The Nation in the Diaspora: The Multiple Repercussions of Puerto Rican Emigration

• Author: Jorge Duany
• Pages: 182-202

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- GOVERNANCE IN THE NON-INDEPENDENT CARIBBEAN -

The Nation in the Diaspora:

The Multiple Repercussions of

Puerto Rican Emigration

JORGE DUANY1

Pride in being Boricua [Puerto Rican] has nothing to do with

geography …We are just as Puerto Rican as a Puerto Rican born on

the Island. Being Boricua is a state of mind and a state of heart and a

state of soul. And as far as I’m concerned, that’s the only kind of state

it’s ever going to be.

– María Teresa ‘Mariposa’ Fernández,

author of the poem ‘Ode to the Diasporican’2

In the year 2006, the United States (US) Census Bureau (2008)

estimated that a larger proportion of people of Puerto Rican origin lived in

the US mainland (50.4 per cent) than on the island (49.6 per cent). No

other country in the Caribbean – or in Latin America – has such a large

share of its population residing abroad. Compared with the main Caribbean

countries, Puerto Rico exceeds by far the figures on immigrants and their

descendants in the US both in absolute and relative terms (see Figure 10.1).

One of the basic causes of this massive diaspora3 is the freedom of movement

between the island and the US mainland, as a result of the extension of

statutory US citizenship to Puerto Ricans in 1917. Thus, it is instructive to

compare Puerto Ricans and other ‘colonial subjects’, such as the residents of

other Caribbean islands who have moved in large numbers to their former or

current metropoles. For instance, the similarities between the experiences of

Puerto Ricans in the US and Antilleans in France are striking, including

their subordinate incorporation into the host societies, mostly as a consequence

of colonial racism, even under conditions of legal equality (see Daniel, 2000;

Giraud, 2002; Grosfoguel, 2003, 2004; Milia-Marie-Luce, 2002).

Nonetheless, the magnitude and persistence of the Puerto Rican diaspora

have few contemporary parallels and historical precedents, with the exception

of Ireland during the second half of the nineteenth century.4

10.

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- THE NATION IN THE DIASPORA -

FIGURE 10.1

Caribbean Population in the United States and Its Country of

Origin, ca. 2006

Sources: Central Intelligence Agency (2007); US Census Bureau (2008).

What are the long-term implications of the large-scale relocation of

Puerto Ricans outside their original territory? This demographic fact has not

yet been examined systematically in Puerto Rico. Few scholars have detailed

the multiple repercussions of the circulation of people, money, material

goods and cultural practices between the island and the US mainland. Until

now, most essays on the topic have been published in English and outside

the island. In recent debates about the national question in Puerto Rico,

scant attention is still paid to the diaspora (see Bernabe, 2003; Carrión,

1996; Coss, 1996; Daniel, 1999; Pabón, 2002). In this chapter, I propose

that the massive displacements of the Puerto Rican population over the last

six decades have undermined the ideological premises of traditional

discourses of the nation, based on the equation among territory, birthplace,

residence, citizenship, language and identity. Employing statistical data and

recent research results, I will show that Puerto Rico has become a transnational

nation,5 that is, a community split between two locations, two languages

0% 25% 50% 75% 100%

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