Summer of 1983 - Cold War, Work, Art, College

Wherein Teófilo reminisces about said season.

The year 1983 was a busy one with all sorts of experiences and activities against a worsening international climate. By now many have forgotten how the 1980’s brought out the zenith of the Cold War between the West and the Soviet block. No one expected the Cold War would finish by the end of the decade. Then President Ronald Reagan was rearming and modernizing the US Armed Forces, and a military build-up was under way. The Sandinistas governed Nicaragua with Cuban support and a US-backed military government in El Salvador fought a Marxist guerilla in a brutal civil war. Colombia had her own problems with Marxist insurgents and emerging drug cartels, and so did Perú. My generation was not unaware of the fact that the world could end at any moment. In September of that year the Soviets shot down a commercial airliner by mistake and then lied by saying it was a spy plane. The made-for-TV movie The Day After which aired in November 1983 would bring to American homes, including Puerto Rican ones, fictional images depicting our worst nuclear war nightmares.

Figure 1. Circles of destruction and estimated fatalities from an 800 kiloton nuclear warhead over Ponce. (Source)

Mercie and I were too busy thinking about our future to worry about the world going to hell. Yet, the thought wasn’t far from our minds. We consoled ourselves knowing there were no targets of value for the Russians to nuke in Ponce. That’s good for us because the yield of the common Russian nuclear warhead, if detonated over the city, would destroy everything and kill everyone within 24 hours. I’m sure the Russians had better targets to bomb than poor Ponce.

Work, Pleasure, Work

Mercie and I worked seasonal jobs doing inventories at local pharmacies. She also obtained a steadier employment at one local branch of the Pueblo supermarket chain. Her check helped her gas and upkeep a Nissan Sentra Doña Elba had purchased for her.

One weekend during that summer we went to stay with Mercie’s godmother Madma at her apartment in Santurce, a section of San Juan near the northern beaches of El Condado. We would walk embracing, as we’ve always had, from Madma’s apartment at Diez de Andino Street to Ashford Boulevard, and dart in and out from the various hotels laughing like the adolescents we were, pretending we were hotel guests. We also stood before the Condado Beach Hotel and ponder why Karl Wallenda chose to cross the boulevard, 10 stories above the street a few years before, balancing from one hotel tower to the next one. Of course the fall didn’t kill him, but the sudden stop on the ground surely did.

Museum Work

To me, that summer’s highlight job-wise was my stint as a guide in the Francisco Oller Exposition at the Ponce Museum of Art.

Fig. 1. Ponce Museum of Art (Museum Photo)

Francisco Oller was a 19th century painter imbued with a Puerto Rican consciousness. He studied in France and while there breathed the air of Monet, Manet, and Cézanne. Having learned Impressionism, Oller made Puerto Rico the principal subject or background of his artistic output.

Of course, in order for us guides to speak intelligently about art we had to learn its rudiments. They gave us a crash course in art: subject, colors and their coordination, projections, composition, perspectives, brush thickness, “emotion,” tone, etc. We went from the Renaissance to the Modern Age and then landed in France to absorb Impressionism. This is the most art education I’ve ever received in my life. It opened a new world of meaning for me. I’ve never forgotten its lessons and I apply them even now, so long afterwards, across many following developments in the arts. I’m grateful to have had this opportunity.

Fig. 2. Photo of a few of us Exposition guides as it appeared in El Vocero newspaper, August 25th, 1983.

I worked for tips only the first month, and for tips and minimum salary the second month. This was also the first time I spoke English to English-speakers visiting the museum. They took pity on my super-thick accent (much of it gone now, but still remains) and gave me generous tips.

Which was good, for I was about to start college at the Mayagüez Campus of the University of Puerto Rico and live out the two most mediocre years, study-wise, in my whole life.

Mercie and I stuck close to each other and then, one Sunday in August, I left Ponce to live elsewhere for the first time in my life. It was a tryout for the time I, along with my Mercie, would leave forever.