Like much of Europe, Corsicans took part in the immigration
to the so-called “new world” in search of economic opportunities. Spain’s Cedula
de Gracias of 1815 encouraged Spaniards and other Europeans to settle and
populate the colonies of Cuba and Puerto Rico. In the 19th century, hundreds of
families from Corsica (a Mediterranean island located between France and Italy)
relocated to Puerto Rico, helping to establish the plantation economy and
subsequently Puerto Rico’s coffee industry in their new home.
Rochester-based artist Jose Olivieri Rivera has spent years
researching this history, inspired by its connections to his own genealogy. This
project has culminated in more than 50,000 words that chronicle his family’s
journey from Corsica to Puerto Rico, and centering on his father’s life, from
birth to death. Rivera says he plans to develop a community theater piece
around the narrative. You can hear a distilled spoken word version of the story
that Rivera will present Saturday night at The Hungerford Building.
The story’s gravitas comes from the fact of subsequent segregation
and marginalization of a disenfranchised portion of the population. People like
Rivera’s father, who was born of a mixed union, were ostracized by family and
community.
Rivera’s dad worked on plantations, and when he was orphaned
at age 16, was left to fend for himself. “He was taken in by relatives and
utilized as part of the labor force to continue to work whatever enterprises
they had in terms of agriculture and harvesting,” Rivera says. “The story
revolves around the challenges he had as a young person and as an adult as a
result of the history of colonialism in Puerto Rico.”
Rivera says his research and anecdotes shared by his father
and other elders led him to discover “things that add to the complexity of
Spanish and of Latino culture in the new world.”
This article appears in Feb 15-21, 2017.
