Culture
The city is home to a long list of cultural assets including libraries, museums, galleries, and parks, hundreds of buildings of historical value including schools, residences, bridges, and estates, and frequent activities such as festivals and carnivals. The municipality invests close to half a million dollars in promoting its cultural assets. It established its first library in 1894 and, as of 2007 had a new central library with seven other branches scattered throughout the municipality.
A number of cultural events take place during the year, most prominently:
- February — Ponce Carnival
- March — Regional Crafts Fair
- May — Danza Week; Barrio Playa Festival
- July — Barrio San Anton's Bomba Festival
- September — Día Mundial de Ponce
- November — Discovering Our Indian Roots
- December — Patron Saint's Day Festival (Fiestas Patronales); Las Mañanitas; Christmas Concert
The city values its cultural traditions as evidenced by the revitalization project Ponce en Marcha. It is deeply rooted in its old cultural, artistic, and musical heritage. The love for art and architecture, for example, can be appreciated at its museums of art, music, and architecture. "Over the last century or so, the north willingly accepted the influence of western culture with its tendency toward large sprawling metropolises, and the displacement of old values and attitudes. Ponce, on the other hand, has been content to retain its old traditions and culture. Ponce is not concerned about losing its long standing position as the second largest city in population after San Juan. On the contrary, she prefers to maintain her current size, and stick to its old traditions and culture."
Some argue that the Ponceño culture is different from the rest of the Island: "Ponceños have always been a breed apart from other Puerto Ricans. Their insularity and haughtiness are legendary, and some Puerto Ricans claim that even the dialect in Ponce is slightly different from that spoken in the rest of the Island. They are also racially different: you'll see more people of African descent in Ponce than anywhere else in the Island except Loiza." Others claim that Ponceños exhibit considerable more civic pride than do residents of other locales. The most important statesman of the time in the Island, Luis Muñoz Rivera, by the close of the 19th century referred to Ponce as "the most Puerto Rican city of Puerto Rico."
Read more about this topic: Ponce, Puerto Rico
Famous quotes containing the word culture:
“Both cultures encourage innovation and experimentation, but are likely to reject the innovator if his innovation is not accepted by audiences. High culture experiments that are rejected by audiences in the creator’s lifetime may, however, become classics in another era, whereas popular culture experiments are forgotten if not immediately successful. Even so, in both cultures innovation is rare, although in high culture it is celebrated and in popular culture it is taken for granted.”
—Herbert J. Gans (b. 1927)
“Children became an obsessive theme in Victorian culture at the same time that they were being exploited as never before. As the horrors of life multiplied for some children, the image of childhood was increasingly exalted. Children became the last symbols of purity in a world which was seen as increasingly ugly.”
—C. John Sommerville (20th century)
“No culture on earth outside of mid-century suburban America has ever deployed one woman per child without simultaneously assigning her such major productive activities as weaving, farming, gathering, temple maintenance, and tent-building. The reason is that full-time, one-on-one child-raising is not good for women or children.”
—Barbara Ehrenreich (b. 1941)