Who Ya Callin' Coon? was exhibited as the first image of the Proclaim Your Emancipation installation. This painting is in direct response to the 1898 cartoon "Holding his End Up," printed in The Philadelphia Inquirer. In this country the common history of African-Americans and Latinos is often overlooked. It is crucial to point out that when the Spanish-American war was launched, the United States was a segregated country, acquiring territories of mixed races. American cartoonists did not reserve the derogatory images of the pickninny and the coon for African-Americans alone. In this image, depicting a circus act, Uncle Sam balances the pickninnies, which are labeled respectively, "Porto Rico," "Cuba," "Philippines," "Ladrones" and "Hawaii." In another unstretched canvas painting of the Puerto Rican flag, I use its stripes to create a juxtaposition between the stereotypical image used to represent my people in 1898 and actual images of my multicolored Puerto Rican family members in the present, one-hundred years since the cartoon was printed. Within the blue triangle of the flag, I create a play on the word "Colony", using cut out images of the "Porto Rico" pickninny to subtract letters forming the new words, "Colon" (as in Columbus), and then "Coon." This breakdown creates a sarcastic outline of Puerto Rican evolution. From the "Discovery" under Columbus, to be labeled "Coons" four centuries later. My personal goal with this painting was to evoke sentiments in the viewer that would challenge them to evaluate the present status of American political thought and Puerto Rican Identity as the island enters its 5th century as a colony.
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