NIBIA PASTRANA SANTIAGO

Nibia Pastrana Santiago is a Puerto Rican artist based in San Juan. She develops site-specific “choreographic events” to experiment with time, fiction and notions of territory. Her work addresses archipelagic thinking to question the colonial apparatus. In her performances, nibia  makes strategic use of materials and text to deal with failure and indisposition. She is the author of the lazy dancer manifesto.  

GREETINGS FROM PUERTO RICO

FIRESIDE CHAT SCRIPT:

En español “complicated” significa complicado.

En inglés se pronuncia com-pli-ka-ted.

Este corto mensaje puede ser no sólo complicado, sino complejo, conditioned, conceptualmente dangerous, convincingly urgente, críticamente problemático, and 

probably unpresidential, it is not possible to speak presidencialmente desde la colonia. 

Entonces aquí vamos...

Con todo mi amor: 

“To Puerto Rican children in the United States”

  To Puerto Rican children not in the United States

 “To Dead Puerto Ricans, who never knew they were Puerto Ricans” 

As I speak to you, I want to be honest y quisiera ser funny y me gustaría sound hopeful, pero el humor might not always be the answer, and I am very tired of hoping. 

I will make an effort to be respectful, as I also want to address, you, the US Congress and all the yanquis out there, sí, a to’s los yanquis.    

I said I would make an effort, because addressing an oppressive nation with words, yet again, might not be enough.

The US Congress es y ha sido de lo más terrible that has happened to us. 

But who is us? What a coincidence! That us, it’s spelled U-S pero, the US does not include everybody, it never has, nunca lo ha hecho. 

Entonces, es complicado, pero también es muy simple. 

“I was born on an island where to be puerto rican meant to be part of the land & soul & puertorriqueños were not the minority, puerto ricans were first, none were second.” 

--I was also not born on an island, but an island was born in me. 

Puerto Rico es “una nación, un país con sueños más grandes que su geografía.”

The name “Puerto Rican” needs to be understood as something in flux y plural, and cannot be limited nor reduced to gender binaries, racial classifications, aesthetical differences around culture, linguistic dilemmas, que si habla mal español, que si sólo habla inglés, que si eso es Spanglish... nor all the generational issues, preferences about traditions or musical tastes, or if you prefer mofongo, carne frita o alcapurrias, or if you are a fan of Hamilton, in which case, we need to have another conversation...

... aclaro que en este momento I am not speaking on behalf of Puerto Ricans; my perception of my country’s history is also conditioned by who I am and how I experience the world. 

“Everyday I am more convinced that language is a sacred gift. No one has the right to abuse it for his personal need of death and emptiness. If I have nothing to say to the people, it is better that I shut up.” 

Pero hoy sí me gustaría comentar una sola cosa. 

“In order for US imperialism to subsist, it constantly needs to cover itself with the masks of lies. And the sad colonized, who know not how to struggle and accommodate themselves to an infames situation of a shallow democracy, appeal to the denial of truth.”

“La mentira es el mal por el mal mismo. La palabra se utiliza para la concientización. No debe someterse al juego inconsciente de la colonia disfrazada.”   

“Falsehood is evil for evil’s sake; language serves consciousness and must not submit to the unconscious game of the disguised colony.” 

“We must be ready to support with facts what we speak of so nicely. There is no worse misery than that of continuing to talk about the values of the spirit, if we do not feel at the same time the obligation and need of a militancy for the common good. We are tired of so much hipocrescía. 

The criminal game to which language has been subjected for more than a century continues to divide people.” 

“A nation is represented by those who affirm it, not those who deny it.”  

You betray your very own principles everyday by denying people their autonomy. 

“capitalism 

who begat racismwho begat exploitationwho begat machismowho begat imperialismwho begat colonialismwho begat wall streetwho begat foreign wars” 

Whatever it is, that you think you stand for is a lie. 

That is why today I say: 

THE US CONGRESS NEEDS TO TAKE OFF THE MASK

I wish I was brave enough to do what others did on March 1st, 1954. I wish I could say, “¡Yo no vine a matar a nadie, yo vine a morir por Puerto Rico!”, but I do not possess the necessary courage to stand up and oppose this imperial history with my life.  

El gringo ha querido colonizar nuestra mente y nuestra imaginación and I must confess, que tengo una lista interminable of fantasies on how to become free, independent and autonomous. 

“I am moved by the anger felt when general evil is seen; when the foolish colonizer believes it can own our heroic virtue of love, that inner  work that national affection generates in us, y llevándonos en alas del deseo, awake y dormidxs, makes us constantly  dream of the good, embodied in us, of the soil on which we were born.” 

You have suffered “a civil death”. 

US CONGRESS: 

“You have died and do not know it. Whoever defends falsehood defends death.” 

Y para mí, ustedes están muertos. 

###

Credits: 

Este texto ha sido escrito and performed by nibia pastrana santiago.

Recorded at Casa Fantasmes, Santurce, Puerto Rico 

Incluye excerpts y quotes de: Francisco Matos Paoli, Ricardo Alegría, Pedro Pietri, Miguel Piñero, Pedro Albizu Campos, Elsa Tío, Lolita Lebrón y Eugenio María de Hostos. 

English translation done by the artist con la ayuda de Nelson Rivera.