Welcome to The Criadas Project!

The Criadas Project was borne out of an attempt to forefront the lives and biographical data within the notes of Fernando Píco that oftentimes were left in the background. By focusing on and working with the data to construct a better understanding of who would be considered some of the most vulnerable members of Puerto Rican society in the 1900: poor Black girls and women.

Puerto Rican Studies and Caribbean Studies writ large can do with bending its ear to attempt to hear the stories of Black girls. Today, “Criada” is synonymous with domestic workers, however, originally it was a raced-gendered-and aged term for Black girls doing domestic labor in homes without wage. This garrison like category of life was a direct legacy of slavery, leaving girls and then women to be in the house, but not at home.  This multi-section, interactive website, is our attempt to bring these girls center stage, leaning into performance studies and a Black digital humanistic ethic to represent these girls and women as more than data we use silhouettes.   In making out the archival silhouettes of these minor figures, we hope to rip open the imperial white screen and bring the criadas out of the shadows, kitchens, and laundry rooms and offer them their spotlight. In doing so, we aim to contribute to and expand on the limited scholarship dealing with young Black life in Puerto Rico and across a broader set of Caribbean discourses.

The Criadas Project has been a years long journey and is brought together by three team members. Abigail Vazquez Rosario and Rosa Emilia Cordero Cruz, alongside and led by Dr. Sarah Bruno make up the Criadas Project Team. The Criadas Project is within the microlab Taller Entre Aguas, within the larger Diaspora Solidarities Lab and Community Knowledge Lab umbrella. 

A NOTE ON NAVIGATION: Please see the “criadas” tab for the database, pedagogical tools under “pedagogy,” as well as our partners under the “about” tab. For more on the Picó papers, from which this database is curated from, please see the corresponding tab.