Puerto Rico is No Joke: A response to the racist remarks made by Tony Hinchcliffe

Friends:

Comedian Tony Hinchcliffe has created a firestorm after telling a hugely offensive racist joke about Puerto Rico that that has appropriately and expectedly enraged Puerto Ricans. According to this NBC news article by Nicole Acevedo and Ignacio Torres, this has brought to mind just how incompetently Trump's handled the devastating impacts of Hurricane Maria in Puerto Rico all of which has sparked outrage and disgust by the Puerto Rican community.

The Trump campaign is trying to walk this back but the cat is out of the bag.  I'm not seeing how the press is covering the Latino community at large on this matter, but as a Latina and Mexican American myself, I similarly feel a deep sense of anger, rage, and disgust. 

I've been to Puerto Rico. It's a beautiful island its people are affable, generous, and kind. I offer you more context for the gut-level response against this toxic racism, opposing not just Hinchcliffe, but Trump's campaign and Trump himself using racism as a way to stoke an irrational fear of Black and Brown people and immigrants in his race for the presidency. Clearly, both Trump and his running mate, Vance, think that this is a good strategy. 

The backlash we are seeing now suggests that there are limits. 

After all, recent Census data indicate that over 5.8 million Puerto Ricans live in the U.S. and many of them in swing states. Remember, as well, that Puerto Ricans are U.S. citizens. Fingers crossed that this parlays into a flexing of not just the Puerto Rican community's political power, but the Latino community, in general, with Latinas and Latinos determining who the next president of our nation will be.


You can view Hinchcliffe's comments in the video below. I also encourage you to read this article from the Center for Puerto Rican Studies in Hunter College, New York that responds to Hinchcliffe's racist remarks.

-Angela Valenzuela

A response to the racist remarks made by Tony Hinchcliffe

October 28, 2024

Protestor holding up a sign with the Puerto Rican flag on it that reads “Puerto Rico is no Joke – Want to Laugh – Burn Your Own” at a protest in response to the Seinfeld episode titled “The Puerto Rican Day” which aired on May 7, 1998. Carlos Ortiz Collection. Puerto Rican protest: CaOr_b21_f13_0004. Center for Puerto Rican Studies Library & Archives, Hunter College, CUNY.

The Center for Puerto Rican Studies (CENTRO) at Hunter College condemns the racist, demeaning, ignorant, and grossly offensive remarks made by Tony Hinchcliffe during the campaign rally for Trump at Madison Square Garden yesterday afternoon. 

As Puerto Ricans, we know our influence and contributions are inseparable from the cultural fabric of the United States. Moreover, we assert that our value as a people both in the Archipelago and across the international Diaspora extends beyond our relationship with the United States. Referring to Puerto Rico as a “floating island of garbage in the ocean” speaks to the willful ignorance of the conditions facing Puerto Rico this very moment and for the last 126 years under US colonial rule. This comment raises deep concerns about the type of persons who may influence policy over Puerto Rico and its inhabitants. Historic and ongoing forms of  colonialism continue to shape the history of Puerto Rico and the everyday lives of Puerto Ricans. Since 1898 , failed US policies have resulted in over a century of violent occupation, exploitation, disenfranchisement, dispossession, and oppression. Austerity policies and failed government initiatives are responsible for creating disastrous conditions and exacerbating them each day as the healthcare industry, education system, and basic infrastructure continue to crumble.

CENTRO finds the application of the stereotype that Latinos “love making babies” to be egregious, degrading, and insensitive. For decades, African-Americans, Indigenous people, and Puerto Ricans specifically, have served as a playground for eugenics and scientific experimentation. Puerto Rico has often been mischaracterized as suffering from overpopulation  and the methods to address this supposed issue of overpopulation included the mass sterilization of Puerto Rican women and using poor Puerto Rican women as subjects for birth control trials without informed consent. Puerto Ricans have often been the subject of eugenic practices and rhetoric resulting in lifelong trauma, permanent bodily harm, and death. 

A photograph of women protesting the forced sterilization of women, with signs that read “Sterilization Abuses Women” and “Stop Sterilization!” and “Health Care For All!” José E. Velázquez Papers. Women Protesting Forced Sterilization: JoEV_b07_f07_0003. Center for Puerto Rican Studies Library & Archives, Hunter College, CUNY.

As advocates of free speech, academic freedom, and freedom of expression, CENTRO deeply understands the need to prevent censorship across the public square, academia, college campuses, the arts, and the press. However, to take a national stage for the US Presidential race and utilize it to make light of imperialist wars, refugee crises in Latin America, and to spew racist rhetoric about multiple racial/ethnic groups is dangerous and harmful. 

While Trump’s campaign has distanced itself from Tony Hinchcliffe’s remarks in a statement, saying “This joke does not reflect the views of President Trump or the campaign,” we demand that Trump condemn this characterization of Puerto Rico. Moreover, we demand that Trump explain what his position is on Puerto Rico, and what his policy priorities are for this U.S. territory, the home of more than 3 million U.S. citizens. We also call for the Republican Party at the national and state levels to clarify what their positions are on Puerto Rico and Puerto Ricans in the United States.

Since our founding in 1973, CENTRO has remained the largest university-based research institute, library, and archive dedicated to the Puerto Rican experience in the United States precisely for the continued mischaracterization and ignorance that exists in the United States about Puerto Rico, its people, their history and their trajectory. On Saturday, October 26th, our television show Puerto Rican Voices won two New York Emmy Awards for our investigative documentaries examining the current conditions facing Puerto Rico. Over five episodes we covered the privatization of the power grid, the legacy of Tito Matos, the collapse of communities in Fajardo reliant on the ferry service, the effects of the AES coal plant on the environment and local community, and increased gentrification due to exploitative tax laws. This is all the context needed to understand the gravity of such disgraceful comments by Tony Hinchcliffe. 

Love for Puerto Rico does not come from vacationing in an AirBnB that likely displaced a Puerto Rican family or a hotel that unlawfully blocks public access to the beach. Love for Puerto Rico  is deeply rooted in a collective struggle, the ongoing fight for self-determination, a shared unique culture, and a lifelong commitment to the true meaning of community – whether showing up at the polls to vote or taking to the streets to make our voices heard. 

As of the 2023 United States Census estimates, there are over 5.8 million Puerto Ricans living in the United States including key battleground states like Arizona, Colorado, Florida, Georgia, Maine, Michigan, Minnesota, Nevada, New Hampshire, North Carolina, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Texas, Virginia, and Wisconsin. Our Data Hub’s new voting tool dashboard showcases the citizen-voting age population for Puerto Ricans and other selected populations in the United States across all 50 states. This tool can be used as a resource to see the potential Puerto Ricans, Hispanics, and other selected racial and ethnic groups may have as a voting group, based on its share of the citizen, voting-age population.

Puerto Rican Heritage Month starts November 1st and Election Day is next Tuesday, November 5th, in both the United States and Puerto Rico. We highly encourage all eligible voters to make a plan and exercise your right to vote: ¡BORICUA: TU VOTO ES PODER! If you live within the United States, you can find information about voting locations and your voting rights here. If you live in Puerto Rico, you can find information about voting locations and your voting rights here.