America, the Sucio
How a Spanish idiom perfectly encapsulates the U.S.’s relationship with Puerto Rico, especially in the wake of Hurricane Fiona
Editor’s Note: This story is part of a collection of work by Xochitl Gonzalez that was the finalist for the 2023 Pulitzer Prize for Commentary.
When my friends and I were younger and would while away the hours gossiping about who was dating whom, we would play a game we called Sucio o no sucio? Sucio, as a word, translates into “dirty,” but as a slang expression it has no precise translation in English—which is probably why it routinely peppers Latino conversations, even when they aren’t transpiring in Spanish.
A sucio (or sucia, in the feminine) is someone of moral ill-repute, in a lecherous or greedy manner. So an old conversation might have followed:
“Did you hear that Isabel got engaged to Victor?”
“Really? Because Victor was trying to get my roommate’s phone number at the party last night. You should have seen the way he was looking at her!”
To which all gathered would say, “Sucio!”
Or, “You remember how Laura had that consulting gig where she was always going to London? Turns out she has a whole other relationship there and Tracy never knew.” To which someone else would reply, “Laura’s always been a sucia—remember when Tracy caught her cheating way back when? What did she expect?”
In pan-Latino culture, the label of sucio is almost like a public-service announcement. It’s an intra-community warning that the aforementioned person has a track record of untrustworthy, shifty, shady behavior. That in that person’s wake is a trail of heartbreak and betrayals. And that, if you are going to engage with this person, you should proceed with caution.
What is unique to the label of sucio—the thing that makes it so difficult to translate—is that it’s rarely doled out after a one-off slip of questionably moral behavior. One affair, or unwelcomed pass, or two-timing incident does not a sucio make. It is a label earned by repeat offenses, usually committed in front of others within a community or online. And it is this visibility that, while not diminishing the hurt, pain, and damage that the sucio causes, leaves the victim with a certain sense of exhausted exasperation. What did I expect? I always knew they were a sucio.
I thought of this term in the aftermath of Hurricane Fiona as I communicated with loved ones, and others with loved ones of their own, in Puerto Rico last week. Here, on the mainland, Diasporicans were filled with dread; when the mainstream media covered Puerto Rico, there was almost a hovering urgency to declare this “another Maria.” But, from the island, what I got was more of a “Here we go again.” Survival systems that developed over years of rolling blackouts and earthquakes, neglect and disillusionment with U.S. bureaucracy, were put back into place. Showers were had with buckets, refrigerators were purged, and medicines rationed out; people in the mountains awaited cell service to check in with relatives—not with the sense of panic and urgency that had come with Maria, but with resignation at the inevitable. Puerto Ricans on the archipelago reacted with the energy of your tía whose husband has been stepping out on her for years, after she’s confronted with yet another piece of evidence of his infidelities. A shoulder shrug and a back-to-the-business-of-making-life-happen. Because this is what it means to be bound to a sucio.
And make no mistake, we—America—are the sucio here. Sucios sinverguenzas—absolutely shameless. We are the gross friend of the family who stares at your cleavage while his wife is getting him a drink at the party. We’re Tristan Thompson leaving a pregnant girlfriend to be with Khloé Kardasian, just to cheat on Khloé once she’s pregnant.
From the outset, when the island was seized as a spoil of the Spanish-American War, Puerto Rico was always one of America’s side chicks. The place where, as my grandmother would say, you went to get the milk without having to buy the cow. Despite Congress’s ability to alter the terms of this colonial relationship—via a vote to adjust the terms of Puerto Rico’s territorial status or a vote to take up the Democratic congresswoman Nydia Velazquez’s Puerto Rican Self-Determination bill, which would provide Puerto Ricans with a true, congressionally recognized referendum on their status—Congress never does. Because a sucio doesn’t consider the other party’s well-being. It’s all about what the sucio wants—which is everything! That is, with none of the commitments, and none of the care.
Anyone who, in real life, has found themselves stuck with a sucio inevitably has a come-to-Jesus moment when the accumulated incidence of grievance, of being used, and of shameless exploitation of the relationship is simply so egregious, they reach peak heartbreak. The person sees, laid bare, how things really are. How little this sucio values them, their well-being, their “relationship.” Hurricane Maria was, for many Puerto Ricans, that moment. The moment when one can no longer pretend that things are okay. Where a person cannot look at an American flag and honestly think that it represents them.
But, unlike your cuckolded tía, Puerto Rico can’t leave! At least, not so easily. So instead, she shrugs her shoulders and picks up a bucket to get more water for a shower. She goes to a community-aid group to see what help she can get—now—for the house whose foundation was always shaky to begin with. Because better a little help now than to wait for that sucio to come back with his FEMA tarp and bureaucratic red tape and talk of unity—how next time it will be better—all while knowing it will be the same. (Yet again, when given the opportunity in advance of the hurricane landing, Congress still has not lifted the Jones Act, which puts a tax on basic goods on the island that affects suffering people!)
There are always those who can’t see the sucio for who they are—either for lack of hearing the warning or for lack of a desire to hear it; whose hearts grow arms that cover their ears. Whose eyes turn away from each infraction of their dignity. We’ve all been there, myself included. I remember as a younger woman dating someone who, on paper, seemed as worldly and upper-class a person as a girl from South Brooklyn could possibly imagine being with. (He even had a British accent! I mean, really …) Oh, and what I thought it said about me that someone like that thought me “worthy.” Never mind that he was clearly being dishonest about his marital status; never mind that he never really treated me like an equal.
Such willful ignorance is what I see when I hear pro-statehood islanders and Diasporicans speak of the U.S. government as a faithful actor. Who gaze starry-eyed at the prospect of full citizenship even as the U.S. government allows crypto-miners to pillage the island yet again, as Puerto Ricans pay the price for the slow-walk of Maria recovery in the wake of Fiona. There is a term in Spanish for that kind of oblivious love: It’s called being a pendeja. The one who plays the fool for the sucio again and again and again.
But, for those paying attention, much of the rest of the island is fed up. People are exhausted of this relationship and the pendejas who keep it in place. If you listen to the people, they are telling you, this relationship is growing untenable.