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
- April — Ponce Jazz Festival
- 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
Other cultural events include:
- April — Feria de Artesanias (Crafts Fair), often the first week
- August — Festival Nacional de la Quenepa (National Genip Festival), often the third week
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: Washburn Elementary School
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“The local is a shabby thing. There’s nothing worse than bringing us back down to our own little corner, our own territory, the radiant promiscuity of the face to face. A culture which has taken the risk of the universal, must perish by the universal.”
—Jean Baudrillard (b. 1929)