Cortador de Caña by Rafael Tufiño (Interpretation and Analysis)

Cortador de Caña
Source: Google Arts & Culture Institute

Although Puerto Rican artist Rafael Tufiño is perhaps best known for his monumental painting Mural La Plena, a large portion of his artistic output came in the form of prints and engravings.

Tufiño famously illustrated Puerto Rican plenas (folk songs) in a series of engravings (fittingly entitled Plenas); however, in my opinion, it’s one of his earlier engravings, Cortador de Caña, that really stands out.

Cortador de Caña, which translates to Cane Cutter, depicts agricultural workers laboring in the sugarcane fields. Producing sugar is backbreaking work, especially before modern machinery mechanized the process, and Tufiño’s cane cutters wield long machetes as they labor in oppressive heat. The primary cutter, who dominates the piece, is stooped over, his face hidden behind a large hat. His anonymous form allows the image to be universal; he is a stand in for the many thousands of contemporary cane cutters in Tufiño’s Puerto Rico. Although the figure is faceless, Tufiño pays special attention to the man’s body. He is careful to emphasize the cutter’s strong hands and bare feet, symbols of the physical toll of labor in the cane fields.

Although sugar production was a major industry in Puerto Rico until the 1960s and the industry employed large segments of the population (who often worked grueling hours for very little money), it was seldom portrayed in art before Tufiño’s time. Sugar mill work was hard and dirty, and was performed by the most impoverished class of laborers, making it an “unaesthetic” subject for artists (with a few notable exceptions).

As sociologist Hilda Lloréns notes in her book Imaging the Great Puerto Rican Family, “Cortador de Caña (1951) stands as an early example of a cane worker/cutter depiction by a Puerto Rican artist. Certainly the romantic ideas that led Puerto Rico’s costumbrista painters to recreate, time and again, the jibaro’s mountainous and hilly landscape, eclipsed the desire to render as equally beautiful the rambling sugar fields on which sweaty and dirty workers dressed in torn rags toiled under the hot sun on the island’s coasts.”

Given this context, Tufiño’s engraving is an extraordinary and important piece of art. It recognizes and acknowledges the Puerto Ricans who performed thankless labor to ensure that Americans could continue to enjoy the cheap and accessible sugar that they took for granted. In my opinion, the realism of Cortador de Caña is to be celebrated. It brings home an important lesson: there is always a cost to be paid for convenience. In this case, it is a human cost, and Tufiño’s work restores a modicum of respect and dignity to the laborers he depicts.

Disclaimer: I’m not an art historian or an expert on this topic. The above is my opinion, based on my interpretation of my foreknowledge of art and history. If I’ve done any additional research, I’ll note it above.