Mi Lamento Borincano - Part 2

In a comment to my previous post, A Cuban in London wrote that hearing the song Lamento Borincano “got to my very core …. it expresses pretty much the sentiment that underlines Latin American identity.”

Since his comment, I have not stopped thinking about why this song also seems to reach into my deepest self; unsettling me, sometimes with joy, sometimes with tears. This is a song about a Puerto Rican peasant, a jíbaro (hee′ bah roh), who sets out joyfully for the market with his products, only to find the market desolated, with no buyers because of harsh economic conditions. He wonders what will happen now to his family and to his country.

When I was a child, one of the worse things others could call you was a jíbaro, meaning a country bumpkin. If they then found out your family was also from the rural mountain town Lares, which mine was, you were really in trouble. Never mind that Lares holds an exalted place in Puerto Rican history for being the cradle of its independence movement. The terms jíbaro and Lares somehow conjoined in the image of the Puerto Rican version of the rube; this time, wearing a straw pava hat.

Ironically, the term jíbaro has become iconic as a positive sentimental symbol of "the roots of the modern Puerto Rican people, and symbolizes the strength of traditional values of living simply and properly caring for homeland and family."

This evolution in the public’s perceived worth of the jíbaro is in some ways representative of my own. In the heady days of my business career, it was tempting to be swayed by the trappings of privilege and power. I hope I have since learned the difference between gloss and gold and that, in my novel about Angélica Miranda, I succeeded in portraying her and her humble family with both realism and respect.

Check out The Bronx Latin Jazz All Stars and other artists performing the song Lamento Borincano. If anyone has a good rendition by a female vocalist, please let me know. I prefer one in the música típica tradition rather than in the operatic vein, if you know what I mean.

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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