The Puerto Rican Diáspora
by Don Jibaro
he term diaspora (in Greek, διασπορά – "a scattering") refers to the movement of any population sharing common ethnic identity who were either forced to leave or voluntarily left their settled territory, and became residents in areas often far removed from the former. It is converse to the nomadic culture. Its cultural re-establishment often assumes a different course from that of the population in the original place of settlement. Traditions and other factors affect behavior between remotely separated communities. The hardest cultural affiliation in a diaspora is in community resistance to language change and religious practice.

As part of the Puerto Rican Diáspora, we take our "puertoricanism" deep seriously to heart. That's good. Our rich cultural traditions dominate the essence of our thinking... a cuatro... el colmao... pasteles... La Plaza del Recreo...!!! Ah... the countryside (el campo) .We can't help but to think of "pasteles" and maybe a cup of "mavi" in the back of our minds.

Some time ago, I was playing guitar in a restaurant in Los Angeles, where I met an intelligent young Puerto Rican man who, was we sipped some espressos, told me about his struggles with the duality of the ethnicity of Puerto Ricans in the United States. By the inflections of his speech, I understood that to be what you appear to be and what you really are two different things. From then on, I kept seeing the phenomenon of identity in the Boricuas in the USA as a necessity to express that identity.

Before the advent of air traffic at the turn of the 20th century, all distances, pit stops and routes were calculated according to what sea ships could travel.

Like other ethnic groups, as immigrants into the U.S.A., we rely on that identity to establish our position in today's society. It's vital for us to accept it, since the world urges us to recognize ourselves as it recognizes our citizenship, not as we really are or anything else.

The many misconceptions, battles with stereotypes and individual struggles have made it essential for me to build this website, Jíbaros.Com. The majority of my readers are, evidently enough, outside of Puerto Rico... the greatest of them are in the United States. That's why most of the data is in English with Spanish flavor rather than vice-versa.

Concerning the people involved in making this site, it's just me, Don Jíbaro, one person doing all the work from a small corner of my house. I intend, however, to train one of my children to learn the pandemonium of HTML and JAVA and continue the tradition, because I believe that I have hit something important here, something that must be declared.

As Puerto Ricans, we've inherited a life with so much spice, flavor and wonderful color that many times it gets shadowed by our need to survive within today's society. The human race beckons: "We gotta work harder to stay afloat." Because of this, many times we forget to stop and taste the "mavi".

So, this for you to be transported to a "virtual" Borinquen... to tell the world that Puerto Rico and its people are not boring. That we are happy, creative and sharp folk and have more than meets the eye.

¿Do you want to try? Go ahead to the Coqui page, put your subwoofer on the window facing out... crank your volume up, turn the lights off and go and sit outside to look at the stars. Then come back and tell me if you didn't get transported to Puerto Rico.