The History of Puerto Rico by R.A. Van Middeldyk

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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.[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 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.

[Illustration: A tienda, or small shop.]

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[63] 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.

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 61: Estudio sobre el paludismo en Puerto Rico.]

[Footnote 62: El campesino Puertoriqueno, sus condiciones, etc.
Revista Puertoriquena, vols. ii, iii, 1887, 1888.]

[Footnote 63: An Account of the Present State of the Island of Puerto
Rico. London, 1834.]

CHAPTER XXX

ORIGIN AND CHARACTER OF THE MODERN INHABITANTS OF PUERTO
RICO

During the initial period of conquest and colonization, no Spanish
females came to this or any other of the conquered territories.
Soldiers, mariners, monks, and adventurers brought no families with
them; so that by the side of the aboriginals and the Spaniards "pur
sang" there sprang up an indigenous population of mestizos.

The result of the union of two physically, ethically, and
intellectually widely differing races is _not_ the transmission to the
progeny of any or all of the superior qualities of the progenitor, but
rather his own moral degradation. The mestizos of Spanish America, the
Eurasians of the East Indies, the mulattoes of Africa are moral, as
well as physical hybrids in whose character, as a rule, the worst
qualities of the two races from which they spring predominate. It is
only in subsequent generations, after oft-repeated crossings and
recrossings, that atavism takes place, or that the fusion of the two
races is finally consummated through the preponderance of the
physiological attributes of the ancestor of superior race.

The early introduction of negro slaves, almost exclusively males, the
affinity between them and the Indians, the state of common servitude
and close, daily contact produced another race. By the side of the
mestizo there grew up the zambo. Later, when negro women were brought
from Santo Domingo or other islands, the mulatto was added.

Considering the class to which the majority of the first Spanish
settlers in this island belonged, the social status resulting from
these additions to their number could be but little superior to that
of the aboriginals themselves.

The necessity of raising that status by the introduction of white
married couples was manifest to the king's officers in the island, who
asked the Government in 1534 to send them 50 such couples. It was not
done. Fifty bachelors came instead, whose arrival lowered the moral
standard still further.

It was late in the island's history before the influx of respectable
foreigners and their families began to diffuse a higher ethical tone
among the creoles of the better class. Unfortunately, the daily
contact of the lower and middle classes with the soldiers of the
garrison did not tend to improve their character and manners, and the
effects of this contact are clearly traceable to-day in the manners
and language of the common people.

From the crossings in the first degree of the Indian, negro, and white
races, and their subsequent recrossings, there arose in course of time
a mixed race of so many gradations of color that it became difficult
in many instances to tell from the outward appearance of an individual
to what original stock he belonged; and, it being the established
rule in all Spanish colonies to grant no civil or military employment
above a certain grade to any but Peninsulars or their descendants of
pure blood, it became necessary to demand from every candidate
documentary evidence that he had no Indian or negro blood in his
veins. This was called presenting an "expediente de sangre," and the
practise remained in force till the year 1870, when Marshal Serrano
abolished it.

Whether it be due to atavism, or whether, as is more likely, the
Indians did not really become extinct till much later than the period
at which it is generally supposed their final fusion into the two
exotic races took place,[64] it is certain that Indian characteristics,
physical and ethical, still largely prevail among the rural population
of Puerto Rico, as observed by Schoelzer and other ethnologists.

The evolution of a new type of life is now in course of process. In
the meantime, we have Mr. Salvador Brau's authority[65] for stating
the general character of the present generation of Puerto Ricans to be
made up of the distinctive qualities of the three races from which
they are descended, to wit: indolence, taciturnity, sobriety,
disinterestedness, hospitality, inherited from their Indian ancestors;
physical endurance, sensuality, and fatalism from their negro
progenitors; and love of display, love of country, independence,
devotion, perseverance, and chivalry from their Spanish sires.

A somewhat sarcastic reference to the characteristics due to the
Spanish blood in them was made in 1644 by Bishop Damian de Haro in a
letter to a friend, wherein, speaking of his diocesans, he says that
they are of very chivalric extraction, for, "he who is not descended
from the House of Austria is related to the Dauphin of France or to
Charlemagne." He draws an amusing picture of the inhabitants of the
capital, saying that at the time there were about 200 males and 4,000
women "between black and mulatto." He complains that there are no
grapes in the country; that the melons are red, and that the butcher
retails turtle meat instead of beef or pork; yet, says he, "my table
is a bishop's table for all that."

To a lady in Santo Domingo he sent the following sonnet:

This is a small island, lady,
With neither money nor provisions;
The blacks go naked as they do yonder,
And there 're more people in the Seville prison.
The Castilian coats of arms
Are conspicuous by their absence,
But there are plenty cavaliers
Who deal in hides and ginger,
There's water in the tanks, when 't rains,
A cathedral, but no priests,
Handsome women, but not elegant,
Greed and envy are indigenous.
Plenty of heat and palm-tree shade,
And best of all a refreshing breeze.

Of the moral defects of the people it would be invidious to speak.
The lower classes are not remarkable for their respect for the
property of others. On the subject of morality among the rural
population we may cite Count de Caspe, the governor's report to the
king: " ... Destitute as they are of religious instruction and moral
restraint, their unions are without the sanction of religious or civil
law, and last just as long as their sensual appetites last; it may
therefore be truly said, that in the rural districts of Puerto Rico
the family, morally constituted, does not exist."

Colonel Flinter's account of the people and social conditions of
Puerto Rico in 1834 is a rather flattering one, though he acknowledges
that the island had a bad reputation on account of the lawless
character of the lower class of inhabitants.

All this has greatly changed for the better, but much remains to be
done in the way of moral improvement.

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 64: Abbad points out that in 1710-'20 there were still two
Indian settlements in the neighborhood of Anasco and San German.]

[Footnote 65: Puerto Rico y su historia, p. 369.]

CHAPTER XXXI

NEGRO SLAVERY IN PUERTO RICO

From the early days of the conquest the black race appeared side by
side with the white race. Both supplanted the native race, and both
have marched parallel ever since, sometimes separately, sometimes
mixing their blood.

The introduction of African negroes into Puerto Rico made the
institution of slavery permanent. It is true that King Ferdinand
ordered the reduction to slavery of all rebellious Indians in 1511,
but he revoked the order the next year. The negro was and remained a
slave. For centuries he had been looked upon as a special creation for
the purpose of servitude, and the Spaniards were accustomed to see him
daily offered for sale in the markets of Andalusia.

Notwithstanding the practical reduction to slavery of the Indians of
la Espanola by Columbus, under the title of "repartimientos," negro
slaves were introduced into that island as early as 1502, when a
certain Juan Sanchez and Alfonso Bravo received royal permission to
carry five caravels of slaves to the newly discovered island. Ovando,
who was governor at the time, protested strongly on the ground that
the negroes escaped to the forests and mountains, where they joined
the rebellious or fugitive Indians and made their subjugation much
more difficult. The same thing happened later in San Juan.

In this island special permission was necessary to introduce negroes.
Sedeno and the smelter of ores, Giron, who came here in 1510, made
oath that the two slaves each brought with them were for their
personal service only. In 1513 their general introduction was
authorized by royal schedule on payment of two ducats per head.

Cardinal Cisneros prohibited the export of negro slaves from Spain in
1516; but the efforts of Father Las Casas to alleviate the lot of the
Indians by the introduction of what he believed, with the rest of his
contemporaries, to be providentially ordained slaves, obtained from
Charles II a concession in favor of Garrebod, the king's high steward,
to ship 4,000 negroes to la Espanola, Cuba, Puerto Rico, and Jamaica
(1517). Garrebod sold the concession to some merchants of Genoa.

With the same view of saving the Indians, the Jerome fathers, who
governed the Antilles in 1518, requested the emperor's permission to
fit out slave-ships themselves and send them to the coast of Africa
for negroes. It appears that this permission was not granted; but in
1528 another concession to introduce 4,000 negroes into the Antilles
was given to some Germans, who, however, did not comply with the terms
of the contract.

Negroes were scarce and dear in San Juan at this period, which caused
the authorities to petition the emperor for permission to each settler
to bring two slaves free of duty, and, this being granted, it gave
rise to abuse, as the city officers in their address of thanks to the
empress, stated at the same time that many took advantage of the
privilege to transfer or sell their permit in Seville without coming
to the island. Then it was enacted that slaves should be introduced
only by authorized traffickers, who soon raised the price to 60 or 70
Castilian dollars per head. The crown officers in the island
protested, and asked that every settler might be permitted to bring 10
or 12 negroes, paying the duty of 2 ducats per head, which had been
imposed by King Ferdinand in 1513. A new deposit of gold had been
discovered about this time (1533), and the hope that others might be
found now induced the colonists to buy the negroes from the authorized
traders on credit at very high prices, to be paid with the gold which
the slaves should be made instrumental in discovering. But the
longed-for metal did not appear. The purchasers could not pay. Many
had their property embargoed and sold, and were ruined. Some were
imprisoned, others escaped to the mountains or left the island.

From 1536 to 1553 the authorities kept asking for negroes; sometimes
offering to pay duty, at others soliciting their free introduction;
now complaining that the colonists escaped _with their slaves_ to
Mexico and Peru, then lamenting that the German merchants, who had the
monopoly of the traffic, took them to all the other Antilles, but
would bring none to this island. However, 1,500 African slaves entered
here at different times during those seventeen years, without
reckoning the large numbers that were introduced as contraband.

Philip II tried to reduce the exorbitant prices exacted by the German
monopolists of the West Indian slave-trade, but, finding that his
efforts to do so diminished the importation, he revoked his
ordinances.

A Genoese banking-house, having made him large advances to help equip
the great Armada for the invasion of England, obtained the next
monopoly (1580).

During the course of the seventeenth century the privilege of
introducing African slaves into the Antilles was sold successively to
Genoese, Portuguese, Holland, French, and Spanish companies. The
traffic was an exceedingly profitable one, not so much on account of
the high prices obtained for the negroes as on account of the
contraband trade in all kinds of merchandise that accompanied it. From
1613 to 1621 during the government of Felipe de Beaumont, 11
ship-loads of slaves entered San Juan harbor.

During the eighteenth century the traffic expanded still more. To
induce England to abandon the cause of the House of Austria, for which
that nation was fighting, Philip V offered it the exclusive privilege
of introducing 140,000 negro slaves into the Spanish-American colonies
within a period of thirty years; the monopolists to pay 33-13 silver
crowns for each negro introduced, to the Spanish Government.[66]

War interrupted this contract several times, and long before the
termination of the thirty years the English ceased to import slaves.

Several contracts for the importation of slaves into the Antilles were
made from 1760 to the end of the century. First a contract was made
with Miguel Uriarte to take 15,000 slaves to different parts of
Spanish America. In 1765 the king sanctioned the introduction by the
Caracas company of 2,000 slaves to replace the Indians in Caracas and
Maraeaibo, who had died of smallpox. All duties on the introduction of
negroes into Santo Domingo, Cuba, Puerto Rico, Margarita, and Trinidad
were commuted in the same year for a moderate capitation tax, and the
Spanish firm of Aguirre, Aristegui & Co. was authorized to provide the
Antilles with negroes, on condition of reducing the price 10 pesos per
head, besides the amount of abolished duty.

This firm abused the privileges granted, and the inhabitants of all
the colonies, excepting Peru, Chile, and the Argentina, were allowed
to provide themselves, as best they could, with slaves from the French
colonies while the war lasted (1780).

Four years later, January 16, 1784, a certain Lenormand, of Xantes,
received the king's permission to take a ship-load of African slaves
to Puerto Rico on condition of paying 6 per cent of the product to the
Government.

In this same year the barbarous custom of branding the slaves was
abolished.

The abominable traffic was declared entirely free in Santo Domingo,
Cuba, and Puerto Rico by royal decree, February 28, 1789. Foreign
ships were placed under certain restrictions, but a bounty of 4 pesos
per head was paid for negroes brought in Spanish bottoms, to meet
which a per capita tax of 2 pesos per head on domestic slaves was
levied.

By this time the famous debates in the British Parliament and other
signs of the times announced the dawn of freedom for the oppressed
African race. Wilberforce, Clarkson, and Buxton, the English
abolitionists, continued their denunciations of the demoralizing
institution. Their effects were crowned with success in 1833. The
traffic was abolished, and ten years later Great Britain emancipated
more than twelve million slaves in her East and West Indian
possessions, paying the masters over one hundred millions of dollars
as indemnity.

Spain agreed in 1817 to abolish the slave-trade in her dominions by
May 30,1820. By Articles 3 and 4 of the convention, England offered to
pay to Spain $20,000,000 as complete compensation to his Catholic
Majesty's subjects who were engaged in the traffic.

The Spanish Government illegally employed this money to purchase from
Russia a fleet of five ships of the line and eight frigates.

The slaves in Puerto Rico were not emancipated until March 22, 1873,
when 31,000 were manumitted in one day, at a cost to the Government of
200 pesos each, plus the interest on the bonds that were issued.

The nature of the relations between the master and the slave in Puerto
Rico probably did not differ much from that which existed between them
in the other Spanish colonies. But these relations began to assume an
aspect of distrust and severity on the one hand and sullen resentment
on the other when the war of extermination between whites and blacks
in Santo Domingo and the establishment of a negro republic in Haiti
made it possible for the flame of negro insurrection to be wafted
across the narrow space of water that separates the two islands.

There was sufficient ground for such apprehension. The free colored
population in Puerto Rico at that time (1830-'34) numbered 127,287,
the slaves 34,240, as against 162,311 whites, among whom many were of
mixed blood.[67] Prim, the governor-general, to suppress every attempt
at insurrection, issued the proclamation, of which the following is a
synopsis:

"I, John Prim, Count of Ecus, etc., etc., etc.

"Whereas, The critical circumstances of the times and the afflictive
condition of the countries in the neighborhood of this island, some of
which are torn by civil war, and others engaged in a war of
extermination between the white and black races; it is incumbent on me
to dictate efficacious measures to prevent the spread of these
calamities to our pacific soil.... I have decreed as follows:

"ARTICLE 1. All offenses committed by individuals of African race,
whether free or slaves, shall be judged by court-martial.

"ART. 2. Any individual of African race, whether free or slave, who
shall offer armed resistance to a white, shall be shot, if a slave,
and have his right hand cut off by the public executioner, if a free
man. Should he be wounded he shall be shot.

"ART. 3. If any individual of African race, whether slave or free,
shall insult, menace, or maltreat, in any way, a white person, he will
be condemned to five years of penal servitude, if a slave, and
according to the circumstances of the case, if free.

"ART. 4. The owners of slaves are hereby authorized to correct and
chastise them for slight misdemeanors, without any civil or military
functionary having the right to interfere.

"ART. 5. If any slave shall rebel against his master, the latter is
authorized to kill him on the spot.

"ART. 6 orders the military commanders of the 8 departments of the
island to decide all cases of offenses committed by colored people
within twenty-four hours of their denunciation."

This Draconic decree is signed, Puerto Rico, May 31, 1843.

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 66: Treaty of Madrid, March 16, 1713, ratified by the treaty
of Utrecht. There were two kinds of silver crowns, one of 8 pesetas,
the other of 10, worth respectively 4 and 5 English shillings.]

[Footnote 67: Flinter, p. 211.]

CHAPTER XXXII

INCREASE OF POPULATION

ALL statements of definite numbers with respect to the aboriginal
population of this island are essentially fabulous. Columbus touched
at only one port on the western shore. He remained there but a few
days and did not come in contact with the inhabitants. Ponce and his
men conquered but a part of the island, and had no time to study the
question of population, even if they had had the inclination to do so.
They did not count the enemy in time of war, and only interested
themselves in the number of prisoners which to them constituted the
spoils of conquest. Any calculation regarding the numbers that
remained at large, based on the number of Indians distributed, can not
be correct.

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