Its a trick.
•
Its a trick. •
I repeat it in my mind the way he says it. Eyebrows raised in question, accent thick, heavy, born with a skepticism lacing his tongue.
It’s a trick.
This time, I’m so surprised he doesn’t fully recognize it.
A few months ago I headed to the same NYCHA building I’ve been so familiar with since I was born. The muscle memory of the walk from the train, of knowing the door at the bottom would be broken, of knowing where to stand in the elevator to not touch the sticky walls or get dead roaches on my shoes, of knowing what buttons to push without looking, of knowing which door bell to ring without breathing.
It was my Abuelo’s 76th birthday; 20- something years spent in Puerto Rico, fifty-something years spent in New York. He hasn’t opened up in general throughout his life, machismo in latinx men being the culprit; it’s being diagnosed with cancer that has changed how he interacts with his past. More vulnerable and cracked open than ever witnessed before. So when he told me his story of how he wound up in Long Island City, New York, all the way from Yauco, Puerto Rico– a man of the montañas– I opened up my camera and I listened. He detailed his story (one similar to many Borikens subject to United States violence) of becoming a fugitive of the United States military during the Vietnam war, refusing to participate–refusal to bend to a power that in one breath destroys the economy and politics of one country and in another breath offers their own as a false salve. Displacement is a ravenous beast in the way it is never satiated, molding and transforming communities into becoming comfortable with its appetite. The same low-income building my abuelo has lived in for all of my life is being transformed slowly before our eyes; I seek to document it before it fades away forever, taking my abuelo along with it. His story, one of many that sit in the nexus of disability, language, diaspora, and immigration politics. His home is, like many, in danger of a second displacement in the face of gentrification– a cultural shrine holding every instrument, photo, indigenous practice, food, and music that one clings to in order to extend home.