Vera’s moving book — their particular 2nd immediately after Basically Enable you to get Roses — explores new forces one added you to loved ones to go away the dear homeland and you can look for a different begin in an unfamiliar and unwelcoming belongings
Marisel Vera stands out a white towards a small-identified facet of U.S. background on the Taste From Glucose. At turn of your 20th century, millions of people on recently acquired region from Puerto Rico moved midway internationally to be effective toward sugarcane ranches from inside the Hawaii.
To learn as to why Vicente Vega, his spouse Valentina and you may Vicente’s half of-sister Raulito result in the demanding go to The state, Vera (who’s off Puerto Rican society) get Houston, MN wife first turns the fresh time clock back again to the middle-nineteenth century, when the Language however ruled across the Caribbean isle. Bondage stays courtroom (it could perhaps not end up to 1873), and you can high poverty was endemic. Even after abolition, many for the isle are no better than serfs, living “los angeles vida de perro.” (Language was interwoven on the text.) On the other hand, Vicente’s parent are a slightly well-off owner off a coffees plantation in the mountainous region of Utuado. Although family members’ luck refuse usually. By the time Vicente expands so you’re able to knob, he is simple growers, though he is best off than the peones exactly who “are fortunate if they consume once a day.”
The new smitten girl “wishing to possess relationship and you may thrill” gets right up their particular close hopes for Paris so you can a de casa” to your ranch is absolutely nothing such as for instance becoming a housewife within the Ponce. Nonetheless, she vows to “input herself to their friends and put aside all the childish goals,” because she produces for the a letter so you’re able to their cousin Elena shortly after their marriage. The life, even though difficult, is not instead of the delights. Anything changes if the You.S. ousts the newest Spanish in the 1898. Whenever Hurricane Ciriaco hits the following year, the new emergency are enormous. The fresh ineffective American method to handling the crisis is actually depressingly equivalent on the bungled reaction to Hurricane Maria more a good century after.
Who is extremely in charge on region is obvious inside a brief scene that occurs immediately following Raulito is actually sentenced to three many years of hard labor for a crime
Vicente, Valentina and you will Raulito make an effective wrenching choice to depart Puerto Rico at the rear of and you can find a far greater life somewhere else. Nevertheless the Hawaiian Glucose Planters’ Association’s intends to new puertorriquenos confirm empty. As opposed to ped shanties. Earnings is paid-in scrip rather than bucks. Brand new universities they certainly were advised its pupils you will sit in cannot exists. It’s a common yet disastrous tale regarding exploitation, as the Puerto Ricans look for they will have exchanged you to bleak disease getting a new that’s somehow tough, where even the quick conveniences away from family was removed away.
Vera’s really-explored guide try a valuable concept for the Puerto Rican record and an eye fixed-opening glimpse from the unappealing fact trailing brand new U.S.is why tend to overlooked record due to the fact an effective colonial stamina. This tale interrogates the newest shocking connectivity between a couple outposts of the nation’s imperial kingdom. Hawaii’s individual advanced reputation of colonization is not looked in the same in depth ways as well as Puerto Rico’s, however, we become a feeling of the newest disparate pushes of working regarding the Polynesian archipelago. Gurus for example Valentina and you will Vicente inhabit shacks after filled from the Portuguese sugarcane workers and you will work alongside Japanese immigrants, who it evaluate having suspicion. The fresh sheriff pours the fresh new legal in the event a category regarding pineapple liquid “delivered to him specially from the their pal Dole, the owner of the most significant pineapple plantation in all away from Hawaii.”
But Vera delivers a more than called for corrective to background. The ebook is additionally the storyline out of an earlier female’s losings from purity, just like the Valentina more sluggish sheds their own girlish naivete, and a series of tragedies and you can hardships hone their particular with the a great harder, reduced emotional people. And there’s a bona fide and you will tragic feeling of loss among the new immigrants after they get to Hawaii. “I miss Puerto Rico and you can Ponce…and even this new hill inside the Utuado,” Valentina writes inside a page so you’re able to their unique brother, just who she’s got perhaps not seen given that she is actually ents which he usually “never ever hear coquis again” just before advising themselves you to definitely “it was ridiculous to help you shout over frogs.”