By Al Cedeno

When I think of Epiphany, I think of amphibians. The coquis (onomatopoetically named frogs) densely cover the Puerto Rican island, and when they leave for places like Hawaii, they often do so in packs overtaking their new digs, blasting their disyllabic cry as they did back home. That is to say they are quite loud at night and considered invasive by some. The same has often been said of the Puerto Rican people.

And on the island of enchantment (sounds better en espanol), while you try to sleep in the house of a distant relative who has just picked you up from the airport at midnight and who welcomed you to delicious rice and smoothies, and will drive you back down the mountain and around the island to recover your lost luggage, you can hear the frogs sing:

Co-QUI!

Co-QUI!

Co-QUI!

I first heard them in 2010. Their syncopated calls throughout the night saturate the island, piercing the ears of black, and white, and native alike.

My grandfather touched down on United States soil from Puerto Rico about sixty years earlier. Drawn to this city upon a hill by the light of commerce and democracy and opportunity, he jumped on a single engine plane and headed to Michigan. (It took him 59 years to return to his native land, which prompted my subsequent journey). Grandpa was an indentured servant of sorts: a Michigan farm paid the way for his flight on a single engine plane that hurled him to a new land. He had some money from building roads down the center of the island. He had a lot of clothes, and when the other Boriquenos worked on that Michigan farm to earn their stay, he stayed back in the dorm. He was the only one to pay cash for his rent, and when he bribed the foreman twenty dollars, he had a ride to the bus station. From there it was easy. Michigan to Chicago: freedom.

Part of the reason for his delayed return lies in the fact that the plane, when it returned with his cohorts, crashed into the ocean. Needless to say, he didn’t want to make that flight again.

Critics say that he taught me too little about his culture. But his culture was the culture of America. He was an immigrant, of sorts. Born citizen and foreigner, he ate apple pie and read the newspaper. Even now he walks and talks the immigrant kids into studying English more and assimilating. He’s an evangelist for hard-work and education. In the cold and rain, this 84-year-old still walks 2.5 miles every day.

Of all the traditions that survived the assimilating process and remained as a cultural tradition to me, the Three Kings Celebrations with pasteles and dominoes remain the most vivid to me.

Much of the Three Kings gusto remains from Spanish Catholicism, but even in Latin America, Puerto Rico celebrates Three Kings Day more than the rest. Perhaps its role as the world’s oldest colony helps secure this humble holiday as a theological imperative. After all, Christmas belongs to Coca Cola, to the Germans (and now the Americans), the super powers, to the conquerors. The King of the Jews was born to Jewish parents. Humble as his incarnation was and humble as his parents were he came to the spiritually elite: the line of David who establish the Kingdom of God’s chosen people. Infidel astrologers from the East had as much of a hope for salvation as a coqui has hope to fly on a big sleigh. Epiphany is the holiday for the outsiders, the gentiles, the other; it is the holiday for the whole of creation that waited for redemption for generation after generation until finally God sent a fantastic star to pagan astrologists.

For Puerto Ricans the three kings carry a second metaphor. Despite popular opinions, Latinos do not represent a specific race any more than Americans do. The three kings represent the three primary races of the people: white (European, primarily Spanish, but also Dutch, and Irish), native (Taino), and black. Three Kings, as much as anything else, is a holiday of unity. Potentially explosive race relationships step aside for true unity of the eternal King.

As Puerto Rico continues to move toward statehood both in political reality and identity, it has begun to drop the traditional cultural practices and is emphasizing the red-suited German dude, with all the swag Coca Cola and Madison Avenue instilled in him, for the multi-racial kings with their gifts to the King of Kings who chose to shine his light on the lowly, the worldly, and yes, even the colonial. Three Kings Day has lost some of its traditional emphasis at the end of the long island-wide Christmas party (arguably the longest Christmas party in the world stretching from Thanksgiving until January 6th).

And yet, if you walk through the tourist shops and explore the paintings of local artists, you will see a deep love for three cultural icons: Don Quixote (another example of humility and looking for transcendence), the co-qui, and the Three Kings.

Having seen the brutal results of imperialism for five centuries and then the hope and unexpected consequences of capitalism the tiny island carries on with its celebrations and traditions. And every night, when the sun goes down, its amphibians sing. Somewhere between the syllables rests the hope of the island that in the midst poverty and racism and famine and darkness comes the Light of the World.