Exhibit on Puerto Rico Opening Friday

“Restoring Community History: Puerto Ricans In Central Florida” will bring the exhibit, “Puerto Ricans In Central Florida 1940s to 1980s: A History” for two weeks to SUNY Fredonia and for another two weeks to the Dunkirk Public Library.

The exhibit consists of bilingual panels and dvds that showcase the oral interviews of hundreds of Puerto Rican families in Central Orlando reconstructing their history and their contributions to the area. The exhibit will also be accompanied by a presentation during opening day by Dr. Patricia Silver, the professor who began a “research” project that brought together universities and state agencies. The exhibit is in itself an expression of the public services provided by Dr. Silver with a team of scholars, students, state workers to create a digital archive of the history of the Puerto Rican community in Central Orlando.

A faculty member of the sociology department at University of Central Florida, Patricia Silver began to do some research about the Puerto Rican population in Central Florida in 2007. Soon, the Orange County Regional History Center and the Florida Humanities Council became interested in her “research” and wanted to provide funding provided that there was a public service component, i.e. exhibits at local libraries and community centers and a digital archive to be a resource for other agencies and other scholars. Silver´s project also came to the attention of the Center for Puerto Rican Studies in CUNY Hunter College in New York who devoted a whole issue of their journal to this research, including the contributions of other scholars in Puerto Rican history.

The bilingual panels, pictures, and dvds summarize the history of Puerto Ricans who arrived to Orlando not only because of military basis and agriculture, but also for the NASA Engineers program and other commercial reasons. In more recent years, the area has attracted retiring Puerto Rican families from both the northern states and the island. The archives also depict both the formal and informal organizations established to provide support services to the incoming Puerto Rican families.