Instituto de Cultura Puertorriqueña

The ''Instituto de Cultura Puertorriqueña'' (), or ICP for short, is an institution of the Government of Puerto Rico responsible for the establishment of the cultural policies required in order to study, preserve, promote, enrich, and diffuse the cultural values of Puerto Rico. Since October 1992, its headquarters have been located at the site of the old colonial Spanish Welfare House in Old San Juan.

The ICP was created by order of Law Number 89, signed June 21, 1955, and it started operating in November of that year. Its first Executive Director was sociologist and archeology PhD Ricardo Alegría, who felt that "There was a need to counteract decades of harmful influences, which at times were openly contradictory to our cultural values, with an effort to promote those values. There was an urgent need to struggle against a psychological conditioning which had become deeply rooted in our colonial society, and which led many Puerto Ricans to systematically diminish anything autochthonous or anything that seemed autochthonous, while disproportionately valuing everything that was foreign, or that seemed foreign." It was in this social and sociological environment that the Instituto de Cultura Puertorriqueña was born. The bill provoked fierce debate as, for some whose political views were in favor of the direction Puerto Rican politics had been taking in the several years prior to the debate, the bill touched on the very essence of the political status of Puerto Rico. Once the bill was signed into law, the controversy created by the new government institution did not end. Provided by Wikipedia