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- RAISING OF THE PUERTO RICAN
FLAG, TOWN HALL, AMHERST, MA, NOVEMBER 1, 2005
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- Buenas tardes.
Bienvenidos a todos. I’m here to say a few words about the Puerto
Rican flag before the raising of the flag on the Town Common.
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- Let me begin by stating
the obvious: Puerto Ricans are madly in love with the Puerto Rican
flag. We use it in all the usual ways, and more than a few unusual
ways: cars, clothes, tattoos. We have other national symbols, from
the frog called the coquí to the ten-stringed instrument known as
the cuatro, but that flag keeps popping up everywhere. Why is it
that, before 9/11, there were more Puerto Rican flags in New York
City than American flags? What history accounts for this fascination
with the Puerto Rican flag?
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- Many people see the
red, white and blue of the Puerto Rican flag and simply assume that
this is an offshoot of the American flag. Not true. The flag was
created in 1895 by the Puerto Rican section of the Cuban
Revolutionary Party in New York City. These Cubans and Puerto
Ricans were, in fact, independentistas; that is, they wanted
independence from Spain, and there was a revolution in Cuba at that
very moment. Lola Rodríguez de Tío, a Puerto Rican independentista
poet who also penned the words to La Borinqueña, the national
anthem, in 1867, wrote that Cuba and Puerto Rico were “two wings of
the same bird;” they received “flowers and bullets in the same
heart.”
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- Thus,
the Puerto Rican flag simply inverted the colors of the Cuban flag.
The white bars were particularly significant, in that they
represented the desire for independence, and the peace everyone
hoped would come with independence.
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- We know
the rest of the story. Independence never came to Puerto Rico. The
Spanish-American War came in 1898. The United States took the
Philippines, Cuba and Puerto Rico as spoils of war. The Puerto
Rican flag, since it represented the desire for independence, was
outlawed for half a century.
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- This
led to some classic colonial weirdness. For example, in 1921, the
Commissioner of Education for Puerto Rico, Paul Miller, became
outraged when he saw a Puerto Rican flag waving at a high school
graduation ceremony. He demanded that police remove “the enemy
flag.” The students rebelled, and informed Miller that, if their
flag was taken away, then the graduation was over. Shortly
thereafter, Governor E. Montgomery Reilly—a character so imperious
he was known as “King Monty”—announced: “As long as Old Glory waves
over the United States, it will wave over Porto Rico.” (Note: that’s
“Porto” with an “o.”)
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- In
1952, of course, Puerto Rico became a Commonwealth. The Puerto Rican
flag was adopted as the symbol of the Commonwealth, though it could
only be flown alongside the American flag. The meaning of the colors
was officially changed; now the white bars stood for the republican
form of
- government, rather than a
peaceful and independent nation. Moreover, the sky-blue of the
triangle in the original flag was changed to dark blue, in keeping
with the American flag, and once again to distance this flag from
its revolutionary roots. In 1995, the government of Puerto Rico
formally reverted back to sky-blue.
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- You’ve
heard the expression: “shades of political opinion.” In the case of
the Puerto Rican flag, this is literally true. In general, those
parties and individuals who want independence for the island wave
the flag with a light-blue triangle; those who want Commonwealth
prefer the sky-blue triangle; and those who want statehood use the
dark-blue triangle. Of course, today this community unites itself
behind the one flag we will raise on the Amherst Town Common.
Sometimes, a flag is a flag.
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- Today
we should remember that the activists who gave us the Puerto Rican
flag created a symbol for self-determination that has thus far
eluded us. Today we should remember that there are people still
fighting and dying for the same ideals represented by that original
flag, like Filiberto Ojeda Rios, killed in Puerto Rico by the FBI on
the Grito de Lares—a holiday marking the fight for independence from
Spain. Today we should remember that this was a banned flag, and
that even now this is the flag of a colonized people, born of
suppressed desires and aspirations. No wonder it pops up everywhere.
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Today we should remember that this flag represents the defiant and
joyful struggle of Puerto Ricans, against the weight of history, to
remain Puerto Rican wherever they may be: here in Amherst, on the
island, or on the moon. Aquí estamos y no nos vamos. Here we are and
here we stay. Gracias.
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