This marionette is Perez #2 from the Latin American folk tale "Perez and Martina: A Portotican Folktale" written by Pura Belpre and published in the United States in 1932. Belpre was the first Puerto Rican librarian at the New York Public Library and a puppeteer. The story she wrote was told to her by her grandmother when growing up in Puerto Rico.
The traditional folk tale tells of a cockroach, named Martina, who finds a coin on a walkway and decides to buy with it a tin of face powder. She primps and then waits on her veranda above her garden for suitors to call. She settles on marrying a rat, Perez, who, unfortunately, becomes carried away by his own curiosity, falling, the next morning, into a vat of soup Martina is cooking. In some versions
he is rescued.
In the puppet play produced by Elizabeth L.. Haines with her husband, Frank D. Haines, Martina is a cricket and Perez is a mouse who competes for her favors with a rooster and a frog. Martina is looked after by an aging duenna beetle. She marries Perez, her face turning into that of a woman, and she lives "as happy as a cricket" with Perez ever after.
Perez #2 is made of hand carved wood, with hinged appendages and a moveable head. .is dressed for his wedding to Martina. His hands and face are painted a light gray, with black buttons for his eyes and nose, his ears are made of soft suede leather, and e has a moustache made of black feathers. He wears a fancy toreador suit with blue velvet pants and short jacket trimmed in the gold thread lace, and sports a bright pink cummerbund. This puppet is operated with a 5- wooden airplane control with ten strings.
Throughout the 1940s the Haines performed this version of the play, ( with Martina a cricket and Perez a mouse), before school groups in the Philadelphia area. The marionettes and stage props were created by Frank and Elizabeth made the costumes and the backdrops
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