Looking for the West Side Story

by Janine Santiago

My graduate work in oral history for UB's American Studies department put me in touch with all these people whom I never knew. The first thing that had happened to me when I came to Buffalo from Puerto Rico, even in the university, was that people were asking me, "Oh, so do you live in the West Side?"

And I was like, "What is the West Side?" and then I said, "Oh, this is like the 'West Side Story' movie? Puerto Ricans actually live in the West Side?"

So then for a class I went to search out what the West Side was. I went looking for the West Side Story. Before that, I never knew much about what is written in history about Puerto Ricans in New York and in the northeastern corridor.

Later I was asked to work on a project about Puerto Rican culture for the Castellani museum. When the exhibit came up, we had a very good turnout. It was interesting that one of the artisans who is here in Buffalo is also a UB alumnus, Ramsn Estrada. He is a woodcrafter of Puerto Rican saints. Ramsn was able to contact people from Puerto Rico, artisans, and he brought some of their artworks here.

The museum had organized an exhibit on Ramsn's art before, and I believe Kate, the curator, fell in love so much with the traditions and with the history of the community that she took on the project of putting together this team of people for the Puerto Rican celebration. The art of the Puerto Rican artist, Lilian Mendez, was also here. Basically, my work was to write about the traditions as people here told them, and we incorporated that into the catalogue.