Joseph Delgado

Tropical Snow Joseph Delgado

During the final seconds of his life Jorge Blancos past appears as a spiraled succession of images on a dynamic canvas. Deluded by the conviction of a religious vocation and motivated by the desire to escape his troubled home life, Jorge migrates from Puerto Rico to Minnesota, where he joins a Benedictine monastery. Jorges dismay at the reality of monastic hypocrisy, however, drives him to a cynical outrage, with fatal consequences. Tropical Snow is set against the backdrop of life in the U. S. colony of Puerto Rico during the first half of the twentieth century and in the mainland in the early 1970s. Jorges life becomes a fluid metaphor that simultaneously reflects and becomes the history of his homelanddreams soiled and promises betrayedand the role that the Catholic Church played in its downfall.