For Houston’s Puerto Rican population, Día de Reyes feels bittersweet in year without travel

Houston-based poet Miriam Maldonado, 39, reveals pleasure in her Puerto Rican heritage at Eleanor Tinsley Park. Now that she has recovered from COVID-19, she plans to spend Día de Reyes, or Three Kings Day, together with her youngsters in San Marcos.

(Marie D. De Jesús, Houston Chronicle / Employees Photographer | Houston Chronicle)

Annually, on the eve of Three Kings Day, Puerto Rican youngsters seek for grass to tuck inside a shoebox — usually adorned with glitter and trinkets — and place the field underneath their mattress earlier than going to sleep. Like carrots for reindeer, the grass is meant to feed the camels that convey the kings to city, and youngsters go to mattress hopeful they’ll awake to search out items instead of the grass the next morning.

The custom is the guts of the lengthy Puerto Rican Christmas season that begins on Thanksgiving and finishes eight days after Jan. 6 with the Calle San Sebastián pageant. Because of this, Puerto Rico is named the place with the world’s longest vacation season.

The Día de Reyes is the day that honors the three sensible males, Melchior, Gaspar and Balthazar, who traveled on camels from the East to convey gold, frankincense and myrrh to child Jesus greater than 2,000 years in the past, in response to the Bible. Many different international locations, together with Mexico, Peru, Ecuador and Argentina, additionally rejoice at the present time, the Feast of the Epiphany. However Puerto Rico has taken the custom to the subsequent degree. There, it is a chance to collect the household, drink coquito and feast on conventional lechón asado and pasteles.

To an island nonetheless carrying deep-rooted Catholic traditions from its days as a Spanish colony, the thought of three historic males magically coming into a baby’s room to depart items is simple to think about. The idea speaks to the energy of religion and custom among the many residents of an island that has been twice colonized by different international locations in 500 years.

Borikén, because the island’s natives known as the island, was first invaded by colonizer Christopher Columbus in 1493; 400 years later, American troops arrived on its shores. Every time, the outsiders imported new customs. Every time, the natives made the very best of it, and later exported their distinctive model of what they acquired. The bomba, for instance, is a prevalent music fashion and dance originated from the island, born from the tradition of enslaved folks of African ancestry.

Univision reporter José Irizarry moved from his native Puerto Rico to the continental United States after overlaying the devastation attributable to Hurricane Maria.

(Marie D. De Jesús, Houston Chronicle / Employees Photographer | Houston Chronicle)

Puerto Rico’s richness can be rooted in its ethnic range, which is why an island the scale of Connecticut is so well-known for its musical traditions, delicacies and cultural pleasure.

“Puerto Rican pasteles, the parrandas, the laughter, el coquí within the evenings is all a part of my Puerto Rican Muslim id,” says Miriam Colón, a Puerto Rican who till the novel coronavirus outbreak had lived in Houston for the previous 4 years. She describes the navidades vibe on the island because the “rhythm of (the) season” — a sense that has dwelled in her since childhood.

Cabanillas usually imagines what it is going to be prefer to lastly hug her dad and mom once more after the pandemic. She imagines a teary embrace, much like her reunion together with her mom and father after Hurricane Maria. However extra importantly, she says, she’s going to really feel gratitude for the reward of nonetheless having two residing dad and mom.

Till that second arrives, she continues planning. On Jan. 6, she’s going to seize a face protect, a protecting masks, some musical devices and stroll just a few blocks to her sister’s yard to rejoice the Día de Reyes in Houston, Puerto Rican fashion.

Esteban “Kuko” Miranda is an expert musician, and Marian Cabanillas is the Well being Plan CEO at Unitedhealthcare Neighborhood Plan of Texas.

(Marie D. De Jesús, Houston Chronicle / Employees Photographer | Houston Chronicle)

Maldonado says the pandemic has meant adjusting her typical celebration — and taught her some laborious classes.

Earlier than testing optimistic for COVID-19 in early December, Maldonado thought the virus could be like a monga, which might be cured with Vicks VapoRub, in response to Puerto Rican grandmothers.

However Maldonado stated COVID-19 was “like an excellent monga.” She had a protracted guidelines of signs: shakes, fever and bodyaches. Her COVID-19 take a look at outcomes returned detrimental on Dec. 16, however she got here out with a brisker perspective. “COVID confirmed me, ‘Hey, you may have a household; hey, you may have this challenge; hey, you may have this particular person that you just love; hey, love your self,’” she says. “COVID got here to my life to indicate me a lesson.”

This 12 months, Maldonado is planning to drive to San Marcos on the Día de Reyes. It’s not Puerto Rico, however that’s the place her son is, so it’s even higher.

She’ll get in her Chevrolet together with her daughter, their canine and the instruments she makes use of for cleaning rituals. Her daughter can be answerable for the radio — and higher play Puerto Rican folks music, she jokes. As soon as in San Marcos, they may gentle bay laurels and collect in a circle.

Collectively, they may open up about all of the issues that occurred this 12 months and start to heal.

Navidades, in response to Marie D. De Jesús

If I noticed you with indifference,

if my love I didn’t inform you,

Oh motherland,

I simply didn’t know the cry

that comes with the gap!

– José Gautier Benítez

Music has all the time been my approach again to my roots, my approach again to Puerto Rico.

So in a 12 months as detrimental as 2020, it shouldn’t be shocking that I began singing my lungs out to Puerto Rican Christmas music inside my Jeep earlier within the season than it’s socially acceptable to take action.

Most Puerto Rican folks music is about pleasure, romance and nationwide pleasure, and I’ve been in some severe want of pleasure this 12 months.

I actually needed to go dwelling this Christmas season. I would like it to reconnect, expertise the rejuvenating richness of its nature and, extra importantly, I have to hug my grandmother Lucy after she misplaced her lifelong companion, my abuelo, earlier this 12 months. However my very own sense of accountability and take care of my family members began to sink in.

I’m a workers photojournalist for the Houston Chronicle. My job will depend on being on location, being a witness and photographing the information because it develops in entrance of the lens. That places me prone to contracting the coronavirus and infecting another person. Shying away safely in my very own bed room shouldn’t be an possibility. This 12 months I’ve photographed large protests, medical efforts inside COVID-19 intensive care items and funerals. COVID-19 could be very actual to me and my colleagues, and the thought of risking my family members for a jolly Christmas was not OK with me.

I figured that if I used to be unhappy about not making the yearly vacation journey, different Houstonians from the island have to be feeling the ache as effectively.

Dios mío, was I proper.

I made a decision I’d work on a challenge about Puerto Ricans in Houston and ask them about their 12 months, their vacation plans and the which means of the season to them.

For Marian Cabanillas, this season was about embracing a brand new form of Christmas in Houston away from the island for the primary time in 49 years. For Javier Ferrer, it was a second to depend his blessings and reside intensely each doable second along with his aged dad and mom.

Javier Ferrer, president of the Pageant Puertorriqueño & Cubano, holds a vejigante masks. A vejigante is a folkloric character in Puerto Rican celebrations.

(Marie D. De Jesús, Houston Chronicle / Employees Photographer | Houston Chronicle)

Perceive: Puerto Rican life often revolves round household. Your cousins are your first finest mates, and moms are your confidants and guides. My very own id is fashioned from being a Puerto Rican girl, who grew up 2 miles from the Arecibo Observatory and is the proud daughter of Marisel Rodríguez. The whole lot else is secondary.

Throughout the interview course of, I additionally met new entrepreneur Cristina Carrión. After dropping her job due to the results of the virus on the financial system, she began her personal enterprise, PR Meals Manufacturing unit, cooking conventional Puerto Rican meals for the rising diaspora in Houston.

I bonded with Univision TV reporter José Irizarry over the difficulties of working as a journalist throughout a pandemic and the methods to make coquito.

Univision reporter José Irizarry prepares coquito. Coquito, which suggests “little coconut” in Spanish, is a conventional Christmas drink that originated in Puerto Rico.

(Marie D. De Jesús, Houston Chronicle / Employees Photographer | Houston Chronicle)

I discovered myself spending numerous hours with them reminiscing concerning the issues that makes us who we’re as islanders, in each Spanish and English. We choked again tears on the considered dropping family members from a distance with out the chance to say a correct goodbye and talked about how we ended up within the continental U.S.

Since I moved from the island 17 years in the past, I’ve seen myself develop the deep love for one’s nation that solely grows within the distance. That is an expertise that was relatable to them.

One thing about not having easy accessibility to starry nights with the music of the coquí within the background, or a spot at my mom’s desk each Saturday afternoon after church, has made me worth my origins much more.

Though I couldn’t get on an airplane, and applaud an ideal touchdown into the San Juan airport, as natives often do after they return dwelling, I acquired to reconnect with my Puerto Ricaness within the firm of different Houstonians away from our homeland, and that was an sudden Christmas reward.