When I stated, I’ve held it’s place in the organization of plenty of Mexicans — my buddies and their family members — who, maybe not once you understand I’m Puerto Rican, have actually spoken at the very least as derisively about Puerto Ricans, and also black colored individuals, or even even worse. In accordance with the majority of the Mexicans I’ve encountered, there’s absolutely nothing even worse than being black colored or Puerto Rican, which many of them equate with each other. Everything Mexicans state about Puerto Ricans they do say equally about blacks: they’re sluggish and always trying to rob or be given a handout.
A progressive Mexican girl my age studying to become a teacher immediately told me this joke: “What did the Puerto Rican say to the potato upon meeting me and learning I’m Puerto Rican? I’ll cut you, papa!” It’s funny, for certain, but it addittionally informs you one thing about how precisely Mexicans perceive Puerto Ricans, at the very least on some level. And, once more, this is a modern mexican who shared this laugh beside me. She couldn’t help by by herself.
Just within the past month or two, during a talk about the first times, Rocio admitted if you ask me that she was indeed looking forward to the minute whenever my internal Puerto Rican would expose their machista self and either begin limiting her freedom, or even even worse. She had been amazed to get my masculinity present but muted, which she discovered strange, for a Puerto Rican. Her fears based on the old label about Puerto Rican males being Lotharios. About me, but I was already on the long and narrow path toward a more enlightened manhood as it turned out, she wasn’t exactly wrong.
Being component Puerto Rican, I’m additionally alert to exactly exactly how Puerto Ricans view their cousins that are mexican
sluggish, squat, primitive, aided by the blood-soaked savagery of Moctezuma coursing through their veins. Many Puerto Ricans blame the perception that is negative plus the bad therapy — of Latinos in the United States on Mexicans, who make-up 60 % of most Latinos in the usa and so have an weighted impact in the Latino image. Because the bulk team, most of the sins of this Mexican communities fall in the entire Latino population. It really isn’t fair, but that is life. The common non-Latino person that is white whose ideas and beliefs take over traditional culture, has difficulty differentiating involving the different national-origin teams, and thus he/she ultimately ends up seeing, if you don’t labeling, all Latinos as Mexican. (Asians have the exact same therapy whenever non-Asians, being unsure of the essential difference between Japanese, Korean, Vietnamese or Singaporean, label everybody Chinese.)
Happily, a lot of my accusations carry less fat on the list of younger generations of Latinos, who’re increasingly American-born, American-raised and, therefore, more cosmopolitan and multicultural than their foreign-born, nationalistic and predecessors that are monocultural. Younger Latinos more see on their own to be into the boat that is same not just other Latinos but in addition other minority teams — along with teenagers, really. In addition to the dominance that is increasing of tradition, with the advent of social networking, makes today’s younger generation significantly more interconnected, with increased things in accordance, than past generations. For several Latino millennials, being a millennial is much more significant with their identities than being Latino. That’s real for this Latino millennial, at the very least.
And that was my point right from 
the start: we wasn’t being divisive by pointing out of the divisiveness between Mexicans and Puerto Ricans — the two national-origin groups that are largest in the U.S. Latino populace. I became just laying it bare in order for Latinos might feel embarrassed, get annoyed and, at final, eliminate of these antagonisms. They are severe times, politically, economically, socially, locally, nationwide and globally, that may need the potent forces of progress to face united when confronted with ascendant reactionary forces. Trump and their great deal won the essential battle that is recent the soul associated with the nation due to the fact remainder of us had been too split and fuzzy-headed. Now could be to not time for you to imagine things are one other way. We ought to stare truth into the attention to be able to effortlessly arrange. When we you will need to slap the solidarity sticker on a bunch this is certainly nevertheless far a way’s from it, we chance wasting our hard work whenever, predictably, that solidarity splinters for the million various reasons that could’ve been properly addressed but had been instead ignored.
And so I say once more:
Mexicans hate Puerto Ricans, and vice versa. Exactly what are they likely to do about this inconvenient truth? Will they blame me personally for articulating it, or will they acquire as much as reality and also make sure generations to come can’t ever make such claims?
Within the 2nd part, I’ll offer my applying for grants why this animosity between those two teams exists, a lot of it regarding the annals of U.S. hegemony, colonialism, institutionalized racism and domestic policies. I think the partnership between Puerto Ricans and Mexicans is defined by history U.S.-Mexico relations and U.S.-Puerto Rico relations, along with the racist system in the usa.
But, until the next time, shoot the messenger don’t.