“American progressives stop before Zoom panels begin to recognize and name the indigenous tribes that inhabited the place where they are at that moment of the meeting. In mywildest days, I have told them that I do not need to go back to pre-Columbian times to recognizemy colonized, exploited, wrecked situation. I tell them that I am Me, a Puerto Rican from PuertoRico, the oldest colony in the world. “You must name your native tribes to acknowledge your colonial ancestry. I achieve the same just by naming myself.”

Although Puerto Rico doesn't have self government, culturally it is considered a nation as it has a distinct culture, history, language and idiosyncrasy. I don’t say this lightly. Since theWe Are Civic Media 130 United States of America invaded our country in 1898, both the English language and the US American culture have been imposed on this Spanish-speaking land in innumerable ways. When my father went to the public school system in the 1930s, it was mandatory for both faculty and students to speak English. He would always tell the stories of how absurd and almost surreal it was that his teachers, in Mayagüez, his hometown on the western side of the Island, had to juggle teaching in a language they could barely speak. He used to say they would just shut the doors and speak Spanish, and if a high supervisor ever knocked on the door, everyone knew they had to pretend to be talking in “el difícil” (the hard one).”