Basura is top of mind in The Bronx this week.
Puerto Ricans who call the borough home ripped former president and Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump after his rally at Madison Square Garden Sunday where a speaker called the American commonwealth “a floating island of garbage.”
While Trump has sought to distance himself from comedian Tony Hinchcliffe — whose scripted comments also included jokes about Black Americans carving watermelons and offensive comments about Palestinians, Jewish people and other Latino groups — Puerto Ricans in The Bronx weren’t buying it.
“If I was there, I would have grabbed him by his hair,” Giselis Celi, 48, said in Spanish in Soundview on Wednesday.
The Bronx is home to nearly a quarter million Puerto Ricans, according to the 2020 Census — the largest Puerto Rican population of any county in the United States. While polling shows New York State, which last favored the Republican presidential candidate during Ronald Reagan’s 1984 reelection campaign, is all but certain to award its electoral voters to Kamala Harris, about a million Puerto Ricans live in swing states including roughly 500,000 in Pennsylvania.
The comment has unleashed a torrent of backlash in Puerto Rican communities — and in pop culture. Since Trump’s rally, the singer and rapper Bad Bunny, who was born and raised in Puerto Rico, signaled his support for Harris. Jennifer Lopez and Ricky Martin, who had both previously endorsed Harris, also spoke out. “This is what they think of us,” Martin wrote in Spanish on social media.
And Reggaeton star Nicky Jam withdrew his endorsement of Trump, saying on Instagram that “Puerto Rico deserves respect.”
Bronxite Boricuas sounded similar notes.
“We feel really offended,” Raquel Pagan, 77, told THE CITY in Longwood. Speaking in Spanish, she said she moved from Puerto Rico to The Bronx in 1965. “For them, it’s garbage, but for us it’s blood — where we were born and raised, and where we have our culture.”
Jose Luis Rodriguez, 79, who said he has lived on the same block as Pagan for more than five decades — joking that “we’re the oldest of the block” — blamed Trump for cost-of-living issues.
“Everything that’s happening here in New York is because of Trump. Trump is to blame,” said Rodriguez — who moved from Puerto Rico to The Bronx in 1957 — in Spanish.
Rodriguez added he was dubious of Trump’s visit earlier this month to a Dominican barbershop in Castle Hill.
“What was he looking for?” Rodriguez asked. “Their votes,” he answered.
“Now he’s looking for the immigrants to vote for him. He’s not looking for unity. He just wants the vote,” Rodriguez continued, saying that Hispanics who are voting for Trump “don’t understand. They don’t know.”
Both Rodriguez and Pagan pointed to a strong economy, healthcare and education as issues that are important to them.
“He doesn’t talk much to Hispanics,” Pagan said of Trump.
“When the Hispanic is who gives them votes,” interjected Rodriguez.
But Celi expects people in Puerto Rico would have a lot to tell him.
Trump, she said, should “go over there right now.”
“They’ll be waiting for him with great fanfare,” she said sarcastically.
