Taller la Borincana

Centre Street Building, Level 2A

Africa Vive (Carving Inspired by a Vejigante) by Taller la Borincana (Minerva Hernández and Gabriel López) is on view in Latin American Art / Arte Latinoamericano.

Indigenous Taíno ritual culture of the Caribbean centered around zemíes, powerful supernatural beings that could infuse or inhabit sculptural objects. Some looked very abstract, like this stone belt used in a sacred ballgame. The trigonolito (three-pointed stone) and the small figure resemble zemíes that represented ancestors. Offerings were made to these beings, in containers like those of shell and ceramic shown alongside the work.

Beginning in 1492, Spanish invaders enforced a system of colonization, seizing natural resources and forcing Indigenous people to labor for them. This small pendant, on view in the same case as the mask, is from an area of Puerto Rico (then known as Boríken) that was ruled by Agüeybaná, the most important cacique of the island. Although he mounted a resistance against the Spanish, it was brutally overcome. After 1517, Spanish colonizers forced the migration of people from Africa, whom they enslaved alongside Indigenous Caribbeans. Europeans tried to impose Catholic traditions, but Indigenous peoples and enslaved Africans hid their own beliefs within these customs, creating new, uniquely Afro-Caribbean rituals, symbols, and traditions. In Puerto Rico, folkloric characters known as vejigantes wore masks including African and Indigenous features at Catholic festival times. In other parts of the Caribbean, West African rituals were concealed within dances and practices at festivals. Revelers were able to use dance, drama, and mischief to uphold their own humanity and covertly continue to resist European colonization.