What's important is it's rarity. It is maybe the oldest, or one of the oldest, surving cuatros anywhere. Most old cuatros disappeared in Puerto Rico due to polilla or because of their low perceived value, they were just thrown away when they fell apart. Previously, the earliest surviving cuatro we have found in Puerto Rico is about 70-80 years old, in a collection in Florida, PR. Yet there are five potentially-19th century Puerto Rican folk instruments surviving in the United States: this one, a tiple and a cuatro de higuera in the Teodoro Vidal collection at the Smithsonian, a small jibaro carved guitar in the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, and an old hundred-year cuatro in the U.S. that we almost found 10 years ago but tragically, lost track of. So this is an important historical find in the field of Puerto Rican folk craft and culture.
And it's first showing to the Puerto Rican public since the turn of the century will be at the Dia Nacional del Cuatro 2009 in Ponce!!