Más de 100 Días de Oscuridad

Una de las razones por la que la #LeyJones / #JonesAct debe ser abolida en Puerto Rico. No sólo la Ley Jones sino el estado colonial de nuestra isla. Puerto Rico Libre.

112 DAYS WITHOUT POWER 💡

— Puerto Rico 🇵🇷 (@PuertoRicoPUR) 10 de enero de 2018

100 Días de Oscuridad

A un Puerto Rico sumido en más de una oscuridad.

Nunca te faltó la ropa que el mismo sol te puso
La piel de bronce fuego con tu pecho abierto y deslumbrante
Nunca pensaste verte desnuda y robada de tu luz
Asustada y doblegada llevando a cuestas una oscura cruz

El presagio que hoy te arropa no nació en una tierra lejana
de aires desérticos y arenas viajeras
No nació en el este atlántico dominado por un trópico canceroso

Tus Cien Días de Oscuridad nacieron en ti
Mucho antes de que llegara la madrugada huracanada
Y te librara de la clara ilusión de vivir a plena luz de mediodía

Ahora vives entre el presente y el pasado
Ambos confundidos y mirando de frente
a la penumbra de tu futuro incierto
¿Qué traerá la siguiente noche después de
andar a tientas?

Las estrellan gritan en su oscuridad ¡más oscuridad!
Tú las escuchas silenciosa tratando de entender
su propia lucha oscilante entre la vida y la muerte
¡Que griten!
Su lucha te robado el sol pero no la esperanza

Crónica de un cumpleaños no anunciado

Hoy, 12 de noviembre de 2017, cumplí cuarenta y seis años de edad. No un primer año, que a mi parecer debiera ser el único cumpleaños extraordinario en la vida de cualquier persona, especialmente si el cumpleañero es el primer hijo de una pareja. En realidad, ese primer cumpleaños es más una celebración para los padres primerizos que para el bebé. Pues resulta un logro extraordinario haber preservado la vida del niño (o la niña) durante sus primeras cincuenta y dos semanas. Muchos padres se preguntan, “¿Y cómo lo hicimos? ¡Ni idea! ¡Pues, celebrémoslo!” Esta celebración es una gran ficción en la que el primeañero ni se da por enterado. Los padres son otro cantar. ¡Salud!

Sí, el primer cumpleaños definitivamente, pero si soy un poco generoso tal vez puedo añadir otro más. Propongo el número cincuenta que es un buen número redondo y apunta a eso de la media vida. Seamos generosos pues. Si le damos uno al infante, reconozcamos otro más justo cuando el carrito empieza a bajar la cuesta más alta de esa montaña rusa llamada vida. El Cincuenta no podría ser mejor, ¿verdad? Y con mayúscula porque se lo merece. Sin embargo, el cuarenta y seis no cumple con estos requisitos. A pesar de vivir en el mismo vecindario cronológico que el Cincuenta, no debemos darle tanta cabeza. Y aún así es como, muy paradójicamente, nos encontramos en esta crónica de mi cumple número cuarenta y seis.

La celebración comenzó un día antes cuando me levanté temprano el sábado, 11 de noviembre, para ir con mi familia a correr una carrera de 5k en beneficio de Casa Chirilagua en Alexandria. Una rápida visita al sótano de la casa en preparación para nuestra salida me otorgó el primer regalo de la mañana: ¡un sótano inundado! Así como lo oyen o como lo leen, ustedes decidan.

Por un momento pensé que mis planes de ir a correr con sumo entusiasmo en una ultra frígida mañana de otoño en el norte de Virginia se echarían a perder. Pero me negué a darle ese lujo al calentador desaguado y su bastardo sótano inundado, y puse a buen uso una maravillosa aspiradora chupa-aguas que me regaló mi vecina antes de mudarse a otoños más frígidos que el nuestro. ¡Corrí los 5k antes de correr los 5k sacando agua!

Después de esa primera aventura precumpleañera partimos hacia Alexandria para los verdaderos 5k de Casa Chirilagua. Decir que la mañana estaba fría es una broma. Ni siquiera había comenzado la carrera y ya se me había congelado hasta el… pelo. Mi hijo M y yo corrimos juntos. Bueno, eso quiero pensar yo. De verdad corrimos juntos como unos cinco pasos luego de que comenzara la carrera porque después de esa introducción solidaria del hijo con su padre no lo volví a ver hasta que llegué a la meta. Allí ya estaba él lo más refrescado, como quien no quiere la cosa, y yo incrédulo además de tratar inútilmente de disimular mi falta de aire por no decir de condición física. “¡Bienvenidos al piso cuarenta y seis, papá! Te quiere, el catorce.” Está bien. No nos pongamos melodramáticos. Yo soy su padre y acá entre nos digamos que lo dejé llegar primero, pues porque soy un buen padre. Eso no se cuestiona. El resto del día lo pasé recuperándome de los 10k que a tan temprana y dichosa hora ya había corrido.

Así llegó el gran 12 de noviembre, día de mi cumple, que es más grande porque también es el cumple (hace más de trescientos años) de Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz, la gran poeta, monja, académica, filósofa, dramaturga y feminista mexicana del siglo XVII. ¿Monja y feminista? ¡De que las hay las hay! ¿Cómo olvidar sus “Hombres necios que acusáis / a la mujer sin razón, / sin ver que sois la ocasión / de lo mismo que culpáis...”? Pero ya que esta es una crónica cumpleañera dejémonos de acusaciones necias y continuemos la celebración. ¡Ponme el alcoholado, Juana!

Nos despertamos, mi familia y yo, con el firme propósito de ir a la iglesia en la mañana y eso hicimos no sin antes enfrentar la disyuntiva de someterme a la tortura de una ducha helada o no. Tuve que filosofar a lo Shakespeare brevemente, ¿me la apunto o no me la apunto? Esa es la pregunta. ¡Hombre, no! A la casa de Dios nos vamos limpiecitos y olorositos. ¡Venga el chorro helado y con él los gritos incontenibles de quien detesta a muerte el agua fría! En realidad, no está mal darse una ducha helada de vez en cuando, algo así como cada diez años. Es rejuvenecedor y no hay mejor ocasión para ello que un cumpleaños ordinario como el 46. ¡Gracias desgraciado calentador desaguado! El número 50 será con burbujas de champaña y agua caliente en un jacuzzi, Dios mediante.

Luego de la iglesia regresamos a la casa haciendo antes una escala en el magnífico mega templo comercial llamado Costco para darnos un atracón de pizza. ¡Gracias, Costco, por el baratillo! La tarde se me fue en juegos de mesa con mi esposa y nuestra querida Rona. Siempre pierdo. Luego jugué ping pong con mi hijo L quien después de haber perdido el primer set se empantalonó y me ganó dos sets corridos. Digamos que lo dejé ganar, pues porque soy buen padre. Eso no se cuestiona. Entonces me puse a jugar Xbox por un rato para relajarme matando zombies a diestra y siniestra. Pero ¿saben qué? Los zombies ganaron… en múltiples ocasiones. Fue culpa del bendito control.

Una vez llegada la noche sacamos un delicioso bizcocho de chocolate y mi esposa e hijos me cantaron Cumpleaños Feliz. Oraron por mí y yo por ellos. Mi hijo menor oró una oración inolvidable para mí tanto por lo sencilla como por lo conmovedora, "Dios, gracias por el cumpleaños 46 de papá. Te pido que cumpla como 60 años más. Amén." Para ser un cumpleaños ordinario, fue un buen día. De hecho, esta crónica de un cumpleaños no anunciado no pudo haber sido mejor. Y claro, llegar a 106 añitos no estaría nada mal.

Nobody Knows My Name

I truly discovered James Baldwin earlier this year. I say truly because while I’m certain I had heard his name many times before, I couldn’t quite place him as a historical or literary reference, and I think the reason for this simply lied in that I really wasn’t that much interested in who he was. At least, not in the same way Malcolm X or Martin Luther King Jr interested me.

It wasn’t until coming across an impressive video documentary titled I Am Not Your Negro, based on an unfinished work by Baldwin that my radar picked up the signal and I decided to have a firsthand view of the author. Perhaps I’ll write about I Am Not Your Negro at some other time. Suffice it to say that it is both a visual and narrative masterpiece to be enjoyed more than a few times as I already have.

James Baldwin was a relevant figure in his time and is probably more so nowadays almost thirty years after his death. He was a top rate intellectual and literary critic, besides being a writer. While he was friends with the leading figures of the Civil Rights Movement in the 50’s and 60’s, he underwent a self-imposed exile in Paris that accounted for his being not as visible in the American mind at the time. However, anybody who was somebody then knew of him and knew of his piercing critique as a leading Black writer regarding not just academic or literary matters, but sociological issues, first and foremost the fight for desegregation and civil rights in the South.

As an incredibly piercing writer, Baldwin gave us some of the boldest social commentary on race issues and the many faces of racism in the history of the United States. One of his books, a collection of essays written from 1954 to 1960 while in Europe and titled Nobody Knows My Name: More Notes of a Native Son, gives us a peak at the heart of a writer continuing to seek freedom from “the Negro Problem” he knew all too well he couldn’t escape. That gradual and cold realization sparks the process that will return him from his European haven to America.

In the introduction to Nobody Knows My Name he writes,

What it came to for me was that I no longer needed to fear leaving Europe, no longer needed to hide myself from the big and dangerous winds of the world. The world was enormous and I could go anywhere in it I chose―including America: and I decided to return here because I was afraid to. But the question which confronted me, nibbled at me, in my stony Corsican exile was: Am I afraid of returning to America? Or am I afraid of journeying any further with myself? Once this question had presented itself it would not be appeased, it had to be answered. (p. xiii)

I stumbled, if you will, upon Nobody Knows My Name recently while at the local public library. I was scanning titles at the new arrivals section when I saw the title Nobody Knows My Name on the spine of a book and the name Baldwin below it. Having seen the video documentary, the connection was instant. I pulled the book and, lucky me, it was indeed authored by James Baldwin. I read part of the intro and the writing pulled me in, but I returned the book to its shelf. I think it was on the new arrivals shelves because it was a new acquisition by the library, not because it was a new publication. Baldwin died in 1987. I came back a few days later knowing I was to read it, so I checked it out of the library and dug in.

James Baldwin wrote as an uncompromising thinker. His time in Europe helped him solidify his identity as a writer because it afforded him freedom from the great social pressures that sought to stifle him not merely as a writer but, above all else, as a man in his home country. Nobody Knows My Name lets us in on the writer as a free agent in the pursuit of truth,

But I still believe that the unexamined life is not worth living: and I know that self-delusion, in the service of no matter what small or lofty cause, is a price no writer can afford. His subject is himself and the world and it requires every ounce of stamina he can summon to attempt to look on himself and the world as they are. (p. xii)

One of the features that distinguishes the essays in Nobody Knows My Name is that beside its social commentary and literary criticism, Baldwin employs the memoir in the service of his narrative. And this is perhaps the most refreshing element―for literary critics can be dry as hell sometimes―in the book. Baldwin obviously has an impressive command of the written word. His type of writing is so incisive and clear one cannot avoid trying to engage at the same deep level he challenges us to engage him with.

I’m not a fast reader and NKMN isn’t a particularly long book, but I went through its pages like a man on a mission. It’s not just that Baldwin commands the written word, he is aware of his audience and respects it so much that there is no place to beat around the bushes. At the same time, he doesn’t want to be a stumbling block in the minds or hearts of his readers. He simply strikes a chord with them, challenges, even shocks them, and by resorting to the memoir becomes accessible and appeals to the hearts and minds of his readers equally.

One is hard pressed to choose a favorite among the essays in Nobody Knows My Name, but I’ll say a line or two about my favorite three in the book.

The Discovery of What it Means to Be an American is my first favorite essay where Baldwin has an honest confrontation with himself as he comes to terms with being an American writer, particularly a writer in Europe—in self-imposed exile.

This is a personal day, a terrible day, the day to which his entire sojourn has been tending. It is the day he realizes that there are no untroubled countries in this fearfully troubled world; that if he has been preparing himself for anything in Europe, he has been preparing himself—for America. In short, the freedom that the American writer finds in Europe brings him, full circle, back to himself, with the responsibility for his development where it always was: in his own hands.

Even the most incorrigible maverick has to be born somewhere. He may leave the group that produced him—he may be forced to—but nothing will efface his origins, the marks of which he carries with him everywhere. I think it is important to know this and even find it a matter for rejoicing, as the strongest people do, regardless of their station. On this acceptance, literally, the life of a writer depends. (pp. 9-10)

My second favorite essay—and my order here does not imply importance—is Faulkner and Desegregation. I may have read a short story or two from William Faulkner back in my college days so at least I know enough to say that he is one of the towering figures in American literature. And by reading this essay I also learned that Faulkner came from a very well to do, slave-owning Mississippian stock. The irony here is that Faulkner was apparently against segregation in the South. But Baldwin sees through the southerner’s thin veil of moral indignation against it and calls him on the floor for what he really is—a hypocrite who when push comes to shove is reluctant to forgo his very deeply rooted, very southern sensibilities preferring to remain in favor of the status quo he himself inherited. Baldwin cuts to the chase right off the bat in his essay addressing what happens when a man encounters the important crossroads life will bring him to,

Any real change implies the breakup of the world as one has always known it, the loss of all that gave one an identity, the end of safety. And at such a moment, unable to see and not daring to imagine what the future will now bring forth, one clings to what one knew, or thought one knew; to what one possessed or dreamed that one possessed. Yet, it is only when a man is able, without bitterness or self-pity, to surrender a dream he has long cherished or a privilege he has long possessed that he is set free—he has set himself free—for higher dreams, for greater privileges. All men have gone through this, go through it, each according to his degree, throughout their lives. It is one of the irreducible facts of life. (p. 117)

Surely, Faulkner read these words and knew what Baldwin was talking about, but he simply was not willing to put his money where his mouth was. After all, he’s the one who said, The past is not dead. In fact, it's not even past.

The third essay that got my attention was The Male Prison, a piercing yet compassionate critique of French author André Gide’s Madeleine, an autobiographical confessional of the writer’s marriage. It was no taboo then, and much less now, that literary circles contained its share of homosexuals, male and female. This essay was originally published under the title Gide as Husband and Homosexual in December 1954.

During Gide’s time, tradition dictated that men and women subscribe to the convention of marriage between husband and wife, male and female. Having been reared in an austere Protestant (Huguenot) family with strong Catholic leanings (!), Gide followed the established societal norms only to fight against them as he grew into his vocation as a writer. This fight to find his own voice both as a writer and a man took him into the depths of homosexual relationships, while still remaining married to his “beloved” Madeleine.  

Given the visceral emotions Madeleine elicits, Baldwin engages Gide and the role of homosexuality in his relationship to his wife on the same plane. Yes, he is honest, but Baldwin doesn’t betray honesty in such a way that it detracts from his appreciation of Madeleine as a literary critic. It is obvious for him that a Protestant ethos permeates Gide’s work and at the same time the French writer exhibits his homosexuality like a badge of honor. Baldwin doesn’t judge Gide for his homosexuality, but had Gide been less explicit about it, it could have served him (and his readers) better. For Baldwin, the question of homosexuality, moreover whether it is natural or not, is not the main concern in appreciating Gide’s Madeleine. Ultimately, it was an unshakable guilt that stood between him and Madeleine like a chasm and in spite of his love for her he paid a steep price because he could not reconcile his morality as a Protestant man and his morality as a homosexual man. Baldwin gets at the bottom of Gide’s crisis when he states that,

The great problem [for Gide] is how to be—in the best sense of that kaleodoscopic word—a man.

This problem was at the heart of all Gide’s anguish, and it proved itself, like most real problems, to be insoluble. He died, as it were, with the teeth of this problem still buried in this throat. What one learns from Madeleine is what it cost him, in terms of unceasing agony, to live with this problem at all. (p. 157-158)

So Gide spiritualizes his relationship to Madeleine since a natural—carnal—desire for her is not an option. This according to Baldwin is a major failure of Gide, who doesn’t seem to understand that he had actually married a woman. Gide was the quintessential egotistical man who was not able to even scratch the surface of a woman’s nature much less her needs. He was in a conundrum he couldn’t escape. Baldwin illuminates this in the following way,

Gide’s dilemma, his wrestling, his peculiar, notable and extremely valuable failure testify—which should not seem odd—to a powerful masculinity and also to the fact that he found no way to escape the prison of that masculinity. And the fact that he endured this prison with such dignity is precisely what ought to humble us all, living as we do in a time and country where communion between the sexes has become so sorely threatened that we depend more and more on the strident exploitation of externals, as, for example, the breasts of Hollywood glamour girls and the mindless grunting and swaggering of Hollywood he-men. (pp. 161-162)

Waive the Jones Act for Puerto Rico

I shared the following with my facebook friends yesterday regarding the 'Waive the Jones Act for Puerto Rico' petition on change.org. I hope that my readers here can lend your support to this petition. It will help Puerto Rico get back on its feet faster. The petition is linked below. Please sign and share it. Every Puerto Rican will thank you. ¡Muchas gracias!

Dear Amigos,

When I signed this petition the Department of Homeland Security had already rejected it. I went ahead and signed it anyway knowing that the more people added their names and voices to it the more pressure towards a reconsideration in favor of the waiver could be attained. The next day President Trump granted a waiver of the Jones Act in PR for 10 days.

In the next couple of days after I signed the petition it reached over half a million signatures. That's a big number and I couldn't be prouder of the many friends on fb who took the time to sign it and show their support! Muchas gracias! But again, this waiver is only for ten days and if you've been following the news, we have immediate and urgent needs to cover in Puerto Rico that will last much longer than 10 days. Then there's the long haul and hard work of rebuilding my beloved homeland. This, I can assure you, will take years.

So I have a dream.

Change is not always easy, but it is always possible. I would like to see the Jones Act be suspended or repealed or abolished in PR. Historically, the Jones Act has been a powerful instrument of colonialism - Puerto Rico is a colony of the United States. Economically, the Jones Act has enabled a monopoly hub for American shipping corporations by virtue of Puerto Rico's colonial status. The government of Puerto Rico has no other option but to hand American shipping industries extra hundreds of millions of dollars annually because of this. When you have an economic crisis like we had in PR way before Hurricane María hit, hundreds of millions of dollars make a significant difference.

This petition is really straightforward in its aim. It asked for a 12 month waiver of the Jones Act toward infrastructure and economic recovery efforts in Puerto Rico in the aftermath of Hurricane María. All we want in the short term is for the Jones Act to be suspended for a whole year, but what really needs to happen is for the Jones Act -or its shipping provisions as applied to PR- to be abolished permanently.

So I have a dream that our petition reaches 3.5 million signatures- a little more than one signature for each inhabitant of Puerto Rico. Our population currently stands at 3.411 million. I would like to ask all those of you who didn't sign it when I first shared it to sign it this time around. Would you? Please make sure you read what the petition is all about and read also the updates that have come since it was first introduced- they appear just below the main text of the petition.

If you don't feel like signing it, that's OK. Would you share it then? Sharing this petition with your friends on social media will only make its reach wider which is what we want. This is truly effective and you would be surprised of how many people will be willing to join their voices to this if given the chance. Please give them a chance by sharing this petition with them.

If you sign it AND share it you will be a total super hero! You will have cataclysmic powers and kittens will start raining down from heaven! Being that powerful is a good thing because you can stop the downpour at will. I did it in about 2 seconds. All of that beside the added benefit of helping PR!

The two main addressees of this petition are the President of the United States and the Department of Homeland Security. I anticipate that a few more key players and decision makers in Capitol Hill will be added to it as more signers give their support. For some things there is truly strength in numbers.

Lastly, my heartfelt Thank You! Gracias! to all of you from a Puerto Rican away from home! God bless you all! ¡Dios los bendiga!