I had a happy childhood. We were poor (and I didn’t know it) but most of memories from childhood (minus some dark and damaging secrets which I will write about at another time) are ones that bring a smile to my face. I am the middle child. My parents had three girls. Jessica, Jennifer (me) and Danielle. My father is an old-school central American Latino–he doesn’t cry in front of us, doesn’t show pain, and says “likewise” when I tell him that I love him. One thing about my dad though, he loves his girls more than anything in the world. And like the old-school, no matter what was happening, no matter how hard things were he never let it show, he always kept us close, warm, fed, and clothed. He never wanted a son or at least didn’t act like it, but I was enough of a tomboy during my adolescent to make up for that.

I now realize that the person I most want to be like to be like is my father. And he could dance, he was one of the premier dancers in the New York City salsa scene. Both my parents emigrated here from Panama with their first born daughter. She was about 5 years old. They got here by way of my maternal grandmother, Violet Russel (or poncey as she is known).  My sister Jessica was known throughout the neighborhood as being the most beautiful black baby. The name of the town where she grew up is called Paraiso (Paradise), it’s in the province of Panama. My maternal grandmother had six girls and was born in Panama. She worked very hard for many years, a single mother most of the time to get all of her children, their children and their husbands to the United States–to search for the American Dream–in search of un nuevo camino. I know now that it is impossible for them to find it here because the American Dream is not available to us–but my grandmother has gained more here than she could ever imagine in Panama.

I was born in Harlem hospital. My father began his work in a mailroom with some company called Henry Donegar or something like that. They were on 6th aveune, something to do with fashion. He spoke no English. My mother was a stay at home mom. She had never even finished the second grade so there was very little work that she could do. But she spoke English and learned to read basic Spanish & English from her sisters as a child. I recognize now my mother’s inadequacy outside of the Latino community. Initially, we lived in Washington Heights–upper Manhattan. Living in Washington Heights is like living in the Dominican Republic. For 3-4 years my parents lived there in my grandmother’s apartment with me and my older sister, my 5 aunts, their (combined)  six children and my grandmother in a NYC-sized 3-bedroom apartment. 12 people, 4 beds, 2 married couples, 2 infants, 2 toddlers, 2 young children. Somos Latinos, pues.

The first apartment we moved to, my immediate family and I, was just a few blocks away from my abuela’s - 161 between St. Nicholas and Broadway. The apartment was two bedrooms and I remember very clearly my father walking arond the house in white briefs always with a cigar in his mouth, his neatly groomed mustache and salsa or calypso playing on the tape deck. We didn’t stay at that apartment too long because the rodent and roach problem became dangerous for our health. When my youngest sister was born, rat droppings were regularly found in her crib. Her crib sat in the middle of my parent’s bedrooom and was not attached or leaning on anything which a rat could climb. The last draw for ma, she later told me, was when she found 3 large roaches at the corners of the baby’s mouth while she slept eating the residue of milk at the corners of her mouth.  In that apartment, we had some good times. My cousins would sleep over and every week my father would broil a rat over the stove and stink up the apartment. He always said that if the other rats smelled it they would leave. What a bush man my daddy is. It never worked.

 (Dad Napping with my baby sister)

In the next installment of “Somos Latinos” I will write about my father’s life as a child and young man growing up in the jungles of Bocas del Toro, Panama. This picture is of him and his brothers, sisters, nephew and mother. My father is the cute one with the shovel.

I was honored to stand before a man who had tried to lead his country out of poverty–Former President of Peru Alejandro Toledo (2001-2006). He stepped down a few months ago and talked about his accomplishments and his failures. He inspired me, but still, true to politicians (regardless of party affiliation) he spoke in oxymoron about his JUNTOS program–he referred to it as “a partial extreme success.” I saw him before he entered the lecture hall. He was at the bottom floor of the General Class Room Building waiting for the elevator with three people (no bodyguards). He stood there like everyone else (it was strange seeing him in person waiting for an elevator, I imagine there being some VIP elevator for ‘important’ people so they don’t have to mingle with sour-smelling students). We rode the elevator together, him, me, his cronies, and a young Latina of Indian descent. I kept looking at him, he was very short. His wife was ugly. She had blondish, stringy, dyed hair, was too thin, had lip injections that were done badly and a nose job to carve it into thinness and remove the bump that made her look like an indigenous American. I gave a silent nod but I don’t think he saw me. “Mucho gusto,” the other young lady said. He nodded back. I rode the elevator with Alejandro Toledo!

Toledo grew up in poverty in the mountains of Peru to a family of farmers. Like many, he started work at a young age. He was lucky enough to find funding for his education. He enrolled at the University of San Francisco on a one-year scholarship. He completed his bachelor’s degree in economics by obtaining a partial soccer scholarship and working part-time pumping gas. Later  he attended graduate school at Stanford University and received Master’s in Economics, Master’s in Education and completed his PhD in Education (in 1992) at the Stanford University School of Education.

He  worked as a consultant for various international organizations, including the United Nations, the World Bank, the Inter-American Development Bank, the International Labour Organization (ILO), and the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD).

“With empty stomachs you cannot do democracy,” he said and I perked up. Like his contemporaries, democracy and capitalism was used interchangeably (in fact, it was used in place of capitalism because we hardly ever use that word anymore).  We were packed in a small room and I could smell the cologne of the man behind me who was so tall that he literally breathed down my neck.“With all of the successes and the noise and praise I got from Wall Street and the World Bank, [a 4% GDP rise from 2003, a proclaimed 7% from 15% to 8% drop in extreme poverty, free trade agreement (TLC) with the US, which basically means that whatever barriers between the two countries with respect to "trade" and services will be removed, support of the Brazil-Peru Trans-Oceanic Highway, the Camisea Gas Project, which in short and through a complicated system has become another of Halliburton’s subsidiaries] the noise on Main Street was louder.” I am glad, I am glad the noise on the streets of Peru were loud enough to drown out the World Bank and his efforts to globalize a country that for so many years have experienced such inhumanities against its indigenous and African people as well as its poor (who constitute more than 58% of the population). “Economic growth needs to reach the pockets of the poor,” he said.

Beneath the surface: Democracy = Capitalism / Authoritarian = Socialism or communism. “Did you know that 54% of Latin Americans would rather live under an authoritarian government than a democratic one if they provided jobs, education and healthcare…we must change the face of democracy…it is a face that Latin America does not recognize.” I was glad, but I think the numbers are higher in some areas. “If I would have known what I know now at the beginning of my term, I would have done things differently. The extreme poverty in Peru is horrendous.” He would know; it’s where he came from.

The logic was there, surely, and from a bird’s eye view globalization looked like a bright future. He bragged about being the only exporter of green asparagus (to China). “I am not an ambitious president, I only want 5% of the Chinese market…” he joked. They export grapes and mangos all over Asia. Good job Toledo. Seriously though, I think he is a man who loves his people but who has been blinded by the lies of “thriving” market-driven economic programs which raise the GDPs of poorer countries but does very little for the PEOPLE in those countries. He is on tour now speaking around the country to universities and other financial organizations as the Peruvian government awaits ratification from the United States about the US –Peru free-trade agreement.  

The voices of my people are often loud and after a long day of work and school and then more work, no one making the commute home wants to hear the obnoxious squeals from a girl whose jokes aren’t that funny. About a group of five or six young women who were leaving their jobs from the airport as security guards sat nearby. Blue eyes read and listened to headphones and when a clap of laughter slapped him across the ears and interrupted both his music and his reading, drowning out the his inner voice, he looked up with his eyes–bright as headlights. They said, “Are you really going to be that loud on a crowded train car?” His eyes shifted toward me, searching for understanding.

Silenced for years. I knew something he did not. I was fourteen once. I was eighteen once. I was twenty-two. I was seventeen when it all changed. What he did not know was that assertion was necessary. The books don’t tell you that “Black Psychology” is biased too. It is a psychology applicable, in large part, to Americans of African descent, and even more specifically North America. But I do not believe that it is “BLACK.”

October 7, 2006 at the state capitol. I saw those same blue eyes. I saw them in the faces of “allies.” I laugh at that notion, “ally.” I question always what their view is because we stood facing the same direction–all around us the voices of immigrants, and the sound of impending liberty. But did they see what I saw? MY PEOPLE (MI GENTE) Afro-Latino, inmigrantes, Afro-Americano, Afrikana, Latino, Indigino. A silent anger often leaves me paralyzed and even now as nothing but pride & love surrounded me, just beneath the surface of my black skin and my nappy roots was anger. Power = exploitation / Money = deportation / Terror = Closed borders (closed to some but open to preferred clients, this little club called America). My fathers died for me to be able to stand here and raise my voice without fear of death or oppression. Did they die in vain? And who the hell said that Freedom was to be found in America?

On the train, the small group of young women (they were older than me but youth is relative) whooped & hollered. It was too damn late for all that noise. The blue-eyed man still had his “are-you-fucking-kidding-me” look on. I did not blame him. I’m often bitter & glib, or rather I pretend to be, my “Inner Jennifer” wanted to turn around and say “shut-the fuck up goddayum!” Instead, I turned my head to the right and looked them all in the eyes. Just this year, I’ve learned to see into people and once that happens lots of bullshit falls to the wayside. I didn’t look at anyone in particular but my eyes eventually met with each of theirs. I thought then about voice and while it may be far-fetched of me (although I have many theories) to assume that years of silencing and oppression made that particular person loud as hell, I still believe there is a connection. And how his Blue Eyes looked into hers, like she was a dog, as he raped her in the middle of the sugar cane field. “Silence!” they said but he didn’t speak a word. And she knew what time of day it would be as he’d shoo he children away and tell the others to leave. They nodded and knew; the others were praying silently for her that he be called in by someone important, or that he find her bleeding, yet they relieved that it was her and not them. How many of his children and his sons’ children had she bore–female ones–that would be subjected to the same by him, his sons, his brothers, his cousins, his nephew, his father & grandfather. Little Black girls ran through fields in Central America; our song and dance was still intact, there are/were traces of an old language and our religions flourished in the night, but they ran and sang violation! The Black girls’ hands smell like sugar cane.

My great grandfather (maternal) traveled from Jamaica to help build the Panama Canal. My grandfather (paternal) traveled from Costa Rica to work in the Canal Zone. Their grandfathers’ grandfathers were taken from Africa to help build America. Immigrants from all over the world came to build America. America is a country of immigrants. Its history is a history of the world because peoples from each continent have all played a significant role in the establishment of this nation. America is a conglomeration of the rest of humanity. B. P. Koirala said, “Breaking the laws issued by unjust governments is the moral duty of an enlightened citizen.” Even as a child, a girl child, as I look back I’ve been taught (implicitly) to be silent. Silence is the chain that links the oppressed together. In the Dominican Republic, merengue (the dance) black feet shuffled in the dirt, the sound sha-sha-sha. A cloud of dirt & dust filled the air and settled into the hair of the Blacks and the Mestizos. Sha-sha-sha, back tip of their chancletas & bare feet kicking up the dust. Sha-sha-sha and the dance ensued still they have never seen Africa. The Incas rose up in Peru. The Olmecs, the Zapotecs and the Mixtecs, the Maya, Purepecha in Mexico. The Kuna Revolt in Panama & Columbia. The Panamanians put molas on their foreheads for prayer. The Bayono in Panama (of whom I’ve proudly found out I am a descendent), the Cimarron & the Mawon/Maroon.

I think of silly thing sometimes. Now, however, since I’ve written them down I don’t think they’re that silly anymore. Before then, I hated being Afro-Latino, I only wanted to be “Black.” I had to separate myself from the “homeland.” Now I know that I don’t really have a homeland in the traditional sense. It doesn’t make me sad anymore because all of my body parts are different. Like America. My hips and the way the move and my dance and my feet are Latino and I cannot escape it–it’s roots are in the Central America via the Caribbean. My face is African, my shoulders African, my back African. Too, I thought of my ‘allies’ out there with me. Though I was only there but a short while, I understood that without them I had no history. That is not to erase the history of my people before we were brought to the West. But I am Centroamericana and I am Africana. Yet those very same blue eyes whose fathers eyes looked into my mother’s eyes, the history of those eyes do not exist without my people either. And it was the mingling in the field and the cabin and the outhouse by the river, in the kitchen or the barn or the empty bedroom. It was the sha-sha-sha del rumba and the cotton pickin’ and the planting rice and the yellow skin babies that brought us all violently together. Without them I am not. Without me, they are not. And though slavery may have made one the oppressor and the other oppressed, my history does not exist without them, nor theirs without mine. We are all human. All of us so that I don’t have to be angry for any particular reason, especially for the memories I have that are not of me but of my people. But I am and should be angry that the very same system of oppression continues to supress my peoples and constantly force us to choose between what is bad and what is worse. First, we are HUMANKIND. My boyfriend’s nephew, a little rosy-cheeked white kid with pale skin and chubby cheeks was four years old when I sat on the floor at his house. He was playing with my hands and Jonathan asked him several times, what’s the difference? He said, “hers is bigger.” We asked him again, he said “hers have more lines.” That’s all the little boy could see. My goal in life is to see like he sees. And I thought of him in four years. Would he watch the television and say, “Why are there so many White people on T.V.? Where are all the other kinds of people?” Like my 8-year-old nephew did this summer? What will HE see?

We stood facing the same direction. Although the shape and sound of the language may have been familiar to me and not to him–we were looking at the same phenomena: Impending Liberty. “What difference does it make to the dead, the orphans and the homeless, whether the mad destruction is wrought under the name of totalitarianism or the holy name of liberty or democracy?” – Gandhi

One day I will write in detail about what it was like growing up in Drew Hamilton Projects in Harlem, N.Y. It was an experience I would not have traded with any other kid in the world and I learned more about life and the cultural experience of humans in my old neighborhood than I have so far in my life. My experience has been one that is not unique in the US. As the daughter of Latino immigrants, I’ve adopted many ways of being from both the Hispanic community and the African American community in which I grew up. Most northeasterners know what I mean, (specifically those from New York and New Jersey).

 My most personal memories of Panama, do not include my early years. I was too young to understand much, other than that things were different from New York City. When I was thirteen my mother and I (along with my little sister and my cousin) went back to Panama. It was the first time I had seen Panama while I was conscious of environmental/cultural changes. It was also the trip where I first fell in love. (Below is a picture of my father in front of his mother’s house she’s sitting on the steps with the purple dress.)

 Until Last year, I thought my (paternal) grandmother, who still lives in Panama, was Catholic because she wore rosary and was highly superstitious. Well, I’ve recently found out that she is Lutheran–not that I know the difference–but I just thought it would be an interesting fact to share. My grandmother practices rituals and rites from Santeria (sometimes called Santa Maria), various Afro-Latino tradtions and other indigenous religions. Of course, I didn’t know this when I was thirteen and broke a mirror in her bedroom. She was in the kitchen cooking food for the dogs. (Those poor miserable perros live behind the backyard gate and ate left overs from the day before that had been boiled down with water and a little salt, con el arroz y carne y todo.) Once she heard the glass shatter, she came running to her bedroom where I stood amidst the broken glass, her chancletas clapping against the cement floor. “Cuidado!” I thought she was angry but she was worried for my soul. “Don’t move.” She went back to the kitchen and came back with salt. She sprinkled it around the broken glass and threw some over my shoulders. Then she got a broom and swept the glass around me but I had to stay still until the glass was all gone and out of the house. I thought she was a freak, until I saw her walk backward into house after leaving something behind (so that the spirits couldn’t follow her in).

Above is a picture of a friend of my family’s. This woman is very close to my parents and lives in a small town inside La Ciudad de Panama near the ocean. They lived in a tiny one bedroom house with no indoor plumbing and one mattress. There were six children in total, two were old enough to fend for themselves, the others were under 13. The house was an open room where the kitchen was just a few steps away from the bedroom (the mattress where 3 people slept). I thought that I had known poverty until I saw the house where they lived. Como? I kept asking, How? Who can live like that? Ruben Blades played on the radio and sang, as he often does, about North and South America being one continent, “permite decir una cosa, America es un continente, y todos que esta en America son Americanos. No solamente un continente. When I talk about America I am talking about the continent. Everybody that’s born in the continent of America is an American and the more we think about the more sense it makes. ‘Cause we should be working together and not against each other. We have to talk about it and deal with the fact that we’re all here. Nobody’s gonna leave, so let’s play our strenghts as oppose to our differences, with respect, and then we’ll get somewhere.”