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.



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