Abstract
Alma Juncos,1 an outgoing and energetic parent-volunteer whom I met in the corridors of the Roberto Clemente High School in the Puerto Rican barrio of Chicago, once commented: “Los nacionalistas son los únicos que se preocupan por los suyos. Si hay una comunidad aquí, es por ellos“ (“The nationalists are the only ones who care for their own people. If there’s a community here, it’s because of them”). Alma was one of many Puerto Ricans who professed that Chicago was the “Mecca of Puerto Rican nationalism.” On the basis of Alma’s characterization of the nationalists, one would never imagine that these Chicago barrio residents would be the same people implicated in front-page newspaper scandals and deemed terrorists in the media throughout the late 1980s and 1990s (Blanchard, 1988; Cruz, 1995). The Chicago mainstream media and legal authorities accused the Puerto Rican “nationalists” of influencing the Roberto Clémente High School parents’ council to spend funds in activities aimed at “indoctrinating” students into radical, anti-American politics that deserved FBI investigation (Cruz, 1995; Committee for Clémente Community Hearings, 1998). Why would a Latino barrio in the postindustrial US, otherwise marginalized from public discourse and politics, occupy center stage in accusations of terrorism and anti-Americanism?
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© 2006 Suzanne Oboler
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Ramos-Zayas, A.Y. (2006). Delinquent Citizenship, National Performances: Racialization, Surveillance, and the Politics of “`Worthiness” in Puerto Rican Chicago. In: Oboler, S. (eds) Latinos and Citizenship: The Dilemma of Belonging. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230601451_11
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