I went to my brother’s babysitter’s house where the babysitter and my mother were conversing over coffee. My mother (in Spanish) asked how my day was and I said, “Hey mom! You know what I learned today? A song!” She said, “OK, sing it!” And I sung “¡Que bonita bandera, que bonita bandera, que bonita bandera puertorriqueña!“
It caught my mother by surprise, but in the quizzical way. After all, she was Dominican and here comes her Dominican/Haitian son singing a Boricua anthem.
Thankfully, the moment came and went, and the Dominican/Puerto Rican rivalry feels childish in the midst of American fascism. But I never forgot that moment over the years. By the time I learned the anthem, the Lower East Side of Manhattan was a well-established Puerto Rican neighborhood. My principal Mr. Barrientos and some of our school’s staff members including the arts teacher who taught me were Boricuas. While most of the teaching staff may have identified as white and/or Jewish, the surrounding neighborhood no longer was. The influx of Boricua immigrants through the 20th century made it safer for other marginalized groups, including Dominicans, to establish families here. Many of us pronounced The Lower East Side “Loisaida,” and we credit Nuyoricans for that, too.
Puerto Ricans didn’t insist that others drop their norms in service of theirs. That’s the American way. They simply ask us to understand their culture as vital to their existence akin to our own equation.
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