BOOK PRESENTATION & DISCUSSION: "Pioneros": Puerto Rican Migration to New York, 1896-1948 Speaker : Félix V. Matos RodrÍguez

THE COMPLEXITY OF SOCIAL AND POLITICAL EVENTS

One of the things that was really fascinating about entertainment that we also wanted to stress was the fact was for example how complex and diverse was that community. If you look at some of the flyers we included, you will see that a political event or a social event, for example, would have combinations of music genres that you would not find today. You would have a soprano singing with a trio following with a full orchestra at the end with Julia de Burgos reciting poetry at the end.A combination of what now for lack of a better word you might consider popular and high culture and things that normally you don’t see in a similar venue and they were all over the place in the thirties and forties. And that’s for example something you might find difficult to understand but I think it showed -- what I liked about that is -- the richness and complexity and the desire not to fit into any box which is one of the things that is a consistent struggle for Puerto Ricans and other ethnic groups, that people allow you to lead a full life and not always peg you with some kind of stereotype. In that particular chapter we did actually maybe err on the side of showing some of those things because it was fascinating. That you would have a political rally in which they were discussing the latest bill to get independence of Puerto Rico from the U.S. Congress and you would have this interesting combination of artistic expression in one event or you would have -- an I’m stealing one of Pedro Juan’s favorite images, you want to say that because I stole that from you. You would have these images of all these beauty pageants -- No, another Puerto Rican beauty pageant! No, Lord! Please, Lord, don’t do that! But then you notice that part of the event is part of a labor organization that had a very clear agenda and a program. That it was part of an educational component and then things begin to fall into a context.that might not be apparent if you just judge the event by the first image without a context or some of our own preconceived notions of what or some of our own childhood memories of terror of these things...

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