For Puerto Ricans, it is a peculiar part of the American experience to be treated as a foreigner in your own land. To be told with scorn to go back to your own country, when you’re already there.
Most of the time when it happens, and it happens a lot, it happens with little fanfare to average working people. No one much notices, except the Puerto Rican recipients of this ugly message, left quietly humiliated and hurt.
But last month it happened to Rep. Luis Gutierrez as he entered the halls of Congress with his daughter and niece. This time, the common slur has caused a stir, leading to the suspension of a Capitol Police civilian security aide without pay.
Rich in its own peculiar ironies, the incident has brought the dilemma of identity faced by Puerto Ricans into the national spotlight, a dilemma that has led to numerous discussions around the Gutierrez family dinner table.
More Top Picks Best Scalp Massagers For Circulation
“Ever since I was a little kid, I have been hearing people say, `Go back to your own country,’ ” said Gutierrez, who was born in Chicago and, like all Puerto Ricans, is a U.S. citizen. “But somehow, it’s still the most humiliating thing.”
Gutierrez had spent the morning of March 29 at a tribute to the Korean War veterans of the all-Puerto Rican 65th Army Infantry Regiment, 743 of whose soldiers were killed and 2,797 wounded in that conflict.
His 16-year-old daughter and 17-year-old niece had taken a 16-hour bus ride from Chicago to attend the speech, part of two days of ceremonies and rallies that celebrated Puerto Rican culture and identity.
That afternoon, the three of them returned to the main visitor’s entrance of the Capitol for a visit to Gutierrez’s office before the girls got back on the bus for the long trip back home.
Gutierrez could have breezed past the visitors’ line and bypassed the metal detectors, but he makes a point of not abusing the perquisites of his office. He doesn’t like to ride the elevator that says “members only,” and he often waits among tourists at the back of the visitors’ line.
His daughters were carrying two small Puerto Rican flags and Gutierrez assumed–wrongly, as it turns out–that congressional rules prohibited them from bringing flags in the building without wrapping them up. In fact, you can carry a flag into the Capitol but it cannot be unfurled.
The girls rolled up the flags, but they got caught in the rollers of the conveyer belt and unfurled. Then, according to Gutierrez, Capitol Police security aide Stacia Hollingsworth yelled in his ear.
“She said, `Those flags cannot be displayed!’ ” the congressman said in an interview Wednesday. “I told her we’re going to take care of that, and I apologized, but she said, `No, I don’t want to see them at all.’ “
Gutierrez was embarrassed, but said he told his daughter to get rid of the flags. “I said, `You know what the rules are.’ “
Gutierrez said Hollingsworth responded by asking him, ” `Who are you that you know what the rules are?’
“I said, `I am Congressman Luis Gutierrez.’ She said, `I don’t think so.’ “
When he showed the security aide the special identification card members of Congress carry and use to record their votes, she said it must be fake, according to Gutierrez.
Then, according to Gutierrez, she said, “Why don’t you and your people just go back to the country you came from?”
Gutierrez was stunned. “It wasn’t like on a side street in Chicago,” he said. “This was in the middle of the gallery. In the Capitol. Where I work. Can you imagine how humiliating this was in front of my 16-year-old daughter?”
At that point, a Capitol Police dignitary protection officer rushed over, recognized Gutierrez and pulled the aide aside. He told Gutierrez he saw what happened and suggested that Gutierrez file a complaint.
“I told the man, `I was born in the United States of America, my parents were Americans, my father served in the Army, but, you know what? Nobody should be treated that way. But I just walked away.’ “
Gutierrez didn’t file an official complaint, Capitol Police said. He didn’t even call the media.
Spurred by a story Wednesday in The Hill, a local newspaper that covers Congress, the Capitol Police’s Internal Affairs office is investigating the incident. “From what we can gather at this point, the congressman’s account is accurate,” said Capitol Police Sgt. Dan Nichols.
Hollingsworth was suspended without pay from her $25,000-a-year job pending the outcome of the internal affairs investigation. Attempts to reach Hollingsworth Wednesday were unsuccessful.
Word of Gutierrez’s run-in on Capitol Hill had not yet filtered into Chicago’s Puerto Rican community. But few people questioned about it Wednesday were surprised by the incident, given the state of race relations and the anti-immigrant mood against Hispanics.
Carmen Claudio, 54, a native of Puerto Rico, owns a mom-and-pop grocery store in the Humboldt Park area on the Northwest Side. She was outraged Gutierrez would be treated with such disrespect. “I think that’s wrong because we’re not only Puerto Ricans, we’re Americans,” she said.
Her son Domingo, 28, who was born on the U.S. mainland, said he was not angry, but disappointed.
“I’m shocked that people are still treated that way, whether they’re Hispanic, black,” he said. “In another way, it doesn’t shock me, with the racism in the United States. . . . You never hear about it when it happens to Juan on the street. But when it happens to a congressman, it really stands out.”
State Sen. Miguel del Valle (D-Chicago), who was born in Puerto Rico, blamed a climate created by politicians and activists attacking affirmative action, seeking to deny social services to legal residents and promoting English as an official language.
“If it can occur to a congressman, who has been elected to . . . a body established by our founding fathers, who themselves were immigrants–if it can happen there, then obviously we have a lot to do in this country,” del Valle said.
More Top Picks Best Automatic Ball Launchers
Gutierrez’s daughter, Omaira , a high school sophomore in Chicago, said she still cannot believe what happened.
“I was in shock,” she said. “I looked at my cousin, this can’t be happening. . . . It made me feel very upset when she told us to go back to the country we’re from. Go back to where? To my island? We’re all Americans. It was very ignorant.”
Puerto Rico is a U.S. commonwealth, and its residents are U.S. citizens. Puerto Ricans vote for president, serve in the U.S. military and pay taxes. Island residents are exempt from federal income tax and don’t vote for president in the general election.
Nonetheless, as Gutierrez noted, “It’s like most Americans look at Puerto Rico as a foreign country.
“I understand what happens. You’ve got Pat Buchanan running around with a rifle in front of the (Mexican) border saying, `This is what we got for Jose.’ She (Hollingsworth) hears politicians saying this, so she thinks she can.”
Ironically, the House had passed a new immigration bill that day; one of its provisions calls for identification cards for immigrants. Yet Gutierrez noted that the security aide wouldn’t accept his congressional identification card.
“There are only 535 of these,” he said, “so you can imagine how much good the IDs are going to do.”