Latinx Paper Cultures: Puerto Rican Solidarity, 1960s-1980s

My CLAS Summer Research Project focused on posters that communicated solidarity with Puerto Rican independence in the second half of the twentieth century. While my previous research was going to focus on the Instituto de Cultura PuertoRiqueña’s printmaking workshops that produced the majority of the nation's posters, it soon became clear that under the jurisdiction of the state, the ICP and its printmaking workshops favored Puerto Rican statehood and its commonwealth status within the United States. My remote research included reading various books, articles, and primary documents such as interviews that narrated this tension within Puerto Rican printmaking. I found the Museum of Fine Arts Houston’s ICAA particularly useful- they have an entire online archive of documents relating to Latinx and Latin American art. Based on my findings, I have a better understanding of the triangulation between Puerto Rico, the United States, and Cuba- especially in terms of producing politically-oriented prints, and hope that moving forward, I will be able to locate more didactic works within the oeuvres of Puerto Rican artists who were living on the island between the 1960s and 80s.