She might not remember it, but I do. I recall my mother warning me
not to go into history because I would get mad. Dedicating my life to another type of career may have been a wiser decision in her opinion--and in many of my friends too. Do Social Work, Science, computer, Business, or Law, I heard often.
The context of this mother-son dialogue was my interest in Puerto Rico and its colonial history, and why she thought we should forget about it. Schools gloss over it purposely. Every time people tried to remember it there were problems; demonstrations were staged, people got killed, and the U.S.A. punished the island's economy.
Differently from most Puerto Ricans, she would see the island's history from a distinctive perspective because she was actually Dominican. She had been an elementary teacher in Puerto Rico for many years and had wrestled with the identity, and accommodation's struggles of being an immigrant. So, her advice came out of her own experience. Yet, I still choose History, a discipline that incorporates all the others, and specialized not on the island history, but on the broader context of the Atlantic.
But my mother was correct! I got mad. I mean, every time I read a piece of history, from the island or from anywhere, I got madder and madder. I got angry at the way some historians ignored the historical experience of people like me. I got furious with history when an honest historian would zero in on injustices from the past. The same would occur when reading from primary sources the struggles of people in oppression. And all this happened in me not because of chance, but because I choose not to be a cynic historian and internalized instead the experiences of the people I studied.
But that was not all. I also became pleased at witnessing how even anonymous historical personalities attempted to rectify the wrong. I realized to my pleasure that often oppressed people found ways to retaliate and adapt, resiliently, in order to survive. More importantly, I learned how systems of oppression did not emerge overnight nor were they the creation of a single group either. Instead, they were the result of several years and processes attempting to concentrate power in the hands of few.
No wonder, then, my teaching and research look for all these three aspects of history: the histories that make you mad, the histories that make you glad, and the creation of systems in which both histories are produced. Still, the rage is too strong, and this in turn moves me to activism today. What can a historian do when the past is not so different from the present and you choose not to be a cynic individual?
My Hope: "This is a moral universe, which means that, despite all the evidence that seems to be to the contrary, there is no way that evil and injustice and oppression and lies can have the last word." Desmond Tutu
Why and how have you become an activist?