Mi Lamento Borincano or My Puerto Rican Lament

If you have followed the thread of my posts, you know that one of my novels is about a Puerto Rican Pentecostal family which immigrates to the U.S in the 1950s. The protagonist, Angélica, grows up to live a dual existence between her American secular life and her Puerto Rican evangelical life. Though my writing benefitted greatly from my similar background, the novel is not autobiographical. Instead it is a tale told in the spirit of Gabriel García Márquez [“Macondo is not so much as place as it is a state of mind.”].

This is not to say that writing this novel was not an emotional journey for me, particularly so when doing research about 1940s rural Puerto Rico, the staging ground for both my family and Angélica’s. When I write, I often play background music appropriate to the time period or setting. For 1940s rural Puerto Rico, there was no question which song I would choose to inspire me. No matter how often I hear the classic "Lamento Borincano" by the famous Puerto Rican composer of popular songs Rafael Hernández Marín, its opening chords carry me back to a way of life I often heard about as a child, but never knew first hand. It captures the longing I saw in my parents’ eyes for the homeland they left behind. Here is Marc Anthony singing background for images of Puerto Rico in the 1940s.




When I wanted a change, I would shift over to "Preciosa," another famous song by Rafael Hernández Marín; here, too, sung by Marc Anthony, this time at Madison Square Garden.



The longing captured in these songs makes me wonder whether it gets imbedded, even generations removed, in the DNA of those exiled from any homeland, whether it be Africa, Europe or Puerto Rico.

Translation links for: Lamento Borincano , Preciosa


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