January 2025
A year ago Susan and I were in Puerto Rico with other bishops, colleagues and friends. I asked almost everyone I encountered, ¿Quiere Ud. que Puerto Rico se convierta en el estado número 51?, “Do you want Puerto Rico to become the 51st state?” There was no consensus.
It’s a loaded, volatile question. A few people just took their heads at the unsolvable enigma. Puerto Rico is a U.S. territory (colony). It is neither independent, nor is it a fully recognized state of the U.S. Puerto Ricans are technically U.S. citizens, but they cannot vote in US presidential elections. They do not have voting members of Congress. They pay payroll taxes but not income tax.
Some Puerto Ricans favored becoming a U.S. state and going all in. Others favorite complete independence, a full recognition of their Latin American identity. The responses were about 50-50. I suspect if a vote were held tomorrow, it would be a tie. There is, however, no indication that Puerto Ricans have any say in this decision, any right of self-determination.
That’s just the political dilemma. There are also social, cultural, and economic dilemmas galore. As Bishops, predominantly white Bishops, we naturally looked at the situation with a theological lens, and more listening than speculating.
In 1493, Christopher Columbus declared Puerto Rico to be the property of Spain. It became a strategic military outpost, and the gateway to Latin America. It became a melange of the native Taino (Borikén) people that had inhabited the island before Columbus’ arrival, black slaves, and Spanish overlords.
Spain brought all of its values to this colony: its sense of white superiority over other races, its sense of Christian superiority over other religious traditions, and its sense of male superiority over female. Clear, culturally and religiously-reinforced roles and powers for men and women, foreign to the local people, were imposed. They developed into the byproduct we now call “machismo.” Along with this, European (particularly Iberian) styles of architecture, military dominance, political structures and economics were considered superior to all other forms of governance and aesthetics. This is what colonialism is.
My doctoral advisor, José David Rodriguez, made me read Walter Mignolo, who says that colonialism and modernity are the same thing. They are two sides of the same coin. Modernity, the last 500 years, since Columbus’ transatlantic voyage, has been shaped by colonialism, the global exportation and imposition of European values and it’s codification of cultures based upon how “civilized” or advanced they are by European standards. It’s baked into our modern consciousness. It is how we see the world. White is better than black. Sadly, even “black” societies start to believe the lie. Male is better than female, and so on.
In 1898, as a result of the Spanish American war, the US took possession of Puerto Rico. And here we are: Puerto Rico is an unincorporated territory in limbo.
When the Puerto Rican artist Bad Bunny takes the stage at the Super Bowl in February, the cultural significance of this will be lost on many U.S. Americans. There will most certainly be pushback against colonial social, gender, political, and religious norms. His very existence challenges the myth of a monolithic white America. Like Prince, his fashion statements will challenge absurdity and existence of rigid male and female dress codes. This is just the tip of the cultural iceberg. He will no doubt be demonized by the dominant culture. The issues will be incomprehensible to many.
His performance will be, as always, in Spanish. This too will be seen by Anglo-dominant society as capitulation to an inferior language, and a threat to white hegemony.
The other thing that modernity has given to us is intermarriage. Of course, intermarriage has always been a thing, but the explosion of transportation and intercultural community has led to massive blurring of ethnic lines. While some view this is a problem, many seed is the solution. José Vasconcelos wrote La Raza Cosmica (The Cosmic Race), suggesting that the transatlantic voyage created a new race of people. The intermarrying of Spanish, English, French, black, and indigenous people created a new race of bicultural, tricultural, multicultural, hybrid people able see to the world through more than one cultural lens. This concept has been expanded by many authors, such as Virgilio Eliandro in his book, The Future is Mestizo.
The purebred myth is so over. We just haven’t accepted it yet. Those who model hybridity reflect a new reality that may seem foreign to some, and heretical to others.
We still treat interculturality as a problem. What if we began to see it as the solution? What if we began to see interculturality as a gift?
Like the border, Puerto Rico is uniquely and strategically placed at the crossroads of these emerging cultural realities. When the border is accepted as the intersection of America’s ongoing struggle with race, ethnicity and gender, when Puerto Rico is seen as the byproduct of our unwillingness to embrace the gift of interculturality, the solution to many, many of our other societal woes will begin to emerge.
Veni Sancte Spiritus, the Spirit of Pentecost.
