Abstract
The question of who is Puerto Rican is constantly raised in Puerto Rico as much as within the diaspora. Historically, the Puerto Rican diaspora has concentrated in New York, New Jersey, and other northeastern and midwestern states. Outside of Puerto Rico, Florida now has the second largest concentration of Puerto Ricans in the U.S. The formation of a Puerto Rican diaspora in Metro-Orlando is not similar to the well-established Puerto Rican diaspora elsewhere in the United States. I argue that Puerto Rican identities are not homogenous across spaces and within places. Therefore, Puerto Ricans have lived and experienced different spatial contexts, resulting in different notions of Puerto Ricanness that are sensitive to such spatial variations. Consequently, as a greater number of Puerto Ricans are migrating to Metro-Orlando permanently, making Central Florida their home, terms like “island-born Puerto Rican” and “mainland-born Puerto Rican” or “Nuyorican” are been highly contested and used as the main means to define affiliation. Puerto Ricans in Metro-Orlando are constructing a “new” Puerto Rico. They do not see themselves as equal or as part of the larger Puerto Rican diaspora in the United States. Nor do they hold onto the myth of return that other Puerto Rican communities on the mainland have retained. Puerto Ricans in Metro-Orlando are building an identity based on what they think it means to be from the island but distinctive from the rest of the Puerto Rican diaspora on the mainland. At the same time, they are themselves developing some cultural distinctions with Puerto Rico that, according to their own notions of Puerto Ricanness, are increasingly making them more “Nuyoricans” than “Puerto Ricans”. These differences are tied to the new spatial experiences of Metro-Orlando, and are creating new notions of Puerto Ricanness that perhaps will result in a new label to represent Puerto Ricans in this new place: the “Orlandoricans”.
|
