The People of Puerto Rico: A Study in Social Anthropology (1956)

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A Stud\' 111 Social Authropolof!.,)' BY JULIAN H. STEWARD ROBERT A. MANN ERS ERIC R. WOLF ELENA PADILLA SEDA SIDNEY W . MINTZ RAYMOND l. SCHEELE

In l!"J.17 the U ni versity of Pue rto Rico ,\·ished to h ave a st udy made of the soc ial anthropology of the Pu erto Rican people. This s tudy was o n e of many resea rch projec ts carried o n b y the Unive rsity of Puerto Rico to funh c r an understa nding of the varied social, economic, geographica l, a nd o ther socia l science aspects of Pu e rto Rica n li fe . I t was pa r t of a larger efiorr, supported by the Puerto Rican govern m ent through the University of Puerto Rico under its able ch ancellor, Dr. Jaime Be n itez, to bring the skills and techniqu es of modern social science to bear upo n social a nd economic problems of Pu erto Ri co. The presen t stud y was proposed by Clarence Senior, th e n director o f th e un iversity's Cen ter of Social Science In ves tigations and n ow of Columbia University, to Julian H . Steward , th e n professor o( an thropology at Colum bia Universi ty a nd now of the University o ( Illin ois. Further encourageme nt to unde r take the study was given when the Rockefe lle r Foundation , through its directo r o f research, Dr. Roger Evans, agreed to su pport the project on the g r ound s that cu llu ra l analysis of a complex and fairl y populous yet delimited area such as Puerto Rico could contribute to th e theory a nd method of interdisci plina r y area studies w hich a rc no\\' bei ng carried o n at many institutes of area res ea rel 1. The proj ect was und e rta ke n with some h es itation, h oweve r, for a stud y of the lifeways of two million p eople is a large order for an th ropologists who have trad iLionally bee n co nce rned prin<"ipally with com paralive ly small societ ies a nd s imple c ulwres. It is p articu la rl y forbidding when the soc ie Ly, l ike P uerto Rico, is high ly lite rate a nd includes m a n y we ll-trained,

Vl

THE PEOPLE OF P t.:ERTO RICO

perspicacious individuals whose deep understandings of their own distinctive cultural traditions surpass " ·hat a n y outsider could grasp in less than many years of residence and study. During the past two d ecades, however, anthropology has devised methods for dea ling with a society such as Puerto Rico which can g ive insights into selected segments of the population without requiring omniscien ce con cerning a ll aspects o( the national culture and of its history. It has d eveloped the "communi ty study" method, a term loosel y applied co the cultural analysis of small, specialized and usually localized segments of the society. Simultan eously, anthropology h as needed to broaden its frame of reference, to view its subject matter in the larger context of modern nations, because it has also been participating with its fellow socia l sciences and with the humanities in new inte rdisciplinary approach es to contemporary world areas. \Ve were convinced, therefore, that throug h inte n· sive analysis of the lifeways a nd of the historical backgrounds of certain selected segments or su bcu ltural groups of the Puerto Rican population we could provide system a tic d escriptions and functional a nd historical analyses and insights. ·while our more thoughtful Puerto Rica n friends are undo ubtedly aware of much of the substance of our material, there h as been no systematic account placed o n record so as to be generally available to persons interested in problems of cultural orig ins and change. \Ve were con fide nt that we could illuminate these selected subcultural groups of Puerto Rica n life somewhat in the manner that the Lynds' stud y of 1\ Iiddletown (L ynd a nd L ynd, 1929; Lynd, 1937) and ·west's description of Plainville, U.S.A. (West, 1915), illuminated certain varieties of life in the United States, that Embree's account of Suye i\I ura (Embree, 1939) has cla rified J apanese farm community life, that Fei's and Chang's comparative analysis of different kinds of vill ages in Earthbound China (Fe i and Chang, 1945) h as exemplified certain types of Chinese rural life, that Arensberg's stud ies (Are nsberg and Kimball, 19.10) have d isclosed basic fea tures of Irish farm people, that Znaniecki's class ic study outlined the culture o( the Po lish peasant, or th at R edfield's account of Yucat;.in (Redfield, 1941) prescn ted a clear picture of several Mexican cultural types. \l\fe were also convinced that th ere were sufficient data available concerning Pu erto Rican history an<l nati o n a l institu tions to enable us to make our study in terdisc iplina ry to the extent th at we could interpret the lifeways of the sp ecial segmem s of the population in te rms of essentia l features or nat ional institutions of the island as a whole. Finall y, we were confident that we could count o n the sympathetic yet criti ca l assistan ce of our P uerto Rica n friends ancl co lleagu es to g uide and counsel us in o ur cornpl ex task and to U>tTC:CL us when we appeared to I >e \\'rong. If there is room for disagreem e nt about a n y of the results set fonh in these volumes it will proba bl y invol ve interpre tation more than subSL;111tivc rc p()rt· ing or deo;cription. But we be li eve t hat diffcrc 11< cs i11

interpretation will n ot be g re;1t proviclc:d our ; 1n ; tl ~· -.c-. are viewed with rcrcre n ce tO our ba-.ic lll C: thndnlog~ to our objecti,·cs, o ur selection of data i11 1c Lnio11 t<> problems, and o ur m et hod -; ol int<.-r 1eL11i 11 g t bt:1 which are e xplained in the lntrodu n io11 . The proj ect wa s finan ced i11 cqu;d p ;1r1-. liy the University of Pu e rto Rico and the R nckclt: lkr Fo1111d;1 . tion, the g rants be ing suffic ient to k ee p ... rnn c te n re· search ,,·orkers in th e: field for ni11c 1c.:c:11 11Hmth-> . In additio n to the field rc: ...carch , the Socia l Sc ic:ncc Re sea rch Cente r fina n ced a spec ial study o f the c11lw1·:t1 history of Puerto Ric.:o, which wa -. m ;1dc l>y R ay111rn1d Scheele before th e main proj ec t began. Th e C:o11 11 c il for Resea rch in th e Social Sciences of C:n l111nbi a U ni versity also contributed to the proj ect through pay ing most of th e tr;l\·eling expenses or th e director. Julian H. Ste"·ard. The project wa s assisted , though 11<>L clo-.('ly din:c te d. b y an Advi sor y Commiuee com isti11 g of .Jul ia11 I I. Steward, Claren ce Senior, and J o hn .\furr;1. During the initial m onths of the fi eld work, J ohn \ I u1Ta, then visiting profcsc;or of anthropology at th e l l nin: rsity of Pue rto Rico, was field director, but subsequ e ntly his teaching duties lXe,·ented his co ntinuin g the task and Julia n Steward ass umed direc tion o f ;ti I phases of the research during the rema indtT ol' the study and of the pre paration o[ the materials for publica tion. Th e project members wish to express their dec:p gratitude to Clarence Senior for his part in initiating and furth e ring the resea rch and lO .John \ Iurra f<ff g iving generously of his time a nd e fforts in h e lping to fonnulate the problems and rncthml-; of field r e· search. \ Ve arc also gra teful to Simon Ro uenl>crg. aning director o( the Socia l Science R csc;1rch Ccntc1· during the period or the field w o rk , l'or ex pediting the research, and to i\ Iilla rd H ansen, prese nt d ircctnr of the Center for h e lping to arrange publication of the present work. Publication o ( the materials was made possible through subs idies g ranted by the Univers ity u( Pue nn Rico, the Rockefeller Foundation , the \ 1Vcn n cr-Cn: 11 Foundatio n a n d the R esea rch Board of the University of Illinois. The m embers o ( the research st:iff c;uTied the burden of th e preliminary background rcsean:h, of the field work, and of the preparation o f' the materials for publi catio n. They are the individual authors of the special stud ies of the various types of Puerto Rican life, and together with Julia n H. Steward. they are the joint authors of the r em a ining c hapters. The staff members were: Dr. R obert l\ fanners, then of Columbia Lln i,·c rs ity a ncl now o n the facu lty of Brande is Un ivcn.ity, \\':ti· cham, l\ {assachusetts. Dr. Sidney \V. P.Iintz, then of Columbia l Tnin,rsity and now on th e faculty of Yal e Unive rs ity, :--:cw Ha vcn, Con n ecticu l. Dr. Elena Padilla Seda, the n of' tltc· l 111i\'(·r-.ity of Chic.ago and n ow a research dircc tor fo r th e Cornell ;\ led ica l School proj ect in New York City. Dr. Raymond Sch ee le, then n l' Coh 1111l>i;1 l 111i\'(·r, it y

PREFACE

and now on the faculty of i\Iichigan State University, East Lansing, i\Iichig:rn . Dr. Eric R. \Volf, then o( Columbia Unh·ersity and 11ow J\ssisw nt Professor o[ Anthropology, University 0 ( Virginia, Charlouesville, Virginia. The staff was assisLed in the field research by Sra. Delia Ortega de Pabon, Charles Rosario, Sra. Angelina Saavedra R oca, and Edwin Seda o( the U niversity of Puerto Ri co. \Ve wish to state most appreciati,·e ly that the splendid co-operation of these Puerto Ricans, who know their country ,,·ell and who paved the way for the North American members of the field research teams, was a major factor in the success of the study. The field work was also grea tly assisted by the wives o( two members of the project staff, i\Irs. Kathleen \Vol(, then o( the Ne"· York School of Social \Vork, ~ind J\frs. J\fargaret i\fanners, to both o( whom d eep g ratitude is due. \!Ve also express o u1· debt to several p erso ns who participated in many of o ur discussions and "·ho even found time to carry on some field research but whose other duties did not permit them to complete major studies. Robert Armstrong. then visiting professor of a nth ropology at the Uni,·ersity of Puerto Rico, made a partial study of Cag uas, a gro\\·ing urban center which is of interest partly because it is the headquarters of a n ew and very interesting class of "chauffeurs," m en who opera te their o"·n cars as a kind of bus service b e tween to\\·ns throughout the island. Isabel Caro joined the project for several months to make a study of a north coast community of privately owned sugar plancations of medium size. Gabrie l Escobar, a Peruvian anthropologist, th en at Yale University, spent several months studying family stru ctu re in a westen1 village. The members o[ the staff ca nno t adeciuatel y express their gnllitucle to the many schola rs, political leaders, scientists, and ci tizens, both Puerto Ri can and North American, whose generous contributions of their time and knowledge were essential to the success of the research. Space does not permit a full list of these persons, for it would include a large portion o( the very wonderful people 0£ Puerto Rico, especially those in the communities who were ever helpful and kindl y. ' 'Ve must, however, make sp ecial mention of the following: Dr. Jaime Baguc, former acting comm issioner of agriculwre; Dr. T om;ls Blanco, hist0rian and general schola r ; Sra. A ngie Babonis, able secretary of the Socia l Scien ce Resea rch Center; Sr. Ramon C o l6n T o rres, commissioner of agric ulture; l\ [r. a nd i\Irs. J ack D elano; Mr. A. L. Foss of Luce and Co.; Dr. Martin Hern;indez, former chief, Economics D epartment, Agri cultural Experiment Station and now su bcommissio 11e r o( agriculture: i\frs. Beatri ce Howell, formerly of the Insular Planning Board; Sra. Clara Lugo de Sendra, director of education for the L and Authority; Rev. Domi ngo l\farrero Navarro, professor at th e Theological Seminary and assistant professor of hum an ities at the Un i,·ersity of Puerto Ri co; Sr. F elix M ejias, subcomm issioner of commerce; Sr.

\"11

Luis Rivera Santos of the Planning Board: Dr. Guille nno Serra, of the Extension Service, D epanment of Agriculcure; Sr. Francisco Verdiales, of the L a bor De pa nm e n t. \\'e owe a , ·ery sp ec ial debt to fr ie nds in the communities " ·ith out "·hose hospitality and un end ing efforts on our behalf our field studies "·otdd not h a Ye been possible. Sidney Mintl would l ike to express his gratitude Lo his compndres, Taso and Eli. Ele n a Padilla Seda wants to give her special thanks to Jose F. R eyes. Eric R. 'Volf 'rnuld like to express. his d eep appreciation to Francisco Jose Lamoso Coira, to Ramona Gonz:ilez de Lamoso, and to Don Antonio 1\ yala and his family. \\·c also acknmdedge our great indebtedness to the officials of the towns, the goYernment agencies and many business organizations. Among these must be mentioned the Land Authority, the Experimental Stat io n of the University of Puerto Rico, the Agri· cu l wral Extension Service of the U .S. Departme nt o ( Agriculture, the Statistical Di,·ision o( the Department o[ Labor, the Coffee Gro"·ers· Coopera ti,·e. the Central Ag-uirre Associates and its landholdinoaHi lit> ate. Lu ce and Co. Special gra titude is due four p ersons for thei r helpfu l critic ism of considerable portions of the m:rnuscript. Dr. Charles \ Vagley and Dr. Conrad .-\rensberg o f Columbia UniYersity a nd Dr. Elma n Sen·ice o ( the University of :Michigan carefully read the stu dies of the rural communities " ·hich were submitted as Ph.D. dissertations at Columbia ni,·ersity. i\ lr. Eugenio Fernandez J\kndez of the faculty of the University of Puerto Rico contributed most valuable suggestions con cerning all parts of the manuscript, especially Part II, The Cultural Background o( Contemporary Puerto R ico. 'Ve complete our acknowledgments with a n e xpressi?n of appreciation to Dr. Harry Shapiro of the America n J\Iuseum of Natural History and Dr. Fred Thieme of th.e University of i\Iichigan. Dr. Shapiro was general chrector and Dr. Thieme field director of a study of the human biology o[ Puerto Rico whi ch was carried out at the same time as our own project and was in many ways closely related to it. Dr. Th iem e maintained close contact "·ith our staff and " ·as ever generous of his time and help. The present volume is in every sense a joint produ ct of the sta ff, even though certain chapters are signed individuall y, a nd we believe that they are striking proof that collaborati,·e research is more fruitfu l than individual scholarship. The Introduct ion. Part J, prepared by Julian H. Steward in onk1· t0 present the purposes, theories. a nd methods of th e resea rch , is Lhe result of cons ide rabl e hard thinking by all m embe rs of the staff. As "·ill be seen throughout this volume, the application of the anthropo logi c:d m ethod to Puerto Rico and the utili1.:-iti on o( th e data of the other social sciences in the interpretation of Pue rto Ri can culture was in many respects n pioneC'ri11g task which required much original thoug-!1t at each sLep. The ch apters on cultural history contained ~

Vlll

THE PEOPLE OF PUERTO RICO

in Part II a re the joint product of all m em b ers of the project staff, although they are based on the o ri g ina l h istorica l survey prepared b y Raymond Scheele. Th e chapters in P an lll describing the rural subcultures and the upper-class culture were prepa red by the individuals ·wh o made the field stud ies, but the final presentation a nd the nature of the analysis in each case results from detailed discussion by the ent ire group. The comparisons of the Pu erto Ri ca n s ubcultures a nd t h e hypotheses of cross-cultural regularities presented in Part IV are the p rod u cts ol' joint auth orsh ip. \ Ve believe that it is noteworth y that it was possible to draw interpreta tive and hypothetical conclusions that satisfied a ll s ix auth ors. It was impossible to bring this \'olume ent irely up to date in the sense that a ll relevant materials "·hicl1

h ave become avai lable prior to Oll r publication d:11t· have been utilized . Th e field research \\'a~ drnH· i11 19.18 a nd t ~-l~J , a nd mos t of th e Iib r: 1r~ r e~<.:: 1 rch \\·a-. comp leted b y 1!)50. S in ce th e n. 11 n,· cc1b11sc~ h:l\T been made, many stud ies ha\·e been (:trri cd 0111. l>y th e Cen ter fo r Socia l Sc ie n ce R esea rch. :ind in 1:1 <t rH '\\' political and economic deve lopment<; li an: ukc11 pl:i <c in Pu e rto Rico. \fuel! n e\,. mat c ri :d i-. nn\\· a\':1il:il1k Ill print. For exam ple, a n c n t in.: iv.;uv ol thv .-1111111 /s of th e America n Academy o l Politic a I :111d Soc i:il Science has bee n d e\'o ted lo Pu eno Rico (J :11111 :1ry . 1 9:"j~). ,\!th ough occ:;1-; io 11al rcfcrc11 cc i-. rn:1cl c to publi cations issued suhseq ue11t LO ou r rc-..carch. thi -; vnl111nc shou ld be cons ide red as dealing \,·it11 th <: p e riod ,,·hc11 the field research \\'as carr ied out.

Co11/f'11fs I.

Tntrncluninn JULIAN H. STEWARD

I I.

The C11lt11ral Ba('kgrouncl of Co1Hcmporary Pu e rto Rin>

29

THE STAFF

31

1.

The Cu ltural Historical :\pprnach

2.

P eriod I: Di scoHT)' and I ntroduction of I b e rian Patterns ( q!l:{- 1700)

:~-

P eriod II: Increasing- Fxport .-\.gric ulu1re (Early Eig·ht ee nth Century to Eady :\inc tccnth C:cn llt ry) •15

4.

l't'riod III: Fxpanclin ~ Expon :\ gr intlturc ( 181 .-, - 1 8~18 )

:i ·

Pe r iod I \':

3-1

50

:\ational P atterns Durin g· th e Am erican P e ri od ( 1898- 1948)

62

,,

I l l.

T yp es of Suhnrltu1-es ancl L oca l Rural Co111111uniti es: Field Studies of Fann and To\\"n Li fc 9 1 ().

Tabara: Subcultures of a Tobacco and :\lixcd Crops \ I uni('ipality

93

ROBERT A. MANNERS

7.

San .J ose: Subcul tures of a "Traditional" Coffee ~ Iuni c ipality

171

ERIC R. WOLF

8.

:"o('od: The Sulxulturc or \\'orkcrs Oil a GoH'J'l llll <:' ll t -0\\·ned Sugar Plantation

265

ELENA PADI LLA SEDA

~)·

C:aliame la r: Th e S11bculn11·c of a Rural Sug;n Pla n tation P ro leLar iat

314

SIDNEY W. MINTZ

lo.

Th e P rominen t Families of Pu e rto Rico

-4 18

RAYMOND L. SCHEELE

I \'.

S ummary and Conclusion s

463

THE STAFF

465

11.

Comparative ..\nal ysis of R egional S11hcult11res

12 .

Nationality in Pu e no Rico

•:{·

Solll c ll y poth e tical R egu lari t ies of C11ltural Change

Ap p e ndi x

489

503

513

Bibi iogra plt y

5 16

IX

BY JULIAN H. STEWARD

Introduction RESEARCH OBJECTIVES The present volume repon s a cultural historical study o[ the behavior patterns or lifeways of certain of the Pu e rto Ri ca n people. The study unde rtook to a nalyze the contemporary culture and to explain i t in terms o[ the historical changes which have occurred on the island, especia lly those which followed the transition from Span ish sovereigmy to United States sove reignty a half ce ntury ago, and in terms of ecological adaptations of the historically d erived patter ns to the loca l geographical environme11L. Interest centers not o nl y upon the concrete details o[ cultllral form, function, and pattern of modern Pu erto Rico and upon the ir m odificatio n from one historica l period to another but upon the general processes of historical development. The su bsta mi ve results of the study are seen as exempt ilications of processes wh ich are n ow occurring also in other world areas, a nd this vo lume co nclud es with some h ypoth etical regularities o[ cha nge which appear to o perate in different cultures e lse wh ere. In order to carry out th is broad objective it was necessary to clarify certai n concepts and methods and to delimit the scope o[ investigatio n . Instead o( attempt ing to ascertain what the culture of the average or typica l Puerto Ri can was lik e or of trying to study a ll of the many special va rie ties of beh avior, we chose to analy1c the life \\"ays of certain special segments and classes which arc numerically important. \Ve we re con('Crned especia ll y with th e features wh ich characterize a11d dist i11g uish the peopl e engaged in the major form s of agricultural productio11-with the sma ll farmers who grow tobacco and mi xed crops. with the hac ie nda O\\"ners, the peasa nts, and the farm laborers o[ the

2

THE PEOPLE OF PUERTO RI CO

coffee area, and with Lhe workers on both the corporateowned and the government-owned, profit-sharin g sugar plantations. These products-tobacco, coffee, and sugar-are Puerto Rico's principal cash crops, and the greater part of the rural population is engaged in their production. \Ve were also con cerned with th e p rominent and wealthy fam ilies o[ business and professional men. vVe se lected munici pa lities exempl ifyi ng these p rincipal types ol farm production and sought to determine whether significant differe n ces in the more important aspects of cultural behav ior were associated with the type of product ion and ·w ith the individual's status and role within the commun i ty. In the field research, we sought to ascertain subcultu ral diffe rences between certain cla~:;es or categories of rural people by a n a lyzing their methods of making a living, fam ily types, social relations, political and re ligious forms, practices and attitudes, varieties o( recrea tion, and life values. \.Ve paid particuiar attentio n to d ifferences associated with the individual's position in the comrn u nity, whether as LO\Ynsman 01· ru ra l dwel ler, farm owner, sharecropper, or laborer, merchant, government emp loyee, wage worker, and th e like. The lifeways whi ch distinguish the members o( these different segments o( rural society are presen ted as subcultu res, as se lfconsistent patterns which prescribe the behavior of the local group o( which t h e individual is a member. These local patterns of behavio r are con ceived as subcultures because they have developed and funct ion within the larger context ol the commu nity and insular culture. for this reason they provide insights into the local manifestations of national political, r eligious, economic, educational, a nd other institutions. They also illuminate the varied local structuring and cultural characteristics of socia l classes. They exemplify certain similar iti es and differences between the local varieties of rural classes a nd between the r ura l groups and the new middle classes wh ich have developed largely in response to new insu lar econom ic patterns and governmental services. A specia l study was made o( the prominent fam ilies o[ the island becau:;e of their traditional su perordi nate position respecting all classes, their importa nt role in th e power stru cture. and their unusually close contacts today with l'\orth American cu lture. In a ddition to firsthand field studies of the rural subcult ures and of the island's prominent famil ies, th e project sought to d e termine th e d eve lopmenta l fa ctors and processes th at produced these varied subc ultu res. Pueno Rico's grad u a l ch a nge from an area in wh ich small, subsistence farms predominated to one cha racterized b y several rather distinnive rorms of commercial agricul wre had to b e unde rstood in terms of t rends resu l ti11g lrorn i11flu e n ces orig in ating largel y from outside the island. The a ppra is;tl of these trends involved us in matters tha t are usuall y not taken into account in "commun ity sLUdies." \ \!e had to understand th e nature o l the nat ional and in ternational framework withi11 which the suhcttltures d evc:loped a 11d Lo d <:1.cn11in c t h e role of the local e nvironrne nt in 1

the differe ntiation of land use and i11 tltc :1d:1p1 :1tio11 <>f soc ial lea tu res to the prod u c: t i \"C pro< c..,,.,c.,_ :\final objective "·as to pn:scnt 011r <<> II <lthin1h 11ot o nl y as substantive findings co11 (cr11i11 g p:11ti<11l:1r ~111>­ cu ltures bu t also as a set o l thcoret ictl pr<>po-.,it i<>lh which might illumi11 ate oth e r etdtt irc-.,. \\' v :1-....,t11111.: that the comparative or cross-cu l ture m ctl iod "l :11111110pology has value i n rcve:tli ng rcn1rn: 11 t l<::11111c.., <>l cultural structure, function, and lti:-.tory :1-.. ,,·ell :h in pointi ng up co11trasb bc t \\-C.:Cll c11lu11-i;-, o l diH"l'>L' 01 ig ins and tradition s. Bcc:1usc th e former 01d i11 :1rily remain impli cit in the data ol a 11 y pani< t1L1r : t11 : tl~· -..i-,, pro,·iding the reader only ill -dd111cd i11qircs'> i<>11.., <<>11 ccrning their cross-cultura l sig11ific 111< c. \\T c 011< l11d e th is report \\'ith a set of c:-: pli< it :dtho11 g l1 tc-11t:1t i\'(.: h ypotheses or formulatio11 s o l reg11Ltritic-, th:1t Pt1t-rt o Rico seems LO sh are ,,·itl1 typolog icall y silllil:ir < tilt11n.:-, in o th er parts of the ..,·orld. l n add iti o n LO th e purpose set fonh. ot her ol>jl'< t i\TS \\'hich arc prontin e nt in a1uhropologic a l stu di c.., o l contemporary populations \\'ere give 11 -;crious tl1ougl1t. For example, \\'e considered h ow o ur rcs<:a n h 111iglt t <0 11 tributc to the understa11di11g or the 11:ttio11:tl ( lt:tr:tct<:ristics of Puerto Rico as a ,,·h o le a11d ol th<: 11:1 t io11:tl charac te r, or "personal ity in cult11rc.' · ,,·hi< h the t yp ical Puerto Rican pn:su m:ibl y acqu ires :is tlt e 1-cs1tlt of nationally sh ared cu ltur;tl nails. \ Ve co11clt1dcd. ho,,·_ ever, that in the analysis ol Puerto Ri<o or :111y other h eterogeneo us soc iety it ,,·o uld b<: m ethod olog ic:tlly indefensible as well as irnpra cticabk: to rn ak<: s tt< It research the first o rder of l>usi11css . .- \I I nH: 111 ber.-; of :t na tion undeniably ha\'e n1t1cl1 i11 common. Bttt before th e shared trai ts can be a ppraised i t is 11 <:ccss;1ry not o nl y to distinguish a nd trace th e sources of the varied com ponents of the national cornm o n d<: 11orni11atorlor exam p le, features resttl ting from th <: i111pnsitio11 O( a si ng le system Of n ationa l l:t \\'S, part icip:tl ion ill a basic national a nd in te rnati on al cconrnn y, use of :t common lang uage, o bse rvance or similar di et ar y pr;1ctices, responses to media of m;1ss co111111 u 11ic;tt ions, similarities of community and family orga11i1:1tio11, and other ch aracte rist ics of div<:rse and h c t<: rogc 11 c<nts origin- bu t to weigh these traits again st the man y feat u res which disti11g ui sh th e membe rs of differe nt communities and sociocultui-;d cla sses. \V e th('rcfo re employed the traditional method ol anthropology of stud ying a ll aspens of the be havim· ol the i11di\'idual within th e co ntext of his specia li1<:d communit y. cLtss, o r oth er subcu lt ural grou p. \Ve also considered the poss ib ility of ;tppn>:icl1i11g Puerto Rico i11 the man ner of area stt 1d y p ro g rams. that is, o( endeavor in g to sy n tlies i1c tl1 c d a t;1 or ;ii 1 social science disci plines in ter111s or the tolal. integrated insular whole . 1f th e whol e \\'ere defined in cu ltural terms this wcrnld have requi red stud y o l t h e political , economic, religious , an d other p;1ttc-r11s ;111 d institutions that function 011 a 11atio11 ;d sc;1k ;11HI len·l as vvell as of features th at constitute tl1<' dis1 in c l i' T p atterns of co111m uni ty and i11di vi du ;tl belt a \'ior. Since: Pu erto Ri co is a fa irl y small a11d well -dcfin('d ;1r('a. ic <ippeared that it mig ht le nd i tse ll to :in :111 c rn1>t w

lNTRODUCTI0:--1

d e\'e lop Lhe lheo ry and praeti ce o[ area r esearch. \\'hile \\T belie\'c thal th e prese nl research has conlributed to the methodology of area studies, there are two ,·en· nwent rc:1sons whv it was im1iossible to make a com plete area research proj ect. Fi rsl, adequate ana lysis of Lhe ma11y specia l aspects of national culture requires ,·e ry thorough interdiscipl in a r y co\·erage, a task completclv beyond our financial and scientific resources. S~cornl. the problem of ho\\· to inLe rrclate and sy nthesize the data or th e different disc iplines so as lO achieve a comprehensi\·e interpretatio n of any national cult ure as an in tegraLed whole h;1s not yet been so lyed satisfactoril y by the v:1rious a rea stud y programs. 1 The p urposes of are a sLUdies range rrom e xtremely practica l to hiahf)' theoretical ohjecLi\'es. and the re m:1 y be as t> man y fram es o f rde re nce as there are disciplines. The a 11thropologi ca l frame of refe rence is culture . Our efforts w u 11ders tan d the loca l and c lass subcul tu res in relation to Lhe tota l in sula r culture compelled us to co11ccplt1a 1ize the la tte1· in its he te rogeneous and complc:x aspens and to dra\\. heavil y upon the disciplines " ·h ich h ave d e ,·otcd th emselves to these a spens . \\' hilc we make no pre Le nse Lhat th e prese nt project is an area stud y w e be lieve thaL it indi cates some of th e lines along w hi ch area resea rch might be pursued . Before e xplaining the m eLhodology of the presen t rcse;1 rch , ho"·e ,·er. i t is \\·e ll to acquaint the 1·eader \\·ith some o f the principal characterist ics o f th e cul ture and society o f P uerto Rico . I

('-.,

I

3

Pu erto Rico passed to Un ited States' so\'e re ignty, where upon cor porate cap ital from the cont inent flo,\·ed rapidl y into the sugar industry, b r inging funher technological changes and a lter ing the socioeconomic patterns under 'd1i ch the suga r workers li\'ed. U nited States sovere ig nty also permitted accelerated change in lega l, ed ucational, religious_. and other insular institt1tions, and it facilitated the fl ow of cont ine nta l influ ences o f all kinds. Puerto Rico, h o ,\·ever, is b v no means a ca rbon copv of the U nited Sta tes. It has ' reacted within the term's Of its O\l' n c ultural background . geogra phical setting, and local traditio ns to the new institut ional frame\\·ork. The isla nd is still predomina n tly agrarian . and some .JO per cem of the p opulatio n ea rns its liYing by cultivating the land . Sugar continues to be the prin cipa l crop, b ut b y no mea ns all of the agricultural population \\'Orks in sugar. There a re m a n v small farmers \\·ho grow mixed c1~ops but obtain most,of th e ir income from tobacco. There are also coffee producers, cattle-

GENERAL CHARACTERISTICS OF PUERTO RICO Puerto Ri co is an is land som e th irty-five miles \\·ide and one hun d red miles Jong- lying at the easle rn end of the GreaLer :\n ti lles bet\\'een H ispanio la a nd the Vi rgin Islands. S u btrop ical and end o\\'ed ' \'ith a \'ari ed and e xtremely fe rti le natural e nvironment. it has been able to produce not only subsiste nce crops but a con · sid e rable va r iety of cash cro ps for ex port to a \\·oriel market. For the greater pan of its four ce nwries as a S pa nish co lon y, ho\\'e ver, Pue rto Rico \\'as predom inan t ly a land of sma ll farm ers \\'ho \\'ere pe rmitted to produce little for world trade, exce pt as contraband export evaded Spanish restrictions a nd sLim ula ted some co111 111 e rcial farmi ng . Kno\\'l edge o f th e subcult11res-especially the ble nds of H ispa ni c, Africa n, a nd native Indian feat ures- of these e;1rl y ce nturi es and o f the fanors that shaped them is a t prese nt very imperfect. In t he n i ne tee nth cenLury, whe n Spain relaxed her trade restrictions. sug ar, coffee, a nd tobacco became ver y important as export crops. R egional subc ultures began to e me rge in response to th e distinctive tech n olog ica l, linan cial, and socia l arra ngements u nder which these crops we re prod uced. ;\t th e turn or the century, 1 T he question of t he ohjerl in·s. methods. underl ying co ncep ts. a n d frames of reference in the in1cnlisciplinan· approa<.:h of area study prog1·;1111s to con1c111porary st ales. nations. and world areas has bee n anal yt.ed i n some dc1ail i n J ul ian JI. Stcw;ird. 19:;0.

Fig. 1. Sugar ra11e fields charactt•ristic of th e Coasta l Plains showin g the mo11 11ta i11 bachbonl' of the island of Puerto Rico. J>hot o by Delan o : (;uuem111c· 11/ of l 'ul'rto Rico.

m en. d a iry farmers . and g ro,\·ers of pineapples, ci trus [ruits, and o th er produ cts. I n addition to the r ural population, there a re tO\\'ll a nd urban pe ople- governmenta l. business, servic ing . construc tional, tra nsponational, and manufacturi ng person nel-whose numbers are increasing and who are becoming more varied and specialized as a r esult o ( d eve loping technol ogy and commerce a nd of expandin g governmenta l serv ices. U rbanization. thoug h recent. is progressing r apid ly, but the g reat majority of Puerto Ri co's :.!,285,000 persons counted in the 195:.! cen sus-ewer 61)8 p er squa re mil e. o n e of the m ost densely :;eu le d areas in the world-a re fairly e\'enly dis tributed over the la nd as rural peop le.

Fig. 2. View near Adjuntas, characteristic of the mountainous in t erior. Photo by D elano : Government of Puerto Rico.

Puer to Rico's population has quadrupled in ti1e last one hundred years a nd more than doubled in the last fifty years. Despite the constant drain of emigration within the past d ecade , there is now a consider able population surplus relative to sources of income.2 Inves tment capital from the United States g reatly expanded sugar production, but it did not leave en ough 2 There arc perhaps 2<>o,uoo Puerto Ri ca ns in New York City alone. C. Wright M ills, Clarence Senior, and Rose Kohn Coldscn, 19:;0:23. Senior ( 1953 : 132) estimaled th at n early 300,uoo persons \\'Cre drain ed off the isla nd between 1942 and 1951. An estimate in 195:1 places the number of Pue rto Ri cans in New York a t 321,000. Sec a lso Kingsley D avis, 1953.

new wealth in the island to take care o[ the increased population. Local industries offer a partial solution to unemploymen t, but as ye t th ey have not b ee n extensively developed. Urbanization has been accompanied by the appearance of slums, such as El Fanguito in San Ju an and lesse r sl ums in the smaller ci ti es and towns. A low standard of li ving, seasonal une mployment, malnutr it ion, endem ic di sease , and general insecur i.ty arc wid espread a nd chronic. Birth contn>I. which is widely a d vo cated as a so luti o n to the ecu11omic a n<l soc ial problem s, has made little h eadway a nd in any eve nt could not re m ed y the ovc.:1·populatio11 whic h a lread y e xi sts. Lan<l r efo rm and social lcgisbt ion re-

I.'\TROD U CTIOX

suiling in government-owned sugar co-operatives, the assig nment of subsistence plots to individuals, easier credit for Canne rs, creatio n o( fanu exte nsion services, wage and hour legislati o n , health and educational facilities, and man y other ben efits have h elped differ ent classes in various degrees without conslituting a final or lasting solution.

sonality type. In e ither case, stress is placed upon the fun c ti o nal interde pe ndence of the differ ent ruodes of behavio r. The c ultural metho u, therefore, is broadly holistic in that it ana lyzes all m odes of indi,·idual b ehavio r and all supra-individual institutio ns in r ela tionship to one another. It contrasts \\'ith a method which undertakes separate studies of each aspect of behavio r, such a s econo mics, governmen t, o r re ligion, in isola tio n. M ETHODOLO GY An o perational concept of culture and a workable cultural method, ho"·e,·er, must be adapted to the Anthropolog y is a comparative newcomer to studies nature o f the particular sociocultural system under of co n tempo rary co mplex socie ties and n a tio ns, having analys is. Co ncepts and methods revised for the study trad itio nally d evoted itself to aborigina l, tribal socie- of triba l socie ties are inadequa te for d ea ling 'dch ties. Although the concept of culture a nd the cultural conte m porary soc ie ti es. 'Ve sha ll disting uish " subculm e thod which it has broug ht to these new studies are ture" from "culture," assign new and qualified meanperhaps its most valuable contribution to social sci- ing to ''national cul tu re," "national charac teristics," ence, it is now ve r y evid e nt tha t these m e thodolog ical and ''n a tio nal cha rac ter ,'' and d evise a taxo no my and tools must b e revised to h a ,·e maximum usefulness in termino logy fo1· d esig na ting qua litati,·ely different dealing with the ne w subj ect m::itter. During the last types o [ cultures. U ntil these distinctions a re made, anthropologists ,,-ho are experimenting \\'ith n ew applitwo decades, the "community study meth od" has been applied to the examination or complex contemporary cations o( their cultural method will be unable to comso cie ties, but, with few exceptio ns, these communities municate with ea ch o ther, le t a lo ne ,,·ith fe llow social have been treated as if they we re triba l societies, a nd scie ntists \\'ho are d ea ling with the sam e subject m a tlittle attention has been paid to the la rger state o r te r. Pan o( the difficulty in readapting m e thodology natio n o( which they are integral pans. \iVhen the culstems from anthropo logy's concept of cultural relativtur~ll method has been used in the study of entire natio ns, it has treated them as i( they were tribal socie ti es ity. As a compa ra ti\·e science, a nthropology has tra and emphasized the commo n d e no minato r of shared ditio nally been con cerned \\'ith contrasts to the exte nt behavior traits whil e largely o verloo king 0 1· minimi L- o( placing prima r y e mphasis u pon the uniq ue ness of ing the many co m pl ex a n d m o re ins ti tu tiona lizecl fca - each cultural traditio n. This emphasis logically n egates the possibility o( a taxono my which \\'ould put w res as well as the varying subcu ltures . The need to rev ise certain an thropological concepts differe nt socioc ultural systems o r parts o[ different and m e thods in studies of contempora r y soc ieties be- system s in the sa m e ca tegoi·y. T e rms tha t are used came very dear in the course of the present resear ch. cross-culwra lly, the refore, h ave o nly ye ry loose m eanIt was evident that a summation of portraits of th e ing if fundam ental distinctions in the stages or levels different communities would not constitule a complete of any d evelopmental continuum from tribal to civpic ture o( the to tal island. Pue rto Rican culture, like ilized societies are n o t made. T h e lack of clarity b ethat o f an y contem porary sta te or nation, is more than t\\·een "triba l,'' " com m unity," "sta te," ··na tio n a l," and the like has mea m in pra ctice tha t all d evelo pmenta l a mosaic of its subc ultures. There are features above and beyond the subcultures o( the communities and levels are handled with the m e thodology which was sociocu ltural classes w h ich must be grasped i f com- developed in tribal swclies. Primitive societies are typicall y small, self-conta ined, munity function and a cculturation are to be unde rstood . In short, th e traditiona l concepts and m e tho d s and c11lwra ll y h o m ogeneous. "Tribal culture '' is a co nof c ulu11-al studies proved to h e a poor tool for dealing struc t based essentia lly on b eh avioral tra its tha t charwith the heterogen eous asp ects of the cul lllre of a con- acterize virtually all members o f the socie ty. A lthough there a re some d iffe re nces associa ted with sex, age, role, temporary society. a nd stalus, there are no rnajor occupationa l, r egional, or so cia l g roups or segm e nts that diffe r sig nificantl y THE CONCEPT OF CULTURE from o n e anothe r a nd ca n be sa id to h a ve subcultures, and th e re are no larget·, suprapersonal instiw tio ns that I\ concept of c ulture that is applicable to all sociocultural systems, primitive and civilized, is necessarily cannot b e understood fairly we ll by studying the beve r y broad and general. Cu 1ture in the a bstract con- havior of individuals. The cu ltural method , which in sists o f sociall y transmitte d or learned ideas, attitudes, triba l studies is commo nly called the ethn ographic t'.'aits o f o vert be havior, a nd supraperso nal instittt- method , is to observe a suflicie nt numbe r of indiYid t10ns. 111 most a11thropolog ical studies. it is gene rally uals to ascerta in th e typical or expectabl e beh a vior o { conce ived that the totality o[ these fe;nures has an tribal m embers whi ch is then described as the culture. l\lore compl e :-; sociocultural systems such as mod e rn ove r-all unity which is gen r rall y e xpressed in culwral terms as functional imegra ti o 11 \\'ithin a bas ic pattern n a tio ns a re n o t d ea lt with so eas ilv. The subc ul t ura l or co11figuration , b ut \\'hich ma y also he ex pressed in g roup:, or the la u e r. such as co1;111H1nities, occupapsy<hological te rms a s integration ,,·ithin a basic p e r- tiona l cl asses, e thnic minorities, and the like . m ay b e

6

THE PEOPLE OF PUERTO RICO

studied by the ethnographic method , but this alone is not enough. l\Ioclern nations have certain features, such as governmental structures, legal system s, religious organizations, and economic patterns \vhich differ qualitatively from anything known in tribal culture and which cannot poss ibl y be grasped by ascertaining the behavior of the typical individual associated with them. The concept that cu lture consists o[ shared behavior will not at all serve to describe the functions of a government or a system of international commerce. LEVELS OF SOCIOCULTURAL ORGANIZATION

The several distinctions made here bet,,·een tribal and contemporary national sociocultural systems are based largely upon the concept o[ levels of sociocultural integration or organization . The concept of levels of organization underlies the distinctions between the physical, biologica l, and social scien ces, which deal respectively with those phenomena which are organized according to physical principles, with those which are organized according to a life principl e, that is, which have the property o[ self-perpetuation, and with those which are organized on a cu ltural or superorganic level. Each level has qualities that are unknown in the lower levels and that requi re distinctive research methods. I have suggested e lsewhere (Steward, 1951) that the concept ol the superorganic, though useful in distinguishing cultural phenomena from biological and physical phenomena and in clarifying the nature of the subject matter o( a nthropology, is an imperfect tool for the swd y of particu la r cu ltures. There is n eed in the culwral sciences as in the biological sc iences to dist inguish sub· levels of organization and to recognize that each su blevel differs from the others not only quantitativel y in having greater complexity but yualitatively in having new forms and dist in ctive principles of organilation. Just as a mammal has a respiratory, circulatory, n ervous system, and other features not found in unicellular I ife, so nation a l societies have institutionalized, supracommunity feat ures not found in tribal society. The intricatel y a nd delicately structured interrelationship between these features has a distinctive quality. The co ncept of levels of sociocu ltural integra tion does not of itself carry conclusions as to what levels are signifi cant. As an operational concep t it merely points u p the need of recognizing yualitat ively d istinctive cha racteristics which emerge in the development or any cultu re and which are found in the in tern;.t! structure of any "complex" or "civilized" soc iety. The precise nature of the cultural sub levels or organizational patterns will differ in particulars in each histori ca l tradition, but certain general features are fairly uni versa l. There are a few cu ltures in the world, like the Western Shoshoni Indians of Nevada or the Eskimo, in wh ich the biologica l or nuclear fam ily re presents the highest leve l of org-anization. In su ch soc ie ti es. virtua ll y all cultura l an iv ities are carried on b y di e family

in compara tive independence or ot hc:i· fa111 il ib. · 1 here are few aspects of culture which lll:1~· not h e \,·J1ll ll y unde rstood through anal~' s i s o l the indi\·icl11:tl Ltmih·. Most primiti\·e peoples. IH)We\·er, :ire orga 11ill·d i11 various multifamily ~oc i ct i es, sue h ;1-; li11c:1g(·..,. h:1nds. villages, and tribes, which ha\·e p:ittcni... ol i11tcrL1111ilial co-operation a11d i11t<:ranio11 . Th c-.c p:ttl<..Tth in clude colleni \·e forms of hunting. fi-.lii11g. :i nd l:11111i11g. group \\·or~ h i p and ri tlla I, e:-: te11dcd k i 11:-.li i p re I:t t ions. tribal \\·arfare, and many o th er ac ti\·itic.., wliic h c·n1;1il suprafam ilial organi1:1tio11. Th e'><: < liaractcri:-.t i< :-. 1norc o r less correspond t() those ol R cclf1eld"s lolk :-.1)( iety a nd folk cu lwre ( Redfield, I~) 11. 1917 ) . Tl 1cy :11·e qualitatively different from a 11 ytl1ing 101111<1 on a purel y fami ly level, and they co11ld not lu11nio11 among families that were J;irgely indt:pc 11dc11t of one another. :-\ st ill hig her lc\·el of orga11 i1 :1t io11 is represented b y 1111tlticom11111nit y st.ates, leder:itio11~. :ind other so ciocultural :-.ys~cms. \\·liich :ire i11t cg r:1t cd through patterns or i11stitutions 11ot lo11t1d :1t :1 c0 111 munity level. The ~late :: ge ner:dl y li:1 ,, n1orc or less forma l national pattern s of govcn 1111 c 11t :1t1d 111ilit:1· rism, a stat<.: church , economic p:1ttcrn-; \\·liich l" tlL til some degree of centr:di1.ed reg1d :1t ion ol produ c tion and consumption and which u,,ually ha \'t: :in ollic i:tl· dom or burea u cracy a nd t1atio11:tl ~oci:d cl:ts~c~. I 11 a d evelopme ntal ~equence through s 11cccssi\(:ly higher levels of soc iocultur:d org:111i1atio 11 . L11e stn1ctural forms a nd disti11nivc functions o l tl 1c lo\\-cr levels tend to pen. ist :1fter the new patterns :1t1d insti tlllions are superimposed upon thern. The la111il y continues to be th e sexual and procreational u nit, and it may retain certain econom ic, educational. :1 t1d soci:tl functions, although , as part of a largc.:r \\'hole. i t is modifi ed in ce rtain \\'a ys. The hand, tribe.:, or \ ill agc does n ot re li11quisl1 all of its f1111nio11s :tltc.:r ))('crn 11i11g part or a St.ate. Jts lllCITlbers CO lttill tlC tO ("O·Oj>er:tt <: ill local enterprises, it has its own leade rs. and it. 1na y retain its trad itiona l religion, even thot1 gh 11:1tio11al fo rms of production , government, and rel igio n a re superimposed upon the local ones. In due t.illlc. of course, influence rrorn the nat ion a I patterns Illa y penetrate to the very lowest levels of org;111i1.a tion. I 11 mod ern industrial socie ti es, for example, c:xtrc: 111c s p e<' i:1lization in occupat io 11s together wi th the d e ,·elopment of transpo rtation, of means or lllass <·rnn1n11nicatio11, and o ther factors have i11crcasingl y leveled loca l dillercnces and ·w eakened local soc ial i11t.egratio11. '!"h e family h as surrendered a large ponion ol i1 s older fun ct ions, a n d those \d1ich it retains h:1ve bcco111 e sp ecial iled. L oca l soc iocu ltural segmentat ion begins to give way to hori1.0ntal segmentation, and th e i11divid ual lives more and more in the cont.ext of a soc ioecon omic class, w hi ch has certa in uniformities ol beh avior or culLUre, rather than as a m embe r or a distinctive commu ni ty. This is true ol the working c lasses. wh ich :<This us<: of "srat<:" j, in 11<1 \\"a\ a11 ;1t l <'111pr to dd111c it. Sig n i ficanL kvcb \\' ill l1a\t: 10 IH: di,1i11gui•d1<:d 1 h1011gl 1 t'lllpi1 i< al rcscar<l1 and an ad e quat e 1cr111 i1 1ologv \\' ill l ia,<· 10 '"' d"'dop('(I. S1aL<:s differ from 01w a1111rl11·1 1d11·11 111<·' ''"'" ""'<·l<> JH'<I ''irlii11 different local <til111r:d traditi1111-; .

I:"'TRODUCTIO:-\

han.: b C<'Olll e hig hl y ::. p e<'i:tli1ed. as \\·ell as Of the middle classes ;111d the profess io11;tl and uppe r classes. This concept of len: ls of orga ni 1ation su gges ts the hypothes is that the hig h e r le,·els of culture m;iy be d1;11wed m o re r:11)idly, and m ore readily' tha11 th e lower ~ ones. \\'he n ;111 y reg io n or sta te passes I rom the so\·erei<r1H v, ot 011c natio n to that of ano li1e r. it has to conform LO ;1 nc\\· set ol national l:rn·s. it is integrated in a nc"· econom ic system. and it ma y b e subject to ne"· religi o us. military, and so cial patterns. But it re tains ·1' ,., "•'-cat d ea l ol its orio n inal local or comm1111itv . organi' i'ation and cusLOm. and an e,·en larger proportion of familial beha,·ior. .\ modern sociocultural system . therefore. co11tains within iu-.e lf qualitati,·e ly distincti\'e k\·c ls of o rga11i 1atio11 . e \·e n though the nature and fun<'I ion ol each le,·el has b ee n modified b y the larger co11flguratio11. It follO\\'S, therefore, that each or these le ve ls or s u ·unural p;irts mus t he anal y1ed i11 terms of th em se lves as ,,·cJ I ;1::. i11 relationship to the to tal syste n1. These con cepts ha\'e ~e n·ed as a tool in the a nal ysis of J>u e no Ri('o. Contemporary Puerto Rican socie ty is highl y di,·c rsified ;111d h e terogeneous. Our research has sho\\·11 that there arc many s ubcultures within th e larger fram ework or the nation a I nil 1u re :1nd th e national insti tutions. The crnnemporary diversi ty is largely 1hc result of dillerelllial loca l e ffects o[ the island's pan ic ip;1tion in world comm e 1-cc-of agriculLur;tl w;1ge labor whi ch has produ ced a proletariat in one region. of cultiv;1tion and sale or ;1 c;1 sh crop an llllal \\·hi<'h has mad e for individual indc p c 11dc11ce and ini tiative of the s mall farmer in another region, etc.but everywh e re the c ultu1·al b g has bee n greatesl at the communit y and L1111ily le,·el. Th e e n comie nda and n•/Jart i111ic11 to under s ixLeenth-cenwry Spain did not at once e radicate all aboriginal l ndian re:1tures, and the s lave plantation did not at firs L e liminate those ;1sp ens of .\lric 1n cullllre whi ch function ed on an individual and family level. In fact. a great man y features ol family and com n111nity cu l ture ol di,·erse origin - thaLc hed h o uses. mort;1rs made of logs. grinding stones, calabash containers. woode n dis h es and stools, hammocks. b;1 skets . manioc or y ucca presses, and even magic and folk form s of C atholic ism-survived until fairly recentl y among th e s mall. independent subsistence fa rme rs o r the interior d espite rathe r fundam c 1nal ch a nges in the national institutions. T oda y, a semblan ce of uni for miLv in insuL1r culture as a whol e is g ive n b y a number ,;r traits of' th e His panic l_1eri_tagc which function large ly at th e comn11111ity and fam~l y leve ls- use or the Spanish lang u;1ge, a large lamrl y. th e double s tandard in sexual b e havi o r. ritual kins hip. and o th e rs. Th ese ha\'e b ecom e diffe re ntl v patte n1ed in each local s ubculture, but th ey are n o.L n ecess;iril y e liminated b y changes at th e n ation al le ve l. ~

NATIONAL SOC IOCULTURAL SYSTEMS

_1 :hc ~o nce pt or levels of integration p e rmits certai n d1s t11Kllons be tween the dillerent aspens or compon enL::. ol the <'lll tu re ol a m odern natio n that are u sel ul

f

in a s tmh· like the p reselll o n e. The most important distinction is that between 11atio11nl (and inte rna tio nal) jJattn11s o n L11e one hand and s 11bc11lt 11res or sociocultur;d segm c11t:; on the other. Once Lhis dis tinction is clarified. oth er aspens of naLional c ulture. such as 11atio11al clinracll'rislics. 11atio11al clrnracler . 11atio11al c11/t11ra/ acliicr.1e111e11ts. and i11stit11tio11al be/1a'l'ior. may be related to the differem le,·els. Nationa I Patterns and Subcultures

l\ational patte rns are h e re con side red Lo b e those portions o r a::.pects or cu llure thal function on a nati ona l le ,·el. for exa mple . th e legislali\·e system and Ic<ral code. the CYO\·ernme ntal s truct ure . the ed u cationa l s Ys tcm. the mili1:1n-. organi1ed relig-ion . mone\', banki;tg . comme rce. pul; li c s~n· iccs. and ;nany 0L11er~. These diffe rent national patterns h:n·e traditionally b ee n the s ubject matter o( \'arious specia l disci plines, each o( \\·hich uses its O\\'ll disti n ct i\'e method .. \ !though a ll of them are part of culture in a broad sen se. the ethnogra phic meLhod is n ot adapted to the a n alysis o( their pri nci pa 1 ('h ar;1nerist ics. An e thnographic approach to 11;1tio nal institutions or patterns could d eal only with ,,·hat we may ca ll culturally prescribed i11stit11lio11ol bcftavior. that is. with the fonnali1ed and st ereotyped beh;n·ior expected of an indi\'idual in his capacity as a p artic ipa nt in the institulion . This b eha\'ior. h o\\'e\'er, \\'Ould 1·epresen1 a ,·ery incomple te portion of th e s ubculture ol Lh e individual or or the larger [unctions o[ the institut ion i1 se lr. The laborers. cle 1·ks. age nts. managers. o wners. and th e like "·ho meet in the con tex t of a fanor~ conform to certain heh:n·ioral expenations of the job :-.iw;1tion. \\'hile their Yaried roles anll statuses give so111 e clu es 1.0 their o ff-th e-job ~Latus. their t ota l s ubni!Lttres-th e ir re lig ion, family life . and alli e r fea tures - are n ot directly manifest in the factory . .Similarly, th e m ea ning o f L11 c factory in re lation to a la rger sy!>tem of technology, credit. d istri bu tio n. and the like c111nol \\'ell be grasped by m erely obsen·ing the b ehavior or fact0ry p ersonnel. There are m any other i11stitutionali1ed s ituations. such as Lhe church. schoo l, moving picture Lh eater. baseball park, and t h e like. which draw p ersons from Yari o us subcultures but wh i('h h ave th e ir o wn stand ards or behavio r. £,·en where these s itll ations p en11i t class distinctions, for exa mple, through ~egrega tion on a n economic or racial basis. \\·hid1 Ill ig ht be mani fe:.t through deference s hown by lo\\'er-class individu a ls to the ir superio rs, th ey do not rcvea I the nature of the subcultural differe nces associated with the classes. I L is only in a coun try with \\'e ll -de,·eloped mass communications. a high standard o l li,,ing. and a relati vely high d egTee of socioeco n om ic m obility. such as the United States, that th e number o f institutio nal ~i UJations in which individuals o[ diffe re nt subcu ltures ('all intcnninglc increases to Lhe point whe re sh ared b ehavior seems to predominate and s ubcu llura l dille re n ce~ are correspond ing ly reduced . E,·en in the United Sta tes s ubculutres are by no m ea n :. comple Le l) Je ,·eled. but the le ,·eling proces:-. has go ne so far, especia l! ) in ~

~

8

THE PEOPLE OF PUERTO RICO

the urban centers, which provide a large number of one another in a system of social staLuses. From th is situations for interclass contact, that it would be easy fact we may derive a cultural definiLion of classes: to underestimate the imPortance of subcultural dif- classes are sociocultural groups or segmenls arra nged ferences and to overestimate the nationally shared be- in an hierarchical order. But the hierarchy fun c tions h avior. principally in the loca liLy. It does not always follow The national institutions have functional and that segments having the same relative status in differstructural aspects which are distinguishable from the ent localities will be cultu ra l equivalems if the local cultural behavior of the people connected with them. or regional subcultures are unlike. The processes of manufacturing, m arketing a nd trade, During the sixteenth a nd seventeemh centuries like the principles of money and banking, are studied Puerto Rico had a few to wns and plantations which by the specialized methods of economics, which need were internally divided into a number of sociocultural not be concerned with how people connected with a segments, but the predomi11anL type ol rural society factory or bank live. Analysis of governmental struc- was the simple, undifkren Liated su bsistcnce I arm. J 11 ture and a system of legislation does not necessarily the eighteenth century, plamations which grew cash pay attention to the subculture of lawmakers. For cer- crops and rural communiLi cs began to de velop on an tain purposes, it may be very important to know the important scale. Since Lhat time, the communi ty, or culture of people involved in economic or legislative municipio, which includes the town ce nter and the activities, but there are some aspects of these activities dependent farm area, has constituted the structural which can best be understood by the specialized and functional context within which the maj or it y o( methods of economics and political science. the people live. Communities arc n o t culturall y The individual lives within the framework of a set homogeneous units, like tribal societies, for there a rc of national institutions, but his daily activities are important subcultural differences betwee n town and normally carried out within the context of a fairly country a nd among mercha nts, artisans, labore rs, and small segment of society that consists of people sub- the like within the town as well as among landlords stantially like himself and who therefore may be said a nd laborers, la rge and small farm ers, and owners and to have a subculture. There are two principal types sharecroppers in the country. But Lhe community has of sociocultural segments. First, there are locally dis- a high degree o f sociocultural integr ation. It is the tinctive segments, such as communities, rural n eigh- center of primary marketing of produce a nd ultimate borhoods, and ethnic minorities, which represent ver- distribution of commodities; it is the locale in which tical or essentially localized cleavages within the larger churches, schools, public health, law enforcement, a nd society. Second, there are horizontal segments, which other services directly reach the people; and it is the follow occupational or class lines and in some cul- place where the p eople are reared and educated, tures, caste lines. These may crosscut local cleavages. marry, work, visit, and amuse themselves. It is in Lhe Society at a tribal level h as only local or vertical community that the different rural subcultural groups segments, each tribe or segmen t constituting a com- interact with one another in a sel of r eciprocal, face paratively independent functional unit which is not to-face relationships. internally class-structured. (There are, of course, many Although the national patterns or institutions and so-called "tribes," su ch as those of West Africa and the subcultural segments are disLinguishable and must elsewhere, which are internally differentiated into be treated separately, the two are so interdependent segments that extend across local groups.) More de- functionally that neither can be understood properly veloped sociocultural systems, however, have both unless it is r elated to the other. To this end, it was kinds of segments. The European feudal estate, for found convenient in the present research to distininstance, was a fairly well integra ted society which guish two aspects of the national patterns: first, the functioned in comparative independence of the larger more formal, insular-wide, a nd institutionali zed associety and consisted of two distinct but interdepend- pects, su ch as the governmental and legal system, ent sociocultural classes. Modern industrialization and political parties, labor unions, edu cational system, its concomitants have brought new kinds of n ational export a nd import trade, money, banking, and credit patterns or institutions which, though producing organizations, churches and officia l church doctrines, nation-wide institutions, have caused extreme socio- the military, certain organized sports; and, second, Lh e cultural differentiation on a horizontal b asis. O ccupa- community manifestations of the national palterns. tional specialization has not only divided the laboring Governmental agencies, for example, are organized class into many special groups but it has created a and controlled on a n insular or federal basis, bu t large n umber of new middle classes. It has also tended the government agent in a local community h as to to establish bonds between equivalent segments of adapt his work to the "realities" of the situa tion. different communities. In some cases, there may be Health, education, farm extension work and other greater cultural similarities and stronger loyalties be- services have meaning particular to the commun ity tween the widely scattered members of the same seg- and to the classes within it. One kind of community ments than between members of different segments stresses the value of education while a nother is indifferent; p eople utilize the health cl in ic in some areas within the local community. Virtually all modern communities consist of several but rely on folk medicine in others; and so forth. distinctive sociocultural segments which are related to Simila rly, there are grea t local 4lifferences in the

9

INTRODUCTION

manifesta tions of Catholicism, in political attitudes, and in obedience to the law. Despite the Catholic church's international organization and standardized procedures a nd doctrines, orthodoxy prevails largely among the upper class, while certain communities have mad e Catholicism into a cult of the sain ts and others h ave mixed witchcraft, spiritualism, and even Protestantism with it. The local manifestation of any n ationa l pattern can be comprehended only with reference to the distinctive concext of the subcultural segment and the community. Not a ll community culture, however, consists of local aspects of for mal national institutions. The fam il y, for example, is an entirely local matter. It is true that a type o( fami ly may prevail over much or even mos t of a n area and tha t marriage laws may be esta blished on a national level, but the family is not part of any ki nd o[ national structure. It is, therefore, a very different kind of institution than a chain of ban ks or ;i pol itica l party. The same is true of cenai n other fea wres of local culture, such as settlement pa ttern. Both the family and settlement pattern, however, are profoundly influenced by national institu tions. T h ese two aspects of insular institutions, the formal a nd the local, reflect the traditional d ivision of labor among the social science disciplines and suggest the terms of collab oration. The former are the subject matter of various specialists; the latter, in their community or class m anifestations-that is, as characteristics of the differ ent sociocultural segmen ts-lend themselves to a cultural or social anthropological approach. The follow ing two lists, though very incomplete, illustrate how these two aspects are distinct ye t complementary. Local asj>ects Subsistence farming Cash crop production and trade La nd tenure Settlement pattern J\farriage and fam ily Social classes Occupational groups Labor unions Local government Political affilia tio ns and ideologies Local associations Church and supernaLUral1sm Schools and learning Recreation Hospitals, doctors, curers

Formal insular or extrainsular aspects Government r egulations a nd aid Insular economy, world markets, sources of credit, etc. Basic economy, land laws, inheritance system None Marriage laws Insular social str ucture Economic system and insular specialization Labor unions National government National parties and ideologies National clubs and societies Organized churches Educational system and media of mass communication Organized sports, e.g., baseball Government health measures

A fairly sta tic society which had developed slowly wou ld presumably achieve a comparatively well inte-

grated total culture in which the national institutions and the sociocultural segments would acquire a fairly stable and fixed interrelationship to one another. In the European feudal p attern, communities b ased on t~e own ership of large tracts b y landlords wer<: f_uncu on al parts of a state whose governmental, rehg1ous, and social system sanctioned and supported the rural land-use and tenure system. But where any parts of the total configuration are radically altered, the whole is thrown out of adjustment. An understand_in~ o.£ the processes of readjustment requires interd1sc1plm~ry collaboration, that is, analysis on both the comm~n.1ty and national levels. The Puerto Rican commumt1es, as the chapters on history and on the differe~t com munities show, have changed very radically durmg ~he four and a h alf centuries since the conquest. An understanding of these changes requires analysis a t the com munity level of cultural adaptations to land-use potentials and at the national level of insul~r chan?es which occurred during the Spanish c.olomal pe:10d and during the American period. Detailed an alysis of the n ational institutions for their own sake was beyond the possible scope of the present project. Non.etheless we h ad to consider them at some leng th m order to understand the n ational or insular institutional fram ework within which the communities developed. To this end, we consulted publisl~ed sour:es and held a series of extended conferences with sp ecialists in the various subjects. 1

National Patterns and National Cultural Achievements

There are certain aspects of any culture, s~ch as ~rt, liter ature music philosophy science, and ideologtes, ' ' · · rat her which are' often subsumed under the humamues than under the social sciences. Because these co~­ monly represent the highest intellectual and ~stheuc attainments of a nation, they are sometimes designated national cultural achievements. .b In any sociocultural system above the tn a 1 1.eve1' ·sh the na tional . is necessary to d istingm . · however it achieve~ents from the folk achievements. T hro.ughout . much of human history, t11e fi nes t art• music, and literature h ave b een produced for the state or godve~n. them· an m ment or for th e classes represennng ' d b telle~tual and scientific d iscoveries have been:i~ e ~ m embers of the priestly or rul ing classes. ~ ougd national achievements tend to filter ohutwar an downward to the general population, t er are con sumed b y all segments of the society on ly 111 propor. · nd other means of u on as there is general educauon a . h . mass communication and consumption. 0 t edrwise, . . . . l"terature ance, locally d1sunct1ve fol k music, i ' art, . religious thought and ideologies may su~vive .. d £ · · · · n in mm I t is necessary 'to bear tlus distmcuo . ' ·or 111 ter~ns national culture is too often conceived solely of those esthetic and intellectual achievemen tds wl1 ~chl b 1 per classes an w u c 1 are under~tood only y nel u~11 ·te1·a;e isolated folk may be little known to t 1e i I .• . . · · · · ate m only hm1ted societies. The latter may paruc1p manifestations of these achievements, as when they take part in relig ious ceremonialism.

1

I0

THE PEOPLE OF PUERTO RICO

National Patterns and the Uppe r Class

The subculture of the prominent and wealthy families of Puerto Rico has d iffered historically from that of the other sociocultural segments in severa l important respects. I t is distinguished not only by its considerably greater wealth and its superordinate social position with respect to the other classes but by its special relationship to the national patterns or institutions and by its role in the power structure. During most of history, when sociocultural systems have developed to a state level, the national or state institutions have given rise to special ruling classes, whose subcultures might consist in large measure o( functions pertaining to the national institutions. This may be illustrated in a somewhat simplified manner by the ancient irrigation civilizations, such as those of the Maya of Yucatan or the Bronze Age Egyptians. The political, religious, and military institutions o( these societies produced an upper class of rulers who not only controlled such matters as state irrigation works and distribution of goods, military affairs, government, and religion, but whose subcultural behavior was in la rge measure determined by their participation in na tional or state affairs. Management of public a ffa irs was part of their daily life. They were the creators of complex calendars, mathematics, writing, literature, and systematized ideologies pertaining to the national institutions, and they alone fully understood these matters. Thus, they were also consumers as well as producers o( the national esthetic and intellectual achievements to a degree and in 'vays that were foreign to the lower classes. In contemporary societies, the national institutions have created a much greater range of occupational special izations and statuses than were found in the basica lly two-class societies of antiquity. Nevertheless, it is normally those persons who are finally considered as upper class far more than any other social segment who understand and control the national institutions, make use of higher education, technological inventions, advanced medicine, and the like, and incorporate the best achievements of national literature, art, music, and the theater into their daily living. The upper class is least integrated in terms of locality, and it is the most cosmopol ita n. I n many respects its way of life represents an international upper-class culture. As technology develops, as the standard of living is raised, and as mass communication is advanced, these national achievements become available to the middle classes and finally to the lower classes. Meanwhile, new national a nd international features develop, and these too become available first to the upper classes. This is not to say that all culture change originates in the upper class. Changes in national institutions, as we have seen, may penetrate to the community and family. Moreover, an imbalance may be created in the total pattern by overpopulation, concentration of wealth, realignment of socia l and economic structure, a nd the creation of unsatisfied desires in lower and middle classes. These lead to movements of varying

magnitudes ranging from individual bargaining, through collective bargaining and politi ca l action. to revolution , a ll producing a change in the power struc· LUre a nd an overhauling of the total socioeconomic system. In Puerto Ri co, the mass o( the people have definitel y achieved greater po"·er than they had under the Span ish regime, a nd man y national changes which were initiated because power shifted to the lo,,·er and middle classes have reacted upon the total culture. J\ feanwhile. th e upper class of Puerto Rico rct:1i11s a prominem, although very unclear. pl;1n: in the po\\'cr strucLUrc; and it s i11di,·id11al mc111bers participat e to a greater deg ree than those of a11~· other cl;1..,~ in t lic national instilllt.ion s. ~foreovcr, they ;ire i11 a lict ter positi o n than pcn.ons or other cla:-.:-.cs to borro\\' f'oreig11 cultural traits. The chapl<.:r d cscr il>i11g Lil<.: pro111i11e11L families o f' Pu erto Rico \\'ill sho\\· dial they :arc cu 1tural ly disti11cti\'e laq.~·c l y because ol their participa tion in tltc 11alio11al leatures and their adoption or behavior paLterns from out~idc the island. Tli c 11ppcr class ma y still pla y an important role i11 the po\\'('r structure, but it \\'as beyo nd the scope of the present projec t to appraise this rnle. \ Ve have shown, however, that wea lth, opportunity, mobility. and conta cts ha ve perm itted this g roup to become cosmopolita n in the sense that any upper class is cosmopolitan. It is uppe r class in terms of the U n ited States social structure as well as the Puerto Rica n , and many o[ its members reside for extended periods on the continent. J t has acquired many of the political attitudes, economic practices, forms of social behavior, intellectual in terests, recreational outlets, and other cu ltural characteristics o( wealthy continentals. As Puerto Rican standards of living, educa tion, and other opportunities permit, much cu lture characteristic of the upper class begins to appear among other classes. To u nderstand the process o[ acculttnation o( the masses of the populatio n, however, it is important to recogn ize that they do not mechanically imitate American behavior or Pu erto Rican upper-class behavior. Any borrowing presupposes a basis of opportunity an<l needs, and, as these factors show marked local variation in the different major reg ions, borrowed culture becomes readapted to fit the community patterns, as we show in subsey_uent chapters. National Characteristics

We have stressed the importance of viewing the cu lture of a modern nation as a composite of various subcu ltures as well as of nationally shared traits which distinguish all members of a nation from the members of any other nation. Vve now consider the nature o( the shared traits or national characteristics. Jn tribal society, the common denominator of shared traits is more or less coextensive or synonymous with the total culture. It represents family and tribal leve ls o( function and integration, there being no larger patterns. The individual acquires these traits by learning from members of his subcultural group. The national characteristics of a contemporary society, on

I NTRODUCTION

the other ha nd, consist of features of various kinds and origins. There are three kinds of features or u·aits which may constilllte the national cultural common denominator: first, those which arise from more or less compulsory conformi ty with the basic national institutions "·hich affect all individuals; second, traits of the common cu lwral heritage, which in Puerto Rico is Hispanic: and third, un iformities produced by means of mass communicat ions. None o[ these, however, necessarily produces behavioral uniform ities. :\II 111en1bers of :i nation participate in the same general eco110111 y, arc subject to a uniform set of laws, 111a y receive somc\\'hat similar public educat ion and other benefits. and be subj ect to taxation, military se rvice. and the like. But the national institutions L11cmsc lvcs an11all y ma y produce internal heterog-ene ity rather than uniformity. An economy of free ~ 11 terprisc :111d industrialization introduces cashorientatio11 and com pc ti ti ve striving in all segments of the society it affcns, but it also sharpens differences beu,·een lactory O\\'ner and worker, landlord and peasa nt, merchalll and consumer, and other groups. Economic development also entails local specialization, which itseH creates sharp differences in patterns of farm production, as this volume shows, as well as in economic sta tus. Participation in education, government, and other national institutions is in turn partly a function o f economic status. In general, it can be sa id that the far-reaching effects of Puerto Rica n national institutions under America n sovereignty as compared with Spanish sovere ignty have increased rather than lessened the island's internal heterogeneity. ~ Ioreover, many o[ th e subcu ltura l groups that have developed in response to new national tt·ends are not distinctive of Pu erto Rico but arc very similar to groups in other pans o( th e world wh ere compa rable economic and political factors have been introduced. Basic national institutions, th erefore, cannot at all be considered synonymous w ith cultu ral uniformities of individual behavior nor as necessary causes of uniformities. The second ca tegory of national un iformities consists of feawres derived from the basic cultural heritage. Pueno Rico shares a substantial Hispanic heritage with all other L a t in American nations. Certain featu1·es of this heritage are commonly adduced as evidence of its vitality and importance: the Spanish la nguage, a double standard and male dominance in the family, r itual kinship, the fJaseo, the town plaza, Catholicism, the lottery, cockfighting, Spanish styles in music, literature, art, and a rchitecture, emphasis upon spiri tual and human rather t han commercial values, in terest in poetry, literature, and philosophy rather than in science and industry, a nd emphasis upon hospita li ty a nd interpersonal re lations rather than upon competitive individualism . These components o f the Hispa nic heritage, however, a re of different orders, and no t a ll o ( them a re equa lly represented among the different sociocultural classes. The older Hispanic sociocul tural system was internally differentiated into two sociocu ltural classes:

11

the upper class of wealthy landlords and public and church officials; and the lower class of farm workers a nd artisans. i\Iany of the characteristics common ly considered typical of L atin America are essentia lly upper-class characteristics which depend upon wealth, leisure, ancl status and whid1 could not fu nct ion among the lo"·er classes. T he cultivation of ph ilosophical val ues, the importance attached to rich a nd warm human relations, and the enjoymen t of art, literature, and music presuppose considerable· education and financial security. The lower classes, especia lly those in th e tradition of the feudal estate, are too poor and illi terate to support these features. Ca tho I ic orthodoxy is largely a n upper-class rel ig ion, various forms of Colk Ca tholicism being found among the lower classes. Since the double standard implies status and regulated forms of marriage, it is largely cha racterist ic of the upper class. Among the lower class of the corporate sugar plantation, male dominance is greatly weake ned and the woman may be the most permanent a nd potent member of the family. A "double standard" signifying extramarital relations means little under common-law marriage. Under the H ispan ic culture the two sociocultural classes shared, first, common submission to national laws and other national patterns, which, ho"·ever, su pported a nd sanctioned the superordinate position and special privileges o( the upper class; second, a set of implicit understandings and habitual b ehavior and attitudes which regulated the superordinate-subordinate relationship which controlled the interaction of the two classes; and third, some forms of customary institutional behavior of a secondary nature, such as cockfighting, the lottery, the paseo, a nd others, which are not strongly connected fun ctionally with the national institutions. Class discrimin ations, however, ca rried over even in to the standardized behavior of situations where the two sociocultural groups mingled. Lower-class members were subordin ated to the upper classes in such matters as segregation, even when walking o n the streets, while there was and is often actual p hys ica l segrega tion in public conveyances, churches, theaters, cockfight pits, and the paseo. The Span ish heritage, therefore, cons ists more of featu res characterizing subcultures than of a national common denominator. \1Vhere the older social arrangements survive, as in the Puerto Rican coffee area, the upper class continues to some extent to exhibit the socalled "typical" Spanish patterns wh ile the lower class preserve!> fo lk patterns. \ Vhere the older classes are being weakenetl and middle classes have arisen under the inlluence of industrialization, the principal survival o[ the Hispa nic heritage is in language, art, m usic, a nd recrea tional activities which were nol strong ly integrated w ith the older na tio nal palterns or the subcultu res. T he older attit udes which regulated interclass re la ti ons are being weakened. The situat ion in Puerto Rico is comparable to that in J apa n. Bened ict's a n alysis of J apan (1946) stressed the importnn ce of universally accepted attitudes and behavior traits which governed an individual's be-

12

THE PEOPLE OF PUERTO RICO

havior toward persons above and below himself in the ethnic minorities through immigration- will certa inl y hierarchy of statuses. In both countries, however, mod· not be uniform in fa milial patterns. It is only where ern influences are breaking down these authoritarian developed communications begin to pene trate even co and personalized relationships and substituting more the family level that uniformities emerge. ~mpersonal and commercial s~andards (Embree, 1939). This analysis indicates that the probl em of national In large measure, then, a list of national character- characteristics is a very complicated one. In Puerto istics of the Spanish heritage consists of secondary Rico, the reg ional and class subcultures arc so disfeatures carried at a folk, community, or class level. tinctive that no single com munity ca n be considered The national patterns produced differences rather to represent the e ntire island in microcosm. To ascerthan similarities between the subcultures. Under tain the common core of shared bcha,·ior \\'ould re· United States' influence many new features have been quire a carefull y de,·i:-.ed <>arnpli ng or th e: ,,·hole i.,bnd. introduced: such a~ p_aved roads, transportation by This common core. ho,,·en: r. ,,·o uld not be \TrY ilmotor vehicles, sarutat1on systems, general education, luminating, for m ost shared traits ha n: a specia l lllea11and others. But, as previously mentioned, these h ave ing in each suhcullllr<:. The louery i-; pri11c ipally a become a common denominator only to the extent form of recreation to some groups. \\'hile to others. that wealth, opportunity, a new cash-orientation, and where socioeconomic mobility is iu1poss ihlc. i t pn:scnts all that these imply have penetrated to all classes. the only opportunity to win a sta ke \\'ith \\'l1 id1 Lo sl;trt Actually, there is great variation in the use made of an indepe ndent b usiness. The /H1sr·o i-; a for 111 of these features. Under United States· influence, too, courtship in some to\\'ll S . while in other-; ii i-; 110 1uon.: secondary features that are not dependent upon either than an evening stro ll. Ritual kinship, though < rn11national patterns or subcultures have been introduced mon to all Puerto Ri ca ns, has sC\'C:ral \'Cr y dill<.:rcnt and become uniformities. Baseball, for example, h as functions which refl ect local social and economi c pat· terns. All people in the island are striving to better becom~ the major sport of all classes and regions. The third major source of the national common themselves, but specific methods for ach ieving sociodenominator is media of mass communications. In economic mobility depend upon th e availability of contrast to national patterns or institutions, which jobs, education, and other factors. Most features of the common d e nominator have have a differential effect on subcultures, education, different local meanings because they arc functional radio, newspapers, moving pictures, and other media parts of the total patterns of th e diffe re nt subcultend strongly to level subcultural differences to the tures. These local d ifferences could not be adequately extent that economic status will permit change toward revealed through a field method of sampling the en~nifo~ na_tional patterns: Constant propaganda and tire island population by means of a questionnaire mdoctnnat1on affects atutudes toward practices of child rearing, recreation, national political a nd eco- covering all aspects of cultu re. Such a procedure would nomic institutions, and even international relations. encounter almost insu rmountable difficulties. It wou ld Mass communications also make national cultural be imposs ible to frame appropriate questions before achievements in art, literature, music, and science the subcultures were known; it would be a forbidding task to sample a ll aspects of cu lture in an entire available to all segments of the population. Finally: we must me~tion practices of child rearing nation; and it would be very diffic ult to obtain acand family types, which, according to certain con- curate answers duri ng brief intervi ews. More importemporary anthropologists, constitute national uni- tantly, questionn a ire r esu lts cou ld not r eveal the funcformities and are the primary factors in the formation tional relationsh ips between p h enomena within the of national character. The concept of national char- different su bcultural patterns. A sta tistical corre lation acter is discussed subsequently. v\Te wish only to point of variables would show that certain distinctive feaout here that whether all members of any n ation are tures were associated with one a nother, but it would really substantially similar in their practices of child not show why. Results of this type a rc no sub stitute feedi?'g, ~eaning, care, toilet training, swaddling, and for prolonged, inte nsive, firsthand obse rvation and the like is purely an empirical question. These prac- analysis of each subcu lture as a whole. At best, a ~ice~ funct~on on a family _level,. an~ they are only questionnaire approach could provide on ly a preliminary indica tion of variables that mig ht warra nt md1rectly mfluenced by national msututions. In fact ~t is ~xpecta1?le ~hat subcultural groups should diffe; more intensive investigation. m child rearing JUSt as they differ in family structure. National Character There are strong class differences in the time the The problem of national characte r is closely related or hired nurses to care for the child, in diet, in numto that of n a tional characteristics. During the last mother can spend with the child, in use of relatives two decades, interdisciplinary collaboration b etween her and relationship of siblings and other relatives to psychology, psychiatry, and anthropol ogy has led to the child, in the familial role of the father, and in the theory that each culture produces a distinctive other crucial factors. In addition, any nation that conbasic person ality type, which is called the "cultural sists ?f several eth~ic minority groups-for example, 1 personality." · In terest in the cu ltu ral pe rsonality of RuSSia, Poland, China, or Mexico, whose political expansion incorpo.rated diverse ~ultures withi n a large 4 Sec, for example, Klu ck hohn and Murray, 1949; H aring, 1949; area, or the Umted States, wluch has acquired many and H allowell, 1953.

INTRODUCTION

13

nations-"national character" or "personality in rela- to the more complex and heterogeneous national tion to nationality"-received a tremendous stimulus society. Another difficulty in determining national characduring a nd afcer World " 'ar II, when ic was recogter is that the techniques have by no means b een nized that a n understanding of the mainsprings of the perfected. Klineb erg's very illuminating review disbeh avior of people of foreign nations was essential to successful international relations. The many recen t cusses the different techniques (1950:8-92): descripstud ies of national character have had wide public tive accounts by informed observers; description an d appeal,:; a nd it even s~ems that anthr_opology, which interpretation by anthropologists (Mead, Gorer, Bene,\·as once popularly bel1e,·ed co be a science that dealt dict, L aBarre, H aring, and others); collection of vital with old bones and prehistoric men, is now commonly a nd social statistics on insanity, crime, suicide, a n d regarded as a new kind of national psychiatry which other features; psychiatric interpretation; psychoanis prepared to nffc~· fa ci.le p;cnera liz_a tions and explana- alytic approaches; interpretation of psychosomatic manifesta tions, such as hypertension a nd gastric ulcers; 1 ions of the b('hanor ol whole nations. The concept of cultural personal ity is unquestion- content analysis of cultural products, such as novels ab ly ,·a l id. but th ere has bee n much skept icism among and motion pictures; public opinion surveys; attitude anthropolog ists as well as other persons concerning studies; intensive interviews; tests and measurements, some of the basic assumptions and methods em p loyed, such as the Rorschach Test and Thematic Appercepespecia ll y in die analysis o f co_ntempora ry _nations. In tion Test; the semantic a pproach , or analysis of word the pre.sent research, the question of studymg the cul- meanings; and review of child training and education, tllral personality "·as inevitably raised. There is ob- both formal and informal. Klineberg concludes (1950: vious ,·alue in understanding the motivations of the 89-90): Pu erto Rican people and in correcting prevalent and The fact that such a large nriety of tedrniques have been erroneous stereotypes. ' •Ve concluded, however, that distinguished in this field of study in itself indicates that the very concept of national character has question- no one tedrnique has as yet been judged completely satisable val id ity-that national character is a phenome- factory. The problem of "nat ional character" or of personnon of undetermined content, dimensions, and validity ality in relation to nationality is exceedingly complex. As a -and that in any event the difficulties of approachi ng matter of fact, there have been frequent denials of the cul tural person ality on a na tional scale are insur- existence of national differences in personality; many writers have held that such differences would disappear if groups mou n table. The concept of national character implies th at all were equated for factors such as economic level, degree of members of a nation sha re attitudes, motivations, and industrial development, concentration in urban or rural areas respectively. age distribution, etc. I t seems more probaresponses that resu lt from a common core of sha red ble . . . that. a lthough all these factors must be taken cultural clrnracteristics and experiences. ' Ve have al- into consideration at every step in the analysis, certain difr eady seen, however, that the nation al cu ltural com- ferences will still emerge in the behavior and a ttitudes of m on den ominator is a complex of diverse componen ts people of different nations. The problem of adequate methof differe n t origins and fu nctional significance. The odolog-y r emains, however. The various techniques that fami ly type is genera lly attributed a major role in have been d isting uished all have something to be s<'lid in personality format ion, and some writers go so far as their favor; they all suffer from the same defect, that their to assume that a II national institutions are projections validity has never been fully established. of the family pattern. Actually, however, regional, Finally, even if it were possible to determine with class, and ethnic differences in family type m ay greatly precision the national core of shared cultural traits outweigh national uniformities. National institutions and of personality characteristics, there would still produce behavior similarities only in a limited sense. remain the problem of ascertaining which of the culThey may, in fact, lead to strong internal cultural tural traits produced the personality type. If, for exdifferentiation, and a great variety of subcu ltural man- ample, it were found that a high incidence of particuifestations. Mass commu n ications, which may auITTTlent t> lar kinds of insanity, psychosomatic man ifestations, the common denominator of practices an d attitudes, reactions to psychological tests, and other responses are quite u ndeveloped in many parts of the world diagnostic of personality type were characteristic of and among certain social segments in most parts of all su bcultural groups, it would be very difficult to the worl d . '"'e concluded, therefore, that the concept dev ise a n empirical method to determine whether of cu ltural personality can be appl ied far better to a these characteristics were caused by child rearing, subcultural group, where the processes of the individ- family type, sim ilar responses to national institutions, ual's social ization as a member of the family and com- or something else. There is at present no b asis for munity can be studied in detC1il and concreteness, than assuming that any single cause has primary importance. Despite the crucial role ascribed practices of 5 For example, Uenedict, 1946; Gorer, 19.13 and 1948. Since this child rearing, there is little doubt that children with in was written, Margaret Mead (1953), has definitively and impor- a single nation are r eared in many ways, while particutantly modified the generally accepted approach to 11ational char- Ja r kinds of child training may b e practiced in several acter in stating that the determination of personality in national nations which h ave unlike national ideologies. terms is but an expediency dictated by international crises and As the means of identifying national characteristics that the proper level of investigation of c11 lt11ral personality is the s11bc11 ltu ral group. and of diagnosing national character are so fraught

14

THE PEOPLE OF PUERTO RICO

with difficulties, the safest and surest procedure is LO work first on a local scale and then to widen the scope of enqu iry. If the methods discussed above are applied on a national scale, there arise enormously difficult problems both of sampl ing and of correlating significant variables. Even if it could be shown that one nation differs substantially from another in general attitudes and behavior, the reasons for the differences could not readily be determ ined. A further reason for beginning analysis on a smaller scale-on a lower level and in subcultural terms-is that the processes of learning can be more readily understood. An individual's social ization begins in the household and is gradually broadened to include neighbors and members of the community. Jn this sense, he is not primarily a member of the nation. The influences o( national institutions are med iated to him through th e locally distinctive patterns o( th e community and its subcu ltural groups, and his responses, even to mass communications, are conditioned by the attitudes he acquires as a member of a subcultural group. A scientific analysis of the sign ificance both of national uniformities and of distinctive subcultural feawres, therefore, must start with the particulars of how the individual is socialized in the context of his family, class, and commun ity. CULTURAL PERSONALITY AND CULTURE

There is still another problem in the socialization o( the individual. Adult personality, attitudes, and values are the result of infant, childhood, and adolescent experiences-his education or "enculturation." Yet in conte~porary society th e life-dem ands and required behavLOr may- not at all correspond with learned attitudes and expectations. In Lhis respect, there may be a shar p difference between c~ntempora ry _civi lizat~on a nd triba l society. The_ ~ntire course o[ ed ~ ca_ti?n in a tribal society rea l1st1cally prepares the 1nd1v1dua l for adult life. In modern society, the indi vidual may be socialized in t11e context of a p articular subcultura l grou p but because of socioeconomic mobility, come to live in a very different subcultural group. Jn such cases, the sociocultural demands upon him are very different from those he has learned. In a sen se, we are confronted here w ith the very defmition of culture. Culture is usually considered to be learned modes 0£ behav ior which are socially transmitted from one g:nerati~ n to ~notl:er. And yeL an individual may find h1mse)( in a situation where the culturally prescribed modes of behavior differ sharply from those h e has learned. . To. illustrate t~1is point, the coastal sugar plan tations 111 Pu~rto Rico have many workers who migrated from the high lands. As our research shows, the h ighJand patterns are very d ifferent from those o( Lhe plantations. Yet the highland workers are forced to con fori:n to the basic economic arrangements and to olher important patterns of the coast. To a certa in extenL, the highland attitudes and customs may b e re-

tained in the plantati on situation, but th ey do not su rvive in streng th because they are in compatib le \\"ith the dema nds o( a corporate, mechani1.cd productive system. The indi viduals from the highlands may suffe r from conflict arising fro m the tran sition. perh aps to a Lraumatic degree, blll by and large they co n fo rm overtly to Lhe expected behavior. In other \\'Ords, a cultural swd y or rapidl y changing modern societies might pay primary ;1llelllio11 either LO Lhe soci;ili1ecl individual or Lo the< 11lt11ral clc·111a1Hb of the situation. \\"hie h might or might not <111 rt"'IHJJHI to what the i11di,·id11al ha') l<::1rnccl. II tl1c -.i111;11irn1 rather than the incli,·idu ;il i-. the re-.e;1n It ohjl'c tin:. it would be proper LO reg:1rd t11e dlt:< t-. ol -.<H i:ili1:1tio11 merely as l actor:, \\'hid 1 m:iy l 11 nhcr or rl'I :1nl cu I 111 r:d change rather 1. ha11 a:-i ctilLUrc ibdl. In the prese n t stud y, primary aLLe11tirn1 11 :1-; been directed LO the ndtur;1 I de111:111d-; ol loc:i I ~iu 1 ; 1t ions. De'ipite a certain amou 1H nl :-,oc ioeco no111i< 111obil it y, most persons h;l\·e gro\\'n 11 p and \\·or keel \\'ill 1i11 l he contexL of a particular :-,ubculLt1ral group. Thl'sc groups and the attitude.') a11d \'alucs ol their 1nemhcr:-,. however, have been cha nging fairly rapidly. \ Ve recognize Lh at psychological stu dies of Lh e effects of child Lraining and of other socializing factors would constitute a n extreme ly valuable contrilrnLion to o ur analysis." Such swdies should first asccna in the personality type of each subcu lture, second, determin e its causes, a nd third, relale it to the changi ng cu ltural demands. Such studies were not made because c ircumstances prevemed us from including in th e project a psychologist w ith appropriate skills. Our analyses of cultural behavior, therefore, must be rega rded as the interpretation s of anthropologists who were equipped to approach these probl ems in terms of cul tural va lues and demands r ather than o( psychological ana lysis. DYNAMICS OF CULTURAL CHANGE

The problem of the presen t research was Lo ascertain the factors and processes which broug h t about the d evelopment of distincLive rural subcultures in Puerto Rico during recent centuries. The field research was directed toward analysis of the contemporary subcu ltu res, but hisLorical understanding was n eeded to explain how these su bcultures emerged during Puerto Rican hisLory. An obvious line of approach would be to trace the patterns and behavioral trails to their historic sources, to the basic Hispanic heritage, which was originally modified in some degree hy African and native I ndian features and later by strong influence from the United Slates. But to consider Pu erto Rican culture merely an adm ixture of features borrowed from different sources would be quite inadequate. Puerto Rico's distincLive colon ia l position, geogra phical environme n t, and locat ion not only ca used a seleco Such studies arc hcin~ made (i n '!):;~) by 11tc Family l' rojccl under the auspices of tltc Socia l Science R esearch Ce nt er. The project is under Rc11bc11 11 ill, director, and Da vid La11dy. ass istant director.

I NTROOUCTIOK

tion of features from the Spa nish culture bt1t emailed spec ial adaptation o( m:1n y of these feawres. Puerto Rican st1bculwres, especia ll y those of the rural communities, were by no means exact duplicates of those of Spain. and they could .not have been duplicates unless the kinds of producuon had been the same and unless whole farm popu latio ns had migrated LO the island, bringing their patterns with them. The Pue1·to Rican rural subculwres were based largel y on the produnion of spec ial crops in distinctive environments, while the rural population was itseH a mixture of I ndians . . \fricans. Spaniards. and other Europeans. Similarlv. the d1ang-es brought about by U nited States . ,.,,rcio;ll" entailed further differentiation of land use ~0 "-l"'t and procluni,·e processes and conseq uently of related socia l fc:1turcs. These processes by which culture is selectivel y borro\\'ed and adapted to a panicular environment, that is. the processes of cu ltura l ecology,7 a re among the most impona111 creati,·e pr<>eesses in cultura l change. No cultural history is simply a chronicle o( the diffusion of rig-id paucrns and groups of culture c lements from 011 c part ol the world to another. Diffusion is always selective, and the features which are and are not diffused de pend not only upon the nalltre of the receiving cu lture but upon lhe e nvironmenrnl potentialities of the receiving area. i\ foreover, o nce cu ltural features are accepted in a new area, they "·ill be adapted to loca l conditions through a series of creative processes that produce a new or mod ified culture. As lhe adaptations primarily involve land use, the m ethod of cultural ecology requires first an exa rnination of the relationship of technology. or product ive processes, to the env ironment. The initial prnblem is to dete rmin e which types of productive processes are hiswrica lly available in the lending cullUre. Next, it is necessary to ascerta in the cultu ra l and e nvironmental fa ctors which cause certain of these to be selected by the n ew area. Finally, the modifi cat ions in the productive processes in a new environment must be analyzed and their effects upon other aspects of culture determined. \ Vhen a panicular exp loitative technology such as farming is in troduced to a new region, th e local soils, topography, rainfall, climate, and other env ironmental factors will usuall y require modificat ions in meth ods of production and in the rel a ted patterns of marketi ng, land tenure, co-operation, a nd settlement pattern. These latter may in wrn have a profound effect upo n the structure and function of th e e ntire society. It must be emphasized, however, that the method o( cultural ecology does not ant icipate particular conclusions as to the precise nature of the ada ptive processes nor their results. It is merely a methodological tool for approaching the genera l problem of how new features arise from the interaction o( cu lture and env ironment. Data from different parts of the world, however, strong ly indiI

1

1 The concept a nd method of c11l1 11ral ecologr have b een illustrated by the author in severa l studies (Steward, 193(j, 1!)3i· 1938. and 19.15).

l

5

cate that rather similar changes often ensue when a particular technolog)' is employed in a particular kind of e nvironment. These changes lend themselves LO the formulation of regularities of cultural change, a co11siderat io n which we discuss in Part I V. The following chapters on the development o[ Puerto Rican culture, Part II. and the succeed ing chapters describing the principal subcultu res, Pan lll. "·ill show clearly that the distin ctive features both of the total insular culture and of the regional community subcultures must be ex plained by cu ltural ecological processes as well as by cu lture history. The point of ,·iew from which these chapters are written may be illustrated briefly by the contrasts between Puerto Rico and the American Southwest. Both areas were first pans or the Spanish Empi re and later came under Ame ri ca n sovereignty, but. despite ha\'ing the sa me sources from which to elm"· their cultures, they developed along distincti,·e Jines because or their different geographical positions and en\'ironments. Puerto Rico is subtropica l, humid, and insular. It is suited to the productio n of such ex port crops as g inger, sugar, livestock. coffee, and tobacco, "·hich were historically a\'ai lable and which have been in dema nd in the world market at different periods, but it has little minera l "·ealth. It has ready access via the sea lanes to cominem al America, Europe. and .-\frica . The Southwest is arid, and, though part of contine ntal North America , it was l'airly isolated from marke ts during m ost or its history. lt has, however. a comparative abundance of mineral wealth. During the ea rly periods o[ the Spa nish Empire, the Sou thwest. like :\lexico and the .-\ndes, supported a class of Spanish o,·crlords who used I ndians in encomiendas as virtua l slaves to exploit the mineral wealth. Puerto Rico. lacking substantial mineral wealth and at first not in a position to (arm extensively for an outside market, became a co lony of srna ll farmers. For two centuries, it had a mixture of Iberian. native I ndian, and frican cultures. How the various culture e lem ents and patterns o( these diverse origins merged into a new culture is not known. The only semblance to t he Spa nish type of hacienda was the livestock ranch, which supplied expeditions to the m a inland with cattle, and a few suga r plantations. The Southwest became a largely selC-su fficient area w hen mineral wealth had decreased and India n labor became scarce, and it produced such crops as beans and wheat for its own use. The e nv ironment a nd location prevented prod uction of anythi ng but cattle and hides for an outside market. Pue rto Rico, however, was in an excelle nt position for ex port, and, as trade restrictions ,,·ere lifted, its pl~uuation economy developed rapidly. Under the America n regime, the outhwest b ecame a n area of migration from the United States, and Anglo-American culture was introdu ced alongside the h aciendas, the small farms of the Spanish America ns, and the Indians. Pu erto Rico drew cap ital r ather than people from the United States, for its sugar lands promised rich returns wh ich corporn tions cou ld ex-

I ti

THE PEOPLE OF PUERTO RICO

ploit in absentia. The only comparable investments m_ t_he _Southwest are represented by certain large mmmg m_terests. Highly mechanized, corporate-owned Puerto Rican sugar plantations and the government· owned _profit-sharing plantations, which followed as a corrective to the overly large corporate enterprises, have created new types of rural life. C?ntemporary Puerto Rico exhibits an internal diversity of regional subcultural types which are no less e~plamable by cultural ecological processes than the differences between Puerto Rico and the Southwest. Th~ Spa~ish_ cu~ture, which originally included both national mst1tut1ons and large rural estates, was available to the entire island. The national institutionsthe g?ve~nment, legal system, church, and military orgamzat10n-were imposed on the island as a whole, but the only subcultures of a predominantly Spanish type were those of the upper classes, while rural subcu!tures largely reflected distinctive local factors. Mineral wealth was unimportant everywhere, and exp~rt cro~s co~ld not be produced in most of the mounta1~ous mtenor. The highlands, therefore, became a r~g10n of small, independent farmers who grew subs1stei:ce crops. Today, the highland pattern has been modified by the introduction of a supplemen tary cash croi:> of tobacco and by the establishment of coffee ha~1endas. The Spanish hacienda pattern developed cl~1efly on the coastal plains, however, in connection w_Hh cattle raising and the production of sugar and gmger. It was based partly upon slave labor in its early phases, but later on free labor. During the nineteenth ~entury, the hacienda penetrated the highlands, where_ It b_ecame the pattern of coffee production. Am~n~~~ mvestment capital was attracted by the poss1b1hties of m~chanized sugar production and transforme~ the Spamsh plantations or haciendas into what are virtually_ company towns-land-and-factory corporate com~lln_es. Today, the coffee haciendas represent the prmc1pal survival of the older Spanish pattern. In each o~ these different regions, environment not only determmed the type of land use which was selected from those available in the Spanish and American cultures, but ~ocal factors strongly conditioned the subcultures ~h1ch grew up. South coast irrigation accelerated the mflow of American capital, which produ_ced a subculture that is neither Spanish nor American nor a mechanical mixture of the two but a local adaptation. Similarly, the highlands, which have been. least affect~d. by modern productive processes, co~tmue to exh1b1t a large number of adaptations which have long been distinctive of Puerto Rico.

PROCEDURES AND METHODS THE COMMUNITY STUDY METHOD

The present research exemplifies what may be broadly classed as the community study method. It represents the application of the cultural method to

subcultural groups ralher tha n to the he terogeneous entily that constitutes a total modern nali o nal culture. The method is holistic in tha t il analyzes individual behavior in terms of the total fabric of life-the manyfaceted and fun ctionall y imc rre lated modes of behavior, the values, and the all illldes. It contrasts wid1 a procedure that d eals with culture on a na1 io11:1 I scale ;rnd treats individuals in the ir separate ca p;1 c itics as farmers, mereha n ts, la borers. cons 11 mcrs, \'oten;, church members, and th e lik e. Til e Ltttn ,·icld" ., t;1ti "ti< ·:t! data from \\'hich : 1,· n;wc~ 111:1\' he d<'dth <:d :1 11<1 1cl:1tionships hetll'CC: ll plH·;7on1<: 1L; 111;1\ b(' de111<11ht1 ;1tvd by co rrclati o11 of ,·;1ri:1hlC', , Tlw < 01111111111ity ;.!11d~· method yie lds expL111:1tio11s (Jf 111(' corrC' la1 io1h he· tween \'ariahks thro11gll dire:< t ;11 1 : t1~ ~is ol tl1C"ir 1"1111< · tional nexus \\'ithin the lor :1li1cd ~1 11J n il 1ur:1 l gro11p. Jn Puerto Rico, 11<::1rl~ .1o pe r <Tiil ol th e p eople make their li,·in g by 111c: ; 11 1 ~ or l:1rmi 11 g. :tll d 1ll:111v more than l1:df li,·c in tile ro111cxt ol :t rura l co111m11 nity. Earn in g :1 li,·ing, vi siting lricnd-> :111d 11c-i gl 1hors . going lo church, att<:nding scl1 ool. 111 arry i11g. reari 11g children, finding e11tcnai11111c:111. lic:longing to clubs, business associations, and la bor union s, obtaining med· ical care, findin g help in time of troi~ble, and many other activities make up the community subcultu res. An ind ividual learns the characteristic responses, aspirations, and attitud es of his class within the community. He shares some but not all o( these things with persons throughout the island. 8 Preliminary surveys of Puerto Rico indicated and field research ultimately proved that the communities represented several strikingly different types of regional subcultures. The more important of th ese subcultures became the subject of fi e ld resea rch, and they a re reported in the chapters on Tabara, the community of small farmers of mixed crops and tobacco; on Cafiamelar, the community of a corporate-owned sugar plantation; on San Jose, the communi ty o f coffee growers; on Nocora, the government-owned, profitsharing sugar plantation, and on the insular upper class which lives in San Juan. These subcu ltures differ from one a nother not only in their culture content, that is, in the particulars o f behavior, but in their total organization or configuration. Selectio n of these for field study made it possible to descri be Puerto Rican beha vior, atti tudes, and character with a specificity, concreteness, and detail which would be wanting in a national survey o( selected character istics and in an abstraction of a nationa l type. As a modern community cannot be ad equately understood if, like a tribal society, it is studied solely in terms of itself, it was n ecessary to devise procedures for taking th e tota l national c ulture into account. s Jn Puerto Rico, the municipa lit y is a con ven ient community unit of study because it is the insular administrative unit. Th e island is divided in to seventy-seven rnuni cipios, or communities, each of which has an elected ma yo r and assembly, whose chief function is to administer schools, health centers, poor r e lief, and other services of th e n at ional government. The (·ommunitics have 10,000 to :io.ooo persons, of wh om 10 to 2;, per cent live in th e pueblo, or town, and lhe remainder in the depend ent farm area.

INTRODUCTION

Ideally, the research stafI should have included persons from the other social sciences and humanities but as this was beyond budgetary possibilities we had to draw upon published information and upon individual scho la rs as the need arose. 0 Another methodological need not ordinarily considered in commun ity studies was to ascertain the regional types of rural culture before selecting a community representative of each. Finall y, we had to adapt the methods of field research to the larger methodolog-y H·hich has been explained in pn:\· ious p;1ges. THE NATIONAL OR INSULAR CULTURE

:\fodcrn arca·training institutes have the inestimable ;Hh·alllagc of prO\·icling the student a general and basic knmdedgc of th e Yarious aspects of the total culture of the area i11 " ·hich he will work. As Columbia l f11in•rsity has no Latin American Institute, it was 11 eccssa r~· to ob tain ba ckground information about Latin :\mcrican culture in general and Puerto Rico in particu lar by o th er means. Two steps were taken in this direction prior to the field work in Puerto Rico. First, about e ight months before the field work began. Raymond Scheele made a survey of historical sources in order to provide a picture of the changing national institutions and subcultures. He abstracted data on cultural orig ins and on the cultural effects of Puerto Rico's changing colonial status with particular atten tion to the economic basis of the social a nd cultural patterns. The sources contain general information on the econom ic, political , religious, and social trends that originated largely outside the island and constituted the principal factors causing change in the subcultures. The cultural history presented in Part II deals largely with national institutions. The varieties of _subc.u!tur~s of the period from isoo to 1815 are be111g rnvestigatecl by Eugenio Fernandez Mendez who will publish his material in the future, while th~ subcultures which emerged after 1815 are described in Part III. Part II accords much greater detail to the period from 1815 to 1948 because national changes during this time are most re levant to our primary interest in the contemporary varieties of regional cultures. It shou ld be stressed that the very incomplete knowledge of sixteenth- and seventeenth-century Span ish culture constitutes a serious obstacle to ~in adequa te understanding of the culture o( any Spanish colony. The national insticutions- the Crown policies, the Church, the patterns o f exploitation and trade, and the military-are known in considerable detail and the upper-class subcul tu re may be reconstructed quite readily, but the subcu ltures of the workers, small farmers, artisans, and other specia l groups are known only incompletely. It is very difficult, therefore, to determine the extent to which the culture of the early small farmer of Puerto Rico is an importation from Spain and to what extent it is a native produ ct. 9 These

procedu r es and methods have also been described in Stewa rd , 1 950.

l

7

A second means of relating the community studies to the national culture was a seminar held at Columbia University prior to the field work. This seminar included all field workers, except those from the University of Chicago and the University of Puerto Rico, who joined the staff later. It covered primarily the national institutions or patterns-sugar production, other economic activities, United States policies, demography a nd general statistics, social structure, race relations, and national ideologies. The seminar members reported on published sources, and they heard several guest speakers who had special knowledge of Puerto Rico. During and after the field work, further information was obtai~1ed 01_1 national aspects of the culture through consultation with Puerto Rican scholars and specialists and through study of various published sources and documents. FIELD STUDIES

The project staff spent nineteen months in Puerto Rico, where the research was divided into three phases. The first phase was devoted to a survey of the island to obtain data on which to base the selection of the communities and subcultures for intensive study. The theory of community selection is discussed below. Durit~g the survey, the staff met together frequently to chscuss problems and to consult with local scholars and specialists. The second phase consisted of intensive analysis of the selected communities. A team, consisting in most cases of a continental American and a Puerto Rican, spent a total of about twelve months in the community making firsthand observations. During this time, ho_wever, the entire staff met occasionally at the Social Science Research Center at the University of Puerto Rico to compare results, rephrase problems, and discuss methods. The third phase was devoted to an interpretation o~ ~eld data, time being allowed for occasional return visits to the communities to check information. As the int~rrelation of the community subcultures and the na_t101:a1 instituti ~ns was the principal interest during this tune, the senes of conferences mentioned above '"as held with authorities on various special subjects. Before each_ conference, a 1ist of questions was prepared coveri ng the national features and their local mani(estations and functions. The wholehearted and ge_ner~us co-operation of the Puerto Rican scholars, s~1~nllsts, government personnel, and political and re~1g1?t~s leader_s, whose kindness has been acknowledged 111dividuall~ m the Preface, contributed greatly to an un(~er~tandmg of how our communities functioned in thell' msular setting. Community Selection: Theory and Practice

The basic problems and theoretical assumptions which underlay community selection in Puerto Rico have already been explained. \ Ve wished to study

l8

THE PEOPLE OF PUERTO RICO

representative samples of the ways of life found among richest on the south coast, where irrigation is practiced. a major portion of the island's population. It was \ 1Ve therefore selected a south coast sugar cornmunity, clear at the outset that a study of rural communities Canamelar, which represents a type of produ ction would account for a large part of the population. In that prevailed on the south coast until legislation 1947, 39 per cent of the people were farmers and, of attempted to dissolve the large holdings. the 24 per cent engaged in manufacturing, handicraft, To older legislation, which had limited land holdand construction and the 37 per cent engaged in trade, ings to five hundred acres, ,\·as added the creation government services, and domestic and other occupa- of government-owned profit-sharing plantations and tions, a considerable proportion lived in the rural small individual ho ldings . By lkce n1hc r. l~J- li" th e communities, and their work was directly related to Land Authority h;1d purclt:tscd ;tlm111 :{fi per cc111 of farm production (Perloff, 1950). Background literature, the corporate holdings, and in ''lJ/ - 1~ it produced census data, and other information, however, indicated over 11 per cent ol all s11gar prndtH ed in the j-,];illll. that the island is very heterogeneous in types of land This type of prod11nio11 rc pr<:.~<: 11h ;1 l11111rc pot c111i;tl use and landownership, and we surmised that each of for a great deal of lar111i11g i11 fi e ld crop-; ()tile r tli:111 these types would entail a somewhat distinctive sub- sugar. A north coast CCH>pt:r:1tin" :\o< "r;'1. \\·;1 s th e re· culture. If so, we could not choose a community at fore selected for study. It \\';1s hoped t'1:11 a st11dy might random with the assurance that it represented all also be mad e of a 11onh coast <om1111111i1y \\'li e r<: pri· communities, 10 nor could we atten:ipt to sample the vate own ers arc sl1 it ting I rom <o(k(' to ~ug:ir pro· total rural population with the certainty that a sub- ductiOn and Of :lllOLfl<: r (Ollllllllllily of I 1J folll l \. Or stantial common denominator would be found. private producers, \\'ho~<.: ~11g;1r i~ g rrn111<l at :1 c<:11Lr;d It was first necessary to determine the types of land mill, or centrnl. Su ch a st11dy. lio\\'<.:\<:r, would probuse and landownership which involved the greatest ably have revealed a transitional type, whi ch is in Lh<.: number of people, and to ascertain their regional process o[ change from the family hac ienda to the extent. Next, we had to find out whether a distinctive large plantation, rather than a fairly fixed type, which subculture was associated with each type of land use. now and presumably for some time in the future will Finally, we had to choose a sample of each regional be found among a substantial portion of the populasubculture. The sample should be a unit which in- tion. ch1ded all possible local manifestations of cultureLivestock ran ches are o( great importance in that town and farm, owner and worker, school, church, the amount o( land in pasture is about double that business, trade, and government controls and services devoted to sugar, while the income from livestock -and which had a maximum degree of local organi- products is second only to sugar. The ranch and dairy zation; that is, which constituted a fairly well inte- farms, however, did not seem to warrant study in grated sociocultural segment of the island. the present project, primarily because only a small To choose among the different types of land use portion of th e farming population works with livepresented certain difficulties. Puerto Rico produces stock, and secondarily because the ranches and farms not only sugar, livestock, coffee, tobacco, and other are scattered and do not form communities. crops which are marketed, but a great variety of garThe small farm owners and sharecroppers of the den vegetables and fruits which are consumed on the highlands, who grow a great variety of garden crops farm or sold locally. It was obvious that a study should for their own use and for local sale, constitute about be made of the culture of the sugar region, for more one-third of the total farm population. These people than half the persons employed in farm work are are in the direc t tradition o( the early subsistence employed in sugar production, and more than one- farmers, although about 10 per cent of their land is third of the acreage of cultivated land is devoted to now devoted to tobacco, their chief cash crop. Tobacco sugar. Sugar also constitutes more than half the value is perhaps a declining crop, at least so far as e xport of Puerto Rico's total exports and more than one-third is concerned, but it has enabled t he small farmers to of the value of farm produce. There are, however, participate in a world whi ch increasingly requires several types of sugar production: corporate-owned some ready cash. :M oreover, the recent establishment mills and fields; government-owned profit-sharing co- of a cigar factory in Caguas may augment exports. operatives; privately owned fields, or colonos, which The selection ol Tabara as representative of the tousually send their cane to large mills; and a few bacco and mixed crops region is explained in Part Ill. individually owned farms and mills. Although there Tabara is a type that has long been charac teristic are small sugar growers in certain regions, for ex- of Puerto Rico and is likely to endure for some time; ample, where a shift from coffee to sugar production for even a further decline in tobacco may be offset is occurring, the general trend has been to concentrate by increased sales of truck garden crops for insular land in large holdings. Corporate holdings, which consumption. .It was believed that a community in the coffee area represent the extreme in this trend, are largest and should be studied, even though coffee production involves only 14. per cent of the farm population (310,000 10 The pioneering work of studying a community that is fairly persons in 1939), because coffee was the princ ipa l ex"typical" of the island had been done by Morris Siegel, who port crop in the nineteenth century and the subculture studied a town in th e southwestern part of the island. This study is unpublished. of the coffee region is most nearly in the Spanish

INTRODUCTION

pattern and a majority of the large owners are first or second generation Spaniards. The choice of a coffee communi ty, howeve r, presented certain difficulties. \Ve sought a place where d1ere were resident owners and workers, th e latter living upon land allotted them for their own subsistence and depending upon favors extended by the owners. In the heart of the area, where such conditions might be expected, it was found that there were many sugar plantations and that a considerable 1H11nbcr of workers used needlework to supplement their income. He re. a lso, seasonal and parttirnc "·ork :ind out-mig-ration had disrupted the traditio11ally fare -w -fa ce dcpe11de11cy relationship between O\\·ner and \\·orker. San Jose. on the fringe of the coffee area, )10\\"C\·er, had just enough product ion of tobacco and min or crops- it had some sugar, too-to enable the workers to produ ce their own food and a small cash crop in the off-season on th e plots allotted them by the O\\·ncrs . This partial dependency upon cash product ion rcprcsen ts a trend ;rn·a y from the older type of Spanish hacienda. but San Jose is less cashmi11d cd than the other communities where wage labor prevails . The selection of the above mentioned communities was based not only upon data from the U.S. Census, the Agriculwral Adjustment Administration, and other federal, insular, and local agencies but upon information obtained by visits to the communities. Consu ltations with mayors, school directors, labor union leaders. political committeemen, farm foremen and overseers, farm owners, tenant farmers, merchants, and wage earners provided a general pi cture of life in the communities as well as a supplement and corrective to some o[ the published statistics. \i\There several communities were fairly typical of a region, the final selection was based on additional considerations: the community should not be too large for a team of two field workers Lo ascertain its general nature within a year, and the people should be amenable to the research. One or two communities were avoided because antagonism had prevented studies in the past. The chapters in Part III explain the choice of communities in greater detail. The decision to study Puerto Rico's economically, socially, and politica lly prominent families was based upon theoretical considerations which differed in certain important r espects from those underlying the choice of the rural communities a nd subcultures. And the study involved the field worker, Raymond Scheele, in certain problems and methods rather foreign to those traditiona lly used in cultural analysis. Vlhereas the rural subcultures were seen essentially as divergent end -products of the processes of cultural change, which were largely although not entirely beyond their control, the prominent families were initially assumed to be not only a subcultural group which itself had experienced change but also an instrument in the change of other groups. It was suspected, although it had not been proven, that in any area which is subjected to strong alien influence the upper or supernrdinate classes might first adopt new patterns and

I

9

then transmit them in some form to the other classes. This rather general and untested hypothesis, however, could obviously not mean that the lifeways of the upper class diffuse outward and downward through a simple process of imitation. The behavior patterns, the ideals, and the attitudes found to be distinctive of the upper class presupposed a basis of wealth and prestige which could not possibly be imitated. The role of the upper class in the acculturation of the Puerto Rican people had to be phrased in terms of two general problems. The first problem was to ascertain the nature of the subculture of the prominent business families and to determine whether it constituted an ideal toward which other subcultural groups sought to move or were compelled to move. In the research it was soon found that these families had been Americanizedthat is, had adopted patterns typical of the United States and especially of the upper classes of the United States-far more than any other group and that their acculturation was patterned largely around commercial enterprises, whid1 were closely tied to United States businesses and which imposed standards not only of economic behavior but of social, political, and other kinds of cultural behavior. It was also found that the United States patterns constituted an ideal for subordinate groups, partly because the lower echelons of employees within any particular business organization are compelled by the nature of the commercial structures to follow many precepts of behavior not only on the job but in their private lives. It thus appeared that many patterns associated with commerce spread downward not only beca use the members of the lower echelons sought upward mobility but because their very employment depended upon it. This fil tering downward of cultural traits did not destroy the differences between classes. It initiated trends, such as those described in the hypotheses in Part IV, which are making a ll of Puerto Rico more commercialized and more cash-oriented even while the subcultural differences are becoming more pronounced. The acculturating effect of the prominent families is certainly greatest upon members of their own business organizations, where a face-to-face relationship prevails and where standards of behavior can be enforced. It seems likely that the m embers of the lower echelons of business adopt these standards as much beca use their personal security depends upon d oing so as because of any desire to alter their way of life in favor of alien patterns. The impact of upperclass standards upon individuals over whom they have no direct control cannot be judged at present, but it seems probable that a kind of chain reaction runs a long the axis of a business affecting large numbers of persons in some degree. The second problem was to ascertain how the prominent families indirectly affected the subcultures of other groups through their influence upon national institutions. Apart from the rather profound Ameri- . canization of the personnel in their own business organizations, these families played a significant role

20

THE PEOPLE OF PUERTO RICO

in insular commerce and finance, which undoubtedly had some effect upon large numbers of. persons with whom they had no direct contact. They also appear to have influenced the economic policy of modern legislation to some extent. No doubt their influence has touched many. other aspects of Puerto Rican national life, but precise analysis of its nature and extent would involve complicated problems of national institutions and power structure and of the relationship of these to the upper class on the one hand and to the other subcultural groups on the other. From the point of view of the present study, which is concerned primarily with subcultural groups, Scheele's analysis has served to show various ways in which an upper class might be related to other frames of reference in cultural analysis. The subcultures and communities selected do not exhaust all of the Puerto Rican rural types. There are Title V communities, which are made up of independent farmers living on small plots provided them by the government. These represent a future potential for many Puerto Ricans, but at present they do not involve any significant portion of the population. _There are predominantly Negro communities, which, though small and not very numerous, are alleged to have some surviving African customs. They might have thrown some light on past conditions, though they can hardly be regarded as "fossil communities" which have survived unchanged into the context of modern Puerto Rican life. There are a few communities where a living is made largely or entirely by fishing. And there are needlework communities, where women supplement other sources of income, often to a very important extent, through lowly-paid piecework. In addition to the subcultural types found in these communities, there are other sociocultural segments which should be studied by the cultural method. There are the growing middle classes which are represented to some extent in the communities described here but which extend more or less throughout the island and very . likely have similar subcultures. An extremely interesting example is the new intercommunity class of war veteran taxi owners and operators. There are also dislocated and perhaps culturally disorganized slum dwellers in San Juan and elsewhere. And there are types of sociocultural segments peculiar to the cities. Having chosen communities typical of the four most important kinds of agricultural production, we faced the further problem of selecting units of study within the community. The smallest community is Cafiamelar with a population of 11,468 in i950, and the largest is San Jose with a population of 22,906. Questionnaires could not be used as the principal instrument in community research for reasons previously dis€ussed; yet the . €ommunities were much too large for tw0· field w0rkets to obtain firsthand knowledge of all .0r .even 0£ ·most persons in the 'time allowed. Before e~plaining how this problem was solved we must discuss- the field techniques.

Methods and Techniques of Research on Subcultures

The anthropologist sometimes perplexes his fellow social scientists by his seeming failure to follow a rigidly standardized field procedure. It is evidently felt that unless cultural studies, like the laboratory and mathematical sciences, specify in detail and step by step how results are obtained so that anyone can follow the procedures and obtain identical results the selection of data and the conclusions based on them are somehow haphazard and unreliable. :\dmittedly, there is danger in cultural studies that many unconsidered factors may invalidate results, and it is certainly the scientist's obligation to show ho"· he has endeavored to be objective and precise. Questionable data however are more likelv to result from lack of clari~y in basi~ methodology-' from obscure problems and use of obsolete or inappropriate methods-than from failure to devise procedures that are comparable in their specificity to those o f the "more exact" sciences. There are, as a matter of fact , several reasons why detailed blueprints of field techniques have not been offered in the past and cannot and need not now be drawn up. In the first place, one of the primary purposes of cultural studies is to identify and record the characteristic features of different cultural groups throughout the world. There is, of course, need for accuracy, but it is unnecessary and impossible to stipulate how the data of an unknown culture are to be gathered when their specific nature cannot be known in advance. The field techniques must follow the dictum that "science is organized and applied common sense" -<:ommon sense in that, since no two field situations are alike, procedures may have to be improvised. It should be stressed that the first task is to identify and describe the cultural phenomena, which must precede measurement, comparison, and correlation. Descriptive analysis and statistical handling cannot be performed in a single operation, for qual!tati~e characteri~tics must be known prior to quant1ficat1on. A questionnaire could not possibly be used to treat an unknown culture, unless it had a space for every conceivable type of human activity. It is a common ethnocentric fallacy for scholars unaware of this methodological problem to treat the data of foreign cultures in terms of those of the United States. F ei and Ch ang, for example, have very cogently criticized Buck's use of American categories of land tenure and methods for correlating them in analysis of Chinese data in complete unawareness of the wholly different nature of the latter (Fei and Chang, 1945). If there appears to be no highly standardized ethnographic procedure it is because no two field situations are alike. The anthropologist has felt that it is more important to work among the great number of still unknown cultures of the world than to restudy known cultures. Perhaps more restudy would be valuable, and it might well reveal inadequacies of technique. Since research in new fields, however, is the greatest present need, the field worker unavoidably faces the

INTRODUcrION

2l

need for a certain amount of improvisation. Nonethe- class structure, and other particular subjects. The lack less, basic techniques have been developed and dis- of comparability of results arises not from failure to cussed during more than half a century of ethno- standardize procedures but from an exceedingly wide graphic field research. If the anthropologist fails to range of research interests. In the present research, we first selected the comrestate them in each monograph it is because it no longer seems necessary to say that he lived with his munities for reasons previously discussed. In order to people, observed their economic, religious, and social ascertain the economic groupings within each comactivities day by day, talked at length with informants munity, we obtained data on the number and size of to obtain explanations of his observations, and read land holdings, the total quantity and value of different any published sources available-in short, that he used crops grown, patterns of marketing, credit facilities, methods of participant observation, interviews, and farm extension aid, and other factors in land use. archival research. These data were readily available from published More specialized techniques depend upon the nature statistics and from various government and local auof boLh Lhe problem and the culture. If, for instance, thorities. In the same way we obtained information problems of social structure were the paramount in- on many important aspects of the community as a terest, and if the society proved to have a complex whole, such as the amount of participation in schools kinship system, it would probably be necessary to and labor unions, use made of health facilities, and make extensive use of kinship charts, to ask very the general nature of political activities. special questions o( innumerable persons, and to deMany things could be observed directly by the field vise any number o{ procedures which were not fore- workers, for example, phases of farm production, the , seeable before the study began. The field worker might homes, clothing and other possessions of the people, or might not find it profitable to hold frequent di- and the stores, churches, clinics and other features in rected interviews, to take notes openly, and to ask the town. ~mpressions were obtained by walking the about certain aspects of culture. Upon occasion he streets, riding the public buses, and miscellaneous might not consider it advisable to remain in a com- conversations with a variety of people. munity. In other words, no two cultures are quite By these techniques it is possible to obtain a general the same, and the competent field worker must ap- picture of the community, but an understanding of proach his data not only with a sense of problem, how the various phases of culture constitute a total which provides a criterion of relevancy of data, but system of living for the individual required intimate with an ingenuity for improvising as complications knowledge of people of the different classes. Practices unfold. In the final analysis, original and sound re- of child training, the nature of family life, the role of search in any science consists of the ability to sense ritual kinship, the kinds of social relations, the meanout ~ew relationships between phenomena and to ing of education, religious and political attitude~, and contrive new methods of analyzing them rather than life goals can only be grasped by intimate and proto impose well-tried methods. In comparative cultural longed association with the people, during which studies, the constant discovery of new and frequently everything is carefully observed and innumerable unexpec~ed ?hen~mena makes the ability to devise questions are asked. appropriate te~h.n!ques absolutely essential. What is The procedures obviously cannot be standardjzed. more, the sens1b1ht1es of the people studied must al- There are even certain similarities between the general ways be taken into account. purpose and methods of the cultural scientist and the Another reason why cultural studies cannot now journalist or novelist. But there are important differbe carried out by means of rigidly standardized tech- ences which consist of more than a common lack of niques i~ that problems and interests are changing standardized technique. Both seek an understanding very rapidly. At the turn of the twentieth century, of the mode of life and the motivations of the typical anthropology was essentially a descriptive and his- individuals of different subcultures. But whereas the torical discipline, dedicated to recording the salient novelist creates a composite or synthetic picture, the features of the many different world cultures before scientist endeavors to show the range of variation. they disappeared or were radically altered under the Whereas the novelist ordinarily employs evaluative impact of western civilization. More recently, new aims terms against a background of his own ethical judgand interests have developed, each demanding new n:ient. and thus may indulge in words that evoke emoprocedures. The study of culture and personality, for tion m the reader, the scientist reports as objectively example, has stimulated the recording of case his- -and as dispassionately-as he is able, omitting purtories and of considerable detail on child rearing ple passages. Most important of all, whereas the and the individual's life cycle, 11 both of which may be novelist endeavors to present a description which is interpreted by psychoanalytic or other techniques. go.od or bad, according to his perception and literary Other new and specialized field procedures are exem- skill, the social scientist seeks not only to describe but plified in studies of race relations, social stability, to explain. The social scientist, unlike the novelist, works within a conceptual framework which requires that he make his problem explicit, categorize his data, H See Gottschalk, Kluckhohn, and Angell, 1945. The emphasis select and reject data according to their relevance to on life cycle in community studies is shown in l\fartin Yang's t;hinese Village (1945), and James West's Plainv\lle, U.S.A.. (1945). the central problem, and present his conclusions

22

THE PEOPLE OF PUERTO RICO

systematically and explicitly in terms of relationships between selected phenomena. One has only to compare highly perceptive but unsystematic works, such as Sinclair Lewis' Babbitt and Main Street and Granville Hicks' Small Town with social science studies such as the Lynds' Middletown to recognize the difference. Field work on the more intimate aspects of community life is an art only in the sense that it requires constant awareness of the sensibilities of the people and constant alertness to take advantage of opportunities to gain deep insights. One cannot enter a home as a stranger and straight off inquire into sex life, family relations, or attitudes toward local authorities. Six months to a year is usually needed to establish rapport. Once rapport is established, the field worker participates in the more private aspects of culture and discusses freely the matters he wishes to know about. He can visit and dine in the homes, attend- dances, meetings, and fiestas, and learn about attitudes, ambitions, and frustrations. It is very debatable whether an outsider can immerse himself so thoroughly in a culture that he can experience its emotional overtones as well as observe its forms. And it is doubtful. whether this is desirable, for it might lead to a degree of subjectivity and empathy that could easily warp his perspective. Although these techniques require tha t the field worker approach his people with the sympathy of a friend,; th~ intuition of an artist, and the objectivity of a scientist, the data gathered may be as reliable and as ?irectly related to ~he central problem of inquiry as m the la boratory sciences. If child training is overemphasized, if social relations are imperfectly understood, if economic activities are a ttributed too large or too small a role in shaping the culture, if, in fact, the factual reporting is inadequate in any way, the deficiency lies in theoretical orientation or in individual incompetence of the field worker, not in techniques of research. Use of too small a sample results from preconceptions about the cultural common denominator and the homogeneity of the culture, not from inadequate field techniques. If a problem is clearly stated, the kinds of information needed will be clear. The techniques of obtaining the information must then be judged with reference to the problem and not in terms of any immutable set of procedures that can be applied to all cultures regardless of the problem or the nature of the culture. Delimitation of the Unit of Study

In the cultural analysis of contemporary socie ties there are several problems concerning the unit of study which do not ordinarily arise in ethnographic analysis of primitive peoples. First, since the total populations of modern na tions are so large, it is necessary to select representative examples of su bcultural groups which can be adequately understood by me.~ns of the m ethods of anthropology in the time a¥a1.Ia?le. The field worker must become intimately <1.c<;~uamte.d with a local group which is fairly small

and whose patterns of behavior he can grasp during his research period. Second, since all members of the group studied may not share a homogeneous way of life it is essential to determine the nature and exte nt of any cultural deviation. Third, it may be impo r tant in a practical if not a theoret ical sense to determine whether the kinds of cultural be havior found within the group analyzed may be reasonabl y supposed to exemplify substamial portions of the total population. The need to select a manageably sma ll grou p lor cultural ana lysis follo\\'s from anthropolo~y's holisti c approach LO all aspects ol the heh;1vior ol ;1ny society. If intimate relations ;ire to be established. es pcci;tl ly within a limited period or rcsc;1rd1, tile lllllllhc r ol persons studi ed cannot hc too l;1rge. Tlt c optilll tllll group s ize and optimum fidd period both depend upon the situation and the nature ol the ntlt ure. Many cultural fe a tures may be ;1scert;1incd lrorn puh· lished data and stat istics. lrorn lairly bri d i111 e niews with little-known ind i vid ua Is. and Imm rapid ohsen ;1tions. Other features such as se x attitudes. the n;llurc of the family, intcrperson;d relat ion s. and basic v;ducs are not readily revealed until dose pe rsonal relations are established. A culwral study of any contemporary group therefore is multidime nsional in that a large variety of informants and sources of information are used for different purposes-some for gross statistics and general fea tures, some for various specialized knowledge about particular features or their community or class, and some for those more intimate aspects of culture which are not readily disclosed to strangers. When the biographical or case history approach is used, six months to a year may be spent studying a single individual 01· family. On the other hand, a culture which is wholly unknown well merits a report based only on a sl'ngle day of observation. G e neraliza· tion is impossible because too many factors are involved, bu t it seems to be the general experience of anthropologists that the more intimate behavior patterns cannot be understood in less th an six months. A year of fie ld work is preferable, and severa l years are still helter. Malinowski's d eep insights in to Trobriand Island cul t ure were possible because h e lived among these people for three years. It is a lmost impossible to stipul a te optimum g roup size in relation to time available for research. As a very rough statement, however, it might b e said that a fi eld worker can grasp the behavior patterns o( perhaps twenty to fifty families w i thin a year of re· sear ch, and that he can lea rn enough about some fifty additional fam ilies to state with reasonable certainty whether they conform to the families he knows intimately, and that he can obtain a pretty good impression of whether another hundred families are generally like those he knows well. In the present research the number of families studied was extended somewhat by the use of questionnaires (see Appendix). The numbers a nd kinds of families interviewed by this technique is explained subsequently. It must be stressed that the use of ques-

INTRODUCTION

tionnaires was an experiment in technique rather than a basic source of information for the analyses reported in these volumes. The result of principal interest is that the questionnaires verified what had been expected, namely, that people with . th~ sai:ne place in the econom ic arrangements were similar m the other major features of their lives. The question of whether all the families studied in field research actually share the same subculture has been a fa irly minor consideration in anthropological research. Members of tribal societies, which have not been affected by alien influence, generally share the same ideals of expectable behavior, even though indi vidua ls may deviate from the norm in different ways. In modern societies, however, the individual's conception o f desirable behavior a~1d his conformity with it may be affected by two important factors. first, his own subculture is constantly changing. The normal or ideal behavior shifts, while alternatives and conflicts arc multiplied. Individuals, therefore, exhibit a considerable range of variation in their adaptation to the attractions. pressures, and requirements of new goals. Second, because modern commercial soc:iety offers incentives and opportunities for upward mobility many individuals attempt to simulate the patterns of subcultural groups above them in the class hierarchy. For these reasons, the range of individual variation in contemporary societies may appear to be so great that the reality of subcultures . . is questionable. Subcultures undoubtedly mtergrade with one another to a certain extent, and there are many individuals who cannot readily be classed in one or another subculture. Nonetheless, there are comparatively few aspects of behavior which exhibit continuous variation along any scale of measurement. ·when total beh avior is recorded, there are definite clusters of interrelated features, especially of features which are not readily susceptible to quantification. Such features d.istinguish subcultural groups rather clearly. Thus, wh~le income, family size, school attendance, and other tram might show fairly contin uous grad.ation ':"itl~in the total population, certain rather basic qualitative features, such as occupation and status in the productive arrangement, kinship patterns, religion, language, and others are fairly invariant among large groups of people. In Puerto Rico, the differences between town and farm populations are quite marked, and the farm population, moreover, is classifiable into subgroups based on the nature of the crops, one's role as owner, laborer, or sharecropper, and his relationship to credit and marketing arrangements. Pronounced differences in the family, in social relationships, in political and religious attitudes, in use made of schooling and of other public faci lities, in value systems, and in many other features were associated quite consistently with the different subcultura l groups of town and rural persons. In the present project, rural neighborhoods exemplifying principal types of productive arrangements constituted the subject matter of field study. The re-

23

search workers could expect to understand the behavioral patterns of about one hundred families. In Cafiamelar, the farmers of the corporate sugar community consisted almost entirely of landless laborers, whose culture was remarkably homogeneous. In each of the other communities, the group selected for investigation included several different rural subcultures which were rather clearly differentiated. For example, in San Jose owners of coffee haciendas and the landless laborers were almost poles apart in a cultural as well as an economic sense although interrelated in the productive system. In contrast there was considerable variation in basic economic features in Tabara, where landownership was widespread. Farm size ranged from small to medium and the income varied correspondingly. Tabara farmers as a whole, however, shared a subculture related to the production of subsistence crops and a ·tobacco cash crop which set them off as a group from persons in the coffee or sugar areas who might fall into the same categories of landownership and income but who otherwise differed in behavior and outlook. The third question of whether the varieties of cultural behavior studied exemplify substantial portions of the population beyond the local group is as much a practical as scientific problem. It is " practical" in the sense that insights gained through cultural analysis are valuable in action programs if they shed light on large numbers of people. It is, however, scientifically defensible to limit analysis to a very small and atypical group, since any understanding of cultural patterns and processes have theoretical value no matter how few individuals are involved. Intensive studies of single individuals or families-as in the case history and biographical methods-or of a half dozen individuals or families in a population of thousands are quite legitimate. But, once these intensive and limited analyses have been made there remains the question of what light this throws on the remainder of the population. This problem is tentatively answered in the present study by the assumption t11at the major characteristics of subcultures tend to be associated with the principal features of the productive patterns. In each rural subculture and in the insular upper-class sub culture, the research strongly indicates that the constellation of basic economic features-the land potentials, the particular cash crops, the mechanization, credit, and marketing facilities, and position in the economic power structure-and familial social arrangements and many other cultural features are so closely correlated in a causal nexus that where the former occur the latter will also be found. As our research was limited in time and therefore in scope, we could not verify whether a second, third, or fourth corporate sugar community would correspond precisely with Caiiamelar, whether the patterns of the older type of coffee hacienda would be found elsewhere than in San Jose, whether all subsistence crop and tobacco growers would be like those of Tabara, whether the workers on all government·owned sugax plantations are similar

24

THE PEOPLE OF PUERTO RICO

when we were able to formu late culturally significant questions. There are, of course, ~any aspects of culture which cannot be treated by this method- e.g. , authority structure within the famil y, the natu:e of .the compadrazgo, and so forth-but the quest10nnaires at least give a clue to the nature of th ~ culture. In general, the results verified our assumpt10~. th at. c~r­ final Selection of the Unit of Study tain modes of behavior characterize a ll fa milies w1thm In the Puerto Rico study, the problem of finding each rural class. Nothing would be added to the analysis contained in this vo lume b y tabulating the l~cal groups for analysis and of determining their internal range of variation and their wider external questionnai re results. . We now con sider the problem of sclccllng a unit significance was expedited by the nature of the local community, or municipio. The municipio is not only of study in each of the communiti es . the principal political and administrative unit, but it San ]ose.-San Jose, a municipio in the western is the unit generally treated in historical and other mountains was chosen beca use it was b eli eved to repdocuments and in statistical material. Each municipio resent the :.traditional" subculture associated with the is subdivided into barrios, which are districts of minor production of coffee, desp ite the inva.s io n :'f suga r, administrative importance, and the barrios tend to mixed crops, a n d n ecd le \,·ork in the rcgwn. 1. h e farm s be subdivided into neighborhoods, "Or small areas of devoted entirely to coffee are gene rall y large, un primary groups with face-to-face relations. mechanized , except in prn ces~ in g, and ow ned uy perIn order to understand the municipio as a whole it sons o f Spanish birth or descent. They 1:cpresc11t the was necessary to analyze its administrative, economic, family-type haciend a which is ch arac teri zed by facesocial, an~ religious functions and to ascertain what to-face, p aternalistic relations . b etween owners and sociocultural groupings were found within the town workers. In addition to the haciendas, there are small center. It was impossible to know all the townspeople farms producing mixed crops and tobacco as well as well because the "urban" population, as counted in coffee. the 1950 census, ranges from 1,032 people in Nocora The municipio of San J ose, including the town and to 4,105 in Tabara, but it was possible to grasp the rural area, has a p opulation of a bout 19,500. p~rso~s, principal functions of the town in the total municipio or 3,800 households, which fa ll into several d1sunct1~e and to gain general knowledge of the sociocultural subcultural groups. The large coffee lan?s are stil l classes. In the case of the rural population, it was h eld as family haciendas, but much coffee is produced necessary to find individual barrios and to select by small-scale farmers, some classifiable as m edium neighborhoods within the barrios that exhibited the owners and others as peasants. As the fie~d r esearc.h kinds of agricultural life typical of the region. The progressed i l. becan:ie. clea.r that four soc 10econ~m 1c studies became intensive analyses of representative groups could be d1sungu1shed: ~ 1) land less ag~~cul­ neighborhoods. tural workers; (2) peasants holding io cue rdas - or In each community, the choice of the neighborhood less and small farmers owning 10 to 30 cuerdas who of concentration was made in about the same way. supplement their income with wage labor; (3) m edium The field workers first spent several months living farmers h aving 30 to 100 cuerdas who also do some in the pueblo or town, becoming acquainted with local wage labor; and ( ) hacienda owners of 1 oo and more 4 life, studying data provided by local agencies, and cuerdas. visiting the rural barrios. The selection of the neighThe rural popula tion numbers about 16,000 perborhoods for intensive study was facilitated by readily sons, or some 3,200 households, and it is .divided available statistical data on land use, landownership, between eight rural barrios. Some of these barr.10s have and the nature of employment. On the hypothesis ab andoned coffee in favor of cane production and that subcultural differences would be associated with others have adopted n eedlework to the extent that the size of farms, crops grown, and occupation, we the older patterns are destroy~d. We finally s~lected chose neighborhoods which exhibited economic pat- the barrio of Manicaboa, which has two neigh borterns typical of many thousan ds of persons in the hoods of some lOO households each and which inr egion. cludes representations of the four socioeconomic types As explained subsequently, each of the groups of m entioned. During the year of resea~ch,. ~he field intensive study numbered from one to three hundred workers cam e to know the lifeways of ind1v1du als of families. Intimate acquaintance with a limited number the different types fairly well. In additio n, a questionof these families revealed certain patterns of behav~or, naire was finally given LO 86, or 43 per cent, of ~h e.. 200 which, to judge by general knowledge of the other households. These included 46, or 17.5 per cent, of th e families, seemed to characterize the entire group. In farm owners of different sizes and 40, or 15 per cent, order to substantiate our assumption that the recorded of the landless workers. norms were valid for the larger group, we gave quesThe town of San Jose numbers ab~ut 3'.500, or 60.0 tionnaires to a considerable number of persons beyond households. This is too large and diversified a unit the principal informants. These questionnaires (see 12 A cuerda is 0.9712 of an acre. Appendix) were given at the end of the field research, to those of Nocora and whether the prominent business executives in Ponce and elsewhere have followed the acculturational trends of those in San Juan. But we strongly believe that, despite slight modifications resulting from unique local factors, this will prove to be the case.

INTRODUCTION

to have been studied thoroughly in terms of su~cul­ tures. It was possible, however, to grasp the functions of the town in its relationship to the rural are~, _that is to detennine its role as administrative, rehg10us, p~litical, marketing, and distributional center. It was also possible to determine in broad outl~n.e the gene:al nature of its subcultural groups. In add1uon to a wide variety of contacts with townspeople, the field work~rs gave questionnaires to 27, or about 5 per cent, of its Goo households. It cannot be claimed, of course, that every aspect of the municipio cu lture was fully investigated in ~e research. Many problems were -peripheral to our mterests. ' 'Ve are confident, however, that this volume accurately reports the subcultures of workers, p~asants, middle fanners, and hacienda owners of Mamcaboa. We also believe that it is highly probable that these subcullures typify comparable socioeconomic ?1'oups associated with coffee production elsewhere m the highlands. Tabara.-Tabara was selected because its economic patt~rns are typical of twelve municipios which pri-

marily produce tobacco and mixed crops. (See Chapter 6 for further explanation.) According to the 1950 census Tabara had a total of some 17,500 persons of whom' about 4,200 lived in the town and 13,000 in seven rural barrios. One of these barrios, Quito, is representative of the twelve municipios in the proportion of tobacco it produces, while another, Salvador, is unusual though not unique in producing a somewhat larger proportion of tobacco. The field workers took up residence in a rural house where these barrios adjoin and they had access to neighborhoods in each barrio. The neighborhoods studied have some 150 families which includes all sizes of farms and types of land tenure in the area. The great majority of farms are small, being less than 35 cuerdas, while the average is 17 cuerdas. Three farmers own 35 to 100 cuerdas, and four, who are classed as large farmers, own more than 100 cuerdas. There is much sharecropping, there are landless laborers, and there are roadside shopkeepers. Of these 150 families, more than 50 became known quite intimately to. the ~eld workers .. Forty-two questionnaires were given m these neighborhoods, although their primary purpose was not so much to broaden the basis of information as to test the questionnaire method against ethnographic results. Some subcultural differences were found within the rural barrios, the principal differences being between the medium farmers, small farmers, and landless workers, and it is presumed that similar differences will be found . in the other .municipios growing t.obacco ·a11d mixed crops. It is significant that the largest farms produced coffee and were very different from all the tobacco producers. The general functions of the town were studied by the field staff, and the subcultures were given. ~on­ siderable attention by Sra. de Roca. In add1t10n, thirty-six questionnaires were given to the professional k

2 !) \

people, large merchants, middle classes, and poor people of the town. Cafiamelar.-Cafiamelar had 13,464 persons in the 1950 census of whom 4,105 lived in the towri and 9,359 in the rural area. The selection of groups for intensive study, however, was much easier than in San Jose or Tabara because the entire culture of the municipio is closely tied to the corporation sugar mill and fields. There is only one rural subcultural group which consists of plantation and mill laborers, there being no private owners or colonos. Moreover, the distinction between urban and rural is less sharp than in the other communities because many of the workers live in the town and because many functions of the town are controlled by the mill. The field workers were generally familiar with th~ town people but they concentrated on one of the barrios which has three nuclei of population-a poblado or settlement along the road where the investigators lived, a colonia or cluster of houses on company land, and the playa or beach where squatters live. Each of these neighborhoods has about ·so families. Not all families, o.f course, were known equally well, but all are laborers and all clearly share a very similar subculture. In the poblado the questionnaire (see Appendix) was given to 43 families. In addition,. special data on the family and the standard of living were tabulated for 66 households. Town life presented a comparatively simple problem because Cafiamelar lacks the middle and upper classes found in the other small urban centers. Many of the urban functions of merchandising and of providing health and other services are closely tied t<> the sugar corporation, while town government is, in a sense, a function of the workers' union. Nocord.-In the 1950 census, the municipio of Nocora had nearly 20,000 persons of whom 1,032 were classed as urban and 18,867 as rural. The socioeconomic structure of Nocora resembles that of Caiiamelar in that a large sugar mill-in this case, governmentowned-is the focal point of municipio activities and a considerable number of the town people are sugar workers. It differs from Cafiamelar, however, in that all sugar producers do not fall into a homogeneous class of wage laborers. In addition to government sugar lands which feed the central, or central mill, and which employ as many as 3,000 men, there are some 500 cofonos, or owners of private sugar plantations, who send their sugar to the central to be ground. Although most of the colonos, especially on the coastal plain where the principal study was made, own so little land that they must work part time as laborers, a f~w have comparatively large -holdings, which places them in a higher economic and sociocultural class. Nocora also differs from Cafiamelar in that town functions are not so subordinate to the sugar interests. Nocora has a small middle and upper class of professional people and merchants, some of the latter also owning sugar lands. The field workers lived first in the "urban" center of

I 26

THE PEOPLE OF PUERTO RICO

Nocora for three months, where they became acquainted with government officials of the sugar mill, labor leaders, businessmen, and mill workers. Individuals of these different categories were consulted in 'o rder to determine the general nature of the community and. its functions in municipio life rather than to establish subcultural differences between persons of various statuses and roles. That is, each individual was an informant concerning the nature of the municipio rather than as a representative of a special subculture. After three months in the town center the field workers moved to Tipan, a commun ity of more than 100 families who worked on the government profitsharing sugar farm. During seven months' residence there they came to know the general cultural patterns of some 50 families fairly well. After this they lived for eight months in Mango, a s~ttlement of some 30 families of government sugar workers of whom they came to know perhaps 15 quite well. "Very well known" or "fairly weil known" are of course relative statements. They mean that in the opinion of the field workers reliable data essential to the present analyses were obtained. The cultural pattern of the government plantation workers is constructed not only from studies of the families just cited but also from fairly extensive knowledge of laborers living in other dis"tricts. The subculture of the colonos is based largely upon fairly intimate knowledge of some 25 coastal fam ilies which send their sugar to the government mill. Most of these colonos own so little land that they h ave to work as laborers to supplement their income and their standard of living is not very different from the landless workers. A few colonos, however, have fairly substantial holdings and high socioeconomic status. Questionnaires were used in Nocora largely to ascertain differences between people within the town. Sixty questionna ires were give n to individu a ls not previously known to the field workers. These subjects included the different social a nd economic classes: professional people, war veterans, workers, a nd others.

used b ecause of their specialized knowledge. A limited number of famil ies became known so intimately that the field worker was given access to information on the familial and socia l features of this class. An additional number of families was studied through a questionnaire drawn up especially for th is subcu lwre.

IMPLICATIONS FOR AREA RESEARCH

Considerab le thought was given to the signi ficance of the present project fo r an area research pro~ra111. "Area research," it should be und e rs tood, is a ve ry general concept wh ich may merel y mean that lll<>rc o r less collaborative research of th e different social sciences and humanities is carried 011 under th e auspices of area institutes o n various problems pertaining to the major nations or a re as of the world .1 =1 .-\ s area resea rch includes almost as man y interests, probl e m s, and procedures as the re are discipli nes, it would be impossible to prov ide a blueprint for area studies that would satisfy everyone. Since, however, Pueno Ri co is very sma ll as areas go and since we dealt in one way or another with virtu ally all aspects of Pu erto Rican cu lture the project could be considered a n interdisciplinary one in certain respects. \ 1Vhile we did not undertake to deal with the island as a whole, o ur methodology has three features of special interest to area research: first, a clarification of one role of anthropology in an a rea program; second, a means of conceptualizing the total ity of the cultural phenomena in an area unit ; third, a method for sta ting crosscu ltural reg ularities. Previous pages have undertaken to show that one o[ the most u sefu l roles anthropology may play in the analysis of contemporary societies is to study su bcu ltural groups. Nationally shared be havior traits and even large communities, wh ich have diversified aspects, do not lend themselves readily to the holistic ethnographic method . Subcul tural groups, however, m ay be adequately underst0od only in the con text of the total area. It is necessary, therefore, to conce ptualize the total area and to devise methods for relating the subThe Prominent Families of Puerto Rico.-These cu ltural group to it. families were a unit of study in a somewhat different Areas are d efined in many different ways for differsense than the subcultural groups of the rural munici- e nt purposes. From a cu ltural or holistic point of pios. They a re character~ed by a high .income .and a view, however, an area must be vie wed as a r e lative ly high degree of acculturauon from outside the island. well integrated sociocultural system. It may be a sta te, They are localized only in that most of them happen to a na tion, or a depe nde ncy, whose people are bound reside in the island's capital, San Juan. This group was together by common laws and economic institutions delimited as a unit of study principally on the basis and frequently by othe r features. Puerto Rico is an of income, social status, and economic and political integrated sociocultural system in that it has a single role. Limited in number by the two basic criteria of government and economy-although both are tied to income and socioeconomic status (see Chapter 10), it the United States wh ich is a larger system-and its people have a cu ltura l heritage which combines fearepresented a highly speci.a li.zed subcultura l group. With the group so delimited, the research problem tures from Spain and from North America. The place of the Puerto Rica n subcultural groups was to establish close relations with enough of its members to be sure that the analyses of the behavior in the insular setting is essentially an interdisciplina ry patterns were truly representative. The procedure was about the same as in the case of the rural subcultural u Sec SLewan.l, 1950. for a discussion o f the theory and practice groups. A considerable number of informants were of area research.

INTRODUCTION

problem. In order to understand cultural function and change among these groups, it is necessary to relate them to various national features, such as commerce, banking, legislation, governmental services, religious organizations, education , and the like, each of which is the subject of study by some special discipline. A full understanding of the national setting of th~ subcultural groups would require analysis of how the national institutions interact with one another. At present, however, there is no super-social science, no area science per se, which ca n integra.te all ~ati~nal fealllres in terms of a total configuration . H1stonans com e nearer than anyone to a h ol ist ic approach to nations. hut most of th em tend to accord primary attention w spec ial fea tures, ::;uch as political institutions. Jn the absence of what migln be called a basic "area studv science," scholars will draw upon the specialized knm~rledge o f national features as their problem demands it. Jn the present stud y, we ha ve ha d to consult th e works o f ou r colleagues in other fields at .great length. There are many problems which wil.l counteract the previous tendency ~o compa rtmentalize know.ledge and to isolate specia.l ph.enomen~ from their sociocultural setting. Such chvers1fied subjects as demographic trends, health, environmental ad~ptatio~s, technological development, money and bankmg, social structure, political systems, foreign relations, military power, religious organizations and beliefs, ideological systems, and val~es may be chosen for investigation, but it is becommg clear to everyone that these are interdependent, that they are different aspects of the total national culture and that an understanding of any one will be incomplete if it is wholly isolated from the others. l'vloreover, when any of these subjects is ..studied in its ·national terms, the nature of the sociocultural system must be adequately conceptualized. The concept of levels of sociocultural organization which distinguishes family, community, and national levels is applicable to all contemporary societies and is useful in any problem of area research. The present project has one other implication for area research which we consider extremely important. It has endeavored to presen t its analyses in the form of h ypotheses which. are. applicable to other world areas. Scholars workmg m other world areas have been prone to view their phenom.ena in terms of cultural relativity-to stress the uniqueness of the cultural elements and of the total configuration. Current

27

world trends, however, call attention rather forcibly to kinds of social and economic change that take place again and again in different areas. Puerto Rico could be viewed either as a country that · is unique in its Hispanic and American cultural heritage and in its particular relationship of dependency upon the United States or as an area which is experiencing many changes similar to those in other parts of the world. Certainly, a description of certain of the problems of Puerto Rico would strike very familiar notes to students of recent trends in Africa, India, China, Southeast Asia, or almost any other part of the world which has been an economic or political dependency. All of these areas are experiencing a sharp increase in population while becoming geared to a world-wide economic system through capital investment, production of export crops or other raw materials, and the importation of manufactured goods. Over-popufation without industrial development has lowered standards of living to the crisis point. Economic and demographic changes have combined with the growth of middle classes created by new trades, businesses, and professions to disrupt traditional social systems and to create new political ideologies and new economic and political power structures. The profound rearrangements within the colonies have affected their external relations; for the individual farmer, artisan, laborer, businessman and professional finds his place in the social and economic scheme, his personal life, and his political outlook profoundly altered. He may demand greater autonomy in how his problems shall be solved and what course the future shall take. Most colonies have become culturally if not politically nationalistic, and many have already won independence. The present project was underta ken with an awareness of the similarities as well as of the differences between Puerto Rico and other agrarian areas which have a similar rela tionship to a powerful nation. These other areas are the subject of analysis in many current research programs, the results of which served to sharpen the sense of problem in the prese nt project. The hypothetical formulations of culture change which are presented in our concluding chapter are based solely on the Puerto Rica n data, but they are made against a background of general knowledge of trends in m any colonial, agrarian areas. And they are phrased so that they may be tested in areas which have a cultural tradition very different from that of Puerto Rico.

(

BY THE STAFF

T . e Cultural Background of C:onternporaf)' J>uerto l?..ico

I Cultural Historical Approach As we have indicated in the Introduction, the varieties of subcultures which distinguish regional, occupational, and other special groupings within contemporary national societies result from the impact of national and supranational institutions upon the cultural heritage of people living in a particular natural envi ronment. The early cultures of sixteenth~entury Puerto Rico. consist.ed of a. mixture of Hispanic fea tures together with tra tts nauve to Indians, both of the island and the continent, and trai ts Crom Africa. T hese cul tures were no t simply a mechanical mixture of features o( diverse origins. The basic nation al institutions were predominantly Hispanic in derivation, • but the subcultures were modified by selection and adaptation of behavioral patterns to the local geographical environments. Thus, wh ile Puerto Ri can subcultures derived many particu lar elements from several sources, they finally emerged wi th new patterns wh ich differed from each of the cu ltu res which had contributed to it. From the very beginning o[ the Spanish colonial period the society became di fferentia ted into sociocu ltura l segments, or special socia l groups which can not be explained solely by the Hispanic traditio n. Native Indians of e11comie11das and ?ejJarti111ientos, Indians from Hispaniola and the mainland , plantation sla ves from .-\frica, unattached laborers, squatter subsistence farmers, large planters, government offi cials, churchmen, so ldiers and army oll1cers all had distinctive statuses, roles, and behavior patterns wh ich must be understood as local responses to and adaptations of colonial insti tu tions. During subseq ue nt centuries wholly new subcultura l configura31

32

THE PEOPLE OF PUERTO RICO

tions emerged in response to international historical attention to economic fa clOrs, institutions. and ardevelopments and the resultant changes in institu- rangements- and to the government a 1H~ c hurch tional forms. Modifications in world markets, trade policies supporting these-becau se the \'anous subregulations, labor supply, technology, cred it, and cultures appea r to h ;l\'e e m erged in respo nse to legislation reacted upon every subculture in the is- changes in the produc ti\'e needs and processes. 1\mo1.1g land. From the point of view of the regional varieties the essential facts in a discussion o l the over-al I picof rura l subcultures, the growth of export crops was ture of the isla nd's econom ic cl e \'e lo pme nt are the especially important. Each region specialized in the types o f [arm producti o n and techn ology, credit f_a~·il­ cash crop which it could best p roduce for the world ities, Janel tenure, markc1 i11g. and the labor lonl'. 1 he market, and by the nineteenth century there were local crop spcc iali1atior1 dqic·11dcd 1101 on ly 111><>11 111;11 marked differences between the small subsistence ket demand s, terrain. :1 11cl the lc:gal rigltt to p1odt1< c· l11r farms, the sugar plantations, and the coffee h aciendas. the market but upon tlit l:1rrnc1", :iliilit' to o l>t :1i11 The lifeways of these three rural types were ' so deeply credit for prod11uio11. l:i11d. :111d 1>1hcr < :1pit :tl i11H· . . 1· affected both in a developmental and functional sense ments. -rh c sot ioc.:< 01111111ic an :111gc·n1l'1th hct\\'cn 1 by the colony and empire of which they were parts owner and worker-n1a~tcr and ~l:l\· e. b11dln1d :1 11d that they cannot be properly understood without p easa nt, resident O\,·ncr a11d \\'age l:1lin1Tl'. < <>rpor;1tio11 reference to the larger context. Under American sov- manager and ,,·orkc.:r, O\\' llCT·\\'orkcr, :111d :-. f1 ;1rc< 1 nppcr. ereignty, new economic and political influences caused and the like- ,,·erc ;die:<tcd hy the i>:i....ic t'' IH'" ol J;11 m further differentiation and change in the regional ing together with the gc.:11c1;d 11:1t11 n· o f th<.: l.ilH>I' -.1111subcultures. The most striking change was the de- ply. The latter ""'~ in t11r11 p artly :1 tun< 1irn1 of the velopment of the large and highly. mechanized cor- relationship o l the popu lation to ;1\':1ila1Jlc Lind :ind 1<.. porate-owned sugar cen tral, or factory-in-the-field, and sources, and attcntio11 is tlt crelorc abo acconlcd tkmo· o_f the somewhat similar government-owned propor- graph ic trends. In order to understa nd the local com1nuni ties, we uonal profit sugar plantation. While the types of farms and farm communities have had to exam ine th e restrictions which the S panish were being transformed under the influence of insular governm ent imposed upon Puerto Rican prodn c tion, and extrainsular forces, other sociocultural differen- trade, labor, land settlement, and other matters, and to tiations were occurring. Increased participation in ex- recognize the role of th e Catholic church as the offic ial ternal commerce, especially during the twentieth cen- religion of the Spanish gove rnme nt, which has played tury, augmented and modified the specialized classes a dominant role in all cou ntries with an Hispanic traof merchants, bankers, artisans, construction and trans- dition. Also, we have had to take into account th e very port workers, and others; new functions of government different philosophy and policies with regard to ecoled t? a greatly expanded governmental personnel, in- nomics, government, and religion which marked the cluding such specialists as teachers, farm, hea lth and America n period in orcler to understand the nature o[ social workers, and many others. Business and govern- c ultural cha nge in the twentieth century. \Ve have not, ment representatives became members of the farm however, dealt exhaustively v.rith a ll national institucommunities, complicating the local social structure tions. The miiitary establishment, education , and the a.nd linking the rural folk more closely to the na- many government services \vould warrant full considtional patterns. eration in a treatise on Puerto Rican n ation al patterns, O~r treatment of the history of the national eco- but they appea red to u s Jess crucial in explaining the differentiation of regional subcult11res than arc the n~m1c, governmental, and religious institutions contams more deta~l than might perhaps be expected in economic and governrnental institutions. Although we have presented a fairly rounded, if an anthropol_og1cal work devoted primarily to the study of the lifeways of the people. The changing pat- brief, history of the nation a l aspects of Puerto Rican terns of the latter, however, cannot be understood c ulture, we have not attempted to "ex plain" th ese aswithout reference to the basic national trends. And pects. Explanations would involve us in complex probas t_here exist no comprehensive treatments of these lems leading far afield from the present inquiry. In sub1ects, we were compelled to assemble relevant in- order to unde rstand the factors affecting Puerto Rican formation from the studies of many experts in these communities it h as n ot been necessa ry to concern o urfields. There are, of course, histories of Puerto Rico. selves wi th the politica l and econom ic history of EuB_ut they contain serious lacunae from the point of rope which saw the rise and fall o( the Spanish Empire v1e~v of prese~t needs. Those dealing with the cen- after the fi ftee nth cenwry, nor with the growth o[ intu~1.es of Spanish colonialism emphasize political and dustrialization, the competition for world markets, the miluary events and personages rather than the cultural development of the United States as a capitalist democp~tterns and _institutions crucial to a study of this racy, and many other matters that would provide a km~l. There is no general history of the American more ultimate explan a tion of Spanish and American period. _And while Perloff's excellent treatise (1950) policies. But we are concerned with the e[f ecls o( world deals with the economics of recent decades, there is markets, political history, changing technology, church policies, and other fa ctors upon the lifeways o( th e no comprehensive source that covers other subjects. In this section we shall present data from many Puerto Rica n people. This concern h as compell ed us to works relevant to our problem. We have paid special examine, at least brie fl y, the relationships among the

THE CULTURAL HISTORICAL APPROACH

33

national institutions and, to a somewhat lesser extent, The historical materials are arranged in four pethe naLUre of the insular power structure. Since our riods. These periods are demarca ted not by major poanalysis of these areas h as inevitably been limited by litical or military events but by those alterations in the considerat ions which we mentioned earlier, we look national institutions which led to significant tra nsforforw ard to the time when a team of specialists may mations in the structure and function of the subculmake a thoroug h swdy of institutional and sociocul- tures. The first period is that of the discovery, conquest, tural integration at the national level. and colonization of Puerto Rico. It is characterized by The present section, then, deals with the institu- the introduction and establishment of gold mining, tional fra mework within which the regional subcul- Spanish methods of farming, and other Hispanic ecowres emerged. Since o ur central interest is in the sub- nomic, political, and religio us institutions, b y the apc ultures of 1!).19, th e hiswrica l data should be regarded parent d estruction of the native Indian sociopolitical. as pro\·idi11g a background of cena in crucial aspects patterns, and by the predominance of the small subof the llatio na l cu llure against which the modern com- sistence farmer. The second p eriod begins about 170 0 muniti<:.s may be vic\\'ed. :\!thoug h it would be theoret- with the slowly increasing importance of export agriica ll y poss ibl e to tra ce each of the modern sociocultural culture and the beginnings of regional specialization. scgmcn ts back through a series of changes to the time The third p eriod, covering most of the nineteenth cenof its emergence, the members of this project were un- tury, is characterized by the rapid expansion of export able to do all the resea rch that would be required to agriculture a nd a sharper divergence of the regional present a n adequate picture of the subcultures of the subcultures. The patterns and trends of the third pe.six tcc1Hh, sevcntce11th, and eighteenth centuries. Nev- riod carry over into the American period, which began ertheless we ha\'e indicated their genera l nature in in 1898. Greater attention is accorded the later periods these periods and their relationships to certain national because these b ear more directly upon the contempoinstiLUtions. Information on the subcultures of the rary cul tu res. nineteenth century is more r eadily available, and we The following table presents the four periods of have dealt with these more fully in Part III, which is Puerto Rican cultural history synoptically: devoted entirely to a discussion of the different agrarian subcultures. TABLE 1.

Period

Chronologicol Periods

Approximate Years I

1493 1508 i508 to mid-15oo's

Mid-15oo's to early 1700

II

III

IV

Early 1700 to early 1800

Culture Periods

Social Orga11iwtion Tribal Ind ian Conquered natives ruled by small number of conquerors in local communities. A r:w estates or haciendas, little community or insular organization or control; scattered squatter farming.

Small farm families of greatest importance but con~munity ~nd insular aspects of lif~ developmg; first msular groupings of hacendados, merchants, and artisans. ~nsu l a r and com~unity organization gain; nnportance of fam ily varies with area, ecology, and class differentiation; insular social groupings formed. Jns.ula r gov~ rnment and community organizatwn ~om 1~a~t'. The social importance of the family d1mm1shes variably.

Economic Organization Indian subsistence farming Gold mining; some livestock and agriculture.

Small independent subsistence farm ing; small amount of "cash" crops and livestock on haciendas; little legal trade but some smuggling; a minimum development of island's potemialities. Agricultural gains; incipient export restricted by Crown to one Spanish port and a few island ports. Export agriculture Bourishes, expanding at an unprecedented rate. Commerce is liberated. Sugar supported by American capital and incipient manufacture. Quantitative expansion of commerce but restriction of trade to the Un ited States.

2 P..iod I:

D iscovery and Introduction of I berian Patterns (I493- IJOO) POPULATION Aboriginal Puerto Rico was occupied by a fai rly large population of Arawak Indians, whose sedentary villages and small, loosely structured local states were based on the production of a considerable number of native American domesticated crops (Hostos, 1948"?; Rous~, 1948). When the Spaniards discovered the is· land m 1493 they did not at first leave any permanent settlements but merely released some livestock in order to provide food for future residents. When the actual conquest and settlement came in 15 09, the Indians were quickly pacified. Great cultural diversity marked the early years of this period. There was not only a sharp difference between the native Arawak-wh o came to constitute the initial labor force-and their European conquerors, but the latter were themselves dissimilar in background. They were primarily Spaniards, although a few foreigners were permitted to enter and settle. It had been the policy of Spain to insure the possession of its colon ies by encouraging permanent colonization (Blanco, 1935: 17). By the time the island was first settled by the conquerors, it had become a focal point in Indian strategy of war against Spanish colonists in Santo Domingo. Discovery of gold was an added factor towards the conquest. The early settlers were soldiers, priests, and farmers, some of noble background b ut n early all in quest of gold and rapid wealth. Some of t hese were a<':companied by their families. The Crown, however, encouraged permanent settlement, and to this end it 34

DISCOVERY AND INTRODUCTION OF IBERIAN PATTERNS

35

encouraged the immigration of families, required 360 planting of certain specific trees, and ordered the 350 building of brick houses that could not be destroyed by attacking Indians. Later, the population was gradually a ugmented by the addition of escaped s::tilors, stowaways, and former prisoners (O'Reilly, 1765: 109). In addition, many officials remained as settlers after their terms expired (Miyares y Gonzalez, 300

p. 14). During the period of first contact, Indians far outn11mbered the white settlers. The aboriginal populati on has bee n estimated at figures ranging from a few thousand w as many as 600,000. An acceptable esti- 250 mate, based not only on contemporary calculations, but on comparisons with other areas of similar environme nt and agriculture, sets the figure at about 50,000 (Steward, 1949b:6G5- 68). The decrease of the native population has been partly explained by warfare, change in lifcways produced by the hard labor to which 200 the Indians were subjected, and disease introduced by the conquerors. There is no actual knowledge of Indians given in encomienda to settlers, but Melgarejo in 1 582 (p. 77) mentioned that there were 5,000 male 150

Chart 1. Population growth in Puerto Rico. (Based on data from Steward, 1949b, p. 664; Brau, 1904, pp. 70-71, 117; Coll y Toste (ed.), XI, 141; Abbad y Lasierra, 1866, pp. 96, 306; Van Middeldyk, 1903, p. 64; Blanco, 1935, pp. 48-49; Descartes, 19.16, p. 3; Fowles, 1906, p. 20; Davis, 1900, p. 159; 100 C6rcloba, 1833, V, 226; !\•fills, Senior, and Goldsen, 1950, \>· 23; Perloff, 1950, p. 198.)

'

Millions of People

l I I I I I 200,000 or more additional in New York

I

I

50

I

I

I

L a

I

2

!1 ~

j

I

l' ' :a I

-QI

"'

.~

~g

/

0

0 0 0

-'°'

'O

..2

0 ~

~c)

I./

'/ 1500

I

<'• 0 0

QI

1600

1700

~

-~

v .ll ,,...

1/ IJ 1800

~ QI

0

1·...... v.....

I

0

~

1800

1850

~

1900

1950

Chart 2 . Value of Puerto Rican exports in millions of U.S. dollars. (Based on data from Abbad y Lasierra, 1866, pp. 34950; Coll y Toste (ed.), V, 299; Annual Book of Statistics, 1945-46, P· 47; Perloff, 1950, Table 36, p. 123.)

and 500 female Indians when the island was conquered not counting those Indians who were not granted in repartimientos. 1 The prevalent belief that the Indian element in the population became extinct is based upon a confusion of cultural assimilation with biological extinction. Although the population today is extremely mixed racially, there is considerable evidence of Indian physical features. There is no doubt that one of the initial effects of

0

·:u

1900 1950

i Estimates suggest that in 1518-19, 607 Indians were granted in encomienda (Tapia, 1945: 153 £.).

36

THE P EOPLE OF PUERTO RICO

culture contact was a sharp decline in the aborigi~es. Native Indians of the early period were evidently dying off at a rate faster than could be compensated for by the rate of influx of white settlers and Negro slaves. Most of the white settlers were males, although a few brought wives, and the predominant racial cross in this period was between white men and Indian women. Figures on the numbers of whites in Puerto Rico during this period are scanty and unreliable. The follow ing tabulation is only an approximation of the white ·popula'tion during the sixteenth century.

Date

1Vumber of Whites

1548

650

1556 1571-H

Coll y Toste, 191 ,i: 2G6; 130 vccinos multiplied by five. Coll y Toste, 191 4; 150 vecinos. L 6 pez de Velasco [ 1571]: 88- 90; 200 veci11os in San Juan, 50 vccinos in San

750 1,,100

Cerm{111, 30 veci11os in J\rccibo. This givc:s 280 ho useholds. or ::ibout 1 • •100 \\·hit cs. Coll y Toste . l !J l .J: !!fi(): 700 vrci11os.

~.500

16,16

Source and R emarh s

TABLE 1.

Date

ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT

Number of Whites

Source and Remarks Hernandez de Oviedo; 1oo Clu-istians r emained after the Indian rebellion had reduced them by half. Other scattered whites apparently are not included in this figure. Colly Toste, 1914: 266; 70 fam ilies, or vecinos. We mult!ply this by five. 1530 census after Brau, 1904: 70; 57 white men married to white women, multiplied by five gives 285, plus 14 married to Indian women, plus 298 unmarried . (Tota l Indians is 1,148; African slaves, 1,523.)

100

350 597

During the first two centuri es of Pue rto Ri c tn colo ~1~al history, Spain used th e island primarily as a

military o utpost and as a suppl y d e pot for expeditions to the American mainland. The ea rliest emphas is on the extraction of gold came LO a rapid end wil11 the depletion o[ th e suppl y. Thereupon, the island declined in importance, becoming littl e more th an a port of call and a serv ic ing point fo r th e ships of the empire. Supported by the Crown and the Catholic ch u rch, sugar production on haciendas ga ined some importance, but eventually Puerto Rico was neglected in favor of other colonies which were more profitable. Colonists in this period faced the need to produce sufficien t

Chart 3. Puerto Rican sugar fnoduction in millions of tons. (Based on data from Annual Book of Statistics, 1945- 46, p. 255, 1946-47, p. 306; Colon, 1930, pp. 97, 290; Coll y Toste (ed.), II, 230, V, 293; Perloff, 1950, p. 70. D ata for production after 1860 from Perloff.) 1200

I 1000

'

800

A

600

M

400

200

\J

I 7

. "'"' "' c: 0 0 c: c:

"' c: .2

100

0 -- 0.CX>

-0 MCX>

"° M

~/

M M'O CX> N~

~

/\

~~

1750

1770

1790

1810

1830

1850

1870

1890

1910

1930

1950

DISCOVER\' Al'\D l l'\TRODUCTION OF IBERI AN PATTERNS

foods tull s w m a inta in themseh·es and sought further to produ ce an e xchangeab le s urplus so that products mip;ht b e introduced into the island from the outside. Cattle \\'e re ke pt: g inger :111d small amounts o f tobacco we re p rod u c-ed, primarily fo r o utside trade, but these \\'ere limited by the reduced d emand itsel( and d ifficulties in tra1hponation. Jn 1 :1 ~2, i\Ielgarejo wrote that prod u nion and trade b y the veci11os (settl ers)~ living in th e island \\'as in suga r, skins, manioc, maize, a nd g inge r. \\'hi ch they exported to Spain (l\ Ielgarejo 11;-,8!! ]: !"i )- .\nd i11 J(ilt· :i nm hcr obser ver, Fray lh mi:in l .i'1pt·1 d e Haro rcpnncd that g inger which was grm,·11 lor e'\pon w;h in decline and that sugar was grou nd I)\ 'l'HT:d r ni110,, in 'L' \ ·e 11 i11gc11ios (Lopez de I f:irn [ 1I i 11 j: ·1 l!r :»i )· Tr:1d c dilllculties were increased by the :tl1111 hi c n11 sta nL :1 ll :H b 0 11 the island by French, Briti:.h. :1 11d n1 h cr c ors:1irs. sa ili11<T near its waters (Brau ~ ' '!lll J:~!J. /1fl.l~i111: T :1pia y Ri,·c r:1. 19.15:.157-90). Despite ~0111c c1111tr:1b:111cl trade in these products, it may be .-,aid th at pl :1111:1Lio11 prod union of fi,·estock, suga r cane, a nd gi11gt-r I ll'\ er attained m ajor importance during th c~c <cmuri c-;. The island 's crnno my rema ined predominantly 011 a s ubsiste nce b asis; and barter and payment in kind prevailed clue to lack of currency. l\fany cro p s tha t later were to attain econ om ic signifi ca n ce were imroducecl by the Spaniards i n the sixteemh century. After 1.193· pl ants and a nimals were brought to th e Indies. T h ese included goa ts, pigs, h o rses, and cattle. sugar cane, plantains, bananas, yams, and caiio/isl 11la. Fann equipment and sk illed farmers were also broug ht in. The Crown sponsored experiments in pla nt cultivation , esp ecially in cereals and frui ts, after the first yea rs o ( colonization (Brau, 1904: 5·1: Blanco, 1935 : 22 ff.). At times foodstuffs we re scarce. L6pez de H aro ([1G114]:.urn IT.) re ported in 1GG,1 that for weeks cows had n ot b een killed for food; nor was there any lard avai lable or other source o( meat except large sea turtles and "e ven these were insufficient for m y fa mily." This scarcity a ppa rently was due t0 high prices in cattle. The re was rice, and plantains provided the principal food o[ both poor whites a nd Negroes. Disease, however, was "·iclespread, but death was more often caused by sta rvation. By 1 5 1 o, three placer gold mines had been establish ed on the island. The mines were exploited with forced Indian labor. The harsh conditions imposed on th_ese _captive_s ~o ntributed .materially to th e sh arp d ecline m abongmal populatio n no ted above. Spain n eed ed gold for maintaining its empire, because of its politico-military involvement in continuing wars in Europe. It sh o uld be added that Spain

was n o t a manufacturing counu·y and its gold went to pay d ebts to internatio nal banks (Crist a nd Cha rdon, 19,17:374.). Until about 153 1, th e A ntilles were still relatively important as a source of gold, for the mainland h ad n o t yec been e xploited. Subsequent to this date, however, gold production in the Antilles declined both relatively and absolutely. \ Vhile n o reliable data on Pue rto Rican production are available, its declining importance is shown in the followin g table from Hamilton, 1934:43, Chart 111. TABLE 2. IMPORTATION OF GOlD TO SPAIN (approximate percentage)

1

~" Du ring the colon ial period, writers and royal officials counted Spanish popu lation in terms of heads of famili es, or vccinos. Vecinos, the equi\'a le nt of 1he English Lenn ·1.rnrghers,' should have 111can1 adult males admi11cd to citizenship in one of the ~panis h !owns, !Ju t in practice it applied to any adult male Span· 1~h- SClll~r <~f sur h position Ihat he wonld have been eligible for clllzc nslnp 111 a Spanish town, for ma ny Spanish selllcd in Indian 1owns and \'illagcs ,,·here thc r could have no citizenship" (Borah, 195 1 :Ci).

37

1

Dale 53 1-;)5

From the Antilles

8

From Tierra Finne (Sou lh America)

From Elsewhere (np/Jnre11tly 1\"ew Spni11 i11c/11ding Honduras)

82 61 -18

10

40

48

H

1536-.10 • 5.11-.1 5 15.16-50

24 12 8

1 55 1-55

0

50

1556-Go 156 1-65 15!iG-

0

·10

15

50

·1

57

Go 39

0

50

50

Owing to the Crown 's emphasis on o the r richer areas, P uerto Rico rem a ined peripheral to the m ainsu·eam of colon ia l de,·elopme nt. Communication with the h omeland "·as sporadic a nd ina dequate . Lapses of several years between ships were common, and there is record of one period of eleven years when n o ship visited the isla nd (Brau , 190-J.). R oyal decree limited u·ade to th e port o( Seville until 1711 , and prohibited the island from trading with a n y foreig n cou ntry o r a n y other p o rt of the h o m e la nd. Small-scale smuggling of a fe"· products to and from other islands in the _-.\ntilles, however, was ca rried on.

AGRICULTURE During the six teenth a nd seyenteenth centuries, pla n tains, b ananas, rice, cotton, a nd other subsistence crops, including maize, cassava, a nd root crops, were grown on small farms. These were localized mainly in the coastal belt o( the island. The first comme rcial crop d eveloped on the isi~nd 'ms sug ar cane, introduced b y Columbus to H ispamola in 1.193. The Crown pro,·ided fund amental assistance in the establishment o f the 's u o-ar industry. During the sixteenth century, land, and, i n some cases, cash subsidies as well were g r;'t ntecl to individua l e ntrepreneurs. Jn 1536, the king pardoned tax debts of sugar g rowe rs and, after b eing pelitioned b y some of his subj ects in the island, loan ed 4,000 pesos for building ingenios, o r mills. This sum, regarded as inadeq uate, was not tou ch ed b y the vecin os until it was increased later to G,ooo pesos and a r oya l order forbidding foreclosure of slaves, tools, and o th er n ecessary mate ria ls for the operatio n of i11ge11ios was extended co Pue rto Rico (Bra u , 1 90.i: l Lj ff.) . The first "·ate r-p ower ecl cane mill ,,·as erected in

38

THE PEOPLE OF PUERTO RICO

teenth century sugar was the only importan t cas h crop on the isla nd. Shonly before the beginnin g of th e sC \ '· 32 enteenth century the expansive trend in sugar ca n e production was sudd e nl y reversed. P rod union dropped ..._ 30 from 450,000 pounds in 1582 to 25,000 pounds by tlio:.! (Col6n, 1922:50). j 28 Commerc ial isolation, pirate and Indian raid-;. the smallpox plague of 1!)96, and religious and 111ilitar~· difficu lties disrupted the economy of tlt e i-;la11d i11 g<· n · 26 I era!. .-\ ftcr the Crown and C:h u r('li wi thd r<'\\' 1hC' i r 1 :1p· I ital "usury took the place of Cas~· creel it :111d lh(' c l)Jll · 24 ( m e rcial monopoly ol 1hc: Crn11jw1/iu <11· !11<1 1111 i11 Sn ilk restricted the demand lor sug:1r .. (C:ol<'111. 1 ~1 :~0: . 1 ;, II. ). 22 These crnnhinccl Lt< tor~-cspc.:c i:tl h · die 1:11 k c d 111011v~ - resulted in an increase in the production "' gi 11 gv1 20 and a d ccrc:asc: i11 1hc procluctio11 ol :-.ug:1r < :111c. 111 :11 1 ~~ COFFEE ~ effon to reverse th e: trend. the.: go\·crrior prol1ilii1C'd tl1c · - · - · OTHER CROPS 18 growing or g inge r in 1lio:.! (Co ll y To-,1e. I q I .J: :.! ;">· I) . SUGAR Neverth e less the culti\·:1tio11 ol gi n g<-r C<>ntinttt'(l 1c> - - - - TOBACCO 16 increase and gi11ger was 1he major ca-.11 < rop ol th (' i., land for a corn, id c rah lc time. Th e i111pc1u-. 10 thi-. i11 clustry was pro\'id ccl by opponuniti c:s lor < l:111de-.1i11c 14 trade with neighboring islands (Coll y T oste, 1~)I.I: 254). Thu s, it is easy to understand wh y tlte governor 12 and late r the ca bildo fin a lly outlawed the g rowi n g of g inger, pe rh aps at the instigation of the Seville mer10 chants ( Haring, 1918: 3-.15). /"' In sharp contrast to the treatment accorded s uga r // ..... ! 8 production, tobacco was grown with o ut the support of Crown and Ch urch. In fact, the Crown issued a decree /.· in 1608 forb idding its cu ltivation in Pu erto Rico, a nd 6 , papal bulls threatened excommunication fo r lOba cco I I .I' \ ,_ users. Yet by 1634 the planting o[ this crop had become 4 \ ~f so lidl y establish ed. It has never vied with sugar in eco! I I n omic importa nce to the island, but has provided mi2 , n or cash re turns to growers who could cultivate it on / .,,,,,. v ... ,.._ ,._ small farms in rota tio n with other crops and with out i..'0 substantial capital outlay or a la rge labor force. To1900 1950 1770 1800 bacco later became the small farm er's cash crop, not a plantation owner's single crop. Chart 1· Land devot ed to cultivation of sugar, coffee, t~­ bacco, and other crops. (Data on sugar from Abbad y Las1Livestock h <ts been a major source of in come sin ce erra, 1866, pp. 229, 313; C6rdoba, 1832, II, 406-07, Ill ,. 4?3· the earliest period. During the time when Puerto Rico V, 404; Carroll, 1899, p. 119; Annual Book of Stat1st1cs, was no more than a port of call to the New Wodd 1945-46, p. 237; U.S. Census; P erloff, 1950, p. 84. Data on mainland , livestock supplied transient troops, o flic: ials, coffee from U.S. Census; Perloff, 1950, pp. 83-84. Data on and ships with mules, horses, and bee[ cattle. During tobacco from Col6n, 1930, p. 97; Colly T oste (ed.), V, 300; the seven teenth century cattle were valued particularly U.S. Census; Perloff, 1950, p. 84. Data on other crops from for their hides, wh ich provided a prin cipal ite m of exCordoba, 1832, Ill, 463; Abbad y Lasierra, 1866, p. 227; po rt. In 1647, 10,000 hides were sent to Seville. Accord Carroll, 1899, p. 11 9; Perloff, 1950, p. 84.) ing to Don Diego Torres de Vargas, the a nnu al ex p o rt to Spai n regularly averaged 8,ooo to 1o,ooo skins (Tapia 1548. In 1549, Charles V granted 1,500 pesos to Alonso y Rivera, 1945:461). The local economic impo rtance Perez Martel to help in the erection of another such of the industry was stabilized in 154 1 , wh e n Charles mill. The king also issued decrees encouraging the de- V set asid e large areas in the island as public grazing velopment o( the sugar industry, and the Catholic la nd. For more than two centuries every town had its church made loans to the sugar growers. Sugar produc- public pastures, or lia.tos, but the right to graze e<t ttlc tion soared from 10,000 pounds in 1535 to 450,000 was gran ted by the cabildo upon petition. "Se le twee pounds in 1582. As early as 1550, Governor Vallejo had m erced al uso y sin propriedad para que pu cda tc n e r commented o n the shift of commercial interes t from casa y corral y asiento de hato de ganado mayor·" (San gold to sugar, noting that "the state of weakness . . . Juan IJc lu s, I : 138). A lthough decrees abolishing these [owing to] the d ecl ine o( the gold mines" gave way to hatos we re issued by the Crown in 1758, and again in prosperi ty "as a result of the interest in sugar" (Tapia 1778, n e ith er wns e nforced until 1786. Cattle roa m ed y Rivera, 1945:3'17). During the second half or the six- wild on the island until the beginnin g of the eight · 10,000 Cue rd as

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39

DISCOVER Y AND INTRODUCTION O F IBERIAN PATTERNS

Millions of Pounds

50

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40 36

32

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COFFEE TOBACCO

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24

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1800

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1900

C!tnrt 6. Co/Jee exports. (Data on coffee for 1828-70 from Col6n, 1930. p. 70; Annual Booh of Statistics, 1945- 46, p. 2:37; Colly Toste (ed.), V, 300; for 1872- 1g47 from Perloff,

1950, p. go. simplified.) Millions of Pounds

60 50

y

- C OFFEE

I

40

eenth century. They were so abundant that in 1640, accord ing to Laet ( 1633 : 138), they were usually killed merel y for their hides, the carcasses being left to dogs a nd birds. The cattle industry in the early period must be viewed as an extractive and wasteful occupation which had neither a dairying nor herding ch aracter. Since it req uired little labor power, it was well su ited to. the insular labor situation al this period. There is evidence th at large numbe rs of lives tock were owned and exploited commercia lly (Van M iddeldyk, 1903:

., ••••

I

I

1850

Chart 5. Production of coffee and tobacco. (Coffee data from 1776- 1899 from Col<'m, pp. 118, 290; C6rdoba, II, 406-07, III. 15; Coll y Toste (eel.), II, 230, V, 2g3; for 19iw- 47 from Perloff, 1950, p. go. Note that Puerto Rico had tre mendously increased her coffee production during the 1870-u period beca use of world market conditions, thus pre-adapting the island for t he change in the market conditions instigated by the United States in 1876.) Tobacco data for 1775- 18g7 from Colly Toste (ed.), II, 230-3 1, V, 293; C6rdoba, 1832, III, 15; Census of 1899, pp. 115, 1117; Col6n, 1930, p. 97.)

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1850

1900

1950

40

THE PEOPLE OF PUERTO RICO

ferences b etween the Indians and Spaniards as well a s the new types o( exploitat io n it was ve1-y diffic ult to LABOR POWER AND transfer Hispanic land-use patte rns LO America. Instead o( ass ig ning individual esta tes to Spanish landSOCIAL STRUCTURE lords who cou ld control the Indians as if th ey "·e r e Span ish peasants, new sys te m s had to b e d ev ised . The The Spanish Empire imposed an exploitative econtwo prin cipal instituti o ns used to procure the labor of omy on the New World, and it depended in the bethe native India ns we re the rc/Jartimiento and th e ginning upon mobilization of the native population encomienda . Both lega ll y imposed o n th e Spaniard the as a labor force . There was comparatively little settleobligation to care for tlt e Indi ans' \\"ci larc, cspc:cially ment b y Spanish families who intended to work their in a spiritual se11 -,c, \\°!til e ccxp loiting their labor. Tlt c own lands, and, because of the strong cultural clifrejJarlimiento ,,·a s a g r;111t ol l11dia1i-; lnr labnr in n :turn for "·hich rh e m,·11 e r \\":1s cx pcnl'd 10 assulllc n.:Percent sponsibility for t lt c 111a1c:rial ,,·el lan: and religio11s inJOO struction o( his \\'ards. T he Sp:111isl1 State and Cllllrclt publicly opposed fore c:d hbor lor tlic I ndi:1ns: tltt're90 fore the harshl y c:om pulsi,-c ;1-,pcns ol the ins titution were developed s ul> rosu in oste nsible oppo:-.i tio11 to 80 formal state con trol s (Ots C1pdcqui. 1 ~JI ' :'.)Ii) . Tlic 70 pressure for more dliciem en tc:rpri,,(·s, h o\\·cn:r, f orccd the Crown to autl10ri1c the distribution of about !).:)<HJ 60 Indians fo r labor in th e per iod between 1 ;,o~) and 1511 (Melgarej o [ 158!!) :77). 50 The second institution, the encomienda, was a grant 40 of the right to extract tribute from certain groups o[ Indians. This institution had its orig ins in Spain, but 30 it developed chara cteristics d istinct ive of the new setting (Ots Capdequi, 1941 : 36; Zavala, 1940: 13-14 ). Usu20 a lly the Indians i ncluded in the grant were grouped 10 into communities under the control of a "ch ief ' and under the "protection" of the encom.endero. The encomienda was expected to serve as a means o[ indoc1950 1800 1850 1900

c:J

'llllll/IA COFFEE

§§suGAR

Percen t TOBACCO

100

IIIIIIIID MINOR (SUBSISTENCE) CROPS Chart 7. Percentage of land devoted to sugar, coffee, tobacco, and minor crops. (Data for 1827, 1862, and 1897 from Cordoba, 1832, III, 463; Abbad y L asierra, 1866, p. 229; Carroll, 1899, p. 119. Data for 1900-1948 from Perloff, 1950. Percentage analysis by Raymond Scheele.)

75

Thousands

50

54

~A.._

48

{

40 32 24 16 8

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i=

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::::; al

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1780

1800

25

1873 1850 Chart 8 . NtLmber of slaves, 1778- 1873. (Data from Coll y Toste (ed.), X l, 146.)

0

1900

1910

1920

1930

1940 1946

~ CANE PRODUCTS

'f!lm COFFEE

c=J TOBACCO

tBI

l ~:;;.:/1:j FRUIT

OTHER . . PRODUCTS

NEEDLEWORK

Chart 9. PrincifHtl e:x·/) 01·/s. (Data from Perloff, 1950, pp. 136-37.)

DISCOVERY AND I NTRODUCTlO N OF IBERIAN PATTER NS

41

for labor in the mines. But the n ative population quickly decreased and many Ind ians no doubt re100 ....._ mained in the mountains where they cou ld not be readily controlled and where the abundance of ''free" la nd permitted them to live in relative plenty on the J 80 yields of their subsistence agriculture. Whi le land remained plentiful in relation to the population, a commercial agricu ltural economy could be based only o n forced labor. Slavery consequently began to gro"· in 60 importance as the demand for sugar stimulated the expansion of cane cultivation. The importance of Negro slaves may be judged from the high prices paid for 40 them in the 152o's (Van i\fiddeldyk, 1903: 207-208), ............. prices which re flect a lso the difficulty th at Pue rto Ri co experienced in o btaining slaves in competition with ~ the richer colo ni es. 20 t--From the very begin ning, control of the slave tra de rested in the hands of the Crown . Licenses were issued to slave trad ing companies. These companies were authorized to introduce a designated number of slaves at a stipula ted price, a certain portion of which was earmarked for the royal exchequer. Several thousand C!tnrt 10. l'crcc11tag1• of total Puerto Rican exports sent to slaves were brought to Puerto Rico by sud1 means, and the U.S .. 18;<>-19.10. (D:lla from Flintcr, 183.i, p. 11 8; Colly addiLional n umbers were u1u·oducecl by settlers who T oste (ed.). J I. !! ~l·I ; Census of 1899, pp. 152-53; !1111111al Boo/, were em powered to bring two slaves each with them to of StntiJtics, 1£J.1<i, p. ·l9·) the island free of impo rt duty. In the sixteenth century, the Puerto Ricans d id not trinating the I ndians into the Catholic church as well associate slavery exclusively with the Negro r ace, but as achieving general cultural change. The c11comc11dero the overwhe lming majority o f slaYes was undoubtedly re paid the gra nt with a pledge to perform military Negro. L ater, imported slaves were all Negroes. During servi ces for th e Stale. The king attempted to temper this early period, little of the slave trade was carried on th e characte r of th e e ncomienda, recommending good by Spaniards, possibly because of religio us sanctions; treatme n t, food, and wages, but he provided no means Portuguese, Englishmen, Germans, and Russians o [ enforcing th ese decrees, which were often disre- brought most o( the slaves to Puerto Rico. i\Ianumission of slaves appears to have been com· ga rded. Th e co lon ists did not always follow orders regarding mo n during this period. First, the irregular character the Indians. l'vforeover, the humane policy had been o ( commercial enterprises meant tha t the m ainte nance thwarted by the Crown's demand that mining be in- o[ a large number o f slaves was a fina ncia l risk and numbers of slaves won creased, which req uired more Indian labor. By 15 16, burden. And, second!",11 la ro-e b the vecin os a nd officials were already protesting to the the ir freedom lhrough military service a nd through Crown that the conditio ns to which the encomienda provis io n in their owners' wills (Abbad y Lasierra, sys te m had reduced the Indians was a threa t to the 1866: 280). The availability of land for squatter farmcolony. E lim ination of the encomienda and a policy of ing enabled these Creed slaves to become independent direct control of the Indians was advocated as a way farmers. Runaway slaves from other islands were also ?f increas ing the native population. The Church was granted sanctuary a nd could frequently exploit the patLern o( squatter fa rming in their sear ch for safety from 111 opposition to the exploitation of the Indians carried ?n by civi l authorities and settlers, although it often prosecution. ig nored infractio ns of the protective rules. In a ny event, it used the encomienda system as a basis for pros~lytizing Indians (Tapia y Rivera, ig,15:217-19). T o enSOCIOCULTURAL GROUPS force the new Jaws in 1542, Charles V asked the Church to h e lp free a ll enslaved Indians, but only a handful The socia l structure of the Puerto Rican population of sl::i,vcs we re liberated. Yet several years later the is- of this period was determined largely by the isolation la nd's governo r reported that a great many Indi an a 1~ cl .the lin~ited commercial importance of th e isla nd slaves we re be ing used in the fields and that Indians w1tlun the (ramework of the Spa nish Emp ire. Many ascontinu ed to be boug ht and sold by vecinos (Brau, pects of this social structure persisted into later periods. 1901:80). As we have seen , these early centuries were ma rked by . Th e re/Jnrti111 ie11io a11d c ncomienda could not pro- the rapid d ecimation and o-ene tic assimila tion o( th e vide a pe n11 :111e11t solu tion to the labor problem. So '.1bo~·ig.ina l pop ula tion, the i~nportation of Negro slaves long :is the I 11clians remained fa irl y numero us, it was 11~ li mned numbers, the maintena nce o[ a militc1ry garpracttca I to draft tltcm by means o f these institutions, riso n and a group o( C11ll rch officials. and the g rowth Percent

v

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42

THE PEOPLE OF P UERTO RICO

of a group of independent farmers mainly engaged in the production of subsistence crops. The social structure of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries appears to have comprised several groups. First, there was a fairly small upper stratum of cattle breeders and sugar farmers who based the ir wealth initiall y on the exploitation of land worked b y native Indians granted to them by the Crown and by African slaves. Second, there was t he Spanish officialdom: civil, military, and ecclesiastical. Members of this group also became landowne rs, as when officials or soldiers settled on the isla nd after their term o( service had expired, or when religious orders undertook ag riculwral production for outside markets. Third, there were isolated, small, indepe ndent subsistence farmers of undetermined number, about whom little is known. Some of these probably owned slaves, but th eir ties to the commercial activity and urban centers of the island are unknown. It is likely that these small independent farmers grew limited amounts of ginger and to bacco. Fourth, there >vas a group of independent laborers who worked as artisans in the towns or on the few hac iendas, and produced handicraft goods. from the early seventeenth century and perhaps much earlier, those in San Juan formed organized guilds or gremios having social, econo mic, and religious obligations, like those o [ medieval Europe (San Juan A ctas, l, Actas Nos. 21 and 192). Fifth, there were the slaves, first Indian, and later predominantly Negro but including a few whites. Finally, a group of landless laborers (oreshadowing th e eighteenth-century agregados may h ave begun to develop during this early period. This last group attained vital econom ic importance only in the nineteenth century, but its beginnings may well date back to the first two centuries of the island's occ upation. The system of statuses and roles of these social groups undoubtedly entailed different subcultures, or Ji(e ways. Part Ill wi ll dea l with the emergence of these subcultures, both in their insular and regional aspects, in greater detail.

GOVERNMENT The administrative system of Puerto Rico during this p eriod was m odeled on the Spanish political pattern. The power to make decisions rested with the Crown, so local efforts to further economic needs of the people of the island were secondary to interests of the empire. In Puerto Rico the governor acted in the name of the Crown a nd symbolized its absolute power. In order to check the governor's power, however, the Church, the Audiencia, and the Council of the Indies were g ive n extraor<linary legal and poli ti ca I power ~ Ban c~·oft, 188;r269). These had the privilege of appeal111g direc tly to the Crown, a privilege which was a lso common among Spanish subjects. Legal theory current at the time foresaw a gradual diminution of the gove rn or's power as the colonies became stable parts of the em 1~ire, but in practice powe r remained strongly centra lized. Governors were subject to removal if their

poli c ies di.'> pl e;1<,c:cl the C111\,·11. ( ",, c1 11• '' , · .1 ppoi 11tments were o f u11dc: ter 111in c:d k 11 g tli: tlit·\ \\l'Jt· 1111:1i>l c lO undertake long- r a 11gc pl:in11i11 g in Ilic inlt'l'l''l of the isla nd, eve n ii tl1 ev .,,> dc:,i1vd: .11111 t ltc' w ere: te mpte d to loo k upon tl;e ir i>""h 'i" IJ'h "' .1 111t'. lll " of a massing qui c k p cr.,011:il \\·c:tl1li. I Iii , .111 i111d c w :1-. rc:in forced bv the la< t that th e: 111utl1v1 1 <11 11111 \' 11.1id littl e aLtention (o eco nomic dc:\·<:lo p1 11<:111 •>I tit<' j,f.1 11d. Th e A11die11 ciu.!> wc:re C:lll JHl\\Tlcd ''' IH-.1r .11lll determine appeals lro 111 th <: g 11\'(:n1111. Iii -. lin11('1J.1 111 , , cHhcr offic iab, and judge., ;1 pJ>oi11t <:cl 11; tl1 (' (.1 •>\\·11. I l1 l' i r d c c isiom co uld be.: ;1J>pe:ilc:cl t<> iii <: ( .111111c ii nl tlw Ind ies or to th e C ro \\'11 ( Ba 11<1 ol 1. 1XX :1::.d i11 ). 111 , f1<11t. 11om in a ll y a court o f ap1>c al . th <: ,-/ 11< / 1,.,u " ' l1111c 1ic111 l'd a s an advi sor y co 111H:il "·itliot1t )' Cl \\' l T I<> l' ltl • >Jcc· i1-. :1clvice, and d eve lope d into ;1 s t1nq11iti<111' i11'<''1i g .1ti11g body. l l.'> admini'> tl':tti vc: ce11t('1 l:i ~ c1111-.idl' tl1c i,1;,nd . and it n ever c;un e to h <.: an i111J>"1t ;1111 Inc :ii ,,, g: 111i 1:1tion. ln co11tra:-. t, a g r <.: at d c: il 111 <.:xcc t11in·. lcg: tl. l11L111 cial , police, military, religiuu-.. ;111cl c u111 1n t· 11 i.tl J><>\'-e_r was loca ted in th e ha11d -, of :1 11otl1 cr i1111 >c·1 i:il <>rg:i111 zatio n, th e Council ol th <.: 111Clic-., 01 g ;111i1c·cl i11 • :->-f:.!. I ts members were appoint c:d l>y tile ki11g :111d c lio:-.cn customaril y from ;1n1<>11g c:xpc:ricnc <'d :1 d111i11i:-.1r:1tors who had dis tinguis h e d d1c:111-.<'lvc' in of11c c· in tile '.'\cw \forld. The Coun c il had p c.: n11a 11 <.:11 t .- ,c-.sion i 11 .\I :id rid , although its s urrogate.: body. tl1t· C:o .\f/ <11· C:u//(1t1/t11 i<in. de te rmine d Spanis h co111111 erci:1I pol ic;· ,,·fi ic Ii. ;1s h:is been shown, a fleete d the: i'>la11d c:c 0110111 ic d<: , ·clnp11 1c11t profoundl y. \ 1

RELIGION i\ e ith cr th e governmenta l p;1t1c111s 1101· th<.: n:tturc of religion in'Pucrto Ri co during th<: lou1· Cl'lllllries or Spanish control can be understood ,,·itl1011t full recognition of the role or the Catholi c: d111rc Ii. 1'11<.:l'lO Rico was colonized by Catholics acting 11ndc:r th e sovereignty of a Catholic power in which the l1lllctio11 of Church a nd State was closely link ed, and it continued to be almost completely Ca~holic until the .-\nlc:1· ican occupa tion sever e d th is link and permitted the entrance of other c reeds. ~ During the sixtee nth and sc:vcntcc11tl1 ccntu1·ies, the Puerto Rican Church was an intc~1- al p:1rt ol the Spanish Church, which has been charactc1·i1ed as ··essentially a national church" (Bren an, 1 !H :~: ~CJ)· It had b e come an instrument of t h e Spa11ish Cn>wn , r ;1 th e r than an independent religious institution under the control of the Roman papacy. The Inquis ition, then at the height of its power, was more ci,· il and political than religious in fu nction, and it was financed by the Crown. ln Puerto Ri co, the: fort11n es of th e ( :hurch waxed and waned with the Crown's interest in, and policies concerning th e island. The power struggle in Puerto Rico b e twcen the Church and State differed from that in .'-ip;1i11 in l\-\'O prin cipal r espects. Finit, s ince colonial oflici;il-. of both 3 Data on I.he: d c:\'c:l opmcnr of 1<-ligio11 i11 1'11<· 110 Rt«• fron1 Cuesta Mc11clo7a. ' !J·tli and '!l·JKa a1>d 11, 111>1.-" <>t lin" j,,. ,,,.., ilicd.

DISCO\'ERY ANO INTRODUCTION OF JBERL-\ N PATTERNS

in~tittttiuns were appointed by lhe Crown, the latter freq 1tc11t1 y m:t 11ipu1:1 tcd them against one another to lunhc:r it~ policies. Second. isolation from Spa in permiucd (On~idcrahlc local rnancu,·eri ng regardless of Crmn1 d e~ in..:~. Ee cksi;1~1ic:tl patronage in Puerto Rico belonged cxcl tt~i,cl y to th e Crmnl. ::-.Jo priest could go lO the lndi<:.~ without exp ress permission of the king. In thcorv. the C:ro,,·n's appoinunents required the approY;il ol the pope. but in practice this ,,·as a mere for111;tlity: the ;1ppoi11tecs depaned for their posts beforc: :q ipro,·;tl had been rccei,·cd from Rome. Thus th<.: p<.:r~o1111 cl ol the Church o\\·ed its appoimmenL~ to the ki11g-. and g:1,·c its loyalty to him. This right of p:1tron:1ge "expLti11s the great loyalty of the Spanish cl e rgy for their Ki11µ;. who was for them the dispenser of all sen1Ltr h e11clits. and the provider of all dignities and it1(<>Jlle·· ( Pf:111dl. 192~r97-98). The king also had the right to open all papal hulls before they ,,·ere published. and th e right to suggest changes in matters that alfcncd th e imcrests of lhc Crmn1 or Spain. Thus, the bishops who ,,·ere sent to the separate bishoprics establish ed in Pueno Rico in 1:1 11 represe!lled in fact lhis unity of Church :111d State. 111 1r;19, the bishop of l'ueno Ri co also became chie f inquisitor. Churchmen lillcd high political posls on lhe island, again validating th e u11itY of ecclesiastical and roya l adm inislration . Th e Crown conlrollcd bod1 the armv and the Church, the t.ml principal Spanish i11sti ll1Lions on the island . Tlt c stress on Puerto Rico as a mililary o ulpost and s uppl y depot r;1tl1er than as an economica lly promising possc:~s ion me:1111 that the army had to be subsidi1cd with fu nds deri\'Cd from o utside the island in orde r to l1111nio11 cffen i,·e ly. This practice of maimaini11g a ga rriso n \\·ith funds and material obtained outside the isl:t nd ,,·as kno\\·11 as the situado. The Church, in co1ll1«1st. could not rely 011 such outside h elp. . \t this time its prin c ipal m ea ns or support was the traditional 1.i t h c payments. which could yie ld comparaliYely li tt le in a posscs~i o11 so und erde\'e loped eco11omica lly. "The l ithe payments yielded . . . not even the tenth pan of " ·h:it h:id been e xpected ." In di.1;,. the Diocesan Synod had to thrc:1te11 e xcommunication for nonpayment of tithes. 111 th e 1lilio's. manioc ''"'s g i\'en as tithes to the Bishop of .'ian .Juan (Ta pi a y Ri,·era, 1~).15: .153) . l\loreovcr, popular pressure forced the first bishop to re1101111ce the coll en ion or corpora l t it hes. or incli viclual labor ~en· i ces ( Pe rea ancl Perea , t!J!.?!):2/-28). For a tirnc:, royal olfa·ers refused 1.0 pa y all tithes, but were Ii na 11 y forced to do so b y a roya 1 order. The exemption o f th e prosperous ])o m i II ica n C s ta I.CS from ti lhe pay1ne 1Jls led to :1 major (Onllict between them and the Episcopate. \\'he 11 Bishop Esca1)uela was ordered to ser\'c i11 P11erto Ri(o, h e se nt a census of Sa n Juan to tl1e ki11g to p ron: t hat the country was 100 poo;. to sustain him . The ki11g took pity on hirn and sent him to .\lcxi co i11~tead. In 1til'il'i, Bishop Padilla wrote about the '"h orror wi th \\·hich :ti! look upo n 1he povcny o f 1hi ~ l;1 11d."' .\ lllllllhC'r of faciors JllT\Tlll ed th(' integration of the hulk nl the ]>('<>pie i1110 the i11st i111tional rrame,1·ork or

43

the Church. The Church itself "·as poor, population was quite dispersed, a nd there were n ever enough priests on the island. :\lost o[ the priests, moreo\'er, " ·ere ill-trained. Early in the eighteenth century Bishop Urliaga wrole to lhe king (not lO the pope!): "Not even a sing le p riest of all the priests who live o n this island has a license to deliver sermons. Those priests neither study no r m end their ways .. . nor d o I have more than two or three whom I can ordain , and these are most short on grammar . . . nor d o I ha,·e a ny replacement in case someon e should die or fall ill." Parishioners were scattered in th e mountainous terrain, and adequate m eans of transportation were lacking. The Church worked in vain tO have the insu lar population concentrated in the towns. In ' 5i3· Fray i\ lanuel i\ Iercaclo found people living " "·itho ut a church, without clergy, without alle ndance :n mass during the ,,·hole ye~1,r, without disp e nsation of the sacram ents of the Church" (Na\'arrete, 1917 : 178-79). The Church stand o n soc ial issues was n ot alwavs dear-cut or consistent. Economi c sell-i1neres t appea;·s lO ha,·e a ffected the IJOsition or the C hurch reo-ardin2" b slavery in a panicularly sign ifica nt manner. For " ·hile the C hurch preached the bro therhood of man , a nd had no place in its philosophical strucwre for the doctrine or inborn human inferio rity, it parti cip:ned in the general subjugatio n and explo ita. lion o f rac ial groups. In 1537, a papal bull condemned the ensl;n·emem or lnclians. and in 17-11 , another bull condemned the Negro sla,·e trade: but th e Dominican falhers owned both l'\egroes and Indians. Cuesta ;\lendoza noted that Negroes were assig ne d lO the construction or the Cathedral and that both Indians a nd Neo·roes we1e ti used to construct the hospita l of San Allonso. He also obsen·ed that Carmelite nuns O\n1ed Negroes ,,·ho worked o n the estate of their !1we11io and that ··Friars and ecclesiast ics both owned at "that time gangs of I\egroes whom they employed in lh e mines, or on their own esta tes, or rented o ut to neig hbors." C hurch efforts lo enforce the papal bulls and royal decrees were frc(iu entlv. Yiti ated b v; the e xio-enci es of b pre\-;1iling economic conditions. Thus, \\·he n Charles \l ruled that lhe C hurch should impleme n t his d ecree liberating all India n sla ves, the bishop and his stall fou nd onl y sixty such I ndian s. Yel six :·ears later, the go\'ernor discovered ''a great numbe r of India ns mixed in with Negro slaves 011 rural esta tes. and these Indians. like the f\egn> slaves were transmitted in sale among the settlers (<•cci11os)" (Brau, 190.1:80). Concerned primarily with impleme ntation or State po licy. the Church became inh crenth unable to d eal effect ively w ith lhe religious n eeds tl~at funnionecl at the lower leve l o f the comm unitv and that of ten assumed \'a ria nl and unorth odox f<~nns . .-\ s co unterpart of th e Sta te, the C hurch operated as a n age nt or social control. Catholic e thics-d ie prescribed IHHnb ol soc i;d and relig ious be ha" in r or the Chu rch - cou Id on h· h e fulf illed by th e individu:d as an ani ,·e 111en1her o l: lhe Chu rch . inasmuch as ~a h·:1tin 11 coul d not h e o;ccu red ()y man·s m1·n effort s. The unity of Church a1HI .\ tatc tl111 ~ prmided sacred ,·alida t ion of sC'c11lar norm,, of so\~

44

THE PEOPLE OF P UERTO RICO

cial behavior. The State itself was regarded as an outgrowth of the family, and thus divine in origin Uones, i911 ). The common ethical ba ns of the Church and State could make for a series of common functions. The Church had always been an hierarchical organization and this was intensified by the need to integrate a large number of Christian communities into a unified structure, and by the necessity to develop specialized personnel for the in terpretation of dogma and for the per formance of economic, administrative, a nd judicial tasks. Codification of belief and specialization of function led to an inflexibility which could n ot adequately contend with the varied pa tterns which folk religion assumes in different cultural situations (\iyach, i944: 1 53)· . The tendency towards decentralization within a centralized structure of beliefs and practices assumed i ts most typical form in the saints and Virgin cults which reached an especially high development _in the Spa in of the late Middle Ages. The Spanish saints cults were typically structured in the organization of the cofradia, societies dedicated to the sponsorship and venera tion of specific saints. (See Pfandl, 1929: i47- 5 i.) In Puerto Rico, the general weakness of the Church in dealing with religious heterodoxy, together with its inadequate personnel and sheer physical inability to reach the people, m ade its religious ministrations rather ineffective. It succeeded in preventing Moors, J ews, Protestants and other non-Catholics from entering the island (Navarrete, 19 17: 184-85; Hostos, 1948b: 73), but it could not insure religious orthodoxy among its parishioners. The people frequently did not attend mass, obtain sacraments, confess, pay tithes, marry in church, or baptize, even under the pain of excommunication (Hostos, i948b:444-47). R eligious h eterodoxy in local belief has probably existed since the sixteenth century. The cult of the saints, b elief in magic, and p erhaps many Indian and African Negro beliefs developed in the context of a nominal Catholic ideology.

PUERTO RICO' S EXTERNAL RELATIONS As we have seen, Puerto Rico in the sixlCe nth a nd seventeenth centuries was la rgely an isolated mi litary strong point a lo ng the lines of empire from Sp:l in to the New v\Torld. Underdeveloped econ omically, and no more than a n eglected ga rrison, th e island was su b · jected to repea ted raid s by th e e nemi es of Spa in whi le receiving little auemion from the metropoli-;. This garrison "·as supported by fund s from mn..,ide. liut mili tary oper:ltions and piracy 011 the p an ol Sp:1i11·-, t'll · emies Often cJc(aYCd Or (rt1~lratcd their art i\·:d. T o maintain ~ 111onopoly ol :\cw \\'orld 1 ra<le :ind perhaps also to protcn h e r e mpire. Sp:1i11 c11: 1< l <'d a number of trade and i111rn ii(r:1 1ion la,,..,. S p :t 11 i a rd-; a nd other Europeans \\'it li speci;tl p e rn1i l-> " ·c· rt.: :tl ln\\Td Lo enter th e Spanish :\m c:r ica n Empire. :\II i11u..: rco u rsc with foreigners withou t expres-> p('r111i ~.., io11 w:1 ... forbidden 011 pc n:tlty of de:1th a nd e<11tfi-.,1:1tio11 o l !>1:openy. T he ban on trade with foreigners wac; pro\'l'itOn ally lifted in 1797 a11d pcrrnancntly removed in 181 :)' During this time, the e ntire ='\ew \\'orld Em pire suffered under the trade monopoly of Sevi ll e, the most popu lous and wealthiest city of Castilla (Haring, 191 8: 7 ff.). Seville's m erchants b ecame rich, but at the expense of the rest of the nation, the empi re a_nd th e r_eople of the New \1Vorld, particu larl y th ose 1n suc h isolated depende n cies as Pu erto Rico. The isl:lnd suffered great poverty and hardship as a co n sequenc~ of Sp:l in's creation of an artifi cially closed and stagn ating sys te m. During the greatest p art of this p eriod Spanish controls were not as effective as la te r o n . I nadequate transportation faci lities a nd lack of communication between the m etropol is a nd the colony at leas t partly explain this condi tion. T h e Catholic c hu rch an d the government in the isla nd tried to enforce. co1_1tro l_s; and once again the inadeq uacy of commun1cat1on m_ th: isla nd, as well as the rela ti vely small number o( md1viduals to enforce the "law" made poss ible the loose a nd ineffective controls of the colony.

3 . Eiod II:

I ncreasing Export Agriculture (Early Eighteenth Century to Early Nineteenth Century) POPULATION Populatio n estimates for the early part of the eighteenth century are incompl ete and probably not fu lly trustworth y, but the population curve at the end of the cemury indicates a rapid demog raphic expansion (Blanco, 19;35:118- 49; Descartes, 19,16:3). If there were only 1 ,000 me n between the ages o( sixteen and seventy in 17 00, as is estimated, the cotal population at that time must have numbered abo ut 5,000. This probably wou ld represent the lowest figure in the island's history. The estimate of 5,611 men capable of bearing arms in 1759 suggests a total island population of not more than 28,000 p ersons. Six years later, the total populatio n is es ti mated at about 44,000 (O'Reilly, 1765). After this time, the popula tion curve rises smoothly. During the twenty-five years between the censuses of 1777 and 1 80~. whi ch are believed to be more rel iable than preceding estimates, the population more than doubled itself. To suppon this growing population we must presume that th ere was a substantial increase in the a rea of cultivated la nd, for there is no evidence that agricultural meth ods were improved, and im portation of food apparently did not increase. The increase is related lo the land reform under lhe governor, Do n Felipe Remires de Estenoz, during the reign of Ferdinand VI, when the /Jatos were abolished and estancias o r small farm s created, and to improved trade following the concessions of Ferdinand to the Compafiia .Barce lo nesa in 1757 (San Jua n Actas, II:1 75- 210) a nd

45

46

THE PEOPLE OF PUERTO RICO

Thousonds of Men

55 E

B

50

45

c

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40

c1 r ·- F . ,' c. c• J

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- - · - • • AGREGADOS

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Chart 1 £. Number of slaves and agregados, 1775-1880. The solid line indicates the increase in sugar fJroductio11, in P?unds produced, for the period indicated. (Data for A from Abbad y Lasierra, i866, pp. 286-87; for n, Brau, 1882, p. 17 ; for c, C6rdoba, 1833, IV, 431; for o, Colly Toste (ed.), IV, 95; for E, Ji~eno Agius, 1885, pp. 27, 35; for F, Turnbull, 1840, p. 556. Figures on the number of agregados are not available for the period after 1837. In that year, the census category "agregado" was dropped, and the term "jornalero," i.e. ·wage e~rner: any person lacking property or profession, was substlluted. Before 1837 the commonest census categories were "slave" and "free." After 1837 the new categories were "owners," "wage earners," and "slaves," an interesting reflection of important social change.)

later to the Compaiiia Guipuzcoana de Caracas in 1770 (Colly Toste, 1914:246). For the years 1777 and 1787 the recorders divided the population by status as well as by race.1 777 3 1,951 (46 % ) q56 (2%) 24,164 (34%) 4,747 (7 % ) 3,343 (5%) 4,249 (6% ) 1

Whites Indians Paulos-free Negroes-free Mulattoes-slave Negroes-slave

1787 46,756 (45% ) 2,302 (2 % ) 34.867 (34%) 7,866 (8% ) 4,657 (41h% ) 6,603 (61h% )

slaves. In both censuses th e slave population was only 1 1 per cent of the total. The majority of Puerto Ricans, therefore, seem to have been free farmers; and as there was little commerce in cash crops, most ol them were probably tillers of small subsistence plots. In contrast to these census figures, however- which class nearly half the population as white-Fray 111 igo Abbad y Lasierra, perhaps relleCLing the outsider's view of Puerto Ricans, wrote: "The major portion of the population of this islar~d are mulattoes, chi ldren of a mixture of white father and Negro mother . . . " (1866:309).

70,210

ECONOMICS . These records suggest th at the bulk of the populat1on- 80 per cent- was free white and free mixed, and that the free Negroes slightly outnumbered the Negro l

Brau, 1904:199. The percentage breakdown is the writers'.

Pardos were all people not classified as Indian, white, or Negro.

COMMERCE

During the eighteenth century, particularly during the latter half, commerce with Spa in and the Spanish West Indies increased. Spanish ports other than Sev ille

L

INCREASING EXPORT AGRICULTURE

\\"Cre opened to Puerto Rico . .-\fter the turn of the nine· tccnth cenwry, Puerto Ri can ports other than San .Juan began to engage in trade. Cadiz was opened first in Spain. because Seville's port had grown so shallow as to interfere with navigation. Soon, ships leaving San Juan sailed to .-\licante, Cartagena, Malaga, Barcelona, Santa nde r, Corui1a, as well as Cadiz and Seville. In 1i:>i· a royal order authorized trade between Puerto Ri co, :\ l aq~ucrctte. and Sa nto Domingo (San Juan .·l <t11s . ll:175 fl.). 111 180.1. by royal order, the "ports of C::ibo Rojo. PrnHc and Fajardo were opened to trade, ;111d t hl' ~a me ordn a hofoh ed the tax on the distilling nl rn m. rellH>\'Cd a II ex port tax from cattle and hides, ;11111 broke the monopoly 011 the sa le of wheat fl our ( Br:1 11. 1~10. 1 : !.!:t;>). There is further evidence that l\foya· g11 l'1 a 11d :\g11:1d i Ila \\'Crc Iikc\\'ise opened to maritime 1r:idc at thi~ ti111c (F<:rrd11tlc1 (;;ircia, 1923:79). In 18 13, :11Tord ing to . \cost a y C:albo. A1iasco, Arecibo, and ( ;11a ya 111;1 \\'('I'(.' added lO the list or opened ports, and t ht' gm-e n1or's J>l'l'lll i~sio11 to load and unload was no lo11gn required (.\hhad y Lasierra, 1866:34{)· These lllCaSUITS quadrupled the \'OIUllle Of import trade, raising it from an average calculated at 117,376 pesos in 1;li5 to .J8.1.G.18 in 181 ,1 (Acosta y Calbo, 1866: 320). During most of the eighteenth century, the policy of the governors had seriously retarded the development o f trade. Fray l iiigo Abbad y Lasierra noted in 1776 ( 18oli::336-37): ":\II is in disorder and chaos, because of the laws o( the governors prohibiting islanders from owning boats to transport their goods to the capital on the pretext that the boats might be used for illegal trade. H owever, this is a farcical attempt to stop illegal trade, since the island has no coast guard a nd foreigners come and go as they please." This bootlegging trade flourished in the Antilles. Prior to the opening of Puerto Rican ports other than San .Juan, fa rmers were virtually forced to sell their crops illegally. To have transported such crops to San Juan via the hazardous overland routes would h ave meant the loss through decay and robbery of most of their produce. Abbad y Lasierra (1866:33i) noted that "this furtive commerce destroyed the trade with Spain a nd does not develop the island .. . . The distance separating the main towns from the single legal port, the poor roads, the lack of bridges and boats for crossing the rivers or using them for transportation, all ca used grea t difficulty in bringing products to port and <:a using higher prices." In the 173o's there were complaints to the government of San Juan about the lack of imported food· stu ffs and other commodities (San Juan Actas, 1:63 ff.). Subsistence production in this period did not provide enough to support the population of the island (I : 1,13), and that scarcity had brought forth very high prices. T he process of opening Puerto Rican ports to world trade and the subsequent stimulus to island agriculture was the product of many {actors operating over a long pe riod of time. At every step the Seville merchants resisted the extension o( trade privileges to others ( Haring, 1918:8). Although begun long before, the

47

final dissolution of the trade monopoly in the first decade of the n ineteenth century appears to have been linked to the political stresses and strains within the framework of the empire. AGRICULTURE

During this period, insular agriculture developed slowly. Until the turn of the nineteenth century, prevailing emphasis was on subsistence agriculture, based on such crops as planta ins, rice, and maize. T he trend toward cash crop farm ing started slowly, first satisfying the needs of the officials a nd the local population residing on the island, and then shif ting toward the production of crops for potential outside markets. In i 736, coffee was introduced into Puerto Rico. An effort to stimulate its production was evidenced by the royal decree issued in 1768, which exempted coffee growers from the payment of taxes for a period of five years. By 1776, coffee had become one of the more important cash crops of the island. At the same time, Fray Inigo Abbad y Lasierra wrote of "cultivation of cane all over the Island," but mentioned that "few make it the principal crop" ( 1866: 309). The relatively slight im· portance o( cash crops in this era is shown in Chart 3. LIVESTOCK

The raising of livestock continued to hold an important position in the island's econom y. Leather a nd salted meat, established early in the island's history as among the few export items, retained their importance in this period. \ Ve have seen that public grazing lands were an insular institution since the start o( colonfaation. However, in 1786, a governmental commission distributed these la nds among private owners, placing the small herd owner at a disadvantage. 1

LAND TENURE AND LAND USE Before the e ighteenth century, all land in Puerto Rico was nominally owned by the Crown. In 1746, the Crown rescinded the rights which it had extended to many individuals to use such land. Those concerned organized against the decree. They first regained some rights in 1759, and finally forced the Crown to grant complete rights of private ownership in land in 1778 (Colly Toste, 1914:27 1-74). At the same time, most of the land of the island remained part of the royal domain, and was given in the form of grants to persons, including foreigners, who found favor with the king (Colly Toste, 19 14:281-82). Apparently changes introduced in land tenure and rights to land use in this period were responses to plans for increasing production. L andless individuals were to be gr~nted unopened and unused land by royal order for improving agriculture (San .Juan Actas, II:_100, 162 ff.). The abol ition of public grazing lands adjacent to San Juan was a device to convert these lands into cropland for coffee, cotton, ginger, and

48

THE PEOPLE OF PUERTO RICO

achiote. A further policy was to give stimulus to raising animals for feed and work, especially cattle (San Juan A etas, 11: 167). The land, however, was not intensively cultivated. In i776, Fray Ifiigo Abbad y Lasierra commented (1866:280), "Looking around on this Island, one is encircled by forests, and a farmer who owns six or eight leagues of land is content to cultivate only enough to support his family, leaving the other land untouched." The availability of land and the relative lack of penetration of institutional controls into the interior of the island permitted a highly dispersed pattern of settlement. LABOR FORCE AND SOCIAL STRUCTURE It is important to analyze with care the role of slave and free labor in the development of the insular economy and the social structure supported by it. Censuses for 1777 and 1787 indicate that almost go per cent of the population in these years was free (Brau, 1904: 199). We have already noted that a class of rural landless laborers (agregados) may have emerged shortly after the period of first colonization. By 1776, Fray Iiiigo Abbad y Lasierra notes that the number of such laborers for that year exceeds the number of slaves. This would indicate that some substantial share of the labor performed in agriculture was contributed not by slaves or subsistence farmers but by dependent laborers of this type. On the other hand, the ready access to land in certain parts of the island permitted a substantial class of small independent farmers to develop during this period. With the growth of commercial agriculture, the slave population of the island began to mount. Their importation into Puerto Rico was still controlled by the Crown, which, however, delegated this authority to the governor in 1755 (San Juan Actas, II: 100 ff.), but Spaniards-perhaps motivated by the decrease in other forms of commerce and the weakened position of the Church-now engaged in the slave trade to a greater extent than in the past. Slaves increased from 5,037 in 1765 to 13,333 in 1800. However, the percentage of slaves in the total population decreased from 11 per cent to 8Yz per cent for the corresponding dates. The introduction of new slave labor was accompanied by the manumission of many slaves already on the island. This continuous process of slave importation and manumission may have been a reflection of the undependable character of commercial agricultural ventures in this period. Large numbers of free Negroes existed on the island b efore land pressure became extreme and could easily become independent small subsistence farmers. During this period, Puerto Rico is reputed to have treated her slaves better than any of the other islands in the Antilles. A liberal legal code issued from Spain governed the treatment of slaves. In Puerto Rico this code seems to have been enforced with some care. The

island's shores were still a refuge for slaves fleeing from neighboring territories. If the refugee slave accepted Catholicism, he was given a small tract of land. Also, towards the end of this period one of the f cw cruel aspects of the legal code was eliminated; for in 1j8.J it was made illegal to brand the slaves (Coll y Toste, 191 4-27:I, 167, n. 1). Racial mixture resulted in various ways. Frequently, a soldier took his Negro or mulatto housekeeper as mistress and had children by her (Tapia y R i\'cra , 1 945:549).

GOVERNMENT From the sixtee nth to the encl of the eighteenth ce ntury, government control of commerce was a1·bitrary in its administration and discouraging in its effects on insular economic development. The king and go\'ernor designated the pons through "·hi ch trade might flow, and prices were set by their delegates. It was not until private property in land was legally established in 1778 that there appeared a class of wealthy farmers who could influence governmental policies. This commercial class began to emerge throughout the empire under circumstances of revolutionary disturbance that led to the independence of many Latin American Republics within a few decades. In 1804. additional ports had been opened to commerce and the heavy tax on the distillation of rum had been eliminated. In 1815, under the influence of the intendente, Don Alejandro Ramirez, the now famous Cedu.la de Gracias was promulgated. The office of intendente had been created in 1811 as a separate office from that of the captain-general, presumably to further the economic development of the island. The Cedula permitted free commerce with the United States and foreign colonies in Spanish bottoms; extended permission to import slaves, machinery, and farm implements; and- most importantly-permitted the immigration of foreign capitalists of Catholic faith and their slaves with all kinds of incentives and encouragements, including generous grants of land. Thus Brau ( 1904: 227) notes the granting of righ ts of residence to 56 individuals and the naturalization of 338 more from Louisiana alone after the enactment of this new legislation. . .. Some few years ago . . . many foreigners from the neighboring colonies, well-i nstructed in sugar cultivation, were induced to settle in the is land . . . . [The] number of sugar estates established within the last twenty years exceeds two hundred . . . [and there are now] upwards of three hundred sugar estates . .. besides . . . upwards of 1300 minor plantations growing only an acre or two of cane . .. [and making] sugar or molasses for the ir own use. (Flinter, 1834: 175).

This rapid development is a reflection of Spain's waning power and her need to inaugurate new policies in the face of threats to her empire.

INCREASING EXPORT AGRICULTURE

RELIGION

49

Spain was reduced to a second-class power b y Napoleon. ·while the attention of the Crown was centered in Europe, the Spanish Empire in the Americas began to break up. Puerto Rico, through remaining loyal to the mother coun try, benefited from Spain's predicament because it was granted much greater economic freedom, which permitted the growth of its export agriculture, and because the loss of most of the other colonies made it relatively more important. Spain's military security demanded the continuance of the situado, and from this single source the island received a total of 2,993,428 pesos between 1766 and 1816. Since much of the money was used to p ay soldiers garrisoned on the island, it represented a heavy contribution to purchasing power. The Mexican money was o nly one of a number of currencies then circulating in the island. But efforts to standardize the medium of exchange during this time were unsuccessful-apparently because of the greater need for maintaining sufficient currency, of whatever kind, in a period of economic expansion.

Between the beginning of the eighteenth and the beginning of the nineteenth century, Church officials wc1·e still appointed by the Crown. However, the Pu erto Rican bishops became subordinate to the inc~·easin~ly influential governors. In 1757, according to \an :'d1ddcldyk ( 1!)03:!!56-57), "the privilege of admi11istning parishes and collecting tithes, which was the pt inti pa 1 sou rec of mo nastic revenues, was canee lied by royal schedule.'' By this time, payments to the Cl11m h \\'en: 1>:trtl\'' drawn from the siluado, the regular < 011tribution sent from ~ rexico to maintain the garri,on 011 the island, and financial control was passing i11to the h::rnds of the governor (Brau, 1!l'.'-1: w:)). 111 rnn:.eq ucnce, Brau stated (1904:229-30), pn ~·~ ts a11d hi ~ hops bei.;an to retain pious legacies for their m1·11 u:.e. and to charge excessively for various !\:tcra111e111al dispensations. In 1797, L edru noted ( 1H1 o: 1:"1!Hio) t h:n "the ecclesiastical estate does not have as many privileges in Puerto Rico as in the metropolis; its urban properties pay the same taxes as SOCIOCULTURAL GROUPS those of every private citizen." In 1774, there were "24 priests in the island's 2 11 parishes" in addition to a number or itinerant priests, a convent of Dominican The sociocultural groupings of this period are charfathers, a convent of Franciscan fathers and another of acterized not by important qualitative differences from ~annelitc nuns. There was also a Dominican hospital those of the preceding period but by shifts in the nu111 the Villa of San German (Jimenez Perez, 1774: ,17). merical importance of the component groups. T he year The lack of insular development up to the start of 1700 seems to have marked the low point in total inthe nineteen th century inhibited the extension of sular population, and by this time, too, the Indians Church influence over the lives of the people a nd led had disappeared as a significant ethnic group. The to the isolation of the rural areas from the religious population was su·atified in three principal divisions. The upper classes consisted of State and Church offilife of the few urban centers (O'Reilly, 1765: 110-11). . Eve n if weakened in its powers, the Church still func- cials, sugar planters, cattlemen, and merchants. These ~1on e d as a juridical power in this period, with author- roles were not sharply differentiated, and an individual might simultaneously be a churchma n, farmer, and tty to enforce Church law and ethical values. merchant. The lower classes consisted of artisans living in the towns and slaves a nd free laborers living on the PUERTO RICO'S EXTERNAL RELATIONS pla ntations. The artisans were now organized into guilds (grem ios), which h ad sufficient importance to "At the close o( the eighteenth century," wrote make recommendations to the government regarding Blanco (1935:52), " Puerto Rico was nothing more than such matters as public works (San Juan Actas, !:32). a mere fortified point and a Cathedral without rents." The slaves and free farm laborers lived in close relaShe had taken her place as a small contributor and tionship to the p lantation owners under a system of purchaser of goods. Jllegal trade with neighboring is- exchanges, perquisites, privileges, and exploitation lands and the U nitcd States had strengthened her ex- whose patterns we have been unable to treat in any ternal relationships and made nations other than Spain sort of detail, but which would unquestionably reward aware of her existence. Later, the economic rela tion- much fuller study and analysis. Finally, there was the ships with these other countries-especially with the class of farmers who lived in comparative isolation and Un.ited States during the nineteenth and twentieth cen- independence, who were subsistence farmers, and who tunes-was to have a decided effect on the character of were not yet concentra ted to any appreciable extent Pueno Rican subcultura l groups. in what can be called communities or villages. This last As the Spanish Empire weakened, more and more group must have included the majority of the populaarmed incursions threatened its perimeter of defense. tion during this period, although during the nineDutch and British ships assailed Puerto Rico, and teenth century it comprised an ever smaller proportion privateers of d ifferent nations raided stores of supplies of the farmers (see Charts 4 and 7 for land devoted to and cargo ships. Du ring the last few decades of this subsistence and cash crops) and became increasingly period, the Spanish power was completely upset, and restricted to the mountainous interior.

4 P .riod III: E

xpanding Export Agriculture

(1815-1898) ln discussing the preced ing periods we have indicated some o( the ways in which the restrictive policies o( the Spanish Crown inhibited the development of Puerto Rican agriculture and commerce during the first three cc nwrics of Spanish domination. And we have tried to show how local land use, settlement patterns, socia l strucwre, politica l behavior, and religious life represent adapta tion and repattern ing of the Spa nish heritage in the local situation. Jn treating the present period a nd the one wh ich fo llows, 1898- 1950, we shall be concerned with changes in those insular and extrainsular factors and forces which, in combination, operated to produce distinctive regional and class differen ces. It was not until early in the nineteenth century that the Crown li fted some of the severe restrictions which had been imposed on Puerto Rico, thus paving the way for rapid growth of the island's commerce and agriculture and for the cultural changes which accompanied these developments. Although we have selected 18 15, the date of the celebrated Cedula de Gracias, as the foca l date for the inception of the profound changes which now began to take place, the break between the past and the newer adaptation is not so sharp as such specificity would make it seem. The land reforms during the reign of Ferdin and V I, 1746-MJ. contributed to a popu lation increase a nd facili tated the settlement o( the interior. After 1765, the n umber o( towns increased, especially between 1765 and 1783 when twelve new towns were establ ished (Ormachea, tS,17 :228). In 1799, the Crown approved the estab lish50

EXPANDl i'\G EXPORT AGRICLi LTURE

me1H of C:ayey. Farjado. Caguas, Aguadilla, Rincon, l\ foc:1. and La Vega or Na ranjal (Coll y Toste, 19q: ~ ,1G ) . T rade restrict io ns had been prov isio nall y lifted

51

a nd immigration. Census materi a l for the nineteenth cen wry, though somewha t contradi ctor y, appare ntly shows the general trends with fair accuracy (Chan 1). Data on the com pos ition o( the popu la tion, however, Ill I j~)j. The r 11lu1r;tl cllcn-; of these trc11ds, however. did not must be handled wiL11 special cautio n. For example, the auain .,i~11ifiralll proponions until after 18 15. The taxes levied on sla \'es p robab ly moti\"<ttecl sla ,·eho lclers Ct'r/11lti <11· <; '"' i11s c\' id c 11c-cd th e waning power of to conceal the real numbers of the ir slal'es. · rhc Lo ta! p o pulali u11 ii. :.a id lo h ave in ci·cascd from Spain, the ··recognit io n o l 11eces!l iLy" LO preserve wha t n : 111 :1i1H"cl nl' I h (• ('lllpin·. But the relaxations o f trade 155,.106 in 1800 to 95 ~3.:.i-1;,s in 1899 . .J :111 er estima ted that lh c raLc o f annua l increase dropped fro m .1.0 1 per cent n·-.. 1ric tic>1 h \1Tl'l' llOl lll:tl'ked ill til e prodtit: tion o[ c a s h in 1i75 LO .87 in 1887, :i(Lcr which it rose LO 1.5 per cen t <mp, until ;il icn1L 1:-\:~o or 1:-\.10 (see Charts 2 to 8) . . \, \\'(' lta1l· ;drl'ad~ noted. the previous period had in 1899. Populatio n g row th during the nineteen th cenh<:cn 111 :11 k"d h~· tlte opcni 11~ of a number of Puerto ltlr)' was mainly a maue1· of natura l increase. T he Ric :111 :ind "'p:i11i ... 1t pon~ 10 trade. This action resulted Ct;d11/a de Crncias o f 18 15. ho,,·e,·er, opened the island 1101 nnh in a r:1 pid growth or commerce but in a con- to immig ra tio n from other Catho lic countries than co mi1:1111 dt'l'C lllj>lllClll or C'O llllllercial and plantation Spa in and [rom other parts of the em p ire. i\Iany roya list re fugees from the Latin r\merica n revolutions ar! arm ing 10 pn1d11cl' the materia ls and the wealth in1·oh·t'd in th(' 11 c \\· trade. The strong regional differ- rived in the island in the early nineteenth cen tury. Th e e1uT, 1\·hic It < lt:iranerin· 11te isl;ind today and which expa nsion of the slal'e trade during this period also efW<:rc :tlrc;1d~ lnrc~hadm\'l' d long before the beginn ing fected population increases. Census da ta indicate an increase during the nin eor tfil' 11illl'lC'l' lllh CCllllll'\', \1·e re brriven the ir rea l itn. .. teemh century of the proportion o f the population pe lll~ as a resu l t or th e re laxati on of the res tncu o ns which had prev iously disco uraged insular commerce classed as white, d espite the r ise in sl;we importa tio ns. The census criteria of "co lored" o r "Negro," hm,·ever, and com mercial ;wriculture <> • To the socioecono mic class differe nces which we have touched upo n in the by no mea ns provide a scientific biological class ificapreceding sect ion were now ad ded and superi mposed tion. These data give about -H per cent white in 1 8~20. differences O\\·i ng to the various regional adaptations about 50 per cent in 18.16. and about G.i per cent in that accompanied the growth o( commercial agricul- 1897. The apparent increase in the proportio n of whites in the populatio n and the concomitant decrease ture an d trad e . On ce th e pons o r the United States and o ther for- in the proportion o f Negroes shows a continuous tren d. eign cm1111ries had been opened to lega l commerce by By 19-.10 the proportion o f the population classed as the c,:<111/a de Gmcias and investments increased , the no n-white dropped to ~3·5 per cent. And the 1950 figeffects were felt throughout insular society and culture : ures report t.he percentage o( non-whites in the P uerto th e pop11latio11 increased sharply; the amount of land Rica n population as 19.7 per cent. Th e principal inunder cultivation in creased , with a g reater proportion terest o( these figures is not in the ir significance conof the land be ing devoted to export crops; the vo lum ~ cerni11g aclllal bio logical groups on tl1e island- for of trade with the United States ca me to surpass that of b io logical proportions and mixtures nre impossibl e to trade with Spain ; some of the \\'ealthy Pucrw Ri~a n s recko n- but is revea ling o f the ,,·ay in wh ich P uerto began to rece ive a college educa tion in the U nited R ico's people ha\'e been cultu rally defined as " l'\egro" States: strong semiments developed for and aga inst the and "white" and even " Indian" during different pekind of democratic ideo logy represented by the Unit:d riods in the isla nd's history. D u ring the second ha)[ o( the nin eteenth century, States: and money, banking, and cred it beca me 1!1creasing ly important in the power structure. Legal Lhc largest numbers of people appear to have been conchanges affecting the labor supply were also intro- centrated primarily in the rural mo untain areas, w ith duced. T h us, slavery was abo lished and vagrancy laws most nf the Negroes Jiving a nd working o n the sugar were rigidl y en fo1·ced by the Gua rdia Ci11il in o rder pla ntations a nd the ca ttle ranches of the coasta l p la ins to augment the labor supply. The changes which oc- and lo\\'lancls. In a pattern "·hich prevails even today, cu rred during the nin eteenth century laid the basis t~1e mounta in dwelle rs did not group the ir houses, but for Lh c t1·ade re lat ions the varied fo rms of investment lived rathe r in a scattered fas hio n on the k.nolls a nd ca pita l, tlt e growth coffee and sugar pl antations slopes o( the countryside. Each farn il y was thus para nd o f toba cco cu lti vation, a nd the rea lig nments in the tiall y isolated from o the rs in the vicinity, partially insular social and power strut:ture which character ize fo rming a soc ia l unit by itseH. Jn 1828. Fl in ter reported the regio nal var ia tions in P uerto Rican culture to be ( 18;1.1:.15) ''only 3, 111 houses and 2,;>92 ca bins in all d eal t with i11 Part II L the to\1·ns o[ the island including the capital: while in the cou ntry there were 13,5.18 houses. and 20,84<i cab ins:· This JKl llCl'tl st ill prevail ed a t the t ime of POPULATION :\meriran occupa tion, al thoug h during the present ce nt11ry communities ha ve increased in si1e . number, a11d During- the nineteenth cen wry, the population o[ econo mic, socia l, :rnd political importance to the in P uerto Rico expanded rapid!~, not o nl y became or in - su la1· structure, as is shown in drtail in tlw scnion on ternal g-rm\'lli but because of the importation or sla\·es Tabara .

c;(

52

THE PEOPLE OF PUERTO RICO

ECONOMICS COMMERCE The nineteenth century is characterized by a sharp increase in commercial activity between the island and the rest of the world. A great deal of trade with foreign nations h ad been ca rried on illegally during the eighteenth century, estima ted at as much as go to 95 per cent of the to tal trade of the island (Colon, i930:84). However, the a mount of legal trade increased threefold in 181 5 (see Chart 2). During the following decades, the island's economy expanded at an unprecedented rate. The dolla r value of goods sold in legal trade increased from S i,382,046 in i 8 15, to S11,099,349 in i 850 and to $25,593,563 in 1883. The year of the highest dollar value o( the trade was i879, with a total of $30,043,034. In the period a fter the opening of trade with foreign lands Puerto Rico's commerce with the United Stales outsc;ipped trade with the mother country. Its principal net trade, however, was with the ·west Indies. The following fig ures are recorded by Fl inter ( 1834: 11 8) and Van :\Iiddeldyk (1903:235) for the year 1830: Country

U nited States Spain England Fran ce W est Indies Ochers

Percentage of Value

I mports 27.2

Exports

12.1

6.8 5.1

2.8

49

53·5

6.7 25.7

1.7

7

2.7

Apparently the United States d id not maintain this high proportion of the total trade, because by 1834 the proportions were (Orrnachea, 1847:234): Country

Spa in U nited States Others

Percentage of Value

Imports

Exports

63

23

24.7 40

14

35.2

In 1897, just before the American occupation, according to the census of i 899, Spain still dom inated Puerto Rican commerce: Country

Sp ain U nited States Others

Percentage of Value

21

Exports 27.7 1 5·3

39

57

i mports 40

But two years la ter in the fisca l year i899- 1900, when the island was under U.S. sovereignty, the United States had assumed undisputed first place in the export and import trade o( th e island. Out o( a total value o( $ 16,602,00,1 in commerce with the out5ide world, trade with the United Sta tes amounted to $ 10,3011,69 1 or 62.1 per cent (A n n u al B ook o f Statistics, ig,16-117). The pro·

portio n of trade with the U nited Stales has i11cre;1sed almost witho ut inte rruption from the beg inning o f th e ce mury to the presenc. During the last thiny years th e United States has monopo lized m o re than !)<> p e r cent o( Pu erto Rico's comm erce, and in the fi scal year 19.16-.17 the fi g ure stood at !J:J.G p er ce nt. The d ecl in e in trade " ·ith the Cnite d States b e twee n the fiscal yea rs 1886-8 7 and 1 , ' !1<i- ~17 co in c id es fairl y we ll with th e pe ri o d n f suga r d cc li11 c a nd nf co fkt·\ Oo rescencc, a11d m ;1y. in p:1rt :it lc;1-.t. Ill· :11u il ntt t'd to the heavy d e111:111d lor the i-..l: 11 HI\ <"Ik e in Ft 11c 11w.111 co untries a11d th t: n.:-.t11L i11g ..,1i :11p i11c 1<.·:1-..c i1 1 til l' 1·:-..prn · talio n o[ tollc<.: tii tl1 e .. i.: 1c>1111t1 ic-. . . \t tl 1c -.. ;1111 t' 1i11 H· :1 sharp dro p i11 Ll1 e \·: tlt1 c of n1111 1c d 11< cd llH· i111pn 1t:1rn c o[ shipme nts of L11 :1l << J11111H>1li1~ to tl1 c l ' 11 i1('(I ~1 : ct n. The United Swt es tariff polic~· p1olilc111 \\· : 1-. :1l -.c1 : 1 1:11 tor in this dt:C'li11 <.:.

LAND USE During th e ni11t:tec11th <<.:nu1ry d1 crc \\T I C \':11 in1 1-. tre nds in land use : ( 1) an increase in land und n c ultivatio n ; (2) a d ecl in e o ( subsiste n ce produ cti o n ; a nd (3) an in crease in cash cro p production. The lo lal land unde r c ulti va tio n, h o weve r, still rem a ined unde r its maximum limits. C hart 7 shows the perce ntages of la nd d evoted to the culti va ti o n of diffe re nt crops o n the island fro m 1800 to 1 ~15 0 . During th e nine teenth century, the propo nio 11 o f land g ive n over lo subsiste nce crops d ec line d steadil y, dropping from a figure of 66.7 pe r cent in 1827 to 30 pe r cent in 1897 (Cordoba, 183 1-33 :1 11, tj63; Carro ll, 1900: 1 1!)). r\t the same time, the amount of land i11 can e rose from i1.5 percent lO 21.7 per cent; and the land devoted to coffee frorn 20.2 per cent to 16.7 per ce nt. T he sh arpest increase in cane prod uction came during the first haH of this period, while the major increase in the acreage devoted to coffee o ccurred afte r th e middle o[ the cenwry. SUGAR

The a ccess to wo rld markets which began in the earl y years of the nineteenth century stimulated the productio n o ( sugar as a cash crop. There was a r a pid g ro wth of th e suga r industry until fairl y la te in the nine tee nth century. No l onl y ha d sugar entrepreneurs fro m Louisia na , Sa nto D o m ingo, and Venezuela (l\11intz, 1953 : 23 1) bee n a ll o wed lo enter the island with machine ry, capital, a nd slaves free of duty, but they had bee n supplied with a mple land from the Crown 's domain. The wo rld marke t situation following the Napoleoni c wars was favo rabl e to agricultural expansion. From 1803, wh en 17 G,3t1 3 po11n<ls of s11gar were produced, production climbed to a peak of abou t 211 1,2!!0,000 pounds in 1879- 80 (ce nsus of 18~)9). A lthoug h st;.itistical material on the la n d devoted to prod 11 nio n of sugar is not nearly so detai led as the da ta o n production figures t hernselvcs. it is appare nt th a t an ex pa nsion o( cane acreage must have a ccom -

EXPAl\Dl:'\G EXPORT AGRIC ULTURE

p;111icd the '>triking rise in tonnage produced. The data :1< n:;1gc "·hich arc a,·ailablc for the period from 1~:w to 10(i:! (,-l 111111nl Uook of Statistics, 193g-.10: I 16) sho\\· a11 cigllllold in crease in slig htly more than forty yea rs. l 11lonunatcly. the acreage figures for the impona 11 t I 1igh prnd un io11 yea rs of 1876-80 arc missing, th cn: lorc thc full expans ion of cane acreage can only be ~unni!>cd . But a-; the acrc:wc \'ield of cane d oes not . :1ppnr t o h :t \T <J1 ;111ged grr;1tly bet\\·cen 1862 and 1897 ( :!. t t -, ;in d :.!.:! J:.! pn111HI' pcr , 11crda . respectively), the l'' "tl11< 1i1>11 ltg111t·, lr11111 that pniod di,·idcd by an :n-ct.tt:<" :!.::no fh>lttlll, pct 1 indicate that expansion l ('.11 ll<"d : tlJclll[ 7.-1.lllHI I /11"/1 { 1/ \. I IH· i'l:11H l 'ug:tr i11du,11' during this century was 111.11 kcd f>, gr:1d11:tl i11q11mt·111t·111s in its technology. \\' IH·11 1lw fir-.t t'lk< ·t.; nl l' 'q>:111ded foreign trade were kit i11 10:.!/'. 11in,· ll'elt' 1.11 7 mi lls "·ith ll'ooclen rollers :11 HI 1::o 111ill, 11·i1h llll't :il rollc1~ opcr;1ting on the isl.1 11<1. I l11n· \t'. tl' l:11<"r th<" 1111111ber of mills wid1 ,,·1111d<"11 111lk1, h ;1d dn tt'.1't'll t<> 1.:!//· \\'hile che numIH"r nl 1nill, \,·it11 mt·t;tl rolkr' had ri!>en to 275 (Cordl)b:1 . 10:1 1- :1:>: 11 . .p>li, .1(iJ)· Throughouc the century, ho\\'C\"Cr, production m ethods in sugar remained highly v;1rialilc. o:x-po\\'Cred , watcr-po" ·ered and s team-powe r e d , metal-roller mills ga ining a s lo\\' ascendancy. The stcalll-powcrcd 111c tal rolle r mills o utnumbered both oth er types by the middl e of the ce ntury. ':\ !"rec tra nsla ti o n or a d escri pl ion of the three types o( 1111lls, or trn/)iclu·s. used in the 184o's makes clear the more efficient. character of the steam-power mill. <>11

~

,,,.,i1"

Th ne are three kinds of ~ u gar mills or "trapichcs" used in the i~l:tml for the :'")urindirw of cane stwar: ~fills run b)' b ox~·11. \\'hi< h in the g-ri11ding" and 1llanufac1uring process oc< 11py 1he work of 2 1 nq,:mcs ancl from .JO to 50 yokes of oxt·n; ·I neg-ro<.:s with as 111a11v ox carts to carry the cane to lhl' mi.ll yard, ;111oth1.:r 2 n q{r~>t'S to bring the ca ne up from th ~ n~1ll yard to the 111ill itself. 1 to put it in between the g nnd111g- roller$, 2 to carry the bagasse to the shed, 1 to h:t11dk the manufacture of sugar in the open pan, 3 LO ca.rry the fuel to the premises. :l to fiIJ up the hogsheads w11h sugar. and 2 hoys to coax the oxen LO move; all of thl'!>t'. besides the 11u111lwr of persons engaged in actual culti1~~ of sugar cane ancl i11 charge of the animals. I he hydraulic mills which arc fewer in number need for lhl' same number of operations from 25 to 30 teams of oxen and :l7 ncgrocs, besides those in charge of the animals :rnd th<· up keep of the cli1chcs :llld ponds. Those mills moved by steam of "·hid1 the re a rc a bigger number employ the sa me number of animals and negrocs as the hydraulic mills and also need an additional 11umb<.:r of m<.:n for the cutting or \\'OOd and fue( and for brincritl<Y it d0\\'11 lO the miJf. h b 1 ·1ic daily grinding of a mill operated by oxen amounts to 1080 <wt. of (ane "·hich rcprcs<.:nts an output or 36 qq. of sugar ,,·hi< h is the work of the gang from before sunrise to aft('r sunset. Rough ly, you gel 1oo pounds of sugar out of 30 t wts. of ca ne and the re fore it is neccssarr to run the mill slcadi ly for ·I months i11 <>rder to obtain 31io hogsheads ''"l· ighing 12 cwts. cat h. The amount o[ cane milled by the h ydra 11lit 111ill amounts to 2[120 n\'ls. per day, producing 8.1 qq. of sugar whitl1 is the averag<.: obtained from a battery or pan~ of a n ox-drawn 111ill; lhereforc it can manufacture the.: :1fio ho~s lH"acls in 5 1 clays. Lastly, the results obta ined fro1n a mill using s1ca111 arc <l<-cickdly more satisfactory be<a11 ~t· the grinding season is not as long. and the extraction ~

53

of the cane juice bcuer. although the working expenses are greater. In a study of this nature, it is impossible to ignore losses due to. disease and sickness suffered durina lhc 0!!rind. b mg ~Cason Dy the sla\'CS and animals, the expenses of the feedi ng of labor and beasts and lastly, the amount o[ land n<:~er~ed to pro\'ide slaYcs with small plantings and the cxtcns1,·e pasture ncedctl for liYcstock (Ormachea, 184j: 25253).

In spite of the greater efficiency o( the sle:un-dri,·en mills, records o( the R eal Sociedad Eco116111ica de Amigos de/ Pais ( 184 0: 17.1) indicate that, as late as 1840, steam was still not being exploited fully for pO\\'CI".

In 18.18, according to Deerr (1943), forty-eight steam mills "·ere in use o n the island. However, "·e do not know to " ·hat ex te nt steam was being used in each of these mills or how effic ient they were. Other innovations such as the ,·acm1m-pa n sugar e\'a porators perfected in Louis i:rna in 1830 still had n ot been fully accepted in Pueno Rico by 1852. On the whole, it appears that the indus try had such a favorable market that it did not ha\'e to keep pace with the latest technological developme nts. \\"hile the increasing amoum of land devoted to the culti\'ation of sugar reflects this crop's growing importance in the nineteenth century, the relativel y low producti,·ity per cuerda o[ land suggests the extens ive a nd wastefu l charac ter o( agriculwral practice at the time. 1 Other production difficulties included the lack of easy credit-especially to mall growers- once the initial stimulus to production had ended. In 18..i7, Ormachea noted: "The state in which the majority of stwar producers [of the is land] find themselves is indeed s~d; burd.ened b y the i~11possibility of increasing their product1on because o( the absence of credit, they are oppressed ~y. the co~ui~1ual cost involved in sustaining and. repamng the11· farms" (Mille r , 1939 :333). Eig h t years lat.e r, Vit"ias described the condition of the sugar farmers in the following words: "![ the creditors demanded payment o[ all their loans today, you could be certain that the sugar indusu·y \\"Ou ld declare itself bankrupt" (l\ Iiller. 1939:333). This apparent contradiction can be expla ined by the fact that the interest rates demanded by the lenders \\"ere so high that the farmer frequently did not dare to expose himself to the risk of losing his farm b y overinvesting and by a n inability to m eet payments. For the majority of growers, then, cred it may have been only technically ava ilable. And others, particularly the large growers who borrowed so they could expand their operations, faced the continuous threat o[ foreclosure i [ they could not meet their obligations. Flinter observed ( 183.1: 16) that cred it was difficult to come by in P ueno R ico in the 183o's because " . .. men of large capital seldom emigrate to distant countries, and conseq u e ndy the rate o( interest for m o n ey must be high." D escribing the effect of the scarcity of c redit on the sugar producers h e says (1834: 1 Fray 11iigo :\hhacl y 1.asic rra. 1866: '.loH- 12 . and :\ros1a':; mm· mcnts. pp. 315- 33. C<'>rdo ba. 183 1-33 : Jll. .Jli3: 11. 406, 407; \', 40.J. Carroll, 1900: 119. A111111al Bonk of S1t11i~tirs. t !l.1."•- ·tli::!37.

54

THE PEOPLE OF PUERTO RICO

182): "Their property is thus often placed at the mercy of the merchant, who, if he lend money, exacts for it four, and sometimes ten per cent per month,-besides charging at the same time a high commission for the produce consigned to him . . . the six per cent [interest] law . . . is easily evaded." Nevertheless, the over-all trend from 1815 until the tum of the century was <>ne of increasing centralization of grinding facilities and increasing concentration of land holdings. In the forty years between 1 830 and 1870 the number of mills dropped from 1,552 to 553. 2 This decrease was accompanied by a very substantial rise in the total amount of sugar produced. The average production per mill rose with the improvements in technology and the accompanying increase in the average size of sugar estates. The 187o's witnessed the first effort to organize (factory) centrales, large-scale mills which often also grind cane for numbers of small growers who are bound to them by contract. The development of a kind of productive enterprise in sugar whereby a single central might grind the cane for scores of owners was to have a revolutionary effect on the industry and on the ways of life of the population. It required a scale of capitalization previously unknown in the industry in Puerto Rico, and its efficiency led inevitably to the elimination of many of the smallscale producers. In the latter part of the nineteenth century, this major industry allowing much variation in the scale and techniques of production changed to one in which only one kind of machinery and one level of capital investment could be profitable and efficient. The working out of this trend was not completed until long after the American occupation. But basic changes in this direction had begun before the turn of the century. Davis stated (1900:37-38):

the Civil \Var, the sugar industry came to be tied to the United States through its market anangements. In 1897, when Spain bought but 31 per cent of the total sugar crop of Puerto Rico, and other cou ntries a total of 8 per cen t, the United States took the remaining ()1 per cent (Davis, 1900:305). Thus it appears that the American occupation , in this respect at least, represented a continuation and intensification of trends in evidence before the change in sovere ignty. The cu ltural effects of revolutionary changes in the scale of the industry, land tenure, em ploymerll praniccs, absentee ownership and the like \\·ere lon:~liado\\·cd i11 the pre-American period, but did not bc:co111 c established until after the American occupation. :\ f t<.:r 1 !J<><>. the absolute assurance of an adequate market. a surplus supply of labor, and favorable credit conditions for American investors led to an unpreced e nted expan sion of the industry. COFFEE

Coffee remained a secondary commercial cro p until the last quarter of the nineteenth century, when its export value became three times that o[ sugar and the land devoted to it more than twice that in sugar cane (Dinwiddie, 1899a: 101). We noted earlier that in 1768 the CrO\vn sought to stimulate coffee cultivation by exempting growers from the payment of taxes. Yet this dispensation cou ld not overcome the barriers of limited credit, unreliable markets, and the heavy e xpenses involved in launching a large-scale coffee farm. In coffee, as in sugar, the early productive arrangements by which the crop might be grown, processed, and marketed were highly variable. Machinery and production by slaves on largescale coffee fa rms had· been introduced sometime between 1776, when Fray Hiigo had noted their absence, The small proprietors are disappearing, for the capitalist and 1832, ·w hen Flinter reported on conditions in the so manages his business in Puerto Rico . . . [as] to force the small proprietors to sell their holdings. The tendency island. But at this point in the development of the inin the sugar business as in all others requiring large aggre- dustry large-scale production proved unprofitable in gations of capital, is to combine or consolidate. While the view of highly unstable markecs. Slaves had to be fed population is steadily increasing, the number of small pro- and machinery cared for under condi tions of limited prietors is steadily decreasing. and flu ctuating credit, just as if production were at a Sugar can be most profitably produced only by means of profitable maximum. Thus Fl inter ( 1834: 185) remarks large central establishments. The larger and more perfect on the state of neglect which characterized the 148 the plant and the greater the acreage tributary to it the betlarge coffee estates worked with slaves, noting that ter the profits.. .. The tendency is for the great manufacroughly five times as much coffee was produced by turer to secure control of adjacent cane lands within a fami lv labor on small farms as on large estates in that radius of several miles, either by purchase or lease. period. This was at a time when sugar haciendas were Small-scale hacienda operators made repeated at- using large numbers of slaves, and the sugar industry tempts to create factory central systems for themselves. was growing. Flinter states ( 1834: 178) that most of the Most of these attempts inevitably ended in failure be- small farms grew coffee merely as one crop in a "procause of the inability of small-scale producers to organ- miscuous intermixture of fields of sugar-cane, coffee, ize the capital or credit requisite for such a change maize, rice, plantains, tobacco and pasture." He de(see Chapter 8). A few large h~cienda owners, however, scribed the production of coffee as a gamble ( 18g4: were able to consolidate family wealth for investment 185) : "None of the productions of the tropics has unin centrales. dergone greater vicissitudes in price than coffee: .. ,; During the nineteenth century, and especially after Three dollars to twenty-five dollars a hundredweight. M. Badrena, writing a brief history of coffee production for the military census of 1899 ( 1900: Census of 2 C6rdoba, 1831-33: II, 406-63; Van Middeldyk, i903:229, says Porto Rico, p. 125), reports th at "up to the year 1876, that 325 mills have been able to conrinue working.

EXPANDING EXPORT AGRICULTURE

planters ha d no inducement to extend the cultivation; a nd lh e augm entation in the crops came only from n atural development, and some work done indiffere ntl y. Coffee was then considered of little consequence in l11 e future of Puerto Rico." Suddenly the e xport market for the crop became stabilized, and the produc tion of coffee entered the p eriod of its greatest development and prosperity. In 1H71i. the U nited Sta tes opened its market to free coflr e. Br;11il. with its cheaper coffee, was able success1ully to shift its sales from the European market to the largl' 111:1rkct of the llnitecl States. Puerto Rico, in 111rn. w:1 s ahk to take adva11t:-1ge of the now unsatisfied l·:urope;111 de111:111d lor the produce. \\' ith th e i111prm·c111c11t in market conditions wh ich had lwg1111 after the middle o( the nineteenth century, b rgc·sca le prnd union o n the h:-tciendas received a new ;111d \·igorous impulse. The acreage devoted to ('(>Ike 11carh· doubled between 18'.!7 and 186'.!, and the 1Hli:.? prod union was nearly ()Uadrupled in the thirtyli\-c·ycar period lhat followed (see Charts ,l and 5; also Chapter Ii) . :\ s rnllec cu lti\'alion expanded to fill the n eeds o( a growi ng market, large-scale production becam e increasingly profit able. That the expenses involved in o rganiz ing a one-hundred-acre coffee farm in the year 1899 were considerable can be seen from the costs computed by Dinwiddie (1899a:88). H e calcul ates that ~23,!iOO would be needed to set up such an cn lerprise, with more than one-third of this going for p rocessing machinery. It is apparent that the expencliLUres in volved, pl us the necessity for waiting four or more yea rs for any substantial return on the investment, make this kind of coffee production an enterprise requiring substa ntial capital outlay. As in the sugar industry, the large sums of credit needed to establish such a farm in coffee meant that many producers would be cut off from credit altogether, while others might become dependent o n the so urce o( loans. The central figure in this system of "advances" was the cred itor merchant, usually a Peninsular Span iard, who operated his business in the towns of the rural area. H e granted credit in goods, ch arged interest for the loan, and m arketed the crop g iven to him in payment for the credit extended. Thus he skimmed off profits at three points in the chain of productive operations. T he total effect of this type of arrangement was to make the planter and his rural e nterprise tribULary to the creditor merchant in town (sec Chapter 8). The rise of large-scale coffee farms did not bring with it the progressive elimination of the small fa rms producing coifee, since lhe small farmer working with fam ily labor could ca rry o n all the necessary steps in production on his own . This contrasts sharply with the situation in the sugar industry where rapid technological advances soon took mechanical processing o ut of the hands of the small cane fa rmer. In further contrast to the sugar industry, the large-scale farms in coffee no longer made use of slave labor but employed a class of la ndless resident la borers (agregados) tied to the farm by perquisites.

55

The island's coffee indusu·y continued to hold its own in the world market until the American occupation forced Puerto Rico to comply with Am erican tariffs (1901-1902) and coastwise shipping laws. These events re-established sugar cultivation as the principal industry of the island, undercutting the bases on which the coffee industry had been founded. TOBACCO

Throughout the entire period of Spanish occupation, tobacco producers received less assistance, direct and indirect, than the coffee and cane farmers. The only kind of official decrees affecting tobacco of which we have record are those which impeded, inhibited, or proscribed its cultivation; none offered assistance or incentive to its production except by lifting earlier proscriptions. Yet, tobacco, from the middle of the seventeenth century, h as constituted an impor ta nt part of the island's export economy. The expansion of sugar and coffee production required assistance in the form of credit o r special tax arrangements. But because tobacco could be grown in rotation with subsistence crops it required no such protection. Essentially it becam e a poor ma n's cash crop. The expansion of tobacco cultiva tion during the 250 years after 1634 had been regular but quite unspectacular. It is not until the i87o's that production figures show a really significant increase. In i 770, the production of tobacco was estimated at around 2,000,000 pounds. N inety years later, in 1860, it h ad increased less than a fourth, to around 2,500,000 pounds (Charts 5, 6). It may be said that the cultivation of tobacco prior to the year 1870 was limited in some pans of the island to small plantings and for domestic consumption in cigarettes, cigars, and fin e cut tobacco. . . . [In 1870) exportation to C~ba commenced, and tobacco growing received a great sumulus to development (1900: Census of Porto Rico, p. 141). By the year 1880, tobacco productio n under Spanish rule h ad reached a peak of around 12,000,000 pounds. It then dropped slowly in the next seventeen years, so the figure for 1897 was only 6,200,000 pounds, but still higher than a ny fig ure pr ior to i 870. The American occupation helped stabilize the industry a t a substantial but restricted level of production, permitting the developmen t of a stable cultural-ecological adaptation built around tobacco cultivation on small farms. COTTON

Although subject to considerable fluctuat ions, cotton was an important export crop in the first h alf of the nineteen th century. For a time during this period it was the island 's third most importa nt export crop (Colly Toste, i 91 ,1:255). From i814, when Spain levied an import tax on cotton from the newly independent republics of Venezuela and Colombia, until i8 4o, the island's productio n of cotton increased steadily. In 1836, over 5,000,000 pounds were exported. In 13 3 3

56

THE PEOPLE OF PUERTO RICO

During the nineteenth century, the keeping o( livestock as a form of commercial enterprise was carried on mainly by large landowners. In 1832, Flinter noted ( 1834: 167) that several owners possessed more than one thousand head of caulc. At the end of the century, some of the richest men in the island were cattle breeders, owning immense herds and extensive lands. However, this wealth benefited only a very small segment o( the population. Since [ew people were employed in cattle raising, little money was paid out in wages. Cattle were exported, the value o( this commodity ranking only slightly behind that of tobacco exports at the end o( the century.

the stimulus to expandi ng commercial and agricuf. tural activity th at would have been provided by a stable currency was absent under Spa nish rule. 111 the early part of the nineteenth century, Ven e1.L1e lan. Mexican, and locally coined money coex isted, and commerce suffered lrom their constantly changing values. I n one instance, when the Spanish government had sudd enly introduced a ne"· currency, there were riots in the streets ( U.S. :\ational Archives, Letters b, c, d). The main so urces of c:rc.:d it during Ll1i., « :11wry \\-ere.: private capitalists. Flint<.:r re pons ( 18:).J: 1:O 011 th<.: activities of the im111igTa11ts of the 1 8:!tt"~: "'Sorn<.: of them founded estates: others lormcd :.111:t!l < ommcrcial establishments; and others lent 011L dt c.:ir money on interest to th e planters . .-\11 fell die 11ecc.:ss iL y of active and parsi111011ious indusLry ."' \Ve have noted the CXLClll to which Lil <.: sl1g:lr in dustry, as well as L11e colfc:c industry . d e p c.: nded 011 private lending opc:raLion!>. Carroll :.Late:. ( 1~11><1: 1.1 ;~) that cred itor men hant:. bu1To\\·cd ntc11H.: y at ·f per ce nt a year in European commercial ce nter:., purchased goods, sold these "on long terms, and charged . . . at least ten per cent a month on the invoi ce va lue . . . . The results o( this system have been that at least one quarter of the small proprietors in the is land, buying in that way, in the period of fiv e years have all lost their estates, the estates going into the h ands of the Spanish merchants, who commenced selling goods on cred it, \\"ithout any ca pital to speak of, who after five or ten years have become worth S 20,ooo and even S50,ooo." He also says ( 1900: 15 1) that the decline of the sugar indu stry in the last ten years of Spanish rule gave evid ence of the extent to which the moneylenders controlled the lives of th e d e btor-producers: " . . . \V ith the downfall o( the sugar industry . . . on the ruins of agriculture there has arisen a flouri shing community of merchams, which not only dominates the farmers, but is slowly absorbing their land. These merchants are nearly a ll Peninsular S pania rds." The chief reason for the ten-year ruin o( the planters, accord ing to this same a uthor ( 1900:74), had been the "high interest on borrowed money." vVith the ch ange in sovereignty, corporations provided large new credit sources for insular agricu ltural expansion. Th is n e w flow of credit, however, favored sugar production over other fields o[ potential investment, and insured the dependent character of insu lar economic development \Vith its tics to outside sources of credit.

MONEY AND CRED IT

LAND TENU RE

At no time in the history of the island have there been adequate cred it facilities. We have seen that the island's agricultural development was facilitated by royal grants or dispe nsations, the immigration of entrepreneurs with their own capital, or the borrowing o[ capital from sources outside the island. Even

In 1899, there were 39,02 1 farms on the island. Ninety-three per cent of these, or 36,372, were owneroperated. \l\Thilc these fi g ures give the aggregate number of enterprises in agr iculture, they indi cate neither the spread of ownership nor the relationship of independent farming LO particular crops. C erta inly many

and 1839 the export total exceeded 1,000,000 pounds. But during other years in this period its export varied between 42,25 1 pounds and 982, 1oo, with an annual average of something between 200,000 and 300,000 pounds. With the exception of a brief period of revival during the Civil War in the United States, the decline begun in 18,10 has continued more or less steadily until the present time. MINOR CROPS

vVe have few reliable sLatiscics on the production of minor crops for this period, but it seems probable that at least during the first few decades of the century, Puerto Rico was still self-sufficient in fooclswffs. Since even today farmers grow a nd consume considerable unrecorded quantities of food, it is possible that Puerto Rico wa5 still producing the major part of the food it consumed as late as the end of the nineteenth century. The basic subsistence crops were plantains, rice, root crops, and maize. l\fore land was g iven over to the cultivation of plantains than to that of any other crop, while rice and corn ranked third and fourth in importance. As cash crop production increased, the proportion of subsistence crops fell re lative to the cotal acreage under cultivation. This occurred despite the fact that former! y home-consumed subsistence crops themselves became an increasingly important commodity in intra-insular commerce . .At the same time, the money gained from the sale o( the cash crops and the subsistence-turned-cash crops enabled the island to import more of its food . This relationship resulted in an ascending spiral of increased major cash crop production, accompanied by increased dependence on imported foodstulTs. LIVESTOCK

EXPAND IKC EXPORT AGRICULTURE

farmers-large and sma ll alike-were landowners in a lcchnical sense o nl y, ow ing to lhe credit arra nge111cnts which bound lhem. The followi ng are the 1899 census fi gures (pp. 35.1-55) on lhe numbers of farms, grouped according to size. Si:.c of F11r111 i11 C11rrdas

S11111b l'r of Farms

o- .1

22 <l 2 i

Total Number of Cucrdas Cullivatccl 50.!!j.l .18,875 58,760

.-1 - !I

7..117

I 0 - 1 !I

·I ·50:1

:w- I!I

:! .929

8~3'783

!)!JI 8:.; 1

Ci.1,9.1 !!

.-1< Hi!I ion :111d 111nn·

171,392

\lore lhan half of the farmers owned farms o( less tl1:1 11 lour r11rrd11s . while seven-eicrlnhs of Lhe farmers 0 had k~s 11!:111 l\\"C llL\'. n11·1·<111s. llsinothe above statistics b - \,·ltid1 ;ire the only o nes a\·ailablc-il ma y be shown 1l1:1t .0:.::1 per ccn1 of lhc farm-owning population own ed more than :\5 per cent of the cul ti\·ated land, while O\"(T :)Ii per Cl'lll Of the farmers controlled only 1o ~1:.: per cent ol the cullivated area. \\Thile these fi gures g iYe a rough picture of the dislribution of land among farmers, they tell us nothing of the number of landless agricultural workers. As early as 183;>, over •JO,ooo resident land less laborers (ag regados) lived and worked in Puerto Rico (Turnbull, 18.10:555). Since the area under cultivalion had :x pa11dccl and population had grown substantially I rom that dale, lhe landless population on the island al the time o[ American occupalion must have been very considerable. Census data since the occupation do not dislinguish between the various categories oE such landless "·orkcrs, lhus completely bypassing the Cll lLUra( implications of these distincliOnS.

LABOR FORCE Slave labor never assumed lhe importance in P uerto Rico which it had in the British and French possessions or the \Vest Indies. From the time of their earliest introduction until the emancipation of 1873, lhe munber of slave laborers was always smaller than lhe numb~r o( free workers. The peak year for slaves in the n1netee11lh cemu ry was 18.16, when there were 51,265 slave~ out of a loLal population of ,143,139. That same year the number o f free "colored" people was 175,791, more lhan three and a haH times the number of the slave "colored" population (Abbad y Lasierra, !8GG:302). Thus its appears lhat the number of slaves mcreased so long as slavery ,,·as economically adva11tageous to the sugar grower. ?\ Jost of the slave Jabo r is reported to have been ronc.:emrated in the coaslal areas, particularly on the alluvial plains, cem er of the nineteenth-century sugar industry. Some slave labor is reported (or the coffee planlalions in the mountain region during lh e first half of the nineteenlh century. Flinter stales ( 183.r 185) that. "q8 coffee estates . . . [are) in some measure ndt1vated by slaves."

57

The majority of the population was engaged in agriculture of some kind throughout this period. A partial census of nonagricultural employment for the year 1824, when the total population of the island was close to 300,000, gives some idea of the extent to which farming dominated insular economic activity. In that year there were but 3·1- teachers, 53 physicians and surgeons, 3, 170 artisans, 733 business men (large stores and wholesale establishments), ·H6 owners of drygoods stores, and ·H3 owners of grocery stores (Cordoba, 1831-33: VI, 435- 46). By 1860, when the population had r isen to 583,308, the occupational census still sho"·ed an overwhelming concentration of labor in agriculture. Only slightly more than 3 per cent of the total population were engaged in pursuits other than agriculture, and of this number (17,90.}) more than half were in the military (Rodriguez, 1930). \Ve have noted that the need for labor in agricultural enterprises grew steadily from the time of the promulgation of the Cedu/a de Grncias ( 1815), as the economy was expanding. Yet, as early as 1817, Spain had reached an accord with Great Britain outlawing the slave trade. Great Britain had already effected the transition from slave to free labor in the Caribbean, but did nol abolish slavery until 1833. And now she soug ht to discourage 1.he competition that would be offered by the Spanish colonial sugar producers who were still able lo make use of slave labor. Ineffective at first, the treaty of 1817 was renewed in 1835 (see i\l intz, 1951b and \\Tilliams, 1951:22-45). In its r evised form, th e agreement imposed new difficulties on Puerto Rico· agricultural entrepreneurs who at this time were (aced with the problem of finding an adequate labor supply for the island's agricultural activities. These entrepreneurs augmented their labor supply by compelling loca l free laborers to work for them. These laborers were vulnerable to coercion through labor laws, because, having no land, they had to work to buy commodities. Even at the height of the slavery period, the bulk of agricultural labor had been suppl ied by farm families, by landless resident workers (agregados), or by free migratory workers. In 18,19. the captain-general of the island promulgated a law which had the e[ect of binding migratory free labor to the land, thus stabilizing the labor supply. This law required every worker "who, because of lack of capital or incluslry" had to sell his labor power for cash to carry a work book (P ezuela, 1849: 217-19). The work b ook was issued by a loca l magistrale. conrnuung besides the usual data for iclentification, the name of his employer and theronditions under which he was employed. Any laborer found " ·itho ut a librela [work book] was subject to arrest and punishment as a vagrant. In a word, for several decades . .. u11emplo yme11t was nominally an offense against I he law . . . rrestricting] lhe bargaining power of country laborers. [gi,·ing] them a special and inferior status, and [encouraging] a form o[ peonage. (Clark, 1939:545; Brau,

1882:53-64.)

58

THE PEOPLE OF PUERTO RICO

With the expansion of the sugar industry after 1815, slavery had come to be an important source of commercial labor power. The policy of manumission which had developed during the earlier more subsistence.centered periods of the island's agricultural growth had created a large group of free Negroes. Thus, when the island entered upon its period of rapidly increasing agricultural production, it could draw upon a · labor force composed of large numbers of Negro slaves, of Negro freemen and of free white laborers. Although it is probably true-as suggested by a number of historians such as Flinter ( 1834) and Tannenbaum (1946)-that Spain's treatment of slaves in her colonies was far more liberal than that of other nations, it should be remembered that slavery itself continued in force in Puerto Rico and Cuba long after it had been abolished in other colonial areas. Owing to specific features in the historical development of the island, Negroes had in large measure been thrown into equal and reciprocal i:elationships with their white neighbors. Thus, we find the almost unparalleled picture of free Negroes and free whites working side by side at the same labor with slaves. Negro artisans came to be members of the small but important artisan group on the island. Nevertheless, full participation of the Negro people in island life was inhibited by the very character of colonial rule. Negroes were denied access to many posts in government through restrictive laws, and the Church barred Negroes from the priesthood (Carroll, 1900:655-56). In 1848, the Black Code of General Prim was promulgated to discourage slave revolts, such as the slave insurrection which had taken place in the north coast town of Vega Baja in the previous year. This law apparently sought to divide the Negro population of the island and to discourage the feeling of commonality of free and slave Negroes. Thus we find the code stipulating that a slave bearing a rms is subject to the death penalty, while a free Negro bearing arms is subject only to maiming (Gontan, 1945: ig-22). Free Negroes played an important role in the growing abolitionist movement, as well as in the rise of a common Puerto Rican national consciousness. There was considerable strife between the army and the free Negro population of San Juan in 1871 (U.S. Nation al Archives, letter a), and it is known that free Negro~c; figured prominently in the anti-Spanish separatist movement and what was later to become the Republican party. From about i 850 on, the sentiment in favor of abolition grew rapidly. In i863, the Spanish Abolition Society was founded and opened an office in Puerto Rico. In 1868, a law freeing the children o( slaves born after the date of enactment was passed. And in i873, slavery was finally abolished. 3 Active in the abolitionist movement were a number of large planters who apparently realized that slavery had outlived its a See Tom;is Blanco (1942a:23), for a discussion of the antislavery attitude expressed by Puerto Rican deputies in l\fadrid in 1867.

usefulness to large-scale enterprise on the island. Abolition would al low these large producers to buy labor under the favorable conditions of a growing free labor supply, for work books were abolished the same year as slavery. A noteworthy aspect of the economic ch aracter of the legislation effecting a bolitio n was the stipulation binding ex-slaves to their existing reside nce for three add itiona l years. A lthough phrased in term s of humanitarian cons ideration for the su dd e nl v dispossessed , the1·e is little doubt that this paninilar provision of the law reacted at Je;1st :i~ wc:ll to th e advantage of the former slavelwldcr ;1~ it did 10 that of the newly freed s lave.

GOVERNMENT Puerto Rico's economic development w:1 s l:irgc ly dictated by policies developed ,,·ithi11 the larger fr;1m ework of the Spanish Empire. The go,·c rnor l1ad th<.: power to r etard or advance measures which (ould ha ve important effects on the island 's development. I le was charged with the maintenance of the system of defense and public order. He could con voke an advisory and semi-legislative body known as the Diputacion Provincia l, and ca ll for its recess. H e headed the adrninistrative apparatus of the island, appointed the munici pal m ayors, and su pe rvised the execution of laws. H e had "the unlimited powers of a general in a besieged city" (Gontan, 1915:11). The Diputacion consisted of two bodies, the Deputies and the Provincial Commission. The Deputies were elected by th at small minority of the population who were ca pable of raising the required poll tax. Their term of office was four years, but their posts brought with them more honor than genuine responsibility and power. Al though the official dispensers of public funds, they were effectively limited in the ir fiscal functions by the prevailing system of patronage. The commission cons isted of five men selected by the governor from the number of elected Deputies. These m e n served two years as a consulting body charged with drawing up the agendas for the legi slative sessions. None of the officers drew salaries. The Gu a rdia Civil, a civil police force orga nized on the Span ish model to maintain the peace after the Lares R ebellion , served in fact as an instrument of intimidation during the period of unrest prior to Ameri ca n occu pation (see pp. 78- 79). Accordi ng to Carroll ( 1900:252), it had "the authority and right to invade any premises or territory in the island in search or pursuit of ba ndits or any political offenders that they were running clown." At the loca l level, a mayor appointed by the governor and a council elected by chose eligible to vote within the restrictions of the poll tax administered local affa irs. The council had no power over the police who were under the control of higher au thori ties. Within the municipality, officials appointed by the mayor served without pay in the execution of municipal ordin ances and in the reporting of disturbances.

EXPAN DING EXPORT AGRICULTU RE

The p eriod from 18 15 to the dosing decade of the centu ry \\·as marked not only by the in tensified comme rcial and econ o mic activity discussed previously but also by accompanying political and social ferment. The g ro\\'ing pressm es for abolition and equal rights of th e N cgro, the movem ent against forced labor, the ques ts for political freed om , the increasing demand for expanded educational facilit ies, all these were e,·idt·11C-e of a spir it of unrest. J\Iost importa ntly, a s11hs1:1111 i:tl cl:t:-.s of merchants, professionals, and \\'t::tl11J~ loc:tl planters had developed as the result ol t':-..p:111dcd t-co11omic acti,·ity. T his class was instru11w111:tl 1101 only in prc:.sing for reforms of the kind 1101cd :1IJ<>,T. h ut :dso as~ um cd an important role in tht' :-.trugglc lor grea ter political freedom. Som e of its 1111111h n~ \\'orked fo r compl ete separation and indej>t'1Hlt:1H c lro111 Spai11. Others favored a provincial ~! :till s ,,·i1hi11 the Spani sh monarchy. J\Iany, however, c:tllt:d i1110 question the polit ico·socioeconomic status quo. :\ ~ each of the ab<)\"C demands and sentiments < ry~1:tlli1ed into ani,·c oq~an ii'ation s, the Spanish State a ppa ra tus responded \\'i th a succession of new repressive and conciliatory measures. The participation of Pu erto Rican s in the Cuban revolts, the slave rebellio n s of Vega Baja and P o nce, the short-lived insurrect ion in th e municipio of Lares, the activi ties of such men as H ostos, Beta n ces, and Baldorioty de Castro sh ow t h a t a Puerto Rican national consciousness, opposed to Spanish rule, was developing throughout the n in eteen th cen tu ry. The pattern of sporadic revolt, rebellion, a nd protest fo llowed by new and sterner governm ent measures aimed at stifling resistance persisted until the en d of the century. It was not until 1897 that Spain appeared to recognize the danger to h er continued domination in ignoring the island's demands. Jn that year sh e made important concessions to Pu erto Rican sentiment through the granting of a cons ide ra ble measure of local autonomy. Althoug h se izure of th e island by the United States came before the new laws had been fully implemented, these had p rovided, among other things, for a more powerfu l. e lected legislative body and for an equal voice for Puerto R ico in the commercial treaties and tariffs affecting the island. Such treaties an d tariffs would be " discussed and approved by delegates from the national and insular p arliament, appointed in equ a l n umber who h ad the power to correct any difference affecting th e island leaving always a protective margin on the tarifI schedule in favor of the island , n ot exceeding thirty-five per cent" (F erncindez Carcia, i 923: 15 1 ). During the greater part of Spanish rule o f the island, the politica l activities of P uerto Ricans found expression in organized pressure grou ps rather than in avowed pol itical part ies. F ormalized political parties -one conservative in outlook, the other liberal- first appeared in 1868, towards the end of the Spanish p eriod. During the period between i868 and 1887, poli tical points of view slow ly crystallized into defini te party programs. In 1887 the liberals adopted a progra m callin g for i nsul ar self-government. This was

59

denounced by the conservatives as a move toward s outright independence (F ernos-Isern, 1953: 17). The imposition o f United States rule o n the island did much to modify these particular political divisions. At the same time, American military government could be imposed upon an already existing political system which could mediate t h e political effects of the occupation.

RELIGION Because the Puerto Rican Church was closely dependent upon the Church of Spain, ch anges in the position of the Church in the mother country registered quickly in the island. The reverberations of the State's decision to expropriate Church estates in Spain was immediately felt in Puerto Rico. ". . . the Church was subjected to v iolent measures on the part of the governors of the island, who, ta king advantage of its unsettled condition and of the laws of con fiscation (applicable only to Spain ), despoiled the Church of much property, a nd disbanded the only two communities o f r eligiou s men, the Dominicans a nd F ranciscans, appropriating to the State their convents and property" (Jones, i 911: 293). In i851 , the Spanish governor of the isla nd also b ecame vice-patron of the insular Church, and all salaries and expenses of the Church were henceforth assumed b y the Sta te (Real C edula, i850: 283-g3). Thus, during the nineteen th century, Church and State on the island tended to draw more closely together,4 while divergent Puerto Rican and Spanish interests were more and more div iding the population into two conflicting groups. Already during the first quarter of the century, Governor L a Torre h ad consciously employed religious festivals to distract popular attention from the revolutionary disturba nces in South America, on the assumption that "while the population is enjoying itself, it does n ot plot" (Brau, i 904:24 1). Clerical personnel was increasingly drawn from Spain. The lesson o f revolutions elsewhere in Latin America, wh ere a combinatio n of low pay and p o litical motiva tion of ten impelled parish priests to rise against established power a nd the clerical hierarchy, had not b een lost on Puerto Rico. The unconditionally pro-Spanish Jose Perez Moris w rote after the a b ortive revol ution of Lares (1872:83-84) : Another lever at the disposal of the separatists consists .. . in a portion of the clergy of this island, especially in the rural areas . .. it is certain that in t11e larger part of the small towns, we have to deal with a separatist nucleus, formed by the priest, the pharmacist, and the school tead1er. . . . political convenience and justice can both be reconciled by giving Puerto Rican priests and teachers parishes and schools in the peninsula, and the p arishes and schools of Puerto Rico to Spanish teachers and priests. ·t ln the 183o's Pedro Gutierrez de Cos, Bishop of San Juan, in a p~storal letter id_cn1ified anli ·~pa nish feeling with anti-religious feeling. (P hotostauc documetll m New York Public Library, n.d.)

60

THE PEOPLE OF PUERTO RICO

Discredited because of its political subordination to Spain, the Church lost much of its already weakened spiritual power over the island's population. The Church could not exact piety from the people by resorting to use of the State apparatus. Its efforts to enforce Church marriage, for example, merely linked the Church and the repressive labor laws of the State in the minds of the people. For Governor Garcia Camba had ordered that "any individual found living publicly in cOmJ!lon-law marriage be classified as a vagrant and that the existing disposition against vagrancy be applied to him" (Hostos, 1948b :4,16). In i861, the mayors of the island were ordered to turn over to the parish priests the names of all people living in common-law union. The priests in turn were to exhort the sinners t0 marry in church. In case of refusa I, such individuals were liable to prosecution under the vagrancy laws. The fun ction of these regulations ·was frankly revealed by Perez Moris when he wrote (1872): "No true Christian rebels against legitimate authority .. . to promote religious sentiment and the kno·wledge of duties taug ht by moral ity, means to propagate patriotism and adhesion to Spain." The effect of this policy insured that "the control actually exercised over the people by these ecclesiastics [was] only nominal" (Davis, i942 :22). "Beyond the fact that nearly all the people are baptized by the priests, that the last rites of the Church are celebrated at the ir funerals, and that such as are married at all are married by the priests, the visible evidences of the influence of the clergy are very few. . . . Perhaps hundreds of thousands never enter a church save to attend a christening, a wedding, or a funeral." As the gap between the people and the Church widened, different groups in the population turned to various religious alternatives. Some upper-class Puerto Ricans, many of them anti-Spanish in their motivation and attracted by the rationalist trends in European thought which accompanied the political upheavals of the nineteenth century, became skeptics, freethinkers, or formed lodges of Freemasonry. Others a llied themselves with a philosophy of spiritualism, scientific in its pretensions. Another small upper-class group of English descent obtained the right to maintain two Protestant Episcopal churches, one in Ponce, and the other in Vieques, on the condition that they do no proselytizing. An illegal group of Protestants was organized near the town of Aguadi lla in the 186o's. This group was led by a merchant, but many of its members appear to have been rural workers. Other groups of the same kind met in secret, read the Bible in Spanish, and propagated anti-Spanish sentiment along with Protesta11t belief. Persecuted by the Civil Guard, some of these anti-Spanish Protestants participated in the sporadic guerilla activity which accompanied the A merican invasion. The bulk of agricul rural workers and peasants continued their local sai nt cults derived from orthodox Cathol icism and often mixed with beliefs in magic and spirits. In such a religious con text a certain number

of aboriginal Indian, Africa n Negro, and Hispanic beliefs may have survived.

SOCIOCULTURAL GROUPS By the end of the Spanish reg ime, Pu e rto Rico had already bee n drawn so strongly into the orbit of world commerce and indu strialization that profound changes had occu rred in the nature and kind of'-<>< ionil1ur;tl g roups e nco untered in the i"land. So< i;il "t;1tu-; and powe r were findin g a h;1s is in \\·ealth clcri H'd lrolll export trad e. Th e tremc:ndot1s im pon ;1 11 <c ol ex pon crops, especially of s11g;1r ;ind cofle<: . h:1d crca tcd ;1 11 aristocracy of wealth y pL11Hers \d10 l1ad ;1 co 11 sidC'r;1hle capital investm e11t in land and 111;1chi11cn. · rnic. 1herc were some small g ro\\'c rs of these c;i;.J 1 <Top .... b111 1lic trend was unmista kabl y to\\'ard shar per diflcre1Hia1 in11 be nv.een large and small farm ers. Si1111tl1:111eou~ly. the sharp population in crease had produced ;111 ;1111plc rn p ply of free labor, and th e shvc pla11t;1tio11 \\"as su p erseded by the hacienda which used free (lgrcgrulo workers. J\ n ew relationship between owner and worker, a new plantation c ulture, deve loped. Th e small independent farm e rs by no means disappeared, for large portions of the country did not le nd themselves to a plantat ion econorny: hut th ey ca m e to constitute a smaller proporti o n or the island population than they had formerly. These farmers, too, were affected by com merce, and man y turned to tobacco as a cash crop which cou ld provide th e means for purchase of the ever increasing quantities of imported and manufactured goods. M ea nwhile. expanded business and gove rn men tal activities had led to the rise of towns, which becam e servicing and distribution points for the farms and plantations. The town-country pattern involved new social groups and relationships. The town population included admin istrators, landowners, credit agents. owners of large businesses, small merchants, artisans, service personnel, and laborers. The rural society con sisted of large landlords and their workers, and, in some cases, medium and small farmers. The particular nature of the rural enterprises gave communities of different crop areas their distinctive characterist ics . In many ways, the subcu ltural differences associated w ith these classes became more marked than previously. The extremely wealthy insular upper class became more cosmopolitan and bega n to acquire behavior patterns characteri stic of the urban upper class. The various middle classes- the businessmen, skilled workers, and professional people-changed fundamentally in ways characteristic o( middle classes in any urbanized society. Increasingly, personal wealth became the goal, and the individual felt personally responsible for his success or fa ilure. These attitudes were re llected in new standards of living, new forms of interperson al relations, and even in the adoption of a new ethical or value orientat ion which has been descr ibed as-using \ Veber's terminology- the Prot1

EXPAi\l'ING EXPORT AGRICULTURE

6l

Fig. ;. 1lgrirnlt11rnl ll'Orher: San Josi. Photo by Eric ll'olf.

Fig. ·I· ll'ifc of agrirnltural worher: San Jose. Photo V)' Eric ll'ol f.

eslant e Lhic. The laboring classes va ried in Lheir patterns o( be havio r, in their values a nd aspirations, according LO the ir role as sharecroppers, workers on pb n talions of different kinds, or as urba n wage earners.

i\ losL o( these sociocultural groups are represented in o ne way o r another in the communit ies se lected for fi e ld study, and they are described in detail in Part llI.

Priod

5 I V:

N ational Patterns During the American Period ( 1898-1948) The new national economic, political, and rel igious patterns which the American occupation imposed on Puerto Rico had far-reaching effects u pan the lives of the people. Many of the new economic pa tterns differed from the old in quantity rather than in quality, in degree rather than in kind, and in the accelerated and often d isruptive momentum. They built upon trends which had been initiated be fore 1898: for example, upon the growth of crop exports, increased capitalizatio n of commercial agriculture, technological improvements of productive processes, the gro\\'th of a labor surplus through population increase, the payment of labor with wages, the growth of larger productive units in agriculture, and so on. Yet the total setting within which these trends were lo develop further now differed sharply from the past. Puerto Rico became an economic dependency of the United States through its incorporati on with in the federal tariff structure, through the absorption o[ its foreign trade, through the use of United States currency, through the extension of massive am ou nts of credit from the mainland for investment in sugar refining, through federal financing of som e public services on the island , and so on. On th e one hand this new set of relationships led to an unpreced ented growth of the sugar industry and th<: developm ent o( tobacco growing and needlework as insular activities o[ greater importance; on the other hand, th e coffee industry declined and the production of Ii vcstock decreased sharply. Political innovations under Un ited Siates sover62

NATIONAL PATI'ER:"'S DU R I NG TH E A:\lERICA:"' PERIOD

c ig 1H y \\'ere equall y fundam ental. .-\ !though the island re111a i n ed u nder 111 iii tary rul e for a year and a ha!( :111d cit i1c11sh i p was not extended to the Puerto Rican p eople until 1917. a legal system and a political ideology radically different from those of Spai n were applied to th e island from the start o( the occupation. although its politica l status remained unsettled. The new tTono111ic patterns had legal sa nct ion. L abor org:111i1:1tio1h. \\'hich had existed before the United States <>< <11p:1t ion. ht·< :1111e :dhliated firs t with the AF o( L. l. 11 <· 1 " ·it h th (' C: I O. :111d e ntered a new period o f g 1<>\\'t l1. Tltt· l "nidad C e 11n:tl de Trabajado res. how('\ <"t. j, .tllili:11nl \rid1 the Conlcderaric">n de Trabajad111n 1k 1:1 .\111ni<:t l.:1ti11:1. rite occ11p:tt ion allowed 1111 11pc11 <rn11p!'t itin11 :1111n11g rcligiou~ organizations; tit(' ( ::11ltoli< <h11 n lt " ·a, 't'1>:1rated co111pletcly from lit!' St :t t!'. li11t d!'\'t' loped tit:s to the Catholic church i11 1l1t· l "11ited S1:11e,. and oilier dc11ominations were :tll11\\'t"d t<> t•111n tht' i,land :111d missioni1.c the popu1.11 i1111. ( ;C)\ ('111111t·11t ,n,·in•, i11 the fields of education , ltnltlt. :1id t•> :1grintltur:tl prod11ni o11 , and public \\'01 k, \\T I T i1H re:1,cd . . \ 111criran military installations \\'tTe huiil 011 the island. and Puerto Ricans were s11hjen to conscription and ,·o luntary serv ice in the anued forces. United States political philosophy gained i11 importance: socia l legislatio n was fun her d eveloped Lo lll cet socia l problems. Yet the .-\mcrican system gave to P uerto Rico ne ither a full poli tica l autonomy nor a vote in the Congress of the United States. The most important general effect of the occupati on was the increas ing ly illlensive and more efficient ex pl o itation o f the economic potential of Puerto Rico as a political and economic dependency. This meant pri111ari lv the continuat ion of the agrarian basis of the society c', 11 a higher level of productive enterprise. Such em phasis 0 11 intensive comm ercia l agricult ure m ea nt the p rogressive loss of the island's ability LO subsist withou t imports. For as its resources are exported at an increasing rate. the island is tied ever lllorc firmlv to th e dom ina n t .-\merican market. Th e nc1{d towards produ ction of mou nting proportions o f export crops red u ced the econo mic selfs uflicien cy of famili es and communities as well as of th e i~l :llld as a who le. Food had to be imported as export nops gained in volume. At the same time ma ~~ - produced good s began to enter the island from th e Uni ted States. Commercial agric11 lwre increased the circu latio n of cash and m ad e the people much more depcndcn t 11 pon it. wh ilc the new goods fl owi 11g into the isla n d created needs which could only h e sat isficd by means of cash payments. People became cash -lllind ed , since cash b ecame an nhsolute necessity fo r ex iste11cc. :\ gr icul tu ra l workers bega n to be paid in c rea~ in gly i11 money wages, which were Lhe more impona11t as laborers grew less of Lhcir own food. S111 ;il I l armers ca m e to emphasi1e cash crop prod uct ion a 11d beg-an to bu y th eir rice an d bea ns in stores \\' ith the 111011ey thus obta ined. T he economic reorien ta ti on of the island affected all a-.J><'ClS or life. as P art I II will show. i\ew patterns, C< 011omic and poli tical, a fleeted every p art o( the is-

63

land th rough t h e development of n ew occupationa l g roups and economic classes and through the modifica tion of o ld ones. There was n ot o nly more complex division o( la bor in th e productio n of export crops - processors, transportation and communi cations workers, and the like -but the increased now of manu factu red products required more wholesalers, shippers, loca l merchants, and ser vice personnel. The rapidly growing population, clustering in villages, towns, and cities n eeded m o re build i ng and sen ·icing p ersonnel. Other specia l g roups developed in connection wi th th e ser vices provided b y t he government. Teachers, health workers, farm extension agents and ochers b egan to form a substantial class o( civil servants. l\ fost of these new occupational groups became pan of the n ew middle classes, and acquired a distinCLive way of li fe. New patterns of l ife a lso emerged as a result of growing urbanization. i\ Jany of today's P uerto Rican communities did noc come int0 existence until the nineteenth century. During the present century, in response to developing t rade and industry, and facilitated b y improved t ransportatio n , l arge towns grew up. On the northern coastal lowlands, for example, where chis Lrend was unusually strong. there are now twenty towns averaging some 7,000 persons each, in addi tion to San Ju an which had mushroomed to a population of 150.000, with a total metropolitan population of 400,000 ( P ico, 1950 :6, 52). These large urban centers differ sharply from the sma ll rural neig hborh ood s. Both the t ypes o( sociocultural segments within th em and the way in which these are integrated set Lhem off from rural comm uni ties. The economic r eorientation of island life, the CormaLion of n ew middle classes, a nd Lhe growth of tO\nls have made for wider, sharper sociocu ltura l differentiation n ow than formerly. Those patterns of behavior which depend upo n possession a nd expenditure o f wealth-standard of l iving, education, socia l relationships, recreational activities- serve as manifold cri teria for class distinctio n s. New pol itical and rel ig ious ideologies a re a lso finding. acce1)tance within the island. T h e teachin()' o f a n ideal of pol itical democracy-felt to be incompatible w ith the island's p resent political status by some groups o( the population- has led to a widespread desire for greater seH-governmen t, but otherwise the specific p o litica l goa ls sought differ greatly from group to g roup. Protestantism has ga ined somewhat at t he expense of formal Catholicism. T h ese changes in relig ion reflect shi fts in economic and socia l values as well as in national policy (see Davis, 19.pi). T he insula r-w ide effects of th ese twentieth -cen tury changes arc evident in somewhat van·in<Y fo rm "'ithin , 0 the many loca l comm unities of the island but some trends were everywh ere the same. l n spite of the develop mcm .of in. creasingly d ist in CL ivc reo·iona l subculb tu res, c~na 1n of the n ew classes- th e wage proletariat, the busmess and professional classes-with their ,·aried economic. social, pol i tical, and religious attitudes ten d increasingl y to crosscut communities. Consequently ~

64

THE PEO PLE OF P UERTO RICO

community integration .is no longer based primarily upon face-to-face relationships a nd the simpler division of la bo r "·hich characterized the ea rlier peasa nt seulements or hacienda communities. The integration o( one cl ass with another in the local commun ity, and of the town dwellers with the rural peopl e. no w involves the mo re impersonal econo mic. social, and governmenrnJ institutions- systems or marketing and distribution of goods, political adm inistration , education, health, and the like. The new island-wide confi gu ra tions are the resul ts of cha nges which took place largely outside the local communiti es, man y of which grew out of the wtal set of relation s of the island with the United Sta tes. A t the same time th a t similar sociocultural groupings ,\·ere developing in the different communities, regional differentiations also became sharpened-as a consequence of the differential pauerns of e xploitation fo llm\·ed in the vario us reg ions of the island (see Pa rts III and IV).

220,000

I

200, 000

150,000

100, 000

J

50,000

I

i..- ~

10,000

/~

~

POPULATION

~

~

~

~

~

~

~

~

6

~

6

~

~

~

~

~

u ~

~

~

~

~

~

C hart / ':! . P o fmln tio 11 g r o11•tl1 i 11 San j ru111 . (Data fro m Adolfo de Hostos, l!Jtl8b, p. ~o: A 111111al nooh o f Statistic s, 19116- 47, P· 5.)

Cha rt i shows the general po pulation trend in Rican family va ried in the diffe re nt r egions and Puerto Rico. The rapid g rowth or population in the classes. 1 present century is a consequence of comple x a nd littleunderstood fa ctors, including the a pplica tio n o f modern medica l technology to a previo usly underdevelECONOMIC PATTERNS oped country undergoing rapid changes in the shift to large-scale commercial ag riculture. The sharp climb Altho ug h fift y years of American domination have in population has been caused by a decreased death broug h t important changes .. they have nol .a~te 1-ed t.h e rate, combined with a continued high birth rate. basically agrarian nature o( the economy. l h~ ma.1~r Puerto Rico now has one of Lhe highest rates of economic changes that have taken p lace dunng this na wra l increase in the wo rld, and is one of the world's period have bee n the expansion of the sugar incl~str y, most densely populated agricultura l countries (Perlo{[, the increase in the importance of tobacco, th e virtual 1950: 188- 209). This is particula rly significa nt since disappearance o( coffee from the export markc~, and Puerto Rico's maj or agricultural industries have ap- the rise of needlework. Chart g shows ch anges 111 the proximated tJ1 eir limits or are declining (Perloff, relative export value of the prin cipal products be1950:88 ff.). tween 18 9:) and 1946. Changes in the acre age d evoted The cultural e ffec ts of this demographi c tre nd are to the main export crops are shown in Chart 1: . striking. Surplus labor accumulated in large, localized It would be incorrect to say tha t the relauve impoo ls o[ unemployed ma kes for heavy competition for portan ce of ag ric ulwre to the i~land' s tota l eco n on:iy ava ila ble work, wea ke ns labor unions as eco no mic in- is the same today a s it wa s fift y years ago, but H S struments, a nd affects Lhe rate of inLroduc tion of strateg ic role may be shown in the fa c t that agriculture, technological improvements in productive processes. according to P erloff (1950:57-59), Families whi ch work the ir own land fa ce th e problem o[ la nd divisio n in inh erita nce where holdings must originated 3 1% of the insular net income in fisc:a l 1910 a1~d be shared by ma ny he irs. Excessive fragme ntation 25% in 19116 . IL was th<.: :.our<.<: of 38 % of the 111comc originating in the private econ omy in the for.mer year, .and limits the utility of th e land as a means o[ subsistence 36.5% in the law.:r yea r. By c.0111 pariso11 , the m comc derived and ma kes for the alien a tion of such holdings to large from manufacturing represents onl y 11.6 % of th e Puerto owners. This trend is accom panied by th e ever g reater Rica n income to tal in 19.10 and 13.2 % in 1946 (or 14.2 and im portance of wage labor, either in additio n to sub- 18. 7% of the incom<.: of the pri,·ate s<.:ctor of the economy sistence farming or as a sole means of making a living. The proces~es o [ land fra gmentaLio n a nd c:oncentrai These a rc full y disc u ssed i11 Pan Ill. In the discu ss i~ n of th e tio n, the r ising va lue of la nd, a nd the increase of wage communiti c~ . cultu ra l fa cto rs affcc1ing th e rlc m ogrnph1 c 1rcncls . labor are part~ of the over-a ll shi ft to c.ash crop fa rm - a nd t h ose which arc in t11n1 a ffcc rcd b y the m , rccci \'c funh c r ing. T hese processes a nd the ir e ffects on Lhe Puerto 1rca1111 c 111 .

Fig. 5. The d1ildn'11 of a small farmer. Photo by D elano: Gmwn1111<'11l of P11l'r/o U.ico.

66

THE PEOPLE OF PUERTO RICO

Fig. 6. Sugar worher near Yauco. Photo by Delano: Government of Puerto Rico.

Fig. 7. JVife of sugar worher in Ti/H111 , Noco rd. P/i o /o b)'

during those two yea rs). lvloreover, from 45 Lo 503 o( the net income from manufacturing activities is accounted for by the processing of agricultural products. . . .

insular government on collection of excise taxes in the U nited States. Such contributions help the present government to devote about a third of its tota l budget to education and health. Federa l expenditures bec;:1me significant only during the period of the New D eal, and increased dur ing \t\lorld \•Var 11. The effects of such expenditures on the various subcultures o( the island have been profound. Veterans' benefits, dependency benefits, wages to army personnel no matter where they are stationed are important items in the gross income p icture o[ the island's economy and have created rather special groups, for example, the "professional" veteran student and many a tJ1£blico driver, who purchased his veh icle through a G .I. Joan. Some of these effects are disc ussed at greater length in Pan III.

Perloff ( 1950:62) has described the decline in the importance of agriculture within the total employment picture: Although agriculture is still Puerto Rico's primary industry, its relative imponance as a source of employment has declined since the early years of the century. . . . Less than 39% of the labor force is now engaged in farm ing as compared with some 60% in 19 1o and 1920. All the other major industries, and especially construction, trade, and transportation, have gained in relative .importance over the years. But, again, it should be noted that many of those employed in non-farming industries arc e ngaged in the processing, transportation, financing, and distribution of agricultural products.

"The welfare o( the island depends to a large extent [upon the export value of suga r, tobacco, rum, a~d needlework .. .]" (Perloff, 1950: i38) and- to an increasing extent- upon the amount of federal government aids and expenditures in the island . Although the cultural impact of federal contributions to the insular economy is undeniably significant, we shall not attempt here to analyze these factors nor to assess all o( the effects .~ A sign ificant part of the insular budget is derived also from monies refunded to the 2 "About one-quaner of our total income comes from the aid and expenditures of the Federa l Cov·1.. in l'.R . . . . The amount of th is contribution LO our economy is eq ual to the total income from all of our agr icu ltura l activities·· (Cordero, 1 ~M~r1<i) .

Delano.

LA ND TENURE The changing importance o[ the large and small farmer is shown by the data on land tenure. The census of i899 reports the total number o( farms in that year as 39,02 1, the distribution being as fol lows: TABL E 1. D ISTRIBUTION OF FARMS IN 1899

Size of Farms i11 Cu e n/as

0- 4 r,- 9 Jo- 19 20-49 50- y9 100 plus

Numb er of Farms 22,327 7,4 17 4,5o3 2,929

Total Number of Cuerdas Cultivated 50,274 48,875 58,760 8B,783

99· ~

G4.!W.?

s~ 1 :J

171,3y2

NATIONAL PATTERNS DURI NG THE Al\IERICAN PERIOD

By 19.10. the total number o[ farms had risen to 55.51 !l· .-\ partial explanation for this growth is contained in the following statement from the Chardon Report of 19;).I (p. 28): ".-\s a result o( the policies of the Homestead Commission and because of the practice o[ farm ers of dividing up their farms between members o[ the family in order to be able to obtain larger loans from the Federal Land .Bank, the number of l:irms has app.ll'entl y increased from 41,078 to : 1 :i .!1<i;, i11 th e decide •!J:!o-;~o." This report, however, ofl<.T' 1w cxplan:itio11 of the 191 0 census data which ~ hcl\\· a total of :i8-:;71 !arms. a startling increase over ti •c 18!1!J figure ;111d hig her than the one given for 1

!1·f(l.

.\ 1though the d:i la con ta i ncd in the two tables are not entirel y comp:ir:ible, they d o permit a comparison between the pcrccm;1gc of cultivated land in farms onT 01w h1111dred c ucJ·cla s to the total of cultivated la11d. 1n 18!J!I· this perce11t;1gc "·as a little over 36; in

Fig. 8. J\l e111lll:rs of the l'ucrto Hir1111 111iddli: class in a small tow11. J>hoto by Gover11111c:11t of Puerto Rico.

67

TABLE 2. DISTRI BUTION OF FARMS IN 1940

Size of Farms

in C11erdas Under 3

3- 9 10-19

20-,19

50-99 1 oo plus

Nu111b er of Far111s . 1. 198 28,172 11 ,288 8,575 3,200 3,086

Total .1V. umbe r of Cue rdas Cultivated" 2,000 110,200 99,900 154,500 i 22,800 663,900

:1 Thi s

includes land which is inte rcro11ped and thus the fig ure is not compa rable with the tig'nrc for 1899. In the data for 1940, a n acre which is cropped twice a year is shown as two acr es. Data from A 11 1111al Book of S tatistirs, 1943- .1-1, p. 68.

1940, it had risen to 53.5, giving some indication of the increase in land concentration. There is evidence that this concentration developed largely in the sugar cane lands of the coastal plains, particularly the south coast irrigated areas. Although the development of the modern sugar central permitted commercial cultiva-

68

THE PEOPLE OF PUERTO RICO

tion of cane on a few acres of land, thus encouraging small farmers to take up cane cultivation, it had a more profound effect in the opposite direction, placing a premium on extensive cultivation and on the wedding of central to cane lands. The Brookings Report (Clark, 1939:626) estimated that in i930 "of the 237,000 acres of cane .. . one fourth belongs to colonos, one half is owned by plantation companies. The remainder is leased by these companies from private owners." In i940, 7i·•! per cent of all farms were owneroperated; 20.2 per cent were operated by renters and 24 per cent by aclm~nistrators or managers. This might give the impression that the amount of land in the hands of owner-operators was overwhelmingly great. However, it is not so, for the proportion of land wh ich was owner-operated was a ctually only 56.9 per cent of the total, the remainder being supervised or held TABLE 3. LAND TENURE IN RELATION TO CROPS IN 1935 a

Crop

Owner-Operated

Managers

Renters

Number of Total Farms Area

N umb er of Total Farms Area

Number of Total Farms Area

%

%

Sugar Cane 79·7 Tobacco 71.9 Coffee 83.0 Coffee-Tobacco 80.5 Minor Crops 76.6 Others 69.5

28.0 72.8 70.0 79· 1 73.2 49.8

%

%

7.5 2.2

67.4 6.2 22.7 6.7 7.1 35.8

7·9 3·3 2.3 12.L !

·% 12.9 25.8 9.2 16.2 2 I. I I 8.1

% 4.6 21.0 7.3 14.2 19·7 14·5

:i D:it:i from 1935 census.

by managers or renters. Thirty years before ( i 9 1o census), although the total number of farms was greater than in 1940 (sS,371 compared with 55,519), the proportion of land held in owner-operated farms was greater, then being 69.9 per cent of the total. Table 3 gives some idea of the land tenure pattern which characterizes the island's chief kinds of production. It shows quite clearly the position of the

manager-operated, that is, absentee-owned, type o f farm in suga r cane. Absenteeism is o nl y o n e-third as prevalent in coffee produ ction , and it is at its very lowest in toba cco, which has less than one-tenth as much o( its total land unde r managers as has sugar. The following table indi ca tes the relative value of land und er the various types of owning arrangements, and by inference throws some lig ht on the hig h e r value of most o( the island 's largest suga r ca n e farm s, which are man ager-run. TABLE 4. VALUE OF LAND AND BUILDINGS IN DOLLARS "

Average per Form

I<) I 0

I tj '20

11)]0

I <)./ 0

Own er-opera t<:d Manage rs Rente rs

!1!)8 !.? '.).8.1;, 78:::

!.?.820

!.?. I !J:i

:.?!J.G.18

!.?!.? . h :-1.'J

i ,H.17 :J<H8;$

7"·1

I· :) !.?:{

81 .08 11:.?.!F> 8 1..1fi

/ ·1· 0 5 • :q .87

~. li(i :)

I'

Average per Cuc rdo

Owne r-opera ted iWanager

[>2 .02

fi!J. I !.?

G9+1

IO!.?-'.)

R e nter

~( i.ofi

t

fi8. I (j

a Da t a f rCJJ11 l ":ii1.:tl S1:itc> Ccn s u ..;,

7 1.!.?. j

l <).1(1.

Finally. to round o ul the land tenure picture for the years 191 u-.10, Tables 5 and (i show first, th e 1111111ber and pe rce ntage of farms under each type of e xploitation, and second, the number and percentage of cuerdas involved in each type of explo itation.

CROP PRODUCTIO N vVe have seen that American occupation of Puerto Rico did not a lter the fundamentally agrarian nature of insular economy. On the contrary, it might be sa id that it further intensified trends towards agricultural specialization in the prod uction of a few basic crops. Since the economies of the communities studied in Part III are merely dependent segments of the economy of Puerto Rico as a whole, an understanding of lhe various subcultures must involve an understand-

TABLE 5. PROPORTIONS OF OWNER-, MANAGER·, AND RENTER-CONTROLLED FARMS 1920

1910

T)•Pe ExjJloitation

Number of Farms

Owner Manager Renter Total

46,779 1,170 10,42 2 58,37 1

% of

1940

193:>

% of

1Vumbe1· of Fan11s

% of Total

81.4 6.4 12.2 100.0

49,900 1,303 11 , 226

77·1 2-•1 20.2 100.0

Num ber of Cuerdas

%of Total

Number of Cucrdas

% of Total

I, 166,976

59.0 34· 1 6.9 100.0

1,072, 1.14 573,699 240,03 1 1,885.874

56.9 30.4 I 2.7 100.0

Total

Number of Farms

% of Total

Number of Farms

Total

80.1 2.0 17·9 100.0

36,407 1,2 I 3 3,458 41,078

88.6 3.0 84 100.0

43,101 3,374 6,490 5 2.965

5:)·5 1 9

TABLE 6. ACREAGE OF OWNER-, MANAGER-, AND RENTER-CONTROLLED FARMS 1920

1910

1930

T ype ExjJloitation

Number of Cuerdas

% of Total

Number of Cuerdas

%of Total

Owner Manager R enter Total Average per farm in cuerdas

1,457,345 401,747 226,070 2,085,162

69.9 1 9·3 10.8 100.0

1,485,208 35 1,335 185,861 2,022,404

73.4 17.4 9.2 100.0

35·7

49.2

'

676,760 I 35,738 1,979,474 37·4

1940

34.0

NATIONAL PATTERNS DURI:>:G THE Ai\!ERTCAN PERIOD

69

ing of Lhe faclOrs underlying lhe production of lhese major crops. Jn lhe follo"·ing discussion we shall c mphasi1.e nalional economic determinants in the produnion of sugar ca ne, lobacco, coffee, and minor crops. The aclual processes o( production will be described and analy1cd in detail in the relevant seclions of Pan lJI. SUGAR CANE

The ~rmnh o( sugar cane production as compared with other crops is shown in Chan -1· A few years alt er :\mcrira 11 occupation, sugar produclion began :111 c:-.:pa11-;io11 which carried it from 39.200 tons in 1H!J~ !l!l 10 a p ea k of 1.q7.59 1 tons in i 9.p-.J2 (Chart :;). l111prnn·d Lccl111iques were respon sible for only part of Lliis i11crcascd production, the biggest faclOr be ing the i11crea:.e i11 area devoted to cu ltivation of the crop. 111 I~!l!l· only 12. q7 cuerdas of cane were cultintcd. hut by 1 !).!<>, this fi~ure had risen to 230,000 n1l'rrlr1S. ?\I ud1 of this land seems to have come from l:tnds Jll"C\· iou~ly dc,·oted Lo stock raising or to the ndtivation of minor crops. Thi" <kn·lop111t·111 of our sugar industry whid1 followed the . \mcri< :111 on.up;ition has bt:cn one of the most serious drawbacks to our cattle industry. The adaptability o( cane to lowlands prc\'io usly devoted Lo pasture and grazing: the irrigat ion of o ur sou1hcr11 coast \rith the subsequent sugar ··rc\'cr," brought about a diminutio n and e\'en complete ron\'crsion o( whole n;gions pre,·iously devoted to cattle rai s in~. to sugar culti\"ation. Only sud1 land indispensable for maintaining the working oxen needed to haul the cane was kept for pasture. Thus. the rapid de,·elopment o( sugar in the island brought a m;irked decline to our livestock industry. (Puerto Rico Govt., Dept. o( Agriculture and Labor, l!J2tJ - ~5: ,1G.)

/\gain, "lhe increase in the cane area to over three and one-hal( times its extent in i896 (1928) has b een largely at the expense of pasture, which was always held in large tracls." In this period there was a corresponding decrease in food crops (Clark, 1939:499). Th e n e w mill, or central, representing a heavy investment, had to grind large amounts of cane if il were co be profnable. The formerly independent farmers had to contract in increasing numbers to have their cane gr ou nd at the mill. These farmers became known as colonos. "One of the first effects of the introdu ction o( modern methods of manufacture, which began with lhe erection of large ce11Lrals short ly after American occupation, was tO convert many of the old mill owners (.14G sugar mills in 1888: 286 driven by oxen, 1 Go by s tea m) into colo11os and to enable the pcasanls, who had hitherto given little attention to th is crop, to become cane growers .. ." (Clark, 1 9 ;~ 9:fi1 1J). "Before lhe modern sugar factory came into existence cane cullivation was a privilege of the rich. . . . Now even farmers who own only four or five acres of land w ill cultivate one or two acres in sugar cane, whicl1 they sell to the [centrals] on the same basis as those who can cu ltivate 0 11 :1 much larger sc:-i le . . . " (Bird, 1923:5.11 -.13). These small sugar farmers reprc-

Fig. 9. Jllife of small farmer 111 San I Jl olf.

Jose. Photo b)' Eric

sent a distinctive su bcultural type, but unfortunately the project was unable to study a commu nity of this kind. Sugar production expanded because it offered one of the very best markets for the investment of mainland cap ital. Protected b y the tariff and assured an excellent market in the United States, the cultivation of sugar was g iven the biggest incentive in the history of the island. Investment from the mainland was so heavy that Dillie ( 1931:135) estimates that by i 930, 60 per cent o[ all sugar cultivation on the island was absentee-comrolled, with virtually all of the control residing in the United States. \Vith the imposition of quotas, the limits to sugar ca ne's expansion were set. Some experts b elieve that all11011gh this works no particular harm on t he ins ular s ugar producer whil e he remains the object of favored trealmen t in the Un ited States market, it could make him unable lo cornpete with the lower-cost s ugar producing areas o( the 'ivorld. In the words o( Harvey Perloff ( 1950: 280) ·-. .. assured production quotas

70

THE PEOPLE OF PUERTO RICO

tend to discourage serious efforts at increasi ng effi• • • ciency." 3 The technical transformauon wluch elevated suga1 production to a place of pre-eminence in_ the. ins~!ar agricultural pi c wr~ a~~o t rans~ormed farmmg mto an intensely commercial operauon. In a speech at the University of Puerto R ico in ~fa rch, i 949, Col6 n Torres, the secretary of agriculture and commerce, said (1949:5-6) : The rapid expansion o[ this enterprise was accompanied by the purchase or rental of great cxp~nscs of the m ost fer· tile lands of the Island by the American producers, especially corporations and affiliates of these. T hese corporations, in the majority of cases, also owned the central where . . . the sugar cane was elaborated. The establishment o[ large and efficient mills m p l_ace of the old tra/Jicltes, also favored a greater ~o n ce ntra t1 on of land in the hands of the owners of these mills, as a methoc.l of assuring a greater volume of production anc.l thus contributing to the maximum efficiency of the facton es. The concentration [of land in sugar esta tes after the com-

ing o[ the America m.J reached its h ighest point around th e year 1930. Fo r exa mple. the: sugar cc11trals and the ir alhl i;11 es opera ted, in •9:M-~5· actorcling to data of the :\:\ :\ , .100 thousand cuadas of land. This area co11s til11/ c r/ m ore //u111 5o'i( of Ifi e Iota/ farm area d evoted lo ilif' /nod11ctio11 of suga r ca11t•. [Iialits ours.l Fo ur absentee corporatio n!> controlled 185.000 cuc:rclas, or .Jli <'( of the total area operated

by all SUl{ar <ompan ic:!>. The farms of o,·e1· ;-,oo u1erdas. 0 11 which cane w;1~ t ultivated . 1:;li in all. compri!>ed ·l!l!J·ooo cuc:rd as, or f>5<'; of the 1otal of farm!> d edi< ;1u:d to the: <ul· tivation of ca ne . . . . This pict ure becomes C\T n more importa nt \\ hc11 we consider 1hat 1hc la nd in the hands o [ t his sma ll number of proprietors was the most fertile and the most easily aclmini>tc:rc:cl. 0

T he impl i catio n ~ of this contro l for tlie we lfare of t h e island arc enormo u -. . .-\ s a ru le, said Co lc"i 11 -T orrc·-; ( 19,19:i), it mea n t t h at "'th e b ig- la ndh o lders cx pl oi 1e d t h e ag ri cu l wra l laborer wi th o u t o ffering h im a b ir sh are in the i ncome of the land. [ Di ffi c rq)()ns div· ide n d pa ym e nts b y the absentee corpor;1tio 11s to their stockho ld e rs of an ywhere lrom 1:->- 50 per cent an 11 11 a l ly.J The co rporations and big O\\" IH:rs cxrTci!>c d 1rcm e ndo u s p o we r o n all a!-.p <:ns of P u e rto Ric111 life. a power that they u sed lo overcome any goven1111 c 11l:t I reg ulatio ns that Ill igh t prejudice l11 e i r i 11 tcrests. en: 11 t houg h su ch reg ulat ions were necessary lor the gc n cr; d welfare of the island ." Esteban Bird ( 194 1) sums up t h e evils that a ccom p a n ied the e xpansion of sugar cane cu l tivation , in th e form tha t it took on t h e island: ( 1) absenteeism; (2) i n su fficie nt pa y Lo cane workers; (3) periodi c o r seasonal employmenL; (,J) miserable livi ng conditions for the famil ies o( cane workers; (5) excess ive econ om ic domination exercised by t h e corpor a tions over t h ousan d s of peop le : (G) inte r ven t ion by t h e corpora tions in th e civic li fe o f t he p eopl e ; (7) in terve nti o n in t h e d eve lo p m ent of socia l freed o m ; (8) inequ a l i t y o f con tri bu tions [to t he island ] w hich clea rly fa vo r ed th e corp ora tio n s and th e g reat landhold ers; (9) conce ntratio n of in come i n a few h a n ds.

LAND REFORM

Fig. 10. Curandcra (m edici11e woman) and wife of sugar worker in Tifrnn. Photo by Delano. a Sec also the chapter o u Caiiamclar, Chapter 9.

To overcome the ev ils bel ieved to have arisen fro m this system o f landown ership, the prov isions o( t h e first O rganic Act l im it in g corporate p ossessions o n t h e islan d to 500 cuerdas were i nvok ed, and in May 0£ 1940, the Supreme Court of t h e United States upheld t h e con sti tutionality of the regulation . A l i ttle less than a year late r , in April, 194 1, t h e L and Law o( P uerto Rico was passed, creating the L a n d Authority a n d pre· paring for a genera l la n d reform. The importance of this d eve lopment warrants m o re d eta il ed d iscussio n. Such d iscussion w i ll a lso provide backgroun d da ta fo r on e of t he comm uni ties studied , a nd discu ssed in P a rt JH. U n d e r t h e provisions of t his l a w , p roportiona l b e n efit fa rms h ave been created in the s u gar prod u cing areas, many of t h e fa r ms d erivi n g from the forced sa le to t h e g overn m e nt o( h o ld ings b eyon d 500 cuerdas. T h e land was purch ased largely w ith f un d s received

N ATIO NAi., PA"ITERNS DU RING THE AMERICAN P E RIOD

from tax rebates on rum sales during the war vears. Today the government is the largest single land~wner in the Puerto Rican sugar industry. This section of the land law was devise<!' to take advantage of the benefits of large-scale operation, at the same time distributing profits m o re widely among a larger number o( worke rs. :\fter all o perating expenses, interest payments, and amortizatio n o( debt have been taken ca re of, the remainder is divided among the workers in proporti o n to the labor they have performed during the year. Title V of this sa me act established rural communities for th e lancllcss, g iving to each fa mily a parce/a, ;1 s111;tll plot of land (genera lly under three c11erdas) on " ·hich to place its house and grow some subsiste nce crops. These communities were to be estab1ished near pro pon io n a 1 benefit farms or in other reg ions "·here there \\"Otild be assurance of enough outside work and go,·ernment services so that holders of p lots could supplement the production of their own plots \\"i th i11come from mo ney wages. Title \ "I of the an pro poses the purchase of larger, famil y-si1cd farms on land \\·here "[or reasons of topogra ph y a11d the relat.i,·c sca rcity o( means of transpona Lion, the establishment of proportional benefit form s is 11ot feas ible."' T he law also provides for education for the developm e nt of co-operatives on the proportional bene fit farm s a nd in the communities. In the seven years of its operation through ig.18 the Land Authority had purchased the property of seven suga r corporations, which included more than 100,000 c 11enlas worth almost S1 5,000,000. Forty-eight proportion al benefit farms have been established with an average size of 1,Goo c11erdas each. The profits distributed to the workers during th is period amoun tecl to S1,244 , 000. The administrators claim to have increased the total volume o[ employment through increase in production and imensification o( cultivation. In four o f the projects, the production had risen 78.4 per cent since the farms were taken over by the Land Authority, w h ile the average insular increase during this period was only 19.4 per cent. One hundred and fifty-eight Title V communities have been established in which 22,000 formerly landless famil ies now live. T he La nd Authority proposes to provide homes for 4.000 more each year until the estima ted 78,000 agregado fami lies have been settled. Grouping the families in these communi ties is seen as a device to provide them with the furth er benefits of certa in public services such as schools, light, and water -things more easily supplied in this type of settlement pattern than in any form of dispersed settlement. Recause of the topography and relative poverty of their soils and because of the nature of their crops, the mountainous areas of the island have not witnessed the degree of land concentration tha t is found on the coasta l plains. The tendency, particularly in the eastern h ighlands, is toward small farms. The Land Authority considers that the proportional benefit type of Cann would not be feasible here, and therefore pro-

71

poses a slightly differen t form of tenancy, employing the provisions of Title VI to provide family-size farms on large u·acts of la nd, where scientific cultivation a nd the development of industries associated with the elaboration of local produce may be applied. The L a nd Authority has been in operation for too short a time to permit a n adequate appraisal of its effects upon the farmers. Its supporters maintain that it has improved the standard of living of thousands of

Fig. 1 r . Noconi g irl doin g needleworh at h ome. Photo by Delano.

families, that it has provided the landless with la nd and hope, and that it has eliminated many evils of large corporate ownership in those areas where it now operates. Its detractors point out that the benefits to the individual agricultural laborer h ave been small, that settlement on parcels of land has in some cases worked a ha rdship because it has deprived the worker of some of the advantages of the paternal agregadolandowner relationship without g iving h im enough in return. TOBACCO

The production o( tobacco, like that of sugar, saw an amazing d evelopmen t as a result of the change in sovereignty (Charts, 4, 5, 7). Free entrance into the A merican m arket, large investments of A merican capital- in this case not in the land itself or in processing equipment but primarily in the purchase of the processed product-and the development of b etter tech-

7'2

THE PEOPLE OF P UERTO RICO

niques of cultivation and manufacture increased the production of tobacco at a rate which, until 1927, was greater than that of sugar. From 62,000 cwt. produced on approximately 6,ooo cuerclas in 1897, it rose to about 500,000 cwt. on an area of abou t 80,000 cuerdas in 1927. In those Lhirty years, Lhe export value of this product in Lhe economy of the Island increased from a Jiulc more than 1,000,000 pesos to $25,000,000. As a result of this enormous developmenL of the tobacco indusLry, the e:ist centra l region of the island enjoyed a growing prosperity, opportunities for work mulliplying rapidly in a zone which, had it not been for this product, would have been one of the poorest of the Island owing to the poverty of iLs soils and its topography. The cu ltivation of tobacco has for this overpopulated Island many adva ntages; it r equires a greater amount of work per cuerda than cane and coffee; offers abundant opportunities for additional work in handling, stripping and processing; the land on which it is cultivated remains free for the culti\'ation of food crops during more than half of the year; the major part of the area dedicated to the culti· vation of tobacco is in small family-sized farms (Cordero,

1949:6).

.

Although tobacco production grew at a faster rate than sugar production, it was not accompanied by the land concentration which marked the development of the latter. Even today, states Perloff (1950:289-90), the "ovenvhelming majority of the farmers who grow tobacco cultivate less than ten cuerdas of the crop." A lso ( i 950: 288), "for many years the crop furnished the largest part of the cash income of more than 20,000 farmers, most of whom own or rent small farms of not more than ten acres .. . ." l\·Iost experts agree lhat in the eastern highlands and the Caguas, Comerio and La Plata valleys, areas of greatest tobacco cultivation, there is no other cash crop that cou ld take the place of tobacco under existing conditions. American capital, instrumental in bringing about a landless proletariat in the areas of greatest sugar cultivation through encouraging the concentration of land in fewer and fewer hands, had an opposite effect in the tobacco regions. In the tobacco highlands, the processor and disLributor did not have t0 control proclucLion, as in the case of sugar; for mechanization was impossible a nd it was far simpler to realize greater profits in tobacco as a middleman than as a producer. Mainland investment capital, therefore, did not go in to the land or the construction of expensive mills and machinery. The producers of tobacco were and are still overwhelm ing ly Puerto R icans. The ready cash that could be gotten for cultivation of tobacco even on a small scale and through share-cropp ing, offered an opportunity and incentive for the individual to own his farm. The Brookings Report Slaled that of all farmers in the island " .. . tobacco workers have the best chance o( themselves becoming small farmers . . . . Some of the smaller farmers in the tobacco regions h ave bought Lheir farms with money cleared as share-workers" (Clark, 193!): 561 ). Although il is possible to m ake a greater ne t income per acre on large tobacco farms than on small ones, a

small amount of tobacco can be planted by any farmer who planls su bsisLen ce crops in this area. J\ lost farmers take advantage of this op pon uniLy to assure lhernscl\'es some cash income (Roberts, 1942:9!!). It has become easier for the sma ll farmer to finance the cu lti vation of tobacco withoul persona l resources and wilhout the means o r abiliLy to negotiate commercial loans. The eslablishment of the Puerto R ico Tobacco Ma rket ing Association on Augus t ::p, 1!)3'1 · a nd ils subseq uem d eve lopm e nt to a p o int where it now handl e!> a large p:1rt ol the tobacco produced and markclcd i11 the reg ion. m;1rkcd ;111 i111pona11t cha111.~(' in the availabil it y ol < r<:dit lor the ... 111:111 producer. I le may no\\· procure loa 11'> l rom tl1:1 t oq~:111i1:1 Lion or l rom the Farmers Hom e .\dmi11istra ticrn to co\'CT 1110>.t ol the costs of production exce pt hhor. :\11d t It<.· inu.:n..:st rate:" are not so high that tltcy :11>>.orh mo!>l ol th e profit in a fair or good year. Thu-;, the tnb:1cc o grn\\'c1· is fj . nanced by an ag<::nc~· Lhat exe rci se!> 1ittk <ontrol on.'r his production and procc ....,ing. The ex isLenrc of the c<i·opcrati\'(.' :11ul othc1· fcdc:r:d sources of credit for the tobaffo gro\\'C'l' h:i" not com · pleLely e limin a ted th e: o ld rr'fr1rcio11ist11- a private: i11 dividual , or one e mpl oyed by a large compa ny who extends production credit at vary ing rates of interest to producers, generally exercises some supe r vision over the crop during its cultivation, and eithe1· arranges for the marketing or buys il himsel[-who handled muc h of th e credit in the days be fore these agen cies developed . H e still fills the gap between loans available through lhese agencies and th e actual produc tion costs, and provides credit fo1· lhose who prefer not Lo be members of the co-operntive or choose not to make use of the gover nment services because of th e "red tape" so frequently involved (see ch apler on Tabara). J-I is interesl rates are like ly lo be higher tha n the !'> p e r cent of lhe other agen c ies, and h e genera lly exerc ises a greater degree of contro l over the a ctua l production processes than the other agencies. I mprovements in the methods of the co-operative, and recen t ch anges in techniques for gra ding tobacco, however, have decreased the complaints against th at organ ization, and the refaccionistas seem mo re clearly on the decline. T h e Brookings R eport (C lark , 1939:505) co mpar es the production of tobacco by small farmers for its cash value with that of cotto n in the southern Uniled States. "l\ fany small farmers raise . . . tobacco, just as our Soulhe rn farmers raise coLLOn, simpl y because there is always an open cash markeL for these crops, and h e nce someon e is re<l dy to make cred it advances o n them." This aspect of tobacco production will b e discussed in g reater detail in Part l II. COFFEE

In 18!)8, se\·eral fanors had d e<lll coffee a serio us bl ow (p. :J5)· Th e change to American sovere ig nly removed Puerto Ri can coffee from its favored position in the Span ish and Cuban markets, lor a coffee tax was enforced on imports into Spain and Cuba. Jn 189n. the hurricane of Sa n Ciriaco delivered a second blow

1\ATIO:-;AL PATTER!\S DURI NG THE A:'.\fERICAN PERIOD

~1t the island's coffee industry. Crops were a lmost com-

pletely lost for severa l years and limited for some add itional yea rs. i\ loreo\·er, mortgages were foreclosed, for coffee had been financed by Span ish merchams on a basis that was precarious to the grower. Coffee reco,·ered slowly, a nd the brief pre-\Vorld \Var I prosperity which it enjoyed "·as ended by the loss of markets after the war. The depression o[ the thirties brought th e industry to the brink of bankruptcy. As a res ult of these fa ctors, coffee cu ltivation h as become i11creasinRIY extensive rather than intensive. \\ ' h crca~ the an~raf{C yield "·as about 350 pounds per ;1nT ne;1r the turn ol th e ccmury. it dropped t0 about 150 p<HllHb i11 the period of 1939-.16-despite imprn\'(:ll1e111 s in ~c i c ntifi c 111 c1hods o[ coffee cultivation during the l:ittcr period. " :\11 increasing number of coffee orch;1rds h;1d bec11 practically abandoned or cut o,·er . . . a11d due to th e lark o( incentive, technologica I progrc~s is not made use of" (Puerto Rico I Iou ~e ol Rc presenta ti\'es . 194 8). The ~i1c ol coffee farms today. although not comparable \\'ith that or larms in die suga r cane region, is far greater than in th e tobacco-minor crops region. In 1!.J.15· ii per cent or the farms in the coffee area devoted five acres or Jess to cofiee, but they comprised only 15.8 per cent of the total acreage. There were 1G,04G such farms, "·ith a tOtal coffee acreage of 27,091. Farms whi ch had loo or more acres in coffee numbered ::?60 o r 1.3 per cen t of a ll coffee farms. This small group of farms, however, comprised 33.9 per cent o( the total acreage, or 58, 158 acres of a ll cofiee farm s (Puerto Rico H ouse of Representatives, 19-18: 19). P erloff ( 1950: 299) describes fa rm ownersh ip in the coffee reg ion as follows: "Beca use of the mortgage and ~lebt situation m an y farmers . . . are generally owners 111 name rather than in fa ct. . . . [The] sources of credit ope n to m ost farm ers are limited and the cost of borrowing extremely high . . . . [On ma ny of the larger farms] there seems to be a tendency toward extensive cultivation . . . parts of . . . coffee plantings either [beingl abandoned or only lightly used .. .. " At the present time, coffee production and the way of life associated with it seems to be a surv iva l of the past, rather than a potential of the future. Little has been done a nd perhaps littl e can be done to rehabilitate th e Puerto Rican coffee industry. After the industry was damaged further by the 1928 and 193 2 hurricanes a nd by the depression of the thirties, a few measures of a temporary nature, includ ing the blanket assessment of all coffee land at a rate of St.oo a cue rda , were ad opted. In the long nm these measures have proved of little value since the on ly real incentive, that of a market for the product. was not to be provided for the coffee producers. It has been estimated that som e $38,000,000 would be needed to finan ce a nineyear p rogram for rehabilitation of the coffee region, including the search for new markets. In 1!)46, the insular government was a ble to appropriate on ly ~800,000 to provide the beginnings of a program to improve cu ltivation practices so as to ennble P uerto Rican coffee to compete with the coffee produced in

73

other areas of th~ world .. -::he currently depressed coffee .g.rO\~ers a1:e 111 no ~os 1~1on to attempt their own rehabihrn tton wnhout this aid. They h ave neither th e money, the easy cred it, nor the market incentive. Until a ll o( these can be provided there is little hope that the problem o( the Canners who occupy more than one-fourth of the island's expanse can be solved . J\ feanwh ii~, the peo p~e of the coffee area are seeking new solutions t~ their. problems. \ l\Therever possible they are converting the ir lands to sugar and tobacco, and the laborers are supplementing their income with needlework and ocher jobs.

MINOR CROPS

The Puerto Rican tradition of small farmers has meant a preponderant production of foods that could be co n~umed . locally. ~h e garden crops that were produced 111 earlier centu~·1es fo r on-the-farm consumption were later produced (or sale to those portions of the populntion, regional and class, which were devoted to produ cing cash crops a nd to rendering other services. Th is need for food prod uction became greater when the population so outran the local food supply that up LO ha!( the island's foods had to be imported. In 19-10, Puerto Rico devoted a la rger portion o( her total area to the cultivation o( ga rden vegetables and food crops than in 1898. As in earlier centuries, a considerable proponion of these a re native Ameri can Indian domesticates-corn, beans, cassava, taniers, sweet p otatoes. There are a lso bananas, plantains, and coconuts. T he 277,798 c uerdas planted to food crops were mostly for insular consumption . During \ Vorld \ Var II, curtai lment of food imports through reduced shipping in creased the need for self-sufficiency a nd augmented this production somewhat. Accura te fi gures are not available, but it is estimated tha t more th an 300,000 c uerc/as were in food crops by 19..J.5· T oday Puerto Rico imports about 40 p er cent b y bul k and 60 per cent by value of a ll the food it consumes. R afael Pico ( 1937a: <iO) secs no way out of this situation, for he states: "If all the cultivable land on the I sland were planted to food crops, it would not support an ywhere near the total population." Two factors wh ich inhibit the further expansion of food crop cultivation a re the disorganized m arket and the sca rcity of cred it. The marketi ng of local vegeta ble, fruit, a nd anima l products is hand icapped by inadequate transportation; by a virtu al monopoly of each individua l trucker who happens to service given fa rm areas; by the limited space in the loca l markets; a nd by the plethora of middlemen. Th e resulting inadequate and restricLive marketing system means high prices to the consumers, a nd to the producers it m eans discourngingly low prices and uncertain sales. Th e credit aspect of this picture a lso contrasts w ith that o ( tobacco nncl sugar, for in minor crop product ion the a bsence "of a constant q uoted market for food crops makes cred it extension for ra ising them difficult or imposs ible . . . even where such production wou ld

74

THE PEOPLE OF PUERTO RICO

be more to the advantage of the farmer and the community" (Clark, 1939:505). Food crops are grown all over the island to a greater or lesser degree. The area of their greatest concentration is in the highlands and particularly in those sections of the highlands where tobacco is the major cash crop. There are several cash crops which are now grown on so small a scale as to be a negligible item in export trade, but which have at one time or another been considered potential major sources of wealth. These include pineapples, citrus fruits, coconuts, bananas, and sea island cotton. It is commonly claimed that these have not developed further or should not develop because the returns from sugar surpass those from all other crops. If the heavy capitalization in sugar, including refineries in the United States, is taken into account, this is no doubt true; but it is by no means certain that the island might not receive more wealth from other crops. Meanwhile these other crops tend to be single crops on individual farms or in limited regions. T hey have definitely affected the lives of the people involved, but, like the cattle industry, they are too restricted in extent to have created a major subculture. CREDIT

As we have noted in the previous section, the island's agricultural potentials were not fully realized until the Americans arrived and liberal amounts of capital in the form of direct investment or credit became available. This credit was extended because new markets were opened; where the markets appeared restricted, weak, or too strongly competitive, credit was generally withheld. Wi thout credit few if any significant changes in agricultural production could be made. The Brookings report states (Clark, 1939:374) that "it is a commonplace that economic progress [under the existing system of production and distribution J is dependent upon .. . investment." A comparison of data on loans and discounts in Puerto R ico for the years 1898 and 1928 makes this point quite clear. In the year of American intervention, the total amount outstanding in loans and discounts was $2,805,682. By i 928, the figure had risen to S54,927 ,963, an increase of almost 2,000 per cent (Clark, 1939: 376). In a survey conducted in 1942, it was discovered that "more than one-fourth of the farms used no credit of any kind, and the farmers stated that they operated their farms with their own resources. Merchants were the principal source of credit, especially for tobacco farms . . . . Banks were the source of credit for less than one per cent of the total number obtaining credit. The proportion of farmers who reported they were unable to obtain credit was especia lly high for the coffee farms and those raising coffee and minor crops" (Monthly Labor Review, 1942: 1282). The situation seems to have changed somewhat since this report was issued, and the chief source of credit for most tobacco producers is now the Tobacco Co-operative and its

affiliated agencies. More than one-fourth of the fa r mers on th e island are now making use o( some comme rc ial credit, and a good many more depend upon credit in the local food and merchandising stor es to ca rry them through the dead season. The major sources of cred it for sugar producers are shown in the following table summarizing a study of 3'!6 sugar cane farms in 1939- -10 (l'vfora les and Haddock, 1946:2 1): TABLE 7. LOANS FOR SUGAR CANE PRODUCTION Lo ans

Quantity Loan ed I

Average per Loon

. !! t /.!!Hfi

;,Ii

s 8!J8 .oo

I I

:-1 8 .1.00

:~

I·I ·.'{'J.! .1fi.oHo

I:.!

:1.07 :1-00

2()

;u .01111

CJ

!!80.00

17 .li87

J !!

7 ·!J.18.oo

.' ;:;88 .:);,.)

I (JO

s H50.oo

I l

s ·I ·I ·~J:"d

J2

S.1.<JH7 .oo

·I

I ' I 3:)

.\" ().

r ,

!!.p Sugar Centrals 71) Large Farmers Federa l Agencies I.') Fertili zer Companies and Stor es 118 Others, Especial ly () Commercial Bank.<.

:-, :{

Total

I ()CJ

Source of Credit

Producers· Credit Administration Emergency Crop Loans

·I :J 7

.·/ /11111/1//

(

,I

(

,

28'1.oo

The chief sources of credit for t0bacco produ cers a re given in the following table summarizing a study of 167 tobacco farms in 1939--10 (Morales and Descartes, 1946:20): TABLE 8. LOANS FOR TOBACCO PRODUCTION Quantity Looned

Loans

Average per loon

No .

%

Amount

%

Dealers-rcfaccion is ts 96 Co-opera tives a 25 Large Tobacco Growers 20 F ertilizer Companies and Stores 4,1

52

S66,637

13 11

7,822 2,861

80 9 4

24

6,066

7

331.00

Tola{

100

$83,386

100

$ 1151.00

Source of Credit

185

s1,007.00 3 13.00 143.00

n Tn the year of this s t11dy , the P11crto R ica11 Tobacco :Marketing Co· ope r ative As soci;iti on handled only 1,;. ; per cent o f the total crop.

It shou ld be noted in connection with the a b ove chart that the credit situation in tobacco has a ltered considerably in the last eight years. Al though the largest part of the dealers engaged in crop loans are representatives of the American tobacco manufacturers, the number o( these and the e xtent of their loans have declined in p roportion as the loans granted by fed er al agencies and the co-operative have increased. Funds for the operation of the co-operative were augmented with a loan granted by the Bank of Cooperatives of Baltimore. This bank fur ther encouraged the freeing of credit facilities on the part of the Production Credit Association and the Farmers Home Administration (formed from the m erger of the former Emergency Crop Loan Office and the Farm Security Administrat ion). Now virtua ll y all of the loans of the latter two agencies for tobacco cu lti vation are made through the co-operaLive.

NATIONAL PATIERNS D U RING THE A?vrERJCAN PERIOD

Credi t facilities for coffee production are shown in the following table, summ arizing a study of 288 coffee fa rms made in 1946- ,17 (Serra a nd Pi11ero, 1949: i 4): TABLE 9. LOANS FOR COFFEE PRODUCTION loons Source of Cre dit

No .

Coffee Co·opcrati\'C n Farm St'c11ri ty Ad. Co111llll'ITial Banks R oa~ter· rd:t\ c io n is t.s Stores Fa nncrs '/'0 111/

Quantity loaned

%

A 11101111t

39

47

s 54.050

18 11

!?I

13 8

9·7H 79,399

,I

·I

16.880 10,456 5.600

8.1

100

S 176.129

7 (}

,,

7

%

Averag e Size of loan

3

$ 1,386.00 54 1.00 7,:n 8.00 2,110.00 1,743.00 1,867.00

100

$ 2, 12:!.00

30 6 45 10 6

a I 11 thi• Y<':. r . o f a tot;d p rn<l11ct i<>11 of ~St>.ooo c wt., the co·op handled r 1 J.o~ • ~' c wt.. or .10 p<.~r C<.'llt.

A comparison of the an~rage si1.e of coffee loa ns with that for whacco sho\\'s a slriking d iffere nce. In coffee it is llic large producers who are able to benefit from \\'hatevcr credi t facilit ies are available, whereas in tobacco credit seems readil y a\·a ilable to the small produn:r in lh e quarllity he needs for the size of his operaLion. As in lhe case of the Tobacco Co-operative, the Coffee Co-operat ive does not make direct loans to farmers but serves as the agent for federal agencies and comm ercial banks (Serra and Pit1ero, 1949: q). Credi t facili t ies for producers of minor crops are d escribed by Geigel ( 1942a :9): " I do not think it is very fa r from the truth to say that in reality there are no adequate sources of credi t available for the cultivation o( mino r crops. The reason is that most minor crops are for local consumption, and here the market is totally disorganized."

COMMERC E The enormous expansion o f Puerto Rican commerce which has taken place in the fifty years of American domina tion is both a cause and an effect of the expan~ion of credit facil i ties that took place with the change 111 sovereignty. Beca use Puerto Rican expor ts were given a favored position over foreig n producers i n the American market as a result of the P residential Proclamatio n of July 25, i901, which made the island a part of the mainland domestic commercial sys tem, credit flowed into the development o f Puerto Rico's agr.icultural resources. The agricultural industries wh1:h were developed with the application of the new capwtl produced great quantities of goods for export and provided the cash to stimulate the demand for a much g reater vo lume o f imports. In the year 1886-87, the United States accounted for 31·99 per cen t of Puerto Rico 's externa l trade. In 1895- 96, this percentage d rop ped to a low po int of less t,han 18 per cent. But by 1899- 1900, i t had climbed to <~2 . 05 per cent and has risen almost uninterruptedly lrom th at point since. Chart 10 g ives th e volume o( trade with the world and with the Uni ted States for

75

selected years from 1886-87 to 1946-47 . These data should be compared with those given in Charts 4 and 9 for a n understanding of the precise value of some of the island's most important exports i n the selected yea rs. D iscussion of Puerto Rico's commerce would not be complete without some mention of the frequentl y debated Coastwise Shipping Law. Adopted o riginally to furth er the growth of a United States Merchant iVIarine, th e application of the law to a n overseas possession like Puerto Rico has worked certa in hardships on the island. The island's tariff advantages of trading with the U nited States are offset somewhat b y the need to use American ships, which charge higher rates than ships of other nations, and incidenta lly, have discouraged tourist trade. Moreover, the restriction prevents building up a large trade with fore ign countries, for Puerto Rico is not free to use foreign shipping wherever it might find it advantageous. The inclusion of Puerto Rico within the mainland's tariff barriers has clearly benefited the island in the case of sugar, tobacco, and needlework exports, but it has served to increase the cost of r ice, the die tary staple of the mass of the people. Often, during the period of American sovereignty, Puerto Rico would h ave been a ble to purchase r ice in the world m a rket at a much lower price than it actually did pay. In o rder to protect r ice growers of the United States from the competition of lower production-cost areas, like those of East Asia, Puerto Rico has to pay a heavy duty on rice imported from any place in the world except the U ni ted States. Thus, the Puerto Rica n consumer has to pay what the American producer cons iders a fa ir price-plus the cost of shipping. '\Ve shall not h ere try to assay the advantages and disadvantages of Puerto Rico's inclusion in the American tariff zone. A survey b y the United States Tariff Comm ission estima tes that the benefits which accrue to the island outweigh the disadvantages.4 A nd it should be remembered further that many of Puerto Rico's Ca r ibbean n eighbors have voluntari ly "obta ined one-half or more of (their) imports from the United States notwi thstand ing (their) freedom to purchase in any market [th ey] w ished and not-withstanding the small proportion of tota l exports sold to the United States" (U .S. Tariff Commission, 1946 :7). Tom{1s Bla nco observes (personal communication) that "probably, if Puerto Rico ·were free to bargain w ith the U nited States it would be a ble to buy 50% or more of its imports advantageously from the United States."

MANU FACTU RING The development of Puerto Rican manufacturing under American ru le , while n ot parallel to that oE agriculture, h as been fairl y rap id, particularly with in the past fifteen or twenty yea rs. The importance of 'l Sec U.S. Tariff Commission Re port. 1!)4(i. for a complete discussion of th is point. For th e o pposi te ,·ie ll". sec Soltero, lf)<!G.

76

THE PEOPLE OF PUERTO RICO

insular manufacturing or industrialization in general lies not so much in what has been accompl ished as in what is contemplated. And what may be accomplished will have a very profound effect upon the subcultures of Puerto Rico, not only through creating new sources of wealth for the island as a whole but through creating new subcultural groups. The present political leaders of the island see the solution for its economic and social problems in reorganization of the island's economy from a purely agricultu ral one to one which combines agriculture wi th the processing of agricultural products and the fabrication of as many other kinds of items as the resources in manpower and natural wealth will permit. Puerto Rico is obviously unable to support its present population by any kind of agriculture, whether it be the exclusive production of food crops or cash crops, or any presently known combination of both. The only other areas of the world which have a comparable population density and a higher standard of living are highly industrialized nations like England and Belgium, or states such as Rhode Island or Massachusetts, which acquire the food they need in return for their manufactured goods.- Meanwhile, the local response to overpopulation and food shortage has been a movement from farm to industrial urban center- in this case New York City, which has absorbed about 10 per cent of the island's population. 5 Industrialization as a solution to the island's problems has been strongly advocated by Luis Munoz Marin, the present governor of Puerto Rico, and steps to encourage the process have been taken by the administration of his party, the Popular Democrats. Since this party came into power in 1940, more has been accomplished to further industrialization than in s For a discussion of the demographic elements of the problem, see Perloff, 1950: 210-35.

TABLE 10. EMPLOYMENT BY INDUSTRIES (PERLOf.F,

Industry Group

the preceding forty years. The inadequacy 0£ an agrarian economy to meet the most basic needs o[ the population, however, was recognized at least as early as the late twenties and the thirties. The needl ework industry, for example, had b een e n cou r aged so that its export value grew from only .03 per cent of total exports in 1911 to 17.0 per cent in 1940 (U.S . Tariff Commission, 1946). In 1919 an act (No. 92) passed b y the insu lar leg islature authorized the Publi c Service Commission to g rant tax exempt ions to new in dustr ies "for not more than ten years." and another act (No. i6) o( 1925 impl emented the first. By .Jun e :)<> . 1 ~):.!8 , thirty-one exernptions had been made, almost all for a period of five years. Later, in i9.10, the Puerto Ric;111 I ndu strial D cn:: lopment Corporation. an independent goven1111 c1it corp<> · ration empO\\'Cred to operate plants and a:-.si:-.t priv;1tc enterprise by furnishing cred it and L1x exclllptions for a speci fi ed period tone\\' industries, was cs ta bl ished by the P opular party. Cement, brick, g lass, and other factories constructed and operated by the 1orpor;1tio11, however, d id not fl ourish and \\'ere finally sold to private capita l. In the area ol tax exemption s and financial assistance for new privately O\\' ncd industri es . however, the present legislation has been more effective than previous measures in speed ing industrializationa l though its goals still seem remote. Rece ntly ( 1949) the tax exemption provisions of the legislation were eliminated, a l though they remain in effect for those industries which had already been granted the exemptions. To date, industrialization has provided only slight relief fo r Puerto Rico's overall economic problems. Jn the thirties industrialization received some stimulus, primarily through expanded needlework (Chart g), text ile manufacturing, and the processing of agricu ltural products. Tables lo and 1 1 show the trends in

1950:401) (Figu res ore for April - except 1920, when Jon. 1)

1910

1920

1930

19.10

19.16

19-18

Agriculture Construction Manufacturing Sugar mills Other food industries Tobacco manufacturing Needlework at home Other textile products Other manufacturing industries Transportation and communications ·w holesale and retail trade Finance, insurance, and real estate Services Domestic Professional Other Government, not elsewhere classified Other industries or occupations

239,973 7,797 45,278 6, 155 3,270 I 1,315 I I ,200 2,000 11 ,338 9,080 25,579 57,128 5 1·39 1 1,365 4,372 4,069 3, 126

244,680 9,317 62,199 8,723 3,622 16,81 I 14,382 3,693 14,968 10,063 25,3 29 256 42,823 35,643 3,4i5 3,765 6,365 5,486

262,623 12,766 98,150 I 1,4 ,16 4, 160 15,508 42,122 13· 197 l 1,7 17 I 7, 137 39,534 812 55,736 38,40G 6,894 10,436 l l ,,123 3,260

228,811 16,037 100,693 19,731 5,631 6, 121 44,73 1 16,780 7,699 20,238 53,570 i ,799 65,989 42,710 9,Scn 13"172 19,116 3,690

226,696 23,082 101,1 18 13,127 9,83 11 10,480 27,690 26,828 13, 159 28,24.0 71,326 1,242 73,838 27.994 l 1,768 34,076 34,462 <J,739

242,321 32,73 1 I 15,9'5 6 I 3,308 9,685 4,059 51,871 18,070 18,963 23,05:1 82,775 2,iJ20 73, 174 33,068 11 ,476 28,630 46,041 4,665

Total regular emfJloyment

393,027

407,324

502 ,75~)

s 12.214

579,900

627, 180

77

NATIONAL PATTE RNS DURING THE AMERICAN PERIOD TABLE 11. NET INCOME OF PUERTO RICO BY INDUSTRIAL DIVISIONS

Fiscal Years (In Thousands of Dollars)

flldustry GroujJ ;\Ianuf:1nuring, total S u g-ar mills and re fineri es Dis tilling and bottling of liquor

Bre ,\·c ric.s and bc,·cragcs Bakery products ~ lisc. food prod u ct.s · 1"iibaC'Co product.s i'\ccdlt-\\'<1rk and other tcxtih.: prod. l .11111hn. f11rnit11rc. and other wood prod. S1011t· :111d < l:I\· produns l'ri11ti11g :1 11d p11lili;..hi11g and allied trades Clicn1icils and allied products .\1;1< lii11tT) and 111i,1. nwt:il products .\ Ii'< cll:111co11s :\grinilt11n·

Ot li('r i 11d 11~tri es :111d gon. i'\n i11tcr11:1tion:tl fl o w of c:ipital returns T flf11/ Ill'/ 11/Cl)ll/C

I 9.f I -.f2

9,272 1,579 633 1,217 634 2,4.H 5.826 5!}1

4.2, 146 14,879 •1,861

l ,775 1,819

3.975 6,766 1,142

598

Sq

872 1,053 1,070

1, 115 1,256 1.697

573 70,,168 11 4,514

106.096 218,584

- 3.558

-6.76i

8~M

56,668 9,843 1'1·323 3,461 3.3 16 2,081 4, 102 10.5.18 1,29 2 1. 3:;8 1,666 1,823 1,503 1.3i2 109.019 322, 14 1 - 10,408

7·!.749 q ,.,[!?9 8.iO·~

3,089 4, 1 5i

2409 S,642 1

9·+·H 2,855 1.779 l.93i 2.628 2,916 I .i60 1.13,67.1 353·;s97 - i,292

!?!?7,789

e mployment :ind earnings in the major divisions of the insular economy lor selcCLed years. They indicate dea rl y the increase of employment and net income not only in manufacturing but in construction, trade, and transponation , <md the services as well. 111 terms of numbers of people employed, the needlework and textile industries rate far above all other nonagricultural enterprises, for they include well over half of the total employed in manufacturing pursuits. lt should be remembered, however, that most of the employees in these trades work irregularly at home and that their earnings are generally small and subject to considerable fluctuation as well as subsidiary to other forms of in come. About 82 per cent of the needleworkers are women (1'1011tlily Labor Review, 1910). The effect of this on the family and on the position of women in homes and areas where needlework is important may be very sign ificant. Unfortunately, we shall not be able to report on the cul tura l impact of this condition, our study of needlework having been limited to the small amount of homework, particularly on gloves, encountered sporadically in a few of the communities studied . It should also be noted that needlework is primarily a processing operation, the bulk of the profits from the sa le of the finished product going to the mainland concerns. "[It is] a branch of the industry in the States, as it is mainly carried on by contractors who process materials sent from the mainland . .. " (Monthly Labor Review 1940: 1328). The Brookings Report (Clark, 1939:454) suggests why the need lework industry has been the one to show the most significant development of a ll mam.1facturing enterprises in Puerto Rico. "Puerto Rico has had a considerable rnanufacturing development along certain lines . . . apparently promoted somewhat by the American Immigration laws, which have ~aused certain industries which formerly relied upon imported cheap labor from Europe and Asia to pay

increasing attention to the cheap labor market afforded b y PuertO Rico. The most notable expansion has been in the garment making trades."

LABOR Probably the most important change which has come about in the labor picture of the isla nd since the coming of the Americans is the emergence and development of the trade and mass union movement. \Ve shall not attempt an analysis of the development of the labor movement as such. Our concern is with the growth in numbers, power, and influence of organized labor up to 1949. Since 1896, when the Spanish labor organizer Santiago Iglesias came to Puerto Rico, the organized labor movement has grown until it now includes nearly haH the total labor force of the island. llut. aside from the sugar cane areas, the agricultural workers of the island have been hardly touched by the trade union movement. Labor in the coffee, tobacco, and minor crop regions, and in some areas where sugar is produced on a relatively small scale, is still largely unorganized, and the possibilities of its unionization presently seem remote. Too much of the work in these crops is performed by agregado, m.edianero or ambulant peon labor. The smaller farms often meet their work needs exclusively with family labor. The FLT (Federacion Libre de Trabajadores) was the first trade union of a modern type on the island. I t follows the general organizational pattern of the America n Federation of Labor to which it has been affiliated since its beginning in 1898. Dock workers, bakers, light and power service workers, among others, constitute most of its membership. The CGT (Confederaci6n General de Trabajadores) is the other major trade union organization. It was organized in March, 1940, and later became affiliated

78

THE PEOPLE OF P UERTO RICO

with the Congress of Indusu·ial Organizations in the United States. In 1945, after it had experienced a period of rapid growth, it split into two factions over the issue of independence for the island. One faction "still includes nearly all the 150,000 sugar cane workers of the island, both field and factory, in a ddition to other unions" (Verdiales, 1949:8 ff.). The most recently organized trade union organization is the UGT (Unidad General de Trabaj adores), created in September, 1947, according to Verdiales ( 1949), with "the a nnounced purpose of unifying the island's labor movement. Several unions from both CGT sectors and some of the smaller independent unions have joined the UGT." Among the independent unions on the island are the Brotherhood of R a ihvay ·workers; the Obreros Unidos de Lofza (which covers two sugar mills a nd adjacent fields); the R estaura n t, Bar and Hotel Employees; the Diamond Workers, a nd others. The insular government has a Conciliation Service in the Department of Labor a nd a Labor Rela tio ns Board (organized in 1945), which certifies bargaining units, compels negotiation, and "defines and prohibits several unfair labor practices" (Verdiales, 1949)· Gains usually attributed to the efforts of organized labor include the eight-hour law (Aug ust 7, 1935) and the relatively high wages of cane workers ·as compared with other agricultural workers on the island. Some of the insular labor legislation wh ich today covers child labor, r egulation of the work of wom en, labor relations, minimum wages, workmen's compensation, maternity leave, unfair discharges, d ouble pay for overtime after eight hours, sanitary working conditions, industrial safety, and others are also a ttributed b y many in part to the efforts of organized labor and its role in the insular political structure.

THE INTEGRATION O F PUERTO RICO'S ECONOMY W ITH THE UN ITED STATES The data presented in this section have shown that Puerto Rico's economy is h igh ly integrated with that of the United States. Perloff has summed up the degree of this integration in the following words ( i950: 110): In general terms, economic integration of two areas has various aspects, including: (a) Trade : The economy of an area may be considered integrated with another if the greatest part o( its trade is with the latter and if the trade is of paramount importance to its economy. (b) Tariffs: Tariff integration, in its ultimate form, takes the shape of a tariff union or the absorption o( one area within the tariff structure of another. C~rren.cy, credit and cred it control: Comp lete in tegration 1s evident whe n the currency is identical, when the credit needs of one area are supplied by the ba11ks of the other, and when, as a result of these condit io ns, m easures o( curren cy or credit con trol instituted by the latter arc also (cir in the former.

(9

(cl) Public Finances: Imcgrat ion may be said to exist where the fi scai r evenues of o ne country arc in part dcri,·ed from payments b y the governme nt of another and/ or wh <:n : one area obtains re\'e11 u es through the ac tivities o( the oth er. (e) Ownership of Investments : Integration on this count exists when the proportion of o n e co untry's in\'estmcnts in another area is large relative to other foreign h o ldings and to the total value o( ca pital assets of the latter-. Mobility of labor and shifts o f industry from o n e an:a to a nother arc also clements of economic integra tion. ' •Vhen these standards arc app lied it becomes c \·iclent that the Puerto Rican cco110111Y is close lv tied to the t·conom,· of ' ' ' the United States.ti

GOVERNMENTAL PATTERNS T he integ ration o[ Pu erto Ri can eco nomy with th e economy of the mainland \\'as a ccompanied b y lhc inclusion o[ Pu erto Ri co \\·ithin the pol it ical fram ework of the United States. l n thi s senion, "·c sh;d l deal with some aspects of this integration. \ Ve shall not be concerned here "·ith lhc d c n : lopmcnt of politi ca l fo rms and ideologies in the Un ited Stares. bu t rather w ith thei r e xpression in co lonial policy. \ Ve shall foc us our discussion on major ch a nges in Puerto Rico's gover nmen tal structure; on atti LUdes r eleva nt to an understanding of th e question o[ autonomy for the island; on th e growth of political parties devo tecl to different social, political, and econom ic goals; a nd on the meaning of democracy in Puerto Rico. T h e impac t of national institutions a nd ideologies o n th e communities studi ed is a n a lyzed in Part ll I. THE AMERICAN OCC UPATI ON-1898

Puerto R ico was occupied by American military forces in 1898, during th e Spanish-American \ Va r, and ceded b y Spain to the United Sta tes under the Treaty of Paris of the same year. \ Vhile American troops o [ occupation were received enthusiastically by some segments of the population , data collected dur ing o ur research tend to support the observations (.Je n ks, 1934: 1<12-57) that most people on the island respond ed with little interest. American rule brought new lega l and governmenta l institutions and political ideologies which differ ed profoundly from those of Spain (Carroll, 1900:243 ff.). This is n ot to say t hat a drnstica lly n ew co urse was thereby charted for Puerto Rico. ;\Cos t of the econom ic trends were ini tiated prior to 1898, and in i897 Spain had granted the isla nd a charter for an autonomous governm en t. T his government, however, ha d little o pportunity to fun ction before American troops arrived, after w hich the island was pla ced under m ilitary governmen t. The prin cipal di fference under America n sovere ig nty h as been well described by Blanco (1938: 40-42) as a sh ift from ra t he r evo lu t io nary a nd adaptive ch a nges to rath er revolutio na r y a nd su bstitut ive chan ges. Th ese cha nges were imposed fro m above a nd 1

'J

For a compkt t: discussion. sc:c Pe r loff. l !).i O : C hap. 8.

l'\ATIO:'.'\AL PATTERXS DURI NG THE A)lERICA:'.'\ PERIOD

from the outside by carriers o( another culwre, sometimes ruthlessly, sometimes d isrup tively, and in all cases in a way req uiring qu ick adaptation . The Spanish colonial government supported a rather rigidl y class-structured society, consisting o( powerful landlords on the one hand and landless rural wage earners, sharecroppers. and small farm owners on the other. The majority of the population had no real rranchise, for only taxpayers were a llowed to vote. Cm·crnmental pos itions were held largely by the eli te. The political alliltldes of the lower classes grew Ollt of 1heir cconrnuic and social position. Their poverty, their 1:1< k ol <"duca tio n and o pportunity. their dependt·ric e 11po11 tht.: l;indlords. and their social subordinatio11 t rc:itvd :1111011g them co11:-.idcrable h ostility toward t lr t· gonT11111t·11t "·hich s11pported the upper class. The l1<J~tili1 y w : 1~ the greater because many of the lanclo\\·1H·b were rl'cc11t Spanish immigrants. The i111t'llen11als and well-to-do were not enti rely pro-~p:111i-.h. hcn,-cYer. Durin ~ the n ineteenth century, 111a11~ pn:--011 ... who h:1d hcc n educated in Spain and i11llt1c11<Td hy r01itcmpt>r:1ry European and American politic:il phi losophy had lieg11 n to form a liberal ele111c11t i 11 the tmn1s :1 ml ci tics. their prestige oEten cxtendi11g Lo South .-\meri ca and the other Antilles. These imelleclllals had advoca ted varying degrees of reform from outright independence to mod ifications of the colo11 ia l system. Field research in San Jose and Nocor;\ showed that toward the end of the Spanish regime, when unrest produced incidents of open violence, a few Puerto Rican landowners even orga nized attacks on Spaniards. Such violence remained sporadic. ho"·ever, and no open rebellion on the pattern o[ the nineteenth-century revolutions in Spain's other possessions developed in Puerto Rico. This may have been due in pan to th e relative economic weakness o( uppera nd middle-c lass segmen ts on th e island , wh ich could ill afford to cut their economic and social ties with the mother country. The rural population, in turn, so<"iall y and economically dependent on the dominant landowners. were unable to assume an independent politi cal role. Du ring the Span ish-American \Var, American troops we re opposed mainly by the C ivil Guard anc.l th e Spa nish army. Spain received little support from the civilian population, even from the Span ish landlords, for the lauer "·ere b y this time looking to th e United States as a source of capital and as a market for their products (Carroll , 1900). T he situation contrasted with that in Cuba. where the people h ad already risen in revolt before the United States intervened. American occupation soon produced concern over the character of Puerto Rico's new relationship with the United States. Some Puerto Ricans favored territorial status as a step toward statehood, wh ile others d e mand ed complete independen ce. The mass of the p eo pl e, h owever, evidently had no conviction on the question of sovereignty. and mi litary rule all owed little out le t for political activity. The commander of the :\merican forces controlled the local authorities qu ite as con1pletely as the Span ish governor had, and Amer-

79

ican military personnel were often appointed as municipal mayors (Rowe, 1904: 126, i 29). I n 1900, the Cong ress of th e United States granted Puerto Rico a civil government; the unde rlying American concepts of law, government, and economic rights were e xplicitl y set forth in an Organic Act. This go,·ernment was not autonomous, however, for final authority on all matters \\·as retained by the United Srntes. The Presidem o[ the Un ited States was empowered to appoint. subj ect to the approval of the United States Senate, a go,·ernor and an executive council, "·hich fun ctio ned as a leg islative body. A H ouse of Delegates of thirty-five m embers was to be elected by popular vote. Rowe remarked that while the President wanted to extend the rights and privileges g uaranteed b y the American Constitution t0 the people of recen tly a cqu ired colonies, h e also fe lt compelled to reserve the rig ht to deal with emergencies b y retaining unrestricted authority in the federal government. The Secretary of \Var, "·ho had immediate jurisdiction over Puerto Rico, h owever, stated blumly that colonia l peoples overseas could not expect the Constitutiona l rights enjoyed b y the people o[ the United States (Rowe, 190-i) . \\!hen the military government was supplanted by a civil government, the imellectual and economic elite still h eld government positions, although they lacked real power or unified purpose. l\loreover. the popular franchise was limited under the n ew election laws which made literacy a condition of voting. But a n ew pol itical ideo logy was deve loping among the urban merchant:; and tradesm en , " ·hose activities had been curtailed under the Spa nish rule, and among the country people, who " ·ere increasing ly drawn into the stream of insular life. The older types o[ seU-sufficient and isolated plantations and small farms became lin ked more closely to th e larger society, and improved transportation a n d means of communication put them in closer touch ,,·ith San Juan, the economic and political capital. Expanding business, banking. and industry created new middle classes, while the gro\\·th of huge corporate-o"·ned sugar plantations brought about large numbers o( agricultural laborers. The n ew econom ic trends-th e rise of unionized labor and the corporat ion and th e general expansion of trade and commerce-were fostered b y the government, and. in time, they were to alter the political thinking o( the different groups of Puerto R icans. At first , the introduction of politica l democracy had little e ffect o n poli t ical processes. Political machines bought votes a nd controlled ca ndidates. The loca l legislative body itself had no real authority, a matter which prompted repeated protest in \Vashington. The labor movement, though guaranteed b y the new laws, was opposed b y th e economically powe rful, and its leaders were persecuted (Iglesias. 1 929). 1n the sugar regions, where un ions d eveloped most r apidly, strikes were broken by the pol ice w ith the governor·s approval and strike leaders imprisoned on false charo-es. Civil rights leg islation re mained without fo rce, ~-111d economic power exercised direct i nfluen ce over the proc-

80

THE PEOPLE OF Pt;ERTO RICO

The Liberal party favored indepe ndence or autonomy. Sympathy (or independe n ce, however , c ut across party lines. The Nat~ona lis t pany w~nted unconditional independence-111dependence '.''tthout r estrictions or favors-and was openly h os tile towards Govern or Blanton \Vinship. Altho ug h it is imposs ible to estimate the s tre ng th and sources of Nation a list suppon, o n the basis o( ava ilable in~o rmation , pany membe rs were involve d with the poli ce ;rnd nation a l THE ORGANIC ACT, 1917 guard in a series o( vio le nt e n cou nters whic h fed anti In i917, the Congress of the United States took tl~e Ameri can feeling. Nationa lis t leade rs \\'e re sente n ced to the federal penite n tiary in .\tl:t11L;1 lor co n-.p irac y next step in providi11g for greater self-government 1.n Puerto Rico when it passed the J ones Act, or Orga111c to overthro\\' .\me rican rule i11 l' ut:rto Ri cn. l 11 en · Act. This measure established a House of R e pre- suing riots. som e :'\atio11;tli-.ts were i11j11red ;1 1.1d :-.<>1n<.: sentatives of thirty-nine members, one from each of killed by the insular police, while oth e r, lT tal.1;1L('d l> v thirty-five representative districts and four members assass ina ting th e ch icl of pol in.:. · 1 li e : "-; ; 1 s 'lll~ \\'crt' at large, and a Senate of nine teen members, two from th en sl1 ol \\'ithout be ndit or tri;tl :1t police li c:;1deach of the seven senatoria l districts and five members qua rte rs. . \ l\:ationa li '>t par;1de in Pon ce \\';1~ broke n 11p at large. The members of both bodies were to ~e b y police and national g 11ard-.mc n. \\'ho lirC'cl <>1 1 th<.: chosen in general elections every four years. Th e legis- crowd , killing twc1ny and \\·m11Hling rnrnc: th:1'.1 ont' lature dea lt with insular affairs but its laws could be hundred. Sc)Jnc :'\:itio11:di,h then :1tttrnptccl to kill Litt· justi ce or the U.S. Di-. trin Court ;111d tl1(' g<>H'_r11or, vetoed by the governor or the Preside nt or revoked 1?Y the United States Congress. T he governor wa s still where upon nian y \\'Crc jailed in l ' .S. ledC'r;il pri -;011 :-.. A. Garfie ld Hayes. s<.: nt by th e .\rn c ric:i11 C:i,·il 1.ibcr· appointed by the President, and the a ppointment reties Union to im·c~ tigat c, reported (. \m c ri can Ci,·il quired confirmation by the U nited States S~ n ~te. The Liberties Committee Report, i937 :G!.!) that p e rscc 11· attorney genera l, the auditor, the comm1ss1oner o f tion and v iolatio n or civil liberties by the authorities education, a nd the justices of the Supreme Co urt "·ere were widespread and that the pa1:ad e at Pon ~e h.ad also appointed by the President. . degen e rated in to a massacre due to J!kgal use o[ pol ice The J ones Act provided tha t all Puerto Ricans born power. Public feelings in Pue rto Ri co now ran strong ly aher 19 17 would automatically become citizens of the . United States. Those born before 1917 could choose to against the Un ited States. This a nti-America n fee ling, however , did not crystalaccept or reject American ci tizenship. Governor H~nt li ze into a unanimous political response on the pan of reported (i g 18) that a few questioned the good fa1th Puerto Ricans. Th e Na tionalists a rg ued in favor o( of the government in granting citizenship j ust before independ ence on the grounds tha~ the U nited States the military dra(t of \ i\l'orld War I and refused it, but most Puerto Ricans accepted it rather than lose their had take n possession o( the island illega lly. Bu.t, wh e n legal status. Citizenship, however, did not grant the Congressmen Tydings and King introdu ced l?dls proright to vote in United States n ational elections u nless viding for independen ce and the atmosphe re m .\iVashin gton seemed to favor this measure, the.y did. n o t the person resided in the United States and met the press the ir advantage. Oth e r g rou~s, outside o[ ll.1c voting requirements of his loca lity. That is, . Pue rto N ationa list party, who a lso wanted 111cle pc nde nce, tlisRico had no representative who could vote 111 Congress. This lack of representation is opposed by some approved of the T yd ings and Ki~ g bill ~ because t.h ey feared that the island would be left outs ide the United political leaders who hope to achieve full statehood States tariff wall in an impossibly weak economic status for the island. For people who remain on the position. The coalition of the Republican and Socia lisland, the rights and duties of citizenship te nd to reist parties, which h e ld power , and the suga r prodt1<.:e rs main somewhat formal. School children are taught . . . . highlights o( American history, a nd learn to r ecite the opposed independe nce. During these troublesome poht1ca l t imes, the island Oath of Allegiance to the Flag. Citizenship h as the greatest practical importance to those who migrate to experienced the econ?mic crisi.s. of the depress ~on which created the bas is (or politica l changes dunng the mainland. th e n ext d ecade. Agen cies had b een es tablished unde r President Roosevel t to provide federal 1·elief, but th e THE DEPRESSION YEARS majority o( the people were living in poverty and the During the depression, Pue rto Rico suffered serious insu la r economy was c rumbling (Pe rloff, 1950) . T h e economic disorganization a nd poverty, which were not basic reforms of the New Deal h ad not yet affected mitigated b y "New Deal" m easures until World ·war Puerto Rico. At the pea k of the crisis, in about 19~ 8, JI. The political status of the island continued to be the Accic'm Social Ind e pe nd entista was formed under the major e lectoral issue. The parties in powe r-a the leadership of Luis Munoz 1Vfarin. This association coalition of Socialists and R epublicans-officia ll y fa. advocated independence o n a basis of social justice. vored statehood, despite a growing antipath y toward Munoz M a rin had formerly been a promin e nt leader the United States. of the Senate minori ty for the Libera l party. In i93fi, esses of justice and government. Commissions of Pu~rto Ricans were sent to vVashington to lodge comp_lamts and claims on behalf of special groups or the island as a whole, but Congress gave them little attention. The United States was making more enemies than friends, and the conviction that grea ter local autonomy or a permanent change in political status w~s the only solution to the island's difficulties grew rapidl y.

N.-\.TIO:"<AL PAlTERNS D UR1l'\C T HE .-\.:'IIERICAN PERIOD

81

he had been ousted from the Liberal party (or heading -rural and urban workers, intellectuals, farm owners, a movement to boycott the elections as a protest and professional people. They included men from against colonialism. The Acci6n Social Independen- other parties who had been disappointed by the actista was the forerunner o( the Popular Democratic complishments of their parties and men who had party, which went to the polls for the first time in 1940. never before actively engaged in politics. Some were Although the Popular party attracted many persons wealthy men who favored reforms. The Popular party who favored and continued to advocate independence, was a large-scale merger of different political and class it officially denied that political status was an electoral interests for the common purpose of achieving ecoissue, and adopted a platform of reforms designed to nomic and social reform. Its principal support, howhelp the rnral wage earners and the small landowners, ever, came from the mass of the people who were who const i tu tcd the greatest number o( potential suffering under the depression, were disappointed by niters on the island.; previous political programs which had not been car\\"hilc a member ol the minority party. :\Iunoz ried out, and were indifferent to the question of the \bri11 h:11l Ii,Td i11 \\"ash ington and had worked to island's political status. h:rn: the n· lorn1s of the ;-\cw Deal extended to Puerto Rico. The lo1111ding- of the P11erto Rica n Economic WORLD WAR II AND THE N EW DEAL .\d111i11i., 1r:11io11 :111d the P11crto Rican R elief Admini-;tr:1tio11. ltder:tl a!!encies concerned with mitio-atin()" Soon after the New Deal was really launched in ·~ b 0 the ntc>r(' 'eriouo; effen~ of the depression, had con- Pu eno Rico, " 'oriel \Var II broke out and created ,·i11ccd 111:111y Puerto Rican that l\Iunoz l\farin was new difficulties for the contemplated social reforms. mm-e i 11 llt1e11l i:tl i 11 \\"ash ington than the representa- .-\fter the United States entered the war, and Puerto Rico became an important military base, Dr. R exford t in•s ol t lie majority Pu erto Rican party, which was :111 :dlt li:1tC' of the l l11itcd States' Republican party, G. Tugwell, former advisor to President Roosevelt, :111d who l:1cked inll11c11cc witll New Deal-oriented was appo inted governor.8 Already identified with reform through his earlier investigations of excessive gcn·c.:rnmc11t ollicials. T he platform o( the Popular party included meas- hold ings by large corporations, T ugwell was opposed ures of social and economic reform which, thouo-h from the start, often by those "·ho favored reform but follo"·ing- New Deal policies, were designed to help preferred other methods than his. and b y those who rural la ho re rs a ncl sma II farmers. The principal pro- resented interference with party patronage or any gram was lo be one of land reform. The Foraker Act intervention whatsoever in Puerto Rican affairs. In of 1900 had provided that corporate landholdings addition, the wartime shortage of goods, materials, and should be limited to 500 acres, but this provision of shipping created a serious crisis, the effects of which the act had never been enforced. The Popular party were used as poli tical ammunition to discredit further proposed to put teeth into the law and to red istribute efforts by Tugwell. In \Vashington, Puerto Ricans land so as to provide for the resettlement of farm representing anti-New Deal interests, among them the workers. Puerto Rica n resident commissioner in the House of The Socia list party had once made a bid for power R epresentatives who was a member of the Socialist on a platform of social reform. It had helped organize Coalition party, attacked the reform program. I t was the Free Federation o( Laborers in the ca ne fields and feared that this opposition might cause Congress to other labor groups and had obtained support from revoke any legislation proposed b y the Popular party both the rural and urban laboring class. But in form- (see U.S. Congress, House and Sen ate Committee on ing a coa lition with the Republican party for the Insular Affairs, i 94 .J). Gradually, however, a program of social legislation purpose of ga ining power, it had allied itself with the very groups who dominated its constituents economi- was passed. Its economic and social effects have been cally. The Socialists had ga ined several public offices described in those portions of the preceding sections but failed to fulfill their promises. dealing with land reform and labor relations. ImpleThe Popular party ran on a pl atform of a New Deal mentation of the new provisions required major for Puerto Rico. All candidates were publicly sworn changes in the Puerto Rican governmental machinery. before the e lections to approve certain reform bills; New agencies and services had to be created a nd cosome continued to speak openly in favor of independ· ordinated with the central government. Research in cnce. The party refused to enter any coa lition a nd it applied social science was m ade the b asis for governopposed vote selling. I t won the 1940 elections by a ment planning. Trained Puerto Ricans rather than narrow margin; it had a Senate majority, but needed political appointees were given key positions in the minority sup port in the House to pass its bills. Al- new agencies. Civil service regulations were enforced though the Popular party program appealed mainly in order to insure a supply of competent personnel to the poorer classes, its leaders came from all groups for the growing bureaucracy. All of these measures found opposition in entrenched political attitudes. Be(ore the elections of 19"14, the question of inde-

'A comp:nable change of immediate objectives took place in J ;wa, where those who had fa\"orcd independence during the t hinics later abandoned the political issue and fought for economic reforms. Sec Ra\lnond Kenncdr. 19.p?.

s Tugwell has described his difficulties during his tenure in Puerto Ri co in his book, Th e Stricken Land (19.n).

82

THE PEOPLE OF PUERTO RICO

pendence was raised again, but the Popular party stood firmly against turning the question of political status into an election issue. Some of its leaders, however, formed the Congress for the Independence of Puerto Rico and were expelled from the party. They later formed the core of the Jndependentist party. The General Confederation of ·workers, a union including most of the sugar workers and a close affiliate of the Popular party, split on the issue of independence. The Popular party was opposed at the polls by two coalitions: one of the Socialists and Republicans, and another known as the Tripartite Coalition. The ideological differences- between these coalitions were not very clear. The Popular party won the elections of I94'1 by an overwhelming majority, for its rank and file membership had increased enormously. It drew support not only from the rural wage earners and small farmers, but from the middle and upper classes-from persons who abandoned other parties as lost causes. Its real strength, however, lay with the lower classes who put it in power. Whether it can enjoy the support of all classes and fulfill the democratic ideal of serving the interests of all people equally well without yielding its political power to special groups which continue to hold economic power under a system of corporate controls and private ownership remains to be seen. Although explicit support for independence has diminished, the question o( change in Puerto Rico's dependency status has remained very much in the foreground. In 19-13· the insular legislature unanimously approved a resolution asking the United States to end the present status of the island, and later the President appointed a committee of Puerto Ricans and Americans to draft recommendations for such a change. Advocates of independence were still heard, but many leaders who formerly wanted independe nce now recognized that the island was so tied to the United States economically that independence without special favors would bring about severe economic dislocations. There was also some support for statehood. This agitation did not change Puerto Rico's political status, but it did bring a reform of the Organic Act providing for an increase of local rule. Jn 1 946, a P uerto Rican had been appointed governor by 'l\Tashington. \Vith the reform, P uerto Rico was given the right to elect its own governor, and he, in turn, could appoint all members of his cabinet except the auditor, who remained a federal appointee. Local legislation could still be abrogated in Washington, but in effect the degree of h ome rule was increased. Today, a half century after American occupation, however, Puerto Rico's political sta tus has not been basically altered . The island has de faclo acquired greater self-government through its new constitution, but it is still an unin corporated territory, and sovere ignty resides in the Congress of th e United States. After i946, the cause of independence was carried o n chiefly by the Independentist party, which included

former 1\ationalists, Popularists, and even one-time advocates of statehood. It demanded that indepe ndence be accompanied by economic guarantees to support the island's rehabilitation. Its membership was drawn principall y from urban areas, and includ ed all classes, especially university students a nd \Vorld \Var II veterans who were bitterl y anti-..\me ri ca n al least in part as a resu lt of "racia l" discrimination lO "·hich they had been subjected in the armed forces. Th e 111 dependentist party has been handicapped by the rcp11tation for terrorism and repudiation of norm:tl el ectoral processes attached to the :'\ationali ... t pany ,,·hich has been called its " spiritual co11~ i11.'" IL'> slun,·i11g :1t the polls, h owever, doc.:~ not i11 :ti ! likc.:liliootl i11dit;1tc its potential strength, lor many people \\"l10 1:1,·or i11 d epende n cc vole the.: Popular t ick et be< :111 sc it -.,cen1s to deal w ith g ra ver a11d more imrncd i:1t<.: i... ..,11c-; :111tl yet involves no contradinion ,,·itli their :l\"O\\"<.:d politi cal ideolog ies. In 1948, the Popular party "· a~ :1gai11 rcll1r11ed to power by a d ccisi,·e vote. i\c.:itl1er the.: C:o:tlitiu11·.., :1dvocacy of statehood 11or th e I ndc pe11d c 11t i... r \ plat lonn of indcpendc11 ce gr<..:atly i11terc~ tcd th<..: 111:1 ... .., ol the people. Jn the sa m e election. ~IuC101. \Ltri11 \\":1-; tliose 11 the first e lected governor of the island.

MODERN POLITICAL STRUCTURE The seve nty-seven municipios, or municipalities, into which Puerto Rico is divided for governmenta l purposes are almost entirely subordinate to the cen tral, insular government. The munic:ipios are admi n istrative rather than cu ltural d i visions, and they arc classified according to their wealth. They h ave a minimum of scH-government w hi ch is d elegated to them by the insular govern m ent. Each municipio e lects a mayor and a mun icipal assembly, which i ncludes r epresentatives o( the barrios, or wards. It collects a few taxes and owns a little local propeny. lt has appointive judicial officers who charge fees for their services, a nd a loca l auditor, schoo l director, secretary, and other minor officials, the number of these latter varyin g with the size and wealth of the municipio. The barrio is the sm allest political unit in Pue rto Rico. Jts political funct ion is limited to elect ing a representative to the municipal assembly. The barrio may have great significance as a sociocultural u n it, if its population clusters in a small commu nity or n eighborhood cente ring around some source o( employment, for example, the group of h ouses on a plantation or on public lands, as in the sugar area . i\Iany o( its residents may be related, and often its local acti vities center in stores, a church, or in other community buildings. In certa i.n regions, th is c u I tu ra l homogene ity tends to give it a uniform political outlook. Th e municipal government has only minor powers, the more important governmental services b ei n g r e n d e red by pe rsons chosen by the insular or federa l gov-

NATIONAL PATI"ERNS DURING THE A?\tERICAN PERIOD

ernment and supported by insular or federal funds. The municipal courts and police force, the public schools, health services and hospitals, the credit organ izat io ns, th e Agricultnral Ad justment Administration, the Extension Services, a nd other local ao-encies are all 0 parts o( insular-w ide services extended b y or through the central government. These services are rendered local ly by insular employees selected from the Civil Service I is ts or otherwise chosen from outside the communities. Similarl y, the greater part of local taxes are those imposed by the insular government. The internal structure of the major political parties te11ds 10 para llel that of the governmental organization. \lu11i cip;tl political movements are rare, for the mu11icipio itself has little political power and its intncsts ge11cr;11lv coincide \\·ith those oE other municipios. Each of the i11subr parties has a strong central org-:1ni1atio11 \\·hich is represented locally by municipal n>rnmittee~. Th e choice of local cand id ates is dictated by the k;1dcrs in Sa11 .Juan. The pattern of paternalistic Je;1dcrship is so strong that the community leaders largclY dcri,·e pm\·er from their contacts with more i111pon:111t leaders. a syscem \\·hi ch places great power in the h;111ds of the party leader. Such personal relationships often outwe io·h the abilit)' to influence votes • 0 m select ion of candidates altho1wh the votes will nor' 0 mally be given to a man whose personal contacts guarantee his effectiveness in obtaining benefits for his constituents in this highly centralized governmental system. Politi ca l leaders thus become contact men, and this is true of the governor, who is counted upon to inOue nce \Vashington, as well as of the local committeeman or mayor. Poli_tical loyalties are determined b y a great many lo:at !actors, as the chapters in Part III and Part IV wtll show. In agrarian si tuations where the workerowner relationship has a paternalistic, face-to-face pattern, the worker may merge his personal and political loyalties and follow the leadership o[ his employer. Where a unio nized laboring class has developed, the workers g ive the ir loyalty to their group and follow the men who are· simultaneously leaders of the labor movement and the political party affiliated with it. To some extent, especially among the landowning farmers, voters exhibit family loyalty, accepting the party of the father. In some of the citi es, political machines have developed under strong leaders. In the rural areas of small farmers and farm laborers, the practical appeal of the Popular party was its program of social legislation, but other appeals were made to the values of the local folk. Munoz Marin, for example, talked, ate, and drank with the people in their homes. He organized informal discussions. H e appeared at large m eetings dressed with simplicity and stud ied carelessness, and spoke in the language of the people. Since the Popular party has been in office, it has used all those means- appeal to the interest o( the labor union. to the values of the rural people, to family loyalties, to affil iation with political machinesto strengthe n its position.

83

DEMOCRACY IN PUERTO RICO The fundamental governmental pattern in Puerto Rico is one of representative government without actual sovereignty. Political attitudes and functions, although within the tradition of political democracy, are not mirror images of those in the United Sta tes. Puerto Ricans vote for a legislature whose laws may be vetoed by the President or revoked by the American Congress, which itself may pass legislation which they do not want. They elect a governor whose decisions may be reversed by the President. The decisions o[ their courts may be overruled by the Supreme Court of the United States, and a United States federal court judges violations of federal law in insular affairs. The Department of the Interior in \•Vash ington may interfere in loca l matters. Members of a Congressional Subcomm ittee on Territories and Possessions appointee! by a Congress in which they have no representation may exercise great influence over their destiny. Moreover, Puerto Rico has become an important link in the defense of a nation which g ives them no vo ice in its national affairs; and Puerto Ricans are compelled to serve in the U nited States armed forces. T his kind of government amounts to a sort of indirect rule, a pattern which is evident from top to bottom in the political structure. Our analysis o( the highly centralized government within th e island has already shown hmv the achievements of politi ca l objectives at any level depend upon person al contacts at higher levels within the political hierarchy. This means that leadership has assumed tremendous importance, and it is a special kind of leadership, one that requires persuasion and bargaining; in short, a job of public relations. This pattern of leadership is perhaps more necessary in Puerto Ri co-United States relationsh ips than it is within the island. The leader must be able to deal with American officials re1)resentinothe b ultimate sovereignty so as to insure that acceptance of political programs which Puerto Ricans desire. Munoz i\farin, as we h ave seen, had demonstrated to the Puerto Ricans that he h ad these qualifications before he became leader o( the Popular party, and his strength still consists of his ability to insure the gains that his constituen ts want. Because of these special qualifications, political leaders in Puerto Rico have been almost entirely native-born persons. Americans, no matter how long they have resided there, have seldom entered local politics. They genera ll y remain cultura lly isolated and show little active in terest in joining political organizations. Insular leaders of the past generally came from the intellectual and wealthy classes, but during the last decade they have frequently risen from the working classes. The same persons tend to be prominent in both political and labor organizations, so the latter, although theoretically nonpolitical. are actually represented in the government. This does not mean that labor as such has become a major political force, but

84

THE PEOPLE OF P UERTO RICO

new binding forces that d e ve lo ped fr om new patte rns of cultural organiza tion. E conomic a nd soci a l san c tions replaced religious ones in la rge a reas of behav io r. The way of life of the new subcultures required validation in terms of economic crite ria and p olitical affiliati on rather than in terms of th e superna tura l. Greate r in dividua l freedom and m obility im p li ed goals th a t d epended m ore upon economic and p o litical ac tivities than on religious conformity. In so far as relig ion had a place in the n ew values, Protestantism , whi ch has a lways been conce1·ned with indi,·idu a l n eed s r a the r than with ritual conformi ty, e xe rted a stron g :ippeal. But Protes tantism n eve r became as :111-pe r v;i sivc a -; Catholicism h ad o nce been , to r th ere ;ire rn :1 11 v arc:;1-, in mod ern li fe th a t ha \·c grown :1\\·:1y :d LO~eth<.:r lrom the sphere o f re lig io n. i\k: rnwhil c. e\'e11 th e pc:rso1i-. who continu ed to be m c111be rs of th e Cathol ic <hunh were often d e linque nt in t he ir den1t io 11:tl :1< ti \·it ic-,. And an additiona l form o l rel igious p :irti< ip;1 tion, spiritualism , "·a ~ a do pted b y 111;lll y nominal 111e mbe rs of th e Catholi c and oth e r< l1urch c., . Th e socia l, economi c, a n d po liti <a l tre nds wlii< Ii , \\·c feel , unde rlie th e breakdown o( C:itho l ici.,111 ;i nd t he introduc tion o[ m a n y sec L~ -cac h wi t h its sp e< i;d fo rm and m eanings amo ng the dillcrcnL sul>cultural groups - ha ve been sketched a b ove. These include c hanges in the p roducti ve p a tterns, such as th e replacem e nt o E the old type hac ie nda based primaril y on fa ce-to-fa ce relationships and slave labor by th e modern corporate sugar plantations based primarily o n impersonal wage la bor ; the d ecline of the coffee industry wi th the a ttendant disorgani1.ation o ( its p a te rnalistic ownerworker relations; and the general d evelopment of wage econom y. Cash-orie nted and depe nde nt upo n labor a nd p olitical organiza tio ns fo r m eeting his needs, the ,,·orker acquired ne w attitudes toward the C atholic church. The trends also included improved means o( transportation, grea ter centra li zation o( the p o pulation in towns a nd cities, a nd n ew m eans o[ m ass communiTHE CATHOLIC CHURCH cation, such as n ewspape rs, r adios, motion pic tures, and schools, which made th e people more accessible to THE SEPARATION OF THE STATE AND CHURCH new id eologies. They included the emerge n ce of new After the United Sta tes became sovereign over subcultura l groups, such as the middle classes tha t Puerto Rico, the Ca tholic church was comple tely dis- developed from in creased business a nd fro m. a n ensociated from government, and the island opened to larged civil service, and other spec ia l groups, such as missionization by Protes tant sects. The weakened and the war veterans. They included closer d e p e ndency d iscredited posit ion of the Ca tholic church during the upon the U nited States, which in tu rn furth e red the n ineteenth century had permitted considerable heter- introd uctio n o ( America n culwral standards and ogeneity in local belief a nd practice. The economic values. and political events of the twentie th century brought furt her heterogene ity, and the introduction of ProtesTHE CATHOLIC CH URCH AND CATHOLICISM tant chmches made it possibl e for new types of institutionalized religion to suppla nt Catholicism in Th e separatio n of Church and State in 1898 put an certain areas while Ca tholicism itself took on new end to payment of e xpenses and sala r ies of the Catholic meanings in others. church from the insula r treasury. P aradox ica lly, howWhile the twen tieth cen tury may be rega rded as a ever, a pplication o f the p r inc iple o( se pa ratio n implied period of d iversified institu tiona lized religions in the re turn to the Church o( those properties which Puerto Rico, it is also a p eriod during which the social th e Spa nish State had e xpropri ated during th e nineand politica l fu nctions of re ligion were sha rpl y cur- teenth century. Th e Church had r e linquish ed these tailed. T he traditional socia l and poli tica l bind ing properties in r e wrn for the State's promise to care a nd force of Catholicism- never too strong-gave place to pay for Church personne l and equi(>111ent. For seve ral

ra ther that certain unions function partly as political organizations. The special meaning which democracy has in Puerto Rico may also be considered in terms of nationalism rather than of leadership. The desire for greater autonomy, whether expressed in the independence movement or merely in the demand for greater home rule within the present arrangement, r eflects a n ationalist trend similar to that found today among colonial a nd dependent people throughout the world. This nationa lism is compounded o( reaction to imperia l domination, of a certain conscious pride in Pue rto Rico's distinctive cultural heritage-whose meaning is differently shaded a mong the regional and class subcultura l groups-and of various practica l considera tions which affect these groups very differently. Tha t is, it represents on the one hand an attitude of cultural nationalism, a n affectively charged striving to retain traditional h abits and values, and on the other a r a tional appraisal of wha t various possible r elationships to the United States mean. Its expression may vary from mild desire for the traditional way of life to violent political nationalism. An adequate appraisal of the meaning of. cultural and political nationalism in Puerto Rico depends upon thorough understanding of the social and politica l attitudes of the sociocultura l segmen ts as well as those of the island as a whole. Consequently, we devote one of the chapters of Part IV to this subject. In the present context it need only be observed tha t present and future political trends in Puerto Rico must b e understood not only in terms of U nited Sta tes' policy and of the institutional framework of the island government but a lso in terms of the island's cultural tradi tions and of the different subcultures which give its democracy a distinctive meaning.

NATIONAL PATTERNS DURING THE AMERICAN PERIOD

molllhs after the occupation, the Church was without income. Carroll stated ( 1900:653), "The people of the differe nt parishes all o ver the country, having been a ccustomed to regard the priests not as ministers of God, but as em ployees o( the Governmenc, are not now disposed to make them paymen ts for the administration of the ir office." T h e Church brought a lawsuit for restit11tio11 of the expropriated property and, as in Cuba and the Philippines, obtained a money payment in rcwrn for the properties. In Puerto Rico this sum amo1111ted to . ;;00.000, the major part of which came fro111 th e i11s11lar treasury. while a smaller portion was paid hy t li t: leder:d ~o \·e rnm e nt. This sum was in turn i11,·c-.tt:d to <'cfft:r the ex penses o( the Church (Jones, 1!I' 1: :.! !J.I ). "Thl' :1:-.:-.11111ption that the Church in Puerto Ri((> i:-. rolling i11 \1"t:;tltli has nothing to support it," :-.:1id Co111111i . . -.io11n Carroll ( 1900::?8) describing the ~i1 11at ion i11 1KqS. Tuda\' . since the Church does n ot lta\'C: to p11hli:-.l~ :-. t:1te11H:;1ts of current income and is 1101 liahk 10 ta x:1 tin11. it is impossible to ascertain its l'Xan ('< m10111ic ~t; 1u1 s :rnd power. The income o( the loc a l p:1ri-.J1 prie:-.t-; comes entirely from a portion of tlte kl'-. < ha1 ged lor the adrn inistration of sacraments and l rrnn drn1ation ~ .. \part from support received in th e p:iri~Jte,. tilt: Church is apparently maintained lllo!>tl )' by do11atio11s rccei,·ed from the _1orth American Church, (rom individual donors outside the small loca l parish es. and from returns on the im·estment o f the orig inal sum received in the settlement-a large p ortion o( \\'hich seems to have gone into the purchase of rea l estate in the San Juan area. Dming the present century, the total m embership of the Catho lic church has increased, but so has that of the various Protestant denominations. The relatively weaker position of the Catholic church is best revealed by th e attendance figures. J-\ survey of the tobacco, colTee, and fruit regions showed that only G2 per cent o( the Catholics attend church, although the frequen cy rate of attendance is not stated. Data from a sugar plantation showed that only 57.1 per cent altend church.O The maintenance o ( the sacramental role of the Catholic church h as been productive of both streng th and weakness. As the " Church Universa l," the only " True Church," it continues to dispense the sacram ents to those who seek them of their own free will, rath er than to compete with the new Protesta nt churches for followers. This policy suffices in the more isolated areas where the population h as some access to land and where Cathol icism as well as traditional p olitica l affiliation tends to remain unchanged within family lin es, childre n follo"·ing the dominant familial authority of the father. Rut the Church tends to attract few n ew m elll bers, and it often loses members by refusin g to compete with the new sects. The amount of initiative sh own by individual priests, however, d epends upon th e ir cu ltura l background. Priests from ~· ~foral cs . ()1 c ro l'I 11/., 19:1i--to:!!5Ci. For il111s1ralil'e statemen ts of scculari ~1·d rd igio us au.i111des. sec Rosario and Carri6n, 193ja: 14- 1:;. and l!J'.ljb: 13.

85

Spain tend to be noncompetitive and rely on the drawing power o( their sacramental functions. Priests wh.o come fro m the United States, \\'here the Catholic church is but one among many, tend to be more competitive. They attempt to attract members b y. participating much more acth-ely in the everyday li fe of the communities to which they are assigned. . . . The Church's position in the smaller communmes is weakened by its inadequate finances. It charges only for the dispensation of certain sacraments a ~1 d ~oes not d erive an assured income from the contnbuuons of loca l churchgoers. _•\t Sunday masses the collection plate is passed, but amounts obtained are ofte n small. A sizable part of the parish priest's income, therefore, n ecessa rily comes from the donations of the wealthy. These donations may not suffice to give the parish priest real economic security, except in towns where there are more wealthy i)eople and where donations are an important device for achieving social sta ~u s. 'While the Church thus makes a point of not tax.mg those who ca nnot contribute continuously, limited econ omic resources in the poorer communities rarely allow o( much extension of Church activities. If, ho,,·_ ever, the loca l parish priest should be largely s u1~­ portcd b y outside inco me from private property of his own, his g reater economic independence m ay be bought at the expense o( his "sacram ental" pos.itio n in the local community. This is especially true m areas where the upper and middle classes are weak a nd where the Church must rely on the contributions of a "tru n ca ted" middle class and a wage-earning proletariat. Although the separation of Church and State h as freed the Church of association with political d ecisions, it is still involved with and sanctions many patterns of behavior. The Church still dominates one end of the town square, reminiscent o( the days when life was polarized between the town hall and the churchwhe n "the plaza belono-ed to the Catholics," and Proto . . estantism. together with other disturbing Amencan 111flu en ces, h ad not yet extended to the island (see Part lil). It ga ins the support o f the stable classes in soc~e ty through its advocacy of traditional reciprocal r elationships between m embers of the family, b etween m en and women, between landowner and landless " ·orker, between social classes (CL Romney, i9~ 5). I t cont inues to emphasize religious participation as proper for ~he middle- a nd upper-class tmn1 woman, thus unpressmg its sea l o n the sexual division of activities in the fam ilies o ( these classes. Simil arly, it stresses a nd sa n ctions th e dominant social role of the househ o ld head among the sm all a nd middle farmers in the isolated rura l areas. But just as it now tends to lean o n the upper classes for financial contributions, so it tends to draw on th ese sa m e groups for leadership in relig io us activities. This practice may lend prestige to Church activities, but it runs the danger o( identifying them with th e upper class. Certain aspects of Catholicism, however , make for read y acceptance o( the Church. for exa mple, th e Church continu es to attach more importa n ce to salva·

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THE PEOPLE OF PUERTO RICO

tion tlu-ough dispensation of the sacraments than to diminished the importance of the priest, de-emphas ized ethical decisions in daily life, which result from a regard for the sacraments, and shifted individual instrongly emphasized individual conscience. It thus puts terest from a concern with a blessed a ftei-1 i (e to a praglittle emphasis upon daily behavior of the individual. matic conce rn wi th control over the prese nt. i\Iany In religious services, it exalts priestly functions above priests are aware of this and have told us privatel y individual participation and stresses the traditional that they regard the local forms of the saim cult as ritual more than the sermon. Rogler wrote ( 1940: 144.): idolatry. However, cu ltural forms are not easil y "The holy aspects of the Catholic religion . . . are changed by fiat. A Catholic priest who took down the more appealing .. . than are the righteous aspects." images of the saints in his church (ell under the susAccording less importance to the individual's sense of picion of being a Protestant. guilt about his daily moral lapses, the Church is a ble In prayer, the rural famili es may also use modified to accommodate it5elf to cultural practices which may versions o( the rosary, modifi cations that arc o l tcll be in conflict with formally conceived religious ideals. passed down in famil y lines dc-.pilc the lact that the Thus, without considering himseH the less a Catholic, 1917 Synod expressly forb ids ":tl l :tltcr:ttirn1s ill L11 cs<: a man may never attend churcl1. In order to fulfill an litanies" and speak:-, o ut ;tg;t illsl "pr:tycrs :tnd dc,·ciobligation for a godfather at baptism, he may lie about tional exercises that may see1n lo sm ;tck ol the 1tt111s11:1I. being married when he rea~ly is not. He may change or to favor the spirit or llO\-C ILy." ;ts well :ts ag:1in-..L his mother's name when asking to be married, so that "adding exotic names to the li t:tni cs or th e S:ti11ls·· the priest will not know that his bride is a cousin and (Obispado de Pu erto Rico, t!Jt /:.J. I)· Each illdi,·idu:tl charge for a dispensation. A pparently some parish or fami ly may have its housclwld s:1it1h alld hold priests have- for both ideological and economic mo- saints' devotions ( rosarios. r•rlorio.1) ott ,·;trio11s <>< c :t.tives-developed a tendency to overlook even major sion s.10 These peo ple al so m:tk c r<:ligio1ts '°''·s ill ordn breaches of doctrine so that offenders . will remain to cure sickness, insure a good harn:sl. or !ind s1tccc,.,s members of the Church. in a commerc ial lrans:tction. :\ prag111:it.i c system or The Church thus makes it possible for a person to payment for fa vors rece ived ma y thus be forrnuLtted: neglect attendance and religious practices without sev- a payment of a devotion or a vow is p romised in return ering his ties to the Church, on the one hand, but for ravorable intervention on the part of the saint or without being forced to practice his religion daily, on the Virgin . The system may he enlarged to includ e the other. But this very indulgence, this failure to practices o( sympathetic magic based on rewa rd or channel all religious impulses in an institutional frame- punishment of the saint. For example, the sa in t"s work may not satisfy persons whose social positions and image ma y be immersed in water in order to ca use personal experiences- people especially of the urban rain . areas and rural proletariat-make them demand an Today's rel igious societies, many of which have active adaptation of religious ideology to everyday life . American or igins and which al ign members a long age. Such persons are more likely to stress the ethical con- sex, and class status lines-for example, the Holy tent of religion above the 1-iwal and to place great Name Soc iety , the Daughters of J\tfary, the Catholic value on the expression of individual religious im- Daughters of America, the Knights o( Col u mbuspulses. Yet even they feel insecure upon leaving the may be supplanting the saint cults. These have the Church, for its apparent organizational unity contrasts form of the urban cofrad!as, or sodalities, and appe:ustrongly with the looser structure of any of the Prot- to be a product o[ lessening isolation, of a decline of estant denominations. Moreover, they miss the reli - local c u ltural differe n tiation , and of an inc rease in gious festivals of the Church, which, having pleasant American cultural influence. How far they manage to recreational features, draw them both to worship and integrate the rural areas into their act ivities is stil l to have a good time. For many country people Good unknown, but we may guess that when country people Friday is the only clay of the year when they come to from more traditional areas are brought into contact town. Yet informants agree that the proportion of with the towns, especially with the urban status system, spectators to participants in the processions- even on it will be partly in a religious context. Rural m embe1·this most solemn religious festivity-has vastly in- ship will probably (urtl~er the grcnvth o[ these non creased during the last fifty years. Other festivals have local, more institu tionalized vo luntary associations. become entirely recreational, as for example, the festivals of the towns' patron saints. As the recreational content of the religious festivities increases, persons PROTESTANTI SM who believe that recreation vitiates religious expression may be drawn into opposiLion to the Church. As ·w e have noted in the previous section , ProtesOutside the institutional framework, Catholicism tantism had reached Puerto Rico before i898. But finds its strongest cultural expression in the fam ily worship of the rural areas, especially in the more tra10 :\ cconling 10 tabulation of a sample of 22.;,oo people colditional comm unities, where strong fami lial units lected l>y \f oraks-Otc1·0, l\fanuel A. Perez, and others ( 1!)37-10: mainta in themselves on the basis of sma ll-scale farm :!:;6). " al>nut 29'/o of the people of a ll areas decla red tha L they a ttend rosarios .. .. The highest percentage (:11.;,'/c) of p eople at · production. In these comm unities, decreased participa- tending 1h csc rel i g i o 11 ~ g;11hcri11gs was found in the coffee area; tion in the formal church activities seems to have th e lowest (!!!! .:,'/<) i11 the citrus frui1s sub -group ."

NATIONAL PATTERNS DURING THE AMERJCAN PERIOD

87

while the Episcopalian churches in Ponce and Vieques served o nl y the needs of the English settlers, it is signilicant that about 1860 there came into existence on th e north coast a secret native Protestant movement which provided for individ ual religious worship while it served Lh e political purpose o[ furthering antiSpanish action. The U nited States' invasion laid the basis for a rapid increase o[ Protestant missionizing act ivity o n Lh e island, and facil itated it through separation ol' Church and Stale. According to J. l\>ferle Davis ( •!J.1!!:1~). in 19.11 the nine denominational churches hacl a "tota l registered membership of 32, 122 upon tlll: ir rolls and . .. a constituency estimated at

and draw their membership almost wholly from among the landless wage workers. To the extent that other Protestant denominations rely less on the continuity of the religious impulse to insure financial support, they tend to maintain the original dependency on the American mother churches established during the early period of 1nission work. J. 1VIerle Davis ·writes ( i 942: 60) that " the mission boards have accepted the low scale of giving of the people as normal and as a proof that the church members are unable to do more, and they therefore continue to su bsiclize the churches." Moreover, "congrega tiqns, accustomed for many years to a great deal of financial help from abroad, cannot K 1.8:->·I."" suddenly be deprived of it without disaster." H e notes Tltc Prntcsta11t streng th today seems to be concen- (19,12:12) that " the Evangelica l Church . . . has been tr;11ed i11 towns and in rural areas where traditional developed in a middle class social order and requires l0< :1li1ies arc on the way l0\1·ards dissolution, its mem- the support of middle class incomes. \i\There such inlwrsliip be ing- dra\\"n chiefly from urban and rural comes are absent [as in Puerto Rico], the machinery of l:t11dlc.-,s \1·orkc rs and from certain of the no-row inoo mid- church economy is upset, and the Church must either d k cLtsM.'s. The Yast majority of the members of the be dependent upon Coreign subsidy for its support or F\·;111gc lictl Protesta n t churches arc poor: " . . . more discover a new system of . . . finance. " The Protestant tl1an two-thirds or i7 --I';. .. . earn S25 or less a churches in Puerto Rico are, he says ( 19.i2: 63), "de1n011tl1. Thi s is less than S:~oo a year." Another 30.3 pendent to a degree that is unknown in the United per ccnL earn less than a hundred dollars a month . States upon the gifts of the very poor." He observes Only :!.;\ per cenL earn above o ne hundred dollars a ( 1942:58) that while an early religious impetus may month (Da\·is. ·~).(!!: ;>1). Yet Protestant leadership gen- slow down and thus reduce the degree of econom ic selfe rall y tends to be drawn from the middle class in areas sufficiency, continued dependence may intensify "the where this class is well developed. Elsewhere it is identifi cation of the Evangelical Church . . . with the drawn from agricultural workers, and has a strongly power and wealth which attended the establishment of lower-class character. U nited States' insti tutions in the Island." In contrast to the Catholic church, the Protestant In missionizing the island most of the leading dechurches genera lly attract new members by emphasiz- nominations agreed to divide Puerto Rico into zones, ing the religious importance of the individual. Prot- each to confine its activities to one such division. estan tism is not a sacramental institution, and it relies Towns w ith a popul ation in excess of 10,000 are open to a major extent on the local congregation rather than to competition by all groups. T he local denominational on the hierarchy for organ izational continuity. lt de- groups co-operate in an island-wide federation which e mphasizes the role o( ritual and makes attenda nce at runs a tra ining seminary. However, the mission boards services a vehicle for the sermon and for individual are in certa in o ther of their activities somewhat more expressions of faith. 11 In contrast to Catholicism which competitive, each trying to assign credit for Protestant builds its structure around the priestly dispensation of achievements to its particula r denomination. In conthe sacraments at major periods in the individual's trast, the Seventh Day Adventists and the Pentecostals life cycle, the Protestant sects emphasize the function do not consider themselves bound by the zoning agreeof conscience in defining standards of ethical conduct ments. These denominations show· the most clearly dein everyday living. The Protestant ministers, most of marcated lower-class characteristics, and they have ·whom are Puerto Ricans, consider themselves the first grown more rapid ly than any of the other denominamember of the congregation rather than the ordained tions on the island. Their churches are entirely selfrepresentative of the sacramental structure maintained supporting and do not in any way depend on the polby the hierarchy of the clergy. Finally, Protestants icy of the mission boards in the United States. They place the burden of economic upkeep of the religious thus show greater flexibility in adapting themselves to community on the members of the congregation. In local conditions, and their preachers are often laymen thus placing greater emphasis on the individual, they without any previous training in formal theology. In assume that the original religious impulse which contrast to the other denominations which try to brough t him into the church will be sustained and combine a more staid form of service, on the pa ttern that the local congregation will thus be enabled to of American Protestant middle-class behavior, with a become self-supporting. T his is most clearly seen in combination of social service work and schooling, the th e Pentecostal-type groups which at one and the same Pentecostals permit the individual considerable freeLime show the greatest religious drive, the greatest de- dom of expression , including the conversion of religree of economic self-sufficiency (Davis, 19112: 27- 28), gious ecstasy in to bodily niovemen ts. 1~ 11 l\lorales·Otero et nl. (193i-40;256) found that only threcfifths of the Catholics as against four-fifths of the Protcsrnnts attend church.

i2 For an excelle nt statement of conflict h e t\\' CC n a 1\-fcthodist minister :incl his congregation. some of the me mbers of which inclined to\\'arcls Pe n tecostal b elie fs, see Rogler , 1940: 135.

88

THE PEOPLE OF PUERTO RICO

A number of characteristics tend to emphasize the class character of the Pentecostal-type groups. \ -Vhile they share the ta boos on drinking, dancing, smoking, and sexual promiscuity with other Protestant denominations, they follow lower-class custom b y refusing to make an issue of consensual m arriage. They employ secular, lower-class recreational patterns-like beating rhythm and singing to the accompaniment of g uitars and other instruments-into the religious service. On the other h and, they de-emphasize the classic Protestant ethic of h a rd work which is stressed b y other Protestant groups who apparently would have the workers adopt middle-class standards. SPIRITUALISM Spiritua lism-a belief in the causation of many occurrences by spirits and an attempt to control or discover such causation through the mediation of a m ed ium- like Protestantism, may const itute an alternative to Catholicism, but more often it appears to be a supplement. Illega l under Spanish rule, it began to crystallize in to a separate religious faith after 1898. The Catholic church unequivocally condemns adherence to spiritua list beliefs, at least on the formal level. The Bishop of San Juan sta ted (Obispado de P uerto Rico, 19 17:25), "\Ve reiterate the prohibition against assistance at sessions, against consultation of media and curers, even when they clothe themselves in a pious air, due to the great danger which spiritual ist practices . . . hold for the fa ith." Yet the great majority of spiritua lists remain formally within the body of the Catholic church. Spiritualism is especially characteristic of those midd le- a nd upper-class people who seem unwilling to lose their socia l status as Catholics b y associating themselves publicly with beliefs often characterized as lower class or ascribed to country people. It thus appears to represent the individual's attempt to control his chang ing environment w ithout affecting a change in his positio n and social role as defined by the e xisting social structure. This interpretation seems to be sustained by the apparent negative correlation between the incidence of spiritualist and Protestant b eliefs. Although there are individuals who confuse spiritualist and Protestant notions, especially at the beginning of a Pro testan t missionizing campaign when the alternatives are not yet clearly defined, it seems that exceedingly few Protestants continue to hold spiritualist beliefs. The Protestan t emphasis on th e application o( the eth ical imperative in the individual's daily life would seem to run counter to the spiritualist bel ief that the fate oE the individua l is affected by outs ide influences or by deeds he committed in a past ex istence. Dennis, whose writings have greatly influenced Puerto Rican spiritualists, writes (1939:34): "All the good, all the beautiful and g reat things that men do in the world are inspired by the invisible influences. The evil spirits can exercise . . . a n influence over men . . . over those perverse men that invoke them and those weak men that aban-

don themselves to them," and (1939 ::; 9) . "th e present life, ha ppy or un[onunate is the r esu lt ol o u1· pa ~t actions and the p1·e par:uion of many future live~ ... The impact of spiritualist beliefs seem s to be g reate r in communities which are now undergo ing compara tively rapid culture ch ange than in those isolate d , cul lllra lly homogen eous a reas o( sm a ll farm s, whe re the sa int cult is stro ng, o r in areas whic h have b een proletarianized for a lo ng time. That is, sp i1·itualism seem s to occur primarily among socioc ultural groups whic h arc losing o r h ave recentl y lost their traditi o nal wa y of li(e. I t attracts sociall y maladjusted individual sthose wh o arc aucm pting to maintain t hei r traditional social ro le and status i11 a chan g ing socic.:1y :ind those whose special psycho log ical org;1ni1;1tio 11 lll ;1kcs it i111 poss ibl e for th e m to I 11nnio11 s111ootl1 h · in their 0 w 11 sociocultural g-roup and " ·ho see k co ;llact with th e supernatural to restore or achic,·e st:itu -;.

WITCHCRAFT \ Vitch crnrt n :pn:'i<.:11 ts a s<.:t of belids and pr:1< tin:-; which seems c learly to be a supplern c.:11 t rather th:111 ;111 a lternati ve to other re li g ious lorm:-.. I 11 Pu c: no R it 0 i1 has been ascribed traditionally to the 0:q~ro popul:r · tion. I t is ve ry possi ble that ..\ fr ican practices ~ un· i v<.: in specia l areas o r among special groups, but corrobo ra tion o f this must a wa it further field work in so· ca ll ed all-Negro communities, such as Loiza or Arroyo . The presen t field research did not ide ntify any e lem e nts of re ligious be liefs or practices that were unmistakably African in origin. On the con trary, we fo und that th e residents in the areas whic h had the oldes t sla ve population were the most secu larized , th e most indiffe rent to religion generally. They e ve n sh owed less influen ce oE spi ri tualism and blac k mag ic than other communities. Some traits o( African re li gious culture may we ll have been preserved in these o ld slave communitie!; at some time in the past, but they we re probably lost because the Negroes could n o t maintain a distinctive subculture where they w ere greatly outnumbered by the whites. The late r rapid conversion o( the ha cienda slave population into wage worke rs undoubtedly a lso helped to destroy th e cu ltural basis for a n y sp ecial African religious beliefs. The presen t belief that Negroes practice wi tch cra ft is probably b ased in part on the knowledge th a t they once did so. The idea may however h ave b een p e r petuated fo r other reasons. Agricultura l wage workers who migra te from the hig hl a nds to the sugar plantations on the coast may rationalize their m isgivings about entering into social and econom ic compet itio n with the strongly Negro popul ation a s a fear o( witch craft. T he b e lief may also be a heritage of the form e r slave-holding upper cJass which was unea sy abou t a hidd en power they attributed to their slaves, a r eaction which is not uncommon in other colonial areas. Jn the present research, evidence of witchcraft was obta ined principally in two isolated, culturally con ser vat ive areas where the populations are precl o mi-

NATIONAL PATIERNS DURING THE .A:\IERICAN PERIOD

11;111tly white. Its presence in these communities may perhaps be explained by a broadened interpretation of the hypothesis which Kl uckhohn ( ' 94-l) used to explain the apparent increase o( witchcraft among the :\a\·aho Indians. Kluckhohn assumed that witchcra(t "·as a manil cstation of en\"y and o( hostility towards membe rs of a fairly close-knit in-group who deviated from th e larger group norm in achieving specia l wealth and status. In one o( the Puerto Rican communities, :'\ ocod. most of the people who were formerly landowners and sailors ha,·e recently become landless, agricultural wage laborers. They are now in strong compe tition with each other for jobs. In the other comn1t111 ii v. San josc, in which witchcraft was encountered, 1 Ile in .t rnd 11<:tio11 o( supplementary cash crops during 1 llc !:1st l\\T 1t ty years has stabilized and for a while, at k; isl. rei11for('cd the traditional values, and thereby 111 ; 1d e d c \·ia11ts the more suspect. The traditional strucllltT ol rccipro(':t l rc.:latio ns between kin, between ritual kill. :ind l>Cl\\·cc 11 landlorcl. sharecropper, and sma ll l:iniH·rs is strollgcr than c,·er. Howe,·er, these relationsit ips :ire threatened hy :111y _further extens_ion o[ the ca sh nex us and tnrther cap ital accumulation. Thus. alt\" i11di\·idual who amasses wealth is the object of c 11 ~· ,· and suspicion because this accumulation threatClls "c.:x i... 1 i ng so('i:t 1 relations. These fears are expressed ill terms of \\"itchcraft. such as the "evil eye." Few individuals arc acwally kno\\·n to practice witchcraft in either or these communities, but the fear of it is prev;tlcnt. Evidence of witchcraft outside these two communities is sca nty. N ieves Rivera (1949) has written a journalistic account of witchcraft in Barrio Obrero of San Juan, an urban neigl~ borhood r~cently settled by an urbanized wage- laboring populat10n.

CONCLUSION Jn the present section we have endeavored briefly to t race the deve lopment of certain institutional forms which a rose in response to insular and extrainsular

89

forces during the four hundred and fifty years of white contact. \Ve have seen how, in the different periods o( its de velopment, certain social, economic, politica l, and religious trends interrelate with the emergence o( various subcul tures, both regional and class in nature. Although we h<l\"e not tried to account for the genesis of those major changes whid1 took place in the world outside, we have been concerned with the ir effects once they ha,·e intruded into the island's total life,rnys. For example, the lifting of earlier restrictions on Puerto Rico·s agricultural and colllillercial development and the subsequent rapid expansion of these activities owed to extrn insu lar, to Iberian and "·orld factors-in short, to a changed world situation in which at least one o[ the elements was a market for those commodities which Puerto Rico was able to supply. The effects of these "ou tside" factors upon the culture and upon the total institutional evolution of the island were, of course, profound. The areal crop specialization and the emergence of n ew forms of social stratification were the direct consequences of these external pressures as adapted to the special regional-environmental differences found on the island. In the section which follows (Part III) we shall review first those factors wh ich seem to account for the emergence of the different regional subcultures which our research re,·ealed. Then we shall examine several communities in detail in order to discover just how the reg ional adaptations which resulted from historica l-plus-cultural-plus-environmental pressures manifested themselves at the community level. In effect, then, we sh a ll be examining the local cultural consequences o( the historical conditions and events we have described in this section as these latter h ave been adapted to the somewhat different island environments. The regional a nd class subcultures wh ich we find today may be attributed to the combined effects of history, past culture, and environment. How different arc the subcultures which have emerged as a con· sequ ence of this process within this small isla nd will be seen from the accounts of these cultures which are contained in the following section and in the comparisons included in Part IV.

T,pes of Subcultures and Local Rural Conununities: Field .

Studies of Farm and Town Life

6 BY ROBERT A. MANNERS

S

ubcultures of a T obacco and Mixed

Crops Municipality INTRODUCTION THE PROBLEM

Tabara, the name that I have given to the community which will be described in this study, lies well within the region o( the Cordillera Central. l\Iore properly, it is in the east central highlands of the isla11d, a region characterized by the production of tobacco and minor crops.1 Although some coffee, lesser amounts of sugar cane, pineapple, and other commercial crops arc grown in this region, tobacco and m inor crops-generally in combination-provide the major ponion of cash and subsistence for the population of the area. l shall attempt to show that it is the ways in which the people of Tabara earn their living that largely shape, deve lop, or determine many of the cultural forms and arrangements of the community; that the "way of earning a living" in the rural community is overwhelmingly dependent upon one's relationship to the land , the primary instrument o[ production and source of wealth; that this relationship may be phrased t The ter m 111i11or crops as u sed throughout this account is ap· p liccl lO 111ost of th e dean ·tillccl food crops such as tanicrs, yams, C'ahha~es, h ea11s. corn. etc. It also inclucks the perennial banana. I 1 do<.;s not include such of the major crops as sugar cane. rotf<.;c, 111hacc:o, grapefruit. oranges, coconuts, \·anilla. etc.

93

-'

-.

. ..." --_-..,:..-

.

.. ·.- . .~

-.

~ .

'- •

Fig. 1z. The main street in San Germcin, a ty/Jical m edium. sized town. Photo by Delano: Government of Puerto Rico.

in terms of socioeconomi c classes, groups or subcultures; that the subcultures so defined differ from each other in many important ways; a nd, finally, that the very productive processes associated with the cu ltiva· tio n of specific crops in the given historical ancl natural en vironmental context h elp to make the culture of Tabara somewhat unl ike th at of other communities in Puerto Rico which have different crop emphases. In this view, the way in which the community as a whole makes its living and the specia l part that each of the subcultures plays in the total productive arrangements of the community are an important part of the base or substructure of the societal edifice. Much of the rest of the cul ture is the superstructure. The method w ill be to examine the history and the life of the comm uni ty in some detail in order to discover the ways in which the cu lture a nd subcultures of Tabara relate to the crops grown and to the contingent

productive relation s hips. ~ Since th e impact of "earning a Jiving" upon the rest of the c ulture is not looked upo n as a o ne-way process, the discuss ion of Tabara 's culture will offer many illustrations of the di alectical reaction to this p rocess-of the ways in which th e c ul tural and ideological superstructure a ffects the productive arra ngements themselves. THE METHOD OF SELECTING TABARA The Municipality

The aim of the method employed in the final selection o( Tabara was, b y combining the nonstatistical ~Fo r an analysis of th e to la l insular stru cture and of the cx 1ra insul ar contro ls and influen ces wh ich help to define th e limi1 s wit hin whi ch the e ffects of pro du cti ve arrangements upon the rest of culture 111us1. he exa mined see J>an If.

Fig. 1 ; . L'rb1111 .\/ 11111 slw11•i11!; the 111a11sio11 of a wealth)' sugar /nod1111'r 0 11 h i/lto/i i11 the bathgro 1111d. Photo by Delano: <;,111f'n11111·11/ of /'11 rrto I< iro.

Fig. 1.J. T j• pical !t o 11sc of ag ricultural laborer o r small fa rme r sftowi11g separate h itc!ten to th e rea r. Photo by Delano: Government of Puerto Rico.

findings \\'ith the objecti\'e factual and statistical data, LO e liminate those communities which would represent th e extreme of this parti cubr adaptation. The commu11it\' chose n \\'ould stand for the whole of the region a nd rH.>t tor itse lf ;done .. \mong the statistical crite ria e mployed \\·ere snch things as th e percentage o( total land unde r cu ltivation: the percen tage of that devoted to tobacco and to minor crops; the kind and spread o( ownership: rural versus urban population distribution : " t ransportat ion facilities; distance Crom the three or four largest cities of the island, etc. Chie( among the nonstatistical fa ctors which eliminated several communiti es from consideration were (1) opposition of the local politicos which would have seriously hampered any invest igation, and (2) research plans of other social in vestigators whose work might have been affected by our prior e xamination of the commun ity. Preliminary inves tigation of the data and our firsthand examination of the island in the first month of our stay had shown us that the region of tobaccominor crops emphasis was, with one exception, a fairly compac t zone of fourtee n municipalities located in the east central and eastern highlands of Puerto Rico. Some tobacco and some minor crops were, of course, grown in most o[ the other municipalities, but it was in t he region of these fourteen tha t those crops app eared to have relative ly greater importance for the lives of the people than in other municipalities. Of all of these, Tabara seemed closest to the norm in those aspects, statistica l and nonstatistical, which we had selected as most significant in the light of our basic conceptualization. Tabara was tentatively selected for conce ntrated study. However, we could not be sure of our choice until we had conducted a more detailed a n a lysis of the other communities in the region in order to d e termine if any one of these would better

suit our purpose. So we spent approximately six more weeks-four of those before moving into the town of Tabara a nd two after-in an examination of the thirteen remaining communities in the region. In this investiga tion, as with the fie ld work for the remainder of the study, I was assisted by an advanced undergraduate student o( a nthropology of the University of Puerto Rico. \Ve toured the municipalities of the region, observing, visiting, and talk ing with local officials, leaders, merchants, peddlers, peasants and others. l\fu ch of our conve rsation was an informal mix(ure of a directed and nondirected nature. However, a number of what we considered the most important questions, those which we came back to time after time- especially in consultation with agricultural experts-formed the core of our inquiries and investigations. Although the answers to many of these ques tions appear in some of the available statistics, our partial distrust of these, added to the fac t that most of such mater ial was sadly outdated (last official statistical data from the census of ig.10), d ictated their inclusion. A partial list of the most important questions used follows:

~ This

is not lhc rur;-il-urhan d ichotom y defi ned by th e U.S. Uureau of the Census. Jn our wor k \\'e classified as rural all those areas and populations living outside the town or pueblo proper, al th ough these "urhan " areas included as few as 2,500 people.

\ \/hat arc the crops grown in this municipio? a. Is there a sharp difference from barrio to b:nrio within the municipio? 2 . ·wh a t is the approximate p erce ntage of tobacco to total cultivated area? O f minor crops? 3. \ <\1hat are other crops grown in the area? Relative importance as sources of income o r "living earnings"? '1· vVhat is the proportion of large fa rms to small? 5. Is there any industry? \ >\/h a t? Number of p eople involved? v\lom en ? 6. v\lhat is your impression now of the gen er al welfa re of (a) the p eople of the pueblo. (b) the people in th e rural parts o f this municipio as compar ed with others in. the area? \ 1\/h at was your impression when you first arnved (if this is n ot nata l municipa lity)? 7. \ Vhat is the importance of sugar ? ln terms o f income, employment, a nd acreage? 8. \<\That is the importa n ce of coffee? In terms of in come, em p loyment, a nd acreage? 1.

1

Fig. I5. Town fJlaza of the old Sj)(mish pattern in San Josi{ on a holiday. Photo by Eric Wolf. See f>age 63 .

Fig . 16. Slum n ear 11 lmt'll 111 11101111f11in1J 11.1 11101 of /n/111101 and mixed cro/Js . l'!tofo l1 y I<nHlw111: (;"' 'rr 11111 r 11t nf /'111· 1/11

Rico. g. Do you believe other crops should be grown here? Which? 10. vVhat, in general, is your feeling about thG agricultural practices of the people? Are they progressive, seek ing help and advice from agricultural agencies, or are they conservative? 1 1. Is there a "dead period''? When and how long? 12. What, if any, arc the ways in which the landless and the day laborers can escape or mitigate the effects of this dead time? Work in other a.reas? Do many men travel daily to other parts of the island to find work? Do any migrate out permanently? i3. If locally produced crops are produced in excess of local needs or demand, where are they marketed? How? I ndividual or through co-operatives, or through private truck contractors? 14. In your opinion does this community resemble (strongly or weakly) any other communities you know? \i\lhich? 15. Are you familiar with the agriculture and the general way of life of Tabara? (If answer was affirmative, or a modest affirmative, the next question would be something like: In these respects, and in most of the matters \Ve have already discussed, is Tabara like this municipio or is it unlike it? In what specific ways?)

Some other general considerations were included in the investigation. These were our personal and comparative observations about the appearance of the pueblo, of the people both in and out of the town itself, of settlement patterns and h ouse types, of the general appearance of the terrain, etc. The topography, soils (Roberts et al., 1942), and precipitation (Gage, 1939) within the region were fairly uniform, showing significant variation only in those municipalities which we had in advance assumed to be peripheral. And the investigation actually revea led that these peripheral areas were increasingly turning from the cultivation of tobacco and minor crops towards the more profitable sugar cane which could be grown on their more level lands . . As a result of their greater emphasis on the cultivation of sugar cane and the consequent effects on the productive arrangements within these municipal i ties,

we el imin ated four Of thClll [rolll f11rtlJcr COl l:> id era· tion. Two others ,,·ell within the region geo~ra plii ­ ca lly were el iminated because certain historical fa ctors and the presence in each ol a large lc:rti le river ,·;1llcy had encouraged their growth in certain specific ways. They had become important processing and servicing centers fo r the entire area and had undergone a very rapid urbanization. In the island they appeared to be representative of themselves and nothing more. Of th e rema ining eight municipalities we were forced to eliminate two which might have been just as suitable for investigation within our context as T abara. The first of these h ad to be elim ina ted b ecause of the resistance of several important local leaders; and the second was omitted because it figured in th e earlier research p lans of another investigator. A final, complete analysis of the statist ical material and the qualitative data of our investigation convinced us tha t Tabara was nearer the norm in all those matters which we had presumed to be of significance in th e aims, framework, and conceptualization of our study than any of the other communities. \!Ve then concluded that a detailed st ud y of the pueblo and certa i n selected neighborhoods of Tabara should provide us with a good idea of the culture of the east central and the eastern highlands of Puerto Rico-that part of the island where tobacco and minor crops played such a direct and im portant role in the lives of th e people. Most importantly, we Celt th at the inferences that might be drawn from a complete and detailed analysis of the c ulture of th is one rnunicipality would apply with equ al force to any of more than half a dozen municipalities in the region, and with somewhat diminishing validity to most of t h e others. Thus, the care that went into the final selection of the community was dictated by our desire to do more th a n a sim ple, convent ional a nd detached ·1 study of a community in -1 Cf. Redfi eld. • fJ.p; :\renshe rg and Kimball. '!HO; and Fei and \.hang. 194;;. for methods of corn1111111ity selectio n on a different hut prnl llem -oricnted fram ework.

TABARA: TOUACCO AND '.\f!XED CROPS '.\ I UNICIPALITY

isolation. Our aim, as was the aim o( the other investigators of rural communities on the project, was to settle upon a community sma ll enough to "handle" yet representative of a statistically significant segment ol the population. In this larger context of the entire proj ect. "·e hoped t0 be able to emerge with an understanding of the ways of life of a large percentage of the population of the island. The Barrios and Neighborhoods

Th e municip;dity o( Tabara consists, in addition to t hc pueblo. ol seven barrios. Tobacco and minor crops arc gnrn·11 in all but one of these in about equal proportions. Th e except ion a I barrio. which we shall design at t• h~· the name Sa h·ador. grows minor crops chiclly ;1s they an.: imcrcro ppcd with tobacco. In Salvador. too , the root crops aud bananas and plantains are gnnnL h111 they ;1rc not nearl y so important either in )>II hsistc11cc or cash terms as else\\· here in the municip;il it~. T hus Salvadm· stands closer typologically to the pat tc rn ul those adjacent municipalities where the emphasis o n tobacco is greater than in Tabara as a whole . .-\ml lur the other municipalities included with in the regional type whose emphasis on tobacco is supported by strong cultivation of minor crops, one o( th e rema ining barrios would be an appropriate unit fo1· comparaLive an alysis. After examination of all of the others, 1 chose the barrio wh ich I have called by the name of Quit0 because, in addition to its greater dependence on minor crops as a source of cash, it boasts Lwo of the largest remaining coffee farms in this munic ipa lity. l3y comparison with farms in the coO'ee reg ion of the west central highlands, these acreages are almos t insignifica nt, but for the light they might throw on the vestiges of the coffee adaptation, I considered them of at least minor importance. Sa lvador and QuilO are separa ted only by the main r oad leading from the next municipality closest to the capital lO the pueblo of Tabara. But t0pographically and climatically they are separated by a great deal more than this.r· I found a small f>oblado, or neighborhood, on th is road and about three m iles outside the pueblo which appeared to be the most likely spot to settle for the final and most intensive phase of the investigation. I located myself and family in a small house about one hundred yards from the main road in t he barrio o[ Quito. Directly across from us lay the principal dirt road (suitable for jeep or weapons' carrier only) into the barrio of Salvador, and all around us were located the residents of the poblado whose chief focal points were three small stores, or liendas, on th e road. J'vl y assistant remained with her two children in the pu e blo itself for the duration of our study. My wife and two ch ildren ser ved both formally and informa lly as additional assistants in the entire period of our residence and field work in the rural neighborhood. Although some of the distances to the more remote ,, Sec below, .. The Selling;• for details.

97

parts of these barrios were relatively great, I was able tO conduct most of my investigation on foot, only occasionally riding horseback. The tiendas, used as neighborhood gathering places by most o( the males and some of the females, were excellent points for the loafing, eavesdropping, and informal observation so essential to the accurate recording of the culture of a ny people. Participant-observation, then, was tl1e favored technique, especially during the early months of the study when becoming acquainted and accepted were most important. L acer, I added to this directed and nondirectecl interviews, li fe histories, and genealogies. Towanls the very end of our stay, the mernbers of the project designed a questionnaire which all o( us used for the compilation of comparative statistical material. A special questionnaire designed by my wife and me and administered by her to all of the housewives in the neighborhood (botl1 b arrios included) covered many specific details of family origins and ties, of migration and backgrou nd. 6 This, too, was administered towards the end of our stay when my wife's rapport with the female members of the community had reached its highest point. A whole series of impressions, comments, incidental observations, and insights into the culture of the rural community was added by my wife's participation in activities and conversation whid1, in the cultural context, would have been barred to me. The presence of my children and the friendsh ips tl1ey established with tl1e neighborhood children also provided us with data on children and child care whid1 might otherwise have been difficult or impossible to come by. After a stay of some two months in the pueblo we had moved out to diis neighborhood, which I call L a Cima, where we remained for some ten months. '"' e left here and went back to the capital for several months of consultation, meetings, and discussion with tl1e other members of the project. During this time I returned periodically to Tabara and La Cima to maintain my contacts. And at the termination of our conference period in the capital, I returned to La Cima for a period of six weeks to fill in some of the gaps in our material which had been exposed during our absence and the joint conferences.

THE SETTING HISTORICAL BACKGROUND

Beyond a few general comments and occas ional statistical references in some of the major historical ·works concerneu with the island as a whole, there is no archival material on the area, now known as Tabara, before the first steps taken for its founding in i803. The Catholic church records contain a MS description of the town's founding, a nd some meager archival G For a list of the more important questions covered by this rather lengthy questionnaire, sec Appendix.

98

THE PEOPLE OF PUERTO RICO

data from the middle of the nineteenth century is contained in the records of the insular Department of Interior. No other primary sources of any reliability discuss the municipality during the nineteenth century. I have drawn on whatever secondary sources were available for most of the pre-American material, and chiefly on data from older informants for material since the change in sovereignty. The Municipality Before 1803

Before 1803, the territory now designated as Tabara was a part of a much larger administrative unit ·with headquarters several miles south of the present town site. There is ample direct and inferential evidence in the document which discusses the town's founding that Tabara and the region of which it was a part en joyed a high degree of self-sufficiency in the matter of food and many of the other consumption goods. 7 However, even during this period there is evidence of some trade with and dependence upon other parts of the area and even on such remote parts of the island as San Juan and Ponce. Some of the kitchen utensils and some of the cloth for clothing which were imported during the eighteenth century undoubtedly came to Tabara. Dried codfish, paper, pins, needles, metal tools, and many other goods were certainly in fairly wide use and just as certainly imported into the area. And although the roads over which these goods had to travel were often impassable, there was usually no urgency attached to their arrival, and their shipment might wait upon relatively favorable conditions or the return of a peddler who had brought some of the area's produce to the city. However, there was travel of another kind which could not be postponed for the coming of more favorable conditions. This 'vas the travel involved in going to church, in visiting or being visited by the priest. And to a Catholic people dependent upon a church and a priest for their devotions and the sacraments, isolation from these services because of poor roads was a hardship. In 1803 a resident of Tabara had his choice among the churches of Mango, Barquillo, and Trinid ad, all of them "almost four leagues away . . . with all the roads leading to them very bad and, when rainy, impassable." 8 Moreover, such a trip meant leaving the house for a whole day at a time, and there was frequently the danger of robbery. On April 30, 1803, seventy-two residents of the parts of Mango (administrative seat) known as San Blas and Tabara, "in order to rid themselves of the problems created by their distance from a church," 9 made the first attempt to set up the area as separate in spiritual and temporal matters from the Villa of Mango. From 1803 to 1898

The first local government 0£ Tabara was formally established in 1808. At this time there were some two

hundred people in the town, thirty-two families. Q[ these about one hundred lived on their own land, the remainder living agregados por ser f>obres. 10 The plan of the town, like that 0£ most New \Norld towns of Spanish origin, consisted of a plaza facing the church, with four streets outlining th e r ecta ngle of the plaza. The growth of the municipality was r apid within the first eighteen to twenty years after it was founded, leveling off to a slower rate of inc rease in th e thirties and forties, a tendency which contin ued at least until the end of the century. There seems to have bee n a small influx of refugees from South America as a rest1lt of Sim6n B6livar's activities in the 18::w's (Blanco, 1935:63 and Flinter, 183.1: 13- 1.1 ). But for the m ost part growth was probably the result of natural increases and immigration from other pans of the island. It is likely that this period saw the gradua l fanning out of the pueblo and the spread o( th e population into the remoter parts of the seven barrios. The census fi gures for the year 1812 show a population of 710 fo r the new municipality. This str iking increase may have been a result of the ea rl y in-migration following establishment of the pueblo and the construction of the church. Or it may mean that people in areas peripheral to Tabara either shifted their residence to be nearer t h e pueblo and its services or that they were included among the residents simply because they used its services (actual boundaries being even less clear then than now). In any case, the increases apparent in the early days o( the consolidation of the pueblo seem to reflect some such movement of the population into Tabara, either physically or functiona lly, because in 1818, the number had almost doubled, and is g iven in the census report as 1,207. By 1824 the figure h ad spurted to 2,317. In 1828, just four years later, it was 3,453. 11 Some time after this, the rate of increase began to decline, so that by 1853, twenty-five years late r, the population was 5,217, an absolute increase of 1,764 as compared with an absolute increase during the preceding ten years ( 1818- 28) of 2,2t16; or a percentile increase in twenty-five years of 51 per cent as compared with a percentile increase during ten years of 186 per cent. In 1883 the number of people in Tabara had risen to 6,711; by the first American census of 1899, it was 8,103. Census of I828.-The 1828 census figures for the entire municipality are broken down as follows: 2,558 whites, 339 mulattoes, 83 Negroes, 78 squatters, and 395 slaves.12 Some indication of the rate of natural increase a part from the increase 0£ in-migration is contained in the figures for births and d eaths in the same 10 "As squatters

hccause they arc poor." llJid. 1935 and Flinter, 18311. These last two cover th e yea rs wh en r efugees from Bolivar's activities were co ming to the island by invitation of the Spanish Crown. 12 C6rdoba, 183 1-33 : 371 - 73. Note the dis tinrtion between landless- presumably of any color- and others. 11 Blanco,

Church R ecords, Tabara. s Original documents describing foundation of town. 9 f bid.

1

TABARA: TOBACCO AND MIXED CROPS i\fUNICIPALlTY

year: 2 15 births, 83 deaths. And the number of emigrams for the same period is given as 18. Occupational data is scanty and shows only the number of artisans, 1 1; and the medical practitioners (presumably not doctors), 4. In 1828 there was one school, five tiendas or large stores, and four ve11 to rillos (smaller stores with more limi ted stocks). There were two alambiques, or stills, for making rum. Other data on agriculture and agricultural products follows: 15 cuerdas of sugar cane which are reported to have yielded 75 cwts. of sugar, 500 cw ts. of molasses and syrup and 1 ~ hogsheads of rum: 5'.\ 1 cuc rdas of plantains and bananas; 131 citerdas or corn: 221 ,000 coffee trees wh ich yielded 726 cwts. o l co flcc: .Jli(j o range trees; 591 avocado trees; an unspec ilied number of cucrdas of rice which yielded 268 n,·ts.: an .um1~cc ifi cd number of cuerdas of sweet potatoes winch yielded 1.0.J.! cwts. (,(' 11s11s of 1853.- :\gricultural data for 1853 is less compl e te . Total land under cultivation is reported as 1,81 q c 11ndas. consisting of plantains and bananas, rice . coffee. s\\-cet potalOes. corn and "very little tobaccc>, for this plant is found only in one barrio called (S:1 h ·:1dorJ. '" •:< Onup:nional data lor 1853 is more complete than that of 1828 and includes the following: laborers, male 29; laborers, female(?) 17; 7 carpenters; 8 shoemakers a nd repairmen; 3 tailors; 1 baker; 3 cigar makers; 1 silversmi th; and 10 seamstresses. The fio-ures 0 given incl ica te to some extent the degree of selfsufficiency of the municipality at this time. Although the majority of the population were undoubtedly wi thout shoes, the presence of eight shoemakers suggests tha t probab~y few of the shoes worn by the people of Tabara were 11n portecl from elsewhere. And three tailors (none t0day) is fairly strong presumptive evidence that most of the men's clothing was made locally in that period. . Construction of new roads had reduced isolation by this time. The new carriage road to Acra and Mango was hair completed. The road to Coro, adequate for foot travel and horses only, had been repaired at the beginning of the same year and was in good condition. The road to Sabana del Palmar was described as still quite dangerous (cl iffs and slopes) and in need of repairs, although it was more than adequate for travel on horseback. The ro;~ds to N ispero and Naranja, because they were so little used, were in poor condition, although suitable for travel on horseback.

Census of 1897-Land Use.-Jn 1897, just one year before the arrival of the Americans, the land use situation on a ll 663 farms in Tabara was reported as follows: Cds.

No. of farms cane coffee tobacco 13 1853 Archives, U.S. Department of Interior.

663 30 1,206 55

99

Cds.

pasture minor crops other crops . bushes and shrubs Total cuerdas in farms Estimated Value

10,607 1,289 260

8,856 22,303

$538,479

From 1898 to 1950 \ 1\Then the American army took possession on September 24, 1898, Tabara was a region devoted to the production of coffee and minor crops. Almost a year later, on August 8, 1899, the hurricane of San Ciriaco began the devastation of the coffee crops of the eastern highlands that was to be completed b y the hurricanes of 1928, San Felipe, and 1932, San Ciprian. Tobacco, which was later to assume so much import~nce. in this area, was quite insignificant, representmg 111 1899 only 1 per cent of the total insular land under cultivation, while 41 per cent of the remainder was in coffee and 15 per cent in sugar (Census of 1899, p . 152).

Census of I 899.-The population of Tabara, according to the first American-administered census was 8,103, an increase of 1,392 over the 6,711 of 1883. Of these, 436 were designated Negroes and 2,065 were called mixed. Of the total white population, i 4 males and 1 femal e were foreign-born. All of these were from Spai1~ ..Thi.s total of Spanish-born is the lowest for any 11wnlc1pallty on tlze island. ~ccupational data show the following breakdown: agncu!ture, 2,102; trade and transportation, 52; manufacturing, etc.(?), 71; professionals, 11; domestics and personal service, 359; and without gainful occupation, 5,508 (somewhat humorlessly, this figure includes ne·wborn ~abies, infants, and children). A35ncultural statistics for the year include the followmg: number of farms, 560; total area of land in f~nns, 21,515 acres; area cultivated, 5,273; in large umber, 792; in small timber, 1,220 acres. Shortly after their arrival, and continuing during t~1e months of emergency which followed the occupat~on, the Americans began a program of free distributlon of food and clothing. After the hurricane of 1899, they resumed the program, this time opening the way to abuses by turning over the distribution of these goods to the landholders who used the government food and clothing as wages paid to the agricultural laborers working on their lands. Opening of new roads by the Americans served as a further .stimulus to the development of minor crop product10n on a larger scale commercially than before. 'While minor crops had been grown and marketed outside the municipality for many years before the coming of the Americans, it was not until the improved r~ads made .such marketing on an expanded commercial seal~ feasible that these minor crops emerged as an important source o( money income as well as of local subsistence. The partial destruction of coffee, the leading money crop of the nineteenth cemury in this area, led to a search for other means

l 00

THE PEOPLE OF PUERTO RICO

of converting land into cash. Minor crops and the encouragement of tobacco production by the Americans provided at least part of the answer for the people of the eastern highlands. ·w ith the Americans too came the Protestant missionaries, and a n island which had formerly been almost exclusively Catholic was, as the result of an agreement reached by the Protestant denominations, divided up into spheres of influence. Tabara was assigned to the Baptists, and before 1910 they had established a permanent church in the pueblo. Free public education was extended, and the teaching of English made compulsory.

Census of 1910.-By 1910 the population of Tabara was 10,503, of whom only 10 were fore ign-born whites; 152 were listed as black, and 2,134 as mulattoes. The total land in farms is given as 21,222 cuerdas, of which i7,760 were "under cultivation." Census of 19w.-ln this year the total popu lation was 11,600, and of these 10,247 are described as native white; 29, foreign-born whites; 108, black; and the enumerators of that period saw the mulatto figure declining from the 2, 134 of 1910 to 1,216. Total land in farms had declined to 18,649 cuerdas, of which 15,063 were "under cultivation." Total value of all farms a nd land was estimated as more than double the figure g iven fo r the preceding census, S992,538. Five hundred and two farms, or 95.8 per cent of a total of 524, were owner-operated . The value of all crops produced in that year was estimated at $478,379. Of this total the coffee crop was estimated at $94.,6 11 , tobacco at $ 134,846, and cane at $18,275. Census of 1930.- Population in this year was 111,901, of whom on ly four were foreign-born, 1,392 listed simply as colored. According to employment data , 3,375 men and 464 women were gainfully employed as follows :

Men Agriculture Industry and Hand Trade Wholesale and Retail Domestic and Personal Sen·ices

Women

2,955 17 1/0

11

16

121

The number o( [arms had increased from 524 in 1920 to 75 1 and the total number of cuerdas was 20,802 . The average o( 35.6 cuerdas per farm in 19!?0 had d eclined to 27.7. Land "under cultivation" was then 15,974 cue1·das. The value of land and buildings had r eached S1,383,960. The number of owneroperated farms was i02, or 93·'1 per cent of the total. Value o( all crops produced in the preceding year 1 ( 929) was S741,2 17, of which total coffee yielded S2,022; cane, $420; tobacco, $375,009; and minor crops, S 183,768.

Census of 1935.- This census, taken by the insular government, reports 16, J 85 people, of whom six were

from the United States, eight from S0tllh America, two from France and only one from Spain; 1,39!! were colored. The number of farms was 903: total c11erdas. 18,993 ; total cuerdas "under cu ltivation," 7,517, a startling drop from the 1930 fig ures, on ly part of which may be explained by the effects of the hurricane o( 1932. It is more likely that the term "under cultivation" use<l in some o( the earlier enumerations appl ied to lan<l which was reckoned cultivatable. The total value of all farm s and farmland had declinccl to SS<i8.,11 8, probably as a result of the sharp drop in all bnd values during that depression. Perce ntage of O\\' llCr·operated farms had dropped Lo 7 :~ .(i pe r cent with on ly (i(i:) 011t o( the 903 total. Value of til e coffee c rop \,·;1~ S:~li.o~o: o( tobacco, ~.1 83.5 lio ; and o[ minor cro p s. S :!:~ 1 ..J.I I·

Ce11s11s of 19.10.- Th e p o pulaLio11 or Tabara i11 I ~l· I() was I 7 ,09(). or thc.-.c, 7 \\"CrC I orcign -lmr11: I ' I (j I. design ated black. Figures o n the total bbor lon·c ., 1im,· the fo ll owing brcakdo\\'n:

Employed Pu blic work' Seeking work T o tal

.\I I"//

I l" u1111·11

2.877

:1 I 0

3 08

I

5;so

GG

3·7 1 5

577

There were 2.,185 " ·orkers employed in agriculture, 62, in transportation; 230, in manufacturing (includes clothing). The number of farms was 1, 177, and the total number of c11erdas in farmland was ::?o,0G7, with J 2,019 ruerdas "under c ultivation." The total es timated value of all farmland was S 1, 102,030; the average number o( c11 crdas per farm, 17.0. Owner-o perated farms numbe red 695, or a drop to about 59 per cent of the cola I. T he preceding brief summa ry of the available archival and statistical material on Tabara was presented to throw some light on the relationship o( the community during its growth to the rest of the island, and especia ll y to trace the changes that have taken place in its economy from the time of our earliest records until the present. It is apparent from this fac tua l review of the data that Tabara's isolation has been reduced b y the construction o[ new roads; that there has bee n a stead y growth in population : and that the number o( cuerdas of land unde r cultivation h as shown an inci-ease from the fi gures of the ea rliest census which d ea ls with the data in an a n alyzable form ( 1853) to the present. While the fi gures for the Span ish period are highly problematica l generally, it is conceded by insular experts that the data o( the 1897 census is fairl y reliable. If we ch oose lo accept the figures for the period of American domination as more re liable (a nd our field work experien ce co nvinces us that this material, too, must be approached with a h ea l thy cavea t), we find that the area under cultiva t ion a I most doubles benveen the period o( t he last Spanish ce nsus (1897) and the m.ilitary ce nsus of

TABARA: TOBACCO AND l\llXED CROPS M U NlClPALlTY

1899 (from 2,8.10 to 5,273 cue rd as). The peak year for land under cu ltivation in the twentieth century ap· pears to have been around 1910. However, as I stated earl ie r, l suspect this figure and those of the two censuses which follow arc rather high and that the figure given for 1 ~HO ( 12,019 we rd as) is not only closer w the probable land-use situation today but then as well. lt must be borne in mind that the 1910 and the 1 ~)20 figures represent the period after the first serious hurricane and before the hurricanes of 1928 and 1932 "·hich dealt the final blows to the production of coffee in this reginn :ind in Tabara particularly. Thus, the collce crop in 19'.!o is \'aluecl at $g,1,G1 1 or almost two· third:-. th e \'alue ol the tob;1cco crop for that year. In 1!U<> it \,·;1s \\·onh S 2.022 or less than 1 per cent of the ,·;tl11c of the tobacco crop. Despite the hurricane of 19 :.; 2 . the coflce crop showed a rise in 1935 to S3G,080, or less than 10 per cent Of the value of that year's 1ob;1cco crop.

Reinforced hy data from o ld informants, the statistical picture u!lllcni;1bly shows the former importance ol colfce to this region and LO Tabara. In addition, the ocn1p;1tiona l dat.a, 111cager as they are, are most crnwincing i11 showing the extelll to which the life ol the people is invol\'Cd \\·ith and dependent upon agriculwrc. Unfortunately, land tenure data for the e;irly periods is not available in a form which would help us to understand the structure of the community then. But old informants remark repeatedly upon the spread of bt~do\\'nership si~1ce Spa.nish times and upon the occu pauonal elaboration which has absorbed so many o( the dispossessed landowners or disillusioned ten an ts. GEOGRAPHY, CLIMATE, TOPOGRAPHY, AND SOILS

Tabara lies just to the east of the center of the island in the midst of the mountainous belt known as th e Cordillera Central. Like the terrain of the surrounding municipalities, that of Tabara is rugged and mountainous and includes two o( the island's hig hest peaks. One 1:ises to a height of 3, 126 feet and the other to 2,585 leet above sea level. Many small streams and several rivers wind through the narrow valleys that mark this steep and irregular terrain. The municipality is itself divided into the pueblo, or town, and seven barrios, or wards: Salvador, Quito, Gelechar, Palo Alto, Azt'1car, Amarillo, and Colina, the last two being the largest. Although barrio divisions are generally marked by streams or roads, the many parts not so marked remain vague and the lines between each sector are frequently redefined from informant to informant. Local officials admit to being 110 better informed than the rest of the population, but are careful to acid that exact definition of boundaries would serve little purpose. Pic6 says (1937a:54) : " It can sa felv be sa id that the areas and boundaries of the different municipalities and barrios are more the result or guesswork than exact data." Th e land area of Tahara is thirty-five square miles.

l 0 l

Of a total of 20,067 cue rdas in farmlands, more than 12,000 cuerdas are under cultivation, even though some o( the slopes so cultivated show a gradient of up to sixty degrees. Of the land formerly given over to the cultivation of coffee, the hurricanes of 1898, 1928, and 1932 destroyed not only most of the coffee crop but the protective cover of shade trees that went with coffee cultiva tion. Consequently, the largest part of the land is now devoid of tree cover (total in woods and thickets, 1,347 cuerdas) and presents a somewhat different appearance from the areas in the western part of the Cordillera Central where coffee is still grown over relatively large areas. The rock formation in the area is largely diorite and andesite with relatively little limestone except in the northern portions. The soils are acid, silty, clay loams, clays and shallow and steep phases of the mucara, and catalina series. I t is largely due to the clayey nature of the soils that cultivation on steep slopes has not resulted in a great deal more sheet and gully erosion than actually exists.14 The annual rainfall in most parts of Tabara is around eighty inches; the mean annual temperature, 72° to 74° F ., with an average annual minimum of 50° F. a nd an average annual maximum of 93° F. The winds blow generally from the east. Barrio Salvador is the lowest and contains some of the most steeply inclined crop land of all seven barrios. 1 ts soils are said to be the "warmest" in the municipality, and it is this property of good drainage which is believed to impart a special delicacy to the tobacco produced here. i'vfost of the land included within the remaining barrios is higher and somewhat less irregular in contour than that of Salvador. The soil types show similar variety throughout, most of them being reasonably well adapted to the cultivation of tobacco or minor crops. Slightly higher temperatures, greater irregularity and steeper slopes of the terrain, and slightly lower p recipitation in parts of Barrio Salvador are looked upon as the factors which have contributed to the pronounced tobacco emphasis of that barrio as compared with the others wher e tobacco is also grown but where there is greater emphasis on minor crops. SETTLEMENT PATTERN The Pueblo or Town

The pueblo is concentrated around a central, rec· tangular plaza dom.inated, in Tabara as in most other municipalities, by the church on the eastern end. Stores surround the plaza, the second floor of most of these being occupied by some of the higher income families of the municipality. Of the four main streets which outline the plaza, the two running east and west form part of the main roads, the one leading to Acra H "l'ueno Rico has been fortunate in that its soils have on the whole resisted the worst types of erosion s uch as gullying" (Pic6, 1936:4-5).

102

THE PEOPLE OF P UERTO RICO

and i\Iango, the other to Coro. South of the street which forms part of the Acra road is another street on which live more of the middle· and upper-income families. Outside the immediate area of the p laza a lo ng the same Acra road are more houses belonging tO the upper-income fa milies. And about a 9uarter of a mile out is a cluster of a ha lf-dozen q zuntas, or summer homes, of wealthy San Jua n fam ilies. In the pueblo itself, the land drops away sharply to the north. Three steep streets run down this slope and in~ersect with another runni ng east and west. Everythmg on the north side of this street, most o f the sou th side, a nd all of another street wh ich intersects half way clown with the most westerly of the three north-south streets is considered part of the slum. But the most depressed, crowded, a nd dirty area of all is that found between the most no rth erly street, Ca ll e Rio, a nd the river itself. This is an area of jumbled houses, of mud and dirt paths winding their irregular way th rough the closely packed shacks. Co ntained in this area of about 150 yards by 20-25 yards are m ore than 1 go shacks and houses. Another slum concentratio n of some forty houses is fou nd on the side of a hill across the riyer a nd just about a quarter of a mile east of the plaza, o n the road to Barrio Amarillo. T here is a strassendorf-type settlement along the road to Sabana del Palmar known as L a Perla, which begins about a quarter of a mile from the plaza and extends Lor about another quarter mile. Included here is a mixture of very poor dwell ings with a few which belong to famil ies in Lhe middle-income level. Another, much larger seulerne nt, a kind of ap· pen<lix of Lhe pueb lo proper is found a long Lhe road to Coro and begins just off the plaza itself, extending for almost a mil e to the cemetery road. Included h e re are dwellings of all kinds, stores, a gasolin e station , the municipa l hospita l, etc. The people of this communiLy rely upon the pueblo for telephone and telegraph, for the local movie, drugstores, the church , and other municipal agencies only. For the rest th ey speak of Lh emselves as a community ap art from the town proper. Main Road from Sabana del Palmer

Beginning about three a nd o ne-half miles outside the pueblo on the way in from Sabana del P a lmar and scattered at irregu lar intervals to a point just below the pueblo itself are thirteen quintas, or summe r estates. These are removed from the road a short distance, so on ly a few are visi ble to the eye of the unprepare<l mot0rist. On a high hill overlooking the valley of Sa lvador and Acra's peneplain to the south, a nd extending for a m ile from two and a half to three a nd a half miles outside the pueblo are small clusters of roadside dwellings, neither especially crowded together nor standing in isolation. Th is is La Cima. Five stores o f very sma ll to med iu m size are included in the clusters o( roadside buildings.

Salvador and Quito

Settlem ent with in the barrios of Sa lvador and Quito is relative ly scatte1·ed , only some of it along the roads (din and rock roads suitabl e for jeep or wca pon s carrie r but not for ordina r y cars). i\f ost of the hou ses a re loca ted at distances up to half a mi le or 111ore from the roads, which, after a bout a mile . become liule beuer than Lootpaths. !\one of the hou ses 1s loca ted directl y o n the rive r o r ,·er y close to ; l11 y of the sma ller s treams that intersec t the ba n-ios. Some Reasons for Settlement Patterns

P eople who Ji,·c a lo ngs id e th e 111ai11 road i11 T.:1 Ci111 :1 a re ge nerall y Lire 111orc prospe rous larrnc.:rs ;1 11d ~ 101t · owne rs in th e: vicinity. The y gi,·c: :is tli<:ir 1<::i't> lh : the ava il ab ili ty or sclroo ls ( La Cima h as a ...(TOlld lllli l school); availability o ( c lcnrici ty: til e :di...<: ll <'l' ol mud; ease O( procu r in g Lr;1nspon;i1io11 IO the j>ll('lilo. or Sabana d e! J>almar or clsc\\·lrcrc : soc i:rbili1 y. 1·· Own e rs of f:rn11-; o l :il l ... i1 e-; up Lo 1hc l:1rgc ... 1. wi1ll two 0 1· three excc pLio1h lor the c 111ire 11 1ll11i<ip : ili1~. li ve o n th<: ir l:rnn .... Tiu.: L0\\·11 pro,·id e ... '>n le\\' ...e r \'i< l'" or amusc111 e1Hs. :r11d 1hcir ,,·ork in,·ol\'(:o; such < lo . . c supcn ·ision . thaL Lla:y do 11 ol find it \\·ortli whik to separa te the111-.eh·e:-. lrom their f:in11s. 1 '' S ummer residents live \\·h e re they d o "for th e brce1cs. . . . the view . . . to be ;nn1y from p eople. . . ." R esid ents in the town s lums arc predomin a ntly people who have com e in from rural areas of this same municipality. Th ey are artisans, labo1·ers, chauffeurs, tru ck drive rs and h e lpe rs, agric ultural workers, odd-jobs m e n, wome n g love \\·orke1·s, and th e growi ngmiddle class of tech nic ians, pro fess ion als, service pe r sonn e l, and spec ialists which has been deve lopi ng with the growth o [ outside contac t and trade. Th e ir increas ing numbers within the past seventy-fiv e yea rsbu t especiall y in the past twenty years-is a rcll cc:L ion or th e trend away from self-s uffic ie ncy and towards a g reate r d e pen den cy on cash. Th ey say they li ke be ing out of th e country, the avail a bility of e lectr ic ity and running water, the relative absen ce of mud, th e li fe and movement of man y peop le. Dispersed sett lem ent in th e cou ntry is pre fe n ed because it permits the worker to be near his fi e lds and averts d isputes about livestock. Li ving near streams or rivers is avoided because it is too damp a nd beca use the shade e ncourages insects. T he houses of tenants and squa tters often occupy plots of la nd that might otherwise b e unde1- c ul tivalG Rccc11lly two sons o f a prosperous farm e r and storeow11cr h11ilt n ew houses a co uple of hundred yard s from t he 111 ai 11 road, close c11n 11g lt t() ass ure I hernsclves o( m ost of I h e c:on\'c nie n ces listed a i)(JvC. \\Ii t.h in li\'C m nn tits th ey had dis ma11 t kd I h e h o u st·s and m oved 1lt e m right clo\\'n to the roan. gi \·i11g as th e ir n :ason the fa ct thal p eople didn't co me t o see them \\'a y off i11 t h<' 11111d like that. and !hey and t.hei1- wives liked c:ompany. iu In rltis connecti o n . p eople of .'\era. whi ch bo::is ts i:JW\Trs. a toi>au·o ware house ::i nd st e mming plant. a rq~ 11l a1· 111ovk house. and a bank. frcq11 e 11tl y ca ll th e ir town "the capital of Tah:1ra.··

TA BARA: TOl.IACCO A ND MIXED CROPS l\IUNICIPALITY

lio11. 1 • Jn shon , neither convenience to water or to

1

03

dice games. A nd at least one of the stores in Salvador is the scene of evening bingo games for sm a ll stakes. Illegal rum- or the lega l variety- may be bought at these rural stores, and if the illegal lottery (in conCommunity Aspects of Settlement Pattern in La Cima tradistinction to the legal form) is pedd led at all, the La Cima is a neighborhood, not a barrio, although agent makes these stores his m a jor area of operation. Tenants and sharecroppers generally m a ke most of there is a tendency on the pan of all T abare1i.os to d escribe La Cima as a barrio. Since the concept as their nonfann purchases from the rural stores. Hm,·w e ll as the bo undaries of barrios is often unclear, this ever, those residents who either own or ca n borrow a designation fol lows. The differences which emerge horse or other means o f transportation may, if they more clearly the deeper one penetrates into the barrios also h ave enough money or good credit, make a weekly prope r become e,·ident in the conceptualization of the trip to one of the larger roadside stores to make their n:.:s idc1lls. Off-the-road residents d o not describe them.- staple p urch ases. Since prices are about the same in the far rural as in the roadside stores, the latter are ~c h·cs a~ ( :im61os but quite definitely as residents o f c ol th e b;1rrios. \\' hen they discuss the merits or favored b ecause they have a greater varie ty of food 011 d c111('rits o l each p l;1ce it is in barrio terms that such and other goods and a lso because they offer a chance d c..,n ip1 ions arc g i\'Ctl. Roadside and near-roadside for broader socializing or entertainment. Such a rc.-. idc111 s. 1101 so clearly affected b y the di fferences shopping exped ition is, there fore, always a leisurely ,\"Iii< h e merge deeper within the barrios, can think affair. ol 1hc:msclvcs as more o[ a unit, as a more homoT he rural stores appear to be a holdover- in a new "l'lll'<>llS grouping-. as a community " "ith community functional setting-of the once common planta tioni11tcrcs1s :111d cotnmunity identity. type stores. As recently as the i93o's, at least one :\p:1n lrnm the need for the church , the medical large property owner in Salvador was also proprietor scn·icc:s ;1nd other pueblo-pro,·ided services, the loca l of a store on his farm . .~!though he paid his tenants and sharecroppers in wages, they generally returned 11 ('ig hhorlwod . . upp lics most ol the daily needs o( its most of these wages to him in the form of purchases res id ent:;. in his store. And until more recentlv the renter of the largest coffee farm in Quito had ~ little store on THE ~ I ERARCHY OF RELATIONSHIPS his farm in which he used to advance credit a nd sell supplies to his ten an ts and others in the neighborOf La Cima and Barrios Salvador and Quito to the Pueblo hood . He closed the store at about the same time he The day to day needs o[ the people o( La Cima, beca me active in local politics on the side of the party like those of other roadside settlements in other parts in power, since it is the pa rty's policy to frown on of the municipality removed [rom the pueblo, are the "company store." taken care o( by the local comm unity arrangements. For m edicines and health services, the rural resiLocal agric ulture and the roadside store supply the dents, like those of La Cima , must go to the town. food needs o( all the neighborhood residents. Most Only the few veter ans who are a ttendino· hio·h school or the Cimenos rarely visit the pueblo, and those who f I. o o rom t 11s area must go regu larly to the pueblo. A nd do go there either to attend church or to make use of only these veterans make an occasional visit to the su ch municipal ity services as the health center or the church-sponsored movie in town on week-ends. \ l\Tithout hospital. Even these occasional contacts with the town private transportation, such trips would be ver y costly, diminish in proportion as one moves from the main masmuch as bus service to L a Cima and beyond ends road into the barrios. Barrio Salvador has two small at 5: 30 P . M. grocery stores in the interior, Barrio Quito has one. In the matter of recreation, L a Cima serves as a These stores contain such staples as rice, beans, canned two-way street. Young men, married and single, who tomato sauce, dried codfish, powdered milk, sugar, live in the pueblo where there is little opportunity and a few other necessities. They have neither the for recreation other than the ba rs, come out to one of varie ty of stock nor do they remain open for the same the two largest stores in La Cima on week-e nds or Jong hours as their larger roadside counterparts. Howduring the week to dance to m usic provided b y gaudy ever, each of these stores functions as a gathering juke boxes and to drink continenta l can ned b eer and p lace (or the men and boys in the evenings, on holieat Argentine sausage. The d ance floors are relatively days, and during the lean clays of the d ead season . spacious, and the m ost en terprising store owner has They are the focu ses of local recreation. If illegal cockconstru cted a shed with a dditional tables in the rear fi ghts are held in the interior of the barrio, they are o( the regular 11oor where those who seek or requ ire like ly to be held near these small stores. Likewise with greater privacy may retire to dance or to listen to the music of th e juke box wh ich he h as artfully piped 17 Funher evidence. perhaps, that th e land hunger which is so into this palm-tha tched re treat. apparent 10 stude nts of Puerto Ri can agriculture is not seen in On ·week-ends young veterans and th eir sweeth ~:1rts the same terms b y either the landlord who permits or supervises may be ~ecn dan c ~ng here. uncl~r th e casual-seeming the co nst ruct io n of Lite house , or the tenant or squatter \\'ho uses it. but genu mely ca re lul g uardianship o( an older brother

rural roads nor conservation of good land seems to d e termine the loca tion of houses in the country.

I 04

THE PEOPLE OF PUERTO RICO

tribution poin ts for whatever m a il there is for rural residents. Either the storekeeper himself o r suc h other residents as th e local dairy farmer who must bring milk to the pueblo daily on his d e live r y rounds collects the mail at th e post office and rewrns it to the store where the addressee may e ilher pick it up himsel( or have it brought to him by o n e o( his neig hbors who calls at the store fo1- provisions o r con versation. Thus, in rnauers o[ dail y living, the people o( th e remote rural a reas e njoy o nl y infreq u e nt contacts outside their immediate n e ig hborhood and th e rural or roadside stores. For s u ch lt1xt1ry ite m s as lrnue r , /\m c ri · ca n fruits, beel, h and for articles ol c lothing, building materia ls, hardw;1re and 111 ;111v kitd1 c.:11 t1tc.:nsils . the\' are dependent upon ptt c blo s~o r<:s. !11 the lit e of th ~ rural p oor , th ese things hard ly count. Those who O\\·n shoes h a ve pro bably hcrng ln th e m in the pu e blo . i\Ien's shirts and trousers and \\·011H.: n's rcadv-mad e clothes ha ve a lso bee n ho11g ht tl1crc, ii th ey h; ;vc not b een purchased from th e local p eddle r who se lls th c.:sc dry good s, ribbons, and stockings as \1·cll. La Cima and barrios Sah·ador and Quito. like the other neig hbo rh oods and barrios ol the m1111ic ip;tlity. are dependent upon the town n o l o nl y for c hurch services and religious fes tivals, drugs and medical services, but for the several agric ultural and credit services such as the priv:-ite ly n~n Tobacco Marketing Co-operative or the government f.Hr\ , the Soi l Conserva ti o n Service, and the Agricullllral Extension Service. The town also h as a loca l office o( the I nternal Revenue D epartment and two local representatives o( the government lottery. In the matte r of education, the rural schools offe r instruction only th rough the first three years. La Cima boasts a second unit school which carries the children through the n inth grade. But for those desiring higher education, on ly the pueblo with its two private high schools, or the neighFig. I7· Transportation. in the highlands is still largely by boring municipaliti es of Sabana del Palrnar and Acrn horseback. " ] ibaros" carrying provisions home near Comerio with their municipal hig h schools are available. Th e in the tobacco area. Photo by Rossham : Government of consequences of these arrangements will be discussed Puerto Rico. in a later section. There is no telephone service ou tsicle the pueblo. The roadside store serves a lso as the funnel through The communicatio n ties with the pueblo are furwhich gossip and rural stories pour to other parts of nished_ by the San Ju a n buses and private f>1llJ/icos, the neighborhood. Because of his strategic position or taxicabs, two of which fun ction regu la rly- or al a nd his prestige in the community, the storekeepe r least as regularly as they can muster full pay loadsmay, if he chooses, be a figure of some status in the between the pueblo and al l points along the road as local political set-up. In a n y case, his favor is sought far as the limits of La Cima. For the few, upper-class residents of La Cima and b y the political leaders o f the municipality. And he is often the most sophisticated and best-informed man barrios Salvador and Quito, th ere are three or four in the n eig hborhood. This is certai nly true o f La formal dances each year held at the town's Centro de Cima, where newspapers are scarce, a ltho ugh radios Recreo y lnstru ccion- commonly known as the Casino may be found in m any of the houses alo ng the road. -which functions in form ally also as a refuge for The proprietor 0£ the larges t store in the neighbor- member-gamb lers at other times. The Casino also hood reads one of the island's three daily n ewspa pers boasts one of the town's two billiard tables, t h e othe1every d ay. And the literate, male hangers-on read i t be ing in El Llano, th e n e ighborhood previously dewhen h e is through ·with it a nd has deposited it on scribed as an a ppendage of the pueblo proper. his counter. Since lhere is no mail d e li very to a ny point in the 1a Pork is genera ll y slauglttc n .:d and sold il legall y right in th e mun icipio, the roads ide stores serve as in fo rmal dis- country. of the girl-who also happens to be a close friend of the veteran. Usually the dancing ends at su ndown and the girls must be brought home. However, the boys may return later with some of the town prostitutes, if these are ava ilable, or as a stag group to drink beer, play the juke box, and talk. On nig hts during the week, the dancers, if there a re any, will probably have been brought b y one of the loca l taxi drivers who has rounded up some friends a nd town prostitutes for a party. He earns the fares, perhaps some free drinks, and the gratitude of the dancers. His car serves as the locus o f final assig nation as one after the other of the men dri ft out with on e of the g irls, get into the car, and drive away to return in a little while.

TABARA: TOBACCO AND l\llXED CROPS MUNICIPALITY

There is no fire depanment or fire service beyond the lew town h ydrants and the hose which is stored in th e town hall. The police are a function of the insular go,·ernment with local headquarters in the town a nd with a jeep to take them into the rural areas as and i[ need arises. There is ordinarily no formal patrol or serv ice in the rural areas. The town is the seat of local government, its mayor and nine assemblymen being elected by direct vote 0 ( the people o[ the entire municipality. One o( the mo~t important loca l func tio ns of the municipal gon:rn111e11 t is the rcpa ir and construction of roads\\·i tl1 i11sul:tr lund-;. T his is one of the few areas in \\'hi('h money may he 111anip11latecl on a local sca le to \\'i 11 pop1ilar support at polls. However, since work : 1, ,jg11111c nts must by law bt: rotated among all of the 1111 l't11ploycd \\·ho apply. the opportunities for political lll :inipubtion :ire no t too g-real. Another source of pol itictl h:111douts reported from some o[ the other arc:1~ hut not ln11t1cl to any appreciable degree in T ahar:1 i~ the method o( ~i,·ing money from the nH111 icipal trc:1s11ry tor purchase of medicines not ~LUt kl'd hy the ho~ pital pharmacy. Th e 111u11icipal gm ·crn111cnt levies a sma ll pale11le, ur tax, on all lrn sinc~s es tablishments throughout the nntni cipality which g ross more than five hundred dollars per :i nnum. Of the Pueblo to the Insular Government

All of the local adm inistrative and governmemal ser vices menLioned previously, "·ith the exceptio n of the town olficial s, arc a part of the insular strncture. Their (unctions may be restricted to Tabara, as in the case of the Intern al Revenue Office; or they may serve two o r three mu11i cipalities like the Soil Conservation Se rvice, or as many as seven or eight like the Agricu 1tll ral Extension Service. The funds for the opera tion o[ all of these are furn ished by the insular governm e nt alone, or by the insular government in co·operation with the government o( the United States. \\later a nd electric service-only the la tter affecting areas outside the town pro per-are controlled by the insular services o[ water and electricity, branches of which are set up in the pueblo. There is a local political leader, a man who was ac tive in the founding and early development of the present party in power, and who has been rewarded with an important insu lar post but who maintains his res idence in Tabara, commuting daily to the capital in a government-provided car. So far as I was able to disco ver, he exerts small inlluence o n the various insular and continental governmental agencies whose offices are located in Lhc pueblo. Jn fact, he is freque ntly assailed for his failure to procure such benefits as improved roads and water supply for the commun ity, [or his fa il ure t0 promote a tobacco processing plant or o ther factory to provide employment for the people of Tabara. However, he is the town's principal tangible link lo the capital. Its chief intang ible asset a nd link is that it is also the birthplace of one of th e grea test politica l leaders in Puerto Rico's history.

l

05

!\fast of the fu nds fo r the operation of those of the municipality's services which are not d irectly controlled by hig her echelons come from the insular budget. Thus, the funds for local road repair, the emergency funds for the poor, and other operating expenses are allocated by the insular government to the municipality, since its own power to tax is very limited and the income derived from its own taxation is small. Education beyond high school is not provided locally but by one o( several institutions of higher learning on the isla nd. In summary, the fu nction ing o( all loca lly provided services with minor exceptions is dependent upon funds furnished by the insular or na tional government. Through these insularly controlled agencies, the island governmen t reaches into the lives of even the most completely isolated rural r eside nts in one form or another. Participation in the cash economy automatically involves one with areas of control outside the immediate rural neighborhood even if one should choose or be able LO avoid utilization of the many services provided by the town and the island government. Of the Insular Government to the United States

A detailed discussion o[ the dependency relationships of Puerto Rico with the United States would be beyond the scope of th is paper. H owever, there are cenain fac ts about this relationship that are extremely important in any consideration of the problems dealt w ith here. It is not e nough to say that a bo ut 50 per cent of a ll the isla nd's food comes from the m a inla nd. Or that most of the island's clothing, hard goods, medicines-all of its automobiles and trucks-many of its luxury goods are imported from the United States. \!\Tc must add that virtually every ounce of sugar that is produced on the island and not retained for local consumption is sent to the United States; that all of its tobacco except for that which is locally consumed goes to the mainland; that the chief ma rket for the island's rum is this country; that a ll of the needlework sent to Puerto Rico for processing a nd return comes from the United States. And we would have to point out further that all of the excise taxes collected in this country on the sale of Puerto Rican rum are returned to the island; that this tax r ebate constituted the insular government's g rea test single source of revenue during the war yea rs and since; ~hat benefit pa ym ents unde1· the G .I. Hill to Puerto Rican veterans have m a inta ined the purchasing p ower of t~1 e island at a n artifi cially high but at least temporarily healthy level during the p ast five years. Sr. Luis l\Iunoz i\farin, the island's first popularly elected governor, in a recent ne wspaper interv iew regarding the possibility of statehood for the island, declared that he would dread such a prospect. H e est irn atcs that the economic bene fits which accrue to Pu erto Ri co under the present arrangements are much g rea ter than w o uld be left to it if th e island lost its power lO levy a nd collect income taxes or if it lost the income from ex-

J 06

THE PEOPLE OF PUERTO RICO

cise taxes on rum.rn While one may differ with Sr. M unoz regarding the most desirable status for Puerto Rico, one can n ot blink the facts of the island's present overwhelming dependency upon the United States. Puerto Rico continues to produce sugar not simply because its climate and soils are well suited to its production, nor even because it has done so for more than four hundred years, nor because the areas now devoted to its production could not be used for the cultivation 0£ other crops, nor because it can prod uce the crop at a lower cost than other s ugar producing areas of the world-it cannot. No, Puerto Rico continues to prod uce sugar despite the relatively high cost of its production because sugar is subsidized by the mother country and because it enjoys tax-free entry into American ports unlike the m ore cheaply produced sugar of Cuba and elsewhere. Should the raw sugar produced in Puerto Rico suddenly be tluown into competition with the raw sugar of the noncolonial countries in the American market b y a lifting of che tariff restrictions on imported sugar from independent countries or by an imposition of equal taxes on the Puerto Rican product, th e economy of the island would undoubtedly suffer ;i serious blow. This is one of the arguments used b y the antiindependence elements, both P uerto Rican and American . And it is a very cogent argument, too, if one concedes the island's continuing dependency upon sugar. However, it is n ot my purpose either to exam in e or to assess the possibilities of change in the ex isting arrangements. There are severa l good reasons why the present arrangement may co llapse within the next few years-at least an equal number of reasons why it will not, why Puerto Rico will continue to enjoy a favored position in American sugar imports as compared with noncolonial sugar-producing countries exporting to the United States. I am n ow on ly concerned with past and present dependency re lationships. And the importance of sugar as a binding force between the island and the United States may be summed up by saying that the form of the dependency relationship of Puerto Rico in the present decade, a nd for some time before, encourages the cultivation of sugar cane, and the cultivation of sugar cane d emands the form of the existing dependency relationship. T hat is n ot to say that the soils, the climate, and the skills of the Puerto Rican worker, farmer, and producer are unsuitable or inadequate to the cultivation of some other cash crop. I am sure they are more than adeq uate. In fact, a highly placed person in the Department or Agriculture told the members of the Puerto Rican Amhropology Project that he would like to see much of the area now d evoted to the cultivation o( sugar cane turned over to pineapple. There was some evidence that he considers the island's heavy reliance upon sugar too great a gamble. Sudd en in-

to Aboul sixLy·scvcn millions in 1941 (U.S. Tariff Commbsion.

1946:7).

dependen ce of the island or drasticall y in creased production and reduced costs of mainland b ee t and can e s ugar producers might make Puerto Ri co's s ugar crop unsalable. P arenthe tically, it might be added, that many pro· and anti-I nd ependentists are agreed that such overwhelming devotion to s uga r must be abandoned, because they rc ali1.e the consequences to the island 's economy of loss of the prefere lllial m arket under the present volume of production. 1-lo\\"ever, the agricultura l expert's pineapple ll)a y b e no bcuer as a so lution. There is 11 0 reason to believe that even intem,ive cu ltivation ol pincapplt: i11 Pu c-no Ri<"o would result in lo\\"er c o'>l'> ol prod11C t io11 th:tn t lio-..c enjoyed by i11dcpe11d c.:nt Cuba or pi11t';1ppk-grc1\\"i11g Ha waii. H erc . too. the l:1n1rc.:d ma1 kc1 \\"011ld li:1\"l: to be maintained. , \nd :-.o- p:1rc.:111lictic:ill : ag:1i11 - Sr. l\lfui""i oz' eJLons on l>e l1all ol i11d11qri;1li1:1 tio11 (()r Puerto Rico rat h er tli:111 011 :1 !>Iii J L Io 1I1<" prod ll< t ion of other agricultural< 01111110di1i<.::, i:-. '>C.:l:ll ; i , :111 ;1tt<.: mpt to escape lrom the dik-111111:1 tJ<>~td l>y tlic.: i:-.l;111d\ agriculwral em ph:1si, 1111<ln co11di1irni-. ol topog1;1phy. soils, and population d e 11 ~ i1;. \\"hi< Ii 111 ;1k<.: 1'11cno Rico a rel ;tl ivc:I y high prod union < osL ;1r<.::1. Thus, under pre.'>t' lll < 01 1d itio 11:-. o ( t li e ,,·orld 111;11 kct and of Puerto Rico\ po:-.itio11 in the .\m erica 11 m:11 k<:t s ugar is seen as the crop \\"hich olfers the greatesl return per ruenla of land in the areas where it is gro\\"n. The c ultivation and export of fresh pin eapp le to take the place of sugar would depend 011 refrigera ted shipping for its I u11nin11ing. These sh ips will n ol make regular ca lls at the island unl ess the volume o( refrige rated material is large e n ough to warrant their com ing, and lhe volume ca nnot be greal unless continental markets arc assured. The same agricultural expen sai d that the i11sular government would be interested i11 running its own refrigerator ships to the mainland if it had or could get a ny. N o other cash crops have bee n suggested for th e present s ugar areas. And since subsistence crops would <"reate more problem s than they could solve, t hey ;i re not the answer eit her. ~o lt should be added, before I pass to a discussion of other aspects of the island's d e p endency relationships, th at the produc tio n a nd sale of rum which is so important as a source o f income to the insu lar government is also depend e nt upon the produ ction of sugar ~nd must be taken into account w h e n disn1ssing the importance of sugar cu ltivation- unde r existing arra ngem e ms- i n to to. \ •Vhile most of the food which is imported into the island comes from the United States, it has bee n argu ed that this is a consequence, at leas t in part, of the Coas twise Shipping Laws. The e ffect of these laws o n the importation of food has been treated elsewhere . l s h ould like to repeat in the present context that while und e r the provisio n s of this law

~ 0 Pin-, ( •!J3ia) says all of l h<.- island·s c111ti,·ahlc land devoted 10 food< rops would produce onlv a lio11l half of ic s suhsiste n rc needs. And this tl'flS writtr11 i11 ' 9Ji u·he11 tht• /w/nilation was evc11 smaller than it is 11011•.

TA BARA: TOBACCO AND l\f!XED CROPS MUNIClPALlTY

mosl of die island's food is imported from the United SLaLes, most oLher SoULh American countries which are nominally free tO trade wherever they choose bu y much o( their food and su pplies from the U nited Stales (U.S. Tariff Commissio n, 1946:7). At the very least, under ex isting arrangements, Puerto Rico depends upo n Lhe U niLed States for 42 per cent of its food by volume, 5·1 per cent by value (Perloff, 1950: :P 7). Jt may be mentioned here that much of the trade in luxury consumption commod ities, such as radios. refrigerators, a utomobi les, etc., which come from the United States is another source of income to the in sular govcrnrne nt. inasmuch as a 25 per cent import le\·y is placed on such commod ities, this money "o i1 wn int o the insular trcasur\'. _.\ side J rnm sen·i11g as a so urce of some sugar, some t.oha cco. some cheap labor. and as a market for processed and manufactured goods, "·haL are the advantages to the U nited States of li1is colonia l arrangeme n t? These are or cou rse of some importance, but the\' arc hardl y enough lO juslify maintaining possessiot; of tile island ir such possession is viewed strictly in tenm of profit and loss. The sugar and tobacco co ttld be obtained from Cuba-or elsewhere-by simpl y ;1 djusti ng thal island 's quotas. T he tobacco might a lso be obtained in other parts of the world. And the markel for processed and manufactured goods would probably remain, if in a slightly reduced form . As a source of cheap labor, the Puerto Rican needlework industry has lined the pockets of a number of continental manufacturers. The recent efforts of the present Puerto Rican government to entice continental concerns down to the island, a lthough publicly disavowing cheap labor as the lure, certa inly had little else to o ffer to these concerns beyond such labor. Proof of that is the fac t that the invitations had to be reinforced by a twelve- to fifteen-year tax exempti on provision in the law. But even so, cheap labor w ithou t an abundance of raw materials and sources of power are hardly enough to "·arrant retaining such a costly luxury as the island o( Puerto Rico-in the balancesh eet view. There are at least two other elements in the relationship between the United States and Puerto Rico which may explain our rel ucta nce to grant the island its independen ce. On e of these is the former strategic importance of the island as a military base protecting th e approaches to the Panama Canal. I believe changes in the world situation a nd in the technology of warfare have reduced the importance o( this factor. And in a ny case, it is not impossible that the island cou ld be granted its independence and sti ll agree to the occu pa ti o n o( cena in strategic fortifications on a longterm lease basis. The other e leme nt in the picture which nourishes the inertia of o ur present domination is the ho ldings of American investors in Puerto Rican sugar enterprises. It is often cynically observed that these producers cou ld not compete with their Cuban counterparts if Pue rto Rico were free. Free Cuba can produce suga r for a lol less money than urn Puerto Rico-free ~

I

107

or unfree. And since an unfree Puerto Rico would mean a serious devaluation in the sugar holdings of insular sugar producers-Puerto Rican as well as American-the cynics say that a Puerto Rican-continental sugar lobby is and has long been busily at work not only discouraging ideas of independence but magni(ying the strategic importance, minimizing the expense o( the present Puerto Rican-U.S. arrangements. Summary of Pattern of Dependency Relationships from La Cima to the United States

Added to the historical picture o( the island's economy which h as been presented elsewhere in this volume, the preceding brief summary of the contemporary situation with regard to the island's dependency upon the mainland and vice versa reveals some of the broader changes which have taken place, particularly in the economic sphere. I have not even touched upon such matters as the U nited States' interest and invesunents in hea lth, medicine, and ed ucation. Certainly the legislative changes that have occurred since the change in sovereig nty, the governmental structure, and many other consequences of Puerto Rico's colonial relationship to the U nited States are extremely important even in the neighborhood setting. The formal introduction and expansion of the Protestant churches which fo llowed America's taking-over has also had important effects on Tabara, some of which shall be treated in later sections. And the in troduction o( such a new recreational pattern as baseball, with its profound consequences on the culture, cannot be overlooked, even if one assumes the fanaticism could, as in Cuba, have taken place outside the political jurisdiction of the United States. However, I have been here primarily con cerned with those formal econom ic arrangements a nd effects, especially in agriculture and trade, which arc a result of Puerto Rico's dependence upon the United States. Many of the omitted topics ·will be treated at least in some detail in later sections. The island p assed from a n aboriginal period of probably complete self-suffic iency to a period 0£ fou r hund red years of Spanish domination during which it became increas ingly less self-sufficient as its popu la tion expanded and its production of subsistence crops fa iled to satisfy the needs of its residents. The grow ing dependence of the island upon the outside world for some of its consumption goods proceeded slowly during the earliest periods of Spanish rule and somewhat less slowly towards the close of the 400-year period as insular and intra-insular isolation declined. Trade and com1nerce w ith the outside world came to a cl imax after American occupation of the island. And the circular process of reduced isola tion, introduction of manufactured products, and intensifica tion of the cash structure in order to insure the means with which to satisfy the need and demand for manufactured products e nsued-more demand, more cash needed . . . more cash needed, fewer subsistence crops

108

THE PEOPLE OF PUERTO RICO

in proportion to cash crops grown . . . more cash THE LAND AND PRODUCTIVE PROCESS crops, more demand for manufactured products . . . more manufactured products, fewer subsistence crops, more cash, more demand . . . . Thus were the de- LAND USE AND POTENTIAL pendency relationships cemented, the importance of trade increased. And the process has had its conse- Introduction The land area o[ Puerto Rico is 3 ..123 !lquare miles, quences upon the most remote parts of the island, so and the population d e ns ity in 19.J<> was 5.1G.1 p er that the tiniest store I visited in the least accessible part of Barrio Azt'.1car had on the shelves of its four- square mile. This has increased in the last ten yea rs foot by six-foot interior, in addition to a few bunches with a rise in population from 1 ,8(i!J. 25!J to an es tiof home-grown bananas and plantains, three cans o( mated 2, 175,000, so th e estimated density is no\,. more Leche Klim (powdered milk), half a dozen small cans than Goo per square mil e, that of Tabara ;1hout ;,.1;> of tomato sauce, and three packages of needles-all per square mile. :\lthough thi:, dcn ... ity j., l<l\\«.:r than from the United States. And the production costs of that o[ Rhode lsland , the: figure: bc:<onH·., signilic1nt in the tobacco grown by the owner of this same store the context of Puerto Ri< o·:-. agri< ultural atbpt;1tio11. were furnished in part by the Tobacco Marketing One migln expect lrom thi., condition that b11d u ...c Co-operative office in Tabara pueblo from funds pro- would be as dose to th e: :1hso lutc: 111:1xi11111111 a" it< Clllld vided by the Commodity Credit Corporation with get. H o wever, a carefu l cxa111in;1t ion ol th<: land in headquarters in Washington, D.C. This man's nephew Tabara reveals man y places in each barrio whc:rc: preis a veteran who lives with his father in Barrio Palo sumably cult ivable land is not U!l<:<I. d<.:-.pite the be L Alto and attends school in the pueblo, receiving a that in o ther pans ul th<: !lame barrio 111any :-.lope" \,·ith monthly subsidy of S120 from the Veterans Adminis- a gr adient o( up to Go pc:r cent ar<.: devoted to c lca 11 tration in Washington, D.C., to help support him and tilled crops. An examination o[ the: st:1tisticil data his parents. He has been devoting part of each month's on land under culti vation in Puerto Ri co i11 tl1 c n : 11 · payments towards liquidation of a d~bt incurred by suses from 1910 to 1940 shows a \\·idc: llunuatiun in the his father when he purchased some land with an FHA amount and percentage of total farmland under cu ltivation. loan guaranteed by the local branch of that federal agency, and with money furnished by the Federal In the view o( loca l representatives of the federal Land Bank of Baltimore. The father grows cabbages and insu lar Departments o[ Agriculture, there is inand other minor crops on the new land, sells some deed much potentially cultivable land in Tabara of these in the town market, the remainder to am- which is not used, yet which could certainly be d evo ted bulant peddlers who transport the stuff by truck to to the cultivation of subsistence crops. Others besides one of the island's large markets in Rio Piedras or in the experts are aware of this potential. Many o( the 1\Iayagilez or Ponce or another city in another part depressed agricultural wage workers and te n a nts exof the island. press bitterness at the apparent waste of this potentially useful land. They blame greed and selfishness of As the population grows and the island shows a concomitant decline in its self-sufficiency po ten ti al the landlords for this cond ition, saying they could use (in terms of insular subsistence production), it may the land which now not only produ ces no benefits for be expected that the dependency upon cash will also the owner but d eprives him o[ an opportunity to make grow. ·whether chis cash be supplied by more exten- some profit without any risk to himself. They suggest that the land be sharecropped, t h at the expenses o( sive and intensive agriculture or whether by the growth of industries, dependence relationships be- cullivation could quite easil y be borne b y the landtween different parts of the island will probab~y lord, the work and worry would be the sharecropper's, intensify. And since it is inconceivable that any in- and one-half or more of the yield would belong to the dustrial or agricultural adaptation, short of a fore- former to dispose o( as he wished, while the latter doomed attempt to return to agricultural self-suffi- would have food to eat and perhaps some to sell for a ciency, will be able to supply more than a part o[ all small cash return. wfan y of the landlords of Barrio Sa lvador <lo not see of the island's consumption needs, trade with the United States and/ or other countries of the world will the matter in this light. They a<lmiL that more o[ the continue. And although the future pattern of depend- land was used in this way in former times, that condiency relations with other parts 0£ the world may tions were once differe nt, when those living <n-rimado differ [rom present arrangements, there is no doubt (dependents of squatter or shar ecro ppe r type) were that Puerto Rico will have to maintain outside com- permitted much freer access to unu sed portions o[ the mercial relationships in order to survive. Under a n y lan<l. They have told me that they can no longer a fford form of society short of a return to barbarism, Puerto this " luxury," that the laws of the Popular governRico and i ts people will always be dependent upon m ent have placed h eavy penalties on the practice o( other areas both for the things it needs and for the permitting fairly free u se o( uncroppcd and ungra1.ecl things it has to offer. Poli tical sovereignty may change lands. They say that the increase in cropped and the form under which the dependency relati o nsb i ps pastured land w hi ch is apparent in a ('ompariso11 of operate. It will never e liminate the d ependency it- 1935 fi g ures with those of 19.10- be for e lhe laws or which th ey speak went into effect- re llects a trend out self.

TABARA: TOBACCO AND i\IIXED CROPS i\IUNICIPALITY

of the de pression which, if it had not been discouraged by the new Jaws, might have continued until the land utilization p ictu re in 1950 would have been very much like that o( 19:20 when more o[ the municipality's total farmland was under cultivation than at any other recorded period in Tabara's history. 2 1 Although most o( the landlords questioned in this co11nectio11 are themselves either active and prominent m e mbe rs o( the PPD (Popular Democratic party), ,,·hi ch promulgated the laws they criticize, or are sympaLl1i1c.:rs and :rnpporters of the party in power, they 1111l1csitati11g-ly attack those regulations which are desig11 cd 1<> prntc.:n the arrimados from 'd1imsical or unsc rnpulom landlords. Jn e ffect, the legislation insures th<' product of tile Lcnalll's labor at least in part to lii1w;cll. It denies the land lo rd the right to dispossess ;1 tc11a11t "·itlwut e ither buying his share of the crops ntlti,·at c:d by the.: te nant or turning them over to him; it arranges lor re imbursement o( the tenant if any of tile.: sh;1n:crnpped produce is damaged by the landlord 's animals: ;111d it guaramees to the tenant his share of any fuLme yield on such perennials as ba11a11;1s. chickpeas, or cofiee .~ z For their pan. the tenants or potential tenants maintain that they are interested neither in the cultivation o( perenn ials nor in making demands in case of disputes between themselves and the landlords. They are interested in growing some of the staple crops that will assure Lhern an adequate food supply. The landlords reply chat many trusting landlords have been betrayed, and that the decisions of the Labor Department in any dispute of this kind which reaches them have always been in favor of the tenant. vVhether this is true or not, it is their fervent belief, and they are cautious in the assignment of unused land to their tenants. Only a few landlords in barrios Salvador and Quito are sufficiently confident of their relations with their ten an ts to permit them to cultivate such perennials as bananas and chickpeas. One informant spoke more frankly than the rest. "Sure, I let my tenants have a little land for sweet potatoes, yams or taniers. But not too much . If I give them too much they will not have to do my work. T h ey will neglect my fields to take care of their own. " Then he added: "They won't need me as they do 110\V."

Because the slopes and soils of Barrio Salvador are 2t U.S. Census. 1010, 1920, 1930, 19110 and Puerto Rican Census, 1 9 3!1·

~2 Flinter descrihes 1.he laws governing arrangements between landlords and tenants in 1834 under Spanish rule: ''They arc tenants at will . . . if the landlord should wish to eject them from their cahi n and lands, he must previously pay them the value of 1he land they may have cleared of wood, and fitted for pasture or cult ivation,-as well as the value of the colfee and the fruit trees, canes and plantains, they ma y have p lanted, ascertained by a regular appraisemcnt , with all the formalities of the strictest justice" (p. 2,; 9). I helie,·c Col. Flinter paints too rosy a picture. l\!ost of rny informants who are old enough to remember Spanish rule scoff al the suggestion that a tenalll either could or wou ld ever have availed himself of his technical legal privileges in case of eviction.

109

not very suitable for the cultivation of the more important minor crops, these are produced in small amounts primarily for home use. Commercial production of such root crops as sweet potatoes or yams is possible. But the market for these is even more uncertain than is the market for bananas or plantains. Thus, the risks involved in wage-producing these crops would be too great, and to attempt their cultivation on a commercial scale by means of sharecropping involves a number of dangers to the landlords without, in their view, offering them anything significant in the way of compensation. Barrio Quito presents a different picture. Here there is not only room for expanded production but the soils are suitable and the slopes less steep than in Salvador. However, the farmers o( this barrio, while quite willing to expand tobacco production , are less willing to increase the cultivation of minor crops. These had brought excellent prices during the war, and the producers had then been limited in their expansion by the scarcity o( labor. Now there is no such scarcity, but neither are the profits so large or so certain. An important contrast between the two barrios emerges at this point. T he prevailing opinion of rural residents of all barrios except that of Salvador is that the people of that barrio suffer much from hunger because of the relative lack of minor crops for subsistence. They express their feeling about Salvador by saying: "One can't eat tobacco." In Quito, as in the remaining five barrios of the municipality, the agricultural wage laborer and the occasional sharecropper consider that they may always have verd'll ras (bananas, plantains, and the root a-ops) when there is no cash. And generally speaking this is true. These food planes are cropped throughout the year. The few (usually those who work on tobacco plus minor crops) who crop for shares are assured of a fairly steady, year-round supply. And those who work as peones, or day laborers, on these same crops usually eke out enough work for wages to keep them in verd urns if nothing else. In Salvador, agricultural laborers and sharecroppers feel ambivalent about tobacco and its effect on their lives. During the dead season, many of the tenants and laborers complain bitterly about their inability to produce their own subsistence as do the poor of other barrios. However, as planting time approaches, as the seedbeds are prepared, as the money starts coming in, the attitude changes. These same people then speak fondly of Salvador as the one barrio where a man can make money (tobacco cultivation req.uires much more labor than the minor crops which usually need only to have the soil prepared, to be planted and harvested), and that it takes money to buy clothing, shoes, rice, beans, and dried codfish. During the dead time, criticism of the landlords who refuse to permit free cultivation of their unused lands is loud. _They say it would be wonderful for the poor people if all the landlords were as generous as C.A. who gives a little land and who makes loans to his sharecroppers (at .1 o per cent) to tide them over the

1 10

THE PEOPLE OF P UERTO RICO

periods between the harvest and the paymen ts on the tobacco crop. He is descri bed as: "The only good man in the barrio." But when the money star ts coming in this changes, and there a re good words for the other large landholders. Now they remember that A.B. gave free milk to his tenan ts, chat R.B. sometimes lends mo ney in case of sickness, that a ll of these "selfish men" do indeed permit their tenants to culti vate a patch of sweet potacoes fo r their own use. And now man y people report that th ey have tried to live in one o( the other barrios but have found the shortage o( wages too trying and have therefore come back to live "where one can own shoes, buy a new sh irt." Tobacco

Tobacco was first found in the Antilles by the Spaniards (Puerto Rico Government, Governor's Report, 1903). Two papal bulls excommunicating anyone who used it (Coll y Toste, 19 111-27) and a royal decree issued in 1Go8 (Barre tt, 1933) interdicted its cultiva tion. Finally, a special law passed in 16q permitted its cultivation while imposing a pena lty of death a nd con fisca tion of property for sale of the tobacco to a forei gner (Barrett, 1933). Planting was fully resumed by 1634 (Coll y T oste, 191 ,1-27). In 1899 only 1 per cent of the island's cu ltivated a rea was in tobacco, while 41 per cent was in coffee and 15 per cent in sugar.:::3 But the production of tobacco increased so rapidly after the coming of the Americans that by 19 16 it ranked second to sugar cane in export value, retain ing that position until i931. Since 1932 it has been exceeded o nly by cane and needl ework (Roberts et al., 1942:86). In the a rchives o( 1853 the cultivation o( tobacco in Taba ra is reported to be limi ted sole ly to Ba rrio Salvador a nd is described as "m uy poco" as compa red with coffee, plantain, rice, corn, etc. By 1920, however, the value of tobacco in Tabara was almost one and one-half times th at of coffee. And by 1930, the number o[ cuerdas in coffee had dropped to i 7 (figures for 1929 crop, yea r fo llowing the San Felipe h urricane) while tobacco was cultivated on 2,25 1 cuerdas. By 1940, only 1,007 cuerdas were cultivated under the newly promulgated quotas. Since acreage quotas were recently abandoned in favor o( cwts., the total tobacco acreage in Tabara fo r 1948-49 is not known with any degree of exactness. Tobacco is sti ll grown most intensively in Barrio Salvador. However, enough tobacco is grown in all barrios of the munici pality to describe it as an important crop in each. Sa lvador is su pposed to prod uce the best tobacco, chiefly because its soils a re said to be " hot" (well-drained), while those of the other barrios, particularly Amarillo and Pa lo Alto, a re said to be "cold" (poorly drained). ~ 3 Census of 1899. I 11 1901 there were o nl y 172 cucrdas o f cobacco in Tahara as compared with 1,.180 cuerdas o f coffee (Puerto Rico Government, Governor's Report, 1903).

T he re arc several varieties of toba cco grown he re, but the fav orite is Virg inia Blanca . Seedbeds or ca refully selected seeds_ (obta ined e ithe r from one\ m vn plants of th e p_rev 1ous yea_r, through pu1-chase from a neig hbor, or lro m one ol the agricu ltura l age nc ies) are planted from late Augus t until e arly O ctober , generall y o n we ll-drain ed. fert il e so il on th e side of a gentle slope. A lmost all seed beds in Salvador and Qu ito are covered by cheesecloth to protect the you ng plants fro m insects, intense direct su nlig ht. and beating ra ins. Tra nsplanting tak es pla ce I rom 1:1 tc <k1ohn to ea rl y J an uary. In the l!J( H-.1q planting . :1 le\\' 111 the large farmers a nd :>Orne: ol the -.mall one-. d c.:l:i~cd planting beyond the .J a1111:iry clcadlin c: -.c:t by Litt· lnc:tl agricultural ex pe ns. (htc1b ib ly th e.: dcl :1y \\':1-.. < :111-,cd by heavy ra ins. Howe ve r. the fa c t is tli :1t a n accid t· 11 t:tl late planting the previous ~·car (o ne: ol the: ~m: illc.:r farmers had been ill and cou ld IH>L a ll ord or :1rr: 111 gc: for the plaming ol his crop-; until altn · 1·1rn.:t· Ki 11 g.., Day) had yie lded on e ol the best crops ol th e lt :1n 'l'.., t. an d the late planter~ ol this <;Cason look ath·anta gc ol the h eavy ra infall to try their luck aga imt the c:x pcn::. ' scie nce. In Salvador, slo p es of up to Go p er ce nt arc not uncommon ly used fo r the cultivation of to ba cco. Since most of the la nd in Salvador is quite steep, the Soil Conser vat ion Service m e n es timate t hat th e average incline fo r most of the tobacco farms in th e barrio is between th irty a nd forty-five degrees. Fertilizer is general ly a pplied a few days be fore pla nting. A duplicate appl icat ion is made about thirtv days later. The crop is cultivated two times, occ;:;_ sionally three if weed growth is exceptional. All cu lti vation is by h oe. H a rvest ing begins abou t seventy to ninety cla ys after transplanting the seedlings. The first c ropping takes off the bottom leaves, the second gets the middle o r· best quality leaves, a nd the third gets the top o nes. The leaves arc transported to the barn in bu rl a p ro lls where they are stored from twenty- five to thirty clays after be ing threaded and suspended frorn rac ks to permit better circulatio n of a ir a nd <.lrying.2·1 A fter the drying period in th e ba rn , the leaves are re m oved to the warehouse o f the co-op (most growers in T a ba ra belong to the Tobacco ~ f a rkcting C o-op erati ve) w here th e to bacco is weigh ed and given a pre lim ina ry g rad ing before it is taken to the large warehouses in Sabana del Pa lmar for ferm en tatio n . T o bacco is g rown a medias-tha t is, the costs of prod uction are shared by the tenant a nd fa rm ow ne r, land provid ed by the latter, a nd proceeds divid ed; or it may be grow n jJor rul111i11ist.ra cid11 , that is, by hired la bor, all costs borne by the produ cer and a ll profits taken b y him. In Salvador and Quito the la rgest farm ers te nd to use m ore media11 ero (sh a recro ppe r) labor than straight wage labor. Those wh o cro p less, bu t still a n ~·1 T he method o[ cutting the cnli re plant [or dry ing. practiced in so me o t her pans of th e is la11d. is ne,·er u~cd in T ahara.

TABARA: TOBACCO AND MlXED CROPS l\'IUN ICIPALlTY

amount g reater than what they could h andle with famil y la bo r, generally use wage labor. The advantages 0£ sharecropping, accord ing to the landlords, are that the workers will take better care of the crop, that sizeable amounts of free labor are co ntribllled by the sharecropper 's famil y, that in the eve nt o f poor prices the loss is borne by the worker as "·e ll as the producer. Its chie( disadvantage for them: if the pri ce for the tobacco turns ou t to be unu sually hig h, th e 111e <lia11 e ro gets a much larger return th :rn if he had worked for wages. Another disad\·:111tagc or the systClll fo r the producer as it i-> pr:1cticcd in Sah·ador ("'here \\'eekly payments are 1n ;1dc during the culti\'ation per iods, and small ad\·:1 nccs g i\'<.'11 by ~Ol ll C o r the larger growers against th e ultimat e sc ttkmc11t after the han·est) is that the ;11110111it ol the debt o[ di e tenant to the producer 111 :1y he g reat er th:111 hi s share or the payment for the crop. This is like ly to ocrnr if prices are exceptionally lm,· . or if the producer has extended relatively large Jo:1ns to th e te nant. :\ch·a 11t :1gc:s or the \\'age- labor techn ique o[ produnion :ire that it permits all of the profits to go to the producer and that he is under no obligation to provide an y more to the workers than the wages he pays the m . Disadvantages are that the crop is not Jikely to get the same care as it would from a sharecroppe 1· (this is generally compensated by the fact that the producer of a relatively small area is able to supervise the work very closely-something which th e la rger producer is unable to do); that labor costs sharply reduce the margin o[ profit in years when th e tobacco price is low; and tha t he gets no free labor from the fam ilies of the workers. ;\ comb ination o f the two devices, tenant and wagelabor production , seems to be favored by most of the largest producers in Sa lvador, as a way of " hedging" the disadvantages each of the techn iques has when used separately. U ncler the m ed in 11ero system of production there are severa l arrangements possible. One type, which is still practiced in Quito and elsewhere but has virtually disappea red in Salvador, provides that the tenant will bear one-half the costs of fertilizer, seed, preparation of soil, thread used in sewing the leaves together, and insecticides. The landlord provides the land, the oxen, the drying barn, and costs of tra nsportation. The te nant gets one-half the total proceeds of the final liquidation, after his share of the above costs has been deducted. In the other type, now favored in Salvador, the tenant bears all the costs of production ·with the land lord donating the oxen, the drying barn, transportat ion , and the land. The tenant's share after deduction of a ll costs is two-thirds of the total crop. The return is a bout the same to both parties under either a r ra ngement; the tena nt's efforts a re said to improve w ith each increase in his share of the crop. Jn Salvador and Quito the daily wage for men is ninety cents or one dollar. There is actua lly a g reat deal of fl e xibility here, some o( the smaller landlords pa ying the wage p l us coffee a nd lunch. Others, the

1 11

Fig. 18. Prepari11g th e soil fo r tobacco i11 Tabarn w h ile th e lan dow ner watches. Photo by Hobert 1'1um1 ers.

F ig. 19. Planting tobacco 011 a steefJ hillside. Photo by Rosska111 : Govern ment of Puerlo Rico.

larger landholders, generally pay the wage w ithout providing the lunch . And in still o ther cases the wage may b e r educed to seventy-fi ve o r e ighty cents a day if lunch is provided. ' 1Vages (or women run Crom forty to seventy cents a day. Young boys and girls genera lly get forty or fifty cents a clay.

1I2

THE PEOPLE OF PVERTO RICO

The men perform all the heavy work in connection with the cultivation of tobacco from preparation of the seedbed and the fields to harvesting the crop. \ 1Vomen are used in such operations as weeding the seedbed-a tedious job done by hand for which they are supposed to be much better suited and more efficient than men- transplanting the seedlings to the field, sewing the leaves in small bunches for drying, applying fertilizers, and pick ing certain plant pests from the leaves. They a re used in hoe cultivation and in harvesting only if there is a real shortage of men. In addition, they may mix and apply the insecticides, although men are preferred for the latter operation. _ Children are used in weeding the seedbeds and in transplanting. They help with such jobs as bringing water to the field workers, bringing them their lunches and coffee. During the active work period (from around August to March) the sharecroppers, like tbe day laborers, are paid weekly. After the harvest, the landowner in Salvador generally makes advances against the liquidation of the tobacco crop to come. These are small payments of anywhere from seven ty-five cents or a dollar to three or four dollars, rarely larger. He charges interest at 1 o per cent for th.is service. One of the landlords in Salvador comes to the country store, sits down behi.nd a table \vith his books and a pocket[ul of cash and waits for the sharecroppers to drift in and make their requests. This is a leisurely process, sometimes accompanied by an illegal cockfight outside the store or by a session of dice. Another advance or credit technique used is for the landlord to pay the bills his sharecroppers run up at the local stores.

what variable. The tobacco may be grown either by wage labor or shares, or by a combination o( both methods. The minor crops arc g rown by wage labor exclus ive ly if they are intend ed for th e market, by a nexible share arrangement i( they arc not intended for sale. In the latter case, the minor crops :ire looked upon primarily as a means o[ assuring the landlord a dependable labo1· s uppl y~ ~. and providing him a s well with e nough o[ these foods for his own usc. Small farms d evoted to the production or millor crops for cash Renerally sat.isl y ;tll tlt c ,,·ork d c:m:11lcls with fam il y labor. Accurate data oil tlt e total :1cn::1gc dt:\'<>t cd l<> tltc production of all 111i11or trop-; i-; llnt :l\:1iL1l>k :-. ill«: the fi g ures which arc gi,·c:n ollc:r no i11clicati<>ll a-; to what pan o[ the l;rnds dc\'ot.c:d to mi11or <TOj>'- yie ld-, on ly one han·cst alld \\'l1iclt yic: ltb t,,-o or lllor<.: har vests a year on the same plot'>. \ lor<.:o\«.:r. tlicrc: is 110 distinction bet\\·ee n tlto~c crops < tdti,·a tnl 101· lwmc consum ption and those d c:-.t ill c:d for s;1lc:- ;11l impor· tant co nsidcratioll in thc ca'><: of those c;1-;h -plussubsistence produ ct;;. The ollly tltillg ,,·c do kilo\\' tor certain is that the total :1n<:a).!;c dc,·otcd to minor nops includes most of that 011 whi ch tobacco 1s gro\ut plus an amou nt at least four or li ve times the total fo r tobacco.

Minor Crops

The only important minor crops cultivated in Sa lvador are those, like corn and beans, which follow the main crop, tobacco, in the same soil. These are cropped as was the main crop-on shares if that was on shares, by wage laborers if they were employed for the tobacco. vVomen and children may help with the planting and the harvesting without pay. Men gen erally do all o( the cu ltivation and preparation of the soil. Fertilizer and insecticides are generaHy not used. On large farms in Quito, where the chief commercial crop is not tobacco but plantains, bananas, taniers, cabbages, these are never sharecropped. The amount of labor required in the cultivation and harvesting of these crops is so much less than in tobacco that it is not considered practical to use th is method of commercial production. However, where the ch ief interest is the production of tobacco, small plots are occasionally allocated to the tenants and they are required to use these for cu ltivation of minor cropsusuall y nonperennials. The yield is either shared with the landlord or kept entirely by the tenant if the landlord has no need for his share of the product o r if its sale would not be profitable. Thus the patte rn in Quito's tobacco-minor crops cultivation is some-

Fig. 20. Cultivating tobacco field Robert 1Ha1111ers.

111

Tabara. Photo by

"~Sec p . 109 fo 1· possible complicalions envisaged hy the land lord i11 this system i( the minor crops hecomc too important Lo the tenant.

TABARA: TOBACCO AND l\ UXED CROPS :.\!UNICIPALlTY

Coffee

Th ere i:. 11 0 commercial coffee growing in the barrio of Sal\'aclor, although extensive cultivation of the pl:111 L is rcponed for the last years o( the nineteenth ccmury. Old informams say that it cominued to be of :.olllC importa11t:e- although secondary LO tobacco - 1111til the hurricanes of 19:.?8 and 19:p demolish ed tllo~t of tltc trees and their shade. Some coffee is g"l"Cl\\"11 in nll1er parh or the municipality, blll no\\"hcre do<·, it lt.1\c thc c·rn111111.:rcial importance o[ LObacco or ('\Tit ol n1i1wr crop,. In Quito there arc two farms \\"Iii< '1 gro\\" ( ollcc ( llllllll(TCi:dly. The largest of these h;1, hC't\\'l'('ll t\\-Clll\ and t\\"e11t~ · fi\·e cundas of beari11g 1rec,. ~ .: 111 <<>Ike nilti\·:1 tio11 i11 Quito a ll ,,·ork except the '1:in't',ti11g i, pcrlonncd b~· me11. Pruning o[ shade 11c'l'' (<>111c in t\1·0 'ear~ here). clearin(T the 0O'round ' • 0 ;111d J>t11ti11g <Hit tH'\\' plants i:. all the \\"Ork of men. :'\cill1er terr:1cing 11nr 1he application of [ertilizers i... I" :1ct i< <'d in (~ui10 rnfke rnlti\·acion. The labor ''' pph I or the ha rn·,t i-; d ra\\"n from the families\\"11111e11 ;1 11d < hilclrcn included- of the tenants, resident wage la borers, or nearby landless workers. Coffee harvesting is paid for by the basket, the rate arranged so tltat a day's picking will yield from seventy-five cents to one dollar and twenty cents to most pickers. The amount of J:ind \\"ith bearing trees is given as Gl.J r11Ndas in the 1!'HO census. This should be compared with the 2,973 cuerdas for bananas and plantains alone in the same year. Cattle

The re are no commercial dairy herds in Quito. Salvador boasts two dairies o( commercia l size, a greater proportion of its land being in steeper slopes which are more suitable for pasture than cultivation. Smaller he rds o( cattle are used to supply the needs of some farmers and a number o( their tenants. O ne of the dairies in Salvador is the property of th e largest tobacco grower in the municipality and is in the neighborhood of La Cima. The other is just outside the pueblo on the lands of the Baptist Academy. Both of these producers sell their milk in the pu e blo, tlte tobacco farmer making daily deliveries to c ustomers there and at some o( the intermediate p o ints on the way to town. However, most o[ the milk produced in the La Ci111a-Salvador-Qui t0 area is not sold but consumed loca ll y. Owners of large farms in Salvador-those not in volved in commercial dairy o r beef operationsmay give a quart or two of milk a day to each o( the fami lies living on their farms as sharecroppers provided these help in the care o( the cattle and provide ocher voluntary services as well. One o( the large farmers who combin es his local tobacco activities with extensive bee( and dairy operations in Mango has ~o Compare 1 his wilh some of Lhc farms in chc coffee municipaliLy s tudi ed l>y my co· workcr where several hundred cue,.dns of bearing ll'CCS is llOL llll COllllllOll.

11 3

loaned a cow lo each family on his farm. The milk produced by the animals may be used for their own consumption. The surplus may be sold and the cash turned over to the owner. All of the farmer's needs are met by contributions of one or the other tenants. Another, sma lier farmer who has not the resources of this large landowner but who owns several cows, also gave these on loan to one of his tenants, requiring only that the tenant furnish him with enough milk for his family each day. H e cold me that he now regrets the arrangement, believes he would like to try to peddle the milk to make some extra money, but he does not dare to take the cows away from the tenant because, as he puts it: "He will resent it and try to do things that may harm my tobacco." In all cases where cattle are loaned out for maintenance and care, the anima l itself reverts to the owner when its productive period is over. The large commercial herds are tended by a salaried employee with irregular assistance from the tenants who benefit by the receipt of milk. 'Where there are only o ne or two co"·s, the actual labor involved in pasturing the cattle falls to the male childre n of the tenants. This follows from the practice of tethering the animals when there are no fen ces and when only a few cattle are involved. Two or three times a day the animals are moved to a fresh location for grazing. Old informants report that cattle were formerly much more numerous not only in Salvador but in all of the other barri'Os as well. They speak of the times when there was an abundance o( milk, when each farm had more than enough cattle to take care 0£ the milk needs of the lowliest family. In those days, they say, milk was almost never sold, but always given away. or slightly more than !?0,000 c 11erdas in farmland in 19.10, 6,83.1 are reported as pastureland. This amount of land supports more than 3,800 cattle, o ( which 718 are cows actually giving milk, and more than another 1,000 goats, sheep, a nd horses. 'Nhile most o[ the lactating cows receive additional grain and fodder, few of the other animals get any more food than is provided b y the uneven pastureland. Rice-Other Forms of Cultivation and the Swing to Cash

In addition to tl1e tenant, wage, and piecework patterns of cultivation described above, there are certain forms of unpaid co-operative labor practiced. One of these, the junta ("group") or junta de G)'Uda ("group for help"), seems to have existed in several forms until the 192o's. Only remnants o( the practice are found now. In t.he form in which it existed in Tabara, it was primarily associated with the production o( such a high labor-cost crop as rice. Formerly grown rather extensively in Tabara, its production now is confined to a few sma ll plots. The farmers say they can't afford to cultivate the crop beca use the junta type of labor is no longer available. Tenancs and small farmers are reluctant to participate in this kind of arrangement any more, the former preferring to sell

I I4

T HE PEOPLE OF P UERTO RICO

their services for an assured wage when they are able, the latter preferring the cultivation of other, lower WORKING CON DITION S AND PRACTICES labor-cost products. The junta in rice operated in the following ways: ( 1) a single large Canner would announce his intention Slavery In 1824 there were 395 slaves in Tabara. And alof planting a certain field to rice. He would ask for though there is no exact data on the number of volunteer labor to perform the work o( soil-preparaslaves for any later period, the municipal Actns o[ tion, planting, cultivation, gathering and process ing the year 1873, year of emancipation, show 305 con(up to husking). Jn return for their services, the contracts between n ewly freed slaves o( a ll ages and tributors would receive a specified part o[ the yield. both sexes a nd their form e r owners. It is apparent Or (2) a group of small farmers would unite to perfrom the sma ll numbers involved ;ind I rom d:1ta sup· form these tasks for each other. Each owner approplied by o ld informan t' > tl1;1t ~tan;:, did 111>1 constit11tc:: priated the entire yield of his own field. an impo rtant part ol the:: agricultural l:1bnr lorn:. Presently there is only a vestige of the junta or Probably more than l1all l11nuiun('d in lt"11~<:kcq>i11g mutual aid. The investigator found a single example o[ this kind in a remote part of Sa lvador where a small capacities, as laund re":-.<.:~. < ook:-., :,1.:n ·;1111-;, h;111d;·me11, farmer who owns a three-cuerda farm reports that on etc. several occasions, when sickness or adverse weather conditions caught him or one of his neighbors, the Post-Slavery In the lauer year:, ol the ni11ctc::c11th ce1nury. tree:: rest would pitch in to complete an operation that had to be completed in a relative hurry. The labor so laborers performed the \\'ork on a II crop~ c::xt cpt rice:: donated was paid for neither in cash nor in kind, (occasionally beans as \\'ell) lur a ,,·;1gc of forty cent-; nor was it assumed that the favor had to be returned (Spanish) a day. For \\'ork in the rice fields (or beans) they were paid in kind. The J;111do\\'11c:;r prm·idcd all in any strict bookkeeping kind of opera~ion . It seems, then, that the growing demand for cash of his te nants with ass istan ce in the lon11 of medical in place of subsistence hastened the disappearance o( care and personal favors. H e made g ifts o( food and milk to all of the agregados. rice production and with it the a)'uda. The shift Crom More frequently than today, he served a s pndrino an interest in subsistence production to cash inco me which we posit in this connection should be compared (godfather) for the farmhands' children, with all that with previous remarks on the same contained in the this impl ies in the way of small gifts and favors, and discussion of Puerto Rican-U .S. dependency relation- of ob ligations between the rea l and riwa l parents o( ships in an earlier section. I consider that it is here the children. The /Jalr<in used this r e lationsh ip in due in large part to the development of tobacco and many ways. For him it was a source o[ free labor, the opportunity which that gave to small farmers to such as carrying of bundles, runn ing e nands, perform· convert land use into cash rather than subsisten ce. ing housekeeping details, taking care of anima ls, etc. The entire trend in this direction was given impe tus These were performed by the tenant or his family, the by the expansion of sugar cultivation which followed children panicularly being used in house-tending. the coming of the Americans. Intensified cultivation Frequent ly, too, a chi ld of one of the tenants was of the chief cash crop, growth of an agrarian prole- taken into the house of the patru11 as ltija de crianz.a tariat which could not produce its own subsistence ("daughter for bringing up"). She fun c tioned as a but was dependent upon its wages for its food, the servant, living away fro m her family. In return she availability o( cash wages for the purchase o( other might be provided with clothing, bette r food, and a commodities-all of these undoubtedly increased the few more privileges than her brothers and sisters who demand for and importation of many kinds of con- remained at home. Occasion a lly the relationsh ip b esumer's goods. This demand spread quickly into the came close enough so that greater benefits were exmountain area where tobacco provided small pro- tended to the "adopted" child . Another informal use made o( the tenants was the ducers and workers with more opportu nities to earn cash to satisfy the new demands. Tobacco gave to not u ncommon practice of taking a <laughter as a Tabara's many small farmers the cash that cane querida or concubine. This arrangement brought adcutting provided for the agricultural laborers in the ditional benefits to the girl's family. The landlords used the homes o( the tenants quite north and south coast sugar areas. And while subsistence farm ing still remained important in Tabara, freely- the best foods a nd comforts being reserved such a subsistence crop as rice, which depended for for them, while the so le (unction of the hosts was to its existence on a plentiful supply of cheap or unpaid serve. labor, could not compete with the new cash crop or 't\fhatever the genesis of the mutu al b e nefit arrangethe money to be earned in its cultivation. Rice could ments, it is certain that they served to keep the be bought in the stores with the money earned from workers on the land, to insure a p ermanent labor work in or the sale of tobacco. Rice perish ed, a nd su ppl y to the landowne r. The small swr e on the farm with it the junta upon which it had depended for its ·was a nothe r device w hi ch h elped to i11s11re a steady production. labor supply. Besides being a source of income to

TABARA: TOBACCO ANO M I XED CROPS l'vlUNICIPALITY

the owner, assuring the re turn o[ most of the money paid o u t by him in wages, it served also to keep the Lenant in debt to the owner, making it impossible for him to move away unless he was free of obligations. T hese same services by which the landlord bound the tenants tO his land also seem to have given him control over the ir votes. :\nd the tenants' relative emancipation from these controls today is possibly most clearly shown by the number o( farm laborers who voted for the pany opposed by the landowner-this was especia ll y true when the landowner supported the pan ics opposed LO the PPD and its land-reform laws. Relationships between Landowner and AgregadoMedioneros Today · 1·1ie \\';1gc of today's farmha nd has risen to ninety cents o r :i dollar :i day. The personal favors a re less common th:in l'orlllcrly. T he production of rice and, \\'ith it. pa yment for labor in kind have virtually disappea red. 11 O\\T\·er, strong traces of the old arrangemcn ts st i 11 pl'rsist. For cx;m1ple. Lhc auitutle of respect, a lmost subservience. \\·hich char:ictcri led the former paternalism is st ill prese nt. in the beha vior of the o lder (armers. The middle group of \'Cterans and other young and middle-aged men show a greater Lenclency to treat the landowner on a kind of eq ual basis- once or twice removed- with occasionally an aggressive assertiveness, as though seeking to remind the fmlron th a t democracy's precepts must be observed. This, however, is rare, and the general pattern, especially to middle-aged and older landowners, is one of respect. The old arrangement seems to have survived in a weakened form in the ritual kin relationships. Landowners st ill serve occasionally as godparents for the children or their tenants a nd sharecroppers, but the selection o f these compndres from among neighbors, other land less workers, is fa r more common . The children of the tenant laborers and sharecroppers are still used frequently tO per form small favors, and to tend animals, but not to the same extent as formerly. Nor are the men themselves used so freely without being paid. The landlord still supplies the tenants with free m ilk occasionally, never with free meat. H e supplies the dwelling for the tenant and usually still permits the gathering of firewood from the farm. And a lthoug h there are evidences that the arrangem e nts are fa r more flexible now than before, the wage worker and sharecropper generally observe the obligation to offer their labor services first to the la ndlord before going elsewhere to work. There is no doubt that the present laws which offer pro tec tion to the sharecropper and the settled wage worker have weakened the former relationship between them and the landowners. T here has been considerable speculation about the effect of the increased population and labor supply upon the old arrangements. Certainly with more people, fewer cattle, and the d isappearance of rice, the ability of the patron to

115

continue the food giving of former times has suffered a natural decl ine. Bu t I have reason to doubt that the increase in the farm labor supply has been so great, or at least has been of a kind to permit the lancllords to dispense w ith tenant laborers even if they wanted to. I t is usually assumed that a genuine surplus in the supply of labor would permit the landlords to get the tenan ts they did not need off the land, to make use of unsettled ambulatory workers and not bear the problems presented by the continuous presence of the tenants and their fam ilies. But they have not clone so, nor have they sought ways of circumventing the present regulatio ns so that they could dispossess their squatters wholesale. I t is true that many of the landlords would welcome government resettlement projects which would take the tenants off the ir land a nd deposit them in convenient places nearby. But failing such a plan, they are unwilling to lose their present tenants, willing to accept the responsibilities and inconveniences in return for the assured labor supply. The increase in the numbers of sm all private holdings; the developmen t of the chauffeur group; soldier, veteran, and emigrant money which h as enabled small holders to survive are factors which seem to have vitiated the effects of popula tion g rowth-or at least to have prevented the growth from making itself fel t strongly as pressure o n the land or resources of the large landholders. Good Boss and Good Worker

T he ideal patron of today embodies many of the virtues of the old patron, and is, in fact, frequen tly adm ired in proportion as he reminds the older tenants of his predecessor. The virtues of a good landlord are summed up by o ld and young, wage workers and sharecroppers, w ith striking un a nimi ty. The good landowner should take a personal interest in ;<his" people; he should a bove everything be able to provide paid work all year round; he should himself be a hard worker, generous, a good teacher, sma rt; and he should provide each family w ith a field on which to grow their own subsistence crops. The landlords, for their part, define a good worker as one who makes his ser vices available fi rst to the landlord under any circumstances; as o ne who does not permit his drinking to interfe re e ither with his work or bis personal re lationships with any of the other tenants or the landlord ; as one 'Who makes the members of his family available for free and low-pay services such as running errands, and washing and ironing clothes. Supplementary Economic Activities

'We defi ne supplementary economic act1va1es as those beyond the primary trade or occupation which are pursued to provide the practitioners with extra money. T he majority o( th ese are the province of the poorest a nd most d epressed segments of the popula-

116

THE PEOPLE OF PUERTO RICO

Custom and law in Pueno Rico have provided for the equal division of the la nd a mong all the cl1ildren upon the death o[ both parents. ln cases where dc:ath is intes ta te such division is mandatory. This has m eant that land acquired by an individu a l durin~ his life· time is divided, upon his death, among his wife, i( she survives him, and the frequently numerous children. Some heirs have held on to the propeny and used it during thei1· O\\·n lifetime "·hile others have left beca use the propeny was too sma ll to pro\'idc subsistence or a decent so urce of income. 01· !limply because they were anxious to le;l\·e the land. Or a s11cesiri11 may han: bc:c:n establi:-.hc:d (a dc,·i< <' \\'herein one o f the heirs is -;c:lcned tn reprc::-.c-11t all in 1hc 11-;c of the land ). C c:neral ly. in th c~c: c-;1:-.c-., the h c ir-111;111;1 gcr has ultimate ly boug ht out th e oth er hc: i1·s ;ind i>v< 0111c sole proprietor or th e Cslalc. I kilo\\' ol crnly Oil (' rc<'t'lll case of this Lype ol inheritance in ~ah· acl<>r ;111d Q11i10. The dominant inh eritance pattc:rn has IH>l pr()(ll1cecl prog ress ive; and irn.:,·c:r:-.ible tranio11ali1atio11 i11 T ;1 bara as might be ~ll!> ]){:ned, he< :n1:-,e tlic rc;1dy -.ak of the inh erited lands to other~ permiued tlic: b11ildi11g up of new holdings. The sale ol ti ic:~c pn >pen ic:-. h ;1:-. been made <.:a!>ier by at lc:a!>t t\\'<> lan(Jr:-.. Th c fir.,L of the!>e is that th<.:rc: is no stigma attached to :-ouch LAND TENURE sale. The second is that other rural areas and the larger urban centers are easy to get to and offer the Introduction promise of opportunities for employment. An heir Generally speaking, the historical land tenure picconfronted with a choice be tween scra bbling for subture of Tabara is one of fractionalization. Although sistence on a pl ot barely big enough lo provide an the data are rather incomplete and perhaps somewhat adequate living and the sale of this plot to provi de unreliable, they show a positive increase in the numa slake while h e migrates elsewhere in search or e m ber of small holdings, a relative decrease of large holdployment will frequently choose the latte r course. ings. However, there is a kind of counter tendency H owever, there has been a steady increase in the operating in this historical development, a ~end~n cy number of small holdings over the past fifty years, an characterized by reconsolidation of the fractional 1zed indication that more peop le are either w il ling or ab le lands in other ha nds, generation after generation. Jn to try to get along as owners with less land than short, the pattern of preservation o( lar?e holdi ~gs (ormerly. T here a re several factors wh ich permit this, within a single family for many ge?erat10 1~s, which among them increased productiv ity and the developis found where primogeniture or ultu~ogen1ture _p1:cment of tobacco as a cash crop. Also, many people vails or where investment in machinery proh1b1ts have remained on the land as owners because the fragmentation, z1 is not apparent in Taba_ra. Nor_ is ability of tile urba n centers to absorb them has been the extreme fractionalization of landholdmgs which limited and because they have little choice. vVithin characterizes the land tenure pattern of such counthe last few years, a new source of outside in come tries as China found here (Fei and Chang, 1945). In has been a factor permitting some of the su bmargi nal China all male children inherit equally, and one's producers to stay on the land . I n Tabara this takes abilit; to dispose o( property is often restri_cted by the form of money sent to the island by out-migrants, clan resistance to its sale. Moreover, geographical and members of families remaining here. Although figures occupational mobility appear to be so limited _as on the amount of money r eceived from these emivirtually to bar escape Crom the land_ a~though r emam- gra n ts are not available for earlier periods, some ide a ing on it means a continually dechnmg standard of o( the extent of their contributions ca n be ga ined living from one generation to the next. . . from the following: the total amount of money in We believe there are special factors operat111g 111 money orders cashed al the loca I post office du ring Tabara which not only slow the relentless and prothe mo nth o( .January, 1949, was $G,~143.25 (315 gressive fractionalization found in China an~! ~n other P.i\ f.O.). This is not a represenLative month, tending countries where the inheritance pattern d1v1<les the to be lower than the few months preceding Christmas, land among several or all o( the children, but which but il gives a fair idea of th e amount of money that tend also to take some o( the sting out o( wha Lever comes into Tabara, mostly from the United States. fractionalization has occurred. No figures are avai lable on the tota l amount of money in subsiste nce checks rece ived from soldier rnembers 2• Cf. Wolf's coffee study, Scda's and Mintz' sugar studies. of Tabara families during the war and now. However,

tion who often depend upon the additional income for their very survival. . . Jn the country, those activities which are subs1d1ary co the regular one of fanning ~re tl_1e ma~ing and selling o( rum (illegal); gambling, mcludmg cockfights, playing the lottery, be_ts on base.ball gam:s, eLc.; sewing of gloves; dressmakmg; cookmg cer~am specialties such as sausage, sweets, etc., and selling these among neighbors; cooking for middl~ and u1?per_ income families in time of fiestas; washmg and ironmg; giving haircuts; working on road repair for the municipality; midwifery. Jn the pueblo, individuals may carry on such extra activities as shining shoes (while a part- or full-time occupation for the boys involved, shoe shining is subsidiary to the family's earnings, since the boys customarily give at least half of all their earnings to their parents); odd jobs on trucks; carrying l?ads; laundering, sewing, as in the country; cookrng ~s ab_o~e; gambling as above plus the Casino where this ~ct1vny is the province of the middle and uppe1: income groups; water carrying from the town_'s sp_nng; peddling of orange juice and oranges; rug makmg.

T ..\BARA: TOBACCO AND i\llX.£0 CROPS MUN ICIPALITY

we know that the amo unt is substantial. l\Iany small farm e rs in the barrio report that they have been a ble to " hang o n'' o nl y beca use of this additional incom e. How Land Is Acquired

Inherita nce is no t the most important factor in la nd a cquisition in Tabara as it is in many other parts of the world. :\ II but a fe\\' of the farm s, from the smallest to the largest, in Sa lvad or and Quito ha ve been acquired by the ir present own ers by purchase during the ir O\\·n life time. :\nd the mo ney which h as enabled !llOSt of tl1cse me n to ge t their star t has come from " cni11rnnit's" and or from the prolits they have made in the oper:ttio ll or sma ll Stores. The term economies ;ts used in this cn1111cnion implies a g rea t d ea l m ore l11:111 s:l\·ing pennies. lt is a term o[ peculiar significa11 ce to th e tobacco producing area, beca use it is in th is rcginn more th :111 in a ny or the o thers that this kind n f s:1\'i11g is :1 genuinely practical device for clc ,·:1ti11g 011c~cll' to a hig her economic status. I shall disn1ss tlti:-. lllorc full y in a l:i ter sectio n where Tabara is compared \\'ith the other communities of this stud y. In forlll e r timcs-lief'ore the tobacco crop took on its present illlportance- the land turnover was not so rapid, and the techniques of acquisition h ad a different emphasis than they do n ow. A landless agriculturisl who wished to b ecome a la ndowner, or a sma ll landowner who wanted to expand his holdings, rn igh t open a sma 11 store in the country or even in or close to the town. The amount r equired for su ch a store was small eno ugh so that a man with a reputation for honesty a1Hl diligence could often secure a p e rsonal loan from o ne o[ the local money lenders to start the enterprise. The profits of the business accumu lated gradua lly, but the purchase of land was not always or d irectly m ade from these accumulated profits. It was the credit function of the stores that was most frequenLly used as the device for acquiring land . The lands o[ defaulting debtors might be taken in payment or the debts. The lands ot the one-time greatest landholder in Salvador and Quito-in fact in all o( Tabara-were large ly acquired in this way. This man got his own start with a personal loan which enabled him to set up a small trading center in the pueblo during the period of coffee's importance. Seizu re o( property for defaulting on personal loans is no longer the favored d evice that it used to be. Only one o( the four functioning moneylenders in Tabara is engaged in local merchandising activities; and he is owner of the town's bread bakery. And while virtually all of th e merchants, large and small, do extend credit to their customers, credit is terminated before the debt b ecomes large enoug h in terms of present land values to permit payment with land. Bad debts are usually small, and they tend to be written off if there is no prospect that the debtor will be able to repay the obl iga tion. I discovered only one example of property acquired as a result o( default on a persona l loan in Salvador, none in Qui to. And I found

l 1

7

no cases where th e existing owner was a merchant who had taken over the property as paym e nt for debts incurred in the store. This does not, of course, mean that there are n o such cases in Tabara. I am quite sure there a re. But the number of such cases must, from all accounts, be considerably smaller now tha n in former times. P roduction credit, formerly ad va n ced b y the sam e merchants when the income from their operations became large enough to permit th is add itio nal credit function, has now been taken over by other lending agenc ies.~s In former times, the exte nsio n of production credit h ad served to increase the indebtedness of the farmer a nd acted as another potentia l lever to oust him from his holdings. \ 1\Tith the m ore genero us terms provided b y the government agen cies and the PRT i'vIA, the farmer's indebtedness no longer represents the same threat to his tenure that it meant formerly when he was obliged to pay 12 p er cent or more on his purch ase debts or his production loans. The Land Tenure Pattern in Tabora

According to U .S. census figu res, in 1898 there w ere 560 farms in Tabara w ith a total area o f 21,515 cu erdas, of which only 5,273 were under cultiva tion. This g ives an average of 38.4 cuerdas p er farm. In 1920, there were 524 farms with a total area o( 18,649 cuerdas, or an average o f 35.6 cue rcla.s per farm. In 1930, there were 751 farms w ith a total area of 20,802 cu erdas, o r an average of 27 .7 per fa rm. In 1940, there ·were 1, 177 farms with a to tal area of 20,067 cuerdas, or an average of 1'7.0 per farm. The obvious U'end apparent from the foregoing is a gradual diminution in the size of holdings. The gre;Hest proportion of farms are now in the 0-75 cuercla group, and of these, most consist of fewer than 15 cuerdas. Using the data o f the 1940 census, we find the following: total land area taken up by fa rms of 0- 15 cuerdas, 5,354 cuerdas; 16-49 cuerdas, 5,995 cuerdas; 50-99 cuerdas, 3,486 cuerdas; 100-259 cuerdas, 2,449 cuerdas; 260-500, 2,783 cuerdas. Thus farms under 100 cuerdas include more than two-thirds o f the total area in farms. Some idea of the length of operation of holdings by present owners or renters is contained in the foll owing data from the 19'10 census. Since it is not clear from this data whether the time the present operator bega n to run the farm m eans time of acquisition by inheritance or by purchase or other technique, it is useful chiefly as an index to gen eral turnover in operation, only incidentally a nd by implication as a n index to the rate of tenure ch a nge. 0 ( 1, 1G 1 farms co vered in the 19,10 census, the present O\.vn ers or tenants began operations in the following years : in 19,10, l; in 1939, 54; in 1938, 200; in 1937, 67; in 1936, 11 4; from 193 1-35, 2tp; from 1926-30, 232; from 1900-25, 2,12; b efore 1900, 4. 2s Cf. sectio n on credit

below.

1l

8

THE PEOPLE OF PUERTO RICO

Effect of Land Tenure on Settlement Patterns and Population Movement

The instability of the land tenure pattern of Tabara is reflected in the relative population instability of the entire area. It is rare to find a grandson owning and working the same land that his grandfather once owned, a little less rare to find a son working a small piece of wh ~ t was a much larger property of his father. Rather, the population keeps dispersing, with new farmers comi.ng into the area as the land becomes available. These farmers may come from another part of the same barrio (especially true for the small plots of land up to ten cuerdas), from other barrios of the same municipality, or from contiguous municipalities such as Sabana del Palmar, Acra, Nara nja, Nispero, Cacao, and Coro. Significantly, very few landholders or agricultural laborers in Tabara have not been raised in what has previously been defined as the eastern highlands. The converse of this is also true; the relatives in absentia o[ residents of La Cima, for instance, live for the largest part in some other municipality in the eastern highlands if th.ey are doing agricultural work. If a new landholder prospers, he may be followed to his new home by a less fortunate brother to whom he will give work or a plot to farm; if not a brother, perhaps a la ndless father-in-law, or brother-in-law, or nephew. The larger landowners occasionally transport workers or families of workers (a father with several sons) from one of their farms (or a friend's or relative's) to another. And these workers in their turn may bring a long less fortunate relatives. Death, loss of property, or sometimes just a better opportunity will again disperse these groups, leaving behind perhaps a daughter who has married a neighbor, or a son who has found work on a nearby farm. CREDIT AND CAPITAL Commercial Credit

Commercial credit in the form of loans is used locally to finance crop production, to purchase land and buildings, to cover construction costs, to purchase cars, or to begin a new business. Sources of these loans are private moneylenders, banks, FHA, Tobacco Co-op, etc. The only source of credit in Tabara prior to the coming o( the Americans was private loans issued by individuals. Many of these moneylenders were merchants and large landholders themselves. They sup· plied loans at a high rate of interest (usually arou nd 12 per cent per annum) either for new business ventures or crop financing,2 9 often using the debt as a means of taking the land [rom their debtors. 3 0 Even today sma ll farmers are reluctant to use most credit

facilities, 3 L prirna rily because of the difficulty and red tape involved in gett ing some o( the loan s. but also because a few sti ll fear the loss of their land if they shou ld not be able to meet the ir obligations. Presently, the most important sources o( commercial cred it in Tabara are the Federal Land Bank or Baltimore, the Bank for Co-operat ives, and the Production Credit Adminis tration, n one o[ these insular. During the war, the Emergency Crop a nd Seed Loan Administration and the farm Security Ad mini stration (now the Farmers Home ,\dmini stratio11) were additional sources of credit. The Puerto Rican Rcco11structio11 .\d111i11istr:1tirn1 bought a nd so ld a number ol thrcc·n11·rda p ints i11 T abara in the thirties. Th e purch;1-.cr-; arc p;1yi11g lor these prope rties over a t\\·c 1Hy -~· c:;1r period :11 r;1 tcs varying from about lony ce nts to a lit tle over a dollar a month depe nding 011 . th e kind of l;111d and abo 011 whether a house ,,·as in c lu ded. Oth er, Liry;cr L1rn1s of family size (thirty to ci~l1 ty f'l/('fd(/s) arc being hot1ght over fony-ycar pe riods with funds l11rni shcd by the FSA and its successor, the f l-I :\. However, procluctio11 credit i-; th<: grc:1tcst 11cccl ol the farmers in this area and die !>ources ol such credit are currently (urnishing the money which permits the tobacco growers o[ Tabara to (unction. In the early <lays of tobacco and before the PRT ;\'I;\ was launched on August 31, 1934, the fa rmer who wanted to grow tobacco and could not finance the production costs from his own savings utilized the services o[ a refaccionista, a man who "supplies production credit, exercises a certain degree o( supervision over the spending of the money a nd the production of the tobacco, takes delivery o( the cured tobacco, and puts it through the long fermentation process" (Gage, 1939: 28). It would be a mistake to assume that the coming o[ the Tobacco Co-op h as eliminated the refaccionista. Many o( the large tobacco growers in Salvador find the loans of that assoc iation inadequate to finance all the heavy costs of production, or they resent the long delay between delivery of their crop to the co-op and payment for it, and consequently turn to the private refaccionista for additional financing. The wealthiest tobacco g rower in the neighboring town of Sabana del Palmar is said to have earned the major part o( his fortune (estimated at over $ 2,000,000) as a refaccionista and not as a grower.

Tobacco Co-of>erative.- In 1948-49, the Tabara office o[ the Puerto Rico Tobacco Marketing Association boasted 53'1 members o( a total of about 560 tobacco growers. However, the production cred it advanced to these members does not in all cases cover the costs of production. In 1948- 49, the Commodity Credit Corporation, source o( fu nds for PRT.MA production credit, allowed e ig hteen dollars for each one hundred :·:1 In

l\H8- .19. the gove rnment announced that il had more than in FHA loan funds for purchase of farms, that this money was going begging. and that they wished qualified farmers would borrow so111 c of 1he money to improve and expand their operatio11s.

S i,000,000 29 This latter practice developed into ref(lccionism, described below. JO CL Land Tenure, a hove.

TABARA: TOBACCO AND MI~ED CROPS MUNICIPALITY

pounds o( a member's quota.n ~ Production costs usuall y run higher where all the work is performed by wage workers as on the larger farms, and it is for this reason that the larger producers who are dependent on more than famil y labor must turn to other private sources to cove r the ir costs.33 Flf.·1 C1·edit .- This agency has 195 loans outstanding to farmers in Salvador. Of these, 31 are for the purchase o( larms, the i·emainder for operational purposes.=•·• I.oans :ire :t\'aiLtblc to bona fide farmers or to vetc r:i11s ,\"110 a1111ou11 ce th eir int ention to dedicate themsc l\'c~ w full ·tirne farming. l 1nder latest regulations, 011ly \ 'C l n:111 s may gc t loans for ruli purchase price ,,·llil c 01ltcrs t1111st post colla teral equal to 10 per cent of tot:tl 10:111. I 11 addition, FH .\ runds may be used onl y 10 111:1kc loans to \'Ctcra ns. Other borrowers must ~c n1rc loans th rough co111111ercial channels, FHA only acti11µ; ;1 s gu;1r:111lo r. :\!though in terest charges are reasn11ablc (.J per <T ill on long term loans, 5 per cent on opera! i11g lo:111s). mu ch money goes begging because of 1hc oll\·ious dillindtics and red tape involved in secm·ing a 10:111 (C::1gc, 1~):~ 9)· For example, there is a regulation requiring applicants to bring their wives to the oflice to " ·it11ess and approve o( the procedure. Several in forma nts have found this to be a major irritant. Cnr Financing.- The relative ease with which new and used cars may be bought under existing credit arrangements is largely responsible for the mushrooming o( the j)lll;/ico or private taxicab business in Tabara as e lsewh ere. There are forty-seven chauffeurs in Tabara , almost half of them ownino· their own cars' 0 wh ich were purchased under financing arrangements.

Noncommercial Credit

The chie( source of noncommercial credit is the loca l tienda, or store. 'Without the credit granted by these establishmenrs it is doubtful that all people in the area would be able to survive the dead period. There is no rural store which does not grant this form o[ credit. The implications of this arrangement as a sa(ety valve for a community subjected to the problems o( seasonal employment are, I believe, significant. Although the average annual loss in bad debts is about 10 per cent, there is no tendency to eliminate the practice, ~n~l e ven mention of ~he possibility that it might be ehm1nated seems unbelievable to the owners of the stores. It might be expected that the predictable 10 per cent l?ss '.vould aff.ect prices in the country stores, but exam111auon convmces me that this is not necessari ly so. 'While some prices are slightly higher in the rural stores than in such stores as the government PRACO establishments which do not permit credit purchases, these may eas ily be attributed to the vola~ InfonnaLion furnished by PRTl\IA in San Juan. :n Costs of production, including labor, estimated at $ 116 p er

cucrda Ill 1938 (Huyke and Co lon Torres, 19.Jco). Prese nt es timaLes for Sa lvadol' i>e Lwcc11 $ 175-2:) 0 (this d ata from a number of small and large producers in th e barrio). a.a I 11for111ation furni shed b y local o Ulce o f FHA.

119

ume purchasing a dvantages of the latter. And, in general, the price differential is not equivalent to the annual loss in bad debts. In the pueblo, the larger stores grant limited credit to good risks, rarely to those who are considered poor risks. This is unlike the pattern of the rural store where a man who has run up a debt at one, and has been unable to pay it, can ahvays procure credit at some other store. T his necessitates longer trips in search of food and credit, and although the new storekeeper either knows or suspects the reason for the arrival of the new customer, he will advance credit if the first few purchases can be made for cash. MARKETING AND DISTRIBUTION

Marketing of Tobacco

Before the coming of the America ns, the relatively small amounts of tobacco that were produced in Salvador were sold to itinerant buyers (generally Puerto Rican manufacturers of cigars). Prices paid in the nine ties were about eight to sixteen dollars per one hundred pounds in Spanish equivalents. ·when the Americans arrived, the cultivation of tobacco took on a new importa nce, and in 1903 an organization known informally as La Collectiva, a sellers' co-operative, was organized on the island. As the production of tobacco grew and spread, small independent co-operatives were developed in other parts of the island. However, there was none in Tabara until 1934 when the PRT MA was established. By 1936, about one-third of all tobacco growers were members. And in 19,18, more than 90 per cent of all the growers in T a bara were marketing their tobacco through the association . a~ Since the co-op markets only that tobacco of its members which fa lls within the quotas allotted to them, excesses are sold to ambulatory agents for buyers who have somehow m a naged to procure quotas. The entire transaction is, of course, illegal but is nevertheless practiced by almost all of the growers, since in good years the excesses are likely to be larger tha n the i o per cent allowed by the law, and growers are naturally unwilling to turn the super-excess over to the government. In addition, there are always a small number of independent growers who plant without any quota. There is an added adva ntage to selling one's crop to an ambula tory buyer. Th ese m en p ay cash upon delivery of the crop. Tobacco sent to the co-op must wait upon the liquiclaci6n (se ttlement of accounts) which sometimes is a matte r of six or seven months. Marketing of Minor Crops

Although their importance as a cash crop had n ever been as grea t before as during the last ten years. minor crops in the a rea have always been a cash as well as a subsistence crop. As a cash crop they have :i:. Data furnis he d b y loca l o ffice o f PRTl\IA.

l 20

THE PEOPLE OF PUERTO RICO

been sold for more than fifty years o utside the area. the entire proceeds from the sa le to him, the producer. \ Vithin the memory of the oldest info1ma ms, bananas, This arrangement is far less comm on than th e other. plantains, tamers, corn, beans, and other crops were In order to cut operating costs, some or the truckers marketed by oxcart, horse, a nd on foot as far as Sa n sometimes arrange to make purch ases fo r storekeepers in the area, buy ing the ir staples and d e li vering them Juan. There are eighteen trucks in Tabara presently e n- from Rio Piedras at the same rate o[ t\\'Cnty ce nts the gaged full time or part time in the buying and selling hundred pounds. T he re is no charge fo r th e sh o pping of minor crops. Each of the negociantes who operates or loading serv ices in vo lved . a truck has a rou te which he fo llows in picking u p I n addition to the prod uce \\'hi ch i'i marketed in his purchases. The crops are brought down to collec- other areas, that wh ich is sold in rural stores is sup· tion points along the main road o n specified days. The plied by local prod ucers. The store O\\'ner pa ys a liulc negociante arrives and discusses the price with the more for the product than \\·mild 011<.: ol tht' tnH kc:rs. producer-seller. If they agree, he purchases the stuff, However, the amount<; arc generally li111i1l'd. :111d thl' paying cash for it. The collection places are usually mo ney paid is a lmmt immcdiatc:ly <011 ,·crtcd i1110 the roadside stores, and no charge is made by the owner purchase of staple-; l.o ld hy the l>:im<.: ~torl'. '· '' for the use of his store. After the trucker has collected a Cull load, he sets off for the market in Rio Piedras Marketing of Coffee late in the afternoon, arriving there in the evening None o[ the coffee nO\\' produ ced i11 T:1IJ:ir:1 i.-. ~o ld to await next clay's 4 A.M. opening. Truckers who can- through th e insular Coll<.:<.: \Ltrkct in g Co ·op. The littk not dispose of their goods in Rio Piedras will go to that is still procl111 ccl i-; '> <>Id either w a111hul:11ll h11ycrs other markets. Some of them report ma king sales at or to one ol the larger protc~~or-. i11 :t 11 e:irhy to\,·11. Sabana del Palmar, Bayam6n, Santurce, Caguas, Cayey, In the dayl> \\'hen collcc \,·:1-. prod11<<·d i11 rc:tlly Guayama, Salinas, Santa Isabel, Ponce, Gu ayanilla, important amou1H'i, \'irt11:tlly all ol it \\·:1-. ~ol d to the Yauco, Caho Rojo, Sabana Gra nde, a nd i\Iayagliez. Brothers Sa nti ago or \la11go alt e r li r~t h:1\' i11 g p:1-.-.nl Possibilities of a n enforced trip to get rid of o ne's thro ugh the h a nds of one ol the large lorn I 11u.:n h:1nts. Small and m edi11m farmers broug ht the ir co ffee in load help to lower the price to the producer. The Tabara Vegetable Co-op abandoned its ma rket- cdsca ra blan ca (with th e pulpy outer husk removed) ing operations in 1948 because it could not mee t th e to the merchants, were paid by th em in cash or goods. competition of the independent truckers, although the }"requently, collce in this form served as 111011<: da, a independent truckers themselves suffer from the loca l medium of exchange. Large pockets sewed into the anarchy which permi ts many more trucks a nd truckers trousers o[ the m en accommoda ted the coffee which than the production vo lume can profitably support. the sm all Carmer u sed in place of cash to ma ke his The gap between the price paid by the consumer purchases. in R io Piedras, for example, a nd that received by the Tabara farmer is sign ifi cant. In October, 19,18, a ll Local Retail Buying but the very best kind o[ bana nas, for example, were The needs of m os t o[ the re tail e rs a rc supplie d bought by the trucker for twenty-one or twe nty-two partly by the u·ut ke rs w h o purchase at th e ir request cents a hundred. T hese same bananas were be ing from the metropolirn n jobbers a nd ware ho use m e n. peddled o n the streets of Rio Piedras at the same t ime However, fiv e la rge wholesa lers supply th e: m ajor for twenty-five to thirty-six cents a dozen. The trucker p ortion o( th e demand for food stap les. Although does not enjoy the profit which this figu re would seem these merchants have som e difficulty in buy ing local to indicate. Data supplied by the D epartment of Agri- produce o n credit, they cla im to be able to purchase culture and Commerce in the Boletin de Mercados, United S ta tes' produced staples Crom th e big jobbers No. 529 for O ctober 7, 1948, indicates that the lowest in Sa n Juan on credit. They in turn offer fairly good selling price in the Rio Piedras market on tha t day cred it terms lo the reta il ers wi th whom they do busiwas thirty-five cents per hundred bananas, the hi gh ness. In fact, it is th e re lative ease of such credit that accounts for the unusually la rge numbe1· of l'et;iilcrsfo rty-eight cents. Because of the competiti o n between truckers, the re over two hundred- fou nd in the municip;ility. Jn th e pueblo t here are three Ia 1·ge l'Cta il s tores is frequent haggling over the price to be paid to the producer. However, we know of two cases wh e re large dea ling in hardware, lumber, and dress goods. l'vlost of producers of m inor crops in Quito have permane nt the stocks for these stores come o n purchase fro m San arrangemen ts with a single trucker to take all of J uan, P once, or by direct o rde r, as in the case of the ir produce, no matter the quantity or the price, throughout the year. These truckers come from :iG :\ n inlcresli11g hy· product of t he cash crop s:ilcs o f minor Guayama and J\Iango ou tside the area. crops is that prin:s in th e pueblo, while lower than those in Sti ll another form of marketing minor crops in - Rio Piedras, are relat ive ly hi g h compared " ·ith th e re turns to volves an arrangement between certain producers a nd th e producer. J t is o ft e n sa id that the re;1son £or this is that the truckers ·wh ereby the producer pays a flat fee of twenty producer is so anxious to sell all o( his pro du ce reg ularl y lO the tru cke r th at th e pue blo reta iler must pay hi g h er for \\'hat he can cents per hundred pounds of his product fo r deliver y !ind. Al any rat e, i t i' a freq u ent ca u se of co111 p lain t h y p eo ple to the market. H e trusts the trucker to procure the who live in 1hc pueblo ;111d a1e aware o[ the prices paid to probest price he can for these goods and to turn over ducers.

TABARA : TOBACCO AND i\IIXED CROPS :\lUNICIPALITY

shoes, from the United States. The gross annual volume of business for the very largest o( these is well over S 1 :?o,ooo a year. Besides these there are four combination bars and restaurants, a number of drygoods establishmems who buy much of their goods in Bayamon or from truckers who come through about once a week in specially designed trucks, a radio repair shop, a vendor of electric appliances including washing machines, and two butchers. Rural stores on the main roads generally carry food staples, needles, thread, pots and pans, toothpaste, knives. soaps. Christmas cards, kerosene, rope, e tc. \·irwallv all rural stores se ll liquor by the bottle or the shot . · the latter cuswm promoting the role of tile rur:d store as a place for social intercourse. Al1liougli im1iro,·cd transportation has made the town muc h mon: accessible: to the rural people in recent times. the cl1:1ractcr or the stock carried by most of tile Lt q~er I'll ra I t ioult1s is e\·idence o( the infrequency \\'ith ,,'. 1iich th e co1111try people either have to or do 111:1kc shopping trips w the pueblo. The.; ~caffit\' o l cash. the absence of refrigeration, and a rcs is tan ~c to ,,·armed·over foods are responsible for the sn1:1ll purchases Lliat one sees made witll such frequenc y in these rnral stores. A penny's worth of salt, two cent s' worth of sugar, four cents' of rice, two c igareues, a single needle or a half a dozen hairpinsthese are not at all uncommon. There is a class of peddlers known as quincalleros who go about the country either on fo?t or horseback selling cloth, ribbons, thr~acl, etc. Barno ~alvaclor has two ambulant peddlers o[ bread and chewmg tobacco. One 0 ( these buys his bread in Acra, troops daily over the mountains, selling it as he goes. The other does the same coming from Sabana del Palmar. They consider a dollar o r a dollar and fifteen cents a good day's profit. . Many of the hard goods and cloth111g purchases of the people in middle and upper income brackets both in the country and in the pueblo are made through the large mail order houses in the States, such as Sears Roebuck and Bellas Hess. Tl;e best months for retailers are November (tobacco liquidation generally comes then), December (the holidays), February, March, and April (Holy \1Veek and tobacco cultivation). The summer months of June, July, and August are the_ poorest. 37 The ordinary consumer who is able to purchase in large quantities may do his shopping directly from the wholesalers, there being no legal restrictions on this kind of sale. T he institution of barga ining from the original price named is found quite commonly in the purchase of hard goods and dry goods in the pueblo. T hese merchants report that the country people, or jibtl1'os, expect a discount on every asking price if they take the trouble to offer less. Most merchants the coming of the summer residents has little e lfoa on the local m erchants. 37 Apparent ly

121

report that they get around th is by raising the asking price at the beginning of the trade. SUMMARY

Of the island's four major crops (including minor crops as one), Tabara's land is devoted most extensively to the cultivation of minor crops, next to tobacco, and finally to coffee (Census of 1940). More than 6,ooo cuerdns of farmland are in pasture, while only one cuerda of sugar cane (by 1948 this figure had trebled) is found in the entire municipality, this in Barrio Palo Alto. In terms of cash, tobacco is the most important crop in the municipality, Barrio Salvador the most important local center for production. M inor crops are a significant second in importance in all but Barrio Salvador, where the only minor crops of any consequence are the corn and sometimes beans which are intercropped sequentially with the tobacco. The land of Barrio Salvador is the most hilly and irregular of all of the barrios, best suited to the production of tobacco, least well adapted to minor crop production. Barrio Quito has a fairly abundant and growing tobacco cul tiva ti on, but its tobacco production is considered inferior both in quantity and quality to that of Salvador. Therefore, it emphasizes minor crops. with two farms which have about fifteen and twentyfour c11erdas respectively of coffee. Tobacco cultivation employs sharecroppers in preference to wage labor. Thus Barrio Salvador, with its ernphasis on tobacco, has a much higher proportion of sharecroppers to wage laborers than has any other barrio. The cultural implications of this difference are significant in terms of economic mobility and the values inevitably associated w ith a more fluid structure. The cultural data, ideals, and practices which are found in association ·with the domina nt working arrangement in tobacco differ slightly from those of contiguous but minor crop-dominated sections. These differences are accentuated in regions ·where tobacco is either absent or relatively unimportant. Intra- and inter-municipality comparisons will be given in some detail in later sections. Under the virtual compulsion to a cash crop rather than a subsistence pattern of production, and in the context of Puerto Rico's position in American trade and in the world market, tobacco and minor crops are today considered the most desirable crops for commercial production in Tabara. Expansion of tobacco production is limited by insular quotas which determine the amounts allowable to each tobacco· producing municipality. The maximum volume in_ new quotas each year may not exceed 1 per cent of theprevious year's total. There are no legal limits on the· cultivation of minor crops. Control here is achieved through the uncerta in anarchy of supply and demand,. and through the difficulties of procuring production. credit. 88 ss "The absence of a constant quoted market for food crops. makes credi t extension for raising them difficull or impossible . .." (Clark, 1939:505).

122

THE PEOPLE OF PUERTO RICO

Though the insular government has attempted to The fragmentation of large farms in minor cro ps encourage the rebirth of a coffee industry in the east- in Quito and other barrios follows about the same ern highlands by the application of extremely favor- pattern as the large to bacco (arms in Salvador. But able tax rates,39 this has had no noticeable effect on the significant fact about these barrios is t hat the coffee cultivation in Tabara. process o( reformation o( farms under differen t owners Unlike the regions of sugar and coffee cultivation has n o t kept pace with the similar process in Salvador. where the tendency towards fragmentation of land- The best breakdown available shows 73 farms for all holdings is opposed by a reverse trend towards main- of Salvador and i61 for Quito. Palo Alto, a barrio taining farms intact through generations and adding which though somewhat larger than either of the to them where possible, the continuing trend in T a- others is not significantly so, has a total of 3 13 farms. bara has been towards the break-up, from generation No other barrio in the municipality ha s fewer farms to generation, of large farms and the partial reforma- than Quito :H tion of these in other hands. Sugar and coffee proI n all b a rrios farms arc and lia\·c been characterisduction, especially sugar, involve a certain amount of tically partitioned on the d eath o [ Lhc owner. 111 all mechanization. Investment in processing equipment b a rrios, a reciprocal rcfonnation li ;1s tended to <1>1111 tends to accompany expansion of operations and this teract the effects of this (ragmc ntatio11. H11t JH)\d1crc in turn reduces production costs per unit. 40 Thus, in Tabara has the reformation, the rcliuildi11g process, within certain limits for each, the production of coffee been so consistent as in Salvador. :"ow, the hi stor ica l and sugar is most economical in large units. Smaller causes wh ich may acco unt for th is ph c11omc 11011 arc productive units tend to be at a competitive dis- theoretically infinite i11 nurnber. Thus, it would lie advantage which can only be compensated for in part impossibl e for me to ev:d11:1tc :il l or C\'Ctl a Ltrgc part by large amounts of unpaid fam ily labor. Unless this of the causes which may be adYann:d to accrnttll lor is available, the competition is likely to prove fatal the pattern. On the basis o r rn y fi e ld work, however, to these smaller farms. vVh ere they have such labor or I would say th at the outstanding rcaso11 for the dill e rare protected b y subsidies (sugar) they may survive ence b etween Salvador and the other barrios may be the competition. But the more success(ul farms i n found in the dom inant working arrangement found in sugar and coffee are the larger ones, and the pattern the product ion of tobacco. A good year as a shareof production tends continuously in that d irection. In cropper can convert a landless peasant into a landterms of land tenure a nd inheritance, this means that holder and a tobacco produ cerY· And if he acqu ires large farms are less commonly broken up on the death the money to buy land he w ill genera lly try to buy of the owner than in tobacco a nd minor crops. A it in the same barrio. The rate o( fragmentation th us managerial device like the sucesi6n m ay be employed, turns out to be faster in the barrios where tobacco's or the land may be sold intact to a purchaser and importance is riva led or surpassed by minor crops. the proceeds divided among the heirs. Possibilities of cash accumulation there are poorer. vVith little or no investment in processing equip- More fragmented land stays fragmented. But the exment 41 there is less incentive to keeping the tobacco ample of accumulation is present throughout the estate intact after the death of the owner. iVIoreover, mu nici pali ty. tobacco can b e and is grown profitably in units of three cuerdas or less.'12 In fact, the larger units like processing of tobacco products. \Vhere, as in the case of sugar or in the case o( Cuban tobacco, there is such investment in processing those once owned by the American Tobacco Corpora- equipment, care must be rnken that the overhead on this equiption, are considered too risky and are no longer i n ment will be spread over the largest number of units possible. existence. It h as been found much more economical to T hus the sugar mill and the big mechanical cigar factory can have the small producers supply the processors. The two remain idle only for limited periods, and these periods of idlelargest individua l quotas (in weight of tobacco) on ness must be fairly predictable in the ordinary cycle of production. The closer to capacity their operation, the lower the ultithe island today are based on an estimated total of a mate unit costs. fraction over one hundred cuerdas each. 43 Sugar mills in Puerto Rico and tobacco factories in Cuba must assessments on all coffee la nds were reduced to one dollar an acre after the hurrican e of 1928" (Ibid., p . 177). 40 Cf. sugar community studies of Mintz and Seda . Also coffee comrnunity stndy of \Volf. H The drying barn is the most expensive object used in the processing of tobacco. 1~ "The overwhelming majority of the farmers who grow tobacco cultivate less than three cuerdas of the crop" (Perloff, 1950: 289-90). 4 3 The reasons for lhe abandonment of large tobacco farms by most of the bigger producers arc generally given as follows. Aside from a few small shops engaged in the manufacture of handmade cigars, the advanced processing of the island's tobacco is done primarily in mainland factories. These factories are no t dependent upon Puerto Rico's tobacco growers for a ll their needs. Jn fact, only a small part of the total tobacco used in the manufacture of toba cco products in the U.S. comes from Puerto Rico. Thus there is no heavy expenditure in capital equipment used in the loca l 39 " • . •

try to assure a large supply of the unprocessed product. In order to do this they must either own or control the land producing the raw product. nut since this pattern does not obtain in Pueno Rico, it is not worth the risk of a crop failure or two merely to be producer as well as processor. The big manufacturers in the States are apparently content to derive their profits from resale or processing, leaving the gamble and the risk of crop fai lure and tumbling prices (tobacco prices have fluctuated wildly as compared with sugar) to their suppliers all over the wodd. As long as they are assured-and the almost world-wide cultivation of tobacco docs pretty d efinitely assure it-a chance to buy enough tobacco to satisfy the requirements of the ir processing operations and the overhead involved in these. they will probably avoid heavy investments in cu ltivation of Puerto Rican tobacco. 44 Data furni shed by local Agi-icu ltural Extension Service and R egional AAA office. 45 " • • • tobacco workers ha ve the b est chance of themselves becoming sm a ll farmers . . . . [!\Jany tobacco farmers] have bought th e ir farms with money cleared as sh<1reworkers" (Cla1·k, 1939:561).

TABARA: TO UACCO AND l\IIXED CROPS ~CU:'\ICIPALITY

Produ ct ion credit is much more r eadily ava ilable to the tobacco grower than to the coffee producer or the m inor crop farmer. This tends to encourage the produ ctio n o f wbacco to the limits of one's quota allotm e nt. Severa I shrewd farmers of my acquaintance manipul ated the loans that they procured for tobacco product ion so that the money so borrowed was used for o th er things as we ll. the part of it going into the cu ltivation nf tobacco be ing, in these cases, less than the amount advanced. That is another reason why tobacco is such :i ha nd y crop. Still another explanation for it.; illlponancc despit e the frequently serious price f111< t11a1in11 is the credit value o( the crop itself. J '1 :1,·c hct·n told repeatedly by small merchants that tl1 c·,· arl' n111< h more wi llin g- to extend credit to the sm:;ll l:irmn with :i fi eld 0 1" tobacco than to a larger lanu c r ,,·11 0 has 110 101i:1n-o. 1" \\'ith the use o( this credit :111d htTause tnb:1cco ocrnp ies the so il for only fo 11 r moi 1th.;, the sma 11 fa rm er can afford to grow tob:H <o " ·hcrl' he could not afford the cultivation of collct· with ih live-year lag bet,reen planting and the first harn•st- or s11g:1r which requ ires a minimum of e k\'C:11 11w11t hs' "·ail. Th ere i.; au assured marke t for all o( the quota tobacco produced 0 11 the i:.land. ,\nd there are ways of selling the surplus tobacco as well, i( one wishesAncl while the price fiu clllations are serious enough to ca use fi n:rncial loss in some years, there is never any qu est io n about the clisposability of the product for a p rice that will cover at least a large part of the total costs o ( production. This is not so true o( minor crops. No one is pledged to buy the farmer's minor crops as is th e case for all members of the PR T i\IA and even for those subsidized by other refaccionistas. True, the poor price may make this arrangement a slim consolation in some years, but it is at least some comfort to the small producer. Besides, h e feels that h e is getting the same price for his tobacco that other producers are getting-47 But in the marketing of minor crops the farmer is generally at the mercy o( the ambu la nt peddler and the flu ctuations in the market price o( his com modities.

THE MUNICIPALITY: LOCAL ASPECTS OF INSULAR INSTITUTIONS THE MUNICIPAL GOVERNMENT

Only the job of mayor and assemblyman arc elective in the municipality itse lf. In audition, the voters select two se nators anti two representatives from each sena1c "l\f;rny s111all farmers raise . . . tobacco, jusl as our souLhern farmers r aise collo11, s imply because there is always an open cash markel for these crops, and hence someo ne is ready to make credit adva n ces o n them" (Ibid., p. 505). 47 IL should be pointed oul, however, thal quarrels about classification arc 1wt un co111111011, some farmers cxpressiug the belief that the IHotlucers with more i11lluc11ce get bcuer prices for th eir tobacco because lhe classifiers show them more consideration. Steps have 111) \\. been taken lO minimize the possibilily of complaints about c.lassilicatio11, autl this objection should soon be el imi11awd.

123

torial and representorial district. Elections are held every four years to co incide with U.S. presidential elections. And for the first time, in 19.18, the people of Puerto Rico selected their own governor. The most important position in the local political hierarchy is held by the political leader "-ho h olds no municipal office but an influential insular, appointive post. All of the other insular and federal employees in the municipality with the exception of the mayor and the assemblym en h old e ither competitive civil service positions or appointments- The relatively high proportion o( appointive positions offers excellent opportunity for dispensing patronage and for exercising other power functions_ Power in the municipal governme n t is d irectly in th e hands of the leader, who relegates many of the lesser patronage dispensing fun ctions to others. The actual opportunities for dispensing such fa,-ors, however, ar e limited by a relatively modest municipal budget. Nevertheless, such items as road repair \\"Ork are often arranged so that some men will get more tha n the share which might otherwise have fallen to them. Also there is a small emergency (und reserved to meet crises tha t the local agency o( the insula r \ \Telfare Department neither can nor does take care of. There seems to be some len iency regarding the payment o[ the annual patent es ~s when friends of municipal officials are involved. The municipal h ospita l, which is reported b y investigators in other p arts of the isla nd to be a potent source of politica l maneuvering through dispensing o( favors, is not believed to function significantly so in T abara. In at least one of the other towns under study, there is a pharmacy in the city h all, and favored patients of the municipal h ospital are given chits on the pha rmacy for medi cin es not stocked in the municipal hospita l. The bill for these is footed by the municipa lity. No such practice was found in Taba ra where th e funds ava ilable for purchase of scarce medicines come from the modest emergency fund described above. For e,·ery expend iture made out of this source an expla natory le tter must accompany the chit. Nepotism was not found. Favoritism in job appointme nts was. Several appointments and the selection of candidates for the 1948 e lection were clearly m an ipulated with an eye to retaining control of the loca l organization, but I shall no t here go into the details of these operations. The p erquisites of office do not seem very great, paying off most in prestige and status and no t too much o( either of these. Campaign a nd Election-1948

Since the election of 1948 marked the first time that the people of Puerto Rico h ad ever elected their own governor , it was a n election of considerable sign ificance, and the entire campaign revolved alrnost comple tely around the candidates for this office; only in4 S A fee exacted from every business in th e municipality which docs a gross business of over 500 annual!~·. IL is a moderate tnx, about 011e-tenlh of 1 per cent of reported gross volume.

124

THE PEOPLE OF PUERTO RICO

cidentally was it concerned with the candidates for who supported the party in po,\·er, most such "aberrants" were carefu l to keep this support rathc1· quiet. other posts. They had also a few supporters among th e to\\·n·s The party in power was the Partido Popular Demomerchants, some federal and insu lar employees, a cnitico, party of Luis Munoz Marin, the country's few prosperous farn1ers, some o[ the people from th e outstanding leader. Although there was a coa lition of poorer sections in town, a 11 umber o( the 111 u n icithree parties favoring statehood for Pueno Rico, the pality's teachers and inte ll ectua ls, a cross-sect ion of PEP, Partido Estadista Puertorriquei'io, and although people generally dissatisfied with the local political this coalition proved the strongest competitor of the situation, and a very few o[ the landl ess cou ntry PPD insularly (actually winning the only one of people. seventy-seven municipalities that was lost to the PPD), Th e PPD's suppon came from all ~enio1h a11d :di locally the PIP, or Partido I ndepen<lentista Puertorrileve ls. But in the: co u11try, a111011g th<.: Lt11dln'> :ind quei'io, was the powe1:ful competitor. Probably because the sma ll farn1c.:rs. they lou11d L11cir grc: 1t<.:'>t -,1n·11gt l1. Tabara is the birthplace of one of Puerto Rico's The entire campaign , inc l11di11g the day ol dc.:nion, greatest heroes, the PIP leadership had decided to was pcacc lul. .\1gumcnb. di~tlh ... irnh. g1HHl ·n;1111n:d throw most o( its forces into winning the election in this municipality. Just before the election the PIP's kidding among politic;tl oppon<.:nh wa-. quit<.:< rn111 11<>11. candidate for governor called Tabara the "bulwark Oppone nts often sa id th;1L while they did ll<>L sc.:c cy<.:of PIP strength .. , to-eye politicall y this wo11lcl not :dlc.:n thc.:ir tric11tl The active campaign began early in the summer ship. Alter all, "·hat maucrc.:d \\·a., that all wcr<.: .. 1'11 <.:rt<> and long before the candidates for all the parties had Ricans." As might be cx p eclecl, the P I P p:1rti ~ :1m \\Trc finally been selected. It was conducted with meetings in the pueblo, barrios, and roadside settlements. Meet- general ly far more emotional in their -;upport ol their ings were announced from a sound truck w~1ich went party and their co11demnaLirJn ol th<.: oppo~iti011. . \11d cruising up and down the roads within the munici- although many o[ them were violent in their denun pality, haranguing the good citizens to attend. Most ciation of the Un ited States and th e harm that that of the meetings were PIP meetings. The PPD held a country's rule had caused the isla nd , the continental member of th is team o( investigators in Tabara was, fair number, and the PEP none. Technique of all but the largest meetings was al- by many of them, \\·elcomed and reckoned a close ways the same. Several regular speakers appeared at all fr iend. of the meetings. One or more guest speakers were The campa ign had a decided en tertainm e nt value. featured. After most of the crowd had collected, the And the leaders oE both parties exploited this to th e meeting would be opened by one of the regular utmost, particularly in the cl imact ic rallies. Here, speakers. The campaign of the opposition was con- there were Ooals, lightly draped fema les, e tc. H owever, centrated on belittling the achievements o( the party the campaign's value as entertainment did not reach in power, attacking its integrity, "exposing the leader far off the main roads o r out o( the pueblo, since as a turncoat who once fought for independence," and few people from the more remote parts o[ the barrio chiefly in making appeals to the nationalist sentiment ever bothered to attend the lesser meeti n gs. Like many of the audience, their desire to be a free and inde- people who are unaccustomed to "good times," they pendent people under the rule o( no other power. The seemed reluctant to r i.>k their few precious excu rsions party in power concentrated on the record. Speakers out o[ the barrio on anything but a major occasion. of both parties spoke very long. Meetings lasted from They seemed to be hoard ing themselves for the b ig three to five hours; the two monster rallies ·were all- rallies-as for Ho ly ' 1Veek or the Patron Sa int's Day. day affairs. The more sophisticated pueblo dwellers and those In order to resist the fatigue that might otherwise who lived along the road-in general, p erhaps, those have overpowered them, the listeners-and even the to whom the excursion would not involve so m uch most partisan are included in this- talked among effort-these came, and they obviously enjoyed them themselves, wandered off to nearby stores for a drink, selves. strolled about, and otherwise took the sting out o( The party in power made completely clear their inwhat would have been a wearisome task, an over- tention of settling malters with those ·who res isted its powering effort of concentration. authori ty. The people o( the community were aware The proportion o[ women to men at a ll meetings, of this and accepted the idea of revenge for betraya l except the town rallies, was always small. Each meet- or cle(ection as one o( the ineviLabilities o[ political ing began with both sexes gathered in places apart. life. The party in power was authority. Th e price for Th is broke down more or less as the meeting pro- resisting authority was pu n ishment. So if a man in a gressed, but rarely to an extent where there were vulnerable position wished to defy author ity he would mixed clusters exchanging talk. Each cluster generally attempt to do so without being discovered. retained its single sex character. The PIP's overemphasis of this pattern led Lhem to misca lculate their strength in Tabara as elsewhere. Wiza SujJported Ea ch Party?-The vocal hacking for They ascribed every show of PPD stre ngth to the fa ct the PIP came from the municipality's veterans and that the people were picliando or pretending Lo be chauffeurs. A lthough there were some of each or these adhe rents of the P P D. The rash of Popula1· flags was

125

TABARA: TOBACCO AND MIXED CROPS MUNICIPALITY

seen by them as evidence of this picliando, o[ a fear o n the part o( the displayers that they must show respect for constitu ted authority. l\Iany of the PPD's most yoluble adherents \\"ere seen by the PIP as "p itch ing for" favors, a job, a handout. The PPD leadership, too, overemphasized the signilicance o[ this culrnr:ll "pitching." Their worries were brought most sharply into foc us for us. A local political figure tried to make use of the confidence in \\"hich the people of the commun ity held me. I was asked to supply the leader with the names of those people who \\Trc pretending support of his party but who in reality intt'tHlcd w Yote wil11 the opposition. And tl1ese \\'<.Tc to be punished in ways appropriate to their position. F/nrio11 ])oy.- The form of elections in Puerto Ri co compels CH' ry ,·oter to be at his polling booth ]),· one <>°clock rni tire alter110011 of election clay. No 0;1c Illa\' ,·ote before one. and no one may enter the pol Ii 11g ·booth alter that hour. All voting is done in the l0\\"11. The ,·otcrs had been admonished to come carlv, and some h:ld interpreted this as meaning as earl~· as th e night before. However, the great mass of votc'rs began to arrive at about six, many o( them transported in trucks of the parties' adherents. Free lunch \\·as provided . The PPD had slaughtered four cows and p repa red enormous amounts of rice and beans, and Lhey offered the feast to all comers. '\Vith less money at their disposal, the PIP's food was more modest. l\fost people Aocked to the free lunch suppli ed by the PPD, while PIP supporters stood by cheeri ng themselves with the belie[ that the people would eat the PPD food and vote the PIP ticket. The voters came in their best clothes, and few were without shoes on this day. The children were left at home for fear of disorders and the great crush o( people. There was no disorder, no serious drunkenness. Ambu lant peddlers, genera lly small boys, sold orange juice to the thirsty for a penny a glass. The lines outside those polling places that could not accommoda te all the voters were two, one for the women, one for the men. Chauffeurs, candidates, and the seriously crippled were perm itted to vote before the genera l public. Fifteen minutes before one o'clock there was a tremendous downpour which lasted until about ten minutes after the voting had begun. Some of the people stirred restlessly, self-consciously in their places trying co crowd closer to the poor protection offered by the walls o[ the buildings in which the polling places were located. No one left the line. The local leader o[ the PPD, resplendent in white shoes, white suit, white shirt, his white hair glistening, and water streaming down his eyeglasses, strolled erectly through the rain exhorting the voters playfully not to be distressed by a little dampness but to keep their place in line until they had voted. l\fea nwhile the PPD candidate for representative rode furiously around in a j eep, shouting Lhrough a loudspeaker that the people 1uust keep their pl ace. On his appearance the crowds made some sarcastic remarks about his

being well protected aga inst the rain by the jeep's roof. On the next trip around the representative, leaning well outside the cover provided by the j eep, was drenched. The people smiled approvingly. The young veteran cand idate had learned an important lesson. The people stayed in line, watched admiringly as the drenched figure in white reappeared. the siren announcing the opening o[ the polls was sounded and the vote began. After the Election .-By three o'clock, all oE the voting was over, the votes had been counted, and the unofficial tabulation announced tO the \\'aiting people:'o The jubilation of the victors was unrestrained. The disappointment of the losers apparent and quiet. Several near disturbances were quelled by the PIP leader when vicLOrious PPD's staged a demonstration before the headquarters of the former and some of the defeated resented their tactlessness. The PPD stopped a row when leaders of the defeated party rode slowly by the headquarters of the victors with enormous nags o[ their party and of Puerto Rico. '\ Vhen the crowds gathered in front of the building started to boo the jeep, a PPD man seized the P.A. speaker and scolded them for jeering at "the flag of our country." Many of the people grinned sheepishly. Next day the most voluble PIP's were bitter. They concentrated their attack on the "ignorant jibaro ." Throughout the campaign we had had indications of the contempt of many o[ the PIP's for the agricultural workers, but now the resentment of the PIP was clearly focused on these jibaros. Said one storekeeper: "These people got what they deserved." A group of twenty-five disgruntled PIP's, voters who h ad decided that they could never wrest power from the PPD, said that they were through with the ballot, that they would consider themselves followers of Pedro Albizu Campos, the Natio nalist leader. They sent him a w ire, asking him to come to talk to them, telling him they were interested in joining his party. 1:..r e sent two o[ his aides, and a secret meeting was held in the back o( the tie11da, a meeting to which I was invited. There was much excitement, enthusiasm, and an eagerness to join- until the spokesman for Albizu made quite clear what such allegiance meant. 00 Only one member o( the group of more than twenty-five which had before the meeting been so eager to join 1

10 Indepenctentists, 906; PPD, 4 ,058; Coalition, 62. In Quito, the \'Ote for the Coali t ion had been i , for the PIP, 82. In Salvador, the vote for the Coalition had been 5; for the PIP, 93. The prediction of the local PPD leader, given Lo one of the investigators just before the voting b egan: PPD, •1,623; Opposition, 814. The same leader announced the following figures ove r the P.A. system just before \'Ot ing ti111c, figures which he confided were high for his pany but we re stri ctl y for ag itation· propaganda purposes : l'l'D, :p41; Opposition, 407. ao Among other things, m e mbers of the Nationalist party must declare th eir allegiance openly. They mnst refuse Lo register for the draft or for selccth·e service. Since virtnall y all those present at the meeting were of military age, this would have exposed them lo imprisonment. Two sons of one of Alb izu's representatives at this meeting se1Tcd prison sentences fo1· this offe nse.

126

THE PEOPLE OF PUERTO RICO

the Nalionalists indicated that he was slill willing to join. For a few more days the election post-mortems continued. Some PIP's accused one of the town's wealthiest men, the man who had footed a large part of the biJl for the free lunch, of having paid S2.50 each to buy the votes of a large number of voters on election day. Other PIP's denied this. One small farmer who had been voluble in support of the PIP during the campaign announced that he had voted PPD. His PIP friends did no~ reject him for this, appeared only slightly surprised. And then he explai ned that the leader of the PPD in the neighboring town of Saba na <lei P almar was a doctor whom he had helped LO bring up, that the doctor now treated his family without charge, and that it would have been a belraya l o( the doctor to have voted against the PPD. No one, of course, knows how he actually voted. Severa l days later the baseball season took over, and the political talk <lied.

scious of one's Catholicism are not d om inant themes in the life of the people. Fiestas and the Holidays

The most important re lig ious holiday in the year is the series of cere monies, masses, and other even ts which take place during Sc1110 11a Santa , or l Joly \ •Veek, and o( all the religi o us holidays tit is is the least secularized in character. Contrasting sharply ,\·ith this is the holida y in honor of the town's palron sa int, San 1\n1.011io de Padua. Ce lebrated for Len days, it i ~ 111arkc:d li y g: 1111 es. gambl ing, danc ing in th e pl :11:1. ;111d the gc11n;tl trappings or a fiesta . .\lth o11gh sen·ict"'> an.: (oltdll< tc:d twice dail y almo'>L tliroug houL th e t•111 ire.: p c.:1iod. tlte ceJebrat iOll Ollt !> ide tll<.: < hur< h pr<>p('r i'> It<)( ("\'(.'II remotely relig iou s in <ftaraner. U11 tlie pl:11 :1 i" a Ccrris "·heel , a mcrry-go·ro1111d. other lik <.: :1m11 ...c.:111c11ts and man y littl<.: ga me., ol < hann.: 011 wit i< h the- JH'opk bet their pennie~. ni< keh, and dime .... The.: tm,·n has auctioned th e w.c of tit<.: pL11a lor thc ... c: purpmc'> to th e h ighest bidder. Tit is holiday turn -; out to lie :1 l> ig RELIGION AND MAGIC pany. It undoubtedly \\·a~ i11tend cd lo be. T oday the phrase /1 qui so mos m uy ·catulicos ("\ 1Ve The period from Cftri ., u11a~ L\·e to Th rc.:c Kin gs are all very Catholic here") is used b y the priest and D ay is another series o( rc:li~iou s ho liday:. 111:1rkctl by the laity to describe the "unusual" religiosily of the prayers and parties. The sober air o[ the daily masses town. Yet, about haH the marriages in the munici- culminates with the joyo us giving o f prescm s on the pality are consensual or civil-both considered sinful day of the Three Kings. And throug hout the period by the church. Birth control and concubinage are from Christmas Eve to the seventl1 of January, inpracticed widely by nominal Catholics. Some are formal fiestas, drinking, music, and dancing a rc the l\Iasons. But no one, including the priest, sees a n y order. Every house has o p en house and every potelltial incongruity between this behavior and the "very hostess has- insorar as her econ om ic resources wi ll Catholicity" of the people. Of the numerous demands permit-prepared the sweets and the drinks ritually which the Catholic church makes upon the individual, prescribed as suitable for the occasion. l\Iany o( the biggest celebrations or fiesta s in the the people seem to have selected those which they w ill observe and they ignore the rest. They do not ap- country are parties commemoratin g events with some parently feel that being a good Catholic-being very religious significance. Thus, part ies celebra ti ng the Catholi c-means being a 100 per cen t dogma tist. And baptism o( a child, rosarios, jJro11u:sas (prayers to a while the priest attacks the transgressors from the pul- sa int (or favors granted), and the unsa nctioned fiesta pit, he apparently sees n o tremendous inconsistency ch ar acter of velorios or wakes. The religion o( the people provides them with most either. Perhaps, then, the phrase 11wy Cal6licos should o( their forma l opportun ities for soc ializing/• 1 In this simply be interpreted to mean that the vast majority respect, religion offers more to the women o( Tabara here are Catholics, are baptized and observe the rules than to the men. T he men are free to ::;eek their of the r itual kinships thus inaugurated, demand the amusem ents in less formal ways and on 1nore nu111erous last rites for themselves a nd their family, attend occasions. The women, particularly the women of the velorios (religious wakes), and go to church once or poorer agricultural fomilies outsid e the pueblo, detwice a year at th e very least. P erh aps it means, too, pend for most of the ir significaut socializiug upon as the priest implies, that a town of around 18,000 the occasions sanctioned by their religion. Thi s is one people which can boast a H oly 1\ame Society o[ o( the things that helps to convey the impress ion that the women are far m ore religious than the m en . That almost three hundred active male members is a is, religion o ffers them opportunities for behav ior in Catholi c community. And perha ps it m eans several other th ings as well. But it most certainly does not mean that the everyr;1 I take iss u e here "·ith some writers who descr ibe what I have day aclivities o( the people are either deeply or termed an atl o f sociali1ing as a "process of sendariLatio n ." I do directly affected, changed, inhibited, or directed by not be lieve that the socia l nsp ects of reli giou s holida)s pro,·c a the simple fact tha t they call themselves Catholic. "trend" at all. I think the celeb rations, at least in Tal>a1a, have There are, of course, certain ways in which th e church always had 1his so·callcd sec ular charaner. th:H this is itll l' ntional, a d e liberate and at kast quasi -CJ f!icial <: lf111 t 0 11 lhc part of the does affect the p eople of Tabara and I shall discuss ch11rdt to insure the p;1rticip:11 ion of (;111d l h11s it' <0111 rol ove r) these in the following pages. But abiding by all the il~ mcmbe 1s. It is no more il\11strat i\ c of a p1otc~~ of ~c.:c 11lariza­ rules, or being especia lly pious, o r being deeply con- tion than is the use o f incense.

TABARA: TOBACCO AND i\IIXED CROPS MUNICIPALITY

sharp contrast with their daily lives and they try therefore to participate. But the daily life of the men is like ly to include a large proportion of the socializing denied to women, and they would not, therefore, be likely to be drawn tO religion for these reasons. Doctrinal Schools

Volunteers, generally students at the local Catholic high school, perform most of the task of indoctrinating the young people of the country and the pueblo, part icularly of teaching them the rosary and the catechi sm. These schools are conducted in the church, or i 11 1 he co11 11 try, in the home o( the teacher or one of 1hc p11pils. Attendance at Church

Ur ln111 .- :\ttc rnlance among all classes of men in the tm,·n is lmL There is no difference between the highest income leve l and the lowest in this regard. A ttcrnl:t nee of women in the pueblo is a sharp contrast, being high for all classes .

R11rn/.- :\tte ndance here varies with the degree of isolatio n. Th ere is a higher rate of attendance among males in the rnost isolated regions than there is among females. '· ~ 1\s one gets closer to the main roads the proportions tend to level off but with neither men nor women attending with extreme regularity. On the main roads in the country the pattern is more like that of the pueblo with the women attending more faithfully than the men, but. with the poor goinO' less 0 o(ten than those o( the nudclle and upper income levels. In the country, women attend less frequently than the men because "the family must eat every day while the field need not be tended daily." Bus fares to and from the pueblo are an item of imporwnce to many of the poorer families, and it is frequently for this reason that neither the men nor the women attend church regularly. For example, church attendance during the tobacco season in Salvador is somewhat higher than it is at other times of the year. In th is entire matter o( church attendance it should be observed that no one apologizes for or expla ins his irregular attendance or seems to feel compelled to excuse himself except in the terms and in the form described above. In short, there is no stigma attached to a failure to attend church on Sundays. In the church itself there is neither segregation by sex n or by class, although the men tend to sit in the rear, some preferring not to take seats at all but to remain standing throughout the services.53 Church Societies

There are three Catholic societies active in Tabara. The most important of these is the Holy Name Society, which is composed of around three hundred male members. i\Iembers are supposed to pay a consz Sec scclion o n rural s11bc11l1.11rcs for discussion of this point. 53 Cf. C harles C . Roglcr ( 19.10. l!)tlS) for an account of class seat-

ing in the churc h of a nearb y mouutain town.

127

tribution of five cents a month with which candles are to be purchased. However, many members do not pay this fee. The Holy Name Society in Tabara is about twenty-five years old and is now bigger, stronger, and more active than ever, according to the priest. He says that these men are much more active and enthusiastic than are the women in their societies, that the men of Tabara "give more to their religion than the women." Holy Name's chief functions are the teaching of doctrine in rural areas, h elping with the arrangement of the festivities of Holy \1Veek, and mutual aid and comfort to members and their families in times of stress. The Daughters of Mary is a society of unmarried women which numbers about 150. Dues are five cents a month. It functions to supervise preparations for church festivals. Years ago, this organization atu·acted its membership from among the more prosperous people in the community. Today, the daughters of the middle and upper income families do not as a rule belong, giving the influx of the poorer girls as their reason. The Sacred Hea rt is an association o( about 125 married women and a few men. Dues are five cents a month. The organization is weak, functions only on holidays. How the Clergy Function

The priest confines his activities directly to the church, functioning outside that building only in funerals and the administering of last rites in the homes of the dying. He does no visiting, saying that such a policy would subject him to accusations of favoritism. The four American sisters who teach in the academy visit the homes of sick students only, and this on rare occasions. The failure to visit is frequently contrasted with the behavior of the Protestant minister and of the Mennonites in nearby communities. :Many people feel that it would be nice "if the priest made visits like the minister." The priest gives advice and counsel in the confessiona l, he adjures parents to supervise the activities of their daughters more carefully. He is alarmed by what he terms a wave of immoral behavior, shameless petting on the streets after dark, etc. He speaks against mechanical birth controls. And he has given sermons in which he decries su1)erstition ' belief in 0a-hosts ' and spiritualism. The Protestants

In the Protestant partit10n which followed the coming of the Americans to Puerto Rico, Tabara was awarded to the Baptists. They have been here more than forty years, have their own chu rch building and an imposing high school on a hill overlookinothe 0 pueblo. The school began functioning more than twenty years ago. . There .are two colonies of i'viennonites nearby, one rn a barno of l\lango and the other in El Oro of Acra. These carry on active proselytizing and are particularly known and liked for their good works. They run

128

THE PEOPLE OF PUERTO RICO

dental, medical, and eye clinics where they treat m~ny people free and charge nominal fees to others. They have a hospital, milk stations, and one of the finest mortuary services on the island (not free). I have never heard an adverse comment-indeed no mention of them without praise. There is a group of Pentecostals numbering about twelve in the pueblo. They have been funcLioning for about two years, hold nightly meetings where they sing, play music, etc. They are the only church organization in town which is entirely supported by contributions of the local membership. Some o( the members show ambivalence about their former Cathol icism in matters of the sacraments. The Espiritistas are a larger group (100- 1 25 members) who meet twice weekly, and whose members are concerned with supernatural visitations through mediums. The Baptists in town and in the academy are lauded by the CaL.holic laity for their good "·orks, Lheir donations to the poor, their visiting. They have a society of women, the Sembradoras, the "sowers," wh ose functions are mutual aid, who meet each i\Ionday and who arrange for lectures to their members on such matters as child care, health, and the like.

plaining. R esentment is rarely directed ouLward against a proper object, against the rea l cause or one's difficulties. Although the causes m ay be quite spec ific: bad crops, no money, no food. sickness in the family. too many ch ildren-the express io n is gen erally difluse, Lhe response, perhaps drinking or a fight "·iLh nne·s neighbor who has the sa m e frustrati o ns. Thus, there is anger. Blll sin ce on e cannot be angry with God , and since all these condiLions arc of 11is doing-"lt is Cod's wi11,·· they will say-\d1aL ca n one do? I believe th e fostering and Lhe prcscn ·a tion or this auiwde one of the more !>ign ificanl co11tributio11s of the Catholic church Lo the dail~ Iii<: probll·11i-. <>I Tabare1-1os .. \nd hen.: J 1cl<: r spc:cific:tlh· to tht: n11:tl and urban poor. Lho ... c.: ,,·ho h ;t\T :1 ,,·id<.:r J><"'' ilil c.: r:1nge or fru . . tra 1io1ts :111d rc.: ...e nllllt'llh :ind who 1nigln lhercforc be c:xpc.:CLcd long -.ince LO h:1\'(; ...ougl1L t:tt1 ... n. noL simply LO '>a~-. as ollC hc.:driddc:n old 111;1n wld llll': "One must sullcr bee au-.c.: .Jc.:-,us '>Ufl<.:rcd ... I have !>peculated :ibo1 11 th e J>C h-. il> k c:11Tyo,·1..·r 111 this attitude i1no 0Ll1cr n·:tl111~ in th e Iii<: o l Il ic pvnplc . Perhaps there is a \\·hole 11 icr;u cl1y ol ksscr g od ... <>r god-flgurec,; onc·s fatl1<.:r. the />(//11i11. the politic:tl leader. the L1 .S. go,·en1 111 c11t. calh ol \\·horn 1110\<.:-, i11 ways that rna y noL be inLc:lligibk Lo lb. the c011111101 1 The Decline in Religiosity of Catholics people, in ways perhaps c:1pricious or \\·hims ic:tl ...\nd Older informants bemoan the loss o( religion. They although one may b ecome angry with th ese figures, insist that the people o( today are fast becoming ir- one does not beat one·s father, attack the landl ord, religious if not actually godless, that they make no a ssassinate the political leader or even blaspheme the effort to bring their children up as good Catholics. I U.S. government (a PIP overs igh t?). The real ca u ses have been told nosta lg ically of the times when as many lie beyond th ese human agents. And surely, one does as four rosaries daily were required of each member not spit on God. of the fam ily, the children even being awakened for Ghosts and Apparitions the late evening prayer. The most common supernatural object disc ussed or Religion in Daily Life Today encountered in Salvador and Quito is an appar ition There are very few houses, even within the poorest known by the name o ( el jac/10. lt is general ly seen and most depressed parts of the rural barrios, which hovering mistlike over a river late at night. Severa l do not boast at least one picture o( a saint or the informants w ho claim to be too smart to believe in Virgin or the Sacred H eart. Some houses have images witches and other "such nonsense" have reported that of family saints as well, these usually b eing kept in the jac/10 is the real thing. " I am not at all sn perthe sleeping room. And the favorite decora tions in st itious, but the jacho is different. I saw that w ith my houses of all classes, rural and urban, are holy pictures, own eyes." It is unwise to remain alone in your house on a night when you have seen this or any oLhcr apthe largest houses boasting the largest pictures. In times o( stress the aid o( the family saint may be parition. Such a night demands company . You bring sought. H the prayers are answered, the supplicant your frie nds to your house or you spend the nigh t may hold a rosario or wear the saint's hab it for a at a neighbo r's surrounded by fri ends. Another apparition bea rs the name frngo/(/ or 111(111specified time. Failure to observe the obligations excornia and is interesting for the way in which it reposes the person to probable punishment. On a purely informal level in Lhe home, ch ildren inforces the adjura ti ons regarding the san ctity of Lhe are taught that Cod rewards goodness, punishes evil. com /Jadre (godfather o( o ne·s child) 1·clationsh ip. The Many children are taught to (ear the Devil. And fragola is a trio, a pair o( com/Htdres and a little boy swearing, unfeminine behavior on the pan of little who is the son o[ one, th e godson o[ the other. The girls, fighting among brothers and sisters, all these are compadres comm itted the unforgivable sin o[ quarrelsaid to be wicked practices, actions which will "shame ing and fighting. Caugln bet\\·een them in the struggle the Virgin ." was th e child. All three d ied. And now as pa ym e nt for Fatalism is a characteristic direclly linked with the their sin they are doollled forev er to wander Lhe earth religion o( the people. I believe it pervades much of in the form o( dogs. They gene rally appear outside their thinking and explains the infrequent com- one's hou se in Lhe moonlight, two large dogs and a

TABARA: TOBACCO Al\D ::'>IIXED CROPS ::'>l U~ ICIPALITY

small one bet\\·een them. fighting. Several informams tes tify to having seen this group too-fleetingly, not too clearly, but surely seen. Other apparitions which arc known but which no one interrogated had ever seen include the classical \fandering J ew who rides about on horseback and always complains that he must hurry off because he has on ly half an hour tO get to Bethlehem; an object known by the name el garrote which emits a loud whis tle from its unseen self; and a whimsical creature which bears no name but whose practice is to watch couples having intercou rse. Immediately the man disappears. h:idng been whisked away by the wish-fulfi II i ng en:a um.: to a place "·here she and her friends will use hi111 lor th('ir own pleasure. There are a number nl these liusy creatures. No one I know has ever been \\·lli:.kcd :nray.

I

29

although a few of the men added that their wives believed in "some of that stuff." It appears, howeyer, that the_re is fa;· less credulity now in any segment or occupauonal group of the municipality than there \\·as even thirty or forty years ago.

\ 1

Witches There arc t\\·o cla:-.~cs of \\·itches: the bad or black w itch es and the good or white witches. There are no evil prac1 itioncrs in Tabara and only one good practitioner ..'ihc i-; nam ed Doth Juana and practices curing in a li11lc shack in a remote part of Palo Alto. l\ l osl or lier time is deYoted to curing illness. But she also "·ill provide prescriptions to exorcise bad luck or to keep a husband home, and so on. There are bad witches on the island, but these practitioners are found chiefly in the coastal communities like Loiza, Guayama, or Carolina, municipalities largely populated b y Negroes. There is a belief in Tabara that such witchcraft is the province of Negroes, neve r of whites. One woman told us that she permitted herseH to be ca rried off by a man only because he had had her bewitched. Another \\·as reported to have secured a man through witchcraft. Still another person is supposed to have been affiicted with an illness that caused his d eath in a short time. And there is the common bclid-among those who do believe-that there is no possible recovery from a witch's spell, whatever the manifesta tion of the bewitchment may be. Finally, there is some belief in 111al de ojo, or evil eye. T h e possessor is generally unaware of the power, but it causes sickness and death to any person (panicularly children) or animal upon whom its possessor looks w i th covetous eye. B el ie f i11 witch es, witchcraft, ghosts, apparitions, etc. is not nearl y so well correlated with age as i t is with the gen eral educational and economic level of the people. There is more belief in these things among the slum-dwellers in the pueblo than there is in even the most isolated regions o( the country (cf. Redfielcl,

i91J1). A ll middle and upper income people, urban and rural , all teachers, government employees, with whom I talked about the s ubject, pooh-poohed the visions, the spells, everyth ing except the curing and the use of herbs for medicinal purposes. Storekeepers, most artisans, veterans, and others indicated their disbelief,

EDUCATION

Schools It is the municipality's boast that it was the first place on the island where schoolino- of any kind \\";ls offered for girls. 5 ·1 Such a school existed in Tabara as early as 1815. There is no further data on education until the year 1853. In that year there was one school and it had fourteen students. About twenty years late;. there were two rural schools and a larger school in the pueblo. For the first time there is eYiclence that education was available without charge to a limited number of children of poor parents. \Vitl~ the com ~ng of the Americans, free public educat10n on a wide scale was introduced, and its expansion has been " ery rapid, particularly within the past fifteen to t\\·enty years, until there are now nineteen rural schools, each going through the third grade. There are four schools known as second unit schools which ?ffer instructio n through the ninth grade. There are pnmary and second unit schools in the pueblo, and_ a temporary public high school for the convenience of the veterans but which includes several nonveterans_ as well. Evening classes for adults are conducted m the pueblo and in Barrio Palo Alto. The to~al number of stllclents in the public schools 1 ( 9.18) is 3,667. Of these, 735 are in the urban elemen~ary school; 2, 190 in the rural elementary schools; 236 m ur?an second unit schools; and 32 1 in rural second un_1t schools. 55 The number of veterans in att~ndance m all schools is 135; adults in attendance at n_1ght school, 50. Ther~ ai:e 66 teachers a nd 2 sup ervisors who take care ?I this entire teaching load. The teachers are frequ ently local girls who have had at least ~me semes ter at th e university. A few are graduates of tl_1e university. The less experie nced t~achers are assigned to the rural schools, which, inc1clentally, are the most poorly equipped. They are ~romotecl L~ second _unit and pueblo schools as they ,1dc.l . to their expenen ce and their own schooling. ~hell" movement out of the isolated areas is cont111gen t upon the raLe of t urnover as well as the rate of e~pansio_n. And since many of the teachers emphasize their "love" of the job, and since, fut·ther, .~ ·1 ~'amphlcl issued by municipality 011 the occasion of its patron saml s day. ~:. :\ote the increase in the proportio n o[ urban second unit lo rural _scc~111d_ unit schools over urban elementary to rural elcme ntary,_ 111d1cau~·e of lhe fact that there is a much stronger lenclency, desp1~e the lugh value placed 011 education, lo withdraw boys ancl girls Ill the rural areas after they have completed their first three grades. Cse of these children as pan of the labor force is one factor, anolher is the relative isolation of some o[ the rural areas from the nearesl second unit school.

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THE PEOPLE OF PUERTO RICO

teaching is one of those jobs which it is quite proper for a woman to maintain after marriage, the rate of turnover is not very high. The combination of less experienced teachers in the rural schools, fewer books, more crowded classes, and the fact that attendance is likely to be less regular because of sickness, mud, and the obligations to assist at home, places rural children behind their contemporaries in the urban schools. Consequently, it used to be the practice to demote a child one grade when he transferred from the rural to the urban school. Overcrowding of all classes has forced the elimination of this luxury and placed further handicaps upon the child transferring from the rural to the urban school. The Curriculum

Knowing that most of the children in the rural schools will probably not continue beyond the second or third year, there is a contemplated change in the curriculum to accommodate these children by the addition of "practical" subjects in the first three years. However, it has not yet been im plemented, a nd the curriculum is the same for the children in the rural as in the urban schools. In the second unit schools 1 the curriculum is both academic and vocational. The latter consists 0£ four parts: home economics for girls, manual arts for both boys and girls, industrial arts, and agriculture. Each child is exposed to these vocational subjects for a probational period and then permitted to concentrate on the one for which he shows greatest aptitude and preference. Thus the curriculum in these schools, unlike that of the elementary rural schools, is better shaped to the needs of the rural students. T he remnants of a once enforced teaching in English and the current use of English texts create numerous teaching and learning problems. Experiments have been conducted in Tabara which prove that the children learn much less from even competent teaching in English than teaching in the vernacular. 5 G Comprehension and the interest of the students was much greater when the subjects were taught in Spanish. Personal hygiene is taught in a ll of the schools, particularly in the rural areas. Although these efforts have borne some fruit, the teachers recognize the limitations imposed by the facilities and the money available to the students. Teachers in both rural and urban areas agree that problems of discipline are uncommon, that fights may occasionally start outside the schoolroom but are quickly quelled by the teacher's intervention. The absence of disciplinary problems is what one might expect from the b ehavior of the children in the home, especially the children of the lower income level families. The lack of these problems and the concomitant irritation they cause the teacher may be one of the several reasons (they are a privileged Go Probably not more than one or two teach ers in all of Tabara have enough control of English to carry on an easy conversation in that language.

prestige a nd income group) why teachers here gene ral ly like their work, find it less wearing than do their counterparts in sma ll towns in the States. Free Lunch Program

There are fourteen school lunchrooms in the m unicipality, which feed a daily average o( i ,9 19 ch ildren, using a total o( 30 emp loyees. The free lun ch menus a re sent out from San .Ju an. :Most of the foods are :hipp.ed into the municipality b y the San .Ju an admin1strauon, the remainder purchased loca ll y through the wholesalers in town. The lunch es are o ne o( the hig h points of the day for the children. 1\lle ndance is never less than attendance in th e classroom. :ind occasio n ally it is higher. For the vast m;1jority of th e children this dail y lunch is th e best m ca l the\' h:ivc each day, and in this respect holidays and \\'C~ kc11cls are un fortunate interludes in the ir lives . .'\lthough they are required to drink the p<H\«krccl milk \\'hi ch most of them do not appea r to like too \\·e ll , they do so in order to earn th e right to c at the r es t of th e meal. It is unusual to see any food left on the plat.cs . Attendance

The chief factors which affect 1.hc attendance o( children in the rural schools are mud; lack o( shoes and proper clothing; illness (co lds most common); malnutrition; use of the children lo help at home, particularly in times of illness or the coming of a new child; use of the children to work in the fields particularly during the planting and drying of tobacco~ A change in enrollment of boys and g irls takes place in the schools after the first few grades. A larger number of girls is enrolled in the first two g rades. But the number of girls is a lways much smaller by the sixth or seven th g rade than the number of boys. There are three reasons given for this change. ( t) Mothers generally want the older girls at home to assist with domestic work. (2) Once tl~e g irls have reached the age of twelve or thirteen the parents fear that the girls may become involved with one of the boys. t3) In the country, at least, there is still a fairly strong feeling that a female's place is in the home, th at women do not really n eed education. Higher Education

Education beyond the ninth grade is regularly provided in Tabara only by the two private schools, the Catholic Academy (high school) and the Baptist Academy. Both of these have been created within the past twenty-five years and reflect the growing emphasis on education. This increased emphasis dates from shortly after the coming of the Americans. Not only did they expand the free educational facilities, but they preached the gospel of more education and, most importantly, they bega n the trend toward the growing industria lization o( the island, toward the e mph as is on scie ntific agricu lture, etc., which in ev itably increased th e demand for train ed (edu cated) personnel and made the competition for the best jobs keener.

TABARJ\: TOBACCO AND l\llXED CROPS :\lUNICIPALITY

Jn short, they posited a new frontier whose benefits ,\·ere for the better educated, and they paid off with jobs. Population pressure, propaganda, the fact that proportionately fewer people either cared or were able lO wrest subsistence and a full life from the soilall these and many more contributed to the popularity of education. Although few of the older generation wealthy and even fewer of the poor have much education , virtually all emphasize its importance. \ ·\Tith clichc-like regularity, each says that education (unspecified~ is the most imponan~ thing in_ tl~e wor!d. Educatio n is seen as the solut10n of life s maJOr problcm--:-i.e. ,. ear'.1ing a li: ing. And, "O_ne .:vho has no cduc1uo11 1s-l1ke myseH-worth nothmg. So c111 rc11< hcd is th is ideal that families will freq t icn ti y make great personal sacrifice to further the cd ticitio11 of the children. :\ncl when the poor man keeps his children lrom school s? ~ha~ they may help earn c11oug h to suppl y the famil y s sunple demands, he is a pologe1ic unless the cl_1i Id . is a girl. ;\[an y 0 ( the children ?t 1111ddle- and upper-class falllilics h:l\T at least a !ugh school etlucauon, some ha\·c more. and ::;e\·cral arc pursuing postgraduate ,n>rk in the St:1tes. 1 ii La Cima there arc some graduates of the free public high _school in ?abana ~lei Palmar, and from the parts of Salv.ador 1?1 111g cont_1guo_us to Acra at least one graduate o[ the free public high school of that municipality. But by far the greatest number of local re!>idents who are 111gh school graduates are products of the two private high schools. The Baptist Academy

Founded in 1926, the Baptist Academy was the first of the two private high schools in the municipality. Fifty-four of the present studen_t body of iGg boys and girls ( 19,19) are boarders, paymg tinny-two doll~rs a month for room, meals, and laundry, a part of which they may work ?ff in jobs around the school a1~d on its farms. Eight of the twelve _teachers are _contmentals, either Baptists or l\Jenr~omtes. Scho?l. is und_er the supervision of the Baptist Home M1~s1on Society of New York (part of the Northern Baptist Convention). The paren t body contributes only six thousand doll_ars a year to the school's support, all other costs bemg covered by tuition and money earned on the school's farm. All but two of this year's students are from Catholic families, some local, others from various parts of the island. Although the tuition is eighty dollars a year, only the veterans pay the full amount, scholarships cutting it for the rest anywhere up to sixty dollars. However, the student body includes only a very few children of lowest income families in the municipality. The curriculum is the same as that offered by the public high schools so that ~tudents ~nay transfer in or out any tirne. The only chfference is a compulsory course in the Bible. The director would like to alter the curriculum tO emphasize vocational materials for those who don't want to go to college. Although the school is not proselytizing on a grand scale, the

13 l

director feels that it should. He does not think that the conversion rate has been high enough, but forty of the present student body "are converts or are studying to become converts." That is close to 25 per cent of the total. I believe that the school has had a profound influence on the community, and one which may have interesting implications for Catholicism on the island generally. For example, students and former students of the academy are, in my experience, the most cynical detractors of the Catholic church . The only religious arguments I ever heard were those which involved academy and non-academy people. The former attack the Catholic church because it is businesslike; because it does not care that the members do not practice what is preached; shamelessly accumulates great wealth (Cardinals' rings were cited as an example) which should not be used for ostentation but should be devoted to alleviating the suffering of the poor; forgets principles for cash; 57 teaches more through shame than guilt; 58 creates fanatics and not humbly religious people. The director of the Baptist Academy appears to have been a lot more successful than he knows. The Catholic Academy

The Catholic Academy was founded in 1934 as an answer to the threat posed by the fact that the only high school in the community was run by Protestants. and that Catholic parents were sending their children. there. Present student body is 210, of which i 10 are girls. (most of the latter coming from the pueblo and el Llano). The teachers are four nuns and two lay teachers. The nuns are from the States; the lay teachers. are used for the teaching of Spanish, mathematics, and Puerto Rican history. The nuns do all teaching in English with English texts and with examinations written in English. They claim that this concentration is better preparation for the students who go on to the university where they are required to know a great deal of English. Tuition at the academy is only twenty dollars a year with a one dollar laboratory fee. Books must be: bought by the students, but there is a good exchange-service which keeps the prices from being too high. There are no boarders. In general, costs are lower than in the Baptist Academy, and the number and amount of scholarships smaller. There are more children of poor families in attendance here.

s1 One informanl cited the case of his own marriage where hepaid the priest S25 for the ceremony and was thus relieved of the· obligation of confessing. Other examples are the cousin marriages that arc permiued if one can pay a special fee, not sane-· tioned otherwise. 58 These informants say that most Catholics, themselves in-· eluded, are not afraid to sin if they arc sure their sin will not be detected by man. This is interpreted as an indication that the CaLholic church has not inculcated deep respect for God as has the Protestant church but works rather through fear of the censure of his morlal agents, the priests. Thus Catholicism is seen b y them as the antithesis of a true religion.

1 32

THE PEOPLE OF PUERTO RICO

Veterans

RECREATION

These constitute a special group. Although many of them are genu inely interested in going to school and delighted with the opportunity which the G .I. Bill provides them for so doing, many more go chiefly for the income that being a student veteran represents. There are few steady jobs in Tabara that pay as much as the job of student-veteran. That it yields an education as well is hardly to be d isparaged. l\Iost of the veterans are not beyond high school. They spend no more time o n their education than what is required of them in attendance at classes. They devote most oE their time to small groups of friends-generally clustered in neighborhoods- who have the leisure and the money to amuse themselves with small talk and drink. In Salvador there are several married student-veterans, landless and living rent free who occasion ally look for work as laborers during the busiest times of the year. There are others wh o do nothing, living wholly on their G.I. income. In Quito, several veterans live on the sma ll hold ings of their father or their w ife's father. These men help with the farming.

Clubs and Societies

Tli e Casino.-The outstand ing agency of organi1.ed recreation for the mun icipality's middle and u p per income groups is the Centro de Instrucci<'m y Recreo, more commonl y known as the Casino. Th is orga nization holds th ree formal dances a yea r to wh ich members and their guests are invited. ll is understood that no member \\·ill bring as a guest a person unlikely to meet with the approval of the mcn1bership at large. 1\il embership is by invitation o( t he board, and the qual ificat ions for se lec tion are purposely ldt un sp ec ified. In pra cti ce, hO\\'C\'er, no one is asked LO joi 11 i[ he is both poor and o f "poor" famil y. :\or is ;111 y0 11 e with obv ious ~c:gro c h aractc ri -;t i( ·~ vw-r in\·itn l LO j o in . The club was C<>tab lishc d in 1q1 1. So111c o( tlic members o l ·· ~ood" famil ies \\'ho are 110 longe1· :dliliated by their own choic:c nit ici1.c the c lul>. :-.:1yi ng that it is not what it used LO he, and by this tl1 cy 111 ean that women can be see n ~ ipping drink~ there during dances, o r that some of th e mc111bers :1ppear to han.; 1n<ffc than a trace of' 1\egro .. blood ." ' or that they fo111H;rly lived in the slum section of town. RADIO AND THE PRESS I n 19,18 there were only se,·c:nty-fi,·c m e ml><:r" of the In La Cima, some of the houses a nd a ll o( the Casino. H o\\·evcr, the club·s activities arc automatical ly stores along the main road have radios. Away from open to all of the im mediate famil y of elected memthe road the number of radios is very small. This bers, and the attendance at periodic [unctions may places the burden of radio listening on the roadside there(orc run up to several hundred. Besides being the place where the year's th ree or stores, and since many of the residents of both barrios live one-haH mile or more from these, the amount of four major d ances are held, the C as ino building serves radio listening per capita is not very significant. regularly as a ga thering place for male members a nd The favorite programs of all classes are music and their acceptable friends who a re ime rested in gamthe I>uerto Rican equivalent of our own soap operas. b ling. Jn a downsta irs section, cards are played for Men as well as women listen to the soap operas. But fair ly h igh sta kes. The local police know about this the height of rad io listening is reached during the illegal activi ty but protest that they cannot d o anybaseball season. I t is at this time tha t the stores are thing about it because the games are always played crowded with young boys and men who h ave no r a dios with chips. E L Club Beta Phi Gamma is th e ju nior edi t io n of of their own and who gather in the exciting social atmosphere to listen and to ta lk with oth ers while the the Centro de Instrucci6n y Recreo. lt was establish ed game goes on. in 1942 w ith m o re members than it has at present. The teachers in the rural schools report that one of Originally, it was a sorority, but even tual ly ma le memthe things which contributes to the commonly low bers were accepted a nd it n o w h as ten males out of a state of general knowledge of the children in that tota l o( twenty-six members. No one can be a m.ember area is that they rarely hear a radio o r read a news- un less h is parem s are members o( the Casino. The paper or magazine. l\ ly own observation is that the reason g iven is th at a ll of the ju n ior organ ization·s educational value of the radio, and particularly of the parties a rc held in the parent club's quarters, a nd programs most prized, is rather slight, but that there they must therefore obey th e rule of that organization is probably some vague sophistication-edge for the w hich Slates that 110 one may enter tlie club unless he ch ild who knows who Diplo (cartoon and radio char- is a member. The purpose of the club is stated frankly: acter) is or who can hum a popular tune. "For amusement o nly." However, th ey have begu n to In a ll of L a Cima there is no regular subscriber b ranch ouL, for they were recenLly asked b y th e superto a newspaper. H owever, several of the storekeepers inlendent of sch oo ls if they would ca re lo co ntribute and a few o( the upper-class farmers do read the a little something toward the purc hase ol a m eda l to papers with fair regularity. Those found in the stores be awarded to the brig h test student in th e tow n 's are at least looked over by the inevitable crowd of school. hangers-on. Other requirements for m embe rship are that the Magazines and books are rarely seen, the latter being applicant be unmarried, be of good m oral chara cter, found mosL commonly in the houses of stuclents- a nd , i( a ma le, b e no yo unger than e igh teen , i( a femal e, 11 0 you nger than sixteen . Th e good m o ral genera11y text books.

TAUARA: TOBACCO A1'D l\l l XEO CROPS :i\IUNlClPALITY

character iLClll was ca use for rejection of three males who applied recently and states: One must not drink wo lllllch and lllake a sho\\· of himse!E. One must not dance with serva nts in ''bad places," that is to say, in the rn f t'I i11<'S (sma 11 stores) . to jukeboxes. One must not have Lhc reputation of being a woman chaser. Potent ial members may not be rejected for "physical ab11onnalil}'. " :\s for the matter o( race, it becomes purely acadclllic si nce the children of members of the (:;1:.ino are generally acceptably white. However, 110 one of "obvious color" has ever solicited membership, hut if he did (!) he would be rejected. Those with a litLle bil of Negro ''blood in their veins" are not e:-:c l11d ('d. s; 1ys the prcsidem , :>O long as it is not ··1101 i< c;1blt:." .\ / 1w111s. - Thc loca l l>r;1nch or this organ ization was c-; 1; 11>1i,hed in Tal>;1ra in 1~p9. lt has fifty-eight member,. 111mt o l thvrn Catholics, ,,·ho meet once a week ;1111 t p:1y du<.:' ol S t .:! ;1 a month. ;\fast o( its activities _ 11111 < 11 to th e di:.trc:-.s of some who report that they had e:-:pcncd certain pranical advantages to accrue to t hcm ;1~ ;1 co1bcq uence of their membership-seem 10 i 11 ,·ol\T the initiali11g. promoting, or exalting of n1<:nih<.:r~. Th e orga11i1:1tion donates forty to fifty dollar-; a ~c;1r 10 the "'wido,,·s of the poor." They also iri\"(: two mcdab a yc:1r to the smartest children in the ~ighth grade. T hey used to _gi,·e t\\'O scholarships of twenty dollars a month. until a couple of years ago when the posLwar recession began to trouble them. Informal Recreation

One of the lllajor forms of recreation is conversation. During the campaign it was largely political, at other times it may be crops, Lhe weather, troubles, jokes. for those who live close to the road and may congregale al the c11d of the day, the center~( recreation is the local st0re. H ere one may talk, listen to the rad io, fi11d an argument, have a drink and a piece o( Argentine sausage, or just sit and enjoy other people who do al! of .these thin~s. The sitters are many. l( th e group is mixed, the SLtters are frequently the shabby ' ones, die poor ones, while the entertainment is provided by the storekeeper, the sons of the local landowners, the landowners themselves. Cockfights are recreation- recreation, gambling, and caLharsis. Likewise with the far less frequent dogfight. Feeling Lhe need for excitement and phrasing it as exercise for his dog, the son of one of the landlords of La Cima would occasionally unchain the family dog and lead him off to ha\'e a fight with one of the 0L11er clogs in the J1cighborhood. Dice, d o minoes, ca rds, betting on ball games, the Jouery- all th ese occasiona l games and forms of gambling may also be included under recreation. The Fiesta

J\s a rorlll or recreation, the home fiesta is one of the more traditional entertainments for all classes. A bapt islll. a wedding, a binhday, the visit of an h onored g11c~t or a rclaLive now living at some distance

I

33

from the fam ily may be the reason for the celebration. The fiesla is essentially a family affair, including uncles, aunts, cousins, and in-laws with perhaps a few co111 /1nclres and intimate friends . .-\!though some of the traditional fiesta foods like roast p ig, chicken and rice, or fricasseed goat may be out of reach of the poorer families, they will make every effort to provide one o( them for these occasions. Rum, legal or illega l, is an important component always. Food for the fiesta is generally prepared by the older women who continue to function in a service capacity throughout the entire affair. The older men drink and chat, and the young people will dance to a guitar or the radio i( there is one, or they may sing and recite. Jn the rural areas close to the main road, the young people may move out to dance to the jukebox in o ne o( the larger stores after the food has b een served at home. People who ccin afford to do so are expected to give fiestas at appropriate times, while those who are considered too poor to do so may nevertheless prepare a simple party. some little thing to spare them the shame of not responding properly to the occasion. A prosperous farmer of La Cima is accounted very stingy because he never gives fiestas. A servant girl was sneered at because she claimed she was going to have a binhday party and it was said her family was too poor to have fiestas. An example of fiesta spending carried to extraordinary lengths is that o( a sharecropper of Salvador who spent his entire tobacco profits (almost six hundred dollars) one year on a very lavish fi esta-even hiring a special car to bring ice from a city twenty miles away. The Visit

Rural visiting in Tabara is generally confin ed to ki11 <1nd ritual kin. Visiting among neighbors is less common, usually restricted to some few necessary borrowings which are accompan ied by hasty snatches of conversation. But a neighborly visit is expected and appreciated in times of illness or death or for the purpose o( admiring a new baby or a new and important material acquisition. And there is always a sense o( obligation to return whatever favors m ay be r endered to one by a neighbor. But the visit and the obligations o( hospital ity assume a much more formal aspect if the visitor is a person with any particular prestige. It is then the h ost's duty to please h is guest in 'diatever ways his house affords. The guest will b e served some refreshment if any is available or if it can be purchased, invited to a meal if his vis it coincides with mea ltime, and perhaps pressed to take back with him the best chicken, some flowers from the garden or whatever else may be considered an appropriate g ift. A lmost every family knows one or two m en who are on such intimate terms w ith one o( its male m embers that their role as guest is ig nored, and they are trea ted with almost the same in(orrnality as a m ember of the family. ~ l ost o[ the informal visiting, however, is done by little boys, as a form o( hanging around, a

I 34

THE PEOPLE O F PUERTO RICO

practice which permitS them to serve as important purveyors of neighborhood news.. . . Fiestas and visitinu reach their height dunng the 0 . • Chrisrmas season, Christmas week bemg more unportant for celebrations in the urban areas, and Three Kings Day and the two days following it, more imp.ortant in the rural areas. The exchange o( small g ifts between intimate friends and relatives is not uncommon during this period.

o r the merengue are the favorites. But the p olka, the mazurka, the fox trot and others ma y be seen , parti cularly in the Casino or at dances in the homes o[ the upper-class urban residents. Danc ing assumes a special importance for the young people of counship age. One nineteen-year-old boy observed that his id ea of the good life "·as to have a pretty girl a nd go dancing with her.

Parrandas

The t)((seo is essentiall y an urban r ecreation which takes place in th e plaza or Tabara, although a few rural families "'ith cars m;1 y come to town to partici pate. After the even in g m ea l. ;ind esp ec ially 011 lw li days and weekends, th e y<H111g people; ol the to\\'11 con gregate at the pL11a, the ~irl-. usu ;rlly ~11nll i11 g ;1rrn111d a n d around th e renarr glc, on; 1 ~ i n 11all y st11ppi11g 10 chat with other girh or ~· 01111g men or resting ;1 lew minu tes on one ol the stone hc.:11< hes. Th e yo1111).!; 111<:11. and often th e o ld e r ones as \\·ell. may wa lk ;1rou11d, but more generally they stand in groups chaui11g a11d eyeing the girls. On Satunl;ry and Surnl;ry 11igl 1Ls. married women o[ the 111iddlc a11d upper class will on a sionally accompany their lreshly dre~sed children t<> the plaza, bu t they usually leave bdore d;11·k ;111d otherwise do not participate unless acc0111p;111icd hy their husbands. The ch ild ren may play games, ro ller skate, or chase each other in and out ol th e lines of strollers. T h e fH1seo is the accepted place for u rban swee th earts and potcmial sweethearts to meet and exchange words and gla nces, and sometimes to slip off into the shadows. There is no rural fJaseo-its nearest e quivalent perhaps being the Sunday a fternoon strolls of th ose w ho live near the road. Groups of sisters and girl friends walk slowly up and down the road, sometimes b ei ng foll owed , or some times just observed by th e g roups o f boys who have congregated near the stores.

The parranda, a small group of ambulatory minstrels, functions especially during the Christmas season, occasionally on other holidays, and sometimes even on nonfiesta days. Anywhere from three to seven or eight men may be involved in the performance. They go from house to house singing the traditional songs or improvising new ones. Three or four o( the men will play guitar, cuatro, giiiro, or maracas, and all of them take turns singing. Drinks of local rum and sweetS are the customary reward for their entertainment. The jJarranda is less common now than formerly, and many people in the country who used to count on these occasions to add gayety to the holiday season now bemoan its passing, blaming the radio and the jukebox for the change. Dancing

The more formal dances oE Casino and sorority and the fiestas in private homes fairly well delimit the opportunities for dancing for the girls o( the upper classes. The pattern of elating, American style, is only beginning and is opposed by the more traditional families, but occasionally groups o( upper-class boys and girls will travel in cars to private dan ces in ne ighboring municipalities or to a respectable hotel in Coamo. The daughters of this group are not permitted to go to the stores and dance halls along the roads in the rural areas. But sometimes on Saturday afternoons, groups of lower middle·class young people may be seen at these places. Usually the group consists of brothers and sisters and intimate friends who come early b ecause the girls must be home before dark. The young men who have the mobility (own cars or trucks or can borrow them) will occasiona.lly do their drinking and dan cing in stores in other mun icipalities. Sometimes, one of these may "carry off" a girl he meets at one of these dances and make her his consensual wife or mistress. Prostitutes are occasionally employed as partners on such excursions, and at these times expect no pay for their services beyond the dancing and the drinks. Everyone beyond the age of ten or eleve n is expected to know how to dance, at least a little. Children learn chiefly by imitation o( their elders, and are encouraged by their parents, little girls frequently dancing together during the learning period. The Casino offers a dance for th e children of its members during the Fiestas Patronales. Latin-American dances like the bolero, the rhumba,

The Paseo

Movies

The movies in T abara arc shown on Friday, Saturday, and Sunday nights in a small auditorium owned b y the Catholic church (seating about two hundred ). T h is, too, is chie fly an urban recreati o n for th e re is no public transportation at night from the r ural areas. Those with cars prefer the more comfo rtable theaters of Sabana dcl Palmar and Acra w h ere better pictur es are shown. Friday n ight, wh en th e program is American-made serials and ' Vesterns, is the most popular nig h t, and by far the largest part of the audience are teenagers. A few adults o( a ll classes who adm it liking tha t sort 0£ pictu re also attend, but what little movie-going there is in th e middle and upper classes is usuall y don e in th e neigh boring municipal ities. The pictures shown in the Tabara theater are selected by the priest, and are for the largest p a rt secondrate or very o ld American film s, all w ith Spanish subtitles.

TABARA: TOBACCO AND MIXED CROPS MUNICIPALITY

Dice and Cards

Dice, cards, dominoes, and bingo are played in the rural areas whe n there is work for the men on the tobacco crop. On the road, and where the radio plays constantly, there is little playing of dominoes, cards, or bingo. And the only dice ga mes are the small games for pennies which the boys or young men play without wo much interest. In the town there are a few private houses and the Casino where cards are played for bigger stakes. And "big shot" gamblers from all over the island come about once a week to one of seve ra 1 houses outside the pueblo to play cards for big sta kes. Cockfighting

Informal and illegal cockfigh ts are held in all of the barrios during the e ight months of the regular season. J\fost fi ghts take place far from the road as a precaution ;q~ains t i11terfcrcnce by the law, but sometimes a hurrie.dly arranged match ,,·ill be fought on the grass in front of a house on the main road . The Gallem, or official cockfighting pit for Tabara, is in Barrio Palo J\lw.

:\!most c,·e ryone who comes to see the fights comes as well to ga mbl e. Th e odds shilt so rapidly during the fi ght that an as.tt!te better may frequently hedge himseH in to a pos1uon where he cannot lose. The bets range between o ne and fifteen dollars, so while small bets and hedging give some opportunity to the low income gambler, it still does not bring the sport close to t he ordinary agricu ltural laborer. Baseball

Baseball is played by young boys in mixed groups of from eight to about sixteen. The equipment is often poor, a rolled. up wad of rngs sometimes serving for a ball, a pad of newspapers for a glove, and a bamboo pole for a bat.. But ~he en.thusias~n is high and the skill with what 1s available is amazmg. The game may be played on the road, on the muddy playground of the school, or on the partly leveled top of a hill where deep grass may tangle th~ feet of the players. Most games have a ball-chaser 111 the person of one of the children o[ an agricultural laborer. Volleyball

Volleyball is another sport favored in La Cima. The n et and ball are furnished by the school; the participants in the games which command an audience are the older students, the veterans, and the unemployed teen-agers. Volleyball is p layed strictly according to the book. There is no adapting of the rules. Important games (those where previous contests have developed genuine r ivalry) must be refereed by a responsible adult, preferably a male teacher. The spectators' cheers are mostly impartial. They applaud all good plays. They are sympathetic when a favored player makes a bobble, merciless in their jeering when th e show-off does the same. The word of the referee (or

135

the umpire in baseball) is fin al. The dispute is ended the moment he r enders a decision. \ •\Then there is no arbiter there may be a brief flare-up after a close play, but one side or the other will quickly yield and play will be resumed. Sulking or mumbling over a bad decision is never observed. Thus, autl1ority in tl1e form of the referee or a majority d ecision is accepted, and the resolution of any conflict whicl1 threatens the continuance of the game is welcomed, even if the resolution prejudices one's chance for victory. In this section I have sketched in some of the local aspects of insular institutions with the aim of showing these as forces which, along with the production processes treated in the preceding section, tend to cement the community. In the next two sections I shall describe the class structure of Tabara and treat the rural area in terms of the cultural distinctions associated with these different classes.

SOCIAL ORGANIZATION: THE CLASS STRUCTURE OF THE MUNICIPALITY INTRODUCTION

Tabara, b y any definition of the term, is a classstructured community. All Tabarenos recognize the differences in wealth, privilege, and power that mark the groups within the community, and they continually demonstrate their awareness in their behavior and attitudes. ' '\Thile some kind of delineation and definition of these groupings is essential for a competent analysis of the social scene in Tabara, I shall go ahead with it only after remarking that the arrangement is, of course, neither inflexible nor sacred. T he idea of classes offered herewith is an abstraction of the realities observed in the field work. And as such it envisages circumstances in which individuals who presumably qu alify for inclusion in one group would, for certain cogent reasons, be included in another. This needs very little further explanation. The concept of class groupings, however these m ay be delineated by individual analysts, is one without which contemporary social science could not function. Tha t the delimitations involved in any schematic representation of them may appear too facile and pat, I realize. However, I know of no other way of handling the concept of these functionally interrelated, interacting, and frequently conflicting groupings tha n su ch a scheme. The alternatives to analysis through group functioning would be either analysis from an unwarranted assumption of complete c ultural homogeneity within the community, or from an equally useless (for purposes of analysis of social structure and function) and impossible reduction of Tabara's society into a collection of individual a toms. vVhile the former approach might be valid in the analysis of a r elatively simple pr imitive society which is actually homogeneous to a high degree, it is certainly inaccurate to assume the same kind of homogeneity for a com-

i

36

THE PEOPLE OF PUERTO RICO

munity like Tabara. As for the latter view-th e as- which assures the sta t us of the new poo1· is a weak sumption that each individual within the community impediment to t he new rich . The way up is qui cker is different from each other individual in the com- than the way down. And, most important, the ways munity-such an emphasis can lead only to discourage- of life: the goals, the aspirations, the material possesment and the abandoning of all attempts at under- sions, the beliefs, the practices a nd the genera l activities standing social structure and interaction. One need of the Tabareilos show greater uniformity among innot deny the truth of the assertion that all men are dividuals with in each of these various groupings tha n different in order to make valid analyses of group they do among individuals from each of the different cultures. It is only necessary to abstract from these groups, classes, or subcu ltures. admittedly distinct individual atoms some of the characteristics whie:h are held in common and which TABLE 1. OCCUPATIONAL-ECONOMIC CLASSES OF TABARA appear to throw light on the similar aims, goals, N11rn/ 11 Urban" motivations, and actions of the specially delimited I. U />/>er subgroup. Sl1 11111 1(T R c ,idc11h ( R ) A. Large 1\Icrc:h a 11L~ ( Rl l) Cultural analysts will naturally differ in the selecl.;111dholdcrs of o\·c1· 100 Docto1-s (U) tion of the characteristics cons idered sign ificant for C11cn/11., ( R U ) Top GoV<: rn111ci1l Elll setting up the groups themselves. Thus, the construct ployces (U) of class itself takes many different forms. The one B. Professio11;1 ls ( R l J) I .;111dholck rs of '.Ej- 1oo which I have used in the discussion which follows is Medium :\fc::rd1;11ll~ ( Rl l) C: 11rrrla.\ ( R lJ) one of occupational or economic groupings, since I consider that the correspondence between these groupII. Middle ings and the bodies of cultural data which I have Truckers (.V l'_{!,11611 n f I'.\) l .;111clho ld crs of 8- '.\:i selected for discussion throws more l.i ght on the total <:111·n/11s ( R) (RU) structure and its interacting parts than would a selecSmall SLOrc: k<:<:pc r s (R l 1) Veterans (RU ) tion of subcultural grouping based, let us say, on such Chauffeurs (RU) other elements as status, degrees of prestige, membership in clubs, associations or societ ies, religious affiliaIII. Lower tions and the like. This is not to deny that such eleVendors (U) Landholders o( 1-8 ments are o(ten highly correlated with occupational Artisans (RU) C11erdas (R) and economic positions. It is simply to state that our Day Laborers (U) Sharecroppers (M ediainvestigation has convinced us that the latter group. 11cros) (R) ings (occupational a nd economic) are more directly, de. Squatters (llgregados) pendably, and significantly related to other culture. (R) clusters than are the former. And it is also because n The distinct ion hetwccn rur.al an<l urban is not always clt:"ar. certain this type of grouping appears to us to give better in. i:ir oups funclionin g in either or both settin gs. However, 1 have p laced each sights into the dynamics of the cultural changes which g roup where it t e nds t o cluster and indicated by the u se of parcmhcsizc<l (R)ural and (C )rban what the actna l s ilua1i on may be. we have noted in our study of the communi ty and its development over a long period of time that we have Group I, A made occupational and economic factors the major The Summer Residents.- These are a group o( determinants in the construction of our own classes, subcu ltures, or cultural subgroups. For example, peo. about eighteen fami lies whose permanent homes are in other parts of the island, generally in the Condado pie now poor but of "good family" have access to the local Casino and other symbols of the upper groups. section of San Jua n or in Ponce. They are undoubtedly They may intermingle, socialize, and intermarry with the wealthiest group in the municipality. However, families in the upper income brackets. But the very they live here during only a few man t hs of the year term "good family" derives in all cases from a pre- and on occasional weekeuds. I do not believe they vious position of economic emine nce. To be a member affect sign ifica ntly the lire o( the people of the municiof a "good fam ily" means that one's recent antecedents pa lity, although the local priest reports that there had money or land or both, that they were, in short, was a time when they took a more ac tive part in compeople of the economic upper class. So while the present munity life, a t least to the extent of attending the prestige may be divorced from economic status or chu rch and making money contributions. power, it is always in these cases a n indication of Landholders of 1\tlore Than 100 Cuerdas.-1\t[ost o[ previous economic status. these live in the cou ntry and occupy positions o( The man who rises from a position of poverty to importan ce because o[ t h e ir wealth and because they one of wealth will generally have little trouble in provide employ m e nt a nd give living space to the wage becoming a participant in the activities of the socia l workers and the sharecroppers who a r e tenants on upper "class" provided that he is not colored and that their land . Their role is seen by many as one o( his " character and appearance" are not patently ob- "providing life for the people." Thus, the landless jectionable. frequently see the solut ion of the agrarian problem P as t or present wealth, then, is the real key to in terrns of better landlon.ls, i.e ., those \vho use more upward social mobility and position . The socia l in ertia land and provide more a nd ste;1dicr employ m e nt.

TAllARA: TOBACCO AN D MIXED CROPS MU NICIPALITY

Large J1Jerc11r111ts.-Most o( these live in the pueblo and occupy the ir pl ace in the upper group b y reason of th e wealth d erived from their merchandising activities. Some combine their activities as merchants with fa rming, parti cul arly the two whose m erchandising esta blishme nts lie outside the pueblo.

JJof'lors.-These are incl uded primarily because they arc fo und in the upper income group, but it is s io-nificant, too, that they have, as a group, the greatest p~estige in the municipali ty. Top <: ovc mm e11l Em/Jloyees.- These live in or very near to th e pueblo . ha ve good incomes, and hold influ e nti;tl positions ,,·ith insular connections. Group I, B / . 1111 d/10/d1'rs

of lk/H'1'1'11 ;=;- 100 Cuerdas.-This group consists p;1rticula rly o.r those. who have a relati\-c h · l;11 ge tob;1rco quota . srn ce tl11s n ot only creates th c ii'. 11-ealth but means the providing of employment orcater sca le than does the farming of minor 011 a ;--

crops. J>rofr·ssiowtl C:rrm/Js.- lncluded are most of the go,·crnin c nt_ clllployees of insular or fecle~·a l agencies, and most ol the teach ers e:-.:ccpt the superintendent of schools who belongs with Grou p A. 1H edi111n Merc/rn11ts.- Inclu ded are those merchants of the pue blo and of the rural areas who have retail establishments of moderate size. Some of these have farm s as well.

Group II

T'etera11s nnd C/1(111Ueurs.- The former includes most of the veterans go ing to school and a number who are drawing G.I. benefits in the Corm of unemploym ent checks. (This. terminated in 1949.) The ch auffeurs who own their own cars and the veterans who are still getti ng the G.I. payments have an income suffic ient to meet living expenses for themselves and famil y plus some left over for recreation which they frequently fmd together. f,(llul/10/ders of 8- 35 Cuerdas.-These are above marginal, family -size farmers . l\1~o~t of them manage to meet su bsistence and all hvmg expenses from produce of the farm. A fe\~ must depend upon their o-vvn or th e ir children 's earnmgs o n other nearby farms w bridge the gap between farm-provided income and expenditures. Trucl<ers (Negocin11les).- Competition keeps returns low but adequate for li ving. This group generally manages al l living expenses from earnings. However , they may be assisted by the ir wives' sew ing, etc.

Small Storelwepers.- This is a fairl y numerous group sca ttered through the country, on the outsk irts of the town, and in the roadside settlem ents. Their incom e is generally just about adequate to take care of their s ubsisten ce and modest clothing requirements, a numbe r of m a rg inal proprietors dropping out every few m o nth~ to be re placed by others .

I 37

Group Ill

Landholders of J- 8 Cuerdas. -These are usua lly dependent upon work off of their own fa rms to meet all living expenses and subsisten ce requ irements. SharecrofJpe rs (Median eros).-These are listed immediately below the landholders up tO eight cuerdas and apart from the squa tter-type landless agriculturist, b ecause it is possible for them to have a good year a nd earn a relatively large amount of money as their share of the profits on the tobacco crop. Ve11 do rs.- These h ave a n uncertain in come, low living standards, a nd must have aid or p erform other subsidiary economic activities.

Artisans.- A very few of these have fa irly steady incomes. But the vast m a jority must treat their vocation as a part-time occupation in order to live. They fill in with other work in the long stretches between jobs. This does not apply to the shoe repairmen, whose income, though small, is re latively stable throughout the year. Agricu ltura.l Wage Laborers ( Agregados).-These have a real problem during the dead periods in tobacco. They a re the ones most often forced to migrate or commute to the ca ne fields to survive during these periods. Day Lab orers (Jornaleros).- These are an urban version of the agricultural wage laborer without the same access to free or cheap agricultural produce and with a more irregular employment pattern. HISTORICAL CHANGES IN THE STRUCTURE

It is apparent from the forego ing schematization of Tabara's socioeconomic structure that a number of the groups included will fit only into a picture of the contemporary community. Some, like the veterans a nd chauffeurs, are as new as the Second \l\Torld War. Although there were a few of each even before 1940, these two g roups have grown during the past five or six years up to the point where their importance to the life of the community can be ig nored n e ither statistically nor functionally. Other groups, like the truckers, who represent a significant develop ment out of the ambulant peddler of former times, and the r elatively n ew groups of professionals and top governm ent employees, are also properly a pa rt of the newer Tabara, or, at any rate, of the post-American a rrival period. And the urban d ay laborers are a lso a rela tively new ph enomenon as are m a n y of: the "full-time" artisans. These r epresent not only the effects of: the trend towards urbanization but of the con comitantl y g rowing emphas is on money and the de-emphasis o( subsistence a ncl seH-su fficiency. As home industry declines with the appearan ce and ava ilability of manufactured p rod u cts, the demand fo r money increases. Craft-prod u ctive time is measured against wage- or cash-product ive time, and when it becomes apparent that the former is wasteful as com-

13 8

THE PEOPLE OF PUERTO RICO

pared with the latter, the trend away from the home vestments in tim e and money that may be demanded manufacture of necessities towards the purchase of by th e agricultural experts' recommendations. In lin e with the present tre nd in insul a r a gricu lture, their manufactured equivalents grows. This is a tendency which has been observed and recorded in a the loca l expen s are advising the cultivation of pinenumber of cases of the acculturation process. It is a apple and e ncourag ing greater efforts with subs iste nce tendency which, in general, marks the post-indusu·ial crops in areas where n o cash crop cultivation is feas i· revolution period and the rise of capitalism. Al- ble. Efforts to promote a retu rn to coffee production though the use of money predated the advent of on the steep slopes o( the centra l hig hlands as a capitalism by many centuries, its overwhelming im- device to combat the erosion problem of the mountain portance and the highest development of the money areas meet with liule o r no success, but arc continued. The largest part o( the growing group o( people economy have been reached under present capitalist forms of production and distribution. Money was in- whom I have d es ignated the professionals arc, of troduced into aboriginal Puerto Rico by the Spaniards course, th e schoo lteachers. I .esser emp loyees o [ th e and was used throughout the period of their domina- governmental agencies are includ ed. I 11 a co u11trv tion. But it was not until the era of greatly expanded where m o re thau one-th ird of the tot;d goY<.:rn111cu1a·I commerce that followed the coming of the Americans, budge t is d evoted Lo educ ;1tion ;ind h c;tlth , th(' role not until the rapid growth of population and the of the teacher has a specia l significance. T cacl ins arc relative decline in subsistence cultivation, that money the largest sing le g roup or cmplo;·ccs \\· ho~ <.: work assumed its greatest importance to the greatest num- places th em in direct COlll<ICt \\·ith ;ti! leve l-; or LIJC ber of Puerto Ricans. population, both rural and urban. Thal Llicir o\\'11 Old informants report that large numbers of the standards and aspirations arc rcl:11.ivdy hig h in t.hc landless and near-landless peasants of Spanish times loca l scale is incvi Labl y i·eflcctcd in t.hcir LCH hing. 111 and just after lived almost entirely without money. the context o( their Leaching th ey ~ 11 ggc-..L ,.i..,L;1s. ,·;due~. This would hardly be possible for any ·but the and aspirati ons which arc often rcn1ote :111d il11prac . wealthier farmers of today, and no one I encountered ticable but arc always in line "·iL11 th<.: pr<.:~llllH: d goah during the entire period of my field work supported of all insular education-betterment ul sell and com himself from the produce of his own fields and the munity, in e ither order. In the absence o[ rad io and work of his own family unless these were at least newspa pers, th ey a1·e the most important link the partially converted into cash. child has with the w o rld outside hi s n e ighborhood. The growing importance of cash to the people of Th ey and the texts that come with the m are the Tabara has, in the opinion of these same informants, medium through which the ch ild receives most of his speeded the e labora tion of the class structure. \Vhile informatio n about the nature o( this outside world. Jn such a conclusion is probably true only in part, there Tabara, this education is looked upon a s valuable. is no doubt that the entire array of new specialists I t is seen as one of the keys to upward socia l and which have witnessed their greatest growth in Tabara economic mobility. And the teachers, as purveyors of in the twentieth century could not function in a folk, this magical mobility mechanism, are highly regard ed. handicraft, or barter economy. The old, overwhelmThe growth in the number o[ truckers is an index ingly two-class arrangement which appears to have pre- of the increasing importance o( m inor crops as a cash vailed in Tabara throughout the first few hundred ~ommoc..lity as well as of the increased dependence upo n years of Spanish domin ation, and which began to unportcd goods and groceries. The oldest trucker in decline in the nineteenth century, has now been re- the community- a man who rents his vehicle from placed by the kind o( structure indicated in the pre- his own son and who pays a chauffeur because he ceding table. ca nno.t drive-told me that he had been engaged in The elaboration of the social structure of Tabara peddling all of his adult life. Now close to seventy, illustrates a number of new trends in the cultural he d escr ibes how, in the final yea rs of the last cen tury, evolution of the community. This is, of course, a n on- he used lo walk from Tabara to San Juan canying a parthenogenetic evolution, and largely represents the load o( minor crnps to se ll in the market. L ater h e impact o( American and insular policy on the life of was able to purchase a mule, then an ox and cart. the community. Thus, the top government employees There were only a few Tabarefios l ike him involved are involved with the dominant economic lifewa y in the transport of (ood to the coast, he expla ins. For of the commun ity. They are the agricultural experts, in those days the money crops had not occupied all the lending agencies' heads, in short, the men who of the coastal areas, and the subsistence needs of the are charged with the responsibility of encouraging big citi es were more easily served by neighboring better agricultura l practices in the hope of increased municipalities not so far removed as T abara. However, production and improved yields. They work directly his work provided him with some cash with which with the small, middle, and large farmers, but their to round out the subsiste nce returns of his father's efforts are concentrated upon the latter. For, while it sma ll farm. Now, his trucking operations are his on ly is official insular agricultural policy to encourage good source of in co me. Today, e ighteen large trucks operate cultivation and soil practices at all levels, it is only out o( Tabara and two contiguous munic ipa lities, the larger farmers who are prepared to make the in- servicing the large urban populations o ( th e coastal

TABARA: TOBACCO :\:-\0 ;\IlXED CROPS MUNICIPALITY

areas :rnd even selling sma ll amounts (especially from the municipality or Nispero) for sh ipment to the United Scates. The trucks usually leave Tabara with their huge loads late in the afternoon, and the peddlers then do their best to sell the supplies in the mosl profitable manner that present anarchical m arke ting arrangements will permit. If they have orders from local merchants they then proceed to the docks and \\·arehouses of San Juan or Ponce to buy the imported commodities for deli,·ery back in Tabara. Th e ,·eterans, or "professional" veterans who are receiving subsistence checks for study, are only those veter:111s ,,·ho have not yet used up these privileges of the C:.I. llill. In background they represent a fair <T<>'i">·"C< 1ion ol the population of Tabara, with a relat ivcl \' ~ma 11 proponion from the urban slum since 111 0 ~a' ol' L11esc "·L'rc rejected because of their infestation with hilhar1.ia. But l have lumped them nil together be:< ;11 1.,c the present pattern of their liYes is so similar that tir e \' in fa ct lorm a fairly homogeneous group. R cgardl~ss of pre,·ious economic status, the vast ma. or i1" of them go to school. and most of these attend ~>1icl;lo school~ rather th:'.!1 the _university, for their pi-c,,·;ir cducauor.1.had ca1 u.cd le" o( them beyond the flr~L tcw ~-ears. l hey recc1Ye any"·here from $75 to S i :.!:- 111 nnthl~ in ~ubsistcn cc allowance payments. The inl);~,nance w tile. island and LO the community of this extra income during the past fou r or five years should not be underestimated. Their cash income-and especially the regularity of it-woul_d place them with the schoolteachers, and that may rndeecl be where they belong on the scale. But I have put them below beause I have lumped them. And when seen in this ~vay, the backg~·otmds and the famil ies of the majo_rity exclude them from many of the upper-class functions from which the schoolteachers would not be barred. Service in the American army during the war sub· ected all of them equally to the same kind of humilia{ion. They were given separate status as "Puerto Ricans." The whites resented the blanket classification lumping them with ocher Puerto Ricans wh~ were Negro because they noted, too, the segregation of continental Negroes. It was apparent that they were being treated as inferiors, on a par with black Puerto Ricans from whom they were not separated. The Negroes we1·e sub)ecced to_the additional h~1miliation and indignities o( segregat1_on suffered by virtually all Negro troops in the American army. \i\fhatever the reasons for the resentment of Puerto Rican Negroes and whites-and not all of them, as can be seen, we re prompted by high-minded motives of r acial equality- they had it and have it. Most of their officers were continental Americans, and they still disl ike chem with an intensity which surpasses even tha t of their e nlisted counterparts in the United States. The whole experience was, for most of them, extremely disagreea ble, and the focus ?f their present_ rese~u­ ment is the government which was responsible for the indignities Lhey suffered. Consequently, the veterans are almost unanimous in their resentment of the

1 39

U niled States and their desire to be free of the co lon ial tie. It is this common grou nd oE resentment which makes the veterans of Tabara, regardless of background or current status, a fa irly homogeneously functioning group in the life of the community. In the political campaign of l 9<18, they were the most voluble and vigorous supporters of the Independentist party. And the few Yeterans who disagreed with the mass rarely dared to voice their opposition because of the reaction that it would cause among their friends a nd schoolmates, their drinking and bullsessioning companions. Thus, tbe veterans stu ck together through the campaign and afterwards. As the only large group whose members are able to maintain themselves in idleness, they spend much time together. Since they do not have to work, yet have money to spend, they, more than any other adults in the community, funclion as a group in work or reo-eation. The chauffeurs, many of whom are veterans too, are closely allied with them in many respects. The occupation, in its present statistical significance, became established during the war when communication to all parts of the island became more important for the many Puerto Rican troops who were stationed h ere and wished the development o f intra-insular transportation, and the trend which had begun in the thirties climaxed just after the war. Buses were inadequate to take care of the greatly increased demand for transportation between towns. The str a in mounted during the war, and finally with war's encl a nd the availability of loans for certain safe veteran enterprises many ex-G.I.'s bought station wagons and private cars and used them as public conveyances. Tabara's more than forty chauffeurs make almost daily trips to the island capital where they mingle with chauffeurs from all other parts of the island to form an insu lar occupational grouping new and unique in Puerto Rican history, a group of sophisticates and quasi-adventurers whose way of life has a peculiar flavor of its own. P olitically, the chau[eurs, like the veterans from whom many are sprung, were strongly pro-lndependentist in the election campaign and after. L ike the veterans they are overwhelmingly a young group, impatient with the presumed indignity o[ their positions as citizens of an American colony. The flurry of building which followed the hurricanes o( 1928 and of 1932, and which is now enjoying a postwar revival, promoted the growth of a small class of Cull-time artisans: carpenters, plumbers, electricians and plasterers. Before i929 there had not even been a builders' supply house or a lumber store in Tabara. Now there are three lumber yards and builders' supply houses to take care of the new construction and the repairs on older houses and stores in and out of the town. There is not enough work going on even now, however, to keep any o( the town's artisans continu ously employed. Thus, they must often seek other, lower-paid work to maintain themselves. A lthough they may earn between three and six dollars a day when they are employed, as compared with the

I 40

THE PEOPLE OF P UERTO RICO

ninety cents or a dollar a cla~ o{ the agricultural laborer, their total annual earnings are probably not much greater than those of the .agricultural ~v~r~er with steady employment. And their standard o( h vmg may be even lower, because they do not have the latter's easier access to the field food crops. However, numerically small as they may be, ~he existence o[ this class of artisans is another reflection of the trend towards specia lization which is facilitated in an increasinaJy cash-dependent economy. In the next section- I shall discuss the culture o( the rural neighborhood and the barrios wh.ich I ~ele~ted for intensive study. For the purpose of 1llum111at~ng my problem, I shall treat onl y those ~lasses which are directly involved in the producuve arrangements found in the rural setting. This is not to say that I believe the life oC the rural com munity is carried on in vacuo, without regard for or relationship to the su bcultures of the town. The entire method of the argument so far is a den ial of such a conceptualization. i\Iy reasons are dictated not only by the purposes of this paper but. b~ other practical considerations. A detailed <lescnpuo n of every one of the segments of the scheme. would add little to illumimHe the central problem 111 the rural community yet would demand many pages o( f~·e­ quently tangential data. However, my reasons for 111cluding in this section the entire str.uctural sch~me and the descriptive material are, I believe, defensible . The social organization of T abara is related to the way in which the people of that community ea rn their living. In this view, social structure is the consequence an<l not the cause of the productive processes and a1Tangements. :\nd it is therefore important to see this total structure which relates ta the totality o( the ways in wh ich the people earn their living.

culture is in reality a seri es o[ subcultures with a varying number of elements common to all running throug h the whok, the n e ach member of ea ch gro u p participates lll Ore fully in th e life o( his subcu l ture than h e does in the life of any of the other su bcul· tu res. Jn any cultural context, the li feways of each component subculture are as consistent for the m e mbers of that group a s are those o( th e r ema ini11g subcul tures to thei r respecti ve m e mbers. :\ ml d espite the simil arities, the over-all paucrn of th e one ma y diffe r profoundl y from th e over-a ll pattern of the o th ers. Thus the tile- th e cu lture- of the coal miner. for exampl e, differs s i g11if1ta11tl~ lrom the file ol the m:1jor sha reholder in the 111i11i11g < orpor:1ti011 who 111a~ live in th e same L0\,·11. Or. to l>ri110 the: 111:11 tlT i11tCJ :1 Puerto Rica11 co 11lex t, the lilc_::::_thc: < 1dlllrl'- ol tl1e agricu l tural laborer \\·1 10 w ic:ld.., :1 h(l(" ICJr 11i11c1' < c:nt-> a day differs importa111 ly lrom the lilt· ol th~ l:arge landholder on ,,·Jio~c larn1 hc work .... de-.pitl· 1heir i11 terdepcndencc.: u11der c.::-.i-.ti11g prudut ti\T a11 :111gc:mc·1w; a nd despite the many -.i111il:aritie.., tit<:\ 111a\' ~1i:1rc. Ea< Ii of them is pani c ip;1ti11g lull time ·i11 l;m·1 tu Ril:111 culture; bin each mibt < rn1< e11tr:1Lc 111J<111 <ena i11 p:trb of the culture, ha,·e 01ilv ca-.,u:d c 011t:t< L or 11<1 coll · tact at all with man y ol t'l1c other p:1rt-.. Some ~llldents who di :.cu:.s the pruulcm o[ " p:1ruupation in a culture" and apply this concept w con temporary, class·structure<.l cu lwres imply that the members of one class pan icipatc to a g reate r extent in the total cul tu re o( the soc iety than do the members of other classes. Thus it is som etimes sa id that the members of the middle and upper classes in o ur own culture "panicipate more fully in the c ulture·· than do the members of the lower class. Even if cu lture be thought of simpl y as a com pe ndium o( clements or traits, this does not n ecessa rilv follow . \Vh ile it is true that socioeco11omi c fa c tor; o fte n induce a k ind o( monoto11y and samc11ess into the lives of the more THE RURAL CULTURE depressed segments o[ the population and limit their potential acquaintance w ith and use o( many mate rial INTRODUCTION and non111aterial elements of the culture, th e other exIn the preced ing section I discussed briefly the class treme o( the socioeconom ic scale m ay be characteri zed nature of Tabara's social struct ure. In this and the by its own kind of r estricted part icipation. next section I propose to treat a selected g roup of This apparent parad ox may be explained with ex"cu ltural categories"' in the rura l community to show amples from o ur own cu lture . The textile worke1· who how the culwre elements may be compared from tentls a machine in one of the mills in the sou the astern class to class. i\Iy purpose here will be to show that pan o( the U nited States performs a dull. unskilled one's position in the socioeconomic hierarchy deter- operat ion for the e ight hours o( his dail y employment. m ines not the a1nounl of one's pa nicipation in the H e comes h o me, ea ts supper, plays with the chi ldre n, culture-for each individual is by d efinition a (ull- watches te levision, talks wi th his w ife, goes to bed. time participant in his own culture-but the hind o( ; \t another end o{ J\merica·s soc ioeco 11 o mi c sca le, the participation, which elements o( the total way of life middle-aged playboy in 'cw York City wakes late, are overwhelmingly the province o[ one group and doesn't go lo work, spends late even ings and early which of the others, which e lements are d en ied to mornings in night clubs, and goes Lo bed. The realm certain groups by reason of their socioeconon.ic sta tm o[ operations, of contact w ith e le m ents o( the total and are ava ilable to others because o( a different culture, is in each case c ircumscribed and fairh· n:1rsocioeconomic status. row. Ea('h man, at almost opposite e nds of t he ·::;oc io I make this distinction because I believe th e phrase eco11omi(' co ntinuurn , is i11 vo lved with a core of s i1nila1· "participation in a cu lture" which is used so rrequently and a number of difle rc11t cul tural ele ments. The pla yis su bject to serious misinterpretation . If each complex boy has a car, color television set, dccpfree1e. and 17 5

.

TABARA. TOBA

CCO AND i\llXED CROPS i\l UN ICIPALITY

141

· the tre·nment of .that • class much of the . ' . • • The mill h an d has a kerosene stove, an ice CIUCI111g Ill )llrely descriptive matenal with ''h1ch the f~llowmg box. and :rn ouLside privy. Each item separately is !ection on middle- and upper-class cultures 1s to be :t pan or :\merica n culture. No one ilelll, as an iLem , h:ts an y more va lidity than any other. H owever, each compared. is dillerent and in i ts O\\"n \\"a)' symbolic of vastly difi"crenl wa\'s ol life or culLure. It is impossible to RURAL LOWER CLASS speak of an)• such abstrac~ion as r~merican ct~il.ure " ·itho11t recogni1ing these different kmcls of paruc1pa- Employment tion, the various areas of emphasis, Lhe limitations, The arrrerrados ;He auric ultural laborers who work 0 for a daJy ~,·age. :\lost or them live rent free . on t~1e :ind even the choices. On e tunhcr commem before l uirn to a discussion land of one of the larger owners and work Ior h_1m ol the methodology to be employed in this and the when he has any work tO be done . .-\ fe"· may e~1JO)' next ~en ion . :\!though the kind of participation in the privilege of a sma ll field wl~ere they ar~ permitted tlie iot:d < 11lt11rc \\'hi('h is round at one end of the to grow s\\"ect potatoes or t_a n1ers for their own con,< :ik 111 :., ditkr r:1dicall~ lrom th:tt found at the other, sumption. nlike the medianeros, or sha.recroppers, it j, :iln;o, 1 :il\\':1~ , tlH·oreticdl~ p<>!>sible for the in- they do n ot get a share of the profits ol t~1e crops d i' id 11 :il :it tile 1op w 111:1kc ru 11ction:d use of those cultivated. The agrcgados o[ the tobacco _region have in :it<'I i:il tr: 1ii-. or <0111pk:-:c, which belong to the cul- \"er v Ii ule to tide them O\"er the d ead period betwee n 111rc 0 1 the imli' idu:d :it the bottom. It is almost im- crol>s, \\"hi le those who work minor crops are l e~s the. opposite. And while affected by seasona I unemployi:-ie1u than by a chro111c I> 0 :-..~ ilil c (or till' latter to do . thi' 111 :1\ i>c the cxpl:i11:1uon ol what l have termed umleremp lo;·ment, since the nunor crops are generally :• ini ... 1l':;di11g u ...e ol the ro n cq~t ot cultur'.tl panicipa- cu ltiYated throughout the year. . 11 . 1·1 <lo"' \\Then the d ead season comes to the tobacco farms, 110 '- . 110 1 alter 1m·. earlier .. contention that the icnn j, :o-uhjv< t to ~l'riou~ 1111s111terprctation in the the aoTerrados "·ho have no means of subsistence must . ra te to tie I fnnn in \\·hich it i~ wn1111<>11ly employed. The Yoluntary took 0fo r ;:,\\"Ork else,\·here. Some o f tIlem mig transkr ol tho,e :it th e top lc,·cb ol the socioeconomic coasta l cane fields in search oE work as cutters. The . ;de Lil the \\·ay of lift: of those :IL the bouom is a r:ire sharecropper or th e wage "·orker with a field o~ his s< · · 11 )' un1111portant · occurrence indeed and stausuca in own almost ne\"er participates in this seasonal mig ra- consideration o( the common culture elements tion. The former has his field: h e has the corn <111d 0111 and patterns shared by the members~[ any group. the beans: and often h e has credit with the landlord i\Jy m e thod in t~icse l\\"O chapters \\'Ill be to abstr;~ct th:it will tide him o\·er the dead period. The la tter from the whole o[ culture a number of clements, m- de pends upon his field and his ability to find a day's cl ud ing ernp loymen_c, i1_1come, ownersh ip, stancl;~rd. of work here o r there. to make enough from one or living, eclucatio1~, Ianuly. tl~e pr?cesses o( ~ocia l m'.­ several of the subsidiary economic acti\·ities described tion, 111 alc and femal e relattonsh1ps, recreation , reh- in an earlier section to tide him over. 5 9 ion, riwal kin relatio nships, health, politics, and The owners o[ farms o( less than eight c11erdas~- lues and schcmatic;dl y to treat these for each o£ u11less they have an exceptional piece o[ land or have 'ti ' . b 1· .. he three major and one mmor su c 1v1s1ons of the been able to secure a gen erous quota for their tobacco ~-ural class strncwre. The l~urpo~e \\"ill ~e to g i,·e -a re inlrequentl y able to subsist year-round on the oug h 0 ( the culwral data m this abbreviated form in come from the produce o r on the food crops gro,,·n en 1. 1 . f to crnphasize the con_trasts w uc l arise rom differen:es for Lheir own consumptio n on these farms. U sually, · the socioecononuc scale, and, by a backward m- they or the ir wives or their ch ildren will "·ork on 111 I . I. fcrential extension, from the re auons lips of the dif- adjacent [arms during tile tobacco season or when ferent groups to the in strument~ of agricultural pro- there is o ther agricultural work to be clone. Or th e Canner himself may even crop on shares for a n ea r?y duction. In the coun.e of this treatment, I shall also point large landowner. During the dead season, the family out the more significant cl ifferences \\"h ich l believe are tends to subsist o n whatever savings th ey may have the result of the special crop adaptations. That these been able to accumulate by the ir paid labor p lus differences arc n either LOO numerous nor too dramatic the food products of the ir own farm. H they h ave a may be attributed, I be lieve, to the importance of to- tobacco quota, and i( the price for tobacco h.appens bacco in a IL rrios, even though the extremes o( its sig- to be goocl that year, they ma y have no ddfic u~ty nificance are to be found in Salvador with its more supplying the famil y n eed for food and es_senual pronouncedl y mono-crop cultivation pattern. ln a clothing. l( they have no tobacco, or if th e price has later sect ion f shall compare the culture of Tabara's been poor, they are little better off than. t~1e sharerural lower class (of Quito and Sa lvador) with th:n o( cropper and in some cases not as well ofl since they the rnral lower-class populations of the three other have neither an assured money income as does the communities studied fo r a m ore dramatic contrast of latter, nor the accessibility to credit in the form o[ the cu ltures. Ji\·i1w-loans adva n ced b )' the landlord. The production b Group I JI , the rural lo\\·er class, is trea ted first and o( minor crops, ho"·eve r, generally assures them the most compre h ensively beca use it is ea:;ily the most Gg Sec Working Condi Lions :i nd Practices. significant group num eri cally, and because I am in11 ccklics.

ua

142

THE PEOPLE Of PUERTO RICO

fruits and vegetables that are not so easily available to the landless workers, and also insures against their having to migrate to the cane fields in search of work.

number of chi ckens, perhaps goats or e \·en a pi g, and occasionally they "·ill also own a horse or a mul e. A very few now own the rancho, or drying barn , in whi ch they cure the ir tobacco.

Income

The ma le agricu ltural laborer earns ninety cents to Sta ndard of living a dollar a day and h as more work than any other perTh e houses of the rural Jm,·er class arc of wood , son in the family. Especially in Salvador, the women genera ll y scrap lumbe1-, or a comb ination o( woo d. and children may work during the tobacco planting sa lvaged pieces o( metal siding, and scraps o( 1·oo fin~ and harvesting, and occasionally at other times as well, material. On e side, the attached kitche n, or the rnof earning sixty and forty cents a day respectively. A share- may sometimes be th:uched w ith palm and banana cropper's earnings are ultimately dependent upon the leaves. Th ere arc a few r ea l bo!tios, houses w h ose roo ( price p aid for tobacco, although he is always sure of and sides are comp le te ly thatched . .\ fe w of th e be tter wages during the working period. In good years he homes have me t: il roofs. :\ I I ha\'e ,,·oodcn lloors. For may make as much as $ 150 or more per cuerda of the many, the house sen·c.., :1s a l>ar11 for s1or in g tnol , field sharecropped by h im, but in b ad years the and fert ili1.c r . !or she llin g beans a nd h u ..,ki 11g conL It liqu idation may not even cover his indebtedness to is prefenecl if th e d i ickcns lay t he ir egg.., in t he 11 0 11 ..,t-. the landholder who has advanced money for seed , The pig. if the re is one. wil l l>c sL1kcd 1111dcr iii <: fertilizer, sprays, extra labor as needed, etc. The small house or a few feet aw:1\'. farmer who grows tobacco may, of course, keep his Sometimes a barre l is , used to collc.:ct ra i11\\':11cr from whole tobacco profit. But sometimes lacking adeq uate the roof. more oltcn \\'atc r j.., carried lrom :1 n ea rb y capital to provide shade for a seedbed, or for extra spring. The re arc le\\· s:1 11ita1·\' f:1ci li1ics . pri\·ics being fertili zer or insecticides in years when production costs a djun ct to the be tte r ho11-..cs <~Il l \'. Cloth <:s :i re \\'a-.h<:d run higher than crop loans, he may pro.duce lower in the nearest iargc s trea m. 01: somet im e ... :1t hom e quality tobacco a nd his return will be smaller. On after a heavy rain. The re is no electricity. ca11d ks or the other h and, he is usually freed of tobacco pro- an occasional kerose11 c lamp proYiding \\'hatc\·cr 11i ~ht duction's largest expenditure, labor, because h e draws illum inatio n is n ecessa r y. on his family for unpaid work. More minor crops Furn iture is sca nty. There is usually one h eel, either are consumed tha n sold by farmers of this group, but bought or ho m emade, with a thick quiltli kc mattress. there may sometimes be enough of a surplus beyond Hammocks or the Ooor accommodate most of th e daily needs to permit the sale of a small amount for family. Extra clothes are hung o n nai ls arnund the cash or for barter in the store where he makes his walls. The re may be a few homemade b ench es, a sea purchases of rice, beans, and other necessities. chest type strong b ox fo r stor ing m o n ey, umb ilical Subsidiary economic activi.ties are intermittent for cords, best cloth ing, and so on. If th ere are d econtthe men, such hard-to-get jobs as unskilled carpentering ti?ns on the walls, th ey w ill b e sa ints' o r re lig ious or road building paying the best. For the women there p ict ures, ca lendars, or illustra t ions cu t fro m n ewsis washi ng and iron ing, the payment arranged so th at papers and m agaz in es. Th e sto ve is a f op;6 11 , a table a full day's work may yield abou t seventy to e ighty lined w ith earth on w hic h a fire is bu ilt. Generally, cents. Sewing pays a little more and is a high ly ir- there arc two o r three iro n ke ttles, a few meta l o r regular activity. ch in a dishes, a few glasses a nd cheap k n ives, fork s, Goats, chickens, and sometimes a pig or two may be and spoons. These are often a u gmented by t in cans raised for the money that can be earned from their for drink ing and cooking, coconu t she lls for eating sale. The income from this activity is, h owever, and drinking, and la1·ge handmade wooden cook ing limited, since few fa m ilies of this group have faci lities spoons. to r a ise anima ls o n a sca le that would mean a really The diet for the families of this group consists substantial additiona l amount. chiefl y o ( the home-g rown sweet potatoes, taniers, corn, bananas, and pla n tai ns; and the rice , dried b ean s, O wnershi p coffee , dried codfish , a n d sugar pu rch ased at the loca l T he wage workers and the sharecroppers own n o store. O ccas ionall y, bread, eggs, o r ch icken may be land ; they do not own the houses that they live in. added-but more often home-produced eggs are sold Before the laws protecting them were implemented, to th e store or to ambula n t buyers. ~T eat is a rarity. I n they were often required to build their own houses times of stress, the fami ly wi ll tend to eat m ore and then occasionally were thrown ofE a short time bananas, p lanta ins, a n d r oot crops, and reduce purlater. Some la ndlo rds were even accused of p lanning chases at th e store. Su ch fru its as m a n goes, cocon uts, it this way in order to get the house b u il t withou t o ranges. g11r1ynba. a nd others occas io n a ll y a ug m ent th e labor costs (Clark, 1939: 15). They own the few meager locri I d ict in season . kitchen utensils th ey have, the ham mocks, the bed, benches, and perhaps a table. They may even h ave Educa tio n some chickens or goa ts, more rarely a p ig, never a l'vf ost of' the w:ige ' vor kers , sh arecroppers, an d sma 11 horse. The small farmers, in addition to the ir la nd, farme1·s in Q ui to a nd Sa lvador have n ot gone beyond own their house and its furn ishings, generally h a ve a the fo urth grad e : oth ers have no sch oo li ng ;it a ll. Jn

TA13ARA: TOl3ACCO AN D :MIXED CROPS MUNICIPALITY

virtually all cases, the "'ives have less schooling than the husbands. Ho\\'eYer there is a su·ong tendency to d emand more educa tion for the children, although it may be difficult eve.n (or those pa~·ents who .are ~o inclined to arrange for much schoolmg for their children. Formal educa tion is frequently seen as a d evice for upward economic a nd social mobility, and the child"s absence or complete withdrawal from school is often accompanied by apologies and excuses. i\Iany of the teachers in the rural areas exert themselves to promote more reg u.l;~r attendance and a longer period o( educat io n by wnung notes to the parents of absent childre n, by occasional visits, and in other ways attcrnpt ing w irnpres~ the pa rems o ~ the importance of <'duc;itior1 to the cl11ld, to the family, and to the comn1u11it\' . Tile. diildrc11 th emse h-es are reported to be more ..II 1.:-.: iou s 10 <>o to school than ,,·ere d1eir l)arents or t°" gr;i nd p:i rc 11 ts. T h ~ rc is :_it least some stigm.a ~ttac.h:cl to illitera cy. a sc:ll-c011snousness a\Jout ones m abt11ty to rc:td or \\Ti te. lor e:-.: arnple. Often children will ridicule others wh o can ne ither read nor \\Tite, or will ,,. 1n. nkd n:le1"tnccs to o lder l)eor)le who are 111'. 1k'· \... ~ illitcr;ttc::. ctlli 11:.; them '"/Jobu:· 1\nd since today's . ·hools olln :111 opportunity for socialization without ~~ic dra\\·b;tck o( rigid discipl ine or rig id pedagogical tecl uiiqucs, proYidc a free lunch better than ~he childre n could have at home, and stress recreation and o-rou p g ames, Lheir regular auend::mce is encouraged. 5'ro these advantages is added the inducement that seems always to ex ist in depressed agrarian communities: the child is freed in part from the heavy farm and house work that he might have to perform were he to rema in at h ome. The Family

The famil y in each household is generally the biological one, consisting of father, mother, and t~n-1rried ch ildren- only rarely a dependent father-m111 ' l . l . law or mother-in-law. T le marnec d11ldren of the s;nall landholde r, after a short period of living with the family (oE e ither partner, though in the rural areas it is most commonly the man's) move to a house of their own, generally on the family land, shortly after the binh of the firs t ch i!~!. The. living-in period may b e longer for couples rn arnmado (rent-free tenants of either sharecropper or wage worker type) families-l asting until a job or a house becomes available. The clistribu tion of children is not always identical ·with the bjological family group. Sometimes grandchildren live with their grandparents, nephews and nieces w ith aunts and uncles, etc. It is not uncommon for a young couple to be loaned an older niece or nephew to h e lp out when the first baby comes and the mother is temporarily incapacitated. A young cousin may go in lieu of unrelated hired help to more prosperous relatives. Occasionally-death of the mother is the usua l reason-an entire family of several childre n w ill be broken up and distributed among rel a tives and friend s. Separation of couples often

143

means that some children go w ith the father, some with the mother to their new homes. Beginning the Family-Courtship and Marriage

Beyond regular n eighborly contacts, few outside facilities for getting acquainted or for courtship are available to rural lower-class residents. Consequently, neig hbor m arriage is the most usu al type. Young people have a chance to mee t at the rosarios a nd velorios (prayers offered on specia l occasions and deaths) which are the social gatherings of the poor, but beca use of the la rge numbers of peopl e concentrated in the small houses on these occasions, con tacts here are ver y slight and surre ptitious. W orking in the fi e lds together is another way of getting acquainted ; and, more recently, going to school together, although even today m an y g irls are not allowed this freedom. Except for the daughters o( the most badly broke n families, a nd for those g irls who ha,·e been working as servan ts outside their own home since the age of eleven or twelve, the rural g irl of m arriageable age is ver y closely supervised. She does not leave the house unaccompanied. She is cautioned against attracting attention to herself ancl frightened b y horror stories of sex crimes committed against rash young g irls. A young ma n who is not an established frie nd of the fa mily will rarel y be permitted entran ce to the house to court her. There is indeed a very active h ostility towa rds these '\voulcl-be suitors, in formants d escribing cases where the young man was beaten b y the father and brothers of the g irl when h e came to ca ll. A lthoug h the obstacles to courtship a nd marriage a re nume rous a nd the selection limited, there are very few women o f this group who can long afford the "luxury" of remaining single. If by the time she is eighteen or nineteen a g irl has not married, she may arrange a visit to a relative in some other part of the island to look for a husba nd, or she may accept an older man or the position of second wife to a man a ble to afford the arrangement. Marriage o( the young is usually arranged b y the sweethearts w ithout the consent of the parents. The tradition of asking the father's perm.ission to marry the g irl is still practiced, and, in that tradition, he usually refuses. :Most of the courtship and even the plans for the marriage have to be carried on through intermediaries- a friend, or a younger brother or sister who will ca rry m essages. There are few economic preparations for m a rriage clue to the low income of both partners; and even if the young man can a fford to buy a marriage bed or provide a house, h e will generally not do so in order to preserve the necessary secrecy of the elopement. The e lopement m ay come about on some evening when the girl slips out of her father's house and accompa nies her novio e ither to his father's house or to the house of some sympathetic friend. The following clay, the young man r eports to the girl's father that he h as taken h er. At first outraged, the father soon comes to accept the fait accomj1li, and the marriage is established. The g irl's father may demand a legal ceremon y a t this time, but in general the choice d epend s upon the couple, and

1 44

THE PEOPLE OF PUERTO RICO

A ll individuals, th e n, <lre exp ected to behave in certain specific ways towards a ll o the r indi vidual s. The right kind o( behav ior depends, as l have sa id, upon one's own age, sex, socia I, occu pa tiona I and economic pos ition vis·<'t-vis the other person o r p ersons in the socia l situation . And the siu1<1Lion iLself m ay exp:111d or contract the area or L11e Lype o( behavior allowed. For example, the kind of behavior d ema nded of the agrcgado performing a n errand o r serv ice for the landlord in the laue r's house will be somewhat d ifferent from the behavior permitted the sa m e (lgregado at a baptismal feast in the ho use of one o f th e oLher lell:tllLS where both land lord and Lena 11 t a re prcsen t :me.I d rinking. Fa ilure to beha ,·e in the \\·ay pn: ...cril>c:d by ntstom for the partic ular sill1:1tio11 :and Lhc rel:tLi,·e !>lat11-; nf the in<lividu a ls in\'C1ln;d i~ t<.:rmcd {11/ta de rt'.~/w l n. o r Jack o[ res pect. One "·hn b c li ;l\'(.''i persi st<.:11ily in this way is ca ll ed ma/ rrirulo. or b:idh· r;1ised. The term respcto . and c-,peciall~· th~ 11eg;1ti,·e phr:i-;ing, fa/ta d e resjJeto. Llten. is an i111pona11L tool in teaching the ch ild hi s place in Lli c l;1mily and th e community in iLs large~t sen!-ic. Th e soc ial r e li('I , Lh e ma l criado, he who \'iol :1Les soci;il u-,:1~<.: by l:1ili11 ~ to behave in the accepted :ind c.:xpect<.:d \\':ty. lack-. n·speto both for individual-. :ind ithLit11Lions_ I le sh:11tH''> his fami ly, loses his lric:11ds. :111d rnav ~rnncLilll<.:~ en d up as the [!, IUljJO, or Loug h g uy, o[ the' COlllll11t lti ty. Frequentl y o lder people will decry Lhe la ck of respeto in younger o nes. Thi s is a reflection o( the d ySocialization at Different Age Levels namics of socia l usage which is in itse)( a reflection of R espeto.- Since all societies demand specific kinds the dynamics of social stntcLurc. Be havior which was o[ reciprocal rela tio nships a mong their various m em- considered appropriate o r even m a ndatory in a prebers, the Tabara in fa n t learns early the kind of be- vious period may now be looked upon as superlluous havior wh ich is considered appropria te to him a nd or even foolish. The patterns a nd the dema nds or to other members of the society. H e is taught both b y respect, indeed the socia l relationsh ips w hich ca ll them precept and example what are the proper responses into being a nd depend at lea st somewhat o n Lheir to other children a nd to adults of both sexes and all existence for their own prcservaLio n, are themselves economic and social levels. At the same time h e learns undergo ing change. But whi le th e co nte n t o f the the prescribed kinds of behavior req uired of him 1:e.s/Jelo re_lationships may show some profound changes toward all other people in most possible situations. lrom earl ier a r rangem e nLs, th e form of the instillltion, The word generally used to d escribe the proper be- its functional importance as a sta bili1.er o f socia l relahavior and response to o thers in social situ ations is tionships, still retains a g reat deal o f genu ine importance. resfJeto. This may be loosely and inadequately defined as respect. It is, in fact, a great dea l more, since there The term re.speto is one o( the dev ices used to inare no absolutes determining what constitutes respect- tegrate the ch ild in to the social se uing. Largely ful behavior in all situations. More properly, respeto through the use o( this term a nd by means o( o ther may be described as behavior or response appropriate sa nctions h e comes to understand the form a nd content of the r e lationships not on ly b e tween himself and to one's age, sex, social and econom ic status and to the age, sex, social and economic status of the others in- the rest or the world b ut between his father and volved in a n y given situation marking the interaction mother, between an adult mal e of one cla:;s and that of two or more individuals. vVhat constitutes such ap- of a nOLh er. He knows th at his m o Ll1 er is expected to propriate behavior is customarily known a nd recog- wash his father's feet, to prepare the food s he likes if nized. I shall n ot discuss the elements h ere, merely th a t is poss ible, to obey his sex ual d emands, and so on; make the obvious observation that th e patterns of this he learns w h at is the proper kind of behav ior bCt\·\'CCll behavior have been both historically and functio nally h is father and the landlord. I n short, h e com es to determined. The changes which are continual ly tak- understand not o n ly his ow n place in the world in ing place in the mutual arrangements subsumed under re lat ion to his family and to hig h e r integratio ns bethe descriptive term respeto or course renen changes yond, but he learns also what are Lh e r c la tionsh ips of in the functiona l relationships between th e various a ll kinds and leve ls or people w iLhin the C011l llllll1ity members, classes, and occupational groups of the so- to each 0Li1er. \Vhe11 the forms a1·e o b served , Lh e participanLs in Lli e vis-;·1-vis sitttaLion are -;aid to be behavciety.

the consensual union is considered a binding marriage truly cemented at the birth of the first child. r\. high percentage of these marriages endure until the death of one of the partners. \\Thereupon remarriage is usually a practical necessity and ensues if a partner is available and if the surviving spouse is not too old or ill. The marriage pictu re would not be complete without mention of the numbers of young girls who do not receive parental supervision, e ither because o( laxity of the parents, because the home has been broken earl y by death or separation, or because the g irl h as been working away from home si nce preadolescent days. These are the girls who may be found dancing in the roadside scores on a Su nday afternoon. \\Thile they are not available for casual sexual adventures, they are more like ly to enter into the quasi-respectable, semipermanent relationship of mistress or second or third wife to the passing chau ffeur, the upper-class man, or the local Don J uan of their own class than are their better guarded sisters. \ .Vhen such a relationship ends, the girl may enter into another, or, possibly into a real marriage. But because there is some stigma attached to her previous status, she may have to move to another place to find this husband . A r elationship of the querida, or second wife, type w ith a man of a higher income level usually bene fits both the g irl and her fam ily economica lly.

TABARA: TOBACCO AND MIXED CROPS MUNICIPALITY

ing· properly towards one another. \ \Then they are viola~ecl it is because either or both behaved with fa/ta de resj1eto. He learns too that the unsanctioned behavior, the vio lation o( the code o[ respectful treatment, may be cause for broken friendships, for quarrels, and even for fights. He learns, if he is a lower-class ch ild, that he is e~pcctcd to run errands, ca1:ry bundles, and in general respond with prompt obed ience to the con:un.ands ~f adults of anv class; that to a lesser degree !us lather 1s e:-:penecl to ·perform certai~ little unpaid services not o nl y for the lan.dlord. ~ut lor ~.th er adults of some s~­ ci al swllls as a sign o[ respect. He learns too that !us 0 ,\. 11 position is not i11e:•itably im1_nutable, not forever dc:tcriuinC'd by the acudent o( birth, but that he or ;inYnlJC else m:iy ;ictu:illy 111nve 11p in the social hier:tn'. ll\· :ind. a" he docs so, al Ler the respect relationships bcl\\:ccn hiinsc lf and a ll others. 1

Children Tile <0111ing of the llrst baby is awaited eagerly. Th e \ nu11g wile will prepar.c clo thes and beclc!ing for h e l>:tlJ\. in wh:1tc\·cr quanuty a nd as elegant 111 qual~t\ a" ltt: r p<Hkc11Jonk will permit. Her fam ily will also gi\·c lier ,,·1t:11c ,·cr presents lor the baby they may be :,bl<: 10 :tl lonl. During pregnancy, the young wife's ;,wst inqJorta1ll co11lid:111te and counselor is her own mother if she is ;n·ailablc. \Vhen her daughter is clue ·i ,·e birth, the mother will generally arrange to be to ...g t w a u e1:d her. T Ile young w1·1·e see k·s no mediprcsen cal advice during pregnancy unless there are com)l icat ions. but she will by custom try to eat more eggs, 11 ·cken milk, and malt beer at this time and refrain cu . l w1_.fe, brought from ce'rtain other foods . T Ile Ioca I m1c b , her husband at the onset o( labor parns, attends l) r with the help o( her mother, the husband usually 1 C: ·c· . outs ide to be ca lled in for a glim1)se of the '"'"'tl 1 110 b . baby when the birth 1s over. In_ theory, hus?and and wife wait forty days after the birth o( a child before they resume sex relations. In. actual practice the time la)' be shortened to three or lour weeks. n 'The newborn baby is breast- [ etl on a se l (-demand ' ·ched u le for the first year of his life- sometimes longer ~f a new baby does not replace him. Some time between cigh t rnomhs and a year old he is introduced to such solid foods as rice gruel, oatmeal, mashed potatoes or taniers. He is generally cared for almost exclusivelv by his mother during the first year o( his life, but ;ftcr the birth of the next child, his father will assume some of his care- especially that of feeding him (usu ally in the father's lap and from the father's plate) and ta~ing him for ·walks. The new _baby generally sleeps 111 a coy, a cloth han'.moc ~ ~val_1 a firm base, for most ol his first year. As lus activity mcreases -at nine or ten months- he is moved to the bed o( his parents. '\!he n the next baby arrives, i( he is still too sma ll to sleep with the- older ch ildren, he may simply b e 1110\·ecl over to the father's side of the bed. Toile t tra ining is genera lly accomplished during this time. On ly rarely is spa nking used as a training technique, frequ ent urgings to use the chamber pot,

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night wakings by the mother, and scolding for mishaps being the preferred methods. A few fami lies make little consistent effort at toilet training-letting it come b y mild suggestion and with maturity. The baby moves out of his parents' bed to that of an older brother, sister, or relative, or to a bed, or more usually a hammock, of his own , or sometimes to a mat on the floor, wh en he is around four or five years o ld. Before he is two-and-a-half, he can generally feed himself (in a metal plate on the floor and generally with his fingers) . He now eats regular family food, and his schedule is an approximation of the earlier selfdemand, inasmuch as regular mealtimes in which all of the family sit down together are unknown; a nd he may come in for his mea ls at almost any time, eating what there is to be found in the way of raw or cold cooked food. A child's food preferences are respected insofar as the family can provide for them- e .g., ripe raw bananas in place of boiled green ones if the child prefers.6<> Unless specifically escorted b y his father or older brother, cousin, or the like, the very young child does not leave his own house or his mother. His mother, because of the restrictions on he r movements, rarely leaves him, carrying him ·with her on all her social or semisocial outings. H she must go to the doctor, or to the store, or, more rarely, to work, the baby is entrusted to some relative with whom she is intimate. There are few toys for the baby, and his principal play contacts are the older children and adults who spend hours holding him, fondling him, laughing at his first efforts at walking and talking. A nd most of his play is imitative of these adults-usually w ith the same tools they use. Consequently a child develops manual skills and mastery at a comparatively early age. A three-year-old can peel a mango ·with a carving knife. A six-year-old can handle a hoe adequately enough to have his labor valued, and usually knows how to use a machete. Breakable objects like eggs and spillable ones like open bottles of kerosene are entrusted to four- or five-year-olds to be carried. At about school age- five or six-children of bo th sexes can be sent on errands to the store or to a neighbor's house-boys alone, g irls more usually in groups of two or three. In general, boys have much more freedom than girls at any age. Boys may loiter longer in the schoolyard, may hang around the roads and stores. Girls return directly from school to confine themselves to their O\vn home or that of a nearby aunt, cousi n, or grandparent. But all children are expected to keep themselves available for work if n eeded. Both sexes, as soon as they are physically a ble, hunt firewood, fetch ·water from the streams, feed and move the a nimals, and care for the younger childre n. J obs more specifically for boys are certain types of m a nual labor with a hoe or shovel, carrying drinking water to the ·working GO Any of the child care discnssccl in these and the following paragraphs except breast-feeding, of course, ma y be taken over by older male or female siblings. The mother-figure for many children is a grandmother, aum, mother-by·adoption. older sister, etc.

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46

THE PEOPLE OF P UERTO RJCO

tcntions he has com e to d ep end upo n. \ \Then h e is fretful he is freque ntly pacified by a p romise ol a special treat or o uting-a pro mise h e soon learns to lo q~e t, for it is rare ly carri ed o ut; or some ti m es these 1111 fulfdle d promises may be employed LO in du ce socia lly acceptable beha vi o r o f o th er kinds. If his baby !ears can be contrasted with adult co urage in a g iven situatio n , h e may j o kingly or sn eeringl y be called couarclt: ("cowanl"). i\fo re and more, as h is play becomes imitative of adults, he is teased a nd m ocked fo r no t a ccomplishing resu lts " ·ith adult skill. :\II aspec ts o [ th e child·s behavior and personality m:1 y be disc11!'! -;cd ope nl y in his presence . H h e is g uiltv nl '> <>Ille !'! oc i:dl y u11a< « L' ptablc beha vio r, just pi1111i11g a l:1bc: I 0 11 it a nd :1ppl ying th e label lrequc:ntl y a nd ,-igorou-.h· i-. looked llJ Hln :1,., th e prope r technique.: lor c ol TL'< Ling Lil <' c 011d it ic >11. Such names inc lude: : 11og o (' 'l:11 y O il (; " ) . /lo r 1)11 (" n y·b:di y") , buli a ("slo w lea rn c:r·· ). Jn1tT«I (" 'ba d \\·ork<:r·· ). riq!JL ("bad clea ner " ). 111i.\ c1ril1l<' ("' o. t i11g' o ne ·· ). l n-11111 ("' ignorant o ne'·). /)(1 (10 ('" loo !" ') . 11u1; ({ rf1·r 11. 111 oft·s/oso. r n sorroso (" 11uisa11cc"" ·· sc t1.... cckc: r" ). 11 f re 11f(l( fu. /({m/Jio ("greed y o ne." c.:" pc:c ia ll y "over-cater·· ). rgo/.,/11 (a " rn efirster''), en-uirlio\rJ ('" c 11 \ ioth one:' ') . t •111cduru (" m a licious goss ip' } T h e harshest lon ns or d iscipl i11 c: :ire gc:ncr:il ly reThe Young Child served fo r teachin g obedi e nce and p erson:d h o n es ty. A V irtually Crom the time of his birth the baby is an child is taug ht to obey p romptly th e co mm a nds a n d object of a great deal of attention. If there a re older requests o( his c iders. Failure to respond may be fol brothers or sisters capable of caring for him, they will lowed by shou t ing. I( that does no t work, i t will be assume respo nsibility for his amusement and d iversion follow ed by beating th e child around th e legs and during his wa king ho urs. Grandparents, other relatives, buttocks with a stick o r a leathe r be lt. He lea rns e arly or visitors will devote considerable time to pl aying " ·ith that he ma y n o t strike back at his e ld e rs and superiors, the baby. H e is deprived of this kind of a lmost con- n or may he p in upon th em the same labe ls fo r antitinual a ttentio n only when there a re no older broth- social behavior that they assig n to him. H e le arns poers or sisters, no grandparents or older re latives. lite address early-gene rally answe ring his mother, 1£ h e is an only child under these circumstances, his "Sefi o ra," whe n sh e calls him. His moth er tea ches him mother will devote many hours during the day to car- respect for his fath er by beating and scolding him Cor impude nce and by continually ve rbalizing th e need for rying him aro und and playing with him. 'W hile it is undoubtedly true th a t much of the h a n- such respect a nd emphas izi ng the fath er·s place of dling, holding, kissing, a nd fondling which the grown- hono r in the ho usehold through h er own a c ts of defe rups practice is a source of pleasure for them, it is more ence to him. importantly a device for indulging th e child, for they At about five or s ix ye ars, he beg ins to learn the need will freque ntly carry the practice beyon d the point o f for m odesty and privacy b y be ing sent into anothe r obvio us exhaustion or at least of boredom if the child room, if there is one, or out o( the house when a p erson o ( the oppos ite sex changes cl o thes, bathes, or uses pro tes ts at b eing put down or neg lected. It is commo n practice to stimu late the child eroti- the chamber po t. At th is a ge, he begins to fee l ashame d cally by fondling or kiss ing his genita ls-teaching h im if caug ht n aked o r w ith his genitals exposed. The how " to milk the cow" or " put the car in gear." If he sh a ming starts earlie r fo r girls than for boys- the ir becomes fretful one m ay thrust a pacifie r into h is wea ring o[ pants some t imes be ing delayed to the mouth, carry him around, rock him, sing to h im or seventh o r eig hth year. o therwise try to divert him, since it is considered unTh ere is a gen eral to le ra n ce to wa rd child r en's quarwise to permit him to cry, and he will only be allo wed r els, but a child of suffic ie nt kno wledge may b e punto do so w hen other duties of the mother ma ke i t im- ish ed ancl'c1ccusecl o( be ing mal r riado if h e is ca ug ht possible for h er to g ive him a ll the atte ntion h e de- d el iberately d o ing physical injury to another childm ands. some times if h e uses parti cularly ba d words. As he comes to r espond to speech , certa in verbal Th e child learns pro pe r b e ha vio r toward th ose of slereotypes may be employed to make him perform in su p e rior economic stalus : first, by the example o( his the desired way. If h e seems stubborn or irri table to pare nts arnl c ide rs; secon dl y, b y open di scussion of the a dul ts or o lder childre n in cha rge o ( him , th ey wh at cons titutes co1-rcct be havio r ; a nd , thi rdly, b y h is may say: " T hen I 'm going away . . . ," a th rea t, o fte n early a nd tho roug h familia r ity w ith th e eco nomic fo cts ca rried o ut, of aba ndo nment o r de priva tio n o r th e a t- that support the n eed for such behavior. H e knows

men in the fields, and toting bundles. Girls learn cleaning, cooking, washing and ironing. Around eleven or twelve, children are expected to start paying a part of their own way. A girl or boy may leave home to become a servant or general helper, usually being paid in fo od, clothes, and possibly a little pocke t money. Boys most usually leave this kind o( work when they are big enough for real agricultural labor. Girls may continue and become regular salaried servants. If they work in agriculture, the g irls and young boys weed, transplant, remove insects from tobacco plants. The girls learn to sew the tobacco leaves. At about fifteen, ~ boy is considered old enoug h to do a man's work with the h oe and m achete. A t eighteen he may expect ro get a m an's wage. At eigh teen, a girl is lega lly old enough to do sewing or glove work Lo augment the fam ily income, although she has probably been learning a nd helping out for some time if her mo ther or an older sister has bee n do ing the work. ·w ages of the minors for agricultural labor are paid to the father who, if he can, will use the money to bu y clothes and other essentia ls for the childre n as they need them. l\Iore ofte n it goes towa rds the family mea ls.

TABARA: TOBACCO AND J\IIXED CROPS i\lUNICIPALITY

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47

tween him and his male friends both before and after marriage. He will be more likely to select a girl because he admires her appearance than for other reasons, it being generally assumed that she has received ample training in housekeeping duties and will be competent to discharge these functions in a fashion consistent with the needs and resources of the couple's economic status. The young girl of the rural lower class most commonly enters marriage with advance knowledge of what to expect of sex re lations. She has received no verbal instruction in this from her mother or other female relatives (for it is a subject their modesty will not permit them to discuss), but because of the crowded family sleeping quarters she has undoubtedly been witness to performances of the sex act. As a small child she probably played accurately imitative sex games with h er cousins or close neighbors. But with the onset of puberty, her activities are much more resu·icted and she is carefully watched by her mother and other adult relatives. She is taught to fear the advances of all men. She is not permitted to go out a lone. v\Tithin her home, she confines herself to domestic activities, preparing the food, and washing, ironing and mending the clothes of her brothers and the young children, fetching the water. From overheard conversations between her father, brothers, and their friends, or from those repeated to her by her female relatives, from frequent discussions with her sisters and female cousins and friends, and from her observations of her parents, she learns of her potentialities as sex object, sweetheart, a nd wife. If such beMa le-Fem a le Relationships-Sex Differences havior does not meet with strong parental objections, Before ,\Jrirriage.-The young man entering mar- she will try to make herself physically attractive on riage must be vrep~red_ to take over th: role of protec- social occasions, and usually goes to her few, welltor and au th on t y m l11s new home. Smee the days of chaperoned outings dressed, combed, and powdered his birth "·he n the size of his genitals was admired by with as much a rt as her skills a nd pocketbook will his famil\' a nd exhibited to visitors, he has been en- permit. couraged · to be, 111aclio (a "real man," "virile:'). His Her conception of love is m ost usually a romantic masculinitv is frequently exhorted and tested m feats one-strengthened by the strong love theme contained of strengcI{, sornct~mes in intel_lectual an~ m~chan_i~al in many of the traditional and popular songs. The skills in his capacity to hold hquor and 111 lus ability customary secrecy of the courtship period and the not to de fend his and his family's honor. In the absence of uncommon elopement which follows add to the rohis father, he is expected to assume responsibility for mantic aura of her relationships with the opposite sex. the virtue of his sisters and the good name of his Ideally, she seeks a man whose masculinity she may be mother. Jn the event o( the death of his father, the proud of and who will appreciate the services and deo ld est son carries these responsibilities in toto, and is votion she will bring to him. titular h ead of the family. During adolescence and After marriage, the wife's sex role should b e one young manhood, he has abstained from performing of almost passive acceptance. She should n ot refuse her "women's work" within his own home (i.e., washing, husband, but neither should she exhibit too much cleaning, ironing, etc.) and has likewise been accorded abandon or enjoyment during the sex act for fear her the masculine prerogatives of much greater mobility, past will be suspected. Sex with abandon and high of choosing his own companions, and having his activi- enjoyment is usually considered the province of prostities questioned only by his father. However, until he tutes and women of loose virtue. actually leaves the house of his father, the latter mainThis is far from a complete picture, a lthough it is tains a certain amount of control over the work habits, perhaps the one most frequently encountered. Not all political acti\·ities, and earnings o( his son. Tabarefios of the rural lower class are pretty or m.uy The young man of the rural lower class rarely en- macho-yet most of them get married. Not all rural ters m arriage a virgin. His first sex experience will girls are so well supervised that they may not enter into probably come shonly after puberty with a prostitute. temporary relationships with young men. Some marHis sexual p otency will be a source of much talk be- riages break up and are re-formed with different partwhere his father's money comes from; that the wood he seeks for the family fire is on the landowner's farm; that the cow he tends and the milk he sometimes gets to drink belong to the landowner; that the very house he lives in is given through courtesy of the landowner; and that the clothes he wears may be cast-offs of the landowner's children. Jn his play relationships with the landowner's children 0 ( his age group he may never feel himself on a quite equal footing. If, as frequently happens, the play is internqncd by an adult wah a request for a chore or an errand, it is he, not the more fortunate ch ild, who is c;.;pcctcd to respond promptly. If a minor accidc11t occurs i11 the course o( play, it is likely to be he who "·ill bc blalllcd for getting the others in trouble. For a rni11or oflense tO either child or parent, he may be forbidclcn Lo seek. renewal of the play relationship. Prejudices aga inst him for his ~lirty clot_hes, or habits. or c,·e11 the unseemly behav10r of Ins relativcs a.re trccly ,·oiced in front of him. And if the play relationship bcl\l'ce11 t \\'O boys ~)f dif~e~·ent ~lass does manage w stay i11Lact o,·cr_a pe1:wc~ o[ tI~ne, It may ulti match· t:mergc as a relauonsl11 p m which the lowerclass cli.ild is little better than the personal servant of the uppc r-cLi~s boy and jumps to respond to his every requcsl. As mi<Yht be expected in these lowest economic groups where there is so Ii_ttle to be shared by so many, there is a strong emphasis on personal honesty. Punishmem or sma ll children (or petty thievery or destructive mischief is a prompt and severe beating.

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148

THE PEOPLE OF P UERTO RICO

ners with very little love or romanticism involved. Families may m arry off a daughter to a man much older than she is because they are under obligation to him; marriages may often be a product o( convenience or economic necessity; or they may simply arise from an urgent desire to leave home.

After Marriage.-The young couple expects a child within the first year of marriage. Birth control devices are known to exist but are not frequently utilized for a number of reasons, some of which are: they are expensive; they are a nuisance; they interfere with the ma n's pleasure; they don't a lways work anyway; it is sin.Cul not to accept the children God gives one; m any children are proof of a man's virility; children a re the "riches of the poor" and loved for their own sake; or even that it is more Puerto Rican, more traditio nal to have a large family. If the failure to make use of birth control devices results in an oppressive increase in the size of the family, the woman may try to abort a pregna ncy in the early months. Abortion is attempted tluough the use of a mixture of local herbs or by purchase of a specia l medicine from the town pharmacy. In general, the man is considered the provider and master of the home, while his wife is the a11ia (mistress o r housekeeper) of the house, the one ·who is al ways there doing services for the master and the children. The man's friends, his working companions and drinking companions, become friends of the family and are granted whatever hospitality their position and his means allow. He has full a uthority over his wife, a nd her family will rarely interfere with his treatment of her unless he physically abuses her too much o r fails to provide for her and the ch ildren. . Usua lly the man handl es the family money, rece iv111g pay for his own and his ch ildren's work direc tly from the landowner, and using it as he sees fit. If his wife works outside the home, the money she earns is paid to her, but she is expected to contribute it to provide for the fam ily needs. Most often, the father does the shopping at the store, bringing home on payday a week's supply of rice, beans, tomato sau ce, coffee, a nd sugar. For sudden lacks during the week, the mother will send one o( the children to the store, tither to pay with cash or to buy on credit, the accou nt being settled by the father later. Whatever extra money the fam ily may h a ve is generally kept in a chest in the main room of the home. Most families have an easy relationsh ip o( mutual trust and confidence, and in these homes the chest may b e left unlocked or the wife entrusted with the key. If, for any reason, the husba nd doubts the judgmen t or honesty of his w ife and childre n, he will b e apt to lock the trunk and keep the key with him. In these cases, o r in cases where there is n o cash at all, many w ives sell corn or a few eggs, if they h ave them, to the ambulant buyers or the loca l storekeeper either w ith or without their husband's knowled ge. Wage workers with subsistence plots, sh arecro ppers with tobacco and su bsistence plots, and sm a ll la nd-

holders with either o r both ta ke majo r rc~ po n s ibility for supervision of the "·ork. " ' hat work the women and childre n do is apportio ned and checked b y them . But care o( th e po ultry and animals in whi ch most of the family's e xtra cash may b e invested is u sually the province o[ th e wife. And i( she is care[ul and lucky she may h ere m a ke a comribution to th e [amily incom e and diet. The young wife rarely leaves h e r h o use . During the first year o( marriage, when the coupl e gene rally lives with one o f the families, she can be supervised by her m other or m other-in-la\\·. It "·ottld be considered a fa/ta d e res/>«lo to he r hu!>band ii she \\TH! to spend much time "·ith ne ig h bor-. \\'here th <:n.: ,,·c:rc likely lo be me 11 pr<.:!>U lt. or to frequent th (' lnc:d store (even for lcg iti111 at<.: errand:-.) \\·h e n.: th e 111 e 11 go to drink. 'When, afte r th e l>irth o( th <.: lir:-.t l>:il>~· . th e young fam il y m;1 y lllO\'C to a hot1:-.c of th c: ir 1l\n,1. just her domestic rc:spo11 sibilities ,,·otdd prol>ahl ~ ;, ulfit c to keep th e wi fe at ho me . Th e 11t1r;,ing l>:1 h v. the chickens that run around freely . the goal'> wh icl{ mu ... t be staked and mo,·cd about. a 11d the pig- ii th ry arc lucky enough Lo ha,·c 011e- for ,,·hit h she rnti-.t tn<>k . the preparatio n or th e famih·'-; Jl1('a ls \\·ith a lire of green \\·oo d o n th e f ogri11 ,~·hitl1 rc qu ire,, c 011 ;.tanL watching- all these and other duties tend fulh· to occupy the waking hours of the you ng m o th e r. ' As her children grow older and the younges t reaches an age of relative ind ependence, the mother may again rewrn to work in th e toba cco fields. H she has sk ill as cook , nurse, or dressmaker, sh e m ay now assist her neighbors with grea te r frequenc y. J\s h er children grow up, marry, and leave ho m e, she m.ay v is it them often; especiall y will she try to be "·ith the m at such important life crises as th e birth of a n ew baby. Now that she is older a nd less burdened with the cho res of housekeeping and baby-tending, it will be cons ide red proper for her to visit with the neighbors or LO pass the time of day with th e storekeeper whil e sh e makes a purchase. Recreation

The chief, semiorga nized recre ations fo r the families of this lowest income grou p are the rosarios and velorios offered by themselves, th e ir n eighbors, or their relatives. In actual p e1·formance the two have many similarit ies, but a rosorio is a more joyfu l occas ion, a time of singing and gaye ty, while a ve lorio, which is the equivalent of a wake, is more solem n. Th e re are several kinds o( rosa rios, one o( which is known as rosario canlado, or a sung rosa ry. This kind is generally reserved for fulfi llment o( a promise to a saint for favo rs rende recJ .r. 1 r.1 There is also a form o f vr/orio c:clehratecl in case o( th e death of a very young child which ma\· he a joyfnl o ccasion. a time of singing and 111od e ra1~· gaye t y, on the assumption that th e pure soul of th e 11nspoilcd r hild m11st ascend 10 hcav<'n. These have been desnilJed for isolat l'd pan s of th e aclio i11i11g 111u11icipality of Coro hy se \·er;il i11fo r 111 ;1111 s. :'\o one i11tcn·iewcd in Ta bara r eca lls this t yp e of ve/111ir1 h l' H' in recen t )<:ars.

TAnARA: TOBACCO AND l\IIX ED CROPS i\<I UN ICIPALlTY

In o ne of the rooms of the house, a table is prepared Lo serve as an altar. It may be decorated with palm branches and flowers. It holds pictures of sa ints, images-if there are any available- a supply of candles co be kept burning throughout the n ight, and a chain o( rosa ry beads. On a bench in front of this table sit Lwo m en, or two " ·omen, or a man and a woman, one to recite the rosary chant a few phrases at a time, the othe r to lead the assembled guests in the choral sectio ns. The recitation takes about half an hour, and t here arc three or four repetitions of it throughout t he night. friends and relatives and t heir children sc:1 t t11c111sch·es on benches or on the floor around the room. :\t th e s unµ; rosarios. there will be playing and si 11 Ri11g of man y oC the re ligious folk songs between pr:; ye rs- the acco111pa11 ime11t provided by a guitar, !.f;iiirn. :1 11d cun t ro . The usual refreshment is black ~-otrce o r cocoa , se1T ed t\\'ice dmi11g the n ight. Illegal rum is prepared for the men and usually consumed outs id e 011 th e bat cv (a cleared space around the h ouse), \\·h ere su ch drinking \\'ill not be too obvious. On th ese occasio ns- as well as on others- the drinking of' the \rn111c n \\·ill be more carefully concealed, fewer women l11a11 m en actuall y participating. Hut co11Yc rsation is by far Lhe mos t important recrea tio n for this group. For the housewife, it is conversation confined to her immediate family, brief bits with neig hbo rs and wi th those m embers o f the extended fam ily who live away from the immediate neighborhood and come visiting on Sundays, holidays, and " dead" days, and visiting while wash ing clothes at the s t ream, etc. For t he m an there are m any more opportunities: during \~o rking hot~rs , du.ring free tim e, on Sunda ys and, w t he even mgs alter work, at the tie11dos. Drink ing is n early universal among this group, most of it taki ng place during fiestas, in free time on Sundays, and during the dead season . Drinking in publ ic places is reserved to the men . But or~l y in p~riods of r e lative afnucnce ma y the poor man mdulge 111 much public drinking, for n~ost o ( th e liqt~or sold over .the counter is the lega l k111d, and th at lS too expensive. Quan ti ty drinking takes place in one's ~lom e, in the home of a frie nd , on the botey, or outside the rural store. In most cases the l iquor is the illegal kind purcha sed from a n eighbor who is an agent for t he local sti ll , or from the still ow ner himself if he li ves n earb y. If the wife has an easy, companio nate relationship with h er h usba nd, she may drink wi th him-i f not, she will do her drinking escondidas, or on the sly. Gambling in the form o f illegal cockfi ghts and d ice games is p racticed on Sundays in the rural areas, especially during t h e tobacco season. During the dead season, the ga th erings persist, but the gambling stops, con versa t ion again taking precedence as the chief form of recrea tion. Re ligion

Church attendance by the p eople of this group is i rregula r and gene rally infrequent. The men of the

149

remote rural a reas, being generally less en cumbered on Sundays, attend church with greater frequency than the women. 6 ~ Special effort is made to a ttend mass during Christmas week, during the Fiestas Patronales or Senuma Sa nta, but, except for the latter, these are by no m ea ns regular annual outings for everybody. l'viany of the children do attend the doctrinal schools which a re conducted in the rural ar eas specifically for them. Although church attendance is not very common among these segments (especially female) of the rural population, participation in the religious and secular services and events which attend b irth, death, a nd the "paying of a promise" is common. These opportunities for socializing are heavily larded with rel igious ritual in the case of death and its attendant ceremonies, less so in the case of a prom esa, far less so in th e case of a baptism. But the chief advantage of a 11 these b asically religious performances is that the most important part of the celebration is conducted at home, a nd this is particularly appropriate for a p eople who are condemned to a relative isolation, not so m u ch b y reason of their distance from

G~ In this connection it is interesting to note that older informants say that Sunday u sed co be the important marke ting day in Spanish times. This \\'O ni el mean an enforced visit to the pueblo to buy and sell food, supplies, and produce. The men were those m ost like ly to make the trip, the families somewhat less likely to accompan y them. Once in to wn the master of the family purse would do the n ecessar y trading ; the rest of the fami ly \\'OUld, if prescm , go to ser\'i ces in the church. To\\'ll traders we re a lso the m en in the fami l)'. T hus, the chief churchgoers were the wome n of the to wn , while the men were engaged in marketing and the accompanying socializing . With the Sun day market in the pueblo gone as a probable consequ ence of improYed communication and transport ation fa cilities, the expansion of truck-borne peddling, and the increase in nurubers and quality of the rural s tores, rural males n o lon ger need to make the \\'eckly trip to town. H o\\·e,·er , we note what appears co be a pers isten ce of the practice with a s lightly n e w functional emphasis. Men in the m ost isolated areas of Tabara (th is is not as trne of Salvado r and Quito as it is of the most remoie parts of Aliicar and Colina) arc fa ir ly consistent churchgoers; they journey to and from town on a Sunday in groups to attend and to enjoy the opportunities for socializing which are less commonly ava ilable to them, th a n to the n.iales of the less isola ted areas. The effect of this may be plainly seen in the characte r of church attenda n ce. There are always more males from the rural ar eas tha n females, more females from the u rban area than males. Rural lower -class wives remain at home to care for the children and to pre pare the meals. Additional evidence from field work shows-besides the fa ct that lower-class m en arc gen erall y the traders for the ir familiesthat Sunday is still the favo red trading c1<1y in the rural areas, th e roadside stores repo ning a much greater volume o f business 0 11 this than any other da y in the week. Exchange of minor cro ps between neighbors is more common o n this day too . In Tabara, \\'here there has always been subsisten ce and mino r crop produc tion, the local p riest, who comes from a su gar an d coffee community in a nother part o f the island, r eports that h e was surprised to find that the majority of ch u rchgoers Cro m the rural areas were lower·class ma les. T h e overwhelming p r oportion of Tahara·s stron gest church societ y (H ol y Na m e) are lowe r-class males fro m the rura l areas. The merchants and local olfrcials of th e pueblo do not attend church except o n the most im portant holidays; nor do the upp er-class rura l and urban m ales wh o commonly identify an d a ssociate with them.

150

THE PEOPLE OF PUERTO RICO

the main road, but because of their econ omic condi- from fiestas and other joyful occasions for a " respectful" (va riously estimated between three months t0 tion. The party which invariably follows the church two yea rs) period of time. baptism of a child is a happy occasio n of drinking, Althoug h the re is a Baptist church in town, a nd aldancing, and singing. A religious ceremony has been thoug h a few residents of La Cima arc grad uates o f its excuse, but the estab lishing o( the ritual kin re la- Tabara 's Baptist Acad emy, there are n o Protestants in tionships is the item of real importance which calls th e nll"al area. J u st three weeks before l left the for an a ppropriate celebration. A rosario promesa is community a sm a ll grou p o( Espiritislas had lau n ched a series of prayers interspersed with music and gayety; a series o( semiweekly meetings in the house o( a n and in C<'l.se of death, telling the beads is the relig ious agregado living directl y across t h e road from the secreason for the commemoration, but the observances o n d u n it school in Sa lvador. About eight people parinclude many other things as well. ticipated in these first sessions, and I have no n ew e\· iThus, if the even ts which accompany these occasions dence to indica te whethe1· they have macle any inroads may be said to be religious, and those who participate on the formal monolithic: C:al110lici..,m ol l11i s ru1·;tl said to be participa n ts in relig io us activities, the comm uni ty. rural poor may be said to be good , practicing Catholics. However, if church attendance and other forms Compadrazgo of devotion be taken as the criteria, t hey a re far less \ \Th en a child is bapLi1ccl in die: C:1Ll 1olic c l1urcl1. religious. In general, then, it may be said that they two i11tim atc:s of tile p:trClllS an: sdc:c t<:d LO b e godparenls. Some d1ildrc:11 may h;1\·c as man~ :ts six µ;rn lare either more incl ined, better able-or both-to parents, but the L\\'O \\'Ito officiate al hi-.. < hurch l>ap· partake of those aspects of the religious life which a re conducted closer to home and which o ffer oppor- tism are c:onsidc:rcd the mo-;t impnrt:t111.'' 1 Tr:tdi1io11 · ally the godmotltc:r rnpplics the <lot he-; \\'hie h the: tu n ities for socializing. Soon after a child is bo rn, there may be a home baby \\·ill \\'Car to th<: church, the godlathn. a gilt to baptism called ecliar agua (literally, "to throw water") the ch ild . ~o\\'~1days 1h c g ift is u sually ;1 sm:tl I su 111 wh ich is tho ught to insure the ch ild's salva tio n until o( money, bu t in form e r times it may ha\'C h cc 11 ;1 pig. a cow, or somethi ng eq u ally \'a lt tablc ii th <.: sta tus ol the money a nd time for a uth entic church b a p t ism can be secured. Because the second baptism is some- the godfath er permitted. A godfather is s upposed to times ignored, the church does not sanction home bap- care for his godchild i n the event that the child's own tism s except where the child is expected to die before parents die or cannot provide for him , but in practice formal b aptism can be arranged, but it is still not in the rural areas o( Tabara orph ans and des ti tutes uncommon, an d in most cases real baptism by a are most frequentl y adopted b y relatives or neigh b ors priest soon follows. An unbaptized child is called a who are in t imate with the chi ld but may no t be his moro (literally, a "~loor"), and social sanctions against ritual parents. him would be strong. Those a dults \\'ho become godmothers and god On those occasions where death follows a long ill- (ath ers establ ish at th e same time a com /1n dre o r ness, the coffin has frequently been p rocured during comaclre r e lationsh ip wi t h the p a ren ts o f t h e ch ild. the illness a nd placed at the foot o f the bed oE the This rel a tionshi p receives much more e mph a sis than the relationship between the f1adri110 ("godfather") sufferer, awaiting the burial which takes place on t h e day followi ng death. O ften the coffin will be rented and his ahijado ("godchild"). On ce estab li shed it for a small charge a nd returned after the unboxed mea n s that the com/Htdres must ma in tai n a warm, body has been deposited in the gr ave. T he priest is co-op erative fr iendsh i p, that they must n ever fi g ht, sent for to administer l ast rites wh en the patient seem s that they m ay not covet the wife or even the w idow to be losing ground. Immediately after death, the o( their com/1adre. 0 •1 Com/Jadres address each other as body is cleaned and dressed in buttonless clothes by compai (trun cated form o( comf1adre) a nd although a member of the fam ily. T hat night a ve lorio is h e ld, traditio n ally they are s upposed to u se t h e fo r mal Usted in address, in practice t h ey rare ly d o u nless t h ey and in the morning family a nd friends gather to ta ke the deceased to the cemetery near the p ueb lo. vVomen wou ld do so unde r o th e r c ircumstances. T he members of the rural lowe r class gen e ra lly and children bearing b o uquets o( flowers often accompany the procession part o( the way, but if the distan ce choose their com juulres (rom among fri en ds or r e lais several miles, it is usually the pallbearers a n d their tives. Although the landowner may occas ionally ser ve reliefs only ''"ho go the entire route. For nine d ays after as fJadrino fo r a ch i kl o ( one of his sha recroppers or a death the family tries to stay united and at home. wage worke rs t he custom is not so com mon as in the During th is time they offer nightly prayers to which days of greater dependen ce o n the landlord. F o r the neighbors and other visitors come. On the ninth night, the most importa n t ve l orio is h eld . After the death c~ Others 111igh 1 lie 1hc midwife at ltis bir1h , 11te woman wh o of a parent, husband, or adu lt brother or siste r, the carri es him to 1hc r llllrr h , a separate pair to rrha1· ag11a in t h e home, a man or \\'11111an to esco rt him lo tlt e p11c blo church for ~vomen are expected to observe m ourning in the ir dress confi r m ation at th e I ittH: o f 1hc hishop "s visit. lor at least a year, sometimes longer if they so d es ire. n1 Fo 1· 1his rca,on . ii is ,aid that th e 'i1 tor in a ro tll cst for a They wear no makeup and the ir clothes are e ither girl"s hand \\'ill frcq11 e111l y ask 1hc losn lo lie god fa1he1· of his black, grey, or white. Th e famil y is expected LO rdrain fit :.t ch ild.

TAllARA: T OBACCO AND l\HXED CROPS l\lUNIClPALlTY

poor man , establishing a compadre relationship with the landowner may mean some preference in those favors tha t the landlord is in a position to offer. On h is part, the la ndo wner may be insuring himself another sta ble unit in his labor supply. The ritual kin amo ng his social equals often help a poo r man in minor matters of neighborly assistance. Fo r example, if a man's hillside spring runs dry, he may use that of his com/1adre in preference to the spring of a nearer neighbor. Or a man without wood on his land may ask a compadre who is also ritual kin of a large landowner to get fire,\·ood for him from th e large fa rmer. Health The heall11 problcllls o( the rural poor are freq11c11ily thmc of rnalnutrition- not enough or not the ri~lt t kind of food. Bi 1har1.ia (sch istosom iasis manson i), a disease that infests the rivers and streams where the peo ple bad1e and wash clothes, is more prevalent in th e p11e hl o or Taba ra than it is in any other municil'a lity o n the island . llowe\·er, it is not so grave a problem in I .a C ima. Sa h·ad or, or Quito where the rate of infection is considerably lower. Not usually a fatal disease in itself. hilhartia may frequently cause much internal pain and generally weakens resistance to other diseases. I rookwonn and o ther types of wonns and parasites are so prevalent in the rural areas that o ne function of the public hea lth nurse is periodically to supervise the administering o( vermifuges to all childre n in the rural schools. H eavy infestation with parasites may cause death, espec~a!ly in very youn~ childre n. Much of the fol k rned1cme of the area 1s d evoted to herbal or combined herbal and pharrnaceu tic<t l vcrmifuges to "clean" the stomach. The most frequent grave consequences of the general debilitation caused by bilharzia, parasites, and malnutrition are pneumo nia and tuberculosis. Among the less serious conse<]uences often attributed to such infestation arc frc<")ucn t, long-lasting colds, grippe, sores, diarrh ea, severe headaches, "shooting pains" throughout the body, and a general feeli ng o[ weakness. For these last th e1·e are many herbal remedies. Almost every house hold h as some herbs growing around it, and th ere a re many neig hborly exchanges. If home cures fo r th ese illnesses fail to work, the sufferer may make an appeal to the family saint o r visit the local curandera. But for th e most part, this group makes use of the free m ed ica l services in the pueblo. The re are four doctors in town at present.Gs One of these is a n America n who has been here for more than nine years and who enjoys the confidence of the people to a hig h degree. A no ther is the doctor assigned to the municipa l hospital who conducts an outside practice as well; the third and fourth are Puerto Ricans each of whom has a more limited private practice tha n the America n. There are two drugstores in town wh icl1 rill most of the prescriptions of the doctors and the c11m11dera. nr. This is mud1 hig he r titan the ave rage for mounta in munici· palitics.

l

51

Doctors do not, except rarely and under the most unusua l circumstances, visit the rural poor to treat them. No matter what the nature of the illness, the patient is placed in a hammock suspended from a single strong pole. Other coverings are placed o ver the p atient so that no part of him is visible, even his face being covered against the air, the sunlight, and the rain. H e is carried thus, often by several teams of neighbor-kin bearers, to the pueblo, sometimes a distance of six or seven miles. The municipal hospital has eight beds and an outp atient clinic that u-eats an average of eighty to one hundred people a day, the vast majority of these from rural areas, and supplies medicine as well. The public h ealth unit in the pueblo, which offers treatment for venereal diseases, furnishes contraceptives, a nd treats for intestinal parasites and bilharzia, is also free. Existing municipal, district, and insular hospitals and institutions for the poor supply only a small pa rt of the rea l need. Very old people are not likely to be permitted entrance to public hospitals, especially i[ their diseases are considered incurable. The physically ha ndicapped likewise cannot get treatment, even those with ailmen ts such as cleft p a la te or club feet who might be aided by present-day surgica l techniques. In the counu-y these deformities are a commo n sight. For the rural p oor, the mentally ill or de ficient a re also a special burde n. Because o[ the general inadequacy o[ free fac ilities, and because there is a strong family feeling against separation from their helpless ones, the insane and the mentally deficient are most usually to be found living in the same crowded homes with the rest of the family group. The mentally ill are often permitted to wander around freely if they are not considered dangerous. Politics The rura l poor hold no political offices and h ave no r eal politica l influence though they are the most importa nt g roup nume ricall y and their vote decides e lections. They arc m a nipulated and a ppealed to by a11 parties, but th ey are represented in the local po1i tical power structure in only token fashion. The jibaro, o r mountain peasant, is used as the symbol of the Po pular D emocratic party. l\Iufioz Marin, leader of this party a nd governor of Puerto Rico, is described as un hombre hwnilde, del pueblo, un verdadero jibaro ("a humble man," "man of the people," "a veritable jibaro" or native of the country). H e h as given a new fashio na bleness to a term which previously had h eld chiefly derogatory connotations. The sig nifi cance of Munoz' identifying himself with the jibaro is a n index of their importance in any electora l struggle. Their actual political influence, h owever, if it may be judged from the local pow~r structure in Tabara , is pathetically inconsistent with the potential of th eir o rganized and united strength in a ny election. The ir vote was considered so importa nt b y both po li tica l parties that on electio n clay cars a nd tru cks

152

THE PEOPLE OF PUERTO RICO

were sent out to bring them to the pueblo. Because their vote was most important, it was they who benefited most from the road-build ing a nd repa ir cam pa ign which preceded the election . \!\Then they voted, they fairly solidly supported i\f unoz i\farin, both from a sense of veneration for the man and out of gratitude to a program that has extended to them certain new rights such as the medianero la"·s, and workmen's compensation .06 Although there was some confus ion in the m in ds of a few who wanted to vote aga inst their land lord's party-whatever that may have been- i n general, the landlords did not or could not coerce or influence the votes of the tenants. A wife generally voted as her husband voted, bu t adult children might vote differently.

seem to be an y stro ng, intraclass s ti~ma auach ed LO such unions. There is, however , clear ev id e nce of :111 other, milder k ind o( ra cist attitude w h ich we h a ,·c ca ll ed color-consciousness. F or exa m pl e, in th e use of the term 1V egro a s a form o f direct p ersona l address.G7 But there is seemingly little assoc iation o f thi-> kind of behavior among the rural lo wer cl ass with the kind which we usuall y associate wiLh rac ism. Th e closes t one comes to such an attitude is in Lhe tendc 11cy o( some lo \\·er-class rural whi les w d escri be ve ry dar k Negroes as less aura c tive than wh ites. RURA L MIDDLE C LASS

Ownership

J n th e o uLline ol co111mt111it,· ~trw tun:. the 1:1 11 dl10ld ings of the ru ral 1n iddk clas; were li<--,c rihcd :1~ l : 1 r111~ Values of e ight LO tltirt\'-fiv e c 1u·nlr1.\ . Thi-. i-, :111 :ir!Ji tr:1r\' L aziness, failure to discharge one's obl igations to d esig nation "·hicl1 omit-. ;n least t\,·o v;1ri:1bk:-. th:1°1 one's family a nd friends, a nd dishonesty-these are h ave consid erable: i111port:111n; i11 dc:tc:rmini11~ Lhe the characteristics universa lly condemned by others real s ig nifi ca nce ol the site of the holdin1!;. Th<':-.c arc in the group. If a man find s too many reasons for the fe rtility and topography ol th e land :111d ih al>ili1y days off, if he wastes his t ime and money on liquor or to produce the cl1i e l c:i-;h and cred it crop. wb:1cn1. 111 fa ils to provide for h is fami ly because h e gamb les too p ans of t he m un ic ipalit y o l Tab:1r:1 tlie Lt11d is 1111 · much, if he finds it easier tO take than to .earn-then, suited to the production ol toba cco. Some o l tlw~c in the eyes of his relatives and neighbors he has slipped farm ers who have la11dlwlding-. o l L<.:ll to Lw<.:l\'t.: over into th e gente vaga, the gente d e mains cos- cuerdas in these a reas and who produce o nl y minor tumbres, or just esa gente (the "lazy ones," the "people crops may a c tuall y be the incom e cquivalenLs of of bad habi ts," or just "those people"). His credit farmers who have o nly four or five cuc rdas in anothe r may be stopped at the store, his neighbors may rduse part of th e mu ni c ipali ty bu t who grow some tobacco. to be h is com/Jadres, his landlord may make over tu res Som e farmers w ith in t he u p p er limits o f this e ig h t to remove him from the farm, and h is wife m ay even to th irty-five cuerda group w ho are fortuna te enough leave him. H e becomes a dependent upo n his fami ly to have relatively large tobacco quotas equate be tte r -sometimes on society. w ith the higher in come and landholding groups than Because accu mulation and the pu rchase of land by some landholders of forty to fo rty- rive c uerdas who the landl ess is often possible, and beca use th ere a re don't g row tobacco. many who have been able to rise, the idea l o( upward One or the thi ngs w h ich c hiefly characteri zes th is mobility is not com p letely a n illusio n. The share- group is its re la tive insta bili ty. B ig e nough a 11d gencropper's ne ig hbor who owns thirty cuerdas a nd has a erally diversified e noug h to take care of the ir n eeds unc.Je 1· normal cir cumstances, they arc ye t too small to daughter " ·ho is a schoolteacher may have come from ride o ut severa l reverses coming at the same t ime. a fa mil y that h ad never owned land. The prosperous sLOrekeeper o r his own la ndlord may have got his \Vhil e a combinatio n o[ luck, sweat, and/or c irc umstart as a sharecropper. H e knows that thrift, modera- s tan ces may have enabled th em to a cqui re the ir la n d tion in his recreations, and the sh re,vd ness that w ill iu a sh o rt tim e, a few ba d years in toba cco, a n exenable him to take advamage of whatever fortu ito us pe ns ive illness ~11 1d th e dea th o [ a work ing m e mber or circumstances are presented are qualities to be cu lti- the family, or ex travagances in gamb ling, dr ink , vated. There is a strong emphasis o n family un ity and moneylending, bu y in ~ saddle h orses, or lav ish e nte rco-oper atio n, for good fortu ne may come in the all- taining m ay just as soon take it all away. In general, vancement o[ a pretty d aughter or sister through in com e in this grou p is not high e nough that subma rriage, fro m a good year or two in tobacco, a sol- sta n t ia l savings for emergenc ies c:a 11 be p u t a way, nor dier's earnings, a w ife's savings in the animals, a so n's do they ofte n h ave access to cred it w hi ch is a mpl e ability to persuade a rich m a n to a d va nee crcd it for a e no ugh to see th e111 thn>11g h a barra ge or d iffic ulties. A very few scattered holdings or this size are ow ne d I ittle store, or any combination of such fa ctors that by helping one member of the fam ily indirectly aids by the: pueb lo mon ey le nders, or by other fam ili es who clo not ca re to ,,·ork them. Th ese la nd h oldings are the others. \Nithin this group there is little o( the attiwde we re nted, the in come of the renters bc i11g lower tha11 that commonly de fin e as racism. Intermarriage between Negroes and whites is not uncomm on, nor docs there

s hould b e 1101 c d here. IH)\\"C' \T 1·, 1ha 1 thi s \ C l ) sa 111t• 1e 1111 in a 1101he1· to111 t·' 1 l1y all 1'11t·1·10 Ri ta n ~ -i .c .. ;i la 1he r IO his child. or a m an 10 hi s swccth c a1·L- i, a 1en11 o( ('11dca1111c:111 I l1to11gholll I hi' j,l;111d . r.7 I I

u~ed

r.G Sec pp. 123 :Iii, The !\f1111i c ipal (;overnmcn l. fo1 d e 1ailcd dis· cussion of clec.1ion.

TABARA: T OB A CCO AND MIXE D C ROPS ;\I U:"I ICIPALITY

of o wn ers by the amount of rent less taxes on the Jand . A good year or two on a piece of remed land this size o r larger has been o ne of the first steps on the wa y up for some o( the presen t large landowners in Salvador and Quito.

J

53

ing. Unlike the farmer of this group whose e mploym ent patterns a re subject to some va ria tions, the employment of these m embers of the middJe class is d efined by their title and generally follows a set p attern. These are the storekeepers, the u-uck owne rs, the m echanics who have other family income, etc.

Employment This class is not primarily an employing class. Standard of Living Landowners with ho ldings this size usually work with Fa milies of this group usually have houses with th c i1· hands and get the largest part of their ag ricul- three or four rooms including attached kitche n. tura l labor fro m their own family. If the landowner l\fan y o( the postwar homes and a few of the older has wo rked his way up from a lower income g roup, ones have a concrete floor a nd a kind of basement that the worke rs 0 11 his farm are likely to be a poorer serves as a hurricane shelter. The wood used for conbroth e r. his fa ther-in-law, or a n uncle. Not a ll of his structio n is genera lly unused, or in good condition. ch ildrc 11 will do agTiculuiral Jabor consistently. They Sheet metal may sometimes be used as covering for the will he lp out afte r schoo l ho urs, may occasionally be entire h ouse. There are generally some addition al (arm withdr:1w11 lro111 school at harvest time; but this is buildings: a tormentera, or hurricane shed of special 110t co111111rn1. for the emphasis on education is very log a nd thatch construction; sometimes a tobacco high within this group, a11cl most of the children, drying barn; and occasionally a bohio-t ype storage cve11 the g irls. ;1 re e ncouraged to get enough education shecl. Often the furniture is of the wood-and-wicker so that they ma y qualify for such j obs as policeman, variety, but the smaller and poorer homes in this sd1ooltcachcr. nurse, mechani c, truck driver, or per- category will have the rough wooden benches and 11ia11em soldier i11 th e 11oncommissioned officer ranks. tables that characterize the poorer houses, although J) 11ri11g the la LC twe nties . thirties, and early forties, there will be more pieces. Usually there are e noug h lrnt especiall y in th<.: last fo ur o r five years, many young beds so that more than two or three sleep ers in each people from th is group became permanent migrants to is r are. H ammocks are not common. The baby may the Uni ted States . .\ligration o[ members of this group have a cri b. There may be a sewing machine. H o uses. appea rs to be at least as high as for any other, for along the road usua lly have electricity, sometimes a severa l reasons: ( 1) it was not too difficult to get cistern fo r catching rain water. Clothes a re washed in together eno ug h money to pay the passage, ( 2) the the stream and the more prosperous m ay hire a woman most likely alternative to migration for the children to d o the washing. i\Iost homes are provided with o( large famili es in this group was agricultural day outside privies. labor- nol a very appea ling choice, and (3) in large D ecoratio ns include framed pictures of saints, families th ere was no hope o( substantial inheritance, saints' images, framed diplomas and the like. Often and little reason for all the children to help out on there will be some kind of curtains for windows a nd di e farm. Jn th<.: last few years migration of lower- doorways. The stove may be of the kerosene-burning class rural and urban men has been increased by Jabor- variety o r a charcoal-burninu arrangement improvised 0 • com ract arrangements for harvests in the mainland . At from a lard ca n. But families who have wood on thetr least one private contractor did not even require air land may prefer the fogc>n . The dishes m ay be of passage money o f the migrants until they were able metal, china, or of both kinds. The cooking utensils to refund lhe costs from their earnings. However, much will be o( iron augmenced by t in cans. o( th is m ig ra ti o n has been temporary, and still the l\Iost families of this 0oTo up own one cow. H. there overwhe lming majority have had to provide the initial are more, the milk may be given to close relatives or sta ke to pay their p assage. Thus, in this respect, the sold to th e neig hbors. One or two pigs a nd twenty middle-class rural group rema ins the most impor- o r thirty ch ickens are not uncommon. Some own a tant permane nt migrant g roup, relatively and abso- horse or a mule, but oxen for plowing are borrowed lutely. from a larger landowner. Fo r those childre n of th is group who prefer o r are The diet for this g roup is based on the home-grown forced to remain farmers after the death o( their par- vegeta bles and the coffee, rice, and bea ns of the rural e1lls, there are several possibilities. Some stay on, store. Rice a nd bea ns w ill be eaten more consistently eventu ally inh eriting the family farm for their own by chis group than by the Jandless, some times twice use by arrangement with the remaining heirs who may a day, and wjll be cooked with the trimm ings of lard~ have other sa tis[actory employment. Some remain to sma ll p ieces of sm o ked ham, canned tomato sauce,. fann th e small parce ls fragmented by inheritan ce. and sometimes with olives a nc.1 capers. Co nsump tion , Otl1e rs m ay marry daughters of other landowners and of home produced eggs a nd chickens is much hig her farrn th e father-in-Jaw's land. And still o th ers may than in th e lower income groups, and luxury foods. arra nge to become sha rccroppers for neigh boring large like bread , cocoa, a nd oatmeal have a more regular farm ers. Proba bly all of the men lv ill do some agri- pla ce in the die t. There are two or three ch anges o[ cu ltural day labor at one time or another. clo thes for each m e mber of the family, although these Along the roads in the rural areas live some people wi ll not necessarily be new or fancy. Everybody in the w ho are middle class by occupations other th an farm- famil y probably owns a pair of shoes, a lthough the

15£1

THE PEOPLE OF P UERTO RICO

children may use theirs only for school or for trips to the pueblo. Education

Some of the la ndowners in this group who are now in their twenties a nd thirties have been educated b eyond the fourth grade- a few up to the eighth or higher. 1\Iost of the remainder have less than a fourth grade education. The wives generally have Jess schooling than their husbands. The number of high school students and graduates in these families varies, but there will be more of them among those families who had or acqui red middle-class income when the children were young, and more among families who do not require the labor of all the children on the farm . In general, younger sons and daughters will have more education than their older brothers and sisters, the fruits of whose la bor will be of material assistance to the younger ones. Fa mily arrangements for education sometim es involve living away from home with relatives or friends in this or other pueblos. Some earn the privilege of continuing their education by h elping out in the stores o( the relatives or assisting with the housework or fi eldwork. Scholarships, the G.I. Bill, migrant's earn ings, and intrafamilial loans send some children of this grou p to the university or vocationa l training schools. Family

T he household genera lly consists of father, mother, and unmarried ch ildre n-either their own or adopted. T he married sons who stay on in agricultural work, or in occupations that permit it, frequently bui ld their homes on the land of the father.Gs A successful son or son-in-law may e ither build a separate house on his land for an aging father, mo ther, or uncle, or take them into his own home. Alth ough the you ng people of this income level have a w ider range of marriage choices than the la ndless agricu lturists by reason of their longer ed ucation, greater mobility, etc., neighbor marriage is still common, a nd for the security attached to long acqua intance, perhaps preferred. Some girls an d men of this class may marry into the class above. In contrast with the rural lower class where consensual marriage accou n ts for about one-quarter of the present u nions in Quito and Salvador, civil or Gii ;\JaLrilocaliLy seems lo be favored in the coastal region s whe1·e slaves were a large part of Lhe population. I t has been suggested Lhat such a pattern in the coastal regions is vesLigial evidence of maLrilorality being favored in plantaLion slave societies where paLerniLy may o(te11 be uncertain (cf. H erskovits, 1917). For a differelll explanation the reader is referred to Mintz' and l'aclilla's accou 1lls of postmarita l matrilocality in the communities studied by them. Jn Tabara the p attern is mixed with locali ty determi ned, in gener a l, b y available land. All other things being eq ual, the couple will make its first home with the parents who have the m ost land. When there is Jillie differen ce in land h olding, patri locality wi ll be favo red (or it permits Lh e groom Lo conduct his own work acLiviLies in the comforling familiariLy of his father's rarm.

church maniage is most usual with this group.Go T he virginity of the bride is a ma tter of fa r m ore importance to them than it is to the male members of the lower class, although most of those, too, insist that it is a matter for consideration. Unmarried m ales o[ the middle group are frequently quite v io len t about th e subject a nd they h ave tol<l me that they would imm edia tely leave their brid e if she turned out not to have b een comple tely chaste. Some say th ey wo uld b eat he r first, then throw h er o ut. Usual ly the courtship is unco ncea led with the young m a n ca lling at the g irl's h om e after getting the consent of h er fathe r to d o so. Marriage gen erally takes place with the consent of the parents, but it m ay follow an e lopem ent if th e parents of e ithe r p;inne r arc o pposed. A very few me n o ( this group support two or three wives: the flrst usua lly a soc ial cqu zd, t.lic others frrnn a lowe r eco nom ic level. Th e legiti111atc wire a 11d chil dre n usua ll y get prefe re nce in quality of house . cloth<"s, a nd furn ish ings, but the second or third wife is prnvided with a separate hou se o r with as-; is ta n ee for h e rself a nd fami ly if she st.avs :H home with h e1· pare n ts. Childre n

A ll families d esire ch ildren- and these :-i-; soon after marriage as possible. Hinh control is p1·:iniccd h y some members of this group, but the most cnmmo11 dev ice is steril izatio n o( the woma n a fte1- the second, th ird, or fourth child . T he most obvious d ifferences in child training between members of this group and members o( th e lowest economic groups a re: a crib is used instead of h aving the b aby sleep with the paren ts; powdered milk is u sed more frequently as a substitute for o r supp lement to the mo ther's milk ; eggs, oatmea l, e tc. a re used to a grea ter extent in the baby's fi rst year; m o re time and care are devoted to the b aby 's cloth es (i.e., ironing th e soiled clothes and diape rs to "kill th e germs that cause rashes"); childre n are more fu lly clothed ea rlie r, and consequently the feel in g o( sh a m e a t being found naked or exposed beg ins earlier; children are g iven some toys o"n T hree Kings Day or o n the ir birthday. Children perform agricultura l work, b ut whenever poss ibl e th ey are permitted to stay in sch oo l for eith er a morning or a n afternoon sess ion , and their wor k may b e arranged as chores to be p e rformed a fter school hours. Children who actively dislike schoo l m ay leave, and th ese may a lso do day-la bor agricu ltura l work off the family farm . Girls rare ly go out to work O!> It is very like ly th at the much higher proportion of lega l (church and dvi l) ma rr iages encountered among the rural poor and middle class of Tahara a s compare d with, ror exa mple. the landless agri cultural workers of the south coasL s u ga r co111111u11i1y, d ocs in som e \\' ay r e flect the grca rrr opportu n ities fo r eco110 111ic advancem e nt in rural Tabar;.1. Th us, whe re Lhe lega l sta tus of ofispring ma y so111e da y lie a matt e r of i111por t a 11 ce in tra11s fcr or inhe ritance of land, it is cons idered m<nc des irabl e t ( i pror ecL su ch p o te ntia l o tfspr ing aga insL future legal cliflicultics.

TABARA: TOBACCO AND l\IIXED CROPS MUNICIPALITY

loca lly as servam s, although they may offer household help in lieu o( payment for room and board to the relatives ;111d friends with whom they live while going to school. Those girls who do not continue education by preferen ce or because o( lack of aptitude or parental prejudice against educa ting women are used at home to assist the mother in the care o( the house and the animals. Male-Female Relationships

Th e means and the opportunity to make herself more auraClive to more people in more places give the middlc·class girl a greater range of selectivity th<1n is open to the rural lower-class girl in her search for n spouse. But social sanctions governing her behavior arc lik<.:ly tu be stricter. If she marries a micldleor uppc r·class 111a11. virp;inity is required. Divorcees arc not des irable \\'i\'cs. Infidelity may mean social ostracism and lms o l cl;i:-.s sta tus for a woman. Remarri;igc J'or a \\'idc)\\· ol this group is d ifficult and may never C\' C ll 1:ikc place at all i( the family can provide for her. 11 a wrnnan "·idowcd early in her marriage docs remarry, her family will apologize self.consciously for h<:r hl'.11:1\·ior. :\I:irriagc.s may be broken up by divorce or simple scp:1ra1 io11. J( the hll!sband has been glaringly unfaithful. o r is a hca ,·y drinker, the wife may separate from hirn " ·ith little criticism resu lting. She is never expected to seek a di,·orce, the implication in that being that she is trying to disencumber herseH so that she may rema rry. On the other hand, if the wife is the transgressor, the husband is expected to divorce her. A divorcee may have to accept marriage with a lower-class man, may become a mistress or second wife, or she may leave town. Insofar as the individuals of the rural middle class arc ambit ious for jobs and education, and insofar as they seek to socia lize with members of the rural upper or middle class or the urban upper and middle classes, the foregoing restrictions on women are probably observed. However, among those members of families who arc more isolated in the rural areas, who are farmers only, who socialize chiefly with their neighbors, economic eq uals or inferiors, the social sanctions against remarriage (a lmost always consensual in these cases) o( widows and deserted wives are less strictly appli ed, especially if a woman has land and no adult children to work it. Recreation

The extra income of the families of the rural middle class will permit tl1em lo give more fiestas than their poore r neighbors. In the season when tl1e load of farm work is light, they may do more visiting to relatives in other barrios or municipalities. Their prosperous relatives will also visit them more frequently. Extra income likewise permits them more frequent indulgence in the recreations offered by the pueblo, shopping trips, r eligious festivals, and the like. In the iso!:l ted rnral areas, families of this group

155

continue to attend velorios and rosai·ios. They give rosarios and velorios to which tl1eir poorer neighbors will be invited. Some of the families along the main roads no longer do such socializing. The possession of a horse, or just the bus fare, permits a wider range of operations for the men when they choose to spend tl1eir free time in conversa tion, drinking, or gambling; but for the majority the local store is still preferred. A few women drink moderately on social occasions, and in a manner more concealed than obvious. Religion

There is a higher rate of church attendance for women in this group in Salvador and Quito than in the lower income groups. But even here there are factors which inhibit regularity of attendance for men as well as women, including such factors as isolation, the needs of young children, and the fact that the r a te of local trading and marketing increases on Sunday, it being the main day on which the men assemble minor crops at the road for the trucker to take to the 1'vionday morning city markets and the day when the weekly family food supply is usually bough t. Church baptism of tl1e infant is generally earlier for this group, and the fiesta following a baptism more lavish than in the lo"·er income groups. Church marriage is usual. The funeral pattern is much the same as in the lower class with an appreciably higher number of panicipams. The extent of higher education within this group a nd a greater degree of participation in organized religion seem to have functioned to reduce to m ere vestiges the belief in ghosts, apparitions, and witches still found, to a very limited extent, among the poorer people of the rural areas. The use of home remedies, o( curanderas, belie( in the varying effects of "hot" and "cold" foods, seem to have survived with different degrees of intensity, but never to the exclusion of the use of the medical services of the pueblo. Health

The general health level of the rural middle class is probably higher than that of the rural lower class fo r such obvious economic reasons as more and b etter food, b etter sani tary facil ities, more clothes and blankets for cool winter nights, a nd more shoes: This group may go to tl1e curandera if they fail to get a n immediate cure from the doctors, but in general they use the free medical services or the private doctors o( the pueblo. They may go to the Mennonite Hospital in Acra for extended medical treatment or to clinics in the larger cities. They use the dentist for the toothache, for extractions, and for bridgework and false teeth if they can afford these, but there is no interest in routine, preventive dentistry. Before the days of free medical services, a prolonged illness wou ld exert a serious drain on the resources oE those families which could barely afford the price of occasional m edical treatment. Several in formants h ave

156

TllE PEOPLE Of." PUERTO RICO

described how all or part of their land had to be so ld to pay the expenses of the last illness of one o[ Lheir parents. Values For the rura l middle class, Lhere is a strong emphasis on thrift, sav ing, and moderation. A failure is the man who goes a little "loco" a nd loses, through sel(indulgence or too much moneylending to irresponsibles, those gains wh ich h ave made him and his family respected members of the community. For those members of a family who have lost ground economically through illness or the land fragmemation o( inheritance, the past prosperity of the family may open social doors that families who have been landless longer cannot e nter. Intermarriage of Negroes and whites is extremely rare in this group; informal socialization, on the other hand, is rather com mon. There is generally more racism, greater color-consciousness. here than within the lower class. It manifests itself in a tendency to lump the very depressed families in a derogatory classification, genie de color, without regard for the actual phenotype of the people or families so design ated.

RURAL UPPER CLASS--A Employment In all of Tabara there are about twenty farmers with holdings in excess of one hundred cuerdas and two rural merchants whose wholesaling activities alone would be large enough to place them 'vithin the same income level as the farmers . But even without their merchandizing activities, these two have farms large enough to place them within the top group. One of the merchants spends most of his time supervising the activities of his retail store, most of the actual selling being performed by himself and his wife. 70 The other spends only enough time in his merchandising establishment to check the volume of business. The real manager of the store is a younger brother. This leaves the owner more time [or supervising the activities on the farm , especially during the tobacco season. His farm and store are in Quito, his home across the road in Salvador. None o'f the farmers in this group works his own land. The farm work is performed by wage workers, sharecroppers, and ambulatory peones or d ay la borers, depending o n the crop and the stage of cultivatio n. The number of working families living on the farms o( these owners runs from two or three to as high as e ighteen. The fami lies of the working males serve as important additiona l sources of labor, paid or unpaid. Usually one o ( the tenants holds the position of mayor;o Jfc acurn ll y "owns" in his 11·i£c's name only scve11ty r11 erdas. hut licca usc of a p e ndin g Ja\\'s llil in which he is the clcfenclant, he "rem s" a n addi 1io11al 1uo·odd c 11e rdas from his fa1lier-i11 -law ;1s a wa y LO avoid hci11g o\'crloadccl \\'ilh real estate if the decis ion s h o 11ld go agai 11s1 hi111 . T hi s man's sto re and holcli11gs arc i11 Bardo C:n lina.

do1110 o r fo reman or activities. The deg ree of respon sibility and the extent of super\'ision e xe r cised b y th e uwyordomo varies from farm Lo farm. \Vhcre, a~ i ~ most o fte n the case, the ow ner takes an a cti\'c inte rest in the farm , closely supervising its acti\'ities every day, the mayordomo's functions a re relati,·cl y unimponanl. But whe re the lando\\'ner takes a less acti\'C inte rest in the farm, o r is o ther\\'ise occupied. the 111flyordo1110 performs the vital functions not only or organi1ing each day's "·01·k but of see ing Lo it that th e \\'orkc rs pe rform in a manne r that \\'Ould meet with th e approval of Lh e boss. O ccas ionall y the son of the O\\'ner will assume man agerial or superviso ry functions on the farm. If the farm is L1rge c nrn1gh. or if the holdings arc.: di -;pt·r...c·(I. he will he LllC.: li11k bet,,·cen hi -; Lither :111d tlic 111t1\' nrdo111os. If this is not Lhc case. he 111a\· 1:1kc o\Tr :di of th e 11u1 y ordrn110 l'u11nio11s himse ll. 111 'gc.: 11 cr:1I. IH>\\'l' \'l'l', sons o l this grrn1p do 110L intcresL Lht'rn~c·lvc.., i11 !:inn ing, and the l :1thcr~ do not urge their p:1r1 icip:1t ion. .Sinc:e the in cornc j.., large c:nough to p<:rmit :1dvanccd edu ca tion. Lhe prc:lcrred palte rn is to prq1:1rl' th e.: male childre n lor one ol the prolc-.... irnb. A large !armer \\'ho l11rni..,he.., li,·ing sp :1n .: 101 a num ber ol familie., and \d10 pcr111it'> tht' lrl'c 11-.t· ol small field s !or th e c ulLi va tio11 ol ~ub-.i~ll' ll< e crop-. 011 the part o l e:1ch ol the lamilics is sa id to "~ i,·c ~ us­ tenance" to th e people. He is expected e ither w g ive some kind o( employment throughout the year C)I' to advance credit to carry the families living on the farm over the dead period. In practice he o fte n docs n e ith er -except where he advances money to tobacco sharecroppers pending the se ttle m e nt. ln addition to performing all of the agricultural work on the farms, the tenants are used for such work as construction of tobacco drying sheds, and 1·e pair o( h o uses and buildings. 1[ any or the men qualify as artisans in this work they a1·e paid at the anisan rather than the p eon wage, about three times as hig h. This kind o( work is reserved for the dead season wheneve r that is possible. The large farm owners and merchants genera lly have a tru ck, jeep, or weapons carrier which they use to transport supplies and produce, o r as d e li very wago ns. Sometimes the owner drives the veh icle himself. If h e docs not, the driver and helpe r ma y h e an older son of o ne of the families living o n his land. Th ese johs are prized both for the higher pa y and the pleasures of travel ing. But they are never full -time jobs, so the dri ver and the helper spend at least part of th e ir time work in hcr as ;wricultural laborers. t)

Ownership I n addition to the land and the farm and ware h o use buildings which the members of this group own, man y of th e m own and breed cattle for commercial cla iry ing ope ration s or for meaL; they have cnoug-h chickens to su ppl y th e ir home requirements and perhaps a11 ovcr;1gc for sa le; usuall y th ey own goats and ;i fe w pigs \\'h ich are kept ch ie ll y for fiesLa oc('asions . Th ey own oi1 e or more sa ddle horses . one <ll' severa l p;i ir~ of

TAl3ARA: TOBACCO AND !\f!XED CROPS MUNICIPALITY

oxen. perhaps a mule or jackass, and a farm vehicle, th e jeep be ing preferred because it performs the double duty of [arm work and famil y transportation. Passenger or pleasure cars are less common. All o( the houses on the land o( the owner belong to him: the barns, sheds, pens, rn 11chos, she! ters, as w ell as Lhe ho uses of the tenants. Aside from the milki 11g ma chi 11es em ployed on two of the largest dairy farms (neither one of them in Sa lvador or Quito) and the simpl e electric feed gri nder on one of these, there is 110 po\\'ered fa rm equipment in a ll of Tabara. Even simpl e farm eq uipment like a mowing machine, disc harrow. or small traclOr is not fou nd since the grad ient makes th e use of these for most of the land in this muni cip;tlity impracticable. Aside from the simple pl ows. th e yokes and th e harn ess for the oxen, all the wols of cultiYation be long to the workers themselves. (See P· I~ ~ for c llccts or machinery on land tenure.) Th e o\\·11n supplies the land, the oxen, and the morH.: y to P" Y !'or-or tl1e actual means of- transporutiott of the product from the farm to the market. Thus, unlike coffee. and especiall y sugar, where processing· impli es the investme nt of large sums of money in ex pem,iq;- equipme nt, wbacco and minor crop production requires chiefly the la nd and the labor to work the land. Lind is the symbol and the rea lity of wealth. Th e rise from pm·eny to riches is most often seen as the change from a landless condition to one of landowning. Standard of Living

One of the leading landowners of Salvador has a fine concrete house in the pueblo where he and his family have lived in order to be near the school for his ch ildren. He a lso has a spacious house of concrete base with wood and metal siding in the country. After eight years of living in the pueblo, the family have just returned to the country. They would rather be there, they say, and take the children the four miles to school daily than remain any longer in the town. One other large landowner has two concrete houses in the pueblo, one of which he rents and the other in which he and his wife and an unmarried daughter and son live. They also have a large house of wood and concrete in the country. which they have rented to a m arried daughter, but where the farmer spends all his days, re turning home to the ptleblo on ly at nig h t. Other large landholders live in the country.7 1 If they have children of advanced school age, these will either commu te to school daily or will live with a relative in the town. The houses of these fami lies are generally of wood 011 a concrete base which serves also as the porch. T h ey have three or four bedrooms, a large living room and a dining room, separated from each other b y a

•1

C ultivat io11 of tobacco and/o r mino r crops alwa ys means that there will he al least 11\'0 , sometimes as man y as three or fo ur, crops a year, with th e at1.cnda11t requirement of soil preparation, cu lti vation. and harves ting. The big farme rs feel that all of this lahnr com ing. as it docs, 1hrougho11t the year, d emands the closer supervision thaL li\·i11g on th e la nd allows.

l

57

kind of railing, commonly a n inside toilet. R a in wa ter caught and stored in con crete tanks supplies all of the needs except for washing of clothes. These are generally taken to one of the nearby streams b y a servant or one of the tenants. Electricity is almost a lways ava ilable, and this means a re[rigerator a nd a radio. The stove is a kerosene type. Everybody, including the servants, sleeps in bed s, although the mattresses for the latter are like ly to be nothing more than a thin, quiltlike affair. There m ay be an automobile, but a jeep is more common. The m a jority have one or two saddle horses a nd saddles of leather. The furniture is generally of wicker and wood (mahogany), rarely of the overstuffed variety. There may be a woven rug on the floor but linoleum covering is more common. Pictures a re usually fra med and include fami ly portraits, diplomas, saints. Dishes, pots, silverware are inexpensive, store-boug ht, as is toilet paper. They use toothbrushes and toothpaste, have mosqu ito n ets for all the beds with the possible exception of the servants', a nd use bug spray. They have one or two bureaus, sometimes a chiffonier for storing clothes, the usual trunk or sea ch est-but of sturdier construction than those o f the poor-in which valuables a re kept. The dining room has a table and chairs to match . There are generally one or two steady servants who live in the house and do most of the cooking and the cleaning. The fam ilies of the tenants are called upon to provide other help as needed . The ser vants may be paid, bu t they are more usua lly o( the crianza (for bring ing up) type, meaning that they are paid in clothes and shoes, other small gifts an d privileges. The houses are uniformly clean and well kept, it being a point of status a nd pride so to have them. The diet for this group is based- as are the diets of all classes in the country-on rice, beans, verduras (cooked bananas, plantains, taniers, sweet potatoes, yams, etc.), and bacalao (dried smoked codfish). The chief differences between this and the lower economic levels are in the quantities of a ll foods eaten, in consumption of eggs, of more chicken, bread, butter or margarine, and in the use of canned continental fruits for desserts. Expenditures on amusements and luxuries, general display, are higher within this group than a n y other in the country. Fiestas are more common, qncl invariably include roast pig and other luxury trappings, such as legal rum.•'.!

RURAL UPPER CLASS~B Employment

The landowners o( farms of the thirty-five to one hundred r11erda size are included with the upper class for they are an employing group ·who do n o t labor with their h ands, and their in come is genera lly large 1~ Sec (ollowing scctio 11 0 11 Rural Upper C lass-B for discu ssion of family. children. recr eatio n , religion. hcallh, pol itics . and \'a lues.

158

THE PEOPLE OF PUERTO RICO

enough to assure Cull social and power participation with the top groups. Those with high tobacco quotas can usually maintain an upper-class standard of living on farm income alone, but a not uncommon pattern is for them or their wives to supplement the income from the land with some other employment such as store owner, government loan inspector, local agent for an American firm, schoolteacher, government agricultural agent, ecc.73 If their employment requires them co spend much time in the pueblo, their farms may receive only part-time personal supervision, or be managed by a relative, or by a hired mayordomo. Some of this group get their extra income by renting roadside houses on their property; and investment in "landlordism" has become more prevalent in the rural areas since the inOux of veterans' and migrants' money. The children of this group are rarely encouraged to take up farming, although a few may take over some supen-isory and marketing functions <luring young manhood. Those who feel that lack of money or lack of scholastic ability will be an impediment to their advancement freque n tly take a business course in high school to prepare themselves for some commercial employment. Others go no further than the eighth g rade. In the cou rse of learning or starting a business, a you ng man may clerk in a score, be a truck driver, a machine operator, etc. These jobs carry a relative amount of prestige as long as they are not held on a permanent basis. Only agricultural labor with the hoe is really barred to the men o( this class, and there is a great deal of pride taken in the mechanical skills and knowledge that permit a man to repair cars, pumps, electrica l equipment, or to assist in building his own house. For farmers in the thirty-five to one hundred c!lerda group, educating sons for such professions as medicine or university teaching which require graduate work in the United States often involves a real sacrifice for the family. Such steady income j obs as schoolteacher, p oliceman, peacetime soldier, government employee, are for that reason preferred. For the girls a nd women, schoolteaching, office work, telephone operator, government jobs such as those in the post office, are considered very respectable and are frequently continued after marriage. Ownership

In add ition to the house th ey live in, they own some farm buildings, including a rancho, tormen lera, and storage shed. They have a few cattle for milk and butcher or sell the calves. They have chickens and at least one or two p igs, and a few goats are kept for fiesta occasions. H the fa rm is in a section remote from any kind of automobile road, they will own one or two horses. A jeep or car is more common for farms near the good roads, but usually farmers of this group <lo not own both horses and cars. A few have their own trucks for marketing. They ge nerally own the o xen they use for plowing. ; :i ln many cases iL is Lhc job which ha~ made Lhc acquisition or lhe land possible.

A ll the houses on his land belong to the owner, excep t those built by his married children i ( they themselves bought the building materials. Standard of Living

T h e stan dard of li ving o( the thirty-five to one hundred c!lerda g roup approx imates very closely that of the O\'er one hundred g roup. They have a good house of several rooms, matching (urnitllrc of "·ood and wicker, linole um rugs, c urtains, and draperies, a c istern for catching and storing rain wate r, and an indoor to il et. Usua lly there is a large r adio, a sew ing macl1 ine, a kerosene stove, ample china and glassware. Less commonl y there is a rel rigcralor. Th ey '"ill probably h ave at least one servant :ind gi,·c a-; tnany lie-.t:1-; :1s the farm ers of group :\ . :dthough th ese will 11nl include some o( the extras o( the laLLcr group·s lic"1:1s. There are fewer change<; of clmhcs. e-;peci:illv for lhc children and vounrr n bo\, s. fc"·cr lux11rv . loot!-. i11 the diet, less use o( the car. !es:; !-.pending money lor adolescents, and less general 11 sc ol modern ho11~el1old equipment like powdered so:1p. mops. 11i g l1 "·au li g h t bulbs. toilet paper, fla s hligl1t ~. and i11-.,cn -.p1:1y. The n eed for eco11omi1i11g 011 the cxtr:1-., may extend outside the landowner·-. l:11nily to the workers who live o n his land :'Ind to his l>1l si11css co111 :1ch. For this reason, many o f the thirt y-fi,·e to one l11111tlre d c11e rdas g r ou p are said LO be "ti g ht," or duro , whereas those of the one hundred and over group frequently find themselves loved for a generosity they can well afford to pract ice without in any sen se taxing their resources. ~

GROUPS A AND B

Family The household contains the biological family: father, mother, and depe ndent children. The widowed mother of t he wife or husband may be included. A widower usually marries again an d ma in tains his own house. The d epende nt childre n may include cousins temporarily living in ; a dopted children who may also be nieces and nephews; hijos de aianza, wh ich usually means children o( poor fami lies taken in to help with the house,,·ork in return for room, board, clothes. 74 Occasiona lly illegitimate children o( th e father taken over b y him after es trangement fro m the mistress who was the mother of the child will be included. Becau se the young men have greater mobility in the use of th e fami ly car or jeep and have some p ocket money, they have a much wider ra nge of possible partners from wh ich to choose their wives tha n do the men of the lower classes. The young men frequ e ntly voice preference for the more sophisticated girls o( pueblo anc.1 jJoblado (the h eav ily populated s~ttlem~11ts n ~ar town) and m ay find wives th e re o r 111 nc1ghbonng municipalities. These wives ma y or ma y not come from ;4 These ~0 111ctimcs ;ithi<:\<' ;iltnosl th<: s tatus or t111r offspri11g.

TABARA: TOBACCO AND MIXED CROPS 1\!UNIClPALITY

families classified as "good" or well-to-do, but if not, the young n1an feels called upon to defend his choice by say ing he would rather have a poor but virtuous girl he can trust than a proud one who thinks only of cloth es and "society." But an emphasis on making good family connections often makes a worthy neighbor, or, perhaps just as frequently, a first or second cousin the better marriage choice. For most, courtship is romantic. Once the father"s permission has been granted, th e you ng man is a frequent visitor at the home o[ the girl. IC she does not have it already, the girl will try to establish a relationship of intimacy with her fiancC's family , especially his mother. Marriage plans are usually made with the assistance of both families, and some adult members of either family will ser ve as /)([dr i nos for the ''"eclding. ·when the family ct11 afford it, and if the couple agree. the wedding is held in the church " ·ith music, bridal gown, and flm,·crs. J L is follo\\"ed by a lies ta, usually in the bride's home if t.lt:it is conYc:nielll ly loca tecl. Engagements are frc:quc:I1lly long (one to th ree years) awaiting economic facilitation or the marriage, and for settling the young couple in a home o( their O \\"ll shortl y after the ceremo11y. The 11e \\· hom e is often put up on the land of th e h us hand ·s f;t 111 iI y. or c,·en if they do not have a house of th e ir o\\·11. they arc more likely to live with the groom·s famil y than with the bride's. Earl y m;trriage. is frequ entl y desired by the young men o[ these groups, for with it comes genuine acceptance as an adult. After marriage a man is more nearly on a n equal footing with all other adults- especially his father. Failure to achieve completely satisfactory sex relations in marriage is almost never a cause for break-up of the marriage, b ecause the husband has relatively easy access to prostitutes and mistresses, and because the wife is not led to bel ieve that she should enjoy sex in the way that her husband does. \Vives are rarely expected to be passionate sex partners. Birth control is now generally practiced by the young people of this class. \Vith increasing frequency here, too, it is applied in the form of sterilization of the woman after the desired number of children has been reached. Large families, however, are the pattern for the older members o( the group. Children

In this class, where the families tend to be smaller, where mothers may continue working outside of the home, and where there are servants who participate in caring for the children, there are some observable differences from the middle and lower class treatment o( children. Babies are more frequently bottle-fed than breas t-fed, so that the feeding of the children may be sh ared b y both mother and servant. Nonworking mothers devote more of their time to child rearing tha n housework, but even the servant is expected to care for the child and to assist in his training. The mother's absences from the child for churchgoing, shopping expeditions, doctor's visits, and pleasure trips may b e frequent, and the servant at this time takes over

159

rota! responsibility for the children. The servant and a nonworking grandmother or aunt may share the responsibility for the children of a working mother. The children receive more personal attention, more training in the need for personal attractiveness and cleanliness, early u·aining in modesty, more advice on correct behavior in the more frequent visit and hospitality situations than those of lower economic levels. They learn that young children should not expect to be waited on, even those with servants frequently carrying their own dishes to the kitchen after being served a meal a nd keeping their own toys orderly. Girls get some training in domestic pursuits, especially cooking, ironing, and sewing. They may help with the cleaning, or else receive instruction by example of standards to be upheld by the servants. The utilitarian activities o( the young boys are usually confined to running errands. At about four or five, children frequently accompany their parents on excursions away from home-girls and very young boys being the preferred companions of their mothers, older boys, the companions of their fa thers. The children are coached in proper behavior, helped to an understan ding of such abstractions as respeto and dignidad through example and practical explanations. They are punished for failings that approach impudence or disobedience. Recreation

Nearly all of the families of this group are eligible for membership in the various voluntary associations of the community, but many do not feel that these offer sufficient activity or prestige to repay the expense involved in maintaining membership. A few use the urban Casino for gambling. Attendance at cockfights in the gallera ("cockfighting pit") in P alo Alto or in other towns is fairly high, the betting relatively generous. The members of this group take their families to movies in neighboring municipalities. The men are frequent patrons of the town and roadside cafetines ("little stores,") (tiendas, "cafes"), where they eat or drink in gatherings that are generally recreational in character, sometimes a combination of recreation and business. The wives do not participate very actively in the (unctions of the town's religious societies, but some of their adult unmarried daughters do. There is more visiti ng, more and bigger fi estas in this group than in the others of the rural area, and more social occasions in rowns other than Tabara. Rel igion

Married women with family responsibilities attend church with less frequency than their teen-age daughters who may be students at the Catholic Academy. The boy students of the academy also attend church with fair regularity, but men of this class rarely do. The entire family generally attends the most important religious festiva ls (Seniana Santa, Christmas, Fiestas Patronales). Those who are m embers of the religious organizations participate in the organization a nd ritual of the religious holidays. The others attend the

I

60

THE P EOPLE OF l' U£ RTO RICO

masses a nd observe. BapLism s and mosl marriages lake place in Lhe church . The members ol lhe rural upper class participate o nl y in lhe ro le of honored g uests al the velo rios and rosarios of th e ir neig hbors. They uo not g ive Lhem. Their greater ability lO pani cipale in the social life of the pueblo and elsewhere seems to lessen lheir depe ndence on th ese occasio n s for socializing and recre ation as compared with lo"·er income g roups. Their o,,·n practices after th e d eath o( a mem· ber of the family seem to var y wiLh th e d egree of isola· lion: from Lhc urba n pauern of condu cling all m emorial prayers after th e funera l in the church , to lhc rural o ne of ha ving su <.: h praye rs in th e home. Health

For lhe m ost part, the m embers of lhis class use the private doctors o f the pu e b lo. the ho sp ital a t £ 1 Oro, and the privale cl ini cs in San Juan. One or two have gone lO Lhe Uniled SLales for particulad y complicaled o r extended m edical treatme nt. Only rarel y is the dentis t used preventive ly. Politics

Politi ca l influ e nce in the rural areas rests rn the hands of the rura l upper class, both A and 13. The com p rumisarios ("electors" ) of bolh rnajor political parties a re chose n from this cla ss , w ilh a sprinkling of gente liumilde (" hum ble fo lk") to g ive the proper t0ne. Th e nominees for barrio representaLives to lhe assembl y likewise come from this class. In th e lasl e leCLion there were suppo rters for both the PIP and the P PD from this class in almost equal numbers. I n vinuall y a ll cases, Lhe wives seem to ha ve voted as their husbands. Values

The values of lhis group are primaril y involved w i th maintaining or improv ing th e ir econ om ic and social position. Amo ng the most prospe rous, the ch ildren are e n co uraged to be doclors, lawyers, teache rs, and busin essmen; but such occ upations as a rtist, musician , ,,·riter, or scientist oth e r than agricultura l scie mist arc not urged or val ued as other than avoca tions. The successful members of this group rarel y m igrate to the Un ited Sta tes, but m ay move to othe r mun icipalities on lh e island. Former m embers o [ this g ro up who h ave lost most o( t he ir possessions quite frequently do mig rate to th e U nited States. \,Vidows a nd di vorcees of this class are a lso fr equent migra nts. Those who flagrantl y viol ale the a cce pted behavior norms, i.e., th ose who dr in k e xcessive ly, or who are in vol\'Cd in too man y impractica l d eals, o r who g amble excessi vely, or ,,·ho too o pe nl y flaunt th e ir mistrcssesthese may lose prestige, but the y w ill no t b e excl uded from p<fft ic ipal ion in the soc ia l act ivit ies o[ the class -;o long a<; th e ir good economi c positio n remains unch a nged. SUMMARY OF RURAL SUBCULTURES

Rur:tl life i11 Salvador is o ri e n ted primaril y :1rou 11d the production of loba< co. that of Quito around the

production of LObacco and min o r cro p-; . .·\lmosl a ll o( Lhe ru ra l po pulaLiOll of th ese C011l ll1Unitics and the neighborhood ol La C ima earn th e ir li ving directl y from the cu I ti va ti on ol th e!-ie crops. The rem a i11der earn the irs, al least indirect ly. in function s ,,·hich ser vice th e crops and th e people e mployed in th e ir produ ction. Th e sc;cioeconumi c hiera rchy ,,·hich prevails in Lhis silllaLio n is fundamentally d e termined by the re lationship of all u l the m embers \\'ithin a g ive n soc ion iltural -,c:g111 e 11 t to th e in ..,t n11n<: 111., o l prodtl< .. tio n . . \IHI lh<: u dtun.: ol i11di,·idu:d-, ,,·itl1in <.::tch ol the '>egmenh !t a-, :1 g1eater ...a lll l'll<:"" tl1:1n do tlu.: cul · L11rc:. ol indi,·idua l., l>c: lo11 g i11 g lo d ill l'll'lll ..,, >< iocul · tural '><:g111 e nh o l th e:< 01111n 111 1it~ .. \lt ltough 111 : 1n~ ck· mcnh a nd 1:11 Ch ul the <ulu11 <: :in: .,lt:ircd <0111111011l y by indi,·idu:d ' ol :111 g roup:.. there :ire ... 1t:1rp dillcrcnces. tit <::.<: :1ppc.:ari11 g 111on: pro11<Hll1< cd :1t lite ex · trem c'>. I<::.-. -.u iking l rom a11> ol the i11t<:rvc.:11i11g g rou p -, lO ciLl 1t:r ol til e: <:xtrunit ie:.. l t is 11ot i 11 th<: rc:: il 111 o l :1 i ms :1 11d :"'pi rat irn1' th:1 t the cultural dillerc 11< c:-, arc :.o 111ark(·d. l11 <kc.:d. the aims ancl a:-.pirations ol :111> 011t· <fa.,., ol producers or servicers arc very 11111cl1 like tl1 ose ol a 11 y oth er . :\nd lhe agricultural emphas is within th e entire <.:omrnu· nity g ives a pronounced comiste ncy even LO the method o[ achiev ing lh ese goa ls \\'hatever th e present soc io· cultural posilion of the individual may be. T rue, there are qua1llilali,·e differences in Lhe aspiraLional realm , too. Bul lhese have th e ir O\\'n d ynamic quality, "altering as [theyl alte ra tion [lin d].'' Thus, the land· Jess ag ric ulturist wants a small piece o( la nd o n which to grow subsiste nce crops fo r his family. Th e share· cropper with such a plol loan ed to him b y the landlord wo uld like to own the land so that he mig ht plant it to w hacco if he w ished . The small landholder would like to he a b ig landholder: an<.1 the big landholder \rnul cl like t.o be a bigge r la ndholder. Th e landless agriculturist would , he avers, be co n tent ,,·ith a better house, more c lothes fo r his fam il y, shoes for all o[ the children. and e nough to eat all year around . The sm a ll landow ner wants a jee p, a radio, and e lectricity. Th e individ uals of each group wam the material possess ions available al least to the next highe r group. The re is no part of rural Tabara so isol ated and unaware of li fe elsewh ere in the communi ty that it d oes no t know of the exislence of indi viduals and groups who have a g reater wea lth a 11 d divers ity of maLerial good s. And lhe re arc none in T aba ra , to m y knowledge, who do not wan L a slice of these goods and the bette r life which they appea r to represent fo r themsel ves. They want lh ese to va rying d egrees and w ith varying intensi ty, it is true. Generall y speaking, the younge r men want m o re, are less co nte nt with their present status if it d e prives them of a good life in mate rial terms; th e o lder people make more mod est demands upo n th e ir e n vironment. T hey a re mo re grate ful for sma ll favors, more likel y to hark back to the " good old days" when paternalism insured to th em lhe necessilies of lilc. H owever, most of l hc people . if pressed, pl ace a high ceili ng 011 the ir asp irations, onl y th ey wi ll be qu ick to add Lha t th ey a re too se nsibl e and levelh ead ed lo take

TABARA: T013ACCO A'.\iD l\llXED CROPS l\I UN JC lPALlTY

such gra nd asp iralio ns seriously. Grad ualness, improveme nt o[ o ne·s material position in stages, is the practica l aim. _-\nd land 0 1· more land is the lever by which o ne ma y raise himse lC higher in the socioecono mi c sca le. Sometimes, but rarely, it is a store or o ther business which appears to be the device for lifting oneselL And this is not hard to understa nd, for both land and stores mean money. And money is, in the encl, the rea l key to upward mobility. T hus. the impona 1H culwral differences be tween lhe ~oc io cultur:tl :,,cgmc1Hs are the differe nces in wealth a nd in th<.: gomb and sen·ices which are o btain:thl<.: throug h lit e u ~c ol that " ·ea lth. \\'ealth or the ab:,,e11 ce ol " ·e;tlth is in this pronouncedly agriculwral ~<.: lling th e co1isequ e11n: of one·s relationship LO the unit ol we;tlth produ ct io n. land. And if wealth be the k<.:y to ntllllral dill c:re 11ces. the n the position o( the individu;tl with regard to the land may explain the conte nt a11d pattern ol hi:> ntlu1re. Through an ex:i 111i11:1tio n o [ employme nt, income, :,,t:t 11danl ol li,·i11g. ow nersh ip. e tc., as they appear for eac It ol th e cla:,,ses i11 the rural setting, I have tried to :,,ketch the more striking differences and some of the similarities in th e cultures of these rural classes. l have also indicated the chief ways in which a somewhat different crop emphasis produces some d ifferences in the culture of two contiguous barrios. Jn the n ext seCLion I shall deal further with th e cultural differences ind ucecl by di ffcren t agricu l tu ra 1 em phases. lllll here the comrast will be more striking, the differences more numerous, for I shall compare the rural lower-class culture of Tabara with that o( two coastal sugar communities and a mountain community in wh ich coffee is the dominant crop.

RELATION BETWEEN THE CROP AND THE LOCAL CULTURE INTRODUCTION

lt has been the argument o( this paper that the rural society of Tabara is class-structured ; that this structure primarily is a consequence of differential wealth w hi ch is itself a consequence-in this predominantly agricult11ral society-o f the individual's relationsh ip to the major instrument o[ ·wealth production , th e land; that each o f the classes or subcu ltures within the communi ty which owe the ir position in the structure to their eco nomic status or relationship to the land is characteri1.ed by certa in differences in the ir culture; and finall y, that the kind of crops grown on the land have an important e ffect upon the culture of the commu nity and upon each of its subcultures or classes. In preceding sections I have emphasized th e first three of these poswlated interrelationships be tween the agriculture of a community and its culture. ln the present section, I shall discuss th e final e lemem , namely, the effect upo n ce rtain aspects of Tabara's c ullure of its d evo tio n to tobacco and minor crops rather than w coffee or to some other crop or crops.

161

In order to hig hlig hL the postulated re la tionship between the productive arrangements associated with tobacco cultivatio n and the culture of La Cima, Salvador, and Quito, I shall refer t0 contrasting patterns in the three other communities of Puerto Rico covered in our invest igation- communities wh ere other crops are emphasi:Led and ,,·here other productive a rrano·e0 ments preva1·1. For more than four hundred yea rs Puerto Rico was pan o( the Spanish Empire. During this period, T abara, like the other communities treated in the project's in vestigatio n, accommodated itS subtropical aboriginal culwre to the demands and inOue nces of the moLher country. Not only were the a bo rigines themselves destroyed, but the culture o( the ir creation was just as thoroug hly obliterated. The ol<l economic and other cultural arrangements were completely superseded by the introduction of a new economy, new religion, new lang uage, new values, a nd new peoples. Spain introduced the cultivation of coffee and sugar into Puerto Rico and sa"· the commercia l importance of these crops deve lop to a rich climax in the second half o( the nine tee nth century. T o bacco was already being cultivated when the Spaniards arrived, but its genuine florescence did not take place until after the change in dominion. In the fifty years sin ce the coming o( the Americans other drastic changes have taken place. In terms of agriculture o nly-a realm in which som e o[ the most important alterations have occurred--coffee has experienced a fairl y steady d ecl ine until it is now not only a crop of little or no export impo rta nce, but its total yie ld d oes no t even supply insu lar requirements. On the other hand, the importa n ce of sugar cultivation. has increased. r~nd this has bee n rna rkecl also by an rnland spread o( the crop to areas never before ?evoted to its comm~rcial cu ltivation. But despite its importance as the ch1e( money crop of the island and its cultivatio n b y many small producers whose farms lie inlan~l and off the more desirable coasta l plains, commercial sugar production h as not en tered T a bara. H ere the chic[ cash crop is tobacco, the second cash crop, minor crops. On the coasta l plains, che sm a ll producers of stwar h.ave been y ie ~cling to the pressure of the big corpo~·a­ uons, largest 111cl e pendent producers, and the government Land Authority until in many places they have all but disappeared. Such is the case in the south coast sugar community studied b y a m ember o( the project ; and , to a slig htly lesser degree, it is the case in th e north coast municipali ty studied by a nother of the project's investigators. The coffee community in the west central hig hlands has respo nded partiall y to the threat posed by the decline in coffee's importance sin ce the turn of the century with th e imroduction o[ sugar cane into certa in parts of the municipality and the spread o r tobacco in other pans. But natural environme ntal factors have limited the extent of this adaptation he re as ,,·ell as in Tabara. Land concentration . for example, has not progressed to a n ywhe re nea r the exten t encountered in the coasta l cane a reas, a lthough it appears to have

J 62

THE PEOPL E OF I' l.iE RTO RICO

gone slig htly furth er than in Tabara. Jn ~Iani ca b oa, the coffee barrio studied in San .Jose, there a re twice as m a n y holdings o ( m o re th a n one hundred cuerdas a s in Tabara-3. 8 p e r ce nt o f all farms in the former as aga inst 1.9 per cent in the latter. \\That is more impo rtant, the great majority of the l\fanica boa sma ll hold ers, especially those o wn ing less than ten cu erdas, grow tobacco and s ubsiste n ce crops. Althoug h their fa rms comprise ove r 55 p er ce nt of all farm s, they hold onl y g per ce nt of th e coffee acreage. THE CASH CROP

Th e combination o f cheap land "·ith a cash crop r equiring Ii ttle a creage a n<l a subsiste nce-pl us-cash cro p makes acquisition of and survival on sma ll holdin gs more feasible in Tabara than in any o( the other municipalities studi ed. N o body in this muni cipality d evotes himself exclusive ly to the cultivation o f the m aj o r cash cro p as in suga r cane or, to a lesser e xte nt, in coffee. B eca use tobacco m ay be cultivated profitabl y on sm a ll plo ts; because it requires no processing ma chinery as do sugar and coffee ; because it calls for no long wa it to realize a r e turn on investment (cofiee takes four to five years to mature , sugar a minimum of eleven months); because produ ction credit is more easi ly availabl e than for either suga r or coffee; because fami ly la bo r may supply a ll the labor needs for a sm a ll plot; becau se it may be grown without occupying the land fo r more than four months of the year, thus permitting sequential intercropping of food crops; because a natu ra l catastrophe does not n ecessarily condemn the g rower to total loss o( a nnual income or subsistence a s would be the case with concentrated sugar or coffee cultivation; b ecause a relatively small amount of land m a y yie ld a relatively high return-for all of these r ea sons, tobacco has been ca ll ed the poor man's cash crop. And it obviously d eserves the designation when compared with coffee or eve n with sugar cane production. Thus, tobacco, which spre ad from Salvador to other parts of the municipality in the twentieth century, retains a strong hold in the agricu ltura l pattern of the total community despite advances of sugar in other parts of the island where the terrain, topography, and nearness to grinding mills makes the cultivation of the latter crop more fea sible. In Tabara, the sharecropper segment o( the landless workers enjoys a position of hope for betterme nt n o t found among the la ndless of th e other three communities studied. The sh a recropper may accumulate e no ugh money in a sing le year of good crops to b uy a sm a ll piece of land. As a matter of fact, the la rgest p roportion of the big la ndowners in this municipality -especially in the b a rrio most exclusively devoted to the c ultivation o( toba cco- have reached th eir prese nt sta tus from a position of poverty or nonownership. Th e exa mple of this virtu a lly unassisted success of so ma ny well-to-do landow ne rs m a kes the goal quite rea l to today's land less worke r·.

T his comra ')LS with th e productio n o f coffee and sugar, ,\·he re the paue rn of sharecropping is absent. In sugar , wh ere so mu ch of the pro fit d e rives from processing operatio ns and whe re control o ( large areas o( land is necessary to insure optimum o p erating cond itions for the mill, straight wage lauo r is al l that is found .' " In coffee, after the trees arc in, tir e clrie[ labor is in han·csting operations . . \IHI , sin ce ex i., tin g l q~i s Lt· tion requires p an of the yie ld l ro111 pere1111i;tls pl:intcd on shares to go :1 J w;1~., to th<.: orig i11 :1 I .,J1:11 n rnppc r. such a wo rki11g :tn:111g<.:1 11 c: 11 L \HHtld I><.: 1 i-.ky :t 11d 1111· profitable LO the < o ll<:c p rod uce r. In Tabara , th <.: to1111110 11 lr ag 111 e 11 L:ttio 11 of l:t11d makes its purcha'i<: in small plo t-; n :l:t t i\·t· ly easier tlian in the oth e r areas. Tir e ~ harecropper p:1ttcr11 of production often pro vid es tire when:witl1 ;tl to rn:tkc the purchase, and tl1 e rc l:11 ive ly lri g h n: t11nr pn r11 n rla of land de vo ted to tobacco makes e xp:t11sion of th e original purcha se mo re lik c l\'. ~'-' SAVING

Getting the first cuerda or two of la nd is th us seen as the importanL first step in the way up the economic ladder in Tabara. Sharecropping is the most likely way of getting that first cuerda. But any other device which is not too risky yet seems to hold the promise of land acquisition is also welcomed. The refore, savi ng through thrift, or, as Ta barefios express it, economizing, is e ncountered here much more commonly than among the la ndless of the sugar reg ion, where proletarianization a nd land concentration have destroyed all hope of la nd a ccumulation for the landless workers. This is true, too, o( the coffee region where the absence of sharecropping makes accumu lation for land purchase difficult and where any kind of land purchase which would lead to wealth implies a much larger initial investment than in the tobacco reg ion. Land in bearing cofiee trees is much more costly than land without trees, and the latter remains virtually unproductive for the first four or five years. To become a coffee producer, one must have more th an the capital to buy a few a cres of land. And cred it is difficult to come by. Th e semipublic agencies which provide relatively easy production credit to the small tobacco producer do not function in the same way fo r the small coffee grower. GAMBLING

In addition to pure thrift, there is a parallel cultural consequ ence o f the availability o( land , its relative cheapness, a nd the capacity of a sma ll unit to pave 1~ Proporr ional pro fit pnyments on fand nuthority farms hnve thus far ( 1949) b een too small to change this picture significantly. 7G For example, the g ross return on an average a cre of coffee would be about $ !?!) ;it the highest mnrket price per pound dur· ing the ten· ycar p eriod from 1936 to 1916. The gro~s r eturn from an ave rage a cr e o f t olr ncco at rhe hi ghest marke t price during this same p e ri od woul d h e nho11t $342. (il nn11 a l ll ooli o f Sla listics, •g-in- -17.)

i

TABARA: TOBACCO Ai\'D :'\llXED CROPS l\IUNICIPALITY

63

the "·ay for laLer expansion in the tobacco region. the area to subsistence crops. Ho"·ever, few who do so Gambling, inslead o( appearing co the ambitious share- bother seriously with their cultivation during the pecropper or agricultural wage worker of T abara as a riod of greatest activity in tl1e cane fields, a time of relalike ly road LO economic beLLermenr, looks more like a tive plenty. There is little energy left for hard work on "·ay of losi ng one's way on the road. In the other areas, the home plots after several days of cane cutting, and where iL appears LO offer the only real techn ique for the return seems hardly worthwhile when compared boosting o n eself out of the economic depths, gambling with the amount of food that may be bought for the ;1111011g Ll1c land less is extremely heavy. The illega l lotaverage daily wage of $2.50 to S3.50. Cultivation of t<.:ry llo11rishc:s in these regions, while it has all but these plots during the dead period is not very attractive disappt::ircd from Tabara. The only vestiges of it which either, fo r the highly developed cash orientation plus 1 cnco1111tc:n:d \\'ere: the highly irregular visits to the a n awareness of the risks to gardens from drought, inpueb lo itscll o( ;1 numbers pedd ler from one o( the sects, cattle, etc., discourage work. and encourage the ncighl)l)ri11g co1111111111ities. None of it penetrates those search for dead-period wage-labor. Sure money is vastly pans ol nrral T abara where I conducted my investiga- preferred to the unsure returns for long labor on a home garden. tion . On tl1e soutl1 coast, there are no plots, and the dead I111crcst i11g ly cnoug-h. as we go higher in the. soc~o­ ccono111ic scale i11 Tabara. the amount o( gamblmg m- season is a time 0£ fierce scrambling for any kind of n casc ... 1111til it matches that of the socioeconomic income. Gambling becomes much higher in relation c:qui,·;tl('llls in 1hc other communities. But in none of to income; the production and sale of illegal rum takes tl ic comn111 11i tics do middl e- and upper-class individ- on a new importance; and fishing and crab catching uals gamble in the illegal lottery. The preferred forms become the chief source of subsistence to many. On the for them in Tabara are cockfights and Lhe card games north coast, in add ition to these activities, the haulin()' and selling of sand to a local contractor involves num~ in the basement o( the town's Casino. A ltho ugh the pena lties for peddling the illegal l~t­ bers of the u nemployed and their families. H ere, too, tery are very severe, this does not seem to have dis- some of the seasona lly unemployed commute daily to couraged the peddlers in Lhe depressed parts of the one of the large cities in search of work on the docks sugar and coffee areas where the "need" is great enough or in construction. I n both the north and south, h ome Lo warra n t th e risks. But the small amount of it that needlework, washing o( clothes a nd the work of partexisted in Tabara before the promu lgation of new time ar ti~ans reacl:es its high est activity during the la ws and severer penalties in 1918 disappeared almost dead period, a penod measured, dictated, and detern~ i ne~ bot~1 in the go~~rnment and private corporaimmediately and has not returned. uon sauatton by cond1uons of the crop. For its most profitable production in field a nd mill, sugar cane in SUBSIDIARY ECONOMIC ACTIVITIES P uerto Ri co must be cut and processed in the shortest Subsid iary economic activities in Tabara are strong- tir~1e possible when the sucrose content is highest; the est am ong the landless wage workers i~1 Salvador, less m1Ils must be kept operaLing at capacity from the start common (or the sharecroppers, and su ll less common of the harvest to its fin ish. And the inevitable consefor the landless wage workers in the barr.ios where quences o( this situation are a dead season . Subsid iary economic activi ties in the coffee area durminor crops are abundant. The dead season 111. to.bacco lasts from about May umil August, and tlus is the ing the dead season tend to be less varied and less nuperiod o( difficulty for those Tabarefios who are mo.st merous th an those of the coastal su()'ar r egions more dependent upon Lhat single crop. The shar:c~·opper 111 ltke those o( the tobacco-minor crops community. tobacco is usually able co depend t~pon l.1v111g loans advanced b y the landlord during tlus period to keep RITUAL KIN AND NEIGHBOR RELATIONSHIPS him a nd his family in food . The others must seek od~l Despite the dependency condition of many of the jobs, which are usually quite scarce, or they. may migrate temporarily to the coasw l cane fie lds ~n search landless who have neither tobacco, fields for subsisto( work. There is little else for them lO do, srnce non- ence, nor easy access to food crops, the ritual kin relaagricul t11rnl subsidiary economic activities are limited tionships are treated more lightly in Tabara than in in T abara. There is no illega l lottery to be peddled, any of the other commu nities studied. This may be and the making and selling of illegal rum in Salvador explained in part by the lesser severity of the dead is virtually limited to one individual, an independent season, in part by the greater fluidity-the possibilities la ndholder who operates the only still in the barrio. and the facts of upward mobility. I n Tabara, where In this respect, the contrast with the s~gar co~nm~­ one's sharecropper comfJadre today may and sometimes n ities is striking. vV ith a dead season wluch begms 111 does b~come a respectable landholder, employer of July or August and continu es until January or Feb- l~tbo r h11~1selC tomo~Tow, the forms may appear inconr uary, the a nnu a l period of underemployment or un- sistent with the revised socioeconomic status, and may employme nt is longer than in Salvador. In the propor- thus h ave become weakened compared with older tional benefit farm community of the north coast, emphase~. On~ w?uld scarcely deny the obligations o( many of the cane workers live on small parcels of one- ~he relauonsh1p m ~abara, but one may conceivably half to two cuerdas of land, and many of these plant JOke about the relationship itself. Besidt-s, the same •

l:)

I

J

64

T ll F. T'EOPLF. OF l'l 'ERTO R ICO

fluidity which promotes the s harecropper OUL of his class may also promote him out of the n eighborh ood in which he has his com/Jadres, another factor tending to weaken the relationship forms. Field "·ork here has shown that i[ aid is sought from a cum/Hu/re who is also a blood 1·elativc (a common form of romprulrr' relationship), it is the bloo d ties ,,·hich arc s tressed rather than the ritual kinsh ip. Riwal kin and neighbor ties arc more strongly emphasi1cd in the tightly nucl eated communities of the sugar areas. They are treated \·ery ser iously in thi'i climate of strong interdepe ndency. There is much mutual a id of all k inds. I L appears that if the problem of gen i n g e noug h to cat to stay a 1i \·e often depends upon the assistance one can ge t from others close by. then the irnponance or these indi vidu a ls in the da yto-day relat ionsh ips is in creased. The gre;ner dis ta n ces between kin. riwa l kin, and neighbors in 1.h e coffee reg ion weaken these relationsh ips as comp;1red with th e sugar regions, but the we ig ht or d ead season depe ndency secmc; to make them s tronger than in T:1bar;1. EDUCATION

.-\!though the demands for their labo1· frequently interlere with the educat ion of children. the ~c 11 c ral tendency i~ t o vie:\\' educat ion as a device fo1· up\\'ard '>Ocial and status mobilit~· · Parents \\·ill frequently educate their ch ildren at some sacrifice. And the town supports t\\'O private high schools, in contrast lo the other communities studied " ·here no private high schools are lound and ,,·here it is tac itl y or openly assumed that the children wi ll "c ut ca n e" or "harvest coffee.·· Ho"·ever, the middle and upper class of t h e coffee community and the traces ol t h ese g ro ups in the sugar com munit ies appea r to regard education ;is desirable for itse lf and for maintaining or imp rov in g statu s. THE SUPERNATURAL

\Vitchcraft and magic are extremely uncommon in

all of T abara . there being only one practitioner of \\'hite magic in the e ntire municipality, none o[ bh1ck. And this practitioner combines these activities "·ith a much more lucrative practice as a straight curer. The only examples of alleged cases of bewitchment were encou ntered in the 11rb;111 slum-in flicted b y a practitioner from another municipality- and none \\'ere e n countered in the rural areas. 77 ft has been sugges ted that rel iance upon the supernatural tends to be emphasi1.ed in operationa l area s of greatest insecurity. A lth ough this view h as b een ch;dl enged, it is interesting to note tha t th ere is a 11 abundance or b lack a nd 1,vhite magic, of sym path et ic magic, and or t h e use or magic a nd love po t io ns ill genera l amo1111; the land less and la nd a uth ority se ttl e rs of the nonh ('Oast s11ga r community: th at the coffee 77 Sec· 11111<111

Rccllidcl I 1!111)

.,ir11:1r i1111.

f1>1

di-;n"-;ion of

inrrea~e

in 111a14ic i11

communi t y has some magic, especia ll y in the form o( manipulation ol sa ints for s pecific c 11 d s.. \ncl \\'hil c one might ex pect from this Lhat the south coast community "·o uld sil o\\' a h eavy 1·eliance upon magic or witchcra l t or other s11 perna lll ra I practices. there a ppca rs to be \'Cr y little ol any of these. Ho"·e,·e r. moH of the rural poor there are PentecosLals in contra!->L \\'ith the ()\'Cr\\'helming Calholicism or all ol Lhe other areas. T hus. ii one accepts .\lalino\\'ski·s hypothes is ( t!J!!!!) that magic i-; s Lrongc~t \\'here Ll1 ere is the greaLe!->L insecurity. th e: ex plan<iLion or the heavy Pc 11teco'ilalism 111ig h1 lie 1haL i1 i... ;111 ;tltc:rn;1Lc n.:~po1i...c 1<J i11-,t·nir i1y. 111 a11 y c ;1-,t'. l'c·111c·c o-,t;tli,m j., :1 p1 1rdy lo\\T l ·< l:i-,~ p_li e 11 011 1c·11<i11 <J11 1(1(' ,cn 11 ft c 0;1-,l. :111d 1'1 (' 11u,!!,i<:tl pr;1ct1c ·b "' ll H · cnflc·c· l <',!!,i<>11 ;111 <1tllC'1101 1'1 co;l'>I ,1 1g; 1r co1111111111 il\ \\'(·:1ke· 11 :1 11 <1 f111 :tl l\· di-,;1p1w:1r ;11 the 111i ddk :11 HI 11ppt·1 i 111ll111c le·\·")'· I lie·' ;11c ;tl ,.,1 ·111 ;11 1hn<' le\'C.:b i1 1 -1 ;il>:11 a . · TRADE UNIONS

Tli <·1c· .11c r11i 1111 1rni... ol ;111\· ki 11 d i11 1 :ili.1r:1 .111d 11011<: in il1c <oll("C" <1Jlllllll111i1,-.·· . l lH.: la1uc ,.., 11111ttl Jt·1 ... ol prod11c<:1': c11l1i\:tlirn1 ol . . u1J..,i.,H·t1<(' <top': 1c·1t·11Lin11 ol ~<Hiit· of 1hc older p:1L<:n1aJi..,Li< :1n;111gt·111t·11h: di-, . pc.:rscd '>Cttlemc:11t patterns : and , particularly in T ahara. the pro'ipt:Cl ol u1n,·ard mobility. ha\'C: di:.couraged anv; :ttlCllll>lS :it 1tllicmi1:1tion or aoricultural \\';WC ..., n \\'orkc:rs e\·c.:n before they \,·e re started . In the north coa~l ~11gar comm1111ity the union is so p0\1-crfu l that it clcned its leader LO the insuL1r C<i111arn . or Ho11sc of R epresen tatives. in the 1 ~H8 elect ion s. And althou gh the so uth coast union is some\\·hat weaker i11 the loc;d seLti ng for ce rtain specia l historica l reasons, it is st ill impo rtant e noug-li in th e com 1111111it y to h; 1 vc.: t:lened i ts le ader mayor or th e municipality. RACE

Th e re are re la tively few Negroes in th e rural area of Tabara. and the attilude to\\'ard them b y their own class is cl ca r l y race-con scio u s a l though not so cl ca rl y one of prejudi ce. The term Negro is used in direct acldre!)s, especially by whites of the middle and upper g roups but occasio11ally even b y members o( the same status group. Soc ializing a nd friendlin ess bet\\'een .\: ?grocs and ,,·hi tes is fou n d in varying degrees at a l l soc 1o ~co nomic levels, but in the middle and upper groups rnc1s t remarks a1·e not 1111commo11, even while the individual making t he comments may loud ly disclaim nice prejudice. The same kind of race prejudice at Ll1 csc upper leve ls is fou nd in t he coffee com munity a nd t h e coasw l sugar communi t ies : th e lowest income gro 11ps of 1hc coast appea r to be less p rej udiced t han even Lheir n 1ild ly race-co nscious co 1111te rpans in th e hig hlands. I t seems like ly tha t th e ma ss prole tarianizat iu 11 \\'lt! ch affompani es the p resen t m e thods of s ug ar prod 11 n1011 . a nd th e in term ing ling of all gro11ps from t h e pu r~st pl_ic n otyp i~«d Negro to b lo11cle wh ites may be respons ibl e for the v irtual absence of race prej udice in t h ese communiti es. '

TAnARA: TOBA CCO Al'\D :\llXEO CROPS J\r UN IC I PALITY

OWNER-WORKER RELATIONSH IPS

165

in e ithe r of the suga r communities where the o wner is e ith er the government or an u n known, unseen a bsentee corporation whose emissaries a re as divorced from the li(e of the communi ty as if they we1·e li ving hundreds of m iles a \\·ay. Jn fact, the investiga tor o( the south coas t community has aptly, if som ewh a t iro nica ll y. described the upper class o[ his community :ts ''absentee:· The same cannot quite be sa id for the pro po rtional benefit fa rms of the north coast community whc1·e o wnership is in the hands of t he insular governme nt, hence technica ll y in those of the workers themselves.

Face-Lo-fa ce relationships between landlord and tenant remain strong in the tobacco-minor crops region d c~ pit e the decline in intensity of many o( the rcspcn paue rns of the o ld pntron-agregado days. I n the cultivation o l both crops, the landlord acts in a direct ~upt:n· i ~ ory capacity. He kno"·s all of his worke rs hy name. knows mu ch of their family hist0r y, and is inti1n :1tl'ly a n p1ai11tcd "·ith their problems. During the bu :·i> time o l the year he sees them da ily. and at all other 1im e:-. li e i' likcl" Lo see them "·ith fair freque ncy :-. i111 v Ii (' li\·n i11 th e cou11tr\' and on the Janel which !SO LA TION AND SOME CONSEQ UENCES < rc;1l L'' Iii' \\·v.il1 li. Olt e n lie himse!( was a poor m a n The importa nce of mi nor crops and the g reater bulk i11 < liildl1nod 11r ~ m 1 tl1. perhaps a close fr iend or ne ighl)()r. al the H'''> k:1, t :111 :1cquai n tance of some o( the o [ these have sti m ulated the building of roads in Ta\\' ag1 · l;1liort'l'' ;111d ,IJ:irccroppers "·ho now work fo r bara. Tra nsportatio n o( tobacco, like L11at of coffee, him . . \ 11d \,·h il c Iii ... rna1c ri;tl suCC'ess has clearly e levated ma y be a ccomplished by mule or human carrie r, but li irn :tlJ()\t ' tl1 t· 111 i11 1hc status scale. the earlier contacts, it is m ore difficult to transport economi ca ll y s ig nif!':11 lit·r l1:1liih :i nd \\';1y:-. ol be ha\·ior tend t0 make him icant amo unts o[ bananas, plantains, ya ms, or ta1'lie rs 111rn t· :11 lw111t· i11 :1 n y :-.rn·i;tl or \\·ork contaet between in this manner. Thus. in those areas wh ere mino r hi11hcll :111d i11di\·idu;tl-; ol these lower leve ls than crops ha ve increased in importance, ne w roads have m >u ld IH· 1h(' < a't.' ii their \r:1~ of life "·ere completel y been built despite the une\·enness of the terrain. There lon·ig11 10 hint. I lo1111d no :,i ngle case in all of Qu ito has been an auendan t decrease in isolatio n until now or S:1h·:1dor where Ll1 e .. self-made·· ma n de pancd from there is no place in the e ntire municipa lity that i his lormc r :-.t:t tus-mates "·ith a vengean ce-where his mo re than a n hour's \rn lk from a hard-su rface road. rcan io11 Lo pro~pcrily was lO become :t snob. Such a I so la tio n in the coffee municipality is much grea ter. re!'> p011sc . ii il did n o Lhin~ e lse, "·ould threa te n his Fewer roads penetrate into the barrios, and m a n y o[ cco1wm ic wc lrare Ll1rough the resentme nt of his em - the farm s are several hours by mul e or horseback from ployees. the nearest hard-surface road. ?\o part of e ithe r sugar Once. :.uch a ":,elf-made .. larmer complained LO me community is ,·er y far from h ard-surface roads, a nd in pri va 1e :1bo lll the carelessness ol the men 'rh o were the co ntrasting le velness of terra in shortens even the gath e ring to ba('('0 Oil OnC of the plots o( his farm which lo ngest distance to ten or fifte en minutes' walk. he was worki11g by wage labor exclus ivel y. I le said that Throu g ho ut the island the pattern has been [o r good the 111r1y ordo11u/s ind iffe re nce was pan ly responsible. roads to fo llo w th e expa nsion of sugar cane- :rncl fo r SinC'c I had spe n t most o l the day w ith h im w:1lch ing these in tu rn LO lead to the Ctt rther expansio n o[ its lhc ope rat ions or lhcse han·cs ters a nd had not seen cu lt ivation. E ve n in chose parts of the interior form erly him <>ll<'C re monstrate either \\' ith the may or<lo1110 or more iso lated by reason of th e ir rough terrain , but an y of the m e n. I asked him wh y he had don e or sa id whe re sttg:1r cultivation has been feasible, roads have nothing. 11 is response was that there was little he could fo llo" ·ed th e planting of sugar. T ransportatio n o( sugar do or sa y. I le had spoken about it once before- not to c;111 c would b e too costl y by mule or human carrier: th e men but to the foreman-and the foreman had it req uires "·agon or truck r oads into the areas of c ulagreed that he would see that the me n did more carc- tivation. lttl wo rk 0 11 the tobacco. His own atticude was o ne o[ Thus, th e natural isola tio n fostered by the nature resig ned ange r. of the la ndsca pe in the m ou ntain communities- but Investigators in the suga 1· communities and the particularl y in coffee a reas-is heig htened in contrast coffee con11111111 it y re port no such reluctance on the to th e coast by the lack o[ good communicatio n. :\ncl part ol the mn 1ers or their surrogates in the large he re, loo, it is obvious that the ver y nature of the pla ntations o l those areas. And \\'hil e a few landlords cro p and the techniques required for its cultivation of large co Oce farms ha\'e close a nd frequent contact (as we ll as its prese nt importance in th e insula r econwith man y o l th eir tenants, the ir re lationship is cha r- om y) a re in large pan responsible for p ersistence of the ancri1ed by d ear diffe rences in treatment, ma ny more situatio n. The implications of this contrast in terms of th e o ld er respect form s having been re La ined in o r mobility. conservatism, and gen eral slowness of ch a nge arc interes ting and important conside ra ti o ns. th ese iso la1ed areas. 1'!1e <loser f;ice-to-face re lationsh ips in th e mo unta in con111111n iti cs in vo lve exch a nge of favo rs between MARRIAGE la ndlord :in d te nan t. w it h the latter provid ing sm a ll Consensual marriage is most commo n 111 Tabara in services \l'it lw11t charge , the former extend ing occasion a l be ne fits i11 the lonn of loans for med ica l ex- th e areas o f greatest poverty. Among the midd le and penses. g il b of milk. etc. No such re lationship e xists uppe r class, c ivil or church m arriage:. arc the rule,

1 66

THE PEOPLE OF PUERTO RICO

with the latter form predominant at both levels. The cos t of a church ceremony discourages a good man y of the rural poor a nd seems to account for the fact that about a quarter of the unions among these groups are consensua l. Little intraclass stigma attaches to this kind o[ arrangement, but comments of the legally married middle a nd uppe r groups are likel y to be sa rcast ic. It is sa id that the number of consensual marriages is greater now than form erly; however it appears a lways to have been fairly hig h among the poor (C arroll, 1900: 693- 98). The attiwde of the church towards con sensual marriage is co ndemnatory, but it looks w ith even more disfa vor upo n c ivil marriages of Catholics. Carro ll stated ( 1900:69.J): " . .. he ' vho lives in concubinage commits no other sin than h aving unlawful connec tion with a woman, whereas he w ho lives in civil marriage has committed the tremendous crime of apostasy of faith. Catholics consider faith above morals." This feeling is not shared b y the m ore sophisticated yo ung veterans and m embers o( the middle class w ho frequently are married by civil ceremony. In both coastal communities where the ne ighborh oods consist almost e ntire ly o( \\·age workers, and "'·here property and inheritance considerations are absent o r n eglig ible, consensualism is much higher than in Tabara and the coffee community. The homogeneity of th e structure in sures against outside censure for this kind of union . The middle and upper classes are too remo te to exercise much of an inhibitory effect on thi s as well as other practices of the wage workers. l\Iarriages at a ll socioeconomic levels in Tabara te nd to be stab le, with separation uncommon and formal divorce completely foreign to the landless and other poor segments of the population. T his pattern preva ils in the o ther mountain community as well but contrasts sharply w ith both of the more monolithic sugar communities w here unions are made and broken w ith greater frequency. As far as the children of these broken marriages are concerned, they m ay live with either parent; and it is common to find the children of one, two, or even three previous marriages of the wife or husband living in the same household. RADIOS AND NEWSPAPERS

Radios and newspapers are neither owned nor listened to nor seen b y most of Tabara 's rural poor; only those who Jive near enough to the road to visit the local stores w he re these may be fo und ever hear a radio or read a n ewspaper. Since electricity does not carry far off the main road, only b attery sets would be feasible in the remote parts of barrios Quito and Salvador. The few battery sets found in these areas are owned by school-going veterans. T h is situation is paralleled in the coffee community, too. But the roadside settlem ent patterns of the rural poor of the coastal sugar communities brings them electricity. T he ava ila bility of larger a mounts o( cash at o ne time during the harvest makes the purchase o f radios possible. Conseq uently most of the rura l poor in the south

coast cornmunity and a large numbe r of those in the no rth ha,·c radios. ,\ Jore n ewspa pe rs arc bought here, to o, and th ey have a wider circulation tha n in the m o untain communiti es. Thus, the people o[ the coastal areas are, as a rule, better i11[o rmed on contemporary affairs than their counterparts in the mo untains. This leads furth e r to a more active participation in matters of curre nt impo rtance. Thus, with the ca mpaign a nd election of 1 9.1 8, 7 ~ the J11de pe nde11tist party miscalculated its stre ngth in Tabara because they assessed it 011 the basis of' c nlhusi;1-,111 at th e ir mcc l· ings and rallies. Th e rur;d poor. 1110-,c wlio comprise th e 11t1111eric; d ma jority. \\T I T indiffe re nt to th e dist:1 11t roa dside m ee tin g'>. They didn·t attcml: they \\T I T not prompt.eel h y ;Illy :--tn >11g de:--irc to hc;1r the issues dis· cussed or de b;1tc·d. \\'h;1 t the,· k1 1e \\. ol the p:iny in power wa s little. but enough. i11 their ,·iew . to convill( e th e m that they ought to support it. Therefore, those ,\"110 did attend the meet ings \\·ere those \\'ho \\·ere close e nough l<> do so a11d \d1ose acq 11;1int.a11ce \\·ith th e issues and th <.: prolilcms ""'s pitched ;1t a high e r level than the pcnple \\"ho fin;llly decided the c1mpaig11. Usuall y these \\·ere th <.: ,·igorous a11cl Y<>c:tl tl(' f<'ritll<>S. Th e contr;ist \\·ith the co;1stal communities is strong. Jn these communities rallies and meetings were he ld in places conve nient to whole neighborhoods. Campaign iss ues debated and discussed in the newspapers and over the radio were pursued in daily conversation. Peo pl e ca me not on ly to be entertained but to be informed or to challenge. The rural poor of these coastal areas we re d irectly and cl osely involved with the entire campa ign and its activ iti es in contrast with the general pre-e lection detachment of the landless in the mountains a nd the ir final, overwhelming participation to choose the leader of the party in power as first popularl y elected governor of Puerto Rico. SOCIAL ORGANIZATION

lkfore I turn to a brief, final summary and conclusion of the thesis presented in this paper, l would like to add a little about the social organization encountered in the four communities studied. In Quito, Salvador, and La Cima I found a spread o[ economic status from the most impoverished landless peasant to the wealth and extensive landholdings of one of the three or four ri chest m en in a ll of Tabara. All kinds of intermediate conditions and statuses were encountered on the continuum from top to bottom of this socioeconomic scale. A n<l the differences were for the most part correlated with the amount and kind o( land owned or rented. 7 9 In any case they a re clea rly correla ted with the amount of wea lth possessed or recently possessed , and since this most frequently has its source in land, I feel tha t emphas is on that element is completely justified. 1s Cf. pp. 123- 26. 1n The numbe r of ren ters in Quito and Sa lvador is ex tremely sm<tll. o nl y n n c impona111l y large farmer lhat I kn ow of-in Quito- h eing a r e n te r. And he rents th e Janel from his brother· in . Jaw.

TA BARA: TOBACCO A:>;O :,\IIXED CROPS :,\lU:'\ICIPALITY

The sLrucLure of lhe other moumain community is roughly similar to that o[ Tabara, with the chief differen ce bei ng in the grea ter size of the largest holdings and in the grealer amount of land required there for an equal cash rewrn LO that realized on a tobacco-plus farm o[ Tabara. I t is in the coastal sugar communities that the sharpest differences <1ppear. There the neighborhoods studied were virtually mono-class entities. True, the municipalities as a whole show a range of wealth and classes, of cultura l subgroups comparable in variety a11d m11nbers ,\.ilh either of the mountain communities. But the neighborhood o( concentration examined by c:1ch ol the co<lstal im·esc igators was essentially mo11oli1h i<.: in class structure. The higher levels were found i 11 the town or in the offices of the grinding Ill i 11 s. i\: o cum pa 1·:1 b Iy homogeneous community even exists in the rural areas of the coffee municipality and of Tabara. Therefore, it was possible for the investigator ol. the south coa:.t community to define the real u ppcr cla:-.s. the o'n1ers of the biggest farms, as an "abse1Hcc upper class," predominantly American, but i11cl11ding Pu<.:no Ric:111s a nd Spa niards as well. The "owner" u( the land-in the eyes of the cane workers on the north coast-is the governmen t, another "absen tee" who operates through an <1ppointed manager or series o( managers. i\Iost of the intermediate groups found in the other communities are absent from the two coasta l communities. Thus, what is found is a numerical ly overwhelming class of landless wage worke rs in the so uth coast community and a similar group, either landless or living on sma ll parcels of fairly unproductive land, in the north coast community. These are proletarianized to a high degree, dependent upon their money earnings in cane cultivation for their subsistence. They have little hope or opportunity of removing themselves upward out of their present status.

SUMMARY

I have suggested that under a system of production for profit, and within the context of a completely agrarian , dependent society, class-structured and participating in the world market, certain forms and productive arrangemencs tend to be associated in special ways with the crops cultivated. Thus, the nature of the crop under the above conditions favors the predomin <lnce of holdings within a certain size range, d ic ta tes the general patterns of inheritance and the rate of turnover in landholdings within a specific size range, fixes the seasonality o[ employment, and delimits the proportion of land which may be devoted to the production of subs istence crops. L arge-scale cultivation of sugar demands an abundan t, seuled labor supply for abou t six months of the year. This means serious underemployment during the other six months of the year, leads to an elaboration of subsidiary economic activities for survival, makes important use o[ the labor of women and children. Con-

1

67

centration of land in large, stable holdings discourages ideas of upward mobility and promotes cynical attitudes towards the ultimate value of saving and education-substitutes the hope for advancement through sudden accessions, i.e., through gambling. Subsistence plots, 'd1ere they exist, are generally neglected. Strong kin, ritual kin, and neighborhood ties arise or persist in the needs and exchanges of the dead season. Faceco-face relationsh ips between producer and worker are absent, and this is accompanied by a breakdown in the older respect patterns and associated aspects of the former paternalistic <1rrangements. Good roads and generally flat country reduce isolation, bring electricity and radios in their wake, and raise the general leYel o( soph istication. In the coffee community the attitude of the landless toward saving, ed ucation, and prospects for advancement, is almost the same as in the sugar communities and for similar reasons. Subsistence plots are more highly regarded and better cared for. Subsidiary economic activities are especially important during the dead season but tend to b e channeled in purely agricultural lines rather than being more diversified as in Lhe sugar regions. Opportunities for work for women and children are confined chiefly to the harvest and to some irregular needlework. G ambling is common bul strongly curtailed by the scarcity of cash. Kin and neighborhood ties, though discouraged by distances and the rough terrain, are rather strong. The general impression of the investigators is that drinking is about on a par with the sugar areas, and violence appears most commonly in the activities of a few neighborhood "tough guys." Face-to-face r elationships between owner and tenants in the coffee community are strong, with prese1Tation of the old respect patterns and ocher aspects of paternalism well marked . Poor roa<ls, the irregu lar terrain, and the scarcity of electric power preserve the isolation of the landless in this region, keep the general level of sophistication lower than in the coascal communities. In Tabara, there is much greater socioecon omic fluidity than in either the coffee or the sugar municipaliLies. The turnover in land is very high, and the hope for self-improvement is pronounced. Saving and education are looked upon as likely devices for reaching a higher socioeconomic level. Gambling is relatively light and the illegal lottery has virtu ally disappeared. Subsidiary economic activities and the work of "''omen ancl children are somewhat more important in the excl usively tobacco barrio than in the mixed tobacco a nd minor crops barr ios. Kin, ritual kin, a nd neighbor relationships are less important-Lhough still far from insignificant-and the fom1s have less sanctity here than in any of the oLher regions. Drinking is not uncommon, but it is the boast of Salvadoreans that violence never occurs there. Face-to-face relationships between landlord and tenant are stronger here than in the other areas, but respect forms a nd paternal istic arrangements have

I 68

TllE PEOPLI:: OF l'U:: IU U

R ICO

oth e r factors en te 1· into this system of rc la Lio11ships. In sh ort, th e ass umption has b een that a ll of these e lements in combination have res ulted in th<.: parti c ular adaptation made by T aba1·a at this poilll i11 h e r h istorv. Th{s ad:qnation includ es ;1 s pec ifi c soc ial "structuring ·· with reg ard to th e primary i11str11me11t o f producLion . th e land. P 11 e no Rican socie t y i, clas-;-:-.tr11n11red. Th e 1111111ic ipality ol Tahara and the ne iRhborl10ods ol La Cima. (~uito. and S:1h·ador partake of thi:-. .. s trncLuring-." · 1 he.: ··'>lrt1C1 11 r i11g .. it-;dl i ~ l>a,ed p ri 111 ar il y <>11 INTERPRETATI ON AND CONCLUSIONS wealth. 1>111 -.i11<e· \\"(·;tl 1h i-. :H< u11111l:11 cd 1111 ht -. ig 11if i<a11tl y :111 d llHhl I 1<"< jlH'Ill h I r n 111 l. 1111 lo\,.ll('l '>h ip. l.111 d ha,·c tri ed Lo ... ho,,· causa l and functional re lation - i" th e kc' 10 '><>< i:tl :111<1<·c1111 cu11 i1 ,1;1 11". I 0 1>:11 1o :1 11 d :-.hips among some of Lhe pans ol Lhe t<Ha I c ulwre of minor c1n1 "' :1r<: t l1e 111n' l i111pn11.1111 11 0 1,, c11l1i,·:i1cd an e as te rn hig hlands agric 11IL11ral commu ni t y i11 P11 e rt.o rn1 tlti -, l:t 11 d: :111d 1l1v \'"' ' ' i11 \,·l1 i<11 t lt n 1111"1 l w Ri co . In order LO e 111phasi1c Lhe conditio11 i11g e ftcns or ntlti\·:11 ed i11 t lH· -.p(·c if 11 . c 11!1 11 1:tl -l1 i,tor i1 :ti c otll(·:--.t th e .'> }JCC ific agri c ultural Jif c wa y of thi"> C0111lllllnil)' 11;1\·c: pr<1d11 c <:cl <e·n:1 i11 n ·l :1tio11 -. liip' a11101 1g til l' i11di · upo n it.'> n dt11re . I ha\'e com pared and contras t ed \id 11:tl-. c-11 gaged i11 1he ir 111 ll i, :11i <111. · 1 line arc t he ce rtain le auire.'> ol T a bara with those ol oth e r munici - CJ\\·n c:r-. <1 1 th e L111d ll} H ill w hi< h tl1 c 111l>;1<co :111d 111i11or c ro p '°> :11 c gto\,·11. :1 11 d t '1 <· 1c :1 1c- tlio-,e 1dw \\·ork til e,< · palities re ported in 1.his volu111c: .. \ l ullcr com p ar iso11 w ill be found i11 P;1n I \ ' . l;111d-; lor w:1g<.:-. or l11t :1 -. '1 :1r<· ol 111(· prof it ,, Then· :11<· I 11 lll Y LreaLrn e nL of the cullllre of T al>ara l h;1,·e a 11111n b c 1 of k i 11d -. :111d d cg 1LT'> o f m,·1H· 1, 11 i I'· :1 nd n ece ......a ril y lel t und e'>cribed and unLr<::n cd a m1111be r th e re :11 c :1 -.111:tl k 1 1111111hc-r o l \.1ri :11io 11 -. w itlii11 the o f a">p ens o f the c ulwrc of Tab;1ra. , \11 cx h aus ti\·e O\'er-all g ro11p ol tho:-.e who :ire l:111clle!>s :111d prope nye thnog ra ph y ol th e community \\"<t:-. 11 01. con s id ered less. Tl111s wh ile there is a grad:1t io n. a cont inuum in l>Crti n <.:11 l LO the J>U rpose and J OCU S of th i... pa p er. I ha \'C.: terms or wea l th or ownership. fr om the 111 0Sl ill1(10\'· onl y included a:-. lllUCh dc~ cription of th e COllllTIUniLy cr ished (;111 dless \\·age worke r LO th e richest producer a n d i L'> life,,·a ys a " I cons id e re d c:~~c11Lial LO ;111 und e r- and landholde r in the comm11nity there a rc . at t he <>tandi11g ol its ge n e ral culLure and LO sc n ·e ;1s a bac k- -,ame tim e . sharp cultural distinctions and lrcq uentl y ground 101· the inte rpre tatio n ol the re lat io n ship lic- conflin in g interesls a~ wholes b etween the group t\\·ee n the "\\'ays or e arning a li v in g .. a nd t il e rest or wh ich O\\' llS land and e mpl oys labor and the group the c ulture . which is la ndless and is employed to perform the labor. \ r eth o d o logi ca II y, each o f Lil e field worke rs on th i!'> T he n d 111re or the indiv iduals al th e top is in many proj ect ,,·as con cern ed with an examination ol th e w:1ys ,·as t ly diffe re nL I ro111 that of the i11clivicluals at pr incipal culwral as pens of liis commu n ity. But w e the bntto111. These d ifferences are the cl ear co11sewere al so co n cern ed w ith causat ion s a nd I un ction ;d que 11 ce of cliflere11ces in wea lth or land ow n e rship. interre lationships. I n this conn ection. our c hief prem - T hu s, again. it is see n that it is the relat io ns hip Lo t h e ise w as that cultural form s and prac tices d o not arise prim ary source of w ealth creation that defines the cul\\·hims ica ll y, a s it we re , but that the re arc !actors in ture of an indiv id ual or of a gro up. True, th e re arc a Lhe environmen L a s well as in th e culture or c ul t11ra l 111m1ber of" sim il :1r iti es between Lhe c ul t ure of the most tradition itself w hi c h predispose o r d etermin e cul ture depressed e le ments or the p opulation ;ind the most arin s p ecific, dependable, and p e rhaps predictable ways. lluenl. s u ch as a common la nguage. common natu ra l ;'\eedl es'i LO s a y, s uch an approach deni es s pecific e nviro11111 e 11t, common c hurch. and so on. But it is the r acia l o r biolog ica l factors a '> d e t e rminants of culture , differe n ces and the frequentl y assoc iated conflict of but it does n ot d e n y th e in1pact o( earlie r c u ltu re or interests- especia ll y o f lhe cla sses :1t e ithe r CX Lrem ity previous ways or li fe. Such an a p p roach, by in di catin g of the soc inecono111 ic scale in t h e rural comn111nitythe rather striking differences in c ultura l d e ta ils w hi c h rath er th a n the s imil arities and the sha red interests chara cteri1e the diffe rent are as of an is la n d so s mall and efforts inYolved in proclunio11 w ith whic h l am and 1'>een1ingly so hornogeneous. obv ious ly re jects com - co n cerned. And th ese differe nces, conflicts. and areas mon h e ritage a s th e sole and sufficient facto r in e x - or joint end eavor I sec as re lated LO or depC'nde nt 11 pon plaining loca l differe n ces in c ulLure. t.he i11cli viclu al 's or t he g roup 's pos iti o n re lat ive to th e land. I ha ve tried lo s how t h at t h e p art icu lar crop adapLation o r Tahara i ~ th e consequ e n ce of c ulu1ral ecolog iI n thi'> ;rna lysis. th e refore, lh e c11 llure of th e people ca l a dapta ti o n w certa in n a tural en viro nm e n tal fa c- ol T ab;1ra- as ol P u e rto Rico- has b ee n seen in rea l ity Lors, toge the r w ith hi s toric:;d influences in the cu ltu ra l :1s a 11umher of ime rrclatcd subc ultures w ith certa in conti11uum; that Tab;-ir<J rn11st he und er~wo cl :1s a pan basi c s i111ila ri 1.ies ru11 11 i11g throt11~ho11l, h ut with many of th <' is land or Pu e rto Ri co: that P uerto Rico h<is a differe n ces ow ing not o nl y to 1h C' pattern ol ea rning a comp lex syste m ol re latio11-;hips \\·ith th e rest: or th e li\· in ~ but to the wa y in which each per:-.rn1 i-. rela ted < <t pi1 ;tli '>t world . bu t pani c 11l a rl y wi1h and thro11gh lo I h e m c a ll S or ean1i11g a Ii \' i11g. On th e ha ~ i 'i of th is t he l ' 11i1 ed S 1:1Le'>: and that world rnarkc 1-; and rna11 y investig al ion, \\'C h;1vc• been rorccd lo re jc< l an y as-

,veaken ed under Lhc impact o( the relative ly fre qu e nt changes in s tallls and wea lth . Th e Lc rra in is o nl y s lightly less rugged than that o( the co flee region . .El ectricity docs not pcnc traLe into the barrios. Good roaus, howe ,·er, bring all parts or the municipality f;1ir ly close to Lh c town . T hus, isolation is some,,·hat less Lhan in the coffee r eg ion. and the deg r ee o f sophis tication appears LO be hi g her than i11 that area.

TABARA: TOBACCO AND MIXED CROPS i\lUNIC I PALITV

su111ptio11 that the cultural particulars found among the p eopl e in any one region- especially the particula1·s inYolYed direct ly and indirectly in the relationship ol p eopl e to the land-will be just like those found in other reg io n ... on the island. \Ve see even less reason for any a:.:.umption of a homogeneous n ational charanc:r lor the people o[ Puerto Rico. \Ve ha,·e di:.cm·ercd that the way of life of the landless agric 11lt11ris t in the tobacco-minor crops area is 11 ot idc.·nt ica l with the way of l ife of the landless agri< 11lu11 i... t 011 th e hi~ abse ntee-owned sugar plan La Lion ol th(' ... 011111 co;1~1. But. more importantl y, we believe 1lt:11 llll ' \ < ou ld he1rnn c ,·e n · much alike if e ither t0ok 11p 11· ... idc 1ll (' :i nd ,,·ork in the comm un ity of the other. .\11d i11 11 11 1 : h l ' did t he \\':1y o l' life or the land less :1g1 i<lil l ltri ... 1 prn,·c 10 h e impnrtanliy like the way o( lik n l i ltc liig l:1 11do\\·11t-r. But if th e former were hi111~c11 10 hvc1111 tt' :1 big l:rndo\\·11cr, the concomita11t < h:111gt·, i11 Iii ... <1iltl1rc \\'<Hild render it more like th:1t ol 01 IH"1 la1 1do,,·11c.T:-. i11 the area. less like that of the < l.1 ...... t·q11 i' :1 l1·11i... nl lti ... prc,·ious position. I 11 1hl' n t I ic t ...cc 1io11:-.. I ha Ye d escribed some o[ the 1111111t·t 1111-. c h:111gc ... that h:t\·e taken place in Tabara :.i m c it:-. lo1111ding i11 the first d ecade of the nin eteenth century. I h:l\·c 011l y touched upon the great number of c: le 111e 11L ... in Tabara·s present-day culture which b e lo11g- in th e 11 ispani c tradition. Detailed examination :111d :.eparaticrn out of these eleme nts is considered tangc11Lial to m y purpose. althoug h there is no d en ying the pc r~ i ~ 1 c 11ee. in a new functio nal setting . o[ man y ol thc~c Spanis h clements. Certainly there was 110 s11g :1r C"anc or <"offec 0 11 the island when the Span ish first ca111c here. Neith er were sugar ca ne or co([ee round aboriginall y in a n y o ( the other Caribbea n isla nds \\"hich came under the early domination o[ othe r powers than Spa in. So we ma y glless that suga r ca n e.: and cofCcc would ha ve com e to Puerto Ri co i[ Engla nd or Fra n ce had been the isla nd 's conque rors. And ce rtain ly som e or the culturn l co nsequ ences o[ the i11lrod11ni o n ol' these crops "'Otdd have been quite similar. I l o\\"eve r. there is n o ga insayi ng that settlement or Puerto Ri co b y the English might, through the man y differe n ce:. in culrnral ,·alues. customs, and practices, have yie lded a different k ind of culcure than existed i11 1H98 when th e Americans wok over the island. Certainl y the impo rtance of the Catholic church, an impona1H·e which it holds in the li fe of the island e,·en today. ca1111 ot be overestima ted. >.:or ma y we dcn yevcn if \\"C d o n o t assess- the conseq uences of Spain's helte r trea tm en t or and liberal ity \\'ith rhe slaves that "·e re i11 1pnrted into Puerto Ri co (cf. Carroll, 19on; Flinter, ' !)~!..!: a11d Tannenbaum, 19.16). 1\nd Spain's poverty or indiffere n ce to the plight o[ th e is la n d in man y wa ys can be contrasted with the i11Le 11se i111 crcst in s u ch mauers as pllblic h ea lth. ed u ('atio11. road huilcling·, e tc., w hi ch have ma rked Puerto Rico's d cvelo pmc m in the firt y-odd yea rs of Am erican dum i 11 at io n . Even th e use of the Span ish la nguage has its t1nqu cs ti o11:i bl c e ffects 0 11 th e life o( the people in many

i

69

\\"ays. for one thing, it undoubtedly fun ctions as a unifying force , a force for promoting the consciousn ess of a national identity of those \\"ho speak it as against the members o[ the metropolitan power who do not. lL is a s trong point in the protes t agai n s t American domination of the island, e\·e n those who are n o t for inde pendence Yoicing resenunent at the forced u se or Eng lis h in the schools, or the use of Engl ish in addresses b y visiti n g continental fu n ctionaries. There is a bit of ambi\'alence here, too. Thus, in T aba ra. n e,d y introduced friends would frequentl y try Lo conduct the conve rs;llio n in a poor English e,·en afte r it h ad been estab lished that m y poor Spanish and their llue nt Spanish would make for clearer mutual compreh en sio n . Abi li t y to speak Engl ish is generally cons idered a st:1 u1s symbol. T his is esp eciall y true o[ t he olde r generati o n o [ rural poor. The lega l system a n d governme ntal form s that prcvniled under Spanish rule have assuredly ldt the ir mark in th e American-cha nged aml adapted system s now fo und in Tabara. H o"· mu ch o[ the old patte n1s have b ee n functionally in corporated int0 th e n ev• setting wo uld b e hard to say, but. like any of the othe r Hispa nic e lem e m s, they ha,·e b een a part o( the cultural continuum which contributell to the c ulture found b y t he Americans "·hen they a rri,·ecl. It wo uld b e extrem e ly ,·aluable to check the conclusio n s of th is i1H"estigation cross-culturally agains t a similar s tud y in an area where all o[ the na tural e 1H"ironmental fact0rs ,,·ere equi,·a lent to those of Pue rto Rico but where the special histo rica l cleYelopm e 11t had been different, such a place a s, for exa m p le, Jamaica. Thus, the s pecial historical factors whi ch we have m e ntio n ed in th is chap ter-those inllue n ces. em phases. and pr:in ices-,,·o tdd be those of Eng lish dominio n rather tha n the Spanish and A1n erican "·hich s11 c:ccss ively dominated Pu erto Rico in the -150 years of wh ite contact. The comparison s that could be dra\\·n fro m su ch a study \\"Ou ld throw cons iderable lig ht on the thesis o f this paper, on the propos ition that the social structure nows more from the productive arrangements than vice versa: that the cultures or subcu ltures of the vario u s int errelated segments of the who le differ: and t h at the nature of t he crop itse]( a nd the de\"ices required fo r its o ptimum exploitation in a gi,·en historical sett ing h e lp to set many of the particular cu lw ral forms e n counte red in this or any other contemporary. ins ular, s u btro pica I ag rarian possession. I have d escribed some of these cultural forms for Tabar:i and briefl y compared certain aspects "·ich those of th ree oth er P uerto Rican communities. D espi te a common cultural h eritage a n d common sources of diffllsion. striking differences between th e culture of Tabara :incl the other com111unitics are apparent. Among t h e diffe re n ces are more thrift aml more in ce 11livc to sav ing in Tabara; less gambling ttnd less inre11 1. ive to gamb li ng than among coastal and other mnunta in comnttrnity lower class e quivale nts: g rea te r em p ha sis on education and faith in its power to aicl in up\\"ard socioeconomic mobili ty; reclu cecl importa n ce

I

70

THE P EO l'L E OF PUE RTO RICO

of ritua l kin and n e ighbor re lationships "·ith greater e m ph asis on individu a lism and independen ce; less belief in a nd use of supe rna tura l forms and practices; gr ea ter tendency to r acia l prejudice and its e xpress ion th a n in coastal communities ; continued importa nce of fa ce- to-face relationships -with accompanying services and o bligations-esp ec ia ll y in contrast with the coastal communities ; far less consensual marriage a nd much m ore stable unions th a n a m ong socioecon omi c equals in the coasta l communities; more isolation th a n th e

coastal comm11 11 1ues but less tha n th e othe r m ountain communit y, " ·ith a conseq ue nt highe r level of sophist ica tion than the laue1· a nd a lower leve l than the form e r. A function :l l anal ys is has sho\\'n that these differences arc d e pe nd e nt upon distinctive local forms of land use. ,\nd it is th erefore offe red :-is :1 h ypothesis for cross-culwral verifi cati on th:-it in a ny situation comparable to th at o f Pue r to Rico such fea tures will result from th e <;amc type of la nd u se .

7 BY ERIC R. WOLF

San Josi S uh cultures ef a " Traditional" Coffee Munici'pality INTRODUCTION THE PROBLEM OF THE COFFEE SUBCULTURES

I n the study of San Jose we shall be concerned with the study of a way of life based on the production and sale o f a major cash crop, coffee. First we shall attempt to see what happened to a culture when people came to dep end to a n ever-increasing extent on a single cash crop. Secondly we shall attempt to see what happened to this culture when the crop lost its former economic importance in the world market. San J osc is located in the western high lands of P uerto Rico, where coffee is raised as the major crop in a system of multiple crop production and livestock raising. Until 1898, coffee was king in P uer to Rico, and the culture based on coffee flourished. Since i 898, the forme r king has turned beggarman, and the western highlands have become Puerto Rico's sorrow. The prob lem with which we a re concerned here has both functiona l and historical aspects. Some economists (e.g., L oftus, 19'14 :417) have r ecognized that "coffee cultu re is not merely a business enterprise but a n environme ntal pattern and a social structure . . . ." Coffee growers oflcn a ttempt to continue their way of 1ife, eve n when their major cash crop has b ecome clearly unprofita ble. The existence of a pecu lia rly Puerto R ican coffee cu lture has long been recogn ized. Arturo Roque writes ( 1948: i5) that "coffee cultivation

l 72

Tll£ Pl::OPLE OF PUERTO RICO

represents a type of soc ial order deeply rooted in th e mountain reg ion o[ Pu erto Rico." V;isyuez Cakerrada points out ( 19.18: 17) that "the cultivation of coffee as a business proposition ,\·as highly disad\'antageous for the mountain farmer. .i\"evenheless, the coffee farmers remained on their farms . . . thus demonstrating their firm adheren ce to the old culture pattern.·· Francisco \ J. Zeno spea ks of coffee's "s ig nifi ca nce in terms ol regionalism, ol true regionalism, of the true Creole-don1 ol the Pu erto Ri can people:· 1 Th e ainhropologist is therefore confronted wiL11 a functional prob· Jern. H e must sec how. in the Pueno Ri ca n co!lee cul ture, "a ser ies of modes or behavior and instilllliOllS arc connected through various kinds and degrees or interdependency" (S teward , 1~N5:ix). Second ly, we must view the coffee culture i n h istor ical pcr~pec:tive. l' ue no Rican writers have taken a -.pecia l view of the histor ical mean ing o f t he coffee area. Th e tran~itional period \\·hich led from Spanish rule to rule by the U nited States swept away the political achievement or insular autonomy of 1897. T he impact of the new culw re and the profound reorientation of the world market subjected the island 's c ulture to <;evere strai ns. During this pe riod the coffee ;irea became at once the symbol of pas t prosperity and a symbol of comm o n nationality. Tomas Blanco ( t~HG:1 :p. 1:3~) stresses the importance o( coffee as a crop grown by small owners, and states ( 1946: 127) that .. all historical and geographical analysis of Puerto Rico leads to the conclusion that it is a fundamentally agrarian and non-ca pitalist co untry." Dr. Clemente Pereda 'nites (1948:28) bitterly: " Jn the process of transfo rmati o n which our people is suffering the coffee industry is shipwrecked. It is shipwrecked beca use th is shipwreck is em inently typical o( us . .Because it does not lend itse lf to exploitation ." A nd Jua n A n tonio Corre tje r exc l;iims ( 1 ~_H5:12): " In these n ow p l u n dered hi lls. in these fe rti le va ll eys. in these p la i ns now depri\·ed , in these mountains so forever proud, put forth shoots o ur great culture of shade trees and Christmas songs, the poet's crown that adorned our great national century: the century of the Republic born in L ares, the cent ury of the abolition of slavery and o( the constitut ion gra nting autonomy; the century o[ the Ode to Bori nquen, of the Puerto Rican tun es, of the 'Socia l \loralit y.' I !ere grew the coffee orchard, father and lord of our co untry." .\ s ;inthropolog ists, we shall note the histori ca l conditions which made for the appearance and the climax ol the coffee cu lture and which a re presently making for its decline. \Ve shall note three major stages in this process. Th e first is characterized by the dominance of ;;u b~istence farming, ·w ith but tenuous links to the out-;ide market. The second esta blishes coffee cultivation on haciendas and small farms, a n d represe nts th e apogee or th e coffee market. The th ire! st.age, th e present. is c lrnracte ri1.ed by th e d ecl in e or the co ffee indui-.try. 1

I Ile

ll nn .

( 0111111i,·do11.

l·1 a11t iMn

' !1:\<i:li.

l .cno , qrn>tcd in l'ucno Rito

F.101H11t1\'

Each of these three stage'i represents a ~pecilic interaction bet \\·cen en \. iro n men t and cu Itu re. Each stage fitted new technological eyuipme11t into the ~ame local environn1e11t. Usin~ the same tropical and mountainous :1rea. d illerent culwres grew up in the course ol time. wil11 each major cha nge in the cultural equip· ment available for the e xploitation ol the en vironment. \Vhile each pre\·ious culture entered into the lllaking and de\·e lopment ol the ne\\·. the character ol each c ultur<.: w;1.., non:I and dilfcrc11t lro111 th:11 ol it-. prcck· cei-.'ior. Yct c;J( Ii culture. 1111( c c-.1:tlili-.hed. dC'n·lnpc-d 1igidi · ti c~ \,·fiic Ii limited ih c:1p:1c it~ lor lt1rtlin < l1;111gc. \\.(' ... hall att<.·1111n to -.,IHJ\\' ,,·h:it the,c limi ting l;1< 101-. wnc in e:teh C':1-.1:. c :h:111gc.: <:til l<.: l rolll tlic- m11,id('. It 11111..,1 be re111 c 111i>er1:d th :1t Puerto Rico Ila-. 11c·,c.:r hu·11 <'<>tll· plc.:u:; ly i..,olated l r0111 the 1nrnkr n world 111:1rkct. -,inn· its di ~c m· c:ry i11 1 l~J :I· l h ntl11 1rc li a.., alwa y~ lieL'Jl li11ked in -;0111 (.• degree to the pl'C\";1i li11g colllllH.' r< i:il p11rpmL·s of the cla;·. The local ndllln: :ilw:1y' had t<> int <:r:ict. \\'ith a larg<:r <.:<011mnic. social. a11d political 'Y'l('lll. ol which it lorrned ;i pan.\\.<.: :-.h:ill attempt to show tli:it each sLage i11 the cultural proC'C:.:. outli11cd alio\'C rqi· rei-.entcd a specific and differing mode of i11tcgration \\·ithin such a larger sociocu ltural whole. \\'h ilc an anthropologist lacks the training to analyze the nonlocal determinants of local events in their large r aspen. he may neverth eless assess the mechanisms 'vhich link the comm unity to the city, the isla nd , the nation, or the world. M ETHODOLOGY

The mu n icipa lity which \\· ill be the focus of o ur interes t and to which we have given the name of San .J ose lies in the western high land s o( P uerto Rico. It consists o r o ne town a n d e ig h t ba r rios. I n l !J110, the mun icipa lity of San Jose had 3,877 ho useholds and 22,906 in habitants. of w hom 1,919 persons. or about 8 per ce11t, lived in the town . Jn 1950, the number had fall en to 3,805 househ olds of 19,,123 persons, of whom 3·..J/ 1, or about 18 per cent, lived i n town. The general theory and method of community selection has been discussed fully in the I ntroductio n. H ere we sha ll be concerned with the selection of a community for study w i thin the coffee area of P uerto Rico. Sa n .J ose was selected o n the basis o( both qua n titative and yu;ilitative information, obtained through a na Iysis of statistic-a I material. persona I consu lta ti on w ith ex perts, and two survey trips. Due to the limita· tion in the number of available field workers, o nl y one com munity could be se lected from a ra nge of possible choices. \1\fe sought to select not merely any coffee c:o111mu11ity, but a coffee commun ity which might yie ld historica l insights. The wri ter therefore sc lenecl a "traditiona l" commun i ty, wh ere a cons iderab le n u m be r of peo ple preserve the trad itio na l Hispanic pat· terns in r elations between owners o f la rge esta tes and agricultura l workers, in market ing through private crcd ilor me rchant s, a nd in other fea tures. 1n sefe>cting a traditional com111 1m ity, it seemed d e-

SAN J OSL ' 'T RADITIONA L "

:; irablc to choose a commt111ity established <luring th e '>cnmd h a ir of the nin eteenth century, when the coffee c ulture was reaching the peak of its florescence. It first seemed that such a traditional community might have :;urvived in the geographica ll y isolated central portion of the island. This proved contrary to fan. Eve n in the celller of th e island the decline of the coffee industry has brought with it such phenomena a-; rapid out-m igra tion. d ecline of private marketing, c h:111gc~ i11 the rel:ttions bet\\·een owners and \\·orkers l rom ;1 fHT'>ll lt :il ha~is to\,·anl a cash-econo m y. and dep;1nurt' ol Sp;1 11i:-h L1mi lies. The coffee-gro\,·ing mu rri < ip:dit ) in th e l L' lll l'r o l the island had 1,000 c11erdfls l111dn c 111t· < tdt int ion :ind a cane processing mill. I Int'. :1-. i11 111:i11 y 0L11 cr coffee-growing municipalities. rill' pri,·:1t c l rl'ditor n1cn :hatll. who once dominated rl1 e ln!':i I co Ike lll :1rkc l. had dosed shop. ln one barrio, ,aid to he tile 111ost "traditiona l" and isolated in the < nfln: :1rl'; 1. t Il l' \\'riter found a hamlet su1To 1 .111ded on :1 I I ~ id e., '» l :111c. ;111d th e people largely d ep ende nt on 11 t't'dkwork f:in11 cd ot1t from a nearby urban ce1ner. It was 11111~ concluded that the maintenance of a tr;1ditio11al \\·av o[ life in an area whi ch is an integral part of a larger sociocu llllra l sys tem d epends t1tJon fanors other than mere geographical remoteness. Such an area ma y be subj ect to the continuous impacl o( mllside fo rces. In the coffee area. Lhese forces aCL ,·ery differently 0 11 diffe re nt localities, perhaps introducing ca ne cultivalion into one community. needle\\·ork into a seco nd, and increased livestock production into a third. It seemed , perhaps paradoxica lly, tha t under conditions of rapid soc ial change the trad itional pat· terns o( coffee fanning would continue to funct ion on ly in a commu nity where they were supported by fa ctors within the changed comext itself. For example, in th e past, workers on coffee haciendas were permitted to do sharecropping o n subsistence plots as part of th e ir traditi onal working arrangement. They retain ed half the resulting produce and gave half to th e ha ciencln owner for his ow n consumption . Such produce was not sold for cash in the market. Toda y this practice is va nishing in most pans of the coffee a rea, except in some communities where cro ps other than coffee are becoming additional cash crops. ln these communities. the owner is willi ng to continu e the sharecropping arra ng ement of the past. because the pan-time farming of his \\'Orkers increases his ow n profits. This continu ed use of an old mechanism under new conditions also ser ves to mainrnin the tracliLion a l face-to-fa ce relat io ns of worker an<l owner characterist ic of the trad itio nal coffee "wa y of life ." A search was therefore m ade for a community where som e suppl eme1H;1ry crop diversification had taken place within the large r frarn ework of coffee economy, a comm1111ity in which such crops "·ere grown in addition to coffee, withoul displacing coffee as Lhe major cas h cro p. In such a community added income from addiliona l cro ps rnight serve to bolster th e main o ri entation, which wou ld continue to be based on coffee as th e princ.:ipal source of livelihood. In the appraisa l o( the factors in volved, answers

COFFEE i\I UN I CIPALlTY

173

were soug hL LO a series of questions in b o th fo rma l and informa l inter views, a nd through obsen«Ition. These q uesLio ns "·ere: \\' hat arc the main crops other th:m coffee grown in this municipali1y? 2. \ Vhat a rc the nonagricultura l purs uits s upplementing or displacing coffee? 3. \ Vha t are lhc p ercentages of total income. in terms of mo n ey or o the r te rms. which are derived from the vario us crops and n onagricultural pursuits? ·I· \ Vhat is 1he pro p ortio n of large farms LO small? :;. H o w docs the municipality rank in respect 10 ot he rs in productivity? ln quality of coffee? Arc some barrios more sp ecifica lly cofTec producers tha n oth ers? G. \Vhat arc the costs of prod11ctio11? \ Vlwt is the p erce nt · age of labor cost in the wwl cost of produ ction ? \ Vh:1t :ire th e ro~ c s of transp onation? The cost o f i11Lrn:luci11g ll C \\' te chn iques? I 11come from cha rcoal? 7. \ \/ hat is the minimum siz:: of far m \\'hich \\'ill sust:1i 11 a fami ly or fi,·c on cofTcc productio n a lo n e? S. \\'hat sources of omside en1ploym e 11t an.: avail :1bl:: w people who can n o t susta in the ir fami lies by agricull\lrc 0 11 the ir own prop~ni es? D· \\'hat is the diarncter a nd stre ng th of out-migrat !o 11 ? \ Vherc do p eople go? \ \' hich farm s h ave b c~ 11 most sue· ressl'u l in stemming out-migration? 10. \ Vha t arc the p n\'ailing types of labor contracts in t!1c are a? 11. \ Vhai are the ;l\"ailalJI:.: sources of cred it? H ow brg'.' is the n eed for credi t? 1:i. \ \'ho owns land ? Arc there many absentees? .\re many fanns mongagccl? 1:I· \ \l h:1L role does the L0\\'11 play in agrinill\lral prn<111ctio11? I 11 processing? t.f· \ \/ hat is the re lationship o( rural people to the town ? 15. \Vha l ;i re the prevailing forms of marke ting? Th roug h co-o peratives? Throug h pri\'ate m e rchants? t(i. \ Vhat role do Spa nia rds play in the control of agricul1.

111rc? From the answers Lhus obtained and fro m ana lys is of publish ed sources, it was poss ible to summari ze the data o n differe nt communities un<ler th e fo llo \\'ing headings: general impressions; prevailing soil types; prevai ling climatic conditions: crops a nd industries o the r tha n coffee; productivity of coffee land ; coffee qualiLy; character of ownership ; character o( labor force; ro le of town in production a nd process ing; character o f marketing; isolatio n o( fa rms : transponaLion ; distance a nd contact with urban ce nters; number of Spaniard s in the community. \ Vh ile som e g aps remained. the m aterial made a\'ailab le in Lhis Cashio n ser ved to aid in the final selecLion of Sa n J ose as the community to be studied . The spec ific cri teria used we re both quantitative a nd qu a lit;Hi\'e : 1. San .J osc'- occ11picd an a\'eragc po.s1t1on in th e p erce1u agc o f its acreage dc\'otcd to coffee. whe11 the p ercem agcs o f all rnlTec-growing munic ipalities were plo u cd 0 11 a bellshapccl cu r\'e . 2. San .J ose rcprcse111cd a com1111111ity '"ltich suppl<.'mc11tccl in come d eri ved from coffee with in com e ckri vcd from other crops. but did n o t g ive up coffee produnion . According to info rmatio n supplied by th e 13urcau o( J11 tcr-

174

THE PEOPLE OF PUER TO RICO

nal Re\'en ue, 50 per ccn t of total income was d cri\·ed from coffee, 15 per cent from charcoal and sale of minor crops. 25 pt:r cc n t from the sale of tobacco. a 11d 1o per cc11 t from sugar ca nc:. 3. In 11umbcr of i11h:1 bitants. it fell nc:ar the average of Litt: population figures for coff<: e·gro\\'ing rnunicipalitics. 4. In com parison to o ther coll<.:t.:-gro\,·ing muni cip:ilitic.:s. San .Josi: c.:x hil>ited a smaller perce ntage of populatio11 i11 the LO\\'n. Eight pt:r cent of the people of tlte n1 unicipalicy li \'Cd in t0\\'11 . ~ This promised LO make a Study or tltt: role: of the to\,·n ea.~icr. Data obtained about the \,·ay coffee "·as processed and rn;irkt:ted mac.le it d ea r fro111 the outset that the town would ha\·c to be includcd i11 any fi eld study of ;i colfrc-growi11g com munity. 5. San Jose did n o t lie close to any major urban ct:ntc:r. 6. The amoun t of can e cultivation within its confi11cs was limited, and it did not own a sugar cane proct:ssi11 g mill (cen t ral) . 7. Twen ty-five per cent of San Jose's coffee crop conti nued to be marketed through private merchants. The workings of a traditional creditor firm could thus be investigated during the field study. 8. San Jose's populatio n numbered among its inhabitants more P eninsular Spaniards than any other single municipality outside the large urban areas. i'vf any Spaniards were large landowners and creditor mcrchi1nts. It thus cxh ibited a patt<.:rn of continuity worthy o( investigation. Choice was thus narrowed down to one municipality, comprising roughly 19,500 people, distributed over eight mountainous barrios and the town. Such a municipal unit was dearly too large for intensive study. The anthropologist attempts to study culture by everyday observation of actua l behavior, as well as by recording statements and impressions on ideal norms in the context in which they are made. For such purposes, a smaller "unit of concentration" had to be selected. Such a unit had to serve a double purpose. It had to furnish both evidence of a functional kind and insight into historical relationships. Since coffee is grmvn both on large and small farms and small farmers supplement their income by working on large farms, it was desirable that the unit comprise both large and small farms. We particularly desired insight in to the nineteenth-century pattern of coffee production by cultural and economic as well as geograph ical isolation, scattered settlement, continuing personal relations between landowner and worker, owner r es idence on the farm, use o( perquisites such as subs istence plots, free milk and minor crops, concentration of politica l power in the hands of the landowner, and marketing through private merchants. The unit of concentration finally selected for the study of the rural subcultures consisted of two neighborhoods, each having about 100 households. These n eighborhoods, which we shall call Altura and Limones, a re located in one of San Jose's eight rural barrios, which we shall name iVfanicaboa. The town was also studied, less in terms of its subcultures than of its relationship to the rural areas. The bulk of data contained in ~Th i s is based on the 1940 censu s. Subsequent data of Lhc 1950 census show that aiJout 18 per cenl live in the town.

this study, L11erefo re. co nsist o( fi e ld observatio ns o( the s ubcultures exemp lified in ?\Ianicaboa. The "Titer r es ided in San Jose from ;'\fa rch, 19.18, Lo A u gust, q).Jg, i11Lerrnpting his stay on ly for a few brief inten•als o( consultations and group discuss ions in San .Juan \\'ith other members o( the project. Throughout this period the method of direct participation \\'as fo\·ored ,,·herever poss ible. J\Iost verbal matcri;tl ,,·as obt:iin ed in the course o( indirect and unguided i11tc1Tie\\'s. 1 fo\\ C:\'C:r. lonnal intt-r,·ic \,·s to e lic it spec ili c ite111 -.. ol i1ilor111:1 tion \\'e re co11d11ctcd ,,·ith person.-. ,,·it li ,,·Jiont co 11lid c11cc.: l1 :1d been f•, 1ab lished and \\'itl1 ,·:1rio11-.. :111ll1o r it iC''i. C e nc:: tl ogiC's ,,·uc: obtain<.:d lor X:1 lto11,el1oltk 11 is1o ric:tl n1:1te rial ,,·;is rec.onstruc icd on t lt c ba-,is ol inlor111:11 ion gin· 11 bv nine old inlorm:111l'i. r:111gi11g liet"·cc n 1l1c :1gcs o( seventy·fi\'C LO O\' ('l' <>ll C Jw11drcd. ;111d of' d:1t:i dr:l\\"ll from l1is torical docu111c1lls found in the archives ol tftc tow11. Tlt c.:s<.: docu111<.:nh co\·ercd tftc yc:1rs 18::? 1-:!::? . 18 ~ti-. 10. 1X:):J· 18Cio. 1871. 187 '.{· 187 H. 1880. :111d 188q09· Baplis mal n·gi s tc rs :1\'ail:d>lc in th e cf1ttrcl1 of the town \\'ere also 11sctl. These date b:ick to 1820. but. Jikc the doct1ments c ited abo\'e, \\'Cre hea\'il y damaged by " ·ater and insects. Dt1ring the last months o f our stay a great d ea l of material was quantified through the use o[ a qt1estionnaire drawn up by members of the proj ect. v\'e sampled 87 of the 200 hot1seholds in J'v lanicaboa and 27 of the Goo odd households in town. The t own sample is admittedly small, but all unreliable questionnaires were discarded. The sample for Manicaboa covers 116 landowners, 1 renter, and 40 landless persons. It represenls 17.5 per cent of a ll landowners in the barrio and an estimated 15 per cent of the landless population. The sample o( landowners may be broke n down, :.1s follows:

Size of Holdin g Less Lhan 1 o eds. 10 to 30 eds. 30 to 100 eds. More than 100 eds. Total

l'e r ce11l of Mani· la 11dow11ers in A ltura J, i111011 es calwa each size groujJ I I 6 7.5 5 22 I 7 29.7 5 I I ·I ~l1 ·4 7 2

28

2

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46

:!\Tith the exception of the sample of landowners ownmg less than ten cuerdas of land, the sample represents 1 o per cent of each g roup. In presenling his material, the writer has made a conscientious effort, wherever feasible, to preserve the anonymity of his informants and to prevent identification of any individual member of the community. In his relations with his informants, a fieldworker tries to establish feelings o( mutual trust. He is thus duty-bound to respect the con fid en ce o( his friends, especially in regard to s ituations in ·w hich the interests of the individual conflict ·with those of the state. To this purpose, h e has changed the name of the community, the names of all geographical locations, the names of all persons; eliminated the description of a ny identifying idiosyncrasies of individuals; and em-

SAN JOSf:: "TRADITIONAL" COFFEE MUNICIPALITY

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Chart 13. Municipality of San Jose.

ployed the technique of constructing composite personalities Lo avoid identification in some cases. All cases a nd popular expressions quoted are taken from my field notes. They are presented here n ot primarily in the spirit of statistical verification, as understood by Malinowski, but rather as significant illustrations o( behavior a nd ideal norms. This writer believes that the contrast so often drawn between individual idiosyncratic beha vior, on the one hand, ancl general, culwrally patterned behavior on the other tends to b e misleading. Idiosyncratic behavior can only emerge from a cu ltura l matrix. In this sense, unique and extrem e cases may serve to illuminate the character of sociocultural re lationships as much as features of a general and average n ature.

A SKETC H OF THE MUN ICIPIO OF SAN JOSE

The municipality of San Jose is inhabited by about 19,500 people living in 3,805 households. A little more than 21,000, or about 82 per cent, live in the rural area, and 1,900 live in the town. This represems a marked change Crom 1940. In contrast to Cafiamelar, Tabara, and Nocor:1, which increased during the decade 19110- 50, San J ose declined from a population of nea rly 23,000 or 3,877 households. The loss was in rural population, which decreased by 5,000, or nearly 25 per cent, while the town nearly doubled Crom 1,919 tO 3,~.7 I.

R epresented schematically (see Chart i 3), the munic-

I 7()

TllE PEOPL E OF l'l' ERTO RICO

ipaliLy looks like an irreg ular, four-sided figure . Taking our direclions from Lhe map . we mighL say Lhat Lhe lo wer left-hand corn er of the four-sided figure is Lilted low, ,,·h il e Lhe upper righL-hand corn e r is he ld high. A ch a in of barre 11 limestone hills, look ing like wa n s or pockm arks from Lh e air, runs along Lil e ba se and divides Sa n .f o:,e from Lhe sugar-grow ing coasl. Th e upper side rises in spols Lo an alLilude of 1.:wo mete rs abo,·e sea le\'e l and forms pan of Lhe Cenlra l Cordillera, the mourn;iin bcickhone o[ lhe island. This sleep to pographical prrifilc carries with it \'arial ions in Le mperature and rainlaf l. The average annual lcmperaLure is 76° F. at Lhe base; the average annual rainfall. 70 inches. ~ear Lhc upper reaches, Lh e average annua l rain fall r ises LO 9G inches, " -hile the average annual tem peratu re foil s LO 68° F. Two rivers make the i r way d own this inclined p la ne. Lhe Rio Josco and the Rio San .Jose. They m eet before reaching the base o f the municipality. at the le fL lower corner of the figure. H e re Lhey have ca rved ouL an open basin and thrown up a low hill. On Lhis hill. ~JI .9 m eters above sea level, lies the Lown. \ feyerhof[ has pointed out that " man y of lhe interior wwns are loca ted within th e eroded belt, especially at importa n t stream junctions where large main va lleys provide easy outlet to the coast, and sma lle r tributa r y vall eys offer a ccess to the interior." The town of Sa n J ose is thus located wher e o n e of th ese " local basins opened up at th e confluence of large stream sys tems" (Meyerhoff. '9:$o=11 3). Below the to wn , the lwo rivers run toge Lher to form one stream which b reaks through Lhe limestone cha in. A road accompan ies the river through Lhis channel, a nd connects the town w i th the sugar coast beyond. The nearest coas tal Lown lies half an hour b y bus away from Sa n J ose, and the islan d rnpi ta l, Sa n Juan, can be reach ed by car in about a n ho u r a nd a quarter. Four o ld buses ;ind fift y p assenger ca rs pl y these roads every day. On the opposite side o( Lhe town, two roads fol low the two streams uphill inLO the mountainous hinterland. The town thus lies at the point "·here the road s fro m the mountains and Lhe road from the coasL com e toge ther. The country peo ple "go down" (bojr111) lo get to town _ \Vh en t hey plan to come to town, t hey say: "Let us go down LO San J ose." \ Vhen t hey return h ome from th e town , Lhey m ust "relllrn u p hill " (v olver /J'arriba) to the rural neighborhood in which they live. Th e town has given iLs name to the remainder of Lhe mun icipality, a nd iL is truly the mu nic ipal ity's ce nte r of gravity. H ere are the offices of the creditor merchants and the marke ting associations where the co untry people se ll thei r crops or trade lie ns on th e ir future production for cred iL a nd cash. H erc are the o ffices of the various age ncies of the in su1<1r governm e nL and the governm e nt o[ Lhe Un i ted St<1tes, a nd the offices of th e loca l lawyers a nd pol i ticians to wh om peopl e go ror he lp and favors. H ere a re the big stores. where c·ountry p eo pl e bu y th e large number of commocl i t ics w hich t hey need to 1i ve, such as rice and hean .... cod fi sh and lard . <loLhes and me r.al tools. H e re

is the church. fo rmal center or Lhe re lig ion \\'hich most of Lhcm prnf c-,-.. :ind here are lh c schooh \\'hich pro\'ide an education beyond lhc Lhird or lounh grade . Here arc Lil e ('ales. ,,·here one c;1n drink "a littl e sl ick of ru111 " \\'ii h :i f ric11d, a11d listen to the latest I ,a Lin American 11111 ~ irnl hil played 0 11 ;i nllllticolored jukebox . H e rc :ire the mo\ ic house :i ncl the governmc nl· I icensccl ('Ock pi l. Herc a re Lhc cou rthousc. lhe hospi ta I, and 1hc: \';1rio11-. < linic-; :111cl di ... [><'lh:trie.... On Frid :t\ .... "i:1turd:1\ .... :111d ."i11nd:J\ 1110111i11g .... 1hc.: L0\\·11 fill.., \\' il11 1/ic IJJl'>I k ol <011n11' p<«>]'k 1d10 h:l\·e "com e cl1J\\'ll .. 1111111 the: hilt.... Th e~ :11c t'a.,ih JT«>g11i1ed :111d cl ill c:1c 111 i:11t'd 110111 Ilic pc·opk ol the to\\'Jl by Lh e \\·a~., i11 \\'lli< Ii th<.·\ drc·..,-.. ,,·;ilk. :incl talk. Th« m e n \\'Car ... 1r:t\\. hat.., \\'ith l:1rge tolored li:111d-;. \\'h ite shins h11ttrn1 <:d 10 1lw lop. h ut \\' it hrntt 11 c·1 ktics. lo n g slceH'.S h<:ld 11p ll\ nilJIJcr hand.., ,.i.,ilik 011 1l1e uppe r arm . dark 11 011-,<:r-,. :111d he:1 \.,. :.hoc .... Th<: \\'0111e11 \\·car Lheir hair clo\\·11 o\Tr th e ~houldc:r~ and fH>111p:1doured in lrolll. or cl-,c: gat hered i11 a knot i11 the back. Tl1e\' a1·e clres-.ecl in < hc:qJ <11tt1111 drt"i'iC'>. ol 1c11 t ic:d :1rournl the wai~t with a -,hiny plastic h<.:11. ·1 he ir faces arc usually :,eriot1s. Th ey ,,·alk \\'ilh knees bent sl ightly forward and m ov ing from lhe h ip. The ir speech is slow and fill ed with archaic words. The lown folk la ugh as they pass. m ock them as slupid , illi terate, back,,·ard, and unsoph isLi ca ted, and attempt to o vercharge Lhem wherever and whe never Lhey ('a ll . Thus the LOwn is nol only a n economic. serv ice. and religious ('elller, but it is a lso the place "·here the rural folk and the city llleet, ovenl y in opposition , covenl y in cu ltural interchange. Jn the pasL, coffee plantations held the town su rrounded 011 a ll sides. Since 1928, wh e n Lhe last hurricane did so much damage to the coffee p lanti ngs, however, Lhe lin e or coffee trees has retreated 150 me ters up the hills, leav ing on ly a rew straggling patches here and there as m ementos of a more prosperous pasl. Bu t coffee is st ill Sa n .Jose's sing le most importa n t crop. occupying close to one half o[ all cu l tivaled land in the mun icipality. To reach the plantatio ns. let us follow a frie nd on his way home "uphi ll." AL the uphill side of th e town, D on Tassio climbs into a sta tion-wagon cab (tnllJ/im) already crowded w ilh people and thei r m ul ti tudinous be longings . \1\fhen it is fill ed to ca pacity, the d ri ver a nn o un ces the impe nding movement o f his vehi cle w ilh a mighty blast on its ho rn. and Lh e cab begins the long and arduous c lim b upward, along th e winding hard-su1·face road. The driver exchanges laugh ing comments and jokes with his passengers, and often leans o uL of the car to gree t some gi rl passing along the road with a well-aimed compliment. Soon. Lhe 1·oad is e nclosed on both sid es b y Lhe somber and cool coffee patches, and rises a long Lhe crest of a long hill , until one ca n sec lhe river far below in the valley . Several t im es . the ca b halts a nd discharges passengers. Such swps are usua lly at cluste rs o r new houses, arranged a long one side of th e road- a single-streec hamlet- s/rnssf'1H/orf fashion. Don T;issio le ls a m11nher of SlOf>S pas<, b y. although S0111C of th em mark the

177

SAN JOSi~ : "TRADITIONAL" COFFEE :\IUN IC IPALITY I

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Chart 14. Mn/> of 11eigltborltoods and trails in "1a11icnbon .

slan ing points of tra ils w h ich he co uld ta ke to get in to the r ura l a rea , th e barrio, where he lives. Three major tra ils lead into i\Ianicaboa (see Cha rt 11). The first is called th e Ri ver Trail, a nd it is the most inc;o11 ve nie11t and rocky o f the three. In its course, it c;rosses th e r iver eig ht times in quick su ccess io n. D o n Tass io is no t interested in this tra il. It wou ld lea d h im into a ne ig hbo rh ood called Limones, settled by sm a ll ho lde rs o n who m he looks down as a stingy, bigoted , a n d sa nctim o nio us lo t. H e himself is a hig hla nd m a n, fro m a ne ig h borhood ca I led the A ltura. All h is friends

a nd ne igh bors a re hig hl and people like h imself. He has n e ith er blood rela tives n or ritua l kin in Li mones, and i( h e were asked to g ive his consen t to a ma r r iage between a m a n fro m Limo nes a nd o ne of his da ug hte rs, he would refuse to g rant it. A second trai l is more fa milia r tO him. It fi rst fo llows a lo ng a ha rd-su rface road, th e beginnings o r a projcc;ted road imo the ba rrio. Unfortuna te ly, the road has shown b ut little p rogress, d espite much expendi tu re of mo ney a nd materi a l. Construction has come to an end in a n area w here. as D o n T assio p u ts it contemptu-

178

T llE PEOPLE OF PUERTO RICO

ously, " not eve n four cats have made their habitatio n." However, a helpful e ntrepreneur has widen ed th e traditional tra il with a steam-shovel, so that a U.S. Armytyp e j eep or weapons carrier can drive along it, if the driver can muste r the n eeded courage and the vehicle the necessary staying po,\·er. The tO\\·n priest has found th e steepn ess of the tra il so unattracti ve th a t h e does not expose himself to its dangers m o re than once a year , as the country people will in form you laughing ly. This tra il crosses the ubiquitous river, but rises slow ly on the oth e r side to a level and centntlly located pl a te au. This is wh ere the barrio chapel sta nds, and th e trail is appropria te ly called the Chapel Trail. Before 1928, the plateau was covered with coffee plantings, but th e hurricane of 1928 destroyed many of the orchards, leaving o nl y those sheltered by dips in the terrain. T oday these patches are interspersed among pas ture la nd s and plots planted to tobacco, rice, b a n a nas, a nd plantains. The soi ls here a re i11 the main h eavy reel clays, and are considered "good" for coffee a nd rice. Th e plateau is one of the places in the barrio which produces the most rice, up to twenty c wts. o f unhusked rice per cuerda . D on Tass io could have chosen this trail , but he prefers the H acie nda Trai l. The re he has fri e nd s a nd relatives. Like a ll the other trails, it too must cross the rive r. The m a in hard-surface road parallels the course of the r iver for a Jo ng way, but n ever crosses it (see Chart i 3). T h e p eople of Manicaboa must th er efor e cross the river both on their descent to town a nd on the ir return "uphill," and the whims of the river are one of their major trials. \i\lhen they are in town, they scan the sky with anxious eyes, Jest they be stranded when the waters of the river swell. It often rai ns along the river when th e sky elsewhere is an azure blue. Whe n th e rive r g rows, you can hear the ominous sou nd of the conch shell horns (fotutos), warning the people to move the ca ttle th a t graze along the river banks, and n otifying ride rs approachin g on horseback that the ford s a re growing impassable. On the opposite side of the river, the hills rise sharply and ruggedly, the ir flanks covered with stunted trees and bush . Along the ir crests and in the sadd les b etween, th e dark p a tches of the coffee orch a rds show up aga inst a backg round of lighter brown or green . H ere and there is a cultivated plot, enclosed on all sides by barbed wire strung through a thorn y hed ge of pingui n , calcul ated to k eep out straying horses or cattle. :viuch land appears to be uncultivated, bu t it is really left to r eco ver its fertility after u se. Grass h as grown over the wood-and-refuse barriers (bancos) that h ave been buil t to stem erosion, and has inva ded th e long slo ping draining ditches. Widely sca tte red among the coffee patches and the plots lie the huts and houses in which the people Jive. Each hut is surrounded by a yard of pounded ea rth ( batey), w h ere many of the day's household chores a r e p~rformed a nd wh ere friends and n eig hbors ga the r a[ter dusk, or o n Sundays, or on festive occasions. l\1ost o ft.he huts are roo fed with galvanized, corrugated iro n , w hich shows up gray in the hot sun. But he re and

there a thatch roof still shO\\·s against a darke r backgro und. Often it is only the mater ia l for the roof that is modernized; a pyramidal iron roof slop ing d own to fo ur eq uidi!>ta nt "·all s from a ccmral peak is of the trad itio nal "four \\·aters" ( cua I ro aguas) construction. Other h o uses, built m o re rece ntly, ha,·e ".-\mericant ype" or gabled roofs ( li /Jo A m crica 110) Lha t slope do wn to two long !> ides from a cenLral horizontal roof bea m. J\t the sid e of the trail leading d o\\'n from the roa d to the ri\"C:r, a little: hoy holding a h orse a\\';1it<; Do n Ta c,<; io . 1)011 T:1-.-.io tiglit(·11-; L11e !Jelly h:1nd of th e saddle:, impc< h tl1c pie< c-., of ~tr i11 g \\·Ji icli keep the stirn1p !> trap-. from parting oil tl1c \\'ay. :ind S\\' ings him se lf ca., il y into th e :.addle. The little boy spreads a piece of ~ ackclotl1 o\·c:r the r111np of th e hor~c :ind mounts IH.:l1ind. Dn\\'nrin:r lron1 the lord \\'litre th ey cross in to tlie IJ:1rrio. a gro11p of \\'onH·11 :ire \\'asl1in g c l o th c~. and ha\"C L1icl tl1e (lean pi ece~ <HJL <>ll sto 11es to dry i11 th<.: <,1111. .\ -;t he h or~<.: 1Jcg i1 1'> to cli111i>. Doll T:1ss io lll eC ts pc:ople he: knm\·:-.. Old I )rn-1;1 lh.,c comes along. rid i11g oil all old na g ~: 1dd k d \\'i tli :1 s: ick filled wiL11 pla111:ii11 lca\T~ (fl ju1n·jo) and holdi11g all lllll · brclla over her head, while a little boy ni11s behind. J\n agricu ltura l worker makes his way home o n foot, his machete clamped t ig htl y under his righ t arm, wh ich h e ho lds stra ig h t a nd still along his side. D o n Tassio no tes the cond itio n of Don Alejo's coffee patch o n his next turn up the hill- the profusion of berries a lo ng the trail, th e scantiness of berries further back, and th e \\"Ct leaves on the g ro und between th e trees. A line o[ little girls in co uon dresses emerges from the depth of th e orchard , bent sid eways by the weig ht o( biscuit tins fillc<l with water which they carry on the ir hips. A fiftee n-year·olcl boy, standing in front of a hut on th e waysid e, calls out, "Bendici6n, fJadrino!" and Don Tass io g ravel y speaks the benediction requested by his g()dch ild. In th e fo llowing pages we shall concern o urselves with a systematic analysis o( how the features we have m e ntioned h ere function in their context. Each of th ese aspects of culture, such as the contrast between cou n try and town, the isolation o f the rural neighborh oods, th e social status involved in owning a ho rse w ith a lea ther saddle, the sexual division of labor, the system o( ritual goclfa therhood and co-fatherhoodreprescnts a problem wh ich must b e discussed and a n a lyLed b o th historically and in terms of fun ctional inter relationshi ps.

PRODUCTIVE FACTORS THE TECHNOLOGY OF COFFEE PRODUCTION

S in ce the " social heredity" of the people we enco unte red in the last section was built up around th e production and sale of one major crop, much of their b eh a vior and many of their ideal norms relate to the characteristics of coffee and the methods by which it is produced. Crops with different characteristics make difTe rent kinds of demand s on the peo ple who grow th em . Such dema nds may of course adm it of

SAN JOSE: "TRADITIONAL"

COFFEE :\lUNICIPALITY

179

more li1an one response. Coffee is frequently grown many years a lso tend to build up an adaptation in the o n permanent plantalions, yet in the Outer Islands plantation. To illustrate with an example, we may of the Netherlands Indies, sh ifting cultivators grow cite the fact that a coffee patch can adapt itself to it as a commercial crop on impermanent upland heavy shade, if the shade is not thinned, due to the rice fields (Pelzer, 19.i:;: 25- 26). The technique of prevailing routine of cultivation. Any sharp change cultivation does not depend on the botanical traits in technique causes maladjustment in the environo f the crop alone, but also on the level of develop- ment to which the plant has grown accustomed, and ment of agri cultural technology, which is affected consequently it must suffer until it adapts itself to by histor ical trends and which di[ers from area to the new circumstances" (Vales, i948). area, as the histories of these areas differ. Coffee ted1The prevalence of such localized determinants m the production of coffee has given rise to rules of nology is also a hisLO ri ca l product. Since it developed production which a re standar dized b y the culture, largely in response to the expanding world market of the l:tst three cenwrics, its success has been m eas- but which are subject to drnnge through individual ured by ~t rict commerci:tl criteria. This has made for experience and interpretation. The people in Manichanges in the ways in which the requirements of caboa say that "a man must have a good hand (buena the co ffee shrub have been met. Puerto Rico and the mano) to plant coffee," because "coffee is a sorcerer" barrio or ;\lanicaboa g row coffee according to the (el cafe es brujo). By this they mean that a tree planted lechn iqu cs which had become culturally avai lable according to a ll the best rules may fail to bear, while in the Caribbean area up to the first quarter of another planted without much expectation of yields may bear in plenty. In the final analysis, it is the skill th is ccn tu r\'. Coffee bushes arc abo,·e all perennials, for they and knowledge of the individual grower which proyield berries over a number 0£ years. \\Then people duces the final product. Since conditions vary from plant coffee, they look forward to a prolonged period patch to patch, skill and knowledge consist of adaptof production from the same shrubs. In commercial ing cultivation to local factors. Although a highly adaptable perennial, the shrub terms, they arc making an investment which pays off over a period o( years. The coffee shrubs do not also requires a minimum of rain at certain periods b ear in any quantity, however, until they are about of its growth. The coffee growers in Manicaboa are four years old, and do not reach Cull productivity until always scanning the sky for signs of rain and comthey are about eight. Thus a man who plants colTee paring notes on the amount and distribution of rainmust count upon a period of four to e ight years fall of different years with the present. lt must not during which he musl expend labor on such tasks rain too much before the tree breaks into flower. "It as keeping the patches weeded while this labor does rained coo much this year before the Oowers came. not bear fruit either for his personal consumption or That is why the trees develop leaves and branches, for sale. In commercial terms, he must count upon a but it does not go into flowers." Once the flowers period of four to eight years during wh ich he must are in bloom, the danger is too much rain, which feed and clothe his fami ly and himself while the "clogs" the pollen and prevents the insects which sale of his product yields hi m little in return. This transport the pollen Crom flying. The flowers may makes coffee growing easier for a man who has become so soaked that they grow sterile. But once financial resources to fall back upon than for the the fruit h as developed, rain is needed to help in the man who has no money. Greaves has noted ( 1935:7.1) development of leaves which manufacture the food that "if returns from the investment are long-deferred that feeds the growing berries and to carry food Lhc crop requires fin ance to an extent that is beyond materials from the soil into the leaves. Then, as the fruit ripens, rain once again becomes an enemy, Lhe capacity of m ost natives." This perennial grows best where the annual tem- for ripe berries may be knocked off the tree. Once perature is 68° F. and the annual average rainfall they touch the ground, berries rot quickly. At picking a bove 85 inches. These are tropical conditions, and time it is therefore imperative that the ripe berries be coffee is a tropical product. \Vithin its genera l tropi- gathered as quickly as possible. 'When a rain squall cal setting, howeve r, i l tends to adapt to a large approaches Crom the direction of the Central Corvariety of environmental conditions. Charles l\I. dillera during harvest time, the whistle sounds on Wilson says ( 19.p: 151-52): "The crop is not o ne to the hacienda to call all available hands to work. invi te authority . . . techn iques of coffee culture . . . Harvesting time in Manicaboa is rainfall time. '\!\There [seem) all a matter of place, time and manners. It is coffee is grown in bulk, a large labor force is needed an . . . industry without absolute rules or formulas." to real ize the crop. \ \Then there are not cnouo-h Emilio Vales states ( 19.18) that "coffee agriculture is workers, the ripe berries fall to the ground and a~·e . . . und er the inOue nce of a series of soil factors, lost. climatic factors and other environmental conditions. In addition to the variations in productivity caused T h ese factors may vary from zone to zone, Crom farm by enviro nmental factors during Lhe g rowth of the to farm, and at times with in the same farm." The berries, there are flu ctuations ca used by the bearing plant acqu ires a special adaptation to particu lar en- cycle of the tree itself. After a few years o( o-ood vironmental conditions over a period of years. "Cul- productivity, a shrub will b ear little (or one o/' two tivation techniques which remain unchanged for years, during a rest period, after which it will again

1

So

THE PEOPLE OF P UERTO Rico

resume production. This cycle can be leveled to some exLent through Lhe use o( commercial fenilizer, but fertilizer cosLs money, and once it is applied it must be used aga in year after year i[ a sharp slack in product ion is to be avoided. Coffee, although a perennial crop, is thus fraught wiLh some un cena inty, which gives the large producer an advantage ove1· th e sm all er grower. On a large plantation, the variati ons in different patches ten d to cancel each other out. Th e small grower, on the other hand, depends on fewer patches, and these must yield each year if he an d his family are to maintain their expected standards of consumption. H e can meet lowered product ion of his cash crop only by tightening his belt or by hiring himself out as a laborer in return for wages. In J\fanicaboa. as e lsewhere in Pu erto Rico, coffee is " shade-grown." When a cuerda is planted in coffee, banana and plantain shoots and the seed lings o( guaba and g11amd trees are set between the coffee seedlings. The banana and plantain trees provide the coffee seed lings w ith temporary shade, while g uaba and guamd, the permanent shade trees, are grow ing to maturity. AgrobiologisLs have shown that the root system of the banana and the coffee shrubs tend to compete at roughly the same level for ava ilable food, and advocate the remova l of the temporary shade trees as soon as they have fulfilled their purpose. But in many coffee patches in l\ Ianicaboa banana trees continue to bea r fruit long after they have outlived their utility as providers of shade. Small holders do not want to g ive up th e subsistence foods thus provided. Some experts co nsider the advantages o[ shade trees "debata ble," a nd argue that the system of shad ing is a histor ica l product " in herited from the natives of Central America who had grown trees, mostly leguminous, among their cocoa and coca" (McDonald, 1930:42). The coffee g rowers in ;\fanicaboa, however, cons ider shade essential. They argue that without shade the trees ivoulcl Oower and bear fruit but d ry out. The ground would harden and the top soi l lose its nutritious factors. \Veeds wo uld tend to grow unchecked and threaten the coffee trees. These arguments are also used agains t agricu ltu ral technicians who advocate more carefu l pruning of the sh ade trees . In most p arts of the world, States Ukers (1935: 135) coffee is usually "grow n from seeds se lected from trees o( known productivity and longevity . . . the seeds being e ith er propagated in nursery beds or planted at once in the spot where the mature tree is to stand." ln ;\Ianicaboa, however , seedbeds are not used, and seeds are not imm ediately planted in situ. The Puerto Rican R econstruction Administration (PRRA) once built a d emonstra tion coffee seed bed on terrain lent i t for the purpose by a hacienda, hut Lhe practice found no accep Lan ce e ith er amo11g the small farmers <>r on the hacienda itself. Seedlings are obtained frorn seed s th<1t have fallen from bearing trees and taken root. 'These are transplanted when Lhey are fa irl y wel l d eve loped but before L11ey are

three years o ld (de /Jfa11tilln ). Si11 ce little land is newly planted to coffee nowadays, these seed lings arc usually planted to replace o ld er less productive trees. The seedlings arc genera ll y plamed in the patch where they germ inated. The tramplanting takes place ,,·he n Lhe moon is on the decrease. If the 1110011 ,,·ere on Lhe increase, it is fell that Lhc Lrees would be harmed. Agricu llural Lecl111icians dt:ny the use of "volunteer seed lings," arguing Lhat th<.:v \\·ill "de\-clop int o feeble and lc"'-. be;1ring coffee tree.~·· (C;11i scalrt'· and Cc'>111c1, 19 ;{9:~J). Th e peopl<.: in .\l:t1 1icalio;1. lio \\·ever. argue that the seedling:-. 1d1icl1 1h e> obL;1 i11 i11 tlii -; lasliio11 cost them 110L11i11g :111d lu rt l1 cr111ore tl1at :-.uc Ii seedlings are likel y LO he ,,·cJJ adapted to 1li t <:11,·iro11111c11t in whi ch tlrey ,,·ill ha,·e LO grn1,· to maturity . ~ct:d h ed s . they believe, repre~c11t :111 :1nifici;tl e11,·iro11rn e 111. :111d arc therefore to be ;l\·oidt:d. Replaming of a cuerda already planted to n>llcc is usually don e in :\u gu .~t. ,,·iJ c 11 the colkt: patches are cle;1ned ol weed~, :111d be lore Lli e m:1 in harn~st has begun. T he l;1bor docs 1101 amount to m<ire tlLt11 L\\'o or two and a hal f ma11-hours of labor per cueu/11 . Planting a whole cuerda LO coffee, however, takes much more Lime and labor. Lhe work needed in th is operaLio 11 being- es t i ma tecl at eighty man -hours, or twice as much labor as goes into weeding a c11erda and one-third as much as harvest ing the produce of one cueula . This expenditure or labor is Lh erefore worth while o nl y when coffee p ri ces are good and labor can be obta in ed eas il y and chea pl y. \·Vhen coffee prices are weak and labor scarce, people will think twice about th e cost in volved. In planting a cuerda to coffee, the people violate several other pranices advocated by agronomists. :\lost patches are planted without measuring the distance between trees. T he ideal appears to he about 700 trees per cuerda, but the people in i\lanicaboa argue that "the more trees, the more berries" (mds palo, mds gra 110), and usually plant well in excess of 700 trees per cuerda. They be lieve that close planting helps to accumulate organ ic matter (cager basa) and Lha t planLing trees so far apart costs too much money. They also oppose Lechnicians who advocate making a large terrace around each individual coffee bush. They say that terra cing hurts the roots o[ the trees, lowers production, a11d costs too much money both in terms o[ Lhe labor and the land involved. They are sa tisfied with a sma ll d epression around the base of each tree, w here organic matter can pile up. AfLer about four yea rs Lh e Lrees begin to bear, and after a bou t eight years Lhey enLer fu ll production. Usually the people cou nt on Lhirty to thirty-five years of production from any one tree, but there are trees sixty-fi ve years o ld which are still productive. In .some of the large r and more advanced countries, fertilizer is employed to spur production. In Man icaboa, however, fen ili1.er is not in use. Some people say they cannot afford the cost of commercial fertilizer. Others argue that it provides an anificial stimulus, and that o nce the tree is used to the sL imulus i t cannot. go without it. Th ey rear that Lhey may not have Lhe money to

method, ripe and unripe berries are stripped of[ the branches together and set oul to dry, while the soft outer hull of t!1e berry sti ll surrounds the beans_ Only after the berries have been dried are Lhe omer hull an.cl th: inner husk S L~rrounding the beans stripped ?ff. This dry method is used in most of Brazil, and Ill pa~·ts o( \~e nezuela and Colombia. " The dry method . : ·. is considered by some operacors as providing a cl1st111ct advantage over the wet process, since berries o( different degrees o( ripeness can be handled at the same time" (U kers, 1935: 1.g). In Puerto Rico, and in l\ ~anicaboa , howe,:er, the dry method is used only after mos.t ?[ the npe berries have been picked, when ~he .ren:ia1_n111g berries o~ the. branches are stripped off 111d1scrm1111ately ~m~ dried 111 the hulL This type of coffee, called n p10, is rarely sold_ I t is used for home consumption, while coffee prepared by the " wet" Fig. :::1._ Cof11·e /1ir/:1 •rs. Jn order to obtain the bcsL coffee, method is sold in the market. lirrrv /11t lu11g 11111.1/ hr t/0111· /Jy 11111/l/. Photo by Delano: Govn 111111·111 flf l'u rr/fl f(i1fl. _ It requ.ires great care and skill to select only the npe bernes and Lo. leave the unripe ones co ripen on the branch. This wet m ethod means that each ~ c.:.vp 011 11~i11g th e needed fertilizer year after year. cuerda must be gone over several times in succession_ :Lill others argue th;1L it produces an anificial spurt Jncliscrimin;ne stripping of bearing trees is said not 111 production. hut that it decreases the lifespan of the o nl y to produce second-rate coffee but to harm the trees. On e man, who said that h e hacl himsel f and trees <ls well. A man can pick between five and six his family and a number or workers to think of, asked almudes (about twenty-five to thirty ga llons) of berries what would become of all the people who lived ofI his 3 a_ day. People e~timate that it takes between fift yone coffee patch if the use of feni 1i1.er hastened the e1 glu and s1xty-e1ght man-hours of labor to harvest day when the coffee trees on his farm would refuse the produ ce of one cuerda. I n other words labor time to bear. Still othe rs argue o utright that fert ilizer is inve~ted in the harvest during a norma l ;•ear of proharmlul. especiall y when it comes fro m the United clucuon almost equals the combined number of rnanState~,. and that it is not adapted to Puerto Rican h ot~.rs of labor ~xpende~l in other fie ld operations concl1L1011s_ Th ey claim that much commercial fercl u 1111g the remamder of the year_ In terms of the tilizer imported from the United States contains weed seeds, which sprout abundantl y in a tropical environ- labor supply, it poses the problem of massing an adement. Li vestock is gr;11.ed freely throughout i\Iani- q~ia~e number of workers for a relatively short period ol ume. caboa, but manure is not collected_ Landowners and upper-class people in town often \.Vhen the coffee trees rea ch productivit)', the patches arg ue thal coffee picking is pleasant '"''Ork when com:11:e weed ed with care every yea r before the beginning pared to c uuing sugar cane. ··People who h arvest of the h;irvest. This is done bv a line of men advanccol~ee are protected from the sun by t11e shade trees, i ng uphill, each cutting the w~eds with his right hand while the sugar ca n e cutters work out in the hot ;ind passing the cut grass to the man 011 his left. TC all sun." Bm coffee picking is somewhat less than a keep in line, the g r;i ss is passed down the line w ithout luxury. T.h e coffee palches are often on steep slopes, difficulty. Ir a man lags behind, a lol of grass piles up and the pickers must m ake their way from u·ee to tree in front o[ him_ On the hacienda the work is often to get th~ir berries. The picking itself tends to prospeeded by putting tlte fas1 est worker 0 11 the rig ht end duce an mtense ache at the back of the head clue of . the li ne. However, excessi\·e speed :ind piecework to the continuous movement of th e head n~ecled (u;uste) are undesir;ib)e in weeding because the cutco c_liscove~· ripe berries. \Vhile the pickers are puuinoters must take care not t0 injure' 'tlte bearing trees the~r berries into the baskets, wh ich are slung around and. the ll ew ly planted seedlings in tltc ground. A th e ~1: shoulde rs by a s.Lring, th~y. oft~n curse and slap hostile crew of workers can reduce production for theu legs LO fight ofl sma ll b1ung rnsccts which inyea r~ to come during one da)' of "·eed ing. Alier tlte coffee patches are weeded, the berries be- fest the coCTee patches (n1(1 /i es) . . . \\ 'h~n the harvest is o \·er. a coffee patch looks as gin to ripen and harvest ing time approaches. Once ti. a minor Ii urricane ha cl struck it. The pickers bend lit e berries are ripe, they mu st be pi cked at o nce or they will fall to the ground and rot. This danger is and tread on branches, which must be bent back and enha nced by Lhe pcrsisten1 rains which come about li fted once again. The shade trees mu t be thinned . harvest Lillie. Th e available labor force is set in mo- and whet~ the harvest comes to an encl, the patch resounds w ith the sound of splitting wood and crashing t ion rapidl y, in order to avoid waste. 13ecause be rries o n the same tree ripen at uneven rales, l\\·o 111ethods of harvesting are current in most coffee producing co untries. By the fi rst, or "dry'·

:i .\11 a/11111<1. t~ic measure used to dclinc quanlitics of coffee harvested. 1s cqu1valc11t 10 li1 e gallons or twent y liters.

l 82

THE PEOPLE OF PUERTO RICO

branches. The "·ood thus obta ined is often made into (disco) costs S:;o, and hulls between Go and 70 nlmudes charcoal. Curling flags of smoke in the landscape per hour, but often damages the beans. The hardshow the spo ts where men are feeding slow fires under wood, metal-1·einforccd power-driven roller costs S.ioo, piles of earth, sand, and plantain leaves, and wrning but can be operated to hull !!:JO a/11111</cs per hour. the wood into charcoal. The process of thinning the It can be see n that the greater the o utlay in money shade trees demand s skill and some courage. The for machin ery, th e greater th e output of the ma chine cutters must know how much sunlight to admit to and the smaller tli e expendiwre o[ human labor. The the coffee trees below, and how much foliage they people ,,·ho hull by hand arc the poorest growers. must cut out. The rat io of shade to sunlight is de- They use an (Httmocled method bcrause it is the termined uy different factors in each particular patch cheapest a\'ailahle to them. The mct:d grinder and the of coffee. In higher altitudes, less shade is needed wooden mac !tine opc:r:1ted by h:llld arc 11-.cd by small than in lo\,·er altitudes. Young trees need much shade a ncl middle r:1r111cr-.. T he wooden machine is 11s11a 11~· in order to mature properly, whereas more mawre worked by relay~ of men, :ind i-. a dif11c tilt and ex trees can better withstand sunsh ine. In deep so ils, rich hausting j ob. Tlie ga-,ol in c-pm,·cred. hanlwood roller is in use al I J:1 cic11cl:1 I .:t Corra. tli e largest procl11ccr in organ ic matter, shade trees must be thinned more, because their bran ches grow fa ster. The cutters must of coffee in the h:1rrio. T hi s h:1tic11cla is :dso the most be carefu l not to injure themselves, and must possess highly capit:di1ed llllit or produ c1io11 i11 l\ lanicahoa. an added dash of courage for their tree-climbing operThe hacienda, which i<; more highly ca pitali1cd ations. "Those "·ho dare then have the right to call and mcchani1cd tl1:111 the :,m:tllcr prod11c ers, has rethe others CO\,·ards" (cobardes), one young cutter said. placed much l11m1an labor in pt oc<.:~'>ing with maClimbing is also usually rewarded with somewhat chinery. l'\C\'C:rthcle-,-.. and th is is :lll important point higher pay, for example S 1.25 a day, while oth er tasks to note, this docs not mean that the hacienda can therefore produce more coffee faster. Not mach inery like weeding and planting receive only Si.oo for each e ight hours of labor. In genera l, th-is last phase in processi ng but human labor in harvest ing is the o( field operations requires from sixteen to twe nty- limiting factor in prod uction. During the average four man-hours of manual \-VOrk for each cne1·da of eight-hour day, the huller can process one hundred coffee. cwts. of coffee berries. Therefore in slightly more than Planting, weeding, h arvesting, and thinning the ten minutes it ca n handle the produce o( one cucrda, shade trees constitute the major operations in the the harvest o( which requires between sixty and sixtyfield. vVhen the workers carry their baskets Cull of eight man-hours. It would require between 330 and ripe beans back to the farm and pile up the contents 390 harvesters working every day to keep the machine near the farm house, the crop is ready for processing. working at capaci ty. On the hacienda, the owner or his foreman sits by The second major processing operation consists in and checks whether all the beans brought in are ripe. washing the parchment husks free o[ the sticky subThen he credits each worker with the amount gath- stance that surrounds them. The berries in their husk ered. Each almud o[ co ffee brought in is worth 30 are fermented in water, and the sticky substa nce is cents to the picker. vVith an average production of sloughed off. They must not be kept in th e same water between five and six almudes a clay, a man ca n make for more than twenty-four hours at a maximum. Howbetween $ i.50 a nd $1.80 a day. ever, if it rains and the beans cannot be dried, they The coffee b erries are now ready for processing. can be kept in water (or two weeks i( fresh water is F irst, the red pulp surrounding the b e rry is removed, continuall y added a nd the beans are constantly st irred. revealing two beans pressed against each other in a 1£ not r emoved at the end of this period, they b egin to parchment sac. This husk is surrounded by a sticky germinate. The small and middle farmers in l\ fanisubstance (baba), which must be washed off before caboa take their hulled coffee down to the river in the husk is removed to rree the two green coffee beans cans and wash it there. On the hacie nda th e beans inside it . The separate beans are then ready (or roast- are placed in large concrete tanks, and a flow of ing ancl grinding into th e final product. water is kept up m echanically. The work usually conT h e process of stripping off the soft pul p of the sists only in st irring the beans so that they will be berr ies is always done on the farm immed iately after washed evenly and in removing the unripe beans the b erries have been picked, so that they will not and leaves that float to the top. ferment and rot. According to the amount of capital The third operation is to dry the husked coffee possessed by the farm in Manicaboa, this operation is after it has been washed. If this is not done immediperformed either b y hand, by a wooden hand-driven ately after washing, the berries wi ll aga in begin to hulling machine, by a metal grinder which is also rot. This may be done on a small scale b y la ying the operated by hand, or by a large hulling machine beans in the sun o n burl a p bags. Or it may be done equipped with a hardwood roller and driven by by spreading the beans on large concrete drying fioors, power from a gasoline motor. Hulling by hand pro- or on wooden platforms which move on tracks and duces one aim ud of c:off:ee in the husk every th rec can be moved to cover if rain threatens. Finally, it lio11r5. Hullin ~ with a ht1nd-operated woode n rnachine may be d o ne by hea ting the beans in a gasol in eprod 11ces 50 a lm ud es per '1011 r, but the ma chi nc costs powered rotating drying drum. Th e first method is It nm S;>o to S75. Th e hand -operated metal grinder used by sma ll growers in l\ Ia nicaboa. Some of the

Fig. ~ ~ I )1 ring c u/Jc·c bct11is "11 movable jJ/a/for111s 011 large lt11cinula in .\/1111ic11bo11 . .'i1111 Jost:. Th ese bt:a ns have been liul/,·t! In· 11 j}()<1'<'r <hil'1'11 11111rhii11• . .-lfle1· <il)'ing they are 1«·t11ly '" ,!!." tn t/11· 111arl:l't. l'/111to by Eric rrolf.

Fig . :i;. 011 small coffee farms bca11s nrc hulled. b)' hnnd or with the aid of a small ha11d-powe 1·ed machine and s1111• dried by th e simple means shown in this pictw·e. Photo by Rothi11: Gouen1ment of Pu e rto Rico.

middle far mers °''·n concrete drying floors which they em p loy for the purpose. The hacienda owns both concrete and "·ooden drying plalforms, but it does not possess a gasoline-driven drying drum. This type of mach inc is cost!y and is owned only by a few very large farms in San Jose. \.Ve have noted the large role played by human labor in these processing operaLions. All the operations may h e pe rformed eiLher by hand or with the aid of mechanical equipmenl. Some hand operations may be combined with machine operations, but the manual operalions are ever-present. One middle farmer owns a wooden hull ing machine, which he, his fami ly and wage workers ma nipulate by hand. He washes his bea ns at the river, using hand labor exclusively. Finally, he spreads h is coffee to dry on a concreLe drying floor. The predominance of manual operations makes it possible for a small grower to compete with a large owner. It is true thal gasolinepowered machi nery and concrete floors and washing tan ks are needed for large-scale operal ions. At the same tim e, a small farmer ca n also grow coffee profi tably i( he is willing to expend the necessary amount o[ labor. vVhere the hacienda uses machinery, he must increase the output o ( manual work in processing. But even the hacienda is primarily dependent on human labor. Field operations can not be mechanized, and human hands carry the coffee from the patches to the hull ing machine, sti r the beans in the concrete washers, spread them on drying floors, move them so th at Lhey dry on all sides, and load them into bags. \Vhen the berries are dried, the pace o( work slackens. Throughout the first three operations-hulling, washing, and drying-s peed is necessary to keep t he beans from ro tting. Dried coffee beaus in the ir husks, however, can be st0red and will keep. U nder Pueno Rican rnnditions, this has made possible a division of processing into operations performed on the [a rm and operntions which can be performed in town. Once dry, the berries are placed in hundred-

pound sacks and loaded on mule tra ins which wind their way to town. ln town, the bags are unload ed at Lhe establishment of the creditor merchant, the marketing co-operative, or at the store o[ the small roaster. T here the husk must be stripped off to free the beans inside. Then the beans can be roasted and ground. In the 185o's. the old creditor merchant firm in San Jose used a n ox-driven wooden m ach ine (malacate) to husk iLs coffee. This machine had a capacity output o( 20 Lo 25 ewes. of husked coffee per day. \ Vhen coffee production began to increase the firm installed a steam-driven husking machine' which had a capacity output of 200 cwts. of husked coffee per day. This machine now sits idly in the large warehouse where t he firm had its proud headquarters and coffee was husked, sorted, and prepared for shipment to Europe. J\Iost of the coffee is now unloaded in front o( the Coffee Marketing Co-operative. This organization does not process its coffee locally, but sends it on to San Juan a nd Ponce for final process ing. Only ~-oughly 25 per cen t of the coffee produced in San J ose is b rought to the small-scale local esta blishment that h as taken the place o( the cred itor firm. It grinds and roasts about ioo cwts. o( coffee a week a nd sells it in San Jose and in neighboring municipalities. A small percentage goes to the several small-scale roasters who retail coff:e to customers along with other dry goods. The clecl me of the P uerto Rican coffee market has been accompanied by a decline in the amount of coffee processed in the loca lity. COFFEE PRODUCTION AND THE GEOGRAPHICAL ENVIRONMENT

. The Lechnology, the means of expl oi ting the cnv1ron1:nen t, ~'ldds up Lo but o ne side o( the ecologi cal equauon . 1 he other side is const ituted by the characteristics of the environment upon "·hich the technology is imposed. Coffee gTo"·s best where the mea n annual temperature is 68 ° F. and the a11nual average

1 84

T H E PEOPLE OF PUERTO RICO

r ainfall above 85 inches. In Puerto Rico these conditions are met most fully in the mountain reg ion which runs down the center of the island. It is in che western pan of this mountain chain that the soils are best fitted for coffee production . Coffee growing in Pueno Rico, as in i\Ianica boa, is thus mountain farming. It is therefore not only a type of agriculwre which must observe certain rules in the cultivation and processing o( the crop, but i t must adapt these rules to the impera tives of a mountainous environment. The people in ~Ianicaboa say that once upon a time the earth was flat, labor easy and plentiful. Then p eople took LO swearing. In p unishment for such behavior the earth shook and brought forth the existing chains o( mountains. T his story recognizes that moun tains create sp ecial and often difficult problems for the farmer. They often prov ide a patchwork o( different so ils, o ne soi l t ype altern ating w ith another in quick successio n. The alternation of high ground with low ground makes for sligh t but important differences in climate lrom. loca lity to local ity. Th is contrasts sharply with the usual uniformity of soi l type, temperature, and rainfall that characterizes large stretches of flat areas, sud1 as the coastal areas of Pueno Rico where cane cultivation predominates. !\fountain b arriers increase precipitation and add erosion to the problems of the farmer. They add transportation diffic ulties and require special devices to m ake transportation possible and easy. ]( cash crops are grown in mountain terrain. on the other hand, they tend to favor crops like coffee that can be transported \Vith re lative ease. They im ped e mechanization o( field opera tions, because farm machinery is diffic ult to apply to rugged terra in. Coffee p atches can b e cultivated and \·v eeded by farm machinery in Brazil (Hu nnicut, i945 :70), but this is not feasible on th e steep s lopes o[ the heavily dissected mountains o( Puerto Rico. I n comm.ercial terms, these various p roblems add special items LO the cost o[ production . A large coffee grower may disregard local variations and strive to produce a large quantity of coffee for sale by purely exten sive cu ltin1ti on . ln disregarding local factors, however, he is not making the most of the land which he ow ns and has paid for. H e may not "count" this as increased cost, but it must be felt as a n invisible ite m in his final balance. O n the other hand, a small grower is much more dependent than a large grower on th e produce o[ a particular spot. Changes in produ ctivity in his particular coffee patch may well reduce him (rom eating rice a nd beans three times a week to eating corn meal all the time. He can t he n outlast hi s misforwne only by reducing his standard of l iving, by tigh Lening his belt severa l notches. Again, h e may not "coun t" this redu ctio n in his living stand ard, but once more the item w ill appear in the fin a l balan ce. The inabi lity o[ the mou nta in coffee farmer to mccha 11i1e h is fi e ld oper ations makes him w ho ll y depende nt on the ava ilabl e supply of labor. Process-

ing machinery has r eplaced labor , but it ca n11ot speed the harvest, ''"hich limits the ultimate r a te of production. A stud y of production costs in coffee cultivation in Pu erto R ico in the yea r 1946-47 showed that about G.J per cent of the total amou n t of expenses went into the payment of labor (Serra and Pi11ero, 19.19:7). Th is study employed modern m eans o[ cost accounting. :\l ost farmers in :\fanicaboa clo not keep books, however. They do not "count·• such items as use of land, cost o[ equipm ent. ;ind use ol mul e transport in the same way a~ the comm erc ial accountant. Labor expense, then.Jore, 10011ts as the '>ingle most important item in their expenses, far beyo 11d th e fi gure t ited above. Tr;insportation simi l ar!~· adds to the cost o( the final product. \ \'e ha\·e see n that in :\lanicaboa a ll goods h:l\·e to be brongltt across th e ri\'er up to the ro:1d wh e re they <:111 be loaded for tra 11 spor tatirn 1 to tm,·1 1 (see C ha rt 1:1). Peop le \,·Jin 0\,· 11 mules do not sys te111at ic :tll>· reckon the: < osh of 11tuk tra 11spon. but those: wli o do not own 11ttJlc, or hcll'.,c·-. mu st 1-e111 or borro\\' these from others. They m1 1.,t pay fifty or sevc: 111 y·fi\T cc:11ts per journey to the: road. or repay a loan later in the lurm ol la\'ors or unpaid service. :\ final burden on the coffee farmer in the mountains of Puerto Ri co is that the island lies within the hurricane belt. Pe1·iodically hurricanes attack the coffee patches and inflict Lheir damages o n the growing perennial. ~fanicaboa exemplifies these \'arious advantages and disadvantages. Its al titude levels reach from 200 meters to more than 500 meters (see Chart 15). lts temperature varies from about 66 to about 76 degrees. Rainfall in the barrio varies from 7'1 to go in ches. Coffee can thus be grown with some success. At the sa m e time it shows much va riety o( soil types (see C hart 1 G). Some of these, like the Alonso, C ia litos, and Cata lina so ils make excellent coffee soi ls. T hese are th e soi ls which the people call " red clay" (ba.rro rnlorao) 01· "co ld soils" (lerreno frio). T h ey a rc "cold" because they will retain water fo r a long t ime. D eep water-fi lled puddles mark the Lra ils in the red ·clay zone after it has r a ined . Horses and mules on these trails splash both riders and passers-by with red mud, and the clay cl ings heavily to the boots of the country people. Besides being "good for" ( bueno pa') coffee, these reel soils are also "good for" plantains, bananas, an d rice. Other soils which occur in the barrio arc o( the ?\Itkara type. These are called "black " (terreno 11e!{ro) or "hot" (terrenv caliente) soils by the people. This type of soil does not reta in water, is grayish in color an d fr iab le to the touch, and "good for" other crops r;1 th er than coffee. Coffee can be grown in such so ils as M l'.1cara silty clay loam , but the profils from growing wbacco on a cuerda o[ this soi l in 1!)'18 were three ti m es as grea t as from grnwing coffee. These " hot" a nd "black" soi ls favor the production o f LO· bacco an d other clean·tilled crops. Th ey are, h owever, rathe r easily eroded , and after a severe rainfa ll the R.io J osco fill s wi th mud washed oIT th e mou n tain sid es.

SAN J OSE: "TRADITIONAL " COFFEE MUNIC IPALITY

185

300-400 METERS

lilllfill

400-500 METERS

•

ABOVE 500 METERS

Chart I ) . L evels of altitude in Manicaboa.

The different soil types are associated with variable factors of altitude, rain fall, temperature, incidence of wind, incline of terrain, and so forth in a multitude of different local combinations. It may be raining on a ridge across the valley, while a particular point of observation remains bone-dry. One spot located in a depression may have continuous exposure to cool drafts, while another may receive li ttle ventilation. One spot may produce excellent cofTee or tobacco, while another spot just like it to a ll appeara nces fails to produce adequate harvests. The people of the barrio comment endlessly on these small but im-

ponant loca l differences. Usua ll y people are able to tell which type of crop will be able to thrive in a pa r ticular spot by the type of plant or grass cover presently grown there, or b y the color and feel of the soil. In some cases, however, they a re una ble to explain wby the bea ns which Don Alejo's father planted below the pla ntain p a tch that currently belongs to Don Chevito never came up, or why that coffee over there goes on producing a lthough the trees are well over seventy-five years old. Such exceptions are carefull y noted by all, and discussed again and ao-ain in the light of any new knowledge that has seep~d into

J 86

T ll E PEOPLE Of' l'UE RTO RICO

111111

-

SOIL TYPES FAVORING THE PRODUCTION OF COFFEE

SOIL TYPES FAVORING THE PRODUCTION OF CROPS OTHER THAN COFFEE

Chart 16. Di.ftriblllion of soil types in Manicabon.

the barrio. \ Vhen a farm is sold to a local m a n, the seller takes the buyer over every inch of h is land a nd carefully explains how the la nd has been used in the past an<l where he a nd his fami ly were espec ia ll y successful or unsucc:essfu l in obtain ing good yie lds. Despite th e great variabili ty from pla ce to place, the good coffee soils occur in the a rea which combines higher a lt itude w ith a greater rainfall and a slig htl y lower average temperature. Chart 16 shows tha t most of the <ire;i a bove ,~oo meters lies in th e zon e of the red-clay so ils, whereas most o[ the "black" so ils occur in the lower area, between 200 and ,100 meters.

A look at Charts 14, 15, a nd 16 will show that the h acienda , the la rgest producer of coffee in the ar ea, is located in the zone of good coffee soils, a bove the 400m e ter m ark. Th e neig hborhood of Limones and the area around the C hapel, on the othe r hand, are areas h e ld predominantly in small farms . L arge p arts o( these ne ighborh oods are formed by the various types of "hot" soil. \l\fhat a re the reasons for this cl istributio11? ln rough terms, we may speak of an a rea in the barrio which is more fav orab le to coffee, wh il e a no the r area -~ l i ghtly lower, slig htl y hotter, sligh tl y drier, with

SAN JOSE: "TRADITIONAL" COFFEE I\I UNICIPALlTY

187

so ils more su ited to clean-ti lled crops- is less favor- ca lly, co~ee 9ro:.'·ing ~n Manicaboa has a lways b een able to its production. It is, however, not only a d<; ellos, theirs, a thmg the wealthy Span iards. grew. question of how much of one crop or another crop ~ he term does not r~fer to _the little man, who grows can be grown in the same spot. The problem is also cash crops to cover his subsistence needs. but to lhose one of how much of a crop can be sold in the market. out~ider~ who raised cash crops commercially "·ith \ Vhether people will attempt to grow coffee in "hot" capaa l 11uroduced from an outside source. Coffee in soils is therefore only partiall y determined by loca l l\Ianicaboa has. not been de nosolros, "our thing," a conditio ns of cl imate, topology, and soil type. T he lo- crop that the lntle man can securely tie his fate to. cal e nvironment plays an important part, but not a It is a perennial. The sm all o\\·ner must wait until it clea r ly determin ing pan. Coffee is a commercial crop, reaches maturiLy. Extraord inary events like hurriand it s prod11nion tends LO fo llow the dictates of the ~an es and insect plague~ may cut it down, taking the markcl. \ \'hen th e market price o( coffee was good and 111vestment of years with them . After it has been th e conditions of the market stable, coffee was grown h a rvested and sold, coffee, unlike tobacco, cannot be "'hcn.:vcr i1s prod union \\"as feasible. \·Vhen coffee was rotated with ~oocl . c~·ops for ~1ome consumption or t.lt c ('; 1s lt <'rop. ,,·hi ch promised people new commod i- sa le. A per~n.111al, 1t IS zet sub1 ect to a bearing cycle. ties a nd an add ed in come, its production extended Loca l concht1ons affect lt so much that a small man into soi ls \\'hi clt. in terms o[ a bsolute yields, would m ay well be left wiLl1 next to nothing to sell if the bet tcr be employed in the production of other crops. harvest h as been bad. Co rre~ is worked mostly by men, H i... 1oric1 ll\', th e limits of coffee cu ltivation have a nd won_1en pla~ only a m111or role in its production shifted lorw;1rd and backward across the barrio. by he lp111g thell" men fo lk during the h arvest. In \·Vhc 11 San Jost"· and l\lanicaboa were still outside the te~·ms of family labor, it is therefore a crop which limits ol ins11lar ;ind world demand, small independ- (ails to employ half of the labor power of the family. ent !armers gre\\· subs istence crops where,·er co~1di­ In fact, when the pressure of work is high, a small tions seemed most favorable for their production. grower may have to lay out wages for extra help. i\Iost of the barrio was then still uninhabited and When the market declined, credit dried up too, and unuti li1.ed forest. \\The n coffee became profitable, the without production credit throughout the year the Altura region became the center of large-scale coffee sma ll grower cannot exist. production. Here the hacienda became establ ished . Tobacco, on the contrary, is a crop that is made Better coffee soils, associated with the other environ- fo r the sm a ll producer, as long as the market holds menta l factors we have cited, promised a lower cost up. I t is an annual. It can be rotated with other crops. o( production. At the same time, most of the land One cuerdn can produce a lot of it. The women a nd there was held in large land grants which could not children can he lp _with its production a nd processing. be ex p loited commercia ll y by their owners. To grow I t means producuon credit, and a source o( money a large qua nt ity of coffee a man needed money. None th roughou t th e year. Most of the people in the ba rrio of the nomina l t itle holders could muster the n eces- have g 1:own up with coffee, a nd coffee agriculture is sa r y stnns. \1\fithout m oney, they could only continue som e thmg they are familiar wi th. But for most of to utili ze small portions of their land for the produc- tl~em co~ee is a crop of the p ast. I t is de e llos, the crop tio n o[ subsistence crops, a llowing the rema inder to of the b115 people, who h a ve the mon ey and the capirn l lie idle. The price o[ such holdings was therefore low, to grow it on a large scale a nd to ride out the years of and land could be easily purchased in large tracts. a d epressed market. It is a good thing Lo own some \!\T hen the Altura region began to raise coffee, the coffee trees; but the smaller the farm, the m ore secup eop le in the other parts of the barrio followed su it rity there is in growing tobacco and the genera l farm and attempted to participate in the benefits of a crops associated with it. Thus, where coffee trees rising market. \Vhen the coffee market declined, how- stood but thirty years ago, tobacco patches and pasever, and the hurricanes struck and devastated la rge ture la nd cover much terrain in both L imones and tracts o( coffee la nd, the profits began to dra in away. around the Chapel. Coffee growing beca me less profitable for both large an<l sm all farmers. Dut it became less profitable at a faster rate for the sma ll owners, especially in the area HISTORICAL DEVELOPMENT OF THE where othe r prod ucts with better prospects in a rising COFFEE PATTERN market could replace coffee. T hose whose coffee trees stood up after the hurricane in terra in that favored THE EARLY SUBSISTENCE FARMS coffee production counted their blessings and stood by the ir long-te rm investmen t. Those, however, whose The Hacienda La Corra in i\Ia nicaboa represented coffee trees were injured by the hurricane a nd whose a clear d e parture Lrom the earlier way o( life of the te rrain favored such crops as tobacco, which sud- peop le. I t was the first produ ctive unit in the barrio de nly fo und an outlet in the market, co nve rted to LO spec ialize in the production o( one cash crop, to the new crops and said: "Coffee growing is a th ing· p lant large a reas in coffee shrubs and sha de trees for the Span iards, but nothing for us little men." a lone, a11d to d epend on the demands of an outside It is thus ev ide nt that Janel use is related, in forge ·world b eyond the confines of the barrio and o( Puerto m easure, to the amount of available cap ital. H istori- Rico.

I

88

THE P EOPLE OF PUERTO RICO

Coffee was introduced into Puerto Rico as ea:·ly as 1736. Prices remained unstable, however, until well into the first part of the nineteenth century (fl inter, 1834: 185-86). During the last quarter of the nineteenth century, coffee was grown merely as one of severa l crops, and it was sun-dried in the hull for lack of machinery (A bbad y Lasierra, 1866:3 1o). Colonel Flinter, writing in 1830, stated (183.1: 158): "Thirty years ago, there were o nl y two sugar estates o n the island , and even these were very imperfectly cultivated. Rearing cattle, and raising a sca nty supply of provisions and a few coffee pl a n ts, were the utmost extent of Puerto Rican husbandry." Between 1800 and 1830, hulling machinery was introduced, and when Flinter visited the island (1834 : 159), there were 148 coffee haciendas equipped with machinery and employing slave labor in the cultivation of the crop. He sa id (1834 : i 86) that these slave haciendas were, however, ill-equipped to withstand the rapid increases and decrea ses in coffee prices: "In consequence of the low price for coffee for several years they were abandoned by their owners." Only small farmers who could grow coffee with family labor and who did not "count" this expend iture of labor powet~ in commercial terms were able to absorb the changes in prices. i\Iost coffee was, therefore, produced by small growers, in addition to the many other subs istence crops wh ich they raised. "Every white laborer, a nd free Kegro and mulatto, has invariably a few coffee tree pl a nts around his house." The product of these trees "\Vas sold to cover certain needs of consumption: "The free laborers, at the harvest, are seen coming in to market, some with fift y pounds, others with a qu intal , and so on, which is the surplus of their little crop, after leaving enough for the use of the families for the season . They sell it to the merchants in order to purchase articles of clothing" (Flinter, 1834: 187). In 1830, su ch free la bor produced more than four times as much as the i 48 slave haciendas (Flinter, i834: 159). Coffee hacie ndas worked by slave labor declined early in the cent u ry and did not come to be the dominant productive u ni ts of the coffee ind ustry during the per iod of its Aorescence. Large-sca le production was resumed on haciendas worked by labor tied to the farm by new a nd different means. San .Jose was characterized a t this period by the pattern of minor cash crop prod uction as an adjunct to the production of other crops, as described by Flinter. It never participated in the patte rn of the slave-operated coffee hacienda. The pattern of minor cash crop production preceded the change to Jargescale production . which began somewhere between the years 1810 and i820 and continued to characterize the peasantry even when the mode of large-scale special ized production on haciendas worked hy bound labor had b ecome dominant. It was only in i S75 that developm e nts in the world market made larO'e-scale . 1· I:> specia 1zat io n last ingly worth while. The p icture which " ·e sh a ll draw in the following paraO'raphs there fore h e ld true for a ll farm <> be fore ;810, a~d fo1~'most smali

farms up to about 1875. Many componems of th is complex are still alive, h owever, though their function ha s changed with changes in the cultural context. Before 1870, the poptdat io n was sparse. Officially, San Jose municipality had about l ,ooo people in 1821. Between 1821 and 1870 it added only G,194 persons. Land was read il y ava ilable. IL was farmed mainl y by extensive slash-and-burn techniq ues. llrush was cleared and piled into m o unds, wh ich \\'ere fired (balr·r'iros) . T rees \\·hie It r<:s isted clearing \\·cre left sLa nding ..'\ e\\·ly cleared Janel wa s e xceedingly fenile. "\Ve did 11ot J1a\T w 11s<.: 1nattock<> tli c11," :in old man sighed . Farm tool s con sisted or a lire-ha rdened st ick used for making hol es in pl:1nting, :111 axe for felli ng trees (l/{/c/1(1 ). a11 iro n mache te for cl earing :111d cntting. and a woode n plow \\·ith a 11 iron point (arno de fHtlo ) for O\'CTttirr1i11g th e soil. :\ man in :\lanicaboa, now abo1 1t fift y years o ld , still recal led the use of 1he o ld wooden plow on a neig hboring fa rm in the l !)3o's. Till e to th e land \\·as held e ith er through squatte rs· rig hi s or L11rouglt legitimate land grants made hy the insiilar gm·e rnm e nL. \\' hen the owne r died, all land \\·as divided equally between the children, male and fem a le. Labor was scarce and labor needs were often satisfied through a sysLem of exchange labor, the "aid team" (la j1111ta de ayuda). Men wou Id take turns working each other's fields. Exchanges were a lso poss ible between two neighbors. A g ive n amount of labor expended on one man's field called for the expenditure of an equ ivalent amount o[ labor in the service of the other man. The kind of work exchanged d id not have to be the same. Aid in plant ing one man 's rice field could be reciprocated by the man's w ife ·w ho would help her neighbor make sausages. Labor was also often paid in kind, principally in rice. Old men recall with a sense of nostalgia how easi ly their neighbors would respond to a call to fonn an exchange labor team. Tn one case exchange labor teams performed field labor for years for a widow w ith young chi ldren. The crops grown were mainly subsistence crops, p rincipally bana nas, plantai ns, rice, corn, taniers, and taro. \II/hen people in Man icaboa talk of the good old days today, they recall large wooden boxes filled with r ice "of the country" (rlel pois), a local va riety, so much better and more nutritious in their remin iscences th an the variet ies o( " Puerto Rico R econstruction Administration rice," or "Japanese rice" (arroz PRAA, m-roz ]a/Jonis), which they grow today. Cassava \Vas prepared by twisting it through cloth, thus extracting its powerfu l poison . A loca l variety of tobacco (ta baco del pais) was ra ised for home cons11mption, and a little sugar cane was grown to provide molasses (melao) for sweetening. A few coffee trees grew around the house. The sugar cane was pressed in a hand press, the coffee dried in the sun . Some pigs and cattle were owned. The pigs were killed and smo ked, thei r lard sealed into large earthenware pots, and their meat stored in calabashes where it

SAN JOSE: "IllADITIO~AL" COFFEE MU::-.IIClPALITY

would keep for one or lWO months. 1\'I ilk was consum ed on lhe farm. Chickens, which were kept about the house, ,\·ere ea te n on fest ive occas ions, but their eggs, the n as now, were so ld to itinerant traders. The principal means o( lransportation was the horse. The econom y of this cullu re was mainly, but not ,\·hall y. one of subsistence. Cloth, clothes, salt, and iron wo ls anti kettles had to be imported into the loc:-ility. C lothes ,\·ere espec ially scarce a nd desired art icl es. \\'c ha,·e seen that Flinter noted the exchange of co ff cc for cloth i11g. I 11 1 835. emergency inoculation~ i11 San .Jose were plll off, supposedly because the cm111tr~ people could not come to town "for the lack of clothes ,\·ith which LO cover themselves" (San .J ose. :\ l1111 icipa l :\rchi\·es. Actas, 1835). The carrier of ll1 ese \'arious d es irab le a rticles was the itinerant tr:tder (r·a rg1u:ro), ,\·ho bartered his wares for eggs, moJa,,c~. cn fkc. and tobacco. The various goods were exchanged ;1t ~Cl prices. such as the equivalen t of one dollar for L\\·entY-ri,·c runrtillas of molasses. The proce~s of 1>:1 ner,. however. made the actual transfer of coins ;1 rare occurrence .. \ large percentage of the coins used were unique tO the island, o ften crudely minted. and late1· declared illegal by the Spanish government. Th is currency was called la maq 11 uq uina. Such coins were often hoarded, together with more valuable money, and the fantasies of later generations often cen ter on dreams betraying the whereabo,u ts of these h on rds o( gold , supposed ly buried in earthenware pots (e ntierros). M;my a tree is sa id to be haunted by a ghost who, when still among the Jiving, had buried his accumulated hoard at the spot so no one could appropriate it. H ouses we re widelv scattered. '"\ Vhen I was a ch ild,'' sa id an eighty--five-year-old m an, "there stood no ho use next to mine until you came to the ridge over there." a nd h e po in ted to a ridge a distance of ten min utes' walk ::m·ay. Houses were constructed of a wooden frame and had wooden floors raised above the surface of the ground. The roof was covered with thatch or with shingles of hardwood, and the walls were covered with the hard bark of the upper palm. Household eq uipme nt was simple, consisting o( a ta ll woode n mortar made from a tree trunk, a wooden pescle, round grinding swnes, d ishes, containers a nd spoons of ca labash, coconm cups, dishes of cedar wood, wooden stools, and storage boxes, an occasional '\·ooden bed, corn husk or plantain leaf mattresses, blankets and hammocks, and many different types o( baskets. Cotton t inder was used to ligh t a fire, and houses were lit with splints cut from the tabonuco lree (hacl1os de tabo11uco) or with oyama berries. T hread W'1S twisted by hand from native cotton . Cord was m a nufactured from rnshes of the emajagua and fib ers from forest lianas. Soap was made from the soa p berry (jabonci /lo). i\ fanioc was used for the produ ction of starch . I t is worth noting th at there a re still man y people alive in the barrio today who can, and often do. manufacture these commodities in their households. Usually such items as cord, soap, matches,

1 89

and kerosene are bought in stores, but when an emergency a rises people can fall b ack on their traditional arcs and crafts. Th is h appened d uring the partial blockade oE Pu erto Rico during " 'oriel 'War JI. T he major link with Lhe outer world was the itinerant salesman. People felt little need to visit the town for economic reasons, a nd felt little attachment to the formal religious structure of the town. They went to w wn to baptize their children and to marry, but a pre limin ary water baptism served as a substitute until an occasion for the fo rmal ceremony arose, while marriages without benefit of clergy were cultu rally sanctioned and stab le. " \Ve worshipped in our own houses," an old man sa id. The focus of this familia l worship ,\·as the image of the sa int, ,,·hich in l\11 anicaboa was San Antony, the Virgin of Carm el, or the Three Kings o( the Orient. There was even a cemetery in the barrio. I t is not clear whether only people who died of clearly infectious diseases were buried there, or whether others were interred there too; at any rate, some of the dead were buried in the rural area, rather than being· taken co tO\\·n, as is the custom fo r a ll dead nowadays. I t was on this culture that the coffee way of life, centered around the production of coffee as a major cash crop, was imposed. \\ e must note that it was not a completely seH-sufficient culwre. I t mainta ined imponant links with the outside world, trading its eggs, molasses, coffee, and tobacco for things which it cou ld not m anufactu re itself, but the quantities traded ,\·ere small a nd the ir value low. Nevertheless, the people must have had a notion of what the increased produc tion of a cash crop could mean in terms o( in.creased manufactured commodities a nd other goods wh ich were so hard to come by. Implicit in such understanding lay a pote ntial acceptance of the credit system, in which goods wou ld be handed out to th em in return ror liens on thei r future production. \Vhat was absent in their scheme of life, however, was the notion of interest. Theirs was not a n accumulative culture, but essentially a subsistence one. They ra ised cash crops for equivalent exchanges, in wh ich a certain val ue of the ir crop could be translated into a set of oth er desired commodities. They lacked the idea that ca pital cou ld be looked upon as a means for economic betterment. T he only increase of production they knew was that which a man, his family. anti his neighbors achieved in the system of mutual aid throug h labor in th e ri elds. They were ready to accep t credit, without recognizing that, in th e words of an o ld man, "the in teresls a nd the interests on the i1uerests would eal up the houses, the field s, and the cows o( the people." R etaining a major interest in consumption, even where their cash links with the outer world were concerned, they saw the land in terms o( their system o( slash -and -burn subsistence agricul ture. Some of the people in the barrio owned la nd grants o( a hundred or two hund red cuerdas. The uses to which th ey put these hold ings were nevcnheless those of

I

90

THE PEOPLE 01? P UERTO RI CO

earlier settlement is re!lected in the larger ave rage si1.e or farms in the San Jose area when compa red to most other pans ol the western h ighlands. Ava il ab ilitv o f la11d was not e no ug h , however. Add it io nal c;mditions had to be establi shed i( coffee production was to g ro\L F ir!>t, the acreage planted to coffee had to increase. Second, " ·orkers had to be fo t1nd LO wo rk L11e la rger pla n t<ttions. T hird, credi t had to be p u mped in to the sys tem to finance the extension ol collce acreage. to pay the workers, and to finance the grow<.:rs duri11g the t111prod11nivc period o l tll c:ir i11,·e.,1rnc11t :1-; wc: ll a-. d t1ring til e hiatus hct \\·c:cn han·c-.1 :tnd ltan"C:'>l. \\"c h:I\"<.: -.cc11 tlt:it tile pic:<cding < 1d111re p:111t-r11 was oric:ntc:d m;1i11h to die irnrnc:di:it c .,;11i.,lat tion of a rc:.,11ic1cd 1111m l;er ol t 1du 11 :d w:111h. Coll('c p ro· dunirn 1. 011 1h <.: oilH:r lta11d , illlpl i<.:d 1hc: J>O'>lj>ClllCm c:nt ol to11-.ump1io11 hoth clt1ri11~ 1hc period in which 111<: -.hrub-. \\.Cl(' n::1chi11g m :1u11i1y :ind then THE RISE OF THE HACI ENDA SYSTEM l r<11n h:1n·c-.1 to l1 :1nc-. 1. l .:11 1d w:1.-. plc11til11 1. \\"orkcrs would be diff1c ult 10 fi11d \\·here la nd <<Hild he c:i-.i ly Th e Developm ent of Ca sh Crop Production acqt1ir<.:d :111d '>Ollle dc:grcc ol -.dl ·'>llllH ie11c ~· \\·a-. a'>· During the first part of the nineteenth century, we '>llrcd . . \-, long a~ fi t: Id-.< mild ht: <lc:ircd :ind :.qu:111trs· begin to w itness th e ini tia l ch anges ;1way . from the righ ts \\Tr<.: r<.:cogni ;c:d, 11 0 \\·orkcr \\"otd d n ilt111 1.;1r il y cu l wre pattern wh ich we h ave d escribed i n th e las e cxcha ng<.: the i ndependent role of a self-suflicicnt section . The change was a\\·ay from th e production o( produc<.:r for th at of a dependen t laborer. F inally, cro ps for the satisfac1ion ol immediate consumption the p1·eccd ing pattern fu nctioned without cap ita l. needs to the productio n of one m a j or cro p for the The ch ange towa rd pos tponemen t o f cons urn ption, world market i n exchange for m o ney o r its e q u i va lents. toward format io n or a la bor pool, a nd toward the The sh ift was gradual. It did not affect many small introduction of capital had LO come from outside. farmers until a mu ch later p eriod. D u ring the second T his involved the application of economic and pod ecade of the century, howeve r, a Spa nish n o blema n litica l rorce w he re the o ld er pattern wou ld not g ive rece i ved a la n d grant i n San .Jose. H e p la nted some way volu ntaril y. It invol ved ma ni p ulatio n o( the cane and some r ice on his ho lding. ll ut at the same indigenous pattern to meet the new demands. time he bega n to plant large areas in nothing but T he innovators needed about S20,ooo to sta rt a coffee. I n 1 8~2, a n outside obser ver, P edro T o111;is d e coffee estate of 100 rnerdas. Din widdie ( 1 89~a:88) C6rd o b a, co uld discern the com ing tren d an d a d vise computed the cost o[ such a fi n rn as $23,500. H e the people of San J ose to increase thei r prod uction counted s.10 for each werda 0£ land; $ 2,500 for of coffee with an e ye to the future (1831-33: II, 123-26). b uildings, including quarters for the planter; S300 "Coffee is the o n ly crop of any use to th em ," he said, for clearing a nd p laming; S2,ooo for weed ing ; $ • ,!)OO "due to th e h igh costs of tran sporta tio n." By i 836, fo r " incidcnla l expenses'" ; and $8,ooo fo r p rocess ing San Jose exported 220 ewes. of coffee and 150 ewes. mach inery. of tobacco. Du ri n g the same year, the influx of com L a nd could be obtained in a nu m ber of wa ys. It modities i n to the mun ic ipality was still neglig ible, and cou ld be obta ined in a la n d gra n t. It cottl cl be boug ht. m o n ey extreme ly scarce. Fou rtee n years la ter, however, I t co uld be acqui red thro ugh a cha lle nge o ( squ atters' th e importance of coffee was c learly esta b lished. I n 1850 r ights. It could be acqu ired by fo rce. And it could a Spaniard, highl y placed in the government of th e be received in the «ourse o f credit transactions. island, dec ided to invest cap ital i n the es tab lishmen t As early as 1 8 2 1, the government of the island bega n of a coffee credi t ;111d market ing fi rm in Sa n J ose. the distr ibution o( virgin la nd to poor citizens of Twenty-five years later coffee began to boom. vV ith the mu n i(' ipa li ty, so they could "make them produce, the boom ca me an acceleration of the changes initiated and contribute to the upkee p of th e Treasury and firt y years ea rlier. San J ose offered much u nused lan d the m u nic ipali ty" (San J ose, i\Iunicipal Arch ives, for th e extensio n o( coffee pl a n t ings. ln this i t con- 1 873: 7 -~>) . This ava ilable ter ritory cou ld a lso be trasted w i th other parts of the h igh land area, wh ich granted as a reward to favored a nd loya l supporters had been more d e 11!'iel y settled in t he past an<l where of the govern ment's policies as well as in e fforts to the introduction or coffee had to be superimposed on bolster governmental resources. Jn 1873 al most 5,000 11 more tenacious earl ier p attern . San J ose, with its c11erda s o f la nd were di:;trihuted in Sa n .J os(', a nd few subsistence farms, must have seemed Ii ke a another 1,000 in 1880. A sample con tract shows that frontier area to tile men interested in increasing the the ultimate rights of tenure were retained by the pr<>duc tion ol coflee. To this da y, this difference i n state. If w ith in one year one-te nth of th e land granted

subsistence farme rs. A sma ll area was fired and p lanted to needed crops, wh ile the remainder of the propeny remained unex p loited forest land. The people of lVfa nicaboa co uld n ot b y a nd o ( th em se lves m a ke t he transition to the new cash crop cul ture . The ir monetary transactions were essentially baner, and they had no capi tal. Own i ng land, they had no means of transform ing i c i n LO la rge-sca le pl a n tatio ns. L ackin g cap i ta l, they could not a flonl la rge sums which \\·ere n eeded LO purchase a hacie nda. Scattered throughout the fore5t, i n family groups, and relyi ng on ne i~hborly he lp for the compl et io n of ma n y of Lil e ir tasks, Lh ey could not produce the massed labor supp ly th at could effeCLively weed, plane, harvest, and care for la rgesca le plantings. T he impetus to th is change came from with<Ju t, throug h th e in tro du c tion o( o u tside capi tal into the loca l area.

SAN

was not under cu!Livalion, Lhe property reverted to the Crown. '.ViLhin ten years half the land had to be under crops. In return for such gra nts the recipien ts were sometimes required t0 pay nominal fees. In one such transacL ion the recipient paid $50 for 250 cuerdas, or one dollar for each five cuerdas of land. Inspectio n was lax, and very often the standards of the contract were not met. Sin ce land was still plentiful and population sca rce, sq uatters were o[ten welcomed on such property since they increased its value :111d cxp:111clcd the area under cultivat ion . Often unused and lo\\. in Y;tl11e. land passed frequently from l1 ;111d to hand. 111Hil th e holders oE the title or the settlers 011 the property bore no relationship to the origi11;il recipient of the grant. B11yi11g l:tncl outrigln \\·as thus a second way in which l:tnd c:otdd be acquired. The man who bought the same 2 :)<> run·das mentioned above from the origin a I recipient of the g rant paid S.625, or S.2 .50 per n11'rd11. His grandson so ld the property again in 1~7() for :)2 .ooo. or $~.oo per cuerda . In i948 some of this land \1-;1s \'alued at S200 or S300 per cuerda. Some land dose to the wwn valued in 19+8 at $800 to $1,000 per cucrda, sold in 1870 for $50 a c11erda . Another property, valued in i948 at $300 lO S-100 per cuerda, sold in the 188o's at~ 1.00 for every two cuerdas. Land was thus fairly cheap, anll any man with a little capital could acquire safe title through purch~1se. A th ird way of getting land into one's possession was Lo cha! lenge st1uatters' rio-hts. These rio-hts were . b b invariably customary rights, and no written documcms attested to their origin. A man who knew how to manipulate the legal system and knew how to r ead and write could easily receive a title to land which someone e lse had cleared and cultivated. A fourth way to obtain land was through force. This usually took the for m of collusion with the police authorities of the island, th e dreaded guardia civil. This procedure is illustrated in the ·words of an eighty-five-year-old man who witnessed some of the consequent evictions: A l\Iallorcan "'Ottld conic to the barracks of the Civil Guard. H e would go to the chief of the Guard who was also a Spaniard, and he would ask him (or two g uards. He would say: "Look. they arc robbing my taro and tanicrs. they are ~ u.tting- clown my coffee shrubs, they arc slashing the ankle J0111ts of m y ca ttle." These stories were all lies, b eca use they ~v_cre untrue. Mut h e would leave \\'ill1 the two policemen. J he people would come tO get their purchases at the ha· ciencla store . for in those times people bought most of their things at the h acienda stores. And the l\·fallon:an would say: ··Look, this man with the blue shirt. h e is the one who is bothering- me." The t\\'O g uards would then walk up to the rnan a11d ask : "Do yo u own property?" The man would reply: " J own some twenty cuc:rdas. They yield enough rnffee for the n eeds of m y own family. I raise a few little plants to feed my family. I li\'e in peace. altho ugh I must work hard ancl they pay me little. But here I live in peace, the owner of my ow11 h o use.'' Then the g-uards "·oitld say: "J f you want to co ntinue to !in· in peace. you must sell your farn 1, or \1'C shall clap you in jail. .. So the poor man

J OSE: "TRAOITIONAL" COFFEE :1\WNICIPALlTY

191

had to sell his land to the rich owner at one-fourth o[ its value.

A fifth way to obtain land was through the extension of credit, with land offered as a security in the transaction. Th is was without doubt the most important mechanism of acquiring the land needed in coffee production: The co/Tee industry o[ Puerto Rico '\'as built upon a cred it system \\'hich was "·ell-known in Louisiana as the system o[ "advances." The farmer would arrange with a city merchant [a coffee e xporter] to furnish the necessary credit to make his crop. This credit was secur ed by means o[ a mortgage on the plamation at a ver y high rate of interest. Furthermore, this credit was not given in cash , but most of it in supplies. This meant a second profit on the same investment. The farmer would open a "despacho de peones" [hacienda store] . . . in his plantation, and pay the wages to his laborers in orders at his store. ' ·\Then the crop was han·estecl it had to be taken to the cred itor merchant who ,\.Ottlcl set a price on it .. . thereby a third profit was made on the same crop loan. (Puerto Ri co Go"ernment, Governor\ Reports, 1925:512.)

\ •Ve have seen that the people in Manicaboa were acquainted with the notion that cash crop commodities could be exchanged for goods they needed. From th is it was but a short step to the acceptance of a system of credit in which they pledged their cash crop production in the future for commodities received now. ' 1Vhat they did not understand was interest. l\ fost of then.1 were illiterate and did not know how to keep books. They believed in the binding quality of the spoken word and in the force of customary law. The creditor merchants, who dominated the coffee industry in the second h alf of the nineteenth century, however, belonged to a new and different culture. iVIost of them were Spaniards who had learned the notion of interest in their homecountry. They were fully li terate and kept close accounts. vVhat counted for them was a man's signawre on the written page, the written contract. A n old informant described the meeting of these two cu ltures in the following words : People came here from all over Spain: Asturians, l\fallorcans, Canary Islanders, Calicians. Men who owned neither sh ins nor pants. But a few years later each one of them sat on a hoard of 30.000 pesos. You can't deny that they were hard-\\'Orking people. But it 'ms a misery to witness the 'ray they treated the sons of Puerto Rico. For this reason Cod has seen fit to punish Spain and to let her tumble from her high place . . . . They laid hold of the riches of this rountry from their seats beh ind the tradesman's counter. If a man came and bought the codfish or the fatback he 11 eecled, they charged him 25 per cent interest. And if he couldn't pay, they charged interests on the interests. ' •Ve all took credit this way; the N. family, the G. family, the M. family. my O\rn fath er. They didn't understand anythinoabout those things. And afterwards the Span iards came. they took the farms from the poor people who could not

and

pay.

Not all the . farmers lost their holdings. But to those who realized what cred it meant to them and

1 92

THE PEOPLE OF PUERTO RICO

grasped its consequences in terms of capital ist economics, it meant one of two things. If they became coffee producers, they cou ld compete with the growing hacienda system as long as they performed the operations of production and processing by h and. This meant an intensification of labor and a closer marshaling of the available resources of fam ily labor. It also meant a curtailing of their standards of consumption . If the credit system threatened them with loss of house and home, then the answer was to restrict the amount of cred i t to cover bare necessities. On the other hand, they had the alternative o[ balancing their ownership of land with wage labor at the newly developing hacienda. This alternative meant that they received goods in payment for extra '''Ork performed on land which belonged to somebody else. Such payments made them more independent of credi t. It also provided them with commodities they cou ld not hope to obtai n with such regularity if they tightened their belt and stuck to their farms ·without performing outside wage labor. At th e same time it tied them to the hacienda system. Both alternatives were products of the new cultural context. The cred it system meant restricted consumption for. many, wage labor for others. In time, both alternat ives became part of the establ ished way of life of the small farmers. The econom ic conAict between large growers who specialized in the production of coffee and the small farmers, between the creditor merchants and the victims of the credit system, gave rise to a cu ltural conflict. Those Spaniards were worse than the Devil [au old small holder opined]. They wanted to become the lords of the earth around here. They gave credit to the farmer during the year until the harvest came around. They chalked up more than the goods ·were worth. Then they took the farms away. That's the way it was. They had soldiers all over the countryside. One day a Spaniard called on the soldiers to hunt down a Puerto Rican. He said the man had stolen something from his farm. They hun ted down the man, and killed him with the bulls of their rifles. They wanted to kill us, these people, so they could take o\·er the farms and the land .

The new conditions created a new cultural stereotype. After th is, any large landO\vner a nd creditor merchant who fitted its description was called a "Spa_niard." Not all the new large landowners and crec.htor merchants were Span iards by birth . But if they were "bad," like Don C. Z., "they were so bad they coulc._l have ?een Spaniards." If they were stingy, they fell 111to this category. "There is a man on the hill," an infon:nant said. "He is just like a Spaniard. He l~as a lot .of money but he doesn't spend any of it. He is all skins and bones himself, a nd his sons are all exceedingly thin . But he sells all his vegetables, ~n.~I b e sells al.I his milk and will not give them any of ll. U nder this stereotype Spaniards are described as ve ry hard-working, hard-bitten, much like Americ;.rns .., ~h ey " work too hard for a dollar." They "are very sungy," " as hard a s th e elbow." "They rob

people's money, but then they just s it on it. They don't spend it." They "came here to make money and then go back to Spain "·ith it." They ··are very individualistic. Nobody can tell them what to do. They don't take other people into consideration." They "d on't give the workers su bsistence plots on which to grow things to eat." They "are clannish." They ''don't like to marry Pueno Rictn women. They don't like lo mix with the sons of the co untry.'' They are "they," e llos. members of the outgroup. adn:rsaries o( the hijos d e! /Jais, "tlie :-.011s of the cou1Jtn·... From these dcscription:-. ;ind adjenin.· ... c11H.:rgcs tlH con trasting stcrcotyp<.:. the 11inL1re ol th<: idc:i l Puerto Rican. U11likc the Spaniards... he i» ca .. y-goi11g.'' Plleno Rica11s "work h;1nl. but th<.:y don·t just \1·ork lor th e sake or work." The>· ";in: considerate o l others.'· They "arc shrewd a11d make money. But ii Ll1ey h;1ve money. they don·t sit 011 it. They arc lrcc \1·id1 it." They "arc always hospi1able. lrcc with the ir belongings." H the y 0\1·11 Lt11d. they "al\,·ays let their \1·orkcrs have subsistenc<.: plots.·· This stercotyp<.: i~ i11 tllrn charged with the value which people put 011 cooperativeness, hospitality, the use o( mo11ey for purposes o[ consumption, personal and shared, and for reci proca I socia I relationships. These a re th e ideal norms of behavior for a "son of the countrv.'' If a large landowner or a creditor merchant fits ~his picture, he is then said to be "not like a Span iard at all." Don Pancho is thus adjudged "so good that it is hard to believe that he is indeed a Spa nia rd." The Span iards, in turn, judge the Pueno Ricans with whom they have to deal through the eyes o( their own accumulative capitalist culture. They think of them as "really a bunch of Andalusians." They "don't like to work." They "have too many holidays.'' They "don't know how to save. If a peasant gets any money on Saturday, he hasn't got any left on Monday. He drinks it away. He plays it away. He is a real Andaluz." They "like to drink and gamble. Just take the sung devotion to the saints. Just an excuse for a fiesta. People always come away drunk." "A Mallorcan will grow all kinds of vegetables : peppers, tomatoes, and so on. Not just taro and sweet potatoes. But they grow nothing else, so they can just cut them ofI with a machete. They are so lazy." · · The cultural conOict implicit in these general izations grew sh arper as more and more people lost their land a n<l were forced to exchange the status of independent and sovereign farm owners with the status of dependent workers working on someone else's land. The municipal census of 1871 listed 1,G(io working owners. ln 1892, or twenty-one years later, there were on ly 555 farm units in all of San Jose. ' 'Ve may assume that some 1 ,ooo individuals shifted to wage labor during the period. \ Vbether eager to obtain the commodities given to them as payment a t the hacienda stores, or whether attempting to supplement their income from their own farms, they set the precedent by which a man sold his labor power to obtain needed goods.

SAN

AL the same time, the increasing prosperity of the coffee area brought streams of migrants from the coast. D uring the years from i871 to i897, San J ose more than doubled its population. To ensure a steady supply of labor, the legal and political authorities e nforced strict vagrancy laws. Until July of i873, an insular statute requ ired every able-bodied adult, who owned no property beyond the labor of his arms, to find employment for wages, and it ensured complia nce through a system of work books and inspections. After 1873, some of these rulings were co11Li nu ed formally or informally on the municipa l lc ,·cl. ln San J ose, a register was kept or all petty misdemean ors, and the men whose names appeared on the r egiste r were drafted for work whenever the judge or the mayor found it necessary. Political and lega l force were undoubtedly of importance in reshaping the older cultural pattern. The credit system appears, however, to have been the m ost active factor in loosening the bonds of the semisubsistcncc pattern in the barrio. We have poimed out that the notion of interest was introduced along with the idea of credit. It thus forced people to accumulate capital above and beyond the level of barter exchange. At the same time, it guaranteed a steady stream of commodities to the rural area, because it granted its loans mainly in the form o[ goods. This introduced the other incentive to wage labor into a community wh ich had previously fun ctioned on the basis of a minimum of purchased goods m ediated through money as tokens to be u se<l in barter. Now people began to obtain these tokens throug h sale oE their labor power. vVage labor replaced the neighborhood exchange labor team as the predominant way of obtaining labor. Credit tied the rural community firmly to the town, which served as a point of concentration for the goods that came in from the countryside. It gathered quantities o[ produce and sold them in a market with wh ich the rural farmers h ad no acquaintance. It funneled credit into the rural area. Credit made the n ew way of life possible. The division of functions between town and country emerged as b asic to the new coffee culture. The new way of life had two major poles. Its urban pole was the creditor merchant, its rural pole the hacienda. The Hacienda

Hacienda La Corra in Manicaboa represems the new rural way of life in its most typical form. At present the hacienda comprises about 690 cuerdas. R oughly 400 cuerdas were acquired throug h purchase of two land g rmns from their orig ina l owners. A little more than ioo cuerdas were bought from sma ll owners surround ing the holding. The proven ience of 150 cuerdas remains uncertain. Most of the hacienda te rrain lies in the area of best coffee production (see Chart i 4). I t is surrounded o n a ll sides

JOSE:

'"mAOITIONAL" COFFEE :\I UNICIPALITY

193

by small holdings, some of which a re owned by descendants of the original owners of the lands now held by the hacienda. The loca tion of the main land grams purchased by the original owner determined the organization of the hacienda into two pans for purposes of administration and processing. One grant comprised land lying to either side of the Hacienda Trail. The other consisted of terrain sloping down to the Rio Josco .. Each p art is equip~ed with coffee processing mach111ery. These processmg plants have a characteristic appearance when seen from a plane. The concrete drying floors show up as light gray rectangles surrounded by sheds and houses, the whole enclosed by the dark area of coffee plantings and shade trees. Each processing plant contains a gasoline-driven hulling machine, concrete washing tanks, concrete dryinoplatforms, and storage barns. \ Ve have m entioned th~ four-hundred-dollar hardwood roller used on one of the two hulling machines in our comparison of farm machinery found in the b arrio. La Corra does not own a steam-driven and steam-heated drying drum, and it lacks the automatic labor-saving device which passes the berries through the hulling machine for a second hulling. This shows that the capitalization of this ~rncien? a does not place i~ among the largest productive units among Puerto Rican coffee farms. Yet its machinery is valued at some $9,000 to $ 10,ooo. To the rig ht of one of the processing plants stands the hacienda house, a large one-story structure of wood with a galvanized corrugated iron roof. It contains four large rooms, a kitch en, a bathroom and servants' quarte rs. lt is simply furnished with articles imported from Spain. In the days when the hacienda system was establ i s~~d in the barrio, three structures adjoined the 11vmg quarters of the owner. T hese have now been torn down. The first was the hacienda store (el despaclio de peones), which was owned by the landlord. E ach two weeks or once a momh his mules and m en would haul up th e needed provisions from town. Throughou t the week the hacienda workers and the outside p eople who h ad performed labor for wages b o ught these goods on credit. On Saturdays a lin e would then form at the store. The workers would pass through the store and obtain the commodit ies they needed for the weekend, and then step in Crom of a cubicle at the encl of the store where the hacienda owner sat b ehind a small cou~1ter. Tl~ere h e checked their weekly purchases agamst Lhe1r accu mulated wages. If the sum of their wages exceeded the va lue of the i1· purchases, he "·ottld pay them the difference in cash. On some haciendas the workers were paid in specia l tokens redeemable only at the haci enda store. Hacienda La Corra , ho\\"eve r, always mad e it a practice to pay out the small diITerences in cash. H a man had usell up more . commodities than his wages were worth, the ha cienda owner wrote d own the sum he owed in lahor a nd waved the man on . The workers were thus able to obta in consumption credit

l 94

THE PEOPLE OF PCERTO RICO

throughout the year, wlielher tliey worhed or not. The owner of the hacien<la, on the other hand, ensured himself of a stead y supply of labor. Many men never accumulated e nough wages to make up for their debts and were under obligation to 'rnrk to make these differences good . The other t\\'O wooden structures next to the hacienda store housed a butcher shop and a bakery respectively. Both were also the prope rty of the hacienda owner. Here he sold fresh meat and bread to all comers. His own workers could buy these delicacies on credit, if they wished. The stores were, however, open to all the people of the barrio who could pay for the bread and meat in cash. These two sma ll business ventures were thus compet itive, w hereas the hacienda store was not. This became clear when a butcher in a neighboring barrio flooded i\ fanicaboa with fresh meat and put Hacienda La Gorra out of th e meat business. The hacienda store, however, had a certain market as long as the special system of la bor prevailed . Through it, the hacienda substituted a mode of payment-in-goods for cash wages. Scattered through the coffee patches, and away from the central plant and living quarters of the owner, lay the huts of the workers. On some haciendas attempts were made to place resident workers into unitary structures (c uarleles), each fam ily occupying a cubicle. These attempts 'vere fiercely resented by the workers as violations of their customary settlement pattern, and they were usually abandoned . According to the traditional unwritten contractual agreement, which came to define conditions of labor on Puerto Rican coffee haciendas, each worker received a separate hut. These huts were wooden one-room structures, roofed with palm leaf thatch. vVith the hut came a one-cuerda or twocuerda plot on which the worker could grow subsistence crops for his own use on the basis of a share arrangement. Half of the subsistence crops he raised on his subsistence plot (Lala) had to go to the hacienda owner. In actua l practice, th e hacienda owners on La Corra required from their workers only as much. as th_ey could use for th eir own consumption, which left more than half in the h a nds of the tenants. . To provide (or its transportatio n ueeds, the h acienda owned more than a dozen mules and several horses. There were never corrall ed but left to pasture freely. During this period no road led from San Jose up into the rural hinterland. It took a da y's fast ride on horseback to get to town, and th e mule-Lrains loa d ed with produ ce were three to four days under way, com ing or go ing. The workers were called ag regados, or resident Ja b orers. The word agregarse means to "settle close to.". At H acie nda La Gorra, as on most other coffee ha ciendas in Puerto Rico the aareaadns received b · ' n b su ~1ste n ce plots a nd houses on the terrain o( the li ac.:1enda, whic:h e nabled th em to "settle" as part

of the permanent labor supply of the farm. At the same time L11ey rece ived the right o[ sharecropping the subsistence plot. The re \\·as no share cropping of coffee, howe,·e r, a II work in coffee bci ng pa id in wages. Coffee represented too g reat an investment for the ha cienda owner to share its produce with any \\'Orker. l'\e\'ertheless, this arrangement does not d erive from the nature of the crop alone. Sharecropping in coffee h<1 s bee n practiced under conditions of sr;1rn: hbor ~upply C\ en in the pla11tation area of Br:11il.: JI ~carc i ty ol labor sup pl~· represents ClllC o J the cond itions lor the appe;1ra11n; of sharecropping in coffee proclunion , it is int e rest ing t0 note that labor was n .: lati ve ly scarce clt1ri11g the developme nt pha!-><: of the Pt1 crto Ric:lll coll cc industry. Perhaps "·e may ex plain the abse nce of sharecropping duri11g this ph:1se b y th e clc:sire of the newly es tablished hacienda 0\\'11crs to get maximum return s 011 their recently inn:stcd capital. The year's "·ork fel l into t\,·o major phases. The first, \\·hie h began in .-\ug11st and ended .some time in January. c O\'Cred the procl1tctio11 and processing of the coffee crop. The joyful holiday of the Innocent Children (Los lnocenles) and of the Three Kings (Los R eyes) marked the final month of the coffee harvest. \ Vhen the last berries were off the trees. the fiesta del acabe, the celebra tion of the end of the harvest, began. An old man described it in the following words: "\Vhen th e coffee harvest was almost don-e, th e people would sneak up to the la ndowner and pin a ribbon to his coat, but so Lhat he would not catch them while they were doing it. This was ca lled 'tying the owner down' [mnarrar el dueilo]. \Vhen the feat was accomplished, they would set up a hue and cry: 'They have tied him down, they have tied him clown, they have tied him down' [le m11r11Taron]! Then he had to give them a dance, a fiesta, and a feast of meat." From the e nd of January to the beginning of August stretched a period when the workers lived off the minor crops on their subsistence plots and obtained food and goods on cred it from the store. Near the end of the period the hacienda store sometimes ran out of goods, and the people were hard pressed. This periocl was initiated by the sad holiday of Good Friday, and came to an end after the h olidays of San Anton io and the Virgin of Carmel (June 13 and .Jul y 16). August once more initiated the annual round of intensive work. To the people who did the work on his farm, the hacienda owner was a person of enormous importance. He b ecame their adviser in many matters 1 " Jn some distri cts where labor shortage has been acute, colonos ha,·e bee n cont racted on t he 'meias' sys tem; that is, they are paid nothing for their work (including picking) in cash, hut are given half of the crop" (t.fcCrcery and Hyn11m, 1930:24.). Th e decline of coffee production in Cuba and the small labor supply in that island at the end o f the first l1alf of rhe ninetee n th cent ur y made sh;irecropping rhc dominant 11iodc of labor in the Cuban coffee industry. Cf. l'frc-z <le la Riva, 19 1.i: 85.

SAN JOSE: "TRADITIONAL" COFFEE i\IUNICIPALITY

of life wh ich required money or mediation with political or legal authorities. Knowledge of his moods a nd his personal characteristics became a requirement for all the ho useholds in the barrio, for they facilitated dealings with the man whose descendants still ca ll themselves "the kings of Manicaboa." The founder of the hacienda, though of Spanish descent, was himse lf a second-generation Puerto Rican. A member of the Spanish upper-class club, the Casino in San .Juan , he yet knew how LO deal wi th the cou n 1r y people \\·ho worked for him. His motto was that "wh e n you understa nd the country people, you can ge t a11ytl1ing out of them." ' "'e shall see later how these hierarchical rela tionships between landowner a nd depend ent ,,·orkers gave rise to a set of culltlral norrns and ideals wh ich served to regulate co ndu ct bct,,·ccn people of such unequal statuses. Th ese n orms guided behavior in recurring situations. constituting a mechanism for the settlement of 1·ccurri11g- con llicts. Th e authority of the haciend a owner was supplem e nted. and occasionally checked, on the barrio level b y the presence a short way above the hacienda of a civil guard post, and a barrio commissioner. The civil guard policed the rural area. They would ;-ilways walk in twos, clad in their wide black capes and peaked hats. They had the right of entry into any house, under any pretext, and according to an o ld informant, "used to walk about to make sure that the cultivable land was planted. Then they would demand that people grow such and such crops in such and such a place." For a while the h acienda owner was himself commissioner of the barrio. The commissioner acted as the mayor's represen tative in the rural area . "Being comm issioner of the barrio was like being mayor of the barrio." He ca lled the people to donate free labor to repair trails and roads, certified officia l papers, settled quarrels and so on . L a ter, another landowner, living closer to the river, took over the position. The development of the coffee industr y caused the es ta bl ishmen t of units similar to Hacienda L a Corra in most parts of the Puerto Rica n highland area. All such units were organized for the purpose of obtaining profits on invested capital. This capital was obtained through a credit system which united the fun ctions of producers' credit and consumers' credit. All devoted themselves to the production of one major cash crop for the export market and employed processing machinery a nd extensive rather than inte nsive means o( cultivation. The initial capital outh1y required for the purchase of processing machinery and land and the sums required for payment of a large labor force were obviously beyond the abi li ty of the small grower. Yet the capitalization required for the average Puerto Rican coffee hacienda was not comparable to the scale of capital characteristic of modern corporate organization. Since such haciendas were often founded by heads of wealthy families, or backed by the fin a ncia l re-

I 9!)

sources of such famil ies, we m ay simply la bel this type of economic enterprise a "family-type hacienda." In essence, the hacienda constituted a social system for stabilizing the necessary labor supply. ' Ve have seen that coffee requires much labor at unequal intervals throughout the year, and that labor, n ot machinery, constitutes the limiting factor in production. The large prod ucer roust, therefore, be continuously concerned about the quantity of labor a t his disposal and make the massing of the labor supply a primary consideration. The labor on the hacienda was bound through the use of perquisites and through purchases at the hacienda store. Several factors combined to make this form of control the most efficient. Subsistence farming in the preced ing stage of development made people accept goods rather than straight wages. L and was still relatively plentiful and easily acquired. The extension of credit, therefore, served to draw the worker away from farm ing on his own behalf into dependence on the large unit. Population was still relatively scarce in terms of needed supply of labor. The provision of perquisites thus attracted workers. Finally, the farm owner also received his credit in goods. This was clue to a low rate o[ accumula tion and a scarcity of credit on the island. The provision of: credit in goods afforded the creditor merchant added profit. THE RISE OF THE TOWN

The rural pole of the coffee culture was the h acienda. Its b ase was urba n credit. The haciend a could not function without the Joan operations of the town. The n ew way of life r eq uired a complementary distribution of functions between town and country. The town o( San Jose was officia lly founded in the first 9uarte r of th e nineteenth century, which was a penocl of town building a ll over Puerto Rico. Spain had given up some of her restrictions on trade and commerce. Clandestine commerce came ~o a n end'. and the ~s la nd began legitimate trading in its own nght. As free trade rose, wealth in creased, and a need grew for marketing and distribution centers. In San Jose the period when the town was established coin cided with the orrranization of the first h~ci~1Kla that grew coffee on° a large sca le as a specia ltzed cash crop. This hacienda came into being sometirne d uring the second decade of the century. During the sam e decade a Spaniard built the first few houses o n the site of the present town. In I~ 18, the. citizenry petitioned the governor for the nght to mcorporate as a separate municipality.. They w:re told that the governor would grant their· reques t if the town furnished proof th a t it had built a church , appointed a priest, and constru cted a jail. In 1821, .the demands of both State a nd Church had been sat 1sfi~d, and the municipa li ty was g iven permission to m corpora te under the name and patron-

l

96

THE PEOPLE OF P UERTO RICO

age of San J ose. .-\n oligarchy of taxpa yers and wealth y citizens e lected the first municipal government and imposed the first taxes. ln order to in corpo rate a municipa l dis trict, the town a lso h a d to furnish proof that it h a d a certain minimum number o f people. In 1821 , the municipality h a d 1,06.1 inh a bitants, acco rding to the offi c ia l lis ting . Five fa mili es inhabited th e to wn, and fo ur of them were Spa nia rds from th e P e ninsul a ; o n e was Pu e rto Rica n . In 18 28, the1·e were nine houses a nd fi ve huts in the t0 wn. F o ur artisans served the ir c us wmers, and four stores a nd three petty re ta il sto res (ve nto rillos) so ld th e ir g o ods to th ose w h o h a d m o n ey to bu y. W e m ay ta ke th e incr ease of p o pulatio n in th e town as one index o[ its g rowing importance. By i 870, it had 48 !) inhabita nts. In 1878, th e number h ad g row n to 72+ Jn 1899, it had 1,356 inhabitants. A growing p o pul a tion and in creasing wealth der ived fro m the coffee tra d e stimula ted urba n cons tru ction. B y 1870, th e g houses a nd 5 huts of fifty years b e fo re h a d g i ven w ay to 1 0 h o uses a nd 23 h uts. B y 1897, the r e were 264 wood e n h o uses, whil e o nly 2 th a tch ed hu ts re m a ined. Before 1890, the pu b lic square ,\·as m ade of sta mped earth. Horsemen from the rural area tied their horses to a wooden fence tha t ran down o n e side of the square, whe re sm a ll stands sold re fr es hments <1n<l quick mea ls Lo hung ry tra ve le rs. The church was made o ( wood, a nd the officers o [ the king were similarly h o used in fo u r woode n stru c tures. In creas ing wealth, however, bro u g ht a n i nc1·e ase in c ivic p r ide . "Th e g rea t a nd increasing importa n ce w hich Lliis Lown p ossesses for th e co ffee ma 1·k e t m a kes it m o r e a nd rno 1·e impe1·a tive

th at it own a d ecen t church," said th e prospectus for a p ro j ect a d vocating th e co nstru ct io n o ( a n e w church in Sa n Jost: in 1890 (Sa n .Jose, Municipal Archives, 1890) . Another project foresaw the comp le te r econstruc tion of the square. "Throug h the ag ra rian wealth of its area, the town of San Jose is p r ed es tined to numbe r amo ng the rich est and most prosperous towns of the island. It cannot rema in behind in aesthetic and architectural development" (San Jose, Municipal A rchives, 1897). The last decade of the nineteenth ce ntury wi t nessed the construction of a stone church and a town hall of stone and plaste r. If a better church and a more adequate town hall were the outwa rd symbols of secular success, the real hub of the universe in San Jose lay in the block of buildings which housed the office and the processing pla nt of the creditor merchant firm. A wooden husking machine had been installed there in 1850. In i892 this old -fashioned apparatus was replaced by u p -to-elate, stea m -driven equipment. Here the c?ffee pi led up, a wa iting processing and transportation , a nd in a n e ig hboring establishment lay the goods w hich w ere to be shipped to the country to fee d th e h acienda stores a nd the hacienda owners. O r ig in a lly the own er of this store a nd the members o( th e credi to r m erch a n t fi rm had been business

partn ers. Later, the partnership had dissolved. Yet the old link between consumption credit and produc tion credit remained. The crediLOr merchants sent their cuswme rs lo Don Y., who ran the store, and h e in turn was pa id through the m e rchant firm. OpposiLe th e process ing plant stood the living quarte rs o[ the h ead of the firm, a two-st0ry concrete building with man y rooms and te rraces. Th e processing pLt11t a nd th e sLOrc acted also as cente rs of trall :,portat.io11. U nd er ex isting condiLio ns o( tra11:-, po rlat ion, good :, had to be: bro ug h t lo San .Jose a11d co1111J1od itic:s shipped 0 1n of Sa n Jose alo ng Lh e on e ;,olitarv road 1h;1t ra 11 d o wn the ri ve r a nd o ut 10 di e co;r.~ t. C:o()(ls h ad to be pil ed up i11 L11e n eares t coasta l tmn1 until th ey made a suflicient load for th e m 1tle- tra ills and o x carts tha t awaited th em alnllg th e ri ver. T h e n the m11lc-trai1Js la bo· rio us ly \\·orkc:d t he ir ,,·ay uprive r. and man y all old info rmant reca ll o; h m\· often ox-1.c;1ms had to be used to drag th e load ed ca rt~ ou t of 1hc d eep mud belo w Sa n .Jost'·. Tl1 e collcc \d1i ch San .Jose produ ced was similarl y stored umil a traill could be readied, ;rnd th e n the mule teers and wagoners would take over, fillin g th e Lown with the ir cries, and spurring th e a nimals on LO fa ster pe rfo rmance with lo ng ironLipped sli cks. T ran sportatio n remain ed one o f the major problems o ( Sa n .Jose throughout the nineteenth century. As early a s 18 36, its paths had all been washed out by prol o nged rains and the citizenry was called out to r epair the damag e b y voluntary labor perfonn ecl under the supe rvisio n of municipal officials.

In the same yea r the municipaliLy built a bridge LO f;i cil ita re tra nsport across a rav ine o n the road to Lh e coast. Th e ro ad pro bl em was not solved, however . A re port in 1889 staled that a better road to the coast was n eed ed : "Th e co nstructi on o( the aforeme ntioned road is of th e utmost urgency in order to increase eco nomic activity in this municipal area, to ease the export of its crops and products, and to develop its agrarian and commercial wealth in positive fashion" (San .Jose, Municipal Archives, 1889). In 1896 i t was noted that "public traffic along the road that leads from this town to the coast has b een inter r upted for twenty d ays, due to the swelling o( the rivers .. . These upsets and the conseque nt losses succeed each other with too much frequen cy. It must be remembered that production on the one hand, and, logically, consumption and traffic, increase each year with th e growth of popu lation" (San .Jose, Municipal Archives, Actas, 1896). In 1897, road repair a nd maintenance used up 19 per cent of the municipal budget, the largest single outlay. T ransportatio n a lso gave rise to occupational specialists, including men who rented out both carts and horses, cartwrig hts, sawyers, and wagoners. In 1871 there we re seve n su ch ren ting establishments, four cartwrights, twenty sawyers and an unknown number of wagoners and mul e teers. The m erchants ra n the town. They gave credit, th ey processed the coffee, and they imported and

SAN JOSE: "TRADITIONAL" COFFEE MUNICIPALITY

exponccl commodities. They also exercised political power. A small minority of taxpayers had elected lhe first municipal government in 1821, and a small minorily kept itself in power throughout the yea1:s by the means of a poll tax of twenty-five pesos. l!ntd 1898, officials of the municipali ty were invanably Spaniard s. Only once was a Puerto Rican elected to ollice in a ca Inda led move to allay popular resc n 1111cn t. IL \\'as hoped that election to office would win die m:tn a\\'ay from his popular following and inhibit the <T,·st:tlli1.:1tion of anti-Spanish sentiment around :t po1;ul:tr figure . ..\s long as the cre~litor llHTcha11t :-.\'s tem remained imact, the pro-Spamards \\'Crc dtt· .:ins." and the anti-Spaniards the "outs."

hacienda type of production. Investors in a foreign market usually look for a higher rate of returns than are demanded by local investors. Foreign investments are therefore usually, though not always, made in bulk. The sugar-gr owing hacienda in Puerto Rico could absorb large quantities of capital in its transformation into the corporate-owned sugar central (Mintz, i95 ia). The step involved in raising the capacity of the sugar mill represented a major change of technology and the promise and reality of a hugely increased output. Under existing conditions of technology, the coffee hacienda could only be improved. lts character could not be radically changed. Vhatever the reasons for the changes under American sovereignty, the fact is that sugar production became the dominant industry of Puerto Rico, and the major factor affecting the way of life of a large proportion of its inh abitants, while coffee, previously the favored son in the Puerto Rican household, became a stepchild. It received no support from the United States, but fell within the United States tariff wall. The change was symbolized by the increase in duty which Spain laid on Puerto Rican coffee. The duty of $8.57 gold per 100 kg. prior to October, 1898, had favored Puerto Rican coffee in the Spanish market. After October, 1898, the duty per 100 kg. was increased to $18.57. The effects of the change in the parallelogram of forces between coffee and sugar in Puerto Rico became apparent only gradually. Commentators have blamed both the hurricane of i899 and the immediate effects of the change in sovereignty for the decline of the coffee industry. In th emselves, both '

UNITED STATES OCCUPATION AND THE PERIOD OF TRANSITION

\\"he11 1hc l l11i1ed Stales occupied Puerto Rico in dw bank dcposils of the island came to just about L\\'O million dollars; lhe total of its bank rcsourn::) to about six million (Cordero, 19,i9:7). But ii Pueno Rico was poor, the new occupying pO\\·cr \\·as rich. Its capitalists were building largescale indu .stn,·, laro·e-sca le ~io-riculture, and largeb 0 scale banking facilities. In order lO continue growing, their capital needed large investments and large relurns on investments. If United States capital was to flo\\' into Pueno Rican agriculture, it had to be invested in enterprises which guaranteed the maintenance of a high rate of return. The choice fell on investment in the sugar production of the islan~l. ln winninp; its independence in 1776, the United States also severed its dependence upo n Lhe coffee mark ets of London and .-\msterdam, which had Iii lh eno dom i na Led the \\'Orld marke t. In their place it began to organize iLS ow11 coffee marketing center, with Bra1.il as Lile chic[ base of supplies (Prado, I~)-15: 170). Brazi l represented a producer of va~t terrilor ial extent, capable o[ an indefinite expans1011 of production to fill the demands of an indefinitely expanding consumer market in the United States. I ts terri t~ry lay outside the dreaded hurricane belt. Pueno Rico, on the other hand, was a small producer, a limited territory located within the hurricane zone. Any further substantial increase in production could come only lrom heavy investment in intensive cultivation of a highly variable crop on a multitude o[ small produ cing units. Brazil was the cheaper producer. The cost of equipping a 500-acre coffee fazenda amounted to $30,000 (McCreery and Bynum, i930:70), whereas Dinwiddie ( 1899a:88) had put the cost of a 100cuerda hacienda in Puerto Rico at $23,000. It is, however, significant that actual production in Brazil as in Puerto Rico rema ined in the hands of local producers. The attempt to establish controls was through marketing rather than through field production or processing. The reason for this is perhaps that coffee was too variab le a crop to warrant large quantities o[ foreign investments and was left to the t :1~18.

197

1

Lhese even ts were important, but they merely accelerated '.~ g row ing trend: Crist h as shown (1948: 3:?1) th at alter the low of 1900 . . . the exports of coffee rose again, and for the n ext fifteen years a ready market took all the coffee which the growers co uld produce." In San Jose, hurricane relief was given to the owners of the coffee estates in the fonu of goods. It thus reinforced the traditional system of "advances" and the system of the hacienda stores. At the same t in:e, the creditor merchants expended large amounts m an attempt to save their investments and their position, and both factors a ided ~i1<~t~rial~y in t_he restoration of production after the il1Ltta1 d1slocat10ns. Also, the familiarity of the creditor merchants with the Spanish and Cuban markets ol_Iset to s?me degree the disabilities imposed by ~ugl:er. duties. ?nly one shift was significant and 111d1cat1ve of thmgs to come. According to the testimo~1y. of the man~ger o( the coffee marketing associat~on, the creditor m erchant firm bega n a systematic eff_ort. to turn all its holdings into assets that were 11qu1d and easily transferable. It abandoned a_n d s?ld its holdings in land and made prepara~~ons Loi_- a profitable retreat from the coffee industry, if occasion should arise. T~1~ system of ownership and credit thus acted to stabilize the situation, after the or iginal impact of

i 98

Tt-1£ PEOPLE OF PUERTO RICO

changed condiL ions. Coffee co minued LO be exponed from San .Jost: w Spa in , Cuba, llaly. Germany, and AusLria. The coffee gro\\"ers appeared to rega in los t ground. .-\n index of rene\\"ed prospcriLy can be found in the face that San J ose's assessed taxable income in 1922 came to a total of . 2.500,000 or S1,200,ooo more than in 19.18. l\Iuch of this was due to the high va lu e of coffee land, assessed at Si 12.72 per cuerda . Jn 1927 the municipaliLy built its enc losed markc.:t p lace, th e municipal h osp i ta l, the t<nn1 se\,·age system , and the large urban elc:mentary school. It was not until th e hurricane of San Felipe (SepLember 13, 1928) and the advent of th e world depression that the bones finally began to show on the econom ic ske le ton o( the coffee industry. Ava ilabl e cen sus figures do n ot appear to picLUre L11 e rea l rate of decline adequately. The 19.10 census figure for land in coffee is only 1 00 cuerdas less than for 1920,:; but the present writer estim:nes that coffee acreage declined 2,500 cuerdas. The reduct io n of acreage, however, was accom panied by a still steeper d ecl ine in produCLion . J>ro<luctio n ap p ears to h ave been cu t in half. T he harvest of 19.18 was est i01:ued at 1 !! ,ooo C\\" tS .

. \ s coffee production declined , other crops rose to higher level s of producLion to compensate for the loss in in come. Tobacco production in creased considera bl y. \ Vith a n official quota set at between 6,ooo a nd 7,000 cwts. per annum, San J os<'; produced 12,000 cwts. of tobacco in 19-48. Sugar produ ction has also increased to a total of about 500 cuerdas, mostly around the to\\·n. C attle raising h as become more important, a nd more land is devoted to pasture. "\Vhen I ,...-as young," an o ld man said, "no r oad Jed from San J ose into t he mo untains. There \ver e very fe w houses around then. T h ere was h ardly any sugar g rown here. All the cane \\"as grown to eat, to sweeten th ings, to m a ke rum. The whole area was covered \\"ith coffee trees a n d woods, and the people lived in the \\"oocls. It was beautiful. :'\ow t here is cane and tobacco everywhere. San .Jose is a lm ost in the center of the island . Yet even here t h ere is ca n e ." The most tel ling ev id e n ce of th e impact of cha nged conditions, ho"·ever, is the sh:ipe of the population curve. In the forty-nine years between 182 1, when the town was first founded, a n d 187<>, just before the coffee market began to boom, th e populat ion of San Jose'.: increased by 6,1~H persons, or 582 per cent. During the nex t fifty yea rs, from 1870 to 1920, just eight years before the coll apse of the industry, San 5 This

writ c: r believes that the figures cited for coffee acreage in the l:.S. Cenrns for 1920 and '!MO :ire t00 low. Fear of wxation ma y have been a moti\"c in p ossihlc under -reporting. Tobacco, sugar cane, a11c1 pasture land have increased s in ce 1940. Acreage planted to 1ohacco, both unclc:r the quota a nd illegal! )', probably amoun ts 10 about 1.r,00 cuerdas. Suga r Janel now covers an estimated 500 r111,rr/as near the t own (<!(Cord ing to figures provided hy the AA:\). Past urc land has in('rcased considerab ly, though figures arc hard to assess. Prohabl) as 111111 h as 2.500 nu•rdas have pas~ed out of coffee cultivation within the mu11icipali1 y of San Jose.

Jost: added 1:1 ..172 inhabitants, an increase of 18G p er cc11 t. Du ri 11g the t \\"en t y yea rs I rom 1 !)'.!O to 1 0·1o, which \\·itn essed tl1e final deflation of the cofiee market, San J ose increased by o nly !!, 17G inhabi tants, or 10 ..J per cent. 111 the decade from I~J.to to l!):)U, it declined b y 3.500 persons, or 10 per cent. Population increased mo~L quickly when l:tnd was !>t ill readily :l\·a il ablc. The largest :tlholutc lllllllber or p(;ople ,,·;1.-; addt:d d 11 r i11g tht: born 11 yc:tr'> \\"ltc11 colkc \\·:1 -. ki ng . T h(; -,1n:tllc-,t i11c n·:i-c c ;111H· bct\\"Cl' ll J ~):!<> and l!JJO. a L\,·c 111 ~ - \c-.1r p~·1iod ol l'<o1 10111ic dl·cli11c a11d <t1it11r:d ,tie". Cornpar:thk f1 g111t·-. art· :l\·aiLtl>lt- lor Barrio .\l ;111i caboa :ind Jor tl1c trn,·11. lor thc pt: r iod-. 1X7CJ tCJ 1!)'.!0 :i n d '!):!Oto l! l·JO..\l:t11i(;1bo:1 i11<rt:; 1,cd hy 1.'.?li7. or l-17.:! pc:r cc:111 . hc t \\"l"<·11 1870 a11d ' !J:!<>. buL bc t\1·c.:c:11 ' !J'.?O ;111d 1 ~110. it grc\\· I)\· rnil y 11 i1. or :·1 .7 per cc11L. The to\\·n adckd 7:1.-1 i11h:1 bita111' hct\\·ct: n 1r{70 and '!J:!O. !>111 l1(•f\\'("l' ll 111:!0 :111d '!lJO. it lo,L :~ ' !I i11habit:111h. \\"l1crc;1-. iL had incrca,cd hy ;,o·!l per n·11t btt\\"<:cn 1870 and ' ~):!O, it lost ' ·l·:l per cent in the t\\"o decades between 1920 and l!)·JO. The t0 \\"11 thus lost population wh e n its fun cti o n as a marke ting and credit center for the coffee indu stry d ecl in ed, but it has doubled iLs populaLion in the past d ecade, probably because o f increased governmen tal functions and decreased opportunity for out-migraLion. This decline is ev ident i n another impon:int way. \ Vhen we exam in e th e birth and d eath rates available fo r the yea rs 1!)30 co 1940, we note that Sa n .J ose should have in creased by about 6, 100 perso ns to a total of about 27,600 in 1910. As the actual increase is only 2,.1 q i n habitants, we must conclude that about 3.700 people left San Jose during this d ecade. Put in a noth er way, this figure means that the d e· din e o f the coffee indusLry and the deepening depression caused San Jose to export labor as a commodity. If we may t;·ust the 1935-.10 migration cen sus sam ple, then about Go per cent of this number of migrants, or 2,200, we re between th e ages of fifteen and forty-fo ur. Of this num ber, roughly Go per cent, o_r 1,3?0, were un skill ed workers. If we count a potential o f 300 man-days of la bor for each o f these i, 300 u n skilled workers at the prevailing wage-rate ~f one dotlar a day for unskilled agriculLur;il work, then we must conclude thaL San J ose replaced the cust0.rnary export of coffee during this ten-year period wuh a n export value of $390,000 worth of labor.

GENERAL FEATURES OF THE RURAL CULTURE THE ROUND OF WORK AND CEREMONIAL Travelers m ak ing the ir way thro ug h l\fanicaboa any time betwee n August and J anuary w ill be beset with the t ribula tions of rain and mudd y path s, for they are tr:iveling during rainy season. lt is also hurricane time, wh en still d ays without wind bring fear.

SA1'\ JOSE: "TRADITIO:-IAL" COFFEE :'.\lUXICIPALITY

During July, peop le begin to repair their hurricane she! ters (lorm e11 terns), low-slung tent-shaped wooden structures covered with wood and fibers, hugging the eanh on the leeward o( hills where they cannot be threatened by strong winds. August, September, and October arc the months which fill the people witl1 greatest anxiety. For this is also the time of the coffee han·est. The people say that when there is promise of a good han·est, there is double danger of a l1urric111c.:, and when the berries on the coffee trc.:cs ripen i11 thick clusters, morbid jokes "that thcn.:'s need nf a liulc hurricane" (liace falta. w1a. tor111<·11tita) betray widespread apprehension. ( :011 ce has dee! i 11ed in importance since the hurrica n c o[ I!J'.!8. hut it is st ill the major crop and contitlltl's to absorb a great deal of labor. l\Iore than 25.<H>o c.: ight-hour m:111-d:iys of work are probably cxpe11dccl :1111111:dly in repla11ting, cultivating, and h:1n·c!>1 i11g some 1.700 cuadas still planted to coffee. D cccm her is th e 111011th " ·hen the coffee harvest nears its p eak. 1l is a month of relative plenty. Christmas is an occasion for the purchase o( much-needed goods, such as a suit of clothes for every member of the family, "the clothes of the year" (la ropa del aiio). The fiesta of "tying the owner down" has disappeared; yet the days o( the Innocent Children (December 27, 28, and 29) and the festival of the Three Kings (January G, 7, and 8) make the transition from o n e yea r to the next, from one section of work to the next, an occasion for merry-making. On Innoce nts' Day (Los Inocen tes) .. the hills resound with the sound of the conch-she ll horns. " Last night the l nnocen1s roamed near the hacienda. Tonight they will pass by here." Don Tassio's children run to and fro, impatie nt fo r the arrirnl of L11e "dolls" [th e m asked impersonators of the I n11occ11ts]. They keep opening the windows shut against the unhealthy night air [el serc11nJ to sec whether the In11orcn1s arc o n their '"ay. At last, the Innocents arri,·c, blowing their horns. They arc young men from the neighborhood, and 111osL of them arc unm arried. Two of 1hcm arc clbguiscd as an o ld couple. The "old woman" steps up w the en trance way o.r ~he house. and begins lo sing in a high pitched and p la111tl\:c voice. Everybody knows who "she" is, and ~hat "she". 1s really a man, but no o n e must tell. The idcnuty of the impersonators must be kept a secret. Afte r a wh ilc, the lady of the house comes LO the door and asks the crew to e nter: ''En ter in. ,,·ith God's blessing. The I lo ly Kings will repay your kindness." The "old lady" and "old man" step imidc the house and shake hands all around. The n the 111 usic strikes up, and the old couple dance . .L::vcryone laughs. The "old woman" tries Lo encircle the "old man" lo\'i11gly with her legs. The onlookers rernark on "how mud1 they lo\'e each other. They love each other truly." Then they try 10 take the old wo111an "away" from the man . They sneak up behind "her," pinch "her," try to take her by the hand, try LO draw her away. They say: "The old 111a11 is going to lose his old woman. " "He is going to be left a widower." The "old man" fights back, dan cin ~ all the while. \Vhcncvcr a disguise slips in the course of the goings·on, it is put back carefully. The imp erson a1ors must n :main anonymous. All the while the chi ldren watch goggle-eyed. They arc supposed to be afraid of

199

the masked. "old people," but they show no signs of fear. After a while the danci ng ceases. The man of the house passes a drink of rum to each member of the ere"" For this he is tlianked, before the group bids the household crood 0 night, and mo\'es on to the next house.

Christmas Eve is not an imponant holiday in Manicaboa. At Three Kings, however, "we dance for a \\-eek straigh t." Parties of men ca1Tying guitars, cuatros (a type of gu itar), and maracas, or rattles (se~cl-fill ed hollow gourds, mounted on sticks) and g tllros (notched gourds) pass from house to house, "singing LO the kings." At each house they ali<m Lhemselves in front of the entrance, and each me~­ ber of the group who has a good voice takes his turn at sing ing: With the birth Por cl nacimic mo I shall begin. Yo YOY empezar. Try to listen Tratcn de cscudrnr For just this while, En este momento, For I am speaking the truth Que le hablo lo cicrto About bclo\'cd J esus. De J csi'1s amado. They found him in Bethlehem En :Belen hallaron The belo\'Cd child. Al precioso niiio. There he was born Alli fue nacido 'Vhen the cock crowed. Al cantar el gallo. Again the lady o( the house will come to the door and ask the singers in. "At Three Kings we go from house to house," a peasant sa id. "\Vhen they come to my house, I must gi\'e them food. Later I go singing to their houses, and put them to t11e ~amc tro uble ~le doy la misma pena]." At night a dance is usually held. 1t lasts until the break o~ dawn. Country people boast of being able LO dance a 111¥ht th~·0t1gh [/Jasar 1111a ma/a nocltc]. While a few accomplish 1111~ feat, many regain their strength by cat naps in some quiet corner. l\Iuch is made of the ability to work through the next clay without sleep, if need be.

These two major h olidays mark the transition fron:, <?ne pe.riod of th e year into the next. Usually, the tune o[ coffee" com es t0 an e nd around Innocents' Day. ln the old days, chis marked the end of the in~en s ive work period for the year. l\'owadays there follows "the time o[ the tobacco." Fanners with coffee orchards give them priority until their harvest is in. Only Canners who have no coffee at all can plan on having all their tobacco in the ground by Decembe r 15. Some of those who own coffee patches avail themselves of the labor of their women and children to complete their seedbeds and to beg in plaming while the coffee harvest is still on. For the majority o[ those who have some coffee land, however, tobacco time starts " ·h en coffee time ends. The demands of the new crop, tobacco, tend to conflict with _the traditional division of the year into two parts. 1: obacco requires a great deal of work. llut. work ceases on January 5 and is not resumed unul January 9, \\'hen the festival of the Three Kings .comes ~o an end. Counting Crom the eighth, Lhere is a holiday every eight days (la octavn), until the Tuesday before Ash \ ,\Tednesclay. These holidays do not b ar all heavy work; peo ple may carry heavy burdens or do odd JObs around the house, but they

200

THE PEOPLE OF

l'U~RTO

RICO

refrain from labor in the fields. On the Tuesda y befo;-e Ash \Vednesday singing and prayer at night marks the transition into Lent. Hol y \Veek is a p e ri o d or enforced peace and quiet. \'\'ood is piled up in preparation for this time; vegetables are pee led and s tored in salt water; all necessary shopping is done in advance. All iron objeCLs, including tools, kitchen knives, and th e knives that men carry on their person , are hidden by the mother of the househokL Jn 1917, the s triet observance of the ca lendar in the neighborhood of Limones interfered with tobacco process ing sufficien tl y to prevent the se\\·ing and hanging of the leaves . The tobacco was left stored in piles. and much of it burned. In .-\ltura, where the presence of the h acienda has t e nded to introduce a more secular cast of mind, man y people no longer let the religious observances interfere with the d e mands of production. At the same time, they arc somewhat uneasy over the brea ch o[ the ancient custom. Tobacco production has b een instrumental in cha ng ing another Laboo. People organize their work according to the phases of the moon. Coffee planLing must be done when the moon is in its waning phase. Trees must not be cut ,,·h e n the J11o(in is in asce n t. A peasa n t said : "There arc man y people who think th a t plants sho uld not be planted during the ascending moon. They say that n e ither corn nor sweet po· tatoes give resu lts in the n e ·w moon. The y say that i[ yo u pbnt beans that the plot will turn to wasie land, and not y ie ld produce." Tobacco is exempt from this belief. Tobacco, unlike any other c rop, is planted at any time. M any people in .\Ianicaboa complain that the traditional festivities are no longer observed for as long a period as in the past. and that they lack the same show o( open-handed hospitality and conspicu ous leisure. The present usually suffers by compariso n with the past in all such contrasts. Yet there are a number of factors in the present which may perhaps be held responsible for such a change. In the past, the period of intensive labor tied up with coffee was sharply separated from a protracted period of enforced leisure. The traditional ceremon ies thus marked a sharp transit ion from work to non-work . Toda y, one period of work merges with another, and the festivities do not announce a time of repose. The introduction of tobacco has tended to reduce the number of days during which labor power can be permitted to run to waste, and the requirements o[ the new crop also make a change of pace imperative. Certain individuals, moreover, have begun to apprnise the network o[ reciprocal relationships in terms o( tbe monetary costs involved and to carry this n ew system o[ reckoning over i nto the staging or cel e brations and fiestas. They hope to cut religious costs, just as they would like to cut down all other costs. The second ph ase of the year, which is now introduced by a shift of attention to tobacco, keeps the people o f the barrio exceedingly busy. The small

farmers and th e landless worke rs, who sharec rop (or the landown e rs. rotate wbacco with other crops, such as beans, cor n , sweet potatoes, rice. benne seed . and occasirn1allv milleL. Tobacco seedlings are first planted under ·plamai11 trees. \Vhc11 the tobacco is ready for the market, plantains and bananas are planted and harvested, then corn and sweet potatoes are planted. and bean s are harvested . \Vhile total expcndilllre of labor po\l·e r rellla ins high during this -;ccond phase. ,,.e m;1y note a shift in the proponion'i oJ 1n;1k ;1 11d J<:111a le labor. Th e tnLtl expenditure ol 111;ilc Lilior power 011 lllinor crop, :ind tob;1cco lr11lll J;111u:1n lo .\p r il i-. ,,,·i<c 111:11 ol tire ,,·ome11. Ye t ,~·0111c11 .p('rlrn111 1 H:;1rl~ 11,·ice :1, 111uclr ;wricul1ural l:ilio r d 11ri 1w:-. dii-. 1>criod ;1, 1Jie,·' did M dt1ri1 1g 1l1c:: prt'<Tdillg '"ti111c ol «Jill'('.·· C:o111p;1n:d ,,·ith 1li:1t p<:i iod. tire 011t1>ut ol 111:tl e l:1bor dec line, l>y rnu g:i l ~ 011c-lounll . Thi-. -;cco 11d p h;h<' ol the ye:1r <1JlllC' LO :1n end ;1bot1t th e tilllc· ol I !oh \\"eek ;11HI Cood Frid :I\. Cood 1-"ricl:I\· fir ing-. 111Ltltitude' ol ro 11ntry pcoplC' to I0\\·11. It j, ~he ·d:I\ 011 ,,·hie h nrn'it o l the111 c:11d1 up In· witli the form ;rl requircll1c11t~ ol rlr e ir rc lioion I"> 111aki11g their a11 n ual co11lc:s.-.io11. During the next p e r iod. frnm i\fay to the end of .J1rly. al l ,,·ork pe rformance tends LO decrease quite sharply ..\fe11 work iess than ha l f as much as during the preceding p e riod, ,,·hilc women limit themselves to the comparatively light task of han·cs ting sweet pow toes. This p e r iod usually begins wiL11 an abundant har,·est or minor cro ps. There is enough over subsistence n eeds to sell to truckers along the road, or to carry to to\\·n for sale LO people who maintain stalls in the m u nicipal public market. But as the p e riod wears on, most laborers and fa r mers \.Vith ~mall holdirws beain LO fee] "that thei r strength ,.., b \ dra in s away." I t is the time or the /rnrga, "the draining away." Few people with less than 30 c11erdns can count on h aving cash throughout the year. By the time the p11rgn rolls around, t h e "coffee pennies" (!vs rllflvos def cafe) a n d t h e "tobacco penn ies" (los c/im1os def tabao1) have usually traveled their predestined road into t he pockets of merchants a nd storekeep e rs. This is therefore the period w ith· out cash for most people in the barr io. To go without cash mea ns to go without foods wh ic h the culture has made them regard as necessary to an adequate diet. They cannot buy r ice, codfish, beans, ;ind lard. and must eat tropica l vegetables and corn mea l. Corn meal is disliked, and most people will hide the fac t that they eat iL. The word by wh ich it is des ignated, marvln, is also used laughingly to descri be the heavy mud in the puddles of the re<l cl a y country . The local supply of m inor crops must suffice to feed rough l y Goo families. If the prices for minor crops are good, the tende ncy will be to sell as much as possible in order to obtain hard cash. vVhen the f)//rga nears its end, there is often not enough food available to make up for the deficiencies in cash. J

Fig. ::1 . F1111//i11g in San J osi! also includes various food t/11·111 l1ll11l111as as shown i11 this plwtograjJh.

t H>/1·'· 1111/f111 g

l'hoto /1y J·: ric IJ'olf.

Some people Ll1en supplemen t their diet by fishino-

in Ili c ri\·cr. The more prosperous members of th~ rural co1111nu11iL\'. look d0\\'11 ll!)On fishino-b as "an acti\·iL y oi bzy people" (vngos). 0 Most o[ the people o( the barrio resu·ict their activities and wait for the resurgence o( economic life in August. \\Then people ditl not have enough cash to pay for goods, the owners of the liule rural stores a lso suffer. If they have Janel to fall back upon, they are more fortunate. l[ they do not own land, they just sell their pigs and chickens or face economic fa ilure. This period o( restricted consumption and slow output o[ labor also leads fami lies to cut down the number of people who eat meals at the stove of ~ny one household. At the end of the work period in tobacco, a certain number o[ young men migrate to th e sugar fields on the coast. They go "in order to buy trousers and a hat," to become financially independent o[ their fathers, and to acqu ire cash for other purposes. Some o( the young girls are sent to town t~> work as servants in the homes o( uppera nd middle-class families. \'\lhen there is need for additional labor, the peasants usually take the ir younger children out o[ schoo l for a varying period of time. At such times the rural schoolteacher must walk from house to house tO ensure cominuecl attendance by his multitudinous charges. Two important holy days in the life of the country people fall in tO this "dead period" (tiemjJo muerto). The fi rst is the clay o( Saint Anthony on June 13. The second is the Day o[ the Virgin of Carmel on Jul y 16. Both are occasions for the "rulfillm~nt of p1:omises for past favors granted by the sa~nts, and if _they a.re not observed, people feel that misfortune wdl belall them. These holy days call a The term v11{!;0 is often used by people of higher social and economic slaLUs in the sense of "bum" en· "ne'er do well." His· torically, the term came to be associated wilh landless workers during the period of enforced labor, vagrancy laws, and work books.

for expenditure of money, if only for the purchase of candles to burn in front of the images, biscuits to serve to the assembled neighbors, and rum to entertain the young men of the neighborhood. Somet imes the holidays are thus celebrated on an earlier date, when there is money in the house. Thus, one celebration of the Virgin of Carmel in Limones was held on the eighteenth of June. Sometimes the sponsor of the little ceremony must go into debt at a store which will grant him credit at a time when life is easy for neither storekeeper nor debtor. Sometimes the celebration is poswonecl with an uneasy conscience until the work season begins once more, and the obligation is "paid" (pagar) when money is once again available. As summer draws to a close, the young men who have been away in the sugar fields return to the barrio, and sometimes there is enough at hand to celebrate a wedding. The newly married couple will come to town one week before the Day of the Cross in October to have the cross that symbolizes their newly established household blessed by the priest. The Fiesta. de la Cruz is once again an occasion for singing. The house is decorated with flowers, and the head of the household leads all those present in prayer. It is a day for visiting from house to house, and the young men once again go through the barrio singing their songs to the accompaniment of guitars and cuatros. · August marks the renewal of activities in the coffee, and the re newal of the annual cycle in 'Nianicaboa. THE HIERARCHY O F OWNERSHIP

Life and expectations of the people in Manicaboa :1 re tied c~osely to the land and its products. Land is the basic means of produ ction in an agricultural society. _In Puerto Rico, land has been held priv~tely sm~e the middle of the eighteenth century. If the society specializes in the production of cash crops, inequa lities in the amount and quality of land held mean inequalities in the ability to turn produce into money. In the course of our historical ana lysis, we have noted some of the factors which led to inequalities of '\vealth within the rural seo-ment of the coffee culture. b In our discussion of the behavior and ideal norms of the people of Manicaboa , we shall speak of five major groupings. These groupings are: the agricultural workers, the small holders, the small farmers, the middle farmers, a n d the large landowners. In the course of our presentation, we shall refer to these groupings as classes. It i~ n ot ~le cessary to r eview at this point the volummous literature on the subject of class, for the emphasis in the following pages is not taxonomic but historical. Cox states ( 1948: 307), " Most definitions have described not an on-going status system, but sm~e taxonomic concept devised for easy comprehension of such a system. . . . Socia l classes are

202

TH E

PEOPLI~

OF l'l"ERTO RICO

' h e ld apart,' not by 'instiLutio nal arrangem e nLs,' but b y Lhe segregaLing crite ria which the r eseard1 c1· has d evised. " The write r ho lds LO the point o f vie w that c lasses cann o t be d e fined sole ly in stati c te rms, but that they must be unde rstood with refere nce to the to t;tl culture of a parti c ular socieLy undergo illg hist0riGtl changes. 111 our discussion of l\fanicaboa we sh a ll , Lh erefo re. atte mpt to a vo id hard-and-fast fix ed crite ria by whi ch to draw sh arp distinctions. \ Ve do no t, for e xa mple, diffe rentiate the ag ricultural wo rke r fro m the m a n who o w ns a sm a ll plot bu t a lso d ocs wage la bor a lo ngside the la ndless \\·orkers for th e g reate r pan of the year. ,\ Ja n y ag ric ultural worke rs o r tod ay are , in fact, Lhe son s of landowners o[ yes te rd ~1y. Th us, thirteen of eig hteen landless workers in Li mones come from lando wning families, three from la ndless families, whil e the origin of Lwo is unkn o wn. In a sample o f twenty-nin e la ndo wn e rs in :\Ianica boa Altura, nine h eads of famili es who o wn la nd wday co m e fro m p a re nts who we re fo rm erl y la n d less. Th e classes disLing uish ed here resulted from three m aj o r and interrelated histori cal processes : first, the concentraLion and frag m e ntation o[ landownership; second, the developme nt of wage la bor; third , the incre ase of specialized ca sh crops at Lhe expe nse of subsistence crops. In our his torical sec tion we have noted th e trem e ndou s decline in the 11umber of landown e rs whi ch fo ll m \·ed the conce nLra ti o n of land in large h o ldings <l uring the rise of the coffee culture. I n i g.18, the re we re, according to d a ta supplied by the Agricultural Adju stment Administra ti o n, ten farm s of m o re than o ne hundred cuerdas in i\Iani caboa. Th ese te n farm s re present 3.8 per cent of all the farms of the barrio. Nine o( them own 50 per cent of a ll the coffee land in Manicaboa, wh ile 250 small farms own the oLher 50 pe r cent. These te n farm s also own '11 p e r cent of a ll the land in the ba rrio. Co ncentration of la nd in these ten la rge es tates h as bee n accompa nied , ho wever, by in creased fragm e nta tion of land own ed by the remainder o f the population. LaLer, we shall auempt to a ssess some o f the factors responsibl e for this change. In 1948, 25 0 farms in iYianicaboa were less than one hundred cuerdas; 5!>·34 pe r cent of all the farm s in th e barrio, or i 15 o( the to ta l 2G2 farms, were less than te n c u e rdas, and together they owned only 9 per ce n t of the land; 28 .24 p e r cent, or 74 of th e 262 fa rms, ranged b etwee n te n a nd thirty cue rdas, and Logethe r held 17 p e r cent of the land; i2.24 per cent, o r 32 of the 2G2 farm s, ra nged from thirty to one hundred cu erd as, a nd h eld 25 per cent of a ll the la nd. The farms may be d ivided into four rough g roupings, which h a ve cultural significance : first, those of less than te n cuerdas; second, ten to thirty cu e rdas; third, th irty to one hundred cu e rclas; and fourth, more than one hundred cuerdas. W e do not at all imply th a t th ese g ro ups are sharply se pa ra ble,

for e xample:, Lhat a man who O\\·ns thirty-one c uerdas is o( n ece~~ iL y a diffe re nt type o( man than a ma n who O\\·ns twenty-ni11 c and a half cuerdas. \\le shall show, howeve r, th :1t the \ra y of life withi11 ea ch g roup tends to be cl is ti ncti vc. \\'e have see n that accepLan ce o( wage labor has emerged i11 tl1 e course of culwral d c\'e lopment. The same process which produced a d eclin e in the numbe r of i11d c pc.: 11d c.:1H J ; 111d mn1 <: r~ co11cliti o11ed the g rmnh nl a ~lot tp of peop le \\·ho dc: pc11ded u pon wage.. to 111tTI d1cir -.11b-.i-.1c11<c· 11c-ed -.. T od;1y. three kind-. ol pc-ople Lill i11 l<J thi-. <a1C·gor~ . Th e lir.,L a rc re pre-.e 111 c:cl by the c-., 1i111;11 ed :i :-10 10 :~oo agrindu1ral workc.:r-. ol .\l :111 il :1lioa. th e ~cco nd by th e O\\'JH:rs of less than l C" ll f ' ll f'I r/r t.\ or !:ind. :111d th e Lhird b}· Lile O\\"JH.:n. o f l>C·l\\"(·t-11 Le11 ;111cl 1hi11~· < tll'rrl11s o[ land. The secOJ1d :111d th ird gro 11p-. d c: pt 11d 011 \\"ages for additiollal i11c 011H:. The .'>lll:1ll holde rs us11:illy do wage labo r i11 orcl<: r to -; 11pplc.:111 <:11 L 1he re:.ources dcri,·ed frn111 t he ir i11 .. 11 lli<ic.:1n p roperty. T he s111:tll fann ch, or ow 11 e1-. o l Len LO thin>· r 11t'rrlfls, o lte n send m e mbers o f th e ir famili es w wo rk elsewhere and appropria Le thei1· cash earnings. Bo Lh g roups, moreover. make every effort not to employ wage labor. unless Lhe i1· own family labor force proves insufficienL. 1\ll of the fifteen landowners who hold less th an thirty-five cuerdas in the neig hborhood of Limones customarily work their land with family labor. By co nLrast, the farm ers ho lding between Lhiny and one hundred cu e rdas, like the large landowners, e mpl<Jy laborers and pa y th em cash wages. Th e Lhird histo rica l process affecting class groupings is the shift fro m the produ ctio n o f subsistence crops to Lhe produ cLion of a cash crop. \Ve have seen how this change was first efiecLecl on a large scale on Lhc large farms , while the small er farms followed suit. \Ve have <l lso noLcd that farming in l\ fa11i caboa was neve r wh o ll y subs isLence farming, but that some cash crop was always sold to meet certain daily needs. P eopl e i11 i\ fanicaboa differ Locl ay in the extent to whi ch th e sale of cash crops permits capital accumul a Lio n a fLer Lhey have m et subsiste nce needs. In crude te rms, th e people who sell cash crops principally in orde r LO eat we sha ll call peasants. The people who run the ir (arms as business en terprises for accum11latio11 of cash or credit we shall call fanners. Th is is a cu ltural definition of the peasant d epen ding upo n what the particula r c11lL11rc defines as its minimum standard of living, and not an absolute de finiti o n. As Greaves has p oinLed out (1935: t93), it is necessa ry to disting uish "several forms of peasant produ ctio n in Lhe various tro pical countries, each form indicating a different degree of subsisten ce culture and capitalization." In our discuss ion we shall make th e possession of about thirty c 11 e rdas roughly coterminous with the point at which monetary accumulation beyond the culturall y de fin ed subsistence needs becomes possibl e. Peasa ntry thus designates landowners holding less than thi rty cu e rdns. \iVe ho pe to show that the

SA:"i JOSE:

norms of behavior and ideals of the peasantry tend to domina te the character of the barrio. I n Puerto Rican parlance, these two hundred odd households would be cal led jibaros, or rural, backward, unsophisticated folk. \Ve sha ll use the term "peasa nt" rather than jibaro, advisedly for the sake o ( g reater precis io n. }i ba ro has been used to des ig nate agriculllll"a I "·orkcrs a ncl sma 11 holders as well as small ra nner:-.. I t ca 11 lie used by the people of one neighborl1ood lor the people o( another neighborhood. T hu-. the pc.:opk ol the :\ltu ra in ~Ianicaboa call the people ol l .i111011cs jibaros. The agricultural workers or the sug-ar mast call the highland fo lk jibnms. Yet th ey arc themselves labeled jibaros by the people or the LO\\·ns. Residents o[ San Ju an may C\·c11 rc lc r la11g lii11g ly w the inhabitants of the country t<H,·11s a s ;fharns. in the sense of the Eng lish word "hick."" .f ibarn is thus a term which denotes a degree or b;1ck warclncss rclati\·e to the cultural position of the :-.peakcr. Jts 111ca11ing tends to change, as the position ol the speaker cha nges. Summarizing our defin i tions, we shall deal with the following groupings or classes: I. Tlte jJeasa11i1)'· The peasantry is composed of persons owning less than ten cuerdas (small holders) :,nd p ersons owning be tween ten and thirty cuerdas (small farme rs). P easants rely upon m embers o( the ir o wn families to till their holdings a nd employ wage labor only rare ly, but o(ten supplemen t their income by performing wage labor elsewhere. They grow cash crops to satisfy a culturally defined standard o f living a nd are unable to accumulate capita l beyond this limit. 2. T/1e middle farmers. The middle farmers own b etween thiny and one hundred cuerdas of land, rely on wage labor, and accumulate cap ital beyond subsistence needs. 3 . Tlt e agricultural worhers. The agricultural workers are landless, though differing in degree of access to land. They meet their subsistence needs th rough the sale of their labor power. -I· Tlte hacienda owner. The hacienda represems the largest productive enterprise in the barrio, specializes in the production of cash crops, employs wage labor on a large scale, and m ani fests a high rate of capital accumul a tion relative to the o ther farms in the barrio. In 1\Ianicaboa, as elsewhere, differences in wealth produce differe nces in prestige. A farge set of differe nt symbols enables peop le to measure the economic standing of their neighbors. If a man owns a pig or chickens, if he has a bedspread. if his "·ife rides on a horse or a mule. if she carries things on her hip or on her head, i[ they cat bananas dry or with milk - a ll are symbols which define social status. 'Whe n a person is clearly o[ hig her social sta tus than ano th er, he is addressed as Us ted by his in fer io r. " I say Usted to you beca use I respect you more. I say ln to Dona T ., beca use we assoc ia te each clay in our work." Such criteria are merely derivative, however,

"TRADITIONAL" COFFEE MU:-.iIC IPALI TY

203

of a basic one: access to land. People in the barrio rank each othe1· not o nly by whether they do or do not own land but also by the degree to which they are able tO use land. A wage worker who has access t0 a subsistence plot through cust0mary arrangements w id1 a landowner tends to rank hig her in the social sca le than a wage worker who must support himself entire ly b y the sa le of his labor power. A man who owns a small plot, be it ever so humble, ranks higher than a wage worker who is provided a subsistence plot by a landowner. This is true eYen in cases where a worker may be materially better off than the owner o( a small splinter of land. Such criteria o( ranking are the produ cts o( cultural experience. Th ey depend on what the cu lture defines as an adequate income rather than on a n a bsolute sum of money e:irned du ring the year. T he criteria refer to steadi ness a nd regularity of th e flow of income, cash, or goods. Amount a nd regularity, in turn, are not measured solely by what the i ndividual family needs tO eat, but include their notion of hospital ity tO their fellow men. A ,,·age worker is a n "unfortunate" man (un infeliz), because the sharp seasonal variation in earnings may force him to sell his chickens and his lone pig during the period of lowered income. A p easant, on the other hand, a nd even a wage worker with a subsistence plot (Lala) can attempt to eke o ut an existence d uring the same bitter months, and con serYe their precious capita l i nvestment. Anothe1· corollary of this scale of values is that people are more concer~ed abou t access to land, per se, than a~out_ legal _utles of ownership. :\lost of ~he properties Ill i\!a111caboa are not formally listed m tl~ e 111sul~r R egmer of Property. On a more intangible basis, most farms a re in debt, a nd the titles o[ ownership lie in some bank outside the co nfines of San J ose, or in the strong box o( a creditor me rcha nt or moneylender in town. However, as long as the la~1d_ cannot .b.e exploited profitably except uncle~·. ex1st1~g cond1L1ons of peasa nt tenure, these c~nd 1uo n s "·1~1 tend to persist, a nd the de facto user o[ the land w ill con tinue to be the nom inal owner of ~1is pro1?eny. T hus ownership implies to the peasant m Ma111caboa the free use of his land, rather than the free and unh indered right to dispose either of the land o r o f its p roduce on the open market. vVhen people say of a IT\an that he "owns la nd (tiene finca), they actually say that be "has" land, and th ey mean tha t he h as u se of land. L and on \\°11ich he stands wiLh boll~ his feet is his b y a claim superior to all paper ~la11ns. One o( the "·orst crimes in their eyes is to dispossess a man in a case where the cred itor merchant himself ca nnot make efTective use of the pro1?erty. Th_c laws enacted b y the Popu lar Democra u c pa_n y 111 • 1 ~Ho, calcula tecl to protect the peasa ~ts against ~e izu res b y. credi tors'. und o ubtedly const~tu te one ot the e1Tect1ve bases (or peasa nt support of P~D govern_ment a nd of the present goYernor of the island, Luis l\Iufioz Marin.

204

TH E PEOPLE OF P UERTO RICO

age. these farm s plant abo ut twi ce as mu ch a creage in to bacco and !> Ubsiste n ce crops as the y d o in coffee. \\le ha ve seen in th e co urse of o ur discu ssio n of the technology of coffee produ ctio11 and . the g eog raphical e11 v iro11me nt that the de,·otio n o l l ~ nd LO coffee has b een a lun n io n o l th e amo unt o [ available capital. Coffee presen ts the p easant \\'ith problems whi ch are o[te n insoluble in te rms of his sm a ll m eans. Jt is a p e re nnial. Jt takes a long time to grow to matu r i ty. I t i-; sub ject to c.li111 at ic .di.;_lll rha n ces. i11cl11ding th (' lt11 rric: 111c-. \\'h 1ch p cn od 1call y swee p tir e i'> la11d. l t c:1n11<>I I Jc rotat <.: d 1\·itl1 <>I her cro p '> . It d o<.:!. not o ll c.: r l u 11 l 'tll p lcl\·111c 11l to Lil (' labo r ol th e fa1 11ih·. T hc-,c.: dra\\'h:1c k-. coup led ,,·ith the d ecl ine ol th~ roll c:c i11d11 s1n · h:1n· thcrclorc lorcc.:d L11c.: small g ro\\·ers LO ca st ;11>011t lor l'fltcic11t and sa ti <;f:r c wn· .'> ttbs titul<.'.'>. Fo r r(';1-,on.s al read y disn1!-.-;cd the'' h a1·c.:· l;i 1·c>rc:d t he: :111 11u:tl toh ac<o. -i"obacc o ca 11 he.: rota tc:d " .it h o th e r crops. T he p c;1sant c;111 1n:1kc u se: ol th e fcnili1 c r. \\'ltich h<:lps his tobacco g ro\\', LO produc e mi11or crop<; 011 the ~ amc: pl ot. T obac.c.o i-, usu a ll y pla n ted wh e re ri ce grew before. O f te n b eans a re planted with tobacco, either in single rows alternating with rows of tobacco, or in the ditch es and along the earth barriers SUBCULTURES OF THE RURAL AREA (bnncos) whi ch keep the soil from sliding d o wnhill. The earlie r the t0bacco is in the ground, the be tter THE PEASANTRY th e corn pl a ntings which follow. Th en beans may Historically the p easants of i\lanicaboa are t he b e planted with corn , or swee t potatoes are planted d escenda nts o f th e s ubsisten ce farm e rs o[ e ig hty with ri ce a nd b e nne seed. O ccasionall y mille t m ay yea rs ago, people whose li ves were ch a n ged r adi cally b e sown broadcast in the pl o t. T o b acco seedlings w hen th e notion a nd practice of inte rest w as in- are grown under plantain trees. The vast majority j ected into the c redit system. Most landowne rs in o ( farmers "make use of" (aj>rovec/1(111 ) these new the barrio are d escended from landowners before o pportunities affo rded b y to b acco fo r an increase t h em. Th us, the p arents o ( e ig htee n o ( twenty-seven in mino r c rop produc tion . Only a few die hards l a ndow n e rs in th e A ltura region owned land them- claim that it is bette r to plant one plo t to one crop se lves, and. sixteen out of nineteen landowners in (fJarejo), b ecause "o ne plant eats a11other." Many Limones a re descended fro m lando wning families. e ve n lowe r their tobacco pro ductio n b y inte rcropA few la ndl ess w orke rs h ave indeed achieved the ping the ir to bacco with b eans. Tobacco production sta tus o( la ndowne rs, either through financia l help thus not 0 11l y provid es a n e w source o r income, but from the h a cienda or throug h measures of ag rarian it also r e inforces th e traditio nal ideal of obtaining r e form. In fac t, abo ut 24 p e r cent of th e farm s under good s fo r direct consumptio 11 from th e la nd. te n cuerdos in \I a nicaboa are the result of governDespite its obvio u s eco no mic utility to the small ment l a nd donatio n s to p eople wh o h a d pre vio usly farmer and despite the exte nt to which tobacco is b een with o ut land. Yet the large majority of peasn o w grown in i\Ianica boa, th e barrio d oes not offer a n ts are d escended from sm a ll landown ers b e fore th e pic ture o[ a ri sing class o f sm a ll farmers who them. a re re lat ively free o ( deb t ;rnd use the i1· t0b acco Today t h ese p easants g ro w cash crops in much productio n as a m ea n s of o btaining more money to larger a mounts than their a ncestors. When coffee ach ieve in creasing economic and social mobi lity. w as pro fit a ble , they went into th e productio n of Th ere a rc indeed a fe w m e n who h ave r isen to coffee. T oday, "·h e n coffee faces an uncertain p resent g reater w ea lth through jud icious econo mic operaand future, m ost of the m combine coffee growing tions based on toba cco, bu t th ese arc exceptions. A w ith th e produc tion of toba cco. Some, indeed, have number o r explan a tions sugges t the mselves to acg i ve n up coffee growing a ltogether. Only 68.3 per co unt for the preva iling pi cwre. First, the d ecline cent of th e fa rm s unde r te n cuerdas include la nd of the m a j o r cash crop, coffee, m ay accoun t fo r a that is p la n ted to co[ee. a nd toge th er they m a ke up con siderable ba cklog o[ rural i11d e b1 ed11ess. Second, s lig h tl y Jess than () p e r cent o[ all the coffee land wh en tobacco prndu ction first became profitable, i n th e ba rrio . A b o ut 9!! p er cent o f the farms be- credit for its produ ction ca m e mostl y fro m the same L\\'cen ten a nd t hi rty cuerdas h ave la nd pla n ted to large cred ito r m erch;111ts w ho s po n sored the p roduccoffee. Ye t in t ofu they h ave o nl y J (j p er ce n t o r a ll tio n of coffee. The d eclin e o f these creditors associthe cofTec la nd ava ilable in th e ba rrio. On t h e a ver - ated wi1h th e d ccli 11 e of coffee, n ecessarily affected

Since a ccess to land is the primary cultural va lue in i\Ianica b oa, p eople d esire to o,,·n la nd. In a s u~ar ca n e community like Caname lar, where the working p eople have traditio nally bee n divorced from. access to land th e culwral ideal n o longer contains an i mage ever y m a n on his o wn plo t o ( land. The workers th e re do n o t d e mand that th e g ove rnment g rant the m s ubsiste nce plots. They hope i ns~ead for the nationalizatio n o f the s ug ar field s 111 which they a re wo rking ( \lintz, 1951a). I n i\lanicaboa, o ~ the oth e r hand, a man without land w a nts to ga in access to a piece of te rrain "in order to grow things" (pa' sem b rar). In su ch a com~11L1nit ~, wher~ p1:operty is held indi vidua lly a nd fairl y wide ly d1smbuted, this m eans that a landless individu a l must ge t land fro m anoth e r individual. A result of attaching prim a r y impo rtance to access to land rather th a n to o wne rship o f la nd is th e refore that indi viduals a re bo und togethe r in fa ce-to-fa ce relatio n ships. Some individuals becom e depende nt on o thers in h iera rchical fa shion , and there ari ses a sca le of statuses b y which people diffe rentiate one a n o ther.

;f

Fig. :::?5. No111c of s111all coflre f11r111 crs in the Barrio i\laniwboa , district of S1111 jo.w:. Photo by I~ ric ll'olf.

wbacco producers as well. Third , large tobacco quotas ,,·e re cornered by large landowners, whether diey intended t0 grow tobacco or not. These owners have loan ed out the quotas against shares o( the resu I ting crop, th m further diminishing the profits of the small producer. Fourth, it appears from comparatiYe data that tobacco producers who work their land with sharecroppers tend to shift more co sts to their workers in ;\I:inicaboa than in such tobacco-produci11g com munities as Tabara.• Thus, wh ile a soc ial segment o[ inoependent tobacco produ cers may arise in the future, its present absence ma y be assoc iated with the dominance in the past of large lando\\·ne rs and crediwr merchants in this area . \\Tha t, tl1en , is the present-da y income of one of these peasant farm s? While it is diffiwlt LO obtain adequate agg rega te statistics on the amounts o( differe n t crops produced. the output arnl revenue o[ one 'Sec Chapte r fi.

such farm unit may serve as an illustration o ( s:;me of th e points ra ised. Don Tassio's farm comprises thirty cuerdas. It is valued at $3,ooo. Of this, $250 r epresents the value o[ the house, and ~ 2 ,7 50 represents the surroun d ing land. The farm is in debt, and interest paymen ts may run between $ 150 and $300 per annum. T he farm produces about thirty cwts. o r coffee, and n ...·eh ·e o( tobacco, in addition to some minor crops. If labor costs are no t "counted," profits 011 the sale of coffee come to $.150, on tobacco to S180, on minor crops co about $50 to $80. Don Tassio's cash income is thus roughly $700 a year. Th e three items which recur every week in the purchases of the famil y are rice, lard, aml codfish. These cost respec tive ly ~ 170, S57. and ~Go a year, a tota l of $287. H the lowes t interes, paym ents be added, outlays on interest and these three items come to about $.137 per year. This leaves roughly S260 to take care of all other need s of a fa mil y o( thirteen, comprising two adults a nd ele,·en children.

206

THE PEOPLE OF PL:ERTO RICO

This means that the cash resources of a peasant household are limite d. An occasional illness or an expenditure of money on rum or on a d_e votion to a saint always threaten to redu ce them still further. This threat ca n be met in part by restrictions on cash spending ..-\ yardstick for mea suring the _n~ean­ ing of s uch reduct ions is provided by the trad 1uonal c ullllral norm, ,d1i ch d e rlnes a "decent" standard of living. Thi s norm re quires s uch things as ~~ccess to a piece of land which enables a man to raise some of hi s own food; consumpt ion of ri ce and bea ns three times a week; possess ion of a flo ck o[ chickens, ,vhich provide eggs for sale and meat for purposes of h os pitality; use of a wooden bed; pu1·chase of a new set of clothes for the adults of the family at least once a year; O\-vnersbip of a solidly bu ilt house; and availabil ity o( enough money for at least one devotion each vear to the household saint and for occasional expe~diLUres for recreation and hospitality. An individual who falls below this cultural minimum is "unfortunate'' (1111 infeliz). This norm represents the product of a p<1St in which money was scarce and consumption needs were largely met by goods produced in th~ locality. \Ve shall see that new condit ions of re tail marketing have introduced a large series of marketable commodities into the barrio. The possession of some of these commod it ies plays an im portant part in prestige ranking. The p easant is thus confronted with a dilemma. He must cut down on cash expenditures, while at the same time buying some of the new commodities. His answer is to delay consumption or the new goods . In cutting down on money expenditures, he defers purchase of new goods and distributes his purchases over a long period o( time. The peasant sta nd ard of living is undergoing change, but the rate of that change is slow. The Role of Family Labor

The key to peasant production lies in its low cost of labor. \Nork is performed by the family as an economic unit, and no payments are made to any of the family members. If the children receive wages from work performed outside the limits o( the farm, they are supposed to hand over these earnings to the father. The father administers all the econom ic resources o~ the family as " one pocket" (11n bolsillo ). Furthermo re, the fa ther of the family has the cusLOmary right to " sell" th e la bor of his dependent offspring. He may send them to work on the hacienda or for other farmers, and he receives their earnings from this work. Or he may exchange their labor for the labor performed by other farmers in the reciprocal co-operative labor exchange of the "aid team" (la j11nta de ayu da) or the "exchange of man -days" (N11nbia r peones). Tn recent times the use of fam ily labor has becom e intensified w ith the introduction of tobacco. \/Ve h ave seen that toba cco re presents the small Kr<>wer·s cash crop par excellen ce. Credit sustains

his livelihood, and its production g rants him quick rewrns. At the same time it makes more econom ical use of the labor o( his women and children. Coffee produ cti o n <lbsorbs main ly male l<lbor and makes very littl e u se of femal e h elp. J3ut where men expend thirty-e ight or thirty-nine days of work in cultivating a c11r:rdn of toba cco and in processing its produce, women expend bet\\·ec11 forty-e ight and fifty-four da ys \\·orking Ll1 e same f'11ada alongside their m e n. Th e ad,·c:11 t of tob;1ffo tlll ts reinforced the aln:.:;1dy c:-: i-, 1i11g 11 -.c of the L1m il ,· :is a bbor p oo l. Th e Fami ly as a Pool of Resources

The fami ly not on ly operates a.'> one Lthor pool, lrnt it is ;dso c11sto111arily the l1mctio11i11g unit of o\\'11ership. Th eoretical ly. \\'omen and < hildrc 11 arc allowed to <nn1 property in their m\·11 righ t, lrnt actuall y the father gencr:tlly disposes of their property as he secs fit. Jndi,·idu:tl c irn 1mstanccs pla y a large p:trt in determ ining the pn:cise arr;111ge111e1ll o f forces within the famil y. In one falllily. a son "·110 made and sold wooden yokes h ad to turn over half his income to his father. \ ·Vith the other half he bought a number of sh oats, but when the pigs were grown the father sold them and appropriated th e money. The son <lid not protest. Another son in the same family, notoriously the most ind ependent of the sibl ings, owned some ch ickens and thwarted every effort of the father to sell them. In a third case, a farmer's wife owned some pigs. Her husband sold the pigs and out of the proceeds bought his wife four yards of cloth as a balm for the open wound. The cloth represented only a fra ction of the value realized in th e sale of the pigs. The sale of labor power and the appropriation of family property by the father cannot continue after his child re n h ave reached a certain age. At eighteen the sons must customarily be allowed to accumulate some property of their own in order to marry and pay the expenses of the wedding. Most boys o( this age own a pig and a ca lf, which they sell before they marry. They often migrate to th e sugar cane fields duri ng the summer season for the express purpose of making money to further their future ind ependence. The boys must be permitted to retain such earnings. After they marry, th ey also leave the labor pool of the family and begin to se ll their labor power individually. In most cases they like to move in with the wife's parents, or set up an indepenclent household near the parents of the wife. This ideal form of residence removes the young husband from the circle of his own father's fami l)1 and avoids conflicts between the young wife and h er mother-in-law. Yet actual residence after marriage is d e termined primarily by the d istribution of landed property in the fami ly. Jf the property is in the husband's father's family, then it is with the husband's father's Jamily that hierarchical ties of dominance and dependence are formed. \\romeo are even more restricted in their ownership of property than men. Their husbancls will make use

SAN JOSf:: " TRADITI O::-.:AL' ' COFFEE '.\I UN IC IPALITY

of any land which they bring into the famil y and dispose of th e produce o [ such property. Jn most cases, women arc allowed to accumulate money only on the sly. Th c:y ma y take a fe w eggs or a little coffee or tobacco fro m the accumula ted stores and sell them for cash to an itine rant vendo r. T heir husba nds usually kn o w abo ut these transactio ns but will close their eyes to them. Ve ry often, the women appropriate these ~mall sulll s of money, n o t for their own independent use. but w help th e ir so ns accumulate money on their o wn. Th<' cl: 1nde ~ ti11 e 11;1L11rc of these transactio ns helps Lo ke('p i11 t:1n tltc d o min a n t role of the fa ther as head of the lto11~d1o ld . Fo n11 :dl y. :ill children i11h erit equally, and no distinct io11 i ~ dr:iw11 be l\\'t::cn boys and girls. In actuality, the pi cture is much more complex. How much each child inh c ri t:; is as mu ch a (unction of the particular l;imil y ~ it11 : 1ti o 11 as o[ the cultural ideal. Equal di vision ol la nd i ~ r:i re l ~· efl cctcd. This writer kno ws of only o ne t :i~e i 11 wh ich the th eoretica l rule was fo llowed. 111 this c i ~c: . l:111d was to be sold in exchange fo r a debt and th e : :. cll<.:r lc lt bound by customary law to ask the c:onsem of all his childre n before effecting the transaction. It is perhaps sig nificant that in this case the piece o f pro perty sold was small. i\lore often, the largest po nio n of land goes to the sibling "·ho makes his indep ende nce felt when the famil y is still functioning as a unitary pool of resources and la bor. In each family. lhcre is usually one strong-willed , nonconformist offspri ng, who is described as "strong" (f11 erl e) and g uajJo, a w o rd which implies that the g roup cannot effective ly control his beha vio r. Jn some cases, the pare nts keep the property intact. The oldest siblings go elsewhere to work as agricultural laborers o r to seek work on land owned by the ir wi ves' famili es. The property will then pass intact to the youngest child or to the son who has postponed marriage longest. Thus, ver y often, older siblings live in shabby and restric ted quarters, while a youngest sibling inherits the s turdily built house o f his fa ther. An idea l o f equal bila teral inherita nce thus coexists with actual patterns o( inhe ritance, according to which most o( the property goes either to the sibling with t he strongest will or to the youngest 0£ a set of siblings. Cases which fit th e ideal pattern of inheritance arc rare. The coex iste nce of the idea l o( equa l divisio n a mong children and the actua l practice o f passing pro perty intact to a single h eir may indica te a shift fro rn th e form er pa u ern in the past to some form of inheritance by one he ir onl y. Labor Exchange

The peasants attempt to use famil y labor o n thei r lands w he rever possible. In tasks which req uire labor beyond the capacity o( the famil y labor pool, they attempt to obtain labor primarily thro ug h a cooperative labor exchange system (la. j1111ta de rryuda). The system is also known as " exchanging labor days" (cam biar peo11es) or "gaining ma n-days of labor" (ganar p eo n es) . \Vhereas histo ricall y the system was

2 07

associated with a scarcity of labor r ela ted to a sp arse population, under modern conditions it is a produ ct o ( the inability of most peasants to lay out cash for wage labor. The exchange labo r team is not p a id in ca sh. A certa in amo unt of la bor on one man's field is excha nged for a g iven equivalent amount of la bor on ano the r man's fi eld. If one of the participants is too old, he may offer the workers a meal and rum instead. Thus a certain old man habitually calls upo n two sons, one a son-in-la w and the o ther a co111pad re, a nd " he offers a m ea t lunch , and a little stick o [ rum to him " ·ho wa nts it." A man m ay a lso rep ay labo rers who have worked o n his own fie ld by sending his sons to work in their fi elds. T he labor exchange team thus d epends to a large degree on the ability of the fath er or the famil y to dispose of the la bor of his sons. T he use o( a lcohol and sing ing to spur the work m akes the excha nge labor team wo rk a h appy occasio n. re inforced by a su·ong competitive eleme n t. T hus. two me n wo rking side by side m ay sing por f ia, in competition, each trying to outdo the other in se lecting words and improvisations. Or a group weeding a coffee patch may split up into two groups. One le ft-handed g roup may cut with the m achete in the ir le ft hands, the others with the m achete in the ir r ig h t. "The g roup tha t fi nishes its swa th first h as the righ t to taunt the others and to tell them they are no good," said a n1iddle farmer. The labor exchange team. is used mostly in the productio n of minor crop s but is some times employed in the production o( cash crops. Team labor m ay thus weed coffee pa tches o r prepa re ter rain for the pla n ting of tobacco. The team is not used , howe,·er , in activities requiring large numbers of workers a t times whe n individual landowners compe te with each other for the_ available labor suppl y. Thus success during th e cofl e~ h:u~ves t de pe nds la rgely o n how m a n y p eop le the 1nd1 v1dua l producer ca n collect to h elp him get the ripe berries off the trees as fast as p ossible. The harvest m eans too much in terms of cash income to the workers a nd to the small h o lders who dep end o n wages to enter into labor exch anges at this peri od. Similarly, the owne rs who employ such labor cannot re ly o n personal conn ections to mass the large mnnber of wo rkers they need. Unde r such circumsta nces, the persona l a nd face-to-fa ce labor system of the n ~ igh bo rhood gives way to the impersonal ra llying o( labor throug h the wage m echa nism. 1 \ Vhilc mainly ag ricultural in characte r, the exchange labor team syste m ma y on occasion e xtend into no nag ricultural ope ratio ns. The repair and constructio n of roads in the barrio is work of such vita l importan ce th at team s some times co-op erate o n spec ial projects. \ Vh~ n the municipality b egan to widen the C hapel Trail, and the steam shovel fail ed to move a large rock, three p easan ts and one labore r sent by a fourth man worked two days without pay to remo ve the obs t;~cle. In 19-~? a s imilar g ro up perfo rmed m aj o r repa irs o n the River Tra il.

208

THE PEOPLE OF PL"ERTO RICO

Other Reciprocal Relationships

The exchange labor team is but one t ype of rec iproca l 1-elationship between the sma ll farmers of the neighborhood . Othe1· interfamilial ties, equal ly im portant and equally valued by the community, co nsist in the exchange o( favors and of hosp itality. The th eory of hospitality was clearly stated by one small farme1· when he said: " It is bad to save at the expense of eat ing \\·ell. I work so I can eat well. Let my sons look out for themse lves. I knew a man on ce ,,·ho saved and saved, and le ft his so ns a liulc capital. Hut h e himseJ[ died "·ith a i,hrunken stomach [esto111agao]. 1 am not like that. J count on my friendships. The1·e is money in that too. \Vh en I have a guest. I kill the b est ch icken I ca n find. :\ot a scrawn v hen. but :1 la\'ing hen." ' ' Jn this comment we mav discern the three e lements which enter into the practices of favor exchange and ho-;pitalit;. First, there is the notion of a minimum diet. If you fall below its sta ndards. your stomach \\'ill "-,hrink." Second . thi<; idea l norm o( \\·hat a man must eat is opposed cor.sciously to the practice of saving. . \ man can save only when he does not eat. Third, it shows that eating Jinks you to other p eop le. The rormation of friendships t hrough the expendiwre or (oocl is a better way of Jiving than th e accumu lation o( sav ings at the risk of undercutting your cu ltural minimum. Implicit in these vie"·s is also the notion that your friends will pay you back. "'\'hen m y neighbors recei\-e food from me," another peasant said, "they ah,·ays try to find \\·ays to send something to me." A third man phra sed the various exchanges in terms of obligations : •·\\'hen you do someone a favor, yo u always expect somet hing in return. I t doesn't matter how poor the othe1· person is. H e a lways ow n s some vegetables." A fourth peasant dre w a contrast between the rural area and the town wh e n he said: " In town , you will be lucky if they give you a glass o( water. But here in the country, as soon as a v isitor enters the house, we prepare a meal fo r him and bring him coffee. 1t is good to have friends. \\'h e n I was bewitched , the curing ,,·oman said to me that I had weathered the illn ess b eca u se I had many friends. You are strong. sh e sa id, you have many friend s." T h e system o( reciproca l exch anges thus (unctions in severa l important ways. It sets off the co u ntry from the town . Th e town is not only an area where the country person must deal with impersonal forces of credit and government of which he understa nds lit.. tic. hut is also th e place \\'here no hospi tal i ty is extended to him. Three hours· walk to town is little compa red with the large distances t he country fo lk travel to town in other area<; of the world, but the failure of hi s system of hosp i ta lity excha n ges to exte nd to th e town isolates hirn more effect ively from town life tl1'1n the distances h e must traverse a nd th e ri vers he mu->t cross. 011 the other hand. the system rein· forces the norms ol lit e ,,· i thin the barrio . . \ p e rson m11"t l1a\·e ac < C''>S to l;a11d ...o he can reciprocate favors.

if o nl y \\'ith "some ' 'egetables ... It causes hospitality needs to be included in the cu ltural definition of a standanl or li,·ing, because it is only through s uch exchanges that a11 indi vid ual can fortily or change his position i11 t h e system of hierarchy . .Frie nds make you strong. H you have friends. you can withstand even ,,·itchcraft. A ll these re lationships take place bet\\'een equals and demand the exchanges of equivalent \';dues in svmmetrical fa shion. Their performance is socially ,;;duablc. :ind Lite man \\'ho per I on th tiH·111 <:1rcl 1111~, j-; re\\·anlcd ,,·itlt prc... Ligc. The cxc ltange <omplcx has ,!.{i,·en ri-,(' Lo :1 11 i111ag(' ol tit(' id c:al 11c-iglthor. I It: is a per.,on "·lio ofkh h i...... en·i<<·.., \\'illi11g l ~. \\·}10 '>ends 111eat LO hi ... 1H: iglilior-. \d1e11c·,·cr :111 :111i111:tl i. . ..,f :111 ghtered in Iii ... li rni...<..:. \\· li o :1rr:111gcs to li a\'l: l 11(' \\'0111<..: 11 of lti-; l1ou ... chold 1:1kc 1:1n: ol a 11cigl11>01..... lirnr...c \\·hcn the " ·0111a11 tlt<.T<.: i... i11 bbor. :ind " ·ho gi,·<·-; readi ly of hi ... r<:\CHll"<'<.''> :111d lti~ k110\\'lcdgc . . \t the ":1111e time, he i-; c:xpc< tcd 10 hC' .. .,11,·c,nl" ( /i.1/0). I le n11l'>t 111:1ke sure tlt:1l lie doc.·-, ll<>l gi,·(· out 1110re in tltc long run than It(' r...·c <:iH''> . . \ 111a11 ol \\·horn th<: pt'oplc: take ach·a nt:igc doc-. 11111 lit iltc ick:d ... pee ifr< :1tio11 .... \\"hilc conti1111ancc ol the 11ct\,·ork of reciprocal exchan ges o l goods and services is sti ll the ideal norm to which most behavior tends Lo confo rm , th e g rowing importance or cash as an impersonal mea ns of eva luating these services is making inroads on exis ting ties in certain subtle ways. As Jong as p eople are w illing to exchange h e lp in building a house for tlte services of a midwife, or Lo count the loan of a horse as roughl y equivalent to help in the preparation of a plot for planting. they can effectively short-circuit the money nexus. \Vh en the m idwife begins to set a certain monetary vali1e on h er services, and the owner or the horse begins to ch a rge seven t y-five cents for the loa n of his horse fo r a trip to the road, then the participants in su ch transactions become sellers and bu yers of services which carry precise money values. Sellers must sell as dearly as possible while bu yers must b u y as cheaply as they can. The tra nsformation of ser vices into money va lues in some aspects of life Lends to threaten continued exchanges of services in others. The people in Manicaboa strongly crit ici1.e certain indiv iduals who n o longer slaughter in th e daytime , so that they may avo id the obligat io n of se ndin g port ions of fresh meat to the ir kin and n e ighbors. Others a re sa id to hide food when visitors come, thus avoi<..ling the obligation o( a free hand in hos pi ta lity. These same people may 110 longer express any willing n ess to help their n eighbors, except for clear-cut payments of money. The people feel threatened b y these attitudes. Yet it ma y he predicted that the slow extension or the use of money in the barrio wil l effectively disrupt many aspcrts of the older pauern . Compa drazgo

This n etwork of reciprocal relationships is reinforced ;111d g ive n a sacred charaner through the mechani~111 ol rrJ111 J>atlrar.go. or ritual <<>· parenthood.

- SAN JOSE: "TRADITIONAL" COFFEE MUNIC IPALITY

ln formal r el ig ious theory, this mechanism arises at baplism and enjoins specia l duties on the godparent in relationship to his godchild. Godparents-to-be in Manicaboa shou ld b e p eople who were m arried in church and who confess at least once a year. Once th ey h ;l\·e parti cipated in the baptismal ceremony, th ey may punis h t h e ir god child jus t as his own parents do. One peasant told h o\\', when a child, h e h ad b een b eaten by his godfather for som e misdemeanor. He ran home "·ee pin~. " \ \Tho gave you a beating?" his f:11her a~ked. "your rn-fatlicr [el compatl?" " And my f:tthc:r gan: m e another beating" (me di6 doble) . C:odp:1rl'nt.; abo gi,·c the ir godchildren sweets and p e1111ic-. :1t Three Kings . and a re supposed to pray for t h elll c ,· n ~· nig h !. "Th e bless ing of a godfath er is worth more th:111 th e bl ess ings o( the paren ts of the c hild." In :dani ca boa. childre n acgu ire three sets o f godp:ircn ts in th e course o( their lives, a difiere n t set being c h o~c:n on each nf three occasions. The first on :1-.ion is that of :1 "\\'ater'' baptism, held in the famil ~ \ mn1 home in the country (el bautismo de af.!.11<1 ) . when member-; of the fami ly, gra n dparents or uncl e .... arc 11s11a ll y chosen as padri11os de agun. The secon d occasion is the church baptism (de 1Jiln), which is used to create reciprocal ties with n e ig hbo rs or lando\\· 11 e rs. The third occasion is confirmat io n , whi ch g ives rise to godparents d e o bisfJo ("o f the bish op"). The real importance o f the m echanism , h owever , lies Jess in the relations hips created between godp arents (padrinos) a n d godchildren (a liijados) Lhan in the establishment of t ies bet\\'een the parents of the child a nd the godparents who become co-parents (co111padres) . Co-p arems are bound to mutu a l help, to m utu al r espect, and to mutual defense, and they are e nj oin ed from ever fight ing each othe r. Th is coparent tie ca n be u sed effectively in pro perty transaction s: Do n F evo o\\·1H:d ten 01erd 11s n e:u Don T assio's farm. D o n Tass i~ had inherited six rncrdas near Don Feyo's Carm. T h e two pieces o[ land were of roughl y cqun l ,·alue. The two p<.·asants decided lO exchange the plots for the sake of greater com·enicncc in fanning. :\t that time Do n Tassio i1n-ited Don Feyo to bcrome his co111/>adr1• lhrough godparenthood co one of his children who had not yet been b ap ti1C'd .

It sc1Tes to sett le quarre ls: Don Tito a nd his rr1111 /Jt11fre. Don Paco. arc always fi gh t· ing. D on P aco claims t hat Tit0's CO\\·s get imo his plantings, a nd ruin his crops. The two men often fight over their respectin· boundaries. Yet they always manage to come to ter ms with each other without resort to the coun s ''because they arc com />adrcs."

209

man .does not pay any attention · The other d ay, a com pad re of mme came to the house in order to have a l 'ttle I b · ' '' e 1tac1 b aptized the bab)' and ' ''e carr'ed • 1 ce e · r ation. • ' 1 pron ·s1ons to my house fo r a little feast. H e got a little drunk and b~gan to speak badly. Bu.t I did not pay any attenti;n to him. Only the n ext day did I mention his bch · ,· . l · I ·d ··n , Ln 101 to 11m. sa1· : on t do things like that, com padre, we must respect each oth er."

Similarly, co-p~ren_ts a re enjoined from having designs on each others wives. Only a co-parent may enter a man's house when he is ab sent and his w ife is th er e a lone. The compadrazgo mechanism is thus used to forestall fan~ily disor?anizat!o•~ a nd sexual aggression on the. conjugal unit, as It is used against bodily aggression between two men . Ritual co-parent!1ood may come into b e ing without the benefit o( baptism a nd without involving children. Two m e n ca n make each other compndres de voluntad (voluntary co-parents) .. This opportuni ty is used most often _by the guapos of the b arrio. ' Ve have cited one m eanmg of the word guapo in ou r discussion of the pattern of fam ily in~1eritance, where it is applied to the son whose behav10r is most independent and who cannot b e controlled b y the group. Each n e ighborhood usua lly pos.sesses one man, or a family o( m en, who are the neig hborhood tou ghs and bullies. They are ca lled !os g uapos. d el barrio. Tough s conclude nonaggression pacts w ith each other b y m a king them selves voluntary co-parents. They do this "so they will not have to fight each other. They will en te rtain respect for each other." "Then they r espect each other, a nd say Usted to each oth er." A long C?·p.are?t lines pass food , favors, and labor. 7 ' '' he_n a pig is ktlled, the man will sen d gifts of meat to Ins co-parents. '"' hen labor is needed to construct a house, a m a i: '~ill call on his co-pare nt for h elp. ' 'Vhen a person is sick and has to b e carri ed to the clinic in town, r e la tives and co-parents will be c:illed on to carry the h a mmock. ' Vhen a m a n h as died his copa ren ts do him a last ser vice b y carrying the 'coffin to the cem etery . l\Iy father taught me [an o ld man said] that offendincr a

com J>adre is th e worst sin in the world. They say that in clays long past there wer e two com /Jadres. Their sons had a fight, and th e two com/Jadres were drawn into the quarrel. In the course of lhe quarrel they killed each o ther. A little afterwards, the re appeared two doo·s t"·o l>lack evil doO's 0 I r · o • ' ' 10w mg a.nd c~1:1 s ing people, a nd a I iulc clog that followed them l>e h 111.d. l h ey were the spirits of the two com/Jadrcs who had k1lled each other, and of the godchild who had caused the I r~ub le. T he people say that lhey passed by h ere. a lo ng tlus very u·ail. running. running through the "·oriel. Thus Goel pun ishcd them for the worst crime in the world.

insu l t~ to

Tt sen ·es to prevent quarrels. e\·en in cases where hono r arc in vo lved :

Marketing

Peo ple 'd10 arc to111 /)({</rrs ha\·e ma n y d u ties tow:1nls e:i clt o ther . The relationship is the h oliest thing in the world (lu mas sn 11to). They say that in p aradise yon d on't rccogni7e anyone. not your mothe r. not your fat her. nor your brothcn;. on ly you r r0111/>ndr1•s. Two rom/Jadres rnnnot ligln. lf one shows a lack of rcspl't'l toward lhe other, the second

Although stro ng in traditional attachments, the culture we are d escribing here is n o t a s ubsisten ce culture, but a cu!Lu re built around Lhe sa le o[ cash crops. ~he efforts of the people d o not immed iately and directly produce a ll the goods which Lhey consume. They depend on the price m echa nism to Lranslate the

2 I0

T HE

P EOPLE OF l' l:E RTO RICO

va l ue of t h e i1- c;1sh crops in to n eeded a rticles . ..-\ particu lar crop is Lherelore la rgel y " ·orth Lhe price i l fe Lches. D o n Tass io may s tate e<uegorically, w h e n Lhe s pi r it ta k es hi m, L11ac h e " "·o uld ra l h cr grow coffee tha n a nything e lse," a nd e xpress his conte mp t o f co<1 s tal p eople b y s ta ting that "onl y th e hig hland p eopl e wh o g ro "· callee a re real ag ric ulturis ts. " Bu t w l1e11 t h e co ffee h a r vest pro mises to be p oor i11 LCnt1s of th e goods a ma n ca n buy w ith the m o n ey h e gets from it'> sa le . th en Do n T assio ch a n ges his LUne. T hen ··gro,,·i n g coffee is not ,,·onh t he l abor in volved. 1t dnc'>n·t br ing i n a n ythi n g. To bacco is the thing fo r poor peo pl e l ik e m." I n tu rn , t h e di ffi c u l ti es of l ivi ng 0 11 the income Jrom h is tobacco ,,·ill sen d him off in t h e o ppos ite directi o n : " No o n e can Ji ve o n th e li f tee n d o ll ar pro du cti o n cn :dit Lh ey (th e marke tin g co-o p erat ive] g ive you. To b a cco cos ts to o much to gel ~ tart ed. I l coc, ls too mu ch to keep up . C offee d oesn 'l cosl n earl y as much ...\n d co ffee b ri ngs in m o re ." The p r ices of coflee and to b acco are set in the i n '>t1lar mark et and are aflected by insu lar, fede ra l, an d international legislat io n. Th e people in ~ l a ni caboa, however, consid er that i t is the tow n wh ich sets the price. I t is t h e town w hi ch prov ides the m arket . .-\ l e\\' p easants will se ll t he ir coffee to the h acienda own e r , but th ese are in th e minori t y. M ost sell their coff ee e il11 e r to th e p r iva te creditor merchan t in to wn ()r to th e Pu e r to Ri co Coffee l\ Jarke ti ng Assoc iat io n , a co-opera ti ve g r o w e rs' orga niza tio n , o rga nized o rig inally ,,·i ch ch e bl essi ngs of ch e ins ula r govern me n t. Se,·enty-five per cent of San .J osC:'s coffee is sold in to the hands of the C<Jllee \I arketing .-\ ssociat ion . Jn \ Ia n icaboa, h o"·ever, only 20 of 2 07 coffee growers a r e l isted on th e m em bers hi p ro ll s o f the associa ti o n. .\ l ost of th ese a re sma ll g rowers, pro du c ing less than t hirty cw ts. The m a jor ity o f them do n ot b e lo n g . ''T h ey continue to pl o w i n the old ways, " as t he assoc ia tion adminis tra tor put it. "They d o n o t see what is good for them . U s u a lly, the grower knows i t is a good thing for h im to b e long to th e co-opera t ive. Every d o lla1· com es back to him in som e form of service. The people who d on't ta k e advantage of t h e h ig h er pri ces which ,,·e pay, a re, to express m yself in p la in Cas tilia n , s tupi d." l t is true that th e assoc ia ti o n p ays hig h er prices than its loca l compe ti tors. In 19 48 the ir prices ranged f rom $33.60 to $35· 1o per cwt. The pr ice is, however, o nly o n e si ngle e lem e nt in a m o re complex str u ct ure . F r om th e p o i n t o f view of the sma ll pro ducers, t h e bi g d rawbacks in belong ing to t he coopera t ive a r e i ts m ethods of p aymen t and its lack o l sma ll-scale cred i t fac il ities. 1t m ay pay u p to 75 per cen t ol the Lota ! bil l a t o n ce bu t defer p a ymen t of t h e rema i n ing 25 per cen t. This arra ngem e n t fa i ls to p lease a p e a sa n t li ke ])o n Ti to: " I h ave to pay m y w 111kc·1-.. and LI H.: <, l llf("{ wo tt' L w;1i t e ith e r . So r ha ve ' '' '< <' I I rn y t 1J l il'l' vi tl1 1· 1 l11 :t l :rrgc.: ti \V tt t•r 111 111 1> 0 11 E li as [Lh e credi to r rnen: li a n tJ. J ha vt: w :.t:IJ i L J()I ~ 10 , iJ t l rnt'~ w h at t h ey wam Lo g i ve for i t. 1 h a ve LO do it. " The pea'>a n t:. are here; caugh t in a v ic io us c ircle. I n

growi ng coffee, they e n ter into competition \\'i th the la rge la n dow n er:. o,·cr t h e ;n ·ailable labor supply. \ Ve h ave seen that the system of the excha nge labor team d oes n o t ex te nd in to siu1 a tio 11s \\'h ere labor becom es the obj ect o f inte nse competiti o n . :\L th e same time, man y p easants add to Lli e ir in com e b y picking coffee for wages. I 11 o rde r LO re ta i 11 even the fe\\' la borers they n eed o n th e ir land fo r L11 c s h o rt p eriod o[ t ime whe n t h e h an·cst is a c its peak, th ey m ust pay their workers in ca'>h . an d p ay prom ptly and we ll. 0Lher· \\·ise, their help w i ll im med iately drift a way to t h e large !arm, where ;1 grc;ttcr hulk ol ,,·ork promi ..es t h e m a lo11gcr period of -.tc;1dy cm pl<>) 111e11t. l"o pr<.:· ,·e nt thi ... die) 111t1->t get 111011 c' i11w thc.:ir h;111ds qui ckl y. Tlt e .~t· c C111d i111porta 11t < 0 11; idc r:it irn 1 in turning d o 1,·11 tit<' ltiglH: r p r icc.:s off ered hy tl1c· assoc i:1tion is th a t i t doe' not gra 11L creel it d uri11g t lt e rc 111ai11dcr o f th e ye:1r .. \ ma 11 ;111d Ii i., family. ltowc:n:r. 111 11 .. t li,·e througho11L tlte ~c::1r and mu .. t tlti11k ol tltc yc;1r in it'> enlirct\. The< 1c:di1or menltatll granh ,,·hat a man cannot ol.>1:1in Jrom the a~~ociatio11. So ;1 111;1n like D on Ta.,.,io 111akc~ no bones ;1bo11L it: .. 1 sell my cofl c:c::: to 1>01 1 E l ia~. :\ 1111iq11e 111 :i 11. Dn n Eli as. I could se ll it to tlt e Fed eral Ban k l di e associati o n]. But 1 know D o n E l ias, and Don Elias kno ws m e. \Vhen one o[ mv childre n is sick. I go to Don Elias and te ll him abo u~ i t. Th e n Do n E li~ts o p en s his safe, and hands m e som e b ank noLcs so 1 ca n Lake ca re of m y child. A u ni q ue m an. Do n E lias ." This does not rep resen t an auach m elll LO the p ast for t he sake of o ld t im es. I n parts o( Sa n .Jose a ll g ro\\·ers sell Lo t h e associa tion , a n d i n t h e future a cold we ig h ing of cc..:on o rni c aclva 11 Lages ma y bring m a n y g rowe rs, both small a nd la rge, in to the fold of th e insular o rg ani1ation. To date, h o wever, p ersonal relationships w ith the creditor inc rchant tend to predominate . T his ph e n o menon results fro m th e changed con ditio n s o l the co ffee market. L ack of credit and the n eed for ready cash a re p artl y con seq uen ces o f the d ecl in e o f the coffee industry. \ Vh ereas consu m p tion credit was gra nted in t h e old days beca u se coffee was a va lu a bl e in vestmen t, today it is gran ted because, unde r p resen t condi tions, th ere wo uld b e no coffee at a ll witho ut it. The in s ular T o b acco ;\IarkeLing Association, in contrast to the C o ffee Association, lt as solved the problems of cas h a n d credit successfull y. l t g ives production credit t hro u g h o u t t h e year, and while growers may g rumb le th at "no o n e can live o n the fi fteen dollars t h ey g ive you," it is the boon t h ey look fo r. A few g r owers in i\I a nica b oa stjlJ fi n d t h em selves in the ha nds o f p r ivate tobacco credi tor m erch a nts in nearby town s, w h o m th ey a re still repa ying for credit g iven i11 p ast yea rs. The majority, however, se ll to the insula r assoc iation. Tl1 c " coffn · p e nni es" ~111d th e "Lo b acco pe n nies" thus o b tai n e d :rrc 11sccl 10 p ay for the s ubsis te nce n eed s of the p easa u t ry. \ Ve h ave seen th a t t he most irnpon a nt ou tlays arc fo r cloc hes, rice, cod fis h , and lard. These

SAN Josi~ : "TRADITIO NAL "

goods arc usuall y purchased in tO\\·n by the father of the family at swrcs where cou ntry people have tra11q11ilidad . This term, which might literally be translated as "tranquility,·· implies that the owner of the store treats his customers with consideration and understands their wa ys of bargain ing a nd their careful selection of goods. Co11fia11:.a ("confidence") is a nother term used to d escribe the sa me kind of atmosphere o f personal re latio nship that surrounds such transactions. Once these major subsistence needs are covered, there is liul e cash about the ho use. U sually money is reimT~ted at 011cc i11 t;rng ibl e movable goods, like pigs :111d chickl'11s. ll necess ity demands, the pigs and ell ickl'11 s 111:1y he rcco11n~ned into money. C:o111par:1ti\-c: ly littl e is purchased at the rural stores. Th e.: .. petty rural re tail ~LOre" (ve nlorillo del camjJo) docs nut co11111 on nrd i11ary consumption needs for its inconu:. I11 ~ t c ad, it s she lves are lined with goods that are co 11su11H.:d 011 occasions o[ hosp itality or ceremony. Bisc uits. ca ndl es, wine fo r women and rum for men arc the type of crn11modity sold at the rural store. Rum is the ~ in glc most impo rtant item in trade. Only ran:ly is it cxpcrn ivc. g°'·ernment-licensed , bottled rum. Onl y the wealthier people of the barrio can afford such rum, and few have the taste for it. The staple is "wi ld" rum (ro11 bravo), the illegally brewed caiiita, which costs less, produces stronger effects, and fill s the bill as neatly as the licensed commodity. If purcha ses fail. most rural store owners are thrown back o n subs idiary activities to support themselves. J\Iost store keepers own some land. Those who do no t , r estrict th e ir standards o( consumption and settle into inac tivity to await better times. In addition to th e rural stores, each neighborhood also has an itinerant trader who goes from door to door to buy eggs and ch ickens. He carries paper and stamps with him, and he may accept eggs for writing letters for illi terate people. H e transmits news from one sect ion of the barrio to another. The farm ers' wives sell him small quantities of coffee, chewing tobacco, and eggs on the sly. He also makes small-scale loans, which are repaid in goods at some future date. He brings the illega l lottery to the barrio, a n enterprise in which m a n y people in the barrio invest a few p e nnies every week. The itinerant trader of Limones is also a sa int maker (.rn11/ero) . H e m akes images of the sa ints and crucifixes with or w ithout the image of C hrist on them. People who cannot afford a cruc ifix with Christ pay b etween fifty cen ts and seventy-five cents for a plain one. A cross with Christ o n it costs S2.50. The same itinerant trader also ca rries the needed food supplies to the school lun chroo ms in the ne ighborhood. He sends sma ll family photog raphs to the United States and has them enlarged the re. These he makes into medallions, each of which sell s for five dollars. He also mounts photogra phs in a special frame i.vhich he purchases in town and decorates with colored paper or paper flowers. \l\'c have see n that til e itinerant trader formerly re pre· sented o ne or th e most important links of Manicaboa

COFFEE i:\1u.:-;1c1PALlTY

21l

with the outside world. Today, he continues to fun ction in his own small way, a very ubiquitous fig ure. l n addition to the small rural storekeeper a nd to the itinerant trader, :i third type of p erson con cerned with marketing in the rural area is the pig-killer (111ata-cerdos). H e buys pigs from the peasants, slaug hters them, a nd sells their meat in pieces for festive occasions. Usu a lly the pig-killer prod uces o nly o n order, rather than for an open market. His occupation carries a slight stigma. The term mata-cerdos is usually prnnounced with contempt, perhaps b ecause the pig-killer is usually an agricultural laborer who ekes o ut an income by tapping the resources of peasants w ho are in bad financial straits a nd who m ust sell their pigs. A pig is not only an animal. It represents about twenty dollars o[ accumulated savings. The pig-killer thus benefits b y the financial misery of his n eig hbors. The trading (un ctions of the petty retail store, of the itin era nt trader, and of the pig-killer, however, remain supplementary to the major transactions by which th e ·Manicaboa peasant sells his crops to cover the bulk of his needs. Peasant life is geared LO the d ictates of a n impersonal market. These dictates reach him through the impersonal processes of changes in price and the ebb or flow of production credit. He is thus confro nted with a situation in which the basic conditions of his life are determined by factors \\·holly outside his control. T he local institutions- the creditor m erchan t a nd the governme nt marketing agencies-which market his crops and provide him with credit do not exercise control over such factors as the demand for to b acco in the United States, the availability of cred it for coffee, the ability of the government to back them with direct expenditure of taxes or w ith promises of long-range support. Yet these factors are decisive in the ir operations. Eve n the degree to which the local institutions may manipulate both market and credit in te rms of these fa ctors is severely limited. Basic economic decisio ns a rc usually wholly outside their compe te nce. Administrat ive ly, they must conform to certain ca no ns of r atio na l management. Legally, they must operate within the existing legal structure. This is less true of the creditor merchant than of the governme nt-supported marketing agencies. Since the merchants can par ticipate in a network of persona l relationships, they can adjust prices and credit to individual needs. A m e rchant can g ran t people favors which they may repay him in person at a later elate. He ca n operate w ithin the legal structu re with g reater ease, and cut a n occasional legal corner, knowing that such transactions w ill remain persona l secrets and need not come under public scru tin y. Therefore, m any peas<i nts prefe r to deal with hirr1, rather than w ith larger and more powerful government-supported or government-owned marketing and credit organizations. Th ese agencies, however, have the weight o ( the governm ent be hind them. Organized on an insul arwide basis, th ey ca n ace to stabilize prices a nd credit

2 l 2

THE PEOPLE OF PUERTO RICO

all over the island, and they command greater credit resources. At the same time, they represent standardized forms of coping with variable economic factors, and they must adhere to fixed rules set up to implement their policies. In this, they are hemmed in by legal restrictions to which they must conform. ·when a fa rm credit agency lends money for agricultural production, it must place certain restrictions on the way its money is used. The loan must be applied for an economic purpose in the production of a crop which is economically viable. It must carry a certain rate of interest wh ich remains fixed while the loan is outstanding. The loan must be repaid at stipulated intervals and in prescribed ways. The agency must have a sure guarantee that the loan will be repaid . The peasant in Manicaboa is limited and thwarted by his own culture in making the best of such services. He does not make an accounting of his own labor or of the cost involved in reciprocal services to his neighbors. Hospitality for him does n ot represent a measurable quantity. He does not think in terms of certain s ums of money reserved for special purposes, but uses his resources interchangeably to cover whatever need must be met. Cost accounting, such as the agency demands of him, requires that he allocate his resources carefully according to certain measurable assets and needs. This, in turn, presupposes that he have the notion of an annual income, which he lacks. Due to the highly integrated character of culture, such an accommodation implies a change in his whole pattern of subsistence and expenditure, a change that may be too diflicult to make because social patterns are not clearly separable from economic patterns. A corollary of the peasant's inability to plan his expenditures in terms of some prearranged schedule of outlays is his need for personal consideration. His thinking is geared primarily to the personal, individual, and variable character of relationships carried on in che barrio. This explains one of the difficulties involved in the interaction of bureaucratic institutions and their clients: "Since function aries minimize personal relations and resort to categorization, the peculiarities of individual cases are often ignored. But the client who, quite understandably, is convinced of the 'special features' of his own problem often objects to such categorical treatment" (Merton, in Kluckhohn and Murray, i949:288). Lacking control over the basic factors which determine his life, the peasant seeks help, h at in hand, from the creditor merchant or the local official of the marketing organization. He believes that if these men a re not themselves responsible for price and credit shifts, they at least are the executors of such changes. He hopes tha t they will adapt the new conditions to his personal exigencies. H they fulfill his expectations, he classifies them as "good" people. Th us, the local creditor merchant is generally regarded as a "good" person, because he o(ten dips into his own pocket to adjust i.ndividual needs to an impersona l situation. Most officials of the more impersonally functioning market-

ing and credit organ izations are, however, "bad," because they fail to meet the peasa nt's needs. Th is is rein forced by the fact that these ofTicials are usually drawn from the urban middle o r upper classes who look do\\'n on the peasa nt socially. They do not know how to function within a network o( statuses involving mutual respect, such as is found in the rural neighborhood, and they fail to meet the peasant's deferential attitude ,,·ith the proper rec iproca l symbols of respect. The pea~ant thus (011s id crs that these officia ls ;ire '"bad" people ;111d that thl:>" treat him badly. Politics

The :-, tale ;ind its opcratio11:, < on~t it11Le another impersonal force in the life of the pc;i ~; intry , fo r the state is beyond tile n.::1c/1 of c:...:pcricnc e of th<.: an.: ragc peasant. lts rl:1H·c:-.c11tatin:~ li,·c in L0\1·n and in San .Juan. lls po,,·cr .- ,cems LO be loca li1cd uut:-id<.: his barrio. Its decisio11s i111lue ncc hilll. :llld ) et h<.: has little part in influe11cing- the-.c decisions. \\·c :-,ha ll see that even today he nlltsl depend 011 middle farmers and hacienda owners to med iate his needs to the authorities of the town. And he must come to terms ,,·ith decisions which dictate some o( the conditions of his life. He does so by personifying the state. His image of the state is modeled o n the highest personal authority with whom he is familiar from barrio life. This is the au thority o[ the hacienda owner. This transfer of the image of local authority to the insular level is historically condi ti oned . Until about J 930, political power in San Jose was concentrated in the hands of hacienda owners and creditor merchants. The effective centralization of power on the insula r level is a relatively recen t phenomenon. The phrasing of insular authority in terms of local persons thus appears to have arisen in r esponse to certain changes in the <listribu tion of power within Puerto Rico. To the people in Manicaboa, and to the majority of the people in San Josc, the election of i\llufioz Marin to the insular office of governor represented a transfer of the idea l of th e "good landowner" to the level of the nation as a whole. l'vfufioz's technique of campaigning, whether developed consciously or unconsciously, presented the people symbols which they associate ·w ith this ideal. After Munoz' third successfu l e leCLion campaign in i9,18, a large landowner asked, "\Vho can stand up against Munoz? He went out into the country. He drank black coffee with the jibaros. H e slept in their hammocks. How many people can say, 'In this hammock slept l\iuiiozl' People do not forget th is. I would not forget it, either, if I were one of them." The political behavior of the party leader conforms to cultural norms with which the country people are familiar in the local context of barrio life: his tactic of "going to the people"; his readiness to talk to country folk; the simplicity of his speeches and language; his willingness to share their food and hospitality; his in[ormality in clothes and studied dislike

SAN JOSE: '"fRADlTlONAL" COFFEE MUNICIPALITY

o( u rban anicles o( wearing apparel; his reputation as a man who can hold his liquor well; his appea l to women: his attempts to "give life" co the people, to bcucr their conditions. The kind of man who fits this d esniption on the loca l level is the "good landowner." Mu(1oz' program o[ economic reform became effective in i\ Iani ca boa , as in m ost of San Jose, in terms of reacti,·ating the C11Sl01l1 of g ranting subsistence plots, with the di flcrcn( e that now it is the government which u11dert;1kes the responsibility of maintaining the worker d11ri11g h i-. 11011productive period. "i\luiioz ha-. gi,-cn Iii<: to the people," said the wife of an agricu lt11ral Ltborcr. "I le has g i,·en them their subsistt'IHT plots. M> they ca 11 plant their crops and keep th e ir li ule co\\'s. Th ese are good th ings." Finally, in a pp roach i11g peopl e 011 a personal level, comparable to the approa('h of the: ide:d landowner, he has enlisted the personal loy;tltics of people in ways which are Li111ili;1r to th('111 in the local context. It is common to hc:1r people ~ay. "\Ve are not Populares. \ Ve are ;<. I ui101i~tas." Com·er:.el) . they often observe with a sense of sadness that "things will be bad when l\Iu1ioz dies. The Po pul a r party will not be able to plow on in the sam e ditch." Peasant loya lties in politics are primaril y Joya l ties to a person o r a set of persons rather tha n to parties a nd their principles. The peasa nts look upon the presen t governo r as a man who is acting in their interest. H e is th erefore a "good" man, and loyalty tO\\·ards him ca n be maintained, even when criticisms of his subordinates or party associates are given free reig n . lt is widely held in Pueno Rico that "i\Iu11oz taught the peasants hm,· to vote." .sin ce the present governor is seen as a "good" authon~y ~gure, the peasants are cager to show the ir apprec1at1on of him at election ti mes. They recognize th e vote as a m eans of sustai n ing this personal authority on the insu lar level. Education

Th1·ee hundred and fiCty children now at~en~l the four elem entary schools in :\ lanicaboa. This fi g ure d emonstrates a profound change from the time when forma l educa tio n was available only to the few ab le to pay fo r it. Today education is limited only by facilities, but these are so inadequate th at there are approxima tel y three hundred and fifty adclitio1~a l school-age ch ildren in Manicaboa who are not yet 111cluded in the network o[ formal education. :\ t the same time, the shi(t tO\,·ar<ls education for a ll has ca used the peasantry to consider schooling for their ch ild ren as a n ideal , even though they do not reali1e it. People who know how to read and write are accorded prestige, and functional literacy is o[ obvious vt1lue in a culture which is making increasing use of printed words and figures, whether for the purpose of registe ring a deed or checking on the ~ooks a~ the store. The ability to read and write is a lso 111creas 111gly va lued b eca use it he lps the peasant "defend himseH" whe n deal ing w ith urban inslitutions. Toda y, the rural schools have by no means met a ll

2 13

edu~tional . nee~ls. A large portion of education in i\Iam caboa is still p ro\'ided in an informal wav. L ife centers around agriculture, and as we shall see i n our discussion of the life cycle, children a re integrated into the work processes o( the family. For ha lf the children of sch~ol age in. N!anicaboa, this still represents the only krnd of trammg they receive. Forma l means of education ar~ still w~ak or nonexistent. The Agricultural Extension Service, which m a inta ins vouth clubs in some other barrios, has not yet establi~hed a club in isolated ~Ia nicaboa. The r adio, which promises to a p~werlul mea~1s of r eaching people everywhere lll the islan~I, has little importance here, because not more th an six people in the barrio own radio sets. T he ~leed f~r readi ng a nd writing in peasant life remains m~erm1tt.en.t, and only a rudimentary knowledge of anthmeuc is necessary to calculate the small amounts o( money or goods which have to be added or subtracted. Furthe~·m~r~, the illiterate peasant can still rely ?1~ other md1v1du.als t~ help him in his need. The iu11era1n. trader will wnte letters in payment for eggs. The middle farme r, who fu nctions as barrio leader, can e xplain the recent party throw-away or interpret the newspaper, which he has brought back from town. The peasa nts arc willing to send their children to school, but express the opin ion that schooling with· draws them from home tasks and home discipline. \ Vh.en l'.1bor needs ~ncrease, they are quick to take t~eir children out of school and to put them to work. 1 eachers must work hard to maintain the attendance o( th~ir charges. Education is regarded as less necessar y fo.r girls than for boys, since women occupy themseh-es with h.ou~ehold tasks: while tasks which require literacy Lall wHhm the prov m ce of n1.en.

?e

Recreation

The pea.sai~ts o~ tvia nica boa do not look upon work as an end 111 1tsell , but as a m eans to an end. The end is le isure and the enjoyment of the fruits of work. Agricultural. labor. is hard, and it is regarded as a 11ecessary evil. lt is recognized that much work is needed to sustain life, and prestige goes to men and women who are able to work hard and who master the tasks that are required of them. Yet work must not be allowed to dominate a man's existence to the ex.ten t that h e cn.n no longer enjoy le isure. It may b e said that the lorty days of religio us observance throughout the year serve to institutionalize leisure. On mo~t o( thcs~ days o nly a few exceptional inclividua~s will ,,·~rk 111 the fields. :;'\;onnally, work is restn cted to lig hter tasks abou t the house or business may be combined with a trip to t0wn. lt is the recrea~ io n al aspect o( the labor exchange system which lends 1t such streng th. Exchange labor is recrea tional in cha racter as 11.1 uch. as it is work, a nd the prospect of good (ellowsh1p, smgi ng, and a few drinks constitute as much an :ltlraclion as the fact that needed work is performecl with pooled labor. Just as work is considered necessary yet unpleasant,

2

14

T l IE

l'J.::01'1.E OF l'U::RTO R I CO

so thrift in the expendiw1-e o( money and the ability to r educe consump tion a1-e necessary traits of the familial econom y. Yet thrift and reduced consumption mu ~ t n o t be can-ied to the point where a man b ecomes unwilling to expend money for the purpose o[ impl ementing le is ure. be it to buy a glass of rum or to furni-,h rocoa and cr;1ckers to the a ssembled g u e'>ts at a d e votion to a saint. P eople who ··"·ork too h<ird for a dollar" or who are considered stingy lose pres tige : those who work to "eat well" and who permit themselves the luxury of occasional recreat ional expenses arc h e ld in esteem . Th e second characteristic of much o( peasant recrea tio n is its fun c tional interco nnection w ith oth er a ctivities o( li fe . \.Ve have see n that the labor exchange sys tem s urrou nds work p e rform ance with a pl easantly recreational aura. Similarl y the chief r el ig io us cvems of peasant life, the s ung d evot ions to th e saints, arc also recr ea tiona l and :1rt istic events. The devotion ful fills obligations which are thought to ensure the health and well-be ing of people and crops. lt affords an opportunity for th e young men lo look over the young girls in the n e ighborhood. The songs evoke pleasure because of th e ir artist ic formulation as well as their relig ious conte nt. Dances are u s ually h eld on some religious occasio n wh ich justifies its reci-ea tional aspec t. F o r example, a dan ce may b e held to celebrate a baptism or a marriage or to make the most of Three Kings ' Da y. Childre n h ave specia l forms of pla y. They ma y fl y kites or pla y with homemade balls and tops. Little g irls also p lay at lau ndering or preparing food, while boys imitate a dult trading activ ities, u sing bottles tied 0 11 strings to represent li vestock . .-\s yet, littl e is commercialized in peasant r ecreation. Only a h a nd ful of peop le in the barrio own radios, a nd radio listening is still a strange experience lo m a n y households in i\Ian icaboa . Sports, like baseball and baske tball, which are popular in San J uan, h ave not yet p e netrated the barrio. The latest musica l hits of the towns find their way on ly slowly into t h e rural area. The p eople continue to play much of th e ir folklike music, which retains traditiona l forms. Abi l ity to im provise words to music w ithin the complex fram ework o ( traditional rh ymes lends prestige to a man , a nd improvisi n g is a favo1·ite pastime. Finally, recreational act ivit ies te nd to emphasize the dominant soc ial role of the head of the fami ly and co unde rline the su bordinate position of women. Men alone may d r ink, play dice or cards, watch an informa l cockfight b e hind somebody's barn, or improvise verses and music in an atmosphere of jocular rivalry. T h ey m ay v isit the town in orde r to shop, linger in th e rnve rns to enjoy a few drinks 'vith fri ends or re lati ves. :Vlarried men may attend dances h e ld at other houses, but married wome n may not. Married wome n may vis it each other at their homes, and un marri ed g irls may go visiti ng in g roups on Su ndays a 11d holida y-;. Ye t the ir recrea tion a l contacts are rarely w id e, and th ey alwa ys center in the narrow sph e re of their own hou seholds.

Religion The dominant form of religious expres:. io 11 in >.Iani ca boa is th e saint cu lt. [ach household owns an image of one or l\,·o saints, us uall y Saint :\nthony and a \ irgi11. These. together with the h o useho ld crucifix. :ire d esignated as the " H oly Famil y... Such illlages :ire ll '> ttally made of wood (sn nlos d e /Hilo) and carved by m e n \\·ho s peci:di1.e in the produ ctio n or such image-; (.rnn l <'rfJ.1) . for c:xample. th e itine rant trad <.:r of l .i111011 e-;. So11/1•ms ,,·ill produce only for lli<.:11b \\'l10 :tr<.: p cr-.011:tlly k110\\'n to th<.:111. Ouhid<:rs ha\·<.: dill1< 1tl1 y i11 ob1ai 11i11g ~ ll< h illl:1ges. IHT:1 11-.c pt·llpl c h e lic ,·L" tl1:1t ll1 e Prote ... t:111h ;ire hu ~ i11g up ll1v i111a g<.:-; i11 11rd<.:r 10 bun· the m . The i111:tgc.-. c:111 0111\ be so ld when still i11 die 1111blc:-.-;ed ... tat~·. 011 ce ll1t·~· have h c.:c.: 11 1:1ke 11 to to\\' 11 :rncl ble.-.sed hy the pric'>I'. they m:i y 110 longer be 1r;111sferred for 11 1CJ11<.:\'. · r o,,·11 p eople laugh al co 11 11try people for thc.:ir · woode n sa i11l'i. :111d a .-.111all 11u111hc r ol Li111ilic'i i11 .\ l:111i(':tbo:i have pun h:r-.cd pla~1cr s:1int-. in tm,·11 -.tore-; to re pl:t< c· their woodc 11 i111 ;1g<.:'>. T h e .~:i i11l\ are ~: 1id to guard th e hou-.ehold . . \t regularl y ~ p:ic cd i mc.:1Tals the huuschold olf crs ccna i 11 goods to the saint. \\·ho is expected to reciprocate b )' furni;;hing the household with luck and pros pe rity. Rituals of devotion (h ere ca lled ve/orios and n ot rosarios as elsewhere) to the household saint are u suall y organi1.ed to obtain relief in case of sickness or to thank the saint for a recovery. H ealth, one of the matters o[ greatest concern , thus figures prominently in the list of troubles which people will refer to the saint. Cases are also known where devotions were h e ld to en sure success in a transaClion and to com 111 cm o rate a turn of good luck in an unfortunate pro p erty transaction. D evotions arc most commonly h e ld 0 11 the days of Saint Anthony and the Virgin of Carme l. As these d ates fall in a season when peopl e arc like ly to be short of cash , the ceremonies arc o ccas ionally put a head of schedu le or postpo n ed. Postponeme nt often carries with it stricken conscie n ces a nd a feeling that ill luck may befall the fami ly and that t h e harvest will be bad. There arc two types of ritual devotions to the saints : those th at are sung (velorio cnntao) and those that are prayed (ve lorio 1·ezao). Prayed devotions are us uall y h e ld b y the family alone, but su ng devotio ns are social, nrtistic, and relig ious events of n e ig hborhood importan ce. Th e latter type is illustra ted b y che fo llo wing : 0

In th e late morning. Don Feyo rut three Oex ihle poles to form th e vault of the altar; and a cousin of his arrived to pla y th e ~u itar. About 7 P.\J. two young girls. hoth members of the fa 111il y from another household, began to build the nltar and to decorate it. The three poles were: tied in the shape of a mull to the narrow sides of the table. They were covered " ·ith a white sheet and cheese cloth and decornt<"d with white. red, pink :rncl mauve Oowers. l nsicle the al1 :u, pots of flm1·crs were arranged on the sides. Two hlack:ind·\\'liite prints o f the Virgin of Carmel were stood aga inst th t• l>:tc k of the altar. Three p;iintccl woode n sa ints nnd a plaster crucifix were lin ed up in front. Two ca ne!!<-~ \\'C'rc

SAN JOSf:: •· rRADlTIO:->AL'. COFFEE :'.lU:->lCIPALlTY

scl up in InHll of lhese Sla lues. Exlra candles were laid on 1he a I La r. to IJt: used as needed. The g irls who had he lped with the arrangemenls took seats a long the kit side of the rno111. They Sal \'Cry quielly, keeping their h :111cls folded 011 the ir l:ips before them, and !>illing with downcast eyes. The ch ildren sat on the right ~idc of the room. ;\kn sat 011 the porch. or st0ocl in a small group n ear one window that \,·:1s kfl open. A \'Cry fe\1' came inside lite room :1nd sat down on a bench . The ritual l>1.:g:111 \\·he n a boy holding a gu itar sal down i11 front o l 1hl' :iltar. and ihe o ldest son of the house sang tlu· lir't _,ong. :1c<o111pa11ying hi111sclf \1·ith 111amrns as he ":111g. l'hn 11'l'l'L' joirn:d Ii~- L\\' O other boys. Fro m then on. 1·:u h wok 111111' ,inging a H'r"t" The \'erses dealt with the l'a,,i1111 ol lhl' l .onl. \lt1T 1lu· f11,1 k\1' 11T;,,t''· thL' ho,t annonn ccd the first ro'ar~. ! k :1 11d 1\\'11 girl:. nl'l llj >inl the bench in fro n t of the :tl1 :1r. :t lld <> Il l' or the girb rt'( ilL'd the rosary. The people i11sid1· the r110111 n·aUl'!I as ii i11 church. kneeling al lhe propn i111t·1 '"'"- 1·t1. ThL· 111t·11 outsid~ did n ol pr:iy. listen or kncl'I. Slu1nh :11lt·1 1h1· 1·1"an· c:111H: to an encl, four men dressed i11 th l'ir linl " ·hit1· ,hiri-, a11d 1 lot hes arri1·ed ou tside. One <.1rril'll :1 g ui1.11 :i nd ,ang lc>r 111T1lly minules. n .:rcmoniously :1 ... ki11" p1·1111i"ill11 tll 1·11tt·r iht· houst:. The host in wrn cere111011i~t1,,ly :1,kt·d him tu cttlt'I'. "The Vi rg in of Carmel will re.: pay you ... \\'ith two guitars present. the cle\'otion really bcg:in. The playing and si ngi ng was interntplccl by three more rosa .-ies. :\II prayers \\·l'rc.: adcl1·1:ssecl lo the Vi rgin of Carmel. Two wc 1·1: sa id hy lll c ll. one by a man and a girl joinlly .. \ s lime ad1·an ccd . the playing and sing ing grew more inte nse, the gu ilars played n10n.: complicated rhythms. improvisations on the saned ~n n gs grew more co1nmon. :\II the sing-ing w:ts done hy th<.: ho ys until ·1 A.:11.. \\'h<.:n the girls sang lwo songs. The clc\'otion lasted until G A.:11.. wilh an occasional pause in lhe singing. Each m:tn rl'rei\'cd a glass of nun. each girl a glass of wine. a nd soda crackers were distributed at midnight. .\l G:;~o A.:11. the p eople kft. th;1nking the host. Ont: cousin, a girl. remained behind t.o hl'lp in the clca11-11p. At 7:30 there \\·as n o sign left o( the prc\'ious night's a ctivities. Peo· pie did not go Lo sleep, but went aboul their dail y tasks.

2 15

still under the jurisdiction of their fathers opporumities to visit the town without parental supervis io n and for the best o( re ligious purposes. For all the purposes of daily liCe, the relationships between the family and its saints serve t0 cover the major religious needs. The peasant family is thus not only an economic unit, a pool of labor and o( r esources, it is also a religious unit. Each family possesses a cross. At the {t esla de la cruz in October newly married couples bring their cross to town to be blessed . 'Nhen people move into a new house, they take their cross \\'ith them. \i\Then the head of the household dies, he is ''taken out" with the cross, which is carried before him in his last march to the cemetery in town. A(terwards, the cross hangs in the room he d ied in to commemorate him. In order to ward off the evil eye, crosses are also placed in the fields and at places where charcoal is burned. Each household also has a rosary, which is recited nightly. These rosaries deviate fr~m the approved \'ersion, especially in the final gracias. These prayers arc usua lly passed down in fami ly lines, and each family has a spec ial way of end ing them. I n Don Tass io's family, the grace was invemed by his grandmother's sister. ln Don Feyo's family, one of the daughters thought up a special a nd most effective urace to the \'irgin. t> The family also baptizes its ch ildren with water (br111tismo de ag11r1) before the ch ild is presented for forma l religious baplism in the town church. Such baptisms are adjudged to be "just as good" as the other that follows, and just as necessa ry, but differ Crom the priestly baptism in the absence o( h oly water. For some special purposes, however, the mechanism o( family worship and Camilial dealings with the saints d o noL suffice. The saints and the familia l cross must be blessed in town. The town priest must perform a baptism in order to admit the ch ild to the comSuch sung de\'otions are discussed for days afterwards. munity of living Christians. Children must be conl n addition to their relig ious and artistic character, firmed. i\Iarriages should be celebrated in the town they also represent the chief recreational events o[ church, and people should confess in town at least cou ntry life. T o the young men o( the barrio they once a year. \ Vhe n a person dies, he is buried in the are opportunities to look over the marr iageab le town cemetery. Such act ions and ceremonies are b eyoung g irls of the neighborhood and LO talk with yond the power of the fam il y and must be performed them while siuing outside th e house on the balcony by the town priest. \Vhile the sa ints suffice for probor standing out in the open. Jn fact, the young men lems of da ily living. these ceremonies require a specia l conside1· the statement "There is a devotion on in charism which only the representative of God in the Doria l'and1 iLa·s house" to be synonymous with .. Let's wwn can lend to them. go over and look al the girls \\'ho are assembled al The religious life of i\fanicaboa is thus carried on Do1"ia l'a nchita ·s." To th e host, the devotion represen ts on two diftercn t leve ls, the level o( the rural neig ha chan ce lo "pay" his obligations a nd to show off his borhood with its sn in t worship, and the level of the household to the neighborhood. sacramental church with its seat in town. lt may I n addition to sponsoring a devotion within the e\·en be said that the relations of the ru1·al households household, men. "·omen, g irls, and boys may make 10 thci1· saints arc patterned o n the relationship of cena in promises (fno111 esas). They may promise to beg peop le within the rural neighborhood to each other. money to huy th e sta tue of the Virgin a new cloak, Ea ch househo ld ma y be said LO rnrry on a sel o( to bu y a n image or a sailll, to wear a specia l nunlike reciprocal relalions with its part icu lar saint, just as in ga rb (11ribito) for a specilled period o( time, or LO go sec ular life people ca rry on various types of reciprocal to mass in to\\'ll for a specified numbe r of times. This relationships "·ith their neighbors. The household last-named promise has afforded many young men ofi ers the sa int certai n goods and de \'otion at regular

2 I 6

Tll E P EO PL E OF PCERTO RICO

inte r va ls, a nd th e saint is e xpec ted to rec iprocaLe wiLh g ifts of good fo rtune fo r Lhe members o f Lhe h o useh o ld. Thc.;e reciproca l relations bet\\·ee n p eopl e and the i r sa ints are con ceive d as a series of pa ym e nts, just a s in rea l li fe people r ega rd exchanges ,,.iLh th e ir n e ig h bors as r ec ip r ocal p aym e nts. \ Vh e n p eople plan to h o ld a s ung <l e ,·otio nal in h o nor of the \'irg in , th ey say ch ey are go ing to ' ' p ay " ( paga1·) Lh e \ ' frg in. \\.h e n p eop le p lan co h o ld a d e vo ti o n LO Sa int Anth o n y, th ey are " p ay ing" (paga n do) Lhe saint. H Lh e pa ym e nts a r e m a c.l e pro p e rl y a nd a t intervals, the sairns arc b o und to produ ce r esults. P aym e nts at th e rig ht Lim e e n sure good han·es ts a nd k eep mis fortune away from th e famil y. \Ve have noted that uneasiness prevails wh e n ever a pa yment is delayed. The greatest worry o f d y in g p eo pl e is who will take care o( their promised pay m e nts a(te r th ey are g one. In one case a g irl about to die g ave h e r s iste r a complete list of the pa ym e nts a nd a ~ k e d h e r to can-y them out after her death. P eopl e recogn ii"e that the saints are themselves con troll e d b y a hig h e r auth o rity. The sa ying has it that "the sa ints ca n ' t wh e n God does not want it" (Si Dios n o q11iere, sa 11t os 11 0 jJ u e d e 11 ) . But for all prac tica l purposes. G o d is too far away in his h ea ven to affect th e d a il y life whic h p eople mus t ca rry on. H e is pic t ured in fo lk be li ef as s itting in p erpe tua l judg m e nt o ver t h e s inn e rs who a r r ive from earth. The saints a ct as c.lelcgates o l his a uthority, and it is they in the ce lesti a l hi e r a rch y who ca n be approa ch ed directly b y the p eople the m sel ves. It ma y be th a t this pi c ture of a n imperson a l G o d and the little inte rest it evokes is conc.litio n ecl b y th e primarily personal and fa ce-toface n e two rk o ( reciprocal relationships in which m ost p eople in ~ J ani caboa pass their lives. Th e r e lig io us form s and expressions of the rural area cann o t, h o wever, function in comp lete iso lation from the larger church. They depend on the r it u alized approval o ffe r ed by the Catholi c sacraments. The major life cycle ce remonies like baptism, marriage, and burial a re p e rformed in town. Their performan ce b ears fun ction a l r e lations to other aspects of rural life . R ecei v ing the prescribed Catholic sanction s r em a ins a prerequisite of a good co m./Jad re and thus co ns titu tes the b asis of a large number of reciproca l r e la tio n shi ps fo rmed in the rural area. Church m a r riage va lidates a new h o usehold, wh ich is set up i nde p e nde n t of esta blished fa mil y units. Identifica tio n of m e n a nd w omen with male o r fema le sa ints, r esp ectively, te nd s to support the custo mary division of la b o r in t h e rura l family. vVomen, for example, are ide ntifie d with the Virg in in their role as m o th ers. Sa int im ages a nd c rosses must be taken to town to b e blessed in c hurch. Sin ce so mu ch o[ Ji(e in Mani caboa is v alid a ted by t h e Catholic church, a person must see k th e sacram e nts to be a complete self-respec ting human b e in g (un Crist iano). Adherence to the church, in turn, te nds to e n sure contin uity of rural life patterns. The churc h , h o w e ve r, <loes no t enter rural life th ro u g h person a l contact. At the time of our sta y,

the: W\,·11 pri est h ad n o t b een in \Ianicabo a fo r a year. T h e church in San Jose fun ctio ns as a sacrame ntal ins tilulio n , di::.pe n .,ing the sacram ents to th ose who seek th em o n prescribed rituali1.ed occasio ns. Its co n tac ts " ·ith rural p eopl e thus te nd LO be inte rmitte nt and impersonal. lt d ocs n o t e nte r the e ve r yda y life of the b a rrio . The 1·elatio ns of the pea::.a nt to the cem e r o f his r e lig io us lif e thus tend Lo be quite impersonal and ou t o l Iii-. hand. Thi <> t ~-p e of rc lig io11-. rc lation-.hip :1ppc:;1r-. Lo p:1r:tl lcl ot h<:r -.<.· t-. o l rel: rtior i-. ;1..,..,nc i:11 cd wi tl1 dil kn: 11 t :1c ti ,·iti c:-.. II L1mili :d d e:t!i11g-. witl1 iii <.: ~: 1in t.., :1rC' p au<.-r11 ed 011 LIH· d c:t!i11 g-. Cl l the l:1111il y with otl wr n c ig hborl rood J:rmili c-.. 1! 1(' 1e la tio1h ol rnral fa111i lic:-. lo 1!1 <: lor111 :1I c.<.·111cr ol their re li g ion :1ppl': 1r lO p:1ralkl L11 e ir re htio1 1-, to the forr11:tl 11rl>:111 (J) g; 111i1:1tio11"> of l'< 0110111ic-; :111d gon' rn11 1c:11L. Th e: p<:a!>allt is r<:J:itc:cl l<J Lil <: !>C':lh or politic :ti . l'CClnOlllic., :ind re (ig iom powe r ''Ll1rou g h c h:11111cl-. ... throug h tir e: op<:r:itio11 o ( i1111ic:r-.0 11:11. 11icr:1rc Ii ic:t!h• or<ra11i1ccl lirH''> ol :n1!110ri1 v• \""'t whid1 11 <: 111HIC'r-. 1.:i11d-. hut littl e: ;ind \\'lii clr '1 :1\'C little: u11d c: r.., la 11di11 g- o f lii111. Health

\\'e have seen that illness is the subject o f m os t re lig io u '> con cern. Illness, in fac t, constiwtes o n e o f th e maj o r topics o ( conversatio n. \ \/h e n o n e man m ee t-; a noth e r along the "·aysidc, he will inquire abo ut th e oth e r's state o f h e alth. U su a lly he ge ts the reply, " l. iul c well! " (j; oco b ie 11 ), a n ans"·c r that tries n o t to te mpt the fa tes . The numbe r of people wh o have bee n "stron g" (f ue rte) all their lives is small. ~l os t p eo ple or th e bal"l'io have had experience with intcs tin:d parasites, tuberculosis, or venereal disease, or all three. Ir we add to these ailments the malnutrition caused by a n overspecialized diet, we c:an easily explain th e preva lence of aches a n d pa ins and the prcdomin:incc or "s ick unrest " (desociliu). The outstandi ng ch arac terist ic o( folk medicine is its empirica l nature. Certain plants, herb baths, and h e rb drinks cure certa in conditions. C/1icoria is made into a drink fed to teeth ing children. Tdrtago seeds arc a s trong purgative. Tdrtago leaves arc used in b a ths and drinks. Sa lv ia and oil, rubbed toge ther on th e fore head, docs away with h eadaches. A11am1i. ca uses a bortion, yet prevents bleeding. Fried cac tus, a pplie d to the sm a ll of the back, does away with kidney trouble; and so forth. A la rge 11umbc r o[ di[fe re n t plan ts, su ch as ig ui Lio oloroso, eu ca li pt o, rue/a, a lvaca de clavo, altamisa, and )'C rba !11 isa, are also used to m a ke e ffec ti ve baths. They ca n be used prag· maticall y. " So metimes you don't cure yourself with o n e thing , th e n you cure yourse lf with an o the r," one wo man said. Usually, then, a numbe1· of su ch rem edies arc used. H the gravity of the case wa rrants, the docto r i n town may be consulted. In al l cases, however, th e e xpectat ion is that the symptoms 'vi ii clea r up quick ly. IC th ey fa il to disappear afLer prolonged p e riods, witchcraft is suspected. Aga inst ill ness caused by witchcraft even the town <loctor is helpl ess. Fo lk th eory recognizes four major types of causes

SAN

for illness. At times these causes are conceptualized separately. At other times, the severa l causes are invoked together, and inconsistencies between the several explanations arise. These inconsistencies are not due to several methods of treatment, but due to the (act that each symptom must be dealt with pragmatical ly, while at the same time a ll the characteristics or the illness must be satisfacterily explained. First. there is the belief that the "normal" equilibrium of the bod,· will be disturbed by imprudent contact with ··cold .. things ,,·hen one is "hot," and with "hot" thing-s \\·hen one is "cold." This has been found c lsc\\'hcrc in Lat in America. It has to do partly with diet. :. ti x ing hot foods, such as yellow )1autia, m ea t, codfoh, or manioc "·ith cold foods like bananas, po1·k. fi sh, onion, or s\\·eet potatoes "affects you through the stomach." The result is merely stomach cramps (em/>ncl1<') o r. more serious ly, pnsmo, a term which might he transbtcd as loca lized muscular disturbances. Foods. 110\\-cvcT. arc not the on ly source o( clanger. A voung nc\\'h·-m an icd \\·oman developed a bladder infecti~n bec~use "she had washed clothes in the cold creek while 'hot.' " A woman who h ad given birth to a ch ild developed tuberculosis, and ascribed it to h aving eaten some wh ite cheese containing lemon, a cold food, too soon after the hot state of the delivery. A man who had been mending a fe nce refused to rescue a chicken which had fa llen in the water tank, explaining that since he was "hot," contact w ith the cold water would cause muscular disturbances. P eople refuse to wash a(cer they h ave danced or sung the night through . ' 1\Tork in the sweet potato plantings is d a ngerous when p eople are in "hot" states. The sweet potato is the cold food par excellence. The second type of illness is attributed to diseases "which eat the blood." Such diseases a re tuberculosis, venerea l disease, and malaria . There is relatively little malaria in the mountains, but sometimes young men returning from the ca ne fi elds of the coast may act as carriers . ' 1\Then one man died o( malaria, a peasant commented: "I believe that the spirit lives in the blood . . . . The man died, the malaria had eaten his blood. A ll that was left was water.'' A boy who was ca lled upon to give a blood transfusion to a friend expla ined, after the transfusion had proved useless and the patient had died, that the transfusion had been g iven to "help him die." The illness had eaten so much blood that he could not muster the necessary strength to die. 'i\lhen blood was administered, his strength returned, and h e died. v\Thile venereal disease is not a subj ect of grave concern ("In our house we a ll have bad blood"), tuberculosis is considered dangerous. N"evertheless, it is considered a lack of respect to refer to a person as tubercular. Various circumlocu tions are employed (es ct ico, tiene oidos de dtico, enfer mo d e! tJec110). ' \Thile a TB carrier may receive a separate bed, he is never g iven separate quarters. The third ca use of illness is witchcraft. ·when th e illness h as not given way to herb baths and herb 1

JOSE:

''TRADITIONAL" COFFEE i\IUNIClPALITY

2I7

cures, when the doctor has attempted a cure and failed, it is thought probable that a case of witchcraft is involved. Let us look at one case history to discern some o f the elements involved in such a belief. This case is specially revealing owing to the verbal facility of the informant a nd to his insight into the functioning of his own personality. Do you believe in witchcraft? I do. I think you are wrong when you say that you do not believe in it. !viaybe you misunderstand what an hechizo [a spell] is. I was very healthy, nothing ever happened to me to make me sick. One clay I felt a pain creeping up my right leg and thigh. It was terrible. All my joints became inflamed. I could not move any more. I grew stiff all OYer. People had to help roe sit up. They had to feed me. They had to wash me. Then they took me to the curing woman. She works under the guidance of the Virgin of Perpetual Succor. She has an altar, with candles burning day and night. This altar is decorated with many saints. She does not charge anything. If she charged, she would be worth nothing. I believe that people may make themselves sick. I t is u·ue that I suffer from the state of my nerves. If I am in a rage, it affects me like a purgative . . . . But she told me a neighbor meant to harm me. You always first suspect your neighbors. ' •\Then it is a case of witchcraft, it is usually a neighbor_ She said a neighbor had buried a bottle in my plot of lancl and "·orked evil on me (me hizo un trabajo) in this fashion. But I am a man with many friends. She said I was a strong man, because I had many friends. [This theme reoccurs often in the conversations of the same man.] She promised to cure me. She gave me chick pea oil, together with other things, for a rubdown. I t burned my skin, it burned terribly. It burned the pain right out of my body. She gave me a charm (resguardo) to hang around my neck on a chain. A bottle like the one that made me sick (im pote) contains ruda (rue), earth from the grave, bath water of the dead, pins, and bruja.s The bruja causes people to wander about the world aimlessly (desandar). In most cases, witchcraft is equated w ith attacks by the evil eye (mal de ojo). The evil eye is always said to be clue to envy, envy of people, children, plantings, cattle, or charcoal. It causes paralysis and wasting away. But it is not primarily a matter of personal animosity. Some people may have the evil eye but not know it. People who are subj ect to ill luck. may suspect others but can never be sure o( the correctness of their identification. Newcomers to the barrio are warned that "there are some bad eyes up here in the Altura." But the evil eye exists rather as a force apart from p eople, and the means of warding it off are mechanical in character. Adults carry charms (resguardos) . Children carry small black h ands of azavac11e, dogs' in cisors, or srna ll packages of rue, tied to their wrists. Crosses are used to protect houses, plantings, and places where charcoal is produced. Direct accusations of witchcraft are rare. i\!Iost people will refuse to identify specific individuals who· are harming them through witchcraft. Only two pers nufll: Ruta Cholape11sis L. brujo: Bryopll'yllum pinnatum, Lam. K.

2 I8

TllE l'EOPL E OF l' l,' ERTO RICO

son s ,,·ere idernified as prac titioners. Both were "·o men, and both were accused at the same Lime o f certain se xual irregularities . .l\" e ve rtheless, "You always first s u s p ect your neig hbo rs," people who arc close Lo you and are involved with yo u in one way or another. J n one case. an agricultura l laborer, who had fallen victim of one mis fortune after another, a ccused his bro the r, who o ,.,,·n ed land a nd had given him work, of b e ing a "·itch and the cause of his ill luck. H e <lid not m a k e the a ccu sa tion publicly, howe ver-, but m e n tion ed it to their fath e r. The father to ld him n e ve r to think of s u ch a thing . The charge was dro pped a nd n o thing more was said. The man whose story w as told abo ve in his o wn "·ords also had a specific pe1·son in mind, but re fu sed to make his suspicions public. The impersonal chan1c te1· of the evil eye a nd the unwilling ness to id e ntify specific inclividual s a s witches ser ve to maintain th e so c ia l cohesion re quire d by b a rrio life . , \t th e sa m e time, envy is said to be the prin c ipa l cause o f a nxie t y a bout "·itchcraft- envy of the p ossessio m and fo rtun es of your neighbors. This con cern abouc o th e r p e rson s' fonun ~s is r eveal ed in other contexts. Inte res t in th e property of othe r people is clearly evid e n ced in daily conversations. The s tatus of married women depends upon t h at of their hus bands, and it is m e as ured by whether o n e owns s uch things as a b e d s pread, a tablecloth, or a set of d is h es and e a ts ri ce and b eans daily or three times a week. These matte rs are the topic of muc h d a il y ta lk. It mus t be n o te d tha t the numbe r o f h o u sehold possess io n s has increased tremendously <luring the p ast fe "· decades. Unde r the old s ubsis ten ce c ulture, p eopl e were satisfi ed with i-e latively few possess ions o bta in ed from the outs id e . The growth or th e coffee c ulture made it poss ible for a larger and more reg ular s upply of necessary commocli ties to b e imported, althoug h the hacienda s tore furnished only a res tricted va riety of goods. Und e r modern conditions, a g reater variety a nd qu a ntity o r good s are coming within reach of the rural b a rrio. Tobacco has increased th e cash income of the s m a ll fa rme r. Improved transportation h as brought th e to wn closer. The numbe r o r independ e nt s tores in Lo wn has in creased. Th e integratio n of the island with the mass-production culwre of the Uni ted States has broug ht with it a reg ular s upply o [ c heap and varied goods prev io usly complete ly unknown to the rural population. Powd er ed milk, ca nne d rruit juices, chin a dishes and m e tal forks, :-. p oo n s a nd kni ves, mirro rs. white s hirts, ch ea p s hoes, pl astic b e lts and h a nd bags, m a ttresses a nd b ed.-. prea d s, pl as te r sa in ts. p a te nt medicin es-a ll o f which a re now a ,·a il a bl e at most wwn s to r·es and o f te n a re wi t hin the m e ans o f th e s m a ll farm fa mil y- h a ve in<T<:asecl th e numb<.: r o r ite m s whi ch give a h o usehold pres Lige and s tallls in th e e yes of the barrio. As these g oods mus t b e purch ased, they symboli1.e growing mon e ta ry wealth. .\ra tc:rial posse-;s ions te nd w introduce subtle so ( ia l dis tinctio n s b e t ween those who o w n more and t h ose who own less. Th e so c ial p ositio n o f p eo ple

who arc unable Lo accumulate material goods g radually dete ri o rates. Ba d luck m ay prevent a man from acquiring th e p ossessions which arc n ecessary to his s tatus . . \nd s i11 ce all farrners of th e barrio are subject to cycles of good and bad lu ck d espite their best efforts, anxieties may be wrned into e nvy o( one's neighbors. H a famil y a cquires \\·eallh it dis turbs the social arrangem c n b in o th er ways than e lic iting c 11vy. People with mon <.:y c :111 buy land. " ·hi e h limit'i t h e !:ind a\·;iilabl c LO n tli<:r-. . T he~· c :r 11 hire l:i bor. thus d r i,·ing up wages 0 11 th <: l;11111 s ol p oor m e n ;111 d making n e ig h b o rs Jc-,., w illirr g L<> ,,·ork i11 th e hbo r e xchange be· cause th c:v lll :I\ 110,,· ,,·o rk for 111 0 11<.:v. and th c:v can buy pcrsc~ 11;1l ·.,c.: n ·ic<.:s. "·hi ch furtlr e;·s the te11~1<.:11cy to cva l11 :1tc .'> c n ·iccs i11 terms ol mon ey. This tc11dc11cy, as ,,.e h;1,·c ~ cc n. tran sforms kin and n('ighbors from participa nt'> i11 reciprocal. exchang<.:s into buyers and S<:llcrs o f ~<.: I T i C<.:'> . wh o ;1re C01l 5< io u -; of 1110 ll e t:tr)' values . Pc:op l<.: \\·i th m o n ey ma y th em.,c:h·cs becom e un\\·illing to pan i( ip:n e in n e ig hbo rl y e xchanges. Traditio n a l ti cs are thus threa te n ed b y cash accumulation. The threat Lo these ties may a lso enhance the fear o( witch craft. Thus individuals in the barrio who do not fulfill their reciproc;tl re lations are the harbingers of a new kind of life in which kin and neighborly relaLions may be who ll y impaired. It is significant that, as our informant s taled, having many friend s, i.e., maintaining many rec iprocal personal tics, m a k es a man s trong and able to withstand witchcraft. A s ye t, h o wever, accusations of witchcraft must not be m a d e publicl y, lest neig hbo r be set against neighbor. Th u s, a new anxiety lies b a ck of the continuance or r eciprocal ties. Its containment depends on the continuat ion of the precarious system of social and psychological balances. A fourth cause of disease, in addition to the ones already discussed, is the failure to (u lfill religious promises a nd vo ws. If the system o ( payments to the saint is intc rrupled , misfortune a nd bad harvests may result. The saint cult, the fin a l control over the events of d a il y life, mus t be maintained. Laxity carries th e d a nger o f pun ishmen L Life Cycle

The cultural ideal is to have a la rge, "Spanish" family. It is good to have many childre n, because, in the words o f many peasants, "children are the capital of the poo r." This phrasing realis ticall y a ppraises the e lcme rn o f "unearned in crem e nt," which is involved in the birth o f a child. The reso urces which go inw the upkeep o f a child are minm· whe n compared to the labo r whi ch th e child will contribute to the family after th e age of six o r se ve n. 1t is also C011sid e red good to have many children, "so t h ey w ill take care of you in yo11r old age." This phrasing recog ni1es the pauern of rcciprociLy between generations, according to which se rvi ces rendered whe n th e young are incompe tent to Lake care of themsel ves ;ire re p a id b y se r v i ce~ to th e old when

SA1' JOSE: "TRADITI ONA L " COFFEE 1\lUN IC t PALlTY

lhey have become infirm. The actual pauern of inhe1·ilance shows Lhal lhis sentiment has a basis in fa ct. \Vhile Lhe older chi ldren often move away at a tim e when the father is sti ll in full possession of his faculties, it of ten falls to the lo t o( the last child, el regafo 11 (the youngest, literally " the gift"), to administer the holding and to care for his aged parents. Childre n who migrate to town or to San Juan and who do ll<>l periodically send conLribuLions toward the upkeep of their parents are severely censured by barrio opinion. CnnHTsdy. children "·ho do concribllle are highly praised. :\ Ll1ird phra:-.ing of the desirability of chi ldren, espcci:1 lly of mal e children. states that it is good to have many children bcc111sc it shows that the m an is virile, that he has " strc ngtl1" ( tif'I/(' f 11 erza) . This formulalion in1plicitl y reinrorccs the pattern of dominance which tl1c m;tlc hc:1d o l th e lami ly exercises over his dept:nde1Hs. The corolbry of this attitude is expressed in a song " ·hi ch :-.tatcs lhal "·omen were given the facully ol concei\'i11g and bearing children as punishment fo r the lransgression of Eve. Finally, a founh phrasing is voiced by women when lhey say that it is good to have girl ch ild ren "because they stay with you and he lp you in your work." This ~1ttitude mirrors the tendency towards res ide nce with the wife's parents, a tendency which is especially strong among the children o( small ho lders, who marry while their fat her is still in con trol of the holding and who have to move in order to extricate the m selves from lhe tigh t ne twork o( obligations of th eir famil y labor pool. In practice, howeve1-, these cultural phrasings often conOict with actual behavior. Abortion and attempts at a bortion-induced by swa llowing strong purgatives or h erb medicines or by "accidental" falls but rarely by physica l measures-are exceedingly commo n. Methods of abort ion are often discussed secretly by women when they are sure lhat no male is listening. Yet, just as women phrase sexual intercourse as a "duty" toward their husbands, so bearing children is their specific task, and the phrasings we have cited const itute cul tura lly fixed responses to a recurring situaLion of anxiety a nd amb ivalence. Consequently, they have take n on the ro le o f cl ichcs, and often occur in conversation, as if by rote and without accompanying affect. \ ,Vhen a woman find s that she is pregnant she imm ed iately informs her husband who mentions the fact casually to his fri ends and neighbors. The announcem e n t is usually taken quite as a matter of fact. Sometimes, in the case of a new bride, who ideally should conceive right after marria~e, there is a little more c uriosity. There is, however, never any of the j oking which accompa n ies such announcemen ts in tow11. The forthrnming pregnan cy receives little furth er d iscussion; women consider it "had'' to talk about it and will eva de qu estio ns regarding it. Again this attitude contrasts with that of town women who revel in discussing their symptoms. To the husban d, the pregnancy is a sign that sexual intercourse may now take

219

place without restraint or fear of consequences, and it is b elieved tha t it is actually b eneficial for the development of the fetus. Thus sexu al activity continues well into the last phases of the pregnancy. P regnant women are not exempted from work but a re expected to carr y on their usua l tasks without additional help. The only area in which a pregna nt woman may indulge herself is by g iving in to her "cravings" (antojo). It is belie\·ed that a food craving wh ich is not indulged may cause a miscarriage. \ \Then labor sels in, the future mother retreats to the seclusion of a shuttered and unlit room, where ideally she must remain for a period of forty days (la cuare11te11a). This custom h as a double function. On the one hand, it exempts the woman from work and sexual inte rcourse for the period of he r seclusion and puts h er in to a role similar to th at o( an honored guest. She is fed chicke n broth, prepared from the m eat a nd fat of a bird usually r eserved for fest ive occasions of hospitali ty. On the other hand, her enforced idleness enables neighbors to extend their services to the fam ily. A compadre or a relative will offer to help her prepare the p recious broth, and a girl will come in to clean the house and help " ·ith the ch ildren. In turn, the secluded mother is exp ected to reciprocate these services on a similar occasion. During the delivery, the mother is attended by a midwife. The peasant women place more faith in her skill than in that of a town doctor. To speed the delivery, the midwife may shake the legs o( t.he reclining patient, feed h e r herb m edicines, place some "male" article, such as the husband's underwear, on her head, or extract the baby directly. The midwife a lso plays a symbolic role. She cuts the navel cord and ritually becomes a comadre of the mother. The dried navel cord is inserted in the fam ily prayer b ook. This act sy~~olizes the expected division of la bor. A girl's cord is 111serted at the page of the P11risima "so she will be good." T h e cord o( a boy is insene'd at the p~ ge o( his sa int and n amesa ke. During the process of birth, mothers often vow to perform certain religious acls to "pay" the Virgin for consideration during labor. A child is breast-fed until the next baby is on the way. ' Vhen the first teeth appear, between the sixth and the ei~luh month, bre ast-feedi ng may be supplemented with raw cow's m ilk, which is not a saleable commodity in Manicaboa, and occasionally with strained oatmeal. This strained oatmea l is the o nly food wh ich is typ ically ch ildren's nourishment and wh ich adults do not eat. At one year of age, the children eat everyth ing the adults eat: "rice a nd beans and even roast pork." Clothes, often secondhand to beo-in . I o w it 1 , are passed down frnm sibling lo sibling and are exceedingly few. Shoes are usually 110L purchased until the child is o ld e no ugh to be brought to the village. The adve nt of a n ew chi Id presents no problem in sleeping a rran g·em ent.s. Childre n sleep several in a bed and orten lie h ead to root, somewhat like sardines in a can. Soon after birth , the child receives it fit .. t baptism

2 20

THE l'EOl'LE OF l'liERTO RICO

in the rural household itself. This b:iptism is called de agua. and the ritual is a close duplicate of the church

and Gll'C s him. 01· adm inister punishme11t for major bre;i ches of discipline, when he will b eat the offender ceremony, except that it Jacks the administration "·ith his belt. On ly the brief hour between evening of holy water and no priest is present. M embers of the meal and nig htfall finds the fam ily united in one room. immediate family oth er than the father a nd the mother Th e n the father ,,·ill usua ll y occupy the prized seat o( the chi ld u suall y se1·ve as godparents. The ceremony in the hamm ock :ind hold the youngest o n his knee. thus g i ves rise to a set of com /Jalfres de ag ua. The Th e moth er "·il l s it on a rough-hewn bench, with the peasants still consid e:r this form of baptism as valid other childre n g;1tl1ered about li er, while the day's as the baptism performed in church, despite ch urch happening<; arr cli~n1'><;ed. disapproval of it. " lt is just as good," Don Tassio \\'e !tan; '>CC II tli:it ch ildre n :ire lir(':ht· kd. :ind soon pass on LO t:1ki11 .~ <,o lid food-.. Du ring tlii ... (> l 'I iod the opined, "because all the actions are the s:1me, and child i ~ the obj cc L 11! 111a11\· c :11n... t·.., :1 11cl much <:ire. It even salt is u sed ." Thi s initial baptism makec; the is feel \\'J1c11c \·t r it c 1it<;. Bill m11 c· it l>tgi11\ lo \\·:ilk , child a Christian. If it dies, it wi ll go to heaven. The there is 11-;u:dl y ;111otl1cr cl1 i ld 10 he c:11cd lor and l<:d. belief in its efficacy actua ll y delays the performance o( baptism in church. People think it b oth ensures and it :1br11pL1~· "l<hC<; th e :,k in" (jJ1.n<fr la fair/a) of the mothrr 10 \\':lie Ii :1 ll C\ffOmer 1:1kc i1s pl :1ce . Si i> li11g salvation and acts as a magical specific <1ga inst death. Sixty per cent of all b aptisms in church take place ri,·;dry i ~ c.::-: pc.:ncd :ind takc.:n for gr:1 111 cd, :111d rarely mentioned. 111 ~ 1<.:ad. efforts arc dirc.:c tC'd lo\,·;1nb pre· six months a(ter birth or later. If a child dies within four vears of its hirth, a venting :,ud1 ho-,ti l ity by c11cnur:igi11g 1lic childre n to special ceremony is held. I t is c~lled un f/or6n, after fulfill , a s :,0011 :I'> pn-,... ilJl e, the c:-:pec 1c.:d 1Hirm;. of help a wreath of flowers which is em ployed in one of the and co-oper:nio11. ·1 hus. one Jiu le g irl aged two was games that are played on this occas ion. Th e ceremony given the t:i-.k ol rocking her 11ewlr-born brother. is actually a fiesta at "·hich all the participants, espe- ' Vhen she rocked him so hard that he fe ll out of the cially the parems of the ch ild, are exhorted to be gay hammock and set up a mighty howl, the mother and not to sorrow for "a little angel who has gone to merel y cornmcmed that the liule g irl had " wanted to care for him, but was sti ll too young to know heaven." Games are played, and the participants eat and drink. It is said th a t "the younger th e child , the how." better the fl,or6n." Child d eath is frequent, and the Children first learn, through play and unforced ceremony represents a cu lt ural means of coping with imitation, the techniques which th ey must use in later life. Girls imitate their mother by ironing rags with a recurrent and tragic situation . At the same time, the tin cans. A Jiule g irl of two sat n ext Lo her mother, c hild has not yet become a mem ber of the social community of the living. Its social unimportance deprives ,,·ho was peeling vegetables, and helped her peel, u sing the event of the sense of social loss felt at the death of an enormous machete as her tool. Sh e copied her an adult member of the barrio. mother's manner of holding the knife very closely and Baptism in church, although usually postponed, is used the machete with a great deal of skill. Adulls will nevertheless very important to the peasants of Mani- not comment when a child picks up a sharp instrucaboa . Proper baptism admits the child imo the com- ment or a knife. Cuts and failures a rc expected; they pany of men . The formal rules for the social mecha- are considered part of the learning process. When the nism o( ritual co-parenthood also require that a man little girl first manages to bring back a calabash filled be married in church a nd confess once a year. Ba ptism with water without spilling any of it, she is lauded and is a prerequisite for both these requirements. P eople given a feeling of pride in her accompl ishment. Simisay, "'l\Te get married in church, so we can baptiLe our larly, when a Jiule boy first "moves" the family cow, children properly." The holy water used in the cere- he is g iven to understand that he has achieved an immony ensures against disease, and the scapula r re- portant n ew stage of competence. ceived is a specific aga inst the evil eye a nd witchIf there are no older girls in the family, then the craft. Formal church baptism gives rise to a second set lit tle girls may a lso be called upon to care for one of of ritual co-parents, the comjJadres de jJila, of the their younger siblings. It is not uncommon to see baptismal font. B aptism is often referred to by say- g irls of five g u arding the next youngest child . ing: "We shall m a ke another pair of comjJadres for 'i\Th en the ch ildre n are about seven, they begin to oursel ves," rather than by simply stating t h at "we be integ rated actively imo the family work pattern, shall baptize the child." division of labor following sexual lines. The girls help The symbolic treatment of the navel cord of boys their mother. They sweep, scrub, wash dishes, carry a nd g irls foreshadows the substantially d ifferent water, and care for t heir younger siblings. The boys spheres of life they wi ll enter. One is the sphere of run errands, fetch wood, and take coffee and lunch the father, the other the sph ere of the mother. The to their eld ers in the fields and coffee patches. AU father organizes labor in th e fie lds, markets the prod- ·work is gra d ed somewhat accord ing Lo <1ge. 'i\Then uce, and purchases the bulk of n eeded commodities small, the boys gather vege tables for the vario11s meals, with the money received. The motli er takes care of take care of th e smaller livestock, a nd n111 errands. the household. Th e care and discipline o( sma ll chil- ''\Then a little o ld er, they take care of the larger livedren fall within her province, thoup;h the fat h er may stock , rnn e r rands that require a greater responsibility, stoop during the day's work to pick up a youngster and occasionally begin to perform sma ll tasks in the

SAN JOSE: "TRADITIONAL " COFFEE i\IU NICIPALITY

fields. Boys who a re fifteen years old perform the same work. as their fath er. But chronological age is some"·hat secondary to a capacity (or responsib ility. C hildre n are divided into those who " have capacity" (l.ie 11 e11 co pacidad), a nd those who lack it. An older bro ther "without capacity" may be repl aced in many tasks and in the esteem of the fa mily b y a younger brother who meets the expectations of the adults. The expen:uion tha t children quickly develop a sense of co-operation is very important. Co-operation is the kc Y11otc of the economi c a nd socia l processes of the b;1rrio, a11d it must be inculcated early. Children arc p:1 ired. and the o lde r is to some extent cha rged ,,·iL11 supen·isi11g the younger one. J\s they grow up, c hildre n mu st he lp each other in their da ily tasks. T hus. " ·hen S;1 mu e l. aged thirteen, a rrives with a horse lo:-iclccl wi th g-oocls, Tino and Chevo, aged nine and seven rcspccti,·e ly, run to help him unload without a n y ,,·onl from thei r pare nts. Chevo, seven years old, bri11gs in some oranges, and promp tly gives a few to his six-year-old sister. She in turn peels one for her two-year-o ld charge before eating one herself. The pattern of co-operation between neighbors a lso becomes established among young children. Chevo not only g ives oranges to his siblings but, without parental prompting, h e ofiers his gifts to any visitor who may b e present. Little girls play at comadres and prepare meals for each othe r, imitating the reciprocal relationships of the adults. Every four years, when the bishop comes to town, children between the ages of ten and fifteen are brought to him for confirmation. Confirmation marks the entrance of the child into the adult religious community, and presages the social adulthood of the individual. Once more the ceremony gives rise to a set of co-pa rents, this time kn own as comjJadres "of the bishop," comfJadres de o bis/Jo. At fi ftee n, when a boy begins to perform all adult tasks, except the direction of the work of the family, he crosses the threshold into social adulthood. Out· wardly this change is signaled by the fact that he may now speak his opinion with more assurance of getting a hearing from his e lders. After his fifteenth birthday, a boy who has been shy a nd formal becomes very ou tgoing and may be acknowledged as a wit. The assumption of a more adult role means a grea ter inte rest in girls. Boys from neighboring holdings begin to form groups, which go around together, visit, sing, a nd make a point of te lling off-color stories, jokes, or r iddles when out of adult hearing. At eight· een, a boy may beg in to stay out overnight without pare n tal per mission . This indicates that he has reached the stage when he will declare his independence of his father. H e will soon marr y and start a new fa mily unit. He is now on the way towards assuming the role of his father: that of the head o( a household and orga nizer of fam il y la bor. A girl, on th e other hand, is prepared for her fu ture role in the sph ere of household tasks. She ·washes, cooks, a nd cares for the children. She is exhorted to "be like i\Iar ia, who a lso suffered a ncl was a good

2 2 1

n1other." Factual education fo r her role as a wife, however, is ach ieved mostly b y indirection. No instruction is given about menstruation, and the girl is left to discover this for h erself. She must take the clothes that a re used during this period to the river and wash them. \ Vhen she menstruates, she passes from childhood and becomes available for marriage. She is moza, una sdiorita. Now she will be subjected to strongly conflicting attitudes. The cultural attitude on matters of sex is that two people who are left together without adequate supervision will not be a ble to forego the plea sures of sexual intercourse. In the case of the daughters of the peasantry, however, sexual desires come into conflict with interests of fami ly a nd interests of property. The peasants do not like to see la nd p assing out of the family through the m echanism of female inl1eritance. :Moreover, sexual freedom would conflict with the established role of the h ead of the fami ly m decisions affecting his female dependents. Cousin m arriage is frowned upon, both . for r eligious reasons and because of its cost, for money is necessary to win exemption from the religious prohibition of marriage between certain relatives. Cousins, h owever, are more likely to come into con tact with one another than with unrelated boys and girls, a nd cousin marriage h as been frequent over m a ny generations. Cousin m arriages are sometimes even preferred, b ecause they tend to keep property within the same famil y. Yet marriages outside the family widen the network of reciprocal relationships. If the girl stays in the barrio, she will be exposed to the advances of the available young men , whereas if sh e is sen t away, she will h ave a difficu lt time find ing a swain. If she is sent to town as a servant in an u pper-class h ome, she will be removed from local dangers. Yet in town she m ay encounter strange m en, and probably become "up pi ty" (p resentd) a nd acquire urban habits. This last d anger also threa tens if she receives too much education. A girl should be able to write her name. But to educate her beyond th at point will make her "refined, uppity, then they don't like to work, and they a re needed for work at home." Thus, the teenage girl is subjected to contrad ictory decision s from all sides. \i\Th e n a girl has h e r menstrual period, her p arents will think her entitled to some rest and lighter work (a livio). Yet if her menses coincide with work in the fi elds where she may be n eeded, as in tobacco planting, she will have to work just as h ard as the others. Parents often send their datwhter to town as a servant . b 111 an upper-class household during her teens. They stipulate as a condition of employment that the employer keep the girl under close supervision and discip line (afn-eld) . "~he may go to church, but no p lace else. I put her m your care, treat her well, and be consid erate to h er. " To the r epea ted consternation of urban employers, however, when th e parents are afraid that she is becoming involved with a man in town (enamord) or wh en they require her services they will suddenly bring the girl back to the country'.

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TME PEOPLE OF PLlERTO RICO

The employers are left to mutter about the incomprehens ible ingratitude of country folk. During this premarital period , the task of supervising a marriageable girl falls to the father. .-\s married women <lo not attend dances in other houses, fathers escort their dau g hte rs to such even ts. Dancing is conside re d "a thing o( the devil" (es de/ diablo) beca use it carries strong connotations or sexuality, and care is taken at a dance th:1t a girl never dances twice with the same boy. !'\or may she engage in any conversations with her partner. If this rule is broken, altercations are sure to folfo,v . Even the boys prerer to go to dan ces at wh ich the girls are "respected." "This was a good dance," one boy commented after a Three Kings celebration, "there were no swee t-hearts." After each dance, the girls are supposed to retire to one room which has been made the girls' quarters. Boys and girls may also meet at devotions to the saints and during Sunday or reast·day visiting. On both occasions there is a complete lack of physical co ntact. :\t devotions, boys and girls sit in different parts of the house. During visits, the girls usually arrive first, and the boys follow them after they have discovered where their " j ewels" have gone. The girls are usually offered a meal b y the hostess, while the boys remain on the balcony outside and are served coffee and soda crackers. Finally, love poetry and love songs tend to avoid personal references, or to encase personal reference ·within a very formal framework. Thus a lover sings : Tell me, pretty maiden }-low are your par<:nts, T\\·o friendly beings. Respectful ly, :.\nd a lone. I enjoy Seeing your virtue And the radiance Of your preuy face, I desire of you E\en yo ur heart.

Dime . 11c11a hcrmosa, Como esuin tus padres, Dos seres amables? Tan n.:spc tuoso Y tan solo gozo E 11 n;r tu \'alor Y c l resp lendor De tu linda cara, Y de ti deseara, Hasta c l corazc'>11.

I come to salute yo u , Jewel of my soul. Carefully 1 picked Flowe rs to give to yo u. l come to visit yo u vVith proo( o f love. I have th e courage To b ecome your husband, . \nd give yo u gladly Even rny h eart.

Vcngo a saludartc Pre ncla cle mi alma. I::scogi con calma Flores para darte. Vengo a visitarte Con pntcbas de amor. Yo te11go valor Para hacer tu esposo, Y <lane gustoso, f-lasta cl coraz611.

The parents must give thei r assent to an engagement. H the boy scents opposition , he may send his co-parent (c01njJarlre) of "greatest trust" to intercede wi th them. The girl has little voice in the arrangemems. She may throw a hysterical fit (ataq ue) either to show her opposition or, if her beloved threatens to leave her for someone e lse, to signa liLe jealousy. At tillles a girl may threaten su icide. Thus, one girl took Paris Creen when her lather opposed her marriage to a fin;t co11s in. Premarital relat ions among boys and girls or the harrio tippear to be ra re . Boys somet imes visit prosti-

unes, both in to\\'n and nea r the road. Ha premarital pregnancy occurs, blame falls upon the parents o( the girl as "·ell as upon the girl herse lL If the parents ca n sho\\', however, that they have re-established discipline and are able lO furnish some form of com pensation, a girl \\'ith an illegitimate child has little trouble in finding a husband. Thus, wh en a certain g irl became pregnant, the hoy \\·ho "·as responsible offered to marry her in a c ivil union, although he refused to marry her in church. Her father refused this offer, stating that if she \\'ere not to be married in cllllrch, sh e \\'<Hild 11ot he 11L1rricd a1 :ill. He kept Iler a1 home 1111der ~tric t di,cipline :ind :-.11pen·isio11 . :\Iler abo11t a year ~he 111;1rricd :111 agric11lt11r:1 l l:1l>orer. \\'ho c:in1c to li\-C :tt the: hot1;-,C ol hi, l:1ther-i11 -l:1\\". \Ve lt:1H: ~CC:ll in Olli" d i:-ctL,,ioll of lalllih· ('('()llCHlliC~ that marri:1 gc i111plic-; tlt :1t 1hc boy h:1~ achic,Td in dependence:: . . \ftcr Iii-; m:1rri:1ge his father 110 lon ger commands his labor :it \\'ill. 111 ordn 10 cst:dJlish his independe nce. the i>o~· llltht ~hcl\\· tl1:1t he c;111 pa y lor the ,,·cdding. I le nll1 ~ t 011·11 :it ka~I one pig 10 c n1T r the 11ece~..,;1ry \\·cddi11g co,ts . . \ propcr \\Tdcling in cl1t1rcl1 is :1 mark o f -;t:1tu-; :111d lend~ prcst igc. It sign i· fies tl1 e induction ol :1 "·0111a11 into a nc"· lio11sehold, where she "·ill " make the woman for the man, make the meal s, wash the clothes." The cost of this syrnbolic act varies greatly, but runs into considerable sums o[ money by local standards. The wedding dress and accessories may cost between five dollars and seventy-one dollars, the highest price quoted . The ceremony itself costs four dollars for poor people, more often six d ollars. In one ceremony the ecclesiastical fee was six dollars, covering the dispensation needed to exempt first cousins, while the lawyer's fee was thirty dollars, th e birth certificate one dollar and fifty cents (one dollar o( th is representing a bureaucratic "bite"), and the wedding dress pl us going-away dress and shoes, fortyone dollars . The actual wedding is an important neighborhood event. Relatives, friends, and neighbors await the bridal pair on their return from town . for two days people eat, drink, a nd dance in celebration of the occas ion. At the costly wedding ceremony memioned above, the bride arrived in to\\·11 two nights before the wedding. accompaniecl by the best man. who was the brothe1· of the bridegroom. She spent the night with relatives. The groom arri\'ecl in the afternoon . He and the bride went to con· fession t.ogeth<:r, a(('o111pa11ied by a sister of the bride and by the groom's brother. In the morning the bride was dressed in the house where she had spent the night. llefore the ceremony. the bride and groom as w<.:11 as best man and bridesmaid went 1o the ollice of the pri<:st 10 sign the neces· sary pape rs. The acwal scnice \\'as most perlu11ttory. ,\fter the service, the bride changed her dothcs. :111d the party drove up the road to \\'here the horses were tethered. There they mou11tt'd and rod e into the barrio. Two ~roups of male relatives on horsebatk join<:d 1he111 ;dong the way. About a mile from the hom<: of the brid e, the pan y stoppccl and the bride dwngccl IJa«k into her bridal dress. At a distante of about 200 feet from the hou~<', s0111c fift y re latives we re gathered in a group to greet the pair. A man fired a

S.-\1'\ JOSI::: '"l'RADITIO:'\AL" COFFEE :\1 U:'\ICIPALITY

gun. ;111d women threw flowers al lhe young couple. The groom's ralhl'r ll'an:d a ll'hilC e111broiclerecl lO\\'C I o n a pole. simulating a flag . . \ group of musician s began to play. The hrick n :p:1irccl lo a room and d1:111gcd again. will1 all the \\'Ollll'n gathl'red :11>0111 her. The house was fe~ ti,·el y decked 011 t. To lhc acro111 pan imc11 t of cou 11 tn· t uncs. lhe bride. grno111. bridesmaid and best tllan sat ~l own to the m eal. Th<:y al<: firs1. The di11ncr consisted of chicken noodle soup. ricl'. fried pork. fried chicke n and coffee. . \ftcr they had li11i-.hl·d. the male gu<:!tts took turns eating at the table. The si:.ln of tht' bride made the rounds. washing each guest's hand :111d mouth ll'ith " ·atcr and rose petals. From each man :.o lte11111rl'd ~hl' n·11.:in·cl :1 co in . .\111 r thl' 11 11';11. lltl' da11ci11~ began and lasted all night. ~ .. n11t· \\Tiit to 'kq>. During this cclchration. the bride ;111d groom n·111ai11nl '''ilh the guc~ls . ancl die! not seek any pri' ;11' I>~· tltt"11t,d\ l''.

.\ft c r the rnarri:1ge ceremony, bride and groom are partner<; in a n e \\' and autonomously functioning hou-,dwld. Thi., p:1nnership reciu ires t he suborcl inat io11 of the ,,·0111:111 to her husband. She has the "duty" of -.<.·:xu:d int e rcourse and of' bea ring children. Sexual rcl:11io11s :ire \' iC\\'td in terms of obligations (1111. deb er) 10 1 he c:xtent 1h:1t 011e woman who enjoyed sexua l intercourse "for its own sake'' "·as considered sick b y the other \\·omen of the barrio.:\ wife must prepare her husband's m ea ls. She must set the table for him and for visitors, wh ile rema ining standing or feeding the c hildren. 1\ fe n and \\·omen never eat wgether. In walking, the man goes ahead. follo"·ed by the woman. Every man has the right LO requ ire tha t his "·ife \\·ash his hands and feet every d:'l y and scrub his body once a week. She may no longer attend dan ces away from home. Her place is in the home, w ith her children. H er status is tied to that of her husband. Her standing is judged according w the possessions which he owns a nd th e treatment whi ch he accords her. \ 1Ve have seen that this causes con siderable rivalry among wome n a n d that a great dea l of gossip and conversat ion is concerned with details of home furnishings and w ith whether "he treats h er badly or is good to heL" A woman does not acqu ire any rights to assen herselC directly in h er own bchaH until sh e is beyond th e childbearing period. Accord ing to the figures o f the 19.f o census, on 1y 1 2.7 pe1· cent of the rural population falls into the age g ro up of f'orLy·five yea rs and over. High death rates make old age appear LO be an achievement a nd a mau.cr of pride. lt is often said of some old man that h e is still sexuall y active and that until yesterday he was working- actively with livestock (bregn ndo ron vncns )' cal)(ll/os) . .-\ c tually. few men and women retain th e ir strength afte r reaching forty-five, when their participation in work decreases sharply. Old people are respected , but they are often regarded with a sense of hidden amusement at the foibles of olcl age. \Vh e n peopl e sec a shooting star at night, they are accusLOmed to sa y: "Cod leads us well (Dias nos lleva bie11 llevrw). T he star fal ls towards the sea. I am carried t(m·ards m y gr;we." \\' h en a person is about to die, \\·ord passes from mouth to mouth, and relatives and n e ighbors assemble at the h o use wh ere the per-

2 2

3

son is passing away. It is customary to enter at once and to ask in a loud voice h ow t h e patien t is doing. Food is served while people converse, often loudly discussing the fate o( the dying person. " H e \\·on't last until three." H he does last, p eop le exp~·ess displeasure and say that the patie nt is "very attached to the earth" (11111y apegno n la lierra), "very materialist." This is called a hard death and is attributed to sins committed during one's lifetime. Saint Joseph is called on to h elp people achieve an easy and punctual death. A candle and matches lie under the pillow of the dying. As soon as it is considered that h e is breathing his last, the candle is li t and placed between his hands. T his helps his soul wrest itself free of the bod y. \Vhen he is dead , members o( the family ,\·ash him and dress him in a suit of clothes from which all buttons and oth e r objects of "luxury" (lujo) have been removed. IE the jaw falls, a kerchief is tied around the head to k eep it in place. Great care is taken Lo make the body appear b eautiful. The bath water is carefully disposed of, because it const itutes a potent specific in witchcraft. The assembled people pray the night t hroug h. In the morning the dead man is put into a coffin and carried Lo town by his co-parems and relatives. The cross, which symbolized his household, is carried before him on the march. Only men accompany the dead to town , while the women stay in the barrio and pray. For nine clays after death, the deceased is thought to b e still "al ive." The famil y must, therefore, meet every night for nine nights. On the ninth night, they pray th e night through. Each year thereafter a cornm em o r:nive servi ce is held on the clay o[ the death. Th e nine-day prayer \\'ards off fear o[ the dead. \'\Then one person tried Lo shonen the period, others assured him that the dead one ,\·oulcl not "die properl y," and the proper length of the ritual was mainta ined. 1 \ Ve have discussed the division of landed property in our consideration of the fam il y as an economic unit. The evidence obtained on the disposal of personal effects after death, ho,\·ever, is exceedingly contradictory. In one case, all the personal effects of an old man were d estroyed. Some informants stated that this represented a gene ral cuswm after death. Others thought that this was clone only in special cases, where illness o( a certain kind was su spected. P erhaps fear of witchcraft was involved in this form of disposal. Others sa id that a father usually bequeaths h is property to a son, and a mother passes on her personal effects co her daughtel'. At any rate, death and thoughts of the d ead are charged \\·ich powerful emotions. The name of a dead p e rson is never mention ed. Thus, when a man rode by on a horse, Don Tass io asked him whose horse h e was riding . The man re plied that it was the horse or "th e defun ct one" (e/ dif1111to). In this ca e, the man's father had died, leaving che horse to him. In this section we have seen that large families are considered desirabl e. This norm re fl ects th e economic imporwnce of offspring in a type o( family where labor is pooled und er the direction of the mal e head of the familv. Childbe aring is woman's dmv. Cultural I

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2 24

TII E P EO PL E O F l' l:E RT O RICO

attiwdes r a tio n a li1e thi s bi o logical funn io n. \\"he n a " ·om a n bea rs a child , a id is e xtende d lo he r b y he r n e ig h bors, a ser \'ice whi ch sh e reciprocates late!". Three re lig io us cere m o nies serve to create three ind e pe nde nt sets of comjwdres, suJTo unding the "·cb o f 11 e ig h bo rh ood relatio ns with important sa cred att illld es. Child training indu c ts tl1c chi ldren into tl1c technological s kills o f th e culture primaril y throug h imitatio n a nd esta b lis hes th e co-op er a tive p a tte rn s carried o n "· ithin a nd "·ithout th e fa mil y. Beca use arra nged m a 1Tiages in,·olve a n ide al o f poten t ia l p rop e rt y se ule m e m s, courtship is a pe riod of m uch conflic t. :\la r riage implies the crea tio n of a n ew a nd inde pe nde nt lrnuseho lcl. Th e two marriage p a rtne rs exerc ise compl c m e nta1·y fun ctio ns standardi~e cl in the sexual divisio n of labor of th e c ulwre. :viarriage as a ritua l of integration and funeral practiccc; a s rituals of re-integration both invo lve th e fun ctio ning neig hborhoo d of th e pe asant farm. Conclusions \ Ve now turn fro m a n a n a lysis of the subculture of the peasant and assess b rie fl y the role of the pea sa nt gro up in the chang ing c ulture o( J\Ianica boa. \Ve have see n th a t the peasant clings to many traditional no rms. H e e nters into labor sh a ring arrange ments with his n e ig hbors. He co nt in ues to consider the use o( land m o re important th a n titl e o( ownership. H e mainta ins a culturall y d e fin ed minimum standard o [ consumptio n. He e xchanges favo rs and hospi ta lity with h is n e ig hbors. H e continu es to sell his coffee to th e priva te c reditor m erch a nt in town. H e trades a nd barters w ith the itin e rant m e rchant. H e ca r ries o n a system o f r e lig ious accounting with his sa ims. H e uses traditional explanatio ns for illness, some o( which are cou ch ed in religious te rm s. Ye t it would be false to look upon the p easant m e rely as a carri e r o( the survivals o[ the p ast. The p easa nt is a member o r a ca pitalist soc ie ty. D espite his a ttachment to tra di tio n a l norms, h e produ ces for a m a rke t. T his m a rke t is part o f a la rger sociocultu ra l w h o le, a nd subject to flu c tuations a nd stru cwra l ch a n ges. The peasant has tied his fate to the conditions o ( the market. The larger society to which h e be longs impinges on his traditio nal way of life, and e ndows i ts e lements w i th n e w conte nt a nd meaning. In attempting to rai se his production, th e peasant fa ces the limiting conditions of sma ll -sca le credit, lack o( access to capi ta l, lo w land values, small holdings, limited produ ctio n o f a cash crop, a nd competitio n w ith large farm ers, who set the sta nd a rds of technolog ical p e rforma n ce a nd heavil y influ e nce the p r ice of the final p rod uct. To obtain m ore cap ital, to r a ise the valu e o f his land, to produce mo re, a nd to in c rease his mon ey in com e, th e peasant must e ith er work m o re or re duce his standards of consumption, o r both. · H e increases produ c tion by intensifying family la bor. Th e contro l o f th e h ead o[ the house ho ld ove r th e la b or o( his w i[e a nd childre n is thus on e o f the

primary cond iti o ns fo r th e sur\'i\'a l of the peasant in we see him trugglc fo r lhe conlrol o f th e earnings and pro p erty of his de pendents, while ea ch m a rriage o f his children lo \\'Crs the efficiency o( his farm. H e may, howe ver, have to res trict consumption. Jn ~fanicaboa, a yardstick for th is restriction is the traditional minimum norm con sidered to re present a " de ce11L" standard o f living. The use of fa mil y la bo r a11d th e redu ct io n of cons111nptio n s tand ard ~ in t11rn determ in e th e fu11 <1io11 i11g of ll1e fa mil y ;i-; ;1 pool of tl"'><H tr<<:<;. T lw f:1111il~· . 11 11 dcr d irect io n of it-. l1<::1d, lu11c tion., :i.; :111 C< 0110111ic 1111 it \\·hi cl1 d i... 11 ilJtt1c-., \\"< >I k :111d :illrn :11<·, " ·11:1 1 eac It 111c111 be r Ill a\· < 0 11 ... 11 111 c-. T hc co 111 rol of 1hL· l:t t her i., :tl-,o essc nti ;tl fo r tl1 <: 111:1i111 c 11:11H e of !li t .'>~'> 1<'111 of labor excl1 ange-; he t\\'C<: ll JJ('iglihori11g f:1rrn ". ' f lie Lrbor exch:1 11gc te:1111 co111i1111c" in fore«. b('c:111,,c it s use redu<c-; l11 c 11 c<:d fo r wage p:1y111e111. wh id1 1hrcatc 11s L11 e c 1sl1 tT'>lll t rc es o l th e Lt mi h·. Tl1 c: < <J11ti1111 cd c s.changes o f fa,·01 . . :111d ho.,pit:ili.1y lo\\'Cr til e 11 ecd to e xpe nd Jll o tH·y 011 th(' pro\ i . . io11 o l '>ti ' ice-.. Th e~<: "-.un·i,·;1!<," of the p:t'>l are l1111 ... co11 ti11 ucd because for t he pre~t: 11t th ey fill ne w f1111 n io ns i11 the ne"· setting. T hey continue to e xist bect111se c ircumstances have changed. The labor e xchange team, once a way of perfo rming work under cond itio ns o[ re lati ve underpopulation, con tinues today in Manicaboa because it saves mon ey. The ability o r the small peasant to sell the labo r po wer o( his sons h as improved, as we sh<tll see, because the hacie nda today re lies to an ever increasing ex ten t o n th e labo r provided by the small farms a ro und its pe riphe ry and less a nd less on a reside nt labor suppl y. The idea tha t use of land rather than title is imponant continues in force, because tobacco produ ction has r einfo rced this notion. The peasants continue to sell to the private creditor merchant, b ecause he furnishes them with ready cash and productio n c redit, while other organizations have restricted th ese functions in a declining coITee market. Jn fact, we may assign to the restricted co nsumption of the p easant the primary role in d etermining the cultural isola tio n of the peasantry. A restricted standard of consum p tion does not imply a sta tic standard o( consumptio n. The peasants o( J\f.inicaboa today buy man y things that they would not have dreamed of buying fifty years ago. At the same time , we have noted the cu ltural strai n set up by this increased consumption. It was evidenced in the growing anxiety over witchcraft a nd the evil eye whi ch concerned itself directly with th e increase in consumptio n. The sta nda rd o( living of the peasants of M a nicaboa is not s ta tic. Yet p easant consumptio n of store-bought commod ities te nd s LO increase a t a lower rate than the consumptio n o f store-boug ht commoclicies by other classes of the population. Th e peasa nt class buys less of th e services available in the muni cipality than any oth er group. The insular instituti o ns calculated to serve th e rural hinterland rare ly a<:commoda te themselves to th e pre-existing ways of behavior used by the p eo ple within the conte xt of the ne ig hborhoods ~fani ca bo a. I Tc11 ce.

SAt'; JOSE: "TRADITIO:"\AL" COFFEE l\lU~ ICIPA LITY

in wh ich they Jive. In turn, the peasants often fai l in the ir effort Lo reshape such institutions in terms of the pe rsonalized frame\\·ork, \\·ithin which they carry on their livel ihood, and fa ll back on the familiar m echanisms of thei r ne ighborhood. Peasant culture thus Lends to be phrased in terms of the universals and special ties of the neighborhood; its economic isolation prcve m s the in troduct ion of m any a lternative forms of behavior and thoug h t which are increas ing ly open LO o ther groups of the population. THE MIDDLE FARMERS

The medi11m -~ i1ed holdings are, by definition, larger than the small farms, and they employ more wage Iauo r. They arc able tO g row larger quantities of boL11 major a nd minor cc1sh crops. The average coffeegrow i ng fa rm ol th is t~· pe receives a n income from ics coffee alo11c rough!~· three times as great as chat of the small farmer. 111 addition, it raises much tobacco, it can se ll a la rge share of its minor crops, and i t can pasture m o re ca u le. \ '\There one or two cows must suffice for the peasant, a middle farmer, like Don T ilo, can graze eight to ten cows on his forty-two cuerdas of land. D o n Tilo also owns two horses a nd several mules, which graze alongside his cattle. A small farmer must carefu lly reckon the amount of capital and labor rec1u irecl LO grow one cuerda of rice, a prefe r red food, and \\·eigh it against the cost of u sing th e cuerda for some other subsistence crop o r for a cash crop. A middle farmer, like Don Gurne, can afford to grow enoug h rice to feed his entire family throughout the year without buying additio nal amou nts at the store. "Of course Don Gurne can g r ow rice," a small holder once expla ined. " H e has a lot o( la nd . Ri ce-growing is fo r rich people. I own o nly a small p lot. So I plant ba nanas, plantains and vegetables. One cuerrla of b ana nas gives me six hundred trees, and each bears three or four times. I can sell some fru its and seeds. So I get more out of bananas tha n I would from a cuerda of rice." T he peasants work the ir farms with their own and the ir family's labor, and only occasionally employ wage workers. O ften they sell their own labor to other farm ers to m ake additio nal sums of mo ney. Middle farm ers may employ their own fam ilies on their h old ings, but they a lso employ wage workers. O ften they may pay wages to relatives either in money or in goods an d services, but in add ition they hire u nrelated persons. Don Tilo employs two sons-in-law as sh arecroppers. He a lso hires a third man as a permane nt reside nt la borer (agregado). Do n Gume employs his brother, his brother-in-law, and two resident lab orers. IC the laborers have subsistence p lots w hi ch they cultivate (or shares, the ir shares are paid to them in m oney, or e lse reckoned in money terms against any credit which has been cxte11 ded to them during the year. There is no question here of unpaid family labor. H owever, wage laborers drawn from the fam ily are ofte n paid at lower rates tha n non-relatives. For in-

2 25

stance, Don Gume's brother worked (or him a t a daily r ate of seventy-five cents, or twenty-five cents less than the current wage for day labor. The following account clearly shows how the workings of the impersonal wage m ech a nism have changed th e traditiona l bonds of family relationship: D on Gurne had a row wilh his brother. \Ianolo. l\Iano lo is his sharecropper. l\f:\nolo had a subsistence plot. One day Don Gume came to him and asked him to leave the work he was doing. There was work to be done in coffee. H e could work his own plot later. Manolo got mad. H e refused. Don Cume sa id: "If lhis is your attitude. you will haYe to get out." l\Ianolo rep Iied, •·If I go, you will have to p ay me back wages." That meant that Cume " ·oukl have to pay him $ 1.00 for every day he worked, and not 75¢ whid1 he had been paying all along. Manolo left. He we11t to work for his brother·in-law who had a house for him .

T he middle farmers no longer sell any of their famil y labor to other farmers. Th is distinction b etween them and peasants is clearly understood by the people of the b a rrio. " H e is not like other people," a peasant said about Do n Tilo; "he never sen ds an y of his sons to work for others." More land, higher income, more wage labor, all make for a faster rate of accumulation. This fact alone is not enough, however, to turn the p easant into a modern , scientific farmer. The increase in wealth merely opens up a lternatives for its use. The m iddle farmer may use his capital to produce more capital through intensification of the productive process. H e may bu y more fertilizer, build more terraces, purchase more la nd, and grow more and different kinds of crops. He may, on the other hand, spend his money to satisfy certain culturally standardized urges of conspicuous consumption. H e may buy more horses, or two saddles for every horse, or a sto,·e that burns kerosene. Or h e ma y use the m o ney to get out of agriculture a ltogeth er, to buy a h ouse in town, and to set himself up in some small-scaJe business as a newly urbanized individual. In tO\\·n he may once more choose between adding dime to d ime, or expanding his mo n ey on the commodities which promise increased status, such as electric lights, refrigerators, canned goods, or dimestore wall fixtures. Several middle farmers from 1\fanicaboa have moved to tow n, where they have become members of the lo,ver middle class. They now own scores or operate sma ll-scale e nterprises, such as cattle-trad ing, illegal lottery sa les, truck ing, a nd so forth. They maintain some ties with the rural neighborhoods where they were born a nd often continue to own land there, but they now move in another sphere of life. A middle farmer rnrncd storekeeper in town ma y count on the purchases o( people from his rura l neighborhood. Yet he is no longer "one o f us." Ile affects town ways and affects styles of food, dress, hospitality, and relio-ious 0 activity that fit the social standards o r the town. 1\Iiddle farmers who rem a in in the coun try have the choice of investing their profits in capital goods, of hoarding them, or of spending them on a dditional

226

TllE f'EOPLI·: OF l'l ' l:'.RTO RICO

commod i t ies . StricLI}' speak ing . the first alternative is the way o[ the fanncr. H e regards his farm as a bus in ess enterprise. H e puts his mon ey LO ""·ork" a nd cuts costs. He tries to maximize his profits at a n ever in creasing rate. The middl e farm e rs in Mani caboa ;ire indeed interes ted in making hig h e r pro fits. bu t they d o n ot atte mpt to ach ieve t his ;1 im throug h more in ten se and e ffi c ient production. Some bu y aclditiona I p ieces o( land, so they can <ldd w the -;um -total of thc i1· production. Some purchase more li,·cs tock, "·hic h , however, mean s hoarding th e ir cap i tal in animate and som ewhat liquid fonn, but does not 1·epresent an inte nsifi ca tion of live<;LOck product io n. Additional cattl e may b e ke pt on ly if th e re arc a dditional ruerdas to pl a nt in traditional pa sture. Scientifi c feeding is not used to inc rease the capacity of a fixed a m o unt o( land. The middle farm ers or l\Ianicaboa who h as e rem<tined in the barrio have not really made the tra n sition LO intensive, m odern farm ing . I n applying th e ir additional capiwl, they a ct as peasa nts "·ho ha ve increa sed means. " ' hen Don Tilo stocks his pasture la nd ,,·ith cattle ,,·hich are valued a t bet\\·een S 1,ooo a nd S 1·:)O<>. with t ,,·o horses va l ued at S300 Lo S.100, and with a number or mul es, h e is n ot inte nsifying th e process of ca pital formation. H e is transforming his m oney into a ni ma te wealth on the one h a nd and satisfying the n eeds of status consumptio n on th e oth e r. \Vhe n Don Gurne plants fiftee n of his nin ety-od d r11e 1·das in rice, he is not merel y try ing to sa ve $ 170, "·h ich it wou ld cost him to buy e n ough rice for his w h o le fam il y throughout the yeC1 r . H e i ach ie\·i ng a repu ta Lion for wealth, because rice represe n ts "·ealth in th e eyes o( the people. Th is is not to say that th e pu rchases o f livestock <lrHl the product io n of r ice do not ha ve economic just ification. L ivesLOck is ·weC1lth, and more rice grow n at home m ea ns less rice bought at t he stores. Yet the econom ic rntiona le is tied to soc ia l va lues, which are those of th e p easantry. The surplu s is used and in vested, but i t is invested in pursuits wh ic h are i ncluded in th e c u l tura l d e finition o f the "good life ." T he middle farmers " Ji,·e the good life" (se dan la buena vida). Thu s, D on Tilo boug ht a second and expe nsive horse a nd two leathe1- sa ddl es. r rc owns a good and comfortable house . H e h as r e pla ced a charco(ll stove w ith a kerosene stove. \Va te r for his house is 110 longe r carr ied laboriou sly from the well b y a servant g irl. H e hu ilt a ,,·a ter rnnk, a nd when people refer to his house, they <llways say, ''H e ha s a good a nd comfona ble h o use. a nd he h as a water tan k. " He pu t a corrugated ga l va ni1.ed iron roof on his toba cco b :-i rn . H e boug ht a sewing machin e for h is wife. H e tore down the wooden balcony o( hi s hou 'ie ancl re built its base in concrete. l fc is pro ud o( th e fact Lh al he ca n eat ri ce a11cl beans every night or the ,,·ee k. I le drinks store-bo ug ht rum. 0 11 S und ays and holi tl<1ys he se nds a child to th e road to fc:tch white b rea d . I le ~ pen d s a lot of mon ey 0 11 tlt e govern m e nt-spo11 s<J1Tcl lottery. His d evo tio n s to t he s~1in t'i «><.;la grea t deal , and rnany peopl e atte nd th e m . ~tuh " ·ea lth y pc:a<.,;111h a1e '> ti ll ca ll ed ji !Nnos b y the

people of th e town . \ Vhen they come to to\\·n. they "·ea r better do th es than the smaller farm e rs; yet the press o[ th e ir trousers cannot hid e the fan that they had to ride Lo th e road o n ho rscbi1ck. Th e ir "·orld is st ill th e n eighborhood , and "·hil e th ey arc aware o( the importance of in stitutional co nLro ls, tlt cy are not familiar with th e wavs in which institutions and voluntary sec ular organi1.a,tions function . \\.he n a mee ting of the Coffee Crowe rs' .- \ ssociatio n "·;1 s he ld i11 the big c ity. none aue ndcd . 011 e ma11 explained it this wa y: " On e of us goes there . Then he do<.:s not dare to open hi s m outh. \\'<.: arc humble [li11111ild<'l One of us gets up. T hen th ey do not lc:t him -.peak. l .ook ;1t "·h:1t happ<.: nc:d to X. \\·ho got tip and p1 o po... t·d :i 11;1111e for prc ... id c- 111 . l\11 t t lie bi g 01H·, h: 1d :ilrt'ad y pie kcd their (;111d id :1 tv. Y c :1111 c 0111 011 top . ."io it i ~ 11ot ,,·nnh go 111g. 011 til e o th er l1 :1 11d, i11 th e ir own lll'ig h l)()rhood s. the opi11irni-.. like.· .... di-dike .... :111<1 g"rn l\\·ill of the middle l:1n11cr arc ol rno111e111 for th e pt'oplc: "·Ito d epend on tli c.:111. Th e middle l:i1 n1c·r c.·111plo~· ~ labor. loan s Olli pi .~-. ;incl c;1t1lc lor ..,1ia1c,. :ind occasio11ally helps \\·ith c_ rc:dit. ''. \ lll;tll is like th e ho ...... (<a<·iq u<') or a neighborhood wht'll he h;1 . . c:11ougli l:1 11d :1 11d the oth e rs h;l\·e Lo :i~k 11 i111 for work. wh e n ,u (']1 peo pl e as the mayor or som e offic ial of importance have stopped off al his hou se, when he has good co nnections in town, when he can read fluently." Gi ven th ese attributes, a middl e farmer ca n ser ve as the political focus o( a n area . This is especia ll y true in a ne ig hbo rh ood without a larger ha cie nda-type farm. There, a middle fa rmer ser ves as adviser and advoca te to the small er peasants. 111 L imon es, th e head of a middle fa rm famil y is th e leader, whereas in Altura, this position is held b y th e ow ner o f the ha cie nd a . /\s spokesman o( Limones, the lead er ap proaches th e town authorities on such qu est io ns as the location of the new rural school. H e peti tions the tmn1 for road repairs or the establishme nt o f a school lunchroom. H e instructs the neighbo rs how they h ave to mark th e ballots at election time, and he exhorts the peop le lo bring the ir "·ives to town so :-il l ca n vote . Such power is in forma l a nd outside the officia l structure of government and political parties. To date, it carries i ts o wn rewards in terms of a stro nge r position of th e middle farmers vis - ~1 -vis the ir n e ig hbors in the rural neighborhood. It is unlike ly that the midd le fa rme rs i11 l\Tanicaboa will a bandon peasant norms unti l the rewards of a thorough ly com mercia lized, inte nsive, cost-accoun ting system of fa r m ing become evid ent to the m. This requires, on th e one h and, the ass urance o[ a steady market for products grown, and, on the other hand, the :-icceptance of new stand ards of judgment, new agricultural techniques and o( new r e lationsh ips to neighbors and ;igricultural " ·orkers. Suclt a n adjustment see111 s u11l ikc ly as long as produ CLion and ex port va lu es of th e 111ajor crops of the islalld c:ontinue to fall or Lo leve l ol[ ( Pe rloff, 19.:>o:f)·I- %· ~Go). Un less new marke ts for n ew produ cts are found , o r p rospects for til e tradit io11:i I nops impro\'C. it seems I ike ly that cu lture c ha11g-c " ·ill m erely draw more middle farmers

SA'.' J OS j.: : " T RADITI O ="AL .. COFFEE :'\I U:-:ICI PALI T Y

into the tm\·n \\·h ere they will attempt to form part o[ an urban stratum. As evid ence o[ this, the t0wn populati on is growing, while the rural po pulation is decreasing. THE AGRICULTURAL WORKERS \Ve have seen that there exist two kinds of employm c tll for the wage laborer:

the ha cienda and the sm all and middle farmers. Th ese differ materially in the le vel or subsistc11ce which they offer the \\·age worker. 1>i ... rl'gardi11g- tlt c:sc d ilTerc nces for the mome nt, we may -.ay that titre(' types o f CllStolllary COntracLUal agreem e11 h :1rc ope n to the wage worker. First, he may bee 0111t· a :,ltaren opper ( 11u·rliu11 e ro) , giving up hal( o f 1lt e fi11 ;1l protl11cc (ri 111l'rlias) to the owner of the land. Second. lte rn :1y become th e m ember of a resident labor ton (· ll\· se ttling 0 11 the land o f a landowner (an-re• • Q grnsf') . Such a rc~ icl e nt (agrcga do) r ece ives a hut and ;1 ~ 11b:-. i s t e 11n.: plo t from the owner and agrees to be at 1 he cornm:tlll l ol the man who furnishes him with these perqu isites. Tltird. lte ma y be a day laborer (jorna lr•rn). se lling his l:1hor powe r freel y to whomever offers him the best d ail y price for it and whe rever he may 1r:1i11 :111 ad\'at1tag·c from its sale. He works for a d a ily n wage (jorna/). Theoretically distinct, these three types or c<:>ntracts ac tually may a ll be carried on by one ma n . The same man may be a resident laborer and a sharecro pper at the same time. H e m ay furni sh m ost o( his labor to one lando\\'n er, especially during the p eriod whe n labor is in great d emand, but when the landowne r does not need his lnbor, or whe n the season is slac k, he ma y turn day labore r and work for wages on som e o ther h o lding . H ow much does such a ma n make during the period or a single year? The gath ering of comple te data would requi re the expert services o( an anthropologica ll y trained home economist. Some indications, however, ma y be gi ven her e. A m a n wh o \\·orks on the hacienda 11s11a l ly is prov ided a well -constructed house by the landown er. H he \\"Or ks every day there is work to be done in coffee, he might make as much as S150 to S d io per a nn um. If he is also a sharecropper in tobacco, he will rece ive a bout S 150 in production credit from th e landowner. If he produces between eight and ten cw ts. per cue rdrt. he will be able to break just about eve n. H he p roduces fifteen cwts. he may take in from S30 to $ 125 p er cuerda. In sharecropp ing, it is of course evide nt that he does no t pay labor nor co unt his own laho1· as an item o[ cos t. His profit increases to th e exte nt that he can cut into his own consumption. Jn the eyes or the landowne r, ;1 tobacco plot worked by one or his permanent workers relieves him o( the n eed for consumption credit. H the worke r does no t ge t a tobacco pl o t, the la ndowner must figure on a n ave rage ann ua l e xpe nditure of S40 to $50 in consumpti on cred it per fa mily of four or five. I n addition to their regular income, most agricultural workers carry on small-scale subsidiary activities. One man pla ys the gui ta r fo r money or fo r a m ea l a t velorios and dances. Anothe r seasons wood for house ~

227

building. A third cuts hair for twenty-five cents, a n d kills p igs. Two rne n regularly bu y a n d butcher p igs for festive occasions. T hey a re the pig-killers who be nefit b y the economic miser y of the sm a ll fa rme rs. All agricultural workers keep chickens and sell eggs to itin era nt traders. Th e worker who sells his labor on the sm a ll holding must expect a lm\·e r s tandard o( living th a n the worker \\·ho becomes a pe rma nent r esident la bore r on the h acienda. i\luch of his pay will b e in kind. T hus, 'rnrk in rice continu es to be pa id in kind on most small farms, at the rate of one al11111d o( rice for one day's work. Or food is substituted for a part of the wage. The worke r m ay rece ive break fast, lunch , a nd suppe r, or lunch only, or lun ch a n d coffee, and the wage which he rece ives will vary accordi ngly. He will o(ten h ave to acce pt a lower wage, because the small (armer cannot pay out much money. J[ he should become a resident la borer on a middle-sized fanu, h e must expect a lowe r quality o( p erquisites tha n is curre nt on the hacienda. His h ouse w ill be poorer tha n that of an hacienda worker. H h e gets a su bsistence p lot, h e will probably not be permitted to raise tobacco on it, a nd he \\·ill not rece ive the guarantee of cash credit, which he can obtain at th e hac ienda. His landowner m ay help him in other ways, but rarely in cash. He will lend him his h orse or invite him to drink rum at his expense. Again, the smaller size o( the holding will not absorb as much o ( his labor as h e must sell in orde r to live, so he will have to compete outside the h olding in a labor market which is already partially fill ed by fami ly labor and by m a n y oth ers like h imself. The differences be tween the h acienda workers and the \\·orkers on the sm a lle r holdings are recognized b y a ll whe n they say tha t the hacienda " g ives li fe" (da vida) . U ncertainties o( employment on the small farms and low ove r-all levels o f employment mark the conversations o( men as th ey s it on some hilltop in the hours after work or m eet casually in some bod y's back ya rd before going home for supper. :\Iuch talk cen ters about migration and th e hazards and potentialities of a life outside o( 1\tianicaboa . One man says h e wants to go someplace where they need sha recroppers in tobacco plamings and whe re things are different than in i\Ianicaboa. H ere, one says, a man is supposed to li ve b y work in " coffee and corn." Another says, " I woulcl move to town if I cou ld, bu t I know nothing but fi eld labor." A third m e ntions that the sugar fi e lds offer a n: opportun ity for a m a n able and willing to work, bu r h e is afra id o f the Negroes who li ve on the coast: " The peopl e who go d own to the coast to cut ca ne must be care(ul, a lways vig ila nt. T h e peopl e there are witches. They are waiting 1'0 1· a chance to offer a m a n a m ea l, but they p ut som e thing in the food. The n you sicke n and die." 1\Iany people ha ve indeed migra ted to town. to the coast, and to San Juan. Howeve r, we ve nture the guess that those who h<1ve left San .Jose were the individu als most eager for a ch a nge, and that whe ther they were m otivated by economic de pri va tion or b y som e other reason, the ir d esire to migrate developed within the

228

T ll L

P J-:<>l'l. E OF P lJ ERTO RICO

conLe Xt of inc reasing l y w e ake r fami ly and ne ig hborhoo d Li es. ·rho se who remain, ho,,·ever, a re relu c Lant to mig r a Le c l ·c " ·h e r e, because Lhe "·orld outs ide :\lanica boa is s Lill LOO s Lrange. The skills required of a m ig r a n t a1·c LOO unlamiliar and Loo varied . T he p eople wh o li ve in OL h e r n :g io ns do not belong LO his own in-gro up. ycL h e mus L m eet their competition , unLe mpe red b y ti<:s wiL11 which he is familiar. So they co ntinu e LO h o p e: fo r impro,·ements in lo cal condi tio n s (el (I J11 Ui l'11t e) , fo r b e Lter means \\" ith "·hic h to m ake a living at home. Th e a g ri c ulw ral worke rs of :\lanicaboa are co nscious o f th e wa y in wh ich the prosperity o( t he agri cultura l e rllc rpr·i..,es in their barr io affects th e ir ch an ces for a be tte1· or ,,·orsc li re . Yet they are precluded, :1t th e presen L stag<:: o f development, from acting in con cert to im prm·c their m,·n opportu nities. Co nditions a r e a l wa ys phr;1 ~ c d in indi\·id11al terms, and 11 0L in Le rm c; o r a si t u ;nio n affecting an e1n ire g rou p . T he p eople arc <<J th< ious of a roug h simil ariLy in the ir e co nomi c p os itio n. l)lll do not see th emselves ;-i s const itutin g a se para te.: !>ocial c lass of ag ricultural worke rs. To them , .. \\'c . th e p o or" ( 11fJ.rnt ros los j uJ ures) includcc; sm a ll h o ld e r ... and small farmers as well as agric ultural la ho r e rs fo r se\'era 1 r easons. · First, w age l;1bor is not the exclusive monopol y o f :l g 1·o up o[ a g rin tlLu1·;t1 \\"Orkers alone. Small holde1·s ;rnd sm a ll farm e r .... 0 1· m e mbers of the ir fa m ili es, ofte n h ire th e m se lves 10 1· w a ges. Po ssession o( land per se thus draws n o sh arp lin e b e t,,·een those who perform on ly ,,·a ge la b o r to earn their living and those who can also wor k th e i1· o wn farms. Second , th e te rms of the co n tractual :-1g1·eernent by which on e rnan a g rees to work for another va r y w id e ly in indiv idual ca ses, tho ugh the kinc.I o f work may be the same . Th e ab il ity of the agricul tu ra l worker to deman<L a ccn:1in wage d epe nds in part on th e economic p os ition in ·wh ich he find s himself, in p a rt on the abil i ty o( the e m pl oyer to pay him for his labor. Th ese cond i tion s tend to var y from w orke r to worker, from farme r to farme r. Moreover, this variability of o"·ne r -worke r r e lations is furthered b y the fact th at in J\ fa nica boa m a n y services are still no t eva l uatec.l in cash te rms. \Vhil e atte mpts are made to reciprocate ser vices in ro ug hly e q uivale nt ways, some se rvices are stric tly non comparable. Thus, on the hacienda, a man is g iven a se t of p e rquisi tes in exchange for w hich he offe 1·s his o,,·n servi ces and tho se of his family. The landown e r m ay ask him to carry a n ewly purchased bed fra m e on his b ack from th e road to the h acienda, without evaluating th is serv ice in terms of cash or tallyin g it aga inst the perquisites the man h as received from him. Jn th e operatio ns of the sm all farm, free help during th e d e livery of a child is not compa r able in cash te rms to h e l p in carrying bags of fertili zer , w ith w hich it m ay b e r ec iproca ted. In the absence of simila r l a b or conditi o ns and in th e relative absence of a means o f e v ~ilu a ting la b or ser vices of widely diffe rent kinds, each labor arran gem e nt is renegotiated on an individual ba sis be tween landown er and agricu ltural worker.

vVhile e ac h s uch arrangement invoh·es certain pay111 cnLs o ( cash and c ulturally stand a rdi zed ways o f exchang ing scn ·ices, it tends to be personal, individu a l, and variable . This in turn Lends LO inh ibit the d e ve lopm e nt of a unif orm rate of p ay a pplicable to all wage lab<>re r<; in th e barrio. Since their la bo r is n o t c xtracced in unil o rm ways, the ag ricultural labore rs in I\Ian icabo a d o not constitute a rural prole tariat, similar to that found in ca nc-g ro\\'ing districts such as Cai"'1amelar or N ocor;i. T hird. mmt of L11 e :1g ri c11 l tural \\'Orkc rs i11 \fani · ca boa are tl1e .~ on ~ of .,111:dl l:indo\\' ll l'b. or arl' rel atl'd 10 l;1111i l i <:~ 1JI ~ 111;ill l:1ndm,·1i<.: rs hy blood or ritu :d ki11 -.liip . S1 1c 11 tic·.., i11 t 11111 ;ilk< t tile \\' : 1 ~"' i11 \\'Ili c Ii tli<:y ~ <: I I tli <: ir l:1h<ir. Bro1 licr~ nu y p:1y lo\\'<:r \\':l g<: ~. but l hey i11 Lurri :tr<: i>o 11 1HI to oflC'r n11n<· :1»»i,1 :111<·c i11 c:ts<: ol ll l'Cd tlt :11 1 :1 1J1 a1 1 1111rcl ated by blood or h y other f orm .~ o l kin ~ hip. T he: inclusion ol la11d o\\'11<: rs :ind l;111dl c;~.., \\·ork<:r;. i11 :1 ll<" l\\·ork o l ki1 1 rc h1i o11sliips f11n li c: r 111 <:: 111 ~ 1h:i1 L11 c l:thorcr\ idc:1b of Iif(' do 11ot d c.:,·<: lop i11 ~ 11a1 p di~1iJ1c tirn1 Jrom tlime of tl H·ir l>c t1 e roll kinfolk . ' l hl' \\·orld \' iC\\' ol the ;.11Lill L1 r m c-r~ is the \\'orld \' i(' \\. o f th e Lt bore r :1~ \\'C ll. noLl1 ha \·c; th <.: S:l lll C idc::d rec rl'a tional. rcl i )!; iou ~ . :ind la 111il y p:1t1 e rn s and the sa 111 c me thods o( child tra ining. \'c t th ere is a much wider g ap bet,,·een ideal norm and a cwa l practice in th e case of the laborer, than the landed g ro up. Eco n o mi c fa cto rs deny the laborer the mea ns to fulfi ll his ideal sta ndards. The ag ri cultural \\'orkers in \fanicaboa lay the same sLress on church marriage as the peasantry, but they arc rarely ab le to accumulate the nccess:-1ry money for th e ce remony. J( th ey ow n n o land and have no access to la nd , th ey must rely either on the paren ts- ill -law or o n the ir landow ner to furni sh the needed sums. Otherw ise, th ey m ay stage a n elopem ent an d hope that the [ail r1r·r·om /Jli may indu ce some close relative to arrange fo r the re lig ious sanction in order to p reserve the good na m e of the fam ily or to ward o ff supernatural consequences. Nevertheless, this pressure towards common -J;nv lia isons tends to increase as the numbe r of la ndless increases, a nd constitu tes an clem e nt which th reatens the system 0£ arranged marriages o f the pea sants. If the landless worker wa nts to go to town, he must b o rro w a horse. If, like Panch ito, he owns a horse, he must be able to sta nd the laughte r and ridicule behind his back which censors him a nd hu r ts his pride. " Pa nch ito is sta rving himself and his famil y so he can feed h is horse," the people say. If h e does no t go to LOwn, h e must pay higher prices at the local rural stores. Thus he must e ither rely on the goodwill and cred it of the sto re ow ne r, or ask his la ndowner to bring him need ed goods from town. Several buyers' groups are in existe n ce in the barrio. They consist o f agricu ltural workers and sma ll holders, who ask a wea lthier la ndowner to b11 y for th em in town. This service, however, b inds the recipients of the favor to reciprocate in some way in the future . Since the agricultura l worker is ra re ly able to reciprocate in goods, h e must reciproca te

SAN JOSf:: ' " mADlTIONAL" COFFEE :i\ l U~ICIPALITY

in labo r. If h e wants to give a sung devotion to a saint, he must go begging from house to house in order to amass the necessar y sum. T his is sometimes done by small and middle farmers as a form of penance. In the case o[ the agricullllral worker, however, what is a penance to othe rs becomes a n ecessity. \Vithout enough money, he can not buy rice and beans at the store. Thus, he must eithe r expend additional amounts of labor in th e rice fi e lds and be paid in rice, or restrict his diet Lo th e d espised corn meal and tropical vegetables. Since h e has little rood, h e can offer little to guests and !l111st c11rta il his hospitality. The sma ll farmer may i11,·itc lti111 to a 11<'/urio . to a dance, to have a drink, or to ~ 11 arc a 111 (':d. Yet he himse lC is often u nab le to ret11rn t Il e 1:1,·or. 11 is inabi li ty to be a fu lly fu nctio ning 111c: n1hc r i11 th e 11n\\·ork o( reciproca l o bligations also n ils do\\'11 h is a bi li ty to be a ri tua l co-parent to a ll 111c 11 . 1 l c 111;1 y i11 deed seek his landed relatives and h is 1:t11do \\'11c r as rit11al co-parents, but they will never seek him <>111 i11 t11rn . D o n Gurne stood baptisrn to a child oi' Ii is l>rn1 her. !\I anolo. \\·ho was h is resident laborer. 1 It: n n-cr per111iued l\lanolo to become godfather to one of Ii is 0\\' 11 children . T hese rcstrinions lend a panicular cast to the li(e o( th e agricultural workers. making them more than merely landless peasants. \Ve may describe one such man to show more clearly the limitations of a worker's life. Ch evo is a husky m a n who has in herited the good looks o( a fam ily that is known throughout the barrio [or good looks. His father, a small holder, was still alive wh en C.:hevo married. Chevo, therefore, moved away from h is parents' holding to become a wage worker i11 o rder to support his newly fou nded family. " \ Ne got ma rr ied," he recalls, "and the n ext day we were wo rki ng away in the sweet potato patch." Not even the "hot" sta te o f the new lyweds kept away the n ecess ity of e:1r ni11g the ir daily bread, and so, o n the day after t he marr iage, they both went to work in the "cold" sweet potatoes. For a year, they lived in a small shack o n th e hold ing of his parents-in-law, who owned a small patch o ( coffee Jand near the hacienda. There, Chevo hired himself out on a daily basis and worked for whoeve r wo uld employ him. H e possesses considerable ph ysica l agil ity and good judgm ent, qualities which soon b rough t him into demand as a specialist in weeding and pruning the coffee p atches. His skill, his looks, h is good voice, a nd his knowledge of ma ny songs to be sung wh ile working earned him the nickname El Grillo ("The Cricket"). The name has stuck to him, ;i I though he is now close to thirty-five and no longer climbs trees with the same abandon as when he was you ng . Yet the name still serves to d ifferentiate him from :1noth er, taller Chevo (Chevo E l Grande), wh o ow ns som e land, and a " li ttle" Chevo (Chevito), who b oth d istills and drinks alcohol in violatio n of insular law. El G rill o establish ed a reputation as a good worker. Soon th e owner of th e hacienda invited him to move th ere as a pe rmanent resident laborer. E l Grillo ac-

2 29

cepted. H e received a house, the use of a cow, a nd a subsistence plot. The house is loca ted a long a path which runs be tween t\\'O coffee patches. It has a corrugated, galvanized iron roof and wooden wa lls. Its o ne room is divided in two parts by a \\·ooden partition. A n adjacent sm a ll shed houses the ki tchen a nd a wood-burning stove. There is no latrine. Chevo o"·ns a wooden bed, but the springs are homemade and instead of a r eal matu·ess the family sleeps on a few folded blankets. Still, CheYo is an h acienda worker, and he owns more blankets than the average worker family-more bla nkets even than m an y small holders. H is dish es are almost entirely of calabash, but h e owns a few white china cups an d saucers, two china plates, and a few metal k nives and spoons. T in cans h ave been put to a mu ltitude of u ses as containers and implem e nts. Most of the cooking is done in o ne heavy iron kettle. C hevo's machetes are a lso h is own, and when h e is not using them, they rest tip downwards in the corner or stuck i n the ch inks of the wall. He now has a family of seven, with an eighth on the way. His income as a regular hacienda agregado is mo re regular th an most, and owing to his skill the hacie nda owner sometimes delegates to him the weeding of an e ntire orchard. For this "piecework" he gets b etween twenty and thirty dollars. The wood produced in the course of thinn ing the shade trees is his to turn into charcoa l, half the produce going to the landowner. The cow is pastured with the other cows o( the h aciend a, but a ll of the milk belongs to Chevo's household. Every morning his eldest son runs out to milk h er before the others have risen from their beds. Ch evo sends ha lf the milk each day to his parents-in-law. The latter are quite o ld now and depend on the contribu tions of all their relatives. Once in a while, Ch evo a lso works the land of his father-in-law and sells the sma ll quan tit ies of coffee o b ta ined for h im. I n turn he receives some minor crops for his pains. \ i\Tith this n ew source of minor crops, he h as given up th e subsistence plot which he had on the h acienda. The piece of land owned by Chevo's own family is now run by the youngest brother, who stayed behind to care for the aging parents while a ll the older siblings m oved a way and became wage labore rs. The eight cuerdas have thus r e mained undivided. The youngest brothe r admin isters them and supports the ir mother o n the revenue. Chevo visits his p are nts' place on occasion, but his closer ties are with his parents-in-law a nd his wife's brothers. One of his wife·s brothers owns a sma ll store, where Chevo's family does a ll their buying. Another brother occasionally does Chevo essentia l favors . 1t is from him that Chevo borrows a horse when he wan ts lo go to town or to the roa d. Chevo's own brothers are his "co-parents" of the water baptism. But th e sociall y more important positions of "coparcnts o[ the baptismal font" are he ld by his wire's brothers a n d by th e owner of the h ac ienda. T h e h acienda owner was glad to serve as godrather, b ecause he va lued Chevo as a worker a n d as a man . He says that Chevo fulfills h is obligatio ns (wm pie ronmigo) .

230

TllE l'EC>l'LE OF f'l'E RTO RICO

Chevo, in LUrn. says: "1 am a poo1· man. This "·ay l ca 11 ask hi 111 LO do me J;1 \·01·s. So l go lo 111 y onn prulre for helf', b e( ame l have a relalionship ol lnt~l "·ilh him. " Chevo i-. sa id lO ha\·e fifly cenls in a li11 can, lhe ex l e nt ol hi '> currenl cash resources. Twenly dollars J rom lhc las l han·esl, however, went inw lite purc hase of a pig, \\'hich. wgelher wilh a number or chickens. reprc-.e nt hi!-> ca pita I. H e u sed lO ha\·e more c h ickem, bul mall)' died oL chicken c holera. T his cut dmn1 revenue front lhe eggs, which his wife sells lO lhe itin erant trader. Chevo has ne\·er been ab le lO acn1mulate lhe. 100 to $ 150 needed to bu y a horse. This wotrld turn o n e o( his fondest dreams into rea lity. A~ things stan d , he does not visil wwn o ft e n. H e u s uall y b u ys his good s al his hrolher-in -law's store. A lmost ;ill the money that Chevo earns goes inlO lhe p 11rchase ol food. For lun c h , his fami ly eals corn m e;d with milk, plantains wilh codfish or a type of banana ca lled pie!"' with codfish. They eat lhe same fare in lhe evenings, allernaling il OCC'a:,iona ll y wilh rice a nd beans ;ind tropical vege tables. Chevo's wife some times takes in \\'ashing . For lhi!-> !'>he charges fifty cents for a do1.en la 1·ge pi ece'>. Il er oldesl daughler is now old enough to care for lh e baby and the younger child ren and can relca!'>e her mother for exu-a ,,·ork. Once a yea r the lamil y bu ys n eeded clothes. Ch evo is a ~tea d y and skillful "·orker. Yet he regards labor wilh distaste. i\ f oney cannot wholly compensale for ch e loss of leis ure. Assured ol som e regular in come, he performs his appointed tasks conscienliously. 13ut he is unwilling to see k extra \\·ork. Even during the coflee harvest, when he has been ,,·orki n g in a productive coffee patch, he will turn in his s ix or seven a/111 utles and lh e n r epa ir to the neighborhood store, rath er th;in in c rease his produ ction. At the s tore h e may pass t he rest o( the day i n le isu re ly con versat ion with hi s brolh er-in-la•v and passers-by. " .I have picked enough coffee for the da y," he w ill say o n s u ch occasions, "now I s hall s it down and ta lk." I n such a mood he is eas il y persuaded to si n g aL th e next devotion, espec.:ia ll y i f the d evotion is h e ld for Saint Anthon y. l l e feels a s pecial affinity for Saint Anthon y. who wa s in strumental in geuing him lhe position of resident laborer at th e hacienda. Chevo s till ha s a n ice voice, and can slill remember many verses or diffe re nt degrees of complex ity . He does not improv ise, but h e sometimes t ransposes lin es from one ::.onK to another. O ccasionally the context appears s uit" l>le tor lhis; sometimes it does not. This practi ce is the mark of a second-rate s inger, and, despite his good voi ce a nd manner, Chcvo Lhus ranks behind major lights who ca n botlt sing and improvise. cvcrth elcss, he is nl Le n in vited as an addilional singer, and responds w illing ly LO s u c h invitaLions. Just as h e lacks the lirsL·l la ss troubadour 's more viv id im agination so h e ;d so rcu1ins his " prude nce" 011 such oc'cas ions ~ nd 1.·arcl y drink s b cyo 11 cl his 111 eas11re. ;\ fore famous s ingers. 111 con Lr;1s1, Ii ave:: ;1 111arked te nue ncy to let cautio n fly ~o the winds and "to become imprudent" (se /JiJ11 e11 1111 j>r II t/ (' II ( r•).

Che\'(> and his wile " earn· on "·ell" with each oLher

(st' ll<·11t111 /Jir11). P eople joke aboul his "s lrength ,'' l~e­

cause eath vear of their marriage she has borne l11m a rhi ld ;111d , i!'> ah,·ays pregnanl. Onl y one quarrel beL\\·ecn them is o n record in lhe barrio. JL is said thal one nig ht C:hc\·o re wrned home \·cry late from a dance with sLai11-, of lip~ tick 011 hi'> shirt. H i::. "·ifc bil a pi ece out ol his lc:lt shoulder. For a "·hilc gloom reigned, 1>111. a< c ordi11g to d1l' -.a111c inlonncd -.011rc l'-.. lhl'> -.l)oll "< o n tc11tcd l':tc h oth e r" (Sf' con / t•11 to rrm ) . ( :ltt•\'IJ i-. ; 111 l1 ;1c it1HLI \uirkcr a11d tl111-. l>l'ltl'r oll 111a 1cri :il I> tl1:111 n1ml ol th e: ;1gric 1d1 lit :ii ,,·o r kl' I., i11 I lie li;11rio. ) c·L i11 ii... li:1-.ic katun·' hi ... lik i... -.1rnc1111cd i11 t il e ..,; 1111 c: wa\ ;1-. their~ . I le: i~ IJl)t ;1 ,,·:1gl' ,,.,>1 kt'I' wl10 11 :1-. 111Jtl1 i11g 10 -.el l but hi-; l:11Jor po\\'n. l le li;1s .'>0111(' ; 1< <l'" 10 pic!'C'- ol Li11d di.-.1ri1J111cd i11 liis la111ily. a11d Iii' la111i li;il tic:" link l1i111 w ;1 cnt;1i11 ~ ion-. Til e.: cc111di1 ici11-, "' Ii i. . Libo1 011 the hac ic11d:i arc: ddi11cd 11ot 011h IJ\ Ll1 <: c u-.10111:1n· re,idc11t L1bor <011 1r;ic L, but I» Iii., l;t· 1-.~111;il rc:l;11ion.,l;ip., ,,·i1h lhC' l:i11dcl\\·11er. \\'ho i... Iii ... ri111;1l CCJ· p:1r<.:11l. The -.a111c c lt: 1r;1n<:ri..,1ic., ;in.: ~ han.: d b y 1110\l "·;1gc ,,·orkcr-; i11 .\la11ical>oa. ·1 1icre arc le:"· 11H.:n who rely on lheir daily wage alone. T hey u suall y work for people with "·hom they mai11win personal and familial lies. \\'h e re the expen ses incurred th rough su ch face ·lO· fa ce rec iprociti es are counted , they appear as costs in th e bal;111cc sheet ol production. Land given lO lhe land l e~s worker for su bsislencc production costs the landowner money. i\ I ilk given free t o the worker in areas wh e re 111ilk ca n be sol d also costs the lando\\'11cr mon ey. Credit at stores cos ts the storekeeper money if his clie n ts do not pay regularly and promptl y. The sick ch ild of his resi d ent la borer costs th e Ja11down er money. l l is cha racteristic of 1.\-Iani ca boa in its presen t stage of' deve lo pment that few su ch cosls arc reckoned, and few e liminaled . In Olh er barrios or San J ose, such as Saba n a, and in oth e r parts of lhe coffee area as a w ho le, su c h costs are b e ing nil. This is especial ly true where the workers use up resources for which they do not pay, bm which co uld yield the landlord an income. The increase o[ populaLion in the large urban centers of the island has brought increased d ema nd for minor crops. The worke r who uses a subsislence plot d eprives the land owner of 1·evenuc wh ic h he could reali1.c t h rough produclion sales o f minor crops in the towns. l\ I ilk. too, can n o w be sold. The ,,·orker who has the use or a milch cow for his fam ily deprives the landowner o f the income of niilk sales. Credit to the worker imposes increased labor costs on the landowner, becau se lit e worke t· needs even more credit in the off-season when h e i" idl e tha n whe n he is working. For th ese reasons. la11d owners in t h e coffee a rea woul d like to e limin ate credit and cuslom ary p erq u is ites. Th e ir id ea l is a n e mployee who rece ives money only w h e n h e is actually wo r k ing an d w h o covers the rema ind er of his subs is t· c n ce needs tliro 11g h incom e d erived from othe r sources. Sud1 a man is a free wage laborer, fi111ctionin g with in an in1pcrson;tl labor market. This labor policy has invol ved the land owners i1 1

SAN

Se\·ere con Lratl icl io ns. Coffee farms do not offer wages n early a s hig h as sug ar plantations or employment in the lO\\'llS. Cu uing perq u isi Les and customary arrangem e n Ls has Lhe refore caused increased mig ration to the sugar coasL and to the towns. If the government hap· pens to be building roads in a coffee area during the h arvest, many landowners ca nnot compete with the hig he r wages paid for construcLio n jobs. Overall eco· nomic d cn: lop11J(.:11t of the isla nd has broug ht many ll t: \,. jobs. ~ uch as those in the distribution and service 1r;1dc ... \,·ltik bcucr Lransportation has g iven the \\'orker ;tc < n~ to job~ a way from home. Thus, "the lack ol m;11qH1\\"C.:r in the mo111llain regions o( the country «011~1i1111c' 1he 111;1jor probl em confronting the coffee ind11 st r> ... d eclares an cdiwrial in the R cuisla d e Ca[C ( 1~1 1 :-:. :id yea r. 1'\o. ~I· p . ;.1). I t is 1101 011 I y h ig hcr wages which the wage worker seek, ;111d l111d-; 011 the coast. H e also encounters a wholly 11e\\· and different ""'Y o f life. H e may not rcn:iH· ;111> perquisites. I !is thoughts turn less and less to the dc~irability ol O\\'ni ng or controlling a subsiste nce pl oL. I le is less and less concerned with a min imum standard of living d erived from a sma ll plot o( land. Living o n his \\·ages means that m ore ancl more goods not o nl y ca n be bul must be purchased al stores. \iVork in the sugar "facLOrics in the fi eld" of the coasL m eans, moreover. that \\"ages arc obta ined wholly with· out the in te n ·e ntion of personal ties of any kind. The laborer becomes a wage-earn ing, store-bu ying inc.Jividual , whose life cha nces arc sim ilar to those o[ other wage workers, all o[ \\·hom have the same rcla lionship to th e impersonal administration of Lhe plantation. which m aintains a careful system o( cost accounting and production. " Jn the coffee farms the worker re· ce ives g reat advantages compared to the workers of th e coasta l wwns"; repea ts l11e editorial in lhe R evis/a de Ca ft: ( 1 !).18, ~ d year, No. 9, p ..J), "pure and abunda nt Waler; fr ui ts and vegetab les g ratis; free o[ the [ear[ul b ite of Lhc mosq uito which ca uses malaria which, g iven p oor diet, degenerates into tuberculosis. " The free wage worker, ho\\·ever, is no longer imerested in obtaining such perquisites, which are pan of a lower sLandard o( living. H e reca lls how persona l relatio nships w ith a la ndowner a lso made him d ependent on the w hims o f a single individual. The wage worker who makes the transition from a resident laborer to a free laborer en ters a new cultural seui ng, in which eve1Hs arc j udged in di fferent terms. In con seq ucnce, the coffee growers musl rely for their sta bl e resident labor supply on that section o f the populatio n of th e coffee region "·hich has not yet m ad e th is transition . These arc the people who are too isola ted b y t0pography, social ties, and transportation fac ilities to move easily from one cultural situ a· tion into another; people who are too poor to migrate; p eople who con tin ue Lo think in terms of a minimum standard of subsistence w hich is maintained by produce d e rived from t he land; and people who are too tied to their local ities to envisage alternatives in occu pation and patterns of life . Yet culture change in P uerto Rico is so rapid that the number of such people is growing

JOSE: " TRAD ITIO:'\AL'" COFFEE :'.\IU:'\IC I PALITY

231

stead ily less. Barring government inten-ention, more and m ore people will make th e transit ion from the coffee way o f life to other ways of living, and more and more workers will go " to New York, New J ersey, Pen nsylvania to harvest potatoes, aspa ragus, etc. rather than to o ur beautiful mountains to han·est coffee, enjoying at the same time a magnificenc climate unlike an y o ther." 9 This phenomeno n represents a contradiction in the re lationship between workers a nd landowners in the coffee area. Idea lly, la bor should be paid o nly when it is producing commod ities for the landowner. L andO\\·ners can cut labor cost by stripping the worker o[ h is trad i tional benefits and con vening his labor into m o netary wage terms. If, howeve r, he is stripped of traditiona l perquisites a nd is paid o nly (or actual labor performed , the worker w ill begin to seek employment where he can obtain the highest wages. The more the coffee producers place their production on a cost accounting basis in order to stem the decl ine of the industry, the more workers "·ill leave the coffee area. This contradiction is present in l\Ia nicaboa. Many workers have left the barrio a nd gone to town, to the coas t, a nd to Sa n J uan. On the coast they form enclaves among the loca l people, a nd in Sa n Juan, they generally Jive in the same neighborhood, which may grow into a larger future settlemem of people from J\Ia nica boa. No d o u bt this trend w ill continue. Neverthe less, the transitio n from the old \\'ay o f life to the new has been less rapid in l\Ianicaboa tha n elsewhe re, because, paradoxi ca I as i t may seem, certain of the new condiLions have helped perpewate the old. The most important single factor in slowing the rate o( change is the introduction o( tobacco as a cash crop o n sma ll farms and on haciendas. Tobacco has mad e it poss ible to cominue m a n y old sharecrop arrangements in the new and changed context. U nlike coffee prod uc tion, where the landowner owns th e entire product, a nd the worker is pa id in wages, tobacco prod uction ena bles both the \1·orker a nd the O\n1er to share in the proceeds. In simple terms, it thus maintains two fami lies on the same plot. It serves the same purpose as the o ld custom of granting subsistence plots w ith p rofit. The tenants now grow tobacco, and the hacienda owner appropriates half their produce as a cash crop. Since production credit is readil y available for Lobacco grown within the insular quota system, the tobacco growers can obtain some money for thci 1· su bs isten ce thrnughou t the year. Th is enables th e la rge la ndowner to cut labor costs. H e can pay his workers o nly whe n they are produ cing a nd at the same t ime keep his best workers with him. Since they now grow tobacco as well as perform work in coffee, he benefits by thci1· labor throughout the doubled period o( productivity. Tobacco production alone has thus served to stabilize the la bo r-la ndowner r ela tionships in Manicaboa, wh ereas in other barrios th e absence o[ this buffe r has permi ued confiicts to arise between landowners a nd workers. D

Edi torial in R evista de Cafe, 19.18. 3d year, No. 9.

2 32

TH E PEOPLE OF P UERTO RICO

This stabiliza tio n, however precarious, preserves much of the traditional cultura l isolation of the barrio. Cultural isolation is reinforced by geographical isolation. Although roads lead into Sabana and into the other coffee ba1Tios, none g ive access to Manicaboa. The people in Sabana who have lost their resident labor status have readily establ ished relationships with the town. To a much greater extent than in Manicaboa, they have moved to town, or have begun to shuttle by bus and public ca rs between town and country. They have become accustomed to making a living through wages, their houses are furnished w ith town furniture, and their cloLhes a re urban clOLhes. Unlike Manicaboa, Saban a has begun Lo think in terms of wages obta ined in many ways a nd in different p laces. In Man icaboa, however, the introduction of tobacco as a second cash crop has maintained the notion that land use is primarily a m eans o[ m eeting su bsistence needs. Since Lobacco can be rotated with other crops, its adoption has meant that addition al edible minor crops are produced on the same land. T obacco thus ensures food Lhrough increased production and through additional cash from to bacco sales, though not from wages, with which to buy it. The gulf between Manicaboa and the to,vn rema ins wider than that between Saban a and the town, yet some people have moved to town. The first step in migration is ap peal LO a rclalivc in town for l1e lp and lodging. Such a relative may look clown on a country person but w ill usuall y help him get his h earings in the n ew life. R elatives who have moved to town from Manicaboa arc indeed imporlant Lo migr:rn ls, but the Lies beLwccn country a n d town kin arc weaker in Man icaboa than in Sabana. \\Then a riwal coparent moves from i'vlanicaboa to town, a man is likely to forget him when he counts up his co-parents. He will not make the trip to town in order to establish co-parental ties with a man there. Relatives who have moved away are often not m entioned in the tally of genealogies. i\foreover, town fol k tend to look down on their rural relati ves, setting up an add itional cultural barrier between t11em. T he people from iVfanicaboa are known as "h icks" wherever they go, and, to the inhabitants o( the coastal belt and the town, th e words "he is from Man icaboa" mean "he is ignorant, backward, stupid, shy and unsophisticated." The comradictions and confl icts in the relationship between landowners and the workers o( the coffee area are thus softened in JV[anicaboa, and the ir effects are slowed. This d oes not m ea n that they are not present and that in the future they will not bring out the trends observed in oth er barrios, such as Sabana. The road which is being built into Manicaboa presages the establishment of stronger cultural relations between the barrio and the town. T he high birth rate will add more people to each plot of land, and the pattern of inheritance will depress more small landowners into the ra nks of the agricultural laborers . l£ the plots are divided equally among h eirs, more small holders will have Lo look for wages Lo supplement the

income from their small ploLs. If Lhe ploLs arc held by on e h eir in the name o[ all the others, the remaining siblings must attempt Lo make a living somewhere else. Tobacco production is limited by a quota, even though som e can be g rown a nd sold illegally. Coffee production is at a low ebb. Govern ment attempts Lo stabilize the labor su pply through the p rO\· ision of small plots to landless laborers have affcned onlv one fourth o[ the sm a ll ho lde rs in Manirabo:1, as ":c sha II sec in :t later sectio n. Barring governme nt inLc1Tt·1llio11, l\fanicaboa in th e future will supply ma11 y l111nclrcds of hands to th e roast. to tile to\\·11s. and to 1l1e l i nit cd States. THE HACIENDA

Hacienda La Corra is th c l arge~L prnd 11 ct ive unit i11 IVIanicabon. Its heart, thc a~ ~c mhla gc o l drying platforms, machine house and storage hanh. rc111a ins in · tact. Each year Lhe concrete is carefully 111e11ded, and defective machine parts are replaced. i\lcmbcrs o( the Y fam il y, present ow ners a nd grandchildren of the original fo unde r, co11Linuc to inhabiL Lh c old living quaners, loca ted next to th e drying floors. Many pea· pie continue to d epend on their power a nd goodwill. They sometimes refer to themselves, half jokingly, yet ha!( seriously, as "Lhe kings of ~ Iani caboa. " The property has com e clown to th e 1wc~c n t owners without loss of lands or machinery. Seve ra l brothers and sisLcrs sh a re in th e proceeds o( th e farm, which is administered as a u nit (s11cesi6n) by one of them, whom we shall h ere ca ll E nriciuc. This ad ministr:ui vc arrangement is occasiona ll y found 0 11 l> lll a ll farn1s, where Lhe area o f land to be divided is small a n<l the number of siblings competing for a p iece o f the inher ita nce is large. In th e latter case, each claimant would rece ive only an infinit esimal portio n of land . Such a farm is usually put in to the hands of one sibling, who adm inisters th e property and supports the parents, while the others leave and try Lo make their living as agricuhural workers. La Corra, however, comprises a great dea l of la nd, and the number of compeLing siblings is sm all compared wiLh the average small fa rm famil y. The most impo rta nt fa ctor in perpetuating the unity of the hacienda is that the machine complex is indivisible. Machinery and colTec p la ntings must go h a nd in h a nd . One would be useless w ith out the oLher. Pieces o[ Janel m ay be sold and one sibling rem unerated w ith money. But the bulk of the h o lding m ust remain in tact in order to produce profits. P rofit is the b as ic purpose of the enterprise. The hacienda was and has remained a commercial organizatio n, ca pitalized by fam ily funds for the purpose of m a king a profit on Lhcm. A number of evenls conspired, however, to d rai n La C orra o( much of its initial ca pital. Sh ortly after the Ameri ca ns Look over th e island, Lhe founder of th e h acie nd a became interested in politics, had himse][ e lected re prcsenrnLive of San Jose to the insular assembly, moved to San Jua n, and proceeded to spend much of his m oney. Another

JOSE:

SAN

portion o[ the capital went into a short-lived and only part ~all}' successful attempt to organize a separate

cred itor mercha nt o utlet in San Jose. The i92S hurricane and the d epressio n put an end to this venture, and put the economy of the hacienda u nder severe strain. Like many other simila r em erprises, it was hea\' il y in d ebt for about ten years, and its capita l has hc.:en "dean a11d out of p:nn1·· (li111/Jio y desem/Jefindo) on ly sin ce :il>ou t 1!J.I<>. nue to its res tricted capitalization. the h:u ienda has i11 recc111 years shmn1 a tendc11cy to thL' up some of its rc~o urccs without any scrirnts ellort to rep lenish d1crn. It c 011ti111H·, 10 be the largc't si11g-le p roducer of n>rLce in thl' li:1 rrin . .\I ucl1 of 1.:t Gor ra's coffee acreage was lo,t during the tq:!8 hurricane. ;iml none of it was rcplamcd. Ye t the .hacie nda st ill has 358 cuerdas pl:int<'d to cofr<'c :ttHI produces some eig ht hundred <wt-;. J>-T :111i111111. C:olkc c111ti,·a1 ion has remained noni11tcnsi\'e. Tli--rc :ire 110 ~ccdhcds made fo r coffee seedling,. tl'tT:icc~ :ire nm made for trees, and fertili1.cr i~ not u~cd lor the collce patches. The reasons for this arc part iall y economic. T he decline of the coffee industrv has made the economic fuwre for coffee precariou~. Don Enrique feels that it is a good thing to use "up" the coffee patclies a lread y planted, but not to invest money in intensi fying productivity per cuf'nla . Instead, he o(ten leaves a large coffee Fig. :;.6. l-lacicnda of 11walthy con1·e produtcr i11 tlll' 11101111· fain s of wr·~t

( ' 1'1//1·11/

/'11 e1·tu !l ieu. / 1/w/ o bv nf'lr1110: (;ov-

crn111c11/ of Punto Rico.

11

TRADIT!01'AL" COFFEE l\IUNI C I PALITY

233

patch uncultivated for several years, so it will regain its nawral fertil ity. He calculates that the cash amount needed per cuerda is completely beyond the power of the sing le individual. The Agricultural Extension Service has calculated the cost of terracing, contour ditching, limi ng, fertiliz ing, and the application of superphosphate per cuerdn during the first year of intensified cultivation alone at $7 1.62 (P uerto Rico House of Represematives, 19.i8:73). For La Gorra this "·otild represent an initial o utl ay of " ·ell over $20,000. At the same time, Don Enrique remains unconvinced by many of the technical arguments of th e Extension agents. H e tends to look dmrn on the agent socin ll y and loses no opportun ity to point out that much of the agent's reason ing is based on "book learning." " ' hen the Agricultural Experimental Station ran a demonstration project in San J ose, he carefully "·ent from site to site. showing up each weak point as he went. Above all. he derides the service's attempt LO apply a general rnle o[ cultivation to a ll coffee u·ees, since "the u·ees do what they want." Vh ilc coffee is st ill the mainstay o( the h acienda economy, it is no longer profi table enough to form the sole basis of a large-scale commercial enterprise. Coffee production has been d iversified with the production of other crops and supplemented with other commercia l activities. La Garra obtained a legal quota \

1

2 34

TllE PEOPLE OF PUERTO RICO

for tobacco of some one hundred cwts., and it grows and markets an add itional one hundred cwts. through informal and unofficial channels. This tobacco is raised by laborers resident on the hacienda, who are wage workers where coffee production is concerned, but work as sharecroppers in the production o[ tobacco. \Vorkers on the hacienda receive the use of a house, and some are given small plots where they may grow subsistence crops as part of their customary perquisites. During part of the year, however, they grow tobacco on these plots. The hacienda owners farm out their quota to them and finance production partly by means of production credit which they themselves get from the Tobacco i\.Jarketing Association for the legal part of the produce, partly out of their own pocket. Hal[ of the tobacco belongs to them, ha!( to the ma n who has done the work. After the tobacco is harvested, the workers may grow annual subsistence crops. Of these, they again owe the owners half, but the latter usually take only what they require for the needs o( their own table, leaving the rest to the workers. Sharecropping LObacco has increased the time during which the workers are engaged in productive work, while at the same time decreasing their need for support by the hacienda owners. \Vhile the processes of cultivation in coffee have remained nonintensive, the average production o( tobacco per cuerda is fifteen cwts., or seven cwts. more than the average for San Jose. Don Enrique sees LO it that his tobacco seed is genetically pure and grown in permanent seedbeds, though not shade-grown. The storage barn for his tobacco has been built carefully. The terrain most su itable for tobacco has been chosen for the production of the crop. Thus, La Corra represents a more efficient producer of tobacco than of coffee. The owners feel that the capital needed to intensify Lobacco production is small ·when compared wiLl1 that need ed to intensify coffee and that the future prospects of tobacco production are good. Finally, they know that they are investing in an annual and that they are sharing the relatively small risks involved in a bad crop or failing market with the ir ivorkers. The coffee patches of the hacienda produce a considerable amount of charcoal, which is sold to truckers along the road and in town. Two of the hacienda workers produce charcoal in share arrangements with Don Enrique. According to these arrangements, he again appropriates half of the final product. The hacienda also owns fifteen head of cattle and is considering add ing more. Milk and minor crops, ho·wever, cannot yet be produced for cash sales in an urban market. The owners of the hacienda are much given to making plans. They not only hope to buy more livestock, but they are thinking of. clearing an area of about eigluy cuerdas, which is heavily overgrown with wi ld gua:yaba, by letting it out to workers as subsistence plots. J\f"ter the workers clear the land, it cou ld be used as pasture iC market conditions [or large li vestock

were good. At present, La Corra permiLs its '~·orkers LO use the lw cienda cows for milk and to reta111 half or more of the minor crops, which they raise in rotation with tobacco. But "\\"hen the road comes," the owners a rgue, ""·e shall sell milk in wwn and sell our bananas. \Ve shall even plant cane up here." Such plans, ho"·ever, presuppose that the family's imerest in agriculture continues and that there are no alternative opponun ities for investments outside agriculture. One brother has alrea<ly moved to San J uan and taken up a profession. and some of the other siblings often play with the idea of le;l\ ing the f:trrn and rnov i11g to town. As they lo:,e interest in agrinrlurrc. tltey tend to regard th~ h;1cienda as a ~Ol;rce o l read y i11ron1e which w ill a l\\"a \'s ser\'C; Lo meet Lh cir cusw111;iry st;111d arcls of cons1111;p1.io11. rat her than as a co111111crcia l enLerpr ise to be exLc.:11dcd and intensified. E11riq11e often spends Jong periods in LO\\·n. lca,·ing Lile an11:tl administration and the ,,·ork of supervi"ion LO his lore. man (111ayordo111n) . He has not left for San .J11a11 mainly bernu:,e "in ~lanicaboa 1 arn king. b111 in Sau Juan J am nobody." Yet lie spends 11111cl1 111or1cy c;1ch year in playing the go,·crn men L-~ponsored lotLcry, hoping to \\"in enough to buy ··one or l\\°o .. houses i11 San .Juan, and to "live off rents" (11iv ir de_rentas~. Jnvestment in urban real estate may become 111creas111gly important in supplementing income c~eri ved ~r?m ~he hacienda, as the family sh ifts from acuve parllc1pat1on in agriculLure LO other ways of living. Don Enrique continues the tradition~! practic~ of turning over his coffee crop LO the pnvate crednor merchanL in town. The merchant keeps accounts for him and makes cred it advances on the basis of fu ture production. This is an arrangement of convenience rather than or dependence. The two men treat each other w ith "trust" (de co11fianza). Jn San Jose society, they rate as social equa ls. They are frie_nds, w!10 have social as we ll as purel y economic relatrons with each other. The lega l share o( the La Corra tobacco is sold to the Puerto Rico Tobacco Marketing Association, which acts as an intermediary for United States buyers. It advances credit on the b<tsis of future production. This credi t is usecl in turn on La Corra to finan ce sharecropping operations. The coffee grown on La Corra no longer goes overseas but is sold withi n the island. The tobacco, however, goes LO the United States. Tobacco has thus taken the place o( coffee as the econom ic link which ties L a Corra to the world beyond Puerto Rico. The o ld hacienda received credit primarily in the form o[ goods, which it then passed on to the workers through the mechanism of the hacienda store. Today, all cred it is given in money, and credit for production has become divorced from cred it for consumption. \Ve sl1all see later that this development has been conditio11cd by such interdependent factors as the d ecl ine o[ the coffee industry, the d ecline of cred it for coffee, th e r ise of independent marketirig in town, the rise of a lternative agricultural and urban pursuits, and the increased purchasing power of the laboring popu-

SAN JOSE: "TRADITIONAL" COFFEE i\fUNICIPALlTY

lation. In most pans o[ the coffee area, these interdependent factors put an end to the institution o( the h acienda store. Most hacienda stores went heavily into debt at the beginning o[ the depression period, and most hacienda owners were glad when an insular law prohibited plantation stores a nd gave them an excuse to rid themselves of an onerous burden. The hacienda store, however, \\'as one o( the most important, if not the most imponant. factor for binding labor to the farm. Its disappearance heavily affecLecl the conditions or the hbor supply on La Gorra. J\s a result. th e YCry character of the labor supply on Lhe li;H ienda has changed. In 1hc pa st. the main l:thor supply needed on the hacienda \\·; is drall'n lro m \rorkers res ident on the hacicnd:t. The number or \rnrker fami lies living Oil La Corra has. IHJ\\' C \Tr. decrc:1 sed I)\" about one-half. The workers \\·ho arc ldt represent the core o[ the necessar~· labor force. but do not suffice to meet the large labor rcquircmelllS or the hacienda. At present, the hacic nd;1 e mploys one loreman and eleven agricultural \\"Orkers ;1-; re~idents. Don Enrique has been carefu l w lll:1i11tai11 the custoniary and traditional ownerworker rel :1tiom \\'ith them \\'hcrever possible within the I igh t ol new conditions. He owns Len o[ their eleven houses. The eleventh bui lt his house with money obta ined from Don Enrique. The foreman and five of the res ident laborers have subsistence plots, and one has a sma ll garden-sized plot around his house. Another shares a subsistence plot \\"ith his father-in -law, a small farmer in the neighborhood. In shares with the owners, the foreman and the workers cultivate a total o( eigh teen and one-half cuerdns, which they devote to minor crops during half o( the year and to tobacco the other half. five workers do not have plots, but two of these produce charcoal in shares with the Y family. These men are employed not only for their own labor, but, as is traditional, for the services of all members of their famil ies who are at the beck and call of the landowner. Sixteen of their children are sufficiently old to perform man-sized tasks around the hacienda. The mother of o ne of the workers helps in the coffee h arvest. Smaller ch ildren are ca lled on to perform services for the Y family, ranging from waiting at table to fetching a horse for the owner. The Y fami ly makes a point o[ "respecting" thei r workers. Don Enrique says: "The best thing is to treat the people right. The town people always speak of the country people as vagrants. They should try 1.0 climb some of the hills here themselves. Some landowners th ink that their workers don't need rest. I always make sure that m y workers get rest periods. If they work well, then they are entitled to a good rest, anyway. H I see that they have clone the task, I send them home. ]( J treat them right, then they need me." He helps in lega l, medical , and political matters. When a boy from the hacie nd a got into an altercation a nd was charged with inrliCling a knile wound on somebody else. Don Enrique went Lo see the mayor and had the sentence reduced to a small fine. \Vhen a

235

man gets sick, he sends him t0 his friend the doctor. He advises people when they wish to buy livestock. He sometimes helps one of his trusted workers to acquire a small farm of his own. He becomes godfather to their children, and is thus involved in compadre relationships with them. At the time of the elections, he boasted that if he turned Inclependentist, he could deliver a hundred votes to the Independentist pany. At the same time, he claims that he shows his anger when his interests are threatened. He says: "The landowner has to take continual care that the workers will plant only annuals in their plots. If the landowner does not check carefully, they will often plant avocados and nifio bananas. And the quarrel is on. The jibaro is of the devil [el jibaro es del diablo]. Then I take my horse and ride through the plot. I destroy the plantings at once. The people cry after that, but one must take a strong stand with these people for their own good [ltn11 de ser fuerte co11 esta genie para el bien de ellos]." Yet one may well doubt whether this st0ry is literally true. La Gorra depends on its resident workers. They have a scarcity value. It is probably to the interest of the landm\·ner to make concessions to his best workers, to deal with them on a "respect" basis, and to enmesh them in a network of mutual obligations. The behavior of the Y fam ily, therefore, tends to conform to the traditional system o[ values which defines ideal norms of conduct and attitudes between hacienda owner and hacienda workers. The primary function of these norms is tO standardize relationships between those who own the means of production and those who must sell their labor power. These two sets of statuses are embodied in two cultural ideals, one for the owner, another for the worker. The status of the owner is symbolized in the ideal norm for the "good" employer. The status of the submitting worker is symbolized in the norm of the "respectful" worker. People readily verbalize the different aspects of the ideal worker or employer, though they do not usually consider more than one aspect at a time. The "good" owner "respects" (resjJela) the laborer. He g ives him a subsistence plot, so the worker will be able to raise a minimum o( goods to cover his subsistence needs. He will give the worker a house and see to it that the house is well built. \ 1\Then he enters into share arrangements with his workers, he will respect the terms of the unwritten contract and not demand more than his clue. \i\Then he lends a man a pig "for halves" (a medias), he takes half of the g rown pig and leaves half to the man who raised and fattened it. If he lends him a cow n ganancin ("for ga in "). he takes the equivalent of the animal's weight before the transfer, and half the amount added aft~i· the trans[er. If a cow thus weighs five arrobas when given to a ma n for "gain," and the cow increases by two mTobas while in the man's care. the owner is entitled to six a rrobas, the man to one. In supervising labor, he will see to it that the workers gel adequate rest periods. and if he works them for longer periods than usual, he w ill promise them re-

236

THE PEOPLE OF PUERTO RICO

ciprocal favors in the future. He not only supervises the work but shows that, on occasion, he can actually perform the operations which his workers carry on. In such tasks he must exhibit a high degree o( competence. He gives advice and help, but must also look out for his own advantage. A man who gives advice and credit too freely is criticized for being "too good" (demasiao de bueno). He must treat his workers with dignity, and insist at the same time that all the symbols of their respective statuses be observed. ' '\Then talking to the hacienda owner, the laborer will doff his hat, and remain standing. The landowner, on the oLher hand, will be courteous in address and not presume on his position . He must be open-handed in his help to the people who work for him. He must never insult them by sending them leftovers from his table. This ideal does not require -a man to be a paragon of virtue. Above all, it does not enforce puritan morals. The landowner may drink, he may swear, he may be irreligious, he may be hard on his wife, he may carry on occasional love affairs with the daughters of his resident laborers, and he may lose his temper on occasion. Such weaknesses, i( such they be, are permitted him, and may be accepted, if not actually condoned, by the people of the barrio. It is known that Don Z. is "like that." Nothing more is said in censure of such behavior. On the contrary, it adds emotional appeal ta his person and becomes the subject o[ much in tcrested speculation. The good worker, on the other hand, "respects" the owner. The best thing that a la ndowner can say of one of his workers is that he "respects a lot" (respetn mucho). Such a man must be a competent worker who can be trusted. H e "knows" (sabe) . He must present himself for work whenever the landowner requires him to do so. H e must put the labor of his fami ly at the disposal of the landowner. If the owner shou ld want one of his boys to fetch a horse left tied to a fence several miles away or to help serve in the hacienda kitchen, he must permit him to do it. H e must act in such a way as to maintain the landowner in full possession of bis staLUs. He must know how to press his advantage, how. to suggest, how to put himseH forward, how to "defend" his cond itions of li(e and labor without insolence, but also without servility. He must always let the owner know that "he is the boss" (aqui quien mando soy yo). He must not ask for overly large amounts of credit. Yet he must present the owner w ith an occasional demand for cred it, to re-emphasize his dependence on the man who owns the land and employs him. The owner will oflen be glad to give him credit, for he knows that his money is going to a reliable man and that he is tying a person oE proved utility to the farm. Such a worker is called a man with whom "one can talk" (se j>uede l1ablar). Such workers may ask the landowner to stand as godfather to their children, thus instituting the important symmetrical reciprocal relationship involved in being co-parents of the same child. Both ideals, of course, imply their opposites. Just

as they stress the ideal of the "good" landowner and the "o-ood" worker, so they condemn behavior which nms ~ounter to the accepted ideal. The "bad" landowner-a man who is stingy, contemptuous, and inconsiderate of his workers and unwilling to g ive them subsistence plots, credit and advice-tends to coincide with the stereotype of the "Spaniard" which we have discussed. The "bad" worker- rebellious (alzao), without respect for his beucrs, i nsole 11 t, too fonvard in pressing his claims-is simi larl y condemned . It is imponam LO note in this rc\pcn that we are dealing here with ideals of hc.:h;l\·ior \\·hi< Ii crnc class Sets for ;111other. J"I IC \1-C>rKCT CX J>t'< h l he.: la 11downer to be "good." Th e l:111dmn1cr expvct~ the wo1 ker to be "good." " ' !tile tile landcnrncr can s1 1hj<:n die "bad" worker LO serirnts ~oc i al sa nnion s. ~ II( Ii as unemployment and the de11i:d of csscnt i:tl Ltnirs. t li e \l'orkers in turn haYC 11 0 such d ircn mea ns ol c.: 11 forci11~ the ideal norms of beh:l\·ior "·here the l:tndowner i ~ con cerned. ?vloreO\·e r. the cx i::-tcncc of ideal 11nrn1s on both sides docs not imply that bcha,·ior will automatically folJo,1· ideal standards. 11 0\n.:,-cr. the ideals provide yardst icks whereby siw:nions ol co111mo11 occurrence can be judged. The Y fami ly tries to maintain its reputat ion of "good employers" in all their relations w ith resident and transie n t workers. Th e customar y arrangements are continued by both parties not merely because they are traditionally sanctioned but because they have proved profitable and advan tageous under new conditions. H Don Enrique realizes his plan o( extended livestock production, more terra in may become ava ilable for subsistence p lots in the area now overgrown by wild gunynba. J[ the market makes it more profitable to grow minor crops for sale, the practice o[ sharing these crops may be discontinued. If tobacco profits increase and La Corra has had a finan cially successful year, Don Enrique may decide to grow some tobacco fJor admi11istraci611, under his own direction and ownership, rather than on a sharecrop basis. If milk becomes marketable, some of the existing arrangements reo-arding the use of hacienda cows may go by o I . the board. J\faintcnance o[ face-to-face re auons and ideal n orms which govern them may soften changes towards greater rationalization of production . They may act as brakes, which slow the process o[ change, but they cannot alter the direction of the trends or stop them. The bulk of the labor supply now comes from outside the boundaries of the hacienda. ' 'Vbi le La Corra can rely on twenty-11i11e hands who Jive within its confines, it can a lso count on thirty-six peo ple who live on the small farms which surround it on all sides. These latter includ e thirty small holders and sons of small farmers and five small landowners, who must supplement their family's earnings with wages obtained on the hacie nda. The wife of a sma ll farmer too sick to work a lso reports for work at the hacienda when n eeded. Don Enr iciue has consciously bu ilt up good relations with the small farmers \Vho surround his hacienda. He has stood as cornjJnclre to many of

SAN JOSE: "TRADITIONAL" COFFEE l\IUXIC IPALITY

1.hem and helped some o( his most trusted resident laborers lO obtain sma ll farms in the neighborhood. He visits their houses, helps them in their affairs, and gives advice. His imervention may hel p a man get a larger quota for the prod u ction of tobacco or in getting a government loan for agricultural production. Don Enrique thus all.empts 1.0 reconcile the con Oicts between landown ers and workers a nd to assure himself a permanent labor s11pply from the potentially most stable stratum of rural society, the peasamry. He olkrs them the oppon1111it>' to supplement their income with \\·age labor 011 the hacienda. His role thus 111ct•ts the rcq11ircmc111-; ol the peasancry and supports tlw ir wa\' of l ilc. Th rough its need of l:i bor the hacienda continues to phy a potent role in th e ne ighborhood of A ltura. The contrast bc t,,·ccn an area b11il1. aro11nd an h acienda unit and an area which lacks a n ha cie nda can be fo1111d in :1 comparison o[ the t,,·o neighborhoods of :\ltura and Li111011c.-;. 111 "·ays already mentioned, re, idem \n>rkcr:. 011 t hc hacienda enjoy a higher standard of li,·i11g than persons "·ho work for small and middle formers. :\01. only docs the hacienda pay cash wages of one dollar a day, "·hereas the small farms may substitute m ea ls and payment in kind for a portion of the \\·age, but the h acienda provides better constructed h o uses 1.han Lhe workers would h ave e lsewhere and it permits the ' rnrkers to keep half of the tobacco grown on th e subsisLen ce plots. The small farmer usually appropriates Lhe entire tobacco crop and auempts to compensate Lhe worker with a combination of money and produce. The hacienda worker also receives produ ction credit throughout the period o( growing tobacco, and he can always petiLion the landowner if he requ ires more money for his subsisten ce. The h acienda owner will pay for medicine n eed ed to cure a sick child , attempt to redu ce his workers' fines in court, g ive advice, and bail a man o ut of jail. He has p ower and money. )f the worker is lucky, the h acienda owner may include him in his network of co-pare n ta l relations, thus guaranteeing him a minimum of personal security on a face-toface basis. The small farmer in the neighborhood o( the hacienda may a lso benefit by some of these fe:nures. If the income derived from the sale of his own pro duce is limited, he or his able-bod ied sons ma y work on the hacienda for cash wages. They m ay appea l to the owner as a powcrf11 I med ia Lor with the au thorities in town. They may h ave him as th eir compndre and friend. The agricultural workers and sma ll rarmers in Limones are in a m ore difficult position. The sm a ll farmers cannot supplement. Lheir income through wage labor on a scale that would compare with 1.h at of Lhe h acienda n eighborhood. They themselves pay less wages to the ir workers. T hus, less cash circu l:ues in th e small-farm n e ighborh ood tha n i11 Alwra . ·w hereas the focus of po litica l and social power in th e haciend a area clearly lies w ith the h ac ienda owner, Lhe bosses (caciques) in the neighborhood of Limones are m em-

237

bers of a middle-farm fami ly, who have (ew influential connections in town. \ \rhereas 1.he hacien da owner can appeal to the ruling authorities of the town on the basis of family and social position, the people from Limones cannot apply equal social leverage. \Vh en the municipality was wideni ng trails in ·Man icaboa with a steam shovel, it required only a small finan cial out.lay and a little persuasion on the part of Don Enrique to ensure that the trails in the Altura would be widened first. \ Vhereas the school near the hacienda has had a school lunchroom for several years, the people of L imones have been petitioning for a simi lar privilege without success. T h e hacienda area is wealthier than the small-farm area. Better wages in the Al tura have attracted people from different pans o( the barrio and from adjacent municipal districts. Some o( the workers on the h acienda are d escen ded from small fanners in Limones, who left their n eig hborhood to live w here there was more and better paid "·ork. Limones contains a limited number o( families, and these have intermarried over generations. Cousin marriages are. therefore, frequent in Limones, and property oflen passes wi thin the same family lines. In place o( other resources, Limo nes uses family ties to increase social and econ omic security. In the hacienda area, people say that it is better to "make" co-parents outside your immedia te family. Thus ritual co-parenthood serves to link together the some"·hat more heterogeneous population o( the Altura. In Li mones it is customary to ask your brothers and uncles to be co-parents and ritual co-paremhood serves to strengthen the network of famil ial ties. The hacienda area is closer to the road. Its higher standard of living opens to it more of the alternatfres that can be purchased with money. I ts inhabitants visit the town more often. The influ ence o( the h acienda owner a lso introdu ces into the a rea some of the urban cull.Ure traits which h e a nd h .is family have acquired. The A ltura boys a nd girls are better acquainted with novel urba n dance fonns than the boys and girls of Limones. They tend to adopt urban styles of dress more than the people of Limones. They are Jess retiring, more outspoken, and more "sophisticated." On ly partly conscious of the economic factors which divide Altura and Limones, the country people think of these cu I tural characteristics as representing the differen ces bc1.wee11 the two n eighborhoods. They phrase the difference between th e h acien da area a nd the small farm area in terms of value judgments. THE RURAL NEIGH BORHOODS

The differences bet\\·een the hacienda area and the small-farm area seem to the people of i\lanicaboa to be partly social in character. The Altureiios not only boast of the cool climate of their hills, but claim that the L imonescs are unfriendly, stingy, sh y, and superstitious. The Limonescs, in turn, lose no opportunity to commen t o n wh at seems to them 1.0 be the loose. alcoholic, irrelig ious, and provocative bchaYior of the

238

THE PEOPLE OF PUERTO RICO

Alturenos. "The g irls o( Limones dance in very Catholic fashion," the Altura boys will say with a note of derision in their voices. "The A ltura girls make an exhibition of themselves, when they dance apart from their partners," the way town people do, reply the boys of Limones. Each group views the other in tern1S of a stereotype, which J1elps "define" the characteristics of their own social unit or primary group. The social unit is the rural neighborhood. \!\Th en people speak o( their barrio, they usually mean the rural neighborhood, not i\lan icaboa as a wh o le. The entire barrio, comprising severa l neigh borhoocls, is thoug ht of as a unit only in contrast to the town. Town people do not bother with the niceties of distinguishing between Lima and Peru, Llanada and B!acho, Limones and Altura . They lump all the inhabitants of one area together and ascribe to them certain common, stereotyped characteristics. Thus, the p eople o f i\Ianicaboa are described in town as "religious," "tradi tiona 1," "respectfu I," and "violent." Politically, Manicaboa has been handled as an administrative unit, under the guidance of a barrio commissioner, and it is still handled as a unit in voting procedures, in matters of political representation, and in the federal census. Religiously, the barrio of ·M anicaboa is represented b y its one chapel, which serves all the people of the area. Yet most of these symbols are largely formal in character, a n d represent extensions of town activities and organizations. They are not really symbols o( functiona lly active aspects of rural organization. The barrio representatives serve largely as adjuncts to the political machine of the town, meeting only sporadically and having little influ ence. Neighborhoods take little cognizance of where the municipal survey draws the line b etween one barrio and the next, and where one census taker begins and another one leaves off. The p riest visits the cha pel but rarel y, and then uses it only to supplement his normal activities in town. N either the political division nor the chapel represents a crysta llization of forces w iLhin the rural area itsel r. The n eighborhood has fun ctional meaning o nly to i ts m embers. It is the area where one's relatives live, where one selects his ritual kindred, and where one can find advice and economic help. It is the place where the stores ·will give one credit, where there are people who will a ttend devotions LO the sa ints at one's h ouse, and where there are neighbors who will help in agricultural activiti es. Thus, the idea of the ne ighb orhood represe nt~ a certain stereo typ ing o[ basic economic and social relationships, a measure b y wh ich one judges a person who comes w ithin his ken. Gente de mi barrio, people of one's n eighborhood, are the people you marry and visit. In addition, each neighborhood h as its stores, its itineran t sa lesmen, and its pork-sellers, each w i t.h his respective clientele. Each neighborhood a lso h as . its caciques, its politi~a l leaders, whose economic and political we ight lends unportance to their opinions. Each neighborhood also

has its "tough s" (g11a/Jos) or families o( "Loughs." Just as a family is likely LO have some one member wh ose behavior cannot be controlled, so each barrio has a family which "kicks over the traces." Usually they arc rela ted to the dominant family in the barrio. Thus the "toughs" o( the Altura region a re related to the owners of the hacienda, and th ose of Limones are related to the dominant middle-farm fami ly. The "toughs" are us ually sma ll landowners who combine a sha re of economic independen ce from oth er p eople in the barrio with a resentm ent against the world which makes their Ji\·cs diOlcult. Th ey are gi\'C·n to viSiOl1S Of ghosts, to nl llSC'llfar and motor dist llrhan ces. and to lack o f contro l in \' ioknt silllations. Jn some measure, therefore , they represen t ex trem e e xamples of certa in tende ncies tm,·ards fairl y c0111111011 nwtor disturbances which are rc1ogni1.ed i11 the nH.:dical folklore of the barrio. Th e patte rn tends to run in in dividual lam i lies. The "to ug hs"' nf 011c n e igh horhood carry on fights and feuds \\'ith tho;;c or another. Thu s. they symbolize the opposing and ho~ti l e tendencies of the members of the primary groups or i11 -gro11ps L<>· ward one a nothe r. It is perhaps significant th;tt the neighborhood never rail ics against its mn1 '' toughs," though they may molest its m embers. "Toughs" may beat up people who return from a visit to town, or endanger gath erings throug h their readiness to avenge real or imagin ed slig hts to the ir honor. It may perhaps be suggested th a t the people tend to identify themselves with their "tough ," even though they look forward tO his downfall as a kind o( scapegoat. "£very hawk has its gray kingbird" (cada g11aragao liene sn fJitine) says the popular proverb, forecasting the eventual fall of the "tough" in the example of the hawk's defeat by a very small bird. Finally, each n e ighborhood has its school, where a teacher tra ined in the ways of the town meets dai ly with his or her r ura l students. It represents the most clear-cut example of the extension o( government activities in to the rural area, and one of the important and direct ties which link the n eighborhood to the town and to the in su lar structure beyond. If we assess the cha nges which have taken place in the rural neighborhood, we must note particularly that its structure is less formal today than in the past. Under Spanish rule i\Ian icaboa was governed directly by a loca l representative of th e mayor and policed by several units of the civil guard. Today, it has no su ch direct politica l authority or police supervision. The police are stationed in town and can invesLigate happenings in :\[anicaboa only ex post facto. The school represen ts the one fun ctioning institution in the neighborhood which is direclly adm inistered from the town . Yet its influence is primarily ideological and not regulatory. L aw ai1d order in th e rural n e ighborhood is maintained , in fact, through customary cultural sa nctions. One set of these, as .John Gillin has n oted (1945 : 10.1) in the case o f i\ foche, is that o[ ritual co-pa renthood. In addition to ritua l co-parenthood, interpersonal

SAN JOSJ".: "TRADITIONA L" COFFEE :\l U:-;JC ll'ALIT\"

behavio r is controlled by several sets of reciproca l rela tionships. The idea ls of the "good landowner" and the "good worker" and of the "good neighbor" serve to regulate conduct without recourse to formal law. At the same time, the connicts and contradictions in the relations between landowners and workers and the increasing importance of wage payment and o ( m o ne tary accumulatio n threaten the reality on which these ideal n orms are based. Thus, regu lation of behavior in the rural neighborhood must inevitably be suhjened LO more formal rules a nd agencies o[ en 1orcemen t.

GENERAL FEATURES OF THE TOWN CULTURE SIGNS OF CULTURE CHANGE

l'\owherc are the 11c" · l'orccs al work in the island as ta11g-ihlc as in the town. The old rail in the plaza to which riders med lo tic their horses has disappea red . I nstead, cabdri,·ers \\'C:trin~ su ng lasses and shortskeYcd sportshirts ou tside their trousers lean against s hiny new American ca rs, waiting for custom ers. A P rotestant church , fl ashing a green neon cross after nig htfall, now faces th e Ca tholic church across th e plaza. A movie house advertises its corning attractio ns, including \ \T es te rns, products of Azteca fi lms from J\ fexi co Ci ty, ~rnd Gracie A pictures from t he U ni ted States. \ Vhile services are held in both church es o n Su nday mornings, a m ass ive and m a ny-colored jukebox in a nearby cafelin emits the latest LatinAmerican rhumbas and boleros. Shoeshine boys in the plaza are busily shining single-toned a nd twotonecl New England -m ade sh oes. A line o( p eople h as formed in the pharmacy. They are waiting the ir turn for injections which w ill miraculously cut th e sympto ms of their ailments. In a nearby store, a Spanish m erchant of Fa lang is t persuasio n sells machetes manufact ured in Connectic11 t. Lec/1e Klim signs ado rn t he walls of several grocer ies, advertisi ng B orden 's powd ered milk. Everywhere there are sig ns of change and innovation. E ven the font in the C atho lic church releases holy water through a cafeteria-type soap disp en ser. These changes a re not m easurable solely through the number of novel Cll(LUre traits dissem in ated in San .Jose. The green n eon cross a top the steeple o[ the Protestant church is symptoma tic of the introduction of new a ncl a l terna ti ve religious forms. The p owdered milk is but a minor indication o( s ignificant changes in consumer marke ting. The cabdrivers, lea ning against th eir modern cars. b espea k a deep change in the tecl1hology and sociology of transportatio n. The blue en amel s ig ns reading " r\gri c11ltura l E xtension Service" or "R urea u o[ In ternal R evenue' ' b etray the rise of n ew and different sources o ( au thority alongside the traditional offices of mayor and judge. 1

239

Nor h ave these n ew organizations m ere ly augmented the number o( orga nizatio ns already existent in the town. R ather, they have initiated qualitative changes and reactions in the town itself. The sep aration of production credit ancl consumers' cred it has created a new social segm ent of independent scorekeepers. The introductio n o( t he th eory of popular d em ocracy and general fra nchise has created a n ew group of officeh olders a nd brought new meaning to traditional patterns of leadersh ip. Popular edu ca tio n has created a class of teachers and produced n ew and large schoo l buildings in which the new knowledge is dispensed. A novel type of military o rganilation, based on a m ass-a rmy and on th e universa l draft, has crea ted a new group o( vetera ns. E ach of th ese groups has developed its special o utlook, standard o f li ving, and means of furth ering its own interests. The simpl e class div is ion o[ the past into an upper class, w hich controlled agrarian wea lth, and a lower class, w hich serYecl the u pper class as servants a nd artisans, has disappeared. Instead, San Jose has a more complex and shifting arrangement of class groups wh ich is symptomatic of the novel a nd changing ch aracter of insular socie ty. MARKETI N G

The town is quiet and p eaceful during the week. A n occasional typ ewriter rattles away in a government office, and a few scattered customers e nter the grocer y stores to do a little necessar y sh opping. Only a few people frequent early morning mass. The shoeshine boys, gath ered in one corner of the p laza, ha,·e little to do, and spend much of the ir time in pranks and play. A few p eople lounge aro u nd the entra nce to the mayor's o ffice, and the shopkeepers lean in the doorways o[ the ir shops watching th e stree t (or customers and obser ving w hat is going on . .An occasional car tours the s treets to find just one more customer for a ride to Sa n Juan. A few people s it in the o ld rattletrap bus and await its uncertain de parture. Cabdrivers s it in a group around their taxis, discussing the affairs o ( the world a n d th e g irls o( ne ighboring towns. Pa tien ts s it waiting in the doctot"s office. As the sun clim.bs in the sky, pl aza and street are deserted, and people h ide in the cooln ess of doorways, s tores, and homes. The town awaits the weekend. The weekend, in contrast, brings " m ovem ent" and "anim:_ition." The country people come to tow11. Buses and ca bs are loaded with goods and provisio ns. The market place bustles with activi ty. At its en trance various small tradesmen assail their cus tomers with cries a n d praises o( the ir wares. One sells oranges; a second o ne offers metal and ename l pots a nd pans: a third, smoking a pipe, which is a rare s ight. stands s ilently behind a cart loaded d own with meat pies. Across the street, an o ld m a n sells printed prayers to tbe sa ints. A sh oal or piglets in a wooden cage are advertised fo r sale to a cagey crowd that g-ath ers about a nd watches. A man , laden with brooms a nd straw

240

THE Pl::Ol'LE OF PUERTO RICO

hats, peddles his commodities in the street. The stores are filled with customers making their weekly purchases. The cafetines are crowded with men who have stopped fo r a " little stick" of rum. Commerce is the lifeblood of the town, and the major source of its in come. Its annual volume is estimated at rouo-h ly S1,500,ooo. Of this sum, the trade in groo ( . ceries accoun ts for ro ug hly S1,ooo,ooo. l\Iost o this million fiows throug h the hands of four wholesalers, the largest of " ·horn chalks up an annual turnover of $400,000 to S500,ooo. From the four wholesalers, the groceries Oow out to more tha n 250 stores in town and country. The increase in the number of town stores marks the emergence of a new class of store owners. According to the statistics of the town, in i8g8 there were i 4 large stores and 1 o petty retail stores in town (San Jose Municipal A rchives, llctas, 1898-99: 25). In 1948, there were 1G3 stores. This increase has been caused by a number o f interdependent factors, including the disintegration of the trad itional merchandising function of the creditor merchant and hacienda. The new integra tion of the Puerto Rican economy with that of th e U nited States has brought the island within the o pera tio ns of the latter's market of massprodu ced goods. This has meant an increase of prices charged for many things which Puerto Ricans customarily consume (U .S. Tariff Commission, 1946 :8), but it has a lso made available a large number of commodities. The consumption of import commodities h as prestige value, as we have seen in the discussion o( how the J\fanicaboa peasantry today ascribe sta tus value to such items in its standards of consumption. The purchase of manufactured goods has been increased by the access of wage earners and peasants to independent mercha nts. The wage worker no longer reports to a hacienda store to have his work per(ormance checked against his weekly consumption, but is usually pa id in cash. With the decline of the coffee industry, the la ndowners eliminated the hacienda stores as part of th eir effort to cut labor costs, while insular legisla tio n made such stores illegal. The decline of the coffee in dustry terminated all systems of advancing goods to th e workers. The increased efficiency of the large farms and the tendency towards wage labor paid in cash also set the pattern for the sma ll farmers. Cut off from the system of advances in goods, yet having to pay occasion al wages or LO work for wages themselves, they can use the increased cred it given in cash for tobacc.o production to buy goods from the stores. The increased a bility o( the wage ea rner to come to town and to take advantage o( the choices offered in town stores a nd o f the cheaper consllmer's goods are also furthered by improved fa cilities of transportation. The increased ease w ith wh ich goods are obtained at stores by mea ns o f hard cash has brought a d ecline in th e number a nd kinds o( commodities manufactured within the rural househo ld. Knowledge o[ the a r ts and crafts needed in these tasks has persisted to

some extent, and in times of hardship, as during the U -boat blocka de of the Second \\'oriel \ Var, people return to the production of goods "·hich they would normally buy in the stores. In normal times, however , fewer a nd fewer such items are made at home. Storebought goods ca rry a prestige "·hich homemade goods lack. In a cash-based world a man who buys objects with hard cash nol only expends less labor at the manufacture o( the particular object he cov:::ts but sho ws his superiority to the poor man. The system of markcLi11g Jinks the Lo\\'11 directl y with San Juan. \\'he re the \\·l wl es;1 lers Im ~· JllO'>l or Llteir goods 011 th e bas is of a rnon tlt\ cred it. .\ s111all p e rcenrnge is bo 11g ht direnly from the l 1 11 itc.:d S1 :11<·s. nnd the o nly stapl e Lltat comes from ;111 :1n::1 <>lll!>id e the United Sta tes is corn from S;11no Dnrnin go. Onl y about 10 per cent of the goods sold in LOll'11 cnm c.:s from neig hboring mu11ic. ipa li Lies. Credit once again smooths the path frolll 1he \\'hol<:sa le r to the retail er. The "·holcsalcr lon11ally e xtc11ds credit for a month but 111ust often wail for sc:vc:ral months lo rea li7e payment on his loan. f\IJ011t !i pe r cent o [ all loans figure as total loss j11 s11ch ac.:dit transactio ns. A wholesaler said : \ Vhc:n I started i11 business, I u sed to Jose a lot o f m o n ey. Now l know the people better. I don·t lend m o n ey to just an yone n ow. E ither I ha\·e to know the man p ersonally, o r he h;is to be g uaranteed to me by a man I know and trust. B esid es, l must have some security..i\Iost little sho ps h ere arc sw n ed with money won in the lottery [bolita], o r saved working o n the co;ist, and so on. \ \/hen they ha\·e S 100 o r S200, then l can h<:lp them with another S 100. But witho ut se<.urity, it is 100 ri~ky. It ,,·orks Lhis way. A certain man· bought $300 worth of goods on cred it. Then he brought in S:wo, <llld no "· h e is taking off wiLh another S:rno worth of goods. They get a loan from us, collccL eggs and chickens from the co1111Lry p eople, sell them tO the itinerant traders, get a Joa n from the trade r, and pay us. And so it goes, into c.!t.:ln and out or deb t, in a continuous round. Of course, I charge the n1 more for goods bought on crcd it. l n a rich countr y like the U.S., you can price things ch eaply and sell a lo t. ]11 a poor country like Pue rto Rico we have to charge high prices because we sell little.

From the wholesa ler credit percolates clown to the retail store, from which it is extended to the customers. vVe h ave a lready seen how closely store income in 1\Ianicaboa is linked to the prevailing cash in come of the popul a tion. The same is true in town. As there are few people with assured monthly incomes, like school teachers, government employees, and veterans, most stores extend credit to their customers. o r cease operation. "If I stopped giving credit," said one retaile r, "people would not come to the store any more." "I just boug ht $:mo worth of cigarettes," lamented an o ther, "and I handed them all out o n credit. vVhat am I going to do? If yo u don't give credit, the people leave and speak badly of you . Look at L. H e stopped g iving creel it, and his business is in ruins." Storekeepers a lso feel that as lo ng as they extend credit, p eople have an incentive to repay past debts. If credit is cut off, th ey shift their allegiance to another store. The h abit of purchasing on credit has extended

SA:-: JO i::: "TRADITIO:'l/AL" COFFEE :-.ru:-:1c1PALITY

even to people "·ith regular incom es. This means that they :iccept the marked up prices b y which the retailer makes u p loss th rough bad debts. At periodic intervals the custom ers attempt to pay off part or all of the debt. A debt of about twentv-five dollars marks the limit granted to most agricul~ural wage workers before repayment is demanded. In one case, however, an unemployed agricultural worker living near the town ,1·as known to and trusted by the storekeeper, ,1·ho cxtendl'd him ;moth er fi1·e dollars before repay111e1n "·a' b('gu n. The den' 11tr;tli1;11ion of marketing and the extent to 11·hi< h credit permeates the " ·hole system of comm erce h:t~ brnuglll 011 a leeling that there are too many ~tnr('s i11 the area . .. Th ere is much more competition now than in the 1 q!.!o\ .'. sa id a wholesaler. "Then th ere were o nly fot;r big swres. Now i[ p eople don't get wha t they 11·:1m at one store, they go to an<Hher." In spite of thi~ feeling. storekeep ing is still regarded as a ,·:did wa~· to make a li1·ing . \ \Then a miclclle-class man from San Jose lost his job in a comm ercial organization in San Juan , h e seriously thought o( buying a store and settling d own to the life o ( a storekeeper in his home town, despite the fact that he would have been competing with a num ber of relatives. Two of the cnfclines in tmn1 are owned b y brothers-in-law. People often comment that " It is hard to tell what Y lives on . H e sells a brush in the morning, :ind two butto ns in the afternoon." "This is a terrible country to make a living in. There is no m ovement. No animation. Nobody has any money. Everything I sell I sell o n cred it." Owning and running a grocery store, however, is not merely a commercial venture. It is also a way of life. Each store has its clientele, and around each store cluster a number of fri ends who stop in to chat with the owner or to have a few "sticks" o( rnm with him on cred it. The shady doorways o f swres always contain a few people "·ho spend their spare time watching the go ings-on in the sunlit street. Occasionally the storekeeper may exact sen·ices fron~ p eople to whom h e h as Jent mon ey. T hus, one man h as been known to exact sexual favors from some lower-class g irl in excha11ge for credit. Those who have Jent money to the municipal government may somewhat influence the affairs of the town. Fo r ex:imple. the municipal government may send an occasional applicant for poor rel ief to their stores, perm itting them to charge the credit to the m ayor or the treasurer. By extend ing such credit and by winning the votes of the barrio committeeme n who purclinse at his store, a ma n nrny becom e a member of the municipa l assemb ly, or even a representative in the H o use. The factors which broug ht decentralization in the m arketing of consumers' goocls have also changed the system of marketing cash crops. Th e building which once housed the establishment of the creditor merchant toclay sta nds large ly empty. Only the light burning in Lhe office of the ad mi11istralor is a reminder that the firm s till maintains inlerests in San .Jos(·. One

241

corner today suffices to shelter the husking and roasting machinery with which a relative of the former owner ca rries on the restricted operations of the old firm. Gone are the 1011g lines o( sorters, who separated the di fferent grades of beans to fit the demands of the high qua lity European markec. Gone, too, are the hundred-odd jobs ,,·hich sorting provided for the women of the town lower class. Today, there are but a few grades o[ bea ns, and these are easily recognized by the ex pert. "I can tell the quality of b eans without look ing," the creditor merchant says. " I put my h and in the bag. If it contains high quality beans, it feels as if my hand were running through oil. If the beans are inferior, they stick and will not let my h an d pass." This restricted establ ishment at present grinds and roasts about 25 per cent of the total coftee harvest in San J ose, at the rate of ioo cwts. p er week. E ach cwt. is sold in the reta il market at forty-e ight cents a pound. In our discussion of cash crop marketing in i\ fanicaboa, we have seen that the creditor merchant buys from small farmers, who are in need of cash a nd cred it, and from some of the large gro"·ers, who sell to him in order to turn the cond itions of the market to their own advantage. The latter, unlike the smaller g ro\\·ers, sell to the creditor merchants not because they are economically weak, but because they "can get p ersonal con sideration." F or instance, during the period when the association is liquidating its obligations to the F ederal I ntermediate Bank an d there is no coffee on the market, the wealthy growers may b e able to obtnin higher prices through the creditor merchant. P erson al ties with the creditor merchant m ay also mean that they do not have to declare their sales openly, thus avoiding income tax payments. \ Ve must note that the maintenance of personal face- to-face relationships between growers and creditor m erch ant by no means implies maintenance of highly a ltruistic relationships. The Coffee Co-operative is today the primary outlet for co[ee in San J ose. The present organization is a child of the depression. An effort to organize a co-operative in the prosperous 192o's failed, and the organi7.ation went bankrupt. The new organization ca m e into being with considerable govern ment support. It was hoped that it would stabilize prices and put a n end to speculatio ns b y priva te buyers. Today the Coffee Co-opera tive is a lso the chief source of taxes in Lo\\·n. T he loca l co-operatives are run as pan of an insular organi7ation which is administered as one unit with centra l offices in P once. Decisions and p olicies are made at the top and then passed clown to th e loca l chapters. The members have the theoretical rig ht to inspect the b ooks any time they like a nd may participate in genera l membership meetings. At present, the co-operati,·e buys about 75 per cent of San Jose's crop. Tn addition, a number of farms in neighboring disLricts take advantage of its central locaLion and send their crops to the San .Jose office for sa le. Such outside cro ps n1ade up abo u t % p er cent or the total volume of coffee h andled by Lhe San Tosc office in 1 ~147--;[8 . The large majority of local ·pro-

242

THE PEOPLE OF PUERTO RICO

ducers who trade with the co-operative are small growers. In 1947- 48, 109 members contributed less than 100 cwts., or '13 per cent of all coffee sold . Ten large growers who are members, however, brought in 57 per cent of the total volume. These figures mean that the co-operative depends on large growers for the ma jar part of its coffee supply. Moreover, these ten large producers maintain social and personal ties with one a nother. They belong to the upper class of the municipality, and some o( them are related to the staff of the co-operative in Ponce as well as in San Jose. This occasionally permits a weighing of the resources of the co-operative in favor of the few rather than the many. A n informant who had worked within the co-operative structure and had considerable knowledge of insular problems of finance said: The co-operative works in favor of Lhe rich. BoLh poor and rich register a figure for their prospeCLive harvest at the Lime of first flowering. Techni<.:ally. the co-operaLive is entilled to the entire harvest of a person. Generally, ho\\·· ever, the rich do not cite their en tire harvest. They cite only a part of it. Or they reduce their first figure at the time of second flowering, and still further at Lhe Lime of the final han·est. They say Lhe weall1er has been too dry. Comes the harvest. the poor sell all of their small crop to the cooperative. But the ridt sell only a part. The co-operative pays a part of the final price right away, but cannot pay the total until it has li4uidated all its commitments with the Federal Intermediate Bank [federal Intermediate Credit Bank of Baltimore]. Meanwhile Lhere is no wffee on the market. But the rich are holding back part of their harvest. They take advantage of the fact that the co-operative has pegged prices in the market. They arc now able Lo sell in the open market, and ask for prices higher than those asked by the co-operative. \!\Te have seen that the Tobacco Co-operative- the Puerto Rico Tobacco Marketing Association-performs credit services for small farmers which the Coffee Co-operative does not maintain. Nevertheless, some of the hierarchical relationships characteristic o( the Coffee Co-operative also characterize the Tobacco Co-operative. The latter, like the Coffee Cooperative, is a product of the depression, and was also supported initially by the insular government for purposes of price stabilization and control of speculative practices. At present, it takes about 70 per cent of the tobacco grown in San Jose, the remainder going to private buyers who come to San Jose from other municipal i ties. Tobacco production in Puerto Rico in 1948 was controlled by an insular quota system which restricted production at the level of the farm. It failed , however, to establish simil ar controls at the level of the buyer. Demand in the Un ited States has played havoc with the system of a llocations on the island. The theoretica l quota for San J ose is pegged somewhere between six thousand and seven thousand cwts. Actual production is, however, near twelve thousand to fourteen thousand cwts., two times the quota. \!\Then the quota system first began, many people acquired

quotas without land on which to plant tobacco, and then sold their quotas to the highest bidder. Sometimes quotas were allocated by the Tobacco Co-operative to influential growers. Still other landowners possess quotas greatly in excess o[ their own ca pacity, and illegally sell or lease their excess quotas to other growers. "How does it happen that Don Z. in T. [a neighboring municipality] has five hundred c:uerdns in tobacco, when I, a poor man w ith ten ch ildren ca nnot get enough for my livelihood?" asked one small grower in i\fanicaboa. Controls in the Tohacc:o Co-operative are sim ilarl y located at the upper le\·els of the organization. Tile country people think that "it is the big boys"' "·ho nlll tile no111inaLions. and who "don't let our kind talk."' The local m;111ager complains in turn that "they think l mn1 the cooperative as a business. They d on't 1111d crsta 11d ,,·hat a co-operative is." Both co-operatives are the products o r insular efforts to stabilize the market. (;ovc:n1mc11t i1ncrvcntio n in the form of subsidi es and quotas. ce1nrali1.atio11 on the insular level, and loss of independent 111;1rketi11g and processing functions on the loca l level arc interdepende nt variables. Yet we must also note that the continued operations of sma ll-sca le creditor merchants and buyers in both coffee and tobacco is similarly a result of the new conditions. The coffee merchant has restricted his operations and decreased the amount o f credit which he extends. Hy narrowing his field o[ activity, he is better able to function within the smaller field . If his credit facilit ies no longer extend to all San J ose, they are sufficient to satisfy the small farmers in l\Ianicaboa. Thus centralization of marketing at the top levels has for a local corollary a strengthening of small-scale marketing in the interstices o( the marketing system . RELIGION

Catholicism The majority of the inhabitan ts o( the municipality remain Catholics by formal designation if not in practice. Only 170 to 180 individuals in San Jose'.: belong to the two Protestant sects wh ich were introduced during the period of American occupation. In Manicaboa, which is a n isolated barrio, there is only one Protestant. The Catholic church in town remains the formal center of religious worship for all those who caII themselves Catholics. \Ve have seen that the people in Manicaboa turn to their saints for help in answering the problems or everyday life a nd to the religious center of the town only on speci a l and extraordinary occasions. Th e town d ispenses the ecclesiastical sacraments, which are necessary for complete integration into the company of men. Yet only a few rural people participate actively in its formal religious observances. Twenty-six of twenty-eight landowners in the Altura region of 1\fanicaboa do not belong to the Society of the Holy Name, while in Limones only eight of e ighteen belong. Only one of

S:\N JOSf:: ' "TR ADITIONAL" COFFEE MUNIC IPALITY

243

the twenty·t\,·o landless laborers in Altura attends h ood, t0gether with his uncertain income, causes the church, belongs to a relig ious society, a nd con tributes priest to rely largely on the advice and goodwill of mo n ey to the church. In Limo nes, only three landless the leaders of the Catholic voluntary organizations. men belonR to the H o ly Name Society, while two used These form the s table basis of support fo r Church to belong but ha ve become inac tive. Fourteen landless activities in the community a nd supply the p riest laborers do n ot attend church in town . Despite lack with information on which to build his weekl y sero( attendance, lack of m e mbe rship in Catholic volun- mon. A ll of the m e mbers of these organizations be· tary societies, and lack o[ contributions, however, al- long to the upper class. One of the organizations, the m ost a ll the men included in the above sample had " Catholic Daughters oE America," in fact, function s as a n upper-class social organization. The priest recog· been married and baptized in the town church . T he priests of San .J ose ha\'c traditionally bee n mem- nizes th e weakness of t he Church 's support, but feels be rs nf l11e C:anndite o rde r. T his is because many o( that he cannot escape it. He says, "The turnover in the first settlers and me mbe rs or Sall .Jose's upper class the religious socie ties is very great. The people lack c:1me lro1n .\ s t.urias. ,,·h e re the C:anne lites maintain a understanding. T h e p oor people a re good people, but tr:1di1 io11 al cente r. In l in e with this tradi t ion . t he they form a weak recd on which to lea n. Th ey cannot prese n t prie.; t is a lso a Spaniard . \ Vhile Ame rica n serve as a basis on which to build the future of the pri es ts se nt to the isla nd often dispby compe ti tive a nd Church ." T h e church is attended by ;111 classes of the popu· 111issioni1i11g 1c;1I. he . in common w ith m a n y other priests of Sp;111ish descent. tends to regard the Ch urch lation, but at least two-thirds o f the congregation is as a sacr:1111e111.al structure ,,·hose es tablished po\\'er made up of w omen, a nd the attend ance of rural peoa 11d r igh te01 1.,ness is he ~·o nd th e need for com petition ple is sporadic. Nevertheless, the three masses held ;111d ri ,· alr~· . 1Tc ma y bmc 11 t di e state of Cathol ic re- on Sundays are distinctive in ch aracter. The first. lig iosity i11 the isla nd. Yet he secs his role essemially as wh ich is the longest a nd most stri ctly rel igious, is a dispense r or sacram e nts LO the people who may de- usually attended by rural folk and the d evout of the mand the m . and he maintains but li ttle contact with town. The second mass is attended m a inly by town people, especially members of the upper a nd middle his fl ock. H e says : classes. T he third is attended by children of all classes and by many upper-class women. Jn contrast to the Pueno Ricans arc b:1cl Ca tholics. Only 2 per cent are Catholics who have ach ie,·ccl u ndcrsta nd i ng. The rest silllpl y essen tially religious character of the first mass, the perform their re ligion 111echanica lly. They pray. bu t they second and third tend to e mphasize distinctions o( clo n ot u11clc.:r.-;ta 11cl. The ir religion has beco111e an empty social sta tus. gesture . . . . ;\ i nrc.:ovcr. t\\·o generations ha\'e no,,· passed The occasion which brings most country p eople tO throug h 1 he ~t11 oo ls \1·ithnut instruc.:L ion in the basic: tenets town is the annual cele bration of th e Passion. On o( the faith. People need the Church. i\ lcn arc n aturally evil, and han· need of the Church to comain their malice . \ Vednesday a nd Thursday preceding Good Friday people form long lines at the church door to obtain Men cannot find the pa th by the111seh·cs. Only the light which the Church pro,·icks can show the way. But the confession. For a week the p laza has been lined with huts offering gambling games to eager custome rs. On Churrh in Puerto Rico is a tree with "·ithcrcd roots. \ ·Vhen Friday, a number of masses are h eld . The first propeople come in co1nan with l'ro testa11tis111. thcv fall like lca,·cs from a withered tree. T hey' lack unclcrsta;1clin<,._ cession takes place in the ea rly afternoon and symbol<> izes t he burial of Christ. The procession is led by Since b o th priest and members regard the Church little girls, women, and six little boys, dressed in primarily as an o rga niza tion to which they may h ave colored satin and representing the apostles. They a re recourse at special a nd extraordinary times, the priest's followed by two groups of men, one carrying a coffin income d e pends o n the in termitte nt payments which containing a n image of the d ead Christ, t he other are rnade o n su ch occasions as birth, b a ptism, mar- ca rrying a statue of the Virgin. A three-piece brass r iage, death . and special masses. The pomp and cir- band accompanies the marchers wi th somber music. cumsta nce of such cere mo nies depends upon the Despite the solemnity o[ th e occasion, onlookers often m~ney . A n upper-class marriage, which provides the joke with participants, a nd religious people complain priest o ne hu n dred dollars, receives considerably more th at the gambling games on the plaza do not even o[ his attention a nd time than a rurnl wedding in s top long e noug h to acknowledge t he passage of the which the couple pays o nly s ix dollars. A funera l for image of the d ead Savior. a rich farmer differs from the funeral for a poor counA second procession takes place in the evening a n d tryman. On su ch occasions as baptism s. marriages, and symboli zes the sea rch o( i\Jary a nd the women for funerals the priest is e nti tled to keep ha!( of the fee Christ. \ Vomen m a rch slowly clown the main streets a nd all of the \'Oluntary con tri butions. H e may also keep of the town, arra nged in two long files along th e sides h a lf of th e contents of the collection plate passed o n of th e stree ts. Their heads a re covered, a n d they car ry Sundays. Yet th e total amount collected is rarely candles in th e ir hands. Aga in a group o( men carries great. J\n important and more stable ite m in his the V irg in. The ho uses of uppe r- a n d mid dle-class budget consists of contribu tions in mon ey or foo d sent people are decorated w ith burning ca ndles. to him by the uppe r-class famil ies of the town . On Sunday m orning, a third process ion is h eld. It The loose tie be twee n priest a nd rural neighbor- symbolizes th e meeting (e11rnentro) of l\fary and C hrist

2 44

THE PEOPLE OF PUERTO RICO

in the cemetery after Christ has risen from the dead. A party of women, arranged around the statue of the Virgin, and a party of men, arranged around the statue of Christ, converge in front of the church. The face of the Virgin is hidden with a veil. As the veil is removed the participants kneel three times, accompanying each movement with applause and clapping of hands. Three loud hurrahs mark the encl of the ceremony. This ceremonial period carries strong relig ious overtones. Yet for the majority of the people the recreational element continues to play a major part. The processions are artislic as well as religious performances. The onlookers of ten joke with the participants. The booths on the plaza offer an opportunity for small-scale gambling. The presence of many thousands of people offers opportunities for social contact, social drinking, and an occasional fight. Gossip abou t town families is exchanged. "Good Friday is a wonderful day for the merchants," said the owner of a cafetin. "A lot of people come in from the country. They do a lot of drinking. If it doesn't rain, I can make about fifty dollars on drinks during the course of the afternoon." Protestantism

The lone Protestant in Manicaboa is a '\Voman who lives as a resident laborer on a middle farm near the river. She lived for a while in a neighboring municipality, where she joined a Pentecostal-type sect "of those who shout." Her residence in i\!Ianicaboa has removed her from contact with the religious organizations. To date, there is no organized Protestant opinion in the barrio, and information about Protestants was derived from scattered and contradictory sources. Some people say that the Protestants are trying to buy up the wooden saints in order to bury them. Others opine that it is part of Protestant doctrine that "the dead do not really die but live on in heaven." "They ask the corpse whether he is really dead before they put him in a coffin. They do not pray for the dead, and they do not give them sacraments. They just sing." Yet the presence of Protestants in the municipality signifies that alternative forms of religious behavior are within the reach of all inhabitan ts. The priest therefore fears that at some point in the future even Manicaboa will turn Protestant: "The people in Manicaboa are still religious Catholics, but they are religious through hab it. They are Catholics because they are isolated. When the road is built, the Protestants will make their way into the b arrio. Without understanding, the people will be unable to withstand the onslaught." The first Protestant group in San Jose was organized in i923, and a Protestant church was built in the town plaza where it now stands facing the Catholic church. Thus the "plaza no longer belongs to the Catholics." Later, small Protestant chapels were set up along the road in two barrios. Today there are two Protestant denominations in San Jose. The

stronger group, called the "Disciples of Christ," numbers i50 individuals. Its strength largely resulls from the system o( zoning in missionary activities, which eliminates competition ancl which. most Protestant denominations in Pueno Rico respect. The second and weaker group, "The Defenders of the Faith," does not consider itself bound by the zoning agreements, but at present it has only 20 to 30 members. The "Disciples of Christ" employ individual testimonials of faith and sing their religious songs to popular tunes and to the accompaniment o[ g uitars and other local instruments. "The Protestants are \\'Orse lhan lVIohammedans or savages," opined an upper-class man. "These at least keep proper silence during religious acts. But the Protestants sing a ll the time." On the other h and, lhe use of popular musi c and choral singing introduces into the se rvice aspects o( lower-class and rural socia l and festive behavior which, in the words of the Protestants, "make the heart glad." Protestants appear lo be cln1\\"ll largely lrnm peo ple who have moved to town from the r ural area and from members o( the new urban middle class. A large part of this middle class o[ Protestant afliliation h as a background socia lly defined as Negro. Historically, the association of this group with Protestantism may be linked to their political pro-.-\mericanism and a wish to identify themselves with the cultural ideal of the occupying power. Their Protestantism is aggressive in stressing an ideal Protestant ethic of hard work, abstinence, monogamy, regular church attendance, and the use o( education as a means of social mobility. Said one leader, "The Protestant faith has made better men and citizens o( those who joined. I remember a man with many vices. He liked to drink, and he would take off his shirt. Then he would run around loose in the town, trying to p ick a fight with the whole world. Today this man is a respectable citizen. I myself, I liked to drink and dance. And women. Today I do not drink and I do not dance, and I do not look at a woman other than my wife. The best thing is to work hard. Hard work has made the Americans grca t." This group furnishes the active Protestant leaders in San Jose. Their Protestantism appears at least in part clue to an attempt to equalize their social status with their n ewly won economic status. In a society where Negro physical characteristics carry a stigma and lead to discrimination, people are highly raceconscious. They often attempt to erase any s uspicion of Negro ancestry or to compensate for it in a number of ways. They may become eager servants of a new political party, devout members of the Catholic voluntary organizations, or active Protestan ts. In San Jose, the religious affiliation this group has chosen marks the Protestant church as a lower-class organization in the eyes of the urban upper class. Thus, one upper-class woman a lways referred lo Protestants as esta raza ("that race"), g iving the term a connotation of racial and lower-class separateness.

SAN JOSE: "TRADlTIONAL" COFl~EE MUNICIPALITY

Spiritualism SpiriLu~tlism in Sa n .Jose tends Lo be prevalent among several groups in Lhe population: the agricultural workers and small farmers, who live in the context of dissolving traditional ties, as in Sabana; the town lower class; and elements of the new middle class whose background and moLi\·ation are similar to those which Protestamism reaches. It is especially evident amo ng schoo lteacliers and women "·hose traditional culwral role has undergone considerable change. To some cxLcn L iL has been making inroads on the upper class in the tow11. \lanicaboa . hm1·e,·er, lacks practici11g spiriu1:tli!> ts. Yet spiritu:tlist beliefs and practices furni sh a third set or relig ious alternatives to tradition:tl C:1Lholicis1n and the nro Protesta nt denominations. Spiriu1alislll accords with popular be lie rs about the s11n·ival of g hosts, and it attributes illness and disease 10 the 1·cngc;111cc or ill will or L11 e dead. Some ho11scholds i tt ,\Lt tt ica boa ha vc adopted the pract icc of w:t!>hing 1hc ho use, :ts 11·ell as the sick person. wil11 :t s:tlutarv herb bath "to combat evil influences."' \Ve may pred.in a11 i11crcasc in such pr:tctices in the future. when the rnral neighborhoods become less isolated. It must be noted that middle- anti upper-class people strong ly associate hig h social status with membership in the Catholic church. They identify spiritualism with lower-class beliefs in witchcra(t, miraculo us cures, and superstition. i\fany spiritualists, therefore, never admit openly to their beliefs. They attempt to appear to be o rthodox Catholics, while secretly attending spiritualist sessions. The movement has not yet achieved institutional form in San Jose. Yet, like Protestantism, it is actively proselytizing. For lack of a central mee ting house, small numbers of initiates gather in private homes. l\Ieetings are usually held to cure ill luck or disease by removing evil influences from the affiicted. At one session, the cure of a young alcoholic was attempted. The being (ser) thought to cause the difficulties is summoned up by a medium during a state of trance. There are several mediums in town. One is a man; the rest are women. All are middle class. The medium e nters a trance for about half a n ho ur, shouting and moving about the room and spea king with a changed voice. Coming out of trance is accompanied by severe pains all over the bod y and a stro ng headache. O ccasionally, individuals may visit a spiritualist curer to have their fortunes told by means of cards or a Ouija board. In moments o( grave personal crisis, believers often appeal to practitioners who reside in the lower-class areas of San Juan, especially in Catano. Spiritualism, like Protestantism, appears to satisfy the needs o( groups that are heavily exposed to the impact 0£ cu lture change. Both spiritualism and Protestantism may well represent alternate forms 0£ emotional response to changes from trad itional ways of life to 11ew conditions. In the case of many people the religious practices and belie(s of both faiths tend

245

to merge. An agricultural worker in barrio Sabana "handed himself over" to God (se entreg6) in a Protestant meeting one day, only to attend a spiritua list session on the next. At the same time, Protestantism represents a more active change from traditiona l norms. It prescribes a radical change in behavior. Spiritualism, on the other hand, enables many individuals to continue their established way of life, turning to supernattu-al powers only when their personal security is threatened. POLITICS AND LAW The Organization of Political Power

Twenty years ago political power still rested in the hands o( the hacienda owners and their creditor merchants in town. The names signed to the municipal records bespeak the wealth and influence of the.i r owners. A Span ish landowner, voicing his complaint of the present, said : "Yes, things were certainly different then. The judges, mayors and officials were rich people. They gave money to the people. They contributed to their welfare. They did not regard the treasury as a source for ready cash. But all these people, who are in now, they are just a bunch o( catskinners." Favorable market conditions had given rise to the po,1·er of the coffee gro"·ers and the coffee merchants. Unfavorable market conditions caused their decline. The hurricane of 1928 and the world depression of the early thirties brought the industry close to the verge of bankruptcy. The economic b asis which had sustained traditional political power was badly impaired. For about a decade, the traditional parties and alliances maintained their grip, despite ever rising odds against Lh eir conti nuance in office. The old econom i.c arrangements continued in force. The hacienda complex retained much of its cultural strength, even though its economic base had been weakened. The workers and peasants were not used to playing an independent political role. They continued to look upon politics as a means of demonstrating their loyalties in the system o( reciprocal relations between them and the large owners. Their allegiance was rewarded with favors and with pleasant recreational activities. At politica l meetings rockets were fired off, the voters were served roast pig, and they enjoyed the excitement of che fist fights which accompanied the rallies. Said one, "The landowners used to bring their people tO town in trucks. These trucks would carry the flags of rival panies. They would meet on the road, halt, and the occupants would fall to pelting each other with rocks, and kicking the daylights out of each other." Rhetoric proved a further am-action to people who admire a felicitous turn oE phrases. A peasant recalls wilh some irony, " I went to a meeting. The speaker talked about the nightingale. -when I came home, my wi(e wanted to know what they had talked about. They talked about the nightingales." If traditional

246

TH E PEOPLE OF PUERTO RICO

ties and recrea tional appeals fa iled, money was paid To put an end to this fraud Acabar con cl c nga1io Vote a la pa\'a cstc a iio for vo tes. vVe have seen that the number of voters Vote for the PaYa this year T hough the o ld lady may not Aunque la vicja no quicra. was limited before the United States occupied the like iL island. ·when the practice of political democracy was introduced it was chann eled into the established pat- This song called the people to vote for the "Pava," t he tern of power. "Each party used to have a checker at P opula r Democratic party, wh ich ad vocates a prothe booths. The voters would mark their ballots in gram of reform and flies the symbol of t he straw h at such a way that the ch ecker could see that the man had o[ the cou ntry people, la fJa-ua , in its flag. fulfilled his promise." H money did not suffice, multi- T he chic kpeas a rc already dry. Ya est;'tn los gandu les sccos. ple voting was resorted to: "As soon as a man had This being the same cou n t ry Sicndo cl mismo pais voted at one booth, h e w·otild throw himself on a as alwavs. horse and ride to a nother electoral place. Th ere he They w;u{t to sell th e m h c.:rc Los qu ic n :n \Tlld t.: r aqui .\ di c.:z )' ~ i :· tf: j>('SOS. would vote again . For each vote he would collect a For seventeen dollars. .'\'o~otros. < arll<' y hu(•so Ve, \\'ith all o ur so ul doll ar. Men wou ld ride through the barrio yelling: Vamo~ todo~ a lur har 'T wo dollars for a R epubl ican vote!' Even the dead Sha ll fight, all togcthc.:r Por l'St: llllt:\·o Partido. For this ll C\\' party. voted ." \' ~j q uicrcs ., er mi a111igo A nd if you \\'ant to be 111y D espite the maintenance of the traditional system of friend authority, wh ich in effect was t he political sta tus quo, Yo u have to l>c a Popular. Ticncs scr Popubr. a number of new currents agitated the minds of the In 1940, the P o pular Democrat ic party ( PPD) came people. Inchoate at the beginning, they began to take to power in Sa n .J os~ as \\·ell as in the island as a o n sh ape and to crystallize into organ izations. Some wh o le. T h e panv consisted of a coali ti1>11. Locallv. of these movements, such as the Nationalist p arty, m a ny landowners 's u pportcd it bcca use they h oped th :; t proved temporary in their orga nizational hold on p eoit would su bsidize the coffee market and stabi li1.c th e p le in San J ose. The Nationalist party nevertheless or supp ly. Creditor merchants s upported it belab left a profound impression on general opinion. It cause it would secure th e ir threatened investments. called in to question the w hole character o [ relationships between Puerto Rico and the U n.ited Sta tes. It Small farmers supported it beca use they hoped to rid fi rst voi.ced some of the cri ticisms that laid t he basis themselves of their debts. Agricultural workers hopec.l fo r a reorganization of th ese relations. During 1935 for land reform and labor laws w hich wou ld improve and 1936, about forty young men in San Jose wore their own conditio ns and cunai l the powers o( the b lackshirts and paraded in quasi-military formations . landowners. The party instituted "a d elayed New Many sons of large landowners a nd merch ants par- Deal" in Puerto Rico, utilizing such sources o( govticipated. One of these reports: "I was a rabid black- ernmenta l aid a nd organization as they could enlist sh in when I was in high school. I wore a big revolver in the United States. Us ing U .S. sources of income, on my right hip. I would have killed anybody, no they began to reshape the political and economic m atter wh o, if someone had given me the signa l. I structure of the island. At the same time they red efi n ed many of the island's ties with the dominant would never have q uestion ed my orders." Another current was oriented to events in Spa in. country (sec pp. 82-84). The PPD coa lition, which ·w on office in San J ose, In 1936, the Spanish civil war broke o ut. It crystallized a strong Fa la ng ist sentiment among the creditor cu t across traditional political attachments in a nummerchants a nd landowners o( Spanish extraction , many ber of ways. \Ve have seen how d islike of politica l reof whom joined the Falange. They con tributed money strictions a nd economic deprivation was historica lly to it, and initiated a religious revival. They j oi ned linked with a widespread feeling o( h atred for the the Cathol ic voluntary organ izations and agitated for Span ia rds. T hus, o ne party was always labeled the help to th e Puerto Rican Nationalist cause. Some "Spanish Party" and its opponent the "Puerto Rican returned to Spa in , taking their wealth with them. A Party," no matter what their formally announced few others, maintaining st rong feelings for Catalonian n ames and purposes were. The insular platforms and autonomy, turned violen tly anti-Falan gist. Both po- purposes of t hese orga nizations were always reformulitical orientations are evidence o [ the a mbiva lent la ted locally to comprise t he centra l issue in econom ic position of this upper class w ith in the Puerto Rican and po litical affa irs in San Jose. For a time, the R ep ublican p arty in San J ose represented the a nti-Spanscene. A third current agitated the \VOrkers a nd peasa nts ish p arty, and appea led to lower-class people aga inst the Spa n ish landown ers. T he Liberals stood for a prowho expressed their sentiments in son gs: Spanish ;:ntitude. I n a neighboring municipality, on Limones h as some rocky h ills Limones tiene peiiones t he other h and, the Span ish landowners backed the /\nd they will take them away, Y se los va 11 cm balgal R epublicans against the anti-Spanish liberals. As Because they can'L pay l'orque no pueclen pagal North American ca pital and p ersonnel have never So much taxes. Ta nto d e contril>uciones. entered San J ose to any importan t d egree, despite the \i\lhilc the corporations Mie ntras las corporaciones They treat differe ntl y. Las trata n d e otra mancra. acc1uisition of ultimate power b y the United States government, local political perspective continued to An d anyone here who wou ld Y lodos aqu i que quisicra like foc us on traditional issues, an d Sp an iard s continued \

1

SAN

lo hold positions o( both economic and political power. This division imo a pro-Span ish and anti-Spanish faction did not, however, make the political picture simple and straightforward. The so-called Spanish parties were not always in favor of Spanish peninsular policies. They did, however, utilize the framework of the Spanish Empire to gain a hearing and a seat o( importance for the island :ind attempt to improve the status and cond itions of Puerto Rico within the framewo rk of United States SO\'ereignty, just as an effort had been made ea rlier to achie,·e better status in the Spanish Empire. They 111ay thus be called reformers wiLl1in the framework of political dependency. The PPD has inh erited this auitucle. The anti-Spanish parties in the past stood for a clear-cut separation f'ru111 the Spanish E mpire. :\t presen t, two g roups con· tinue to adn1cate g reater i11dcpendence as the solution of imular problems. In 19-18, the Republicans and J11dcpcmkntists sa id repea tedly that they stood for statehood o r that they \\·a nted complete independe nce. \\lhile these alternati,·es ne,·er appeared officially in the platl'orms of the two parties and may appear contradictory, the wording "either one [statehood] or the other [independence], but we do not want to carry on as we have been doing" was heard frequently in San Jose before the last elections. \l\Thile the Republicans and the Independcntists called for resolu· Lion o[ the problem o( sovereignty, "one way or the other," the Popular Democratic party has continued to seek greater power within the framework o( po· litica l dependency. It has postponed consideration of the question of political "stallts" of Puerto Rico. This is clearly expressed in a d ecima sung locally during the 191,1 campaign: The Popular p:irty Docs not srn nd for indcpenclcncc. I le who tells you that \Vants Lo dccci,·c yo u. Only social justice So that yo u may Ji,·e quietly :\ncl together with your family Cn::;1tc a d ecent home. And if :.omconc tells you clif. ft: rcntly I I c is tdl ing you lies.

El P:irtido popul:ir J ndt:pcnclcncia no ticn c. El que se Jes dig:i a ustcdes Estos Jc quiercn e nga1iar. Solo justicia social Para que tram1uilo \'i\'a Y junto con su familia H agasc un hogar clichoso. Y st: algo te cucnta otro Embuste cs quien lo cliga.

Th e desire to enjoy the bene fits of the new reform program and to conti nu e the financial ties with the United States prevailed during the several e lectio ns at which the stand or the Popular Democratic party was put to a test. The experience of \Vorld \Var 11, when the island was temporarily cut off from food supplies from the mainland , remains in the m inds o( many people. A rural storekeeper argued: " \ \There will the stuff to Ji,·e come from, if Puerto Ri co is independent? But the U ni ted States is also giving mo ney Lo Puerto Rico for a good reason. They know it comes back to them. E very cent they spend in Pu erto Rico, the Puerto Ricans have to spend in the United States." A cabdriver, arguing with his l ndepende ntist

JOSE: "TRADITIONAL" COFFEE :'\lU:-.ilCJPALITY

247

brother, put the argument thus: " Look, here is father. He is the United States. 'Ve are his colonies. You could make yourself independent, and he would grant your wish. But later, when you close the door, you will want to return to the table once more." Nevertheless, strong ambivalent feelings about the nature of the tie remain, especially in those groups that are most directly exposed to the new currents. The position o( the new middle class in town is symptomatic of the ambivalence they feel. They owe their rise to the introduction of new instiwtions and organizations which are patterned particularly on institutions and organizations of the United States. At the same time their traditional cultural patterns and allegiances often come into conflict with the standards and norms o( a culture which they tend to regard as superior in the material and organizational field, though inferior in cultural values. Such people are likely to be "a ll Populares when sober, but Nationalists when drunk." They are hea\'ily exposed LO the painful impact oE rapid culture change. Their phrasing of the problem of "status" thus tends to draw on ambivalent feelings produced in a number o( different areas of their life. Thus one middle-class roan said: "A man must be free, or he is no man at all. I am a free man. I am married, but I am also a free man, even if with a certain amount of dependence . . . . I don't want to have a nything to do with Albi:w [the leader of the Nationalist Party]. But I am £or independence, like a ll Puerto Ricans. But the first thing is economic independence, economic independence with a certain amount of dependence." The problem of "status" is, however, merely one factor influencing the direction of the popular YOte. \ \1hen the people in Manicaboa voted overwhelmingly in favor of the Popular Democratic party in I9Li8, they voted, first, for a continuation of present political conditions. Second, they voted against giving power to the peop le in town whom they associate, in their minds, with an urban lower-class group of Negro ancestry, la morrnya ma/a. These are historica lly associated with the R epublican party. Third, they voted in order to be "on the in," in order to receive some of the benefits o( power. And fourth, they voted in favor o( a party leader, who, in their minds, stood for a betterment o( the ir conditions through a program of agrarian reform, and whose personality a nd manner of operation apprnximatecl the ideal of the "good landowner." The R epublicans, on the other hand, voted against the Spa nish landowners, against a continuation or the present kind of politica l d ependency upon the United States, and against loss o( the ir own power. The result o( the voting in ig.18 gave 1.1.12 votes tO the Popular Democratic pany; 1,793 to the Opposition ( 1,377 for the Republicans, 38.1 for the Socialists, 32 to the R eformists), and 2-19 votes to the Indepenclentist pany (Diario de Puerto Rico, 19.18). One o( the chic( effects of the rule of the Popular Democratic party has been the transfer of power from the loca l municipa l level to the insular level. l\[ore and more strands con nect the municipality directly with

248

THE PEOPLE OF PUERTO RICO

The local political o rga nization thus represenLs the insular and the federal level. According to information suppl ied by the municipal auditor, S,18,4G9 in one of the executive arms of the insular governmental the municipal income is derived from insular sources, structure. In essence, it fulfills the functions of a local whereas only $ 17,450 derive from municipal sources. patronage-dispensing organization. It aids in minor The major contribution for sick and poor relief, o r personal difficulties that can be resolved through $32,869, comes from the insular government. The in- small gifts of money or medicine or through adsular government maintains law and order through an vice o r persona l connections. I ts p rimary fu n ction is insular system of police. It directs the educational to "help people." Policy is made in San Juan and exesystem throug h the insu lar D epartment of Education. cuted in general by hierarchically organized, imIt builds new roads in San J ose on bids submitted by personal bureaus. The local machine supplies the percontractors from all over the isla nd. It maintains a n sonal touch. It links the governor, Don Luis :\lu1io1. insular relief system which pays S7.50 per month to Marin, with the people ,,·ho voted for him. \ •Vithin the municipal political org;1ni1atio11 \\'C 01H·e 465 old and disabled people. It sponsors an Agricultural Extension Service connected with the insular more find the ideal or the "good" authority ligure University of Puerto Rico. It maintains an office of represented in the person of Don Pancho. Don P :111the insular Department of Labor in town which passes cho is not alone in \\'ie lding pcrn·er. ;111d 11111cl1 or tltc on the grievances of workers who consult it. Its laws powe r in his hands is expressed in indirect \\';1ys. I le fi x buying and selling prices for coffee, maintain a shares it \\'ith th e 111a yor, \\'ho is the o ffi cial hc; id of' the duty on the importation of foreign coffee into the municipal government, and \\'ith other elected lo«al island, license coffee roasters and dealers, grant tax officials. l\'evenhe less, 111an y people think th:1t exemptions on coffee lands, punish adulteration of Don Pancho b the: r<:al ho-;~ of the: l'opubr p;1ny. Tlw coffee, fix a quota for tobacco, and in other ways mayor is ju~t a papc:r figure:. Fe\\' pt:ople g-o Lo the 111ay11r·s maintain a stable market for the agricultural prod- office. They go to Don 1':111< ho. He: g-i\'(:;, th t· 111 ath· itT. Srnnc:· ucts of San Jose. I ts insular Land Authority operates times h e g i,·cs them money. The mayor is a good man. He helps people. llut it is Don two projects within the confines of the municipality. A series o( agencies of the federal governn).ent o f Pancho who rea ll y helps people. H e should ha\'e been the the United States supplement or parallel those of the mayor. insular government. A federal post office receives and Don Pancho is the administrator of the estate left distributes mail. An office of the Agricultural Ad- in San J ose by the once dominant Spanish creditor justment Agen cy pays out federal money to further merchant firm. A R epu blican before 1940, h e became certain agricultural improvements. An office of the a Popular when he saw that the Popular D emocratic Soil Conservation Service, located in a nearby iown, party was "doing good," as he put it. He was then is charged w ith the distribution of knowledge and elected to head the municipal committee of the Poputechniques calculated to stem erosion and to develop a lar party. Once again, his approachability and inhigher technical level in agricu lture. The Puerto Rico formality in clothes, his easy manner and his generReconstruction Administration and the Federal !-'l ous- osity, his personal fam ily ties and ties of ritual kin ing Administratio n aim at a measure o( reorganiza- with many members o( the community both upper and tion in the loca l system of landownership. T h e federal lower class are characteristics w hich fit the ideal o( Veterans' Administration h elps former veterans of the "good landowner" on the barrio level. Jn addithe United States armed forces go to school and pro- tion, he represents a traditional source of socia l and vides unemployment payments to others who are un- econom ic power in the community, which h e threw able to find productive employment. behind the Popular party, the incumbent political The importance of these insular and federal agen- organization. cies may be m easured numerically. The present writer His coumerpart in the town hall is the mayor. The estimates the tota l amount o( direct cash payments mayor, who fills an elected position, was one o( a which the federal and insular governmen t make to group o( officials who swept into office with the rise the municipality in the form of FHA loans, AAA of the Popular Democratic party. Some of the o rga n payments, vetera ns' subsistence allowances and un- izers of the party in the locality were rewarded with employment ch ecks, poor relief, and additions to the positions in the federal 01· insular bureaun-acy, permunicipa l buclgec to be about S122,000. This figure haps as representatives of insular or federal 01·g:111i1.adoes not include the many indirect payme nts a nd tio ns in San Jose. Other party organizers occu pied the subsidies which the central government provides in positions ava il able in the mun icipal government, for the fo rm o( electric lig ht, water, education, courts, example, the position of mayor, justice-of-the-peace, a nd so forth. Simila rly, the salaries of government secre tary-treasurer, auditor, bead of the municipal officials are not inclucled. Nevertheless, the figure may dispensa ry, jail keeper, and school director. 1\ll th ese be compared to the estimated n et income derived rrom positions brought improved status within the loca lity. coffee, which is roughly S 185,ooo. The government The mayor, for exa mpl e, had formerl y been a res taumonetary contributions from outside the community, rant keeper and part-time /'armer. exclusive o( indirect payments and services, are twovVhile many people tend to underemphasi1e the thirds the in com e derived from the chief cash crop or role of th e ma yor, h e and Don Pancho have complethe municipality. mented each other in the work o( dispensi11g the ncces-

SAN JOSE: "TRADITIONAL" COFFEE '.\!Ui': IC IPALIT\"

sary patronage and in the adjustments of local conflicts. This division of labor is partially symbolized by the sepa ration and location of their offices. The mayor's office is in the town hall, and he seems to deal mainly with the claims of the new " Ooating" population, which has cut its ties wi th the landowners and relies to an increasing extent on the direct intervenLion and aid o[ the municipal administration. Don Pancho maintains his office in the building of the old creditor merchant firm. where he deals mainly with the poor tmnl and country people who are sent to him through the mediations of landowners with whom he has personal and social ties. \\1here help can be gi\'cn dircnly 011 a per onal basis, Don Pancho will "give advice and sometimes money." \·Vhere institu1ions must be 111;111ipulatcd and appeals made to bureaus and organizations. he will refer cases to the mayor. Thus Don Pancho ma y lend a man m oney to pay a fine, but c tll on the mayor tO help a faithful Popubr beat a rap in court. Some chang<.:s i II th is di,·ision or labor developed at the time ol our stay. Don Pancho "·as elected representative to the I louse during the last election. The motives which prompted this unification of the fun ctions of unofficial party leader and representative to the insular organizations are not wholly clear. They may reflect a recognition that the traditiona l role of the creditor merchant is waning and that the power of policy-making now lies at the top of the hierarchy. Any share in that power must come through association with the insular organization. Don Pancho was elected to the office d espite the candidacy of other men when it was announced that he was "the candidate of Munoz." In addition t0 these two sources of power, there are a number of formal organizations. These exercise littl e real influence. Jn addition to the head or the party comm i ttee, there is a lso a municipal party committee, which consists mostly of town merchants and storekeepers. \ Vh ile its members have some personal influence, the committee as such is so nonfunctional as to make it difficult for its head, Don Pancho, to recall all the names of its members. There are also barrio committees, composed mostly of small holders. Their judgment is theoretically <lecisive in electing candi<lates for local office which will then figure on the par ty ticket. Nevertheless, the party leadership con fidently pronounces the barrio committeemen to be "rubber srnmps." Potential cand idates expended much money on persuadi ng the committeemen to vote for them, while the actual process of selection fell outside the province of the barrio comm ittees. Finally, there is a municipal assembly, elected along party lines. It consists of town merchants and st0rekeepers, whom the party leadership characterizes as "people with little brain, but w ith long ears. Every people gets th e government it deserves. They don't understand the laws which they pass. They have tO be cxplai11ed to them." Appointment to candidacy for the municipa l assembly appears t0 be a convenient way of compensa ting <lisappointcd ca ndidates for responsible positions. 1

249

"With these resources and personnel the municipal organization carries on its chief task of dispensing sick and poor relief to the population and of adjusting individual claims with help and advice. The municipality pays a doctor, who sends his patients to a dispensary housed in the t0wn hall. This dispensary annually fills some sixty thousand to seventy thousand prescriptions, at an average cost of fifty cents per prescription. This represents an average of three prescriptions per annum per man, woman, and child living in the municipality. Don Pancho comments adversely on the quality of these prescriptions. "They are worth nothing, but people here are happy when they get some pills. It would be much better if we raised chickens and fed the people food rather than pills." The municipal doctor attends the hospital with its twen ty-five beds, takes care of insular workman's compensation medical exam inations, and runs his private practice in add ition to his tasks as a municipal employee. Owing to the scarcity of hospital beds, one of the most important jobs of the mayor is finding adequate bedding for applican ts. There is o ne bed per 920 inhabitants. A landO\rner explained, "That's why being mayor is a difficult job. Every time a man comes and brings a sick wife or child, day or night, the mayor has to find him a hospital bed, or at least he has to show that he has done his best to find one. Otherwise he loses a vote." ' 'Vhen the elections came close in l !)4.8, upper-class people in t0wn would comment that "th is is the year everyone will cure their ills. I'm a good Popular, you have to sterilize m y wife. I'm a good Popular, m y sister is very ill, you have to let her into the hospital. I'm a good Popula r, you have t0 commit my insane relative." Besides health care, a few other informal £unctions are still exercised on the municipal level. The jail is run by a municipal official on the basis of a more or less informal administration of bail, connected with local politics. One oC our informants, who was sentenced to a short term for carrying brass knuckles, was permitted to spend his days away from jail caring for his game cocks, but he returned to jail at night. The mayor exercises po"·er t0 get people out of prison and can advise the judge on the relevance of party affiliation or personal connections in court procedure. In one case, the ma yor was able to win a year's probation for a man a ccused of "·otmding his brother in the leg. Jn a case of knifing, the mayor was approached by the emp loyer of the parties concerned, a landowner, and got the culprits off with a small fin e. The mayor hands out work on municipal road repa irs, and he is in charge of local street cleaning a nd garbage collection. H e may sometimes be asked to adjudicate minor boundary dispu tes. Finally, a number of local leaders can ge t municipal credit for poor people at various local sto res and occasionally give informal rel ief. Such small-scale tasks put the officials of the municipal government under cons.iclerable s_tra i11. During three-quarters of a n hour w hich the wntcr spent in a municipal office, the following people <1pproachcd the

250

THE PEOPLE OF PUERTO RICO

official for help: a man who wanted penicillin when the dispensary had run short of it; a man who wanted to get a job on a road repair project and was put on the list; a man who came to get fifty cents because his monthly relief check had not arrived; a woman who ·wanted food for her child and obtained a chit for one dollar made out to a storekeeper in town; a woman on crutches seeking penicillin; a man looking for work who had been told to see the mayor; and a man who was distributing death notices in town. To cover some of the expenses incurred in such additional relief, the municipality carries an "unofficial" as well as an "official" debt burden. We have seen that such unofficial debts are contracted by the town hall at a number of stores in town. Roughly half the debts of the municipality fall into the "unofficial" category. Under unfavorable circumstances, such indebtedness can put the municipal administration under considerable obligations to individua l moneyed men in the community. Agrarian Reform

The promise of "land for the landless" implicit in the Popular Democratic party slogan, Pan, Tierra y Libertad ("Bread, Land and Liberty"), assured Munoz a substantial following in each electoral test. In San Jose, it aroused the aspirations of agregados threatened with the loss of traditional perquisites and security. T he slogan promised a renewed stability, enforced by the powers of the insular government. Eight years have passed since the advent of the Popular D emocratic party to insular power, and we may briefly appraise the effect of the electoral promise in local terms. According to the census of agregados taken by the insular Board of Planning in 1945, 573 of San Jose's 1,633 agregados had been "resettled" on land of their own. Figures published by the Board of Planning in i 948 apportion this total figure as follows: 107, or 7 per cent of the total number, received holdings under the program of the Farm Security Administration; 300, or i8 per cent, received subsistence plots of three cuerdas through the offices of the Puerto Rico Reconstruction A dministration (PRRA) ; 166, or io per cent, received title to land under Title V of the Puerto Rican Land Law; and 1,060, or 65 per cent, were still said to be awaiting resettlement. It is not the purpose of this study to analyze both t he aims and results of the agrarian reform movement. Data o n resettlement are relevant only to the extent that they contribute to a n understanding of the rural units studied in terms both of internal fun ction and of t heir relation to the town. Manicaboa has remained relatively untouched by the reform program. Only 35 of the 262 farm units were furni shed by the PRAA. These represent 13. 3 per cent of all farms in the barrio, but 24. 1 per cen t of all farms under ten cuerdas. A brief analysis of the forces which h ave furnished nearly one-fourth of Manicaboa's small holders with land is in order. The figures on the municipality issued by the Plan-

ning Board do not wholly agree with some figures obtained by the writer. Thus, the local office of the PRAA listed thirty-eight subsistence plots less than the Planning Board. A number of plots held under Title V proved to be uninhabited on inspection. Nevertheless, we may put the number of resettled agregados in San Jose at roughly 450 to 500. The creation of 500 small holders has double importance. First, it fulfilled to some extent the hope of the agricultural workers that the insu lar govern ment would provide them with the perquisites which were vanishing under rising economic press ures. From this point of view, the provisio n of one-third of the agricultural labor force o( the municipality with a title to land meant the attachment to the loca l la bo r market of a sizeable group of people. Ownership of a small parcel of land might not be sufficient to maintain a family, but it tied a large number of people to the locality. Thus, initi ally it decreased the po tential for migration. Second, the program was acclaimed by th e landowners. Stabilization of the local labor force en abled them to resolve some of the contradictions which had emerged in the relations between workers and landowners in the coffee industry. A slowing in the rate at which labor migrated to areas paying higher wages also ensured at least a temporary con tinuance o( lower wages in coffee. Finally, it meant that the government recognized the existence of obligations towards the landless workers. It freed the landowners of the customary obligation to support the workers while they were not actually producing goods. One landowner said: "I don't have to worry about the workers any more. I don't give them subsistence plots any more. The government saves me a lot of headaches. Now I pay them more, and kick them off the land. They always steal my minor crops. They keep chickens. They keep cows. The chickens eat my bananas. The cow goes crashing through the finca. This way each of my men has three cuerclas from the Land Authority, and I can kick them off the finca." In two other ways, the agrarian reform permitted the landowner to intensify production. First, it freed him of poor land. The local PRAA official said : "The way the PRAA buys is this: A landowner wants to sell. The PRAA sends an appraiser around. For the most part, landowners sell their bad land. Later there are usually complaints. The monthly installment of the payments wh ich the men make must be small, because the land is no good." The effect of this policy of land acquisition has been to raise agricultural production per acre, while decreasing• the tax burden. Moreover, the splinter holder became the owner of a plot which d id not produce enough to maintain him and his family without performing labor on the out· side. The second factor in the increase of productivity was the choice of p ersonnel for the new land holdings. The local PRAA official said, "The candidates for resettlement are usually selected on the advice of the former landowner. The PR.AA does not want idle vagabonds

SAN JOSE: '•TRADITI ONAL" COFFEE :;<.lU~ICIPALITY

[vagos]. \Ve also advise the parcel holder to work on the farm of his former landowner. Of course, there can b e nothing compulsory about this . . . . But the holde rs of the PRAA parcels cannot live on what they grow. They have to work for wages." The result has been that the small holders, though more numerous, face continued economic pressure. As the quality of the ir la nd is quite poor, they perfo rm outside work to supplem ent their income. Their income is drained off by purchases at local stores and by mo lllhl y installme nt pa~· m e n ts at the agency. If they wrn to the illega l production o( tobacco, they increase the press ures 0 11 the insul:tr tobacco quota and mu st often be satisfi ed \\'ith lower prices for their produce. The~· ~c t little a s~ i sta n ce in equ ipment or tcd111ical aid. ·· .i n earli er daYs the PR:\A gave each te nant seed. \\'ire and pi ~s . l'\m,· \\'C just hand him a p;trrcl o( !;ind.'. Th e pressures arc thus strong- to resume migra tio n to areas that oiler Ii ighcr wages. The same PRAA offi cer expla ined: .. There was a lo t of selling of parcels hcfure. i'\m,· th e tenant must sig n a provisional co ntran \\·hich m av be changed into a title of ownership after four to ~ ix yea rs. '. . . Before, people tried to carry on transactio ns with their land. Now, n o man may sell without permissio n, and no man may h old two parcels. If a man hns to quit for one reason or another, h e usu ally brings a n ew candidate for the title himself. The ca ndidate will pay for the harvest of the previous owner, :lncl is then regarded as just a no ther holder under provisional con tract." The attempt at agrarian stabilization has ca rried with it a series o( consequ en ces in the political field. 1t rem oved a large number of workers from direct control of the landowner, and placed them under partial control of a set of governmental agencies. These agencies are themse lves largely unco-ordinated, loca ted in different places, and h ave the impersonal ama o( the bureaucratic organi7.ation n eeded to carry through a large scale program. The workers credit the Popular Democratic party with the ir su ccesses. but have little familiarity with the techniques o r personnel of the agen cies which now control such a large sh are of their economic life. They thus appeal to the individua ls who, for them, personi fy the party on th e local levelthe local executives o( th e PPD po li tical machine. In a case in which a laborer had difficulty with a l:lndown er, for example, the worker concerned cleverly introduced the mayor into the controversy, thus u tili zing the local politica l organization to help him iro n out the difficulty. At th e same time he was putting the popularity o[ the pany o n tria l. Such appea ls have increased pressures o n the local political machinery, rather th an crea ting new m ed iating fun ctions within the novel insu la r organirntions wh ich have been sponsoring the re rorm program.

251

swinging a night stick is a familiar sigh t in the streets of the town. T h ese policemen are not San J osefios. They are recruited in other municipalities and assign ed to areas where kin a nd ritual kin ties will not interfe re with the execution of· their duties. The Popular party has bettered the lot of the police through increases in p ay a nd privileges. Loya lty to the PPD is taken for granted in the selection o( ca ndida tes, "for how shall we accept people who are aga inst the govenunent?" Despite the fact that they are strangers -and strangers acting in a forbiddingly official capacity-the police n evertheless fit rather easily into the local scene. L ocal merchants try to gain their goodwill by offering them a drink under the counter during their hours on duty. The cabdrivers, gathered about their cars in one corner of the plaza, will engage them in easy banter. IC du ties assign the pol ice to the town cockpit, the general excitement which prevails soon draws them to the edge of the pit with the o thers. The police are ch arged not only with the ma inten ance of peace and quiet in the town. They must also keep an eye out for signs of " illega l" activities, such as t11e clandestin e lottery, clandestine cock figh ts, the distilling of rum " in the home," · and the illegal slau ghter of animals. Th e clandestine lottery is o utlawed, as is the preparation of ran cai'iita, the illegal rum. Cockfights are res tri cted to the licensed pits. Livestock may not b e killed without paying a municipal slaughter tax and submitting the animal to sanitary inspection. Enforcement o( these regulations, h owever, presen ts a num ber of difficulties. :'\Ioreover, the regulations ofcen raise conflicts in the minds of th e law-enforcing agents, who, as priva te individuals, understand the appeal of the forbidden activities, even though they are called on officially to stamp them out. The first difficulty is that most poor p eople in the town and country d o not regard these activities as illegal. Brewing rum is a recognized source of income which a ids many a father of a family who could not otherwise m ake ends m eet. A small holder said to the writer: "I make ca iia. I have eight children and this small farm. I d o it for m y family. Look, here is a bottle. If they ca cd1 m e with it, they throw m e into j ail right away. But this rum I m a ke is very good . . . . The problem is th at n ow there are so many n ew policemen in town. Yesterday an inspector came to the store. But then the rum disappears. No on e knows where . . . . They will never put an end to this in Puerto Rico. A p oor mnn takes ca re o( himself b y making rum." A storekeeper in Manicaboa queried: " H ow do you think the stores make a living? Do you think they do it by selling a couple o( b iscu its per clay? If they didn't have the "·ild rum to sell, they would b e without th eir p igs.'' This incom e is made possible b y the m arket fo r the product. Store-bought rum costs one d o lla r for four-fifths o( a quart, whereas Law and Order illega lly made rum cos ts on e dolla r per liLcr. It is Law and order in Sa n J ose.'· are maintained b y a also "o u~· r~1m, " ~ ~1e rum of the rural ne ig hborhood. d etachmen t of insular police. Th e figure or the police- R on Ca11a 1s th e rnm of the country" (ro11 del pa.is), m an clad in a b lue uni form, revolver on his hip, and but store-boug ht rum is cons iclerccl " rum f'ro m over

252

THE PEOPLE OJ? PUERTO RICO

there" (ron cle allri), from the United States, despite the fact that it is manufactured on the island, by P uerto Rican firms. One of the :\Ianicaboan bootleggers said: "If this law did not exist, nobody would drink that rum from over there. \Ve don' t like it. They put too much essences into that rum. It gives you a headache. Ron cafiita does not g ive you a headache. The best drink is ca iia. You go LO bed drunk and you wake up in the morning with a clear head." Sim il arly, the illegal lottery is not regarded as immoral by the poor people who play it. The illegal lottery is not as common in l\Ianicaboa as on the coast, where cash earnings are higher and where the notion of winning subsistence from a piece of land is weak. Nevertheless, in San Jose as a whole, the illegal lottery (bolita) is big bus iness. People bel ieve that their chances of winning in crease when they play the local rather than the government lottery, because the local pool is much smaller and includes less potential competitors. Also, they are able to obtain the numbers which they want to play. The island-wide lottery distributes different sets of numbers to different municipalities. People, however, wish to play the number they saw in their dreams Lhe night before. Sometimes they can buy a sma ll portion of a ticket, so a man can participate in the illega l louery when he has on·ly one or two cents, whereas the smallest legal lottery ticket costs twenty cen cs. Dreams in which people interpret dream symbols in terms of numbers constitute a source of considerable excitement, conversation, and discussion. There are "ugly" and "beautifu l" numbers. Participation in the lottery gives people a sense of social participation . It also represents a mechanism whereby the universe and its whims become manipulatable. A man who puts money into the lottery, puts his money on fate. Sometimes he may su cceed, and his capital of a few cents will bear astounding fruit . As long as the majority of the people do not regard these activities as illegal, they will protect t he people who make them possible. This is reinforced by kin and ritual kin ties. An elaborate informal system carries warnings with incred ible rapidity, often b y horseback over sm a ll and hidden paths, to defeat the effons of both police a nd sp ecial agents. The illega l lotter y and the illegal manufacture of rum continue their hold also because they are big business for San Jose. One of the several operators of the illegal lottery LOld the writer th at he estimated that roughly sixty thousand dollars per annum passed through his hands alone. This would indicate a tota l turnover of some one hundred thousand dollars for the illegal Jouer y in San Jose. Similarly, the profits from Lhe manufacwre o[ rum are high. The molasses needed to produce five ga llons of alcohol costs one dollar. The producer sells the five gallons of alc:ohol to (l middleman ror fourteen or fifteen dollars. The m!dclleman se lls it t.0 the r etail er for twen ty dollars. Diluted wiLh ·water for final consumption, the five gallo ns of 1wre alcohol are then sold in retail for the

equivalent of fifty dollars. Rum is manufacwrecl not only for local consumption but for export to other municipalities where topographical condiLions and surveillance make distilling difficult. Finally, the econo mic ro le of these activities d emands protection and influence, and the bolila kings and caiiita dis tributors exercise influence on the councils o( the municipal government. If these major activities are h ard to suppress, so arc the minor activities. Preventing cockfights is like passing a law against sand-lot baseball. ft is \\"Cll k110\\"11 to all that cocks like to fight. That is \\"hat thcv arc born for, and who ran pr~vent s uch a fight lichrnd a barn on Sunday afternoon. The prese nce ol p eople at such fights is merest coi ncidence. Similarly, no police oflicer would want to see an ;1nimal su fl cr. The cow, which has provided the meat for the tahlc. hurt herself o n the barbed wire and had to he killed. Such killings are spurred by the high n>st of meat in the municipaliLy. Fillet or beer sells aL se\'cnty-fivc ce nts per pound; a regular chuck cul at fifty cents per pound. The problems of enforcement arc cornplicat.cd by the fact that Lhe police are garrisoned in town. The rural barrios lack resident Jaw-enforcing agenL<;. Centralization o( government has clone away with the government representatives in the barrios and abolished the rural posts of the civil guards. This means that as far as the bulk of the population is concerned, the poli ce can auempt to spot the culprit or culprits only after the fact and cannot prevent the offense. This ca uses a strange division in the records of the court. Some crimes are typica lly "of the town" (def jJ11eblo), and others are typically "o[ the c<>untry" (def cam/Jo). Breach es of the peace, usua lly following upo n mutua l insu lts and compr ising the largest s ingle g ro up o( offenses brought before the court, are prepond eran tly urban. " I nfractions of municipa l ordinances" usually refe rs to people who get drunk in town and are jailed under a municipa l ordinance against drunken rioting. i\[ost assault cases, howcve1-, are rura l in orig in. They give the impression , in the words o( the judge, that "the offenses of the country people arc always much more serious than those o( town p eople, much more serious." \t\7hile the town police can take care of breaches of the peace, and in most cases prevent their development in to open fights, "assault cases are brought to court as a result of investigaLion after the fact." The court clerk described Lhe process in Lhese words: "A wounded man is delivered to t h e hospital. The hospital sends word to the poli ce. A policeman then investigates Lhe case." The result of this type or recourse to the courts is that conv ictions are difficult Lo obtain. Roth litigants and wiLnesses arc keenly aware of kin and ritu a l kin obl igat ions and often refuse to make clear-cut accusations. Th e court clerk sa id : Tl1<·y are like the Chinese i11 Cuba. The pol icema n asks Lhc 1vo1111dC'd 111a11 who s truck him, and the rnan will say: so and so did . But when lhe case comes before coun, Lhey do11"L 14ivc ('l"ide ncc: aga ins t each other. The judge llw n

SA!\

asks \\'ho the assailant was. The \\·oundccl man then points to an incli\'idual who up to this point was not i11\'olved in the case. This 11e\,·ly d esignated aggressor then names someone else as the man \\·horn he hit, and there will be witnesses 10 co11!ln11 this. lly the time they are half-way through, no one knows who did the assaulting and who \\·as assaulted. Only the mher day the judge roared, "Why don't you kill him next time, so \\'e'JI kllO\\' who died! "

Thus, a man from i\fanicaboa struck his wife's uncle with an axe. Brought to court, the uncle refused to testily against L11 e nephe'"' }-le said that he suffered from epileptic fits, had fallen to the ground, and hurt himse lf on the axe. The n ephe\\' had picked up the ;1xc and collie under st1spic ion becat1se he had been seen holding it. Another case was described by a large lando\\'ncr in \lanicaboa_ "T\\'o men got into a fightThcy didn't reall y want w figln, but the crowd egged them on. The crowd ,,·as hot and excited . One 0£ the two ki l led the other. They asked me to be a witness. But I re luscd beca use l knc,,· the man who had clone the k i II i ng . There \\·ere no other witnesses." The hi\,·cekly sess ions of the co urt are well attended . They f~1rnish performances of dramatic character, and all \\'ho are not otherwise engaged crowd in to the courtroom ancl fill the balcony of the courthouse outside. "There are some people in this town who are absent from court hearings only when they have a cold or when they have died," the clerk said. Some town lower-class people have accumulated considerable legal experience through a ttenclance at court sessions throughout the years. An informant related: One ,,·oman comes to the session e\'ery time. She can predict what the judge \\'ill say. She moves her head to indicate "yes" or "no," so the witnesses will not put their foot into it. X died only a short time ago. He was legal ad\'iser to everybody in town .. .. l[ you wanted a witness in court. you'd go to him. He would witness Lo anything you wanted to have witnessed.

'Wh ile th e government discourages such informal advisers from exercising their talents, rural and town lower-class people often have recourse to them. They distrust lawyers, "who eat you out o( h o use and home," and do not like to incur the high expenses of legal service. If they cannot draw on such informal advisers, they have recourse to the political authorities. The circumstances and mechanisms of such an appeal had best be told in the words of a bootlegger. The mau who has godparents gets baptized. They caught me once. A man who liYecl in town once came to see me a ml to try my rum. He sa id there \\·ere a lot of people in town who wanted LO sample my rum. So we carried three gallons to town. I remained behind in a store while he \\'ent ol[ looking [or customers. A man comes, and takes the sack m,·ay from m e. I know nothin?; about it. I say somebody gave me the sack 011 the other side of the ri\'er. He \\'anted me to take it to to\\'n. Ho\\' did I know \\·ha t was in the sack? I am a poor man . .I ca111e to town LO buy food, nothing else. But 1hey sa id 1hcy had ca ught me red-handed. Pay thirt y dollars or s pend six months in jail. But then Z. [a political Jeaderl came by. He knO\\'S me \\'Cll. H e testified to the fan that I am a father o ( a family and incapable of

JOSE: "TRADITIONAL" COFFEE MUNICIPALITY

253

committing the offense with which I am charged. They could charge me ten dollars, but not more. '\Veil. said the inspector, he'd come clown to twenty dollars. Z. talked to him some more, and g-ot it down another ten dollars. I had money in the house ·or Y. because I had delivered some coffee there not Jong before. I went tl1ere su·aight \\·ay, and told him what had happened. H e immediately made ouc a check, and 1 paid. T he stool p igeon got cut, so it was difficult for him to swallO\\' water. [They slit his throat.] '\'\lben it was done, yo u could feed him water in here [points to mouth], and it \\'Ould come out here [poims to throat]. Sud1 is the custom in Pueno Rico. EDUCATION

The first school in San Jose was erected in the town shortly after the municipality was founded in 18::n. Later, schoolhouses were set up in five barrios. Nevertheless, education in the school room rema ined unimportant during Spanish rule. In 1899, only 92 children under ten years of age attended school, while 6,069 did not. The cost o( education was carried partly by the munici pality, partly by the parents. Poor parents pa id a monthly sum of fifty cents per child, wealthy parents one dollar. The town school was divided into a section for boys and one for girls. Otherwise girls received no formal education. Teaching was based on memorization of basic information on history, geography, natural sciences, mathematics, grammar, and religion . \ 1Vhile the Church w as not directly connected with the school system, Catholic catechism was also rnught in the schools. One teacher taught all subjects. Discipline was strict, often at the demand of parents who wanted the strictness of the home carried into the educational process. At the time of American intervention, according to the i899 census, 8 per cent of the population knew how to read and write; 2 per cent could only read; and go per cent were wholly ill iterate. Today, according to information supplied b y the local superintendent of schools, 4,100 children visit day school, 2,500 attend elementary rural day schools, and 700 elementary urban schools. About 800 children go to junior high school, senior high school, and rural vocational schools. A bout 120, or a little more than half of the total number of veterans in San J ose, go to school under the G .l. Bill o( Rights. Thus they receive a steady income which raises them to the economic level of schoolteachers, giving them credit at stores a nd lending them the social status of white collar workers for the duration o[ their school training. Most veterans are of urban background, because o( large-scale rejection of rural indu ctees. They thus form a new subsection o( the town middle class and a re very conscious o[ their social position . A store keeper remarked: "There they go again. \ \Thy don't they learn a trade? Instead, they go to school. Big boys like that! \ 1\Tait and see what will happen when their benefits come to an encl. There will not be one who has benefited by his eclucatjon. They take the money, and drink it up." 1

2

54

THE PEOPLE OF PUERTO RICO

\ 1\lith the increase in the number of children attending school has come an increase in the size of the teaching staff. At present the staff includes ninetyfour teachers, four principals, one superintendent, and one assistant superintendent. Most of these are women. \ Vhile top appointments are made through the insular D epartment of Education, the school director, who is a municipal officia l, retains the power of pushing the appointment of some teachers over others. This is an important function of political patronage, and it reinforces the dependence of teachers on the poli tical parties. Since the advent of the Popular Democratic party, teachers' salaries have doubled a nd the teachers' social status has risen considerably. An insular federation of teachers acts as a teachers' beneficial association, giving them health benefits a nd hospital care, while a lso serving as a kind of teachers' union. This association has proved one of the mainstays of the Popular party's power. T he net effect of the educationa l policy of the party has thus been to r aise the teacher into the new middle class. Today, becoming a teacher is one of the chief means of social mobility open to a lower-class woman. It represents the major way in which a middle-class woman can obtai n financial independence o[ her husband. At the same time, pressure for social status combines with the urban background of most teachers to increase the competition (or teaching jobs in town. Assignments to the rural area have a connotation of lower status. The job of the rural teacher pays the same as that of the teacher in rown; yet the former must either travel d aily from town to her destination or reside with a rural fam ily. For some forty years before Popu lar D emocratic party rule, American teaching methods were in troduced into the local schools wi thout regard for the distinguishing characteristics of local culture o r for the d iffic ulties of lingu istic communication. Spanish was replaced with Eng lish, or teaching in Spanish was coupled with the use of English schoolbooks. This created a discrepancy between actua l and req u ired standards of performance. A new educational policy is changing this picture. At the same time the diversification of subject matter bro ug h t a trend towards d epartmentalization of subjects on the high school level, where children face a n umber of teachers in the co urse o f the day. This invited criticism from older generations in town and people from rural sections, who are used to face-to-face rela tions. Opined a veteran from Sabana: "School was better in the old days. There was o nly one teacher who taught all <lay long. By the time you left school, you h ad learned something. Now they shift you from teacher to teacher every hour. I am not used to learning. I forget easily. I don't have time to study. I must look after my fami ly and the crops. We have English schoolbooks. I cannot understand them. They are written in a language which I do not speak . This is very hard for me." Similarl y, the introduction or "progressi ve" methods o( discipline in the classroom has drawn a dividing 1

line between older teachers, who rely on traditional methods of punishment, and the younger teachers. It has a lso broken the con ti nuity between parental authority and the authori ty of the teacher, who was formerly looked upon as an extension o( parental authority and was often urged to beat the children to indoctrina te them more thoroughly with respect towards authority. The increase in the number of sub1ects, the partial use of English, and the use o( varied kinds of d isciplinary m easures indi cate the extent to which the educational system has introclucecl altcrnati\·c systems of behavio r and thinking in to the community. The custom of seating pupils of al l classes side by side in the classroom similarly constitutes an :tltcrnativc to the customs of the larger comm unity "·hi ch keeps the different class groups hierarchicall y sc par:1ted. The r ole of the married \\·oman as a teacher contrasts \\'ith the r o le of the ma rried '''01na11 o u ts ide the school system. To the many lower-class fema le students. th e position of a lower-class " ·oma n as a sdiool tc:1chcr striking ly illustrates an alternative to the position of their kinsfolk. The bulk 0£ urban schoolgirls, when asked wh at they wanted w be when they g rew up, said they wou ld like to be teachers. The schoolbooks w i th the ir pictures reveal to the students alternative ways of li ving that are practiced in the United Sta tes. The school lunchroom serves them foods which are at variance with the diet to wh ich they are accustomed. It includes, for example, GllTOLs and tomatoes, which they do not normally eat. Table manners ta ug h t in the school lunchroom and a t the milk station require si tting at a table a nd eating with fork , knife , and spoon. T hese differ radically from the eating habi ts a t lower-class o r peasant homes, where each person repairs to a corner and eats his food with a spoon and with his fingers . The students learn o[ holidays, which differ from their own fi estas- fo r example, Chr istmas Eve and Santa Claus, George \ Vashing ton's birthday, and others. The subject matter taught presents a lternatives and con tradictio ns which affect the various components of the population differently. A complete spelling o u t of these differen tial i nfluences requires the a ttention of a n educationa l specialist. Nevertheless, we may say broadly that an "American" education instills sta ndards of diet, behavior, material goods, conspicuous consumption, etiqu ette, social mobility, individual effort, and so forth, wh ich conform most closely to the behavior system o( the middle and upper classes in town. l t creates a desire to be like Americans, a l though ambiva lence between Puerto Rican and American ways of d o ing things contin ues. \Ve h ave seen ho\v this ambiva lence plays a large role in influencing poli tical behavior and attiwdes. In part, it derives from the standards set during the process of forma l education . I n contrast to the middle an<l upper classes, education has remained large ly nonfunctio nal for the lower classes of the town a nd for the b ulk of the rural population. The new idea ls taught in the school remain nonfunctiornil because they are introduced

S.\i'\ JOSf:: "TRADITIONAL" COFFEE '.\IU:-llCIPALITY

2

55

a lo ngside more homogeneous traditional slandards becomes a means for social mobility. The group which without interpenetrating them. Yet the concrete has used education most as a means for attai ning knowledge of reading and writing is of recognized social and occupational goals consists of the members importance. The son o( a small fa rmer said: "l\ Iy of the new middle class. On the one hand, education gra ndfather took ou t a m ortgage. He could not read is a means by wh ich they validate their newly won and write. H e told no one a bout it. T hen he d ied . positions in the social structure. On the other h and, Nobody kn ew the farm was m ortgaged. The family it reinforces their a u empts to set themselves off as could nol get the m o ney logelher. The bank took the members o( a whi te collar group in contrast to people farm :rn·ay from us a nd sold it lo i\J. [a credilor who must gai n a livelihood through work wilh their merchant in w"·nl That's how they defrauded us, hands. They are thus using a new techn ique, develbecame he "·as illiterate. \ly falher does nol hold oped as part of an insu lar institution, a nd they depend wiLl1 reading and \ffiting eilher. Hut I know how LO on new cultural fact0rs to maintain their position. read and "Tile."· .\ lower-class "·oman of the town At the same time, they surround that position with sa id: ··~I\' h11shand has a !> i:.tcr. She has four children. the traditional symbols wh ich distinguish the man of Th ey :1 r~ ;ii l gro,\·n. and not one o( them knows how wealth, letters, and leisure from the working man who to read and \ni te . . \11d thal is something one must can neither read nor write. know today. Poo r peop le ha,·e no rights. T hey m ust know how to take care of themselves." CLASSES IN TRANSITION Ed11 c:i tion is u ~ed lO different d egrees b y the variT hroughout the history of Puerto Rico. the turnous segme nts of the pop1il:1tion. Thus. the 1 9 .~o census !-.lHJ\\'S th e ,·en· con:.iderable difference in the over o f the elite has been rapid. A group of merchants school attendance o·r urban a nd rural children. \ Vhile and lando\\'ners wou ld rise to the top of the social the total number of children in school appears to ladder, o nly to be replaced a little later by a nother ha,·e increased by some fi,·e hundred since 19.JO, the and similarly composed group of merchants a nd landincrease is not spread equa lly O\'er all grou ps. The owners. The causes for this frequent turnover may bulk of the increase has taken place in the town, be found partly in the dependent political a nd ecowhich shows a consistently higher percentage of nomic position of the island. The sources of capital accumulation were agricul ture and commerce. Its children in school for each age grouping. indispensable tools were capital and cred it. But capiPER CENT OF CHllDREN OF EACH AGE GROUP ATTENDING tal was scarce. Bank resources be(ore i 898 scarcely SCHOOL IN 1940 came to six million dollars. The rate of interest was, therefore, high and often usurious. This form of usury Tow 11 Co1111t1)• Age Crou/' permiued certain men to make qu ick fortunes, then (/Jer cc11t) (/Jer ce11t) leave the island and return to Spain. On the other 2.1 5-6 3 hand, the high rate of interest also brought the land1 S:; 58 7- 3 owners in to debt. A man could easily lose his shin 65 51 14-15 for want of sufficient credit. Crist states ( i 948: 179) 1!) I 0-1/ .J"that "coffee plan ters were the favored ones of Puerto 16 18- 20 3 Rico; th eir cred it wns good-too good in many cases These figures show considerable difference in the -for a few poor yea rs meant that their farms were relative percentages. They also d emonstrate a rapid heavily mortgaged ." One generation would pile up d ecrease in the percentage o( children attending wealth. Another generation would lose it. San J ose demonstrates this i nstability of the upperschool after fifteen in the rnral area. This is also brought out by the fact that in 19.18, 5i6 children class group. Names familia r and potent in the social a ttended high school in town, while only !!!!O chil- and economic hiernrchy around the turn of the cendren attended vocational schools and high school units tury are all but forgotten today. Some have returned in the country. The nnio of children altencling high to Spa in. Others have gone to San Juan. Still others schools in town to the number o[ those attending have left o nly lower-class or lower midd le-class deelementary schoo ls is g:.1, bu t the comparable ratio scendants. The local descendants of a compa nion of fo r the country districts is i: 11. Ponce d e Lc(>n, who received huge gran ts of land, are \\' hi le the L0\\'11 is th us using the eel uca tiona I sys- today sma ll farmers in l\fan icaboa. The descenda n ts tem beyond the sixth grade, the country districts lag of the man who established the first coffee hacienda in behind. i\fany cou ntry people who want their ch ildren San Jose similarly O\\'n nothing but small plots of LO receive an education either send them to town land in the same barrio. The descendants of another or move to town for that purpose. One farmer in Spanish gentleman, who recei,·ed a large grant of Manicaboa pays relatives in town to board his chil- land in the 18~o's. are today small farmers in Sabana. d ren while they arc attending school. ,\nothcr peas- The family which first received the terrain o[ o ne ant sold his farm a nd store a nd moved to the urban oE the largest present-clay ha ciendas in Sabana in a slum in San Ju an for th e ostensible purpose o[ edu- land gra n t for services rendered in the insular cavalry cating h is children. These facts lead us to co11clude in the 1 fL1o's now be lo ngs to the Lown lower and that education hecom.es [unctiona l primaril y when it lower middle class. ll no lo nger owns any la nd. The

256

THE PEOPLE OF PUERTO RICO

descendant of the man who founded the Spanish Casino in the town is today a very minor official in the municipal government. The descendants of a former governor of the island today belong to the lower middle class of the town. Genealogies also reveal that upper-class families have often lost their wealth to relatives by marriage. Thus, Hacienda La Zumbaora passed to a son-in-law of the founder rather than to the sons. The creditor merchan t firm twice passed into the h ands of affinal relatives during the hundred years o( its existence. While the affina l line prospers, the direct descendants often pass into comparative oblivion. Some migrate. Others resign themselves to a lowered economic and social status. Ascent and descent of this type was economica lly conditioned. The decisive factor in a man's status was the extent of his control over the production and sale of coffee. Wealth and the social prestige attached to it were tied up with agriculture. Even the commercial dealings and the manipulations of the rate of interest ultimately involved agricultural wealth. ·wealth based on agriculture gave rise to a simple division of classes. On the top there was an upper class. At the bottom were "the people." Today, however, people are conscious of the fact that there are now three class groupings in the town. One of these, moreover, is of very complex character. At the top there is, as before, a "first class" (la primera), also often referred to as "the cream" (la crema). At the bottom there is a class called la clase popular del pueblo, which might simply be translated as the "populace" o( the town. In terlarded between th ese two, we now find an additional class, the middle class of the town. To this group belong storekeepers, government officials, teachers, veterans, and cabdrivers. The storekeepers owe their rise to the decline of the old credit system, when the functions of production credit and consumers' credit became divorced. The government officials owe their position to the great i ncrease in insular services and federal services and the centralization of government (unctions in San .Juan after the depression. The teachers are a product o( the widening scope of the insular system of education. The cabdrivers exploit the new facilities of transportation and the improved roads. The veterans are a special product of the benefit programs which followed ' 'Vorld vVar I and, especially, ·world War II. The Upper Class

The ranking position in the economic and socia l hierarchy is still held by the " cream." This com ists o( the members of about fiftee n wealthy Spanish-born families. They are indisputably wh ite, and they have long been residents in the municipality. Their social ties are usually with relatives in Spain and with Span~sh-born upper-class families in other parts o( the island. l\Iany of chem have never taken out American citizenship. H they are Mallorcans, they read Mallorcan papers, import fruit seeds /'rom Mallorca a nd plant them in the ir gardens, recite l\ Iallorc:an poetry,

prepare special J\Iallorcan dishes. One day of the year all the i\fallorcans of the island come to San Jose tO reaffirm their cultural and status unity by worsh iping th e Virgin of Lluch. The image of the Virgin stands on one side of the altar in the town ch urch. If they are Asturians, they decorate their rooms with little dolls in Asturian dresses, "·i th the roya l colors of Spain, and with miniature representations of bagpipes. They cook special Asturian and northern Spanish dishes. On a special day they worship the Asturian Virgin or C:ovadonga, \\'hose Slatlle stands opposite the Virgin of' Llu ch in the to\\'11 church. '"'e have discussed th<: t\\'o stereotype!. \\'hich country people apply to lando\\'ncrs, the idea l typc:s of the "good" and "bad" la11do\\'ners. The Spanish families of die town upper class tend to be regarded as "bad landowners." In it~ positive aspen. thi!i type represen ts the puritan ideal of thrift. i\ fo11cy is ac· cumulated not to be spent, hut to be saved. Crn1sump· tion is restricted and inconspicuous. Th e i11cli,·idual amasses wealth for him!.elf and does not ex pend it to reinforce socia l ties. Th e Iron ts of houses owned by such families in town arc usually simple.; and hide good slllrdy furniture beh ind a nonostentatious la\acle. The members o[ this group do not dress showi ly nor exhibit their wealth. They are often seen working at small tasks, performing these themselves rather than calling on some servant to do them for them. Their women carry on small-scale business deals, selling milk or eggs or sewing for profit. An extreme case is exem plified by the Spanish woman who sells six eggs every morning to her daughter-in-law at the prevailing market price. This class accepts a stringent familial ideal. It makes the social status of the household dependent to a very large degree upon the social behavior o( the wife. The wife must be a virgin at marriage. She must respect h er husband and not attempt to give him advice open ly. She must bear children, preferably male children, to demonstrate the masculinity of her husband. She should not leave the house unchaperoned. She should not be seen talking to a man if her husband is not present. She may not dance with other men, except when h er husband gives permission. She should not drink. She should be religious, go to church, and pray for her husba nd. She must not put any restrictions on h er husband's activities. If he is drinking w ith friends, she may not interrupt him. If he has a mistress, she may not show her resentment openly. She must not gossip about her relations with her h11sband, especially to other married women. She must be ready to make a meal for her husband whenever he chooses to return home. H e in turn should always know where his wife is. She must maintain the stat11s or h er daughters by providing them with the clothes which show the class to which they belong. She must always be well dressed when leaving the house. This ideal is functional for women during th e chi ldbearing pe riod of their ll)arriage. They arc carefull y prepared for it in their youth. Hence th e great status-

SAN JOSE: "TR.ADITIONAL" COFFEE l\lUNJCIPALITY

consciousness of middle- and upper-class girls as opposed to boys of the same groupings. \Vhere boys will mingle freely, girls will segregate themselves into cliques according to the social and economic status of their parents. At marriage, the girl really exchanges economic stallls for the promise that she will strictly fill these roles. "As long as the man maintains her, she can not complain," was the verdict when an upper-class woman openly voiced resentment at h er husband's extramarital affairs. H owever, it is sa id that "women rule fro m underneath." They "manage" their husbands. Carefully g iving the impression that they arc not actively engaged in giv ing advice or in forcing their husbands in to decisions, they nonetheless use subtle means to maneu\'er them into desired choices. "As long as he is sober. I run the house," an upper-class woma11 sa id. ''Of course, when he is drunk. I zipper my mouth." As they get o lder, women begin to shed som e o[ these expected behavior patterns. The c.:loser th ey approach the end of the childhca ri 11g period, the more 0 11 tspok.en they grow in the ir criticisms of their husbands and the more openly they resist the demands made upon them. Child training and rearing fall almost entirely to women. \IVhile the man moves mainly outside the household, his wife "represents" the h ousehold. Both boys and girls of this class grow up in a sphere in which the men scarcely participate. During early childhood, they are discouraged from learning to care for themselves. Nurses ca re for the young under the mother's supervision, and will often carry and feed them long after they are able to accomplish these tasks. ·w hen girls grow into their teens, they begin to fit rather easily i mo the role of the upper-class woman as they see it presented by their mothers. Boys, however, are subjected to more strain in iden tifying with the role of the adult male. In the first place, their fathers are rarely seen by them. In the second place, the boys hear all male behavior criticized by their mothers, who are ambivalent about the role which they must play in the household. In the third place, mothers lavish much affection on their male children, perhaps compensating in part for the difficulties of their marital relations. Thus, boys of e leven are permitted to spend the night in the mother's bed. Finall y, many of the roles which the boys learn from their fath ers are in turn ambivalent in their attitudes towards women. Frequently, adult males of this class find themselves incapable of su stained work and come to be known as 11111y fiesteros, people who like drinking and dancing and who pass much o[ thei1· time in idleness. It may be suggested tha t thwarting of e;irly attempts at mastery and uncertainty of male identification may contribute to this type of behavior. lf one of a set of sib lings takes over administration of the propel'l)'. the work habits of the others may remain ineffectual. Often this one hard-driving individual is himself a reformed drinker. Marriage is o ften looked upon as an act o[ reform in which the prospec tive bridegroom promises to ('hange his "·ay of life. If no effectual candidate for

257

the administration of property develops, affinal kinsmen may gain control of the family's wealth. The pattern is repeated over generations. \ •Ve may conclude that conditions of colonial capital formation-scarcity of credit, high interest rates, and uncertainty of the chief money crop- constitute the general conditions for the ascent and descent of the families in the upper class. These factors are reinforced by psychological mechanisms, which produce individuals who are incapable of sustai ning the original rate of capital accumulation. l\Iany members of the upper class who played an important part in the li fe of San Jose fifty years ago have gone back to Spain. Others have moved to upperclass residential areas in San Juan. Still others h ave lost their wealth. Those who have remained behind in San J osc have done so either because they felt themselves too old or too conservative to make a major change, or were willing to settle down on their accumulated wealth in the town which had become their home. "With the declin e in the coffee crop and a slowed rate of accumulation, their position has inevitably been rivaled by n ewly rich, who have derived their wealth from nonagricultural sources. These latter may lack Spanish descen t and a "secure" genealogy, but they have made u se of the new opportunities to rival the upper class in wealth and display. The Lower

Class

At the bottom of the social and economic hierarchy in the town there is the "populace" o( the town. The lower class of the town differs greatly from that of the rural districts. Its members are wholly dependent on wage labor for their livelihood. They cannot expect perquisites from any paternalistic employer. Instead, they must compete for jobs in a mark.et oversupplied with laborers like themselves. \l\Then the can e below the town was ready for cutting and the call went out for cane cu tters, sixty men presented themselves, but only twenty were chosen. \'Vhen one of the rich men of th e town began construction on a large house, many men shared the work but none worked a full work week. Th e people of this class are no longer tied personally to any one employer, and access to land is o( n o importance. Many o( th em have moved to town from country areas, where they once owned land, but most o[ them have cut the ir ties with the rural way of life. They are wil ling to work in agriculture when the opportunities arise, and m any of them work seasonally in cane and in the preparation of tobacco pl<rntings around the town, but few are willing to harvest coffee, because they consider the wage rates below the ir price. However, they do not depend on agrirnlture even for the major part of their li velihood . They are primar il y concerned with obtaining a cash income from the set o[ combined activities. For purposes o( broad analysis, this class may be divided into three groups. The lirst group consists of people with more or less steady occupations and

258

THE PEOPLE Of" PUERTO RICO

regular cash income. It includes such occupations as coffee roasters, firemen, dry cleaners, beauticians, seamstresses, embroiderers, nurses, butchers in the municipal slaughterhouse, caretakers in the schools, garage mechanics, barbers, midwives, carpenters, shoemakers, bakers, cigar makers, plumbers, store clerks, painters, and so forth. T he second group represents people who try to make a living from pursuing a limited number of part-time activities, such as cutting cane, stripping tobacco, washing and ironing clothes, announcing the movies, working as domestic servants, baking pastelillos (batter filled with meat and cheese fried in deep fat) for sale, making fishing nets, making guitars, selling the legal lottery, and so forth. The third group accepts a large number of different opportunities as they present themselves. They are called buscones, people who "look for" small-scale sources of employment. T o this group belong the occasional peddlers, gamblers, musicians, sellers of the clandestine lottery, fishermen, prostitutes, people who can be paid to run errands, announcers of the departure of taxis or buses, trouble makers and spies at rival political rallies, and so forth. These three occupational groups do not represent fixed categories. Individuals often shift from one kind of work to a nother when they h~ve to. Sometimes members of a single household will combine tasks which fall into the several groupings. Thus a man may make cigars and also sell the clandestine lottery, while his wife works part of the year as a tobacco stripper and takes in laundry during the remainder. People performing these kinds of labor represent an urban class, despite occasional employment in agriculture. "Wh y should I risk a headache at the back of my head from looking up at the coffee trees for one miserable dollar a day?" a lower-class man asked laughingly. T heir ambitio n is to earn wages, and their income is spent at stores where they buy all their food. Only a few own small plots near town, where they raise part o( their own food. Their houses are covered with corrugated galvanized iron roofs. The many aerials rising above the roof tops show that most of them have radios and electric lights. Their furniture a nd their kitchen utensils are also bought in stores. Not for them the rough-hewn tables and seats and the calabash dishes of the country p eople. Their clothes are urban clothes. The khaki clothes, which they wear at work, are replaced with loosehanging sport shirts and pressed trousers in moments of leisure. l\ Iost of them have gone to school, and among them a person who cannot read or write at all is rare. }.fany of them have worked outside the confines of San .Jose, along the coast during the sugar harvest, at the various air and naval stations during the period of v\Torld 'Nar II. ·M any have relatives in San Juan and in the United States. Their outlook is urban and sophist icated, as opposed to the country folk who know liule about the larger world outside their rura l barrio.

This different orientation is evident in other ways. Lower-class town people do not share with the people in Manicaboa the outspoken dislike of individuals with Negro physical characteristics. In Manicaboa, this sentiment appears to be based on the desire to maintain distinctions of social status based on the ownersh ip of land. T o be a Negro there means to be a descendant o( landless coastal people, of slaves, to be a land less laborer, a proletarian with an urban way of life. The town working class, ho\\·cver, has no socia l status of this kind to defend . .\larriages, therefore, between people with white physical cha ranerist ics and people with Negro physica l characteristics arc fre quent. \ \Te have seen that in .\lanicaboa marriage and the establishment of a new and independent lio11schold was reinforced by strong relig ious tics. 1\111 011gthe people of the town lo"·er class, 011 the other ha11d, common-law marriage prevails. In "\fanicalJoa tl1 e marriage may be said to symbolize the se,·crance of the tie between the young man and the family which lias previously controlled him. The re lig ious sa nctions are utilized because they add strength and relig ious aura to a union which challenges the familial status quo. In town, the family as "one pocket" hardly exists. Relig ious ties are much weakened. \Vhen young men of the urban lower class work for wages, they retain the money they make. In one case, a young man worked for his father, who owned a small plot on the outskirts o( town. He aided in the preparation o( terrain for planting and cultivation. Whenever he performed work on the plot, his father paid him money wages. He refused to work without pay. Thus, there is liule need here to symbolize an event, which, in Manicaboa, signalizes a moment of crisis and reorgan ization of the family. Similarly, the religious motives of this town lower class are weak. This group may choose between Catholicism in its urba n form and its rura l folk form. Protestantism, sp iri tualist beliefs, or unbelief, or a mixture of all four. Criticism of the Church, as opposed to criti cism of the particular priest or the leaders of religious socie ties, is strongest in this group. Church marriage costs money, and is felt to be unnecessarily binding. l\fany common-law marriages are stable. "Look at them," a lower-class woman said about a relative. "They were m arried, in church, and yet they fight all the time. i\fy husband and I live like this, and yet we get on well with each other." Under consensual marriage, it is possible to change marriage partners, and the children in a household sometimes come from previous, marriages of both parents. Often, however, a woman keeps all of her own children when she remarries. This is especially true where the man has left the munic~pality in search of a job elsewhere or where he has proved to be ineffective as a provid er. In fact, the inqeasing ability of women in this class to make money \ndependently of the ir husba nds gives them a strong voice in household affairs. vVomen can wash and iron clothes, hire themselves 011t as servants in upper- arid middle-class 1

SAN JOSE: "TRADITIONAL" COFFEE MUNICIPALITY

homes, Slrip LObacco, fry paslelillos, be midwives, and perform other tasks. One clay a lower-class woman, who was complaining about the way her husband had spent money on himselC instead of on their children, expressed this clearly, "I don't really care about him. H e can go fo r all I care. I am only in terested in the children." Thus, "·omen form the stable part of the household, and the mother-daughter tie tends to be strong. Sons, like their fathers, tend to be on the fringes of the successive households in which the women "carry the melody" (llcvan la voz cn ntante). Economicalh'. children arc less of an asset here than in the rural · districts. and arc often shifted from one support ing household to another. Poor families will often attempt to "g-in~" their children to wea lthier in cl i ,·icl ua ls. This is 11tc c:lass whi ch relies most on the political and social ser\'ircs offered by the town. Some of its members do political odd jobs or work on municipal roads. Most of them use the public dispensary and the services of the town doctor in his official capacity. l\Iost of their children go to school. \\Then they are in trouble or need ach·icc. they seek help from the town politicians. If they feel cheated in their wages, they appeal to the Department of Labor. Thus, even though they make their contact with insu lar institutions through individual politicians in t0wn, they are nevertheless making use of the new impersonal insular instilutions to a larger degree than any other group in the municipality. Intermittent employment and poverty, however, often counteract this tendency. Many members of this sociocullural group, who depend wholly on a combination of many small-scale sources of income, are often forced t0 attach themselves to individual wealthy families within the locality rather than tO insular and nonlocal sources of power. They are forced to build up reciproca l relationships in which they run errands, wash floors, and perform a multitude of minor jobs for one household in exchange for cast-off clothes, utensils, occasional gifts of money and sometimes politica l and legal protection. \\'hile the upper and middle groups of the town ,,·orking class are able to function to a large degree independently of individual emp loyers, the third group must curry favors with individuals in order to make a Jiving. The Middle Classes

The middle classes are products of the same changes which made coffee tumble from its position of dominance. They are the products, as well as the instruments, of the changed system o( retail marketing, the improved transportation, the new system of government, and the changed system of education . They are the products of new opportunities. These new opportunities, however, not only made social mobility possible among members of the town lower class. They also provided alternatives for those members of the older upper class of coffee producers, whose economic and social status was threatened by the decline of

259

coffee. A position in the officialdom of the island meant a chance for improved status and prestige to many a son of a stricken hacienda owner or merchant. However, the bulk of recruits into this new group derived from the lower class. The character of its income marks this group off from the lower class of the town. I t derives a reuular • 0 mcome, frequently a salary, from the performance of nonmanual labor. It is sign ificant that being a cabdriver is not looked upon as manual labor. The middle classes provide goods and services. The symbol of their income is the monthly check, whether the check is sent to the local post office by the Veterans' Administration of the United States or paid through the insular Department of Education. "They don't use money here any more," a storekeeper said. "Now they all pay by check." In contrast to the upper-class ideal of restricting consumption in order to further accumulation, the new middle class strives both to accumulate and to spend conspicuously. Its ideal is co make money in every conceivable way. The same man may be a government official, run a store on the side, employ a man to drive a cab, and sell pork meat and the eggs of game hens. He also buys expensive goods, which are put on show. His ideal is to own a new house, equ ipped with the latest conveniences. The refrigerator, newly purchased through an agent of a United States firm, occupies an honored corner in tl1e living room. New and expensive clothes are worn, and new cars bought. This class uses symbols which mark off its status securely from that of the lower class. In many respects, these symbols are like those which traditionally have marked the upper class of Latin America, even though their use is made possible by new kinds of oc~upations and invo.lves ne"- kinds of products. Mtddlc-class people h ire servants to do the rough work about the house. They r efuse to carry packages home from the store, and will call on some lowerclass boy to deliver the packages for them. They dislike walking, but prefer to ride in cabs or cars of their own rather than in buses, which are mostly used by lower-class people. Their clothes bespeak the changed form of their labor. On the streets, women are immaculately dressed, and often carry umbrellas to shield themselves against the sun. i\Ien wear citytype clothes, including creased trousers a nd freshly laundered sport shirts. Shoeshine boys shine their shoes. The women expend much time on the ironing and starching of their clothes. They go to San J uan for medical services, rather than to the local doctor and clinic, where they ·would have to mingle with lower-class people. They set much store by education .. Education is the "'atTant that they have taken the· final step which divorced them from life on the land,. life by manual labor, and from interest in agriculture. Education is the key to occupational secmity. It assures them of a place in one of the new institutions_ They mnke a point of speaking like city people anct

2 60

THE PEOPLE OF PUERTO RICO

laughing about the archaisms in the language of the country folk. They regard fatness in both men and women with pleasure, as a symbol of better diet, increased wealth, greater leisure, and changed social status. Their watchword is social and economic mobility. Thus, their presence in town has ovenhrown some of the hard and fast divisions which were current in the past. One of the officers of the former u pper-cla~s club said: "In the old days, the Casino sent out invitations to people to join it. Only people who belonged to the 'cream' were permitted to attend. If a dance was to be held, the Casino sent a restricted number of invitations to reliable people in nearby towns. But nowadays anyone who has the price of a dollar may come to the club." The old Casino, "where the Spaniards sat and drank wine," dissolved during the depression. Two organizations took its place. The first of these is the Social Club of the Catholic Daughters of America. It is run by upper-class women, and to some extent it inherited the aristocratic pretensions of the old Spanish Casino. It still carries a certain amount of upperclass prestige. T hus, it attempts to ban Negroes from membership, although it has been unable to enforce this rule. It holds dances, which are attended by fam ily groups, including children and young adolescents. The second organization is the "Fraternity," which dissolved during 1949 because of financial difficulties. This club was organ ized by the "young bloods" of the town. It was in no way a college organization, but rather an age-grade club which held dances and parties and employed a few symbols, such as the crossed paddles in the anteroom, reminiscent of American college fraternities. "Anybody can get into a Fraternity." In other words, the old class division of the Casino, with its rigid social distinctions, gave way to two clubs to which entrance could be had on cash terms. The secretary of the Fraternity said: "You see, many second class people want to be first class. So we admit everybody. It is not like in the big towns. In the little towns you cannot keep anyone out. But of course cliques will form as soon as people get inside and on the dance floor." Nevertheless, the rising opportunities which have produced the new middle classes have clearly challenged the old upper-class exclusiveness. ·whereas some years ago the daughter of a Spanish upper-class family could refuse to accept a member of a rising middleclass family as an escort, and thus bar him from the Casino, today the middle-class boys participate in all the major dances held in the town. Since the middle classes are the products of ongoing culture change, no clear dividing line can be drawn between middle-class and upper-class people on the one hand, and lower-class and middle-class peopl e on the other. Thus most veterans in the town are of lower-class origin. The benefit program of the G .I. Bill of Rights has given them the temporary economic status of people with a regular monthly income. "In fact," joked one merchant, "the veterans

are Puerto Rico's major industry." A few have used their new income to become cabdrivers, and have laid the basis for a stable income after the benefits are exhausted. A few others have become owners of small stores. A large number have availed themselves of educational benefits. Nevertheless, a permanent improvement in the economic and social status of this group depends largely on the reality of life chances open to them, as well as on the way in which they understand those chances. Education can result in a major improvement only in those cases where the veteran has grade school and high school behind him or nearly completed. Other· wise, the chances are that restriCLed work opportunities will force him once again into a lower-class staLUs. Opportunities for cabdrivers and storekeepers arc similarly limited. Therefore. after the G.1. program has come to an end, many individuals who have enjoyed middle·class incomes for a time will once again fall back into the tO\\"n lower class. :\Iany veterans have changed neither thei r behavior nor their ideals. They tend to regard their added income as a gift from heaven, and know that it will come to an end. \Vhcrc veterans have taken on the attitudes and behavior norms of the new middle class, realistic opportunities for an improvement in status exist. In such cases, however, the new way of life conflicts with the old lower-class values and behavior. Thus, a lower-class veteran, who had a chance to go to college, identified himself with urban folk . He was made uncomfortable by the visits of his old illiterate rural father. His wife affected standards of clothing o( the town middle class, but continued to walk the way rural women do. She hoped that her child would grow up "the way country children do," but took him to the doctor in San .Juan and expended much effort on providing him the kind of baby clothes which symbolize mi<lclleclass status. Thus, this new group is not only the product o( new opportunities. It is also their victim. These opportunities have widened what Linton calls ( 1936: 282) "the fluid zone of alternatives." They have increased the number of choices and made for mobility, but a t the same time opened chances for conflict. Behavior and ideals of the middle class tend to conflict with both upper- and lower-class standards. The alternatives themselves are furthermore drawn (rom two different contexts. One context is that of the changing Puerto Rican upper- a nd middle-class subcultures as understood and practiced in San Juan and in the small towns. A second context is that of the United States, which transmits a l tern atives to Puerto Rico through a variety of media, such as members of the military, veterans who served in the United States, relatives who visit back and forth between the continent and the island, teachers, magazines, movies, advertising, hearsay, and so forth. The choices are not only new in Puerto Rican terms, but of ten derive their no;elty from some other cultural background, principally in the United States. In the economic sphere, middle-class people in San

SAN JOSE: "TRA DITI ONAL" COFFEE l\IUNICIPA LlTY

Jose have a choice of a number of nonmanual occupations. They may become moneylenders, officials, movie operators, telephone operators, telegraph operators, lawyers, pharmacists, r adio repairmen, government licensed electricians, storeowners, tobacco traders, or cabdrivers. Sometimes they effectively combine two occupations, or husband and wife pool incomes derived from two different sources. T he fa milial ideal of the upper class operates also among middle-class people, but actual and ideal behavior cliITer at many points. In most middle-class households, die woman is no longer merely the mother of a family and an ornament of che househo ld. She also holds a job. :\!any positions are open to women. \ rost teachers, the officials in charge of P ublic ·welfare, the person in charge of the gi rls' 4-1-I Club in the Agriculw ral Extension Service. most secreta ries in the o ffi cial inst i1 utions, and some officers of the town are women. Others, who are now married, held such posts in the past. Still others carry o n little businesses of embroidering or selling clothes in addition to their household chores. In such cases strict observance of status rule-; comes into conflict with everyday behavior . "A woman who is a teacher must talk to many men: to the superintendents. teachers, to the parents of children and so forth . She must know how to deal with them." As a corollary, many men believe, or say they believe, that the women who fulfill official roles in go_vernment offices must ipso facto be sexually loose. The co nsciousness that novel and unknown situations are challenging the family runs deep within most middle-class men. The fear that women are "causing them to sit in the trunk" (senlar en el ba1il) is everpresent. Thus one middle-class man coming home from a drunken party repeated again and again, "i'vly wife is going to hi t me. She is r ight. She is one in a million. " \\' hen he reached home, his wife had a meal prepa red to sober him up. He then refused to eat the mea l and went out to eat a t one of the restaurants i n town. "Tha t was to show," he explained later, "that it is I who gives the orders around the house. If I were not the one to run the house, I would cut off my pants here [to make a skirt]-" In politics the middle class has a choice between the party which stands for improved standards o( living throug h a continuance of the dependent tie with the U ni ted States, the party which stands for complete independence, or the party which stands for complete incorporation into the United States. l\Iost of the members of this class are Popu lares. They are indebted to the Popula r Democratic party for the great increase in institutions and the growth of the number of official positions that can be filled. The party is associated with the improvements in living during the war and after. l\Iost members o f this class. however. want independence in the fut ure. Once aga in ideal and actua l polilical behavio r tend to confl ict. M idclleclass people are aware that th e standards of performance set in their offices ancl businesses are America n sta ndards, not Puerto Rican standards. These are

26 I

often set directly b y American supervisors or advisers, who occupy posts for which Puerto Ricans compete. This competition tends to create a strong d islike o f advice and invidious comparison with the standards of the occupying power. "Any American sailor rates higher tha n a n y Puerto R ican businessman," a storekeeper in San J ose complained. They a lso feel that Puerto Rico is too dependent on the uncertain goodwill o[ the U nited States. In religion, they h ave a choice of remaining Catholics or becoming Protestan ts or spiritualists. Many men leave religion wholly to their women and openly profess their unbelief. Others secretly turn spiritualists. v\Te have seen that to be called a spiritualist openly associates a man with lower-class belief and may threaten his status. Yet frequentl y, especially in crisis situations, such as the loss of a job, sickness, or change in political power, men and women of this class turn to spiritualists for help. A few middle-class people are Protestants. These are usually persons who are raising their status Crom the lower class into the middle class. Their Protestantism emphasizes the novelty a nd unorthodoxy of their new position. '"'e have seen that many people of Negro ancestry tend to be . Protestants and Republicans. Both affiliations are levers within an environment which attempts to bar them from social mobility. The town upper class h as passed its zenith of power with the decli ne of the way of life based on the cultivation of coffee. I ts representatives have either resigned themselves to d iminished in fluence or moved away. l\Iembers of the town lower class are often prevented from playing a more active and independent role by their incermittent employment, wh ich drives them into dependence on wealthier families in the town. The alternative is migration, "·hich removes them from the local scene. The middle class of the town, however, represents the one sociocultural segment in the town wh ich has clearly improved its sta tus within the loca l framework. This improvement has been possible only, however, because they have become the mediators between th e locality and the island as a whole. They are the local representatives of governmental, economic, or religious organizations which fun ction o n the insular level, and their local position depends ultimately upon island-wide factors often beyond their control. Thus, they have been affected by the cu ltural conflicts of Puerto Rico, as well as by island-wide changes which have benefited them.

CONCLUSIONS Jn the course of th is stud y we have examined one cultural ecological adaptation characteristic of P uerto R ico. '"'e now offer cenain conclusions regarding the distinctive processes of culture change which mark this adaptat ion. T hese processes cannot be understood in terms o ( the locality a lo ne fo r th ey operated w ithin the framework of the larger Puerto Rican sociocultura l whole. \Ve shall stress the essentia 1 unevenness of

262

TliE PEOPLE OF l'UERTO RI CO

changes within the heterogeneous whole and attempt to show how they nevertheless contribute to cultural stability in certain segments of the total local society. We have traced the imposition o( coffee growing on a portion of the highland area and analyzed its consequences. The subcultures of this area were analyzed through field work in one community, San Jose, which was selected because it derives the larger part of its cash income from coffee but also grows supplementary crops for food and sale. San Jose lies in the mountains. Its population is overwhelmingly rural and lives scattered in rural neighborhoods. The town-the economic, political, and religious center of the community or municipality- lies at the crossroads bei:ween mountains a nd coast. T he coffee shrub, which is the basis o( the present cult_ural adaptation of San Jose, is a perennial. It begms to bear only several years after planting, and when mature it is subject to fluctuat ions in productivity. These characteristics favor growers who have capital and can afford to wa it until the shrub begins to bear and who can absorb decline in output. The grower with little capital, while at a disadvantage, can nevertheless maintain himselC a lo ngside the large producer. The crop requires field labor at intervals throughout the year, labor which cannot be mechanized under mountainous conditions. The· large grower is continuously confron ted with the problem of massing sufficient labor at the required intervals. " ' hile processing machinery facilitates large-scale operations, labor, and not mach inery, is the limiting factor in production. The small grower can produce and process c~~ee without machinery, at the cost of expend ing additional amounts o( labor. v\Thile environmental conditions in some sectio ns o[ the rural area favor coffee, land use is not determined primarily by the local environment. Land use reflects market demands, and changes with the availability o[ capital and credit for different crops. In Barrio Nlan icaboa, the zone of coffee cultivation has shifted back and forth across the land. Because of their greater ability to take risks, growers with capital found coffee more profitable at an earlier period than small growers. ·when market conditions for coliee grew worse, co[ee production became less profitable sooner for small growers than for large growers. Historically, the co!Tee technology was imposed on a pre-existing culture based on subsistence farming. This cu lture was not wholly selC-sullicient; sma ll quantities of produce were sold to pay for goods not produced locally. The people were thus familiar with the idea 0£ raising cash crops to pay for goods obtained Crom the o u tside. Yet the idea of interest on credit extended was absent. ' Vith monetary capital lacking, labor and land were the only factors of pro<l_uction. Land was readily available, but the population was scattered and labor was scarce. The new culture introduced capital and interest from outside. The coffee crop became its raison d'etre. Larger farms were needed to grow more cofEee. More labor was needed to work the larger farms.

l\Iachinery was introduced to process the larger amounts of co!Tee. The cost of processing machinery exerted pressure for a further increase in the size of landholdings, in the size of the labor force, and in the volume of coffee produced. These needs gave rise to the coffee-growing hacienda. The hacienda was essentially a m eans of binding labor to the farm through the hacienda store and perquisites. I t r estricted the labor market in which the worker operated, localized it, and sta nd ard ized its conditions through customary arrang-ements. It was thus based on the principle that the "·orker must be maintained e,·en 1\·hcn he is not \\·orking. so that he may be present and ready wh en hi$ labor is urgently needed. \ Vith relation to the credit system, the hacienda was the rural 011 1p o~L ol a sy~tem which unified th e funct io ns of credit for prod uction and for consumption. This system did not do ;rn·ay with the sm;tll producer. As coffee beca me lllorc profit able, many smal l growers expand ed Llieir ca!>h crop produ ction. At the same time they began to supplement their in come from their crops \\·ith wage~ rccti\·cd from \\·orking elsewhere. If the pea~a11t could rely o n his s11bsistence crops, work harder and longer , and restrict his consumption requirements, he could compete with the large landowner and cominue in independent ownership of the land . Yet many peasants joined the landless labor force on the haciendas, either because they were unable to meet these conditions o r because the re was no longer room for th em on the peasant farms. The urban counterpart of the hacienda system was the creditor merchant. Capital was scarce and imerest rates high. The system of credit operated through "advances" granted in terms oE goods. Hacienda , workers, and peasan try were thus tied to the town throug h a centra lized system o( marketing. Un ited States occupation ini tiated ch anges in the coffee adaptation. These changes arc interrelated and tend to determine each other. The decline o( colfee caused a Omv of credit into other areas. It underm ined the system of "advances." I t caused growers to look for added sources of income, increasing the search for additional cash crops. I t mad e growers cut unproductive costs, converting perquisi tes into terms of si mple cash payments for labor. T he end of the system of advances put an e ncl to the hacienda store. This cut some of the ties which bound the laborer to the farm. It also perm itted the rise oE inclependen t retail trading. The search for added sources of income ca used subsistence plots to be used for alternative cash crops, especially where transportation was available. This put furth er pressure on the perg u isites of the agricultural laborer. The transformation o( perquisites into cash changed the worker from a man who used land to grow his own food to a man who wanted money so he could buy at stores. I ncreased means of transportation

SAN JOSf.:: "TllADITIO:"AL" COFFEE :\I U:-\ICIPALITY

widened his horizons and increased the size of the markel in which he coul<l sell his labor power. Faced with compeLiLion of exc:ess freed labor at home and attracted b y oLher areas promising larger wages, he began Lo migrate. The grO\\'lh o( wage labor, in turn, meant increased pressure o n perquisites, spurred retail markeLing through an increase in the amounts of cash held by agricultural workers, and made for a further imroducLion of capilalist cost accounting into many spheres o( life. The growth o( transportalion facilities made diversification more profitable. lL furthered the esLablishment of a dece11tr:tli1cd system of retail trading; and it ena hied \\'orkcr-; w look for ,,·ork i 11 other areas. These chang<'s ha,·e i11llt1c11ccd and 1ra11sfo1111ed the tmrn. 111 the field orm:uketingcash crops. ind ependent local 111arkc ting and prnccss i11g- has largely given \\'a y before insul:ir market ing organizations, which are hierarcl1ic:illy organi7etl. impersonal in cha racter, and function in terms of goH:r111nent swbil ization sch emes and subsidies. ln the licld of 111:irkcti11g of consumers' goods, the old cc11tr:tli1cd sYs Lcm of credit advances in the form or Q:OOcls ll;1s g· i\'~11 \\"a\' to increased local retail trading. This i11crease is d epc11dent locally on increasing amo unts of cash in the hands or agriculltlral workers and on increased transportation, which cheapen prices and enable workers to visit the town. In the fi eld of political controls there has been a sharp increase in ce11trali1.aLion at the insular level. The decline of the coffee industry undermined the political power o[ hacienda owners and creditor merchants. At the same Lime, economic crisis put power into the hands o( Lhe insular government, which now confronts the needs o( an increasingly mobile laboring population in an overpopulated labor market. The domin a11t political party auempts to improve living cond itions on the island through judic ious use o( resources available within the framework of United Slates domination. Funds for many governmental activities flow from the top of Lhe insular hierarch y clown imo Lhe local community. \Ve saw that the local poliLical and gO\·ernmenta l machine w<1s largely d ependent on insular sources o( revenue. The machine acts on Lhe loca l level as an arm of the central insular governmem, dispensing patronage and advice to Lhose who seek it. \Ve saw that the attempt to furnish the agricultur:il \\·orkers with perquisites had been transferred from the local level o( the barrio to Lhe level of the insular government. Local governmenrnl functionin g anti agrarian reform attempt to satisfy the needs of Lhe agricultur:ll workers, who have been displa ced into the insular labor market. The increase of Lhe need for fund s at the insular level has also affected the character o[ law enforcement in the locality. \Ve saw how the effort to maintain gO\·ernmemal revenues from the sale of rum and the government-sponsored lottery met with difficulties on the loca l level. In our discussion of urban classes we noted that the chief product of culture changes was the rise o( new ~ J

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i

263

middle classes. The separation of consumers' credit and production credit has created a new social segment of storekeepers. The introduction of the theory and practice of popular democracy has crea ted a new group of office holders. Popular education has created a teacher class and brought large new school buildings. A new type of military organization has created a group of veterans. Increased means of transportation have g iven rise to a group of cabdrivers and motor mechanics. \ •Ve saw that these groups tend to carry new cultural norms of ideals and behavior, and that they place emphasis on education as a means for social and economic mobility in the new society. \Ve noted that part o( these groups were attracted by the new religious alternatives ava ilable within the community. Th is new middle class has increased the complexity of the class structure, absorbing individuals from the lower class as well as the descendants of impoverished landowners from the upper class. Since the anthropologist most readily deals with subcu ltures exemplified in the local community, our emphasis throughout has been on processes of culture change taking place within one locality. Yet we have stressed continuously that these processes did not take place within a self-contained system. Each major change within the loc:il comm.uni ty corresponds to a major change within the island as a whole. The change from subsistence farming to cash coffee farming in San Jose "·as conditioned by island-wide changes, which turned Puerto Rico as a whole from a military post int0 an agricultural dependency of Spain. The decline of coffee as a cash crop in San J ose was conditioned by the inclusion or Puerto Rico into the .American sphere. Each major change within the island was connected "·ith a change in the relaLionship of Puerto Rico with th e dominant power of the time, although the dominant power mediated changes in ·western civilization. Each change of sovereignty brought a major realignment or markets, emphasizing the producLion and sale of one crop over another. Each change thus tended to call forth new cul tura l adaptations, based on the cullivation of one crop rather than another, and threatened older adaptations, which had developed in response to demands now superseded. As one adaptation was emphasized, others declined. Hence changes in market demand have produced uneven changes in cu l tu re. First, such changes in market demand are producLive of highly uneven changes in distinct geographical areas. The unfavorable coffee market after the change of sovereignty in i898 did not at once affect the local culLure. For thirty years, the coffee cu lture continued to cap italize on its traditional patterns in order to conLinue coffee producLion. '\\Thile Lhe sugar-growing coast was subjected to radical changes under the impact o( modern capita l, credit, transportation, health facilities, and wage labor, the coffee area was affected only slig htly by th ese evidences of a booming market. Thus, changes which have largely run their course on the sugar coast are just beginning in many parts

264

THE l' EC>PLE OF Pl:ERTO RICO

of the coffee area. Only after the bones of the economic skeleLOn of the coffee industry began to show did such changes begin. Decreasing isolation, strasse11dorf-type settlements along newly bu ilt roads, increasing relations with the town, growth of pure wage labor, impersonal relations between landowners and workers, and the beginning of absentee ownership began to characterize the coffee area primarily after 1928. Second, such changes do not go forward at the same rate of speed even within the same area, and they h ave pronounced differential effects on different classes within the same total adaptation. 'Ve have seen that the hacienda in Barr io ~Ianicaboa has cut its resident labor supply in half and displaced the surplus workers into the labor market of the town and the sugar coast. Yet this very exodus of hacienda workers has had the effect o( leaving the barrio more conservative than before. The introduction of tobacco as a supp lementary cash crop has preserved the traditional custom of granting plots and credit to the workers on the hacienda. The kinsmen of the migrants who remained behind and continue to accept •the perquisites, which remain functional in the new context, also remain tied to the traditional norms of the peasa ntry. Their relations continue to be phrased in terms of face-to-face in teraction. They continue to think in terms of land and perquisites obtained from individuals as the result o[ individual relationships rather than in terms o( a rising number of commodities purchased with increasing monetary wages. ' •Vhile the migrating workers are passing into an insular wageworking, store-buying and la ndless proletariat, the worker who stays in i\Ianicaboa ties his life to the old haciend<l or the peasant farm. H e has neither consciousness of nor interest in proletarian status. The same factors which condition the transformation of bound labo r into wage labor serve to reinforce the traditional way of li[e of the peasantry. The increasing use of money throughout the culture causes the peasa nt to rely more heavily on fam ily la bor, on labor-sharing arrangements with his neighbors in which no cash is expended, an<l to delay consumption of the ma ny commodities which are available for sa le. The introduction of tobacco has permitted economic use of female labor and thus further intensified use of family labor. The increase of subsistence crops, which can be rotated with tobacco, has strengthened the peasant's attempts to cover essential needs Lhrough Lhe use of land. At the same time, the hacienda is becoming aware oE the labor supply available on the loca l peasant farms. Peasant labor is displacing Lhe labor of workers resident on the hacienda, a

tendency which will grow stronger as population increases on the peasant farms. While the bulk of agricu ltural workers are propelled centrifugally away from the communities to which they belong, the i\ fanicaboa peasant wrns in towards his barrio. Thus culture change in some segments o f the sociocultural whole contributes tO cultural stability in other segments. The prevalence of peasant norms lends to the culture of the barrio a strong folklike quality, si nce "it is more clearly possible . . . to describe society in th e terms of a single o rganized body of conventional understand ings" (Redfield , 19 . 11: ;~ -li)· \Ve have seen that the agricultural workers in :\lanicaboa tend to conform to the ideal norms of behavior of the peasantry. Comrnon d escent of hoth groups, continued fa ce-to-fa ce relationships. and the view that life gets better the closer a man comes to manipulatin g a piece o f land contribute to this conformity. On the other hand, the middle farmers are peasants of greater means rather than businesslike agrarian e 11 trepre· neurs. This prevalence of peasant norms is strengthened by the emigration of mobile surplus \,·orkers and middle farmers who mo\·e to town. It is also reinforced by the very movement of change in other sectors o f the total sociocultural whole. At the same time we are clearly barre<l from treating the barrio as if it were a uniform homogeneous folk culture. \Ve must not commit the logical mistake of supposing that a society which is characterized by a homogeneous body of conventional understandings is therefore homogeneous. l\'lanicaboa is not homogeneous. It consists of several subcultural groups. \ !\fe have seen that change impinges in qu ite different ways and at different rates on the different classes of th e barrio, drawing each into quite different relations to each other and to the outer world. Such stab ility cannot, however, prove more than temporary. The peasantry, like all other segments of the sociocultura l whole, is involved in the spread of cash crop farming within a developing capitalist free enterprise money economy. There are already clear indications that the old ties of kin and neighborhood relationship are threatened. Such compensating mechanisms as witchcraft may serve to maintain them in balance for a while. Yet kin and personal relations are giving way to relations between buyers and sellers of commodities and services. Since the ability of individuals to comm<lnd such goods and services differs, the local subcu ltural groups begin to fragment into new subcultural groups, which have new and different interrelations with one another.

8 BY ELENA PADILLA SEDA

Nocord: L e Subculture of Workers on a Government-Owned Sugar Plantation INTRODUCTION RESEARCH PROBLEM

Nocor:i. 1 is a municipality-a town and dependent area o( forms-in which everyone is profoundly affected by the devotion of virtually all land to sugar production and by the control of most of this production by a centralized authority. There is a sugar mill which grinds the cane produced on hundreds o( acres, and th ere is a centralization of control which has profoundly influenced the way oE life, the attitudes, and the behavior o( the local people. Nocor<i. was selected for field study for two principal reasons: first, because it is a government-owned, proportiona l-profit project which has the social objective of d istributing work and dividing profits among as many persons as possible; and second because its cul ture has changed in response to modernized productive arrangements more slowly and less completely than that o( Cafiamelar, the other sugar community studied. Two principal research problems grew out of these differences. T he first research problem was to ascertain whether the natllre o( ownership and profit-sharing in Nocor;l had an y traceable effects upon the culture o( the people, especially the agricultural laborers. While the re1

This name is fictitious.

266

THE PEOPLE OF PUERTO RICO

search workers could hardly be unmindful of the acute social problems of Puerto Rico and of the implications for social betterment of the government program in Nocon't, the p r esent account should not be construed in any way as an attempt to evaluate the program in terms of its objective. Our study was directed solely to the question of whether the productive arrangements in Nocora affected the nature of the f<unily, social relations, political behavior, religious outlook, and other aspects of culture in ways that differed significantly from those of Cafiamelar. The social experiment represented by Noconi began in i941 when the Puerto Rica n government passed land reform legislation 2 to correct certain malf unctions of the agricultural economy of the island. In the production o f sugar for a competitive market, a 500acre plantation is an efficient unit. Since many plantations had exceeded this size, despite the Organic Act limiting corporate holdings to 500 acres, the legislation created a Land Authority which is a semi-autonomous agency empowered to dissolve corporate latifundia, to prevent their re-emergence, to insure private owners the preservation of their land, and to create new landholdings. The law was designed to elimin a te centralized ownership by corporations rather .than to curtail large-scale production. To carry out its objective, the Land Authority was authorized to buy and expropriate land, provided just compensation were made. The Land Authority farms retained aspects of corporate ownership and organization in that they carried on large-scale production under centralized m a nagement. They differed fundamentally from those of the corporations, however, in their goal of distributing the profits among the workers on each farm (Title IV of the law). In addition, the Land Authority was authorized to organize villages for the landless, resident farm laborers (agregados) who were to be granted plots of land (parce las) ranging from one-fourth acre to three acres, where they could build their homes and establish small gardens (Title V of the law). Family homesteads were also to be sold on a forty-year credit basis as a means of developing more farmers (Title VI). 2 Law No. 26, approved

by the Puerto Rican Legislature, ig4 1.

Chart r7. Distribution of p roportional.profit govemmentowned sugar farms, Aj;ril, r949. (After Pic6, 1950.)

During the first years of operation of the Land Authority, the establishment of proportional-profit farms and the resettlement of agregados made a vigorous start. By June, 19,18, the Land Authority owned and leased over i 1 o,ooo acres of cane, or one-third of all such land in the island (estimate based on figures of the Production and Marketing Administration, 1949). By this time, it employed about 20 per cent of all the sugar cane workers and produced over 1 1 per cent of the total sugar of the island . I t owned and operated two sugar mills (ce nlrales) on a proportional-profit basis, and esta blished 1.13 rural villages in which 17,631 families were g ranted plots of land . The Land Authority operates througho ut the Puerto Rican sugar area (Chart 17), although it started on the north coast where 62 per ce nt of the land owned and leased by the Authority is loca ted. (Pie<'>, 1950: 30). The second research problem was to determ ine wherein the various su bc.u lt11rcs of Nocor;i differed from Caiiamela r because of the distinctive historical background and the tempo of change from a pauern of family -owned ha ciendas to one primarily of highly centralized control o[ the mill and land. Prior to American sovereignty over Puerto Rico, Cai"iamelar had typified the arid south coast which was then an area of ca ttle ranches and family-type sugar haciendas. Vhen, after the turn of the century, American corporate capital became available in substantial amounts, it was possible for the first time to convert arid lands into lush cane fi elds through large-scale irrigation and to construct the most modern sugar mills and refineries. An area that had formerly been somewhat marginal, in the sense of being relatively unproductive in terms of profits extracted per acre, rapidly became a key area in that it was modernized and made highly profitable. The strong centralization of control under th e corporation, wh ich quickly forced drastic changes in the lives of the workers of Cafiamelar, will be described in the following section. Nocor:i, typifying much of the rainy north coast, had long been an area of extensive sugar production while part of the south coast was raising cattle. Its family haciendas, which at fi rst used simple, primitive techniques for raising and grinding cane, were gradually enlarged and improved until, near the close of the last century, family holdings were partly consolidated to crea te the N ocor:i Corporation. Small farms and haciendas, however, continued to operate, and they were not entirely eliminated when the Land Authority proportional-profit farm 'vas established in the early forties. In contrast to the rapid and drastic changes that affected Cafiamelar, the transition in Nocora was gradual and it h as not yet run its course. I t was supposed, therefore, that the culture of the rural people of Nocera would preserve many features of the ea rlier years, especially attitudes and patterns derived from the faceto-face, paterna listic relationsh ips tha t existed between the liacendados and workers. This transitional character of Nocon't culture would, we believed, reveal \

1

NOCORA: WORKERS O N A GOVERl'\'.\IENT·OWNED SUGAR PLANTATION

D

267

Tipan

..,,

Bajas

Mill

FARMS ~RIVER

- - - - MUNICIPALITY I BORDERS OF l ====PAVED ROADS

-ttttttttt+ttttttt RAJ LR 0 AD

Chart r8. Northern t)ortio11s of the mu11icifJa[ity of Nocord.

some of the d ynamics of change from an hacienda type of. emerprise to a laro-e and highly centralized produc0 t1ve arrangem ent. A problem that is coll ateral to the first t\\·o is whether the limitation on the amount of employment that resulted from giving work to a mnximum mnnber o f persons, together with the cultu ral Jngs or incomplete adjustment to centralization of ownership and managemem, had affected the attitudes and responses of the people in any way. The foll owing chapters o ffer a more or less rounded pictu re o f the cu lture of Nocon\, but the material will be most m ean ingful if read with reference to the three major problems. It will be seen that the Land Author-

ity prog ram encountered very serious difficulties in attempting to spread employment as widely as possible while having to opera te in a market where competitors imu sed the most modern and efficient cechnoloo-ical o provemcnts to cut labor costs. The Land Authority was constantly faced with the difficult decision of whe the r to tmlke work by using inefficient methods and thereby risk having no profits to distribute. The difficulty was aggravated by underemploym ent thro ug ho ut P uerto Rico which caused a n influx of workers from oth er regio ns seeking j obs in N ocora. At the time of the fie ld work it was estimated that the ~ocod Land Authority project employed about three times t he number o( persons it need ed , with a corre-

2 68

THE PEOPLE OF PUERTO RICO

sponding reduction in the amount of employment offered to each worker. As for the problem of cultural lag, these chapters will show that owing to the long and gradual develop· ment of Nocora, it has considerable heterogeneity of classes and subcultural groups as compared with Ca11amelar. The pressures making for culture change in a modern, factory-like situation had not run their course in Noconi. Although it will be seen that the workers in Nocor;i resemble those of Caiiamelar in many fundamental respects, there is nonetheless a great deal that survives from earlier times. This heterogeneity, moreover, was increased b y the many job-seeking migrantS who have come to Nocora from elsewhere. The effect of these fact0rs upon the attitudes o( the people is revealed in several manifestations of insecurity. The cultural imbalance, conflict, inadequate adjustment, competition, and hostilities are reflected in use of mag ic, fea r of witchcraft, and the cult of the sa ints to manipulate nature, the uncertain attitudes toward the la bor union and politics, a nd attempts to see social and economic hierarchical relations in personal terms. SELECTION OF THE COMMUNITY

The selection o f Nocor{L among the governmentowned, proportional-profit farm communities was preceded by analysis of data of popu lation, land use, land ownership, size o[ farms, soil potentials, and other pertinent in forma tion. In terviews were held in San Juan with government specialists in agronomy, rural sociology, and economics who were familiar with the region a nd with the program of agrarian reform. During a series o( survey trips to the north coast, eight municipalities were visited and interviews and informal conversations were held with town officials, 'vorkers, labor leaders, Extension Service agents, Land Authority man agers, adm inistrators, supervisors, and managers of priva te mills. Of the eight municipalities considered for study, Nocora seemed most representative of the govern ment-owned, profit-sharing communities. It grows suga r cane o n a large scale, and it had been operating under the agrarian reform program for the past fi ve or six years. lt was neither the oldest nor the most recent acqu isition of the Land Authority, nor an extreme either in high or low productivity and profits. ,

GcNERAL CHARACTERISTICS OF NOCORA

Nocor;i is a municipality-a political administrative unit-of about twenty-five sq uare miles and with a 1~opulation of 2 1,000. About half of the municipality hes on the coastal plain , which is planted primarily in sugar cane. The sugar is produced on large governi:ien~-own ed farms. The other half o( the municipality hes 111 ~he hills, and is d evoted to minor crops and prod uctton of suga r ca ne on a smaller scale. The lowland popu latio n consists primarily of rural, landless, wage-earners who d epend on the large proportional -

profit farms for seasonal employment and for their housing. In the hills, small and medium size farms prevail. i\fany o( the farmers here grow sugar cane and grind their crop in the local mill (central) . The su bculture of the coastal sugar cane workers in the area of government-owned fanns was selected as the subj ect o( investigation. To cover as fully as possi ble the varied effects of the agrarian reform on the ways of life of the population, field work was concentrated in: ( 1) the town (el pueblo), the seat of government and services; (!!) a village of resettled resident laborers (agregados) ca lled Tipan, which is connected with the proportional profit farm where most of the villagers are employed; and (3) \fango, a hamlet o[ resident laborers, not yet resettled by the Land Authority, who work on proportiona l profit larm s. The village of Tipa11 has over 100 families. The farm where most Tipanccos work. hires over 500 laborers, including agrcgados li\'ing 011 public land and sma ll farm owners who plant suga r ca11e. \lango's thirty famili es work on a farm which hires ;1uo11t 150 laborers and therefore dra\\'S workers from ne ig hboring hamle ts. The town of :'\ocor;i, \1·hi ch is situated in the lowlands, has about 1,500 inhabitants. The proportiona l profit farms employ roughly So per cent of the working population of Nocor;L Of these, the mill (central) hires about i o or 12 per cent, while the remainder work small farms, engage in business, or hold positions in service occupations. Di rectly or indirectly, however, all Nocorans of the coastal plain depend for a living on the wealth derived from sugar ca ne. THE FIELD APPROACH

This ana lysis is primarily the result o( field work begun in April, 1948, and continued into the fall of 1~:M9· My first con tacts were wi th political and labor leaders, government officials, and Land Authority employees. I also visited the cane fields and rural districts of Nocor;i and made sporadic trips to other rural areas, usually in trucks which transported workers a nd equipme nt to sugar farms and to villages under the agrarian reform program. During this phase, the validity of selecting Nocora for intensive analysis was furth er checked by gathering data on settlemen t patterns, agric ulwral practices, local government services, and o ther featu res o( several communities. One of the most difficult problems of this period was that of establishing rapport with the people of the community. It was not easy to explain my purpose, since P uerto Rica ns find it difficult tO conceive that women may be scien t ists or investigators and that cultural studies should be made by a Puerto Rica n. Jn a class-structured society such as Puerto Rico, where double standards for sexes prevail, a woman anthropolog ist ca nnot, by the nature of her work, fill the role which th e society normally assigns women. ln .Jun e, 1 ~)'18, 1 ren ted a house in Tipan from a sugar cane worker. My first contact he re ·was with a minor political lea der whom I had met in lown. H e

Fig. ~7- ,,/l'l'i11l view of cane fields 011 th e northern coastal /Jf11i11s. Photo by Ruthi11: Govern111e11t of Puerto Rico.

o ffered to co-operate with the research, but warned the villagers that l might be a detective. In order to make friends, I boarded with a local family. A fter a few weeks in the village, rapport was such that ma ny pco· pie volunteered information about various phases of the ir culture. It b ecame possible to h old interviews and to participate in and observe various activities. Finally, neighbors vis itetl me info1mally and talked freely of their lives. In Ocwber, Edwin Seda, a University of Puerto Rico graduate, joined me as a field assistant. As a child h e hnd lived in a coasta l community of rural agricu lw ra l workers where he became fam iliar with many phases of the culture. H e \ \'aS quickly accepted in Nocod and was able to panicipate in severa l areas barred to me, such as men's cl i<1ues, sex talk. gambling, sports, and so on. Afte r a short while, we were both so much part o f th e community that our role as invest iga tors was forgotten . Jn .Jan u ary, 19.19, we moved to Mango, where m y co-worker undertook the principal fi eld studies ·while I mad e frequent vis its to the community and carried on suppl emenLary interviews and fie ld observations. In J\ lango we m et hundreds of peop le. Some of these peo-

pie were m ere acquaintances, while others became very close and warm friends. vVe interviewed m any persons to o btain information 011 special matters. The principal fi eld technique was to participate in and observe all possible aspects of the culture. i\Iy co-worker and I were baptized in Ti pan and we became ritua l co-parents (cvmpadres) of a m a rried couple and godparents to one 0£ their children. Mr. Seda was pitcher on the baseball team, worked in the cane fields of J\ Iango, and san g with informal local musical groups. i\fcanwh ile, I participated in women's work. J\1y coworker and I performed small services for individuals such as writing letters, and served as secretaries of the labor union. On on e occasion I was chosen as a community represen tative on a laborers' delegation to San Ju an. After six months our place in the commun ity was well esta blished. ln addition to participant observation, we ca rried on directed and n ondirected interviews. \ Ve co ll ected historical, statistica l, and other documentary data, and kept a record of n ewspaper clipp ings. \1Ve gave two questio nn aires. One, prepared b y the jo int staff of the Puerto Rico project, was g iven to fo n y persons d uring the last two months of fie ld work. The o ther, prepared by m ysell', we used pri-

270

TH E PEOPLE OF PUERTO RICO

marily as a guide to standardize data on schools, local business, and farms.

THE SETTING THE LANDSCAPE AND NATURAL RESOURCES

Kocod. is situaLed on the northern coastal belt or plain, near the winding Ba jas River. J\Iost of the municipality lies just above sea level. For nearly half a mile inland, th e water of the river and part o( the land are rendered heavi ly sa line by the ocean. Drainage is needed to permit farming. Local sugar production depends in part upon control of the river. Before a dam was built in the highlands the river would often overflow, deluging fields and buildings a nd driving people from their homes. The river, however, adds alluvium to the soil, increasing its fertility. The soils of Nocod vary in their natural fertility, chemical content, and potentials. Most of the land is suitable for agricu lture and is u sed for this purpose. Even some relatively unproductive land bordering the marshes and the limestone hills is planted. Natural vegetation is scant, and there are no trees or woods. The fauna consists principally of small amphibia, o-abs, and river and sea fi sh. Geologically, the soils of the humid coastal plains are derived from compact limestone, and being friable, rich in tuffaceous materials and acid, produce a high yield of sugar cane. Other land, although less suited to t his crop, is a lso planted in cane. Chemical fertilizers are used to obtain maximum yields. The b est terrain is generally operated in large farms, while marg inal lands are occupied by small and middle-sized farms. SubsisLence agriculture is negligible, compared to cash production. The upland border o( the plain is marked by scattered limestone hills of conical shape, known loca lly as mogotes or seborucos. These hills are covered with grass and brush, ;md yield wild herbs used in folk medicin e. Some horticulture is practiced, but is of minor impon a nce. The limestone, however, has commercial value as a source of gravel which is sold to contracLOrs for u se in construction. T he marsh lands and the b each are also exploited, especially during the slack season in sugar production. The marsh provides fuel, fi sh, amphibi a, fiber for house building, herbs, a nd grass for cows a nd goats. The mangrove trees are made into charcoal. Beach sa nd is also gathered and sold. Coastal a nd river fishing is practiced to some exLen t for cash and subsistence. The rainfall of Nocor:i averages fifty to sixty inches annually. The season'11 variations influence agricult ural practice. In the months preceding the harvest of sugar cane- from l'\ovember to Janua ry- h eavy showe rs a rc common , whi le from April to August rainfall is lower. Nocorans sp eak of a rainy and a dry season, hut Lhc variations in rainfall do not really represent cx u·cmcs. Irrigation is not required for the

farms, but drainage is necessary for soils \\·h ich are less porous or are near sea level. Seasonal variations are m a rked by Lhe direction a nd strength of the wind, but ch an ges in temperature are not drastic. The s un shines almost every day in the year. The climate is mild and th e temperature is subtropical, with a yearly m ea n of 78° F. l\:iglns are generally cooler than days. Th e h o uest days are those \\·hich follo\\' the i\larch sho wers, and mark a period kno\\'n locall y as the L ent h ea t (ra lor de cuarcsma), ,\·hich lasLs rrom April to .\11g 11sL. Durin~ this period the humidity is high and the Lcmpcrawrc in the shade is ~ li ~ht ly m ·c r 100°

F.

SETTLEMENT PATTERNS

Nocor;\, alth o11gh a s111a l l to\\'n, is prcdomina111ly rura l in that lllCJSl or its populatio11 is landless and eith er lives Oil nonproductive pri,·atc or public land as rcsiclcnL labor (ogrcgados) or is reseu led in pl ots provided by th e go\·c rnmcnt through its I .and .\11 thoriLy p rngra111 (Title \ '). .\clminislra tors of proportional-profiL farms are required by Jaw to live oil the farm where they work. They occupy houses built by the old hacienda o\\'ners or b y the Nocod Corporation, or in cement bungalows built b y Lhe Land Authority. Small and middle fanners gen erally live in their own farm houses. Absentee landholders live in the city buL occasionally visit their farm houses. Some m e rch a nts and real estate owners, who are also p antime farm ers, live in town. The pueblo, or town, includes the mill zone, where pan of the mill personnel lives. Rural Settlement Patterns

There arc four basic t ypes of rural settlements iu the Nocor:\ region: ( 1) homes clustered in the limes Lo ne hills, (2) homes built on unused parts or farms, 01· culo11i(IS, (;>) homes on public land along the roa d sides, (.J) vi ll ages or communi ti es organized under the Title V program o f the Land Law for the resettlement o r ag regados. Landless workers on farms (ag regados) were a llowed to bu i Id h omes o n plots of land belonging to their employers. Originall y, sections of the limestone hills south or the fen ile lowlands and plains had been g ranted by hacie nda own ers to landless laborers, many of \\'hom were forme r· slaves. to build houses a nd g row ~ uhs i stc n c:c crops. The praCLice was continued h y th e Nocor;i Corporation to insure a labor supply near th e place of employment. The se ttlements in the lim estone senio n. especiall y near Lhe town and roads. arc at prese nl co nce n trated residential centers. Subsistence ga rde 11s have pra ctic.-rlly dis.-rppeared under th e b oom of n ew construction. Houses have been built high on the hill s, and dirt paths rather than roads provide comn11111ica tion. Houses built before the construction o f the paved hig·hway, which cuts across the hills, face in a II cl i rections, while those built after the roa d was put in usuall y face it. These hill settlements h ave dist in cLive n am es, many of which are taken from

'.';OCORA: WORKERS ON A COVER'.';:\JENT-OWNED SUGAR PLA'.';TAT I0::-1

t he name o( the farm wh ere the residents work. The houses in these settlements are occupied by independent conjugal families, although kin may live near one another. P ersons who resid e in the higher hills, away from the ro ads, are predominantly sugar cane workers, while those n earer the roadside are mostly small merchants, veterans of \\1o rlcl \\' ar JI, mill workers, and chauffeurs. The chauffeurs usually have larger and better h om es. The hills are connected with the town and with the highlands and o ther municipalities by 11 Ct\rnrks of pa,·ed roads. T hey are also closer than the to\\'n to the mai11 no rth coa t higlnrny, "·hich is one or the pritl< ipal tralfic arteries o f the island. .\bn y p er))ons st ill reside o n farms (ro lo11ias), although l:1 11dltolders. "·hen in need o[ additio nal produni,·e land for suga r cane, ma y push their agregados of[ L11e !arms to use the bnd they occ11picd. In 1949 there \\'ere s till h1111clrccls o( ngrcga rlos living on farms in the co11rn11111i1y. althoug-h the Land Authority had already c~tablislted its resettlement program for a brge portion ol them. 011 the Land Authority propo rtio nal -profit farm in Tipan. for insta nce, there are only about liftcen houses o( agregados, most of the former population having moved ofI the farm to the seashore. After the Land Authority had s tarted its program in this district, over five hundred 0£ the agregados living at the senshore moved to the Land Authority vill nge. The homes on the Tipan farm consist of a small cluster of frame houses which are owned by the L and Authority ;ind occupied by the permanent p ersonnel o ( the fa rm . T here are n o stores o n the farm, a ltho ugh before the legal abolition of farm s tores there was a grocery store which furni sh ed credit to the farm workers. The (lgregados o[ the Tipan farm d epend to a large extem o n n eig hboring settlements for goods a nd services. On the Lnncl Authori ty fann of Saco, on the o ther hand, the agricultural workers live in small clusters of houses built by th emselves near the railroad tracks and along the edge of the cane fi eld. On this farm there are small stores owned by agregados, where the people of the farm buy groceries and gather for in formal recreation. This pattern of relatively iso· lated clusters of houses and small stores on colonias seems to h e characteristic or the farms on wh ich the workers live. The workers on some sugar farms live on public land along road s, near their employment. Sometimes the houses are grouped arou nd a yard, or batey, if there is sufficient sp ace. Some of these clusters include small grocery stores which provide goods and informal recreation. The yards are used Cor informal ga th erings of adults, for recreation, for d o ing odd jobs, fo r playgrounds for the ch ildren , a nd sometimes for cooking. In the sugar districts of Nocod there a re also two villages of agregados who were resettled in towns under the program of agrarian reform b y the Roa n! or Planning. These villages consist or plots sufficientl y large for a house and ki tchen garden. Tipan, a rese ttlement community o[ about sixty acres. 120 h o uses, a nd Goo peopl e, was established in 19.1 ~ as a village of this type. i\fost of its inhabitants \\'ere born a nd li,·e in the dis-

27 I

trict, although a fe,,· came within the past twenty yean from the highlands or from small coastal farm communities. Most of the villagers are s ugar cane worke rs on the Land Authority farm at Tipan, but a few work entirely or part time for private growers. The Land L aw stipula tes that these communities shall be located near sources of employment, schools, health units, and other public services (Title V, of the Land Law, 1942). The villages are given space for churches, milk stations, a recreation center, communal pasture, a police station, and the l ike. These plans have not been carried out completely in a ll L and Authority v illages in the island. T he purchase of land for the reset tlemen t of agregados and for 1xo,·iding the rural population other ser\'ices is still in progress at the present writing. Tipan has a modern school house o( con crete in which the fourth, fi(th , a nd sixth grades are taught. The first, second, and third g rades use a frame house rented from a private landlord, ab out one-half kilometer from the village. The children of this village, as well as those from n eig hboring roadside settlements, u su ally go to these schools. The school has a free lunch program operated for all children . There is also a milk station where pre-school children of the whole beach district have free breakfast on work days. In 19,Jg the Catholic church built a chapel wi th a capacity of sixty people on the land granted it by the Land Authority. Other churches had not yet taken advantage of these grants. Sin ce Tipan has no stores, the villagers d epend upon the roadside s tores or go to Nocon:\. for their commodities. Tipan can be reach ed b y automobile, althouo-h roads wit hin the v illage are rough. The houses are located where the slope levels off, out of sig ht of the paved road (la brea) . On the south the village borders on t he mangrove marsh es which the local popula tion utilizes extensively for gathering and fishing . Most of the plots o( la nd are recta ng ular and consist of a fourth of an acre, but some ind ividuals control m ore th an this. The limits of the lots (guardarrayas) are marked b y fe n ces of bushes, usually thorny xeroph ytic va rieties, to prevent trespass by people and domestic anima ls. The frame houses u sua lly face the s treet, while sh acks tend to be hidden in the garden. Ea ch house h as a batey, o r ya rd ; a nd o n som e plots there is a storm sh elter which is u sed prima rily for storage or for sleeping. Usually there is only one fam ily to a plot, althoug h in a few cases two fam ilies share a plot b y mutual agreement. Th e assignment of plots is legally made by the Land Authority, but quite often plot holders excha nge, sell , or ma ke other arra ngements regarding the plots, without consulting the L and Authority. Town Residence Patterns

T he town of Nocor:I lies ill a pocket between s ugar cane fi elds and the Bajas Ri ver, some fiv e minutes' 'rnlk from the mill. Its population i:. lc:>s than 1 , 500

272

THE PEOPLE OF PUERTO R ICO

persons. Unlike most L a tin American towns, it is not centered around a p laza but is spread a long its principal street, Calle Gonzalez. Other streets are built on strips of land along the meandering river, but the li fe of the wwn, its commerce, and its best buildings and h ouses are on Calle Gonz;Uez. T here are various sections or zones in the town: a commercial section; a zone where the churches and m ost pu blic buildings are located; a nd there are also residential sections at the northern e nd and on side streets. The town lies outside the main transportation thoroughfares of the coast. Beyond its limits, in the rural district, th ere a re several paved roads wh ich make the community an intersection of thoroughfares. There is a railroad station at the entrance of the t0wn, and three or four trains a day stop for a few minutes at the d epot. Transportation by rai lway is, however, unimportant in terms of both passengers and cargo as compared with the m otor veh icle transportation system. ~ocod is the center of local trade and d istribution and the seat of loca l government and public services. Because i t fails to provide many of the goods required by the community, its inhabi tants o ften have to go directly to Bajas to shop. Nocorans also depend on Bajas a nd other cities for certain pub lic serv ices not available locally. Between a park ing lot at the town's entrance, where buses and taxis or jitneys (piiblicos) take on their passengers for the high lands, San Juan, and Bajas, a nd the south side o[ the plaza, where the highway to Tipan begins, lies the commercial section, a d istrict close to both the ra ilroad and to the main thorough(ares. In this zone are found the two drugstores, the larger wholesale grocery stores, b ars, depa rtment stores, the grammar school, funeral parlor, movie house, casino buildings, and an auto r epa ir shop. The buildings here are probably as old as those in Calle Gonz;llez, but they a re in better conditio n and are painted bright yell ow, orange, or green. Most build ings are of timber and are roofed with corrugated iron . Second stories of commercial buildings are gen erally used for residence. At the ed ge of the commercia I section is the square (p laza), bordered to the south by the Tipa n road and to th e east and west by Avenida Pen'1 and Calle Gonzalez. North of it there is a d ilapidated two-story house, which has a school room on its first floor. On the Tipan ro;id, the hig h schoo l and an athletic fi eld were recently built. Further n orth on Cal le Gondlcz are the Cathol ic and the Pro testant churches, the town hall, the post office, and the police station. Still further north are several b uildings and houses i n which rooms and apartments are rented. T he public we lfare o ffi ce an d the Pentecosta l ch urch are a lso located on this section o( Calle Gonz{tfez. O n other streets the h ouses arc sm all and dilapidated, except on the recently opened Aven id a Pert.'1, where there are several new cement houses. i\fost of the town bui ldings are old, and in recent years very little construction h~s been undertaken. Th e sugar mill. or cen tral, is located about a quarter

o[ a mile from town. The road leading to it is bordered on the r iver side by rows of h ouses whi ch extend from the edge o( the town to the mil l. Oth er roads leading to the mill are bordered by sugar cane farms and have no houses along them. Across from the main site of the mill buildings is the Avenida Central, along which there are several houses. Toward the west a re the o ld barracks (ra 11clw11es) made into several apartments fo r mill " ·orkers. Facing one o[ the paved roads are the houses of the top mill officials, formerly the residences of high offic ials of the l\ocor:i Corpor;1tion. and some: barracks for sing le mc:n employed in tl1 c mil l. Tow;1rd the east are other sma ll er houses Jor m ill workers. ~ l ost houses and all thc land s11rrouncli11g thc mi ll district are owned by the Land .\utlwrity. The l:imilies living h ere d epend LO :1 large: degree 0 11 the tow n. R esidence in this district is limited LO the famili es of mill employees a nd pcn11a11 c11 t workers. liu t the niill distr ict is by no means ··a company town."" like tlwsc in many parts of the south coast. Relationship of Settlement Patterns to Land Use

In the rura l districts of Nocor;i, the use of a ll suitable land for large-sca le commercial agricu lture has forced the houses to cluster near the farms. The L and Au thority villages of rese ttled ogregados are a lso located nea r the farms where the men arc employed. As sugar cane employment h as attracted more workers, the clusters in some parts of the community, especia lly in th e limestone hills, have become larger. In man y cases the h ouses a re so crowded that they resemble rura l slums. Many factors inhibit th e cornmercial developm ent o f the town. Its purchasing power depends largely upon the limited wage income. :\Ioreover, its inhabitams often seek goods and services o utside the community proper. The Local Units and Their Proliferations

The smallest residential units in the rural and urban districts are the caserios, which are neighborh oods or ham lets consisting o( h ouses and sma II stores. In the rural distri cts these h a mle ts are usually named a fter the n ea res t farm or after a distinctive landmark, such as a tree or a mountain. Jn th e towns, names of sa ints, objects, or p laces are g iven to various sections. The recently established Land Authority vill ages are loca ll y known as parcelas ("plots'"). The barrios are the smallest politica l :rnd adm inistrative loca l units in the mun icip io, but the barrios, especia ll y in sugar distr icts of la rge farms, have lost some o( their importan ce as res idential units. In these districts the people ofte n consider themselves reside nts of a particular farm or caserfo.• rnth er th<1n of a barrio. The neighbo rs of a caserio are generally co-work ers, ritual ki11 , or blood kin, <lnd m<ln y of them h <1ve lived all the ir lives in the sa me rnserio. The loyalties between members of a f"r1serin are some times manifested b y expressions such as " The peop le of th is place are good, but those down the road a re bad." T h e people of Tipan, for inst;ince, often claimed that the

NOCORA: WORKERS ON A GOVERNi\IEi'\T-OWNED SUGAR PLANTATION

people who lived down Ll1e road were bad, that they were political enemies, and that they stale the labor union funds. The latter made similar accusations against the people of Tipan, and added that the women were immoral. The town and its rural barrios form the municipality or 1111111icipiv. Nocod has five such barrios whose members often refer to it as the ta\\'n or pueblo. rather than ao; the municipality. The to\\'n provides governmc11t ltea ltlt scn·ices ;rncl political con cessions, stores, and :t <l'nter lor celc:bratio11s he ld during the holy days of the pat ro11 saint. The to\\'n pL'ople genera lly clistingui\h the rural d\\'cllcrs (gr11/1· <i<' rnmj>o) from themsd\"C\ (.t:_cntc <Id /n(('b/o ). They regard themselves as mctllbl'rs of the municipio in a political sense and in mat ltTs \\'hich ill\·olve competition between municipalit ic-, .. \ clisti11nio11 is :dso made between the people of t li e lmda11d and hiO'hl:rnd 1wrtions of the munici.., palit ~. In 1~1- 1X one ol the local political issues was \\'hCther to create· a municipality in the high lands that was ~c p:1rate politically and administratively from the lo\\'la11d .~ .

Ec.:onom icall y, commu ni ty [unctions extend beyond municipal boundaries. The community is involved in a larger area of trade, marketing, and distribution o( goods, and the mill processes sugar cane for a large portion of the private and governm ent farms of the north coast and the highlands. J\ Ioreover, the land and the J>rocessin•,. of sLwar ca ne are controlled by the b b Puerto Rican government, while the local government, the laws, and the economic system are tied directly to the insular government.

HISTORICAL SKETCH Th e history o f Nocor<i is to a large extent the history or the land and its uses, which in lllrn has been affected by broader trends in the island. four main perio ds of culture change occurred in the development of modern Nocor;l: first, su bsistence agricul cure, grazing, and slave-operated sugar haciendas; seco n~, expansion o( commercial agricul ture and emphasis on hacienda sugar production ; third, the rise of corporate lando \\'nership and centralized processing; fourth, the agrarian reform. Th e data used in this section are based on both published and unpublished sources and on interviews with o ld informants. Published material o n Nocod is scarce. Few referen ces are made to Nocor:i in the various histories of the island. and there is no history of the com munity. Unpublished documents in the archives of the insular government and in the municipal a rchives o( Nocar;\ a nd Baj as arc in exceedingly poor condition and difficult to rea<I. Few of these provide information for the period before 1910. Nocora had formed part of the municipality of Bajas until 1880, when it became an independent municipality. It was later reduced to barrio status by aclrn inistrative decision but was again reorgani1.ed as a separate municipality after the American occupation in 1898. Since

273

most records use the municipality as the basic statistical and socia l unit, little material on Nocora is available until after 1898. The data obtained from old informants were checked for reliability by cross-interviews and by testing them against the available documentary sources. Owing to limited recall, old informants were of little value in reconstructing the earlier culture. Their infonnation, however, is useful in assessing how local persons viewed their past way of life. PERIOD OF SUBSISTENCE AGRICULTURE AND GRAZING

The north coast was the region of the earliest Spanish settlements in Pueno Rico. \Vhen Noconi was settled is n ot known. In his description of the North coast during the period between 1765 and I 790, Cordoba characterized the territory between the Bajas and the \Vest rivers, which includes the present location of Nocera, as a forested coastal plain (Cordoba, 183 1: I, 1 24). He stated that this area was used mainly for cattle grazing, raising sugar ca ne, and subsistence agriculture and that "all industry and agriculture [were] dedicated" tO these activities. Regarding sugar, Cordoba pointed out that "in this part of the island there were too many ox-driven mills, few slaves, and capital was wanting." Cattle a nd sugar were the principal sources of income, but the soil was not utilized intensively. A few individuals owned large tracts of land and grew mixed crops-beans, corn, and legumes -as well as sugar cane. Cordoba commented on the establishment o( haciend as in the fl atlands of Bajas, o( which Nocod was then a barrio. The haciendas began to specialize in the cultivation of sugar cane, which they processed locally. They were near the rivers, for at this time trade on the island was largely carried on along the rivers and coast. Land transportation near the coast was hampered by a lack of bridges and roads. Ti pan was the port for goods destined for Ba jas. After C6rdoba's account, there is practically no published record of this reg ion until the latter part of the nineteenth century when the town o( Nocera was officially founded. Old in l'onnants, h owever, provided some information on the decade 1weced inothe official . b founding of the to"·n. THE RISE OF HAC IENDAS

Haciendas producing cash and subsistence crops. a nd worked by hired or slave labor, characterized Nocod in the nineteenth century. The exact date of ~heir eswblishment is not known , but present-day informants reca ll ed that haciendas using both free and slave labor were said formerly to have occupied the coasta l plain surrounding the present townsite. The slaves lived in thatched shacks or in quarters built on ~1a c ie nda land. T hese so-ca lled slaves may have been indentured laborers. In any case, they and fre e m en performed the same kind o[ work in the field s. wh ilc some slaves worked as servants in the household of

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THE PEOPLE OF PUERTO RICO

their owners. Since informants generally speak o f all Negroes, including those who were free, as "slaves," it seems that there was really not much difference between free Negroes and slaves in terms of their actual status as workers. Even the "slaves" were paid with loaves of sugar which they evidently used for exchange or barter. In addition to the haciendas, there were small coastal farms where fishing supplemented subsistence crops. Tipan served as a port both for illegal trade and legitimate commerce, a nd as a shipping point for sugar from Nocora and Bajas. Nocora, although not yet officia lly recognized as the seat of a municipality, apparently served as a marketing cen ter. It carried on trade wi th San J ose via the river, for there were few passable roads. The hacienda workers, whether slaves or free men, depended on the landholder not only for their living but also for protection and for various perquisites. The hacienda social structure differed from that in the districts of small farmers. The own er had almost complete control over the lives and livelihood of his workers. His power was sanctioned b y decrees enacted by the Spanish government at different times during the nineteenth century. The abolitio n of slavery in 1873 did not seem significant to old informants, who described later years a lso as "slavery times." Some persons continued to cultivate their land with former slaves, who were now agregados. I nterna l migration seems to have intensified after abol it ion. It is reported tha t many former slaves left Nocora to live in Bajas or in other towns or cities. In the 1 88o's there was a large wave of migration from the dry northwest corner of the island into Tipan . Migrants settled primarily as agregados on unused land, but some of them went to work in the town and on the haciendas. Meanwhile, some oE the resident laborers a nd small farmers native to Tipan had already begun to look for work in the cane fields of the haciend as, especia ll y after a drought in th e 188o's d amaged their own crops. Nocor{t was by now officially recognized as the seat of local government. Some in formants have described it at this period as consisting only of the main street, which was a d irt road bordering on the river and lined with a few houses of thatch and palm bark. Sometimes it was necessary to remove stones from the middle of the road so that carriages might pass. There are still some old timber and cement houses toward the north of the town which probably were built b y weahhy landowners in this or a slightly later period. The Catholic church and probably the alcadia, or mayor's office, were built about this time. The plaza or square was situ t1ted off the main street and was bordered by houses, the church, and the alcadfa . Travel between the town a nd th e rural districts adjacent to it was mainly through private land, over a few d irt paths suitable for foot a nd horse travel. Few public roads had h een developed. The railroad lin e which was established in this period vastly im proved transportation facilities between Nocor:i and other

coasta l points, including San Ju an. T ravelers, especially horsemen traveling b y night, were subject to close police supervision, being checked by the civil g uard. The cry of ''(Quien vive" (freely, "Who goes there?"), when directed to a traveler by the guards, required his prompt answer, lest he be seized and punished. The proper answer was " Espana." In the 189o's, in the decade preceding the American occupation, there were few stores in Nocod. Some of these were owned by large landholders who often also kept small stores on their farms. where they might profit by paying off their laborers in goods rather than wages. Customarily, the " ·orkc rs on the haciendas were paid partly in cash and part ) ~· i11 good s. T hey also we re a llowed to g ro w su bs iste nce cro ps o n small plots, since they lived 011 h:1c ie nd a land. Free lunch was provided on the farm: it con sisLed usua lly of locall y grown boiled plantains, ya ms, and S\1·eet pota toes se rved o n taro leaves. Sugar was grown on th e haciendas near town, as in the Mango district today. but in Tipan none was planted until after the American occupati on. Fo ur haciendas were operat ing in .Kocora at the time of the occupation, b ut others had discontinued operations before 1898. The haciendas fo1merly planted a variety of cane unlike L11e ki nds in use today. These o lder varieties were thinner, less adapted to local conditions, and lacked the bristles or "hair" of some modern varieties. Cane production was carried out on a yearround basis, with a longer grinding season than now. Each hacienda processed its own cane, producing a form o( sem i-liquid, unrefined sugar. Some of the haciendas of this period were owned by resident or absentee Spaniards and others by Pu erto Rica ns. Some of the wealthiest owners were related by marriage or by blood. Thus, Don J ose Alvarez, a wea lth y landow ner with family connections in San J ose, was marri ed to the daugh ter of Don J uan G 6mez, another wea lth y farmer and landowner in NoconL The G<'>mez fam ily was in turn related by marriage to the Velez family, which also owned a large hacienda. Some of th ese hacienda owners eventually organ ized the Noconl Corpora tion, which centralized fam ily wealth. ile the hacienda owners were distinguished by their wea lth and socia l p osition, persons of lower status could sometimes improve their positions. Concubinage was one means of social mobil ity. Upperclass men had children b y mistresses of lower socioeconomic levels and by slaves whom they maintained in separa te households. Tt should be noted in passing th tit this insLitut ion con tributed to the absence of strong rac ial feel ings in con temporary Nocor;I, a su bj ect that is discussed later. Many of the chi ld ren of these unions were legall y recognized and m ight inhe rit property. Concubin es had no formal means of bargaining ·with the ir paramours to obtain benefits for themselves a nd th e ir chi ldren, a nd the latter did not necesstiri ly become members of their fa thers' fam ilies nor ach icve the status of their falhers, since their

'"'h

NOCORA: W ORKERS O N A GOVERN'.\ I ENT·OW NEO SUGAR PLANTATION

recognition and accepta nce in each case depended on the fath er's decisio n. T oday there are in Noconi man y impoverished d escendants of wealthy paren ts and grandparems by lower-class women. Thus, Paco G6mez, a radio singer, and Tono Gomez, an unskilled mill laborer, both arc d escend ed from a former hacienda owner. That race per se was not a significant consideration in d e termining the position of illegitimate children is d em onstrated b y many cases in which childre n of N egro slave wome n were granted administra li\'e pos it io ns in their fath ers' enterp rises. Another mea ns by which a man might acquire wea lth and p m\'er d uring th is period was initiative and e nterpr ise, as ilh1 ~ trated by the following case hi s t.or~-. Do n Fe!i pc, a 11 industrious Spaniard who worked as a lorc111:in (rn /;o/a:) on the Alvarez hacienda, <1uit his job and moved to Tipan, where he bought land and. with hired laborers, began to cultivate 111inor crops and toba cco. Jn addition he manufactured riber chairs, using hired laborers from neighboring small Lt r111s and g ir ls who ga\'e the ir services in return for being 1a u ~ht the trade. H e a lso established a small grocery 0 11 his farm, '"hich catered to workers and small fa rmers. ])o n Fe lipe was not as rich as the owners of sugar hac iend as, but he was not as poor as his neighbors. AL his d ea th, his son Ramon took over the enterprise. After the hurricane of San Ciriaco (1898), Don Ramon began buying up the land occupied b y the small farmers in the neighborhood. One informant reca lls: "He was m y godfather (1Jad ri11 0), but he really sto ic o u r land ; he got it in excha nge for rice and bea ns," tha t is, th rough explo ita tive cred it arrangements at the farm store. Don Ramon 's brother, Carlos, owned a schooner which he used to tra nsport goods to San Ju an and ports outside the isla nd and to smuggle goods through the port o f Tipan. Don Carlos hired young men o ( T ipan as sailors. On o ne occasion he is said to ha ve hidden a shipload of local tobacco and then alleged that the ship had sunk, so as to rob local farm ers o( the ir crop. Ramon a nd his brother bec.1 me two o f the wealthiest men in Tipan. Before the American occupa tio n, R a mon married the daug hter o[ a la rge la ndowner who grew minor crops, tobacco, a nd coconuts, and in a fe w years he controlled his fath er-in-law's ho ldings as well as his own. During this period the power o f the dominant la ndowning class wns ma intained by Jaw, b y relig ious sanction, and by certain traditional employme nt practices and relationships between workers and owners. Before the occupation, Don Ramon was mayor of Nocora and loca l justice o ( the peace. He ordered the civil g uards to discipline workers "who didn ' t behave." One informalll reca lls tha t Do n R amo n even "told the civiles to seize a nd whip his fa ther for getting drunk." But lower-class people found some securi ty in the traditional pattern o f co111/Jadrazgo . As an informant sa id, '"When a laborer got into trouble, if his landlord were a lso his riwal co-parent (co m.fJac/ re) or godfather (fJac/·ri11 0), he wo uld be helped." Don Ram6n, like other l<trge lando wners, had a fairl y close relationship with his empl oyees. based o n goclparcmhood and

275

baptisma l spo nsorship. Don Ramon gave his workers credit in his store, and subsequently d educted it from their wages. At New Year's, however, he frequently canceled their de bts. Another informant described the situa tion of the workers as follows, " \1Vhen a man had a sick child, he went to see Don P ancho, and would receive five dollars for medicine. Don Pancho baptized ma ny children o( the workers, a nd both he and his wife brought toys for the children o n Tluee Kings' D ay." Speaking of working conditions, however, the same info rma nt said, " In the old d ays, a man \\'Orked for thirty-five cents a d ay from sun-up to sundO\\·n." An info rma nt in Tipan said, "I don' t remember having seen my fa ther in the d aytime. H e left for work at three in the morning and came back at night." Another added, ''Do you know that before the Land Authority came h ere, onl y the overseer could own a watch? IE a worker h ad a wa tch and dared to look a t the time, the forema n would take it from him a nd b reak it so tha t the worker would no t know how man y hours o ( exu·a work he was d oing "·ithout pay. Now a ma n can go to work with his wa tch and look at it whenever he wants." During the p re-American period o f the h aciendas, the agregados seldom shopped in t0wn, except perhaps to buy material fo r clo thes t0 be worn on such special occasions as weddings a nd baptisms. They bought most goods from the rura l stores run by the landlord. The town sto res were pa tronized b y the rural la ndlords. By the time of the American occupa tion, the landlo rds owned grocery stores a nd genera l stores ( q 11 incallas) in the to wn. Prices were considerably b elow those of today, a nd purchasing power was greater. A m an would wo rk in th e fields six days a week, from sun -u p to sundown, for three pesos. Yet he could buy things very cheaply. Ma nuel, who was a laborer, says that when he married he bought material for his suit a nd for his brid e's gown at fi(teen cents a yard and his bride's shoes fo r one and a half pesos. Prices o( groceries were very low. In the town one could buy a b unch o f plantains fo r ten cen ts, sugar for three cen ts a pou nd, coffee for Len cents a p ound, codfish for six cents a pound, and o nio ns for fi ve cem s a pound. The ag regados, however, could not accumulate enoug h capital to cha nge their ways of life. EARLY PHASE OF AMERICAN OCCUPATION, 1898- 1910

America n soldiers ca me Lo Nocora b y ra ilroad a nd occupied the town a nd surrounding coun try about three momhs after the invasion o ( the island h ad started. In Nocora there had been rebellio us groups (partidas sediciosas o r embrisques) ,\·hich had terro rized Spa nish merchan ts a nd landholders of the coast and highla nds. .Jua n Castro, the leader, was a Spa nish landholder who lived on a twenty-acre farm in T i pan . His farm laborers took par t in the terrorist r a ids . T h ey seem to have operated independentl y of simila r g roup's wh ich were organized in other parts o( the isla nd . Gabrie l Lias, a former member o f Castro's partidas,

276

THE PEOP LE OF P UERTO RICO

informed me that his knowledge o f the Protestant Bible goes back to pre-American times, when Castro used to read it to his workers. This suggests that opposition to Spain in the community arose partly among those who opposed Catholicism. None of the old informa nts seemed to regret Spain's loss of Puerto Rico. They described the period of Spanish domination as one of tyranny, and they were o f the opinion that Spain was irresponsible, that Spaniards were rich, tha t the Pu erto Ricans were poor and were mistreated by the Spaniards, and that the Catholic church was too closely associated with the Spa nish government·. Informants still vividly remember the civil guards and police punishment a nd torture. But they disapproved o f the raids and terrorism of the embrisques or partidas against the Spaniards. It is said that as soon as the American military government was established in Noconi the terrorist groups disappeared . One informant recounted how the Spaniards organized men equipped with machetes to fight aga inst the Americans, and how these proved ineffective. \ •Vhen American troops entered Noconi there was no organized resista nce. T he soldiers established their billets in the ho use of a local landholder and politician. A major change under United States occupation was the granting of gr eater relig ious freedom. Dona Lola, an active Protestant o f the middle-income group in town, said that it was not until this time that the Protestant Bible could be read freely. She further said that some of the "best ladies and families living in the town" turned Protestant after the change in sovereign ty. According to Dona Lola, the Catholic church had served only the rich before the occupation, and privileges were dispensed on the basis of wealth. One of the first Protestant ministers to serve Nocod was a former Spanish priest who had quit the Church and community in order to marry but who returned at the beg inning of the century. At this time, however, there were neither Protestant no r Catholic churches in the rural districts, and services were held onl y sporadically and on special occasions, such as the Day o[ the Patro n Saint of Nocora or Holy ·w eek. In 1899, when the San Ciriaco hurricane severely damaged Puerto Rico, d estroying many homes and severely damaging farm la nds, the United States Congress provided relief. In Tipa n, according to our informants, American soldiers at first distributed free groceries di rectly to the people, but after a few weeks the food was g iven to th e storekeepers for distribution and the rations diminished. In formants <lttributed to the hurricane alone the r ise in prices and the decrease in employme nt which occurred much later. They did not recognize that other factors related to the invasion were a lso affecting the island. They could not know that America n occupation caused devaluation o( Spanish silver, loss of credit, and commercial isolation of the island. America n occupation removed th e trade ba rri ers be t.ween the United States and Puerto Rico and created a situation which attracted United States ca pital

to investment in the plantations and mills producing sugar. These advantages caused sugar production throughout the island to expand, a nd large landholders in Nocora did not fail to benefit. The nature of the hacienda, which had been established during the nineteenth century, was not changed during the ea rly years of the .-\merican occupation. The individually owned or famil y-owned hacienda continued to pl ant most of its land to sugar cane, but it also grew some mixed crops and it used uncultivated la nd for g razing. The ha ciendas p rocessed the ir own cane. As manufactured goods became a\ailable. the hacen dad us established store:-.. proba bly obtaining credit from personal sou rces m o re often than from banks o r the govern ment. Th e 0\\"11er and m·ersecrs (mayurdomus) lived o n the hacienda, "·hile th e workers were permitted to construct houses on th e unproductive land in the limestone hills. The social structure of tile hacienda \1·as hasetl o n a patern alistic system of rec iprocal but unequal relationships between owner and " ·orker. The fl({t e11d11 do mig ht take a worker 's daug hter as his concubine; this ·would streng the n th e tic bet\rcen himsel[ and the girl's father. Jn local politica l activity he counseled his workers and represented them in office. H e took a personal interest in the welfare of his employees. He o fte n beca me cumfJadre to a worker and padrino to his child, which created close tics with the worker's entire family. The worker, although a strong authority in his own household, was subordinate to the landholder. The subculture o f small farmers differed from that of the haciendas. The small farmers emphasized subsistence production. As cash needs increased, they obta ined money through growing crops for the local market and through doing add itional work for wages, usually on the haciendas. The small farms were operated by family la bor, although middle-size farms, which raised more cash crops for the ma rket, occasionally hired wage laborers. Co-o perative labor supplied by neighbors was an additional source of help for these fa rmers. The immediate family or household had fairly close ties with relatives living nearby on small farms. The father exercised great authority over members o f his family, whose roles were strong ly differentiated on the basis of age and sex. Most relig ious practices were probab ly info rm al, <n ving to physical isolat ion from the chu rches. Catholicism in the rural districts centered on a saints' cult rather than on formal Church affiliation, except on the haciendas where the owner could obtain the services o[ a priest. THE CORPORATE LAND AND MILL, 191 0- 1930

A few years after American troo ps occupied Puerto Rico, a large, modern sugar mill-a cen tra l- was constructed on the site formerly occupied by one of the haciendas. The construction of this highl y efficient mill was made possible b y the pooling o( fa mily resources in a corporate enterprise which could compete

l'\OCOR..\: WORKERS ON A GOVERNMENT-OWNED SUGAR PLANTATION

with sugar producers in other parts of the world. The Nocor;I corporation was controlled by former /l(l cendados. By means o[ the corporation, the hacendndos continued as a collectivity, rather than as individuals, to increase their land holdings and their control of subsidiary land companies. They were able to concenlrate wealth and power far beyond what individual families had been able to accomplish. v\Thile the corporate type of enterprise developed, the family haciendas and the small and medium farms declined. The l\ocor;i corporation established a railroad to tr;1nsport its ra\,. sugar to the pon o( Tipan, where it "·as taken in boats to steam ers off the coast. It also conn ected its Jann properties by railroad spurs to facilitate the llo\\" of cane to the mill. It leased land from other landholders. pro,·ided cred it to and ground the cane ol pri,·ate suga r gro\\'ers, and generally dominated the community. Sugar production rapidly increased in importance. esp ecia ll y after the first \ •Vorld \Va r. and the community gre\\' apace. The trend to\\'ard tl1~ monocrop production o( sugar made the cornnwnity more dependent 011 outside sources of consumer goods, which in turn enhanced the importance of cash which was derived primarily from wages earned in the sugar fields and mills. Expanding sugar production geared the community closely to the United States market and caused it to be affected by political decisions made in San Juan and in the United States concerning tariff, trade, shipping and other matters. The modern mill manufactured dry raw sugar for which there was large demand, rather than the semiliquid sugar heretofore processed locally by small mills. Costs o( production were reduced, and transportation of raw sugar became more economical and ellicient. Since not enough sugar cane was grown for the m ill, the corporation provided credit to private cane growers and thus was able to extend its control from Bajas to the west coast and into the highlands. Highways and paved roads were built with public funds to help in the deve lopment of the growi ng economy. The class of wage laborers became proportionately larger because the corporation mill acquired the land o( many smaller producers, throwing some of these men into the ranks of laborers. This kind of sugar production, moreover, could use unskilled labor, which brought an inf-lux of workers from the highlands and from the west into the sugar area . Som e of the dispossessed landowners and their families moved to the cities, abandoning agriculture for professional and business careers. Others remained in the community where they worked in the mill or in the sugar field s, conducted small businesses, or held government jobs. In 191 !! the farm land devoted to ca n e was seven times as great as in 1897, and land value had in creased considerably (Governor's Report, i913). The peak of profit in ca ne production in Nocora was 1920, when the high price o[ sugar in the United States market gave ren ewed stimulus to production . In 191 o, according to the Governor's Report of 1921 , land in Nocor<i was

277

valued at fifty to seventy-five dollars per acre, and in i 920 it was said to have been at least eighty-one dollars per acre. In i921 the sudden drop in sugar prices on the American market reduced cane planting by nearly 1,000 acres. The expanding sugar economy made possible the development of a small merchant class in NoconL Previously, goods had been sold to the workers by landowners who operated stores on their farms . l\{ost of the new, small merchants were migrants, many of whom had started as peddlers (q11i11calleros). vVith the sudden rise of sugar prices on the American market after \1Vorld \ •Var I and the increasing need for commodities in the community, the peddlers were able to compete with the landowning merchants and estab1ished general stores (quincal/as) and grocery stores. Cane fields provided the largest source of employment, and the mill, which largely employed town dwellers, was next. The per iod of work was shortened because the mill could grind the sugar cane in a few months. The laborers, having no land and becoming increasingly dependent on wages, could secure work only during the harvest, and with much less certainty, during planting and cultivation. Members of the community who were stockholders in the corporation did not necessarily reside in Nocon't throughout the year. The president of the corporation and many of his relatives, (or example, spent only part o( the year in Nocod. They maintained a close relationship with the local people in that they held office and were known personally to the workers, managers, and foremen. Some of the corporation stockholders became godparents to children of workers and in other ways perpetuated many of the personalized and paternalistic bonds of earlier years. The corporation in Nocod thus did not represent so sharp a break from the hacienda system as it did in Cafiamelar. Before the first \i\Torld \ 1Var the Federation of Labor (FLT), a Puerto Rican syndicate affiliated with the American Federation of Labor, started to organize workers in the sugar areas. Nocora was one of the communities so organized . The visiting union leaders bargained directly with the employers for higher wages. These activities helped d evelop local labor leadership. In i914 a strike was called on the farms of the Nocora corporation near the town, but failed when strike breakers were brought from other parts of the island a nd worked under police protection . The strikers were not only intimidated by the show of force , but some of them evidently reacted within the olde1· pattern of persona l loyalties to the owners. In i916 there was another strike, led b y Socialist leaders. Tn 1918 the workers successfully struck in protest agai11st the twelve-hour work day and demanded higher wages. The work clay was reduced to e ig ht hours, and wages were raised from seventy-five cents to one dollar per cla y. During the business depression o( i922, wages were reduced to sixty cents a day while hours of ·work were increased but no organized protest followed. The workers' de~ mands were ign ored by the landowners, and strikes

278

THE PEOPLE OF PUERTO RICO

were then an ineffective weapon for settling labor disputes. By giving concessions and privileges to certain workers upon whose loyalties the employers could count, the landowners undermined the class solidarity of the workers. At the same time, the insular labor leadership had become so centralized and auto· cratic that it often failed to recognize local needs and made agreements with local employers that thwarted the aims of the local employees. In the early th irties, local chapters of the Federation of Labor were organized on different farms of Nocora, each with a board of directors and each affiliated with the Puerto Rican Federation of Labor. In 1930 the first collective bargaining contract was signed by the field representative of the laborers and by representatives of the landholders, including the Nocora corporation. Later, a legislator who was a landowner representing Nocora and Bajas presented a bill to legalize collective bargaining in the island. In 1933 the mill workers were organized in unions under leaders from the FLT a nd the Socialist party of Puerto Rico. Aided by local leaders, they appealed to the mill management for wage increases and better "\vorking conditions. Un ion demands were customarily made annually before the grinding season started. The Puerto Rico Federation of L abor developed strong support for the Socialist party; which, under Santiago Iglesias, came to be regarded as the party of the working people. Even after the Socialist party entered into a coalition with the Republican party, whose leadership was primarily drafted from technicians and Ia-wyers o( the big sugar and transportation ~orporatio~s, it was still considered to rep resent the interests of the workers. Landholders who had tried to influence the vote of the workers away from the Socialist party found after the coalition that they and the workers were on the same side.

THE DEPRESSION YEARS, THE l 930'S

The world depression of 1929 created great difficulties for the Puerto Rican sugar industry. In Nocora sugar production was reduced considerably, many sugar colonos moved away, and unemployment prevailed. The depression period is still very vivid in the memory of farmers, although it is seldom mentioned by the landless workers who blame the hurricanes of 1928 and 1931 for the difficult econom ic conditions at the time. According to the 1940 census, land had become concentrated in larger holdings during the preceding decade, while its value had decreased somewhat. Some of the large, independent landholders went bankrupt. The descendants of Ram6n Soto, who once owned 500 acres, now held only six acres. Chano Velez, a former agregad o on Ramon's farm said, "Don Ram6n died in poverty. He lost all his money and land and was d efeated in the 1932 elections. H e was so poor that one d ay he asked me to g ive him a nickel for a cigar, so I boug ht him two cigars."

THE ECONOMIC REFORM, THE l 940'S

The Popular Democralic party lost the elections in Nocodt in 1940 and 194'! to the Socialist party, but it controlled the Puerto Rican government. Basic social legis la tion, including the land reform program, which limited land holdings by corporations to 500 acres-a Jaw which some corporations including that at Nocora violated-had been passed and put into effect throughout much of the island. At this time the buildings and machinery o( the mill and the equipment on most farms were i11 a state of neglcc:l. In efficient agricultural practices had redt tccd th e.: fc.:rtility of the land, and production in Nocor:i declined. The.: death of the founder and preside n t or the 0:ocor;'t corporation in the late thirties, toge ther with the reduced production o[ sugar, weakened the corporation. After the l~ll · l clc.:ctions, Lile Land Authority. which will be described in detail subsequently, hought the land, buildings, railroad, and mill.

ECONOMIC PATTERNS GENERAL FEATURES

The L and Authority dominates the economic life of Nocor{1. By i 948, when the present study began, it controlled over 8,ooo acres, hav ing acquired more tha n G,ooo acres a nd the sugar mill from the Nocora corporation in I 9<15 and purchased and leased other land. The land was devoted almost entirely to sugar, o( which abo ut go per cent was produced by the Land Authority. Less than 150 acres were in pineapple, ioo of these belonging to the Land Authority and 50 to private growers. Pineapple had a doubtful future, owing to transportation a nd marketing problems. At the time o( the study, the Land Authority operated all of its sugar land in the form of proportional profit farms of 500 to i ,ooo acres each. These farms differ from those of the corporation and the wealthy fam ilies of the past in that they are controlled by managers and technicians brought in Crom the outside, whereas the corporation fa rms and the haciendas were run by local men, who were related to the owners and, having been reared in the community, were known personally to the \Vorkers. Under the earlier paternalistic, face-to-face manager-worker relationship the development of class solidarity was inhibited. The more impersonal nature o( the Land Authority management has permitted the growth of a genuine working class. The Land Authority farms are also distinctive in that the administrators and the laborers receive not on ly wages but a share o( the net profit proportionate to the amount o( work done during the year. This arrangement, however, does not seem materially to have bettered the workers, for the socia l goal of providing employment to as nrnny persons as possible has limited the time each could work.

NOCQR ,\: WORKJ::RS O~ A t:OVER:-1:\ I E~T·OWN.EO SUGAR PLA:-:TAT ION

279

lL was supposed that the wo rke rs on the propor- been described in P a rt II of this volume, the present tional profit farm s would feel that they "own ed the analysis will be restricted to the place of Noconi in land," and L a nd .-\mho rity ollic ia ls h ave e ndeavored this larger economic p a ttern. to foste r this idea. These ollicials point out that the wo rkers protect the fi elds and no lo nger steal cane or Credit pas wre their cows and goats on it. During our r eThe L and Authority is authorized by law to supply search, howeve r, we h eard no intimation that the production credit at a small rate of interest to the wo rke rs felt that they shared in the ownership. They proportional profit farms, each of which is an adminreferred to the Land Autho rity as the "corporation" istra tive and operational unit. The crop but not the or ··capital." :\l o reovc r. we saw them h e lp themselves land is used as collateral, and the loan is repaid at the 10 ca ne many times a11d surreptitiously graze their end of e ach crop year. Neithe r the project supervisor :111i111:tl!> in the fi<.:ld s i11 the e,·e ning. The wo rkers nor the farm admin istrators are h e ld p erson a lly re;1 ppro,·e ol the Land . \ mhori t y, ho we,·er, bcca use it sponsible for these d e bts. The L a nd Auth ority uses pro,·idcs the m \\·ork (c,·cn \\·he n additional la borers private sources of credit both in the island and the an: 11ot n eed ed) a11d bcca11!>e it res p~cts them and United Sta tes. trc:a ts thc111 we!I. Sma ll- and m edium-sized private sugar g rowers obThe: L111cl .\ull1or i1 y manage rs must consider the tain cr edit from the mill where their ca ne is ground, !:inns from a political po int or view. Since worke rs from banks in Bajas, and from private sources. co11stillltc the largest gro t1p o l ,·o tc rs in the commu11i1 y. 1he man :1gers o l tc.:11 1>ro,·ide employm e nt at a Costs of Production ri~k to profits. T he ll!>C ol m ode rn mac hines and In the Nocor;\ p roject, costs of production vary s ince I a hor-~a ,.i 11g practices p<>!>C~ a ,·c r y serious political a ncl some fa rms produce hig h er yields tha n others. owing to grea ter size, b etter soils, or other natural factors. ~oc i al proble m. In a compc titi,·e m arket, management ca nn ot afford to produce at e xorbita nt costs, yet mod- Other costs include taxes, land rent, ser vices a nd e rnization is like ly to r educe e mployment. One o[ the equipment. depreciation a nd repa irs, improvements, m ost important leaders in the community stated that auditing, supervising, and a percentage o[ its sugar he favored more mechani1.a tion but wanted it tried tonnage paid to the mill for processing. The farms o ut first on a single farm with the unders tanding tha t must also contribute to the co-operative ed ucation the government would cs ta bl ish a factory to take care prog ram. or the une mployed labo re rs. The manager of the mill and the supervisor o [ the Nocor;\ project seemed unTHE PROPORTIONAL-PROFIT FARM d ecided about the conseque nces o( technolog ica l imEach of the proportional profit farms (colonias) in provem e nt. At times they thought it was better to h ave on ly a few hundred wo rke rs use m odern m achines to the Noconi project is divided for admin istrative purc ultivate the field s ;111d e nj oy a hig her standard of poses into parce ls (/Jiezas) o f a fe"· acres LO m ore than living- than to ha ve thousands of workers b e nt over fifty acres. th e hoe. undernourish ed . u 11de rem ployed, and i nadeThe Nocor:i p roject is h eaded b y a supe rvisor a nd q ua tely paid. At other t im es they declared emph ati- his ass ista nt, both o f whom are trained agronom ists. ca ll y that they wou Id rather close down operatio ns These offic ials a r c appointed by the centra l office in than m echanize furth er. The local Land Autho rity San Jua n , which rev ie ws the ir manageria l dec isions. managers, however, are no t e mpowered to make these E ach (arm o r co /onia in t he project is under a n addecisions. ministrator who is also appo inted in San Jua n but :\!though th e L and Alllho rity is by fa r the m ost im- takes o rders from the local project superv isor. ;\lost po rtant oper a tion in Nocor:i, there are a few private of these men had p reviously worked for the Nocod can e !arms o( m ed ium s i1.e and hundreds of small corpora tion as 111a1•ordo111os, or o verseers, and they farm s, many of them less than o ne <1cre. Sin ce th e still bear t h a t title. They a re paid a sa lary of forty profits from cane on these small [arms is insignifica11c, dolla rs a week and ea rn a share of th e ne t profits o( th e owne rs cu ltivate ki tche n ga rdens and hire o ut as the farm as incen t ive p aym e nt. wage workers on the larger farms. Th eir incom e is Each farm has a listcro. a minor cle1·ica l officia l who $ 1oo to S:wo per yea L r eceives a salary o( twe nty-five dolla rs a week and shares in the profits or the fa rm, a \1·atchma n o r g uard, and a stable man . These are appointed b)' the loca l LARGE-SCALE SUGAR PRODUCTION admin istrators, and they a r e e mployed throughout the The brge-scale, co mme r c ia l production o( suga r in- year. The re m a ining rarm p ersonnel " ·arks o n a seavolves a comple x of facto rs-·c rcdit a nd c 1pita l, cu lti- ~onal basis. Each farm has several foremen (rn/Jatnces) vation, p rocessing, m arketing. management, labor. a nd whose duties depend upo n the particul ar kind of fi e ld oth e rs- som e of which are parts of economic institu- opera tions they supe rvise. /\ fore m a n is in ch arge of a tio ns ex tending far o utsid e th e corn rnunity and even squad (esnradm) of fil'tccn to thirty laborers. l\ Iost Lhe island. Since th e m ore important of t hese, such as farms emp loy. onl y m e n [o r a ll j obs, but in Tipan governme nt credi t arn1 11ge111 e nts, the United States women are lured to spread fe rtilizer. The La n d A u suga r marke t, shipping fac ilities, and the like have thority forbids th e hi r ing of children o n its farms. but

280

THE PEOPLE OF PUERTO RICO

youths under legal age nonetheless are frequently given work. The Union and Employment

Technically, the proportional-profit farms have a closed-shop agreement w ith the union. The union, however, is b y no means a tightly knit group of delimited membership, for members <lo not a lways pay dues or fulfill any specific union obligatio ns. Both men and women are admitted to membership. T hat union membership is a condition of employment, therefore, has little practical significance. The management determines the number of workers employed on a farm, and the listero selects the workers, except in Tipan, where the union president makes the choice if there is a surplus of la b orers. vVhen work is short, preference is gen erally given to fami ly hea<ls. Friendship or r iwa l kinship connections may h e lp o ne to get a day's work, but favoritism is seldom practiced in giving steady jobs. In 19,19 l ocal officia ls of the Land Authority tried to persuade the union to limit the number of its members so as to eliminate some of the surplus workers, but the union refused on the grounds chat everyone has the right to work. Some of the Land Authority officials, however,_claimed that the leaders of the local union had adopted the policy of accepting every applican t in order to raise union income and bring political pressure to bear on the Land Authorit y. The labor suppl y is so much greater than what is actually needed that the Land A uthority uses a system of rotatio n which allows each person to work in the fields two or three days a week, a lthough the work week is five or five-and-a-half days. The men who boss small work groups in the fields are called jntertas, and they are paid ten or fifteen cents more per day than their fellow workers, who genera lly do not earn more than $2.75 per clay. Certa in special jobs in the cane fields, however, carry better pay than the average. These wages are higher than those paid by private growers in the district, although tota l employment is less. Farming Methods

The Lhree phases of agricultural activi ties-pla n ting, cultivation, and harvesting-are the basis for the division of the year into a work season and a n idle season. Harvest is the main p eriod of employment, while planting and cultivation, which last several months and are known as the "dead season" (el tiempo muerto), require relatively little labor. During this time the re is practically no other source of cash income. While planting and cultivating a re being increasingly m echa nized on the proportional-profit farms, one may observe old-fash ioned ox-drawn plows working beside modern plows pulled by tractors. In p lowing and furrowing the land fo r new pla n tings, a tractor with a detachable plow driven by o n e m a n can prepare twelve acres in eight hours, w h ereas severa l men requ ire more than a week to perform the same operation using animal-drawn plows. Since t h e Land Authority began its operations in Noconi after

\ i\Torld \.Var II, when inflation had increased cosLs but when the price of sugar on the New York market "·as dropping, fuller mechanization seemed essential to profitable large-scale production. Moreover, since sugar has been grown for many years in Nocora with little conservation or fen ilizatio n of the land, the Land Authority intensified the use of fertilizers and other means of revitalizing the soil b efore planting new fields. It also introduced se\·eral new varieties of cane. Sugar cane is planted from cuttings or stump~ of ripened stalks. Each year there arc three kinds o[ p la nting: "big gro\\"th" (grnn rn/l11rn), "spri11g tilll e·· (1Jrimavern), and ratoon (retoiiu) . '"Big grow Lh" is the cane planted bet\\·een September and November ;111d harvested eiglncen or t we n Ly months laLcr. "Springtime" is planted in f\Iay or .June a nd harvested af1 er one year. Ra Loons are g rowths from Lhe stumps lei t on harvested fi elds, and Lhcy u sua ll y ripen in e ig h1 cc 11 or twenty months. Large farms have p lots planted in each of thc ~c periods so as lO prodt1ce ripened crops al various t imes of the year and insure a longer gr inding season. RalOoning is cheaper than new plantings, an<l Lhe yield of sucrose w i th in three or four years may be as high as that of new plantings. P rivate growers in the Nocora district have u sed ratooning for many years, an<l they continue to do so at the risk of exhausti ng t he land, taking advantage of both the immediate r eduction of costs involved in ratooning and the federa l compensation for decreasing returns of the crop. Planting techniques have been changing . In previous years cane cuttings were usu ally set in separate holes, but today the cuttings are dropped in furrows. Manual labor is used for planting can e, but the numb er of workers now required for this operation is relatively small. In the past few years, however, costs o( planting h ave increased. The cost of planting th e "big growth" can e harvested in 1949 was $ 120 p er acre, while that h arvested in 1950 cost Si 27 per acre. Drainage ditches which are n ecessary n ear the river and the marsh are now dug with machines, and shovel s are used only to r epair them. Cultivation is done by means of a small, hand-pushed i ron cultivator opera ted b y one man, although the south and western coaslal plan tations u se tr actor-drawn cultivators. The h and implement is known locally as a spider (arafia), because of i ts multi-prong shape. vVith i t one man can work four to five acres in an e ight-hour work day. The ox-drawn cultivator, operated by two workers, has already been eliminated by the Land Authority. One of the farm admin istrators estimated that if his farm were to be fully mechanized, costs of cult ivation could be decreased as follows : "The use of tractorcultivator wou ld reduce the costs of first tillage from eight doll ars to eighty cents per acre; of second tillage from six dollars to sixty cents; and of the thi rd from two dol lars to forty cen ts." Fertilizer is scattered b y h and on a ll fa rms at Noconi. M en are hired fo r this job everywhere except at Tipan, wh ere for over t hirty years a squ ad of

NOCORA: WORKERS ON A GOVEfu'IMENT-OW NED SUGAR P LANTATION

women has performed it. The Land Authority continues hiring women so as to provide work for widows and other women who are family heads. The fertilizer is hauled to the fields by tractor in hundredweight bags. It is then put into tin containers, each holding about twenty pounds, which the women carry on their hips and spread with a spoon or by hand. For protection against the fertilizer they cover their dresses with rags or cloth bags and wear old stockings on their arms. \ '\!omen consider the job a very hard one, although men generall y say that it is "a light job" and good for women. It is estimated that it requires eight hours fo r a \\'Oman to fertilize one acre. All these opera Lions- preparation of the soil, planting, and c1iltiv;1tion-req11ire only a few days of work. From A ug ust, when the harvest is completed, to the e nd o( October, \\·hen the big growth cane is planted, there is hardly any \\'Ork in the fields. For a few days in December and in February, new plantings may require tillage, \\'Ced ing, and fertilizing. This work is all don e by hand: cultivation \\"ith the "spider," weeding with hoes, and k nilizing. In June, springtime planting takes place. and etdtiV<\tion again provides employmelll for a few days. In l!H8 the cane was given more care than was actually necessary for a successful crop. The fields were so clean "that they looked like gardens," but in 1949, dry leaves were left on the sides of the plants to reduce the growth of weeds. The use of herbicides would eliminate considerable weeding by hoes. The project supervisor informed us that he thought herbicides were necessary for successful operation but that he h ad not used them because a clause in the contract between the Land Authority and the local unions prohibited it. Another official told us that the Land Authority had bought mechanical weeders in 1947 but had not used them for fear Fig. 28. Culti11g sugar ca11e near Nocor<i . Photo by Ross· ham: Gover11111e11t of Puerto Rico.

281

the workers would resent it. He said that the workers on certain farms had threatened to kill the first employer who used herbicides. In our experience, the workers in Noco1«i seemed to regard machines as devices which made work less arduous rather than as substitutes for themselves. They often watched admiringly as tractors pulled several wagons of cane or farm machines. Unlike the south coast, where extensive mechanization ·was introduced and the consequent labor displacement ·was obvious, the gradual mechanization of the fields in Nocora and the Land Authority's policy of spreading jobs had not yet in 19,19 made the workers aware of technological unernployment. The h arvest season (zafrn) is the period of greatest activity. Some workers are temporary or transient employees from the highlands, but most are local Nocorans. They look for work on different farms, and very few work for a full week as in previous years. Today a farm may employ more workers than it needs for the harvest, although it cannot absorb all who want jobs. The project supervisor at Nocora estimated that the farms employ about 3,000 men, whereas only goo were needed for the most efficient production. The length of the harvest period varies in different pans of the island. In Noco1-;{ it seldom exceeds 1 20 days. Improved methods of production and processing has shortened it. During the past few years, when the mill in Nocora was being repaired, the harvest did not start until March, although it was then at its peak in other parts of the island, and it was finished by August. 'Whereas planting and cultivation are strictly the concern of each farm, harvesting must be arranged with regard to all farms, since all the cane in the nmnicipality is ground in a single mill of limited capacity. The problem of arranging when the cane should be

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THE PEOPLE OF PUERTO RICO

cut and ground on each of the many farms whose crops ripen a t about the same time is a difficult one, for immature or over-ripe cane does not yield a maximum amount of sugar. The project supervisor has to resolve this difficulty b y designating how much cane shall be cut and sent to the mill each day by the various farms . In 1949 the problem was resolved in part b y staggering cane cutting on the different fa rms so far as possible. Early in the harvest period it was possible to cut the cane on one or two piezas each day. E ventually, however, the cane had so ripened on all /Jiezas that full scale harvest was necessary, and there were jobs for all workers, although these jobs did n ot necessarily provide fu ll-time em p loyment. For example, the Tipan farm engaged sixty men between March and June in 1949, instead of 300 as in previous years, but a man was permitted to work o nl y every other day. July brought maximum employmen t for the final weeks of full-sca le h arvest. This practice served to red uce labor costs, but it can be foJlowed only by agreement with the mill. In 1949 the mill ground the cane of private colonos before it took that of the propor tional profit farms . Individual workers protested this system, but the unio n took no official stand on the m atter. · Cutting cane is an u nskill ed job. ·work in the fields starts at dawn and normally lasts eight hours. The workers provide their own Am erican-made m achetes, which they buy in town for a couple o f d ollars. To reduce accidents wh ile cutting cane, a regulation of the State Security Board forbids workers to cu t cane in adjoining rows, but this regu lation is ignored on some farms . In 1949, when tbe government tried to enforce the regulation in T ipan, the union and several individual workers opposed it, claiming that this was a device to exploit them and that it really would not prevent work hazards. Jn .Mango, where each worker had been cutting two ro\.vs at a time, cutting "~as limited to one row after the passage of the regulauon. An experienced cane farmer of Nocora, however, thought that if each worker cut two rows i t not only was safer but more efficient, because workers who cut single rows usually stop to sharpen their machetes and to chat wh en they reach the end of a row. A cutting squad is so organized that the "front train" (el lren de/ante) consists of the first fi ve or six men who open the row. The first man of the "front train" is the "door" (puerla) and his follower, the "second door" (traspuerta) . T he members of th e " front train" are the fastest, strongest, and most efficient cutters, especially the fJu.erta and his second. The slower cutters, usua lly very old and very young men, are called " tails" (ra b1£as) and are paid the same rate as regular laborers. The system of puertas is an incentive to efficiency. The "fron t train " operates as a co-operative unit, the members working together to set .the tempo of cutting. Even thoug h this system was des~gned to increase efficiency, it can produce the opposite effect, for if the "front train" slows clown, the pace o( the workers behind them is a lso slowed . T his

happens frequently, especia lly toward the end of h arvest. On some days, when the mill quota o[ cane could be h arvested we ll before the end of the d ay, the "front train" slows d own so that a full eigh t-hour day can be worked. ·workers are glad to accept the j ob o f fnwrta, because it is assign ed on the basis o f prestige, or resf1elo, responsibility, efficient workmansh ip, a nd stren gth, a nd because it carries ex tra income. T h e position is not achieved by o utdistancing (mo ntarse) the lirst \\'Orkcr in the row, alth ough a jn1crt11 who is ou tdista 11ced m ay be cr it icized by his co-\\·orkers. The fo reman mig ht transfer a man who is laster than L11 e j)ll(:r /11 to an· othe r row lO avoid conflicts. B t ll \rorkers wo uld n ot try to overtake the jJ11nfa o r ;1ny hody else in the "front train," becau.'>e th ey would still be paid as ordinary \\·orkers, 1101. as j}llf'r/as. There is no uniform tcclrn iquc for cuuing cane. Generally the worker grasps the: sta lk \\'ith one hand and, taking care to protect his legs. cuts it near the bottom with the machete, leav ing a sm all stump for ratooning. H e the n strips off the lca,·es and cuts the stalk into 5everal pieces \\'h ich he thro\\'s 0 11 the g ro und . T he sections of cane are heaped togeth er to be picked up by the wagon loaders (llenadores) . It is estimated that a man ha rvests about two and a h alf tons of cane in e ig h t hours. There has been steady improvement in loading a nd transporting ca n e. In the thirties cane was loaded on oxcarts (Figure 29), then reloaded in wagons which took it to the mill. Because of the drudgery of the work, the men successfu lly struck to have railroads replace the wagons. Today, movable rails bring carts to the edges of the fie lds wh ere they meet tractor-drawn carts, a nd cranes are used for loading. The older methods, however, a re still used alongside the new ones. On the Tipa n farm, in fields wh ere drainage is poor, cans loaded with ca ne are pulled to the roadside hoth b y oxen and by large tractors. F rom here the cane is taken to the mill either in railroad dump cars or in sma ll, rubber-wheeled carts pulled b y light tractors. These carts are call ed zanc1is because they arc said to resemble mosquitoes. They are more e ffi cient than railroad transportation because they are faster, they can be operated without the crane, and they do not req u ire the ser vice of the ra ilroad. The Role of the Sugar Mill

Through its mill in Nocod. the Land Authority exerts indirect control over sever:i l hundred colonos in the margin:il cane districts of Nocod, in ferti le coastal lands of Bajas, and throughout the mountain districts wh ere la nd form erly planted in coffee and miscellaneous crops is now planted i n sugar cane. I t competes w ith private and government mills. The Nocod mill is th e ma in source of income fo r the town. A n informant said: H ere everybody wor ks for the mill. Tn this town there is nothing e lse. That is t. hc wcaJL11. If it were n ot for the mill, this town would he third class rather th;in second. HaYcn't yo u been to the mill? It is very pretty, it is beautiful (pre-

poned commodities. A considerable portion of i ts food is imported from the United States, although most vegetables and meats are obtained from neighboring municipalities. Practically a ll the manufacwred goods it buys are made in the United States or in other pans of Puerto Rico. !\lost o( these goods a re sold through local retailers, although a few are purchased by individuals directly from mail order houses in the United States. Local Business

Fif!,. Z<J .• ll l'tliutf of t11111.'/"1rti11g :;ugnr ca 11c 111 oxcarts Ill

Sunmi. l ' lwtu by 1Jcfo11u.

cio.rn). IL has new boilers and in a couple of yea rs there arc plans to o p en a re finery. 1t is at night whe n it looks beautiful. Don't yo u sec that the mill is so impo rtant that this town l i\'CS o n it, and that is why they take such good care of it?

There are two wholesale groceries who also sell retail in the community. They buy directl y from traveling sa lesmen from Bajas or San Juan. These salesmen work on a percentage basis representing United States and Puerto Rican firm s. i\lost retailers buy both Crom traveling salesmen and from local wholesalers. Local i tinerant peddlers, who sell both in town a nd in the rural districts, usuall y buy their goods at Bajas or in the cities. The town and rural stores selling foodstuffs import most of their goods from the United States but buy loca lly produced vegetables. All of these stores are privately owned except that of the Land Authority co-operative, which was started in 1948. This store depends upon one of the large wholesalers of the town for most of its goods. Both wholesale and retail buying in the town is done largely on a credit basis, although purchases from outsiders are generally paid for with cash. Before \ \Torlcl \Var II, small merchants boug ht all their goods on credit from local wholesa lers, but after the war, when the large wholesalers restricted credit, these merchants began to buy their goods in San Juan or Bajas or from traveling salesmen. Higher prices and black market operations in the postwar period enabled them to pay cash for basic commodities. The two local wholesalers now furnish only scarce items. Some o f the stores sell only food but may serve drinks on the side. Other stores carry a variety of commodities. such as clothes, shoes, furniwre, hardware and household items. ·ocora supports only one spccialited store, the furniwre store. Stores in the rural districts sell no clothes, shoes, or furniture, but these items are bought for cash from itinerant peddlers who visit these districts, especially during the harvest season. The goods sold in the town and in the rural clisu·icts of Nocora are poorer in quality, more outmoded and more expensive than those sold in the cities. The L and Authorit)' co-operative store for mill workers a nd employees attempted to reduce and fix prices. elimimne credi t, and use exact weights and measurements, but it had very few customers among its own members. Since the co-opera tive members were employed mostly during the harvest season, they needed credit for the months of unemployment. They turn ed to the private merchants, who were willinO' to provide the needed credit. A loca l wholesa ler, who luHl been selling t.o. the co-operative on cred it, eve ntua lly became o ne ol Its strongest competitors beca use he sold 1

The mill workers make up about 10 per cent of the labor force of the community, the remainder being agricultural \\'Orkers. The mill workers Jive in and on the outskirts of town and in houses provided them next to the mill. They belong to a union which, before each grinding season, signs a contract with the Land Authority. They GllT)' life insurance which is paid by th e La nd Authority and are compensated for accidents by the State Security Board o[ Puerto Rico. l\Iost employees of the Jocod mill work seasonally, although many men are hired during the "dead season" to ca re for and repair the mill. \\Tork is rotated to provide an equal amoum for all. The mill worker is beucr oIT tha n a field hand because he can work more hours and receives higher wages and a larger proport ion of net profits. H e may earn thirty or thirty-five dollars a week during periods o[ employment and more ir he works overtime. External Economic Relationships

T he d ecis ions regarding the marketing of I\ocor;i's sugar arc made outside the com munity ;rnd ult imately outside the island. \Vhat happens to the processed sugar is largely a m ystery to Nocorans, who kn ow only that it is shipped to the United States. How the price of sugar is affected b y the e\\· York market, tariff regulations, a nd the ben erits to farms paid by the United States Produ ction and i\ fark eting admin istration is not unclerstoocl. Nocor;\ ne ither manufa ctures consumer goods nor meets its own need for food , but depends upon im-

2 84

THE PEOPLE OF PUERTO RICO

to the members of the co-operative store at lower prices than the co-operative store could afford. The co-operative store finally abandoned its fixed prices and bargained with its customers. It also began to provide credit to regular custom ers in order to compete with private merchants. In i948 and i 949 the Tipan storekeepers b egan to discontinue credit during the period of unemployment, and gave credit during harvest not to exceed a man's weekly earnings.

EARNING A LIVING SOURCES OF INCOME

Because of low wages, which barely suffice to cover m inimal daily needs let alone allow savings, and because of the short season of employment, the differences between the harvest season and the dead season in Nocora have a dramatic character. Each season, with its different activities, prospects and emphases, poses entirely different problems for the rural workers. The people describe this contrast as "in the chips" and "broke" (clzapa y bruja), as "the period of employment" (el trabajo) and "the crisis" (Don Cliso, la crisi, el clise) or other euphemisms meaning "doing nothing." T he most dramatic effects of the seasonal dichotomy are produced in its impact on everyday life and on interpersonal relationships. During the dead season , the pace of life slackens in both town and rural districts, while it quickens visibly at harvest time. During the harvest, the workers rise at dawn and often have only a cup of coffee before leaving for the fields. At the foreman's signal all take their place in the section of the fields assigned for harvest and start to work. At eight in the morning, school boys and girls and some times women bring coffee to the men. Coffee is also sold by people who live near the farms and by the foreman, although the latter is forbidden by law to operate a business o n the fa rms. At eleven o'clock in the morning, lunch is brought to the workers. Lunch generally consists of coffee and one course, such as wheat flour fritters, fried codfish, corn meal fritters (sorullos), soup of dried codfish, sweet potatoes, manioc, or rice and beans. Some workers who do not receive lunch from home and cannot a fford to buy it may be offered food by their fellow workers. The work days lasts for a m aximum of eight hours, but the hours actua lly worked are normally determined by the amount of cane the m ill accepts for grinding and the number of men hired by the farm. The men are seldom if ever permitted to work overtime in the fields. On Saturday morning the men put on their clean clothes and wait at the entrance of the farm for their pay. The pay does not always meet expectations, for the basic wage scale is affected by the price of sugar on the New York market. A few days before the end of the harvest, the dead season, which is a cause of great anxiety, becomes a

common topic of conversation. Usually it is spoken of in personalized terms; " D on Cliso is coming." Small groups of men and women gather at the roadside to discuss this lack of employment opportunities, shortage of cash, and what they could do to earn money. The merchants begin to put an end to cred it. P eop le now claim tha t the old times were better, that the harvest was longer and prices lower than tod ay. There were opportunities of employment besides cane cutting, both in the mill and in the transportation of sugar. In the past, food was grown locally, and credit was available. Ta lk. takes the fo rm of protest, and people may b la me the p ri vate colonos, the Land Authority officials, leaders who have quit tile Popu lar party, or the president of the ir local union , for th ei r conditions. They call for meetings of th e union through which they try to persuade the government to provide employment and othern·ise to dea l with the problems of the unemployed heads of families. Thc:y usually complain that the governme nt has neglected their district and say that other pans of the island are better off ow ing to government favoriti sm and industrial prosperity. The community is described as lacking any kind of opportunity (no tiene ambiente). In the words of informants: " N ocora is the poorest p lace here. . . . I t is a place w ith nothing. It h as no industries n or anything . . . what we have here is sugar cane. In other places there is life. There is work everywhere. You go to Bajas in the afternoon and they tell you, 'Bring the machete. I need people.' . . . Formerly people came from the highlands to look for work here and they were jobless 'so-and-so's' (vayaos). Now we o urselves are vayaos." The need for cash and food dur ing the dead season leads to a search for subsid iary economic activities, usually referred to as chirifJas. These are temporary anc.l unsteady occupations which, although performed to some extent during the h arvest season, become the core of subsistence in dead season. The activities ( oficios) carried on by men primarily in the dead season include fishing, fish n et weaving, carpentering, barbering, construction work, plumbing, handywork, a nd so o n. A man may work at one or several of these. \1\Tomen are laundresses, seams tresses, peddlers, herb gatherers, cooks or maids. The lack of employment opportunities, however, prevents any of these from being full-time occu pations comparable to labor in sugar cane. In Tipan the main subsidiary activities are gardening, fishing, hauling sand, catching crabs, manufacturing rum, gambling, and gathering fruits and medicinal or o ther usefu l plants for sale in town o r in the city. In Mango, stone quarrying, gam bling, rum manufac tu ring, gather ing fruits and plants, a nd river fishing are the main subsidiary economic activities. Both in Tipan and Mango, famili es who originally came from the highlands and still have relatives or ritual kin there return to seek work in the coffee harvest. Others migrate to San Juan or some other city in the island to find a job. In the past few years, especially since the end of World War II, many young men have

NOCORA: WORKERS 01\ A COVERN!\IE="T-OWNED St;CAR PLANTATION

285

migrated Lo the United States a number of times as contract labor to work in the agricultural harvests. Some men from Tipan have worked in N ew Jersey, \Vashington, upper New York, 1\!Iichigan, and other states. J\fost migratory agricultural laborers, however, return to the community during winter when the sugar han·est begins. J\Ien with families cannot travel to find work, and they stay in rum! Noconi. SUBSIDIARY ECONOMIC ACTIVITIES Kitchen Gardens

J n Tipa11 most famili es O\rn a house located on a L md .\11tl 10rity plot ks~ L11an an acre in size. Here they ~row manioc, sweet potatoes, beans, pigeon peas, and .solllc Lobacco. :\ few lamilies keep chickens and perhaps a goat or two. \\Then the sugar harvest ends, garden planting begins. Crops are planted according to 1he pha,e of the moon and the season of rainfall. :\!all\' lamilics do not farm. but allow their plots to he cu ltivated ])\· somcbodv else on a sharecropping basis. Persons \1:ho do not li\'e o n their plots permit others to build their homes there or to cultivate them in return for half the crop. Both m en and women help cultivate vegewble gardens. Th e so il is first bro ken up with a hoe, or sometimes w ith a n ox-drawn plow borrowed from the Land Authority farm. Seeds and sta lks are planted by hand in rows, between which are shallow ditches for drainage. No chemical fertilizer is used. Preparatio n of the soil and planting usua lly take two or three days. The growing crop is given li ttle care, although weeds are often pulled out b y children to feed goa ts and chickens. In l\Iango the agregados living on the slopes of the limestone hills plant kitchen ga rdens and tobacco for home use, but the soils here limit the extent of gardening. 0

Fishing

Before sugar cane became important, Tipan depended la rgely on coastal resources, and it has a Ion~ tradition o f sea stories, legends, and omens. Some of these are still told, but they are regarded as jokes, and fisherm en are said to be liars. In Tipan t0day most fishing is done only occas ionally and then mainly on the seashore and in the mangrove swamps and only rarely on the open sea or rivers. In fact, no o ne in Ti pan village owns a fi shing boal. Fishing is primarily a man's j ob, although sometimes women and children assist in carrying the fish, preparing the line and bait, and doing other chores. Fish are ta ken with hooks and lines which they buy and nets which local men make. Nets used for sha llow water are some seven feet square and can be ha ndled by one ma n. The first fishing is ca rried o n between evening a nd midnight with the aid of narcs. It is believed that if fishermen swear or say unpleasa n t things while on the seashore, bad luck will follow. Either they will ca tch no fish or wi ll take a catfish, which is considered a bad omen, because "its body is just like that o( a woman ."

Fig. 30. Gathering sand d1tri11g the dead season in Nocord. This is 011c of the 111i11 or eco11omic activities that jnovidc a small incom e. Photo b)' Dt:la110.

Fish are weighed by an unstandardized measure of abou t fou r pounds, the arrelde. T hey a re usually sold to a middleman who peddles them in t0wn, in Bajas, or even further away. The middleman pays seventy cents for an arrelcle which he re tails a t $1 or $1.25 a pound. The people seem to have an aversion to fresh fish, for very little is sold in the community and men fi sh for home consumption only in case of extreme need for food. Fish a re considered to be nourishing, but it is feared that sometimes they m ay be poisonous. It is generally thought that fish are an aphrodisiac. ln i\Iango most fishing is done in the river from sma ll boats, which sometimes go nonh in to the Tipan district. The fish from this district are usually peddled in town b y th e fishermen. Crab Catching

The season for the edible fresh water blue-and-gray crabs, which are considered a tasty and nourishing food a nd also a sexua l stimulant, is March to August. In the evening, parties of men a nd children carry fl ares to catch these crabs in the roadside ditches, in the cane fields, and in the swamps. \ \7hen the crabs come out of their holes in search of food and are blinded by the flares, they are seized by the bare hand from behind. If scarce, they may even be caugh t by thrusting the hand d irectly into the holes. R ed crabs and salt water crabs a re caught for fi sh bait but a re not eaten, because their meat is consid erecl "sweet." Crabs are sold in bunches o( different sizes known as ensaltas. or they are ta ken home and put in barre ls fill ed with water and g-rass and are left to fauen and "cure" before they are cooked. 1

286

TH E P EOPLE Ofo' PUERT O RICO

Hauling Sand

I n Tipan, hauling beach sand for construction purposes (Figure 30) is o n e of the main sources of i~come during the d ead season. ~ f en, women, a nd cluldren work together scooping up sand from the beach a nd placing it in five gallon cans, which they carry t.o the roadside, and sell to a storekeeper who acts as middleman. The mercha nt pays fifty cen ts' worth of food at his store fo r sixty ca ns or one "cubic meter" of sand a nd resells the cubic meter for two dollars to jobbers and contractors. Stone Quarryi ng

In Mango, .lim estone is q uarried in t he hills for road a nd building repa irs. vVhole families work together, crushing the stones wi th pieces o f scrap metal so that it ca n b e sold to road contractors. Gambling

Al though gambling, that is tO say, caking cha n ces in th e illegal lo ttery, m ay not b e an "economic activity" according to a narrow definition , since it creates no goods, it is n oneth eless a very cruci a l fea tu1:e of the genera l economic pattern of Noconi. T h e factor of ch a nce-the possibility, however small, o[ winning a substa ntia l sum- is one of the few ways o( escaping the econom ica ll y d epressed condition of this group. I n the rura l districts, men gamble throughout the year in the hope o[ winning e nough cash to bu y clothes or a house or to sLarL a small business, such as peddling. During the dead season there is more gambling, since i t is on e of the few ways of obtaining money for daily expenses. 'Workers s pend considerable sums in playing bolip 11!, an illega l lottery based o n the last three numbers of the first prize of th e Puerto Rican Iouery of Wednesda y and of the D ominican R epublic lottery of Sunday. One or two da ys before the lotteries are drawn, the numbers are bought from loca l salesmen of various "bankers." Until a few years ago, the bolita, another illega l lottery, based o n three figure numbers drawn loca lly fro nt a basket-like sh aker, was popular. but bolipul has replaced it. It is considered m o re re liable since it is based o n legali.t:ed lo tteries. On Sunday morning the winn ing numbers o[ the Dominican R epublic lottery drawing are transmitted b y radio, and when the top pri1.e (el gordo) is a nno unced, La R orinqueiia, Puerto Rico's national anthem, is played. The win ners ol the Puerto Rica n lottery are no t broadcas t, hut the number of the cop pri.t:e is announced on blackboards in lottery agencies o [ the town. The p ayment of bolij)li/ prizes is genera lly assured. R ecen tly, sin ce th e insu la r legisla wre p assed an antigambli ng law, the pauern or betting o n numbers h as changed owing to fear o f the Jaw, wh ich punishes both buyer and sa lesmen. Beuing, which used to be conducted publicly, is now secret. T he cho ice of numbe rs for the bolij)lt/ is usua ll y

made according co dreams. which are interpreted in terms of three 11umbers in different combinations. T h e dreame r may sh a re his numbers wi th relatives, n eig hbors, friends, and ritual kin. I n some dreams, which are considered especially lucky, ancestors o r spiri ts a re seen. I n o thers the drea mer may see plants, animals, people, and objects. In a ll cases, each thing seen sig nifies a number. The dreamer has then to d ecide which num bers are meant a n d what seque nce they should follow. I t is sa id that t he intcrpretatin11s are based o n ;1 .. boo k ol dreams, .. but none of 1he info rmants seem ed to 01,·11 ()r to ha,·c ~ee n ;1 dr('a111 book. (Som e book sh op~ and pedcllcrs i11 Pue rto Rirn. which carry books 0 11 mag ic. s piriu1;il is111 . .-.:ii11h. prayers, a11d the l ike, sel l dream books tell ing li m,· 10 in ter pret dreams in th1 cc-digit 11t1111bcrs .) \\'li c 11 ;1 dream n 11111her loses, it is 11s11all y s;1id th;1t th e interpretatio11 of til e dream ,,·as wrong . and ('florts are mad e w corren it. Th e .. correnccl·· n 11111hers ar(' the n p layed re pe;1ted ly. somet imes lor ye ;1r~. C:c.:na i11 number combinatiom arc consid ered .. hc;1u tif ul .. (boni tos) whi le oth ers are rn11siclerccl " ug ly" ({f' 11s). The "beautiful" numbe rs are drea m ed about most often. Ha winning drea med nurnber has been shared with o the r persons, th e prize is sha red . T h e owners of bolijJ11/ "ba nks," have lowered th eir odds on the "beautiful .. numbers to protect them selves aga inst the h eavy playing of certa in num bers. Th is suggests that there is a high frequen cy of certain dreams, perhaps indicating that the con tent of dreams is culturally d e termined. The restriction on cho ice o f numbers has recently been extended to the point that th e amount o f bets has been redu ced. Th e bolip11! sell ers are loca l workers who seek an add iti o nal source of income. There is a "banker" in town a11d another in Hajas who operate throughou t th e mu ni cipal ity. The salesmen receive a p ercentage of sales from th e "banker," who also expects 1 o per cent o( the p rize from the winner. Th e ow ner of the Noconi uolipul "ba nk" is we ll Jikecl in the community, partly because h e combin es his illegal ncLivitics with d istinction in o ther fi elds. A l though his o p eration o f the bolipul "ban k " is public kn owledge, no police action has been taken against him. This is no t because h e pays "protection" no r b eca u5e h e has p olitical influence. Apparentl y h e is suflicienLly well liked to guaran tee his immunity. People also buy ticke ts for the legal lo ttery opera ted by the Puerto Rica n government, choosing numbers on t he bnsis of dreams. In the countryside this louery is less popular Lha n the boli/>11/, because, while one may win as mu ch as 500 dollars o n twenty cents, th e cha11ces of wi nning arc mu ch smaller a nd few persons as pire to su ch sums. In the bolipul, which is often ca lled t he " lottery of th e poor," a twelve-cent ticket ma y win e no ugh for immed iate needs. T h e boli/rnf seems to enjoy the support of t he wageearning popu la tio n a lso beca use it involves a p ersonal re lationship between sa lesman and player. I t is ow ned by two m en known personally in the comn111ni ty and access ibl e to the p layers.

NOCOR..\: WORKERS ON A GOVERN;>.IENT-OWNED SUGAR PLANTATION

Manufacture and Sale of Illegal Rum

Some p eople distill rum on a small scale in homemade stills which a re hidden in the countryside. This rum is known in Nocod as romo, caiia, caiiita, jJitri11rhe, or trasj;aso. and distillers are known as romeros. The ro111eros buy one or two drums of molasses in th e mill. ostensibly for cattle feed. T hey ferment it with yeast, distill it, and sell it raw and u11aged. The ro1111:ros net about twelve dollars a week. So11w distillers se ll ruin in their homes by the drink or by the bottle, hut usually L11c)· sell it through local liootlcgµ;crs. Lnc:tl di~tri l)lltnrs :idd "·ace r to the drink, thcrcb\·• m;1ki1w lin: dollars· 1nofit ]Jer Q:a llon, which t'l ...._, thev ~el l in a \\·eek. In the dead season the number of imotlc<.nre rs increases. Illeiral rum is chea1)er than \"In \, the legal product. .-\ six-ou nce bottle of the cheapest lega l hr;1nd. known loctlly :is a "Shirley Temple," cost t\1·c1Hy-fi\ e cents in '!).J~J. \rhile the same amount of i I lc<r;tl ru 111 cost t \1·en t v cents. In the coun tryside the lo~~tl prndun is prdct'. red lO legal rum. lt is said that it does not produce a hangover and that it is the drink of the poo r. People generally disapprove o( drunkards, since they tend LO lose control of themse lves. At h arvest time some men get drunk on Saturdays. :\Ien usually drink while gambling and during fiestas. A few women, especially older ones, drink habitually. They claim that women who work in the sugar ca ne fields develop pains in the navel if they do not drink ca11ita. Everyone in the community knows who makes and distributes rum and where the stills are located. T he ir identity is kept secret from outs iders, particularly from people of a high er class. Outsiders are s uspected of being pla in-clothes policemen looking for hidden Fi[!.. -:;r. I-Jom e of sugar worl:ers of Ti/Jan by the Atlantic ocean. The serra ted roof anglrs are characteristic of the a re a. Photo by Delano.

Fig. p . Home of Ti/Ja11 sugar worhe rs. Photo by D elano.

stills. \Vhen the police jeep cruises through the countryside, children and ad ults spread the word so that the romeros and dealers may hide their rum. The latter are sometimes reported to th e police by individuals with whom they have had differences. ln self-protection, romeros and d ealers are carefu l to avoid making enemies. STANDARD OF LIVING

l\lost of the earnings of a cane worker are spent a few hours after he h as been paid, for they seldom cover more than food and other immediate necessities. The stand a rd of living of the Nocoran workers is only s lig htly above subsistence during h arvest. In the dead season, the problem of making ends meet increases, and many families often go without food. Housing

l\Iost sugar workers ovm their homes. In Tipan, the houses are made o( reeds and have thatched roo[s. (Figures ~p. 32) \ 1Vorkers' houses usually consist of one or two rooms with a lean-to kitchen attached. The partitions separati ng the rooms of the house are made or sack cloth, usually decorated with pieces of old newspapers and magazines. l\lost thatched houses in Tipan have dirt floors, but a platform is built for the bed or hammock. People do not sleep directly on the Jloor because the earth is "cold" and thought to cause illness. i\foreover, when it rains, water seeps into the house. The hard, earthen floors are swept often and ke pt clean. Houses are built through the co·operative labor o( neighbors and friends or by hired labor. Material (or a reetl and thatch house is obtained in the mangrove swamp. The reeds. known as enens, are c ut. dried, and tied in bundles with wire. These bundles are

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THE PEOPLE OF PUERTO RICO

used for the ou ter walls, and each is tied with w ire to the wooden house frame . The roof is made o f a plant called cortadera, which is pressed into a thatch seven to ten inches thick. The roof thatch is generally trimmed at the edges so that it won' t blow off. In r ecent years cardboard h as replaced reed for walls, although thatch roofs are still used. It is said that such roofs last twenty years. New frame houses in Tipan are generally owned by veterans, government employees, and merchants. }dost of these have a Jiving room, a dining room, one or two sleep ing rooms, and a kitchen. The doors and windows in a ll houses are tightly closed at night by a transverse beam. Ventilation is through spaces between the roof and the walls. In Tipan and in Mango, which lack electricity, very few famil ies own battery radios, bu t i n Nocora p ractically every middle-class family owns one. Candlelight and homemade a nd imported kerosene lamps are used to light houses. In the i 948 political campaign, when Tipan was offered electricity, some people protested that they did not want to pay for the service, and others, who owned reed and tha tch houses, feared their houses would burn if electricity were installed. A public water supply was introduced r ecently both in T ipan and in :Mango, but there are no pumps or running water in the homes of the sugar workers. ·water is obtained from public fa ucets an<l brought home b y children or adults. Before this service was installed, Tipan had an open well , whi le Mango had used river water for drink ing and other household purposes. The people of Mango still wash clothes an<l bathe themselves an<l their animals in the r iver. For washing clothes a bin (petaca) is made out of a piece of corrugated iron with three sides folded and one side open. This bin is inclined on the floor; the closed encl is used to hold the clothes and the extended sheet for rubbing an<l beating the dirtier clothes. Only a few households own such b ins, and women borrow them from friend s who have them. A stove is needed for cooking but not for heating. It may consist simply of a raised wooden platform with stones and cinders to support the cooking utensils or it may be made out of a kerosene can. During the harvest season, charcoal which must be purchased is used instead of kind ling. Some homes, especially those of vetera ns, have rwo-burner kerosene stoves. The inventory o[ kitchen utensils usua lly consists o( old tin cans, a heavy iron kettle, one or two pots, a frying pan, some coconut shells, and a few cups or glasses. T hese are readily loaned to neighbors. Most houses in Mango have no latrines. but T ipa n homes have bee n provided b y the Puerto Rican government under its War Emergency Pla n wi th an aluminum latrine on a cement platform. Since few houses have a specia l room f.or bathing, the kitchen usually serves this purpose. Bathing water is put in ca ns and st0re-bough t basins. All waste water is drained or thrown into the yard. Town fami lies with a higher income usually own

factory-made fu rnitu re, but r ural lower-class houses are equipped only with a few homemade pieces. These usually include a hamrnock made of o ne or two white sugar sacks, a cot o r a small bed bought for two or three dollars (known as "step-on-and-run" beds, pisicorre), box-shaped crad les kn own as coys, whi ch are hung li ke hammocks, a table, and one or two benches. A tru nk or card board boxes for storing clothes are kept under the bed. Groceries a nd small articles a re p laced on an e levated shelf. Food and Diet

Most of the food is importC'd frn111 the U11i1ecl States or other parts or the i~la11d and bo ug lll in local stores. It consumes a considerable: p:1n of th <: earnings of the sugar workers. "One "·orks lor the g rocers," they say in Tipa11 a 11cl ;\ lango. Th e record of ea rni11RS and expenses kept by .Jose Rios of Tipan , for insta11ce, shows that in 19-17-.J~ he had an i11 c:omc of s ~71.05 Of Which he spent s~:)~ .(io OJ I groceries. Prices in the r u ral districts arc generally hig her than those in town. ;\l ost purchases a re made o n credit, especially du:·ing harves t. During the dead season, credit is discontinued for all who do not have some kind of job or income. Grocers in Tipan claimed that unemp loyed who received cred it during the d ea d season usua lly fa iled to pay their d eb ts once they resumed work. Debtors seek new creditors when their accou n t is closed at one store. In the past few years, severa l grocers h ave gone bankrupt in Tipan . T he extension of credit in terms of expected income may serve to reduce risks of loss incurred by the merchants, b ut in general their prices are so hig h that they can continue operating at a p rofit in spite of the risks in volved in the cred it patterns. Even merchants who have gone bankrupt often continue operating small stores by registering them in another person's name. Tipan grocers told us that their average weekly sales were less than one hundred dollars during the harvest and less than fif teen dollars d uring the dead season. The sugar workers expressed resentment against the policies of the grocery stores, compla ining of the high prices, the inaccuracy of weights and measures, and the storekeepers' padding o f their accounts. Du ri ng the 1949 harvest, several families in Tipan started to <lo their weekly shopp ing in town in the Land Authority co-operative store, but they purchased odds and ends n eeded each day in the rural stores. Food h abits are determ ined not o nly b y purchasing power but by cu l tural tradition, w hich reflects certa in beliefs of the H ispanic heritage. I t is thought that a wa rm mea l is healthful, w hile cold and uncooked food lacks nourishment and is likely to cause illness. Particular foods are classed as "hot" and "cold" wi th reference to their effect. The classification has nothing to do with the tempera ture of the food. }'or instance, sweet po tatoes, dry codfish, and fish are "cold," while chocolate, cocoa, and lard are "hot." The daily diet, however, is little affected by these beliefs, except in case of illness. A person suffering a stomach-ache, for i nsta nce, avoids "hot" food.

NOCORA: WORKERS ON A GOVER1' '.\1E1'T-OW:>:ED SUGAR PLANTATION

During the harvest Lhe diet is comparatively good, although not necessarily adequate. The diet of the workers in the fie ld has been described. Supper, eaten at home, genera lly consists o( rice and beans followed by black coffee. During the dead season people eat less and cheaper food. Some families sell chickens and eggs to buy tropica l vegetab les, root crops, or other items produced in Pu erto Rico. In Tipan the garden plots yield several crops each year. During the dead season it is possible Lo catch crabs and fish. At this time, when the people ca1111ot bu y rice, beans, dried codfish, and other imported loods, crushed almonds, boiled crabs, soups, coconuts, and fish make up the basic diet. Too ol tc11 a lamily has no food. It generally J11;111ages LO sun·i,·e. howeve r, because at such times the basic paw.: rn o[ sharing induces relatives, neighbors, and ritual kin to help o ut.

SOCIAL STRUCTU RE

The number and kinds of sociocultural groups in Nocod are somewhat greater than in Caiiamelar. This is explainable by differences in the cultural historical backgrounds rather than by the factor of the Land Authority. 'Vhereas Caiiamelar has a fairly homogeneous class of wage laborers a nd a small number of managers from the outside, Nocora has town and rural groups, landless wnge earners, ;ind small and medium farmers, each with a somewhat distinctive subculture or way of life and each with a different place in the status system. 'Vhile our principal interest is the rural workers of Nocod, the relationship o( this group to the other segments of society requires a brief historical review of the sever:i l modifications o( the social structure that occurred during the principal periods of economic and politica l change. THE HISTORY OF LOCAL CLASSES

The ownership and control of land and wealth have been of basic importance in the development of Nocon't's socioeconomic classes. \Ve have seen that in the nineteenth century Nocod was basica lly a commu nity of haciendas which were owned by individuals who had acquired their land either through gra nts or by purchase. The haciendas "·ere worked both by slaves and free, landless laborers. " 'nge labor eventually supplanted slave labor. The workers depended on the ha cienda owners not on ly for their livelihood but also for assistance in many personal ways, while the latter could call on th eir workers at a ny time for farm labor ;incl for various services. The laborers received such low wages that accumulation of wealth or property was practically imposs ible. and their socioeconomic status was fixed ra ther rigidly. The political pattern o( th is period rein lorced the rigid class differentiation, since many laws restricted the freedom of labor and th e landlords held politicn l as well as economic power. The traditional value o[ social status

289

also served to maintain the class system. l\Iost of the haccndados were Spaniards, many bearing titles of nobility received from the Crown. Marriages between these families consolidated and perpetuated wealth and power. The social importance of descent began to decline in the late nineteenth century, ho\\·ever, when family wealth alone could not meet the capital requirements oE larger and more efficien t sugar production units. ·w hile some families increased their power and insured its continuance through becorning stock holders in the Nocori corporation that began to supersede the haciendas, others lost their fortunes and eventually their status. l\Iany of the liacenclados sold to the corporation, moved out o( the community, and educated their children for professional and city life. The acquisition of sugar lands by the Land Authority accelerated the disintegration o( the landed gentry, and today this group has little importance in Nocora. i\Ieanwhile, as we have seen, small landowners also sold to the Nocora corporation and others later sold to the L and Authority. '"' hile many small and medium owners continue to plant sugar today, those who gave up their lands and the impoverished descendants of the former wealthy land lords entered new occupations that were now appearing. The corporation and the Land Authority needed managers, technicians, administrators, and clerks as well as a large number of mill and field laborers, while expanding business and other services in the town created opportunities for merchants, construction personnel, teachers, and the like. l n Car1amelar, most of the fun ctions of a small town are carried out by the corporation. In Nocora the town is made up o( a large number of persons in private business as well as L and Authority employees. The changing nature of the town created opportunities for social and economic advancement. The expansion of commercial agriculture after World \Var I had enabled some merchants to acquire considerable "·ealth and to invest in real estate. In some cases, peddlers became storekeepers in the town. Today certain o( the merchants are among the richest members of the community, although most of them are in a much lower income group, and store keepers and peddlers in the rural areas bare ly make a living. Despite the disintegration of the form er !1acendado clnss and the occasional economic advancement of persons who were formerly poor, wealth has tended to remain in the same families. The pri ncipal changes in the differentiation o[ these groups are those which have followed the development o[ town [unctions and services. \7hile !:ind was coming increasingly under the control o( the corporation and later the Land Authority, the class of wage laborers, which was the principal subject o( o.ur research, became very much larger. It was. drawn (rom severa l sources: former employees on haciendas and the corporation, dispossessed land owners, and migra n ts who were attracted from regions o( unemployment by the opportunity to work. It is '

1

290

THE PEOPLE OF PUERTO RICO

affected the communily structure. \fany you11g men from the towns and rural districts were drafted or volunteered for military service in the Unilcd Slales Army. The war itself crea ted many n ew job opporlllnities. The lower-m iddle class, which was formerly composed o f town mill workers, sma ll - and middleclass businessm en, and clerks, expanded with the rise o( these new occupational groups. After the THE CONTEMPORARY CLASS STRUCTURE war, most vetera ns who came back to the community The hierarchy of subcultures in the commun ity at went to school under the G.J. BiII of Rights. Some the present time is (undamentally related LO recent went to the St;1tc:s I<> work and sent 111011 cy I<> their changes in the productive system. The agra ria n re- families: others b ecame sm;dl e11trepre11e11r-.. c-.peci:dly form altered the class strucwre of !\ocora, especially in the tran:.portation hmi11c:..,-;. operating public jitne~s (!nibliros) or true k-.. :\011 \Ctcra ns also 111igra1nl 10 the at the cop. Since the landed aristocracy has been des troyed, the ranking segment today in terms o( States, som etimc·s n .: 1ur11ing :titer ;1 le\,. year' with wealth and prestige is actually a n u pper-midclle class. sufficient savings Io .'>l:t rt a lw si nc~s. .\I osl ol I hem bought a ca r \\'hicl! they operated :1s a /nililico. OpThis class, however, d oes not control the prin cipal means of production, which belong to the govern- portunities for >rn 111g men \\'itlt rnil y a slll:tl l s11m were, hcrn·c:,cr. li111it c:cl. I.and h:id bcco1nc un;l\·:ti lment. able. The est;1 bl i-.ltcd m en h;111ls had :ii re;1 cl y ex pa nclccl The Upper-Middle Class to ca p acity, :111d '>lorckce pi11g could 11ot hc staned The 1and110lders, managers, and technicians who with a small im·c..,u11c:11t. I 11 Ian. during thc la-.t le:\\· formerly constituted th e loca l upper class in Nocor:I years several small hu.,ines!>men in the rnral di-.1rins have been replaced by government officials who live and one middle busi 11 c:s~lllan in LO\\'ll ha,·c gone hankin the community but who have only limited social ru pt. contact with members of o ther occupational groups. The ideal o( th e veterans is to avoid manual labor These officials are compara ble to the former upper in the sugar fields. A qu estion naire given w veterans class insofar as they represent political and economic attending schoo l und er the G.I. Rill of Rig h ts revea led power. They live in the houses occupied by th eir that none who went beyond the seventh g rad e wanted predecessors, they are the highest paid employees in jobs requiring heavy labor after they finished school. the community, and they share many of the oppor- They hoped to work in offices or as clerks in the tunities and privileges of earlier managers and owners. mill, to migrate lO the Un ited States, or to become Unlike the workers and farm administrators, h owever, owners of public cabs UJ1iblicos) or sma ll grocery they do not share in the profit from the lands and the stores. mill. In addition to the G.I. Bill of Rights, which proSome power and preslige is also held in the com- vided schooling and maintenance for veterans, edumunity by about ten fairly well-to-do famili es in cational faci li ties in the community h ave been exprivate business, such as the large merchants who a lso panded through the efforts of the Puerto Rkan govhave investments in land and real estate, the part-lime ernment. Jn the mu11icipio there are more than 500 professionals and merchants, and the families in which students between the seventh grade and the fourth three or four persons are salaried. year of high sch ool. I n questionnaires g iven to more Tipan has severa l families who own farms of twelve than 50 per cent or these students, it was found thal, to over ioo acres. Some of those with less land derive like the vetera ns, none planned to work in the cane additional income from professions or stores, so lhal fields. Significantl y, the boys a n swered that they wished their total income equals that of some of the larger to continue higher education and LO become prolandholders. i\Iango has o n e large absentee landholder. fess iona Is, mi II or office workers, fni blico ow 11ers and All these farmers raise cash crops, especially sugar, cha uffeurs, professional baseball players, o r soldiers, and hire labor to operate lheir farms. Jn income anti or that they wanted to migrate to the Un ited States. prestige they are comparab le to the upper-middle The girls generally wa11tcd to be school teachers, nurses, class of the town. Th ese fa milies are the ricos, ancl or dressmakers. 011c who aspired to become a dressworkers refer to them usually as "the corporalio11." maker sa id she would go to a "school (acode111ia) for Some members or this class arc newly rich , having dressmakers." The families of these swclents come made their way b y slow accumulation o[ weallh, but predominantly lrom the to\\·n and its ouLskirts and mosl of them inherited the ir wealth. This class also from the highland rural districts. They are chiefly includes a few p ersons who do not own property but, lower-middle class, although some are of a higher owing lo education or political activity, hold im- class. Very few came from the rur<1l wage-earning popponam government positions. ulation. The ex pans ion or this class depends upo11 job opThe Lower-Middle Class porwnities over \.Vhicl1 th ey have no control. Th e pro· The ex pansion o[ serv ices of the Puerto R ican ductive arrangeme nts o[ t:hc community rn1111ot progovern ment during and since \Vorld vVa1- Il abo vid e outlets whiC'h will satisfy their expcn;1tions and

this laboring class that is comparable to the workers of Caiiamelar. They differ from those of Caiiamelar largely in the recency of their employment by haciendas and by the corporation, in the fact that many own a little land, and in their incomplete conversion into a homogeneous, consolidated class.

NOCORA: WORKERS ON A GO\'ERN c'\'fEl\T -OWNED SUGAR PLANTATION

291

make use of the ir training. They seem destined, therefore, to suffer disappointment and conllict unless they can go elsewhere. In fact, a trend in the opposite direction has already set in. i\Iost veterans have completed, or are completing, their G.I. Bill of Rights education benefits, and in the rural districts many of them have already had to sell some of their possessions and go back tO work in th ~ cane fields as unskilled wage earners. i\feanwhile, the modernization o f the mill machinery in rece nt years has begun to displace both unskill ed and skilled workers.

prenatal care al tho ugh she may ta ke precautions, especially regarding food, that a re advised by her mother, a midwife, a person of recognized curative power, or a friend. The couple usually has its first child within a year. The ch ildren, whether legally recog nized or not, tend to use their mother's last name as their own. Some couples marry lega lly after having children, or recognize their children lega lly " to avoid trouble with the government in case o ( being drafted by the army."

The Lower Class: Development Toward a Proletariat

Formerly, m ost children were born at home, but today the mother goes to the hospital if it is her first child, if she desires post-partum sterilization, or if she has difficulties in labor. Some people believe that if the mother's belly is rounded the child will b e a girl and if more conical it will be a boy. Parents express little preference regarding the sex of the child. \1\Then a chi ld is born at home, the mother is a ttended by an unlicensed midwife, her own mother, or a female (riend . She is massaged and/ or given a soap enema to induce labor. Few efforts are made to alleviate labor pains. \ Vithin five clays or less, the mother is up doi ng housework, a lthough relatives and neighbors help her throughout the following fortyday period. For about two years the b aby is nursed unless the mother becomes pregnant again. He is given the breast whenever he cries or the mother feels that she has too mu ch milk. In addition, he is sometimes given orange leaf tea or laultia leaf tea with sugar. The infant lies in his cradle most o[ the time, cared for b y h is mother and older sisters and largely ignored b y his father. H e is covered with clean rags and dressed in handmade clothes. At the age of fi ve or six months the baby is feel mashed vege tables, rice, beans, and bread moistened with milk or water. H e now spends many hours on the floor, eating and sleepi ng. Baby boys are usually naked, or wear a waist-length sh irt, whereas g irls have their genitals as well as the upper portions of their bodies covered. The mascu lini ty of the boy child is a ma tter of considerable interest, and parents and friends may play with the boy's genitals until h e is around seven years old. At one year the child eats the same food as adults, except for "hard" food, such as fried or smoked cocllish. Although served on tin or enamel plates placed on the floor, and provided a spoon, h e is left to find out for himself how to use the spoon, a matter that may require several years. A t two the child is taken b y an older sibling to the government-sponsored milk station where he receives milk, cr ackers, prunes, cheese a nd o ther food. Breast feeding ordinarily is stopped by this time, since it is said that milk b elongs to an expected new baby and will make the older ch ild sick.

The majority or Nornrans are rural landless wage earners "·ho. :1s \\'C have seen, find employment only lor a re\\' lll<>tllh~ during the cane harvest when they \l'ork l.\1·0 or three da ys :r \1·cck for S2 .:?0 to $2.75 a day. The proponinnal profits derived from the farms are sm:dl but \\'elcolllc. T his is the most stable class in the con1n1t111it v because it has the least chance for mobility. Tire \1·<;rkers cam barely enough for their subsiste nce and d epend on odd jobs and minor pursuits dming the dead season. Gambling in the illegal lottery is a means of '"inning a stake for an otherwise difficult goal . such as building a house. Class consciousness and solidarity are expressed by the members of the lower class by identifying themselves as "the poor" (el /Jobre), "the worker" (el obrero, e l trnbajador), "labor" (el lrabajo), "the peons" (los /J eanes), and so forth. 1\fany town and city dwellers ca ll the suga r workers jibaros, or rural folk, but the workers themselves regard this term as an insult. They w ill apply it to highland dwellers and to less proletarianized agricultural workers o[ the town, whom they also contemptuously call vayao.s. The sugar workers express thei r opinion of the managing class by referring to it as "capitalists" (el capital),. "the corporation" or "the compa ny," which they believe to be against the "suffering worker" (el tmbajador sufriclo). Members o[ this class are very conscious of racial characteristics, especially sk in color, to which they frequen tly refer. But within their class, color differe nces do not usually form the basis for discrimination. Between classes, color is associated with status more than with acwal physical characteristics. Upper-class persons are usually d escr ibed as "white" and lowerclass as "Negro," whatever their real color.

KINSHIP AND THE FAMILY CHILD REARING Pregnancy

A pregnant woman carries on her tasks as usual, although in later months her mother and husband help her in heavier work, such as carrying water. She d evelops cravings (rrntojos), especially for certain foods, and t(lkes advantage o( her condition. It is said that if cravings are not s~rtisfiecl she may lose her chi~d. The expectant mother seldom goes to the hosp1ta l for

Childbirth and Infancy

Childhood

A two-year-old plays with improv ised toys and imitates his parents. A boy begins to follow his father

292

THE PEOPLE OF PUERTO RICO

around. Children of both sexes help around the home, fetching water in the company of elders and doing other minor chores. Toilet training is not enforced. T wo-year-old children inform their p arents or older siblings of their needs, a practice that continues several years longer. A difficulty is that in the frequent absence of a latrine, an elder must te ll the child where to go. The death of a young child occasions somewhat m ixed emotions. If the child is very young and if there are many other children, grief is not so great. Moreover, it is mitigated by a night of mourning, or a wake (fl,or6n or maquine), which is attended by friends, neighbors, and ritual kin. The bereaved pa rents provide food a nd liquor for a n ight of music and folk songs. Since the soul of a baptized child is said to be pure, and to become an angel after death, the maquine is sometimes explained as a commemoration of the admittance of an angel into h eaven. Paren ts, however, may refuse to hold wakes on the gro unds that it increases their grief. Young children are commonly disciplined through fear. If they do not go to sleep a t sundown or if they go out after dark or do something else dangerous, they are threatened that the bogey ma n will come, that an old ma n will carry them off in a bag, or that they will be harmed by dogs, spirits, and ghosts. As a joke, boys may be threatened with castratio n. At five or six, chi ldren are sufficiently independent to take such respons ibili ties as going alone to the store. Siblings now play and take walks together and sleep in the same bed. Quarreling is rare. When at eight or nine they become more aware of sex (ma licia), boys and gi rls are somewhat more segregated. A child is taught not o nly the tasks appropriate to his sex but how to behave toward other people, especially toward members of his family. He is taught loyalty to a ll bis immedia te fami ly, and he is expected to confide in his parents, especially his mothe r. He is instructed in proper and conventional behavior toward persons o( different roles and statuses in the society (respeto, "respect," and verguenza, "shame"). Children are reprimanded when they do wrong, or else the behavior of another child is held up to them as a model of proper or improper behavior. They are seldom punished physically. Younger children are supposed to obey and respect the ir older sibl ings, bu t th e authority of the mother is decisive when children are concerned. The father, although the final authority on a ll else, consults the mother regarding the children. Youth

A(ter the age o( eight or nine, boys and g irls tend to associate excl usively with their own sex. Boys who play with girls are teased and called "little women" (mujercitas), while girls who play with boys are called tomboys (amacluis). Chi ldren of this age have comparatively little time for play, however, because boys carry water, care for the livestock, and carry meals to the field hands, whi le girls help their mothers cook,

care for younger children, wash dishes, iron, and gather kindling. Maturity, or capacidad, is marked less by age as such than evidence of responsibility and proper behavior toward other persons. Presumptuous children who gossip and address their elders in fami lia r terms are called presentados or malcriados ("badly reared"). Childre n address their parents by the ir given names. The form of respect, don or doiia, is reserved for members of a higher class. A neighbor or friend usually refers to a youngster as the "child of so-and-so," especially designat ing the mother, and rarely uses his persona l nam e. Chi ldren learn skills through praCLica l work. (;iris are taugh t needlework, for exa mple, by their fri ends and mothers and sometimes by 4-H Club leaders. \!\Tome n, especia ll y those who have not married or have a lread y reared families, may supplement the family income by doing needlework at home. Boys learn to do carpentering, thatch roofs and houses, and do other ma nua l lracles from prnfess io11:1ls "·ho train them in exchange for their assistance. Such skills, h owever, provide only a minor supplement to wages from work in sugar prod ucing. ATTITUDES TOWARD SEX

Among persons of the same sex, role, and status, sex is discussed often and freely, and jokes tend to cen ter around sex. \ Vh ile sexual potency is something of a cu lturally prescribed masculine ideal, a cer tain casualness in relating one's exploits is required, for boasting is r idiculed. Discussion of sex ·with persons other than close friends is considered a form o( disrespect (falla de respeto). Similarly, children must not talk or joke about sex in the presence of a dul ts lest they be considered badly reared . The conve ntio nal bars to sex talk are broken down mainly in the case o( compadres and very o ld people. Various sex ua l aberrations and masturbation were reported among young boys, a nd it was said that adolescen ts a nd young unmarried men in Tipa n who had no t had heterosexual relations tended tO gather together in the fie lds, where they found immediate outlets while relating fa ntasies about certain girls to whom they actually did no more than write notes. These features raise problems of sex psychology th at cannot be answered within the frame of reference of the presen t approach, and require a special paper. Sexual behavior a nd attitudes in part reflect the Hispanic heritage and in part the limi ted means of a lowly pa id laboring class. Prostitution is known, a nd migra nt prostitu tes who come during the harvest season, as well as two or three local women who are occas io na lly available, a re patronized mostly by unmarried men. M arried workers seemed to be fairly faithful to the ir spouses. If a woman is unfaithfu l, the husband may pub licly expose and threaten her and h er lover, but in fi de lity seldom leads to separation. A strong d eterrent to such exposure is fea r of ridicule, for the husband may be called a cuckold (cabr6n) or

NOCOR,\: WOR KERS Ok'\ A GO\'ERNl\ IEi'\T-OW NED SUGAR PLA~TATION

"horned-one" (co nni). Although often nursing a deep rcsemment abo ut his wife's infidelity and perhaps expressing it when drunk, a husband may normally remark, "It is not a ba r of soap which d issolves in use." Ye t premarita l virginity and marital fidelity are d esirable in a woma n. A woman is judged by her general qualities more than by her sex behavior. Both men and women frequently spea k admiring ly of o ne o f the Tipan prostitu tes as a ··good, clean, co-operative and neighborly wornan who kno ws ho w to read , sew, and cook." l\Ien condemn women nwre readil y for having a "long" to ng ue (lr• 11g11ilarw1) L11a t is. fo r talking too much, tha n for loose scxua I be ha \·ior. Co ntraceptives arc generally known, but they are evidentl y employed less to reduce the number of legitimate children o r even to avoid unwanted children amo ng prostitutes a nd married women having illicit a ffa irs tha n to preven t pregnancy in an affair between a young man and his fi ancee, tha t is, between 11m•ins. Jn man y cases. women have themselves sterifo cd by surg ical means, in a hospital. l\ lcchanical abortions arc disapproved and are uncommo n, partly because it is tho ug ht tha t the soul of a n a borted child rema ins o n earth . In the case of surgica l or mechanica l abortions, there is concern for the wonrnn and fear of the criminal law aga inst abortio nists. Abortions induced b y patent medicines, however, carry less risk a nd seem to be fairly common. MARRIAGE

Marriage among the farm workers in Nocora is often consensual. As between civil or r eligious marriages, there is a preferencc for the former over the la tter. Co nsensual unions arc often perman en t, a ltho ugh readily broken, and both spouses as well as the community a ccept such unions as norm al. Younger peo ple, however, tend to prefer civil marri age. A young ma n who earns a living is expected to marry. It is said that he sho uld have a wife in order to relieve his mo ther from having to keep ho use and take care of him. The ideal of a wife, therefore, stresses efficiency as a housekeeper and a good mother rather than beauty or sex ap peal. Engagement and courtship differ somewhat in the lower a nd middle classes, members o f the latter ascribing more importance to their own social conventions. T hey consider that an engagement which has been arranged by form al consent of the parents requires that the couple visit together only in the g irl's ho me and tha t they be chaperoned by a sister or fema le friend o( the g irl if they go out. This kind of courtship, which approximates the ideal of the Hispanic tradition, carries the understanding that the couple will eventually wed , tha t the young ma n w ill meanwhile rema in chaste, and that the g irl sha ll be a virgin. T he conditio ns o f a laboring class, however, d o not a lways m ake this cultural ideal possible or desireable in the lives of the people. Virginity is actually not a very importa nt considera tion for marriage. And,

293

since so many marriages are consensual unions, meaning simply that a couple decides to live together, the couple elopes to a place outside the community instead o f having a wedding ceremon y. This may deeply offend the girl's fa mily if they ascribe importance to holding a civil or religious wed d ing in the ir home and desire the dignity and status that may accrue to them from it. In practice, however, the couple usually re turn a few d ays la ter, staying first a t the boy's home until the g irl's family ca lms clown. A fter this, her fa mily h elp them build a house nearby. Sometimes a consensual union m ay be follow ed by a legal ceremony, especia lly when the ma n is a \ Vorld \Var II veteran o r has some other steady source of income. ln such cases the ceremony often is requested by the girl's p arents. O ccasionally, w hen the boy docs not wish to marry the girl legally, her parents request the mayor, political boss, or justice o( the peace to force a legal union. The general pa ttern u nderlying consensual unions, civil m arriages, a nd church weddings seems to be tha t persons o[ the lower income groups who own no property and have few prospects for advancement are content with consensua l a lliances, even though they prefer the m ore orthodox and p restigeful kinds o f marriage. \ '\There young men have a fa irly secure income and a re thereby classifiable in a slightly higher sociocultural class, civil or religious marriages are more commo n. In the lower class, a good husband p rovides for his wife, stays with her a t nigh t, does not bea t her, a nd helps her in such tasks as carrying wa ter, kind ling for the stove, and groceries. A good wife is quiet, loyal, mends and washes her husba nd's clothes, cooks, is clean, and knows how to read. This contrasts with the ideal and actua l behavior of wives in the m iddle classes, where the wife is expected to be su b m issive and quie t a nd to do all the househo ld chores witho ut help from her husband. A married couple is not supposed to be seen ma king love or demonstrating affectio n in public. \ Vives may speak to other men in the street witho ut arousing suspicio n, jealousy, or criticism. The rural lower-class wife has considerable authority in the househo ld . She is considered to be the owner of the house, a nd she makes decisions concerni ng her child ren. She is not supposed, however, to show ofE h er a u thority in the presence o f other p eople. Family quarrels were m ore frequ ent in the dead season than during the harvest. Most involved accusations that o ne or the o ther partner had not done eno ugh to meet household needs. A m arr ied son is not expected to a id o r support his parents unless he is better off than they, although a single son living at ho me contributes to its upkeep. Parents endeavor to g ive the ir child ren as much as ~hey ca_n, in cl udi~g ·:the ir own being" (su propio ser). [or which the ch tld ts expected to show his grati tude. After m arriage, a woman genera lly iuaintains close contact with her m o ther and other members of her mother's household, a nd she pre fers to settle n ear her

294

THE PEOPLE OF P UERTO RICO

mother. As a rule, mother and daughter help each other in case o[ need and frequently exchange food. The daughter's husband also establish es a warm relationship with his mother-in-law. He wi ll visit his own mother, usually by himseH, but seldom contributes to h er support. Sh e may resent h er son's behavior toward her and criticize him for n eglect. She also com· plains of the treatment he receives from his wife and his mother-in-l aw. A woman may say th at her married son is "not the same any more," referring to his p reference for his in-laws on the wife's side. THE FAMILY UNIT

The basic fam ily unit is the nuclear g ro up: a woman, her husband, and her unmarried children. ln recent years family size has decreased, and, wh ile all couples desired children, two or three is the preferred number. Sterilization of w ives is openly advocated after two or three children are born to the famil y. Families with more t ha n four or live children com· plain of the burden placed on the parents. In former times, when children were an essential part of the wage earning labor force, they contributed to t h e sup· port o[ the household more than at present. You ng children still do some work, but employment opportunities for children are ver y l im•ted, and they are n o t u sually hired as wage ea rners. Both parents genera lly contri bu te to the support o( the househ o ld. During the dead season , women do some work in the fie lds, take in washing and sometimes sell rum. P art-time needlework done in the home yields a very small income to a few unm arried g irls and housewives. There are no needl ework factories (talleres) in Nocora, and <luring the time of our research, the n eedlework had to be obta ined from agencies in neig hboring municipaliti es. T he strongly matr ilineal n a ture of the fam il y is exp ressed in the saying that the h o useh old a nd the children belong to the wife. "Father can be any man, but there is on ly one mother." Both in Tip;rn and !vla u 140 1110!->L olde r 1n;1rried wnm t: p IFLVC hncl <It lea rn two spouses, althoug h conjugal unions are not n eces· sarily uns rnblc . Th e ronti1111 i1 y o f Lli c fam il y i" 111 n i11 · piin cd thr0t1gh Il ic womc11 1 wll o in case of scparalion or widowhood ta ke care o f their llnmarriecl children . A man i~ nol c.: 1"il i<.:iLed fur lai l i11g LO contribute LO Lhe support of a child by a former wife, b ut a woman who aba ndons he r children is severe ly censored . T h e close Li es bcLw ecn a wournn a nd her children lend b oth emotiona l and econom ic sta bi! i ty to the h ousehold. The bond between the father a nd children is m uch we;:ake r, a llh o ugll lhc l"aLher is <.:xpccLed to co 11tribu te a portion o f his wages to support of th e home. Obligatio ns to kin b eyond the immediate fam ily arc L<.: nu o us. Relationships with th e grandparents and gn111clch il<lrc11 arc k11o w11 0 11 both sides of th e fam ily, but relatives o u tside the nuclear family need be accorded no more than soc ial recogn ition . In order to avoid any possibl e resp onsibili ty, as for exam ple re·

garding kinsfolk who have moved away or who are poor a nd mig ht ask h elp, relatives may be d eliberately ignored . As between affinal relatives, th e strongest ties are between the mother-in-law and son-in-law, which are an aspect of t he strong mother·daughter relationship and the matrilineal family. O t her affinal relatives are n o t cons idered essential members o[ the fami ly. Family Property and Inheritance

The la nd less ag ricultural ,,·orke rs have fc\\" posses· sions that arc not "consumpLio11 goods." T h e ir property is gen erall y limited to .-,ucli p ersonal be long ings as clothes . work too ls. u1.c1bib. and a le \\' ho uscl)() ld items. Inheri tance therelorc is ;1 minor prob lem. and the su r vi,·ing spou se disposc:s o l the property as h e wishes. RITUAL KINSHIP

Ritual kinship r<.:la tio ns h;t\'C." r ompe11s;1ted in certain respects fo r the "·caknes... o f e xte nded co11 · sang uinal a nd a llinal relations. \l ost peopl e: in Tipan and ,\lango ha\'e en tered into formal, ritual kinship relations with a number ol pe rsons ou tsid e their families. Ritual kinship creates two kinds of close ties: first, that between the godparent and the godchild (aliijado-fJadrino); second, that between the parents and the godparen ts (co111/1nd re) . Although the original basis for these rel a tionships was religious, ritual is not now always used. Two persons may be· come "volun tary co-parents," o r cotn/Jadres d e v olun · I.ad, by mutual agreement. This kind of bond. is not recognized by the Cathol ic church . The more orthodox form o( co-parenthood, compadraje, b inds the co· paren ts as well as the child to one another in a close relationshi p which is consummated in church r itual, usually baptism. The social importance of the co· parent relationshi p is much greater than that o f the godparent·godchi ld relationship. A godparent may b e content to appear a t h is godchild 's wedding a nd sig n as witness to th e ceremony. Th e functional importance or rittlil l k ill:>hip rnn :iillf.:.l of Lll C liOCiologirn l I iCI! il es ta bl ishes between persons o [ the same gen eration and wilhin th e s an1 c c 1ilLL1r:d silualio n . Voluntary Co-Parents

Two persons become voluntary co-pare nts only after a long p eriod o[ close fr iendsh ip. Amo ng me n it is us uall y " budd ies"' (mingos) who form this re lationship in order to make ex plicit their joint inte rest in helping each other, having fun togeth er, an d not compe t· ing aga inst each other in gambling . o r ror women. A man and ;1 woman or two women may become vol· unlary co·p arents without go ing thro ugh the sem iformali7ed " buddy" rela.tion. Vo luntary co·parent.s often ini.tiatc t he ir re lationship by d eclaring t he ir purpose and shak ing bands. H e nceforth , they address a nd refer to each other as co-pa re nts, compadres, a nd use th e formal "you ," us/eel, i nstead of the familiar "thou," l11 , in mutual address. The ir re latio n is s upposed to

L

NOCORA: WORKERS Ol'\ A GOV ERNi:\IJ:::'f f-OWNED SUGAR PLA NTA"nON

be one of respect (de rcs/Jelo), co-operation, and m 11tua1 help. ?\lost adulls h ave severa l volunteer co-parents, and some have as many as fift een. A voluntary co-parent may a lso be ch osen as riwal co-parent, thus having a double co-pare nta l re lationship. A pe rson may become a co-parent with two individuals \\·horn he selects to baptize his child. The midwife who a ttends the mothe r during chi ldbirth also a11Lnmatically becomes a co-parent o( the parents and a "water godmother" (111a dri11a de ag11a) to the ch ild 011 the ground that she is the first person to pour \,·a tcr on him al tc r he il> born. Before the child is one year old. he is b;1pti1cd by a godmother and a gocllathcr cl 1men by his parents. Th is kind of baptism ma y be l11nher ,·alidatcd by a Ca tholic christen ing, h11 t thi~ is seldom d o ne. For a Catholi c baptism , t he 1-{otlparcnts arc supposed 10 provide special garments Jor the child and take care of the e xpenses of t he lic,ta "·hicl1 follows. The mrn.t ('()JlllllOll lonn or baptism is ca lled a "rural hapti:-.m·· (ba11ti.H110 t/1· rnmpo). The godparents officia Le m ·cr it in th eir cnn1 or the parents' home and provide the ingredients for the ritual bath and a ca ndle. The godfather holds the lighted candle in o ne hand a nd repeats together with the godmother three prayers d e rived from the Catholic ritual. Both then pour a mixture of water, o live oil, and sa lt on the god child's head and g ive him a name, which is usually the name the parents had g iven him at birth. The c hild is not supposed to be bathed for twenty-four hours after his baptism. The godchild has now entered into a relation o( respect with h is godparents. Theoretically, the latter have some authority over the child, but no permanent obl igations are involved. The relationship requ ires lit t le more than that when they meet they exch ange ritua l greetings a nd that th e godpare nts bless the godc hild, who in turn is expected to ask for th e blessing. The paren ts and godparents are now co-pare nts, and. like voluntary co-pare nts. they are expected LO coopera 1.e, assist and be Jq)':il 10 1111(' a11othe1·, a~·oid • 0111 petition, and in general maintain hanno111ous re lat io11 ... "T h e se ex pect:i 1 ion .. an· .. c ldom carried out complCLel y, bill, !iillce til e idea l h very s trong, one who viol:nes it is us ua ll y critic i;,ed. A person who gossips about his co-pan::11t u:.ua ll y ju~Lillc!> lti ~ L011\'c 1·" ' ' iu11 by say ittg, "The Virgi11 sho uld punish me for :.aying this abou t m y co111jJrl(/i'e. b u t." and then goes a head to :.ay it. Scv1.:ra l s tori <.:s rccu111 1t how a pcrson ki ll ed or abused his co111padre , anLl jokes are often told o( ill icit sexua l relations between a man and his ro111po<ire's wile. During ou1· ficld wrn·k, a man and his

rn111adre stabbed his ro111/uulrc, her husband, co death. Conimen ts on chis case were especially critical, s ince it violaLed a ll Lhc ideal cxpcctalio ns of ritual kinship relations. ln fo rmer ti m es, lower-class parents chose the ir coparents from the la ndho lder-emp loyer group. Thi ~ re lationship involved th e la ndlord in specia l obliga-

295

t ions to his co-parent and his godchild as well as to the family o( Lhe worker, "·ho reciprocated ,\·ith favors, gifts, and occasional free labor. It furthered the dependence of workers on their employers and thus reinforced the rigid pattern o( class relationships and close inte rpersona l obligatio ns. At the presen t time, h owever, there is a trend toward the selectio n of co-parents from one's own class. ComjJadres are usually found among the pare nts' brothers and sisters, among 111i11gos or ''buddies," and among voluntary co-parents. Compadres o( the same class enter into mutual obl igations which are more equal and reciprocal than those ben\·een com padres o( different classes. They may co-operate in working a garden, shar e meals, or lend each other money. Since a broth er o r a sister may be selected as com pad re or comadre, the bond between adult siblings is s trengthened. Owing to the interpersonal re la tions between members of diffe rent classes, co-parenta l relations have become increasingly equal w ithin the same class. They serve to strengthe n class soliclari ty rather than to bridge the gap between classes as in the past. For instance, in the past godchildren seem occasionally to have performed unpaid work for their godparents. This pattern is still followed by P etra, a ,\·oman about fifty years o ld, who walks sever al miles to town each Saturday to do housework for her godmother, the widow of a former large l a ndown er. The godc hildre n of sugar worke rs, h owever, would not be expected to perform su ch services fo r the ir god parents. \Vhile relatio ns between co-parents are thus generally more equal and reciprocal, the obliaations bern·een ritual kin seem to be weakening. The tie continues to provide guarantee o( some aid in case o( need, but its importan ce within the society as a whole seems to be decreasing. Perhaps this should be underst0od with reference partly to achievement o f person al goa ls through the labor union, which a ffords a mea ns o ( collective actio n and expr ession and partly to the ver y low econom ic status which preve nts a nyone from extending substant ia l aid to others.

POLITICS AND GOVERNMENT The political sys te m or Nocod is a subord inate, no n-auto no m o us part of t he is la nd system. T he municipal governrn e111 i~ w h ol ly subj ecL LO th e P11 c n o Rica n governmen t. The political organizations of the community are local branches o( island-wide parties. l\ l:ijor d ecis ion., which ma r affect the life of Nocor:111:, are made in .San .Juan or in the UniLed States, while 0~1!}1 minor .deci_:iions are made by the local pol itical h1c ra1·ch y. '\ Ct 111 :i community like ocod. where the governmc111 is the main emp loyer and owner of land and weal~h. Ll1e relations between the municipal a nd Puerto R1ca11 po litical structure take 0 11 special charac teristics.

296

THE PEOPLE OF PUERTO RICO

THE ORGAN IZATION OF BUREAUCRACY

POLITICAL LEADERS AND THEIR FUNCTIONS

The Municipality

Loca l political officials are appointed or authorized to run in e lections by the leadership of the political parties, each of which has local representatives. In Nocora a meeting is held at which these representatives, known as com prom.isarios, officially select candidates for office. It is no secret that the choice of candidates is made b efore the meeting, when the candidates are introduced to the public at mass rallies. While the rom/Jro111isurios have the fi11al "·ord in dccid ing who \\'ill n111 for office, they may accept ca11did;ues suggested by leading local politicians. For example, an outstandi11g political leader in Noror;'t had been rejected as a candidate for the House of Representatives for fear he ,,·otild create difficulti es for the party: hut, because he had an independent fol lowi 11g in the cnmmunity and could influ ence the: loca l vote, h e \\'as finall y accepted by the leaders or the party. ' ·Ve had good reason to believe that the com /Hom isorios were instructed by thc.:i r su pcriors before the olo cia l meeting how to vote. The minor candidates were sometimes nominated without their prior knowledge. A candidate for the municipal assembly in Tipan is a case in point. Notified of his candidacy b y a town leader shortly before the com /Jromisarios met, this man, who had not sought the post and knew nothing of its duties, called on us to find out what an assemblyman was supposed to do. The rural workers support the Popular party without criticism or opposition, and accept the leaders it selects. They consider education and the ability to s p:ak in publi~ i1:iportant prereq~isites for_ top polit1~a.1 leadership in the commumty. Rankmg local pol1t1cal leaders are also expected to co-operate with more powerful political l eaders without friction. In case of confl ict between the lower and the h ighe1· echelons of the hierarchy, popular sentiment will tend to support the more powerful figure. Local leaders are expected to be friendly, to dress without ostentation , and to indicate in as many ways as possible their identifi cation with the interests of their constituents. ·workers will often accuse minor political leaders _who have risen in the political organization, -especially those of lower class origins-of a Jack ?[ sympath y for the cause of the "poor" and of lookm g out for themselves. Such criticism is not voiced aga_inst political leaders of upper-class origins, whose actio n s are usua lly accepted without commen ts. Members of the rural lower class and the middle classes have certain images of the former which have important political implications. They believe that their social and economic condition has resulted from the lack of "initiative," "irresponsibility," "inability to save," and a "tendency to drink and gamble." They see themselves as helpless and in need of protection. This protection is furnished by the political leader. Th: . serv_ices of politi_cians, although motivated by poltu ca l 111terests, are mterpreted as personal services

Nocora, like all oth er municipios in the island, has a municipal government with its seat in the town. The municipal governm ent is far from self-supporting, and its budget depends on substantial contributions from the Puerto Rican insular government. Taxes raised by the municipal government do not meet local requirements, and did not do so even in 1948, when the municipal budget was less than S.70,000. The use of funds by the municipal government is subject to auditing by the Puerto Rican government. F ormally the municipal government is organized into three branches. The head is an elected mayor who is assisted by two appointed officers, a secretaryauditor, and a treasurer-school director, an elected municipal assembly in which the different barrios of the municipality are represented and an appointed justice of the peace. The election of local officers takes place every four years, along with the general island-wide e lection s which elect members to the Puerto Rican House of Representatives and Senate, a resident commissioner to 'l\Tashington, and, since 1948, a governor of Puerto Rico. T he municipality is part of a district which elects one representative to the Puerto Rican House of Representatives, and part oE a senatorial district which elects two senators. The mun icipal governmen t enacts local ordinances (o rdenanzas), which may not conflict with any island or federal law. The municipio administers a hospital and a drugstore where medicines are sold at cost or distributed free. It owns property, builds and maintai~s roads, and has a fund for charitable purposes, which include a lms for the living and coffins for the dead. Th e positions in the municipal government are not acquired through civil service but are generally handed out as rewards for political activity.

SERVICES PROVIDED BY THE PUERTO RICAN GOVERNMENT

The services of the Puerto Rican government are available primarily through regional or district offices which m ay have branches in the community. These services include the police department, the Bureau of Internal Revenue, the health unit, schools, a nd the State Security Board. For other services, such as those the Departm.ent of Labo~, the fire department, special health services, and agricultural services, the corni:nunity depends on Bajas. The personnel in the service o( the Puerto Rican government is mostly selected through competitive civil service examinations and is less subject to political influence than those in municipal positions. The post office is the on ly agency of the United State~ government in the .c?mmunity. Its personnel is recn11ted under the provisions of federal civil service regulat ions.

o!

NOCORJ\: WORKERS ON A GO\'ERN:\lENT-OW NEO SUGAR PLA NTATION

furnished by the individual concerned. They thus involve the recipien t in a bond of personal obligation. "Good" political leaders are those who are able to furni sh desired services or who can intercede with those above them to obtain such aid. Local leaders may be asked to accompany a sick man to the district hospita l or to a public clinic in San J uan, to write leucrs of recommendation to enable people to obtain p olitica l concess io ns. to g ive personal advice to their consti tu en ts. to faci Ii tate con tacts between their cons ti tuc n ts and publi c officia Is. Lo transmit complaints about u11cmployrncnt to higher authorities, and so fonlt . Their mediation is regarded as essential in getting go,·crnmcnt jobs. The main function of local leaders is thus to mediate bet"·een the members of the lo"·er class who live in local communities and persons who represent institutions organized on the national level. Th e personal clement is basic Lo political life. There is liulc concq>Lio11 of "public" service to a "public" at large. Local lcaclcrs may attempt to interfere with the ope rations of a nonpolitical government agency to advance the claims of some individual under their protection. Administrators themselves may view their positions in personal terms, as rewards for services performed, and they may use their positions to meet family ob ligations or to further family interests. Nepotism, a common form o( patronage, may be de· fended in these terms. The constiLUents. in turn, look upon the government primarily as a group of individuals, some of whom wield power over and control others. These individuals are entitled to hold office and tO enjoy its perquisites because they fulfill the demands of their clienls. Politicians are expected to derive personal, economic, a nd oth er benefits from their activities. The degree to which this is sanctioned, however, depends on the degree to which they meet the expectations for aid of their constituents-aid not only for the class of the "poor" as a whole but aid for particular individuals. The concept of personal obligations is extended to the party organization. Since the party is also viewed as a group of individuals, loyalty to it is personal and changes of party affiliation are viewed as breaches of personal loyalties. The party in power is seen as synonymous with government; office holders are expected to belong to it. On the other hand, political opponents are like ly to become personal enem ies, especially during pre-election days. The ideals o( leadersh ip in contemporary Nocor:i are embodied in the person of Juan Campos, top political figure in the municipality and adjacent rural districts which h ave a large wage earning population. Loca l wage earners refer to him admiring ly as "the leader," "the trunk," or "el caudillo," while his politica l aml personal enemies refer to him contemptuously as "el caciq ue." A person with an upper-class backgro und, he began his career in politics as a ch ild by distributing leaflets for th e Socialist party. ·while still very young he was elected to the House of R epre-

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sentatives. His political career, however, has not been smooth. He h as been "in disgrace" with higher leaders in his party, and he and his party were defeated in successive electoral campaigns. Formerly a Socialist, he thought it best, in his own words, "to cross the silver bridge tendered him by the Popular Democratic party," and to insure greater gains for the working people of the community. He is quoted as saying that "political parties are merely instruments, not ends in themselves." 'While he held no official position in the government before the 1948 elections, his word carried decisive weight in the formulation of many official decisions, and he had some influence over the use made of municipal funds. He participates in a leading capacity in many other community activities. In 1948 he was advisor to all the labor unions of the community. As the tenant of a small farm, he was president of the local colono association. Though single and childless, he was president of the pare ntteachers' association. \ Vhether in or out of office, he has constantly been active in labor and political organizations. During the past few years Campos has increased his power in Nocora by his leadership of the dominant political party in the island. In other words, comrol by a political boss (caudillismo) is basic to Nocoran politics and is regarded as indispensable by a considerable part of the population. POLITICAL ORGANIZATIONS

Rural people are strong ly aware of their obligations to vote. They know that they hold the most votes in the community and are aware of the political advantages which they can gain by wielding the vote. Since participation in politics may produce ga ins not otherwise available, interest in politics is always hig h. Frequen tly we heard rural Nocorans say, " \ Ve got that party [the Popular Democratic p <trty) into power and it had better continue to favor the poor or e lse we will do to it what we did to the Socialist Party." Their power to influence party decisions is, however, extremely limited. In Puerto Rico, elections are held every four years, on the day of presidential election in the United States. Su[Tage is universal for men and women twenty-one years of age. The political parties active in i948 were the Popular Democra tic party (PPD), the recently formed lndependentist party (PIP), the Statehood party (PEP), the Liberal-Refonnist party, rind the Socialist party. The last three formed a coalition which favored statehood for the island. The PPD nominated its president and founder, D on Luis Mm1oz Marin, as candidate for the governorship of the island. Its campaign was based primarily on its record of eight years in power, during wh ich a prog ram of social and economic reform had been carried out. Loca lly it stressed the land reform, the social security law for sugar workers, and other leo-islation which had direct bearing on conditions in l~cora. It promised con.tinuecl expansion of the island economy and furth er m crease of employment through indus1

298

THE PEOPLE OF PUERTO RICO

trialization. It promised to ask the Congress o[ the United States to grant Puerto Rico the right to draft its own constitution, but made no official comm itments with regard to the final solution of the island's political status. As in previous campaigns, PPD leaders made it clear that political status could not be changed through general elections, but would have to be the subject of special eiections which might make recommendations to the Congress of the United States. The Independentist party (PIP), organized less than a year before the election, advocated independence for Puerto Rico through "democratic and peaceful means." Its local leaders were mainly university or business school students and discontented persons who had bolted the Popular Democratic party. The Coalition made its local appeals mainly to adherents of the Socialist party; but its appeal remained limited. All parties held mass meetings and made use of loudspeakers to disseminate propaganda. Stress was laid on the names of past and present leaders of the parties, such as Santiago Iglesias, the former leader of the Socialists, and Luis Muiioz Marin, the leader of the PPD. The very mention of Mu11oz Marin's name d rew cheers and applause. The PPD distributed banners and its party symbol, the straw hat -(fJava), worn by r ural people, to individual households. lt won much acclaim by providing free transportation to and from meetings held in town. Its campaign was backed to some extent by the resources of the government. Government offices and officials were employed in political activities. Patronage was intensified to pro~ide alms, odd jobs, free clothes and food to potential voters. The Land Authority took on additional workers in the cane fields, though these were clearly unnecessary. Intimidation by i ncli viclual officials also played some part. Some political leaders threate ned to bar opposition voters from the public hospital or to expel them from government-owned subsistence plots. Such grants of favors in return for votes by the political party in power were not condemned, although people strongl y condemn vote selling a nd are contemptuous of those who change their political affiliation for money. The elections in Nocora were won overwhelmingly by the Popular party, which received the votes of most of the rural sugar ""orkers and landowners and or the businessrnen, professionals, and workers in the town. The Socialist party had attracted votes from the same groups, but in smaller numbers. The PIP h ad the vote of landholders and businessmen and of discontented Popular party members, mostly townspeople and some agricultural workers from the outskirts oE town, such as 1\Iango. After the elections a parade of Popular party adherents in cars carried the effigy of the Social ist candidate for governor and finally burned it. Rural wage earners were proud of their role in the elections, saying that it was their votes which had carried M unoz Marin to the post of first elected governor o[ the island.

ORGANIZED LABOR AND POLITICS

The loca l labor unions o[ .Nocod are not affil iated with the island-wide labor organizations. Each Land Authority farm has a separate union . These in turn are held together by a common leadership and an advisory committee. They are mutual aid societies as well as labor unions in the strict :;ense o[ the word. \ •\Then a member is sick, th e u11io11 provides m edi cal care, medicines, and fillan cial aid for his s11ppon. I[ he dies, the unio11 is expected lO buy the coll1ll and to provide a funeral. D11ri11g the dead seaso n it is expected to provide it~ me111bcrs ,,·iL11 occisio11;tl credit vouchers (vales) with "·hich to 1>11~· lood at .'>tores. The union is also the m;1i11 barg<1ining- agent for the workers of the co1111111111ity. The abil ity of workers to bargain with ;111 employer is restricted ill a ~ituatio11 "·here an evcr-increasi11g population co11fronts a restricted 11un1ber or jobs. The unions are th ercl'orc im·olvcd ill politics in order to gain poli ti ca I concessions for the ir mem bcrs. Tit is is especially im]>Orlalll in an area whe re the chief emJ>loyer of la bor is a government agency, the Land Authority. Although the unions can exert little influ ence ove1· the labor market by withholding labor, they can attempt to influence the government, which depends on the union members for their votes. The union leaders are thus heavi ly invo lved in po liti cs. Jn fa ct, the labor leaders are also the lead ing politic ians of the commu nity. Organ izationally, however, the political parties and the unions form separate entities. The unions make thei r appeal tO a ll workers, regardless of political aITiliations, on the basis of class sol idarity and class interests. The labor leaders are aware o( the advantages which accrue to them as the result of this organizational separation. T hey can rally support to themselves, without having to face the need o( compromise between class interests, which must govern a multi-class political party like the PPD. r\t the sa me time, they have control of a political instrument wh ich makes them organizationally independent o[ the main party organization, and which they can th us use as a lever to advance their own interests and those of their followers. A rank-and -file worker may be elected to a post in the union, but his power is limited by a committee of adv isors which consists of politicians. Power is centered in this advisory committee. Collective bargaining, the chief function of the union, is carried out by the leading advisors and the representatives of the Land Authority. The elected president o( the union is allowed to attend these bargaining sessions but may not participate actively in them. IC the managers of the A u thority and the labor advisors cannot reach an agreement in open session, they may settle the ir difference in closed meetings from which local labor leaders are excluded . The main functio n o[ the union president is to present the demands of the local labor union workers

NOCORA: WOR~RS 0:-1 A COVER101E:'\T·OW1'ED SUGAR PLA:"ITATION

to the real power-holders who run the advisory committee. These demands consist usually of req uests for the i1uroduction of some sort of public works, such as road building or repai rs at the Land Authority mill, as a mea ns of creating work during the dead season. The union president also g ives advice on personal problems to union members. " ' hile his control o( uni on all:iirs is limited. he can take part cx-of11cio in some :dl :1irs rnnducted in the municipal building, and lie i .~ an c::x-o!licio member o[ Yarious citizens' committ ee~ :tncl corn111i,,,,io11,,. He controls the union fund,,. but these :1 rc mu:tll\' \'en · small. His o\\·n n:111um·r:llio11 co11"ists ol the ~qui Y:~ lent of three days' pa~· during the hatYe"t :-.c:1:-011.

POLITICAL ATTITUDES

The rur:d \\'orkn~ rcg;1rcl parunpation in politics a~ a 11iea1h ol clening to oflice certain indi viduals \\·ho will C: llT\" o ut actions and pro,·ide services o[ immediate l~cn c: fit to the ir das~. T hey are not interested in wheth er Puerto Rico remains an unincorporated territory of the United States, becomes one of the states of the Union, or becomes wholly independent. They arc interested primarily in immediate solutions to immediate economic problems. This basic interest is reinforced b y their lack of access to institutions whi ch operate on Lhe national level ancl their lack of knowledge regarding them. Relations between the United States government and the govcrn111e11 t o( Puerto Rico are mediated through institutional channels which remain invisible and cannot be understood on the loca l level. People there fore do not show much imerest in these relatio ns. Federal decisions and [unctions whi ch affect them are rega rded as decisions and functions o f the Puerto Rica n government. Legislation passed by the United States Congress which resu lts in benefits to Pueno Rico is viewed as an accomplishment of the political leaders of Pueno Rico. Unfavorable federal decisions, such as the closing of the port of Tipan b y the Feel.era! l\ifaritime Commission, are blamed on Puerto R1c::u1 leaders belongi ng to an opposition party. Middle-class opinion on the political issue o f Puerto Rican political status is much more divided than tha t voiced by th e sugar workers. Some middle-class people consider independence to be possible in the "fa r-off fuwre," or "a fter the island has become industrialized." Oth ers fear an outbreak of anarchy if the island became independent, "a lack of government, as when Spain was here," a state "dangerous for our women." Others want immediate independence. i'vliddle-class opinio n is also divided o n the measures o( reform introduced by the Po pula r party. Some local businessmen and other middle-class people vote for the Popular party beca use it has stimulated trade and employmem, but they ma y criticize such Land Authority proj cns as the co-operat ive store. l\ [iddle-class Republica ns te11d to regard the Lancl Authority and

299

other reform measures of the government as "socialistic." ATTITUDES TOWARD THE LAW

The acceptance of various illegal acuvit1es is evidence of the local attitude of insulation from outside instillltional authority. Most of these activities have an economic purpose, such as the production of rum in illegal stills or midwifery, while others, though forms o( recreation, such as cockfights and gambling in the illega l lottery, have economic overtones. These furni sh the livelihood of many people, and the community does not see why they are the concern of outsiders. Even "·hen the people are well aware of the illegality of such offenses as trespass, lack of compliance with regulations for domestic animals, and brawling and fig hting, they simply ignore the law. i\Iany acts which the law defines as crimes against persons may be so regarded b y the community, which none theless resists the introduction of institution alized procedures to judge them. Tbe community prefers to deal with crimes itself. This attitude results partly from past experiences in which the Jaw did not provide satisfactory solutions for disputes and controversies and partly from a strong conviction that the institutio nalized machinery of law and justice operates differently for the rich and the poor. Consequently, even murders and mutilations, usually the result of violent aggression with knives or machetes, may be concealed from legal authority. A case in Tipan will illustrate these genera lizations. A husband stabbed his wife during an argument. Her brothers and friends armed themselves with machetes and confronted the husba nd to hear the reason for his act. The man justified himself on th e g rounds th at the woman had not shown the respect due a husband from his wife. After a lengthy argument about the "respect due a husband from a woman," the police appeared and took the cu lprit off to jail. At the court tria l. however, his wife appeared in his defense. Court Trials and Procedures

When the municipal court meets, the public fills the room and people even crowd the sidewalk to listen . Th ere is no official prosecutor, a nd the d efendants very rarely are represented b y lawyers. Cases are presented to the court directly by the police, by public officials, or by indi vidua l plaintiffs who bring one or two witnesses to swear to charges (de 111111cias) against the d efendant. The justice of the peace then renders a verdict. The principal function of the justice o f the peace is to investigate cases, perform marriage ceremonies, and solve minor civi l cases out of court. i\Iost cases of law vio lation are settled or fixed (nrreglndos) before they are taken to court. The d ec isions o[ the court may occasiona ll y be modified b y po li tical or other inOucnce. Tn Tipan a nd l\fango it is believed that court~ ravor peopl e who a re rich a nd have po litica l

300

THE PEOPLE OF PUERTO RICO

influence. The top political leader, however, is regarded as a fair man who would defend the interests o f a poor person altruistically and sympathetically. The workers prefer to deal with him personally, rather than with the mayor. A case which came to our attention involved a young sugar cane worker who was accused of attempting to rape another m a n's girl friend. The father of the defendant was promised by a political official that the case would be settled out of court if he paid six dollars. Later the defendant was called for trial, since the official had forgotten to settle the case. It was then arranged that the defendant plead guilty and be fined five dollars. This was done, but the officia l kept the six dollars. Cases are often seltled in advance by arra nging through a n official that the d efendant plead guilty and pay a minimal fine. Even innocent persons may plead g uilty on the promise of a suspended sentence. This practice, however , may backfire . Three young men of Tipan serenaded a prostitute, who resented their sing ing , got into an argument with them, and the following day charged them with attempted rape and housebreaking. The men pleaded guilty, but instead of being freed after p ayment of a small fine, they h ad to spend the whole harvest sea~on in jail.

EDUCATIO N The school system of N ocora is a part of the Puerto Rican school system headed b y a commissioner of education , who is a member o f the governor's cabinet and h as offices in San Juan. The commissioner was formerly appointed by the president of the United States with the consent of the Senate, but since the recen t r eforms of the O rganic Charter of the island, h e is appointed by the governor of Puerto Rico. Educationa l policy is d ecided in San Juan by the top officials of the educational system. In former years the municipal government had some voice in the choice of teachers and other school personn el, but today all teachers, administrators, and supervisors are appointed by the Puerto Rican Department of Education. Only a few minor appointments, such as rural teachers, are made locally by school su pervisors. Even these teachers are paid with governmen t funds. Before the occupation of th e isla nd by the U nited States, there were no public schools in Nocora. Schooling for the children o[ the well-to-do was provided in their own homes. Since the occupation, public education, which began on a small scale, has increased considera bly both in tm·vns and in rural districts. These facilit ies, however, are still inadequate to provide schooling for hundreds of children w h o cannot start in the first grade for lack of teach ers and schoolrooms. Until recent years only elementary school training was offered wi th in the municipality. For high school ed u cation, children had to go either to Bajas or to other n eighboring m un icipalities. But

in the late i 94o's the high school building was completed, and gen eral hig h school courses have been offered locally. School personnel, especially teachers a nd supervisors, are either res id ents o f the community o r commuters from Ba jas. Most of the urban teach ers are graduates of the N ormal School o f the University of Puerto Rico, and most hig h school teach ers h ave completed their college edu cation, while some of the supervisory personnel have had graduate training in the United States. ln the rural districts most teach ers have high school diplomas and have ta ke n some courses in n o rmal school. T h eir appo intme nts are usually made o n a tcmpor;1ry basis. Teachers are p aid salaries set by the Dep;1 rt111en t of Ed ucaLion. Several teachers supplc111c 11t the ir incomes liy carrying on small peddling busine.)ses in the schools. such as selling homem ade candies, sh erbets, and Lhc like to the school ch ildren . There arc n o pri,·ate sch ools in Nocora , but families in the upper incom e bracket may send their daugh ters to a recemly opened Ca thol ic school for g irls in Baj as. THE URBAN SCHOOLS The offices of school inspectors, supervisors, and others are located in school buildings in the to'\vn. The grammar school student body numbers some 800. Boys outnumber girls by about ioo. There are twice as many students in each of the first four grades as in the fifth and sixth grades. Most ch ildren who attend grammar school in town come from neig hboring settlements and farms in the rura l districts. Children a re admitted to public school at seven years of age, but those from the rural districts usually start somewhat later. while the children of schoolteachers and of influential citizens m ay be admitted earlier. Because ol inadequate facilities many children are refused admission, while the overload is partly m et by restricting attendance to half a day. The junior and senior high schools are housed in the same n ew school building of sixteen classrooms and are run by a staff of nineteen teachers and one principal. The high school stud ent body numbered 450 in i948-49. The junior and the senior high school serves the rura l barrios as well as the town. It h as more students from the highlands than from the coas tal districts. I;ew students com p lete thei r high school education, since m a ny have to go to work while still in junior high school, and others go to Bajas for a year's commercial course in a private school after finishing junior high school. Educational opportunities thro ug h the G.I. Bill of Rig hts are provided for Nocora's veterans thro ugh classes held a fter regular school hours a nd taug ht b y the local teachers. In Nocora m os t veterans were registered in junior and senior high school. There were 23,1 veterans registered in full programs at

NOCOR,\: WORKERS O N A GOVERNMENT-OWNED SliGAR PLANTATION

these schools in 19.18-.19, but at the end of i9.19 a considerable ponion of Lhesc had used up their education privileges and discominued schooling. Very few students from Nocor;I continue their studies after graduating from high school, but the C.l. Bill of Rights has enabled more students than before to pursue furth er training at the University o( Puerto Rico or the Puerto Rico High School of Commerce in Rio Piedras, where they prepare for professions or whiLc-rollar occupations. 1\Iost of the :.t udents ,\°110 go to Rio Picdras live with Nocora families who ha,·c movc:d into the metropolitan area and operate bo;1rding ho u:.cs.

301

the students had Jiule interest in learning English because they saw no use for it. A questionnaire given to elementary students of the urban schools and the Tipan schools indicated that arithmetic was the favorite subject. In Tipan, where illiteracy is so high, illiterates who do not know the letters of the alphabet recognize numbers, and can add and subtract. Simple arithmetic is part of the children's daily life b ecause of their work and their shopping duties. 1n the junior and senior high schools in town, mathematics, science, Spanish, home economics for girls, and industrial arts for boys were favorites according LO the questionnaire answers. School Attendance

THE RURAL SCHOOLS

There arc three rural schools in the beach area. One, near th e ri\'er h:1s a single room where the first a11d second gra:les are taugl;t by one teacher. Another, lor:1ted abot1t one kilo meter from the Title five comm1111ity of Tipan. ronsisLs of a rented room where children of the first Lwo grades arc taught by o ne Leacher in groups attending a half day each. During our research Lhere were eighty-four ch ildren in this school, many of whom lived in the Title five village. The third to the sixth grades are taught in a 1·eccntly built concrcLc schoolhouse located at the en trance to the Title Five village. Most children in Tipan quit school before receiving their sixth grade diploma, and still fewer go to school in town for a junior high school education. In 1948-49 less than five children of agregados reseuled in Tipan village were going to junior high school in town. SCHOOL CURRICULA

The program and the content of each course in grammar school are pla1111ctl by the Puerto Rican Department of Edu cation. The teacher fills in the details of the course, but Lhe curriculum is quiLe rigid. High schoo l offers a wider choice of courses with in the general program, but certai n subjecLs are compulsory. One o[ the most controversia l topics in the educational history of the island has been wheLher to teach English as a special subject or whether to teach all school subjects in English rather than in Spanish . Since the American occupation, it had been required that Eng lish be taug h t in the schools. The issue h as been both educational and political, and a resolution was approved by the general convention of the Popular pany in 19.18 to use Spanish for all teaching. In recent years the trend has been to use Spanish in teaching different subjects while intensifying the teachi ng of English as a special subject. In r\oconi Eng lish is taught by persons who learned it in Puerto Rican schools and who have had vl.;·y limited opportunities to use it outside of the classroom , as there is no occas ion to speak Eng lish in Nocor:i. The principal o( the high school claimed that

The dichotomy of a dead season and a harvest season affects school attendance considerably. In the town during the d ead season, young ch ildren whose parents work repairing the mill miss classes because Lhcy carry lunches to Lheir fathers, while older children usually work in the mill. Families who live in the rural disLricts nearer to the interior migrate to the highlands to work in the coffee harvest from October to Lhe encl of November, taking their schoolage children with them. During the sugar harvest season, children o( rural farm workers miss much school because they usually work as alnmerceros, carrying lunch to men in the fields for a fee of five cen ts a week. Other causes of absence are sickness, lack of clothes or shoes, fear among the parents that bigger children or Leachers may beat their children, and fear of accidents. One day the classroom of the first and second grades was practically empty because a rumor circulacecl that two bulls were blocking the road. Rural children often quit school a(ter a period of sickness, or because of conflicts between the Leachcr and the parents. School l unch Program (Comedores Esco/ares)

The insu lar government supports school lunches for needy ch ildren in Lhc island. A considerable portion of the budget of the lunch program is derived from income obtain ed from the government lottery. In Nocon! the lun ches are one of che most auracLive features of the ed ucational system, especially in rural districts like Tipan where practically all the school children are given lunches at the school. ln town this service is used by more than 350 students, most o( whom are Crom the rural districts. The food served in Lhc lunch program is bought locally from private wholesalers who also happen to be local political lead ers affiliated with the party in power. The p rogram personnel arc appoinLed locally as employees o( the government. The j obs arc not under civil service and are granted as part o[ the local system of patronage. Tn Tipan, lunch wh ich usually consists o( soup with rice and milk is provided for most or the chi ldren and for the women who work in the kitchen without compensatio n. These women somet imes senJ some o[ the food Lo their husbands in Lhe ca ne fields.

302

TH£ PEOPLE OF PUERTO RICO

Some children go home for more food, but during the peak of the dead season the school lunch is often the only source o( food ava il able to them. Relationships of the Schools to Other Government Services

The school maintains close relations with other government institutions. The Health Department Unit provides medical examinations and treatment for the students, and dental care is provided free about once a year through the dental service of the Department of Health. The Agricultura l Extension Service has organized various chapters of 4-H Clubs in the rural d istricts and has a small but very active group in Tipan. The schools are also assisted by the Department of Labor in connection with problems of ch ild labor. The Public vVelfare Office is another agency increasingly concerned with the problems of schoo l children. The schools also have ties with other institutions su ch as th e Red Cross, the .Junior Red Cross, the Anti-Cancer League, and the anti-pol io campaigns. These organizations, some of which are branches of American national institutions, filter into the community as branches of Puerto Rican organizations. T he schools are asked by the Department of Education to co-operate with su ch organizat ions. Collections oE money from individual st uden ts, raflles, special programs, and so on are undertaken to comply with the department's requests. 1 n these cam paigns, the teachers have the obligation of raising funds among students. They take the responsibility serious ly ancl put pressure on the students, appea ling to such values as co-operation, charity, competition, and rewards in grades. THE SOCIAL VALUE OF EDUCA Tl ON

For the rural lower class, school tra111111g suppl ements other kinds of knowledge that is transmitted informally by the fami ly or by specia lists in lore, a nd is often summarized in proverbs. School tra ining provides a special kind of kn owledge which is regarded as having both prestige value and practical importance. Knowl edge is not a l uxury, but a wea pon for "self defense" and a means of con trolling others. It is believed that uninformed people are abused and deceived by "smart ones" (listos). 'Nithin the local community, several years' schooling is of little value in earning a living, but it affords the individual a greater opportunity to improve his condit io n through migration, for he can better cope with the world. Migrants to San Juan or to the Un ited States usually have some years of grammar school education . The relationsh ip o( the rura l wage earne rs to the school is mainly through th e children. T he parents and schoolteach ers hardly know one another persona lly. The loca l bran ch o( the Parent-Teachers' Associa tion in the rural districts is led a nd controlled b y middle-cl ass people in town. ''\/hen the rural people a ttend m eetings and o ther activ ities sponsored by the school , t hey usuall y do so at the request of the

president of the labor union and attend as bystanders rather than participants. Sometimes, however, they are named o n commiuees to ca ll on the public officials. The rural people want their chi ldre n tO be able to read and write, which they regard as the purpose of schoo ling. They often complain that schoo l was denied them becau se they had too much work to do or because their parents did n ot care about schools. RADIO AND NEWSPAPERS

Th e cornm uni tv rcn: i\·es radio bro:1dc:1s ts a11d ll C \\'S· papers entirely from the crnt~id c . Th e~c are cxLrc mcly importa nt in the d illibion ol n e\\·s a1 1d propagarnl:t and in providing c.:11tertai11mc11t. There are ;,cvcral r;1dio .~ L:1Lio11 s i11 the isl:1nd. 011e of which is owned :ind ope raLcd by the go\'Cl'I1111cnt. All or the.'IC broadcast mu sic and dra111atic. rclig iom, and sports p rograms. Commercial :tc h·cnisi11g i,, :111 essential p:1n of most prog rams. exce pt those o[ the government statio11. Th e t\\'O most import:lllt newspapers in Puerto Rico arc 1-;1 !111/Hll'<i11/ :111d /·;/ .\/1111do. both or which arc alli liatcd \\'ith Amer ican ll C\\'S sy nd icates. These are distributed throughout the island. The rad io ha s a larger audience than the newspapers. In town, fewer than 100 daily papers are sold . Jn th e 1·ural districts, man y adu lts cannot read and th e role of newspapers is negligible, but most people have the opportu n ity to listen to broadcasts. Although Tipan and i\ fango have no e lectricity, a few h omes and grocery stores h ave battery-operated radios which attract people who do not own radios. The favorite radio programs both in town and in Mango a re soap operas (la novela), comedy programs, and baseball games. During the election campaign o[ I ~H 8, radios were often tu n ecl very loud to the politica l p rograms of the party favo red by their owners. Broadcasts of baseb a ll and political propaganda for the party supported by the owner of the radio are favor i.te subjects, a lthough women are less interested in sports than men an d children. A questionnaire given to public sch ool students from tOwn showed that radio listening consumed a large portion of their alter-school time. Their favorite programs were baseba ll games, comic sketches, and popular Puerto Rica n music. Since very few fami lies in rural T ipan own radios, people, especiall y men , make inform al visits to friends and to the roadside stores to listen to their radios. T h e favorite programs are n ews, political propaganda program s of the Popular party, popular music, and baseball games. The radio has had a strong influen ce in replac ing fo lk music with popular music. The radio is probably more effect ive i n shaping political atti· tudes and in introducing new sty les, o r fads, in music, poetry, and even speech than in convey ing commercial propaganda. The people seldom listen to educational programs sponsored by the Extension Service or other governme11t agencies endeavor ing to help the ru ral

NOCORA: WORKERS ON A GOVERN;>.t E NT· OWNED SUGAR PLANTATI ON

dist r icts. D uring the hurricane season, from about .July to October, the rad io has naturally attracted everyon e. since weather forecasts are g iven frequentl y. Newspapers h ave less influence on t he community than the radio. T h e two major Puerto R ica n newspapers h ad a com b in ed da ily circulation of 1 20 for t he en t ire municipa lity, in cl uding the highlan ds. El lJiario d e Puert o R ieu, a newspaper pu b lished by a corpora tio n head ed b y i\ l u 11 oz i\ Iarin , h ad onl y one subscriber in T ipan , th e local leader of the Popular pany. "·hile in to\\'11 o nly a fe"· copies were sold. El / 111/uncial "·as the most popular paper in the com111u11it>. althou~h it :.cldon1 reached the rural districts. It \\';1, Ii kcd hcc1u ~c it rcponed crimes. Pr i11Lcd prop;1g-:111d:1 :ind educat iona l material prep:in.:d by pol iti cil panic:-. or by the government are ~011 1 c 1 i111c., distrib u ted in the community. During th e pn.:-c lc.:nio n c:i m p;i ig-11 o l 19.18, the Popula r party p u bli,h cd ;111d d istrih11 tcd lree a ne\\'spaper ca lled El Uuf <'\'. T his publica tion \\'as importan t to severa l peop le i11 Tipan because it wld \\'hat the government of Lht.· Popular pan> had been doi ng for them. La ]1111ta, a publication of the I.and :\uthority specially prepared for the rural po pulation and distribmed at the m ill or at th e Land Authority co-opera tive grocery in town, seldom reached T ipa n or l\Iango. Nocod has no p u b lic l ibra ry, and [ew homes h ave books. One candy store sells magazines and novels. The magazines curre11 tly sold incl ude Pue rto Rico l/l11strado, which is pub lished in San J uan, i\ lexican and Argen ti nia n magazines, and the Spanish versio n of R eader's Digest . i\lost 11ovels are cheap pulps. few American magazi n es are ava ilable, except comic books, which the school chi lclren bu y and ex.change with one another, and occasionally Popular Meclia 11irs, Po/Jular Scie11re, a nd Looi\. The turnover o[ m agazi nes is very slow, o ld issu es sometimes rema ining in the racks for m a n y weeks u11til removed by the storekeeper. Even in town, people read comparatively li ttle. Apart fro m p ul p 11ove ls, books most com mon ly read are books on magic, spiritua lism, the Bi ble, and prayer books. The town people find newspapers more interesting than books, and radio preferable to both. T hey would rather listen than read, and radio practi<;ally monopolizes the channels of mass communication. RELI G IO N A N D THE SUPERNATU RAL T h e a ttiwdes a nd be liefs of ~ocora n s rega rd ing the supernatura l h ave rnken varied and, in some ways, unorthodox forms. \ Vhilc the p eople arc quite una nimous in distrusting one who is a ,;nonbeliever" in a formal religion and in saying that "all religions are good fo r the peop le," there are differences in emphasis :ind alliliation that a rise from the sp ecial socioecon om ic silllation of Nocor;i. That almost all p ersons in the communi ty a re 11 0111 inal Cathol ics h as not preven ted th e p ractice or witchcrart and magic an d even affi liatio n with oth er ch urch es. Th e town dwellers tend to be more orthodox than

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rural people in attending church and observing conventional tenets. The rural people do not expressly repudiate formal church requirements, but man y of them ascribe more importance to m agic. Some p ersons atten d th e Evangel ical church, wh ich was established in the com mu ni ty a few years a fter P uerto Rico came under U nited States sovereig nty. Th e m ore reviva listi c P entecostal church, wh ich was establish ed recently and has fewer members, is fa irly active and, as in the sugar commu n ities o[ the south coast, has a sp ecial appeal to an economically insecure laboring class. :\Iagic, "·hich has many follm,·ers and pan-time practitioners, is not bound by any church doctrine. It pervades the municipality, however, b ecause as suggested previously it is eviden tly a symptom of insecu rity and h ost ili ty. ORGAN IZED RELIG IONS

The Catholic Church

J\fany relig ious principles and social va lues of Catholicism, s uch as the obsen ·ance of the cen commandments and o( the church precepts, have an ideal a nd moral value in Nocor;i, but actual compliance "·ith these rules is lax. Before the 18So's l'\ocora h ad no Catholic chu rch . Its people had to go to Bajas (or relig ious services, except wh en t he priests were ab le to m a ke inrrequen t visits to th e v ill age for mass and oth er rites. Baptisma l registers, marriage records, and death certificates, which were under church jurisdiction until the American occupation, \\·ere also kept in Bajas. In the i 88o·s the church was built in Nocora and the muni cipalitv was esta blished with the T'irg~11 de/ Cnrme11 as it~ patron sa int. Tn the past few years Span ish and Puerto Rican priests have been rep laced by young .American priests wh o sp eak Spa n ish. Most of the activit y o( the Catholic church tod ay, as in t h e past, is in town where the ma in ch urch is establ ish ed and where the lay leadership lives. The American padre in .P;ocora told us, " In Puerto Rico the people ca ll themselves Catholic because they were b aptized, a lthough they don' t know the church co<le, and they d on't care to come to church." T he number o( d evo ut persons (beatus) is very small in town, and very fe w people from t he rural dist ricts come to th is ch u rch. The p r iest estimated t hat a total of 170 a ttendcd a ll S1111da y masses, al th oug h the church has a ca pacity o f 200. On work days th ere is a daily mass between six and seven in the morning, but according to Fonsa , a t0\n1 woman who works for the mill, the priest sa id that he held a mass for her and himself. beca use n o others sho\\'ed up. At Sunday services adults are con:. idera bly outnumbered by children, of pre-communi o n age, that is. between six and twelve years o ld. and the number o( m en is mu ch smaller t han the n umber o( women. T he Ch urch proselyti zes ch ildren an d teaches t hem to pray at home. Every yea r, n u ns rrom o uts id e v isit the com111 u nity for two weeks to teach the children

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THE PEOPLE OF PUERTO RICO

church doctrine and to prepare them for communion, 'vhich is held on the clay of the patron saint and is announced by cars with loudspeakers. In 1949 a Catholic chapel was built in Tipan with funds granted by the Puerto Rican Catholic church and Catholic organizations in the United States. The San Juan bishop officially opened the church with a mass and a blessing. Since then, the priest comes from town on Friday night to say a rosario and on Saturday to say mass, but there are no Sunday services. Although at first the church attracted many people in the community, attendance declined after a few weeks, and the church grounds have now become a center where young men and children sit to chat, gamble, and play. Lay church associations of the island have three branches in Nocora, and their membership is mostly from the town sector. The Hijas de A1aria, to which only chaste g irls and women are supposed to be admitted, has lOO members. Th e Sociecla.cl del Santo Nombre is a men's society with seventy members. The Cofraclia del Sagrado Corazon is for married couples and has seventy members. The officers of these organizations are elected. To judge by the figures on church attendance provided by the priest and by members of church societies, it can be assumed that church attendance is not regular even among the members of the lay Catholic associations. These societies are connected more with the celebration of church holidays than with church ritual and doctrine. The celebrations of Catholic holidays in Noconi attract many persons and increases community interest in the church. The more important holidays celebrated are the Patron Saint's Day, Christmas and Three Kings Day, and Lent and Holy \ 1Veek. The Patron Saint's Day entails the greatest activity a nd brings out most people. Christmas and Three Kings Day and the Patron Saint's Day celebrations are more secular than religious. Holy \l\Teek is a religious festivity celebrated b y the church rather than a community holiday. The celebration of these holidays do not seem to make many converts or to increase devotion. The festival of the patron saint exemplifies the secular nature of the modern ce lebrations. On July 10, nine days before the day of the Carmel Virgin (Dia del Carmen), the celebrat ion is announced in an official proclamation by the mayor, who appoints a committee to prepare the program. The program includes not only masses and rosaries, but amateur talent programs, contests an<l games sponsored by the municipal government with the assistance o( the church. Side attractions are provided by concessions, for example, a merry-goround, "star," flat flying cha irs, and other mechanical "rides." In 191·9 a small circus came to town for the celebration. L ocal and visiting pro(essional gamblers who bring games of chance bid for space in the plaza and set up gaming tables. Peddlers sell trinkets, refreshments, "snow balls" with syrup, and candies from carts placed along the streets. Under the sponsorship of church associations, trinkets and refreshments are sold at bazaars (verbenas) run by the priest, assisted by unmarried girls.

Activity is greatest in the eveni ngs when the town

is host to many people from the rural districts and from neighboring municipalities. Many former residents o( Nocor{1 visit the commu nity during these holidays, and some of them stay over while they are in progress. The principal evening is that of the day of the Virgin, when festivities continue until midnight. The bars are filled with men drinking and chatting and the dance halls crowded with workers. In the plaza, older townsfolk, children, and rural people sit on benches and listen to the program while \\'atcl1ing the town youth promcn:-ide. The girls dressed in their best stroll up and do,,·n the pbza in groups of two, three or four, whi le \'Oung me11 stand in line to watch them'. They make 11inati,ous remarks and sometilllCS throw rice at each other. Although the holidays associated "'ith the patron saint have become more sec11 lar than 1·eligious . the church intensifies its efforts to interest people al this time. A few clays before the holidays, it distributes envelopes for contri buti ons to the fest ivities ;iml it places booths in the plaza to raise fu nds. It holds a rosary to the Virgin (novena) for nine even ings before the day of the patron saint, when a special mass for first communion is held. It js said that in former days several marriages took place on this date and that many parents had their children baptized. After the high mass on the Day of the Carmel Virgin, there is a procession through the town in which the image of the Virgin is borne by prominent residents. Many people who are not active Catholics join this procession. In Tipan in 1948 the Carmel Virgin was taken out in a boat, as she is also the patron saint of fishermen and sailors. The Evangelical Church

The Evangelical church was established in Nocora a few years after the American occupation, but it is said that some people read the Protestant Bible before 1898, when Catholicism was the official church of the community and the island . A priest, who left the Catholic church to become a minister, organized the Evangelical church in Noconi. in 1900. This ch urch is a branch of the Christian and M ission Society with national headquarters in the United States. Recently a mission school for training ministers was established in the mun icipality. On special occasions, visiting American ministers come to address the congregation. The members of the Evangelical church are mostly town residents. The minister and the more devout Evangel icists, however, complain of poor church attendance, lack of co-operation, and the sinful life of church members. The Pentecostal Church

In i940 a local branch of the Pentecosta l church of Puerto Rico was established in Nocora. This church is located in the old section of town, its present minister being from another town. The church claims to have sixty members, mostly the families of unskilled mill workers and other town laborers. It is supported

NOCORA: WORKERS 0:-1 A GOVERNi\IE XT·OW NED SUGAR PLAJl.;TATION

b y its members, unlike the Ca tholic and the Protestant churches, which depend on outside support. The minister derives his income from the contributions of church m embers. The church, however, is a branch of the Puerto Rican mother church and of United States P e ntecosta l churches. THE SAINTS' CULT

De,·otion to sa ints is ,·cry common in Nocora, although th e 'rays m \\'hi ch this devotion is demons trated ,·ary :-t m ong the different segments of the popula tion. :\ mong the more sophisticated town people of higher income. this devotion is shown by offering m:1s-;cs to the sa int and by g i,·ing an image of the saint, som etim es with :rn :tllarhcd alms box, to other d evo tees of th e s;ime saint. :\ ta time of crisis or sickness. a p erson holds a d evo tion for his namesake sa in l. J n the rn ra I cl istrins the "·orkers associate devotion to sa ints \\'ith a system of muwal exchange or "give a11d Lake'· bct"·een themselves a nd the saint. The relationship is one of pro111 esn, a promise or obligation. The worshiper selects the saint who possesses the special power to meet his needs. In Tipan, for example, wh en a person wants a house and lacks the means of o btaining it, h e may ask Saint Anthony to help, promising the image of something in exchange. Usually a novena bought from p eddlers or stores is said before the saint's image. For example, "Saint Anthony, permit m e to buy the lucky number in the lo llery of Puerto Rico, so that I can buy a house, and then I will build you a nice little house too." The offering to the sa int depends upon t he kind of favor req uested. A person m ay offer to wear a dress like that o( th e saint and go barefoot, beg, and do other things i£ the wish is g ranted. If not g ranted, the supplicant may insult or beat the sain t's image. A very popular sain t in Nocor;i is San Expedito, who probably h as more worshipers in Tipan than elsewhere in the municipality. San Expedito is the Anacreontic sa int of gamblers, drinkers, and women. 1\fost houses have several images and altars to sa in ts, of which San Expedito is usually one, if not the only one. This sa in t is ofiered pictures of beautiful women, usually photos of Hollywood and i\fexican movie actresses, dice, cards, p ennies, small g lasses of rum, and the numbers u sed in the lottery. If the worshiper does not get his wish , the image o( the sa int may be beaten and kicked out of the house. Often on Sundays after the results of the Dominican R epublic lottery arc known, one m ay see the image of San Expeclito hang ing upside down from the roof of 1.he house. Promesns are also offered to the Virg in :mcl to the Three Kings, as well as LO sa ints, as payment for a request gra nted. The riwa l involved in these offerings is basicall y d erived from C ath olic church riwal, but it also includes many non -C a tholic elements. A person may ask a sa int to do something (or him and promise to "pay" by holding a velorio or wake. When the favor is granted, the person is obligated to pay the debt,

305

or he will be punished. Sometimes, if a p erson dies before h e has paid his d ebt to a saint, his spirit asks a relative to fulfill his obligation, because his spirit will not be freed until thl! debt is repaid. When a person offers a velorio he m ay be expected to beg for money to pay for it. He goes from house to house, accompanied by musicians sing ing songs declaring the purpose of the velorio and inviting people to the celebration. The velorios are usually held in Nocor:i during the harvest season, except those offered LO the Three Kings, whi ch are celebrated on the eve o( J a nuary 5. The velorios are held at home, or, if the h ouse is too sm all. the supplicant asks a neighbor or friend with a bigger house to permit the celebration in his h ome. 'Wi th the money collected, the person bu ys candles, crackers, wine for the women and rum (or the men, pays the musicians, and usually keeps the rema inder for himself. Before sundown he is accompanied b y chaste girls to the house where the velorio will be celebrated. One or more older persons who know the rosaries lead the singing of the velorio "·hile the audience sings the chorus. The velorio lasts all night. At sunrise a specia l song announces the dawn and th e end of the wake. During intervals of singing, starting about midnight, liquor, cofiee, and crackers are served to the guests. l\fa n y of the p eople, especially the younger ones, do not knm,· the songs a nd improvise new words, but insofar as the velorio is a celebration devised for the amusement of a sa int, all is part o( the en tertainment. Some of the older p eople resent the fact that the younger ones do not ca re about learning the old songs. In general, however, velorios are occasions for entertainment and joy. MAGICAL PRACTICES

The place of mag ic, spirits, and other unorthodox beliefs concerning the supernatural must be understood in the light of Nocora's socioeconomic background. "'Ne suggested in our introduction that Nocorans evidence anxiety symptoms b ecau se, since the L and Authority must limit the ir employm ent to give work to as many as p ossible, their incom e is not sufficient to meet the ir economic needs. The workers also retain certain attitudes o f dependence upon their employers, carried over from hacienda days, which are inappropriate to the present manager-work relatio nship of the mill and cane fields. In Caiiamelar the workers, although largely d escendants of slaves, are thoroughly accultura ted to the corporation situation. The corporation hires no more m en than it needs, and the workers do not fear that their term of employm ent will be r educed to make work for a ll comers. The workers are also thoroughly aware that no personal favors can b e exp ected from employers and that group solidarity is essential to personal security. Caiiame lar has no witchcraft o r mag ic. That witchcraft and mag ic in ocor;\ are not directed against ind ividual job competitors is expectable, since the competition involves large numbers o( p ersons, m any of them from other reg ions, rather than

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TH E PEOPLE OF PUERTO RICO

particular individuals. These practices, therefore, may be interpre ted in part as expressions of hostility and insecurity generated by the total situation but directed toward immediate causes of annoyance or fear. The importance of magic and of supernatural curers in N ocod, especially in the rural areas, must also be understood as a survival of earlier patterns. vVithout an historical background that caused them to interpret sickness, misfortune, and poverty as results of m a levolent forces that could be nullified through appropriate m easures, Nocor;i wou ld unquestionably h ave dealt with these problems in other ways. The culture history, h owever, offered a backg round of beliefs in ·witchcraft and spirits that are prevalent today. Puerto Rican and international churches sometimes become intermeshed with local magical beliefs and practices in Nocor:i. For example, many persons claim to be both Catholics and sp iritua lists, or Protes tants and spiritu a lists. D evout church members resort to magic on certain occasions. Comple te orthodoxy in relig ious beliefs is very rare. Even those who do not resort to magic a re sometimes ha!( convi nced of its efficacy. Rural workers regard religion as a solution of problems that ca nnot be solved by rational techniques. It is felt that magic and other fo rms o( supernatural control ca n cope with the problems !JlOre adequately than organized relig io n a nd that they are access ible to anyon e. It is believed that th ere are different supernatural means for solving different kinds o f problems. In the community, there a rc several practilioners of rnagic who a re known as seiforas que saben and hombres que trabaja11 ("women who know," "men who work"). Magical beliefs in N ocor;i are also associated wiLh saints' cults, sp iritualism, Catholicism , belief in ghosts, metamorphoses, the devil, prayers, and obj ects. Magic is in volved in the belie[ in li[e after death and in the be lief tha t all phenomena cannot be explained in terms of natural ca uses and that o ther kinds of forces interfere in natural events. Medici ne and Magic

Man is thought to be subject to a fate which he can seldom avoid, but which , with the a id of magic, he may aver t. Conditions or disease, health, death a nd li fe ca n be expla ined in na tural terms only to a certa in extent and only within certa in "contex t si tuations." In matlers of disease, it is not a question of whether to choose a mag icia n or a Lrained ph ysician in each case. Certain ills are ascribed natural ca uses and are taken to a physician . There are certa in others for which modern scien ce is thought to ha ve no cure, because their cause is supernatural. These are taken to the curr111deru or magician. Pa tronage of the magic i;in , however, is also partly the result of the limited access to medical services . A lthough medica l servi ces are ava il able th roug h the municipal hospital. the government Department of H ea lth, and State Security Fund , th ere is no private physician in Nocor<i. Instead, there is a licensed healer (cirnjano menor)

who prescribes and performs minor operations and who also uses mag ical pracLices for therapy. There is linle preventive treatmenl. and a physician or curer is usually consulted after th e patient has been sick for some time. The patient first receives home treatment, except in cases of serious accidents, when h e is taken to th e hospital for first aid ..-\t home, treatment is prescribed according to the folk pharmacopoeia, which includes innumerable h erbs that arc ascr ibed mag ical po\\'er to cure panicuLt r ailme11Ls. These herbs are gathered or b o ught from ;1 he rb peddler (1;/r111 le ro). They ;1 rc t1scd i 11 ba tlh. e nemas. and purgaLivcs, son1cti111es i11 c0111binatio11 11·i11t cl1 c111icals bough t at the drug.">tore. For i11 .~1a11cc . \\·J1 c11 ;1 b;1b y h as pain in th e stoma ch he is gi,·en bo iled /1111t 1i11 or orange leaves. In case ol a fe,·cr h e 111a,· lie b;11hed with plants such as a rrasa ron t d ("'eradi cates everything"), verbena, and other herbs 10 n.:d un · th e fc"er . If the patient does not get beucr \\'itlt home carc and the disease is thought w be prod t1c·c.:cl Ji~· 11;11ural causes, th e hospital is co nsulted. If til e cli,c;1sc is considered to be ca used bv supcr11au1 ral forces. a curer is asked LO ca rry on the treatment. Th e people believe that only the ph ysician can cure syphilis and cenain skin infections, do surgery, and stop h emorrhages. The ph ysician should not, h <m·e,·er. be consulted for broke n bones or for diseases supposedly caused b y spirits. Often medical and magical treatme nt of disease are complementary, and neither medicine nor magic is regarded as wholly adequa te in m ost illnesses. The va lue or one or the other depends on the kind o f disease and its specific cause in each case. Tubercul osis, for example, may involve mixed treatment. \Vhen the Public Health Serv ice bega n a popular campaign against tuberculosis, bringing a portable X-ray unit Lo th e community, people \\'ailed in line to be examined. wledical control and cure o[ tuberculosis, however, is very difficult to carry out at home. The absen ce of physical conveniences to handle tuberculosis cases in the small homes, the Jack o[ adequate nu trition , a nd the ted iously long period usually required for treatment of this disease. incl in es the people toward othe r treatment that is within their m eans. Th is is Lrue of any disease requiring long m ed ical care. An example is a tubercula r woman in her twenties who had improved greatly under rnedical care. A friend o[ h er famil y, however , had a re\'e lation that she had becom e sick because of envy but Lhat through "spiritual trea tment" h er h ealth could be restored. The treatment consisted of a series of seances in wh ich a medium challenged the spirits that had made h er sick while her m other, grandmother, and husband sat by. A. similar case was that o( a woman ,\·ho had been under treatment for uterine ca ncer in th e hospital. She returned hom e voluntarily and, after resuming h er hou sehold routine, became worse a nd h ad to go back to bed. A woma n cu rer was the n ca ll ed to find out the cause o ( h er illness. She diag n osed th e sick ness as

NOCQR,\ :

WORKERS ON A GOVERNl\IE1'T-OWNED SUGAR PLANTATI ON

wbe rc ulosis, not cancer, and prescribed a hot drink made with several herbs, a hot enema o( other herbs, a nd a h ut bath with aromatic perfumes and herbs. She sa id ~he knew that the wo man would d ie despite the treatment. s ince she had seen a coffin in the glass of water. The patie nt d ied the next day. In diagno:.is the curer may consult a g lass of water, invo ke :.pirit he lpe rs, or pray to discover the nature and :.011rce or the illness. Treatme nt is varied. If the pati<:ra ha, ;1 pain in the back o r in the st0mach, the c urer 111:i~ 1i-;e cupping (<'<'n losa ) . In this practice a lig ht ed candl e i.-, placed under an e mpty glass on th (· :11c::1 ol g re;t1e-,1 pain . The tw11/osa is supposed to nc:rtc· :t , .;t< 1u1111 \\'h ich \\·ill extract the air that caused the p :ii11 Ii~ prnduci11g a 1emporar>· swelling. \Iagical pra yer-, ;ire ,,;1id \\'he n a 1w11/os<1 is appli ed or when 111a ..,.,agc i, gi\"C ll. The pra yers are not necessarily d cr i,Td lrom the Catholic ritual. Some, fo r example, :ire taken lro111 " The P ra>er of the H o ly Shirt,'' Or(/( 11i11 tic'" .•.,,111111 <:11111isa . \\'hich is supposed to h ave bee 11 i11\ e11ted I>' a11 I11di;1 n c hief i11 the southwest pan ol the.: l ' nitc;l States. Pra yers are supposed to have c:uraLi\'(: p<n,·cr i11 themselves. Th ey are owned privately a11d are 110L supposed Lo be g ive n a way or loaned . :tlthough they may be sold . .-\fte r a perform:mce Lh e curer usually prescribes other m edicines. These medici11es are used in three pri11cipal ways : enemas. purgaLives. and h ot he rbal baths. Jn addition Lo h e rb!'. Lhe curer may prescribe pate n t medicines, pcnicilli11 i11jcnio11s. medicinal wines for appetite, gai11i11g- weight a nd stre ngth , and other drugstore items. Sometimes h e asks the patient lO sa y certai n pra yers or to pe rform certain rituals in connection with the treatme nt. The cure r is pa id for these services, or e be the treatm e nt ma y n ot be effective. Patients of both sexes a re expected to stay in bed and to show pain. They sho ut, swear aloud, and cr y. attracting the alLClllion or neighbors and fri e nds. Talk of pai11 i~ especially common during the d ead season. One olten hea rd , " I would not have this pain i( I h ad a joh." .\11 o pponunity to "·ork, however, is ge11c r;tll y taken d e~ pite sickn ess. People are re luna11 t to go to th e hospital and rarely go a lone. There is fear of be ing trea ted disrespectfully in the ho:.piwl a11d resentment at not rece iving e nough per:.onal attention. It is often sa id that during cons ultation-. th e ph ysician d oes not give the patient pcr~o11al aLtention a nd prescribes without a thorough ex;1mi11atiun. Since there is o nl y one physician who auc111pb to ,,ee hundreds o( people during visiting hours, the patient usually remains at home, unless his condiLiun is thought to require hospitalization, and a man of the household goes to the h ospital and describes th e ~ i ckness to a nurse, a nurses' aid, or to Lile doctor. I n se rious cases the union preside nt or the ma yor is asked to pro\'ide the municipal ambulan ce to take the patient t0 the hospiLal, or the pati e ut m:1 y be t:iken in :t public jitney. or bus, or go 011 foot. Si n ce hospital mea ls are cons id ered in adequate . food is bro ught from home.

307

Wealth and Magic

Magic is a lso a means o( e xplaining such phenome na as p ersonal fortunes. A cquisition and loss of wealth, for instance, are often explained b y m agic, and p eople often speak about dreams and vis ions of treasures. \ 1Ve were told the story of a wealthy man of Nocora who was supposed to have acquired his wealth through a pact with the deviL Once he asked his cook to serve a m ea l for t\\'O when h e was apparently alone. After the cook served the m ea l, the man locked the door o[ the dining room. The cook watched him Lhrough the key hole and saw him sitting beside a very handsome young man. After dinner, he walked o ut o f the dining room a lone, the handsome young man having disappeared. The author of the story com mented that "those people, the well-to-do, always do that." In T ipan it is said that Tero, a merchant, w as a very poor m a n, but that "one d ay he was told that there was a buried treasure under his house. H e dug a nd found gold coins. Now he is rich." Manuel says that he has been informed through visions several times of buried treasures (entierros) . One night when he " ·as fishing with a friend , he heard coins being jing led, so he looked around. " I was frighte ned and tre mbled when I saw a beam of lig ht that directed my eyes to a tree. Suddenly it started rain ing very h ard, and I ran with the othe r fellow to gather our n ets a nd told him of the re,·elation. A few days later I went to a seance, a nd a woma n in trance told m e 'Here is a man who w asted a fortune that was offered him, because he could not keep a secre t to himself. All that wealth was for him alone.' " Another in formant who lived in town said that a g host ofte n came to h er h o me and told he r of treasures, but that he was a trickste r. A chauffeur o f a jitney a lso said that in Barrio Troc ha, near J\ fa ngo where he lives, there are many g h osts " ·ho jestingly tell people of treasures. "The people believe them and destroy many sugar ca ne plants by digging for treasure.'' she said. "They d o not know that spirits and ghosts som etimes lie." Visions, Susfos, and Ghosts

i\Iany people in the community cla im to have visions and s11slos. Visions may b e soug ht, as in the spiritualist sessions, or may be seen w ith o ut a ny qu est. S11stos are mostly supe rna wra l crea tures and gay spirits which com e unsought and ha,·e power for neither good nor evil. The bleating o( a goat may be a susto, or a Lree or a stone m ay contain on e. Jn l\Iango almost every ad ult cla ims to have seen visio ns eiLher spontaneously or through a quest. Jn Tipan informants tell of others w ho h ave had v isio ns. but seldom cla im to have had the m personally. Such vi ·ions as the behead ed woman who walks by the seashore, the ball o[ fl esh, th e ball o[ fire, a nd the mermaid, a re said l o b e seen often :u nig ht in Ti pan.

308

THE PEOPLE OF PUERTO RICO

i\Iost visions are evil, and the sight of them may produce stupor, high fever, chills, and sometimes death. The mermaid, for instance, appeared to Mana, a very beautiful and healthy g irl. One day she told her mother that she saw a g irl with fins. H er mother was frightened because she knew this meant the girl would die soon . That same day when Marta went to fetch water, she and some other girls were given a lift in an empty railroad cart. l\ farta fell off and was run over b y a wagon. The follow ing day she died. In Tipan there is a short poem abou t the mermaid: 1

The mermaid of the sea Sings divinely Bue he who hears her sing Surely dies.

L:i sirena de la mar Canta divinamente Y q uien la oycre cantar Segura ticne Ia mucrtc.

In town, many people claim that they want nothing to do with such superstitions, but they do admit the existence of spirits, and fear them. The belief underlying the spiri t seances which are held in private houses in town, and in which revelations are made through mediums, are somewhat different than the rural belief in spirits. T own people call their belief "spiritism" (in some ways i t is like spirirnalism in o ther countries) and they describe it as a science a nd relig ion which has no conn.ection with evil and with what they call m agic and superstition, i.e., spiritualism. Among the rural workers the spirit world is very closely connected with everyday affairs. In Tipan and Mango, sessions are often held in which mediums go into a trance and communicate with spirits. A glass of " magnetized" water is placed on a table to attract the spirits, and desired informatio n is revealed to the medium. But it is not necessary to have a seance to seek revelations. The spirits may visit a medium a t any time and they may give people information in dreams. Human beings are believed to be caught in a struggle between good and evil. Every person has good spirits which protect against malicious spirits (espiri tus pe1·turbadores) which try to lead him toward his own destruction and the d estruction of others. There is a struggle between the two opp osing forces, a nd man needs to appeal to the spirits in order to achieve his aims. Magic in this context consists of the procedures a nd rites used to control the power of spiriLs a nd ghosts. There are two kinds o ( m agic: black and white. Mango has the reputation of being "bad," because it has several practiLioners of black magic. M any of i ts people boast oE the ir abil ity to harm others Lhrough their relationship with "the enemy," as the devil is called, and w ith other evil sp irits. O th ers, however, have the power to do "good." Catana, a woman in her seventies, had several dogs she could n ot afford to feed, and which scavenged and stole food from people's houses. When someone hit one of the dogs, Catana consul tecl the g lass of "magnetized" water which she a lways kept on the do or lintel and found out who had done it. She said the person who d id it would die like her dog, and, as our informants said,

"So it happened." O n another occasion Catana's son stole money from a neighbor, who accused him of the theft. This angered Catana, who called upon evil spirits and ca used a ll those who had accused her son to howl like dogs. To resto re her vicLims to normalcy, it was n ecessary to have a series of sea nces in their homes. Catana's fri ghtened neig hbors sometimes described her as a witch, meaning a pracLitioner of black magic. In Tipan, >iesa, who \\·as \·ery sick. claimed that L ope, in envy of her c.:hickcn and garden. had bewitched her by placing an e\·il fish on he r sweet potat0es. It was ~ t•ppo:.ed Lhat her husb:rnd would kill her with a knif e just ;1s she would use a k nife LO cut the s"·eet po tawc:-.. and that in d ying site would resemble the mutilated fish. T o find a curer who cou ld counterac.:t t.h c rnag irnl ell ec ts o f this fish, Nesa had to travel to differe nt pans of the isla nd . especially to so uth coast com nrnnitie~ a nd to the hill s. Site considered that her ow n good and evil helping sp irits were not strong enough to n::!>torc her health. The curer, who helped rc~tore her health by destroying the evil forces that caused sickness, can be said to have practiced white m agic. In Nocod, and especiall y in Tipa n, people living in the hills are fea red as witches because they are supposed to have g reat power to do evil. Antidotes can be found only in such places as Lofza, Guayama, Salinas. Juan a Diaz, Cuaynabo, or in Saint Thomas in the Virg in Islands. A ll of the mag ica l practices so far described are considered deliberate, conscious acts. The evil eye, however, is thought to be involuntary. Anyone may unknowingly develop the power tO harm by regarding something with envy. Since a person is unaware o( this power, he can guard against doing injury by saying "God bless it" when looking at somethi ng d esirable. Amulets are worn as protection against the evil eye. RECREATION

R ecreation in Noconi. cannot be readily disting uished from m an y o ther activities. I t is not a mea ns o f u sing leisure time, since the people have an excess of idleness; nor is it something money can often buy, since people are barely a ble to subsist. In fact, "recreation" hardly exists as a category that is separable from religious activities, social relations, and family life. Religious festiva l days and activities of religious societies are losing the ir sacred character a nd have become major sou rces of enjoyment. Pleasure is found in visiting and drinking with friends a nd relatives. The dichotomy between work and pleasu re, so fundamental to a modern town or city d weller, is only b eginni ng to appear in the community. There are, however, certain informal activities which are predominantly recreational. Among these are drinking, singing, dancing, storytelling, and gambling. Sports, radio, and moving pictures are even more purely recreational. Some o( the instituti ons of forma l recreation which once opera ted in the comm uni ty have

NOCORA: WORKERS ON A COVERNMENT·OWNED SUGAR PLANTATION

become obsolete and have been partially replaced by informal means of recreation. The casino, for instance, which provides entertainment for the richer persons in so many Pueno Rican commun ities, ceased to operate in Nocod with the decline of the upper class. Three casino buildings in the town, where the local elite fo rmerly held iueetings, dances, and fetes, now function as public gambl ing houses operated for profit by loca l entrepreneurs. They arc sometimes rented to local organi1ations for dances, meetings, and other a cti ,·ities. LOCAL SOCIETIES

309

years. The team, which is sti ll affiliated with the Puerto Ri~an Federation of Volley Ball Players, is quite inactive. T he softball team is secoricl to baseball in importance and number of supporters. There is a n amateur softball team, with membership mostly from town. MOVING PICTU RES

There is an old frame movie house on Main Street, owned by a local man. Since the mezzanine has no chairs, customers sit on the Boor or stand to watch the film. The orchestra h as folding chairs, many of which are broken. Th e films are usually old Mexican and American westerns and crime pictures. Every night there is one show. Few persons attend the local sho"·s, except to see l\Iexican pictures. The audiences consist largely of men and boys from town and its outskirts. On Good Friday a matinee is held to show a passion play. l\Iany women come with their famil ies from the rural districts to see this. The richer people of Nocor~t go to Bajas to see moving pictures, especially on Saturday and Sunday nights when public transportation is available. T he movie houses in Bajas are more modern and comfortable, though the tickets cost more than twice those at Nocora.

The only ~ociety "·hose purpose is purely recreaLion:tl i~ the C.:irculo U nivers itario. The other societies in the community an; on ly incidentally recreational. J\mon~ these arc th e ~l:t sons. the American Legion, and til e labor union s. Th e C:irntlo L:ni,·ersitario was founded during a Strike or Stttdtllls al the University of Pueno Rico i11 i9.J8. The leaders of the strike tried to organize chapters of university students in different towns of the island, so as to continue the protest while the university was closed. ln Nocor:i the activities of the Circulo soon sh ifted from their original aim toward recreational and educational goals, and students and universi1y alumni swelled the enrollment. The activities of the Circulo are not limited to members but include other local people of the higher income grou ps. INFORMAL RECREATION On the Day of the Patron Saint in 19.19, the Circulo The dichotomy between harvest and dead season h eld a dance in one of the loca l casinos. Admission was by personal invitation and cost five dollars per has a direct bearing on recreational activities in the couple. People who were not members of the Circulo community. In Tipan the illegal cockfights, roadside were invited, among them fo rmer Nocorans living in gambling and drinking, velorios, dancing to informal San Juan or in other cities. Sometimes on Sunday, orchestras, improvised baseball games, and visiting, m embers of the Circulo drop in a t the hall to dance which are so common during harvest, are just memories during the dead season. In Mango and Tipan, info rmally. people may be seen in the afternoon and evening, sitting silently at the entrance to their homes. Two SPORTS or three men may squat in a courtyard or by a road , Nocod shows the enthusiasm for baseball which is talking quietly until dark. Conversations usually regeneral to Pue rto Rico. As an organized sport, base- volve around lack of work, food, prices, and protests ball is preferred to softball and volleyball. Nocor<l's against the employers, the government, a nd the labor baseball team belongs to an amateur league which union, which they blame for the crisis of the dead plays against similar teams in oth er towns. The players season. Harvest, which brings employment and cash, are usually from town, although boys from nearby releases tensions. After work on holidays, people rer ural districts are sometimes recruited. The rural dis- lax, walk, visit, gamble, and sing. Sometimes men tricts think o( this team as belonging Lo the town walk down to the seashore, just to look at the ocean. ·with the first week of the harvest, especially on pay(pueblo), and most o( the fans are townspeople. The e nthusiasm for baseball in Nocod, however, is day, the tra nsformation is ev ident in the smiling faces no t based on its pueblo team, but rather on Puerto of the men. They put on clean shirts and pressed pants Rican professional baseball teams, practically all o( to go visiting, drinking, and gambling, or just to spend which have supporters in Nocod. The games are the evening a t home chatting with their families. broadcast regularly, and are avidly followed by perIn town the dead season also shows its effects, even sons who cann ot afford to go to the towns where they though repairs on the mill during the past few years are played. In the rural districts, baseball is extremely have provided jobs for some 800 men. There are a few popular, and impromptu games are often played by bars, one dance hall, and one movie house. The few persons of all ages. persons in the upper income group who can afford Volleyball, for which a special concrete court was commercial recreation go to neighboring towns and b uilt in town, has been eclipsed by baseball in recent even to San Jua n.

3 I0

THE P EOPLE Of" P U ERTO RICO

Dancing a nd Drinking

In the t0\\"11 there is one dance hall and bar. Although larger bars have jukeboxes with the latest hits in Puerto Rican, Mexican, Cuban, and Dominican popul a r music, only one has a dance floor. Men visit this bar with their mistresses or pic kups, but not with their sweethearts (n.ovias) or their wives. Chauffeurs, mill workers, and men Crom nearby rural districts are the main clie n ts. There is no cha rge for admission, but the d a ncers a r e s upposed to buy drinks at the bar. Bars in to\\·n are commonly patro nized by men who drink, chat, o r p lay domi noes whi le the jukeboxes play loudly. On Saturdays and holidays, they provide the ga thering place fo r town m e n. Vete rans, who come to town daily fro m the rural distric ts during the school session, m eet in the bars before classes s ta rt. Adolescent boys are some limes n o t excluded , a nd they a r e seen drunk in the ba rs a nd in the stree t. lllegal rum is sold in some sm a ll stores ( tie11das) and in private houses in town. The bottle is often passed amo ng f'l"i e nd ~ g;1t h c re d on th e r o ad s ide. Social Gambling

rounds, between which the roosters arc held b y their owne rs o r a sympathizer who sucks the blood of[ the wounds. A fight las ts until o ne or th e coc ks is killed. Home Fiestas

The o nly public fiestas in N ocod arc those LO the patron saint. Private fies tas attended b y invited g uests are u sually held to celebrate some spCC'ific event. In lO\\'n , baptisms. weddings. and farewells arc occasions fo r fies tas. R.e ceml y. sh o we r pan ies have b een g i\'e n lo r g irb o f th e rniddl e-uppc:r in come gro up. The ~ 11 b ts :ire brgcly to\\'11 pc.:ople ol :-. imibr oc·,·up<ttion a11d incom e. 011 C11ri .,t111a~ :11HI Thrc(' I\. i11gs' Day, m ost ce le b rations h e ld in l<l\\"11 i11\'olvc Ja111il~· member-. o r close c ire I cs o l I r ie ncls. In th e rural districts. li cst:1s i 11d ud e 11clorius h e ld for the sai n t'-. L1re \\·e ll pari ics. h:1p1 i., llh. :i ncl \\'Cddings. Impro mptu fies t:t'> , to \\·hi c li e \-eryo11 c: is \\"ckmne. arc aho he ld in p r i\·;11 c ho m e:, a nd yard-,. During the d c:td sc:1srn1 1hc onl y cekhr:11io11s in Tipa11 arc th e 1•t'lu rio pro11 1i..C'd I<> 1lt c· Tllf"l'<' l'i11J.?;s . and 1lw Nt: w Yl·: 11".., lll<l '> ljll C' r i trl <"~ . ( ; l11i ~ llll i l ~ l'". lt' j ~ just like an }' o th c r nig h t o f th e d ead season in Tipan, a nd a ltc·1 !l ' '-"

11 0

ligh 1 ;.. '•l' <' " · 1)111 i11 i-; Ll1 c d.1 y

11 u

s " l i.ol 1'!i""'bli11f!. . w liid• b <.:x 11 e111 e ly com1non, in -

relelJrnlions arc held. altho11gl1 Ll1ere is so111e lalk of

volvcs small g roups o( players. ln town, small parties o f m e n ofte n ~~1m b l c a l di ce. c·a 1d ... a nd do111i11 uc:. i11 ca!>inos run illegall y by local opc raLOrs in the bake r y, o n the sidewalks, and in bars. T o wn boys LOSS penni es in th e roac.bide, esp ecially during the z afra. in Tipa n a nd l\lango, socia l ga mbling is one o ( the m ost po pular [orms of recrea tio n fo r m e n and boys. Du r ing th e h a r vest .i n T ipan , wh e n "things begin to get hot" (e l cl!ilfo se anna), small parties shoot dice 0 11 Lh e road side n ear the small stores. On Sa turda y evenings. S unday a lte rnoo ns, a nd ho lidays, m e n who form a clique a nd ca ll each o th e r mingos play togeLhe r against other 111 i11gos. Be ts range from a few p e nnies to three or four dollars. \Vheneve r a bet is mad e, each p a rty drinks from a bo ttle of illegal rum, cMia . T e nsio n s incr ease, and insults sometimes lead LO fi g hts with fi sts and kni ves. These brawls o(Lc n have LO be broken up by the to wn police. There is also muc h gambling at card s in pri va te ho m es. ln ~fa ngo m e n a nd boys gambl e on th e roadside, in the hills, o r in small stores an<l private houses wh e re rum is sold.

Christma s in th e old da ys when the harvest .;1:ined in D <.:c.c1111Jt:1· a 11d las ted :.ix months . At this time . s ug ar was shipped from the Tipan port, and man y you ng men earne d their Jiving working as ste vedores. J t is said that i11 those days there we re dances, promenades (/><11Tc11ulas) of music ia ns, and masq uc racles during the who le Christmas season up to th e Three Kings· Da y. Now, on December ~8. th e day o f l n no cenl Sa ints, childre n paint th c i1· fa ces :rnd go around in g roups of fi ve o r s ix asking for m o ney and candies. The re is no mischic [-making when they are n o t given anything, which ofte n h appe ns. On Decembe r ;~ 1 . O ld Year's Day, a g roup o f men dressed in rags and wearing g rotesque m asks made o( dry grass a nd rags go a round the community ;111d th e n earby settle m e nts. s ing ing. dancing, and b eggi ng. Two of the masks represe n t an old marrie d coupl e who ('arry 011 a dialogue about sex a nd e ngage in s imul a ted sexu a l pra ctices w hile danc ing. T his provokes laug h1er from th e p eople who follow them, trying to guess who th e y are. fn the rural districts ce rtain events in the life c ycle are cele brated b y drinking and dan c ing . Birthdays are ig no re d and people o ften d o no t know the ir age. A Catholi c bap tism. howe ve r, is ge ne ra II y cel e bra tccl at the chi ld 's h ome by a r1esta, the C'OSt of which is born by th e god-pa re nts. A loca l weddi11g is also occasion for fe~t i v iti es . the g room or his pare n ts providing the refreshm e nts. So m e times fi estas are h e ld as rare wells for agric u l wra l lll igrants LO th e Un ited Stales. Fiestas are atte nded b y m a rried m e n hut not b y m a rried wom e n. The g u ests a re nor111all y in viLed , bu t unin vited g u ests arc also welcome. l\ le n are servecl rnlio in the kitche n but may go outside to get more to drink.

Cockfights

The re is o ne le gal cockfight pit which m a ny people rrom Bajas and other wwns visit during the season . Ve r y fe w p eople Cro m Nocod a tte nd this, but illegal cockfig hts held in sonic rura l distric ts during the h a rvest a t tr act m a n y pe rsons. In Tipa n coc ks are o\\·n ed b y ve terarn,. m e rc hants. and n e ig hboring landholders. Th e fights are h e ld on Sunday m o rnings in a secluded p lac.e. (Figure 5 1.) Th e cocks, w hic h usua ll y fi g ht w ith · out artifu ia l c;purs, a re placed in front ol ea ch o the r, su r ro unded by a circl e o( s pecta tors who niake hc 1 ~ w hile urging o n th e ir fa vorite. ,\ fi ght lasts severa I

NOCORA: WOR KERS ON A GOVERN:\lENT-OW NEO SUGAR PLA="TATION

Folk Music and Songs In Lhc rural clisLricLs folk music and songs are still popu lar, a nd they pro\"ide dance music even though popular radio music is becoming popular. Young m en and \\'omen prefer su ch popular music as boleros and congas, buL fo lk music is still played where local musicians are Lo be found. During the h arvest in Tipan and i\ [ango. groups of men will form a small orchestra with g uitars. cuatros. g11ic/10ros, and perhaps a marimb;1 for pe rcuss io n. and o-o Lo som eone's h ouse to ~ in g :111d pla y. In to\rn as in most other parts o the island this i-. ctllcd pr11Tr111dn: in Tipan and i\lango. it does not lta\·e a special name and is simply referred lO as "the music. .. la 1111isicn. As soon as the musicians stan to play, people gather, since everybody is \\'c komc to listen . There is no communiLy singing or d :111ci 11g-. but so 111eo11 e in th e aud ience who knows a tune or :1 stan1a mav !l ino- it. Persons \\'ho can sing \\'ith vibrant voice ar~ dcs~ribed as having eco, \\'hich is :1 11111!'11 estccrn ed ~ ift. For each song, usually two p er:.0 11s si11h al tc:r11 :1te s1;111n 1s, ol 1c.: 11 i111provi:.i11g them . T hese performanres are really contests in whlch Lhe wi11 icqt vc1 ·~c • I" "'·okc laughter and smiles. \ \lords lO a !.Ong thus oltcn ch:mge, and new \'Cr5CS develop. Some of the songs are of Span ish derivation. Others a re widespread in Lite.; isl a 11d a 11d proua Lil)' : 11 c Pu enn R ica n in origin, whi le still others are regional or local, as can be inferred from the content. The fol k songs a rc lyrica l 01- relate Lo cenain even ts. The lyrical songs concern love, rel ig ious subjects such as the life of Christ, Lhe Virgin, and saints, a nd themes of local irncrcsL. Some songs are said Lo record aclllal event~ which ha p pened in the past. T hus, one song tells of the sinki ng o f a suga r boat in which several men from the communi ty were killed, ;m d anoLher re~ates how a g irl was raped and killed by two men rn a comm11niLy near San .Ju an in the late twenties. . These fiestas usually sta rt at dark and last until abom g o r 10 r.:-.r. Often, wh ile the fi esca is go ing on, children o( the same sex dance together beh ind the house and the yard. T he men, including th e musicians, refresh themselves Crom t im e to Lime with a drink of (">

31 l

the hero is a prince and the heroine a princess under en chantment. T h e characters however include work ing men who sometimes turn out to be' the real h eroes and save the prince and princess. Bu t a t other times, laborers .are .the butts of ridicule and laughter. There are ~pec1a l . J.okes about two principa l characters, a stupid Gahcian (aa /leao) a nd a smart worker whose . . 1.s usually " " Cuban. Some o( the stories nat1onal1ty take over an hour to relate, while the audience listens absorbed. 1

[

crnia.

Visiting and Storytelling

During the h arvest, people make freq uent visits early in the evening to their neighbors and fri ends. \ \!omen take th eir younger children to v isit the homes or other women, where they talk a nd 1is ten to the radio i[ there is on e. i\Ien, unlike women, may meet in public places such as roadside stores, to talk, listen to the rad io, a nd somet imes gam ble and drink togeth er. \ 1\Then visiLing, men and women usually change from work clothes a nd put on shoes. Some p eople who are recogn ized as good sto1·ytellers attract many listeners. The stories gen erally d ea l wi th fantasti c a nd supernatural events, and usually have elemenLs of joking and ridicule. Most of them are d erived from old l\lestern Europea n folk stories in which

SUMMARY AND CONCLUSIONS ~ocora was selected for fie ld study because it exemp lified one o( many kinds of rural subcultures that have de:elo1:ed in Puerto Rico in response to cultural, h1stoncal, and ecological factors. Desp ite the fact that the H ispan ic heritage provides a cu lture shared by all P uerto Ricans and that strong influences from the Nonh American continent \\'ere exerted on Pueno Riro after occup:lt ion by th e lln i Led S tat es .

the culturnl differences bCLween Noconi, Taburn, nnd Sa n J ose are fundamenta l. T hese d ifferences are expla111ablc

only

by

rc.;~io11.d

dill e 1·c 111-c:>

in

cu ltu1.tl

ecological adaptations. At d iffe ren t periods in the h i<;Lo1·y o( P11 c r10 Ricn. 1h c various p:ir1-; or th e i'> l:1ncl produ ced cash crops thm were in d emand on the local or \~o rlcl market a nd that were suited to the particular environment. In recent years Tabara's production of food crops for island consumption and tobacco, San J ose's emphasis o n coffee, an d Nocar.i's and Cai'lamela~·· s la rge-scale cu ltivation of sugar can e were d etermmed by the total situatio n- the land, cl im ate, crop, processing, credit facili ties, m arketing possibi lities, and othe1· economic factors. T he ways in which these modes o( land u se profo undly affected n early a ll aspects of the lives of the people have been traced in detail in the sections describing San Jose, T abara, Nocora, and Caiiamelar. The effect upon Nocora was very similar to that upon ~a~1amel ar, nnd the analysis in the preceding pages 1s 111dependent verification of the general conclusions reached by l\fintz. All o( these analyses show tha t the different rural subcultures o f Pueno R ico emerged because o( particu la r cul tu ral ecological adaptations that took place wiLh in the broader frame\\-ork o( Lhe J:-lispanic Lrndition, and more particularly throug h involvement dur ing the last fifty yea rs in the economic a nd politica l system and general cu lture of t he Un ited States. \ \Thi le cultural traditio n and culture diffusion provide content to the loca l Puerto Rican subcu ltures. an d constitute limiLs of variation, n either can expla in the emergence o ( the severa l loca l types. Our m o re specific research problems were: first, to ascenai n wherein the people of >:ocor;i differed from those of Cai'iamelar beca u e of the social objectives o( the Land Authority program of creating jobs and dist ribut~ng pro fi ts t~ ~h e workers: second, to study a communtty 111 trans1tton between the paternal ist ic

31 2

TH E l'EOPLE OF PUERTO RICO

famil y hacienda type of farm a nd the large, impersona lly managed, modernized p lantatio n, and third, to recognize how these two aspects of Nocora affected the attitudes and behavior of its people. The evidence concern ing the effects of government o wnership and profit-sharing of the L and Authority seem to show fairly conclusively that while more persons receive employment, the standard of living has not been decisively bettered. Because of overpopulation, d ependence upon a seasonal crop, unemployment a nd underemployment, the d istribut ion of the net profits of the farms results in a situation in which, as a prominent Land Authority official said, "\ Ve do not distri bute wealth, b ut poverty." The principal b eneficiaries o( the proportional-profits are the mayordom,os and other year-ro und employees who a lso receive a much hig her wage. The profits distri b uted among the ordinary seasonal laborers have been so i nconsequentia l that inform a nts rarely m ention ed them as a feature of the la nd reform. The problem o( mechan iza tion under these circumsta nces has far-reach ing implications for programs of technical assistance a nd farm improvement throughout the world. I t might be supposed that efficient mechanization would reduce costs and thereby increase profits so that the workers, although em ployed for shorter periods, wo uld receive the same income. T his is not the case. Only a fraction of what is saved in labor costs is returned to the local "'orker, while the greater portion oE the !><wing goes into the cost of equipme nt, wh ich means that it goes to the factory worke r and owner who produced the equipment, If, for example, eig ht men working manually can cultivate one acre a t a labor cost of S io per worker or a tota l o( S8o per acre and the produce is sold for $ 100, the profit is S20. Divided p roportionally, each worker receives $ 2.50 o f this profit, a tota l earning of $ 12.50. If, however, o ne man using a machine can cultivate the acre a lon e, th e tota l cost might consist o f, let us say, $50.00 pa id for the machine, representing a yearly amortization , and perh aps Si !Loo wages to the skilled operato r. In this case the tota l cost of p roduction is S62,oo a nd th e profit $38.00. Divided among eight men, each receives S4 .75 except the operator, who receives S16.75. Under mechanization the ordinary laborers receive $7.75 less than when all the work was done by hand. A private in vestor is not concerned with the loss to the workers or with their unemployment. Jn a program d esigned to prov ide employment for a m ax imum number of people, the dilemma is not resolved b y sharing the profits. An arrangement of thi s kind is workable o nly when the technologica lly unemployed laborers can find work in other, growing industries, In the long run, techno logical unemployment in th e Un i tecl States has been offset by the developrnen t o( man y kinds o( new e nterprises, and the unemployed form population has had little d ifficulty in findin g jobs in cities a nd industrial cen ters. Pu erto Ri co h as end eavored to provide new industries for its surplu s labor, but it has faced serious difficulties, such as 1

shortage o[ power and raw m a terinls. J\ figra tion LO the ci ties-in this case, lnrgely to New Yo rk Cityhas drained off an enormous number of surplus workers, but man y persons haYe found even the moderate cost of transportat ion LO the United States prohibitive, The manner in which the proponional-profit farms are run as com pared \\'ith private operation has o therwise mad e no g reat difference to the workers, for it was stipulated (Section 7~, Land L n\\') that they \\'Crc to be operated and admini:-.tered li ke pri vate farms, '\'V. Packard, in an appra i;.;d o f the I .;ind :\tt thority ( 19.18:70), \\Tote . "Th e opcr;1ting org ani1ation of the L nnd Authority corre,pond.; in ha:iic 0 11 tli 11c \\'ith that used by pr ivate corporations in .-, 11g:ir c:i11e pro· du ctio n," ' Th e pri11c ipa l cconomic g;1i11 Lo th e work ers is the prov isio11 of equa l op po rtuni ty for c111ploy111 c11 t without di e f:i\'oriti ~ m o l the early sys tc111s and \\'ith out reducLio n o f ClllJ>I O) llWllt hccause o f th e ll C:('('.:.S ity to save labor co~t s. Bu t thi ~ . as ,,·c have 5.ec: 11. h;1s hc:c n a chieved at tl1 e C'm t o l reducing the le 11g-1h of employment for each \H)rker , ,,·hilc a im probabl y reducing th e pro fits. D espite the \\'Orker's inte rc:i t as voters as " 'e ll as share rs of profits in the go,·ernment-owned farms, they have failed Lo acquire n sense of participatio n ei ther in o wnership o r management of the enterprises. For them these arc still the "corporat ion." A major effect of the L and Authority prog ram has been LO exaggerate the contrast between the dead season and the harvest season without providing solutions to th e distress accompanying the former. U nd er the o ld fami ly hacienda system, slaves and free men were ca red for during the dead season by the liace11dado, who felt a personal responsibility that went beyond merely paying off his worker s after the harvest. Production o( food nnd other basic essen tials o n the hacie nd a enabled him to meet their minimnl needs. T oday Lite proportional-profit (arms do not produce food an d are unable to carry the men during the d ead season, Since the wo rkers d epend a lmost e ntirely u pon wages rece ived from employment in sugar, they are virtua lly without income during the three mon ths o[ this season, and unemployment is almost uni versa l. The town appears empty, and the rural districts seem paralyzed, Credit is discontinued or reduced. The people t urn LO a va riety o[ minor subsid iary activities that sca rcely p rovide su bsistence, a nd they engage in illega l ga mbling o r in bootlegging in the ho pe of ra ising sma ll sums. The garden plots that were p rovided the rese ttl ed ag regados somewhat a lleviate the food shortages, but th ese a re used less th an might he expected. One exp lanat ion for this may be thnt the cashorienrntio n of the mod ern worker disposes him to work at earning money, however little, rather than al produ cing food. Another, perhaps more con vincing, explannt io n mny be th a t with the aba ndo nme nt of land food crops, the wo rkers learn ed to regard imported foods- rice, beans, codfish, and lard- as so essen tial that they would rather earn even small

NOCORA: WORKERS ON A GOVERN"!ENT-OWNED SUGAR PLANTATION

amounts of cash with which to buy these than to cultivaLe vegetables to which they are no longer accustomed. The foods are not new to the workers, but they have become emphasized as dietary essentials. Adjustment to the modern conditions in Nocod has been more dilficult for the workers than for other classes. \ Vhereas the large landowners sold their farms and moved a"·ay and the middle classes entered business. real estate. and managerial positions in the Land :\utl1ority. the \\"Orkers lost the security of the hacienda ~yste111 "'ithotn making adjustmenLs to the large, modc:rni1cd farms. The situation became more diffi< ult ,,·fien sn);tll and medium farm s sold out and joined the rank~ o[ landless laborers and when uncm plo~·cd men Ill ig ra ted from other parts o( the island to find work . . \t C;1 t1;1111cla r the "·ork i11g class has become rather thoroughly prnlctarianized. :\ L Nocor;i it is a proletariat in transition. \fany attitudes and behavior pattern-; of the hacienda days Sllr\'i\'e in the present Situation. Some of these arc inappropriate and ineffective, and exemplify stresses and stra ins in the processes of accult11raLion. Others have actptired new function s necessitated by cha nged circumstances. Jn their relationship to those in po"·er in the municipality, the workers have not yet been able to make Cull use of the union and the political party. This is partly because they retain attitudes o[ personal dependence derived from the hacienda pattern. The workers in Caiiamelar, aware of the impersonal nature of their relationships with the management, take economic and political action through the labor union. In Nocora the workers are far less aware of the meaning of collective bargaining and of political democracy. -while they know that jobs are distributed impartially, they sti ll see their relationship to union leaders and politica l committeemen as one involving personal favors and g uidance. In addition to these carry-over attitudes, however, it is obvious that the critical job shortage makes collective bargaining enforced by strikes a very ineffective procedure. Nocoran rural family preserves the earlier ideal of rilllal marriage and male dominance. Ilut in modern. times these have little significance. In Lite a bsence o( property and matters of inheriLance, consensual unions are extremely common, and, although these may be enduring, separation is so easy that the wife, together with her progeny by any number of consorts, is the permanent core of the home. The family is essentially matricentric, matrinymic, and matrilocal. It is matriarchal in that the woman controls all members except her husband. In these respects the Nocoran family has developed a pattern much like that of Cafiamelar. Ritual kinsh ip relations continue to be important

313

in Nocora, but as in Cafiamelar many are contracted without church ritual and they now create close ties between members of the working class rather than between laborers and landowners. Unlike Cafiamelar, however, where the compadrazgo is an inu·icate network o[ criss-crossing relationships which augment class solidarity, in Nocora they serve mainly to sanction or formalize ties between cliques of friends or " buddies," and even between siblings or other actual kin. It is probable that the formal content of religion and supernatural activities in Nocor:i has not changed greatly since hacienda clays, except for loss of such direct contact with the Catholic church as may have been provided b y the liacendados and introduction of Protestant sects. One of the most notable changes in religion is the widespread use of several su pernatural means o( manipulating destiny. The perpetuation of these patterns is an expression o( the fact that many a reas o( life are not secularized as among classes with higher literacy and education. They also evidence extreme insecurity in employment, personal relations, health, and the basic needs for existence, which the people cannot solve by rational procedures and thus attempt to manipulate or nullify by supernatural means. It is no accident that these practices are far more common in the dead season. The cult of the saints-community, household, and personal saints-although derived in substance from a very old heritage, has assumed a pattern of personal favors and obligations between the supplicant and the saint. For favors the supplicant rewards the saint and (or failure he punishes the saint. There are more promises made the saints during the dead season, more fulfillments during the harvest. Since bad luck, sickness, and other general misfortune is ascribed to sorcery, Lhe community has curers or practitioners of white magic as well as of black magic. The genera l patterns of recreaLion have changed largely in the occasional use of radios, motion pictures, jukeboxes and in the interest in sports, especially baseball. These innovaLions from the outside, however, have been adopted far more by the sophistica ted, acculturated town people than by the rural workers. The latter continue traditional patterns, although with certain cha nges. R eligious activities, especially those held on religious holidays, have lost most o( their sacred character. Gambling and drinking show a marked seasonal change. They are done socially during the harvest, but during the dead season the illega l lottery is played in the hope of making a small stake, and bootlegging increases. During the harvest more varied forms of recreation are undertaken, many 0£ them of commercial origin.

9 BY SIDNEY W. MINTZ

C

aiiamelar:

Le

Subculture of a Rural Sugar

Plantation Proletariat INTRODUCTION THE PROBLEM

The history of P u erto Rico is n o t m erely distinctive when compared with the rest of the Antilles-it is almost unique. H P uerto Rico were excepted, a historian asked to symbolize C aribbean history in two words could say "sugar" and "slavery." Over a period of m ore than four hundred years, b eginning when the firs t crude sugar cane grinding apparatus was constructed on the Spanish island of Hispaniola, the land of the Caribbean, the labor of its people, and the capital of Europe and America have b een employed more and more in the production of sugar. vVhen the la nd of one island was exhausted, more l a nd could be bought or stolen o n other islands. When one colonial power fell behind, others were ready a nd willing to take its place. If capita l could not be got from one source, it could be got from another. There was no function ing aboriginal agricultural system to be built upon in the Caribbean, as t here was in highland P eru or Mexico, and so a different system deve loped, based first on indentured servants and the m eager supply o( local I ndians, and soon after on the African slave. Eric "Williams (1942: i2- 14) has told the story eloquentl y: It was, in fact. sugar which raised these insignificant trOp· ical islands from the stalUs of pirates' nests to the dignity of

3 14

CANAl\'fELAR: RURAL SUGAR PLANTATION l'ROL£TARIAT

the 111ost precious colon ies known to the ' •\Testern '"'orld up to the nineteenth century. It was the Negro, without whom the islands would haYe remained uncultivated and might as well have been at the botwm of the sea, who made these islands into the prizes of war and diplomacy, coveted by the statesmen o( all nations. These black "'bundles," these "logs," as the Negroes were referred to, meant sugar together with other tropical products. Between 1640 and 1667, when suga 1· was in u·oduced, the wealth of Barbados increased forty times. All the European wars between 1660 and 1815 were rouglu for the possession of these valuable C:arilibca11 islands and for the privilege of supplying the ··tons·· of labor needed by the sugar plantations. Between 1jlio and 181 :1 Si. Luria thanged hands se,·en times. Trc11H·11<lous wealth \\·as produced from an unstable econ0111y b:1sed on a single crop. which combined the vices of kudali~ m and capi ta lism with the virtues of neither. L iverpool in Enghucl. i\antcs in France. Rhode Island in America. prosp(·rcd m1 the sl:wc track. London and Bristol, Bordeaux :rnd i\farse illcs. Cadiz and Seville, Lisbon and New Eng land. :di ,,·axcd lat o n the profits of the trade in the tropical produce raised by the Nq.\TO sbvc. Capitalism in E11gb11d. France. Hoibnd and colonial America received a double stimulus- from the manufacture of goods needed to exd1a11gc for sb,·es, \\'Ookn and cotton goods, copper and brass vessels, and the firearms, hanclculfs, chains and torture instruments indispensable on the slave ship and on the slave plantation; and from the manufacture of the colon ial raw materials,- sugar, cotton, molasses. The tiniest British sugar island was considered more valuable than the thirteen mainland colonies combined. French Guadeloupe, with a population today of a mere 300,000, was once deemed more precious than Canada, and the Dutch cheerfully surrenclerccl what is today New York Seate for a su-ip of the Guiana territory. These islands were the glittering gems in every imperial diadem, and Barbados, J amaica, Saint Domingue (t0day Haiti), and then Cuba were, in that order of succession, magic names which meant national prosperity and individual wealth. Signs abounded in England and l~rancc, the "West Jndians" held the highest offices and built magn ificent mansions, which in Cuba, with a due sense of their importance, they called palaces. Sugar was king; without his Negro slave his kingdom would have been a desert.

It is curious that Puerto Rico, perhaps more than any other of these "glittering gems," managed to remain outside the bloody turmoil of sugar and slaves. The tangential character of Puerto Rico's developmem ·was due to a complex o( historical and economic circumstances. Spain came very late Lo the trade struggle. Yet she had defended Puerto Rico against the warring nations time and again, so that the monstrous panorama of endless waving cane and sweating slaves was long delayed. When Spain, too, joined in Lhe race, Cuba's greater size and endless ferti le lands enabled her to receive the first stimulus. vVhile the nineteenth century was indeed a period of great economic expansion fo r Puerto Rico, as it was for Cuba, it was both late a nd relatively weak. Puerto Rico, under Spain, was only brieny a "sugar island," and never one in the almosL explosively exploitative a nd capital ist sense that the British and French islands had been. Thus it was that Puerto Rico came to the fate of all the other Antilles late in its historv and late in Lhe history of the

315

Caribbean. What this tardiness meant to the island's subsequent and peculiar development, socially and culturally, may in part be revealed by the present study. In 1899, the Spanish-American ·war brought the American occupation to Puerto Rico. It was this event, probably more than any other in its history, which set the direction and molded the future of the island. Economically, the occupation signified a sharp and intense shift in Puerto Rico's agricultural exploitation. It has been under the United States that the island has joined, in an agricultural sense, its faltering forebears - Haiti, Cuba, Barbados, Jamaica, and Guadeloupe. The present study undertakes to examine the cultural effect of this shift. I t is, therefore, first and foremost, an analysis of culture change. Because of the nature of anthropological method and its emphasis on the day-to-day functioning of a living culture, this cannot be the study of an island, nor even of an entire region; ra ther, it is an effort to analyze a general cultural change through the study of a specific community. The supplanting of what I shall define as the family-type hacienda by what can be called the corporate land-and-factory combine marks the main focus of this change. In the community which is reported on here, this supplantation radically altered the way of life of the people: certain aspects of the culture were changed completely; in other areas, resistances to change developed. The locale is the south coast of Puerto Rico, one of the regions most altered by the economic effects of the American occupation. The basic shift in the economic organization of the south coast sugar industry at the time of the American occupation did not occur in a sociocultural or historical vacuum. The present-day organization of the industry in the area represents a synthesis of the American productive system and the system which preceded it. Correspondingly, the present-day culture of the area must be seen as a result of the cultural synthesis of pre-1900 patterns and subsequent innovations into a new way of life. The American occupation brought with it new political traditions, new colonial policies, and, especially important for this problem, new technology, new markets, and great amounts of investment capital. These forces were introduced in a social and economic situation which had much earlier developed its own methods and means of industrial organization, its own cultural forms, and its own rationale. The shift to the corporate land-and-factory combine on the south coast came about in response to extrainsular forces: a growing demand for sugar for the American market; the introduction of great amounts of American capital for local expansion of the sugar industry; the development of extensive governmental and private irrigation systems; the intensified centraliza tion of crop processing; and so on. The currently exclusive cultivation of sugar cane in this zone, therefore, cannot be regarded as the "natural" result of local conditions. Rather, a particular kind of technology and a special scale of capital investment were imposed upon an a1·ea which historically and environmentally was suitable for wage labor, single crop,

3I6

THE PEOPLE OF PUERTO RICO

commercial agriculture. Until the American occupa· tion, the technology and investment practices which characterized the area differed markedly from the subsequent forms. ·with good assurance that largescale in vestment would find a waiting market and yield an adequate profit, American corporate investors changed the economic arrangemen ts which obtained in the south coast zone, and thereby brought about sweeping socia l and cultural changes as well. The con tinuous chain of social an d cultural changes begun b y the occupation h ave not yet come to a stop. These changes were especially abrupt on the south coast, where two great American corporation s began operations. Even before the corporate land-and-factory combine system had fully established i tself and consolidated its position in the insular economy, it had molded the people of areas such as the south coast into a new k ind of labor and had brought to them a new kind of social awareness. In the course of the analysis of this culture change, four steps are projected: (1) to reconsu·uct the cultural setting of the fami ly-type hacienda way of life; (2) to describe and to analyze fun ction ally, where possible, the series of ch anges set off by the basic econ omic shift of the igoo's; (3) to describe and interrelate the diverse aspects of the present-day culture of a community sub jected to this change, tying this culture to the culture of the past, where the materials allow; (4) finally, to offer some generalizations about the nature of the basic change and its cultural effects, subject to possible cross-cultural application . THE DEFINITION OF THE COMMUNITY

Certain of the limitations of the purely ethnographic approach to community study wh ich are discussed in the Introduction to th is book-the inadeq uacy o( treating of communities as if they were primitive tribeswere made clear during the field research in Canamelar. F or insLance, corporate slockholders in Boston and Kew York played a vital role in the way of life of the people . W hile it was m a nifestly impossible to follow such lines of influence in their every aspect, ~ware~ess. of their effect was of great va lue in sh aping invest1gat10n procedu re. It b ecame increasingly clear that the definition of the boundaries of the communi ty to be studied is largely an arbitrary mntter, determined b y the research facilities of the field investigators and by the particul ar nature of the problem under consideration. On the other hand, it was felt by the participating field workers that many add itional insights into the problems wh ich lay o utsid e Lhe arbitrarily defined community un it might be ill uminated by the researches of our colleagues in the field, in other Puerto Rican commu ni ties. This, indeed, proved to be the case, and some of the results of this kind of c?·operative effort will b e treated in the present sect10n. Granted that co-operative effort and simultaneous research in more t h an a single community would probably help to sharpen the analysis and to reduce the

disadvantages of a single, isolated, community study, the problem of defining the lim its of t h e communi ty of Canamelar still remained . A dditionally, there was the strong desire to exploit wh atever statistical materials there were available; this mean t approaching the definition of the community in terms of the formal politica l administrative arrangements, at least in part. The various offices of government which tabulate their data according to the forma l adm inistrative system co· operated in providing statistics on h ea lth, land use, crop s ubsidies, electio n reLurns, etc. Onl y some recogn ition o( the municipal governmental system made it possible to use such \'aluable materials. Ca1iamelar is one of ~eventy-seve n municipal units in the Pu erto Rican sptcm of municipal ad111i11istration. Each such unit is a 11H111iripality (m11 11i cipio), con· sisting o( a town (pueb lo) and surro1111d i11g coun l ry. Roug hl y, this arra ngement is compa rabl e lo tlie Amer· ican counly and co1111ly s<.:a l sys tem. Th e surrou11di11g country which is adminislered politically by the offi. cials of the pueblo is divided into wards (barrios). T he barrio has cons iderable importance as a cultural unit, as will be d emonstrated, but Jillie m ean ing adm in istratively. Fo r m ost o[ th e municipa lities of th e island, th e ba rrio boundaries have never even been carefull y surveyed. Since statistical material of all kinds for Cailamelar, as for other municipios, is available on the municipal level, while little or n othing is known oE the communily nature of the barrios, our initia l efforts to ch aracterize th e sugar produ cing regions o f th e island, preparatory to selecting a community for study, h ad to be based on the comparisons of munic ipio data . Operating in this way, it was possible, for instance, to compare the rates of malaria incidence of the different municipalities, or the rel ative proportions of acreage in suga r can e a nd in minor crops, or the division of muni cipa l popu lation between the p 11eblo and the sur rounding barrios. But there were no statistics ava ilable which could tell us, for example, whether the rural population was scattered w idely over the barrios, or concentrated in small n uclei, 1 or wheth er th ere were company stores or rural electrifi cation facilities, etc., in the barrios. These more refined items of information ha d to b e extracted b y other m eans. Canamela r, like all of the communiii es studied, was chosen in itially as a municipio unit, first because o f the con ven ien ce of insular sta tistical i nformation based on the municipio as a unit; and second ly, because local information, including local historical data, such as town council records, church documents, etc., are likewise based on the municipality as a whole. Once h av ing selected Canamelar and having establish ed o urselves 1 T he problem of what is urban and what rural is especially important in Puerto R ico. Assuming the pueblo. or municipal seal, to he urban, however sma ll its population, all the people of the municipality living o utside I.he town limits could be classified as rnral. This was the m erhocl followed by the project staff. Jn fact, rhis is a dubious procedure since a few of 1he island's municipios include othe1· "urban" <:011cen trations whi ch are nearly of the same size as their pueblos.

CA~A'.\ I ELAR: RURAL SUGAR PLANTATION PROLETARIAT

in the pueblo, my co-field worker, Charles Rosario, and I were able to explore the " rural" barrios of the municipality, note the range of variation, and seek further to delimit the community, or unit of study. While the municipality o( Cafiamelar, like the other municipalities, includes both the pueblo and its surrounding ba rrios (thus Canamelar designates both the town and the seven wards which surround it), the real unit of study was smaller. The nature of this unit of study was d etcrmi11ed b y the nature o( the cu ltura l-ecological adaptation in the corporate sugar area. Thus. the "rural .. (11011-pueblo) population of Cafiamelar is concentrated itllo compact nuclei. and three such nuclei arc included in the uni t of study. How such rural units should he stmlied in relation to the municipal seat (puehl o) ,,·as also a problem, a d istinctive one in Caiiamelar because o( the local cultural-ecological adaptation. In Ca11:-imelar. the total of functioning conm11111ity life is much more under the control of absemcc corporations than it is in the case of any of the other commu11ities stttdied. The role of the town as a force in the life of the people correspondingly is less. Li11 es or i110uence and COlltrol led from the rural neighborhood to the grinding mill or the corporation, to Sa n Juan and to 'Vashington, as well as to the relatively unimportant town o( Cafiamelar. How a particular community, Ca11amelar,~ and within it a particular barrio, Barrio Poyal, were picked in the case of the south coast region will be discussed later. First, a general discussion o( the hinds of sugar cane producing adaptations to be studied is necessnry.

munities, and the projected study of still a third such community, would not have been necessary. Some preliminary consideration oE the range of variability which the selection of three sugar producing communities sought to encompass may prove useful before the problem of the selection o( Cafiamelar is discussed. Two, at the most three, sugar cane growing communities could be studied, given the limitations on staff and funds. These three were to represent rather distin ct cultural-ecolog ical adaptations: ( i) A L and Authority community on the north coast: such a community would be selected to represent the cultural effects of the Puerto Rican government's land reform program. The characteristics of such an ecological adaptation include insular landownership, the distribution of profit surplus among the workers (proportional benefits), union organization, governmental supervision, and environmental conditions typical of the rainy north coast. (2) An "intermediate" sugar cane growing community, to be located in the east, west, or north of the island: the principal features of this type of adaptation lie in its landownership and productive arrangemen ts. In such a community, the cane land is owned and administered, not by the government, as in the Land Authority community, but by independent small and medium fa rmers who have contractual grinding arrangements with a mil l. These farmers are called colonos, and they play an important role in the pro· duction o( sugar. As Bird has put it (1941 :73): "The small co/ono is the romantic figure of individualism in an industry controlled by a handful of corporations or powerful partnerships. ' Vhile farming to the sugar cane corporation is merely a manufacturing business, it is a way of living for most colonos. The colonos constitute an elei'nent through whom a better distribution of part of the large income produced by the sugar industry is obtained." Unfortunately, it was not possible to carry out the study of an "intermediate" community. (3) A south coast commu nity, typical of the most direct and drastic changes made in insular sugar production by the American occupation: the ecological adaptation implied by this would include very concentrated landownership a nd very large holdings, a highly centralized grinding apparatus, American ownership and corporate organization, the combination of land and mill control, and an ecology typical of the irrigation-in-arid regions method developed on the south coast after the occupation. The range of variability of the more important ecological adapta tions in sug:-ir cane production in Puerto Rico, even if an "intermed iate" sugar community had been studied, would probably still remain largely un· explored. The orig inal threefold choice sought only to give as revealing a picture as was possible, g iven our initial understanding of the problem, our theoretical orientation, and the limitations in personnel and finances. The rationale for the inclusion of a south coast sugar cane growing community i n the study derives simply from: (1) the overwhelming importance of agriculture in the insular economy, (2) the predominance of sugar 1

THE SELECTION OF THE SUGAR CANE GROWING COMMUN ITI ES

Thirty-eig ht per cent of the employed workers in Puerto R ico are agricultural; o[ this number, well over halC work in sugar cane. In 194.5-46, the gross income from sugar cane agriculture was more than 50 per cent of the total agricultural (gross) income (Perloff, 1950:55- 58). It followed naturally that full :-ittention would have to be given to those cultural ecological adaptations operating in the production o( this all· important crop. Two sugar producing communities were studied. It cannot be stressed too much that the rationale for the selection of a community devoted to a special crop was not the belief that the crop of itself causes some dis· tinctive local adaptation to develop; rather, it was the idea that the nature of the crop, in a complex of sup· plementary factors, plays some role in determin ing the nature of the adaptation. ' 'Vere the crop itseH the sole determinant, the study of two sugar producing com-

!! .. Ca1iamclar" is not the real name of the con11111mity studied, nor are the barrios correctl y named. \\' hile the practice of conceali ng community identity may he questioned by some, project membe rs felt strongly their rcspo11sihility to shield trusting in · formants from the complications that might be caused by detailed 1·eporti11g if the names of the co1111111111ities were to be made public.

317

31 8

THE PEOPLE OF P UE RTO RICO

ca ne cultivation within the island agricultural system, (3) the importance of the south coast "sugar way of life" within the r a nge of cultural-ecological adaptation for the production of sugar cane which o b tains on the island. METHODOLOGY AND CHOICE OF COMMUNITY

The selectio n of a south coast sugar cane g rowing community did not signify that the problem of cane growing in the eastern or western areas was ignored as irrelevant or unimportan t. Limitations on research fac ilities necessarily meant that certain areas might go unrepresented geographically. Still, it was hoped that we might stud y the major ad aptations, and that thro ugh these studies some light wou ld be thrown on similar adaptations in other geographical areas. The Land Authority sugar cane growing community of the north coast, for instance, stands for the ecological adaptation resulting from government management of cane lands and mills generally; the south coast sugar cane growing community stands for the ecolog ical adaptation resulting from the impact of American capital, markets, and techniques generall y. The emphasis, then, is not in terms of crop a lone, nor of geographical region alone, but in terms of kinds of cultural-ecological adaptations-the major typologies of production obtaining in Pu erto Rico. T he municipios which compose the south coast region of the island display many striki ng uniformitiesin topography, climate, soil types, landownership, land use, and so on. F urthermore, the m arked economic changes in the sugar industry brought about after the American occupation have been felt more strongly on the south coast than in any other region of compara ble size on the island. In i942, the fo u r largest sugar companies on the island, which ground about two-fifths of the ca ne in Puerto Rico, were American. Two of these compan ies are located on the so uth coast.3 They were the first large-scale America n corporations to begin operations in Puerto Rico, and worked out distinctive productive arrangements in the fertile but arid south coast zone. It could be a rg ued that the effect of the American impact on the industr y might have been studied in the eastern zone, since that zone, as well, was much changed by the occupation. This is perfectly true, and the presen t study can only hope to reveal some o f the effect of the occupation on the culture of the people in that zone by indirection : that is, to the d egree that the comm unity studied on the south coast represents not merely a geographical area or a unique productive arrangement but a pa rticular communi ty type, it will stand for other such ecological adaptations of a similar nature, in o ther times and places. During the course of the subsequent discussion, attempts are made to abstract from the particular com3 Pue rto Rico Government, l\'I inimum vVagc 13oard, 1942 : 101. In the fall of 1948, the land holdings of one of these corporations were p urchased by the governme nt of l'uerto Rico.

munity and culture stud ied those features o( the way of life which appea r to be organic parts of the particular community type. Theor etica lly, it is ass umed th at certain fea tures o f the culture of Canamelar are functionally re lated to i ts ecologica l adaptation, and hence comparable to simila r or parallel a daptations in o ther parts of the modern world, or in other periods of history. In the sense that the present st ud y aims to show how particular facets of Can amela r culture are related and interdependent, it is a functional a nal ys is. This does no t mean, of course. that the \\Titer cla ims that he can demonstrate the functional signi fi ca nce of e,·ery item of Caiiarnelar culture. Bu t the o nl y wa y lo approach the problem of ftm ct iona l i11tcrrebtcd11css is to examine the culLUral materials in ana lyti c fa shion (Radel iffe-R1·0,\·n , 1!l ~.::;:399) . The more ev ide nce lhal can be muste red for ;111 integra l function;d re lalion bet\\'ee n so111c ilcm of L1iiamelar culture and lhc Lolal ec olo~ical aclaptalion which determines the people\ \\'ay of life, the be tter the ch ances of testing th e relationship by cross-cullu ral compar ison. Fo r inslan ce, il is an extremely common practice for working people in Ca i1a mcla r to bu y the ir d a ily necessities, such as food, in small tp1an t ities and on a credit basis. This practice would seem to be fun ctiona lly related in e xpl a inable ways to the total ecological adaptation, o r configuration, of wage earning, seasonal agricultural labor, pro letari a n status, and other features of the local culture. I would predict that a similar practice would probably be fo und in all, or nearly all, other areas where the same ecological adaptation o btains. T o this d egree, the approach used here is functiona I. However, the present section also draws heavily on historical r econstructions based on the combining of interview materials provided by old informants and available historical documents. This study, then, purports to be both functional and historical. After a number o f preliminary trips to the area, and careful checking of statistical data on municipalities and sugar growing regions by the "sugar committee," the staff of the project accepted the proposal that a south coast comrnunity should be studied in order to represent an important a nd special ecolog ical adaptation on the island. i.Vly field assistant and I m a de r epeated trips to the southern zone, a nd on March i8, 1948, '"'e moved to the sou th coast community of Ca fia melar, to begin a more careful study of our fin al choice. The project was at this point some eight weeks old. From o ur location on the south coast, l\fr. Rosario a nd I traveled from place to place in th e zone, speaking with municipal officia ls, local representatives of federal and insular governmen tal agencies such as the AAA, managers of grinding mills and landholding corporations, labor union officials, and working people. Moreover, we compiled compara ti ve sta tistics for all south coast municipalities on such aspects of local li fe as land use, landownership concentration, the loca tion of the grinding mills, minor crop a nd sugar cane production i n proportion to the total amount of arable land, etc. Nonstatistical materia ls were also collected on our

CANA'.\IELAR: RURAL SUGAR PLANTATION PROLETARIAT

trips. For instance, certain communwes maintained socia l clubs, others did not. Funhermore, the degree to which an effort was made to maintain racial distinctions in such clubs varied and was noted. The number and kind of stores in each community was noted, in an elfort to get some idea of the presence or absence of a mercha n t middle class. The number of professional people in each town was sought, as well as the number of independent cane growers (colonos), government officials. and other nonlaboring residents. Granted that such data arc at best but a clue to local community orga11i1ation. they ;1idecl us in making characterizations of each ,·0111111unity in the 1011e, and in allowing compari~ons of these c·omnn1nitics. For instance, evidence relating w the su-cn~ll1 of the labor mo,·ement in a partinilar municipality was of obvious importance in judging how such a n111nicipality comp:u-ed to its neighbors in terms of the over·all picture of labor organization in the 1cn1c. :\ Rowrv or Lions' International branch would indicate sm;1cthing about the existence of a mcrd1a 11t class i11 the co1111111111ity and its degrees of organi1.;1tion into a fu11ctioning body. It was important to know whether political and labor leadership were in the hands of the same persons in a given municipality. Colono organizations indicated someth ing about the ex istence and strength of a landed middle class. It was valuable to check. the membership of social clubs, in order to sec whether landowners and merchants were integrated socially, and to find out which of these groups provided social leadership. During the same investigating trips, it "·as noted that merchants, government oflicials, landowners. professionals, etc., for the most part ma nifested a strong consciousness of racia l differences, while working people seemed to lay no such emphasis o n race as a criterion oE social acceptability. \Vhether phenotypically Negro individuals were municipal leaders of any kind in a given municipa lity was also noted. Any stated awareness or fear o[ the growing trend lOward mechanization was recorded, and to the degree that it was possible, the presence of ma chines and new mechanization in any municipality " '<ls ascertained. It shou ld be po inted out that the final select ion o( the sou th coast connnunity was based in part on the assumption that not only would a Land Amhority sugar cane growing community also be studied but that a n "intermediate" commu nity of independent cane growers would be studied as well. Since the study o( such an " in termediate" commu ni ty cou ld not be arranged, the general picture o( the varied ecologica l adaptations o( sugar cane growing is handicapped by large deficiencies in information concerni ng the ind ependent sugar cane growing farmers. For the final se lection or Caiiamelar, however, the writer and no one else is responsible. As will be noted su bsequently, Ca1iamelar does not represent a median poin t in the display of characteristics which I consider typica l of the American prod uctive arrnngements. T hat is, it is not a "represenrntive" community in the sense that it marks an average in a ll the traits-landownership concentration, American control. large

3 19

g rinding centers, etc.,-which are typical of this kind of ecological adaptation. Quite the contrary, for Canamclar is an extreme case of this kind o[ adaptation. If what was to be stud ied was the effect of deep American economic and technological peneu·ation, then the place to study such effects was where they had been [elt most deeply. It might be argued as justifiably that an "average" community, displaying all these traits in lesser degree, would have been a better choice. Since the "intermediate" sugar cane growing community never came to be studied, such an argument is validbut only after the fact, in my opinion. At the time when the selection of Cafiamelar was made, the hiatus which later appeared in our total data could not have been foretold. That Catiamelar does not represent the whole o[ the "sugar way o( li[e" in Puerto Rico goes withou t saying. Even with our limited research facilities, we saw lit to project the study of three sugar cane growing communities. But I wt>uld maintain that, to a surprising degree, the way of life of the working people of Caiiamelar is the way of life of several hundreds of thousands o( other Puerto R ican people who are typified by the same history and the same present socioeconomic circumstances. To verify or refute this claim, it would be necessary to make a similar stud y of other sugar communities in Puerto Rico and assemble markedly distinct ive cultural information. Such a test study wou ld be welcome. I cannot defend so vigorously m y claim that important fun ctional relationships exist between aspectS of Caiiamelar cu lture and the over-all ecological adaptation studied. Information concerning a number of such relationships is offered herein and in Part I V, and the tentative conclusions are presented largely in the form of h ypotheses which may allo"· for cross-cultural testing by other field workers. FIELD WORK M ETHODS

From March, 1948, until late in August, 1949, my field assistant and I were engaged in field research in Ca1iamelar and its rural environs. After establishing residence in the town itse lf, we traveled to neighboring communities, visiting officia ls, farmers, u nion leaders, etc., until the final choice of Catiamelar was decided upon. \\Te remained in residence in Cafiamelar town until late in the summer of J948; then, through the relationships we had established with the townspeople, we were able to secure quarters in th e barrio where we planned to carry out the major part o( our resea rch: Barrio Poynl. From July, 19.18, until August, 1949, except for regular co-operative meetings of the project staff, I lived continuously in the villnge of Oriente in Barrio Poyal. During the same period, my assistant, Charles Rosario, lived for some time at the large corporate farm, or colonia, located about a quarter of a mile from Oriente, and in the same barrio. This division of labor in the field "·ork arrangements allowed us to cover more material in a given period o[ time and faci li tated cross·check ing and compar isons o( data. By the time we took up rural residence, my knowledge of

320

THE PEOPLE OF PUERTO RICO

Spanish was sufficient to enable me to collect data easily, and I could guide the progress of my own field work. Moreover, our primary objectives in the research had been established, so Mr. Rosario was able to carry on his investigations independently. The mutual exchange of information, insights, and guidance continued, of course, throughout the field work period. In our field work, Mr. Rosario and I were guided largely by the concept of the participant-observer technique (F. Kluckhohn, 19<!0). \!Ve sought, wh en ever possible, to take part in loca l activities of all kinds: in the different jobs involved in the round of seasonal work, in subsid iary su bsistence activities such as fishing a nd cr ab-catching, in the recreational patterns of visiting, card-playing, and political discussion, etc. By permitting retailers of illegal rum to conceal the ir prod uct in his house, my co-field worker was able to collect important materials on the functioning of illegal activities and on a ttitudes tcJwarcl them. By working in the cane for a few d ays (wi thout pay), I was able to collect facts on work attitudes, on attitudes toward Americans, and detailed in forma tion on work practices, all of wh ich m ight otherwise not have been accessible to me. Early in our field work, we made use o f topographic maps, which helped us in planning the process of community selection a nd, thereafter, gave )..lS important leads on severa l historical problems in Cafiamelar. L ocal historical documents were disappointingly scanty, but some informa tion was gleaned from them. In addit ion, general historical works by Puerto Rican an d other historians were of great value. The most detailed and insightful historical data came from aged informants within the community. In a number of cases, old people were at first too shy and deferential to talk freely and at length, but the familia rity and trust which come with proximity and continuous contact helped to change this. Througho ut the follo,.,•i ng paper, frequent references are made to the information provided b y aged residents of Barrio Poyal. The field worker ·who would use such data faces the task of deciding which aspects of long reminiscence he may accept as accurate or likely a nd w hich he will do better to discard. I n order to check on aged informants, the available written documents were used, and the explan ations provided b y severa l informants were checked, one agai nst the other, for inaccuracies or exaggerations. I believe it is far better to make a conscientious effort to sift and use su ch materials than to ignore them entirely for fear that some inaccuracy may creep in to the results. This would seem particularly valid where written ma terials provide at least a rough check on in formants' accoun ts. Late in the course of the field investigatio ns, a questionnaire, formula ted co-operatively by the project staff, was employed by a ll the project workers to provide some minimum of basic in formation on all their communities. I t was illum inating to note that ordinarily garrulous informants talked much less w illingl y when ~aced with a m imeographed questionnaire. Of e~u~I mterest was the way in which I found my q uest1onmg procedure expedited by having a respected

member of the community accompany me in my visi ts. Through this p rocedure, I was able to get est imates, for instance, on ga mbling expenses, whereas a n earlier Ione effort to get such information h ad been completely u nsuccessfu l.

THE SETTING THE REGIONAL SETTING

A visitor to Pueno Rico, wishing lo go from the capita l city 0 11 the north coast lo th e island 's seco nd largest cily, Ponce, 0 11 Lile souli1, mu~L Lravel about three hours by car. T he road "·inds up and across the spin y mountain ra 11ges- cordi//eras-running cast and west across the land . A lth ough Puerto Rico is but thirty-four miles w.ide, Lil<: steep, irregular mountains make this souLhwa rd leg th e longest part of the lrip. From the final cresl of the sou th ern ra nges. the traveler can look down upon the fe rtile, gree n ribbon ol irrigated sugar ca ne land \\·hi ch stretches along the Caribbean, paralle l Lo the mountains. Be tween tlte heavy foliage o( the mountain ra nges and the rich, all u vial floodplains of the coast, there lies a strip of interven ing hill land, dry and sere for the most part, of value mainly as second-g rade pasturage. This land is too coarse and poorly watered to be first-class agricultural land as it is, and too hilly and irregula r to be irriga ted profitably. The car rnoves swiftly Crom the mounta in edges to the southern foothills. Vegeta tion a nd temperature c~rnnge sha rply. The air feels heavier and hotter. This is a zone of great aridity, a nd the d ry northerly winds only accelerate evaporation . As the car descends, mounta in greenery is replaced by the barren-looking pasturage and the trees of the foothills. On both sides of the road, herds of humpbncked oxen graze quietly. Dur ing the harvest, these a nima ls are dri ven south a long the roads, to be used for work in th e cane. Soon th e land levels out, and the traveler enters the irrigated cane region. Vast fields of ca ne, i n various stages o f growth , flank the road. As the car enters the first sou th coast town on the route, the road turns sha rp ly westward, a long the Caribbean. Here and there are expanses o f saline marsh, of no value either as pasture or as cane land . A few stream beds, dry except during the fall rainy senson, cut into the plain . O therwise, from here to Ponce, there is noLhing but suga r cane and more sugar cane. Occasionn lly the wrecked ch imney a nd storehouse of an old, abandoned hacienda can be seen . Little settlements of workers' shacks stretch strassendorf-fashion a lo ng the highway or cluster on corporately owned land nea r the hacienda ru ins. If it is the harvest season, long trains of wagons, loaded with ca ne a nd pul led by oxen or tractors a long the road, may slow the car occasionall y. During the harvest worke rs can be seen in the field s, the cutters stretched in long lin es a lo ng the full y grown cane. As they cut the crop, they move forward into the fi eld . Behind the cutters a re the wagon loaders who pile the cane on

CANAMELAR: RURAL SUGAR PLANTATION PROLETARIAT

321

small cars pushed into the fields along portable rails. great expansion of the sugar industry, the haciendas The harvest, from January to midsummer, is a time of were the seats of local power and activity. Introduction feverish activity. Here and there the great cane grind- of American interests in the southern zone began iming m ills, called centrales, loom up, spouting smoke mediately after the occupation. The paternalistic and filling the air with the cloying smell of freshly patterns of the nineteenth century were gradually reground cane. During the rest of the year, however, the placed by new arrangements, and the shift from the centrales, roads, and fields are too tranquil; except for family-type hacienda to the corporate land-and-factory the more and more mechanized tasks o( cultivation combine-the central problem of this study- took and irriga tion, there is no work ava ilable. T he workers place. can be seen squatt ing idly before their tiny houses or Caiiamelar, the community which is the subject of lying in their hammocks. ln dead time (tiempo the following report, exhibits to an extreme degree the 11111crlo. as it is called), even the plazas of the little socioeconomic characteristics of the south coast region. coasta l L0\,· 11s arc still and empty. Land is owned or administered corporately, for the From the time the traveler's car has reached the most part, and dedicated exclusively to the cu ltivation :.outher11 plain until it enters Ponce, perhaps an hour of sugar cane. Land units are prevailingly large in has passed. During this hour, the visitor has driven past size, for efficiency in operation. The concentration of SOlllC or the richest. most productive la nd in Puerto ownership of the land and of the sugar-can e grinding Rico. Concentrated largely in the hands of two cor- mills is h ighly centralized. The population of Canapuratiom, this land cannot be bought today at an y melar is a wage-earning o ne, with a wage-earning u·aprice: and none of the cane land in this zone is eval- dition. Stated most crudely, Canamelar is no more ua tcd at less titan $ 1,000 an acre. Some 73,000 acres of than a super-farm. I t is equipped, it is true, with varithis J;111d arc irrigated , stretching in a narrow band ous servicing facilities and institutions. Yet the community structure, even as early as at the start of the along the southern liuoral. The people of the south coast area are dependent nineteenth century, never had the social and economic almost e ntirely on the cane industry for their liveli- diversity and self-sufficiency of peasant communities. hood. Traditionally an area o( sugar cane production, ' t\Then the American corporate land-and-factory comthe south coast entered upon a new and intensi fi ed bine system replaced the family-type hacienda agriculperiod after the American occupation. New land was ture, Caiiamelar's social su·ucture was, in a figurative thrown into intensive production, new technological sense, decapitated. Caiiamelar over a period of fifty d evices brought in , faci lities and ownership were more years has become a "company town in the fi eld." Th is hig hly capitalized and centralized. The local labor sup- is the regional setting for the present-d ay culture o( ply, made up of old settlers and the descendants of the people of Caiiamelar. plantation slaves and freemen, was swollen by an inThe southeast coast of Puerto Rico, and parts of the flux of mounta in people, many of whom had lost their southwest as well, reveal considerable topographical land as a result of hurricanes and debt. Others from uniformity. From east to west, the area is divided into the highlands, already long landless, came seeking the a series of municipios, each with its Caribbean shore higher d a ily wages available in sugar. To the present line (Chart 19). The coast, from the municipio of Arclay, sma ll landowners and farmers working by some royo in the east to Ponce in the west, a nd in certain more share arrangement still descend in substantial numbers western municipios, is character.ized by large su·etches from the highlands during the harvest to augment of alluvial floodplains. North of these plains, the same their cash income by working in the cane. municipios conta in a broad ribbon of dry, rolling upThe most casual visitor to a large-scale sugar cane land which runs parallel to the coastal plains, a nd is farming zone, such as the south coast, can see at a used i n most cases for pasture. Certain of these sou th g lance how the people today are caught in the grip o( coast municipios, such as Ponce or Guayama, have seasonal, cash crop agriculture, with no economic alter- mountainous sections as well in their northern barrios, natives. Overpopu lation, underemployment, credit but regional topographical uniformity is symbolized buying, and seasonality sap initiative, stimulate geo- by the coasta I plains. graphica l mobility, and result in a kind of planlessness The whole of the southern coast, from the municipio in living. It may be said that cane workers exhibit a of Arroyo westward, is further characterized by great "seasonal culture" to match the seasonal economy. aridity. Northerly winds reach this zone free of their This way of life reflects their thoroughgoing depend- mo isture beca use the east-west mountain ranges of the e nce on a si ng le cash crop ·which rarely provides more island's center capture most of it; the same winds, by than six months' paid labor during the year for the Yirtue of the ir dryness, accelerate evaporation in the average worker. coastal area (R oberts, 19.p! :47). The coastal floodplains I t is possible, too, to see how loca l life is the product o( th e zone, wh ich typify it throug hout, loom as its in large part of specific historical conditions. T he most important feature economica lly, but rarely recrumbling red brick shells or the nineteenth-century ceive more than thirty-five inches of ra in in any one suga r mills with the huts of today's wage earners and year (R oberts, 1942:55 a nd Chan ig). the barracks o( yesterday's slaves huddled about them While the soil types of Puerto Rico display remarkare a clear reminder. Before American cap ital, tech- able variation, the soils o ( the so utheastern river floodnology, and markets had provided the impetus for the plains are fairly uniform. They arc "level. deep, well-

32 2

THE PEOPLE OF PUERTO RICO

drain ed and alkaline," according to R oberts, and though th e enumeration of individu al soil types is long, nearly all such soils are ideal for s ugar cane cultivation. The river floodplains on the south east coast have been formed in great part Crom eroded surface soils of interior hill land. Roberts points out that these materials are carried very far from the river bed itself. Large stretches of productive soi l flanking the river floodplain s no longer receive additional materia l from the streams, whose channels are often dee ply entrenched. The soils of these terraces and alluvial fans are likewise high in agricultural productivity, hold water well , and in most places have good natural drainage. It is generally conceded that the soils of the river floodpl ains a nd alluvial fans and terraces of the southeast coas t are among the most productive in Puerto Rico. The alluvial fans and river floodplains and terraces of the southeast coastal region are devoted exclusively to the cultiva tion of sugar cane. \\There topography and rainfall p ermit, cane cultivation is found on the rolling uplands of the municipios of this zone as well. The uplands and high saline content flatlands are mostly used to pasture work cattle, a nd northern barrios may, in some cases, be devoted to minor crops, bu t cane cultivation is by far the most important activity in the zone as a whole. 4 · Cane cultivation is not new to the southeastern zone. Sugar haciendas were common in the region both in the time of slave ry and after the emancipation. The extent and intensity of present-day cultivation, however, has a short history, dating in fact from the American occupation. In the case of certain municipios, the amount of land devoted to the cultivation of cane has increased to two, four, or even ten times the amount cultiva ted before the occupation. Most such increases were based on the cons truction of great irrigation systems and the subsequent utilization of dry range, previousl y uncultivated or used as pasture. Some important minor crop cultivation was also eliminated b y th e e xpansion of cane agriculture. R oberts notes ( 1942:70) : Field observations and fa ctory figures indicate that a higher yield of both sugar and sugai·cane is obtained on the irrigated south coast than in nny other large area on the island. This is because the low relati\·e humidity along the south const and a sufficiently regulated irrigation water supply, combined with level. deep, well-drained alkaline soils, make most favorable conditions for the growth of sugarcane. Jn ncld ition, the soils have not been leached of mineral clements to so great ;rn extent as have those in the areas of h ighcr rain fall. Most of tlic: soils of the sou th coast have been f;irm c:cl for less than forty years whereas those in other parts of the isla11cl have been under cultivation nearly 400 years. The best soil' of the south coast. under [a,·orahle conditions and proper management, produce from Ro to 1 oo tolls of sugarcane a n acre. or from 10 to 11 tons of suga r. \l\lhile not completely distin ctive from the rest of the sugar zones of Puerto Rico, landownership patlerns in 1 See Chan !!O.

the southeast coast and in parts of the southwest manifest a degree of concentration unequal ed in any other area o( the island. The ch aracter of t his concentra tion can be conveniently sum marized in two parts: firstly, the individual holdings are predominantly large scale, so the total number of s uch holdings is very small with relation to the total acreage o"·ned; secondly, landownership or adminis tration is closely linked, or identical with, the ownership o( the cane grinding mills in the zone. In a continuous be lt of live south coast m11n icipi os, more than Go per renL o f the Janel is ow 11ed in holdings in excess of fi\·e h1111dred ;1cres (l.a yer. I loman, and James, 1938: I l:)- 1<1). 111 a cnntinuou-; b e lt o f !->ix :-.011th ~oas t municipalities. more than 50 p er ccnL of the l:incl is owned in holdings in excess of fi\'e h1111clred acrcs.r• !foldings a re not conce ntrated LO Ll 1 is : 1m:11.i ng extent 111 other sou th coast municipalities ha\·i ng extens ive highlands, but the correlation of irrig ated land with large.scale holdings is common knowled ge. Should the degree of concentrati o n of ownership of irrigated land be d e termined for th e :tone, far more than Go per cent of the land in these m1111icipalities wo11lcl turn out LO be owned in holdings i11 excess of fiv e hundred acres. One of the represen tative municipalities, which has virtually no highlands or minor crop production within its limits, has 98.5 per cen t of its l and concentrated in holdings exceeding fiv e hundred acres. This s ituation has persisted in most, but not all, south coast municipalities until the present day, in sp ite of Jaws making mill corporation holdings in excess of five hundred acres illega l. That the absolute number of holdings for the zone would be small with relation to the tota l acreage follows n aturally. The con centration in large holdings typica l of the southern zone relates as well to the second p o int, that is, to the high d egree to which ownership of land and ownership of grinding mills co incide. This zone, more th an any other, is -one of mill-administered cane agricul ture. All the cane grown on irrigated land of the south coas t is grou nd by nine mills whose grinding capacity is such that they are even able to grind cane from other areas as well. Linkage between land and mill is well documented. There are two mills (Guanica, LaFayette) where government land reform programs h ave begun to m od ify the south coast picture. In the case of the remaining seven mills, three of which are owned by a single corporation, the cultivation, harvesting, transport, and grinding of the cane is no more than a continuous process under corporate owner-administrators (Gayer, Homan and J ames, 1938:i26- 29). The south coast, and especially the constal Oatlancls, displays a characteristic pattern of settlement quite different from that of the highlands. The burgeon ing sugar indus try of the early nineteenth century took the form of small plantat ions in the south ern coastal area.a G Sec Chart !! 1. As no1 cd Cltrli er. the holdings of an important A111crica11 corporation in 1his area were purchased by the gov ernme nt of Puerto Ri co in '!J.18. o By ··p1anta1ion .. is m ea nt he re "a capitalistic t ype of agricul.

Chrzrt 19. Rrzi11f11/I 011 the sou th coast of Puerto Rico. The light area indicates rainfall of 45 inches or less and the darker area rni11fall of 35 inches or less.

Cha rt 20. Zone of sugar cultivation of the south coast of Puerto Rico.

Chart 21. South coast m11nici/1alities in which more than 50 fJe r cent of the land is in holdings in excess of 500 acres.

The limited water supply restricted such plantations to areas of relatively greater rainfall or areas where poorly drained marshes provided adequate surface moisture. Irrigation was practiced to a small extent only. The other industry in this zone, before the American occupation, was cattle raising, which requires a very low per acre labor force. Population on the south coast tural organization in which a considerable number of unfree laborers were employed under unified direction and control in the production of a staple crop." Sec L. C. Gra y, 1941. By "hacienda" is meant the same kind of agricultural organization, but manned by free laborers, instead of bound laborers, debt slaves, slaves. e tc. The large-scale, corporate form of agricnlt11ral organization which developed in this area during the past fifty years is referred to as the "corporate land-and-facto ry combine."

therefore was sparse until the start of the twentieth century. Before then, the rural population of the south coast was concentrated prevailingly first on the slavemanned plantations, and then on the haciendas as free labor. Each such plantation or hacienda constituted almost a townlike unit. The real towns, or municipio centers, were small, and gravita ted to the needs a nd demands of the p lantations. The south coast munici-· pios always were, and r emain, agrarian and rural.. While urbanization h as been rapid since the occupation, the population is still predominantly rural except in the most populous municipios. Conversion of large tracts of dry range into cane fields intensified the need for labor, and large segments of the coastal working: class are made up of migrants Crom the highlands.

Fig. 33. Air view of the extensive irrigated south coast cane fields showing the mill among tlle trees in the right of the fJhotografJh . The Caribbean Sea stretches to the horizon. Photo by Rothin: Government of Puerto Rico.

Towns have increased in size as a result of the urbanization trend, the in-migration of highlanders, and natural increase. In the country as well as in the town, the high value of cane land has kept the growing population within very confined residential limits. To this day, the greater part 0£ the work in cane cultivation is done by a labor force which lives on the owners' lands, often around the r uined sites of the old haciendas. These workers who live rent-free on property of the landowners are called agregados; the small clusters of houses where they are concentrated are called colon ias. Another important segment of the south coast population lives in the poblados, or villages, which lie along the main highways. The poblados should not be confused with the pueblo, or town center of the municipio. The poblados are much smaller than the town, and serve no administrative function of any kind, although they are thought of as barrio centers. Some o( the poblado dwellers own the land o n wh ich they live; perhaps a majority, however, live in houses they have built for themselves on the public domain . Still others live along the beaches of the Caribbean on insular park land. A substantial part oE the south coast populat ion, althoug h usually less than 25 per cent, lives in the pueblos themselves. Two other aspects of the south coast regional setting, while not unique to it, should be mentioned. The first of these is the importance of retail stores which, while legally distinct from the corporate landholding and mill owning organizations, are closely linked with them. Jn some south coast municipios, the annual gross

o[ these stores equa ls the gross of all other retail out-

lets combined. The other aspect is that of the mechanization of field operations in the zone. i"Vfechanization is proceeding rapidly, and is the inevitable answer of south coast corporate enterprise to potential international competition in the sugar market. I n summary, the south coast of Puerto Rico shows an important regional uniformity. It is environmentally typified by fertile alluvial fans and floodpla ins lying at sea level. Rainfall is low throughou t the whole coast. A special set of man-made conditions have been imposed on th is environmen tally uniform coasta l alluvial belt. Most important of these is an irrigation system which makes some 73,000 acres cultiva ble. This irrigated land is a lmost entirely con trolled by a sma ll number of corporate owner-administrators, the owners for the most part absentee. The ownership situation is fur ther important because the ownership of the land and that of the nine local processing centers is closely linked. Such a relation permits the complete dedication of the land to the production of a single cash crop. This crop, sugar cane, is produced more efficiently and cheaply in the south coast irrigated zone than in any other a rea o( the island . Land values of irrigated, low-lying cane land are undoubtedly higher there than they are for any comparable area on the island. Mechanization of field operations, because of environmental suitabi lity, the need to reduce costs in the face of potential world competition, and the ready availability of capital, has progressed further on the south coast than anywhere else in Puerto Rico. In combination with this productive system, al·

CANA:'.!ELAR: RURAL SUGAR PLANTAT101': PROLETARIAT

though functioning as separate legal entities, corporate. reta i1 centers cater to the consumer needs of the working population of the south coast and have an important effect on the lives of that population. The working people of the south coast are concentrated in great part on the lands of the corporations for which they work, although there is a noticeable tende ncy for such people to move to the lands of the public domain. The south coast has consiclerable historical uniformity, based mainly on the former existence of the slave-manned plantations, followed by the so-called famil y-type haciendas. The population has a large component of people of African (slave and free) ancestr)', and a tradition of both slave and "·age labor. Broadly. the south coast is further characterized by a larg-e rural population, seasonal employment, inmig ratio11. and drought cycles. It is a zone of better than :t\'er:wc communicatio n and u·ansportation facilitics. The objectiYC of the soul11 coast field investigators was to study the problem o ( culture change, as outlined before, in a community which typified in the extreme all o( the above-memioned characteristics of the south coast. That community is Canamelar. ~

THE COMMUNITY SETTING

The topography and physical conditions which characterize Caiiamelar are typical of the southeast coast. The municipio has a roughly pentagonal shape, two sides of which are coastline.• Th e eastern and western boundaries are formed by dry streambeds which are frequently Hooded during the rainy season, from August to l'\ovember. The northern boundary of Caiiamelar separates it from a highland municipio quite different in character. The allHvial fan s and terraces and the river floodplains of the coast are gen tly elevated inland. The town of Caiiamelar, which lies quite near the sea, is about Len feet above sea level and surrounded by flat, fertile floodplains on all sides. The land slopes more steeply further north; the eastern and western riverbed boundaries lie in land which is quite dissected, and the nonhern half of the municipio is largely rolling land. The finest cropland, in terms of topography, soil, and suitability for irrigation, follows the coast almost uninterruptedly in a wide band and extends northward in three wedge-shaped sectors. Two o( these sectors adjoin the river beds which form the rnunic:ipio's eastern and western boundaries; the third and largest joins the others at their coastal bases and extends some six kilometers nonhward. I t was within this cen tral triangle of land that most of Cai\amelar's nineteen th-century sugar ind us try f u nctionecl. Droug ht has always been a serious problem in this and in neighboring municipios. Until the develop~S ec Chan 22. This is not an acc urate drawing. hut rather a schematic map, wi1h dclihcratc diswnions to help 10 conceal the rea l idc111i1r of th e l0111111u11i1y.

325

ment of adequate irrigation after the occupation, most of Canamelar was dry range, unsuited for cultivation. Practically all of t11e best land in Ca1'iamelar receives an average of less than thirty-five inches of rain annually. Notes Roberts ( 194 2: 54): "Plant growth is correlated with soil moisture. Sugarcane generally will be a failure when planted on steep hillsides, level sandy soils, or very impervious soils, in areas having less than 40 inches of annual rainfall, unless the land is irrigated." Farmers and hacienda owners of Caiiamelar exploited the high water table of certain coastal lowlands, some riverside plains, and a few minor irrigation canals in order to cultivate during Spanish times. But, as will be shown, cropland was never extensive before 1900. Canamelar's 22,000 odd acres are divided into seven sections, called baITios, plus the town itself. Formerly, the municipio was administered in (our such units; the further subdivision was made at the turn of the century. As already noted, these barrios are not formal admin istrative units, but can be thought of as large rural neigh borhoods, each usually with its roadside village. It is within one such barrio, Barrio Poyal, that the present community study was made. Ca1iamelar is transected by a modern insular highway, running east and west through the town. Another recently improved highway carries traffic to the municipio which lies to the north. The human settlement pattern, good roads, and level terrain make the town of Caiiamelar readily accessible to nearly all of the municipio's rural population, in marked contrast to the situation in many highland municipios. Less than 25 per cent o( the inhabitants of Cana· melar reside in the town itself. The remainder of the inhabitants of the municipio live in the seven barrios which surround t11e town. Because Caiiamelar is in every '''.a>~ an ~1grarian and a rural community, the emphasis 111 the present paper is on the culture o( the barrio dwellers o( the municipio. That the intensive field_ work was mainly carried out within a specific b.arno_ does not mean t11at t11e municipio-wide implicauons 111 the work were abandoned. The town plays a definite role in the lives of barrio dwellers, and this role will be cons idered . But limiting a large part of the ~eld work to three neighborhoods within a single barno made for greater depth of research. In the selection of a barrio within which the fi eld workers would carry out the most detailed field ·work a .numbe.r o[ important considera tions were kept i1~ mrnd. ·wah regard to land tenure and use, it has been pointed out that land in the region is owned in extremely large tracts, and that a very few owners control substantia lly all the cultivated land in the area. This picture prevailed in all lhe soulhern barrios of Caiiamelar, so in this project, one ba rrio would do as well as another for intensive study. The banio has '.l very narrow meaning administratively, but with in H, one ~11(ls labor organization, political organization, tl~e retail sto_res of the corporate land-and-factory combtne'. smal.1 mdependent retail stores, bars and cockfighung pits, u111on and nonunion labor, permanent

326

THE PEOPLE OF PUERTO RICO

0

TOWN CENTER TOWN LIMITS BARRIO BOUNDARY MUNICIPAL BOUNDARY HIGHWAYS NORTHERN LIMIT OF BEST CROPLAND

MUNICIPIO DE CANAMELAR

CARIBBEAN SEA

Chart 22. Municipality of Cmiamelar.

and migrant workers, and other features of Puerto Rican agrarian community life. But what pulls all these and many other features of barrio life together are the tremendous tracts o f cane land, complete with their agricultural equipment, most of their labor (orce, and their managerial hierarchies. ·what constitutes the ultimate unit of study, then, is not the entire municipio, or even the barrio; the unit of study actually is one such tract o( corporate cane land, with all the local forces-men, machines, and managerial staff-required to operate i t profitably. The barrio within which this ultimate unit of study was defined is Barrio Poyal. It lies to the east of Canamelar pueblo and, in terms o[ population, is one o[ the l argest barrios in the municipio. The settlement pattern in Barrio Poyal is typica l of the region. Its inhabitants are concentrated in compact nucle i, either on the land of the corporation, along the highways on the public domain, or a long the beaches on insular park land. The present stud y was carried on in three such n ucle i. This was done partly because th e la bor force for t he la rges t tract of land in the barrio was <lra wn from a ll t hree nuclei, and also because we

hoped to see the range of variation 111 the three little settlements.s There was an additional reason for including in our unit of study both indi viduals who live on corporatel y owned land ancl those who live elsewhere. The diffe rence between these g roups has meaning historically, politica lly, and culturally. The rural population o f the whole zone is divided in this fa shion between those who live on the public domain as squatters or on small plots of their O\\°ll, and those who live on compan y land. To make an assessment of th e cu ltu ral differen ces relating Lo this dis tinction , it ,,·as necessary to sllld y rc pre~e rna ti vcs of a I I g roups. The se lection o( adjoining un its m ade it possible; to observe the various interre lations bcl\n;e n th e gro ups. Th e problem o[ rural res id en ce has lo ng been o( crucia l importance in Pu erto Rican history. R ecent trends in rural residence include the shift from compan y land to the public domain 011 an informa l basis, and the governmen t-sponsored resett lem e nt, on governm ent tracts. of ,,·orke rs ,,·h o previously lived 011 company land. To understand the cultural differences between these various residence arrangements, some definitions are required . According to Art icl e 78 of the Land Law of Puerto Rico, enacted in 1941, " .. . any family head residing in the rural zone, whose house is erected on lands belong ing to another person or to a public or private entity, whose only means of livelihood is his labor for a wage . . ." can be defined as an agregado. If we are to follow this general definition, we cannot distinguish between those people of Barrio Poyal who are squatters on government land and those who live on the land of the company. For this reason, we shall utilize an additional definition . According to Howell, a former staff member of the Puerto Rico Board ot Planning (1945: 42), "The term agregado as used in Puerto Rico does not exactly correspond to sh are cropper or farm laborer. . . . There are three types of agregaclos: (1) for whom the farm owner provides a house in exchange for a n unwri tten but vigorously enforced promise to serve him, (2) who live off the farm, but not on property of their own, and (3) who, in addition to the house, have the use of a small plot of the farm owner's land for cultivation of food and for ra ising animals." Of these three forms of relating the laborer to the land, only two are important in our discussion of Barrio Poyal. The third type of agregado, still found in the highla nd areas of Puerto Rico, no longer ex ists in the coastal sugar zones, where cultivation is both extensive and intensive. The first type of agregado, as defined by Howell , is a wage earner who lives rentfree on t he landowner's land and is under a mora l obligation to work for the landowner. This definition, for our purposes, can be elabora ted to read: "An agregado is a nonslave laborer who works for wages, and who lives on the land o( an agricul tural e nterprise, g ivi ng service in place of rent, and perhaps res Sec Chart :.?§).

CANAl\IELAR: RURAL SUGAR l'LANTATION PROLETARIAT

D

/~

~~

OD DO

0 COLONIA VIEJA

00

00 0000

D

0000 0000

0000 000 0000 0000 0000

0

a

0

CARIBBEAN SEA

Chart 23. Barrio Poyal ·in Caiiamelar.

ceiving certain other minor perquisites from the owner or manager." Such will be our usage during the rest of this paper. The second type of agregado, as defined by Howell, is a wage earner who lives off the farm, but not on property o( his own (Howell, ig,15:42). In t.he case of Barrio Poyal, this describes many of the m habitants of Poblado Oriente, 0 and all those of the barrio beach. For this group of individuals, however, who are somewhat different cultura lly from those who live as aarerrados on the cor1)orate farm, we shall use b b the term inclepe11dizaclo. The indefJendizado residents of Oriente and the barrio beach reflect the growing development of a movement off the lands of the large corporate landowners and into independent home ownership on lands of the public domain. The term colonia is also in need of definition. In common usage, a colonia is a large tract of agricultural land plus the machinery, the managerial staff, and part of the labor force needed to operate it. To the cor11 Sorne

porations which operate the colonias o~ the south coast, a colonia is primarily a land unit and only secondarily a population nucleus. T o the agregados themselves, a colonia :is the place where one lives, a part of the community structure, and onl_Y ~eco~darily a land unit operated for profit. The cl1sunction becomes clear in conversations with colonia dwellers, who see the colonia as their home and as a part of the barrio in which they live and work. Colonia Vieja, which is one oE the three population nuclei to be discussed in this paper, is a 2,000-cuerda farm. It is one of the largest colonias in Canamelar, and one of the richest and most productive as well. Colonias vary greatly in size and in complexity. In Cafiamelar, they ranO'e from monstrous tracts of fertile land down to 0 . small farms of perhaps forty cuerdas. The colon1a populations-agregados-will like·wise vary in size from perhaps eighty families clown to a dozen or less. Four of the most important colonias in Cafiamelar, both in terms of cultivated land and available labor, center on the ruined sites of the haciendas of the past century. All four of these haciendas lay in the eastern por tion of Canamelar, two of them in Barrio Poyal. Colonia Vieja is such a colonia, built upon the original small tract of land and processing plant which was Hacienda Vieja of the nineteenth century_ It is this factor of historical continuity in sugar cane cultivation that led to the choice of Barrio Poyal as the seat of the field work, rather than some other barrio. It and its western neighbor barrio, Llanos, contain the finest expanses of cropland in Ca11amelar, and the nineteenth-century sugar industry of Canamelar flourished almost exclusively within these two barrios. Colonia Vieja stretches from an area of fertile, marshy cane land a long the coast to the beginning of the arid uplands to the north. Its western boundary nearly touches the town, and runs along the undefined border of Barrio Llanos. To the east, Colonia Vieja borders on still another barrio, and its cane lands engulf Poblado Oriente, which lies to the southeast, on the main east-west highway through Caii.amelar. 1 0 The southern border of the colonia couches on the strip o[ insular park land which borders the Caribbean and on which many independizado families live. The total land included in the colonia serves principally for cane cultivation- 1,297 cue1·das; secondarily for pasture-nearly 700 cuerdas; the area devoted to houses, sheds, etc., is only some io cuerdas in all. In addition to the east-west highway which crosses Viej a to the south, a railroad, the Ponce and Guayama, traverses the colonia with numerous spurs to facilitate the loading and transportation of the cut cane. This railroad is an adjunct of the corporation which owns and operates Colonia Vieja and its grinding mills. A series of dirt roads (g ra11calles) criss-cross the colonia, making car and j eep travel possible, and faci litating the movement of men, machines, and the mounted mayordomos, or managers. Portable rails are used to

of the people of Poulado Oricntc own the land on

which th eir houses are built.

327

io See Chart 22.

32 8

THE PEOPLE OF PUERTO RICO

connect various tracts of the colonia to the loading points. The scarcity of rain makes travel throughout the colonia dusty but efficient. About an eighth of a mile to the north of the main highway lies the main concentration of houses on Colonia Vieja. These encompass a plaza, or batey-the courtyard of the old hacienda-where trucks, tractors, a nd wagons are parked in these clays, and where the workers receive their pay at the week's end. The most impressive building on the plaza is the old mill building, a huge brick and mortar structure now used for storing herbicide, machine pans, fertilizer, etc. Across from this now decaying bu ilding is the house of the mayorclomo primero, the head overseer. It is a brightly painted, two-story house, with a plot of grass and trees surrounding it. At other points on the plaza are located the colon ia office, wh ere the bookkeeping is done a nd where the workers a re p aid, the stable and m achine shops, and the community shower. The company store- legally distinct, but closely co-ordinated with the corporate m anagement-stands near the o ld mill warehouse. T he score ch ief h as the second-best house on the colonia, but it is on ly one story hig h, and very much less elaborate than that of the head overseer. This house and the houses of the assistant overseer and bookkeeper also face on the plaza . l\Iore removed from the plaza, but still near by, are the houses of the workers. The zafac6n (literally, " ashcan"-a distortion of the E nglish "safety can") is a n old barracks divided into ten apartments o( two rooms each. It is considered one of the worst places to live on the colonia. A few couples, m ostly o ld, live there, as well as a number of bachelors who share some apartments. In back of the zafacon are severa l privies . .Much o( the cooking is done outside, although cook ing is also d one within the zafa cr)n and the whole interior

Pig. J / · T-10111e of t lte .51//)(:rni.wr of a large south coast sugar j1lo11tntio11 i'll Caiirwu:lar. Photo /Jy D elano.

of the building is blackened with soot. Next to the zafac6n are five separate houses. The first is slightly larger than the rest and is occupied by the irrigation fo reman and his (amily and by a few single workers. The other four houses are much smal ler, two-room affairs with individual privies. Each such house holds a family. On the south side of the plaza is another residence, this one a Jong, barrack-like building, called the barracks (c11art eles), and surviving from a much earlier period. This is divided into ten apartments. Across the street from the barracks is the main hou s i11~ concentration 011 the rnlo11ia-thirty-eig ht houses laid out in e' 'en rows. each ha,·ing two ro<>1ll'i and a lea n-to for cooking. Thc~c hou ~es date lrom the tim e o( \ \'oriel 1 \ Var I, and this scn ion i-; aptly called "Verd un." The houses form a square. with the north. south, and east bounded by the pri vies, and the west f:t cing o n th e road leading to the 111ain highway. Some of th ese ho uses have tin y :iclclitions attached to the kitchen, such as a littl e lunchroom in one case, two li ttle stores, an orange stand, etc. Except for the lunchroom, none of these additiom has been appro,·cd h y th e corporation. Scattered th rough th e co/u11ia are other houses, three of which are occupied by irrigation and cultivation overseers. The rest arc occupied by workers and are generally similar to the workers' houses d escribed above. The three ho uses occupied by the minor overseers are larger and o ffer certain advantages which will be discussed su bsequentl y. These residences make up the housi ng facilities of the colonia and the settleme nt patterns of the agregados who live there. Travel to a nd from points on the colonia by foot is easy and frequent, except to the little g roupings of houses in the upland no rthern part. All of the houses be lo ng to the corporation, and while the law now forbid s the corporation to eject a worker, a man who leaves his house cannot choose his residential successor. A quarter o( a mile to the southeast of Colonia Vieja, on the highway which runs east-west along the coast, is the vi ll age (/Job/ado) of Oriente. Most o( the houses in O riente are on the should er o f the highway itself, and were built by the independizados who moved there from the highlands or from the co/011ias in the neighborhood. A few of the inha bitants o ( Oriente own the sm a ll pl o ts of land on ·which th eir houses are located . Th e vill age dates back to the time of sla very, and some o( the independent home owners ;:ire descendants o( famili es who have lived there since the nin eteenth century. Over sixty families li ve in Oriente, and the m ajority of the working popula tio n is employed at Co lo nia Vieja or at another o ( the large ro/onias in the barrio. There are nine sma ll stores in <?ri ~ nte : tlu~ee are ca fes, the remaining six sell a very l1m1tecl variety o( ca nn ed goods and comm odities . A ls~ l?ca ted in Oriente are two small school buildings, a cl111 1c operated by a part-time municipa l employee. and a one-cuerda pl o t for the resettlement of agregados w hich was boug h t and made availab le by the Caiiame lar town council in 1 9,13. :\s in the case of Colonia

CANAMEL AR: RURAL SUGAR PLANTATI ON PROLET ARI AT

Fig. 35. /Jarrachs-lih e house for families of sugar worhers in Cal1n111elar. Phot o by D cla110.

Vieja, the houses of Oriente are built close together. vVhen a new house is built, it does not encroach on the ubiquitous cane land, but rather is built to fit between two already existing houses. Most of the houses are o[ two rooms, with little var iation in quality and condition. The two best houses are owned by the two most substantial store owners in the village_ The shore line of the Caribbean stretches parallel to Oriente village, no more than several hundred feet away at some points. The beaches are under the jurisdiction o[ the insular park service. Over a period of perhaps forty years, more and more houses have sprung up on this insular park land, and they now form what the villagers of O r iente and the agregados of Vieja call La Playa ("the beach"). All the residents o( the beach area are squatters except one or two who rent their land from the government (or a nominal sum (several dollars a year) and grow tiny patches of minor crops. The total land used for the grow ing of these minor crops probably does not exceed one cuerda in all. As will be pointed out in some detail in a later section. facilities at La Playa are extremely limited : the road to La Playa from the main highway is crude and rutted, the water supply comes from an open spring with no sanitary precautions, privies are shallowly dug, there is no electricity. Yet La Playa is important in barrio life as a source of labor power for the colonias, as a place where the poorest newlyweds can take up residen ce, and as a symbol o( the shift from agregado to ind ej>end izado status. It was within these three population nuclei, which supply the labor power and make up the continuously fun ctioning, fa ce-to-face community group which works the land o[ Colonia Vieja, that the field team did its

329

work. There are approximately So fami lies which live as agregaclos on the land of Colonia Vieja_ In the village of Oriente, an additional So or S5 workers, most of them the heads of fam ilies, are in residence; some of these are, strictly speaking, agregados of Vieja, b ut they live on the margins of the corporate land, near the road through Oriente village. Perhaps another 75 famil ies live as independizados along the barrio beach. Since the barrio contains 650 voting adults, according to the political census conducted locally in 19,18, i t may be assumed that, very roughly, there are perhaps 300 famil ies in the whole barrio. The present study treats of the 215 odd fam ilies living in the three population nuclei denoted above. Except for periodic co-operative meetings of the project staff, nearly a full year was spent in residence in Barrio Poyal- both in the village and in the colonia_ During this period, every effor t was made to trace the lines of social interaction between the barrio and the town. The role of..the town in the rural life of Cafiamelar will be discussed i n a separate section_ T he description above sketches briefly the physical setting of Barrio Poyal and the groups of people living there. They are the subjects of the following report.

THE PAST LABOR POWER AND THE PLANTATION SYSTEM

The agricultural and industrial development of Puerto Rico up to the nineteenth century was substantially retarded by its special position in the Spanish colonial system, as well as by that colonial system in general. One reason for this was Spain's early emphasis on precious metals and Puerto Rico's noticeable lack of su ch metals. Spanish colonial policy was extractive and exploitative, and little attention was given to the problem of indigenous colonial development until as late as the nineteenth century-11 In the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, agriculture served primarily to sustain the small local population; production for export and trade was very limited. In 1582, there were but eleven tiny sugar mills in all of Puerto Rico. These were si tuated on plantations, encouraged to some extent by the Crown, and financed mainly with Crown loans. One historian, Lopez Dominguez (19,16: 149-57), describes these plantations as resembling Spanish villages, complete with churches and even resident priests. Roya l support was undependable, however, and hw-ricanes and the Caribs destroyed these early mills. T hroughout the seventeenth and 11 "The development of the sugar ind11stry and th e growth of sla very were dependent upon each other, especiall y aftel· the mines in th e Ani.illcs gave out. Each trapichc, or sugar-mill, run by horses or mules, req11ired thirty or forty negroes, and each "·ater-mill eighty at the least. Bad the com merce of the islands been reason ab ly free, plantation slavery on a large scale would have rapidl y developed, and the histo ry of Hayti and the English islands wonld h ave been anticipated a century by t he Spaniards." (Bo urne, 1904:2j2.)

330

THE PEOPLE OF PUERTO RICO

eighteenth centuries, commercial restrictions imposed by Spain herself, the movement of population to South America for further colonization, the lack of labor power, and the attacks on Puerto Rico by the enemies of Spain inhibited further development o( commercial plantations. In those centuries when Great Britain, France, and other powers were erecting sugar-andsla ve empires in the Caribbea n, Spanish influence in the same area remained dormant. In 1776, sugar pro· duction in Puerto Rico was only 10,947 arrobas/ ~ which was less than had been prod uced on the island in 156i1. In the whole island, only 3,156 cuerdas were planted to cane in 1776 (Abbad y Lasierra, 1866:264). lt was not until the nineteenth century that the plantation in its classic form began to develop on the island. Although slaves had been imported to the island as early as the middle of the sixteenth century, slavery as an institution for the provision of forced labor on commercial crops really did not come into its own until the nineteenth century. The planta· tion system in Puerto Rico was the predecessor of later productive forms in sugar production; as such it deserves to be discussed, particularly with reference to the p roblem of labor power. The p lantation system is traditionally assoc iated with tropical areas, so much so that Keller ( 1908) includes as part of his definition of the plantation the assumption that it will be located in a tropical zone. While my view will be shown later to differ widely from Keller's, his analysis of the pla ntation system must be described briefly. According to Keller, there a re two principa l agricultural processes con nected with colon ial history: the plantation on the one hand, and the farm colony on the other. The farm colony obtains in the tempera te zones, and it is marked b y economic and administrative independence, democracy, and equality; its work a rrangements are typified by free labor, cohesive fami ly organization, and no mixing of popula tion. I n contrast, Keller maintains, the plantation colony is to be found in tropical zones, where products having luxury value are produced for the mother country. The clima te, unfavorable to home country population, necessitates forced labor of some kind. Agriculture is extensive, cultivation exploitative. Because of the climate and the large financial resources of the owners, there is m uch absentee ownership and much cruelty toward the laborers. The n eces· sity of m arketing goods in the mother country and of buying from there crea tes a vital interdependence between it a nd the colony. The plantation colony is characterized by great estates, more or less based on speculative capital investment. Social organization is aristocratic, with d e fini te castes based on racial di (. ferences. A grea t preponderance of males of the colonizing race leads to forma l celibacy but also to extreme laxity in rela tions with women of the laboring class. So much for K eller's analysis. 13 Seen in th is way, these two principa l colo nial 1 ~ An arro!Ja is about twenty-five pounds. 1 3 This

review o( Keller draws heavil y on Crar, 19.-p .

processes- farm colonies and plantation colonies-as formulated by Keller, a ppear to develop in terms of specific climatic differences. As Thompson h as a bly pointed o ut ( 1932), such a climatic deterministic analysis has d ecided I imitations. lt is true that the closest modern approx im ations of plantation organi zation are to be found predominantly in the world's tropical o r semitropical areas. Yet this concentration is not d ue to the climate, but to the fact that tropical regions const itute and have long constituted . . . the m ost im portant and m ost :iccc,~ il;lc front ier of the world co11111n 111i ty. They lo ns titut e a fro n tier \,·IJ('n; there are exploitable resources. most ly :1g ricul t ural, that are nearer LO con suming c;en u::rs in t<.:rn1s of cost th;1n arc the Yast areas of sparsely peopled lands capable of producing \·ario us kinds of agri cultu re in th e.: tempe rate.: zon es. T/11: n·aso11 the jJ/antatio11 jncdo111iu a tes whnc it dues is th e llf"Cl's.~ity i11 th ose regions of sccu ri11 g a disrif>lin r d a11d dc/)("llrinfJ/r labor force. lllh ere th e n at ive ju:o/>lr~s arr: 1101 .rnfficic nl in 1111111· b e rs o r ca11110/ be i11 d uCl'd or co1·rrNI I o s u /1 />I )' I h e n r·rr·s.rnry labor, labo rn ·s are i111 /J0rlcd as i 11 d c 11turcd serv an ts . as co n tra ct labo re r~. or ns sla t11~s . 1t is this ra ther than climate that

g ives its character LO the plan tation. (Thompson, 1v32: 131,1; italics mine.)

Thus Thompson sho,,.vs that it is the problem of relating labor to the land in undeveloped, sparsely populated areas, and not the local climate, which lies at the basis of plantation organization. Moreover, the family farm ing which Keller considers as typical of farm colonies in temperate zones obtained to a varying degree in all planta tion colonies, including Cuba, Puerto Rico, the American south in the colonial period, and so on. It is true that, as Gray explains, " . .. where conditions favored commercial production of staples, small farmers were unable to resist the competitive power of slave labor organized under the p lantation system. H they could not themselves become big planters, they had to establish another selfsufficient economy in a r egion less favorab le to commercial agricu lture" (Gray, 194 1 :444) .H Yet family farms, able to produce either subsistence crops or crops for revenue, can develop in the tropics, and were found in Puerto Rico and in other Spanish possessions.1" The distinction, then, is shown to be between two systems of farming, rather than between two kinds of colonies or two kinds o( climate. Gray d efines the plantation (191p :fJassim) as: . . . a capitalistic typ e of agricultural organization in which a considerable number of unfree laborers were employed und er unified direction and control in th e production of a staple crop.

H e then enlarges on the distinctive characteristics of plan tation organization: . . . (1 ) the funct ions of laborer and employer were sharply distin ct; (2) the system was based o n commercial agriculture, except in p eriods of depression; (3) the system w as representative of a capi talistic stage of agricultural de1-1 Also

see ' ·Vi lliams, 19,14: 25-29 and \Vyndham, 1935:286- 89.

1~ Sec Chapte rs

6 and 7.

CANAMELAR: RURA L SUGAR PLANTATIO::-.: PROLETARIAT

velopment since the value of slaves, land, and equipment n ecessitated the in\'estmcnt of money capital, often of large amou11 t, a nd frequently borrowed, and there was a strong tendency for the p lanter to assume the attitude of the business man in testing success by the ratio of the net money income to the capital in\'csted : (.J) there was a repeated trend LO\\·ard specia lization-the production of a single crop for market.

H e concludes: . . . the gL·m·~is of the plantation system is LO be regarded as a ph:1sl· of colonia l expansion of capitalism necessitated 1>,· thl' i11d11stri:d t•11,·iro11mc11t peculiar to certain parts of tl ;c :'\ t·w \\ orlcl. th l' d1aractcr of the races and populations Lh:1t t·11te n ·d inw the f:1bric of rn lonial empire, the com111ntial :111d colonial ideals of the sc\'cral nations panicipati11M in thl' task ol toloni1:nio11. and the technical character of i11d11:.cry ;1t that period. 0

The treme ndo us c:u Itural influence which the plantation :.v~tc m " ·ie ldcd in the New \Vorld has received surpri ~inglv lillle attcmion from culture historians. It should be lJOintcd o ut that the plantation as defined here mu st be distingu ished from the enormous farms ,,·hi ch were d eveloped by the Spanish conquistadores on an a borio-in a l Indian labor basis in the highlands o( Peru and ~Iexico a nd in o ther large areas. Aborig inal labor never sufficed for the p lantation system. Labor h ad to be imported. . . l\fan y of th e fea tures of the plantat10n system linger on and have, to a varying d egree, provided the cultural bases for the subsequent land and labor arrangements in Puerto Rico, Cuba, the British and French " ' est Indies, Brazil, the American south, and other large agrarian areas. In the case of Puerto Rico, the start of the twentieth century marked the shi(t from the family-type h acienda to the corporate land-an~l-(actory combine. Both o( these later systems o( agricultura l organization in P uerto Rico can best be understood in the perspective or the plan t<ttion system which held sivay during most of the ni neteenth century.. It was not until a fter the start of the n111eteenth century that commercial sugar production was undertaken in earnest in P uerto Rico. By this time, the Haiti an Revolution had reduced the most ndvanced sugar producing a rea in the world to a largely selfcontained peasan t economy; the sugar producing Br itish \ Vest In dies had falle n upon hard times; the revolution in South America had restricted the scope of Spa nish colonial ru le so that the Caribbea n possessions increased pro portionate ly in importance; royalist emigres from South America were in need of a pl ace to settle; a nd Spain was eager to secure and to develop her remaining holdings in the New \ \Torld. These conditio ns, taken together, were responsible for the subsequent d evelopment of Puerto Rico as a sugar producer of first importance and for the maturation of the plantation system on that island. Since the island had remained tangential to the main curren ts of Euro pean colonialism until the nineteenth century, the ag ricultural developmen t fostered at the time evolved in an internal si tuation roughly resembling tha t of the British \·Vest Indies at a period a cen tury

331

and a half earlier. But there were a number of noteworthy differences. Most im portant of these were those concerning the securing of labor po"·er. The Spanish had no supply o( indentured servan ts on which to draw. And laws illegalizing the slave trade were passed in joint treaty form by the governments of Great Britain and Spain shortly after the start of the nineteen th century (Williams, 1950:22-45). The Puerto Rican plantation entrepreneurs therefore could not so r eadily obtain outside sources of labor, even though illicit slave trading was possible and continued during th e first ha lf of the nineteenth century (Williams, 1950). In contrast to these disadvantages with regard to a labor supply, P uerto Rico a nd the other Spa nish ·west Indies en joyed an advantage which h ad been lacking in the British possessions in the seventeenth century. The British sugar industry in the Caribbean h ad evolved before a large indigenous "Creole" populatio n had grown up. In the case of P uerto Rico, the period from the discover y until the start of the nineteen th cen tury had been marked by the gradua l but continuous growth of a native population, compounded genetically o( three stra ins-African, Hispa nic, and Indian-and consisting largely of isolated subsistence farmers living in the mountainous interior of the island. Thus considerable labor power was potentially available in Puerto Rico, a lthough these people could no t always be readily persuaded to work as wage earners o n the newly developing plantations. The P uerto Rican situation thus differed in two significant r espects from that of the British Caribbean a t an earlier period: first, an indigenous labor supply was potentially available ; second, there existed at the time no institutiona lized means for extracting the labor power itself. The land tenure piccure at the start of the nineteenth century is not completely clear. L arge areas had been held by private citizens th rough royal decree, but private property in land was not insti tutionalized until J anuary 14, 1778 (L edn'.1, 18 10:17 1-72) . At the same time, we have noted that very large numbers of Puerto Ricans lacked title to land but operated as squatter subsistence fa rmers or worked as share farmers on the large and mostly undeveloped estates. The general abundance of land, even tho ugh secure title was lacking, provided a kind of " in ternal frontier " for the landless. This situation and i ts implications for economic development have been discussed at length b y historians writing about the New \1Vorld. Generally, in the colonial Americas, a ny free laborer was able to produce a surplus well beyond the costs of minimu m subsistence, so labor was expensive for the agricultural entrepreneur. So much undeveloped land was accessible for squatter use that p lantation owners and landowners could not appropriate in the form o( rent a profitable portion o f the surplus prod uced b y free farmers (Nieboer , i 900:420). In the case of P uerto Rico, th e provisio n o( labor power for plantation expansion could be h andled in two ways. First, slaves could be imported (but ·we already have noted the d ifficulties involved in this pro· ccclure). Secondly, the large, free native population

33 2

THE PEOPLE OF PUERTO RICO

which had developed before the plantation system had really taken hold could be coerced into supplying its labor power. In the struggle for an adequate labor supply, both methods were, in fact, employed. We have already defined the term agregado in the discussion of the culture of the modern people of Canamelar. The history of the term and the practice it stands for are germane to the history of labor pO\ver on the plantations. Historically, the agregado was a la ndless agricultura l laborer who attached himself to the holder of a royal land grant, 10 living on the land controlled by the landholder, giving labor in place of rent, and working under some variety of share arra ngement. As early as 1778, Puerto Rico had more ag regados than slaves (Abbad y Lasierra, 1866:24 1, 287; Ledn.'1, 1810:171-72); but control over the agregados seems to have been very limited in the early years of the nineteenth century. A Puerto Rica n mayor wr ote in 1809 (Ramirez de Arellano, 1936: 12- 13): . . . the abundance of uncultivated lands, whose owners are not able to throw them into use, is to my mind a great obstacle, which forcibly hampers the population, reduces harvests, and encourages v ice and hooliganism on the part of m an y, who could be resp ectable citizens, useful to themselves, their country, and the Empire. Firstly, the abundance of unused lands h olds back the people because owners lack the means to cultivate them ; they let the poor m ake use of them, to clear the brush and create pasture lands for cattle; th ose who receive use of the lands (to whom the name agregados is g iven) do not r eport r egularly to the own er, have n o obligation to him, p ay no re nt; nor does the owner exercise any privilege in recognition of his ownership; on the contrary, a lmost always in the past he would give to the agregado or usufructuar y a half a dozen cows more or less, that they might share equally in the profits of the raising. . . .

The picture is a curious one; many people were landless, and a substantial number had entered into agregado status, but landowners apparently lacked the power to exploit their la bor efficiently. Moreover, many landl ess persons were apparently unwilling to accept such status, and either lived by squatter fa rming in the inaccessible highlands, or lived by their wits, deferring to no employer. I n 1808, the Spanish Crown invited Puerto Rico to name a representative to the centra l governing council of the Empire. The grant ing of such representation was aimed at r educing sepa ra tist pressures in the colonies. I t led, however, to demands for greater commercial independence and greater freedom from royal restr ictions on trade. vVhen Don Ramon Power went forth to the Span ish Cortes in i8JO as Puerto Rico's first deputy, he carried with him a list of twenty-two petitions w hich summed up the aspi ratio ns o( his landed a nd merchant countrymen. Among these was a petition calling for stricter control over the landless citizens of Puerto Rico- the agregados.11 Power returned to i c R ights of freehold were not granted by the Crow n until 1778. 1 7 Peti t io n r\o. 11: "That a ll those lackin g property, salaried jobs, or legitimate employme n t in prh·ate establishmen ts be

Puerto Rico with much to show for his efforts, including the basis for a policy of repressive labor control upon which the sugar industry soon came to d ep end. In 18 15, Governor Melendez authorized the appointment o f additiona l police and judicia l officials throughout the island. These officials were, in every case, chosen from the military forces stationed in various districts (Coll y Toste, 191 ,1-27:XIV). In 1824, a Ba11do de Policia )' Buen Gobiemo authorized the arrest of "vagrants" and their employment on public ·works or in the military unless they were gain fully employed otherwise.l s T he effects of this late r regulation must have been ver y grat ifying to the lando wners if \\·e can judge b y the compa ra ti\'e n umbers of ngrr·grulos in 182 ,1 and 1827. In th e firsL or these years, there ,,·ere 14,327; in the second, 38,90().':• During the same period, the number o( slaves increased only fr om !!!!,725 to 28,418 (Cordoba, 183 1-33 :VJ, -J3•). As l11e sugar industry grew larger, new and ha rsher Jaws ,,·ere imposed to extract the labor power of fr ee men. Th e B a11do de Policia of Govern o r General Lopez de Baiios in 1837 compelled a ll landl ess \\·orkers t.o go to work o n loca l plantations and to reg ister their names in municipal rolls, under pe nalty o ( fin es (Brau , 190.i: 2.1G). ln 18,19, Governor General de la Pezuela extended the law so that workers were compelled to carry work books (librelns reglam.enlarias) in which their services were recorded by the plantation owner or manager who employed them. A g regados could n ot change their place of employment if they had contracted debts at the plantation 'vhere they were ·working. Debts came about presumably through commodity credit arrangem ents a t planta tion stores. The stated intention of the 1849 law was to bind by legal means the employers and the municipal authorities, as well as the laborers, to a just system of labor practices (Brau, 190.1:2.16). In fact, the free laborer was disadvantaged and thrown into a dependent subordinate position with relation to the pla ntatio n own er. From th ese Jaws, it can be seen that the coercion of technically free laborers was used, in addition to slavery, to mobilize plantcition labor power. One Puerto Rican historian, Morales :Munoz ( 19,i.9:72), interprets: "Vagrancy spread through the whole island, among the free and freed , making necessary regulations to compel the idle to work. A lthough log ically, one understands 'wage earner' (jorn a.lero) to mean anyone who lives by a wage, Governor Lo pez de compe lled to concentrate the mselves in li ving quarte rs in the towns .. (reducirse fJrecisa mente a v iv ir e11 las jJoblacion es). (R a mirez de Ar ella no, 1936:39.) i s ··Asi en esta Capital como en los d cmas pueblos y villas de la Isla enca rgo p a rti culanncntc a los Ay untamientos y dernas Ju eces p ersigan la ociosidad, procurando quc todos viva n d e su tr;1bajo. . . . Sc tendd por vago a todo joven o persona rob11sra que se cntrctcnga p or las callcs en vender fri olcras y fruslerias propias d e las im pcd idas y ancianos; a tal es indi viduos sc Jes apl ica rft a las a rm as o a los trabajos de utilidad pt'.1b lica, co n arreglo o las circulares d e la rna teria" (Colly Toste, 191,1- 27:H, 33. an. 8). rn According to o n e so urce, th ere were 30,560 agregados in 1820, but this fig ure run s counter to all other estimates. The primary source for this figure could not he ascenaineu. (Sec Coll y Toste, 19q- 2rX I, ' £> 1.)

CANAMELAR: RURAL SUGAR PLA NTATION PROLETARIAT

Bafios defined 'jornalero' as an y person, free or freed, who had neither property, profession, nor position b y which to live. Such a 'wage earner' was left obliged, as a result, to work as a hired hand for some employer." The basis for creating an agregado labor supply can thus justly be called "forced labor" but not slavery, sin ce the plantation owner could technically not exercise rights of property, though he did have such rights in the case of slaves. Some historians, however, do not believe such legislation signifies forced labor. Writes ?\[oralcs ;\luiioz (19.J~r 73) : This ad1ni11istratin:: med10cl '"as not an inter\'ention in free labor. as has been bclie\'cd through error, but rather

a kgitim;1tc i11Lern:1Hion of authority itt the generalized ,·:1gr;111< y o r idleness. \\'hich w :rs al\\'ays the cause o( frequent dl'li11q11c11< y. ln our days, Yag1·a ncy is a pun ishable crime in n1ost of the states of the American u11ion, and to avoid it. the " "·orkliook system" (sist1' 11ia de las libretas) was extended. This labor legislation had, as its only end, to pre\'Cnt the dkn by atlack ing the cause : that is, it prohibited ,·agrancy or idkm·ss. mother o( all \·ices. making work compubory. IL coll\'Crtecl the potemial delinquent into a worker, uscl ul 10 hi111self as \\'ell as to the society in which he was I j,·i ng. This historian neglects to mention that any property owner who lived quite idly off his income in the form of rent or interest was not subject to the legislation. It might be added, furth er, that the "vagrants" subject to such a law were not in a very good bargaining position when it came time to discuss wage rates with their employers. The fact of the matter is that until all laws affecting the legal rights of landless workers to work when they chose, where they chose, and for whom they chose were revoked, a special kind of forced labor obtained on Pueno Rican plantations. ~ 0 Slavery was finally abolished in i873, with the stipulation that freed s laves must work for three years' minimum for their former owners under contract on a wage basis. All the repressive laws regulating the activities of free laborers were repealed in July, i876. The year i873, or i876, then, can serve as an approximate turning point for the shift from slavery a nd forced labor into a new system for relating the la borer to the land. The general productive arrangement which prevailed on sugar producing plants from i873 until about 1900, I shall call by the name "family-type hacienda." The main distinction between t he plan ta· tion as defined by Gray and the family-type haciend a is that the form.er was manned by slaves, the latter by free m en. Slave labor was abolished in Puerto Rico notably later than in the British, French , or Dutch possessions, or in the United States. Not only had Spanish possessions entered late into the plantation 20 lintil very recently, "\·agrnncy !all's'' "·ere in force in Guatemala. These la\\'s forced the agriculwral laborer lo \\'Ork on the haciendas or 011 publ ic works if he ll'ere not self-employed fulltime. In large areas of modern Latin America, it is a commonly kno\\'11 fa ct lhat debt bondage still continues to f1111ctio11. And it seems fair 10 olJserre that in many African colonies, tax Jaws fun ction to extract labor from peasants who would otherwise not be so likely to leave their present holdings in search of work.

333

picture, but the substitution of free labor for slave and forced labor had also come about late. In the case of Puerto Rico, this substitution took place when the island population had apparently increased up to the requirements of the plantations for labor power. \ i\/'r ites N ieboer ( 1900: 42 i ), in describing a society with closed resources: H ere subsistence is dep endent upon material resources of which there is only a limited supply, and whid1 accordingly have all been appropriated. These resources can consist in capital, the supply of which is always limited; then those who own no capital are dependent on the capitalists. T hey ca n also consist in land . Such is the case "·hen all the land has been appropriated; then people destitute of land are dependent on the landowners. \/herc subsistence depends on dosed resources, slaves may occasionally be kept, but slaYery as an industrial system is not likely to exist. There arc generally poor people who Yoluntarily offer themselves as labourers; therefore slavery, i.e., a system of compulsory labour, is not wanted. And even where there are no poor men, because all share in the use of closed resources, the use of slaves cannot be great. \•\/here there arc practically unlimited resources, a man can, by increasing the number of his slaves, increase his income tO any extent; but a man who o"·ns a limited capital, or a limited quantity of land, can only employ a limited number o( labourers. iWoreover, as soon as in a country with dosed resources slaYcs arc kept, they form a class destitute of ca pital, or land, as the case may be; therefore, even when they are set free, they ,\"ill remain in the scn· ice of the rich, as they are unable to pro,·idc for themselves. T he rich have no in terest to keep the labourers in a slaYe-like state. It may even be to their interest to set them free, either in order to depri\'c them o[ such rights over the land as they may have acquired in the course of time, or to bring about a determi· nation of the wages of labour by the law of supply and demand, instead of by custom. They will thus, without any compulsion except that exercised by the automatic working of the social system, secure a larger share in the produce of la bour than they got before by compulsion. \ 1

As Thompson ( 1932:21 ) h as formulated the contrast, in the case of open resources, two masters are running after one laborer; in the case of closed resources, two laborers are running af ter one m aster. Colonel G eorge Flinter, a widely traveled Englishman, understood the practica l aspects of this difference to p erfection. He had visited Puerto Rico and Cuba, as well as some of the British and French colonies in the Indies, at a time when the cane s ugar trade was expanding for the Spanish , contracting for their competitors. Flinter noted that the Spanish colon ies had been settled, ho"vever sparsel y, b y the Spaniards themselves, since these colonies were not s ugar-a nd-slaveorientecl from the first. In the British and French colonies, the ea rl y and in tense emphasis on the su gar industr y a nd the slave trade led to massive slave populations d ominated b y tin y w hite minorities. Flinter saw a desirable method in t he forced labor techniques of the Spa nish colonies, a ncl tried in vain to teach it to his countr ym en . H e writes (1832:53-56, passim) : 1l has been much disputed by political economises, whether the labour o( a sla\'e or of a freeman is most advantageous to the pla nter; but 1 am apprehensive that. while discussing

334

THE PEOPLE OF PUERTO RICO

this very important quesLion, they did not rcco~le~t thaL and in means for controlling labor, bore most h eavily there are no free labourers in any of the 'Vest India islands, on the small producers. The writer has been unable with the exception of Lhis island [Puerto Rico]. Cuba, and to doc ument the s iwation in Pue rto Rico, but the posthe Spanish part of Santo Domingo. I have neve.1· se~ n the sibility that it was very similar ought not to be refree people of colour in the French and E.ngl1sh 1sh11.1ds jected. work in the fi elds, "·hilc in this colony the "·hue population In the year that the compulsor y three-year contracts work at every species of tropical agriculture. . . . for ex-slaves e nded in Puerto Rico ( 1876), the P once Free laboure rs can only be found in the ' Vest Indies by the operation of time; it cannot be err:cted by magic, or by Agric ultural Society petitioned the government LO p e rforcin« the laws of nawre out of their course. It must be mit the introduction of Chinese contract laborers for done by educa ting the slaves to habits of religion and indus- agric ultural laho r. Th e society also asked that every try, and not by teaching them to read writings and news- male laborer betwee n the ages of fiftee n :i11cl forty -five papers which inculcate revolt and insubordination. The be r e(1uirccl w hire out his sen· icc for three. mo111hs cullivation of tropical produce in time, may be more ad- each year. C:11rirn1sly. the Council of State denied both vantageous. chea per, and humane, by free labour than by reques ts. Since 110 .~ 111:h I imitations on the. sen1r~ng- of 5 Javes. . . . Le t the free negroes and mulattoes in th·'.! labo1· power were illlposcd on Cllha. one 1s n1ouvatcd French and English islands, be subject to certain municipal to inquire wh:1t influence the Cuban plan~ers 111;1y regulations, by which the idle and. v~gra nt shall be ~om· have wie lded itl the politics or the m etro pol is. pellecl to work, as in the case of tl11s island [I'.u~no Ri co]. Let the governmc11L watch over Lhe loca l authonues, and sec that the laws on Lhe subject of Cree labour be enforced LAND AND TECHNOLOGY without favor or p;irtiality, and Lhat the young chi ldren arc After this bri ef examinat io11 o f the de,·elopmclll of brought up wiLh religious and industrious habits; let houses of correction be established for the refractory-where Lhey labor power during the g rowth o( the sugar industry should be made to wo rk for the benefit o( the communi Ly, in the nineteenth cenwry, we may consider the proband I am persuaded, Lhat in the course of fifty years. 110£ a lems o f land and technology. Until the Royal Ced11ln day Less, the \VesL Indies population will increase in num· o( January q, 1778, which provided for .the divisio n bers. a11d that agriculture will not he diminished , nor prop· a nd granting o( royal lands with the right o[ freeen y endangered, by the gradual, prudent, and justabolition h old most o( the fertile lands of Puerto Rico had o[ negro slavery. lain 'dormant and unused. T he south coast, which is Flinter's e fforts were in vain. Great Britain abolished the selling o( modern Cai'lamelar, was relatively unslavery in 1833. Puerto Rico, her situation difierent, deve loped and but spa rsely populated. At one time, judic iously exploited free labor and perpetuated all the la11d in the nine present-day coastal municichattel slave ry until 1873. Ben\·een the R eal Cddula palities from Arroyo to Guaya nilla, and large highland o[ 1778, which opened Crown land to private use and areas as well, were under the jurisdiction of the Villa ownership, and 1876, when the three-year contracts de Coamo, o ne of Puerto Rico's oldest towns. These which had bound ex-slaves to the plantations termi- coastal lands, although renowned in very early times nated, Puerto Rico had, in Nieboer's terms, changed for their fertility, were cultivated very little. About from an area of open resources to one of closed re- 1640, a Spanish writer, the canon Torres Vargas, wrote sources. Its labor supply had changed from slave and of the south coast lowlands : "Other plantations make forced labor LO free labor. Yet this transition was molasses in . . . the valley of Coamo; and the canes neither c lear-cut nor complete. As in the case o[ the they pro du ce nre of such r ichness thnt t h ey n eed British colonies, the emanci pa ti on found some slave neither watering nor to be cultivated more than once. owners heller prepared than others to carry on their . . . Such a ca n e fi e ld lasts sixty or seven ty years" agricultura l operatio ns. Among the leading groups ad- (Abbad y Lasierra, 1866:316- 17). From t h e descrip· vocating abolition in Puerto Rico were so-called tion, it seem s certain that this cane must have b een "boards of proprie tors." It is interesting that all of the planted in the fertile, poorly drained lowlands (poyaboard membe rs owned in excess of twenty-five slaves les), and p e rmitted to grow from stubble year after each.~1 In all like lihood, the newer plantation operyear w i thout rcplanting-;-a practice cal led ratooning. ators and smaller-sca le agricultural ists would h ave been T orres Vargas docs not estimate the amount of cane quite conte nt had slavery continued un~il the insular in c ulti va tion in the zone. population increased sLill more, .or unul the scale of D on Alejandro O ' R eylly, who traveled throug h their operations had advanced. A1mes has noted (1907: P uerto Rico on a survey for the Spanish Crown, noted 208-15, fJassim) chat in the transition from slave to in 1768 that at that time, nearly all the south coast got free labor in Cuba, Chinese con tract laborers were its sugar and rum from outside. I n 1778, only nin etyfilling the labor gaps and that the large-scale planters four n1erdns were planted Lo suga r cane in the whole had take n the lea d in staffing their plantations with e xpanse of Coamo Distric.t, which included the land contract labor. H e observes further that the large of modern Caiiamelar. This was the year in which inge11ios outdistanced the small er mills duri ng this r oyal lands were first granted with inhe ritabl e prop· transition, a nd that the cha nges, both in technology erty rights, as note d above. Cafiamelar then was a rninor coastal borough o f the distric t, but small boats ~ 1 J. Sanronn\, in a speech Lo the Spanish Corr.es, February 17, alrea dy were carrying coffee, tobacco, corn, timber, 1 8i~l · q 1101<.:d in Illa nc;o, 1935 :88.

CANA l\ l E LAR: R URAL SUGAR PLA NTATI O N PROLETARJAT

335

and med icinal herbs Lo other pans of the island from and in terms o f the number of enterprises, there was its Lin y pon . .Agricullure showed an over-all emphasis a correspond ing upswing at least umil 1880. The faston coffee, cotton, rice, corn, and livest0ck. Only ,180 est growth, in terms of gross product ion, took place in families (-1,3 17 persons) were living within the juris- the period from about 1820 to i840, tho ugh even dicLion o f the whole Villa of Coamo at that time. earlier the expansion had been remarkable. In B eLween 1778 and about 1810, the agricultural pat- the fi ve-year period from 1848 to i 852, an average terns o ( the island d o not appear to have changed annual production in excess of one million quintales signi ficantly. The south coast zone remained stagnant. was attained, and from thal time until the final d ecades But abou t 18 1o, revolutionary movements in South of the century, this average was maintained or ex.\mcrica drove many Span ish royalists out of their ceeded. From every indica tion of this kind, the inadop ted COllntl'iCS. a nd large numbers Of these emigres dustry would appear to have been prospering. But \\·ere admitted to Pueno Rico. They brought with when the Puerto Rican sugar industry of the ninethem ne\,. skills and capital. The Crown sought to teenth century is considered not by comparison with recom pe11se th ese men ror their loya lty by granting production in the previous century but rather in the them b11d from the royal do main (Enj uto Ferran, context o f world sugar production, a b etter perspecLive on the insular economic situation o( the time 1~1 f:): '.P~l) . No records o[ any of those granLs were available to th e \\Titer . but it is known that some of can be ga ine~ . Puerto Rico entered the world sugar the south coast"s leadin~ families got their start in this ma rket at a tune when sugar producers in the French wa y. On :\11gust 10. 18 15. the promulgation of the and British Amilles " ·ere encoumering g reat difc(:d11/u d e <:mf'ias stimulated the inOux of Catholic fi culties.~3 In the twenty-five-year period b etween the cmrcprencurs by offering to them g rants of land from Cddula de Gracias and 1840, Puerto Rican a nd Cuba n the royal domain in proportion to the number of sugar producers were able to expand rapidly. The slaves they owned. CaLholic foreigners came from the nature of this expansion was such that small em erprises Fre nch and British islands, from Louisiana, Vene- prevailed. vVith special dispensations from Lhe Crown, zuela, l\ Texico, and Santo D omingo. From the d ~ne of the assurance of a waiting market, and the opportunity issue of the Cedula de Gracias of 1815 until May 21, to get cred it, more and more entrepreneu rs could turn to .sugar production. The cultivation and processing 1 81 G, 324 Catholic foreigners came to Puerto Rico unit th.at composed a pla ntation required, even in from u nspecified countries. Eighty-three more entered with their wealth and slaves from Louisiana a lone.zz those times, a tremendous capital outlay. But land Th e Ctfclula provided (or the free importa tion of ma- could be had, and, b y borrowing, many fam ilies were chine ry, removed taxes on slaves ;md agricul w ral im- able tO bu y their way into the industry. Between 18 13 plements, establ ished free commerce with Spain, a nd and 1833, more tha n two hundred new estates were allowed direct commercial relations with foreign established in the island (Fl inter, 1834: i 75). i\Iany o( nations. The e ffect of this Ctld11la on Puerto Rican these were on the south coast. ' Vhile it is true that in agricu lwre and commerce was revolutionary. It was terms o( acreage, most present-day south-coast sugar in this period that the J ama ica Train, a new cane ca ne lands were not put into cu ltivation until after the j uice extract io n system, was introduced into the American occupatio n, the lands i n use in the PoncePuerto Rican sugar industry. At that time, still a new ? ua~a.ma ~istric~ were producing most of the isla nd's and imporcant d evelopment in sugar technology, the s u~a 1 m. 1833. Fil mer attests Lhat the number of planJ amaica Train a llowed for a marked increase in the ~auons m Gua ya~na, a southeast coastal municipalicy, mcreased from eight in 1828 co thirty in 1830. ' 'Vhile proportion of sugar extracted from the ground cane. The influx o f capita l and the freeing o f large tracts the growth of the industry did not con tinue at this of Crown land stimulated the development of the cattle rat~ throughout the century, the statistics for the and sugar industries. I t was sugar that required the penod t_1p to 1. 880 seem to indicate a vigorous and greater investment o( ca pital, the aggregation of a J~rogr~ss tve busm css; but the statistics conceal the real labor force, the construction of process ing centers, and s1tuat10n. lt was actually as early as 1840 that the the d evelopment of ports. T he volume of sugar in- e~entu al deterioration of the industry could be precreased as the slave population mounted. But we al- dicted. In that yea r, Cap it<in Jose de la Pezuela adread y have noted that not all, nor even most, of the voca ted to the Econom ic Society of the Fr iends o( the labor in sugar appears to have been done b y slaves. Nation (Soried~d Eco116mica de Amigos de! Pais) that steam be substttutecl for a nimal power in the mills ~ree w hite, Negro, and mulatto laborers were of great ~Coll Y :r:oste, i 914-2 7:VJII, 174)· SLea m was first used unportance. _ The period of e_xpansio n of the Puerto Rican sugar 111 Lou isiana in 1822. Yet d emons trations of steamdriven equipment were needed in 1840 to convince mdu ~try began "'.1th the Chlula de Gracias of 1815; but 1t 1s more thfficult to say exactly when this ex- the_ Puerto R~can . planters of its adva ntages. Flinter pansion ended. The torn I production of sugar grew by claunecl that six of the mi I ls o perating in G ua yama in leaps and bounds throug h nearly the entire century, 1

2 ~ J . .J. Acosta. !111otacio11cs a la Historia d e Puerto Rico, cited by Bran, 188!!: 16.

.~a It is hcrond the ~rope of th e present paper to discuss th ese ptohlems. R evo luti o n :rncl l'1·1· t ~ 1· 11 " t 1· · .. ,the. Ha1Lrn11 . • ' " ~ a JO 1tton o f . . liul the sla\ c la.Hie \\ CIC a1110 11g th e 111ost imporiant.

336

THE PEOPLE OF PUERTO RICO

1830 were steam-driven; and Deerr states (1943) that forty-eight steam mills were in use in the island in i848. vVhat is not clear is to what degree steam was being employed and on what scale. To judge by other technological aspects, steam must have come to full use in the industry slowly. Vacuum pan sugar evaporators were first used in Louisiana in 1830. Yet as late as 1853, Jose Julian Acosta was still urging that this type of evaporator be installed in Puerto Rican mills to replace the already outdated system of open evaporation. Technological improvements were coming fast, but most island planters were not keeping pace with the innovations. From a n American visitor to the island in 1852, we get a brief picture of the sugar-making process. The writer, iVIatthew Bagg, went ashore for a short visit. He says (1936 :38- 40): Sugar is ,•ery extensively culti\'aLed here as in most of 1.he o th er West Indies islands. Indeed it seems to be the staple product. The estates contain from one to three o r four hundred acres. They have a cl"·elling house and sugar mill and boiling house besides the Negro quarters on each . Ilut the owners do not always or even genera lly reside on the estates but in the towns or abroad and Jea,·e the cu ltivation of the sugar to agents. It is a matter of skill to boil the sugar properly and requires experience. The cane after being cut ancl divested of foliage is drawn in immense cart loads to the mills. There it is ground either by steam or cattle . . . . The grinding consists merely of pressure between iron rollers. The juice runs in a constant stream from the mill in a trough to the boiler in another house. A yoke of oxen would keep two wenches busy in feedu1g the mill "·i th cane. The juice is boiled three or four separate times in distinct boile rs and when the process has been sufficie ntly ca rried on it is placed in reservoirs where the sugar sinks to the bottom. It is then taken out and placed in casks over a va t into which drips the molasses. The fuel used for boiling is the processed cane which makes a speedy and powerful but under the . circumstances, economical heat. The boilino· is d one b most I y m the morning; and the smoke rising among the hills from the many boiling houses g ives the appearance of the island's being covered by volcanoes.

The system Bagg describes is the Jamaica Trainvery modern in 1815, but technologically backward in the i85o's. The fact was that the planters of the period 1815- 75 had come upon a good thing, and they ·were loath to a lter it. The Puerto Rican sugar industry of the period was a small-scale, wasteful, extensive rather than intensive enterprise. But it was profitable. New machinery would have required the investment of more cap ital; the same was true for irrigation development, for fertilizer, and for expanded cultivation. Because of the nature or the industry at that stage of development, the rule of the planter was stabilitynot expansion. Growing more cane would have meant building bigger mills; without bigger mills, there was no point in expanding cane land. The average sugar estate of the time was a family-owned business. 'l\fhat this signifies is not so much that the enterprise was managed by a member of the immediate family, or that the family lived on the estate (though the first of these conditions was customa ry, and the second com-

mon enough), but that the level of capital investment required was such that, in most cases, single families were able to start and to continue Lo own and operate the estates. Had the need for Puerto Rican sugar on the world market remained as pressing as it was in the early decades of the century, there is no doubt that changes in the scale of operations would have had to come, swiftly and perhaps even violently. As things went, however, each estate owner could he a wealthy and respected man, li,·ing off th e fruits or his in\·cstmem, but n either expandi ng operations n or taking ne\,. risks. The nineteenth-century l:nnily-type hacienda \\':ts not. therefore, a progressi\·e institution in terms of its agricu lLUral processes. .\lanuring "·as limited to animal fertilizer, and apparently eYe n this ,,·as not uniformly practiced; rudim enta r y hook type plows were used in field operations; gri nd i 11g ma chi ncry \\':ts i 11cfTicicn t. Potential profits \\·ere lost in the bad ly ground cane, the poorly manured land , in low q11ality sugar, and Liirough excessive interest rates . The eventual e ffects of this situation \\·ere not at llrst apparent, but some 'niters made dire predictions. A warning was voiced by Jose Juli;'tn Acosta, in 1866, when he wrote: It is knom1 that the pla ntation operator dedicates himself at one and the same time to the cultivation of cane and the manufacture o( sugar , a nrnfolcl task which requires on his part great capital and agricultural and industrial knowledge. In such complication, the natural result is that gcncrally both cultivation and processing are done badly. This is what produced the Joss of the greater part of the crystallizable sugar conta in ed in the cane. In such a sitnation, neither cultivatio n n or processing can improve, unless great capital is invested. . . . Further, on no plantation of the island do they have the steam calcining apparatus, which doubles production in line with the known chem ical principle that in sugar the quality infiuen ces the quantity. . . . The field of action of the plantation operator in the majority of cases being lim ited to the area he possesses, given that he lacks legal means or financial resources to extend it, exacting every year a crop of ca n e from the same land, and the natural result is that production, for the same c11r-:rda, decreases so that it is already not what it "·as before, tomorrow it will be less than today, until the day will arrive when it is insufficient to pay the operating costs of the plantation. In such an extremity there will be no other way out hut to abandon cane cultivation, which is tantamount to almost the entire loss of the capital invested in mills and storehouses.2·1

By 1875, the situation had become impossible. vVhere entrepreneurs had been unwilling to invest in technological and agricultural innovations in 1840, they could no longer have invested, even if they chose to, by 1875. And a fter 1875. conditions continued to worsen. Thus, what appeared to have been a thirtyfive-year period of stability ( 1840-75) had really been a period marked by the gradual petrification of the produ ctive system . Analysts have offered a variety of explanations for the rise and subsequent fall of the sugar industry between 1815 and 1875, all with con2 .1

.J. J. Acosta, quoted in Sanrom;i, 1873: 10-11 (my translation).

CANAMELAR: RURAL SUGAR PLANTATIO:": PROLETARIAT

siderable basis in fact. In part, the trouble seems to have been Lhe eccelllric, even whimsical , allitude of the m other country toward colonial development. Tariffs o n Lhe importation of grinding and refining machinery, a bsent in the florescent period which immediately followed the 18 15 Cedula, began to appear. L ater, h eavy wxes on the exportable product were imposed. K o consistent policy ever was developed, and producers and entrepreneurs "·ere, as a result, exLre mc ly c;11nio11s abouL ind11sLrial expansion or technological i11110,·ation. 0Lher problems were the cane disca~es: the rc,·i ,·a l of the cane indusu·y and the beginning ol beet s11gar production in other areas; and so 011. Yet to thi~ writer. the basic ca use seems LO lie in the 11au1rc of the plantatio n form as developed in Pu erto Rico : that is, there appears LO have been a gen eral reluctance. C\'Cll if capita l could have been made a\·a ilahlc throug-h the pooling o( reso11rccs, to upset the apparenl stability or the a lready existing (a nd profitable) producti\'e orga nizations for some other arr:1nge111cnt. R el11cta nce in i840 or 1850 becam e ~ h ccr inability hy 18io. from the termination of slavery until the .American occupation, commercial sugar production was d ominated by the fam ily-type hacienda. J11st as the family-type hacienda system in its entirety was an outgrowth of the plantation system which preceded it, so the work arrangemen ts on it were adaptations of previous arrangements. The labor contracts for ex-slaves which obtained for the threeyear period 1873-76 stipul ated that the freed slave must resid e o n the farm o( the contractor; that he must get his ex-owner's permission to leave the municipality; that the contractor need not feed or clothe ex-slaves unless an agreement to that effect preda ted the signing o( the contract; and so on. The ex-slaves, then, wo11 an important econom ic and political viccory via emancipation, but were still bound econom ically by the contracts and by the necessity of eking o ut their living on the soil. They m erely joined their ag rega do neighbors in the hacienda shacks and came a step closer to b eing competitors on the free labor market.~;; Barring the distinction between free and slave or forced labor, the family-type hacienda was no more than a continu ation of the preceding plantation. The (unctions o ( laborer and employer were still sharply distinct, with labor provided mainly by ag regados, many of them ex-slaves; it was sLill a capitalistic enterprise based o n a limited investment of money ca pital; the production of a sing le crop for market still prevailed. I 11 the 187o's, a new productive process, the factory ce11tml system, w<1s made practicable in the British Antilles. The fa ctory ce11lral system, which reached its zen ith only fift y years ago, was bnsetl on the reorg;111ii'at ion and centralil<1 tion of the g rinding operations in the industry. \\Tith the development of new and more powerful m achinery, it had become possible to create central i1.ed g rinding mills (h ence the Spanish name central), to which the lands of a great 2s La Exj>eric11cia

pp. 92~6.

A bolicio11ista de Puerto Rico (:\ladrid, 1874),

337

many haciendas could be tributary. Hacienda operators could agree to provide the central with all the cane they grevv, on a contractual basis, and the losses inherent in the use of outmoded and inefficient methods could be eliminated. The factory cen tral system had become very important in the British \Vest Indies in panicular, and was spread ing rapidly in the i87o's; its d evelopment was the logical outcome o( the need to exploi t colonial <1reas more efficiently. The factory ce11lrnl did not come to Puerto Rico in force until the American occupation. As the technological contradictions implicit in th e family-type hacienda system became more and more a pparent, small-sca le hacienda operators made repeated attempts to support the creation o f a factory central system in Puerto Rico. In 1876, the Ponce Agricultural Society soug ht to raise capital to build co-operatively a large-scale enterprise, with each hacienda operator participating in the cane producLion and sharing in the pron ts. The plan failed -for want of sufficient capital. In 1879, Do n Santiago i\IcCorm ick was commissioned b y the Diputaci6n Provincinl to make a study of the factory central system. i\fcCormick completed his study in the following year and urged that a fund-raising agent be sent to Europe to get capital for the construction of a factory ceu trnl. According LO l\IcConnick's report, a factory central capable of producing thirty-nine tons of su gar d aily could be built for about 300,000 pesos. A plan was proposed in the report whereby the can e producers could be stockholders in the central, in proportion to each one's part in s upplying the cane. But nothing came of McCormick's recommendations; it was too la te.~ 0 A Ponce hacienda operator, G. Cabrera, writing a morose letter to the British sugar industry periodical Sugar Cane in 1882 (pp. 326-27), tells of the industry in Puerto Rico in retrosp ect: . . . the same old ta lc of how planters in slavery da ys squandered the money they so easily acquired, ne,·er giving a tho ught lo improvcmenLs nor sa\'ing m oney for a ra iny day: nnd how, when Lhe ine,·itable crash came, it found them be hind the age in mnnufacture, withoul funds to meet increased expend iture, and, as a rule, deeply in debt. No wonder i[ many broke down, and if the survi vo rs find thcmsel\'eS unable to furni sh the capital required e ither to change the ir antiquated machinery, or to set up a central factory.

AnoLher effort to s tart a factory central system was m ade in 1882-84, and it. too, ended in fa ilure. The average sugar mill in 1880 had rem a ined a familyownecl busin ess. The g radual slowing of the industrial 20 Lack o f capital proved a hindrance in other ways as well, and sometimes was related LO other issues. Shortly before the emancipation in the Spanish colonies, Puerto Rican south coast plancation owners planned an irriga tion project and secured the promise of British private capital. All was going well umil the British capitalists concerned learned that the irrigation would be used to benefit slave-man ned plantations. They thereupon wilhdrew their s upport, and the projecl had to be dropped. Cf. a record of rhc Socicclacl Aholicionisia Espaliol, in La Ex/1erie11cill Abolicionista de Pu erto Rico, p. 71.

338

THE PEOPLE OF PUERTO RICO

pace, the patching together of the outdated machinery, the easy incorporation of plantation ex-slaves into the system Jent to the industry a false quali~y of stability and security. In the closing decades of the century, the obstacles multiplied . To the scarcity of capital and the discouraging attitude of the government must be added the high rate of interest which prevailed on all loans. Not only were hacienda operators unable to amass capital for largescale improvemen ts, but the credit arrangements were prejudicial to their long-range interests. By the time of the American occupation, the sugar industry had come to a full stop; the sys tem itself was crumbling. In i8gg, 81 of 289 plantations in 45 municipal districts were not in cultivation. Interest rates were at an alltime high. Increased world production of sugar and the technological backwardness of the Puerto Rican industry were taking their toll. Added to other difficulties, taxes and customs duties on machinery were disproportionately high (Carroll, 1900:44-46). American capital began to flow heavily into the island immediately after the occupation, and re-created the "sugar way of life," but in radically different form. It is true that the Puerto Rican plantation operators had made some progress independently. Four smallscale factories had been built before the ttfrn of the century. But most mills before the occupation were changed by the addition of small improvements rather than by the reorganization of the whole scheme and scale of production. Maxwell has pointed out (1927: 105) that this defect is typical of the history of sugar: " . . . it is a fairly common experience in visiting certain cane countries at successive intervals, to see sugar factories growing up, as it were, like a swallow's nest, i.e., gradua ll y extending and patching the various departments of manufacture as necessity dictates, without a prearranged plan." Given the great amounts of American capilal which the occupation rendered available, the revamping of the Puerto Rican sugar industry came about rapidly. In the modern era, the larger and more efficient the plant and the more la n<l attached, the better the profits. In 1899, a mill rendering 5,000 tons of sugar annually required an investment of S500,ooo. Control of cane producing lands was, of course, essential (Davis, 1 900:37- 38). The first factory centra.les to develop after the occupation were American built and American owned, corporate in organization, and built only when substantial assurance that the vast areas of cane land requisite in making such an investment profitable had been secured. The invasion of capital continued unabaled for fully twenty-five years, ·within which time every feature of sugar production in Puerto Rico, and the very scale o( the industry underwent revolutionary change. . The new land-and-factory combines developed first 111 the south coast zone. These productive arrangements are a kind of zenith in the evolution of plantationtyp: economy. Greaves points out that they a're a log ical developme nt of early forms of the plantation:

Since the seve11teenth century the plantation has been the dominant method of European agricultural development in tropical regions. In th<.: earlier periods there was little mechanical equipment, even less scientific cultivation, and Jabour represented a capita l in\'estmeut iu the form of slaves, while land was usually a free gift. The present situation is exactly opposite in almost every rcspcct. Land is obtained by rent or purchase-although the price is in some places lo,\·- labour is paid by money wages, methods of increasing fertility of the soil have greatly improved, and in every industq' capital is extensively employed. T he form of culti vation that may legitimately be called plantation prnductio11 110,,· represents a p<.:rman<.:11t in,·cs1111c11t and :1 Jong-term interest in a cl<.:fin cd ;1rc;1 of land .. . .e 7 \1Vhile Lhe nineteenth ·ce nwry pLtn L;1 t ions and the family-type haciendas ol the late nirn:tccntli cenwry sought Lo maintain a limited but ~ t;1blc.: scale or production ,\·ithout additional capit;d in,·es tmenl. the Jand-a nd-fanory combines count on no limitations in ca pital i1westme11t consonant \\·ith potenlial increases in production. For ha cienda operators of the J)l'CYious century, lhere \\'as 110 ll ~e in r;ii.'>ing the produ ction or sugar ~anc ahm·c the: g rinding lirnits of their liulc mills. The d evelopment of the factory rr' 11/rn/ tm\·ard the end or the century found them unprepa red to make Lhe change w the n ew hig h level o( productive organization. Instead , they struggled along, trying to keep the level of capital investment at a minimum and syuandering their profits in the payment of hig h inte rest rates for credit. The American land-and-factory combines came to stay. They meant to crea te a llourishing sugar industry, and so they did. \Nhere the land was dry, they watered it; where it was infertile, they fertilized it; where it was unused, they threw it into use; where it was used for other crops, they turned it to sugar cane; where it was owned and saleable, they bought it; where it could n ot be bought, they remed it. And this entire conversion process was clearly seen in terms of long-term investment. The new system dug itself in. Not all the land in Puerto Rico wh ich went into sugar cane cultivalion after the Ameri can occupation was bought or leased by the American corporations themselves. A large colono class arose (the colono is a sugar cane farmer who has a contractual grinding agreement with a central). The institution of the colono began to develop in many pans of the world- Cuba, the British \J\T est Jncl ies, etc.-after the inve ntion of the facwry central. Individual entrepreneurs were not able to compete with the cr:ntrn/es in the production of sugar, nor, in most cases, could any individual muster the capilal needed to start a factory central. The centrnl corporation arose, and hacienda operators sold or rented their lands to the cen tral, or entered in to a colono agreement. The colono class has often been hailed as independent of the corporate central in Lerests. \l\Thile the culonos are indeed very distinct ~•I. C . Greaves, 193;,:1jo. It must he noted that Grea,·es speaks of lhe modern , corpora1e, land-and -factory combines as '"plantation production."' This usage diffe rs from 1hat in the present work, where th e term "plantatio n " is used exclusively wilh reference co the early, sla ve-based fonn of agricultural organization.

CANAl\lELAR: RU RAL SUGAR P LANTATION PROLETARIAT

culturally from landless laborers in cane and represent economicall y a more privil eged class, they are extremely d ependent on the ce ntral, even if they own their own land. In the modern "·orkl, sugar cane is grown by indep endent farmers only under exceptional circumstances. It is predomina ntly a corporate plantation crop-not the plantatio ns manned by slaves and forced laborers in past centuries, but the large-scale, land-and-factory combines o r today. Independent peasant farming of sugar can e is \'irtuall y rul ed out by the need for close co~ordi11at io n of f:tnory processing and agricultural produnio11. Th us Crea ,·es writes, in contrasting p eas;1 11t and pla11tatio 11 (i.e .. corporately organized) production : Tltt' di ffl'f'('IH L' i>t' t\\'een the l \\'o systems is fundam entally that of largl' :i nd sm:dl units o f' production. but the plantatio n is not to i>e identified \\'holly by area : it is essentially a type or org:i11i1:itio11. and take~ di~ cre'.H forms under dif-

ferent co11di1io11~. But its orga1111a u o11 1s C\·c11·whcrc char;1nc:ri1ed Ii\' a 1111ifor111 .1y.1t1·111 of r11/th1ntio11 under ce11trn l 111111lfwn11n;t. f t i.1 this /I'S/ of tlt1• source of dirccli11g autltori l v 11•'/1icli 1w1 1110.11 com•l'11i1'11tly be tahc11 to distinguish J>l11111 11 t ir111 f ro111 /}( '11s1111 I /1rod u r t io11 . For the most part it

means the c.: 111ployc.:r uses hired labo ur o.n hi~ own lan~l, but it also m ea ns that where pcasa nt·fanmng 1s done dll'ectly under the supervision of the central-factory, e.g. i.n the case of sugar-cane in Fiji. it comes under the plantauon sys te~1 because the t ulti,·ator is completely controlled by the agncultLn-al ad\'iscrs of the fa cto ry. (Greaves, 1935:67; italics mine.)

\lhat Greaves ca lls "peasant production," i.e., cash crop farmin g wilh little o r. no depend:nce on a central processing o r aclminislrat1ve center, is largely absent from suga r cane productio n the world o~·e r. In Puerto Rico, as in n early every other substanual sugar cane producing area. there is n o local marke~ for raw cane. The small producer cannot compete wtth the central in the processing of cane. Ralher, be is usu ally tri?u· tary to it. This is lhe co /0110 arrangement, by which the sugar ca n e farmer (co /0110) contracts LO produce sugar ca n e fo r grinding a t a certain mill. This contractual arrangement between the mill and the cane farmer varies in detail, geographically and histo rica lly, but in a ll cases effectively ties the farmer-produ cer to the process ing center. Even where colo11os cultiva.te the cane 011 their own land, they are not peasants, m Greaves' terms, but contractually bound components in the cor-pora te plantation organiza tion. ln ccn ain parts of Puerto Rico, the decay of the family-lyp e h acie nda system \\'as followed by the development o( a colono class composed of form er sugar hacienda ope ra tors, farm ers o f small crops, and cattle raisers who converted to ca ne cultivation. \\!here this process took place, a class o( medium landholders evolved , still resident in the local communities. But on the south coast of Puerto Rico, no such colono class d eve loped. Beca use so much land was unused at the time of th e occupation, American corporations were able to bu y t he land outright, or to rent it, a nd t h en to throw it progressively imo ca ne

339

cu.ltiv~tion as the irrigatio n system developed and new grmdmg cen ters were built. The sweeping economic chano-es in Puerto Rico after • t> the occupation can be d emonstra ted in tabular fonn (L6pez Dominguez, 1927). Fo r the period betwee n i gog and 19 19, a time of great expan sion and g rowth, the follow ing facts may b e adduced: TABLE 1. EXPANSION OF SUGAR PRODUCTION

N um ber of cane p la ntations ToLal acreage in can e Pcrcemage 0£ arable land

r909

1919

6,8 16

8.839 ::?2;,8 15 i7.5

l.!5·433 9·3

In the same period, the number of sugar factories belong ing to individuals had decreased from fifty-one to twelve, while the number owned by corporations h ad increased from twe nty-three to thirty-three (Lopez Doming uez, i927). The d egree of techno log ical concen tration in the same p eriod is interesting . The increase and decrease in establishments in accordance with th eir value was as follows: TABLE 2. CONCENTRATION OF CAPITAL INVESTMENT IN SUGAR MILLS

L ess than S5,ooo $5.000 to $:?0,000 $!?0,000 tO $ I 00,000 $ I 00,000 to $500,000 $500,000 l O $ I ,000,000 l\Iore than $ 1,000.000

\ 1

1909

1919

18

0 8

I !!

8 37 3

5 10 14 18

On e other datum is worth noting. That is the value of th e products of these various establishments, given in terms of the form o f ownership: TABLE 3. SHIFT TO CORPORATE OWNERSHIP OF SUGAR MILLS

Yen r

Individual O wnershi/J

Corporate O wnerslti/J

Other

1909 1919

S 1,328,809 S3.333.5 21

S i3.129 ..153 S45.925,205

$6, 11 1,086 S7, 153,206

T he economic reorganization of the insular sugar industry was not completed by i91 9, but it had b egun to approach its zenith. In less than twenty-five years, the whole econ omy of Puerto Rico had been revamped-to produce sugar. \\Trote Brigadier Gen era l D avis in 1899 (1900:38): .In producing coffee and tobacco the n ecessities of combination arc not so urgent, but since sugar cannot be produced a t a profit without large concentrated in\'CStm cnts, it is on ly through combines or trusts tJ1at the best commercial success \\'ill be a tta ined. Shou ld the de\'Clopmcm of tJ1e cane industry in Puerto Rico approx ima te that achieved in l\Iauritius, llarhados, and H awa ii, the ca ne lands w ill be 11l1i111atcly owned or pranica lly controlled by these huge "central " proprietors. There will be a few tho us:tnd o" ·n ers. managers. O\'erseers. d crks. etc., and rna 11 y hundreds of thousands of peon la borers, whose social a nd if we may

340

THE PEOPLE OF PUERTO RICO

judge by numerous examples in oLher countries, industrial conditions will be the same as now, and without hope of improvement.

General D av is had accurately foretold the history of the subsequent thirty years. The corporate combine system led to the purchase of great tracts of hitherto uncultivated land; it constructed extensive private irrigation works. Grinding operations were centralized, transportation expedited by rail and road improvements, mills with tremendous capacities set up. Of the south coast, Rafael Pic6, a Puerto Rican economic geographer, wrote in 1937: "The planting o( sugar cane has been incidental to making this area the most p erfect example of a region where land concentration and absentee ownership dominate strongly the whole economy of the region" (Pic6, 1937b:65). vVhat are the characteristics of the corporate lancland-factory combine? To begin with, it can be compared in general terms with the slave plantations and family-type haciendas which preceded it historically. The functions of laborer and employer are even more sharply distinct than before-the "employer" is corporate; ancl the corporate employer does not know about its laborers' lives, nor do its interests impel it to find out about them. In terms of division of labor the corporate land-a nd-factory combine thus follows' the slave plantation and family-type haciendas, but the new form of organization does not require the employer to establish, in its own self-interest, face-to-face relations with the laborers. Nor would it be possible for many thousands of wage workers to establish face-toface relations with a thousand scattered stockholders in another country. As in the case of earlier forms, the new system is based on commercial agriculture-but, whereas the plan.tations tende~l t~ fall ~ack on the production of subsistence crops m tu~es o( depression, the corporate lancl:and-factory combrne, through its advanced pro?ucuve methods, largely maintains its production even m the face of world contraction of markets. Note Profess?rs ~ayer, Homan, and J ames (1938), after studying capital uwestments and earnings of three American corporate sugar b usinesses in Puerto Rico:

ment in the manner o( its productive predecessors but is in fa cl a "much more ca pi La Iistic" emerprise. Capital is provided corporately, and wage earners, managerial staffs, and ow ners are sharply separated by space and econom ic function. The corporate land-and-factory combine is exclusively a cash commodity producing ente rprise, with its labor power organized entirely on the bas is o[ wages. The complete substitution of cash wages for any other kind o f payment or privilege has led to a standardization of effort and technique and to a complete impersonaliLy i11 the social re lationships between the comb in e"s manage rial hierarchy and the men who \\·ork the soi l. ~1[oreovcr. th e sca le or e nterpri se of th e corpor:tle land-and-facwr~· c0111bine exceeds anything \\·hi ch has preceded it, so one such unit cou ld take the pl ace of literally doze ns of family -type haciendas. " ' ith land n ow held in grea t tracts and the family-type haciendas gone, an important landlwlding class \d1icl1 served many functions in the co1111n11nity 01w111i1.aLion in former Limes has bee n uprooted. La nd unde r the combine system is o \\·ned or administered by the same corporation, o r by a corporat ion i1ncrlocking \rith it, that operates the mills. Finally, the corporate landand-fac tory combine is a long-range enterprise, based on large-scale investmen t and planned for a long-range extraction of pron t. l n the farming an<l processing methods utilized, the land-and-factory combine shows itse lf to be a "progressively capitalistic" system. lt does not lie within the scope o( the present study to elaborate further on the hisLOrical development of the sugar industry in Puerto Ri co except insofar as such historical detail is re lated to the principal problems of culture change and to the nature of the presentday culture of the people of Cai'iamelar. The cultural meaning of the shift from the family-type hacienda to the corporate lane.I-and-factory combine will therefore be cl iscussed next in the context of the Cafiamelar situation. THE HISTORY OF CANAMELAR

~n concluding the presentation of profit fi gures, several bnef comme nts may be offered: (1) The most striking fact abo ut the figures is Lhat they are almost. as good for recent depression years as for years of prospenly. Of the three companies sllldied, only Fajardo shows a temporary d ecline in earnings, d ue p erhaps as mucl~ to hurricanes as to the impact of the d epression. In. \'.1ew of the downward movement of sugar prices, this ability to make profits ca n probably be regarded as evidence ?f three things: fi rst, the excellence of the managerial abilJl~; second, lhe pursuit of conservative financial policies w ith respect to capitalizalion, borrowing, and distribution of earnings; and third, the flexibility- thoug h this factor equall y affects all sugar producers- of the principal items of cost, as represented by wages and, especiall y, the price of cane.

The history of the municipality o( Caiiamelar suffers from a lack of adequate documentation. This municipality, like others in the zone, was a barrio of the Villa de Coamo until the midd le of the nineteenth century. At the time of its founding, in 18,12, the town was localed in the northern part of the present-day municipality; later, it was moved nearer the coast. Between the time o( Caifamelar's founding and 1890, six sugar estates operated within its limits. Of these, five were begun well before the emancipation (1873), bu t probably not as early as the start of the nineteenth century. No record is available of the exact dates when these estates began operations. The mass baptism of fifteen African slaves by one plantation owner in 1844, however, suggests that his plantation at least already was operating or was about to begin . ~ 8 There were no

The corporate ]and-and-factory combine not only represents a capitalistic stage of agricultural develop-

2s Coamo parish records, November, 1844; mass adult slave baptism.

CANAMELAR: RURAL SUGAR PLA NTATION PROLETARIAT

341

corresponding group baptisms by other plantation small scale of the Puerto Rican suo-ar industry in w·orld • 0 operators at that time. The baptisms of African slaves perspective. The 1899 census shows that while Puerto by another Ca1iamelar plantation owner are recorded Rico in that year had 345 suo-ar mills to Cuba's 207, in 1852, and by 1855, all four plantation owners who their collective grinding capa~ity was only one-tenth could be identified were baptizing newborn slaves in as much, and their average capacity only one-fifteenth Cai'iamelar.:!9 These dates do not indicate the starting as much, as that of the Cuban mills. dates o[ the plantations, but they suggest that by 1855, The early history of Cai'lamelar as an independent these fou r plantations probably were in operation. municipality can be described only from the scantiest Hardly any record o[ any kind could be found regard- of records. The town of Cafiamelar was established in ing the fifth plantation of the slavery period. Of the 1842 on a poorly kept di.rt road in the north of the four don1111c1Hcd sla,·e-ho lding plantations, one was newly constructed municipality. A few years later, the begun by the SOil 01· a Vene1.t1elan royalist emigre, an- town was moved southward, where it lay south and other by a Spaniard from the Can:lry Islands, the other slightly west of the geographical center of municitwo by Spa11iards ,,·hose more exact origins are un- pality limits on an east-west road of poor quality. The kno\\"n. These four estates operated until a few years new location was near the sea, and the tow·n had a after the :;tan of the t\re1uicth century. The fifth, tiny port; but as late as 1860, slaves were bought at a u11idc11tificd, esta te operated briefly in the highlands neighboring port city, and goods from the capital at of the mu11icipality, and seems to have been very small. San Juan were brought by sea to Ponce, then overA sixth ope rated for about ten years (1875-85), then land to Cafiamelar. ceased operatio11:;. apparc11tly because o( the extreme ' 'Vhile all of Canamelar suffered from the severe and drought. It is interesting to note that of the four persistent droughts which characterize this coast, lcadillg plantation om1ers of the slavery period, only ground water was most accessible in Cafiamelar in two lived within the immediate confines of their the eastern lowland part~. It was in this eastern section estates. Jn all four cases, however, municipal records of the rnunicipio that the four main slaveholding suggest that some member of the fami ly lived on the plantations developed. Settlement of the western section of Cafiamelar came later and was much sparse!". plantation grounds in an administrative capacity. The cane acreage cultivated by these plantations is The only sugar mill to be built in the western part of difficult to estimate for the period before 1880. Cultiva- the municipality failed [or lack of water. The regional tion o n the south coast was limited by the need to variation in surface water supply in the municipality exploit the poorly drained lowlands (jJoyales) and played an important role in the later development of river floodplains. Irrigation before the American oc- the municipio. Agricultural wealth and population recupation depended mainly on the plantation opera- mained concentrated in the east as late as i88o; poputor's own capacity to construct and improve water lation increases and concentration 0£ holdings in the facilities. In the case of royal land grants, water rights west did not occur until after the American occupawere included with property rights, and in some cases, tion, when the expansion of the cane industry and the d eductio ns in taxes were granted to p lan ta tion owners development o( irrigation systems made the western who had invested in irrigation works. ·water rights half of Canamelar as productive potentially as the were obtainable only from the Crown, and on the eastern half. Municipality records for i88o illuminate south coast severe droughts were frequent. In spite the local situation.so The municipality's estimated o( this, the 1899 census states that the Ponce District wealth was 121,585 pesos in that year, nearly half of (of which Cailamelar was a part) had the largest which was classifi ed as agricultural wealth (57,326 acreage in cane that year, and the highest average pesos). The next largest item included under total hacienda area- 115 cuerdas. The first Governor's Re- wealth is the calculated "value" of the town's workers, port after the America n occupation gives the average and a census by name a nd by barrio (rural district) is size of a Puerto Rican sugar hacienda as thirty-five provided. Three hundred and ninety-five workers were acres, so south coast estates in the Cailamelar region living in the municipality in i 880, the largest aggre·· were relatively large for Puerto Rico, even at that gates, as would be expected in view of the hacienda time. Two interesting aspects of the total insular distribution, in the two easternmost barrios. The barpicture, related to other historical problems, may be rio adjoining the town on the east, and containing mentioned briefly here. The first is that the Ponce two haciendas, had 131 workers; Barrio Poyal, easternDistrict was not only the biggest cane producer and the most barrio of the municipality and the subject of district with the largest average hacienda area, it was study in this report, also had two h aciendas and 95 a lso the district which had led the light of some of workers. T he two highest land evaluations were also for the the sugar planters of an earlier period for the abolition of slavery. This is probably not coincidence, but eastern barrios: 32,137 pesos for Barrio Llanos adjoina demonstration of the growing preference for free ing the town, and 22,204 pesos for Barrio Poyal, on and competing labor on the part of large-scale pro- the eastern border. 'l\lhile the twelve farmers in Llanos ducers. The second point serves merely to reveal the and Poyal represented agrarian wealth of over 5,1,000 29 Caiiamclar

parish records, 185 2 and 185:;, Li bro d e los Batt-

tis mos de Esclavos.

so R esumen gcmeml de las 1·iquezas del Pu eblo de Cniir1mefa1·, l'vCarzo, 1880.

342

T H E PEOPLE OF P UERTO RICU

pesos (5 2,000 pesos of this on the four haciei:das), the twelve farmers in Cafia m e lar's northwest b a rrio owned a total agricultural wealth valued at about 1,179 pesos. ·wea lth in cattle at that time cam e to 17,678 pesos as represented b y forty-seven owners. Apart frorr: the cattle-ra ising hacienda owners, who n eed ed a111mals for draft and for food, cattle owners were concentrated in th e northwest of the municipa lity. Apparently cattle raisers were numericall y important, but their invested wealth was limited. The re were also in Caiiamelar twenty-s ix taxable businesses, with a total evaluation of but 2,215 pesos. Other evaluations were likewise small in comparison with the agricultural figure . These record s p rovide a nother interesting hin t about municipality history. The su r n ames of the four origi n a l pla ntatio n owners in the east of Cafiamelar were carried by sixty-four workers in the i 880 local census. That is, abou t one-sixth of the workers listed in the agrupacion de braceros ("census of workers") for that year had the names of the orig inal plantation founders . T wenty-five workers carried th e surname of Canamelar's wea lthiest hacienda operator in 1880; nineteen, the s urname of the second wealthiest. The baptismal records for 1863 show that slaves in th at year had begun to acquire the surna m es o( their owners. There is h ardly any doubt that these laboters of i 88o were in large part freed slaves or the children of freed slaves. The relative ly well d eveloped eastern half of Caiiamelar has meant m ore d em ograph ic sta bility as well. Between 1920 and 1940, Barrio Poyal in the east gained only 109 persons in its population, while o( two western barrios, one gain ed 863, the other 44 2. Thus the most stable population is found in the two eastern barrios, Llanos and Poyal, seats of the four most important nineteen th-century sugar estates. Althoug h the historical record is spotty, we can surmise from the few documents locally available and the information supplied by aged informants that Canamelar changed very little from 1880 until the turn of t he century. One of the fi ve haciendas then operating, which lay in the n orthwest of Caname la r, stop ped operating in i885, but otherwise, there ap· pear to have been no important ch anges. Local hacienda operators became increasingly aware of the threat of outside competition in sugar production, b u t could do little. An extract from a statement submitted to the government of the island by the town fathers of Ca 11amelar in 1 888 keynotes their unfortunate situati on: Four sugar haciendas constitute the on ly agriculture h ere, if we. note that the prolonged droughts arc punishing this locality. and m;ik ing insignificant th e cultivation of minor crops. These haciendas, corrobora ting the theories of Ricardo, were founded in la nds o( first qua li ty, a nd thanks w the amazing fert ili ty of these la nds, and the good prices of the commodity in that period r 183:3-1855?J, they were able to d efray the great exp enses of machin er y. buildings, irriga tion . etc. . . . T oday. these sa id h a(iendas, thanks to 1.he most careful and costly c ultivation and the use of fe rtilizer. s uppon themselves; but if the product is more o r Jess the

same, th e in come is very much Jess. . . . It ca nnot be co ncealed that the utility [of the h aciendas] must be inferior to that of twenty or ten year s ago, even \\"itho ut taking into ac· count the depreciation of the price of sugar, these last few years, o wing t0 the cultirntion of the s uga r beet in Europe, a nd the e xtension of can e [cultiva tio n ] in som e consurner natio ns a nd its increase in o thers. Another o f the ca uses of the discouragement of o ur agriculture is the e xcessi,·e interest 0 11 money. [since wcl lack the territorial I: a nks throu"h which Germany. and other nations made a\-;1tlable h . to the farm ers, at a ti n y interest. the n ecessary n :sourccs lor cu I ti ,·a tio n. . . .:a

A b o ut ten yc:1rs alter the :\llle rica11 occupation, .t mode rn n•11 t111/ "·;1s built witl1 loc;tl ( i.e .. Pue n o Rican) ca pi tal in C:a ii a lll e l:1r. lrn t it "·as sold to the Amer ica n corpora1.io11 \\·hich "·as ex pa11cli11g- i11 th.e a rea in the '!)'.!O°s .. \ s noted earl ier. 1he so ttth coast 1s typifi ed b y a high degree ol co-o n li11 ;1tio 11 be.tween l.;~ncl and cr.11trnl. or e ' en si ngle O\\·n ership of a un1ficcl land-and -ce11trn/ productiH~ unit. Rat.h er than the contractua l rcl ;1 tio 11ship " ·hich obta ins het\\·ee11 i11cle · pendent landholding ca ne form e rs a 11d th e fanory administration i11 other areas s uch as t he north and west coasts, Ca iia m e lar d emo nstra tes through its his· tory the simultaneous d evelopment of large estates and facto ry cente rs, as parts of the same productive process. The almost complete absence of small , inde p ende nt cane farmers (cu lu11os) in Cailamel ar has had an importa nt effect on loca l social structure. Oldtime hacienda owners, to a man, sold or rented their land lo th e larg·e corporations as the great r:e11lrales replaced the loca l, outmoded h aciendas. and moved to urban cente rs, leavin g a social vacu um in the municipality. In other areas su ch as the west coast, the hacie nda owners freq u e ntly became colo11os of the mill and continued to be a socia l force in their communities. One possible d e terminant o f the difference was the water factor. America n corporations, and a few Puerto Rican corporations as we ll, paid good prices for dry range a t the turn of the century and afterwa rds. Corpora te organization of this kind had sufficient capital mobilized to build their own we lls and irrigation systems; b y 19!.!o, a vast insular government irriga· tion system was s upplementing private works. L ack of capita l made con struction on this scale im possible for the nineteenth-century hacienda operators of the south coast. At the present t ime, there are probably no irrigated farms on the south coast smaller than five hundred acres. About 1905, Cai"iamelar hacie nda owners began lo buy range land n ear their h aciendas, serving in fact as commiss ion agents for a n expandi ng American corporation . Ca1'iamelar Janel was resold in large tracts to this a nd to a n o ther cor poration . Other extensive holdings were leased. Between 1905 a nd 1930, over seven thousand cuerdas of land were bough t outright by a single, mill-owning corp orate entity in Caifamelar; between i 909 and 1929, anoth er fi ve thousand cuerdas were leased by th e sam e organization . The twen ty-fiveyear period from 1905 to 1930 saw the produ cti ve "' l .i/Jro rlt1 /Jr tns de Calia 11 u •lar, 1888. ~ l y translation.

CANA:\ I El.AIC

C'Olllrol or more lhall l\\·efve thousand C//erdas mar:-oh:t II eel 11 nd<.: r a s ing le corporate owner-lessee. .\ s the following lig ures demonstrate. all data from 18!17 on poi 11 L lO the progressi,·e spread of sugar ca ne culti,·ation throughout the community. TABLE 4. SPREAD OF SUGAR CANE CULTIVATION

or lan11'

:'\111111>1-r

<:111·nfn, 11 I l .111< ·

( Ill',.,,,,, 111 ,l (' ;tJl11ll,

11111101

I 1C II''

J..~t)j a

1910))

19-10 ~

1.(1

'<{:!~

i7 :1.07 1

G.o:p

l!t:i

1(i9

less than '.!;)

16

JqtH • :l I~ .

J, I lint . ,·11 1/: c , 1:,:• \' ,1 / ti: .· t 1: r':,·d ."i'r,zt.·s ( \\"a::;hing:ton. D.C.: Go\'Crn· P1 111111H~ ()Uh' t '. l•J ltd , \ "1•l. \ " I I. tin.o'm. 1 , , , th" I ' 11 lft'•' .\ f11f,·s ( \\'a:-.hin~ton . D.C.: Government • \ 111, ·, 11tlr < ·, '" ' " ' 1 '1 111 1111 1.: c >111n: . 1 •113 ),

lilt Iii

r·z,.,;,,i.

Th (' cllt'c l' o l 1Ii<' i ll\·:1~ i o 11 o l c 1pita l in the municip:il il\· or (::i 1"t:i 111tl:1r :1rc 111:1 11 \°. 111 the course of the -..11 ihe«111C'111 '<'t I irn 1. s<H ll(' cffor~ 11·ill be m ad e lO assess 1hc < 1il11 1r: tl 111t·: 111i11g ol 11li.., change. For th e presen t, 1hc· i1111lll'di:11t· dltTh i11 tcr111.; of land use and O\\'ner\hip 111:1\ lw < i1vd. Frn111 '!P<> to 19_10, the average l:m 11 -..i1e i11 C:a 1'ia1nel:1r c hanged from 1fi2.8 c11errlns :i~ lo 1..10:1.1 t 111·rd11s.'::1 Produnio11 of tobacco, fruits, and minor crops. ne\'er exte11si,·e in Caiiamelar, has become 11egligihle si n ce l!)I<>. The O\rnership siwation has reached a11 cx1re111e \\'hich it i ~ ne,·er likely to exceed. Out of sixtee 11 !arms reporting in 19-J o/H se\'en are <>\\'ned and s ix 111a11agecl . t\\·o are operated b y tena1us and one h~· a part-O\\'llCL The a,·erage size of the seven owned farn1:. is 5·!1 n1erdus \\'hile that of the s ix 111a11;ig<.:d far111s i... ~:;:~ 1.8 r11erd11s : the percentage of nop area crnllrolled b y mrned fa r ms is .2 per cent: that co11Lrollc d by the two ten a n t farms and one panow11er-o perated rarn1 is also . :! per cent; w hi le the inanagecl ranm co11 trol 9!)·(i per cent. I t is n o w poss ible to t urn to th e history or Barrio Poy:d . a s ing le b oroug h o f Ca 1ia m elar, a n d w it hin it, th <; history or t l1c peop le o f O rie nt<', V ieja, a nd the ha n io b each.

LIFE ON THE FAMILY-TYPE HACIENDA

The h istory or the rnral people of Caiiamelar can be wri t te n i11 term~ o[ the relation of labor to the land. \Ve ha,·e seen ho\\·. from the time when slave and forced labor had made possible the economic development of the south coast early in the nineteenth cen t11 ry. the h i~wry of lab01· i11 Ca1-1amelar had bee n one of a g radual process o[ emancipation. The manumission ol incl i ,·id ual s laves before 1 873 was common. The use of free. a11cl freed but 1·epressiYely controlled, labor in conjunction ,,·ith sfa,·es m arked the early periods. Jn 187:1. e mancipation \\'as enacted. In 1876, the t h ree-year labor cnnLracts bi n ding ex-slaves to the h ac i enda~ a 11 d th e discr iminatory laws aga inst "vag ra 11c y" ended. \\'hi le ema n cipation was often cited ::~ T/1irt 1·1·11tlt <:t'll.\JIS 11/ t/11' l '11iled Sia / I'S. p. 999· :<:1 Si.\ lt'(' ll /lt <:t'llSll.\ 11/ / It (' I '11it1·d .\ /a/es. Ccm us or :\ gricu l111 rc,

Tcrr i1 oric~ and l'oss(·.~s i o 11s. :: I / f>ir/ ..

pp. !?On. ~O~. ~O;';•

I" 1 ~ I·

RL'RAL SUGAR PLANTATION PROLETARIAT

343

later as ha\'ing hindered the develo1)111ent of the stwar . I o !fl( usu·y. a ctua lly it had almost certainly been advantage_ous, at l e~st for the larger estates. Free and cornpeung IO\\'·pa1d labor already was cheaper in the long run ~han slavery, and it became even cheaper as populau?n m~unted and production sJo,red. By the um.e ol the emancipation, four of the six sugar estates 111 Ca1iamelar had been operating for a t least l\\'Cmy_ years. These all lay in the fertile southeastern poruon o( the municipa lity, in an area ,,-atered b)'. severa l man -made irriga tion canals and endowed with large stre tches of fenile marshland. Haci: nda Vicja, which . as Colon ia V ieja, was the loca le lor much ol th e presen t stu dy, was founded as a cane p lantation d u ri n oo- Lhe fi rst h a l( of . th e nineteelll~l century. Its founder was the son of a Spa nish r oya l1s_t. a captain or cava lry, wh o h ad fl ed w P uerto Rico from Ve_n ezuela. I t is not p oss ib le to ascerta in wheth er .the lo u nde1· o[ Vieja received the land in a g rant f ro~11 . th~ royal doma in before th is practice enclecl, but it 1s like ly. T he founder is first mentioned in the available munic ipal r ecords in 1860, when he and other plantation O\rners of Caiiame lar appealed to a roya l officia l for a red uction in their taxes-3" The reduction \\'aS asked because terrible loca l drouahts had been .kil_lin~ the cattle and necessitating expe~d i­ tures .ror _irnga uon on the pan of the estate O\\'ners. :\fcnt10 1~ 1s al~o made of the lack o[ free labor (pocus bm:ws ~1bres) 111 the munici pality. The owner of. Vieja plantau o n was at that time res idino- in the cit)' o( p I. o once, n o t on us estate . As early as 1852, this man had bro ught th e childre n of nm of his slaves to the loc:'.I parish for baptism . which would suggest that his lrn~1 e1Hla. may hav~ been operating at chat time. Jn 18(1 1. tl11s plantallon owner wrote h is wil l which lllrnccl OllL Lo b e the earliest docu m e nted ass io-nment o r th e h ac ie n da lands tha t cou ld be found . b , 1~1 18j2, a lo n g w ith oth er p lantation owners o[ ~an a m e lar .. th e own er of V ie ja shared in a ro yal sub~1(1!' t~ agn cu lturalists who h ad invested privatel y in 1rngat1011 works. An additional item i n the same record incl ira tcs that the laws for a royal subsidy were e nanecl som e t\\'emy years after the irrigation syste m s \\'Cre c~nst ructe~I. This is furth e r evidence that Vieja plantauon \\'as 111 o peration by 1852. T he amount of cane unde r cultivation or irriga tion in 18~2 is not . b . oe I g ive n, ut srnce only 1.328 cuerdas ,,·ere planted co c:rne as ~at~ as. 1897 (Ca rroll, 1900) . much o[ it unirngatecl, irnga u o n probably \\'as not extensiYe. Jn 1880. the agricultural \\'ealth of the Vieja estate \\'as assessed at n early 1.f,000 pesos. with the estate cattle \\'Orth 1,000 pesos more. l t \\'as at that time the ~hircl m_ost valuable enterprise in Ca1'iamelar. The R~g:1str)1 of P roperty for 188 1 described Hacienda V~cp as a prope rt y of 1,796 rnerdas, partly in cane. wnh pasture, mangrove swamp. and forest. The o-rinding m ill was sm a ll, with some improved equ i p~nent. :i:; l_l 11 lcs~

01 hcnrisc specified. a ll hiswr ical references up lo

18 90 111 1l11s scc1ro11 a rc from 1hc l.ibro <fr /as Ac/ 11 , tit·/ p // I · 11 e 1 o < e ('.1111111111• Iar ;111cI I Iic Li·iJro tit' los JJa11tis111os di' F~1·/a11 • 8.. II.~. I :J~-i)O.

344

THE PEOPLE OF PUERTO RICO

The mill's grinding capacity is not given, nor is any figure stated for the amount of land planted to cane, so informants helped to make the following reconstruction. The grinding mill was equipped with three evaporators and stood, together with a small distillery, on the plaza of the hacienda. A large house for the owner or administrator, barracks remaining from slavery days, an "orphans' home" which had been used for the quartering of orphaned slaves purchased before 1873, a small hospital or infirmary building, and storehouses of various kinds were among the other hacienda facilities. A small house was located at the tala, or subsistence crop area for the workers. Some woodland located on the hacienda was used for starting fuel for the grinding mill (the fires were maintained with the dried cane pulp, or bagasse) and tinder for the agregado families. A plantain grove (jJlalanar) supplied some food for the agregados; the leaves were used to plug perforations made in the bottoms of the sugar barrels as part of the process for separating the sugar crystals from the molasses which would drain through. There was also a malangar, or grove of arrowroot, on the hacienda for the agregados' use. Large stretches of pasture were required to graze the hacienda stock, and pasture was set aside as well for the livestock owned by the agregados and artisans of the hacienda. The description indicates that Hacienda Vieja at the time was a highly developed productive unit, which also provided many facilities for its own laborers. Title to the property was filed by the youngest son of the founder. It . should ~e noted here that the indivisible productive relation between the cultivation and the processing of sug~r cane is probably the single most unportant factor m the land history of the sugar plantation up to the development of the factory central. Hacienda owners were unable to divide the productive apparatus for purposes of inheritance. This led to a variety of techniques to insure efficient administration of the inherited estates. Frequently, Puerto Rican haciendas in the late nineteenth century were incorporated, and one heir served as administrator for the corporation . Yet this kind of corporation must be strictly differentiated from the land-and-factory combine of the twentieth century in size, number of stockholders, scope of operation, and so on. By i882, the property of Hacienda Vieja was incorporated. It continued to operate in this form until the turn of the century. At the time of the American occupation, Hacienda Vieja, although a corporate enterprise, still was owned a nd even supervised by the members of a single family. Its l ands and buildings h ad been substantially unchanged for many years, and its sugar production was based on the cultivation, g rinding, and processing of three hundred to five hun?red cuerdas of la nd, part of it irrigated and part of 1t naturally watered lowland. North of the hacienda i tself lay the subsistence plots of the workers, some as large as five cuerdas. Here agregados could, on their own time, raise minor crops for their home use without cost to themselves. Near by

was the jJieza de las jJoDres (literally, Lh e "part of the poor"). This plot of cane was gro und at Chrislmas time every year, and the molasses, sugar, and rum produced from it were given to the poor of the neighborhood. About 100 to 125 "·orkers lived on Lhe land o( Vieja as agregados in the i88o's. i\Iost of these were the descendants of the hacienda slaves, but there were many white agregados and many agregados of mixed and indeterminate ancestry. vVork was not divided on any racial basis, nor did Lhe Negroes and whiles live separately. There is good evidence that slaves, rather than r1gregados. had been given Lhc mill jobs ;rnd artisans' "·ork in the slavery period, since there was no question of the regularity or dcpendal>ilily of their labor. In a report by a British consular ofllc:ial in Puerto Rico, written in 18j5 (Great Britain Foreign Office, 18j5: 2), we read: "In fact in the process of sugar-making, the more skilled ' lihe rto' [i.e., [reed slave] is generally empl oyed within th e boiling-house, while the free laboure r does the regular tasks of c:uuing and carrying th e ca n e." Vlork on Hacienda Vieja lasted n ea rly the whole of the year. Then, as now, th ere were three growths of cane, planted so as to provide the mill with a regular flow of cane for grinding. Actually, two such grinding seasons took place each year, the first from Chrislmas till June, and the second from August to October. The productive process was geared to the limited capacity of the small, steam-driven mill and to the most efficient use of local, low-paid labor. Daily wages in this period, according to aged informants, ran at about a thirtycen t maximum for men, except for those for one specialty to be discussed later and for the artisans' jobs; women received eighteen to twenty-two cents per clay, children still less. Unable to mobilize the capital needed to shift to large-scale production, local estate owners exploited low labor costs, a minimum of capi tal reinvestment, and paternalistic labor arrangements in order to eke out a profit. For most of his work, the ag1·egado was paid in services rather than in cash. On many haciendas agregados were paid half in vales, or scrip, redeemable at the hacienda store (though not at Hacienda Vieja, where there was no hacienda store). Nevertheless, the hacienda economy must be thought of as a wage economy, at least in part; none of the agregados owned land, though many were permitted to work subsistence plots of hacienda land in conjunction with their agregado status. Women worked on Hacienda Vieja alongside the men. They feel cane into the grinders, loaded it on the hammocks which carried it in to the mill, spread animal fer tilizer, cleaned seed, weeded, cleaned the fields after harvesting, and emptied the evaporating cauldrons into the purging barrels. Old women, living today, boast that they could do any job on the hacienda. ' 'Vage differentials, however, seemed to have been based on some difference in the volume of work done. Evaporator tending (and later centrifuge tending), barrel making, rope making, cane cutting, seed planling, ditching and draining, a nd other technical jobs were done by men.

CANAi\fELAR: RURAL SUGAR PLANTATION PROLETARIAT

rhe prncessing apparatus of the hacienda was not of a very modern sort. Three horizontal iron cylinders were used for crushing the cane. Double extraction, a lthough developed much earlier, was not practiced here. The cane juices were boiled, using the old Ja· maica Train method. Thickening little by little, they were transferred from cauldron to cauldron, then poured into the purging barrels. Here the molasses would drain out, leaving the crude, brown moscovado sugar. Hacienda artis:1ns supervised this process and the packing o[ the sugar for sh ipment. The sugar was shipped in the same uarrels in which it drained. The barrel makers "·orked on the hacienda itself. From Hacienda Vieja, the barrels were carried by oxcart to Ponce, an eight-day trip, or they were loaded onto small launches at the hacienda docks on Poyal Bay 'd1ich carried them to larger vessels for export purposes. Transportation was a serious problem. Railroads developed late. i\Iany local roads were bad (although the north-south mo untain crossings built by the Spaniards are said to have been excellent). The important cast-west highwa y which now runs past Hacienda Vieja and tl~rough the neighboring village of Oriente was not paved until 1908. Except for the grinding mechanism itself, the hacienda was operated entirely by human and anima l power. The work day began at five or six o'clock in the morning and continued until five or six o'clock in the evening: a ten- to twelve-hour day, with perhaps an hour for lunch, was maintained matter-of-factly. The brief ten o'clock pause for breakfast which is observed by the cane workers of Cafiamelar today was also a custom during the past century. Lunch was brought to workers in the field by their wives or children. Much more of the food was grown local! y then, since workers not only had small subsistence plots but also could keep animals, and the area at that time was one of considerable beef and work-cattle production. Yet there is conflicting evidence about the kind and quantity of food that was available. The subsistence plots, barring serious drought, were used to supplement the imported polished rice, dried codfish, and reel beans diet with other items. Chick-peas, plantains, yams, yautia, sweet potatoes, and corn were among the locally grown subsistence crops. A variety of herbs were gathered and used, both in food and medicinally. Migrants who came to the coast to work were boarded by the officials of the hacienda and, according to a 1900 observer, received as a daily ration half a pound of rice and a quarter of a pound of beans, or three pounds of sweet potatoes and half a pound of salted fish, or a pound of bread and a quarter of a pound of cheese (Knapp, 1900:24-25). ' 1Vhile greater variety in diet seems to have been the rule in this earlier period, the r ice and beans and salt cod pattern preferred today seems to have been an established part of the basic food choices of the people of Hacienda Vieja. The general standard of living of the Vieja workers of the eighties was much lower than that of today. As has been poin ted out, most of the workers were agre-

345

gados who lived in the former slave barracks which stood around the plaza of the hacienda. The kitchens were located centra lly, and the wives of the agregados prepared their food there in a building lined with crude hearths. The food was then carried to the oneroom quarters of the families. Furniture was of the crudest sort. Clothing was very simple: several com· petent seamstresses and tailors made most of it by hand. For dishes, utensils carved out of coconut shells and gourds were used, with perhaps a glass or china plate or two held in reserve for special occasions. There was no hacienda store on Vieja. vVhen workers had some small purchase to make, they would visit the village of Oriente. Quincalleros (ambulant peddlers) visited the hacienda irregularly, as they visit the Colonia to this day. lVIedical care came from the hacienda owner's shelf, or in the form of the herbs, roots, etc., used for making teas, compresses, and other medicinals. T he nearest doctor was in Ponce, several clays' journey by carriage. Aged informants can recall numerous cases where death might have been averted had a doctor been available. H acienda workers also lacked such facilities as schools and churches. The Catholic church in town was visited by a few agregados, but it was a long and difficult trip. The common Latin American custom of maintaining chapels on the haciendas themselves did not obtain a t Hacienda Vieja nor at its neighboring haciendas, probably because the average size of these enterprises did not merit it. The only school was a town institution with one teacher paid for by the pupils' parents and consequently inaccessible to the workers' children. The work of Hacienda Vieja was supervised by an administrator who was a member of the owning family. Three mayordomos (overseers) directed the labor of the agrega.dos. The artisans of the hacienda included two barrelmakers, two carpenters, a blacksmith and his assistant. All these men earned more, of course, than did any of the field laborers and had more status. Intermediate in status and income were the paleros, or ditchers, who were field laborers with special skills. The relatively limited amount of con tact between Cafiamelar and the rest of Puerto Rico and the world demanded that its local economy be somewhat of a self-sufficient character. Sugar was, admittedly, a cash crop on the world market. Bu t Cafiamelar of the i88o's was not so fully dedicated to cane cultivation as it is now. And balancing the cane agriculture was the then. locally sustained processing of the cane. In addition, a flourishing brick industry ·was located in the town of Cafiam elar in the eighties. Tanbark was collected from the mangrove swamps for the tanneries of Ponce. Tailors and seamstresses worked in the town of Cafiamelar. Enough artisans lived in Cafiamelar to support a social club-"a casino of the second (artisans') class"-after the custom of artisans in many Puerto Rican towns of the time. The artisan listings for 1880-8 1 include: barrelmakers, masons, carpenters, coach repairmen, blacksmiths, ropemakers, a nd mechanics. vVhile the number and variety of specialists in Cafiamelar has in-

346

THE PEOPLE OF J' UERTO RICO

creased in absolute terms since the turn of the century, proportionate ly far fewer workers are so engaged to· day. Aprop os of this is Greaves' com ment (193y 18.1-

85): The essc1nial purpose; of plantation d C\'Clopme nt has been LO pro,·icle exports from the tropics. In so111e areas it has re main ed mostly distinct from indigenous econom y. 111 others it has largely replaced pre,·ious forms of 11ati\'e occupatio n: but c,·er ywhere it has in some d egree s ubstituted an econom y of mon ey exchange for one; of sc:lf-sufficicncy. Bc;sides producing expor ts. plantations usually require; a large amount of impons. Their capi tal equipment and worki11gsupplics have to be obtained from o utside . and to the e xtent that labourers do 11 0 1 produce; tlic:ir 0\\"11 fond this has to b e imported. H ence one charaneristic of a p lantation area is :in ex te nsi\'c; foreig n trade. and this has sometirnc;s been interpre ted as e,·id enc:e of the greatc1· "prospc:ri ty" of th is system of prod uCLion as corn parcel \\' i th a rcas st i II ,,·orked by nati,·e methods. But in fact exports- or lack of them-cannot be u sed ;is a mcas ure of the prospc;rity of a commun ity \rh ich is not 01·gani7.ed ror producing th em : thus may lie consuming ,,·hat it producc;s interna lly \\'ithout feeling any sense of \\·ant. Still less c.;;1 11 trade fi gurc;s be; takc:n to indicate a "greater efficiency or output" by the plantation system. l nd igenous economy may be qui tc as cfficic11 t i 11 reaching the ends to \\'ltich its effort is directed. althoug-h these are not included in the trade returns.

T he above is cited, n ot as a bbnket show of frtvor for the family-type hacienda system o( produ ction in comparison w ith the corporate land-and-factory combine b y any mean s, but merely to suggest that the system had its own societal ration a le. T he hacienda was the seat of continuous, face-toface, reciprocal deference-respect relations between the owner or manager a n d his family on the one h and, and the hacienda agregados on the other. Relationsh ips between these g roupings were governed by the historical precedent of a benevolent slavery and of a less benevolent system of forced labor. The resulting attitudes were formalized, personal , and o( long standing. \Vhen Don Jaime \\'Ould come with his farnil y to watch us dance the bomba [an Afro- Puerto Rican dance] on the p laza, what a good time we wo uld have! T h e family wouldn't stay long. but they would joke with all the n c~ritas ancianas fiiule old Negro women], and Don Jaime would laugh every time a new verse was s ung. Sometimes he would call over the childre n and tease them , never badly. Don J ose Sanchez always blessed the little Negro child1·en who wo uld gather around him when he walked frorn the house LO the boiling house. He was a hard man, but h e was accustomed to joke with the childrc11 and to thro\\' pennies for t hem to fight over. There was never a problem in those times about money. One need ed ver y little. People weren 't so proud, or always so amb itious then. And if yo u needed a few cents very badly, you would alwa ys be able to borrow it from the JJW )'Ortlomo, who would know you a nd the kind o( wo rk yo u were able to d o.'.:11 :~ •l Statement~

Fall , 1949.

by Barrio l'o ya l informants . personal intervie,,·s,

Conduct be tween the members of the different group ings of the hacienda- the O\nler or m;1nager and his family, the assistant mayordomus, t h e artisa n s, the "·orkers of the fields-was dete rmin ed by pre,·ious law and custom . Disciplin e. s tates \Veber ( 19.1G:!.!fit). \\" as a necessary c harac teristic of the slave plantation : s uch discipli11 e persisted i11 the organization of the familytype hac ienda. Hacie nda agrcgados did 110L c:hallc11ge the authority of the hacie11da mn1er. He ca red for them whe11 they \\·ere ill: ltc prO\·idcd tltcm with employment; often h e w;1s god p :1rc t1t to tltcir d1i ldre 11. I .ire \\·as Ji,·ed l:trgc l> \\·itltit1 t lt c lt ;1cic1td: 1 ihc:ll. 1ltc ownn its s ter11 but bcnc,·olc1tt r11 lcr. \\'!tile the fa111i l>-t> 1ic lt;1< ic tllh ,,·:1' tied lo t it(· 0111side \1·orld by iu. \"Cn· rca-.0 11 lor bc i11 g- ,11g:1r- 1'1i, 1ie W<tS, for lllO:>l of it.'> i11 l1alJila lt1'. Cjllill" :t lCltt lOll '> Oil(.". .\fosL of wh;1 L the \\·nrkcr,., ttecd cd "·;1, gn>W tt or 111:1de on the haci e nd;1 i1.,.,c ll or in tile rn t11ti< ip;tl c<:tlllT. Tltcre \\·as li ule c;tsh with \\·llitlt to buy ;111d Jc,,. 11li 1tg.. In be bough t whic.h \\·crc at 011cc < ott,idcrcd d c, ir:tlik :111d attainable. The l;rmil >- t> p c f1;1C il' 1td;1 looked 10 tile: pasl. I ts aim \\·a~ 11ot gro\1·th 1>1tt ~ll n · i ,.a I. IL:-i 1>11 i Id i ng,, machi11e ry, and mc1.l10ds ul opcr;1tio11 wcrc o ld . It ground th e same quantity of sugar ca 11e. produced the sa m e qua11tity of rum, sugar, and molasses each year. 'Ve turn at this point to a brief descr ip tion of th e village of Oriente in the same period. \ \1 hen Cai1amelar became an independent 111u11t c1· pality in 1852, Orie nte was th e ,·illage ce11 ter of 0 11c of its most \\·calth y barrios : Poyal."' Very little is known about Oriente bclore 1880. But the apparent lack o[ stores of any kine! on the barrio's haciendas suggests that there may have been soine settlement in the village in the time of slavery. One Oriente family, formerly wealthy, is said to have sold slaves there before 1873. \\'age labor had lo11g coexisted w ith slavery in Caiia melar, and wages imply that the re were at least a few things to be bought by the hacie ndas' wage labore rs. The road which runs from Ca1iamelar to the adjoining municipality 011 the cast passes Hacienda (11ow Colonia) Vieja and runs through the present-day village of Oriente. As late as 1908, this road was of inferior quality: eastbound traffic fro rn Ponce to the next largest south coast town, Guayama, was weeks in arri ving during the nineteenth century; westbound sugar. shipped by oxcart from .H acienda Viej a to Ponce on the same route, took eight days to arri ve. The very lack or adequate tra11sportatio11 and communica tion gave to a a1 llarrios at that time \\'ere governed by officials called com i.r nrius, the "mayor's lieutenauts," appointed liy the mayor of Lhe municipali1y and responsible to him. The post was an honorary one and u sually g iven to men of wealth or prestige. Cu111isarios continued to function in C:ai'tamclar until 1 ~p2, reporting fires and disorders. co mmu11icati11g mu11icipal decrees 10 the people, securing medical services for ba rrio dti1eus, and so 011. The 1l:l80 Aclas d1•/ P11 efJ/o dis1ing11ishccl be 1wec11 ,·o tcrs w ho were e ligible liy virtue of pa) ing taxes and those who \\'ere eligible by vin11e of being literate. Such were th e allernaLc rcfJ1iircrnc11ts for voting which, in 1880, eliminated all butt p er cent or less of Cai1a111elar's adult population from the clcc1.ornlc. It \\"as from among th e few voters that the 1na yor ,,·o uld pick his romiso rios .

CA NAl\rELAR: R URAL SUGAR PLANTATI ON PROLETARIAT

village such as Oriente the need for greater independence ;i n d self-sufficiency. According to an 1880-81 business cens us. lhe village had five retail outlets in addition lo a m eal market and a bakery. There also were t\\·o coach houses and one barrelmaking shop.38 In 1880, lh en, Oriente Village was a busy but sparsely popu laled commt111ity, tied to the town of Caifamelar for its medical , political , and commercial services but taking care of a g-oocl pan of its own daily needs. The populatio11 consist ed of a few secure merchants and ;1ni,,;1ns ;111d ;1 ,·cry smal l number of independent small ra rm ;111d home owners. The hacienda populations, all 110111in;dly lrcc since 1 ~7:) and formal ly cut loose from ob i ig;1tory se n· ice on the haciendas in 187G, continued to li'T 011 or ne;1r the haciendas themselves. THE CHANGE TO THE CORPORATE LAND-AND-FACTORY COMBINE

The setting of B;1 rrio Poyal to\rarcl the close of the bst CCllllll")' \\·as one of apparent internal Stability and tranquil! itv . .-\nua ll y. the siltlation was not stable because of th~ losing b;~ttle local hacienda operators were waging against the vastly improved technology and more cheaply produced sugar of their foreign competilors. In 190!!, Hacienda Vieja added a centrifuge to its mechan ical equ ipment and was thus able to produce sugar finer than the crude moscovado type. This kind of improvement was part of the patching and mending that t ypified most of the pre-occupation change. The o ccupation brought with it a capital invasion in the sugar industry: b y i902, great factory centrales were going up both to the east and west of Ca11amelar. The patchwork improvements of the small hacienda owners had been in vain. The h igh prices and the opportunity to make a clean break with Cafiamelar and the sugar industry were tempting to loca l estate owners. One by one, they sold or leased their land and moved away from the municipa l ity. One such owner would never sell, and his land is still leased to a corporate organization by his descendants who reside in the Canary Islands. Something o( the qua lity of the hacienda way of life is revealed by this man's stipulations regarding the hacienda he ovvnecl. The unused machinery was to b e oiled and kept in operating condition, and each year enough cane was to be g round and processed into sugar to test the machinery. T h e prom ise was kept until 1929. Several yea rs later the rusting mach ines were sold to Japan. Ily 1!JO!'). the owners of Hacienda Vieja had decided to sell their lands to one of the n ew American corporations. One o f the members of the own ing famil y became

'"' IL i~ nol clear. holl'ever . \\'h)' snr h rnmplcle retailing services were ncn:ss<iry. J'rcs umahl y. the few indepcn<lc111 small farm mrners in Barrio l'o ya l made the ir occasional purchases al Ori · c nc e. The agrcgados on the loca l haciendas ma y hav e bought 111 innr com 1110<1 i cics 1he re also. The ba rre lmaker in Oricnt c sen-· iced 011e of the local haci c11das, which later had its harrelmaking do11e 011 1hc g1·ounds o[ the hacienda itsclC.

347

a land agent for the purchasing corporation. Vieja ground its last crop in 1905; during the following harvest, the raw cane was carried by boat to the new factory central of the corporation. Since the cane in subsequent harvests would go to th e American cen tral, much of the processing from the time o( cutting onward would take pl ace elsewhere. Accord ingly, barrelmakers, hacienda mechanics and technicians found themselves out of work. Many women, who loaded the cane for the mill, also lost their jobs. A railroad was constructed along the coast and cane now could travel to the central more rapidly and efficiently from the properties of many old h aciendas. \ 1Vork cattle lost some of their importance, and ox tenders became cane cutters. Step b y step, the hacienda artisans were displaced occupationally. An oldtime cultivation chief for the new corpora tion reports that at least twelve haciendas such as Vieja stopped grinding in 1904 alone in only three municipalities on the south coast 39- the closing of a n y one of them meant the occupational disp lacement of several score of artisans. The cortical center of hacienda activity now lay outside the grounds themselves and, in fact, to a large extent, outside Puerto Rico. This vital organizational change was crucial to the subsequent sociocultural de- · velopment o( the entire a rea. The indivisible productive relation between field and mill had not been broken but had been reintegrated on a much higher level. The plantation system o( organization, as Greaves points out so clearly, is oriented at a ll times to the produ ction of crops for market; whether we are speaking of th: family-type h ac ienda or of the corporate land-and-factory combine, this fac t remains unaltered.40 Yet while the history of Caiiamelar has b een one .of conrin_uous. production of a bulk crop for sa le, profound soetal differences obtain b etween the earlier and later agricultu ral forms . \ Vith the dissolution of the loca l connection between hacienda mill and la nd tracts, wi th the sale or lease of the lands, and ·with the centralization o[ the productive process outside the hacienda community, a new axis of social orga nization was ~ntroduced. Vieja was no longer a largely selfsuffic1ent community (wi lh production for market, of course, excluded), but rather a tributary farm and labor reservoir of the great central. H acienda Vieja h ad become Colonia V ieja. Shortly after the mill of Hacienda Viej a stopped grinding, eng ineers inspected the area to see what irrigation mig ht do to expand the cultiva ted acreage. By 191 ~· the irrigation \vorks were well under way. Both an msular and a priva te system were being developed. In 1~p 3, the workers· subsistence plots were put in to cane. ~ fu c h of the land which formerly had served as 3!• "'.On the prcs_em area of 1 he csune of one of Lhe largest :\mcncan co mpan1e~ . th ere were Connerly lhiny-on e mills. The cane now grow n 011 this area is ground by one fa ctory." U.S. De paru11e11l of Co mmerce, 191 7::q8. • -10 This .is on e_ reason thal the term " fe uda l"' is so inappropriate in destn b 111g this t ype of orga ni zation .

348

THE P EOPLE OF PUERTO RICO

pasture or unexplo ited woodland was likewise converted to cane. Logs o( such tropical woods as guayacdn (lignum vitae), caoba (mahogany), and tachuelo were employed as railroad ties. Wood for fuel, formerly gathered free by the h acienda agregados, now became a cash commodity. Charcoal making and retailing developed as a business. Work opportunities increased enormously and wages rose as more and more dry range was converted into fertile ca ne land by irrigation. A one-dollar head tax was levied on ca ttle owned by agregados and pastured on land of the Colonia. The local subsistence pattern of home-grown vegetables, livestock, free sugar, molasses and rum, and occasiona l gifts of fresh meat by the hacendado was largely upset in this transitional period. Before 1913, hacienda workers had gone to the highlands when the long sugar harvest ended to work in the coffee harvest. Coffee towards the end of the nineteenth century had emerged as much the more importa nt crop. But as the land in cane increased sharply, the situation was reversed. Now workers came from the highlands to the coast, and many stayed on after the cutting was over. The sugar wage scale became, and has remained ever since, higher than that in coffee. Although conditions of life on south coast haciendas were exceedingly rough at the turn of the century, they were apparently much less so tha n those which prevailed in the highlands. I t is not surprising, therefore, that highland workers who came to the coast to fill the need fo r cheap labor engendered by the expansion of cane la nds often decided to stay. The lov,r wage scale of the coast was still much higher than that of the coffee a nd minor crop areas. The p icture on the coast, then, was one of rapid expansion of population, of economic production, and of land use a t the same time that the old family-type hacienda patterns were crumbling under the impact of the re-centralization of the industry. In the hig hlands, old hacienda patterns were passing, too, but from lack of capital a nd markets, from neglect and hurricanes, rather than from the expansion resulting from a new adaptation in the zone. Migrants from the hig hlands were mainly white farmers and sharecroppers. They had lost their lands because of the hurricanes, the exorbitant rates of interest, and the loss of the European coffee m arkets. The majority of the coastal people were probably of mixed African and European ancestry with possibly some additional genetic component derived from the aboriginal Indian people of Puerto Rico. Though white labor had always been plentiful in the sugar industry as a result of the labor Jaws, the new influx of white highland workers h ad a marked social effect on coastal life. At first, the highlanders stayed apart as much as they could. "'When I came here in 1907, the colored people lived on the Colo nia. I got work with the wood-cutting crew that was clearing the land h ere, and they let me put my house here near the beach. At first, I stayed mainl y with my crew. But there was a group of white slaves fagregaclos] living in the Colonia, and I got to know some of them. They told me

not to be bothered by the color ed people. You know that in the highlands we say the colored folk arc witches. I soon found out they are all right. The white slaves-some of them lived here the ir whole lives, and they got along fine with the Negroes. \Vhcn we came here from the highland (altura), we settled near the Rillicux family [a large Oricntc family descended from the slaves of a French hacendado]. T h ere would be bomba dances each weekend, and I would go to watch and dance. " 'ell, my fat h er "·otdd get furio us because I was dancing with the Negroes, and hc wo uld bhrnc my mother, who was not so \\·hitc as hc:11

As a consequence of the practice of training slaves as hacienda technicia ns wh ile g ivi ng I\egro and white agregados the less spec ialized jobs, some of the Negro p eople of th e coast ,,·ere econom icall y more secure, better educa ted, and more full y adapted to a wageearning way of life than were the highland newcomers. The expa nsion of American influence in the zone h ad displaced many of the techn icia ns a nd specia lists of the coast, but these people h ad reintegrated themselves in the newly expanding pattern. The n, as today, the older coastal dwellers sought to disassociate themselves from the rougher and poorer-paying jobs in the cane: cutting, loading, and so on. The white coastal population which h ad worked a longside the Negro people of the coast before the American occupation helped to cement social r elations between ,.vhite highland newcomers and the Negro people of the haciendas. No distinctions were made in the giving out of jobs in the field phase of the industry; as had always been the case, black and white worked together, often with the Negro the teacher, the highland white the willing apprentice. Social activity on the ha cienda took in the whole local population. Each Saturday and Sunday night, the bomba drummers beat out the Bel<!, Calenda, Holandes, Lero, and other Afro-Antillean rhythms, and the white newcomers would learn to Jose their fear of "witches of the coast" (los brujos de la costa), dancing on the plaza of the hacienda. The social system of three social clubs (casinos) for three sepa rate estate- or class-like groupings persisted after the occupation in ma ny Puerto Rican towns, but the rapid dissolution of the landowning class in Cafiamelar led to the encl of the first-class casino. The artisans' casino, however, continued to operate for some time, and, as before, Negro and white artisans mixed in free social intercourse. In these and other ways, white highlanders came to be an accepting and intermixing part of the coastal population. Marriages between highland and coastal people became more and more common, for, as one old ex-slave says, "De la' cosa' de amor, no hay nadie que se lo' rnanda" ("In matters of love, there is no one who commands"). If we are to judge by the present difference in standards of highland a nd coastal dwellers regarding the importance of sacr amental marriage, then the highland n ewcomers changed in this aspect of life as in others. 41 Statements by Ilarrio Poyal informants, perso nal interviews, Fall, l!M!l·

CANAMELAR: RURAL SUGAR PLANTATION PROLETARIAT

In Lhe period between the first intrusion of American capital i1_1 Caiiamelar and about i913, the new system of organization of land and labor developed and expanded. lt was in 1913 that Lhe lands of Hacienda, now Colonia, Vieja passed formally into the direct ownership of the American corporation. 'Ve have noted that among OLh er changes, subsistence crop lands and pasture were put imo cultivalion, a tax was leveled on agregado livesLock, woodlands "·ere cleared, and family managc111e11t ,\·as repla ced with a managerial hierarchy con1poscd mainly of outsiders. Shortly a(ter the acquisition ol \ "ieja land , a company store was set up on the Colon ia and a system of token money introduced . .\l cdical sen·ices ,,·ere supplied by the corporation in the lorm of a small hospital located at the large central and a medical pract itioner who would visit the neighborhood colonias of the corporation to attend the sick. A stro11g tendency to use piecework methods rather than to set n ew sta ndards for the field labor perforllled d eveloped . This may have been due to the fact that the .-\merican corporat ion wamed LO estimate Lhe maximum efficiency o( the labor force for later standards; more likely, the corporation felt that maximum labor cou ld be extracted in this fashion, other considerations aside. Until Lhe corporation had worked out its own estimates on labor performance, it le(t the jobs of recruiting, bossing, and arranging pay of workers with labor recruiters. Even the most difficult and most skilled jobs in the field came to be done by incentive piecework. The company store on the Colonia offered commodities at the same prices or below those of their competitors at Orieme village and in Caf\amelar. They carried a wide variety 0 ( stock, and by virtue of their enlarged buying power and the resultant retail savings, and because of their physical convenience, they rapidly entrenched themselves into the local consumer buying patterns. The "ticket system" was employed in paying company store bills. 'Norkers purchased goods on credit, and the purchases were charged against their p ay slips at the end of the work week. The store manager sat at the pay table at each colonia having a company store and saw to it that the · debt charged the worker was subtracted from his wages before they were paid out. A week's pay o( a few cents after d eductions was noL unusual. Furthermore, workers insist that cheating by store managers and clerks was common, and that the store's scales were kept behind a wire frame which made it difficult for the customer to see if he were being cheated. Credit buying and incemive piecework were tied neatly together by the managerial system. As the amount of cane lane.I expanded and the need for Jabor g rew, labor recruiters were employed. Some of these recruiters b eca me labor contractors for a whole colonia; they were called rematistns. Others were crew bosses (e11rabezados) . These recruiLers, familiar with the time and labor needed for a given job, would come to an agreement with the manager of the colonia on the p r ice for a particular job. The rematista would set the pay for each man, according to his personal esti-

349

mate of the man's ability. The co-operation between rematista and manager, the utter dependence on the rematista's judgment, the credit system at the company stores, and the lack of any standardization of rates meant that unscrupulous managers and rematislas could cheat each worker of part of his wao-es and control his outside activities through conu·oi° of his credit and of his opportunities for work. Because so much o[ the land of Caiiamelar had been consolidated under one corp?r~te sys.tern, a "mal_content" or "agitawr" who lost lus JOb might search 111 vain for another througho~t the entire municipality. Another aspect of this piecework system was the control exercised by the rematistas over the highland migrants seeking work. These men often had to board at the houses of the rematistas, frequently against their w ishes. It was part of th7 stipulation on the basis of which they would be given a chance to work. To keep their boarders, rematistas would compete fi~rcely to get their crews the most work, often to the disadvantage of local workers. The abuses of the work system during this period resulted from the lack of any revised standardization of rates after the corporate central system had replaced the family-type hacienda system in the area. The shift from a thoroughgoing paternalism to an impersonal, pure wage competition system took some time to accomplish, and it was throughout a disorganizing period. No longer was the hacendado available for appeals which w?uld have been heard in the past, however condescend111gly. ' 'Vages were relatively o-ood, but still hardly enough to Jive on, and the labor s;pply grew day by day as new migrants arrived. Local workers sought to establish personal relationships with the managers, store managers, and labor foremen, but this was difficult; the managerial h iernrchy was a hired not :1n ?wning ~ne. It could be_ shifted from place to place, ~ts interest _m the ~roducttvt: process was impersonal, 1ts status with r elation to the laborers was determined by salary and occupation rather than by a long personal history. The process of d epenonalization and rationalization of production began abruptly, but working people sought in their own way to resist it. Needless to say, new techniques for dealing with the problem of getting work a nd of surviving developed. The sociopol itical atmosphere was menacing. l\IIost of the workers were agregados, always at the beck and can of the colonia managers (mayordomos). The threat of losing one's house, one's job, one's credit at the company store hung over everyone. Dependent on the corporation for credit, housing, and la bor, workers could not orga nize easily. But a strong spirit was not long in developing. An ex-slave talks proudly of having shaken the hand of Samuel Gompers when that labor leader visited Ponce in J 905. A union was created, intimately connected with the Socialist party of that period. Political activity was of course frowned upon. Men who were too active politically found that there was no work for them. Political rallies were attended by the managerial staff o[ the Colonia to check on the agregndos. Political activity on the Colonia itself was unheard of. Many colonia gates were locked at night.

350

THE PEOPLE OF PUERTO RICO

One of the most dramatic descriptions of the total form of the agrarian corporate organization whi ch had developed is g iven by the Cuban social historian Fernando Ortiz. For the period from about 1919 to i939 1 it proves as appropriate for Cafiamelar as it does for any Cuban parallel , and apart from its dubious usage of terms from feudal Europe it is adm irably stated (Fernando Ortiz, 1941=52-64, passim): The central is now more than a mere plantation: there arc no longer a n y r eal planters in Cuba. The modern central is not a simple agricultural enterprise, nor eYen a factory whose production is based o n the raw materials at hand. Today it is a compli cated ··systelll of land. machinery. transportation. technicians, \\·orkers. capital. and people LO p roduce sugar." It is a complete social organism. as li\'e and complex as a city or municipality, or a baronial keep with its surrounding fief of rnssals, tenants and serfs. The latifundium is only the territorial base. the visible ex pression of this. The central is \'ertebratccl by an economic and l q~a l structure that combines masses of land . . . machinery men . . . and money . . . . Today the sugar latifundium is so const ituted that it is not necessary for the tracts of land or farms that constitute it LO be contiguous. It is gen erally made up of outlying lands, adjacent or distant. linked by railroads and under the same general comrol. all forming a complete empire with subject colonies co\·erecl with canefie_lds and forests , with houses and villages. And all this huge feudal territory is practically outside the jurisd iction of public law; the norms o( private property hold S\,·ay there. The owners· power is just as complete O\'er this immense estate as though it were just a small plantation o r farm. E \'erything there is private -ownership, industry, mill, houses, stores, police, railroad, port. . . . The sugar lati[undium was the cause of important ag-rosocial developments, such as the monopolizing of land that is not cuhivated but lies fallow; the scarcity of garden produce or fruits that would complement the basic crop, which is sugar-the reason for the latifundium's existence- because the effon required for this can be wn1ed to more profitable use from the econom ic standpo int ; the depreciation in value of land that it d oes not need within the zon e monopolized by the ccn tral, and so on. \/ithin the territorial scope of the central, economic liberty su!Ters serious restrictions. There is not a sma ll ho lding of land nor a d\,·elling that does not be long to the owner of the central, nor a fruit o rchard or vegetable patch or store or shop that does not form pan of the m1·ner's domain . The sma ll Cuban landowner, ind epend e nt and prosper01.1s. the backbone of a strong rural middle class. is gradually disappearing. rhe farmer is becoming a member of the proletariat, just ,111other I a borer, without roots in the soil. sh ifted from on e district to another. The whole li[e of lhe central is permeated by this prn\·isional quality of dependenc:e. wh ich is a d1aracteristic of colonial populations wh ose members have lost the ir sta ke in their cou11u·y . . . . Bdore. this absentee landlordis111 was period io 1ll y attenu;JLed by inheritan ce. through which, upon the d eath of the p lanter, this accu111ulated wealth return ed LO society through his children and h eirs. Th is is not so any longer. for lhe planter. if this name can be given to the org-a11izatio11 that in the eyes of the: la w is the owner of the central , is born outside th e country an d dies a foreigner, and even has no he irs if it is a corporation. The great " 'eal1h of ca pital needed [or these superce11tra ls cou ld 11ot be: raised i11 Cuba, '

1

and the tendency 1oward procluctiYe capitalis111 could nn1 be held i11 check from \\'ithi11. The maturation or the land-and-fa ctor y comb ine system c ame during Lhe First \\lorld \Var. The violent and important sugar induslry strikes of that period have never been forgotten in Caiiamelar. One o f the notorious com pan y administrators remarked at the time that he hoped the \\"i\·es of the strike rs would end up walking the streets \\Tapped in dresses m ade of the fertilize r sacks. ' '.\'" //(/ y t ·111/o 11u1s 111(1/a </II<' /({ d1· lo llliSlllfl 11111</ t:ra "' (° ""l 'h ere i~ 110 \\°l;d ge \\"())":-,(.'. th a11 Oil(' made of th e same ,,·ood .. ). ~;1v the older \\'orkcr, tod:t\' when they remini.~ce grirnl~: about th e h ;1rsh11c:s-, <i"I this native Pu erto Ri ca n ;1d111i11i;.tr;1tor. Tlw l;111dand-factory colllbi11e co11l i1 111ecl 1111cha11gcd and. ii anything. expanded. until the time ol the cl cpn:s~ io11. During the depres~io11. the producti\·e appar;1llh. profit;1blc from the \Try st;trt, .- ,ought LO rn;1 i11tai11 ih customary hig h rate of reuir11 in the Lice ol plun g ing prices and contracting rnarkeh. This required tightening up 011 the e xpense-, of ;t]I oper:1tio11s ill the productive process, ;111d a -,ig 11i!ica11t cun;1ilment ol ;111\· features Of paternal ism St ill obtaining \\'hich did llOt result in a pro fit entry in company ledgers. H' hile corporate employers t0ok further steps away from the traditional hac ienda pattern, local working people gained greater awareness of their social status in the society at large and of their power to effect dec isions. This depression period was marked by a great in crease in covert political activi ty and the renewal of union organizational a c tivities. :\ new point of view grew, and working people d eveloped a fee ling of their own strength. Puerto Rican workers had seized eagerly the privilege of fran chise extended to them at an earlier time. In the forty-year period between the occupation and the late d e pression, these working people were acquiring a political education . ft was shortly before the en d oJ this period, in 1938, that the roots o( a new political party were being established. Up to that time the Socialist party, with the backing of the Free Federation of Labor (Federaci6n Libre de Trabajadorcs) a!liliated with the American Federation of Labor, had held some power, but only at the expense of jettisoning part of its own p r ogram. It was precisely to the now disillusioned, now poli ticafly awakened workers of the south coast-and sugar workers everywhere- that the new party made its appeal. This was the Popular D e mocratic party (Partido Popular Dcmocratico), which won a slim but crucial control of the legislature iu 1940. This party followed its victory with a series of polit ica ll y important reforms. \Vorkers who were agregrulos could not be summarily deprived of their r es ide nce rights; at the same time, land purchases were begun Lo ena bl e agregados to resettle on governmentowned land. v\lorkers' rights to participate openly in political and uni.on activi ty were asse rted, and workers could not be fired for s u ch activities. The right w organiLe un ions and to do political work on the rnlonias "vas established. Token money was abolished, the labor recru ite r (e11cabezado and rematisla) patterns

CANAMELAR: RllRAL SUGAR PLANTATION PROLETARIAT

351

\\'eakencd, and the company stores were ordered to dissolve Lhcir legal con nec tion "·ith the landholding MAKING A LIVING and rt•11trnl·O\\'ning corpora tions. Large tracts of fertile cane land \\'ere purchased by the government to be run THE SUGAR CANE WORKERS OF BARRIO POYAL as g<)\·en1men t farms.•'.! Some of these reforms were successr u I: OLhers \\'ere evaded by legal circumvention. The present study purports to demonstrate the The ne\\' lreedom of political activity led tot.he estab· reality of a class culture, or subculture, within the 1is hmen t. ol ;1 ne\\' union [or "·orkers, including an larger society. Because of certain economic, social. and all-import:i11l s ugar cane ,,·orkers' branch. This union hist0rical forces, the writer holds that the people who n::pLt< c:d t hc: Fc:dc:r:1cic'm Libre and all ied itself un· are the subject of this study form not o nly a class, but a ollic i;ti I~ ""it h the ne\\' pa rt y in po\\·er. class with a culwre, a way of life, an ethos and ideology ~ll"<li<:tl <an:. \\"hich formerly had been meager and fair ly distinct from that of the members oE other Ltrgcly i11 thl" hands ol the corporation. came more and classes. Writes Kroeber ( 1948:268-69): 111on· 10 be: the n .· ,pons ibility of the government, im\ Ve do not usually consider class cultures as actual culpl('lltl·111 n l 1ltrough th e individual municipality adtures, because they arc pans of "one socie ty" and this Le nds 111i11i.,tr:11 ions. to correspond in modern li fe with the larger political unit Dc.: 111ogr: 1phiC' 111m·c111ent in the barrio during the of the nation. and it is Lo this that we a re wont to consider p;1 ~t ten or fil tc:c.:11 yea rs has been away from the culoa type of ci\·iliza tion as attaching. But if there is any need 11i11s. Olli to the b each and to the Yillage or Oriente. The for it. it is just as legitimate intcllcctuallr to speak of 111u11i<'ip:tli1.> ol C:1l1amel;1r. as a lready mentioned , "lower-middle-class English culture·· as of French cu lwrc: bot1gl1L a 1111-rt/11 nl land in Barrio Poya l in 1943 for the one is part of all-dass English culture a nd shades off the: u~l· o l -.quauc r L11nilies. By 19.19, the plots on this into it: the other. of western-European culture. For that tran had been redivided: each plot hold ing a s ingle malLCr. a class has as much right to be considered "a society." al any rate \\'ithin one locality. as has the total popufamily in 1!J.l:h held two (or three) in 19.19. The beach lation of a country. lL is more homogeneous. can function of B arrio Poya l had but a scauering of houses in 19-1 3. more easily as a unit. may or may not have more solidarity. belonging mainl y to fishermen: in 19.19. it was a growing community in its own right. !\lost of the newcomers The material to be presented in this chapter will were 111 igrarHs from the highlands; some were ex- seek to documenL the economic, cultural and social agrewulos from the r·o/onins. and, in a broad sense, historical homogeneity oE the From this brief sketch, it "·ill be seen that the period people of Oriente Village, Colonia Vieja, and the baron which data is most available, from 1873 to t~).18, rio beach. These people stand in a uniform relation to just seventy-five years. was one of inte nse social change the means of production and in a like relation, ecofo r llarrio Poya I. The working population of the nomically and sociall y, to one another. They hold in barrio, and. in fa ct, of the whole coast, had been con· common their socioeconomic status, their occupation, verted in this brief pe riod from the status of slave and and the ir educa tion al training, and they face a uniform bound laborers w that of free and competing union- lack o( opportunity for social and economic mobi li ty. ized la borers. The: landownership pattern, n ever one The present discussion, in its emphasis on class uniof peasa n t farmin g locally, had reached an unsurpassed fonnity, n either denies n or intends to d eny the enordegree or concentrat ion. Along with the marked mous individual variabi lity which obtains in even so cha11ge in owne rship, the re had come concom itant narrow and uniform a g rouping as the rural proletarchanges in the productive process. Capitalist. corporate ia11s of Barrio Poyal. In fact, the following sect ions seek agr icu lture had take n the place of the paternalistic to delineate and to g ive meaning to this variability fa111il y-type hacie nd a pattern. The workers of Barrio wherever possible. At the same time, however, the Poyal came to be pan of an insular "rural proletariat" write r has tried to seek out the regularities o( human with rights to union organi1.ation and the vote, rather behavior to the extent that such regularities are d ethan, as before, dependent on the locally based, face-to· monstrable and to make them available for comparisons face, social arrangements of the hacienda. Their cul- and criticisms. ture remains largel y a synthesis of old hacienda pat· l have called the people of Barrio Poyal representaterns of thought and activity, ,,·ith newly de,·eloped tive of a rural proletariat because they are ( 1) land less ways o f behaving conceived under the pressures of and essentially propertyless, lacking any means of prorapid proletariani1.ation. duction OLhcr tha n their O\nl labor: (2) "·age earners (gramed that agregados receive some perquis ites and in th is sense resemble tenants or sharecroppers, still '"The so·ra llcd .. ,i, c-h untlrecl acre J:t\\·:· which prohibits the they are not paid in kind , and they must work as labo row1li11~ or 11lort· 1hall li\'C h1111clrecl acres of ca ne land by a si ngle ers); (;~) predominantly store-bu ying, si nce they cannot 111ill-corporatioll. ''as u~ed hy th e reform go\'crnmcnt to expedite produce more than a sm all part o( their basic commod1hc purd1a~l' of laq;:c tracts of l;1ncl from corporate O\\"nCrs. Such l:111d i~ t ht·n "JlCl'atcd 1hrough an ins ular gO\·crnmc ntal instnt· ities; rnther, these commodi t ies are purchased, preva ilm c ut a lit )'. th e I.a nd .\111ho r it ). The lirs t such purchase of land ing ly 0 11 credit and in corporate retail sto res. As a posl'rom n1rpma1c lwldin g~ oil 1hc south rnasl \\' ;1s not made 1111 · sible additional compone nt oE the definition, i t may Lil ' !J.18. Tl1c n1r pora1cly O\\'nccl cane land in C:ai1amclar and mosl be pointed o ut that the people of Ba rrio Poyal are (.l) adjoining n111nicipaliti cs \\'as s till in private hands in 1!)5 •.

352

THE PEOPLE Of" PUERTO RICO

prevailingly employed by corporate enuues, rather than working for themselves or for an owner-employer with whom they maintain continuous face-to-face relations. To the extent that individual members of this sociocultural grouping are characterized uniformly by these fea tures, it seems worth while examin ing the possibility of any derived or functionally related uniformities in the present-day cu lture pattern or in class culture values. It seems fair to suppose that, in situations of high mobility, the values and attitudes of the different sociocultural groupings of the socie ty will be subject to rapid and radical alteration . On the other hand, a cond ition of relatively stable class distinctions and limited mobility is likely to lead to the stabilization and reinforcement of distinct group values and attitudes. While the prescn t study purports to be a h istorical analysis of culture ch a nge, it also is inte nded to d emonstrate the relatively stable class position and limited mobility which confronts the people of the rural proletariat. In the past ten years, the United States Army, and the n eed for la bor in such urban Un ited States centers as New York City and in commercial and agricu ltural areas as well, have provided rural sugar cane workers with opportunities to escape the economic and social limitations which obtain in communities such as Cafiamelar. The increased mobility provided through army service and m igration h as been of great importa nce, though more so outside the community than within it. I ts principal effect within a community such as B arrio Poyal has been to further the growing deterioration of the noneconomic institutio ns b ased on cominuo us face-to-face contact. But th e army has limited its recru itment 0£ Puerto Ri cans, and the labor marke t in the Un ited States must ine vitably be filled . 1Nhcrc iL is p ossible to comment on the e[ects of migra tion and the war, this is clone; for the large majority o f rural proletarians, however, 11c ither of these developments h as in creased notably the mobility accessible to them. The people of Barrio Poyal, and of the municipa lity in which it is located-Canamelar-cont inu e to form a uniform socioeconom ic grouping, uniformly co nfronted with an inescapable future in the cane fi e lds.

SEASONAL WORK PATTERNS

Puerto Rico as a who le is typified by a warm, equable clima te. The south coast te nds LO be warmer and much drier than either the north coast o r the highla11ds. The ro und of seasons and the seasona l changes affecting the productive process ta ke place with liule apparent change in the climate itsel f. R a in in the south is ver y sca nty, falling mainl y during the autumn m o mhs. From December till th e pla nting of the big grow th (gran cu.llura) , or fifteen- to SC \'enteen -month cane, w hi ch begins in Aug ust, th e fi e lds arc ani[i ciall y watered. The agriculLUral worker will say that th e cane n eed s water to grow big, but that it is the su n that makes the sugar. Because so mu ch of the water suppl y

is now artificially com rollecl, there is little d ependence any longer on natural rainfall in the area, though of course rain is welcomed as a supplement to irrigation except during the harvest. The fall season, in addition to being the time of rain, is the time o[ the hurricanes. At the close o( the summer, the town council issues announ cements regarding hurricane warnings and places of refuge for country a nd town d\\·ellcrs. These arc pos ted in th e municipal building . schoo ls, and in the post o lllcc and are read 'dth intcrc-;t by the loca l people . Since most of the country houses a nd man y of the houses in town are liule more than shacks of ti11 , " ·ood , o r e ,·c11 o( straw, the refuges a rc usually th e cu 1HTCte schoo l buildings. Many peopl e c011sLrnc t nc:tr their h o u se~ tin y torment eras, flim sy straw-covered dugo uts. for use as hurricane refuges. During the hurric: 111 c season. a warm, humid wind usually rises in th e sn11th c:t st l:1tc in the morning a 11d blows until dmk . Fall is a .slack tim e for most suga r ca n e workers. Some field s must be cl ca 11 cd and seeded \\. i di th e hig g1 O\\·th (gran cu/Lura) cane, while the fi elds planted in th e summer rey uire weeding. Irrigation d i tches arc dug anew, and old ditches cleaned, and field trash must be burned or piled up (nlineado) betwee n the banks. These are the tasks which afford most of the labor opportunities between July and .January. Seedi ng , irrigation, and weedi ng are still largely manual processes, but the use o f h e rbicides, ditching m achines, and other technical aids arc reducing the amount of labor required even in this work. Hence the period from the harvest's close in J une or .July until the new harvest in late December or early January is one of growing deprivation. Unemployment and its pressures on the people reach a peak around Christmas. By that time, the new crop is tall in the field s, nearly ready to be cut, loaded and processed. Workers wait eagerly for "the fire to break out" (romper el fu ego) . \iVhether or not Christmas will be a festive occasion hinges on the starting date of the n ew harvest. If there is a week's pay collected, or in the offing, by Nocl1e 1J uena (Christmas Eve). Christmas is marked by gaiety and celebration. Otherwise people are somewhat reserved until money is ava ilable. Presents for the children are not given until Three Kings' Day (January 6). by which time the harvest is usua lly under way. \i\Tork is most plentiful during the late winter and in th e spring for th e south coast laborer. With the h arvest going at full strength, nearly everyone can get some work each week, and the most energetic a nd d ependab le workers can find work all week long. Money begins to fl ow in to the corpo rate stores and i nto the little v illage stores as well: clothing and m odest h om e furnishings are purchased; beer supplements the illega l, hom emade rum; more m ea t and more food generally are consumed. This is the season when responsible workers try to establish a respectable trade re lation with the local tradesmen in order to ensure th emse lves o[ a commodity credit source during the slack se<1son. Longde[erred baptismal ceremonies are he ld and godparents

CANAl\IELAR: RURAL S!JCAR PLA NTATION PROLETARIAT

fulfill their traditional obligations, thus creating new bonds at a Lime "·hen the participams can best afford it. \ •Vhile th e harvest time o( winter and spring is one of increased activity and a rising standard of living, it is also a period of strain. Energetic workers, their strength sapped by a long s lack season during which employment and nourishment are likely to be very irregular, return to \\'Ork anxious and with liule resistance Lo fatigu e and illness . .-\ccidents are frequent, and the strongest \\'Orkers become drawn and lose weight from the p:1cc. The harvest (:afra) is the time when a "·orkcr mii:.t ex tricate himself at all costs from the previo us ycar·s obligations, the time when he must re-cst:tlJlish and rcnc\\' his economic and social status. By 111 idsu111mcr, the ha1Test is o\·er. On the last day or grindi n g. each great central blows its whistle loud and lu ng. and the people say that the mill is crying because there \\'ill be 110 more \\'Ork till next year. The oxen a1·c put to gra1e on th e cane trash left in the cleared fi e lds. then arc driven to pasLUre on the northern slopes. l'\011harvesting jobs continue throughout the year, but these supply relatively liule work. It is <luring the slack time that special skills come to the fore. Some laborers fall back on minor subsidiary economic activity (fishing, selling the illegal lottery, netmaking, crab-catching, etc.), while oLhers, such as the jJaleros ("ditchers"), may have a special skill usefu l in the cane fields during Lhe slack season. For nearly all workers, however, the slack season, lasting six months or more, is a Lime of sharply reduced in come. '\i\fhile the four seasons of Lhe tempera te zones are recognized and delimited, they are not o( great importance in the life of the people. True, Lhcre is a "hurricane season," a "season of the crabs," a "rainy season," and so on. As wiLh ag rarian populaLions everywhere, there is sLrong awareness of changes in Lhe so il, water, plant g rowth, kind and quanLity of wildli[e available, etc. l3ut the south coast laborers, engaged in seasonal, monocrop, wage labor, are a far cry from the peasant or small farmer. In certain aspects, they are much more like Lhe factory worker of Detroit or the seasonal, migrant agricullllral workers of the present-day American '\.Yest. For the suga r workers, there are rea lly but two seasons: zafrn (harvest) and tie111po muerto (dead time). On the south coast, typified by the most concentrated ownership and the mosL centra lized processing apparatus on the island, the contrast bet\reen these Lwo "seasons" is most striking. Jn s lave times, the hacienda owner sought to keep his labor force profitably engaged throughout the year. Jn t his sense, since labor in chattel form had to be fed and clothed, however inadequately, the year round, the most efficient enterprise was one which could make of the hacienda productive process a year-round system. Even after the emancipation, no concerted effort was made to shorten the period of labor during the year. 1\foreover field processes at the time were entirely manual or were carried out with animal power; accordingly more labor power \\'as needed. Cane was planted, weeded, and cu ltivated, cut and loaded by hand; even in the mills themselves, much of the processing was manual. Then, as now, there

353

were three gr~wths of cane, with the harvesting staggered to provide a steady flow of fresh cane for the grinders. The time oft.he greatest activity came during the harvests: from Christmas to June, and from Auo-ust to October. In the remaining months, fields had be cleaned, the new cane planted and weeded, the mill cleaned and repaired, and the animals cared for:13 '\\Tith the coming of the great central, after 1900, the year-round work pattern of the sugar laborers was markedly altered. The great central requires considerable investment and is very costly to operate. It needs an enormous supply of ready-flo\\·ing ra\\' cane so that the grinders, once in motion, need not sLand idle for a minute's time. The introd uction of the grea t central meant the progressive shorten ing of the h arvest. \ Vhere the pre-1900 hacienda harvests took eight to nine months, the great centra.les clo not operaLe more than five and a half months except under unusua l circumstances. The objective of the great central is to grind the cane contracted for, or produced on corporate lands, within a defined minimum of continuous operation-usually less than six months. l\Iaxwell notes ( 1927: 10,1): " . . . Let it suffice to mention that the studies of costs o( production made by the U.S. T ariff Commission indicate that the large-scale operations are conducive to economy in the manufacturing stage of the industry; there b eing a marked inverse correlation b etween the output o[ a factory and its cost of production. It is note\\·onhy moreover, that all countries which belong or are under the influence of the United States of America have invariably adopted the policy of 'big' centrals." i\Iaxwell gives the average individual mill output in terms of sugar produced for the areas with which he is familiar; the correlation between U.S. owned or controlled areas and large productive apparatuses is clearly demonstrated:

t;

TABLE 5. I NDIVIDUAL SUGAR MILL OUTPUT Co1111t1)•

Tons of Sugar a

Cuba .

26,000

Hawaii

18,000

Philippines Pucno Rico Australia Java . Somh Africa i\lamitius

17,000 15,000 14,000 12,500 9,500

5,500 n Fi cu1·cs :ire based on :wcrngcs of the grinding for the thrcc·ycar period 1923- 24 to 1905-26.

In the same connection, he writes (1\!Iaxwell, i 927: .' 04):_ "As regards the length of the crushing season, it is evident Lhat an inadequaLe capacity Lo deal with a large seasonal supply of cane implies the crushing of •t3 The animals needed LO. produce a commercial sugar crop under completely un111echan1zecl field conditions were considerable. According to one report. rn;ide in 1900, 420 oxen would be required 10 culti''."tc and har vest an 800-acrc crop. Sec Knapp, 1 goo: q. It took six )'Oke of oxen and three men to plow thrceqnarters of an acre in one day, says Knapp.

354

THE PEOPLE OF PUERTO RICO

unripe cane at the begi n n ing and more or less perished cane at the end of a prolonged season." vVe may also note the decrease in the average munber of days of g rinding in Puerto Rico : TABLE 6. LENGTH OF GRINDING PERIOD

Y ear 1930 1940 1 945 1946

Days 142 -'1 159.2 1 34.-4

123.1 ll

a Lopez Domingu ez, 1946: 149-57. 1Nrites

Perloff (1950:74): "In recent years, the tende n cy for small mills to close down has ga ined momen tum. Between 1938 and 1947, five such mills ceased <-Operations. Jn each case, their capacity was smaller than the average rated capacity per twen t y-four hours o[ about 1,500 tons . . . . In the opinion of some experts, a definite trend is indicated, with the economics of large-scale production leading to an increasing concentration of sugar-processing in a relatively sma ll number of large, modern mills." The el imination of the sma ll er, antedated mills, which has been in progress since the start o[ the American occupation and before, can be expected to con tinue; as it does, the number of harvest <lays ca n be expected to fall s till further. The field or agricultural phase o[ cane production .also has been a ltered radically since 1900. Two related trends should be mentioned in the south coast situation. The first is the steadily increasing replacement of manual with mechanical labor. Mechanical weeders, herbicides, mechanical ditchers and tillers, and even mechanical irrigation devices have been introduced. As has been mentioned, manual labor in most of these operations continues to be of importance, but the trend is unmistakable. The second trend, apparently a matter of policy, is the growing emphasis on lower per acre production costs, especially in labor, even il this means a drop in the per acre production of cane. These two trends together signify the progressive elimination of manual labor from the fields. Mechanization of the industry is regarded as an utter necessity by the is land's large producers, because high labor costs, relative to the cos ts o( other services in the productive process, hinder successful competition with other sugar producing areas. Sugar cane workers are nearly helpless aga inst the threat of occupational displacement. Emigration to the United States is one answer, w hile the Puerto Ri ca n legislature bas passed unemployment i nsurance laws to reduce somewhat the pressures of seasonal work. The unemployment insurance, however, is inadeq uate, and for many sugar cane workers, emigrat ion is economica ll y impossible. For these people, no cho ice is open but to work on, whi le the availab le opportunities dwindle, th e population rises, and machines continue to replace men. It is in th is context of harvest versus slack time that the year's round or work must be viewed. Most local workers have no economic al Lernatives open to them.

The year consists or two pans. a fat part and a lean one. The harvest, of course, is th e time for ea ting better , perhaps for buying clothes or for p ay i11g an installment on a radio or for purchasing a kerosene stove, and, most importantly, it is the time for paying off old ob ligaLions at the stores. Credit-buying is a deeply ingra in ed pattern. Every worker's wire has a l i ttle book in which her purchases at the loca l store are recorded. At the close of the "·eek. the purchases are totaled and the b ill paid . During the sl:tck season. til e wages received at tile \\-C:ek's e nd oltcn do 1101 «>,·e r more than a sm :dl p;trt of tile 11·cekly pur<'liase~. The worker must fall b:1ck on the tr u:-.t of the s ton.: owner or manager. Belts arc pu l led a liul<: tigl11cr. and "lu;.; 11r~· · purchases, such as kcrose ne sto1·es or ne\\' shoes. stop. This "fat and lean" :1rr;111ge111ent kcq>s tile ,,·orker forever dcpc11de11t on Lhe commodity tradc~m:i11 . .\ lost famil ies are faced with ;rn u11e11di1 1g neces->ity lor more food , clothing. medicine. and ::io 011 titan tile (;1mily budget will allow. This c ndle:-.s pre.'>s 11 rc doc~ not lead to a family policy of rig idly cn lorccd thri lt. lnstead, the avai lab le lund.s are c;.; pe 11dcd in a fashion consonan t \\'ith the panicular local vah ics. WORKING IN THE SUGAR CANE

As can be seen from the economic history of the zone, south coast life is geared to the loca l form o( sugar production. The passage of time s ince the ea rly nineteenth century has been marked not by the diminution of this dependence but by its i11crease. \tVh ile not unique tO the south coast zone, sugar production there is characterized by corporate, absentee ownership; wage labor; a short grinding season; large-scale, monocrop, cash crop irrigation agriculture; and the absence o( the refining process which is now done largely outside the island. The cultivation, harvesting, and transportation of s uga r cane not only provides local workers with n ea rly, every penny of th eir cash in come but constitutes their main tie with th e world outside the zone and outside Puerto Rico. Because each worker's wage above the minimum is in part d eler m ined by a sliding sca le tied to the price of sugar on the s tock market, he has learned to read newspaper repons on stock buying and sell ing in New York. Since the sugar markel is at present protected from foreign com petition because Puerto Rico lies w ith in United States tariff wa lls, the island's political status is a matter of deep concern to every cane cutter. That local producers reel that they must mechanize in order to meet price compet ition with other s ugar producing areas o f the world is r esenled and feared by local workers s ince it can only mean w idespread replacement of men by machines. The Puerto Rican agricultural laborer who does not know that there is land devoted to agriculture in New York State does know that Cuba, outsid e the United States tariff barrier, has surplus agricultural Janel and can produce more sugar at a lower cost than P uerto Rico can . The so uth coast sugar worker must bu y co tton clothing from Tennessee; dried codfish from Newfound-

CANA;-. IELAR: RURAI. SUGAR P LANTAT ION P ROLETARIAT land~ rfre from Louisiana: shoes, machetes, and clocks

from J\J assachuseu.s; a11rned beer from 'Wisconsin and New York~ .and rad ios from M ichigan in exchange for money ea rn ed in the p roduction of raw sugar which is sefined ;u1d sold wi.1.hin .the continental United States. 'The guot.a of sugar ''"hich Puerto Rico may produce in .a ny year is d eterm ined l>y the U nited Sta tes, and any sed uction in t his quota, without a corresponding rise in wages. must incYiLably l>e measured in the red uced capacity o f 1.hc sugar "·.orke r to buy commodities for cash. Soo11cr o r btcr. C\'CS\. bl>orcr in the ca ne comes to rca li 1c tltat his \\'ork t{olds no opponunities for eco110111ic 1Je1tcrn1c11t. The rates of pay. while better than 1.hcy were tc11 ,·c;i rs ago . .aud beuer than (or equivalen t jobs in most other world areas. do not a llow for accumula 1io 11 o r1.Ji c ca1Jital needed to a lter one's economic sta tus i11 a11v substa11tial ""1v. fa 11tasies are many, and sclie111cs lor ' freeing one's sefr from the cane fields are ha Lchetl, 1 he n la id .aside. For most ,,·orkers, complete emanc ipation from the field s is ne,•er attained. The besl lltal can be hoped for is a job on a permanent (i.e., year-round) crew Df some kind, paying perhaps twelve dollars weekly during the slack season and fifteen dollars weekly du ring the harvest- Defe11derse de la ca i'ia ("to .d e.fend one's self from the cane") is more than just an expression among the sugar proletariat: it symbolizes t.b.c .endless effort to wriggle off the hook of lowpa id, in secure., seasonal field labor. Vh ile the .ca.ne is the .only real source of locally accessible cash, it does not define the limit of economic activities in a cttl turaJ sense. A host of minor pursu its are a lso maintained by the working people to supply .occasiona l food, 10 secure familial, ceremonia l, and friendship relationships, and generally t? ~1elp tO cus.hion the effect of seasonality. These subs1chary pursuits .;u-e embedded i n local lower-class culture. They are ]earned b y children as they grow into adu l thood. Crab-catching · lhe ra isino- butchering-, a nd sale or use of ' t>' livestock; fishing, and gathering sea li fe; the retailing of homemade products; the vending of bootleg liq~or a nd illegal tottery tickets do not compete with work in cane as principal economic activities because they are even less rewarding and less dependable economically. But the local culture would not be the same w itho ut these activities. To the working people of the south coast, these au xiliary sources of cash or food are, in their own way, as essential as work in the cane. From the point of view of the corporate em ployers of the sou th coast zone, the cu ltura l i n terrelationship o[ cane work and su bsidiary economic activities is not to the ir interest. The corporate requirements for labor power in g reat quantity for a six-mon th period is seen by th e cor porations themselves as a means for providing local workers with valuable employment. These subsidia ry activities, which in the minds of the working class population are as much a part of the cultural horizon as the cultivation and cutting of cane, are seen by the corporation as impedimen ts to the main productive process, particularly if workers choose to go fishing or crabbing when there is still cane to be cut. \ 1

355

The municipality of Caii.amelar and its south coast neighbors reveal a great uniformity in occupational organization. In Caii.amelar, slightly m ore than 61 per cent of the labor force is engaged in agricul ture,Hsynonymous here with the cultivation of sugar cane. Of this 61 per cent, perhaps 5 per cent are regular salaried employees as con trasted with the remaining 56 per cent, who are clay laborers in the cane. In i899, the occupational distribution was less extreme: the census for Canamelar in that year stated that exactly L!O per cent of the adult male population worked in agriculture:';, ·M ethods o( cultivation, transportation, and processing of crops in the nineteenth century, which required many more man-hours per ton of production or per acre of agricultural land, left room for the employment of numerous artisans. In addition, the number o f merchants and tradesmen ou tside the sugar industry was proportionately much larger. After igoo, the sh ift to highly centralized processing, plus the concentration of la ndholdings-especially on the south coast-brought abou t both the replacement of local administrative personnel w ith a hierarchy of managers and supervisors and a vast reduction in the number a nd variety o f artisans needed to produce the sugar. Of the land in Cafiamelar today, almost one-half is. d evoted to cane cultivation; nearly all the rest serves as. pasturage for work stock. The amou nt of land in resi-· dential areas, used for municipal ·works, or in so poor a condition as to be put tO no use at all is negligible. The hilly slopes to the north vary considerably in the qua lity o( pasturage they provide, but they are used anyway. This land natura lly is much lower in value than are the choice river floodplains a nd a lluvial Cans and terraces in the south of Cafiamelar. Still, the average per cuerda valuation o( Cafiamelar land is one of the highest for the island as a whole. Since the American occupation, the land in Cafiamelar has been increasingly dedicated to cane cultivation, the tracts devoted to pasturage have decreased in size, and minor crop cultivation has all but disappeared. In order to understand the round o( work of Cafiamelar's rural pro letarians, it is essential to know the process of sugar cane cultiva tion a nd the way in which i t fi ts into the season al changes. Sugar cane cultivation in Puerto Rico rules out crop rotation, and land rarely lies fa llow. There are two pla nting seasons and three types of cane.-10 These three types are the long growing (up to seventeen-mon th) grnn cultura; the primavera, H Sixteenth Census of th e United States, Clwmcteristics of the Population, Bulletin Nwnl!er 2 (\ Vashington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, '9'l3). p. G4. 45 U.S. Depanmen t of ' •Var. 1900: Table 23, p. 303. I t must be noted, however. that a large percentage of the Ca iia me lar population in that year was classified as unernp loyed. The une1nployed probably found part-time work during th e cane harvests. ·IO lly " type" is meant here differences determined b y the t ime of planting. length of growth, and ll'hether the cane is seeded or grown from the roots of the previous cro p. T h is docs n ot refer to the variety of cane . A very grea t number of varieties have been bred in Puerto Ri co by private and governmental laboratories to fit local conditions.

356

THE PEOPLE OF PUERTO RICO

or ten-month spri ng cane; and the retoiio, or ratoon cane, which is the cane grown and reaped in successive harvests from the same roots, without replanting, and which matures in about fourteen months. From August to October, the big growth cane is planted, to be cut during the second harvest thereafter. If the yield is high, the roots may be l eft so that another crop may be reaped from the same roots at the next harvest. If the yield is consistently high, south coast growers may grow two successive ratoons on the same soil, without replanting. In areas of high rainfall, such as the northwest coast, a dozen consecutive growths wi thout replanting is not unusual, but as many as three consecutive ratoons in the south is rare. The south coast trend, nevertheless, is to more and more ratooning, since labor costs are lower on ratoon cane.47 During the rains from October to December, cane planting ceases entirely. Shortly after the start of the harvest in late December or January, the spring cane planting begins and continues during the harvest months. This primavera cane matures in about ten months; thus, cane planted in March will be cut the following January. As in the case of the gran cultura, a planted crop of primavera may be followed by a ratoon or even by several successive r atoons. The relative proportions of gran cultura, primavera, and retoiio crops planted will depend on plans formulated to co-ordinate the harvesting a nd grinding processes. The cultivator aims always at reducing labor costs, without permitting the tonnage or sugar yield 0£ a g iven piece of land to fall below a profitable minimum. The south coast demonstrates the closest co-ordination of field and factory processes on a large scale operative in Puerto Rico. Mill corporations are forbidden by law to own more than five hundred acres of land in conjunction with their mill operations, but landholding corporations can be set up as distinct legal entities and still allow fo r productive integration of a high order. Through ownership by separate corporations, and by the administration of individually owned land, such productive combines achieve maximum efficiency of operation. Managers of the field processes- cultivation, harvest, and transportation of the crop- must organize their work to provide the mills with a steady flow of freshly cut cane during the grinding season. Cane must be ground very soon after cutting in order to extract a maximum yield; therefore, too much cut cane must not be allowed to pile up at the mills. On the other hand, if the flow of cane to the mill dwindles or stops, men and machines will be idle. In short, cane must be harvested in such a fashion as to permit continuous capacity grinding by the mills, which operate twenty-four hours a day, six days a week, during the harvest. While cultivation, harvest, and transport supervisors strive to provide their mills with an uninterrupted flow of freshly cut cane, attention must be given as well to the preparation of crops for subsequent harvests, for all of 47 Ratoons on occasion may yield a higher tonnage per cuerda than the initial seeded crop, according to corporation experts.

the processes dealing with the care of a grow ing crop, or with the preparation of soil for another crop, cannot be suspended until the harvest is over. A schematic representation of the planting and harvesting arrangements might look somewhat as foll ows: TABLE 7. PLANTING AND HARVESTING ARRANGEMENTS Field B

·Field A

Primave ra Planted: !\larch, 1 ~). J S

For harw·st: January. 1 D·l~) (Thereafter to be left as rc/01/0, for the April, 1 !J;J<>.

han'<.:st.)

Field C

First Retolio

Srco11d R. e /01/0

B egan culti,·ation: i\lay. 1!) (8

Bcg:111 cult jy;1 tinn :

For h:1 n ·c;,t: Jul y. IC).ICJ (T I H: n~:1f t c; r to

lit· r e planted with gr1111 cu//11m i11 . \ ugust. 1<').J C). for the .Janua r y, 1!)5 1. har\'(:st.)

Fi e ld D

Felirna ry, 1 !1·18 For h:1n·cst: \I:1nh. •!H'l (Thcrt'afl c; r to be replanted \\"ith /lrim11111·111 in July, '!J.I!}· for the ~ J ay, 1950. han·est.)

Fie ld E

Gran Cullum

Firs t T<rto1i o

Planted: August, 1917

Began cultivation: April,

For harvest: January, 19,19 (Thereafter to be left as retoiio, for the l'viarch, 1950, harvest.)

For har\'Cst: June, 19119 (Therearte1· to be left as a second re/01/0, for the July, 1950, ha1·vest.)

19.18

I n tabular form, the planting and harvesting of these three types of cane appears as follows: ·1s TABLE 8. Cane ''Type"

Growing Period

Time of Planting

Harvest Time

About ten Fe bruary to May l'vfarch to rnon ths June Gran Cultura Up to sevenAugust to Octo- December to teen months ber February Reto1io About fourteen Not planted; March to months grows from old Jul y roots after first cutting of cane.

Primavera

Thus, even while the fields are being cleared of their crop in harvest, cultivat ion managers must concern themselves with the problem of preparing and replanting the same field for the harvest 0£ the following year or for the year thereafter. To make this cultivation - harvest-transportationsoil preparation-recultivation series of productive steps as rapid and efficient as possible is the objective of every cane grower. I n Canamelar, all the cane grown and cut is ground at three nearby m ills, two of which are owned by the same corporation. In addition, the 48 These dates are approximations only. Whereas the gran cultura must be cut at a certain time, after which its sugar content will decrease, tnimavera may b e allowed to grow for some time after its te n -month maturation.

CANAl\IELAR: RURAL SU GAR PLANTATION PROLETARIAT

railroad which Lranspons a substa ntial part of the cut cane is operaLed in terms o( Lhe mills' needs. A major problem of the producers is to secure labor when and ,,·here iL is needed. Because of the intensive, seasonal naLure o( Pueno Rican cane cultivation, a large labor force is required but for a short period only. The problem of Lhe laborers is the need to support Lhcmsclves and Lheir families Lhe year round on the earnings (rom \\'Ork. opponuniLies concenu·ated largely in Lhc fj,·e and one-ha!( momhs harvest period. Benca Lh the surface \\'Orkings o( the field phase of the intltt stry. an 1111cmling sLruggle goes on. 'W hile largescak prodt1ccrs cen tral ize grindi ng operations, replace manpo\\·er ,,·iL11 machines. and streamline field operation:.. :-.ugar cane \\'ork.ers seek ways to raise their hourly and d:tily \\·ages and to lcngllien their period of emp l<>ylll<:nt. For the ,,·orker, a choice sometimes must be rnadc IH: t\\'een a higher hourly rate, and the possibility of extending the \\'Ork season by working more slowly. Agriculture u ually connotes sharp attention to weather changes. emphasis on day-to-day plant care, and concern over problems of fertilizer, watering, and cultivation, but to the Caiiamelar workers these problems are o( little imerest. The land is not theirs, not do they feel equ ipped to make juclgmems regarding the agricu I wral process. This process, for them, is segmented into a large number of simple tasks-weeding, ditchi ng. irrigat ing, cane culling, wagon loading, aligning cane trash, and so o n. A good worker will learn as many of these tasks as he can so that he will be able to get some work, no matter what particular jobs are ava ilable. But few workers ever have the opportu nity w get full perspective on the process of production as a totality. The landless, wage-earning, agricultural worker is thus not only alienated from the land as a potential owner-producer, but he is given Jillie chance to relate himselC to the institution of sugar p roduction as such. Because the simplicity of manual operations enables any energetic laborer to learn nearly all the separate steps in the field process in a short time, a curious similarity may be observed between this kind of agriwlture and the type o( productive orga n ization common in modern factory assembly lines. This is not to say that sugar cane workers take no pride in their work: to be an energetic and conscientious worker is a high value among the sugar cane workers themselves. But one's skill is not put to the test by most field jobs. Mechanization is feared on the one hand, scoffed at as ineffective on the other. ·workers insist that herbicide, for instance, will never kill weeds the way that hand weeding will. "A la caFia le l10ce falla el toque de la mano lmmana" ("The cane needs the tou ch o( the human hand"), they will say. When the harvest is about to begin, laborers who live in towns and roadside villages (poblados) visit the local colonias in search of work. Crews are "shaped up" before the harvest starts. The h ard core of the labor force is provided by the personnel of the colonia: the agregados. Some cho ice of jobs is avai lable when the work seaso n is beginning, and workers show decided preferences. I nitial assignments are given by the ma)1ordomo

357

(manager) of the colonia, the highest-ranking local employee of the corporation. Before the small, local mills were thrown into disuse by the introduction of the great centrales, 11rn)1ordomos on the haciendas played a major role in the distribution and planning of work. Today, calculations of this kind must be m ade by higher supervisory personnel, who can determine what part each colonia will play, as a la nd unit and labor reservoir, in the total harvest. Thus what formerly stood as a complete and self-contained productive unit - the hacienda-has now become no more than one of Lhe many extra-large farms-the colonias. T he job which required over-all perspective on productionthat of mnyordomo-is now simply a minor adminisu·ative post in the t0tal corporate hierarchy. Each 11W)'Ordomo has under his supervision one or more lesser mayordomos: assistant managers. Much lower in the hierarchy are the capataces, or foremen, who supervise crew operations such as cane cutting, wagon loading, the laying of portable rails, and irrigation. The foremen may be salaried during the harvest and on wages throughout the rest of the year. I n some cases, a foreman may enjoy no higher pay than the workers under him but simply serves as a director of crew work. The workers themselves usually regard the cutting of cane as the most arduous of the h arvest jobs. As for all other jobs, there is a minimum daily wage for cane cutting; but employers are permitted by law to instiLUte piecework rates above and beyond the minimum, if the workers choose to work on such a basis. By considerable extra effort, individual workers thus can triple their earnings, or even more. Since accelerated cane cutting reduces inevitably the total amount of man hours needed to harvest the whole crop, labor unions oppose piecework and incentive rates. 'l\' hether such opposition is successful depends in each case on the local workers. Where even a few workers choose to compete on a piecework basis, usually all cane cutters will go a long with the piecework system. In strongly unionized communities-Cafiamelar is not one of them - the unions are often successful in maintaining overall day rates in cane cutting. \1\Thile each worker earns less thereby, the total amount of available work is increased. Employers may introduce outside workers in such cases, either to stimulate piecework competition or to drop a hint to local cane cutters that any increases in the total amount of work achieved by working only by clay rates and by refusing the temptation of piecework will be swallowed up by outside labor anyway. In one south coast municipality, where the union is strong, the union local has as part of its contract the stipulation that no outsid e workers may be used on the colonias which it has organized. This rule was formulated because of the large numbers o( migrant laborers who come to the coast Lo work in the cane during the December-to-July harvest, commuting daily or weekly from the highlands. l\Iany of these migrants stay on when the harvest ends and move their families to the coast. This is less true today, however, than it was thirty or forty years ago. It is estimated that perhaps half of

358

THE PEOPLE 01: PUERTO RICO

the present-day working population of Ca1iamelar are (or are descended from) migrants who moved in from highla nd municipalities within the past fift y yea rs. Migrant workers from the highlands often prefer can e cutting to other tasks. While it is generall y conceded to be the m ost distasteful j ob, the minimum rate can be made t wo or three times over by piecework. As man y as e ighty migrant highland cane cutters may come daily to Vieja <luring the harvest and a re routed from there co smaller colonias. Since the ir association with the sugar industry is brief and commutation expenses high , such worke rs like LO earn the m ost money p ossible in the sh ortest poss ibl e time. They are not particularly interested in strong unionization 0 1· in extending the work season so much as d1ey are in a m assing a lump sum of cash LO s upplement their income in the highlands. Such worke rs may own a sma ll parce l of highland lane.I or they ma y be tenants on the land of a highland coffee hace11dado. The ir income is m easured much more in terms of subs istence perquisites and payment in kind than is that of the coastal wage earn ers today. Needless to say, permanent res id ents o f the coast are not panicularly fri endl y to the highland migrant workers whom they regard as clan· nish, tigh t-fis ted, opportunistic. and provinc ial 111 manner. Th e £act that hig hlanders ch oose the hardest and most com petitive j obs in the ca11e is a source o f some amusement to coastal dwellers. As o ne in fo rma nt puts it, "A nosot1·os Los 11egritos de la cosla 110 nos gusta el corte de la caiia!" ("\ Ve little l'\egroes of the coast don·t like cane cu tting!"). Another reason why coastal workers may esch e"v can e cutting is th e ir experien ce th at th e work can be less regular than that involved in certain crew jobs. The ripest cane must be cut first, but the mill's g rinding capacity o ught not to b e exceed ed at a n y p oint. Frequen tl y, cutters will be assigned to a field, on ly to be ordered LO cease cutting severa l hours later. This ma y be due to a tempora r y shortage of rolling stock to carry the cane, or because the mills have t oo much cu t cane a lready available. At such times, workers engaged in weeding, a lign ing trash, loading, and other jobs may ha ve work for the whole day, while the cutters stand idle. It is true th at a can e cutter work· ing piecework may earn in a few hours of p iecework labor a wage equal co that for a whole day o f work o n crew at a minimum rate. But e nergetic workers, who warm slowly to their jobs, are annoyed b y the sudden s toppages of work i11 the cane cutting. Says o ne man , "/J mi no me gusta e l curte hasta q11e se me calienle el cuerpu; despuh de desayunarse, comu a las nueve, curwdo el cuerpo me estd pidie11do el trabajo ya ." (" I don't li ke cutting cane till I'm warm ed up; after break· fas t, arou nd nine, when my body is 'asking for the work .'") Rath er than warm up, on ly to quit several hours later, such a worker prefers to work at dai ly rates, on a crew laying rails. Another reason for the d isl ike of ca ne cutting is the ~heer physica l strain and c.liscomfon, even danger, it mvolves. Many can e varieties have hairy s urfaces, and the fib ers penetrate one's skin. get into one's eyes, a nd

prove very irritating. The h o ttest place in the cane fi e ld is right along the cuuing line. yet it is inadvisable to rem o,·e o n e's h at or shin or neckerchief while being subjected to the sun. can e hair, and dust of th~ fi eld. \ Vhen piecc\\'Ork rates prevail , the work pace is very stre nuous. Indi vidual cutters are motivated to nit faste r by the promise o f higher pa y and b y th e sp eed of the cutting go ing 011 to e ith er side of them. To increase the 01tting speed '>Lill more. the landholding corporatio11 \\'hich u\\'n~ Colo11ia \ ' icja offers ~c,·c ral cash prizes w those ca 11<.: c111 tcn; ,,·Ito n 1t Ll1 <.: 111 chl <a nc each week ol' th<.: han·cs i 011 a11Y Jann of 1ltc corpora · tion. Th e li r~t pri1c j.., 1wc111y·G\-c dollar-;. :'\at111:tl l ~. accident:-. on111 ,,·ith '>Olli<.: l1ec1uc.:11c~. l°'>j><.:ci;dly ,,·JH.: 11 the han·e:.t ha-. jtht bq.!;llll. Clll rer-. ;11 c- not ~"t't adj11,t<:d LO the pa ce, and th<.: big grCJ\l'Lh can e. th ick ll"ilh stra\\' and heavil y e ntangled , lta .. 11ot yet bcc11 c leared. \ Vhen a d ec i~io11 ha .. lil'C ll mack LO ll ;1r\'Cst the < a 11e on a g i,·e11 plot ol Colo11i ;1 \ ' icja land. the 11111y1nd1J11111 orders his !>t1bordinatc., w ;i.,.,cmble crcw-; for the joh. Cutters generally ~t;in \\'ork about :-.ix-t liiny in the m o rning, hall an hollr i>e lore the arri,·;d ol th <' rail la ying crews and wagon loaders. Th<.; n1 llers s prea d out, three to six ro ws of cane apa rt, depending on th e number of men being u ~ed to clear a given fi eld. ,\ rn/Jataz. de corle (cutting foreman) s uper vises the ir work. \Vhen th ey have cut i11 about thirty feet, th e rail new la ys the first line of track. parall el LO the cutting lin e and running the width o f the plot being cleared. Track is dragged in bu nd les from the last-c ut fi e ld. Then the wagons which will be loaded with the rreshl y cut cane arc dragged to the plot by ox team and are dis tributed a long the first line of ra il. The load ers (1mgo11eros) begin to stack the cut cane which the cut· ters toss in to rough piles as they move forwa rd. L oaders load from both sides of the wagon , leaving pan o( the ca n e in th e forward pil es to be load ed when th e next li11e of mil is laid d own further into t he cut can e and additional wagons are broug ht in . En ch load runs fr om one-and-a-h alf to two tons, and at t imes a good load er w ill fini sh a wagon in twenty minutes. \ Vagon loading, like ca ne cutting, is competitive in the sense that piecework rates us ually prevail. Co-operative labor in s uch tasks is rare. The only avenue of co-operation for loaders, for inst an ce, is in the splitting o f an extra pile of cane between two wagons. Co-operation o f th is kind - splitting a n ex tra pi le of ca ne and overloading-is done when there is a sh ortage of wagons and loaders would have to wa it much longer, once their wagons were filled, before th ey co uld begin loading again. Since they are paid b y tonnage under piecework conditions, it behooves them LO fill their wagons as fast as they can. Of course, if a daily minimum rate preva il ed, there would be n o point in rushing or overloading, and th e corporation would be obliged to su p · p ly empty cars faster if it wan ted stead y labor in load · ing. \'\Tith piecework rates a nd wagon shortages, m en co-operate in o rder to com pe te more efficiently. This is th e ir way of coping wi th the ine flici encies o f the productive process wh ich pun ish th e workers in wage losses rather tha11 the corp orat ion in g reater costs.

CANAJ\ IELAR: RURAL SUGAR PLA='ITATION PROLETARIAT

By the time the first row of wagons has been filled, the cu tters a re like ly to have advanced another six varas (about fifty-fo ur feet) and the second row of portable track can be laid some thirty fee t forward .from ti1e first row. Full wagons a re dragged off along the portabl e rails by the oxen a nd are taken to the scales. Each car is numbered, and the loaders' foreman records these numbers so that it is easy to credit each loader "·ith the ,,·eiglu of cane loaded by him on a pa n icuL1r ,,·ago11. The pay scale in 1949 at Colonia Vicj;1 r;111 ;1bcrnt thirty-th ree cen ts a ton, or about fortyni11 c <<.:Ills lor a on e-and-a-ha lf ton load. \ 1Vhat keeps down lo;1dcrs· pa y is the time \l'asted between wagons, si nce rol ling- :-.tock lor the portable rai ls is not regularly ;l\ a il;1 ble. 1.oadcrs ci rrnm,·cnt this difficulty in part b y O\-Cr lo:1d i ng. as described above, bu t few loaders c;1 r11 more th;1 n ;1 Ii ulc o\·er three dollars each working <L1 y during li;11Test.. Th e cu t c;1nc. o nce \1·cig hecl . is transferred by small cr;111cs to r;1 i Iroad cars or is loaded onto rubber-wheeled carts and then is shipped by road o r rai l to the mills. 1\lo~t cr;111 cs i11 the Ca1-1ame lar area are motor-powered, though a number ol ox-dri,·en cranes remain . Informan ts forty yea rs old and over can recall when cane was transferred by ha nd from the small wagons to the railroad cars. A strono· vou ng man would fill a car on one b , day's work-some twenty to twen ty-th ree tons of cane -at a wage or nine cents per ton loaded. This was in the 19:w's. In the days before winches were set up, one 111a11 was needed for each trainload of ca ne at each loading point. Since about forty loads of cane is the c ustomary maximum quantity loaded at Colonia Vieja each day of the harvest, this former arrangement would requ ire forty workers and their foremen. At present, the two loading points in Colonia Vieja, using power winches, employ eight men in all, including fo remen. Th is is a reduction to less than 20 per cent o( the former la bor power requ ired in but a single phase o[ the field labor. Multiplied by the great number o( corporate colonins now eq uipped with winches, some idea of the effect of mecha nization on the industry ca n be glimpsed. T ractors, ditch digging machines, and the use of herbicide-which is thought of as mechanization by the workers-also have drastica lly red uced the available jobs. After the crop is cut and the cane load ed , a field m ust be cleaned of trash and prepared once more for cultivation . The oxen may be allowed to graze in the cleared fie ld for a short time. If a ratoon crop is p lanned, no seeding is necessary; but when a new crop is to be put in, the field must be prepared very careful ly. Jn the case of the irrigated south coast terrain, the work of the paleros ("ditchers") is especia lly importa nt. Pa lero work dwind les during the harvest, and fJa/e ros may turn to other jobs: ra il laying, wagon load ing, and so 011. When the growth plantings begin in the late summer, fJaleros are especially busy: old ditches for irrio-ation or drainabo-e must be cleaned and b renewed, and new ditches dug. Such work requ ires a kn owledge o( irrigation techniques and an understanding of h°'v the ·wa ter must flow to reach all parts

359

of the field without collecting in pools or missing an y of the cane plants. Pateros make the principal ditches a long the fields, a nd special trenches for cane seedlings at the end of the furrows where the machines cannot be used. In the poyal, or d rained coastal stretches so important in nineteenth-century cultivation of cane, paleros dug the al/ados, special planting troughs for reseeding. The ditching work o( the palero was formerly much more complex. Many o( his former tasks are now done by machines (such as the initial digging o( the transverse irrigation channels, ca lled Maclaine's 4 0 ) . Nevertheless, the pa lero rema ins the closest approximation of the artisan among field laborers. 0 0 His work day, set by law, is seven hours instead of eight, and ca lls fo r a higher minimum wage than that for any other field job. Since the introduction of labor legislation in 1943, the palero's work has been done on a daily minimum basis. The use of incentive techn iques to extract more labor from pnleros during the twenties is still a source of resentful ta lk. Informants claim that many p(l /eros were ruptured because they tried to boost their pay through excessive piecework. \'\Then a field has been prepared for the planting o f a new big growth crop in late summer or early fall, the seeders begin their work. "Seed" consists of eigh teeninch lengths of freshly cut cane, cut diagonally at the base and flat at the t0p. Seeders move forward, straddling a furrow, using a short-handled pick as a dibble, and seeding the furrow at short interva ls. A hole is made, the seed inserted, and the top o[ the seed tapped into place. Seeders are preceded by seed carriers, who carry one hundred to one hundred and fifty pounds of seed in a burlap strip and toss the seed evenly along each furro""- An average plot of perhaps fifteen to e ighteen c11erdas will require the serv ices of about twelve workers during the seeding: four paleros, three or four seeders, two seed cleaners, a seed carrier, and one irrigation worker. Seed cleaning still is sometimes done by women, who rarely work at all any longer in field processes. Except for seed cleaning, a nd occasiona lly sp reading fe rtilizer a nd cleaning cane trash, women workers h ave disappeared from the cane since the labor laws of the forties. By October or November the last planting is over, and irrigat ion work (riego) and weeding (desyerbo), together with some ditching, provide the scant employment available. Most workers are idle, for the most part, until the start of the harvest in late December or January. In desperate circumstances, nearly any worker can depend to some degree on the resources of his own or his wife's fam il y. But because over-a ll resources are so extremely lirnited, soch dependence cannot go too far. In practice, this means that every worker is ex·Ii• A Hispanicization of the name of the American engineer wh o devised this 1ype o f ditch. no Old informants still boast that their fath ers or gra ndfathers were Cainous /m foros . " £11 esos dins los /mleros 11u11ca sa /ian del trnb(ljo e11g 11ay 11ca'o co1110 nltom" ("In those da ys. p a/ ems neve r used to lea ve work iu their work clothes'"). the y say, re fe rring to the fact that palc ros we nt to and from th eir work in good clothes and changed in the fi eld.

360

THE PEOPLE OF PUERTO RIC0

pected to take full advantage o[ any available work opportunities. Avoiding work constitutes a social offense, since it can mean overtaxing the family's total economic capacity in time of need. Pan of each worker's social obligation during the harvest is to square up debts incurred with family members in slack season so as to restore some reciprocal economic equilibrium. Such debts include not only formal loans of money or goods, but the fulfilling of a variety of ceremonial services and minor favors as \\·ell, such as the purchase of little presents for one's aliijado (godson), or the treating of one's comjJadres to foot! or drink. As stated, unless some major economic alternative presents itself, most workers count on the cane to provide the bulk of the year's budget. A "major econom ic a l ternative" might be winn ing a large sum on the ill ega l lottery, getting a minor polit ica l job, or being sent to the United States as a migrant worker th rough the pooling of family resources. Barring windfalls of this kind, the cane worker must u se all his ingenuity to supplement in every way possible his limited wages. THE PLACE OF SUBSIDIARY ECONOMIC ACTIVITIES

F or the ,,·orking people of Vieja and ·Orie nte, no readily accessible activity can take the place of labor

Fig . 36. Hanel cultivation of c1111e fi elds near Pon ce on tltc south coast. Photo by D cla110: Govc rn111 e 11t of Puerto Riro.

in the cane fields. The prevailing economic importance labor has been demonstrated in the preced ing sect ions. Supplementary activities, for the most part, are o( minor importan ce in terms of cash in come but are valuab le in te rms o( the meals they may provide, the ceremon ia l obligations fo r wh ich they may afford means of (ulflllment, and the meaning and motivation they lend to the cu ltural life or the people. \ Vork in the ca ne has lost much or it-; cu lwral meaning. while supplementary ani,·iLic-. c orninue to he rich i11 it. Segm entation of tlH.: '>tl'J>'> i11 th e cane cull i,·:11 io11 process, disappearance of tilt li:tc i('11d :1 p:1 u c:r11. tile o\ er-all prevalence of wage carni11g. Ll1 c grmnh of nH·c h:111i1ation, the depcr:-011ali1atio 11 ol c 111ployc r-cn1ploycc relations, the rc1110val of final n:lining- n·n1c1s. the centralization of tl1c grinding process- al I share responsibility in ha,·i11g red11n;d til e c:ulwr:d meaning- o( working in the cane. Yet work in the c:111e is more important than ever as a sou rce of Ii,-elihood. Suh~id­ iary economic acti\· itie~. ~11ch as livestock r:ti'iing or the sale of bootl eg rum, c an11ot be full-time alternatives to ,\·age labor; yet they arc part of the cultural field ,,·ithin which Vieja and Orieme people grow, ,\·01·k, and "defend themselves" (se defienden) . Of great importance is the raising of livestock. There are five cows in Pob laclo Oriente, one owned by a man o[ such

CANAi\IELAR: RURAL SUGAR PLANTATION PROLETARIAT

361

who depends principally on livestock for his income their animals get into the cane, and after several warnand who does not "·ork in the cane. Many families have ings to the owner, a n animal may be shot if i t is found goats, and one old woman, considered demented by the in the cane fields. Since the village of Oriente and vi11agers, supportS herself by raising goats. Nearly every Colonia Vieja are surrounded by cane fields on every family has a pig, and even at Colonia Vieja, \\"here liv- side, much care must be taken to protect the animals. ing space is extremely restricted, most families keep a An additional danger to the owners of livestock is the pig o r two in a small sty behind the house. Pigs are re- chemical herbicide now in use in south coast cane cultigarded as one of the few ways in "·hich capital can be vation. The herbicide is applied in the weeding process accumulated. Once the fiye dollars or so has been by use of manually operated spray guns. It is washed inves ted in a pig, care a11d feed ing are all that are into the furrows and ditches by rain and irrigation, requir('d. and the animal's growth is looked on as the and Cafiamelar people repeatedly claim that their aniaccumul:it ion of wealth abO\·e and beyond the initial mals drink it and die. i11\·c:-. 1111 c11t i11 purch;ise. Owners who can afford it may While livestock remains an important source of cash in\·est a kw dollars each month in feed, but this is and subsistence, old informa nts maintain tha t before beyond the means o( almost C\'errone and, for the most 1900 much more livestock cou ld be raised. P asture, now pan, :-.cr:i ps pro\'icle the pigs' meals. It should be em- extremely scanty, was at that time plentiful. At present, phasi1cd that livestock rais ing of this kind, especially animals may be pastu red only on certain rather barren in the case of pigs, is not so much a way of making stretches of corporation land. One of the evening tasks monc,· :1~ it is a \\·a,· of saving it. Sa,·s one informant, of lhe young boys in Oriente and at Vieja is to cut a "\\'l1c'11 times :ire l;acl, the [;milies ' without animals quantity of grass for the animals. At dusk each day, the haYc nothing 011 ,,·hich to li\'c." Despite the importance youngsters take sickles, go out in small groups, and and popularity of li,·estock raising, the a medias (by relllrn laden with bundles of freshl y cut grass. Some halves) practi ce common in the highlands is poorly cattle owners, more daring than others, will pasture regard ed in Oriellle and at Vieja. By a medias custom, their animals in forbidden fields. They say that the the owner of a pig will wrn it over free of charge to a improved feed is worth the risk of the fine, since the caretaker. \\'hen the animal is Cull grown, the pig is animal can wander about freely. Says one such owner, butch ered by mutual agreement and the meat, or the "Ha)' que vivir por la izquierda aqui en Puerto Rico, cash rea lized from its sa le, is divided equa lly. One in- pero sin jJerjudicarse!" ("One must live illegally here in formant remarks cynically, "I do all the work, and the Puerto Rico, but without hurting one's self!"). owner gets h a lf of the profit-just because he owned In addition to the above, there are a few owners of the baby p ig!" The cynicism regarding a m edias prac- pigeons at the Playa (beach), two men who h ave hives tices may derive from Lhe wage-earning Lraditio n on of honey bees, two men who own horses, and one man the coast. Coastal workers are not impressed by the who raises fighting cocks. "interest-bearing" quality which typifies so much of In summary, livestock r aising is a subsidiary ecoagricultural enterprise. Few of them could ever be nomic activity carried on throughout the year which persuaded to work on Lhe medianero (share) basis so provides subsistence, cash , a nd a means for saving. It common on highland farms. Jn the case of livestock allows for the use of the labor of the wife and the chilraising, it seems that the people of Vieja and Oriente dren in cleaning, leading to pasture, feeding, ga thering are willing to save through the medium, but object to feed, e tc., and enthusiasm for livestock breeding is, in profit making by the pig's owner since he does none of fact, considered an important wifely virtue. On the other hand, shortages of investment capital, pasturage, the work involved in caring for the pig. Whe n pigs are fully g rown, or even before then if a and a cash market ma ke livestock raising necessarily a fa mily feels the need, they will be butchered without a subsidiary occupation. Only one man in Barrio Poyal, permit (j;or la izq uierda, "to the left" or illegally) and where Oriente and Vieja are located, makes a major the meat sold in small quantities to neighbors. If the portion of his income from livestock. Since h e seeks to pig can be kept until the Christmas season, it may be get local workers to raise pigs a medias, charges when his butchered for the Christmas meal. The lack of refrig- boar is used for service, and exploits other "interesteration facilities means that once butchered, an animal bearing" devices in connection with livestock, this inmust be eaten fa irly quickly. For this reason, when a dividual is not well regarded. Haciendas in the pre-1900 period maintained many family plans to butcher a pig for commercial reasons, buyers are first solicited. Pigs also may be sold alive to paternalistic p ractices involving livestock, and some of wholesa lers who drive along the highway in trucks for these practices still obta in. Thus, cows can be serviced this purpose. free of charge by the colonia bulls, some inferior pasGoa ls are maintained principally for milk and ture is made available free of charge for local stock, and cheese, although cabrito (young goat, usually prepared agregados are allowed to raise pigs, chickens, and goats in stew) is considered a delicacy and may be prepared on company land. Colonia mayordomos often own sevfor an importa nL ceremonial occasion such as the feast era l cows, pastured and cared for at the colonia, and given by paren ts after an infant's baptism. sell the milk to local agregados. This constitutes in realChickens are very common and are allowed to re- ity a p erquisite rendered the 1/W)'Orrlomo by the cormain unpenned. Pigs must be penned, however, and porate landholders. goats a nd cows carefully tethered. Owners are fined if Fishing is another important subsidiary economic

362

TH£ PEOPLE OF PUERTO RICO

activity for the people of Pob~a d:> O~iente, Colonia Vieja, and the barrio bead:. F1shmg 1s a year-round activity which supplies full -tnne employment for ab.out six adults in Barrio Poyal. Yet even these full -time fishermen will spend some time work !ng in the can e durino- the height of the harvest. Fishermen range from ci1 e full -time operators of sailboa ts (of which there are four at the Barrio Poyal beach) to those who fish from rowboats or from the shore for sport or for food for the family. Sailboats represent a very s ubstantial investment of cash-about two hundred dollars. Because they enable the fishermen to use th~ir n~ts and traps several miles offshore, and bec~use of their large carrying capacity for the catch,_ sad?oats ~re an _e~­ viable possession. But the cost ol a sailboat 1s proh1b1tive and no sugar cane wor~er can hop~ to ~a~e enou~h to buy one. Besides, operatmg and m a mtam111g a sailboat involves special skills not known to most local people. Two of the sai l boa~s at the. Poy'.tl ~each ~re operated by members of _a s111gle fi sh111g Lam_dy wh ich has been engaged in fishrng for two generat10ns. One boat is owned by a recently returned veteran, and the fourth is owned by a fisherman of long standing. At the town beach of Canamelar, some sailboat fishermen are financed b y small-sca le entrepreneurs who own com mercial refrigerators in n eighboring towns. By the prevailing arrangement, th: two fishermen :equired to operate a sailboat each rec~1ve 20 per cent of the_ wholesale value o( the calch . Sixty per cent of the income goes to the entrepreneur who owns th e_boa~ and pays for n ecessa ry repairs. ln the case of the full-time fishermen at the Poyal beach, the boats are owned in every case but one by their operators. Fish are sold to wholesalers who travel along the beaches during the best fishing seasons, or to commercial drivers who will carry the local catch to markets in larger, neighboring towns on a commission basis. One sma ll local retailer buys part of the daily catch and, traveling by horse and wagon, sells it retail in the upland villages of the municipality. The height of the fishi ng season comes during the fall, at which time local spending, due to the slack season, is at a minimum. The smallest proportion of the catch is sold within the barrio at that time. During the rest of the year, local people have more cash, and a goodly share of what is caught can be sold at the beach itself, in the village of Oriente, at Colonia Vieja, or at one of the other neighboring colonias. A license is required to sell fish, but the fishermen pass among the houses almost daily, shouting that they have fish for sale, uncon cerned about the licensing rule. T h is practice, like the unlicensed butchering of animals and the illegal pasturing o( livestock, is part o( the lawbreaking regarded as completely defensible morally by Barrio Poyal people. Fish are rarely bought on trust (fia'o), unlike almost any other food or essential commod ity. Instead, the housew ife wi ll examine the catch, ask for a price on her choice, and pay cash from her small store of change. If fami.ly budgets allow, barrio families eat fresh fish Lwice or even three times a week. There is no bargaining. Full-time fishermen have a sp ecia l status in the

barrio. Their cash income is perhaps less than that of an energetic /Jalero or foreman, but their boats represent a significant accumulation of capital and their sk ill and knowledge are much admired. vVhen these fi shermen are not at sea, they spend their time mending and making nets and traps, cau lking their boats, repairing sa il , and otherwise renovating equipment. A much more important g roup or fisl1ermen numericall y are those sugar cane workers " ·h o fall back on their fishing sk ill during the slack season in cane. These men, about forty of them. fish from ro\,·boat.s or along the s hores and use the ir c1tches !or food, w maintain social rel;1t ionships via gilts ol fresh fish. or lO provide a small. ex tra cash inco1rn.:. Th e i111portance of fishing as an economic :1cti\·ity \ari cs in each case with the zeal, good fortune . and sk ill or the !isher111:111. l\ fost of these men work in teams. splitting th eir catch between them. full-tim e and most part-time fishermen liH: at the Poya l beach, though a kw p:trt-timers li n ; at Oricnte Vi llage. People from the r.0 !011 i11s, and especially from Colonia \ 'ieja. which is some distance I rom the beach, fish onlv, rarc lv. . Fish ing techniques differ ,,·ith the seasons and the equipment available. Sa il boat fish ermen re ly largely on the 11a.sas, or wooden fish traps, which they sink along the banks several miles offshore. Traps o( this kind can be used safely only from August to about December, when the sea is relatively calm . Species taken include the salmonele (surmullet), sal111a (?), clzicata (?), colirnbia (?) , pargo (porgy), mero (sea bass), cuna (?), arra1/ado (?), and cabrilla (rock bass).'.i From December to May, fishermen also use the c hinchorro arrnstre, a large net which is used to drag likely looking areas within the little bay wh ich faces on the barrio beach. The c!tinchorro arrnstre requ ires the co-operation of eight men for efficient use, and each worker gets his share of the catch and a cash payment. The largest share goes, of course, to the owner of the net. Fish taken by this means include fJicua (barracuda), sierra (kingfish ), cassave (?), corcovado (humpback fish?), cojinua (?), and j1trel (a carangoid species) . A wide-meshed net o( the same type (chinclwrro volante) is sunk in certain a reas from A ugust to November to catch a kind of sea turtle called fanduca. Gill nets (cl1inc/wrros de ahorca) are also used for some species, such as jarea (?), pluma (?), and 111unearna (?), throughout the year. Year-round fishing, carried on mainly from rowboats, is possible through the use o[ trotl ines (1)(l/ang res) for bottom-feeding sp ecies in the bays ancl coves. Palangre fishing is done mainly at night, and bottles suspended from bent twigs are used as bells to reveal the whereabouts of the various small boats and their fishing l ines. Sailboat and rowboat fisherm e n, returning with the ir catches, troll with wobblers and spoons (/Jlatinas) behind their boats for game fish such as the s ie rra when the sea is placid. Hook and line (anzuelo) fishing from shore is common, as is the use o( circular throw nets (tarn/las). These n ets are used both to catch bait for hook and line fishing or trotline fishing and to r,1 The author was unable to identify man y of the species taken.

CAN A?. I ELA R: R UR AL SUGAR PLANTATION PROLETARIAT

take edible species of a sma ll size. Lastly, cuttlefish, lobslers, oysters, and other sessile and crustacean aq uatic life-forms are caught by hand in the rocks and shoals, usuall y at nig ht. Jn former yea rs, large nets of a small-mesh lype and wooden tide-traps were used, but these are now prohibited and this law is not broken in th e Poya l area. Hardly any food taboos surround fish as a food. Mero (sea bass) and medregar (?)are considered poisonous if the fish is excessively large or if it is eaten at certain times of the year. On e variety, the cliapin, is said to be illloxicaling. i\Ioreover, the traditional rnli11gs \\·Ii ich d es ig n ale some foods as "hot" (ca lienle) and olhcrs as .. rn td" (/rcsrn) also obtain for fish (Redfield, ·~1. 1•:!1 :~) . Sea food in general is considered a male aphrodi~iac: and a source of male potency by many of lhc.: lll C ll o r Oric 11Lc. Exce pt for Lile rew full-Lime fishermen in Barrio Pov:il. fishi1w must be regarded primarily as a subsicli:1r;· cconon;ic: activity. \ rhi ch provides some additio na l c;1sh or at least a larger food supply to successful fi sherm e n. J t is a11 important activity for money-earning ;1nd for recreationa 1 reasons. It provides the local \\'orking m :lll " ·iL11 additional cash, entertainment, and an opportun ity to explo it indi vidual skills and knowledge not needed in the cane. i\ fan y loca l people are adept at making the circular, lead-weighted throw nets or at building the fish traps of wood and chicken wire or h ardware cloth . Such skills have economic value, since nets and traps can sometimes be sold. Fishing and the sea are much on the minds of the Barrio Poya l people, and provide a source of folk lore, jokes, and sad tales. The sea is said Lo be an exact duplica te of the Janel, with mounlains and plains, trees and bush es, horses and cows (certain species of fish), and other counterparts o( the terrestrial part of the world. Stories o[ storms at sea, of the sea's ominous retrea t before the coming of a hurrica ne, of monster fish, of loca l fishe rmen who ha ve been drowned in the past arc common. And there is no end of droll a necdotes. Tra ps are occasionally stolen by fishermen from his listenneirrhborinotowns' a nd one old man d elights {'") t-> ~ ers by telli11g how he will put feroc ious dogs in his traps so that when the thieves attempt to stea l them the dogs will bark and scare them off. Another man tells wryly how h e marked the position of one of his traps by sighting Lhe ch imney o f an old hacienda and a fam iliar clump of mangrove. H e left the trap without a float in order to frustra te thieves. Two clays later, when he rowed back to empty the trap, he tried to locate it by his landmarks and round that someone had chopped down the mang rove dump. It took him several hours of disgusted grappling to loca te the trap. Stories of this kind show something of the part the sea plays in the th oughts and ex periences of the people of Poyal. A third supplementary economic activity in the Poyal way o[ life is provided b y the trapping o( land cra bs. These large crabs live along the irrigation ditches, ca nals, and poo ls, and in the cane fields. Th e crabs Jive ma inly on the sugar cane and destroy substantia l quantities. Crab hunters and trappers thus render a double service-tha t o f getting themselves

363

food and of reducing damage to the cane. In the rain y late summer and fall season, crabs can be caught by hand. Both young boys and adults engage in crab catching, a nd, rarely, girls, or a young man and his sweetheart, may go out to hunt crabs. Usually operating in pairs, the hunters carry burlap sacks, m achetes, and a torch (mech611) consisting of a pint bottle of kerosene stopped up with a rag wick. 'When a crab is located outside his hole, one hunter jams his machete over the hole and seizes the crab as it tries to crawl in. As with fi shing, crab ca tching is recreational as well as economic in character. Young boys, ten years old or so, mark their entry into the sport of crab catching as part of their growing up. In addition to hunting crabs, traps are used for catching them, especia lly during the dry months when they are less mobile a nd rarely go fa r from their holes. The traps are constructed ingeniously Crom five-gallon tins and are baited with a piece of cane. ' 1Vhen the crab enters the tin and pulls at the cane, a sliding door is released which effectively traps the crab inside. Crabs a re usually not eaten as soon as they are caug ht. Instead they are kept in chicken wire cages and fattened on corn meal for several weeks. As with fish, crabs ~ire sold illega lly in the community or to passing motorists. They are not so commercialized an item as fish nor so important economically. Yet they constitute a n important loca l item of diet, particularly during the fall slack season. Catching crabs allows for the mobilization of the efforts oE young male children and is an activity marking progressive m aturation in much the same way as onshore fishing, the gathering of fod d er, .and so on. Stealing crabs from a nother's traps is considered most unethica l, as is the theft of fish from the nasas. Gathering shou ld be mentioned as still another sub-' sidiar y econom ic activity. \1Vith the land in the barrio so largely devoted to the cultiva tion of ca ne, there is little room for a n ything else. Yet a few fruit trees, many bushes bearing medicina l o r ed ible fru it, leaves, bark, or fruit husks, a number of edible roots, and gourd plants still grow. In addition, loca l people are quick to harvest the scanty crop of beans sometimes available on corporation land when beans o r o ther legumes are planted to enrich the soil. \ Vhatever part o( this crop the people fail to harvest is promptly plowed back imo the so il. \ 1\Thile such crops never provide a great d ea l o f food , one Poyal farnily estimates that enoug h beans were harvested in one year b y dint of great effor t to give the famil y thirty meals. Another important aspect o[ gathering is the provision of tinder or firewood . Poya l is completely stripped of wood, and insular law forbids the cu tting of the mangrove trees which grow a long the barrio beach. Owners o( wood-burning stoves (fogones) gathe r bits o[ wood and cocon uts along the beach , or stea l pieces of cane o r boug hs of the nrnngrove trees to build their cooking fires. The on ly a lternati ve is to b u y charcoal, a rela ti vely expensive commodity. Ther~ are ~w? .ot her extremely im portant subsidiary economic act1v n1es : the betting on and sale of illega l

364

THE PEOPLE OF PUERTO RICO

lottery tickets (bolita), and the manufacture and sale single number. Also important is the fa c t that it is usuof bootleg liquor (caiiita, jJilorro, f7ilrinche). Tvlost all y possible to get any specifi c three-digit number o ne Poyal people regard these activities as morally unob- d es ires in bolita. Sellers will take bets on any number jectionable and the laws illegalizing them as unjust. or part of a number not covered by other beue rs, and Bolita (literally, "little ball") was introduced into also will ho ld numbers in reserve for a regular better. Poyal in 1937. The writer was unable to discover which There are quite a few individuals in Barrio Poyal who persons in the barrio first made contact with outside have be t on the same number weekly (and o n occagame operators, but the games have always been man- sions when games were held twice a week, the n twiceaged and financed by outside sources, and the tickets wee kly) for seven years or more. Bo!ila games arc opersold by local ticket sellers. Several times since 1937, ated b y more Lhan o ne combin e, and althrntg h the local people have attempted to start games o( their same winning numbers hold ror all games 011 a g iven own, but such games have always failed for want of day, there are o l t.en L\\' O, three, or more games running sufficient capital. Bolita has remained popular in simultaneously; ;.c also, some games li:t\'C more tli :lll Poyal even though its odds are against the individual series o[ numbers...\ccorclingl y, a better ma y r:tise th e better and it regularly drains remarkable sums of ante for his bet o n a gi\'C11 number not o nl y by increasmoney away from its players. Three factors seem im- ing the amount h e bets o n that n111nbe r in a sing le portant in evaluating the game's popularity. First, it is a game (if this is pc rmiued ), but also by bell ing on the source of excitement to local people, who follow the same numbe r in se\·eral games. Anoth er important betting with great interest and awai t the announce- characteristic o[ bu!ila is the Ian that sel lers arc usuments of the winning numbers with suspense. Second, ally willing to g ive the bette r credit up LO t.hc da y of the game provides a means of additional livelihood to the drawing. Since credit buying is a preferred pattern the sellers, who either get i5 per cent of the winnings in Poya l life, this cusLOm rits in "·ell \\'itl1 the usual on any prize-winning numbers they sell or earn a flat form o( cash transactions. Lastly, bo!ita tickets a re infive cents on every twenty cents' worth of tickets soid. variably sold b y local peop le on a [ace-to-face basis. T hird, the winnings provide one o'f the few ways in This practice gives a special personal quality to bolita. which local people can accumulate su bstantial sums of Seller and bu yer are known to each other and carry on money. These factors do not explain, however, why the their business in a situation of mutual trust and congame is more attractive to barrio people than the legal fidence. The sel ler can be depended on to pay off winlottery operated by the government of Puerto Rico. ning numbers promptl y and honestly, for if he fails to Certain features of bolita are described below, and do this, he will lose his clien tele. T h e player also must these are fo llowed by a comparison witl~ corresponding fulfill his commitments to the seller, for i( he fails to ones of the legal lottery in an attempt to suggest why pay up by the eve o( the drawing, his bet will be bolita is preferred. cancelled. There are no full-time bolila sellers in BarEach bolita game is limited to 999 numbers (001 to rio Poyal: all sellers are workingmen or housewives 999), and nearly all the numbers for a given game are using this means to supplement the family income. Nor likely to be sold within the ba rrio. Accord ingly, few is there any cbss differen ce between sellers and buyers. weeks go by when there is not a winner known to Bo!ita, therefore, because of the fewer numbers sold, most o( the other players. Each bolita number is repre- the preva ilingly local character of the betting and the sented by a ticket divided into five portions attached to likelihood that winners will be local people, the small a stub . A full ticket sells regularly for twenty cents, or amounts of money required for a bet, the opportunity [our cen ts per portion . Sellers may divide a ticket to choose specific numbers, the availability of credit among a number of buyers so that an individual can (!ia'o) arrangements, and the personal character o f the be t as little as four ce n ts on a game. It is not unusua l relationship between seller and buyer is admirably for the first prize (normally one hundred dollars for fitted to meet local needs. a twenty-cent ticket) to be divided among live players The legal lotte ry, sponsored by the government because the ticket has been sold in portions. There are of Puerto Rico, is island-wide. Its numbers run up a first, second, and third prize- one hund red dollars, through five digits. Although the number o f prizes is forty dollars, and ten do llars respectivel y-two consola- cons iderable, the first prize very large, and the redistion prizes of two dollars each for the numbers just tribu ti.on of money wagered greater proportiona tely above and below the first prize number, and nine one- than in the case of bo/ita, the likelihood o( there being dollar prizes for each ticket ending in the same last two a winner in more than just a (ew of the hundreds of dig its as the first-prize ticket. The w inning numbers rural ba rrios is rela tively slight. Legal lottery tickets are the last three digits o( each of the three winning are sold at twenty cents a ticket. Several persons may numbers of the Santo Domingo legal lottery which is combine to share in the purchase o( a single ticket, b ut announced over the loca l radio every Sunday morning. the ticket is not divisible and the seller cannot sell it Jn some games, the betters are allowed to raise the in fractions of its to ta l price. A better on the legal ante, to pay as much as four dollars for what is nor- lottery, th erefore, e ither must have twenty cents or an ma lly a twenty-cent ticket. A first p r ize winning num- a rrangement with one or more persons who will comber costing four dollars wi ll pay two tho usa nd d o ll ars to the winner. Bolita thus allows the better to play anyr.z Each game is kn o "·n by the name of a b in!, such as La i\1uth ing from four cents to four dollars on th e same cara, La Paloma, e tc.

one

CANA l\IELAR: RURAL SUGAR PLANT ATION PROLETAR IAT

bine with him in the purchase of a ticket. It is not possible to raise the ante on a legal lottery .ticket, nor can one usually be bought on credit. The individual better is rarely able to choose a specific number he wishes to play; he must choose the number or numbers available from the seller's board. A seller usually carries a swck of different numbers; for instance, some in the 1 o,ooo series and some in the 35,000 series. ·while he may have as many diffe rent numbers as the bolita salcs111a11 to se ll, they clo no t run in a consecutive series, and on ly :i fraction of the numbers in the legal lottery r1111 be I ow 1, 000. 5 :• L<'g-al loucry salesmen arc 10 be found in the towns and citi('s. rather than in the rnral ,·illages, and their customers usuall y are of a higher than working class stallls: during the period o( the writer's field work in Barrio Popi. lie "·itnesscd the sa le of legal lottery ticke ts to loc:i l people 011 o nly nm occasions. Legal loucry s:i l<.:s111c n are a special occupational group in Puerto Rica n soc i e t~·· Th ey hold licenses which they p11 rchasc from a g0\·ernme11 t agency, and the demand for such li censes, particularly in the urban centers, far exceeds the number of licenses issued. Many license holders se ll blocks of tickets to other persons, who then resell them. But most of this buying and selling activity d ocs not involve people living in rnral areas. v\Thile the legal lottery is sold full-time by lower middle-class persons aspiring to respectability and economic independence and is bought by customers who usu ally are either the socia l equals or superiors of the salesmen, /;o/ita. is sold part·time by working people, mainly rural, and bought by other working people. The two patterns of sale and the two markets appear to be largely separate and tend to perpewate themselves w i thout much overlapping. l\ [ention has been made of the fact that Poya l people, although they know it is illega l, do not consider bolita an immoral ga me; it would be hard for them to think so in view o f the government-supported legal lottery. D espite the fa ct that most of them are loya l supporters o f the po litica l p arty in power, they resent the strict anti-boliln laws of 19.18. These laws, which make buyer and seller o( bolita liable to imprisonment for terms up to six months, have reduced the bolita market, although they have by no means d estroyed it. Since people know their favorite numbers by memory, since they usually buy the same number week after week, and si nce bolila salesmen are able to memorize the beuers a nd the a moun t bee, it is possi ble for betting to go on continuously witho ut the use of tickets, which are the best ev idence o( illega l betting. The writer has seen bets totaling several hundreds of clolh1rs collected in broad daylight and in view of scores of people with53 l t \\'as not clear in Poya l ll'hether people showed a p reference for n11111bers hclow 1 ,ooo because thcv arc "more comfortable" with sm a ll n11m lic1-s. because th ey Imo\~' the series 001- 999 defines the ran ge o f winnin~ possihili1ies as smaller in the uolita, or whethe r I h ere was som e other reaso n in volved. Jn any case, dreams of lucky 11umbers alwa ys seemed to involve three-digit ones, ancl people would ta lk of certain thrce·digit numbers as "beautiful" or "uglr."

365

out a word being spoken by salesma n or betters. The winning numbers are an nounced on a Puerto Rican station on Sunday morning; bets are p aid off that night or the following night. At the time the writer left B arrio Poyal, the new laws h ad caused a drop in bolita sales, but there was no indication that the money had been shifted to the lega l game and there was considerable ill-will about the laws. One old woman in the barrio had been convicted for selling tickets <"Ind had been sentenced to three months' imprisonment; her conviction coincided with newspaper an nouncements of the opening of a new luxury hotel in San Juan, with pictures o( its elegant gaming rooms. Barrio people continue to feel that bolita is their game and to regard the legal lottery and o ther more e labora te gambling systems as the proper concern of people of other classes. One barrio informant, speaking o( the new laws against bolita, sa id: " How can it be bad when so many people like it?'' This would appear to be nea rly everyone's attitude. The Pentecosta l church mem bers in Barrio Poyal frown on boliln and all other forms of gambl ing. but they are in the minority. A majority of barrio residents were still playing bolita when the writer ended his field work there. I t is impossible lO say how ma ny people in P oyal sell bolila, what their earnings a re, or how great the sales are at any time. A trustworthy in formant claimed to have sold as much as fou r hundred dollars' worth o [ bolila during each of many successive weeks of the harvest while holding a regular job in the cane fi elds during the day. Before the new anti-bo lita laws, whi ch use imprisonment rather than fines as a threa t, went into effect, many women sold bolita. The number o f saleswomen dropped afLer the new laws were passed. S<tid one man: " Imagine my wife in jail and me saddled with the responsibilities o f nine children !" Several local women can tell of n a rrow escapes from the police, o f running between h o uses a nd hiding the incriminating tickets while the police were in hot pursuit. Such tales arc tolcl with a mixture of defi ant pride and amusement, and take on the ch aracter o( exploits. Estimates of the earnings of bolita sa lesmen vary with the season, but their earnings seem to have fallen since the new laws were passed. To be seen realistically, earnings of the sa lesmen must be compared to no earn ings at all. Peop le forced out of bolita sell ing rarely can find any econom ic alternative. Sin ce bolita is operated from outside the local community, it is necessa ry to h ave intermed ia ries between the sn lesmen and the game operators. These intermed iaries operate b y ca r, visit ing the barrio usually on the eve o[ the drawing to collect the bet money, and re turning in a day or two to pay off winnings. The relationships be tween intermed ia ries and local salesmen m ust be m arked by the same kind of trustfulness which characterizes relationships between sa lesmen and betters. TC the sa lesma n can not pay off his betters, he loses his clie ntele. The game o perato rs un derstand £ully the need to keep the gri me opera ting o n a (ace-to-face basis and lO meet commitments promptl y a nd ho nestly. The writer was told of only one insta nce where the

366

TllE PEOPLE OF Pl.ERTO RICO

game failed tO pay off promptly, and this was due lo housi ng, clothing, hospi uil ity, ceremon ial relalionship. trouble with the poli ce. Th e winnings were paid a family obligation, and friendship-w ithout alLeri11g materially their economic fate. The writer has not been week later. From the point of vie"· or mos t o( the local people, able to document lhis process of "culturally approved bu/ita is less imponant in terms or the in come it af- di~sipation" penny by penn y. But in one case of a fords sa lesmen than it is in terms of lhe winnings il $ 1,500 stake, L11e winner spent all of his money in provides. \·Vhen th e game was in full swing in Oriellle nine month s and at the e nd or this time had nothing a nd Vi eja, every "·eek was marked by several S 1oo or more to show for his expend itures than a one-room house, a kerosene sto\'e, and m any friends. Th e S::wo " ·innings. Th e \Hiter "·itnessed one occasion on which one number brought S 1.:.ioo and another when amounts bet by some Poyal people seem extremely one number brought S r,:-;oo. ,\ pri1.e of $100 is nol sub- large at times in proportion to \\'Cek ly or ye;1rly instantial e nough to make a s ignificant difference in a comes, bul in term~ ol lo< :ii c u ltur;il 111ir11h. qr< Ii ex· cane worker's way of life, bul il can be a big s tep penditure-; and thC' c.:xpc11dit11re o l " ·i1111i11g' i11 Ilic: tm,·ard its material improvemenL. Such a pri1.e will per- wa y~ jus t d e-.nibcd an.· perle< ti~ ;IC c eptahk. T he mit th e \\·inner to square up hi~ debts, to re-equip his maintenance ol good rclation-.hip-; \\'ith oil(:·, l;1C t '- lo famil y \\"ith clothes. and to provide the house hold w ith fac.:e associaws i~ one ol the: hc:~t 10< ;1I g 11ara111<·t·' ol new conveniences: or the mon ey may be used to buy security . and L11rif1 is 1101 va lu ed highl y i11 the: h;1rrio several pigs and a cow, to build a partition in the except by 111c111hcr~ ol tht· l'e11tcco-.1;il < liun 11. \,·Iii< h house, or, in combination with other money. to send a has as a pan ol ib 111oral <ndc the exc i-; io11 ol -.11< h man tO the United States m ainland to seek other eco- activities a ~ drinking. g;1111hl i11g. and the c:-.i:1hli-.l111H·nt nomic opportu nities. ,\ prize o l over S:.i:;o makes it of ceremonia l co-p;1rcnt liood (<'0111/)((t/ro ::.p, u ) . P('1111 y-hy· p enny sa\'i11g is dill1cu l1 l>t'c ; 111~c o l tl1c: co11~t;1111 :111cl possibl e for a worker to change his sla t.us from (lgregado to indep endizado by affording- him enough capilal lo unending need for c;1.-.l1. r\'('. r y pc1111y someho\\' is mo\'e off corporate land and to build a house of fair ~wal l cn\"ed up by s uch es~cntials as corn meal, ri ce. and quality on insular park land or on the land ol a small a minimum quantity ol clothing. If bolita be \' icwed priYate owner in Oriente Village . .-\t least three or the as an in vestment technique, the rationale behind the indep e11dizndos in Or iente built their houses exclu- ).{ambling becomes perhaps a little cl ea rer. The amou nt s ivel y with uolitn wi nnings, and scarcely a n e w house of real cash which passes through the hands of a Poyal is built that is not at least partl y paid lor this \\'ay. working man could be c·o11si d e1-ed large only if compared to the cash ean1ings of a highland sha re farme r F or a ca ne \\·orker to make an attempt to set himsell up as an independ e nt busin essman of some kind, a or a highland ogregado. Local people sec bolita as minimum of ~goo wou ld be required. During the ;1 highly pe rsonalized gambling arrangement which writer's s tay in Poya l, only one winner in Orie nte t ried se rves almost as a kind of insurance. "Sooner or laler," to use his winnings in this fashio n. 13ut the village people say. "e \'ery beucr \\'ill win. H the rn·enty rents really cci nnot suppon any more enterprises of this kind. in\'estccl each week in bo/ita were saved instead. one and a L the time the field \\·ork e nded. the new store \\'Ould have te n dollars at year's e nd. Isn't it heuer to \\·as failing. Pri1es larger than S~c>O open up a variety risk the money on the chance of winning a hundred or possibi l ities, with e migration tlte most importalll dol l ars~ Besides, il is impossible to save. If the twenty one. In vie"· of the general stand:ird of living in Barrio cents were not paid out to the bolitero. it \\'ould go for P oyal. S500 or S 1,000 is a tre m e ndous sum of money, rice or shoes or candy for the childre n or something and what is perhaps surprising is that few people seem c bc the same day." The Ian that \\'eekl y expendiw rcs able to use such winnings lo esrnblish a ~ i gniflcant for lwlita by a single worker may reach t\\'enty-11ve or difference in their sty le or life. Em igration. of course, even fifty times more than twenty ce nts at times during is lhe most direct way to alter o n e's life-chances. and the h;1rvest docs not seem to alter this cultural ly ac· more and more p eo ple in Poya l are using bolita win - cepted rati ona le. nings lo r this. But man y persons are not inte res ted in 01 much less importance economi cally than the sale migrating. For the m. the securing of a la rge sum of a nd purchase of bolifrt 1ickcts is the retailing of bootleg rum, called f'r11ii ta. This nnn was not being manufacmoney se rves mai11l y to make up for those thi ngs that they feel have been miss ing in their way of life: radios. tt1red in Barrio Poyal during the li e ld \\'ork period, house e lectrific;ition , a water tap within the house. ne\\' to the best ol' the writer's knowledge. Yet it could he clothes. e tc. Cash is also important in re-e~t:1blish in g bought eas il y from any of perhaps a clo1en illicit regood re lations with merchants and other creditors, tailers withi11 the barrio. Large quantities of rr11iita are s ince the workingma n in Poya l is likel y to find himself imported from highland municipalities to be reta il ed a lmost continuous ly in debt. Cash is also necessary w locally. At one time. tr11iilr1 was prod11ced withi 11 the maintain good soc ial relationships in the co111111u11itybarrio. but heca 11se mos t" of th e land is llat and lh e view to li\'e up to one's udturally d efined ideals as a father, 11nohstruned it grew too difficult to conceal th e s til ls son-in-la w. compadre . hos t, union man. e Lc. Accord - from the police, informa nls say. J t is rumored that in ingl y, it is common to find that w inners ol s takes lhat near-by municipaliLies, large-scale producers of illega l are large even b y co ntinent:tl United States sta ndards nrm h ave come to an understanding with the loca l lrnve ex hausted most of their runcls in maint;ii11i11g cul - police and manufacture their prmlun undisturbed. turall y approved standards or consumptin11- of food, True or 1101, the lrcquency \\·ith which the sto1·y is

CANAJ\IELAR: R URAL SUGAR PLANTATION P R O L ET AR IAT

h eard suggests something about local a ttitudes toward law e nforce m e nt personnel. Informal est imates of rniiita consumption for the village or Oriente alo ne run in the neighborhood of e ig ht g allons " ·eekly. This fi gure could not be checked accurate ly, nor \\·as it possible to calculate variations in sales during the year. Tota l sa les at different times <11 the year probabl y do not va ry significantly. Sales ol' legitimate ntm a nd bee r proba bly rise, proportionate to th e total sa les of liquor, during the harvest when 111ore 111 0 11 cy can be spent for recreational drinking by local workers. But tmiit11 is the loca l favorite during the ,,1;,, k ;.ca;.0 11 \\·li e n fund s arc low, a nd many workers h a\·c· a nilti,·;1ted tas te for t he illegal rum and drink it t:\' C' ll \\·he 11 tl1 e\' ca n afford the legitimate product. Tit<.: n :t;1 il price of illegal rum is customarily fi ve cents a drink. nr just. ha ll th e price for an equa l quantity ol legi1 im atc rum . .\Jany working people claim that u11iit11 is l c.~s 10:-;ic th ;tn l q~· itimate rt1111 and ca uses no ill e l fcn~ . This argument has it. that ca liita contains no "co lo r i11 g" :md is dicrdnrc more read il y digestibl e. .\ s ill the c;isc or th e illega l lo n e ry, pressures against the 111;11Hilacttirc and sale of r·a 1/il<1 a re growing. T hese campaigns, among othe r thi ngs. aim at .increasing govern mental re ven ues. The people of Barrio Poyal pers ist in consuming illegal rum because it is cheaper th an lega ll y produced rum a nd in selling it because it p rovides its retail e rs with an e xtra source of income. Even thoug h arrests have been made for the sa le of caliitr1 in Barrio Poyal and raids occur re peatedly, sales continue. Since it is on e o( the few subsidiary means fo r getting a cash re turn in lhe barrio, m a ny persons are willing to run the risk, and compeli tion benveen reta ile rs is quite brisk. At Colonia Vieja, quite a few agregados sell u11/ita, and while no e xact fi gures can be adduced, the pe r capita consumption of illegal rum there undoubtedl y exceeds l11at or th e village of Oriente. So fi e rce is com p elition that some re taile rs, raided a nd punished by the police, claim d1a t jealous rivals h ave betrayed them. No such case was d ocumen ted for the write r. Together with the illegal lottery, the sale of ca1l ita and its consumption in th e face of lega l threats must b e seen to some extent as the expression of lower-class va lues. \Vhile legitimate rum is ca lled by local people ro11 d e 111uslrador ("showcase n11n"), r o 11 "e11ga11clia'o" (i.e., "hung" on a shelf), a nd ro 11 sel/arlo ("rum wit h a seal"), the illega l product is dig ni fiec1 with th e name ro11 de! /J(/is ("ru m o f the country"). The use of loca lly made rt.1111 has a histor y going back to the family h ac iend as and distill e ries which domi nated sou th coast li fe in the nineteenth century. The mod ern manu faclllred n1111s not only are more expensive tha n caiiila but a rc regard ed by some Ca11amelar people as "fancy" or "newfang led ," and those who drink them may be accused of putting on airs. The same distinction properly applies to the legal lottery as opposed to the illegal ho!ita. Such attitudes m ay represelll part of a lowerclass ideology formed in reaction to hostile fo rces generated by other class groupings o utside the local comnw nil y.

367

SOCIOECONOMIC MOBILITY AND STRATIFICATION THE COLON/A HIERARCHY AND ITS FUNCTIONS

The sugar cane w orkers of Poyal, in the course of lheir da ily lives, deal with a number of p eople who re presen t different class or sociocultural groupings. Some of these "outsiders" even live in the barrio and may have some close social relationship with on e or another of the workers. Thus, wh ile the sugar cane workers of the barrio form a rathe r well d efi ned class grouping, it ca nnot be assumed that they form the kind of self-sufficient, unitary social phenon1enon which characterizes a primitive band or even a tribe. It shou ld be abundantly clear by this time that the very features o f Barrio P oyal life which define the people as rural prole ta ria ns are the same which interrelate them with a multitude of outside forces a nd individuals. I t is t he ir uni form landlessness, their propertylessness, their st0re-bu ying practice, a nd their employment as wage earners by corporate e ntities tha t d efi nes the rural proletaria t as such , but the d efi ni tion is couch ed in te rms primarily b earing on its relation LO othe r sociocultural groupings. \Ve shall seek at this poin t to describe some of the n onproletarian groupings with w h om Poyal workers have con tact and to sta te th e nature of the contact and the degree o f mutual acceptance by the different groupings where that is possible. In the r ound o[ the year's work, men establish relationships in th eir jobs with th e men who work alongside them and w ith those wh o d irect their work. It is not uncommo n for a man to be, fo r i nstan ce, a weeder during the slack season and lo ·work on the ra il-laying crew during the h arvest. Often the ra il-layin<r crew wi ll shape . up year after year with the same 0crr~up or f our or fi ve workers und er the super v isio n of t h e same crew chie f. The crew chief gets n o more pay than the other workers d o, but he directs the work; as a n individual who knows his job a nd is known to his crew memb ers, h e is accepted by th em as a leader. Such an individua l is n ot c us tomarily ide ntified with th e managerial hiera rch y. Above the crew c hiefs are the capataces, or foreme n . These are salaried em ployees, and their sta tus is intermediary betwee n tha t of th e V ieja ·workers on the one h a nd and the m a nagers o[ the ro l o11ia on th e other. The relationships between worke rs and capa taces a re n ever sh arply delineated. The ca/Jalares e nj oy certain privileges in th e em ploym ent s itu a tion and are valuable to the corp oration in t imes of s train (strikes, etc.). On the o th e r ha nd , they a re in constant con tact w ith the workers in the field , and their scale of income is not so high as to take them out of the social grouping of the worke rs. T h ey are the b u ffers between the workers a nd the manageria l hierarch y at Colo ni a Vieja . The h ead mayordomo is the hig hest pa id a ncl most important official of the colouia . I-:l e d oes n ot deal directly w ith the worke rs, but rather uses his subordi-

368

THE PEOPLE OF PUERTO RICO

nates as in termecliaries. 54 Thus, for instance, the head usually social but they may include practical motives as mayordomo rarely enters the houses of the agregados well. \ Vorkers are suspicious at all times o( h is motives. who live on the colonia he manages. He usually will One night, it is said, the store chief visited a small not spea k to a worker other than to ask for information "illegal" store which sold beer on the colonia, drank or for some business reason. As a result, workers con- several beers, and chatted in friendly fashion w ith the sider the head mayordomo ''aristocrcitico" (proud, un- workers congregated there. Some time later, the head willing to be intimate with his subordinates), and he is mayordomo called on the owner o( the store and redisliked accordingly. The head mayordonio's wife is a quested that he close up shop. One worker, who does schoolteacher in Cafiamelar and is a regular church- various odd jobs for the store chief, is known as the goer, attending Catholic services in Cafiamelar every only working man on the colonia who ever reciproSunday morning. The son of the head mayordomo is a cated the store chief's visits, an d he is probably the student at the University of Puerto Rico. The family most respected man at Vieja. The store chief is aclives almost in complete isolation from the rest of the cepted as a member of the barrio com munity, and he barrio community, even from the lesser mayordomos reinforces this acceptance by acting "democratically"; of the colonia. Even the son, who will p lay baseball on yet in all situations of strain , such as during a strike, the colonia team when he is visiting in Cafiamelar, workers say h e is on the corporat ion ·s s id e. The store otherwise has nothing to do ·with the working people. chief is married consensua ll y to the daughter of a vVhatever social life the mayordomo's family pursues worker from another co/011ia. Their ch ildren play takes place off the colonia . The family owns one of the with the children of the worker neighbors. The store two cars on the colonia, which gives them both prestige chief himself ixorked as a store clerk and is reputed and great physical mobility. The ma)1ordomo is said to to have made part o( his li,·ing by ga mbling before he earn $.250 a month plus free use of the house in which became store chief at Vieja. His educatio n is suffici ent he lives and its attendant facilities. As a teacher of at least to enable him to do the accounting required by long standing, his wife probably receives about $125 a his job. It is plain that the store chief stands in an month. These combined salar ies, if estimated accu- intermediate position in the colonia hierarchy; his rately, m ake the mayordomo and h is wife the highest 1vork and his personal feelings about what the job depaid people in the barrio and among the highest paid mands throw him into constant social relationships in all oE Cafiamelar. The mayordomo's job is to super- with the workers, but he is not fully trusted by them. vise the production o( cane on Colon ia Vieja, bu t The second or assistant mayordomo is the third most more and more of the technical aspects of p roduction important member of the colonia h ierarchy in his work are decided today by supervisory officials outside the and probably second most important in terms of co Ionia. colonia prestige. v\Torkers say that at one time this The store chief who runs the store located on Colo- man was a colonia bookkeeper with ambitions of benia Vieja has what is probably the second most im- coming a mayordomo. His bookkeeping was excellen t, portant position in the Vieja hierarchy.55 He has the but the company is claimed to have refused him a second largest house at Vieja (though much less pre- promotion because of his color. Finally he is said to tentious than the two-story house of the head mayor- have threatened to leave the company altogether, and domo), owns a car which he rents to a public car he was then given h is present post. The story is indriver and which he uses occasionally for his own pur- teresting as a reflection of local attitudes on race, and poses. He owns a cow, which gives him a milk busi- probably has some basis in fact. The house of the assistant mayordomo and that of ness, and a refrigerator in which his wife makes the candied ice cubes called lindberghs which she sells to the bookkeeper are closest to the workers' houses. The the children of the colonia. The store chief is said to assistant 11iayordomo's wife will chat over the back earn $.72 a month as his official salary, but he gets his fence with workers and their wives. His father-in-law, house free, and supposedly gets a bonus from tlie store who lives with him, constantly associates with working -last year said to be a bout S250-and if rumors and people on the colonia . The second m.ayordomo is uncompl aints are true, he sells some articles at higher questionably the best liked of the local managerial than official prices and overweighs others, thus ap- hierarchy. \ Vorkers say he knows how to treat them propriating more money for himself. Because the store and how to show them the respect (resfJeto, not deferchief is in constant contact with the colonia workers, ence) they believe appropriate. Yet he himself rarely he assoc iates with them socially as well. He is familiar mingles with workers or tries to become their friend. with the workers' fami lies and occas ionally wi ll visit It is claimed that he will try to bribe men to work workers in the ir houses on the colon ia. Such visits are during a strike by offering them the opportunity for more '"'ork duri ng the slack season. The bookkeeper is the fourth man in the hierarchy. r. ·1 Th e field situation was suc h that it was not possible for the He, too, has one of the best houses on the colonia, writer to become close to the managerial hierarchy because of the danger of alienar ing the work ing people of Orie nte and Vicja. though it is the least pretentious of the four and the The d escrip t ion of the managerial hierarchy in the barrio, therenearest to the workers' houses. His wife sells m ilk and fore, necessa ril y is largely frnin the worke rs' point of view. Lindberg/is to the workers' ch ildren, and he is manager c,r. The store is one of a cha in operated by a corporation legally of the co /onia baseball team. The bookkeeper is on d ivorced from the landhold ing corporation hut in fact closely associated with it. friendly terms with the workers and is liked by them. 1

1

CANAl\lELAR: RURAL SUGAR PLANTATJON J>RQLETARIAT

Except for the much respected worker mentioned above who visited the store chief. no workers ever go to the l1omes of any of the hierarchy. l\ fost completely separated is the head mayordomo. Social distance may be less g reat in the case of the lesser officials, yet the distin ctions between L11ese men and the workers is greaL in lerms or salary as well as in terms of education and general living standa rds. and \\'hile the managerial grouping ma y feel free to visit workers' homes on occasion. no such rec iprocal ree ling is enjoyed by the H'orkn:-.. The managerial grouping, moreover, seeks to pcrpet u:tte ihclf: a 111<n •ordo111o·s son \\'ill begin to learn '1 i:-. l'athcr's \\'ork \\'hile he is st ill in his Leens, and he is t1~t1:il l y cxpcctcd to inherit the job if he wants

369

selves; they follow the same traditions of social behavior and respeto (the observance of respect rules) the workers do, and everything in dicates that th eir patterns of life are likewise almost identical with those of the workers. \ Ve have in the capataz group an interesting middle stra tum which functions on the social level with the people of the stratum below i t, and to some extent is economica lly no more than equal as well, but whose main economic functions are favorable to the corporation. The capataces thus occupy a truly ambivalent role in the co/onia hierarchy. Attitudes of the workers toward the managerial hierarchy are of some interest. The upper echelon adminismnors a re rarely conceived o( as a group, but i l. rather as individuals. The previous head mayordomo Bet\\'ecn the 111anagerial hierarchy at the top and of Vieja, for instance, was well liked b y the workers. the \\'orkcrs hc lo\\' arc the rn/Jatarcs, or foremen. At He was a stern ma n, people will say, but fair; h e gave times th('se men. too. arc called 111avordo111os; this con- out more work than the presen t mayordomo does, and fusion in n:1111c~ ma\· rdlccr a ,·en; real confusion on he knew what the cultivation required in terms of care the p:in of ll1e \\'orkcrs reganling ' the position of the and labor. The present mayordomo is not well liked. foremen in l11c f'oloniu hierarchy. i\ fost ca/Jnlaces are He is haugh ty and unwilling to establish a working salaried men, and in this sense. as employees (em - social basis on which to deal with the laborers. H e t1lr:rul"s) rather Lhan wage earners, they are identified gives out less work a nd knows less of the requirements w ith the m anageria l hierarchy. Also included in this for good production. A l though these distinctions begroup is the man who operates the main pump which tween the present and former mayordomo probably supplies water for much o( the irrigation on the reflect a change in corporate policy and aclminisu·ative techniques, they are seen simply as differences in perco lo11ir1. Jn addition LO their salaries, the capataces receive houses which are larger than those of ordinary sonalities by the working people. In reality, there is workers. Curiously, they are also given plots of half a visible a progressive decline in the importance of facecuerda 01· so of land where they may grow what they to-face rel:ltionships in the productive process and an please fo r their own use or fo r sa le. l\fost of these accompanying decline in the supervisory importance of capataces do not live near the plaza of the colonia but the managerial hierarchy or the colonias. \Vorkers are a\\·are that coercion o ( certa in kinds is at rather remote points in die northern part of the colo11ia. \\The n one travels throug h the endless fi elds of still used to extract maximum efficiency in the work cane Lhat ring the plaza, one ma y come suddenl y upon and yet keep operating costs low. During the slack a tin y patch of plantains and a \\·ell-shaded house set season, a worker who, through a rebellious attitude or on a triangu lar patch o[ land . This will be the house for some similar reason, has fallen into disfavor will e ither or a capataz or of an irrig;uion worker. In relllrn be given a clay's or even two days' less work each week, for these perquisites, the ca/Jataces perform imponant representing a sharp drop in income. A worker who is fu nctions for the corporation. for one thing, they are aggressive might be given a job in irrigation during the especia lly irnportant for irrigation work when a strike height of the harvest season, because in this way he is on. L iving as they do far from the center o( the will be isolated from other workers and less able to colonia, these foremen can do irrigation work without start u·ouble. A foreman may exact a loan from a being so subject to community sanctions as are Lhose worker on the basis of being able to g ive or deny that living right nea r Lhe co lonia plaza. The cafJataces often worker employment at a crucial time. Coercion is also practiced through the med iu m of have one or two si ng le workers living in their houses; such workers also can be enlisted more readily to aid the credi t a rrangements at the corporation store o n in irrigatio n d u ring a strike. Irriga tion is the prime Vieja. Corporation stores, as components of landhoklnecessity o( cane cultivation in Lhe area. Strikes usua lly ing and cen tral owning corporations, were illegalized occur <luring the harvest when the cane is being cut by law less than ten years ago. But nothing in the law and irriga tion is not urgently needed. Even then, how- cou ld prevent such stores Crom legal reorganization as ever, water is req uired by the cane abou t every fifteen separate corporate entities. As a result, the comp<iny days, and the ca/wlaces a nd their boarders are avail- stores continue to funct ion on the rolonias, their activities closely co-ordinated with those of the landable to a ttend to i t. To e([ect these funct ions for the company the capa- ho lders yet legally distinct in their operations. The stores and the lan dholding corporation work taces must be on fairly in timate terms with the workers, a nd so they are. I n social respecLs, they are equals only hand in hand in many ways. For instance, the store o( the working people. \Vorkers clo not hesitate about ch ief lives in a company house. Every Thursday or reciprocating visits of capataces. On occasion, a capataz Friday, before payday, the store ch ie( goes to the bookmay become a rom/Jadre (ritual co-parent) of a worker. keeping office on the p laza to check the earn ings of Ca/Jatares are always o( work ing-class origins them- different workers to whom he has extended credit dur-

370

TllE l'EO l'L E OF P UERTO RICO

Before 1~) - JO, the corporat ion store carried o ut two ing th e week. In the event o( a strike, all sales b ecom e important function s ill the co-ordinatio n or work al cash transactions after the day of the last paycheck. Long-term credit is extended to a numbe r of laborers the colonia. First, nearly all earned in come was funon the colu11ia. These are the workers best known at neled back in to the corpora tio11 th rough the store. Vieja whom the store chie( feels he can trust. \Veek- Second, through the use or token money or tickets, to-week credit is allowed to nearly all workers. These workers co11 ld be controll ed 11ot only in th eir purcred it arra ngements are made at the store chief's dis- c:has ing but in their mobility a11d thereby i11 their cretion; law forbids the granting o( credit in this sea rch for other work. . \II older workers today comfashion, and explicit company policy is to g rant no plain bitterly ol the ;drno-..l absolute po\,·er corporation credit. H any losses result from the granting o[ credit, stores wi e ld ed o,·cr tlwm in thme 1irne-... ()f thc:-.c: l\\ 0 impon;111t lt11H tio11'. the lir:-.l i-.. ;1-.. true the store ch ief will be held r esponsible. At the same today as it \\·a:-. c::1r lier. Tok<.:11 11101\c\·, lio\\T\Tr. h;1s time, according t0 informants, th e corporation will been a hot i-,li cd, LI ll h wc;i kc11i11g the < or po 1:1t io11 "s send bills to s low-pay ing workers. Any worker who fails to pay up will find his commod ity credit source power i11 thi-.. rcg;1rcl. \\.orkc1-.. <:i1111ot lq~:tlh he threatened a 1w longer ,,. i th lo-.., ol hou'e or ,,·ork closed and will have LO look for some other outlet in the village or in town. It migln be added that in the s imply at the whim o l the:< 0111p;111~. I .o,,,., ol <red it does case of Vieja, at least, the store c hief has bec11 urged to r emain as a danger: L11i, is e,,pc:cia lly true in n 11ci:d times. Ouhidc: co1111110di1~ crc:dit outl(•t;, ;.ucJ1 a-.. those give more credit by one o( his superiors. The whole question of credit is complex: rates of pay are prevailin Oriente ca11. of cour,c:. c.·xte nd only 'o lllll< Ii < redit ing ly so low and so irregular that credit is a lmost an and no more. Th eir buying power i-.. but a lr:1< tio11 of that ol the corporation ,tnrc:-.. :111d they can c:x:t< l no absolute necess ity- none of th e working people can con trol over ,,·orkc:rs L11rough d e n yi ng c:111ploy111e 11t. survive w ithout it; at the same time, it becomes a technique for contro l in the hands of tradesmen, par- Outside credit sources are scanty, particularly during the slack season, and workers wh o pe rhaps were ahle ticularly when the same entity which gives c redit also to dispense \\'ith corpora tion store credit during the gives work. Once establ ished, cred it practices are hard to uproot, especially i( no impo nant. changes in the harvest ma y be made to turn again to the corporation rate of pay are possible. Gove rnment-encouraged co- store. On occas ion the corporati o n store will refuse a operatives which seek to operate in Pu eno Ri co on a worker credit unless he can obtain a note from o ne of noncredit basis find the going extremely rough and the ra/Ja/an: s mak ing the ca/Htlaz responsible fo r the the temptation to grant credit to boost sales a stron g debt i r the worker can not pay it. I 11 cases such as these, one. 1t must be added that o nl y rarely are debts in- a worker's opportunities LO get credit depend 011 his curred through cr edit ignored or left unpaid. So v ital reliability and on his personal relations with the is the cred it system to all worker-consumers that a rn /Ja la z. worker who fail s to pay incurs the ill will o r contempt Ou tside c redit sources rapidl y arc exhausted during of his neighbors. Working people in Vieja and Oriente a strike also. Becau se private stores at Oriente and in take the respons ibility of paying off credit obl igations town usually buy from wholesalers on credit arrangevery seriously. ments th e mselves, they can not ex tend credit greatly Considering the population o f Vieja and of the rew ithout en dangering their whole business. The demainder of the barrio the corpora tion st0re on Vieja pendence of (/gregados on the corporation store puts does a startling busin ess, averaging a g ross intake of them in a difficult position; during a strike they are over one thousand dollars a week. The sto r e c hief him- more readil y forced back to "·ork because they arc less self boasts that he took in twice as much gross last year likely lo have another so urce of cr edit. Colo11ia dwellas h e reported to the Town Cou11cil of Ca1-1ame lar for ers in genera l are notorious strikebreakers. I !ere is a tax purposes, and the municipal records indicate sales crucial co nnection between the credit practices or the in excess of twenty-three thousand dollars. This amaz- c ulture and the struggle or working people for a higher ing volume of business is resented b y the Vieja popu- ~tandanl of living. Once a strike is declared, credit lation who credit the store with dishonest practices. ceases imme diately and the workers soon find themFor instance, \-vorkers cla im that the sca les are fixed selves in an impossible situation. Thus it ca n he seen that the corporation stores as prcse1nly constituted to indicate an ou nce or so over the ge nuin e weight or a bag or package, consequently any possible sav ing in serve two important functions today, first as a profitprice is lost through dishon est practices. The scales making business, and second as an agen cy of labor a r e located some distance behind a wire scr een and are control-especially in situa tions or crisis. therdore difficu lt to read, and this is likewise resented The store o n Colonia Vieja is known in loca l parby the workers. l'rices for such items as dry goods arc lance as the "American swre." This use of the term fixed at th e central office of the corporation stores, but ·· ,\merica n" is not genera ll y extended to the landholdworkers mainteti11 that the store ch ief cha nges these ing corporation and might pos~ibly s uggest that the pri<es at will lO whatever price he thinks the market workers are more aware of the ouL-.ide ownership of wi 11 bear. vVhether the corpora ti on ca11 not s top such the store (beca use or their greater resentment of the practices or whether these are covert mea11s for sup- credit sysLem) than they arc of li1 e way em ployment is plementing the store ch ief's sa lary is not clear. handled in general. 0

CANA '.\IELAR: RURAL St:CAR PLAl'\TATIO:'.'i PROLETARIAT

SOCIOECONOMIC MOBILITY

One or the "·ays in which local workers believe they 111;1y b e ab le to win their permanent economic emancip:n ion lrom th e cane is by the acquisition of a small re tail bu siness. Yet su ch an id ea l-t0 be a small indept: ndc11L ret;1i le r- li es well beyo nd the mea ns of nea rly a 11 ru ra I prolct:t ri:1 ns. There ;m· 11inc rct:1 ii outlets in the village o( Oriente \\'Iii< Ii nlkr <<>lll]K'titio11 to L11c \'ieja corporation sLOre. . \1 1 nt ding tn the ,t;1te111c11h gi,-cn b~· these stores to the ( .;11"1:111wl:tr ·1 n1n1 ( :01111< ii lor t:1x purposes, the gross in<<>llH' lot :ill nitll' 0111kh i11 •!l·18 1rns 15,5.J<>. For lltt' ,;1n1c p crirnl. dt (' one corporation store in the 1>:11 rin. l•H :1 Lcd nn ( :o loni:1 \ ' i('ja. reported a gross in<"0111c ol :--:!:i ·quo. :\011c ol the:,e statements is compktc l" 1ru,.. 1\\'Ol'lll\. :111<1 it is g-c nerally agreed that all ~ 11n1tl (·1 be :id j11 . .tc1i up1c1rd to gil'C an accurate picwre ol ti'" grm, i 11co111c,. Storekeepers report low gross both In < <>111 l':tl their re: 1I 11ro'' income and to reduce the p1or:111'(I li1c1hc It'<'' "iht·~ mtt:-.t pay for their busitll'''l'"· I 11 am c;hc. ii it <an be assumed that the clistortiorn. ;1re l.airlv u11ilonn. then the company store at Vieja. by itself, grosse:-. ;,o per cent more than all the nl11 e r 11i11e licensed ~t0rcs in the barrio together. In addition. it sh o11 ld he pninted ou t that the corporation s LOre handles a volume o f trade and a variety of goods q 11 i te beyond the 111ea ns of the barrio re ta i I outie ts. Thus one can 1>11y clothing. chi ldren's toys, house f11rnishings, :ind the like in the corporation store, b u t 11 0 one in Orie n te can muster the capital needed to stock his store 11·ith goods such as these. Six of th e nine Orientc stores are considered g-roceries while three are called cafes. Onl y one is a ticudn 111i:dn, or genera l store. though in fact it sel ls nothing more elaborate than th e customary :-rock o f groceries : rice, red beans, c:orn rne:tl. dried cod. bottled capers, o lives. pirnienwes, chick p e:1s. and so 011. Th e struggle to start such a busin ess can be quite a d esperate one. One such store h as been started by a m an with no capi ta l to cou nt on except what he could save from his work in the sugar cane. His store is evaluated at two hundred doll;11s, and he h:1s not been able to live off its income. Instead , he continues to work in the cane while his wife and son run the store. H e is daily in danger of losing the busine:,s through overextension of credit, and people on the barrio say h e is fishing witho11t a hook (1J esn11ulo sin a11 z 11r•lo). The case of this s11ga r ca n e 1vorkcr is an unusua l o ne- most workers arc n ever abl e to get so far solely throug h working in the ca ne. Ye t his chances of sustai ning the little business permanently are very slim. Three of the other business owners in Oricnte Sta rt eel out as peddle rs, one man pedd Ii ng the crushed ice refre~hments called /Jirng11r1 _. the others peddling small ,,·ares at the colonias. T"·o stores were inherited by th e present owners from the ir fat hers. One you ng veteran bought his store w ith his savi ngs accumul;ucd while se rving in the army. In n ea rly every case, these litt le stores must operate o n a very limited budget and

371

require the use of a "·ife's or o[ children's labor in order LO stay in operation. All the stores give uedit (fin'o), l;>ut credit arrangements are worked out on a personal basis and the extensio n of cred it is limited . ln t he case of perhaps half of the stores in Oriente, the store does n ot p ay better than wou ld a j ob in the ca ne . Moreover, the competition for t11e consumers' money is quite fierce. A b eginning businessman must actually woo a"·ay from some other store o"·ners the consumers of his own stock. But the store o"·ner need not work in the sun nor work so hard. and this distinction is well appreciated. The initial capital needed for a srore is beyond most ,,·orkers' reach , though it is nearly every man's ambition to amass it. In this con n ectio n , two stores at least owe their beginnings and their sustenance during; the first a nd h a rdest years or their existen ce to bo/i/(I. P eople on Colonia Vieja are as m otivated as a re those or the village to accumulate capita l for some business venture, and this procedure is as difficult for them as it is for their i11de/Je11di::(ldo neighbors. There are three self-sustaini ng businesses on the rolo11ia-a lunchroom and two refreshment stands-a ll operating without forma l permission of the corporation which could shut them down il it cared tO do so. In add ition, illegal rum is so ld in large quantities. H ow competitive is the ree ling stimul ated by the des ire ror ca pital accum ulation can be suggested b y the fan th at workers who se ll ill ega l rum claim tlrnt others h ave betrayed t hem to the police to increase their O\\'ll business. (T he police. when raiding. orten go directl y to a particular house " ·here such rum may be cached, suggesting that someone has indeed informed them.) . \ s pan o( the same fierce com peti ti veness. it shou Id be memioned that business ideas are gua rded carefully for (ear someone will stea l th em . . \ man may announce that he is planning to open a liule stand to sell codfish fritters or plantain cakes only to have some competitor start just surh a business a day o r two la ter. from fear of creating antagonism or hatred in frie nds, p eop le may refrain from starting a competitive business. Yet the pressure LO accumulate somehow a few more pennies than a job will pay is very strong. \\'omen play important roles in the liule ~tores, in the care of animals. and in the preparation of foodstuffs for sale on payday. Only su ch casks as fishing are o utside a woman's culw rally defined ca paciti es. Even though for the most part they are absent Loda y from the main cash -earning activity, the econ olllic importance o( women in t his subculture must. not be undere:>timated. It is furt her in terest ing to note t11at the most profitable sources of income-s ubsistence plots. refrigerators for ma king lindberglis, cows for giving milk, etc.-are largely in the hands or the upper echelon of the managerial hierarch y. It makes it easy to sec how the present econom ic situation tends to perpetuate itself indefinitely. The rich may no l get very much rich er, but the poor stay very p oor indeed. The income structure, the buying paucrns, the co-

37 2

THE PEOPLE OF P UERTO RICO

ordination of employment, and the man agem ent of work are all inte rwoven in barrio life. i\laking a living necessarily involves such disparate activities as work in the cane, selling the illega l lottery, keeping a pig, and catching crabs. \Vhilc tied basically to a pure wage-earning system, the people o[ the b a rrio seek to m a inta in the ir human re latio nships on a personal, face-to -face basis, resisting and appea ring to resen t the g rowing rationalization a nd deperson al ization o f th e ir work. At the same time, the d rive for cash is very strong because 0 £ the unpl easa ntness of the most important economic activ ity. Thus the wage-earning patterns of what is superfi cially labeled a n "urb a n " way of li fe sometimes clash openly with the system o f socia l r elationships based o n face-to-face contact, b lood a nd ritua l kinsh ip ties, a n d an atmosphere of muwal trust. H ow some of these conf1icting values are resolved will be to u ch ed on in su cceed ing sections. STANDARDS OF LIVING

A n y discussio n of stan dards of li ving must necessaril y deal with the problem of group sta n dards. The rnost dra m a tic illustration of this in Barrio Poyal h as to do with the cultural importance of land. \ Vhile landowning remains an impo rtant value amon g hig hl a nd peasants, it has no su ch sta tus a mong Oriente labore rs. There are, in fact, over thirty small plots of priva tely own ed la nd in Oriente, b u t on ly one (owned by a m an who r es ides in New York City) is as mu ch as o n e Fig. 37· Pay day for the field hands al Caiiamelar. Photo uy Delano.

cucrda . The rest of the " lando,,·ners" own 11 0 more than the small pl o ts or scratch y soil on which the ir houses stand. A fe w tiny patches o( sweet potatoes, plantains, etc., constiwte a ll the noncane cultiva ted land in Poyal. T h e pl ots used by th e ca />alaces o [ the co /011ias, the small patch es a lo ng th e barrio beach, and the tiny clusters o[ p la ntai n trees al o ngs ide som e o ( th e h o uses, taken togethe r, occu py land n ot in excess of several cuerdas-this in a barrio containing th o usands of cucrdas o[ the rich es t land in Pu erto Rico. \ Vhi le Jando\\'ning i-. n ot an id ea l a111011g the harrio p eople, "i11de/>e11di<i:.i11g .. o n c ·s self- i.e .. moving ofI the colonias and <>1llo public land- is !>uch an ideal. /11d e/1e11dizrulos arc C11\·it'd tl1e ir ln:cdom .. \11 fl g rr'.f.! Jufo is tied to the cnrp n r:1tion :-itore. ,,·hil c ,·ill :1gc a11d be:1ch dwellers usuall y d ea l \\'iLl1 retail ers in the v illage. The agregado is at th e bec k a nd c dl or the rolu 11 i11 ove rseer in case o( fire or o th e r troub le . and his serv ices rnav be recruited witho ut pa y. \\' hilc th e af!.rrga dus 111a;: 110 longer be ev icted w ithout c1u~e, they :ire d cpcnde nt o n the corporation lor the u"c ol th e ir hou-.cs and the attend ant fa ciliti c!>. Care ol :111imal-. j,, mor<' dilhndt at the colo11ia; and lil e there is ge nera lly more cxposed, more crowded, and m ore exas pera ting than life in th e village or even at the beach. But life at th e beach is very diffic ult: the i·e are 110 stores, 110 ready-bu il t p rivies, no electrical fa ci li ties; the water supply is exposed a nd unsanitary, the road to th e village very poo r. Most ag regados, h owever miserable o n the colo 11ia, do n o t usuall y choose to g ive up their two-room wooden

shacks, complete with kitchen lean-to and community showers a nd privies, for the freedom of a thatch-roofed palm-leaf shack on the beach. On the other hand, most of them would happily give up their houses at the colonia for dwellings of equal quality in the village; b u t such a move is usually economically impossible. First, an arrangement must be made for a plot on which LO build the house. A plot of land may be re!1led from one of the village landholders, or perhaps one of the i11de/Jcndizados will have additional land alongside his own house which can be used. But until the money needed to build a house as well as the place 011 which to build it have been secured, the agregados remain on the colo11ia. :\ genera l description of the residence buildings at Vic.:ja has a 1read y been given. Th e two-room houses which are the co lo11ia norm there rarely meet even the 111ini111um needs of the families which occupy them. These houses have a total floor area of some 150 to 1 So square feet: that is. floor dimensions for the entire house are 10 feet by 15 or 18 feet. The outside kitchen lea ,-cs the house fr~e or cooking, but there is still too little room in most cases. Usually, an effort is made to use one of the two rooms as a living room during the day; at night, both rooms generally become sleeping rooms. Fu rniture is meager: an ideal is the conventional straw-backed chair and table set called Aneas in local parlance, but few families ever achieve this stan_dard . Most houses have at least one bed, several chall"s or benches, a dresser, and little else. At Vieja, each family fetches its water daily fr~m _a pump about one hundred yards distant and empues 1t into a large barrel which stands near the h?use. All water for cooking, bathing, drinking, ~tc., is drawn from this barrel. Cleanliness is much pnzed but hard to maintain because of the dust and wind and the constant need to fetch more water. Yet houses are scrubbed every clay, and everyone bathes daily. Houses, of course, are corporation property. No repairs were m.ade on them between the years 19,p and 1948, but 111 19,18 some improvements were made. Especially gra~ifying to the agregados was the patching done ~n the k1tcl~ en roofs so that they no longer leak dunn~ the rams. Latrines also were installed by the corporauon; though of good quality, mosquitoes breed in them-a part icularly dangerous condition since the malaria incidence in Cafiamelar was, until very recently, one o[ the highest on the island. Sumps for kitchen water are dug by the agregados themselves; they are not effective in carrying off waste water, for clay is reached just below the surface and the sumps overflow soon after they are dug. A recent extension of the island-wide rural e lectri fica ti on program es ta bl ished by the government has made electricity available to those agregados willing and ab le to pay for installation. Nearly all the house dwellers have electricity, although the people who live in the zafacon and barracks have not as yet asked for installations. After the installation of electricity, a number of ngrcgados bought radios. No tabulation on stove types was obtained for Vieja, but probably less than half the agregados there have the

Fig. 38. H omes of Caiiamelar cane workers on the beach. Photo b)' Delano.

preferred kerosene stoves. More common are the fog611es, or earth-packed hearths. Least preferred are the inconvenient braziers, which are consu·ucted from fivegallon tins. Kerosene stoves are best liked because they give regular heat and because kerosen e is less expensive proportion ately than charcoal. '"' ood is used as tinder by some agregaclos, but it is scarce, and the search for it is time consuming. Living conditions in the village of Oriente, (or the most part, are as good or better than those at Vieja. T o begin with, there is the value attached b y local people to the freedom of life off the colonia : no ubiquitous mayordomo, Jess need to deal at the corporation store, and so on. 1\Iost Oriente residents are former agregados who did not leave the colonias until they were prepared to construct houses for themselves comparnble to those available to them at the colonia. lVIost o( the houses in Oriente a re of wood and are at least as large as those on the colonia; a lthough some arc not as good as the colonia houses, none is less attractive or in worse condition than the barracks and zafac6n buildings on Vieja. \\Tater comes from public faucets which are situated at intervals along the highway. or ninety-six houses tabulated (including some marginal ag regado houses of Colonia Vieja), eighteen had faucets installed within the houses. i\ fost houses in Orience have their own latrines, though these a re never more e laborate than a simple pit, lined with barrels a nd topped with a concrete frame, within a wooden superstructure. vVhen a privy can be used no longer, it is filled with earth

Fig . 39. S11g11r worhers' h omes along t!tr' ro rulsirlr: 111 Jforrio Poy11/ i11 Cr11ia111<' /1n-. Pft o lo b y lk/0110.

and a n ew one is dug a short distance away. Th e fac ili t ies for cooking are bette1· in Orie nte than al Vieja . O f ninety-lour houses ta bulated, including those o[ th e ag reg(ldos n ear the edge of Viej a, fifty-s ix fa m ilies were e<.ju ipped with ke rose ne sLOves; t hirty-fiv e used the crude fog611es, or wood-burn ing, ea rth-packed hearth s; and three rami li es used only th e inefficie nt and in convenient 11a rfes . or fi ve-ga ll on-tin brazie rs. Al mo::;t exanly two-t hirds or the h ouses tabu la ted in the v illage of Oriente we re equi p ped w ith electr ic lighting (sixty-five houses o ut of ninety-eight pol led) ; almost. one-ha ll' of the sa m e sample (forty-e igh t) had rad ios. O ld peop le rem inisce about the days w h e n there was only o ne wooden house in the vi II age -the prope rty of a vill age merchant who dealt in slaves. They ta lk of

th e e ig hteen -cents-a-da y sa lary o f wome n lic.:ld labore rs in 18~)0 , and of the li ule the re was then to buy and LO e njoy. But some o f them wil l sigh and say: "These da ys we ha ve becom e c hanged by money. II we h ave a mattress, we want a spring; if we have a s pring, we want a lramc." The culturally accepted standard of li ving has risen to include radios and iron beds. Other standards have c hanged less sharply: from word o r mouth reconstrunion and frnm the little written m a terial available, it would seem that peopl e do not eat, nor do they feel th ey sh o uld cat, an y better toda y than th ey did fifty years ago. ll m ay be pointed ot1t, however, that it is on ly w ithin th e pas t te n years at the mos t that money for s uch large investments as rad ios or ke rose ne stoves has been available, and that of tl1c popular ite ms

CANAMELAR: RURAL SUGAR PLANTATION PROLETARIAT

375

bought, many o( them are, in a sense, "profit-bearing." Kerosene stoves save in time, effort, and hard cash. THE FAMILY, SOCIALIZATION A ND RITUAL Only one worker in the three localities- Vieja, OriKINSHIP IN BARRIO POYAL ente, and the barrio beach-has a refrigerator (the down payment was made with a bolita winning), and THE SOCIAL FU NCTIO N S OF THE FAM ILY it is used to make the li11dberglis (flavored ice cubes) The wage-earning people of Oriente, the barrio which are sold to children. Electric irons are cheaper to operate than are the more common Aatirons which beach, and the colonias like Vieja have two principal must b e h ea ted with charcoal or wood. Rad ios appear loyalties: one to their families and their rit ual kin, the other to their political parties. The family is the most LO represent a real symbo l. of conspicuo:is consumption, since no econ omic sav 111g can be denved through important single social institution in the lives of the the ir use. Like h eer drinking, they are an innovation people. Subsidiary institutions which customarily play which came with the war a nd the increased wages of so important a role in modern culture are of lesser the last d ecade. Every family no\\' actively aspires to significance in this community. The Church has only limited power in shaping the way of life. Schools are own a r;1dio. Standards ol li,·ing at the barrio beach are markedly of growing importance, but the pressure of economic lc)\\·cr than those or'" either Vieja or Oriente. There is necessity is a strong deterrent to a long school trainno electricity: \\"<tter is olnained from an open spring; ing period. Community organization is very limited in there arc 0111\· two or three kerosene stoves. All the every way. In the municipality of Caiiamelar, labor houses there l~ut three arc made of plaited palm-leaf unions are not strong nor are they strongly supported. w:-ills and thatch roors, with earth Ooors. The beach is The family thus emerges as a powerful force in shaping cut of[ from th e rolo11in and the village, though parts daily human relations and in providing the setting for o( it lie very near the main east-west highway. Most, growth, training, and socialization of the young. · In view of the overwhelming importance of the though not all, 0 [ the families living there hope to move to an area where electricity, water from faucets, family, it is surprising to learn how many of the unions and other such conveniences are available. Some of in Poblaclo Oriente are common-law. An effort was the beach residents are migrants from the highlands made to tabulate as many marriages as possible in the who lost their farmland or who came to the coast seek- village of Oriente with the following results. If a maring the wages in sugar. These families keep fences of riage by each individual be counted as one marriage, palm leaves around their houses and grow patches of then there have been i83 marriages among 60 couples. sweet potatoes and plantains. Their pr~v!ncialism is Included in this figure are the marriages of 3 widows manifested, accon.linu to one pa tronizing coastal (1 remarried) and of their deceased spouses. OE these dweller, by their willingness to marry "cousin with i83 marriages, 21 have been Catholic, 7 Protestant, 21 cousin." There are no stores at the barrio beach and civil, and 134 consensual or common-law. Forty-two about the only things one ca n buy there are fresh fish men (2 deceased) and 37 women (including i widow) occasionally, when the boats come in, and illicit rum, have been married once. Ten men and 15 women (including I widow) have been married twice. Seven men for which there are one or two sources. From the brief description above, it can be seen that, (1 deceased) and 7 women have been married three of the three locales, the people of Oriente probably times. One man and i woman have been married four enjoy the highest standard of living; Colonia Vieja times. One m an has been married five times. Where comes next; the barr io beach is a poor third. This multiple marriages by the same individual have been ranking h as historical meaning: the village is largely of different kinds, the following facts emerge: Catholic populated with those a<rregndos who earliest found the and common-law marriages by the same individuals means to move off th~ colonias. Standards at Vieja have occurred in seven cases; civil and common-law have improved very slm·vly over the years. At the barrio marriages by the same individuals have occurred in six beach, one finds the newcomers to the barrio: the high- cases. In no case has any individual been married by landers who have not yet acculturated to the standards Protestant and Catholic sacraments, or by civil and which the villagers set for themselves, and newly mar- Catholic ceremonies. In only one case has an individried couples who find they can live at the beach ual been married by Protestant and other (in this case, cheaply while waiting to obtain other housing ar- common-law) procedures. Of the presently constituted unions tabulated in the village, including herein 3 rangements in the village. Certain other items should b e mentioned. There are widows, 1 of whom has remarried, there are 3 (5 per seven cars in the barrio: two at the colonia, belong- cent) Protestan t unions, 7 (11 per cent) Catholic ing to the head ma)•ordomo and the store chief, and unions, 8 ( i 3 per cent) civil unions, and 42 (70 per five in Oriente. four belong ing to veterans who drive cent) common-law unions. The predominance of common-law unions and the them as public cars, a nd one belonging to the son of the leading storekeeper who is also a public car driver. apparent relative instab ility of marriage in the comThere are no telephones in Barrio Poyal except in the munity clamors for expla nation. Certain other facts offices of the several co/011ins and in the colo11ia. are revealed by the simple census above. Ior instance, stores. 5 •; r.n In thi < c11 nnec1ion, it is \\·onh noting that approxima tely

l\\'O·lhirds of the tclcp.houcs in all of Ca1iamclar are th e properly of lhc single corp orauon which clomina1.cs life in Barrio Poyal.

376

TME PEOl'LE OF PUERTO RICO

Catholic marriages show generally high stability, and only in five individual cases have Catholic marriages been followed by other kinds of unions-in every case by a common-law marriage. Individuals united by Catholic sacrament are prevailingly of the older generation. Individuals united by Protestan t sacrament, on the other hand, and those married by civil procedure, are preva ilingly young people. • The common-law or consensual marriage has l ong been a practice in Puerto Rico. Dr. Carroll ( 1900: 690-710) concluded from his interviews with Pu erto Ricans in 1899 that lower-class people often did not enter Catholic marriage because it was a complicated and expensi ve procedure for them. According to the statistics c9mpi led by l\Iorales-Otero and others in 1937 and 1938, over 46 per cent o( the unions then existing among some fifteen hundred individuals in a south coast s ugar zone were common-law. J\IoralesOtero and his staff point out (1937- 40 :44- 45) that this figure is much higher than that for the island as a whole, and still higher than the one for the mountain regions. Jn their tabulations, i\Iorales-Otero and staff divide their sample by race and note that " . . . these data suggest that the colo1·ed people prefer the civi l to the church marriage." Furthermore (p. 49), "the consensual marriages among the colored ·people in the surveyed area are much higher than among the white p eople." Since at n o point do the authors explain what constitutes a "colored" person and what a "white"' person, either physically or sociologically, the division on a racial basis seem s at best rather questionable. The authors later conclude ( 1937-40:49) that "if the percentages for the s ugar cane and fruit and coconut areas are taken as representative for the sugar cane and fru it regions (and conseguently for the costal sections where the colored race predominates), it may be safely stated that the natural unions or consensual marriages occur mainly in the rural coasta l sections and among the colored peop le of Puerto Rico." If the figures supplied b y these resea rchers are rearranged, we can see that while some correla ti on between "colored people" and consensual marriages is suggested, the percentage of consensually married "whites" in the coastal a rea is 30 per cent of the total sample of coastal unions. In the case of the highland sa mple area, just 30 per cent of the unions of "colored people" are consensual. In view of this, the present writer would suggest that the frequency or co11sensual marriages is related w something othe1· than "color," since coastal "whites" apparently li ve con sensua lly j ust as frequently as h ighland "colored people," according to :\ forales-Otero's own fi gures. Th ere is every reason to suppose that consen sual, or common-law, unions are determined hy fa cto1·s extraneous to color. Throug hout the nineteenth cenwry, religious and aboli tionist writers deplored the socia l conditions ex isting on the slave-run sugar haciendas. While som e //{/cenda dos were responsible men who saw lo il that slaves were married by religious ceremon y and received religious instruction, this was apparently not the rule. Lack of observance of religious rey uirements even antedates the influx of slave labor in large

quanttttes. to judge by the wnungs or priests and other early observers. And in the case of the agregados compelled by law to serve on the haciendas, there is nothing to indicate that moral pressures o n them to fulfill religious requirements "·ere any stronger than they were on the slaves. The prevalence of consensual un ions in the coastal areas of the island may thus be considered historically and economica lly rather than racially. The writer"s figures on consens ual unions in Poblado Oricntc are not divided b y race. ln the case of many of the p eople of Orie11tc, racial identity is irrele,·ant or e,·en impm~ihl e to establish e xce pt in terms ol the sncial attiwdcs ol the vi ll agers themselves. That a gro up labeled "wh it e .. 1na y demonstrate a lower p c rce n Lage ol consensu;d unions tha11 a group l;ibeled '"colored .. 011 th e south coast. as in the ;\fora les-Otero study, may have some mca11i 11g. however. This writer believes it m ea n s that m any of the religious marriages tabulated on the so uth coast for "wh ites"" ,,·ere accontplished in the highlall(I area; later, the individuals in question. through lo!>!> of land or home or ernployment, migrated lO the souL11 roast area, which expanded incl ustrially alter the w rn ol the century. ll is this migration of highland "whites" lO the coast that gives the curious "racial" character to the question o( consensual marriages. P erhaps it will help lO consider certain specific cases of common-la"·· civi l, and religious unions in the vi llage of Oriente. Don Pablo and Dona Vassilisa have lived together con sensua II y for seven teen years. Th ey have eigh l children living, the oldest six teen and the baby about six months. According to customary standards, both P ablo a 11d Vassilisa are "pure white." Pablo does nol think there is anything wrong with consensual marria ge, though he understands that his ch ildre n may have need of their parents' marriage record al some time shou ld they ever escape from the sugar cane. Tite priest had someone visit Don Pablo to sec if h e would be willing to be married religiously, at no expense. " J know that fellow," laughed Don Pablo. "He'll marry us free, then send us extra envelopes for alms every month. No, I think we'll stay single-it hasn't been any trouble so f"ar." Dona Vassilisa agreed, with no show of concern. Neith er P ablo nor Vassilisa has ever been married bcl"ore. .Santiago is now married for the second time, by consensua l arrangement. He had previously b een married civilly, a11d on separating from him, his first wife threatened to try to get money from him lega ll y. H e wanted to get a divorce, but he could not afford it. Howeve r, his first wife made no charge against him, and Santiago began to look about for another woman. Al first, he asked a woman who was pregna n t by an· other man who had refused to marry her. Santiago pointed o ut w h er that he was without a wife and sh e without a husband . But sh e refused him. Later, he took. into his house Dofia l\Iarga, who had a sma ll chi Id by her first union, which h ad b een a co11se11sua l one. Santiago remains lega lly married to his llrst wife, but cannm do a11ything about it. Ile says of legal and

CANA'.\IELAR: RURA L SUGAR PLANTATION PROLETARI AT

religious marriage that it is " 1111a cosa de sociedad" ("a matter for high society") and poin ts to his and his consensua l w ife's independence under the present system. H e accepts D oiia l\ larga's child as if it were his o,,·n, and he will raise the child (por cria11za). Racially, Santiago is "white," if his hair and fea tures be used in making a judgment; his skin is dark. Santiago's first wife resembled him. His second wife is lighter of color tha n he b u t with tightly curled hair (/Jelo 111alo, i.e., "bad" hai r). Don r. lanolo Diaz, unl ike Don Pablo and young Santiago, is an older man and a storekeeper. H e came LO Oric ntc lrom a big cit)'. He is married by Catholic ceremony and neither he nor his wife has ever been 111;1rricd to anyone else. He is a man of substance, probabl y the wealthiest man in the barrio, and would not be married other tha11 by Catholic ritual, he says. His wife i:. ligla-skinned with wavy hair; Don Manolo's features a re heavy. Ra111011cito is a ~·o ung ,·e teran who is now going to school und er th e G.I. Bill of Rights. The school su pcri 1a e11dc 11 t cond uctcd a campaign with some success to get consensually married students married by other procedure. Ramon and his wife had a civil ceremony. Now i[ they arc d ivorced, Ramon's wife will be in a position to get economic assistance for herself and for any children from the union (there are two). R amon refused to be married by a religious ceremony, which was the objective o[ the school superintendent, an e nthusiastic Catholic. Both Ramon and his wife are light-skin ned, but she h as extremely curly hair and very [u ll 1i ps. Juan el Viejo ("Juan the old one") is the most married m ale in Oriente. H e has been married five times, each time consensually. His last wife was much younger than he; she left him for another man, leaving several of th eir children with him. Juan has no wife now and bemoans the fact. Yet he says he has had five wives alread y, so perhaps he should not complain. H e willingly cares for and supports his children by his last wife, and has o ne young man in his house who is the son of an ea rlier wife by one of her previous marriages. Juan cl Viejo is not bothered by the supposed moral question in conse nsual marriage, though he maintains that marriages lasted longer when he was a young man a nd that people did not marry so you ng. Juan's "race," to judge by h is appearance, is what is commonly called "pure i egro." Th ese br·ie f examples may suggest the diversity of marital arrangemen ts obtaining in Oriente and Vieja at present. Further, they ma y indicate the futility of trying to unders tand the dynamics of consensual mar· ri age in racial rather than in historica l and socioeconomic terms. The writer submits that the prevalence of consensual unions ought to be considered in terms of local lower-class conceptions o[ what is "moral." In these terms, consensua l marriage and its persisten ce falls into a category o( behavior which includes local preferences fo r the illegal lottery, illega l rum, and the like. ' \lhat is meant here is not that lower-cl ass people prefer illegal behavior. Ilut it is 1

377

important to determine what does and what does not constitute moral behavior in the eyes of most of the inhabitants of Cafiame lar. T hat drinking illegal rum and playing the illegal lottery, bu tchering wi thout a license, selli ng fish without a permit, and quartering one's animals on forbidden property are not seen as immoral practices b y the people of Oriente and Vieja has already been stated. It must be added that consensual unions are, in like fashion, not regarded as immora l. In a preliminary report on the sociology of fertility in Puerto Rico, it has been pointed out that in a sample of 13,000 adults of both sexes, well over 85 per cent of the individuals questioned opposed consensual u nions for their daughters.67 Unfortunately, the preliminary report does not state what percentage of the individuals so questioned were themselves living in common-law unions, nor how such a fact would correlate with the percentages of stated disapproval. It is indeed true that any father in Oriente or Vieja might express disapproval of a consensual union for his daughter, even if she were already so married a nd even if he himself were so married. Legally, her economic r ights are less adeq uately protected should the union be dissolved. Yet such disapproval, in terms of the present economic and social situation of the people of the village and of the colonia flies in the face of daily reality. i\fost of the people in the community are married consensually themselves, and there is no local disapproval of such marriages in a realistic sense. An illustra tion may clarify the point. A man who chooses godparents for his newborn chi ld is enjoined by the Catholic church to select people who, if married, were married in the Church. Yet a priest will not refuse to baptize a child if this is not so. In fact, the probability is extremely good in the coasta l area that the child's parents have not been married in the Church. In the highlands, where the rate of consensual unions is m uch lower, a man selecting godparents will exercise more care. But at the same t ime, the problem is not so pressing, because proportionately so many more of his neighbors have been married b y Catholic sacrament. I t is not the author's intent to maintain that the people of Oriente and Vieja positively prefer consensua l marriage to o ther, lega l, Corms. Yet i t seems conceivab le that if consensually married individuals or their children are punished socially or econom ically for their marital arrangements, a feeling of hostility and resentment to such punishment will develop. That is to say, local people are not willing to be judged morally after the fact, as it were. Institutions of long standing in a loca l way of life can not be declared illegal, and thereby immoral, without threatening the people who have a lways lived by those institutions. l\Iost first marriages take place when the man is between seventeen and twenty. T he woma n may be much

M

H all, •!M9· The sample included bolh lower -class and middle-

class individun ls, divided in 1he lablcs by sex and by Jow fertility and high fertility ratings. Ohjenions Lo a consensual marriage for onc·s daughter ranged from 87.S per cent Lo 9-1 .1 per cent.

378

THE PEOPLE OF PUERTO RICO

younger, however, and while the difference in age is rarely more than four or five years, unions with girls of fifteen and one with a girl of thirteen were observed. A girl of eighteen may feel compelled to explain at great length why she is still unmarried. Because marriages are for the most part established by mutual consent and without ceremony, and because working people here do not regard a marriage as truly consummated before the birth of the first child, consensually married couples will seek to have a child, technically illegitimate, within a year of their union. And because such unions can be, and are, freely dissolved and new unions easily established, most people who have been married m ore than once are likely to have in their homes children from two or even more successive unions. When a child is asked whether another is his brother, he may reply, "Somos hijos de padre" CWe are sons of the same father"), or, "Somos hijos de madre" ("We are sons of the same mother"). Hardly a family in Oriente or Vieja does not have at least one half-brother or half-sister living together with the other children. Moreover, children of broken homes, orphans, or children in a situation where the family budget does not allo'v for their support may be shifted to the homes of relatives or childless couples. It is interesting to note that lower"class women of Poblado Oriente, the Barrio Playa, and Colonia Vieja claim to be as opposed to formal church marriages as their men are. The customary rationale is that by the avoidance of a sacramental or civil ceremony, the union can be dissolved more easily in case of disagreement. Of late, young women have begun to see the advantages of the civil ceremony, which guarantees support for the children in case of separation. 5 s In one case, a young woman in Poblado Oriente brought her consensual husband to court because he refused to marry her or to support the child she claimed was his. The court ordered him to contribute to the child's support. In another case, a consensually married couple separated, and the father of the girl insisted then that they be married civilly in order to assure some help in the support of the children. Such instances are rare. They indica te, in the author's opinion, a growing strain upon the customary arrangements in such cases and the increasing need to secure the care of children through institutionalized legal techniques and other devices external to the operation of informal social controls within the local community itself. The prevalence of consensual unions is as true of Vieja as it is of the other parts of the barrio. One old woman in Vieja says that in her fourteen years of residence there, she has never seen a single couple married by religious ceremony. . Courtship among young people in Vieja and Oriente is usually initiated through an intermediary, a friend GS A ~·eli gious ceremony would provide Lhc same guarantees, but Onentc people do not readily undergo Catholic marriage becau ~e ?f Lhe d ifficulties of getting a divorce, and Protestants are SL•ll 111 the minority.

of one of the participants. Parents make considerable effort to protec t the chastity of their daughters, and chaperones are usually present at dances and other social gatherings. Yet the prevailing social tradition is one which allows individuals o( marriageable age to make a free choice. The ir parents' marriages are the model for most of the young people o( the barrio today. This does not mean that the you ng people, particularly the girls, do not have iclcalized feelings about marriage ceremonies; but the marriagea ble men of the barrio cannot afford a regular marriage. they will say. For the most part, such formal aspects of courtship as visits to the house of the girl's family. g ift-giving, a request for the g irl's hand , and so on arc lacking. The bases fo r the sc len io11 of a mate und er the conditions which prevail in Vicja and Orientc a rc re· markabl y frank. To begin witlt, one r:ircly hears talk o[ love among the people. Jt is a \\·ord that appears in the lyrics of the agui11aldo and /Jff'llO, !J0111lJfl. d ecimn, and seis/:1 which are s11 11 g 011 occas ion. Yet it is rarely spoken of in conversation e:-:cept jokingly. People acknowledge the importance of physical attraction in choosing a marriage partner, but there is no serious talk of a "one and only." The social values of the people of Vieja and Oriente include the idea that adult li(e is married life. Sex activity generally is agreed to be essential and desirable. For men, particularly, sexual activity is looked upon as a necessary aspect of maturity ancl of "maleness." Newcomers to the community, particularly the single highlanders who come to the coast in search of work, are soon integrated into the local social scene with regard to the sexual accessibility of barrio women. Men of the barrio, who serve as intermediaries in such arrangements, are carrying out two functions: first, that of helping a newcomer orient himseIC socially in the community; second, that of preventing liaisons between the newcomer and women who are not supposed to be sexually accessible. In Oriente in particular, so many of the people are bound by blood and ritual kinship ties thi.s kind of orientation is necessary to avoid serious trouble. For all marriageable males in the barrio, then, the acceptance of sexual activity as a necessary and desirable phenomenon, and the lack of money for prostitutes or mistresses, makes marriage a desirable state. Further, marriage offers much more than simply a means of satisfying sexual needs. Old Juan, who has been married five times and is now without a wife, is an object of secret pity to many of his close friends. Juan still does the work of a jwlero and earns enough to keep a home. He supports several of his ch ildren by his last wife, but lives alone with them and with another child of a still earlier wife. People say: "Poor .Juan. He has no woman. His clothes tear and stay torn unless his sister mends them. He won't dare to inv ite Go Local music;il forms. The bomba and /ile11a arc usually asso· ciatcd with the coast; the decima. scis, and agui11aldo wiLh the highlands.

37 9

CA NAl'\'lELAR: RURAL SUGAR PLANTATION PROLETARIAT

you insid e his house when you visit, it is in so bad a state. H e never gets a good, hot sopon de polio (chicken stew), o r asopa'o de j11eyes (crab stew). His life is too e mpty." A nd th is is true. A man without a wife is in bad socia l stra its: he lacks mo re than just sexual gratifi cation; he lacks all the comforts, the small savings, the security of a well-kept man. This is felt more keen ly than can be imagined. Vieja and Oriente have no gay bachelors. Since the married state is the acccpu.:cl one among the \\·orking people of the barrio, to be be reft or a wire is to lose much of one's socia l st:illls i11 tltc commu ni ty. The fact that a wife can prepare food tltat lllll Sl Otherwise be bought, can care for a pig or two o r a cow, sometimes (particularly at Colonia Vicja) ca 11 sell rr11ii1a or bolita or refrescos (co ld hc.:n:ragc.:s) g ives her hig h economic value as well. Some vi llage and rn/011ia women display great ingenuity i11 ea rning a few extra pennies, thus adding to L11 c.: f:amil y l1111ds and fulfilling one of the prime requi sitcs o l rca l \\·ifeliness in local terms. Love, then, is never a stated reason for marriage. Granted that physical auranion is a serious consideration in the unions of Barrio Poyal people, the usefulness, devotio n, a nd resourcefulness of a wife are at least as important considerations. Correspondingly, women d esire me n who a re attractive, but that is not the primary considerat ion. A man must be, above all, a d ependable worker, not a drunkard or a loafer; occasiona l ph il andering seems to be accepted, at least on the surface. But the great social importance o( women in this rura l proletarian culwre gives them the power to challenge any flagrant misbehavior of their husbands. On one occas ion, a female informant asked what she wou ld do i( her husband took a mistress said: " Y o no voy a criar 1111 esposo a medias con 11adie!" ('Tm not going to raise a husband 'by halves' with anyon e!") \ r\fomen are not allowed to retaliate by infidelities o f the ir own. It is an indescribably humiliating e xpe rience for a ma n to be made a cuckold, and an ad ul terer in th is sociocultural setting is risking his life. Jn a famous killing in Ca11amelar some years ago, the oIIend er, a hated corporation mayordomo, was murdered b y a n outraged h usband, a local worker. The worker then killed himself. People say proud ly th at many more people went to the funeral of the killer tha n went to the 111ayordomo's funeral. The bala nce of authority in marriage extends to o ther things besides quarrels of the kind discussed here. Th us, it is an accepted male responsibility to supply the household with money for food and other necessities. A man who fa ils to fulfill this responsibility loses stature within his family and in the commun ity. As can be eas ily d emonstrated, this cultura l va lue in an economic situation as precarious as that which confron ts the work ing people of V ieja and O rien te can have a se rio usly disorga ni?.ing effect. If a wife is able to garn er a few pe1111ies through the sa le of some articl e, she is assu med to have the right to d ispose o[ h er g a i11 as she wills. Yet a careless or showy use of th is money w ill be censured b y others. Nearly always such money goes for regu la r household necessities. In

the househo ld, the man is supposed to be a domin a nt and deciding figure at all times. H e is to determine how extra expenditures w ill be made, such as buying a radio or clothes for one of the children, since his income is always the larger. On this basis, a man may evade certain home responsibilities, such as caring for the ch ildren, by claiming that his only obligation is to supply the cash and to see that it is well spent. Yet husbands usually share in the tasks of child care, refusing o nly to p articip ate in the "purely feminine" jobs such as food preparation, sewing, dish washing, emptying of the chamber pots, making beds, etc. Needless to add, most women of Oriente and Vieja would never think of asking their men to do work of this kind. vVhile men are supposed to determine the time and p lace for major expenditures, available funds ar e invariably left at home in the care, or at least within the reach, of the wife for the daily trips to the store for the d ay's necessities. Vomen's relations with men other than their husbands are, of course, limited. Yet a man occasionally may sit on the stoop of his compadre's house a nd converse with his wife without fear o f reproach. \ Vomen h ave quite a lot of freedom of movement and visi t frequently. There is a stated male preference th at o ne's wife stay at home all the time, yet this preference is never maintained to the letter b y the women themselves. In conversation, a wom an is free to join in almost at w ill. l\Iany h usbands are wont to consult their wives about some p oint of in formation. There is plainly a great deal o f g ive and take in these relations. One cannot but carry away the impression that the women of this sociocultural grouping feel neither suppressed nor m isused . Their husbands need them, their contribution to the uni ty and well-being of the family is of the utmost importance. Women who break off with their common-law husbands, those whose lmsbands d esert them, widows-all may remarry promptly, a nd do not becom e less respectable thereby unless they behave wa ntonly. I t is indeed true that the burden of excessive child bearing fa lls heavily on the female. Yet children a re considered a virtue in themselves, and nearly every Vieja and Oriente woman aspires to be a mother. The lack of more complex ambitions in general is probably tied to the lack of outside economic or educational opportunity, the pressures o( socia lization for the domestic female role, and the desire for a home o f one's own. Consensual marriages are usually consummated before the you ng couple ma ke public their intentions. The union, since it is rarely m arked b y any ordained ceremony, is, in fact, fonnalize<l by sexua l consummation. As has been mentioned, in the thoughts and opinion of the average Vieja or Oriente citizen, a marriage is really meaningless until the birth of the first child. Thus, the re is little loca l emphas is on " married men," but considerable attention to the idea ot padres de familia ("fathers of families") . Either shortl y a fter the consummation of the consensual union, or, much more frequen tly, simultaneously w ith it, the husband abducts his wife (se la lleva), b ring ing \

1

1

380

TllE PEOPLE OF P U ERTO RICO

her usually to the house of his parents o r of a relative. By ph ys icall y separating the g irl from her famil y, the man establishes the fact of marriage. Objections, if any, a re expected from the girl's family, not from the boy's. It is simp ly ass umed that boys will leave home and get married, and in this sociocu ltural grouping, n o e ffort is made to curb them ..-\fter carry ing off his girl, it is then in cumbent upon the young man to set up as soon as possible a separate place for the two of them to live in. If a man and woman have been courting for so1ne time and the man refuses to establish the fact of the union b y sening up an ind epencle nL homestead, it will reflect on both his and the girl's reputa tion. H e has been a dece iver and hi s lover h as lost status. This is particularly true if the g irl becomes pregnant and bears the child without the father explicitly assuming obligation for it. Such a situation happens rarely. During the fi e ld work period, onl y one such case occurred in Poblado Oriente. Jn another case, a young man debated too Jong between two girls. \Vhile neither g irl became pregnant, the community felt that the young man's indecisiveness had caused the situation to get out of h a nd. 110 Once the couple have been ma~Tied if it is essen tial to Jive with the family of e ither the boy or the g irl, the g irl's famil y is pre ferred . Furthermore, when independent settlement is possible, the couple is more likely to live near the g irl's famil y than n ear the boy's. Friction between the wife and h er mother-in-law is expected and feared. The husband, however, is expected to appease and con cili ate his mother-in-law with gifts, favors, and even economic aid . In future disputes between himself ancl bis wife, he is like ly to turn to his mothe r-in-law for aid. Since the group is so predominantly landless, residen ce with or near the husba nd 's famil y is rare ly desirable for economic reasons. Relations between the wife and he r mother-in-law are usuall y neither strong nor very warm , while the husband and his mother-in-law will maintain a strong respec t relationship. Th e son-in-law will resent a n y failure on the part of his single brothersin-Jaw to co ntribute to their mother's support; h owever, he does not expect rnarried sons of his motherin-Iaw to h elp h er and her husband particularl y, since they w ill ha ve obligations toward the ir own famili es (a nd presumabl y, toward their m others-in-l aw, as ·we ll). \ Vhat is demonstrated by th is mother-in-law sonin-law relationship is an apparent tenden cy to structure socia l relatioi1ships along the fema le line. T here is liul e conscious awareness of any such te nde n cy. A man w ill say, "Yes, I will give h elp both lO m y own parents and to th ose of m y wife, if they n eed it; but '"'For cas ua l sex u a l experien ces. lh e m c11 of Vicja and Oric111 c arc expec1 cd to go to pros1i1111c•s. 1\ fos l of t h e laborers. however, e<t1111111. afford ~ u c h a n 0111 1<.:t. l ·s ua ll v the oc;ca sions when a p ros ti · rute w tll be vi ~tted arc 11·llc n a 1\°ifc is ill or in lat e p regn a n cv. The lf'"'!·iffo. or 111istr<.:' ' p att e rn, \d1ich a ss um es th e proponi;rns o f an lll 'L H111 io n in 1he mot·e pri1·ilcged c lasses. is miss ing in V ic ja a n d Onc- nt e. Such a n :1rrangemen 1 lies lic1ond rhe economic 111ea11' of 1h1· 11·11rki11g people. ·

it sh o uld be in equa l d egree." Yet the same man will send food dail y to his wife's parents and not concern himself with his own parents. co unting on his m arried sisters to help them out. This tendency may be related to the problem of child care. When a fam ily breaks up, the chi ldren usuall y, though not always. go to the parents o( their mother until the mo th er has found "·ork o r has made oth er arrangements. The mutual respect and economic in terdependence existing between son-in -la\\· and motlter·in -law rn c;1n s mari tal disputes can be liancll ed diplrnnaticall y and p<.:r· haps patched 11p. Ir no -, 11 c h so lu1 ion i ~ pos-,iblc. tlt<:n the children nu y be cared for (),· the wil c:"s rnothc r until th eir m1·11 moth er is ready to t;rkc up the ir c 1rc once more . · r11c ".<>111an "s ah ili t,· to count rn1 lte r O\,·n parents for help a nd circ. in c;1sc li er 1111ion is dissolved, is prob:tbl y also a lanor in 1.lt c indc pc11dc11t attilllcle of th e ,,·om en ol \ ' ieja ;ind Oric ntc ;ind in their usual \\· illin gnc~s to dispen se \,·i1.lt a c ivil or re ligio us marri:ige ccrernon y. lf separate res ide n ce. J10"·e,·e r l111rnbl c. is po~silil c for the young couple, th ey will prdcr it to li ving ,,·i1h the famil y of either one. ' "(2_11e sc casa /Ht ' su C(Wt," goes one local saying. ("Who marries, let him go to his own h ouse"), and this is customaril y o bserved."1 The problem of se tting up a place of one's own is a difficult one because of th e shortage of land, of building materials, and of capital. The children or the agregados at Vieja may try to get one of the shacks on the colonins, but these are usually filled to capac ity. Laws passed by the political pa rty presently in power denied to landowners with agregados on their land the right summarily to evict them. This has been an important measure of protection for th e agregados, and at preselll, the population turnover at Colonia Vieja, among married people, is small. Nearly any Vieja ag regado ,.rnuld move to the public domain if he had the means to provide himself a nd his family with comparable living conditions. But the minimum living fa ci lities at Vieja are better than the average ag regado can afford for himself and his family on th e public domain. This fact acts as an important brake on the i11de/Je11dizaci<Jn process. Thus th e newlyweds o f agregado families must usually look elsewhere for their living quarters unless they d ecid e to double up with one family or the other. For those young people who choose to live independ ently, the probable choice will be a palm thatch shack at the barrio beach . T h ese shacks are inexpensive. if purchased, and quite easy and cheap to build. Rut they are substandard accommodations, since the floors are of bare earth and sanitary facilities are deficient. An y young couple who set up h o usekeeping at the beach wi ll have as their ambition the eventual owning of a

UL .\cronli11g lo l'arl l'R·') of th e P/1/11 0 N<'[!;lllarlor /111ru <' I Dn arrol/o d e Pu ertu Rico. a mimeogra ph ed do cum e nt iss u e d hy I h e 1'11c r1 o Rico Tloa nl of I' la 1111 i11g. of 7!J.OOO ag,.('gado families polle cl in th e l\fa y, t!).JS, cen s u s of agr<•garlos onl y six ·tenlhs of 1 pct· cen t we re living in hou seholds cornpr.secl o f more 1il a 11 rn1c nuc lear farn ih'.

CANA'.\!ELAR: RURAL SuGA R l' LAl'T ATIO>: PROLETARIAT

38 1

wooden h o use, either nt the beach or, preferably, m use Lhem with th e ir wives. Coitus interruptus is unithe v illage. formly scorned b y th e males of Orie nte and V ieja. H ousing in t he village of Oriente itself is not so "U11n bobe ria de los A mericanos-yo soy Latino, )'O dilTicu lt LO arrange for as it is nt the colonia, but it 110 lu saco." ("A foo lish idea of the Americans-I'm is. ne,·enh e less. a severe problem. In Oriente, it is a Latin, I won't ,,·ithdraw'"), says one man angril y. Of gen erally assumed that there a re but three ways to get steriliLation, "·omen express conflicting opinions. T o a "·oode n house : ( 1) by inherirnnce, (2) with veterans' beg in with, steriliza tio n is a contraceptive technique a llo\\'ances. or (3) "·ith Vf)fila winnings. The writer which h ns ga ined considerable ground in Puerto Rico knows of nn ly one h ouse in Oriente which was built in recent years. \ Vomen \\"ho are brought to distri ct exclu -; i\'(:ly \1·i1h m o ney s;l\·cd from fi eld labor. Two hospitals for delive ry can be sterilized at their own houses \\'Cr c built by local s1ore owners, using store request. But most children in Puerto Rico are born a t profi1 -; (in one o l these c1~e -.. /Julita "·innings made the home, particularl y those of rural lower-class mothers store po-.-,ihlc): at least l\\"O houses were built exclu- such as the "·omen of Vieja a nd Oriente. One Oriente si,·cly \\"it h 111011cy made from the sa le of bolila and woman is said to have been ""·eakened" b y the operation, and other wom en in the barrio u se this as a ('(11/ilr1. The rc't \1-cre ob1ai11cd in o ne of the three a forc 111c 11tio11ed \\"a ys. or through some combination renson for being unwilling to have it performed. The simple fa ct that it ca n be done only in district hosof these. .'\dcq11atc housing thus looms as one o( the most pita ls a nd the importance of havi ng the "·oman a t pressing prohl cms o l n c\\" ly\\"eds in the barrio. A cuerda home to fulfill h er wifely functions a lso acts as a of agric11lt11r:illy useless !:ind. purchased from a land- d eterrent. It is extremely interesting in this connecO\\'lli11g < ·0111pa11~· in Ba rrio Poya l by the municipnl Lion that no one has campaigned for the sterilization government in 19.1 '.~· lies along the road through of males, thoug h the operation invo lved is a less d a n P oblado Orieme. The mu11icipal government divided gerous and less expensive one. (The writer does not sugthis land into plots which it gave to local famili es who gest this approvingly.) Certainly other means besides needed a place lO live. The orig ina l number of families sterilization might b e en couraged to show lower-class settled h ere has doubled sin ce lhe original seulement. families the advantages of having only as many chilJn n early a ll cases. the ne\\" settlers are children of dren as they can adequately s upport. One problem here the first g rou p. The gro\\"ing migration of local workers is the assumption by many lower-class people that there to the United S tates h as been a help. i\Iany wives and is always enough rice and b ean s for one more mouth. children have vacated lheir houses and gone to live Cases of excessive ph ysica l abuse of children are exwith the wives' parents until they ca n be sent for by tremely rare, and there is a strong genera l liking for the migrants. thereb y making a house nvailable [or child ren. The educatio n al and economi c limitation s rent o r sale . But, for the most part, nonvelera ns in on e ffective birth control thus are further buttressed Oriente, Vieja, and the beach \\"ho marry today usually by Lhe role children play in the validatio n of m a lemusl beg in lhe ir married life in a hlll aL lhe beach. n ess and female n ess a nd by the great feel ing and love Once independent h ousekeeping has begun, the which is felt for children by this sociocultural group. young coupl e seek lO cement their union by having a 011 a verbal level, male children ·a re preferred, parch ild. The birth of the first child is the rea l marker ticularl y by the fathe rs. Neverth eless, every fath er wants of their marriage, and g ives them the dignity o f being at least one m11jercila ("little woman"). A mong the considered a fam il y. Childless couples are few, and landless wage earners o( Ca 1i amelar, boys do not h ave childlessness is consid ered lragic. "Si 110 pnre, jJues, the economic potemial "·hich is the irs ilmong the ecltalo fJn' 'bajo.1" ("If it cloesn"t bear, throw it o ut!"), family-fa rm a nd sh a re tenant people of the highla nds. says a twe nty-five-year-old ho usewife with five children. Child labor laws p assed in the 19.1o's prevent boys For the hus ba nd. the fath ering of children is a va lida- from working in the can e until th ey are seventeen tion o[ vi rili ty : for the wife, the first chi ld is a v;i lida- years old. The cash contribution which can be made tion of the u11ion and lh e most importan t affirmation by boys and girls in Oriente and Vieja fam ilies is of h er feminine role. The author never h en rd of nn neglig ible. Yet th e h elp childre n may lend in the Orie nte \\"Om:in who sa id o ne ch ild was enouo·h, a nd family is made use o( ,,·h erever po sible. The b iggest Lhere is a feel ing th at to have only one or t,7,o chil- ~11iLia l task is lhc care of the younger children. This dren is lo live unfulfill ed. On the olher hand, women J O~, ;~ l o ng with sewing. cooking, a nd washing, Calls do fee l tha t the total n11mber or children should be prin cipally to the g irls. Boys learn Lo collect tinder; to limited. l\ lechanical contr~ice ption is known, but o nly wt g rass for animal food ; to gath er coconuts, 11vas de! three cases o f its use b y married coupl es were recorded mar (sea grapes), a nd o ther fruiLs su ch as m a ngoes and by the ''Tite r. Jn l\\"O of these rnses (both vetera ns). grosellas (gooseberries): to pick co\\"peas and other Lhere ilre L\\"O child ren alreaclr in each family and there legumes which ha,·e been p lanted o n corporation land has b een 110 verbally ex pressed desire to limit the as green fen ilizer; to catch crabs, cuttlefish , and fish; number p erma ne ntly LO L\\·o. Jn the third case, that to run errands: to Lake the a nima ls Lo pastu re a nd o[. a nonve teran about twen ty-eight yenrs old, fi ve bring them back; to carry lunch to t he ir fathe rs; to childre11 ;ilready have been born and a sixth is ex- shin e shoes; Lo se ll ca 11d y a nd other small item s at t h e p ected. i\fan y me n in Orie!lle nssociate m;ile contra- coloni"s on paycl:1y: and so o n. Some of these tasks ceptive Lechn iques wiLh prostitutes and so refuse to ma y be clone by children o( e ither ex, bu t most of

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THE PEOPLE OF PUERTO RICO

them are q uite sharply divided along sexual lines. \Vhile either boys or girls may look after the ba by, a boy would rarely if ever cook food or wash clothes; a girl who wanted to catch crabs or to sell food at the colonia on payday would be strongly discouraged , though she might be a llowed to carry the sack for the crabs or to prepare the food to be sold. vVhile some sexual division of labor is thus marked o ut for both boys and g irls, there is plenty of work for both until they reach the age of puberty. At that point, the girl's contribution rises sharply relative to her previous usefulness, while the boy's contributi on drops until he reaches legal working age. Preparations for an expected baby customarily are very informal. The mother-to-be, if this is her first child, will probably visit the municipal hosp ital at intervals for prenatal examinations, but unless lhere is some complication the child will be born at home with a registered mid wife in attendance. Nearly every village such as Oriente has one or more women who qualify as midwives. Layettes (canas lillas) a re prepared by the mother-to-be, perhaps ·w ith some help from her mother. vVhile the new mother is resting, usually for about eig ht days after the birth, her familial responsibilities are fulfilled by the oldest g irl i{ she is twelve or older; in the case of young families, a sister of the mother or the maternal grandmother may help out. The godmother of an older child also may assist in taking care of the mother and the household. THE SOCIALIZATION PROCESS

The present study maintains that a certain distinctiveness and uniqueness characterizes the culture of the rural proletarians as represented by the working people 0£ Oriente and Vieja. Not only does the rural proletarian face particular life needs and obligations, he a lso reveals a distinctive set of values and attitudes which are a part of lower-class culture. The following material aims at giving some picture of these values and attitudes as they are manifested in the socializatiou process. It has been pointed out that the people of Oriente and Vieja place a high value on independent res idence. One might suppose, there(ore, that the functioning rural proletarian family is a self-sufficient and independent unit. Yet the tendency to structure in-law relations a long a son-in-law mother-in-law axis suggests that such self-suffic iency a nd independence do not necessarily follow from independent residence. The still vigorous sysLem of riwal kinsh ip further binds individuals and individual conj ugal families into a web of social relationships which have important daily fu nctions. While each conjuga l family of Oriente and Vieja may live in its own house, each house is tied by a wide variety of blood, rilual, and marriage relationsh ips to many other houses in the barrio. Visiting is an im portant barrio pastime, and people wander freely in and out of the houses of friends, r~ l atives, and neighbors throughout the day and eventng. The exception to this already has heen stated

- m en (oLher lhan blood r elaLives) are not supposed to visit the " ·ives of others while the women are alone at home; if they do, they are expected to stop at the front steps or in the yard ( baley) . Olherwise, however, a conslant stream o( visitors is expected and welcomed daily. A busy housewife will hover over her pol of ri ce while the baby lies nursing in her arms. Female guests will ca re for, fondle, and gently Lease any toddlers around the house. Th e visitor may be a comad r e (i.e ., female godparent to one's child . or molher of a ch ild lO \\·hom one is godmcnltcr or godfather) , a younger siste r or h;tl r-~istc r or brnther or half-brother, an aulll, the liouse\\' il e·s motlier. clc. Friends of the younger boys may sLop by lor a nq> of the swcel bbck coffee \,·liid1 is prepared in the late afternoon. :\ s lhis fi le of \·is itors passes through lhe house, Lhc baby is picked ttp. fed, played \\'ith, put down. Fiflccn women. girls, ;tncl C\'Cn young chil dren may handle a cra \,·l ing child i11 th e course of an afternoon . .In terms of the c;1sual. daily aspects of child training, then, the "family" liccomcs an en larged, exlend ed, elastic orga11i1alion , which gives the chil<l orientation, affection, guicbnce, and, rarely, punishment. The fact that large famil ies arc the rule increases the importance o[ siblings and half-siblings in the socialization process. The span between the oldest and youngest child is frequently fi(teen years or more. There is a stated desire to train older chi ldren, and particularly girls, in the care of younger siblings. Girls as young as seven years of age are expected to share actively in the responsibility o( caring for the younger siblings. Nearly all the older children help to care for a newborn baby and are encouraged in some feel ings of possessiveness where the new child is concerned. On one occasion, following the birth of a baby in the home of an Oriente resident, the next o ldest child, then under three, was awakened and shown his new baby sister. The infant was wrapped up well and carried outside for a brief walk near the house, fulfilling an old superstition that the newborn infant must be exposed, but on ly momentarily, tO the night air (sereno). \Vh en the father returned to the house with the baby, he put it into the arms of the two-year-old boy, with the words, "This is your new sister. She is very weak. You are bigger and stronger. You have to help us a ll take ca re of her." Such training does not, o[ course, solve the problem of sibling rivalry. Older sil>lings •.vill tease and may even strike younger children without provocation. Rival ry for parental attention lakes a visible form in petu lant requests for small services on the part of lhe children. In general, the o lder children are taught to defer to the demands of the baby but the emphasis in such teaching is upon the baby's helplessness. This emphasis, almost certainly never deliberate, helps the older children to understand their lesser dependence and may even reduce the hostility they feel for the liulest child who has the g reatest claim on parental attention . \Vhat governs training in the period ol infancy is nothing more than familial necessity : the father is al work,

CANAMELAR: RURAL SUGAR PLANTATI O N PROLETARIAT

the mother busy with the house; hence, the older children must care for the yoirnger. As indicated already, from infancy onward chi ldren arc handled by a host of friends, relatives, si blings, etc. l n addition , considerable p hysica l freedom is allowed the child as soon as it begins to crawl about. At Colon ia Vieja, the i nfants are put in the yards between the h ouses where so much o[ the communi ty activity trans pires, and here they may sit and play with stones, stic ks. old tin cans. and passing animals, without much adult supen·i:-ion of any kind. Usuall}'• a sibling five or :-.ix or sc,·cn ,·car~ old "·ill be commissioned to look alter the hah'". · Sometimes no one is so d irected. I n ca:-.e the chi Id · hegi ns to cry loudly for any reason, the mother \\·ill rush Ollt of the house tO tend tO its needs. .\t Oricllle \"illagc. children are confined somewhat more than the,· :1rc o n the rolonia because of the busy hig h "·a y ,~·h id i passes the doors of most o( the houses. Sti ll. w here h ouses are Cenced in, the chi ld is free to era\\·! ahmn and has the unrestricted use of the entire house and porch. \\'hen it is time for the men l<) come home from work. the babies will be given baths and dressed in clean shins. Then they are ready to be fondletl and played wiLl1 by their fathers. The struggle against dust and d irt goes on unceasingly in the barrio, though the dirt wh ipped across the land by the wind, the poorly constru cted ho uses, and th e need to carry every drop o ( water Crom public taps to the house i n a ll but a few ho uses make t he job discouraging. \ Vhe11 infants are being clea ned in the evening, older siblings are likely to be doing the job, for the mothers are busy with the preparation of supper. Boys will wash and clean babies, but they will not change them. In general, care o( the young devolves on the g irls, although boys will feed the baby, carry it about and play with it, or bathe it. i( there is n eed. After supper, the strea m of visitors often begins again, a nd th e infant crawls about the feet o( the g uests, is picked up to b e fond led or examined, and p lays a b out. \ Vhi le very young, the baby may be put to sleep on one of the beds, but it soon learns to enjoy company with its parents. Then it is picked up when it grows tired, and rocked to sleep by its mother o r father. Putting the ch ildren to sleep and p laying with t hem at bedtime is at least as much the father's job as the mother's. \ Vhile a compadre sits on the front stoop, listening to a baseball game or politica l speech over the radio, o r while a visiting couple ta lks with the p a re nts in th e l iv ing room, Cather and mother will be surround ed by t h e drowsing younger children. Sometimes the baby will sleep in the mother's lap, another ch ild w ill sleep at her feet, while a third, and perhaps a fourth, \\'ill I ie in the arms o( the father. The constant presence o f children apparently is not looked upon as a disadvantage: yet it rarely allows parents any opportunity for private conversation, and the terrible crowding makes sex activity a necessarily cover t a nd yet 11ecessari ly exposed matter. Because chil d bearing and child rearing [requently extend over a period o ( cwenty years or more, houses a lways r ing ,,·ith childre n 's \'Oiccs. and o nl y rarely arc both parents 1

1

383

found to be out. Baby sitting occurs, usually as an exchange service between sisters, friends, mother and daughter. or comadres, but it is infrequent. ' \Thile a mother is still confined after birth, most domestic services are carried on for her on the basis of blood or ritual relationship, or friendship. Jn th is period, the Cather's role in the fami ly also is more important and he readily accepts the job of d11rmie11do (i.e., "putting to sleep") the ch ildren. The father genera lly plays with the children in the evenings, perhaps strolls down the road with some of the younger ones. In these and other "·ays, he is able to give the mother some respite from the constant demands which the children, young and old al ike, tend to make on her. It appeared to the writer that fathers tended to spend more t ime with their male children. v\Then they set o u t on their evening visits and walks, most o[ten i t would be boy children who toddled beside them or wa lked a long behind. Contrariwise, you ng girls spent most o( their time with their mothers and often remained behind at home when the father went out for a stroll. Such a division is a logical one from the point of view of the teaching of tasks and the establishing of sex. differentiation. Yet it is interesting at how early an age this distinction seems to appear. Even ,,·hen children are being put to sleep by their parents, fath ers will "sleep" the male ch ildren (once they are about two years old or more) while mothers give their attention to the girls. I ndependent eating begins early, and little discipline is imposed with regard to it. This "laissez-faire" attitude about eating appears to start with birth and to continue through childhood and on into adulthood. \\That is meant here is not that there are no cultural values about food, but rather that how much, when, and what the child eats is largely left up to him. \ !\Then the midday or the evening meal is ready, each child gets his plate or pot Cull of food a nd eats it where he p leases. The conve ntio n a l picture of the fam ily sea ted quietly about the table does n ot hold in these P uerto Rican homes. The children eat any time from when the food is ready up to perhaps two hours later. The bigger boys may bolt a plate of rice a nd beans, then at eleven or twelve at night go into the kitchen for the cold leftovers of the supper. The younger children get their food and wander about the house or out onto the porch while they eat. Bits of food they may drop are usually cleaned up by the chicken s which, unpenned, learn to explore the floor of the house during mealtimes. Occasiona lly, a child may not want the meager fare (usually rice and beans or cooked corn mea l or some other sirni lar dish) he is offered. Then the mother will make every effort to find some i tem he will prefer: the burnt "tough" rice (arroz pega'o. literally, "stuck rice.') at the bottom of the pan, or a little sopa de fideo (a chick noodle soup). If n othing pleases h im, it is just assumed that he is out of sons. food wi ll be set aside fo r him in case he decides h e is hungry later on. The writer once watched a boy o( two, seated o n th e Ooor of the living room with his bowl of rice and beans, laughingly

384

THE PEOl'LE OJ? PUERTO RICO

feet! part o( his dinner to a hung ry chicken which stood , poised, several (eel away, pecking the rice o ut o[ lhc boy's spoon. 1\o reaction but laughter was fonhcoming from the child's parents. The only d iscipline invol ved in the eat ing process centers about the fa ther. H e sits at lhe table, a nd he and his g uests, i( any, musl be served immediatel y when he decides to cat. ~Iany liule ser\'ices are usually performed for the fa th er b y lhe chi Id ren while he eats. His coffee will be sweetened to his taste, fresh water wi ll be brought to him from the pipes along the highway, his plate will be quickly refi lled al his re· quest, and so on. His wife does not join him. After everyone else has eaten, she sits down to her O\\·n dinner, often l ess appetizing by this time. ,\·hile her baby nurses in her arms or gets his dinner in the form of tiny mouthfuls o( corn meal or mashed rice poked in \\·ith a fin ger. In addition to the genera ll y easy feeding arrange· ments which the children of Oriente and Vieja enjoy, it should be m entioned thal between-meal ealing is common and that children are never punished for this. By the time a child is three or four, h e has beg un to eat throughout the day: he chews cane, sucks on the /indberghs (flavored ice cubes) which arc so ld in both the village and th e co/011ia . or gets scraps o( food Crom the kitchen. In view of the em phasis on ea ting and the seem ingly insa tiable appetites of the children , it is interesting to observe that such bits o( food as arc eaten during the day are freely shared with other children, often without a request for a share having been made. This is a va lue instilled by the parents, and a parent may comme n t disa pproving ly that his child does not like to share and that t his is incomprehensible since neither he nor his wife are like that. Various means are employed LO establish sex cl if· ferentiation . Both p;irents are carefu l abom g irls revea ling their gen ita lia from b irth on, a l lhoug h boys are permitted to wear o nl y their littl e shins and nothing more. The emphasis on feminine modesty continues, while the writer has sometimes seen boys as old as seven years playing about naked. Toilet training for g ir ls appears to start earl ier than for boys and to be more rigid as ,,·el I. Sex differentiation, then, and many of its loca l cultural implications, begins to be taught at aboul three years, perhaps e\'en earlier. The fact that boys are usuall y left naked until they are an average or li ve, while gir ls are cloll ied from birth , is pan o{ this. l\Iany jokes are made about boys' genilals, and parents and fri ends w ill often fondle boys' genitals to tease them or LO placate them. Any such leasing or fondl ing of g irl s is unusua l; rather, the emphasis on lhe organs of sex as such seems to be played down in lhe case or g irl children. r\ two· ycur-old boy wi ll be asked, "\1\fhat is that for?" while an adult pulls at his penis, and sometimes the child will answer, "For women ." Surh a child is ca lled 111alo, or even ma lcria' o ("bad! y brought up"), but actually the terms arc 11 sed with some measure o[ approval. This kind o( joking is a lmost entirely limi ted to boys, but g irls see and hear such teasing. Talk about sex is

not concea led from th e ch ildren. Tltrn1g h specific d escriptions of' sex re lations arc not a common lllaller of con\'ersation. an y comments which are m ade can be overheard by the children at n early all time'>. Furthermore, parcms han: great dilficully in co11 n:al i11g the sex an from their children bccau<;C of lh C O\'CrCrQ\\·dcd cond itions in \\·hich they li ve. Th e average house al Oricn te and in Vicja has two rooms which ca n be used for sleeping. Frequenlly two doubl<.: beds ,\·ill be crowded into the .. regular" bedroom. and the parcn1s :tnd :1 number o l the 1 hi ldren \,·ill ~k(' p i11 llicrc, wh ile the ot.liC'I''> :-.lLT p in Lill· l i,·i11g roon1 . l ' 11d(·1 such cir< tllll'>l:1 11CT'>. 1111: 111t·1 l1 :111i1, ol '>CX <:1111101 po'>· !i ibly be 1011<eal<:d 110111 till: ~01111g. In an dlrnl w handle die p1ol>k11i... 1;ii,(·d Ii~ 11\t"l< nnnli11g. p:11c:11t-. try Lo arrange the children for sleepi ng :t< 1ordi11g- w two pritH ipks: lir~L. older < liildre 11 ;in: p11t into 1lic room otlit'r than the one: in \\·hie Ii die p;u·L·11t-; ,f,·ep. second. an :ittc:mp1 j.., 111:11lc 10 ktqJ the older l><>y-; and girl.., separated. ·1 he dil11ntlt~ i-. th:1t th(' l\\·o principle;, ol te11 nJ11lli11. Tile 111m1 pn·..,-,i11g pnil i, that Of illC C:Sl. \\'hen i11e \\Titer <JllCC a-.kcd :1 11 i11forrn:111t ll'l1 y in cest <>< ( 111Tccl in :-,0111c homes (:t'> re· ported in loC"a l paper. . ), the inlorn1 :1m replied, .. Lack o[ precaution or perhaps an ab~olute lack of room and beds ... lt is this possibility that parellls strive hardest lO llVo id . .-\s a result, lhe desire fo r privacy for themselves is sometimes thwaned. Attitudes toward incest are frank and realistic. Says one man, "f.os hombres. l/(/Sffl los mas rliiquitos. so11 sie111pre pc11die11tes." ("Men, down to the tiniest, are alwa ys 'in watchful expectancy.'") Such a statemen t seems w itn· ply that in this sociocu l tural setting th ere is a tying- in of ma le n ess w ith an assumptio n that men arc sexually irresponsible and cannot be expected to show restraint. Sho,\·n most clearly in lhe frank effons to avoid the possibility Of i11cesl, th is a lli tu de pervades Other aspects o f child train ing and is part o( th e process or sex d ifferen tia Lion . Beginning about the time when they start to todd le, boys are taug ht th;it aggressiveness is male and th;it they should be aggressive. This emphasis on maleness is strongly marked. The word for 111ale, 111aclio, is used freely . ,\.drunken man i.n a dangerous mood was once disarmed in front or the writer, wh ile he shouted "Yo soy mas macho q11e qua/q11iern!" ("I am more 'man' than any one of you!") From in fancy onward, the boy lea rns that he must be 11111y maclw. Jn line wilh the em phasis on malen ess, a distinction in lhc treatmenl o l ta nlnnn:. o f boys and girls appears ea rl y, in the opinion of the writer. This difference in training has not been confirmed by observers in olher comlllunilics of Puer to Rico and is orTcred h ere partly i11 the form o f a hypothes is. ln the writer's experience, boys regu larly appeared to be more indulged hy parents than their sisters were. Between the ages of perhaps two to five, boys' tantrums (rabietas) usually are not suppressed. A child may screa m loudly al what h e regards as som e infringement 0 11 his dignity or his freedom of action . and adults w ill only laugh. Such a little boy has un vel/6n /Jega'o (li terally, "a nickel

CA;\;A'.\IELAIC R t.; RAL SL'C.AR PLANTATIO:"' PROLETARIAT

swck," referring to the jukeboxes and their canned music:). I le may be 111alo. or malcria'o, or 1111 lilere (l iterally, " puppet." but meaning here, "a tough guy"); but h e will probably not be shamed or struck for his performance. Although the writer has seen many such tantrums on th e pan o f boys, girls seem much less gi,·en to them, and. in fact. generally are punished more quickly ;me! decisi,·e ly than are boys for "bad behavior."' It may be, or course, that girls are less prm·ok"d: boys admittedly are teased into shows of ;111g<:r p:trtl)· 10 es1;ih lish this response as a part o( their ··111 ;tl('nc-.,.·· .\fter aho111 the a~c of fi,·e years. boys are no longer suhje< t to the ,.exu;il joking. teasing. and play o( their p;1rc11 1.... I Iii, ki11d or pl;L) apparently ends abruptly, ;ind one< :11111o t h111 \1·rnHlcr at the psychologica l effects or this. Tltc sudden mi11 imi1i11g o[ sex play and the rr:111k COllCl'l"ll o( the p:trCllh O\·er the possibility (in Lin. the p1e... 11111ed likelihood ) or incest do not appear t<> coi 11< id c ;1n idcntally. Such joking appears to stop compktcl~ 1111til hoy;. :ire of the age (about eleven) when tl1c) begin mm·ing rrcely in gangs. At this time, boys co-opn;itc in gathering feed for the anima ls, fish or swin1 together, and wander in groups through the barrio: sexual joking (but among themselves only) be· comes opc11 and articulate, often aggressively homosexual and aimed at insulting the listener. During this same age period, girls are kept much more in check by their parents, and cannot roam about as freely as their male contemporaries. }'rom about the age or seven onwa rd, g·irls' and boys' play activities are usually quite separate, though they may co-operate in some games or unite to do different pans o( the same task at home. The kind of sex ual joking which occurs among boys could not be ob ervecl by the \\Titer among girls. This very likely is the result of the fact that in the case of g irls, sex as such, from birth to the start of puberty, is de-emphasized and hidden. It seems generally accepted that g irls may pass through a "wmboyish" (111ar-/111'a) stage in their development, and until the age of seven and e\'en afterwards, girls are penniucd to play quite freel}' al boys' games and with boys' w ys. B y the t.imc boys and g irls have entered puberty, however, their male and felllale roles arc sh arply d efined. 1\d11lts will remark in the presence of a twelveyear-old girl that she will be a very attractive woman when she is full grown. and the girl will listen serenely and acceptingly. As the g irls grow, they increasingly become potential objects of mild sexual aggression. Girls arc regarded as sexua lly mature and suitable for marriage at an early age: several consensually wed thinecn -yc:ir-olds live in Lh e municipality, and fifteenyear-old wives are nol uncommon. Boys, on th e other hand, find g rowing up a longer process. At fifteen. a bo ~ is still only a boy, and th e period which rema ins before he can earn a man's wage in the fi eld and be full y _accepted in lhe compan y of men is li kely to be a d1fT1cull one psych o logically. \Vhen tlt ey are small, both boys and g irls will be used lo care for the younger children. As they grow

385

older, the tasks beg in to be differentiated according co sex. Girls are taught feminine tasks in a progression starting w'.th the simple jobs o( sweeping and cleaning the floor. porch, an<l yard, and proceeding through simple laundering and cooking. Girls learn more about the care o[ the baby, and a re taught to do the more specific tasks (feed ing. changing, and burping the infant). Boys are taught to run littl e errands in and near by the house when they are as young as two yea rs. By the time boys can r un errands freely in the vi llage or abo ut the co/unin (about age seven years), girls have learned to S\,·eep, to wash socks and handkerchiefs, and to make minor sewing repairs; they are beginning to iron and are fully equipped to care for the baby all day, \,·ithout any help at all. From seven to twelve, both boys and girls serve important fun ctions in family life. Boys gather grass, collect loose rnne for the pig. hunt crabs, get water, collect tinde r, pick herbs, etc., " ·hile girls are mastering the techniques o( homemaking. B ut as they grow older, the range of feminine acti,·ities increases. and the boys' usefuln ess goes down. Fetching the water comes to be done almost exclusively by the g irls as their strength increases, and they may go a dozen times a day to the public faucets. i\Iore and more of th e child care, o( the laundry and cleaning tasks are shifted to the girls' shoulders, and "·ith the almost inevitable succession of younger ch ildre n, there is much to be done in the house. Boys continue co hunt crabs. catch cuttlefish and lobster, gather foods and grasses; moreover the boy of twelve or so \\"ill begin

~'ig ../CJ. 11 ) 10 1111g girl s1•1' s lo the ba1hi11g of lll'r baby sister

slrea111 11c11r their ho111 e while h er fril'llff clues /h e Ja111ily la1111cl1:)' in C11iin111rlar. l'lwlo by Dcla110.

111 11

386

THE PEOPLE O F PUERTO RICO

to seek means to su pplement his con tr ibution to the house in the form of cash . Thus, there are several boys who shine shoes in Oriente, one boy who regularly catches and sells crabs in the village, and several who sell homemade sweets at the pay line of Co lonia Vieja on payday. But these activities ca nnot equal in importan ce the contribution made b y girls of the same age. ~mong the s~c i a l attitudes _which children acquire wlule they are still very young is the respectful behavior which should mark a godchild's manner toward h is godparents. Among the first things a child will learn to. say_ is the re.quest for blessing with which a godc~ild is to _greet Its godparent. \ 1Vh il e a man's comjJadre ~v1ll be friendly to a ll the children in the family, he l~ expected to sing le o ut his godchild for special attention and a_ffec~ion . Thus. the child is born into a large, ~oose family-like groupmg, and it learns early that It stands in a special relation to certain other members of this grouping in addition to its blood kin. Mannerly children are expected to perform small errands for adults without expectation of recompense. On the other hand, an adu lt is not supposed to overtax a ch ild's good humor or strength w ith request for such service. The willingness to perform small services seems to be connected ~vi th the child's sense of m aturation; he learns that the performance of tasks of ever increasing difficulty a nd complexity is the way to grow up. Whenever there is construction work of an y kind in the barrio, boys in particular will be on hand to help. This kind of volunteer labor is usually encouraged by the parents as a means of indoctrinating healthy social attitudes. The donation of lab_or a nd a co-operative a ttitude are essentials in fulfilling one's obligations as an adult. These patterns are learned early. From the age of twelve onward, as the boy's role in the home dwindles steadily in importance, he begins to chafe to be old enough to leave home and to become an independ ent wage earner. The inability to secure wage employment _fo r gr~wing .boys has led parents to ~eep th_ose showrng aptitude rn school for a longer penod. Girls, on the other hand, are taken out of school early because their services are needed a t home and because it costs much more to equip a girl school ~han it <lo~~ a boy, according to local people . There. is an aclc~H10nal reason of some importance: the higher public school grades are located in the town, and many O r iente a nd Vieja parents d o not want their daugh~ers to travel to town every day because the town is regarded as a center of bad influ ences. Actually, stern reality in the form of the w aiting cane fie lds and simple economic needs makes education for either boys or girls look like a u seless luxury to most people of Oriente a nd Vieja. . The lega l working age is seventeen, and if they can Ire s~ccessfully a bout their ages, boys even younger can g et J? bs working in the cane. Responsible young men a re likely to marry a t seventeen or eig hteen meanin{)' that they will h ave children a year or so I~ter. Such

fo;

men go to the ca ne fie lds and are likely to stay there for the rest of their lives. The grow ing migration offers one possible a lternative, but the suga r cane is for many the inescapable future . iVIarriage is the normal state for a twenty-year-old male, and few men continue dependent bachelorhood in the houses o f their parents past that age. It is the combina tion of economic necessity, scanty educational opportunities, and the local cultural conceptions of manhood and the normal life th at makes the rural proletarian family of VieJ·a and Oricntc )'ouno-. 11oor' and lar<rc b· M ' THE SOCIAL FUNCTION S OF RITUAL KINSHIP Cornpadrrz zgo is the sing le most important riu1a l kinsh ip institution i11 Barrio Pnya l and , in fa ct. in all P uerto Rico. I t mav he described as the S\'S tcm of social relationsh ifJS g• ' ro\\·in ,:...," 011t of th e rc lio-irn1s ·ind f'""l ceremon ial spo nsorship of a child by its godparctH or god parents. ComfJadra zgo d e ri,·es from the Cathol ic prescr ip tio ns for baptism in accordance with \\"hich the godp;1rc nt or godparents are respons ib le for th e re ligi o us edu cation o[ the godchi ld. From these orig ins a \\·hole new series of forms and fu nct io ns of the institution have sprung. Many of the new usages are simply elaborations of the original sponsorship applied to other life crises such as confirmation and marriage. Other usages are completely new in form and purpose . G~ At least one form of comfJadrazgo , comfJadres de vo l u.ntad (i.e., voluntary co-parents), actually involves no sponsorship at a ll, but is a secular, although ritual ized, r elationship between two con temporaries. In one sense, then, the baptismal rite, or the corresponding event, is the original basis for the institution but not its sole motivating force. Baptism is considered very important b_y the parents and sponsors of the child, but the persistence of comf;adrazgo in secul arized contexts, and its _existence even w i thout the sponsorship of a person, object, o r event, is evidence of its high social and secular ut i ~ity . In a ll its forms, compadrazgo serves to set up reciprocal, face-to-face socia l relationshi ps between individuals. It imposes on these individ uals statuses and obligations of a fi xed na ture. It serves to make the i~n?1edia te social environment more stable, the parttcipan ts more interdependent a nd more secure, and in these ways it achieves its u tility and value. In the late eighteenth cen tury, Fray Ii"iigo Abbad y Lasierra a lready h ad written (1866: 405) of compadrazgo in Puerto Rico: ~

The r elation of com/Jadrr~s among these islanders constitutes a very strong bond. Noth ing is kept from a com/wdre, and he enjoys full confidence and complete liberty in the houses of his com/wdres, disposing of their friendship and their possessions as of his own things. If a brother accompan ies his brother or sister in the ma rriage ceremony, holds in the baptismal font or serves in confirmation of one of the ir children, they no lo nger ca ll themselves bro1hers; the 02 f or a ge neral di scussion of th e institu t ion, see l\•fintz and 'Volf. 1950 .

CANAMEL\R: RURAL SUGAR PLANTATION PROLETARL\T

form o f address of compndres is always preferred as the most affeclionate a11cl expressi\'e of one's close friendship. [My transbtion.)

Abbad n o Les at least three forms of compadrazgo then e xtant, based on the sacraments of baptism, confirmatio n , a n<l m arriage. Of these three forms, only the one based o n baptism can be said to continue in force among the people of Vieja and Oriente. In addition, the cu stom of comfJadrazgo de voluntad (which actually requires no sponsorship, no religious procedure, a nd no sponsored person or object) obtains in the barrio. 111 vie"" of the general inattemiveness in Oriente and Vieja to the church's insistence on religious marriage. it is dillicult LO expla in the careful observance of t h e baptismal riwa l. One contributing factor may be implicit in the fa ct that hiswrica l records indicate that there was much more emphasis placed on baptism during the time of sl;wery than there was on maniage. Catholic baptismal records in Coamo reveal, for insta n ce, that in No,·embcr, 18.i.J, fifteen slaves were bapti1.ed i11 the municipality.Ga These slaves belonged to the o\\"11cr of one of Ca1-1amelar's choicest haciendas of that time. In the case o( this particular group, six m e n served as godparents to the slaves, each man being ceremonialized as padrino (godfather) to two, three, or four slaves. The Roman Catholic church requires at leas t one, but no m ore than two, baptismal sponsors for any individual being b aptized. Plainly, under such c ircumsta n ces as those indicated here, a socia l relationship between the godparent and the paren ts of the baptized individual (i.e., a relationship between compadres) wou ld be impossible. Nor is it very likely that the padrino o[ a n y slave in a group such as this took a p aternal or serious interest in t he welfare of his "godchild." Th e ceremony served merely as a recognition that th e slave was a human being and a potential practicing Cath o lic, and that the !tacendado was Jiving up to the letter, if not the spi rit, of the church's urgings that relig io us gu idance be provided the slaves. L ater church r ecords are full of the b aptisms of the children of slaves from Canamelar haciendas, childre n u su a ll y but not always described as illegitimate (ll i jos naturales). Priests of the various municipalities kept separate baptisma l record books: one for the free and freed , the other for the slaves. From the records, it is possible to tell whether the godparents chosen were t h emselves slaves or free. R itual godparents o( slave infants usually were slaves, b ut sometimes were free men often described as pardos libres (roughly, "free mulattoes"). In one case, the church records disclose that a capalaz (minor foreman) served as godpare nt to a slave child. It seems highly likely that a freeman could h e lp his slave compadre or his godchild in various ways. Ex-slaves corroborate this, and point o ut as well that godparental and co-parental bonds crossed rac ial lines in many cases. Aside from these mino r clues, however, not much informa tion C3 Libro

d e bautismos de Esdnvos, l'arroquia de Coamo.

387

abou t the history of compadrazgo in the southern coastal zone can be ascertained. There seems littlt! doubt that baptism and the social consequences of its attendant ceremonies had a grea ter social utility than m a rriage. Exactly how this operated in the remote past is not clear. The writer is convinced that, in part a t least, the modern difference in attitude toward marriage a nd b aptism among lower-class p eople of the coast stems from an original difference in emphasis on the part of the church itself. It seems that baptism was either more enthusiastically encouraged, or more rigidly enforced, as a religious measure. The value of com padrazgo as a social institution in presemday Barrio P oyal can b e amply demonstrated , while in most life situations in the barrio today formal marriage h as proved to be less of a n advantage. Like all face-to-face institutions, compadrazgo is b_a~ed on the continuous interfunctioning of the p arttc1pants. Through the birth and subsequent baptism of a child, fo~ ki1:1ds of compadres are acquired: (1) comadrona (m1dw1fe), (2) compadres de agua (coparents " by water"), (3) compadres de pila (co-paren ts by the baptismal font), (4) ama de pita (baptismal nurse). The cornadrona is simply the midwife who assists in the delivery of the child. bl her professional role, the midwife automa tically becomes a ritu al co-parent to dozens, eve1~ hundreds, of parents. The midwife is paid for her serv1ces; h er relationship to the parents of the newborn may be cordia l, but it is not important and it has no religious justification. ~h e same ?"en~ral lack o( importan ce whid1 characterizes the m1dw1fe's godp arental role holds as well for the ama de pila, the "baptismal nurse" or "mistress of the font." The ama de pita carries the child from its home to th~ door .of the church, and through this act asst'.mes a n~ual k1~ stat.us .to the child and to its parents. But ~11s relationsh1p is not a particularly significa nt one._ heq~1entl y in Oriente a nd Vieja children are not bapuzed n g ht after birth but years later. On such occasions, amas de pita usually are not u sed. Compadres de voluntad are co-paren ts joined toge~h er by mutual agr eement but without any sponsorship or ceremony b e ing involved. The writer could n o t find any data on the history of this purely secular usage of the compadrazgo m ech anism. v\Thile these r elationships are rare in O r iente and Vieja, cases of such corn1Jad~·azg_o are interesting for the light they throw on the 111st1tut1on as a technique o( relating persons to their mutual benefit. Com_Pai [i.e., Compadre] Ce(o and I h ad long talked of bccom111g compadres, but neither his wife nor mine w;:is, having a child at the lime. After some months, we decided w~ would .become com/Jadres de voltmtad. \ Ve made up o ur m111ds while we were talking on e night, and we drank a beer together. After that. we were compndres. \ Ve had called each other " Usted" from when we first met, nnd we had not changed to "tu " at the time we decided to b ecome· compadres. Now, of course, we continue to call each other "Usted." I would not dare to call Com/1ai "tu," and h e musL

388

Tli E l'EO'.' l. E OF l 'l 1E!lTO

l ~!CO

feel th<: S:lm<: way. \\"<: a 1·e co111padre.1 just a:. if Com/mi C cfo we r e /1adri11u Lu a c.liild of mine, or I lo one or his .'"'

:\Iuc h more important tha n these are the com padres de ag11a and the co111padres de p ita. Very soon afte r the birth o f a c hild, o r even before, padrinos (godparents) are chosen for the infant, and the relationship is solemni1.e d in a quas i-religious baptismal ceremony. This is the ba11tis1110 d e agua, o r water baptism. Orig inally devised b y the ch urch lO e ns ure the baptism o[ infants who might not live until the r egular c hurch baptism could be h e ld, water baptism is now h e ld for practicall y anr n ewborn c hild in Oriellle a nd Vieja . r\s in th e case o f the o fficial church bapt ism, godparents for the child are c hosen , and the child is c hristen ed and baptized . Used in this way, the wate1· baptis m no lo nge r ser ves as a m ea n ~ for removing the stigma of original s in from a "·ea k or d ying c hild; rather it serves to (rec temporarily t h e parents of any n e wborn infant from the eco nomi c pressures involved in a church baptism. So widespread is this custom of wate r baptism through out Latin America that the Churc h recentl y has so ught to stress again the limitation of its use to s ic k and dy ing infants. But lhe ge ne ralized usage persists. I n Oriente and \ ' iej a m a n y c hildre n rema in formally unbaptized until Li1 e ir sixth year, or even ·late r. P a rents a lways plan to hold c hurch baptisms for their c hildren when econom ic a nd o che r c ircumstances a llow ; in the interim, th e water baptism serves in place or th e church cer emon y. \ \later baptism establish es a li felon g sacred relatio nship between the godch ild a nd his godparents, and also be Lwe~n the godparents and Lhe biol ogical parents. The ntual ties established thus run both acr oss and along gen erational lines. In Oriellle a nd Vieja, water baptisms are treated as serio usly as o lfic ial c hurch baplis ms b y par ents and godpare nts alike. The same godpare nts may o r ma y not be chosen to serve as compadres de pita (co-pare nts b y the baptisma l fo nt) for th e sa m e child. In the case of church baptism. the com padre-Lo-be is exp ected to pay th e costs of Lhe trip to the c hurch, of the c hild's baptismal clothes, a nd of the baptism i.tself. 0 :. Tl~ e ne,,· <"~JJ11_1Jadre also may bu )' a sm al l g if t lor the c hdd a nd is lormally responsibl e for his godchild's care should harm be fall t h e pare nts. Actua lly, it would be rare under such ci rcumstances for a godpare nt to fill tbe pa r e nta l role unl ess he or she were also a b lood r elative. " ' hile on occasio11 a co111 padre ma y no t reme mbe r the n ames o( a ll the childre n for whom h e is fJadrino, he in variabl y will be a ble to recall Lhe n ames or a ll the men to whom he is com /Jndre. ll is not unusual for a sing le indi vid ua l to list over fifty compadres without hesiunion , naming tl10se who are his c hildr e 11 's godparents, as wel l as th e parents o( the children to whom ~~ T_111 ervicw w'.Lh Orie nle in forma n t, l\fay. •9·1!>·

1 ··• ~•ns ~nc ~}'n•c: ""The priest S:l)S that if the child i~n·t haptizccl

he ":11 1 tile w ith his s ius. llul if yo u can't a fford the cost of th e hapLism, the c hi ld goes 1111bapti1.c.:d . "\Vhal"s more, since th e war the Church ha; hnome innated- the pri1c of liap•i~m has gone

up.""

he is godparent. Jn som e culwres, godpare nls haYe many_ more responsibilities to their godchildren; •rn even 111 Puerto Rico, th ere arc ~u bc ulu1ral rrr o u1>ings . I. I b m " " i1c l s uch re~ponsibilities arc perpetua ced o r are bette r reme mbered , as in Tabara and San Jost:. A lso attenu_ated in \"ieja and Orieme are lhe ob li.g:nions o f go d ~h ild to godpare nt. The child is taug ht to ask his godlathcr to b less him, but the s trong reciproca l d ependence shown. lo r ins tan ce, i11 T1.inL1.unt1.an. i\ fe xico (Fos te r, 19.18:!!6!!), is lacking. The fact that c1J111 j)(u/rn :g1J is much stro nger b(' t ll'CCll com/Hu/res ( \\'11 0 an: 11q1 ;tl l~ co11 tt·111porari<''>) than it i-; between godparc11h and godchildrt: 11 doc;; n o t 111 c: 11 1 that th e i thliu1tio11 i-; ol 110 h e lp to Li1 <.: godc hi ld. lh makin j.{ lh c :id 11 lh i11 th<: ,oci:d c t1,·iro11t11,c11 t 1110rc i 1;. terde pc11dc 111 and ,ccurc. r·o111/)lf<lr11 ::.o 0 " i\-e-; lo th e 1 ·11 I . ..... n c 11' _11111.,cll. e\·e 11 ii a liulc:: indircn ly. a linnn, 111 or(; o rgan 11ed \\·orld. Church bapt i~n t~ I reqt1l·11Lly :tr(; held duri11g th e ~:•s.l c r sc:1 .~on \\"he 11 the.: ,t1g:i r h:1n·e-, t is ll't'l l und c.:r \1·:1v. l l11 s. conY<:lliC'nl j1t11nu1T o l relig ious frc li1w :t nd cc;i. . n nom ie: cap;1( ll~ 111 <::t11-, lh :ll ;1 l:trg<.: famil y n 1:1v ~<.· rnl :t-; 111:11~ y as th~·c:<.: ch ildre n ol dillcre111 :tgcs to bc , bapli1cd duru_1g a _srngle sea~o 11. Rr111lism o de /Ji/a . o r c hurc h bapll sm, is t he s ing le m ost impo rtalll religious lifecy~l c cerem o n y for n ea rly all Orie nte and Vieja people. \V1th but few exceptions, it is much m ore importa nt formally and functi o nally than marriage, co11firmat io n , or an y simil ar ritual. Churc h baptism invo lves a si~n ifi ­ ca nt n1oney cxp e ndiLUre, is ordained by a religious figur~, and lasts for one's whole life. As already menuo ned, lhc "water godparents" and lhe church godpa re nls m ay or may n o t be the sa m e. Furthe rmore, god pare nts may b e se lec te d e ith er from members of the family o[ lhe wife or husba nd , or from outside the c i_rc ~ e o ~ blood kin. In this connection , an illle resting d1s~ 111 c uon be tween C olonia Viej a a n d P oblado ~ne n_te e m erges with regard lo Lhe fami ly and to ritual k111sh1p generally. The populalion o( Orie llle is made up more of o ld seul e rs and loca lly born and bred vil~age~·s tha1_1 is that o[ Vieja. Correspondingly, the famd~ 111 Onente is appare11Lly m o re slab le and more widely exlencled rituall y. Through lhc medium of com/~adrnzgo, the p eople of Oriente have succeed ed in relaung and inte n e lating themselves, one w ith the ~Hher-. Th e riwal kin unity appears to have a stabilizing c~l ~c t 01 1 the communi ty o f s ig 11ilicant importance. In V1c_i:1 , grea ter mobility and the relatively grea ter 11ewne:.s of Lhe population ha ve prevellled a like cleveloplllent. Some riw a J kin relat io nships conn ect the p eop le o f Oriente and Vieja, but th ese a r e fe w in numb~r. The prevailing te nde n cy is to se lect individuals w1t.h whom on e can maintain , through continuous fa ce-to-lace activ ities, a r c la lio nship of rec iproca l re!>p ecl anu llllllllal a s~ i~tan cc. 1t is indeed i_ntercsting that, whil e the re lig ious ideol ogy from which ll1 e com/Jadrnz.µ;o system stem s is

v•: Sec, for exa mpl e. ano u 11 t ~ of :\ll"xit'a n \'illagcs gi,·c n i 11 Bea ls. l~).Jfi .

Parson~. 1931i; Fosl e r, •!Jt8;

CANA;\IELAIC R URAL SU GAR l'LA:'\TATIO:'\ PRO L E:TA RIAT

largel y on!)' 11 om inall y s ubscribed to by the people 0£ Orie11tc a11cl \'i eja, so mu ch emphasis is laid on the godpare nt.al and co-parental concept. It is as if, in the process of g radual secularizat ion, certain religious items ha,·i11g great secular use fulness \\'ere preservedcon sciousl}' or other\\'isc. The survi,·al in s trength o( a sacred institution such as rum/Hulmzgo in the communities of Oriente and Vieja ma y be: related historica lly and fun ctionally to the grad11:tl emergence of a rural proletariat in the :1rc:;1. 11 1 order to clarify this h ypothesis, it is n ecessary to wr11 hack lo the proble m of labor power before the t·1n:t1H i1':1tio11 . . \ . . ha' hcc11 de monstrated , the slave po pu (;11 io11 \\'h ich \\'orkcd the sug ar plantations was at all 1.i111c:. :.11pplcn1e 1ucd by a s ubstantial number of nati,·c ( i.c· .. 1'11 c rto Ric:111) lorced laborers. The plantation :.>:.LC:111 \\':1-; p:itcrnalis ti c. and its labor supply 11onco1111K· t it j,·e. .Em:111cipatiou occurred at a time \\·hen it a lrc;1dy :q>pcared that insular population incn:ase-; had :1 ...... 11n:d th e l:trge hacendndos o[ an adequate. Ire<: :1ml co1npc ti11g labor force. There is no doulH that tlic change lrom s la\·e and compulsory labor to free a11d co111pet ing labor carried with it significant c hanges in Lit<.: allitudes which related workers to their employers. \'e t , as we have seen, th is change was neither so sharp n or so drastic as it might seem. Ag regados apparently always had been part-wage workers. Accompany ing the gradual shift in the character of the labor fo1 ·cc was a change in the relationsh ip bet\\'een /wce11dado and worker. As job security came more and more to depend upon the impersonal evaluation of a worker's qualifications and less and less on a personal relationsh ip existing between him and his employer, personal re latio nships whic h crossed class lines began to Jose some of their value. This change is described by an aged in formant: Don lgnaC"io S;i n C"hez was a Spaniard, born and hrc:d. Very n .:n1<.:111her him. He bought Hacienda J uan:-i in the eighties, not too many years be fore he died. I can remcmb::r him blcs~ inl{ the liulc colored children around the batey of th :: hacienda \\·hen he would walk about inspecting things. 1\ftcr Don Ign:icio died , Do n Jose. his son, Look over the hacienda. Like his father, he lived right on the hacienda. He died ;iro1111d 190.J. about the same time that the ha· C"ie nd a stopped opera ting . Don J ose ran the hacienda himselL His ho use was a regu lar museu m. Don J ose hnd a great big flock of pigeons that he ke pt for pets, and he had a special cornfie ld w supply feed for the pigeons. \Ve would ~t eal the <rll'n l>omc times. and other times, we might e \·en :.tc:al the pigeon s. Of course, it was preuy bad 10 get caught. One cou ld losc his job forever. Dou Jose was quite a sporting m a 11. Do\\'11 at the \\'ater's edge, he had his own boat, and there was C\'C ll a blind for him where he could stay and shoot the ducks that c;1111e to the marshes. Also he had t \\'O mistresses. and when he cl ied. he left to each one the Jillie house in \\·hid1 he had ke pt her and the plot o ( land on which the houses were loca ted. One of those two women ~till lives hcre in the barrio in h er house. The other died a nd her c hildrc:11 li\'e there now. Dou .J os( w;1s not bad: I do11' t 111ea n to say he was. lf a coup!<.: of ti s fe lt like making 111usic. we could ask hirn if he would J ikc· t.o hear us play some e \'ening, and then we would <Omt· at ~0111e prcarrang-cd time. H e and Do 1b Def c.; \\' h c.:re

389

lia wou ld 1:1ke cha irs o ut o n the lawn n ear the house . and they would sit while we phi yed. Aften\·ards. he would g i\'C a peseta Lo each one of us . .-\t Christmas time h e was also thoughtful about the '\'Orkers on the h<tciencla , only in his own wa y. H e would thro w coins into a barre l of \\·a ter. and let the d1ildre11 try to get them out with 1hcir teetli. JC it sounds like I am telling yo u he was really a bad m a n, I want Lo correct that. For instance . if vo:1 \\·ere anx io us to have him as godparent to your d1ild, fie \\'Otdd agree. H e 1rnuld g iv<.: the money for the baptismal ritt.:. and you could ca ll him you r com/Jni (co111/1adre). But he \\'Ou lcln 't come tO the ceremon y an d if yo t1 invited him to drink with you, h e wouldn't. So that then.: wer e men \\'ho mig ht han~ him for a compadre, just so they could say he was. But mos t o( u s know beuer than that. A com padre mus t be like one's self. :-\ co111/1adre must come to your house and yo u must go to his. I le holds the child and s tands for it at the church: he buys it a s uit. Com/Jndmzgo is a sacred thing . Co111fJadres arc like brothers, o nl y closer. People who go to a 111an like Don J ose:, or Don Julio the pharmacist in the t0\\'11. to get money for the baptism are n't reall y getting com/Jadres. All they get is the right to boast about who is their co111f1ai.G•

As late as 1 900, the momentum of the paternalistic system carried it fon\ ard. But the brief description above will g ive some inkling of the nature of change. Of t he four former hacie ndas, now colonias, in Barrio Poyal and the adjoining Barrio Llanos, Lhe writer can state that in three cases, no worker has as a compadre the mayordomo in charge. Thirty years ago, the ma)•Ordomo of Colonia Vieja used to implore his subordimnes to work a longside the ordinary workers por co111padrazgo (" Cor th e sake of co-parenthood"). T oday s uch a11 appea l would be rejected, p e rhaps even with open laughter. Yet, it is not that the institution has weakened or lost its sacredness. R ather, it serves today tO bind. members ~f the working class together, whereas 1n the past 1 t was Iara-el}' a means for cross• 0 cutt1ng class d i fferen ces. The evidence is good that com /Jadrnzgo h as persisted because it is a useful device for uniting individua ls otherw ise in a dangerously competitive situation, as well as for genera lly widening the circle of interdependent kin and fi c tive kin in the community. Unlike other more rig id institutions, compadra:go has been elastic enough to satisfy mu ch more than its orig in a. l purposes whi le maintaininoessent ially t h e ~ same lorm. As an institution, it is fully interrelated functionall y with the whole way of life in rural proletarian culture. From its place in the cultural system, compndrnzgo is able to extend itself outward and t o have an effect on many other parts of che sys tem. It, in turn, is subject to modifying influences communicated through othe r aspects o( the culture. Along with all the other innumerable parts of the c ulwre, comjHtdrazgo does not _form a stable, unchang ing whole. Rathe r. the entire c ultural system, com/Jadrazgo \\'ithin it. is subject to e ndless stresses and strains arising from \\'ithin che c ulture or caused by the introduction of new elem e n ts from outside it. Tt seems possible 1

o•

S1a1c111cn t by Oricmc informant, personal il\lcrvic\\', Decem be r. 19.18.

390

THE PEOPLE OF P UERTO RICO

that, as a consequence of this, a single institutio n , such as compadrazgo, may be call ed upon at times to fulfill simultaneous! y contradict0ry objectives in th e cul tu re. The resultant s tress on the ins titution may give it a new form, may modify it to eliminate one objective or the other, or m ay even bring about the collapse of the institution. T h e rural proletarian culture of Vieja a nd Oriente appears in many ways to be moving progressively toward the kind of indus trialized farming culture described so trenchantly by Goldschmidt ( 19'17). In the face of this tendency, local institutions must re integra te themselves or disappear. ComjJadrazgo seems to have undergone one m ajor reorientatio n already, having ch a nged from a generally cross-class to a gen erally intraclass mecha nism. B y extending the ritual family outward to friend s and neighbors of the same class, the people of Vieja and Orie nte may be trying to reduce the wide open competition of too m any hands for too few j obs which inevitably comes with agrarian proletarianiLation and a free labor force. Some of the various usages of compadrazgo for this goal a re perhaps worthy of d escription. Says one 111formant: Compai [i.e., Com/1adre] M arcia l a nd· I got LO know one another when I mo\·ed LO this plot of la nd from ofI down the road. l\farcial used to live on Colonia Ind ia and when h e made two hundred dollars on the bolita, he got pcrmis· sio n from the municipality to build his h o use h ere. \•Ve became friends, and we worked together in the second campaign o( the Popular party. The11 we decided to become compadrcs. i\f~rcial is padrino Lo m y Maria, the baby g irl. ~ ave yo u noticed how she asks him for be11dici611 (blcssmg) when h e comes to the house? Naturally, after \\'C became compadres. i\Iarcial is padrino LO my Maria, the baby g irl. ~ore respectf~tl, o f com se. It was Marcial who got me the JOb on the mil crew. Once n ear the end of the harvest in 1942, they were going to lay a rnan off. The re were six of us, and the rail chie f d ecided there would be work for five. Since l was the last to be hired, I would have to be the first to go. Marcia l spoke up. '"Why," he asks our forema n, "couldn't \\'e reduce our \1·ork day by day just a Iiule b it, and that way keep P ablo on the ere\\'? He is the father of a fam ily and n eeds the work." The crew ta lked it over and clecidcd it would be all rig ht with them. They let m e stay, a1~d you know that I'm still with th e crew. Comj>ai Marcial '.lt<l _that .ror. me. H e and I are closer together n ow than he 1s w ith !us siste rs or than I with my relatives.

It becomes apparent from such anecdotes that the important functio n of compadrazgo is to bind con temporaries. Thus, while it is based o n a rel ationship between ad u~ ts a 1~d infants (th a t is, between god parent a 1_1d ~odch ilcl ), Jt serves a more important purpose by bm<lmg together p ersons of about the same ages. Furtbenuore, the weig ht of ev ide nce in dicates that while under certain conditions com/>adrazgo may b e used to structure an unequal but reciproca l relatio n , as betwe:n lw cendadr! a~d agrersruto, it is almost e ntirely an m~raclass d evice m Barno Poya l today. Jn tts ~l ay-to-day usages, the co mjJadraz{!.O system is of g reat •.mponance to Barrio Poyal people. The exc hange of labor without cash compensat ion is o ne s uch

usage. Su ch unpaid labor, while especially important in family farm areas, has value eve n in proletari:rnized comm unities. Houses must be built and re paired; on occasion e ven moved, piece by piece. One man will be a n expert in butchering pigs and, for the Christmas season, his services may be offered free to his co111/H1dres. Other workers arc part-time fishermen, and the labor th ey e xpend in fi shing will be given to th eir com/Nu/res in the form o[ an oc:cas ional free catch of fi sh. 0 11 the part of \\'0111c11. labor also is g-iven by coma tl re to comodri'. Such "gifts of labor"' arc particu larl y important in timec; of cris is: \\'hc11 a ch ild is born, when a lather h;1s 111igratC'd to the ( ' 11itcd Statcs mainland and his \\'ilc i., tc1nporari ly \ritl10ut su pport. \\'hen someo11 e in the fa111il\' i., !'l ick or has died . L1bor in su ch circumstanc-c:s ma y i1~cludc c le;1ni11g the house. c:1ring for the childre n. pre paring food. or sc11·i11g clothes. Another impona11t :t'>pCct o[ the rilllal kin tic ha s to do \\'ith the ~ha ring of large ga ins. Thi~ refers LO such wind fa lb ;1s a large <at< h ol fish or th<: present ol a batch or used clothes rccei,·ed from a n:l;1t i\-c in the United States. Even large [}()/ito wi1111i11gs ma y he distributed in the form of the fulfillm e11t o [ Cu llljJtllfrC obi iga tions. Th e co111padre relatio nship may i11volve also the lending of money or property by one co111/Jadre to ano ther. T his is a crucial test o f t he com/Jadre bond for th e borrower as well as the lender, and it differs importantly from the g iving of presen ts because it is marked by an articulate request for financial aid. Jus t as the lender is expected to d o what he can in the extension of s uch services, so the borrower is expected to show restraint in his demands and to be hono rabl e in every detail o( his obliga tion. \ Vhether the cumpadre relationship will su rvive a fin ancial exchange will depend, of course, on the so lem nity with wh ich the co 111/wdres view their bond. There Hre cases in Oriente a nd V ieja where a compadre tic was d estroyed by excessive borrowing and failure to pay throug h cynicism or carelessness. Tt is not the fail ure to pay as su ch w hich wi ll injure the re lationship, but failure to p ay when the means arc available. B ecause t h e noncash value of the relatio nship may well exceed any temporary gain in money, hard-pressed individuals may be more loathe to request a loan than the ir com/Ja dres mig ht be to g ive it. Usually, loans are req uested on ly in times of the severest n eed : for expensive m edicine, for food, et c. At the same time th at the com /J(l(/re mechanism appears to make indi viduals in Oriente and Vieja more interdependent and secure, th ere is reason to suppose that it may operate also as a brake on the socioeconomic mobility of the participating individua ls. Material from Sp icer's comm1111ity s wdy (19t10) suggests this possibility. The community in question, Pascua, is composed of essentially landless, wageearning Yaqui I ndia n immigrants who, with their d e~cc 11d an ts, form a vill age on the outskirts o( Tucson, Anzona. The econom ic basis of Pascua life bears certain striking resemb lances to that of Barrio Poyal: th e a lmost tota l lack of subsistence activities, the

CANAMELAR: RURAL SUGAR PLANTATION PROLETARIAT

emphasis on seasonal employment, the prevalence of wage-earning over payment in kind, and so on. Spicer ''Tiles ( 19,10: 3i-38) that:

391

"country squires" of the era. "With the coming of the American central corporations, the agrarian and mercantile leadership of the community began to disappear. v\Tithin fifty years, the !ween.dados and their fam\ ·Vilhin the village the chief use of money between Yaqui ilies, the artisan class, and most of the merchants and and Yaqui is in the form of gifts and credit. Relalives living in different households arc constantly helping one another wholesalers had vanished. In their place there remains with small money g ifts, particularly in connection with de- in the town of Caiiamelar a sort of officialdom, much fraying the expenses of ceremonies. Not only the claims of of it imported. These people give Caiiamelar a funcrelatives but also those of compadres and "godparems" are tioning administrative framework but one that lacks the n1<:t regul:irly with the payment of small sums. Every person flesh of a social life which would include the clubs, is t·x 1wncd to assist :1 com padre in paying the expenses of a dances, parties and gatherings of an earlier day. The fiesta which th<: latter is faced with giving. In addition, com- townspeople of Cafiamelar talk wistfully about the p :tdn·s and godpan:nls han: the right lO ask for small loans. emigration of the middle-class leaders. They tick off 1ntt·n·st is not charged in such transactions. the names of yesteryear's leading families, point out where these men had their houses and stores, tell of It \\"Ould seem that the same ritual kin bonds which the municipal posts they held, and talk of where their protect individuals in the community in time of sore descendants live today: Ponce, San Juan, Miami, New need might also inhibit upward economic mobility, beYork, the Canary Islands, Grenada. ca11se any indi vidua l so bound is subject to the economic Thus, in delineating the role of the town in rural life press11res ,,-hic:h may beset any of his ritual kinfolk. This siwation appears to hold in Barrio Poyal. "While today, it is first necessary to note the truncated quality the wriLCr co uld document scores of cases of assistance of the social organization of the town community itself. prov ided by one cum padre to another in terms of labor, Those large tracts of land not owned by the corporagifts, small loans o[ cash, etc., he knows of no case in tion are leased to it by absentee owners. Retailing fawhich a loan was made by one compadre to assist the cilities are largely concentrated in the hands of the migration of another except where the com.padres were corporation stores. In the whole municipality there is also bound by blood or marriage, and thus doubly no economic activity of any importance except work bound. This would seem to reflect the realization that in the sugar cane. Consequently, the town of Cafiamobility o( the kind which migration connotes may melar is little more than the political administrative prove a permanent blow to the ritual kin bond. The unit of a gigantic farm: a servicing center for a populageneral conception would seem to be that compa.drazgo tion . which is overwhelmingly rural, landless, wage must function in some practical way within the com- earnmg, and seasonally unemployed. On the followin<Y munity itself. It is not the ritual meaning of the insti- page a schematic diagram of the social class organiz~ tution itself which matters, but rather the internalized tion of tl~e entire municipality of Cafiamelar is essayed. norms of obligatory social behavior. Those comjJadres Such a diagram can do no more than seek to show the who cannot interact with one another can derive no relative social and economic positions of the sociosocial value from the relationship and may neglect c~tltural segments, or classes, in the municipality at the tune the study was carried out. · their obligat io ns.'is The chart ~s based primarily on occupations. The absentee renliers exercise only a negative influence in Caiiamelar by their absence, constituting as they do the TH E ROLE O F THE TOW N IN RURAL LIFE former middle-class leadership of the municipality. The town of Cafiamelar figures in the life of the The thousands o[ people who live and work on their people o[ the rural barrios to a certain degree, though lands, leased to the corporate administrators, must to a much more limited one, perhaps, than might be deal with the employed representatives of the corporaexpected. It is the seat of the municipal government. tions. For all practical purposes, even the leased land Jn addition, many features of barrio life today are is corporate land. A few former Cafiamelar citizens shaped by secondary institutional agencies-the educa- return to town at intervals to perform services. One, tional, political, medical, and religious systems, for the owner of a local pharmacy, is now a Popular party insta nce- which penetrate the rural barrios but op- politician; another operates the local movie theater; a third owns many tiny residential properties in town era te through the town of Cafiamelar. Before the American occupation, a sugar producing and comes to collect rent a nd, since Cafiamelar has no municipality like Caifamelar was largely under the bank, to lend money, post bail, etc. Cafiamelar's lone colono (independent cane farmer domination and control of the liacendados or hacienda having a contractual agreement with the mill) is an owners. To the extent that these men were active soanomaly because the municipality is ·without colonos cially and politically in the community, they were the as such. This man owns about two hundred cuerdas us It would be valuable to know what happens to compadre of choice cane land which he actively manages; in adbonds in the l\:cw York City setting. The writ.er knows of cases dition, he owns the only lorn! wholesale outlet o[ growhere com padres 1\°110 were also re latives assisted each other in ceries and general goods; moreover, he owns a retail m igrating and geuing esta blished in the city. But it is an open general goods store. H e is spoken of as Cafiamelar's qu es tion whether compadrc tics alone are able to persist for long only rich man. unde r th e special urban conditions which exist in New York.

j92

TllE P EO PLE OF l'l ; ERTO RICO

TABLE 9. SOCIAL ORGANIZATION OF CANAMELAR MUNICIPALITY

Rural

Urban

,\USE:'\TEI:'. 1,,\1\DOW:'\ERS <.:!U,\Sl-:\USEi\TEES: house renliers, LhcaLer owner. pharmacy owner LOC.\L:

co/0110 l'KOFl·~'>~IOi\AIS

A:'\I> OFFICIALS

School supcrimcnden l. ns1ung doctor and dc11Li!>b. miniMer and family (teacher~ and engineer). pharmaci'>LS. waler works engi· ncer. Lhc mosL imponan L Lcachers.

Hacienda aclminisLrators and 111ayordu111os on big· gcsl co/onias.

OFFIC.:E ll Ol.IJERS. IU·:TA IU:.RS. SUPPLIERS OF SERV I CE

.Vfa yor, auditor. Lrca!)urer. inter- Rural Stor e and c;if6 nal rc\'cnue agenL and as:.istan L, owners, 111ayordomos sc· tick bath olflcials. U.S.P.H.S. olli- g1111dos. cials. union officials. justit'es of peace, police and firemen, munic· ipal workers. ~ome Lcachers. the colo11i(I /narticn11fr ( nur~c). mosl cafe and swre o\\·ner'>. telephone operator. Veterans a nd public c;u- drivers Qui11cal/eros (ambulant \'enders). pan-Lime anisans, lottery ~a lcsmc:n. derk ~. Year-round employee:. of ll1e !>ugar industr y (e.g .. foremen. railway workers) Cane workers

Cane workers and fo.hermc 11

.Among the profess ionals and absentee representatives may be include d the municipality doc tor, who is actually a r es ident of a neighboring town; the most imponant corporatio11 co /r)//ia administrators; the town's two pharmacis ts: the engineer of the water works: the school s upe rintendent: the priest; the Protestant minister and his family (which includ es two daughters who ;ire teachers and a son-i n -law highway engineer). \Vhil e f'aidy s imilar in income and social status, these persons form no homogeneous social grou p. Hardl y any of them :ue natives of Cai'iamclar. Social life in the sense of parties or club activities, funct ions at a very low level. T he nearest thing to social class activity among these people cons ists of sma ll social cliques in which some of them are united. Yet there is some awareness ol a common identity. \ Vhen a neighboring community with a la r ger middle-class grouping started a bus in ess and socia l club, a prominent P opular party member in Canamelar ,.v as asked if he cou ld suggest fiuing members lrom his town. H e suggested, in ad· clition to himself, three absentee representatives, a ll Oppositioniscs politically. There was apparently n o one of his ow n politica l persuasion in Canamelar w h o m h e rega rde d as his social equ a l. Jn like manner, when the infreque nt community social events in Caiiamelar arc attended by members o[ this grouping, they stay we ll apart from the other p;irticipants. It is only in this

g rouping that cons ide rations of race are of an y impor· Lance sociall y. Below Lhi:. group in ,,·ea lth and sLaLus arc the compmite rem11a11ts or another "middle-class" grouping. J ncluded here are man,· teachers. of ,,·ho111 there arc fifty in Ca1iamelar: th~ corporation 111edical practi· tioner; mosL to\\·11 store o\n1er!>: 1elcpho n c operators; and some public ca r dri,·ers. Th e pinure ol retail ente rpri ~e provide-, ti:- \\'iLl1 addiLional C\'iclc 11 r c: ol Lite 1n111c:1Lt'd q11ali1y ol 1ltc m1111i ci pality·.., 'Ot i:tl ;,tnH 111rc. Tht' co 11< c111r:11 inn of re tail trade i11 the hand-. ol ;1 corpor:11c 0111 IC'I. \\'Iii< 11 typific.:s Barrio 1'11~ :1I:'" j.., ,imph 1qicatcd 011 :1 largn sca le in the wil olC' n1uni< ipalil ). Tlinc ;ire. i11 :ill of Ca1iamc.:Jar, 1:10 111cnli;111h or ... w rc 1n:1n:iµ;crs. 111 1q10 Ca1-1amc J;1r h:1d I<::-.:-. tl1 :1 11 1.10 rc1;1il 1r:1dc.: e-.t: tl >I i-,h . m e n ts ;1 nd b in 1 "·ltolc~;tlcr. :'\c.:arh· rn1 e-lt:il I o l t lic.: retailers \\'Cr e loc1tccl in the tow n ihe lL \\'Ii,· tlii-. 111n· ca ntilc grouping clot'-. not pro,·idc: the 1111< lc:11-, ol ;in importallt 111icldle cla'>'> i-, re\'C:il cd hy f'rµ;urc· -; Oil loc:iJ trade. l lsing nothi11µ; 111orc.: Lhan t l1c µ;rm' i11t onit· fig· ures sub111ittcd to the C:ili:1111elar IO\\' ll n>1111c ii l11r licensing purposes, it can be sho\\'n that the 7 corporation retail stores in the municipality get bet\\'een ·15 and 50 p e r cent of all local trade. Since these swres c.onstituLe 11umcricall y on ly 5 per cent o( the loc:il retail outlets, it is e asy to see the difference in sca le or e nterprise bet"·een the corporation retail stores and the smaller private enterprises in Ca1iamclar. The number of r et;i il stores in Caiiamelar h:is hardly varied over recent years; in 19~19 licenses were rene\\'e d ror 130 estab lishments, two less Lhan had been issued in 1\J.IO· '" I t was not possible to get figures o n the number of bus in ess failures in this p eriod. Because the valuations put 0 11 stock by store owners for municipa l licens· ing purposes are n ot to be trusted, it is dillicull to estab lish the average valuation of Ca1iamclar's re tail stores. r\ vcrage reported gross rece ip ts for a II rcta i I outlets in 1 \MO were less than :;;3,ooo; since nearly half o( th e gross in come llo\\'ed inLO the 7 corporation stor es in the municipality, the scale o[ the rernaining retail outlets can be judged accordi ngly in a rough fa shion. This in formation shows, in still another way, how th e corporaLe invasion has hampered the growth o( a slllrcl y middle-class grouping in Caiiamelar. Another middle-class grouping in the munic ipality is composed of officeholders s uch as the ma yor, auditor. treasurer, In Lernal R evenue collecwr and his as., is tan t, the tick bath officinls, mal aria con trol and other Public H ea lth Service employees, the cane workers' loca l unio n leader, the justice of the peace, policem e n and fire m en, and municipal workers. ' Vhile many of th e!>e individuals hold the sa me pos ition as people in Lhe first group in terms of wealth and occupational status. the two groups exhibit an interesting political difference: th e officeh o lde rs are nearly a ll P op11J a r party m e mbers, while the retailers, teachers, ca fe owners, etc., 0:11

Sec pp. 3<>~-i 1 .

'° :\111bulan1 p eddlers, a 11d slon.: owners wilh s tocks valu<:d at lc's 1ha11S r .,;oo111.Td tH• I l1C' licc:us<'d.

CA~A~IELAR: RURAL St;CAR l'LA NTATI O:-\ PROL ETAR IAT

mainly suppon opposition political parties. The officeholders may noL rea ll y deserve to be set apan in this fas hio n but they seem to represent the "rising to the surface" of a bureaucratic midd le class. The officeholders form a group which is more sel(-consciously uniform than that of OLher middle-class people, more distinguishable LO olllsiders; and these men operate in a m o re unit:1ry \\":t)' Lhrough loca l political activity. It is panicu l ar l ~· through th eir relations with this burcaucr;1tic grn u pi ng that tile rural people are tied to the 1011·n :i11d dr:i11· scn·iccs and favors from it. Th e \'l'll'ran :111tl the public-car driver groups overlap. \ c1<:r:11h arc c:>pccially dillicult to fit imo the class pinurl· ... in l c 1111>..,t ol them ha,·e a temporary position ol ...011H· ..,c< urit' through cduc1tional and subsistence bc 11cht ~. lwt le,,· o l thc111 ca n be sure of maintaining it 011cc tile lw11clih haH' been used up. Public ca r drivers al·m lnrn1 :1 ll11id group. Their cars are invariably boughL 011 < redil. :111d the dri,·ers have monthly in!'. tallmc11h 10 pay . .\lo11C) t11rno,·er may be large, but the real i11<om e ol public car dri\"ers is often quite s111;dl. J>ui>lil (ar tlri,·crs lorm a separate and a politica ll y scll -con:-.cious group. Jt is interesting to note that the insular political platform o( the Independence party included a separate clause promising special help to th e public car drivers, although there was no comparable clau:-.e for other occupational groupings. \\lhile public car clri\·ers earn man y of their dimes and quar· ters carryi11g m embers of Lhc rural laboring class, they frequently ex press contempt for this group. Rural laborers arc often termed stu pid, unlettered, a11d coarse by the clri,·crs. lt is interesting, in the same connection, that a poll of elementary students in Barrio Poyal re· ,·caled that the boy students would like to be public car drivers more than anything else when they grow up. Below the various middle-class groupings is a group of very minor q11i11rnllerns (ambu lant vendcrs), parttime artisans, 11e11turrillo (unlicensed store) owners, lottery salesmen, a nd clerks. J\Iost of these people are strongl y identified \\"ith the cane workers and depend largel y on them for their livelihoods. Onl y the legal louery salesmen deal more with middle-class Lhan with lower-class individuals in this group. Next come th e fo remen, railway workers, and oth ers who h ave som e m easure of security, however low-pa id, in their work in the suga r industry. This group is pre· vailingly rural and in constant contact with the rural \\·or kers. And b elow Lhese is the remaining 70 per cent or more o[ C.:a1ia1nelar"s adult male labor force: the seasonal cane " ·orkers. These workers who sell nothing but th e ir labor most closely a pproximate a true class g ro uping in Ca1iamelar, united by social, economic, and political identity, "·ith a growing consciousness of class and of their position in the insular picture as a whole. In highland communities, where the dissoltnion of town trad ing- a nd landowning classes has noL been so coinpl ete, this orientation to the insu lar axis has not gon e so far. I n Sa n .Jose or Tabara, [or instan ce, the town remain-; a trading and processing cenler; local 0

393

business dealings are carried on there, decisions are made there which affect the rural popu lation in important ways. In Caliame lar, o n the other hand, the town is a very limited center o( control and sen·ice. In Barrio Poyal, there is a strong awareness of th e difference bet"·een rural life and town life. Poyal people speak of thernselves as nosotros de/ barrio ("we of the barrio"), and say fondly of Poya l, "This is a barrio where no one will starve as long as any man has food." A feeling of barrio-consciousness shO\.VS in other ways as well. Thus, while people in Poyal admit that fights are common in the barrio, they maintain that it is outsiders-t0\rnspeople and strangers who come to the barrio looking for trouble-who cause the fights. Politicians on the local level-barrio committeemenfeel a sense of pride and civic responsibility, and strugg le for various sm a ll improvements within the barrio. To Poya l people, the town is a cente r of certain important services, but not a trustworthy place. Daughters ought not to be sent there t0 school. The lazy hangers-on of the Popular party, as opposed to the idealistic, rural Popular party workers, are located in the town. Yet the town is a necessary evil for the sen·ices it affords the coun try. \ 1\Th en an e ffort is made to relate the various g roupings of the urban social system to rural people, it rapidly becomes appare nt that it is the officeholding group which deals most directly with the rural w01·kers themselves. T he rural people depend on the town for certain medical services; but although the town physician may examine and preso·ibe for them, it is the mayor who signs the prescriptio ns so that they may be fill ed free, and it is the barrio politica l committee president who secs that a bed in the hospital is secured. The town is a recreational center. but only in a limited way. Few rural workers can afford to go to the movies in Lhe town; they may attend the annual Misa de/ Ga llo (Christmas Eve midnig ht mass) at the town Catholic church and the Feast o[ the Patron Saine each year, but their parti cipation is usually limited. The fa ct of the matter is tha L rural people, even in the Cai1amelar situation where communication and u·ansportation are good and distances short, have little to do \\"ith the to\\·n. Occasionally they may go to town to make a purchase, but usually they will buy in the corporation retail store in Barrio Poyal or in the adjoining municipality which has better stocked stores than Caiiamclar has. The municipality post office is located in town but one pe1·son from the barrio usually will pick up the mail for a clolen different rural families. It is the same with nearl y any activity whi ch dra\\·s the town and the country LOgether: rural people do not choose lo deal at length with the town o lficialclom, and look 11 pon the town as the seat o( services to be exploited only when the n eed is urgent. This situation undoubtedly is related to reg ional histol"}'- Until 1900, hacienda rather than th e town \\"ere the scats o( most local activity so far as rural workers \\·ere con cerned. ACter 1900, the haciendas were supplanted by the cor · porations. The fu n ctions of the town, never important in the life of the rural worker, remained substantia ll y unaltered. Until 19.Jo, which marked the com ing to

394

T H E PEOP LE OF l'UERTO RlCO

poH·er of the P opular party, the rural workers' relationship with the local political apparatus was practically nonexistent. The successes of the Popular party, more tha n anything else, have made the town somewhat more important to the barrio people tha n it was in the past, simply because it is through the local pol itica l machine that the now politically conscious mass rural electorate is able to voice its demands upon the insular political system and to avail itself of the services supplied by that sys tem.

THE POLITICAL SCEN E POLITICAL FUNCTION ING ON THE LOCAL LEVEL

The present party in power in Puerto Rico is. a reform political grouping which has su cceeded 111 appealing to Puerto Ricans of all classes. But in Cafiamelar, the population is pred ominantly rural , agraria n, a nd laboring; locally, it was to this numerically prepondera nt group that the political appeals were directed. W orking people in Cafiamelar are impressed by the government's minimum wage and eig ht-hour laws, by the land reform program (which has touch ed them only slig htly so far), by the improvement in health a nd educational services in the municipa lity, and by the government's efforts to alter the control over the workers' lives exercised by the corporations. In 1948, there was not a single barrio in which any party won a m aj ori ty over the Popular pa rty. In an earlier section it was pointed out that the Popular party, under the leadership o( Luis 1\Iufioz Marin, had come to power in ig,10 promising basic reforms. Since that time the party h as gained in strength; in 1948, it captured the mayoralties in seventy-s ix of Puerto Rico's seventy-seven municipalities. In 1948, in terms of the Popular votes cast in proportio n to a ll others, the party lost votes; yet the victory was a complete one. In some ways, the success of the Popular party in Canamela r is the epitome of the party's isla nd-wide success, particularly in the sense that the lower-class working people who prepondera te in Caiiamelar are th e principal objective of Popular party appeals in gen eral a nd, in fact, actua lly h ave bene fited substantially [rom the party program. Municipal adm inistration in Puerto Rico is much less sovereign than is, for example, a state administration in the United Sta tes. Such services as th e pol ice and firemen are organized o n a n insular rather than on a local basis. Many local political jobs arc fi ll ed by appointments made in the capital. Nearly a ll the reform measures underta ke n by the Popul a r party a re both legisla ted and implemented from above. T he personal a nd symbolic importance of the party leader, Luis i\Iuiioz Marin, is such that Popul ar party enthusiasts are given to speak of themselves as Mufi.ozistas rather tha n Populares. When a loya l Popular in Barrio Poyal was once asked if he had a picture of a saint in h is ho use, he pointed jokingly to a pho togra ph of Munoz Marin and punned: "There is m y sa in t, he

lives in San Juan ; his name is sancoc/10." (Sa ncocho is a kind of thin stew; l\ lunoz Ma rin tints is identified with the most fundamental needs o( the common people.) One illustration of the power wielded b y the Popular party leader is demonstrated with relatio n to the subject of politica l independence. i\Iunoz i\Iarin has opposed political independence for P uerto Rico for some time; his lower-class follow ers are not troubled by this, a ccept ing his judg ment that politi cal indepe nd ence is tangelllial to the ir i111nH.: diate needs: more food. more "·ork. better "·ages, land rcfor111. etc. ;\fan y \\·orking people wh o support \ [111io1. do not claim to und ers tand hi-; rationale \\'itlt rq~ard to political independence, hut they arc \\'illi11g to go along. I nde pend ence ma y be somet hing to " ·hich they asp ire abstractl y but it is not a burning iss 11 e. l\ fan y of them add that when and ii :\11111 01. is prcp:1red Lo fi g ht for politi ca l inde pcnd c11 cc, they will follow. Po pular party lea d ersh ip is solidl y e ntrenched in CariamelaL Essentially all municipal johs are held h y P o/Ju/ares. Cenain cxpen!'>cs, such as edu catio n, which were former ly municipa l, now have been shifLecl largely to the insular government. \ •Vith these shifts went accompan ying changes in appo inti ve powers. The munic ipa lity, through the mayor and his ass ista nts, retains the power to recommend personnel for such jobs as grade school teachers, workers on municipal contracts, muni cipa l laborers and gravediggers, employees of the school lunch program, etc., but th e actual appointments arc made by insular authorities. Since the politica l power of the loca l government is much limited b y o ver-all centra lization, and since Popular party adherents in Cafiamelar feel a first loya lty to the insu la r party leader, how are loca l a nd insu lar politics related in the eyes o( the o rdin ary rural voter? To begin with, l\lufioz Marin, Popular party h ead , has ca mpaigned pers istently for a straight party ticket. The phrase Una so fa cruz debajo de la jJava ("One single cross underneath the hat"- the straw hat is the Po pular party symbol), is known to everyone in Pueno Rico. It signifies the idea which Munoz has b een hammering home i n re pea ted politica l camp a ig ns. Jmportant in ensuring support o n the insular leve l, support of the stmig ht party ticke t in many cases has r esulted in th e election o( incompetents to local office simply because they belonged to the same party as the insul ar leader. Th e o peration of Cafia melar pol itics indicates the fu nctio ning o f the straig h t p arty ticket in local terms. The mayor, a PojJ1t/ar, is serving his second successive term . While his ab il ities have been much questioned at times, he has been able to count on the "one single cross" to e lect him. T he local problem o( re-election, therefore, is one o( winning the loca l Popular party nomin atio n. Sin ce loca l voters arc overwhelming ly P opulares, once the Popular party nomination has been cl in ched, the cancl idate is almost assured of being elected. In order to w in the loca l nomination, it is necessary to capture th e support of th e rural Popular e lectors. Th is is the crucial connectio n between rural political activity a nd the municipal admi nistra tion.

CANA'l\U:LAR: RURAL SUGAR PLANTATION PROLETARIAT

The Popular party chooses its local candidates in the follo wing way: barrio political committees are elected by the registered members of the party in each barrio. The political committees elect one comfJromisario, or elector, for each one hundred registered party members in that barrio. Then the electors from the barrios and those from the town meet in a party caucus two months before the election to choose candidates for the mayoralty and assembly. The man who would be mayor of Caiiamelar in these times, then, must be a Popular pany rnc1nber \d1 0 ho lds the allegiance of the barrio politi cal committees of the party. The present mayor, when he ,,·as seek ing to be re-elected, devoted himself to " ·inning th e support o( the rural party committees. His rivals \\'ithin the p::irty devoted themselves to the same task. The fa ct that many dispensing functions are within th e ma yor·s power-filling jobs, signing prescription slips to be filled at municipal expense, etc.makes it dillicult for his intraparty opponents to try to COlll pc lC ,,. i th hi Ill . Occ 1sion;tll y, disillusioned Populares will break con1pl e tc ly with the organization and change to another political party. In Caf1amelar that is tantamount to political suicide. Because of the nature of insular political organization and the fact that rural voters see political gains of the past ten years as the work of the insular party leader, it is almost impossible for a local leader to break with the party and to carry the electorate with him. On ly one oppositionist mayor won in 1948, and he had been an old-line opponent of the Popular party. In a large city of the island, an exPofn1lar tried to create a new oppositionist party and made a very disappointing showing despite the fact that he was an extremely well-liked man locally. Loyal Populares, particularl y rural voters, view any ch.a~ge from the Popular party to another party as a political betraya l; in this connection, the rural voters are of the greatest importance to the voting strength of the party. Thus, in Barrio Poyal, when an opponent of the mayor sought to win rural support other than from within the Popular party, he lost almost all his political influence. Rural political organization has been. briefly d~­ scribed. The barrio political committee 111 Poyal is constituted so as to represent the main population nuclei: that is, the beach, the colonias, and the poblado. Rarely if ever do these local committee members receive any compensation for their efforts other than the gratification of a job well done. They are the men who work and campaign par nmor del pnrtido ("for the love of the party"). \1\Torking together on the barrio committee, they arrange for voters to get their voters' cards, they carry out the political census for the Insular Boa rd o f Elections, they arrange for rural political meetings, and they see that the voters get to the polls. More than any other leaders, they are aware of political disappointment and dissension when it first arises. When the Pofndnr mayor of Cafiamelar wanted to know what was brewing in Barrio Poya l, it was to the barrio committee that he went. It was to these sa me men that the political opponents of the mayor, within

395

the Popular party, went to air their grievances and to woo support. :Members of the barrio committee, although unpaid for their political work, provide the crucial local link between the party hierarchy and the electorate. At th~ insular level, no such link is stressed any longer; the insular leader communicates directly with the electorate through the radio and the press. But Mufioz Marin understood well, during his climb to power, that his success would stand or fall on the basis of his appeal to the rural electorate. He is famous for the democratization of political campaigning he effected early in his career: he campaigned in a shortsleeved shirt, entered the houses o( the rural poor to discuss problems with them, made himself personally accessible to the men who would elect him. In subsequent campaigns, since J 940, opponents of the Popular party have tried to make the point that Mufioz Marin has become less and less a man of the people. The fact rema ins that he is still able to win the support of most of the electorate, particularly the rural lower-class grouping. The barrio political committee of the Popular party serves not only to prepare and to indoctrinate the people of the barrio but seeks to win more support for the party locally by achieving modest local reforms. In Poya l, people are troubled b y an unguarded railroad crossing which is near the village of Oriente. During the harvest, trains pass through the barrio d ay and night, and there is great concern over the safety of the children. The local committee is attempting to have some safety measures taken so that the village children will not be endangered. The road from the village of Oriente to the barrio beach is muddy and rutted; in case of serious illness at the beach, the municipal ambulance would not be able to drive directly to the beach itself. The political committee is insisting that money be appropriated to build an adequate road. On one occasion, there was no ·water in the barrio. A member of the committee went directly to the mayor to get action, and the next clay there was water again. \ l\Thile it is not necessary to see the mayor personally in order to get a bed at the hospital, the pressure on hospital facilities is great and the mayor usually is able to expedite things. '\!\Then someone is seriously ill in the barrio, his family will request a member of the political committee to see whether a hospital bed can be obtained. '\1Vhat is curious about the status of the barrio political committee is the low regard in which i t is held b y the town politicians of the party. It is seen as a device for mobilizing popular support, but little credit ever goes to the committeemen themselves for what they accomplish. The patronizing attitude which politicians in town feel toward the rural poor in general is not lost on the local political comm itteemen. Yet they view local Popular politicians as mere adjuncts to the insular machine, and demand little more from them than attention to certain local n eeds : more and more medical care, perh aps a milk station in the barrio to su pply the children with free milk, better serv ices at the barrio infirmary, etc. They elect the Popular party loca lly because they are con vinced of the reasonable-

396

THE PEOPLE OF P UERTO RI CO

ness of the straight party ti cket rather th a n beca use in po"·er today, it remains a fa ct th at it \\·as this party whi ch made poss ible open cam pai gnin~ ;ind lega l pothey feel any particu lar lo_yalty to the local Jez~t~ers. As the time of the elections grows near, pol1t1cal ac- litical ~truggle . " ' h en tile day or clenio n fin a ll y arri,·es, the parties tivity in the barrio is stepped up._People gath er in fro~t co ncemrate al l th e ir efforts o n bringing the ir \'Oters to of the little stores where the rachos blare out the poli tthe polls. Babies must be ca red ro r. th e aged and infirm ical programs of the Pop ul:lr par_ty. The po.li tic~d must be carr ied in cars : the "ord in ary'' m en and committee makes its poll of me votmg populatio n m the barrio for the Insular Board of E lections-which women of the ba rri os ro ll into town in g reat crowds 0 11 is, o[ course, a nonpartisan body. Each voter registered trucks \\'itli the b;1nners or the ir pan~ fly ing-. :\ grc;1t in the previo us election must be v isited by the c_ensus sh o,,· of ~pirit ;1 11d d c111ocr;11 ic int crc,t i.; ~111J\,· 11. The rural lo,,·cr·c 1:1'' ,·ott'r did 11ot !ind Ii i, , tn·11gtli 1111ti l Committee, a committee made up of a member o [ each J ~). J O: no\,. th :tl lie: k11 0,,·.., \\· li :1t lie< :1Jl do. lie i-; 1m1 to political pa rty. As each regist.ered ~~ter is i~l e 1.1 t ifi ecl a n d ch ecked off, he is asked his politica l affi l1 auon. If be roo lecl c:1-., ily . .\lt1i101 .\l;1ri11 ( :llllt.' lo power ()I) :1 an a nswer is g iven rapidly and without hesitation, the party platlor111 ,,·lti< It in c lt1dcd tile :Hh·icc. " I f I fa il voter is checked off accord ing ly. If th e voter does not yo u, throw me out." The: fan tli at .\I 11 1101 i-; he ld in choose to a nswer or hesitates, h e is marked " d o ubtfu l." such h ig h n:g;i rd b y the rn:1jorit~ ol \\·ork i11g cl:iss :Kew voters from o ther localities and voters who are people doe;, not 11c:c c;-,;,:1rily ;, ig11i ly tlL1 t t lt c: clt:c1o r:1tc registering for the fir~t time a re checke~ throug h in- will stay with the p;1 ny. corn<: ,,· '1;1t lll :1y. "l ltc 11nnitic:i l scription or by certihcates <;>f tran:fer. rhrou9h the 1\t/11iiozisffls are lialan<cd h\' th ose \·oter' \dlo saY . "l political cens us, members. of the _d ifferent p~1rt 1es ar: wi ll stay a l,oj)ll/rir :1;, long :1, tltc p:1rty c o11tin 11~·s to able to get some gen eral 1mpress1on of political senti- h elp me a nd people like me.'' On 011c occ: 1 ~ io11. d ur i11g ment in the barrio. L ater, the voters' cards, needed to th e 19,18 ca111paig11, a C:1d illac dro\'c 1l 1ro11gh Barri o enter the polls, a re sen t to the ?arrio, a nd each. party Poya l, past Orieme Village, with the Popular party !l ag political comm i ttee m ust s~e to 1t th a~ every reg1s.tered tied to its bumper. This fla g carries the Spanish words, Pan, Tierrn )' Lib erlad ("B read , L a nd and Liberty"). member of its party gets lus card: Tl~ 1s task req uires a thorough knowledge of th e barno. since m a ~1y of the "([ lie rayo ! Le ftace fa/ta fH111, '/11111?" (" \ \T h a t a rellow! reg istered voters from the previous e lec t~ o n h ave Need s b read, e h~ ·'), remarked a lo ya I P o j)lt la r. J t is in moved away, died, been taken to the hospital o r to view of this humorous yet bitter cy nicism that the Popular party will do well to make i ts socia l and ecosanitori a, j oined other parties, or as in one case, been comm itted to jail for m urder. ' Nives of th e comm ittee- nomic ga ins exceed th e grow th of i ts high-pa id bumen often help in the distribution a nd iden tifi cation rea u cracy recruited in the island's cities and in th e o( voters' cards, and women are expected to vote, no contine n ta l Un ited States. matter what their o ther obligations, when election day The loca l results o( the elect io n are known some hours after th e pol ls are closed. Principal o ppos ition a rrives. Meanwhi le, speeches by all the ca ndidates o n the to the Popular party in Caiiame lar in 19.18 came from insular level pour over th e radio; political meetings are the Puerto Rico Ind epende n ce party (P IP), and from held in the rural barrios a nd in town by a ll the parties. the three-party allian ce ca lled the Opposi tion . The All day long, cars drive through the barrio with the Oppositi on is not as impo rtant for the votes it receives flags of the different parties fastened to the bumpers. as it is for the local social and political poin t o f view it Barrio Poyal is a Popular strongh o ld. vVhen a ca r o( expresses and the local social grouping it represents. In an opposition party drives through th e barrio, cri es o( th e l~)tJ ,J e lect ions, the separa te po litical parties which combined in 19,18 to form the Oppositio n-Estadistas, "Abajo!" ("Down w ith it!") w ill be heard; when a car carrying the P opul ar party fl ag passes, the cry is Soc ia listas, and R eformistas-polled a bout 25 per cent o( the tota l vote; in 19.~8, the Oppos ition rece ived "Arriba!" ("Up with it! ") Pictures o f the candidates b egin to appear in the houses o[ the agregados. Po litical about the same. In Cafi amelar, lead ership a nd voting comm itteemen in the colonias meet w ith those o[ th e strength both for the Oppos ition an d fo r the Independence party lie in th e town and n ot in th e rural villages and o[ the tow n to plan strategy. Politics is a matter of great e n th us iasm locally. l\'fa n y loca l agre- barrios. Th e O ppos iLion leadersh ip loca lly, unlike that gados wa lked the road s o[ the barrio in the days before o[ th e Popu lar party, is dra wn mainly from th e few 1~)tlo without homes or jobs because they h ad [ought remaining "old" families in the tovv11. Non governme n for their politi cal ideals. In discussions about politics tal o!Ticials, su ch as teachers, also a re likely to be Opin the old days beCore 1900, ·workers say that someti m es positionists. The Independen ce party in Cafiamelar is they were jailed w ithout ca use simply to be kept from a sma ll , voluble gro up, m ade up primarily o f vetera ns voting. A hired po litical tool wo uld claim that an in- of \ 1Vorld ' Var 1I, although th e in sular leadersh ip of dividual act ualJ y was from another town a nd was vot- th is pa rty is not fro m the veterans' group. There is ing illegall y. I mmedi ately th e accused would be taken good ev ide nce th at many ve tera ns became IndependolT to jail aml preven ted from voting . Violen ce also was cn tists in reaction tO the racist policies of the United quite common then, and mayordomos \-vo uld sit at the S tates Army. Anoth er group of Independ entists comes election d esk s ch eck ing on th eir workers, w hil e candi- from among the public car d r ivers in Cafiamelar who dates were not above b u ying votes wi th clothes o r pres- fee l th at the Popular party ad ministratio n has been ents of money. vVhatever the shortcom ings of the party unjust to them with regard to certa in licensing policies.

CANAMELAIC RURAL SU GAR PLANTATION PROLETARIAT

397

:\s lt as bcc.:11 pointed out b efor e, the veterans and public car dri ,·crs arc overlapping groups. However, neither :ti I \'C lcrans nor all public car cl rivers arc Independe mis ts. Tltis relativel y youthful grouping, largely concc111ratcd in th e town of Caiiamelar, is very anxious to a\'C>id ha,·ing LO go to Ll1e cane fi elds when their benefits end. Jn I!.).J7, a \'Cterans' social club was formed in t.he LOw11 of C:ailam c lar ,,·iL11 t\\'enty-nin e members. By the s1:1r1 of 1!1-l~l· on ly urn o[ the origina l members were ldt. .\II tlH' others had gon e LO New York, where a new (I tili \\':ts lo rm cd. Th esc m en , through their army training. :tdditio11:t! cd t1c ttion ( however brief it may be), :111 d o tlt n bcndib. arc mu ch more mobile than the I'll r:tl \\·ork i 11g pcopk. .\n illlport:t11L leawrc o f the recent political history ol PtHTlO R ico lus to do ,\·ith the over-a ll political sc1biti1:1Lio11 and educat io n of th e rural worker. This g r:tdu:tl process is best understood \\'hen one listens to til e d escriptions o f past politica l campaigns and learns Ito\\' the Popu l:1r party finall y succeeded in galvanizing :111d 1rniti11g tile laboring people b ehind its cand idates. Says 011e ,,·orkcr:

Popular party came to power, it gave support to a nelv union organization, the General Federation of v\Torkers (Confederaci6n G en eral de Trnba jadores). This was during the period when the ' ew Deal program of the Democratic party in the United Sta tes was in rapid growth. General conditions thus were favorable for the rise to power of a reform political party and for the development o( an effective union organization on th e island. Concomitant with the development of the CIO in the continental United States, the CGT raFidly b ecame Puerto Rico's most important union.• ~ :\n office of the CGT is maintained in the town of Canamelar (as it is in the toivn of every municipality having a local bra nch), staffed b y a salaried local president and seo-etary, and functioning to resolve minor complaints, to collect dues, and to arrange for welfare payments in cases of illness, accident, or the death of a member. l\fembers of the union at different colonias are represented by locally elected officials. These colo11ia representatives collect clues (they are p ermitted to keep as a reward a pan of what they collect). and represent th eir membership a t regular meetings. E ach year the municipa l local sends delega tes to the island'Ve we re like the crabs who get caught in the traps. I can wide annua l CGT convention. · remember lhe ma yo ral candidaLes he re in Caiiamelar g iving The CGT, when it first began, fought for and won p eople: a nc\\' pair of pants o r two dollars for the promise increases in pay and improvement of working condiof a \ 'Otc. The crab \\'alks into the trap lo get the swee l tions. The P opular party was amenable to the incorcane, but in lhe e nd he is caught a nd boiled. So "·e would poration of such gains in law, and one of its importa nt sell our vole for n e\\' pants and suffer for several more years. leaders became actively engaged in winning b ack pay \ Ve \\'e rc fooled. wc "'ere mis take n. "\•Vhen l'\'[u1ioz lo ld us lO lake the ne w p;rnts, but to \'Ole for him, it opened our eyes. cases for the sugar workers. In the early forties, the And h c promise d us lhat he would do \\'hat he said or e lse CGT Jed several strikes on the south coa st, strikes wc should lhrnw him o ul. And if he doesn't keep his prom· which were marked b y a number of v iolent in cidents. ises. we will thro\\· him out! The progra m of th e union at that time was simple and In '!l-1·1· all of us rural committee chairmen met him in a direct- to improve materially the workino- conditions night duh lhat the pany re m ecl fo r the occasion in o of. t 11e cane workers. a ncarhy municipality. H e sat in front of us and told us what By 1945, internal dissension cau sed a major division he was planning . I saw all of the other committeeme n with in the CGT. One o( the splinter l:>OTOU J)S later b ecame me there and I thoug ht, " '\/hat a party we have built." • ant1-PofJ 11/ar and pro-Independence in its political The n, in 19.18, I \\'as a de legate lo lhe insular conventio n in San Juan . \ Vc ~c t out al four in the morning in lrucks. position. T he other group remained pro-Populnr, took vVhen we got to thc o ulskins of thc capital, we could hard ly the Popular p arty stand on the independen ce issu e, move along. lhe re was su ch a press of people a nd ca rs as I and was supported by a numerical majority of the h ave n evcr scen before:. And all we re Po/ndares. And whe n CGT's members. Th e south coast workers and the Muiioz b egan in his sp ccch, "Que gra nrlc es 1111est ro batey'' CGT had been tied closely to the Popular party ("How big is our fro nt ya rd"), I looked around in the throughout the union's history and with the eliminaswdiu111 and saw how many more like me the re we re; it was tion of dissenters, the union became even m ore idena finc feeling.•t tified with Popular p a rty policy. Its two m ost important leaders are members of the insular legislature. The THE POLITICAL NATURE OF UN ION ORGANIZATION identity of interests between the Popular party and A discussion of politics in the local situation leads the CGT was fur th er d emonstrated in the 1948 elecn ecessarily to the subject o[ union organization and tions, when two south coast union leaders (both of activity. The connection between labor and politics in them also mayors) joined the Popula r party representatives in the legisla ture. Pucno Rico is strong a nd important. On the loca l leve l. the union b ecam e a n instrum e nt 1t has been noted already that the first union orga nization in lhe south coast. zone arose with the support in the struggle for local political power. Jn Canamelar, or th e Socia list party in Puerto Rico. This union, the this struggle led to the formation of an " indep enden t" Fed e racir)11 Libre d e Trabajadores (Free Fed era tion of •~A n article by I'au I F. Kennedy in th e N ell' )'01-ft Tim es for \t\lorkers), lost its supporters b y conceding too much No\'ember 12. 1950, rcpons: "It [the CGT] was primarily formed of its own program in the political struggle. 'When the as an adjunct to t he i\ l u 1inz pan.y. AL that time. 1he C.I.O . granted

•1 S1a1 c111( 11t l> v l3arrio l'oyal informant, personal interview, 0

June, 19~9.

a charle r to its n ew affiliate. b u t there \\'ere inclic:nio n$ the na· tional organi zation \\':ts apprehensive over 1he close 1.ie~ between the fnsular Union and the P uer10 Rican Gm·crnmc111."

398

THE PEOPLE OF P UERTO RICO

union, because the mayor and the union leader, both system, wo rke rs were ldt with three days' pay lo tide loyal Populares, could not agree on the division of them over th e e xpected few days withou t work that th e politica l spoils. As a resu lt, b y 19.18, the CGT in Cafia- strike implied. Everyone e xpressed his hope and his melar became an almost defunct organization , retain- expectatio n that the strike wou ld end in a matter of a ing only a fraction o f its former membership. The long, few da ys . i\ leanwhil e, strike committees we re organselfish local struggle had created great apathy and even ized, and representatives of five munic ipalities in lhe antipathy on the part of the local workers, who felt zone to ured the stri ke area to h a ndle any breaches of that they were getting nothi ng for th eir dues and mem- strike regul a tions. In each area, groups o( workers d esbership. A t the time that the present study was made, ignated by the union ch ecked on the co lonias to sec that no irrig ati on o r o ther work ,,·as in progress. For the distrust and suspicion of past years still hung over the loca l branch of the CGT , and in V iej a, only about two days lli esc g ro ups watch cd d osc:ly. On the third one hundred workers were active, dues-paying CGT day the ,·ig ilance o f the ,,· atelier~ i>eg; in w d\\·ind lc. members. Some o f these workers were members of the The slrike was Liiling becau~c barga i11in g \\·a~ m eeti ng local in the adjoining municipality rather tha n of the wilh no su ccess and th e corpor;1tio11s \\·en: quite \\·illi11g Caiiam elar loca l. The outside local was elTic ient and to bide their time. \\'orkers \\'OIHlcrcd ,,·h y th e goH~ r­ well-run, a nd had obtained a <lay wage and the elimin a- nor did not d ec L1rc a .~lalC or e111 crgency. E\' C l1 \\"illi tio n of piecework on most of the colonias under its m en checking LO see that irrigati01 1 stopped , some jurisdiction. None of these g ains, much desired by the covert irrigalion was a l\\·;1ys in progress. By the ,,·ce k's end, the inspection of the colo11i(ls had :ilmos l comworkers of Vieja, was ever won for Vieja itself. In December, 1948, when the harvest season was pletely ceased . By tir e fol lm,·in g \londay, n ego tiations a bout to begin, the insular CGT presented its bargain- had led to a set Llement: ,n,rkcrs in the field found lliat ing contract to the Association of Sugar Produ cers, they had won a one- h:tlf·ccnl·an -l10ur increase. Th e agent for most of the island's corporate producers. The resenllne11 t o[ the slrikers " ·as considerabl e; they fel t union dema nded, among other things! large boosts in baffled and deceived . True, th e union also had wo'n lhe pay. N o settlement was forthcom ing and a strike was right of a check-off system on dues. But the local workvoted . The strike, as planned, involved b o th factory er's economic situation is such tha t he is more interand field workers. Beca use factory workers were in- ested in immediate ga ins and is likely lo view the volved , the d ispute fell under the provisions of the achievement of the check-ofE system more as a conTa ft-Har tley law. The harvest was well under way be- solidation o( the power of th e union hierarchy rather fore the "cooling-off" period had ended. The cooling-off than in terms of its implica tions for stronger uni on period provided the corporations with ample oppor- programs in subsequent years. \\The n the strike staned, th e ogregndos o( Vicja had tunity to cut their best and most perishable cane- the big growth (gran culturn) , wh ich cannot be left sta nd- lwo or three clays' wages in reserve, and the corporaing too long w ith out losses in sugar content and is al- tion store extended credit up to about the amount of ways cut first in the h arvest. The less important cane, cash which th is equal ed. By the second day o( lhe the spring plant (primavera) and ratoon (reloiio) slrike, the store was a lready cutting down on credit, growths, can remain standing indefinitel y i( it is wa- and from the third day onward, the store was open only tered regula rly. As a result, b y the time the strike an hour or two each d ay. Several workers in the barrio actu ally got under way, the most pressing part of the were known to be working; in one case, a gro up o( five harvest had b een taken care of; the other cane could workers from one o( th e t in y co /onias to the north of await cutt ing i ndefinitel y. \!\Th a t h ad cooled off in the V ieja were en joined from working by th e strike comcooling-off period was the effectiveness of the strike. mittee. Strikers commen ted fa vorably on this: in the ·vvorkers were distresse<l at the need to wait and to old days, th ey remarked, the strikers were arrested and continue working before str iking while their trump lhe strikebreakers protected. Feelings abou t being card, so to speak-the big gro·wth cane- was cut and loyal lo the strike varied. One worker, whose com jJadre g round. The CG T officials h ad m ade a serious tactical was working secretly, said of him, "It's not rig ht. If we mistake, it would seem, in in volving the fa ctory work- don' t eat, no one should." He poin ted out th at his ers, which meant that the strike was subj ect to th e strikebreakin12: comfHtdre had no children a nd was free cooling-of.£ prov ision, and another in waiting as long to take chances; he himself, as a father of little chilas they did before beginning collective bargain ing. d ren, dare not risk v io len ce. Yet this same worker had Vhen the strike actuall y began , there was little the stated on a n o the1- occasion that he had broken strikes union could do to press for its demands. v\Torkers, and in the early fort ies even lhough he th en h ad children apparentl y the union hier arch y as well, hoped that a lso: at lhat time, he h ad said, he h ad sl ipped a kni fe on ce th e strike was under way, the government would und er his shi rt and had gone to the fi elds. "A strike," he intervene. If the government declared that a sta te of sa id , "is like war. Each ma n must be for himself." This emergency ex isted, the M inimum \ 1\Tage Roarcl could worker is from the village of Oriente. U su a lly the first be called in to settle the dispute. That would mean to break a strike are the agregados who 1ive on the that the strike would be a brief o ne, that the wo rkers colonias. Jn a previous strike, some years ago, even the would lose o nl y a few d ays' work, and that th e CGT union representative on Colo nia V ieja worked in the might w in certain con cessions by d ecree. The strike irrigation . \ 'Vorkers from town came to the colonias staned on a Monday; because of the Vieja accounting and swnecl th e strikebreakers. and cons iderable antag\

1

CANAl\lELAR: RURAL SUGAR PLANTATION PROLETARIAT

399

adequate for wor~ing p~ople. T he Popular party has put great emphasis on improved health services and perhaps nothing else it has clone has been mar~ important in winning over the rural electorate. Because the l~nds of Cafiamelar ~e so valuable, a good return 111 the form of taxes is collected and the municipal budget is quite large relative to the population. From 40 t? 50 per cent of this budget is spent on healt!1 servi_ces. B~tween i 944 and 1948, the municipal hospital mpled HS number of beds; its employees number but two ~e~s than the total employed by all of the other mu111cipal offices combined. ln addition to the hospital, there are three rural dispensaries, one of them in Oriente. Municipal 1_10spitals are not fully equipped for surgery or complicated treatment. v\Then cases arise which cannot be handled adequately by them, patients are sent_ or taken to one o( the ~even d istrict hospitals or the islancl. In the case o( Canamelar residents, the district hospital at Ponce is used. In the area of health service, as in other areas, the insular reform political party in power is challenging corporate control over the working people. The corporation employs a visiting male nurse who treats minor illnesses at Vieja and the other colonias in Ca1"1amelar; it also runs its own hospital, located at the administrative center and central area. But more and more ~,·orkers now go to the ?1unicipal hospital (or aucnuon. They seem to prefer It because they feel that they can demand service from the governmental agencies while they could only be made to feel humbly grateful for corporate service. Fo~·~1erly,_ Caiiamelar and the neighboring coastal mun1~1pahues sufferec~ from a very high incidence o( ~alana. The lack of preventive techniques of any k111d, even of the use of mosquito nets, and the fact that irrigation ditches were perfect b reeding places, as were the ponds and the marshy lowlands of the coastal stretches, all contribu ted to the hicrh inciden ce of the 0 disease. But during the war and after, anti-malaria campaigns were carried out with r emarkable success. People in Oriente say that before the war one could hardly sit on the front stoop because of the swarms of mosquitoes. Now they are rarely annoying. At the barrio beach there continue to be great swarms o( mosquitoes, but the DDT campaign has been sufficiently effective to reduce malaria cases to a fraction of their f~rmer number. Progress in the curbing of parasitic diseases has also been gratifying. Anti-malaria service, HEA LTH, FOLK M EDICINE, FOOD HABITS, x-rays for tuberculosis, treatment of communicable dis.cases, diagnoses of venereal diseases, prenatal and AND FO LK ARTS AND SCIENCE child care programs, health inspections, and certain otl)er serv ices are handled by the local branch of the HEALTH U .. Public Health Service. This organization is particThe question of health in the barrio is tied closely ~ilarly popular wi_th young mothers_ who ca n get into the role or the town and to insular government. In Ionnauon of a ll kinds from the service. Caiiamelar generally, the health conditions are one of the most encouraging aspects of the total socioeconomic picture, not because the cond itions are so good, FOLK M EDICIN E b ut bem use or the ga ins which have beeu made during o discussio n o( health and medical pract ices in the past ten yea rs. Health services have never been Barrio Poya l is comple te without mention of the use

on ism developed during this conflict. Yet once a strike is settled, o ld fri endships are resumed without much friction. R emarked one Oriente worker, a former CGT ofticial: ".-\ strike is like an election; when it is over, en mities arc forgotte n." :\ number of factors make the use of the strike as an instrument for winning better working conditions difficult in the sugar cane industry. To begin with, cane work prevailingly is of an unskilled nature-any ""(ffkcr call perform nearly any job; what is more, compel it ion for jobs is considcra ble, and strikebreaking is 1101 1111< 0111mo11 . .- \n additional problem is the vast exp;11b<.: ol L111d LO be patrolled during a strike. Because tl1e CC T is able to excn some pressure on the legislawn: tltro11glt its representatives, political activity raLl1N t'1 :i11 th e strike has become the more important mc:a11 s o l al tempting to achieve un ion go;:ils. Th e: growing liaison between the CGT and the Pop11 l;1r pany, alt.hough d enied by union officialdom, ca11 be ~cc 11 ill tl1c increasing number of union officials " ·ho ;ire c lcned to politica l office on the Popular party titket. This fusion of union and political leadership leads 10 ( 011 l usio11 when the respective objectives of labor and of the Popular party are not completely in accord. Fo r instance, workers in the cane are strongly o pposed to the present mechanization trend in industry, while producers are determined to mechanize "·hercver possible in order to reduce production expenses. The governmen t, now a large sugar cane farm operator and producer itself, must face the question of mcchani1.atio11 in the same 'm y that private produ cers are doing. Yet the government could not openly support the mechanization trend before the ig,18 elections without losing the support of the cane workers, particularly in areas like the south coast. AEter the electio ns were won, the party assu med a cautious pro-m echa nizat io n position. In J uly, 1!)'18, a Popular party candidate for the insular legislature, at the time both the mayor a nd a CGT official of a south coast municipa lity, to ld a Cailamelar audience that ig,18 was the "first year o( the terror" because of the strong mcchan iza ti on trend. Elected to the legislature, this man th en found himself in the position of having opposed someth ing publicly which, in line with his party's own objectives in reducing the costs of cane production o n government farms, he subsequently lrnd LO SU pport.

400

THE PEOPLE ()F Pl: J·:RTO RI CO

of loca l m edic ina ls. " "hile forma l medical services a r e generall y quite ad va n ced in P uerto Rico a nd s tead il y progressing, there persists, as in a ll agrarian countries, an impo rtant emph asis on (olk healing . F o lk medicine h as vanished complete ly in those pathologies n ow h a ndle d operative ly o r t hro ugh long and careful ca r e : vene rea l diseases, appendectom ies, tuberculosis, e tc. But in the treatme nt o f tempo rary c.lisorc.lers o r chro ni c minor disorders, loca l medicines are still impo rta nt. They include teas, aromatic baths, juices, etc. In local usage, a tea (Lt;) is the mixture derived fro m boiled a nd steeped roots, twigs, or leaves. A tisr111n is usually a much more dilu ted so hnion, often prepa r ed and drunk cold. A gunrapo (corr ectl y, a beverage made (rom cane juice) is a drink, m ed ic inal o r o the r, prepa r ed from a fermen ted ex trac t. The fo ll owing lis t does not pretend to comple te ness but merel y seeks lO document the inte resting persistent emphas is o n folk med ic ine . for kvcrs: zorm dr li111ri11 fl 111111 b re

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rrse11ifera probably Origr111w11 Mnrjornnn men/a probably M e ntlrn cris/w qui11i110 clef /Justo L eo11otis n epetae fo!irt ye1·bn b11e11a 1\ I e 11 t lia 11e 111uru.rn ri11·1a probably · E11/wtori11111 Lri/>li11crve

( Ririnus co1111111111is). St ill others are used to m ake externa l compresses for toothache, and one common remedv is to hold a little rum on the aching tooth. Thi~ lis t bv no means exhausts loca l ~1sages. For ins tance, ')1 erb~1 morn (So la1111111 caribae11111) is' used to relieve pain from stomach ul cers; kidn ey pain is allev ia ted b y use of arn111a (probabl y All1iz.z.in J.c bech): the sm o ke of bur11ing tabo1111co (Dacryodt:s t•x elsa) ca n be used to disinrcn a h ouse : !t oja de c"slrulo (An t It uri 11 m acr11tlP) is recommended for ... 10111a r h cl i ~orclers. and so on. \ Vhat i-. imprt.,,iq: in .,llC Ii :i Ji..,1 i11g i, ilw ,,·;iv in whic h such lolk '>< ic·11c c Ii:" pehi-;1ccl t'H'll in 1hc lace o f grO\\·ing fon11;d mcdic:d ~C' lT i cc: -,. n111 lil t ' tll:t jor ity o r treatment'i ;ire ()f\ ' " [or di·.;order ... w li id1 :tr(' mi11or (or are con~ iclt:n:d 111(11or): :111cl the: barrio peopl e :ire awa re tlta t s uch cu res a re 011 ly pre Iirn i 11 ;1ri cs- i [' no s uccess is acl1ic-,·ecl. they do not h es itate to ~o 10 the munic ipal h <bp ital. There i-; ... o m e e \·iclc11('C that ma11y o( the h erb-;. rooi.... :111d l ean·~ 11 ...ed do :-.Cr\'c some curative purpme. l .oc:d people clo not \C(' lolk m edici n es and hospital care a ... logically oppo~c:cl. and 1hc:y reject neither formal mcdiral sen·iccs nor the old medicinals that have been in use in the ir c ulture for many yea rs. FOOD HABITS

The prin c ipa l h ea lth proble m in Barrio Poya l today is nutritio n. \Vhil c it is true that c ultural preferences pl ay some role in the nature of this p roblem, it would be nonsensical to sa y that the die t of th e Puerto Rica n s ugar worker is bad because "he prefers i t that way.'' (jengibre : Zingiber Zi11giber; reseda : R eseda odornla; To quote an important r e port of the Puerto Rican 11nrnnja: citrus a11ranti11111); menstrual p a ins (raices de Minimum \Vage B oard ( 19.p :1 59) o n the suga r ca ne 11a leria11a: l 'a leria11a sca 11 de11s) . industry: " In view o f the .. . data it may be c.:onA m o n g the common a romatic ba ths are those bre we d c ludecl that alth o ug h th e re are many causes and fa ctors from t h e herbs ca lled Santa J\ faria ( probably Callo/Jh)'l- influencing the h ea lth of the field worke rs' famili es in !11 m nn lil1a1111111 ), verbena /;/anca (verbene liibrida ), Pue rto Rico, it is ev ident th a t their p oor health has eucal yptus and ca mph or leaves, flrlemisa ( pro bab ly its deepest r oots in the diffic ult econ om ic s ituatio n ambrosia perm,ir11/(/), salvia (Plurlies purj)ltrascens), resulting in the ent ire ly inadequate diet, th e squa lo r and albnhaca blanrn (Oci11111m bnsilicum). One aroand a b a ndonm ent in which t h ese people must live matic bath, snluia (Pl11c/1efl p11r/J11rnsce11s), is used "to since they d o not have sufficient r esources." T he school draw the blood to the feet." lunch program provides hundreds of Ca1iamelar c hilTisnm1s are used for teethi ng (grn11rn blanca: Steno- dren "·ith their lun ches ever y clay. The menus are to/Jltrum sen111dal11111; a nd nl11mbre : fJeporo111ir1 /Jel- worked o ut ce n tra ll y w ith e mphasis on what is dietet/11rida) an d fever. ic-ally regarded as a "b:ilanced" die t. It is a common For eye ailments. t h ere is a loca l c ustom, p ossibl y o f exp e rience to fi ncl chi Id rcn re fu sing som e i tcms o [ ancie11t provenie n ce. of c rus hing certain leaves or these lun ch es which :ire unfamiliar lo th e m . Hu t t he p la 11Ls and plac ing tile crush e d matter o n the forerule h as it that a pupil must eat all his lun ch in o rder h ead. Usua ll y oil is 11:-.cd as a medium for m<1 c.:cra ting to get the lunc h at all. Gran te d that this m ay occas ionthe plants used. Lla11 ll;11 de ag11a (Ec/1i11odor11s 'ordi- all y cause discomfort to a c hild, it is usuall y possib le /olius), sabila (aloe vulgaria), /1i11ojo (anelltum grn11e- to develop in the chi ldren a liking for the n ew diet. ole11s), and l/a11te11 arc med in this way. Families in B arrio Poyal are extremely e n thusiastic For earache, the <,ame kind of extract is made, mixabout the school lunch program. Children continue ing the oil of the h e rb with other o il , healing and to cat t h e " c ulturall y s tandarcli1.ed" diet at home and applying it i ns ide the ear but without any of the plant the schoo l lu nch es at school. particles. Bruja (B1)'ojJl1 j' ll11111 p i11a lu111 ) and /1 ig 11 era So Jar as could h e d e te rmined, no s ig nifirn11L changes arc used for th is pu rpose. in the kinds of food eate n in the barrio ha ve occurred Other h erb rem e dies a re used for 1not Ii ;1che, incl ud - in the p ast fifty years. Aged informants d escribe th e i ng g11oyar·d11 ( (; 11uiac11m ofiici11alis) and /1ig 11ereta di e t of Lh e pa-;t cc 1n11ry as quite simil a r tn th a t of

Other teas are used for stomach -(lche (jengilne nmargo: proba bly Zingeber Zerumbel: ta11t11ba: Ade11oropi11m gossypofoli11m : and sarab11c/1e: Pliysalis a11g11lala); worms (pazole : C/1e11ojJodi11m ambrosiodes); gri p pe

CA:\lA )I EL\R: RU RA L SU GA R P L ANTAT JO:-> P RO L ETARIAT

40 l

toda y. R e miniscences o f this kind often stress the part of any meal except brea kfast, n o matter wh a t greater availability of certain foods-green vegetables, other foods are being eaten. Sometimes white beans o r meat, and milk in particular- in the old clays, but chick peas or black-eyed peas replace the more freit is not p oss ible to make any precise judgments. It quently used reel b eans. In all cases, a sauce (soffrit o) seems like ly that, in the case o[ milk and greens at is used with this sta rch y mixture. It is n o t considered leas t, th e die t p rob a bl y h as worsened. Coastal munic- inad visable to ser ve still o ther sta rch es " ·i th these comipalities su ch as Cariame lar, because so much o f the bina tio ns: bread once in a while, corn m eal cakes o r land is d evo ted to the exclusive cultivation of cane, fritters. or a plate o f boiled tubers (iinme, ·ya utia, batala, m11st d e pe nd 011 the import;llion of foodstuffs for local etc.). If it is possibl e to add a little m ea t or fi sh to this 11se. Th ere is a b11tch er in the to\\·n of Caifamelar but dish it will be done ; usually the best that can be 110 f;1111il \' i11 B:1rrio Poval ever goes to his shop to buy managed will be a bit o f fried sa lt cod. Fo ods are liked lll (.';tt. n ::rrio peopl e n~ay h11 y 'a piece of pork when in la rge quantities, a nd workers will eat perhaps three 0 11e ol 1hc l()(al peop le butchers a p ig, or they m ay plateful s for their lunch before they fee l sa ted. Spices occ;1, io n:tll\' IJll\ :rnd the b lood sa usage, sa lami, or an a re n ot used very freel y. a ltho ug h saffron , a nnatto infe ri or t ~ 1'ic o l. . \mc ric;111 t inn ed me?ll in their cook- (nc!l io te), garlic, a nd o ther such substa n ces m ay b e ing. For th i..: mo:. t p:1rt. lll C:tt is excluded from the invo lved in the prepara tion of certa in dishes. Coffee diet lwca11sc of it.s expense. Its exclusion is an eco- is the beverage drunk most often; tea is thought of as nomic not a e1tlt11ral. matter. a ncl hig h value is at- a medicinal substance. The division into "ho t" and "cold" foods is m ad e in tach ed 10 b1: i11 g :1b lc to ea t m eat a ny time one wants. Poya l in the fa shion m entioned b y R edfie ld for YucaFre~ h li-.h is ;l\·:1i la ble a ho11 t on ce a " ·eek. \ ·cgct a bk:- a re a n o ther ma uer. Aga in, hard ly any tan ( 19.p :93). The rules have been som ewh a t compliarc prnd11 rcd loca lly: sweet po ta toes and similar tubers ca ted b y the variety of imported food s: thus, in the and root foods "·it11 hig h starch contents are grown case of canned milk a nd fresh milk, one is considered locall y by a few people in pitifully small quantities, as "hot," the other "cold." Although the people express has been pointed out b efo re, but these are used (or a disregard for the be! ief that holds tha t the mixing of familial consumption and n o t retailed . Even in the " hot" a nd "cold" foods will make one ill, they do, case of so cheap and necessary a dietary item as in fact, o bserve the d istinctions in the ir ea ting h abi ts. A specia l place in the thinking a b o u t food is reserved planta ins. reside nts must d epend on the trucks which pass thro 11 ~h th e ba rrio, re ta iling produce from the for sea foods. Sea foods in ge nera l are be lieved to b e highlands. Berause they must be brought in from out- streng thening and st imulating. Shellfish o[ all kinds side, :i lmosl all foods-sweet potatoes, plantnins, and are thought to be aphrodisiacs, and a kind of illegal the like-cos t the coastal d\\'e ller more than they cost rum in which sea fo ods h ave been immersed is r ethe hig hlande r. Green vege tables are difficult to obtain garded as particularly po tent. It h as a lready b een noted a nd not particula rl y prized b y most Barrio Poyal that nea rl y all fi sh a re considered edible wi th but o n e people. " ' eeks "-ill go b y without any g reen vegetables or two exceptions. o[ a n y kind b eing sold in the barrio. There is no dairy pro du ce delivered locall y. People m ay scrimp to FOLK ARTS AND SC IENCE buy a littl e milk from th e fortunate few who own cows. (In th e village of Oriente there are five workers One of the r emarka ble fea tures o ( the life o f the " ·ho own cO\\'S a nd in this way get milk both to drink rural prole tariat is it5 curio us blending of the pa tterns and to se ll.) But so far as the \\'ri ter could tell, fu lly we th ink of as custo m arily urban, such as la ndlessn ess, two -thirds or the people in the barrio, children in- " ·age ea rning. store-bu ying, e tc., with those associa ted with rura l life. Th e va lues o f folk ans a nd skills come cluded, simply d o not drink milk. How do these facts compa re with those o f fi fty years to h ave specia l m ea ning in su ch a context, particula rl y ago? There is some tenden cy LO idealize " the old days," since life is as d e pende nt in many ways on success(ul but the mino r crop plots, free a nd plentiful pasture, subsidiary economic activities as it is o n the main wagemuch smalle r p o pulation , a nd the custom (on the part earning actiYity. of the lrnrenrlndo) of distri b u ting free m ea t suggest No one find s i t stra nge, th erefore. that o n e m an m ay tha t item s su ch as g reens, milk. a nd m ea t were m o re know wh ere to fi n d a nd h ow to prepare a hundred plenti ful th en th an th ey a re tod ay. i\Ian y herbs a nd di fferent m edicinal herbs. o r that a n o ther is especia lly grasses. su ch as blcdo (wild amaranth), ve rd olnga skilled at making h o use p os ts of the to ug h g uayncan or (pun;lane), be rm (water cress). and others, were more la c h11 elo logs. A /Jnfero m ay spend several d ays preplentifu l th e n al so and were used freely in cooking. paring a ha ndle fo r his sh ovel out o ( th e beautiful red People use th ese h erbs much less freguenll y tod ay, wood ca lled aroma f'xlra 11 jera, using a p ice of the softer they s.-iy, beca use th ey grow in a mong the ca ne a nd th e frf'scura wood , which is n o t so " hot" lO the tou ch, for h e rbic ide kills som e and p o isons o thers. On the o ther the h and g rip. Fo r extra b eauty, he m ay even add soft h a nd , it seem s likely tha t the usage of some foods, par- copper r ings lO the stock at regul a r intervals, an d sink ticularl y the imported o n es, has increased : principally studs a 1HL paste jewels into th e h and g rip. Fish erme n polished rice, reel beans, and dried codfish. Rice Corms will spend idle afternoons re pairing the ir throw n e ts the broad die wry base ; with it are combined all man- and fi sh traps. or pl a iting oarlocks o ut o f toug h fib e rs. ner of othe r fo ods. Rice and bea ns will be served as Everyone is adep t a t fashi oning cups l"l n d dip pers Crom

402

THE PEOPLE OF PUERTO RICO

coconut shells and higuera gourds, and at making landcrab traps and narfes (braziers) out of five-gallon tins. These random examples demonstrate that the rural proletarian subculture has not been stripped bare o( its earlier material culture and technology by the imposition of the land-and-factory combine system. In many areas of life, new material items-including foods, fabrics, containers, and shoes- have partly supplanted more traditional ones which were homemade rather than purchased. But the innumerable items of culwre which make life possible, which help to shape it and to give it depth and meaning, have by no means been completely eradicated. Life in Barrio Poyal is not urban life nor is it rural: it consists of a mixwre of the features of both urban and rural in specia l ways and in a special historical setting.

EDUCATION EDUCATION AND CLASS

The Puerto Rican educational program, as it is now constituted, has been used by more than half the school age. But as Perloff ( 1950:52-53) says: "Yet ha!( the ten years. Financiall y and technically, it is sti ll not capable of providing even prima·ry education for a ll oE Puerto Rico's children. In Barrio Poyal, one can see in microcosm some of the problems confronting this program. ·when school registration begins, the mothers rush to enroll their children because only a limited number can be accommodated and latecomers are forced to wait till the following te1m to begin the ir education. I n addition to this problem, there is the difficulty each working family faces in trying to keep its children in school for any le ngth of time. Educational facilities of the island as a whole have increased tremendous! y since the American occu pation in spite of the rapidly rising population of school age. But as P erloff (1950:52-53) says : "Yet half the children of school age a re not attending school; a third of the children leave school between the first and third grades; only 36 per cent of the population (ten years of age and over) has an education equivalent to four grades or better." The Annual Report of the Commissioner o( Education for 1949-50 notes that 42 1,869 children in the six- to eighteen-year age group arc actually e nrolled in pub lic and accredited private day schools. 1£ it be assumed that the proportion o( children in this age group is the same as it was in 1940, then there were 692,814 children within this age range in Puerto Rico in 1950. Therefore, the comm issioner's report (p. 26) concludes, roughly 270,000 chilc.lren between the ages si x to eigh Leen were nol attending school in 1950. P uerto Rico h as invested great energy and a large portion o( its revenues in education within the past ten years and there is no doubt that prog ress is being made. Hur the functioning and the importance of the educational system <1mong such a group as Barrio Poya J's rural proletarians can only be correCLly gauged when it is

seen in the perspective of straitened economic circumstances, limited facilit ies, and the overwhelming importance of class factors in social learning . There are two school bu ildings in Barrio Poyal equ ipped to handl e students from the first to the sixth grade. I n all, 258 studen ts were enrolled in th ese classes at the close of the field work p e riod, the smnllcst number of them in the highest grade: TABLE 10. ENROLLMENT IN THE FIRST SIX GRADES (;rnr/1·

1-: 1110//1111"11 /

Fir:.l Su 011d Third Fcrnnli Fifth Sixth Tut al

.i I Id :\Ii

·l!I :1li

;\O :.! ,..,H

Double c11rollmc1n. \\"hich mca11s c~-.c11tiall\" fewer hours o( school ing per day for e;1ch st11de11 t, i-; necessary in three of the classrooms. BoLh the fifth and sixth grade building and the building for the lower grades are located along the highway which runs through Barrio Poyal; students come from some o( the more remote upland colonias as well as from the villnge, the large colo11ias, and the beach to attend these classes. Neither the beach nor Colonia Vicja lrns any school building of its own. The drop in the number of students attending the sixth grade can b est be explained by the need for both boys and girls, but especially girls, in the home as they grow older. Of the students attend ing the fifth and sixth grades, the following proportions o( male a nd female children were in attendance: TABLE 11 . PROPORTION OF MALE AND FEMALE PUP ILS ATIENDING UPPER GRADES

Grade

Girls

Fifth

13

Total 36

Sixth

I I

30

This statistical datum, which suggests the greater importance of girls in the home, is reinforced by informa nt materials. An addition al factor which plays a part is the greater cultural importance of sending girls to school wearing shoes and p roperly dressed. Boys who attend schoo l in the barrio can go barefoot without shaming the family, but girls cnnnot. Beyond the sixth grade, the proportion o ( Barrio Poyal boys to girls rises still higher. Going to school in town requires still more attention to proper clothing, for boys now as well as for girls. T he importance of girls in the home also rises, and parents further express their (ear of the LOwn as a source of danger to a girl - danger in the sense of bad infiuences. Th is lastmentioned concern in part reveals the moral ideology of the rural prole tariat, admittedly different from that o[ middle-class Puerto Ricans, yet just as certainly a self-conscious code of what constitutes good and bad behavior. Pu erto Ri co, a predominantly agrarian (and

CANAMELAR: RURAL SUGAR PLANTATION PROLETARIAT

hence, rural) country, has been undergoing a slow but steady urbanizing trend for many years. The pull of the city is particularly strong for teen-age girls who can find work as domestics in the larger towns. The trend is resisted by their parents, both because of the girls' economic importance in the home and because of the fear that a you ng girl without proper supervision in the city may easily be seduced and deserted. Urban domestic wo rkers receive shockingly low salaries, although fifteen dollars a month plus food and room may seem generous to a Barrio Poyal girl who may have to do no more in a n urban apartment than she did for no pay :H a ll in her parents' home. The parental fear o[ seduction and desertion in no way contradicts the custom of common-law marriage which prevails in communities like Oriente and Vieja. A girl who remai11s in the barrio "·il11 her family will be able to maintain the web o[ interdependent rela tionships which bind her to farnilv and friends. Her sweetheart will }Jrobablv be a neio-hbor·s son or a highlander who b ......, has shown his intentions of remaining in the barrio. That a union between two such individuals will be consumma tee! without civil or religious blessing in no way affects the moral and social status of the couple in the barrio nor the fact that the children probably will be raised and cared for by both parents. On the other hand ' a 0o-irl "·ho 0o-oes to the city and returns deserted, her baby in her arms, has broken with her rural past: she has seen city life, made her own cash income, and largely rejected the rural living pattern of family and friends. Such a girl is likely to leave her child with its grandparents and eventually return to the city where the same experience may be repeated. It is the parents' desire to see their daughters become functioning members of the local society o( adultsjJadres de familia (parents of children), living and raising their young by the local cultural standards -which makes their daughters' separation from home seem so risky and unreasonable in their eyes. This same reluctance, then, is a factor in tying the girls to the home even when it may mean an early end to their education. Parental attitudes toward the educational system are realistic in the extreme. l\Iost Vieja and Oriente parents want their children to be able at least to do simple arithmetic and to read and write. Further education is a value even if it be education for its own sake, but there is a strong recognition that the economic potentialities for the children of cane workers are severely limited. Since child labor laws began to take effect in the cane industry, the tendency to keep one's sons i n school for a longer period has grown. But this is not so much because parents really expect their boys to get better jobs as a result of their education as it is because they have little or no economic value until they are able to go to work in the cane. A touching aspect of this rationale is the fact that the school lunch program provides many students with their most nourishing meal of the day. And there is always the faint hope that perhaps "something will come along" which will make the addi.tional education valuable. I

403

iVIost of the adults of Oriente and Vieja have a fourth-grade education or less. 'With an eighth-grade education, an adult may be able to hold a minor clerical job- if he can get one; a high school education provides a good chance for individuals to get significantly better jobs. To the writer's knowledge, none of the adults of Oriente and Vieja has completed high school. A small number, including the second mayordom.o of Colonia Vieja, have gone through the eighth grade. A majority of the adults in Barrio Poyal can read and write, but less than half have finished the fourth grade. Considering their limited formal education, it is interesting to observe that nearly every worker in the barrio carries with him a tiny notebook in which he keeps a careful record of the hours he has worked and the rate of pay for his particular job. Several individuals can handle numbers but cannot write: as was pointed out earlier, there is one illiterate man in the barrio who sells the illegal lottery a nd who comfortably maintains an accounting for up to four hundred dollars' worth of numbers every week in his head without making a single written notation.. The rather remarkable ability of many sugar workers to deal with figures without ever h aving had any formal training in doing so is the product of necessity. In a productive arrangement based on relatively complex distinctions in pay rates and scales, rates for overtime and piecework, and similar refinements, a control of numbers is essential. As one educated Puerto Rican remarked humorously, "If the British are a n ation of small shopkeepers, then the Puerto Ricans are a nation of small bookkeepers!" The fact that the cane looms as the inescapable future of ev:ry male child and an early marriage and a large family as the necessary concomitant for every fema.le child is o~ the greatest importance in gauging Barno Poyal attitudes toward education. For education to be accepted enthusiastically as a ladder of vertical social and economic mobility, some realistic possibility of such mobility must obtain. No child in Oriente or Vieja wants to be a cane cutter. In an informal poll of children of the fi fth and sixth grades, the question was asked: "What would you like to be ·when you are grown up?" Boys prevailingly answered that they wanted to be public car drivers and policemen, with teaching running a poor third. Girls over~vhelmingly wanted to be teachers. It was interesting, m the case of the boys, that only one said he wanted to work in the sugar cane and he wanted to be a mayordomo. Gran~ed that such materials are handled largely on a level of fantasy, it is interesting that not a single boy expressed a desire to make his living in either the cane fields or cen trales. Teachers in the rural schools generally live in to\.vn and commute daily to the schools where they teach. Education officials are aware of the defects of this practice, for it prevents the teacher from b ecom inointegrated into rural community life. There is a furthe~ problem in th is connection. The teachers 0£ the Cafiamelar school system, for the most part, are from town families; in many cases they are the daug hters or rela-

404

THE PEOPLE OF PUERTO RICO

tives of the town's middle-class grouping o( fifty years ago- By virtue o[ their urban and middle- or lower middle-class status, they represent a sociocultural group very different Crom that from which their rural students are drawn_ In this connection Allison Davis's comments (in Kluckhohn and Murray:466-67) are to the point:

A n informal but important aspect of the educational process is that provided by radio and the press. Radio

is panicularly important in Barri o Poyal. \!Ve have noted that almost exactly one-half of the families tabulated in Oriente Village possessed radios: 7 •1 this figure is very high when compared with highland rural areas such as San Jos(:. The primary [unctio n or the radio is recreationa l, but it has assumed grea t political importance among the people as well. Radios a re the only luxury items which do not also const itute a saving-refrigerators and kerosene sto\·es can be used to save time and money, as \\·ell as for m;1king salable produce : r;1di os ca11 1101. The demand !or radios is co nsiderable, and lll O-'>t se ts arc purchasc:.:cl : 11 cx tortio11 ;11e installme nt rates . Th ere i~ a radio ~hop i11 C:t1ia11H: lar which reco\'ers for nonpan11cnt as man\' as half the sets it sells. Somet imes a ::.'c t \\·ill be re i:;ikd three or four tim es. each time at a profit. hdorc CHI C custo111e r finally succeeds in paying th e hill cost. It is apparent that, among other things . a radio is ;111 important prestige item . Poyal radio liste ners enjoy mos t. the b:1scball gallles and the politic:d programs. Ba seba ll c:111 be heard nearl y all year round, if both Pue rto Ric:111 and Ameri can big league and loca l minor league games are listened to. \i\' omen listen as enthusiastically as men do, but while the wives listen to the games in their houses, the men of Poya l gather in little gro ups about the radios in the village stores. Other important programs are the novellas, kinds of "soap operas" wh ich ca n be heard througho ut the day and evening, and comic famil y programs. It is curious that these programs, which cater to middleclass aspirations and are full of middle-class id ealization , are listened to very seriously by Poyal people. Perhaps a parallel to this is the respect and interest accorded to political speeches made by members of anti-PofJular political parties. J>oyal is solidly Po/J!tla.r, yet the speakers o[ other parties are listened Lo politely and with interest. Popular party programs and, to a lesser extent, the programs o( the lndependen tis ts as well as those of a certa in labor union provide the main educational utility of the radio. Th e Popular party runs a regular political hour in election years, featur ing frequ ent speeches by the party leader, Luis l\fuiioz Marin. According to barrio informants, l\ Iuii oz .M arin was the first politician of his generation to make direct and easily understood appeals to the working people. His masterly use o[ common speech, and his manipulation of the phrases, catchwords, and familiar symbols of the lower classes helped him to achieve an unprecedented success in insular politics. \ 1Vhilc h is personal visits to the rural commun ities and homes of the people were cru cial in his winning support, his radio appeals have also been very important. Other political parties have not learned as thorough ly the need to phrase political materials in terms of the immediate needs of the ordinary working people. vVhenever some ant i-

•~ \ ,\lh il c the births of con se nsual unions may bc recorded in lhe Vital Sta tis ti cs Register, thus g iving full acknowledgment on th e pan of the parents to the chi ld's origi n , these ch ildren remain

illeg irimaic in acc:ordance with th e Ci\'il Code of Puerto Rico unlcs~ the pare nts s ubsequ e ntl y marr y. ; ., Sec p . '.~ i4·

Class ways in child training. as well as the class-motivating facwrs in the child's social learning, differ sharply even when the observer considers o nly the classes having lo\\' status. T h e social instigations and goa ls of the lower-middle class, for example, are fundamentally unlike those of the lower class. In education, the ineffectiveness of middle-class sanctions upon the great masses of lower-class ch ildren probably is the crucial dilemma of our thoroughly middle-class tea~hers and school systems. The processes underlying this fa ilure are not clear, but it seems probable from life-h istories that lower-class children remain "unsocialized" and "unmotivated" (from the viewpoint of middle-class culture) because ( 1) they arc humiliated and punished too severely in the school for having the lower-class culture which their own mothers, fath ers and siblings approve, and (2) because the most powerful reinforcements in learning, namely, those of emotional and social reward, are systematically denied to the lower-class child by the systems of privilege existing in the school and in the larger society.

The social attitudes o( the teachers _in Barrio Poyal are indeed communicated to the children. A ll the married teachers of the mun icipality have been married by civil or religious cerem ony, and all the teachers, married and unmarried, in all cases known to the writer, are the children o( legally wed parents. In the eyes of their teachers, the students o[ the rural schools of Barrio Poyal are predominantly "illegitimate." 7 3 Even veterans who are students in the seventh to twelfth grades in town are frequently reminded of their "shameful behavior" by no less a personage than the school superintendent if they are living in consensual union . Discriminatory behavior on the part of teachers because of class differen ces cannot occur in the rural ba rrio schools because the students compose so uniform a sociocultural group. In the higher g rades in rown, such distinctions begin to appear. Lower-class, particularly rural lower-class, children frequently are made to fee l ashamed of their clothes, their speech and manners. Such distinctions provide added obstacles and act further to reduce the motivations o[ young people (or more education. It ·was sad but not surprising to hear a fourteen -year-old informant say: " Pa ' que tengo que aprender eslo, si pa' jJicar caiia no me /wee falta ." ("Why do I h ave to learn this- I'll not need it to cut sugar cane.") RAD IO AND THE PRESS

CANAlVfELAR: RURAL SUGAR PLANTATION PROLETARIAT

PojJlllar leader is able lo make a trenchant objection to Popular party policy, this objection is heard and understood ; but the over-all attitude of the nonPopular parties is sti ll prevailingly condescending and negative, anti-Po/J11lar rather than espousing a realistic political program. During the 1948 campaign, the Popular party bought considerable radio time, had songs which extolled the party written and played, and hammered home over the radio the "one single cross·· (straight ticket) concept which Mufioz Marin has depended 011 to win him island-wide support. \\"orld e\ ents arc now carried rapidly and directly lo Poy;tl ,·ia the radio. " 'oriel news does not interest mon: 't han a fc\1·, but it is entertaining to note that the local songs which are improvised calypso-fashion now o ften treat of important world events: the improvisation pattern is an old one, the use of this kind of m;ite rial qt1ite new. :\lso important in tying the people o( Poyal to the la rg-cr society a re the newspapers and political tracts which reach the barrio. There were three main newspapers bci ng sold in Cai"iamelar during the latter part of the field work period: El Mundo, an anti-Popular conservative paper; El Imparcial, an anti-Popular, pro-Independence tabloid; and El Diario, essentially a Popular party paper. In addition, a few copies of the Ponce daily, El Dia, would be sold. El Batey, the official Popular party information newspaper, also occasionally reached the barrio. This paper is given away Cree and dea ls specificall y with national problems frorn the Popular party point o[ view. T he newspaper with the greatest circulation in Barrio Poyal was El lm/Jarcial, and the word !111parcial was generally used to mean "newspaper." Since this paper is anti-Popular wh ilc Poyal's citizens are overwhelmingly Popular party supporters, the situation is vaguely analogous to tha t of New York City during the later Roosevelt era, when so many Roosevelt supporters were Daily News readers. Perhaps ten or a dozen copies of El JW.1111clo were sold daily in Poyal during the field work period. El Dforio, which had been out of publication for some time, resumed pu bJication in 1949 and cut slightly into both El Mundo and El !mparcial circulation. For the most part, El Diario and El Mundo were bought by store owners for the benefit o( their customers. El 1111/Jarcial was the only paper in general circulation. Literate people would sometimes read the papers aloud to others who could not read, but such g1·oupings were always very informal and never exceeded more than one or two listeners.

RECREATI ON Recreation in Barrio Poyal is not so separate a part of life as it is in more urba nized, time-conscious communities. \Ne have already seen the more important recreational aspects of such subsidia ry economic activities as fish ing, crab catching, selling the illegal lot-

405

tery, and the like, which provide a relief from the drudgery of labor in the cane while at the same time contributing to the total family income. Some recreational forms revolve about life-crises, particularly birth (or rather, baptism) and death. Church baptisms are held most frequently at E aster and are usually followed by a small feast in the house of the child's parents. 'Wakes are held on the evening of a death and sometimes for a number of successive nights following the death. They a lso have a recreational quality about them, and may include checker playing, the drinking of coffee (and perhaps caiiita), and conversation. Even the walk to the cemetery takes on a convivial air, which is laid aside at the burial. Christmas and New Year's are celebrated by drinking and dancing at the cafes and in homes. On Christmas Eve, many people who do not go co church regularly attend midnight mass, which becomes a kind of "special occasion." The day of the patron saint of Ca11amelar is celebrated in the town with a week of masses, public dances, fireworks, and a parade; amusement booths are set up around the plaza, and barrio. people usually come to town for at least one night during the week to see the sig hts. Group recreation in a completely secular sense has two principal bases: dancing and baseball. Dancing i.5 popular with people o( all ages but older people dance much less and prefer older dance forms like the plena. On rare occasions old-timers will dance a bombaa coastal dance form connected in everyone's mind ~vith the descen.dants of the slaves. An informant, speak111g of the social structure o[ Cai'iamelar in the late nineteenth century, once observed, "In former days, we had three classes of society: the cream (la crema), or first class; then the second class, a little blacker (un f>oco 111ris f>rieta); and then the workers who danced the bomba on the hacienda plaza." The bomba was popular on the south coast until about twenty years ago. From a traveler's repon (Ledn.'1, in Cuesta Mendoza, 19-.16: 19i) of the late eighteenth century comes th~ follmving: "During my stay in the house of Don Be~1Ito, near Faj ardo [a northeast coastal town], I w~s witness to a d:rnce which the mayordomo of the hacienda was giving to signalize the birth of his first son. The group was composed of forty or fifty creoles of the neighborhood, o[ both sexes. . . . The mixture of '~' bi tes, mulattoes and free Negroes formed quite a picturesque assemblage. They all danced African and creole dances in succession, commonly cal led bomba,. to the sound of guitar a nd tambourine" (my translation). Now the bomba is a spectacors' event rather than o ne for general participation. At festivals tO the patron saint, troupes of o ld Negro people will still clan~e t.he bomba a ncl sing verses to the music. Bomba music is played on drums made from bacon b arrels with goatskins stretched across the top. Two such drums o[ different pitch are used ; they are played b y hand. a drummer to e~ch drum, while a third musician taps out a more rapid rhythm on the bottom end of one of the drums with two sticks. i\Iaracas also may be used, and at least one woman singer will accompany

406

TllE P£01'LE Of.' P UERTO RICO

the drummers. The verses, which are believed to be traditional, deal mostly with love, jealousy, and death: £11 G11oyama )'O voy a dar mi envoltura, £ 11 Cuoyoma yo voy a dar mi envoltura; y ese hombre se me va llevar a la Lumba, Y ese h ombre se me va llevar a lo. 1umba.

I n Guayama I am goi ng to get my shroud, In Guayama l am going to get my shroud; And that man is going to take me to my tomb, 1\nd that man is go ing to cake me to my tomb.

Mi combosa, es me combosa;

'.\Iy love ri\'al, it is my love rival; '.\Iy lo\'e ri,·at has no hair; I'm going to send her to the plaza, To buy a shawl.

,\Ji combosa no tie11e pelo; La voy a mandar a la plaza, rl com/>rar un jJaliuelo.

The bornba is especially typical o( the areas of Puerto Rico wh ich \Vere characteri zed historica lly by heavy concentrations of slave labor. To "dance the bomba" has special social overtones: a white person may dan ~e the boniba for amusement, but a Negro who <lances ll, by doing so, is stating that he considers himself a :'\egro. The ple11a is more common that the bomba. The da11zn, a traditional Puerto Rican form dating from the last century, is danced only rarely, usually n o t by the younger people. Most popular in Barrio Poyal are the guaraclta and the bolero; [ollo"ving them in popu larity are the mereng11e, rumba, and son. Children learn to dance almost as soon as they learn to walk, an<l the shyness and h esitat io n which characterize the first efforts of many American children and adults arc totally absent in a commun ity like Poyal. \\' omen and g irls frequently <lance together; when drunk, men may dance together as well, but only in jest. It is common to see boys or girls dan cing alone, practicing a particular step, or just moving absentmindedly with the rhythm. There are jukeboxes (velloneras) in two cafes in Oriente and it is in these cafes that local dances are held. Infrequently, people will dance to radio or gu itar music in their own homes. In Orientc, any holiday will serve as an excuse for a dance for the young people: the week of Christmas, Holy \ 1\feek, the week of the Feast of the Patron Saint in Cafiamelar, election time, etc. Baseball is extremely popular, both as a game to watch or to listen to, and as a game to play. All the Inrge colonias, including Vieja, have baseball teams. There are also girls' teams, schoo l teams, and village tC<lms. It is not un common to sec boys playing ba ll on newly-cut cane fields whi le the oxen are still graz ing on the cane trash. In the town of Cafiamelar, a municipal athletic field in which amateur baseball games can be held was recently opened and enthusiastically received. Baseball fans include women and children in the same proportion as men, and everyone has a favorite professional team both in the United States and in the Puerto Rican big leagues. J\ [ovies are an important recreational medium in town but Poyal people go to them only rarely. Most ol the pictures shown arc g rade H Amer ican films-

westerns espccially-\\·ith Span ish titles. The most popular type of movie, ho,\·ever, in terms .or the crow~I it <lra,\·s, seems to be the sex-slanted variety of l\ fex1can film. A passion play film of the life of Christ, which is shown throughout Puerto Rico every year during Holy \ 1Veek, is always viewed by a large audie n ce. Rural recreation, aside from. the items already discussed and the recrc;llional aspect of subsidiary economic acti vi tic~. revokes a bou L 1he :-ii111 pie so< i;tl custom o[ ,·isiLing. T:ilk \\'ill conti1111e 1111:1bated lor 111:111y hours during the.,c ,·i.,ih. changing lro111 politi< s to baschall lo recital., ol ill11<:-.-.c-.. from «>1npl :1i11h :1bo11t one·s "·ork to di,nh-,iom ol g:1111hli11g. Th e la11guage of Lhe rur:1 I Pu c::no R ic111. \\'hi le 1111preH·111 io11:-. and :ll times ungra111rn:11ic :i i. i-; richly exprcs ~ iv c. \\'ords and phrases a 1·c co mt :1111 Iy being i m ·c n tcd a 11d lll()d i lied. and gc:-i tt 1res. pa 11.,es. :111cl v;1 r i:ll ions i 11 i 11 to11;1tio11 a re used to the I 11llc~t. l111provi:-ied :-iong-poenh :ire among th<' fc"· 1110.,t per· sistent cultural art lorm-; ol LhC'se J>l'<>ple. and there are rad io program., \\'hich con~isl ol cmnpet it ions be· t\\·cen rura l troubadours who must compose verses about some chose n subject on the spur of the moment. \ Vh il e such song-poems are not a common mode of expressio n. there are a few persons in Barrio Poyal who still compose and sing in this fashion. Native music 0 11 the coast is not common. Instruments of local manufacture like the giiic/rnro (a gourd wh ich is scratched like a rasp) and the cualro (a stringed instrument similar to a guitar), still popu lar in the highlands, arc more rare on the coast, and the attractively dissonant jJ/enas, scis, and agui11aldos arc d isappearing. :\lost o( what local music there is usually is played by a two-gu itar team in the style of certain popular radio pe rformers. During the Christmas and New Year season, a number of Poyal people of highland origin return to the highlands to see old friends and to sing and p lay the o lder musical forms. The traditional musical promenades (tJarra11clas), when two or three musician s wander through the barrio playing in front of people's houses, are conducted rarely in Poyal and at those times by fairly recenc highland migrants. In general, Caiiamelar's cultural recreation seems to be characterized by a progressive standardization of some art forms and a gradual elimination o[ many others.

RELIGION Most of the people of Barrio Poyal, like most of those of all of Puerto Rico, are nominally Catholic. They have been baptized in Catholic ritual, and when they die they will be buried as Catholics. They baptize their children in the church, name the children with saints' names, occasionally go LO mass (on Christmas Eve, perhaps during H oly \1Veek or the week o( the patron saint o f the municipio), and put up holy pictures on th e walls o f the ir shacks; once in a whi le a young man or woman may make and "pay" a promesa.

CAl°'i,L'fELAR: RURAL SUGAR PLA:'llTATION PRO LETARI AT

But they d o no t attend church regularly; they rarely marry by Catholic ceremony; they baptize their children when the children are six years old or older; they ridicule the priest's costume and his Spanish accent; they avo id confession and the taking of communion; and they spea k o f the Ca tho lic church as " the church of the rich." For the most part, Poyal people are not anti-Catho lic, and in terms of affiliation, more of them arc Cath o li cs th an an ything else; but their Catholicism is nci th er fcn·cm nor strict. It is in teresting LO speculate whether people such as th ese \\'ere fo rmerl y more religious and have been u ndergo ing a process of grad ual seculariza tion. T here is some c\' idcnce tha t cen a in rituals which once were pract iced fr equently in th e barrio have now va nishec~ or ;ire dose LO ,·anishing. For instance, the R osary of th e Cross (l fosario de la Crnz), which is generally asso ciated \\'ith the south coas t and which was extremely p o puL1r as recenli\' as twen ty-five years ago, is now d is;1ppcaring i n Po;·a l. T his ceremony is celebrated in the m o1nh of :\ fa\· and is held '"in ho nor of the cross." ln Po nce a nd G1.'ayam a. the riw al usually is initiated by a man, in other communities by a woman. The initiator o( the ritual erects in his house an altar of palm leaves a bove a table o n which an altar is placed. The rosary lasts nine d ays. On each day, the sponsor o f the rosa ry sends a plate of various sweets and tidbits with little fia!!S stuck into them to a cou p le~ usuall y a pair of sweethearts or young newlyweds. The couple wh o receive the plate are called the standardbearers (aba11dcrados). They partake of the sweets a1~d return a g ift: the man will send money; the ~voman ~viii pre pare a bo x with pretty o rname nts-earnngs, bnght clo th, j ewelry, e tc. At the house of th~ sp_onsor, the money \\"ill be put aside and the box wtth ns baubles will be placed o n the table which bears the cross. The same procedure will be foll owed with anoth er couple on the follo wing day, and so o n until the ninth clc~y . Each night rosa ries with special verses are sung 111 the house o f the sponsor, and on the ninth night the Dance of the Swndard-bearers is held. A t tha t time, the nine pretty bo:-.:es and the bau bles in them are r eturnee.I to th e standard-bearers, while the mo ney conu·ibuted b y each couple is spent for refreshments. Barrio people, in reminiscing about this riwal, comment on its prettiness bu t say that people began. to hold the rosaries to raise mo ney rather than as a socialrelig io us even t a nd that that is why the R osary of the Cross began to die out. In i\Iay of 1948, only one Rosary o[ the Cross was held in the barrio. Another ritual which has passed from use is the rogativ a., or group supplication. In past years, the rugativa was used to exhort the Almighty to send rain. Citizens o f the communi ty paraded in the road and pra yed. The las t such evem was held in 1928. One man comme nted, wi th reference to it: "The mayordomo's wi fe led il. Two weeks later, Sa n Felipe (the terrible 1928 hurrica ne) came. I d o n' L want any more rogat ivns." On e o bvious fa ctor in the disappearance o f this ceremon y was the increased irrigation in the area which ma rked the expansio n of U nited Sta tes corporations ~

407

and assured a sufficient water supply excep t unde . d" . r very exu·aordmary con tt10ns. A lso important perhaps · f · . • , \ Vas the declme o interest m conditions o[ production b barrio p eople. y But while rituals of these kinds h ave been los·n . - . . . I g streng th, the1e _is no evidence that confession, the taking o f communion, sacra mental marriage, or even regular church attenda nce were regarded with greater seriousness fifty yea rs ago b y the p eople of Barrio Poyal than they are today. "While there is, then some evidence o~ seculariza tion, it is not strong, a~d the present a ttitudes towa rd Catholicism cannot be expla ined simply in terms o f a d windling of reliuious feeling. \ •Vh a t survives o f Catholicism, fo r the ~ost part, a re elements o f content, with life-cr isis ceremonies -bap tisms and funerals-as the only important institutionalized practices. Th~ writer . could. fi_nd no e~idence of aborigina l American Inchan re l~g 10~s s urv1~als of a ny kind. But some custon~s _are ma mta med wh~ch may possibly have stemm e~l o ngmally fr~ m th e A frican heri tage, r einterpreted 111 the new setung, a nd syncr etized with Ca tholic elements. Certain ceremonies connected with death ~onceivably ~t into this hypothesis: In cases of lingermg d eath, fnends, an_d blood relatives will congregate at _the hous.e of the clym g pe1_·son. The sta ted purpose of this a ttenuo n, the velada, 1s to assist the family and the dy ~ng individu al in case of r:eed. Bu t usua lly th e a ttend ing g roup brea ks down mto separate parties of men a nd women. T he women e n ter the house where they will sit and pray. The m en, for the mos~ pa rt, rema in outside the ho use, usually a round a table or t\~O, p laced there b y the family, a nd play cards o r ~lomm ?es a nd ta lk. T a lk m ay b e abo ut a n y subject, 1nclud111!$ baseba ll a nd politics, but a rg umen ts a nd loud no ise a re frowned upo n. Co ffee will be served by the family. On the night foll owing a death, a similar ritual, ~oca ll y called the ve l o r~o, is held. Once again there is a ra ther sharp sepa ra u o n of th e sexes, a ltho ug h m en may enter th~ ho use and sit there quietly d uring the p rayers. Ou tside, black coffee and sod a crackers a re served to the attending friends a nd rela tives a nd domi1~ oes and ca rds a re p layed. Cafi ila m ay be drunk, ?ut d1s?rder an~ drunke nness are much d eplored. The 1mmecl1ate family _of the deceased '~' ill usually stay up thro ugho ut the nig ht o ( the velono. Fu nera ls take place the d ay after d ea th. Followinu the buria l, nig:luly ceremo~1 ies (called rosarios locally~ are held for mne consecuttve nigh ts. These ritua ls do not differ in deta il from either th e v eladas or the velorio and have a Catholic origin. R osarios Franceses ?r i:re nch 1:os~rios, which were held fairly frequently Ill the ?a rr~o m ~ea rs past, a re ma rked b y the sing ing o f services 111 a ktnd o( patois. A number of res idents o f the barrio a re d escended from the slaves of French Catho li: hacenda~os, and some still ~·emember pan s of the 1' rench services. One such rosano was held during the fi eld work period. The French rosa rios generally take place o n the monthly or a nnual anniversa ries o f a d eath. P articipan ts are a lmost exclu -

408

THE PEOPLE OF PUERTO RICO

sively aged Negro people who were taught the ceremony b y their parents or grandparen ts. In addition to the sing ing of the rosary in patois, verses are improvised and sung by the participants, and there is dancing. At dawn, the rosario is concluded with a search for the ghost of the deceased (apparently in an effort to exorcize the ghost). The rosario Frances is associated in Barrio Poyal with particular fam ilies. As these fam ilies <lie out, the ritual itself seems sure to disappear. The sou th coast, p articularly the southeast, is reputed in P uerto Rico to be an area in wh ich witchcraft survives in strength. Historically, this association is connected with the considerable influx o( African slaves in to the area, particularly during the third and fourth decades of the nineteenth century. Guayama, which had a particularly la rge slave popu la tion <luring the last century, is still known today as the town of the wi tches. Yet local conversation abou t witchcraft and sorcery is mainly trivia l. No genuine feeling about such materials was ever expressed to the field workers. The only areas in which superstitious practices appear actively to obtain are those having to do wi th love and hate. Thus, people wi ll claim that one can get a curse placed on an en emy th ro ugh the services of a witch, or th at a witch may help one to win the love o f a disinterested person. I t was impossible to document a single case in which active steps were taken to put into practice on e of these beliefs. Th e wri ter was told of a woman at Colonia Vieja who was said to have paid ten dollars for a charm to make a particular man fa ll in love with her. The woman would laugh at the charge but never den ied it. So fa r as the writer could discover, it is not possible to buy such a charm in Barrio Poyal. It is of further interest that superstitions of this kind n ever seemed to deal w ith matters of health except in one case where an individual main tained that a particular illness was th e result o( a curse and so not responsive to regular medicine. As indicated, barrio people are aware of municipal medical facilities and accustomed to use such facilities regula rly. Anothe r interesting aspect of the subject of witchcraft is the fact that fear of witches, as associated ·wi th fear of Negroes, is r id iculed by most Barrio Poyal people as an uncouth hig hland superstition. That is, both the old-time white settlers and the local Negro people (including the variant mixtures of the groups) feel that an interest or belief in witchcraft is a reflection of ignoran t highland standards, a nd so wi ll eschew such beliefs, at least in public. In historical discussions, references to witchcraft appea r quite frequently . Old informants will state seri ously that in the o ld days, if a man worked too fast or earned too much money, he m ig h t be bewitched into cutting off his own hand or wounding his own foot. One ex-slave tells humorously how a w i tch on a cert~in Hacienda Cora made so much trouble that finally hts fellow slaves bottled him up in one of the great hogsheads of sugar and shipped him away. P erha ps the most interesting story involving w itchcraft was told regardi~g a notoriously cruel and efficie nt mayordomo of Haetencla Vieja. Says one informant: "The greatest

witch of all was Marcelo R-- . And he was not even Negro, h e was white. That man could make o thers work when they d id not want to and h e cou ld steal their pay from them witho ut their protesting. T here was never a bigger witch than he." • G The impression one is left w ith is that no concentration o ( slaves was grea t eno ug h, and slavery did not pers ist in strength long enough, in the sou th coast of Puerto Rico at least, to allow for the d evelopment or any large bod y of belief regarding ,,·itchcraft. Certa inly the people of Barrio Poya l today are as scculari1.ed as an y in this regard. After the United Stales occupat io n of Puerto Ri co, the Protesta nt ch urches undertook l:trge-sc:alc prosel ytization prog-r:1111s i n the island. These prog rams h ad their g reatest impact in the cities a nd towns . rather tha n in th e rura l barrios. 111 Caiiamelar. both the Catholic and the P rotestant church arc 011 th e central p la t.a: in terms or their congregations. the municipa li ty's m iddle class is about evenly divided between them . Both th e Ca1-1amelar pries t and the Protestant m inister complained to the writer about the fact th at the working people of Cafiamelar respond so feebly to their appeals. \ Vhile the organized Protestant churches have made inroads o n the religious monopoly previousl y held by the Catholic church, they have not succeeded in penetrating the r ural areas in strength. P rotestant services were being held in a private house in Oriente in 1948- 49, which implies that an effort was being made to bring the relig ion to rural people in m ore. di rect fas hion than was true of the Catholic church there. But barrio support for the organ ized Protesta nt church was not at a ll strong -a bout ten fami lies customarily attended the rural services. For barrio people, th e reviva list churches have had a m uch more important effect than have the more forma lly organized Protestant church groups. Parti ettlarly significant has been the g rowth of the Pentecostal church in many rural areas of Pu erto Rico, Barrio Poyal included . The Pentecostals are a self-supporting group; in terms of recruiting n ew adherents, it is undoubtedly the fastest-growing faith in the island. To understand this success, it is necessary to understand the appeal of the Pen tecostals to rural people. In Barrio Poya l, the Pentecosta ls are led by a lay pastor who con tinually tr avels (and o n foot) throug hout the barrio to conduct services regularly in O riente. at Viej a, a t the barrio beach, and in the sma ll, remote colonias in th e north of Poyal. He is a local man who formerly worked as a cafH1lnz de 1·iego (irrigation foreman) in the cane. His fam il y came from the h ig hlands about twenty-five years ago to settle in Poyal, a nd his brother is o ne of the smaJier storekeepers in Orien te. This pastor devotes himself with utte r selflessness to his faith; he supports himself and his family with a portion of the contributions made by church members plus the money his wife earns as a seamstress. J-Te an d 1

1 ;. Srn 1c 111c 111 by Coloni a Vi<:ja informanl , persona l inlervicw, Fc lH"uary. 1949.

CANAMELAR: RURAL SUGAR PLANTATION I>ROLETARIAT

409

his family live in a fashion equal in its humbleness to the central p laza; it is supported by local conu·ibuthat of his neighbors. An old building, which once tions only, and is a much poorer and more poorly held the barrio's biggest store, has been rented by the equipped building than are those of its rivals. It has faith and is used almost nightly for meetings. Benches been pointed out, too, that the Catholic and Proteshave been built, the interior painted, a 'velcome sign tant churches make their appeals particularly to the hung out, and the building thus transformed into an middle-class people in town; the Pentecostal church acceptable place of worship. The Pentecostal sect, like concentrates on the poorer people. many fundamenta list sects, is marked by its uncomproIt may be said that the only religious spirit that is mising opposition to such local customs as drinking, expressed in Barrio Poyal which may come to mean dancing, and gambling. In spite of these stricttues, significant changes in the very immediate future is ho\\'ever, and even while legislation against bolita and that in the Pentecostal faith. In broad terms, howthe sa le and manufacrnre of ca1/ita has been met with ever, religion is not an important force in the barrio. stroncr resistance by lower-class rural people, the Attitudes toward the universe and life appear to be I:'> Pentecostal church with its emphasis on "sin" has made markedly secularized. No religious formulae of any kind attach to the agricultural process; the use of remarkable gains in barrios such as Poyal. At first. Pentecostal services were ridiculed in the folk medicine is not restricted to a specialist; there are barrio . ..-\ s one man t0ld the writer, before radios be- no village gods of any kind. Moreover, tr aditional came common the services of the Pentecostales pro- Catholic practices, such as the rogativa and various vided amusement. One important feature of the kinds of rosarios, appear to be undergoing a progresPentecostal service is its emphasis on participation. sive weakening. At the same time, though, there are Evervone can sing, everyone can undergo the religious some religiously colored aspects of life which persist. expe;·icncc which involves the taking o.n of an exal ted, The system of ritual co-parenthood survives, with c-ercrancelike state (promesa), everyone is made to feel tain undeniable religious overtones. The weakly rituthat his participation is an essential of the religious alized wakes are also religious as well as social. Moreprocedu re. This participatory character of the Pente- over, the introduction of evangelizing sects, particucosta l church, though it may afford amusement to some, larly during the past fifty years, has added new must be seen also as one component of its success. elements to the local picture. The Pentecostals have The majority of both the barrio and the municipio met with surprising success. To the writer, this success congregations is male, and it is mainly to men that the implies that after "secularization," there may be posappeals of the Pentecostals seems directed. Presumably sible some kind of reorganization of r eligious feeling women rarely drink, smoke, or forn icate so that the in a new way within the rural proletariat. Store-front process of repentance would be less full and rewardin5 churches are by now an institution even among urban for them than for their husbands. ·what is more, the lower-class people who are certainly "secularized" in public confession of sins committed is almost impos- the conventional sense. The success of such institusible in local terms for women but is culturally per- tions may lie in their essentially democratic character and their ability to capitalize on their understanding missible for men. The number o( local people who actually attend the of the nature of lower-class culture. Thus religious Pen tecostal services faithfully is quite small: about a materials now are entering the community not from dozen in Vieja, perhaps thirty in Oriente, and another above, but at a level with the people themselves. The dozen at the beach. One is tempted to explain the minister of the faith not only identifies with the commembership of the church in terms of the church's mon people and is known to them, but also lives among appeal to a particular kind, or particular kinds, of them and is always present. I n some sense, the evangepersonal ity. On the other hand, many more people than lizing churches may therefore provide for religious those who regularly attend services are responsive to reintegration within lower-class culture because they the new va lues which the Pentecostals offer. 'l\Thether recognize the class nature of sud1 communities as Vieja part of this acceptance derives from the middle-class and Oriente. virtues extolled in schools and in radio drama programs was not determined. The Pentecostals, despite their relatively small numbers, remain interesting and imTHE SOCIAL M EANING OF RACE portant by virtue of the strict and uncompromising appeals for faith which they make and their success so It has been necessary in earlier sections to r efer far with these appea ls. occasionally to the interrelation of race with other Since each of the three main competing religious factors in the life and culture of the rural proletariat. groups (Catholic, established Protestant, Pentecostal) There have been people of Africa n ancestry in has some Poyal adherents, it is difficult at first glance Puerto Rico almost from the start of its history under to see how class differences may be operating in terms Spain, but they have p layed there what is almost ac of religious affiliation. In the town, however, the dif- unique role in the development of the Antilles. Slavery ferences between Catholic a nd Protestant churches on Aowecl and ebbed as an instilu tion in Puerto Rico but the one hand, and the Pentecostal church on the other, never developed on a sca le eq ual to that of the British are quite noticeable. The town Pentecostal church, and French vVest Indies. Furthermore, the system of unlike the other two, lies several blocks away from manumission of slaves was always relatively liberal so

410

THE PEOPLE OF PUERTO RICO

collapses o( its own weight. The physical anthropologist, attempting the same task, may of course convert visible or measurable phenotypic traits into statistically valid judgments; but the scale of values for each and every trait will show a continuous intergracling Crom "Negro" to "white." Puerto Rican cultural standards for racial identity appear to place the most weight on hair type, the least on skin co lor. Thus there is the term pc!o malo ("bad hair"), which refers to the tenden cy to\\'ard tight curl ing. Hair which is long bllt "bad'" is /Jasa; hair which is very "bad" is j)(1s1/ or /Ji111ie11/a or co /clrn11 or jonji; and "half-bad" hair is 111cdio-/Nw1. 1\n indi,·id11al who is light in skin color ;111d has '"bad" red hair is gri/fo. One who is light in ~kin color but \\·ith "'bad" b lond hair and full feawres is 1ahrw. In each case, first emphasis appears LO be g iven al\\'ays to the h;1ir type. Th e multitude of ra c i ~t!l y descripti,·e terms demonstrates the slrong racial consciousness that obtains e\'Cll at the working class level. But ,,·ithi11 the Puerto Rican working class at lea st. diis awareness or phcnotypica l differences is of limited social importan ce only . After the a bol it ion of slavery and the end o( the laws regulating free labor, sugar cane workers, regardless o( physical types, continued LO earn their daily bread in the fields. The evidence is good that the freed slaves (fiber/as) had better technical training than the pre-abolition agregadus had . Probably most o{ the hacienda technicians before abolition were slaves because their labor could be relied on under any circumstances. Emancipation apparently did little to alter the technical tasks of trained ex-slaves: coopers, blacksmiths, mill hands, ropemakers, tailors, leathenvorkers, etc., were as much in demand after abolition as before. Carroll ( 1 900: 1 1, 5 1) mentions that most of the artisans whom he interviewed in 1899 were colored; a British consu lar official noted as earl y as 1875 tha t the freed slaves got the more demanding technical jobs on the haciendas (Great Britain Foreign Office, i875:2). Artisans of African ancestry were able to support their own social clubs throughout the island as late as the starting years of the twentieth century, and their importance in su pplying the needed skills for insular industrial development lingers on in the common belief that Negroes are innately more clever tha? whites o r a re endowed with greater mechanical aptitude. From the very start of insular history under the Spaniards, it wou ld be impossible, strictly speaking, to consider "Negro-white relations" as if there were no large interm ixed grouping. As Gordon points out ( 1949:296), it is in the light of such continuous interm ixture that people who acknowledge some measure of African ancestry or in whom such ancestry may be inferred from visible phenotypical traits, chicle their "wh iter-Iooking" fe ll ow Puerto Ricans. She writes: "Th~ white Puerto Rican has a weighty burden: he must be 'white' not only to white continentals, but a lso to other 'white' Puerto Ricans who know only too well 10 The whole matter o[ vestiges of the aboriginal Indian stock that he m ay [ear some almost but never entirely forin the prcscnt-dav population is arbitrarily excluded from this discussion. gotten raja . (In Spanish, raja means 'stripe'; it is

that the number of free men of color consistently exceeded the number of slaves in insular history. Most importantly, at the very pinnacle of slave-manned industrial production, in the mid-nineteenth century, repressive labor laws served to bind free white and colored workers to the soil alongside the slaves, thereby creating a social situation which is almost unique in the history of the Caribbean. One result of the forced labor legislation was to lay the groundwork for a long history of remarkable interracial co-operation; out of the twin repressions of slaver y and forced labor, there grew a feeling of unity based on the common lot of Puerto Rican landless agricultural labor, regardless of color, which can never be riven by racist appeals. At the same time, Puerto Rican white laborers, at work in the cane fields, established definitively that the European's supposed unfitness for strenuous labor in the tropics was a myth and nothing more. Throughout Puerto Rico's history, intermixtu~·e between the two racial groupings was common. ' \Thatever their limitations, the various censuses which were taken during the island's history mark the growing number of racially mixed individuals. The complicated naming system which purported to distinguish individuals of mixed ancestry, one from another, dependiRg on the degree of mixture-morenos, pardos, and other terms-reflects this. Along with these "technical" terms, which were supposed to denote kinds and degrees of intermix tu re, a body of descriptive words and p h rases about race came into being. Some of these descriptive terms served to insult: for example, bembones is a derogatory name for the fully evened lips commonly associated with the Negro racial phenotype. Other such terms carry no such derogatory overtones: thus, labios ordirzarios describes in neutral fashion the same type of lip eversion. Still other terms are used euphemistically or to circumvent specific description: for instance, trigudio (literally, "wheat-colored") may be used politely to describe a person of even an extreme socalled phenotypically N egroid appearance. In the same effort to circumvent specificity, an individual might be described, not in absolu te terms, but by comparisons with other persons whose appearances are already familiar: "as light as Compai Juan." vVhen an American, accustomed to the American cultural standard that any "Negro blood" defines an individual as a "Negro," seeks to divide the Puerto Rican people into two fixed racial categories, he soon finds the task impossible. There are, of course, many people who fit in with customary American standards of "Negro" and "white"; but there are a large number -of Puerto Rican people who might best be defined as "mixed." Moreover, if the layman seeks to make h is judgments more and more refined, he soon discovers large blocs o[ individuals who appear to be marginal, between "mixed" and "white," and between "mixed" and "Negro." 76 In short, the classification system soon 1

CANAMELAR: RURAL SUGAR PLA NTATIO N PROLETARIAT

used in Puerto Rico to indicate a tinge of Negro blood.)" She notes (1949 :297) that a white Puerto Rican may be uneasy about the subject of racial identity and may regard the "struggle of the colored islander against prejudice . .. as a tlueat to his own standing as 'white.' "It seems that this uneasiness about race has a class character, modified by the varying degree of acceptance accorded "Negro" or "part-Negro" identity in differing sociocultural segments. Gordon hcrsei( notes this variability in acceptance and in frequency of appearance of "Negro phenotypes" when she \\Tites (19.19:298- 99, passim): The major slum areas of the island, however, are predo111i11a11 tly i11liahited by large numbers of low-paid colored worke rs. . . . The economic conditions of Puerto Rico foster inter-racia l unions because "crossing" takes place more frcqucntl y among- the lower income groups, and because the \·ast majority of Puerto Ricans subsist on incomes which arc 11otorio uslv le)\\-. . .. An accompanying condition is the "poor m:111 ·s .. ' or consensual marriage. It is estimated that from Ii ftcc11 to t \\'e 11ty p er cent of L11c married population docs n o t for111alizc its marriage by either State or Clergy. T his pro\'ides 11s with another index to the degree of interracial marriage, since less stigma attaches to "crossing" part icularly if consensual and in the lower economic levels.

It is exactly within this socioeconomic context that we may speak of the people of Barrio Poyal: low economic levels, "crossing" consensual marriages, and "less stigma" attaching to such crossings. The discussion of race in terms of its social meaning in Barrio Poyal, then, does not typify Puerto Rican attitudes but applies at most to a speci fic sociocultural segment: the rural proletariat. . .Judging by visible phenotypes, the peop!e of Bar~·10 P oyal give the impression of great racial mixture, w1th many more individuals appearing to belong in some wide in termediate racial grouping than in the convelllional "pure Negro" and "pure white" groupings combined. To the writer's mind, this necessarily would be so, since a "racial type" in reality is no more than an aggregate of separate characteristics. But classification "by sight" becomes particularly difficult where socia l reality is not a matter o( merely dividing the population arbitrarily into two "races." "'\1Vhenever any effort was made to work out lines of descent, it was immediately complicated tremendously by the large number of previous consensual marriages, by the crisscrossing of related families, and by the large number of hijos cle crianza, or informally adopted children. Judging again by appearances only, most "crossings" in marriage seem to involve individuals who appear to be of relatively the same mixture. But there are a few examples of marriages involving sharply distinct phenotypes in Poyal : Juan is absolutely white (or pink) in coloring, with thin features but "bad" hair. He is a foreman, and wears his sun helmet always. With his hair con cealed, he is pheno typically "white ." His wife, Rosa. has very cbrk skin, "medium-bad" hair, and full feawres. (This marriage is especially interesting. because in most cases of " extreme mixture," the wornan is lig hter than the man. Presumably, this is because a com-

41 1

petent and successful darker male is able to find a lighter spouse, and " el negro siempre busca la mujer mds blanca" ("tl1e Negro always seeks a whiter woman").] Antonio is a man with "'bad" hair and Yery dark skin, but t11in features. His wife, now deceased, is said to have been "very white": thin features, light eyes, light skin, and long, blond hair.

Several other cases of extreme differences in the physical appearance of spouses were noted in the town of Cafiamelar. In two cases, "white" women were married to "Negro" men who had achieved a certain measure of success in special field s-one of the men was a professional athlete, the other a veteran and a professional musician. Speaking very generally, it might be said that "white" men may marry "Negro" women in special cases, but that the reverse is much more common-a "white" woman with little to offer but her "whiteness" may be able to marry a very successful "Negro" husband. As one moves out of the rural proletariat and into higher socioeconomic groupings, there is undocumented evidence that a successful "Negro" family will seek to find acceptable "white" husbands for the daughters. Among the rural proletariat-"Negro," "white" and "mixed" alike-there obtains an ideal of whiteness. This ideal is manifested conversationally in many ways. A white man, skinning a black pig, will remark jokingly, as the pig's white underskin is exposed, "Isn't it too bad we can't make all the Negroes white like this?" Since this man has "Negro" relatives, friends, and compaclres, it is unlikely that the remark is meant to hurt; rather it seems to be a frank expression of the fact that whiteness is a culturally accepted ideal. A woman who is much admired will be described as una mttjer imporlante- blanca y grande ("an important woman- big and white"). Contraposed to the ideal of ·w hiteness is the common assumption that "Negro blood" is found in all families. A prominent "old family," now gone from Cai1amelar, will be mentioned in conversation. Immediately, an elder in the group will mention that he knew the maternal grandmother of Don Sciuro and that she was "a little dark." In the course of daily life, these two attitudesthat on the one hand, "whiteness" is a clearly desirable thing, and that on the other hand, all families in the community carry some Negro ancestry-operate in a situation where it would be virtually impossible to classify and interact with one's marriage partners, cornpadres, neighbors, and fellow workers in terms of their color. What is more, there apparently is no desire to do so. It has often been said that race has meaning in the Puerto Rican situation only in cl ass terms. There is evidence that this is true in many cases: an individual's "color" may "vary" in accord with changes in his socioeconomic status. But it is necessary to remember tha t such social judgments of color h ave meaning only to the members of the social grouping in which the newly success(ul " colored" individual will be active. Poyal people need not mince words over the "race" of a

41 2

THE PEOPLE OF PUERTO RICO

successful politician, professor. or businessman , for they do not interact with such individuals anyway. They welcome the success of "Negroes," but this is because they recognize thatthe lowerclass (of th e coasts, at any rate) is more "Negro" tha n are the hig h er class levels: con sequ e ntly, the s uccess of a "Negro" d emons trates that some bit of vert ica l mobility obtains. "Race" enters into this recogni Lion on ly indirectly, as a reflectio n of class. For the rural proletarians of Barrio Poyal, class homogeneity is a force for integ ration , while "race" is not a (orce for much of anyth ing at all. The peculiar history of Puerto Rico did not permit color to become a special mark of degradation within the class itself, as happened so tragically in the Un ited St ates. 'iVhile certa in of t he emphases might justly be question ed, Rogler sta ted the case well for Barrio Poyal when h e wrote of the Puerto Rican lower class in general (19.1 8:74): Questions of staws :ire of slight import:incc LO a class of people "·hose economic condition has for generations remained on a subsisLCncc lc,·cl, and whose folkways. attitudes, moral and religious \-;tlucs are so closely wo,·en into this subsistence economy as to produce a comp:iratively wcllorganized person. This condition tends to produce a class whose wishes lie close to socia l reality. Forces .which produce competition, social dirferentiation. conflict and strugg-lc for status are constrained by this traditional social in cnia. In the lower class, where the on ly "stable" fa ctor is economic insecurity, where slight ad\'antages in economic st:1ws conti nuously shift from person to person. and ,,·here m11tu<1 l aid is a sun ·ival expedient. there is neither need of nor any process to produce :iny socially diffcre1niating set of traditional status-producing \'alucs. Dominance and subordination on any basis a rc out of character within a comp:irati\'Cly isolated class \\"hose: activities arc organized ;iround the elemental process of satisfying b;isic human needs.

VALUES AND VALUE CHANG ES IN BA RRIO PO YAL ·within a seventy-five-year period (1873-19,18), Barrio Poyal "·as transformed from being the seat o( two paternalistic slave-and-agregado plantations into a modern "factory in the field." The first twenty-five years were a time o( con traction an<l stagnation; the next fifty yea rs were a p eriod of extrem ely rapid change. During this latter p e riod, the popu lation incrensed; the s tandard of Jiving rose in many ways; more land was put into cu l t ivation: sugar can e (urther !iupp lanted ocher crops; pate rnalist ic socia l r elationships were uprooted: new political, educational, medical, religious, and other forces were introduced from the outside; and the class stru cwre was polarized into a proletarian grouping <lnd a managerial grouping. with little in between. All these changes effected a transformation of the local s ubc ulwre. In some Heas of life, new cultural [eawres replaced old ones. Jn others, new and old ways were com bined jnto a n ew form. In st ill others, the o ld cu llll ral features persist, of'ten in conn ict with new ideas, objects, and pr:ictices. i\ fany of the values of P oya l people today are old 1

and well established and were not chan~ecl in their general form b y the tra nsformation o( the past halfcenwry . .-\pparently, since hacienda days, to "belong" to the community has mcam to have ach ieved the respect of o n e's f'e llows: people res/J etan fl a man w ho works h a rd and well: w h o is a Jmdre de fr1111ilia. and h as boy ch ildre n : 77 who takes a drink with pleasure a nd buys one in return . but who is not a drunkard ; who is re liable (n1111/1/idor) . which m ea ns that he ,,·i ll pay his debt.;, keep hi-. \\·ord. fulfill his ohlig:it irrn-. to care for hi-; laniih. :1ml lin: up to hi-. c ommitllH'IJh :1-. a co111/1adn· . . \ "1c-.p<:< tt·d" man ol th<: co 111111u11it ~ aho a\·oids quarn:k :111tl ,eek., to end 1hc·111 whe11 they occur between It ie11d~. 1clati\ c~ . c>r r11111/u11lrf'.\ h y :1ppea l ing to th e 11111111tr /nl)fn1' o l both p ;111 it"-.: Inn lie "·il l wlcr;;te 11<> in -.ulb to hi.-. honor. I le ll"i ll lie ~oc i: 1ble without h c: in ~ 111 eddle,0111 e: h:1rd -\,·orki11g ln1t 11ot to the extent that it i11terlcres \,·ith hi, ~oci;i J obligat io11' : loving to hi~ \\·iJc.: a11cl cliildre11 . hut not "he11 -pc·cknl" or overindulg<:11t: tolcran1 ;111d re-.pcc 11111 ol religion. without being lc1TC11t or dogmatic. These values. held as ideal:-. by 111<i-.t Poyal people. are part of the picture or this homoge n eous, mono-class community in which a prem ium is put upon grou p solidarity. Yet the same forces which wrncd Poya l into a homogen eous mono-cl ass community also seem to have acted to crea te contradic tions in the va lu e syste m o ( t he subcu l ture. These contradic ti o ns h ave been little stressed in th e present report, la rgely beca use they were not clearly manifested in people's behavior; they bear noting here, ho"·cver, because they may represent trends within the c ulture wh ich wi ll grow stronger in the future. Epitomizing these comradictions is a faint but probably mounting struggle between an increasing emplrnsis on ind ivid ual ism a nd individual perfonnance as opposed to the more lirml y established re liance on g ro up iden tity as the basis or local life. This can best be illustrated perhaps by re fe re n ce to the main ambition of the local worker-to win for himself a meas ure of permanent economic securityand the conflict which presently exists concerning how this economic security may best be attained: through the con sta nt reinforcement and extension of social relation ships with others who sh are the same economic status, or by a "busi n ess! ike" a tti tu de which denies many of the old ways of expressing m embership in the community and the class. The re is nothing n ew abo ut this type or conflict; to some extent it sy mbo li zes the whole development of modern western society, and one reason for rinding it interesting in the presen t connection is that it s uggests that an ideologica l struggle which "·as waged centuries ago during the rise of western society is being repeated at the present time in colonial areas. T he manifold sub!>idiary economic activities engaged in by P oya l individuals in order to accumu late additiona l cash have been touc hed upon a lrea dy. But mil itating agai11 sl i11di vidual accumula Lio 11 arc st ro ng 01 :\ man who ~ ire~ only girl children i s sm1H'\\'ha1 piti ed ; he is ca lled a dw11rfrl1' rn ('";,lipper -maker'").

CANA1\IELAR: RURAL SUGAR PLANTATION PROLETAR IAT

social p ressures which take shape in the obligations a ma n feels Lo his compadres, to his parents-in-law, and to any perso n "de respeto" who is in need. As a result, attiwcles about upward m ob ility, individual accumulation, thrift, and money itself in Barrio Poyal reveal considerable ambivalence and inconsistency. v\Torkers normall y collect their pay on Saturday after· noons. Outside the payline stand a group of creditors who are paid as each worker leaves the pay window: bnlitu and ca1iifa salesmen; peddlers with their tiny stocks of combs. chea p jewelry, and hair tonic; the womc.:11 who rnake lunches for single workers during t.hc week. or " ·ho sell 111obi (a sweet bark-extract bever· age:) or some other refreshment in the fields; the small boys who sh in e shoes or sell homemade candy. After these debts are paid, "·orkers usually head immediately for the corporate retail store, or other stores, where they pay tliei r pre,·ious week's obligations in order to get cn:dit for the following week. In general, barrio pcnplc pay L11eir commercial obligations promptly and regula rl y. In vie"· of this, and of the prevailing cash basis of rur:-tl proletarian life, one would think that conllictinoaltitudes regarding money would not exist. :-, But they do. A barber may charge an innocent newcomer twice what he charges his regular customers, but he may make no attempt to collect if one of his regular customers neglects to pay once or twice. A man who fails to pay a debt will not be dunned; it is expected that people will be trustwonh y because of their own feelings of self-respect. \.\Then a man at Colonia Vieja enjoys a small windfall-a bolita win, or a veterans' payment-he may distribute a substanti~tl share o( the money and he will expect not to get most of it back. Of Colonia Vieja, people in Oriente will say, "It is full of spongers (vividores), all ready to borrow money, but not to return it." Yet both at Vieja and Oriente, one of the most significant gestures of friendship and trust is to assure a person that what money one has is at his disposal. One of the traits which marks a "good" person in the barrio is his willingness to lend money or to help a man in need get money somehow. In dealings between friends, money becomes particularly troublesome: for example, the writer found it almost impossible to get people wi th whom he had established a social relationship to accept money for serv ices rendered-laundry, cooking, etc. Cash is the basis o[ life in Poyal, yet too much concern about it is despicable in terms of the local value system. The desire for economic securi ty, then. which is a barrio id ea l, presents a conflict situat io n for Joca l people. Another instance of conflict. between old and new ways of beh aving is manifested in the local religious situation. As has been mentioned before, many people of the barrio are showing a growing interest in the Pentecosta l church. Hut the norms of behavior valued h y this church are in open conflict with the antecedent values oft.he barrio subcul ture. Not only in such mat· ters as bolila , dancing, and drinking, but also in what may he a more crucial area-com jJadrazgo-peopie who are attracted by the Pentecosta l faith find that

413

they must choose b:twec:n the ~-aditional '~a~. in which their contemporaries sull see the good life and the way in which th~ P e.ntecostals conceive of it'. . . The Poyal chdd is prepared tbrou.gh sociahzat10n for a life in a cohesive and group-conscious community. But the changes going on around him are posing new alternatives LO the adult ideal norms he acquires from his parents. \·Vhen qt.1e.s tionecl by the writer, children mainly revealed ambmons to be ~1Urses, t<:achers, a~d public car drivers. How these _c:l:1lclren. will r~concde their presently exp.ressed amb1t10ns :·Vlth their later fate as adults remains an open question. But the potentialities of value conflicts are strongest perhaps in the y_oung men who are drafted into th~ U.S. Anny, and in those who are unable to find sulficient work (or who want to, and find that they can, escape from wor~ in the ca.ne) and wl~o go to the United States mainland seek111g economic opportunities. Veterans returning to the community do not readily fit into it again, and the young men who have "·orked in the United States and who have returned (because of their dissatisfaction with one. or another aspect of li(e en el Norte) find. th~t labor 111 the s ug~r ca ne is now even more unsa t1sfy111g to them than it was before. At present, these value conflicts are posing new problems for a subculture still marked by a strong sense o[ group identity and class homogeneity. Continuing economic prosperity, conscription, and increasing outmigration are likely to intensify these problems still further.

CONCLUSIONS The simultaneous study b y anthropologists of several Puerto Rican communities, Caiiamelar among them, permitted comparisons of specified features of Puerto Rican culture (marriage and family structure, ritual kinship, religious patterns, etc.) in different community settings. Such comparisons make it possible to see more clearly the funct ional relationships between parts of the cultural system and to get an initial understanding of the correlation or co-va riance of these pans. Thus, ritual kinship, for instance, was seen to be an important feature of life in both San Jose and Cafiamelar, but the social usages o( this practice appear to vary with the nature of the class structure in each of the communities. Bolita, economically and culturall y, is quite important in Cailamelar, but of no importance in Tabara. This difference may be correlated with difterences in opportunities to accumulate capital in the two communities. I nferences of this kind, and the ability to posit functiona l connections between different aspects o[ culwre were sharpened b y hav ing data Crom a number o[ communities upon which to draw. A group or (our or even more studies of different comrnunities can not poss ibly serve to d escribe Lhe totality of Puerto Rican culture. But having d ata on a number of communities, distinctive in their cultural ecology, does increase our knowledge of Puerto R ica n cultura.l variation.

41 4

THE PEOPLE OF PUERTO RI CO

similar economy and social situation obtains. Thus the presence or absence of ritual kinship could hard ly be said to depend on the im posit ion of the corporate landancl-factory combine system. This highly specific feature derives from a specia l histo ry; it is not d iagnostic of the plantation type, and its p resence or absence has no functional connection with the diag nostic features of the typology itself. Under the land-and -facto ry combine system, however, a need a rises for mecha nisms esta blishing intrag roup solidarily. In Barrio Poyal , this need was met in part by the transformation o( the ritual kinship institutio11 imo an intraclass binding d evice. In o th e r "·ords, a specific c lemenl or complex of the a nlecedent culture may he altered as a result o( the impositi.on of the corporate la11d-a11d-fa c1ory combin e in such a way tha t it serves new or additional purposes in th e new setting. But such cha nges wi ll not be predictable unless they d erive from the essential features o( the plantatio n type. The corporate land-and-factory comb ine system (which is made to sland here for the sugar produci ng example o( lhe plamalion type) has certa in requi rements which must be met i( it is to operate successfu ll y. These requirements must be met regardl ess of the an tecedent culture of the people upon whom the system is imposed. Within limits, the antecedent culture may h amper or accelerate the im position o f the system; a nd in every case, certain features of the anteceden t cul ture will continue to g ive a distinctive flavor or individual quality to the culture even after the n ew sys tem is set up and in operation. The interest here is no t in the distinctive or relativistically unique features of the subsequen t culture, however, but in those features which are found to occur as regula r, predictable, and explainable cultural consequences of the imposi tion o[ the corpora te land-and-factory combine system . vVh eth er predictable cultural consequences regula rly will be found in association with the corporate land-and-fac tory comb ine system can be tested only b y examining world a reas oth er than Puerto Rico where the diagnostic feawres of the typology appear to hold, to see whether the expected cultural concomitants a re to be found in those areas also. Al though the writer reels that the search for genera lizations to be derived from a cross-cultura l typology is a logical one, plantations vary considerably fro m region to region and from crop to crop, and even sugar plantations in different world areas may fail to conform to a ny but the most general kind of typologica 1 characterization. Jn ord e r to formulate a useful typology for a "sugar p lantat ion type," attention must be p aid to some of the characteristics o( the suga r ca ne plant and to the nature of its production. J( sugar is to be produced with maximum effic iency in the compeli tive world mark et, certain basic conditions must be fulfi lled. These conditions have had to be met througho ut the 1s Of relevance are such works as L ind's An Ts/11111/ Co111m1wity history of ca ne sugar as a world market product, and (1938), Ortiz' Citban Counterf1oi11L ( 1947), H o fsommc1..s studies of they hold today as they did four centuries ago. The Louis iana p lanta tions (1!)40. 19.11). and snch J n tern;:itio n al Labor first such basic condition is that the sugar cane must Organi1.ation publ ications as llasic Pro/Jle111s of Pfrmla tion Labour be ground with in a few days after it is cu t if the major ( 19:io) .

Aside from the value the Cafi amelar data mig ht have for the study of Puerto Rican society, they may ha ve some utility in cross-cultural research. \ Vhen Cafiam elar was chosen for field work, the writer described it as a south coast community, typical in its way of life of the results of the most direct a nd drastic changes in insular sugar production by the United States occupa tion. T he cul tural-ecological adaptation includes a concentration of landownership in very large holdings, a large-scale processing center, the control of both land and mill in the hands of a single corporate owner. This combination of features, with the addition of certain others, provides a d escription of the land-andfactory comb ine system. Many changes occurred in the local subculture as a r esult o f the introd uctio n of this system to Caiiamelar. The writer was led to inquire whether similar effects might h ave resulted in other world a reas where a similar mode of agricultural organization had been imposed, even where a different crop is produced and the form of the antecedent culture was different. If in fact the cultures o f peoples in other plantation areas bear marked resemblances to that of the people of Cafiamelar, the study of Cafiamelar may have application for comparative cross-cultural research beyond the limits of Puerto Rico itself, and extending to other plantation a reas in Latin Am erica, Asia, and Africa. 78 This possibilitythat Cafiamelar might represent a plantation type o( subculture which occurs in other world areas-was not anticipated whe n the fi eld work began; wider crosscultural implications began to emerge only as the d ata characterizing the la nd-a nd-factory combine system and the subculture of Barrio Poyal were acc umulated. It was possible late in the field work to set down a hypothetical tabulation of the essen tial characteristics of the land-and-factory combine system, a nd then to range a longside it those changes in the local subculture which appeared to be the consequences of the imposition of the combine system. Th e seemingly essential features of the combine system, taken together, give a provisional characterizalion of the "plantation type" as fo und in sugar producing areas. The characteristics of the local subcu lture which appear to have flowed from the imposi tion of the plantation type are taken to be i ts cultural consequences. If a connection does exist between the combine system and the local subculture, it should be possible to test the con nect ion by studying plantations in other world areas and by observing the cultures of the people who work them. A typology useful for cross-cultural comparison consists of a set of featu res ("corporate la nd -and -factory combine") which vertebrate certain functionally depend ent cultural phenomena ("cultural consequences"). Yet there wi ll be found in any situation a large number of cultural features which are variable or unique, and w hich are not fo und i n areas where a 1

CANAi\LELAR: RURAL SU GAR PLANTATION PROLETARIAT

part o( the juices is not to be lost. From this condition flow two others: first, the labor supply must be large enough to handle both fi eld and industrial phases of the indus try simultaneously; second, an intimate operating re lationship must hold between the field and industrial phases of production. The prnduc tion of cane sugar for the world market also has always required relatively large amounts of capital for e nsuring an adequate supply of land, labor, proccssi11p; ma chinery, and transport. Ortiz (19,17: 2Gj-82) has clea rl y shown that starting with the royal Sp;lll ish g ratlls o[ the sixteenth century and continuing to 1hc present da)·· sugar cane has always bee n a fa,·oritc child of ex p:rnding capicalism. Thompson ( 1 ~l:I:!) has d emonstrated that the planlation and hacie nda have bee n the c haracteristic modes of produ c tion or cane suga r because these have made possible th e main1 e11a11ce of a disciplined and dependable labor force. The same point h;is been made by Greaves ( • ~J:l :i)· who regards the celllr;i lization of control as the prime d i:1g11ostic of pbtllation organization. These prcconcl i Lions of commercial ca ne sugar production ha\'C made for the predominance of the plantation system in sugar throughout the world: the perishabil ity of the s uga r ca ne, which requires that it be ground imm ed iate ly after cutting; the derived needs for simultaneous co ntrol of factory ;ind lield, and for sufficient labor for simultaneous factory and field operations; and the require ment of large sums o( capital for comm e rcial produc tion. " ' here control over any of these condit ions is lacking, the development of the land-andfactory combine system is unlikely. Some of the main features of this system, and th e sociocultural effects whic h arc believed to resu lt from its imposi tion, may now be tabulated. These are somewhat simila r to the hypotheses suggested in Part IV. ·whereas the latter, however, a re intended for cross-cultural comparison, the present lists merely state, p oint by point, certain features and their e ffects.

landholders Small-scale centrated in large-scale hold- are eliminated, or become dependent upon the corpo· ings. ra tion. 2. Alternate cash crops and :?. J\ll available land is put inlO a single crop or is ren- all subsistence crops are cl iminated; li\'estock is reduced dered i nanh·e. to a bare 111inimum. 3. Artisa ns in small-scale 3· All small-scale processing is supplanted by a large-scale processing cc!llcrs arc put out of work; local occucen H.T . pational differcmiation is sharply reduced. 4. Local owners of la nd and -l · Local social organ iza ti on pron.:!Ssing- centers arc no is nltercd so that a larger longer moti\-:u ccl to stay in proportion of the populathe a rea. tion form a landless wagecarning group. 5. Owners arc replaced in 5. Work is carried out in a the local procluc ti\"c process more impersonal, standard/\II available land is con-

6. Perquisites are replaced

by cash payment for labor. 7. Machines arc introduced

in some phases of field labor.

8. As a result of med1aniza.

tion, some of the remaining manual jobs arc made simpler and less differentiated from one a nother. 9. Agriculture becomes more scientific.

10. F;ictory and field operations are separnted sharply in space and character.

1 1. The work season is shortened consonant with greater efficiency in opera tion. 12. Transportation is vastly improved (this need not be c;irried out by the system but is essential Lo its operation). 13. Geographic mobility of field labor is increased.

14. Cash wages rise.

Effecls of t he Features

Features of tho land-and· Factory Combine 1.

with hired managers and their subordin;i tes.

i.

15. Centralized company stores replace small re tail outlets (this is not an essential fc;iture of the system, but seems lo occur in m;iny c;iscs). 16. i\ledical facilities are improved (this is not an essential fea ture of the system, but seems to occur in many cases).

415

ized fa sh ion. Close rela tionships bet,,·een sup ervisors and workers now mean less for both groups. 6. Jobs come to be measured by a more uniform standard than before. 7. Older manual skills are supplan ted; to some degree, ne,,· occupational differen tiation (truck drivers, tractor mechanics) arises. 8. Special manual skills lose importance in their economic, interpersonal, and psychological meanings. 9. Attitudes

toward work and the land become secularized: the Janel loses its personal meaning; agricultural practices no longer need the "human touch." 10. F;ictory workers and field laborers are moved further apart; neither can get a clear picture of the whole productive process. 1 1. Seasonal Yariation in work opponunities becomes sharper. 12. i\Iobility of goods, services, and manpower increases.

13. \•Vorkcrs come to view high geographica l mobility as na tural ; loca l communities grow Jess cohesive. 14. The cultural standards of consumption changemore goods produced outside are p urchased with cash. 15. Local small merd1ants are suppl<1ntcd, and local occupational differcnti;ition and class structure are correspondingly simplified. 16. Treatment o[ illness becomes more standardized, and attitudes toward illness become more scientific.

These features of the corpora te land-and-fac tory combine system, and the c ultural conseq ue nces associated with them , ha ve bee n e numerated h e re as they seem to ch a racterize one Pue rto Rica n plantation community. The d egree to which such a n ent11neratio n would h o ld elsewhere remains to b e demo ns trated. Obviously the impos ition of the corporate la nd-a nclf actory combine system. upo n Barrio P oya l ca nnot be held responsible for a ll the culwre ch ange which has

4 I6

THE PEOPLE OF PUERTO RICO I

occurred there since 1900. On e need not expect Lo rind a a result of the introducLion of Lh is system an expanded educational apparaws. or n ew re lig ions taking hold, or the elimination of child labor, for insta nce. These innovations in Pu erto Rico spring from forces which accompanied th e introduction o( United States con trol and culture (governm ental. religious. etc.). l3 ut oth er cultural con sequences, su ch as elimination o f small-scale landh o lders, the cons umption of more goods produced o utside, e tc., stem quite directly from the imposi tion of the corporate land-a nd-factory combine system . The formu lation of this system as a ser ies o f sepanne but in terre lated characteris tics is an eITort to list the precise determinants in a kind o( culture change, and as such has p ote11lial va lue as a predi cti ve Looi. The degree to which su ch pred iction is p ossible canno t be s tated as yet, but the writer feels Lhat the value i11 conscructing a " type" s uch as the corporate land -andfact0ry combine system lies in its utility for crosscultural comparisons and in the pred ict ive p oss ib ilities to be derived from a series of su ch compa risons. At least three levels o[ com p a rison and predictio n may be sugO'ested : (a) that the impos ition of the land a nd-factory"combine system lead s to sim_ilar soc iocu ltural effecls in certai n other plantalion areas: (b) Lhat th e imposition or the la nd-a nd -fa ctor y combine system lead s to simil ar soc iocullura l effects in a ll oth er s ugar plantation a reas; (c) that the impositi ou o ( the la nd-and-fa ctory combi n e system leads to similar sociocu ltural effects in a ll o th er plantation areas. or the three levels of comparison (and he nce prediction) s uggested above, o nly (n) may ha\'e any real valu e. Pla inl y the more similar the conditi ons between the Puerto Ri can sou th coast a nd anoth er g iven "·oriel area, the more s imil ar the results we may expect from the impos iLion of Lhe land-and-factory combine system o n th at area. T h e con cept of the cor porate lan d -and-factory combin e system, w hen and if tested in comparable and historicall y independent siw :uio ns e lsewhe re. m ay be found wanting in a number o [ ways. It ma y fail to app ly because the clescriplion of typologica l fea t ures and cu ltural effects is schematic a nd oversimplified. Unanticipated factors may intervene bet\\·een the typological features and the expected effects of the system. Or Lhe type ma y be d escribed too sp ecifically. iLs e ffecLs likew ise Loo speci fi ca ll y stated , because of a failure to take into account th e poss ibl e variations in land -and facwry combine systems. Aga i11, it may prove t on gen era l in character. prov ing i tself by comparative test. but proving on ly what is a lread y obv ious even wil11o uL such a typological formu latio n of essentia l features and posiLed effects. L astly, it may fa il to hold because o f the panicular h istory of the region \\·here the land-andfactory combine system ha:. been imposed . T he present stud y has sought to establish the rea lity of a subcultu re, as o bse r ved in Ba rrio Poya l, whi ch obtains among members of n s pecific socioeco nolllic segment, or c:lass. T his class has been defi n ed in terms o f a number of like characteristi cs: its mem bers arc a l-

most unilorml y la11dlc:.~. propenyf<::-.., ( in the scn'>e of income-producing property). wage earning, store buying, and corpornt<.:l y employed. The~· diller liLtle in Lhe ir economic re:ioun:es and sh:1rc: :111 inabilitv to change fundam e ntall y t he ir eco11o mi c "i lallls. Economicall y and social ly, th ey stand in a unil onn relaLion to o ne anoLhcr and in u11i for m relation., Lo members of o Lh er classes. Th ey ha ve comm o n e '.'.:perien ces a11d in teres ts. the ir child ren learn cl:1ss ways ol beha vi ng . and Lhey ma y b e sa id LO h a\'e a class ideo logy- some mea:-.ure of cla:-.'>·Coll'><'i111 1.,11 c:.,., . .\ . , 110Led in :i pn·,·iou., d1:tp· ter. thc.,e a'>pcc l'> of r11r;tl prolc:tari;111 li fe 111ake for ;1 dbtincti \'(: l10111ogt·1H.:il\ :tllHlllg the: people who .,11:1re the m. Th e p eopl e: o l lb11 iCJ Po ~ : tl an: 110L :rlikt: ~n l e l y in Lerlll!> or loc;tl L1nor ... (·\·c· 11 1ho11g'1. ad n1i1t ('dl y. Ilt('il' likeness clc pc 11d ., w a c 01h ickrablc <:'.'.:tt: 11 1 011 1lie ir (i;iil y inter:ini o 11 . Ll1 c: ir g rou p cl1:1raner. 1h c ir c·on1111on goals. Th e ho 11111gcne i1 y ol Barr io J>oy:tl c 1tlu1rt: rc: p · resents, in p:1n at lc::i.,1. a (HJ.,., ible reguf:1rity ol con.,<:· quen u::-. from a '>pee iaf ki11cl ol prim:1r~ dc·1c·r111i11:1 1Jt., \\'hich rec 11r cn1,.,·c uluir:dl~ -nol the unilonnity ol a m ere culture ;11ea. lh iri11K Lhe p:t~l ftfl~ yc;11,, the local culwre or Barrio Poy:il \\'a:-. subject to Ollbidc i11fl11· e nces which m:1de s\\'eeping changes. In addition LO th ese majo r forces or change, L11 e personne l of th e community was e nlarged b y the in -m igraLion o f high land people seeking work, p eople who diffe red som e· what in their ways of li ving and behavi ng. The fact that these n ewcomers have come to co11 fo n11 largely to Barrio Poya l \\'a ys ca nnot be explai n ed pure ly in terms of community pressure; it must be rem embered that the land-and-fa ctor y combine system it:.el [ reqnires certain kinds ol con lorm ance in terms or its ow n object ives. The picwre, then, is one o[ a rap idl y altered local cu ltu re wh ich , once achiev ing some stabiliLy in line w ith the new de mands o[ the land-a11d-l';icwry combine system , co11ld partly count on that system to enforce conforman ce o n th e part o[ newcomers.,\ highla nd small farmer can co ntrol the labor of his wife and sons; if h e moves with his fam ily to th e c:oast., he may bring th is way o f behaving with him . Hut i[ h e is now landless, and if under-age children and \\·omen ca nnot fin d work in the fields, it \\'ill be difficult for him to m a in tain the anteced em pauern . J n this sense, the demands of the land-a 11d -facwry combine sysLem con s pire to achieve the sa me con formance on the part o f the n ewcom er thal wi ll be expected o [ him b y the local res id ents oJ' Lh e C0 lllllllt11ity. Two main po ints h ave been essayed in this conclusio n. The first is th at the su ccessful opera tion o f the land-a nd-factory combine system is marked b y certain essentia ls and lead s to certa in p redictab le res11lts; second, that the p eople \\'hose ever yd ay c111lure is subject to this system \\'ill come to exh ibit a dic;t inctive common way of lif e. The qu e~t i on immediate ly arises: i( a g iven cultur;tl eco logical adaptat io n produces a predinable set or socia l rela tions, will p eo pl e subject lo this adapt:llion , but wide ly se parated in sp ace and culture history, come 1.0 be mo re a like? Th e p roject's h ypothes is is that they wou ld. For certain rnses, such

CANAJ\lELAR: R U RAL SUGAR PLANTATION PRO LET AR IAT

a h ypoL11es is is less Lhan daring-L11 cre are many reasons LO suppose Lhat cane-cutlers in Cuba wou ld be cul turally very mu ch like cane-cutters in Pueno Rico. Granted , ho"·ever, that the cu lwres of cane-cuuers in Jamai ca, Peru. Java, i\Iauritius, H awa ii, etc., would obviously not be identical, there is every possibility that

417

they may exhibit strikingly similar social re lationships even with widely varying cu lture contents. \Vhethei'. or not i t may someday be possible to prove that there exists an "international sugar cane plantation way of life" _ren:rn in_s l? be seen. nut the answer to questions of this kind 1s likely tO g row more a nd more important.

10

Le

BY RAYMOND L. SCH EELE

Prominent Fa n ilies

of Puerto Rico INTRODUCTION GENERAL PROBLEM

A coroll ary effect of the development of rural subcul tures that depend upon export crops- a n effect first noticeab le during the nineteenth century but more markedly so since American occupation-has been the d evelo pme nt of a subcultural group of professio na l businessmen, technicians, high government officia ls, <rn<l other service-rendering occupational groups. T he group is o nly one of the distinctly urban, sophisticated, lite rate, and edu cated segments of the population in m odern Puerto Rico, but i ts position in the i nsu Jar con text is im portant a nd, in some ways, unique. Its members li nk the island to A merican firms and American fi nancial practices, and they funct ion in government a nd other services. I t is the segment of population that associates most directly w ith Americans a nd the one whose d aily routine and work r equire American "know-how." A command o f the English lang uage is practically essential for this group. This segment war. rants being investigated in order to understand some of the major eITects of large-scale finance and rela ted major poli tical and economic institutions resulting from the island's re lations with the United States. The central problem of field work was to determine the processes which have Americanized these famil ies through th eir extra- insular ties to U ni ted States nationa l inst illltio ns- economic, political, educatio na l, an d soc ia l- and throug h their face-to-face con tact with people i11 the Uni Led States. The second a nd Lhird probl ems are proj ectio ns of the first: How has this group 1ransm itted these cha nges into other subcul'l 18

Fig ../I. A f>ortion of old San Juan near the harbor. Photo by Rosskam: Government of Puerto Rico. tur~tl groups? And how have these changes affected, on a national level, the political, economic, and religious institutions of Puerto Rico? This report consists of information on a number of families prominent in business, the professions, and the government. These families all reside in San Juan, the capita l of Puerto Rico. American business firms have concentrated largely in San Juan, and most of the island's large business transactions are handled there. Some of these families have been well-to-do for generations. Originally their wealth came from land, but today it comes basically from their service occupations. Their financial success and their life activities mark them as a p r ivileged status group on the island, their prestige giving them the reputation of being "upper class." Throughout this study the group w ill be referred to as "prominent families." This study emphasizes particularly the activities that distinguish the subculture of these prominent families and tliat contrast strongly with the way of li(e reported for the rural subcultures. Since the study defines this population segment in terms of some of its major functions in modern Puerto Rico, it indicates some of the features which make lhe insular culture a complex and heterogeneous system. There are of course many subcultural groups not treated in the present volume. The prominent families are functionally defined by their role in the economic and social structures of the island. Such families are found in other Latin Ameri-

can countries and perhaps also in other nonindustrialized areas of different cultural heritages where they developed as a response to conditions imposed by the extension of permanent markets, by financial institutions which spring up with the importing of mass produced articles, and by the export of raw materials and other cash crops. As Wagley states ( i 952 :5-6): In the metropolitan cities [of Latin American countries], a new group composed o( government employees, professional people, and business men, many of whom have come up from the masses or who are descendants of recent European immigrants, have appeared. But, unlike the situation in the United States, where such people like to think of themselves as "the good middle class," these people who have climbed socially and economically in Latin America tend to identify themselves with the "aristocratic" forms of behavior, manners, and ideals. They share, with the old gentry, what has been called a "gentleman complex" which includes a disdain of manual labor in any form. They are afraid to be marked as lower class and they do not like to carry bundles or packages nor do they care for those aspects. of almost any profession which are field jobs.

It is in Lhis sense that the Puerto Rican counterpart of this subculture can be thought of. as being "upper class." These families may be but are not necessarily d escendants of the older aristocracy. Although in a sense this subcultural group expresses the culture o[ the city itself, its way of liEe is related prim.arily to insular institutions a nd to groups pos-

420

THE PEOPLE OF PUERTO RJCO

sessing similar occupational and class interesLs. Their life style is more directly infl uenced by non localized institutions than by any local community life. Since Lhcse cross-community or horizonal axes come to outwe igh the local or vertical community axes as the determinants of behavior, the local commun ity becomes correspondingly insufficient as the unit of study. R e idence in or near San Juan, therefore, cannot be r egarded as the sole or eve n the most impo nant determinant o( the social behavior of the group. The cu lture of these prominent people is found not only in San Juan but throughout Pu e rto Rico and outside Puerto Rico. For several reasons, howeve r, it was possible LO con fine the s tudy LO San Jua n. Because Pueno Rico is small and its prominent people mobile, cha nges spread easily and rapidly t o the entire group on the island. l'vforeover, the m ajority of promin e nt famil ies li ve in San Juan. And s i nee San Juan is the center of business, government, and social activities, prominent families who do not live there permane ntly often vis it and temporaril y res ide in the c ity. H ence the norms o( the members Jiving in San Juan probably represent the norms of the entire group. Metropolitan San Juan is a c ity of ha)[ a million people according to the 1950 ce nsus. It not on Iy represents an extreme form of urban living in the is land. but its role wiLhin the island resembles Lhe combined role that l\:ew York, \\'ash ing ton , and perhaps Chicago play in the Un iLe cl States. San Juan, in oLher w o rds, is the island's center of transportation, finan ce, commerce, business, and government. l\ Ioreove1-, probably it is [ar more cosmopolitan than cities of comparable size in the United States. The center o( Lhe city, Old San .Juan , " ·ilh iLs narrow streets and thickly plastered brick buildings, was until recen ti y the area in whi ch business. govern m e nt. and professio nal serv ices conce nLratecl. l\Iorc r ecenlly, the service as well as the reside ntial area or th e city has expanded into the suburbs. It has grmn1 so rapidly, for instance, that Rio Piedras, the site of the Unive rsity of Pueno Rico and a c iLy by itself, has bee11 a bsorbe d by the munic ipalil}' of San Ju an, while fo r purposes of planning and 70ning , the m et ro politan area has been legally defined to cover territory and population which up to a decade or so ago were rural. Today San .Juan is a m odern city, wiLh sh o pping centers, docks, museums, in ternational a irpons, 11a val and miliLary ins tallations, school!>. th eaters, ci ne mas. and slums. Its hote ls, clubs, a nd restau ra nts range from the swa nkiest to the wors t honky-wnks. I Ls residential and orlicc buildings r e present both th e architectural s Lyl cs ol centuries ago ;111d modern construction. Jn San Juan one can buy locally made goods, but mass produced a rticles from th e United Stales are more numerous, a nd lu x uries from prac ticall y e very corner o( the world arc a \·ailable in the sh o p s. vVithin a nd near the c ity arc districts of ex treme ly high rea l esta te value, where th e wealthiest fa mi lies tend to concentrate, such as the Condado, l\ l iramar, and pans o ( Floral Park, L as Marias, Hato Rey, Rio Pie dras, Trujillo Alto, esp ecially along the hig hways in the hill s and on the seashore.

From the sectio n on Puerto Rico·s cu lwral history (pp. 3 1-89) the reader may visualize the development o( Pueno Rico's socia l structure Lliroughout the cenwrics, especially the profound trans formations which have occurred within the past fifty years. The expansion of the group d i ~c u ssed in Lh is section is one of the most s tarlling res uhs o[ Puerto Rico·s participation in Lhe Unite d States marke t and its dependence upon Lhe Ameri can econom y. . \ s a g roup iL is the one most di r eclly alf<::ncd by Lile U1 1i ted States. This scgmem, hO\\'e,·er. has not adoptul .\mer ic; 111 he ha,·ior p:1uerns and wa y-; ol lile i11di'c ri111i 11:1Lc ly or rn111ple1dy. These diffe r c11t patt<:rth ha\C: been altered hy Ili c group\ 1radiLional be h:l\·ior.. \nH:t ilat1 i11fl11<.:tH c:s lt:1,·c: bee n mod ified h ysuch tr:1di1irn1 ;1J. pn.:-i11d11:.ui:il pr:1<ti<t:s :1-., tltc; pate r11alis1i1. hw,in c,.., firn1 in \\·liiclt a111ltori1 y is ltt::l\·ily cenLrali1ed. \lorcoHT, .\m cr ic:111 prac t ices ;ire; »<>111etimes s trongly re..,i .. 1cd and so111t:ti111cs rejc:n c:d. Th e be k1,·ior p;nte rn ~ ol promine n t San .Juan citizens influe nce o LIJCr '> uhcu llllral g-roup-. inasmuc h a s their p rominc:m c: in e< 0 110111i c. politi< a I. and soc i:d :ii fairs liecomc:s an idca l 10 b<: gc: nera ll y t•1111 tla1cd. Local fa ctors. lio\\·e \·er, crc·:1te a crn1siderali le v;1ricty ol subcultures, while Lhe opportunities of Lhe promine nt peopl e. Lhcir attitudes and oricmations toward life, Lhcir tile goa ls, and Lh e ir levels of as piraLions may be cxpened Lo differ fro m those of Lhc small farmers, sharecroppers, or landl ess agrarian worke rs. FIELD TECHNIQUES

Duri11g eighteen 1nonths of field research. five or s ix monL11 ~ \\'ere spent co llaborating wiLh Olher members

of the r e.,earch team 011 general problems, and over a year was devoted LO ill\·es tigating Lh e subculture of promin e nt b11si11cs~ and professional fam il ies of San Juan . The firs t phase of Ge ld \\'ork was c:xp loraLOry; rappon \\'as csla blishecl \\'ilh several families and visits were made to the 0\\'11e n, or radio s talio11s, newspapers, and mag-~11ines to ascenain whelher the prominent famili es we re inllu c mial in these major lines of communirntio11. ,\ s Lhc probl e m of clearly delineating the universe of i11vcstigaLio11 was solved (see pp. 1122- 23), lhe bases for se lecting potcnLial informants became comparatively cle:ir; informants were selenc:d for lheir abilil)' LO tl1row light rn1 Lhe cu lwre of lhe prominent peo ple both pas t and present. ,\ feanwhile. conLacts "·e r e e'>ta hlished ,,·id1 addiLional i11clividual s and with associa1 ions s uch as the Rolary Club, th e Chamber o( Comn1 e rce, and the lJnivers iLy of Pue no Rim. In formal contacts were made at coffee shops, bars, beac h es, in the waiti11g rooms of impo nant lawye rs, at soci:il c,·ents, and nume rous oLhcr places. ln acldi1ion. th e R e public:an -S tatc ltood part y, which is affiliated wiLl1 th e R e publica n parLy of Lhe Un ite d States, was a source of inl orrnation 011 the s ubculture's politi cal interests and al.litucles. The lcadcrsl 1ip o[ Lhis party and s ubstamia l backing for it came (rorn some of' Lhe more promin e nl business and professional groups. Fina ll y, three e le menlary schoo ls attended by children of promine nt famil ies were s tudied for dala

THE PROMINENT FAMIL IES OF PUERTO RICO

on the curric ulum, tra1111ng, teachers, and the children's at t iwdes ..-\ cq uaintance with these children Jed to contacts with th e ir parents and to entry into their homes. Partic ipant o bservation was one o( the most importam m ethods of obtaining data. It enabled the investigator to check information supplied b y informants, to o btain n e "· data, and to develop insights. During contacts \\'ith these families, a technique wh ich might b e called the in\·isible or hidden questionna ire was employee! .. \ p:1nicu br question , which was always worded 1ltc salllc ,,·a\·. \\':1" in tr od uced in to casual con versa tion ,,·it lt ~t' le< l t'<l i11rorn1:1ms ,,·ho we re unaware that they \\'Crc i>ci rw i11Lcn·ie "·cd. and the response was subseqric ntl y r;rnrdecl. Ins ights r egard ing a~titudes and \ ·; ii 11cs :1~ "·c.:11 :1~ o \·cn m odes ol be ha v10r were obt·1i11cd tr0111 oTo up discuss ions and arg uments which ,:-ere i 11 tc11 t io~ :il h· provoked. . \ddit.ion :i l understanding of the group's li fe style ,,·as g: 1 i 11 ed I>~ ohscr\'ing such aClivitie~ as corporation boa rd tll Cet i ng., :1ml school classes. Children ten years old :i C<'e ptcd 111c ii:. ;1 lri ~ nd , called on me. in my house, ·i iHI ·iskcd rnc 10 '"0 \l'llh them to movies and other ' , ' • ri amuscmc11ts. l \\' as also accepted b y practically all adult members of the group. since they do not restrict their so c ial activities LO indi viduals of their own age as consistentl y as America ns. In tl~ e course of fi e ld work, twenty-five men, forty women , ciglneen boys, and e ig hteen g irls were intensively inLen· ie wed . In addition, man y e lderly people were consulted for his tori cal in[ormaLion. During the rcsea rcI1 , I.1ve I) ueno R. . 1can . " c h ec k·ers, " or " nawral socio logists," and three United SLateslrain cd Puerw Rican sociologists and anthropologists were cons ul ted. The " checke rs" not only e valuated and s ubstanliated die ex ploratory findin gs but suggested new sources or inforrnation. During the final months ~ r intensive !nvest.igation of the promin e n L p eople, a fo rmal quest10nn:ure ~1 as e mployed to broacl~n and document Lhe data. ~ ~ie ques tionnaire was g1v~n to 100 .househol.ds or fam~l1es w hich had not been included 111 any of the prev10us fi e ld work . .-\!thoug h m embers o( these families h ad b een at many of the !SOci;~l, civ.ic, commercial, and oLher gatheri ngs which the m ves tig~tor a~ te nded , they had been known prior to lhe questio nna tre only casually or not al a ll. This questionnaire was essentially 1 he same as a socioeconomic section o[ the "invisible tiuestionnaire" used with the families which had b een investigated more thoroughly. lL was used to check the distrib~.nion of moda l beh avior patte rns a lready identified through systematic participant-observation. The items included in the (orma l questionna ire are listed b e low. 1.

Se x. Age. Color rat ing: 1, 2, 3·

2.

()(spouse: Sex. Age. Color rating.

.

:l· First marriage: Age at marriage. Husband. W 1(e.

Second 111 arriag-c: Age at marriage. Husband. ' •Vifc. 'l . Physical condition. 5. N L;mbcr of d a ughters. Number of sons. Children by othe r marriages. Adopted children. Ages of ch ildren. (i. i\fr1111Jcrs of tile household (family. serva nts, etc.).

421

7. Principal occupation and residence of husband's and wife's parents. S. Relatives outside of Puerto Rico. 9. Residential history: Place o[ birth. V\There reared. Last two resid ences. 10. Standard of li\'ing: Carpets. Number of cars. SerYams. Radios. Etc. 1 1. Owner o( house. Other property own ed by family. 12. Mass communications: Per.iod icals. Magazines. Books. Radio. Other. 13. Educational history of husband, wife, and children. 14. Occupational history of husband. 15. Other sources of income: Stocks. Bonds. Interest on mortgages. Fann income. Other. 16. ' Var veteran. '<\lhich war? 17. .l\Iembership in clubs, professional societies, unions, cooperatives (now and formerly). 18. Religion of husband. Lifelong? H changed, why? Same for wife. Frequency of confession . 19 . Church attendance. Husband, wife, sons, daughters . 20. Con tribucions to dn1rcb. 21. Trips to the United States and other foreign countries. 22 . i\Jeans of transportation when traveling. 23. Residence and occupation of brothers. 0£ spouse's brothers. Inheritance of husba nd and wife (money, stocks, business, je\\'elry, ia nd, etc.). \1)10111 do you visit most often: relatives, fri ends, brothers and sisters, etc.? \ 1

'Vith the suppleme ntary data from the questionnaire, therefore, informati o n concerning b asic socioeconomic characteristics was available for 200 farni lies. One hundred famili es were inten s ive ly investigated both by m ean s o f the invisible questionnaire and by th e more personal techniques of interviews, participation, and so forth . The second hundred were studied only by means o ( the formal questionnaire. H owever, becau se ana lys is showed that both g r o ups were simila r in the socioeconomic trails recorded in the questionn a ire ( Lhe independent va riables), it was assumed that t hey we r e also sim ilar in those features o( culture not examined in the questionnaire. The fun ctional r e lation between the independent and dependent variables was qualitatively established during the investigation. Informa tion was gathered fro m p eople represen ting a minimum of 200 households. l'"or some o( these, only a single ch ild in sch ool or a sing le parent served as informants. One hundred and four households, however, were made case studies. 0 ( these, 1 oo were selected to be compared with the i oo families o n which only questio nna ire data were o btained. Each of these case study households was visited many times. 1 spoke to every member of the h ouseh o ld who was on the isla nd during my investigatio n and there completed the "invis ible questionnaire." A core of twen ty ca re full y selected households represent ing fourteen fam ilies was studied more inte nsive ly during rna n y months. From these mos t ol. the q ualitative d a ta o n intimate fam ily relationships were obtai n ed. These data were the n checked with information on the fa milies in the case stud y g roup. H owever , on occasion, new in(o rmation was g lea ne d fro m a n in formant at a Rotary Club meet-

42 2

THE PEOPLE OF PUERTO RICO

ing, whose family l did not know or attempt to know, or in a house which I visited only briefly. Such data were then checked against the "core" group and the case study group, as well as with the trained and "natural" sociologists and anthropologists. DEFINING THE GROUP

In order to delineate the prominent people in the San Juan area, the investigator relied during the first four months on a few informants' ratings o( families. 1 'Vhen it became evid ent that t11is sample was likely to be too biased, members o( the group were asked to define their own g roup. Since the group is comparatively small, frequently being referred to as "one big family," it was possible to have several well-known members of it identify the prominent fami lies of San Juan. Eight persons were selected as "raters." In addition, two professional society editors assisted in this phase of the work. Each rater was asked to submi t a list of the one hundred most distinguished families in San Ju an. To counteract the influence o[ relatives, the raters were in formed that several other people were drawing up similar lists. Secrecy concerning the identity of the raters and of those included on each rater's list was guaranteed and maintained. Since each name listed represented a fami ly, the raters were asked to append to each the relatives considered to be in the prominent people category. For example, Don Influente (a fictitious name) included not only a certain elderly gentleman but also his three married children, two living sibl ings, and the widow of his deceased brother. Consequently, the prominent families included by the raters consist actually of consanguinal and collateral kin-that is, members of the "extended family." The prominent families listed included between 386 and 542 names of conjugal fami lies. During most of th e field work the n ames on these lists were considered prominent people. The eight raters were selected partly because of their r eputed knowledge of prominent people and partly beca use they represented a special segment of the group. By the rime the raters were selected, a rough typology of several subgroups ha<l been established. The estimated importance of each subgroup determined the number o( raters assigned to it. The socia l characteristics of the raters were as follows: two came from the commercial group whose social heritage was a "good" middle-class family but who presently were members o( one o( the wealth iest families on the island; two represented a grou p whose origin was "upper class" and who had remained "upper class" with great wealth in land and commerce; two others represented families who were socia ll y prominent at the turn o( the ccnwry and who still reta ined their social prestige and had some wealth; one was an elderly widow who had very high social prestige and esteem i Muc h of this time I spent in altending meclings, making Stll'v<:y trips, improving my Spanish, and in vestigating the fi eld of cum mun ications (rad i<> and press).

but whose econom ic resources had dwindled; and one person represented a group of families that had been prominent for several generations and that maintained their present well-to-do economic position by <:o·operating \\'ith the new commercial group. :\Iany of the families of the raters in cluded persons in professions as ,,·ell as in other activiti es. The two society editors who served as raters were of "good" families. They \\·ere influential within the group. many members of \\'hich accepted them as lricnds. They h;1d. lim,·e,·cr. been employ<:cl as ~ociety editors lor sc:vcral year~ and had a ccna in d<:Lt< hmcnt \\'hich the other r;tt<.:rs did not ha\·c. 1\ pr<: li111inar\' anal\'~i~ of tile 1c11 lisls of onc: l111t1 · dred names ft1r;1i~lt<:d, the follo\\'ing information: Fallli ly na111(:~ ;tppcaring- on :ill 10 lists Fanti ly 11a111<:' apl'('ariJ1g O JI !I lists . Fa111i ly na111t' :1ppl'ariJ1g Oil 8 Ji,ts . Famil y 11:1111e' appc:1ring OJI 7 lists Famil y Jl:Jlllt'' appe:1ri11g OJI() lisb . Famil y 11a111 <:~ appl·:1riJ1g oil.:; l i~ts . F:1111ily J1a1m·~ :1ppearillg- OJI ·I lists . Fa111ily Jl:tJIH; , app<:aring- 011 3 lists Family names appearing on 2 lists . Family names appearing on 1 list

.11 :{o

t!i

!I Ii li

/ (j

Ii

5

In intervie\\'s conducted with the raters after the preliminary analysis, a ll the names which were includ~d on fi ve or fewer lists were acknowledged as belong111g to the upper class by at least two other judges who had not originally included their names. Thus, the seven names found on four lists but excluded from the other six lists were resubmiued for "group'' rating to two or more of the six raters who had excluded them. These raters then conceded that, with few exceptions, the resu bmi ttcd names belonged to the best families. This originally excl uded group consisted o( nine families. They were finally classified by two or more raters as socially prominent but on the "border o[ society" (a la orilla). The remaining raters considered Lhem old and good families, but impoverished (pero les falla la tJlala). Hence, although the raters disagreed on a few families included in the one hundred finally selected, they agreed on most of the families. The disagreement, moreover, docs not seriously mar the present analysis, because the norms and ideals of the group are fairly clear even though the fringe families fail in one way or another to conform to some standards and to be completely accepted . . Analysis o f these lists disclosed that a person's position in the social hierarchy partially determines his own view of the social status groupings and that anyone's status is determined by his position in each of the economic, social, and racial hierarchies. Prom inence and "upper classness," therefore, are some·what multidimensional, fluctuating, and ill-defined. There is no clearly d elimitable "upper class," the compos ition of \.vhich is agreed upon by all of its members. Even the few undisputed core members, who were included in all ten of' the r:ners' lists, disagree among themselves on the inclLtsion of some families. Disagreement over the criteria of "prominence" in

THE PROMINENT FAMILIES OF PUERTO RICO

part revolves about the changing attitudes of this acculturated group and the raters' own claim to prominence. The older auitude stressed traditional family status; present-day attitudes give greater importance to ,.v ealth. \•Vealth-for example, the wealth of the 11 0 11veaux riches-thus competes with former criteria. 1\Ioreover, since wealth per se has become increasingly important in social rating and since in modern society the wealth o( individual families must be arrayed on a continuum rather than in sharply separated groups, this criterion is emphasized by the very wealthy because it places the poorer below themselves in the ilicrarclw. Obviously, in addition to wealth, a family's soc ial s t:~u1s is determinecl in part by cultural values and attitudes. \Vith the development of business and the expansion o[ other service-rendering occupations, many 11011uca 11x riches have appeared. Often these people l;ave come from socially obscure families and have succeeded by acquiring the skills and techniques which Puerto Rico needs to meet the requirements of its position ;1s a prominent market for United States products. Therefore, these families stress these items in determining prominence. In spite o( their different attitudes, hm_vever, the various raters and the members of the promment families agreed in general upon the relative stan_1s ~£ the different families. Disagreement centered pnnc1pally upon defining the limits of the prominent people. There were always some famil ies in the lower echelons who wished to include others lower than themselves. In order to facilitate analysis, however, attention was centered upon the undispt~t~d group of c~re families, although some fringe families ·were exammed. It is difficult and perhaps unnecessary to say precisely how large the upper class is. Its members vario usly estima ted it to consist of five hundred to one thousand f<1milies, six to eight hundred being the more common figures. . . The term "family," however, earned cl11ferent meanings. Some persons used i t to mean the conjugal ?r nuclear family consisting of mother, father and children, while others included various consanguineal and collateral relatives for several generations. Only 132 extended fami lies were on all ten of the lists made up b y the raters. These in turn included an unde~ermined number of nuclear families. Since we are cluefly concerned with the cultural patterns characterizing families which are unquestionably upper class-that is, whose behavior is considered typicall y upper classprecise delineation of the group is of minor importance. 'Vhen members of the 132 extended families marry into other families, the different nuclear fam ilies may or may not be rated by one or more persons as upper class. Since the society is neither strongly matrilineal n or patrilineal, each case would have to be judged on its own merits, a task which would have been extremely laborious and fairly unre\.varcling. As a rough estimate, the core of the upper class consists of about 200 extended families and 800 nuclear or conjugal families. More important than the total number of prom-

423

inent families are the criteria by which they are judged. Members of the group generally stated that a family should be "correct," " "prominent," "decent," or "good." Some persons could define these terms fairly clearly, while others were uncertain just what they meant. Daily conversations and observations of upper-class behavior served to clarify the characteristics of the upper . class. In general, the prestige and status of a family rested upon wealth and an acceptable source of wealth, racial and ethnic characteristics, family background, correct behavior and attitudes, and education. All of these features are discussed in detail on subsequent pages.

SOME CHARACTERISTICS O F TH E PROMIN ENT FAMILIES INCOME AND OCCUPATION

The following is a partial description and analysis of a variety of cri teria ·which determine prestige ranking in Puerto Rico. It presents only the more obviously important factors such as wealth, occupation, standard of living, race and ethnic affiliation. In addition it examines some of the major recruitment techniques of this subcultural group. ECONOMIC CRITERIA

In 1948, the Bureau of Internal Revenue reported returns for the island as follows: 2 TABLE 1. SURTAX NET INCOME BRACKETS (In Thousonds of Dollors)

6-8

8-10

10-I2

l:!.-14

14-16

16-18

268

160

11 1

69

68

42

230

95 206

75 144

52 120

32

498

133 293

74

18- 20

20- 22

22-26

26- 32

32-38

38- 44

San Juan 76 oLher municipios

31

25

35

43

17

5

35

19

38

35

20

5

Total

66

44

73

78

37

10

4-1-50

50-60

60-70

70-80

80-90

90-100

9

12

4

2

0

8 12

2

2

2

3

4

2

San Juan 76 oLher mun icipios Total

San Juan 76 oLhcr

municipios

8

8

Total

17

20

San Juan 76 oLher municipios Total

l00-150

150-200

200 and over

2

0

0

4

0

6

0

2 Letter from the Bureau of Internal Revenue co ntaining data not published al the time this manuscript was written.

424

THE P EO PLE OF PCERTO RICO

Several facLS in these returns are notable. first, o[ n et taxable income of $6,ooo or more, 904 o r 52 per cent arc from persons living in San Juan; and o( 913 returns of $ 10,000 o r m o re, i12 or 55 per cenc a re from San Juan . In oLher words, the families in Sa n Ju a n control more lhan halC the wealth of those in the upper income brackcls. ( \ Ve have no way o( estimating what is removed from the island throu~h in come from foreign investment.) 0£ the .172 famili es in San Juan ea rning $10,000 or more, poss ibly 10 pe r cent are foreigners . lt ca n probab ly be assumed that about 800 Puerto Rican families in San Juan earn at least . G,ooo and that m ore Lhan ,,oo earn at leasl 1o,ooo. Thus, if the tax figures arc correct. apparentl y a reported income of 56,ooo rath er than the estim ated $ 10,000 is the minimum to maintain some semblan ce of Ji ving standards accepwble for prominent p eople. \ VhaLever the in com e floo r of t h eir class may be, the QTOUj) is subdivided bv i tself and oth ers inw three 0 groups: Lhe rich. che very rich , and the milli o naire. The incom e normally comes lrom certain occupalions, as sho\\'n by the following table based on the so urces of in com e for the 200 h o useholds in the interview sample. 1.708 returns d eclaring a

I

Comm<:n<.:

110

Pro fessional Finance Su~ar pro cl u c tion

9G (j8

1·1

1

G o\·cn 1111<.: 1n s<.:1Tic<:

Coffee pro cl uction Ca tt I<:

2

T otal

The total sources of inco me i!> g rea ter than L11e number of brea d\\'inners beca use many person s are engaged in more tha11 one occupation . On e hundred and fo ur had one major occupation; seventy-two had two and twenty-four had three or more. lt is note,,·onh y thal, ;ilthoug h Pue rto Rico is ;111d has been essentia ll v agrarian, a substa ntial num ber o[ the well-Lo-do d erive' their \\'ealth from busin ess and the pro fcss iom. Their responses suggest the extent to which wea lth d e rived from coffee has d eclined whi le wealth d er ived from corporations a nd servicing occupations h <Js in creased. \Vhile p erson 5 o [ both Spanish a nd Pue rto Rican o rigin belonged to the commercia l, business, and professional groups of the nineteenth century, th ese servicing groups were qu ite small. T hroughout the twentieth century particul a rl y as a res ult of the introduction of mass-produced goods into a nonindustrializcd area, special gro ups eng aged in distribulion and oth er services becam e necessary. The marke t and the whole orien tation of' the eco nomv h ave a lso affecled the sou rces of wealth a nd the mc'thods of o btaining it. I t h as greatly influe nced organ i7ations to fo llow Uni led States busin ess patterns-LO in crease Lh e ir effici e n cy and profits . Today, there fore, most families includ e<l among Lhe promine n t people receive Lhe ir income from large'icale business. Some o[ the old upper-class fam ili es

" ·h ose \\'Calth and positio n o ften cam e from the ownership of unused and unprolitabl e land have temporaril y retain ed prestige even when reduced in fonun es. Bul today prominence in Puen o Rico ca nllot be maintained without wealth: im poverished famili es tend lo sink into obscurilv n o mauer what their ancestors were. Jn aclclilio1~ to bran ch es of .-\meriran firms. th ere a rc large loca lly o wned and conlrolled stores selling imp orted goods, local ins11rance compani es . hanks, radio stations, ne,rspa pcrs, tlt c:1ter<>, la rge rca I cs La le cmnpa nics. a nd Ll1c like. Sorne upper-< l:i"" IJ1 1 ~ i11 c..,sn1e n d erive th e ir in cnml'' lrnlll m :1ki 11g- :11HI n1a11a g ing i11,·c-.lm cnh. This profl'"'i1111al g1011p i-. -.111alkr tlia11 tha1 prcviOll\I}' merllionl'd. IJut 111;1ny o( it-. nJCllllJCr:-. lt;J\'(' aclcliLional '0111·cc:;. ol i1 1<0111<" '.t i < It :1-. in q:~ 11ne11t~ in sugar corpor:1tiOJ1-.. \\'hicli pa,· ,., 11 l>;.1;111ti;il di,·idemb. or in apannH: 11t ilrHl \ l 'S ;111tl ollice l )lli l cli11 g~ . So111e 111<.:11 \\·ho rccc in; the ir pri1H ip;il income lrn11 1 :1g riculu1rc ma y ;tl..,o practice :1 prolc-.-.,ion bee :111-.c it g iH·s social pre'> tige. Ob vio 11-.h·. nol all Pue rto Ri cans dc:clari 11g :1 net tax ab le ill com c o l :S!i ,<HH> lo o\·c r S!! <H>.ooo a year lorm a social c l a~s ill an y n ::d :-.ensc. [,-c11 am o 11g Lhosc w ilh sim ilar social, occ.11patio11al, and financial i11terests, the style of li ving and freq u en cy of panicipation in activities varies \\'ith finan cial abil ity. R elationships among these occupation a l groups are also somewhat cond itioned by the ind i vid ua l's p anicu lar business. The execu tivc of a small firm selling automobile tires may attend parties and busin ess meetings sponsored by a wealthy banker interested in the tire busin ess, whereas on the basis of his income alone, he wou ld be excluded from the social life or a banker wh o is n ot interested in tires. \ \!hen this gro up, which is usuall y d elined occupationally and socially, is rated according Lo "social" prestige, further signifi ca n t features of the group are refl ected. Somet imes 11011vea11x ric/1r1s are rejected for cenain social funclions in s pite of th e ir wealth, either because they acquired th e ir wealth too recently or beca use it came from dubio us sources such as bootlegging. RACIAL CRITERIA

Racia I criteria are sign i fica 11 t in pres tige eva l 11a ti o n , espec ial ly beca use undesirable charac te ristics ca n exclude individuals from certain social activilies. Althoug h in business, race a nd ethnic criteria become comparatively irrel eva nt, socially th ese may strongly affect social parti cipatio 11. On an island where most ol tlt e population shows al l manner or mixture of white, Negro, and some lndian, whiteness has become associated with the "uppe r classes," th e promine11t peop le. ,\ p erson who has marked Negro physical characleris1ics a nd is the re fore d escribed as a Negro m ay have hig h in come, grea t political powe r, and advanced educal io n, yet on racia l g rou nds may be excl uded from the inn er circles ol' i1ni111 a te fami ly life, Creek letter sorority or fraternity rn cmbership, and Lite more select social clubs. Ile ma y attend political affairs, be a guest at the governor's pa lace. a nd be in viLcd to political

THE PRO~II:'\ENT FAMILIES OF P UERTO RICO

425

cocktail parties. because people wish to cu ltivate his and professional interests from fuller participation in frie n dship, but he probably would not be asked to a this subculture results partly from the attitudes of g irl's engagement party or other more private [unc- Americans toward.> Puerto Ricans, and panly from the tions. attitud es o( Puerto Ri cans towards Americans. Codes Having :.light traces of Negro physica l traits or o( ideals o( behavior often clash, while jmerpersonal having ?\ egroes among the nearest of kin is not a relatio ns are often colored by stereotyp ed notions barrie r to soc ial acceptance, although if a person who which foster separation . appears white himself has an ancestor of strong Negro It should be pointed ou t, ho"·ever, that although in type he may be subjected to slanderous gossip. Some many parts oE the world such as Europe, Asia, the or til e> wc:d 1h ies t and most prom inent persons on the United States, and some of the South and Central isl;rnd. hm\'C:,·e 1-. ha\'e such ancestors, and wealth and . Arnerica n countries specific ethnic groups can be dealt other cri teria c:in modify any censure for Negro an- with as subcultures, in Puerto Rico ethnic differentiarcsu·,. I 11 othn ,,·ords. an incli,·idual is "wh iter" in tion into groupings is hardly possible. Perhaps the pro1 ;or1 ion 111 hi~ ,,·ea Ith . .\n}·one who is fully accepted most distincti,·e and o nly ethnic group which could i 1110 1lie 11 ppt'r (Jass is considered non-Negro, despite be dealt with and understood as such is that of the his pli~·~ic :ii ;1ppeara11ce. and i( an outsider remarks Americans who reside in the island and who maintain :11>0111 hi ~ :q>pcarance he 1nay be t0ld th at the person themselves in relatively separate residential and social h:1s J11dia11 blood far back in the line of one of his activities from those o( the Puerto Rican people (cf. R. p;1rc 11 h. 1h1111gh ne,·er of both. Jn a snide moment, how- P attie, 19.J.2). Althoug h a minority group, the Amerever. ~nllH.'t>tH' may remark that the individual had a icans here form a privil eged social and economic group. First generation Spaniards have tended to maintain ~ q~ro gra 11d11101her. i\ cgrn :ind Indian ancestry is present in many fami- themselves in certain occupational groups, namely in lies because Puerto Rico as a whole has lacked the ex- the import-export o( foodstuffs and the grocery-goods treme ra cial prejudice found in Anglo-American coun- retail business, but their isola tion from Puerto Rica ns tries. As Preston .James (1!)42) remarked of the islands is almost negligible, for their social and economic acin the Caribbean, Puerto Rico's white population has tivities carry them into participation with Puerto increased, and this is largely through the rather in- Ricans o( comparable socioeconomic sta tus. Second sign ificant role o[ racial discrimination in the choice generation Spaniards a nd other descendants of foreigno[ partners. ()[ the ::?OO women interviewed, however, ers, especia lly those of Latin origin, a lso tend to bethe writer classified only 1G (8 per cent) as having no- come Puerto Ricans; children of American parents ticeable Negro- and/or possibly Indian- physical fea- tend to remain within the American-oriented subcullllres. This c 1n be explained by the frequent racial in- ture; children having one Puerto Rican pa rent, howtennarriage of other classes and the upward mobility ever, tend to be socialized to identify themselves as Puerto Ricans. o( a fe w individuals. ETHNIC TRADITION

SOCIAL SKILLS

In spite o[ some o( th e requirements and its new economic hasis, this subcultural group is essentially La tin ,\mc rican ; its social, recreational, and religious life, alt.h o ug h now chang ing, has centered in traditional patterns derived from its Hispanic heritage. For instan ce, although Americans ("Yankees") have close business and professiona l comacts with Puerto Ricans, those who are not acculturated to P uerto Rica n life are rarely invited to p articipate in the organized sta tus group. Th ey 111ay be invited to a few social (unctions, but man y Pueno Ricans regard them as " uncivilized materialists" \\'ho cannot relax sufficiently from money g rn bbing to enjoy spiri tua I things, to cultivate such social g ra ces as Latin American singing and dancing, or to unde rstand the finer nuances of Pueno R ican attitudes and socia l behavior. l\Iany Americans who live on the island do not eve n speak Spanish. Only a very few America ns have adopted Puerto Rican patterns suflicien tly to he accepta blc as persona I fri ends. R elations b etween m embers o[ the two groups arc based on t h eir official positions, economic or governmental, rather than on persona lily traits or noneronomic common interests. Only a few have m arried PucrlO Ricans. The exclusion of :\mcrica ns o f comparable economic

The business executives and professionals do not operate solely within any particular social class. Occupational factors require them to participate on various levels o( the social hierarch y. i\Ioreover, the growth o( commercial groups h as modified the class structure of the island-a strncwre that is still in flux: these groups h ave been partially accepted into the traditional class struclurc, which is also chang ing . Thus, when a bus inessman l'ulfills the requirements for participating in upper-class social activities and is accepted in tha t circle, the station he represents gains socia l approval. H o\\'ever, acceptability today depends not only upon income and race but a lso upon ma nners, personality, and sponsorship. A typical case of an unsu ccessful asp irant to prominent socia l activities w ill illustrate this po int. The son of a fairly prosperous middle-class fam il y and a m an with n o regro physical traits nor suspicion of a "Negro grandmother" \\·as educa ted in the United States. H e is a successful p racticing physician and has addilional sources or respecta ble income. H e h ad been excluded , howeve r, beca use his informal edu ca tion h ad n ot given him the proper manners lo associate with "society." As o ne o f the most prominent women

..

426

THE PEOPLE OF P UERTO RICO

on the island stated: "You can no longer rely 0n clothes to tell you who the person is, but if you watch him at the table breeding will tell." Table manners are but one criterion; people are judged by their ability as hosts, b y the groups they mix with at cocktail parties (which indicates their perception of fine social gradations), and by their ability to adapt their behavior so that they treat their equals in one way and their inferiors in another. One should know h ow and when to use the behavior patterns and symbols of the prominent people. Th e unsuccessful aspirant just mentioned erred in pushing too hard and in overdoing what he considered "upper-class" behavior. H ad he been backed by an undisputed socially acceptable sponsor, this might have been prevented-he might have been accepted. Children of the newly rich, however, frequently become accepted into the group even when their parents have not been accepted on grounds of expected behavior because they learn proper behavior from their schoolmates who in time become their sponsors. This is one reason why it may require a generation or two for a family of wealth to become a well-established and undisputed member of the promiDent families. EDUCATION

College education has become a requirement for men in this subcu lture, because the business and professional skills needed today cannot be acquired without such training. Many of the young men go to college or graduate school in the United States, although many also attend the University of Puerto Rico, at least for a few years. Formerly a high school education or its equivalent, often in a parochial school, was deemed sufficient for women. Formal education was emphasized less because informal learning from the mother and other women relatives prepared them sufficiently for the distinctive and more traditional social role a woman then played in society. Today, however, an increasing number of girls are going through college or finish ing school either at home, in th e United States, or in Europe. Such education is strongly disturbing the patterns of behavior expected traditionally from women and thereby deeply affecting the Hispan ic patterns which heretofore have been perpetuated by women . The emancipation of women from the traditional roles assigned them by the society is largely conceptualized as "Americanization," even if the behavior of such emancipa ted women cannot really be explained in terms of copying American standards of behavior. RELIGION

The prominent families consider themselves Catholic, and in fa ce they are overwhe lmingly so. The investigator learned of on ly two households that were Protestant and four that were agnostic. The religious affilia tion of the Protestants received no special com-

ment, but the agnostics were subjected to some gossip. Since the social functions of Catholicism have changed in the last haJ( century, and Catholic-oriented values are not in overt conflict with criteria for acceptance in this somewhat loosely defined group, religious affiliation has become less important than other criteria. CULTURAL AND SOCIAL DEVIANTS

There arc a fe\,. indi,·iduals \d10 h:t\' C all the characteristics req 11 ired Ior acccpta nee in upper-class circles but who arc !.imply not int erested in these circles and wish to lead their own li\'CS. Although sometimes denouncecl as neurotic by upper-class members, cviden ti y these men mere Iy prefer to follow such persona I i11 tcrcs1 s as sc ience, a rt, or husi ncss. Their socia l withdrawal , ho\,.e,·e1·, cloe~ not render their families inelig ible. For example, the daughter of one such man ma rried into and wac; complete ly accepted by the group. Other persons arc excl uded or expelled from the group because they disregard its conventions. Thus, one who marries a person classed as a Negro or one considered undesirab le for other reasons may lose his position. A certain exclusive upper-class club in San Juan decreed that when a member marries a nonmember, an individual application for the spouse must be made. If the application is refused, the memb er may resign, thus admitting loss o( status. l\farrying a former mistress may affect the status position of a prominent man, depending on various factors such as th e social background and esteem which the man, his first wife, and his mistress have had throughout their lives. At first the situation is regarded as embarrassing, but as lime passes, if the man is powerful in business, in politics, or in the pro· fessions, others begin to ignore the matter, until eventually prestige is regained or even increased. Scandal connected with major crimes may embarrass both an individual and his famil y to a point of losing their position. In such events everything possible is done to avoid publicity; powerful families, for example, may suppress newspaper stori es. To break some conventions may entail censure but not necessarily rejection. For example, scandal connected with proof that the family head had been a rum-runner or bootlegger during proh ibition days or a black marketeer during the last war cou ld exclude a possible member from the circle of prominent families, while in other cases rumor or knowledge of such th in gs is not necessa ri 1y a barrier. Tolerance is also manifest in politica l affiliation. Political extremists, from the groups' point of view, such as lndependestos and Fascists, are accepted by the group. Conformity with all the criteria fo r grou p participation does not suffice for admission. Even good taste in clothing, art, music, and other esthe tic features is not eno ugh. Apparently, the crucial fa ctor or criterion is a sensibility to the very finely graded prestige system within the group itself, the ability to g rade every-

THE PROl\fINENT .F AMILIES OF PU ERTO RICO

one within the upper class. This ability can be acquired only through intimate knowledge of the ingroup-through participating in its social affairs and above all through being counseled by women in-theknow. Another aspect of the required sensibility to social nuances within the class is the ability to recognize and maintain social distance between classes. Since social (unctions vary 'in their inclusion of limited cliques and larger groups of the upper classes, it is necessary to treat lhe participants in appropriate ways- to behave democratica lly to out-group participants at the proper time a nd to relax in appropriate degrees ,,·he n associa ting with in-group participants. Since tl1 e larger social coiuext within which the upper cl asses live is rapidly chang ing, the importance of these new sensibi Ii ties has increased. These nuances have become particularly important because the class alig nments in Puerto Rico have changed in recent decades and are only now becoming fix ed . .\ ne\\' class of commercial families tied principally to United States business has come into prominence. A t first, this new group of prominent famili es was so sma ll that other families which were simultaneously holding economic prominence easily accepted them into the inner circles. But the number of families which have wealth, education, and proper behavior has increased to the point that the concept of the group as "one big family" is tlueatened. T~1e promine nt families within this class have necessarily become graded according to a finely shaded hierarchy. The present-day criterion of prominence has become increasingly a matter o( sheer wea~th, education, and other skills, which vary greatly with the fortunes of comme rce. Acceptance into and grading within the social ranking system is judged by the group itself; and this judgment attaches importance to the criteria of life style for grading within the socia l hierarchy, making it possible for the new system to continue operating on the historical base of the patterns of hierarchization which characterized the original group. MOBILITY

l'vfobility between social g rades within the group of prominent families is primarily a change of status from one to another of four generally recognized grades : first class (p rim era), second class (segunda), third class (tercera), and fringe (a la orilla). Each of these grades represents primarily a clique based on amount of wealth . All are "good families," but distinctions are ma.de belween the "rich," "very rich," and "millionaires." Movemen t between the first, second, a nd third grades is a matter o( acceptance by special cliques. vVhen a person's economic fortun es prosper, he will be invited by a more prominent family to sit at its table at a sma ll party, to come to its home before or after a soc ial affair for cocktails, or to be a. m ember o( a sma ll group which goes out to a night dub. Mobility from outside these subgroups is, of course,

427

far more difficult than mobility between grades. ·when a family outside the total group acquires wealth, to· getber with the other basic requirements discussed a bove, acceptance may finally be achieved b y finding a sponsor. Sponsorship is absolutely necessary, because these groups are defined largely by interpersonal relationships. A high ranking sponsor will have greater success than a lesser person. A famil y will be sponsored only if it has the basic requirements for membership. The know-hows about the finer nuances of expected social behavior required for acceptance are learned by participa tion, usually made possible by the sponsor, who assists the family members in widening their social contacts, especially in the areas of recreation. For instance, they start to participate in the more intimate life of certain cliques, and their names are put up for club membership. This is a difficult period for the aspiring family; like a college student being rushed for a fraternity, it is under constant inspection. The very test of its acceptability, however, is to behave with nonchalance and ease in every situation. The sponsor is generally able to judge the accepta: bility of the new family so well that its rejection by the group may be regarded as an affront to him and the candidate. The successful sponsor no t only introduces the family to prominent circles but adds to his own retinue or circle of intimate friends and thereby augments his prestige. In addition, the sponsor who has chosen wisely receives other benefits: if the new family has growing economic power, it aids the sponsor through gifts, through business deals, a nd by giving him favorable publicity. However, in the final analysis one's position in the social hierarchy depends not upon one's ability to purcha:~ or display ~)re~tige symbols but on the group's recogn1t1on of one s nght to control a nd use these symbols.

THE BUSINESS EXECUTIVE AS A SOCIAL TYPE A detailed d escription of the lifeways of the Puer to Rican businessman throws light both on the ideals of behavior set by the society for the successful businessman and on the effects American business institutions are having on the behavior of prominent Puerto Ricans. The foll owing picture is a cultural abstraction of the behavior of the prominent man in his various statuses as executive, fath er, husband, brother, Cath· olic, club member, with special emphasis o n his values and his levels of aspiration. In this section of the paper he is dealt with as a social type defined by his status within the subculture. The nature of commercial structu res m akes exacting demands on the Puerto Rican executive who o'vns or manages a business firm or who holds a post in a business enterprise. The loca l executive operates w ithin a hierarchical structu re in a business world, where hio-her b echelons of control are u sually located, ultimately, in the United States. Usually he is not the tycoon who

42 8

THE PEOPLE OF PUERTO RICO

controls business, but merely a cog within a highly patterned business structure. Obligations, privileges, and requirements for successful bu siness operations seem to be largely defined by American enterprises in American terms. Since the financi a l success of a Puerto Rican executive depends on his connections with American firms and American markets, he has tO follow American business techniques and standards, and in many respects his style of life is similar to that of many wellto-do American business executives. Frequently, however, he does more than merely administer a business. He has to sell good s to a Puerto Rica n public in Puerto Rican terms, and operate the business within the framework of Puerto Ri can laws and statu tes. As the cultural context in which the American business executive opera tes diHers from that of the Pueno Rican, the subculture of the Puerto Rican businessman cannot be understood in American terms. Close examination of the ways of life o[ the Puerto Rican business executive reveals how, within the context of the insular culture, American patterns undergo local adaptations.

g roups. Th ey do not merely make a li,·ing : they ob· tain a share of the "plenty" which e nh;in ces their social prestige and esteem . Those man y other Puerto Rica ns who participate in the sa me busine:>ses and professions but who ha,·e 11ot yeL ach ie,·ed a life o( plenty, but whose "·ays of life are subjencd to constam influences and requirements from tl1o~c who have already reached positions of wea lth. orient the ir behavior, values, and life goa l toward s a life of ple nty. In practice, they can only caricatllrC the li fe o f the prollli · nen t people \\·ho se L the gnab o l th e ir li \'C.''> ;111d \\'ill1 whom they i11tcran and rcl:it c tltcnhch· e~ in thc "trncLUre of business l1i.cra rd1ic.-. and tilt: <01ts<.:qllent soc ial activities outside \\·liicl1<11ar;tncri1e modcrn hll.sincs~ in a complex soci ety. :vJost of the tippcr-cb;.s rnct1 ;ire c 11g;1gcd in coll! · mercial pursuits. E\'c n men ,,.h<h<: \\'ealtli comes lrom sugnr production arc more bu ~i n<.:~~mcn than large landowners, for ~ ugar orga11i1atirnts ate really large factories in \\'ltich 11ppcr-c la~s 111en <>«up,· exeuni,·c positions. The naLUrc of commercial structures makes cxani11g demands of the Puerto Rican who holds an executive or managerial post. The loca l executive is subject to pressures from higher echelons wh ich arc usually MAKING MORE THAN A LIVING located in the United States, and h e in turn passes The requirements imposed by the group in order to them along to the lower echelons in Puerto Rico. maintain a certain style of life, which in turn pro- These key administrative posts involve more than vides the basis for entry into various group act ivities, running a business. The executives not only follow can hardly be categorized as making a living. The American business methods and standards, but much members o( this subcultural group in contrast to o[ their way of life or subculture is like that of wealthy many people in the other studies are not engaged American businessmen. In Puerto Rico as in the United in a struggle for physical existence. Rather they are States, business is closely interre lnted with political interrelated in maintaining a life style which calls activities, social behavior, and other features. for making more than a living wage. They strive, These intimate and extensive economic relations lhrough th eir economic pursuits, to ga in both socinl with American businessmen have placed a premium prestige and socia l esteem.3 Therefore, attitudes and upon becoming Americanized . i\Icn in the United ' 'alues which this group bring tO their work differ from States seek Puerto Rican representatives whom they those found in other groups lower in the economic can understand, wh o conform t0 American standards hierarchy. These values are firmly implanted during and va lu es in commercial transactions and in other childhood and are constantly reinforced during lhe aspects of their living. Subsequent sections 011 polit ics, re lig ion, the family, education, a11d other subjects process of socialization (see pp. 434- 35). Within the group of prominent families there are will show how Americanization of the economic pata few marginal persons who are pressed economically terns has in ev itably involved man y phases of their life. To judge from a few days spent in the offices o[ four in their attempts to maintain an "upper-class" way of life. To a typical member o( the upper class, how- informants, from frequent visits to the offices of about ever, loss o[ pos iLion in business would only mean the twenty other persons, from interviews or conversations inability to keep up standnrds; he would have no fea1· on the subject with about fifty men, and from interthat a livelihood would not be available to him. This views with several secretaries. the working day or the class views the economic world as one o[ plenty, not businessrnan lacks the routine which characLcrizes o[ sca rcity. In Pu erto Rico these economic values and sucl1 speciali1.ed occupations as that of farmer, farm attitudes set the subculture of the prominent, success- laborer, or secre tary. He has no fixed office hours, ful business and professional people apart from other and he assigns routine tasks to oLhcr mcrnbers of the Staff. The Pu erto Rican executive, however, maintains a " These two frequ entl y used lcnns signify differcn L pheno m e na; patriarcha l position in his concern. All matters not social prestige is the attitud e oft.he community 1011'i1rd an y pcrso11 who holds a cc r1ai11 social Hation; social esLecrn is th e a 1ticovered by routine procedures are brought to him, 1L1de of 1hc tommunit y toll'ard a p<1rti cular pcrso n·s su ccess ell" for his subordinates are no t free LO make ind ependent failure in fulfilling the ex p ccta 1ions or his social sl<1tio11s or role. decisi o ns. There is a tremendous d ependen cy on the Thus. LIH; prcs icle11l of a large hank has social pres t igc l>y vinue owner-executive: employees go to the head of the firm of lti, siaws. bu t 1he socia l cs Lcc m in which he is h eld d e p ends 11po11 he )\\· we ll he d ischarges his du Lics in the role of banker. wilh any and all probl erns, incll!cl ing some perso nal

THE PROl\llNENT FAMILIES OF PUERTO RICO

ones which do not involve the business; established ro utines tend to collapse, causing friction between emp loyees and between departments. The executive's daily work includes dictating letters, writing memoranda, initiating new procedures, reading reports from his staff, and study ing reports on business trends, legislation, and other matters. For a few clays or weeks, several times a year, the executive must concern himself "·ith inventory and reports. Because ur his patriarchal posit.ion, the Puerto Rican cxenlli\·c is per~onally acquainted with all or most or hi~ c111ployccs. Occasionally the executive's relatives represent a l;1rgc minority or his employees. In sm aller organi1:11 ions emp loyees who arc not related to the h <.::1d oltcn ask him LO be /H1dri110 o[ t11eir marriage and or godfather to their chi ld . .-\ padri110 of a mar1·i:1g-e is the best man and in former days theoretically h;id some responsibility [or the welfare of the couple and lor m:1intaini11g the marriage. The godfather of a child is the one who stands for the child at baptism. Formerl y, this clllailed responsibility for the child's welfare. Tod;1y the employrnenl of relatives and of riwal kin is used by the executive principally to foster the feel ing that his concern is a family one. The introducLio1~ o( ritual kinship relations into a business organ ization gives the employees added emotional security, because ritual kinship in this context appears to insure good personal relationship with the executive, and can thus enhance their security and position. The new (unctions of ritual kinship illustrate the secularization of a religious feature. At present these relationships funct ion chiefly in business, having lost most or al I of their religious implications. By using th ese feaw res, the employer strengthens the familypatriarch pattern of his bus iness. en~erpris~, while tl~e employees ga in emotiona l secunty rn thetr econom ic status. The executive feels that he must [ollow many r\merican patterns of beha~io1: for the sake o( .bu~in~ss, but these also permeate s1g111 ficant aspects of his life. H e attends luncheons and meetings of the local Rotary or Lions dub and of the Chamber of Commerce. Often th e executive eats at the very exclusive Bankers Club on the roof of the Banco Popular, where he mainwins conta cts with other important people. Membe rship in the club is highly restricte~l and carries great prestige. Jn his ow n office, the executive must also meet many people who wish to use his prestige to their advantage but who also can be of vnlue to him. Since the executive must maintain contacts in the UniLed States, he makes periodic business trips to New York a nd other cities. Jn turn, representatives of American firms mnke tours of inspect.ion of the island. I n these contacts, the Puerto Rican executive is aided by Lhe k n ow ledge he accumulated while attending secondary school and college in the United States and by his contacts with American businessmen residing on the island. The irnponance or speaking fiuenL English and o( understand ing American behavior cannot be exag·geratecl. Geuing along with Arnericans is an important

429

factor in commercial su ccess. The American businessman on the island is simply a variation of a tourist. He selects a Puerto Rican representative with whom he thinks "he can do business,'' which means a person like himself. Many American businessmen express disapproval of certain Puerto Rican business establishm.ents which do not meet their standards. Puerto Rican executives are aware of the Americans' preference, and many make great efforts to conform tO the demands that they .American ize their life style. They can do t his more easily than a n y other group because of their wealth and their social contacts. The business executive must maintain rapport not only with his American concern but also with the Puerto Rican community, and particularly with the subculture of business and professional men. He is thus a member of two social systems which are often conflicting, and success requires a difficult conformi ty to both. The psychological implications of such behavioral demands are, of course, beyond the scope of this paper, but it is culturally relevant to examine how the society has developed socia lizing techniques that prepare an individual for roles in the American business world as represented in Puerto Rico. In Puerto Rico, as perhaps in any society in which personal relationships have only recently been shattered by more impersonal institutions, the tendency has been to personalize the institutions by identifying their l eaders with the institutions themselves. Hence, to advertise his firm, an executive must participate in civic functions. Furthermore, to maintain the social prestige necessary for business success, he n1ust entertain and be entertained. Savoir-faire at a cocktail party and the ability to give a good one are therefore economic as ·well as social assets. The interrelationship between business and social activities is also illustrated by the trend t0 hire individuals well established in "upper-class" society. Their names increase the prestige of the firm and facilitate expansion. As many of these individuals have been educated in the States, they are an additional asset in the firm's relationship with t h e mainland. Interrelations o( business with politics are frequently found too. Members o[ prominent families often either are candidates for office or obtain imponant government positions. These ties represent some o( the mu! tiple stalus relationsh ips in which an individual may be involved as a resu lt of a particular, socially approved status in which he has obtained some prominence. Because he is a businessm an, his activities extend into other areas of the society; government service, social wel(are, and charity work, for instance, add to his prestige and directly or indirectly add to his business success. In order to achieve th is success, he attends many social (unctions and frequents the clubs a nd bars. A businessman may appear to be doing nothing but enjoying himself al a cockta il party while actually he is in the midst o( his -.,vork. H e is a represen ta ti ve, an ambassador, a symbolic aclvertisemen t o( his firm, every minute he is viewed by other people. A success-

430

THE PEOPLE OF PUERTO RICO

423, income tax figures record a range from a net of $6,ooo to over $200,000 a year for those individuals filing tax returns. The lower figure reported permits a certa in style of life which, compared to that of workers and clerical personnel, allows much more material comfort and more conspicuous consumption . .Although the small executive seldom realizes the higher cultural goals of his group, he is never concerned about basic necessities . There is always money or credit to provide food, shelter, clothing, med ica l care, and recreation . Another attribute of top executives and managers is of course power. :\n owner or executive lias many people at his disposal whom he hires and whom he can use to obtain his ends. 111 addition , he can in· fluence lcgisla t. ion and administrative action, and his influence may affect the lives of many people who are connected to him only indirecLly. Recentl y this power has been challenged by legislation regulating em ploycr-em ployee re l:t Lions and by labor unioniz;nion among sug-;1r cane workers, dock hands, and workers in other liclds. J\lany members of the subcultura l group have resisted this encroachment upon their power, terming the trends "socialism," "communism," and "socia l revolution." I n private conversations, executives identify these threats with union leaders. Their (ear of a redistribution of power has led some of the groups to try to increase their political power. Some commercial and professional men have sh ifted their allegiance to the strong Popular party; one indication of this has been the increasingly frequent appearance of Popular party leaders at social functions given by prominent people who prev iously belonged to other parties. Social legislation moreover has become more conservative. However, only some of the socially prominent famil ies are participating in this poli tical merger; financ iers in sugar have generally avoided it, while representatives of banking, b uilding, and o ther commercial groups have been more responsive. Changes in the attitudes and polity of Popular party leadership reflects in some respects the nature o( the economic-political power structure. Because Puerto Rico requires an expansion in capital and investments a nd more skilled ta lent in business and government, this subcultural group has become indispensable to the government, especially as more self-governmen t has been implemented. As the New Dea l finally waned in the Un ited States, the Popular party had to alter its methods and goals and adopt a program more acceptable to the economic power groups in the island ECONOMIC ST A TUS AND O THER REWARDS and in the United States in order to strengthen the The way of li(e of the bu sinessman is largely con- island's economy under the new terms and to attract ditioned by his occupation. The executive is rewarded capital investments from the United States. For the individual bus inessman another reward for for his work by achieving goals which are highly valued in modern society: money, material weal th, hi s position is the fu lfillment of se lf-concept ion . This social prestige, social esteem, fulfillment of seH con- fulfillment might be regarded as somewhat segmented cep tion- all expressions of and attributes of power since economic success is not the only factor in assuring success in other realms of life. Jn general, how· in the society. Business executives do not, of course, make up a ever, in this subculture, goals and values interna lized uniform 01· sta ndard income gro up. As shown on page during infan cy, childhood, a nd youth may be achieved.

ful businessma n deliberately appears in public in as many important areas o f community life as possible, for although attendance a t these d ifferent funct ions claims much of his time, i t is essential in building up the "good name" of his concern. They may be satiated with these socioeconomic events but they are under such pressure that even the most prominent men are only partially successful in evad ing celebrations on the grounds of having more important business engagements. The mixture of social and economic elements in business was dramatically displayed at the opening of a new branch office in Santurce by one of the largest business enterprises on the island. A party was held in a new air-condi tioned, ultra-modern building. The list of guests, who came by invitation, included the social register of the island together wi th a few distinguished Americans and foreigners. It was an urban, cosmopolitan party. The best cocktai ls and food from the finest restaurant on the island were served under the supervision of an American manager. The highest representative of the Catholic church on the island, an American, blessed the new enterprise. Many of the guests were persons wl~o attended only the most important events. Among them ·were retired men in their late sixties who seldom attended any such affairs but who nonetheless came to pay tribute to this successful man. Some guests had come reluctantly as it was a Sunday morning. The event was of major social significance and simultaneously outlined the economic lines of power which the host had at his disposal. It displayed an economic kingdom reinforced by allies who held social, economic, religious, and political power, prestige and esteem. Similarly, attendance at certain governmental affairs, such as the opening of a publ ic hospital, denotes political ties and sanctions. Men who will not actively participate in politics can use these functions as a means of displaying political connections. To a prominent man, fiestas are an essential part of work; most social events have economic functions. T he businessman finds in these social events a power struggle. By attending them he hopes to demonstrate his economic an<l political connections, to reinforce his socioeconomic station through his acceptance by the members of the elite group, to establish new contacts, to create and maintain goodwill and a "good name" for his firm , to pay respect to the host, and to solidify and mainta in the in-group.

TH E PROMINENT FAMILIES OF P UERTO R I CO

Throughout his life, beginning with expectations acquired during his childhood and passing through later phases o[ indoctrination within the subculture, an individual learns to view himself as a sucessful adult businessman. He believes that he can obtain his goals through superior inLelligence, training, and hard work. Usually he e ither attains or approximates these goals. His sLatus affords him every advantage for realizing his se lf ex pecla ncies. This fullillinent of sel[.concept is extremely impon:111L to J>ueno Ricans because it is intimately bound up wilh Lhe culwral ,·alue of dignidnd, one of Lhc most imponam values on the island. Anyone can h:i,·e tlig 11idad- a booLblack or bank president. To h:ivc dig11idad . the person must conceive of himself a nd be! icvc o Lhers c:once ive of him as successfully fullilling- th e cxpcnanc ies of his various statuses. 'When a person's eva lu ation is that he has played his role s11cct"~:.f11lly. he has this important characteristic ol d1g 11iclrul. Because of his birth, the prominent person has C\'Cry ad\'antage in oblaining dignidad. AlLhough Lhc goa ls o( Lhe upper classes are rather widely shared on tl1e island, the majority of persons cannot rea lize them. The fina l and most obvious reward g iven to this group is the wealth that insures it a high standard of living . \ Vhen the young son of a businessman returns from the United St:ites as a college or university graduate, trained in va rious commercial skills, he usually joins his father's business, which may be expanded lo include him, or else a new business is started for him. Young men with equ iva lent training but who have no capilal or credit available to them usually start as salaried employees with firms. If the father is a patriarch who wishes to keep his sons under his aegis, he is like ly to expand his own business and to find or to create top positions within his company for his sons, who w ill jointly inherit Lhe business when he dies. If he is a very ambitious and successful man, Lhe father sets up an economic kingdom of several types of businesses wh ich are associated and linked with his own original enterprise. L ess often, the father wishes his son to establish his own independent busi ness. But a fter the father's death, when all Lhe child ren inherit the business, Lhe fami ly usually makes a joint decision whether to continue the business as before or expand into new fi e lds. ' Vhen there are many sons, some of them may be tra ined in professions different from that o( the parent. These carr y o n their professions, but they also inherit an eq ua l sha re of the business even though lhey do not take any active pan in Lhe b usiness. Such men are contenl with this arrangement, since they maintain their shares a nd recei,·e approximately the same share of the profils as their brothers in the firm. Rivalry does occur, h m\·ever. In one family a professional man claimed Lhal his brothers had increased th eir sa laries at the expense o f profiLs and o( his own share until even the youngest brother's tota l earnings were greater th an his. This man wanted a bonus in addition lo the

431

regular returns on his shares so that his income wo uld at least equal that of his youngest brother, but he had not succeeded in accomplishing this when last contacted. Among the prominent businessmen, there are not on ly those who inherited a business or were financed b y their fathers, b ut a considerable number of men in their forties or fifties who through their lifetime have achieved wealth by their own efforts. Usually the families were wealthy enough to send the children to college or perhaps to business school, but they were unable to set them up in business. After their training they usually worked for someone else. Through good fortune or foresight, they joined American concerns during a period of transitional development in the Puerto R ican economy and rose to positions o[ weal th and power. During the emire American period-especially during the First ' •Vorld \Var, the expanding twenties, and the market-hungry thirties-goods were available on consignment. American companies ga\'e d isplays and sample products to people who would try to establish their products in the Puerto Rican market. i\Iany in· d ividuals without great wealth advanced by allying Lhemselves w ith these firms, learning the business with the firm or in college; the group has become one of the most important segments of the prominent families. At the time o( the present study, this process h ad yet to run its full course. There were sti ll some midclleclass people starting businesses of their own. One, who had worked for a firm at less than S.3,000 a year, had staned his own business a few months before the study began. D uring his fust year he cleared over S10,ooo and seemed likely to earn some S20,ooo in his second year. Two other middle-class families and one prominen t family also became representatives of American fi rms during the study. At present, however, the d istribution of goods is largely conu·olled b y long established Puerto Rican and United States firms. The new governmental policy of protecting and granting tax exemption to new industries tends to favor United States investors. Although these factors tend to fix an economic hierarchy, mobility is still possible because the economy is expanding. Since some goods are in great demand in P uerto Rico but not in the United States, and thus may be overlooked by the established representatives in San Juan, alert businessmen may market these goods successfull y. The frequency of becoming rich in this way, however, has d ecreased in proponion as rhe major commercial items imported from the United States have become established in the accounts of the more important and stable Pu eno Rican distributors. The new kind of recruitment inlo lhe group o( success ful businessmen has brought changes which have affected Pueno Rico as a whole, especially during the last halC-ce ntury. The grow ing importance o[ export crops, o f marketing industriall y manufaclllred goods, of governmental (unnions, of the pro-

432

THE PEOPLE OF PUERTO RICO

fessions, and of o ther developments reflecting modern change h as created la rge n ew middle classes of business and professional men throug hout the island. The wealthier and more as tute members of these g roups h ave achieved considerable upward mobility, many of them acquiring p rominence. Through investing their s urplus earn ings in the expanding s uga r mills, in American stocks a nd bonds, <ind in new service industries and companies, this new g ro up o( businessmen remained within the economic current and was carried b y it into t heir positio ns of promin ence. Some of them who h ad bee n employees of fa iling firms established th eir connections wi th the Un ited .States because they had n o choice but to accept the Ameri can offers. Subsequently they were carried up the econom ic hierarchy h y insula r trends. Not all th ese persons, h owever, had wished to a lly themselves with A merican business. As one man sa id, "\l\fhat else could I do? 1 was afraid of being fired. My wages were b eing cut, and my fami ly was growing.'" This sa m e man also reca lls that a fri end of his, who now boasts of his foresig h t, in dustry, and business cunning, became a representative of an American firm beca use he had lost his previous position . There are some persons who profess co have had foresight, person s who cla im to h ave recognized that s ugar was Am erican and coffee was Span ish. These p ersons went into sugar produ ction, and as s ugar grew in economic importa nce their wea lth gr ew. This group, however, ev id ently had little ch o ice, sin ce the coffee industry was already closed to all except the famili es who owned la nd. P eople who had small sums of money but little land went into business partnerships. T he professed "foresight" of the latter may represe n t a rea listic d iagnosis of economic trends, but it may a lso represent a rationalization of a cho ice wh ich h eld no rea l a l tern at ive bu t which finally ca rried them into the higher in com e brackets. R ecruits for positions in the upper income brackets today come p rincipa lly fro m middle- a nd upper-cla ss fami li es. During the last fifty years under United States politica l a nd economic domination, the trends of Puerto Rican econ om y which had started during the Spanish d om in ation became intensified, a nd th e island h as been shifting toward an industrialized economy. Because many of the o ld established groups h ave been unable and relu ctant to ch ange their econ omic mode o f li fe s ufficien tl y to adjust to modern trends ' a new oToup o f fami lies has gain ed control of many of the higher economic sta tions. However, at the present tirne both the ch a nges and the adaptations to them are we ll entren ched , o n-go ing processes, ancl establ ished bu sin ess h o uses usuall y gain control of nearly all n ew important items o[ commerce. Thus, the upward an d downward mobility of the previo us decades is gre'1tly decelerated, and today th e class system tends to be relativel y stable. ~

!>mall items, and it was impossible to account for all ea rned mon ey b ecau se earnings and expend itures are d elicate subjects. These people do not worry a bou L n ecessi Lies. The re is always s ufficie nt money for food, shelte r, m edi ca l care, clothing, and recreation. Most fam ilies have a su rplus for savings a nd in ves tmen ts. T h e follow ing data will amply d em o nslrate this. Th e h ea lth of this gro up is exrrern ely good. Of th e 200 fam ilies illlen ·iewed, 11 011c ol lite adults is physically handicapped 1 :in d 01tly :l of Lhc ·Iii'..? child rc11 are physically h ;111d ic:1pped . .\t the Lime o J Lit e i11 Lcrvie\\"s no one ,,·as bedridde n. This excellc.:11t hcaltlt refl ects a good diel, ~an i 1: 1 t io11, s1lllicic 1H t'C)>l. :i nd :1dcq uate care. \ Vhc11 ;..ic k n e.~' do c ~ <Jccur. medic;il :1id is ava il able . If th e illncs' is :,e rio1 1.' :111cl it i .~ medica ll y adv isab le, the patient is 11 ~ u:dly 1;1kcn to th e ll 11i1 cd Sta tes for trc:1tme111. l\ fateria l good s ;ire t he llHh l oll\·io11s indi c:1ti o 11 o f the standard o l Ji\·ing. Th e kind o[ l1ou s i11 ~. c:1rs. fu rnitu re, recreation. :11 1d other l orm.~ of co11spicuo11s consumptio n serve as indices lor materia l wea lth . The first table below shows the number of residents per h ouse, exclud ing se rvants; the second shows th e numbe r of rooms in Lh e house. (This fi g u re includes t he kitchen and bath.) N umb e r of Peo/1lc:

Living i11 I-louse at T im e of Int erview

N11 111ber of

F11111ilir:s

Pe,-cc11tagc of Families 22

26Y.! 5

24

G

1 I

1h 311.! 1%

7 3 3

7 8

9

N 11111b cr of U oo111s i 11 I-/ ouse

7 8 9

l

Y.!

N 11111bc r of

Perce11 tage

}-[ 01/SCS

Of f-1 O!ISCS

4

2

37 33

18\6 I fi

Y:i

10

10

11

71t·~

1:!

..._

STANDARD OF LIVING

T h e standard of living described in this section shows how fundam entall y t h e upper class differs from other groups. Th is descr iption does not include many

10

3 17

The furnishings and d ecorations or upper-class h omes are lavish , varyi ng in s tyle from ultra modern to classic. \ Vit hi11 this subcultural gro up, standards an d c.1ual ities of housing a nd furnishings vary tremendously. The food con sum ed by the g roup is largely Puerto Rican (tropical), although Span ish food and 1\me rican can ned food are common. l'vfost standard Ameri can brands are fam iliar to t he islanders. }"o r g uests, and especially at large p <1rt ies, food tends to ·I T il e 11ccd 10 \\' C<l r c~eglasscs w as not class ilied as a handica p.

433

THE PROi\rtNENT FAMILIES OF PUERTO RICO

be cosmopolitan, both local and fore ign delicacies being served. Nonnaily a great variety of food and beverages are at hand at all times, thanks to the use of deep freezes. Ad ults take highballs before dinner and wine and liqueurs with their meals. Of the !?OO households studied, 17 (81h per cent) had one or more air-conditioned rooms. l\fany women, however. do not like air-conditioning; when going to air-conditioned mm·ies, (or instance, they usually carry a light coal or a wrap. Sixt y- three (:P 1~ per cem ) o( the 200 interviewed Limili cs o\\'n not on ly lheir dwellings but a week-end vac1 tion h ouse, often in the mountains within an hourand -a -hal[ dri\'C from the city. During hot weather some fa 111 iI ies I i,·e in 1.hese houses. A few fam ilies maintain one or two apartments in the United States for the ir frequent d s its to New York, Boston, and other cities. One hundred nine (54."Y:!- per cent) own to\\'11 houses in San .Juan ; 20 ( 10 per cent) own multidwe lling h11ildi11gs; 2 ( 1 per cent) have cattle farms; 71 (:Ei 1 ,~ pe r cent) om1 some sugar land; and 28 (14 p er cent) ha,·e small truck garden farms. Sixty-four (32 per cen t) of the 200 interviewed families own some commercial property. The 200 families had the following number of cars in Puerto Rico at t he time of the interview. Some also had cars in the Un ited States, but these are not recorded. N umber o f Cars fJ CI" F11111ily

Nu mber of Families

Percentage of Families

8

0

'l 53~

107 !!

3 1 or more

73 9 ' 3

3GY.i 4¥.! 1 1t~

Possibly because of traffic congestion and parking difficulties, some men and women who live in San Juan preCer to use taxis rather than to own a car. Because domestic help is relatively cheap, servants are not as good an indication of wealth as in the United States. I\fost middle-class families in San Juan have an adolescent girl as a servant, whereas the richer families hire mature women or, more characteristically, male servants. Female Servants in the House

Number of Se rva11ts

Nu111ber of H o uses 31

Percentage of H o uses 151,{?

2811?

:l

57 89

4

20

I0

5

3

441,1:! 1 1,~

Mole Servants in the House

N umbe r of Servants

N11111ber of H.011ses

Perce ntage of 1-Iouses

0

56 108

54

2

3 oi· more

29 7

28 1 ,1)~

3~

In a few cases where salary was ascertained, servants received between fifteen and twenty-five dollars a month in addition to room and board. \ 1\Tomen received less than men. In 19 o f the 200 interviewed families, servants a nd their children occupied special quarters in the employer's house or on his grounds. The variety and quantity of clothing and ornaments worn by both sexes is a bout like that of comparable income groups in Europe and North Ameri ca. This group reads newspapers, magazines, professional journals, and books p ublished in Puerto Rico, North a nd South America, and, occasionally, in Europe. The fo llowing data are from the 200 interviewed families . Pnerlo Rican Publication s in Home El Mundo (conservative newspaper) El l111parcial (daily tabloid) Puerto Rico l/11strado (magazine) Other Puer to Rican Publications

N u mber of Families

189 124

181 168

Num b er of South Jl m e rica11 Publications in Hom e

37 24

3

9

Numbe r of United Stat es P11blicatio11s in Home

5 2

3

3

17

4 or more

173

T wo families who did not receive United States p ublications in their homes had access to them in their parents' homes. The American publica tions were r ead regularly; Reader's Digest in both English and Spanish - the English edition is preferred- and T ime and Life are more popular than any of the others. Vogue, Better I-Jomes and Gardens, Charm, and House Beautiful are also w idely reacl. The following data are from the 200 interviewed families. U nite d Stales Publicalio11s in Hom e L i fe Tim e R eader's Digest Home iWagazines Style i\fagazincs Professional Journals 0

Number of H ouseholds

164 158 147

167 150

127

A very large number of families are a lso members of book clubs in the United States. The group's readi ng m a terial reflects its educational level, which itself is an index of the standard of living. (Data on education are presem ed on pp. 438-.10.) This is a well-u·aveled group. Several peopl e have been around the world, and most people h ave at least been lo lhe U nited Slates. The fo llowing are the data lrom t he 200 interviews. .-, These ind ucle so me commercial as well as scientific an d m edical journals.

434

TH~

PEOPLE OF PUERTO RICO

Travel lo tlte U11ited States No trips One trip Two trips T hree trips Four or more trips Annual trips for man y years Trips more than once a year

Numbe r of Indiv iduals 3 11 17

19 1 50

47 93

T ravel to Europe One trip Two trips Three o r more trips

41 20

17

Travel to Sout h 11merica a On e trip T wo or more trips

Form Land from wife:"s family Other wealth from wifc"s family Land from husba nd's family Other wealth from husband"s famil y Business or fam1s from either family

N umber of Families

The homes of Lhesc people arc spa cious. well furni shed, \\"ell d ecorated . a nd equipped with modern m echan ica l applian ces. T he cost of socia l affairs, vacations. and rc:cn:;1tio11. \\"hich is di ~n1 \sed e lsc \,·IH..: re in this M.:ction, ,·ari es from s<·n:ral hundred 10 sc.:\'cral th ou~an d dollars.

57 44

T he period uf res id e nce abroad partl y explains the cosmopolitan a nd worldly orientatio n of many adul ts in this group. The followi ng data illustrate how the !?OO interviewed fam ilies were exposed to other cultures. Residence Abroad Number of Cases 011e year or more in Spain 37 One year o r more in South America 32 Less than o n e year in the U nited Sta tes 21 One to two years in the United States 13 T"·o to four years in the United States 32 i\fore than four years in the United States 134

Very few people spent much time in Spain or South America, but m any take several years of school in, and subsequently visit, the U nited States for one or two months every year. Thus, this population is p redominantly exposed to the American way of life. Another index of wea lth is surplus fund s which were inves ted as fo llows: [A question on annua l income was included in the first fifteen interviews, but i t was a nswe red so rel uctantly a nd probabl y inaccurately that it was dropped.] Types of Investmen ts

Source Rent Propeny

Inheritance

Num ber of Families 127

~Iortgages

40

Stocks a nd Bonds Other

15 1

60

Some of the richest P uerto R ica ns hold large blocks of stocks a nd bonds in the principal United States banks and concerns. They a lso sit on the boards of Lrustees and hold offi ces in these enterprises. Many fam ilies ha ve sufficient wealth to make g ifts lO the childre n wh il e the parents a re still a live. In the case or y<>11ng parents, the g ifts are made in order to start the co uple in life rather than to avoid inh eri ta nce Lax. 6This includes 1rips LO C uha o r o ther large Caribbea n islands.

SOCIALIZATION AND EDUCATION Th e present sect ion \\"ill d eal \,·ith the processes by which the \\"Ca lthy child is trained for the culwra l roles that disting uish his class. ~!arriagc and the form a tion o( the new fam ily are treated in a later sect ion. The treatment will be primarily in cultural rather th an psycholog ica l terms, although Lhere are some very cha llenging problems for psychological ana lysis, wh ich mig hL Lhrow m uch light upon both the funct ion and orig in of certain behav io r patterns. For example, i t is possible that certain aspects of sexual behavior having Oed ipea n origins a re closely related to the cultural iden lizatio n of the mother, to the relig ious importance of th e virgi n sometimes called the "virgin cu lt," Lo Lhe double standa rd , and to other cu ltural tra ils. A psychological study of Puerto Rican attitudes toward the U nited Sta tes might reveal an ambivalence created by an unconscio us h os tility toward this country combined wi th a conscious acknowledg ment of cen a in <1dvantages to be obta ined from it. This hostili ty m ig h t expla in in part the high value ascribed to the Pu erto R ican way of life. These and other problems present tempting fields of psychocultural specula tion and inquiry. The present purpose, however, is to a naly7.e the urban-business subcultural patterns and to ascerta in the ir d eterminants in cultural terms. \ Vhile it is conceiva ble Lh at a phenomenon such as the double stand a rd would not exist but for certain psycho logica l factors, the present analysis explains all ph enomena by purely cultural-historical factors. The processes o f socializa tion, therefore, are conside red as the cu I tura lly defined si tua Lions and mechanisms by which the g rowing child learns adu l t patterns of social behavior-the means by which he learns the attitudes, motivations, prescribed behaviora l norms <ind va l11es of his group. A study of socia lization involves another partly psychol ogica l prob lem . Since modern cu ltures are changing g reatly from o ne generation to a no ther, there may be co nsiderable d iscrepancy be tween what is lea rned a nd what is required. This discrepancy cou ld he viewed in terms of psychological con fli cts a nd de-

THE PROJ\UNENT FAM ILIES OF PUERTO RICO

435

rangemenls affecling the individual's mental heallh. In take an adjoining room in the hospital. The presence the present ana lysis it will be viewed as a question of of the parents in the hospital as well as the g ifts from culwral differences between successive generations. relatives and friends at this time evidences strong fa. We are not concerned with the inner malacljusun ents milial and social solidarity. that may d evelop in a person socialized in ch ildhood for one way of life b u t required in adulthood to conform outwardly to another way of life. INFANCY Puerto Rican men of the prominent families have Shortly after birth, fe male infants have their ears bee n soc iali zed in certa in ways very d ifferent from that customary under the older Hispanic pattern, pierced. This Hispan ic practice has such a firm hold especially in ha,·i11g e:-:tended education in the United that girls who have not had their ears pierced in inStates and training for a commercial career. The fancy see LO it later in life. Godparent o r compadre and comadre relationships women on the other hand have received much less education in the United Stales, and they have rarely are always established during baptisma l rites held in been involved in commercial activi ties. As the princi- the church. These rites are followed by receptions in pal arb iters of social staws, Lheir personal contacts the homes. Before birth announcements became popua rc largely limited LO their own class, and they retain lar, the parents gave remembrance cards to g uests a t mu ch o f the traditiona l way of life. That socialization this time. Several clays after delivery the mother and maternal and adult activities have acce lera ted the acculLUration grandmother leave the hospital and go to the mother's of men as compared with women has introduced some, though not irreconcilable, conflicts within the home. The mother now becomes responsible for the care of her ch ild, but she is aided by the maternal famil y and class. The traditional differences in rearing and educating grandmother and usually by a nurse or a housemaid. In general, chi ld care conforms to modern \i\fes tern boys and girls has of itsel( facilitated more rapid accul turation among the former. The double standard practice and utilizes modern medical knowledge. Durof earlier Hispanic culture gave men freedom to esta b- ing the twenties, however, the practice of reducing the lish relationships w ith people of other classes and period of breast feeding was rejected. Today, six cultures, while women were narrowly confined to their months is the avowed period of nursing, but observaown upper-class social g roups. Th!s social mobility tions disclosed that nine months is more common. At enabled men t0 accept new behav10r patterns more a bout three months, however, nursing is supplemented read ily than women. Today, there is no fundamenta l by milk and pabl um and at six months by canned conflict between a man's adoption of many American baby foods. \ Veaning may be accompl ished b y anointpractices while his wife perpetuates _the traditional ing the breast with a mildly acid ointment. Feeding ones, even though some stress and stram are bound to finally becomes the task of the maid, although the mother a nd grandmother enjoy doing it from time occur. The patterns of socialization which distinguish the ~o time. Th~ ch ild takes its food without special urgprominent fam ilies are evid ent at infancy, when the mg or scolding, and most babies appear t0 be well m o ther and the newborn child receive the best m od - nourished. Most children are able to feed themselves ern medical care. The g rowing child is well cared for when they are two, although some accomplish this physically, and he is surrou nded by ador!ng kin and much later. The child is taught mainly by coaxing a nd somemaids and servants who are devoted to his needs. H e soon learns to distinguish persons hired to care for times by sham ing, but the general atmosphere is one him physically from the close kit~ circle :vhich gives of permissiveness and security. Scold ing and punishhim emotional secu ri ty. By the ume he ts older, he ment are rare. On the question of toilet training there has learned to take for granted his superordinate is divided opinion. Some regard the matter very casueconomic and social position. In his late teens, when ally. Others, following what they consider to be the most ch ildren in P uerto Rico have become wage American pattern, start this training when the infant earners, he looks fo rward to additiona l years o[ ad- is a year old and hope to complete it b y the time he is vanced educa tion designed to train him for his status two. Some have claimed successful trai ning by the time the ch ild is twelve to fourteen months old, whereas and role in the society. P arents generally prefer a son, though they do not others have not completed it until he is ten or eleven say so, because it is thought to prove the husband's years old . If there is any connection between nursing virili ty. If a girl is born the husband may be referred and toilet tra ining and adult characteristics, it is certainly not a direct one. The families that endeavor to tO as c/ianclelero ("slipper maker"), one who makes follow American procedures in child care are Ameriworthless things. That the ch ild's sex is determined by canized in other areas of their lives, and Lhey pass their the husband's virility is occasionally mentioned, probattitudes and behavior patterns on to their children. ably more as a joke than a belief. Adult characteristics, therefore, cannot be ascribed priA p regnant woman looks to her mother more lhan marily t0 any partirnlar featu res of child care. to her husband for help. Dttring the few weeks precedThe security which Lhe child feels wilhin his Camily ing birth, her mother is with her much o( the time, and after delivery her mother or both parents may is furthered by Lhe personal attention and fondling

43 6

THE PEOPL E OF PUERTO R ICO

g iven him. H e is carried a b o u t a nd has little chance to crawl or use strollers or perambul at0rs, a lthough the family may h ave them. Despite the constant assistance of an adult, the infant generally can walk by the time he is about a year old and perhaps sooner. His physical co-ordinatio n appears to be excellen t; eleven chi ldren between one and three years old, who were specially stud ied, conformed completely to the standards of infant activity set u p by Yale Universi ty studies. Two boys o f about four years of age mounted and rode ponies and horses. Although the infant is cared for principally by th e women in the home while the men are interested bystanders, the indoctrination o f a son fo r his distinctive role a nd attitudes begins when he is three or four years old, when his fa ther takes a hand. He is a companion to h is son, and teaches him th at boys sho u ld behave differently than girls. Above a ll, h e instills in him the idea that boys should be muy macho, very virile a nd masculine. So much emphasis is placed on this that one might say that the male's life is pervaded b y a cult of machismo. Meanwhile, the g irl, whose training is left to her mother, accepts the feminine ideal of purity a nd ch astity. This ideal is so strong th at the wife-mother is regarded as a special kind of being found o nly among the better people. T hus, a kind of cult of virginity exists side by side wi th that of machismo. A child does not entirely escape physical pun ishment, but it is usually dealt out by the m a id or nurse in the absen ce of the parents. These attendants may a lso frighten the child into obeying by telling tales of evil men or threatening to withho ld their favors. One of the most signifi cant aspects of the child's socialization is that he begins to acquire a sense o f his superordinate socioeconom ic status almost immediately after he is born . Infants under nvo years old a re dressed in the softest clothes availa b le and adorned with various fineries. They are surrounded by admiring v.romen during most of the day and have the attention of th e fath er in th e eveni ng and in some cases at noon also. The ch ild learns to disti nguish two groups: one that gives orders and one that takes orders. These groups dress and behave d ifferentl y. The child soon understands that he belo ngs to the well-dressed, commanding gr oup. T h is is m ade extremely clear at the time of the dail y fam il y visi ts as well as during the freque n t v isits of friends. This d iscrimination begins while he is a "lap" baby and continues while a "knee" baby. \!\Then he commences to understand language, he is frequently ta ught to display his fineries. A g irl shows h er gold earrings ; a boy som e garment or other article indicating wealth. This display ga ins the reward o( attention and a ffection , which are g iven not only by the fami ly but a lso by visitors. During the preschool period , from about two to fi ve years o f age, the child is constantly told, "\!\Then you grow up you are going to make a lot o[ money." This may be just smal l talk wh ile the ad ul ts are bestowing

affection on the child, b u t the child learns to associate goals of wealth with affection and a u entio n. During th ese years the comm unity is explained to the child in man y ways. Peop le are class ifi ed as rich o r "mi llio naires" and as poor people; and the word "good" is assoc iated with wealth. T h e ch ild soon learns that adults approve of and defer to people of wealth. A " millio n a ire" informant said, " \·Vhen I v isited my niece in kindergarten , the ch ildren asked me if I own ed my Pack:~rd. T h ey knew the car by its trade name. Then there was discussion <ts to which was bigger and better- a C tdill ac. a Packa rd, or a Bui ck." A child of four yea i ~ call judge people b y tlieir material possessions. T il ey h;n·e yet much to learn abou t the nuances of disp hy. bu t the va lu e or o bjects and of displaying objects has bee n full y grasped. T h e father. \\'ho is usuall y a su ccessful business owner or an exec utive. he lps to establish adult goals and values in his so 11. He takes the ch ild to his ollice to obser ve his "\\'ork" situat ion . "·here the rather receives d eference from o th ers and the hoy is treated as a "l ittle boss" and told that he \\'ill become a "boss" some day. As a person's concept of himself is greatl y influenced by what others think of him, th e rich boy's self-conception is that o l a boss and rich man . His ego ideal, wh ich is most frequently his fath er, is a n executive or an owner. T his ideal is verbalized b y children in kinderga rten a nd en ters play, along wi th cowboys or ga ngsters. Between the ages of two a nd five, the child's relationship to the servants ch a nges. vVhereas the servan ts had previously control1ed the child, bathing him, fetch ing him for meals, and generally managing his life, he now resists the ir authority, even with physical violence, and begins Lo acguire com ple te control of them. H e constantly sends the h o usehold servan ts on trivial errands, gives orders to the hired men on the p remises. He learns at an early age that h e possesses authority to gratify his desires. T h e soc ial pos ition of the child is constantly reinforced. He rides to the stores in an automobile while oth ers walk. He wears fine clothes, eats excellent food, a n<l is set a part in a II ways. The child also acquires atti tudes of superordination in his relationship to his own age group. The child of a ma id will be his servant as well as his playmate, and may be called "my secretary." The servan t's child often becomes a close compan ion o f the you ngster, being taken w ith him wherever he wishes and sometimes even start ing school with him. Al th ough a strong emotiona l ;:ittachment may d evelop benveen the two, no doubt is left as to who gives the orders and who m ust enterta in, please, and obey his su perior. It is significant that the wel l-lo-do child spends most of his p reschool years w i th adults rather than th e children o( o ther prominent famil ies. (H e has cons iderable contact w ith siblings an d cousi ns, but these belo ng to several age groups. Ordinaril y, his closest association within his own age group is wi th the servants' ch ildren.) Among adults he is guiet, well-behaved,

THE PROl\lI NENT FAMILIES OF PUERTO RICO

and obedient, although from the American point of view the attention and freedom accorded him might be considered "spoiling." At the same time he is shy with strangers and lacks spontaneity and exploratory drives.

437

come more varied, and during the summer, when he is older, he may work pan time or full time in the office. Meanwhile, he associates with successful businessmen. Twelve-year-old boys play volleyball and handball and swim with thirty-year-old men, thus making excellent contacts for their future work and gaining confidence in themselves.

THE SCHOOL AGE CHILD

The role of the school in socialization is discussed subsequently under "Formal Education." Apart from aCli\'ities in the classroom, new patterns are introduced into the lives o( school age children. The child, who here wfore has li ved primarily in the context of an intimate group of kin, now associates increasingly with other children of his age and status group and with adults who are strangers to him. The brea k from home is not complete. One school closes at noon, giving the child ample time for home a nd outside activities during the remainder of the day. The others dose later in the afternoon, but the parents usuall y take the child home to lunch. Unless the child goes to a parochial school, some of the time after school is devoted to religious instruction and to special lessons in dancing, music, and art. The children now begin tO play with the neighborhood children of their own age, but there is a notable absence of truly organized sports and of a competitive spirit. Instead, the children wander about, perhaps exploring the neighborhood for "treasure.'' They will form a line and follow some leader in and out of back and front yards, talking constantly, until they encounter some object of interest. They inspect the object and specu late about it, then lose interest and continue to wander. They also play Indians, gangsters, and a kind of baseball, soccer and croquet, but none of these are organized. Be tween the ages of about eight and thirteen new patterns begin to~ appear. A very h~rge i~ortion of recreation has American sources: mov111g pictures several times a week, fairs, carnivals. comic books, saving of p icture cards, reading, and the like (see p. 453). UnLil the age of eleven or twelve, the child's allegiance has been primarily with his own family. Thirty-two of fifty children of this age, for instance, said that a cousin was one of their best friends. After this age, the child, especially the boy, attains much greater independence to explore the world outside his home. He rece ives an allowance and is permitted to Lravel alone by bus or perhaps on his motorcycle. He forms circles of friends, especially with his own sex, who visit one another at their homes. Girls, too, extend their social contacts, but lhey must be accompanied by older companions. The upper-class boy is constantly reminded that he will become a commercial leader, a rich man, and a prominent person. During frequent visits to his fother's ollice, he begins LO learn the business. As a child he docs occasional ofTice ivork, and he lakes responsibiliLy for a special job every week or month. The tasks be-

THE YOUNG MAN A N D WOMAN

Adult behavior patterns become evident at about fourteen or fifteen, but the differences between boys and girls are sharpened, especially in sex relations. Boys now have considerable freedom, and men expect them to become involved in affairs with lower-class girls, often with the household maid, although this first overt expression of the double standard is disapproved by the mother. Their relationship with girls of their own class, however, should be romantic. The upper-class girl is chaperoned whenever she goes out with a boy. At this time, however, she is presented to society. Formerly, all daughters of the best families were "presented" at an annual "coming-out pany" held at the Condado Hotel. Dµring recent years, since certain families of dubious social status have been able to include their daughters in these parties, the better families hold private parties. After the debutante party, the girl, accompanied by a male companion, attends the formal balls which are a major feature of upper-class social life. A l though chaperoned by adults at these balls, youths of both sexes are recognized as individual adult members o( their class, not as children of certain prominent families. They are a couple accornpanied by an adult; not children controlled by their parents. The transition from childhood to adulthood at this age is very great, for family disputes and tensions a rise as to whether the ch ildren are oJd enough to participate in social activities outside the home. In the case o( girls, initiation into a sorority in the mid-teens is a developmental milestone. Puerto Rico has five acceptable sororities for rich girls, none of which are connected with schools. A cand idate must receive a unanimous vote. The sororities constitute rather strong in-groups or cliques, but there appears to be no social competition between them. For adult men, there is only one fraternity to which most of them belong. The importance of coming-out parties, balls, sororities, and social activities among women are all evidences that a family atLains social status prim;;u·ily through the woman's associalions. A man, however, must relate more closely to his employees and business associates. If these people are om ilted from his wife's guest lists it is not his fault. If some of them become sufficiendy important to him economically, he may .i nvite them to participate in his fam il y's social li(e, and if they are socia lly acceptable and sufficiently wea lthy they may eventually become part of his own set.

438

THE PEOPLE OF PUERTO RICO

FORMAL EDUCATION

The role that forma l education plays in the lives of the urban, trained executive differs strikingly from the role it plays among most of the other classes. The sugar workers a rid coffee laborers have comparatively little u se for school ing, a nd they usually terminate their education with the primary grades. The tobacco "·orkers, though desirous of using education for selfimprovement, have had little opportunity to go beyond high school.7 Bu siness executives, however, consider advanced education n orma l and necessar y. nloreover, whereas vinually all children of the rural laboring classes attend public schools, rich chi ldren patronize private schools. These schools cost from five to sixteen dollars a month, a sum which would be prohibitive to most of the popu latio n. Chart 24 shows attendance throughout the various g rades at a Catholic co-educational primary school and senior high school in San Juan. There are fewer boys than g irls in the primary g rades because many of the girls attend a Catholic girls' school. Attendance in h igh school, especially by boys, declines because most upper-class males of this age are sent to the United States. Advanced education in high school and college helps prepare the yo ung man for his profession, which is commercial and necessarily North American i n that his income is derived largely from salaries and commiss ions earned as a representative of United States bus iness concerns. Eighth grade students understand this va lue o( education. Of fifty children who were asked why they attended school, virtually all answered that they did so "t0 aid in m y profession," "Lo make more money," "to become an engineer," "to become a doctor," and the like. This kind of edu cat io n tends to Americanize children, especially boys, to a considerable degree. Since the economic (unctions of Lhese families are closely geared to American bus iness organizations, the Puerto Rica n businessmen believe quite r igh tly that an understanding of American attitudes and social practices w ill help themselves and their ch ildren. For this reason, they employ American teachers and desire instruction in English. "When the child enters high school and college, they send him to school in the United States (see p. 440). A third function of education is to enrich life. It is recognized that literacy, k nowledge of skills, a nd a liberal education are a ids to the enjoyment of the man y things the upper class ca n so well afford. Finally, hig her education is essen tial to the social status of fami li es. It is essentia l not only because a college d egree is a symbol or badge o( status bu t beca use an uneducated person would be lost in Lhe social and imell ectual life o( this subculture. 7 There ha s i> cc11 a great increase in higher educat ion :11110 11g ;ill dasscs s ince 'vVorld \Var I.I , owing to C.I. educat.io n nl grauts. · f"hi ~ h :1s modi lie d to som e extent. Lhe gcneral corrcl<ltion 1Jc1\\'<.:en high e r cduc:1tio11 and th e econo111ic s t.allts of the faniil~.

I t must be stressed, however, that there is still a strong, though decreasing, di chotomy between the sexes in the significance of formal education as well as of Lhe other processes of socializati on . The emphas is upon training for professional life, especially upon college training. and upon .~\meri can i1.ation has applied principally LO men. The woman's \\"Orld is quite different from the man's, and con sequently as the girl grows up her training d i,·erges from that or her brother. The informal education in social bc:ha,·ior and attitude:. \\'hich ~he recei,·e-; lrom her lemale n :la tives bc:co111e)> more impon;un th:1n )>( hooling. It \\':t'i forlllc:rly a mauer ol rnmpar:tl j,·c i11dillnc:1tcT \\'he1 htr sh e \\'Cnt. 10 collc:ge, for .,he \\'011ld ha\·c· li 11le t1se lor prof'css ion;tl tr;1ini11g. 111 recent years. ho\\"C\"Cr. 1nore g irls attcnd ('Ollegc in the l ' ni1cd S1.:11.es and ;ire s ill >· j ectcd in 111a11y other \\·ays to .\mcr i(';111i1ation . ,\ s sho\\'11 c.; l!>C.:\\' hcrc. 1h c;.c i111lue11ces ;ire c: li111i11a1i11g 1'1c do11ble sta ndard a11d (':tll~i n g many othc1· l11nd ;1111e 111al change.;-; in the ide;d-, of 11ppcr-clas~ l;11nily ;1 11d ;.ocict y. Jn a g-c.:ncra l \\':t)'. tire !>cl1oo l not only i111p:1ns kno\\'I · edge but '><>< i:di1c-; the i11cli,·icl 11;d !or his di.,ti11nin: type of adu lt li fe. \Viren beginning the ki11dergancn or the primary school, the chi ld is suddenl y torn from the warm and familiar circle o( his kin group and forced into the society of stra nge children and a ne\\" kind of authority siwation. Gradually he adapts to this n ew pauern. H e con forms to the deman ds and expecta tions of his own group, which by the time it reaches the eighth grade has ach ievecl sufficic:n t so l idari t y and independence to (orm its own organi1.ations and to make and e nforce many of its own rules. H e learns h ow lo win rewards from the teacher, who represents a n ins titution very different from the fam ily, and eventual ly he discovers that the ins titutional situation in volves even higher and m ore impersona l a uthoriLies, s uch as the principal. Tlu1s, formal ed ucat ion, particularly in Lhe hig her grad es, represents an instilution which is somewhat in termediate between the family a nd the formal national institutions of the larger soc ieLy. It h e lps p re pare the you ng man or woman fo r participat ion in the larger world in which, by virtu e of his economi c and social status, he will play a very imponanL ro le. Primary Schools

Nearly all or the ch ildren of the families studied attended one of three private p rimary schools, whose pupils con sist predominantly though not entirely of children of the same social class. One is a Catholic girls' school, which is attended largely by P uerto Ri can children. Another is a co-educational Catholic school, which has a few American students. A nd the third is an American school w ith half the student body com ing from the America n colony. These schools prepare Lheir swdems for high sch ools in the United States, and they stress E nglish. The emphas is pla ced upon re lig io us tra ining and the teaching by nuns are among fea tures distinctive o( these church schools. l\[oreover, even though the educat io nal system of Pu erto R ico is mod eled on the ,\merican system, some

TH E PROMINENT FAMILIES OF PUERTO RICO

439

By the sixth grade instruction continues to emphasize learning through memorizing. The respect for authority, which in the parochial schools is religiously as well as socially sanctioned, is used to insure conBOYS formity to classroom standards. In addition, since the teacher is generally an American, the students believe that both the standards and the methods of enforcing them represent Americanization. An awareness of sex appears by the sixth grade, when boys and girls begin to form separate groups. Preadolescent romantic love begins to bud in the Hispanic pattern, although intimate relations between the sexes are forbidden. Girls may provoke the romances through coquettishness, but the boys traditionally make the overt gestures b y writing love letters and poems to their sweethearts.s · In the eighth grade, instruction in the natural sciences attempts to instill some understanding of 5 6 7 8 F s J s scientific principles, but in the social sciences memory K 2 3 4 is still stressed. There is considerably more independent effort here than in the lower grades, however, and High School Primary School individual students work up special projects upon Chart :Y..f- At1e11da11ce at the Catholic co-ed11calio11al pri· which they report. This permits individuality an~ 111a1)• school all(/ high school in San jua11. creative effort, a nd allows spontaneity, for in such endeavors the student does not compete with his fellows. ·when the eighth grade class as a whole recites o[ the educational practices are hardly typical of Ameron an assigned subject, the students' earlier desire to ican schools. The significance of the schools in the child's process gain the teacher's favor b y showing up a poor student of socialization difiers from grade to grade and corre- has noticeably diminished. One who does risks being sponds more or less to the age levels previously men- censured by his classmates, and there is thus some tioned. The crucial periods seem to be from kinder- incipient group revolt against established authority. Attitudes toward the teacher are revealed in a list of garten through the eighth grade. Kindergarten represents an abrupt cl~ange from the traits which fifty upper-class eighth graders admired household, which consists of close km and where most. First, the teacher should be strict but permit Spanish is spoken, to a situation where most persons fun; second, she should be intelligent; finally, accordare strangers, where the teacher may speak only Eng- ing to a few, she should be young, an easy marker, lish and may be American, and where the child's age and an interesting individual. Boys tended to like group consists of non-kin and i~cludes ~mericans. women teachers, while girls preferred men. These changes require somewhat difficult adJUStm~nts, Group solidarity a mong the students is greatly furand the Puerto Rican chi ld tends to seek compamons thered by several school activities. An organized club within his own ethnic group. Kindergarten teaching, meets during class hours. Debates are held on subjects however, seems to give the child no great difficulties chosen b y class members. Programs o( poetry recitaexcept that his activities are restricted. The children tion and skits, the latter frequently original, are given. A student newspaper is issued. There is a paint, model, play with toys, sing, ~nd play games. Formal instruction is initiated 111 the first grade, student-body government, ·which passes rules for classwhen the children are taught the alphabet, numbers, room behavior and ·which punishes misdemeanors counting, word meaning, reading, and recitat~on. In- such as lateness or disorderly conduct by a system of struction observed in one of the schools consisted of small fines. rather routine questions and answers with a minimum All of these features are part of a pattern in which ot what may be called "modern educational" proce- social conformity is enforced by one's own circle of dures. More important than the methods a1~d content associates. By the time the student graduates he is o( education is the relationship of the cluld to the s The following. which came into my hands, is rather typical teacher and to his fellow students. The teacher now of love letters. "My dearest Rosita: T ell me if you like Juanito. represents authority, which is imposed through disIsn't it true that you love m e? 'When arc you going to tell Juanito cipline. The child must win the teacher's approval that you lo,·e me and not him. J ose told me that you lo ved him. and through it the approval of his own ~arents by Tell me that it is not true that you love him. Paco told me that acquiring the American patterns o~ered 111 schoo_l. you have written letter~ to him. ' ·Vhen you write to him again l\Ieanwhile, the child is learning directly from Ins te ll him tha t you do not love him. Today I will give you candy. Tell me where you live so I ca n go visit you from time to tim e. contemporaries, who include American children, but Paco loves you but you do not love him- d o you? Do not listen the situation does not produce competition between to him as he is a liar and all that h e says are lies. My sweet, I speak th e t ruth. All is well m y dearest. \\Tith kisses, Rob erto.'' children . Number of Pupils

440

THE PEOPLE OF PUERTO RICO

prepared to accept the rules o( his peers. Through participation in making these rules, he is allowed a new scope for individual decisions and responsibility, but an extreme individualist will be branded as an eccentric and incur group disapproval. Greater individual responsibility within one's age group, however, does not eliminate h~her authority, though the latter begins to take new fo rms. The teacher, representing a cultural heritage and a formal institutionan organized school system- which is much larger than the classroom, carries authority from which there is no appeal. To some extent she still uses the techniques o[ singling out delinquents (or shame, ridicule, and punishment. But a fo rm of discipline not previously experienced by the student is introduced in the upper grades: the student may be sent to the principal, who represents a higher and impersonal authority. At home, the child has been controlled by a small number of ·warm and personalized kin relations, and even the father is not a very forbidding authority figure. The grade teacher is at first a stranger and her discipline is based upon authority given her by the situation, but she soon becomes an intimately known person. The principal, however, is little-known, and she represents ultimate :irn1 remote justice. To :i great extent, therefore, dealings with the principal subject the student to the kinds of higher a uthority he will confront in his relations to the laws of his government and w ith representatives of the political ancl economic forces that will affect his life and whose ultimate power lies outside his soc ial circle. Children acquire an increased interest in the other sex during the eighth grade. There is much teasing, flirting, and gossip, which tend to disrupt instruction and discipline in tbe classroom. Boys and girls meet at the class's club gatherings and parties, but they are not permitted to go together unchaperoned outside the school. High School and College Education

During primary school the socialization of boys and girls is rather similar so far as formal education is concerned. The sexes differ in that boys learn about the adult male's world from their fathers and their male associates while girls learn their distinctive roles from their female kin, friends, and servants. Education in the United States, wh ich is in part a deliberate effort to Americanize the children, may begin in primary school yea rs, but it is more common during secondary schooling and is even more frequent at the college level. At all stages far more boys than girls go to the Un ited States, but it is highly significant o( the general acculturational trend that the present generation of girls is receiving a more extended education and a larger proportion of education in the United States than the preceding generation. The follo"wing table shows the choice of schools for those who attended, but not the proportion of men and women who ·went to school. All of the present generation attend co ll ege or its equivalent, however a generation ago it was believed that a high school educa-

TABLE 2. PERCENTAGE ATTENDING SCHOOl IN DIFFERENT PLACES High School

College

Puerto United Rico Stales

Puerto U11ited Stales Rico 1111d cl.wwlierc

Pare ntal generation Boys Girls

I 00

0

Presen t gc11cratio11 Boys Girls

-., I !JO

62

38 So

!!O

··- 1

I0

!JO

I0

:JI

·l!J

99

tion was .~ufficicnt lor g irk and many 111iddlc·agcd and elderlv' \\·omen Ii,·iiw tmbv' ha,·e not been to colleo-c. h ~ Only 1.1 per cent ol present generation "·omen rompleted. college and lour-fifths ol th ese took tl1eir college work ll1 Puerto Rico, "·hile 50 per ce nt or the 111en of this generation finished college and G2 per cc11L \\'e nt to the United States or ebc\\·hcrc. Of tltc 200 men in the parern<d genera ti on , 1 15 rccci ,·cd some col lcge or profess ional training. ()[ th ese :,() attended !>d10ols in the United States, I:! in Spain, ~ :! in Puerto Rico. and 1 5 others in Fra nee, Sw i uerla11d, England, Scotia nd, Cub:1, Mexico, Argentina, and Germany. Eleven women received college degrees in the United Swtes. Four hacl attended schools in Spain, Gin France, and 3 in Canad:i. A slight majority ·of the present generation women still at~end college in Puerto Rico: the University of Puerto Rico, the Sacred Heart College, and commercial and art colleges. ;1--ack ·o[ advanced formal training may embarrass m1ddle-aged persons, especially men, but if the individ~ial has the proper social and economi c prerequisites it does not greatly matter. It is expected, however, that th~ }'.Ounger genera tion shall attend college. For ri:i-en this rs a requirement and no longer a mere asset, smce modern business clern:inds trninina in business administration . In the previous generati~n most men received university degrees in law and medicine, following Hispanic tradition, and those who eng:iged in commerce hired persons trnined in business. The latter, wh~ were often of a lower class, were able to improve their statuses through becoming high salaried employees. Today, the sons who arc t0 en ter their fathers' business receive appropriate training. Young women have more choice than formerly, and many attend college a few years before marrying.

THE FAMILY

' \lhen a society comes under :i new foreign political ancl legal sovereignty wh ich ch:inges its nation:il in stit~1tio~1s quite suddenly and drastically, the patterns which Junction on a fami lial level apparently respond more slowly. In Puerto Rico, however, fifty years o[ ~hange _indu ced both by American sovereignty and by mdustnal trends have affected the nature of the family amc~ng many subc~dlllra l groups. The families of profess1onal :ind busmess executives have been perhaps more proloumlly altered th:in any other. i\loreover, it \

1

THE PROMINENT FAMILlES OF P UERTO RICO

has become increasing ly like the fami ly type found among middle- and upper-class fam ilies of the United States. Previous discussion has shown how the employment of the husband by North American business fir ms has altered large areas of behavior, and a later section will show how education in the United States, although designed primari ly to further economic goa ls, has Americanized ma ny o ther areas of life. The sta ndard of living of these fam ilies-housing, food, cloth ing, automobiles, and other material goods, and certain social and recreational patterns-conform closelv to Ame rican standards. Yet, the ways of life and cu I tu1:a I o ri cn ta tions of the Puerto Rican executives and the ir fam ilies are not wholly understood in America 11 t c:nns. T his subculwrc. although a direct consequence of :\merica n econom ic and political factors, emerged from a lo ng Hispanic tradition which dictated the theme o[ man y of its cultural ways and aspirations. . \ s shmn1 in previous sections, this Hispanic base m odifies the diffused American traits, and o( cou rse is itse lf modified. In the course o( Americanization at least three importalll and related features of the older Hispanic fam ily have conti n~1 ed .to operate, namely, the double standard, the solidarity of the extended kin group, and the sociorecreational forms. These fea tu~·es are also changing, but H ispanic-Puer to Rican tradi t io ns a re still considered ideals and are often adhered to in daily life. Owing Lo the demands made upon the subcultural group by its occupational roles, however, these old traditions frequentl y have been replaced by more fun ctional substitutes. Tracl itionall.y and ideally, for example, a ~nan ~hould. employ ~us relatives and friends. Bu t, srnce JObs often require specia l skills t0 maintain bu sines~ standards, it i.s p ossible to hire kin only wh: n cand~da tes for the positions have the necessary bus111ess skills. As ed ucational a nd occupational opportunities for women h ave increased , women have become more eman cipated an d they assume great:r responsibilities w ithin the fa mily and the community. As among urban professional groups int.he Uni te.cl States anc~ other commercial areas, the soc10recreat10nal fun ct10n of wives has an important effect upon the success of their husbands' business. Educated women, ho\.vever, are also expected to conform to a core of cultural va l ues which are associated with approved definitions of a "good" wife and which are firml y entrenched in the Hispanic trad ition. These values are so unlike those of the United States that North Americans in Pu erto Rico h aving equal economic status and sha ring simil ar business in terests find i t difficult to participate as fam ilies or couples in the cu l ture of their Puerto Rica n colleagues. Puen o Rican men have become fa r more Americanized than the ir wives, because the tradition a l society imposed fewer restraints upon their behav ior, beca use they receive much more education than women in the United Sta tes, and because they participa te extensivel y in a highly Americanized economic p attern. The older patterns, however, are being weake ned in spite of the home environment which tends to

441

preserve u·aditional values. The most i mportant influ ence is formal schooling in the United States. ATIITU DES TOWARD SEX AND MARRIAGE

The double standard, although not limited to the prominent fami lies, is a crucia l feature among this group. According to this standard, men are fairly free to have premarita l affairs and exu·amarital sexual r elations, whereas complete chastity is expected of the women. \!\Then marriage is consensual, as in certain of the sugar plantation communities, there can not be a sharp distinction b etween marital and extramarital relations and hence a double standa rd is minimized. The double standard has more significance where marriage is civil or ritual. The cultural explanation of this pattern is not unlike th at found among certa in other classes. It combines a number of interrelated ideas: that men are more highly sexed than women and that they may therefore be expected to have relations with many women both before a nd after marriage; tha t since men are na turally domineering and that sexual consummation depends upon them, they will be better marriage partners if they h ave had p'tevious experience; and that m an and w ife achieve grea ter satisfaction if the wife has not had experience with other men. Some persons also believe that wi ves cannot be expected to enjoy sexual experiences. T hese beliefs and related practices are changing toward the ideal of a single standard-we say " ideal" advisedly, for there m ay be a wide discrepancy between a cultural ideal and practice-but they h ave by no means disappeared. The young man usu ally has his first sexual experiences in his early teens, and these may call for boasting rather tha n secrecy, for the mores implicitly sanction his behavior. H e has already lea rned that virility in the m ale is hig hly esteemed and that it is largely measured b y the number o f his amorous adventures. Even as an infan t, the m ale child is praised for being macho, "very male." l11.acho, which really m ecu1s "male animal" rather than "man" (hombre), is thus used in a complimentary sense. Th e g irl, on the other band, traditiona lly is sheltered, protected, chaperoned, a nd taug ht to believe that sex fo r her should be procreational rather than pleasurable. Prior to marriage, her relationships with men are lim ited to mild and perhaps somewha t clandestine flirtatio ns. Many cultural threads have been in tricately woven into the pattern of which the double standard is an expression, and these well merit special historical and comparative study beyond what is possible here. Certain directions in which the problem might be pursued, however, may be mentioned. F irst, there is unquestionably a relationship between the idealized status of women a nd sex ua l practices. In a culture where the mother image is ideal ized to the extent of h er being somewhat ide ntified wi th the Virgin, where one's female relatives a re ch erished and care(u lly protected aga inst the advances of all men, and where the concept of romantic love is so strong as to be a major

442

THE PEOPLE OF P UERTO RlCO

theme in music and poetry, psycholog ica l barriers that militate against full sexual sa tisfaction between husband a nd wife are probably created. The wife becomes the mother image, a n unsexed, idealized a nd untoucha ble figure. Sexuality is for men and for lower-class women but not for dece nt women. A man who is emotionally blocked by his attitude toward his wife may tu r n to mistresses fo und o utside his own social g roup. This double stand a rd has been understood b y the Catholic church, which considers extramarita l sexua l r elations a far greater sin in women than in men. A nother aspect of the pa ttern involving the double standard is the closeness of kinship relations within the extended family. A marital setting which forces the husband and wife into intima te social if not actual physical proximity to innumerable relatives to whom they have strong obliga tions and e motional ties is not conducive to that specia l closeness between husband and wife wherein each meets the other's principal emotional needs. Still another factor affecting both sexual practices and kinship relations is the size of the family. Data cited below show that the number of children has decreased appreciably during the past two generations. In earlier o-enerations, when birth control was not used a nd the wife was pregnant a great d ea l of the t ime, the man was [aced with continence or finding a sexual outlet outside the family. The ethic o[ the Catholic church, unlike th a t of the puritanica l Protestant sects, did not place strong subconscious moral barriers in his way. As will be shown subseq uently, it is no accident that the double standard and the extended kinship ties are both disappearing today under the influ ences which are ch anging the entire nature of the famil y in this subculture. SELECTION OF A SPOUSE

The choice of a spouse is norma lly made from the circles which are socia lly accepta ble rather than from partners in previous sexual experiences. Beca use a man usually mixes extensively with persons of all classes in business, whereas women move more exclusively within their own social gro ups, i t is the latter whose status tends to fix that of the fam ily and thus must be selected within the g roup. Through her sorority membership and her appearance at social functions the posi tion of a girl is m ade amply clear. As chaperone and social arbiter, the g irl's mother controls her contact with boys a nd expla ins to her which o( them a re .and are not socially acceptable. Marriage is ideally pictured as the culmination o ( a -courtship based on deep romantic love, during which the young man is expected to act the pa r t o f the lovelorn swain. These attachments usually begin in the late teens, but marri age is generally postpo ned until the couple have fin ished their education. If the p arents oppose a particular marriage, a minor family d ispute may be provoked, but the children normall y acced e in the end, for fam il y ties and the ensu ing advan tages

are stronger than romantic lo,·e. Th e affa ir is usually terminated, especially by the men, withou t excessive or lasting emoti onn l wear and tea r. Famil y approval o f a marriage p artn er d epends upon th e prospect ive husband's potential earning power and th e spouse's social pos ition, wealth, and racial background. Although economic position counts most strongly, co11spi cuo us non-white ances try in the fam il y ma y offse t it. Boys ha ,·e far more contacts ou tside their clas5 titan g irl s, but they normall r take their pa1·e111-;· :uh·ic c regarding a girl\ marital cligi· bility. Proposnl is ;1<; nwclt a family as an indi\'idu:d rn:1tL<:r. Cust0marily. the boy's la m il y takes th e initiative-. Inn wh en a boy a11d g-irl h:l\·e o fte n been seen tog-ether in public for some 1 irn c . occ1sionally-cs pcc i:dl y if the boy is rich- ll1c g irl's l:1mil y makes the p roposal or inq u ires abo ut hi~ marital intent ions. Rc:f'usa ls arc infrequent but not rare. Recentl y. a pre tt y and wealthy girl of one of the bc-.t J;11nilies was the swecthean or a son of 011e of the ric hc-.t lamilies in Puerto Rico. T he couple \\·ere ver)' 111l1Ch in lo\'e, \\"Cllt about together constantly, an d were among the m ost popular o f the smart set. The g irl 's famil y proposed marriage to him, but was refused on the grounds that Lh e couple were on ly in their teens and that the boy should finish school first. T he boy and g irl were not seen together after this and the boy soon returned to the United States. COURTSHIP AND MARRIAGE

The p eriod of dating prior to marriage is the t ime when young men and women a re most active socially. Ordinarily a young m an has several love affairs, but if he has a series o f dates with an eligible girl he is usually considered e ngaged to her. As few as three dates may start rumors that the coup le is engaged, while eight or ten consecutive dates are taken as proof of this; for when a couple are truly e ngaged each dates exclusively wi th the other. One young g irl refu sed all dates for eight months while her sweetheart was in the States attend ing scho ol. During courtship the co uple is always cha peroned by an adult female relative of the girl. At the more important social events, she is chapero ned by the mother or aunt, but al informal occasions such as moving pictures and picnics it is permissible though not entirely proper for the sister to nccompa ny her. 1 \ Vhen the coup le is definitely engaged the vigilance of the chaperon is somewhat relaxed, but liberties are not allowed. At the large balls, for example, the couple are not permitted to remain long out of sig ht on the balco n y a nd their dancing must always be proper. The custom of chaperones is part of the traditio na l double standard wh ich is preserved in the culture of upper- and middl e-class women. Young men who have lived for extend ed periods in the U nited States are not so convinced as their forebears th a t women need so much protecting. Young women who have spent

TH E PROMINENT FAl'vfILlES OF PUERTO RICO

443

considerable time in the States are also beginning to No. of Coses share this view. But only about half the upper-class 45 women as against go per cent of the men have been to American colleges. In time-perhaps in a few l ' - MEN 35 decades-chaperonage will probably disappear. lVIean1 ' WOMEN while, it remains in such force that a young couple ! \ I \ 25 ( j \ I ....... rarely goes out alone in Puerto Rico. In one case, a \ I couple who had dated alone in the United States for I ~ 'I I"' ... 15 \ seven months rewrned to Puerto Rico for the summer ' ..... ~' ...... ·, / .... •, only to be chaperoned at every dance and party. 5 .... ,__ Another Hispanic feature of courtship is serenading, which is still very popular. The suitor and three 35 20 25 15 30 or m ore musicians, usually with a guitar, mandolin, Age at Marriage and vio lin. play and sing under the girl's window. Some g irls rduse even to show themselves, but most Chart 25. Age at marriage of upj;er-class men and women. appear at th e window and some may even go down to the yard to talk with the boy. ln recent years, if the No. of Cases boy is considered a potential husband he may be invited bv, the "irl a nd her father into the house for 35 b I\ drinks and other refreshments. 30 Cirls generally marry in their early twenties and I \ I \ 25 boys in their late twenties. Of 200 cases th~ h~sband I \ J 20 was three to eight years older than the wife m 160 "' marriages; he was younger than the wife in only 4 15 I marriages. . . 10 A nev1ly married couple li~es 111 ~.separate h?use!'... l/ 5 -..... hold near one or both of their families. There is no ... ., marked preference for _mau·!local~ty _or patrilocality. 0 5 10 15 16 Because well-to-do residential districts are usually No. of years difference in ages small, neither kin nor friends ordinarily live at a great distance from one another. Four fa milies, how- Chart 26. Difference in ages of upper-class spouses. ever, had 110 relatives in Puerto Rico, and five others Th e solid line indicates husband older than wife. The dotted h ad kin on ly in other parts of the island. line indicates wife older than husband. · Marriage does not entail a sharp_break with_ one's blood relatives. The young couple is welcome 111 the parents' homes, especially during the first crucial years a?le, the parents of a newly married couple occaof marital adjusunen~. Vi~iting p~tterns, lmwever,_ re- s10nally convert their second floor into an apartment. veal that while family ties are important, a slight Some of the extremely rich, the so-called "millionpreference being shown for the :vife's family, there is aires," may build apartment houses for themselves a trend for the couples to associate a great deal, and and their married children or purchase a large u-act of probably increasingly, with friends. According ~o. sta~e­ land and build separate houses for themselves and m ents as to preferences mad~ by the 200_ families m- their children. Sometimes these house clusters are terviewed 100 visited rela ttves and friends about surrounded b y walls and constitute family compounds. The cohesion of the old Puerto Rican gentry livequally, ~ visited friends ar~c~ business associate~ more 3 often than relatives, 30 v1srted the husbands and ing on farms a ppears to be much greater than that wife's families equally; 28 preferred the wife's family; of the commercial and professional class located in and 10 preferred the hu~band 's fan~ily. Thl_ts, one-half San Juan. Two factors probably account for the find non-kin as conge111al as relatives, wlule another changes in the urban families. First, friends as well as relatives are readily accessible in the city. Second, sixth prefer fri ends to relatives. . These visiting preferences suggest that the tradi- owing to their American oriented education and the tional extended family is weakening under modern in- pressures of modern business life, the younger generafluences, although we have no comparable data from tion has acquired tastes and interests somewhat dif· the older generation to verify this. Old people, how- ferent from those of its parents, and therefore is ever, repo~·t that f~mily ties as revealed in _visitin.g coming to prefer the company of friends to that of patterns and other items were much stronger 111 their relatives. A married coupie, however, is usually attached to youth than at present. Kin ties are still strong, as its kin group through financial favors as well as en10evidenced not only by considerable preference for tional ties. In addition to help in the establishment visiting relatives but by a common tendency for relaof a home and a business, newly-weds may receive tives to live very close together. Siblings somet imes two sums of money from their families, one to hold build houses next to each other or share a single large as a joint fund and the other to be divided and dehouse. vVhen nearby land and housing are not avail-

,,

I

,,

·

--

-

'

'

,

--

444

THE PEOPLE OF PUERTO RICO

posited in separate bank accounts for the h usband and wife. These separate accounts may be kept throughout life. The joint fund, together wi th any money made by the couple after marriage, constitutes the family fortune, and at divorce or death it is subject to divfaion according to law and custom. Men and women inherit equally. After marriage, emotional life centers upon the immedia te or con jugal family of husband, wife, and children. Children are desired and cherished more than in any group in the Un i ted States known to the writer. The unusual value placed upon ch ildren probably refiects not only the importance attached to kinship relations but a lso the special significance of children to both parents. Procreation is proof of the father's virili ty, and any delay in the arrival of the first offspring may expose h im to jokes concerning his masculinity. The wife wants children because they cement the marriage and are the principal in terest in her life. A large number of children is desired, and the first is usually born within two or three years of marriage. Of the 200 famil ies interviewed, 7 had no children, although they had been married for many years. Two other cases had none, but these were second marriages and both spouses had had children by previous marriages. Of the remaining i93 cases, the first child was born during the following years of marriage: first year, 28 (14 per cent) cases; second, 46 (23 per cent) cases; third year, 65 (32% per cent) cases; fourth year, 20 (10 per cent) cases; fifth year, 5 (2% per cent) cases; sixth year, 14 (7 per cent) cases; seventh year, 3 (1 Yz per cent) cases; eighth year, 4 (2 per cent) cases; ninth year, 7 (3% per cent) cases; and tenth year and subsequently, l case (% per cent). The interval between the first and second child in the 200 famil ies is as follows: same year, i case; one year interval, 52 cases; two years, 37 cases; three years, 5 cases; four years, 16 cases; five years, 7 cases; six or more years, 17 cases. The interval between the second and third children is: one year, 4 cases; two years, 17 cases; three years, 7 cases; four years, 4 cases; five or more years, 12 cases. Between the third and fou rth child the interval is: one year, 5 cases; lwo years, 16 cases; three years, no cases; four years, 7 cases; five or more years, 8 cases. And between the fourth and fifth child, the interval is: one year, no cases; two years, 13 cases; three years, 4 cases; four years, no cases; five or more years, 3 cases. These births are fairly closely spaced. The second child is born when the first is two years old, or younger, in 73 per cent of the families. With the third child this same condition exists in 48 per cent of the cases; with the fourth it occurs with 69 per cent of the children, and with the fifth it happens in 65 per cent of the cases. Data on the total number of children o( the 200 fam ilies studied are not conclusive since some of the couples are still in their late twenties or early thirties and their fami.lies are still increasing. Among 11 4 of these fam ilies in whi ch the wife is 40 or older, a greater

proportion has four to seven children. The most significant differences, however, appear when the number of children of these 1 q families is compared with the number in the grandparental generation-that is, with the 400 families composed o( the siblings of the 200 husbands and wives swdied. Analysis shows that whereas 64 per cent of present generation women who are practically beyond childbearing age had two or less children and the grou p average was not over four or five, 50 per cent o( the older generation had five or more children and the group aYerage was about six or seven. Even the o lder generation families, however, were said tO have fa llen :.hon of those of the past century, some of \\·hich had as many as L1 1irteen children . Factors making for a decrease in the number of chi ldren are probably similar to those a111011g well -toe.lo and educaled people in o ther parts of the world. Despite the professed Catho li cism of this subculture, birth control is llsed to reduce the birth rate. 111 this respect, the gro up contrasts with most of the rural population, where la rge families are still common and birth control is little used. There is evidently some confl ict over the matter o( family size . A large fami ly carries prestige, children are greatly loved, and, owing to the help of servants and often of g randparents, their care presents no great difficulty; but frequent pregnancies restrict the activities of the woman, who is becoming increasingly independent. Moreover, in certain cases a large number of children would re-

Number of Families

90

~

'\

80

.I \ I

70

I

I

.·1

\ \

'."

./ ~ \

\.

. ' //

30

,

20

,,

\,__ _.....

\

~

I ..

~

I

10

\

"• \

I

40

\ I '

I

60 50

J\ I

~._

0 2

3

-....._ ......... 4

5

-·-. . . 6

7

-

_ 8

9

'\ " 10

Number of Children

Chart 27. Number of ch ildren in ujJjJer-class f amities of difJerent generations. The dotted line indicates th e 11u.mbe r of children in r IT families in which the mother was at least forty 1•ears old at the time of study. The brohen line indicates th e number of chi/drert in the 400 families of the fJarental gen eration.

THE PROMINENT FAMILIES OF PUERTO RICO

quire some reduction of the family's standard of living. It has been suggested above that a large number of children is one of many fact0rs involved in the double standard-that denial of access to his wife is one inducement for a man to have extramarital affairs. It is probably a lso true, however, that with the bonds of the extended family weakening and the ties between husband and wife strengthening, the woman has less emotional need for children than formerly. Hence, the decre:1se i11 the number of children is a result as well as a cause of die decline or Lhe double standard. The dominant role of the husband is traceable to influences that begin at birth. Male children are preferred . and during infancy they are given more attention than girls. Jn Lhe absence of a maid, a sister may e,·en attend a ncl wait upon her younger brother. As the boy grows up he is permitted much more freedom than his sisters, who are closely supervised and protected. During courtship, the young man is somewhat pampered and waited upon by his sweetheart. After marriage many women make a point of giving their husbands innumerable little personal services. T hey serve them at dinner, cut their meat, fetch tobacco, bring their slippers, and light their cigarettes. Women are closely restricted throughout childhood, and after marriage they are accountable to their husbands and enjoy only limited freedom. At the same time, they have a particularly important place in the family since the mother is idealized and commands the greatest love. Although the unmarried youth may attract more attention than his sisters, the married woman symbolizes the status and the focus of the family. She moves in restricted circles and wears clothing and jewelry which display the family's wealth. In addition it is suggested that the status of the mother is a cultural cynosure of this subgroup. DIVORCE

Divorce is not common-the step being disapproved of either on religious or on social grounds. Perhaps 5 to io per cent of the marriag.e~ in. this ~roup had been dissolved. Of the 200 families mterv1ewecl, five men and nvo women had been divorced and remarried. No great social stigma was attached to them. Unman-i ed divorced women, however, were considered fair game both for married men and bachelors, and they were the subject of malicious gossip. RITUAL KINSHIP

Kinship relations are extended through choosing godparents for one's children. These persons become co-fathers (cornfJaclres) and co-mothers (comadres) in a system known as the comjJadrazgo. This institution, though shared with the rural subcultures, is distinctive among prominent fami lies in several ways. In the first place, these famil ies are formal Catholics, and they established godparent relationships at the church rites of baptism, confirmation, and marriage in contrast to

445

certain rural groups, who do not trouble with forma l Church sanction. In the second place, when godparents are chosen for children of professional and business people, the choice is usually made among relatives or close friends within their subcultural group. Thus, the compadrazgo functions sociologically to bind the kin group and the in-group rather than to extend them. This contrasts with its function among the people of the coffee area and to some extent among those of the tobacco area, where ritual kin relations bind persons of different statuses or classes together. It also conu·asts with the function of ritual kinship among the sugar workers, where it enhances solidarity among unrelated members of a proletarian group. ·within the subculture of professional and business executives, this institution does not serve the members of the group in furthering their economic or social security as it does for other groups, including the employees of prominent families. In this subcultural group the grandparents are preferred godparents. If a family has numerous children it may also ask other relatives to become godparen~s. The father's brother and the mother's sister are usually the second choices. Sometimes dose friends may be chosen, but the practice of finding com.padres among friends is less common than a generation ago because of the small families. Al though businessmen and professionals do not ask persons of other classes to become godparents to their own children, they may become godparents to children of the latter. In such cases, the relation serves, as in the coffee and sugar areas, to bridge the gap between these classes. Thus, employees of a wealthy business executive may attempt to strengthen their position and to induce their employer to sponsor and protect them by asking him to serve as godfather to their children. This practice is declining, however, and the employer may refuse to enter into such a relationship with employees. CHANGES IN THE FAMILY

American influences are changing the nature of the prominent families through direct personal contacts of Puerto Ricans with middle- and upper-class North Americans, through education and the influences of mass communications, and through the direct and indirect effects of commercialization. It is difficult to appraise the relative importance of each of these factors, but the trends they have created are unmistakable. These (amilies feel the need to conform to the patterns of North Americans in their business and social contacts with the latter. They learn continental patterns while in the United States through personal associations as well as extended schooling. The young Puerto Rican wife, like the modern Am.erican wife, is becoming emancipated, is well educated, and demands more attention and consideration fro1n her husband and greater participation in his life. The husband accedes to these demands, partly in order to impress his continental business associates with the

446

TH E PEOPLE OF PUERTO RICO

extent to which b o th his wife and himself have been Americanized and partly because he is learning to approve of them. As a result, the couple has fewer children, their bonds with the innumerable con san g uineal a nd collatera l kin are wea kened , their social, recrea tional, and business relations with non-kin assume greater importan ce, the double sLandard de· dines and a difference in outlook, values, and expectations is created between the older and younger gen erations. Freed from the social and emotional demands of a large circle of relatives, the husband and wife can a nd are drawn closer to each other. Together they participate in the social life of their class, especially of the younger generation. Together Lhey find satisfac ti on in sex, for the idea that a decent woman should find sex enjoyable is increasing, w hile the wife's greater independence and more modern o utlook makes her refuse to tolerate her husband's mistresses and on occasion even to threaten divorce. Simultaneously, it appears that the somewhat matriarchal aspects of the tra ditional fam ily are declining, for women a re becoming people rather than the revered symbo ls that bind an extended kin group. These trends have not yet run their course, for the older patterns are perpetuated thro ugh the processes of socialization within the family which start in infancy. The double standard lingers as a culturally accepted practice,9 and the extended family still tends to supersede the nuclear fa mily in commanding primary allegiance, respect, and affection . No matter how far a person extends his loyalties to fr iends, the p romin ent fami ly always provides a secure in-group where he can be sure of satisfyi ng most of his needs and desires throughout life. These va lu es h ave functional importance today and inhibit sudden and drastic change. POLITICAL BEHAVIOR Statistical analysis of the political behavior of the prominent fa milies is much mor e diffic ult th a n in the case of rural communities because the votes of the former are cast along with those of other groups in San J uan. A political census in the field research could not overcome this difficulty because som e of the prominent fa milies are unwilling to reveal their political activities a nd affiliations. The ir conversation, h owever, suggests that there is a lack of political un animity. P rominent families appear to have supported the Popular party, wh ich has been in power for some years, the Coalit ion p arty (consisting of the Statehood party, Liberal party, and Socialist party), and the Jn. depen<lentist party. The promi n ent families seemed to have compara9 Tt is impor1 an1 lo d istinguish actua l behavio r from tha t which is cu lturall y acccp tccl. There is ample evidence rhat in ma n y sorie t ics cxt ramari1al rclalions arc common ;1ltho11g h disapproved -(or example, the pracLices in th e Un ited States as revealed h y Lhc Kinsey report. In the t raditiona l Spanish fami ly, however, t.h ey were 1.aci Ll y condoned by societ y.

tively little interest in politics. T hey spenL litLle Lime in poli tical activity, a nd d id not discuss politics at lengli1 in their p rivate conversaLions. Som e insiglus into political life, h owever, were ga ined from associations with one of the political pani es during the 19.18 election campa ig n and from personal contacts with several powerful government officials during Lhe eight months fo ll owing Lhe eleCLio n. During 19.18, the promine nL fam ilies su pported Lhe Popular party for se\·cral reasons. FirsL. Lhe pany had somewhat n1od craLed its polic y LO\r;1rd c;1pital :1 11d b usines!>. Jn ord er w lu n hcr i11du .~Lr iali1a Lion of Lile island, iL had ach·ocaH:cl Lli;n i1t\' C.:~Lmc1ll in ll C\\' in dustries be tax excmpl. l t ~ougln Lo h;1vc d ie Dc\'el opmen t Company, a go,·en1mc.:1H agency. <'<>·opcraLc rath{!r Lhan co111 p cLc \\'iLh pri \·alc busin ess. :\nd iL assured b11.s incssmc11 Lltat no n c" · hws conccn 1i 11g wages and working co1Hl iLions " ·ere c01llc:m pla Led. Tltc: businessmen i1Hc rprcLed Lhcsc facts as indi caLi ng t.h :tt the governrnc n L would su ppon and sLimulatc fore ign invesunent through loca l comn1crcial concerns. Second , Lhe group was reassured by J\I urio1 J\lar i11's d esire to maimain the island's present political relationships with the United States. Significantly, he chose the Fourth of July to outline the fact that the isla nd was better off economically in its p resent status, because it was afforded advantages under the U nited States tariff system, than it would be as a state or as an independent n ation. l\fost of the prominent famil ies had been conv inced that statehood was impossible and that independence was undes irable, for it would deprive them of many of the ad van tages of being an integral and favored part of the United States economic system. In add ition, ?vluiioz Marin's own personal force and magnetism attracted m any followers . Not a ll o f the prominent fam ilies supported the Popula r party. Those who rema ined loyal to the Coalition belonged largely t0 fami lies that owned land or h ad in vestme nts in sugar. They believed that state· hood was possible and desirable; and they feared what they called the "socialistic" and " communistic" tendencies of the Popula r party, that is, the fund amen tal ch an ges introd uced by the government in th e agricultural prog ram. T h ey considered th is a th rea t to their interests. Hence, though th e Popular party received consid erable support from som e mercha nts and industrialists, o thers were leaders and supporters of the Co· a lition party. The fo llowing tabuhtLion sh ows the hig h correlation between source o[ income and poliLical affiliation of seventy-six men o n whom data were obtained. TABLE 3. INCOME AND POLITICAL AFFI LIATION Agricu ltural Party

I ncom e

N11111 · ber

l'e r cel/t

Nonagricultural Income

Tota l

Num.- Per e<: ]/ t ber

Nu111 - Per cent ber

Popular Coalition

g

29

32

71

41

51·

22

71

l l

25

31l

Inde pendence

0

0

2

,1

2

13 3

Totals

31

100

45

I 00

7(i

JOO

THE PROMINENT FAMILIES OF PUERTO RICO

These data on prominent families suggest that rich absentee farmers and investors tended to support the Coali tion, while persons deriving their income from other sources strongly favored the Popular party. During the week encl preceding the 194.8 election, a g roup of socially prominent supporters of the Coalition party held a public demonstration by driving more than fifty cars displaying banners and decoratio11s through San Juan. T his procession seemed to the man in the .street to be a dispi<ly of wealth more than o[ political strength. for it apparently conveyed the idea that the Coalition party was identified with wealth. The parade was g reeted with whistling and hoots, both expressions of disapproval. i\Iost of the \\'Cll·to-clo urban candidates for the Coalition and the Tndepe11clentist parties adhered to the protocol prescribed by their groups conducting their campaigns. \Vhether they spoke to members of the Rotary C lub or to laborers, they nearly always dressed \\'CIJ and wore neckties. These badges of prestige and "·ea! th made their verbal efforts to identify themselves with lower classes somewhat ludicrous. By contrast, well-to-do urban leaders of the Popular party readily conformed to the dress, customs, and habits o( their audiences. They appeared be(ore mid<lle- and upper-class groups in San Juan well dressed and before certain rural audiences in sh irt sleeves and open collars. During the campaign, some members. of prominent families were candidates, some were active as speakers for different parties, and some supported a candidate merely by the ir presence on the speaker's platform. In San Juan, the Coalition party more often ~han ~he Popular party sought support ~rom the social ehte. The Coalition party made considerable use not only of Americanized Puerto Ricans but of "Yankees," or Americans. One o( its candidates for the legislature had been born in the UniLed States but had lived for many years in Puerto Rico as a wealthy farmerprocessor. He spoke Spanish fluently, had reared his children as well-to-do Puerto Ricans, and had adopted features of Puerto Rican culture, but he was nevertheless regarded as a "Yankee" by many Puerto ~.icans within the Coalition party as well as by many 111 the society at large. . . . . Finally, another poliucal function of the promment families was the ir contribution o( campaign funds for all the parties. The Coalition, especially, depended very h eavily on the wealth of a few of its leaders, who dominated the party. LEADERSHIP

The objectives of Puerto Rico's political parties are described briefly in Chapter 11. The relationship of prom in en t men to political issues, however, rneri ts special consideration because in Puerto Rico as elsewhere in Latin America these men have traditionally played an important role in politics. Voters have freq uen t i y favored men with personal prestige rather than men sLanding on a clear-cut platform, although

447

political issues have not been absent and indeed have often been quite varied. In the early government, as in other realms of life, men of prestige and hereditary status made the principal decisions. Elections were dominated b y political machines that attempted to buy or terrorize voters, and the party was essentially the vehicle for the paternalistic leader. This partly explains why so many parties appeared a nd disappeared during the early decades of the present century. \ •\Then an aspiring political figure could not achieve leadership in an established party he formed a new party of his own. During the last three elections, however, parties have become more dedicated to objectives and ideologies than to individuals, and thus are more durable than their predecessors. The traditional and largely Hispanic pattern of the paternalistic leader still prevailed to some extent in the Coalition party during the last election, although the leader of the Popular party was more charismatic. 10 Coalition supporters ascribed great importance to the qualities of the leaders, whose personalities became a .major binding force in the party. Even amonocer0 tam well-educated people, adherence to the individual leader sonietimes overshadowed ideological considerations. Even when the candidate's position was unclear or apparently wrong, it ·was usually assumed that owing to his wisdom, honor, and breadth of infonnation he must somehow be correct, or at least worthy of support. Partly because of the changing patterns of leadership, political power was redistributed. The Popular p~rty de~eloped a s~rong island-wide organization, wlth a h~g:hly cent.rahzed and effective leadership. In the Coalit1on parnes, where organization was weaker and yet '~here ideol~gi es had begun to prevail, the relationship between msular and local leaders became confused. The latter were still somewhat torn between allegiance to prominent and wealthy persons and to specific political goals. This difficulty was encountered in the highest echelons of the Coalition party itself. \l\Then the Liberal, Socialist, and Statehood parties merged in an effort to defeat the Popular party, they had to select a set of candidates acceptable to all three. At the very outset, when the leaders of these parties formed a committee to choose the joint candidates, each candidate had to abandon his previous and traditional role as a leader whose candidacy could be based on personal prestige. To surrender individual authority and waive personal status in order to achieve a co1nmon purpose through team work was new and disruptive. Personal rivalries and ambitions played havoc with party planning, and the Coalition was badly shaken from wi thin. By contrast, 10 Charism;Hic is used in the '\Vcberian sense of "resting on a devotion to the specific and cxccption<1I sanctity, heroism, or exemplary character of an individual perso n , and of the normative patterns or order revealed or ordered by him." The leader has exc~ptim~al gif~s and ':is always h~ some sense a rcvohlliona ry, sct1111g h1~11 sc1.r 111 c?11sc1011s oppos1t1011 to some established aspects of th e society 111 wluch he "·orks." Parsons and Henderson. 19 47 :64 ,

328.

448

THE P EOPLE OF P uERTO RICO

the Popular party had m a naged to gear th e pattern of personal lead e rship with political objectives through a strong organization. The leaders of the Coa lition thus lost the ir traditional dig11idad and status without achieving comm e nsurate influe nce throug h o rga ni zation toward a common obj ective. AMERICANIZATION OF POLITICS: PARTY PLATFORMS

relig ion, race, o r socioeconomic pos1uo n. ''The stimulatio n and protecti o n of private initiative in order to create a more abundant life" is a lso among the prin ciples of this sectio n. A third section, the "Prog ram o[ Action," which \\'as writte n by pro mine nt members and presents the position of the majority o f them, swtcs : "\Ve shall implant an economic system o[ free enterprise, d evoid of monopolies, which we shal l prosec ute a11d e radica te: we shall g in: oppor· tunitics to yo uth ;ind to h;1rd ,,·orki11g and s tru~g l i11g citizens who seek ;1 I il c '>:ttislactory Lo tl1 e111-;<:ln·s ;111d the ir families:· ( Tr;1 11 ~ l a1 i on mine.) After t\\'o short '>C:< tio1h \\'hich state that the: pany \\·ill , first, I urthc:r ma:-.i1111 1m <o·opc:r;1ti011 bct\\'Ct'll ca pita l. labor. and the: p rolc:ssional a11d middle.; cl:isscs. and, second , e limin ate sL1perll11011 -; and extra \·;1g;111t expenses in goven1 111c 111.. th e p latlonn ;111:1cks the participation of gm·c rnme nt in C<>lllll1 C:ITC: "\\'e will completely eradicate the large estates (111tif1111dio) and the monopolies in the hands of the state. the perfidious competition of this aj:!,a inst pri,·atc O\\' IH:r ... hip, a nd the g rowing centra li1.atio11 o( government p o\\'Cr whi ch crea tes bureaucrati c di ctatorship and incompetent administration.'' (Translation mine.) Interspersed among several vote-getti ng planks on eliminating slums, reducing crime, increasing \\·o rkm en's compensation. a nd en courag ing co-operation with labor unions are th e follow ing attacks on the Popular party's p ositio n in commerce:

The shift towa rd emphasizing ideology and party pla tforms r ather than promine nt p ersonages has made the Pue no Rican political scen e more like that of the U nited States than like the trad itio nal L a tin American scene. This is not to say that L a tin American poli tics has wholly lacked purpose; some o f the fund amental revolutions, esp ecially those which led to ind ep endence of the rep ublics or to ag rarian reforms, were id eologically directed. H owever, there h ave been long periods when ch an ges of government consisted of replacing the ruling personnel ra ther than a ltering objectives. The dedication o[ po liti ca l parties in Puerto Rico during the p ast decade to ideologies is a shift toward the pauerns of the industrialized U nited Sta tes and Europe . Among the particula r ic.leo~ogi es are that of the P opular party for economic independen ce, that of businessmen for furtherin g free enterprise, and the program for political independence through democratic process. The present more ideo logical politica l o bjecti ves ca nnot be credited to the socially promin ent group. ' 'Ve will eliminate the Puerto Rica n J\gricuhural Com· The growth o f labor unions, the increasing politica l pa11y, which gives lO th e Department of Agriculture the awareness o( the general population, and a general necessa ry funds to rea lize r\ gricullural development which franchise h ave b een crucial in creating parties and said Company should ha\'C clone and has fai led to do. party platforms. At the sam e time, the prominent " 'e wi ll eliminate the Transportation Authority a11d sell people have furthered and san ctio ned this movement its equ ipment to a chauffeur's cooperative as soon as this has in severa l ways. \ ,Vhen i\Iunoz i\farin broke with tradi- been formed in the Department of the In terior, Division of tion and conducted his P opula r p arty campaigns on Area Tra11sponation. ' 'Ve will eliminate the La nd Authority, s<.:11 its lands lo the basis o ( fundamental socia l and economic issues, prom inent people publicly approved. ·whe ther they bonafide small and middle-sized farmers on easy terms, sell su pported i\fuiioz o r not, they were convin ced th at the sugar mills to cooperati\'CS of th<.:sc farmers, and give title of property to the workers who now work the Janel unsocial issues shou ld underly poli tica l differences. Insoder Titlc V of the Land Law. far as other segmentS o f the population based the ir v\lc will also elimin ate the Communications ,\uthority.n idea of proper forms of behavior upon this group's behavior. the latter's approva l of politi cal pla tforms The above quotations, although marked by a cerca 1-riecl weig ht. ta in rhe toric, probably re present the political ideology The platform of the Statehood party, published in of a considerable majority of the prominent famili es. 1948, illustrates the importance to prominent fa milies of h aving issues in Puerto Rican politics. T h e docuWOMEN IN POLITICS ment was written by m e n of prominence and accepted b y those members of this group who were present Trad iti o nally, m en have carried out the econom ic at the conve ntion o n August 15, 1~)48. i\ Iaking a com- and pol itical [unctions o f the prominent fam ilies while m ent upon the poor social and political cond itio ns of the women have e ngaged in the socinl activities so the country, the p aper sta tes that all the presen t poliri- impo rtan t in placing the famil y in the hierarchy o( ca l confu sio n a nd difficulties are intended "to sa tisfy prestige. And yet, with universal suffrage, it has bethose egotists who think on ly of their own interest, come proper for women to enter this arena, and som e who permit the ship of state to ride the tides, never upper-class women have become m ayors and leg islators to reach port and who, while aboard the ship, continue and have h eld other e lected o ffices. At the time of the to abandon thernsel ves to orgies." (Transla tio n rn inc.) swdy, for instance, th e m ayor of Snn Juan was a Another section entitled "Declarati on o( Prin cip les" supports broad d emocratic a 11d liberal tenets: libe rty, 1 t Quotat ions from pages £'> and 6 of the 111imcograph ed slate· justice, and el1uality with ouL distin ctio n between sex, 111t:ll l.

THE PROMINENT FAl\11LlES OF PUERTO RICO

woman. The prominent families seemed to resolve the contradiction between such activities and women's traditiona l role by holding that it was quite proper for except ional women to enter politics but that otherwise women should play their usual social roles. Actually, most women who engaged in politics were single or widowed, although there were exceptions. ·M ore women held imponant positions in the Popula r party L11;111 in the Coalition. \•Vomen attain power in po liti cs d1rough sheer persona lity and energy. One gifted prominem woman became exu·emely prominent in the Popular party because of her indefatigable appearann:s al public ft111etions and her unfailing support of mm·cments tO benefit the poor, underprivileged, and handicapped. :\ friend of labor and school children. she was known as the "Eleanor Roosevelt of Puerto Rirn" si nce :\lrs. Roosevelt, li ke the late President Fra11kl,i11 D. Roosevelt, ,,·as greatly admired in the island. The reaction of the prominent families toward this woman was some"·hat similar to that of many North Americans toward ?\[rs. Roosevelt. .Although occasionally ridicu led, she was praised for her purpose and achievements. The reaction was ambivalent, revealing an uneasiness that a woman might make significant achievements in an area traditionally dominated by m en, a n admi1·ation of a woman who had successfully compelcd with men, and uncertainty about her obj ectives. It is a lso indicative of acculturational trends that women have engaged in political activities far more in the industrialized and urbanized coastal towns than in the mountain agrarian areas.

RELIGIOU S BEHAVIOR Th is sect ion d iscusses lhe func tional role of organized religion in ~he sub~ultu re, not ~-~ligious doctrine and organizauon. l\I1nor superst1llons, dream interpretations, apparitions, spiritualism and spiritism, though present to a. small extent, _arc comparatively unimportant ft~ n.cuonally. To this subc~tlt~ral group, organized ~eh g 1 on me~ns orthodox, u~s~ltu­ tionalizcd Catholicism. There is no folk Catholtc1sm, as among the coffee workers o( San J osc or the sugar laborers o( Nocora. CATHOLICISM

vVe are imerested in Catholicism as a system of eth ics which instills in the ind ividual a set o[ social values and gives them religious sanctions. Since the functi o n o[ ~he ch urch has changed greatly during the last cen tll ry and is sti II changing, it will be necessa1-y to analyze some o[ the culwral historica l processes which have secularized considerable areas o( life and which ha ve created increasing conflict between the va lues engendered by modern industrial society and the traditional values of the Church. This ana lysis in evitab ly involves th e broader question of how the subculture of the business and professional families,

449

though embracing the "Protestant ethic" in much of its economic and soci~ l lif~, has remained essentially Catholic. The analysis w ill attempt to show how Catholicism itself chai~ged from a state religion, which once sanct1~)11e.d. vu-tually all aspects of behavior, to a more 111d1v1dual religion ; how it has acco~modated t? _modern u·ends and, through its symbolical and sp1ntual value, has been able to increase its following among these fami lies even while it h as relinquished its control over many areas of life. Quantitative evidence of these changes is found in the extent o( adherence to Church precepts such as birth conu·ol, P'!-1·ticipatio1~ in church r itual, confoimity with cardma~ r~quirements, and membership in Church orgamzauons. The great majority of prominent Puerto Ricans are professed Catholics. Of the 200 case history fami lies, only !? are Protes.tant a nd _o_n ly i is an agnostic. Bue present-day promment fam1ltes are Catholic in a somewhat d ifferent sense than their forebears of a century or even a half century ago; for the social function of Catholicism has undergone hist0rical change. In feudal Europe, the Church and State were so closely associated that even economic and social arrangementssuch as the agrarian pattern of two classes, landlords and peasants-were part of a total socioreligiouspolitical pattern. After the industrial revolution, which produced Protestam mercantilists and indusu·ial middle classes in northern Europe, agrarian Spain and her empire were carefully guarded by innumerable restrictions aga inst the pene tration of non-Catholic, commercial foreigners. I n Spain itself, the middle-class J ewish and Moorish artisans and merchants were suppressed, liquidated, or expelled. Toward the end o( the last century, Puerto Rico, like the other Spanish colonies, became restive under the economic restrictions of the mother country. A desire for g reater economic freedom- that is, greater participation in world commerce-went hand in hand with demands for greater political freedom and local autonomy. Since the Catholic church personnel had been closely identified with, if not acwally selected by, the Crown since the sixteenth century and had engaged in political activity as well as in religious duties, the general anti-Spanish movement inevitably included anticlericalism. This u-end was not unique to P uerto Rico, but was also observed in Spain and in Latin American countries (Brenan, 1943; \ •Vagley, 1952:8 f.). This feeling, however, was not necessarily anti-Catholic, for although a few individuals in Pueno Rico embraced Protestantism and others became skeptics, the body oL traditional rel igious ideologies was too firmly implanted to be seriously shaken in this way. l\Ioreover, th ere were few institutionalized alternatives to Catho licism. It was not until near the close of the nineteenth century that Protestant churches were established in Ponce and Vieques, and this was permitted only because Queen Victoria, at the request o( a few British immigrants, had petitioned the Spanish Crown. American occupation opened doors to influences

!ms

450

THE PEOPLE OF PUERTO RICO

which were adverse to the older forms of Catholicism. It facilitated and permitted proselytization by Protestant sects, which gained a substantial follow ing among certain sociocultura l groups. Bm a resurgence of Catholicism also followed American occupation. There were two possible reasons for this. First, the political, economic, and social changes after 1898 were so rapid and in many ways so disruptive of older values that a great many persons used Catholicism as a symbol of traditional values. Since the United States was-and is-thought of as essentially Protestant, Catho licism stood for the traditional way of life. Catholicism, however, ca nnot be equated with anti-Americanism or P rotestantism with pro-Americanism. Second, Catholicism itself changed. In the United States, the Catholic church, lacking the social and political power comparable to that it held in the Spanish Empire, had long since ach ieved a workable arrangement, if it had not quite come to terms, with an industria l nation in which state a n d church were wholly separate. \Vhen Puerto Rico came under American sovereignty the local church came under American dioceses. It now started to respond to policies originated in the United States by trying vigorously to reinforce its position through religious education and insistence on conformity. Puerto Rican Catholicism differs nonetheless from Catholicism in the United States and is perhaps more similar to the patterns of Catholicism described by ·wagley (1952:8) as widespread in modern Latin America: In all countries, Catholicism is a part of one's life, even if you are not a Catholic and despite the fact that the Church and the State arc legally separated in most countries. . . . You will aLLcnd weddings, Baptisms, Confirmation ceremonies, and Masses for the dead in the Church . . . . Latin American Cntholicism tends to be more mystical, more understanding of the lesser vices of men, and perhaps less strict in carrying out the principles o( the Church than Catholicism in the United States. Allhough there are many fervent Catholics (the majority of whom are women), many others arc "traditional" Catholics in about the same way many people arc "traditiona l" Protestants in the United States. Catholicism, like most religions in Lhe modern world, is b ecoming an instrument which meeLs the spiritual needs of the individual-the needs fe lt by most persons to relate themselves to the larger forces o( the universe and to the hereafter-rather than a set of dogmas governing economic, socia l, and political behavior in daily life. Catholicism in Puerto Rico has served as a foca l point oE resistance to acculturation: more positively, it has affirmed Puerto Rican ism. Many people are not literally orthodox. The ir observance of eLh ical strictures and participation in the ritual is considerably below the requirements of the Church. An outstanding example of the disregard of Church precept is birth contro l. The low birth rate among the commercial and professional families shows that the number o[ chi ldren is a function of in come, standard of li ving, and ed ucation much more Lhan of religious teneLs. The indi vidual's social goa ls and his

means of attaining them have become in this instan ce secularized- they have responded to social and economic ideals- despite the o lncial position of the Church. Yet, while keenly aware that overpopulation is perhaps the island's most serious problem, these families hesitate to favor openly any insular program of binh control. This question came before one of the associations of prominent women, and a motion to support the Church \\'as opposed hy :111 outsta ucliui.; member on the grounds th:tt the 111c1nbcr.~ 1IJC·mselvcs obviously used birth rn1nrnl. To a\'oicl Ll1 c issue. the motion was tabled. T he function ol the Church in dii~ group is :t!so indicated to !'>ome extent bv church :1ucndancc, bv confessions, and b y ll11anc·iai' support. C:hilclren, \\'h;> have been consta ntl y indoctrinated throug h p:1rochial schoo ls and oth er religious tearhi nK. an:: fair ly faithful in church attendance. Among young unmarried ;1d11lts, women auend more regularly than nu.:11 .. \ftcr m:11·riage, men usually accomp:tny their \\'i,·cs, hut as they grow older they attend l<:ss oltcn . Data 011 the :?oo fam ilies swdied show that l.J2 \\'ivcs and only !l ' husbands attend regularly, while 109 husbands and 58 wives attend rarely or never. Observa nce of confess ion also indicates that many persons a re little more than nominal Catholics but that more women than men are orthodox. Confessions

Nu 111/Jer

Percentage

\<\fife confesses regularly \Vife confesses a few times a year \Vifc confesses once a year \\fife never confesses

t07 18 68 7

53-5

Totals

200

100

Husband con fesses regu larly Husband confesses a few times a year Husband confesses once a year Husband ne,·cr con fesses

37

18.5

13 8G

G.5 43 32

Totals

G1 !!00

9

34 3·5

100

This laxness in the confessional as well as in church attendance suggests that the Church's control of social behavior has waned. Although Catholics n ow dea l with social, economic, and political situations in secular rather than religious terms, most of them contin ue to observe the more private 0 1· individual rites-baptism, wedding ceremonies, con firmation, last rites, and the like. These critical points in life have religious significance to the individual, but they also serve secular social p urposes. Baptisms establish godparental relationships which rei nforce the kin group. T he other rites not only protect the spiritual welfare of the individual but enable small circles of kin and friends to get together. Th ere are a lso certain more strictly familial religious features: pictures and statues o[ saints in the h o usehold , daily prayers, ancl wakes held at dcaLh. Among man y fami lies, however, some o[ these fea tures arc c.lisappea1·ing. For exam pl e, at the death o( an im-

THE PROM I NENT FAMILIES OF PUERTO RICO

mediate kin, a person once was expected to observe a year of mourning, during which he dressed in black o r dark. colors and avoided dances, parties, and other for ms o f recreatio n. Today, many persons cut the period of mourning to a few months or to the minimum of the nine days o( prayers, and even this period o[ prayer Jacks its former devoutness. ·women, however, still are expected to mourn for a longer period than me n a nd arc expected to carry on the religious activities fo r the dead. This does not mean that beliefs the fate of the deceased's sou l have cn11cern i1w n changed, nor that grief has lessened, but o nly tha t the ~ocial behavior required of the survivor h as changed, as have other mores o n the island . . \no th er indication of the contemporary meaning or Catholic ism is found in con tributions to the Church. The Puerto Rican ch urch is not self-supporting; it d e pends upon finan cia l aid from the United States. Pro 111 incnt people dona te substa nti~~l su_ms upon requ est, but their spontaneous contnbuuons are not large. The 2 00 families swd ied gave the followi ng i11t'ormation on their contribu tions : Cont ribut ions to the Church

ll'eehly Less than S• Be tween Si a nd S5 More than S5 Yearly Less than S100 llc twecn Sioo and S300 :Between S300 and S500 More than $500

Number of Percentage of Families Families 140 70 16.5 33 13·5 27 117 39

33 I I

58.5 19·5 16.5 5·5

Of the an nua l contributions, 56 were volunteered, were donated upon the request of a priest, and 27 ~{)Oil the request of_ Other cl:urch :·epresentatives. Th irty-four fami lies rn c~ uded 111 then: a_n m~al .contributions reaular donauons to Catholic 111st1tutions, and I I families gave occasionally to other institutions. Various mino r contributions are frequently made to sisters, children, and others who take up collections in stores and offices. ln contrast to the figures just cited, a recent cb-ive for funds for a Catholic university established on the so u th coast elici ccd contributions, often of several thousa nd dollars, from the wealthy families, especially o [ Ponce and J\Iayagi.iez. Although the in !lu~ncc o( tl~e C~mrch h ~s dccrea~ed in m any a reas of soc1<1 l behav10r, its part 111 enablmg p rominent families to display the symbols of their socia l status is extremely important. T hese people use the church for weddings, baptisms, and funeral r ites; at these ceremonies the church is elaborately decorated with flowers a nd other adornmen ts whose quantity and cos t measure a fam ily's wealth and status. This attitude is at odds with some Church teaching. During a class o( religious instructio n, a nun had some cli_fficulty expla ining to the children that when one dies the r.r.

451

spiritual ministrations for the deceased a nd comfort for the survivors were more important than display. One of the students protested that the popularity of the deceased is measured by the number of automobiles and the quantity of flowers which were seen at his funeral. This religious training insures observance of proper ritual and a comprehension of the spiritual function of the Church, but crisis rites nonetheless are occasions for social display. Some persons attend a particular church for the sake of prestige. A late mass in the Sacred Heart Church (Sagrado Corazon), which is attended predominantly by the prominent families, is known as the "rich man's mass." One very rich fam ily has a chapel on its estate where it holds private masses. Some prominent people, h owever, attend sma ll churches. One of these in a lower middle-class neighborhood is popular because of its Spanish priest. \N'hatever church is chosen, the well-to-do use expensive rosary beads, crucifixes, and prayer books, and they wear their finest clothes to mass. O ften, people of inferior status may wa it outside the church to observe the elegance of the well-to-do. The association of individuals with one another at church also indicates status. Members of various social cliques sit together, a nd, more importantly, they gather outside the church to chat. After church, a socially compatible group may go to someone's h o use for wine. There are other forms of quasi-religious participation in the Catholic church. Some of the young women of prominen t famil ies who have been well trained in the Ca techism and Church procedures accompany sisters imo the countryside to help train lay members and to instruct children . Prominent fami lies may also belong to clubs and associations connected directly or indirectly with the church. Among these are the Cat110lic Daugh ters (Hijas Cat6licas), the Catholic Youth Organiza tion, and the Knigh ts of Columbus. Many members of these associations are very active and make church work a n important part of their lives. Membership in these organizations, however, involves only a m inority of the prominent families. Of the 200 families interviewed, only 73 households h ad a member in one or more of these societies. The fa ilure of th e prominent families of San Juan to participate extensively in the religious festiva ls of the city has little bearing on religious con(ormity because these festivals have become secularized popular affa irs rather than class·oriented activities. The Festival of th e Patron Sa int, San J uan, for instance,. includes some religious ritua l, but it is predominantlya commercial and recreational affair for people of the lower classes. Rich people, especially men, usuallylimit tl1emselves to gambling at the bazaars or watching the u-aditional n ight bathing at the seashore~ At Easter, most of the prominent fam ilies go to church,. but they do not participate in the parades which carry sacred statues through t11e streets. In Rio Piedrns, this holy processional is completely overshadowed by the permanent ca rniva l at the plaza that adjoins the· cathedral; the carro usel, d odgem cars, caterpillar ride,,

452

TI-IE PEOPLE OF PUERTO RICO

and other noisy amusements which dominate the festival. Thus religious affiliation is not a precondition to group acceptance or to achieving status, although religious activities have the secular value of permitting display of wealth.

RECREATION

In moc.lcrn society, there is a sharp distinction between work, to which certain hours arc allotted, and recreation, which is clone after hours. "Recreation" has in fa ct become an irnponant social ca tegory and a primary culwral goal, beca use modern man often considers his economic acti,·ities to be a means noL OTHER RELIGIOUS BELIEFS merely of meeting the ba~i c need~ ol lire but ol Among many different sociow ltural segme1:~ ?[ enabling him to e njoy Iii ~ le isun: ti111c. I knee a (<>11 Puerto Rico there is a fairly prevalent belief 111 siderablc repertoire of purely recrc·;1tional ani,·ities spiritualism a nd spiritism. So little has been recorded has de\'elopcd-ga111c~. :-.port\. m0Lio11 pinures. radio, of these phenomena that the very distin ction between books, art. lllthi<, da11c i11g-. '>Ocial gather ings. tra,·el, them is somewhat vague. P erhaps spiritualism can be and man y 01 lt er\. defined as communication with the spirit world Since .. r<.:cr<.:aLional acti\'itic . . .. as a C'al cgory of modthrough a medium, the purpose being principally tO ern civilization haH: bc:cwne b\' d efi nition those forms foretell the future a nd receive guidance in crises. or c njoymenl which are large !;· str ipped o[ their proPuerto Rican spiritualism thus resembles the common ductive or religinu<; lune tio11;,. iL may he postulated variety known in man y countries. Only a few upper- that Lhey can ,·ary co11 ... idcrably and that they ma y class persons consult mediums, although the practice cliff use or be brnTm,·cd Iro111 a 11 a Ii en ntl uire more exte nsivel y than mosL ani vi ti<.:s. Culull"al Lraits aimed is common in the rural areas. Spiritism differs from spiritualism in being a kind sole ly at re('reational ends ca n be accepted by societies of magico-sciemific cult which has a strong intellectual more easil y than traits embodying religious fun ctions. appeal to many "·ell-educated persons. It h as a suffi- Thus this subcultural group characterized by a rather cient followino- of earnest believers in the Condado self-contained set of recreational activities has readily district to s upport a commodious and luxu~iously borrowed entertainment trails from nlien cultures. furnished temple. Spiritism purports to be a krnd of Jn modern soc iety, use made of recreational forms scientific and philosophical search for truth. An effort is of course a function of economic sta ws, for such is made to tie it inte llectually to such philosophers as things as movies, automobiles, radios, trips a nd vacaSpinoza, Kant, and Voltai re, whose works are stud ied tions abroad are costly. For this reason the repertoire carefully, and it is claimed that procedures a re based of recreational features is greater in the higher in come on experimentation. The precise nature of the rituals groups, anc.l recreation becomes an index o( social is not clear, but they evidently have discarded some prestige. Because prominent families use their high o( the more bizarre pracLices such as table tapping standard o[ living and costly entertainment to imand trances found in orthodox spiritualism while press business associates, their econom ic and recreastressing the "in tellectual" side. To its ardent foltional activities are closely related. This relationship lowers, the revelations of th e spiritistic sess ions are is facilitated by the executive's comparative freedom often determining fa ctors in making important deci- from a strict routine of work. I n their kinds o[ recreation, in the amount of time, effort, and money devoted sions. Premo nitory dreams and signs are ascribed some to it, and in the prestige value it carries, the upper significance by a fe"· p rominent people, especially classes differ from all others. Individuals of oth er women, but they are rarely the basis for <lecic.ling vital g roups may imitate these patterns to some extent, matters. Occasionally, they may be used for deter- but they lack the extra wealth, th e leisure, and the mining whether or not t0 cancel a flight reservation or training that give recreation its distinctive meaning to this group. to purchase a lottery t icket. Once in a while, a person It has been noted elsewhere that a family's social may remark that he knew a certain thing would happen because h e h ad dreamed it, but little cr.cd ence position depends principally upon the circles wiLhin is criven clairvoyants and fortun e tellers. Reading tea which the wife moves. In contrast to the husba nd , 0 . whose business activities require th at he have exten leaves or palms is considered mere enten~1~i:ient. Outside the rather earnest cult of sp1nttsts, few sive contacts with people of other classes, the wife is persons take dreams, premonitions, hunches, and other able to confine her personal contacts and her activities lesser manifestations of supernaturalism very seriously. to her own "k ind." These activities are very largely This is probably attributable to the high level of edu- recreationa 1. It has also b een noLec.l that Pueno Ricans of this cation and the largely secularized thought in this subculture rather than to the opposition of the Church . In group arc far more Americanized Lhan any other spite or the Church's disapproval, people of various group. This is as true of their recreation as o( most classes throughout the island find little con flict be- o th er aspecls of their life. Recreation, however, is by tween Church membership and belief in sp iritualism, no means com pletely Americanized. Tho11gh many of their recreations-motion pictures, automobiles, sports, spiritism, and magic.

THE PRO~Il:'\Ei'\T FA~llLIES OF PUERTO RICO

radios, books, magazines-are products of the United States, th ese are sometimes consumed in a distinctive Puerto Rican way. The upper class still reta ins in some meas ure the Latin American attitudes which ascribe grcaLer imponance to gracious living than to material values. These attiwdes may cause some conflict within the men, who seemingly work at making money wiLh a business o rientation learned in the United States. But the women are comparatively free to e nj oy the traditional va lues. T hus, the complex of activities which center around women far more than around mc 11 perpewates the Hispanic recreation values of th e larnilv and in-group. These values are especially a ppa rent in · those cle~nen ts of recreaLion which are not i11d11strial products-for example, in a marked preference for l .a tin American music, songs, and dance steps. This p1·c lerc11ce for Hispanic content is reflected in the great impo rtance atta ched LO a man's dancing ability. Compctcnce in this kind o( artistic expression is essential to Lh e Puerto Rica n man, whereas it is only a minor a!>sct to the United States socialite. In short, while Lhe man's world of business has of necessity become American ized, the woman's world of social entertainment remains markedly, though not wholly, Latin American. In fact, Lhe sociorecreational patterns are still so foreign to the wealthy resident American that he is not at ease in them. R ecreational patterns differ according to age-levels, but throughout life there are features distinctive of the u pper class: considerable costs are involved; comparatively great freedom from :cono1!1ic ;rnd household chores is necessary, especially 111 the case of women; a large number of ~m7r~ can devices and mat~­ rials arc used; and, as the 111d1v1dual grows older, lus recreational activities tend to become inseparable from Lh e whole prestige system o( the in-group. CHILDHOOD AMUSEMENTS

The infant is provided with a large inventory of toys imported from the United States- rattle_s, rubber toys, blocks, pacifiers, balls, dolls, mecha n 1cal toys, and the like. The child is also '1ttended by a maid who cares for his physical needs and is a playmate and companion. "\•\Then th e preschool child bec?mes olcl~r he owns an impressive variety o( toys- bicycles tricycles, mechanical toys, soccer balls, baseballs, and oLher sports goods, cowboy suits, dolls and doll houses, erector, carpentcr, and painting sets, comic books, and innumerable other things appropriate to his sex. He may also have pets, and, if the family has a country home, he sometimes has a pony. In addition to play, preschool children indulge in more structured forms of recreation. A boy may accompany his father to sports events, and children of both sexes may go on family picnics. I n many activities, the ch ild ren are not merely participants; they hold positio ns of prestige and responsibility which foreshadow their adult roles. At his birthday parly the

453

youngster is expected to act as host, unassisted by the adults, who gather in another room. There are juvenile and children's formal balls for which a king a nd queen of the ball are chosen. These children are dressed as the reigning majesties and, like adults, may be photographed for the newspapers. ELEMENTARY-SCHOOL AGE PATIERNS Boys' Recreation

Some of the forms of recreation of the preadolescent child have been mentioned previously. Outside of school, boys and girls spend a great deal of time taking lessons in an , dancing, and music, all designed to funher their sociorecreational futures. In addition, boys become interested in sports, in movies, and in making collections. Baseball and basketball are the most popular sports, although the games are not well organized and the competi tive spirit present in the United States is largely absent. Other sports include volleyball, tennis, golf, swimming, yachting, horseback riding, and soccer. In addition, children, like their forebears, play checkers and chess a nd fly kites. At this age, a good deal of the interest in sports is vicarious. Boys attend professional sports with their parents, a nd as they approach adolescence, they go alone or with other boys to these events. "\Vhat they lack in competitive drives when engaging in sports themselves they make up for by having violent arguments about such matters as pitching and batting averages of prominent baseball players, and team records. Although these arguments rarely lead to blows, the name-calling a nd shouting often become so vehement that they seem to express extraordinary pent-up hostility. During the primary-school years movies become a major source of enterta inment, and children in this su bcu lLura l group usually see several pictures a week. It is impossible to estimate how much influence movies have~ these are among the imponderable effects of this media of mass communications-but it should be noted that most films are made in the United States and either have Spanish clubbed in, in a few instances, or carry Spanish subtitles. "\l\Testerns, mysteries, comedies, and gangster p ictures are preferred. Abbott and Costello were the favorites at the time of the field work. Motion pictures, like comics, apparently meet a need, as in the United States, for vicarious excitement, and may not comribute substa ntially to learning. These children are bilingual, however, and they also see a few films imported from l\Iexico, Argentina, and Spain. Coll ecting picture ca rds from candy a nd gum h as become an absorbing interest among the boys of this age. Considerable time is devoted Lo trading, purchasing, selling, and even gambling for these cards. A purchase price of S 1 for a card was o bserved, and it is alleged that prices as high as 100 have been paid for rare items. This claim is probably apocryphal, but it suggests the degree to which money is part and parcel of ju venil e recreation. There is no particu-

454

THE PEOPLE OF PUERTO RICO

lar cultural stigma attached to gambling- witness for example adult gambling at the cockfights and horse races-and young boys gamble for cards through various methods of matching and tossing. Collecting stamps, coins, and other items interests some children, but none vies with cards. Girls' Recreation

After the primary-school girl has put her dolls away, she is trained much faster than her brother for adult roles in which social and recreational activities are largely inseparable. She is informed by her mother about the sta tuses of different families in the social hierarchy, and through participating in an increasing number of parties she learns how to behave as a hostess and as a guest. These childhood parties reproduce quite faithfully the major social events which will require so much of her time and interest as an adult. The girl becomes preoccupied with dress, personal appearance, demeanor, dancing ability, and entertainment, and she begins to judge the social acceptability of young men. At the same time she has much less interest than her brother in hobbies, sports, and collections.

served at a coronation in one of the better hotels. On this occasion , the ballroom was so large that it accommodated a large crowd . Tickets were sold pub licly to persons who wished to watch the coronation . An effort was made, however, to incl uce celebrit ies to attend. The crowd, nearly all in formal dress, began to arrive about ten o'clock, although the coronation was scheduled for midnight. The interval was passed eating, drinking, chatting, and taking pinures. Fi11ally, the band started to pla v. which symboli1ed the start of the mai11 even t. a11d an ;urnouncer stepped up to the public addre~s systc111. I k greeted the cro\\'d . \\'elcomed and compli1rn:11ted thcrn in a short speech , and then stated. '"\\'e :ire g:1thered here to cro\\'n Sei'iorita Linda as Queen. :\ s her co11n \\T prcse 11t Sei'iorita Bonita, queen of the C:o11dado last yc: 1r. and her escort." :\ spotlight locuscd 011 Se1-10ri1a Bonita

YOUTH RECREATIONAL PATIERNS Young Women's Recreation

At the age of about fifteen, boys and girls are introduced into adult society and thenceforth will attend numerous formal balls, wedding receptions, cocktail parties and other social events. Girls are initiated into their new roles through membership in sororities and through lavish coming-out parties. The social events serve the threefold purpose of social display, recreation, and an opportunity for courtship. J\larriage in her early twenti.es will partially remove the young woman from the social arena . Until then, these events dominate her life. Before and after each one, she and her friends spend the ir time discussing clothes, boys, food and decoraLions at the balls, and the social statuses involved. Of greatest interest to girls just entering social life is the selection of the queen of the annual carnival, the queens of other events, and their ladies in waiting. To be chosen queen is a girl's supreme ambition . Choice of the carnival queen, the most prized of all, is by no means a popularity contest. Since the carnival has become commercialized, a seH-appointed committee of interested businessmen, together with society editors, ma nagers of hote ls where the balls will be held, and one or two socially prominent persons, simply announce the queen for the year. The ad !toe committee's selection is based upon the family's financial ability to support the girl in her queenly role as well as upon her appearance and poise. There are now so many social funcLions which select queens that this distinction is losing importance. I n all cases, however, the choice and crowning of the queen are major functions of certain halls. This social award fo llows a general pattern similar to that ob-

Fig. 42. T!te quee11 of th e 1911 carnival h eld at the Escllln· brdn B ench Club . Plwlo by Oscar Aponte of "El !111/wrcial."

and her escort, who paraded majestically amid ap· pl ausc to the decorated platform, where they turned to be photographed. About twenty more queensthose of previous years, those from other towns, those representing different age groups, and so forth- were then presented w ith their escorts. The queen of the evening had sixteen princesses who were presented and took positions on the platform. Finally the queen and her escort were presented and were g iven much applause as they paraded and took their places upon the stage. The new yueen differed from the other girls in wearing a veil and a long train. Seated upon a throne, she was crowned by her predecessor amid a musical fanfare and flashing o( cameras. Her princesses then danced, a fter which the royal couple did a solo waltz and then a <lance in which all of the court joined. This completed the ceremonial and the guests danced fo r the remainder of the evening. T\.vo orches-

I

Ii

THE PROiVIINENT FAM.ILI ES OF PUERTO RICO

tras took turns playing to make con tinuous dancing possible until nearly dawn. Although United States music and dance steps are sometimes used in Puerto Rico, all music and dances at this ball were Latin American, which is more popular throughout Puerto Rico. People of this subculture prefer their own music- Puerto Rican, Latin American, and Spanish -because they think it has more rhythm than American dances, which are flojo ("li feless," "dull"). Since most young men of this subculture go to the U ni led Slales for their college education, the winter social season has encountered difficulties. At the carni\·al. which is held in February, just before Lent, su iLa ble partners arc so sca rce that the girls may take th e initiative in asking boys to escort them. Selection of ;1 n escort for balls is particularly important, because partners se ldom rotate and a girl dances most of the evening ,\·ith her escort. Often the girl may invite a cousin~ \\·ho. because ol kinship obligations, cannot we lI refuse. The social season is now shifting to the summer, when the young men are home from college, but the pauern wherein young women take the initiative in dating has carried over to the summer seas?n, despite the oppositi~n of some parents: Th~t the girls take the initiative 111 these matters is still another indication of the extent to which social life revolves around women. Sororities

Previously we have me1.u_ioned that in~tiation into one o[ the five major soronues, together with presentation to society at a ball, is the final step in growing up. The sororities, however, are more. than r~crea­ tional groups. Formed in ~he la~e t~ven_ttes but m no way connected with educational mst1tut1ons, they have formalized social cliques. The subculture has grown so large that it has subdivided. The sororities, each with about 1 00 members, have become status groups primarily of young, unmarried women, whose married members may become inactive or "passive" members in chapters [or marri~d wo_men. These "alumnae" chapters are important in_ social ev~n.ts: . The manner of choosmg and 1111tiatmg members was evidently borrowed fron~ _collegiate fraterni~ies, except that there is no compet~uon for members. Smee the social rating of each girl is pretty well known to everyone, sorority affiliation is left in little doubt. The prospective member, however, is proposed by a sponsor. After a committee investigates and approves her, she must receive a unanimous favorable vote. Initiation is usually held in some secluded place in the country, a nd it consists of a few minor pranks, such as req uiring the neophyte to wear dungarees and a ludicrous hairdo, to walk blindfolded over wet spaghett i, and the like. Once a girl has become a member she is never asked to resign. The purpose of the sororities is entirely recr~ational. Each holds monthly meetings at the homes of its members. These meetings keep the members in contact with one another and give the hostess experience in social duties. The sororities have volleyball teams, and

455

they go on occasional picnics which are paid for by monthly dues of a dollar or so. By far the most important sorority function is the annual ball which, like all balls and parties given by the upper classes, are among the more ostentatious recreational activities. The annual ball has gained importance as the principal activity. At one time, when the upper class was a small elite, sororities evidently formalized genuine cliques of intimate friends who habitually visited each other and gave each other wedding presents. Today, sorority meetings, picnics, and the like seem to be designed to promote cohesion largely for the ultimate purpose of giving the annual sorority ball. That is, the "upper class" has outgrown the "big family" or "clique" stage and now formalizes internal group cohesion in part by a series of social affairs. The sororities represent formal associations of women, who are the status markers in this society. Sorority balls are one of the means of displaying the family's status. I\fore specifically, sorority balls have three latent purposes. First, they present new members to society, thus reinforcing the status these members gained in their family's "coming-out party." Second, the guest lists, as in all social activities, delineate social groups, since the sorority ba lls may be attended only by members and by their invited guests. Each member is entitled to give only two or three invitations to nonmembers, and the affair is very restricted. Third, the balls provide opportunities for meeting suitable and eligible bachelors. Thus, attendance at sorority balls defines the group socially. \l\Tben analyzing the function of sociorecreational activities of this kind, one may lose sight of their more manifest purpose. Sorority balls conform to the sociorecreational patterns of urban upper classes. But the members of these classes also regard them as tremendously important personal events. Members of the host sorority are dressed in the same color a nd sit at the same table at dinner, thus presenting a united front without competition between members. This contrasts with coronations of queens, where each individual vies with her friends and age group in dress and other overt features. In addition, at a sorority ball the floor is cleared at midnight so that all new members of the sorority may be presented to the public. The sorority members then form partners in a waltz. It is only after the members of the sorority have put on this united front that the invited g uests dance together. Young Men's Recreation

Vhen young men of the upper class reach the age o( about fifteen, they are exposed to a very different recreational pattern than that which affects most of the young women, for they usually go to the United States to college. Their participation in Puerto Rican life is largely limited to summer vacations, when they perforce accept the pattern of the female-dominated social functions which continued in their absence. Attendance at college in the United States gives the young man certain interests and attitudes which differ \ 1

456

THE PEOPLE OF PC ERTO RICO

somewh at from those of Pu eno Rico. H e b ecomes interes ted in a nd p e rhaps parti cipates in sports more than he did pre,·io usly in Pue rto Rico, and h e is now more often k<l rmrnrcls making the game something of an encl in itself. :But he is also taught team play, co-operation, and LO win for th e sake o[ winn ing . These arc basic America n patte rn s found a lso in the commercial world in ''"hich these young m en will soon func tion. This pat tern combines indiYidua l competition and co-operatio n within a n establish ed set of rules. 1t requ ires i11itiative a nd lead e rsh ip, which the vounO" if hesita 1ulv. These at• b ma n ac<iuircs g raduallv , , titudes ,,·hich the yo ung men a cquire in the U nited States ha,·e not yet g reat ly modified their p art icipation and acceptance of the more traditional recrea tional patterns w hi ch are based o n values learned o uts ide the sch ool. These slig ht ch anges in the sociorccrea tio nal attitudes of young men are accompanied by s imilar cha nges in young g irls. To the e xte nt tha t g irls h ave hiO"h e r ecl11car io11, more fln;rncial freedom , and more 0 personal freedom , they too a cquire n ew attitudes to\\·ard sociorecrea tiona I pa tle rns. But a pronou n eed sexual dichotomy s till persists. WEDDINGS

\\'hile marriage is a crucia l point in the individual's life cycle and is also an impona n t religious ceremo ny, the wedding and the wedding reception arc prima rily s ignifica nt as "socia l" occasion s. The prcmarriage parties a nd the final wedding reception arc a m ong the mo-.t important soc ia l even ts in a person's lire. The annou nce m ent o f the wedding initiates a series of cocktai l p arties, tea-;. sho,,·ers, and bach e lor dinners and eve nin~s of drinking. i\ lin or prese nts may h e given th e bride at certain of these affairs, but th e principal g ifcs are :.em jus t b efore the wedding to the brid e":. house, ,,·here they a re displayed for som e davs. \ Vhile the wedding is largely a n ecclesias tica l ru;1ni on, the wedding reception , us uall y h eld a t one of th e bew:r h ote ls or clubs, is a purely soc ial even t. T he g 11cst lists, based upon pres tige, revea l t he soc ia l h ierarch y. Duri ng the fi e ld research, one of die lead ing families was said to h a\'e in vited eight hundred guests to a rec c:ption. So much soc i;1I importan ce was attach ed to th is rece p t ion that man y p erso ns who had not been in vited e ndeavored to o btain in vita tions. They fe lt t hat excl u -;ion ,,·ould h ave serious ly threatened their social status . Th e la vish and co-;tly wedd ings and receptions are discussed constantly. Seve ral lea ding p ersons and proress iona l ca terers agreed close ly on Lh e cosu; of wed<l ings and reception-;. J'h e s<Jcial ite~ ec, timated ;1 mod e-;t or s mall wedd ing with about 200 g uests aL . 3.000 LO S 1,000, a n average wedding with , 100 gueHs at S5,c>oo to $8.ooo. a nd an unusuall y s umptuous weddin g with 5 00 or lioo g u ests a 11d s p ecia 1 rd res h m e n ts at :i5 1o ,ooo or more. The caterers estimated these three degrees or WC'ddings rco.,penively at S2,ooo to . . 1.000, SG,ooo to SH.ooo. a11d S 10,ooo a nd up. Sin(e sheet cost le 11 ds

pres tige, h owe,·e r, it is often o\·crc.,t imated b y tlt e t h us. increasing the socia l di:-.tancc be twee n the ir grou p and o ther less ,,·ealth y grou ps 011 thc i-.land. For example. a certai n unusu ally lux11rio11., wed · ding \\·as cst imated by sc,·e ral p er-.rn1:. to h a,·c cost be tween S 1:.1,000 ancl S 17.<><H> . Close itt\T'>tig :11i<>11. h owever, revea led thaL it did not cxcc(·d .-,1i.1H11> ( l>:tlltC1()t11 a nd food sup plied by tlte h()tcl. ..... '.!._:110: < lt:i111p:1g 11c. sco tch, a nd other drink..,. :-.1.'.!1111: ()J 1 lw... 11 a. :-.1'111: flowers, S3 1:;: d ecor:11 io 1" · ....,'.!<H >; p i it·..,1 . 1;11 t· h 11\ v1 $ 100; dres'i, S7<H>- a t111: 1I " ' :1110111 .v 1.1 i 1.-1 \,·Jtt· 11 1v1 1:1 i11 incidental expc11-;c., w(·1c added ). . \ , j1niLtr ;111.1h,j, o( an alleged S2 0.ooo wedding ... lt11\\·nl Ilic 1n1 :d 111 lw n eare1· S8,ooo. The p attern ol the wuldi11g 1c< c p t inti'> i-. ...11111nd1.1 1 like that ol a pn.: \·ic11h ly d e..,<1 il>ed li:11l. n . c1·p1 n l course Lhcre i-. 110 <liargv 111 tlic g 1w' 1' :1111 1 tliv ncw h weds arc the ce1ncr of ;1111:11tio11. 1 ltc111:111 inl 101'111;·. together wi th their l :11nil~. occup~ 011<.· t:il>k. :11ljoini11g which is another tabl e s upporting a giga nti c wedding cake adorn ed with fi g ures re prese nting the bride and groom toge th e r, w i th coaches and horses and oth er fi gures. (; u ests occupy other ta hies, close fri e nds of the couple s itting n earest them . The evening is spc1Jl danc ing and drinking. Champagne marks the affair as ou t of the ordinary, and a sp eciall y s\\':tnk rece ption wi ll be ca llc;d a "charn pag nc: fi esta ." The marri ed pair and th e ir parents rccc i\·c nume rous treats. Jn evi tably, L11 e g u ests frcq11c1nly compare this reception \\'ith other rece ptions, ev id e ncing th e ir absorbing inte res t in soc ia l events as m casu rem e n ts of prestige. . \11 outst:1ncling feawre of the evening com es ,,·hen the m a rried nn1ple passes among the guests to distribute h earts o( ,,·hite s ilk trimmed with lace a nd pierced hy one or more white wax p ea rl "arro ws." 1\ cconling lO tradition, t h e number o r \\'aX p earls in dicates t h e 1w111bcr of m o nths or years before the rec ipie nt will marry. T he hcans are ke p t as sou veni rs. :\ I ter th e h earts are distributed, th e receptio n is g i,·en o \·cr to dan cing . ~oc i al ites,

ADULT RECREATION

\ Vhile the '>ocia l activity reaches its peak in youth, it does not cease with marriage, fo r young married cou ples continue to aLtc 11d balls bu t not as freq u e n tl y :1s before. T h e ch ara cte r o f social life cha nges somewhat, however . for p c:r-;on s of this age group h t:gin to g ive cockta il p a nics in the ir own h o m es o r in h ote ls or < l11bs. Th e s ig ni ficance o f t his cha nge lies in the Ian th at those w h o give th e panics carry full a d11IL respon s ibility as 11 osts. Th ey l1111ction as indivicl · lla ls, llOl as m e mbers or fam ili es in wh ich th e pare n ts are domin a nt no r a s m embers of sororities which h ave co l lee tivc respomibility. .i\ltlwug h adults s till u>11ti 1111e to e njoy s ue Ii earlier interests as 111ov ing pinurcs. s ports. radio. and vis iting fr ie nds, th ey 1urn increas ing ly lo small e r in -group act iv itics such as pla ying card-;, gambi i11g. :.ot ia l drinking-. a nd home life. . \ -. \\"C have :-,ee 11 prc:\ious ly th e p• e~e 11t - day l1u:-,h a 11d

T ll E l'Rl):\11:'\' F:\T F.-\:'-llLIFS OF l 'l'L·: tn o

N umber of families

30

I

!

I

20 1 -

10

_._ I

...__.__._~_,__.__...

[Z- ~-Ei'----1-_.__!-1-~ 0

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

10

N umb er of Volunta ry Associo tions

Chari ::S. ,\J,•111/1t'fshi/1 of 11/1/11·r-d11ss f11111ilit.:s i11 r10/1111/11 ry

11ssor iat iu11 s.

and \\'ik share rccrc:iLion:il paLLerns much more tha n in lormcr genera Lions. \Vi Lh increasing dolll estic and business responsibi l iL ies Liie Lempo of recrea Lional lire slm\·s down. and the family and fri e nds becom e a maj o r i nterest. Older adults cease to aLLend all-night balls. T h e wife remains at home in the evenings \\"ith he r children. listening to the radio or read ing . i\lagaz ines, b ooks, and ne\\·spapers in creasingly fill th e n eed for diversion. The husband. loo, finds amusements in the ho m e, although he may go o ut for som e forms o[ recrea ti o n. Togeth er or si ng ly th e husband a nd wife spend many evenings with relati ves a nd friend s. Food, drink, and c01w ersatio 11 b ecome more important. Cml\'ersatio n becomes an art in itselC invo lving quips a nd jokes. Older adults also show considerable illleres t in artistic events- concerts, ballets, and thea trical produ ctions-lo which they frequemly take their children. These people are g rea t joiners, a nd clubs n o t only furnish recreation and pres Lige but they further economic, religious, and com mu nity o bjectives. l\Ien belong principally to the R ota ry C lub, Lions Cl ub, Elks Club, and the Chamber of Commerce. \\'omen join su ch secular o rgani1.alions as the Red C ross and certain civic clubs. Among religious dubs are the Catholic Daughters o f J\merica, Catho lic Sons, and Knights of Columbus . A partial list o[ th e m ore exclusive social dubs includes the Casa d e Espa1la , Cas ino de Puerto Rico, Ofllccrs' Club, Union Club, Birdwin Club, a nd AFDA (the m en's fraternity), Bankers' Club, Yacht Club, anJ othe rs. For in tellecwal and anistic purp oses, people attencl Ateneo and Pro Arte meetings and conccns. The follo wi ng ta bu la Lion shows the d istribu ti on o( m embership among types or \'olunt.ary associ a tions. H one or more persons in the famil y belong, the family is co1 11Hed as a m ember.

Tv/n' of 1·1111111 /ary .·b .,uc i11tio11 Rl'l ig ious l'olitit;d .\mcri ra n l'rnkssi<llla l R o 1:1n·. I .ions Cl u b Bankns· Club lllt l'rlla tion :il Rl'll Crns:; C:1o; i110 d e l'lllTto Ritn C :1s:1 dl' Esp:1 i1:1 Sorori t v

RI CO

-157

.\" 11111/J,-r o f F11111 i lir s f-/ 11 ; •i11g 011c or .\/ 11ri- .\l r111h,·rs

,, :>/

12 t •>'>

Th ese data sh m \· that the social clubs :ire th e m ost popul;tr. Other assoc iation:-;. ho\\-C\'e r. su ch as the busin ess clubs. th e R ed Crns ~ . and the art groups. unite peop le with cornmon inte res ts . .-\II or th ese associ a tions ha\'e the ex trcmeh· irn1)nrtant (unction o f establishin 0o, g ra <btions \\"ithin the subcultural g roup and assen ing its top position in the ,-ar ious hi erarchies in the so cie t\'. The \\"e;dthier peopl e afllrm the ir s tatus by e ~cluding m embers of othe r groups from som e of th e small assoc iations and taking o \·er the offices of th e large associa l inn s. RECREATION FOR ELDERLY ADULTS

\\' h en ch i Id ren become ol d e n o ugh to :1 u end ba I ls and othe r socia l affairs, their pa re nts begin to e n joy the ir fi,·es Yi cariously. On ce again. they are drawn inw the g rea t balls and festiYals as chapero ns. They atte nd e ngagement pa nies, wedding rece ptions. baptisms, and other !unctions. E\'en \\·h en th e ir childre n are married they continue to p:irticipate in th e social life of the community in \':tri o us \\·ays.

SUMMARY AND CONCLUSIONS ,\nalyzing the cultural conllgurations and the processes o r cultural chang e among th e promine nt famili es p osed problems somewhat differe n t from those e ncounte red alllong the rural subcultural g roups reported in o the r sec ti ons of this , ·o lume. The latter were interes ting primarily b eca use or th e way th ey d eveloped from an earlier subsiste n ce culture to se\'e ral distinct ive life ways, each adapted to a produClivc arrangeme nt based on a special e n,·ironment a nd crop po te ntial. The dive rgence and spec i:di La ti o n of these subcultures rrom the ea rlier , JllOl'e ge11e raliLed type or subsistence farmers may be explained primarily as responses LO the producti,·e a rra ngements and o nl y secondaril y as direct diffusion from other cultural ce nters. T h e subc11lwre of the promineut fami lies, o n th e o th er hand, d e pends only indirectly u pon an Cll\'i ronme ntally condi ti o n etl p roductive a rrang·em ent. T ypically and n1ost s ig nifica ntl y, this class is tied to commerc ia l institutions cha racterist ic of the modern industrial ,\·orld a n d ce n tering in th e l ' nited States rath er tha n in Pue n o Rico. The ;rnal\'~i s o[ t his sulx ullUre. the refore, i1woh·ed

458

THE PEOPLE OF PUE RTO RlCO

several fund a mentai problems. The first was to explain na rro wed to a description and explanation o( th e subchanges in the subculture of the prominent commer- culture of the commercia l and professional famili es. cia l a nd business fa milies. The second was to trace The rem a ining pages, therefore, will summa rize iLs the influence of these families upon the behavior of principa l cha racLe ristics and will f unhe r analyze the other subcultura l g ro ups. T he third was to ascertain ways in which these characteristics h uve bee n ch a ngin wh a t way these families affected P uerto Rican na- ing. tiona l poliLical , economic, and social institutions. T h e first pro ble m ra ised two basic questions that THE CHANGING CULTURE OF THE PROMINENT FAMILIES co uld be a nswe red satisfactorily. What influence had The disLing uishing cl1araCLerisLi c..s of the prollli 11c:11 t invo lvem ent in Un ited States economic institutionssp ecifica lly, in business firms and commerce- upon the famili es have bee n chang ing. T rac..litio 11a l 11 i:-.p:111ic way of life of these families ? To what extent did face- patterns have by no means been los L, but Llt cy arc to-face contacts with persons at school a nd other kinds be ing mo dified and supplem e nted . Sin ce the.: principal of direct pa rticipa tion in United States culture Ameri- facto r in accu lLUraLion is commercia l operation s \\·lti ch must conform to Ameri can practi ces, 111e11 a rc chang ing canize these persons? As for the second problem, a t present ,.,,e can only more than women. surmise ho w th e upper class has affected the behavior Social sta LUs a 11d Lhc more lrad ili onal soc ial and of other subcultural groups, for som e o( the latter recreaLiona l life sLi ll center in Lile woman and Lhe have not ye t been studied. Obviously, Puerto Ricans family. Ameri canizat io n, ho\,·ever, is bcgi1111ing to who wo rk in a business concern u nder an American- p ene LrnLe even the home itself. Nol on ly arc the sn o ng tra ined executive must conform to his highly Ameri- dem a nds of the business world being reflected in canized m e th o ds. In part, this conformity is brought fa mily and socia l life, but, owing to advanced educaabout in fa ce-to-face relations in the office, where the Lio n, persona l contacts with North Americans, and em p loyee is ta ug ht wha t is required of him. The m ass communications, women too are beginning to rigid de ma nds of the job situation undo ubtedly acq uire new va lues and behavior patterns. The cli[era lter m a ny a ttitudes a nd behavior patterns outside c nccs be tween generations, therefore, has become very th e office, b u t these ca n b e understood o nly throug h m a rked, a nd in the new generation the d iffe rences b edeta iled a nalysis. E ven the lower echelons of em- tween Lhe sexes is much less than in the ir pa re n ts' ployees, who a re no t in direct contact with the execu- a nd g randpare nts' genera tions. tive, must a lso conform to requirements; probably, too, these r equirem e nts a ffec t considerable areas of Economic Changes the ir total b eha vior. Moreover, the executive's ecoTh a t the families in question could rise to promino mic p ower a nd social prestige probably lead others n en ce is iLsclf a phenomenon absent during the Spanto emula te him in ways not req u ired by the job. But ish pe riod, for most o[ these families have risen with these a re m a tters for future research. the fortunes o f American commercial firms. As agen ts The Lhird problem- concerning the relationship of of these firm s, they h ave had to adopt American busithe commercial and professional subcultu ral gro u p to ness ways in managem ent, production m a rketing, a nd th e n a tiona l institutions-ra ises questions that cannot th e like. The on ly important survival of the o lder be answered a t presen t. This group has a strong eco- pattern in business operations is the somewhat panomic position a nd undoubtedly plays an important ternalisLic role the executive plays in his office. role in d e termining political, educational, and other Ame rican patterns are a lso changing social li fe isla nd p o licies. This role cannot be precisely sta ted gene ra lly, sin ce business success requires success in w ith out de ta iled study of each national institution in e nterta ining and extensive participa tion in private terms of Lhe total p ower structure. The prominent a nd communiLy social events. \ 1Vhatever he does, the famili es control m os t loca l business organizations wh ich e xecutive is a lways a representative, ambassador, or are linked with the United States. They control a symbo lic advertisem ent of h is firm , for h is own display large po nion of the island's trade, manufacturing, of wea lth demonstrates the resources and power of his servicing, an d fin a ncing . They r e ta in some interest in concern, and thus crea tes goodwill and a good na me the great sugar p la n ta tions and in coffee. T h e ir socio- fo r it. The e xecutive also establishes new a nd profitpolitical ideo logies are supported b y the d o min a n t a ble business contacts, in troduces new members into poliLical party . Some of the ir members are among the the g roup as his asso ciates, and establishes and exmost orthodox rep resen ta tives and the strongest sup- hibits useful politica l ties. po n ers of mod ern C a tholicism . Their social and ecoSocia l goals and economic goals are very closely no mic prestige p laces them at the apex of a somewha t inLerwoven. Th e prominent families seek not merely com p l icate<l insula r socia l structure. And, finally, the ir to m a ke a living but to acq uire enough wealth to mainrecrea tio nal a n<l social a ctivi ties and standard of living tain themselves in luxury, the display of which has re prese nt goa ls toward which many if not most seg- become necessar y to successful econo mic operations. n1enLs of the po pu la tion are striving. Jn its rea liza tion of this socioeconomic goal, this T o say more about the power position of th is group owne r-ma nager ial group is n ot wholly differe nt from wo uld be un warranted. During the field research it less afflue nt g ro ups. Commercial ization has enhanced became clear th at o u r principa l problem had to be Lhe impo rtan ce of money, and any members of the

THE PROM11'ENT FA'.\llLIES OF PUERTO RICO

middle classes who engage in commerce and business strive to live in a manner not unlike that o( the prominent families. The laner are distinguished largely by their success in making "more than a living·• and in maintaining modes o( behavior based upon th is fact. Changes in the Family

C:li:111g('s in the Lunih· strun11 re and function of this grc~t t p han: not be.en com11H.:11surate with economic changes, b11t impnn:rnt modifications are evident. Close bonds bcl\n.~ e n members of the e ~tended family ha\'e wea kened. the double sta ndard is declining. ~rnmen ;ire acquiring great.er equality in educnion and greater freedom in social and professional life, the h11sbantl :ind 11·ife ha,·c become socially and cmotion;ilh· closer. the number of children has decrc;isecl . an.ti the family has yielded many of its socializing f11nctions LO formal education . These interrelated phenomena stem from several factors. First, prolonged education, which now includes college training in the United States for many girls as well as for boys, has given both girls and boys greater interest in associating with persons of their age group who are outside their circle o( kin. Second, the social aspects of economic life also demand a certain amount of social life with nonkin. Third, the modern family has fewer children, about half as many as their parents, so the wife has greater liberty to participate with her husband in social affairs with business people and friends. Fourth, availabil ity of new and nonfamilial forms o[ recreation-sports, moving pictures, social clubs- extend the scope of possible activities far beyond what the relatives could provide. Finally, the decrease in the number of children creates a greater need for each child to find companionship outs ide the home. This outside association continues in later years. The opportunities to meet this need increase as the child goes to school, takes advantage of new forms of recreation, and participates in various outside social events. The discussion on the family delineated a number of interrelated causes and effects of the weakening o( the traditional double standard. The increasing equality of the woman, the weakening of the extended family, the smaller number of children, the stronger sexual and social ties between husband and wife, a lessened need for, and growing disapproval o(, the husband's extramarital relations all contribute to the development of a single standard. These trends have increased the number and the emotional intensity of the father's rights and duties as a member of the family, causing him to live more in the context of the conjugal group than before, while they have decreased the duties of the mother, giving her greater freedom from home demands, especially imposed by innumerable children, and enabling her to emphasize her role as wife rather than her role as mother. The bonds between husband and wife have in some ways become stronger at the expense of the motherchild ties. Traditionally, the mother and child were

459

so close to one ~mother that the mother was idealized in a way to inhibit her full social and sexual partnership with her husband. Emphasis upon motherhood rather than wifehood forced her to find her emotional outlet primarily in her many children and secondarily in her other kin . This is partly why the virgin-mother was the idealized figure. Today, "·ith (ewer children, the wife is able to satisfy her emotional needs rnuch more fully than before by turning to her husband . Her children whose own needs are more and more fully met outside the home, no longer monopolize her attention. For these reasons. what some trained local observers have called the "matriarchal tendencies" of the middle- and upper-class Puerto Rica n families have seemed to decline. That is, the bonds bet11·een extended kin, especially those in the m atrilineal line, have weakened while the bilateral bonds bern·een husband and wife have increased. The family o( prominent persons continues to be of fundamental importance in a distinctive Puerto Rican context in that it not only represents a priYileged, high-ranking famil y, but that it affords each child every possible comfort, security, and opportunity, fulfilling most of his wants and desires. To the child, it is an emotional fortress which ensures him a privileged place in society. Political Changes

\l\Thile economic power generally carries considerable political power the latter has shifted within modern, industrialized nations in imponderable ways, which leave no clear correlation between wealth, status, and power. Under the Spanish regime in Puerto Rico, the combination of a large unfranchised population and a politically powerful upper class of wealthy landlords and Church and State officials constituted a power structure which was fairly simple compared with that of today. In contemporary Puerto Rico, trends in social, economic, and political institutions resulting from centuries of industrialization have been crmvded into a brief span of a few decades. Puerto Rico had received a general franchise just before the rebellion against Spain and occupation by United States troops, but this franchise had no time to become effective. American sovereignty, however, gave the masses a similar franchise. In addition, it brought Puerto Rico into a highly favored economic position ·within the tariff walls of the United States. \Then Puerto Rican political trends began to follow the philosophy of the New Deal and the well'are state, the prominent families of Puerto Rico, unlike those of the United States, began to [ear what they considered "socia 1is tic tendencies." The more leftist tendencies, however, have slacked so much in recent years that this group no·w supports the Popular party program by a slight majority. This support is strongest among the commercial groups, who are tied most closely to United States business, and among the professions; it is weakest among the agrarian families. \ 1

460

THE PEOPLE OF PUERTO RICO

who still see a threat to their interests m the ?\Iufioz rural welfare programs. At the present time, the prominent families do not conn·ol political life, but they influen ce it, both directly and indirectly, sufficiently to have forced the Popular government to compromise with it in some measure in economic matters. Another distinctive change in political attitudes of the group is its desire that political parties be based much more than in the past upon ideologies or platforms. Educated in the United States a nd influenced by modern Puerto Rican pol itical trends, the prominent families now believe that the more traditional Hispanic pattern of centering political movements around outstanding persons is undesirable. They support th e new form of political leadership which is emerg ing in Puerto Rico. Changes in Religion

The prominent families think of themselves as Catholics. They say, "Somos Catolicos" ("\iVe are Catholics"), although they completely accept two or three non-Catholic families in their class. Th rough their strong orthodoxy in most aspects of the Catholic faith, the prominent families differ from certain rural areas, described in preceding sections of this volume, where folk Catholicism prevails and from those a reas where Protestantism has become widely accepted. Catholicism, however, has a somewhat different function and meaning to the prominent families of today th an to their forebears. By the end o( the last century, the clergy had played so important a political role that considerable anticlericalism developed. 'When, however, all official connection between Church and State was completely severed under American sovereignty a nd when Protestant missionaries were permitted to work in the island, the Catholic church regained its importance among the prominent families as a religious institution. (Several factors caused this resurgence of faith. First, Protestant competition ancl vigorous measures of the Catholic church in the United States increased the Church's activities in the island. Second, compulsory religious education for children was begun. Third, Catholicism became identified to some degree with Puerto Rica n values, whereas Protestantism beca me identified with the United States values.) Finally, Catholicism became a symbol o( g roup homogen e ity ancl solidarity. \Nhile Catholicism has a firm place in the lives 0£ the prominent families, its influence in certain aspects of their lives has decreased. It has lost most of. its politica l significance. In birth control, its tenets appear to be widely disregarded. Its spiritual values have weakened; most Puerto Rica ns, including Catholics, seek economic, social, and other mundane rewards rather than religious rewards. The prominent families are eve n able to use the Church in seeking these secu lar ends, since church atte11dance permits display and delineation 0£ social cli ques, while church weddings, b aptisms, and other ritual events are occasions for pomp as well as ceremony and for partici-

pating \\'ith the select. Thus, Catholicism in Puerto Rico, as in the United States, has grad ually adapted itselC to the general cu lwral con text of an industrial ized society. Changes in Recreational Patterns

?\Iuch recreation in cludes feature-. imponcd from the United States-for cxa mpl<:. ~pons. 111m· in ~ pi< · tures, radios. Frolll ii !I OC i;tl poi11t or \"it'\\". the 111ore important and distinnin: rccr<:;itirn1:d fonw; :ire th e balls, cocktai l panic!>. and other M>< i:d all airs \\'(1 ich mark a family's plac <: i11 th<' pre-.tig<: liieranliy. 111· vitation lists and !>Orority mcmtin~Iiip !>ho,\· cliqu e affiliations, \\·hile si1.<:. quality. and expe1rn.: of \\·c:d dings, birthday parties . a11cl b;tlh. and die g-cncr;il le\'el of living objectively allirm socioc:cono111i c: status. l lo\\'ever, in the final analysis 011<:\ po~ition in the soci:il hierarchy depends not upon his abi li ty to pt1rchasc these symbols of prestige but in the grou p's recognition of his right to control the symbols. Changes in Socialization

Socialization today difiers from that o( the previous generation principally, although not entirely, with respect to the group's connections with American business firms. The demands o( these firms are very exacting, and they affect large areas o( life beyond the strictly economic patterns. Becau se o( these demands, children, especia lly boys, arc deliberately oriented toward certain American ways at an early age. The you ng boy visits his father's office, and when he is older he performs small tasks. Jn school, he and his sister are taught by Americans in a system which is supposedly based on America n procedures and designed to impart understanding of American ways. They are generally taught in English, and the subject matter and methods o[ teaching arc intended to furt her the child's understanding of American life. In his extrafam ilial contacts at home and elsewhere, the child meets and must understand many people from the United States. Contacts with such people increase as he grows o lder. The primary school child becomes expertly bilingual; he also becomes bicultural to the extent that he learns to adjust on the one hand to the predominantly American patterns of school and of business and on the other hand to the more traditional Hispanic patterns of the home and the in-group socia l life. He therefore becomes somewhat ambiva lent in his attitude toward the two cultures. \ ·Vhen h e continues higher education in the United States-generally starting with college but frequently with high school-he learns the American ·w ay of life more thoroughly. This training is specifically designed to equip him for business success w hich requires a deep comprehension of American practices and motivations. Jn college he takes business courses rath er than m edicine o r law, as his grandfather did, and both inside and o utside the classroom he is judged by stri ctly American sta ndards. By the time the young adult returns to Puerto Rico with his college degree he is prepared to live in many

Tll~ l'R0 :"-11:-: F.:>;T FA'.\l!LIES OF P UERTO RI CO

fu11dam clllal wa ys like a :--J onh American. His business skills mccL United States expec tatio ns. and his office is like those of l\cw York o r :\Iiami e ~ccu ti,·es . His home is oft en pallcrncd after B ctler H omes a 11d Cartlt·ns. 111 his illle llcnual and rccrcaLio nal life he use many :\mcrica n products. E,·en the nawre of his lamily and hi~ ~<Kial life ha,·c changed in response to thc,t· .\11 H:ri< ;111i1ing influence.;. 11 i~ the 111e:11i- ol acquiring- wealth rad1er than the im pm tan< c ol ,,·e;tl1 h 1h;11 i.; 11e"· in Pu en o Rico. A JHT,011 sC'<'k i11g bthitlt''' ,ucn·,, ;i nd !'<K ial prominence Jllll'l ( nnlnrlll l <> lht' Ill'\\" patter n~ nr drop OUt or CO lllj>t'l llllln. \lo.;1 ol thl' older mc111hc r:, of this g rou p were 1111\\'il lin g or 1111:1i>k to re:1d:qi1 th eir li,·es. In many c ; 1:-.L''. 1ht· <·rn1llich ill\"CJl\'(:d sen; n : difficulties. The yo111 1g\'r gt'1tn:11io:1. o\\'it1g- 10 planned changes in the soc i;1li1ing proc t'"l''. e-;pc< i:tlh· in forma l education, i.; better 111 c1· t i11g 1lie ne\\' demands. The Prominent Families Today

T he li fcways of the prominent families have so changed that families adhering LO the older patterns now tend to disassociate themsc h·es fro m those discussed in this section. At the same time, certain families that former ly held inferior position are a ble to enter this select group. The social mechanism for selecting and admitting ne,,· members is a form o( sponsorship. Similarly movement within the group is accomplished by sponsorship. This system creates cliqu es within cliques, which constitute the fin ely shaded hierarchy o r the group as a whole. T he subculture of the prominent families of Puerto Rico today is no more a final and static result o( a change than arc the many other kinds of subcu ltures fo und wid1in Puerto Rico as a whole and in fact within a ll world areas which arc being affected by the general processes of inclustria I iza ti on. The cul t11re changes described in previous pages represent trends which are shared by many other g roups, and the description of these as "American ized" simply sign ifies that Pu cno Rica ns are following the forms taken by these trends in America somewhat more than those found e lsewhere. The prominent families of Puerto Rico are not o nly learning the culture patterns of Americans, bu t of upper-class Americans. CHANGE IN RELATIONSHIP TO LEVELS OF SOCIOCULTURAL INTEGRATION

\\/he n any person behaves in a way appropriate to his situation, th is represents a particular level of sociocultura l integration. As a member of a famil y and o( a subcultural g roup or class, he believes in certai n m e thods and wa ys of behavior. In his business, church affiliation, poli tical activities, and much of his recreat ion , he participates in one way or another in a larger context of sociocul tural integration . Changes in the subculltlrc o r the prominent fami lies were initiated large ly through innovations in these hig her level institu tions. Consec1uently, th e prominent famil ies of Puerto Rico

46 1

arc changing m o re in some respects than in others. They arc chang ing most where the impact of natio nal o r internatio nal leve l institutio ns is g rea tes t. In business. th e e xecu ti ,.e who is fi e ld representati,·e o( a large o rgani1ati o n must m eet the demands made upon him. because his place in the echelons o( autho rity is fixed and his fun c tions are care(ully prescribed by the firm's procedures. H e must con (orm or be replaced. \Vithin his family , ho"·e,·er, he may maintain traditional relations with his wife and ch ildren. H e is still the pro,·icler, rega rdless of the na ture o( his outside work. and his wife is the m o ther and homemake r. T he family is changing in r esponse to the d emands of business, but the father is not unde r direct pressure Crom his business to alter th e general nature o( his home life. In recreation. change has been greatest \\'he re an islancl-"·iclc sport has been introduced . Thus. in recreation the structured si tua ti on once cen tere:l aro und n e ig hborhood soccer: today new spo rts o rga ni1.cd o n an insular leYel, such as baseba ll and baske tball also command great interest. \\' hen promi · nent families enterta in one another within the re· strictcd sph ere o[ their homes or o( their social class. they stro ng ly pre fer the tra ditional Hispanic o r Latin American patte rns in such areas as music a nd da ncing. This re te ntion of u-aditional recreatio n a l forms is paralleled in other sociocultur al groups, who continue to play dominoes and certain card gam es, and to attend cockfig hts. Not all cha nge is the direct result of instituti o nal or stru ctural changes. Formal educatio n and face-to fa ce contacts in the United States have also introduced Ame rican patterns which are altering the ver y nature or th e famil y itself. Indirectly, ho wever, b o th o( these influences stem from institutional changes. for Americanized education was adopted large ly to prepare the you th for a successful business life. Th is education has now been extended to young women. During high school and college in the United States, exte nded fa ce- to-face contacts with North .-\me1·ica ns have implanted n ew attitudes about relatio ns between the sexes, about social behavior, recrea tion, a nd o th er cultural items. Partlv for these r easons, the woman today has greater irniependence than former ly. husband-\\·ife re lationships are closer, and fri ends arc re plac ing kin in social relations. E ven th ese influe nces, however, have not yet broken down fea wres " ·hich functio n fargely on the family level: the close ties be tween relatives, th e imponance attributed to virility in the male and virginity in the woman. the \'aluc o[ dig11idnd (self-fulfillment) and alegria (we ll-b e ing), a nd th e taste for Latin ..\merican music and dance. Fea tures such as these arc p erpetuated by the family's inform a l lil'e, and they may pe rsist so long as they do not interfere with the d ema nds of the larger structured situations. This contrast brings out the essential difFe1·ence in the kinds o[ socia liza tion . Learning within th e fa m il y perpc watcs patterns which involve the individunl largely in unstruc tured situations, in his role as a m ember of the small circl e o[ rela ti\·es and dose

462

THE PEOPLE OF PUERTO RICO

friends. Learning in the school introduces new patterns ·which enable the individual to adjust adequately to the demands of the larger world with its institutionalized and intricately structured situations.

And apparently change can occur more rapidly in intricately structured situations than in the less formal and more simply structured areas of a society and of a culture.

BY THE STAFF

S

ummaiy and Conclusions

11 Comparative Ana(ysis of Regional Subcultures Previous sections have emphasized the differences between the regional subcultures stud ied during the field work. Part JI presented the institutional framework within which these subcultures developed. Part III described the disting uishing characteristics of the regional types stud ied. The present part will highlight these differences by comparing major aspects o( cu lture comm unity b y community. A lthoug h our primary concern has been with subcultural differences and their relevance to patterns of personal behavior, we have also noted that certain o( these patterns constitute a cultural common denominator of the entire island. These too will be discussed at greater length in the present section.

THE ECON OM IC BAS IS In the economic-or more particularly, the productive-realm, each of the regional subcultures described in this volume is characterized by specia lized arra ngements between farm owners or managers and workers in the rural a reas and by a somewhat different pattern of productive relationships in the towns. The socia l arrangements on the farms are strongly affected by the role o( mo ney, which has grown in imp or~ance with the expansion o( cash crop production. There are a number o( ways in which cap ital investment may affect farm economy and he nce the sociocultural arrangements o( rural areas. First, it may be used LO improve field productio n, as in the

466

THE PEOPLE OF P UE RTO RICO

' Vith very few exceptions. most of Tabara 's coITee farms had been smaller than those of San J ose. T hus, the decl in e in coffee production afLer 1899 mere ly extended what had been Lhe pre\'alent Lraditional smallfarm subculwre in T abara imo the few remaining areas of the municipal ity into which this pallcrn had no t already penetrated. Therefore . in 1110-.t of T;1l>ara. this fina l abandonment of cofkc in it-.t:lf repn:~entcd no very imponanL change in rural lifc,,·ay~ i11-.olar :is toba cco-m ixed crop gro\\' ing allm,·ed Lhe co111 in11a · tion o( the ex isting p;1llcrn of adap tation. In S:111 Jose, on the oth er hand . tht' fairly ex 1c11-.i\-c p l;1n1i11g of coffee an d the g-rmnh ol la rgcr prnn::.~i ng pla 11 ts had produ ced a fundamcrn:tl modifi c;11i o11 of the \\':t y o( life o n th e farm and led to a greater i11,·o l\'ellle n t o[ th e o wn er \\'ith outsid e ~ 011rc Ts ol n ed it. T ilt: ha · cie nda system and th e creditor 11H.: rch:1nt he<:1me characteristic of the areas of large-sea le < oflt:c prod11 c· tion. Un der the ha cienda pattern, the re de ,·elopcd what was esse ntia lly a two-class system in the rural area: a superordinate class of large landlords and a subordinate class of landless workers and peasants. The workers were tied to the land through extens io n of perquisiLes in lie u of part o[ their wages. The landlords were closely dependent upon the cred itor merchant of the town, who loaned the origina l investTHE PRODUCTIVE PATIERNS ment capital for the hacienda, supplied goods at h is The introduction of coffee into the highlands prob- own price, and fi nally bought an<l resold the coffee ably affected T abara a nd San J ose somewhat differ- crop. I n Tabara, the extrem e dependency o ( the farm ently, for larger proportio ns o[ Tabara's land were laborer upon the owner and of the owner upo n the a lready cleared and committed to the production of credit merchant was never so exte nsive as in Sa n mixed crops than was the case in San J ose, where Jose. the generally more rugged terrain was less fully uti'When the coffee boom ended at the turn o[ the lized. It sho uld be remembered, h owever, that through - twentieth century, the effect on Tabara and San J ose o u t the nin eteenth ce n tury the cash importance of differed. Through its creditor merch ants, San J os<'.: coffee in Tabara was g reater than that of minor crops. continued to find a pro fi table market for coffee until But the slightly greater emphasis on the cul tivation of 192 8, and the h ac ienda pa ttern h as persisted to the coffee in Sa n J ose a n d contig uous areas stimulated the present day. Tabara, however, readi ly gave up coffee eas ier flow of credit into that region. Thus, th e large and met its in creasing need (or cash by shifting to amounts of cash required to erect the processing plants crops which did not requ ire heavy inves tme n t. To demand ed by coffee and to carry the farmer until some extent it became a truck (arm area, su pplying newl y planted trees began to bear was more read ily vegetab les for isla nd consu mptio n. This d evelopment available to the farmers of San Jose than to those of was facil ita ted by the fact tha t insu lar speciali za tio n Tabara . The result was that toward the close o( the in export crops h ad b y then r educed the island's food nineteen th cemury Tabara was not so comp letely produc tion per hea d of population, wh ile a network oE involved with coffee as was San J ose. And so the roads made it easier to ship produce within the coundrastic hurri cane of 1899, which affected the eastern try, espec iall y to the large coastal cities and towns. highlnnds more seriously than the western hig h lands, :\fore importantly, however, T ab ara took advantage together w ith the loss o( European markets alter of the grow ing market for tobacco, with farmers rethe occupation by the United States, proved the de- ceiving small loans from buyers, especially from the ciding factors in a process w hi ch had been developing United States. Th ere was some attempt by creditor somewhat slow ly throug hout the last h a H of the mercha nts LO take over production of tobacco, but cenwry. Coffee almost disa ppeared Crom T abara, an d they were unsuccessful. They failed, partly beca use there was a spurt in the c ultivation o( tobacco, wh ich U .S. ma nufacturers did not need to assume the risks had been adva ncing wh il e co ffee product io n decl ined . of cul tivation in o rder to assure themselves an a deJ'vl inor crop product ion for cash, which had been in- quate supply o f tobacco for the ir more profitab le creasing slow ly b u t steadily during the preceding fifty sta tes ide fac tory operations, a nd partly because tobacco years, rece ived a new impe tus fro rn the improved ca n be grow n in rotatio n with othe r crops. T o ba cco transportation w hich deve loped a fter the turn of the thus involves fewer risks and a relatively sma ll intwen tieth ce nt11ry as well as from th e expansion of ves1rn ent. In contrast to coffee and sugar, which retobacco product io n and the intercropping this implied. qui re substantial investment in processing equipment development o[ irrigation or the use of agricu ltural machinery. Second, it ma y be used to purchase processing equipment such as is required for the preparacion of coffee beans or the milling o[ sugar. It may make possible hiring of trained personnel and provide scientific management o[ farms. Third , it may be needed for marketi ng . The sources and nature of credit, therefore, may affect commercial farm production at a n y or a ll o{ these points. The extent of credit required a nd the way in which it is used w ill in turn affect the socia l arrangements on the farm. A crop like tobacco, which calls for comparatively small a mounts of credit in production and processing, can be grown b y rela tively small and poor fami lies. On e like sugar, which is su itable for la rgesca le farm opera tion and involves large investments in m achinery, land, and marketing to make its productio n most profitable, fosters concentrated ownership a nd the development of a n impersonal r e lationship between managers and workers. These three vital points-production, processing, and/ or ma rketing-at which the avai lab ili ty, manipulation and use of credit affects rura l patterns will be emphasized repeatedly in the discussion wh ich follows .

CO:\ IPA R:\T l\'E Al'\AL \'S IS OF R EG IO:>IAL SUUCULTURES

as we ll as land. tobacco n eeds o nl y prod u ctio n support and assistance in marketing. The governm e nt has a u em p ted lO m eet th is need th rough the cs ta bl ishment o[ quotas and the sponsorsh ip of a credit and rna rketi ng co-opera ti ,-e. In San J ost'., tobacco culti,·a tion was also adopted, lrn t it bcc;1 lllc a :,u pplem cn t to coffee p roduction. It \\'as gro\\' 11 princip:dl~- hy sharecroppers and small hold ers . \\'ho u'ed it 10 increase their income, and it did 111H hC'n1111 c: thl' cxdu:-.iH· nr lllajor crop of large r;1rn1n.o;. The 'uhnrdi11a1c role nl tolx1cco culti\':Hio n there lll:I)' h e dtl l' in J>:lrl to the fact that the leading credit so t1rn:s lor tobacco production during the 19:w's \\'ere th e ~a m c as th ose \\'hich furnished credit for coffee, and tltc dc:clinc of coffee :1s a profitable indu stry may ll'e ll h a\'C.: :tfknc:d the :l\·aibhility of credit in tobacco as \\'e ll. : \L prest· 11l. :t mt1d1 larger share o( quotas a n d credit is <'<>lllrolled hY l:1rgcr grcrn·ers in San Jose tha n in Tabara , and there 'is so;nc ~,· idence that coffee g rm,·crs in Sa n .Jos~ discourage tobacco produ ction o n the part of th e ir labor force in the interest o[ a cheap labor market. Today, most cred it for P uerto Rican tobacco g rowing is granted by the government-sponsored Puerto Rica n Tobacco :\fa rketing Associat ion. Pe rha ps because o f the quota restrictions caused by th e marginal p ositio n of the P uerto Rican tobacco grower in relationsh ip LO the U nited States, there was n o possibili ty o f subsla lllial returns on large investments over a long per iod, a nd a pla n tat io n pattern o f tobacco production, like that in the United States and Java, did not de\'elop. Ca1iamelar and Nocor<i are represen ta tive of productive trends o n the coasts in that both have a lo ng histo ry of sugar ca ne production. Although subject to ch a nges in markets, credit, and productive techn ology, sugar has been the major cash crop in th ese regions for a ll except brief periods; a nd today it is a lmost the sole coasta l farm product. The two reg ions diffe r in certain important respects, however. Before the burgeoning markets of the early nineteenth century made slave pla ntatio ns pro fitable, N ocor:i had bee n an area o( comparatively small farms or haciendas. which used free labor, o r agregados, and relatively few slaves i n sugar production . Situated on the n orth coast, a n area of ample rainfall, Nocora did not need capita l to d evelop irrigation on a large scale. A variety of crops besides sugar had been grown there during the la te nineteenth century. T h e town itself served as a port for the many sm a ll producers along the coast. The expanding sugar market demanded som e form of bound la b or in Nocor<'t and impelled the planters to improve their technological processes. In m any r espects, these north coast sugar haciendas were similar to the coffee haciendas which developed in San J ose toward the end o( the nineteenth century. The similarity extended to the a ppearance of creditor merch a n ts in Nocor;\, who exercised some control over produ ction thro ug h the extension of Joans and ownership of la nd and who controlled marketing by means of the ir trad e relations with the outside through the n orth coas t p orts.

467

Catlame lar, on the o ther hand, ,,·as typified largely by caule ranches until the early ninetee1uh century. \\' h e n sugar became profitable, considerable unused land \\'as rapidly com ·ened in to large suga r plantations, using most ly sl:H'e labor. .-\ great deal o f in"estm e m capi tal \\·as rep1·ese nted by the rapid increase in the numbe rs of sla,·es and by the introduct ion of upto-date processing- machinery, \\·hile bnd was thrown into produ ction through large g r::rnts from the Crown . The pattern of la rge sla,·e plantations flour ished until popul ation g ro,,·th began to m a k e free labor cheaper than sla\'e labo r. \\' h en the sla\'es \\·ere ema n c ipated in t 8i ;1. Caiiamelar was much m o re seriously affected than N ocod. TWENTIETH-CENTURY CHANGES

T h e farm patterns of the four regions reacted v er y diffe rently to the impact of n e,,· inst itutio ns and influ e n ces fo llo \\·i n g .-\merica n sovere ignty. As \\'e h;we seen. Tabara a ba ndoned coffee and expanded the produc tion of tobacco and market vegetables as cash crops. T h e shi(t to a quasi-commercial b asis in\'olved no drast ic or sudden change, and subsistence fanni ng was n e ,·er abandon ed. Farms rema ined of moderate siLe. 0\\'ner-\\'orker relations continued on a p ersonal faceto-face b asis ' thotio-h less hierarchical than in San .Jose ;:, a n d on a more commercialized le,·el. Smaller farms \\'e re worked b y their O\n1ers and fam ilies; larger farms b y hired help and/ or sharecroppers. Tabara farmers a n d workers, though n o t so exclusively on a cash basis as th e great su gar mill communities of Nocor;i a n d Ca1iamelar, came mo1·e and mo1·e to measure life by monetary sta ndards. Here, more th an in the o ther communities, the poor man might obtain som e cash without g rea t investment or risk by growing tobacco. Hard work and saving might enable him to buy land and improve his economic and social status, in contrast to the Sa n J ose worker, who was caugh t in a web of hie rarchica l relati.ons, or the sugar worker who was almost inescapably frozen in a p roletarian position. The twentieth-cenwry impetus given su gar cane was para lle led b y a decline in the coffee industry which had dominated such communities as Sa n J ose. The g rowers, unable to compete with sugar wages, lost many worke rs through migration to the coast. They had to hi1·e workers from subsisten ce farms i n the n e ig hborh ood, attem pting to stabilize their labor supply throug h the extension of perquisites, such as promises of th e use of a cow or a share in the production of ch arcoa l o r in supplementary tobacco and minor crop pr·odu ction. Such agreem ents were usuall y made b etween the p<i rticular owner and worker involved, and varied considerably in the particular terms which they con ta in ed. A ll re presented a ttempts to circumvent direct cash o utl ays. Smaller coffee g rowers used the labor o( th e ir famil y, supplementing it at times with some hired he lp, who mig ht also cu ltivate a subsistence plot. Often. they o r their children worked on the large fa rms in re turn for perquisites, (avors, or m o n ey. R e lations be tween workers a nd o wners thus remained variable

468

THE PEOPLE OJ? PUERTO RICO

and essentially personal, and on the larger haciendas they maintained much of their hierarchical and paternalistic character. After 1900, Cai'iamelar and Nocora began to acquire fundamentally new patterns, which ho"·ever developed more rapidly and more completely in Canamelar under the system of corporate ownership. The modern plantations contrast not only with the nineteenthcentury sugar h aciendas but with the contemporary coffee hacienda as exemplified in San J ose. Responsible to its stockholders and therefore uncompromisingly dedicated to maximum profits, the corporate plantation must opera te on a strict cost-accounting basis and extract every possible dollar from its land, labor, and machinery. In contrast to the hacienda, which has only a general and elastic n otion 0£ costs, the plantation must fix its margin of profits exactly and operate with maximum efficiency. Its heavy capitalization has brought modernization o( equipment and construction of large mills which process cane from a much greater acreage of land than mills of the past. Sma ll farms are elimin ated by monopolization of available lands, by increase in land values, a nd by the "freezing" of even marginal lands through expanded plantation landownership. In Caifamelar, the private owners have sold out to corporations, which installed a hierarchy of resident managers. The corporation has eliminated subsistence crops and devoted its land exclusively to cane. It cannot even tolerate subsistence plots for workers if the land which might be devoted to these yields a more va luable crop in sugar. The workers, consequently, become a landless, wage-earning proletariat. They receive no favors or perquisites, as under the hacienda, and are treated as a standardized cost item in the plantation operations. The differing personal needs of the owners and workers, which were formerly met on the hacienda according to culturally prescribed standards of the ir status, are disregarded. The plantation owner is an impersonal corporation, which has assigned its resident managers the obligation to produce sugar at a maximum profit and given them the power to formulate policies to this end. The establishment of manager-worker relations is accomplished through the impersonal medium of the labor union rather than on the basis of personal relations b etween employers and workers. The development of union and political activity are completely new phenomena. Labor re lations are formalized through the external influences of insular union strategy and governmental policy. Thus, basic issues are not settled locally, let alone on a personal basis, as on the hacienda. There is a growing awareness among the workers of a sugar community of their affiliation with an insular class of workers and o( a need to deal collectively with the town and insular bureaucracy. By contrast, the worker in San J ose has primary local affi liations in a var iabl e, persona lized context, and any d ea lings w ith insular institutions are genera lly mediated through the local hierarchy of power. Lacking subsistence plots ancl unable to produce

household goods, the plantation worker has come to measure goods and services almost exclusively in terms o[ money. Seasonal unemployment forces him to supplement his income "·ith nonagricultural work or to migrate to other areas. Ca1iamelar, however, has differed somewhat from 1'\ocor;I in its development during the twentieth century. First, owing in part to the differences in their nineteenth-century ba ckground:.. Caiiamelar has fulfilled the trend t0\\·ard s a strictly corporate: type o( enterprise more rapidly than :\ocor;i . Second. :\ocor:I. is dist inctive in certa in qualitati\"C: rc:.perh. <.:'pccia ll y in those featurcs which resulted I mm tl1 c npcr;11 iom of the insular land relorm. The twentieth-century trend t<l\\·:ml highl y capital· ized sugar production \\'as more acceler:1ted 011 the soulh coast, partly bccattse ~o mt1ch prc:\·iot1 sly uncu ltivated land could be tl1ro\,·n s\\·il t ly a nd dlicie11tly into production once irrigation ~y!i te ms \\Tl"C tle\'t·I · oped. L oca l sugar cane: gro\\'ers ,,·en: cager lO lea'c: or sell their land and retire Jrom \\'hat was. lor them. a losing eco11 om ic struggle. i\lost of the Janel so sold or leased had been unexploited or used for pasture in the closing decades o( the nineteenth centu ry, when the family-type hacienda in this area "·as on the decline. The availab ility of the grea t expanses o( rich, previously uncultivated land made heavy United States investment in large-scale mills a promising prospect. \Vithin twenty years, practically all the land was owned or con trolled by a few corporations. On the north coast, on the other hand, most o( the land was already under cu ltivation on haciendas. Loca l family credit rather than United States corporate credit was invested in the new centrales, and landownersh ip was less readily concen trated, a sing le mill often serving a number o( cane growers. These owners m.ight in time sell out to the mill, but the Nocod mill still serves a number of small planters. Nocod. also continued to g row diversified crops in the highland portion o( th e municipality long after coastal Cailamelar had become single-crop. At present, the land reform has gra nted subsistence plots to agricultural workers of this commun ity. Relationships within the plantation were also more fully developed toward the corporate type in Canamelar than Nocod. The latter tended to preserve some o( the varied personal obligations between owner ancl worker chara cteristic of the h acienda. Moreover, Nocod's labor force was historically more heterogeneous than Canamelar's. It was drawn in part from small farmers, and it was easier to establish a pattern o( wage labor and to weld the new migrants into this system . Cailamelar has achieved an extremely simplifi ed twofold division of its personnel: a managerial hierarchy and rura l workers, whose relations are standardi1.ed in the con text of a simp le wage base, uniform com pany policy, government wage and h our legislation , and large ly cen tra lized retail merchandising facilities. The laborers have fa irly uniform character istics: d ependence upon wages and a monetary standard of va lues; supplementary income derived by

CO:'-lPARATl\'E A:'\ALYSIS OF REG IO:\.-\L SUBCULTURES

selling illegal rum, making candy. doing needlework, and Lhe like ; sen·ices and obl igations within Lhe class wh ich have a nomnonetary base, for example, ritual kinship. The social composition of the commun ities o( Nocod and Cai'lamelar differed rather importantly in that the latter large ly lost its midd le and upper classes after the U.S. occupation. Upper-class landowning families sold out the ir Janel and moved '""ay, while business f11n nio11s or the middle classes were largely takc11 m ·cr by the corporatio11. Chn1ers \\'ith properties o l ,·:rrious ~ i1cs contitllH.'d to cx isL in :'\(H·cir;i and carried 011 :111 org:111i1ed ::;ocia l life as 1:1tc as ·~l1G , ,,·hen the l .:111d .\111horit\' boughL out mmt oC their holdings :111d repl:tced them ,,·i1h a gon :rnm e111al managerial hicrard1,·. THE LAND AUTHORITY

l111po.-,itio11 of the Land .\uthor it,· on Nocor;i spc:eded i1;, ;ipprn:1c lt 10 the C;1ii;1mclar type in several \\':l\·s. It r:11ded tile ,·:1ri:1bk and r;1ther persona l ant! paternalistic rc:lations het\\·ce n O\\'ners and workers -a pattern heretol'ore some\\·hat like that of San .Jose - and substituted for these a system of management which controlled its laborers in an impersonal, sLandardized manner dictated bv law. The \\'orkers are a "pro letariat in transition.' : The management instit~1ted new and more efficien t productive and organizau onal methods and substant ially increased land yields. lly extend ing the range or cane cultivation into marginal lands, which had offered m inor subsistence resources, it created a fuller dependence upon wage labor- a dependence so great that the "·orkers now prefer minor w.-ige chores in the off-season to "·orking their subs istence plots. The Land Authority, however, has made l\ocod a differen t kind o( commun ity than Cafiamelar in several respects. First, it distributes profits to \\'Orkers and feels an obligation to provide some employment for as many o( them as possible. Profi t-sharing, however, has not been attended by a rise in the workers' standard of living, since work opportunities are spread among a grea ter number of men and women seeking emp loyment than the plantations actually require. Second, the Nocora plantation is a governmental project, so that political considerations-an appeal to the electorate-as well as efficient operation must be taken into account. Third, the company stores have been discontinued, permitting a small merchant class to develop. MARKETING AND CONSUMER PATTERNS

The four communities differ in their marketing and consumer patterns as well as in their productive arrangements. The patterns reflect differences in the amount of land devoted to subsistence, the kinds of crops grown, the relative importance of cash wages, and the nature o( cred it controls. In San Jose a nd Tabara, the chief cash crops are not monocrops, and both communities grow some of their own food, thus decreasing the need for imports through

-J:69

the marketing system ..-\t the same time, "·ork in coffee and tobacco is not paid as well as ,,·ork in sugar cane. Thus, less pu rchasing po"·er circulates through the bulk o( the population. Both comrnunities are also characterized by the predom in ance of many small units of product ion. PotenLial consumers are thus scattered, rather than massed. as in the t"·o cane-gro\\·ing communities, Nocor:i and Ca11amelar. This situation inhibits investments in large retai l marketing centers and tends to discourage sales o( commod iLies in bulk. l nstead, it favors the emergen ce o( many small-scale retailers, w ho secure a pe m1anent but limited group 0£ customers and const itute a substantial trading middle class. The tmrns a.re thus primarily shopping centers. supplying indi\'iduals and small -scale retailers with goods for their use. In Cai1amelar and l\ocor<i . production for subsistence is at a minimum or absent; people are paid in cash for work performed in the cane fields; and the labor supply is concentr ated in small nuclei, affording massed groups of consumers. Large stores have come to supply virtually all food as well as other commodities. In Cafiamelar, a nominally independent store, once controlled directly by the corporation largely monopolizes retailing, "·h ereas in Noconi the elimination of the hacienda store enabled some retailers and middle-class storekeepers to make a regular living in trade. Formerlv, all four communities produced clothirw ) b' utensils, and many oth er goods in the home, though the scale o( such production \\·as never very large. Some such production continues in San Jose and Tabara, where it is necessary b ecause of lower cash wages and h as not b een displaced by the production of a monocrop. Such production is nearly absent from Cafiamelar and Nocod . LAND TENURE

The trends in land tenure in the fou r commu nities exhibit processes that are common under different conditio ns of production. In Tabara, the rapidly expanding population has created a land shortage in terms of the prevailing technology and land use. Although the "surplus population" which results has been partly drained off through migration to the coast and more recently to Lhe United States, a farm •viii be divided repea ted ly among heirs to the point w here none owns sufficient land . At this juncture, the plots are sold and the purchaser frequently acquires enough land to create a farm of adequate size. "\i\Then, upon his death, the lands are again subd ivided among his children, the cycle is repeated. The nature of farm production in Tabara is such that large h oldings and extensive investments in production, processing, or marketing are not necessa ry. Money that would build up large estates is generally attracted elsewhere; it is invested in real esta te, industry, commerce, and sugar cane. Land in Tabara, therefore. passes through cycles of fragmentaLion and reconsolidation in moderate family-size farms.

4 70

THE P EO PL E OF PUERTO RICO

In San Jose, Lhere is Lhe same tendency for sm all holdings Lo fragment each generation. But, unlike Tabara, large holdings, formed by heavy investment in land a nd processing machinery for coffee production, tend to be mainta ined intact generation after generation, since fragmentation would render the productive unit useless. These units tend to grow by absorbing small plots around their periphery, since these often becom e dependent for credit and other economic favors o n Lhe la rger unit. San Jose thus presents a picture of la rge farms g rowing larger, while a decreasing a mount of la nd is clivicled among an increasing number of sma ll farms. The h ypoLhe tical trend in land tenure just mentioned is exemplified more strongly in Nocon'! and Caiiamelar. In the days of ox-powered trafJiches (sugar mills) and sma ll sLeam boilers, a refinery could be construcLed at moderate cost and of a size to serve only a sing le medium-sized hacienda of less than one hundred acres. i\Iodern sugar grinding requires machinery ten LO twenty times as costly as coffee machinery and about as many times as c.ostly as the suga r la nd itself. To justify this expense, the sugar mill must be assured of hundreds of acres of ca ne to keep it o perating a t near capacity. Sugar plantations consequenlly gre"· in proportion to the investment. I n 1'\ocora the gro\\·th was slower than in Caiiamelar, for the silllation at the Lime of the American occupation m ade it possible fo r several independent plantations to contract to use a sing le mill. In Canamelar, where capita lizatio n meant not only construction of modern mills but reclamation of new lands through irriga tion , both corporate and family holdings increased in size much more rapidly.

SOCIOCULTURAL SEGMENTATION Early colonial, pre-industrial Puerto Rico was differentiated socially into comparatively few groups. The governme nt administrators, clergy, army officers, and wealthy landown ers made up a fairly homogeneous upper class. Indians in encomiendas and, later, landless workers and slaves constituted the labor supply. The rul ing group and laborers held differing status a nd power positions, thus constituting a basic Lwo-class sysLem. A third sociocultural segment, the sm a ll subsiste nce farmers of mixed ancestry, functioned largely outside Lhe predominant two-class structure of the towns and plantations since it was geographically isolated a nd comparatively independent. During subseque nt cenLUries, when regional sub· cultures b eca me more strongly differentiated under the influ ence of chang ing insular institutions, the character o ( the earlier segments was a ltered, while occupation a l sp ecialization induced by world-wide incl ustria I trends fostered the development of new segments. With in ea ch community th ese segments came to ho ld fairly d e finiLe positions of status and power a nd to have somewhat distinctive subcultures. They m ay thus be regarded as social classes, that is,

Fig. ·13· This store i11 the tow n of San }rm: rntns or1/y to rnm/ c11sto111ers. Phot o by Eric Wolf.

as subculwral g roups arranged in a hierarchy of sta Luses. But today social ranking is not always precise ly compa rable in the town and cou n tryside, let a lone in Lhe differe nt regions, because the social structure o( each region a l subculture is distinctive. These differences are direct manifestations of factors alread y discussed, such as ownership and size o( farms, the e xLent of the investment in productive apparatus, marke ting faci lities, labor arrangements, and specialization in nonagricultural occupations. I n Tabara, the production o( a cash crop on a sma ll sca le with little credit encouraged the existence o( smal l- and moderate-sized farms. There is no equivalent in Taba ra of the managerial hierarchies o( Cai"iam e la1· or Noconi or even o( the hacendado class o( San J ose, and the ways of life o( the workers of Tabara arc qua li tatively unlike those of the wage-earning pro leLariat o( Noconi or Canamelar. The social structure of the town of Tabara is somewhat more complex tha n tha L of the rural area and in some respects it resembles Lhose of other towns. There is no true landed reside nt aristocracy in the town, but there are many specia li1.e<l groups representing business and governme nt services-m erchants owning businesses of varying sizes, wholesalers, builders, artisans, tea chers, hea lth o ffi cials, police a nd the like-a ll of whom re present Lhe middle dasses, and unskilled workers who may be con sidered lower class. A very few large merchanLs, the doctors, and a few top government officia ls consLitute the local upper class. Soc i.ocultura l segmentation in San Jose is st ill more complex. fn the rural area, the d isLinction between th e la rge coffee grower and his worker entails considerable differen ce in wealth, standa rd of living, education, socia l staLus, and power. No clear-cut divid ing lin e exists between the small owners and laborers. Landless laborers are related to the h acienda owner throug h a web o f personal obligaLions and ties, and the ha-

CO ~ I PARATl\' E

cienda co11sLill1tcs a sharply pauerned Lwo-class socicLy in miniau1re . But som e hac ie nda "·orkers also ow11 small p;1rrc ls of land. ,,·!til e there are also small coffee g rowe rs who are incle pcndc m of the large o\\·ners ""iLh out ha\'i11g hig h social status. In general, the rural socic Ly con:. is ts o l a n e Lwo rk of more o r less person a I i1cd i11 tcrdc pc11dc 11c ics. di e hacie nda O\n1ers b eing a t th e top o l th e ...ocia l :t nd cco11 0 111ic p yramid. \\'i t hi11 th e 1m,· 11 n l Sa 11 J 1,...1··. th ere are classes of hu ... in c"' :i nd go\T I 11111c n t p c t :.01111 c l " ·ho are ro ughly tht· ' rn in1 ultur:tl t·q11i,·:tlc 11h nl those i11 Tabara. The prin <ip:d difl nt• n<c i' tlt :t t in ~: 1n .JmL· the credito r !lle rc h:111i... h :l\T ri,c11 to pmitirnh o l grc:1te r social and t•co11e1111i1 pmrcr . Tm,·11 :1 11 d country cannot be prec j,('(y eq 11:it cd. for 1hc s11hculwrcs are rather difJcrc:n1. :111d .;oc i:il :111d cco 11 n111 ic cont:1ns are too tenu ous to h:l\T Iii I t'd 1he rnr:tl p C'oplc precisely into the 10,,·n ~ 1:111" :-.y:-. tcnt. J l;1cicrnb o\\·11c rs ha,·e Lh c greatest hori1011t;tl so<ial mobility :111d :ire p:1n of the Lown 11 pper cl:t,.;cs ..'im:1ll lar111 crs :ind workers visit town infrcquc nLl y. buL are reg-anted as of lower status. in co11tras L lO the Tabara farm e rs who are well accepted in lOWll. Nocor;i and Caiiamclar ha,·e d e,·elo ped a\\·a y from a pauc rn o( socioculwra l segm ents that " ·as o n ce roug hl y like th at o f San .J ose. In the pas t. there \\·e re many rural hacie nd as in both areas, and in :'\ ocor;'1 the re were also m edium and small farm ers. The lo \\·11 was dis ti net from lhe co un lryside and co ns li tu Led a servicing ce nter. T o day. in Ca1iamclar. the corporale mill or ce11tm/ is the h ean o f an emerprise that has absorbed th e ha ciendas. Th e distinction b et\\'een town and country is <1uite atte nuated for the corporation has take n over practicall y all the functions o ( the various classes o f wwnspeop le. Sociocultural segmentation consequent ly has become extreme ly s implified . Two h as ic segmc11ts h o ld s h a rpl y di ffe ring soc ial a nd economic status. Salaried res iden t managers constitute the upper class, since t he former hacienda o\\'ners h ave so ld o u t. The middle classes have been reduced , for th e corpo ration-dominated stores h ave largely t aken th e place o f wholesalers, retailers, and peddle rs. Bu t there arc gove rnment schoolteachers, police. d octors, other pro fessional p eople, and such vendors o[ ser vices as barbers, builders. and Lhe like . The lo \\'e r class cons ists o f a remarkably homogen eous labo ring prolc La r iat. within which occupa tional a nd sta tus di ffere nces a re insig nificant. lt finds solidarity in ritual kinsh ip, in unio n o rga ni1.ation. and in politica l actio n. There is n o p ersonal b asis for employer-wo rke r n egotia tio ns as in Tabara and Sa n Jose. Seasonal mig rants from th e highlands must conform to the attitudes and bch a\'ior of th e reside nt work ing class. o c01Xs sociocultural segmentation d iffers somewhat from that o( Cafiamclar as well as from that of the two highland commun ities. Since the process o r land co11 cc 11Lration ha s no t progressed as far as in Caiiamelar, th ere a re st ill farmers w ith ca n e Janel holdings or varying si1.e , w ho gr ind their cane e iL11 cr in th e loca l ce 11trnl or in oLh er n earby mills. Th e Nocod Canners. howe \·er. cannot be lumped toge the r

Ai':A L YSIS OF REGIONAL SU BC U LTURES

471

as o n e g ro up in t e rms of their wealth a nd co nco mitant s tatus and p o we r. Onl y a ,·ery small g roup of farme rs o wn e noug h land and ha,·e enoug h credit to d e rive s ufficie nt in com e fro m their farm s to p ermit them t o hire labo r. pro ,·ide hig h e r ecluca Lio n to the ir childre n , and indulge in su ch things as automo biles. com fonable h o u ses. trips LO the U nited Scates, and m o d ern fas hio n able c lo t h es. \l ost co /011us in 1'\ocod o wn Ye r y small farms, and they musl e \·en wo rk as la b o rers for la rger landh o lders. The re is no s ignifi canc differe n ce in the way o f life b e tween these minor producers of can e and the landless suga1· cane \\·orke rs. The managerial hier arch y of the Land .-\mho rity Proj ect in Nocor:i is in many respects like that of th e corporate managers of Ca1iamelar. It cons ists e n tire ly o [ Pue rto Ricans, b ut the m en are n ot native LO t h e co111111 u11 ity, and they participate on ly in very limited wa ys in comm un ity life. They are regarded a s o uts ide rs 01· tra n s ie nt residents. ,,·ho work for the go vernm ent a n d are b e tte r paid than other local g o \'e rnmen t p ersonn e l. T o the extent that there e xis ts a local uppe r class. they are pan o( it, althoug h not in the sa m e wav as a fe"· o r the local m erchants. fa rmers. sch o oltea,che rs. and top go ,·ernment e mployees, " ·h o e njoy s imilar s tatus. incom e . and power , and who a r e p ermane nt reside nts of the co mmun ity. In l'\ocor:i the re is no s ig nificant differe n ce in the s wtus a ncl wea lth of l arge farm o " ·n ers a nd the town upper class . In fa ct. the same incli\'idua l m ay b e both s ug ar farm er and re Lail merchant. .-\!so , the differe n ce b etween th e upper and middle classes of b o th t o wn and farm is not ver y marked. The m iddle classes con s ist largely o f t ownsmen, such as salesmen, Ye terans, gove rnme nt clerks, a nd others \\·ho have an assured ann u al incom e, and o[ foremen and paymas ters at th e f'e11t rnl. and rural shopkeepers. The distin ctions b et\\'ee n Lh e Low n and rura l sub g ro u ps in Nocora a re blurred , (o r the municipality is essentially rural and Lite Lo wn d e pends upon s ugar cane from t he surrounding fi e lds for its mill. The lo we r class o f Nocora consists of t h e la ndless labo re rs. who diffe r considerably from Lhe local middle and upper classes but who resemble ~he workers o f Ca1iame lar in cons tituting a wage-earn111g g roup tha t is re la ted co t h e pla ntation manageme n t thro ug h a n impe rson a l system. There are, however. certain di ffe ren ces be tween the rural wage earne rs o f N o cod ancl Ca i1a m elar. T he N ocod ,,·o rke rs a re less homogen eou s a nd h ave less so lida rity than t hose of C a fiame lar. The la borers who we re r eared in the munic ipio were h acienda wo rkers until quite r ecently, when th e agra ri.a n reform program introdu ced the m o dern syst em which dis rupted th e ha cie nda pattern of employer-employee p ersonal relations. I ndividuals are removed ~ram th e h ac ienda pattern in different d egrees depe n d~n g upo n the ir ag-e. i\foreover, s in ce \1\Tor~ d \ Var I , t ~1 e rn creased sugar pro d u ction h as led t0 an influ x of migrants fr om t he h ig hlands. w hi ch has adde~I t~ the . loca l h c te rogen e iLy. The work ers of Nocora cl1ff~r lrom those o f Ca ii am e lar in Llrnt Lhey have potential access to the land Lliro ug h g r;mts of subs istence pl o ts -tho11g lt these

47 2

THE PEOPLE OF PUERTO RICO

various social segments to the governmental control of institutions and the return now of regula tions, services, and benefits. In Tabara, all segments of the population, both town and country, support the insular gove rnment through the Popular Democra tic party. ln re turn , they benefit as individuals from the loans for ~ro\\·­ ing tobacco and from schools, health clinics. police, farm extension sen ·ices. :ind other social lcgisbtion. San J ose'.: differs lrom Tabara i11 that pc)\\·erJul hacienda owners and midd le lar111ers c01ni11ue to exercise considerable politic:il pm,·er ,,·ithin the rnral neighborhoods. Since the bulk o l rnr:il L1horers ;111d small farme rs O\\'e economic and soci;tl lavors to th e owners of larger farms and since these rehtions are phrased prim arily in indi,·idual and persona l terms, they stand to gain k ss directly lrom insu lar legislation sponsored by the Popular Den10cr;1tic party. :\L the same time, hacienda m\'11Crs and middle farmers support Popular pany ru le, lor it ha s !-.tabili1ed cu>nomic conditions after yea rs o( depression and increased the flow of income into the community. ln this attitude they tend to be supported by the town merchants. Political oppos ition to the Popular pany tends to be weak and is maintained by only a few hacienda owners a nd merchants. In Nocor<i, the flow of po·wer and return of benefits is very direc t and simple. The workers support the p roportional benefit farm, wh ich is a major manifestation of the social legislation undertaken by the Popular party. Through the political party the laborers support the government which in turn appoincs the managers o( the ce11tral and of the fa rms who con trol the workers according to the provisions of the law. In Ca fiamelar the now of power and benefits is somewhat less direct in that ultimate economic power, although subject to governme11ta l regulations, lies w ith a United States corporation . The corporation controls the workers, subject only to the labor laws and other restrictions imposed by both the federal and the insular governmen ts. Government services are designed to serve the whole island or segments of the popula tion ; but these reach the communi· ties in qualitatively differential ways. How the population in the commun ities gets those serv ices is often determined by class. All classes in both Nocor<l and Caf\amelar may benefit from government schools, health, a nd other services. :But these municipios lack a sign ificant group of sm.all and med ium landholders who can benefit from the loans and the many agriculPOW ER STRUCTURE tural ser vices wh ich are accorded tO these segments of The preceding sketch of the sociocultural seg- the population oE Tabara and San Jose. ments suggests in a general way the power structure of each community. Lines of power, of course, involve FAMILY AND KINSHIP the total insu lar picture, including the government, of which more will be said subsequently. At present, \ 1\Tithin the rural neighborhoods of all fou r comit is illuminating to contras t the power role of th e munities the family constitutes the household a nd different sociocultural segments. In the diagram on the forms the basic economic and social unit. The subnext page arrows indicate the flow of power from the cultural groups, however, differ greatly in the re la-

seem to have little functional importance- whereas the latter are completely landless and depend entirely upon wages. Thus, in Nocora there has not yet developed a true proletariat like that of Cai'iamelar. The working-class homogeneity which characterizes Cai'iamelar has come from a progressive and continuous incorporation of a rural population into the world system of cash crop production . It is, therefore, a homogeneity very different in terms of process from that used to describe isolated, independent, tribal groups (Cf. Redfield, i947). The people of rural Caiiamelar are wage earning, landless, a nd store buying, and they are employed by largely impersonal corporate enterprises, characteristics generally associated with the highly individualized populations of urban society. The rural proletarians of Caiiamelar, then, are m a rked by a homogeneity springing from their class likeness within an heterogeneous, class-structured society. They face uniformly restricted opportun ities and phrase their interpersonal relationships with in their class in terms of similar life chances and in face-toface fashion. In this sense, they exhibit an interesting combination of "folk" and "urban" characteristics that the term "urban proletariat" is meant to represent. Community life in rural Cafiamelar is maintained by the hard core of the local working population . Migrant laborers and outsiders must eith er be integrated into this functioning community or remain as outsiders. In this respect, rural Caf\amelar contrasts with rural Nocod, where different historical factors have carried the proletarianiza ti on of the workers somewhat further . In Cafiamelar- and to a less degree in Nocor<i-relationships between members of the rural working class are personal, reciprocal, and equivalent in character. These intraclass relationships contrast rather sharply with hierarchical, standardized, and largely impersonal relationships which hold between classes within the same community. Historically, the progressive growth of wage labor has permitted the individual to establish and maintain social relationships as an individual rather than as a member of a family group. Because of their positions as wage workers, all individuals find themselves in roughly eq uivalent positions. This does not mean that family units are without importance or function. It does mean that relationships within the family itself and between the family and the outside world have been markedly influenced by the system of individual wage labor.

COi\IPARATIVE ANALYSIS OF REGIO:-\:\L SUDCULTURES

473

COMPARATIVE POWER STRUCTURE OF THE FOUR RURAL COMMUNITIES TABARA

Political porly

Insular government

Government benefits: farm credit, schools, heolth, farm services

Formers and town people

SAN JOSE

.. y

lnsulor government

1 Hacienda owner

l

I

Government benefits: farm plots, schools, land and labor legislation

I~

I"

Workers and peasants

NO CORA Political party

Insula r government

Government plantation officials

Government benefits: profit-sharing employment, schools, health services

.J..

Union workers

CANAMELAR

U.S. corporation

Political party

Insular government labor legislation

Union workers

tions of the members · of the families to one another and in the relations between fami lies. These differences reflect the larger productive arrangements typified by the neighborhoods and rural regions. INTERFAMILIAL RELATIONS W ITHIN THE NEIGHBORHOOD

vVithin each rural neighborhood, the fami lies are interrelated with one another through a set o( reciprocal services and social activities, but the bases for these differ. In San J ose, a large number of goods and services are exchanged without use of cash or reference to a monetary standard. It is estimated that such exchange supplies roughly one-fourth of the

Government benefits: schools, hea lth services

labor needed to carry on agricultural work in minor crop production. Jn Tabara, Cailamelar, and Nocora, on the other hand, any exchange of goods or services is paid for by money or is eval uated in cash terms. Jn San Jose, the distinctive nonmonetary network of inte rfamilial relations springs from a primary attachment to the land. Families having access to land in different degrees and in different ways are interrelated to one another in a system of personal and variable obligations. This holds not only for members of the same subcultural groups, or classes, but between families of different groups. The web of interfamilial relations is strongly personal. It is based on cu lturally prescribed obligations between neighbors, rela tives, ritual kin, and landowners and laborers.

474

THE PEOPLE OF PUERTO RICO

The father plays a dominant role in the management of the family. H e dictates the agreements involving MARRIAGE AND THE FAMI LY the labor, services, and favors which bind his family The total socioeconomic setting within which the to the other families of the neighborhood. Interfamilial relations in the other communities family functi ons is an important determina nt o( have been strongly affected by the increasing impor- certain relationships between members of 1.h e fam il y. tance of cash in economic life and the resulting in- It conditions th e re lative importance of th e husba nd dividualization of the role and functions of each and the wife and the ex tent to \\·hich indi,·iduals may member of the family. \Vithin this general cash. function in independe nce of th e famil y u11it. In addioriented context, however, there are important differ- tion, conside rati om of propeny and i11hcrit:ince h:i\·e important bearing 0 11 \\'hcther a marri:1gc 1111io11 is e nces bet"·een the communities. Jn Tabara, the traditional system of reciprocal , consensual , civil. or religious and \\·hethC'I' a married nonmonetary obligations between families is greatly couple lives \\'ith the parem s of 011 c or th<: 01hcr weakened, and the custom of labor exchange is absent. spouse or sets up an independe111 rc)\idt'11cc. The com Neighborly relations have assumed a new character, bination of the fanors h:1s prodt1c('d patrili11c:il which is related to the rise o( a cash-based set o( fam ilies in some gro t1ps and ma1.rili11cal l'alllilies in values. Those who render services to ritual kin, to others. relatives by blood or marriage, and to ne ig hbors, In San Jose, the variable. personal and hi crard1ictl whether in delivering a baby. providing meat, or nature of interfamilial relations g i\'cs < 011sidcr:1hle tra nsporting goods, seek to sell their services for a authority to the mal e family head. The father has maximum cash return while recipients seek to ac- the customary rigln to dispose of land, even if title quire them for the lowest possible sum. The Tabara to the land has been inherited by the wife from her family functions in a situation in wh ich it is possible own family. H e supervises the work of the members of to accumulate wealth and to achieve improved status. the family and markets the produ cts. H e may even Its members acquire a competitive attitude. They hire out the members and appropriate their wages. find that the sale of produce, the purchase of com- The father's extreme con trol of fam il y resources is mod iti es, and the securing of cred it depend more upon conditioned partly by the absence o( a strict cash individual effort than upon personalized techniques basis for determ ining the va lue o( the contri lnnion of for dealing with the hierarchy of power. each member of the fam ily and partly by the relative In Caf\amelar and Nocorc'1, each family of planta· difficulty which women and ch ildren find in earning tion workers is related to the managerial hierarchy money. through a wage system, the conditions of w hich a re In T abara , the fathe r also pla ys an important role determined b y the highly impersonal dictates of cor· in disposing of the labor of the members of his family poration or gO\·ernment policy together with the and in controlling the wages they received, a lthough requirements of labor leg islation. At the same time, individual ization of economic functions has reduced relations between families of the rural proletariat are his power as com pared with the more remote parts reciprocal, equivalent, standardized, and largely non- of rural San Jose. Tabara tends to measure services monetary. The majority of these families bear the in terms o( money, and it presents conside rable op· same relationship to the means of production and portunity for earning money. Each member of the h ence the same relationship to one another. Jn a family, therefore, m ay work somewhat independently manner somewhat similar to that of rural Sa n J ose of the others, and it is difficult for the father to exerand unlike that of Tabara, services in the sugar com- cise complete control over him and his earnings. munities may be exchanged between famili es without Among the la ndless workers of Tabara, postmarital measuring them against a cash standard. Interfamil ia l residence of the fami ly follows no fixed pattern and as r elations are standardized in the sense that most often as not the union is consensual. Landowners, fami lies recognize the econom ic limitations on their however, contract civil or rel igious marriages, beca use upward mobility and the commonality of their inter- property ownersh ip and inheritan ce is invo lved . A ests. Goods and services exchanged between famil ies married couple ord inarily settles with the parents on a reciprocal and equ ivalent b as is contribute to who have property. Authority within the wage-earning fami ly of Cai'ia· economic and social security. As in San Jose, inter. familial ties are reinforced by bonds of kinship a nd melar is much less centralized than in San Jose. On ritual kinship, but unlike San .Jose, these cannot the sugar plantations, family members ordinarily contribute cash to the family resources whereas in San bridge the gap between sociocu ltural classes. Imerfamilial services in Cafiamelar and Nocor;i .Jose they may contribute services or cash. The sugar are largely dictated by the father, as in San Jose. But worker is ab le to sell his services independently of these services do not re la te to the principa l means o( the family, and the re is some feeling that he has a right making a living, which is wage labor in the cane to keep his income. A father may endeavor to con· fi e lds. In this respect, Cafiamelar and Nocorc'1 contrast trol the labor and income oE his sons in the interest with San Jose, where excha nge of labor on the la nd of the family as a whole, but h e has much less power is a major feature oE interfamilial relations. than in San .J osc. Jn fa ct, the mother, who may be a

CO'.\tPARAT l\"E ANALYSIS OF REGIONAL SUBCULT URES

wage earner herself through working at minor chores, is implicitly accorded control of the family purse in ma king everyday expenditures. Because young boys are prohibited by law from working for wages while girls may perform household tasks, the latter are more valuable to the familv. The rural \\·orki11R family in ~ocor:i differs from that i11 Ca1iamclar principally in th;n \\·omen may be employed in agriculrnr:tl field labor and <.onsequently arc lllorc domi11a11t \\·i1hin the ram il y. This refiects i'\oror:i's failure to ha,·c dc,·c loped a thoroughly proletari:i11i1cd class Of \\"Orkc rs in \\°ltich the men are the principal wag-c earners. The basic unit o( family life is a \\"Olllall alld her chi ldren . al l of whom contribute substantial ly LO the family income. The house and d1ildn: 11 arc said to belong to the \\"Oman, and the husb:111d tends to be supplementary to this basic 111atrili11cal core. his income being added to that of the 0Ll1cr famil y members. l\latrilocal residence is more common in Nocor;i than in the other rural communities, and the mainstream of economic resources runs from mother to daughter. In Caiiamelar, where ma n y of these same factors are present, the father has a mu ch more important role in the family because he is the principal breadwinner. Jn both Canamelar and Nocod, a logical concom itant of the lack of property together with the division of authority w ithin the famil y is the prevalence of common-law marriages. As no question of inheritance arises, there is no need to register marriages with civil or religious amhorities. l\Ioreover, institutionally sanctioned unions have no status value and may even be regarded as undesirable. The info rmal bonds of consensual unions perm it ready separation of man and wife. Because of her re lative economic independence, the woman may leave a common-law marriage at will and ta ke her children to her mother's house. The family consists of a stable matrilineal core o( mother and children to which a number of men may be successively attached. The rural families of the sugar communities thus contrast with those of San Jose and Tabara, which tend to be more strongly patrilineal and, in the case o( landowners, to be conditioned by factors of property, land use, inheritance, and socia l acceptability. RITUAL KINSHIP

Rilllal kinship is a device derived from the Hispa nic tradition for extending close personal relations to individua ls outside the consanguinal and affinal family. Com padres, or co-parents, may be relied upon for help as much, and sometimes even more, than members of one's own family. The extension of personal ties through ritual kinship, however, is patterned in quite different ways, which correspond to the socioeco11 0111ic structuring of the different communities. Jn San J ose'.:, co111/Jadres are chosen not on ly within one's own subcultural gro up, but, when possibl e,

L!75

from members o( a higher status group with \\·hom one has special personal ties. Thus. a worke r commonly seeks his employer as co111 padre. althoug h the employer will not ask a laborer or small Jandowner to be his co111padre. The com/Jadre relationship is thus a powerful m ea ns of cementing personaliLed relationships between members of the same and different classes. In Tabara, these relationships are also contracted between indiYiduals of different statuses as well as of the same status, but because of the emphasis upon individual effort, competition. and cash Yalues. the ir functional importance is greatly attenuated. In rural Caifamelar, ritual kinship relations obtain only between members of the laboring class, (or the barrier between workers a n d managers is too great to be crossed in the compad razgo. \ ·Vithin the laboring class, however, ritual kinship promotes solidarity among class equals through reducing competition for jobs and increasing economic and social security.

RELIGION In the patterns of religious behavior found among the various subcultural groups studied, it is important to distinguish not only Catholicism from Protesta ntism and sp iritualism but in some cases to recog nize a distinction between institutional forms of Catholicism and family or folk forms. These patterns are closely related to different social and economic features. San Jose is strongly Catholic, but in the rural area the distinction between familial and institutional Catholicism is readily recognized. Each family of workers ancl peasants maintains a sa int cult, which contributes to the unity of the family and which links actual and ritual kin in the rural n eig hborh ood through h ousehold ceremonies. By contrast, the institutional religious observances pertain to certain major events in t he life cycle. For example, church marriage is emphasized, in marked contrast to Nocera and Caiiamelar and somewhat in contrast to Tabara, where consensual unions are common among the rural poor. Church b aptism is also impon:rnt because it is a m ea ns of esta blishing ritual kinship, ,\·hich lends a sacred characte1· to the network of exchanges b etween ne igh boring fami lies of varying statuses. In the other rural communities, participation of the lower classes in institutional Catholicism is somewhat weaker than in Sa n Jose. In Cafiamelar, Cathol icism has come to be identified largel y ,\·ith the upper classes. On the sou th coast, there has been a sharp distinction during the past cen wry between the upper class o( h acienda owners and the lower class of pla ntation workers, who were largel y slave until i 8i3· In Ca11<1m elar, there d eveloped a tendency for Negro and white free resident laborers as well as fot· Negro slaves to identi(y Catholicism with the upper class o( hacie nda owners a nd large m erchants. These latte r constituted th e active core of the church and excl ud ed

476

THE PEOPLE OF P UERTO RICO

a rea so far as th e fi e ld research could ascertain. Perhaps the failure of such features to persist is explainable by the relative ly sma ll numbers of slaves imported into Puerto Rico. Neg roes and whites worked side by side. Bound by comparable restrictions and tied to a common destiny, they finally merged into a fair ly homogeneous subcultural g roup and lost an y distinctive characteristics. The general tre nd o f relig ious d e n :lo pmc11t on th e south coast must be recogni1ed as o ne of scn tlari1ati o n . at least with re fc re nce to form a I. i nsti tu tio11 a l Ca tho Iicism. This trend is evid ent in the d cc rca~ in g part ic ipation of the worke rs in church ritual. in the rcstrincd role of religious sa nction s in dail y be havior. and i11 the skepticism regarding most aspens of the s11 pc rnatural. The historical !actor, which c;n1sed th e workers to identify orthodox Catholic.ism wiLh th e upper Z:ig . .f.I· Catholic church i11 San J ose. This is Lite only church class, however, is o nl y a partial explanal ion of the i n the m 1micijJality at w hich o rthodox Catholics crz11 wortrend. The processes ,,·hich have broug ht extreme ship. Photo by Eric fllolf. proletarianization o f the worker have also in<liviclualized the relation of the worker to soci ety and caused d isintegration of 1he early patterns. T o this extent, there is a simila rity to the processes in Yucatan , where the rural folk patterns are secularized, individualized, and disorganized under urban inlluences (Redfield, 191 1). But in rural Cafiame lar, the workers acquired a new relationship to the superna tural, a new role in society, and a different kind o( social integration . The impact o( the land-and-factory combine system created a so cioecono mic situation wh ich made for receptivity to a proselytizing religion. This religion , the Pentecostal sect, is not merely Protestant. It is a revivalistic sect which meets needs specific to the situation . I t is characterized by de-emphasis of the kin<ls of sacramental sanctions which are crucial in Catholicism, by appeal to the individua l as arbiter of his own religious consciP.nce and his destiny, by d e-emphas is on the family as a functioning religious unit, and by stress upon collective participation of members o( the working class i n ceremonialism. Vt/e have seen that in the context of the proletarian socie ty each person participates d i rectly as an individual in economic and social life rather than as a member of a family. This contrasts with the familistic character of the social relations and of the sa int cult in San Jose. But the individualization o f Ca1iamelar, which is explo ited by the Pentecostal cult, implies new oriem ations and new kinds of integration. The social solidarity of the class, which is fe lt as a common destiny and which is strengthened thro ugh ritual kinship, econo mic and political solidarity, and union activity, is p aralle led b y religious solidarity expressed in joint p a nicipa tion in a revivalistic cult. To a considerable exLent, all these phenomena are e vide nce o( insecurity. The Pe ntecostal sect has been gaining ground in Cafiame la r for many of the same reasons that revivalisti.c religious sects have been accepted by depressed groups elsewhere in the world. Comemporary Nocora differs from Ca ii a melar in L its relig ious m a nifestations because of its distinctive

the workers, who were not socia lly acceptable, from m a n y of the church ceremonies. Apparently, the principal participation of the Negro slaves in church ritual was baptism. The Negro slaves, however, not only failed to become thorough-going Catholics but they were un able to sustain African religious practices and beliefs. It is understandable that African patterns, which had fun ctioned on a community or tribal level, were precluded by the absence of any functionin g N egro co mmunities on the south coast. Negroes and whites m a d e up the laboring group on the plantations, and the re was no sharp distinction between them. Africa n household ritual and belie fs in magic, witchcraft, and the like, however, have also largely vanished in this

'

Fig. ·15· 11lo11gsirlr· orthodox Cntholicis111 there ex ists a /Jop11lar saint cull. Th e jJliolvgr11 pli shows u 0011<'11 figures of //11• Three l\.in gs anrl of Christ 011 the cross i11 a !touselto/d s!tri11e. Photo by Rothi11: Covt·rn1111' 11t of Pue rto R ico. 1

histo rical backg round a nd b eca use the process o f prolewrianilation has n ot d eveloped so far. D uring the nine teenth century and the ea rl y part of the twe ntieth cenwry, Nocor;i consisted of haciend as and small farms which existed side b y side a nd formed a n intricate social web. much like San .Jose. Nocod never had the sharp class cleavage which ca used Ca thol ic ism to be identified w ith the upper class. All groups within the social hierarch y were embraced b y the Catholic church , which sa n ctioned their interrelationships. l11d11strial changes entered Nocod more slowly tha n th ey e11tered Ca i1ame lar, and th ey were accompanied b y a slower fusion o( the diversified lower class m e111bers- th e form er slaves. one-time sm a ll la 11clown ers, fi shermen , sa il o rs, free laborers, and

immig rants from the hig hlands-into a uniform class of wage labo rers. i\ Ioreover. the Nocor;i \\·orkers have been confronted b y a decline of work opportunities, which has set indiv iduals in to competit ion with one another to an exten t that has not been o ffset b y class solid arity. Fo r these reasons, th e working class in Nocon.'t has rephrased o lder religious patterns instead o( adopting n ew sects. R e ligious practices have been indi vidualized but they have n o t yet acquired a g ro up ch aracte r. T h e P entecos ta l church h as a few followers in th e town but iLs e fforts to proselytize the rura I area h ave been unsu ccess fu l. The workers now utili ze the olde r ro rms of th e sa int cult and m agic, but for indi vidual purposes. Their be lie f in m agic is even socia lly disruptive

478

THE PEOPLE OF PUERTO RICO

in that fear of witchcraft, evidently arising from economic and social competition, sets workers against one another. _ Toconi religious experience thus may be regarded as in a stage of transition. It reflects Nocor;i's failure to have achieved new patterns of social and economic integration. Tabara , like Cafiamelar, manifests a declining interest in the traditional forms of religion, but there is no sharp break along class lines. People of all sociocultural groups continue to participate in religious activities, but emphasis is shifting from the supernatural to the recreational aspects of these activities. It has been suggested 1 that because of their active membership in the Holy Name Society the rural poor, especially the men, retain a greater interest in the church than other segments of the population. This membership, however, a ppears to be motivated by the monetary aid and comforts extended rural members rather than by religious considerations. The more secularized and more cash-dependent poor of the town are not attracted to the Holy Name So_c iety, possibly because they are Jess dependent upon it for the kind of aid and comfort it extends the rural poor. The townspeople generally turn for aid to the Public Health Station and to governmental relief agencies rather than to church organizations. i

Fig. ·17· Household ;porslii/1 l>rforc the· .1/ni11,. nf the· .rni11/ s lu1ow11 as "ros11riu c 1111 /1u/o"' "r .1 011 g nf tlic· rn.1/tr)'. !'ltotn /Jy Hothi11: Guv en1111e11t of l'ucrf() Nico.

Seep. 12;.

santcros carve th e woode11 images of the saint s. Photo by Rosslwm: Government of Pue rto Rico.

Fig . 46. SjJecial era[ Ism en or

Fig. -18. F11neral fnoccssio11 i11 the r11rnl area 011 the north coast. Photo by Rotkin: Govern111e11t of Puerto Rico.

Since the turn of the century, the Protestant church and Protestant missionaries have been active in Tabara. They have even introduced a separate educational center, the Baptist Academy (high school), as well as separate churches. A lthough the Protestant membership is small, it is not surprising that in a community such as Tabara, where individuals not uncommonl y rise from poverty to comparative wealth large ly through their own efforts, Protestant doctrine, wh ich emphasizes individual rel igious expression as well as independent social and economic mobility, should have a strong appeal. The socioeconomic conditions favorab le to the attitudes expressed in Protestantism do not necessarily lead to severance of ties with th e Catholic ch urch, but they d o cause decreased participation in church activities and open expressions of disapproval of church activities and o[ the motivations of its personnel. Some of the wealthier [armers and merchants have even become active participa nts in the local 1\lasonic lodge. The rejection o[ Catholicism by certa in Tabareilos a nd the indifference of others does not mean a p roportionate growth of membership in the Baptist,

L

CO:\ ll' ARATl\"E A;-\ALYS IS OF REGIONAL St; UC U LT U RES

479

a rchica l obligatio ns \\'ithin lhe rural area : and such sen-ices as the goYernment offers a re central i1.ed la1·ge ly in the lm\·n , e xcept for the rural schoo l. a nd the)' a re media tecl to lhe ru ra 1 wo1·ker th rough the domina n t l;mdo,\·n er of the n e ig hborhood. Th e landO\\·ner has lost some of his polilica l power. but he has n ot yet been replaced. as in Nocor;i and Cai'lamelar. b y the political officeholder \\·ho has diren contact \\·ith the rural workers. The ties between the pol i t ica l ad ministrators. \\·ho are co ncentrated in the town of Cai'tamelar. and the r ura l proletariat a re estab li shed b v the pro,·ision o f sen ·ic:es and th e co ntro l oYer t he' p opular franch i ·e secured b y such scn ·ices. The shift from the fa mil yty pe hac ie nda to t he corporale land-and-fact o r y com · bi nc \\'as a ccompa ni ed b y th e transfer o r ser\'i ccs from INSTITUTIONAL CONTROLS AND SERVICES the hacienda o wn er on th e loca l level to the politica l machine o n the state le, ·e l. Thi s has gone h a nd in h and POLITICAL AND LABOR UNION ACTIVITIES wi th the in creas ing· po litica l acli vity and p o litica l Durin g th e nin e teenth century p refere ntial ,·oting ;nrnreness of th e \\·orking peop le. The c01-ponne hierarra ngeme nts excluded the b ulk or the rural popu la- archy, which first suppla nted the hacie nda m n1er as tion from political partic ipatio n. U nited States so\'er- m ed iator o f services a nd pri,·ileges for rural ,\·o rkers. eign ty broug ht a general franchise, but voting was fo r was in turn replaced b y the ollicialclom \'Oted in to a lo ng time seen as an obligat ion to the d o minallt office b y the p eople themseh·es. The g ro up of o!Ticials landowner of the rural community rather than as a presen tly in office form part of a n insular bure:1ucpersonal privilege. Po li tica l obligation renected the racy, largely d ependen t on the goodwill o[ the people hierarch ica l yet persona l character of socia l rel a tion - for their continuation in office. ships which grew o ut of local economic arrangements. The \\·ay the political orga nization may be used by Landowners and sha recroppers, worke1·s and store- the rural proletarians in Cai'iamela r differs noticeab ly keepers, \\'ere hound together in to a fun ctioning sys- from th e \\·a y this can be done in San Jose and T abara. tem o( po li tical powe1· a nd patronage. As late as the Jn Ca1-1a m c lar, a s in :-\ocod. the \\·orking people form 1 9~o·s voters in rural Cai1ame lar "·ere still sellin g th e ir a su bsta n t ially homogeneous body o f voters, fa ced votes for a pair or sh oes. H \'Otes \\·ere n o t given as a b y th e same life n eeds and with like access to the pomauer of cou rse to the d omi na nt landlords, they were litica l apparatus. In San Jose a nd Taba ra , 0 11 the bo ug h t by party po liticia ns and sold without r egard oth e r ha nd. th e utilization of th e p o litical framework for pol itic:al platforms. b y the rural worke1· o r sm a ll farmer must be m ediated \Vith the d eve lopment of the Popul ar party. the th roug h the hig hl y differentiated chann e ls o( ecolate nt po li tica l power of the rural p roletaria t became nom ic powe r (d . below). In C a fi a m elar th e strnggle m a nifest. Po litical a ctivity seems always to have been for grea te r benefits for the ,\·orking p eople is seen as seen as part or the over-all effort to secure better con- one tak ing pla ce be tween the Po pul al" pany on the cl itions of work and li ving. The Socialist party and its o n e hand, and the corporate la nd-a nd-factory com labor union co unterpart, the FLT, were supp la nted bine on th e othei-. by the Popular party and the CGT. The success of th e The persisten ce of a landowning class in Nocod Popu lar party is based on its different appeals to until ,·ery recently has been a factor in sh aping politicliITerent segments of the population. I n the case of ca l attitudes and practices in this community. Th e the rural p ro letariat of the suga r area, political action political attitudes d ependent on these hierarchica l an d by the Popu lar D em ocratic party has taken the shape persona l relat io n ships ,\·ere under pressure with the of legislation to im p rove cond itions o f work, a strong g rowth of in creasingly impersonal economic arningeemphasis o n improved health and san itation facilities, me nts conseq uent upon the establ ishment of the and land reform e ncouraging the ema ncipation o( the large mills in this area. At first these mills we1·e con\\'age ea rner from the t ics of perquisites which bound structed a nd O\\·ned by loca l fam ilies. C o ncomitantly, him to the land of th e corporation. It thus furt he red there was in Nocod a slower cleveloprne nt of cl;i ssth e trend toward com plete wage labor, with wage bascd poli tical att itudes. Desp i te the ,\·eight o( personal loya lti es in Nocod . levels supponed or d e termined b y poli tical action. It appears that a ll improvemen ts in edu cation, health , the period from 19 15 to i ~Ho \\·as ma1·ked by the d elabor legislatio n, a nd t he like have a strong ly polit ical velo pmen t o r politica l activity among \\·o rking p eop le . ch ara cte r, and their provision is regarded as such b y In its earlie r stages th is took the form of Socia 1ist p a n y affi li ation, which resulted fro m the ea rl y activ ithe rurnl peopl e. ties in t.his area o f the Social ist-sponsored FLT. Du r In Sa n J ost', which retained the hacienda p a ttern m ore nea rl y than the o the1· communities. voting is ing til e 1 9~o·s. th e Soc ia list party ca me more and m ore st ill part o( the tota l network o( reciprocal, hicr- to a ll y itse lf with la ndowning grnu ps on the is land. Pe ntecosta l, and sp iritualist sects. R ather , it seems to indicate a general decline of religious interest among a ll segmems of the community, rich and poor, rural and urban. The d ecl ine of a hierarchica l a nd personali1.ed socia l struc wre . such as that which characterizes San J ost'." destroys the need for religious validatio n of this structure. The increasing abi lity of the indi\'idual sm all ca~h-crop f:1nner to maintain and even to better hi-; ccn11omic pn~itio11 indc pencle11tl:· of an y soc ia l ;1 11d economi c hierarchy within the community ha s 11nckn11inccl the traditional religious organization. \\' here ne w n :li14io11s patterns arc substituted, they arc Protcstalll.

Fig. 19· SupjJorters of the Pofrnlar Party (note symbolic straw hal) from Barrio "11111ic11/.Joa, San Jose entering into town for a /Jolitical rail)'· Photo by Eric Jllolf.

Much previously pro-Socialist sentiment was there- employment among the " ·orking population, in Cafiamelar the private corporation controls hiring and fore made use of in the rise of the Popular party. Jn 1946, the reform government bought the land makes operating effic iency the basis of its hiring policy. and mill from the private family corporation oper- Union leaders must seek to win gains for their memating in Noconi. The labor union, which had de- bership ei th er through direct economic union action veloped under conditions of private ownership, was or through political action. \Vhereas in former years now confronted with the problems of government con- the strike was a weapon o[ direct action, today gains trol. Today, substantially the entire labor force is a re sought through legislation sponsored by the Popu· employed by the governmen t. Conditions of employ- lar party. The strike, however, is a more effective ment are formalized by means of insular and federal weapon in Nocera than in Caf\amelar, because of the laws. vVorkers, most of them loyal to the Popular political implications it holds for the government in party, continue to maintain their union, which serves power. Ve have seen that the land reform program operas a bargaining agent for their demands on the government. The practice of sharing work equally among ating in Nocor;i makes it possible for its rural workall settlers of the area is part of union policy. The ers to win political concessions by exerting direct union leadership is aware that the government must pressure on the government's managerial hierarchy. meet its obligation to provide employment on its In contrast, in Cafiamelar the workers exercise their own farms in order to fulfill its political commitments. power through the franchise, and in favor of the reIt thus reflects the philosophy of the reform govern- form party, since they see governmen ta l reform measment in approving the policy of h iring additional ures as the ch ief means of regulating work conditions workers while the amount of '"'ork per capita de- and improving their standa rd of living. Jn San Jose, creases. political activity tends to be channeled through the The role of the union in Nocor{t con trasts sharply ex isting hierarchical system of social and economic with that in Cafiamelar, where the labor supply is power. In Tabara, however, there exists no locus of also in excess of the needs of the sugar industry. political power comparable to the situati ons which \iVhereas the union in Nocodt is able to exploit the prevail in the other comm unities. A small body of political objectives of the government in spreading officials, representing the Popul ar Democratic party \

1

CO:\ll'ARATl\.E A:-IALYSlS OF REGIO:>;AL Sl' UCULTURES

481

in the com111unity, ho lds power and retains It 111 suc- social and economic obstacles make any cha nge in incessive elect ions. But it cannot so effectively exploit dividual status virtually imposs ible. Edu cat ion thus the political potential o( a massed lower-class elec- may extend literacy and pro\·ide knowledge that is torate as do the officials in Caiiamelar or Nocor;i; essemia l to an informed e lectora te, but its utili1.anor can it manipulate power through the existing tion in practical affairs will depend upon the sociosocial a nd economic structure as in San Jose. It must economic status o( the group. instead attempt to mobili7e a highly differentiated In San Jose, the loca tio n and building of schools populatio n within \d1ich indi\·iduals are able to pur- and the pro\'ision of the school lunchroom are dictated sue imli\·idual goal ·. Just as the indi\'idual lower- to some exte lll by the landlords. The educational mateclass T;1b;1reiw i~ heller able than his counterparts in rials and techniques themseh ·es are not adapted to the other rom 1nu11itics to rn:iint:iin himself economi- the particular needs o( the rural (arm population. and ca lly apart lro 111 a11v dominant hiera rchy, so he may so remain large ly nonfunctional and unrelated to the the manv' tend to s<.:c liis stak~ in pol itics i11 largely indiviclual- re lative lack of social mobilit\'. Durinrr 0 i1.cd tn111s. This emphasis docs not preclude the oper- years when teaching of school subjects h ad to be do ne atio n ol' the Popular party political apparatus in in English, often by teachers who could sca rcely the town as :t patnrnagc d c\'ice and dispenser of scrv- speak the la nguage, the value o[ education was funhe~· in:s. B11t it m:ty he lp to expla in the fa ct that no vitiated. ln Caf\amelar and :Kocod, the role of education tic seems here to ex ist between the supplying of m edica l serv i ce~ and th e po litical :-1pparatus, as is the case does not differ greatly from that in San Jose so far as effect o n loca l life is concerned. Since the Popular in all the other communities. These characteristics o( Tabara may help also to party has come into po"·er educational facilities have explain the significa lll absence of bloc voting which bee n ex tended , but their fun ctiona l importance is characterized the elections in 19.18. In all communities curtailed by two factors. First. the unrelenting ecothe Popular party won by resounding majorities, but nomic pressures which confront the rural worke r in Tabara a relatively large Independentist vote- have limited his ability to take full ach·amage o( eduabout one-fourth of the total- was cast. " ' hile a cation. Second, it is extraordinarily difficult for the larger proport ion of these votes came from the pueblo worker to utilize his knowledge in the context o( the itself-from the urban poor, the disillusioned veteran local silllation to impr0t·e his lot. In Caiiamelar. jobs cabdrivers and swdents-the marginal landowner and above the level o( wage laborers are extremely limited the rural landless worker contributed importantly to and the only rea l chance for up\\·ard mobility is for the worker to mig rate. Nocora affords little more inthe total minority vote. It would seem, then, that Tabara is a kind o[ dividual opportunity. although i t has small and municipality in which the Popular party's special ap- m ed ium farmers. storekeepers, and service personne l. peal to the problems o f the landless agriculturalist These groups, which a re absent in Caiiamelar, have might be least effective. For despite its somewhat a be tter chance to use their education locally or as varied appeals, the Popular party is most careful to migrants. The population of Tabara has more extensive fa ciliemphasize programs and practices devoted to the landless, who constitute the largest segment of the island's ties for education tha n that of the other three com population. Thus, in a community like Tabara , where munities, and it appears to be in a position to take lan<llessness is not always seen as a hopelessly in- g reater advantage o[ them . Not only h as the public curable condition, it is conceivable that the party's schoo l system been extended greatly here as in the appeals would be less persuasive than in the other other communities, but the town also supports a three communities where class identification is stronger Baptist Academy and a Catholic _..\cademy. The Bap(Canamelar and Norcora) and where perquisites and tist Academy was established as part of the Protestant patern a lism (San J ose) may take the special sting missionary effort after _..\merican occu pation, a nd the Catholic Academy was erected a decade later to out of landlessness and poverty. counteract the e ffects of the Baptist Academy. These educat ional facilities ha,·e been rather fully utilized, not only because ch ildren are comparatively free of EDUCATION economic obligations and their parents are able to Among the services provided by the insula r govern - send them to school but because formal education is ment, ed uca tion is one of the most important. At considered a means of facilitating upward mobility least, a one-room school is found in every rural neigh - in the economic sea le. borhood, and it functions without the decisive influ Tabara has many success stories of individuals who ence of the landowner. The meaning of education to ha ve achieved their present economic emine nce the rural population and the advantage taken of through the ir own efforts. Such stories are far m o re schooling varies considerably, however. Education is common in Tabara than in Caiiamelar, Nocor;I. or based, at least in part, on the premise o( potent ial up- Sa n Josc. 1n many of these cases, success has b een ward mobility, econom ica ll y and socially, and it oITers achieved through starting a country store or throug h a m ea ns of seH-improvement. The possibility of realiz- skillfully manipulating a good yea r's in com e as a ing this fundamental goal is largely negated where tobacco sharecroppe t·. 1t is generally known that sue#

482

THE PEOPLE O F P UERTO RICO

cess in such a commercia l venture as sto rekeeping pla ye rs as they com e to bat. In i'\ocor:i, baseba ll , d ema nds at least the a bility co keep accounts, fo r a ma teur ho urs, an d political prog rams are fa vorites. which some education is required. As for the success· In Taba ra , o nly a sm a ll po rtion o f the m e n who ful sha recropper, it is thoug ht that a n edu cated pe r- loiter in the roadside stores and lisle n LO the radio son is more likely to invest his profits in land than to read newspapers. Those who are literate read first squa nder them in other wa ys. Although the role of the comics and Lh en the sports news and th e more educa tion in promoting this type of advancement may lurid crime news, " ·hich is featured hy th e island's be la rgely overrated by T a barenos, the re la ti vely popular tablo id. As in radio. so phi:-. ti <"ati011 rath er frequent coincidence of educa tion, careful husbanding than useful kno wl ed ge scc1m to be ;t by-prod uct of thi-; of cash , a nd economic ad va ncement functio n to fo rtify desul tory ne ws pa pe r read ing. the belie f in a ca usal nex us. T hus, Ameri ca n prop a· i\Io ving p ictures. C\'C n more tha n rad in-. a nd new-.. ga nda for the mate ria l va lue of educa tio n fa lls on pa pers, are d istinc ti\'C o l the tow 11 cu lture:. Sho\\' ll onl~ m uch m o re fertil e soil here tha n in the other com· on three nigh Lc; a " ·eek in T a hara . a nd u ~11al l y " \\ 'c~t ­ munities, and pa rents m ay m a ke g reater sacrifices to erns" imported fro m the Uni ted Sta tes. th l"y arc popu· assure to their childre n th e opportunity to o bta in lar among all classes in to wn but esp<:<i;tll y a111011g th e this education. To the extent to which upward social. slum-dwelling poo r. Th e movie hou:-,c belongs to the m o bility remains a poss ibility in Tabara, edu cati o n is Catholic church, and th e film s arc :-,ck< 1c:d by th e like ly to be valued as the key to that mobility. M ass local priest with a n eye to c11te nain111 c1ll rath e r than proleta ria nization a nd the a bsence of local opponuni · education. These film s h ave a te nde ncy to pro pa· t ies fo r cash accumula tio n, which characte rize Cafi a. ga te misinforma ti o n a nd to enco urage lalsc a nd anachmelar a nd, to a slightly lesser ex tent, N ocora, have ronistic thinking about the Uni ted Sta les. Only a n ot occurred in Taba ra. Nor a re the o ppo rtuni ties fo r cynic would desig nate the ma jority of the films which accu mul a tion so limited he re as in San Jose. Thus, come to Taba ra as edu ca tio nal. Th e rural poor and w hile the premise tha t edu ca tio n offe_rs a key to middle class, who lack tra nsportaLio n, arc d enied upwa rd socioeconomic mo bility is largely a fi ctio n in this form of recreatio n, and here again probably yield these other communities a nd is shrewdly appraised as an edge in sophistication tO their town counterparts. su ch b y the lower·class resicle n ts, it sti 11 has eno ug h r eality to b e a ccepted and valued by lower· and middle· MEDICINE AND HEALTH class rura l Tabarenos. Health services a re one of the m aj o r be ne fits proI n T aba ra , informal ed uca tio nal devices o r m ass means of communicatio n, such as radios, newspapers, vided the Pu erto Rica n people by the governmen t, and and the movies, affect directly o nl y certa in segments they conseq uentl y h ave a political as well as thera· of the popula tion. " ' hile e lectri city a nd hence radios p e utic sig nifican ce. i\ Iedica l care is in a sense a form a re ava ila ble to th e town lower class, the rura l com. o f politica l publicity. In San Jose, Caiia mc lar, and m unities, which lie off the m a in roads, have no t even Nocora, treatme nt at the public clinics is provided been reached by e lectricity. This means that th e rura l through the politica l organization o( the wwn and p oor are less sophisticated than any other segme nt of channeled to the rural popu lation through th e leaders th e p o pulation. Even this g ro up, however, may spend of the party in p ower. This does not mean that opsom e time visiting in rura l roadside stores, which ge n- po nents of th e pa rty in power are de ni ed medical era lly h a ve radios. Soa p operas a nd baseball gam es a re service, but rath er th a t an yone using th e servi ce is the favor ite progr a m s, a nd ic can h a rdly b e sa id tha t strong ly reminded of the source o[ th e bene fits. rad io liste ning of this kind substa ntia lly ra ises the The use m ad e of hea lth services, however, de pends genera l level of knowled ge. 'Whether the soap operas primarily upon the ir accessibility to Lhe people and h ave con tributed anything to the general emphasis upon concepts rega rding scientific m ed icine as against o n rom a ntic love in th e selection o( a mate, which folk cures. Jn Sa n Jose, the rural people were fo rmerly was {ound in this area as contrasted with th e o th ers, cut off almost e ntire ly from medical servi ces available is d o ubtCul. In Cafiamela r, m a ny more persons amo ng in the Lown, and even today they often find it ex. the rural prole tariat o wn a nd listen to radios, but tremely difficult LO transport a patient to to wn. Morer o m a ntic considera lio ns a re d ecidedly second ary to ove r, the farm wo rkers believe that certa in ailments more important prac tica l considerations invo lved in are of supe rnatura l o rigin and cann o t be cured b y selectio n of m a ri-iage pa rtners. In N ocod , th e radi o scientific m edicine. Possibl y some of th ese disabilities does no t seem to influence " love" pa tterns, a ltho ugh a re in part psych osoma ti c, caused by the p articul ar soap o peras a re liste ned to. The re is no question that stresses induced by li ving within th e ru ra l pa u ern b aseba ll b roadcasts in fl uence rural Tabara. Th ere is o f socia l re la tio nships. A t a ny rate, consid erable folk m uch excitem en t over p rofessio na l ga mes, a nd the medicin e is p racticed in the rural community, a nd only child re n, w ho live close eno ug h to the ma in road to the more seve re cases arc taken to town. Cafiamela r is a t th e opposite extreme from San spend p a rt of their r ecrea tio nal hours there, are not o nly avid fans but skillful ball players themse lves. In Jose in its publi c medical fac iliti es and in the use their own games, the chil d ren imitate the radio broad - m ade of them. Th e hig h tax returns from the munici· casts by a nnoun cing the deta ils of play, a nd th ey pa lity h ave su p po rted be tter fa ciliti es whil e good adopt for themselves the n ames o[ the ir ravorite transpo rta tio n has made these fa c ili ties easily ac·

CO~ lPARATI\.£ :\~ALYS I S OF RECIO:-lAL SU BCU LT URES

cessible to the majority of rural people. The utiliLation o( facilities is further expedited by the high er wage level in this community. Ano ther facLOr that may have influenced the tre nd away from folk. medicine is the compl ete d edica ti o n o[ the land to the growi ng o[ cane and th e use of weed killers which has eradicated plants that " ·ere used medicinally in the p;1:-.t. 111 contr;tst to J\:ocor;i and the other com11rn11itics. th ere ; tl~o see m ~ to ha,·e been a trend away from ~ 11pc r11at11r; tl c:-:pL1n:1t ions o( disease. which i~ perhaps linked to t hang<::. i11 religious belief pre\'iou~ly m c11tiu11 ed. l\'ocor:i has in :.otn c way:. remained mo re like San .J mt'· than it has become like C:11iamelar, where the ,,·orking- population makC':-. lull use o( the available public he:tlth L1ci li1.ics. Its lower real estate values lian: 111e;t1H less ad l'qt1:1t c:: l:tcilities. ;111 d its more r(·s trined per c1pit;1 i11rn1nc has also perhaps curtailc::d use ur medical care. . \t the same time, folk medicine, o wing in part to stronge1· ties with the hig hland population, has survi ved. much as in Sa n J ose, while the local abun dance of medicinal herbs used in folk practice has enab led it to function. The illness treated by folk. medicine, however, seems in pan to have a different cause than that in San Jose. Jn N ocor:i, such psychosoma tic diswrbances perhaps relate to the disorganization of the prev io us hacienda way o( life involved in the transition illlo a wage-earning pattern. \ '\Then disease is ascri bed a magical cause, it may be suspected that witchcraft, or fear of w itchcraft, is a fun ction of the insecurity arising from the limited income that can be earned at the central. If so, the witchcraft, though derived from folk belief, fl o urishes here as in other parts o( the world in a sill! a tion o( competilion which can not be resolved by overt act ion. i\Ieclical ly speaking, Tabara differs from. the o th er communities in a number of important respects, not the least of which is in the virtual absence or political manipulation of the medical services. This is probably a manifestation o( the g reater personal independence and mobility of the people o( Tabara, which is also expressed in politica l and economic individual ism. It is interesting to note also that Tabara had five doctors in 1948, more th an twice as many as any of the other communities swdi ed, which may be explained by the combination of ava ilable cash and the d ecline in utilization of fo lk remedies. Although loca l free fa c ilities arc well used by th e rura l and urban poor or Tabara, many o f th ese pe rsons prefer the p rivate practitioners, and will often pay two cla ys' wages for a visit to one of th ese docto rs rather than subject themselves to the belt-line diagnosis and prescriptio n offered during the m o rning visiting hours at th e hospital. As in the other communities, the docto rs pay ho me visits only to the mo re prosperous individuals, a nd the usual procedure is fo r the physician to keep ofTice ho urs for the whole day. Although the incid ence of bilharzia (Scl1ist.osomiasis 111n11so11i) is much hig her [or Tabara than for the OLh cr communities, and although respiratory disorders arc fairly common in the wintertime, the community is

483

often described as among the healthies t o n the island_ This designatio n , howe,·er, should be unde rstood in the context of Tabara's excellent climate which makes it a healthful and desirable place for wealthy residents of coastal areas to escape the summer heat. For the majority of the rural and urban poor h ere, as in the other commun ities, howeve r, the physical condition of the people is more likely to refl ect the adequacy or inadequacy o( their diet than the presumed h ealth advantages of a milder climate and fresher breezes. LAW

T h e distinctive ways in ,,·hi ch the people o( the four communities are linked to the legal system is consistent with th e socioeconomi c patterns and attitucles \\·e have d escribed. In Tabara , th e individualized character o( comme rcial dea lings a nd soc ia l relations is reflected in the direct contac t which each person normall y makes with legal and political officials. I n San Jose, on the other hand, the individual tends to approach lega l matte rs through the traditio nal channels of the loca l hierarch y. He relies on indirect intercession by the large landmn1ers. In fa ct the latter often m ediate local legal disputes themselves. The strength of customary usage rather than insular law in San ] ose is re fl ec ted in the fa ct that ac tual use of land may be considered more important than legal title to it. L and tenure is by no means a lways supported by formal title, and exchange o r sale may be consummated o n a neighborhood leYel \\·ithout registration and formal legal certification. I n Nocor:i and Cafiamelar, contact with insular lega l institutions tends to be largely through the collective effort o( the fairly homogeneous g roup of laborers. The Nocor:1 union officials deal with the government, which is at once their e mployer and their elected p arty, standing for socia l a nd economic reforms. This g roup solidarity in approaching the legal apparatus is stronger in Canamela r. The relationships which obtain between the rural wo rkers a nd the m anageria l staff of the corporation a re standardized legally through the social legislation e nacted b y the Popular party. Disputes which arise are prevailingly those involving the workers as a whole rather than as individuals, and they are settled throug h the union organization or nt the polls. Disputes be tween indi vidual workers and the management may b e settled by a union officia l or b y a local politica l leader. The homogene ity of the working class, the standardization of work ing conditions, and the wo rkers' developed ability to use instillltional controls in litigation dist inguish both Cai'iamelar and Nocora from San Jose and T aba ra. The disregard in which certain laws are h e ld also distinguishes th e communities. Probab ly every sociocu ltural group in the world is indiffe rent if not outrig htly disobedi e nt to a number of the laws imposed upon it. Th ese laws may be in conflict with customary law and are regarded as matters of loca l concern only.

484

THE PEOPLE OF PUERTO RICO

In Caiiamelar, persistent as the working class is in i ts utilization of national laws protecting its group interest, disputes be tween individual workers are se ttled on a personal and customary basis, with recourse to kinship and ritual kinship obl igatio ns and to precedent i n past settlements of such disputes. In Cariamelar, Nocon.i, a nd San J ose, illega l manufactu re a nd sa le of rum is a common practice o( the lo wer classes. It is a customary pra ctice which is cont inued in defian ce of the law, especia lly as it affords many individuals an imponant supplementary income. The sa le of illega l lottery tickets flourishes in Caiiame la r a nd ~o cod for the same reason. Tabara, o n the o the r hand, is much more law abiding so far as these activities are concerned. Instead of facing the risks that a re invo lved in pursuit of these activi ties, the people normally seek to bet te r themselves through the sa fer means of accumu lat ing land and cash in return for their O\\"n efforts in farming, m ea ns d e nied rural workers in the o ther communities.

come extremely popular, baseball being played virtually everywhere d es pi te Lh e rugged terrain of L11 e interior. On the whole, these newe r form s of entertainme nt are secular, and thei r adopt io n d epends partl y upo n the brea kd o wn of the o lder fonns a nd partly upon the availability of cash. San J ose exemplifies the ea rli e r recreat ional patterns, w hi ch are part of ~oc ial and re ligirnh :tcti\· iti e~. R e lig ious festi va ls ;ind lil c eye le.: < c·1T1no11 ies. for example, are not only inh c:n·111ly rccn ::1tio 11 :d b11t tl1 cy provide occasio ns fo r vi,iti ng ;11HI dri11ki11g . I .:tl)(lr exchanges a lso are rcnc::itinnal ; i , \\"ell :1' ecrn11>mi c activities. In ad diti nll to thc~c ,<>< ially int egrating patterns, m o re secular cntc: ri:iinment i-; lrn1 11d in tr:1ditional games, such as ca rd ~ :1 nd drnninocs. ;111d 111 cockfig hts. In th e other commu111t1 c'i ;ind C\T ll i11 lli e to\,·11 of San J ose, r e lig ious festi\·; tl -;. -;uch ;1-; thC' fest inl of the patron sa int and many an ivi tic'i c01111cncd "·ith Christmas and T hree Kings Da y, ha\"C come to he recreatio na l rather than sacred. Even the meetings of the Pentecostal church, although intense ly serious in p urpose, clea rly provide a n emo ti onal 011Llet which is RECREATION akin to recreation . In these communiti es, fi e ld la bor 1oconi Jn all the communities studi ed , traditional forms has largely lost its r ecrea tional content. of entertai nme nt are being partly replaced, partly "·orkers may sing and te ll jokes and stories while toi laugmented by new recrea ti ona l ou tlets. :\Tass means ing in the cane, b ut they have nothing comparable of communicatio ns, such as rad ios, jukeboxes, and to the labo r exchange of San .Jose. The increasi ng use made of radios, ne wspapers, and n ewspapers, have been i ntroduced at unequal rates, a lth o ugh they a rc w idespread. Cenain North Ame ri- nickelodeons is a fun ction both o f income and cu lca n ga mes, such as basketball a nd baseball, h ave be- tural con ta ct. T h ese have been adopted w here practicable, but the desire for them ha s been stimulated b y rewrn ed vetera ns and b y closer contacts with the Fig. 50. Boys dressed as th e Three Ki11gs go from house to urban centers. Can amelar has made g rea test use of house to si11g on Three Ki11gs Day. Plioto by Huss/cam: these mass media o( communicatio n, and San .Jose Gov er11111e11 l of Pue rto Rico. leas t. Nocor:i is som ew hat intermediate. It has limi ted cash for radios, newspapers, a nd jukeboxes, and it preserves some o( the traditional recreat iona l patterns, such as the saints' cu lts. In Tabara, in contrast with Caiiame lar, the dispersed se ttlement patte rn which d enies e lectrici ty to most o( the rural population has m ea nt the concomitant d e nia l o[ radio as a source of recreation . Man y of the rural poor have therefore come to d e pend upon th e nicke lodeon of the roadside store to provide them with e nte rtai nment a nd music for dan cing. Th ese stores perform a simila r fun c tion fo r many of th e urban middle-class young men and women , who are barred fro m participa tio n in upper-class recreational activities. A lthough th ese gi rls would not be a llowed to dance in any of th e ca [es in the pue blo, there is no stigma a ttached to week-en d da ncing at one of the roadside stores, so long as the group o f g irls is accompa n ied by an older brother or a nother close male re lative o f an yone in the group. O ccasiona lly whole fami lies of th e rural poor celebrating some such eve nt as a baptism or a marriage w ill make one 0£ the stores the scene of th eir fes tivities, dancing to Cuban , Dominican, 1\fex ica n. or Pu e rto Rica n music, drinking the lega l Pu erto Rica n rum or Ame ri can beer. a nd ea ting Argentine 'iaus;ige and cheese. Tf they

TABLE 1. COMPARATIVE ANALYSIS OF THE FOUR REGIONAL SUBCULTURES Government-Owned Cane Region

Traditional

Corpo rate Cane Region

TobaccoMinor Crops Region

Coffee Region

Land Use

Non irrigatcd sugar ; north coastal plain

Irrigated sug:ir: south coastal plain

T obacco. minor crops; mountains

Coffee, lobacco. minor crops; mountains

Landownership

Go\'Crnment sponsored co-operati\'e

Absentee corporate ownership

Family

Family

Size of Farms

Co-oper:Hi\·ely owned

Almost exclusively large farms n

Predominantly small farms with a few large n farms

L arge n and small farms

fields

Crop Processing

Cl·n tral ized processing

Centralized processing

Each farm

Each farm and then centrali zed processing

Credit

Insular go\'ernmcnt capital

U.S. corporate capital

U.S. credit for tobacco; liule loca l insular credit for minor crops

Credit from Puerto Rican merchants and insu·1ar goYernment

Cash Crop

C:ash-90~

95% 1s exported

103 exported from island, 10% sold for isla nd consumplion

Most coffee for Puerto Rican consumption

1s exported

from isla n<l

l\Icchanization

111 processing only

I n processing and cultivation

None

Processing on large fam1s is medianized; cultivation is not

Type of Management

Government appointees

Managerial hierarchy; frequently small stockholders

Family

Family

Labor

Unskilled; wage labor; seasonal; unionized

Unskilled; wage labor; seasonal; unionized

\ .Yage and sharecropping on cash crop; nonunion

Nonunion; wage labor; payment in cash and perquisites; some exchange labor o n small farms

Subsidiary Economic Activities for Labor

Games of chance; illegal occupations

Games of chance; illegal occupations

Few

Few

Minimum \'\'age

Yes

Yes

None

None

Consumer's Goods

Almost all importeddistributed at local stores

Almost all imported -over 50% distributed through a store

Small percenlage made locally: distributed through small independc n t stores

Sm all pcrccn tage made locally: distributed through small independent stores

Rural Classes

Predom inant one ruralJabor class (remnant of m iddle and upper class)

Laboring class and manage1·ial hierarchy

\Veak upper class; strong middle and lower class

Large landowners; sma ll landowners and wage laborers

Attitudes toward R ace

vVeak ness

vVeak race consciousness

\Veak race consciousness

Strong race consciousness and some prejudice, except for town lower dass

Ritual Kinship Bonds

Upper class Managerial hierarchy Lower class

Managerial

u

u

M L

M L

Ethnic Groups

None

American managers

None

Spanish (Mallorcans, Asturiaus)

Political Organizations

Partido Popular Democdtico; Labor union; powerful local leader

Partido Popular Dcmocd tico; Labor union; weak local leaders

Partido Popular Democrauco: powerful local leader: Partido I ndcpcndendista Puertorrique11o mi nority

Partido Popular Democdtico

Supernaturalism and Religion

Magic; saint cult ; Catholic

Pe ntecosla l; Cathol ic; no magic or saint cul t

Catholic: some Protesta nts; liule magic

Catholic; saint cult; magic

race

conscious-

j

n uLarge" varies with these three regions; in corporate sugar it is thousa nds of a.Cl'CS, in coffee a few hund red, in toh:i cco and minor crops twe nty· five to one hundred acres is a large farm.

:-\oc-or;i a11d C.:a1iamelar. where hope for slow ace umul;nion would be; vain. the helling is cautious: and few indi,·iduals \\·ill go so far as to risk all or C\'C tt a major pan of their earnings in these ani,·i1ies.

NATIONAL CHARACTERISTICS The L111iforn1i1ic'> 111 IKli:1,·io1 :111d :111i111dc l!11111d thro11g l101n th e <1i 1111111 111iti<·, ,1wlit«I in l' 1H·111) Ri111 represent two < ultur:i l lt c- 1iLt.!.!.t''. 011« l>ci11g tli :ll ()I agrarian :111cl 111nc:i 11 1ili-.t illlp<:ri:tl .'>p:1i11 :11 1<! tlic 0L11er tl1;n of the· 111nckrn ind1i-t ri:tli1cd \\'<ir ld :i s mediated largc: ly I» l11c: l ' 11i1c-d .'11:1 11·, (« <>11!1111i1 :111d politic;d domi11:1tio11. ·1 11c,t· 1111il01111itic,, :iltl1 <>11gh isl:rncl ·\\' ide in di-.1r ilrnti1J11. do 11ot. '1 011·c\·L·t. j'l't lll(':;tt' all pop11L1tio11 -.eg111L"11i- t'q1 1:1lly. I .:1rgcl y 1lt c rt·,11lh or i11st it111io11 :d 1011 c:,. till"\ h;I\"(' l1 ad clillt:rc111 111:111i fcstatio11!) i11 the vario11s so~·iocultural segments. Th e principal leatures of the Spanis h heritage w crc derived from a wiclespre;1d \Jediterranean c ulture. R oman law supported the m;1norial propeni cs of the lcuclal estate, a11cl the Catholic chu rch thorouf.{hly !>a11nioncd the hierarchical socioeconomic rel;11ionFig. 51. /I/formal cocl<ftf:!.hl Sororri. Photo iJy /Jl'/11110.

111

mm/ area of T i/u111

in Fig. 52. Co1111try

11111.11< u111.1.

The 11111.1i<'ir111 sl1111tli11g rubs n

~tirlc <m 11 llfJ/rhnl c:.rJ1trrl. Scatecl 011 the l1·f1 is" ~uitar />lavrr

1111d 011 thr rir,ht <~ c1u1tro />ltzycr. Phot o by Rosslw111: (;,011• er1111tr11t of !'111'1'/o Hico.

are abl e to afford it, this celebration wi l l be preceded by a m eal o( fri casseed goat or, if there has b een a specia l windfal l, o( roast pig. But these recreational opportunities arc fairl y infrequent for most poor rural workers and their famili es. Besid es ther e is a reluctance LO dissipate in this way hard-earned money that might be better ernployed for food, clothing, or perhaps as a sta ke to buy some land. Therefore, th e usual patrons of the roads ide dances include a s izable proportio n o f the mun ici pa lit y's less cautious spenders, the stud en t veterans and cabdrivers and an occasional prosperous farmer. The latter, who is eligible for membership in the upper-clas<; town Casino, may find the recreational opponunitie-; of that place too infrec1uent or too form a l and restrinivc to satisfy his requirements. The atmosphere in the co1 111try store is freer, th e scrutiny less careful. a 11cl the opportunities for enjoyment more frec.1uent. \Vhile upper-class men frequently r esort to these roads ide sto res to drink, ta lk , and even to dance with som e ol the chaperon ed rural rni s.~es or an orc;isional town prostitute, their wives generally rem ;1i11 at hon1e . Th e opportun iti es for p11hlic dancing arc limite d to Lhe Casino functio11s three or four times a year. I.egal <ock fi ghh ;ind gan 1bling /'or large stakes arc ag-;1i11 the province of Ll1nsc who can genera ll y ;illord the los~('i,. For 1he n1ral poor there is the occasiona l illegal <ockfight :111d the sma ll -s take dice game during the tobacu>·growing 'ie;1srn 1. J n s harp cmnra'>L 10

CO'.\!PARATl \" E

ships betwee n landlords and ,,·orkers of the land. The political , legal and religious sa nctions of the feudal estate were utili1.ed in the processes o( nation-forma tion and Jed to increased culwral homogeneity. Regional clificrences in legal concepts were 1e,·elecl, being s11 perscded by state la \\"S. The two-class agrarian pat· tl'l'll became so firmh· established that it pre\·e1uecl the ("1JH.-rgc11cc o l :1ny g-c1 rni1H.: classes o( merchants and lll:tlltll'a< 111rns. c::11l10 lic onhodoxy gradually elimill: ll t"d lllll< It of tit(" lil'Lt"f"()(loxY o l lolk religions. £yen li1 1g11i,1ic lto111ogc11ciL~ ,,·:is cncour:1ged through the ll »l" ol die di;tlcn ol C:h tik. The i111pmi1ion o l 11a tion:il ithtitutions upon all <1:1-,:-.c., _ ho\\·e,·n . I>~- 110 111c:11h produ ced cultural l1rn11ogc nci1y. Tile rcciproc:t! :ind hicr:irchical natllre ol rt'lat ionships bct\\"l"Cll the principa l social classes c1ll:1ikd n·rt:ii11 .'>t1bn rl111r:tl di:-.tinninm. The upper ( l;1,.'>c~. 10 \\"ho~c :1d,·ant:1ge the institutions operated, cnjmTd :1 w:1' ol lilc quit e impossible among the lo"·er cl:t.'>»Cs. \\' lien nation ;tl cu l tural products-art. literaL\lre, music, poetry- began to appear. the landlords ''"ere the chief consumers. \(any features of the Spanish heritage now considered characteristic o( Puerto Rico and Latin America generally are principally an upper-class heritage. for they presuppose economic security and access to national culwre products. Thus , a n emphasis upon gracious living, upon sp iritual over material va lu es. upon phi losophy and poetry, and upon hospitality can find little implementation in an impoverished laboring class. To the extent that such traits are antimaterialistic, they are characteristic of an y preindustrial, p resc ientific people. It is difficult to know how far culL11ral practices tha t function on commun ity and familia l levels were affected by state institutions. The patrilineal and father dominated familv and the double sex standard are certainly consiste;n with the hierarchical and authoritaria n socioeconomic and political institutions. But not all uniformities of the Hispanic tradition can be auributed 1.0 the leveling influence of national institutions. Spain was a cultural area before it was a unified political state, with nation-wide controls. As in any cultural area , feawres had spread from group to group through the process of diffusion. lt is not now possible to identify all of these features, important as they are to an understanding of Latin American cultu ra l history, but they certainly include innumerable folk practices, such as technologica l processes in home man u factures. di e saints' cu l t, and various magical beliefs, ri tual kinship, co-operative labor exchange patte rns, a nd probabl y man y recreational acti vities. such ;-is cockfighting and gambl ing . Political considerat ion may have altered these to some extent. and it cenai 11l v facilitated their diffusion among regional subculture~. These remarks Oil the nature or the Spanish heritage a re large!y speculative. rnggesti ng lines of inquiry necessary to understand the basis of Latin Ame rican civili1atio11s. The processes leading to cultural uniformities in the later periods of Puerto Rica n history. however mav be recognized more clearl\'. T he l~e ne~ration of industri:ili1.ed ci\·il i1ation has

A~ALYSIS OF Rl.::GIO~AL SUBCULTURES

487

brought changes or two kinds: those that are contingent upon new national ins ti tu tions and those that represent di ff us ion of customs through personal contacts and through mass media of connnuui ca tions. The latter depeud in large measure upon the former, for many of them presuppose certain basic attitudes and resources. Both types or processes o( change at present represe nt trends \\"hich have progressed at different ra tes but which by no means are fulfilled anywhere on the island. Institutional changes have bee n destroying the personali1.ed, hierarchi ca l. and authoritarian relationships of the older hacienda system anti the isolation a n d self. sufficiency of the small subsistence farmer . .-\II socioculwral segments o( th e island are becoming m ore alike in their cash-mindedness-the ir d ependence upon wages. the purchase of manufactured goods. the decline of hom e industries-their saess on indiYidual effort. their utili1.ation of nationa l health. ed ucational, and other sen·ices. In al l parts of the island, tO\\'llS are developing in response to many basic trends: the need for merchandising, marke ting, and servicing centers; the improvement of roads and transportation; the cen trali1.ation of churches and recreational features: the growth of political administrative centers: and other !actors. The to\\'n middle classes of business and professional people which are expanding under the influence o[ the new na tiona 1 i nsti tu tions are eYen ·where very similar. The grow th of a cash economy an'cl th e :l\·ailability of new goods and services lun·e provided a [unher condition for the diffusion o( cu ltural practices. The diffused tra its are those of industrial ci,·ilization, especially in their American forn1s. The typical Puerto Rican makes important use of modern technology, buying his clothes, household goods, and rood: riding in automobi les : reading newspapers: liste ning to radios a nd nickelodeons; and, in the higher income brackets, buying manufactured beds, stoves, refrigerators, and the like. Tastes for American foods, moving pictures, games, and literature are penetrating the island. r\ scient ific attiwde is gradual ly replacing supernaturalism in many spheres. The penetration o[ all these aspects o f personal living is greatest among the upper class. which combines the economic ability to adopt them together with more extended personal contacts. education, and the broad experience which helps introduce the m. These aspects are also being diffused through veterans, who had close contacts witll American values and ways during the war, through urban centers where the middle classes have swung more sh;trply toward an industrial way of life, a nd through the influe n ce o f radios, motion pictures, schools, and ne\\"s pa pers. These island-wide trends arc crea ting national unifonnities . but the ir m ea ning among the different snciocultur:il segments is so different that they cannot be considered the basis of national character excep t as P11 crto Ri co ge n erally is changing from an agrarian l.\n>-class orientation w a modern industrial snc iet\'. The peop le a re becoming imJi,·iduali1cd, b u t the goals of obtaining greater economic security in a socict,·

488

THE PEOPLE OF PCERTO RICO

whose values are measured by cash are approached quite differently. The individuals o( Tabara, like the middle classes generall y, count on their own effort, those of Canamelar and Nocora upon collective effort, and the upper classes generally upon inherited wealth, while a considerable landless and unemployed group, which inhabits the new urban slums, is apparently becoming culturally disorganized. The varied means of achieving the culturally prescribed goals of western industrial civilization entail a great variety of differences in interpersonal relationships, utilization of nation a l services, and political and religious attitudes. If nation al character has meaning in the case of Puerto Rico, it must be considered as a trend toward the values and practices of industrial civi lization, which, however, represents a fairly high level of abstraction. This type of "character" does not distinguish Puerto Rica ns from other p eople of the ·western world . ·what does distinguish them is the specific mixture of features of the o lder Hispanic heritage with these newer features. These modern trends are clearly in duced by institut ions operating on the supracommunity and usually on the s upra-insular level. Jf, for example, there is any relationship between nationa l character, on the o ne h a nd, and familial patterns and practices of ch ild rearing on the other, the ultimate explanation of both must be sought in the basic in-

stiwtions of "·es tcrn civilization. It is these which have reorien tcd socia 1 and economic va Ju cs, erea ted a ne\\' set o( subculwra l groups in the commun ity, fra~­ mented the extended family, and placed the individ· ual in the context of a competiti,·e society from the time of his early inlancy. The modern family. therefore, becomes reoriented to the e:-:tc1H th;it it h:i~ to meet the demand-. ol th<.: IH'\\Tr -.oc i;tl gn:tl-.: it-. 111(·111· bers n ccc~sarily acquire 11<:w driH·-.. ,·:tl11c-.. :111d :11 tiwd es to :ichic\'<.: the l'lld-. toned 11pn11 it hy the increasingly pcn·a-.ivc 11:ition;1I i11-.1itt1ti111h. \\'e li :l\l' seen that the upper·< 1;i,., la111ily H'J>1T-.t·111-. tlit· n . trcmc of th is tre nd. The individual i'> in c:' it:11Jly <aught i11 rn11flin-. i11 the course nr this rl'ori c 11t;1tio11. The :-.CCIII itv ()r Iii~ o ld er extended lamil y ;111d fi:-;cd po-.itio11 i1 1 111<· :-.oci;1 I hierarch y is weakc:n c:d I)(· lore Ill'\\" goa I:,< ;111 h<' rl'ali1cd. Th e new goa ls in Ll1c1meh·e, :tlmn'>t i11evitabl y C:tlT\' frustratio n, for the donri11c ol unlimited 11p\\'a1 d mobility can never be \\'holly achic,·ed by any 011<.: in dividual , or even largely achieved by any group of individuals. Frustration, insecurity, and even serious neurotic and psychosomatic symptoms may be so widespread as to constitute national characteristics. nut they are characteristics o[ a set of human relationsh ips that arc rapidly changing-and changing toward patterns that conta in inner contradictions and instability.

12

N

ationaliry zn Puerto R ico

"NATIONAL CHARACTERISTI CS" AND SUBCULTU RAL DIFFEREN CES Studies of national culture have presumed to be, among other things, analyses of an all-pervasive system o[ n ationa lity. Such analyses are based in part on th e assumption that nationa l cu ltures arc bo und togeth er by a vital commo na lity of values, which in turn are re lated lo national uniformities o r a common core or behavior (pp. 11-14 ). "National culture is represented as if it were homogeneous, as if the same facto rs affected personality in the same way in a ll regiona l, ethnic, racial, occupatio nal, class, professional, and other segments of socie ty" (Steward, 1950:8 1). G eoffrey C.orer introdu ces his study of the American people by writing ( 19-18: 1G): There is o( course notahle Yariation in different areas, in some the p1·cdom in a11cc of immigrants or a single trndition - fo r cxa111ple, the .Su111d in;l\·ia11s in ?\ li1111 csota, the Germans i11 much o( \·Visconsin, Il linois, and Pe nnsylvania, the Irish i11 l\ lassachusctts. the ?\kxicans i11 T exas, the F1·cnchspcak i11g Acadians in \ Vcstcr11 Louisiana- provid e loca l coloring; in others, the cn11ccntratio11 of most of the popuJa1io11 in a si ng le p1u-s11it-for example. 111i11i11~ in much of l\ fontana or cattle rai ~ i11 ~ in \\"yoming-rcdun?s the con · tras t and lilllits the a'> pirat iom of 1lw inhabitants: but 1hrs1· are 011/y surface 111 udi/1catiu11s of a cu111111011 />all <Tll.

[Italic s o urs.]

Vvc contend that the "s11rface patterns" in and o f thcmsc h·es affect the character and persistence of an\ common pattern in ,-.1rying degrees a nd ways. Th e

490

THE PEOPLE OF PUERTO RICO

relative importance of behavioral traits and attitudes of conflicting no rms o f idea l behavior a nd actual bethat are shared nationally and those that are character- havio r within any particular sociocultural segment. istic of subcultural segments is a question to be an- Thus, individuals wh o try to improve the ir sta tus swered by empirical procedure, not by presupposition. within the local socia l stru cture may be faced with a The present study has shown that in Puerto Rico the conflict between thrift and status consu mption. " ' hile so-ca lled "surface modifications," su ch as means of live- other sociocul tural segments in th e community may lihood, are all-important in affecting the ways in which adhere to o ne of these norms to th e e xclusio n of particular sociocu ltura l segments are tied into a com- others, it is within the socially mobile g ro upings that m o n n ationa l structure. The empirical findings of the the struggle for the validation of ne\\' norms m ay propresent study are that the sociocultura l distinctions duce com bi nations of OlhCr\\' isc sep;t rate modes of beoperative in a class-structured society, such as Puerto h avio r. Conflicting sta ndards of behavior and comRico, are in many particulars more significant tha n binations o f diffe rin g sta nd a rds in new \\'ays seem the common patterns. especially to typify th ose soc ioc ultural seg ments of a In o ur detailed comparison of the four comm uni ties middl e-class cha rac te r found in diffe re m reg ions of studied by this project, and in the commun ity studies th e island. themselves, we have delineated the various kinds of culFin a ll y, there are those norms of idea ls and behavior tural differences-the patterns of behavior and the as- which a re alleged w overri de regional. co111 m1111i ty, sociated values and attitudes- which obtain in these a n<l class distinctions. A number or students of Pu eno communities and their functional relationships t0 the Rican "nationa l character·· have sought to discuss these prevailing cultural-ecological adaptation of each di(- uniformities witho ut taking into proper account the feren t region. These comparisons have shown that internal heterogeneity of the island. R euter, for ineven types of marriage and family, which are ascribed stan ce (1946 :96), contrasts Pu erto Rican a nd American special importa nce in the determin ation of "national n ationa lity as fo ll ows: character," are differently pattern ed in each subcultural group. Thus, the lower-class proleta ria n laborer T he contrasted ;i ttitudes toward Ii fe which have been of Caiiamelar marries prevailingly b y commo n law pointed out by both continental ;i nd I sland commentators show that the America n is realistic. concise, exact, irreverand shares au thority in the family with his wife, while e nt, competent. prompt and d ependable ; the Puerto Rican the agricultural worker of Barrio Manicaboa oE San tends to be romantic, diffuse, vague, supe rsti tious, inelliJ ose, somewhat like the members o[ the San Juan cie nt, dilatory and unrel iable. \'\lhere the American is modupper class, marries in ch urch a nd is the dominan t ern, the Puerto R ican is medieY:il; where the Am erican is figure in his fami ly. The Caiia melar sugar worker thus scientific, the Puerto Rica n is poetic. 'Wh ere modern life differs not only from the insular upper class, which and industry demand ;iccuracy, the Pue rto Rican is casu al represents a group distinctive in subculture and status, and care less; "·here science requi res verification, the Puerto but a lso from the San Jose coffee worker, who repre- Rican g uesses and improvises. The American is illlc rested sents a group somewhat similar in status but differe nt in results, the Puerto Rica n is interested in poetry; the American wants facts, the Puerto Rirnn prefers oratory; the in subculture. American reads, the Puerto Rican talks. The American is In some cases, our field m aterials have demonstrated impa tien t with the casual attiLUdes of the Puerto Rican; the uniformities among several sociocultural segments Pue rto Rican is irri tated b y the exacti ng demands of the w ithin the same local setting. Thus, landowners and America no. landless workers in San J ose both attend Sunday mass. Although the derogation may be unintentional, the This correspondence of behavior, or common cultural choice of words conveys such an effect. Somewhat negadenominator, however, is an interclass response w ith in characteristics are assigned to Puerto Ricans, and tive the same community to a common set of n ational inthese are contrasted with the more "positive" values stitutions. Both of these classes in San Jose are also tied and characteristics of Americans. to national economic and political patterns. vVhile Dexter ( 1948), foc using attention on somewhat difsuch norms of behavior are fo rma lly similar, they d iffer in both content and meaning for each of the dif- ferent aspects o[ Puerto Rican culture, spea ks of such ferent participating sociocultural segments. As we have values as the idea lizatio n of the jibaro, Span ish inshown, the total participation of the landless worker dividualism, interest in gestures o( planning, generin religion, in economic patterns, a nd in po litical ac- osity to beggars, a nd others; but, like Reuter , he does tivities is ver y di fferent from tha t o f the hacienda not say o( what segment o( th e population these arc owner. The two classes may a lso share such social valu es or how pervasive they m ay be. Petrullo (1947: mechanisms as hospitality patterns and r itua l co- 102) stresses aversion to field labor as a vital feat ure of parenthood. Th ese mechani sms may fun ction in the Puerto Rican culture, but he d oes not specify what interaction between two or more segments in a local sociocul tural segmen t finds field labor degrading, nor socia l hierarchy, or they may operate within a single, does he indicate whether this ch aracteristic distinspatially separate sociocu ltural segment. Jn each case, g uishes Puerto Rico from other Caribbean islands. The characteristics which are ascribed to the "typical their functiona l rol e is somewhat different. The total Puerto Rican" may be found among certain groups behavioral systems within which these relations obtain not only in th e island but throughout L a tin America. vary from subculture to subcu lture. Field material [urt:h er demonstrates the coexistence 1\J any of the traits mentioned by R euter and Petrullo

NATIONALITY IN P U ERTO RICO

and by other commentators on Puerto Rican culture may be distinctive of the Hispanic upper-class heritage but could not exist among the lower classes. To emphasize spiritual values and to be casua l and indifferent to the exacting demands of modern life derives from the economic security of hereditary priv ilege; to be poetic presupposes literacy and opportun ity to develop esthctic tastes: to be concerned with individualism. as in achieving political position . requires training and status in a po,,·er structure which stresses personal relations and maneuvers: to have aversion to ma11u;tl labor implies a status \\·hich obviates the necess ity of such labor-a stallls so high ly valued that impO\·erished scions or upper classes insist upon wearing clean if threadbare white shirts and prefer poverty to the degrading task of "·orking with their hands; to be romantic invoh·es an idea lization o( women as wel l as an accept;ince or the double standard. The tradition from which these ;incl other characteristics of Latin American upper classes were derived has not "·holly disappeared in Puerto Rico. These characteristics survive in considerable force, especially where superordinate and subordinate classes continue to function in a personal, reciprocal, and hierarchical relationship, as on the hacienda. The trad ition also survives in some degree in other segments o[ the population, for it represents a set of values wh ich is deeply rooted in history and which has an obvious appeal to persons, Latin American or not, who repudiate the materialism of twentieth-century industrial society. These "nationa l characteristics," however, a re not now and have never been shared to any significant degree by the m ajority of Puerto Ricans and, for that matter, the majority of people throughout Latin America. Ne ither the native Indians, the imported slaves, the free workers, the resident laborers, the small farmers, the sharecroppers, nor the artisans ever had the wealth, leisure, or power to participate to any important extent in what is so often described as typical Latin American behavior. The less affiuent and less privileged groups never had to decide whether to shun manual labor in favor of upper-class occupations. They never had the chance to cultivate poetry and philosophy, for they were illiterate. Their esthetic tastes a nd ideologies were those of a (olk society. They did not face the issue o( whether to be materialistic, for the only life they knew was one of daily toil according to the cultura lly prescribed standards and requirements of their status. If they were hospitable, they were so within the framework of a system of persona lized relations, but their hospit;ility lacked the lavishness possible among the upper classes. The traditional Hispanic upper-class patterns h ave been changing unde1- the impact of a n industrial society. They have been influenced by new forms of commercial development and they are being affected by close contacts with, and even extended residence in, the U nited States. New middle classes have emerged in Puerto Rico, and the members of these groups are striving for li fe goals not unlike those of the upper classes. But there are sti11 important distinctions be-

491

tween the lifeways of the d iffering socioeconomic segments of the population. Education and mass media of communication , the radio, n ewspapers and the like, have by no means leveled subcultural differences. Nor would these in themselves be capable of so doing even i( they were extended somewhat more equitably among the different segments than is presently the case. In short, the features which are labeled "typically Puerto Rican'' generally apply to those groups ,\·hich have had the means to perpetuate the Hispanic upperclass tradition , and/ or to those who have been able to utilize education and other forms o( communication to the (ullest, and/ or to those who have access to the outside ,\·oriel and are in a position to maintain standards of living appropriate to n ew sets of values.

THE HISTORICAL BASETHE SPANISH PERIOD In cons idering the question of the development of Puerto Rican national consciousness, it will be pertinent first to review some of the historical factors which appear to have operated to enhance or inhibit the growth of this sp irit during the (our hundred years of Spanish dominion. In the period of initial contact (pp. 34-36), Puerto Rico was largely populated by professional soldiers, chu rch officials, and civilian settlers who were obliged to carry arms for the Crown in any crisis. The position of these elements in the island's social structure was that of a superord inate, conquering group en joying the protection and the privileges granted them by the Crown and its surrogates. Spanish policy at this time emphasized the island's role as a military post. Any production beyond the minimum n eeds of the military garrison and the insular officialdom was looked upon as unnecessary. The military, the officia l bureaucracy, and some members of the insular ecclesiastical establishment were paid from funds collected in other parts of the empire. The a rrival of this regular payment, the silundo, constituted an occasion for public festivities and was accompanied by music and tolling bells. In terms of o ur present problem, the military emphasis had two important consequences. First, it prevented the development of local agricu lture and industry beyond minimal needs, and thus inhibited the rise o( local commercial or industrial interests strong enough to influence imperial policy regarding Puerto Rico. And, secondly, it built up a governmental hierarchy which produced no wealth of its own and had no stake in the development of wealth on the island. For example, while the number of slaves appears to have been large relative to the total population of these early centuries, their presence was not accompanied by a maximum expansion of the island's agriculture and industry. Sugar production at the end of the eighteenth century was lower than during the first part of the sixteenth century. Land was not held as private property until the late eighteenth century, and remained in

492

TllE PEOP LE O F P UERTO RICO

central govern in g coun c il o f Lh<.: kingdom (d e l l os Los, 19.18b:!J:!). This marked the beginning ol a series of poliLical rc..: lorms which were panl:· calc:uL1u.:d to s tc111 the tide ol ~cparatist !>Clltimcnt. Yet thc:.,e rclorm-; sen ·cd in thcmsch·cs to inc rea~c the dcm:tnd lor further reform. There is C\·idc1at' Lhat the group' wh id1 s upporte d the demand ... lor poli1ictl rdonn' \\Trt· 1h e merc hant-; and Li1<: c 01111n(T< i:il 1:11 nw1 .. \\°110 \\°<"I e lw com ing- c.on ...c ioti.. ol 1hc· P""iliili1it·, ol l1111iw1 c-to numic de\'C:lopmc-11t li;1,c:d 11p"11 111 j, :11c l.111d11\\"ltt·1,J1ip and the o p e ning ol l nT 11:1dc. l l1ti... i11 1/!I/ · 1hn pet itio ne d tl1 c ki11g 10 open ;1 J1t·c j><JI 1 i11 S.111 1u.1 11. <111 th e mode l of Lh c lb11i,1i c .. 1:tl il i-..l11 11l·11 t i11 Si. l lt<J111 :" (d e Hos LOs, l!J·IKh :7.1). . \1 1d i11 18 1:!. 1>1111 R :1111<°>11 Powe r , th e l1r.-.t dqH•t: I<> tl1c: c cJt111t ii. c :1 ri inl \\"it l1 l1 i111 lO Spain a li ... t ol t\\"C11t: -1110 pi o p o,, i1 i<11h ' IJC> ll'><>t L"d hy the Cah ild o de Sa11 jt1:1n ,,·ltic Ii rcn·:il Lit e t h. 11:1<1n ()r Puc n o H.ican cl c1n;111cl, C111 tl1t· 11101 hcr <o t11ttt \ . 111 duded were rcqul:-"h lo r ,< l1oo li11 g- ;111d 11 0,pi1. 1k lor the reduction and :1holitio1t ol t:1xcs. lor :1 11 e nd 10 1h e p aymem u f church du es, for th e abol iti o n o( taxati on fo r military expen diture~. for the d e ,·clopmelll o[ free trade, lor a11 en d Lo cap ital mo,·ement from the island. for an e nd to 11epotism- csp cc ia ll y where it lavorcd Spaniards lrom the J>e nimul a rather than Pue rto Rica n s-for conLrol of r esid ence o( landless lahorers, fo r the introduction o f Puerto R icans in fixed p r oportions into the ranks o( n o n commi ssion ed ofl 1cers. for the recruiting of P ueno Ricans for the local garrison, a ncl so forth. T h e~c proposi tio n s were phrased in term s both of natio nal and class inte res ts. T he opening of military service to Puerto Rican s would h ave bene litecl a ll g r o ups o( th e island's p o pulation to the e xclus io n of n o n -Pue rto Rica ns. A r ule agai ns t nepotis111 w o uld h ave benefited Pu erto R icans aspiri ng to positions in t he insular h iera r c h y. The req ucst for contro l o( land less laborers, o n th e oth e r hand, would have provided ~ p ecia l a d vantages to the e merging landown ing c lass. At th is tim e, however , the issues we r e presente d to· CHANG ING SOC IOECONOMIC PATTERNS OF THE geth e r and app ealed in a body to the pol icy of th e NINETEENTH CENTURY empire. It thus appears that a t this stage o f the isla nd 's Th e grow Lh of th e movement for natio n a l li beration deve lopmen t, the ris ing comme r c ial group foug ln for in Lati n America, the patent weakness of Spain after its own e merging interests in terms of greater auto n the 0."apoleonic wars, a nd the emergence of t he U nited omy for the isla nd as a whole. l ts p r imary ll ced was Slates as a n indepen dent facLOr in w o rld pol itics ind igen ous capital accumula t io n t h r ough free trade. marked the turning point in Span ish policy towards l b p rimary policy, t herefore. demanded the e'>tabl ish · P uerto Rico. i-·rom 18 15 until the abolition of s lavery ment ol free trade and the search for potential ma r kets for i ~la nd products. in 187:1, the policy of the empire toward Puerto Rico R a m c'm Power rewrned to the i~ l a nd with muc h to changed from a11 emphas is o n military significance to an em phasis on commercial agricu ltural development. ~how for his efforu;. For instance, Church and State were The same policy was app lie d Lo Cuba . Cuba's superior :,eparated in admi nistrative m aners; in~ular ports \\ Cr e lo be improved; rules r egulaLing certain kinds of Jenili ty, greaL<:r s i1.e, larger populat ion, and more exte 11!>ive re~ource base gave h e r a h ead start in Lhc commerce wer e passed; and the hasis wa s la id for the policy of forced labor 0 11 which the late r d evelopme n t s trugg le for 1u Iler e< onomic d evelopment and th e rise o[ a naLional sentirnent base<l on inte rnal growth. of the sug ar ind u stry d epend e d (d e J l o:,Lo,,, 19.18b: J\:everr li ekss, t h e li r~ t qu a rter of the nin eteenth cen- ~:! -~J:;, /1assim). Othe r barriers to econ o mi c and po lit· tury proved a t urning p o int in the d eve lopm e nt o f ica l g rowth wer e re moved b y the c,:(/11/a dt' (;/"{/( ias in 18 15 (d. C ultural B ackgro und ). This I:rn· e n cot1ragcd P tte rto Ri co. l !nder the ConstituLiona l i\ [onar chy of 1808, Pue rto ec1>110111i c d eve lopme n t b y favor ing e n trepre ne urs in Ri.tan ~ were in vite d lo name a representa ti ve to the othe r coun 1 rie~ w ho \\"ere ab le to br ing to the isbnd

the royal domain to be gran ted to (avorites who had served the empire. The contraba n d trade carried on during this period sen ·ed the several funct ions of providing goods to supply dail y n eeds, uniting in con traventio n of im peria l la,,· many of the P uerto Ricans living along the coast, and return i ng s ubstantial profit to the large num bers of go\·ern m e ntal fu n c t ionaries involved in the smugg ling a ctivities. Fur three hundred years, "·hen insu lar development was inhibite d and the coasta l population "·as wholly dependent on the oper at io ns of the state apparatus or smuggling, or a combination of both , the hig hlands and uncleared areas of Puerto Rico cons tituted an isolated place of refuge. Until the middle of the ninetee nth cen wry, these areas were Puerto Rico's "ope n frontier." Here sma ll g roups o ( Ind ia n s may have survived the impact of the conquest. Herc squatter farm e rs cou ld stake o ut sma ll p lots of land and ca rry on s lashand-burn s ubsistence agricu lture. H erc runaway sailors, deserters, s laves from other is lands, and flee ing prison ers cou ld find sanctuary a nd eke out a s imple existence. A lth ough most of these men were not necessarily in open con fli c t w ith the law, they found i n the highlands a place where they m igh t b e free of state restrictions. This was th e group which la ter gave rise to the independe nt mountain farmer, ideal ized in the nationa l literawre of Puerto Rico during the late nineteenth and throughout the twentieth centuries. As late as 1810, this pictu r e remained essentially unchanged. The attempt to build a sugar industry had failed, and the market for g inger \vhic h had s timul ated some agricu ltural producLio n in the e ighteenth century had proved ephemer a l. Coffee h a d not ye t found a stable market. .-\nd un t il this time, s laves had h ard ly been used in t he capiLa lis t fashion so typica l of t h e British a nd French co lo ni es in the Caribbean o [ Lhis period .

'.'\ .·\TIO'.'\Al.ITY !'.'\ PL'ERTO RICO

L11eir rapital. sla\'es. equipm e nt. and technical knmd<.:dgc. :\II or these changes thus laid the fo undation for the rapid dC'\'C'lopment of a class of planters \l'h O came 10 crn1tro l Puerto Rim politi cally and econom ically during th e major pan or the nin eteenth century. ·1·1i c rcl orms \\·ere impl emented in an atm osphere o l gro\\'ing di,;dknion ..-.;p:1in's cmpi r~ \\'as rontrani1 1g. :11HI <n111 c''i()th :1ppc:1rl'd i1w,·iuble ii th e empir e \\'l'l't' 11 n1 tc> <n1111hk c 11 1irch . Imperial p olicy \\':t s l:t <cd \\·i1 Ii Il l<' prolikrn ()I gr:111t ing eno ug h to satisfy i11< n·:1, i11g dt·1 11 :1n d, lor n cJ 11 <n11 i< :ind political selfd t·\<' lop1m·11t. ,,·ithn11 1 :1 1 the ,;1111t· t in 1c p e rmitting the "1'<"'·11! ol :1 ......oon .-. :-. ·" in · c C>lo 11 i:1 I k;1der:->hi1>. Reform or P11c·1 I<> Ri< ci'-, n·l:i1icn 1' ,,·ith th(' <>Ul~itle \\·orld \\':tS ILt\( ('ll t'tl IJ, 1l1t· ,,·;11, ol i11dcpt·11dt'll((' i11 ot he r pans or I .; 11 i11 .\rnn ic :1. .\ 111011g th« 1:11 l<>t".. ,,·h ich prm·idcd the 't i11 111l 11' !or 1Jw , l' n· lort11' :111d !or Pll(T IO Rico's cont i11 11cd lo\:tl l\ (() Ilic Crol\ll 1h ro11glwut the period or n·\o l1 \ \TIT the tcT111i11:11ic>11 o l the si t 11ado (caused by t he c 1111ing·oll ot l u11d:-. lrom \ kx ico h \' th e \l exica n re\'olution): the Cro\\'n 's need to n.:se11lc: loy;d rn\'a list refugees from the rebellious areas: and the gro"· ing real i1.ation or self-interest on the pan or t h e emerging cornmercial a nd landownin~ groups in the island. INTERNAL DIFFERENTIATION AND INTEGRATION OF PUERTO RICAN SOCIETY

The p e riod from io 15 to th e last d ecades of the nineteenth ce ntury is considere d the "golden age" of P ue rto Rico by many Pue rto Rican historia ns. During this p eriod , the economic gai ns made in the early two decades of the centm y w er e consolidated without significant cha nges in political arrangements. T h e growth o( the s ugar and coffee industri es, on which Puerto Rican development was based du r ing the nineteenth century. d e pe nded on the tw in ins titutions of s lave r y and forced labor. \Ve have seen that th ese t\\'O inst itutions existe d in germinal form in the e igh teenth century. Yet n e ither cou ld come to fruition " ·ith o ut further e cono mic cle \'e lopment and in creased economi c freedom. Th e p eriod from 1815 to 187 g thus marked the integration of the is land 's laboring population into the hacienda svstem . ' The hacie nda system, based o n a combination of s lave r y and forced labor, d eveloped in a remarkably short period. sta rting essentiall y in 18gs . when the most harsh of a ser ies o f labor laws was promulgated. It cu Im ina ted in 1851, the peak year o f slaver y on the island. In terrns of the probl em o[ Puerto Rican n ationality, it must be remembered that the nalll re or the asp ira tions o f the dominant sociocultural segm e n t ch anged between 1791 and 18% . T he Cc;dula de G racias had been an appropri a te accommodation to a period wh en the e m erging comme rcial g roup was in terested in deve loping free trade. This group had wa n ted to ch a nge the primari ly military and su bs is tence charac ter or the previous ad a ptati on into o n e in which connnercial activ ity might ffourish . The ir interest had led these rnen in to a n a lig nme nt against the largest segme nt of the insular bureaucracy-which

-193

depended on the m;tintenance of th e status quoagainst th e mili ta r\'. :ind against the im per ial pranice of filling positio11s in the isl and \l'ith Pe11in sul ar Span· iards. The ir stand. therelore. could be phrased in t erm s of Puerto Rican i11te rests :ts a "·hole. as opposed to Sp:1nish interests . .-\fter 18;r-1 • ho\\·e\'e r. the~· \\·ere faced \\·ith the proble m of c01 1\'e ning th e ir paper gains into econom ic and poli t ic tl rea lit\' . ln tern alh·. this m ea nt that th e character o l their st rugo-le had to unde rgo sig11if1ca 11 t c h a n ges. 1-la\'ing secu'i·~d the basic conc~s­ sions for th e ir later de\'clopmc nt \\'ith r e lation to th e o ut s id e market. they could nm\· seek to stre ngthe n their ti cs \\·ith sy111p;1thc 1ic g-ro~ t p~ of the insular bureaucracy. Backe d l)\' this increa~e d politic tl suppm·t. they could proceed to bind th e Lt bor sup ply to t he n e \\· (\· dC\'Clopi11g fo r ms of production through labor la\\'S ;ind other reprc::-.si,·e legi~la ti on . The number of re:-.id e nt labore r::. force d to work on hacie n das rose s'. 1arpl" in the e:1r ly decades ol the n in c:teenth ce ntttn ('-Ce

PP· 5 7-58). \loreO\er. the plarn crs \\·ere dependent upon the protection ol the Sp;1nish Emp ire for the imp ~)rt :ttion ol slan:.-. . .-\ s ear ly a~ t 8 1:.?. Spain h:td olllc i:tl ly dee-bre d herse lf a gains t the sb\'e trad e. But as late as t h e 18tio's Bri tish n:l\·a l ,·essels ,,·e re stil l pursuing boatloa:b of smuggled sLl\·es in the co;1st:t! \\'aters off Puerto Rieu and Cuba . ln its co1n r:l\ ention o[ international t r eaties. the S panish Cro\\'n \\';1s co·operating in the inter11:tl economic d e,·eloprncnt of Pu eno Rico. Puerto Ri can comme rcial agriculture a nd the \\·ealth based upon ir could n ot ha ve d e ve lope d \\·i th ou t such protection. In terms o f national alignme nts. therelore. we should ll Ole that the position of the up per socioeconomic segme nt c hanged consider ably from the time or its first appeals for the right or free trade . .-\t that time this group h ad confronted issu es \\·hich arose from the is la nd 's special pos it io n in t h e imperial structure. l'\ ow, however, t h eir ma in task \\'as to force their countryrne n to produce w ealth ,,·ithin the framework of a hac ienda econ o my . This comp elled them to use the politica l a nd legal apparatus of the island a nd the e mpire aga inst oth er Pu e rto Ricans. Thus Puerto R ican naticmality did n ot emerge as a major issue until the e nd of this p e riod whe n the labor force had become s ta bil ize d , when th e loss of ma rkets for the prevailing industries h ad become a r e u e\\'ed threa t. and when gained political freed o m s were restricted . T h e p lanter class had d eve loped la rgel y on the bas is of borrm,·e d capital , paying exor b ita n t rates o f inte rest and using ine lilcient methods or agriculture and a b ackwar d technol ogy. But t h ese inefficient practices did not become o ne ro us until imperial policy in the form of h eav y taxatio n com bined w ith the shrin king marke t to reduce th e ir profit margin. The p rocess or integTat ing t h e s lave population into the n ew productive system did not take place w it h out fricti o n. Slave rebellio ns took place in Bayam <)n in 182 1: in G ua yarna in 1822 ( Brau, 190-i:2;).t , 2gt'i) : in Ponce in 182G (Co lly Toste, 19 q - 27: 111. pp. ~q/--1~1): in Toa Baja in 1 84~{ : in P once and Vega Ba ja in 1~48 ( Brau . 19cq:2.17- .18). S im ilar disturba nces were prob-

494

THE PEOPLE OF PUERTO RICO

ably the result of the enforcement of the work book and one minor. First, there were the liberals who laws. In i868, the burning of work books was one mani- stood for autonomy or self-government within the empire, who sympathized with republican ideas and festation of the abortive revolution of Lares. It must be recognized that the aspirations of the opposed monarchical government, who looked with upper sociocultural segments, and their various ex- interest to the United States, and who favored the pressions, were not uniform and consistent during this abolition of slavery. Secondly, there were the "unconperiod. Not all members of this group were land- ditionally Spanish" who ravored the monarchical owners. Merchants might well have favored the greater regime and close ties with Spain, who repudiated use of wage labor in the hope of increasing the buying republicanism and stood for the co11ti11uation of slavpower of the working population. As the number of ery. The remaining group, the separa tists, consisted free workers increased, large-scale haciendas found it largely of inte ll ectuals and profc::;siunals who repudi more profitable to employ them than slaves. For these ated any assoc iati on with Spain. It "·as this gro11p ,,·ho large hacendados, abolition of slavery would also collaborated with Cuban Icadc:rs a11d he lped to prc:pare hasten the elimination of the small hacienda owners the way for Cuban independ e nce. who competed with them. For while the small producer The struggle for the abolition of slavery bcc:ime a would be compelled to replace his slave labor with political issue closely linked to the su·uggle ror i11s11l:tr equal amounts of wage labor, his large-scale competitor autonomy in this period. The s;1111e political sent im en t would be able to reduce his relative labor expend iture which called for greater autonomy nm,· merged with by the introduction of the costly but more efficient th at of the abolitionists who so ught ftdl integration o( machinery which was beyond the reach a nd resources the slave population into the Puerto Rican polity of the small hacendados. Thus the advantages which (Pedreira, 1934: 184-85). In 1866, the Puerto Rican were manifest in the slave production of a crop which representatives to the central government in Madrid involved considerable man-hours of labor . tended to stated (Bra u, 1904: 2G 1-62): "'Ve seek the abolition of disappear as labor-saving devices were introduced, as slavery in Puerto Rico, and we ask for this with comman-hours decreased, and as "dead times" lengthened . pensation or without, if no alternative is possible: Haciendas of the south coast, which required more abol ition with the regulation of work or without it, if labor than those on the north coast, were in the van- that be thought absolutely necessary." The Spanish guard of the figh t for more slaves before 1850. After government forced many of these representatives into 1850, opinions on slavery ·w ere divided. Large owners exile and at the same time instituted repressive meas· in the Ponce district favored abolition, while the small ures against free men as well as slaves (Brau , 1904:263). owners in the Guayama-Humacao area appear to have The period of agitation for abolition ancl for greater opposed it. Hacienda owners living in areas of greater economic and politica l freedom again saw merchants, population density could advocate abolition earlier professionals, and planters allied with other segments than those in sparsely populated areas. Yet coffee of the population aga inst Spanish rule. This period haciendas in the mountains were better able to clo marked the first strong development of Puerto Rican without slaves than sugar haciendas on the coast. T he national consciousness. Th is spirit developed in an coffee industry developed as the numbers of free labor- atmosphere o( increasing political persecution and durers in creased. Coffee lwcendados had always found it ing a time when Spain acquired a renewed interest in more profitable to make use of free a nd forced labor Puerto Rico as an economically exploitable colony. because of the specia l restricted and seasonal nature of Puerto Ricans ·were ejected from positions in the labor needs in the production of this perennial crop. insular bureaucracy; Pen insul ar Spaniards were given As slavery diminished in importan ce and free labor the highest jobs in the ecclesiastical hierarchy; public increased up to the requirements of the larger-scale education was stifled . vVhile Puerto Rican trade and haciendas in underpopulated districts, the framework commerce suffered, there was a marked movement of of the empire which had protected economic develop- P eninsu lar Spaniards in to commerce. Through the exment during the first half of the nineteenth century tension of credit at high rates of interest, the merchants was felt by the upper socioeconomic segment to be in- gained control of the rising coffee industry. Jn this, creasingly burdensome. I t desired to improve its they were often su pportecl by the organs of the state position by strengtheni ng its economic ties with the (pp. igi - 93). United States. As early as the 183o's, the United States The line between !1ijos de! pa.is, sons of the land, and appeared as a potential outlet for insular products. In the "Spaniards" became ever sharper. Yet the native 183'1 , the United States was first in importance in upper-class I iberals were not strong e nough to en force the value of exports, whi le Spa in was second . Between their demands for greater autonomy. T he secre t or1879 and 1883, the United States became the most im- ga nization called La Torre del Viejo ("The Tower o[ portant export market for the island. Thus the turn the Old l\fan") was formed to boycott firms failing to of the century had marked the beginning of Puerto employ Puerto Ricans, to aid in the development of Rico's economic emancipation from repressive Spanish education on the island, to protect citizens against govpolicy. The second half of the nineteenth century wit- ernmental abuse, and so forth. This organization was nessed Puerto Rico's orientation toward the United smashed by official persecution (Pedreira, 1934 : 190-92). States. vVith regard to national fee ling, these develop- P erhaps part of the reason for the ·weakness of this me nts split the upper class in to groups, two major autonomist movement was the over-all lack of cap ital

NATIONALITY

for local agricultural investment. The sugar planters had proved unable tO sustain their industry at a conslant rate of growth through new investment. The decline of the industry follow ing abolition was due to lack of capital for mechanization rather tha n to lack of labor. The coffee planters of the first three quarters of Lhe nineteenlli cenw ry had generally been unable to marsh;tl th e credit required lor the establishment of large-sca le coffee farming. This capilal came to be supplied by Peni nsular rapita lisls and credit organizaLions. The CU S (Olll or using Pueno Rico for short-term in\·est111e11t in the hope or quick re turns was carried On in 1he 11c\\·l y de\·e loped coffee induslry. This custom militated against th e permanen t eslablishment of \1·ea lth 011 the isl;111d. T o secure money wh ich cou ld be consurnccl in the mother country was the primary purpose of i 11vcs tt11cn t. These practices in ter(ered with the grO\nh of an insular socioeconomic segment securely based on local capital and identifying its interests with ll1ose o( the Puerto Rican people as a whole. Such autonomist and separatist sentiment as did develop represented the extent to which indigenous Puerto Rican national feeling had matured b y the later decades of the nineteenth century. Participants in these movements identified themselves with Cuba's struggle for inclepen<lence, contributed money and men to that fight, attempted to purchase arms in the United States for use in Puerto Rico, and organized local groups which stood for independence and for the strengthening of Puerto Rican national identity through education , economic organization, and the like. The decline o[ Spanish imperial power after 1880 again brought reforms and concess ions to Puerto Rico. These were of a minor character, but served to spark the strength of the independence movement. In 1897, whe n the war with the United States was imminent, substantial local autonomy was granted to Puerto Rico by the mother country, an autonomy which was terminated b y the American occupation seven months after it began. At the same time, the coming o( the Americans cut the power of the "unconditional Spaniards" and offered some political power to those groups in the au tonomist camp which had allied themselves w ith the U nited States against Spain. Thus many officials of the now defunct autonomous government came to occupy important political posts under the new United States sovereignty. THE JJBARO AND NATIONALITY UNDER SPAIN

For the three hundred years during which the island was used primarily as a milita ry base, the hills and some parts of the coast functioned, as we have no ted earlier, as an "open frontier" and an area o( refuge for squatter fa rmers who were able to mainta in themselves relatively free of state con trols. These isolated farm ers who had little or no contact w ith hacie nd a dwellers or townspeople have been described in Chapter 6. Their relative independence o f the state and other integrated sociocultura l grou pings on th e island is

Jj\;

P UE RTO RICO

495

evidenced by the repeated attempts of the government to make them a fun ctioning part of the dominant insular economic stru cture. Thus, at the turn of the nineteenth century, a Puerto Rican mayor in his report to the governor (R amirez de Arellano, 1936: 12-1 3) complained: The abundance o f uncultivated land whose 0\1·ners a rc unable to d evelop it. is in my opinion, a great obstacle \1·hich forcib ly re tards the d eve lo pment of the population. r edu ces the size o ( han·ests, and stimulates Yice and hooliganism amo ng many who could be valuable citizens. useful to themselves, their country :rncl the state. To begin wiL11. the abundan ce of tlllctiltiYated land holds back the people because its own ers. lacking the power to cultivate it. make it aYa ilabk tO the poor so they may break land and clear pasture for the ir liYestock. Those \1·ho r ece ive land (who are called ag regados) 11cecl not r eport to the °'n1e 1· on any regular basis. nor pay rent. nor rende r the owner any serl'ice in recognition o( his ownership: on the contra ry, the o\rner almost always giYes the agregado a half a dozen cows a nd they share equally in the profits of raising them. The agrega do puts up a tin y shack, roughly built. poor and conte mptible . . . .

Puerto Rico's further development in the nineteenth century depended upon its ability to involve the labor power of this numerous population segment in commercial agricu lture and industrial activities. \Ve have seen how labor regimentation \ms implemented through legislation when the sugar industry began to grow. vVhile it is difficult to estimate what part of the population escaped this attempt at integration and remained independent squatter farmers in the highlands, th eir numbers must have been considerable. It was this g roup which form ed the hard core of the jibarvs up to the middle of the nineteenth century. The g roundwork for displacing the smal l, isolated squatter farmer had been laid when private property in land was instituted in 1778. Impetus for actual r emoval of the squatters was provided by the rapid d evelopment of the sugar industry in the first half of the nineteenth century. The squatter farmer was ei ther pushed into marginal districts isolated from the mainstream of commercial agricultural development or forced to sell his labor power to the hacienda owners. The d evelopment of the coffee industry in the second half of the nine teenth century further restricted the area in which the independent squatter farmer could earn a living, for it took place in the zone which ha d hitherto constituLed the internal fron tier. \Vhil e it did not e liminate the sma ll farmer, it either jnteg rated him into the industry as a small producer o( cash crops or turn ed him into a part-time or full-time laborer. This process went hand in hand with the g1·ow ing importance of cash as a basis of exchange and commodity purchase (see pp. 52-() 1). Ry the end of the nineteenth century, the open areas of the in tern a l fronti er had been full y redu ced to commercial cultiva tion and private control. The romantic fi g ure or the jibaro as an ind ependent farmer had lost r eality. only to r emain as a cul tural ideal which had d eveloped during the nineteenth century. T he number of sm a ll farmers r e la tive to the total ag ricultural lane.I in use d eclin ed. This

496

THE PEOPLE OF PUERTO RICO

land for cultivation granted LO Negro or "mixed" immigrams (Rosario and Carrion, 19.Jo: i J.t). Jn 1833, Negroes were entirely barred from m il itary service. In 1848, following a series of abortive slave revolts, the governor-general of the island invoked the infamous Black Code (C<idigo Negru). Among its provisions, this law subjected free and slave men or color alike to jud ~­ ment by courts-mania I. Sia \ ' C O\\'ners \\'Cn .: <.:111 po\\'Crcd THE PROBLEM OF RACE UNDER SPAIN to punish the ir slaves for minor offense-; withrnit reBecause of the limited development of commercial course to military or civil authorities. By ~11bjcni11R 1'\cagriculture in Puerto Rico during its first three cen- groes to special legal di-;abilities, the code lu11 uio11cd to turies under Spain, slavery played a minor role in in- separa te 1 egro and white workers. JL also imposed su lar development. The first slaves were introduced restra ints on the gro,,·ing and important group of free from Spain in 1510, though a few may have been Negroes, mostly small f:mncrs and anisam in Lown and brought from Santo Domingo in the preceding year on haciendas, who sen ·ed as leaders o( the movc111cnt (Rosario and Carrion, i940:92). In 1518, Charles V for the equality of I'\cgrocs ,,·ithin the n:1Lion:tl whole. authorized the importation of 4,000 slaves to the Despite its severity, the Black Code did nol accomislands of Puerto Rico, Cuba, .Jama ica and to Spain plish its aims. A few years after its passage, the sla\'e herself. These slaves were imported primarily to fill population readi ed its highest number relative to the commercial needs, particularly in the infant sugar in- total population o( the island, but thereafter it began dustry of the sixteenth century. But the labor needs of to decline. Throughout the period of commercial this industry fluctuated, not becoming stabilized until agricultural development, forced laborers, both white the beginning of the nineteenth century. In consider- and Negro, worked at the same manual tasks in the ing Spanish policy toward slavery, therefore, it must be fields with Negro slaves. As the labor supply increased, remembered that the institution did not have con- slave labor became more and more uneconomical, and tinuous economic value du ring these eai:l y centuries. free labor increasingly important to the economy. EmThe practice 0£ manumission, long established in phasis shifted from the maintenance of a specifically Spain itself, served to increase the numbers of free Ne- Negro pool o( slave labor to the maintenan ce of a labor groes in Puerto Rico during periods of commercial supply in which th is racia l element played a less funccontraction or decline. In i 776, the number of free tional role. The group of free Negroes ha<l always been men of color, "mixed" (pardos), as well as "Negro" large, and the insu lar population too mixed to permit (negros), exceeded by many thousands the number of clear-cut disti nctions between ethnic groups. Negroes slaves (Rosario and Carrion, 1940: io8) . Escaped Negro appear never to h ave formed a separate sociocu ltural slaves from other colonies were allowed to enter Puerto segment within th e structure of Puerto Rican society. Rico as free men. There is ev idence that their admis- The degree to which they formed subgroups within sion was seen as adding to the military strength of the each larger sociocultura l segment varied in time with island. A group of eighty fugitive slaves from St. Croix the requirements of economic and political developwere granted their liberty upon entering Puerto Rico ment. On a near-equal level with whites before the end in i714, organized into militia, and given two cuerdas of the eighteenth century, they were subjected to inof land each (Rosario and Carrion, i 940: 106). creasing pressure and lega l segregation during the peak '!\' hen the sugar industry came into its own again in periods of slavery (Rosario and Carrion, 19qo: 113-24, the early nineteenth century, the free Negro popula- passim). Yet during the second half of the nineteenth tion of the island was very large. Yet the heavy impor- century, the passing o( slavery once more narrowed the tation of slaves, the imposition of repressive labor gap between whites and Negroes on each sociocu ltural legislation, and the renewed identification of the polit- level. The struggle for abol ition, which increased in inical interests of the insular upper class with the interduring the middle decades of the nine teenth te nsity ests of Spain were factors which retarded the further unification of the diverse clements in Puerto Ri can century, became more and more a part o( tbe general nationality. It is interesting to note how-w ith the Puerto Rican fight for political autonomy (Pedreira, inOux o[ new capital-the attitudes of the insula r 1934: 184-85). The desire for a free laboring populaupper class changed during the nineteenth century tion was voiced in particular by the large-scale producfrom an emphasis on the unity of all Puerto Ricans to ers of sugar, who saw the economic advan tages of free one of encouraging the growth of a large slave popula- labor over slave now that the population had grown tion which should possess few rights and sm all chance substantially (Rosario and Carrion, 1940: 120). To their of political integration. This shift is foreshadowed in efforts were added those of intellectuals and others with the Instrucciones given LO Don Ram6n Power to ask little or no economic sta ke in abolition. The struggles for the duty-free introdu ction of slaves under the for human freedom and autonomy were thus, in part at provisions of free trade. Free trade in slaves was estab- least, stimu lated by the libera l ideologies which were lished by the Cedula de Cracias of i815. A discrim in a- taking hold in Europe and America. The d ivision into LOry property clause o( the same Cedula granted white slave and forced la bor on the one hand, and free labor immigrants the right to occupy twice the amount 0£ on the other, was now to be replaced by a division into meant that the isolated squa tter farmer either accepted a su bstantially reduced standard of living in comparison with other groups in the population, whose living standards were in Aux, or he was incorporated more directly into the national economic and political structure.

:-JATIONALIT Y 11' PUERTO RI CO

property ho lde rs a nd landless. The growing imporLa nce of the United States as a market for Puerto Rican products acted as a further stimulus toward the unificatio n o E Puerto Rican sentiment in the struggle for autonomy. The integration of Negro subgroups into Puerto Rican nationa li ty thus came to be closely t ied to the lig ht for greater self-de termination o n the part of th e island. \\'c ha\'e alread y noted the developme nt of secret patriotic groups o n the island in the late nineteenth cc ntur~-. J'\cgTo patriots. such as Dr. J ose C. Barbosa ( 1937 : 1 ~1-:18. /H1ssi111 ). played a n important role in the crystalli1ation of common Puerto Rican identity. The 1\egroes could bes t rea li1e their objectives in the struggle for eqn al ity at that time by identifying th cmsch ·es with th e idea l of se lf-gm·ernme nt in Puer to Ri co , thro ug h which the separate identities of white and J\icgro Spanish subjects mig h t be subordi nated to the do minant concept of Puerto Rican nationa lity. The alll liatio n of man y i\'egroes during the nineteenth century w ith such organizations as the l\fasons a nd their an ti-Cathol ic stand. with the Republican party rooted in the Li ncoln tradit ion , and with Protestant sects appears to be a refl ectio n of their r esistance to Spa nish rule in Puerto Rico.

NATIONALITY IN THE TWENTIETH CENTURY Our analysis of the varied regional subcultural groups of Puerto Rico has shown that there is a considerable range of differences in the way of li fe and the associated attitudes a nd values. \i\Te believe that there would be no poin t in constructing a list of culture elements shared by a ll Puerto Ricans or in sampling the total insular popula ti on in order to ascertain what is "typical" or most freq uent. Our approach h as b een to view each subculture as an adaptation oE the cultura l h eritage to the employment of particu la r productive processes in particular e nviro nments. The field data assembled by the proj ect appear to val idate this approach. Each community studied re presents a regio nal adaptation wh ich has been characterized by sig nificant historica l changes in the nature of its component sociocultural segme nts and in the interrelations of the segments to o ne another. These changes have followed events wh ich affected the island as a whole: the imposition of the coffee technology, the initiation of la nd gra nts by the royal doma in , the American occupa t ion, a nd so o n. \ •Ve believe, therefore, that a more significan t understanding of Puen o Rican nationality m ay be derived by tracing the historical interaction a111011g the local sociocultural segments, or subcullurol g rou/Js, a11d between these and 11atio11a/ inslitulions than by compiling a list of commonly shared traits. Historical ch anges in the loca l social structure may affect the whole system of rebtio nships on the natio na l level, a nd such induced historical changes on th e natio na l level may, in turn, react back upon the distinctive loca l social structure . . \ s a n illustration of th is, we

497

may consider the institution of slaYery. Certain areas were better fitted historica lly and enviro nmentally to ava il themselves of this institution. \Vhen the use of free labor began to be more economical, these same areas led t he struggle for abolition. On the national leve l this struggle was carried on throug h pol itical means. v\Then abolition came, it, in turn , affected all areas which h ad been using slaves, materia lly a ltering th e sociocultural re lationships in the various communities. i\Ioreover, abolition changed the character of the e x-slaves' participation in Puerto Rican society at the local level, w ilh special consequences for the next developments at a n insul ar level. For the purpose of the discussion which follows , therefore, one sh o uld visualize the nationa l structure as a historically cha ng ing network of different sociocultural groupings, a nd consciousness of n ationa lity as the interplay over time of the aspirations of these different groupings as they find expression within the total structure of the island. The American occupation meant the penetration of the existing Pue rto Rica n su·ucture by many of the national institutions of the most highly ca pitalized nation in the w orld. U nlike the impact of the Spania rds on the a bo rig ina l culture of the island. or of the United States on many p arts of the Philippines, the occupation of Puerto Rico signified the inclusion of an already integra ted national polity into a la rger sociocultural sphere. Puerto Rico had attained a considerable degree of national consciousness during the struggles around the issues of slavery a nd local autonomy. At the time of the American occupa tion, the island h ad just been conceded by the crumbling Spanish Empire the most libera l rig hts for a utonomous development in its history. A merican occupation a ltered the political status of the isla nd. On the one h and, many o( the concessions wo n from Spain were revoked. On th e other, new political concepts a nd practices were in troduced which presented a sh a rp break with the past. At the same time, many of the trends commonly associated with the occupation were, in fact, perpetua tions a nd intensifications of pre-existing conditions. The population h ad g rown considerably before 1898. Slavery h ad come to an end, and free labor was on the increase. Sugar had suffered a tempor ary ecl ipse, but was a lways the one crop most cl osely integrated with the economy oC the United Sta tes. Political activity, with party-type organization, had d eve loped during the last qua rter of the nine teen th century. T he artisa n a nd g uild clubs of the late nineteenth century had laid the basis for the later d evelopment of trade u n ions. i\Iany Puerto Ricans had come to r ecognize that the future of the isla nd would inevitably b e tied to the growing commercial and military migh t of the United States. Anti-Spanish .agitation had often taken the character of pro-Am en can propaganda. The developme nt of the community cultures after 1898 and their roots in the past h ave been dealt with at length in earlier sections. \.Ve noted the existence of large sociocultural segments which ofte n cross-cut the

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THE PEOPLE OF PUERTO RICO

local cultures. Jn the preceding sections, we have traced the gradual in tegra ti on of certain of these major segments with each other into a more cohes ive national entity. At the encl of the nineteenth century the problem of slavery had been resolved, and the Negro population of the island was incorporated on somewhat equal terms into the Puerto Rican social structure. The same decades witnessed the end of an open frontier. Not on ly was pure subsistence agriculture inhibited by lack of unused land into which to expand, but the impact of an economy based much more exclusively on cash payments for commodities compelled squatters and small subsistence farmers to work for wages or to grow cash crops. This meant th at large groups of people who had hitherto successfully avoided functional involvement in larger sociocultural wholes now, of necessity, en tered into the life of the other segments in the national structure. ,

THE JIBARO AS A SYMBOL OF NATIONALISM

The integration of the sma ll, isolated, independent farmer, the so-called jibaro, into the commercial agricultural patterns of the island has become one of the chief cultural problems under American _occupation. 1 The literature on the jibaro is extensive. The word itself and the type it stands for go back to the early history of the island. 2 He is often regarded as an exemplification of the "authentic values" of Puerto Rican culture. Traditionally, the jibaro is said to be shy and reticent in his dealings with strangers (muy jibaro); laconic, skeptical, humorous, pessimistic and hospitable. He is said to be dignified and independent, yet capable of a calculating deference where it is to his advantage. He is said to be hard working where his subsistence is concerned, but unwilling to exert himself when he believes he is being exploited. H e is supposed to be very shrewd (muy aguza'o). And "the only match for one jiba.ro is another jibaro; the only match for two jibaros is the devil." He is also characterized by certain peculiarities of speech. His social ethics are supposed to express a deep wisdom nourished by his daily struggle for survival. His traditional unwillingness to alter his way of life and to take on the values of more fully integrated groups is symbolized in the poem by Luis Llorens T orres, who w rote: Lleg<'> un jibaro a San Juan Y unos c uanLOs pitiyanquis

Lo atajaron en el parque Querie nclolc conq u istar. Le hablaron dcl Tio Sam, D e Wilson, de Mr. Root. IJc New York, de SandyHook. D(~ la Jibertad, del voto,

A jibaro came to San Juan And a bunch of Yankee-lovers Carne upon him in the park Hoping to win him over. They told him about Uncle Sam, About \•Vibon. and Mr. Root, 1\bout Ne w York, and SandyHook, A bout liberty. and th e \'Ote,

1 file Le i m jlbaru has a l~o come Lo in dude the large numbers of l a n dlcs~. n 1ral, ;111d often illiterate ag1·ic11lt11 ra l workers. "Cf. Alonso. 18,111; l'ed r c ini. 1934; Sih-a, 1 ~115; Rodriguez, Jr., 19,rn; Rosario , 1939.

Del dolar. dc:l habeas corpus Y cl jibaro dijo: Nju.

.\ bout the dollar, and abou t ha bcas corpus. And the: jiuaro answered: "Mmhmm."

Jn many ways, this image o[ the jibaro has rationalized his exploitation by other sociocultural groups. Since he was nati\'ely slll'e,nl. the tO\\'ll merchant \\'as morally free to try to dece i\'e lii111. Since he \\·as said to be lazy when working for others, means to make him work had to be found, and the~<.: lll C;tns cou ld lie justified. Since he wa s so well acqu;1intccl with nature's remedies and was supposed to be inherentl y hc;dll1y, he presumably did not require 111eclic::tl scrvices. Since he was natively ime lligent and resourceful. educational facilities were sa id to be wasted on him . :\nd since he is a child of nature, rural roads. modern housing, schoo ls, radios, high wages, and too much governmenta l sCr\'icc were said to ruin him. Civili1.ation tempts him to leave the lane.I. It disrupts his health y val ue system with new wants, making him dissatisfied with his lot. J\s a consequence he leaves the healthful environment of the countryside and becomes a social liability as an urban slum dweller. The supposed characteristics of the jibaro, mentioned above, are products of p ast and present relationships bet>veen the various sociocultural segments, and they are used to justify and reinforce these relationships. They are not descriptive of the actual conditions of rural life. In fact, the j!baro is not usually idealized by jibaros, and the idealization of the jibaro is not a trait common to all Puerto Ricans. In contrast to the type of idealization discussed above, there has developed in the past fifteen years a conflicting political formulation. Since 1940, the Popular Democratic party has been in political control of Puerto Rico. The organization draws its principal voting strength from the rural agrarian population and has campaigned principally on the platform of a better deal for that popu lation segment. The party flag shows a Puerto Rican jtbaro, ringed by the words: "Bread, Land, and Liberty." Most of the improvements achieved in behalf of the jlbaro have been in the direction of extending to him more complete, more efficient, and more convenient controls and services-schools, health services, roads and highways, motor transporta· tion , and so on. Such improvements, along with the Land Authority projects, have partly maintained the jibaro on the land in spite o[ th e twin trends towards land concentration, espec ially in suga r, and the growth o[ urbanization. At th e same time, these serv ices equip th e sma ll landowner f<:>r greater participation in island industry. The insular government has launched an extensive campaign to encourage island-wide industrialization and hopes that such a program may help to reduce the problems created by agricultural emph as is and land scarcity relative to popu lat io n. The ex tension of various controls and services to the rural population, therefore, offers in cen tive to stay on the land while making it possible for th e rnra l dweller to participate in a wage economy based on commerc ial agricu lture and re lated industries .

NATIOl'\ALlTY 1:--1 P U ERTO RICO

i\fobile middle-class groupings which depend on an increased national income for their success have given their support to the program; those who hold jobs connected with the dispensing of controls and services, and a sma ll sector of upper-class industrialists and landholders have also lent their support. But major clcnoral backing ror the present program comes from the rural agrarian population itself. from the sma ll, independent farmer and the landless agricultura l workcr ,,·ho regard the industrial program as a form or joh creation. \\'!tat must be noted is that the Popular party ideali1:1tion of tile jil)(/ro is based on what the jibaro can bcrnlllc: the older ideal is based rather on what the jib11ro may ha,·e been. Implicit in the Popular party ideali1ation is a stress 011 the j ibarr/s potentialities for industrial training and ad;1ptability to urban living. The new po litical cl1araneri1ations o( the jfbam emphasi1c his role as the resen·oir of national strength. Peclrcira (19;31:197) speaks of "'the jibaro-taproot of our culture." Such a characterization allows o ther sociocultural segments in the national structure to identify themselves wi th the jibaro, while, at the same time, increasing his dependence on the national political and economic structure. ln the sociopolitical atmosphere o[ the past fifteen years, many Puerto Ricans have come tO look upon the jibaro as a heroic type whose unflinching courage in the face of adversity and whose native resourcefulness are those of "the real Puerto Rica n" (el verdadero boriwa). The jibaro's fuller integralion into the commercial structure of the nation is merely one of the many changes taking place in Puerto Rico at the present time. 3 'Wh ile the older types of adaptation were characterized by hierarch ical, personal and hence variable relationships, modern Puerto Rican culture has changed and is still changing rapidly in the direction of more impersona l and standardized relationships. This standard ization is a consequence of the fu ller development of capitalist economy under the impact of American occupation . vVhile continuing trends already apparent in the past, United States sovereignty accelerated the rate of change and greatly intensified change in certa in areas of life. The full impact of a highly developed capitalist country on an underdeveloped world area necessarily called forth rapid change away from traditional patterns of life. CULTURAL AND POLITICAL NATIONALISM

Cultural a nthrnpologists h ave paid consid erable attention to the phenomenon of the nativistic movement. vVhen the impact of a European culture upon a primitive tribe disrupts the native way of life, the tribe usually resists first by warfare; but later, finding itself overpowered, it resorts to supernaturalism. Strict adherence to native cultural patterns and values becomes the principal tenet o( such a revivalistic movement. The cult observances may be designed to restore 3 Cf. Chapter 1 1.

499

the native way of life. and even to bring back the dead: or they may provide a rallying point for persons unable to adjust to the new regime, those \\·ho cling instead to the symbols rather than to the reality of the past. :\II members o( this society tend to react in about the same way, except that those who have been fully assimilated to European cultu re general ly reject such movements. It is impossible to lreat of Puerto Rico in precisely the terms o utlined above. In 1898. the island ,\·as part o( a complex class-structured society. ln such a society, wilh a developed economic and political organization and a class structure, the impact of a powerful foreign culture affects each class in the local system quite differe ntl y, and it is necessary to distinguish the processes of accul turation and cultural reaction in each segmenc. \ Ve may begin such an inquiry by distinguishing reactions which take the form o[ cultura l nationalism from those which take the form of political nationalism. By cu ltura l nationalism we mean stress on those ideals and patterns of behavior which set off the Puerto Rican people most distinctively from the dominant United States. By political nationalism we mean the effort to channel such ideals and patterns of behavior into political activity aimed at making Puerto Rico a n indepe ndent nation . Political nationalism holds that all Puerto Ricans shou ld affirm the traditional cultural va lues, a nd to this e nd should co-operate in the setting up of a sovereign Puerto Rican nation. Cultural Nationalism

Two chief characteristics of island life are at the basis of the feeling of Puerto Rican nationalism (fJuerlorriq11eiiis1110) . First, the island is a sociocultural entity in that it functions as a un it and has problems which must be solved in insular terms. There is a strong tendency for all Puerto Ricans to (eel that they are in the same boat. Few are so outside the stream of national life tha t they fail to be aware of their stake in insular affairs. Increased literacy, the use of mass communications, popular electoral practices, and the mobility which followed improved transportation under the American regime have done much to e nhance this awareness. This is to an increasing extent true even of the jibaro, hitherto representative of the most isolated and aloof group in Puerto Rican society. And, secondly, the flow of American practices and ideas into the island tlll'eatens familiar ways of life. Historically, Puerto Rican culture represents a combination of Hispanic, Indian, and African elements, repatterned to effect a n adaptation to the special conditions o( life on the island. \ Vhile Hispanic folk patterns may have had considerable conti nuity in insular history, the institutions characteristic of the Spanish state cou ld not be adapted without far-reaching m od ifications. This adaptation involved the sloughing off of nonfunctional features in the new colonia l context. i\ loreover, this colonial context itself differed markedly from tha t which developed in mainland areas of hig·h state o ro-anization , such as Mexico ' t'l and Peru. Stemming from these and certain environmental distinctions, the evolution o( plantation econ-

500

THE PEOPLE OF PUERTO RICO

omy in Puerto Rico took a very different course from has a stro ng emotional content. Kinship duties and the forms which evolved in those other areas. The obligations are extended through ritu al kinshi p, which island remained cut off from the mother country, with fun ctions somewh at differently in each sociocu ltural legitimate trade at a minimum for three centuries. segment but wh ich, like h ospitality, furnishes a cu lConcomitant features of this special colonial develop· turally approved means of tying individu als to one ment were the failure co integrate the aboriginal a nother. These characteristics of the Puerto Rican population as a persisting cultural force in the n ational family represent national uniformiti es, but they do not structure and the long history of isolation characteristic evidence national unity. T h ey arc aspects o( a pre· of the substantial white squ a tter population of the industria l society in wh ich human relations arc phrasccl island interior. Thus, the Hispanic heritage of Puerto predominan tly in personal and reciprocal terms rather Rico must be seen not as an undifferentiated and con- than w ith reference to impersona l, national institustant substratum of island culture, but rather as a tions. As such , they resemble in fu n ction- though not repeated I y modified and attenu ated fund o f cul rural necessarily in specific form - the fami ly and commumaterials. Thus, for instance, su ch expected features nity level patterns whi ch are found i11 a 11 y soc iety as the extended "patr iarchal" family, lay brotherhoods, which has not yet bee11 d eeply affec ted b y th e national and primogeniture are largely nonfunctional on the institutions of an industrial soc iety. Th ey arc corolisland. Different sociocultural segments of th e society, laries of a retarded d eYclopment of industria lism a n d moreover, have made selective and differential use of capitalism, of the use of money for consumption rather particular elements in this cultura l fund in the course than for in vestment ca pital, and o[ the a bsen ce of goals of time. Thus, one must look upon this h eritage and its of upward mobility. Insofar as the family continues to mea ning in historical and functional terms. be the customary means o f relating the individual to The ideals and patterns of behavior which cross-cut the larger socia l context through a network of perso nal all segments of the Puerto Rican population are lim- ties, imperson al and institu tional con tacts will be d isited, and even these may be differen tly phrased in each liked and feared. segment. All subcultural groups stress the solfclarity of In Puerto Rico, Lhe Lhrea ls to the paucrns o[ the the fam ily in in terpersonal r e lations, yet the ch ar acter family and th e intimate contacts of private life enof the family varies, as shown in the preceding sections. gendered by twentieth-century trend s have been Puerto Ricans consider male dominance in the home very r ea l. Systems o( personal, reciproca l relationsh ips to be the ideal pattern. They desire that the first-born are everywhere giving way to n ew relationships which be a boy; they hold that a newly married couple should have developed as an inescapable aspect o f the impact have children as soon as possible in order to validate of developed capitalism on a p reindustrial agrarian the husband's masculinity, a nd, in many segments and society. ln sugar areas of high capitalizatio n, the communities, they accept a strong double standard. small paternalistic hacienda has yielded to the largeNonetheless, in such proletarian communities as Cafia- scale, impersonal, wage-based corporate plantation. melar a n d Nocora, women have rather equal status Throughout the coffee area, wage p aymen t in cash h as with m en and may even have more authority within b ecome increasingly important as a standard of perthe family, while consensual marriage has eliminated formance, r eplacing noncash perquisites set up as part the double standard. of the tradi tiona l, personalit.ed relationship between Traditionally, the ideal diet includes a m eal of rice landowner and worker. In the tob acco and minor crop and beans at least once a day, while dried codfish, area, the emphasis on a cash crop raised by independcoffee, and locally grown vegetables are va lued as ent small farmers governs the prevailing system of symbols of Puerto Rican national identity. Actually, interpersonal relationships. different sociocultura l segments va ry widely in their More direct interference in certain areas of life, such ability and desire to conform to the ideal diet. Grea t as the enforced teaching of English in the public value is placed on the Spanish language as a means of schools until 1948, restrictions on cockfighting and the comm u nicatio n and o f esthetic expression, but the imposition o( the draft, has been applied under Ameriisla nd has linguistic uniform ity only insofar as a ll local can rule. variations are based on Spanish. Geographical location, Such threa ts to the familiar way of life m ak e people access to fonnal ed u cation, and standards of speech susceptible to appeals which capitalize upon an inarmaintained in certain segments of the population are ticulate sense o f loss and lead to a rejection of the all fac tors in creating con siderable linguistic variation. American way of life. Various symbols are used to The Spanish language b ecame a symbol of Puerto intensify their desire for the restoration of what is see n Rican national identity only when the United States as traditiona l Puerto Rican culture. The coffee area attempted to enforce the teaching and use of English w ith its remnants of a tradi tional hacienda pattern is mentioned nostalgically as a symbol of th e good way of upon the people . In Puerto R ican socie ty, great importance is attached life; coffee becomes a symbol of what is Puerto Rican. to the family, which retains many functions that are The jiba.ro is represented as the ideal Puerto Rican lost in industrialized societies. Kinship bonds are because of his fortitude in adversity and his reluctance stron g, and the fam ily tends to function as a unit. to become a part of the imperson al institutional frameThere is great emphasis upon hospitality which is felt work. Love of the island as a citadel of on e 's traditional to be a (undamental obligation of the fam ily and which way of life; the country's great natural beauty; the

NATIONALITY IN P UERTO RICO

Span ish lang uage, songs, poetry and literature dealing w ith Puerto Rico; the beauty and grace of Puerto Rican women; Puerto Rican and Latin American dance and musical forms-all come to be favored pol i tical appeals to p11erlorreq11e1/ismo. Because such symbols tend to appeal to most sociocultural segments, they can be used to win support for one or the other party. IL must he n oted, howe\'er. that such appeals are useful only as long as c11lu1r;d nationalism does not crystallize into poliLica l n a tio nalism . Certain widely shared qlt1cs . ge nera ll y ill\·ol\' i11g practices and beliefs only al the family or commu nity le\'el, arc threa tened by the imp:1n of :\rnerican cu lture upon the island. These, however. do not involve institutional features which gi\·c strunural and functional unity to the island as a whole. Thus. cu ltural nationalism looks essentially at the p:ist. It represents a fairly common sense oE loss of customary attitudes and practices. But it does n o t call illlo q11estio11 the ne"· nationa l structure which is em e rg ing under the impact or industrial influences. Political Nationalism

While capitalizing on the same kind of symbols, pol itical nationalism aims at a funda1nental change in the re lation between the United States and Puerto Rico. It does not merely extol passing values, but must impugn the character of relations between the island and the dominant power which has effected these profound cultural changes. The re-establishment of traditional values is alleged to depend on politica l independence. Independence, it is asserted, will preclude th e interference of the dominant power in insular culture. One may seriously doubt whether political i ndependence will prevent the further penetration of influences which have already altered the culture, let alone effect a revival of traditional cultural forms on a familial and community level. Yet the reality of political nationalism as a force in total insular life can no more be ignored or overlooked than the causes which appear to have created it. Those values shared by most Puerto Ricans and the symbols which tend to evoke common responses, together with a sense of common d estiny, underlie a true cultural nationalism. But it would be easy to overestimate its importance. As we have shmvn elsewh ere, the cultural features and the attitudes shared by all Puerto Ricans are overshadowed by the differences between the various classes and regional sociocultural segments. The impact o( the United States' occupation on Puerto Rico was felt in various wavs and to a varying degree in the different subcultures of the island. A ser ies of n ew subcultures were formed, and with them divergent attitudes toward both cultural and politica l nationalism. These attitudes are affected not only by cultural values attached to traditional ways of Jiving but by social and economic objectives anc.l by potential strength to achieve these objectives. The American political system differs profoundly from its predecessor in Puerto Rico in the way in which it offers the island means for changing existing conditions of life.

501

It may be said that the failure of militant nationalist sentiment to crystallize into a popular movement which would include all or most of the sociocultural segments of the island is partly a function of the possibility of obtaining concessions within the framework o( political and economic dependence b y manipulating the American polit ica l system. Inhibiting the growth of nationalist sentiments are such factors in the relationship between the United States and Puerto Rico as migration to the United States; the ability to market sugar cane in the United States under p referential conditions; the assurance of tax refunds, subsidies and loans; the extension to the island of social welfare schemes applied in the United States; small but successive political concessions by the United States; Puerto Rico's development to a level of living more comparable to that of the United States than to that of such a country as Haiti; and the pervasive influence of U nited States culture. Favoring nationalism are ideals and patterns of behavior associated with a traditional way of life, largely persisting on the family and neighborhood levels; realistic resen tment at the degree of pol itical an<l economic control exerted over people who are insufficiently represented in decision-making bodies; the negative effects of the United States' tariff policy which force the island to import basic commodities for consumption at high prices from the United States; racial discrimination practiced by individual North Americans and racial segregation in the armed forces during v\Torld \ Var II; the tendency of American residents to form a colony which does not associate with Puerto Ricans; the development of national consciousness which preceded the American occupation but became manifest in opposition to United States cultural patterns as American sovereignty intensified cultural ambivalence and a sense of conflict. Although the United States has granted concessions in the political field, the problem of political status continues to be an issue. Puerto Rica ns are American citizens and are subject to conscription, but they cannot vote in national e lections unless they are legal residents of the mainland. They elect an insular legislation and governor, but their enactments may be overridden in Washington. They are subject to American racial attitudes, which expose every individual with "a drop of Negro blood" to some discrimination. Economic and political development under American rule has created a cultural gap between Puerto Rico and the other countries of the Greater Antilles without genuinely incorporating the island into American cultural life. Puerto Ricans are thus unable to iden tify fully either with North Americans or with fellow L a tin Americans. Only a few intellectuals and professionals maintain ties with Cuba, Venezuela, and other Latin American countries, while firsthand contacts with North Americans are limited to a few areas of business and to government functionaries in both countries. It has often been observed that dependent political status tends to stimulate movements of national independence even while the people attempt to acquire the culture of the dominan t power. In Puerto Rico, the 1

502

THE PEOPLE OF PUERTO RICO

cultural ambivalence, which we have described as a product of historical factors, gives rise to a seeming contradiction in goals and values. Some segments of the population are more acculturated than others toward Un ited States patterns. The groups most affected b y United States influence include teachers, government personnel, the military, technicians and professional persons, people supplying services, and the like. They are largely the product of the vast inflow of American capital and the expansion of government activities fol lowing 1898. They have achieved the greatest social and economic mobility and they have been most willing to accept the ideals and standa rds ta ug ht by American education . They are in the best position to use education to improve the ir s ituation. The lower-class laborers an<l the small farmers, although strongly affected in m a ny ways by cha nges following United St"tes sovere ig nty, occupy socioeconomic p os itions that render them unable or unwilling completely to accept more typically American attitudes and modes o f behavior. There are, however, some among these groups who, by choice or by necessity, have started clown the road to acculturat ion. Many workers who ca nnot find jobs and smal l farmers who h ave Jost the ir lands often seek to better themse lves by migrating to insular urban centers or to th e United States. Their migration and adjustment is conditioned by many factors, but once theil" ties with lh eir native community are severed, they must make new adjustments in an urban context, where new middle-class standards are strongly evident. Their attitudes toward these new standards may differ, but there must be some outward conformity to the new condi tions if they are to make a living. Inwardl y, they may reject the stand·

ar<ls and wish for a return of traditional values; they may accept them, although faced with con fli ct between the old and new; or they may remain amb ivale n t. It is not reasonable to expect that at the present stage of histor y any segment o ( Puerto Rican soc iety shoul d have resolved all cultu ral conflicts. Individuals such as those who make up th e body of governmental an d professional personn e l ha\'e h ee 11 drawn closest LO American sta ndards. but the values of the I l ispanic heritage are coo recent to he altogether l'orgouc n . Other segments, s uc h as the sm:1 ll L1 rmcrs and far111 laborers who arc onl y 110\\· moving ;l\qy from tradi · tiona l patterns, inevitably f;1n.' in ternal co111lict in values. \Vhen to these varying but incomplete dq~recs o[ accu ltu r ation :ind :idj11st111c·11t there arc ;1ddcd th e

special c ircum ~ tance~ \1·1licl1 alf<.:c t tile i11di \'icl11;tl ·'i ;11 titude toward the U ni ted St:itcs- disni111i11:itio11 in the army we ighed ;ig a imt govc rn111t.:11l IJcn<.: fils, lack ol politi ca l sovcre ig 11ty measured :1gai 11 sl expanding business, and til e like- lflc.: 1·c.:s11lt is i11cvit:ibl y a tn:-

mendous range of feeling and op inion. In all segments, however, there is some cultural ambivalence, some unresolved con flict and, therefore, some degree of personal insecurit y. Perhaps the most completely accu lturated and the most thoroughly adjusted are those at extremes of the socioeconomic hicra1·chy: lh osc of the insular upper class wh o are sufficientl y acculturated to ha ve made th eir c ultural c hoice. and those of the laboring prole tariat, for example, at Caiiamelar, whose roles and statuses are so inescapably fixed that no choice is possible. It may be expected that when more segments achieve a definite orientation, the political issues involved in nationalism will become better clarified.

13 S

ome Hypothetical R egularities of

Cultural Change METHODOLOGICAL CONSIDERATIONS AL L11 c compl eLion of any scientific study, the research wo rke r fa ces Lhe (1uestion of how to prese11t his findin gs so as LO provide general principles o r understandings t h at e xte nd beyond his own research. In the physi cal and biolog ical sciences, a 11y piece o( r esearc h ordillarily leads Lo the formulation o( a law, generali1.ation , or regularity whi ch s tates a h yp o the tical r e lationship bcLwcen se lected phenomena and is postul ated to be valid o r pre dic table in ;di cases whe r e the pltc llOtnena and conditions are the same. The concl usions or infe re nces o ( th e r esear ch may be tested inde p e ndc 11tly b )' o l11e r ~cic nti ~b, w h o reconst r uct ;111 iden ti ca l

sc l ol ro11d iLiom. IL is fa r more dillicul t LO gcncrali lC t h e ll 11 d i11 g~ o f c ultu ra l ~UH.l i es. \ Vh ile t h e re ~eem s to he a w id e ly he ld h o p e a nd eve n p resu p p os ition that a n a ly· ~ i s o f t he lo nns. fun c tions. a nd p rocesses o f a n y g ive11 socioculwral ~yste m w ill yield va luable insights con cerning o the r syste m s, these ins ig hts a re u suall y left a t the imp lici t level of inllliti ve under s tandings o r hun ch es. The r e is no rig id m e thodology fo r m a king the m ex pl ic i t and s usc:cp ti ble to vcrili.ca t ion by s tudcn Ls of oLher sys tem s. The pri11 c ip:i I o bst:1c lc to th e fo rmulati o n o[ h y-

poL11cscs of rross·c11lu1ral regulariLies is Lhc rather fu11da111 e11tal anth ropological assumption that th e over-all c ultural patte rn or config uration and the fu11 ctional role and inte rrelatio n ships of elem e nls is n e ve r quite duplica ted in any two socie t ies. This assumption ,

504

THE PEOPLE OF PUERTO RICO

which is generally known as cultural relativism, is partly the result of a half-century of intensive field research. Preoccupation with exceedingly detailed analyses of particular cultures has led to emphasis upon contrasts, and it has obscured similarities between cultures. 1L has virtually forced the conclusion that each sociocultural system is unique not only in its pattern but in its causal antecedents. In spite of the skepticism abou t scientific generalizations of cultural phenomena, most social scientists concede that meaningful cultural parallels do exist. Their reluctance to formulate these parallels as cross-cultural regularities is, h owever, more the resu lt of interest in fine discriminations between cultures than of any theoretical antagonism to making generalizations. H they avoid using the term "law" it is not because they fundamenta lly deny that cu ltural laws may existmost anthropologists would very gladly recognize proved regularities that would help systematize the infinitely complex data of culture-but because at present they are skeptical that cultural laws can be determined. The research data presented in this volume will undoubtedly have struck various familiar notes to students of other world areas. \Vhile there is room for question as to how significant the similarities between certain subcultures of Puerto Rico and of other areas may be, there is no doubt that some similarities exist. We endeavor, therefore, to formulate the conclusions of our study in such a way that the relevance of P uerto Rican subcultures to those of other areas may be made explicit. \Ve would no doubt be on safer grounds if we described Puerto Rico solely in terms of itself, without consideration of whether our data m ight be generalized. vVe offer these tentative and preliminary hypotheses, however, as a n initi al effort toward achieving understandings that o btain cross-culturally. In endeavoring to d etermine cul tural r egularities, we are not primarily interested in ascertaining functional relationships or Jaws that apply to all mank ind. Th ere may be universal laws, but i( a scientific approach consists of definition of phenomena and stipulation of conditions underlying the relationship between phenomena, we believe that a cultural law must express particular and highly qualified relationships. It is quite possible that some relationships between phenomena may be found in a ll cultures. It is certain, however, that other relationships will be found only in certain types of cultures a nd still others only between special aspects or features oE certain cultures. The prese nt hypotheses pertain to all subcultures which are of the sa me types as those found in Puerto Rico. As the Puerto Rican subcultures, however, are distinctive in severa l respects, including their Hispanic origins, we are confronted with the question of how to determine th e basic patterns, insti tutions, and conste ll at ions of features that have cross-cu ltura l significance rather than local a nd historica l unique ness. The proble m is really one of identifying form and function rather than con tent; for cultures or diverse

origins and of different element content may have similar structures and functional relationships between the pans. Our methodology consists of three steps. First, we e ndeavor to place the Puerto Ri can subcultures in classes or categories having cross-culwra l sig nifica nce and to selec t a historical datum point lrom whi ch to trace changes. Second, we seek to detcrmi1H: the principa l factors causing change in Pu eno Ri co a11cl in other typologica lly similar :.11bc11lt11re!>. Third. \\'C u11 · dertake to trace the cone ret<.: clfcct:-. ol these l:ic wr~ i11 terms both Of general Lre11tb altecting all scgll tClltS ol P uerto Rican society and ol dilleremia l dl<.:c h <>11 s11b· culwres of the larger society. The first step, that o i placing the cttl ture under ana l· ysis in a broad Cttcgory of subcultures. requ ires :tlte11· tion to basic patterns rather than to cu lture elen1c11ts. This immediately raises the question ol how inclusive any category sha ll be. For some purposes. it may be useful to employ such a broad classification :ts "tribal society," "class-strucwred society,'' "theocratic state," and the like. In the present stage of research, however, it is probable that more specialized delimited types will better facilitate the formulation o( cross-cultural regularities. For example, while "tribal societies" have certain very general features in common, it would be difficu lt t0 formulate the interrelationsh ip of these features in a concrete and meaningful way. "Patrilineal bands," however, are a special type of tribal society which have certain features that lend themselves to formulation . They occur in widely separated pans of the world where they have independently developed a similar type of land use, landownership, patri lincal orga ni zation, local exogamy, patrilocality, and certa in o ther featu res wh ich have the same func tional interre lationsh ip in each case (Steward, 1936). A nother example of th e use oE typology in the formulati o n o( cross-culwral regula r ities is the development o f ea rly irrigation civilizations. The p roblem of classification in this case involves not on ly the detennination of types of cultures but of sign ifi ca nt developmental periods. The pre-iron age farming culwres of Egypt, ~fesopornmia, China, i\Ieso-America and Peru developed independently and for the same reasons through strikingly similar eras, which began with small farm commun ities, passed th rough an era o( theocratic states, and terminated with militaristic empires (Steward, 1 94 ga). J n pre paring the present formula tions, it was necessary to decide which features of Puerto Rican culture should form the basis of our taxonomy. At one extreme, the island cou ld have been considered unique in th e combination o( its Hispanic tradition, Caribbean geographica l sett ing, distinctive role in th e Spanish Empire, a nd contemporary position as a dependency o[ th e United States. At the o ther extreme, it could be classed with a large number of societies which arc cl imatica ll y subtropical, agrarian , class-structured, and colonial dependenc ies. As few formulations based on other cultures resemb ling that o( Puerto Rico h ad previously been made and since the present inquiry could

SOi\IE llYPOTHETICAL REGULARITIES OF CULTURAL CHANGE

505

not undertake a detailed cross-cu ltural comparison , ''infinite regression.'' For the p urpose of the present the present formulati o ns "·ere made against a gene ral analysis, the establ ishm e nt of a culture of small farmers kno wl edge that the runclamental cultural patterns and under the rule of Spain is the initial culture. developmental processes of Puerto Rico exemplify, The second step toward formulating h ypotheses of sometimes in general ways and sometimes in remarka- cross-cul tura I reg ularities is the de term ina ti on of the ble particulars, changes that have occu rred in other factors that brought about cha nges in the initial cu lparts of the world. During four and a ha!( ccnrnries of ture, subsequently producing several partially simila r colonialism many \\·orld areas ha\·e come under Eu- subcultures. The vario us characteristics which Puerto ropca11 politi cal and economic domin;ition. Despite Rico shares ,,·ith many other areas seem to ha Ye redifferences i11 imperi;tl techniques and in loca l cultural sulted predom inantly in all cases from external influ. traditions. m:111y peoples \\"h o formerly had subs istence ences. I t is possib le, of course, to particular ize the faccco non1ics ha n~ been clra\\'n into a larger system of tors affecting Puerto Rico in terms of specific and commerce and haYe begun to produce cash com modi· unique Spanish and U nited States p o li cies. In a more 1ies. In earh insta nce. the socia l and ceremon ial lile general sense. howe\·er, it seem s clear that Puerto Ri co based on the aboriginal subs istence patterns was de· changed from a l ~111d predominantly of small subsist->troyed , eco nomi c aniYity became individualized, na- ence farmers tO one having a variety of rural subcultive handicrafts \\'ere lost, manufactured goods were wres, each related to specia l kinds o( cash crop propurchased. money became a measure of value, a nd the du ction, business enterprise, a nd other commercia lly basic: population tended to become proletarianized and o riented activities, because it participated in increased hence to assume a lo\\'er-class position in the national world trade and " ·as affected by developing technology, or impcri:t! sociely. Despite differences in the total ac- g reater availability of ma nufactured goods, improved cu lturation of the societies involved in the process of transportation. increased cred it and other factors that expanding empires, the aforementioned similarities are are currently affecting all world areas. A deep analysis very real and very significant. ' '\There heavy capital in- of Puerto Rico must necessarily examine in detail the vestment in production machinery, processing equip- specific mea ns by which these influences are mediated ment, and other means of exploiting resources has oc- to a local popul ation . But in a scientific sense, this parcurred, portions of the local population have formed a ticularizing ca n a lso lead to determination of basic wage-earning proletariat, even though many features factors. of their earlier cultures survive. The third methodo logical step in making scientific There are, of course, distinguishing features in the generalizations is to determine the effects of the basic processes and their results in different parts of the factors upo n the local subcultures. In the case of Puerto world- for example, in the mines of Africa, Peru, and Rico, and presumably of a ll similar areas, these effects Bolivia, the oil fields of Iran, Borneo, and Venezuela, ca n be formulated in -two ways. First, they may be the rubber plantations of l'vfalay and Africa, and the stated in terms o( general trends- a[ commercializapineapple plantations of Hawaii and Cuba. The origi· tion, rise of m o ney values. breakdown of traditional nal cultural foundations differed and the induced va lues, occupational specialization, and the like. Secchanges have advanced further in some localit ies than ond, they may be described in terms of the emergence in others. But there are fundamental similarities in the of special types of subcultures-rural wage ea rners, processes of proletarianizat ion as these have develo ped sma ll independe nt landowners, sharecroppers, and so throughout the colonial world . There are a !so simi- forth-which represent specialized local cultural ecolari ties in the patterns of emergence and growth of logical adaptations. Bo th processes a re evident in middle classes in response to increased commerce, Pu erto Rico. The island as a whole is changing under credit fa cilities, and expanded governmental functions, th e influence of external factors and all segments of and there are rather fundamental likenesses in the re- the populations share in varying ways the effects of alignment of social classes, in the restru cturing of the these changes. At the same time, subcultural differenpower system, and in the general processes o{ urbani- tiation has also occurred. And this differentiation h as zation. Concomitant with these changes is a world-wide not only regional but sequential significance. In Puerto grow th of nationalistic trends. Rico, we have specified certain characteristics that are The features that are selected as diagnostic of the diag nostic of principal periods in the development of Puerto Rica n types of subcultures are ten tative ly as- the subcu ltures. l t is assumed that simila r subcultures sumed to be fundamental characteristics upo n which a in other areas ha ve passed through comparable detaxonomy of subcultures in other parts of the world velopmental p erio ds. may be based. But the characteristics consist in pan of It is sometimes held that the rather strikingly similar fea tures induced by certain special factors arising out effects of industrial civili zation on local popula tions of economic or political imperialism and industriali- do not at a 11 signify independe nt instances of the operza tion. It was necessary, therefore, to select a point of ation of fundarnental cultural processes because they reference by which the effect of these factors could be are all in reality simply the result of the diffiusion reckoned. That is, it was essential to establish a "base" of European culture. lt is said that along with cash or "initia l culture," which did not itself require expla- produce. wage la bor, purchase o r manufactured goods, nation; for it is neither necessary nor expedient to and other European economic features, the native peotrace change indefinitely backward in time through ples have also adopted-"imitated," according to the

506

THE PEOPLE OF PUERTO RICO

narrowest conceptio n of diffusion-the other feawres in which they resemble Europeans. I t is true, of course, that the loca I people may be subject to cons id erab le influence and even pressure to fol low the European way of life. B ut a purely diffusionistic exp lanation represents accu lwration as a ra the r mechanical process that would in time convert a ll native people into the likeness of Europeans. 1\ cculturation is neve r this simple. In man y ca ses, the local people are influenced by European n a tio nal institutions-by economi c and political forces, fo r instance-without having exte nsive or sustained personal contact with Europea n s whose behavior they might imitate. l'\onetheless, far-reaching changes occur in their native land use and land tenure patterns, family s tructure, marriage, community orga nization , and social and relig ious values, and many aspecL<; of the native culture begin to resembl e European culture. In large measure, these are th e inde pe ndent consequences of the diffused institutio nal inlluences. As contactS between peoples increase, a local population becomes subject to more and m o re fo re ign influence that may be diffused o n a personal level. Such diffusion. however, depends not on ly upon the ava ilability of the features to the borrowing cu l ture and upon the mech an isms for borrowing them but upon conditions favorable to their acceptance. ;\foreover, borrowed traits are rare ly exact imitations; rather, they are rephrased to fit the context of each subculture. In the h ypotheses which folio,,-, we offer explanations o( the diag nostic features of Puerto Ri ca n c ulture which we believe hold also for other c ultures wi}ich h ave s imilar c haracteristics and ha ve been subject to similar in!luences. T e ntative as the formulations a re, "-e consider th a t it is important that a beginning be made in this kind of inte rpreta tion , not o nly because it has th eoretical inte rest but because at present it seems to be the best way to predi c t changes that have not yet run their course. \·Vhether future c hanges among any peoples wi ll occur within the context of political d omi natio n , of economic dependency a nd comm ercia l exp lo itation , or of s uch technical a nd financial ass ista n ce programs as Po int IV and others provided by th e United Nations and its s pecial agencies, man y of the trends will be so similar as to p e rmit prediction o r their outcome. Our conclusions, however, must stand the test of a comparat ive method. \Vhilc many, or perhaps most. of th e form ulatio ns may have to be rev ised, we doubt that a n y are completely wide of the truth. \ Vh e re they a re wrong, they sh o uld be replaced with b e tter ones.

HYPOTHESES OF INSU LAR-WIDE TRENDS THE INITIAL CULTURE After the Spa nish conquest, the peopl e of P11eno Ri co th eore ti ca ll y came unde r the national inst it11tions or Spain: a system o f land g rants lead ing LO private holdings, monew r y s tandard s, credit and in tercst. com merce, a two-class society with social and political power residing in l11e upper class, a state church that

sa nc tioned the econom ic and social patterns. But th e is land 's eco nomi c pote ntials were largely unrealized, prin cipally because of its geographi cal pos it ion, its colonial stallls, and the poli cies o[ Spain. Th ese poli cies incl udcd rcstrinion of ex port market-;, i nadequa tc credit for agricultural production, empha~is upon extraction ol wealth in the lorm of specie. use of the is land primaril~· a-; a lllilit:1ry po't. prod11nio11 and financin g principall y to r n,·c:r t lt c 11L·td, ol tlte lllili tary, la c k of indtt'>tri :tl dt·,·c:lop111 c 11t . prnltiliitiom 01 1 commerce with incltht ria li1t'd crn111t1 ic•-. lintit('d acn:'>'i to good~ rna11ulact11red i11 ')pain. :111d poor rncan~ ol tra nsporta ti on . Puerto Rican c11lt111c during tlte i11iti:il q:1gc ol Spanish co lonialism . tlt crc lnrc. w;1-; i11 cc:rtai11 gc 11cr:tl respects like that ol 111 :111 y n:1ti,·c pt:opk' ottt,idc tltc orb it or Europe:i 11 inll11 c:11C c:. l·:xn:pt Im :t \Cl"~' I C\\ planters who grc"· ex port < rop~. the c lcrgy. and the official p ersonnel ol tltc lllilit:1ry ~arri"111 :ind Llw ci,·i l government. Pucno Rico w:1-, prcdo111i11:111tly :1 la11cl of subsisten ce farmers. wlto li,·ed !>Catlcrcd in compara tive iso lation from State :incl Churc h authorities, who grew their own foods and manufacwred their own commodities, who knew little or nothing of cash transactions, \rages, credit. ca pital accumulation, or commerce, a nd whose social and religious patterns fun ctioned largely in local independence and o n a folk leve l. An a bunda n ce or land and a shortage nf labor were crucia l characterist ics or the initial stage. Jn subseq u ent centuri es, c h anges in Spanish policy, together with his torical d evelopm e nts in E urope and America. permitted new influe nces to affect Pue rto Rican culture. 0

FACTORS OF CHANGE

The influences brough t to bear upon the subsistence farm e rs of Puerto Rico included certain basic factors ,,·hic h have also profou ndly affected other folk cultures throughout the ,,·orld. Th ese factors are: l ntrod11rtirm of />ole11tial cash crops. llccess t o 111arl<ets for s11rh cash rrop s as could be fJrod11r ed lout!!)'· The island produced [or world mar1.

:L

kets LO a n important ex ten t only when Spain terminated her monopol y of trade and when shipping facili ties were exp a nded . 3. / lrirtilrtbilit)' of rredil for prod11rtio11 of ex/Jon crops. At first credit was ex te nded b y firms to family e nterprises: late r it e ntered Puerto Rico also through corporate in vestments and government loans. ·I· !lf'c ess lo 111r11111fucl11red co11s11111ers' g oods. Th ese goods became ava il able on an important scale whe n ind11strialization d eve lo ped in Europe and Ame rica and when Jegali1.ation ol Puerto Rica n trade with nations outside the Spanish Empire and improved ship· pin g facilitated impons. f» (;m<111ally imj>ro11erf />m d11cti11e f rtlrnology. This resu l ted from sci e n ti fi e progress, but i Ls use was contingct t l upon available capital as well as upon the requi rements for the particular crops. F rom th e beginning ol P uerto Rican colonia l history

SO:\tE HYPOTHETICAL REGCLARITIES OF CULTURAL CHANCE

L11ere \\"as some pressure o n Spain to introduce these factors. but it is doubtf11) whether the isolated small farmer made any ,·ery conscious effort tO change the basic regime under which he lived. THE GENERAL TRENDS

These factors had certain effects on all subcu ltural groups ol Puerto Rico. cffen~ which "·ere paralleled in other clt'pc11dc11t. agrari:111 area~. The effects must be ,tated a' tendcncie, or uc1H1'. lor ,,·hile they arc e\'icll'llt tl1rot1ghn11t the i,(:iml. ~per i:tl local conditio ns <:1u:-nl thc:1n to cll•\elop lunhcr in some regions than i11 othns. The general c: ll cns ,,·ere: 1. /11 cr1·asr•d /11'1)(/111 lio11 of cx/)()rl C0/11/1/0ditics i11 g<'llf' m/ (//Id uf sc;wml rr'p,i"1111/ly s/Jccializcd cash rTups i11 j)(lrlic11!11r. The p:irtinilar crops were d etermined by local and \\·orld markets, by em·ironmenta l potenti : ilitie~ . by credit lacilitie~. and by the a\·ailability of a labor lorcc suited to the produnion requirements in each c:1~c. :.i • •·I tendency toward a single cash crop at the ex· /Jl'11sc of the subsistence aops. ;i. Crr'ally increased i111/Jurtance of money. which acquired Ifie following functions : a. A standard i11 th e e.w'liange of com. 111 odilies, supplanting barter; b. A mea11s of acc1111111lati11g capital for i11 vesl111e11t, especially i11 improved agric11/t11rnl technology and /a11rl: c. Payment for labor se111ices, supplanting />ay111e11t in goods and />erquisites: cl. JI means of />11rcliasi11g manufactured goods. wliirh i11 l11m m11s<'<l a decline of lio11sehold ind 11st ries: c. A mer1s11re11u:11t of values, s11pj>lanti11g 11011cnsh based ralionales and leading lo increased reliance 011 individual effort thro11gli wage labor or tnod111·1ion of rnsli commodities in order to ea n1 cas/1 rel 11 n1s. ·I· Utilization of more efficient 111et.!tods in product ion, wliet!ter in [teld /Jrod uct ion, processing, or 111n rl<r'l i ng. by individ11als lia11i11g access to credit ur ca/>ita l, and hence: 5. Greater socioeconomic diljere11tiatio11 between the wea llh )', wlio were able lo improve prnduct ion, nnd t!t e /Joor, w!to were 1101. 6. E11!tr111cecl va lu e of lo11rl as a source of wen lt/1 , and therefore: a. Individualiza tion of land len ure in lieu of extended family or co1111111111ity lioldi11gs: b. lm/>le111e11tation of national laws of la11downershijJ and inheritance in /Jface of customary usage: c. A tendency for land to become co ncentra ted in large lioldings, small owners being a.t a co 111 t1elitive disrulvr1ntnge and having to s/Jlil holdings nmong heirs, while large owners increased their lioldi11gs: d. In creasing r•xj1loitr1tio11 of 1111develoj>ed land. 7. Uise of a landless labor force.

507

8. Better internal com111 1111icatio11 resulting from i 111 proved tech no logy a 11d i 11creased com 111erce, and leading to: g. Growth of tow ns and cities as mnr/;eting and distribution centers as well as ad111i11istrati11e centers. io. Th e increase of trade and commerce as a source of wea lth . 11. An expanded 1111111ber of government regulations and semices, leading to: a. Greater formal. centra/i:ed jJ11blic control of individual behauior ns against pri·uate. 111formal control: b. An enlarged and /I/ore s/Jeciali:ed class of government personnel, or a bureaucracy. 12. Migration of rnral pop11lation to towns i11 order to achieve new cultural standards. 13. A n ew social strncture, rej;resenled especiall-y i11 the rising towns and consisting of: a . JVea/th)' 111erc!ta11ts, high government officials, and large landowners: b. 1\tliddle classes of lesser b11sinessmen, medium farmers, professional people, civil servants, and some trade and servicing personnel; c. Lower classes of rural and urban wage laborers, irregularly employed artisans, and some tow11dwelling farm worhers; cl. Tlie occasionall)' emjJloyed and tli e complete!)' 1111em ployed: e. A special class of unemployables. i.e .. cripples, menial!)' de[tcie11t, etc., who, among tlie urbmi lower classes especially, have to be institutionalized. This contrasts with the folk society, where such persons are cared for and used in some small way ... 14. Acq11isitio11 of g1·eater political power b)' businessmen. 15. Crea ter pol i ti ca l sopIi istica lion and increased participation in political aclivilies among farmers and worl<ers. i6. Increased impo1·tance of the individual and of the conjugal Jamil)' and decline of the extended family, leading to: a. Transfer of mall)' traditional functions of the famil)'-sucli as education and liealtli- to communit)• and national agencies; b. Changes of tlie authority patterns wit/tin the Jamil)'· 17. Greater sec11lnrization, involving: a. Expanded areas of rational or sf'ientific procedure, as in agriculture and medicine: b. JVeahening of for111al state religion and diminution of its a/Jj;eal, partic11larly in lite mobile middle class and in the proleta1·ic1nized rural lower class: c. Changes i11 th e character of om•'s relntionship to the s11/;emat11rnl, i11c/11ding tli e growth of a more individualisl.ic nttitud f', the appem·al1(·e of new forms of orgr111ized religion, and even tli e streng th ening of cr:rta!n religious forms througli their sec11/ar1zat1011 by the organized c'111rcli .

508

fHE PEOPLE OF PUERTO RICO

18. A tendency for sociocultural segmentation and four analyzed in this volume: t h e s ubsisten ce farm integration to shift from a fnedominantly local and which also produced a cash crop; the mod ified family family basis to a class basis, i.e., for "horizontal" socio- hacienda; the corpora te plantation; and the governcultural segments to arise and to find solidarity in ment-owned planta tio n. These do n o t represent panorganizations and in political a11d economic action. insular types, fo r each developed in sp ecial region s 19. The creation of conditions favorable to accef>l- where the trends and changes found differe nt expresance of Euro-American practices. These include : sion. a. Functional changes, whic!t fJermit adofJtion of The m odified hacienda is a partial exception to th e practices appropriate to t!te sociocultural seg- general d eve lopmenta l tre nds and formttlatio11s inment; asmuch as its occurrc11cc in the third period rcprc· b. An economic basis adequate to su/J/Jort new sents the survival, with !>light moclilltation'>. of an practices; older type. The p er!) i'>t<:11rc of the modified haric 11da c. In terpersonal contacts and media of mass com- appea rs to ha,·e been brough t aho11t hy declining munication which serve to introduce t!t e markets and credit for the cash crop in,·oh·cd. practices. Some of these genera l effects represent tre nds toPERIOD I: THE SUBSISTENCE FARM ward individualization, seculariza tion, and disorganiza tion comparable to those which Redfield postulates This typ e has alr<:ad y hcc n described ; 1 ~ a lolklikc in the acculturation of a folk society under urban socie ty whi ch funnioncd during a tim e ol limited inRuence. It should be n o ted , however, that indi vidual- export trade a nd in cnmparati ,·c i ~olat ion I rom na ization of persons as members of the family and tional inn uences a ncl imti unions. community also entailed their reintegration in class groups (Nos. 13 and 18), provided them st1~onger ties PERIOD II: THE FAMILY HACIENDA with national institutions (Nos. 11, 14, and 15) a nd The family-o wned and operated hacienda developed gave them new sets of va lues (Nos. 3 and 10). These new va lues relate to the "Protesta nt ethic," and Gold- as an important rural subcultural type when the schmidt ( 19:> 1) has shown that they may even occur fo l lowing cond i Lions a ppea red: 1. An assured rnnrhet for a cash cro/J. Jt was not in a triba l society-the Yurok and Hupa- provided certa in featu res of individualization and commercial- until after 18 15 th a t Spain permitted sullicie nt trade ization are also present. In Puerto Rico, disorga niza- to stimul ate export agri culture o n a large sca le. tion of the father-dominated famil y, of the subsistence !!. Adequate shi/>/>ing focilities. farm community, and o( the h acienda involved re3. Enviro111nental t>ole11tialities for growing a cash organization of the people into classes of wage ea rners, rro/J. Sugar was one of the first cash crops, and it businessm e n , and the like, and it emailed increased was grown on th e coastal plains, especially on the relia nce upon the government. Secularization meant north coast, where irrig ation was not n eeded . Coffee first a weakening o( orthodox state Cathol icism and and tobacco beca m e cash crops o f the mountains. second a series of alterations in the religious beh avior 4. Sufficient c redit to {tnance the n ecessary overh ead . of the individual. Th e a rea of supernaturalism may I n sugar, even su ch primitive m e thods as the oxenhave decreased, but it a lso changed in pattern in powered grinders required some cap ital investment. that mediation throug h a hierarchy was elim in ated Slave labor a lso required capita l. Jn coffee, it was a nd individual respon sibility was established. necessary to ha ve some means o( supp ort until the Jn m a n y regards, custom a ry usages su ch as the trees bore fruit, ab ou t fo ur or five years after pla ntritua l kinship system are not su ppl a nted or erased but ing, and some equipment for processing was req uired. ch a nge in form and fu n ctio n Lo fit new conditions. !>· Assured profits. The family hac ie nda d eveloped un<ler th e above conditions, a nd it acqu ired the followin g cha racter· is tics: HYPOTHESES OF A DEVELOPMENTAL a . Size g reate r tlinn th e subsistence form. The OR DIAC HRONIC TYPOLOGY overh ead o f a cash crop (arm h ad to be increased, esp ecia lly when technolog ica l improveThe trends outlined above were initiated when th e ments <lem a ndecl more expensive p rocessing island's economy became p art of a system o ( comequipmen t, if the producer were to succeed m erce, c:red it, a nd improved technology. As they d ein a competitive m a rket. The im proved equipveloped, their cumulative effect on the rura l subm ent, p articu larly in sugar and co ffee, recultura l types of the different loca lities and their loca l quired an assured harvest from e no ugh la nd patterning eventu a lly created new types. T he d eve loplo make the inveslment pay. Th e small sugar mental sequence m<t y be d escribed as follows. Th e grower, who could not afford th e equipment, period before th e appearance of the postulated t re nds now h a d eith er Lo process his harves t at the was primaril y one or subsisten ce farming. I n th e seclarger growe r's plant or to sell out. o nd period, the family h ac ienda or plantation ap b. An enlarged labo r force co11.sisti11g of bound peared in add itio n to the subs istence farm. I n the worh ers from outside tlte hacie nda owner's third period, there emerged new t yp es including the

SO::\IE llYPOTHETICr\L REG U LARITIES OF CULTURAL CH ANGE

fam£ly. The size of the h acienda became grea ter than the o wn er 's famil v could work. Until late in Period II, there \\;as a relatively small island population and much " free" land that could be used o r acquired by squatter's rig hts. " ' ages a lo 11 e could no t attract a sufficient labor force. C:onsequenLly, a n adequate labor force "·as insu red panly through: ( 1) .·1 system of slatJcn· . Special circumstances kep t the sla,·e requirements somewh a t lower i11 Puerto Rico than in oth er areas, bm sla,·c ry persisted u111il the population had i11 rre:1~ed to th e point wh ere land \\·as difficult to obta i11. (!!) Ri11di11g 111n/1(111 is111s. Prio r to the establishmc 11t ol' a basic cash orie1H:Uion, slave labo r \\'as augm cm ecl b y a botly of free labor, "·hich \\'as bo und LO the o wner n ot o nl y L11roug h legal mechanisms but throug h goods furnished the ,,·o rker, perquisites. a nd personal sen·ices rendered in a set of reciproca l, in terclass relatio ns. c. Gradual disappearance of th e s ubsisten ce farm in areas suitable for cash crops. T he growing d esire for a cash in com e induced the small subsistence farmers eith er t0 produce a cash supplement to subsistence crops, to hire out to a plantation in addition to working their own land, or to sell out and work full time as hired laborers. \ \There cash crop pro· duct ion required h eavy investment, when land va lues increased, and " ·h ere large farmers absorbed the labor force, the long range trend was for the sm all farmer to sell out, which, together with increasing population, rapidly augmented the labor force. Subsistence [arming persisted much longer in the tobacco area, where the cash crop required sma ll er capita l outlay. PERIOD Ill: THE DIFFERENTIATION AND EMERGENCE OF MODERN RURAL TYPES

This stage is reached whe n the following genera l conditions have appeared: 1 . Productive technology req11iri11g li ea11y cnpita lization b ejiorul t h e 11onnal resources of fami lies. and frcqu e'lllf)• even beyo11d t/J e reso urces of foca l (i .e., Puerto R ican) cor/Jorations: 2. CorfJorate or government credit for highly d eveloped fHoductive t echnology; 3. Regular and regu la ted marhets, whic11 safeguard lieavy investm ents ancl whir/1 assu re profits from suppleme11Lary cash crops grown 011 small farms: 4. /1 shortage of land and n surplus of wage labor; 5. A ccess lo mnss-produced cons um ers' goods; 6. Credit frmn m e rclrn11/s for acquisition of consum e rs' g oods. 7. Th e presence of large l o111 11s a11d cities which are class-structured predomi11a11lly along occujJational lines a'lld w hich serve as centers for:

509

a. l1fo1·1< eti11 g a11d distributio11 of produ cts and goods; b. Governme11tal services; c. Tra11 sporlatio11al. constructional, and oilier business services.

THE FOUR REGIONAL TYPES THE CORPORATE PLANTATION

The corporate plantation acquires the fo llowing characteristics : i. Greatly enlarged and ltighly capitalized produ ctive 1111its. In su gar, the S500,ooo or more investm ent in processing p la nts led to: a. Th e purchase and combination of 1111111 e rous family harie 11das lo augment the cane lands, or b. Co11trac/s l o grind cane from family haciendas, and c. Conve rsion of 111111sed land, or pasture, esp ecially th roug h irrigation on th e south coast, into ca n e land. !?. Utilization of the most modern teclmology. Meehan iza tion, use of h erbicides, elaborate irrigation, a nd o Lher improvements in fi eld production a nd processing a re n ecessary to minimize labor costs a nd to make the investmen t profitable in a compe titi\"e market. 3. Mon ocmp production . All effons are directed toward the productio n of one cash crop, which y ields the highest profi t. Subsisten ce farm ing is e liminated entirely. -1· A manageria l hie rarchy which su pplants lite older uppe r class of hacienda owners and has th e following clwracteristics and fun ctions: a. It o/; era t es in te rms of corporate, nonlocal objectives and 110 / in terms of local conditions and needs, or via persona l hierarchical relatio11sh i /Js. b . Pe rsonnel of th e hierarchj• 111ay be disch arged, or moved around /reel)', hampering the g rowth of persona l hierarcltical rela tionships. c. A 11 impersonal sta ndard of work value (money) and sta ndards of effort (mi n imum wage, etc.) limit the use of p e rsonal h ierarchica l re/at ioush ips. cl. Th e co rporat e syste m operates without referen ce t o the particular p ersona lity of the owners; it is th e most fully rationalized hind of prod 11cl ive arrangement (I-I och !wpita I ism us) . 5. Absence o f a strong middle class. These last two feat ures are found where a community consists solely of plant p ersonnel. A plant, however, may be located n ea r a town which h as upper and midd le classes produced by other factors. 6. An essen tially homogeneow labor force, which constitutes t h e lower class and has th e following charact e ristics: a. It is landless and produces 110 subsistence crops;

5l 0

THE PEOPLE OF PUERTO RICO

Second, Lhe government·O\\·ned p lantaLions ha,·e cenain characteristics that are deLcrmined by the soc ial philosophy expressed in Lhe Land AuthoriLy. The features of Lhe north coast L and AuthoriLy communities w hich result from Lhcir Lransitiona l position arc: 1. Variation in size of landownersltip. There arc large plantations O\,·ned by Lhe go,·crn menL and small and medium-s ized farms owned by indi,·icluals. 2. Variation in 111e///()ds of oj>t'rn lion . :\!though Lhere is some modern 111<:1 ha11i1atio11 011 Ll1<.: gon.:r11 · ment plantaLions, J1lll( Ii ll~e i-; ~till made: or older and less cfficic1 IL mc:Llwds of fa rm i 11g. 3. Presence ()f 111idclfr du.1~es. ""1.~isti11 g 11f sJ1111fl and medium fur111en . .1l/fJ/Jht'<'/Jc1 .1. allll ln1 si11rss111c11. This characLeri~tic rel;tLC'> to the: ~u1Ti,·al ol incl c.:· pendent farm ers in tl1 t: cum mu11iLy and lO the go,·· ernment's policy of 11ol mai11tai11i11g a co111pa11 y store. '1· Tlte follo1l'i11g clwrart e ri:.tfrs of tltc lal>ori11g class: a. Relations witlt emp loyees wliicli are u11 a somewhat jJerso11al basis. This is particu larly lruc on privaLely owned farms, where face-to-face relations between employees and owners s Lill operate effecLively. On the government farm s, although impersonal relations prevail between managers and workers, Lhese workers were on private farms only a few years ago and seek to use personal relaLions. b. Female labor in the sugar cane fields. c. Survival of pre-existing religious forms, e.g., the saints' culls, magic, and wilchcrafl. These forms are derived from Lhe hacienda period, but they have modified functions in the new context. They are symptoms of underlying insecurities, and they lunction in the so lution of such problems as maintaining health, securing employment, seeking revenge, and obLa ining wealth. d. Ritual kins/tip wltich cross-cuts class lines. As THE GOVERNMENT-OWNED PLANTATIONS in Cafiamelar, the fam i ly is bilateral a nd ritual The subcultures of the community of the profit. kinship functions partly as a supplement to sharing plantation and mill differ somewhat from extended kinship relaLions. But whereas in Canamelar ritual kin ties are poss ible only those of the corporate-own ed plantation. Two principal sets of factors are involved . within the working class, Nocod has middle first, the particular plamaLions purchased by the classes LO which t h ey may be extended. governmen t in the early period of land reform were e. Influ ence by migrant workers arriving coll· on the nonh coast, where irrigation was not practiced ti1111011sly from lite liigltlands. Th e corporate plan Lation , too, receives immigrant workers, but and where trends away from the h acienda economy and toward a corporate type of emerprise had not its socioeconomic sys tem is more rig id, so Lhe progressed as far as on the south coast. Typologically, migrants must conform. In Nocor<i, which is in these plantations were somewha t transitiona l between a stage of transition, migrants from the highthe family hacienda and the corporate land-and-factory lands retard the trends Loward a corporate type of community. com bine. They were not so highly m echanized a nd centralized and they did not require as great capital Governmem ownership, although entailing cenain investment as those owned and run by Lhe largest disLincLive features, does not produce a wholly different corporat io n s. The laborers worked on Cami ly h aciendas kind of planLaL io n Crom the corporate plantatio n . Both in recent years, and Lhere sti ll exist in t his a rea large kinds are extremely large, both are devoted Lo a single cane farms, a persisLing m od ification o f the former cash crop, and boLh requ ire heavy capital outlay family haciendas, which lack mills o( Lhcir own and and credi t. The disLinctive objectives of Lhe governoperate as tr ibutari es or the large mill on the govern- men t plan tation , however, introduce cena in basic 111en t plan union. conditio ning factors. These are: b. It is dependent almost entirely upon cash income, maftes 110 ltouseltold goods, and purchases almost all commodities; c. Cash is the basic measure of values; d. Extra-wage income is suught through subsidiary activities, such as games of chance and illegal activities. There is little chance for increased wages or for normal economic pursuiLs that would yield a greater income. Significanl cash accumulaLion under these circumsLances is impossible. During long periods of unemployment, some subsistence activities, such as fishing a nd crabbing, are essent ial to survival. e. Members of Lite class have equal status and similar attitudes; f. Th ere is strong class solidarity; close interfJerson<tl relations and ritual kinsltip are limit ed Lo class members; g. Relations with the managerial ltierarclty are impersonal and solely econoniic; h . Collective activity (through labor unions and political organization) is used to gain class economic and political objectives; i. Socioeconomic mobilil)' is almost impossible except throug h emigration (or ilie rare event of a windfall in gambling); J· Tlt e fam.ily is bilateral and nuclear, rather Llian extended, and Llie wife lends to be t!te stable member; k. C ommon-law marriage is prevalent where common-law unions have been the customary practice in the pasl. There are now no new considerations of property, status, or religious onhodoxy to induce civ il or ritual marriages; I. Religion is individualized, the stale church being weakened. Various denominaLions, especially evangelical sects, which afford common emotional outlets, are popular.

S0:\11:: HYl'OTllE'l'I CAL REGt: LAIUTIES OF CULTURAL CHA:-.;GE 1. The /Jolil)' of redistributing net J;rofits eac/1 year as /Jrojwrticmal />ay111e11/s lo worhers. :!. T!t e /Jo/icy of /novidi11g 111axi11111111 e111ploy111 e11/.

Cons iderabl y more laborers "·ork on the farm than are needed for the most efficient operation. JI co11/licl betll'een lit e need for technologica l i111fno11e111 enl and the need to /Jrovide em/Jloymenl. r\s the plantations function within a competiti,·e market ol l rec cn tcrpri-.c. ma n ;1geme m faces the dilemma of whc1hc r to intrndlt tc l:tbnr-:-.a,·ing technology, which would serio11:-. ly n.:dure thc 11u111bcr ol jobs, or to continue i11t'fficie1ll n1 cthod:-. at the ri'k or operating at a

:»

l o~s.

l· ,./ do.1·1· rdatirm !Jl'lll'l't'll ,!.!_mwn1111t•n /. labor, and />olitintl 111',e,a11i:."tirms a11d 11•fJr/uTs. The workers,

l11ro11gh appeals to the.: L 111tl ..\111hority and through politic:tl anion, carril« l out brgely by means o[ the 1111io11s. ra n i>rin µ; prcs~ 11rc tn be;ir 0 11 their employer, which i.\ th e g-<>H>rnmetll. and its appointed managers. These rnnd i 1ions ha ,.c not a lfcned the independent farnH:rs lrnt thty ha\'C! alfened the workers as follows: 1. Co11<litiu11s and tenure of wor/{ are secured by the govem111e11/. !?. T!t e quantity of worh is decreased. The policy of

spreading jobs amo ng an excessively large labor force has CUL down the amount of \\'Ork each individual may perform. 3· IJ'or/wrs rercive subsistence plots. These have made little difference in the workers· \\·ay of life for they are scarcely used. 4. J'l'orlwrs /Jo/ enlia//y /t(we new i11ce11tiues. say "potcmial" adv isedly. New attitudes and patterns of behavio r appropriate to having a stake in management and being owuers as well as employees seem not yet to have deve loped to any m arked degree, according to the findin gs of th e fie ld workers. fn spite o( the distinctive features of the profitshari ng plantatio ns, which derive from the past tradit io n of the area and [rom government ownership and opera tion. the laboring class is strik ingly simi l:1r to that of the corporate plantation in fundamental respects. The workers o( both kinds o( plantations depend o n wages for a living, having no specia l home crafts, and they buy food and manufactured goods in stores. They compete for j obs. They are fairly frozen in their class s tatus, being able to achieve socioeconomic mobility only through gambling success-a rare event-or throug h m igration. R elations between class members are reciprocal a nd equivalent. There is class solida rity expressed in labor unions and political parties. i\ Tarriagc is u sually consensual, and the family tends to be bila teral, matrilineal, and matrilocal, women having considerable authority. In dividual ization with respect to fam il ial and personal t ies has been accompanied by greater class solidarity. Relations with managem en t a re mediated through the labor unio n rather th an o n a personal b asis.

" 'e

THE SMALL CASH-AND-SUBSISTENCE CROP FARM Farms which grow ann u al cash crops in addition Lo subsistence crops may arise at any time when Lherc is

511

a market for a cash crop requiring little im·estment. The particular type of cash-and-subsistence farm studied in Pueno Rico, howeYer, deYeloped in P eriod III, when insular trends (pp. 50-62) brought about general reorientations o( the subcultures. The specific conditions underlying this type are: 1. .-111 a1111ual cash crop which s11ppleme11ts the s11bsiste11re crops. This may be grown in fields separate

from those used for subsistence crops or rotated with the lauer on the same plots. The yield per acre is fairly hig h , and unlike a perennial cash crop (e.g., coffee. cacao. or rubber), they do not monopolize the land year after year. !.!.

A raslt crop w!tirli requires only small i11uest111 e11t.

Expens ive production or processing machinery is not n eeded, and marketing does not involve large transponation cos ts. but it may involve tying on e's self to a marketing or processing system, depending on the character o( the crop. the quota system, etc.

3. Easy access to t!t e s111all a11101111l of credit needed. ·l· .·/ 11 assured 111arhct for t!t e cash crop despite price

f7u ct11a I ions. The small cash-and-subsistence farm has the following cl1aracteristics:

Cash re/urns depend 11po11 individual effort. Jl'ealt!t may be accumulated in moderate amounts a11d reinvested i11 land. 3. Loss of one lrnruest (t!trougli natural factors, rnc!t as droug!tt ) do es 11 ot ca11se loss of livelih ood. -I· T!t ere is relatively rapid turnover in landowne rship. Land is divided among h eirs in large families. 1.

!!.

\ ,\Th en the plots are too small to support them they are sold to wealthier famili es.

5. Th ere is lillle incentive lo rish money i11 gam es of d1a 11a1. 6. Tl1 ere 1s ro11siderable socioeco11omic 111obilit)'· This is refl ected in the changing farm sizes.

7. Socioeco110111ic statuses range without sharp brealis from small lo medium farmer and include laborer, /Jart-tim e laborer, and slrnrecropper. 8. Th ere are 110 extremely large farms. There is no need for heavy investmem in lleld or processing equipment and therefore no need for enlargement of farms. H eavy i1wesunent is attracted to other regions. 9. A// economic activities, except subsistence crops, n re 011 a ensft basis. H ousehold goods are purchased , home industries have declined, reciprocal assistan ce between farmers has been abandoned, and services are paid for. 10. Co11sidernble use is made of national, i11stitu-

tio11al nnd associational, religious, educational, recreational a11d !tea /tit or<ra11iznlions. The poss ibility of J

~

self-improvement thrnngh individual effort leads the utili1atio n o[ all aids and services.

tO

11. T/I(• Jamil)' is 1111clear and bilateral rath er tli a11 r:xle11ded. 1 !?. J\forriage is civil or ritual, especial!)' among la11d011111r' rs. Ritua l or c ivi l marria~e is n ecessar y to slatus. or resp ectability. but th e ultir~ate origin o( registered

marriage o f any form is expla inable by Lhe inclividual:s need to validate inheritance of property and the states n eed to keep records of iLs citi1ens and their property.

5l 2

THE PEOPLE OF P UERTO RICO

13. Postmarital residence is determined by pro/Jerty conside rations. The tendency is to patrilocal residence. 14. Ritual l<in ship extends botli vertically a11d lwrizontal!y througlt all levels of socioeconomic status. vVealLhy and poor as well as persons of equal s tatus emer riwal o r compadrazgo relationships with one another, but these relationships seem lo h ave decl ining importance as a consequence of increasing socioeconomic m o bility. 15. Fa ce-t o-fa ce relationsltifJs on the farm are stru ng . The small s ize of farms a nd the preval ence o f owner superv is ion of planting, cultivating, harvesting, and processing brings the owner into close and continuous association with "·orkers. REGION OF PERENNIAL CASH CROPS: THE MODIFIED HACIENDA AND SMALL FARM

T he fam il y hacienda d evoted to a perenn ial cash crop, coffee, arose under conditions already stipulated. Where there is an assured market, ample c r~clit, and steadily d eveloping techn o logy, the hacie 11da wou ld presumably acquire some o[ th e characterist ics of the corporate plantatio n. Th e extent o( this d eve lopment, howeve r, would probably be limited by the less intensive land use e ntailed in a p erennial crop rather than an a nnua l, s u ch as su ga r, a nd by the sma ller requirement for m echanizatio n au<l capitalization inherent in the production of the perennial. vVh en a change in the world market brings a d ecline in the cash crop, as in the case of Puerto Rica n coffee, the productive arrangements and therefore the rural t ype m ay be somewhat modified. It is possi ble that family plantations d evoted to decl ining peren nial cash crops in oth er parts of the wo rld experience somewhat simil ar modifi cations. I n th e a rea of the famil y hacienda, th ere are also sm a ll farms wh ich h ave been devoted to pro duction of the perennial cash crop. vVhere the market is declining but a cash orientation has become som ewhat more important, these too a re modified bu t in ways different from the hacienda. The Modified Family Hacienda

Under a cl eel ining marke t, the fam il y hac ienda acquires the following characteristics: i. It tends to remain intact in sales and in inh eritance and may in crease in size at the expense of tlte small farnis. The nucle us of processing machinery and ex te nsi ve lands pl a n ted to the pere nnial re present heavy investment and tend to prevent fragmentation. H aving a competitive advantage over the small producer, i t may buy up sma ll farms which are not profita ble . 2 . Few t erlm ologica l im/novements are made. Addition a l capital w ill not r eadily be risked in view of the declining market. 3. R esident laborers continue lo receive perquisites

a11d goods i11 additio11 to 11•ages, but th ey su pjJle111c11t their i11come by sllflrecro/JjJing a11 a111111til cash cro p. B y m ee ting the n eed for greater cash through sharecroppi ng a hig h-yie ld , low-credit annual ( tobacco), the o ld arrangements bet ween o wner and worke r may be continued . ·l· ll'age labore1·s are hired f()r jJart -ti111e H•orlc TI1is 1·efl ects the increa!>ccl i111 pnrta nee of " ·age labo r a ncl the e nlarged labo r force. 5. M1orhe rs b rnn111' 1111Jf!' c11s/1 -1Jri1•11/1•d. Jm rc!to.w: gouds at stores . anti rt /)(111 tl1m lflJlllf' 111111111(111 I1 n1·s. The Small Farmer

The small farlller retaim 111a11y <harancristic-; of lh e o lder pattern. h1n Iii ~ ~mall a< rc;1ge ol the p erennia l cas h crop (cofl<:<:) become., i11ad <:quatc to 111 CC L cash needs in a d ecl i11i11g marl;.et. I le d1a11gcs, the refore, in the foi lo\\·i ng rc~p<:< t-;. 1. I-le grows 111rn-1· d11°1'nifll'd rru/1.1. i11d11tli11g a mar/,e tnble a11111utl ((l.\/t r r1Jp ( tolJ11« ") 11s ll'l'll as //t(• pere1111ial cas!t rroj> (colfrr) . Tile ~ 111all Larmer ronlrasts sharply with the large farm er in his readiness to adopt tobacco, whi ch has highe r yields, requires less credit, and involves lo ,\·er risks. 2. H e augm ents his incom e thro11glt w age work fo r the large farmer and t!troug!t games of chance. 3. H e often sells 011/ lo become a full-time wage worl!er o r to migrate lo oili e r areas. \·Vhere the annual cash crop meets the need for greate r securit y m easured in terms o( money values, th e small farmer re tains older chara cteristics as fo llows: 1. A ccess to land is tlie basic rult ural value. It is the m easure of prestige and the b asis of security. !L The family is st ro ng ly patrilineal. The father controls lhe family labor both on a nd off the farm , d e Lcnnincs inheritan ce and disposal of !:incl, and di ctates the social relatio ns of his wife and children. 3. I nterfamilial relations are reinforced throug h reciprocal services, obligations, and rit ual kinship wlticlt are not measured by cas!t . 4. The small farm famil y !tas reci/Jrocal and rather p e rsonal relations wit h hacienda owners which are jJatte rned by their class statuses. 5. Traditional fo lk religion surv ives. T he family saints' cult is preserved. 6. Marriage is usually rit11a/_ This re fl ects the possessio n of properly together with the importance of trad itio nal religion. 7. Some home mn1111fn ct 11res are rarried on. Emplrns is upon land and production over monetary values minimizes the desire for goods purchased at stores. 8. Th ere is lillle use made of national institntional services in medicine, ed11cation, governmen t , and otlter matters. These fami li es either m eet their own needs in traditional ways o r they contact the state institutions through th e traditio nal lines of author ity, that is, throug h the h acienda owners, which involves them in the web of personal and hierarchical rela tionships.

J

THE QUESTIONNAIRE At the end of a year of fi eld research among the different subcu ltures the staff met to draw up a questionnaire covering features which were consid ered to h ave greatest importance. The purpose was not to devise a su bstitute for extended inter views, observerpanic ipation, and the other methods used to obta in the essential data upon which our conclusions are based but r a ther to find out whether the basis of informati o n could be broadened through a rapid survey method. It was immediately evident, however, tha t to have sig nifica nt entries for all the subcultures so many scores of questions would be necessary that we would in effect be using a case-history method wh ich was too time-consuming. The o nly practicable alterna tive was to make the questio ns so general tha t they a mount to basic categories of data, like those employed thro ug hout the research, rather than to a true questionnaire. The results o( the questionnaire, if we may so designate it, provide salient and readily obtainable data, such as employm ent, landownership and land u se, sta ndard of living, occupants of the household, degree of edu cation, relig ion, and a few other features. Our research had shown that diffe rences in these features correlated with other characteristics which had been ascerta in ed only through slow and careful inquiry. Thus, while it is easy to ascerta in the compositi on of a ho useho ld and whether the marriage is consensual, civil , or re ligious, such features as role of the man and wife in the family, the socia l and economic importance

5I4

THE PEOPLE OF PUERTO RICO

of the children, relationship of the household members co the larger extended family on both sides, the extent and meaning of ritual kinship ties, the patterns of interfamilial relations within the neighborhood, and the goals and values of the people could not possibly be disclosed by asking a limited number of standard questions. Also, while there is no great difficulty in asking about occupation, the social significance of work in the sugar fields as compared with the business executi\·e who is the representative of a large United States commercial firm defies analysis through any imaginable list of preconceived questio ns. \Ve can only say of the questionnaire resu lts, therefore, that the limited number of cultural characteristics they reveal probab ly indicate the presence of a great many functionally related features, but the latter can only be determined with certainty by using the ethnographic methods described in the Introduction. The questionnaire is not a substitu te for ethnographic research, but it is helpful in suggesting which segments of society may be expected to share subcultural features. The general questionnaire, given in Spanish, is reproduced here with translation and explanations. i. Nl'.1mero (Number) (In each municipio the questionnaires were numbered consecu ti vely.) 2. Informant: \1 (Man) F (Woman) (Give name) Edad (Age) Race White _ __ - - - (Race to be entered according to the Mixed :K egro inten·iewer's opinion. 'White and Negro mean obvious and extreme characteristics. !\Jost persons are probably genetically mixed.) 3. Informant's spouse: M (Man) ___ F (Woman) (Name entered) Edad (Age) Race 'White Mixed Negro 4. Estado civil ( Marriage status) (State whether consensual, church , or civil marriage; also, whether plural marriage, divorced, e tc.) 5. Condici6n fisica (Physical cond ition) (This item refers essentially to ability to work. Extreme incapacity prevents Puerto Ricans from working but othern·ise they somehow manage to m ake a living.) 6. Residentes en la casa (Residents in the house) (All persons who eat and sleep in the house.) 7. Cuales son miembros de la familia (Members o f the informant's family) (This includes blood and affinal relatives of the informant; a lso step-children, illegitimate children, etc.) 8. Residencia y occupaci6n de los padres (Residence and occupation of the informant's parents) _ __ (This question must be answered at some length, giving the parents' occupation, ownership of land, class sta tus, and other data showing whether or not the informant is of the same general socioeconomic staLUs as his pare nts.) g. Familiares fuera d e Puerto Rico (Close relatives

outside of Pueno Rico) (Any relatives regarded by the infom1ant as close.) io. Historial de residencia: i\Iinimo_lugar de nacimiento, de crianza, y dos ultimas residencias. (R esidential history: at least place of birth, where reared, and last two residences.) _ __ 11. Nivel de vida: tamaiio y tipo de casa, incluyendo numero de cuartos y otras facilidades, tales coma electricidad, agua, radio, carro. nevera- a plazas o cash. (Standard o f living: site and kind of house, including number of rooms and other facilities. such as electric ity, \\'ater. ca r. refrigerator- and whether boug ht " ·ith cred it or ca-;h) (This can be filled in beuer by ohservatio11 than by questioning, except the last item,) 12. ~A quien pe rtenece la casa? (\\'ho owns tl1 c house?) _ __ (This refers to lega l ownership. If poss ible, information should a lso be obtained 0 11 previous owner, cost of the house, source of L11e money to buy it, and other cletai'5.) 13. Fuentes de com unicaci<'m (\ledia of com munications) (Th is covers man y i tcms: 11c wspa pers, free papers, almanacs, books, etc.; radio, whether listened to at home or elsewhere and which programs.) 14. Historial de cducaci6n (Educational history) _ __ (Not only school ing, but any edu ca tion in the army, veteran·s education, and anything the informant regards as education. Also, attitudes toward education as a means toward a better job, as a prestige i tern, or other.) 15. Historial de ocupacion (Occupational history) : A. Ingreso monetario regular (Regu lar monetary income) _ __ B. Otras fuentes de ingreso (Other sources of income) - - (Cover if possib le the age the informant started to work, apprenticeship if any, veterans' advantage, and value o( education to employment. Part A should include yearly income if possible. Part B should include parttime work for cash a nd any data on paymentsin-kind.) 16 . .:Es vecerano? (Veteran?) <Cu<il guerra? (Which war?) _ __ 17. Afiliaci6n a uniones, asociaciones, clubes. Participaci6n. (A ffiliations with unions, associations, clubs. P articipation.) (I nclude a ll kinds of organizations. Also, data on dues payments, attendance, a nd attitudes toward the organization.) 18. Tenencia de tierra. Tamai'io de Ia fin ca en cuerdas. (Land tenure. Size of the farm in cuerdas.) _ __ ig. Uso dado a la tierra (cosecha m:is importante; la segunda de mas importancia). (L and use, most important crop, second most important crop.) Crianza <le <1nimales. Especifique. (Domesticated animals. G ive detail.) _ __ 2 1. Mano de obra: Camiliar, empleado, medianero, etc. (Day labor: family help, w<1gc labor, sharecropper, etc.) _ __ 22. R e ligi6n (R e ligion) ,:Si ha cambiado, par 20.

APPE::-\DIX

qu e? (If changed, why?) _ _ Asistencia .. (At· ten<lance.) _ __ Contribuciones (Conu·ibuuons) Transponaci6n (Transpona tion) _ __ (Owned, rented, used pan-time, etc.) . Viajes a los E.U. (Trips co the Un ited States) Purpose of trip, length of stay, impressions, desire to go again, etc.)

5l 5

25. Comentarios (Comments) (This incl udes comments on dre~s ? £ informant and family and other m atters penammg to standard of li\'ino- which can be obser~1 ed but which would be offen~,·e if asked as quesuons.) 26. l\liscellany (Elaboration of abo\'e items. and 11 e,,· questions which seem significant.)

Bibliograplry Abbad y Lasierra, Fray Iliigo i 866. Historia Geogrti{tca, Civil, y Natural de la Isla de San Juan Bautista de Puerto Rico. Third Edition. Editada y Anotada por J. J. Acosta y Calbo. San Juan: Imprenta y Libreria de Acosta. Aimes, Hubert H. S. 1907. A History of Slavery in Cuba: 1511 to 1868. New York : G. P. Putnam's Sons. Aldebot, J ose Gabriel i 931. "Mis Impresiones Sobre la Fe Rcligiosa en Puerto R ico," Puerto Rico Ilustrado, Oct. 17, Yr. 22, No. 1128, p. 61. Alonso, Manuel A. 1849. El Gibaro. Barcelona. Alonso Torres, R afael 1939. Cuarenta Aiios de L11cha Proletaria. San Juan: Imprenta Ba ldrich. American Civil Liberties Committee: Commission of Inquiry on Civil Rights in Puerto Rico. i937. RetJort, May 22, N ew York. Annual Book of Statistics 1 939-40. 1943-47. San Jua n: Department of Agriculture and Commerce. Arcnsberg, Conrad M. and S. T. Kimball 1940. Family and Community in Ireland. Cambridge: Harvard University Press. Bagg, Matthew D. 1936. journal of Two Months' Residen ce in St. Thomas, Santa Cruz and Porto Rico in 1851-1852. New York Public Library. Typed copy of the original. Baguc, Jaime (Editor) i942. Al111anaque Agricola d e Puerto Rico /Jara el aFio 1942. Published for the Department of Agriculture and Commerce. San Juan: Bureau 0£ Supplies, Printing and Transportation.

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5 19

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The Associates in Negro Folk Education, Washington. 1944. Capitalism and Slav<n-y. Chapel Hill : University of North Carolina Press. 1950. "The Negro Slave Trade in Anglo-Spanish Relations," Caribbean Hislorical Review, No. J. 1951. "The Negro Slave Trade in Anglo-Spanish Relations," Caribbean Historical Review, I\o. 2. Wilson, Charles iW. 194.1. Central America. New York: Henry Holt and Co. Wolf, Eric 1951. Cullure Cha11ge and CulLure Stability in a Puerto Rican Coffee Crowing Community. Unpublished Ph.D. thesis, Anthropology Department, Columbia University. Wolf, Kathleen L. 1952. "Growing Up and I ts Price in Three Puerto R ican SubculLUres," Psychiatry, XV, No. 4, 401-33.

Wyndham, H . A. 1935. Th e ,rltla11tic and Slavery. London: Oxford Univcr· sity Press. Yang, l\Iou -chin 1945. A Chin ese Village: Slia11t1111g Proui11 ce. New Yor k: Colurnbia Uni\'crsity Press. Zavala, Sih-io 1940. De E11co111ie11das y Propieclad Territorial e11 algzwas region es de la A 111h-irn Espaiiola. .\Itx ico, D.F.: Antigua Librcria Ro bn.:do. Zimmerman, Erid1 \V. 1940. Slaff R e/>ort to thl' /11t crrle/H1rt 1111·11tr1l Co /11111 i1tci: on Pue rto JUco, S(:pt. !J· \\'as hi11g ton. \lillleographed.

Abbad y L~s i crr:'l. fray liiigo, 38, 40, ,p .. 16, 'li· .18. 53n, 5'1· 57, 188, 330. 3:J 2. 33·1· 386-87 Abo nio n, q8. 219, 293 Abscrllccism: in sugar protluction , 68, 69 Accide nt compensatio n, 283 Accidents: in cane cutting. 358 Acculluration: di1Tusio11istic explanatio n of, 506; role of the upper class in, 19-:w: tow:'lnl America n patterns, 502 Acci6n Social l nde pcnclcn tista. 80-8 1 Acosw, J. J.. ,17· :rnn. 3;~5 11 , 3;1G Adolescen ce: in Ca i'iamelar, 385 ; in N ocod , 292; m prom i· n cnt fami lies, 137; in San J ose, 22 1; in T abara, 1.17 Afric:m culLUre patterns. 7, 88, 476 Agrarian reform. Sec Land re form Agregt1dos: rolonins, 327; clcfinitio 11 and types. 32G; e\·1ct1on forl>iddcn , 380; history o f the class, 332; in Ca1iarnelar, 314· 319· 372, 375; in Noconi, 71, 270, 271; in San J ose, 19.J; in Spanish p eriod , 48, 55, 57; in Tabara, 1,p ; relationship tO la nd o wners, 11 5, 227; resettlement of, 250, 25 1; social position. 1;16-:i7: work books, 57 Agricullllral Extension Service, 10.1, 105. 213, 2.15 Agriculwre: hig h productio n cost, 106: in the e ig hteenth century, 47; in the nineteen th century, 52-56; in the sixteenth a nd seventeenth centuries, 37-39; in the twentie th century, 69-74; n e t income, 77; number of and size of farm s (1899 and 19,10). (i(i, 67; p e rsons e mployed in, 76; role in prese lll economy, 3. 65 . GG. Sec also Coffee cultiva· tion; Coffee produ ction : I.and tenure ; Land use; Livestock; Rice; Sharecroppi ng; Sugar cultirntion ; Sugar productio n; T obacco cultirntio n; T o bacco proclucLion Aimes, Hubert H. S., 33·1 Aluwd: d e finiti o n, 18 111 Alonso, l\fanuel. 1198 American CiYil Liberties Unio n. So Ame rican culLure patterns: in prominent famil y group. 1'10•4 I • 4'15

528

THE PEOPLE OF P UERTO RICO

American enterprises: consign ment sh ipme nts, 431; role of the Puerto Rican execu tive, 427-29, 458; sugar industry, 69, 107, 227, 3 15, 3 18; tobacco industry, 7 1-ri: tax exemptions, 43 1 American Federation of Labor, 63, 77, 277-78, 350 American Legion, 309 American Occupation: and Catholicism, 63, 449-50. 460; and emphasis on edu cation, 129, 130-3 1; and expansio n of prominent fam ily group, 420; and government patterns, 78-80; and n ew credit sources, 56, 74-75; and religious freedom, 276; and rise of Puerto Rican nationality, 497-98: attitudes toward, 78, 275-76; effect o n coffee prod u ction, 55, 172, 197-98, 262-63; effect on farm pa tterns, 467-69 ; effect on su gar industry, 54, 69-70, 197, 276, 3 18, 321, 3:.i2, 338-40; effect on tobacco production, 55, 7 1-72, 99-1o1 ; English language sch ool requirement, 30 1; introduction of new economic, political, and religious patterns, {12-64 , 66; rebellio us groups against the, :.i73. See also American enterprises American residents: a ttitudes toward, 4 25 American southwest: contrasted with Puerto Rico, 15 Angell, Robert, 2 1n Arawak Indians, 34 Area of Puerto Rico, 3, 78 Area research : areas d efin ed, 26; implications o f this. study, 26-27; interdiscipl inary coverage, :.i-3 Arens berg, Conrad M ., 96n Audiencia, 4 2 Auto mobiles: financing of, 1 19; in Ca1iamela r, 375; in Tabara, 157-58; owned by prominent families, 433. See also T axi drivers

Books: read ing of, 132, 303 Borah, \Voodrow. 37 Bourne. E. G., 329n Brau, Salvador , 37, .( 1, 43, 46n, 47, 48, 49, 57, 59. 332, 1193· 494 Brazil: Ame rica's chief coffee source, 197; coffee sharecropping. 194 B renan, Gerald. 4:.i, 449 B rookings Report, 68. 7:.i, 74, 77 B uria l. See Fu11 eral Business execu ti \·cs: att itudes toward labor unions, ,130; ful fillm ent of self-n>n ccp tion . ·l:lO·:! 1: mix LU re of sori:tl and economic acti\·i tics, . J:! !J· :~ o; poli tictl a<ti\·itics, ·I:!!}: po:-i tion defined by :\111nic111 t· 11 tnpri.\t".'>. ·!:! i":!!l · ·Fi8 : ri tua l kinship with c111ployee,, J:!t): soc i;tl pn:,t igc .. J:.?8 : \\'ork routin e, 428-:.ig. S1' 1' al.10 Pro111i11c11t f:1111 ilies Bynum, l\lary L.. l~J.111 , '~li

Campos. P edro A lbizu. 1:l7> Cailamelar: attitudes toward law and nnkr. 3(i2 . 30.1. 3();"',. 366, 377, 1183-811; attitudc:s tow;1rd th e 111an agerial hie rarchy, 349, 369; ch ildrc 11. 38 :.?-81i; c la~s ~ lructurc , ;ifi7-70. 39 1-\M· 4 12, 471; coercion through <rcdit arra 11gc111cn ts. 369-70; comm unily sett ing. 325-2~i; courtship, 378; dead season, 352-53. 359-60; definition of the com111u11i ty, 3 16- 17; diet and food h ab its, 383-84, 400-401 ; education and schools, 386, 402-04, 481; family, 375-82 ; fi estas, ,105; fi sh ing, 36 1-63; folk ans, 400-401; hacienda , life on a nd declin e o f. 34:3-48: health services and h ospital, :149· 399, 48283; hiswry of, 340-!J 1; housin g. 328, 3·11· 373. 374 . 375, 380-8 1; interfamilial relatio ns, 4 74; lab or exchange, 390, 474; labor unions, 349, 350, 397-99, 480 ; land tenure, 470; Badr ena, M ., 54 land use a nd own ership, :.M3· 355, 372; livestock, 360-6 1; Bagg. Matthew D., 336 lotte r y. 363-66; male-female relationships, 378-79 ; maps. Bananas: banana plant, illustration, 201; provide shade for 326, 329; ma rriage patterns, 375-81, 474-75 ; migrant laborcoffee, 180; small-scale cash crop, 74 ers, 357, 375 ; minor crops. 372, 375; newspapers, 405; ocBancroft, H. H., 42 cupation al distribution, 355; political functioning, 350, Bank for Co-operatives, 118 394-99. 479; power structure, 472; racial attitudes, 319, 348, Baptism: church baptism , 387-88; "first" or "water" baptism, 368, 392, 4 11 -12; radio, g7:1, 374, 375, 404-05, 482; rccrea· 150, 209, 215, 220, 294, 388; in Nocora, 310; in prominent tion, 382, 405-06; r egional setting of, 320-25 ; religion, 400families, 435; in San J ose, 209, 215, 220; in Tabara, 126, 09, 475-70; rise of the land-a nd-fac tory combine:, 3 15- 16, 133, 150, 155. 160; of slaves, 387. See also Ritual kinship 349·51; ritual kinship, 386-91, 475; role of the town in Baptist Acad emy, 11 3, 130, 131, 481 rural life, 391-94; rural proletariat, 351 -52; seasonal work Baptist Church, 100, 127 p atterns, 352-5,1; selection of the community, 18, 25, 316-18; settlement pattern, 326-29; social structure, 367-70, 39 1-94. Barbosa, Jose C., 497 Barrett, 0 . W., 110 4 12, 47 1; sociocultural segmentation, 47 1-72 ; socioecoBarrio Poyal. See Cafiamelar nomic mobility, 37 1-72; standard of living, 372-75; subBarrios: as a cultural unit, 316; meaning of, 211; political sidiary economic activities, 355, 360-67; summary and confunction of, 82 clusions from the present study, 4 13-17; summary of marBaseball: bets furnish supplementary income, 116; interest k eting and consumer patterns, 469; summary of productive in, 135, 309, 405-06; radio broadcasts, 132, 302, 309, 404 p atterns. 467, 408-69; values and value conflicts, 412-13; Beals, R alph, 388n witchcraft, 408. See also La nd-and-factory combine; Sugar Behavior: respeto, 144-45, 146-47. See also Values productio n Benedict, Ruth, 1 1, 13 Carnival queen, 454 Bilharzia: army rejections b ecause of, 139; in Tabara, 151 Carrion de i\tLilaga, Pa blo B., 8!)n, .196 Bird, Esteban A., 69, 3 17 Carroll, H e nry K ., 38, 4 1, 52, 53n, 58, 78, 79, 85, 166, 338, Bird, Jorge, 70 376, 410 Birth: n avel cord ritual, 2 19, 220; practices, 291, 382 Cash-and-subsiste n ce crop farm: characteristics of, 511 -12. Birth control: in Cai'\am elar, 381; in Nocor a, 293; in promi· See also T a bara nent fami lies, 444, 450; in T abar a, 126, 148, 159. See also Casinos: in Cailamelar, 348 ; in Nocorft, 309; in San Jua n, Abortion; Contraceptives; Sterilization 195; in San Jose, 260; in Tabara, 104, 1 di, 132, 159. 486 Birth rate, 64 Catholic Acade my, 130, 159, 481 Catholic C hurch a nd Catholicism: adaptation to an indusBlack Code , 58, 496 Blanco, Tomas, 34, 37, 45. 49, 58n, 75, 78, 98, 172, 334n tria lized society, 449·50, 460; and American occupation, Bolita. See Lotte ry, illegal 63, 44.9-50, 460; and consensual and civil marriages, 166; Bolivar. Simon, 98, 98n and fa talism, 128; a nd sai nt cults. 86: a nd slavery, 43, 48, 476; a nd social status. 24;i; and Spiritualism. 88, 128; atBombn, 405-06

I NDEX

tcndance. 85. 127. 149, 159-60. 243, 303: baptism, 387, 388; beha,·ior patterns san ctioned by Church, 85 : change from state to individual re lig ion. 4-l!J: confirmation, 221; criticisms of, 1:P; d ecl ine in religiosity of Catholics, 128; doctrinal schools, 127; in eigh teemh century, 49; in nineteen th century, 59-60; in sixtccmh and seventeenth centuries. 38, 42-+i; land grams to Catholics, 335; Negroes barrecl from priesthood. 58; priests' role, 127, 243, 304; pro111i11ent families· participation, 426, .J19· 450-51, ,160: Puert o Rican and U .S. Catholicism compared, 450: return of expropriated properties. 8.J -8:~>: sacrame ntal role of the, 8;,. Sli: separation of the sta tc and Ch urch , 8.1-85; sources of i11w11H.:. tl:;: st:tbility c>f Catholic marriages, 376; tithes, ·t:i : llTIHh ,,·hich h:t\'C \\T;tkened the Church, s ,1; upperl l:t>S ,11ppon ancl kadcrship. 85. Scc also Fiestas and religiou> ft:sti1·als: Rdigio n: Religious societies; Saint cults Ca1holiL Daug hters of .\111c ri ca. S<i. 2.Jj. 260, 451, 457 C:ttholi< Sons. ·l!i7 C:athol il Yrn11 h Organi1atio11. -15 1 Ca11k. Sa Lil'cstock C1;d11/a de (;rnti11.1: .J8. ;-,o. :·> 1. ;-,7 ..192. ·193· .196; effect on s11ga 1· indmtrv. :1;15: prol'isions of. :U5 Ce11trnfrs. St'(' Sugar u :11tralcs Ch:1mbcr of Com111crce . .J!!O, .p9, 457 Chang, Chih-i. 20, 96n, 116 Chaperons, 442 Charcoal: from coffee shade trees, 182, 234; from mangroves, 270: use of. 2 29, 363 Chardc'>n. Carlos E., 37 Chardon Report, 67 Charles V, 38, ,11, 13· 496 Chauffeurs. See Taxi clriYers Child labor: restriclion of. 279 Children: adopted children, 158; attitudes toward, 381; child rearing and national character, 12; dancing, 406; death ceremonies, 220, 292; desirability o[ large families, 218-19; discipline of. 146, 209, 220, 292, 384-85. 435. 436; eating habits, 383-84; in Cafiamelar, 382-86; in Nocor;i, 291-92; in prominent families, 435-37, 444-45, 453-54. 460-61; in San Jose, 214, 218-21, 257; in Tabara, 145-47, 154-55, 159; play, 214, 220, 437, 453; preference for sons, 4.35; training in respe to, 14,1-45, 146-47, 386, 388; sex differentiation, 384-85; work of, 112, 113, 145-116, 154-55, 220-21, 381-82, 385, 386. See also Adolescence; Infants Christmas, 134, 199, 310, 35 2, 405, 484 Circulo Universitario, 309 Citizenship, So Civil Service, 82, 123 Clark, Victor S., 68, 69, 72, 74, 77, 121n, 122n, 123, 142 Class: cultural definition, 8. See also Social classes Class culture: concept of. 35 1 Class structure. See Social classes Clothing, 153-54, 176, 258, 259, 288. 433 C lubs: fraternities, 260, ,137: prominent £amilies' clubs, 457. See also Casinos, Sororities Coalition party: leadership pattern, 447; support by prominent families, 446 Coastwise Shipping Law, 75. 106 Cockfights: 112, 116, 133, 135. 163, 252, 3 10, 486; illustration, 486 Coffee co-operative: basis for government support, 242; operation of, 24 1-42 Coffee cultivation: bearing cycle and productive period, 179.80; cost of intensive cu ltivation, 233; e n vir?nmental factors favoring, 179; fertilizer, 180-81; h a rvesting, 181; labor hours expended in, 199; machinery, 182-83, 188, 193, 232; p lanned according to phases of moon, 200; planting,

529

180: shade-grown method. 180, 181 -82; soils for. 184; weeding, 181 Coffee industry: capital n ecessary for production , 162; characteristics of small coffee farmers, 512; credit for, 55, 73, 74, 7 5· 195, 197-98, 234; dead season , 163; decline in production, 72-73, 161; disadvantage as a crop for small farms, 204; effect of cost accounting on labor supply, 231; effect of hurrican es, gg, 100. 101 , 11 3, 12211, 176. 187, 197; effects of the American Occupation, 55, 172, 197-98. 262-63: income of workers, 227; in Tabara, i 13; in the nineteenth century, 54-55; in the sixteenth and seYenteemh centuries, 38, 39; in the twentieth century, 72-73 : labor costs. 184; labor force, 202, 225. 22i·28, 235. 236-37; labo r requiremems for, 262; large fann units most econom ical. 122; loans for coffee production ( 1946-47), 75: machinery, 193: marketing, 120, 209-12, 241-.p: return per acre, 162n; role in Puerro Rican econ o m y, 18; size and number of farms today, 73; three historical stages o(, 172; wages for workers. 182. See also Coffee cultiYation: Hacienda, coffee; San Jose Coffee l\Iarketing Association: 120, 183; drawbacks to dealing with, 210; relationship to coffee peasantry. 2 10 Coffee municipality: summary of the culture of the coffee area, 261-64. See also San J ose Coffee processing, 182-83 CollectiYe barg-aining, 278. 298. 313 College education: attendance by prominent families' childre n, 440 Coll y Toste, Cayetano, 36, 38, .10, 4 1, -15· 48, 5 1. 55. 1 io, 332 . 335, -193 Colon, E. D., 38, 52 Colonia , 324, 327 Colonos, 18, 25, 26, GS. 69, 3 17, 338-39. 342 Colc'>n-Torres, Rambn, 70, 119n Columbia University, 17 Columbus, Christopher, 37 Commerce: Coastwise Shipping Laws, 75. 106; exports (19001946), 1f.O. 41; in e ighteenth century, 46-47, 48; in nineteenth century. 50-5 1. 52: in sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. 36-37; in twentieth century, 75. See also Cedula de Gracias Commodity Credit Corporation, 108, 118 Community culture, 8-9 Commun ity selection method , 17-20 Community study m ethod, 16-17 Com/Jadrazgo. See Ritual kinship Concubinage, 114, 126, 274 Confirmation, 221 Congress for the Independence of Puerto Rico, 82 Congress of I ndustrial Organizations, 63, 78, 397n Conscription, 63 Conversation as recreation, 133, 149 Co-operatives: La Collectiva, 119; Land Authority retail store, 283-84; Tabara Vegetable Co-op, 120. See also Coffee Marketing Association; Tobacco Marketing Association Cordero, Rafael de J., 66, 72, 197 Cordillera Central, 93, 101 , 176 Cordoba, Pedro Tom;\s d e, 38, 40. 52, 53, 57, 98n, 190, 273. 332 Corporate plantation. See Land-and-factory combine Corretjer, Juan A ntonio, 172 Cotton, 55-56, 7'1 Council of the lndies, 42 Courts: attendance at court sessions. 253 ; trials a nd procedures, 299-300 Courtship: in Caiiam elar. 378 : in Noconl. 293 : in promine nt families, ,112-43 : in San Jose. 222: in Tabara, 143. 154, 159

530

THE PEOPLE OF PUERT O RICO

Crab catching, 285, 363 Credit: as a means of coercion, 369-70; comparative analysis of the four r egio nal subcultures, 485; during strikes, 370, 398; extension afler American Occupation, 56, 74 -75; government restriction s on credit age ncies, 212; in the nineteenth century, 56; for coffee produce rs, 55, 73, 74, 75, 195, 197-98, 234; for coffee workers, 193, 195, 211 -12, 230, 237, 262; for minor crops, 73-74, 75 , 12 in; for sugar producers, 53-54, 74, 279 ; for sugar workers, 283-8.1 , 349, 371; for to· bacco producers, 74, l 18-19, 123; for tobacco workers, 11819, 156; for wholesalers, 240; refaccio11ista, 72, 118, 123. See also Coffee Marke ting Association; Fed eral Housing Autho rity; Tobacco Marketing Association Creditor mer chant: in San Jose, 210, 211, 241; political power, 245 Cr ist, R aymond E .. 37, 197, 255 Cross-culture regularities: value of cross-culture me thod, 2; implicat io ns from present Puerto Rican study, 27; in landancl-facLOry combine systems, 4 13-17; methodology for form ulating h ypotheses abo ut, 503-06 Cultural change: a nd change in market demand, 263-64; dyn amics of, 14-16; factors o f change, 506-07; general trends, 507-08; initia l culture, 506 Cultural ecology: me thod of, 15-16 Cultural history: p eriods of, and table, 33; the cul Cural historical approach, 3 1-33 Cultural history (1493-1700): agriculture, 37-39; economic developmen t, 36-37; extern a l relations, 44; government, 42 ; labor force a nd social structure, 40-41; population, 34-36; relig io n , 42-14; sociocultural groups, 41-42 Cu ltural history (1700-1815) : economic patterns, 46-47; external r elations, 49; government, 48; labor-force and social structur e, 48; land tenure and la nd u se, 4.7-48; population, 45-46; religion, 49; sociocultural groups, 49 Cultural history (1815-98): economic patterns, 52-56; government, 58-59; labor force, 57-58; land tenure, 56-57; land use, 52-56; population, 51; religion, 59-60; sociocultural groups, 60-6 1; socioeconomic patterns, 492 Cultural history (1898-1948): American O ccupation, 62-6.1, 78-80; commerce, 75; crop production, 69-70; economic patterns, 64, 66; la bor unio n s, 77-78; land reforms, 71; land tenure, 66-68; manufacturing, 75-77; nationalist movement, 80; population, 64; religion, 84-88; witchcraft, 88-89 Cultural m e thod, 5 Cultural p ersonality: concept of, 13, 14 Cultural relativism, 5, 503-04 Culture: anthropological frame of reference, 3; concept of, 5-6; concept of "participation in a culture," 140; definition of, 14; individual idiosyncratic b ehavior and culture p a tte rns, 17 5. Se e also National cultural patterns Culture type: development of the rural types, 509; hypotheses of a d evelopme ntal typology, 508-09; r egional types in Puerto Rican study, 509-12; government-owned plantatio ns, 5 10-1 1 Dan cin g : balls given by prominent families, 454-55; by children, 406; favorite dances, 134., 405-06, 453, 455; in the rural areas, 103, 132, 134, 214, 310, 405, 484; prefere nce for Latin American d an ces, 453, 455; restrictions on girls, 222

Daug hters o f Mary, 86, 127 Davis, Brig. Gen. George W. D., 54, 338, 339-40 Davis, .J. Merle, 60, 63, 87 Dead season : and school attendance, 30 1; and recrea tional activities, 309; in the coffee regio n , 163; in the corporate sugar region, 352-53, 359-60; in the tobacco region, io9,

1111; on proportional-profit sugar farms, 28.1-85, 3 12. See alsu Subsidiary econ o mic :ictivities Death: ceremon ies for childre n , 22 0, 292; custo ms, 223, 407. See Funera ls; ~!ourning De butante parties. 1137, ·15·1 Deerr, Noel. 53. 33Ci Defe nders of the Faith, The, 214 Democracy in Puerto Rico: pattern of, 79, 83-8.1 Dennis, Leon, 88 Department of Education: and school curricula, 30 1; :ippointment o f teache rs, ~\O(> Depression o f 192q: and go\·n11111<: 11l :d patterns. 80-8 1; a nd the coffee industry. 7:\ : and 11Je ~11 g; 1 r industry. 278, 3:;0 Dcscantcs, S. L., 711 D exter, L. A., .190 Diet : belie fs about sea food s. 3 fi :\ . .10 1; eating habits. 2:,4 . 383 ; "hot" and "cold" l ic:l i d~. l :i 5· 217, 2:!9 , 288, ;1G;i . .101 ; in Caiiamclar, 383-84 . .100-.10 1; in :\ ocor:i. 28.1. 288-8!J· :~ 1:! · 13; in Ta bar;i , 1.1:!. 1:,:1. 1:,j: m:d1111tri1io11. 1:; 1. 2 10 ; milk in the diet, 1 13. 1 30 •.101 ; 011 th e sugar h:1r ic11da , 3.1::;; the ideal natio n al die t, 500; role: of to rn meal 111, 200, 209. Se(~ also Sch ool Luntl1 Program Dillie, Baile y W. and .J. W .. 70 Diffusion, 15, 505-o(i Dign id ad, 43 1 Dinwiddie, 'W illiam. 54, 55 190, 197 Dipulaci6n Provincial. 58 Disciples o f Chris t, 2.J.1 Discipline of children : by co-pare nts, :?09; in the family, 146, 220, 292, 384-85, 435, 436; in school, 130, 254. See also R esp eto Disease: bilharzia, 139, 151; hookwo rm, 151; malaria, 217, 373, 399; smallpox plague, 38; venereal disease, 216, 217. See also Jllness Divorce, 155. 166, 115 Doctors, 137, 151, 249, 483 Dog fights, 133 Double standard: cultural explanation, ,134 , 441 -42 Dreams: and lo ttery numbers, 252, 286 Drinking. 149, 150, 287, 310. See also Rum Drums, 405 Earache : trea tme nt, 400 Econom ic administration, 81 Economics: integration with U .S. economy, 78, 105-08; occupational division of population, 18; patterns of the nineteenth century, 492; role of sugar in island's economy, 317; summary of marketing and consumer patterns, 469; summary of productive patterns, 466-67. See also Agriculture; Commerce ; Credit; Land Authority; Land tenure; Subsidiary economic activities; 'i\Tealth Education: adult education, 129; and social and economic mobility, 164, 403, 481 -82; attitudes toward, 254-55, 403; attitudes LOward education for girls, 130, 154; emphasis on education after the occupation, 129, 130-31; in Cafiamelar, 386, 402-04, 481; in Nocora, 272, 290, 300-302, 481; in prominent families, 426, ,138; in San Jose, 213, 253-55, 48 1; in T abara, 100, 104, 105, 142·113, 15'1, 164, 48 1-82; policies set by insular officials, 300; prestige value, 213, 302; summary and comparison of the four areas, 481 -82; vete rans, 129, 132, 253. 300-301. See also Schools Elections: election day procedures, 125, 396; election of 1948, 123-26, 151-52, 164. 166, 247, 3!)6 ; r egistration for, 396; time of, 12 3. See also Franchise; Politics Electrification: of homes, 105, 15g. 157, 258. 374 Embree, John, 12 Emig ra tion: financed by illegal lo ttery earn ings, 366; labor-

I NDEX

53 1

contract arrangements, 1:;3: mo ney sent back to fam ilies.• Fo:.ter . G eorge \I.. :188 11 G: Puerto R ic:111s in New York C il)', .p1 . 7G. Sec also Fra n chise: sin ce A merica n occu patio n , 79. So; und e r Spa nish i\ I ig ra tio n rule. 79 E n comie ndas. 7. 1[,. 3 1. 35 . .10-.11 Fra ternities. 260. ·137 E nglish la ng uage: as a status sy111 bol. 169: imp on :1nce LO Free Federatio n of \ \'o rke rs. 77, 397 b usiness executi\'C.:s. -:!::?!J: use in schools. i:JO. 13 1, ::?5-:1 · 30 1. F u n erals. 155. -:10 7. -17S 11:.18 Furn iture. 1.12, I ..,.., :; !I, I;; ~. s . 189 ' "''9 n-3 . ;)/'1: n- ( .., -,, l .., -- . -o-8 :> , -<>SS. ;)/ E nj11 to Ferr:in , F .. !l:l5 En tena in 111e nt. Sec R ecn.::n io n G .I. Bill o f Rights. 15-:1. ::?53. ::?go. 300-301, -t3Sn Ei·mion. 1:18. 118. Sec a/.,o Soil Cm 1 ~c n· :11io n Ser \'iCc G age. Charles E .. !IG. 1 18. 1 19 E ;.k irno : 1111de:1r fam ily, (i Ga 111bling : antigam b ling law, 28G. 3G5 : fo r card s b y child ren . ! ·:., I II II cin \. ·I !i ·153·5:1; 11.1 Cai1amcla r. ;3Ci3-G6: in >:ornr:i. 3 10; in San j o ·e, E\ .111gdi1:d Clnm h. ::o:l· :101 ~·1 :1 : 111 1 abara. 11 6, 1;3::?. 135. 1.J 9, 16::?·63. See also L ottery, E\'il l'~t" 1:.!!J· !!17 -18. :10:;. :101. :1118. 'in' 11/.10 \ \' itr h crafl il lega l: a nd Lo tter y. lega l F ~<' :1i l11 11·11h: trca1 111c11 t. .100 G athe r ing: as a su bsid ia r y econom ic a cti\'ity. 363 C ayer .. \ .. :\:.!'.!. . :i-lo F:11 11 ily pa t te rn": :i lm:d patt nn . !I: :1s :1 l<.:\'cl of i1n eg ra tio 11 , C l:igcl, Lu is J\f .. 7:i G en e ral Fed eratio n o f ' Vo rke rs: a fli lia tio n w ith L atin AmerIi: '0111par i" 111 o f in tl'rfa rni li:d rl'l:nio n s in t he fo ur reica n Unio n . fij: ide n tified w i1 h Popu lar p an'" 397: in g in 11 ". -17:1-7:,: in C:ii1:11nd:1r. :1/."1·8::?: in ;\'ocor:i. 29 1-9.1, Ca 1iamc lar, 398; o rganiza tio n o f, 77-78 : p o liticai fun ctio n : ~ 1:I· ·11·1: in p rrn ni n cn t l : 1 lllil il'~ . ·l·lu-.1li. ·1:)9; in T al>ara, ing of. 397·!)S. :1!19 1 J :1-.18. 1:"1·1· 1;;8·;"1!1: i111 1Tfa111ili:il n·la1io ns. ·I i ·I: m:nri:n Ghosts and app a ri tion s. 12S-29. 155. 307 tl 1:il. :.!!J.I · :P:l· ·l ·l fi. ·17:">: m a tri lma lit ~-. 15.p1. ·17:1 : natio n a l Gi llin , .J ohn. ::?38 p:llt t'f'n;.. !JOO; p:1tr ili11c:il. 15.111. ·17·1; sun -in -law, mo theringer , 36, 38 G in-la\\' relat ionsh ip, 380. 38::?. Sci: also C hildren. ?\l alcG oclpare nts. Sec Riwa l kinship ft: malc relatio nships; Ritual kin ship G o ld. 3·1· :;6, 37 f ann rnlo n y, 330 G o ld schm idt, Walter, 390, 508 Fan11<.:rs Ho me Adm inistrat io n , 7'.!., 7·1 F ar ms: effect o f O ccupatio n o n fa rm patterns, -:167-69; o p era- G o ldsen. R ose Koh n . .p1 G omez, L.. 1So tion arrangemen ts. 68; size and num be r ( 1899), 57, 66; C o nt:in . .Jose A., 58 size a nd n umber ( 1940), <l7; va lue o f land a nd bu ildin"0 S G ood Friday. 19.1. 200, 2.13 ' 68. See also Agr icu ltu re; Lan d te nure: La nd u se G ord o n , \I .. 4 10- 11 f arm Secm ity Admin istratio n , 118. '.!. 50 C o re r. G eoffre y, 13, 489 F a talism, 1 ::?8 Gottscha lk. Lou is, 2 1n F ed e ra l H o using Authorit y: credi t ex te n sio n. 11 8, 1 19 . !.!.JS G o\'ernme~u of mun icipalit ies: p owe rs of, S2-83; in 1\ocori, Fed eral L ane! Bank o f B altimo re, 11 8 295-9G: 111 Sa n .Jose, ::?38.• ::?:18-;;o,· in T ab a ra ' 10·:>· 1"3 Fe i H siao-Tu ng, 20, 9611 , 11 6 • .., - . , 1 3~ . I G o ,·crn me n t o f P u en o R ico : ap pointed o fficials, So; cenF ern:i11dez C arcia, Eugen io. 4 7. 59 tralizatio n a t the insu l:ir le\·el, ::?.J/·-18. 263 : ch:u10-es after F ern cis-l sern. A n t0 nio. 59 ~he American O ccupation, 78-~o; d e mocratic p:n~cm , 79 , Ferti lizer: in suga r cult i\'ation. 270. :? So, '.!. 8 1: in tobacco cul8;1·8.1: H o use o f Delegates. 79; m sular a nd fccl en il ser\'ices, tiva tio n , 110: reasons against u se for coffee trees, 18o -8 i 8!!-8;;, 105. 290 ; legisla ture. So, S3 : in the e ig hteemh cenF estival o f the P a tron Sa int. 45 1 tury. -18: in the nineteenth ce ntury, 58-59; in the sixteenth Field studies: commun ity select ion. 17-20. '.!..l ·::?6; delim itaand scvc1neenth ce nturies, 4 2; O rg anic Act, 80, 82; soci:d tio n of the unit o f stud y. :?'.!.·'.!.4; subc ultu re research m e th sta t us o f o ffice h o lde rs. 392; relatio n sh ip o f the insular o d s a nd tech nigues, 20-::? 2 go\'e rnme nt to the United Srn tes. 83. 105, !!.JS: ro le o f Fiesta d e la Cruz, 21 5, 407 local p o litical organizatio n s, ::?48. See also E lect io n s: Fie~ La s and r~ lig~o ~s festivals: fo~d fo r. 13!1: g ro u p sup p lica D emocracy in Pueno R ico; L a nd Au tho ri ty; P ol itical u o n. 407; lll C a 11 a m e l~r._.1.05 : 111 Nocor:i. 30-t . 3 1o : in San pa rties; Po litics J ose, 199-::?oo, 21 4- 15; 111 l a l>a ra. 126. 1 3 ~1 . 1so. 1:; 9-6o ; o n t he coffee h aciend a, 19,1; participa tio n of promin~~l t fami - G o \'cr nme nt-o wned sugar plan tatio n. Sec Nocorri : Proporl io nal-p ro fit fa r m lies, 45 1; s~cul~u-iza tio n o f re lig '. o us festivals. 4 :, 1. 434 ; tob acco cul ll\'a u o n cha nges fesuva I o hser\'ances, 199. 200 . G o \'e rno r : electio n o f, 8!!. See also i\ Juiioz- ~ fa dn . Luis C ra y, L. C .. ;i23, 330-3 1 See also C hristmas; I lo ly \\'ee k ; U o.rnrios Grea ,·es. Ira C .. 179. 203. 338. 339. 346, 347 . 4 15 Fire protectio n: in T abara. 105 G11a/1os. ::?07. ::?08, ::?38 F ish in~ : commercia l fi she rme 11 . 36 1-G2; in Ca iiame la r. 3 6 1. Gun,.d ia Civil, 51. 58 _ ~ 3 ; in ~oco d . 285; sp ec ies taken , 302; tech n iques, 36 2.() 3 Guilds or C l'emios, 4 2, 49 Hmtcr. G eorge D ., .11, 48. 5 1, ;;2 . 5:3. 5·1· 5(i, 57, 58, !)8, 109n , G u isca fre A rillaga . .J .. 180 18l 189, 333, 334. 335 Gutier rez de Cos, P edro, 5911 F olk a ns, 2110, 400-401 Folklo re : fi shing a nd sea lales, 363 f olk medicine . See \[ed icine H acie nda . cofiee: ::!j::?·37; cha racterist ics o f. 5 1::?; in herita n ce. Food. See Diet !!32; ill11stratio n , 233 ; o wne r-worker relatio n s. 235-36; Food industries: p erson s employed (ta ble), 76 p ol i ti ca I po wer . ::?45 : the p rescn t p atte rn . 1~1 3·0;;: rise of, Fo ra ker Act. 8 1 I !)0-95. 2(i::?; status o f o wnc i-, 203. Ser also San I nsc Fore men of sugar pla ntatio ns: duties of, %7; relatio nshi p H acie nda. suga r: after the Ame rica n O ccu patio n. '27G: :igriwith workers, 3GD. 370; so cia l st:1111s. 367. 3<j9 cul tural me thods in n in e teen th centu ry. 3:1G; a n d socia l F ortune telling: by Spiritua lists. 2 ~5 su·uctu1-c, ::?89; a nd th e sugar corporatio n. 277: cl cacl sea-

532

THE PEOPLE OF PUERTO RICO

Hacienda, sugar (continued) son, 353; d eclin e of, 289, 347-48; inheritance pattern, 3:1.1; introduction and effects of technological improvements, 335-38; labor force, 333-34; life on the hacienda, 343-47; mea ning of term, 523n; owner-worker relationships, 275, 276, 346; the rise of, 273-75 H acienda system: economic basis for development of, 508-09; methods of acquiring land, 190-91; slavery and forced labor, 493 Haddock, Daniel, 7'1 Hallowell, A. Irving, 12n Hami lton. Earl J., 37 Haring, C. H., 44, 47 Haring, Douglas G., 1211, 13 Harvest festival: on coffee hacienda, 194 Halos, 45

Hatt, Paul K., 377n Hayes, A. Garfield, 80 H ealth and health services: a government responsibility, 35 1; anti-malaria campaigns, 399; in Caiiamelar, 349, 399. 482· 83; in Nocora, 482-83; in San Jose, 249, 482; prominent families, ,132; in Tabara, 128, 151, 155-56, 160, 483 ; Public H ealth Service, 399; types of services rendered, 399; summary of the four regions, 482-83. See also Disease; Doc· tors; Hospitals; l\fodicine Henderson, A. N., 447n Herbs: as food, 401; as medicines, 400 Hern ~indez de Oviedo y Valdes, Gonzalo, 36 Herskovits, Melville J., and Frances S., 154n History of Puerto Rico. See Cultural history Hoffsommer, Harold, 414n Holidays. See Fiestas and religious festivals Holy Name Society, S6, 94, 127, 149n, 242-43, 478 Holy Week: observances, 126, 200, ::n 3, 243, 304, 406 Homan, P., 322, 340 Homestead Commission, 67 Honey bees, 361 Hookworm, 151 Hospitals, 123, 151 , 155, 160, 198, 296, 306, 395, 399; atti· tu<les toward, 307 Hostos, Adolfo de, 34, 44, 59, 60, 492 "Hot" and "cold" beliefs, 155, 217, 229, 2S8, 363, 40 1 House o f Delegates, 79 Houses: in Caiiamelar, 328, 344, 373, 374, 375, 380·8 1; in Nocor{1, 270, 287-88; in San J ose, 178, 189, 193, 194, 229, 258; in Tabara, 142, 153, 157, 158; of prominent families, 432 Howell, Brandon , 326 Hurricanes: effect on coffee crops, 99, 100, 101, 113, 122n, 176, 187, 1!)7: preparations for, 153, 199, 352; San Ciriaco hurricane ( 1S99), 276 Huyke, Roberto, 119n Iglesias, Santiago, 77, 79, 298 Illegitimacy, 40,1n Illiteracy: in Nocor;i, 301; stigma attached to, 143 Illness: folk theories, 216-18; "hot" and "cold" beliefs, 288. See also Disease; Medicine Incest, 384 Income : of prominent families, 423-24. See also Wages Independence movement: Acci6n Social Independentista, 80-8 1; anti-American violence, 80; attitudes toward, 501-02; basis of present movement, 84; Congress for the Independence of Puerto Rico, 82; effect of economic ties to Un ited States. S2; effect of World ·war II, 247; MuiiozlVfarin and the, So, 394; reasons for U.S. reluctance to

' grant iudcpenden ce, 107; suppo n of, 299; T ydings and King Bills, So. See also lndcpe ndentist party lndepe11dentist party: in 1~148 electio11, 123-2G. !!!)/, 298; me mbership. 82; support in Ca1iamelar. 391i: support in Tabara, 160: support of promine nt families..J.lli; support of veterans and cab dri,·ers. 139, 396·97 lnde/1e11diz.fl(lo, 327 Indians: aborig inal. 34 . 35 : in e11colllic ndas. 7. 1:; . .10-.11 Industrial Development Corporation, 7(i Ind us try: efforts to interest fore ig-n concerns, 107: ('111 ploymen t by industries. 7(1: 11atio11:d i11dustriali1;1tio 11 p:it t('r11s, 8; net income by i11d11 ~ tria l cli,·i-.io11,. 77: t:1x t:Xt:lllptio11s, 76. See also Ag riculwrc Infants: care of, 1,15. 1,11i. l f).J. l :)'I· 21!J· 29 1, :>X2 ·K:;. ·!:J5·:>li; de a th ceremony, 2 20 Inheritance patterns: in 1\'ocor:'1. 2<q: i11 S:111 Jm<". 207. 22 :1. 232; in Tabara, 116. 122: of the co ff cc haci('ncl :1'. :!'{'.!: of the sugar hacie11clas, :l·M: pattern in promi11t:11t families, 431, 134 In11ocent children fest iva l, 1 :~:; . 19.J. 199 Innocent Saints Day, 3 10 Inquisition, 42 Institutional beha\'ior: sig n ifi ca nee of. 7·8 lntendente, 48 lnterest: •before 1898, 255 Investments: of prominent families, 13·1· See also American enterprises Irrigation: and land values, fr:q; of sugar cane fields, 324, 34 1, 342, 343, 347, 359. 369 Irrigation civilizations: upper classes in, 10 Jail: in San Jose, 249 Jamaica train, 335, 336 James, Preston E., 322, 3,10, 425 Java,810 J enks, L. H., 78 ]ibaro: and the Popular party, 151 -52; as term of insult, .291; characteristics and idealization of, 498; in San Jose, 226; integrated in commercial en terprises, 495-96; political characterization, 49S; uses of term, 203 Jimenez Perez, Manuel, 49 Jones, \i\l'alter A., 44, 59, S5 Jones Act. See Organic Act junta, 113- 14 Keller, A. G., 330 Kennedy, Paul F., 39711 Kennedy, R aymond, 8 1n Kimball, S. T., 96n Klineberg, Otto, 13 Kluckhohn, Clyde, 12n, 21n, 89 Knapp, Seaman H., 345 Knights of Columbus, S6, 451, 157 Kroel>cr, Alfred L., 35 1 Labor, Department of, 248 Labor Exchange System : in Ca11amelar, 390, 474; in Nocora, 174; in rice cultivation, 113-14; in San Jose, 207, 224, 473; recreational aspect of, 213, 484; threatened by wage labor, 218 Labor force : comparative analysis of the four regional sub· cultures, 485; effects of resettlement program, 250; en· comienda, 7, 15, 31, 35, 40·4 1; fami ly labor, 206, 224; in coffee production, 202, 225. 227-28, 235, 236-37; in the eighteenth century, 48; in the six teenth and seventeenth centuries. 40-1 1; in sugar production. 324, 333·34, 314, 4S5;

I NDEX

Lite plantation sysLem. 331-3.i: in Lobacco proclucLion, 110· 11. 121. .185: m ig rant workers. 2!!i·28. 23 1. 357-58, :175: vagra ncy laws. 193. ;13 2-3.J: \rnrk books, 57, 58. 332, ·l!H· Si.:c also L1bor exchange; Mayordo111 os; Ownerworkcr rcl:llio n s: Sharecropping; Sl;n·ery; UnemploymenL; \ Vages Labor recruiters. 3·19· 350-5 1 Labor ReJ:itions Boa rd. 78 l.ahor union:.: affiliatio n with .-\.F. of L. and C.1.0 .. 63: and politic'· 8:1·8.1. :.!!J8·!19· :l!li-!19· .180: alti tudes of business l'Xl'< 111in·' toward . .rno: colknin: bargaining, 2iS, 298, :i •:i: Cortgn·:-, nl l11cl11:-trial Org:111i;r:1L io 11s. 6 3, 78, 39711; gai n.., attril>111cd to 1111iom. 78: in Ca 1bmclar, 3,19, 350, :l!J/·!J!J· .1Ho: indq>L' lltknt uniom. 78 : i11 Nocor;i, 277-78, :.!Ho. :.!H:l· :l' :l· .1Ho: in T:1h:1r;1. 1(i.1: loca l fun cLio ns. 39i; oppoM' pil-tl'\1·nrk :ind i11 cc ntin· rates. ;1;17: opposiLion LO :ilt n Oc c npa1 ion. i!I: prl'Sl'lll org;ntila tio ns. 77·78. Sec also (:enl'r:il Ft'llnat inn of \\'orke r:.: Strikes I.a C: i111 a. S1'1' Tal>ara l.;1c·1. J11:111 (.Joan 1tl'-') ck. ;l!J I ,;1ncl -a11cl . l;ic wry c0 111Iii11 l': :rncl c rns>-cu It u ra I reg-u I al"i tics, ·I 1.i · 17: a11i111dl':. toward the managerial hierarchy, ~169: attitudl'!> of ,,·orkc rs toward their jobs. :l:li; characteristics of, ;,1:10 . .J 15. 5<>!1-10: culwral con sequen ces..11 5 : clcvelop111 c 11l o f. ;138-.10: labor unions. 349-50. 39i·9!J· .180: medica l sen ·ices. :H9: piece\\·ork. 3.19: reason for sh ifl to. ;p5i 6; rise o f the syste m. ;1.19-51; seasonal work paucrns, 3525.1 . See also Caf1amelar Land Authority: and c;mploym ent problems. 26i·6S. 279; child labo1· restricLion. !!/9: co-opera tin~ store. 283-8.1: rreaLio n of. 70: exte 11L of present operaLio ns. 18. !!6Ci: fivehunclred acre law, 35 111 ; 1 ~148 e lecLion campaign. 298; life insurance, 283; n ewspaper, 303; opposition of Statehood pany, 4 .18; proj ecLs in San .J os~, 2,18: pu~)lic s~n· i ce provisions, 271 ; purp ose and fun ctions of. 266: v illages established by, 272 . See also Land law; Nocor:i; P roponio n a lprofit farm s; Rescttlemen t prog ram Land g r:llllS, 190 Land Law: d e finitio n of ngregado , 3 26; prov1s1ons of, 71 ; limiLatio n of Janel holdings, 278; resettlement program, 2 rw-5 1. Sec also Land AuthoriLy; Proportional-profit farm s Lan:>d owne rsh ip : comparative analr is of the four regional subcultures, 485; laws to pro ~ec t small landown ers, 203; legal titles, 203: me thods of acquiring la nd. 1 17. 190-91: resettlement program. 250-5 1; i11 Cailamelar. 34 ;1. ;172: in San J ose, 20 1-04; in southern coastal region , 322. 32.1; in Tabara, 142, 152-53, 156-57, 158 L and reform. See L a nd A uthority; Land law: Organic Act L and te nure : distribution of farms. 67-68: in Caiiamelar . 470 : in N ocor~1 , 470; in .re lation. to crops in 1935· 68; in T abara , 11 6- 18, 121-2 2: 111 the e ig hteenth century, 47-.18, 33 1; in the nin e tee n~h century. 56-57 : in the twentie Lh ce ntury. 66-68; o p eratton a rra n geme nts ( 191 0-4 0). 68: summary of p resent trends. -169-70: value of land and bu ildings, 68 L a nd use: as a basis for community selection. 18- 19; comp a rative analysis of th~ four regional subc_:ulLUres, 485 : in Caiiamelar, 313· 355: 111 San Jose. 262: m Tabara. 10811 ; in the e i~ htcc nLh cen.tury. 48; in the nine teen.th ce~1 tur y, :, 2-56: 111 th<: twentie th century, 69-70; re l.a u o n sl11p LO culture a nd social classes. 168-69. See also Agriculture Law and o rder : a uitudes toward, 25 1-52. 299-300, 362 . 364, fi!J, 367, 377: court trials, 253, 299-300; summary of atti3 tmlcs a nd lega l arran gem ents. 483-84. Sa also Lotter y, illega l; Ru m L edn'1 . A. l' ., 49· 33 1· 332, 405 Liberal-R eform ist pany: 1!)4 8 coal itio n , 297, 298 111

533

Life cycle. See Adolescence: Birth ; Children: Courtship : D eath ; In fan cy : M arriage Life insu ra n ce : h eld by union members. 283 Limesto ne. 270, 286 Lind . A. \ \' .. -! qn Lindberg/is, 368. 3i5 Lilllon, R a lp h, 260 Livestock: cau le tax. 3.JS: decrease with expansion of su gar industry. 69: in Ca11amelar. 360-61; in San J ose. 225. 226. :?3.1: in T abara. 11 3. 153. 156-57. 158; in the e ighteenth cenLury..17: in the nineteenth celllury, 56; in the sixteenth and sc,·em ecnth centuries, 38; municipal sl:t ug lHcr tax. 25 1; released b y first settlers. 3·1: r ole in Puc n o R ic:i n econo nt '". 1 S L o ftu s. j o hn A .. 17 1 Lc'>pez de H aro. Dami:in. 37 L<'>pcz de Velasco. Juan. ;1ti L 6 p cz Domingu ez. F. A .. ;1 29. 339. ~~5 ·1 Louery. illegal: antiga mbling law. 286. 365 : cho ice o f 11t1111bc rs by dream interpre tation, 252. 286; descriptio n o f. :1<>.1: econ o mic importa nce o f. 365-66: fun cLio n s of. 12: in C af1amclar. 3 6 ;~-66 : in Nocor<i. 286 : in San J o se. 2 11. 225. 2;>2: in Tabar;1. 116. 163 : winnings as cap iLa l for busin ess. :17 1 L o tter y, legal: Dominica n R epublic lottery. 286; "bea u tiful"' a nd "ugly" numbers. 36511: description of. 3ti.J·65 : Pue rto Rican loner y, 286; support of School L unch Program. 301 L oYe: auitudes to ward. 378. 379 Lower class: in Caliamelar. 393: in .Kocor;i. 29 1: in San .J osc. :.!0;1. :.!5 7-59: in Tabara. 136. 137. 1.J 1-52 L um ber and wood p roductio n: net income, /i

l\fcCorm ick. Sa ntiago, 337 McCreery, \ Valter Gay, i94n, 197 l\ IcDo nald , John H o lt, 180 i\ ! ;ichinc r y: attitudes toward m echanizaLion, 28 1, 399 : comparison o f mechanization of the four reg iona l subculLures. 485; cfTect on workers' income on proportional-pro fi t farms, 3 1:.! ; for coffee cultiYa tion and processing, 18:i-83 . 188. 193, 232: for suga r cultiYation and harvesLing . 280. 335-36. 35,1. 359; technological unemployment, 279, 280. 3 12. See a lso Sugar ce111 m ies l\fagazines: in Nocor;i, 303 : r ead b y prominenL famili es ..JB;) :M agic: a nd medicine, 306-07; and wealth, 307; '"black .. and .. white" magic. 308; in Nocora , 30 3. 305-06 ; in Tabara, 164: r elat io n to in security. 16.1. See also \ Vitcltcra ft i\Iail serYice, 101 l\Ta laria. 2 17, 373, 399 Male-female r elationships: in C a 11ame lar, 378-79; in Nocor;i, 293. !!9·1· 3 13: in prominent farnil ies. -!45·-16: in San J ose. 223, 256-57, 26 1; in Taba1·a. 1.13·H· 147-.18, 155. Sec also Double standard l\falino wski. Bro nislaw, 22. 164 . 175 i\ lalntHriLion. 15 1. 2 16 l\fango . See Nocor ;i l\fanicaboa. See Sa n J ose ·Ma nufa cturing: sin ce A merica n Occupa tio n , 75-77 i\farkcting: coffee. 1!!O, 209- 10. 23~1-42; m inor crops in Tabara. 1 19-20. 123: proportional-pro fit fa rm, !!83, .16!): summary of marke ting patterns. 469: tobacco. 119. 120. 123 l'vfa rriage: common-law or consensual, 60, 88, 126. 1311. 1.1 3111 154, 165-66, 228, 258. 293. 375-78; cou sin marriage. 13 1n. 221; Fiesta c.le la Cruz, 215; in Cafiarnclar. 37:,-8 1. 474-75; in Nocon'i, 293-94: in prominent families. ,142-.1'1: in San J ose, 215, 22 1, 228, 475; in Tabara, 15,1. 159. 1fi566; interracial, 258, 348, 4 11; made legal to a void trouble.

534

THE PEOPLE OF PUERTO RICO

Marriage (cont i11 ued) 29 1; padrinos, .pg; remarriage of wido,\·s, 155; second wives, 143, 144, 154, 155; summary and comparison of patterns in the four regions, 474-75. See also Courtship; l\falefemale relationships Masculinity: emphasis on, 38.j, 436, 4.11 , 444 Masons, 126, 1 33, 309, 478, 497 Mass media of communication: a factor in spread of new ideologies, 84; cultu ral influences of, 12. See also Newspapers; R ad io Matriarchy: in 1'ocor;i, 294, 3 13, 475 ; in prominent families, 446 Matrilocal ity, 154n, 175 Maxwell, Francis, 338, 353 Mayordomo: in Tabara, 156, 158; on land-and-facto r y combines, 257, 36 7-69; on proportional-profi t fanns, 279, 3 12; on the sugar hacienda, 276, 3·15 Mead, Margaret, 13 Mechan ization : attitudes toward, 281, 399; comparative analysis of the four r egiona l subcultures, 485 ; technological unemployment, 279, 280, 3 12. See also Machinery Meclianero. See Sharecropping .Medicine: explanations for illness, 216-18; folk medicine, 151, 216-18, 399-400, 482, 483; magical practices, 306-07; on the sugar hacienda, 345; teas as med icine, 400; treatment ear, eye, and tooth ailme nts, 400. See also H ealth and health serYices; W itchcraft Medicine women: illustration, 70 Melgarejo, Juan, 35. 37, 40 Mendez, Eugenio Fern ;indez, 17 Mendoza, Cuesta, 42 n , ..13. 405 Mennonites, 127, 155 l'vfenstruation, 221 Mercado, Manuel, 43 Merchants. See Stores "Mermaid of the Sea, The," 308 Methodology: community selection method. 17-20; com· munity study method, 16-17 ; concept of class g ro u p ings, 135-36; concept o f culture, 5-6; field studies, 17-26; formu lation of hypotheses of cross-cultural regularities, 503-06; levels of sociocultural organization, 6-8; in Cafiamelar study, 3 18-20; in Nocon'1 study, 268-69; in prominent fam ilies study, 420-23; in San Jose study, 172-75; in T abara study, 94-97, 14 1; o f cultura l scien tists a nd n ovelists, 21 22; preliminary sllldies of Pue rto Rican culture, 17; research obj ecti\'es. 1-3. See also Questionnaires Meyerhoff, Howa rd A., 176 Middle class: in Cafiamelar, 392-93: in Nocora, 290-9 1; in San Jose, 20:1. 225-27, 259-6 1, 263; in T abara, 136, 137, 152-56 Midwives, 219, 382; as co-parents, 294, 387 M ig rant workers, 227-28. 231 , 357-58. 375 Migration : and ritual kinship, 391; fro m San Jose, 227-28, 231; in Cai1amclar. 357, 375. See also Em igration M ilitary installa tions, 63, 107 M ills, C. W right, 4n Minimum Wage Board, 398, 400 M inor crops: cred it for, 73-74, 75, 12111; crops considered as minor crops, 74 , 193n; good roads essential fo r transporta· tion of, 165; in Cailamclar, 372, :315 ; in San Jose, 188, 200201; in Tabara. 99, 100, 112, 119-20, 121, 123; marketing of, 119-20, 123; production in nineteenth cen tury, 56; role in present economy, 73-74; truckers, 137, 138-39 Minor crop mun icipality. See Tabara Miyares y Gonzales, Fernando, 35 Money: coffee as m edium of exch ange, 120; in crease of importance and role in class structure, 138; in eighteenth cen-

tury, 49; in nineteenth centuq•, 56; token money in C :111:tmc:lar, 370 :\Iorales l\foiioz, G. E., 332-33 l\foralcs-Otero, P., 74, 85n, 86n, 87 n , 376 l\Iotion pictures: aucnda11ce b y prominent families' children , .153; in Ca1-1amclar, .100; in i'\ocod, 3og: in San Jose, 239; in Talrnra, 13.1. ,182; p assio n play film. 106 :\fountains, 10 1, 320: create special prol>Ic.:n1s for farmers, 183 J\fo urning : in rural lower class, 150; i11 pro111ine 11t families, 1151 number of, 82, 3 1G. Sec also Barrio ~; C:1 r·r:1111t' L1r: 1'\o<c>r:i: San Jose; Tabara l\fuii oz-l\farin, Lu i ~: .\ C'< it°111 So< i: d ln dt'pc11clcmi,1a. 80: ad_\fuiioz-Marin, Lui': :\< < i1"11 Srn ia l I m kp t'11dn11i., ta. 80; :1tlYOG1 tcs inclustrializ:ll ion. 7li: ;tel \">< ;11 c' s1r;1 igltt p:irry ti cket, 39·1· 1105; a nd tlw jilJ1110. 1;, r·:"1 :.?; :1ppl":tl w th e YOters, 83, 3~14 ••JO·I· .Joli: a11i111clc L0\\';1rcl politic d i11clcpendcnce, 3!Jtl : ra111pa ig11 111<.:tliods, 1 :.?:l· :.?li . ::q8. :l•l::I· :i<17: influence in \ \la,ltingwn. 8 1; lcadcr,lt ip :ilii li 1y, 8:1: 11c\\·~­ paper a ffili at ion, 303: 0 11 ,t;1u.:ltoocl. 10:;; support. i11 San Josc, 2 1 2-1 3. Sei: 11 lso l'npu l;1 r I kmocra tic pa rt y J\Iurray, Henry:\., 12n Music: bo111ba, 1105-oll; fo lk musil', :.? "I· ;i 1 1; i11f1111· 11 1·e o f radio, 302; jukeboxes, 3 10; /Hirra11r/11s. 13.j. :11 r, .10G; preference for Latin American music, ,153. ·155; sere n ades, 44 3. Se e also Songs and si ng ing l\fusical instruments: dru ms, 405 ; gourds, 199; g uita r playe r, illustration, 486 National character: concept of, 12-13; techniques fo r determining, 13- 14 Natio nal characteristics: and child r ear ing, 12; and individual insecurity, 488; and subcultural differences, ,189-91; and va lues a nd practices of industrial society, 487-88; arising from cultural heritage, 11- 12; arising from mass media of commu nications, 12; influe n ce of natio n al insti· tu t ions, 11, 487; summary of Puerto Rican national ch aracteristics, 4 86-91; th e Span ish heritage, 186-87, 49 1 Nation al cultural pauerns: and cultural achievements, 9; and national institution s, 9; and subcultures. 7-9; and the upper class, 10; community manifestations of, 8-9 Nationalism: a nd d em ocracy, 84; cultural nationalism, 499· 501; political nationalism, 50 1-02; the jibaro as a symbol of, 498. See also Indepc1idence movement N atio nalist party: A lbizu, 247; and m ilitary service, 12511; an ti-American violen ce, So; in San .Jose, 246 Nationality: a nd social structure changes, 497-98 ; d evelop· ment of national consciousness, 493 Navaho Indians: witchcraft, 89 Navarrete, Agustin, 43, '14 Needlework: foreign support of, 107; illu stratio n, 71; increased after American O ccupation, 62; in Nocor{1, 292, 29.1; person s employed and exports, 76 Negroes: and witch cra(t, 88; as term o f d irect add ress, 164; fear of Negroes, 227; free Negroes in nineteenth-century labor forre, 58; inter-racial marriages, 152, 155, 258; predominantly Negro comm unities, 20; proportion of popula· tion in nineteenth cen tury, 51; Protestant affiliation , 244; rosnrios, 407-08; segregation in U .S. army, 139. Se e also Racial attitudes; Slavery Neighbor: ideal image, 208 New D eal: social legislation, 81 Newspapers: in Caiiam elar , 405; in Nocod, 302, 303; in Tabara, 132, 100, 482; read by prominent fam il ies, 433; the island's main newspap e rs, 302, 303, 405 New Year's Day, 405 New York City : Puerto Rican popula tion, 1n. 76

INDEX

Nicboer. H. ] ., 33 1 333 Nie\'es Ri,·era, Carlos, Sg Nocor:i: and the American O ccupation. 275·76; auiLUdcs wwarcl sex. 29:?·9;3 : attilllcles toward the law, 29!)·300, .iS3S.1; barrios of. 27:.i-;;1 : basis o( selection for stud y, 18, 25:?ti, 2G5. 268; children. 29 1·9:?; class structure, 289-91 , 1171; corporate land and mill ( 1910-30). 27!.i-78; comtship. 293; cduca1ion and schoo ls. :?7:.i. :?go. 30:?·0;;. 481; family life, :?!JI ·!l·I· 8 1;\. ·I 7·1: Ii est as. :10.1. :Po: geographical characteri... t i< ~ of. :?(iti. :?/o: gho'h a 11d apparitions. ;307: go\'ern1m·1n. :?!l:"i·9li: hacit'11d:1 .... :?/:1·/;1• 28!1: health, .182-83; his· wn of. :!/:;·78: ho11 ... i11g. :!/"· :?87-88: inheritance, 29.1: J;ihor l'X< hang-e. ·I i ·I: la11do\\' nlT~ org-:111ized attacks o n Sp:111i:mk /!): l:111d 1c11111't' . .170: loucry. :?81i : mak-Ccmale n· 1: 11i o11~h i ps. :?!l:I· :?!l I· :11 :i: 111a p. :.?Ci;: marriage practices, :?!l:l·!H· .J;;1 : mt·dit i1H' and h t'a lth St'n ·ices. 1182-83; nll'thndolog-y of '.\:01 or:i ~ 111 dy. :?ti8-li!1: n e\\·spapers, 302, :io:i: politic a I ac 1i\'il ivs. :?!lti·!li. :?!l!I· ·I 79-Sn; p opul:ttion, :.!;,: l"'"'cr su·11ctun·. ·I/!! . .17 :1: rac i:il :1t1iwdes. 291; radios, :?88. :;o:.!-<>:i· .J8::?: 1T<Tt·:11io11. :108-11. 8 1:\: relig io n. 303-06. :I' :I· ·I78· i!l: rt'sea rch prohlt'll1s. :?Ii :1·67: re ta ii business, :?8:;-8.1 : ri wa I k i n'h i J>· !!!J J·!1,-, . :i 1:1: Sl' l l km e m patterns, :! 70. 7:?: ~or ia I ~l ru< 111 rl.'. :?l{!l'!l 1: ~oc iolog i c 1 I !>egmen tation, ·Ii 1-7:?; standard of Ji,·ing. :!87·8!): subsidiary economic activities. 28.1 -8;; sugar mill. 28:.?·83: summary and con· cl us ions. !P 1- 13: summary o f marketing an cl consumer patterns ..169: summary of producti\'e patterns, .167 . .168-69; witchcraft. 89. 308, .Ji8. Sec also Land .-\uthority: Proportional-prolit farms; Sugar production No,·clist: p urposes and methods of. 21 -:.?2 Obrcros Uniclos de Loiza. 78 Officers' Club, 457 Oki age: attitudes toward, :.i:.i3: care of aged. 21 8- 19 O ' Reilly, Alcxaudro, 3:;· •15· 19· ;334 Organic .-\ct, 70, 79, So, 82 Oric nte. See Ca1iamelar Ormachea, Dari<'> de, 50. 53 Ortiz, Fernando, JEiO, 41411, 415 Ots Capckqui, Jose l\.fari;i, 10 Ownership. Sec Land ownership Owner-worker re lationship: •lltitudes tm,·arcl the managers of the land-and-facto ry combine. 349. 369: culwral ideals of employers and workers. 115. :?35-36: effens o( resettlen1e nt program, 250: in coffee area, 19.1·95, 228, 235-36; i1~ tobacco areas, 11 5. 165. 167-68; o n sugar h aciendas, 275, 3116; riwal kinship, 11 ,1. 235. :?30. 275. :?76, !?if. 295, 429 Oxen: in sugar harvesting. :.?82, f~53 n: illustrat ion. 283 Packard , \IV. L.. 31 2 Padrino. 114. 429 Pare nt-Teachers' Association , 302 Parrnndas. 134, 3 11, 406 Parsons, Talcott, 388n. '1·1711 P artido Estadista Puertorrique iio. 123-26 Pasl'o, 1 !? • l 3·1 P atrilinea l families, 15.111 , •17·1 Patrilocality, 1511n Patron Saint's Day, 30-:1, .1 05 Pattie . Richard, 425 P easantry: rnltural d e finition , 202, 203; in San J ose. 20.1-z5, 2!.i4 P eddlers, 121 , 189. 2 1 1· 3·1!'). 37 1 Pedreira. Antonio S., 4 iGn, ·194· ·19G. 499 P elze r. Karl J., 179 P e ntecostal Church: appeal to rural workers. 303 ..108-09.

535

nG ; features o f the sen ·ice, .109; class character of, 87, 88;

in Ca1iamclar..108·09: in Nocor:i, 30_1·05: in San Josl:. 2H; in Tabara, 128: m o ral code. 365. 3GG. -!1 :> Perea, Juan A., and Sa!Yador, ·13 Pereda, Cleme nte, 172 Perez, J\Iannel A., SGn Perez de la Riva, Francisco, 19.p1 Perez J\Ioris, Jose, 59. Go P erlo{f, Harvey S., 18, 32, 38, 40, 6.1. 66, 69, 72, 73, 76, 78, So, 107, 12211, 226, 3 1:.? , 354. 402 P ersonality in culture. See Cultural personality P etrullo, Vincen zo A ...190 Pezuela, Juan d e la. 57. 335 Pfandl , L., ·13· +1 Pico, Rafael. 63. 73. /6n. 101, 184 , 266, 3.10 Pig-killer. 2 11. 227 Pigs: in Ca1-1a111e lar. 36 1 Pineapple, 7·1· 10G, 138. 278 Plantation: meaning of. 3:.?:?11, 32311. Sec also Hacienda, coffee; Hacie nda. suga r Pla)'a, 25 Poblado, z5. 97. 32.1 Police, 157, 251 ; Guardia Civil. 5 1, 58 Political inde p cndc n cc. Sec Independence mo ,·eme nt P olitical panics: comparati\'C analysis of the four regional subcultures, .185: emphasis on ideologies and party plat· forms, .1-18, .160; first appearance of, 59; Libera l-R eformist party, 297. 298: loya lties d e te nnined by loca l factors, S:r Nationalist party. So, 12511, z.i6, :?-17: R cpublic:rn-State· hood party. So. 8 1. .120; strength in leadership. 83; Tri· panite Coalition. 82. Sa also Elections; lndependentist party: Politics; Popular D emocratic pan,·: Socialist nanv P o litics: effect of rcseulement program 0 1; . z51: in Cai1;;. melar. 350. 39.1·99 . .17!): in 1\ocor:i. 296-99 . .179-80: in San Jose. z12·1 :~ · 226. 2-1:;-51. 261: in Tabara. 12 ;)·26. 1 5 1. 5z, 1Go . .180-8 1: labo r union participatio n in. 83-8.1. 298· 99· 397·9!1· .180: leade rship pattern. 296-97 . ·l·J7·-t8; o( promin ent C..milics. -12!). .1-16-48 . .J59-60; Spanish and antiSpan ish fa ctions. 2.16-.17 ; summa ry and comparison of the four reg ions. 479-81: \\'Omen in politics. .J.18-49. See also E lections: Politiral parties Popular De mocratic party: and industrializa tion , 76; and mech<1nization. 399 : and statehood, 2.17: <1nd teaching of Spanish. 301: and the G e n eral F ederation o f ' \Torkers, 397; and the jibaro. 15 1·52 . -198; campaig n songs. 246, 2-!7; elect io11 of 194.J. 8 1; elect ion of 1948, 82, !!g8: land reforms. 81. 203, 350-5 1: n ewspaper. 303. 105: platform of 19.iS. 297-98; radio programs. 40.1·05; support in Caiiamelar, 350, 394; support in Noconi, 278, -172; support in San Jose, 246-47. 26 1, 472 . .180; support in Tabar:1. 109. 160. -J/2, 180-81: support o f prom inent families, -1;10. ·1·J6. 459-60; women in important positions. ·1'19· Sec al.10 :'If ui'ioz-M arin, Luis Population: :iborig inal populaLion. 35 : gro\\'th in t\\·enticth century. 64; Pue rto Rico (1493- 1700). 3.1·:1li: Pue rto Rico ( 1700- 18 15). 1J5·.16: Puerto Rico ( 1815-98). 5 1: San Juan. 63 . 420; white population during the sixt ccnth century, 36 Power, D o n R am<'m. 332 . 492, -t9G Power struct ure : comparison of the four regions. -1/2. ·173 Poya l. Sr' c Ca1iamclar Prado Junior, Caio . 19/ Pregnnncy: a ttiwdes toward , ::? 19, 29 1: care in prominent families, 435; delivery practices, 219: in Tabara, 145 : premarital , 222: sex ual int<'rrourse during. :.? 1!l· S1•r• also Birth Prest ige : and chun:h rites and attendance. 4:; 1: and church weddings. 222: and education. 21~1. 302: and mate rial possessio ns. 218. 2.10: a nd radio own er~hip . .JO.J: and stor e·

536

T HE PEOPLE OF l'UERTO RICO

Prestige (con tinued) bought goods, 240; and thrift and spending practices, 208, 2 14; and use of the English language, 169; recreation as an index of, 452, 453; symbols of social status, 203, 259-60 Priests, 127, 243 PriYies, 109, 153, 157, 158, 288, 373 Production Cred it Administration, 74, 11 8 Productive patterns: and sub-cultu ral characteristics, 23 Profit sh aring. See Proportio nal-profit farms Promesas, 126, 149 Prominent fam ilies: American behavior pa tterns, ;po; and national cultural patterns, 10; atti tudes toward America n r esidents, 4 25; attitudes to\\'ard sex and marriage, .14 1·42; attitudes to"·arcl nouveaux riches, ,p ,1; attitudes toward so· cial deviants, 426; automobiles, 433; basis for prescm study of, 2, 19-20, 418-ig; basis of selection, 26; children, 43:>-37• 444·45, 453-54, 460-6 1; club me mbership, 457; cross-community influences, 4 19-20; defin ing the gro u p, 422-23; d ivorce, 445; education, 426, 438; fact<>rs determining so· cial status of, 423; family, .140-46, 459; h ealth, 432; Hispan ic traditions, 44 1; houses, 432; incomes, ,123-24; in· fluences on other subculrnral grou ps, 458; inheritance patterns, 43 1, 434; in other Latin-American countries, 4 19; inte rnational uppe r-class cu lture, 10; investments, _<J.34.; L atin-Am erican characteristics, 11; male-female relationships, 445·46; marriage. 442-44; occupa tions, 42.1; participatio n in fiesta s, 45 1; political activities, 429, 446-4 8, 459-Go; racial attitudes, 424-25, 442; readi ng materials, 433; recreational patterns, 452-57, 460; relationshi p to n ational institutions, 458; religion, 426, 449-52, 460; residence locations, 420; ritual kinshi p, 445: schools, 438·40; servants, 433; social behavior patterns, 425-26; stan dard o ( living. 432-34; summary and conclusions, 457-62 ; techniques used in study, 420-22; travel, 433-34; weddi ngs, 456; women in politics, 448·49. See also Business execu tives; Upper class .Proportional-profit farms: adm inistration of, 279; attitudes of workers, 279, 312 ; benefits tO workers, 5 11; characteristics of, 51 o; creation of, 70-7 1; credit fo r, 279; dead season, 284-85, 312; distribution of farms, 266; employment problems, 279, 280, 3 12: farming methods, 280-82; labor unions, 280, 283, 313, 480; marketing and consumer patterns, 283, 469; productive patterns, 467, 468-69 : profit· sharing, 162n; status of the managerial h ierarchy, 47 1; sugar mill, 282-83 ; su mmary of effect on Noconi, 469; wages, 280. See also Land A uthority; Land law; Nocora Prostitutes, 134, 292, 38on P rotestantism: and Spiritua lism, 88; appeal of, 84; Catholics prevented entran ce of Protestants, 44; emphasis on the importance of the individual. 87 ; establishment of first church es, 449; ethics of, 60-6 1; fin ancial support, 87; gained strength after the American Occupation, 276; in Cal'iamelar, 408-09; in San J ose, 239, 244, 26 1; in Tabara, 127, 478-79; in the nine teenth century, 60; membership, 60, 87, 244, 426; mission zones, 87; Negro affiliation, 497. See also Baptist Church; Defenders of th e Faith; Disciples of Christ; Mennonites; Pentecostal Church ; Seven D ay Adventists Puerto Rican Reconstruction Admi nistra tio n , 1 18, 180 Puerto Rico: area, 108; climate, 352; general characteristics, 3-4; history compared to the rest of the Antilles, 314-1 5. Sec also Cultural history Puerto Rico, University of. 17, 248, 309, 420, 426. 440

Questionnaires: purpose of, 22-23; used at end of p resent research , 5 13- 11 : used in prominent fam ilies study, 26, 42 1-22; use of in Caiiamelar, 25; use of in Nocodt, 26;

use of in San Jose, 24, 173, 17.1; use of in Tabara, 25, 95· 96 QuiLo. See Tabara Racia l attitudes: and the ideal of whiteness, ·I• 1-12; class character of. .11 0, .111; color and social sLatus. 291 ; com· parative analysis of the four regio nal subcultures, ,185; descriptive racial phrases. ,110; effect of American d iscriminaLion. 50 1: efl'en o f enforced labor legislatio n , .10910; fea r of l'\cgroe~, 22j: i11 Cai1a11H:br. :i JI), :>-18. ;1li8. :i~F· ,111 -12: in l'\ocor:i. :.19 1: i11 San .Jose. !!:">8: in Tabara. • :">!!. 156, 16.j; in tcrmarri;1gc. :.? ;,8. :{- l~t .111: i11 the p rrn11i11c11t families, ,pq-25, ·l·P; i11 1h e l ' 11ited State-. ;tnny . 1:{!): problem of ran; under Spa i11. ·I !Jli ·<J°/: :\ eg rnc-. IJ;11111 cd I Will cl ub, 132 Radcli1Te-J3rown , A . R .. 318 Radios: and prestige. ·l''-1: ba ~e ball 1J ro:1dc :1.-.h. 1:12. 302. '.lo g. 40.1; ed ucational ,·;due . 1;) 2: i11 C:a1ia 111c lar. :ri:I· :li·I· ;17:,. 404 ·0!), 482; i11u-casi11g w.c o f. .18.1 : in :\ocor:i. :.?88. :10203, 482; in San .Jo~c . 21.1. 2:>8: in T al>ara, •:12 . 10!.i, .18:t; programs. 302, .10.1: rad io stations. ;10:! Railroads: in l'\ocor<i. 2f!!; me in ~ugar h arw·;,t i11g. 277 . 28:.?. 327 Rainfall. 101 , 176, 270: idea l a11101111t for <ollec prod u nion, 179. 183; on south coast, map. 323, 325 Ramirez d e Arellano, Rafael. 332, 495 Ratooning, 280, 334. 356 Real Ch/11/a , 334 R eciprocal arrange ments: and poliLical loyalties, 245; and regulation of law and order, ·239: between the you ng and the o ld , 218-19; buyers' groups, 228-29; hospitality exchange. 208; labor exch ange, 11i1·14. 207, 213, 218, 22.1, 390, 473, 475, 484; with the fam il y saints, 215-16. See also Rit ual kinship Reconstruction Adm inistration, 248, 250 Recreation: as an index to presLige, 452, 453 ; in Caiiamelar, 382. 405-06: in Nocod, 308- 11, 3 13; in Sa n J os(:, 213· q, 484; in Tabara, 103, 132 -35: 148-49, 155, 157, 159, 484, 486; of prominent families, .152-57, ,160; stores are cen ter of, 133. 24 1; summary and comparison of recreational patterns in the fou r areas, 484, 486; the fJa seo, 134. See also Baseball ; Clubs; Dancing: F iestas; Gambling; Motion pictures: Radios; Songs and sing ing; Visiting Redfield, Robert, 6, 96n, 129, 164n, 26:1, ,101, 472, 476, 508 R efaccionista, 72, 118, 123 Relie f administration, 81 Religion: African influences, 407 ; changes after American Occupation, 276; comparative ana lysis of the four r eg ional su bcultures, 475. 485; in Cailamelar, 406-09, 475· 76: in Noconi, 303-05, 3 13, 476-78; in p rom inent fami ly g ro up, 426, 449·52. 460: in San Jose, 214· 16, 242-45, 258, 261, 475: in Tabara, 100, 12G-28, 149-50, 155 . 159-60, 478· 79: in the sixteenth and seven teenth centuries, 42-44 ; in the ninetee nth century, 59-60; in the twentie th cen tur y, 84-88. See also CaLholic Church; Ghosts and ap p aritio ns; Magic; Protestantism; Spiritual ism ; \Vitchcraft R eligious societies. See Catholic Daughters of America; Catholic Sons; Catholic Youth Organization ; Daughters of .l'vfary; Holy Name Society; Kn ights o( Columbus R ematistns. See Labor recrui ters R emires de Estenoz, Don Felipe, 15 R epart imienlo, 7, 3 1, 35, .10-,p R epublica n p arty, 80, 81, 420 R esettlement program: effect on m igra tio n, 250; and ownerworker relationships, 250; political conseque nces of. 25 1 Resfu:to, 144. 146-17. 1118, 159. 292, 368, 386 Reta ii business. See Stores

l.:'\DEX

R euter. E. IL ·!!JO Rice: cultivation in Tabara. 1 1:3· I.!: in basic diet. -101 Ritual kinship: and husband and "·ifc relationship, -1-12; and law enforcement. 25::i-5;1: and lending of money, 39091: and migration. :l91 : and :.haring of large gains, ;,190; and socioeconomic mobility. di;;, 390·9 1; an intraclass arrangement. ;J!)o: com/Nuln:s de agua (water baptism), 220: 1·0111/1adres de /1i/a (church baptism), ::?::?O; confirmation ro·parcnts. ::?!? 1: different functions of. 1z: effect of migrat ion on. :!:!:!: dlcn 011 \\'agl':.. 228: four kinds of ro111j111tln'.1. :187: i11 C:11"i:t1m:lar . :18ti·!JI· -175; in Nocor:i. 29-!-95· :1 1:1: in pro111i11c11t l:m1ilil's. ·l·!i'1: in S:1n .J ose, 208-09, ::i28, :!:.?!I: in T:1b:1r:1. 1 1 I· 1:!Ii. 1:>0·:> 1. 1(iJ-G.1. -li5: in the e igh · llTnlh tL·nuar~. :11'\li-87: 111id"· in·~ bc.:come f'Omadres, 2 19; origin' of. :181i: O\\'llt'.l"\\'Orkl'r tO·p:tn:nts, 1 q. ::i35, ::i36. :!/;,. :!iii. 2/i· :!!J;1• !:!!J: n: la1io11 w emergence of a rural prnlt'Lariat. :\8!J·!J<>: re'J>l'tl for godpa rents. ;18G; summary :ind t·o 111pariso11 of the four reg ions. ·Ii i°>- .185; YOlu r!lary (l)·pan·11ts. W!l· :18li. :l8i·S8: \'aqui l11dian. ;390-9 1 Roatb. 1 Ii:;. 1 ii·iS. :.!i 1. :1:i;). :Pi Rohl'rt-. R. C .. i:!· 80. !)Ii. :I:! 1. :\:?:!. :1::i5 Rodrigm·1. .-\ .. .Jr.. ;"1 i . ·l!JSn Rodrigue~. San111cl J. .. :1i Roglcr. Charles C., 8G, 87 n. 12 i ll, 4 1:? Romney. R vdo. Gilberto, 85 Roose\'clt, Eleanor. +19 Roose\'elt. Franklin D., -H9 Rnq11c. :\ rturo. 171 -i::? Rosario. Charles, ;\ 17 R osario. Jose C .. 8:;i1 ..116n. 496 Rosario.I'. 126. q8·.t!l· 155. 160.::? Lt · t5. ·!Oi·08 Rosary of the Cross. 2 15 . .JO/ Rouse. lr\'ing. 3·1 Rowe. Leo S., 79 Rum: altitudes to\\'ard illegal l'lllll , 367; in Ca1iamelar. 366Gi: in Noconi, 287. ;;10 : in Sa n J ose, ::i11 , 251·5::i; in T abara. 163; rel:Hionship to sug:n production, 106

Sacred H ea r l, 127 Sacred Heart College, <140 Sailboats, 362 Saint Anthon y Day. !!O 1. 2 q Saint cu l.ts: ~ttitude. o( Ca~holic Church toward. 86; laxity in obliga uons brings misfortune, 218; practices of. 86; images, illustratio n, 477, 478: i11 the nineteenth century, Go; in Nocor:i, 305. ~113; in Sa n J ose, 214 -15; Spanish , ·l·I: sung de,·otions. ::? 1,1-1;;. 229 Sah·ador. See T abara SallCl : h au ling of as a subsidia r y acti,·ity. 2 86 San J ose: agricultural workers. 227-32; attitude toward law and ord er , 25 1-52, 483-84 : barrios, 172; b;isis for selection for study, 19, 24-25; children, 2 1.1 , 218-21, 257; courtship, ::i 22; credit for workers, 193, 195, ::?1 1-1 ::?, 230, ::!3i· ::i6::i; edu cation , ::? 13, 253-55, -181: festi\'a ls and holidays, 199· ::ioo, 21 11-15; folk theory of illness, 216-18; gambling, 2,13: geographical sketch o(,. 1is-78; hacien da. 190-95. 232·1n. 5 12 ; h ealth, 249, 482; hierarchy of ownership, 201-04; hist0rical development of t he coffee pauern, 187-98: houses. 178, 189, 193, 194. ::i29. 258; inheritance. 207. 223. ::i32: interfamilial relations, 473-7.1: land ownership. 201-0.1: fandowncrs organized attacks o n Spaniards, 79; land tenure, 1170; land use. ::?62; law and order, 2!) 1-53; livestock, 2 ::i 5 , 226, 234: loucry, 2l l, 22!). 252; malc-(enwle relation ships. 2::i3. 256-57, 2G 1; map of the municipality. 175; map o f the neighborhoods, 177: marketing. 209·1::?, :i39-42: marri ngc patterns, ::? 15. 221, 228. '47·1: medicine and health

537

ser\'iccs, .182: method of selection, 17::i, 175; mig-ration from. 22i·28, 231; minol' crops. 188. 200-::?01: municipal government. 238, :q8-50; mun icipal income. ::i48: O\\·nerworke1· relationships, 19.1·95. ::i28. 235-36: peasantry, ::?0-;{25. 2G.1: political organization and actiYities. ::? 12-13. 245· 50, 4 79: population and area. 172, 1i5: power structure, .172. ·1 7:~; recreat ional patterns. 213-14. 4.8.1: relations ,,·ith insular go,·ernment, 2-;!S: religion. ::? q-16. 2-! 2-.t[,. -1i5: resettlement program. ::i50-51; rise of cash crop production, 190-93: rise o[ the town. 19:;-gi: ritual kinship. 208-09. 2::i8. 229. -! j5: round of \\'Ork and ceremonial. 198-20 1: rural n e ighborh oods, 23i·39: sch ools, 2 ~;8; social structure. 20 125. 239. 25:)-6 1: sociocullltral segmentation . •170-71: socioeconomic groups, 2.1; soil types, 18.1: sp iritualism, 2.15. :i61; standards of liYing, 206. ::i::i4-::i5. 2::i9. 238; store, illustration ..170: subsidiary actiYities, ::i27: subsistence farms. 1Si90: sun1111ary and conclusions, ::i61 -G.1: summary of marketing and con sumer patterns. 469: sumniary o f p rod u ctiYe patterns. .1G6·6i; U.S. fedei-a l agencies. :?-;{8; witchcraft. 89. 21i-18. See also Coffee production San Juan: description of the city, .120; population, 46. See also Prominent families School Lunch Program, 130. 254. 30 1-02, 400. 403 Schools: attendance of children of prominent families, 438, 440: Baptise Academy. 130. 13 1; Catholic Academy, 130, 159· .181: curriculum. 130. 301. 439: discipline. 1130. 25.i; enrollment in insular schools, 402: in Ca11amelar. -!02; in Nocod. 271 , 272, 290, 301-02; in San Jose, ::i1 3, 238, 253-55; in Tabara. 129-32; pri\'ate schools, 130. 438-40; Puerto Rico High School of Commerce. 301; relationsh ips to other government sen·ices, 302: use of English language, 130. 131, ::?5'4· 301. .138; Yeternns in schools, 1::i9. 13::i. 253· 300-301. See also Education; T eachers Senior. Clarence, 4n Serenading, -143 Serra. Guillermo, 184 Ser\'ants: employed by p rominent fami lies. 433: child care, 159· 435. 1136; cria11za. 15 7: of upper class in Tabara, l 5i· 158 Se\'enth Day Adventists. Si Sex clifTerentiat ion: in ch ildren. 384-85 Sexu al relations: aberrations a n d masturbation. ::i9::i; after d1ildbirth , 145; and lack of pri\'acy. 384; attitudes tO\\'ard, I.Ji· 159. !? 19. !?::? 1, 223. ::igz-93. 3i8. -14 1-42: double standard, ·H 1-.1 :i; during pregnancy, 219; incest. 38.1; premarital relations. 222 Sharecroppers: acquisition of land l>y, 16 2; coffee sharecropping. 1 11. 122: in coffee region. 173. 194. 231. ::i34; in tobacco region, 108-09, 111. 112. 121. 122. 142. 162, 163; legislation con cern ing perennial plantings, 16::i ; legislation covering. 109; proportion of total Cann population, 18: social posit ion of. 136, 137 Shoshoni Indians: nuclear family. G Siegel. l\fo rris, 1811 Silva, A. l\ L, 4 16n Situndo, 4~\. 19 Slavery: abolition movement. 58. 49·1· .1.96·97; a nd Cath olic Church. 43, <18, 4.76; baptism of slaves. 387: Black Code, 58, 496: compulsory three-year contracts for ex-sla\'es, 333, 337; emancipation of slaves, 58: importance in early Caribbean history, 3 14-15; in a society with closed resources, 333-3.1; in the eighteenth century. 48: in the nin eteenth cemury, 57-58; in the seventeenth century. 41-tj::?: integration of Negroes in to Puerto Rican n ation a lity. 496-97; manumission of slaves. 118. 409-10, .19G: maniage of sla\'es, 376 : on sugar haciendas. 273·/.J. ~Hthl 1: sla\'e population (•ii7· 1787) . .16: sJa,·e rebellions . .J9:1·9·t: made illegal by

538

THE PEOPLE OF PUERTO RICO

Slavery (continued) Gr<:a t Britain and Spain, 33 1; technical training of sla\'es, 4 10; treatment of slaves, 48 Social classes: and increased importan ce of cash, i 38; and racial attitudes, ,po-11; based on land use. 168; concept of class groupings, 135-36; concept of res/Jeto, 1411-45; consequ en ce of clifftrential wealth, 1()1; in Ca1iamelar, 367-70, 391-9.J, 412, 47 1; in Nocon!, 289-91, 471; in San Jose, 201-25, 239, 255-61; in Tabara, 135-40, 161 , 166-67 ; in the e ighteenth century, 119; in the n inc:tccnth century, 60-61; in the sixteenth and seven teenth centuries, 41-t12; status and Catholicism, 2.J5: symbols of social status, 203. See also Agregado; jibaro; Lower classes; Middle classes; Upp<:r classes; Promine nt families Social esteem: meaning of, 428n Socialist pany: and labor unions, 278; and statehood, So; coaiition of 1948, 297, 298; coal ition with the R epublican party, 81, 278; support in t\ocod, 278 Socialization: meaning of, 434. See also Chi ldren Social mobility: and concubinage, 27.1; and education, 403, 48 1-8 2; and wealth, 136 ; in the hacienda system, 274-75; in th e prominent families group, 427; of middle-class businessmen. 431-32; teaching as a means of, 25.1; through arm y service and em igratio n, 352 Social science: interdisciplinary coverage, 3 Social Science Research Ce nte r, 17 Sociocultural segmentation: and national characteristics, 489-9 1; changes after American Occupation, 63; diffusion of traits in industrial society, 487; in Cafiamelar, 471-72; in Nocod, 471-72; in San Jose. 470-71; in Tabara, 1170; integration of segments into national entities. 8-9, 493-95; interaction among groups and between national institu· tions, 197-98; Negroes, 496; principal types of, 8; summary of the relationship of production patterns and land use to, 470-r!; tendency toward "horizontal" segments, 508 Socioeconomic mobility: and education, 164, 403, 481-82; and ritual kinsh ip. 163, 390-91; and trade unions, 164; in Cai'iamelar, 37 1-72; in Tabara, 152 Soil: in Nocod, 270; in San Jose, 184; in southern coastal region, 322; in Tabara, 101 Soil Conservation Service, 104, 248 Soltero Peralta, J. E., 75n Songs and singing : at velorios, ;305; bomba songs, ,106; improvised song-poems, 40G; in Protestant Churches, 2,14; love song, 222; parrandas, 134, 31 1, 406; Popular Democratic party songs, 246, 247; singing at work, 207; sung devotions, 214-15, 229; Three Kings' Day song. 199. See also Music Sororities. 437, 455, 457 Spanish-American \11/ar, 78. See also American Occupation Spanish Civil v\lar: support of. 246 Spanish colonia l system : Cddula de Gracias, 48, 50, 51, 57. 335, 492, 493, 496: g-rantecl charter for autonomous government. 78; land te nure, 331; plantation system, 329-34; Real Chlula, 33,1; representation in govern ing council, 332; restrictions on non-Catholics, 449; royal subsidy to agriculturists, 343; support of class-structured society, 79; taxes and tariffs, 337 ; vagran cy laws and forced labor, 332-34 . See also Cultural history (1 ,193-1700), (1700-1815), ( 18 15-1898); Slavery Span ish culture patterns. 7. 11 -12, 256, 486-87: cu ltural stereotype o f "Span iard ," 192; effect on present culture, 169; extent in subcu ltures, 17; in cu ltural and recrea tiona l activities, 453, 461 Spanish language: symbol of nationalism, 169, 500 Spicer. Edward, 390-91 Spiritism: m eaning of. 152

Spirituali!.111 : and J>ro testamism, 88; Catholic position on, 88, 127; d efinition of. 88, 452; in San Jose, 245. 261; in Tabara , 128, 150; upper class auracted to. Go, 2.15 Spons: inte rest of boys of prominem famili es, ·153· See also Baseball; Volleyball Standard of li\'i11g: and hosp italiLy needs. 208: in Ca1iamclar, 37 2-75; in Nornr:i. 287-S!i: in San .Jose. 206, 221p5. 229, 238; in Tabara. 1.12. l53·:J·I· 1~,7. 158; of prominent families, 1132-3,1; of \rnrkers 011 ~ug:1r harienc!:is. !1·15· Sn· also Clothing; Dic:t; Furnitun:: I !om<:~ State: as a le\'cl o( i11t('grat io11. Ii Statehood: an issue in the: l!J·J8dee1ion. 1:t ;i·:di: positi1m of Popular Demo< rati< p;1r1y. '2 .li· S1·1· 111.111 lnd cpc11clcncc mO\'Cment Statehood pany: i11 1CJ.J8 l'k< tio11. 2!Ji· ·1·18 Slat<: Security Board: an icll'llt co111pcnsa1io11. :t8:;; sa fe ty regulaLions. 282 Sterilization. 159, 2~i 3 . 21).!. ;18 1 Stor<:s: as a social ce nter. 1:1;1. '2.1 1; as a s tep LOward land acquisition. 117: hacienda stnn". l!J:l· 2;;5. ~qo, :t75; importan ce of re tai l stores in sot11hc:r11 region. 3'2 ·1; in C:ai1amclar, 328, 370. 37 1. 3!J'2 : i11 i'\mor;\. '27'i · '28;1·t>.1. '288: in San J ose, 196,211 ,2.10 . .Jio: inTab:tr;1, H>:1.117. 119. 12021 , 156; Land Authority co-operatives, 283-811; social status of storekeeper, 121-22. 137. 24 1, 368. See also Peddlers Storytel ling. 31 1 Strikes: and credit arrangements, 370, 398; attitudes of workers, 398-99; difficulties of strikes in sugar cane industry, 399; in Caiiamelar, 397. 398·99: in Nocor:i, 277; in sugar industry during \'\Torlcl vVar 1, 350 Subcultures: comparative ana lysis of the four regional subcultures. 1J85; definition, 2: in the Uniled States, 7-8; in Pue rto Rico, 7; methods and techn iques of research on, 20-22 Subsidiary economic activities: attitude of the corporate employers toward, 355; comparative analysis of the four regional subcultu res, 485; in Caiiamclar, 355, 360-67; in Nocor;i, 28.1 -87; in San Jose. 227; in T abara, 115-16, 163. See also Crab catching; Fishing; Gambling; Gather ing; Livestock; Lottery, illegal; Rum Subsistence farms: economic basis of, 508; in Nocod, 285; in San Jose, 187-90, 202, 2fi2; in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. 8 Sugar cane: drawbacks tO cane cutting jobs, 358; harvesting of, 281-82, 355-59; illustrations, 3. 269; irrigation, 324, 34 1, 342, 343, 347, 359, ;ifi9; machin ery used in cultivation and harvesting, 280, 335-36, 354. 359; p lanting and cultivation techniques, 280-81, 355-56, 359; transportation of, 358; yield per acre, 322. See also Sugar industry Sugar centra les: and the colo11os arrangement, 69, 338-39; comparative sugar mill output. 353; cost of grinding machines, 470; costs reduced by, 277; early sugar mills, 53. 70, 329n: effect on production patterns, 67-68; extent of operations. 70; in Cafiamelar, 322, 312, 3'! ·1· ;315; in Nocon.\., 276-77, 282-83; introduction of the system, 54, 337-38; Jamaica Lrain, 335, 3;16; length of grind ing p e riod, ;)54; net income, 77; persons employed, 7G; seasonal work patterns, 353-54 Sugar corporation, 276-78 Sugar industry: acreage and yield (1815-98), 52-53; American enterprises, 69, 107, 227, 3 15, 318; basic needs for competitive production, 4 14-15; capital investment (1909-19). 339; cred it for, 53-5.J. 74. 279; costs of production, 277, 279; dead season, 163; in the d epression of 1929, 278; effect of American Occupation on, 54, 69-70, 197 , 276, 318, 32 1, 322, 338-40; em phasis on lower acre production costs, ;i54; evils accompanying the expansion of cultivation, 70;

Ir-\DEX

history of the industry, 37-38. 47. 5:?·5·1· 33.1·.10: labor force, 32.1, :l33·1M· 3·1 ·1· 1185: large farm units most economical, 1!? :? : o wner-worker rclationsh i p s. 165: prod uetion per acre, 32:!: quotas. G9. 70, 355 : reason fo r sh ift to corporate landand-fa ctory combin e. 3 15-1 6; role in Puerto Rican econ· om y. 18 : seasonal work patterns. 352-5.1: south coast sugar wnc.:, map, 32~l; strikes, 397. :rn8-99: subsidy bene fi ts, 1oG; u.:drnological illlJffOYcmcnts. :1:1:;-:3G: types of production. 18: ,,·ages of canc.:loadcrs, :15!1· Sci· also Hacienda. sugar; I .a ml-a nd-fal wry l nmhin e~: Sugai· cane: Sugar centrnlcs S11g-:1r 111u11icip:tlitil',. Sec C::1l1:11nl'l ar: l'ocor:i S11111 111:1rv :i nd «>n< lt1,io 11 ~-: nm1par:1tin: :111aly:.is of regional s11li1111.LUrcs. ·tfi;1-8;1 : o f rnfkt· :t!T:t -;ll!cl y. !?Ot·li.(; of land:tlld-fal wry (0111i>i11c s111dy. ·I' :1· 1;: of proportional-profit 'Ilg.tr farm ~tud y. :11 •·•:1: of tohano :m.::1 •mtdy. 89 S111H·1org:t11ic lonlt'(>l of. li S11.,fo.1. :l<>i T:ih:1ra : :1cq11i,i1 io n of land. 1 • i: barrios and n c.: i~hborhoocl s, !Ii· 1111: ));i,i, and method for 'l'ltTtion of. 18, 25. 9.1-97: c:"i n o. 111.1. 11 <i. 1:1:?. 1:1!). 48li: c:1ttk. 11 :3: census a nd econo111i1 :.1:1ti-;ti1,, !18-w1: d1ildn·n. '-! ~>'·Ii· 15.1·;,5. 159; cofTee prod111 Lion . 1 1:1: tounship. 1.1 :1 . 1;,.1. • ;,~): creel it for \\'ork· er.-;, 1 t!{-19. 1;;li; clt.:ad season. 109. I.I 1: d ie t. 1.p, 153. 15i: education. 100. 10.1. 105, 1.12·.1;1. 15.1. 16.1.. 181-82; employment of upper clnsscs. q 1-.p. 153. 156. 157-58: family. Lt '.I· 48, 154. 158·5!}: farms. 11 7. 122: fi cstns and holidays. 126. 1;13 . 150. 159-Go: gambling. 132. •!3;1. 135. 1G:?·6;r geographica l features. 101; g hosts and apparitions, 128-29. 15;; . :1<>7 : government, 105: health , 128_. 15 1, 155-56. 1Go . ..i8;i: histori· cal background, 97- 101; hosp ital. 1:?3: houses. q2. 153. ' !ii· 1;;8; inheritance pattern. 116. t :!2; interfamilial r elations. 47,i: labor force, 110-11. 121 : labor unions. 10.1: land tenure, 116-18. 12 1-n . 469: Janel use and pote ntial use, 108-q: livestock, 11 3, 1 ;3~1 - 156·57. 158 ; louery. 11(i, 163; magic, 1611; malc-(cmalc relationships in m iddle class. q 3·.:1-1. q74s. 155; marketing and consumer patterns. 469; marriage . 1511, 159. 1G5-G6. ·17'i: med icine and he alth scrYices. 48;r mino r crop procl11Clion. 99, 1oo. 1 1!!, 1 18- 19. 121: m ovies, 13,1; m u n icipa l governme nt. 105. t 23. t ;17: newspapers, 132; ownership. 14:?, 152-53. l !J i· 158; own er-worker r elatio nships. 115. 1G5. 167-68: /)(/s<:o. 1!!. 13·1: po litical acti\'· ity. 123-26. 151·52. 160. 180-81: po\\'er structure . .172. 473: racial distinctions. 1G.1; radios and n ewspapers, 132. 166. 182; recreation, 103 . 132-35, 1,18-.19, i55, 157, 159, 484, 486; relntion between the crop and th e loca l cu lt u re, 16 1-68; relationship to insular government, 105: re ligion , 100, 126-28. 1.19-50, 155. 159-60. 478-i9: rice cultivation. 113-14: ritunl kinship. 1 '4. 126, 150-5 1. 163-6.1. 4 75: rural culture, 1110-61 ; schools. 101, 129-32; settlement p attern. 101 -03; sharecropping. 108-09, 110-11 , 121; sla\'cry. 1q; social structu re, 13!)·11u. 16 1, 166-67; socio cul tu ra 1 scgm en ta t ion, .170; socioeconomic mob ility, 15:?: standard of living, 14 2. 153-54. 157, 1r18: stores, 1o;i, 11 7. 119. 120-2 1, 156; subsid· iary economic acti\"ities, 11 5-1Ci, 163: sugar cane. 121; summnry and conclusions of study, 168-70; summary of produnive patte rns . .166-67; su mmary of rura l su bcultures, 160-6 1; trnckers. t ;iS-39; uppe r-class cul tu re, t 56-Go; veterans, 139 : witchrra(t. 129. 155. 1G.1 . Sa also Cash -anclsubsistence crop farm: T obncco production T aft-Hartley Law. ~198 Tanne nbaum. Frank. 58 Tapia y RiYera. Alejandro, ;i5~1, !~ 7· 38, - I~· 118 . Taxes: cattle tax, 3.18: exempt ion to n e w 1ndustncs. 70. 'I:\': imposed b y insular gO\·ernme nt, 83; income tax, 105; in Nocora. 29Ci; 011 rum . 106; poll tax. 58. 196: slaughter tax, 25 1; Tahara loc:i l business tax. 105. 12 3

539

Taxi clri\'Crs: an outgrowth of the war. 13!): in Cniiamelar, :rn2: in Nocod. :?!JO: in San J ose. 239; i11 Tabara, 119, 137, 139; political actidtics. 12.1. 139. 396: use of cabs by prominent famili es. -133 Taxonomy: basis or Puerto Rican taxo nomy, 504-05 Teachers: appointment or. 300; in Baptist Academy, 13 1; in Ca tholic :\ cadcmy, 1!I1 ; in Nocor:i, ;;oo; in San Jose, 254; in Tabara. 129-30. 138: prestige o L 130; social attitudes of, 403-04 Teas: as 1111.:dicine. .100 T e mperawrc. 176. 270; ideal for cofTee production. 179. 183 Thompson . Edgar T .. ~330- 333. ·1' 5 Three Kings' Day. 12G. 13.1, 19.1. 1~Hl· 209. 2q. 30.1. 305. 3 10, 352 . .18.1 Thrift: attitudes toward. 208. 2 q Tipan. See Nocori Tithe payments. ·19 Tobacco culti,·ation: drainage affects qual ity of cro p, 10 1; ill ustratio ns. 111. 11:.?: me thods, 11 0- 12 Tobacco industry: acl\'antagc of wage-labo r techn ique. 111; ach·ant:lges as a crop fo r small fam1 s. 122n, 162, 187, 204; ach-antagcs to workers. 72; classification complaints, 123; costs of production, t 1911: credit for growers, 7:1, 118-19, 123: dead season , 163: early restrictions on use and sale of tobacco. I 10; effect o r .-\merican O ccupation on, 55, 71-72; cofTee-a rea peasants pro duce tobacco. 204: in fi(tcenth and sixteenth centuries. :)8, 39. 55: in an Jose. 19811. 204, 231, 23.1; labor force . 11 0- 11. 1:?1 , 485: marke ting. 119. 120, 123; net incom e. ii : owne rs li\'e on farms, 15 711; p e rsons employed. 7G: production q u otas, • 21, 205. 242; return p er acre. 16211: sharecropping. 111 , 122: since American O ccupation. ii·/!?. 99-101 Tobacco i\[arketing Association: basis fo r ~oYe rnmc nt support. 2.12: cr edit extensio n. 72. 7.1, 118, 210, 234; in T abara, 11o, 1 18, 119; pledged to buy quotas, t 23: seulement of accounts, 119 Tobacco municipality. See Tabara Toilet training, q5, 292. 435 Trade. See Commerce: Stores Tra\'Cl: b y prominent fam ilies, 433- ~H Treaty of Par is, 78 Tribal cu lture : m eaning of. 5 Tripartite Coalition, 82 Truck ers. 137, 138-39 Tubercu losis. 15 1, 216, 217 T ugwell, Rexfo rd G .. 81 , 81n T urnbull. D., 57 Tydings <lnd King bills, So

Ukers. 'Villiam H ., 180. 18 1 U ncmploymc n t: technolog iral, 279, 280. 3 12; rotation of labor. :.?80. Sf'e also D ead season Unemployment insurance, 35·1 Unions. See Labor unio ns United States : Puerto Rican attitudes to\\'ard U.S. go\'ernment. 299: relation ship to the insula r goyernme nt, 83, 105. 248; su bcultures, 7-8: trade with Puer to R ico ( t 815-98). 52. Ser also American enterprises; American O ccupation Upper class: a nd sp iritua lism. 60. 2.~5: Catholic Church su pport ancl leadership. 85 : in C<t iiamcl<lr, 392. 471; in To. coni. -17 t: in San Jose. 203, 255·5i: in Tabarn, 136-37, 156Go. ,170: instab ility of. 255. 2:)7: in the eighteenth century, ·1D; in the nine teenth century. Go: o pposition to Spnnish colonia l syste m , 79. Sf'1' also Promin ent famili es Urb<tnizatio n: after .-\merican O ccupatio n. G3 C'st cd: use o f. 294

540

THE PEOPLE OF I'l.:ERTO RICO

Vagrancy laws: and commo n -law m a rriage, 60; and fo rced labor. 193, 33 2-3.1; work boo ks. 332 Yaks. Emilio, 179 Values: a nd financial obliga tio ns. 4 13; economic security, .112: dig nidad and the fulfillment of self concepl. 1;$0-31; importance of respect, .p2 ; in Caiiamclar, 412- 13: in Tabara. 152, 156, 160 Van l\J iddcldyk. R. :\ .. 3fJ, 4 1, 4 9, 52 Vasquez Calcerrada, Pa blo S.. 172 Vecinus. 37 Velorio. See ·w akes Venc.:r<:al disease, 216. 217 Verd iaks. Francisco. 78 Ve teran-;: attitude t0ward mnnual work, 290: attitudes toward the Un ited States, 82, 139; effect on labor force, 115; C. L Bill increases Pue rto Rican purchasing power. 105; in schools on G . l. Bill , 129, 132, 253. 300-30 1; poli tical acti\·i ties, 124, 139, 166, 396 ; relationsh ip w ith landowne rs, 115; social status, 137. 139, 260, 290, 393: value conflicts. .11 3 Ve tera ns· .-1.dministratio n , 248 Virgin of Canne l festiva l. 19.1. 201. 214-15 Vi5io ns. 307-08. See also Spiriwa lism Visiting : as recreatio n. 133-34, 155. 3 1 1. 382 -83, .106: patte rns in prominent famili es, '1-1 3 Volleybal l. 135. 309 Voting. See Franchise \.Vach, .J oachim. 44 \\'ages: advanta~es of wage-labor in coffee productio n , 1 1 1: comparative analysis o f the four r egional subculLUres. 185: o ( a rtisans, 140; of coffee workers. 182; of su gar ca n e loade rs. 359; of tobacco worke rs. 1 1 1. 14 2; on land-a nd-factor y combine, 35·1; o n proportio nal-profit farm s, 280; piecework. 257 \\:agley. Charles. -1'9· 449· ·150 \\ a k e~. 126 . 155. 160. 292. 305 . 405. 407 \\later supply, 105. IO!)· 15 7, 288. 37 3. See also Irriga tion: Rainfall

\\"ealth: and magic. 307: and social mo bility. 1:;G : a11d prestige, 2o;r and ratial distinction!> . .12;1 : ;111d ~Lat u s i11 prominent famili es . .12 3, ,1:q. -127; attitud e~ toward 11 011vca11x rich es, 42.1 \ 1Vcbcr, ?\ l ax, Go. :HG \ Veddings: i11 NC>c.:od, 3 10; in promine nt families, .156; 111 San Jose. :w t , 222-23; in Tabara, 133. 159 \ Vest. James. 21 11 \ Vholcsalcrs: credit extcnsio11, 2.10 \Vidows: become 111igra11ts. 160; sa11ctions a ga in ~t re marriage, 1 55 \Villiams. Eric. 57. 3 '-1· 33011. 33 1 \Vilson , Charle!> ~J .. 179 \ Vinship . Blanton , 80 \\' itchcraft: a came of illnesses. 217-1 8; a funni o 11 of insecurity . .183; a manifestat ion of hostility, 89; among Na\'aho Jndia ns. 89; amo n g Nq~roes, 88; e nvy a cause of anxie ty abou t, 2 18: cvi 1 eye, 129, 2 17-18, 303, !l<>.1, ;108: in Cafiamclar, 408; in l\:oconi. Sf). 308, 478; in Sa11 J ose'.:. 89, 217-1 8; in Tabara , l!!!J· 155. d i,1 \\'omen: church attendan ce. 127. l.J9· 1;,5; educnion , 130, .12G; in p o litical acti\·ities. 't-18-.19; land O\\'nership, 206; role in :\orn r:i, 293·9.1; role i11 promine nt fami lies, 126, ·l-11. 1-1:1· .158. ·15!J; role in San Jost". 25li-57. 258-59. 261: social restrictio n s, 21.1. 222: work in C:ai1ame lar, 37 1: work in coffee production, 1 13, 187; wo rk 0 11 th e su~ar hacienda. 3•14· See also Family patterns; J\Ialc-femalc relationshi ps; 1\la triarchy • Work books. 57. 58. 332, 494 \·Vorkmen's cornpcnsatio n , 152, 283 \ Vorld \ Var II : effect 0 11 indcpendc n t c: 1110\'(•1ne11t. :1.17. Sc·e also Veterans \ Vyndham, H . :\ .. 33011 Yang. :'\fanin , 21 n Yaqu i I ndia n: ritual kinship. 390-9 1 Za\'ala, Sil\'io , .10 Zeno, Fran cisco i\I., I I~

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