The Chris Moeller Archives

Chris' Movie Club-- Yo Soy Boricua

A recommendation tonight comes in the category of "untold people's histories." Actress Rosie Perez made her directorial debut in 2005 with a documentary feature for the Independent Film Channel entitled "Yo Soy Boricua, Pa'Que Tu Lo Sepas," which provided an intriguing look at the history of U.S.-Puerto Rican relations and the Puerto Rican people. The title translated is-- I'm Puerto Rican, just so you know, and it's available wherever DVDs are rented and sold.

Friends in the past have been told of my contention that there is no film or television program in existence that cannot or could not have been made better by the addition of Rosie Perez, who is a dazzling and reflective light on the lens to surely match the national wonder of bioluminescence at La Parguera beach near Lajas, Puerto Rico, and when Rosie turns the camera on her friends and family and the Puerto Rican people living on the island and in New York City, she finds a new depth onto herself, as well as to her native fellows.

Puerto Ricans living in the ratified 50 are not immigrants but rather citizens of the United States by nature of their birth upon the passing of the Jones Act of Congress in 1917. Puerto Rico is considered a commonwealth of the United States and its citizens are statutory U.S. citizens, but island residents have no representation in Congress, only a Commissioner, or non-voting delegate, and they have no electors within the Electoral College structure. They pay federal taxes to the United States and are subject to the compulsory draft of the U.S. military, for which they've served in each U.S. conflict since the turn of the 20th century, but their lack of a political voice in the government of the United States is part of the reason that roughly half of the island's residents still live today in poverty.

Though Perez's film is primarily focused on the late 20th century history of the commonwealth, Puerto Rico's history also represents, after the annihilation of the various tribes of the American Indian, one of the earliest case studies of America's imperialistic and colonial-minded foreign policy that continues unimpeded more than a century later. (My words, not Rosie's.) In 1898, eight days after the establishment of Puerto Rico's first autonomous government, the Spanish province was invaded by the United States under the orders of President William McKinley, and the island quickly became what it has been ever since-- a land mass with an area of 5,324 square miles occupied largely by the United States Navy. Shipping laws imposed and upheld in the years subsequent have wreaked economic havoc as well, severely limiting free trade to and from the island.

Puerto Rico has served over time as a testing ground for U.S. militarists and capitalists for everything from the launching of missiles to the studied use of birth control pills and other drugs by U.S. pharmaceutical companies located on the island. Much of this is documented in Perez's film, but it's the human warmth of her and her friends and family that give the documentary such great resonance. Puerto Rico is undoubtedly a beautiful and effervescent country in its topography, its culture, and its people, and it's very lucky indeed to have a daughter like Rosie Perez as spokesperson.

posted by CM @ 8:08 PM