THE family is the simplest combination of individuals that we find in
organized society and is the basis of social group forms. It ranks in
importance as a social institution with the church, the state, and the
school, coming into existence before any of these three institutions. It
existed in a complete form, consisting of father, mother, and children
long before there was such an institution as civil or religious
marriage. In the history of mankind, the family and marriage grew up
together, the importance of the family requiring certain marriage
customs by which the members of the family could be held together to
protect the interests of the children.
In Porto Rico we find the average family consisting of five people, and
according to the census of 1910, in the total population 15 years of age
and over, 43.7 per cent of the males and 38 per cent of the females were
single; 36.2 per cent of the males of the total population and 35.4 per
cent of the females were married, while 16 per cent of the males (or a
total of 50,113), and 15.7 per cent of the females (or a total of
51,073), were consensually married, that is, living together by mutual
consent, but without the benefit of a civil or ecclesiastical
marriage.[1] This proportion is somewhat lower than it was in 1899, as
the percentage of consensual marriages in comparison with the population
at that time was 16.3 per cent for the males and 15.2 per cent for the
females. The difference, however, does not exceed one half of one per
cent, and there were actually 17,046 more people living together
consensually in 1910 than in 1899. The seriousness of the situation may
be seen when we consider that of the total population of the Island over
15 years of age, 31.7 per cent, nearly one third, representing 101,186
people, are living together without any form of marriage ceremony.
[1] The difference in numbers between men and women living together
consensually is doubtless due to the fact that many men who have
legitimate wives also have consensual wives or mistresses.
Many reasons have been given for the prevalence of the consensual
marriage in Porto Rico, among which are to be found the necessity of the
ecclesiastical marriage with its complicated forms and the relatively
costly ceremonies which prevailed before the institution of civil
marriage under the American Government. It seems quite probable,
however, that this custom is a relic of the consensual marriage form,
which was established by the early colonizers of Porto Rico, many of
whom came to the Island, leaving their families behind, and entered into
consensual marriage relations with the native women of the Island. In
this way the custom was established, and there was a lack of public
opinion against it which has existed down to the present time, and
until, through the influence of the schools, public opinion against this
form of union can be roused, very little progress will be made in
changing conditions.
There is no doubt but that many of the consensual marriages are
considered by the parties concerned just as permanent as those
performed by civil or ecclesiastical authorities, and the question of
immorality does not enter into their view of the situation. It is a
question of mutual consent, and especially in the country districts, the
knowledge of the law in regard to these matters is very vague. The
greatest harm in cases of marriage of this sort lies in the tendency to
prevent the spread of public opinion against the custom and in the ease
with which the family relations can be broken at the will of either
member of the family, with the resulting unprotected condition of the
children which may have been born into the family.
The number of persons of illegitimate birth in the Island of Porto Rico,
as given by the census of 1899 and that of 1910, is as follows:
White illegitimates 1899 66,855
White illegitimates 1910 76,695
Colored illegitimates 1899 81,750
Colored illegitimates 1910 78,554
Thus we see that there was an actual increase of nearly 10,000 white
illegitimate children from the year 1899 to 1910, or an increase of 14.7
per cent; but during the same time the white population had increased
24.7 per cent, so that there was an actual decrease in the percentage,
according to population, of nearly 10 per cent. During the same period
the colored population had increased 5.9 per cent, but the number of
colored illegitimate children had decreased 3.9 per cent, there being
actually a less number of colored illegitimate children in 1910 than in
1899, although the population had increased. It seems very probable that
this is due to the fact that the great majority of the colored
population in Porto Rico is to be found in the towns, where the school
system is more efficient than in the country districts and where customs
change more easily, due to wider associations and to more frequent and
continued intercourse with people of other points of view.
In the country the custom has remained, with little change, due to the
fact that the isolation of the country people and the comparatively
small number of children in the rural schools has given little
opportunity to work against the existing situation. Of the children from
the ages of one to ten years there was only an increase of 1,397 white
illegitimate children between 1899 and 1910, which was not anywhere near
the rate of increase of the white population as a whole. During the same
period there was an actual decrease in the number of colored
illegitimate children between the ages of one and ten years, amounting
to 7,717, or a total decrease of illegitimate children under 10 years of
age of 6,320, which would lead us to believe that within the last ten
years the births of consensual marriage and the number of illegitimate
children have decreased much more rapidly than the total census figures
would indicate.
In addition to the question of consensual marriages, we find that under
the Spanish administration, when ecclesiastical marriage was the only
form recognized, there were no divorces registered in the Island of
Porto Rico. With the introduction of the civil marriage after the
American occupation, and the institution of divorce laws and the
recognition of divorce by the civil authorities, the question of divorce
began to demand attention, and in 1910 we find a total of 1,246 divorces
among the people in the Island of Porto Rico. About two thirds of these
were women,[2] and the divorce question will undoubtedly in time bring
as many problems in Porto Rico as it has in the United States.
[2] This would indicate that many of the divorced men had remarried
and were listed in the census as married instead of divorced.
According to the last report of the Insular Chief of Police, it is
estimated that there are in the Island of Porto Rico at the present time
about 10,000 homeless children under 12 years of age who live by
whatever means they are able, many of them begging or stealing, and most
of them having no permanent lodging place, sleeping at night in boxes or
on doorsteps, or wherever they happen to find a lodging place secure
from the rain. These children are, for the most part, deserted and
abandoned children of illegitimate parentage, or orphan children whose
parents have left no provision for their care and education, and they
constitute a fertile soil for the implanting of criminal tendencies and
are ready material for older people of criminal habits. They constitute
a danger to the security of the community, and if it were not for the
relatively high death rate that is found among people of this class, the
Island would soon be overrun by citizens brought up under these
criminal-forming conditions. The Insular Government should take
measures to reduce this danger by means of the compulsory industrial
education of this class of boys and girls. There is enough Government
land available to colonize them in different parts of the Island under
the care of people trained in reformatory and industrial methods, and
this should be done in order that they may become self-supporting
individuals who will contribute to the comfort of the community, rather
than parasites who live on the charity of others. There are any number
of small industries in which they might be trained, as well as along
agricultural lines, and the trades which lack skilled workmen in Porto
Rico would be much benefited by adding to their number graduates of
industrial trade schools, taken from children of this class; these
schools should be operated by the Government, at Government expense, but
could be made largely self-supporting by means of the sale of the
services of the boys, or through the sale of the products turned out.
The living accommodations of the average rural family are very
unsatisfactory, consisting, as they do, of a dwelling house of one room,
or at the most, two. This reduced house space makes it necessary to eat
and live and sleep in the same room, rendering impossible any degree of
privacy on the part of any of the family. This condition in the case of
growing boys and girls is very undesirable, particularly since it is a
custom to take in as members of the family relatives, sometimes of a
rather remote degree of relationship, in case they are left unprotected.
Another feature of family life which tends toward degeneration and
which is found to a great extent in Porto Rico, is the intermarriage
between relatives within comparatively close degrees of consanguinity.
The civil laws of Porto Rico prohibit the marriage of persons of closer
degrees of relationship than first cousins, and the ecclesiastical laws
of the Roman Church prohibit marriage within eight degrees of
consanguinity. In the record of one family which produced 25 cases of
insanity in two generations, it was found that there had been a
considerable amount of intermarriage between relatives, one of the
grandparents marrying a person who was prohibited by the ecclesiastical
law on four different grounds on account of consanguinity.
Ecclesiastical permission had been obtained to overcome these
difficulties and the marriage took place. There is no doubt that close
intermarriage and the failure to introduce new stock into the family
tends to both mental and physical degeneration. And where families
intermarry for generations, as we find to be the custom in a great many
instances in Porto Rico, there can be no doubt of the ultimate
disastrous outcome from this custom.
The average Porto Rican family lives very happily and contentedly, the
parents displaying great affection for the children and for relatives
even of a remote degree of relationship. In the case of the death of
parents, relatives usually adopt or take charge of the children which
may be left and bring them up as carefully as they would children of
their own. The family group is naturally closer among Latin peoples
than among Anglo-Saxon races, and this has tended to do away with some
of the vices of family life which are found among Anglo-Saxon peoples,
while the same circumstances have tended to increase other
unsatisfactory conditions of family life peculiar to Latin races.
One of the features which, from the standpoint of society, may have an
unfortunate result is the mixture of races in the family life. While
this has not taken place to such an extent in the country districts as
it has in the towns, nevertheless, a great many families in Porto Rico
are composed of mixed races. The biological tendency in cases of mixed
races, according to most authorities, is a decrease in the number of
children in the family as generation succeeds generation, unless there
is an addition of new blood to a considerable extent. This may possibly
be one of the means which Nature has provided for solving the problem of
overpopulation in Porto Rico, but there is the added fact that usually
as the succeeding generations become fewer in regard to numbers, they
also become less capable mentally and physically. The race question in
Porto Rico will undoubtedly come to be one of the problems that has to
be solved, and it will be more difficult of solution than the race
problem in the United States, where the races are becoming more widely
separated every year and where it is very infrequent to find persons of
the two races in the same family. In Porto Rico the problem will be
intensified because it is not merely a problem between races, but a race
problem which involves the family organization in many cases. The
government of Brazil has predicted that in a hundred years there will
be no black inhabitants in the Brazilian republic, that they will be
entirely assimilated by the white race or carried off by disease. The
census report for Porto Rico shows a falling off in the black race of
about 9,000 in the last ten years, and an increase of about 30,000 in
the mixed or mulatto population. Thus the assimilation of the black
population is gradually taking place, and whether this will in time lead
to a complete assimilation, or whether the mixed race will become
weakened through this racial intermarriage to such an extent that it
will eventually refuse to propagate, is a question which only time can
answer. There is no doubt, however, that this is one of the problems
that must be confronted in Porto Rico.