Dr. Jose Vadi, Profssor Emeritus California State University, Pomona. Boricua radical.
“El negro por justa ley, y por su mala conducta, debe de estar con una tusa limpiandole el culo al buey.”
(“Black people, by just laws and by their bad conduct, should be with a corn husk wiping a bull’s ass,” Saying of my white maternal great-grandfather)
(“Black people, by just laws and by their bad conduct, should be with a corn husk wiping a bull’s ass,” Saying of my white maternal great-grandfather)
“The truth shall set you free” (James Fennimore Cooper)
Societies
and individuals depend on sustaining myths that maintain them in some
semblance of order or wholeness. Puerto Rican society is riven by
sustaining racial myths such as the myth of the comparative low severity
of Puerto Rican slavery, the color-blindness of Puerto Rican society,
and of a Puerto Rican identity based on a brotherhood that transcends
race. These sustaining myths operate also at a familial level and at the
level of individual consciousness but, on the whole, they serve to
paper over the legacy of slavery and of its effects on current Puerto
Rican society. While the North American society is troubled by its
racial past and acknowledges and condemns it, Puerto Rico seems to have
adopted a form of historical amnesia of its history of slavery and its
continuing effects on Puerto Rican social structure where it is still
most advantageous to be “white.” Family histories and individual
identities are encapsulated in convenient myths that achieve a similar
result at the familial and individual level.
What
follows is an account of two myths in my family that illustrate this
dynamic. First, I will describe the myths. Then I will uncover the truth
as I have been able to arrive at it from historical documents. I will
conclude by tracing the implications of these truths for my own
identity, for my children, and for my family name.
As
a child, I heard the story of a Frenchman named Vadi who had come to
Puerto Rico with a black or mulatto wife. He had children from her and
they and the older Vadi would relegate the black woman to the back of
the house when they conducted business. The offspring of that union between a black woman and the French Vadi were the “colored” Vadi’s. There
was no mention of slavery or of the possibility of slavery, thus
preserving the myth of an alleged racial harmony that resulted in a café
au lait society with relative absence of racial conflict. Dr. Emilio
Vadi Collazo, a physician in New York, would call my father and me
“primo (cousin).” This contributed to cementing this myth because,
superficially, he did not appear to have any African ancestry. As I
matured, I wanted to find out who was the black woman who was the mother
of all of these Vadi’s “of color.” Over
time, I gave up the search for this black woman thinking that no such
person ever existed. I began to question whether there was any “blood
“relation at all between the Vadi’s who were white and the Vadi’s of
color. In time, I would know that all of the people with the Vadi
surname from Puerto Rico had African ancestry, even though many of them
looked white. Perhaps it was the fact that we all had some African
ancestry that led Dr. Emilio Vadi Collazo to call us primo, even if
other “white-looking” Vadi’s refused to acknowledge such a link amongst
all of the Vadi’s from Puerto Rico.
In
reading an essay by Dr. Haydee Cancio de Reichard about the Central
Coloso, a sugar mill in Aguada founded by Emilio Vadi Benelli, I came
upon a passage that mentioned that Angel Luis Santoni, the second
largest slave owner in Aguada, had fathered a daughter from a fifteen
year old slave named Enriqueta. The child was named Rosario and she was
recognized by Santoni as his daughter. Emilio Vadi Benelli, who was
overseer overseer (mayordomo) for Angel Santoni and would later found the
Central Coloso, had a common-law marriage with the daughter of Santoni
and his slave Enriqueta (ie. Rosario). But none of the offspring of that
marriage was recognizably black or married to a black person. Dr. Luis
Vadi Benelli, founder of what later became the Clinica Perea in Mayaguez
and brother of Emilio, had one male child out of wedlock but this child
returned to France and adopted another surname. In short, there were
only two possible explanations for the Vadi’s of color in Puerto Rico.
Either there had been no Vadi’s “of color” that were offspring of the
two Corsican immigrants , Emilio and Luis Vadi Benelli, or their African
origins via their mother were obscured by the common process of
whitening that is frequent in Puerto Rico. I
then concluded that the Vadi’s of color had most likely appropriated
that name. This meant that the origins of the Vadi’s “of color” were in
slavery. Then who was the slave that took the Vadi name?
In
finding my slave descendant, I worked backward beginning with my
grandfather, Mariano Vadi Ayala. His death certificate lists his father,
my great-grand-father as “Balle Vadi.” The 1872 Puerto Rican Slave Registry (Registro de Esclavos) has no Balle Vadi. But
a master’s thesis written by Norma Medina Carrillo (using notary
archives of the 1850’s) mentions two slaves with names similar to Balle.
These were slaves of Angel Santoni and their overseer was Emilio Vadi
Benelli. These slaves were named Antonio Valle and Santiago Valle. Given
the common misspelling of names of slaves, it is highly possible that
one of these slaves is listed as Balle and later took the name Vadi
after emancipation in 1873. Another possibility is that Balle was the
nickname of one Jose Maria Vadi (according to notes of a conversation
with my father in 1977). I have found only one mention of Jose Maria
Vadi and that was in a military service registration document of 1917. I
had no evidence that Jose Maria Vadi was a slave or that he was in fact
“Balle.”
Later
on, I found an entry for Jose Maria Vade (sic) in the U.S. Census of
1910. With the help of Anna Feliciano, a maternal relative that I met on
Ancetry.com, I was able to locate the 1917 Death Certificate for José
Maria Vadi and this certificate proved, decisively, that he was my great
grandfather. In that document, his son, Mariano Vadi (my grandfather),
is listed as the declarant and identified as his son. Thus Jose Maria
Vadi was, clearly, Balle and I had found Balle. Balle was sixty at the
time of this death in 1917 and thus was born in 1857. He was sixteen
years old when the slaves were freed and nineteen years old in 1876 when
they were required to select a surname that would be carried by all of
their descendants.
The
1910 Census lists a ninety year old man, Juan Antonio Vadi Muñoz as a
lodger (alojado) in the household of José Maria Vadi. That was Balle’s
father and he was born circa 1820. The document also states that Juan
Antonio’s parents were born in Africa. It was Juan Antonio who most
likely took the surname Vadi, given the fact that that his son, Jose
Maria, was nineteen and thus not of adult age. From the Certificate of Death of Jose Maria Vadi (Balle), I learned that his mother was named Francisca Acevedo.
The
search for Balle was difficult in light of the fact that the Registro
de Esclavos or Slave Registry of 1872 omits district #3 that encompassed
Aguada.[ii] No
Balle Vadi appears in the U.S. Census but persons with the same surname
as my grandfather (Mariano Vadi Ayala) appear in the 1910 Census and in
World War I registration documents. These were Epifanio Vadi Ayala,
Leon Vadi Ayala, and Pedro Vadi Ayala. Like my grandfather, these men
were all machinists in sugar mills. The oldest of these men, Epifanio,
was born in 1873, the same year that slaves were emancipated in Puerto
Rico. This means that their father, Balle, was of adult age, in 1873. By
logical deduction, it was Balle’s father, Juan Antonio, who took the
name “Vadi” as his surname in 1876 when the former slaves were required
to adopt a surname with the understanding that the surname adopted would
be the ones inherited by their descendants forever after. Since Balle
was not the son of Rosario Vadi Santoni, his father took the name Vadi
and hence the origins of my surname. I have no blood connection either to the Vadi or to the Santoni family.
After
making this discovery, I decided to examine the maternal side of my
father’s ancestry. My father’s maternal surname was “Pardo” and the
evidence of slave lineage through that side of my family is even more
direct than was the case with his paternal or Vadi side. As with the
Vadi’s, there was a “descent myth” with the Pardo’s as well. The myth
was that my father’s grandmother, Matilde Pardo, also had the surname
Belflan or Belfian. One Belflan or Belfian had fathered her and then
left to fight in the Franco Prussian War and never returned from the
war. In the 1910 U.S. Census, Matilde Pardo appears as Matilde Pardo
Belfland and in the 1920 U.S. Census she is listed as “white.” I
have found no evidence of this person named Belfland but I have found
evidence that Matilde Pardo and her husband, Reyes Pardo, had been
slaves in childhood.
My
father had told me that Matilde Pardo’s mother was named Maria
Constancia. The Registro de Esclavos (slave registry) for 1872 shows a
Maria Esperanza who was the slave of “Pardog (sic) and Pardo.” The
record also shows that a slave named Maria had given birth to a child in
1868 while still a slave of Pardog and Pardo. 1868 was the year Matilde
Pardo was born. Moreover, this birth had occurred in San German Puerto
Rico. Matilde Pardo always claimed she was from Lajas, Puerto Rico but
Lajas was part of San German until the 1880’s when it became a separate
municipality. So her mother’s name, date of birth, location, and slave
owner’s name all coincide in the likelihood that the child born to the
slave Maria in 1868 was Matilde Pardo, my great-grand-mother.
Matilde
Pardo’s spouse was named Reyes. I conducted a search in the Registry of
Slaves for 1872 for all slaves named Reyes. About six or seven slaves
with such names appeared but only one of them was enslaved by “Pardog
and Pardo.” The register lists a slave named Reyes who was 18 years old
in 1872 and who “belonged” to “Pardog and Pardo” in San German, Puerto
Rico. It is extremely likely that at emancipation, the slave Reyes took
the name of his slave master (Pardo) to become Reyes Pardo, my
great-grandfather. The registry also lists his parents as “Juan
Chiquito” and “Catalina.” Juan Chiquito and Catalina were slaves on the
Hacienda Resolución and they were my great great grandparents. Again, in
the case of Reyes “Pardo,” the dates, location, first name, and slave
owner name all point to the inextricable conclusion that Reyes Pardo was
in fact my paternal great-grandfather.
Reyes
Pardo was the husband of Matilde Pardo and he was 14 years older than
Matilde. It was not unusual for girls to marry older men at that time.
The documents also reveal that Matilde had children by the time she was
15 years old. A 1917 passport application with a picture of her son,
Jose Pardo (born in 1883) provides this evidence. Jose Pardo was my
father’s beloved “Tio Pepe” of whom I heard countless stories during my
childhood. Another passport application with photo dated 1917 exists
showing another of her sons, Reyes Pardo (junior not senior, born 1894).
I got to know this Reyes Pardo in New York as my father’s uncle,
brother of my father’s mother, Juana Maria Pardo. Altogether Matilde
Pardo had 13 children, among them being my paternal grandmother, Juana
Maria Pardo.
The
claim by Matilde Pardo that her paternal name was Belflan is, most
likely, a “whitening myth.” In the 1910 census, all of her children
appear as “Pardo y Pardo,” indicating that both their maternal and
paternal names were names of a common slave master. Had Belflan been
their grandfather, their surnames would be Pardo Belflan and this is not
the case in the 1910 Census where her children are listed as “Pardo y
Pardo.” In the 1920 Census, Matilde Pardo is listed as “white.” All of this suggests efforts at “blanqueamiento” or whitening.
Researching
further, I found that the slave-owning Pardo’s had come to Puerto Rico
from Holland with the arrival of one Manuel Pardo around 1830 (via St.
Thomas). The source states that he had one or two slaves.[iii]
As part of the overall sugar boom of the period after 1800, Pardo
expanded his slaveholdings to some 69 slaves and, at one time, sought to
import 100 more slaves. Pardo was located in Mayaguez, where he had a
small number of slaves, but most of the slaves were employed at his
estate, Hacienda Resolución in San German. He was heavily indebted and
lost 22 slaves in the morbid cholera epidemic of 1856. Nonetheless, he
was able to meet his debt obligations and did not go bankrupt.[iv]
This attests to the high rate of labor exploitation on his estate. It
is most likely that his son, Antonio Pardo, was the slave owner of my
ancestor Reyes Pardo, who was 18 at the time the Slave Registry was
compiled in 1872.
I
paid a visit to the Hacienda Resolución in Lajas Puerto Rico on
Father’s Day of 2012. It is located in a flat and expansive valley now
dedicated to cattle raising and to the production of hay for stock feed.
The entire hacienda is fenced-in and there is a large gate with an
entry road that is almost a quarter of a mile deep. As I stood at that
gate and peered through the fence at the land where my forefathers had
toiled in slavery, I could feel the goose bumps all over my body. There
is a foreboding isolation to the place even though a well-travelled
paved road runs right past it. It must have been very desolate one
hundred years ago. Even though it was a rainy day, I could sense how
miserable those slaves had to be. The land is table flat and there are
no trees on the hacienda proper. I could imagine how my forefathers
toiled in the hot sun, without shade, to build the fortunes of the slave
masters that stole their labor and thus their dignity as human beings.
The level of labor extracted had to be enormous in order to pay off the
massive debts of the Pardo slave masters. I had my picture taken at the
gate of the hacienda and left it with profound sadness. This sadness was
made even more acute when we tripped upon a roadside open bar with live
musicians playing to a dancing public in celebration of Father’s Day.
Thus
my ancestors were enslaved by foreign immigrants to Puerto Rico, some
from Corsica (Emilio Vadi and Angel Luis Santoni) and the others from
Holland (the Pardo family). These immigrants found opportunities in
Puerto Rico to make their fortunes in ways that were forbidden in most
of Europe: via chattel slavery. Emilio Vadi was a conundrum in that he
was a Free Mason and a man of progressive views who defied the social
conventions of his era to live with the daughter of a slave and to
recognize his offspring from that woman as legitimate. He
would make fun of the pretenses and the social opprobrium of the
“Blanquitos” or white well-to-do sectors in Aguada, where he resided.[v]
Nonetheless, his ambition for economic advancement and economic gain
overcame whatever progressive inclinations or scruples he might have
had. He chose the most readily available avenue to wealth in the Puerto
Rico of that time, serving first as an overseer to one of the largest
slave owners in Aguada and then becoming a slave owner upon purchasing
the slave owner’s estate.
Knowing
the truth that my father was a descendant of slaves on both sides of
his family has led me to what I can only describe as a convulsion of
identity and an even more critical awareness on my part regarding how
Puerto Rican culture deals with the whole gamut of racial issues. I came
to understand, in my gut, the meaning of “nobody knows my name” because
I was now left to wonder “What is my true name?” I have the surname
Vadi not because I am Vadi through any genetic connection but because of
a decision or choice made by one of my ancestors, who had been
enslaved, to adopt that name. My initial reaction was to reject the
name. But that would be a betrayal of my father and grandfather who went
by that name. Moreover, my enslaved ancestors paid a very heavy price
to have a surname. There is a delicious irony and justice in their
appropriating the very name of the person who stole their labor, their
dignity, and their honor. And there is an even greater sense of “getting
even” in taking a name debased in its association with slavery and
slave ownership and raising it from its debasement through my own
achievements and those of my parents and my children (one a medical
doctor and the other a playwright and writer). No, I will not hang my
head down. I will not define myself by a surname but by what I have
achieved in life and by the content of my character. And that is what I
expect from my children and their descendants as well.
I
know that I am here because somehow, the slaves Juan Chiquito,
Catalina, Reyes, Matilde, Juan Antonio, Francisca, and Balle survived;
because they were strong and because they endured. I have the sense of
being a successful warrior who overcame many obstacles in my life. From
my birth in the slum of Barrio Buenos Aires in Parada 26 in Santurce, to
my upbringing in East Harlem’s slum of “El Barrio,” to a college degree
from the City College of New York and a doctorate from the University
of Wisconsin at Madison—all of this is somehow linked to the moral fiber
and to the fortitude of my slave ancestors. This in turn has led me to
question the ways in which Puerto Rican culture deals or fails to deal
with slavery and the legacy of slavery that persists in Puerto Rico.
At
its root, Puerto Rican culture manifests amnesia regarding slavery and
its lingering legacy. First, there is the myth of Puerto Rico as a
racial democracy where there is no awareness of race, racism, or
exclusion based on race. Related to this myth, is the view that Puerto
Ricans are a blend of Spanish, Taino Indian, and African ancestry. But
this mélange is almost invariably related to diminishing the African
roots of Puerto Rican identity. The use of euphemisms such as the term
“trigueño” (or wheat colored) “elevates” a person to the status of this
mélange and moves them away from their Africaness. The national iconic
identity is that of the while hillbilly or jibaro and not of the
trigueño mélange.[vi]
The iconic high culture is Hispanic and lends little or no weight to
the African roots of a large part of the Puerto Rican population.
Besides
these super structural aspects of Puerto Rican identity, the structural
reality is that there is an absence of gente negra in the important
economic, political, and social echelons of Puerto Rican society. As in
the United States, the gente negra are represented in sports and in the
world of spectacle (entertainment). A cursory view of the “society”
pages of newspapers reveals and absence of dark skinned Puerto Ricans.
Here, the pattern is similar to the United States. In fact, even in the
world of entertainment, it was not until the 1960’s that the black
musical ensemble Cortijo y Su Combo broke through the color barrier that
excluded black Puerto Rican performers from the more prestigious
performing venues in the capitol of San Juan.
What
is remarkable, in light of this situation, is the degree to which
Puerto Ricans either are oblivious to this situation or pretend to be
because it shatters the ingrained belief of Puerto Rico as a racial
democracy. This belief did not evolve without design. Maria Margarita
Flores Collazo shows that the Puerto Rican elite of the immediate
post-abolition period set out to construct such an ideology fearing the
examples of Haiti and Cuba.[vii]
An examination of the documents of that period (circa 1870’s) provides
numerous examples of public officials and cultural leaders stressing the
degree of thankfulness of the now “emancipated” slaves to their former
masters for their new-found freedom.[viii] They
remarked frequently on the peaceful manner in which the former slaves
were conducting themselves and moving from the status of slaves to
citizens.
Even
progressive intellectuals imbibe this myth of Puerto Rico as a racial
democracy despite the structural facts that do not support it. I was
once on a boat on a tour of San Juan bay when I remarked to one of the
leading progressive intellectuals in the island that I was the darkest
person on the boat. A group of mostly middle class Puerto Ricans had
chartered the boat for a bit of drinking and socializing. But there were
no dark-skinned persons in this network of people and I (a mulato) was
the darkest person there. My intellectual friend remarked, “Es que ellos
se marginan (they marginalize themselves).” Even if one were to accept
this at face value, simple curiosity leads to the question “Why?” Why
would darker skinned people marginalize themselves? In fact, do they? What
does this show about Puerto Rican “racial democracy?” In short, if this
is the reaction of one of the island’s leading progressive
intellectuals, one is left to wonder what would be the reaction of the
non-progressive and non-intellectual sectors of Puerto Rican society. In
fact, these sectors either don’t recognize there is a problem or hide
behind an obscurantist transcendent Puerto Rican ideology that race does
not matter to Puerto Ricans because we are a mélange of…..blah, blah,
blah.
My
perception of Puerto Rico has also been challenged by knowledge of my
ancestral paternal roots in slavery. Puerto Rico no longer seems to be
“la isla del encanto” or the charmed island. It rather resembles
Mississippi, Alabama, and Louisiana. As an activist in the U.S, civil
rights movement of the 1960’s, I have had repulsion to the states of the
American South. I have passed
up opportunities to visit them because of my knowledge of their
histories and what occurred there in the 1960’s in places such as
Philadelphia, Mississippi and Selma, Alabama. In short, the idealized
version of Puerto Rico as the land of the jibaro and beautiful palmed
vistas has been complemented by an image of Puerto Rico as the land of
slave masters and slaves, the componte, the argolla, the whip, the
jackboot and the nightstick. The Hispanicist dream of the idyllic land
of enchantment has been eviscerated by the nightmare of slavery and its
legacy that underlies that dream. That was my initial reaction, a
reaction that changed on deeper reflection.
I
can no more renounce Puerto Rico than I can renounce my name. I can
renounce the idyllic image, the cultural amnesia regarding slavery and
its legacy, and the image of Puerto Rico as a racial democracy. But the
reality “is what it is.” And rather than be rendered impotent by that
reality and becoming a person in double exile—without a name and without
a nation—I have to accept the reality and to commit myself to changing
it. This is the only way to render homage to Juan, Margurite, Juan
Chiquito, Catalina, Reyes, Matilde, Juan Antonio, Francsica and Balle—to
my slave ancestors who survived –and who, through me, can find a voice
to change the legacy of their servitude that still persists underneath a
vestment of racial democracy that covers an essential part: a legacy of
slavery.
In
my mind, there is no doubt that the effects of slavery linger for
generations. Part of the Puerto Rican view of the island as a racial
democracy is to view slavery as something that occurred in the past and
that has been transcended by a non-racial, criollo society and identity.
That this view is in error is evident within my own family. Knowing the
history of slavery in my family has shed light on the personal
characteristics of members of my family that I could not explain. I
offer these views more as hypotheses than as proofs because we do not
know enough about all of the elements that make a person.
I
got to know four of the children of Matilde Pardo, three women and one
man. They were all introverted and hardly spoke unless spoken to. One of
them lived for decades in a tenement in New York without ever leaving
the apartment. She was not ill but she was totally housebound, sullen,
and hardly spoke. Her two sisters shared all of these characteristics.
One of them lived in Aguada, Puerto Rico and the other lived in New
York. The New York resident married a Spaniard and had an only son. As a
widow, she made a humble living working in a laundry while raising her
only child. He grew up to become a heroin addict as was another son one
of Matilde Pardo’s daughters.
The
one male son of Matilde Pardo that I knew was Reyes Pardo (the same
name as my enslaved great grandfather). He was tall and had a grave and
sullen aspect to his personality. I never saw him laugh. He was my
father’s great uncle and was highly respected as the patriarch of the
family and for his grave and serious character.
In hindsight, there was no joy in living, spontaneity, or liveliness in the Pardo’s that I knew. There
was inwardness to their personalities as if they were carrying a heavy
internal burden. They carried themselves as if life was an endurance
test—something borne rather than cherished. My father and his brother
also went through life in this way. How much of this the legacy of
slavery is, I do not know. But it requires little stretch of the
imagination to see how these would be personality attributes of one who
was or had been enslaved. And these attributes could be handed down in
the way that their children modeled their behavior after them and in the
attitudes and world views inculcated in them by people who had known
slavery. Maybe this is the ultimate meaning of “es que ellos mismos se
marginan”: to blame the victims of slavery for their “self-exclusion” in
a way that overlooks this marginalization as an understandable response
to their knowing that in the broader society, to be non-white is to be
inferior, undesirable, and even dangerous; a rational response to their
knowing that underlying Puerto Rico’s self-conception as a racial
democracy and its use of the diminutive negrito and negrita as terms of
endearment, is a racism of such subtlety as to constitute a racismo con
cariño.
