Nuyorican
Cinema Our Latin Thing: The Nuyorican Experience in Narrative Film
Our
Latin Thing: The Nuyorican Experience in Narrative Film*
by Judith Escalona
The
films mentioned in this essay were made in the United States and had a
Puerto Rican in one or two creative capacities, that of director or writer.
They span nearly three decades, from the seventies through the nineties,
and are fictional narratives. We were interested in narrative films, first,
out of sheer curiosity. We wanted to see Puerto Rican narrative films
which are not often distributed. Second, we were interested in exploring
the differences between a Puerto Rican island sensibility and a "Nuyorican"
sensibility. This would emerge more readily from narrative works than
documentaries which offered a report on the Puerto Rican immigration to
the United States over the past four decades. Although those made by Puerto
Ricans might give an insider's view of that historically unfolding experience,
the documentary form did not provide the kind of interpretive subjectivity
we were looking for. Documentary filmmaking takes from the existing world.
Narrative filmmaking recreates the world, revealing the emotional flesh
and blood of our daily lives. Third, we wanted to experience the transformation
of Puerto Rican consciousness through the eyes of the Puerto Rican artist,
to relive the questions he or she was raising through film. What did we
lose and what did we gain in our movement north? Who were we and what
were we becoming?
There was an evolution in consciousness among Puerto Ricans in El Barrio(as
well as other Latinos who lived among us) that became markedly clear in
the seventies. Puerto Ricans began to view themselves somewhat differently
in relation to their mother country and adopted land. A process of redefinition
marked the period generally but within the Puerto Rican community there
came to be something known as the "Nuyorican"-- homegrown in El Barrio.
We were different. Different from our brothers and sisters who had remained
on the island and different from the communities that surrounded us. We
assimilated, incorporated that "otherness" into our "being" and called
it "Our Latin Thing." It would be preposterous for a Puerto Rican, a Cuban
or a Dominican to refer to "Our Latin Thing" in their own respective countries.
What could it possibly mean there? In New York it meant we were different
because we were Puerto Rican and we celebrated it. There is a fundamental
irony to this celebration that will become apparent as we trace the Nuyorican
experience in narrative film. The selections may not follow a strict chronology,
but are organized in such a way to elucidate themes and issues that seem
to preoccupy the filmmakers of any given period.
In La Carreta(1970), the film adaptation
of the renowned play by René Marqués, a schism between the
old and the new, the rural and the urban is delineated through the family
of don Chago, an old jibaro (the country folk of Puerto Rico).
Luis, his eldest grandson, is uncomfortable in the countryside of his
birth. He wants to leave, to go to the big city and work in its factories.
Don Chago admonishes him to cherish the land that is central to life and
well-being. This is a house divided, where those that remain behind are
living out values of a rapidly disappearing rural society, while those
that leave are seeking a different, if not better life, where they can
work and perhaps break an endless cycle of subsistence farming and increasing
impoverishment. The first act ends, not so much conclusively but having
set out some of the arguments for staying or leaving, a theme regularly
revisited by the Nuyorican filmmaker. Just as La Carretawas the
definitive work concerning the migration to the city, later works explore
our struggle to make ends meet there while attempting to come to terms
with what we left behind.
In Los Dos Mundos de Angelita(1982) and
Cristina Pagan(1976) the main characters
appear isolated from the society at large. Tradition clashes with the
new; and both are viewed ambivalently. Deracination takes the form of
substance abuse and insanity as ways of managing oneself in the face of
overwhelming circumstances. There is the threat of falling into the bad
life of the streets where tecatos (drug addicts) and titeres
(hoodlums or street characters) lurk, waiting to take the innocent down.
The characters are immigrants, newly-arrived or raised in El Barrio, where
they struggle to carve out a decent life for themselves. The protagonists
are victims of circumstances beyond their control. In Cristina Pagan
home and family provide solace and, ultimately, healing through traditional
modes. By the time of Los Dos Mundos de Angelita home is no longer
a place of refuge and love is not sustaining. There is a deep sense of
loss and a profound yearning to return to Puerto Rico. But they can never
go back. The language of choice in these films is Spanish with English
serving to distinguish the newly-arrived from those who have become Americanized,
or those who preserve tradition from those who have abandoned it. Los
Dos Mundos de Angelita, although a later work, is a Spanish-language
film. Cristina Paganuses both languages liberally with periodic
bilingual exchanges, a hallmark of the Nuyorican experience in film.
Two unusual films of the late seventies are the Spanish-language Natas
es Satan(1977) and the English-language Short
Eyes(1978) in which values become inverted, producing in the latter
case a breakthrough film. These are transitional works, introducing new
narrative elements and experiences to the screen. In Natas es Satanthe
victim triumphs over his victimizer, a corrupt New York City cop. The
underworld of drug-trafficking and homosexual liaisons that Natas inhabits
is juxtaposed to the world of the protagonist, a successful furniture
storeowner in El Barrio with a beautiful and adoring wife. The
real hero or, rather, anti-hero, however, is the melodramatically evil
Natas. Los titeres begin to dominate the screen. Short Eyes
pushes these new tendencies forward, portraying prison inmates as
protagonists. Homosexuality is the norm among these men and power is the
real name of the game. Race, culture and sexuality are merely instruments
in the shifting power relations among the inmates of the notorious Manhattan
Correctional Facility known as "The Tombs," a microcosm of how we live
in the belly of the beast called America. Here the middle-class, decent-looking
white man is revealed to be the most depraved among them, a child rapist.
Distinctly Nuyorican is the depiction of culturally diverse characters.
There are Puerto Rican, black and white characters in the storyline. The
Puerto Ricans freely interact with members of the other groups who keep
apart from each other. It is not just a matter of counting the number
of characters of any particular racial or ethnic background, however,
Nuyorican films display a culturally diverse sensibility not found in
either African American or "white" films.
The seventies and eighties witness the exodus of Puerto Ricans back to
the island. Having succeeded in obtaining some part of the American dream
or nightmare, many Puerto Ricans now wanted to return home. They were
of retirement age, their children were grown or had established their
own families. It was time to buy a casita (a typical Puerto Rican
small house) or la finca de mi abuelo (my grandfather's farm) in
order to live out their golden years in the tranquility and comfort only
Puerto Rico could provide. They would be leaving behind the urban blight
of abandoned tenements, joblessness, drug addiction and homelessness with
which future generations of Puerto Ricans would have to contend. A perennial
underclass had grown before their eyes, had engulfed many of their very
own cousins. They were members of the same family and yet they spoke differently,
carried themselves differently, had different prospects for the future.
Indeed, a distinguishing feature between them was the fact that some had
a future. They had acquired the means to move their families out of the
inner city and into the suburbs earlier, to Queens or Long Island, following
the pattern of American housing that began in the fifties, and were now
seeking a way out of its fading glory. The House
of Ramon Iglesias(1982) is a bumpy and obstacle-ridden journey
back home, reflecting the actual historical reverse migration. Class issues
and social responsibility are examined through the metaphor of the family
home. When Ramon retires from his job as a janitor and decides to sell
their Long Island home to return to Puerto Rico, his oldest son Javier
refuses to go. The first in his family to graduate from college, he has
contempt for his father and his jibaromanner. This is a house divided
by those who want to return to their native land and those who want to
remain in the United States. Clashing cultural values are explored and
familial obligation reasserted. Javier remains stateside but not until
he has helped his family return to Puerto Rico. He gives back to them,
specifically, to Ramon who slaved away so that he could go to college.
In the final scene, he embraces his father, openly expressing a love that
had remained dormant for most of his American formative years.
The Sun and the Moon(1983) also examines in a poignant and humorous
manner a highly successful woman's journey back to her roots in the South
Bronx after living a very comfortable bourgeios life on Manhattan's Upper
East Side. Her disenchantment with that sophisticated life makes her yearn
for the greater wealth and simpler joy she knew at home. Arguably, she
was only a train ride away, but her geographical proximity could never
account for the vast distance that lay between her past and present lifestyles.
The film marks an important shift in the Puerto Rican community of New
York which nolonger considered itself an immigrant population and, indeed,
nolonger was. Anita's return to her roots did not mean Puerto Rico physically
but Puerto Rico culturally or spiritually. A somewhat
introspective film, it asks and answers the question of what true happiness
is by comparing experiential notes on the South Bronx and the Upper East
Side. At one point in the story, the protagonist Anita sincerely wonders
why she ever left the ghetto she once called her home. And yet, it is
not just a matter of going back but giving back to the old neighborhood
that makes a difference in her life. Before a devastated landscape of
tenements threatened by slumlords all too willing to torch their properties
to collect on the insurance, she re-establishes old ties, makes new friends
and commits herself to making their lives as well as hers better.
The later films of the nineties have crossed the path of thorny social
criticism and cool existential assessment to reach an ironic and at times
cynical stance. Comedies such as Hangin' with
the Homeboys(1991) and Puerto Rican Mambo:
Not A Musical(1992), or even tragic comedies such as
Pleasant Dreams(1996), present contradiction as a way of life.
Los titeres of the street now strut the screen as our heroes. The
immigrant is gone or recedes into the background of the story, the main
characters are second and third generation Nuyoricans who have always
called El Barrio, the Bronx or even other regions of the United
States their home. There is self-criticism and hope, the possibility of
finding a way out of endlessly bad situations that are laughable because
they are unending. The good and the decent appear almost as throwbacks
to an earlier, more simple age. The same applies to the dramatic work
El Deseo (1998), where the protagonist,
a hired gunman, mulls over his missed opportunity to live a decent life
with the woman he loves. Perhaps they could still marry and move to Puerto
Rico?
The nineties also provide the Nuyorican filmmaker with a different field
for experimentation and expression, reflecting trends not only in American
culture but changes in Puerto Rican island society. New subjects and themes
are introduced that are latently or subtextually present in earlier films
but now emerge full force. Themes related to feminism and homosexuality
in the Puerto Rican/Latino family and society at large are openly and
unabashedly addressed through uncoventional narrative structures. Brincando
El Charco(1994) and Go Fish(1996)
set off in this new direction and are breakthrough films for both the
Nuyorican and American independent cinemas. What does it mean to identify
with a culture, to feel deeply a part of a culture, that rejects you because
you are homosexual? What are the intersections of race, class and sexual
identity? Brincando El Charco, an experimental work that looks
more like a documentary than the fictional narrative it actually is, takes
on these issues and, without reaching any pat conclusions, returns to
the family as a key to resolution. This is the story of Claudia, a young
Puerto Rican lesbian who comes to live in the States after being thrown
out of her home by her father. Here in the States, she has been able to
create an openly gay life for herself. She has never thought of going
back to Puerto Rico until her brother calls to inform her of their father's
death. Similarly, Go Fishis almost a serio-comedic discourse on
lesbian identity and herstory with a multicultural circle of lesbian friends
and lovers. In a coming out scene to her family, the only scene in the
film done in Spanglish, the Latina character storms out of her home to
escape her mother and brother's oppressive intolerance. She finds a new
home and family among her lesbian lover and friends.
*This essay will continue to unfold as this
cinema grows
Copyright (c)1999 Judith Escalona