Interview Transcription (Duration: 1:50:00)

Narrator: Dr. Carlos Antonio Torre

Interviewer: Jared Mutsumi Dennehy

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Key:

BOLD: Dr. Torre

Nonbolded: Dennehy

Bracketed [xxxx] Text: Unspoken notes or actions, laughing, etc. Font style will follow
whichever is in use at the time.

Parentheses (xxxx) text: Speaking at the same time the current main speaker is talking. Follows
the bold/nonbolded format.

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[0:00:00] - This is Jared Dennehy interviewing. Dr. Carlos Antonio Torre before we begin as

required in the procedure, we must provide on record that you have read the consent form and

therefore approve of this interview. Hmhm, I do. To summarize for the recording, this interview

is being conducted for the History 480 Seminar in Oral History course here at Southern

Connecticut State University. The principal investigator is Dr. Carmen Coury, assistant professor

of History here at Southern. The purpose of this research is to collect oral histories of members

of New Haven's Caribbean born community and digitally archive them for research or use at the

New Haven ethnic Heritage Center as well as the digital New Haven website. By participating in

this project you will be interviewed by a student within the course, me. Ah, the upcoming

interview is expected to run approximately 90 minutes long and may require a follow-up session

in case of any clarifications in regards to the interview being needed. This is a minimum risk

study for its participants due to recalling personal memories and stories of your life. There is a
possibility of recalling those memories that may be unpleasant or upsetting. Should it ever

become to much you can request a break or to stop the interview. Participation will however

ensure that the history of New Haven's Caribbean immigrant Community is remembered and

made available for future Generations. Once more your participation is completely voluntary you

can withdraw at any time. Although the recording will be destroyed, the interview will be

transcribed. These transcriptions will be used by the history 480 course for their final projects.

And if you permit, a copy will be preserved at the New Haven ethnic Heritage Center and or the

digital New Have website. Age gender year of immigration and country of origin will be

available to researchers, given the need to you may choose whether or not to be identified.

No problem. (No problem) Terrible picture [Both laugh] [In regards to a picture Torre was

taking of the consent form]. It, it didn't focus at all. Yea, okay, this ones' good.

I think I also gave you a copy aswell (Oh did you? Okay) if you wanted a physical one.

Now do you want me to initial these over here?

[00:02:22] Yes. Thank you. This is for your initials. Aha thank you [Consent form was initialed

and signed] (This is yours). We will now begin with the interview. Once again, this is a life

history interview of Dr. Carlos Antonio Torre conducted by me, Jared Dennehy. Alright

Professor. When and where were you born?

I was born in ah, Santurce Puerto Rico, which is uhm, ah, Santurce is one of the

burroughs, if you will, of San Juan. Uhm San Juan somewhat equivalent to New York

City, has four boroughs. They're called condados, counties, ahum, and I was born one of

them in 1960.
[00:03:32] Could you tell me of life there, ah before moving? What was it like?

Sure. Uhm, how much depth would you like me to go into.

As much as you care to share.

Okay. Well, let's see. I was born there. I was raised there until about the age of 8, and uhm

we lived in a poor side of town. We weren't you know poor per say... but ah, my father had

issues with drinking and often times, you know, even though he made good money, ah it

wouldn't last. So, you know, we had this house that we did not, actually it's interesting we

owned the house, but we did not own the land it was it was a unusual - Well, not Unusual

for Puerto Rico, but unusual and in many other parts and people, you know would have a

hard time understanding, better in fact that is connected to what's part of what happened

after Hurricane Maria because a lot of people would maybe own the structure, but they

wouldn't own the land and they couldn't prove ownership and so FEMA would refuse to

give them money and that sort of thing and others they had, you know built the house, on

some land and because they built their own house, they never got any documentation for it.

And so ah, then FEMA says, "You know, we can't give you because you can't prove

ownership". And there was no mortgage there was no uhm, you know people just made

their own house. Ah so that was kind of the situation there and uhm, ah, I remember I

had'a two half-brothers. It was a situation, very interesting because my father was much

older than my mother. And you know when they got married and he... it was one of those

things, that dangerous words like in English the dangerous words would be "oh by the

way", right, and on the honeymoon night she heard those words in Spanish ah... "By the

way, ah I have two kids" which she didn't know anything about, "...and they're coming to
live with us". So she or she is a young girl probably even younger than you know than the

women in my, in the class today, right then your classmate, classmates, and now she's

having to raise two preteens right. And ah, and I wasn't born yet. But later on when I was

born and she had all this situation there. I still remember some of the stuff. I used to play a

lot by myself. Ah, ehrm... I don't recall too many other kids my age and my brothers were

older, and I would, you know, I would be the little pesty kid trying to get into their games,

playing baseball and whatever. I still remember one incident. Somehow it got burned into

my memory and probably you might understand why it, that little kid, we were playing

baseball and you know, we didn't have money for proper equipment. So we, they were

using broomsticks as bats and tennis, not tennis balls, I'm sorry, what do you call those...

ah jacks, you know those little balls that you used to play jacks... (Bouncy balls?) Yea

bouncing ball, those little, tiny ones, about the size... maybe a little bit bigger than a quarter

but the size of a half dollar coin. And uhm. I kept pestering them to you know, "let me play

let me play let me play". And finally just to get rid of me, they thought they were going to

strike me out and then I'd be out and I wouldn't bother them again, and instead, I mean

not by skill, but I guess by luck, I hit the thing and it flew so far they never found the ball.

So [laugh] that's why I guess that's why it it's burned into my memory. And so that was

that was the end of the game, because they didn't have another ball, ah, but it was that kind

of a, of a lifestyle uhm. And let's see. I did, you know, I had a lot of cousins and we got

together often. The families would visit each other; brothers, sisters, aunts, you know,

cousins and that sort of thing, we were a pretty big family. My mother had ah, I'm still

trying to figure out exactly how many brothers and sisters she had but they were at least

12, right? And ah, so you know, ah, the family originally comes from a town in the center of
the country known as Comerio, that's C O M E R I O, and ah, that's a very indigenous

town, you know, and well, you know, and now people are starting to recognize that, and

you can tell I have I have a lot of Native American in me and it comes from, basically from

that area. My grandfather, her father - I don't know much about my father's side of the

family. I had one uncle that I was, you know that I saw often and his daughter who was a

little older than me, but that's basically it. I didn't know that side of the family very well.

They were more I guess... European in appearance. Probably Spanish, although I have...

you know, we keep our last names and sometimes you can remember back several

generations because of last names, I can go back seven generations. And of those seven

generations three of those last names are Spanish and four are Italian, so when I had my

DNA done, which I wasn't totally satisfied with 'cause all they gave me was you know, like

background I didn't get a lot in terms of um, percentages and all of that. But it showed

that, you know, Native American obviously and then... ah, Iberian is they put it, which

would be a combination of Spain and Portugal and whatever. And then southern Europe

including Italy, no big surprise, and Greece. So that - and then other stuff in there, which

I'm a little bit of Irish, little bit of British. Well actually two forms of British um, and even

some Scandinavian and whatever else, but you know, that's not surprising in Puerto Rico,

because you get all these different mixtures and people came from all over. People, here in

the US, people have a tendency to see you know, any Latin American as all being uniform

or whatever, but that's not the case at all. As a matter of fact, in Puerto Rico you you might

even had a bigger mixture than you had in the United States because people blended, and

ah - you know, there was there is racism, there is racism everywhere, but it wasn't the same

kind of racism as in the US and there ah, um, there was more at the time, more of a color
consciousness than there was a racial consciousness if, if that makes any sense. For

example, uh, If two brothers with the same parents, one comes out darker and the other

one comes out lighter, which is very common, well the... it's ah ah father of a daughter

wouldn't mind her-his daughter marrying the lighter one but uh - and it's the same DNA

it's the same thing, you know, they're from the same parents and whatever so, you know,

it's that that sort of thing but even there it wasn't such a strict kind of thing as it was in the

United States. Ah I don't believe there was any, you know, racial laws against people

marrying as in the United States until fairly recent, some people are still alive when it was

illegal to marry people of another race in the United States. Ah so you know, ah what else

can I say? Like I said, I-I used to play with whatever I could come up with. Sometimes, you

know, I would pretend you know that I had a, like a little toy car, and sometimes I really

did have a toy car, but sometimes it was just like a little block of wood that I would shape a

little bit and pretend you know that I was driving down the street or something like that.

Um, and then there were the other kinds of games that were popular then and

interestingly, some of those came back during the hurricane, because people had no

electricity. They had, you know, no no internet and so a lot of those older games were

revised during that period. And so some kids, for the first time, are learning these you

know, I don't know what it's called, but when you have kind of a metal wheel, it's just like

a like a like a hula hoop, but it's made out of metal. And then you would take a stick and

kind of guide it along and see how far you could get it without it ah, you know wobbling

and falling on the ground. And it- you know it was that that kind of game. The ah, you

know, the other side of that, you know, it was kind of a happy growing up, but the other

side was that my ah, my father had ah, a problem with alcohol, as I said previously, and ah
he was the nicest person when he wasn't ah, when he wasn't under the influence of alcohol.

But when he drank, it was Jekyll and Hyde, really Jekyll and Hyde. Ah, most of his

colleagues and his business associates knew him when he was, you know, not drunk and so,

all they knew of him was this wonderful person. And I still remember when he died, and I

went to the banks and different places to see what he had left ah, and they found out that I

was his son. Wow, they treated me royally. Like wow, the, "One of the best people we've

ever met. Never a harsh word coming out of his mouth and such a gentleman", and all of

these other things. And they treated me very very well because I was his son. But on the

other hand, as you saw in the in the ah the two chapters I shared with you, he would beat

the hell out of my mother, right. And ah, when he got really drunk, and at some point my

mother said, you know, I'm not going to take this anymore. And it was very ah, very

unusual for that time and place, right ah, because most women especially in Latin America

other places, you know, they said well, I guess this is my lot in life and I don't know what

I'm going to do if I leave this guy and you know, will I starve to death and all of these other

kinds of things. So, but my mother said "No, I'm not going to take this anymore" and she

decided to run away. Ah, and that's in there. I don't know if you want me to retell

it. (Hmhm) (Okay).

[00:16:09] So. The ah, the relationship with your father is the... would have been the main

motivation for you (Yeah) coming to the United States?

Yeah, it was, it was essentially the only because there was no reason for us to come to the

United States. And ah, you know, had my father not squandered his money the way he did

on drink and whatever uhm, we would have been okay. And you know, he worked on, and
he worked on the docks and he went, you know, he was uhm, um, he wasn't a professional.

I don't think he, I think he only had like a high school education. Maybe not even that. But

um, he was a smart individual and he got in. There was a, there was a Puerto Rican

shipping company that was called ah, of all names, Bull- Line. Bull like the animal right,

the Bull Line. And the owner of that, you know took a liking to my father and he was kind

of his helper. So he was, you know up there and making a lot of money and um, at one

point he made my father his chauffeur. But you know as his drinking got worse and that

sort of thing, they would not get rid of him because they liked them and again, you know,

he was a good worker ah. But they would... he kept getting less responsibility, within the

corporation, and ah, at one time, this was much much later. He was essentially a

longshoreman... right? I guess it would be the equivalent of a longshoreman. So he was

hauling packages and whatever, loading ships and that sort of thing. I don't know whatever

happened to that Line, if it just disappeared or if it was sold, but ah. When my mother

decided to leave... she plotted with my uncle, her brother. And my uncle pleaded with her

don't leave, you know, come and stay with us. And she said you know that her husband

knew the country like the back of his hand and there's no way you know, he's going to find

us and he's going to take us back and he could get violent and that sort of thing. So, they

um, they made this plan, where you know, my mom was working in electronics. There were

all kinds of companies that had uh set up in Puerto Rico at the time, there was this

electronics firm and she, you know got a job there. I don't know exactly how or when or

whatever, but she got a job there and one day, I don't know if she told her boss that she

wasn't coming back, but one day I knew something was happening and... you know and as,

as you saw in that story, I actually tried to stop one of the beatings that he was giving my
mother. Um, somewhat I guess successfully or not. I'm not, I'm not sure because, in my two

half brothers when they saw, you know, the beating he was giving her they started crying.

They were still somewhat kids. I mean they were preteen. And I was the baby of the family,

ah but um they started crying and ran away to hide and at some point I just, I grabbed the

knife, I was 5 years old or something. I grabbed the knife and I went to attack him and I

have no memory of what happened there. But I imagine that the crowd that had formed

outside, cheering him on. ah realized that this was serious for the members of this family.

And somehow when, when, when my consciousness comes back, I have no knife. My father

wasn't- that I wasn't hurt in any kind of way and the fighting had stopped. So hopefully, uh

somebody in the crowd came up and said, hey, no, we can't let this go on any more,

somehow took the knife away from me and separated them, and that was that. But, I guess

my mom took about two or three more years of that. And at some point she just said no, so

she plotted out with my uncle that we would um, that should would leave and obviously

take me. She wasn't going to take his kids, that probably would have been illegal. So she

left them behind and, and and ah, one morning I realized that my father had gone to work,

he always went first, and my mother was still hanging around the house, and it would have

been time for her to have gone to work, but she wasn't going. So I kind of figured it out, in

my young mind, I figured okay, something's happening here. I intuitively, I think I feel I

know what it is, didn't question it, and went along with whatever she asked me to do. And

so she had uh, two suit- I don't remember if we had two suitcases, one for me one for her,

or just one suitcase in which all of our stuff is put, because we didn't take very much. Um,

and ah, my uncle came to pick us up and in Puerto Rico, you always have, for the longest

time, ever since I remember, something that is in in the local culture is called "El
tapón", which may, which essentially means the bottleneck but the bottle, the stopper in

the bottle neck. In other words, traffic jams, traffic jams. And people still use those as

excuses, you know, you know, you're late for something. Like "You know that bottleneck

was so bad this morning, you'd never believe it." Yeah, anyway, but it is endemic, because

Puerto Rico has almost one car for every two people. It's just ah. At one point, I think

percentage-wise, it had more cars per people than almost any other part of the world

including China. You know the world's most populous country. Um, percentage-wise. And

at one time it actually had more cars than China. You're talking about relatively small

country about the size of Connecticut with three and a half million people. Right, the, for,

so ah, a place like that, can you imagine if Connecticut had more more cars than China

had? But at one time, China was not what it is today. So today, obviously China does

Puerto Rico many many times in terms of the number of cars. They make them now, I

don't know what the percentage is still... if Puerto Rico still leads in percentage-wise. That's

something I'd have to look up. But percentage-wise for the longest time, again, you have

you know, one one car for every three people than one car for every two and a half people

and I think it creeped up to about one car for every two people. I know this one family, um

that had, well there were three humans in the family, the mother the father and the in a

small kid, and two dogs, and they had five cars. So I guess even the dogs had their own car.

So in any case, that did us in, because on the way to the airport, that famous Tapon, that

traffic jam made us late. And when we got to the airport the airplane had left. And, see in

Spanish, "We did not miss the plane, the plane left us behind" right? And ah so the plane

left us behind and my mom starts, you know asking. "Okay. So what can we do?" though

by that time they only had one flight per day, right leaving for Chicago, which is where we
were going. Most everybody else was going to New York City, but my two aunts, actually

three aunts let's say, had taken advantage of some recruitment that had taken place mostly

for women to work in the needle industry, you know, sewing and whatever else. And so

they had gone to Chicago, because that's where some of the opportunities were. And my ah,

my two blood aunts went, but you know, the relationships are a lot more fluid and there

was this other young woman that grew up with them in the same neighborhood

in Comerío. And they called them, they called themselves sisters. And they always just say,

you know, she's my aunt even though technically she wasn't related and in the way that we

would commonly talk about being related, but she was my aunt as well. So there were three

of them who had gone. In retrospect, I see that they were young women maybe even, well

they weren't girls 'cause I think they were over 18 at that time, but they were very very

young woman. To me they were these old ladies, because you know ,as a little kid, they

were much much older. So um, my mother and I went to live with them. And the problem

was that there was only one flight per day. And so they had I guess the equivalent, I don't

think they call it that, but they called them to have a wait-list. And so they put us on that

wait list and there were other people who also missed the plane and that waitlist, uh and

when it came time, oh, well, we had to stay overnight and my uncle insisted that we go and

stay with him in his house. And my mom said absolutely no, you know because he, when he

comes home from work, he will realize that we have left and he will come looking, come

hell or high water, and the first place is going to look as your house and my and my other

brothers and sisters houses. So there's no way. And he says "But what are you going to

do?" And she says, well we'll sleep in the airport and he says but you know women don't do

that, single women don't do that with a small child, you know staying in, in in the airport,
but there was no moving her. And she said absolutely no, we're going to stay here. And my

mom had thought of so many... ah she was really really intelligent. She had thought of a lot

of scenarios, including, she had gotten tickets for her and me under fake names. So that ah,

even in those days, you know, it was a lot easier to get the manifest, right, the flight

manifest and all of that. And he could have just asked for them and see, look for our names

and then know when, you know, when we were on that flight and just waited for us or

whatever. And so she did, she she put fake names, even though that we could have lost

everything, because flying under fake names, you know, anything happened you would lose

your rights. I don't know if we would have gotten arrested for faking the names, but

whatever. And then the other thing she did was she looked for a spot... in the airport, where

she and I could sleep, that was hidden away. And you know, bring on any suspicion that

somebody could be hiding back there... and it all worked out for the better because my

father eventually did go to the airport. He figured you know, she is ah, she is what you call

creative enough that you could just leave the country. So, he did go and I guess somehow he

demanded the manifest of the different flights and because we had fake names, he wouldn't

find our names. And as I understand it, he actually passed within feet of where we were

sleeping, but he couldn't see us because we were hiding away. And the next day, what

happened was that uh, uhm, my mother goes up, you know, they start calling out the

numbers. And I think my, I don't know I'll make it up, but I think my mother had like

number 30, and they get up to...30 and they call her number and she says okay and then

she grabs me and start going and that was, that was the last number they called. So as we

start going in they stopped her, and they said you can't go in, and she goes "you just called

my number. They said yes, but you have a child, and he doesn't have a seat. And she says
well, you know I had a child when I registered for this waitlist. You knew I had a child. So

why did you just give me one seat, they said because you didn't say anything about the

child etc, etc, etc. And they start getting very bureaucratic and she just kept arguing with

them and arguing with them and finally... Actually, no, I think I'm remembering wrong.

It's right in the in whatever I gave you, but I think they only got up to 29, or whatever the

number was, I'm making it up, and then there was, no there were no seats and then one of

the stewardesses looked up and said, oh there is one seat. So they put her on, but there was

still not a seat for me. And the long and the short of it is that my uncle was there to see us

off and somehow they communicated just by looking, making eye contact with each other.

And they knew exactly what had to happen. So as my mother is arguing with them, and

they're at the counter, it was in those days you still had the walk up. They didn't have those

tunnels that you walk straight into the airplane. So you had to go down into the tarmac and

walk across part of the landing field and then, you know, go up the stairways into the

airplane. And so suddenly what she did was, that... she went under the rope and started

running down and the arrangement, that you know with the eye contact, my uncle grabbed

me and picked me up over the Rope, right? She grabbed my hand and we but just started

running. We ran down onto the field ran across the field, ran up into the airplane and

they're chasing us that didn't get us, you know to get us, take us away, and we get into the

airplane. And ah, she sat on the floor and she would not move. And people came from

everywhere, you know, trying to coerce her, trying to cajole her, trying to you know, logic

her into leaving and blah blah blah. And she would not move and finally... At some point,

they simply gave up. I mean, in those days - today that would have happened. But in those

days nobody cherished the thought of forcibly taking a young woman with a child off of a
plane, you know against her will, kicking and screaming nobody cherished it, at least in

Puerto Rico they didn't. And so from what little I remember, somebody said well this plane

has to leave, and we don't need to bother the FCC with this information because you know,

the air plane will, will go, it'll get there, nobody will know and blah blah blah and so they

just walked away. They threatened us with the FBI and 10 million things and they just

walked away at some point and my mom, they gave me the seat, and my mom traveled on

the floor for the rest of, for the flight going to Atlanta, Georgia, right. Because airplanes

didn't have the, the kind of range to get, or at least that plane didn't have the range to go

all the way to Chicago. So they um, we landed in, Georgia. Yeah we landed in Atlanta and

then there was a seat in the second plane that we had to catch and we went all the way to

Chicago. Uh... but because we didn't have phones, you know, there was no, there were no

cell phones in those days or Internet or whatever, when we got to Chicago, we were late.

My aunt's, her sisters had come to pick us up at the airport, but um, we never arrived. And

when they saw that the plane arrived and we didn't get off, you know, that they had no idea

what was going on, they probably figured we missed the plane and they just went back

home. So, at that point when we arrived in Chicago, there was nobody to pick us up and we

had no way of communicating with them. I don't even know if they even had a phone for us

to communicate. So we just took a taxi and my mom had a letter from one of her sisters.

We couldn't speak a word of English neither she or me and she just pointed to the return

address on that letter and the cab driver nodded and showed us to the cab, took our

luggage whatever, if it was one or two suitcases, put it in the in the trunk, and we

proceeded to, you know, to go to where they lived which was on LaSalle, LaSalle Street, see

if I can remember the name... 12-something LaSalle street. But in any case, that was
basically, how you know how we got to the United States. I don't know where do you want

me to...

[00:36:49] Do you remember anything specific about that first day in Chicago?

Oh, yeah. Yeah. I remember. Well we went, we got there like early in the morning and we

had to go to sleep because you know, we hadn't slept very much. Actually no, we got there

late at night. It was like midnight or one o'clock or something like that. So by the time we

got there, you know, we rang the bell or knocked on the door and you know, they opened it

up and then they realized you know what had happened and so... but they put us to sleep

because of, we were really tired. The next day. I don't remember if it was a weekend or,

somehow they, they were, they didn't go to work. I doubt that they would not go to work

because we had a ride to, although that's possible as well. But it, all of them. You know, so I

think it was a weekend. Maybe we arrived on a Friday or early Saturday morning. And

then this was probably a Saturday morning and among the different things that we did was

that they uhm, my aunt's took us to the park. A well-known Park in New Hav-, in Chicago

known as Lincoln Park. And we went there, and... I had- oh I had never seen snow before.

So that when we got to the, it was freshly fallen snow when he got to the cab and I still

remember almost like a um, like a silent movie, getting into the cab and as the cab drove

along and you know, the lights weren't that bright the streetlights were that bright, but

they were kind of a yellowish tinge because you know, that's what happens when you don't

have bright lights. Ah... and that yellowish tinge reflected off of the snow. And as the cab

drove along, it would glisten. You know we would see the glistening of the snow. So it

almost looked like a field of diamonds with that glistening and I was fascinated by that. It
reminded me of the story books I always read... that I would read as a kid, you know, with

fairy tales and all of that sort of thing. And to me it looked magical. So we arrived at my

aunt's house and they had us sleep and the next day they took us to Lincoln Park. And they

played a trick on me. They they said oh, let's take a picture. And so they they they wanted a

picture just with me. And so they said- they stood me underneath a tree, and one of my

aunt's was there with the camera and the other aunt went behind me without my noticing

and just at the right moment, they kind of gave each other signals and she shook the tree

and all the snow came down from the tree and I got covered with snow and I look like a

snowman right, and then they snapped the picture. I'd like to find that picture at some

point. But uh, so that was my first day there. I do remember, you know at some point I had

to go to school. It wasn't that long after that. They took me to a Catholic school. That was

fairly close by. Was it? It wasn't exactly walking distance, but you could have walked if, if

you had to, it wasn't that that far. And um, it was St. Joseph. St. Joseph School, which was

a K-8 school. Everything in Chicago was K-8. They didn't have middle schools like here.

Matter of fact, I, I, even being a professor of education, I never heard of middle school until

I went to teach in Queens College in New York. And I hear my students talking about this

middle school, middle school this, middle school that, and I interrupted. I said these middle

schools you talk so much about, what are they in the middle in? Where are they in the

middle of? Like a middle of a field? Is that why you call it a middle school? And they

looked at me like "Professor, how can you not know what a middle school is? Your our

teacher of education, right?" I said, what is a middle school day? They described it. And I

said, why would somebody want to do something like that? Why would you want to uproot

kids, you know, in in fifth grade and put them in a different environment and then uproot
them again and put them in a high school and all these crazy things? And I think I can take

credit for having gotten rid of almost all the middle schools in New Haven, in my time on

the board, because I talked to the superintendent. I says, you know, this doesn't make any

sense to me. And this is one of the reasons why a lot of the kids are so disoriented. And they

said well, you know, but you got these big galoot eighth graders and they're giants in

comparison to these little babies, and you gotta protect the babies and whatever. I said,

yeah, you can do that so many different ways. One, you can separate them in the same

building, right, or if you're smart, you can actually get the older kids to feel some

responsibility for the little kids. They would feel useful and the little kids, you know they're

going to love that because they're always looking for the attention of the big kids. And like

I did, you know, with my brother's I bugged the heck out of them because I wanted to play

in their games. And that's what we did in New Haven and there's only one middle school

that that doesn't have K-8 and that's because the land around it was too small for us to

build a bigger building so we could accommodate a K-8 or Pre-K8. and so it's been it's

been that way ever since so, let's see. What do you want me to go? Because I can go off on

tangents. And...

[00:43:27] When did you start learning English? With, i- in school, or...?

Yeah or well, I didn't speak a word of English and I told a story in class about my first day

in class, here, when you know, I was shocked by you know, how they had us eat lunch in

total silence. And then the nun one is yelling at us, you know, no talking no talking and to

me as a Spanish speaker. It sounds like "no tocar, no tocar" which means don't touch. And

sheepishly I said [Phrase spoken in Spanish that was reiterated in English] "No, I'm not

touching anything. What do you mean? What do you want me to do?" And so I decided
that I was going to learn English better than than the the local kids. That to me became a

super important thing and I didn't want to be, didn't want to be singled out. You know, I

was a foreigner and all these other things and I think it's in it's in that the second chapter

or something where I say at some point, I wanted to be black. Yeah [laugh], because in my

18 year old mind. You know, they could somehow tell a Latino from the rest of, but it there

was a foreign black and a local black, they couldn't tell the difference. So I thought you

know, black is the thing to be. And then I think, I almost know that part by memory. I

never turned black, but I did- my English did improve tremendously. And within a few

months, I felt quite cocky about myself, thinking I knew everything, every word in English

because there wasn't one word, you know with my classmates that I would ever have to trip

over. And I didn't realize that you know, that was such a limited vocabulary, but I still had

that situation, in which Sister Relendes, the the second grade ha- ah teacher... was so how

would you say? She was prejudiced, just wanna say it straight out. She was very

Prejudiced.. and ah about so many things. One, she was this really short older lady, very

old. I mean she looked, I don't know how old she was, but she had so many wrinkles on her

face that she looked to us like she was over 200 years old. And you can't get that many

wrinkles under 200 so, ah. And um, she was angry all the time. That's why I called her the

edgy...what you call... tightly wound Chihuahua, because she was just so little and she was

always walking around like this and angry and so forth. And so I um, one day I ran to her,

and I think that is the in the second chapter, because, Billy a really popular boy in the

school, had fallen down and he broke his his pants. And in those days it was not stylish to

go around with ripped jeans or ripped pants of any kind. And so I ran to her trying to do

him and her a favor and say, you know, Billy fell down and got a roll in his pants. And I
think she understood but she was so prejudiced that she had to lash back at me. And she

said, she yelled at me in a very visceral expression on her face and voice, it's a hole not a

roll, why don't you let somebody who can speak decently come and tell me? Right? So that

was the thing- and I think that actually... how would you say... um, really cemented in my

desire to speak English better than they did. And so within a year, I think I was very fluent

and my accent was somewhat similar to what it is now, so you couldn't tell the difference if

I had been born and raised in Chicago or you know came in from someplace else. And I've

always been a stickler for for language, any language. And sometimes I joke with myself,

maybe I should have been an English teacher because I really get erked when people, you

know misuse the language. They say things like there's three cars on the lot know there is

not three cars in the lot. There are three cars on the lot. Yeah, and that sort of thing and

when they say there's a large amount of students, no there's not a there isn't a large

amount of students. There is a large number of students right? You can count it, it's

number if you can't count it, it's amount right? So that sort of thing. I guess it comes from,

you know from that strong desire to speak English, you know, like a native and even better.

And I happen to have lived in Chicago which has the what is sometimes known as the no

accent accent. The Midwestern no accent accent, which is the accent that most radio TV

and other, you know, public speaking personnel are trained by. That's why you go to

Mississippi and they sound like Chicagoins, and they go to New York and they sound like

Chicagoins. Now a lot of that is changing. There is this, there's this guy on NPR whose of

Italian background and I'm blanking out on his name, but ah. He has the stereotypical

accent that you would find in the 50s 60s, in the Italian Community and it sounds cool and

you get other people, you know with other accents and that sort of thing. But in those days,
it was very strict. You had to use the proper accent and the proper accent happened to be

the Midwest accent and I happened to be in Chicago. So, it kind of worked out. right? So

that's essentially how I learned English. Where do you want me to go from here? So I don't

keep going off.

[00:50:37] Growing up throughout Early Education to high school, where you around other

Puerto Rican migrants and (Oh Yeah) were there any comparisons or differences from maybe

U.S Born Porto Ricans that you found between you (Yeah) you and themselves?

Well, there were some, but I didn't seem to run into too many of them who were born in

the US. And it was interesting because the community, there, where we ended up, was the

center of the Puerto Rican Community. It was sort of a ghetto at that point. Ghetto, not

necessarily a slum, just a ghetto, but uh. And that word is misused. A lot of people, you

know mean slum when they say ghetto. Ghetto just means you know that you got collection

- you have very rich ghettos you know, the Jewish ghettos in Italy, that's where the word

comes from. It's an Italian word, ghe-tto. And it was the Jewish ghettos in Italy and

obviously a lot of them were super rich and so they have nothing to do with poverty, just

the accumulation of the same group of people. And sometimes they were controlled, so that

there was no outward mobility. You either lived in the ghetto or you didn't live anyplace

else because you weren't allowed to either, you know, reside in some other part of the city

or the whatever. Or you couldn't afford it or many millions of possibilities. So, it was it

was, there was poverty, but it wasn't, you know, like deep deep poverty where you would

call it a slum. But it was around the time that gentrification started to become a thing. And

so they essentially lied to us and said that you know, we want to fix up these houses and

whatever so we have to ask you to move and you can come back in two or three years when
we finished the project. Like who's going to come back once they've established himself for

two or three years someplace else? It the make any sense and they knew that. It was one

way, I quote unquote a nice way to tell us that we were wanted, but right now we can't have

you here. It just so happens that my... we ended up... Interestingly when we arrived, my

aunt's were living in the second floor of a Japanese family's house. And they were um, they

were really nice to me. And I don't know if they had asked my aunt's or my mother to send

me to pay the rent. Every every week we would pay the rent, I guess on Friday or

Saturday, and it was cash. Right? So, every time I went to pay the rent they had a gift for

me. So I still remember a lot of those gifts. It was wooden puzzles of houses that I would

put together, you know, three dimensional kinds of things and different things. And I

remember one day, I don't know if maybe they didn't have money to buy me something a

little more expensive, they gave me a number of straws, you know to drink you know,

drinking straws, but they were special. They had a little kind of sponge in the middle with

flavoring. And so you could just take regular milk, drink it through the straw, and it would

come through that sponge and then it would taste like strawberry or would taste like

chocolate or you know, different. And so I still remember the lady instructing me and how

to use them. She says, you know, they were Japanese, they didn't speak a lot of English and

she would look at me when she gave me the straws and said, "For drink, for drink", and

she would, you know, kind of model it for me and so forth. And said, "Flavor, it got flavor

inside or whatever". and I you know, I still remember like that was like happened last

week or something, you know, very strong memories. And it was very nice. But then one of

my aunt's had met a man that, that you know, they fell in love and they were going to get

married and they did get married and he was interesting in retrospect. I realize that he was
kind of a go-getter. He was very much of a conservative kind of person and he bought into

the American dream and all of this other thing and he would dress like, you know, a little

hat that was popular at the time. Today, most people wouldn't be caught dead with those,

but... and he bought himself a Studebaker which was the kind of car, you know, that

somebody at the level that he wanted to be would get. But anyway, long story short, they

got married and they move not very far, maybe about five six blocks away. And ah,

actually I think I still remember the address. It was either 900 or 800 LaSalle Street. So on

the same street that we were living, and at one point, I don't know the details what

happened if something happened financially or they just did this in order to kind of help

each other out, but it was you know, my two aunts my mother and myself still living in the

small apartment above the Japanese family, -er family's house. It was a very tiny

apartment and there were three, four, five of us living there. And all it essentially is was

like um, a medium sized room that was divided, and on one hand they had the kitchen and

the ah, a dining room table. And on the other side, there was a living room and they had,

my aunt's and my mother, had figured out sleeping arrangements so that one of my aunt's

actually slept on a sofa they.... one other one had a cot, and then two of my... was it two, my

mother and one aunt and I would sleep in the bed, right. So it was kind of tight, but to me it

was no big deal, it's just the way it was. And at some point, somehow the adults got

together and decided that they were all going to move into this one apartment that was in

the neighborhood. And even though it was you know, not the nicest of living arrangements,

this apartment had burnt down and so it was totally reconstructed. And it was beautiful. It

was totally revamped. I still remember in all, the first time I saw the doorknobs, they, they

looked gold to me, and it was that fake copper or something, but it looked like gold. And...
huge apartment, it had two living rooms, two very large living rooms. Each living room was

bigger than the apartment that we had, the entire apartment that we had previously. Then

there was a dining room, and then we had one, two, three, four, five, bedrooms in this

thing. So they had made an arrangement that everybody would move together, including

my aunt who had gotten married and my other two aunts, my mother and myself, and we

each had ah our own bedroom, except my mother and me, who you know, shared a

bedroom. And then my aunt was married, they shared a bedroom. So, that everybody was

all, able to get ah, their own bedroom. And we were there quite a while. Like... I don't

know, several years, two years three years something like that. And I still remember

bringing some of my friends home, and being afraid of, you know, not having told my

mother or my aunt's that I was bringing anybody home. So I... One of my particular

friends, African-American boy, I asked him to wait for me behind, you know, the back

door and stuff and then my aunt asked me to go to the store to get something. So I passed

by him and I said, you know... When I come back from the store, he's inside in the dining

room eating cookies and drinking milk. And I said wait a minute, I'm not, I don't have any

cookies and milk in here, you know, they don't even know who he is and they probably just

brought him in, they obviously realized what the heck was going on. And they just invited

him in and he was helping himself to cookies and milk. And there, there are, there, you

know all kinds of adventures that I can recall and all going on. And some some point... this

is when they told the neighborhood that they wanted to, you know, reconstruct the- fix the

houses and that sort of thing. Our apartment did not need reconstructing because it was

essentially brand new after the fire, but the rest of the building did and so they took

everybody out and there we separated. And my mother and I went to live on Ashland, just
a little bit north of Diversey Parkway, Ashland Avenue and Parkway... and Diversey

Parkway. And my other aunts went to different parts to, to live. But the interesting thing,

you asked me about the community and that sort of thing, at that beginning while we were

still in that apartment, in those two apartments that we lived in there. The community, the

Puerto Rican Community was fairly small. And because it was fairly small, we were very

united, very together. Every weekend there was some activity, either a dance or party, you

know, some kind of get together. And that was like on a weekly basis. That was just a

normal thing, that we would always have fun and enjoy our um, you know, enjoy each

other and our company. But then, as the community started getting bigger and bigger,

became more and more impersonal. So to some extent it was almost like having a hunter-

gatherer relationship at the beginning, and then later on it got into agriculture and

industrialization, and now we didn't even know each other's names. But then when we

moved, and we did not move into Puerto Rican or Latino neighborhoods. My mother and I

were, ended up in this home of um, of a Yugoslavian couple. They didn't have any kids and

that's how I got a Yugoslavian mother. Because they, you know, took a liking to me, and

then she called herself my Yugoslavian mother, and that was a really interesting time when

we lived in. Because they had a three family house and we lived on the third floor which

was actually an attic but they had converted into an apartment and it was perfect for my

mother and myself. We um, you know, the the attic still had the slanted roof and at some

point, just out of their own the goodness of their heart, the, the Yugoslavian couple, Sam

and Sora, Sora, they decided they wanted to raise the roof and to give us more room and a

little more comfort and that sort of thing. They did that on their own. They didn't have to

do it. We didn't ask him to do it. And it was almost like living with family because, you
know, Sora was a very interesting character, you know, you could write a novel about her.

She was the kind of person I would consider salt of the earth. She had come out of the, you

know, second World War, a lot of poverty in Yugoslavia. And I don't know if they had met

over there, or if she had met Sam or they had met in the US, but in any case she was just

this rugged woman who would do anything. If you had to chop wood she would be out

there chopping wood, if you had to, you know, plow snow, she would do that. She's just

very earthy. And ah, you know, she had never had a lot of that stuff in Yugoslavia, So to

her it was luxuries. And so, like ice cream. She would buy, what you call, a quart or a

gallon of ice cream. And in those days, they sold them in boxes, right, as opposed to the

round containers. And what she would do, she'd invite me to the kitchen. She made these

incredible soups and and she would take the block of ice cream. She would take the the

whole cardboard box off around it. She would put an entire brick of ice cream in the

middle of a plate, take out a knife, cut it exactly down the middle, give me half, and and she

would eat the other half. And you know to a kid, you know, that was Heaven, because can

you imagine an adult giving you half a box of ice cream that you could eat? And she was

eating the other half. The other interesting thing about Sora, many interesting things but,

you know, like I said, we were always together and sometimes we'd invite them up to have

dinner. He was a barber at the beginning, at the at the front end, you know, they had a

barber shop and they had a curtain behind the barbershop and then behind that was their

apartment. So they live in the same place and he cut people's hairs right there. But either

they would invite us down and we would have some their, her delicious cooking, or we'd

invite them up and my mom was an ec- outstanding cook as well. So we you know, we had a

good time sharing meals and sharing stories and that sort of thing. But the other, one other
interesting thing about Sora, was that one of the other luxuries that you could never even

dream of in Yugoslavia was owning a car. And she went wild, you know, she would get

these new cars all the time, and then she would you know crash, and she didn't even know

how to drive and I don't even know if she had a license, right? So every time, you know, she

got into an accident and the police would come, they never arrested her. They just kind of

let her go because she'd come, "Officer, I don't I don't know. This'a crazy car. I-I drive

good but these crazy car and goes into tree! So I don't know the crazy car!", and she'd go

on and the police officer would say go lady, go, get out of here, you know. They would let

her go and I would make a joke in Spanish. It doesn't work in English, but I would say

that... See you in Spanish the word for the brand name of a car, and having you know,

smashed it up having a dent on it, it's the same word. So I said, you know, I don't know

what brand of cars Sora has, because every time she comes back, she has a different brand

on it. Right and it was like that and she would just keep bumping and into things, into fire

hydrants and whatever else, and you know, making mush out of these brand new cars. But

she would change it just about every other year, sometimes more. And at that time, before

we actually move to that place, my mom had met the man who became my stepfather and

she eventually married but they weren't married yet and ah... He was the one who actually

helped us get this apartment because there was a lot of prejudice. Prejudice in more than

one way one, you know being Latino and secondly a lone woman getting an apartment,

nobody would, you know, do that, with a child. And so my stepfather, like my father, was

very white looking, and so, and he was a soldier. So strategically, when we were looking for

an apartment, he would show up as kind of like a man of the house. He didn't, he didn't lie

about, you know, being the man of the house, but he's helping her up and he would show
up in his sergeants uniform, right? And there was a lot of respect for that. "Whoa Sergeant

yes, and that" and especially for somebody from Yugoslavia and some of the other people.

Chicago is very ethnically mixed, and a lot of um, a lot of white ethnics in Chicago, you

know, it had Lithuanians and Poles and Yugoslavians and Czechoslovakians and Irish and

a lot of, lot of white ethnics. And they didn't quite blend. So it wasn't this thing about, you

know, I never had this thing of all whites are the same, because I know they weren't. The

polls were really discriminated against, the Irish at that time weren't that discriminated

because they were a large number and they were, they had some power. And even among

the white ethnic groups, they had divided things up. So the Irish were mostly politicians

and the Italians were, and oh the Poles were mostly policemen and the Italians were a little

bit of both, and you know, it was kind of like they had divided up the different sources of

power and authority and whatever, but a very very divided City. Where was I going with

this? So anyway, you know, we lived there for a while, and we had, at some point, my

mother, you know, wanted a lil' more space and that sort of thing than we had in the attic

and we moved exactly a block down. We were still good friends with Sora and Sam, and we

would go over to their house which is only a block away and they would come over and that

sort of thing, so that happened. But my mother only had a second or third grade education

because in Puerto Rico, there was this, there was this custom, which I think is also in the

Philippines, of comadre compadre, which essentially translates into co-parent, you know,

co-mother, co-father. And it's a it's a practice of the Catholic church, that you would um...

You would get a trusted friend to become your kids Compadre. No, I'm sorry your kids

Padrino There's a word for padrino... um.... Godfather. Yea their Godfather. And then,

automatically the parents and the and the Godfather became comadre or compadre,
depending whether you're comadre or compadre, depending on whether they're male or

female, and that was sacred. That was a sacred bond and you know, that was sometimes

even more important than family, than blood relationship. One on the one hand, the role of

that Godfather, godmother, was to make sure that if something happened to the parents

that the kids would be taken care of, right? It had to take them into their home if necessary

or at least of they were older, make sure that financially they were you know able to make

it excetera. And so... My grandfather, my mom's father, he was the capitas, which is ah,

essentially...he was the boss of these people in the farm, you know, in this rural area. He

wasn't the owner of the land but he was the head honcho and so he could, you know, tell

people what to do and all of these. And so he was a good man and you know, demanded,

deserved a lot of respect and got it, and so forth. And one of his compadres, one day came

over and says, you know me and my wife we need a girl to help us out at the house and that

sort of thing, and can I, can you send me one of your your daughters. And he had so many

daughters, he sent my mom. I think she was one of the youngest, but.... What my mom tells

me is that they essentially mistreated her. The woman, they weren't jealous of her because

she was just a little girl at the time. So it wasn't like any jealousy that the husband was

going to start fooling around with her, but they quite like her and had her... instead of

taking her in and letting her sleep somewhere in the house, they would have her sleep in the

dog house, outside. And would not allow her to go to school. Because if she went to school

she wouldn't have time to do the chores. And it wasn't just helping around the house, you

know, she almost became like, you know, the person who took care of everything. And it

was interesting that my mom didn't go to school because this woman would didn't you

know wouldn't allow her to go to school so she could do the chores, and this woman
happened to be the town's teacher. Right? And she ran the school or she ran the local

school and would not allow my mom to go to school. So my mom, when she got here, she

only had I think at best a third grade education. But she always wanted to have a

profession of some kind and so she looked into, what it's called a cosmetologist, beauty

culture or beautician. She studied and became that and opened up her own business and

that sort of thing. That didn't quite go as anticipated. I think it was open like a year and

then you know, she closed it down, but... Then she decided that what she actually wanted to

be was a teacher. And so only having a third grade education, she couldn't be a teacher.

She had to have at least high school at the time. And so she decided to go to Wells Evening

School. Wells School, Wells was a high school and then they had adult classes in the

evening. The GED was was an option, but she didn't want to go through a GED. You know,

the GED? (Yeah) Yeah, she didn't want to go through with a GED. She wanted to get a real

degree and go to classes and the whole bit. So after after, after work, she would go to

school, every evening, until she was able to pass the test and got her diploma, got her high

school diploma that way. And then she went into school to learn how to be a teacher and

became a teacher. And went out and started teaching. And so that has provided for me, you

know, like real life example of you know diligence and continuing forward. She, I would

say that she was very effective though, not very efficient, right? She would, if she had to to

get over here, she didn't know how to go from here to there, she would go around the

planet, but she would get there, right? And she did things in a way that weren't very

efficient, but they were certainly effective. And she got to teach and all of that sort of thing.

So at some point she met this woman, named Mrs. Weber, who was one of her clients,

because she was teaching she was teaching cosmetology. She was a teacher of beauty
culture, that sort of thing. And this woman, you know, because at the school, in order to

practice they would have the students actually work on clients and it would be a lot cheaper

for the clients... and you know, you burn her hair off or something like that. Well, you

know, that's that's par for the course but most of the time that didn't happen and that's

how she met my- Mrs. Weber met my mom. Mrs. Weber happened to be the head nurse at

a major hospital in Chicago. And she became part of the family as well, and her her

husband, who I always called Mr. Andy, and he was the German, and she had the name

Weber. And so I thought she was, you know, German, and it eventually it turned out when

she died that I went to the funeral, I said who's McGillicuddy? Her first name was Eleanor.

I said, I know Eleanor Weber, but whose Eleanor McGillicuddy? And then I found out she

was really Irish. So, different things happened, I you know, I then went to a school,another

Catholic school, that happened to be on the same block that... we moved from Sora's house,

Sora and Sam's house a block down to a house right on the corner. And on the first floor

they had a bar, Lisa's Tavern, and Lisa was you know working there. There's another one

of those hearty women who just, you know would attack anything. Not dainty at all. And

you know in retrospect, this wasn't that, you know, that far away from the second world

war. It was 20 years since the second World War or something like that. So it it was not

unusual to find a lot of people who were refugees from that war, they come to Chicago,

there is a lot of work to be had. If you're a hard worker you could, you know, make more

money than you could think of. It wasn't a hell of a lot of money, but it was more than you

imagined that you were going to be able to make... and so people would set up there. It was

a very white ethnic community and they would set up their own bars, their

own barbershops, their own bakeries. My first job was at the age of twelve, in Suffer's
Bakery the, German family that lived right next to this place where we moved in. And I

was in the back cleaning stuff, cleaning up the place. They had these huge vats that they

would make mixes and they would mix, you know cake batter or something known as

streisel, which I actually liked, but for some reason I must have been allergic to it because

as I started eating it my entire throat started itching and it's difficult to scratch inside your

throat. So um... what was I going to say? So at the age of twelve? They hired me there as a

Baker's assistant. And I did things like selling Christmas cards and made enough to buy a

bicycle and made- buy some of my own stuff, because you know, my mother didn't have all

that much money. I still remember, in the attic apartment, we got our first TV. We actually

had a TV in Puerto Rico. So we were like the first family on the block to get a TV. That was

interesting too because in those days TVs didn't weren't instant on. You would turn them

on, they had to warm up because they use tubes and he had to give it a while. And my

father didn't know that and he went to a furniture store and he bought this big looking TV

and nobody else had a TV. So everybody was invited over the night that we were going to

watch TV. And the whole neighborhood was there, some people were around outside

because they couldn't fit inside the house... And my father was always dressed in, you

know, in a in a suit, right? So he gets very proud in front of his TV, and he turns it on, the

click and he's waiting, nothing happens. He says looking around and he doesn't know what

the heck is going on. He starts getting nervous and at some point, I guess to save face, he

starts... he never used harsh language, but he would you know say like, stupid, you know,

and like piece of junk and blahblahblah. He'd started yelling at the TV, right, to save face,

you know, like I spend money on this thing and look I got a piece of junk and blah blah

blah. I will never in my life even buy.... what did he say? I will never even buy a button
from that place again and blah blah blah,you know, just, you know, going off to save face.

And the next day I went with him to the furniture place where he bought the TV and he's

yelling at the at the salesman who sold them the TV. And he says "this is a piece of junk

and you have no idea how embarrassed I was last night and all my friends in the entire

neighborhood was there in this piece of junk didn't work". And he said, "well, let's look".

So the salesman turns it on. He says, "see nothing happens", he says "You have to wait for

it to warm up"." Oh, okay how long?" He says, about three minutes or something like that.

You know, just it's not instant on right? And so after about three three-and-a-half minutes,

whatever it turned out to be, the thing came on and is working perfectly. And my father

kind of put his tail between his legs and he walked away and he did he did it over again and

he explained to people that you know, he wasn't quite understanding how the thing worked

and and then you know people would be over all the time because I was the only TV for a

while. But guide me, 'cause again, I'm going to go off all kinds of places.

[01:24:22] It's no problem, just looking at my time... Um. When did you start, or do you consider

yourself an American or...?

Well, that's an interesting question because you may not expect the answer. Um yes I've

always been an American. In Latin America we are Americans right (Ah, right)? You know

where I'm going [Mutual laugh] right? And the United States has usurped the name

American and there's a lot of people who have already kind of given up on that but some of

us still... I know we are American. And I remember one time when I went to Columbia, not

that long ago, when I went to see the woman who became my wife, and somebody put on

my Visa, oh did I need a Visa? No I didn't need a visa but some document that I need it. Oh
because to travel with my son, they don't allow you to take a minor out of the country

unless the minor is accompanied by both parents or one parent and a legal permission from

the other parent and so forth. Somebody had put on that legal permission that I was an

American citizen. And the woman says, you can't get, you can't leave here with your son. I

said why not? So she says, it says you're an American citizen. There is no such thing. We're

all Americans. All right? and I said lady, you know, oh, you're a woman after my own

heart. I believe that, I'd.... that's that's what I, you know, always say, so please let me go by.

No, I can't do that, right? You've got the wrong paperwork, that says it that you're an

American citizen. There's no such thing right? Bababababa. And I go, please lady I beg,

you I gotta go, I'm gonna miss the plane whatever. And she didn't, so we had to rush to

another... See, in Latin America, notary publics have to be lawyers first. It's not like here,

that anybody pays whatever it is, 50 bucks and they get a stamp and they charge you a

buck or five bucks or whatever and they notarize something. In Latin America, only

lawyers can become notary publics. So we had to go to a lawyer. We had to find a lawyer,

we had, to you know, tell him what happened and do the paperwork all over again. And

here I'm rushing against a clock and he finally did it and we're rushing back to this place

where we needed this other document and finally got it, but it was all because somebody

said that it was an American citizen and there is no such thing as American citizenship.

There's Colombian citizenship, there's U.S citizenship, Canadian, right? And the lady just

simply would not let it, you know, go. So yes, I, I've always been an American and I'm not

from the United States and I don't feel like I'm from the United States per say. And in some

ways, I can say that I've never gone to the United States. The United States came to us,

right, and took us over and are still holding us, you know, there against our will. We were
in autonomous nation when the United States took us over. And the U.S had no right to ask

for us. We had nothing to do with the so-called Spanish-American War. We weren't part of

that. And Spain had no right to give away what a nation that they had already declared

autonomous. But U.S asked, and Spain was weak at the time and they capitulated and gave

us over and that was the legality the U.S needed to say that we were now property of the

United States. And we're still property, you know, after a hundred twenty-five years now,

we're still property of the United States. We're not a state. We're not a you know, they

would call an unincorporated territory. But all that means is property. I consider Puerto

Rico not a territory of the United States nor a part of the United States. I consider it a

possession of the United States the same way as if I took your your phone right now, it is

your phone but it's in my possession, right (Right)? So I still consider Puerto Rico, you

know belongs to Puerto Ricans.

[01:29:00] And what do you think that that status, that relationship with the US will be going

with in like the next generations?

It's interesting because so many things, so many dynamics are taking place right now. On

the one hand, this is the time in which nationalism has risen most because of the treatment

that the U.S has given it, as you know, mostly because of this debt, which is another story in

and of itself. That debt was not created by Puerto Ricans. These were the vulture funds

that would not have been allowed in the United States to do what they did in Puerto Rico.

But because Puerto Rico did not fall under those rules, they were out there with a

vengeance and it's obvious that they didn't care if the country went bankrupt and they

knew that the probability was the country was going to go bankrupt because the way it was
structured... the people who sold all of this junk bonds and whatever else, got a commission

one way or the other. So if I sell you something, I get the commission and maybe it turns

into, into garbage two hours after I sell it to you, I still got my commission. my commission

doesn't go back. So I'm out there just to sell as much of this as possible and understanding

that that whole thing is going to collapse. And the other reason, well many reasons for the

debt is that the United States had set up in the early 60s, they had set up this, what they call

the 936 law, 936, which allowed US corporations to move to Puerto Rico tax-free, right?

So... And they, in the Puerto Rican government, in order to create more incentive, would

build roads to their plants to their factories, whatever they built, build the roads electricity

bring in the electricity, all of this and there was absolutely no no tax money that was made

by the Puerto Rican government. The idea was that because they're going to provide work

for the locals, then... It is that that that new working forces purchasing power that'll make

the system dynamic, make the economy more dynamic, and it worked for a while right?

There was there was some to get by that, but then the United States, because it can do

anything it wants, it just took it away. And so here Puerto Rico had built these roads and

you know, people had gotten all these cars and these houses and whatever else, and then

suddenly when when when that 936 is taken away, there's nothing there. There's no

incentive for the US corporations to stay, right? And so they all just packed up and left and

here you're left hanging in the wind. And so governor's came one after the other and in

order to... they did kind of like what Reagan did, except Reagan got away with it. Under

Reagan, The US was essentially broke. And so what Reagan did was pull out the credit

cards. You know, like a father who loses his job and doesn't want the family to know that

he's unemployed and he keeps up the standard of living by using credit cards. At some
point you got this mountain of debt that you cannot pay and essentially that's what

happened in Puerto Rico. You got governor after governor borrowing more and more to

keep up the illusion of the standard of living. And it came crashing down. So a lot of that

debt was it, was illegal. It should not have been allowed even even under US law, in this

possession of the US, it would have been illegal, but it was allowed. So now a lot of people

are saying, you know, that was a illegal debt in the first place and whoever, you know, took

it, is the one who should be responsible. Not the the, not the people. Not the, not the

country. And same thing with all of these other vulture funds and whatever and the people

who hold the, you know, the mortgages and the bonds and whatever else... They don't want

to lose any money whatsoever. And so it's what has been called, they want to privatize the

the profits and make public the debts. So they want the Puerto Rican public to to pay them

back a hundred percent. They say ah, "a wait a minute? You don't understand capitalism.

Right capitalism is like a like a casino, right? And you have to be you have to be willing to

you have to be willing to lose because that's why you win best". And so this didn't go. Well

you have to be willing to take your losses, but they don't want to take any losses and they're

forcing the Puerto Rican people to pay everything, and this was never an investment. It was

a guarantee as far as I see and so that's why Puerto Rico is closing down schools. It's

doesn't have to be able repair the grid, you know the electric grid. The roads, all of these

other kinds of things are in disrepair. The health services, hospitals, are closing left and

right. Medical doctors aren't being paid, so they're leaving. And as a matter of fact, I

understand that for the entire country now, there are two pathologist dealing with dead

bodies. Imagine if there were only two Pathologists in Connecticut. It's about the same size

and it has about the same population. All right it is it is a real good comparison. And that's
why it's all backed up and you got these people that are rotting away in refrigerators. And

as ah... Sometimes the electricity goes, so they literally are running away and legally, they

can't just bury them until they do some autopsy or whatever, all kinds of other things like

that. So it is really a horror. So because of that, I think a lot of people are waking up and

realizing that even though you call Puerto Rico a commonwealth, that it is nothing more

than a possession held by a colonial power, that will, you know, that they can do whatever

they please to. You know like if you, if you own a car, you can beat the heck out of that car

or you can throw it over a cliff. You can do whatever you want with it. And that's what's

happening with Puerto Rico. So a lot of people are waking up to that, but at the same time

what's happening is that a lot of those people that are waking up to that are leaving, right?

And so the people being left behind of those that you know are aren't able to leave for

whatever reason. The elderly and the you know the poor. And so, what can they do? On the

other hand, even before the ah, these crises, the hurricanes and so forth, the United States

has for a long time been trying to replace the population of Puerto Rico, because one of the

reasons why Puerto Rico will not be an incorporated territory like Hawaii or Alaska, that

there were incorporated territory because they were destined to be ah, states at some point

and you know, they were able to outnumber the population of Hawaii. That wasn't very

difficult, and in Alaska, you know native populations are spread all over the place and they

also outnumber them by whites from the from the mainland. And ah...So they eventually,

when they became culturally digestible enough, they became states. In Puerto Rico, they

have not been able to do that. And Puerto Rico has gone through all kinds of things, from...

All kinds of experiments have been done in Puerto Rico, on women, sterilization without

their knowledge. A woman would come in for a toe ache and the doctor would take care of
her toe and then say Oh, by the way, why don't you take one of these or in the meantime,

he would tie her tubes, he says oh we need to look over here and tie the tubes. And the

woman had no consent and they didn't know that they were, you know, they were being

sterilized. Or they just cut the tubes because that's permanent. If you tie the tubes

somebody can figure out a way of untying them, but if you just cut them, fallopian tubes.

Ah ah... About a quarter of all Puerto Rican women were sterilized that way, and then

Puerto Rican women were the first to try out, as guinea pigs without them knowing it, the

birth control pill. Right... before Pincus and Rock, two ah pharmaceuticals, came into

Puerto Rico. And you can read this in a book titled the Pill by Robert Christner or

something like that, and which it, you know, they say that they chose Puerto Rico to do the

experiment on women, because they wanted to know if simple-minded women could... if

this instructions were were easy enough that even simple minded women could follow them,

to take the pill. And they had no idea what an adult human female, what dosage was

appropriate. They knew what an adult female mouse needed or a female rat, but they had

no notion of what a human being needed and so a lot of the initial doses, were incredibly

high and it sterilized the women and it did all kinds of other... created all kinds of havoc for

them. And, so, you know, the the same thing that was done with the Tuskegee men that

were injected with with syphilis was done in Puerto Rico as well. There was this one

notorious doctor who called Puerto Ricans the biggest vermin on the face of the Earth, that

the only thing good for them was to be destroyed and I am doing my part, I have already

killed 25 of them in my laboratories with these experiments and that and nothing happened

to this guy, as a matter of fact, he then gets invited to participate in all kinds of projects,

and when he eventually died, he died in high regards. Right, and you know that letter and
all kinds of other evidence was was public knowledge. It wasn't like this guy was flying

under the radar. So Puerto Rico has been used under those those kinds but then again a lot

of the people who could stay behind and be the pro-independence people are the ones who

are leaving. Some are staying behind. But going back to US trying to replace the Puerto

Rican population, because the only problem with Puerto Rico is too many Puerto Ricans, I

think that's one of the reasons why they also gave up the Philippines even though they kept

them as a neo colony like they did Cuba until 1959, when Fidel Castro took over. But ah,

one of the latest things was to start building in the midst of all of this economic hardship.

They started building multi-million dollar condos to attract people from the United States.

Obviously, you're not going to be attracting, you know, a lot of Latinos and a lot of blacks

and other minorities, right, who don't have that kind of money. And ah, they had to

promise to reside in Puerto Rico and what that meant was they had to be at least six

months... ah six months out of the year in Puerto Rico. They could come and go as of will

and they would count in one form or another. And then they made it easy for certain

corporations to come in. That's why a lot of people who have these, you know, internet

firms and stuff. they go down to Puerto Rico and get all kinds of tax exemptions and

whatever else by saying they reside there and, if they if they keep their computer behind,

they can go to Timbuktu and still claim, you know, to reside in Puerto Rico. And so in that

way they're replacing the population, because at the same time that they're bringing anglos

in, the Puerto Ricans are leaving in droves. More than half a million have already left, and

it's closing in on a million. Actually. It's closing in on a million already, because before all

of this, the population of Puerto Rico had already reached over 4 million. And right now

what they're saying is for is 3.4. So even if that's true, that's at least 6/10 of a of a million
plus the I think it was like four point two, so that's like eight tenths of a million. That's a lot

of people. And that 3.4 has been stuck for a while and people are still leaving so they

haven't changed that number. I wouldn't be surprised if at least a million have left. And

Puerto Rico has mines, mine minerals and since the 1970s, they've been trying, the US has

been trying to exploit those mines. They happen to be in the center of the country. And ah,

what they were going to do in the 70s was exploit them with what is known as open pit

mining. In other words. You just blow the hell out of everything, take the malobanium,

take the copper, take whatever it is, and then just leave everything devastated. You leave

this huge cut, this huge of blister down the middle of a beautiful island. And that was one of

the few times in which I saw Puerto Ricans getting together regardless of whatever political

tendency they had. whether they were pro-independence, pro-statehood, pro-

commonwealth, and they got together over the the minefields that were to be exploited and

they said over our dead bodies you're going to exploit these. And the federal government

pulled back and kind of cut Corporation American Metal Climates who were the, two of

the companies who were going to be doing that, they pulled back. And I guess they just

we're just waiting for people to forget about it and people have forgotten about it. And now

after the hurricanes, one of the things that happened was that, you know, a lot of places in

Puerto Rico have gone more than a year without electricity and most of those places were

in the middle of the mountains. And yes, you could claim that it's difficult to get cables up

there and so forth, but yeah, you can do solar and you know, Hawaii has mountains other

places have mountains, West Virginia has mountains, the Rockies have mountains, and

they're able to get, you know, all the electricity and maintain it and so forth. So, but the

idea is that if the people in the center of the country don't have electricity or running water
because if you don't have electricity, you don't have running water, right? Because the

pumps, you need the pumps to pump the water and that sort of thing, they will leave and

often times just abandon their land. And these corporations can come in and take it over.

So it's at this point. It's up in the air. It's very dynamic and it could turn towards

statehood- toward independence. A lot of people now are saying, you know independence is

not reality, so we must be equal like everybody else, let's go to statehood. TThe United

States isn't going to get Puerto Rico state, right? As long as you got so many Puerto Ricans.

As a friend of mine who died, he was a political analyst in Puerto Rico, probably the most

respected and believed, he had like 85% public approval rate. He used to say... Are you are

you crazy, the United States is going to give three and a half million mulatto, Spanish-

speaking, poor, statehood? That's three strikes. And in this country three strikes and

you're out, right? So what's going to happen? Well, I think you know, something's got to be

done in Puerto Rico itself to hold back, you know, the the trend of getting so many non

Puerto Ricans into the country because they'll just try to Hawaiianize it or Alaskanize it or

any of the other territories that the US came up. The only one of those territories, you

know, like, Texas and New Mexico and Arizona and whatever that they took from Mexico.

They took half of Mexico. The only one that still is majority and I say that carefully,

majority Latino is, New Mexico. It's like 52, 53 percent people of Mexican descent, but

they're no longer Mexican, right, and they have blended in and that was kind of like the

way it was. So, all the other territories they outdid, outnumbered, the local population in

order to be one culturally digestible and then turned it into a state. So as long as Puerto

Rico has, you know, three and a half million or so that's not going to happen. And as people

start leaving and leaving. Yeah little by little. Because in Hawaii, it is not the Hawaiians
who are in control. Some people claim to have some Hawaiian heritage right? There was a

movie made a couple years ago as a matter of fact and what's his name famous actor, white

actor, plays one of these families and he claims, but you look at him and the only thing

Hawaiian about him, the character in that, in that story, is that you know they claim, you

know, great great great grandparents, which means that he has maybe one or two percent.

Once you get to all these great generations, the percentage keeps dropping and dropping

and dropping.

[Due to the recommended 90 min length of the interview and personal obligations of the

narrator for the rest of the day, it was decided that the interview would be concluded following

the previous dialogue.]