El Puerto Rican Passport
El Puerto Rican Passport was designed for El Puerto Rican Embassy Project by ADÁL as a document to identify citizens of El Spirit Republic de Puerto Rico. El Rev. Pedro Pietri wrote its accompanying Manifesto.
El Puerto Rican Passport Agency issues passports during special performances in which the artist takes fotografs of those individuals who apply for the document. A communiqué issued by El Puerto Rican Embassy explains the passport’s function: el passport is the official document that defines an individual’s personality, an important sign of identity that you need in order to travel outside of the country and in some cases within. Puerto Ricans given our condition as North American citizens have been without a symbol that affirms our cultural identity. To this end el Puerto Rican Passport was created. El passport’s status as works of art playfully disrupts officially sanctioned systems of identification and control.
Eduardo “Eddie” Figueroa, cultural visionary and founder of the New Rican Village, conceptualized El Spirit Republic de Puerto Rico and its Embassy El Puerto Rican Embassy. After Ambassador Eduardo Figueroa’s passing Rev. Pedro and ADÁL collaborated to bring El Puerto Rican Embassy into the world of hard objects by designing a passport, appointing ambassadors of the arts and culture, creating a political platform, introducing a religious philosophy and arranging for mass baptisms, and introducing a space program, among others.
El Puerto Rican Embassy Communiqué
Adál Maldonado
Resident Dissident
1 La Santa Iglesia de la Madre de los Tomates
2 Coconauts in Space
“We are a Spirit Republic no one understands a rainbow better than Puerto Ricans who are a physical and spiritual combination of all Nations of the world. Everywhere you go you will meet yourself.”
Ambassador Edward “Eddie” Figueroa
Creator: El Spirit Republic de Puerto Rici/El Puerto Rican Embassy
El Passport
Page 2
For the purpose of El Puerto Rican Passport Project, please consider the following: the passport is the official document which defines an individual’s nationality, an important sign of identity which you need in order to travel outside of the country and in some cases within. Its color and text tell the country of origin while the fotograf and related data identify the individual’s characteristics. Puerto Ricans, however, given our condition as North American citizens, have been without a symbol which affirms our cultural identity. To this end, we have created El Puerto Rican Passport.
It is now time to take El Passport Project to another zone of thought, which is to question the significance of such a citizenship, either assumed or bestowed. Considering that Puerto Ricans have developed into a hybrid culture, might it be considered possible for others, not of Puerto Rican descent, to solicit and assume, through El Puerto Rican Embassy/El Passport Project, the construction of that symbolic identity and become part of it. I would like you to consider the projected imagery and to respond to the following questions:
a. What would citizenship in El Spirit Republic de Puerto Rico (the country
which El Puerto Rican Embassy represents) represent? Who may
assume one?
b. What are the implications of a multiple citizenship?
c. Is it possible to assume a national identity which has no citizenship
privileges, as the country (El Spirit Republic de Puerto Rico) has no
territories other than conceptual ones?
The idea is for El Puerto Rican Embassy/El Passport Project to register the social unconscious to vote on a criteria of thought flexible enough to accept the absurd concept of having multiple citizenships and in this way open a forum of dialog for an idealogical debate which may inspire some answers to this identity crisis hat has been following us into the 21st Century.
Send comments to
adal_maldonado@hotmail.com
Adál Maldonado Artistic Director/Resident Dissident
El Puerto Rican Embassy