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(glad I can be so entertaining...)

seriously, Clemenza, everything you have said is true, and I know it from deep and personal experience. I lived the other side of the coin.

I was born here in NYC - Dad moved us down to PR when I was 15. I knew spanish and all (though it did get much better down there) but it was really a shock. How much of a shock? Let's put it this way; this is in the '70's, and before I knew what a "spic" was, I learned I was a "gringo".

I went through a lot of life's lessons in PR and elsewhere - for a variety of reasons and ponderings, I see something else besides the cultural aspects you mention, because yes, they are there and what you wrote is true. Along the way, I myself went through an ID period where in the back of my head I wondered what/who I was. Afterwards I realized that even though I didn't turn out to be a little-minority-socialist-imprinted-Rican-who-the-knight-in-shining-armor-from-the-local-dhimmicrat-chapter-could-always-count-on-to-vote-for-him, I was subject to so much bullshit in education, social life, expectations, etc., that I could have turned out different from who I am today.

Take for example the Puerto Rican stateside population - whether island born or - as is the case up here in the northeast - identifying themselves by their ethnic separateness - and imo this identification process has more to do with the embedded socialistic core beliefs (in groups, in what makes me/we/us different from you/yours/them). I see that of the stateside group, most are concentrated in the northeast, and subsequently most tend to vote democrat, believe in big(ger) government, statist solutions, and I see the effects of a declining education system on this group.

I ask myself then, how much of the difference is cultural and how much is environmental? I haven't yet gotten a good answer for that one, but when I look at the political landscape in Puerto Rico, where the dhimmicratic wing of the local Puerto Rican political landscape (los "Populares"... who else???) work their crowds with that same bullshit that the pelosi-reid-kennedy-kerry-clinton-dean pendejos use up here... well, Clemenza, I'm just not so sure the answer is entirely cultural.

I see historical effects in not quite the same way as others - take a Luis Munoz Marin, for example, who upon becoming the first Puerto Rican governor faced the challenge of improving the lot of a poor agrarian-based island whose people used to "immigrate" to the mainland pineapple fields back in the 1940's & '50's (just like the Mexicans & Central Americans do today) and working with the FDR-TRUMAN-JFK-LBJ administrations to improve the standard of living and conditions on the island. He was governor from 1949-1965, he saw it all. Big Democrat Government, Operation Bootstrap, LBJ's Great Society. I believe the democrats have had a grand time using Puerto Rico as their experiment for what big government can do... and to see this as strictly cultural is not the entire answer.

Because of the above, I do not think your first sentence "the Boricua are not CULTURALLY American" is completely true. I honestly believe that for lots of Ricans - especially many living in the northeast/NYC area - they define themselves as Puerto Rican and not American because everyone else around the northeast uses this same mode of thought. And when I see a kid ID himself as a "Boricua" but who has never lived in the island, who doesn't speak Spanish, doesn't have the beautiful Spanish cultural-linguistic imprint that obliges him to use the "usted" when addressing his elders with respect... this is not a "cultural" expression, it's more like a self-defense mechanism for someone who doesn't know better. In other words, environmental.

I don't find fault in your explanation, nor disagree with your process. I know there aren't many folks who think like me, but that's nothing different. Perhaps there will be a day when there won't be a democratic governor who cravenly sucks up to anti-Navy sentiment over a tragic death (being hoorahed by the usual leftist suspects and MSM) and then punks out when the jobs supporting that base are removed... but like in the rest of our Country, we're not the only ones with problems like this.

I think there's more of an environmental and political aspect to these differences. I think they're played upon by the left, because that is what they're good at, playing the groups against each other.

I used to be pawn in that game, Clemenza, but I learned. I'm more than that. I'm an American. E Pluribus Unum... all these separate identities inside of me that the Gramsci's of the world tried to work, with really only one goal; to ensure that I would emphasize my life as surely as I was supposed to emphasize my identity, as a PUERTORICAN-american. Have you ever noticed that, Clemenza? How, when people so commonly nowadays refer to themselves as "1/4 this; 1/8th that..." the emphasis is always on the first identity in that hyphenation? Well, I reject that. Categorically. Soy Americano. Sono Americano. I am an American.

ok, enough of this stream of consciousness. Like I mentioned above, your comments are true. It's just that I believe they are not conclusive. There's plenty yet to write about the story of the People of Borinquen. It is my prayer that my fellow countrymen from the land of my father will write their tale as Americans.