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Prometheus CleftHaroldo Fontaine aa Department of Educational Leadership and PolicyStudies , Florida State UniversityPublished online: 23 Apr 2008.

To cite this article: Haroldo Fontaine (2008) Prometheus Cleft, Journal of Latinos andEducation, 7:2, 177-181, DOI: 10.1080/15348430701828756

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PROMETHEUS CLEFTFONTAINE

Prometheus Cleft

Haroldo FontaineDepartment of Educational Leadership and Policy Studies

Florida State University

This poetic-prose piece is my personal ethnic educational history. It challenges themisconception that Cuban students (so-called voluntary minorities) are not op-pressed, especially not by their Cuban teachers, and that they thus achieve more aca-demic success than other Latinos. Some may be hiding. Perhaps this work will helpto find them.

Key words: poetic prose, Cuban students, educational history, voluntary minorities,Latinos

INTRODUCTION

For whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee—those who’ve mused the voluntary minor-ity has had his foreign page translated into the King James slang without beingtrampled in welcome to this fast food nation. My page remains tattered, scattered,and unbound, a disembodied soul, howling through the smog of Uncle Sam’sschools. This scream I render as my personal ethnic educational history, a po-etic-prose piece challenging the misconception that a Cuban student is not op-pressed, especially not by his Cuban compatriota-teacher, and thus achieves moreacademic success than other Latinos and minorities. As I hope my tale will tell, thewretched of the schools may just be hiding on the porch of their daydreams, andtheir saving grace the view.

JOURNAL OF LATINOS AND EDUCATION, 7(2), 177–181Copyright © 2008 Taylor & Francis Group, LLCISSN: 1534-8431 print / 1532-771X onlineDOI: 10.1080/15348430701828756

Correspondence should be addressed to Haroldo Fontaine, Department of Educational Leadershipand Policy Studies, Florida State University, 113 Stone Building, P. O. Box 3064452, Tallahassee, FL32306-4452. E-mail: hfontaine27@gmail.com

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EXILE

And on the fourth day God also created communist propaganda, who begat amorde la patria, who defiled social justice, who begat alienation, who begat immigra-tion, who begat repudiation, who begat amputation, who begat emasculation; andGod knew and God saw and God felt that his melting pot was very good! In his infi-nite wisdom and heavenly justice God rewarded the faithful who’d crossed the gulfto be one nation on their knees and indivisible (Piñero, 1975), but my tongue wasforever cleft on the in-flight complimentary Coke whose sugary swash welcomedme to an empty city of lights. Ever since I arrived in the land where milk and honeyflow freely from price points, I’ve been trippin’ over my forked tongue, never funwhen thought’s undone ’fore I open up and say “ahhhh” … uhmmm … from agypsy line I’m strung, hung on nomadic trips through strips of stillborn embryonicblood clots clogging vitality, reality is, I can’t say what I mean … been that waysince I can remember pissin’ my pants in my third grade ESOL class because myCuban teacher Mrs. Muselle would not allow me relief, and it wasn’t because shecouldn’t understand the condition of my bladder or see my legs fanning the windwith fury. In her portable-o-let I knelt humbly before her feet and the gathered pu-erile throng, and in their presence received baptism in my own burst of urine.

ELEMENTARY SCHOOL

I was an exotic ethnic hottie from the first moment I stepped onto the campus ofSouthboro Elementary School in West Palm Beach, Florida. This is not self-con-gratulatory, but self-evident in light of knowing that my being “Cuban” made me atarget for many a prepubescent Venus. Thanks to rice and beans and platanomaduros fritos, my expanding girth discouraged further sport. Other than withstored calories and few friends, I spent most of my time alone while my motherworked long hours to keep us solvent. Adam Smith would have been proud of ourdivision of labor: our pact was that she would worry about the money, and I wouldtake care of the grades. With the exception of Mrs. Muselle’s class and the way-ward arrows of curious lasses, ethnicity eluded my callow consciousness once Iwas “mainstreamed” in the fourth grade.

Once exiled into translation, teachers made no effort to keep me connected tomy language or culture other than what I got at home, and this I resisted, for I hadalready acculturated into doubting Swarthy’s moral worth. As Moses (2002) sug-gests, bilingual education can have a profound ameliorative influence on a stu-dent’s “authentic cultural identity” and “self-determination.” Its absence may ex-plain why I feel inadequate and incomplete—broken, in fact—to this day. I am stillstraddling the gulf, yet t’acclimatize to exile, still tryin’ to gather the pieces with’ashorn broom: sobbing boy leaving papá here, American tourist embraced by a wiz-

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ened hug there, once warmed by the burning bush, now’m chilled by’n agnosticair, wealth was measured’n familiar kisses, cheeks now sunken after years of pen-ury, no more sweaty rides down revolución lane—closed for perpetual repairs,condition-aired Scion now seats only two: a pounding fist and’a sagging frownperipatetically bound, home’s a salted open wound, stitches nowhere found. AsMacedo (1997) argues, being denied bilingual education (or at least its lack of pro-vision, which amounts to the same thing) till now has me tongue-tied and hence“mind-tied.” That’s why I suffer from feeling like I can never quite say what Imean, for “I” feels like Picasso’s Weeping Woman. I live in a perpetual state ofapproximation.

MIDDLE SCHOOL

Palm Beach Public School introduced me to the iconic polo and khaki costumeI’ve often used to gain my audience’s favor, gliding and profiling across the globeof their Anglo-Saxon stage. It was also the first time I shaved my shadowy peachfuzz. Elementary school had taught me that if I wanted digs next door to theJeffersons, my lips and threads had to fit in. This I did gainfully to spite Garcia’s(2001) odds: limited English proficiency, Cuban born, recent immigrant, psycho-logically isolated, and socially unattached. Mamá spoke little English, had no con-nection to my school or the local community, paid our government subsidized rent,received food stamps, and worked odd shifts.

The pallid ladies still clamored for my attentions, and I readily obliged, for I al-ready knew that making out with “White girls” split the stock of my social capital.Superlatives in music and advanced academics polished my rising star, but it twin-kled with a blinding white sparkle that still blinds me. With the exception of a re-search paper I wrote about Cuba in the seventh grade, I grew up on the same jejunefare as minority peers were fed: the United States is the only country with a history,and it basks in the gleam pouring from the benevolent faces of its great White fa-thers. Music, on the other hand, was a sonorous bliss, a benumbing opiate that re-lieved my bleeding skin from inveterate self-bleaching. Secondary school wouldbe rhythmic and blue.

HIGH SCHOOL

My ethnic awareness was never keener than during my freshman year, not of myown, but of Stacy’s, my best friend in middle school. My mother and I had beenrenting a condo in Palm Beach for several months before he came to visit. We wentto the pool for a swim and were having ourselves a swell of a time, until the guardcame out and asked to have a word with me. He got straight to the point: Stacy had

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to leave the pool because he was Black! Apparently, several guests had called thefront desk to complain that the chlorine could not possibly disinfect them from thevirulence of his skin. I only remember White anger—his and later his mother’s, butI was too young to understand anything else. Stacy and I slowly grew apart not toolong after that. He impregnated a girl who bore him two sons who did not grow upto know their daddy because Stacy was shot and killed trying to feed them byslingin’ some dope. I guess it ain’t easy tryin’ to make a livin’ as a Black highschool drop out with’a coupl’a kids … it’s hawd out the’a fo’a pimp. I miss him.

I was not conscious of this then, but perhaps what I saw Stacy suffer remindedme of my own marginality. Whatever the cause, I crawled back into the safety ofmy polo and khaki cocoon and tread softly with my musical staff for the durationof my high school career. Other than the old theme of finding it easy to get a datebecause assumed to be rrrrrrico … ssssssuave, I have no recollection of my exis-tence as an ethnic being other than at home. I had been an honored, decorated, col-lege-tracked student since middle school, which was made possible in part by mycorps of ambassadors: Sperry Docksiders, Ralph Lauren, and Persichetti.

CONCLUSION

One thing I can say for certain is that I always preferred to date White girls, eventhough Black and Latina ones generally found me more appealing and they werenot shy to let me know I had it going on. I cannot say when, but early on I learned toassociate light skin with virginal purity; dark skin was sullied and sinful. Not sur-prisingly, both serious and frivolous mates were wan. My wife knows that I strug-gled to see past her gorgeous Black mane once we chose to hang outside the club.Fear of failure to assimilate is how I explain it; what better way to prove I wasmovin’ on up than to bed Jenny White?

The straits were dry when we crossed them, but from our deluge of tears came awatery highway traveled by many a weary balsero, without the aid of guardrails orreflectors. I have been fortunate to relish the absence of the type of teacher Lewis,Pitts, and Collins (2002) describe in their study of preservice teachers’ perceptionsof minority students. Even if our paths have crossed in a now-forgotten classroom,my will to social and personal power was and continues to be indomitable, thanksto mamá who’s always told me, ponle ganas, mijo—my mantra, the air I inspire.As it turns out, I have this in common with the founders of the League of UnitedLatin American Citizens (LULAC) as described by San Miguel (1997): an uncon-querable drive to demand my rights and improve myself by means of schooling.Flores-Gonzáles (1999) understood my and mamá’s view of education: It is instru-mental, a means to an end. However, the journey’s been smoothed by jettisoningcultural baggage I would have preferred to keep, and assimilating into oppressiveAmericanisms I still struggle to uproot. The inexhaustible waves of mamá’s boom-

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ing echo have kept me flowing toward elusive ends—first assimilation and thendisavowal, which has made me into a straw man, an empty man, devoid ofsubstance.

REFERENCES

Flores-Gonzáles, N. (1999). Puerto Rican high achievers: An example of ethnic and academic identitycompatibility. Anthropology & Education Quarterly, 3, 343–362.

Garcia, G. N. (2001). The factors that place Latino children and youth at risk of educational failure. InR. E. Slavin & M. Calderón (Eds.), Effective programs for Latino students (pp. 307–329). Mahwah,NJ: Erlbaum.

Lewis, B. F., Pitts, V. R., & Collins, A. C. (2002). A descriptive study of pre-service teachers’ percep-tions of African-American students’ ability to achieve in mathematics and science. Negro Educa-tional Review, 53(1/2), 31–42.

Macedo, D. (1997). English only: The tongue-tying of America. In A. Darder, R. D. Torres, & H.Gutíerrez (Eds.), Latinos and education: Critical reader (pp. 279–301). New York: Routledge.

Moses, M. S. (2002). Bilingual education. In Embracing race: Why we need race-conscious educationpolicy (pp. 39–79). New York: Teachers College Press.

Piñero, M. (1975). The book of Genesis according to Saint Miguelito. In M. Algarín & M. Piñero(Eds.), Nuyorican poetry: An anthology of Puerto Rican words and feelings (pp. 62–64). New York:Morrow.

San Miguel, G., Jr. (1997). Roused from our slumbers. In A. Darder, R. D. Torres, & H. Gutíerrez(Eds.), Latinos and education: A critical reader (pp. 135–157). New York: Routledge.

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