PUERTO RICO ¿PRIDE?

Puerto Rico may belong to the United States, but politically it resolutely behaves like most Latin American countries.  Taking away the status issue, policy differences between the parties are very difficult to discern.

But one implication of the above distinction is clear, politics in Latin America is characterized by stronger populist traits than in the US.  And along with populism comes a marked reliance on personality which leads to the widely acknowledged issue of caudillismo, or as we more commonly call it in Puerto Rico, cacicazgo.

The discussions during the past three “cuatrienios” on the local employment non-discrimination act prove that the legislative leadership is more important than the party platforms in influencing whether policies in favor of gays get enacted.

Even though the New Progressive Party (NPP-PNP) had backed this legislation in the previous two terms, it actually only got approved in either the House or Senate when the leadership in those bodies personally sympathized with the bills.

Although the Popular Democratic Party (PDP-PPD) has a better record when it comes to human rights, ever since the NPP´s political ascendancy, the PDP increasingly approaches equality issues only once the pressure of history has made inaction shameful.

Historically the PDP would have advanced liberal legislation at the vanguard of both the United States and Latin America, as was the case with women´s equality, domestic violence, children born out of wedlock, the property rights of concubines, etc.

Now Puerto Rico has to content itself with being one of the last Latin American countries and one of the last “progressive” US jurisdictions to formally decriminalize sodomy.  Puerto Rico is clearly at risk of following the Southern US states and our radically homophobic neighbors in the Antilles.

Most gay people wonder how can Puerto Rico have so many homosexuals and yet LGBT citizens have such little power.  Even while our country becomes more tolerant and even accepting of gays individually or in family settings, we fail to see the development of, say, respect for gays as voters.

Comparisons are often made between our Island and big cities or big countries.  While mass may not seem relevant, in fact it is.

Anyone who has been involved in politics knows how difficult it is to deal with a voter community that is not well organized.  And the easiest to organize communities are the ones that live together or have common centers of activity.

In Puerto Rico, like most suburban societies, life revolves around the car.  The only traditional urban communities, like Santurce, Old San Juan or Rio Piedras became almost abandoned half a century ago.

Unlike in some major United States cities, the most relevant of course being New York, San Juan has yet to rediscover urban living (albeit maybe somewhat briefly in the last decade, specially in Santurce).

In the US the agglomeration of gay people in particular districts enabled them to gain political power both through the strength in numbers of voters over politicians and through the purchasing power against retailers.

In our capitalist system economics matters, to the point than in the US some consider gays to have disproportionate influence because of the proportion of disposable income.  In majoritarian democracies (those that don’t vote with variants of proportional representation), minority voters only count if they live in the same district.  (In Puerto Rico we have a mostly majoritarian system with a degree of proportionality through the way of at-large legislators.)

Nowadays, with the “normalization” of gay life with same sex marriage, gay people seem comfortable once again living in the suburbs in the US.  So at least in that respect, Puerto Rico could be considered to be doing fine when it comes to gays´ quality of life.

But as long as there is no organized or visible gay community in our country, rights against non-discrimination will depend on our culture or US laws.

Puerto Rico may not have a gay district.  But there are enough gay businesses to give critical mass to a gay empowerment movement.

It seems like a new generation is taking up the challenge, but there is a need to recognize a geographical limitation that requires a different strategy.

Lacking a gay district the only viable strategies are online organizing and exploiting gay centers of activity.

Online organizing is of course much harder than it sounds.  But here the tools and strategies are still being developed even in more technologically proficient societies.  (This a good topic by itself for another time.)

Exploiting gay centers of activity for more than drinking and dancing is a very big challenge, specially if the owners and managers are not committed to LGBT empowerment.

The challenge of strengthening gay bars at a time when in the eyes of many they are even irrelevant is huge.

Specially when many of the most politically oriented people are either not interested in going out or still way too much in the closet.

In a country where most political activists are employed by government or work exclusively with one of the major parties fully breaking the closet is not easy.

Another potential center of activity are college campuses.  There we can probably find an untapped resource that can act independently and boldly in building a gay political movement.