The Lynching of an Impertinent Journalist : Television: The question was, ‘Why do Puerto Ricans have the highest poverty levels among the major groups of Hispanics in the U.S.?’ The answer created a furor.

Let us begin with the basic figures to arrive at an understanding of the brouhaha.

In 1987--and I do not think that rates have changed substantially--the average Chicano (Mexican American) family in the United States earned $19,300 annually. The average Puerto Rican family earned only $14,600. This difference, obviously, was reflected in the number of persons officially classified as being poor: 38% of Puerto Ricans fit into this category, as compared to just 25% of Chicanos.

The question, then, was inevitable: Why do Puerto Ricans have the highest poverty levels among the major groups of Hispanics in the United States? There was one minute to answer that question before the cameras of “Portada,” one of the most successful and professional shows of the Univision network. One minute for two exponents of differing and balanced opinions to express their views, in the best tradition of American journalism.

In truth, one minute was too little time for so complex an issue, but it was worth the effort. I found the issue particularly unsettling. I knew that Puerto Ricans on the island had attained the highest levels of development, health, schooling and progress in all of Latin America, but that some people who triumphed in the Caribbean, or even in Miami or Orlando, for some unknown reason, once they settled in the Hispanic ghettos of New York and New Jersey, obtained results inferior to those of persons of Mexican descent.

I recalled then the reflections of Joseph P. Fitzpatrick, a Jesuit professor at Fordham University, published in the September, 1988, issue of The World and I. The key seemed to lie in the fragility of the Puerto Rican family nuclei when compared to those of families of Mexican origin; no fewer than 43% of Puerto Rican homes were headed by very young single women with children but no husbands, while the rate dropped to 19% for Chicanos.

Foreseeably, of this 43%, 67% lived in poverty, partly relieved by welfare but frequently worsened by successive conjugal failures, which, when there were offspring, contributed to making the cycle of poverty nearly inexpungable.

How was a poor 20-year-old young girl going to give her children a proper upbringing--abandoned by her partner, unable to finish high school and frequently hindered from working outside the home by lack of assistance? Barely 40 out of 100 Puerto Rican women find the opportunity to work at a job. They are trapped in their own personal tragedies. Among Chicanos, the percentage of working women is 51%. Obviously, there is very little money available in homes where there is only one employed adult. There is almost no hope of attaining a better life in those where there is none.

Shortly after voicing these so painfully clear things, all hell broke loose. Impetuous Puerto Rican State Sen. Olga Mendez did not hesitate to label me a “cretin.” She accused me of having insulted Puerto Rican women, Puerto Rican mothers, the Puerto Rican fatherland. Her words succeeded. Soon, 30 civic activist groups had joined ranks with her. Some university professor sought to see in my words the hand of “Yankee colonialism.” Suddenly, I became a public enemy. I had insulted, offended, sullied the honor of Puerto Rican women. And that was said on the radio and repeated in the local press in New York. A few days later, almost no one knew what I had said, just what others claimed that I had said.

The most diligent reporters reached me by phone. I was in Guatemala as an observer of the electoral process. At first, I did not understand what was going on. I tried to explain. It is not easy in the tranquillity of Lake Atitlan, in the midst of the simplicity of a Mayan village, to comprehend the remote madhouse that is New York.

I had offended no one, and much less “the Puerto Rican woman.” I tried to clarify what had happened. I extended my sincere apologies to whomever might have felt aggrieved as a result of misunderstanding my words. Why would I do anything so cruel and stupid as to insult grief-ridden women?

Of all the countries of Latin America, Puerto Rico is the one I know best--where I have the largest number of close friends, both male and female; where one of my children was born.

I was only attempting, by comparing the data, to explain an unpleasant fact engraved in stubborn reality. I know of no other way to confront ills. Poverty has its secrets and they must be deciphered in order to be able to overcome it. The phenomenon had nothing to do with the ethnic background of those who embodied it in New York.

My words held nothing of racism or sexism. No prejudice. In every group--be it black, Chinese, Puerto Rican, Cuban--in which homes headed by poor single mothers abound, poverty is almost inevitable and tends to perpetuate itself in a horrible cycle. Is it really so difficult to understand something so amazingly transparent?

Even as I write these words, certain civic activists are preparing to picket the television station that aired the program, and the innocent and perplexed network that made it possible.

Activists sometimes feather their nests in mid-November. These professions of faith are wont to be politically profitable. The smell of charred meat stimulates some hidden gregarious mechanisms in some persons. A fistful of civic activists want my head. Not all of them, because there are also calm and objective ones. But the more rabid ones do not want me to appear on screen again. They do not want my articles to appear in New York newspapers. They want me erased from the map.

It is as if the background topic did not really matter. It is much easier to lynch an impertinent journalist who says unpleasant things than to ponder what it is that he is saying. It is one of the occupational hazards of this curious profession to think aloud. Perhaps that is what makes it worth practicing.