After interviewing Omar, co-founder of Urbe A Pie, in June I was interested in finding other mediums where people have expressed an interest in the neo-coloniality of education. I began attending museums like El Museo de Arte de Puerto Rico where they have El Pan Nuestro (a famous painting of a jíbaro walking across the land carrying plantains). During my visit, a photo that struck me was “Untitled” by Jack Delano.  It shows a young boy appearing to read in a classroom, taken in the 1940s in the era of the New Deal in Puerto Rico. Jack Delano was known then for his photography of rural Boricuan life and its close ties to sugarcane, tobacco, and coffee labor under his contract with the Farm Security Administration Photography Project.

The photos reminded me of others I found during my research. These photos were taken at a time students were forcibly taught to learn English as a measure of civility and ensure the island's mobility under the U.S. imperialist ideologies with the Official Languages Act of 1902. What I did not know until this visit was how most of Jack Delano's work functioned to capture the progression of "civility" on the island largely by capturing the establishment of schools.

Source: https://suarezepr68.wordpress.com/2018/09/07/the-history-and-challenges-of-teaching-english-to-spanish-speaking-students-in-puerto-rico/  Delano, Jack. Pledging Allegiance. 1946 

Titled: "America's Greatest Gift to Porto Rico--- the public school, Caguas" (in this photograph, like many others, Puerto Rico is misspelled)  

Captured by the Red Cross at a Girls Charity Bazzar in San Juan, Puerto Rico 1920

I visited other museums on the island like the Museum of the Americas and found some other great pieces like the exposition "Sin pena ni Gloria" by Aby Ruiz discussing the colonial psyche, loss of land, and more. 

Ruiz, Abismael "Aby". "Mi canto de tierra" . 2013

Ruiz, Abismael "Aby". "Preludio al paraíso" . 2010

One of my personal favorites was a mural, The Flying Bus by David Zayas and 45 other people between the ages of 18-30 in 2014.  

What did you notice first from the mural?