HUMBOLDT PARK — Artist and activist Melissa DuPrey is on a mission to extend visibility for Puerto Rican girls previous and current in Humboldt Park.
The Humboldt Park native, who’s an actor and comedian, is working with native leaders and cultural establishments to place up 20 portraits with accompanying plaques close to the neighborhood’s signature metal flags. The featured girls revolutionized the humanities, tradition and politics, amongst different areas, and have been integral to the diaspora neighborhood in Chicago.
“My venture seeks to span the spectrum of id and … many areas of both tradition, training, revolution, politics, even Santeria and faith that we’re capable of reside,” DuPrey mentioned. “One in all these profiles may also be one of many first Black girls to the touch a bomba drum — it’s not nearly revolution; it’s about revolutionizing the factor.”
Lolita Lebron, Julia de Burgos, Ana Roque de DuPrey, Mariana Bracetti, Blanca Canales, Luisa Capetillo and Mayra Santos-Febres are among the iconic Puerto Rican girls DuPrey hopes to function. They aren’t as effectively often known as Puerto Rican males who’ve been highlighted locally, she mentioned.
“Canales was a enormous revolutionary, and we don’t know a lot about her,” DuPrey mentioned. “So once we speak about Puerto Rican historical past, which is such a small portion of our Latin historical past normally, girls typically get omitted.”
DuPrey is partnering with nonprofit arts company 3Arts to fundraise for the venture, referred to as Las Flores del Paseo Boricua, or The Flowers of Paseo Boricua. It met its preliminary fundraising aim in simply 48 hours, so now she has a stretch aim of $10,000. DuPrey hopes to lift a little bit over $1,000 extra earlier than Thursday night time to hit that aim, she mentioned.
The venture additionally acquired $2,000 from 3Arts and $6,000 from the town’s cultural affairs division.
The ladies showcased within the portraits can be 10 historic figures from Puerto Rico and 10 girls who have been a part of the Chicago diaspora.
DuPrey is collaborating with native artists, The Nationwide Museum of Puerto Rican Arts & Tradition, the Puerto Rican Cultural Heart, the twenty sixth Ward workplace and others from the Puerto Rican Agenda group to gather suggestions on who can be featured. She then plans to put in the portraits in flower beds or pots lining the 4 posts of the Puerto Rican metal flags, although precise particulars are nonetheless being labored out.
DuPrey additionally hopes to make use of QR code and augmented actuality know-how so individuals can scan and listen to narration from 20 trendy Humboldt Park girls speaking in regards to the girls featured within the portraits.
DuPrey’s family has led a revolutionary path in Chicago. Her grandmother was one of many first bilingual academics within the Chicago Public Faculties system, instructing Spanish and English to Puerto Ricans and Mexicans so that they “couldn’t preserve being left behind,” Melissa DuPrey mentioned.
DuPrey’s grandmother additionally helped set up La Casa Puertorriqueña, which began as a cooperative house the place girls would carry meals and feed native youngsters. It created the mutual help mannequin, DuPrey mentioned. La Casa Puertorriqueña, a longstanding Puerto Rican neighborhood middle, was closed and demolished in 2019 after over 60 years within the neighborhood.
A brand new reasonably priced housing complicated is beneath building on the previous neighborhood middle website, although there are plans to open a brand new model of the middle, referred to as Tu Casa, in 2026.
“I come from an extended line of revolutionary girls. Ana Roque de DuPrey, she is an ancestor. She was a feminist, an educator, one of many first suffragettes on our island,” the actor mentioned. “We’ve faculties named after her, however we don’t know the place she comes from.”
The Las Flores venture has three phases. The crowdfunding match for the Las Flores venture will first pay artist Richard Santiago, a distinguished Puerto Rican portrait painter, to make six of the ladies’s portraits, which can then be auctioned off to lift extra money for the ultimate venture, Melissa DuPrey mentioned. One other neighborhood artist will switch the portraits to a weather-resistant materials for out of doors use and work on the tech, Melissa DuPrey mentioned.
DuPrey mentioned the organizers hope a ribbon-cutting ceremony can happen in September 2026.
“Hopefully, [$10,000] is sufficient to ebook the know-how prematurely whereas we work out what materials we need to use to create,” she mentioned.
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