Moca, Puerto Rico | New York City | Nuyoricans

Artist's identities, like everyone's, are informed by their surroundings. The colors, smells, sounds, landscapes, history, and traditions of their communities are expressed in their work—in what they create, how they create, and why they create. Rosa Elena's hometown of Moca, Puerto Rico has had a profound impact on who she is today as a woman, and as an artist.

Moca, Puerto Rico

Moca, Rosa Elena's hometown, is in northwestern Puerto Rico Photo: http://welcome.topuertorico.org/city/moca.shtml

The beginning of Rosa Elena's lacemaking lies in her hometown of Moca, in the northwest region of

The name Moca is a Taino word referring to this beautiful flowering local tree, known as andira inermis in the scientific community.

Puerto Rico. The town of Moca, founded in 1772, is surrounded by fertile plains where it rains often between May and November, and drought conditions occur between December to March. The Culebrinas River flows from the mountains through the town. At one time the economy relied on the cultivation of sugar cane. The economy is now centered around manufacturing and electronics factories.

Bronze statue of a tejadora, mundillo maker. Moca, is the capital of mundillo in Puerto Rico.

The name Moca is a Taino word for a tree that is common to the region. Tainos were the indigenous inhabitants of Puerto Rico and other islands of the Caribbean before the arrival of Europeans. The moca tree (andira inermis) has clusters of rose and purple flowers resembling the flowers of the sweetpea plant.

Compared with New York City, where Rosa Elena lives today, Moca is small. Around 30,000 people live in about a dozen barrios (neighborhoods). As in many Latin American regions, each town in Puerto Rico has a patron saint, and there are festivities and processions in their honor on their feast day. The fiesta patronal for Moca is celebrated for Our Lady of Montserrate on September 8. The town is nicknamed La Capital de Mundillo (the Capital of Mundillo). Since 1980, the town has held a mundillo festival to celebrate the town's legacy each December and a statue in the plaza, La tejedora de mundillo honors the art and its artists year-round.

Puerto Rican Migration to New York City

Rosa Elena migrated to New York City in 1986 and is part of the largest community of Puerto Ricans on the U.S. mainland. Puerto Ricans born in New York or who live in New York call themselves Nuyoricans. Once a disparaging term used by islanders to ridicule migrants, the word is now embraced by second- and third-generation Puerto Ricans in New York to describe their culture—one that straddles island and urban life, U.S. and Puerto Rican values.

Puerto Rico is the fourth largest island in the Caribbean. Four centuries of Spanish colonial rule made Puerto Rico a Spanish-speaking country that shares many cultural aspects with other Latin American and Caribbean nations, yet it is separated from most of Latin America by a century of U.S. colonial presence and its ambiguous status as a U.S. commonwealth or territory. In 1898, after the Spanish American war, the U.S. took over Puerto Rico, and American companies gained control of the island's economy. The transfer of power resulted in a shift in the location and nature of work. Primarily the sugar industry moved from the country to city and became more industrial than agricultural. The change in the means of production greatly affected the workers and created a labor shortage.

Photo: Jack Delano, Personal Papers, Centro de Estudios Puertorriqueños, Hunter College, CUNY.

Puerto Rican agricultural workers harvesting sugarcane. Photo: Organizational Records, Centro de Estudios Puertorriqueños, Hunter College, CUNY.

At the turn of the 20th century, many agriculturists had to retool as industrialists and move to the cities to find work. Photo: Organizational Records, Centro de Estudios Puertorriqueños, Hunter College, CUNY.

Due to the scarcity of work, 71,000 people left the island between 1909 and 1940. By 1935, sugar production had declined and other sectors of trade and production—coffee, needlework, tobacco, and cigar production were also collapsing. These factors led to the implementation of "Operacion Manos a la Obra," or "Operation Bootstrap," a 1940s economic plan designed and implemented by the U.S. and Puerto Rican governments to boost the island's failing economy.

Although there were many success of Operation Bootstrap, including a decade of increased per capita income, increased school enrollments, increased life expectancy, the expanding industrial sector that was supposed to absorb the displaced agricultural workers could not. It became saturated much faster than expected. In fact, if there had not been a large outmigration flow from 1950-1960, when 500,000 (20%) Puerto Ricans came to the mainland, the island's economy would have imploded. Historian Virginia Sánchez Korrol sums up the economic situation on the island as "a perfect example of growth without development." [1983:218]

Puerto Rican migrant workers en route to the U.S. mainland. Photo: Organizational Records, Centro de Estudios Puertorriqueños, Hunter College, CUNY.

Because of the U.S.'s relationship with Puerto Rico, and the mass migration of Puerto Ricans to the mainland, Congress passed the Jones Act of 1917, which conferred American citizenship on Puerto Ricans. This changed Puerto Rican's status from immigrant to migrant, therefore making it easier to make the move to the mainland during difficult economic times. The Johnson Act of 1921 and the revised Johnson Act of 1924, although not aimed at Puerto Ricans, also increased migration. This legislation severely limited European immigration and so contributed to expansion of jobs on the mainland for African Americans migrating north from the southern states and for Puerto Ricans.

The issue of statehood for Puerto Rico is often the subject of debate. The U.S. has not annexed Puerto Rico into the Union, so it remains a possession, or commonwealth. The island's upper economic classes support this decision because they do not have to pay federal income taxes, yet financial support for the lower economic classes comes from the federal government, not the commonwealth budget.

Like other ethnic and immigrant groups before them, Puerto Ricans took low-paying jobs that had helped previous immigrants move up the economic ladder. However, Puerto Ricans remain among the least educated and poorest migrants. In New York City, the hotel and restaurant industries and especially the garment industry have depended on the large presence of Puerto Ricans. During World War I and in the 1920s, Puerto Ricans were drawn to New York City to replace the positions formerly occupied by European immigrants. Although there were other Puerto Rican settlements throughout the city, East Harlem became the largest. Following World War I and ensuing massive migration from the island, many Puerto Ricans flocked there and it became known as El Barrio (The Neighborhood).

Although Rosa Elena spent most of her life in Moca, she moved to New York City in 1986 to begin a new chapter in her life. While she had already established her skill and devotion to mundillo in Puerto Rico, moving to New York made her recognize and strengthen her personal and cultural ties to mundillo and to the tejedora legacy. In New York she introduced new people to the art and continues to build a tradition of mundillo. In addition to influencing her personally, professionally, and artistically, moving to New York connected Rosa Elena to generations of Puerto Ricans who had migrated her before her. She currently lives near Hunter College in an apartment filled with mementos of Puerto Rico. Her loom is always out, ready to be worked on and her walls, shelves, and closets are filled with mundillo pieces.

________________________________________________________

Nuyoricans

Founded by poet Miguel Algarín in 1994, the Nuyorican Poet's Cafe has given voice to a generation of young Latino, African American, and other poets, providing them with a forum for their art and a new medium of expression. The Cafe popularized the contest of poets known as the slam, and gave it a decidedly Nuyorican slant. Visit their website at www.nuyorican.com. Photo: Martha Cooper

A common term for Puerto Ricans who were born or grew up in New York City is Nuyorican. The word is a combination of the words New Yorker and Puerto Rican. Originally a disparaging term used by those from the island to describe a generation of migrants who dressed differently, acted differently, and spoke differently (Nuyoricans either spoke Spanglish, a combination of Spanish and English that many Spanish-speaking Puerto Ricans felt was a bastardized and corrupted form, or no Spanish at all).

Nuyorican is now a term embraced by second and third generation Puerto Ricans in New York to describe their culture-one that straddles island and urban life, United States and Puerto Rican values. The ideas of biculturalism and discrimination were major concerns for the Nuyorican literary movement that emerged in the 1960s and 1970s with a center New York's Lower East Side.

This movement was comprised of poets and writers who expressed themselves in English and Spanish and in rhymes and rhythms that blended Latin Salsa and African-American sensibilities. In the early 1970s, a group of poets opened the Nuyorican Poets Café in the Lower East Side. One of the founding poets, Miguel Algarín, lists a few definitions of "Nuyorican" in the introduction to the book, Aloud: Voices from the Nuyorican Poets Café by Miguel Algarin.

Nuyorican (nü yor 'e ken) (New York + Puerto Rican) 1. Originally Puerto Rican epithet for those of Puerto Rican heritage born in New York: their Spanish was different (Spanglish), their way of dress and look were different. They were a stateless people (like most U.S. poets) until the Café became their homeland. 2. After Algarín and Piñero, a proud poet speaking New York Puerto Rican. 3. A denizen of the Nuyorican Poets Café. 4. New York's riches.

back to the top