"La Jaula" is an open cage. This series is born from the emotional and psychological trauma caused by the male body stereotype shared throughout Puerto Rico's conservative culture. The project focuses on black-and-white nude self-portraits that explore how the body communicates psychological shifts.

  
I began to develop "La Jaula" to cope with insecurities and understand whose body this was. I started by shielding myself, and once I felt comfortable enough, I removed motion and objects that hid my skin. After connecting with the project, I was curious to explore this new state of comfort in my homeland. It resulted in a new connection represented by nudity, a sense of belonging, and a clear contrast between my mental health state on colonist grounds vs. Puerto Rico. The project intends to have meaningful conversations across generations about relevant and timely topics, such as colonized bodies, repressed feelings, oppression, and the patriarchal hold over men's vulnerability. I wish to engage in decolonizing and anti-patriarchal conversations that hopefully help men realize the cage they live in due to our society's gender roles. 

La Jaula 

Knowledge gaps exist throughout all colonial territories. I was born and raised in a society that did not remember, thus they did not teach. Traces of what once was collective knowledge are scattered and conserved by a minority of individuals. To connect with this knowledge, many Boricuas are forced to become autodidacts and interpret what was once easily accessed, now without the proper tools. On many occasions, even learning our history from foreigners, what better proof of cultural trauma? 

  
I believe these traces (of practices, traditions, etc.) remain in our consciousness and are passed down to individuals who, throughout their lives, have affinities to them. Some produce original replicas, conserving the practice with purity, others find ways to incorporate the indigenous with the modern, and many never pursue them due to a lack of resources and access. Specifically, these practices are not limited to arts and crafts but include agriculture, botany, and others specific to Puerto Rican culture.

  
Puerto Rico is part of a short list of Caribbean islands that suffered colonization twice. Since 2010, 600,000 Puerto Ricans have left the island, a population decline of more than 12%, and a second [exodus](https://www.nbcnews.com/news/latino/puerto-ricos-population-fell-118-33-million-census-shows-rcna767) of 300,000 is already taking place. The collective amnesia in the diaspora is even more severe, with almost no way of vividly connecting with cultural knowledge, including one of the most important, language. And although culture evolves, dangerous narratives are born due to these gaps in knowledge and experience, filling our history with incorrect facts and threatening specifics of our culture with extinction. 

  
Survived by Few is a photographic essay exploring Puerto Rican artists' efforts to conserve the remaining Taino, native and Afro-Caribbean technics, music, and art forms.

  

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Javier Piñero