Slipping and Sliding: The Many Meanings of Race in Life Histories of New York Puerto Rican Return Migrants in San Juan

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"This essay analyzes the workings of race and ethnicity in the life stories of fifteen New York-born Puerto Ricans who have lived in the San Juan metropolitan area for several decades. I argue that discussions of race and ethnicity played an important symbolic and structural role in these memory accounts. The narrators used such conversations to distinguish themselves from islander Puerto Ricans, to assert their legitimacy as true Puerto Ricans, and to critique the United States. These memories confirmed scholars’ observations that Puerto Ricans have historically experienced a homogenizing, oppressive racialization upon emigration to the U.S. Finally, the narratives also expose multiple, changing, emotion-laden meanings of race, particularly of blackness. Ultimately, I argue that the meaning of race not only shifts according to the historical context, but that in narratives spun by New York Puerto Ricans, multiple interpretations of race can exist simultaneously. Thus, these narratives demonstrate that a single interpretive framework for analyzing race, even when carefully contextualized, can offer us only a partial understanding of the complex workings of race for Puerto Ricans."