Orlando Furioso: a diasporic story

Abstract

In this article, I analyze the transformation of the ethnic landscape of the city of Orlando that emerged-temporarily-as a result of the tragedy of the Pulse nightclub. Orlando has become the destination of many Puerto Ricans in the face of the crisis that the Island is facing nowadays, however, several migratory movements have already taken place in the city in previous decades. During the first migrations, Puerto Ricans articulated their identities from the discourse of opportunities and the discourse of the absence of the motherland. The diasporic communities incur in specific practices, through which they negotiate their identity position between their homeland geography and the receiving geography. In the new territory, the Puerto Rican communities rethink their cultural identities with respect to other predominant groups in the region. In the case of the state of Florida, there is a predominance of the Cuban communities, so I ask myself: How is the Puerto Rican identity rethought in face of other Hispanic groups? Is there an alliance with other Latinos? Are national origins affirmed? Both of them? In this article, I argue that the tragedy of the Pulse massacre gave way to Puerto Rican migrants negotiating between an island identity, continuous of the generations that previously migrated to the United States and a new Latino identity, where political and cultural links are shared in relation to the white man and an identity that produces temporal micro-motherlands.