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SUNDAY JOURNAL

Borders stretch spirits

Stereotypes usually stifle, but sometimes they can be incentives to expand our boundaries.

By ALY COLON
Published April 9, 2006

I knew the question was coming. I knew the answer I would give.

As we sat in the car, I watched the border agent bend down and peer at us through the driver's window. Four of us were on our way back from an evening across the border.

The border agent smiled. I watched his tongue darting out, coiling to form the words that would wrap their way around our responses, preparing to strike at any false moves.

"Where were you born?" he asked.

My friends smiled. They named their birthplaces. Toledo, Ohio. Detroit, Michigan. Amsterdam, New York.

He bent down a little farther, trying to get a better look at me. I was sitting in the back seat on the other side of the car.

"Where were you born?" he repeated.

I paused. I knew what would happen next.

"Where were you born?" he said again, this time with a tone of exasperation rising in his voice.

"Santurce, Puerto Rico," I responded.

"May I see your green card, please?" the agent asked.

"Green card?" I responded. "I don't need a green card. I'm an American citizen."

"Look, you need a green card to get into the United States," the border agent said.

I could feel my face getting hot. Doesn't he know his own history? Doesn't he know the United States took Puerto Rico from Spain after the Spanish-American War? Doesn't he know we belong to the United States? That we were made U.S. citizens in 1917?

I reached into my wallet. I pulled out a card.

"Here's my American Express card," I shot back. "It's green."

He stood stone-faced.

"Look," the agent said, "I need to see your green card or you won't be able to get back into the United States."

"Okay, how about my Bank of America card? They only give those to Americans who bank in America," I spit back.

"Okay," he said. "Pull the car over there and tell it to the officer in charge."

I should have known. I've been dealing with this all my life - ever since I began traveling as a U.S. Army dependent, away from the island of my birth. I always had to explain where I was from and my connection to the United States.

I did it at post offices, where they wanted me to buy foreign stamps when I mailed my letters to my relatives in Puerto Rico. I did it at banks, where they didn't want to cash checks sent by relatives as gifts because they thought they weren't legal U.S. tender. I did it at some gatherings, where I told people my father was a military officer and they wanted to know if it was in the Puerto Rican army.

Sometimes, at dinner parties, I played along. When they asked me if we had cars or television on the island, I would tell them how we traveled by canoe. How we paddled rapidly on the rivers, through thick jungles. How we would use special signals with the monkeys hanging from the palm trees. Then they would throw us fresh coconuts to drink. I could go on like this for a while. They would stare at me with wonder and amazement. Until I told them the boring truth.

What I've come to terms with over the years is that I will always be seen as different. That I can look like, talk like and act like the people around me. But I can't bypass who I am. I can't disconnect myself from my heritage. My culture. My ethnicity.

More important, I've come to realize it's not a burden. It's a blessing. It grounds me. It reminds me who I am. Where I'm from. And how that has shaped me.

Another border agent came over to the car. He asked us what was going on. I explained in a calmer, more civil tone. He smiled. Then he waved us on.

I was back in the United States. But the experience reminded me that I always will be a sojourner, a traveler, staying only temporarily wherever I am. And that what defines me is not where I was born, but what was born inside me.

Aly Colon is on the faculty of the Poynter Institute for Media Studies, which owns the St. Petersburg Times.

[Last modified April 7, 2006, 10:50:01]