IntroductionIn my return to Puerto Rico for Christmas vacation I went out with some friends to a Sushi bar in downtown Mayagez, my old College town. As a get into the discussion I pay close attention to a group of two or three families in the next table. There were about five children from about eight to ten years old, all dress as jibaritos. The jibarito or Jbaro is the idealize peasant from the highlands of Puerto Rico, they where supposedly, the creole Spanish descendants, poor white peasants treated almost as slave by the Spanish colonial government who had at that time (late 1700s / early 1800s) establish the Jornal, that was basically obligatory low-wage labor in the sugar cane mills, as the slave trade ended. This image is one of the hard working, Puerto Rican men from the land. As I was watching their neatly white cotton shirts and black pants of the boys and colorful floral stamp skirts for the girls I posed this question to my company. Why are those children all dress as jibaritos? To what my friend responded: They are dress like that because this is Puerto Ricaness week. She was referring to the yearly events the schools at all levels held between November and December, which all things Puerto Rican are excelled, making special emphasis to the racial mixed we all are, making children participate by dressing up in traditional costumes. As our conversation progressed I asked again, but why as jibaritos, why not as Africans or Tano natives? I should make the observation that all these children where white children with brown and blondish hair. I continue to interrogate my friends with questions more rhetoric than direct, as for example, Why the children should dress up as jibaritos and not Africans or Tanos, are we not supposed to be a mixed of all races, meaning I or them can dress up as any? Eventually, the conversation when on another direction, but my head stayed with the image of the white jibaritos on the next table. My readings on race in Puerto Rico had got me questioning ideas and ideologies I had never questioned much. Although, all my life I was participating in this event that fomented racial democracy I refuse to be the Tano girl just because my color skin or my hair type, I remember myself having my own Bomba dancer costume and I always when to these events as a black dancer. As I when out of my comfort zone, by moving to Michigan for graduate school, and having to deal with a very different construction of race I started questioning my countrys way of experiencing, representing, transmitting and overall dealing with everyday racial identification and racism. In this paper I will try to untangle the phenomenon of racial construction in the Caribbean Island of Puerto Rico. Fortunately, many Puerto Rican scholars, from whom I can start to build a clearer picture of what being a Puerto Rican means in racial terms, have studied this topic. Unfortunately, even thought these questions have been translated to the Puerto Rican diaspora in the United States, for lack of time I will only discuss race as it is seen and transmitted in the Island. And I must make the caveat that, even though the representations of race in the Puerto Rican diaspora is similar to the Island, other set of values are imposed as Puerto Ricans in the US clash with the binomial ideas of race that works in US social-racial relations. Racial Democracy: Mestizaje and Blanquiamiento There are two ways to seen how racial relations and racial identity was created in Puerto Rico. First, historical shifting of the racial composition of the Island and second, the creation of nationalist ideologies that urged for racial harmony. By 1800s racial composition in Puerto Rico was a very complex one. 1802 census counted 48 percent of the residents as white and 52 percent as non-white out of 163,192 people in the island. This proportions change drastically in the time span of 150 years, by 1910 65.5 percent of the residents descripted themselves as white and 38.2 percent as non-white, 40 years later, 79.7 percent of the residents reported being white versus 20.3 percent non-white (Vargas-Ramos 2005). Those identify as Tano native stopped being counted by 1797 with a final count of 2,312 people (Haslip-Viera 2006). This perception of whiteness is created by both historical factors and socio-political ideas. Vargas-Ramos (2005) points out that during this time the ending of slave trade and cholera contribute to the reduction of black bodies in the island, but also the colonial policies foster white migration from Spain and Latin America, p.268. Through the years migrations (black and white) from other parts of the world where also a very important contribution of the racial composition of the Island, Canary Islands, French planters from Haiti, Creoles from Santo Domingo, where some of the white immigrants and their slaves, run-aways or maroons slaves from the English Caribbean where some of the black immigrants (Haslip-Viera 2006). Later in 1950s economic immigrants from the Dominican Republic and Cuban immigrants from post Cuban Revolution have also contribute to nowadays Puerto Rican racial composition. Even though we can trace fluctuations on the racial composition of the Island, the actual racial identification has been bounded by nationalistic ideologies that promulgate mestizaje or racial mixing (Duany 2000). This nationalistic idea of mestizaje is not particular to Puerto Rico; throughout Latin America this idea has being used in the construct of nation-building projects or a unified national space (Godreau 2002) (Rivero 2002). In Puerto Rico, mestizaje is the ideology that advocates for the egalitarian fusion of European, African and indigenous cultures and traits constructing a nationally mixed culture and identity and promotes a color blind and culturally mixed socio-cultural space (Rivero 2002). But underneath this democratic racial harmony mestizaje puts forward, the idea of blanquiemiento which Godreau et al. (2008) has explain as the notion that Puerto Ricans have whitened and evolved by shedding most of their African blood takes place in everyday racial identity making.

Blanquiamiento or whitening implies the individual strategies of marrying lighter-skinned individuals to gain social status and supposedly dilute, through mixture, the African blood of the next generation (Godreau et al. 2008) see also (Duany 2000). This notion denotes the Western ideas of whiteness being desirable and as being intricately good and of a civilized nature, and blackness on the contrary denotes inferior, ugly, dirty, unintelligent, backward, reduced to a primitive hypersexuality (particularly in the case of black women), equated with disorder, superstition, servitude, danger, and heavily criminalized (Godreau et al. 2008). Scholars argue these ideas have permeated into many facets of the Puerto Rican life. These ideas are reproduce and legitimized in the most individual matter going through the popular scene and the state official rhetoric, on institutions such as the public education system.

Transmission and reproduction of Mestizaje and Blanquimiento

In the Puerto Rican context when talking about race, language is used very fluidly, almost ambiguously. Meaning that lexicon used to talk about race some times can or cannot be use to identify someones race. This in part from the dominant ideology of mestizaje, language use to refer racial differentiation depends on the context is used and the proximity of the people involve in the conversation (Godreau 2008) (Vargas-Ramos 2005) (Rivero 2002) (Duany 2000) (Godreau et al. 2008). Godreau 2008 has call this slippery semantics she explains that this slippery effect [] can reflect and construct different interpersonal and relationships among those implicated or involved in the conversation indexing solidarity, intimacy, distance, or respect among speaker. This creates some problems at the time of identifying people by race, and how people see themselves racially. This also creates tension when talking about racism and avoidance of terms that can construct definite racial identity.

As US citizens Puerto Ricans are count in the US Census, but different from the States race was not part of the survey for the past 50 years. In 2000 the federal government mandated race was included in the survey for Puerto Ricans in the island. The results showed more than 81% of Puerto Ricans in the Island identify themselves as white and only 7% identify themselves as black. This speaks to the views of blanquiamiento and the language use as racial identifier. Vargas- Ramos 2005 argues that the reason why people choose the term white, is the lack of better regional identifiers that better describe the racial identity of the survey participants. To prove this argument he made a new survey that included the more ambiguous racial term trigueo, which is used to identity racially mixed people whose color skin is light or dark. Even so not everyone fits this category, because Puerto Ricans as in other countries, tent to racialize phenotypes, meaning that specific phenotypic expressions are assign to a race, for example shape of noses and lips (Lopz 2008). Nonetheless by including this regional racial term made a difference in the racial identification of the people surveyed for the project. When trigueo was included only 34.7% of the people self identify with the term white versus 41.1% self identify as trigueo and 5.1% as black.

This data does not only sheds light on how Puerto Ricans use language to refers to their racial identity, but also revealed that racial hierarchies are quite present in peoples mind at the time on choosing their racial identity (Godreau 2008). The term hispanophilia and negrophobia has been used to describe the tendencies of Puerto Ricans and other nations to prefer and value Spanish and white heritage over black or African ones (Duany 2002). Blanquiamiento is an example of the hierarchies beneath the blood mixing in the Island. Guerra (1998) in Godreau (2008) explicates that blackness is seen as an extreme condition, which people tend to disassociate whit. Contrary to the US notion of society being divided into whites and non-white, Puerto Rican society is divided into Blacks and non-blacks, meaning that people see them selves as something other than the imaginary image of blackness or as being less black that the blacks (Godreau 2008).

This notion of disassociating blackness with being a Puerto Rican can also be seen in the popular portrays of black people. Rivero (2002) and Arroyo (2010) explain the media, specially televise programing reproduces and legitimized the ideologies of mestizaje and blanquiamiento. Rivero makes us aware of the usage of black-face in local programing to portray black people in the 1970s and 80s. Which she explains Puerto Rican televisions construction of negritud [Blackness] was synonymous with a lack of education, a lack of social skills, and backwardness but at the same time the people (audience) and other media professionals apparently did not acknowledge the presence of racism and prejudice in these type of programing. She argues that mestizaje ideologies permit this type of representation of blackness to be received by the population in a non-racist manner.

Rivero also explored how the first black situational comedy show in Puerto Rico named Mi Familia (My Family) reproduces the racial democracy ideology. She claims Mi Familias conceptualization and thus created a cultural artifact that normalized Puerto Ricos hegemonic construction of a racially integrated-non-racist national culture, identity and society. Portraying the Mlendez Family, as if their racial identity did not mark their social interactions and normalizing their image as to being representing any other Puerto Rican family contributes to the democratic perceptions of race. In a personal observation I can also remember the sons girlfriend was a white girl, which can also be interpret as the normalization of the ideology of blanquiamiento as well. This research on how blackness is normalize is important because it informs the popular (national) ideas about what it means to be Puerto Rican, and how blackness is silence and erase from the national identity.

In the other hand Arroyo (2010) explores the representation of blackness in the Banco Popular Christmas Music special Races (Roots). Sponsor by the biggest most power bank in Puerto Rico; Races is one on a series of Christmas musical specials that appeal to the notions of national unity and racial harmony. Other titles were Un Pueblo que canta (A nation that sings), Espritu de un pueblo (The essence of a nation) and Somos un solo pueblo (We are one nation) (My translation). The Races special was the first dedicated to the contributions of Afro-Puerto Ricans to the national culture, which basically means Bomba and Plena music genders that have being institutionalized as being the representation of the black heritage in the Island.

Arroyo identifies these specials as being a state effort to sell and distribute Puerto Rican national culture for local and global consumers. But more than being an image created for an outside market is an image of blackness created to for the objectifications and folklorization of blackness inside the Island (Godreau 2002). Folklorization has being defined as a process that relocates native customs from their original contexts to new urban contexts usually under the direct sponsorship of the state (Urban and Sherzer 1991 in Godreau 2002). Races is one example of the transmission of the folklorization of blackness, which Arroyo (2010) further explicates these televised images are construct images of what is racialized positively and what is not or in other words what is good and desirable of blackness and what is not. This video-special as other images of blackness in Puerto Rico contributes to the promotion of notions of mestizaje and the silencing of the black race. Which has being relegated to consumable or marketable objects that further stereotype blackness in Puerto Rico, and contributes to the ideology of racial democracy by making believe black people in the island have been given equal space in the trinomial heritage ideal (Duany 2000, Davila 1997, Arroyo 2010, Rivero 2002).

Godreau et al. (2008) explore how racial identity is officially transmitted by the sate via public education; the researchers demarks the silencing, trivialization, and simplification of blackness in the Puerto Rican history textbooks. They explain the curricular silences [] serve to legitimate the idea that slavery and African heritage played a minor role in Puerto Ricos development and that being black, therefore, is not representative of Puerto Rican identity p.119. Black heritage if ever taught in class, is infused whit the silencing of slave practices in the Island. Textbooks in Puerto Rico tent to give less space to the black heritage chapter, relegating the contributions of Afro-Puerto Ricans to religion and the aforementioned music genders of Bomba and Plena. Blackness and slavery are dislocated into the English Caribbean, disassociating it to the Islands past. In Godreau et al. words the textbook marginalize the topic of slavery, displace racism to the past, and support the construction of black as something different from Puerto Rican.

In the other hand trivialization maneuvers in history textbooks tent to portrayed blackness with passive, disempowering connotations. More specically, maneuvers of trivialization downplay the systemic violence of slavery and racism while failing to acknowledge black resistance to it p. 122. In addition slave rebellion, and maroon communities are never discuss as well as the contributions of free blacks in the abolition of slavery in the Island. History textbooks overemphasize the individual cruelty of slave owners and represents slave as docile and obedient, thus making the possibility of their resistance unthinkable (Trouillot 1995 in Godreau et al. 2008). The researchers explicate that this trivialized discourses of slavery contributes to the ideologies of mestizaje and blanquiamiento by portraying slavery as benevolent or less harsh thus permitting the racial mixing and the racial democracy nowadays.

Finally, Godreau et al. elaborates into the idea that blackness has been simplified in textbooks and in teaching practices in three different ways. Reducing blackness to slavery and as foreign, reducing black people to specific homogeneous phenotypic characteristics, and reducing blackness to the folkloric sphere of music and dance. The researchers discuss how the world negro is use interchangeable in talking about slaves in textbooks and the classrooms. Thus disregarding a signicant large sector of free blacks who lived and were born on the island during the slave period about 50% of the population in 1820. This views underestimate the roles of free blacks and promotes the social construction of mixed as nonblack, the equation of blackness with slave status also dissociates blackness from a modern, contemporary Puerto Rican identity p. 126.

Furthermore Godreau et al. (2008), Lpez (2008) and Helpi-Viera (2006) explain the how representations of blackness are condensed into very specific phenotypic expressions from the Sub-Saharan African population. This oversimplification of blackness has being explored by Godreau et al. in third grade history textbooks and teaching practices. They explain that this simplification marks blackness as distanced and marked as an alien identity and blackness is pushed to the extreme slot of the racial continuumoutside the margins of the mixed Puerto Rican identity (see also Vargas-Ramos 2005). Varcrcel 1994 in Godreau et al. 2008 explains this view of homogenous blackness produced at the elementary school level do not encourage individual identication with blackness; instead, they further reinscribe dominant discourses of disassociation.

Lastly, as it is well documented blackness has also being simplified to folkloric ideals in many areas of Puerto Ricos popular expressions. Helping to develop the folklorization of blackness, history textbooks also downgrades black heritage to music and dance. But Godreau et al. further explicates this notion of black heritage implies blood-driven attributes, not as contributions that require work or intellectual ability. They also recognized the lack of black contemporary role models, no heroes, no beauty queens, or famous public gures which fails to put African contributions to the Puerto Rican nation on equal footing with the other parts of the Puerto Rican racial and cultural triad.

With these examples we can start understanding the complexity of racial identification in Puerto Rico. We can also appreciate how the ideologies of mestizaje and blanquiamiento get reproduce and legitimized in different facets of Puerto Ricans life. Puerto Rican scholars have argued these ideologies do affect black people in Puerto Rico, by undermining structural biases and denying black people the legitimization of racist experiences in the Island. In the next section I will reconstruct part of the arguments scholar have put forward by exploring what I have called the case of San Antn, the case of Aguadilla and the case of the black actors.

Who is affected by racial democracy?

Barrio San Antn is located in southern town of Ponce, is one in other black enclaves organized after the abolition of slavery. This barrio is known as the birthplace of the aforementioned Bomba and Plena music and dance gender. But this reputation does not translate into social mobility or economic benefits for this community. We can affirm this is a working-class town suffering clustering and lacking political power to improve their situation. Puerto Rican anthropologist Isar P. Godreau when into San Antn in times of the construction of a housing project sponsor by the municipal government. Godreau (2002) explains the housing development worked to reinforce stereotypes of the black community, to further promote the folklorization of blackness in Puerto Rico and to legitimize the ideologies of mestizaje and blanquiamiento in the country.

The author explains the community houses were arrange in a particular form, for historical and economical reasons. The community was arranged in patios, which she has described as roughly defined as a small plot of land occupied by an extended family. Approximately 68% of all the families in San Antn were established in this arrangement. The government wanted the new housing project to preserve this arrangement, and also to construct wooden houses instead of concrete one, because this was seen as the intrinsic way the black community is represented. The government gained legitimation by presenting themselves as preserving the identity of the barrio and the cultural notions of blackness in Puerto Rico. But the community of San Antn did not see this arrangement as an innate and legit communal arrangement of them, but as a vestige of the poverty and clustering they have suffer. The community tried to organize against the housing development in these conditions, they ask for a more modern and safer communal arrangement, especially since the island is constantly being menace by hurricanes.

The housing project was constructed without the changes the community advocated for. Godreau explains this view of traditional housing needing to be preserve as a cultural distinctive black community feature is cause by the state sponsor idea that the national culture is often perceived to be threatened, the showcase of folklore as historical evidence can bestow political authority onto those who seek to administer the colonial nation. And the government in power where searching to gain support for the upcoming elections by presenting themselves as the true upholders of Puerto Rican culture. But this political move also speaks of the promotion of the ideologies of mestizaje and blanquiamiento sponsor by the government. Godreau (2002) explains the case of San Antn can be representative of the discursive distance in constructing blackness as a singularity, exception, or vestige of the nation. This governmental move to rebuild the old fashion communal arrangement can be read as trying to identify who is black and how one defines it is always an elusive one thus legitimizing the idea of Puerto Rico being non-black.

The case of Aguadilla particularly illuminates the disadvantage position of Afro-Puerto Ricans in the Island. Vargas-Ramos 2005 in his study of racial identity and the US census already alluded in this paper, was also looking at the socio-economical and educational differences between those identify as black, trigueo and white. He discovered that educational differences between groups were not statistically significant, as all the groups achieve about the same amount schooling. But he found differences in annual income when race was define by the interviewer and not the interviewee. He discover Whites are underrepresented in the lowest income category and even though those identify as black and those identify as white had the same educational levels Blacks are not able to translate that advantage into higher earnings indicates that not being White in Aguadilla incurs a cost p. 278. This is important so we can realize that real racial democracy is a social creation and although inequalities are not as drastic as in the US or other countries, they still exist.

The final case I will present as answering the question of who is being affected by the racial democracy ideology is the case of the black actors in 1970s. As I already explained in the earlier period of Puerto Rican television the usage of black-face was common to represent blankness in Puerto Rico. Rivero 2002 points out some of the character as being misrepresentations and stereotypes of blackness in the Island, for example Chianita whom was aired from 1973 until 1985. At this time black actor influenced by vestiges of the Civil Right movement denounce the usage of black-face as discriminatory and racist. But differently from the US, no major mobilization in Puerto Ricos public sphere supported the black actors coalition, in the contrary, Jimnez-Romn (1996) in Rivero 2002 explains that those who have protested against racism on the island have been labeled overly sensitive, as suffering from an inferiority complex, or as unwitting victims of an imported, i.e. alien, racial ideology thus negating the existents of racism and denying Afro-Puerto Ricans rights to protest and expose their legit racist incidents.

ConclusionAs a final statement, I want to make clear that this paper does not pretend to accuse Puerto Ricans as being racist, but rather to detangle the construction of racial identity by social and political forces, which Puerto Ricans may or may not be aware of. This paper shows how the different forms racial identity are created, talked about and transmitted in the Island. It also reveals some of the ideologies and political forces leading these ideologies that can be unfair for part of the population. I should also make the caveat that there are many other factors, political and environmental and I did not compile in the paper. The research made about race in the Puerto Rican context implies the search for a more equal sheer in the importance of contributions from all racial components in the Island.

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