Year: 2010

A Brief Summary of the Origin, and Survival of the Taino Language

boricua01

by David Wahayona Campos The Greater Antilles, lying in the center of the Caribbean region, contain the four largest islands of the area. The islands of Cubanakan (Cuba), Boriken (Puerto Rico), Bohio (Haiti/Republica Dominica), Xamaika (Jamaica), as well as the Lucayo (Bahamas) all share a universal language with some dialectal differences. In the late 1500s Bishop Las Casas stated “En todas estas islas eran una lengua y misma costumbres.” The Taino language of the Greater Antilles is related to the Arawakan stock stemming from South America, “the people of the…

Read More

LISTEN TO MY CRIES

boricua01

LISTEN TO MY CRIES From congress To the prez, My people are in dire need Regardless of what the Lying politician sayz. My people are As good as any other, Wake up and hear my cry My political brother. Dropping from the welfare roles 57% Whites 30% African Americans 7% Latinos 7% this is very sad, When I look at this number I feel bad. Latino’s make 53% To every white mans dollar, Come my people speak up, Yell, it is time to holler. Everyone else seems to be ahead,…

Read More

Home is Where Mami is

boricua01

In 1998, my mother was summoned back home by Latin roots that were severed long ago. Home was her birthplace Ponce, Puerto Rico, the birthplace of plena, my grandmother and bis abuelas. In 1958, my mother came to Chicago where she planted new seeds, my two sisters and I. But after toiling for four decades in American factories and offices, and having established a better life for the next generation, she left, and in the process, left us her daughters behind. She left before her oldest daughter (me), would graduate…

Read More

Pelo Malo, Confessions of a Kinky Haired Sister

boricua01

by Xenia Ruíz My birth certificate contains a mistake. Where it asks for my parents’ race, “White” is neatly typed. Although my father was the color of vanilla, my mother was dark caramel. Back in the early 1960’s, there was no category for “Hispanic” so Puerto Ricans were recruited into the White category—until someone noticed that dark-skinned folks were getting off the flights from Puerto Rico. Ironically, in Puerto Rico (where my mother claims there is no racism), on the birth certificates of children born in the ’60s, parents were…

Read More

Global warming is killing the coqui

boricua01

(San Juan, Puerto Rico)SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico (AP) — Back in the Puerto Rican rain forest for the first time in five years, biologist Rafael Joglar sensed something was wrong. He wasn’t hearing the frogs whose nocturnal calls he had long recorded in the misty highlands. It was as if a small orchestra had lost key players, he recalled. After that discovery in 1981, Joglar and wife Patricia Burrowes, a fellow University of Puerto Rico amphibian specialist, found that other populations of frogs in the genus Eleutherodactylus — known locally…

Read More

Luquillo Beach – La Capital del Sol

boricua01

Luquillo Beach Luquillo Beach is the jewel of all the Puerto Rican beaches. Known as La Capital del Sol, the sun capital and La Riviera de Puerto Rico, (Puerto Rico’s Riviera) this wonderful place was founded in 1797 by Cristobal Guzman. The huge plantation that hosts large coconut palms shades more than a mile of sparkling shimmering sand. It is the perfect place to enjoy a vacation that will stay with you long after you have returned home. This is the nicest beach that you will find in San Juan.…

Read More