ABOUT

MISSION:

AgitArte is an organization of working class artists and cultural organizers who work at the intersections of race, class, gender, sexuality and ideology. Through a praxis of cultural solidarity, creative process and popular education, we initiate and facilitate arts and cultural projects with grassroots communities that contest U.S. cultural hegemony and propose alternatives to existing systems of oppression. We do this in our creative work by centering the experiences of oppressed people in resistance through  interdisciplinary storytelling/media, and in our mutual solidarity, through trainings, workshops and running a physical space for educational programming in Santurce, Puerto Rico.

BRIEF HISTORY:

AgitArte was founded in 1997 in Lynn, Massachusetts as a youth popular education, hip-hop and theater project with the broader vision of building a popular education center. In 2001, we developed AgitArte Puerto Rico in the San Juan barrio of Caimito. In 2005, we engaged in the anti-gentrification struggle in Santurce with “Santurce No Se Vende” which ended in the displacement from our offices in the neighborhood and coincided with the ending of a grant, the only economic support of the project at the time.

On May 1, 2006, the Papel Machete theater collective was born, responding to the economic crisis in Puerto Rico at a time when AgitArte was inoperable due to lack of funds. In 2010, AgitArte restarted in Boston facilitating projects with fair housing organization CityLife/VidaUrbana. Leading up to and following the creation of the book When We Fight, We Win!, published in 2016, AgitArte has grown from a one person to a multi-squad member led organization, expanded Papel Machete’s workshop into a cultural organizing and community hub in Santurce, Casa Taller Cangrejera, and grown into a transnational movement and mutual aid organization, rooted in Puerto Rico and the Global South.