Portafolio Conmemorativo Taller Alma Boricua M Useo De L As a Méricas , C Uartel De B Allajá 2 3 H O M E N a J E Alma Boricua X X X a N I V E R S a R I O

H OMENAJE A LMA B ORICUA X X X A NIVERSARIO

Taller Alma Boricua Portfolio Exhibiton PRESENTACIÓN PORTAFOLIO CONMEMORATIVO TALLER ALMA BORICUA M USEO DE L AS A MÉRICAS , C UARTEL DE B ALLAJÁ 2 3 H O M E N A J E ALMA BORICUA X X X A N I V E R S A R I O

Recuerdo que fué en el invierno de 1970 - la mañana estaba fría y no teníamos

calefacción en el Taller Boricua - al abrir la puerta nos dimos cuenta que había

sido forzada durante la noche anterior. Penetramos y encontramos que el F.B.I.

y la C.I.A. nos habían visitado, levataron y destrozaron las maderas del piso

del taller - estaban buscando armas ocultas tal como hacían en el local de los

“Young Lords”, nuestros vecinos que tenían su cuartel frente a nosotros en la

4 5 calle 111 y Madison. Comenzamos a reírnos; Carlos, Rafael, Marcos, Adrían,

Armando, Manuel, Neco* y yo ... y comemtamos “ Aquí no hay armas...lo que si

hay es Alma... Alma Boricua...

N i t z a T u f i ñ o

*Carlos Osorio, Rafael Tuﬁ ño, Marcos Dimas, Adrían García, Armando Soto, Manuel ‘Neco’ Otero

Ta l l e r Al m a Boricua P ortf ol io Exh ib iton P RESENTACIÓN P ORTAFOLIO El diseño de la portada incorpora detalle del Cartel Comemorativo. Diseño de Juan Sánchez C OMEMORATIVO T ALLER A LMA B ORICUA The cover design incorporates a detail of the commemorative poster. Design Juan Sánchez M U S E O D E L A S A M É R I C A S , C U A R T E L D E B A L L A J Á 1 9 D E S E P T I E M B R E D E 2 0 0 1 A L 1 9 D E F E B R E R O D E 2 0 0 2 I Wish I Could for Taller Alma Boricua C ONTEN IDO

I wish I could tell you how beautiful you are, I wish I could show you that you are more than a fl ag, C ONTENTS how you emerged from the darkness of an ancient mud mother your hands stronger than chains that bound them, Introducción / Introduction who breathed life into your rainforest root, your words more powerful than a gun, Almas Sin Fronteras 8 into the Cordillera symmetry of the heights of you your thoughts faster than the speed of light, Lourdes R. Miranda from the birthplace of your Indian nature soul, your knowledge greater than can be found in all books. your African freedom dreams, I wish I could paint that picture Introducción / Introduction your Spanish wandering songs, of cosmic galaxies in your gypsy eyes Taller Boricua - Treinta Años de Lucha 9 that merged coqui wind turquoise ocean that gallop and stride the path Andres Marrero cricket and stone mountain into your tambor, through your distant journey into light. into the agua mariposa strings of your guitar Presentación / Presentation into the palma coco azucar of your mambo I wish I could explain that the world is within your reach, El Taller Alma Boricua 10 into the clave of volcano fi re marking time inside your conga weaver that you are, that everything you need you already own, Gladys Peña into the griffa guasabara inside your chachacha that all possibilities of becoming are inherited in your DNA, mesclando raices from the quantum universe of you. through the power of all who came before us, Prólogo / Preface through the voices of those who are kin to our blood, The Melting Pot Concept: I wish I could open your eyes to see Albizu Campos, Betances, De Burgos, Soto Vélez and the “am-e-Rican” Dream 12 how you are divine child, descendant of kings, Capetillo, De Hostos, Guevara, Agueybana Marcos Dimas warrior priest, tribal magicians; Guarionex, Anacaona, Geronimo, Urayoan how your music is the seasonal dance of sun and moon, Schomburg, Malcolm, King, Sojourner TruthÆ Resúmen / Overview how you and the land are of one blood Where we are 14 fused from the fountain of many rivers, I wish I could dream for you and mold the paradigm of your awakening Fernando Salicrup a rainbow chemistry in the silk of your skin. reaching deep from within the treasure of your inner being, like the fresh green and fl ower spring that heals your eyes, Perspectiva / Perspective I wish I could serve you this great feast of yourself like mysteries revealed to you in celestial dreams. Between“Aquí” and “Allá”: promised to calabasa born babies Thirty Years of the Taller Boricua 20 I wish I could give this gift to you . . . . Shifra M. Goldman 6burned brown from tropical heat, 7 parched by the desert of harsh city streets. this abundant love beyond time and space, this kiss that lifts your soul to dance, Perspectiva / Perspective I wish I could heal you from your sea of tears, this prayer that fi nds you when you are lost, Aesthetic Development of Puerto Rican remove blindfolds that led you away, this aphrodisiac nurturing that believes in you unconditionally, Visual Arts in New York as part of break shackles that encased your spirit, that accepts your perfection in the moment of this now. the Diaspora: The Epitaph of the Barrio 28 transcend boundaries of bitter tongues and closed minds. Diógenes Ballester I wish I could look into the mirror of you, I wish I could scream loud for you! refl ect back your sacred holy ground, Perspectiva / Perspective Undo every humiliation you endured, hold you up to the sunlight of yourself, Soul Bytes: Taller Boricua shout down all walls that imprisoned you, remove all harm, and lead you home 30th Anniversary Portfolio 30 unlock all doors that were closed to you, where angels play on steps to your door, Yasmin Ramírez clear all blocked roads that would not let you pass, be the sister and brother always by your side break the spell of all lies that keep you sleeping in the abyss, talking, sharing, believing, trusting Portafolio 36 calm the turbulence raging in all your tomorrow horizons, as you grow beyond yourself, give you back all that was stolen of your hidden wealth, guiding you through this journey El Alma Boricua de los Poetas del feed you wisdom nectar from your sweet well of life we must all complete on our own Taller Boricua de Nueva York 50 into the bright warmth within you. Beatriz Santiago-Ibarra I wish I could give you all these things. I wish I could. Artists’ Biographies 59

Credits 61 ®copyright 1998 Sandra María Esteves from Contrapunto In The Open Field; No Frills PublicationsÆ Introducción Introducción Introduction Introduction Alma sin fronteras Taller Boricua - L OURDES R . M IRANDA , C OLABORACIÓN E SPECIAL PARA E L I NSTITUTO DE C ULTURA P UERTORRIQUEÑA Treinta Años de Lucha A NDRÉS M . M ARRERO M ARTÍNEZ , P RESIDENTE A MIGOS DE L A B IENAL

En lo más profundo de nuestro subconsciente anida la certeza de que entre los seres humanos, refi riéndome específi camente a los seres puertorriqueños, es más lo que nos une que lo que nos divide. Pero hay épocas e instantes en que esa certeza se opaca, se oscurece. Somos propensos a olvidar que son múltiples los niveles de realidad, que lo que observamos a primera vista es sólo uno de ellos, que los seres humanos somos mucho más complejos. La tendencia se agudiza cuando comenzamos a señalar las diferencias, a comparar, a sentirnos mejor los unos a los otros. De ahí “La patria es de los que la afi rman” Don Pedro Albizu Campos al sentimiento de “otredad” es un paso, seguido por las inevitables consecuencias que suelen ser el distanciamiento, la exclusión, la intolerancia; la desunión. El discurso pictórico y poético desarrollado en el portafolio Alma Boricua nos sirve de espejo en el cual podemos apreciar la diversidad de lo que somos; una diversidad que se refl eja Nuestro gran compositor, Rafael Hernández, declaraba ser puertorriqueño de nacimiento en distintas generaciones, visiones, enfoques y experiencias, a la vez que nos permite entrever lo y por convicción. Hoy recibimos con orgullo y alegría a nuestros hermanos y hermanas del Taller que tenemos en común, lo que nos une, da vida y fuerza- - nuestro espíritu. No se les pudo ocurrir Boricua. Algunos de ellos no nacieron en Puerto Rico, sin embargo, han demostrado a través de mejor título para esta colección. Si por defi nición el alma es “la sustancia espiritual e inmortal, sus vidas y su obra, que son boricuas por convicción. capaz de entender, querer y sentir, que informa al cuerpo humano y con el construye la esencia El exilio forzado de nuestro pueblo encontró en Nueva York un lugar a donde mudar sus del hombre”, entónces el alma no tiene, no puede tener “otredad” y fronteras. Cualquiera sea la ubicación geográfi ca donde nació el cuerpo físico— irrespectivamente del lenguaje en que se sueños y necesidades. Ni las largas jornadas de trabajo o el desempleo, ni el hacinamiento ni el exprese, de su color, de su clase social, de su poder económico, de su ideología - - si quiere, siente discrimen, en fi n, ninguna adversidad pudo detener la expresión de nuestra identidad nacional. y afi rma esa indescriptible emoción compuesta de tantísimos intangibles, si hace ese acto de fé, Supieron transmitir a sus decendientes los valores y la cultura que llevaron de Puerto Rico, y la ahí reside un alma boricua. Si además le es fi el y se siente parte de esa colectividad fruto de una 8 historia da fe de cuanto celo pusieron en esta empresa. 9 herencia en común, ahí estamos ante un puertorriqueño, aunque haya “nacido en la luna”. El Taller Boricua surgió como respuesta a la necesidad de crear un centro donde se pudieran La dura experiencia de la emigración puertorriqueña ha dejado su huella en todos, los mantener y enriquecer los valores de nuestra cultura. Tres décadas después podemos declarar que que se marcharon y sus hijos y los que se quedaron. La marginación de los puertorriqueños en los Estados Unidos de America, resistiéndose a la asimilación a otra cultura y celebrando la suya propia, estos propósitos se han cumplido a cabalidad. tiene su contraparte en los puertorriqueños en la Isla que evaden enfrentarse a su realidad. Somos Si hoy día podemos celebrar con genuino orgullo que poseemos una gran cultura, tenemos dos lados de una misma moneda; 3.4 millones de almas boricuas residentes en los Estados Unidos que reconocer que gran parte de la misma ha sido forjada en la patria extendida, ésa que llevamos y 3.8 millones en Puerto Rico. Nos necesitamos mutuamente, aquéllos saber que pertenecen, que los boricuas a donde quiera que caminamos. tienen su sitio en su lugar de origen; éstos la renovación y el acceso a entidades estadounidenses Se cuenta que en una ocasión el F.B.I irrumpió en las facilidades del Taller buscando armas, que las comunidades puertoriqueñas ofrecen. claro que no las encontraron. En su lugar se encontraron con el alma de un pueblo inquebrantable Ante estas realidades no cabe la exclusión de una parte u otra. El alma boricua trasciende representado en sus artistas. Esos que honramos hoy, con esta exposición homenaje en su trigésimo las fronteras convencionales. El ALMA boricua no depende de un lugar específi co, de una frontera geográfi ca, son AL...AS esparcidas por muchos mundos. El alma boricua no habla ningún idioma aniversario. en particular, su lenguaje es el del que A...MA. Se desmoronan los falsos supuestos que a veces escuchamos: que somos un pueblo homogóneo, que la cultura puertorriqueña esta atada al espacio geográfi co de la isla de Puerto Rico, que para ser puertorriqueño hay que hablar español, hay que Con fervor boricua haber nacido y vivido en la Isla, y tantos otros rasgos subjetivamente elegidos durante la legítima lucha por forjar una identidad nacional, pero que ya carecen de vigencia. El reto de hoy es aceptar nuestra hetereogeneidad, entender que hay muchas formas de ser puertorriqueño. Le agradecemos al Taller Boricua de la Avenida Lexington en la Ciudad de Nueva York el espacio que nos abre para mirarnos más de cerca en su espejo que, entre otras cosas, nos esclarece que no hay tal cosa como puertorriqueños “de acá“ o “de allá“, sino puertorriqueños, todos en una gran travesía humana en la que cada uno tiene un papel que desempeñar y algo que aportar al conocimiento de nuestra esencia en común. Presentación Presentation specifi c social, political and economic conditions, as a people. This is not to say that all Puerto Rican

artists share the same creative process, or that there is only one artistic movement representing

Boricuas. It is simply one aspect of our common experience that is represented in this collective El Taller Alma Boricua and which at this juncture, after 30 years, is worthy of examination. After all, at the center of G LADYS P EÑA , A RT C URATOR /M USEOLOGIST their work and what units us all as a people is a determination to hold on to our National Identity,

in spite of the circumstances of our personal condition or where we live.

The portfolio in its totality represents the diversity of our individual histories, the rich For more then thirty years, the Bienal has successfully presented to the world the mixture of who we are—a generation, confronted by issues of survival within a complex and alien best graphic artists from the Caribbean and Latin America. It is an event, which provides the society, one, which at every opportunity tried to disconnect us from our cultural history. Central opportunity for all of us to share in celebrating the contributions made by our artists to the to the work of these artists, is an internal clandestine philosophy of resistance—a reaffi rmation of art world. This year the Taller Alma Boricua Portfolio Exhibiton also marks more than 30 years of National identity as the common denominator that historically units us as Boricuas. At issue for accomplishments as an important cultural institution in New York City. It is an honor for El Taller them as a group is a personal process for achieving the conceptualization of a symbolic language Boricua to be invited to join in the celebration of the Bienal de San Juan , Puerto Rico 2001. that captures the subjective complexities of the inner self. It is a search for the spiritual essence The Alma Boricua Portfolio is a collection of computer generated works on paper by seven of our ancestral origins and a reconstruction of a personal identity within the context of our greater Puerto Rican artists. Each artist’s work is represented by a text, specifi cally selected or created history as a Nation. by a poet, and then superimposed over a detail of a second copy of the original image. The seven 11 10 It is evident that our colonial status and migrant movements have infl uenced the perception diptychs are computer-generated images, which refl ect an aesthetic cohesiveness accomplished of National Identity and the way our cultural forms are expressed. One example, is the preoccupation through the manipulation of this digital technology as a medium. shared by this particular group of artist to utilize a “personal language”, in their work, but is not The Alma Boricua Portfolio represents a generation, which although not limited by age or void of our “unique” reality, social, political, historically and philosophical, as Puerto Ricans. personal background, their lives, as are ours collectively, marked by the historical consequences of The presentation of the Almas Portfolio in Puerto Rico is a symbolic homecoming, a return the mass exodus of the 1950s. More then one million Puerto Ricans left the Island with great hopes to the Island that many of us in our hearts never left. We are now living in a new era for all Puerto of fi nding prosperity and strengthened by the dream that one day they would return to family and Rican— los de alla y los de aca. As a Nation, we move ahead into the future with a new sense of friends left behind. A half a century later, many of us have been forced to recreate our lives in identity, one, which has no prescription and no criteria, but connects us wherever we are. another place outside of Puerto Rico, but our ties to the Island have only grown stronger.

In many ways, the artist who today represent El Taller Boricua in the Bienal also represent,

the totality of our experience through their work. They were born in Puerto Rico, New York and

other places; some have lived in Puerto Rico; others visit and yet others are more international.

Regardless, of their situation, or background, we all share a deep and consistent connection to Puerto

Rico. Regardless of style or content, their art functions as an instrument of protest refl ecting our P r ó l o g o by chance or by design El Barrio has become the token for gentrifi cation. The infl ux of residents P r e f a c e coming up from below 96th Street and from abroad has changed the face of El Barrio into a global

community. Unfortunately it has been at the expense of the original community who has been

driven out of their homes due to exorbitant rents. The Melting Pot Concept: and the “am-e-Rican” Dream When I ﬁ rst came to the United States as a child, M ARCOS D IMAS , A RTISTIC D IRECTOR I came to a mixed barrio in the South Bronx.

De acá y de allá y de allá a acá. Aunque estamos en

Looking in retrospect I ask myself, what has become of the revolution? During the seventies Nueva York, nos sentimos mas Boricuas todavia.

echoes of Jesús Papoleto Meléndez’s poem Have You Seen Liberation reverberated throughout the Y aunque cuando llegue a Nueva York todos hablaban

era. Pedro Pietri’s poetic work Puerto Rican Obituary was the anthem of the times, its political ingles y se burlaban de los “Marintigers” y de los “aguacates”.

satire being as relevant today as it was back then. The Taller Boricua/ Puerto Rican Workshop, an Y los hijos de los Puertorriqueños que habian llegado acá

organization committed to the development of arts, culture and education, struggled to stay aﬂ oat desde los años del 1917, estaban assimilados a el sistema

in a turbulent ocean of poly-political discord. This friction affected the momentum of the Cultural “melting pot”, como un sancocho en el caldero.

Revolution. For example, the leadership of the Young Lords Political Party hadhad escalatedescalated toto celebritycelebrity

status as the central leaders of this organization all became media stars. This also was evident in But behind this assimilation there was a cultural stream ﬂ owing that kept the arts alive.

the transition of El Museo del Barrio. A hallmark of Puerto Rican achievement and prosperity was The romance, the beauty and the joyfulness could not be repressed and surfaced through the

now converting into the all-encompassing Latino institution. The system had managed to co-opt a music, the poetry and the style. If the melting pot concept wasn’t such a hypocrisy we would not 12 13 select few and seal the end of an era; “so the times they are a changing!” have been so proud of our identity and stubbornly nationalistic. The promises of prosperity, equal

The idealism of the seventies had diminished. The eighties ushered in a decade of celebrity opportunity and democracy that lured our people away from home were not fulﬁ lled. The only

artists endorsed by art world players. The movement of multiculturalism, which was liberating to thing left to hold onto for power and strength was ones own identity and culture. The Neo-Rican

the creative artist, became a pretext that the mainstream used to categorize and isolate artists identity was coined in the seventies, then the multiculturalism fervent followed suit. This yielded

into a stereotypical paradigm. The art of racial, ethnic and sexual identity became a double-edged cultural speciﬁ c work from offspring such as third world art, peoples art, artists on the fringe, arts

sword, dually self-liberating and institutionally exclusive. The Taller Boricua, struggling from the of the outsider and others to carry forward the tradition of multiculturalism that has now reached

constraints of decreased funding and escalating rents, managed to purchase a building from the the digital age.

city of New York and moved into the heart of El Barrio. “El Taller” became a pioneer in community At the dawn of the new millennium, seven visual artists joined with seven poets to create

development and the renovation of East Harlem. We restored a brownstone building to accommodate a meaningful cultural statement. I conceived the project of the print portfolio to revisit the concept

ofﬁ ces, studios and a gallery as well as a building on 106th and Lexington for artist housing. of the artist collective to commemorate and celebrate our Thirty Year Anniversary. Taller Alma

The nineties found that the Taller Boricua/ Puerto Rican Workshop had come full circle Boricua’s - Digital/Print - Portfolio is a combination of the mediums of printmaking and poetry as

as we were once again involved in community activism. The Taller spearheaded a movement to a tribute to the soul of art making. “El Alma del Taller es trabajar la noble cultura.” The soul of

rescue an abandoned school at 106th and Lexington from becoming yet another homeless shelter. Taller Boricua is to work the noble culture, to bridge the cultural and digital divide and to contribute

We wanted a space to empower our community, not perpetuate its oppression. We established the to the pluralization of American Art.

Julia de Burgos Cultural Center ttoo sserveerve asas a foundationfoundation forfor ourour community’scommunity’s culturalcultural growth.growth. EitherEither R e s ú m e n As a board member of the Heckscher Building, I became a member of Community Planning O v e r v i e w Board #11. The Board represents East Harlem’s interests between 96th and 135th Street from 5th Avenue to the East River. Different committees focus upon housing, trafﬁ c, public transportation, culture, and education among others. Representatives from the city provide these committees with Where we were information and resources to insure their progress. Through the planning board, we learned about F ERNANDO S ALICRUP , E XECUTIVE D IRECTOR land use, real estate development and how the community infrastructure worked. Our participation increased our technical skills and ability to acquire new space for the Taller Boricua. I am privileged to be part of the Taller Boricua/The Puerto Rican Workshop Inc., a 501(c)

3 non-proﬁ t organization. I began working with Taller Boricua 27 years ago as an artist and have 121 East 106 Street served as the Executive Director during the last 13 years. As I look out the windows of the Taller,

presently located in the Julia de Burgos Latino Cultural Center of East Harlem, New York,York, I see a As one of several organizations in the Heckscher Building, our growth and development neighborhood undergoing rapid changes - a revitalization of infrastructure, demographic changes was restricted. We were aware of the need to acquire inexpensive space where we could expand and a cultural vibrancy that is unparalleled in New York City. This vibrancy is a product of arts led independently. Our primary goal was to move back into the community we serve and be a vital part community leadership in El Barrio for thirty years. The Taller is a catalyst and mentor for El Barrio’s of it. We wanted to clarify our identity as we were removed from East Harlem by our Fifth Avenue cultural growth and wealth of creative expressions. location. The Parks Department of New York was interested in our space within the Heckscher and we Taller Boricua’s expanding role is sustained by a synthesis of teamwork between Irma were interested in purchasing a city owned building within the community. We were very fortunate Ayala, Marcos Dimas and myself during the last 20 years. Irma came to the Taller in 1981 as the to enter successful negotiations with the New York City Housing Preservation and Development for administrator. Her diligent nature has strengthened the Taller’s economic growth through grant a new space, a four story brownstone at 121 East 106 Street that we acquired within one year. writing, fi nancial management, credit growth, facility management and long term relationships Obtaining 121 initiated my role as Executive Director in 1987. The building would provide with our funders and fi nancial institutions. Irma has been the essential protagonist to our growth. artist work, a gallery on the ground fl oor level and serve as a cultural bridge that linked Fifth Marcos Dimas, a founder of the Taller in 1970 and the present Artistic Director,Director, has focused on Avenue’s Museum Mile with East Harlem. This premise was an effective and successful strategy that the evolution of our gallery, working with artists, educational programming, curating exhibits and also guided our move into 1685 Lexington Avenue and into the Julia de Burgos Cultural Center. This recruiting curators. Irma and Marcos have been the core to the Taller’s accomplishments and success also guided our ongoing planning projects, the Cultural Corridor of East Harlem. in community outreach. I came to the Taller with a natural ability at public relations, vision and

14 planning skills, and an ability to build beneﬁ cial relationships with the city, community leaders and 1685 Lexington Avenue 15 the community’s political representatives.

Our collaborative and combined skills have allowed us to advance the Taller’s mission to The Taller quickly outgrew the brownstone as our programs expanded making it diffi cult its present role in East Harlem’s community. Likewise the many consultants and volunteers who to effectively serve community needs. In 1989 we learned, through the Planning Board, that a have worked with us during the past thirty years have generously shared their knowledge to help street corner building 1685 Lexington Avenue at 106 street was available. It was either going to us grow. During my participation, the Taller has benefi ted from the advice of our Board members be demolished or we were going to partake of this opportunity to expand our space by proposing that include Dan Comas, Chairman and Lawrence Varas, Board Secretary. We have also benefi ted a feasible rehabilitation plan. The Taller succeeded in negotiating with city planning agencies to from strategic alliances with Manny Ortiz and Antonio Rivera, Jr. purchase the building to develop artists’ living spaces and a new art gallery under an HPD Artists I began work with the Taller Boricua in 1973 when the center was located on Madison Living Spaces Program. By good fortune I met Manny Ortíz, a land developer, at the ¡Somos Uno! state Avenue in a third fl oor fl at that had no heat, and hot water was scarce. At the time we each had a conference in Albany, New York. He became involved with the building and through his outstanding small area for painting with a collective silkscreen area and a small photo lab. It was an interesting leadership led this effort and assembled different resources that made this project feasible and time. Poets, musicians and all types of artists came and congregated in our spaces. Discussions guaranteed long-term sustainability. The project was successful. More artists became part of the about art, exhibitions, and the community were always lively. Around the corner on Fifth Avenue community and our outreach programs. the Heckscher Building, occupying half of a city block, stood boarded up. Lonnie Williams from Boys

Harbor approached us to establish the Heckscher Building as a cultural entity in the community. We The Julia de Burgos Latino Cultural Center in turn invited the Museo del Barrio to join us as founding members of the buildings new program.

Upon establishing ourselves in the building, we created individual studios for our fi rst artists in Although we were developing artistís spaces, there was still an urgent need in the community residency program. The buildings vast and spacious hallways become our galleries. It was also for a cultural center that could bring all the creative forces together into one location. Across the at this time that the Taller acquired it’it’ss fi rst Macintosh ComputerComputer,, an icon that foreshadowedforeshadowed the street from 1685 was a block long abandoned school building, the former Public School 72, that had establishment of a digital lab in 2001. been closed since 1978. The building, known throughout the community, held long-term nostalgia for residents who spent a part of their childhood there. In 1990, the city wanted to convert it the Electronic Learning Center possible. WithWith the Rotary Club’s support, in February of 2001, the into a homeless shelter for men. State Senator Olga Méndez, Community Planning Board #11 and Digital Lab has obtained nineteen Macintosh computers, and digital video recording and editing community members convinced the city to consider designating P.S. 72 and the surrounding area as equipment. It will prepare artists, youth and community members for social participation through a cultural zone. The building was quickly rezoned and recognized as a historic landmark. The new information technology. Taller Boricua has responded by including the development and education designation allowed the city to open up a process where cultural organizations could apply to be a of adolescents in its vision for a cultural renaissance in East Harlem. Taller is providing educational part of P.S. 72’s new role as a cultural center. The fulfi llment of a cultural zone supported ongoing after-school programming in the Digital Center thatthat pprovidesrovides mmentorshipentorship bbetweenetween aartistsrtists aandnd arts based planning and became the fi rst phase of the Cultural Corridor of East Harlem. students and develops the technological skills of youths. Taller hashas providedprovided programsprograms forfor HeritageHeritage studentsstudents suchsuch asas anan after-schoolafter-school VideoVideo ProductionProduction The Present Day Program held in the Digital Lab that recently won an award for outstanding work in documentary production from television Channel Thirteen, WNET. Heritage students have also worked with Taller In 1997 the fi rst tenants moved into the newly designated Julia de Burgos Latino Cultural media artists to create basic computer graphics for the School’s newspaper, and a literary magazine Center. The organizations included the Taller Boricua, Los Pleneros de 21 - a Bomba & Plena of student poetry and journalism. Students have also worked with Taller artists to create a CD-ROM music group, The Puerto Rican Traveling Theater and Heritage High School, an alternative high about the Cultural Center. school founded by Columbia University’s Teachers College and the Board of Education. Today the The “Taller Alma Boricua Portfolio”, was designed in the lab as a collaboration between building hosts an art gallery, a theater, the recently completed Multi-Cultural Space and this year artists and poets. This project initiates the Lab as a venue for the creation and distribution of the the Taller also opened the N.Y. Rotary Learning Center under sponsorship from the Rotary Club of work of community artists. New York. The Taller Boricua Gallery has maintained a mission for the last thirty years to present The Julia de Burgos Theater high quality exhibitions that explore a variety of art forms and styles by young and emerging artists. While the basic philosophy of Taller has been to serve as a place where art encompasses Puerto We are extremely fortunate to have a professional quality theater space on the second Rican aesthetic values, history and culture, the gallery and programs also frequently present and fl oor of the Cultural Center. This newly renovated theater can seat up to 200 people. The Taller promote the work of multi-ethnic artists. The new gallery in the Julia de Burgos Cultural Center, Boricua is responsible for programming and has created collaborations with different performance opened in 1998, displays eight exhibitions annually through the grass-root efforts of community groups to present comedy, music, plays, concerts, dance and other expressions of theater arts. artists and volunteers. The Taller Boricua Gallery has become recognized as one of New YYorkork City’City’ss The space has also successfully served as a place for community forums for the Upper Manhattan 16 progressive spaces for artistic expression and is receiving international attention as the largest Empowerment Zone Development Corporation, Community leaderís presentations and a place for 17 Latino based cultural center in the Mid-Atlantic region. fi lm festivals. The Multi-Cultural Space, completed this summer, provides a 2,300 square foot multi- functional space. The space, dividable into three separate galleries, will host experimental art Arts and Education Program installations. It will increase access to after school activities and weekend programs for everyone in East Harlem by expanding additional classroom space for schools and community members and In 1991 United Way of N.Y. and the Board of Education funded us to take the arts to the will support on going digital media collaboration with local schools. The space will also be used schools. Taller selects, prepares and sends community artists to work with elementary students in for community functions, support our hip-hop/Salsa dance company-in-residence program and two public schools in East Harlem. The program offers an innovative curriculum in which learning in provide a place where poetry readings, musical performances, and presentations of one-act plays a traditional academic program is balanced with interdisciplinary learning in which the arts - visual, can occur. music, poetry, and dance - play a critical role. The Rotary Club of New York’s Electronic Learning Center, a digital lab on the second fl oor of the Julia de Burgos, was established by Taller Boricua in 1998. The lab’s purpose is to create a collaborative artist studio for the technological arts, and to provide educational programming The Future and the Cultural Corridor Project of East Harlem for youth and community members that will curtail the widening social gap known as the “digital divide”. The Taller’s move back into East Harlem in 1987 served as the premise for an ongoing Faye Feller, a representative to the United Nations/U.N. Education Committee, who has planning effort that has become the Cultural Corridor Project of East Harlem. The establishment been collaborating with us since 1998, established our collaborations with Dr. Bette Schneiderman, of the Julia de Burgos and its surrounding area as a cultural zone in 1990 was the catalyst for our Program Director and Dr. Michael M. Byrne, Co-Chair, Educational Technology, at the C.W. Post objectives to create a link with other institutions of culture serving our community, and to rejuvenate College of Long Island University and the Electronic Educational Village. Bette introduced us to the neighborhood with arts led programming. During the last six years, planning efforts initiated Mr. Morton Eydenberg, Board Member Trustee, of the New York Rotary Club. Their efforts made by a group of architects and urban designers has provided visual evidence that this is a plausible and realistic scenario to enrich our community. The plan seeks to create a cohesive community by 111th street and 114th Street. The buildings will be dedicated to spaces for the production of linking existing cultural institutions and historic sites within a new design that will include green sculpture, painting, printmaking, digital art, digital labs, art galleries and a cafÈ. The project will spaces, community services, commercial uses and restored buildings. revitalize the existing La Marqueta building, located between 114th Street and 115th Street, that Miguel Angel Baltierra began working with us on the master plan to respond to immediate presently has seven retail tenants and twenty vacancies. community needs in 1995. The initial plan linked the corner of 106 and Lexington with the Museo The 18 Chapels of Luminous is a proposed series of illuminated light boxes with changing de Barrio and then extended around the northern periphery of Central Park to extend the Museum art exhibits to be placed on the Metro North railroad track walls facing Park Avenue. ìLuminousî is Mile. After a design studio, exhibition and symposium in collaboration with Columbia University, the Cultural Corridorís spine. It will illuminate Park Avenue and increase community safety around the focus was brought back to the neighborhoodís core and to work with sites that had a prolonged the eighteen pedestrian passageways located beneath the elevated Metro North Railroad Tracks that sense of memory and where there was a desire for rejuvenation. Mr. Baltierra has brought several occur between 102nd Street and 111th Street. The present passageways are dark, unsanitary and other architects including Joyce Lee, Grahame Shane of Columbia University, Robert S. Edwards, and a source of anxiety for residents and visitors making their way to the Museum Mile from Lexington other younger architects to assist the process through design studios, exhibitions, design proposals Avenue and likewise to East Harlem from Fifth Avenue. ìLuminousî seeks to reverse perceptions and publication. Through designs studios several proposals have been made for projects that occur of East Harlemís physical division to recognizing the viaductís walls as a conduit for community along the Corridor. The Taller presently has the following projects in design and planning: revitalization.

The Creative Cultural Café Building and Community Programming in the Digital Lab El Yunque Rain Forest Biosphere Project at 1685 Lexington Avenue The Digital Lab provides an opportunity to support these planning efforts. This project includes graduate students, visiting international students, East Harlem community artists, Will support the digital arts within a sustainable conversion and expansion of 1685 Lexington professional architects, and urban designers who will use 3-D modeling computer software programs Avenue. The fi ve story, 16,000 square foot project will incorporate materials, design practices, to continue building upon prior design studies. technology and construction practices that are ìsustainable/green building.î It will educate residents about sustainable architectureís benefi ts to confront their polluted environment while providing In Refl ection them an environment for state-of-the-art experimental digital media. Likewise the design program strengthens the Tallerís capacity to respond to environmental Anytime we began our efforts to grow people would tell us it was impossible. People told 19 18 and quality of life issues impacting East Harlem by: ( Increasing digital technology access with 8,000 us it was impossible to save any of the buildings we have managed to rejuvenate in synthesis with square feet of studios and classrooms for digital technology collaborations during evenings and the community to serve their needs. People still tell us that what we are doing is impossible. Yes, weekends with students from local schools and East Harlemís community. it has been a struggle and we continue to struggle, but we continue forward, undaunted that we ( Increasing the Julia de Burgos Latino Cultural Center’s presence as a tourist destination can infl uence the growth of our community in a positive manner that will benefi t families, their by expanded opportunities for performances and art exhibition venues in the Cultural Cafe. children, and the generations to come. The arts do make a difference and the future of East Harlem ( Establishing a health conscious ethnic dining experience in response to poor dietary (El Barrio) is now fl ourishing all around us. practices that affect residents and result in high levels of heart disease and cancer. ( The El Yunque Rain Forest Biosphere Project, a rooftop-learning lab, will provide community residents education about the benefi ts of architecture and sustainable design strategies to confront their polluted environment. ¡La Marqueta Artist’s Incubator Building! was historically the social center of East Harlemís Community hosting the activities of immigrant populations from Eastern Europe, Ireland, Italy, Caribbean, African Americans, Puerto Ricans and other ethnic representatives of the community. La Marqueta exemplifi es thirty years of decline in East Harlemís quality of life and pride. Its historic program of fruit stands and souvenir shops has been made obsolete by new developments in Upper Manhattan. Likewise its characterless buildings only extend the railroad track walls. Fortunately its past as a community focal point creates opportunities to redefi ne the viaduct along Park Avenue and 106th Street as a place for cultural, artistic, educational, political, and social exchanges that challenge the epidemic of East Harlemís deteriorated quality of life. It will occupy three 11,000 square foot buildings that are located beneath the Metro-North railroad tracks between Perspectiva Perspective 1967 which became an archetype gracing posters, murals and banners.6 There was also the ferment of 1968 in many parts of Latin America - from Argentina’s new critical artists, to the Tlatelolco Massacre in Mexico directed at university students and their working class allies. Artists from the 1937 Taller de Gráfi ca Popular, and their San Carlos Academy aartrt students,students, providedprovided powerfulpowerful imagesimages for the protest movements that brought about the massacre, and were later circulated in the United States as exhibits and catalogues. Finally, the sixties featured the psychedelic counterculture from Timothy Leary at Harvard, to the hippies of San Francisco, to Carlos Castaneda’s meditations on Don Juan and his nagual shamanism through the use of hallucinogenic drugs. All these factors set up a background for the activist postures of Latino artists across the United States, and were certainly of major importance for the Puerto Rican artists of New York and the eastern seaboard - as well as Between “Aquí” and “Allá” : Chicago.

Thirty Years of the Taller Boricua Nuyoricans and Chicanos S HIFRAH I F R A M . G OLDMANO L D M A N , H ISTORIANI S T O R I A N , C RITICR I T I C ANDA N D P ROFESSORR O F E S S O R ATA T U . C . L . A . Within this energized arena, as it manifested itself in the United States, it is not surprising that “Third World” peoples, or “people of color,” composing what were formerly called “internal The work of the Puerto Rican artists, in the island and in the United States, is conceived as part of colonies,” should not only carry out political actions of all types, but constitute themselves as cultural a fi erce struggle to survive as an independent culture.1 representatives of their communities. In fact, this is exactly what occurred with the two largest Spanish-speaking groups of the nation at the time: the Puerto Ricans of New York and Chicago, and Culture has produced some of the most vital energy for resistance, energy that has enabled the Mexican American/Chicanos of the Southwest and Mid-West. For both these groups, the artistic generations of people to survive. Our poetry, music, dance, theatre and visual arts...refl ect our project undertook - among other things - to challenge and re-determine the impact of political and folklore and history. Visual images convey the momentous historical events of past generations: cultural colonization. The political project of the United States, in both cases, was not only the dismemberment of the colony, the migration of masses of our people as wage-laborers, and the invasion of their native countries in the 19th century under the terms of “manifest destiny” and the growth and development of the new community in a radically different, hostile, racist, economic/ Monroe Doctrine, but the absorption of their territories. Part of Mexico was physically incorporated political/cultural setting on the U.S. mainland.2 within the boundaries of the U.S, while Puerto Rico was permanently colonized and became known as a “Commonwealth,” constantly swinging between independence and U.S. statehood. The liberation I think that Puerto Rican culture here or there has a dialectical relationship, that it...belongs to an motif, therefore, was equally strong among Puerto Ricans (known in New York, where they are a major aesthetic world that’s into itself and at the same time...has a Western imposition...our palette is population, as Nuyoricans) and Chicanos, and they followed similar courses. The latter, however, emotional and it deals with our cultural development.3 derive from a politically independent nation (though some Southwest families date back to New Spain), while the former share their independentista posture with the most nationalist elements Between 1969 and 1970, El Taller Boricua and El Museo del Barrio were established as concepts - especially intellectuals and artists - of the Island. 20 and as organizations in upper Manhattan, in an area known as Spanish Harlem - one of the oldest A major difference between Nuyoricans and other Latin-descent peoples in the U.S is that 21 Puerto Rican barrios (neighborhoods) in New York. The times were ripe for a new phenomenon: they are emigres from a colony owned by North America since 1898 with a special history that does the creation of “alternative” cultural spaces where the canons and restrictions of the mainstream not pertain to any other Spanish-speaking nation. Puerto Rico is the only Latin American country institutions (the numerous major museums which dominate New York) could neither judge, exclude maintained to the present in its colonial status despite many fi erce efforts to liberate itself- efforts nor inhibit new languages developed for a new epoch.4 that have resulted in long prison sentences meted out by U.S. courts for various generations of Puerto Rican independentistas, both men and women.7 Politics of the Sixties In addition, due to the one-crop sugar economy imposed on the island which aggravated the poverty of the working populations, and due to the proximity of Puerto Rico to the eastern The 1960s, internationally, reverberated with a changed spirit in the midst of a cold war United States and the decree in 1917 that automatically made all Puerto Ricans limited citizens of against the socialist world, and a hot war in Southeast Asia. Political and social platforms from the United States, a constant movement back and forth from the Island was promoted - the “aca” the 1930s and 1940s - those oft he “Old Left” - no longer fi t the circumstances, and a “New Left” and the “alla” of this essay’s title. On the Island, they are an exploited colonial people within an emerged with a fervour and an activism that could only come, at that juncture, from young people economy dominated by the U.S., and with a foreign military which uses their lands with impunity - particularly, but not only, students. The sixties marked the great moral and political surge of the (the long-standing abuse of the island of Vieques, for example). The Puerto Ricans who live in the black civil rights movement which began in December 1955 with the Montgomery bus boycott; a United States (some 40% of the population) are subjected to xenophobia and racism, not to mention growing opposition to the Vietnam War; the idealized activism of the nation’s students; the counter- sexism, as well as economic exploitation. The means used in the United States to demote African cultural stance of hippyism; the fl owering of ethnic awareness among Third World people abroad Americans, Native Americans, Asians, and Latin Americans to an inferior status served as a double and in the U.S.; the drive for unionization among migratory farm workers; the emergence of critical colonization to Puerto Ricans: that of their homeland, and that of their new residence. This factor feminism, and gay/lesbian activism; and the revival of anti-nuclear peace groups. It was also a kept artists and intellectuals from both locations bound together in a unity not true for any other decade of assassinations as the covert “establishment” fought back: John F. Kennedy, Malcolm X, migrant group. Nevertheless, this attitude did not extend to the offi cial institutions of Puerto Rico. Martin Luther King, Jr., and Robert Kennedy - as well as attacks on the Black Panther Party, and The famous San Juan Biennial of Latin American and Caribbean Printmaking, established in 1970, the later hunt for Angela Davis. Among Puerto Ricans there emerged The Young Lords Party with its did not invite Nuyoricans to participate until they were again urged to do so by an Island artist as publication Pa’lante, and the Puerto Rican Students Union, which made common cause with African prestigious as Antonio Martorell who, since the 1990s, has maintained an apartment and a studio in Americans as well as poor whites, Native Americans and Chicanos. In fact, the poet Jesús “Papoleto” New York, as well as Rafael Tufi ño, Nitza Tufi ño and Rafael Colón Morales. Juan Sánchez, participant Meléndez, a Taller “regular,”“regular,” and contributor to the present Alma Portfolio,Portfolio, spent some eight years in the present Taller Alma Boricua Portfolio, was among the fi rst to exhibit in a San Juan Biennial. in California and published an ode to the border city of San Diego and the “Mexican Illegal Aliens” By 1998, Sánchez and Taller Executive DirectorDirector,, Fernando Salicrup, won prizes at the XII edition of killed on California highways as they sought jobs in what was originally Mexican territory.5 the Biennial: Sánchez for a diptych on pulp paper combining photolithography and collography, and Within this political outline, we must consider the 1959 Cuban Revolution which impacted Salicrup for an experimental computer-generated print on paper. It is precisely in this exploratory all of the Americas, and the photographic image of the murdered Che Guevara issued from Bolivia in medium that the present portfolio is executed. Tainos and Afro-Antillians The Taller Boricua and the Museo del Barrio were defi nitely children of the sixties, however the Puerto Rican-organized cultural presence in New York actually began in 1953 with the foundation One of Columbus’s fi rst landings in the Americas was on the island later named San Juan of the Society of Friends of Puerto Rico which ran a small gallery named Galería Oller/Campeche Bautista; he then established a settlement at Hispaniola - today known as the Dominican Republic and with private funding and showed Island artists. By 1968, it expanded its space and added theatre, Haiti which, with Puerto Rico and Cuba, are in the Greater Antilles. Juan Ponce de León carried out music, dance and silkscreen workshops to the space known as Galería Hoy, which moved to Broadway the conquest, and named the island Puerto Rico, or “Rich Port”. The original peaceful inhabitants, and 14th Street. It was run by artists-in-residence including Marcos Dimas, Adrian García, and Carlos physically decimated within two decades, were Taino Indians, who called the region Borinquen. With Osorio - later co-founders of the Taller. (Of this group, only Dimas remains with the Taller to this their demise, African slaves were introduced in 1513, while San Juan became a leading outpost of the day.) Galería Hoy exhibited Jorge Soto, Rafael Colón Morales, Fernando Salicrup, Martín PPerezerez and Spanish empire. Thus Puerto Ricans are descended from Spanish colonists, with an admixture of Indian Vitín Linares - all of whom became members of the Taller in 1971 and 1972. By 1975, a space known and African strains. Spanish is the offi cial language, and Roman Catholicism the main religion. as the Cayman Gallery, changed its name to the Museum of Contemporary Hispanic Art (MOCHA) Centuries of intermixing has produced a multi-racial, multi-ethnic, and even multi-lingual which ran an impressive program of exhibits by a wide variety of Latin American artists, assisted people since the Indian and African cultures were assimilated into the population along with the by the Taller Boricua. (Due to insoluble fi nancial problems, it became defunct by 1990.)11 Spanish. Though Creole society in the Caribbean (as elsewhere in Latin America) focused on its European descent, embracing Hispanicism and Catholicism, coastal, rural and urban working people Soul of the Taller Alma Boricua also maintained the Indian/African coloration and customs, including vocabulary, foods, musical instruments, dance, and syncretic religious practices. An example of popular religious syncretisms The Taller Boricua brought together a collective of artists in 1969, and was incorporated are the santos and milagros (carved saints and silver “miracles”), the latter used as ex-votos, or in 1970. With good reason its artists celebrated their twentieth anniversary in 1990, publishing the offerings to the saints, for completed promises. Some rural architecture was also based on Tamo important catalogue Taller Alma Boricua Refl ecting on Twenty Years of the Puerto Rican Workshop, structures. 1969-1989.12 Four details in the catalogue seem of special importance: the dedication to deceased Thus we fi nd that, in the 1960s and 1970s, even in New York, the most tightly-packed and friends and artists who helped shape the Taller - Gilbert Hernández, Victor Vitín Linares, Carlos cosmopolitan city of the United States, Puerto Rican artists seeking to demonstrate the importance, Osorio, Martín (Tito) Pérez, and Jorge Soto; a photograph of Island artist Carlos Osorio (1927-1984) antiquity, and creativity of their identity, turned to their Taino and African heritages. Simultaneously, seated on the street before the narrow doorway of the second Taller Boricua headquarters on Second the Catholic, African and Indian religions were plumbed for symbols and artifacts that could be mingled Avenue, after it left its 110th St location; Rafael Tufi ño’s 1970 silkscreen “Jayuya,” calling for an artistically with European-derived modernism - which itself had plundered and assimilated sources October 30th gathering before the United Nations for the liberation of Puerto Rico, and recording from Africa, Japan, Egypt, Persia, the South Pacifi c and Latin America under the rubric of “primitivism.” the Taller Alma Boricua with its original “soulful” name; and fi nally, an undated photograph of That the Indian presence in Latin America itself had been absorbed by artists from Mexico, Central four artists and early leaders, Fernando Salicrup, Gilbert Hernández, Jorge Soto and Marcos Dimas America and the Andean region; that the African presence was not limited by any means to Brazil standing in the snow of a New York street (taken by the artist Néstor Otero, a member of “El Taller” and the Caribbean but was adapted by artists in Mexico8, Peru, Uruguay, and Argentina,9 as well as during the 80’s). Combined, these images emphasize the collaboration between the Island and New the United States - is a secret that has been carefully kept from history and art history books. York, the combination of aesthetics and politics, the constant struggle to locate the Taller during Indeed, Nuyoricans aandnd Chicanos, to reclaim their heritages and affi rm their identities in its six or seven moves in the limited housing of the barrio, and, fi nally, its “open street policy” of the 1960s and 1970s, turned to the pre-Columbian indigenous heritages of their respective countries. moving art outdoors to the people. In the racist and euro centric United States, it was their desire and need to establish an ancient and With essays by Petra Barreras del Río (then director of El Museo) Marcos Dimas (co-founder venerated history, with its own high civilizations and cultures, that pre-dates the European invasions of the Taller), Rafael Montañez Ortíz (co-founder of El Museo del Barrio and a major installation and 22 of the 15th and 16th century. As Marcos Dimas - one of the original founders and long-term leader of performance artist of Puerto Rican/Mexican parentage), Lucy Lippard (New York art critic attuned 23 the Taller Boricua (a term itself taken from the original Taino word, Borinquen) - says: “As a gesture to critical artistic voices from many parts of the Américas), Fernando Salicrup (tireless organizer of solidarity and union, we adapted and personalized Taino images, which became insignias that to create a “cultural corridor” in the barrio, and to develop experimental digital printmaking with symbolically linked us with our ancestral root culture.” By the same token, the African elements computers), the catalogue contains excellent reproductions of artworks, a history and aesthetic - including spiritualist religious beliefs syncretized with Catholicism in many parts of the Caribbean, evaluation of the Taller by painter and printmaker,printmaker, Diógenes Ballester,Ballester, and a list of events.events. WomenWomen are a crucial part of art and culture. artists and coordinators appear in its pages, revealing an increased sensitivity to feminist issues. A fi nal goal of the Taller for many years was its efforts to establish artists’ housing so they could maintain El Taller Alma Boricua and El Museo del Barrio their presence in the barrio and continue to interact with its young people and its schools. Ironically, this housing project runs counter to general U.S. patterns for artists, which can be summarized as With such a panorama before their eyes, with such a changed consciousness, Puerto Rican creative isolation in a studio, followed by a move to areas outside poor and bohemian locations artists began to form their own organizations. Before launching El Museo del Barrio and the Taller when artists began to be shown in galleries and museums and to sell well on the private market. Alma Boricua in 1969 and 1970, however, they were very much aware not only of the Island but of The collectivity of the Taller, and its dedication to neighborhood participation even when artists its artistic achievements. There had also been a Puerto Rican artistic presence in New York that became well-known exhibiters and prizewinners, is fundamental to its existence and continuing dated back to the 1940s and the 1950s, on the heels of the New Deal art programs. At that time, integrity. many Island artists came to New York to study at the Art Students League, at Pratt Institute, the Art School of the Brooklyn Museum, the Stanley W. Hayter Atelier 17 whichwhich temporarilytemporarily movedmoved fromfrom Seven Artists, Seven Poets, Seven Diptychs: The Portfolio Paris, and workshops staffed by former New Deal artists (particularly the important Robert Blackburn Printmaking Workshop which continued to train New Yorkers for many decades), European refugees, In 2000, the Taller undertook to celebrate the thirtieth anniversary of its incorporation and some Latin Americans. In fact, Mexican painter Rufi no Tamayo was one such instructor, as was in 1970 with a collectable edition of the Alma Portfolio, one of 100 computer-generated prints on Ecuadorian Camilo Egas. archival paper using archival inks, each print measuring 36”x24.” Headed by Rafael Tufi ño, the Puerto Rican artists like Lorenzo Homar, Antonio Torres Martino, and many others were in artists include Diógenes Ballester, Marcos Dimas, Gloria Rodríguez, Fernando Salicrup, Juan Sánchez New York, while Rafael Tufi ño, a major fi gure on the Island who was born in New York in 1922, was a and Nitza Tufi ño. Each work is a diptych with the full print on the left, and a detail to the right with constant voyager between Puerto Rico, Mexico and New York, and later became a direct link between a column for the poetry by Pedro Pietri, Hector Rivera, María Boncher, Mariposa, Jesús “Papoleto” Puerto Rico and the Taller Boricua. Tufi ño was involved with the Taller ffromrom tthehe bbeginning.eginning. InIn fact,fact, Melendez, Tánia Niomi Ramírez and Juan Sánchez. he designed the Taller’s fi rst poster in 1970. It stands to reason that his artist daughter, Nitza (born A most important element of this portfolio is its experimental character. Fernando Salicrup, in Mexico and raised in Puerto Rico) also became a member of the Taller - anan affiaffi liationliation whichwhich bothboth having worked for many years with computer-generated digital printmaking, was in a position to maintain today.10 assist the artists with this new technique for the portfolio. A clue to the importance of digital production as a new graphic form can be measured by the fact that the 1998 Biennial, under the Gloria Rodríguez (b. 1953, Arecibo, lives in New York) guidance of Jury President, Diógenes Ballester, devoted an international panel discussion to the topic which was broadcast on the Web under the auspices of the on-line Puerto Rican magazine, El There is a God./ and She is you: Mother / Mother of the Artist / Cuarto Quenepón. Mother of the Art! / Mother, rising in Son and Daughter In the course of discussion, various techniques employed in Europe, the Americas and Asia, Life as Art on Earth, quite commonly, is a / were detailed. Examples such as the combinations of graphics with photography, with video, with Natural circumstance of the chance for life itself. the use of layering (digital collage), with the digital manipulation of the photographs themselves, poetry excerpt The She of God: for Yolanda Rodríguez with the combination of digitals with traditional graphics like mezzotint, with printing on canvas, by Jesus “Papoleto” Meléndez on aluminum, on Plexiglas, and on acetate, with the registration of movement, with the use of large scale images beyond the possibilities of traditional graphics, etc. Though not mentioned in the Gloria Rodríguez is enamored with Catholic iconography, both Roman and Byzantine. presentations, billboards in the United States have been produced digitally for a number of years, She recreates retablos (altars) and ex-votos (small paintings dedicated to saints and Virgins for and artists transferring their own work to outdoor billboards - like the late Cuban artist from New succor) in modern terms. Images are frequently haloed and frontal, richly garbed and ornamented. York, Félix González Torres, and Los Angeles Chicano artist, Daniel Marffnez - have replaced street Backgrounds and clothing appear elaborately carved and painted. The subversion begins when murals with billboards. The ability of computers to create imaginary worlds not bound by reality her sainted or holy fi gures are peoples of color - black and brown; when they are combined with - as demonstrated by Steven Spielberg’s movies - is also available to computer graphics. hip-hop dancers and street-types; when the women equal or outnumber the men; when Catholic hierarchies are overturned. Her works were originally constructed by layering stencil and media Diógenes Ballester (b. 1956, Playa de Ponce, lives in New York) image paper with luminous glazes of acrylic paint, a technique she calls “acrollage.” Such is the case in the present retablo, but digatally-rendered. In this memorial piece, her deceased Puerto I walked today / from arc de triomphe / fl anked on either side by international banks Rican mother replaces God or Christ in the judgement throne. The Holy Lamb of Christ, with the / guardians of post-industrial multi-national fi nance capital / past the grand palais / head of the artist’s deceased brother as a child, climbs on the mother’s lap. A chorus of twenty the petit palais / through the gardens to the louvre... I continue eastward... fi gures in white garb surrounds her, while black-garbed, prophets reign above. Ornamental winged chic speciality stores / reminders of the homogenized existence / that is rendering women support the throne: but one winged angel is classically clad, while the other is black, wears paris / new york / london / tokyo / indistinguishable... tight pants, and dances. Below these levels is a haloed chorus stacked in fl at Byzantine style, among [think] of sandal-strapped feet / interacting with materials / that bind the land. whom, to our great surprise, appear members of the Taller Boricua! Certainly the visages of Dimas poetry excerpt “I Walked Today” by María Boncher and Salicrup are recognizable. The appearance of ordinary people serving in sacred roles is startling and energizing. True to form, the diptych containing the poetry is rendered in elegant calligraphic Living temporarily in Paris, Diógenes Ballester created, over a base of disparate architectures script, and beautifully illustrated. domed, fl at and A-framed buildings - a vision of stone monuments, rock-formed circles and the drawing of a medley of human beings, as well as an Indian profi le, and three versions of a black Fernando Salicrup (b. 1946, New York, lives in New York) woman kneeling in a loose white skirt. In short, a scene where Paris meets the Caribbean. A poignant man’s head in a lower corner, gently contained in a frame of letters reading “Playa de Ponce,” Life, in constant movement / bouncing to the night colors / records the artist’s loss of his father. A maze of photographic segments and violent linear evocations of a hustler’s song / a Barrio prophet’s psalm. She is the moon I and push at the boundaries of the work but are held down by the architecture and by fresh earth below I the Moonchild / keeping the beat / to the coming calming tides. 24 in which rests a straw basket - a memory, perhaps, of Haiti. Red and blue circles seem to be either poetry excerpt The Name of Her Father by Héctor Rivera 25 traffi c signs, or computer signs when one has trangressed the rules. The poetry diptych positions a photograph of a young woman in a black coat and umbrella against a muted image of Parisian Salicrup’s composition works on three levels. Below, thick vertical foliage and waterfalls create a architecture. The poem itself is superimposed over the image. frame through which is seen a multi-colored rotating circle with eyes, nose, and teeth in a huge mouth which suggest a whirlpool of color, perhaps an anthropomorphic hurricane. Above appear Marcos Dimas (b. 1943, Cabo Rojo, lives in New York) several symmetrical curves: one a globe-like form fi lled with human bodies, faces, eyes, ears, in sepias and browns. These are contained within a larger swirling space delineated with whites, greens A cyclone of song / spins around / and around / my room... and blues in which personages and objects are rapidly carried. From the two sides of this revolving The music / comes to life with a.conga heartbeat.../ form drop the waterfalls. On the top level are bodies and heads of people against a distant sky. Possessing the clothes in my closet to shake off their hangers and dance./ There is a tremendous sense of freedom, of movement, emphasized by simulated thick painterly Into the fi ery garden of the / African, Taíno, and Spanish. textures. A strong suggestion of a populated island, contained and energized by lush trees and poetry excerpt “Something Beautiful” by Tánia Niomi Ramírez plants, surrounded by water and sky, is the content of this work. The second section introduces a detail of the globe, with the poetry in dark letters. On a multi-layered surface with muted colors are fl at shapes and tiny cubed forms. A fl at painterly royal blue shape suggesting water or a mood, surmounted by a black target or or a whole Juan Sánchez (b. 1954, New York, lives in New York) note, fi lters outward like vanishing sounds, while crimson calligraphies writhe above yellow dots. Are these pictorial equations of drumbeats, rhythms, and staccato song? Repeated, they echo in Vieques / You are the playground / Paradise of our children’s imagination... yellow over a crimson ground, and in yellow again on a rose-colored cylinder that may be an inverted Vieques / A force so purposefully evil / Has violated, tormented, battered ceramic pot or a fl at form like a shield. The adjoining diptych repeats this last form with the poetry and enslaved you / Now I grieve for you. in dark hand-lettered words. The Taino join the coathangers of a New York apartment: the ancient poetry excerpt “Vieques en Gritos.” Juan Sánchez and the modern cohabiting. Marcos Dimas, coming to the barrio from sugar cane country in Puerto Rico, where he and Juan Sánchez has a long and eminent history of highly original paintings and graphics that his family found and collected bits of Taino pottery in the fi elds, was imbued from the beginning of are artistically multilayered and socially direct. He often combines his own photographs with text his artistic work with the evocation of the ancient Indian art works rendered in suggestive modern and imagery ranging from Tamo and African symbols to contemporary emblems. In this work, the shapes. Sliver moons were sailing vessels. Sails, fi sh and birds appeared against full moons; umbrellas long rectangular shape of the Puerto Rican fl ag hangs vertically until it encounters a reversed palm were lunar shapes, rendered in paint and three-dimensional installations. In this work, like Kandinsky, tree. Reversals, for Sánchez, symbolize falsity, betrayal. The entire work is a study in reversals. he replicates musical sounds with painterly equivalents, then adds the music of poetry. Partially covering the single star above is a photograph of a small Puerto Rican boy in a U.S. naval uniform, standing before a.U.S. fl ag. The boy, proudly embracing the uniform of the colonizing U.S. “Artists make prints; Prints don’t make artists” military, is one example. The colors of the fl ag have been changed from blue, white and red to June Wayne, founder of Tamarind Workshop their opposites: orange, black and green. In the light of Vieques - the most recent of a long history of U.S. invasions of Puerto Rico - the use for forty years of the island for military exercises, has N o t e s caused harm to the land and to the people. Protest has recently been renewed, bringing together 1 the largest and most unifi ed action ever known in Puerto Rico. In fact, the newly elected governor Marimar Benítez, “The Special Case of Puerto Rico,” The Latin American Spirit: Art and Artists in the United States, 1920-1970, Luis Cancel (ed.) catalogue, New York: Bronx Museum of Arts, 1988, p. 105 of Puerto Rico, Sila María Calderón, has called for an end to the bombing of Vieques. Sánchez’s poetry appears as white printed letters superimposed over a red and blue-black fl ag. Reversal has 2 Juan Sánchez, Huellas. Avanzada estética por la liberación nacional, catalogue, New York: La Galería en el been demobilized, a subtle suggestion of the power of art. Bohío, 1988, p. 7.

Nitza Tufi ño (b. 1949, Mexico, lives in New Jersey) 3 Jorge Soto, (New York, 1947-1988) taped interview, Patricia L. Wilson Cryer, Puerto Rican Art in New York. The Aesthetic Analysis of Eleven Painters and Their Work. Unpublished doctoral dissertation, New York University, The Sun begot daughters only / Destined to live forever / & while still very much alive / 1984, pp.131 - 132. Return to life as gentlemen / With imagination of physical / Supreme woman that gave 4 birth / To every poem they will write. Among the early founders of the Taller and the Museo were 25-30 Puerto Ricans active in the Art Workers poetry excerpt: “Impvisblis” by Reverendo Pedro Pietri Coalition (AWC) which set forth a political platform to reform the elitism of mainstream museums like the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Museum of Modern Art - to “decentralize” them, as Marcos Dimas stated. A more recent term might be that of “identity politics,” a politics refl ecting the changing demographics of the Born in Mexico and raised in Puerto Rico, Nitza also studied art in Mexico, before settling U.S. art population: its diversity produced by including women, people of color, and 188 in the U.S. where she received a number of mural commissions from the City of New York. Her work “Third World” artists living in the United States.The demand of the AWC was representation in the museums, resonates with both Taino and African emblems, with landscape and fruit - but particularly, in this which generally did not occur until the late 1980s. Thus the need for the Taller and the Museo, as well as the case, the syncretism between African and Catholic beliefs so common in the Caribbean. Here, she establishment of many alternative cultural organizations throughout the nation, not only for display, but for suggests that of Santeria. Elegguá, an Afro-Cuban god and messenger of Olofi , eternal father of all dissemination to ignored communities. the gods and identifi ed with the Holy Spirit, the god of light and darkness, is one possibility for this image; as is Yemaya, female deity worshipped as the goddess of waters and streams where she lives. 5 Bulletin of the Centro de Estudios Puertorriqueños , II, No. 3, Spring 1988, p. 81. Of indeterminate sex, then, her image pictures a dark brown head with eyes and features outlined in 6 light brown tones. The zig-zag motif is taken from her collage techniques, of cut-out images united See the catalogue edited by David Kunzle, Che Guevara. Icon. Myth and Message, Los Angeles: UCLA Fowler Museum of Cultural History and Center for the Study of Political Graphics, 1997. on paper with the sewing machine. The brilliantly colored garment is fi lled with multiple images of Elegüa. Flatly rendered, the composition rests on rich patternings of many sorts, contained by 7 Three names should be mentioned: Pedro Albízu Campos,, Elizam Escobar, and Lolita Lebron, two of whom curved lines that give defi nition. The poetry section echoes the face. Blue textures are surmounted have been memorialized by artists, and one of whom (Escobar) is an important artist and essayist in his own by blue letters. right. Released from jail after nineteen years, he now lives and practices in Puerto Rico.

Rafael Tufi ño (b. 1922, New York, lives in Puerto Rico) 8 Though Mexicans and Chicanos long denied any African heritage, the evidence is irrefutable. See Gonzalo Aguirre Beltran, Cuijla: Esbozo etnografi co de un pueblo negro, Veracruz: Universidad Veracruzana [1958], 1989. Also, 26 Las lagrimas de anteayer [The tears of the day before yesterday] / fl y on wings so free I Shifra M. Goldman, “The Mexican School, Its African Legacy, and the ‘Second Wave’ in the United States,” In 27 and stone breathes color/ breathes vida [life] / breathes tranquilidad [tranquility] / the Spirit of Resistance. African American Modernists and the Mexican Mural School, catalogue, New York: The in the heart of the crossroads / en mi plaza de almas [in my plaza of souls]. American Federation of Arts, 1996, pp. 69-82. In addition to Robert Farris Thompson on Africans in the Americas, see Puerto Rican Jose Luis González, El pais de cuatro pisos (1980) in which he said “The fi rst Puerto Ricans poetry excerpt “Plaza Las Almas” by Mariposa were black Puerto Ricans;” and the catalogue La Tercera Raíz: Presencia Africana en Puerto Rico, San Juan: 1992. The order, implicit in the title is Taino, Spaniard, African. On Puerto Rican cultural heritage in New York, From the Spanish conquest came the central plaza of Latin American villages and cities: see Juan Flores, “‘Que assimilated, brother, yo soy asimilao,’: The Structuring of Puerto Rican Identity in the a location where people habitually gathered for music and social activities. Over the centuries, U.S.,”Divided Borders. Essays on Puerto Rican Identity, Houston, Tx.: Arte Publico Press,1993, pp. 182-195. many plazas were named “Plaza de Armas” with its military connotations. The poet has chosen to rename it “Plaza of Souls” to demilitarize the public space, and to echo the “alma” of the Taller 9 Afro-Peruvian culture is well-documented, and recorded in paintings. Black Peruvian Saint Martín de Porras, Alma Boricua. The original plaza is one near Rafael Tufi ño’s house in Old San Juan, and his digital was twice incorporated in paintings by Juan Sánchez, participant in the Taller portfolio. Uruguyan Afro-American translation is taken from an existing painting. The style is very different from the modernisms of culture was painted by Pedro Figari; while Argentina’s tango culture derived from African sources. the much younger Taller generation: it is based on the realisms (often the social realisms) of the 10 fi rst half of the century, which were avant-garde in their own time. The scene represents features For a history of Puerto Rican artists in the U.S., Mexico, and the Island in the 1940s and 1950s, see “Under the Sign of the Pava: Puerto Rican Art and Populism in International Context,” in Shifra M. Goldman, Dimensions in grays, beiges and yellow browns of the corner of a fountain with its fi gural stone sculpture which of the America:s. Art and Social Change in Latin America and the United States, Chicago: University of Chicago establishes the civic presence. Early morning sunlight slants across the cool turquoise of an old Press, 1994, pp. 416-432. three-story building forming the background and the geometry of the plaza. A tree on one side and old-fashioned street lights on the other set up a strong horizontal plane to counter the diagonal 11 Some of the members of the Taller were on the selection committee and on the Board of Friends of Puerto thrust of the fountain. The light is cool and the fi gures are painted with little detail. The bright Rico, Inc.They wanted to maintain MOCHA as a Puerto Rican institution. A few examples of their aims on a broad red dress of a child draws the eye into the background thus stressing the conjunction of civic and basis include, in 1973, their inclusion in a First and Third World Arts Exhibit held at Hunter College. In 1977, the public space. Though executed digitally, the quality of thin oil painting is maintained. The poetic Taller participated in organizing and exhibiting the Whitney Museum’s “Counterweight” against the traditional half of the diptych adds a large butterfl y to a slice of the scene - a reference to the name of the Whitney Biennial of American Art. Another major event was the exhibition “Das Andere Amerika: Geschichte, poet, whose text in a staggered column of black print, is located to the left side. Kunst und Kultur der amerikanischen Arbeiterbewegung” (The Other America: History, Art and Culture of the American Labor Movement), 1983, organized in Germany by the Neuen Gesellschaft fur Bildende Kunst, by Philip S. Foner and Reinhard Schultz, which traveled throughout Europe.

12 New York: E1 Museo del Barrio, 1990. Researched and curated by Diógenes Ballester. Perspectiva the United States such as racism, the “second class citizen “ status, and social conditions of Puerto Perspective Ricans on the mainland. Juan Sánchez and Fernando Salicrup are examples of artists who address the social political concerns of Puerto Ricans. Aesthetic Development of Puerto Rican The issue of culture, closely related to the social and political, is paramount to all immigrants. At question is how to fi t into the host country without losing the cultural values of the Visual Arts in New York as part of motherland. The day to day culture of the Puerto Rican people on the island and in the City has inspired artists to appropriate found objects, kitsch elements, and images from Puerto Rican history. the Diaspora: The Epitaph of the Barrio Marcos Dimas’s work is illustrative of both the cultural theme and found-object technique. Excerpts from the original text presented at The Conference of International Art Critics Embedded in the diaspora is the question of identity. Who are these fi rst, second, third Association (AICA) Southern Caribbean 2001 Symposium, Orlando, Florida, 8/31/01 generation immigrants, no longer Puerto Ricans from the island but clearly not accepted as part of mainstream America. Artists, along with the people of El Barrio, have searched for their roots and D IOGENES B ALLESTER , ARTIST AND LECTURER have found the Pre-Colombian and African heritage of the Caribbean. The recent work of Gloria Rodríguez addresses identity issues facing women and black males in a society dominated by sexism and racism. My own work fi ts into the theme of identity with a focus on Puerto Rican spiritual From the window of my studio at the corner of 106th and Lexington Ave, I observe the tradition. recent gentrifi cation of a neighborhood that was once, and is still today, an icon of the Puerto Rican The Public Art created in El Barrio cuts across the themes already addressed but is a more exodus to the United States. El Barrio, also known as Spanish Harlem, is a Puerto Rican neighborhood direct form of artist-community dialogue and interaction, brings together a broader perspective of located on the upper-eastside of Manhattan in New York City. The neighborhood became a center of community concerns, and can function as a form of social intervention. The Public Art in El Barrio migration for Puerto Ricans after WWII, following the U.S. government initiative Operation Bootstrap includes a variety of murals, from traditionally painted walls to aerosol art and mosaics, sculptures which encouraged Puerto Rican immigration as a means of supplying cheap labor to factories and of various forms, and chalk drawings on the street. Nitza Tufi ño’s ceramic tile mosaic “Neo-Boriken” industries. As a result of this exodus, communities like Spanish Harlem became important cultural (1990) at the 103rd Street subway station, is a good example of the function of public art in El centers where the development of a Puerto Rican identity in the United States was crucial to the Barrio. It interprets Taino symbols that convey our heritage to the metro passengers as they arrive new immigrants. at El Barrio. Similarly, Within this context, Puerto Rican artists began to develop an aesthetic that addressed the values of their community while also adapting to the avant garde currents of the City. This aesthetic, The Gentrifi cation of El Barrio as well as the values of the community from which it stems, have evolved considerably over the past fi fty years and are worthy of study at this historic moment, as the community is rapidly changing El Barrio has changed since the 1950’s. Puerto Rican families have moved out to the in the face of gentrifi cation. From this perspective we can refl ect on the Puerto Rican artistic suburbs. New immigrant groups such as West Africans, Chinese and Mexicans have crowded the expression that has occurred in El Barrio using artists from the alma portfolio as examples. rooms of the old tenements. This is not a new process. The ethnic make up of this stretch of land from 96th Street to 125th between Central Park and the East River has changed many times from The Period of the 50’s and 60’s North American Indians, to Dutch, to German and Irish, to Italian and Jewish immigrants, and African Americans who came from the south. What is new is the class change that is currently transforming The mass emigration of Puerto Ricans to New York in the 40’s and 50’s created a dominant El Barrio. center of Puerto Rican culture and quickly spawned new levels of artistic activity. From a community Gentrifi cation has already transformed neighborhoods such as the West Village, Soho, rooted in a small-town agrarian based culture, these immigrants, as so many before them, became the East Village, Tribeca, Williamsburg, and Chelsea, as the upper middle class moves in while the 28 29 a part of the City’s working class. They passed on to a second generation of Puerto Rican artists working class and working poor are forced out. Clearly, El Barrio faces a challenge. On the political a class and cultural consciousness that by the end of the 60’s gave rise to three major centers of front, there has been a re-zoning of the area with the southern section from 106th to 96th now cultural ferment in El Barrio. part of Upper Yorkville. Economically, money is fl ooding into El Barrio through developers but only The fi rst artists to emerge from the diaspora were folkloric and primitive, artists that are a small portion of this money is going to the Puerto Ricans of El Barrio. El Museo del Barrio, under to be found in the fi rst stages of any displaced culture. Often self-taught these folk painters were pressure to broaden its economic base, has been redefi ned as a Latin American and Puerto Rican known for nostalgic Puerto Rican landscapes. Carlos Osorio, Rafael Tufi ño and Vitín Linares arrived Museum. On a brighter side, The Taller Boricua, under the leadership of Fernando Salicrup, has over from Puerto Rico in this period and joined the primitive group of painters, concentrating mainly the past fi fteen years wisely secured gallery, studio and artist housing space and is collaborating on on Puerto Rican themes rather than those of New York. Infl uential in this community as well as in planning efforts to create a multifaceted Cultural Corridor Project in El Barrio. the art world, these artists brought a whole new set of stylistic inspirations. Tufi ño introduced the But what about the community? The next phase of the diaspora is not yet known. Many techniques of serigraphy, linoleum, and wood cuts. His work represents an extension of Puerto Rican working class Puerto Ricans are moving out of El Barrio. However, young Puerto Ricans, among them themes, but is more expressionistic and portrays the suffering of the people. artists from the island and other cities in the United States, more educated than previous waves Issues of the city soon came to the forefront as the children of the fi rst wave of immigrants of immigrants and more globalized in their perspective, are still arriving. Like their predecessors, came of age announcing in technique and image the poverty of the Latino community at the time. they are working in the community. For example, Miguel Luciano, is currently working on a mural These artists banned together and by the end of the 60’s, El Barrio had three important centers of project with Robert Fulton Housing in the Chelsea area. His work forecasts the imminent battle Puerto Rican art: El Museo del Barrio, Artistís Struggle Organization, OLA, and Taller Boricua. over the status of Public Housing which will be crucial to the fate of working class Puerto Rican’s in El Barrio. The Puerto Rican Diaspora- An Evolving Aesthetic Assuredly, our community here, together with the artists who recount and interpret the tales, has the ability to not only withstand the onslaught of gentrifi cation but also utilize it to While Puerto Rican artists in New York use many stylistic expressions including folkloric enhance El Barrio. We are indeed resilient and just as back home our people have struggled for painting, social realism, neo-expressionism, conceptual, and digital art; the art of the diaspora our identity in the face of 500 years of Spanish and U.S. colonialism so too we will continue the in and around El Barrio can be categorized by the themes portrayed. These themes, though struggle. The next stage of the Puerto Rican diaspora and the artistic aesthetic that speaks of that somewhat interchangeable, can be de-marked as 1) social political, 2) cultural, and 3) the search journey awaits us. Let us meet the challenge. for identity. The social political theme stems from the Puerto Rican colonial status with the United States since 1898 when the U.S. overpowered the independence movement and appropriated Puerto Rico from Spain. Most Puerto Rican artists in the City maintain a strong sense of Puerto Rican nationalism and have been adamant in their support for Vieques, the Puerto Rican Island used as a bombing range by the U.S. Navy. They are equally concerned with issues confronting the Puerto Rican population in Perspectiva Perspective musicians, masked vejigante revelers, and statuesque Black women became icons that supplied the younger generation with their primary pictures of Afro-Puerto Rican identity. Notwithstanding Tufi ño’s infl uence, the prominence of Pan-African motifs in works by Diógenes Ballester and Nitza Tufi ño, among others in the Taller, are attributable to the confl uence of additional factors: (a) a longing to trace ancestries back to the African continent; (b) access to museums and institutions that house extensive collections of African and Afro-Diaspora materials; (c) identifi cation with the Soul Bytes: Taller Boricua cultures and social struggles of an array of African, African-American and Afro-Latino peoples that reside in New York area;(d) exposure to African-Diaspora religions such as Santeria, Vodou, and 30th Anniversary Portfolio Cadomble. Y ASMINA S M I N R AMÍREZA M Í R E Z , H ISTORIANI S T O R I A N , C RITICR I T I C ANDA N D P ROFESSORR O F E S S O R ATA T U . C . L . A . Indeed, one can regard the Pan-African sensibility shared by artists in the Taller as the fruition of a seed planted by Arturo Schomburg, the Afro-Puerto Rican scholar and activist who established one of the earliest libraries in the United States dedicated to African cultures.1 Arriving The director, Woody Allen, once quipped in his fi lm, Annie Hall, that relationships are like sharks, to New York from San Juan in 1891, his collection of over 10,000 books, prints, manuscripts and they have to keep moving or they die. Although Allen was remarking on the quality that sustains paintings relating to the African Diaspora formed the nucleus of the Schomburg Center for Research relationships between lovers, his analogy can be extended to understand what goads artists to in Black Culture, a branch of the New York Public Library located at the corner of 135th street and maintain relationships with each other and establish a place for themselves in the history of art as Lenox Avenue in Harlem. The Caribbean Culture Center on 58th Street in mid-Manhattan is another a collective or movement. In truth, there are two interrelated drives responsible for motivating important research venue founded by an Afro-Puerto Rican. Begun in 1976 by Dr. Marta Moreno creatures like sharks and artists to congregate with members of their own species: sex and hunger. Vega, an artist and scholar once associated with the El Taller Boricua and El Museo del Barrio, the But, only the latter is relevant here because hunger is at the heart of what compelled Diógenes center provides a wealth of information and exhibitions on the African presence in the Americas. Ballester, Marcos Dimas, Gloria Rodríguez, Fernando Salicrup, Juan Sánchez, Nitza Tufi ño and Rafael Several artists associated with Taller including José Morales, Néstor Otero, Juan Sánchez, Tufi ño to create this digital print portfolio commemorating the 30th Anniversary of Taller Boricua/The Elaine Soto, Jorge Soto, Fernando Salicrup, and Manny Vega, have explored the iconography of Puerto Rican Workshop, popularly known in New York by the singular name of the Taller. Santería, an Afro-Cuban system of worship with a rich tradition of music, dance, art and regalia that After twenty-eight years of struggling in makeshift studios and exhibition spaces in El has spread throughout the Caribbean and United States. Santería arose during the 19th century when Barrio, Marcos Dimas, co-founder and Artistic Director of the Taller, and Fernando Salicrup, Executive Yoruba slaves that were brought to work in the sugar cane fi elds began acculturating their ancestral Director, attained the considerable achievement of inaugurating new facilities for the workshop in deities (Orishas) to Catholicism’s veneration of saints. As Arturo Lindsay notes in “Orishas: Living the Julia de Burgos Latino Cultural Center on Lexington AvenueAvenue and 106th Street in March of 1998. Gods in Contemporary Latino Art,” Santería has become an important archetype for artists seeking The fi rst group show at the Julia de Burgos Center entitled, New Work, New Visions, re-united visible examples of African retentions in Latin American culture. “For Latino artists, particularly thirty artists who had been associated with the Taller since its founding in 1970. Expressions of those of Caribbean ancestry, Santería aesthetics represents a strong and resilient Afro-Caribbean congratulations aside, a recurring topic of discussion at the receptions for New Work, New Visions retention that has survived and fl ourished with which they can identify and claim as their own as they 30 concerned the future of the Taller. How could the Taller help them prepare for the 21st century, the too experience the intensifi ed process of acculturation in North America,” writes Lindsay. “These 31 artists wondered? What would nurture artists spiritually, physically and economically in the years shifts in the art world, occurring at the crossroads where Santería aesthetics, Afrocentricity, and to come? postmodernism meet have gained Latino artists the necessary currency to create a recognizable The idea for publishing an anniversary portfolio began germinating in the minds of Marcos new genre of art that has been dispelling erroneous misconceptions of African religious traditions Dimas, Fernando Salicrup and Nitza Tufi ño, during the summer of 1998. The Taller would celebrate by opening a window through which the world can witness the ache [power] of the barrio.”2 its thirty-year anniversary at dawn of the new millennium and it was clear to Fernando Salicrup, who Elegguá, the guardian of the crossroads, is foremost among Santería’s pantheon of Orishas. had been experimenting with digital technology since the early nineteen eighties, that the future Nitza Tufi ño’s portrait of Elegguá, Eshu Elegguá Edi, presents the hybrid face of a Yoruba deity whose of printmaking involved working with computers. What was unknown to him at that time was how identity was cloaked for over a hundred years by syncretism with Catholic saints such as St. Anthony the Latino public, accustomed to the rich textures produced by the artist’s hand, would respond to of Padua and The Holy Child of Atocha. Reconciling his Catholic and African ancestry, Tufi ño’s Elegguá computer-generated art. Salicrup tested the waters by submitting a digital print, La Tierra arde, displays vestiges of his incarnation as the Holy Child of Atocha by bearing the sweet visage of an (1997) to the 1998 Bienal del Grabado Latinoamericano y del Caribe in San Juan, Puerto Rico and androgynous looking child with full lips and a fi ne thin nose. His black skin and large almond shaped won a prize for experimental printmaking. Obtaining international recognition this new arena, eyes, however, are typical of the way Elegguá is represented in Yoruba statuary. Salicrup blazed a trail for the rest of his colleagues. Mindful that the Yoruba believe Orishas are plural entities that manifest different faces By 1999, the path ahead was obvious. In order to advance its vanguard position, the Taller or aspects of their characters, Tufi ño created six additional images of Elegguá below the larger would publish its fi rst portfolio in the 21st century utilizing computer technology. The artists who portrait. The blue zigzags that surrounded Elegguá’s multiple faces impart dual messages to her wanted to participate had to commit to learning the intricacies of the Photoshop program. Under audience. Those versed in the symbolic language of the Yoruba system can interpret the wavy blue Salicrup’s guidance, Diógenes Ballestar, Marcos Dimas, Gloria Rodríguez, Juan Sánchez and Nitza lines as hailing Yemaya, the female goddess of the oceans. Others familiar with Tufi ño’s handiwork Tufi ño set out to conquer the realm of computer graphics, but they would not greet the digital age will notice that the lines simulate stitches, a sign that this digital print has been created with the without following certain time honored traditions, beliefs and rituals. As always on momentous same level of intensity that she lavished on her previous series of artifacts that featured prints and occasions, the Taller artists invited poet laureates to write invocations. And, faithful to Taller photographs sewn on fabric. Boricua’s legacy, several images and poems in the 30th anniversary portfolio honor the African and Nitza Tufi ño has offered several reasons for creating this portrait. Primary among them is Taino roots of Puerto Rican culture. that in addition to being the guardian of the crossroads, Elegguá is the intermediary between human Rafael Tufi ño set a precedent during the nineteen fi fties and sixties by making the Black beings and the Orishas. Elegguá personifi es the art of communication and thus appears destined to population that resides in Loiza Aldea a recurring subject in his artistic output. As a co-founder be the guardian of computer programming, the Internet, and all things related to the dissemination and mentor to artists in the Taller throughout the years, Rafael Tufi ño’s images of Bomba and Plena of information in the digital age. Diógenes Ballester’s art concerns spiritual sources of knowledge and power that Puerto perhaps, with a common pigeon on her head. The statue, which is rather small in person, appears Ricans have kept hidden—even from themselves. In contrast to Cuba where Santeria practices have monumental in proportion to the three fi gures pictured in the background: a mother and young been researched and codifi ed, there is relatively little written information on the syncretism of daughter seated on a bench, and a self-portrait of the artist walking towards the family holding a Spiritualism and Congo-based rituals in Puerto Rico, a practice known in some circles as Sanse. The sketchbook. Mother, daughter, artist and statue and form a triangular grouping, suggestive perhaps syncretistic nature of Sanse is apparent in the multi-ethnic composition of the four major spirits of the triangulated relationships Tufi ño has experienced as a husband and father whose devotion to that oversee the well being of its adherents: an Indian whose ancestry may be Taino, Carib or North his family has, at times, rivaled his love of art. American; an Afro-Haitian female called the Madama, an African male known as El Congo, and a Juan Sánchez’s ongoing series of works on paper, Rican/structions, is a family album Gypsy of Spanish or North African ancestry. of epic proportions. Through a montage of words and images, Sánchez weaves the experiences of In Ballester’s print, Globalization, Postindustrialism and Syncretism, drawings of the signifi cant people in his life into his larger chronicle the Puerto Rican Diaspora. Even prints that are Madama and the Indian are foregrounded against a montage of photographs chronicling the year manifestly about “political issues” employ images that can be linked back to Sánchez’s personal he spent as an artist-in-residence in Paris, Haiti and Cuba. The digitally overlaid photographs and life and concerns. drawings lend the print a dreamlike appearance that complements its mystical subject matter. The Since her birth in 1990 Sánchez’s daughter, Liora, has appeared in dozens of his mixed media sensitively rendered portrait of Ballester’s late father, for example, bleeds into the Indian’s back prints and paintings as a screaming infant whose expressive face evokes a multitude of emotions to suggest an imminent fusion between the two. Certainly, the death of his father, only four days including rage, pain, confusion, and alarm—among others. Sánchez typically recycles photographs, after Ballester arrived in Paris, led to a great deal of refl ection on his purpose for being there, but details of Liora’s face mostly appear in works that question Puerto Rico’s future and the legacy and who or what would guide his actions. Among other things, Ballester’s father provided him with its children stand to inherit. Signifi cantly, Liora fi rst appears as a crying infant in ¿Todavia Hay oral history about sources of Spiritualism in their hometown of Playa de Ponce—information that Boricuas? (1992) and Colonia II, (1992), prints created during the 500 year anniversary of Puerto was now suddenly and tragically cut off in one form but perhaps could be accessed though other Rico’s conquest. Both works featured a photograph that Sánchez staged using his wife, Alma, and means. The international transit symbol that appears on the Indian’s cheek represents Ballester’s Liora as models. The photograph displays a bare-breasted woman masked by the Puerto Rican fl ag newborn mission to place these spirit guides from Puerto Rico within an international perspective, holding a crying baby in one arm. The baby is turned away from the woman’s chest, towards the to discover how they relate to the belief systems he encountered among African immigrants in Paris, camera, a gesture that implies the baby’s cries are due to being denied the comfort of the woman’s to Cubans who observe the Congo-based faith called Palo in Havana, to Haitian Vodou practitioners bosom. The psychological impact of this photograph is immense; it viscerally displays the sentiments in Port Au Prince that recognized the Madama as one of their own. of Puerto Ricans born outside the island who hunger for reattachment to the motherland, Puerto Like Diógenes Ballester, Gloria Rodríguez entered into a period of spiritual refl ection Rico, symbolized by the woman masked in the Puerto Rican Flag. following her mother’s death. Drawing on her prior experience with the technique of photomontage, Lacanian psychoanalytic theory, which holds that human subjectivity is structured by its Rodríguez inserted photographs of her deceased mother, herself, and various friends and family adaptation to the loss of the mother’s breast, gives further insights into Sánchez’s image. According members into a scanned reproduction of an illuminated manuscript dating from the middle ages. to Lacan, infants fi nd tangible objects that substitute for the mother’s breast during the weaning The result of her efforts is a modifi ed depiction of the Madonna and Child that represents her process. Lacan designates objects that infants use to compensate for the sense of wholeness and mother as the queen of heaven and Rodríguez as a docile lamb at her mother’s feet. Rodríguez’s comfort at the mother’s breast as objects petit a. The register in which objects petit a are stored neo-Byzantine folio, christened The She of God,” by the poet Papoleto, poses the existence of a in the mind is termed “the imaginary.” 5 Lacan believes that human beings never recover from 32 matrilineal religious legacy—a female claim to divine rights. Anthropologist Kay Turner has found the loss of the mother’s breast; yet, that feeling of lack is what motivates us to continue forming 33 that among Catholics the creation and upkeep of home altars is customarily left to women who identifi cations with objects, things, symbols people that offer a sense of wholeness throughout pass the tradition on to their daughters, their spiritual bonding continues after death when the our lives. mother’s picture assumes a place on her daughter’s altar. Indeed, the content and organization of The Puerto Rican fl ag is the object petit a that dominates the Nuyorican imaginary. In Rodríguez’s print shares affi nities with the “mother-centered” home altars created by Latina women several of Sánchez’s Rican/structions, photographs of children holding the Puerto Rican Flag in that feature photographs of deceased relatives displayed alongside religious chromolithographs the Puerto Rican Day Parade, children who perhaps may never set foot on the island, speak to the to form an extended holy family that is presided over by the Virgin Mary. As Turner suggests, tangible importance the fl ag plays in creating Puerto Rican subjects in New York. Yet, the pathos the validation of motherhood in women’s altars and images like The She of God, offer nuanced implicit in this reliance of external symbols and objects to suture identities that are unavoidably responses to patriarchal assumptions of power; benevolent fi gures like the Virgin Mary never appear fragmented and transnational is captured by Liora’s scream in as she is turned away from the fl ag to impose their will but rather rule by nurturing relationships. “At the home altar, Catholicism’s in ¿Todavia Hay Boricuas? . For as Lacan noted in theorytheory,, and Sánchez has demonstrated through Holy Mother is freed from the canonical bonds that place her under the male authority of God and his method of layering images, national symbols like fl ags are embedded in multiple and confl icting Christ,” writes Turner. “Her maternal authority is acclaimed by women…who understand that she public discourses that can mislead and misrepresent the subject’s sense of self and place in the is central to their concerns in giving and sustaining life…The discourse of the mother is a discourse world. of affi liation and attachment, of birth and rebirth.”3 In the print produced for the portfolio, Vieques en Grito Flag, Liora’s scream animates an Women as mothers and muses dominate the work of Rafael Tufi ño. “It could be his mother, up-side-down palm tree whose trunk connects to a photograph Sánchez took of a young boy in a wife, girlfriend, lover or simply a woman,” observes Dr. Teresa Tió. “The woman has been a main sailor costume at the Puerto Rican Day Parade. The Puerto Rican fl ag on which these images rest has aspect of his work and life, from La Sevillana and Goyita to his fi rst wife Lucha whom he met when undergone a dramatic makeover. Its primary red, white, and blue color scheme has been changed she was a model.” 4 Tufi ño’s contribution to the portfolio is a digital reproduction of a painting he to the corresponding opposite hues on the color wheel: green, black and orange. Does this second rendered in 2000 of a neo-classic female statue that occupies the rim of a fountain in Old San Juan’s fl ag refl ect the secondary status of Puerto Rican citizenship? Or, does it represent the ideals of the Plaza Las Armas, near his apartment. Originally a site for military exercises, and today a commercial oppositional grass-roots movement that has arisen in Puerto Rico and the United States to evict square, Tufi ño portrays Plaza de Armas, which he renamed Plaza de Almas in this print, as an ideal the Navy from Vieques? Is it emblematic of the formation of an alternative national consciousness public space for the contemplation of art and beauty. The green building that frames the statue that wants to transcend binary constructions—that 50.2 percent of the Puerto Rican population who provides an expressive backdrop for this scene; its lush color projects the streets of Old San Juan as chose “none of the above” in last plebiscite? The meaning of the Vieques en Gritos Flag produced offering fertile grounds for the imagination. Yet, Tufi ño grasps the opportunity to introduce a note by reversing order in which the Puerto Rican fl ag has been encoded in our imaginary is intentionally of irony in this work. He crowns the elevated stone maiden, an attendant to the goddess Athena ambiguous. But, Sánchez did not create it as an empty gesture. Rather he forces us to re-imagine our national symbol within the context of current socio-political realities. a matter of public record. Together with their colleagues at institutions such as the Alternative Marcos Dimas, whose activism in progressive social movements dates back to the anti- Museum, The Bronx Museum, The Caribbean Culture Center, En Foco Gallery, The Longwood Arts war movements of the late sixties, has pursued an independent track as a visual artist. Dimas has Center, and El Museo del Barrio, Puerto Rican artists built the infrastructure for the exhibition of explored and mastered a range of mediums including painting, printmaking, sculpture, installation, Latino art in New York. Secondly, Marilyn S. Kushner, the curator of Digital Printmaking Now, a recent fi lm, and video. His mature work is abstract and refl ects his keen interest in Afro-Caribbean music exhibition at the Brooklyn Museum that included the work of Juan Sánchez, has observed that digital and Taino art. For Something Beautifully Bizarre Dimas morphed a Taino symbol into a charismatic printmaking is causing a revolution in the arts. Digital printmaking is collapsing formerly discrete anthropomorphic fi gure—a Creole jitterbug that appears to be dancing. One can imagine it is doing mediums such as painting, drawing, photography, video, and printmaking. I would also add that the Mambo, the Afro-Cuban dance and musical style which Augustin Lao notes has become a metaphor digital printmaking is helping to erase ethnic stereotyping in the arts. When the artists who founded for New York’s cross-fertilized Latino cultures.6 Wiggling down the page washed in tones of blues, the Taller began exhibiting their work in the late nineteen sixties and seventies, it was labeled pinks, browns and yellows, the jitterbug changes its orientation every time Dimas places it against “ghetto art.” In the nineteen eighties art produced in the Taller was regarded as “community art” a differently hued shape. On the yellow ground its tail faces to left and on the brown rectangle the and or “Latino” art. But, with the publication of this digital portfolio the Taller has entered into a tail faces right. When the jitterbug arrives on pink paraboloid it turns completely up-side down. new global area where no singular style or methodology, country or ethnicity can claim to dominate Dimas’s playful visual composition is matched by the words of poet, Tania Niomi Ramirez, the fi eld. Finally, the experience of working in the digital medium has revitalized Taller Boricua. whose joyful opening stanza supplied the title for her father’s print: Diógenes Ballester, Marcos Dimas, Gloria Rodríguez, Fernando Salicrup, Juan Sánchez, Nitza Tufi ño and Rafael Tufi ño are producing some their best work to date. And, when artists of this caliber are Something beautifully bizarre happens hungry to work, the result is a banquet for the eyes. when the dial on my stereo hits the pre-set Spanish radio station… the watts on my “made in America” boom box N o t e s can’t contain las canciones de mi tierra/ the songs of my people and 1 Winston James, “Afro-Puerto Rican Radicalism in the United States: Refl ections on the Political Trajectories from the speakers of Arturo Schomburg and Jesús Colon,” in El Centro de Estudios Puertorriqueños, (Volume VIII, Numbers 1 and EXPLODE 2), New York: Hunter College, 1996, pgs 92-127. a tropical tempest. 2 Arturo Lindsay, “Orishas: Living Gods in Contemporary Latino Art” in Santería Aesthetics in Contemporary Latin America Art, ed. Arturo Lindsay, (Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1996), 219-220. Fernando Salicrup supplies the Précis to the portfolio. In the Name of Her Father, portrays 3 Kay Turner, Beautiful Necessity: The Art and Meaning of Women’s Altars, New York: Thames and Hudson, a fantastic universe of four interpenetrating spheres. The top is dense with people of all kinds 1999. p 55 walking the earth including a pregnant woman fl oating on the right hand side whose transparent 4 Teresa Tío, “Rafael Tufi ño: The Art of Self” in Rafael Tufi ño: El Pintor del Pueblo, San Juan: Museo de Arte belly exposes the embryo contained in her womb. Comprised in the second smaller sphere is the de Puerto Rico, 2001. p. 220. 34 realm in which the unborn child dwells. The child fi lters the experiences of the mother through its 5 Jacques Lacan, The Four Fundamental Concepts of Psycho-Analysis, trans. Alan Sheridan, New York: W. W. 35 emergent consciousness; it co-exists in a mini universe that is partially grounded in the terrestrial Norton, 1981. Also see Kaja Silverman, The Subject of Semiotics, New York: Oxford University Press, 1983. sphere above and the swirling ancestral world below. Beyond the ancestral world lies a fi eld of 6 Augustin Lao, “Introduction” in Mambo Montage: The Latinization of New York City, eds. Augustin Lao and fl owing vegetation and fl owers that resemble irises. Arlene Davila, New York: Columbia University Press, 2001. pp 1-50. Salicrup once remarked that In the name of her father represents his universe, the planets 7 Holland Cotter, “A Neighborhood Nurtures Its Vibrant Cultural History,” in The New York Times, sMarch 16, of El Barrio. He pictures himself in a square on the lower register as an open mouthed man ingesting 1998. p E3. the spirit of El Barrio through a swirl of colored smoke, summarizing the objective of the artists, namely to express what the Hegel called the zeitgeist or spirit of their age. The Nuyorican zeitgeist is dense like the city it emerged from, crowded with animals, ancestors, artifacts, fl owers, people from all places and of all races, gods, spirits, the undead and the yet-to be born. It is noisy with the screams of babies, car alarms, roar of the trains, prayers, chants, Mambo, Salsa, Merengue, Latin Jazz and Spanglish Rap. Thus contributions of the poets who lent their voices to the portfolio were essential to covey the full spectrum of the Nuyorican experience that began a genre of poetry which is recognized around the globe and recited nightly at the Nuyorican Poets Café in Loisada. Moreover, the precedent for Taller Boricua’s 30th year anniversary portfolio of art and poetry was set in Puerto Rico with the portfolio Las Plenas (1954-55) by Lorenzo Homar and Rafael Tufi ño. The artists of Taller Boricua are extending that tradition and reformatting its appearance but the populist sentiments that led to the creation of Las Plenas are much the same. Manny Vega, a colleague and former member of the Taller once commented in the New York Times that the artists of Taller Boricua are a school. “They’re the East Harlem School, said Vega. Eventually historians will get it.”7 There are several good signs that the Taller will gain greater recognition by historians and curators in the future. Firstly, the large migration of Latinos from all parts of Caribbean, Mexico and Latin America in New York has created a greater interest among historians, anthropologists and sociologists in studying what is termed the “Latinization” of New York City. Taller Boricua’s 30 year history of maintaining El Barrio as cultural Mecca for Latino artists is ARTIST ARTIST DIOGENES DIOGENES BALLESTER BALLESTER POET POET MARÍA MARÍA BONCHER36 37BONCHER ARTIST ARTIST MARCOS MARCOS ARTIST DIMAS DIMAS LORIA POET G POET TANIA NIOMI RODRÍGUEZ TANIA NIOMI RAMÍREZ38 POET 39RAMÍREZ JESÚS PAPOLETO MELÉNDEZ ARTIST ARTIST GLORIA GLORIA RODRÍGUEZ RODRÍGUEZ POET POET JESÚS JESÚS PAPOLETO PAPOLETO MELÉNDEZ40 41MELÉNDEZ ARTIST ARTIST FERNANDO FERNANDO SALICRUP SALICRUP POET POET HECTOR HECTOR RIVERA 42 43 RIVERA ARTIST / POET ARTIST / POET JUAN SÁNCHEZ44 JUAN45 SÁNCHEZ ARTIST ARTIST NITZA NITZA TUFIÑO TUFIÑO POET POET EL EL REVERANDO REVERANDO PEDRO PEDRO PIETRI 46 47 PIETRI ARTIST ARTIST RAFAEL RAFAEL TUFIÑO TUFIÑO POET POET MARIPOSA48 49MARIPOSA L o s P o e t a s T h e P o e t s El Alma Boricua de los Poetas Nevertheless he goes astray del Taller Boricua de Nueva York And trows himself into brutal artistic day, B EATRIZ M . S ANTIAGO -Y BARRA , P OETA Y C OORDINADORA G ENERAL openly exhibition his maked heart! ,,,2 B IENAL DE S AN J UAN DEL G R ABADO L ATINOAMERICANO Y DEL C ARIBE Héctor Rivera, en su poema In The name of the Father “deliberadamente refl eja los ac- cidentes de su búsqueda de una visión coherente y armónica del mundo y la vida. No lo seduce La Fusión de Taller Boricua de Nueva York, de sus artistas gráfi cos con los poetas, tiene para nosotros el arte por el arte, no pretende explicar un grabado, ni mucho menos hacer poesía por “llenar el los puertorriqueños de la banda acá, un pronunciado sesgo familiar y es que los puertorriqueños de espacio que falta y seduce “Tampoco se detiene aquí a poetizar pequeños sucesos, suyos, sin peso la banda allá con la de los de acá, somos todos, como precisamente es la misma tierra, dos polos típico o paradigmático. Rivera da interés a sus confesiones de orden universal, pero desde su mundo inseparables y de igual valor. Un extremo es la raíz y el otro es la invención constante del viaje interior y el de su entorno como respuesta directa a la pregunta fundamental sobre el hombre y su interno y simbólico que como “leit motif” hacia esa raíz, se realiza constantemente y a veces existencia: en esos puntos, se encuentran ambos polos, se animan y se tocan, porque en defi nitiva somos los puertorriqueños haciendo vida cultural ininterrumpidamente en la Isla, y los de Nueva York, como “She is the moon una uruboros sabia, de visión y retina intactos, sin desprendimientos, con una cabeza y una cola and I the moonchild que se unen y cíclicamente pasamos, unos de la cola a la cabeza y otros de la cabeza a la cola y keeping the beat así sucesivamente, como cuando decimos bien a lo puertorriqueño (refi riéndonos a la rueda de la to the coming calming tides simbólica fortuna) “A veces estamos arriba y otros estamos abajo”. whose train I ride Asimismo los artistas gráfi cos y los poetas de Taller Boricua continúan con este amalgamiento Cheating death constante, como si el ser puertorriqueño fuera más importante que ser poeta o maestro de grabado Feeling alive o pintor, y así es para todos nosotros; Espiritualmente “lo que es arriba, es abajo”de frente de lado Transforming the tyrannical tomb into a womb y de espaldas”ser puertorriqueño”es primero y ser poeta va en segundo lugar, lo es, porque se es Where I am reborn to make room boricua de alma y de corazón. Los poetas de Taller Boricua, Jesús Papoleto Meléndez, Pedro Pietri, for the new day arriving soon:”3 Mariposa, Héctor Rivera, Tania Naomi Ramírez, Maria Boncher, Juan Sánchez entre otros, (históri- camente 1er Premio junto a Fernando Salicrup (artista y grabador) por Puerto Rico en la pasada XII Esta última actividad en su poema es la que por suerte y gracia se mantiene incólume, lo Bienal de San Juan del Grabado Latinoamericano y del Caribe, son partes como artistas y maestros aleja de la muerte real de las cosas o del “nihilismo suicida”de los poetas de antaño (románticos, del grabado y la pintura, aquí, ahora unidos a todos sus compañeros de Taller Boricua, celebran su buenos) Gustavo Adolfo Bécquer y la fi losofía del realismo neorromántico de Rubén Darío. Profesa Trigésimo Aniversario con la Exposición “ Alma Boricua”(Portafolio y obras del Taller) y con ellos como así también lo hace la poetisa Tania Naomi Ramírez, una fi losofía realista y a veces pesimista un Manuscrito de los Poetas, como “dueto” perfecto de esta histórica y simbólica exposición en el de la que anhela sacudirse, desprenderse pero como Museo de las Américas en el viejo San Juan. Se unen a la celebración de los treinta y un años de Ramírez, no pueden: la existencia; y lo evidencian en sus imágenes y símbolos es un 51 50 la Bienal de San Juan del Grabado, lo que nos hace por condición sin-qua-non, ser dos vertientes conglomerado de signos hostiles, enemigos, inhumanos, que los fuerzan, como al poeta Petro de una sola alma. Pietri a buscar un modo creativo de entender la vida, de enfrentarla, humanamente aclarada y Hay dos elementos de suma importancia en toda esta poesía de Taller Boricua que como es únicamente entonces, cuando ese proceso de vivir y crear en el “room for oneself “del que la vida misma es un hecho complejo, el primero índole estructural; el verso libre y narrativo que tanto nos habló Simone de Beauvier”4 , que convertido en este caso, en la ubicuidad del Puerto se sujeta a su propia necesidad etimológica, (la palabra al servicio de lo que se siente, y no lo Rican Workshop, Inc. Taller Boricua, va adherida la individualidad de cada uno de estos poetas a la 1 contrario), el segundo es de contenido (esencial, sentido) en el que todos los artistas sin faltar objetividad del mundo. No son los poetas de Taller Boricua en esta exposición Alma Boricua poetas uno, al dar testimonio de esa “puertoricanidad”1 su sentido esencial, no es bajo ningún concepto subjetivistas. Son líricos, continúan desde (el concepto de la “poeyesis griega”) 5 vinculados esa “volver”a la Isla postrado, de hinojos, sino más bien el gesto poético señala a un rehusamiento de “alma boricua”a lo que está fuera de sus subjetividades. En todo caso canalizando primordialmente defensa bajo la apariencia de entrega: ( a lo único que el Reverendo Pedro Pietri se entrega es a a descifrar, desentrañar y decodifi car esa realidad eternamente tránsfuga, como lo es la de todos lo espiritual) ¡claro! De Dios, pero no a los valores trastocados, que hoy se viven en la Isla, seme- los puertorriqueños de la colonia y los de la diáspora en cualquier rincón del mundo. jantes, como “Copy Cats”a los de Nueva York, pero acá en nuestro Puerto Rico, se pueden perdonar ¿Qué han hecho los grandes poetas como Bárbara Pynn, T.S. Elliot, Emily Dickinson, Ed- pero no estar de acuerdo, y Pedro Pietri no lo está, así Jesús Papoleto Meléndez, en su poema The gar Allan Poe, Walt Whitman y James Dickey? Si no, como decía el propio Dickey; “drowning with She of God (dedicado a Yolanda Rodríguez) señala a la madre poesía y del arte, madraza de la others”<

“O, Mother,Mother Poetry & Art... “Where I can dance While still cradle in the womb, the embryonic man Merengues with Dominicans, sustles in his sleep..... Hit claves with Cubans, un born as get,h e is brave; Bailar Bomba con Boricuas Unafraid of dreams & myths, Without the static of stereotypes And is soothed by a lullaby sweetly sung, arising frome That Keep the Latino Nation in The angelic voice of his Mother’s natural love.. A perpetual state of civil war. That from the moment of his birth, having nursed The Universe of ther breats, Not here ...... & still restless, Not in this land of love. I AM PRE-CONONIAL POWER exilio) de la mujer deambulante, con un alma que aprende poco a poco a desasir su sen- I AM GOLDEN SUN REFLECTIONS OR ANCIENT AFRICAN FACES timiento de lo universal a lo aprehensible y personal y es la ciudad de París lo aprensible, I AM AN IRIDESCERT AURA OF ARAWAK INDIAN que le hace estar aprehensiva (valga la redundancia) porque como bien ella dice”that the splendor/was paid for by many”. No obstante, la contemplación de la ciudad de París FEELING THE SOUND OF GENERATIONS OF ANCESTORS debemos interpretarla como un testimonio de fuerza creativa ya que tiene un signifi cado WHO SHOW ME A REAL PICTURE OF ME, NOT THAT ANGLO-ASSIMILATING IMAGE relevante al plantearse unos problemas, a los que instantáneamente da respuestas: THEY TRY TO SELL ME ON TV.” 7 “I try to imagine El “alma boricua”se sumerge con los otros latinos, también tratando de unir esa latinidad what is was lik en una sola alma latina. eto live Para entender, por ejemplo y sin mayor envergadura, el arte (grabado, pintura y poesía), in these grayish/tas store cut buildings en los varios géneros del artista puertorriqueño Juan Sánchez, defi nitivamente hay que conocer home of the empire el arte social, el de testimonio (el arte socialista) un giro de noventa grados representa aquí el luminous yet cold poema “Vieques en Gritos”. Sánchez apunta al cambio de tono que en el poeta produce el paso in the rain dripped evening sunset por la vida; la gravedad del caso especifi ca de nuestra isla nena, las interrogaciones que suscita what iti was like for the others la vecindad de la muerte, seguida por las respuestas afi rmativas de la querencia del poeta por labor exploited Vieques, “cada poeta pone su alma donde quiere”, y en este caso Sánchez, sin renunciar a la lírica life diminished denuncia el delirio de persecución y ¿Cómo lo denuncia? No panfl etariamente, sino que hace una under the order of things elocuente enumeración de los atributos que en su sentir forman la íntima estructura de la Isla Nena upon whic these structures were built”.10 violentada, pero declarada en fe: Parece que Boncher nos estuviera describiendo la existencia de la angustia en cada átomo. “Vieques Pero, Juan Sánchez, Pedro Pietri, y su IMPVISBLTS, en esa imposibilidad invisible de la existencia A force so purpose fully evil humana, el alma aunque mezclada entre el cemento de las grandes urbes, sobrepasa su propia an- Has violated, tormented, battered and enslaved you. gustia cuando el papel, como matriz esencial recibe la impresión poética de las palabras, entonces Now I grives for you for las imágenes saltan y los símbolos del lenguaje fi gurativo disparan sus fl echas liras, de modo que la This monster has run right through you gesta del poeta se convierta en elegir que es un atrevimiento genial cruzando esos límites extremos Has taken passion of your de lo expresable, la vida de nuestras almas, el drama del poeta, que como todo ser viviente es Passion and determination for el drama de estar consciente y no sólo de estarlo sino de serlo. En esto el alma boricua tiene la 8 Freedom, virtue and Peace. palabra hace ya treinta años, y la Bienal de San Juan del Grabado, treinta y uno.

Los versos son de angustia, se angustian las palabras en las imágenes dolientes como de percusiones tamboriles, no obstante, el poema tiene versos alegres en estrofas dinámicas y ritmos 52 internos como de percusiones y tamboriles, entre una palabra y otra, e inclusive canta cosas y N o t e s 53 situaciones de las que el hombre social, citadino”que se sumerge con los demás”, ve siempre a su alrededor; 1 Licencia poética de la autora. Entiéndase puertorriqueñidad 2 Poema “The She of God”de Jesús Papoleto Méndez en “Manuscrito de los Poetas” “Vieques 3 Poema “In the Name of the Father”de Héctor Rivera en “ Manuscrito de los Poeta” You are the playground 4 De Beauvier Simone,”A room for oneself”, Random House, New York, NY (1972) (USA) Paradise of our children’s imagination 5 Concepto de la poesía en la Grecia antigua. Your water laden winds that 6 Tania Naomi Ramírez, poeta con la poesía “Something Beautifully Bizarre Happens”en Precedes joyful rainstarms forgin Sky sandcastles, rainbow twilights and jovial shadows. “Manuscrito de Poetas”de Taller Boricua 7 From fl oating impressions of sand, musical seashells, Fragmentos poemas de Tania Naomi Ramírez, del poema Daydreams and stargazes, “Something Beautifully Bizarre”. Taller Boricua. To golden and rainbow blossoms, 8 Juan Sánchez, (Artista y Poeta) poesía “Vieques en Grito”, del “ Manuscrito de Poetas” You are so utopía de Taller Boricua de Nueva York. My beloved Vieques 9 “IBID”. (op.cit.) 9 So beautifull and true” 10 María Boncher (Poeta) con “I walked today”(poesia) de “Manuscrito de los Poetas” del Taller Boricua de Nueva York. Para nuestros poetas de Taller Boricua al acompañar con sus versos el portafolio y las obras de “AlmaAlma BoricuaBoricua”van grabando en cada palabra y por cada estrofa grabando sus propias imágenes, creando todo un sistema lingüístico de ritmo, sonido, símbolo y fi guras retóricas que ante nuestra lectura van convirtiéndose en colores. Es homologamente que nuestros artistas grabadores, Fer- nando Salicrup, Nitza Tufi ño, Diógenes Ballester, Marcos Dimas, Gloria Rodríguez, Juan Sánchez, el Maestro Rafael Tufi ño van a través de sus colores e imágenes descubriéndonos el lenguaje poético del grabado.

“I walked today” poema de Maria Boncher, nos invita a conocer el antecedente del poema, caminar por las calles de París, de un París, gris y capitalista, así lo describir su alma. Es realmente la paráfrasis melancólica de la leyenda del poeta exiliado (quizás en un auto Diogenes Ballester proud to be french Voices To become ineffable extention live together with their neighbors materialize into angels Of the greater darkness phase María Boncher working class parisans that carry me Where colors never before ima- whose ancestors came to the city from the provinces to the core of the earth, gined invite you to witness I WALKED TODAY driven from the land where darkness fl irts with light. Body leaving the spirit after by the laws of production Into the fi ery garden of the Alarm clock is heard not ringing i walked today afraid they will lose African, Indian, and Spanish And the ghost in us all sings from arc de triumphe the compensatory privileges Musical Trinity. In the nude after the storm fl anked on either side by international banks gained through their struggles To swim in smoked fi lled lake guardians of post-industrial multi-national fi nance capital aware of the color of the new immigrants skin A melodious ménage à trois conceived this realm, To valley where silence was past the grand palais wondering if the new world order heavenly domain First heard in unspoken words the petit palais will undermine their history where Strength After so many misconceptions through the gardens their sense of being transcends ignorance. Of death has kept the art Of to the louvre Living out of breath in reverse awareness of the price of the opulence it has been good Where I can dance To experience no true thirst diminishing to walk and think Meréngue with Dominicans, In the desert where it was the pleasure of the architecture/sculptures/grounds of the foundations / the underpinnings Hit claves with Cubans, Someone said LET THERE BE LIGHT with the knowing that exist beneath what is seen Bailar Bomba! con Boricuas And there was LIGHT & it was that the splendor cognitions generated without the static of stereotypes Not good or bad but ALRIGHT was paid for by many by the kinesthetic movement that keep the Latino Nation in And a society of no being fl ed of sandal strapped feet a perpetual state of civil war Mounted on non existing horses i try to imagine interacting with the materials All the way to promised land what it was like that bind the land Not here. Of clouds that were clouds to live Not in this land of love. Before the beginning of time in these grayish/tan stone cut buildings i am tired now When crimes of passion were home of the empire i will sleep I AM PRE-COLONIAL POWER. Not sins but holy achievements luminous yet cold dreaming of the spirit In the journey to becoming in the rain dripped evening sunset of the people of this land I AM GOLDEN SUN REFLECTIONS ON ANCIENT AFRICAN FACES Personal creator of our shadow what it was like for the others At the precise moment when labor exploited I AM AN IRIDESCENT AURA OF ARAWAK INDIAN. The last will and testament life diminished Of the wind drives God crazy under the order of things Feeling the sound of generations of ancestors And we swim to our own rescue upon which these structures were built who show me a real picture of me, In the legend we never become Marcos Dimas Not that anglo-assimilating image And the sun shines again i walk on they try to sell me on TV In the middle of the night past the hotel de ville Tania Niomi Ramírez In the beginning of the séance the ongoing symbol Mother Music To bring back the living of government SOMETHING BEAUTIFUL HAPPENS Caresses the whip scars on my soul/ To socialize with the dead governing54 the governed rope marks of oppression. Under an umbrella in the rain 55 heading toward the bastille Something beautifully bizarre happens She heals me of conditioned doubt. In anticipation of eternity interesting that they tore it down when the dial on my stereo To seek shelter from formality the prison hits the pre-set Spanish radio station… So when someone While staring at mountains surrendered in 1789 pulls the plug and For centuries if necessary and erected a column The watts I am cast back into exile… Nitza Tufi ño Until they move spontaneously to commemorate on my “made in America” boom box I can cope with reality And we can look in the mirror the revolutions can’t contain las canciones de mi tierra/ cause I know my identity. El Reverendo Pedro Pietri And actually see NADA there, the paris commune the songs of my people and And maybe something else also a momentary promise of a different way from the speakers IMPVISBLIS EXPLODE i continue eastward a tropical tempest. The Sun begot daughters only the narrow alley streets Destined to live forever until home to the artisans A cyclone of song Their knowledge of the history of the twelfth arrandissement spins around Of the moon becomes original those skilled workers who hand crafted commodities and around & while still very much alive that are now mass produced my room. Return to life as gentlemen their workshops transformed With imagination of physical into fashionable restaurants Shattering the glass on my window Supreme woman that gave birth chic specialty stores that peers onto the routine reality To every poem they will write reminders of the homogenized existence of inner-city submission, When the vision of the night that is rendering paris/new york/ london /tokyo of ghetto pain mentality. keeps the dreamers wide awake indistinguishable To fi ght in wars & win & lose the hagen daz tastes the same The music, & die & refused to be buried comes to life with a conga heartbeat… So that romance never has to my thoughts have meandered Possessing the clothes in my closet to shake off their hangers and dance. Say farewell to the thoughts with the footsteps Of the ocean in the mirror i have walked The sounds of the instruments Where fi nal mystery is solved heading on this journey transform And the magnifi cent secret to a place i call home into a spectrum of butterfl ies Becomes clear to chosen few where immigrants from the colonies that color my white walls. Of the forest they awaken in After having lost enough sleep Juan Sánchez How unbearably immense Gloria Rodriguez from a new, obscure and poignant point of view -- Life can be Where Nothing’s Nowhere Under miserable subjugation. Jesús Papoleto Meléndez & Everywhere at once! --leaving him for dead!!!… VIEQUES EN GRITOS Where life is forever forgotten THE SHE OF GOD He Cries Out!: And agony implores no answer. for Yolanda Rodriguez “Mother! Mother!… Island of warmth, terra fi rme, water-drenched breezes. Where Art Thou Now?!”… Labor of love, peace and faith, and Vieques There is a GOD… And, consumed within the guilt of every man -- Taino spirits You must be exalted. and She is you; Mother… he sulks into his open hands, “…Why have you forsaken me?!” Surrounded by salted-blue waters Your grito must be an Mother of the Artist, Mother of the Art! Without so much as a farewell kiss -- That is your own Unrelenting, Transformative and Infi nite Mother, rising in Son and Daughter, …Thus begins descending Bosom’s very blood. Taino battle cry. Now, Everyone alive2 her Child, cherished as is water; into his own abyss. That grito must castigate that evil fi end Who channeled through the liquid space of Time You are the Out of our misery. into this lake of jagged stone, alone -- But it is She who weeps, and thusly, sweeps away the remnants of Virtue of our self-esteem The labor, struggle, pains and necessary wait Everyone of woman borne; Whose mystery is Spirit; and penetrates quite easily the mundane pain that seems so plainly always Where hard honest work never humiliates the perforated threshold of this Earth; in the world today -- Or damage our hopes and pride. Will never humiliate Fecund with the gift of Birth -- That would win the Cosmic battle for the heart Or damage our pride or our will. The look of love, obvious as eyes upon her face!… Were it not! Vieques for her ever-present form of Art -- …Whose love would not betray! You are the playground Vieques No Man, or Woman can escape the Essence of this Grace, that breathes within every living thing that is, Though through time tested, never bent its will -- Paradise of our children’s imagination. You will once again be the very & because It Is; To speak of what it would; Your water laden winds that Virtue of our self-esteem. Life as Art on Earth, quite commonly, is a To express what pain and power Precedes joyful rainstorms forging You will once more become Natural circumstance of the chance for life itself; is in Nature’s natural strength… Sky sandcastles, rainbow twilights and jovial shadows. The dignity, the joy, the love, the faith That holds him wounded in her arms, alone, From fl oating impressions on sand, musical seashells, Of our people to live in peace. O, Mother, Mother Poetry & Art… While still cradled in the womb, The embryonic man while in his arms, Daydreams and stargazes, rustles in his sleep -- is She -- To golden and rainbow blossoms. Vieques Unborn as yet, he is brave; with the subtlety of Dignity, You are so utopia Your paradise must emerge back to the life unafraid of dreams & myths, Humility My beloved Vieques. That is the infi nite spirit and jubilation of our And is soothed by a lullaby sweetly sung, arising from and Godliness; Who sheds the tears that pay the price So beautiful and true. Children’s Precious Radiance. the angelic voice of his Mother’s natural love… That from the moment of his birth, having nursed for the breadth of Art’s unrequited sacrifi ce… the Universes of her breasts, O, Mother of the Artist, Vieques -- & still restless, Mother of the Art ! A force so purposefully evil Nevertheless he goes astray Spiritual Creation made fl esh, strolling among us Has violated, tormented, battered and enslaved you. And throws himself into the brutal & artistic day, in its purest form; That makes Time itself stand still, holding-in its own breath; Now I grieve for you for openly exhibiting his naked heart!… 56 … while the Mind’s Third Eye, While She gives to Life that, 57 This monster has run right through you in its unconsciousness, which Death can never take from us. Has taken possession of your Fernando Salicrup already knows Passion and determination for substantially Freedom, Virtue and Peace. Hector Rivera 9Reality ,is as elusive IN THE NAME OF HER FATHER as Vieques a fl eeting moment( Your children have fallen prey to In the name of her father “the thought upon the lips reclines to rest” The bombings, the assaults, the rapes. I am her son …), that in its speck The beast wants to full of holes and spirits of time exists Devour and render you I am driven to mimic ,and in another instant escapes our grip -- Broken, Tortured and Contaminated. those that live it, life, in constant movement To be born distinctively anew bouncing to the night colors Somewhere else, within Someone else, Our beloved fl ag is equally inexperienced of a hustler’s song In Love and Life, as you!… No longer red, white and sky blue. a Barrio prophet’s psalm We are indecisively upside down with :Within, without, separate and apart, of the Purple Queen of 116 Embodied in a man, being matter over mind, A Puerto Rican Crackerjack Sailor Boy whose heart is torn & having its own soul, Standing guard over She sees eyes hidden in faces that warn He goes… Our grimacing cry. charm and warm With mad ideas of Perfectness A grito in perpetual pain. to the heat of the streets pounding in his head, She is the moon In Love! And in mad pursuit of and I the Moonchild the Adventure! keeping the beat & some kind of Peace of Mind to the coming calming tides that there might be within the world today, So whose train I ride He fl irts with the fl ickering fl ame of fi re cheating death & desire… feeling alive And now sees Himself, & the World transforming the tyrannical tomb into a womb where I am reborn to make room for the new day arriving soon. Rafael Tufi ño yo aprendí a volver. I fl ew beyond the Persian Gulf, beyond Crete Mariposa and Greece, beyond the other side of the world, to fi nd that I too prefer La turquesa PLAZA LAS ALMAS and the music of poetry, I. of painting, of humanity, Las lagrimas de anteayer el amarillo de las caras lindas de mi gente fl y on wings so free el amarillo que brilla en el alma… and stone breathes color breathes vida IV. breathes tranquilidad in the heart of the crossroads What was once completely sealed off en mi plaza de almas. with only two lonely entrances at opposite ends was my home where I perched II. like a sentinel, high up on a forgotten corner before they knocked the walls down and opened up Make love not war mis queridos the plaza to place me by the water…. she whispers into the aged fi ngers I don’t remember if I stood facing East or West, and secrets speak into quick sketches North or South. as small drawings bleed slowly into Time rings in my memory of warm stone pools… to a time before the two clock towers the four walls III. and the loneliness to the time where I stood guard in El Paseo de La Princesa And then I make and witnessed the making of history, the composition where I witnessed the imprisonment of to go home and paint what I feel lost souls and slaves, and all I have seen in the years in between where I witnessed resistance as the son of a Puerto Rican merchant marine and listened to the prayers of those who sailed the seven seas whose crime was to fi ght for freedom, to discover the blues where I witnessed pain and sacrifi ce. of the unknown No one really knows who I am. to fi nd he preferred I bear the grays of sadness and secret satisfaction and La turquesa with the freshness of spring I reveal myself. 58 of his ancestral home 59 Las palomas are my friends, and the small children y el amarillo que brilla en el mediodía y el amarillo y la turquesa. el amarillo que brilla en el alma… Only the great painter Tufi ño knows how to love me, I too have journeyed like my father how to pay attention to my existence. beyond the borders of my Brooklyn barrio birthplace His paint brush ignores Marshalls, the Puerto Rico Drug Store beyond my island Walgreens, and the crazy poet screaming to discover the greenest of greens by Las Cuatro Estaciones Café to a crowd of onlookers. in a jungle of dreams where Only the great painter Tufi ño knows how to love me, nature shielded me from the bloodshed of WWII, where how to pay attention to my existence. I killed not a soul, only 2000 mosquitos that wanted to eat me alive His paint brush ignores the sadness of homeless tecatos in that paradise called Panama where trying to sell pretty rose shaped palmas music was the softly whispered sacred secrets destined to turn brown and decay the next day. of ancestral spirits and the mystical echo Instead his paintbrush captures me and of my own heart beating forgiveness as I counted the days the souls that live here with me like the great poet Diego for the war to end and where in the glowing waters where all the great poets gather there was a lake where we would swim and where in this plaza of souls. my canvas was the green canopy, They hail him in the street Tufi ño! Tufi ño! the majestic mountains and my own imagination, where The great Puerto Rican painter who our mission was to guard the Canal, where is known as Tefo by the whole nation. we were spared direct combat, where our job was to Only he knows how to love me, make guns and to clear the bush with our machetes, where how to pay attention to my existence. we’d have to go down the mountain to get gasoline and where He takes the time they put me to look to the sky to do small quick sketches of me, a ver los vuelos poeticos… quickly because the light is too strong I was blessed. and because soon someone will come to talk with him, I learned that beyond because you will very rarely, if ever, fi nd him alone, the mountains lay more mountains because he is loved by everyone and so I painted my own wings en mi plaza de almas. y como las palomas S PONSORS / AUSPICIADORES C ATALOGUE

TEXTS / TEXTOS DIÓGENES BALLESTER TALLER ALMA BORICUA MARCOS DIMAS SHIFRA M. GOLDMAN LOURDES R. MIRANDA FERNANDO SALICRUP GALERÍA PRINARDI BEATRIZ SANTIAGO IBARRA GLADYS PEÑA YASMIN RAMÍREZ

BIENAL DEL GRABADO DE SAN JUAN DE LATINOAMÉRICA Y EL CARIBE REDACCIÓN Y COORDINACIÓN EDITING & COORDINATION NÉSTOR OTERO / NITZA TUFIÑO

MUSEO DE LAS AMÉRICAS CATALOGUE DESIGN / DISEÑO DEL CATALOGO CENTRO DE ESTUDIOS AVANZADOS DE PUERTO RICO Y EL CARIBE NÉSTOR OTERO SALTO, ALTERNATIVAS EN DISEÑO STAFF / PERSONAL TALLER BORICUA POETIC DEDICATION / DEDICACION POÉTICA SANDRA MARÍA ESTEVES FERNANDO SALICRUP, EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR MARCOS DIMAS, ARTISTIC DIRECTOR PRINTING / IMPRESIÓN IRMA AYALA, EXECUTIVE ADMINISTRATOR ELMENDORF NITZA TUFIÑO, FOUNDING MEMBER FERNANDO SALICRUP III, LAB TECHNICIAN SPECIAL THANKS / AGRADECIMIENTOS JESÚS MUÑIZ, OPERATIVE ASSISTANT SPECIAL THANKS / AGRADECIMIENTOS

60 CREDITS / CREDITOS ANDRES MARRERO 61 GALERÍA PRINARDI PORTFOLIO / EXHIBITION MARIA DE LOS ANGELES FERNÁNDEZ DIRECTORA DEPARTAMENTO DE ARTES PLÁSTICAS PRODUCTION COORDINATORS / COORDINADORES DE PRODUCIÓN DEL INSTITUTO DE CULTURA DE PUERTO RICO MARCOS DIMAS / NITZA TUFIÑO BEATRIZ SANTIAGO IBARRA COORDINADORA GENERAL COMPUTERIZED ART PRODUCTION & POSTER DESIGN / DE LA BIENAL DE SAN JUAN DEL PRODUCIÓN DE ARTE COMPUTARIZADO Y DISEÑO DEL CARTEL GRABADO LATINOAMERICANO Y DEL CARIBE FERNANDO SALICRUP DEL INSTITUTO DE CULTURA DE PUERTO RICO MARIA ANGELA LOPEZ-VILELLA POSTER DESIGN / DISEÑO DE CARTEL MUSEO DE LAS AMERICAS JUAN SÁNCHEZ ELIZABETH MERENA NEW YORK STATE COUNCIL ON THE ARTS LOGO DESIGN / DISEÑO LOGO DEPARTMENT OF CULTURAL AFFAIRS MARCOS DIMAS OLGA ALEMÁN / DR. RICARDO ALEGRÍA / AMIGOS DE LA BIENAL / IRMA AYALA / DIÓGENES BALLESTER / MIGUEL POETRY COORDINATOR / COORDINADOR POESIA BALTIERRA / ANNEX BURGOS / MARIESTELLA COLON- JESÚS ‘PAPOLETO’ MELÉNDEZ ASTACIO / SHIFRA M. GOLDMAN / ANDRES MARRERO Y JUDY MARRERO LACOMBA - GALERÍA PRINARDI / LOURDES REGISTRAR / REGISTRO R. MIRANDA / JESÚS MUÑIZ / NÉSTOR OTERO / GLADYS GLORIA RODRIGUEZ PEÑA / TAINA RAMÍREZ / YASMIN RAMÍREZ / BEATRIZ SANTIAGO-IBARRA FRAMING AND INSTALLATION / ENMARCACIÓN E INSTALACIÓN GALERÍA PRINARDI 62 63 64