A Glance At The Puerto Rican Independence Struggle July 30, 2008

I am interested to hear your comments about this internationally overshadowed social justice struggle in my island. The assassination of Ojeda Rios by the FBI was one of our most painful tragedies and one more case of the historical FBI illegal persecution against leaders and members of the independence movement.

Have you heard about this? If not, blame the media for not letting you know that this country still holds a colony and has never ever been held accountable for it! Hope to read some comments.

The video begins with Filiberto Ojeda Rios talking in Spanish and the rest of the video is in English.

My Normal Abnormalities July 15, 2008

by Maria R. Palacios
copyright 2007

The normal in me can tell you
about distracted bones
that refused to learn
about motion,
about fingers that speak
a language of tangible deviations
and feet that fell asleep
before their time.

The normal in me
is the underexposed flesh
half shown to you
as you explore my imperfections
pretending that your hands are deaf
to the whisper of my scars.

My normality
has been redecorated
as an unusual
biological masterpiece,
a human canvas
displayed in front of you
the artist who values
the rare
the sensual
the woman.

Rigoberta Menchu September 27, 2007

I had the honor a while a go to interpret for Nobel Peace Prize winner, Rigoberta Menchu, during an event held by Amnesty International in San Francisco. During the event she discussed her candidacy for President of Guatemala in the upcoming elections and her hopes to give voice to the historically marginalized indigenous communities in Guatemala and to end impunity to the civil war crimes that she herself witnessed.

I had been working around human rights issues in Guatemala for 2 years organizing delegations to Guatemala. In the process I understood more in depth the civil war, the marginalization of indigenous communities and their movement of resistance, so one can only imagine how mesmerized I was to hear her speak and translate those words to the audience. I was delighted yet petrified to not be able to convey the essence of her message. She truly speaks from the heart and in an almost poetic way. This is an experience I’ll never forget.

Cultural Shock: from San Francisco to Florida July 8, 2007

I have just come back from a 7 day vacation with my sister and her family in Orlando, FL. They are the only reason I would visit that state again. It was so nice to be around family! However, it was truly a cultural shock! Here in SF we live in a bubble. Just being in Florida and getting bombarded by US patriotism was enough to realize how much of a refuge SF has been for me. I also realized how I have almost lost the ability to debate my political views. In SF am surrounded by like-minded “progressive” people, so debating about whether the war should end, or whether we are responsible for the climate crisis we face, or whether gay people choose or not to be gay is out of the question. I just find it absurd to even entertain such ideas.

According to what I saw and to my sister’s stories of the girls’ experiences in school and in their soccer team, that place seems to be flooded with racist people. I was glad to see how my sister and her husband are raising their kids to cope with all that bullshit! That racist bullshit does not exist in Puerto Rico or at least it is not based on HATE. Like Puerto Rican/Newyorrican poet Pedro Pietri beautifully puts it [for a Puerto Rican] “to be called negrito means to be called LOVE.”