People From Puerto Rico

"There was racial separation in jail. In one section the white prisoners, in another section the Black prisoners; I was placed with the whites. After a few years they passed an integration law in the jail. The white prisoners refused to abide by that law. I and a group of white communist prisoners decided to struggle against this racism and show those people some decency and the reality that we are all the same. We were the first to integrate. From then on, united with my Black companeras, I enjoyed the best years I had to do in that prison."

"The machismo is so strong that there are almost no sisters in the leadership of the independence movement. Where are the Lolita Lebrons, the Canalas, the Viscals?"

"Today Puerto Rico is suffering the most monstruous intervention as our territory is surrounded with land bases and submarine bases with powerful atomic weapons that, because of the smallness of the island, can cause the destruction of all the Puerto Ricans and the total disappearance of the island from the map of the world. And as if this horrible menace were not enough, genocide is being perpetrated in the most shameless way with a massive house to house campaign to force the women to use a u.s. form of birth control. The plan is to prevent the birth of more Puerto Ricans. At the same time, they stop the advancement of our youth when they recruit them to take them to their deaths in the fields of Vietnam. On the other hand, they have no qualms in firing over the heads of the Puerto Ricans who live on the island of Culebra and the u.s marines have the audacity to ask that the people of Culebra abandon their island because the almighty marine of the biggest empire in the world has decided to use this island as a target for their military practices."

"The Puerto Rican Nation must continue. We must open our eyes to the oppressor's tricknology and refuse to be killed anymore. We must, in the tradition of Puerto Rican women like Lolita Lebrón, Blanca Canales, Carmen Pérez, and Antonia Martínez, join with our brothers and, together, as a nation of warriors, fight the genocide that is threatening to make us the last generation of Puerto Ricans."

"The schools I went to only taught yanqui history. You know stuff like George "I never told a lie" Washington, Bunker Hill, Lincoln freed the slaves. The schools were run by yanquis and discouraged the teaching of Puerto Rican history. But I had a teacher once, Carmen Maria Torres, who used to smuggle into the schools books on Puerto Rican history and she would spend time telling us about Puerto Rican heroes like Betances, and the revolution in Lares on September 23, 1968-I felt re-born."

"I believe that all of today's movements are important. What is needed is unity to achieve the independence of our nation. Some times posters, other times fires, strikes, votes, all that is necessary. My hopes lie with the youth, because you have the ability to carry the word onward."

"We fed people and clothed people," Rivera explained in a 1998 interview. "We kept the building going. We went out and hustled the streets. We paid the rent." The work was of course treacherous, as Marsha P Johnson, proudly brandishing a can of Mace, once said: "It's very dangerous being a transvestite going out on dates because it's so easy to get killed." She and her sisters had to protect themselves and each other, because they knew no one else would...Johnson and her comrades innately understood the intersectional nature of their struggle, even if those who should have been their natural allies did not. Sex workers like them provided crucial material and organizational support to the early trans rights movement as well as the broader gay liberation movement, yet due to the stigma attached to their labor, even the most pivotal activists were scrubbed from the narrative. In 1973, only a few years after the Stonewall uprising, Rivera was excluded from the speakers' list at a gay pride rally organized to celebrate its anniversary because the crowd was uncomfortable with her profession. Furious, Rivera got onstage anyway and castigated the crowd for abandoning their queer sex worker brothers and sisters who had been arrested and jailed for their means of survival. "I will not put up with this shit," she shouted. "The people are trying to do something for all of us, and not men and women that belong to a middle-class white club. And that's what you all belong to!"

"Before gay rights, before the Stonewall I was involved in the Black liberation movement, the peace movement. I felt I had the time and I knew that I had to do something. My revolutionary blood was going back then."

"Rivera was involved in protests against homophobia within the Black Panther Party, after which Huey Newton writing a letter opposing homophobia and supporting gay liberation...Rivera faced transphobia and discrimination as Pride events gained larger mainstream momentum. This boiled down in an impassioned speech by Rivera known as the “Y’all Better Quiet Down” speech...Following her death, the impact of Rivera's activism has been much more widely acknowledged, including by the queer community but also that of homeless, trans, and gender-nonconforming sex workers."

"it used to be a wonderful thing to be avant-garde, to be different from the world. I see us reverting into a so-called liberated closet because we, not we, yous of this mainstream community, wish to be married, wish for this status. That's all fine. But you are forgetting your grassroots, you are forgetting your own individual identity. I mean, you can never be like them. Yes we can adopt children, all well and good, that's fine. I would love to have children. I would love to marry my lover over there [Julia Murray], but for political reasons, I will not do it because I don't feel that I have to fit in that closet of normal, straight society which the gay mainstream is going towards."

"One of my best friends now, who has employed me for the last seven years before I changed jobs, is Randy Wicker. Randy Wicker was a very well-known gay male activist in 1963. He was the first gay male—before any real movement was there—to get on a talk show and state to the world that he was a normal homosexual. I give him credit for that. He has done a lot of different things, but he also in 1969 and for many years trashed the transgender community. It took him a lot of years to wake up and realize that we are no different than anybody else; that we bleed, that we cry, and that we suffer."

"the laws do not give us the right to go and get a job the way we feel comfortable. I do not want to go to work looking like a man when I know I am not a man. I have been this way since before I left home and I have been on my own since the age of ten."

"This is a month that's very important. I may have a lot of anger but it means a lot to me because after being at World Pride last year in Italy, to see 500,000 beautiful, liberated gay men, women, and trans people and being called the mother of the world's transgender movement and the gay liberation movement, it gives me great pride to see my children celebrating."

"I am tired of seeing homeless transgender children; young, gay, youth children. I am tired of seeing the lack of interest that this rich community has."

"People have also asked me, "Was it a pre-planned riot?," because out of nowhere, Molotov cocktails showed up. I have been given the credit for throwing the first Molotov cocktail by many historians but I always like to correct it; I threw the second one, I did not throw the first one!"

"Part of history forgets, that as the cops are inside the bar, the confrontation started outside by throwing change at the police. We started with the pennies, the nickels, the quarters, and the dimes. "Here's your payoff, you pigs! You f---ing pigs! Get out of our faces. " This was started by the street queens of that era, which I was part of, Marsha P. Johnson, and many others that are not here."

"we have to remember one thing: that it was not just the gay community and the street queens that really escalated this riot; it was also the help of the many radical straight men and women that lived in the Village at that time, that knew the struggle of the gay community and the trans community."

"That night, I remember singing "We Shall Overcome," many a times, on different demonstrations, on the steps of Albany, when we had our first march, where I spoke to the crowds in Albany. I remember singing but I haven't over-come a damn thing. I'm not even in the back of the bus. My community is being pulled by a rope around our neck by the bumper of the damn bus that stays in the front. Gay liberation but transgender nothing! Yes, I hold a lot of anger. But I have that right. I have that right to have that anger. I have fought too damn and too hard for this community to put up with the disrespect that I have received and my community has received for the last thirty-two years."

"it was a long night of riots. It was actually very exciting cuz I remember howling all through the streets, "The revolution is here!""

"When the cops did finally get there, the reinforcements, forty five minutes later, you had the chorus line of street queens kicking up their heels, singing their famous little anthem that up to today still lives on, "We are the Stonewall girls/ we wear our hair in curls/ we wear our dungarees/ above our nelly knees/ we show our pubic hairs," and so on and so forth."

"The women have tried to fight for their sex changes or to become women.... they do not write women, they do not write men, they write 'STAR' because we're trying to do something for them."

"on the fourth anniversary of the Stonewall movement, of the Stonewall riot, the transgender community was silenced because of a radical lesbian named Jean O'Leary, who felt that the transgender community was offensive to women because we liked to wear makeup and we liked to wear miniskirts...Jean O'Leary started the big commotion at this rally [Christopher Street Liberation Day, 1973]. It was the year that Bette Midler performed for us. I was supposed to be a featured speaker that day. But being that the women felt that we were offensive, the drag queens Tiffany and Billy were not allowed to perform. I had to fight my way up on that stage and literally, people that I called my comrades in the movement, literally beat the sh-- out of me. That's where it all began, to really silence us. They beat me, I kicked their a--es. I did get to speak. I got my points across."

"I don't pull no punches, I'm not afraid to call out no names. You screw with the transgender community and the organization StreetTransgender Action Revolutionaries[STAR] will be on your doorstep."

"The trans community has allowed, we have allowed the gay and lesbian community to speak for us. Times are changing. Our armies are rising and we are getting stronger."

"it seemed like everybody and their mother came out for Matthew Shepard. A white, middle class gay boy that was effeminate! Amanda Milan got killed last year, five days before Gay Pride. We waited a month to have a vigil for her. Three hundred people showed up. What kind of a—doesn't the community have feelings? We are part of the gay and lesbian community! That really hurt me, to see that only three hundred people showed up."

"I wish yous all a very happy gay pride day but also think about us"

"People were very angry for so long. How long can you live in the closet? I listen to my brothers and sisters who are older than I am and I listen to their stories. I would never have made it. They would have killed me. Somebody would have killed me. I could never have survived the lives that my brothers and sisters from the forties and fifties did. Because I have a mouth."

"Marsha and I fought for the liberation of our people. We did a lot back then. We did sleep in the streets. Marsha and I had a building on Second Street, which we called STAR House. When we asked the community to help us [tears coming down face] there was nobody to help us. We were nothing. We were nothing! We were taking care of kids that were younger than us. Marsha and I were young and we were taking care of them. And GAA had teachers and lawyers and all we asked was to help us teach our own so we could all become a little bit better. There was nobody there to help us. They left us hanging. There was only one person that that came and help us. Bob Kohler was there. He helped paint. He helped us put wires together. We didn't know what the fuck we were doing. We took a slum building. We tried. We really did. We tried. Marsha and I and a few of the other older drag queens. We kept it going for about a year or two. We went out and made that money off the streets to keep these kids off the streets. We already went through it. We wanted to protect them. To show them that there was a better life. You can't throw people out on the street."

"Any time they needed any help, I was always there for the Young Lords. It was just the respect they gave us as human beings. They gave us a lot of respect."

"Some people say that the riots started because of Judy Garland's death. That's a myth. We were all involved in different struggles, including myself and many other transgender people. But in these struggles, in the Civil Rights movement, in the war movement, in the women's movement, we were still outcasts. The only reason they tolerated the transgender community in some of these movements was because we were gung-ho, we were front liners. We didn't take no sh-- from nobody. We had nothing to lose. You all had rights. We had nothing to lose. I'll be the first one to step on any organization, any politician's toes if I have to, to get the rights for my community."

"Stonewall is a great, great foundation. It began the modern day liberation movement, like we spoke before about the Daughters of Bilitis and the Mattachine Society."

"Routine was, "Faggots over here, dykes over here, and freaks over there," referring to my side of the community. If you did not have three pieces of male attire on you, you were going to jail."

"I wasn't the kid who got involved in the streets. I liked to be at home with my family."

"I don't want to be fake. I'm just being me. And I have the power to break stereotypes and whatever useless rules that society puts on us."

"Puerto Rico has limited influence over US national policy. Island residents cannot vote in presidential elections, and their congressional representative has no voting power. Without sovereignty, bilateral relations, or participation in international bodies, culture remains our primary doorway to the world, and Bad Bunny has opened it wider than ever."

"Quítate la ropa, que hace calor Días de playa, noches de terror En la gaveta dejo el temor Pa las envidiosas paz y amor"

"His goals in this archival project are to identify and celebrate Black contributions to transamerican civilization, and he was particularly (though not exclusively) prone to research concerning men of African descent. In these lifelong pursuits, Schomburg was extremely successful; the papers and artifacts he gathered became the world's first major collection of transamerican and transatlantic Africana, which is today the African diaspora's largest combined archives."

"Afro-Latinos serve as bridges. The most obvious example would be Arturo Alfonso Schomburg. The Schomburg Center for Black Culture [Harlem, New York, USA] is probably the premiere institution for any type of serious scholarship and research on Africans and their descendants. Schomburg was a Black Puerto Rican who came to the United States from Puerto Rico in 1891 at 17. He became an integral part of the Black community – African American and Caribbean; most definitely he served as a bridge. Most of his writings were about Black Latinos, whether in Spain, the Caribbean or South America."

"He grew up on the island, moved to New York when he was 17 years old, and became one of the most important bibliophiles and researchers on Africana Studies. His international views on race and the history of people of African descent is heavily influenced on the fact that he spoke Spanish, French, and English, and grew up outside of the U.S. Our program is inspired by the legacy of Arturo Schomburg"

"more research needs to be done on Schomburg, who claimed his Black identity very publicly, but who also simultaneously claimed his Puerto Rican identity, a combination he did not consider inconsonant. In forging my biographical perspective introducing both Belpré and Schomburg, I have found it necessary to emphasize what they accomplished, rather than speculate on their inner racial consciousness, in order to further research and discussion of their legacies. Both were bibliophiles, both were successful professionals, both were brilliant and quite public cultural intellectuals, both were writers, both hid details about their lives in Puerto Rico before moving to the states, and those secrets-and their reasons for keeping those secrets-may never be known for certain."

"We also missed in the branch library news for February dedicated to Puerto Rico any mention of the Schomburg Collection, at 135th Street and Lenox Avenue. Though the collection itself is dedicated to the Negro people and their history, there is a great deal of material on prominent Negro Puerto Ricans in its files. Besides, Arturo Schomburg, a great figure in the life of the 19th century Puerto Rican in New York was himself a Puerto Rican, born in San Juan, the capital of Puerto Rico. Its seems to be that one of the main divisions in the New York Public Library system-bearing the name of a great Negro Puerto Rican should at least have been mentioned in a library publication purporting to compile the most important books dealing with the cultural developments and contributions of Puerto Rico and Puerto Ricans in New York."

"By building and popularizing a counter-archive of Afrodiasporic history, Schomburg made a radical intervention in the production of historiographic knowledge. His collection and his essays effectively refuted the dominant ideology of white supremacy and the popular and official forms of historiographic knowledge in which this discourse was embedded."

"Schomburg belonged to a circle of "race men" who were also book fiends, sharing and trading recent acquisitions. Before there was such a thing as the New Negro movement, he had cofounded the Negro Society for Historical Research, was a member of the Negro Book Collectors Exchange, and had served as president of the American Negro Academy.... The desire of these men to uncover the forgotten history of black people was matched by a desire to protect and steward that knowledge."

"Within the still incipient study of Afro-Latin@ literature, where the Afro-Latin@ is somewhat known in prose through insightful accounts such as Black Cuban, Black American (Evelio Grillo 2000) and Down These Mean Streets (Piri Thomas 1967), as well as through the figure of Arturo Schomburg, the creativity and diversity that results from the multiple dimensions of the Afro-Latin@ poet can only be found in the present ¡Manteca! Inspired by Grillo, Thomas and Schomburg, then, at the foundation of this anthology is also a recognition of the close relationships between African Americans and Afro-Latin@s (who are also African Americans); these relationships have been significant for both groups from collaborating in politics to working together in the arts for the past one hundred years."

"In Europe we have had the historian Hume who said in one of his essays that "there are Negro slaves dispersed all over Europe, of whom none ever discovered any symptoms of ingenuity.... In Jamaica, indeed, they talk of one Negro as a man of parts and learning; but it is likely he is admired for slender accomplishments, like a parrot who speaks a few words plainly.""

"On the one hand, such figures as Arturo Schomburg, who intentionally integrate themselves into Africa-America, point to the intellectual possibilities as well as conversations among Latin@s and African Americans. On the other hand, the example of Schomburg also highlights the complexities of such allegiances within the context of New York City's African-American and Puerto Rican communities (Dzidzienyo 164). Schomburg would not give up his Afro-Latin@ identity, even though his blackness was often contested because of his Puerto Rican origin and light skin color. His project of black cosmopolitanism, then, was based on a recognition of diversity and complexity in the multiple racial regimes and cultural practices that composed the global African diaspora. He was a "transamerican intellectual" who promoted a diasporic project in which identity and community were conceived through and across difference (Laós-Montes 8). As such, it is not without thought that ¡Manteca! ends with a collaboration between Afro-Mexican poet Joaquín Zihuatanejo and Antwaun "Twain" Davis, who attribute the oppressions of people of color to larger histories and structures of violence."

"We need in the coming dawn the man who will give us the background for our future; it matters not whether he comes from the cloisters of the university or from the rank and file of the fields. The Anglo-Saxon is effusive in his praises to the Saxon shepherds who lived on the banks of the river Elbe, to whom he pays blind allegiance. We need the historian and philosopher to give us with trenchant pen the story of our forefathers and let our soul and body, with phosphorescent light, brighten the chasm that separates us. When the fact has been put down in the scroll of time, that the Negroes of Africa smelted iron and tempered bronzes at the time Europe was wielding stone implements, that the use of letters was introduced among the savages of Europe about 1500 BC and the European carried them to America about the fifteenth century after the Christian era, that Phoenicia and Palestine will live forever in the memory of mankind since America as well as Europe has received letters from the one and religion from the other, we will feel prouder of the achievements of our sires. We must research diligently the annals of time and bring back from obscurity the dormant example of agriculture, industry, and commerce, upon these the arts and sciences and make common the battleground of our heritage."

"Where is our historian to give us our side view and our chair of Negro history, to teach our people our own history? We are at the mercy of the "flotsam and jetsam" of the white writers. The very learned Rev. Alexander Crummell, before the American Negro Academy, stated that he heard J. C. Calhoun say that the inferiority of the Negro was so self-evident that he would not believe him human unless he could conjugate Greek verbs; and yet it must have been evident to Calhoun that in North Carolina there were many Negroes held as slaves who could read and write Arabic.¹ In those days men like Juan Latino, Amo, Capitein, Francis Williams, Rev. J. Pennington, and others could not only conjugate the Greek and Hebrew verbs, but had shown unmistakable evidences of learning, for they had received degrees from the universities of world-famed reputation. Yet in those days there were many whites unrestrained, enjoying the opportunities of education, who could not conjugate Greek roots nor verbs of the spoken language of the land. Yet this barrier was set up to persons restrained by force from the enjoyment of the most ordinary rights."

"The remark attributed to John C. Calhoun,' "that the Negro race was so inferior it could not produce a single individual who could conjugate a Greek verb," was accepted half a century ago in this country as the last word on the subject of the inferiority of the Negro. Thomas Jefferson, one of the fathers of the revolution, and a friend of the Negro race, who was not so dogmatic as Calhoun, said: "I think one (Negro) could scarcely be found capable of tracing and comprehending the investigations of Euclid: and that in imagination they are dull, tasteless and anomalous.... Never yet could I find that a black had uttered a thought above the level of plain narration; never saw even an elementary trait of painting or sculpture. ... Religion indeed, has produced a Phyllis Wheatley, but it could not produce a poet." So much for the American statesmen."

"For Arthur Schomburg, the Harlem Renaissance proved to be an excellent environment for conducting his bibliophilic research and an ideal opportunity to promote interest in black history and culture. Responding to the urgent desire of black writers and artists to use "black themes, Schomburg supplied information both from his encyclopedic knowledge and from his private collection. The Harlem Renaissance also stimulated Schomburg himself to write more for publication, and this proved to be his most prolific period."