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RANT | CULTURAL IDENTITY

Wait, Hold Up, Did He Just Say “Puerto Rico Is Not a Country”?

On being exasperated with the idolization of gringolandia

Lola Rosario
4 min readFeb 3, 2025

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Photo by Ovidio Soto on Unsplash (location: Boquerón, Borikén)

Bandera de Estados Unidos yo no te saludo,porque aunque sea cierto que tú eres símbolo de una patria libre y soberana en Puerto Rico representas la piratería y el pillaje”— Don Pedro Albizu Campos, Freedom Fighter,Harvard-educated lawyer

Earlier today — at the start of our English tutoring session — an elderly man from Beijing gave me a not-at-all-needed reminder of how many around the globe glorify that colonizer/oppressor/racist [add your other preferred adjectives here] imperial/capitalist North American nation.

Here’s how it went down —

Me: [smiling] Hello.

Man from Beijing: Yes, hi, you can call me Bruce.

Me: My name is Lola and you can call me Lola. Where are you calling from?

MFB: Beijing, China.

Me: So, I’m curious. You’re from Beijing, so what’s your given name?

MFB: Yeah, you can just call me Bruce, because my Chinese name is usually difficult for foreigners.

After about three minutes of discussing how the sound of one’s name is something…

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Lola Rosario
Lola Rosario

Written by Lola Rosario

Poet | Journalist 🇵🇷. Writing + Living Boldly Unapologetically | https://lolaslines.com | Author of Daughter de Borikén https://libreriayeditorialpulpo.com/

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