Teaching the Caribbean

Context for Use

The purpose of this study guide is to exercise critical thinking and analytical skills when engaging with art, monuments, and historical narratives. Students will first analyze texts and deconstruct nation-building narratives. Then, they will answer questions based on the visual and descriptive elements of commemorative sites. Finally, students will engage in a creative activity that fosters alternative commemorative approaches and counter-narratives to memory.

Learning Objectives

Part 1: Textual Analysis and Deconstruction:

• Objective: Students will explore the influence of race in nation-building narratives in Puerto Rico through the analysis of primary and secondary sources.

Part 2: Critical Analysis of Commemorative Sites:

• Objective: Students will identify the visual tropes and narratives of the racial-triad by critically analyzing Puerto Rican public art.

Integration of Visual, Textual, and Creative Analysis:

• Objective: Students will integrate their analysis of the visual and textual elements of public art to critically assess how colonialism shapes representations of heritage and identity in Puerto Rico.

Part 3: Futuring and Counter-Monuments:

• Objective: Students will imagine, propose, and/or create alternative methods and mediums for remembering the past that challenge dominant historical narratives.

Introduction

Developing the narrative of mestizaje and the formation of Puerto Rico’s national identity

Puerto Ricans are taught from a young age that they are the result of the mixture of three groups: the Indigenous Taíno, the white Spaniard, and the black African. Founded in 1955 by the Popular Democratic Party (PPD), the Institute of Puerto Rican Culture (ICP) has been largely responsible for the dissemination of this myth. In fact, the racial triad trope was officially canonized as the metanarrative of Puerto Rican identity at its founding. The nascent Estado Libre Asociado (Commonwealth of Puerto Rico) sought to balance and legitimize its newly founded autonomous political relationship with the United States through a consensus-driven nation-building project that depoliticized the past to create the illusion of a harmonious present, that would launch Puerto Rico into a pseudo-sovereign future. The ICP was established to develop the symbols of the young Commonwealth and proliferate the narratives that would solidify Puerto Rico’s first-elected governor Luis Muñoz Marín’s cultural and political project. 

The ICP’s insignia (Fig. 2) pays tribute to Puerto Rico’s three races and was conceived by its first director, Ricardo Alegría, and created by renowned visual artist Lorenzo Homar in 1956. It depicts a Spaniard, Taíno, and African standing together, holding objects of their respective cultures. The Spaniard is at the center holding the Nebrija dictionary which reads “Gramática de la lengua Española” (Grammar of the Spanish language) and represents the Spanish contribution of language to Puerto Rican culture. Behind him are three ships which symbolize the vessels used in Columbus’ first voyage to the Americas. The Taíno to the left wears a necklace with a coquí (endemic tree frog) pendant and holds a cemí (religious idol) and is surrounded by numerous corn crops; his contributions are rooted in the land. The African holds a machete and a drum with a vejigante (Afro-Puerto Rican folkloric festival character) mask beside him; his contributions are related to labor and folklore. They are all clearly men and stand together at the same height, though the Spaniard is positioned in front of the other two. Alegría based the ICP logo on the tympanum found at the entrance of the Oriental Institute at the University of Chicago (Fig. 3).There are numerous monuments in Puerto Rico that depict the three races together and, in most cases, alongside the final result, the jíbaro (rural peasant), creole, or boricua (Puerto Rican). In his analysis of monuments to mestizaje, Rafael Capó García (2023) found that these monuments tend to privilege the white European portion of the racial triad by presenting Taínos and Africans as complementary roots that contribute to the predominantly Spanish trunk of Puerto Rican identity. If monuments are “statements of power and presence in public space,” (Monument Lab), then we must interrogate their visual narratives and contextualize their symbolic discourse.

(Text has been adapted from from Capó García, R. (2023). Monuments to mestizaje and the commemoration of racial democracy in Puerto Rico. Visual Anthropology Review 39(2), 2-39. https://doi.org/10.1111/var.12313

Important Terms

Blanqueamiento

Blanqueamiento refers to the politics of whitening achieved primarily through biological means by mejorando la raza (improving the race) through intermarriage and/or social ascendance. It also occurred semiotically as national symbols of racial mixture amalgamated and diluted difference into predominantly white and Eurocentric symbols of national heritage.

Composition

To compose means “to put together”. In art, a composition refers to how objects are arranged within a work of art, their relationship to each other, and how these components contribute to the message or expressiveness of the artwork.

Decolonial

Decoloniality refers to the dismantling of hierarchies based on race, gender, sexuality, class, religion, and spirituality that continue to shape life in the former European colonies of the Americas. Some describe this as internal colonialism, where groups such as Indigenous Peoples and Black Peoples are subjugated by White creoles within the domestic confines of an independent republic.

Eurocentrism

Eurocentrism is the process by which European ways of thinking and knowing are privileged to the exclusion of epistemologies from other parts of the world, particularly the Global South.

Historical narrative 

Historical narratives, as defined by scholars, are oversimplified stories of the past that usually lack the rigor of historiographical methodologies. Historical narratives tend to be romanticized versions of history that idealize the past, or overly simplistic critiques of historical events, processes, and peoples.

Jíbaro

A jíbaro or jíbara is an impoverished mountianside, agricultural worker. Refer to the following readings for a critical analysis of the Puerto Rican jíbaro, and how this folklore figure is remembered. 1. Torres-Robles, C. (1999). La mitificación y desmitificación de jíbaro como símbolo de la identidad nacional puertorriqueña. The Bilingual Review, 24(3), 241-253.  2. Scarano, Francisco A. (1999) Desear el jíbaro: Metáforas de la identidad puertorriqueña en la transición imperial. Illeis i imperi. http://www.raco.cat/index.php/IllesImperis/article/view/69214

Mestizaje

Mestizaje is a form of racial mixture that was originally coined to refer to the offspring of Indigenous Peoples and whites in the Americas. It later expanded to include other ethnic groups. While the process of mestizaje has been celebrated by many, it has also been criticized because of how it has been used by creole elites to homogenize and Whiten their respective nations and conceal the violence that produced the mixture.

Racial Democracy

Racial democracy is a utopian concept that refers to a nation where racial tensions and differences are non-existent. It was developed by Latin American thinkers who sought to explain why the former colonies of Spain and Portugal exhibited perceived higher levels of racial tolerance, mixture, and harmony than their British, French, and Dutch counterparts. Racial democracy has been critiqued by scholars, similar to mestizaje, for how it silences blackness and conceals racial violence behind the veil of tolerance and homogeneity.

Racial Triad

The racial triad is a concept coined by Anthropologist Arlene Dávila in her book Sponsored Identities. It refers to the harmonious union of Indigenous Tainos, White Spaniards, and Black Africans.

Trope

A trope is a convention or a figure of speech. In storytelling, a trope is a recurring element that an audience quickly recognizes and understands.

Tympanum

The tympanum constitutes the semicircular area enclosed by the arch above the lintel of an entrance.

Vaquero

Vaquero is the Spanish equivalent of a cowboy; a herder of cattle.

Vegigante

Vegigantes are masks created for the Fiestas de Santiago Apóstol (St. James) festivals. St James is also known as the “moor-slayer.” The masks vary in materiality depending on the region they are made, with paper mache masks being typically from Ponce, a coconut ones from Loíza. The word vegigante is a fusion of the Spanish word “vejiga” meaning bladder, and “gigante” meaning giant due to the festival’s custom of hitting children with a cow bladder while wearing a mask.

Recommended Readings

These readings provide additional historical and cultural context on the construction of the mestizaje myth in Puerto Rico, and how its shaped conceptions of identity and commemoration in Puerto Rico.

1. Capó García, R. (2023). Monuments to mestizaje and the commemoration of racial democracy in Puerto Rico. Visual Anthropology Review, 39(2), 2–39. https://doi.org/10.1111/var.12313 
2. Godreau, I. P., Reyes Cruz, M., Franco Ortiz, M., & Cuadrado, S. (2008). The lessons of slavery: Discourses of slavery, mestizaje, and blanqueamiento in an elementary school in Puerto Rico. American Ethnologist, 35(1), 115–135. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1548-1425.2008.00009.x
3. Helg, A. (2022). Democracia racial, mestizaje y cultura del privilegio en la historia de América Latina. In C. Naranjo & M. Á. Puig-Samper (Eds.), Color, raza y racialización en América y el Caribe (pp. 168–198). Catarata.
4. Wade, P. (2003). Repensando el mestizaje. Revista Colombiana de Antropología, 39, pp. 273-296.
5. Wade, P. (2005). Rethinking mestizaje: Ideology and lived experience. Journal of Latin American Studies, 37(2), 239–257. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0022216X05008990

Questions: Part 1

The questions in this section can be answered within a 2 hour class time. Instructors are encouraged to give 15 minute time slots to answer each question in short paragraphs or essay form, and allocate time for a discussion session. Questions 9 and 11 could be adapted for longer research and crea/or creative projects.

1. Salvador Brau (1842-1912) was the second official historian of Puerto Rico under US rule and was one of the first scholars to disseminate the narrative of the racial triad. Read the following excerpt from his work Las Clases Jornaleras / The Laboring Classes, and discuss how his perspective of heritage is potentially reflected in some of the monuments to mestizaje in Puerto Rico.

Tres han sido las razas pobladoras de este país: del indio le quedó la indolencia, la taciturnidad, el desinterés y los hospitalarios sentimientos: el africano le trajo su resistencia, su vigorosa sensualidad, la superstición y el fatalismo; el español le inoculó su gravedad caballeresca, su altivez característica, sus gustos festivos, su austera devoción, la constancia en la adversidad y el amor a la patria y a la independencia. Si alguno de los tres debió predominar sobre los otros, obedeciendo a esa ley de fusión de unas razas en otras, reconocida desde los primitivos tiempos de la Humanidad, tuvo que ser indispensablemente, ya lo hemos indicado antes, aquél que encerraba en su seno los poderosos gérmenes de la intelectual cultura. (Brau, 1882, pp. 2-3). 

Three have been the races that have populated this country: from the Taíno, we were left  their indolence, taciturnity, their disinterest/indifference and hospitality; the African gave their resistance, their vigorous sensuality, superstition and fatalism; the Spanish infused their grave chivalry, their characteristic haughtiness, their festive tastes, their austere devotion, their perseverance in adversity, and their patriotism and love for independence. If one of the three should dominate  over the others, obeying the laws of interracial fusions, recognized since the primitive years of Humanity, it had to have inevitably been, and we’ve mentioned this before, they whom had the powerful genes of the intellectual culture. (Translation our own)

Brau, S. (1882). Las clases jornaleras de Puerto Rico: Su estado actual, causas que lo sostienen y medios de propender al adelanto moral y material de dichas clases. Imprenta del Boletín Mercantil.

2. Anthropologist Ricardo Alegría Gallardo (1921-2011) was a key figure in shaping Puerto Rico’s racial triad paradigm. Below is a quote from Alegría where he shared his opinion about the ICP’s use of the racial triad as the symbol for its emblem. Reflect and critique his narrative portrayal of Puerto Rico’s “harmonious” heritage in the context of the 1950s.  

Mucha gente se burló, por primera vez veían al negro equiparado a las otras dos razas; llamó mucho la atención en esos años. En Puerto Rico se hablaba siempre de la herencia hispánica, se olvidaban los otros dos ingredientes. Pero yo tenía una formación antropológica y lo veía de otra manera. Nuestra nacionalidad es producto de un mestizaje de cinco siglos entre el indio, el español blanco y el negro. Cada uno contribuye. La huella del indio es menor, de índole biológica y cultural; el negro aporta la riqueza con su trabajo y el español una cultura más compleja y elaborada. Los tres se integran armoniosamente. Un puertorriqueño puede ser rubio y blanco, pero su cultura tiene también una raíz africana. (Hernández, 2002, p. 171)

Many people scoffed, for the first time they saw a Black Person on equal footing with the other two races: it turned many heads during those years. In Puerto Rico people always talked about Spanish heritage, they forgot the other two ingredients. But I had an anthropological formation and saw it a different way. Our nationality is a product of a five-century-long mestizaje between the Indian, the White Spanish, and the Negro. Each one contributes. The mark of the Indian is minor, biological, and cultural in nature; the Negro contributes richness with his work, and the Spaniard a more complex and elaborate culture. All three integrate harmoniously. A Puerto Rican can be blonde and White, but his culture also has an African root. (Translation our own)

Hernández, C. D. (2002). Ricardo Alegría: Una vida. Editorial Plaza Mayor.

3. In 1992, various monuments were erected in Viejo San Juan to commemorate 500 years of European settlement. The following is a statement delivered by the Governor at the time, Rafael Hernández Colón who was an ardent defender of the Spanish language in Puerto Rico and who was fiercely opposed to the political project of statehood and Americanization. Analyze the way Hernández Colón depicts Puerto Rican heritage. What is the relationship between this portrayal and the celebration of the quincentenary of European conquest and colonization in the Americas?

En realidad la sociedad que existe hoy en las Antillas es, en gran medida, heredera directa del patrimonio español. Los nativos fueron prácticamente borrados del censo y los africanos, que luego siguieron, fueron asimilados de una manera casi total por la cultura dominante. De manera que, en modo alguno, a nosotros,  los puertorriqueños, no es dable reinvindicar esa adscripción retórica a un remoto pasado amerindio o a una africanidad, aun siendo un componente valioso de nuestra identidad nacional. Cualquiera que sea el color de nuestra piel, el signo de nuestra cultura – lengua, religión, valores, percepciones, idiosincrasias – es esencialmente español…Tan incongruente resultaría para un español de nuestros días buscar sus raíces en los desconocidos pueblos ibéricos, o en las pinturas rupestres de Altamira, como para nosotros asomarnos con emoción patriótica a los petroglifos de Utuado. (Hernández Colón, 1992, pp. 2-3)

Actually, the society that exists today in the Antilles is, to a large extent, a direct inheritor of Spanish heritage. The natives were practically erased from the census and the Africans who came later were assimilated in a nearly complete manner by the dominant culture. Therefore, in no way can we, the Puerto Ricans, claim that rhetorical attachment to a remote Amerindian past or an Africanness, even though they are valuable components of our national identity. Regardless of our skin color, the hallmark of our culture – language, religion, values, perceptions, and idiosyncrasies – is essentially Spanish… It would be just as incongruous for a modern Spaniard to seek his roots in the unknown Iberian peoples or the Altamira cave paintings, as it would be for us to gaze upon the petroglyphs of Utuado with patriotic emotion. (Translation is our own.)

Questions: Part 2

Instructors are encouraged to assign the questions and readings together, asynchronously and then later discussed in class. Questions should be answered in short paragraphs or essay form. Visit Memoria Decolonial’s website, and explore the digital map, Map of (De)colonial Monuments to answer the following questions.

4. The emblem in Fig. 2 was the official emblem of the Institute of Puerto Rican Culture (ICP for short) in 1956 until the 1970s, yet Fig. 1 was briefly used during the first months of its inception (Capó Garcia, 2023).
   1. Identify three similar elements and three different elements in each of the emblems compositions. 
   2. Using the elements you identified, discuss in specific terms the message each emblem is trying to communicate about Puerto Rican heritage. Compare and contrast the visual discourses.  
   3. Looking at the contrasting elements you identified, what does each emblem convey about the ICP’s point of view on Puerto Rican national heritage? How did the ICP’s message about Puerto Rico’s national heritage change? 
5. The founder of the ICP, Ricardo Alegría, based the ICP’s emblem on the tympanum located at the entrance of the Oriental Institute at the University of Chicago titled “East teaching the West.” In what way do you think the Oriental Institute’s tympanum inspired the ICP’s emblem (Fig. 2)? Identify three similarities and discuss.

6. Refer to the statues on Map of (De)colonial Monuments that depict mestizaje. You can do this by clicking the “Data Browser” icon and selecting “Race and Mestizaje.” 
   1. What are some of the common tropes used to represent each ethnic group in the racial triad?

Statue	African Root	Indigenous Root	Spanish Root

2. Each ethnicity is depicted as contributing something to Puerto Rican heritage. Identify five contributions for each ethnicity throughout the “Race and Mestizaje” category of public art. How are those contributions represented in the monuments?

Statue	African Root	Indigenous Root	Spanish Root

3. Select three sites and answer the following questions. For each of the monuments, identify:

1. The historical narrative it conveys.
2. How that narrative is conveyed (cite specific elements from the piece to support your answer).
3. Whether this narrative privileges a specific culture, ethnicity, or historical perspective.

7. We’ve identified five monuments to mestizaje that include a portrayal of the final result of the racial triad: “Monumento al Descubrimiento” in Mayagüez, “Homenajes a las Razas” in Corozal, “La Formación del Pueblo Puertorriqueño,”  in Manatí, “Evolución de la Raza” (Fig. 4) in Bayamón, and “Herencia Social” in Plaza de la Herencia de las Américas (Fig. 5 and Fig. 6). 
   1. What do these depictions of a finalizedsuggest about Puerto Rican national identity?
   2. In “Evolución de la Raza” in Bayamón, describe the jíbaro/criollos attire. What are the implications of this attire for Puerto Rican identity? What does it have to do with Puerto Rican “vaquero” culture?

8. Locate “Plaza de la Herencia de las Américas” on Map of (De)colonial Monuments in San Juan.
   1. “Herencia de la Sangre” (Fig. 5) portrays Juan Ponce de León, Puerto Rico’s first governor and conquistador, embracing “la hermana de Agüeybana”, Agüeybana’s sister who according to early chroniclers was gifted to him by the cacique chief. On the bottom left, the artist depicts an African child. Offer a critique of this statue. How do the figures interact with each other? 

Questions: Part 3

The questions in this section can be answered within a 2 hour class time. Instructors are encouraged to divide students into groups or pairs. Students should be able to present their findings, and  provide a visual component to accompany their reflections.

9. Visit the Digital Library of the Caribbean’s online archive (dloc.com) and search for key concepts discussed in this resource within other Caribbean contexts. How does the representation of heritage and mestizaje, for example, compare across the region? In what ways are they similar? For instance, search for monuments to mestizaje in Panamá, or Hispanic heritage in Cartagena de Indias, Colombia.
10. Visit Map of (De)colonial Monuments’ “Race and Mestizaje” and choose a monument that has a plaque. Now, rewrite the plaque incorporating the knowledge you have gained  about Eurocentricity, heritage and mestizaje in Puerto Rico and the Caribbean. What are some of the key changes you would make? Why?
11. Explore the monuments in “Race and Mestizaje” in the Data Browser of Map of (De)colonial Monuments, and choose a commemorative site. Reimagine its design and its narrative by adding, cutting, or substituting its visual elements. Explain why you made these changes.
12. At this point, you should be acquainted with different sites of memory, and the stories, elements, and narratives they represent and replicate. Now, imagine you have the opportunity to erect a monument in your hometown. How would you visually represent racial heritage in your own country, culture or community?
    1. Who would participate in the decision-making process and how would that be carried out? 
    2. What would the monument commemorate? 
    3. Why is it worth commemorating?
    4. How would it be commemorated?
       • What does the monument visually look like? 
       • What will the plaque say?
       • Would it be an anthropomorphic representation? 
       • Would it use specific historical figures?
       • What materials would be used?
       • What symbols would be deployed?
       • Would it be permanent or ephemeral?
    5. Where will it be erected?
    6. How will the public engage with the monument?
13. Explore our “Memoria Decolonial” category in  Map of (De)colonial Monuments which maps monuments and sites of memory from decolonial perspectives. Choose one of the monuments and explain why it should be considered a decolonial heritage site, and/or why it shouldn’t.

References:

Brau, S. (1882). Las clases jornaleras de Puerto Rico: Su estado actual, causas que lo sostienen y medios de propender al adelanto moral y material de dichas clases. Imprenta del Boletín Mercantil.

Capó García, R. (2023). Monuments to mestizaje and the commemoration of racial democracy in Puerto Rico. Visual Anthropology Review, 39(2), 2–39. https://doi.org/10.1111/var.12313 

Hernández, C. D. (2002). Ricardo Alegría: Una vida. Editorial Plaza Mayor.

Hernández Colón, R. (1992). La Españolidad de Puerto Rico. Mensaje del Gobernador del Estado Libre Asociado de Puerto Rico Honorable Rafael Hernández Colón en ocasión del acto ofrecido en su honor por el Secretario de Estado para la cooperación internacional y para Iberoamérica y Presidente del Instituto de Cooperación Iberoamericana Don Luis Yáñez-Barnuevo. 17 de mayo de 1992.