In a 1928 portrait, a Puerto Rican woman is depicted holding a devotional painting of the Virgin Mary and child, gazing directly at the viewer with her hand on her hip. The painting, titled La promesa by Miguel Pou y Becerra, hints at the broken promise of salvation through Catholicism forced upon Puerto Rico during Spanish colonization. The woman, with olive skin and dressed in a plain, ochre-colored dress, conveys a sense of sadness and doubt through her eyes, revealing the lies she has endured.
The Rollins Museum of Art in Orlando, Florida is currently hosting the exhibition „Nostalgia For My Island: Puerto Rican Painting from the Museo de Arte de Ponce (1786–1962),“ where La promesa is displayed alongside The Vision of Saint Philip Benizi by José Campeche y Jordán. This exhibition is part of a series exploring Puerto Rican identity, both historically and in the present day.
The complexities of Puerto Rican identity, especially in the face of continued colonization, are highlighted in recent exhibitions such as „1898: Visual Culture and U.S. Imperialism in the Caribbean and the Pacific“ at the National Portrait Gallery and „Puerto Rico Negrx“ at the Museo de Arte Contemporáneo de Puerto Rico. These exhibitions delve into the history and ongoing struggles of Puerto Rican identity formation under various colonial powers.
The year 1898 marked a significant turning point for Puerto Rico, as the US acquired the island from Spain after a brief war. This transition from Spanish to American rule posed challenges for Puerto Rican artists, who documented and navigated this shift through their work, as seen in the exhibitions at Rollins and NPG.
The portraits displayed in these exhibitions, such as Lola Rodriguez de Tio, Arturo Schomburg, and Eugenio Maria de Hostos, represent key figures in Puerto Rican history who advocated for independence and social justice. These portraits serve as visual representations of their causes, furthering the conversations on Puerto Rican identity and self-determination. Rodriguez de Tio, for instance, is depicted with short hair and dressed in a manner resembling a Spanish statesman, a form of presenting herself as a colonized woman in a masculine way to be taken seriously. Schomburg, in a small photograph, is also seen wearing a black tuxedo, a symbol of social class. These three intellectuals largely laid the groundwork for the next generation to resist the new regime, such as the Nationalist Party Revolts in the mid-20th century, emphasizing the development of national symbols of Puerto Rican identity that would emerge later. „Vielleicht würden einige von ihnen, besonders die früheren, überrascht sein zu sehen, wie sich die Dinge entwickelt haben und wie das, was es bedeutet, Puerto Ricaner zu sein, auf unterschiedliche Weise beschrieben oder charakterisiert werden kann.“