Flores - The Cultural Expresion of PR in NY

The Cultural Expression of Puerto Ricans in New York: A Theoretical Perspective and Critical
Review
Author(s): Felix Cortes, Angel Falcon, Juan Flores
Source: Latin American Perspectives, Vol. 3, No. 3, Puerto Rico: Class Struggle and National
Liberation (Summer, 1976), pp. 117-152
Published by: Sage Publications, Inc.
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THECULTURAL OFPUERTO
EXPRESSION RICANS
AND
PERSPECTIVE
INNEWYORK:A THEORETICAL
REVIEW
CRITICAL
by
Felix Cortes,Angel Falc6n, and JuanFlores
I am Puerto Rican. I came to this countryin 1952 with my three brothersand one sister.
My fatherand motherwere here already workingand saving money to send for us. My
father,who is dead now, was a mechanic but had to do work in a plastic factoryto earn
a living.He earned extra money by fixingcars in his improvisedshop righton the street.
My motherwas a seamstressin the garmentdistrict,and when she came home she would
prepare dinner and afterwardsdo part time work sewing women's hats in a shop that
operated out of a small storefrontacross the streetfromwhere we lived.
In 1969 I was very much influenced by the takeover of City College by a third world
student coalition which was demanding Puerto Rican Studies and other relevant pro-
grams geared to their needs. Rightthen and there and with the direct contact of other
musicians such as myself,I realized forthe firsttime that I wanted to play a music that
related to today's realities,not yesterday's.I was concerned in reachingan audience that
related to these experiences.
The music that grew out of this experience became hard, violent and heavy with resist-
ance. It was rarely performed.It just got stored up - so when it came out, it sounded
more like one big mass noise of incoherentsound. It was a dual process - on the one
hand it served as a cleansing process and on the other it did away with antiquated pat-
terns and built new ones to take its place. New musical ideas were forged,integrating
itselfwith known popular forms.It renewed the process of music playing and made it
vital and importantagain.
Music to me then is more than just performing.It's studying,organizing around young

men and women musicians such as the Lexington Avenue Express Percussion Work-
shop whose concept is to help develop betterlearningprocedures and healthy attitudes,
to learn throughthe historyof music what we, as thirdworld people, have in common
and by nourishingfromother musics, we enrich all. That is why the historyof this pro-
cess is the key to knowledge,education and real proletarianculture.
JoeFalc6n, StreetMusician
New York City
THEORETICAL THESES ON NATIONAL CULTURE
This preliminarysurvey and commentaryon the cultural world of Puerto

Rican people in New York City,especially its appearance in music, theaterand
LatinAmericanPerspectives:Issue 10, Summer1976, Vol. III, No. 3 117
118 LATIN AMERICAN PERSPECTIVES
poetry,is intended as a step in developing a historical materialistanalysis on

this question. Such an analysis calls for furthertheoreticalrefinementand ex-
haustive empirical investigationinto each corner of the vast, often mystically
treated,fieldof cultureas pertinentto Puerto Ricans. Concentrationsof Puerto
Ricans under differingconditions - labor contract farms,smaller cities and
towns, suburban settings- give rise to particular cultural phenomena that
must be taken into consideration specifically.Puerto Rican cultural manifesta-
tions in the United States cannot be lumped into a simplifiedgeneral analysis.
Music, theater,and poetrycomprise the genres most extensively experienced
and created in the Puerto Rican communityand give fullest expression to its
situationand outlook. Music in particularoccupies a central place insofaras it
represents,of all artistic media, the one that is most replete in traditionand
highlydeveloped and commands the widest appeal and greatestparticipation.
The technical and political fashioningof these threegenres has proceeded une-
venly. Each blends a particularcombination of Island and New York elements
and a unique integrationof materialfromothercultures.
The thrustof the progressivecultural movement underway among Puerto
Ricans in New York arises fromtheirnational and class realityand is histori-
cally connected to the pervasive backdrop of the dominant and familiarcultur-
al forms,that is, imperialistbourgeois ideology,includingthe array of cultural
commoditiestailored fornationallyoppressed workersand survivingtradition-
al expressions fromthe national culture. The growing movement,an effusion
of democratic sentiment,engages the people's interpretationof theirlife situa-
tion into an intricatepatternof forcefulassociations. Formative images of the
class situation surface at moments,though they often escape the eye amidst
the complex arrangementsof national motifs.This process requires conscious
critical selection fromthe national traditionand rulingculture during the his-
toricalcourse of the class conflict.In this respect,an importanttask for Puerto
Ricans is the recoveryof the proletarianmusic, theater,poetry,and essay sub-
merged in the historyof our workingclass strugglesthat is now beginningto
be told (Campos, 1974).
1) The fundamentalvariables which underlie all the particularities,self-

definitions,and mysteriesof a people's culture are the indices of a national
and class analysis. Culture conveys the world in which a people live as it is
representedin theirminds, fantasies, and habits. Whatever its intentions,cul-
tureis located against the backdrop of the realitywhich it represents.The stu-
dy of culturalrepresentationis a work of reference,a relentless back and forth
between the world as culture would have it and the world as it really is, as a
totalityof human experience. But the "ensemble of the social relations" (Marx,
1967:198)is not just the conglomeratesum of man's activities,independent of
cognitivedifferentiation.In fact,we can really discern the totalityonly by as-
certainingthe dynamic process of interactionand relative determinacyof each
aspect of social realitywith respect to all others. In general, the factorsof his-
torical objectivityexisting independentlyof the will of men condition the ex-
pressions of human subjectivity in the form of institutions,laws, customs,
ideas, and works of art. Specifically,it is the position of people with respect to
the existingarrangementof classes and nations which goes to define the quali-
CORTEZ-FALCON-FLORES: CULTURAL EXPRESSION OF PUERTO RICANS IN N.Y. 119
ties and potentialitiesof their cultural life. Both of these planes of analysis
correspond objectively, in turn, to the state of development of social pro-
duction.
2) The national attributesof a culturecomprise the distinctconcreteness in
the expressive life of a cohesive, historicallyevolved communityof people. On
the one hand, every instance of cultural expression on the part of any member
of the nation may be viewed as a component of the national culture and the
aggregateof such utterances and patterns as the "culture" of that nation. On
the otherhand, it is clear that each such cultural unit,taken by itself,is almost
invariably present,to one degree or other,and often in virtual replica, in cor-
responding details of other cultures. Furthermore,to construe the composite
national culture as the mere accumulation of all existing samples of cultural
activitymeans to remain blind to the contradictionsand developing tendencies
which are at the heart of the culture.The national culture of any people is the
complex network of interactingtraditions and representationalmodes func-
tionallyavailable to the people to give expression to theirparticularrelation to
the historical development of production. As such, it exhibits strains of uni-
formityand internalreferencewhich may endure centuries and epochs of his-
torical change, encompass layers upon layers of ethnic interpenetration,and
lend a common voice to the psychic experience of a varietyof social classes. At
the same time, the national culture contains radically divergentfeatures and
functions;its seeminglybinding and predoininantelements may recede in fa-
vor of substantiallynew ones, and the very concept of a national culture may
assume an entirely differentmeaning and power to differentmembers or
groups within the same nation. In all its aspects, its unity and diversity,its
cohesion and inner tensions,the existence of a national culture testifiesto the
vitality,aspirations,and strugglesQfan existingnation,that is, of a given peo-
ple constitutedas a nation by the objective course of history.
3) Men choose to group togetherin countless differentways, as religious
sects, political parties,and cultural clubs. Classes, however, the most universal
and essential form of human association, are entered into involuntarily,re-
gardless of whether men want to or not. "Classes are large groups of people
differingfromeach otherby the place theyoccupy in a historicallydetermined
system of social production,by theirrelation (in most cases fixed and formu-
lated by law) to the means of production,by their role in the social organiza-
tion of labor, and, consequently, by the dimensions of the share of social
wealth of which they dispose and the mode of acquiring it. Classes are groups
of people one of which can appropriate the labor of another owing to the dif-
ferent places they occupy in a definite system of social economy" (Lenin,
1965:421). Every given level of the development of production has a corres-
ponding cultureexpressive of it. Yet each class, each group differentiatedfrom
others by its position relativeto the means of production,has a culture corres-
ponding to and expressive of this position. The dominant culture of any social
system is that of the class which owns and controls the means of production
and is therebyenabled to appropriatethe labor of otherclasses. The culture of
the subject classes, which, under capitalism, survive only by selling theirpow-
er to produce, is a subject culturein that it is necessarily obstructedfrominde-
pendent expression by the influenceof the rulingculture.The more developed
the differenceand antagonism between the classes, the more articulate and
LatinAmericanPerspectives:Issue 10, Summer1976, Vol. 111,
No. 3
self-conscious the subjected culture. The dominant culture serves to explain,

and is increasinglyforced to justify,the existing social system of production
which more and more obviously stands in the way of the thrustof productive
development.The cultureof the producers takes on an independent expression
of its own when the class of producers associates consciously with a historical
purpose independentof thatof the rulers.
4) "The elements of democratic and socialist culture are present,if only in
rudimentaryform,in every national culture, since in every nation there are
toilingand exploited masses whose conditions of life inevitablygive rise to the
ideology of democracy and socialism. But every nation also possesses a bour-
geois culture (and most nations a reactionary and clerical culture as well) in
the form,not merelyof 'elements,' but of the dominant culture.Therefore,the
general 'national culture' is the culture of the landlords, the clergy and the
bourgeoisie" (Lenin, 1968:17). Nations and classes are objective, "involuntary"
formsof human association in that they result fromthe historicallynecessary
developmentof social production.In the age of imperialismand the division of
the world into oppressor and oppressed nations, there is a significantoverlap
between the two, there developing, as Marx and Engels already observed, a
division between "bourgeois" and "working-class" nations. There can be no
"pure" class culturein which all national attributesand specific characteristics
are absent, either in historical reality or as the programmaticrevolutionary
goal. In fact,the national situation of any cultural event, whetherfroman im-
perialist or a colonial nation, may reveal a great deal as to its overall class
perspective.However, the reinforcingand perpetuationof national differences
do correspond ultimatelyto a bourgeois formof rule, the rule of private prop-
erty,while the unfoldingand conscious recognitionof class division represent
the preconditionforthe eliminationof both class and national oppression. The
contradictionamong nations is "essentially a class contradiction" (Mao Tse-
Tung), that is, it can only be grasped in its actual dynamic fromthe standpoint
of the internationalclass struggle.Therefore,to elevate the defense of the na-
tional culture of even the most oppressed peoples to a slogan is a reactionary
step. From an analytical point of view, emphasis on the internalcohesion of a
given national cultureserves only to obscure the real class differentiationwith-
in it, whereas the dissection of all cultures according to their political, class
contenthelps to illuminatecriticallythe familiarfeaturesof the culture of each
nation. "In advancing the slogan of 'the internationalcultureof democracy and
of the world working-class movement,' we take from each national culture
only its democratic and socialist elements; we take them only and absolutely
in opposition to the bourgeois culture and the bourgeois nationalism of each
nation" (Lenin, 1968:17).
5) The most definitivefact of life of Puerto Ricans in the United States is
their class placement within the North American relations of production; in
their overwhelmingmajority,migrantsfrom Puerto Rico over several genera-
tions continue to comprise an acutely oppressed sector of the NorthAmerican
proletariatand industrial reserve army. Generally, the migrationhas had the
effectof alteringsharply the specific national settingof the class struggleas
experienced by the migrantpopulation from a movement of national inde-
pendence conducted by a varietyof class forces to direct class antagonism in
which the subject class is composed of a variety of nationalities. The context
of Puerto Rican cultural experience has changed accordingly. On the Island,

the main frame of referenceand source of wealth of the cultural struggleare
the national traditionand, especially, the popular, class roots,the "democratic
and socialist elements,"of that tradition.In the United States, the cultural life
of Puerto Ricans is definedincreasinglyby the inevitable process of interaction
and amalgamation with other national sectors of the working class. Though
traditions run deep and endure, and the dominant "national culture" of the
NorthAmerican bourgeoisie includes an entirewardrobe specially tailored for
its local Puerto Rican clientele, there is nevertheless a growing distance from
the familiar features of Puerto Rican culture, both popular and official. This
process of culturalamalgamation is as yet in an early,formativestage, with the
forcefulstrains of the national culture,however diverse and in the throes of
transformation,still prevailing as the most impressive source of spiritual and
social identity.Because the working class is comprised of differentnationali-
ties, one oftenfindsthe general class exploitation manifestas national oppres-
sion. For this reason, Puerto Ricans in the United States commonlyrespond to
theireconomic subordinationby means of national resistance. In fact,an indis-
pensible device of imperialistcontrolconstitutesprecisely "cultural amalgama-
tion,"thatis, enforcedsubordinationand assimilation of the colonial cultureto
the modes and standards of that more "civilized" culture of the oppressing
nation. The upholding and revitalizationof the national traditions, therefore,
particularlywith a view toward their popular historical sources, remains an
integralfrontwithin the overall battle for national independence and social-
ism. But the latent revolutionarypossibilities of cultural reality,as it is experi-
enced, tend to elude our conditioned observations and assumptions; what
meets the eye and commands our interestmay serve to blur the most repre-
sentativeand germinalprospects of cultural movement.Such is most evidently
the case whenever a defensive "fear of assimilation" and cultural nostalgia be-
come the touchstonesof our criticalapproach.
When viewed froma primarilynational perspective,with the cultural trad-
itions and expression rooted on the Island as an explicit or implicitstandard of
value, purityand authenticity,the resultingadmixtureof Puerto Rican culture
with strains of other national traditionsmust invariably be considered a loss
and contaminationof culture as such. What is implied in such an estimate,to
one degree or another,is a sense of degradation and betrayal of the national
ideal, however defined,and a denial of the very life situation of Puerto Ricans
in the United States. From the vantage point of the working class movement,
on the other hand, the blending of Puerto Rican culture with the strains of
otherculturaltraditionsis, firstof all, an appropriate expression of social reali-
ty and thereforenot subject to normative valuation relative to other equally
appropriate cultural experiences. Furthermore,insofar as "the international
culture of democracy and the world working-class movement" is not only a
tendency within each national culture but the complex of interacting"ele-
ments" of all existingcultures,the cultural expression of Puerto Ricans migrat-
ed to the United States representsan unfolding,expansion and enrichmentof
what has been known,historically,as the cultureof Puerto Rico.
6) The cultural expression of Puerto Ricans in the United States contains
the seeds of a proletarian culture. Correspondingto theirhistorical position at
the juncture between the movementfor national independence and the rising
LatinAmericanPerspectives:Issue 10, Summer1976, Vol. III, No. 3
struggleforproletarianrevolutionin NorthAmerica, the representativeculture

of the massive migrantpopulation abounds in the elements of resistance, de-
mocracy,and socialism which formthe basis of working-classculture. Experi-
ence has shown, and Marxist analysis confirms,that proletarian culture nei-
therspringsup in a vacuum, as the negation of all previous traditions,nor is it
the composite of whatever culture is produced by workers. In fact,proletarian
cultureas a social institutioncannot develop and flourishuntil it is guided by
the necessary political apparatus, that is, until the workingclass has assumed
state power and the apparatus of the dominant,officialculture has been over-
thrown.Prior to this crucial historical break, proletarian culture exists only as
"elements" and anticipations, as a vaguely circumscribed aspect of popular
mass culture,and is subject to the inevitable subversions and cooptations of
the officialculture.No matterhow revolutionaryin tone and radically innova-
tive in formaltechnique, the main tendency of popular culture is directed to-
ward accommodation with the dominant, bourgeois environment.The only
popular cultural thrustwhich can grow to challenge the officialculture direct-
ly and absolutely corresponds to the development of proletarian class con-
sciousness, whereby the "socialist elements" come to articulate the "demo-
cratic elements" most forcefullyand in sharpest historical contour. The deter-
miningfactoris not whetherevery sample of this cultural struggleis composed
by and for workers, but whether cultural expression represents consciously
the overall perspective of the proletariat,including its critical assimilation of
progressivetraditionsand its need for new creative techniques. In spite of the
overwhelmingimpact of imperialistpropaganda in concert with the most re-
trogradeinfluencesof Puerto Rican "national culture,"the germinalfeaturesof
such a developmentare evident in the culturallife of Puerto Ricans in the Unit-
ed States.
7) To assert that culture is a complex, dynamic process expressive of the
contradictorynature of life in society is no more than a firststep in overcom-
ing the metaphysical approach to cultural reality.As such it remains a plati-
tude, incapable of counteractingthe sheer relativismand categorical norm-set-
ting which make up the interlocking"alternatives" of official criticism.The
revolutionarydialectical method begins with the need to grasp culture politi-
cally, which means to rub it against the grain of its own internal process of
development. Culture always exists in a specific period of time and is always
undergoingchanges in a varietyof directions.Given a calculable level of prod-
uctive development,given a distinctconfigurationof class arrangements,and
given a correspondingpolitical conjuncture, culture should change in a cer-
tain direction.The key task in the theoretical struggleis to insist most persu-
asively and authoritativelythat the recognitionof this tendency,and the fight
forits realization,is not the resultof propheticspeculation or mechanical pres-
criptionbut rests on scientificanalysis, cultural sensitivity,and political deter-
mination.Amidst the great diversityand complexity,and as a signal of its re-
markable vitality,the cultural life of Puerto Ricans in the United States is de-
veloping in the directionof proletarianinternationalistculture.At present,and
forsome years to come, this general process may remain obscured by the pre-
vailing particularitiesof national traditionsand class alignments.But without
holdingthis broad, objective thrustforemostin mind,and applyingit as a criti-
cal tool validated by political consciousness, we will be unable adequately to
appreciate the fascinating rhythms and textures of our specific cultural

presence.
CRITICAL REVIEW OF PUERTO RICAN CULTURAL EXPRESSION:

MUSIC, THEATER, AND POETRY
Puerto Ricans migrateto the United States as workers. Within the United
States Puerto Rican workers constitute a nationally oppressed sector of the
NorthAmerican proletariatand a significantforce within the reserve army of
labor. This class situation lies at the heart of the Puerto Rican cultural experi-
ence. It implies two sources and complexes of conditions acting on the Puerto
Rican's cultural formation:the historical roots in and continuingties to Puerto
Rico and the presentcontext of a multi-national,advanced capitalist settingin
the United States. The daily inequality sufferedin every sphere of life and the
hardships engendered by acute class exploitation motivate the central senti-
ments given life in the arising cultural forms- the condemnation of oppres-
sive and alienating conditions and the desire and will to fightfor equality.
While still preliminarilycaptured in the mass consciousness, these sentiments
representan outcryagainst capitalism and a demand for a new society led by
the proletariat.In the poems, songs and music, and theater projectingthe de-
veloping cultural expression of the Puerto Rican people within the United
States, we discern elements that will contributeto the forgingof proletarian
culture.
The waves of Puerto Rican migrantsto the industrial centers and contract
labor farms of the United States have borne the rich traditional culture,with
popular and classical expressions, to which the people referas a basis of na-
tional culture.Within the communitiesestablished, this traditionis part of the
people's cultural formation.However, the traditional modes of expression in
the Island itselfhave undergone severe changes and even receded to the back-
ground. These modes have given way to new forms and outlooks that reflect
the profound transformationof the society, especially in the past three dec-
ades, through industrialization,the advancement of capitalist relations and
proletarianization,and the development of a sophisticated bureaucracy and
capitalist superstructure.The continuous interactionbetween the Puerto Rican
people in the United States and in Puerto Rico also transportsto the new set-
tingthe newly formingmodes in the Island culture,including the early indica-
tions of proletarianexpression. This relation between the Puerto Rican popula-
tion in the United States and in Puerto Rico constitutesone vital factor of the
culturaldynamics in the NorthAmerican communities.
Other particulareconomic and political conditions of the NorthAmerican
industrialheartland operate on the Puerto Rican's developing perspectives,as-
pirations,and culturalexperience. These conditions range fromthe conglomer-
ation of productive forces that provide the frameworkand tools for possible
artisticproductionto the convergence of diverse national cultures.Evidence of
cultural ingredientsfrom other working peoples' expression, engaged at the
point of production,in the schools and universities,and in the multi-national
workingclass neighborhoods,increasingly appear in the Puerto Rican's own
national forms.This germinal fusion is not only, or even mainly, reflectedin
artisticproduction,the focus of the presentpaper, but also in the language and
lifestylesof the people. Thus, a complex dynamic is at work in the Puerto Ri-
No. 3
can community,imbedded in the national and class reality,in which links with
the Island persist while the growing,objective threads connectingto other sec-
tors of the North American proletariatbecome more manifest,despite the of-
ten imperceptibleand subconscious course of this process.
Puerto Ricans become more and more aware of theirobjective interestsas
wage-laborers. These interests,that imply the "democratic and socialist" na-
ture of theiraspirations,have an impact on theircultural movement.The new
artistsarisingwithin the Puerto Rican experience proceed fromworkingclass
backgrounds. Their audiences are workers, the unemployed, students from
working class families, and youth. (The median age among Puerto Ricans in
New York City is 19 years.) The new formsemergingin music, theater,poetry,
and graphic and plastic arts in fact coincide with the political upheavals
sweeping the late sixties and propelling forward the period of organization,
and theoreticaland ideological refinementthat follows: the strugglesforequal-
ity and decision-makingpower in the schools and universities,especially for
Puerto Rican Studies, forbilingual education, fordecent housing (notably man-
ifested in the squatters movement),for freedom of political prisoners and an
overhaul of the criminal justice system,and so on; the growth of nationalist
and Marxist organizations based in working class communities and moving
into the point of production;and the development of class analysis and revolu-
tionarystrategy.In greatpart,these struggleshave taken formconsciously as a
movementof national contention- the fightfor survival of a national collec-
tivityand the securingof national democratic rights.The primarypolitical task
of the Puerto Rican movementtoday lies precisely in bringingto the people's
consciousness an awareness of the economic interlock between national op-
pression and its class basis. As this task is advanced, an appropriate cultural
theory and new artistic possibilities emerge. Today, glimmers of such con-
sciousness shoot throughthe culturalmold being forged.Even the spontaneous
culturalsurge,dramatizingthe popular emotion militatingagainst national op-
pression and supportingthe battle for national redress,in essence reflectsthe
motion of a class phenomenon. The roots of this battle are ultimatelyburied in
the Puerto Rican's condition of super-exploited worker. To respond to it ade-
quately and promoteits furtherdevelopmentrequires organization and leader-
ship of the workingclass.
Music
A musical storehouse,abundant in traditionalformsand new rhythmsand
melodies, is an intimatepart of the daily lives of Puerto Ricans. Music, coupled
to dance and song,has a long historyas a primaryvehicle of expression within
Puerto Rican culture,retainingthis place in the Puerto Rican communityto-
day. However, this cultural mode, extremelypopular while easily and cheaply
reproduced,is also well-suited for production as a commodity.In its familiar
capacity as cultural commodity,music has also been a central carrier of the
rulingculture. Popular and national appeal on the one hand, and commercial
success on the other, togethercharacterize the musical world of the Puerto
Rican.
The traditionaland well-known rhythmsof town and countryside- bom-
ba, plena, seis, aguinaldo, and so on - moved at the center of the peasant's
and urban laborer's culture. These rhythmspresented the peasantry's com-
plaints against theirplight,the swindlingsufferedat the hands of the landown-

ers and merchants,the hopelessness feltin the face of natural disaster and an
antagonistic "destiny." They summed up the workingpeople's vision of life's
circumstances. The firstcolumns of new migrantsat the end of the Second
World War maintained this musical tradition. Two recordings of typical
rhythms,a seis chorreao and a plena, demonstratemusic in Puerto Rican cul-
ture as an expression that captures the people's sentimentsand reflectstheir
democraticaspirations. In "Yo me Vuelvo a mi Bohio," recorded about 1951,El
Jibaritode Adjuntas articulates the perception and reaction of the migrating
multitudeto conditions in the new drama. The song represents a rejection of
the hostile environment,cultural alienation, and economic oppression encoun-
tered in the United States. In "Alo! ,Quien Nama?," a commerciallysuccessful
recording in Puerto Rico and New York during the late 1950s, Mon Rivera
dramatizes the experience of strikingwomen in a small ironingshop in Maya-
guez. The phone call representsthe boss' search forscabs. In simple termsand
throughan appealing music, the popular formevokes the reasons forthe strike
and the workers'attitudes.
From "Alo! ZQuien Nama?"
Alo! ZQuien Nama?

Maria Luisa Arcelay conectando con JohnVidal.
Dicen Las planchadoras
que si no hay plata no van a planchar.
Que sera, que pasara, que el tallerde Ma' Mary
que pide gente pa' trabajar.
Empez6 la huelga.
Dios mio que barbaridad.
Las trabajadoras, comenzaran a bembetear,
que si cuchicu - que si cuchicci.
Petra apaga esa plancha,
no trabajemos na'.
ZQue se cree esta gente?
No nos tienen piedad.
La lana que aquf nos pagan
Ay, no nos da pa' na',
Ay que si cuchicu . . .
A la vuelta de la esquina .
(trabalengua)
"Yo Vuelvo a Mi Bohfo"
Si yo vine a Nueva York/conel finde progresar,

si alli lo pasaba mal/aquflo paso peor.
Unas veces el calor/yotras el maldito frfo,
a veces parezco un lio/porla nieve patinando,
eso no me esta gustando/yome vuelvo a mi bohfo.
Fui por el Parque Central/meestuvo muy divertido,

y me pregunt6un amigo/que si sabia caminar,
"yo estoy aprendiendo a andar," le conteste,"amigo mio."
Per6 me siento aturdido/oyendotanto alboroto,
y por no volvermeloco/yo me vuelvo .
Ay, no sigo de esta manera/porque no me esta gustando

de estar subiendo y bajando/las malditas escaleras.
No se que suerte me espera,/cuando saldre de este ifo.
En ver donde estoy metfo/nopuedo hablar con certeza.
Esto es un rompecabeza/yo me vuelvo . . .
Ay, liega el dia de cobrar,

liega el dia de cobrar,/mepongo a sacar cuenta.
Despues de pagar la renta/,cudntome puede sobrar?
Y el resto se va en pagar/lo poco que me he comfo.
Con el bolsillo vacfo/nos6 a d6nde ire a parar.
Si nunca a mi me sobra un real/yo me vuelvo . . .
Compadre Ladf,yo me vuelvo a mi bohfo.
Music served as a cohesive cultural force among the migrants,being a rec-

ognized national formaround which Puerto Ricans gathered in homes, home-
town clubs, and at cultural and social events. The traditionalrhythmsbecame
a tool of cultural survival, a carrier of national identityand unity against the
opposing conditions. These rhythmsare presentlykept alive within the com-
munity,faithfullyreproduced by community-basedgroups (Grupo Loiza, Ple-
neros de la 110, Cuarteto Yali de Corozo), consciously passed on in workshops
(LexingtonAvenue Express Percussion Ensemble), and newly adapted to con-
temporaryrhythmsin the commercial field (Willie Col6n, Mon Rivera, Grupo
Folkl6rico y Experimental Nuevayorquino). However, the music of the pre-
capitalist peasantry and town workersof primarilySpanish and African slave
origins,a music for simple hand-made musical instrumentsand of value as a
tool of communicationand education, is no longer the dominant genre in the
popular and commercial muisicof Puerto Rico and New York. New social and
productiveforces prevail that act on music. These are the dominance of wage-
labor, accessibilityto many national culturesand musics, advanced technology
and sources of acoustic power, universal education and literacy.
The musical experience of the Puerto Rican in New York today is dominat-
ed by the commercialmusic controlledby a corrupt,multi-milliondollar indus-
try,the music produced on records forsale and proliferatedthroughradio and
dancing halls. The industrycaters to the divergentgenerations and nationali-
ties of Latin American origins living togetherin the city. We hear in many
settingsMexican rancheras, Colombian cumbias, Dominican meringues,Ar-
gentinian tangos, traditional Puerto Rican rhythms,the well-known bolero,
and the fashionable rhythms of the moment everywhere,including the un-
ending parade of sentimental balladeers from Latin America. The principal
musical form developing in New York among the Puerto Rican population,
however,is salsa, the presentmode of Latin (basically Cuban) rhythmsflour-
ishingforthe past four decades. Radio programsin Spanish and countless so-
cial clubs and largerdance halls address the diversityof musical tastes among
the LatinAmerican communities,specializing in salsa or in adaptations of the
traditionalmusic. (The traditionalmusic broughtto the commercial dance hall
is produced by largerdancing bands with standard contemporaryinstrumenta-
tion. It is depurifiedof basic elements in the traditionalexecution of perform-
ance and divorced fromthe originalrole of transmissionof folkculture.)
Salsa, the catchall denominationfor the commercial and popular rhythms
of Latin music, developed in New York. It stems from Cuban music with its
wealth of African elements, recorded here by RCA since the mid-1920s and
vigorously alive for the Puerto Rican and Latin American communityin the
uptown clubs, which have been central communitycenters since the 1930s.
This music was modified for the elite downtown clubs of the 1930s ballroom
"rhumba" that excluded Black musicians. The danz6n, son, guaracha, rumba,
mambo, guaguanc6, son montuno, charanga rhythms(danz6n-mambo, cha-
cha-chaj,pachanga) were and continueto be performedin large part by Puerto
Rican musicians who took them over and adapted them as theirown. The big
bands of the 1940s, most notedly Machito, were influenced by the brass ar-
rangements of the bebop era in Afro-Americanmusic. Noro Morales, Tito
Puente, and othersalso incorporatedthis and otherelementsfromjazz. On the
other hand, Chano Pozo, during this same period, initiated the flow of Latin
percussionistsand rhythmsinto jazz. And today the Latin rhythmsection is an
importantpart of many jazz, soul, and rock ensembles. This crossingover at a
significantlevel of elements among diverse national musics is characteristicof
the advanced movementof productiveforces under capitalism. The New York
settingalso allowed forotherchanges in the originalCuban rhythms.The most
significantinnovationin the last ten years has been the almost complete ampli-
fication of the musical instrumentsproducing the large, at times overwhelm-
ing, sound characteristicof rock and soul. Justas significant,although also
characteristicof the popular music in Cuba, has been the increasing tempo
given to the original Cuban music. Other particular features of salsa were
introducedby Puerto Rican musicians - the centralrole given tothetrombone
by Eddie Palmieri and Willie Col6n's integrationof traditional Puerto Rican
and otherCaribbean rhythmswith this music.
Salsa is a powerfulculturalforce with two sharp edges: one, the objective-
ly progressiveeffectof representingboth national and internationalexpres-
sions, acting as an instrumentof cohesion for oppressed people; the second,
dominantside, the reactionaryrole of servingas a medium of bourgeois ideolo-
gy and carryingall the corrosive features of a bourgeois cultural commodity.
These two aspects of salsa do not exist as mechanically separate forces. They
are interlinkedby capitalism itselfand by commercialspeculation. The histori-
cal evolution of salsa under these conditions in turngives rise to a strongand
growingmultinationalfeature,which also is contradictoryin nature.
As the most popular formof the centralcultural idiom in the Puerto Rican
community,salsa music inspires great masses of young working-classPuerto
Ricans as an expression considered theirown. Puerto Ricans born or brought
up in New York naturallyappropriatedthe Cuban rhythmstheydaily enjoyed.
Latin music attractsand bringstogetherPuerto Ricans much as the rhythms
importedin the early migrationsserved as familiar signposts unitingthe mi-
grants.Its appeal, includingthe aesthetic elements that Puerto Ricans find at-
tractivein the rhythmicmovementand well-known tunes, lies precisely in its
being recognized as a cultural formreadily adaptable as a national expression
by the community.(Of course national originis not always the underpinning
of aesthetic preference.However, the fact of national oppression and a hostile
environment,cultural and otherwise,engenders a turningtoward the national
roots.) The rise of national consciousness and political activityamong Puerto
Ricans during the late 1960s had to be reflectedin this music, albeit in a wa-
tered down and politically confused manifestation.Eddie Palmieri's Justicia,
Tony Pab6n's Bandera, Willie Col6n's turn to traditional Puerto Rican
rhythms,even the names adopted by certaingroups (Revoluci6n '70, La Protes-
No, 3
ta, Conjunto Libre and others) occurred in this context. The rhythmat the
heart of this music, inclusively carried by "non-rhythmic"instruments(brass,
flute,stringinstruments),traces a dialectical movement,which when executed
well, reaches an all-embracingunitythat young Puerto Ricans love.
From "Justicia"
Justiciatendran,justicia veran
en el mundo los discriminados.
Con el canto del tambor
la justicia yo reclamo.
Si no hubiera tirania
todos fueramoshermanos.
Dulce paz y armonfa,
alegrfa,tu lo veras.
ZCudndo llegara la justicia?
Justiciapa' los boricuas y los niches.
From "Bandera"
(Note referenceto Puerto Rican Nationalist & patriotPedro Albizu Campos)
Un campesino muri6
enterradoen el presidio.
A mi mi padre me dijo,
el Presidentemuri6.
ZPorqu6,
si era un pobre mendigo?
A mfmi padre me dijo,
porque bandera pidi6.
Bandera, bandera
hecha de tela y colores.
Vale mas que las flores
y todos los profesores,
mi bandera.
Salsa also contains a multi-nationalor international aspect increasingly

significantand, in the long run, harboringits deepest progressive thrust.Ini-
tially, and predominantly,this cultural idiom attracts Latin Americans who
relate to salsa in similar ways as do Puerto Ricans. Puerto Ricans and Latin
Americans fromNew York enjoy and respond to salsa as a group. More and
more it has begun to appeal to Afro-Americans,Anglo-Americans and other
peoples as it extends beyond its original restrictedaudience, propelled by the
need of the music industryto expand and conditioned by the objective position
fromwhich it stems. While having a cohesive effectin the Puerto Rican com-
munity,salsa approaches being a unifyingfactor for the working class. This
emergenttrendcontains the potential forLatin music, given a progressivecon-
tent,to emanate and join the culturaldynamic of the entireclass, appropriated
and enjoyed by all workers.In a similar way, jazz came about as an expression
born from the strugglingdevelopment of the Afro-Americanpeople, spread
withinthe United States beyond its regional origins,and swept throughoutthe
world, recognized and used as a fresh, living expression by many national
traditions.
The present back and forthexchange between salsa and musical idioms
based on other national cultures evidences its multi-nationalcontent and ef-
fect.We have already noted the incorporationof Latin rhythmsinto jazz, soul,
and rock. The emergence of young commercial groups that infuse into Latin
music elements of jazz (e.g. Bobby Paunetto), soul (e.g. Ricardo Marrero and
the Group), and rock (e.g. Seguida) testifyto the elaboration of salsa beyond its
original cultural formulations.These groups consist of large ensembles with
prominentpercussive sections and instrumentationand innovative technique
reflectiveof experimentationwith diverse national musics. While the defining
musical characteristicremains the Latin rhythms,these new ensembles range
beyond those of their predecessors, such as Machito, who took similar
directions.
The reactionary side of salsa takes on a sharp cuttingedge through its
main functionas a commodity.Salsa is an entertainmentitem, packaged for
sale by a multi-milliondollar music industryin New York. This industry,led
by the Fania recordingcompany, securely controls production and, indirectly,
the quality and ideological thrustof Latin music. In addition to the acute ex-
ploitationof musicians, big business approaches to the promotionof salsa are
themselves corruptingand destructiveof the cultural value of this music. All
the hideous featuresof the largerworld of commercial music come into play: a
destructivecompetitivenessthat infectsthe relations among musicians and the
exploitative cultivation of musical idols. In its thirstfor sales, through the
monthlystagingof salsa festivals at sports arenas, stadiums and concert halls
in the United States and the Caribbean, throughthe exploitation of anything
with mass appeal, the commercial productionof salsa stiflesthe artisticquali-
ty of the music. This fact is evident fromthe host of salsa extravaganzas and
outpouring of "big name" releases. When viewed collectively, this musical
package evokes the impression of a damaged record that repeats the same line
over and over again, becomingmonotonous and empty.
The corrosiveeffectof commodityproductionon the quality of music, and
art in general, is also pervasive in theirsocial and ideological aspects. Salsa is
increasinglydivorced fromthe concerns of the masses of young and working
people. The lyrics depart furtheraway from a true reflectionof the people's
lives, from a true expression of their sentimentsand thought,even from an
approximate statementof and commentaryon the events that affectthe lives
of its audience. These were precisely the roles played by the traditionalmusic
displaced or coopted by commodityproduction.Significantly,the vocal part of
salsa, which had commanded equal attentionwith the musical aspect in tradi-
tional music and in early popular recorded music, seems to be receding from
its central place. One or two words or a repeated, meaningless phrase often
comprise the lyrics of songs. The economic crisis acutely affectingNew York
City,and most damagingforits youth and oppressed minorities,does not exist
as far as the most far-reachingcultural expression experienced in the Puerto
Rican communityis concerned.
Salsa on Women:
From "Quftatela Mascara," by Ray Barreto

Me diste a comer pescao,
sin tu quitarle la espina.
LatinAmericanPerspectives:Issue 10, Summer1976, Vol.
11, No. 3
De postreme diste astrinina,

con tu sabor a melao.
From "Juana Pefia," by Willie Col6n

Ella era una mujer
que a muchos hombres habia engafiado.
From "Carmen la Ronca," by Grupo Folkl6rico y Experimental Nuevayorquino

Yo conozco a una mujer
llamada Carmen la Ronca.
Que se pasa todo el dfa
metiendola gente en bronca.
Ella todo lo averigua

con mucho lujo y detalle.
From "Dale Jam6na la Jeba,"by Machito

Dale jam6n a la jeba
que es comelona.
In measuring the conflictingtrends within salsa music, one must consider
the role of coercion at the center of the contradiction.The national aspect of
salsa is progressive insofar as it supports the Puerto Rican's struggleagainst
enforced cultural assimilation. On the other hand, the commercialization of
salsa, precisely as a nationally-orientedmusic, represents a backward step,
making of a workers' music a bourgeois statement.In regard to the multina-
tional aspect, the voluntaryextraction from many national musics to enrich
Latin music and vice versa makes fora mutual revitalizationof musical idioms
of value to the entireworkingchss. Conversely,the forced,superficial adapta-
tion of trivial,"cosmetic" rock, soul, debased jazz, and salsa - broughtabout
by commercial speculation - degenerates the music in quality and content
and precludes its real value forPuerto Ricans and the rest of the class.
In opposition to the prevailingcommercialization,a music grounded in the
Puerto Rican's living reality also continues to grow. This music has diverse
forms: the natural, almost spontaneous expression of drum rhythms daily
created in the streets;the consciously innovative,anti-commercialmusic of na-
tional and multinationalelements exemplified in the Conjunto Uni6n; and the
politicallymotivatedmusic and songs given varied directionsby ensembles as-
sociated with political organizations.
Until the middle of the 1950s,the regularpractice of drummingin Spanish-
speaking communitieswas mainly engaged in rites of santerfa, primarilyby
Cubans. Other percussive music importedfromthe Caribbean was performed
by a few in closed sessions and festivities.The release of several recordingson
Afro-Cubandrum rhythms,isolating the percussion section of the well-known
dance tempos,e.g. the guaguanc6 and other rumba forms,provided the mod-
els forlearningtheirexecution and gave an impetus to theirdissemination.The
improviseddrum sessions quickly moved fromthe homes, rooftops,and base-
ments to the streetcorners,playgrounds,parks, beaches, and wherever Puerto
Ricans congregated.The energy of the movement swept over the resistance
originallyput up against this medium of national assertion. (Much like the out-
lawing of the plena in Puerto Rico, public gatheringsaround the drums and
chants were not allowed in New York.) Drumminggrew into the cultural ex-
pression of Puerto Ricans. And it goes on as a Puerto Rican expression, a form

appropriatedby Puerto Ricans, while the music industrvappropriates salsa.
The streetdrum music presents a cultural mixingof national and multina-
tional significance.It arose as a cultural vehicle for young Puerto Ricans feel-
ing the weightof national oppression, the distance of traditionalforms,and the
absence of "high" culture and other creative media. The drum music, encom-
passing channels of creativityand energywith familiar antecedents in Puerto
Rican and Caribbean cultures,constitutesan instrumentfor national survival
and expression. At the same time,it draws togethermembers of diverse mig-
rant communities,especially Caribbean peoples who share common sources in
the formationof their national culture,but also in greater numbers, of Afro-
American and other peoples. On any given summer night,Puerto Ricans, Do-
minicans, Cubans, Panamanians, Haitians, and Afro-Americansdrum together
in a city park, exposing and exchanging theirrespective rhythms,opening the
possibilityfortheirmutual enrichment.Such activityformsa basis in the cul-
turalfrontforthe union of diverse national sectors of the workingclass.
However, the powerful popular expression of drum music accompanies a
total lifestyleof the youthand permanentlyunemployed sectors. Energy,crea-
tivity,and national aspirations transforminto divisive and destructiveforces,
into the escapist, lumpenized cultureof drugs,streetrivalry,and the hustle for
daily survival. As in all popular culturewithin class society, the infiltrationof
the values and habits which emanate fromthe social base penetratesdeeply. In
the absence of class consciousness, this aspect of popular culture can gain
dominance.
To counteractthis tendency,and to furtherdevelop the spontaneous musi-
cal mode developing in the street,workshops such as the Lexington Avenue
Express Percussion Ensemble have been organized. The Lexington Avenue,
made up of young men and women fromEast Harlem, combine learning and
practice of traditionalCaribbean and new streetrhythmswith study and dis-
cussion of theirsocial originsand theirrelevance today. The question of devel-
oping songs reflectiveof the Puerto Rican reality is taken up, along with on-
going criticismof the negative practices associated with the music. The Work-
shop goes out into the communityto performand discuss theirview of music.
A differentrelationto the streetmusic exists withinthe Grupo Folkl6rico y
Experimental Nuevayorquino, a large ensemble of professional musicians reg-
ularly workingwith salsa bands. As with most musicians in Latin music, the
members of the Folkl6rico's rhythmsection in the main acquired their first
trainingin drummingin the streets.The large rhythmsection - including bata
drums, timbales, two or three congas, and bong is the base of the
Folkl6rico's sound. The group combines musical instrumentsand styles of
execution fromPuerto Rican, Cuban, and other Caribbean traditionwith con-
temporaryLatin music. The Folkl6rico allows more room for improvisation
than is normallypermittedin salsa. While not politicallytuned, and oftenfall-
ing into the ideological pitfallscommon in salsa music, such as the stereotype
of the nosy, gossiping woman in "Carmen la Ronca," the Folkl6rico's blending
of traditionwith the most appealing music of the moment is a guide for the
progressof the Puerto Rican musical form.
Non-commercial collectives of musicians have also emerged which are
concerned with maintainingnational Puerto Rican rhythmswhile drawing on
the ever-presentmusic of other peoples. In contrast to the invisibilityof the

musicians who have not achieved star status and the focus on the leading mu-
sician that occurs in most commercial music-,the progressive Puerto Rican
groups provide ample room for the development of the individual musician
withinan ensemble concept. The Conjunto Uni6n (1972-1975)is an outstanding
case in point. This groupingof five or more musicians joined Puerto Ricans,
Blacks, and Anglo-Americans.They soughtmusical innovation and the integri-
tyof the artist.Developing throughinteractionwith the Puerto Rican commun-
ity,the Conjunto turned froman outpouringof chaotic and emotional spon-
taneity,unfamiliarand withoutappeal to the Puerto Rican audience, to a solid
base of Latin rhythmsand popular tunes on which new musical elements were
built. The Conjunto managed to keep a groundingin jazz and improvisation
throughoutand introduced singing into its performance,looking to verbalize
its outlook on music and its relation to the audience: "La universidad de la
calle/donde se estudia/como en otra escuela."
Music as a frontin the political strugglehas been engaged by several en-
sembles supportedby socialist organizations.El Grupo and Sangre Jovenin the
past and Tarraya in the present period (associated with the Puerto Rican So-
cialist Party) merge popular and protest music of Latin America and Puerto
Rico, looking to the Cuban groups of this genre as a model. Guitar, cuatro,
other stringinstruments,flute,conga, and bongo make up the typical instru-
mental accompaniment.The lyrics include songs of protestfromLatin Ameri-
ca and Puerto Rico and songs on the situation of Puerto Ricans within the
United States. The latter center on the theme of interconnectionbetween the
strugglefor national liberationon the Island and the political emancipation of
Puerto Ricans on the mainland. The Socialistics, on the other hand, an ensem-
ble of fouror five voices harmonizingto familiartunes fromrhythmand blues
("du-bop"), practiced by many Puerto Ricans broughtup in the United States,
make class strugglewithin the United States their basic theme. The Socialis-
tics, sponsored by the Puerto Rican RevolutionaryWorkers Organization, lay
emphasis on class solidarityagainst imperialism (North American and Soviet
in theirview). Althoughboth musical modes taken up by these political artists
rely on aspects of Puerto Rican expression, as artisticprograms meeting the
political needs of Puerto Rican people in the United States theyfall short.One
mode, based on traditionin the Island and Latin America, fails to take up the
culturalformsthat touch base with the Puerto Rican experience in New York;
the other,based on one aspect of Puerto Rican cultural experience in the Unit-
ed States, ignoresthe original and still importantroots of Puerto Rican culture
in the colony. Neither can fulfillthe political and cultural requirements of
Puerto Ricans withinthe United States.
The question arises of what road to take in developing a music responsive
to the cultural and political needs of Puerto Ricans as workingpeople. Musical
creation as an expression of an oppressed people cannot occur in a vacuum.
F6r Puerto Ricans it needs to take cognizance of the mainstreamof theirmusi-
cal reality,referringto its most prevalent modes, the traditional rhythmsas
well as the dominant salsa, while recognizingthe diversityof the rich musical
world Puerto Ricans enjoy. To either obliteratenational form,or to ignore the
new elements and impact of othernational formson the Puerto Rican's cultur-
al experience, is not adequately to address througha familiarand moving me-
dium the questions and problems uppermost in the experience, thought,and

sentimentof an embattledpeople.
Theater
While not as extensive as music, the dramatic world Puerto Ricans enjoy
reaches back to a full traditionin "high" theaterand popular theaterand deep
into the daily modes of interactionand expression, pregnantwith the elemen-
tal drama of mimeticgestures and casting of roles. The overridingexperience
with theaterin New York,however, is the Spanish-language network telenove-
la, a cultural institutionin' Puerto Rico and many Latin American countries
developing from the magazine and print novela and its radio counterpart.
While music, even in its commercialized form,may convey protest and indi-
vidual outcries of criticismand satire,the telenovela is a more thoroughlycon-
trolledideological medium and most markedlyso in its Spanish-language ver-
sion. The contendingtheatricalformin the community- over against the tele-
novela and official theater - grows with the resurgence of popular theater,
based among workers,whose incipientproletarianexpression firstoccurred in
the Island at the turnof the century.
In addressing the question of theater in a people's culture, one must not
lose sight of its basic common form. A dramatic quality that is found, with
differingdistinctivefeatures, in the cultures of many peoples pervades the
modes of everyday communication among Puerto Ricans. Any account of an
event or incident,a movie or baseball game, an attitudeof the boss at work or
the workings of the welfare office,is accompanied by explanatory gestures
and mimickingthat serve to dramatize the point being made. This dramatic
element is given structuredcultural formin the controversia of Puerto Rican,
musical tradition.A battle of musical dialogue, replete with meaningfulges-
tures and improvisationon a given theme,is carried out between two contes-
tants.The singercasts a role or plays out a situation,providingan explanation
aimed at outdoing in wit and spontaneitythe ability of the opponent. In fact
the theatricalityin everydaylife and in popuilarcultureis the essence of drama
and is the Puerto Ricans' most immediateexperience of "theater."It goes on as
a formalsource, alive and dynamic,forthe creation of theaterclose to the lives
of its audience.
The theatrical traditionin Puerto Rico originated during the seventeenth
and eighteenthcenturies.This traditionfound initial expression in the biblical
and moral dramas and processions of the church. Dramatizations of Spanish
classical theaterwere also performedduringcelebrations of signal ecclesiasti-
cal or political events,such as the arrival of an archbishop or the coronation of
the Spanish monarch. The nineteenthcenturysaw the emergence and, during
its second half, the spread of theater throughoutthe Island. A professional
theater viewed by the Spanish and emergingnative elite was established in
San Juanand major towns, and foreigntravelingcompanies toured the Island.
Spanish drama was staged, as was the work of native dramatists, who ap-
peared with the emergence of a national bourgeoisie. An "amateur theater"
reproducing this established drama emerged in every corner of the Island.
Even the smallest towns had a theater house by the central plaza. The za-
guanes (the interiorpatios of city tenements) in the workers' quarters were
transformedinto stages fora theaterof charlatanerfa(buffoonery)before the
end of the century.
With the organization of the evolving working class, late in the century,
and the foundingof its leading trade union and political arms, the Federaci6n
de Trabajadores Puertorriquefiosand the early Partido Socialista, a proletarian
theater emerged,directed at workers and dramatizing the themes of conflict
with the hacendados and other sectors of the national bourgeoisie. Eduardo
Conde, a leading organizer of the Federaci6n, referredto his participation in
the zaguan theaterof Old San Juanthat provided a referencepoint for build-
ing a proletariantheater.Magdaleno Gonzailez, a tobacco worker and follower
of the Federaci6n, was a leading dramatistwho later emigratedto New York.
Little is known, however, of this workers' theater and traditional "amateur"
stagecraft.Their history,buried in the documents of municipal governments
and town churches and in the newspapers and publications of the workers'
organizations,needs to be reconstructed.The demise of the Federaci6n and the
radical transformationof the social structuresupportingpopular theater left
this traditionbehind without a visible connection to the present. Its rescue is
an urgenttask today. Here lies a reservoirof cultural material and an essential
link in Puerto Rican history and expression on which to draw for the new
buildingof proletariantheatertoday.
The dramatic experience of the Puerto Rican in New York is dominated by
the melodramas, the telenovelas daily occupying nearly ten hours of viewing
timeover two Spanish-language stations."Exciting"amorous intrigues,"tense"
battles between honest, manly, upper class heroes (or lower class heroes with
markedly bourgeois aspirations) and absolutely evil, conniving villains,
"pathetic" situations for defenseless passive heroines, "moving" displays of
noble virtues on the part of the underdog - worker, peasant, Black, Indian,
woman - are standard ingredientsof the drama fed to the Spanish-dominant
audience, in its majority women. The virtues displayed are extracted from
bourgeois moralityand from bourgeois prescribed rules of conduct for hired
laborers: honesty,resignationto fate, chastity,loyalty to husband or master,
faithin movingup the social ladder under certain conditions,and so on. These
programsserve as pacifiers and a principal injectorof class propaganda, much
as the English-languagesoap operas do forthe NorthAmerican housewife.
Pacification in the telenovelas, however, differsfromthat of the English-
language melodramas, where the characters and the problems treated belong
to sectors of the middle class. Social inequality and injustice lie at the core of
the telenovela's problem. In the traditionof bourgeois tragedy,the "moving" or
"sentimental" tear-jerkerdrama of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth
centuries,the root cause of the conflicts encountered in the telenovela is the
class stratificationof the society. Haves and have-nots and the privileged and
underprivilegedare cast in dramatic tension, where sympathy is evoked for
those at the bottomof the ladder. The grain of realitycontained in the telenov-
ela, that of social inequality, is the point of attractionfor its viewers, them-
selves membersof an exploited class and its most oppressed sectors- women
and the nationally oppressed. Its connection with reality,of course, is totally
distorted. The solution to the conflict is the triumph of right and justice
throughthe actions of the upper class hero, which restrictsall perspective to
the set of relations that is actually the source of conflict. Pacification in the
telenovela consists precisely in this falsely comfortinglimitation of alterna-
tives.
Despite its deplorable artisticquality and, in the final analysis, its reaction-
ary mission, the telenovela needs to be seriously contended with by progres-
sive artists.Clearly, its sheer popularitymeans that to ignore the telenovela is
to lose touch with the most familiarand attractivetheaterforan enormous and
avid audience. (The English-languagesector of the Puerto Rican community,
on the other hand, does not have a comparable far-reachingdramatic form.
This predominantlyyoung group finds its "entertainment"in the "action" net-
work serials and in cinema.) Furthermore,the social nature of the telenovela's
theme,the undercurrentof class divisions, representsa real revolutionarypo-
tential.To poke fun at the telenovela, to parody (with a play within a play) its
cliches and stereotypeswhile pointingout the real interestsbehind class align-
ments (as in Brecht's treatmentof German popular opera), or to create a seri-
ous telenovela where genuine, revolutionarysolutions are indicated (as in the
democraticand proletariantheaterin Europe that reversed the themes and so-
lutions of bourgeois "sentimental"drama) are roads open to Puerto Rican art-
ists workingin this field. The drama of the migrationand the enormouslyvar-
ied and complex experience of the Puerto Rican's historyin New York provide
all the materialnecessary fora telenovela servingthe interestof workers.
As in music, a recentlyemergingtheaterhas arisen that serves as a politi-
cal and aesthetic response to the telenovela's reactionarypolitics,poor quality,
and divorce fromthe Puerto Rican's real life. A variety of directions are evi-
dent: a conventionaltheaterin English and Spanish presentsthe work of Puer-
to Rican dramatistsand other established playwrights,especially from Spain
and Latin America; a somewhat less conventional theaterin English composed
of young Puerto Rican playwrightsdramatizes the conflictsof particular sec-
torsof the community;and an experimentalstreettheater,with orientationsin
New York and in Puerto Rico, treats the central problems of the community
froma radical perspective.
In 1953, a group of actors produced and staged La Carreta by the promi-
nent Puerto rican author,Rene Marques, in the community-basedHunts Point
Palace. The best accomplishment of conventional Puerto Rican theater, in
many respects full of life and capturingmuch of the realityit seeks to portray,
good theater with a popular essence in so far as the Puerto Rican audience
immediatelyrecognizes a great part of its own experience withinit, La Carreta
sets a standard forPuerto Rican drama. Equally important,it has been to date
the most significantdramatic statementon the journey and impact of the post-
war migration.Marques perceived the voyage "from the Island countryside
throughthe urban slum to the New York ghetto" primarilyas one of disinte-
gration of the Puerto Rican family causing lamentable cultural disorder and
degeneration.Its final resolution,a nostalgic returnto the farm,is a symbolic
gestureof its backward perception.Lacking in historicaldimension,presenting
no real indication of the underlyingforces generatingsuch social dislocation
and human trauma,La Carretain the end evokes the defeat of the Puerto Rican
nation. The sufferingand loss sustained by the Puerto Rican people fails to
find in its dramatic recreation the combative response given in real life. This
lack of historicaland political perspectivemars a work that thereforeultimate-
ly remainswithinthe realm of the "official"culture.
Miriam Col6n, the well-known Puerto Rican actress, produced a second
stagingof La Carreta in 1965. This effortset the stage forthe idea of a theatri-
No. 3
cal company dedicated to the support and development of Puerto Rican thea-
ter in the community. In 1967, Ms. Col6n organized the Teatro Rodante
Puertorriquefno(Puerto Rican Traveling Theater), "a bilingual, professional
company," that brings the work of established and new Island dramatists,
poets, and writersand, lately, of Puerto Rican writersformedin New York to
the Puerto Rican communityand, in translation,to a North American audi-
ence. The Traveling Theater also presents Latin American and, periodically,
samples of European and North American theater in both languages. It has
provided a theaterof quality and relevance to Puerto Ricans, such as La Carre-
ta,the dramatization of short episodes of the New York experience by Pedro
JuanSoto, and the theatricalpresentationof poems by New York writerssuch
as Pedro Pietri, Papoleto Melendez, and Piri Thomas. The need to critically
assess much of this theatrical production and to press beyond the limits of
officialor "professional" theater,however, remains unanswered. It is precisely
this theater that distorts- through its narrow, ahistorical vision - all the
major themes- such as the dislocation of the familyor the conflictsof "ghetto
culture" - and falls short of transformingthe theater into a living medium
capturingthe dramaticelementof strugglesin people's lives.
In the recent past, two young playwrightsfromNew York have portrayed,
fromtheirown experience, the life situation and tensions of particular sectors
of the community.Miguel Pifiero,an ex-inmateat Sing Sing forfive years, and
Papoleto Melendez, a poet born and formed in the Puerto Rican community,
have produced plays on the conflictsof prison life, Puerto Rican streetgangs,
and drugaddiction.
Short Eyes, Pifiero's commercially acclaimed work, dramatizes the de-
pendent and tense relations among an inmate group thatincludes Blacks, Puer-
to Ricans, and one white. The play reflectsthe basic inhumanity,conditioned
by the prison system,that heightensthe most destructivefeaturesof "normal"
society- in sexual relations,national divisions, individual self-interest,social
alienation - even in the face of attemptsto create a community.In the play,
this systemultimatelyleads to the total distortionof human relations for most
of its participants.
Melendez' The JunkieStole the Clock crystallizes a view of the personal
interactionswithin a juvenile gang in "ghetto" conditions,typicallyleading to
addiction, pettycrime,and psychic desperation. The play's symbolic message
is carried by the transformationof the gang's youngestmemberfromhis initia-
tion in dope to the overdose, accompanied by glimpses of the addicted couple's
hustle and attemptsto detoxicate, the poet's pessimistic contemplation of the
"ghetto,"the hustler's abusive relations with other gang members,and so on.
In the final analysis, the world captured is a dead end.
Short Eyes and The Junkie. . . come closer to aspects of the Puerto Ri-
can realityand the antagonisticconditions in which it is set than the telenovela
and much of the established "professional" theater. They offermoments of
real conflictarising fromalienating institutionsthat bolster the general condi-
tions of oppression. Short Eyes, in particular, reflectsthese moments in its
dynamic movementand gives life to the appropriate styles and patternsof ex-
pression. As impressions from an oppressive situation and its dehumanizing
and destructiveimpact,these dramas representin themselves a condemnation.
But they lose much of the potential force of this progressive stance precisely
because of their concentrationon moments,impressions, and crystalizations

liftedfroma livingdrama with greathistoricaldepth.
Where do the prisoners and junkies come from?Why are so many Puerto
Ricans in jail and on drugs? What are theirlinks to the dominant systemof the
whole society? The theaterthat takes a still photographfroma drama in mo-
tion lacks the perspective for providing clues in response to these questions.
ShortEyes and The Junkie. . . take a microscopic look at a large realityand
can only capture, as a complete statement,that junkies overdose, that prison
destroysover and over again, that this is the fatal destination in an oppressive
system.They end with a sense of sheer futilityratherthan the deeper critical
insightand potential struggleassociated with the true realist art, where the
perspectivecuts throughthe many layers of social reality.The lack of perspec-
tive makes this drama reminiscentof the existential,alienation plays in other
national traditions,most obviously modish European "themes of the absurd."
Street theater in English and in Spanish developed in the Puerto Rican
communityin the late 1960s, the firstmolded in the New York experience and
the second rooted in Puerto Rico and furtherdeveloped in New York. Both
reflectthe growing national awareness among Puerto Ricans and their devel-
oping political struggle.They move directly in the streets of predominantly
Puerto Rican neighborhoods, set aside the conventional structureof theater
and the costly development of sophisticated lightingsystems and settings in
favor of dramatic vignettesallowing much improvisation,integratingthe lan-
guage and expressive modes of Puerto Rican life, and strive to develop a dra-
ma, throughcollective effort,with a political perspective supportive of nation-
al equality and independence. As a totality,this theater exhibits the complex
movementof Puerto Rican culture in New York that on the one hand main-
tains national integrity,identifiedthroughthe continuous turn to traditional
elements as vital sources of national expression, and on the other bringsforth
and integratesfeaturesof othernational culturesencounteredin New York.
The Third World Revelationists(1968-1972)were the firstguerrillatheater,
based in working-classcommunities,in which Puerto Ricans participated.The
Revelationistssprang fromthe battles for "communitycontrol" and "self-de-
termination"thatdrove the national movementsof Afro-Americans,Puerto Ri-
cans, Chicanos, and other oppressed people in the last decade. A collective,
including Blacks and Puerto Ricans living and undertakingpolitical study to-
gether,this ensemble set out to develop a political theaterin the idiom, dramat-
ic imagery,and expressive style of the urban neighborhoods of oppressed na-
tionalities.The Revelationists were not trained as dramatic artists.Critical of
the conventional theaterthat erects a mystical wall between the audience and
the stage and indulges in the outworn themes of intense personal strugglesof
the petty-bourgeoisand middle classes, the Revelationists improvised their
"reflections"or vignettes,oftenintegratingpoetry,music and dance, on street
corners,in storefronts,and at political rallies. Each dramatic piece treated an
aspect of the circumstances and central issues underlyingthe conflicts of the
expoloited nations and minorities:the ideological grounds of racial and nation-
al discrimination;the repressive apparatus of the legal system; the binding
thrustof acute national exploitation at home and aggression abroad, especially
in Vietnam; inequality in living conditions; cultural oppression manifested in
drugaddiction; and the alienation of national cultures.
Latin American Perspectivs Issue 10, Summer 1976, Vol. 111, No. 3
The Last Poets presented poetry accompanied with dramatic gesture and
drumrhythmscontemporaneouslywith the Revelationists.A Puerto Rican and
Black group consistingof three poets and one drummer,the Last Poets devel-
oped a forcefulvisual and oral medium based upon the spontaneous drama
and music of the expressive styles of the "lumpen" (actually the unemployed
youth) and the "walk and talk" of the urban streets. Their poems expressed
hatred of the historyof plunder and destructionof Black and other oppressed
peoples. At the same time,theirwork called to overturnthe passivity official-
ly encouraged and for channeling the anger and violence among the people
themselves (gang warfare, drugs, and so on) against the legal and repressive
institutionspropping up the "white establishment." The emphasis was on
"nation building,""thirdworld solidarity,"and sinkingroots into national cul-
tures.The political contentboth here and in the production of the Revelation-
ists reflected the level of organization and theoretical depth of the young,
spontaneous national movements in which cultural nationalism and a nation-
alist perspective are the drivingforces. Both these groups are outstandingex-
amples of the interactionamong national sectors of the workingclass, and the
interweavingdevelopmentof theirexpressive modes.
The street,or popular, theaterin Spanish which emerged in the Puerto Ri-
can communityduring the period in which the Revelationists and Last Poets
were active is similar in political and dramatic intent to these New York
groups. It differsin its actual political focus and the cultural material through
which it is forged. This theater also abandons conventional structures and
looks to delineate drama that is collectivelyproduced, integratedwith the au-
dience, abundant in the elemental drama of the peoples' popular culture,com-
posed in the living,popular language, and politically aligned with national re-
sistance both in the North American and Island context. This free-flowing
theateris also generallyorganized in short impromptupieces, at times loosely
linked via a common plot. Unlike the members of the Revelationists and Last
Poets, the leading exponents and participantsof the street,or popular, theater
in Spanish do have some trainingin acting and theatricalproduction.They are
trained in Puerto Rico, where some participate in the resurgence of a theater
rooted in the workingclass barrios. The attemptto build a popular national
theaterextends to New York. The focus and raw material for this theater re-
mains the national traditionas presentlydeveloped. Consequently, the resul-
tant drama differsgreatly from the "reflections" and dramatized poems in
English and the New York styles of the Revelationistsand Last Poets, blending
Black and Puerto Rican elements.
The firstpresentations by a Puerto Rican street theater in Spanish took
place in the summerof 1968. Two groups appeared - the Puerto Rican Ensem-
ble and the Nuevo Teatro Pobre de America. The Puerto Rican Ensemble,
consistingof poets, musicians, and a theatrical ensemble, toured Puerto Rican
communitiesin the summers of 1968, 1969, and 1970. Traditional music and
poetry,as well as a theater presentingworks of contemporaryPuerto Rican
playwrightsand the newly-emergingguerrillatheater,moved into open, organ-
ized, militantcultural activity.The Ensemble's presentationsprojected nation-
al symbols of resistance: the images of Albizu Campos and Betances, the heri-
tage of the Lares revolt,and the ongoing effortto drive the North American
navy out of the Puerto Rican territoryof Culebra Island.
During this same period, the Nuevo Teatro Pobre de America emerged in
New York. Organized by Pedro Santaliz, it operated alternatelyin New York
and Puerto Rico with new members. The Teatro Pobre broughttogetherboth
young people with no theatricalexperience and trained actors who jointly de-
veloped ideas for dramatic pieces. Victor Fragoso, a participant in several of
the theatricalensembles formed since this period, describes the Teatro Pobre
in the followingmanner:
They performinvariably in Spanish, givingthe impression of being a theater of the re-
cent arrivals. Drugs is one of the themes, as it is one of the most shatteringexperiences
of the ghetto.They combine realitywith fantasy,the world of childhood games with the
crueltyof the ghetto environment,a sense of humor with the social message. All the
works have an air of unfinishedbusiness, open to the unforseen(Fragoso, 1975).
The Nuevo Teatro Pobre de America set the example for a community-
based Puerto Rican theater.By 1972, new theaterensembles were organized by
actors who had participated in the Teatro Pobre, the Puerto Rican Ensemble,
and the Teatro Rodante. These included the Teatro Aspaguanza and the Teatro
de Orilla. Both presented short dramatic pieces, including works by progres-
sive Spanish and Latin American playwrights,by Santaliz and other Puerto
Ricans, as well as the ensembles' own productions developed in workshops.
The Teatro de Orilla experimentedwith audience participationin resolvingthe
situationthat developed in La Factorfa: a worker is unjustlyfiredand her co-
workersconsider strikingin her defense. The actors discuss with the audience
the workers' decision. Finally, all agree to call for a strike.This ensemble also
produced a series of dramatic scenes (iEste trenpara en Delancey?) that cap-
tured bits of Puerto Rican life in New York, some collectively conceived and
others adapted fromPedro Juan Soto's Spics. In 1973, the Teatro de Orilla's
last production dealt with the question of racism among Puerto Ricans in
de un pueblo gulembo.Thiswork
Peloalambreno se rindeo las tribulaciones
fuses traditional drum music, Puerto Rican espiritismo,and other aspects of
popular culture,especially fromthe black barrios,to commenton the decadent
commercial culture and the outlooks of various classes and social sectors of
Puerto Rican society. The play included an effectivesarcastic look at the co-
lonial apparatus of politicians,judges, police chiefs and the yanquis.
Since 1973,several theatricalensembles, organized on universitycampuses
or in neighborhoodstorefronts,have developed fromthe models of the Span-
ish streettheater.For the most part composed of Puerto Ricans fromNew York
given direction by artists trained in the Spanish language street theater,their
theatricalactivityis characterized by featuresdrawn fromthis theater:collec-
tive work, improvisation,mobility,free-flowingaction, interactionof several
genres, and national affirmation.The Teatro Jurutungo,Teatro Guazaibara,
Teatro La Nueva Mujer, and, most recently,Teatro 4 are outstandingexamples
of this theater.All produce loosely connected scenes that stand independently.
Both English and Spanish are utilized. The themes treated concern the situa-
tion of Puerto Ricans in the United States viewed as interconnectedwith the
colonial background of the Island. The Teatro Guazabara, for example, has
produced pieces on the colonial historyof Puerto Rico up throughthe advent
of the migration,on the life of the seasonal migrant worker, and on Lolita
Lebron (who led the Nationalist attack on the United States Congress and is
now a living symbol of Puerto Rican resistance to colonial oppression). The
LatinAmericanPerspectives:Issue 10, Summer1976, Vol. 111,No. 3
Teatro La Nueva Mujer, especially dedicated to treatingthe position of women

in society,has staged a piece tracingthe move of a Puerto Rican woman work-
er from the factoryin New York, where she defies her ill treatment,to the
streetsof a Puerto Rican town, where she finds not work, but the same North
American corporations.In iQue encontreen Nueva York?, the Teatro 4 sig-
nals out police brutalityand criminal delinquency in the Puerto Rican com-
munityas outgrowthsof the colonial situation and the conditions of forced
migration.
This streettheateris still in an embryonicform,looking to solidifyits tech-
nique and to work out a trulypopular dramatic idiom. Its political statements
sufferin not looking deeply enough, and theirunderstandingof the Puerto Ri-
can's present historical placement in the United States falls short. Thus, the
orientationremains the Island and the characters portrayedare closer to the
Island than to New York in their expressive modes and styles. There is little
recognitionof the new conditions which act on the outlook and mannerismsof
the masses of Puerto Ricans who are only familiar with life in New York. In
fact,even the view of the Island oftenlacks awareness of the determinantsand
effectof social transformation.The young streettheater still falls into the ro-
manticstereotypingof the jfbaro or the Island leftbehind.
The road to a progressiveand proletariantheaterin the Puerto Rican com-
munitywill be paved with closer attention to reaching the audience and to
making the movementon the theatricalplatformtrulymeaningfulto the lives
of its public. Partly,this means utilizingthe familiarworld of theater,primari-
ly the telenovela, in addition to the common theatricalityof everyday life al-
ready successfully employed in the street theater and by New York play-
wrights.The world-wide experience in proletarian theater that has utilized
popular national forms(opera, melodrama, bourgeois tragedy,etc.) should be
criticallyreviewed. Most important,a progressivetheaterat present requires a
fullerhistoricalperspectiveof the basic themes of the migrationand the exper-
ience of the United States mainland. We have yet to see, for example, the
placement of the Puerto Rican here as worker, the historical impulse to the
migration,and the relation between the Puerto Rican worker and other work-
ers. The national position, on which Puerto Rican theater concentrates, has
thus always been incomplete or distorted. Still missing is a thoroughunder-
standing of the migrationas an essentially economic process with political
consequences.
Finally, the best of bourgeois drama offerslessons and examples on the
secrets of effectivetheaterthat need to be adapted. However, the slice of life,
the mere criticalinspection of bourgeois society,the dark view fromthe lower
depths - the contentof this drama - offerno perspectives to the Puerto Ri-
can worker.
Poetry
A rich poetical legacy is available to Puerto Ricans in the oral traditionof
the peasantry and in classical poetry,the literaturethat articulated the posi-
tions and state of mind of the national bourgeoisie during its rise and wane.
Both aspects of this tradition in poetry, as popular oral expression and as
"high" art, are familiar to a sector of the Puerto Rican community in New
York. However, the New York Puerto Rican does not partake in a formalpoetic
world similarto the one daily experienced in music and theater.Poetryhas not
been easily seized as an importantcommodity,like salsa or the telenovela.
Even the extensive Island poetic output is cut offfrommany English-dominant
Puerto Ricans because of the language difference.Poetryemerged as a signifi-
cant mode expressive of the New York Puerto Rican experience only during
the last decade of political and cultural fermentand not primarilyas a literary
form,but as an oral and visual experience.
Storytelling,poetry and declamation, lyrical improvisation and commen-
taryon daily events and universal themes (the decimas and otherpoetic forms
of Spanish origins) were central components of the Puerto Rican peasants'
popular culture, a primarymeans of voicing theiroutlook as a class and their
opinions on social, political, aesthetic,religious,and othermatters.A classical
poetryproduced by the literaryrepresentativesof the formativePuerto Rican
bourgeoisie of hacendados (Gautier Benftez,Luis Llorens Torres, Luis Pales
Matos) was established at the heart of the national culture.This literature,aris-
ing with the birthof national consciousness and patriotismin the forgingof
the nation,gave expression to the twistinghistorical course of this class from
its initial, struggling,independent steps under Spanish rule to its painful de-
mise under NorthAmerican domination.
The oral traditionand the classical poetry are inheritedby that sector of
the New York communitythat directlyexperienced these formsas their own
vehicles of expression. But, by and large, this aspect of the popular culture is
not a primarymode of expression within the United States communities.The
oral traditionis being displaced in the Island itselfby new formscorrespond-
ing to the transformedsocial structure.The cleavage with the writtenlanguage
forPuerto Ricans schooled in the Uuited States enforcesa furtherrupturewith
the classical poets as well as with the contemporarypoets writingin Spanish.
For Puerto Ricans reared in United States cities,the oral and classical heri-
tage in poetry is viable as their own expression only in an indirect,although
important,way. The home has provided certain cultural grounds in which
traditionalformsare partlypassed on. The improvised verse and the seis, the
gesture that accompanied the declamation of an amorous or patriotic ballad,
the rhythmicmovementgivinglife to popular poems are elements submerged
in the aesthetic consciousness of New York Puerto Ricans. These blend with
newer featuresof theirown, presentmodes of interactionand communication.
While the decima, or the popular verses of love, patria, peasant, and country-
side of Luis Llorens Torres have not served as the immediate models for the
constructionof a proper poetic expression in New York, an undercurrentof
theirfeelingand affinityto rhythmis sustained. These traditionalformsneed
to be studied and turnedto useful purpose today. Their positive aspects - the
cry against the peasant's and the laborer's plight,the anti-imperialiststance,
the musical quality and attractiveimages valued by the Puerto Rican masses -
must be drawn upon to strengthena poetrythat effectivelycorresponds to the
situationof Puerto Ricans in the United States.
The poetrybeing produced by Puerto Ricans in New York is developing in
two modes rooted in differingsources. One, writtenin Spanish, actually flows
fromthe new poetic wave that has been surgingin the Island duringthe past
fifteenyears. The other,produced in English,develops as the New York Puerto
Rican expression that surfaces with the rise in national consciousness and out-
burstof militantstrugglein the Puerto Rican communityduringthe late 1960s.

Althoughboth modes are presented at political and cultural events, and there-
fore participatein the cultural life in which Puerto Ricans are immersed,only
the lattergrows fromthe New York experience and crystallizes a local vision.
An exchange between these two poetic modes has not taken place, although
the authors know each other and are familiarwith each other's work. In great
part, the language differenceaccounts for this separation. A closer develop-
ment between the music and theater of the Island and New York, unimpeded
by the writtenlanguage, has been possible. While the spoken language is ap-
propriated sufficientlyto develop a music and for participation in a theater
originatingin the Island, the writtenlanguage could not be the medium allow-
ing the decima or Juan Antonio Corretjer's poems to be the natural starting
point of a poetic expression fromNew York. Language, in this sense, has been
an obstacle to the transmission of tradition.Another aspect of this language
phenomenon is the enlargement of expressive possibilities that clearly por-
tends an enrichmentof the tradition.Indeed, the poets writingin English have
already made meaningfuluse of this fascinatingbilingual situation.
Ivan Silen, Angel Luis Mendez, Victor Fragoso, and Etnairis Rivera (now in
Puerto Rico) are among the Spanish-language poets writing in New York.
Formed on the Island, this group is well acquainted with the classical tradition
and the progressive artisticmovement in Puerto Rico during the last decade.
These poets have studied their medium as a writtenform and know its pro-
gressive developmentin the West and, especially, in Latin America where Val-
lejo, Mistral, Neruda and Pedro Mir, among others,have served as fundamen-
tal sources. The immediate Puerto Rican background fromwhich they emerge
finds antecedents in the innovative work of Hugo Margenat (1933-1957),a poet
and political activist with Marxist ideas, and the new, politically-committed
poetryflourishingwith the organization of the Revista Guajana in 1962. The
Guajana poets, two of whom (Jose Manuel Torres Santiago and Edgardo
Lopez) are presentlyactive in New York, are among the firstto criticallyop-
pose the officialimperialistand bourgeois culture in Puerto Rico with a Marx-
ist critique. They view cultural work as an essential political task. The divi-
sions present in this group reveal the political spectrum supportingthe con-
temporaryleftist poetry - though uniformly independentista, the writers
advocate a "socialism" of broadly differinghues. Ivan Silen for instance is a
self-proclaimedanarchist,while the other Island poets here named are sympa-
theticto socialism, althoughnot explicitlyinvolved in the question of Marxism
and literaryproduction.
"Sepelio" by Jos6Manuel Torres Santiago
Inmensos cadillacs funerarios

cargados de floresy palomas.
Mas floresque gentes
y gentes de cefnosapretados.
Damas de negroy pafiuelos blancos.
Todo limpio y purificado.
Campanias a duelo.
Sefioresde la camara y del senado.
Ricos de toda la Isla encompetados.
La Calle principal repleta de respetos
y respetados.
Un volcan de dolor como volcan helado.

Monjas, cenobitas, curas, obispos
y prelados.
La crema,la crema del amor y el luto
emocionados.
Habia muertodon Gustavo.
el mas hijo de puta de los hacendados.
In varyingdegrees,the poets active in New York write a markedlyliterary,

oftenquite learned, poetry,characteristicallyconcerned with the themes of the
migrant'slife, the destructionof traditional patterns and cultural alienation,
the inspirationprovided by the nationalist, anti-colonial struggles,as well as
the deeply feltcontours of personal relationshipswithinthe Puerto Rican situ-
ation. Victor Fragoso's "Carta de Lolita Lebron" demonstrates the ability of
this poetry to raise basic contradictionswith political consequences through
literaryand highlyindividualized statements.This poetrycaptures the outlook
of the Puerto Rican man, permeated with the sexist strand runningthroughthe
culture,and the present significance of the Nationalist history.It manages to
serve at once as a tool of politicization (exposing the problem) and cultural
combat,withoutfallinginto pamphleteering.
From "Carta de Lolita Lebr6n" by VictorFragoso
mas aca del horizonte

y de la nifhay del hombre que habl6
y de la imagen borrosa de mi pueblo despu6s de viente afios
sol palmas
bases militares
empanadas de jueyes alcapurrias
aire salado marinos mercantesminando peces
comerciantespescando en las minas entrafias
de mi tierra
Mas aca de todo
cerca ya de mis ojos
y de mis lagrimas si las hubiera habido
veo el barroteque divide en dos mi cara
y sabes pueblo mfo
que el hombreque me pedia sopas
un caldo de gallina un buche de cafe
aprendi6 que s6 empunar un arma
y fabricarel fuego con mis manos
con el mismo pulso que 61
aprendi6 que puedo amarlo y dejar que me ame sin ser de 61
amar con 61si
quiero contartelo que veo por esta ventana
postal partida en cinco cintas
cinco pavorosas franjas
dicerteque aqui estoy porque no hay otro curso para la sangre
desde el principio ya la habia ofrecido
suerte que no me la derramaron
la sangre de la tierranunca se derrama
crece fluyese alza pero no se derrama
aun derramada no se derrama
ah la suertede esta sangre
que no permiteun pulso serenamentealerta
posdata
aun conservo el fuegodebajo de la almohada
necesito vertelo antes posible
tu hermana que te quiere
y que jamas te olvida
Lolita
For the poets writingin English and developing a poetrydeeply embedded
in the New York experience, Puerto Rico has not served as the experiential or
cultural source of theirwork. Their dynamic voice rises fromthe clashing ex-
perience in the traditional home and the alien institutions confronted -
school, church,army,criminaljustice system,as well as the cauldron of anta-
gonisticconditions encounteredin the sub-human living quarters of minorities
in New York City. The image and rhythmof this poetry is influenced by the
poetic world more familiar to New York writers:the militant,nationalist ex-
pression of the Afro-Americanpoets, especially arisingin the tumultous1960s.
NorthAmerican poets, such as the progressive William Carlos Williams, and
the rebellious, "nonconformist"poets of the Beat generation,also have had an
impact, notably in the work of Victor Hernandez Cruz, in turn which has in-
fluenced other artists.In contrastto the writersmigratingfromthe Island, the
poets fromNew York did not pass throughthe universityand courses on writ-
ing and Western literature.They took up the study of their medium on their
own. For the most part,theirpoetryis more visual and oral than literary.
The New York poets appeared publicly in the Puerto Rican community
duringthe ground swell of political action in the late 1960s. Felipe Luciano, a
member of the Last Poets and for a period chairman of the Young Lords Or-
ganization, and Pedro Pietri read at political concentrations and progressive
culturalcentersof the Puerto Rican and Black communities.Victor Hernandez
Cruz' firstbook of poetry, Snaps, appeared in 1969. Other poets - Papoleto
Melendez, Americo Casiano, Sandy Esteves, among others- followed, guided
by the earliermodels.
There are many elements characteristicof much new Puerto Rican poetry
which were clearly drawn from the Afro-Americanpoetry of the period of
"Black Power" and the democratic, nationalist organizationin the Black com-
munity.Such elements include the militanttone of anger and struggle,the de-
clamatoryand musical quality of the presentation,the streetimageryof Black
youthand culture,the basically democratic themes in the condemnation of the
ruling"white establishment"and its repressive,chauvinistinstitutions,the call
to fightback and to mold national unityand pride,the denunciation of exploit-
ers and opportunistswithinthe ranks of the Black community.
Felipe Luciano's literaryoutput is significantduringhis stay with the Last
Poets and Young Lords. Dramatized and put to percussive music, his poems
are screaming,rhythmic,subversive calls to "build the nation," to enter the
"Third World fight,"to defend and take pride in the culture,as defined by the
young nationalist movement of the period. They treat the "lumpen" (unem-
ployed youth) in "Yellow Pants" and "Hey Now," warning against self-de-
structionand calling for the united, political direction of energies against the
"white establishment"; they glorifyPuerto Rican culture in "Puerto Rican
Rhythms"as an indestructibleweapon of national survival; theyrecall the cul-
tural "essence" of the nationalityin "Jibaro,"affirminga presentunit with this
romanticized root of the culture. Luciano's upliftingrecitals played a role in

theirday, settingthe stage for political contentionin the cultural realm. Remi-
niscent in their"message" of Frantz Fanon, widely read at the time,they con-
stitutedan attack on the "colonial mentality,"on passivity and timiditybefore
the oppressor,self-destructiveviolence, and the denial of self. However, Luci-
ano's poetryfails to go beyond its period and a narrow nationalist perspective
precludingtrueclass consciousness. It is dated in a time of national awakening
for many New York Puerto Ricans that is now surpassed by a deepening of
political strategyand class consciousness. In the long run, the gesture, the
forced,insistentcry of cultural greatness pitted against an amorphous repres-
sive "white system" fails to provide durable images, solid rhetoricalweapons
fortoday.
From "Hey Now" by Felipe Luciano
Got to get together.Oye Chino go over to Country'spad

and tell him to get the Big People.
And Chino, tell Countrythese faggotsgot all kinds of
heat man, machine guns, rifles,pistols,and tanks.
And theyusing them.
Tell him theyblow up Harlem, Newark, Detroitand Watts and
my aunt got shot in the head just forlooking out the
window, man.
Viceroooyys,Dragons, Midgets
And we gonna name you one of the war counselors of our new
clique
A clique, baby, thatwill tear this nation apart. Can you
imaginethatBatman. (Tell the brotherin your cell)
A clique of millionsand millionsof people
Red, Black, Yellow and Brown
Batman,don't worry'bout it cause the shit is ooonnn
From "Jfbaro"by Felipe Luciano
Jibaro/myprettynigger
Fatherof my yearningforthe soil/theland
The earthof my people
Fatherof the sweet smells of fruitin my mother'swomb
The earth brown of my skin
The thoughtsof freedom
That butterflythroughmy insides
Unlike Luciano, VfctorHernandez Cruz does not set his creative produc-
tion according to a defined political vision. His poems are not intended for
public declamation, but rather to evoke in the reader personal observations
and moods. His are striking,yet delicate poetic images, drawn with calm, sub-
tlety, and sensitivity,where the sounds of the language, the evocation of
words, the course of the rhythmare measured. His world arises fromthe Puer-
to Rican barrio,to which he is still close in Snaps, and widens with travels to
Puerto Rico and across the countryto a final settlementin San Francisco, all
viewed in Mainland (1973). In Snaps, and to an extent in Mainland as well,
Hernandez Cruz mirrorsthe sentiments,style,and modes of perception of the
Puerto Rican youth grown up in city streets:the world in impressionisticbits,
at times speeding or in slow motion by city eyes of cocaine or marijuana. The
poems are shortpsychological or emotional snapshots througheyes trained in

the New York City barrio,dressed as personal impressions of the poet. Their
strengthlies in the power of evocation throughinsightful,penetratingobserva-
tion. Their shortcomingis that the visions of the world become increasingly
private and disconnected from the original source of sensitivityand percep-
tion,the basis in the communityof workersand the vital and complex cultural
experience. The artistfalls into the trap of a world existingfor his private ob-
servationand recreation.
"Location" by VfctorHernandez Cruz
The distance between here and the trains

is too long
They are mountainsaway
The beach is first
So is a school
Thousands of strangerswho walk Rio Piedras
shoppingforthe endless confusion
There is the ocean between here and the trains
where sharks swim all day
There is the ghost of Drake hovering
over the Atlantic
His motheris in New Jerseynow
The distance between here and the trains

is long
Long and wide
Deep and wide ocean length
500 years of historypress against the sky
It does not want to let off
To thinkof otherthings
It remains remindingeverythingthatit is
And sometimesstrongerthan the trains

who remainfar and strange
Here is the futurewhere the music will rain
The island is a trainmovingslow / and
thinkingfast /
While Luciano and Hernandez Cruz, workingfromdissimilarpositions,set

the stage foraddressingthe Puerto Rican's life throughpoetry,Pedro Pietrifills
the main role of director in this treatment.Dramatization, exaggeration,and
incisive sarcasm characterize the elaborately developed images and sweeping
rhythmicflow. The best of Pietri's poetry manages real allusive power with
sarcastic humor and, in the end, deeply serious drama, collecting the entire
gamut of the Puerto Rican experience: migration,settlement,and development
of a people. "Puerto Rican Obituary" sums up all these aspects of Pietri's poe-
try,combiningan exposure of an oppressive and alienating social system,ridi-
cule of the colonized and fetishisticneeds engineered by this system,and an
idealized vision of a Puerto Rico free fromcolonial subordination and misery.
It dramatizes the mutilationof human relations as experienced by Puerto Ri-
cans and expresses the yearningfor the dominion of freedomand undistorted
human intercourse. Puerto Rican Obituary (1973), as a whole, is a literarytes-
tament to its times, bestowing a powerful voice to the multiple sides of the
migrantcommunity'slife: the army and the war ("The B-52 Blew"), the reli-
gious experience (as in "Puerto Rico Obituary" and "Methodist Hang Ups"),
the home and the segregated neighborhoods ("The Old Buildings," "3170
Broadway"), the work relation ("Unemployed" and "Monday Morning"), the
merchant,slum lord,and otherfirst-handexploiters("Beware of Signs"). How-
ever,a clear political understandingand stance fail to emergewhich can probe
deeper than a general takingof sides. And in recent years, Pietri's production
has steered into an anarchistic posture rather than to a development and re-
finementof earlier statementssteeped in knowledge of, and sensitivityto, the
life and needs of the people. The prevailing outlook is a bleak assessment of
the world, a rebellious distrustand rejection of "all systems," all politics, all
order and all directionin life and art, a position exemplified in "The Broken
English Dream" ("Suefio en ingles goleta"), which consists of three pages of
punctuationmarks.
From "Puerto Rican Obituary" by Pedro Pietri
They worked
They were always on time
They were never late
They never spoke back
when theywere insulted
They worked
They never took days off
thatwere not on the calendar
They never went on strike
withoutpermission
They worked
ten days a week
and were only paid forfive
They worked
They worked
They worked
and theydied
They died broke
They died owing
They died never knowing
what the frontentrance
of the firstnational citybank looks like
Juan
Miguel
Milagros
Olga
Manuel
All died yesterdaytoday
and will die again tomorrow
passing theirbill collectors
on to the next of kin
All died
waitingforthe garden of eden
to open up again
under a new management
All died
dreamingabout america
waking themup in the middle of the night
screaming:Mira Mira
your name is on the winninglotteryticket
forone hundredthousand dollars

All died
hatingthe grocerystores
thatsold themmake-believe steak
and bullet-proofrice and beans
All died waitingdreamingand hating
Juan
Miguel
Milagros
Olga
Manuel
will rightnow be doing theirown thing
where beautifulpeople sing
and dance and work together
where the wind is a stranger
to miserable weather conditions
where you do not need a dictionary
to communicatewith your people
Aquf Se Habla Espafiol all the time
Aquf you salute yourflag first
Aquf thereare no dial soap commercials
Aqui everybodysmells good
Aquf tv dinnersdo not have a future
Aquf the men and women admire desire
and never get tiredof each other
Aquf Que Pasa Power is what's happening
Aquf to be called negrito
means to be called LOVE
While the work of Luciano is already quite dated, the best poems of
Hernaindez Cruz and Pietri maintain real vitality and lasting impact. Other
poets have appeared to build on the examples lent by Luciano, Hernandez
Cruz, and Pietri,sometimes equalling and even surpassing the quality devel-
oped in the works of these first writers. Jose' Angel Figueroa, Papoleto
Melendez, Am6rico Casiano, Sandy Esteves, and more recently,Miguel Pifiero,
and the Nuyorican Poets fromthe Lower East Side, while on the road to devel-
oping distinctpoetic personalities,all feed on the basic inspirationand defini-
tive motives of the firstwave of poets: the need to draw the images marking
the Puerto Rican situation that each writerpersonally lives; the national dis-
persal and suppression; the will and fightto survive as a national collectivity.
Spontaneityremains a leading force determiningtheirsocial vision. They cap-
ture the popular spontaneous anger and militantresponse that characterizes
the mass movement.Unfortunately,we frequentlyfind among these poets the
same dangers that stand as a barrierbetween the cultural and the political life
of the whole community:the strained cry of narrow,short-livedcultural rebel-
lion; the anarchisticflairharboringonly destructivechannels; the utopian con-
structionsthat collapse beforereality;the formalisticand private airs that hov-
er out of reach of the masses. Yet a great energy and potential for concrete
force lurks in the best works of these poets, who originatein the midst of the
workingcommunity.The developing work of Sandy Esteves, forexample, ad-
vances toward positive struggles and the future,tearing at the destructive
forcesthatsplinterpersonal lives and a growingpolitical movement.
From "Blanket Weaver" by Sandra Maria Esteves
weaver
weave us a song of many threads
weave us a red of passion

thatbeats wings against a smokycloud
and forces motioninto our lungs
weave us a song of red and yellow

and brown
thatholds the sea and the sky in its skin
thatholds the bird and mountainin its voice
that builds upon our graves a home
forinjusticefear oppression abuse and disgrace
and upon these fortifications
of strengthunityand direction
weave us a rich round black thatlives

in the eyes of our warriorchild
and feeds our mouthswith moon breezes
with rhythmsinterflowing
throughall spaces of existence
a black thatholds the movementof eternity
The poetrybeing produced in Spanish stems largelyfroma language, style,

and conceptual concerns orientedtoward the Island. It is not the voice trained
in New York,a poetic reflexof this experience. Yet, along with its best achieve-
ments and strengths,it can contributethe needed standard of the great Latin
American poetic tradition- Vallejo, Neruda, the "Nueva Cancion" - to a pro-
gressive New York poetry.In the cultural forefrontof the heighteningpolitical
struggleof Puerto Ricans in the 1960s, New York poetry as a whole has now
fallen behind the continued advance of this process. Born as a powerful medi-
um in the hands of thousands of Puerto Ricans marchingagainst theireconom-
ic and cultural subordination, erupting amidst a young, spontaneous move-
ment,the lack of adequate political directionhas leftwide open the roads of a
modish aestheticism and willful anarchism. Yet the fascination of the New
York poets, tracingtheiroriginsto the very heart of the migrantcollectivityof
wage-laborers, capturing as they do the profound experiences of a rapidly
changing cultural identity,still offers signs of a significant artistic break-
throughforPuerto Ricans and the whole NorthAmerican workingclass. How
closely it is able to reintegrateinto the frontlinesof its community'slife and
political urgencieswill determineits ultimatecourse.
CONCLUDING REMARKS
All the prominentfeatures of the music, poetry and drama of Puerto Ri-
cans in the United States arise fromthe single event of the dismembermentof
the colony, the transferof part of its people as'wage-laborers into new eco-
nomic, political, and cultural circumstances,and the growthand development
of the new community.Other art forms have given vivid expression to this
experience as well. The graphic work of the Taller Boricua, the dance of Betty
Garcfa outlining the history of the Puerto Rican proletarian woman, Piri
Thomas' powerful autobiographical novel Down These Mean Streets in the
vein of Native Son, and the collection of Puerto Rican cultural historyof El
No. 3
LatinAmericanPerspectiv~esIssue lO Sumer 1976, Vol. 111,
Museo del Barrio are some of the notable events which characterize the lively
culturalworld of Puerto Ricans in New York.
These noted cultural artifacts,of course, do not constitute the whole of
Puerto Rican culture,nor even its most essential core. In many ways, this artis-
tic output,being of necessity attached to the cultural apparatus that is part of
the structureof ideological domination, only serves to distortthe day-to-day
concrete social interactionthat occurs at the work site, in the neighborhood
and schools; the political and ideological impact experienced in engaging the
dominant institutions;the new cultural possibilities that arise with these ex-
periences and in the presence of new technological forces; and the changes,
challenges, and mutual influence among the generations.The pressing need in
culturaltheoryand criticismis to probe deeper toward this social basis of cul-
ture.By drawing amply fromthe field of everydaycultural experience, we may
recognize more clearly the workingclass contours of culture; we may be ena-
bled more appropriatelyto place the distinctivenational features,which seem
to loom so prominentlyin the foreground,into the perspective of the broader
historical movement of the people. Only such an approach can disclose the
powerfulcurrentsand profoundimplications,as well as the ominous dangers,
of a multinationalculturalsituation.
The divergence between the creative work which is granted recognition
and the actual circumstances of the communityis also manifestin the severe
lag of cultural expression behind political and economic conditions. Existing
cultural work has not taken adequate account of the degree and character of
national oppression, nor has it kept pace with the discontentor possibilities of
the Puerto Rican people's struggle.With all the innovation and vitalityof our
culture,the revolutionarypossibilities affordedby the presenteconomic crisis,
forexample, and the more developed political understandingachieved over the
last decade lack any significantcorrelatesin our culturalproduction.
The pressingtasks on the culturalfrontare the dual responsibilityof active
cultural workers and the political vanguard, whose effortshave for too long
been expended separately and, at times,even at cross purposes.
* * * *
Following are portraits by the contemporaryPuerto Rican artist,Victor Lin-

ares. He was born in Puerta de Tierra,Puerto Rico, and studied art at the Aca-
demia San Carlos (Universidad Nacional Autonoma de Mexico) and at the
Universityof Puerto Rico. His art formspart of the production of thatgenera-
tionincludingartistssuch as Tony Maldonado, Homar, Martorell,Tufino,Oso-
rio and others. In Puerto Rico he participated in the First Biennial Exhibit of
Latin American engravingsand has also exhibited at the Instituo de Cultura
(San Juan), at the Museo del Barrio (New York) and the Galeria Tito (New
York). Since 1971 he has resided in New York City, where his work depicting
thelife of the Puerto Rican workerhas received the recognitionof otherartists.
Portraitsby the contemporaryPuerto Rican artist,Linares.
LuisoCapetillo(1883-1922).Industrial
work- JulnVilur.One of theoriginalfoundersin
er, writer,orator,and organizer of the 1909of theCentrode EstudiosSociales.Be-
Federaci6nLibre.Anarchistby persuasion, forehisdeathin 1915he was to becomethe
active in workers'struggles,she dedicated "social philosopher"of the PuertoRican
her lifeto defendinterests of the working working movement. He was instrumentalin
class and fortheemancipation ofthePuerto founding twojournalsand publishedseveral
Rican workingwoman.Portraitrepresents philosophicaland pedagogical
works.His ef-
herarrestin Cuba (1915)forbeingdressedin fortswere concentrated on changingthe
masculineattire. conventionaleducationalsystemto incor-
poratenewtechniques.
gos dcl Bien PO;blico," established in San Federacion Libre,he was active in the work-
Juanin 1873. His effortsrepresentthe initial ers' movementsand was imprisonedon sev-
manifestations of solidarity among artisan eral occasions for his attacks on bourgeois
workersin Puerto Rico. society and in defense of the workingclass.
He was to becomea senatorrepresenting
the
PartidoSocialista.
Lh,A-i-,a, Pe,-pc -oe I,,re 10,Sooe 976, Vol Ill, No

REFERENCES
Campos, Ricardo
1974 "Apuntes sobre la expresi6n cultural obrera puertorriquefia,"San Juan:Centro de Estu-
dios de la Realidad Puertorriquefia(CEREP), mimeographed
Esteves, Sandra Maria
1975 "Blanket Weaver," pp. 134-135in Miguel Algarin and Miguel Pifiero(eds.), An Antholo-
gy of Puerto Rican Words & Feelings, New York: Morrow Paperback Editions
Fragoso,Victor
1975 "Notas sobre la expresi6n teatral de la comunidad puertorriquefnaen Nueva York:
1965-1975,"New York: Centro de Estudios Puertorriquefios,mimeographed
Hernandez Cruz, Victor
1969 Snaps, New York: Vintage Books
1972 "Location," The Rican (Chicago), 2 (Winter),
1973 Mainland, New York: Random House.
Lenin,V. I.
1965 "A Great Beginning,"in Collected Works (29), Moscow: Progress Publishers
1968 "Critical Remarks on The National Question," in National Liberation,Socialism, & Im-
perialism, New York: InternationalPublishers
Marx, Karl
1967 "Theses on Feuerbach," in The German Ideology, New York: InternationalPublishers
Pietri,Pedro
1972 "The Broken English Dream," p. 138 in The Puerto Rican Poets, Los Poetas
Puertorriqueuios,New York: Bantam Books
1973 Puerto Rican Obituary, New York: MonthlyReview Press
Pifiero,Miguel
1975 Short Eyes, New York: Mermaid Drama Books, Hill & Wang
Records
Barreto,Ray
BarretoPower, New York: Fania SLP 391
Col6n, Willie
Cosa Nuestra, New York: Fania SLP 384
Figueroa,Miguel Angel (Jibaritode Adjuntas), Conjunto Tipico Ladi
"Yo Me Vuelvo a Mi Bohfo,"Verne RecordingCorp. V-1006B
Grillo,Frank (Machito) y su Orquesta
Machito, New York: Mericana Records MYS-110
Grupo Folkl6ricoy ExperimentalNuevayorquino
Concepts in Unity,New York: Mericana Record Corp. SAL 2-400
Luciano, Felipe
The OriginalLast Poets, New York: JuggernautRecords JUG ST LP 8802
Pab6n, Tony y la Protesta
La Protesta, New York: Rico Record St. RLP 701
Palmieri,Eddie y su Orchestra
Justicia,New York: Tico Records LP 1188
Rivera,Mon with Moncho Lefiay Los Ases del Ritmo
A Nightat the Palladium, New Yorks Ansonia ALP 1219

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The Cultural Expression of Puerto Ricans in New York: A Theoretical Perspective and Critical

Music to me then is more than just performing.It's studying,organizing around young

THEORETICAL THESES ON NATIONAL CULTURE

This preliminarysurvey and commentaryon the cultural world of Puerto

poetry,is intended as a step in developing a historical materialistanalysis on

1) The fundamentalvariables which underlie all the particularities,self-

self-conscious the subjected culture. The dominant culture serves to explain,

of Puerto Rican cultural experience has changed accordingly. On the Island,

struggleforproletarianrevolutionin NorthAmerica, the representativeculture

appreciate the fascinating rhythms and textures of our specific cultural

CRITICAL REVIEW OF PUERTO RICAN CULTURAL EXPRESSION:

plaints against theirplight,the swindlingsufferedat the hands of the landown-

From "Alo! ZQuien Nama?"

Alo! ZQuien Nama?

"Yo Vuelvo a Mi Bohfo"

Si yo vine a Nueva York/conel finde progresar,

Fui por el Parque Central/meestuvo muy divertido,

Ay, no sigo de esta manera/porque no me esta gustando

Ay, liega el dia de cobrar,

Music served as a cohesive cultural force among the migrants,being a rec-

ZCudndo llegara la justicia?

Justiciapa' los boricuas y los niches.

Salsa also contains a multi-nationalor international aspect increasingly

From "Quftatela Mascara," by Ray Barreto

De postreme diste astrinina,

From "Juana Pefia," by Willie Col6n

From "Carmen la Ronca," by Grupo Folkl6rico y Experimental Nuevayorquino

Ella todo lo averigua

From "Dale Jam6na la Jeba,"by Machito

pression of Puerto Ricans. And it goes on as a Puerto Rican expression, a form

the ever-presentmusic of other peoples. In contrast to the invisibilityof the

dium the questions and problems uppermost in the experience, thought,and

because of their concentrationon moments,impressions, and crystalizations

Teatro La Nueva Mujer, especially dedicated to treatingthe position of women

burstof militantstrugglein the Puerto Rican communityduringthe late 1960s.

Inmensos cadillacs funerarios

Un volcan de dolor como volcan helado.

In varyingdegrees,the poets active in New York write a markedlyliterary,

From "Carta de Lolita Lebr6n" by VictorFragoso

mas aca del horizonte

romanticized root of the culture. Luciano's upliftingrecitals played a role in

Got to get together.Oye Chino go over to Country'spad

From "Jfbaro"by Felipe Luciano

poems are shortpsychological or emotional snapshots througheyes trained in

The distance between here and the trains

The distance between here and the trains

And sometimesstrongerthan the trains

While Luciano and Hernandez Cruz, workingfromdissimilarpositions,set

forone hundredthousand dollars

From "Blanket Weaver" by Sandra Maria Esteves

weave us a red of passion

weave us a song of red and yellow

weave us a rich round black thatlives

The poetrybeing produced in Spanish stems largelyfroma language, style,

Following are portraits by the contemporaryPuerto Rican artist,Victor Lin-

Portraitsby the contemporaryPuerto Rican artist,Linares.

Lh,A-i-,a, Pe,-pc -oe I,,re 10,Sooe 976, Vol Ill, No

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