I returned the book Fantasy Island: Colonialism, Exploitation, and the Betrayal of Puerto Rico by Ed Morales.
I got to the part where in the same breath that he says Pedro Albizo Campos inspired him to embrace his Afro-Latinidad, that Pedro being jailed made him "out of touch" with Puerto Ricans. I cannot get passed that. I cannot get passed this guy referring to Pedro, the father of the Independence movement, who the US irradiated and experimented on and stalked as simply "out of touch". Nope. Nuh-uh. You're book is returned.
And I do not think I can take anyone seriously for recommending it.
Writing Latin@ New York, a new series by the Wolfe Institute for the Humanities, presents Latino Core Communities in Transition: The Erasing of an Imaginary Nation by journalist Ed Morales on Monday, March 30, 2015 from 2:15 to 3:30 p.m. in the Woody Tanger Auditorium, Brooklyn College Library.
In Puerto Rico, the political discourse is dictated by a female puppet called La Comay
La Comay: Puerto Rico’s biggest gossip-journalist unearths political scandals and murder mysteries.
By ED MORALES
It’s about 6:30 in the evening in Puerto Rico and chances are a huge percentage of television viewers are tuned into Super Xclusivo, the island commonwealth’s highest-rated show, to watch a Miss Piggy-like puppet—voiced by a middle-aged man—give them the latest news.
La Comay (slang for comadre) is holding court as usual with her sidekick, Cuban comedian and producer Héctor Travieso, raging on about the latest unsolved crime she has taken up as a crusade, the murder of marketing executive Carmen Paredes Cintrón. It has been a week and a half since the island’s Department of Justice had declared her husband, Pablo Casellas, as a suspect, but the process was moving too slow for La Comay.
“¡Que bochinche!” she shouts her viral catchphrase, announcing a new round of juicy gossip.
The bizarre puppet orders a video clip played featuring leading radio host Luis Francisco Ojeda badgering an ex-DOJ special prosecutor. “This is a marionette that is doing what the Puerto Rico police won’t do,” insists Ojeda, and his guest agrees. “I think I could do a better job than Somoza!” she cackles, referring to Puerto Rico’s Attorney General Guillermo Somoza Colombani. The sound of a phone ringing is heard, and La Comay, wearing a shimmering black and silver checkered dress, turns to Travieso. “If that’s [Puerto Rico Governor] Fortuño calling, tell him I accept the job of attorney general!” Then she pauses, playfully putting her puppet hand to her puppet lips. “Has there ever been a female attorney general?”
La Comay, voiced by a once struggling comedian named Antulio “Kobbo” Santarrosa, is at the epicenter of a strange conjuncture between entertainment gossip, tabloid journalism, and what some might consider investigative reporting. Her show, which could be described as a cross between TMZ and 60 Minutes, has become a kind of town hall for the small-town culture that permeates the island, with La Comay playing the old lady of the barrio, chief gossip and guardian of the truth. “Santarrosa has used some very specific elements of Puerto Rican culture and exploits them,” said Sandra Rodríguez-Cotto, a publicist and columnist for local newspaper El Vocero.
The show has been on the air for 13 years. In the US, it airs on Wapa America, which is seen in 5.2 million homes. A couple of weeks ago, La Comay and Travieso held one of their typical celebrations when the ratings figures come out. With balloons and confetti flying, Travieso announced that for the period, Super Xclusivo received a 24.1 rating, beating out two episodes of Escobar el Patrón del Mal and American Idol spinoff Idol Puerto Rico. “Thirteeen years in a row,” he shouted, doing a half-step salsa turn.
Super Xclusivo is the #1 TV show in Puerto Rico, going strong for 13 years.
In a profile published last year in El Nuevo Dia, Santarrosa comes off as magnanimous if somewhat full of himself. He began the Comay character with a gossipy marionette known as “La Chácara,” which he attributes to a comedian called Luisito Vigoreaux. Next he appeared on a noontime show on the local Telemundo outlet as “La Condesa del Bochinche.” Finally in 1999, he was offered the 6-7pm slot daily at WAPA, and Super Xclusivo has never looked back.
Over the years he has forged a team of reporters, usually with entertainment journalist chops, and police informers to tip off when well-known personalities have to appear in court. Super Xclusivo also receives many unpublished documents a la Smoking Gun, and now in the social media age, receives many tips through Twitter and Facebook.
Part of Super Xclusivo's formula is how it "makes 'celebrities' out of public figures that can be spoken of or commented on as if they were members of 'la farándula,'" said Professor Silvia Álvarez Curbelo, director of the School of Communications at the Univeristy of Puerto Rico. "It also has relatively low productions costs, with only Santarrosa and Héctor Travieso and reguarly appearing characters."
The elusive Kobbo Santarrosa: pupeteer, investigative journalist, media king.
Rodríguez Cotto feels that the atmosphere of cutbacks and scarcity of journalism jobs on the island have made those with a job “complacent,” and says they don’t have the support of their employers to do serious investigative work. “Many of us who used to work in mainstream media,” says Rodríguez Cotto, who once toiled for El Nuevo Día, “have left for jobs in public relations or alternative websites like Oscar Serrano’s Noticel.”
Super Xclusivo has a garrulous and sometimes raunchy sensibility, punctuated by Comay tag lines and by quick shots of local legends egging her on. “I have word here,” La Comay shrieked a few weeks ago, “that a group of dancers taped a new video for the latest Daddy Yankee album, to be released! They did this on April 23 rd, and THEY STILL HAVEN’T GOT PAID YET!
¡Qué bochinnnnnn-che!”
The show specializes in embarrassing celebrities and ambush journalism, planting reporters in courthouses and waiting for famous figures like ex-MLB star Juan Igor González when they emerge from family court; and an endless array of bloopers where rival journalists and politicians are usually the target.
"The show dismantles or attacks the reputation or character of public figures, often revealing their hypocrisy, cynicism and opportunism," said Álvarez. "In this sense, La Comay assumes a moral posture although using sensationalism and facts to pronounce judgments that she proclaims are those of the people of Puerto Rico."
But in recent years La Comay has taken to championing the causes of high-profile crimes that have gone unsolved, such as the Paredes Cintrón case, or that of eight-year-old Lorenzo González Cacho, better known as “el niño Lorenzo,” who was killed in March of 2010, and who is permanently memorialized with a makeshift altar at the right of La Comay on every broadcast. No arrests have been made in the case, and La Comay has gone hard after his mother Ana Cacho, who she considers a suspect. The case had a major development two weeks ago when William Marero, an ICE agent, was declared a suspect in the case, and his lawyer claimed it was a political maneuver by the Fortuño administration during election season.
La Comay has also been accused of homophobia, and when confronted by LGBT activist Pedro Julio Serrano, who went to the FCC after the marionette used a derogatory word for a male homosexual, was forced to apologize, vowing never to use the word again. While not much about Santarrosa’s personal life or sexuality is known, Rodríguez Cotto mentioned that he went through a bitter divorce. La Comay was embroiled in more accusations of homophobia this year when she questioned the decision of the Miss Universe pageant to allow transgender women to compete.
Still, Comay/Santarrosa’s focus on unsolved crimes has struck a deep chord among Puerto Ricans, who are suffering from one of the worst surges in violent crime ever experienced there. Not only has the crime rate exploded, but whether due to incompetence or lack of staff and funding, the Puerto Rico police leaves an uncomfortable number of violent crimes unsolved. La Comay uses a populist approach to gain sympathy by focusing on the wealthy, who she implies escape prosecution by using their influence with the police.
The Parades Cintrón case has gained a lot of momentum on the show because it seems to be a textbook example of this phenomenon. Paredes’s husband, Pablo Casellas, is a suspect but until recently had not been indicted supposedly because of the influence of his father, who is a local Supreme Court judge. Super Xclusivo has continually sent camera crews to the Casellas-Paredes posh home in Guaynabo and re-runs footage of the judge, Salvador Casellas, lurking around during the police investigation.
Last month, La Comay stepped up the pressure by using one of his regular reporters, Jessica Serrano, to ambush the elder judge. One night, after insisting that Paredes’ missing computer held important clues, La Comay teased the viewers. “Look at this video!” she shouted, as a video runs of an older unidentified man walking down an Old San Juan street in a guayabera, carrying a briefcase. “Who is this man? What could he be carrying in that case?”
The next night the video was close-up, and Serrano pursued Judge Casellas as he entered a local church.
“Did you enter the crime scene?”
Silence.
“How do you feel that Pablo is suspected?”
“No comment.”
“What are you carrying there?”
“I have no comment,” said the judge, entering the church. “Respect the house of God!”
The Paredes Cintrón case coincided with a referendum vote that was held on August 19th, where it was proposed that those who were accused of murder in certain aggravated cases (having to do with kidnapping, sexual abuse, and expressway shoot-outs) would not have the absolute right to bail, as per the 1952 constitution. A second item, a proposal to reduce the size of the legislature, was also on the ballot, but La Comay relished the opportunity to showcase the first on her show.
It is common knowledge in Puerto Rico that most major politicians feel that an appearance on Super Xclusivo is a must. The tradition began, as Rodríguez Cotto tells it, during the election campaign between Anibal Acevedo Vilá and the former governor Pedro Rosselló in 2004. “Everyone knows Santarrosa is for the statehood party, but when he asked [statehood candidate] Rosselló to come on, he refused, saying ‘I don’t go on puppet shows,’” said Rodriguez Cotto. “But Anibal did, and La Comay told the audience they should vote for him.” After Acevedo Vilá’s victory, no one dared refuse La Comay again.
Fortuño appeared on Super Xclusivo in late July to discuss the new penal code he signed into law.
Current governor Luis Fortuño doesn’t hesitate to appear, and neither does the president of the senate, Tomás Rivera Schatz. In fact, when Fortuño faced his first major crisis in 2010, when students demonstrated in front of the Capitol building and were beaten back by police, Fortuño appeared on the show, and faced confrontational questioning from WAPA staff reporter Rafael Lenín López.
Before the referendum, La Comay invited Acevedo Vilá, who argued against the amendments and Governor Fortuño, whose party initiated the amendments, to come on and gave them 10 minutes each to state their position. Acevedo Vilá argued that the referenda were politically motivated , and that to change the constitution to eliminate the absolute right to bail would not reduce crime. “It’s like giving an aspirin to cure a cancer patient,” he said, smiling.
Fortuño followed the next night insisting the referendum was not political, that it amounted to a minor change that would greatly help to relieve citizens and the victims of violent crime. “This is about protecting working people,” insisted Fortuño. “It’s going to bring peace to Puerto Rico.” After the break, La Comay announced that she was supporting the amendment, saying the issue was not political, despite showing footage that came from ads clearly labeled as paid for by the statehood party. “We have to do something! I recommend everyone vote yes!”
On August 19, both amendments were defeated in a surprise vote, 54% to 46%. The Monday show had La Comay with her red sunglasses on, which signified a “descarguita,” which means that she is about to deliver a major rant about something. “Ponme tensión,” she said in her trademark way, cueing the playing of foreboding music. She scoffed at the result, saying only 33% of the electorate showed up, as opposed to the “77% who went to the beach.” (It’s the new math!) “ I don’t want anyone to go around leading marches [about the crime problem]…I don’t want anybody crying.”
The reaction came off like sour grapes, especially when so many on the island celebrated it as a rejection of politics as usual. But in a strange way, even though La Comay urged everyone to vote “yes,” the appearance of Acevedo Vilá, who came off as more believable, on Super Xclusivo may have ultimately influenced the voters more than her personal recommendation.
Just this week, however, the themes Super Xclusivo had been pushing came to a hysterical climax. Pablo Casellas was finally charged with murder, a firearms charge, a charge of destroying evidence and giving false information to the police. La Comay came on almost beside herself, insisting that the show’s reporters had not only beaten everyone else to the story, but was still delivering the most cutting-edge coverage.
This time Jessica Serrano led a shaky-cam charge towards Casellas, dressed in a navy blue suit, as he walked from the Bayamón court house parking area to the main entrance, harassing him with questions as the Jaws soundtrack played in the background. She goaded him with questions about his daughters and how he hid the body, but there was of course no reaction.
Then La Comay jockeyed with Travieso about how he’d heard that the police superintendent had been left out of the arrest process by Attorney General Somoza, as footage rolled of a police lieutenant violently pushing away the paparazzi came to read Casellas his Miranda rights. It was a suffocating spectacle that brought up more questions about possible political motivations.
As La Comay ranted on about how Casellas’s father had already paid the $4 million bail in cash, she taunted those who voted against the amendment to deny the absolute right to bail. “The man is a flight risk,” insisted Travieso, despite the fact that he was required to surrender his passport.
Just as La Comay is prone to speculate about how the fix was in about the suddenly suspicious ability of Judge Casellas to come up with the bail, she was leading her audience to speculate about something else. Why was it that, a few weeks after an embarrassing loss at the polls, the Fortuño administration had suddenly prioritized the cases La Comay had been railing on about for months? How convenient was it that they were able to provide an example of a high-profile murder case that involved a controversial bail scenario, even if letting Casellas rot in jail would have little effect on the explosive crime problem on the island?
Puerto Rico: Police brutality is rampant on ‘impunity island’
Betty Peña and her 17-year-old daughter Elisa Ramos Peña get doused with tear gas at a peaceful 2010 protest.
By ED MORALES
The report echoes a previous, scathing one on police brutality and abuse of civil rights in Puerto Rico released last September by the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ), which put the island commonwealth’s police department on notice, providing some hope that the situation might change.
But that couldn’t be further from reality. The new report goes on to say that the use of excessive or lethal force is routine, and civil and human rights violations are rampant.
In its 180 pages, there is an even more detailed examination of a troubled 17,000-member police force (the second-largest in the U.S.), its executive summary making the following points:
1) The “pervasive corruption” of the force is demonstrated by the arrests of 1700 officers between 2005 to 2010, nearly 3 times the amount of officers arrested in New York, whose department is twice the size. Many of those cases involve domestic violence against their own spouses.
2) Since 2007, 28 people have been killed by PRPD, many under circumstances that were “unjustified and avoidable.”
3) There is a quantifiable pattern of excessive police force used against low-income, black and Dominican communities in Puerto Rico.
4) Excessive force against protestors have had a chilling effect against constitutionally protected protest. Many activists have ceased protests or scaled back their activity because they fear arrest or unsafe conditions.
5) PRPD has failed to protect victims of domestic violence and sexual assault. In 2007, 25% of women killed by their partners had previously reported incidents of domestic violence to the department.
6) The department lacks the ability to systematically investigate or punish incidents of police brutality.
7) The PRPD generally fails to provide guidelines for use of force, there is a lack of oversight of police practices, and there is insufficient training and transparency in the implementation of policy.
In September 2010, PRPD officer Abimalet Natal Rosado fatally shot José Alberto Vega Jorge in the back of his head. The unarmed 22-year-old was present during a robbery at a Burger King and was willing to offer his testimony; he was not a suspect. The victim was brought to the hospital over an hour after the shooting.
“This is a place where American citizens and immigrants are enduring terrible abuse at the hands of their own police force, and the local and federal governments are letting it happen,” says Anthony D. Romero, ACLU executive director. “The Puerto Rican government has promised reform for years, but people are still suffering under a police department that is out of control. The U.S. Justice Department needs to take concrete action immediately to end the PRPD’s unconstitutional practices.”
But not everyone is taking the report’s findings as fact. Speaking on a radio show in Puerto Rico on Tuesday, police superintendent Héctor Pesquera said that the ACLU’s findings are “incorrect and irresponsible” and part of a “political agenda.”
“Have there been cases? Yes,” said Pesquera. “But it doesn’t mean the police are determined to violate the rights of citizens…It’s no different from police in other places in the world.”
Romero and his colleague in San Juan, William Ramírez, who heads the ACLU branch in Puerto Rico and held a simultaneous press conference, both threatened legal action if concrete measures are not taken soon to address the police brutality issue. “We were waiting for legal action by the DOJ against the government of Puerto Rico after they issued the report,” said Ramírez. “But time has run out. We’re in the process [of mounting a lawsuit] and it could be before the end of the month.”
The release of the DOJ’s report last year was the culmination of a three-year investigation that covered periods from 2004 to 2011, and is technically termed a “findings letter,” the release of which began negotiations with the Puerto Rican government.
According to Jennifer Turner, ACLU researcher and author of “Island of Impunity,” the options for an agreement are a consent decree, which involves the oversight of a federal judge, or a memorandum of understanding, which would be out of court. Turner’s impression is that the government of Puerto Rico strongly prefers the latter.
“They don’t want a judge that’s going to hold them in contempt for failing to abide by the agreement,” says Turner. “They want something on paper that they can ‘sort of’ implement ‘maybe’ to some extent.”
Joel Félix is a Dominican immigrant who was walking home alone on a recent Saturday just after midnight when six to eight PRPD officers exited their patrol car and savagely beat and kicked him, causing him to fall to the ground and lose consciousness.
A DOJ official tells Univision News that as far as the negotiations with the Puerto Rico government is concerned, “The department is engaged in productive discussions to resolve its findings, and we decline further comment at this time.”
So far the government, led by pro-statehood party governor Luis Fortuño, has not shown a great deal of progress on this issue. It took several months for them to replace the previous police superintendent, Emilio Díaz Colón, who famously denied there even was a DOJ investigation taking place weeks before the findings letter was issued last September and was widely regarded as incompetent.
In a court filing last year, Puerto Rico’s Justice Department denounced the DOJ report as unreliable, flawed, and biased. In January of this year, PRPD announced a new general use of force policy that the ACLU report denounces as “short of constitutional and US national standards…and lacks objective criteria on the use of lethal force.”
“The vast majority of our police are selfless, dedicated public servants and this [report] does not speak of them, it speaks of a minority,” said Governor Fortuño in a radio interview.
“Puerto Rico is so unique in that it’s an islandwide state police department, with no effective independent mechanism to monitor it,” says Turner. “It’s a legacy of colonialism. In 14 of the past 18 years the police superintendent has been a former FBI agent.”
Both José Figueroa Sancha, who preceded Díaz Colón and who was controversial for backing the beating of university demonstrators by the police in 2010, and the current superintendent are both ex-FBI agents.
The lack of proper training and monitoring has created a situation where police are sometimes left on duty after having committed various violations. In one case, as the ACLU report states, an officer who had been arrested eight times and who held the local police chief hostage at gunpoint was reinstated and went on to fatally shoot an unarmed teenager.
“People are really afraid to come forward,” says Turner. “It’s typical for people to file a report and then retract it because the police would show up at their home after they made the complaint.”
Ironically, since this is an election year, the fate of reform can hang in the balance. If Obama lost the presidency, many of the initiatives of his Justice Department, including actions taken against Arizona Sherriff Joe Arpaio, will be severely disrupted, if not discontinued all together.
For now, the solution to Puerto Rico’s policing problem has been left to just the hope of action taken by the DOJ or the pressure put on the system by institutions like the ACLU.
“I think there’s evidence that the problem has gotten even worse since the DOJ report came out,” says Turner. “We keep getting cases coming in right up to the present.”
Adds William Ramirez: “It seems like the only people who aren’t aware of this problem are the Police Department itself. And their own superintendent just denied the existence of the problem again today.”
Latin Jazz generations: From the Bronx to San Juan
Saxophonist Miguel Zenón is one of the countless musicians influenced by the Fort Apache Band.
By ED MORALES
Like most visionary artists, he already had an idea of where this was all going.
“Latin jazz was my flag since back then, man,” said 63-year-old Gonzalez over the phone. “I wrote graffiti on every desk in my high school that said, ‘Latin jazz, played by me! The future is coming.'"
Gonzalez’s future included stints with countless salsa bands (Ray Barretto, Eddie Palmieri) and straight-ahead jazz combos. But his crowning achievement was assembling the Fort Apache Band, along with his brother, bass player Andy Gonzalez. Today, it stands as one of the most influential Latin jazz groups in history.
This weekend, Fort Apache will be celebrating their 30th anniversary at the Blue Note Club in New York’s Greenwich Village, playing its usual array of jazz standards and Latin boleros spiced with bebop and Afro-Cuban rumba and guaguancó. The shows will be taped to produce an upcoming live album.
“I wanted to play everything at first,” said Gonzalez, who is of Puerto Rican descent. “I played at weddings, funk bands, soul bands, imitating Cal Tjader, Mongo Santamaría, Tito Puente, Machito -- those were my father’s bands. But I was also affected by Miles Davis and Horace Silver and Rahsaan Roland Kirk, and Art Blakey -- he was a monster influence.”
In the 1970s, a series of jam sessions in Andy’s home in the Soundview section of the Bronx produced historic linkages between conventional jazz and salsa musicians that yielded the groundbreaking Grupo Folklorico Instrumental, which fused traditional Cuban and Puerto Rican folkloric music with jazz influences.
Later, some spirited gigging at avant-garde outposts like the short-lived New Rican Village, located in the heart of the Lower East Side, and the Upper West Side’s Soundscape produced early versions of the Fort Apache Band, whose signature tunes drew from Thelonious Monk, Miles Davis, and Dizzy Gillespie. At first the band enjoyed some success, especially in Europe. But as Jerry tells it, he had to cut the 15-piece band down to 6 so he could assure band members a living wage.
The band produced 10 albums, not always under the Fort Apache Band name, while Jerry pursued session work with legendary bassist Jaco Pastorious and trumpeter Freddie Hubbard, among others, and Andy became a stalwart in roots salsa band Conjunto Libre.
Following the 9/11 attacks on New York’s World Trade Center, Jerry Gonzalez decided to move to Spain, where he found a new group of musicians connected to one of his ancestral roots.
“I was four blocks away from the Twin Towers when they fell and I said, ‘it’s time to get out,'” said Gonzalez. “I just walked right into the scene in Madrid and it was comfortable and I started to teach them some stuff about clave and guaguancó. They were scared to death at first but I said watch what happens when you play a bulería and I play this on top of it. And everybody went, 'Oh shit!' and I said, 'You dig?'
But while Jerry’s flamenco fusion albums have helped spur renewed interest in the Fort Apache Band, he and his brother have left a lasting legacy to younger generations of Puerto Rican and other Latino jazz artists. Guesting with the band during their Blue Note stand will be Miguel Zenón, a Puerto Rican-born saxophonist now living in New York who received a MacArthur Foundation Genius Grant in 2008. Zenón, like contemporaries David Sánchez, Danilo Pérez, and Henry Cole, have been strongly influenced by Fort Apache.
Jerry Gonzalez's ability to move between two worlds is unparalleled.
“I was attracted to the band not only because it was lead by musicians of Puerto Rican heritage,” said 36-year-old Zenón, “but because but they think of jazz and Afro-Caribbean music as one single entity...they can go back and forth between swing, guagancó, columbia, mozambique, but they do it all in the same breath.”
Zenón’s playing can be described as a spectacular reinterpretation of mid-period Coltrane, but he has also released albums that focus on the folkloric Puerto Rican genre of plena and his last album, Alma Adentro, collects classic boleros from the island’s famous composers.
“I'm a big admirer of what they do with [Thelonius] Monk's music, but what I'm really looking forward to is getting to play some of the slower songs they have on their repertoire from the Latin American songbook,” said Zenón.
Playing two seemingly opposed roles is at the root of Fort Apache, and it all starts with Jerry’s extraordinary ability to merge two cultures, literally by playing two instruments.
“In Spain they know me as a trumpet player, but here in the U.S., I’m known as a conga player,” said Gonzalez.
His raspy, African-American inflected voice does not overwhelm his Puerto Rican soul. Last decade he found the time to return to the island to care for his ailing parents and made new connections with musicians.
Henry Cole, a Puerto Rican native who plays drums in Zenón’s band but has recently released an Afro-beat inspired album called Roots Before Branches, met Jerry when he came to see him play at the Nuyorican Café in San Juan.
“He would come up onstage and play with us quite a bit,” said Cole. “He would invite me to his mother’s house and make me watch videos of straight-ahead jazz players for hours. Then, when I moved to New York I met [his brother] Andy playing in a big band at Birdland. Steve Berríos, who plays drums for them, had a big influence on a younger player named Adam Cruz.”
Henry Cole is at the forefront of a new wave of Latin jazz musicians.
“I’m glad to be in touch with young cats who are making a move in a direction that’s identifiable to us,” added Gonzalez, thinking about one nation spanning from the Bronx to San Juan. “We’re part of this whole history of jazz here, going back to Machito. Just don’t block us out—if you do, you’re doing a disservice to history.”
Jerry Gonzalez and the Fort Apache with Miguel Zenón will be playing the Blue Note in New York May 24-27 with sets at 8 and 10:30 p.m.
Henry Cole and the Afrobeat Collective will be playing 92Y Tribeca in New York May 30at 8 p.m.
(Photos, top to bottom: Keith Sirchio, Chris Drukker, and Marisol Diaz)
