Salsa colada politica y cultura

Puerto Rico
In your shores
You welcomed people of all colors
Young and old, black, brown, de color, Moreno, mulato, prieto, indio, negrito, blanco and mocha
Mixed like your famous original piña colada
Laced by your magical landscapes of many hues of green and blue
I fell in love, with your natural beauty, white sand beaches and to your people too
It’s not only about the salsa hips, but the warmth and community in the streets
I feel the solidarity of all colors, the love and passion in the tropical heat

I learned from your history
That you like to live in a four story house
A room for Africans, Spanish, other Europeans, and North Americans
But then an attic is added, for our dear Dominicans
A metaphor of your ancestry that amused me
Maybe not as complicated as your reality
How migration and slavery fertilized your soil
From the blood spilt by Columbus until the conquest of Spain
How can your people survived, war, slavery, invasion, disease
Wiped out by a foreign disease, how many lived and died
Only the colors of the skin survived
It is now a living legacy that will tell us your ancestry

I see masks of the past and many different masks we wear today
Like the Old San Juan of affluence and beauty
Captivated my soul for its colors, architecture and panorama
Though haunting of the bitter sweet embrace of the past and now love affair with America
Where a Spanish armada made you a stockpile of cannons
And a little stop over for siesta
Sold for a few thousand silvers, you become an object of America

How can busy streets felt like a ghost town of tourists
I heard people are no longer able to afford to live in such places
Where they used to have open barbeques and open doors
For people walking the streets and you know all your neighbors
Now a law defeated them from living in their own houses
Lined up is a sad picture of signature stores that has nothing to do with Puerto Rico
Shall you live for more strangers to drive you away from your living spaces
But I cannot go away empty of happy memories
The sensual memory of tres leches and mofonggo
Are those times I got pregnant with experiences a new

But I heard you have been confused
Some people think you have sold yourself for a cheap price
Maybe too much chicaito some people lost their consciousness
What happens when memories fade away?
What happens when the island is weak but obey?
What happens when people wants independence but ‘nada’ say
What happens when you are no longer America , let’s see
Are you ready, to be free?
Shall we dance some more salsa to drive away colonial clichés
Shall we hop to bomba till we get rid of political foreplay
Shall we dig into Macha Colon or listen to the regaeton ‘till we are back to reality

Why are there people having cha-cha with police in your streets?
I was amazed by your young activists, students and artists
They are grown ups faster than the generation ahead of them
How fearless and now stands on their own
Is this the blood of Puerto Rican, Buricua in spirit
That shall rejoice multi-race identity between two flags with merit?
Shall you shout Long live PRUSA?

Oh rich land of a thousand blessings
Revered as the sparkling Spanish virgin islands
you make people stay for it is hard to go away
Enchanted forest listen to the long lost voice of your Tahino people
I shall come closer to listen, learn and in your arms shall I cradle

I heard your people speak in many voices
Language so sweet, but have no use for mascarera Deborah Hunt
For she lets the masks speak loud for freedom
Did you see her in the street or store windows?
She never stops to create so women have a voice against violence
In her masks all archetypes come alive from the mystic to detective
Madwoman, anxious, comic, shamanic then she is healed
With mask work she reminds us “better to be big so the other person can see it”

I am speechless, when I found a haven in Ponce where colors blends with garden and sky
Only a man with a superfluous visions and a mind advance of his time
Shall speak in lines, colors, texts, sculpture, steels, concretes and stones
Inanimate things come alive for they become extensions of his soul
Survived and reincarnated from the ashes of his own creations
Renewed his spirits and used the past as his new narrative
But he has words written in sumptuous poetry that tells about his family, childhood and memories
A metamorphosis of all mediums that gave us all kinds of perspective of art forms
He is never finished and starts on a new series of political statements
“when is a sketch a final drawing, when is a drawing a sketch”
The tireless Antonio Martorell speaks of “drawings as narration without the words”

One afternoon we met Maricha Perez and the Jovenes de ’98 for a quick exchange of ideas as starter
A youth-based street theater inspired by Theater of the oppressed practicioner
Boal games are never old fashioned with a few more twists and additions
Together we created powerful images and gained a new sense of connections

Then little puppets emerged from the sea of manual animation
Shows original works of Teatro y no habia luz
That has combined clowns, masks, music, film, animation and puppets
A room of young people gave us the experience of how objects are manipulated
According to Julio, there are three things that can give life to an object
Have a relationship with the object, learn manipulation and transformation of the object
Then theater is born from a wooden stick
It told the story of birth, childhood, teen-age and adult life, old age
How easy, crazy and funny we all tried tested and think of the unfamiliar, unusual and out of the box
Aside from rain and sun, i did more than fun like eat in the streets and smelled the markets
I guess it all makes sense that we paid our way to live in a posh hotel
Swing in hammocks and lie in the sun in between beach volleyballs
Tested our comfort zones as we have both worlds
Of fantasy and reality

Oh adios Puerto Rico mi amor
I shall long to be back in your shores
With a friend, a lover or a stranger
I shall let this memory grow in my heart
As I continue to dance salsa and lost myself in your street beat
Until the next time I see you again, we remain familiar, dear and sweet.