07/27/2024
Puerto Rican History Moment. Have you heard of Carpetas? It was a well-documented, US GOVERNMENT-led operation that I consider a violation of civil rights, IN MY OPINION, to track/influence/target Puerto Ricans with files that are now open to the public thanks to FOIA laws. The government used the files against Puerto Rican Nationalists, dissenters, and sometimes whole towns. The Government sowed division, misinformation, fear, abuse, and all in the name of taking an island and reducing the native population. This all took place during my grandparents' lifetime, and the records were maintained for around 100,000 Puerto Ricans until at least the 1980s. Even when Puerto Ricans moved stateside.
Denis said, "As befits a sun-kissed island with wonderfully fertile soil, Puerto Ricans were an open, gregarious, cheerful people – but sixty years of carpetas, police informants, and neighbors spying upon each other, had affected the national character of Puerto Rico. It had burned fear, secrecy, lying, betrayal, and mistrust into its collective experience. The Carpetas drove a permanent wound into the psyche of Puerto Rico. It is a wound that may never fully heal."
When I went to school in Puerto Rico, my grandparents explained this topic to me in whispers, with a heavy emphasis on leaving it in the past and not asking anyone about it. There was a general mistrust of "New York Ricans" on the island, and after learning about the movement of people away from targeted towns, I can understand why.
Government is inherently evil. Politics is a sanitized distraction. Don't rely on it for your foundation, validation, or community. Be in the world, not of it. More on an upcoming episode of the podcast.