My Puerto Rican Culture

Non-material culture is the notions or ideas that shape our communities, family units, and society. It is the sense of duty that provides comfort to the young, elderly and infirm. Nonmaterial culture is the idiosyncrasies that define our neighborhoods and are unique to those groups of people. It is that silly song that we sing at every Christmas gathering and reminds us of holidays past. One of the values that I admire of Puerto Rican culture is the importance of family. I am inspired by the way in which neighbors, young and old will gather in the center of the community during power outages. The men will play their guiros, congas, guitar, and even plastic buckets. The women and children holding flashlights, follow alongside, serenading the neighbors that stayed at home in what is called, a parranda. In a small community, even your neighbors form a part of your family. On any given afternoon, you may find my Tio Negro, busily, mowing his lawn, my aunt’s lawn, and the neighbor’s lawn. On another day, you may find my

For instance, on the island whenever you are paying a social call to family or friends it is customary to bring an offering. It can be in the form of half a pound of bread, or half a gallon of either juice, or milk. Having a BBQ might result in several pounds of bread or a couple of gallons of milk. Living in separate towns, the tendency to forget our established protocols ends in embarrassment when it dawn on me that I have arrived, empty handed. Another convention you may find in Puerto Rican culture, is that there is always a feast waiting for you. Heaven forbid you make the faux-pas of not accepting the invitation. Although this is great, growing up, my mother would extol the virtues of politely refusing any offers of food or drink; thus sending us into confused fits of tears by the end of the