Mail Service in the Tropics - 1937 - Rockwell Kent
~ OR ~ That time that Puerto Rican bureaucrats were mad that Afro-Latino people were included in a mural.
In the 1930’s American artist, adventurer, and writer Rockwell Kent (1882-1971) was commissioned to paint a mural depicting the northernmost and southernmost territories serviced by the U.S. Post Office Department. At the time, that was the state of Alaska and the territory of Puerto Rico.
Rockwell Kent made his first trip to Puerto Rico in July of 1936, while conducting research for Mail Service in the Tropics. There, he encountered and was distressed by scenes of great poverty, especially among those of African descent.
It was in 1937 that the Ponce Massacre occurred, during which Puerto Rican police killed approximately twenty and wounded over 100 peaceful Nationalist parade-goers.
Due to his political and humanitarian sympathies with the Puerto Rican people, Kent chose to depict the Puerto Ricans that he encountered during his visit, and to embed in his mural a message of political solidarity. The letter being held by the woman in the foreground contained a message that had been written in an Eskimo dialect and which said, “To the people of Puerto Rico, our friends! Let us change chiefs. That alone can make us equal and free!”
Puerto Rican officials objected to Kent's inclusion of Afro-Latino men, women, and children in the mural.
Santiago Iglesias, resident commissioner of Puerto Rico, wrote that the picture did not represent the country or its culture, referring to it as "perverse propaganda against our country;" Rafael Martínez Nadal, president of the Puerto Rican Senate, called the mural an insult due to its depiction of "a bunch of half-naked African bushmen.”
The mayor of Ponce, Puerto Rico, described the subjects as "unkempt and uncultured."
In response to this barrage of racist criticisms, Kent offered, provocatively, to revise the panel free of charge to include portraits of members of the Puerto Rican Senate, including Nadal himself if he would agree to model for Kent. The original message of equality depicted in the letter, was painted over and is now blank.
For more, see the gsa.gov website:
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