Carteles: A Puerto Rican Tradition
No, not that kind of cartel. Read on.
I’ve received countless compliments on the cover art of my novel, A Delicate Marriage. It’s vibrant and colorful in shades of greens and blues and depicts a photo of a retro woman from behind as the looks at illustrations of the Puerto Rican ocean and mountains. Above her, the novel’s title is superimposed over a drawing of iconic Old San Juan architecture.
I am thrilled at how the cover came out, because I had a very specific idea in mind of the style I wanted. I aimed to honor the 75-year tradition of graphic Puerto Rican posters called carteles. Carteles are silk-screen colored prints that came to be around 1946 through a government-sponsored program. They were created to educate the population about public health (wash your hands before eating, cover your food to protect from disease-bearing flies), to promote the government’s successes (bringing new industry, improving housing), and to urge people to vote.
Because roughly 30% of the population was illiterate, the messages were depicted through pictures as well as words. You didn’t need to know how to read to get the gist. Even though the designers could initially only use four colors for economy’s sake, they began to create a “unique national iconographic language,” as Teresa Tío says in El Cartel, a 577-page tome dedicated to the topic. Translation: cartels have a specific look and feel. When you see one, you know. The Pinterest board called Carteles de Puerto Rico showcases some beautiful examples.
Eventually, as the population became more literate, carteles became tools for promoting the Puerto Rican culture, the arts, fairs and feast days, sports competitions, and other events. In the 1970s, they began to be used as political tools to protest the U.S. Navy’s presence in Culebra, the disproportionate number of Puerto Ricans fighting in Vietnam, and to promote independence. The old carteles are now collectors’ items, and some sell for thousands of dollars. As Tío also puts it in her book, carteles were a “weapon wielded to affirm the existence of a nationality.” I couldn’t imagine a better inspiration for my book cover.
