Puerto Rico is a hotbed of music, gastronomy, and tourism. Because of this, it is no surprise that Puerto Ricans also share a rich art culture. 

Prolific portraitist Jose Campeche captured historical figures living in Puerto Rico during the 18th century. During his tenure, he also created impressive religious portraits; painting more than 400 works just for the church alone. 

Impressionist Francisco Oller painted everything from still life to complex paintings like “El Velorio” which serve as vivid windows into Puerto Rico’s past.

Jose Rosa, Antonio Martorell, Ramon Frade, Miguel Pou, the list of talented artists goes on all the way to the contemporary art of today.

The University of South Florida Contemporary Art Museum (USF CAM) in Tampa, has curated such cultural works of art. Its exhibit titled “Constant Storm: Art From Puerto Rico And The Diaspora.” shines a spotlight on a Puerto Rican population that has increased in Florida. Mass immigration events caused by the back to back natural disasters caused by recent earthquakes, Hurricanes Irma and Maria, and the COVID pandemic pushed between 30,000 and 50,000 people to the Sunshine State.

“You’re encouraged to start in the smaller gallery,” says Gillian Olortegui, a Student Assistant at the USF CAM. The artists planned out the optimum way to move through the exhibit in a way that would enhance a museum patron’s experience.  

By following this programmed order, patrons first experience a set of static art exhibits. The works in this area are housed in a subtly lit space that is serene and quiet. Artwork by Ivelisse Jimenez, Gamaliel Rodriguez, Yiyo Tirado Rivera, and Jorge Gonzalez Santos range from canvas paintings to a sand sculpture which is designed to deteriorate with the environment.

As visitors move away from this section of traditional art styles, patrons move through a small hallway housing a video presentation titled “Foreign in a Domestic Sense” by Natalia Lessalle-Morrillo and Sofia Gallisa Muriente.  

“It’s a four video installation that syncs up with each other,” says Olortegui about her favorite part of the exhibit.  

The video artwork displays fragmented events which the spectator then becomes part of as they assemble them all together in their mind. This piece of interpretative art is a decompression chamber of sorts that prepares patrons to enter into the more abstract final section of the exhibit.

It is more than obvious once you reach this last section of the Constant Storm exhibit. In contrast with the entrance, visitors are bombarded with bright colors, loud competing sounds, and the jarring use of bold materials. 

Standing out are two artworks prominently featured in the promotional material for this particular USF CAM exhibit. First, you run into a brightly colored shaved ice cart titled “Pimp My Piragua” by Miguel Luciano. The piragua, or shaved ice, is a staple of Puerto Rican culture. The piraguero who makes the piraguas is easily identifiable by the carts that they push.  

To a Puerto Rican, “Pimp my Piragua” needs little explanation as an art piece that highlights the melting pot of Puerto Rican and US mainland culture. In his piece Luciano takes the traditional piragua cart and “pimps it up” by attaching it to a low-rider style bicycle and painting the whole thing with bright orange paint. To top it off, Luciano added an audio system that would easily be found in any fiebru’s (audiophile) car.

If the organizers of the Constant Storm exhibit would start this section with an extremely bold specimen, they should find an art piece that’s just as strong to finish the exhibit with. Wanda Raimundi and Kristina Tollefson’s combined performance and material art piece fit the bill perfectly.

A professor at the University of Central Florida, Tollefson created a traditional Afro-Puerto Rican dress out of materials such as blue tarp, advertisement signs, and other debris left behind by hurricanes. Wanda Raimundi then used this dress to create an interpretative art piece part where she walked through certain city venues and danced to traditional Afro-Puerto Rican music.

The result of all this effort became a piece titled “Exodus / Pilgrimage” displayed by showing the performances on a video screen and by prominently displaying the dress on a mannequin facing the exit. It’s almost like the exhibit organizers wanted to remind patrons that despite the hardship faced by the people of the Puerto Rican Diaspora, they will make the best of what they have and continue moving forward to preserve their culture into the future.

“Constant Storm: Art From Puerto Rico And The Diaspora” is on display at the USF Contemporary Art Museum through December 4th, 2021.

The people of Puerto Rico have been through a lot in the past four years. Hurricane Maria and Irma packed a double wallop causing widespread destruction that cost more than $90 billion in damages in Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands. The human toll was worse with an excess of 2975 deaths in just Puerto Rico as a result of the storm. 

As if these disasters were not shocking enough, Earthquakes continue to rock the island. Damage includes structural damage to homes, schools, and businesses making them uninhabitable. The New York Times reports that thousands of families sleep outside their dwellings for fear that tremors may finish off their homes while they are inside.  

Four years since Hurricane Maria, physical and emotional scars are still felt by Puerto Ricans that lived through back-to-back disasters. During these emergencies, recovery aid was painfully slow and some are still waiting for recovery money and assistance. 

These events touched Puerto Ricans of every part of the social strata. Even US Representative Alexandra Ocasio Cortez’s own grandmother had hardships living in post-Maria Puerto Rico. Many felt the desperation that comes from not being able to find a stable place to work or live, opted to immigrate to the United States mainland.  

Puerto Rico is a territory of the United States and its people are US citizens. As such, Puerto Ricans can move in and out of the US mainland at will. In 2017 over 100,000 Puerto Ricans did just that as they fled in droves to places like Florida.

What greeted them there was not that much better. Groups that decided to settle in the area of Tampa, walked into more frustrating circumstances which in turn created deeper more complicated issues. Sociocultural anthropologist Dr. Alessandra Rosa calls this a “cascading disaster.” 

“The needs in the migrant community were great,” Dr. Rosa says. “They needed affordable housing,” but instead were met with inflated rent prices in Tampa. According to rentdata.org, “2017 Fair Market Rent prices in Tampa-St. Petersburg-Clearwater are very high.”

In order to afford a place to live, Puerto Rican migrants needed jobs that paid enough to pay the high rent prices they were experiencing. In many instances, they did not find that. Dr. Rosa mentions that some challenges for these displaced families included “the language barrier, lack of affordable or free child care, and racism” just to name a few.  

One of the most important reasons why families migrated was their children’s education. They quickly found out that the hurricane had created several issues with that as well. Dr. Rosa says “it was a challenge for parents to enroll their children in school because in many cases their kids’ school electronic and hard records were lost due to the storms.” “In cases where children enrolled in local schools, the language barrier was sometimes an extra obstacle for keeping up with their studies.”

The “cascading disaster” Dr. Rosa speaks about is a result of all of these compounding issues. “The Tampa community especially was ill-prepared for the influx of immigrants from Puerto Rico,” said Rosa. 

Many of these Puerto Ricans had no choice but to return to Puerto Rico where they face similar hardships, but at least have family support. Some chose to stay and to confront the new challenges posed at the locations they immigrated to.

Evidently, four years after Hurricane Maria Puerto Ricans continue to feel desperation. They need the government at both the state and federal levels to provide them with the assistance they need to get on their feet. Government organizations and NGOs have still not implemented adequate action plans that will be effective in dealing with the state of emergency created by these compounding disasters.  

Dr. Rosa says “it is unfortunate that given what these communities have gone through during two hurricanes, several earthquakes, and now the COVID pandemic, that we do not have better programs in place in case other major disasters happen again in the future.”