Автор: Vera’s moving unique — their own next immediately after If i Give you Roses — explores the brand new pushes that led one to family to go out of the dear homeland and you may seek out another start in an unidentified and you may unwelcoming property
Marisel Vera stands out a light towards a little-recognized part of You.S. background in the Liking Out of Glucose. At the change of the twentieth century, many people about has just received territory away from Puerto Rico moved halfway all over the world to work to your sugarcane ranches during the Their state.
To learn as to why Vicente Vega, their partner Valentina and you may Vicente’s half-sis Raulito make rigorous go Hawaii, Vera (who’s away from Puerto Rican society) first transforms new clock back into the fresh new mid-19th century, when the Spanish nevertheless governed along side Caribbean area. Thraldom stays courtroom (it would maybe not avoid until 1873), and you can high poverty was systemic. Despite abolition, of numerous on isle are no much better than serfs, lifestyle “los angeles vida de perro.” (Language is actually interwoven throughout the text message.) Conversely, Vicente’s daddy try a slightly well-regarding holder away from a java plantation regarding mountainous area for Utuado. However the family members’ luck decline over the years. By the time Vicente develops to manhood, they are very humble growers, even when they are better off compared to peones who “is happy if they consume once a day.”
This new smitten girl “prepared for romance and you will adventure” gets up their unique romantic hopes for Paris so you’re able to an excellent de- casa” to the ranch is nothing such as for instance being a housewife within the Ponce. However, she vows so you can “place in herself in order to their unique relatives and place away most of the childish hopes and dreams,” because the she produces in the a page to help you their particular cousin Elena once her matrimony. Its life, even when hard, is not in the place of its delights. Things change if You.S. ousts the fresh Language when you look at the 1898. Whenever Hurricane Ciriaco moves a year later, the emergency are tremendous. The brand new inadequate American way of handling the drama was depressingly comparable on the bungled reaction to Hurricane Maria more than an effective century later.
Who is really in control about region is clear from inside the a short world that happens immediately after Raulito try sentenced to 3 numerous years of tough labor having a offense
Vicente, Valentina and you may Raulito generate an effective wrenching decision to go out of Puerto Rico behind and you will find a better lifestyle someplace else. But the Hawaiian Sugar Planters’ Association’s promises to the new puertorriquenos confirm blank. Unlike ped shanties. Earnings was paid in scrip in the place of bucks. The latest universities these people were told the children you will sit-in dont exists. It’s a familiar yet disastrous story out-of exploitation, just like the Puerto Ricans see they’ve exchanged one bleak problem to have an alternate which is for some reason tough, in which possibly the small amenities out of house were stripped out.
Vera’s really-explored guide is a very important lesson inside Puerto Rican background and you will a watch-beginning look in the ugly facts trailing the new You.S.’s commonly skipped record while the a good colonial energy. So it tale interrogates new stunning relationships between a few outposts of nation’s purple empire. Hawaii’s individual advanced reputation for colonization isn’t really looked in identical outlined means as is Puerto Rico’s, but we obtain a feeling of the disparate pushes of working regarding Polynesian archipelago. Pros such as for example Valentina and you can Vicente are now living in shacks shortly after occupied because of the Portuguese sugarcane experts and you may work alongside Japanese immigrants, exactly who it evaluate with suspicion. asia beauty date The new sheriff pours this new court in the case a class away from pineapple juices “sent to your specially by the his buddy Dole, the master of the largest pineapple plantation throughout off Hawaii.”
However, Vera brings an over needed corrective so you’re able to history. The ebook is additionally the story out of a young woman’s losses regarding purity, given that Valentina more sluggish falls out their own girlish naivete, and you may a succession out-of tragedies and challenges develop their unique to the good more complicated, less psychological person. And there is a genuine and heartbreaking feeling of loss one of the brand new immigrants once they get to Their state. “I skip Puerto Rico and you may Ponce…and even the fresh mountain in the Utuado,” Valentina produces into the a letter so you can their particular brother, who she’s maybe not seen because the she are ents that he usually “never tune in to coquis once more” just before advising himself that “it was absurd to help you cry more than frogs.”
