Puerto Rican artist and critic José A. Torres Martinó asserts that there is widespread ignorance about the island of Puerto Rico, which he attributes to its isolation, which is the result of its political subordination. This has created a distance between the island and the other Latin American peoples to whom it is tied by history and culture. In the summer of 1979, on the occasion of the celebration of the 8th Pan American Games in San Juan, an artist from each participating country was invited to Puerto Rico to take part in a fifteen day collective Pan American print workshop.

The Taller Panamericano de Grabado [Pan American Print Workshop] was an initiative of the Programa de Artes Plásticas of the Instituto de Cultura Puertorriqueña. Indeed, the effort was supported by Bacardí Limited; the Organizing Committee for the Eighth Pan American Games; the University of Puerto Rico; the Puerto Rico Olympic Committee; and the Art Students League of San Juan. So that the workshop in metal engraving was given by Puerto Rican printmaker José R. Alicea, the one in silkscreen by Manuel García Fonteboa, and the one in lithography by Susana Herrero. The products of the workshops were presented in three graphic portfolios: one for silkscreen, one for intaglio, and one for lithography. The works were centered on sports themes. Thirty-three students from the following eleven countries participated: Puerto Rico, Bolivia, Canada, Colombia, Costa Rica, Cuba, Ecuador, the United States, Guatemala, Mexico, and the Dominican Republic.

José A. Torres Martinó (Ponce, born 1916) is considered the ideological leader of the generation born in the 1950s in Puerto Rico. As such, he was among those who defended the creation of an autonomous artistic movement in Puerto Rico. He also played an active role as arts educator and promoter of the graphic arts. In 1969, he founded and taught at the Taller de Diseño Gráfico [Graphic Design Workshop] de la Escuela de Arquitectura de la Universidad de Puerto Rico. Working with the artist Myrna Báez, he founded the Hermandad de Artistas Gráficos de Puerto Rico in 1981. The reason for organizing this group of artists was to protest against government intervention in cultural matters at the time.