I’ve started a brief birthday fundraiser for PROPA, the Puerto Rican Organization for the Performing Arts based in Orlando, Florida. This is a first for me, that celebrates a significant birthday, and this goal brings friends, family and ancestors together into focus.
Preserving the cultural memory of Bomba y Plena also means working with care with the community and the genealogies of the families involved. The tangible momentary experiences carried in visceral knowledge can be shared so many ways. Among the organizations doing this is work is PROPA.
These practices and the resulting events are not hollowed out by demands of tourism. Neither does the approach to the academic study of Bomba replicate the colonizer’s strategy of taking a territory and extracting knowledge. You can listen to Melanie Maldonado Diaz, PROPA’s President, on a two-part episode of Rematriating Boriken that came out last year on YouTube.
This is community first. Holding events, such as the series around the Middle Passage Markers Project in Ponce (2024) and another coming in San Juan, that help keep the connections to the past alive . All of this is how this organization works, with its President, Melanie Maldonado Diaz, whose knack for linking people, places and ancestors on Boriken extends our understanding of the past.
I’d love to have your help!
A page for donations is on Facebook. Any amount is welcome.
#PROPA #ancestors #Boriken #Bomba
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