In 1929, the Spanish poet Federico García Lorca spent nearly a month in Bushnellsville. Several poems later immortalized in his collection Poeta en Nueva York were inspired by the area's rural tranquility.

In the summer of 1929, the Spaniard Angel del Río (1891–1953) and his wife, Puerto Rican Amelia Agostini del Río (1896–1996), hosted the famous Spanish poet and dramaturg Federico García Lorca (1898–1936) at their rented farmhouse in the hamlet of Bushnellsville, in the town of Shandaken, New York. At the time, the hamlet was mostly farmland with a cider mill, ice houses, several general stores, and a post office.

Before and after Lorca’s visit, the del Ríos regularly summered in the Catskills region while on break from their academic duties in New York City. Angel del Río was an eminent scholar of Spanish literature who served as director of Columbia University’s Hispanic Institute and its prestigious journal Revista Hispanica Moderna. He is credited with helping develop the discipline of Hispanic studies in the United States. Amelia Agostini del Río was the prolific author of more than 45 books of poetry, essays, plays, short stories and art history. Among them was one of the first academic monographs about the Puerto Rican experience in the United States. She was a professor and longtime chair of the Spanish Department at Barnard College.

Federico García Lorca stayed with the del Ríos in their Bushnellsville farmhouse for three weeks, from August 29 to September 18, 1929. He had befriended the couple—who would serve as his hosts and guides during his time in New York—a few years before in Madrid. According to Lorca’s biographer Leslie Stanton, Lorca thoroughly enjoyed the tranquility of Bushnellsville, taking long walks and studying English, ostensibly the main reason for his journey to the United States.

Although the scenery could not be said to have enhanced Lorca’s proficiency in the English language, which he never mastered, it did ignite his poetic imagination. His time in Bushellsville led to the creation of some of the poems that would later appear in his iconic, posthumous collection, Poeta en Nueva York (1942). Lorca’s bond with the farmhouse caretaker’s children who frequently followed him on his bucolic walks inspired the poems “El niño Stanton” and “Niña ahogada en el pozo.” These works are contemplative explorations of childhood innocence. Melancholy permeates other poems written in the Catskills, such as “Nocturno del hueco,” “Ruina,” and “Paisaje con dos tumbas y un perro asirio,” which meditate on the passage of time, loss, and death.

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The former summer home of the major Latino critics and researchers Juan Flores and Miriam Jiménez Román, it was built by Juan's mother, Kate Flores, and his father, Angel Flores, himself a major critic of Latin American and world literature.

For decades, Juan Flores (1943–2014) and Miriam Jiménez Román (1951 – 2020), both eminent scholars of Puerto Rican, Latino, and Afro-Latino studies, summered in Palenville, Greene County, New York. They spent their summer months at a serene and secluded property located at the foothills of Kaaterskill Clove, at the end of a dead-end street that led straight into an expansive network of trails in the Kaaterskill Wild Forest. The Kaaterskill Creek runs through the property’s backyard, forming a swimming hole. The house served as an ideal writing retreat for both Flores and Jiménez Román. Away from the teaching and administrative demands of the academic year, their summer house provided a setting in which groundbreaking ideas were developed and field-shaping essays and books were drafted and revised.

Their pioneering Latino-centered scholarship helped transform our understanding of the U.S. Latino experience. Flores, a prolific cultural critic and professor at Hunter College, CUNY, and New York University, is the author or editor of over ten books and many award-winning essays. His work is essential for understanding Puerto Rican diasporic and working-class cultures as well as the dynamic cross-cultural exchanges that shape Latino identities today. Jiménez Román, an indefatigable activist, writer, curator, and founding Executive Director of the Afrolatin@ Forum, was a pioneering architect of Afro-Latino studies. Through her activism and scholarship, Jiménez Román forged new spaces for studying the intersections of Blackness and Latinidad and the operating power of race within and across Latino communities.

Juan Flores’s parents, Angel and Kate Flores, respected scholars and translators who helped establish the field of Latin American studies, had bought the land and built the Palenville house in 1955. After a decade in Mexico and Washington, D.C., working for the Pan American Union, they had moved to New York City for academic appointments and sought a summer retreat that they could call their own. A prolific writer, professor and translator, the Puerto Rican Angel Flores is widely credited as the first to apply the term “magic realism” to Latin American literature. Kate Flores, of Hungarian and Russian descent, was a feminist poet, translator, and editor who developed a novel theory of consciousness and evolution. From their home in Palenville, the Floreses corresponded with towering Latin American writers and critics like Octavio Paz and Julio Cortázar. They also socialized with other intellectuals who summered in the area. Juan Flores remembered, for example, how figures like Hannah Arendt and Heinrich Blücher (who also lodged in Palenville, at the nearby Chestnut Lawn House) would come over for drinks or dinner when he was a young boy.

Juan Flores and Miriam Jiménez Román continued this tradition of intellectual conviviality in Palenville. Over the years, they welcomed countless friends and colleagues into their home, treating them to delicious Puerto Rican meals, scenic hikes, and bracing swims in the ice-cold swimming hole out back. But, above all, they offered lively conversation that flowed effortlessly from pressing Latino political and cultural issues to the natural beauty and rich history of the Catskills.

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This article is a stub. It will be expanded in a future phase of the Latino Catskills project.

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This article is a stub. It will be expanded in a future phase of the Latino Catskills project.

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This article is a stub. It will be expanded in a future phase of the Latino Catskills project.

For more, view the original article.

This article is a stub. It will be expanded in a future phase of the Latino Catskills project.

For more, view the original article.

This article is a stub. It will be expanded in a future phase of the Latino Catskills project.

For more, view the original article.

This article is a stub. It will be expanded in a future phase of the Latino Catskills project.

For more, view the original article.

This article is a stub. It will be expanded in a future phase of the Latino Catskills project.

For more, view the original article.

This article is a stub. It will be expanded in a future phase of the Latino Catskills project.

For more, view the original article.