On Decolonization, Community & Bridging the Divides: An Interview with CENTRO Director Yarimar Bonilla
Photo of Yarimar Bonilla. Credit: Chris Gregory
In July of 2021, Dr. Yarimar Bonilla officially stepped into the role of director at the Center for Puerto Rican Studies (CENTRO), becoming the first woman to lead the institution in the nearly half century since its founding. In the following interview, which has been edited for length and clarity, Dr. Bonilla discusses the first eight months of her tenure and how her vision for CENTRO moving forward.
The Latinx Project (TLP): What's been your biggest accomplishment since stepping into the role? And what's been your biggest challenge?
Yarimar Bonilla (YB): I think the biggest challenge is the daunting task of taking over a center with a nearly 50-year history that so many people look to and care about. As academics, we usually have to work hard to convince non-academics that they should be invested in what we do and search for ways to bring the community in. But CENTRO is a site that was built through community engagement and there remains a lot of community interest in it. So it’s a wonderful privilege to run such a space but also a big responsibility.
The biggest accomplishment, I think, has been just bringing back so many people that are invested in CENTRO. For example, we are launching an artist residency and former Young Lord Hiram Maristany is our first artist-in-residence. We also had several events around the release of the new version of West Side Story which allowed us to both celebrate the legacy of a world talent like Rita Moreno, but also stage a critical dialogue about Puerto Rican representation past and present. And of course, there is the big Mellon grant that we were awarded, which will serve precisely to further that effort of bringing together diverse constituencies, diverse generations, and people from diverse ideologies to work together. But it's only been eight months. So I think these accomplishments are still small.
TLP: Shifting toward programming, there's this emphasis on inclusiveness and accessibility. Could you talk about how this relates to your vision for CENTRO?
YB: One of my main goals for CENTRO is to make it accessible and inclusive. Issues of accessibility are particularly key at a moment when there's limited physical access. When I stepped in, we were closed. So accessibility was all about leveraging technology. How can we make virtual events more accessible? The first step was to have interpretation in sign language and to take advantage of Zoom technology that allows us to do instant translation in a very smooth and effective way. Accessibility is intimately tied to inclusivity and making CENTRO a place where people who are English dominant or Spanish dominant, can feel comfortable and be able to speak to each other. We've also adopted inclusive language in our translations, and in all our communications, to signal clearly and loudly that this is a place where we accept everyone.
TLP: What was your initial introduction to CENTRO and did Frank Bonilla have any particular influence on you?
YB: I never met Frank Bonilla, but I have to admit I feel a special connection to him. My entire professional life, people have asked me if we’re related because of our last names. And so when I began the job, I went on a deep dive rereading his work, listening to the oral histories with him that we have online, and watching the documentary about him. I feel a connection to him in terms of how community oriented he was, but at the same time, his work wasn't necessarily applied, it was very conceptual, very theoretical, it was about theorizing the Puerto Rican experience, not just documenting it. Ultimately he wanted to ask deep and profound questions about the nature and purpose of our migration and the interests it served. And he was also a comparative thinker, he didn’t just write about Puerto Rico, his original work was about Venezuela and Chile. And so I want to follow in that legacy, to be able to theorize the Puerto Rican experience and put it in a global frame, but not in a way that is alienating to the community.
TLP: Hurricane Maria allowed CENTRO to reestablish a lot of connections with the Island, and really prioritize the island. How do you see this shift in Puerto Rican studies after the hurricane between the island and the Diaspora? And how do you see CENTRO’s work fitting into that dynamic?
YB: One of the foundational aspects of CENTRO has always been to respond to the Diaspora's need to know its history, its culture, and where it came from. This remains just as important today as there remains a complete structural silence about the U.S. empire and its territories in the US educational system. I think this debate about whether CENTRO should be diaspora-focused or archipelago focused is a false one. It has always been about understanding where the Diaspora came from and why it's here. At the same time, CENTRO has to also talk about the needs of the Diaspora, the particular challenges of the Diaspora. Because nobody else is doing that, including the Diaspora itself! Because the Puerto Rican Diaspora is often so committed and so focused on what's going on in Puerto Rico that they organize politically more around that sometimes, especially after Hurricane Maria, than around the challenges they have here: housing, displacement, policing, the pandemic, public health—all these issues. So CENTRO has to work on diaspora issues. But we also have to work on Puerto Rico. Finding the right balance is always going to be that challenge, but I think the key is not see it as two seperate tracks, but rather to tackle large issues—such as displacement, migration, public health, gender violence, anti-blackness—in ways that address what is happening on both sides of el charco.
I also think that the role of CENTRO has to be to educate folks in Puerto Rico about the Diaspora. Because folks in the Diaspora work tirelessly to know the history of Puerto Rico and to stay connected to either where they came from or where their parents came from. But folks in Puerto Rico, traditionally have not known much about the history and struggles of the Diaspora. They have very vague notions, oftentimes influenced by stereotypical representations like West Side Story or the same kind of stereotypes that circulate in Hollywood. And so I really want to work on helping Puerto Ricans in Puerto Rico know more about the work of CENTRO and the history of the Diaspora.
In terms of Hurricane Maria, I think that CENTRO served as a convener, and there were a lot of people who came together through the Puerto Rico, Puerto Ricans conferences. But I feel like it did not influence policy to a great extent. So I want to think about how we can better fulfill our mission of applying scholarship to public action. How can we influence policy around Puerto Rico and Puerto Rican communities in the US? And that's why the first Mellon-funded study group focuses on decolonization. The second one is about how to create a more just and equitable post-disaster future—to not just document the challenges, but to actually stick our necks out and propose some policy solutions or at the very least provide critical tools for developing those policy solutions.
TLP: With the Mellon grant, I think you had an event that was just for transparency with the funding. So I was wondering if that's something you want to talk about, in terms of why you made the decision, or if that's something that you have to do or just how it went down.
YB: It was recommended to us by a colleague because there was a lot of interest. People wanted to know more about what it was and how to apply. And so we did it in a town hall format—which is something that we're developing now, not just webinars—to talk about this program, its goals, and the rationale behind it.. And we asked folks to come and bring their questions. Since CENTRO was built by community, it has to be a place where community members feel free to walk in and ask questions. We're in a public university, we receive public funding. We can not replicate the culture of a secretive nonprofit or of the ivory tower. The original principles of CENTRO were all about breaking down those walls. So we wanted to make sure to demystify that process because there are folks who are used to applying for fellowships routinely—I'm one of them. I understand these processes, and there's things that I take for granted. But not everyone has that experience. So we wanted to make sure that folks who have never applied for these kinds of funds felt welcome and understood the process. Again, it is about accessibility.
TLP: How do you view Puerto Rican studies intersecting with broader research on the Caribbean and its global diasporas? Is this intersection of interest to you and your current projects at CENTRO?
YB: I come from the tradition of Caribbean Studies. So my approach to Puerto Rico is always comparative. That doesn't mean that I don't have an interest in the Diaspora. It’s just that I am always thinking about things like migration, transnationalism, sovereignty, colonialism, and decolonization, beyond the frame of the United States. We need to think about decolonization broadly in terms of what it has been in different times and different places. We need to examine the processes that occurred in the United States—not just in Cuba or the Philippines, which are constant points of reference—but also in Hawaii, Oklahoma, and Alaska. But we should also be thinking about what's happening in Palau, Cataluña, Taiwan, and Hong Kong. Part of what I argue is that there hasn't been a clear model for U.S. decolonization the way there has been for France and the United Kingdom. These other empires had clear processes, histories, traditions, forms, and problems with their decolonial models, but because the United States has always been a hidden empire, it’s never articulated a process of decolonization. So the decolonization study group is going to be as focused on decolonizing Puerto Rico as it will be on decolonizing the United States and on trying to get the United States to break the structural silence around its territories and its empire.
TLP: Is there anything else you want to add?
YB: We're at a time where Puerto Rican studies departments have declined. They're either defunded, non-existent, or have been lumped in with other programs. So I think that's also a question that we have to think through at CENTRO. CENTRO was originally built to support Puerto Rican Studies, but do we not also want to be leaders in broader fields? There's a new wave of decolonial studies in the academy. How should we contribute to that? How can we contribute to comparative ethnic studies? American Studies? How can we rethink our relationship to Black studies as well? There's a lot of people who are really weary about Puerto Rican studies being folded into the broader Latino Studies category. But I do think we have to think about where we fit within all these other fields and how we can be a leader in these other areas because we intersect so many of them: Latino Studies, Caribbean Studies, Latin American Studies, American Studies, Ethnic Studies, Black Studies. I think we need to draft a new intellectual agenda for Puerto Rican Studies in relation to these other fields. We're still in a time of transition at CENTRO, but I do hope that we can be a place where those conversations can be had.
TLP: To close on a personal note, what has it been like to balance all of your responsibilities?
YB: It’s been a challenge moving into an administrative role. The constant challenge for mid-career scholars (especially women of color) is to figure out how to take on leadership roles, while still balancing our writing, our research, and our health. During this time I've not been able to sustain my monthly column at El Nuevo Día, for example. But I'm trying to. It's still a time of transition: I'm trying to make CENTRO more of a place of collective decision-making and collective governance and to move from a hierarchical leadership model to one that is more horizontal, less about a directora and more about a directiva. That way I can also write and continue to be a thought leader and not just a bureaucrat. I'm not there yet, but I’m trying.
Yarimar Bonilla is a political anthropologist, professor, writer, and directora of the Center for Puerto Rican Studies at Hunter College. Both an accomplished scholar and a prominent public intellectual, Yarimar Bonilla is a leading voice on questions of Caribbean and Latinx politics. She is a monthly columnist in the Puerto Rican newspaper El Nuevo Día and a regular contributor to publications such as The Washington Post, The Nation, and The New Yorker.