Looking back at my family’s history from Puerto Rico to the U.S.
This morning I listened to ‘Borinquén’, an NPR podcast about how Puerto Rico became a U.S. territory in 1898, and for much of the next fifty years, how Puerto Ricans fought fiercely about this status. Their struggle for independence, or to become a U.S. state. The episode looks at Puerto Rico’s relationship with the mainland U.S. and the key figures who shaped the island’s fate.
I’m reposting this essay that was first published in January of 2018, right after the ballistic missile false alarm in Hawaii. Though, I travel to Hawaii every year I have never been to Puerto Rico where my family’s roots are. I hope to do that someday.
My great-grandparents were born on the island of Puerto Rico. They left as young adults in 1901 after two disastrous hurricanes that devastated the island and left them without work. It was also around this time that the United States Military Government had taken control of the island’s money, custom duties, and taxes — as if the hurricane wasn’t reason enough to leave — enter us. My great-grandfather Gumercindo made the decision to move to Hawai’i with his wife Lucia in search of work in the sugarcane fields. The trip took them first to New Orleans by boat, then to Los Angeles by train, and then back on a boat to Hawai’i. It was considered a long, hard, and exhausting trip. It was also around this time that Hawai’i officially became a United States Territory.
There are only 5000 Puerto Ricans documented leaving the island after the hurricanes for Hawai’i and rumor has it they did not receive a warm welcome. On the pineapple and sugarcane fields, they were being accused of taking away jobs from the locals and life was difficult for Puerto Ricans living as a small minority and a cheap source of new labor. My great-grandparents settled in the town of Lihu’e and had 13 children before moving to California and settling in the East Bay in the early ’20s.
In the early 2000’s a couple of my cousins and I took my grandmother back to her birthplace in Lihu’e. She hated the flight but I could tell she was happy once we arrived. There was nothing more than a field of the overgrown jungle where their small house once was but the memories of my grandmother playing the ‘ukulele and singing Puerto Rican folk songs remained. It was magic to me.
This story of my family’s history is so tangled up in what has been happening currently in our world. The missile threat shook not only my friends and the few family members remaining on the island but also my friends and family here on the mainland. Our country exposed our greatest vulnerability to the world and in the worst possible way. It has also been five months since Hurricane Maria and only half of the island of Puerto Rico has to power. Power, money, and economic inequality — ugh. If you are reading this you are more than likely in agreement with me that our government is failing in so many ways.
Looking back on this history I see my family’s struggle to overcome natural disasters, discrimination, and inequality and here we are over a hundred years later still fighting for the same damn things.
