Puerto Rican education spread throughout a community
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The first time Isha Renta López attended a day of Puerto Rican bomba dancing, she recalled the excitement that filled the room along with live music and drumming.
Women, dressed entirely in white, moved to the music as their colorful ribbons, undercoats and headwraps swung through the air.
Men in guayabera-style shirts and fedora-styled hats immersed themselves in the music while the drums and singers followed the beat that they danced.
The beating of percussion instruments and the powerful, swift moments of the bomba dancers stoked their connection with their audience. The excitement was built on that important occasion, a rare opportunity to dance to live music, just like traditional bomba is performed on the island where it originated.
These dances “were being done by people, by a group of Puerto Ricans that were just trying to share the culture,” said López, who said she was moved by how inspired the dancers were by their love for their rich Caribbean culture.
That was back in 2006, but Renta López, a Washington, D.C. meteorologist and children’s author, still recalls how it motivated her to launch the Puerto Rican arts and cultural promotion organization, Semilla Cultural, which she established in 2014. The nonprofit organization, based in Fredericksburg, Virginia, helps educate the community through dance lessons and invitations to performances like the one she first attended two decades ago.
“I want to educate people so that when I do community events … I want the community to really participate,” said López, Semilla Cultural’s director.
There is a sizable Latine population in the Washington, D.C area. Nearly one in five residents today identify as Latine, but Puerto Ricans make up a tiny portion of that diversity — only about 1% of the total population of the greater Washington, D.C. metro area, according to U.S. Census data.
Most Puerto Ricans living on the United States mainland lived in Connecticut, Florida and New Jersey in 2024, the Pew Research Center reported.
Furthermore, residents of Puerto Rican origin are spread out around the Washington region, with no central hub or enclave, making the work that much more important for cultural organizations like Semilla Cultural that bring the community together through education and connection, said López.
Puerto Ricans have been U.S. citizens for more than a century, ever since the passage of the Jones Act in 1917.
However, historically, polling has found that more than 50% of Americans are unaware that Puerto Ricans are U.S. citizens. Educating the general public on not only about Puerto Ricans’ citizen status, but also their culture, is a part of what drives cultural promoters like Renta López. In the D.C. area, bringing together a community of Puerto Ricans, when there did not seem to be a prominent one before, is another.
“When I first got to D.C., if I met one Puerto Rican a year, it was a lot,” said Joancarlo Parkhurst, the owner of the Puerto Rican restaurant, La Famosa, in D.C.’s Navy Yard neighborhood. Parkhurst recounts opening the Puerto Rican cuisine restaurant as “almost a selfish thing.”
“It’s more out of necessity and longing for something familiar,” he said.
For Renta López, her favorite way to educate the public about Puerto Rican culture is through bomba lessons. Bomba is not just singing or dancing, but also an entire genre of music created with African influence that utilizes both singers and a variety of instruments to accompany its dancers.
Other genres of music like salsa, that are accompanied by a dancer, are often defined by the musician playing the music and the dancer matching the pace of the rhythm. In bomba, however, the dancer comes first. Whatever speed the dancer moves to is the rhythm by which the band plays.
There are 16 bomba rhythms that the dancer may choose, and they are normally accompanied by three or more singers who follow their lead. The band uses three main instruments: a bomba barrel, maracas and a cuá, wooden sticks used to beat the sides of a drum, ranging from smaller and higher to a larger and wider choice.
Semilla Cultural gets many requests from Puerto Ricans living in the DM who “wanted a piece of Puerto Rico to be in their private party.” While she said, “it was always beautiful to feel that,” the organization cannot always fulfill all the event requests it receives.
Semilla Cultural has helped popularize this music genre in Washington, D.C., along with forerunners like Raíces de Borinquen, a Puerto Rican arts and cultural promotion organization that had operated throughout the Washington area at the time, including the 2006 event that inspired Renta López.
While bomba may be a new discovery for many in the DMV, it has been around since the 16th century. The genre was created by the African slaves in Puerto Rico as a way of embracing their culture while collecting sugarcane. As it grew more popular as a form of expression, bomba soon spread across the Caribbean.
Not only do music and art act as a connection between Puerto Ricans and their home island, but food does as well. Like Semilla Cultural, Parkhurst is using La Famosa as a bridge between his food and the Puerto Rican community.
Parkhurst opened La Famosa in 2020. He said fond memories of cooking with his grandmother, “Mamita,” in their family kitchens in Barceloneta and Guaynabo, Puerto Rico, inspired him.
One of his favorite dishes to cook is mofongo. Mofongo is a savory dish that utilizes plantains, a fruit that resembles a banana, as its main ingredient. The plantains are cooked before being eaten and commonly cut into small pieces and fried, creating one larger portion of plantain. A sauce, often containing some sort of protein, is served on top.
La Famosa allows alterations to the dish and lets patrons get to choose their preferred meat, but one constant remains: it is Parkhurst’s own family mofongo recipe that’s been passed down through generations.
Many of the dishes served at La Famosa are Parkhurst’s family recipes. Besides cooking, he and his business partners often host local school groups, inviting them to eat Puerto Rican dishes and listen to the La Famosa staff talk about the ingredients and their prominence in Puerto Rican culture.
Educating people is important to Parkhurst, who notes that Puerto Rican culture was not always so widely accepted in the United States.
Parkhurst said he is grateful for the opportunities that the United States has given Puerto Ricans, but also realizes Puerto Rico has done a lot for the U.S.
Not only has Puerto Rico brought bomba dancing and delicious food, but has also brought influential singers such as Ricky Martin and Jennifer Lopez, whose parents are from Puerto Rico, as well as Sonia Sotomayor, a U.S. Supreme Court Justice.
“We owe a lot to the U.S,” he said, “but I think the U.S. owes a lot to us too.”
– Story by Ava Westendorf
– Copy edited by Channing Matha and Valerie Izquierdo
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