WE COME IN PEACE - VILLA VICTORIA
Boston’s Villa Victoria neighborhood in the South End was the scene of the flash mob orchestrated by artist Ian Deleón on July 19. Performers carried a flower-strewn sculpture meant to evoke an émigré raft to Plaza Betances Square, where musicians from the community burst into traditional Afro-Puerto Rican percussive rhythms and performers distributed handmade Dymaxion globes, which were developed by R. Buckminster Fuller to present a less culturally biased projection of the world. “Audience interaction with the globes is key to achieving a childlike sense of wonder that will hopefully result in a liberation of preconceptions regarding accepted social/historical/scientific “facts” and a consideration for the wealth or experience and creativity that an undemarcated world has to offer,” the artist said in a statement.
The flash mob occurred in the context of the neighborhood’s annual Festival Betances, which celebrates one of Puerto Rico’s earliest anti-colonial freedom fighters and commemorates the 45th year of IBA, the nonprofit that oversees several social service programs in the community. Deleon said he hoped that the performance would help “re-ignite the neighborhood’s sense of its own revolutionary past,” both in terms of the community’s stand against urban development in the 1960s and Puerto Rico’s own struggles against colonialism.
