CHAPTER IV PORTO RICO
Porto Rico was discovered by Columbus in 1493, and he entered the port of San Juan, naming it San Juan de Porto Rico—St. John of the Fine Harbor—hence the name of the island itself—Porto Rico. The Indians there were in a low state of civilization and showed little sign of wealth. The island seems at first to have presented less interest than its neighbors: Santo Domingo became the beloved of Columbus, Cuba became the chief Spanish base for exploration and conquest. Porto Rico enjoyed therefore comparative peace for sixteen years after its fatal discovery. Then came Ponce de Leon, and after him plunderers and pacificators with sword and hemp; killing, ravishing, enslaving. The despoiling of the Indians of their gold and jewels was followed by dispossession of their lands and then the capture of their persons for the slave trade. Ships were fitted out in Cuba, with the sole mercantile objective of capturing the Indians of the islands and selling them into bondage.
Slaving may have proved profitable, but in the long run it was unpractical. The Indians entirely disappeared, and at the beginning of the seventeenth century were reported to Spain as extinct. There were no longer enough servile hands to do the hard work. So in place of the lost Indians the Spanish colonists felt forced to import Africans.
The Negro slaves throve under conditions which killed Indians; they increased, and the Spaniards mixed their blood with them and bred from them. Hence the large Negroid population of the Indies at this day.
The same happened in Darien, Panama, Costa Rica—Negroes largely displaced Indians. In Mexico, however, Africans were not imported to any extent, as the Indians, though rebellious, were in large numbers and there were many tribes accustomed to slavery.
The Spaniards settled Porto Rico, and grew sugar and bananas which they brought over from the Canaries, and tobacco which was indigenous. They lived in a humdrum state, taxed, of course, interfered with a great deal by Spanish governors, but generally enjoying the wealth and ease of a luxuriant tropical island—thus for three centuries, when suddenly all the Spanish colonies followed the example of the North American demarche and endeavored to throw off the yoke of the mother country. Mexico, Guatemala, Salvador, Nicaragua, Costa Rica, Colombia, Ecuador, Venezuela, Peru, Bolivia, Argentina, Paraguay, Chile, all gained their freedom before 1825. Porto Rico fought for three years and failed (1821-1823). Spain remained in possession. Fifty years later slavery was abolished. The free republics of Central America had abolished it in 1824. However, in 1873 the Negroes of Porto Rico became free Spanish subjects. In 1897 Porto Rico even obtained Home Rule under a Spanish Governor-general. But next year came the war between the United States and Spain, and Porto Rico was annexed.
Cuba had also failed in 1823, and for the rest of the century remained disaffected. The Cuban is of a much more violent disposition than the Porto Rican. Cuba has never been wholly in a state of peace and contentedness since it was discovered. A widespread guerrilla warfare lasted from 1868 to 1878, and in 1895 Maximo Gomez led another revolutionary war. By that time, despite constant unrest, foreigners had acquired considerable property in Cuba. There were American, British, and French planters besides Spanish ones. Naturally, in a state of civil war, as in Mexico during 1910-1920, there was much damage done to foreign property. At this, the United States took umbrage.
On February 15, 1898, the U. S. battleship Maine blew up in the harbor of Habana. The Spaniards say it blew up accidentally; the American impression given in the American press was that the Spaniards, to whom the presence of the vessel was thought to be distasteful, had blown it up on purpose. Others think the Cubans blew it up to instigate the war. On the other hand, some Cubans aver that the Americans themselves blew it up—but that is not credible. Probably it was an accident.
But this was the spectacular event which an emotional public needed, like the hauling down of the Flag at Fort Sumter in 1861, like the supposed onslaught of the Mexican Army upon the forces of General Taylor in 1846, the sinking of the Maine was just what was needed to rouse the democracy of the North to war. An ultimatum was presented to Spain.
Spain must make immediate peace in Cuba. Spain was very polite and promised to do what she could. But the war feeling demanded more. On April 19, 1898, the United States Congress voted that Cuba was henceforth an independent state, and called upon Spain to give up Cuba. Next day the Spanish Ambassador left Washington and there was war.
In the arbitrament of force Spain stood no chance. There were a few months of one-sided warfare, and the honor of Spain was satisfied. Spain faced her challenger, shots were exchanged, Spain was wounded and retired from the field. Cuba was given liberty. Porto Rico was annexed.
Does one need to stress the annexation of Porto Rico? Is it worth while inquiring whether the Porto Ricans should also have been given their liberty? Perhaps not, generally speaking, as the government of States and Empires goes on to-day. Porto Rico has only a million and a quarter inhabitants, is only 3400 square miles in extent. But I stress the annexation in this study because it seems specially important in the development of the power of the United States of North America.
The Spaniards took Porto Rico for greed. No tears need be shed over them. The United States did not take it over from that motive. But it was a step forward in her quest of power. The Castilian flag went down—the flag of the quest for gold. The American flag went up—the flag of the quest for power.
San Juan de Porto Rico is a gay and pretty little city, without crime, without dirt, and without much poverty. Revolvers are not fired promiscuously. Heaven's water-carts lay the dust each afternoon. There is a luxurious American hotel, and Spanish ones which are less luxurious. You eat to music, and can be fed in airy restaurants by eager Italians. Babbitt orders his stacks of hot cakes and soft-boiled eggs for breakfast; Francisco Morales sits down meekly to coffee and a small roll. The well-fed, broad-faced business men of the States walk with india rubber step—happy, tubby Texans, lordly lumps of Louisiana. The tropic, which dries the Spaniard, does not reduce the North American. The young men are clean-cut and handsome, but soon sag, owing to lack of exercise and the habit of bathing in hot water instead of cold. The Porto Rican is not so dependent on a car, eats less, and certainly bathes less, be it in hot or cold. You know the ex-Spaniard by his spare form and swarthy complexion. The Spanish sombrero is being chased off the island by standard American hats; likewise the Spanish shirt by the more expensive silk shirt of the American working man. The blue overalls or "slops" of the laborer are also common. It is difficult to buy an article of attire which is of local manufacture and style; even Panama hats it appears have to be sent to New York and reëxported. Inter-island trade is very scanty; once a month a small Dutch cargo boat arrives from Jamaica, but it seems to bring very little.
Characteristic of modern San Juan is the barber shop with its striped pole revolving in glass case: there the Spaniards getting their hair cut have their necks shaved also and a bareness left above the ears; and having "gotten" a shave they get an American hot towel also pressed upon their brows and temples.
Truly, as you stand on the quay and watch the ferry boats, modeled on those of the Hudson River, go screaming across the harbor, you feel there is some justification for the saying that San Juan is a miniature New York.
One thing, however, it lacks, and that is an adequate number of "shoe-shine parlors." Like the Bedouins who have a monopoly of the visitors to the Sphinx, so a tribe exists in San Juan who hold the blacking brush to the world. When an imperial race arrives there is great competition among the natives as to who shall clean their boots. The tribe especially swarms around the town square which, banked with flora and shaded with luxuriant palms, might otherwise be a pleasant place of rest. Even at night, after supper, when the town band is playing to a flocking crowd under a dreaming moon, you are treated to a sort of jazz interposition of "Shine! Shine! Shine!"
The voices of the street urchins and news venders have the same quality of voice as those of Cadiz. Boy babies come forth from their mothers' wombs howling "Demokratia." The stones of the high houses repeat their cries. But there are no parrots shouting on the streets of San Juan. There used to be, for Spanish sailors brought them. But in some streets of Cadiz one might have thought there was a riot, what with the news venders below and the parrots in the upper storys. Coming direct from Cadiz one noticed many divergencies in the detail of life. For instance, Cadiz had no cinemas; San Juan had five or six, showing all the Californian stars. In Cadiz there were several theaters with dancing and singing. In San Juan there was only one with a visiting Spanish artist. In Cadiz no one rocks or swings on a veranda. In San Juan, on the other hand, there are no bullfights. Most of what bound the island to Spain has been now cut. Only a few educated people know who is King of Spain.
Out in the country, however, life is more definitely Spanish and American influence is less felt. The Negro life is greater there and seems to relate neither to Spain nor to America. It hardly seems to relate to Africa either.
The Negroes live in saffron- and marine-colored boxes little bigger than bathrooms, and what they crowd into these cabins makes them like Noah's arks with all the toy furniture and animals inside. You'll see them stuck right in the midst of a swamp with thousands of land crabs crawling on the tips of their claws and feeling in the air with their portentous extra talons.
The mangoes hang their fruits like tassels. The palm trees rise up like vast, lissom, feminine forms swathed to the waist and then bright naked to their matted heads, where cluster their giant nuts. The banana palms bask in solar radiance and hot mist; and last year's shabby sugar plantation stretches for a mile of bashed canes and sprawling withered leaves. And naked children improvise a throb of music with a tin can band while others dance to it a natural shimmy shake.
Living among the colored folk are poor white Spanish Porto Ricans on quite an equal basis, and their pale babies run about in the sun, too, only they are not musical and do not dance. The grown girls, white and black, are beautiful creatures, dazzling with their bright dresses, their vitality, and their unthwarted curves. The Negro men are finer than the Spanish ones, however, and naturally a long way simpler. I never saw Negro men so happy and untroubled as here—the Negro without a complex, without the blues.
Nearby goes the military high road, hard and straight, and along it hoot America's cars. The little island is traversed by a whole series of magnificent roads of great value from the point of view of war, but now a happy means of touring the country. The automobile parade from Packard to Ford goes past before your eyes, and beside private cars fly strings of little motor buses, all packed with people. Each bus has a name, and that adds greatly to the amusement of the road. Thus we have "Coney Island," "Cristobal Colon," "Excuse my Dust," "Maria Luisa," and a hundred more. These are worked by the Spanish-speaking people for Spanish-speaking people. You will seldom meet an American in one. I found afterwards in Colon and Mexico City, in Santo Domingo and Port au Prince, and other places, these converted Ford trucks swarm, and are a great if risky means of locomotion. The Porto Rican wagonettes are if anything quieter in their demeanor than the Mexican ones. So they scour the ways from ports and tobacco-towns, over the low ranges of tree-covered sugar-loaf mountains, to other towns and ports and villas and resorts. When far away on the verdure-covered hills they show where the roads are by their turbulent dust.
You see almost the whole range of class life in Porto Rico from the bottom to the broad top, from yellow wooden cabin to the latest type of American home. For whites an American standard of life has been set. Rich as the island is, and simple and remote, the artificial prices of New York, nevertheless, range. Your room at the hotel, with bath and telephone, will cost you from three to five dollars a day. You will sit down to the characteristic breakfast of grapefruit, ham and eggs, corn cakes, and coffee. Ice and water continually tinkles in glasses. Yonder is the ice-cream soda bar. The suit pressers are all busy keeping proper creases in the breeches of the islanders. American men, wearing their white suits and linen collars, look smarter than the Porto Ricans, and the women, if quieter in looks, at least keep to the fashions.
Business of course is king. You feel that, at every turn, by the look of the advertisements and the trend of the talk. Porto Rico hums as it has never hummed before. It goes. It is a real live place. The dominant spirit of the Anglo-Saxon has overcome the gentle, sluggish conservatism of old Spain. Rich Porto Ricans, and there are many of them, live in luxury, in beautiful villas with every possible means of material happiness—books, baths, electric light, fans, tiled floors, perfect mosquito nets, and the whitest sheets and the softest of pillows. And the water is pure and the drains are good—thanks in great part to a quarter of a century of ownership and exploitation by the U. S. A.
The material benefit which has come to Porto Rico through annexation is considerable. In 1901 she was included within the American tariff union and all her products could enter American harbors duty free. She entered the American postal unity. The American dollar became her unit of currency. American traders taught Porto Rican middlemen how to make money, and American planters from Louisiana showed the proper way to raise sugar. The annual output of sugar has been increased to ten times what it was in 1898.
On the other hand, there are material and political disadvantages. Though Porto Rico has free trade with America she has it not with the rest of the world. A high tariff excludes European goods. Spanish America has profited immensely by cheap German wares. But the Fordney tariff keeps them out of Porto Rico. Porto Rico pays excessively for scores of articles and commodities which she could otherwise import cheaply from France and Spain, to say nothing of England. Prohibition of wines and spirits is said to have been achieved by local option—but, if so, it was before the population was able to vote. Trial by jury is not given in Porto Rico. Porto Ricans are citizens of the U. S. A., by virtue of the Jones Act of 1917. They were enabled to be conscripted for the Army. But they do not have the power to vote. They are represented in the United States Congress only by a Commissioner. They have no Senator. They have no part in electing the President.
Now there has sprung up what may be called a Porto Rican Sinn Fein movement, featured in a concerted attack on the Administration. Many Americans now advocate "Statehood" for Porto Rico. But the Porto Ricans clamor for independence. Porto Rico is in the anomalous condition of belonging to the U. S. A. but is not a State nor governed by the Constitution. She is a possession. And the general Spanish discontent which rules in Cuba, Haiti, and Santo Domingo outcrops in Porto Rico also. Just as the popular song "Es mi hombre" which tires the ears in Madrid has gone through these islands and is no doubt ravaging Mexico and all the mainland, so the one insurgent Spanish emotion has infected all the islanders. And, in Porto Rico, journalists in the newspapers and street orators in the squares are flirting with the idea of a revolt. The street politicians seemed very nervous when any one looking like an American came near.
It is difficult to know what test to apply to the institutions of Porto Rico where, for instance, trial by jury cannot be claimed. If the test of Empire, the trouble would be hardly worth considering; but if the test of Lincolnian democracy, the Porto Ricans have grievances which could be removed. The removal would take little effort. The island is well governed, and is civilized and prosperous. Given her independence it is all too likely that her present happiness would fall away from her.