Abstract
Details the career of Marvette Perez (1961–2013), the first Latina curator at the National Museum of American History. Essay emphasizes her curatorial accomplishments, focusing on her collecting practices including some of the larger and smaller acquisitions that she added to the national collections of the Smithsonian Institution. Large collections discussed include the Teodoro Collection of Puerto Rican History, the Goya Foods Inc. Collection, and the Celia Cruz Collection. Smaller collections mentioned include the Diosa Costello Collection, the Tito Puente Collection, the Mongo Santamaria Collection, and a collection of panos from New Mexico. Archival collections are also referenced such as the Clotilde Arias Collection, Latin Jazz Oral History Program, and the Puerto Rican Division of Community Education. Also mentioned is the prior history of Hispanic collecting in the museum conducted by curator Richard Ahlborn which focused on Spanish settlements in the southwestern United States.
Keywords
Introduction
In 1991 the National Museum of American History (NMAH) in Washington, D.C. got hit by a tropical storm. The meteorological records of the Nation’s Capital do not reflect any unusual thunder or lightning in the 1300 block of Constitution Avenue. However, after then-director Roger Kennedy hired Marvette Pérez, the building had a crackle of electricity that had never been there before. For years, she was the only woman to rumble occasionally into its parking lot on her motorcycle.
Pérez was the Museum’s first Latina curator, and possibly the very first in the entire Smithsonian Institution. During her more than twenty years in the Division of Community Life (later changed to the Division of Culture and the Arts), she acquired new Latino collections, produced ground-breaking exhibitions, conducted new oral histories, wrote pungent and persuasive essays, and delivered many distinctive public programs. Her life’s work was to challenge the pre-existing and widely held U.S. national narratives that left out any histories of Latino peoples beyond the initial conquest. She demanded respect for, and the inclusion of, the distinctively expressive multi-ethnic cultures created both within and beyond the borders of the United States. Her physical presence, demeanor, and her work announced that Latinidad had arrived on the National Mall. 1
Overview
This article highlights Pérez’s work in acquiring important new Latino collections principally at NMAH. Our narrow focus cannot do justice to her wider career which deserves further research and scholarship. Nevertheless, by collecting new objects, such as a magnificent costume worn by the Queen of Salsa, Celia Cruz, Pérez introduced histories, musical genres, and performances that were previously absent.
Pérez’s dedication to diversifying Smithsonian collections derived from her academic preparation as a cultural anthropologist. Pérez understood that the museum’s often-stated goals of “preserving a material record of the American people for future generations” were narrow, European-centric and inadequate. She knew that without Latino material culture, photographs, and documents in national collections, America’s historical interpretations were incomplete, inaccurate, and actively reinforcing of racist histories and practices. Informed by new scholarship and powered by community engagement, she set out to make major changes. She encountered formidable resistance and many acts of overt prejudice and discrimination. Nevertheless, she saw acquiring Hispanic/Latino artifacts and archival materials for the Smithsonian as part of an ongoing struggle for justice and equality. Her success enlarged Smithsonian national collections and changed the museum forever.
When Pérez arrived at NMAH, the few existing Hispanic artifact collections focused on the Spanish settlers in the Southwestern United States. The earliest curators began collecting in the late 1950s for the new museum, originally named the Museum of History and Technology (MHT). MHT opened in 1964. Having inherited few pre-existing collections, the museum’s founding generation of cultural curators sought to build comprehensive collections of the finest examples of American, British, and European objects made or used here from the British colonial era to the 1920s. This emphasis on decorative arts is connected to the education and research of these early curators, who had often trained as scholars of the decorative arts. 2 Although a small number of curatorial staff became interested in what was then called “Folk Art,” their primary goal was to make the new museum—the National Museum of American History—“the museum of record” which effectively meant documenting the lives of the American (read white) “middle class.” 3
Pérez arrived as a graduate intern in 1987, while a doctoral candidate in Anthropology at the Catholic University of America in Washington, D.C. She interned with long-time curator Richard Ahlborn (1933–2015). Hired in 1964, Ahlborn held a master’s degree from the Winterthur Museum and became the first (and only) Curator of Ethnic and Western History in the original Department of Cultural History. His curatorial portfolio included many American minority ethnic, racial, and regional groups who had previously been mostly absent from the collections. However, throughout his tenure, Ahlborn was principally interested in collecting artifacts from colonial churches and missions and objects of “everyday life” such as saddles, horse decorations, and even a kitchen from colonial New Mexico, which clearly documented Spanish influences. He seemed uninterested in objects of mestizaje (mixed) 4 origin, produced by the emergent American-born ethnic/racial groups, such as Hispanics. Why? His training in decorative arts may have blinded him to the importance of these groups. Perhaps this occurred because these curators were educated in the American historiography of the time, dominated by a “consensus” framework in which “minority” or “regional” stories were deemed atypical and therefore irrelevant to the central white narratives of continuous progress toward achieving the middle class “American dream.”
In 1979, Director Roger Kennedy arrived at NMAH (1926–2011, director 1979–1992). Kennedy was a creative, charismatic, mercurial man who wrenched the museum into the post-Modern Civil Rights Movement era. He noticed there were no People of Color on the curatorial staff and set about changing that situation by hiring Marvette Pérez and others. 5 By 1992, when Pérez began to do her curatorial work in earnest, Kennedy had retired from NMAH and would likely have anticipated the hostility she would encounter.
Pérez was openly out and proud, often wearing stylish gender-fluid clothes. A fluent bi-lingual speaker and scholar who published in both languages, she was a proud Puertorriqueña 6 who did not hide her accented English. During Pérez tenure at the museum, her mere presence provoked certain staff, some of whom schemed to deny her earned promotions, and attempted to block her exhibitions and projects. She endured racist and homophobic attacks. She worked in an environment that could quickly become hostile. Nevertheless, she persevered. 7
Though Pérez was appointed curator at age thirty, with only a master’s degree, she radiated intellectual sophistication and a subversive wit that did not tolerate condescension. Pérez’s visionary collecting shifted priorities and resources toward the creolized Hispanic or Latino histories that acknowledged that their ancestors were not only European but also of Native and African descent. She understood that all these American-born Latino cultures had distinct political histories yet shared a basic “mixedness” that united them with language and foodways (e.g.) but also separated them into Puerto Ricans, Dominicans, Cubans, Chicanos, and others. 8
Pérez did not neglect Chicano or Mexican American history. For example, she collected a group of distinctive hand-decorated paños (handkerchiefs) created by Chicanos incarcerated in New Mexico (Acc. #: 1991.0431, 1991.0859, 1993.0150). These paños reflect their makers’ longing for home, the hope of religious solace, and release. Very few museum objects had been acquired from incarcerated people or others distant from American middle-class life, making these materials rare and distinct.
Pérez’s graduate research had focused on the development of Puerto Rican identities within the context of Spanish and U.S. colonization. Performance studies were an indispensable lens for Pérez because performance illustrates the meanings and interactions between race, gender, and class, in addition to rebellion, resistance, and spirituality, that are signaled through sound to listeners of Afro-Caribbean music. 9 Prior to her arrival, NMAH collections contained no significant materials on Puerto Ricans, Cubans, or any other peoples from the Hispanic Caribbean. Her acquisitions indicated NMAH’s new commitment to preserve and incorporate these centuries-old communities and traditions.
Pérez also highlighted the ways gender matters by centralizing women’s experiences. She acquired collections that documented Latinas’s lives including the papers of Clotilde Arias (Archives# NMAH AC 1164), a composer, translator, and commercial artist who wrote El Pendon Estrellado, the only Spanish version of the Star-Spangled Banner that is singable to the English tune. Born in Peru, the Arias collection provides a meticulous documentation of the life and work of a young immigrant pursuing her own American dream. 10
Pérez was a scholar who published pieces on performance theories and practices, she was also a fine singer and musician who could play several different instruments. Her musical background grounded her collecting in her wide-ranging, intimate knowledge of Spanish Caribbean music. She produced dozens of oral interviews with Latin jazz musicians and popular stars as well as exhibitions focusing on music.
Working in a division that featured people such as Edward “Duke” Ellington, Pérez searched out equivalently famous Latinos such as the Puerto Rican composer, musician, and orchestra leader Tito Puente (Acc.# 1996.0304 and 2000.0198 Archives NMAH AC 0894) and the Cuban percussionist Mongo Santamaria (Acc.#005.0030, Archives # NMAH AC 0893). She also obtained a wide variety of archival and photographic materials including Mexican calendars owned by Chicano historian, writer, and collector, Dr. Tomas Ybarra-Frausto (Archives # NMAH AC 0660).
Had Pérez only collected the individual materials that were just discussed, this would have been a significant expansion of the museum’s holdings of Latino artifacts and archival materials. However, what made her a truly pioneering curator was her success in acquiring three different major collections that include artworks, documents, objects, and costumes representing the very pinnacle of Latino culture, enterprise, and music at the time. While others followed, Marvette Pérez led the way by adding thousands of Latino objects to the national collections. She proudly claimed the first space for Latinos to have their long, complex histories presented in the National Museum of American History.
Three Major Collections Acquired
Teodoro Vidal Collection of Puerto Rican History (Accession #:1997.0097 and Archives #: NMAH AC 0712)
Teodoro Vidal (1923–2016) was an author and amateur historian who started collecting local artifacts in Puerto Rico in the early 1950s. Born into a wealthy family, Vidal sought out a large variety of objects from across the island. These included religious artifacts and carvings, santos (wooden carvings often of Catholic saints) and milagros (stamped metal or wax figures); carnival masks and costumes; agricultural tools; household goods such as handmade linens; and photographs. Vidal also acquired paintings, including by Puerto Rican colonial artist José Campeche y Jordán (1751–1809). Campeche is one of the most significant painters of the colonial era, the son of an enslaved man who had purchased his freedom. Due to Vidal’s donation, Campeche’s works are now prized as some of the earliest pieces in the Smithsonian American Art Museum’s (SAAM) collections. 11
Vidal carefully searched out renowned masters of their traditional arts and crafts. He was a meticulous connoisseur who recorded detailed information about the objects, makers, traditions, histories of use, and cultural significance. He also had many rare objects documenting the Vidal family’s long history. Vidal was a discreetly gay man who had no children and no clear heirs. As he aged and his collection grew, Vidal worried about its future.
After years of negotiating with Puerto Rican institutions, Vidal was not satisfied with their ability to house, preserve, and care for his collection. Like many voracious collectors, he did not want his collection broken up because each element related to another, as a record of his vision of “la gran familia puertorriqueña.” 12 In 1996, following years of private conversations with him, Pérez decided to acquire the Vidal collection, after certifying that NMAH had the spatial and financial capacity to process, manage, and store it.
By 1996, the collection had grown to nearly 5,400 objects, too massive for any single museum to acquire. After identifying which objects were too fragile to travel to the Smithsonian, Pérez’s on-site team acquired 3,500 objects and other archival materials and photographs. Approximately 1,500 objects remained on the island and were later given to the Luis Muñoz Marín Fundación Center in Trujillo Alto, P.R. In 2001, Stephen Velasquez described, analyzed this massive effort, and identified this acquisition’s crucial role in claiming physical space and historical presence for Latino collections. 13
Pérez’s success in acquiring the Vidal collection was aided by a new focus on Latino history and culture at the Smithsonian. In 1994, a Smithsonian Task force on Latino issues released its extremely critical report, “Willful Neglect: The Smithsonian Institution and U.S. Latinos.” 14 This report unleashed a torrent of public criticism. In response, the Smithsonian set about making some visible changes. In 1997, the Smithsonian Latino Center opened. There was a new push to hire more Latino professionals. This new institutional environment created opportunities which aided Pérez in her collecting by providing resources to hire interns and collections staff, and to fund exhibitions and other curatorial projects.
Goya Foods Inc. Collection 1960–2000 Acc.# 1999.0322 and 2000.0198 Archives # NMAH AC 0694
Acquiring the Goya Foods business history collection was an early curatorial effort. Pérez collaborated with historian Fath Davis Ruffins (and co-author of this article) who then served as the Head of the Collection of Advertising History in the NMAH Archives Center. 15 The Archives Center already owned voluminous collections documenting mainstream American business history, especially advertising created by some of the original American advertising agencies such as N.W. Ayer and Sons (1869). Significant collections dating back to the early 1800s featured images of Latinos, many of which were stereotypical. However, there were no Latino business or advertising collections that documented the work of these businesses in serving their communities as well as aiding people to see themselves positively and representing Latinos with dignity to the wider American public.
Goya Foods Inc. seemed a very natural addition to the business history collections because it was a nationally recognized food product company. Goya Foods is still owned by the Unanue family and is a private corporation. This history of continuous family ownership meant that there was company lore and traditions that remained intact over generations. Factory and office workers, salespersons, and other staff often had long histories with the company and could bear multi-generational witness. Goya products dominated the Latino market in the Eastern U.S. and the Caribbean. Even more important, these food products supplied Latino families, restaurants, churches, and other organizations with the wherewithal to continue their foodways traditions, even though they had migrated to the states. Though Goya Food products were eminently available, their business history was unknown. By acquiring the Goya Foods collection, the museum was thereby opening a much wider documentation of Latino foodways, lifeways, and community cultures. Goya Foods products were constitutive of the development of American Latino communities in the east.
Don Prudencio Unanue (1886–1976) was Spanish-born immigrant. He moved with his family to Puerto Rico in 1903, and in 1918 to New York City to attend business school. Although he had some earlier unsuccessful ventures, Unanue founded his successful company, Unanue and Sons, in Manhattan in 1936. In 1961, the company name was changed to Goya Foods. 16 Upon conducting extensive research, in the mid-1990s, Pérez and Ruffins decided to approach the company without any personal introduction or referral. We just called the CEO’s office one day and his major PR person got back to us quickly. Our conversations started from that point.
When Pérez and Ruffins approached other museum colleagues, many said that they had never heard of the company. We directed these colleagues to the “International” aisle in their local grocery stores where they were surpised that they could easily find many Goya Food products. When We first approached the then-CEO of Goya Foods, Joseph A. Unanue, he seemed puzzled about why curators at the Smithsonian were interested in the history of his family’s firm. He was quite surprised to learn that upwards of forty million people (including international travelers) visited the Smithsonian in any year. (Bear in mind, this was before the internet.)
Upon further conversation, CEO Unanue and his key staff became quite excited about the Smithsonian’s interest in preserving their history, their documents, and their objects. Pérez and Ruffins visited offices and factory floors, taking photographs, talking to as many folks as possible, documenting the office workers and factory processes in both New Jersey and Puerto Rico. We contacted and/or interviewed dozens of employees and collected worker clothing, food packaging, recipes, and many company photographs. All this provided ample evidence of the company’s involvement in many aspects of Latino life in the states and on the islands. Goya sponsored Little League baseball teams, beauty pageants, participated in national-origin parades, musical groups, and a wide variety of local Latino institutions, such as clubs and church groups throughout the Caribbean. Their advertisements and charitable works featured major celebrities such as baseball star Roberto Clemente and musician Ray Barretto as well as lesser-known chefs, family cooks, and ordinary people. The Goya slogan: “Si es Goya, tiene que ser bueno” was once known only in Latino communities. (“If It’s Goya, It Has to Be Good”) Today, the English version appears all over urban and rural grocery stores located outside Latino neighborhoods.
In 1999, the Goya Foods company donated their collection to NMAH. They saw that Pérez and Ruffins connected their family and company stories to the expansive history of Latino communities in the United States. When planning the company’s 75th anniversary celebration (2011), several long-time and retired employees visited NMAH and spoke about how this collection had sparked their own greater interest in their own history. For this major celebratory year, the company commissioned a scholar who wrote a privately published company history which they distributed widely for which he did research in the Goya Foods Inc. archives. Since then, Goya Foods Inc. has created their own in-house company archives.
Celia Cruz Collection Acc.# 1997.0291 and 2016.0032
Celia Cruz (1925–2003) was an internationally recognized, award-winning Cuban singer and actor, known as “La Reina de la Salsa,” the Queen of Salsa (or of Latino popular music more generally). She was one of the most popular performers of the twentieth century, selling more than ten million records worldwide and winning numerous Grammy awards and many other honors. Her music transcended commercially devised musical genres, languages, and borders.
Born in Cuba, Cruz first became famous there as a singer with a legendary vocal group, Sonera Matancera. She sang with that group from 1950 to about 1965. After the Cuban Revolution (1959) Cruz left the island, moving first to Mexico, then the United States. About 1966, she began collaborating with equally famous Tito Puente. He asked her to be the vocalist for his famous orchestra. In 1973, Cruz began recording with the new Fania record label. During the 1970s, the Fania label became the most important, most popular, and best-known company in the emerging musical genre branded as “Salsa.” Cruz was among the many famous vocalists and musicians who recorded for the Fania label. Fania became recognized internationally as the signature producer of Salsa. Cruz frequently performed with the Fania All-Stars, their Salsa supergroup featuring the most popular and iconic performers of the Fania roster.
Celia Cruz was not only one of the most significant vocalists of the twentieth century, but she was also an actor who appeared in several films, including Mambo Kings (1992). She was famous for her dramatic stage costumes, her specially made shoes that appeared to have her tiny feet floating in the air. She paired this with incredible wigs, and dramatic jewelry. Her fashion sensibility and presentational performance style resonated with audiences thrilled to hear her famous call—¡Azúcar! (sugar). Cruz sang, looked, and acted like the diva she was. Acquiring a collection of some of her objects was a major coup for Pérez and the museum.
Pérez began speaking with Cruz and her husband, Pedro Knight, in the mid-1990s about the possibility of acquiring some of her objects. By 1997, Cruz felt comfortable enough to donate several personal items to the museum. Pérez knew that an exhibition on Celia Cruz would be eminently popular and fundable. Such an exhibition could clearly demonstrate the power of Latino communities and their impact on American music, entertainment, and fashion. Shortly after Cruz’s death, Pérez curated the seminal 2005 exhibition, ¡Azúcar! The Life and Music of Celia Cruz. The exhibition featured gowns, wigs, and personal objects such as jewelry and devotional objects that were all loaned from the Celia Cruz Foundation. In 2016, the foundation donated those objects to the museum. This second donation expanded the Celia Cruz Collection, making it one of the museum’s best-known and most important collections.
In acquiring the Celia Cruz Collection, Pérez took on a new kind of curatorial task. Persuading celebrities to donate their objects, photographs, and documents is a complex process. The curator often must navigate contentious family issues such as former spouses, potential or aspirational heirs, legal constraints, long-standing rivalries, and complicated personalities as well as competing subtly or sometimes openly with other curators, wealthy private collectors, connoisseurs, and others. Many times, incredibly detailed, legalistic, unique Deeds of Gifts must be diplomatically mediated and shepherded through lawyers. Pérez ably managed the complicated and delicate discussions required for this donation from the Cruz Foundation. The negotiations were well underway when Pérez unexpectedly died in Summer 2013. The Celia Cruz collection (and exhibition) together were a momentous part of Pérez’s curatorial legacy. Now Cruz not only has a star on the Hollywood Avenue of Stars, but also is part of the “forever” Smithsonian collections, firmly present as one of the most important Latinas of all time.
Conclusion
Space does not allow us to list all the collections that Marvette Pérez acquired. For example, she worked tirelessly to conduct oral histories with Latino musicians, founding an ongoing archival Latin Jazz Oral History Collection. In addition, her awareness that folks involved in the early history of HipHop in New York City were the children of Caribbean born parents led her to acquire the boombox of Fred Brathwaite, better known as Fab 5 Freddy (Acc. # 2006.0059), who was of Guyanese and Barbadian (Bajan) descent. Although Pérez founded the NMAH HipHop initiative, her acquisitions in this area were cut short by her sudden death, though continued by others.
Pérez’s curatorial work was wide-ranging, informed by research on class, race, gender, and sexuality. She acquired materials from diverse Latino cultural perspectives, and differing national, political, and social sensibilities. She collected materials of lesser-known entertainers such as Diosa Costello (1913–2013), a Puerto Rican singer, producer, and club owner, often referred to as “the Latin bombshell.” In 1939, Diosa became the first Latina to appear on the Broadway stage. Costello donated eleven costumes and personal archives (Acc.#2011.0208 Archives# NMAH AC 0808).
Pérez also acquired the DIVEDCO poster collection (Archives Center # AC 0615). The División de Educación de la Comunidad (Division of Community Education) was an official unit of the Puerto Rican government from 1949 until the 1970s. 17 The nickname or acronym of this unit was DIVEDCO. DIVEDCO produced educational posters on topics such as health information for children, pregnant women, and frequently occurring conditions. They also printed and distributed announcements of public meetings, and other graphic materials for public education. Rural and poor citizens with limited access to public resources were the primary target audience of DIVEDCO. Their colorful and striking posters and other products were widely known across the island. As part of the ferment of this time of an elected government, many emerging graphic artists designed these materials and later became famous. The DIVEDCO posters reflected an unusual combination of graphic innovations in visual composition and experiments with typefaces in the service of communicating with a wide and not always literate public. Pérez’ rescued these materials as they were about to be discarded. Her acquisition of this collection demonstrated the breadth of her curatorial interests.
This article foregrounds Marvette Pérez’s curatorial work and does not do justice to her pathbreaking exhibitions, her frequent participation in public programs, panels, conferences, and videos. Pérez was a consummate curator whose scholarship, teaching, and public presentations were creative and remarkable. Pérez demanded and claimed space, resources, and full recognition for the inclusion for the Latino individuals, communities, and histories in the museum and the dominant national narrative. All of this was difficult, wrenching work. Pérez faced many efforts to impede or cancel her work. She remained resolute, articulate, energetic, and defiant. However, such attacks may have taken their toll; she died unexpectedly and untimely at the age of fifty-two. Yet her legacy lives on. Due to her visionary work, Latino objects, papers, photographs, and oral histories will always be part of the Smithsonian “forever” national collections.
Footnotes
Declaration of Conflicting Interests
The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
Funding
The author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
1.
Latinidad refers to the various attributes shared by Latin American people and their descendants without reducing those similarities to any single essential trait. It was first adopted within U.S. Latino studies by the sociologist Felix Padilla, in his study of Mexicans and Puerto Ricans in Chicago. Latinidad has since been used by a wide range of scholars to speak of Latino communities and cultural practices outside a strictly Latin American context. See: Felix Padilla, Latino Ethnic Consciousness: The Case of Mexican Americans and Puerto Ricans in Chicago (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1985).
2.
Richard Ahlborn and many of the original cultural curators at MHT held master’s degrees from Winterthur. Winterthur Museum, Garden & Library is often considered the premier museum of American decorative arts, with a collection of about 90,000 objects made or used in the United States between 1640 and 1820. In 2015, Winterthur expanded its collecting range up to the end of the 20th century. Winterthur, in partnership with the University of Delaware, sponsors two graduate programs, the Winterthur Program in American Material Culture (est. 1952) and the Winterthur/University of Delaware Program in Art Conservation (est.1974).
3.
“Middle class” is a term that is widely used colloquially by ordinary people and journalists as well as by social scientists, however these definitions differ widely. The Pew Research Center defines “middle class” as an income that ranges between two-thirds and double the median income. The exact boundaries of a middle-class income vary by family size and location, due to the geographical differences in cost of living. Yet, Americans with annual incomes of $500,000 call themselves middle class, as do people who annually earn $50,000. That helps explain why, in the United States, social scientists divide the group into upper and lower subcategories. Upper-middle-class people tend to hold bachelor’s and postgraduate degrees.
4.
Mestizaje refers to the process of interracial and/or intercultural mixing. This is a foundational theme among Latino scholars and activists, particularly in those areas colonized by the Spanish and the Portuguese. See: Lourdes Martinez-Echazabal, “Mestizaje and the Discourse of National/Cultural Identity in Latin America 1845-1959,” Latin American Perspectives, 25, no. 3 (1998): 21–42, available at: 
.
5.
Roger Kennedy (1926–2011) was the longest serving director of the National Museum of American History (1979–1992) to date. Early in his tenure as director of NMAH, Kennedy hired the first African American historians and curators including: Spencer Crew who later became director on NMAH (1994); Lonnie Bunch who became the founding director of the National Museum of African American History and Culture (2005–2019) and the Secretary of the Smithsonian Institution (2019); and author Senior Curator Fath Davis Ruffins. In addition to hiring the first Latina curator, Marvette Pérez, he named also the first Native American curator folklorist, Rayna Green, and the first Asian American curator, a historian and one of the founders of Asian American Studies, Franklin Odo. In 1993, Kennedy became the head of the National Park Service.
6.
The literal meaning of Puertorriqueña is a Puerto Rican woman. Colloquially, the term can be used to describe oneself and carrying the meaning of being born and, perhaps, growing up on the island. However, the term can also be used as an expression of pride in Puerto Rican descent for women who may have been born elsewhere.
7.
The authors of this essay were among Marvette Pérez’s closest friends and colleagues at the museum. Among all four of us, we have first-hand knowledge of many events and had detailed conversations with Marvette Pérez herself about acts that we did not witness. Eventually Pérez went to the Smithsonian Ombudsman to make official complaints about this hostile climate and particular individuals.
8.
As a Goya salesman of fifty years expressed it: “Latinos are united by language and separated by the bean!” meaning that Latinos shared many cultural elements, but their foodways were subtly but clearly different in terms of how beans were named, cooked, and which were used for what purposes. (N.B. When he coined this phrase in the 1950s, Goya salespersons were only men.)
9.
Quotation from Ranald Woodaman, a co-author of this article. Woodaman worked at the Smithsonian Latino Center 2007 from 2007 to 2020. The Center for Latino Initiatives was established in 1997, as an immediate response to the 1994 “ Willful Neglect” report referred to elsewhere. In 2006, the name was changed to the Smithsonian Latino Center (SLC). In that role, Woodaman served as the exhibitions and public programs director. As part of a large team, Woodaman curated several exhibitions on Latino History and Culture including ¡Presente!A Latino History of the United States. This exhibition opened in 2022 and is in the National Museum of American History (NMAH). Now, the SLC has rolled into the new Smithsonian National Museum of the American Latino (NMAL), which was authorized in 2020. Currently, Woodaman is the Assistant Director of Exhibitions and Development at this museum.
10.
Clotilde Arias is best known for her composition of the song “Huiracocha,” popular in Peru and sung worldwide. El Pendon Estrellado was commissioned by the Department of State in 1946 as part of the government’s World War II era “Good Neighbor” policy in Latin America. Arias participated in a wide range of American women’s organizations such as the General Federation of Women’s Clubs and the Inter-American Commission on Women. Facilitated by the Latino Center, in 2007, Pérez visited Arias’s son, a retired the U.S. Air Force officer. At NMAH, 90% of the Arias Collection is in Spanish. Pérez was the first curator to acquire significant collections in Spanish.
11.
When the Vidal collection arrived, 3500 objects came to NMAH. Curator Andrew Connor had selected objects for the National Museum of American Art, later renamed the Smithsonian American Art Museum (SAAM). Those objects included Campeche paintings, miniatures, and several large santos.
12.
“La gran familia puertorriqueña” is defined in this way: “The concept of the Great Puerto Rican Family describes how Puerto Rican people see themselves: the authentic inheritors of an ancestral history. First used in the 1770s, the term helps convey the idea that the Puerto Rican people, no matter what their racial background, are part of a unique Puerto Rican culture born of a mixture of European, African, and Indian traditions.” These words come from a label in the exhibition produced from the Vidal Collection. “Teodoro Vidal: A Collector’s Vision of Puerto Rico, Puerto Rico: La Visión de un Coleccionistax” which opened at NMAH in 1997.
13.
14.
15.
All Smithsonian museums and research centers have their own in-house libraries and archives centers. There are also free-standing archives such as the Smithsonian Archives which houses the history of the Smithsonian itself. The archives center referred to here is the one in the National Museum of American History which stewards many of the oral history, photographic and papers collection and is an independent unit that acquires collections itself and cooperates with other curatorial divisions to acquire collections that include both artifacts and archival materials.
16.
Unanue and Sons changed its name to Goya Food Inc. in 1961, because at the time the family leaders felt that Goya was a more widely recognizable name, not only in the United States but also in all Spanish-speaking countries as well. The company has also supported exhibitions and books about the Spanish painter Francisco Goya (1746–1828) at the Metropolitan Museum. See Colta Ives and Susan Alyson Stein, Goya in the Metropolitan Museum of Art (New York, NY: Metropolitan Museum, 1991).
17.
The United States acquired Puerto Rico as part of the settlement of what is called the War of 1898 waged against the Spanish empire primarily in its colonies in the Caribbean and the Philippines and other islands in the Pacific. As a U.S. territory, it was managed by a governor appointed by the American President. In 1948, Puerto Ricans went to the polls for the first time and elected a governor, Luis Muñoz Marin. He began what was known as Operation Commonwealth, an effort to get greater self-government and greater independence from the American government. Following a pattern established by some of the earliest colonies that became states, such as Massachusetts and Virginia, Muñoz Marin and his supporters developed a constitution as a “commonwealth.” This status was officially recognized in 1952, with the ratification of that document. To this day, there remains great controversy within the island about this status and there is a wide political spectrum on what solutions might be to solve some of the issues and problems created by the status of the island as a “territory” or “colony” but not a state of the United States.