The Jibaro 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 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 condit
ons of a past era deserve to be known.
To this considerable part of the population of Puerto Rico the name of
"jibaros" 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 jibaro builds his "bohio," 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 "bohio" 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 jibaros are whites. Mestizoes, mulattos, and
negroes are numerous also. But we are here concerned with the jibaro
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 Atiles, one of Puerto Rico's distinguished
literary men, has left us a circumstantial description of the
character and conditions of these rustics. 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 jibaro, 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 jibaro 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 regime 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 jibaro, 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 regime, 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. Atiles 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.
Intellectually the jibaro 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
"gueiro," 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 jibaro professes Catholicism with a large admixture of
fetichism. His moral sense is blunt in many respects.
Colonel Flinter gives the following description of the jibaros 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 bohio, and with them will come a greater
morality. In a word, in ten years the Puerto Rican jibaro 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.