The History of Puerto Rico / From the Spanish Discovery to the American Occupation

by R. A. Van Middeldyk

CHAPTER XXIX

THE "JÍBARO," OR PUERTO RICAN PEASANT

"There is in this island a class of inhabitants, not the least numerous by any means, who dwell in swamps and marshes, live on vegetables, and drink muddy water." So wrote Dr. Richard Rey[61] a couple of decades ago, and, although, under the changed political and social conditions, these people, as a class, will soon disappear, they are quite numerous still, and being the product of the peculiar social and political conditions of a past era deserve to be known.

To this considerable part of the population of Puerto Rico the name of "jíbaros" is applied; they are the descendants of the settlers who in the early days of the colonization of the island spread through the interior, and with the assistance of an Indian or negro slave or two cleared and cultivated a piece of land in some isolated locality, where they continued to live from day to day without troubling themselves about the future or about what passed in the rest of the universe.

The modern jíbaro builds his "bohío," or hut, in any place without regard to hygienic conditions, and in its construction follows the same plan and uses the same materials employed in their day by the aboriginal inhabitants. This "bohío" is square or oblong in form, raised on posts two or three feet from the ground, and the materials are cane, the trunks of the coco-palm, entire or cut into boards, and the bark of another species of palm, the "yaguas," which serves for roofing and walls. The interior of these huts is sometimes divided by a partition of reeds into two apartments, in one of which the family sit by day. The other is the sleeping room, where the father, mother, and children, male and female, of all ages, sleep, promiscuously huddled together on a platform of boards or bar bacao.

The majority of the jíbaros are whites. Mestizoes, mulattos, and negroes are numerous also. But we are here concerned with the jíbaro of European descent only, whose redemption from a degraded condition of existence it is to the country's interest should be specially attended to.

Mr. Francisco del Valle Atilés, one of Puerto Rico's distinguished literary men, has left us a circumstantial description of the character and conditions of these rustics.[62] He divides them into three groups: those living in the neighborhood of the large sugar and coffee estates, who earn their living working as peons; the second group comprises the small proprietors who cultivate their own patch of land, and the third, the comparatively well-to-do individuals or small proprietors who usually prefer to live as far as possible from the centers of population.

The jíbaro, as a rule, is well formed, slender, of a delicate constitution, slow in his movements, taciturn, and of a sickly aspect. Occasionally, in the mountainous districts, one meets a man of advanced age still strong and robust doing daily work and mounting on horseback without effort. Such a one will generally be found to be of pure Spanish descent, and to have a numerous family of healthy, good-looking children, but the appearance of the average jíbaro is as described. He looks sickly and anemic in consequence of the insufficient quantity and innutritious quality of the food on which he subsists and the unhealthy conditions of his surroundings. Rice, plantains, sweet potatoes, maize, yams, beans, and salted fish constitute his diet year in year out, and although there are Indian races who could thrive perhaps on such frugal fare, the effect of such a régime on individuals of the white race is loss of muscular energy and a consequent craving for stimulants.

His clothing, too, is scanty. He wears no shoes, and when drenched with rain or perspiration he will probably let his garments dry on his body. For the empty feeling in his stomach, the damp and the cold to which he is thus daily exposed, his antidotes are tobacco and rum, the first he chews and smokes. In the use of the second he seldom goes to the extent of intoxication.

Under these conditions, and considering his absolute ignorance and consequent neglect of the laws of hygiene, it is but natural that the Puerto Rican peasant should be subject to the ravages of paludal fever, one of the most dangerous of the endemic diseases of the tropics.

Friar Abbad observes: " … No cure has yet been discovered (1781) for the intermittent fevers which are often from four to six years in duration. Those who happen to get rid of them recover very slowly; many remain weak and attenuated; the want of nutritious food and the climate conduce to one disease or another, so that those who escape the fever generally die of dropsy."

However, the at first sight apathetic and weak jíbaro, when roused to exertion or when stimulated by personal interest or passion, can display remarkable powers of endurance. Notwithstanding his reputation of being lazy, he will work ten or eleven hours a day if fairly remunerated. Under the Spanish régime, when he was forced to present himself on the plantations to work for a few cents from sunrise to sundown, he was slow; or if he was of the small proprietor class, he had to pay an enormous municipal tax on his scanty produce, so that it is very likely that he may often have preferred swinging in his hammock to laboring in the fields for the benefit of the municipal treasury.

Mr. Atilés refers to the premature awakening among the rustic population of this island of the procreative instincts, and the consequent increase in their numbers notwithstanding the high rate of mortality. The fecundity of the women is notable; from six to ten children in a family seems to be the normal number.

[Illustration: A tienda, or small shop.]

Intellectually the jíbaro is as poor as he is physically. His illiteracy is complete; his speech is notoriously incorrect; his songs, if not of a silly, meaningless character, are often obscene; sometimes they betray the existence of a poetic sentiment. These songs are usually accompanied by the music of a stringed instrument of the guitar kind made by the musician himself, to which is added the "güiro," a kind of ribbed gourd which is scraped with a small stick to the measure of the tune, and produces a noise very trying to the nerves of a person not accustomed to it.

In religion the jíbaro professes Catholicism with a large admixture of fetichism. His moral sense is blunt in many respects.

Colonel Flinter[63] gives the following description of the jíbaros of his day, which also applies to them to-day:

"They are very civil in their manners, but, though they seem all simplicity and humility, they are so acute in their dealings that they are sure to deceive a person who is not very guarded. Although they would scorn to commit a robbery, yet they think it only fair to deceive or overreach in a bargain. Like the peasantry of Ireland, they are proverbial for their hospitality, and, like them, they are ever ready to fight on the slightest provocation. They swing themselves to and fro in their hammocks all day long, smoking their cigars or scraping a guitar. The plantain grove which surrounds their houses, and the coffee tree which grows almost without cultivation, afford them a frugal subsistence. If with these they have a cow and a horse, they consider themselves rich and happy. Happy indeed they are; they feel neither the pangs nor remorse which follow the steps of disappointed ambition nor the daily wants experienced by the poor inhabitants of northern regions."

This entirely materialistic conception of happiness which, it is certain, the Puerto Rican peasant still entertains, is now giving way slowly but surely before the new influences that are being brought to bear on himself and on his surroundings. The touch of education is dispelling the darkness of ignorance that enveloped the rural districts of this island until lately; industrial activity is placing the means of greater comfort within the reach of every one who cares to work for them; the observance of the laws of health is beginning to be enforced, even in the bohío, and with them will come a greater morality. In a word, in ten years the Puerto Rican jíbaro will have disappeared, and in his place there will be an industrious, well-behaved, and no longer illiterate class of field laborers, with a nobler conception of happiness than that to which they have aspired for many generations.