Palestinians Are Us
Today is the anniversary of the invasion of Puerto Rico by the United States, followed very closely by Spain's surrender and the island becoming a US territory - and eventually our displacement to the mainland. I wrote about that recently, and I used the term or the concept that Puerto Ricans are this country's Palestinians. And someone, despite having read that article, wanted to know what I meant by that. It seems to me obvious, but here goes.
I've made five trips to Cuba. In 1998, we were stopped coming back from the airport in what quickly became a nightmare. They looked like they were military - fatigues, jeeps, large weapons - but they were police. The were accusing our friend who had picked us up as being a boterro (gypsy driver), a serious Black Market crime. They were engaged in a very heated conversation that became ever more surreal as it went on. Speaking Spanish I tried to mediate but gave it up in exasperation because the cops were being outrageously thickheaded.
We recounted the experience to our host family and she explained, disparagingly, that the cops were most probably palestinos. "As in Palestinians?", I asked. She explained that police were very poorly paid and so the only ones that would take the jobs as policemen were the supposedly unwashed, illiterate folks from the East end of the island, Santiago. They use the term for people who have been displaced.
In the 1950's, the "DPs" of my Jersey City, were the East Europeans. To my shame we would also terrorize them, discounting their horror stories as no big deal as they were on our turf, that irony lost on us. There were also "the Jews", before them "the Irish", Italians, etc. As it applies to us, it's obvious hyperbole. We haven't been mistreated in the same manner as the Palestinians, but we share a lot of similarities. I can go into the song and dance about where we've lived and what has happened to us, but my family is successful, to some, that makes it no big deal, but not to me.
And to be candid, that comment was purely anecdotal. I no longer use that term as somehow symbolic of our country's situation any more than when I used to say - well before 9/11 and this at the time when the mujahideen were USA-sponsored - that "what this country needs is a good jihad".
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