On vacation so you’re able to Ponce to go to a refreshing cousin’s marriage, Vicente matches the brand new lovely younger Valentina
Vera’s swinging novel — their unique 2nd immediately after Easily Bring you Flowers — examines the forces you to definitely provided you to definitely relatives to exit the precious homeland and you may choose another type of come from a not known and you will unwelcoming property
Marisel Vera stands out a light towards a tiny-identified aspect of You.S. background on Taste Regarding Glucose. At turn of one’s 20th century, many people regarding the recently acquired territory out of Puerto Rico moved halfway international to operate toward sugarcane ranches into the Hawaii.
To understand as to the reasons Vicente Vega, their partner Valentina and you may Vicente’s 1 / 2 of-cousin Raulito improve demanding go Hawaii, Vera (who is out of Puerto Rican tradition) earliest transforms the newest time clock back into the fresh middle-19th century, when the Spanish nevertheless ruled along the Caribbean area. Thraldom stays courtroom (it might perhaps not prevent up to 1873), and you can high poverty try general. Even with abolition, many for the island are not any better than serfs, lifestyle “la vida de- perro.” (Spanish was interwoven about text message.) Alternatively, Vicente’s father was a gently well-off owner regarding a coffees plantation in the mountainous area for Utuado. However the family members’ fortunes refuse usually. By the point Vicente develops so you can penis, he or she is modest growers, although he’s best off compared to the peones just who “are happy when they consume once a day.”
The smitten girl “waiting having relationship and thrill” offers upwards her intimate hopes for Paris to a beneficial de casa” on farm is absolutely nothing including becoming a homemaker from inside the Ponce. Nonetheless, she vows so you’re able to “invest herself so you’re able to their members of the family and place aside all the childish aspirations,” while the she produces from inside the a letter to their unique aunt Elena immediately after her relationship. The existence, even if hard, isn’t in the place of their delights. Some thing alter if You.S. ousts this new Foreign language inside 1898. When Hurricane Ciriaco attacks a year later, the new emergency was astounding. Brand new useless Western approach to handling the crisis try depressingly similar towards bungled response to Hurricane Maria more a good century afterwards.
Who’s really in charge regarding the territory is obvious when you look at the a quick world that occurs immediately after Raulito is sentenced attractive San Francisco, CA girls to 3 several years of tough work getting a minor crime
Vicente, Valentina and Raulito create a wrenching decision to leave Puerto Rico behind and find a much better lifestyle someplace else. Nevertheless the Hawaiian Glucose Planters’ Association’s promises to the fresh new puertorriquenos confirm empty. In the place of ped shanties. Wages was paid-in scrip as opposed to bucks. The newest colleges these people were advised their youngsters you can expect to sit-in dont exists. It is a familiar yet devastating tale away from exploitation, while the Puerto Ricans come across they will have replaced you to bleak disease getting another type of that is for some reason even worse, in which probably the brief conveniences out-of house had been stripped out.
Vera’s well-researched publication is an invaluable tutorial inside the Puerto Rican record and you may an eye-starting glance at the ugly fact trailing brand new U.S.is the reason usually missed background since the a good colonial fuel. Which story interrogates the brand new surprising connectivity between a couple of outposts of your own nation’s imperial empire. Hawaii’s individual complex reputation for colonization is not explored in the same detail by detail means as it is Puerto Rico’s, but we become a feeling of the brand new different forces at your workplace about Polynesian archipelago. Gurus for example Valentina and Vicente live-in shacks once occupied of the Portuguese sugarcane pros and you can work near to Japanese immigrants, just who it take a look at which have uncertainty. The fresh sheriff pours this new courtroom in case a category regarding pineapple juice “provided for your especially by the their friend Dole, the master of the greatest pineapple plantation in every out of Their state.”
But Vera provides an over requisite restorative to help you background. The publication is also the storyline out-of an early on woman’s losings of innocence, just like the Valentina reduced sheds her girlish naivete, and you will a succession from tragedies and you will hardships hone their on the an excellent harder, faster psychological individual. And there’s a genuine and you can tragic sense of losses certainly the fresh immigrants when they arrive in The state. “We skip Puerto Rico and you can Ponce…as well as the new mountain within the Utuado,” Valentina writes from inside the a letter to their unique sister, just who this lady has not viewed while the she try ents he often “never tune in to coquis once again” prior to informing themselves one to “it actually was absurd to shout more frogs.”