Lamento Borincano (Puerto Rican Lament)

As one of the most important composers of Puerto Rican popular music during the 20th century, the work of Rafael Hernández Marin has passed the test of the time.

Hernández was born in 1891 to a poor, black family in Aguadilla, Puerto Rico. He wrote his famous “Lamento” in 1929, while living in New York City. There are several versions of where he wrote the song but we know for sure that he wrote it in the Spanish Harlem. Lamento Borincano depicts the struggles of a Puerto Rican "jibaro" (a term used to describe a Puerto Rican peasant; or just anybody from the countryside) to survive; an archetypical hero that the Puerto Rican people always identified with closely. The identification with this poor "jibaro", despondent from his inability to sell his goods in the town's marketplace can be seen as a representation of Puerto Rico's own struggle for national identity and self-reliance in the face of a colonial history. The lamentos were the protest songs of their time, although they lacked the anger and demanding tone of today's protest songs. They were truly lamentations directed at God or to any sympathetic ear.

On the 11th of December, 1965, Hernández died after a long struggle against cancer. He left a legacy of more than 3,000 musical compositions in many different genres.