Yo Soy Boricua… So That You Know
- Detalles
- by Aurora Flores Hostos* for MSAM
“The biggest one”, I answer whenever someone asks, “¿de qué pueblo eres?” Strolling through the centuries-old Andalusian streets of Puerto Rico, my smile gently suggests “no”, savoring the humid coco and mango-scented air. They guess “Ponce”. I shake my head. “New York”, I counter. “Soy Manhateriana”.
We laugh and bump fists. They understand, the place with the most Puerto Ricans outside the Island is Nueva York. Born and bred in Manhattan, this Manhateriana was infused and weaned on legacy roots held tight by my mother, Cruzita Valentín Hostos from Mayagüez, Puerto Rico.
Since I had the use of reason, she spoke of Hostos‚ Eugenio Maria de Hostos, and how I had writing in my blood. Unlike many of my Nuyorican peers, I didn’t learn about being Boricua from a movement, a classroom, or a book. I learned at home. Where Ma demanded we speak only Spanish.
Yet, in the American empire, we never used her maiden name. Even during visits to Mayagüez, standing before the Hostos statue, or during familia holidays, it never crossed my mind. Until her passing in 2016. I returned to Mayagüez once more to spread her ashes over el Río Cañas where she played as a child.
During that stay with her sisters in Alturas de Algarrobo, my tías recalled that first visit when I was eleven, up the unpaved mud-red, fango-driven road to their house on stilts. I remembered chasing crabs on the beach at sunset; hearing roosters ring in the day just before sunrise or sucking on the sweet sap of a sugar cane husk.
Those early memories ran through me as I walked past the vast Plaza de Colón where the Church of Nuestra Señora de la Candelaria —whose monsignor plays a mean tambora— sits opposite House Town Hall whose lobby is decked out in exquisite Three Kings Day extravaganza as the town dresses up for the holidays or the fiesta of one of its many patron saints.
The Island’s top salsa bands play a free concert at the nearby basketball court in El barrio de París as young actors stage skits in the square unfazed by the various domino games played by the elders. And who can forget the Brazo Gitano sponge cake served with my favorite coconut and cinnamon Rex Ice Cream or lemon limber. Down that with some maví, (fermented bark-based drink) followed by a dinner of taro or yuca veggies with pork for a down-home honeyed flavor of Mayagüez.
All this ran through me while visiting the resting place of my mama this past June. I strolled by the Sugar Cane - Río Cañas River where a local fisherman displayed the huge prawns he’d pulled from the cool white-water gush. The nearby Hostos Museum projected a documentary on the patriot’s life as the smell of fresh coffee wafted from the lush verdant mountainside where mangos decorated the pathways like a loosely paved yellow brick road. A rustic-colored chicken pecked through the sweet litter of fruit as a young man rode by on horseback. A sign that seemed to have been painted over on the nearby Boquerón beach still read in red: “Gringos Go Home” as an overgrown dragon lizard made its way back home up a palm tree.
My aunts all asked why I didn’t use my mother’s name. The Empire doesn’t recognize mothers, I thought and indeed the Empire today is hell-bent on taking us women back to the dark ages. But after attending seven masses all using both her parent’s names, I thought about how to honor her; the place where she was born, and the heritage of history and independence that name represents. That all became crystal clear when we interred half of her ashes in the cemetery. Her name chiseled in marble: Cruzita Valentín Hostos cemented my resolve to reclaim her history. Her deep heirloom of roots, no matter the route, became my key in opening that strong feminine portal of my familia’s journey in Mayagüez. It is a name more important than my father’s and the one that completes the identity of writer and activist in me. It no longer matters that her mother’s name, my grandmother’s, was not added to my birth certificate because the rules of the Patriarchal Empire do not apply to the children of the Diaspora. ¡Pa’que tú lo sepas!
* Aurora Flores Hostos is a prominent Puerto Rican journalist from New York City who specializes in telling stories about New York life and chronicling the development of Latin music in the United States. She is president of the communications and strategy firm Aurora Communications in New York. Flores Hostos is a producer, singer, instrumentalist and director of the group Zon Del Barrio.