This is a miniature version of the barril de bomba, the kind of drum used in performances of the Afro-Puerto Rican musical tradition known as bomba. While bomba can be used as the generic name for a number of rhythms, its real meaning is about the encounter and creative relationship between dance

This engraving shows Hernán Cortés (1485 1547), the Spanish captain who headed the conquest of the Aztec Empire. He became a part of popular mythology the moment he arrived in Mexico in 1521. Cortés had spent time in Cuba killing and enslaving its indigenous inhabitants and administering the n

The civilizations of pre-Hispanic Mexico recorded their histories, religious beliefs, and scientific knowledge in books called codices. Codices are folded pieces of hide or bark that depict both mundane and spiritual scenes with images, symbols, and numbers. Scribes and painters busily recorded d

La Malinche, the title of this lithograph, was the indigenous woman who translated for Cortés between Maya, Náhuatl, and Spanish during his first years in Mexico. Considered either as a traitor or a founding mother by some Mexicans, La Malinche was Cortés' lover and the mother of his

This large, hand-held drum, known in Puerto Rico as a pandereta, is an essential instrument in the musical genre known as plena. The plena was developed by agricultural workers at the end of the 19th century on the southern coast of the island, around the city of Ponce. Consider