A traveling version of The Puerto Rican Year is available for a modest loan fee and the cost of shipping. Please contact Kate Koperski at 716/286-8293 for additional information. An illustrated 20-page exhibition publication may be purchased for $6.50 including shipping.

The following images, reminiscences, and songs [in this Spring/Summer 1999 Voices section] are from an exhibition, shown at the Castellani Art Museum of Niagara University in fall 1998, that looked at holidays and festivals that are uniquely Puerto Rican and their annual observance in western New York. Many of these celebrations have endured and evolved since the Middle Ages. They reflect the fascinating blend of indigenous Taíno Indian, Spanish, and African traditions that makes up Puerto Rican culture. All are set to the compelling beat of Puerto Rican folk music—jíbaro—from the mountains of the country’s interior and African-derived styles like the bomba and plena. Through these celebrations Puerto Rican cultural identity is both expressed and preserved.

Gift giving after Three Kings Mass, Immaculate Conception Parish, Buffalo, New York, 1992. Photograph by Marion Faller.

The Puerto Rican Year included photographs of celebrations in Buffalo, Lackawanna, and Rochester, New York; carnival masks and a spectacular carnival costume; a listening kiosk featuring music recorded at the local celebrations by ethnomusicologist Karen Canning; santos carvings representing saints associated with the holidays documented in the exhibit; and an altar created for La Fiesta de la Cruz de Mayo, the Festival of the Cross of May. Among the celebrations featured in the photodocumentation are El Viacrucis, the Way of the Cross procession La Fiesta de San Juan Bautista, the St. John the Baptist festival and Three Kings celebrations. The holidays and festivals documented in The Puerto Rican Year are grounded in folk Catholicism—reworkings of formal liturgy and ritual that reflect the particular history of the Puerto Rican people. When Christopher Columbus landed on Puerto Rico during his second voyage to the Americas in 1493, the island was inhabited by the Taíno. In 1509, Juan Ponce de Leon, one of Columbus’s soldiers, founded the first Spanish settlement there. Intent on exploiting the island for profit, the conquistadores forced the Taíno to mine gold and later to provide the labor for agricultural ventures. Diseases introduced by the Europeans, harsh working conditions, war, and reprisals against attempted uprisings soon decimated the Taíno population. From the early decades of the 1500s, enslaved Africans, mainly from the western regions of the continent, were used as laborers on the island. The conquistadores imposed Catholicism on both the Taíno and the early African inhabitants of the island. Ironically, as time passed, the religion of the oppressor was gradually co-opted by the oppressed. As open rebellion proved to be futile, people quietly grafted elements of the own customs and beliefs onto Spanish Catholicism as a means of cultural and spiritual self-preservation. This blending of cultural traditions gives the artworks in The Puerto Rican Year their distinctive character. In a Nativity scene carved by Pablo Rinaldi, for example, the infant Jesus sleeps peacefully in a hammock. The Taíno invented that sleeping device, and "hammock" is one of the few surviving words in the Taíno language. Masks made from coconut shell, worn during an annual July festival in honor of St. James the Apostle in the city of Loiza Aldea, are believed to be derived from the traditions of the region’s early African inhabitants. Western New York is home to largest number of Puerto Ricans in the state outside of New York City, yet Puerto Rican art and history are rarely represented in the region’s cultural institutions. The Puerto Rican Year introduces some of the most widespread and enduring Puerto Rican cultural traditions to those outside the community. The Puerto Rican Year was the culmination of more than three years of research completed in partnership with Puerto Rican folk artists and community scholars. Santos carver, educator, and writer Ramón Estrada-Vega coordinated library and archival research on the history and development of traditional celebrations, assisted by his wife, Rosario. Mr. Estrada also curated the exhibit’s stunning santos component, which included pieces lent by local collectors Zulma Deitz and Charles Penney. SUNY Buffalo Ph.D. student Janine Santiago conducted interviews with the community members. Artist Lillian Méndez provided information about Puerto Rican carnival traditions and introduced the museum to talented costume maker Orlando Ortiz.

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