Research & Insights

When my thesis journey began, I was really interested in this topic of Puerto Rican history. I had started reading up on Puerto Rico’s history and, at age 24, after having lived in the island most of my life, I started to learn things I had never heard before about the place I was from. I started to ask around to make sure I wasn’t the only one. I remember having a conversation with some family members where I was telling them the story of Don Pedro Albizu Campos and Luis Muñoz Marin. 

As I finished telling my family about it, they looked at me, amazed. They also had never heard it. 

There are many studies that prove the importance of cultural identity on the wellbeing of a person. In particular, a study conducted in Guam of the Chamarro culture titled Mandalas and Cultural Identity: Increasing Positive Identification With Chamarro Heritage (Nicolas, 2016), the author says “as a consequence of a history of subjugation and disempowerment, the Chamarro culture has suffered numerous loses—in particular, the decreasing amount of native Chamarro speakers”. 

Another study titled Cultural Identification Among Afghan and Iraqi Traumatized Refugees: Towards a Conceptual Framework for Mental Health Care Professionals (Groen, Richters, and Devillé, 2018) the authors define a term called “Aculturation” as “the level of identification with the host culture and/or the culture of origin”.  They take this definition a step further stating that “...a positive identification results in a decrease in risk of developing mental distress, while a negative identification can increase the risk” (Groen, Richters, and Devillé, 2018).

In Puerto Rico, the effects of a long standing colonial status can been seen in the lack of historical preservation of the island. As is well known, history is told by those in power. This project seeks to flip that scale, using graphic design as a powerful tool to tell the story of one of the oldest colonies in the world and, as a direct consequence, empower Puerto Rican youth living in the island and in the diaspora.