My Puerto Rican corazon is bursting with mixed emotions today. The Sotomayor Supreme Court nomination is historic and important. My mother, who came to NY from Puerto Rico as a child, was beside herself with excitement and I can’t even imagine what my dad, who came to New York from la Trocha de Vega Baja with dreams of becoming a lawyer, must be feeling. Pero that pride that is usually reserved for Rican Weekend is tempered with being disturbed at how Sotomayor’s nomination is being used to play identity politic games while denying some of the real work that needs to be done in terms of Puerto Rico’s status, the role of Latinos in politics, and the move towards real change in the current immigration system.

Like I said yesterday, I still have to study Sotomayor’s record before I pull out the wepa welcome wagon, pero Latinos and many people of color are excited and rightfully so. Just as the Obama presidency is historic and is viewed as an example for young men of color, Sotomayor’s nomination and hopefully her getting on the bench, is an example for young women of color. Pero the question then is who gets to claim that example?

According to some, NOT immigrants. One of the things that shocked me the most and personally pissed me off, was how many Latinos, including Puerto Ricans, were adamant that Sonia Sotomayor’s experience wasn’t an immigrant experience and that linking her family history to an immigrant narrative was a disservice. This argument is based in the idea that Sotomayor’s parents, as Puerto Ricans, are U.S. citizens, and therefore even if they moved from a U.S. colony, with it’s own culture and history and claims to nationhood, they are not immigrants. That because Sotomayor’s parents hold a U.S. passport, they are not immigrants.

Pero what does Sotomayor say? From a lecture she gave in 2001 (thanks for the link Manny):

Who am I? I am a “Newyorkrican.” For those of you on the West Coast who do not know what that term means: I am a born and bred New Yorker of Puerto Rican-born parents who came to the states during World War II.

Like many other immigrants to this great land, my parents came because of poverty and to attempt to find and secure a better life for themselves and the family that they hoped to have. They largely succeeded. For that, my brother and I are very grateful. The story of that success is what made me and what makes me the Latina that I am. The Latina side of my identity was forged and closely nurtured by my family through our shared experiences and traditions.

For me, a very special part of my being Latina is the mucho platos de arroz, gandoles y pernir – rice, beans and pork – that I have eaten at countless family holidays and special events. My Latina identity also includes, because of my particularly adventurous taste buds, morcilla, — pig intestines, patitas de cerdo con garbanzo — pigs’ feet with beans, and la lengua y orejas de cuchifrito, pigs’ tongue and ears. I bet the Mexican-Americans in this room are thinking that Puerto Ricans have unusual food tastes. Some of us, like me, do. Part of my Latina identity is the sound of merengue at all our family parties and the heart wrenching Spanish love songs that we enjoy. It is the memory of Saturday afternoon at the movies with my aunt and cousins watching Cantinflas, who is not Puerto Rican, but who was an icon Spanish comedian on par with Abbot and Costello of my generation. My Latina soul was nourished as I visited and played at my grandmother’s house with my cousins and extended family. They were my friends as I grew up. Being a Latina child was watching the adults playing dominos on Saturday night and us kids playing loteria, bingo, with my grandmother calling out the numbers which we marked on our cards with chick peas.

Pero to some, self-identification isn’t good enough. It goes against tightly wrapped notions of “belonging” and assimilation. Plus, calling the Puerto Rican experience from island to the United States, an “immigrant” experience means dealing with the complex reality of Puerto Rican colonialism, an issue that Liza at Culture Kitchen breaks down. While so many are praising Sotomayor and celebrating her Ricanness, Puerto Rican political prisoner, Carlos Alberto Torres, who has been in prison for over 29 years because of his belief and commitment to the Puerto Rican nation, is oh so close to being paroled. Tell him Puerto Rico isn’t a nation.

And let’s be real, while one side will revel with pride over Sotomayor’s immigrant roots, others will use it to clearly “other” her. However, especially in light of how the immigration issue and the struggle for it’s reform has been “Latinized”, to cling to Sotomayor’s “American-ness” and distanceher from an immigration experience that my parents had, and that many others share, is to equate “immigrant” with “wrong” and “perpetual outsider”.

As one Puerto Rican told me this morning on Twitter, ” I always considered my experience an immigrant experience even though I didn’t have to deal with the migra”. Yet even for some Ricans, their experience involves la Migra. Many years ago, immigration agents burst into my grandparents’ apartment in Jamaica, Queens and threw my grandfather up against a wall asking for his papers. Compare this to the anti-Latino sentiments expressed in words and actions against Luis Ramirez and Marcelo Lucero. Not a huge leap from one to the other. Just as my abuelo was asked for papers, when Lucero and Ramirez were murdered, no one asked for their papers. We are all read as “other”.

What we must be ultra-cautious of now, is in our rush to embrace Latinidad as exemplified by Sotomayor, is not to distance her from the immigrant experience in order to make her more palatable to mainstream tastes or to accept her nomination as a sign of the Obama administration’s commitment to Latino issues or immigration issues. On the table and in the streets there remains an enforcement first agenda that links the immigrant experience to criminality not to political and economic circumstances that force people to leave their homeland. That’s something that Sotomayor’s parents and all immigrants have in common. Those are the connections that won’t be made in the beltway or by “journalists” pero rather by people committed to seeing justice in the Supreme Court and in la calle.