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:
“Cynicism makes things worse than they are in that it makes permanent the current condition, leaving us with no hope of transcending it. Idealism refuses to confront reality as it is but overlays it with sentimentality. What cynicism and idealism share in common is an acceptance of reality as it is but with a bad conscience.”
—Richard Stivers, U.S. sociologist, educator. The Culture of Cynicism: American Morality in Decline, ch. 1, Blackwell (1994)
“Here in the U.S., culture is not that delicious panacea which we Europeans consume in a sacramental mental space and which has its own special columns in the newspapers—and in people’s minds. Culture is space, speed, cinema, technology. This culture is authentic, if anything can be said to be authentic.”
—Jean Baudrillard (b. 1929)
“The first time many women hold their tiny babies, they are apt to feel as clumsy and incompetent as any man. The difference is that our culture tells them they’re not supposed to feel that way. Our culture assumes that they will quickly learn how to be a mother, and that assumption rubs off on most women—so they learn.”
—Pamela Patrick Novotny (20th century)