Nation on the move: the construction of cultural identities in Puerto Rico and the diaspora

Abstract

In this article, I analyze recent intellectual debates on the Puerto Rican nation and its persistent colonial relation with the United States. First, I trace the development of a nationalist discourse on the Island, primarily among intellectuals, writers, and artists during the 20th century. I identify several problems with this discourse, especially the exclusion of ethnic and racial others from its definition of the nation. Then I argue that any serious reconceptualization of Puerto Rican identity must include the diaspora in the United States. I focus on the increasingly bilateral flow of people between the Island and the U.S. mainland-what has come to be known as circular, commuter, or revolving door migration. The Spanish folk term for this back-and-forth movement is extremely suggestive: el vaiveYi (literally meaning fluctuation). La nacion en vaiven, the nation on the move, might serve as an apt metaphor for the fluid and hybrid identities of Puerto Ricans on both sides of the Atlantic. My thesis is that massive migration-both to and from the Island-has undermined conventional definitions of the nation based exclusively on territorial, linguistic,

Mental Health Services Structure: The Case of Older Puerto Ricans in Senior Centers

“…The participants in the New York City location were largely distributed in the 65-to 74-year-old age category. This difference may be due to a migration pattern because many Puerto Rican older adults return to the island when they are of advanced age (Duany, 2000). The difference in age can place some of those in the New York City location in a slightly different cohort that may have influenced their lifelong experiences with mental health (Currin, Schneider, Hayslip, & Kooken, 1998).…”

Re/membering the Nation: Gaps and Reckoning within Biographical Accounts of Salvadoran Émigrés

“…The sense that a knowledge of national history, and particularly of the Salvadoran Civil War, was elusive and yet key to unlocking their own biog raphies emerged in my interviews with Salvadoran youth who, for the most part, were students, activists, or community organizations' clients (see also Delugan 2010, Duany 2000, Espíritu and Tran 2002, Hintzen 2004 Although they were elicited during interviews, the narratives that I analy here-and indeed, the decision to participate in an interview-were linked to the advocacy work described above. One interviewee, an electricia who had never attended college, likened being interviewed to marching Milda also said that while she was in El Salvador, her family sometimes attended meetings of the FMLM the rebel organization.…”

Imagining the Nation in the Classroom: Belonging and Nationness in the Dutch Caribbean

“…In a world of nation-states, ideologies of belonging are often still framed in nationalist terms, or in anti-nationalist terms as a reactive narrative to imperial narrations. However, in the case of most Caribbean societies, these ideologies cannot be conventionally defined within strictly territorial boundaries or customary discourses of sovereignty and statehood (Duany, 2000). Like other places in the 'nonsovereign Caribbean' (Bonilla, 2013a), the Dutch Caribbean islands fall outside of the traditional definitions of either independent states or official colonies, defying hegemonic ideas -even if just a myth -of a clearly bounded nation defined by a distinct land, people, and state.…”