United States of Latinx- WI

United States of Latinx is an ongoing series of interviews with everyday Latinxs that are creating change in their communities and who are adding their own twist to what it means to be Latinx in the U.S. by providing a profile of their interest area and highlighting the vast experiences that give us orgullo Latinx.

Our second stop on the “tour” is Wisconsin. Enjoy…

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Ariela Rosa

Motherland: Puerto Rico y Costa Rica

Area: Genealogy

Ariela Rosa is a grant writer by day — -a profession she affectionately describes as part jack of all trades, part superhero, and part professional nagger. When she isn’t saving the world one deadline at a time, you can find her watching YouTube, listening to podcasts, taking free classes at her local library, trying desperately to learn Spanish, hanging out with her blind cat, and/or eating good food with her husband. But what brought us together was her expert-like talent for solving genealogical mysteries. With DNA testing from common sites like Ancestry and 23andMe, who you are and where you’re from are two questions many people are beginning to explore with nothing more than their own saliva. For Ariela though, building her genealogical tree means reconnecting to her culture, learning her native language, and embracing her roots, all on the La Isla del Encanto — Puerto Rico.

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Ariela: In 1960 my grandma immigrated from Costa Rica. She never communicated with me in Spanish and didn’t tell me anything about where she was from. Her family does not speak English so it was really hard for me to figure out information but I tried and got some ancestral names. They wouldn’t tell me who her father was other than he was a bad man. His mother was rumored to be indigenous. I didn’t know who he was, and unfortunately DNA has not helped me figure it out. I’ve found out things about my grandmother’s mother’s side as early as the 1600’s. Apparently one of her ancestors from back then was a captain. I found records of him and his family making financial deals and marriage deals with people who had wealth and power and who also had slaves. So he was probably a slaveholder too. By the time I found this out, I had already spent two years researching my Puerto Rican side and felt more connected to my black ancestors. I was disappointed and stopped researching this line.

Antonio de Jesus Lumbano Echegaray, Ariela’s 1st cousin 4 times removed. Antonio was part of a group of 70 teachers who donated their own money in 1911 to found the Teacher’s Association of Puerto Rico. The group is dedicated to promoting and protecting public, secular education.

JG: When did you start working on your family genealogy? What prompted it?

AR: I have like 600 answers so I’ll try to be succinct. I had at least three big reasons. The first was that my family was not very talkative growing up. My mom was born in Puerto Rico and she and her parent’s generation were the first wave of our family to come to the mainland. Before that, we had no family in New York, but we also didn’t really go back to Puerto Rico, so to me, PR was just this mystical place over there. My dad was born in New York but his family also lived in Puerto Rico and Costa Rica. He had been established a little longer but his family was just out there in the world and I didn’t know where. When I would ask questions about the family, the response I usually got was something like “this has nothing to do with you.” The implication was that it was their family, not mine, so it was none of my business. And I would be thinking “no this is my family too!”

The second reason is that I didn’t feel culturally grounded. I did not grow up speaking Spanish. For my parents, it was shameful to speak Spanish in the U.S. so they avoided teaching it to the kids to avoid any embarrassment. So I had no language, no culture, I’d never been to these mystical places like Puerto Rico but I wanted to get to know it. So that was them, they were Puerto Rican and then there’s me, the “American.” That’s what sparked my interest in our history initially. I’m also very racially mixed and I’m ambiguous looking. Puerto Rican is the last thing someone would guess I was. If they did guess, usually it was, “Are you Greek? Italian? Egyptian? Dominican?” It was so bizarre and I wanted people to stop asking me these random questions. So I wanted to be more grounded and start searching for where I really belonged.

The third reason is that I wanted to know more about my mom’s older sister. My mom had a sister in Puerto Rico and sometime between Christmas and Three Kings day she had died of serious injuries when a drunk driver hit her. It was very traumatic for my mother. Mom was around 3 years old when they were walking hand in hand and the car swerved and barely missed my mom but it took off with her sister. Not too long after that it, it set off a chain of events that would make my family so different. When I would ask about her, my mom would say she didn’t remember. I, on the other hand, was curious about her, especially because the family always said I looked so much like her that I must be her reincarnation, so it was just stuck in the back of my head. Then one day when I reconnected with an aunt I figured I could just ask her about it. And when I did she told me that the sister’s name was Marianela. So, I put the name in ancestry.com and then forgot about it. Then randomly, Ancestry kept sending me notifications teasing me about finding a death certificate. So I paid the money and logged back on and it it was her! I found out the day she died, her injuries, and that the death was reported by her uncle. I figured I would start with him and go from there and eventually it went from a tree of few people to about 2000.

JG: What was most surprising to you that you’ve found out so far?

AR: Two things: one is small. I happen to be connected genetically to a lot of famous Puerto Ricans. I want to write about it more but anyways there’s this guy named Rafael Cortijo who had a group called Cortijo y Su Combo and this is a 50s or 60s bomba y plena band with lots of members and he played the congas. They’re this huge group doing this awesome music and I’m connected to Rafael in at least four ways that I figured out by both blood and marriage. There’s also the author Cesáreo Rosa Nieves who is my grandfather’s cousin and he is like this prolific writer, but I don’t know the language so I can’t read any of his books.

Cesareo Rosa Nieves, an important Puerto Rican poet, playwright, scholar, literary critic, and teacher. Also, Ariela’s 1st cousin 3 times removed.

The other surprise is, to me, a much bigger deal than any of that stuff though. Fun facts to real serious stuff: we all know there is a strong Black history in Puerto Rico that has been suppressed. I was reading recently an article that my family was posting about not being ashamed to talk with a Puerto Rican accent because it’s part of our culture and that the way we pronounce things apparently comes from different regions of Spain. But Africans were here and they had a lot to do with that too but we don’t talk about it! My mom and dad are Afro-Latino. I think he identifies as white but I found it — -there was slavery in his family. We don’t credit enough what Black people did in Puerto Rico. My history could be a little off, but imagine: It’s the 16–1700’s and Puerto Rico is struggling as a port place. People just stop for supplies and move on to “more important” colonies. So they aren’t doing well but Spain needs to keep it populated. Spain eventually realizes that there are all these islands next door, colonized by enemy countries, with Africans who want to escape slavery and live a new life so they put out this notice to recruit slaves wanting to escape. It pretty much says you can come to Puerto Rico and you can live here as a free person as long as you serve in the military. So people come all the way from the Virgin Islands and other places to Puerto Rico to defend it and live freely. Puerto Rico would not exist without this influx — they built San Juan. The surprise is that I’m connected to that history.

On my mom’s side, my 7x Great Grandfather — his name Josef Phelipe Verdejo. I can’t find any information on this guy except in his children’s records where he is named. There are no baptism or death records. One of his sons, my 6x great-grandfather, married the daughter of the captain of the black regiment, though my ancestors were not the product of this marriage. I believe members of Josef’s family also served in the military, and I’m pretty sure he escaped from somewhere and came to Puerto Rico and built his life here, especially because every time I find a Verdejo I can trace their lineage back to this one dude. What gets me is that there is all this history that people have pride in, like “hey my ancestor was part of the Revolutionary War” or whatever, and for being such a major part of Puerto Rico’s history, I didn’t know about it and there’s no pride. My mom’s last name is Escalera; she told me once that everyone with the last name Escalera in PR is related to each other, and that our common ancestor must have been running from something and made up a last name when he landed on the island. Well, she was right: Escalera is one of several last names (like Verdejo, Andrade, Cortijo, Paris, and dozens of others) that I found were connected to the history of Blackness, slavery and *escape* on the island.

Another surprise: so slaves were baptized! I don’t know how common it was in other places, but I expected to hit a wall once got to slave ancestors. I have hit a wall in some cases. But then I have also seen birth and death records that say so-and-so was from Africa, or their mother was from Africa, or they were from *this place* in Africa, which gives me hope that I can find more information one day that will take me beyond those walls. I didn’t expect that–such a terrible institution that denied so many of personhood and yet these priests had the foresight to document Africans, to put their name in the official register like they did with *everyone*, slave or free…

In the 17th and 18th centuries, the Spanish offered freedom to any escaped slaves from neighboring islands colonized by other countries as long as the escaped served in the militia. Though she cannot find a definitive paper trail, Ariela believes based on circumstance evidence that her 7x great grandfather Josef Phelipe Verdejo (born in the early 1700s) may have escaped slavery elsewhere and landed in Puerto Rico. He and his wife were free, as were all their descendants.

JG: You’re originally from New York. Do you have a connection to New York City? Has research helped you connect more with it?

AR: Absolutely I’m from New York! Always. Wisconsin is a stop along the way and I will always say I’m from New York. My research made me think more about who I am really. Growing up I was always told I’m not Puerto Rican. “You never been to the island.” “You don’t speak the language.” “You are black.” Now I have the history to say “Yes, I am super fucking Puerto Rican.” I used to question my identity — but, I’m Puerto Rican A.F.

Interestingly, last year the Latin and Spanish American film festival at Lawrence University screened a Puerto Rican film for the first time. As far as I know, Puerto Rican film is undergoing a cultural renaissance right now. Puerto Rico has this phrase “Antes Que Cante El Gallo,” which is used to describe when a woman first gets her period, but it was also the name of the film they showed. When I heard about it, I had to go — -it was Puerto Rico in Wisconsin! I’m glad I did because the director is married to the woman who wrote it (Keisha Tikina Burgos Sierra) and she’s my cousin. I didn’t remember until I saw him, but he had been to my house before and I just hadn’t known who he was, and then I was like “Yo it’s you, how you been?” During the Q&A he talked more about the diaspora, specifically the tension between people on the mainland and people on the island. He was saying: There are more people in the diaspora than there are on the island and if we want to make changes, then we need the diaspora. Those living in the mainland have voting rights and can make changes that the island can’t. He kept saying we have to engage our family and make them feel like they are really part of this. “You are one of us!” To have someone from the island say no no no you’re our family, come back, that was huge! It had a profound effect on me: “Come back, you are Puerto Rican.”

JG: Does Wisconsin play a role in your family history? What has your experience been like?

AR: Not at all, hehe. Wisconsin is fine. The positive thing is that I’m building a life here and career. Having a life that I couldn’t have back home. Also, it has been a really big influence in claiming my identity because when you are the only Puerto Rican, or I guess there’s like three of us, you constantly feel there is this pushback on who you are. This was the first state where I was asked if I was a citizen. I had never been asked that before. It made me want to cling tighter to my ethnicity if that makes sense. Anyways, my own family history here starts and ends with me.

JG: Is there anything now that you are doing to archive your records or history?

AR: My family is not really interested so there isn’t anyone to really pass it onto. But my Ancestry tree is saved in a way so that my family wouldn’t need the subscription to see it. Other than that, if anyone wanted to see it, I keep a blog, but it’s very scarce. I get nervous writing about it because I can’t write about the family without writing at least a little about the history of the island. I’m not a historical expert and some of the history is locked away from me. Other times, the history isn’t even recorded well. I was reading articles in old PR newspapers, like 1800s, about a war between Spain and Morocco, a land grab, and they published the names of people donating to the war efforts. Funny enough some of them were Verdejos. When I saw that I was like fuck, thanks for that guys. Anyway, when you research this war it doesn’t say anything about how it was funded, so even when I read history there are these things that are left out, there are gaps in information. And those gaps and the language barrier make it hard to write about my family in a coherent way. For generations, my family were poor farmers, laborers; they weren’t “educated” people so it’s not like they left diaries about their lives. That means I have to use history to figure out what things would have been like, why they would have made certain decisions. Otherwise, the blog would mostly just be “I think they were born around this time, they died at this time, they had this many kids.” And that would be it. But then I don’t want to have any authority over how the history gets written because I know I’m ignorant to that history, and really it’s just me exploring. Yes, I’m aware I take myself much more seriously than I probably should.

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Editor’s note: The Spanish relinquished Puerto Rico to the United States after losing the Spanish-American War in 1898. This happened just as Puerto Rico was fighting fiercely for independence from Spain. Puerto Rico is now a commonwealth of the U.S., and since 1917 anyone born on the island is automatically a U.S. citizen. However, the island does not have any federal voting rights, which means that Puerto Ricans often do not have a say in their own destiny. Puerto Ricans living in a U.S. state can automatically vote in presidential and other elections. Though dynamics between a homeland and its diaspora are often complex, part of the tension between the Puerto Rican diaspora and the island comes from perceptions of the United States as a colonizer and Puerto Ricans born on the mainland as having adopted the customs and language of an oppressor.

Note: According to research from 2014, conducted by the Pew Research Center, Hispanics/Latinxs make up 6% of Wisconsin’s population and according to the Wisconsin Historical Society Puerto Ricans had settled in Milwaukee, WI following WWII and by 1953, there were more than 2,500 Puerto Ricans, many of which worked as agricultural laborers. Today, Puerto Ricans make up 23% of Milwaukee’s Latinx population.

FOLLOW Ariela’s Blog: https://spokendragonfly.wordpress.com/

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If you’d like to support my writing and work, feel free to do so by making a charitable donation to any of the platforms below:

Cashapp: $SimplyAwwchumm

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