WANDERING ABOUT BORINQUEN
The American who, noting the Stars and Stripes flying everywhere and
post-offices selling the old familiar postage-stamps, fancies he is
back in his native land again is due for a shock. Though it has been
Americanized industrially, Porto Rico has changed but little in its
every-day life. Step out of one of the three principal hotels of the
capital and you are in a foreign land. Spanish is as necessary to
the traveler in Porto Rico who intends to get out of the
Condado-Vanderbilt-automobile belt as it is in Cuba, Mexico, or
South America. Though it is not quite true that “base-ball and poker
are the only signs of American influence,” the other evidences might
be counted on the fingers. There is the use of personal checks in
place of actual money, for instance; venders of chickens carry them
in baskets instead of by the legs. Offenders are tried by a jury of
their peers; the native regiment wears the uniform of our regular
army; it would take deep reflection to think of many more instances.
Only one daily newspaper in Porto Rico has an English edition. The
first American theatrical company to visit the island since the
United States took it over was due the week we left. There are
barely ten thousand American residents; except in the capital and
the heart of two or three other cities one attracts as much gaping
attention as in the wilds of Bolivia. In a way this conservatism is
one of the charms of the island. The mere traveler is agreeably
disappointed to find that it has not been “Americanized” in the
unpleasant sense of the word, that it has kept much of its
picturesque, old-world atmosphere.
English is little spoken in Porto Rico. That is another of the surprises
it has in store for us, at least for those of us old enough to remember
what a splurge we made of swamping the island with American teachers
soon after we took it over. It is indeed the “official” language, but
the officials who speak it are rare, unless they come from the United
States, in which case they are almost certain to be equally ignorant of
Spanish. The governor never stirs abroad without an interpreter. The
chief of police rarely ventures a few words of Castilian, though there
is scarcely a patrolman even in the heart of San Juan who can answer the
simplest question in English. Can any one think up a valid reason why a
fair command of the official tongue should not be required of natives
seeking government employment? Spanish is a delightful language; its own
children are no more fond of it than I am. But after all, Porto Rico
differs from the rest of Spanish-America, in that it is a part of the
United States. She aspires some day to statehood. That day should not
come until she knows English; it is not a question of one language in
place of another, but of mutual understanding.
To be sure, English is compulsory in all the schools of the island, but
few pupils learn it thoroughly enough to retain it through life. Most of
them can read it in a parrot-like manner; if they speak it at all, it is
to shout some half-intelligible phrase after a passing American. “Aw
right” is about the only expression that has been thoroughly
Portoricanized. That is not exactly the fault of the pupils. The ear
shudders at the “English” spoken even by those teachers who are supposed
to be specialists in it; the rest are little short of incomprehensible.
Passed on from one such instructor to another, the English that finally
comes down to the pupils resembles the original about as much as an
oft-repeated bit of gossip resembles the original facts. It might almost
be said that there has been no progress made in teaching Porto Rico
English in the twenty years of American rule, or at least in the last
fifteen of them.
On the whole the state of education in Porto Rico is a disappointment.
It is a surprise to the visitor who has thought this essential matter
was settled long ago to find sixty per cent. of the population
illiterate, few countrymen over thirty who can read, and scarcely a
third of the children of school age in school. We had, of course, much
to make up. In 1898, after four centuries of ostensibly civilized
government, there was but one building on the island specially erected
for educational purposes. The total enrollment in the schools, with a
population of nearly a million, was 26,000. Three-fourths of the males
of voting age were wholly illiterate. Pupils were “farmed out,” teachers
drew salaries without ever going near a schoolhouse, all the old Spanish
tricks were in full swing. But that was twenty years ago. Yet the
department of education asks for twenty years more to bring things up to
a “reasonable standard.” Why? Moreover, at the rate things have been
moving it will not nearly do that. The thousand and more
school-buildings that have been erected, tropical Spanish in
architecture, well lighted and ventilated, of concrete in the towns and
wood in the country, their names in English over the entrances, are all
very well, but they are far from sufficient. The census taken just
before our arrival showed almost a half million children of school age,
with 181,716 enrolled, and 146,561 in average attendance. Of the 2984
teachers only 148 were Americans. The only inducement Porto Rico offers
to instructors from “the States” is an appeal to the love of adventure.
Those who wish to make a trip to the tropics may be sure of a
position—at a lower salary than they receive at home, and with the
privilege of paying their own passages down and back to profiteering
steamship companies. No wonder the “English” of Porto Rico is going to
seed.
In the graded school system of the towns all instruction is given in
that maltreated tongue except the class in Spanish. In the rural schools
all the work is given in Spanish except a class in so-called English as
a special subject in all grades above the first. The University of Porto
Rico, seventeen years old, has fewer than a thousand students. The
Agricultural College in Mayagüez has some two hundred. Private
institutions like the Polytechnic Institute of San Germán are doing
yeoman service, but why should the education of Porto Rico depend on
private enterprise? The natives claim that the trouble is that nearly
all the commissioners of education sent down from the United States have
been political appointees; the latter lay the blame to the fact that
salaries and disbursements are set by the native legislature. Somewhere
between the two the education of Porto Rico is suffering.
For all their misfortunes, or perhaps because of them, the Porto Ricans,
especially outside the large cities, are hospitable and soft-mannered,
characterized by a constant courtesy and a solicitude to please those
with whom they come in contact, with little of that bruskness of
intercourse for which “the Mainland” is notorious. The island has a less
grasping, less materialistic atmosphere than Cuba, it is less sinister,
less cynical, more naïve, its people are more primitive and simple,
though industrial oppression and American influence are slowly changing
them in this regard. Their naïveté is often delightful. It is reported
that a company of youthful _jíbaros_ drafted into the Federal service
during the war waited on their captain one day and asked for their
“time,” as they did not care for a job in which they had to wear shoes!
The children are rarely boisterous, rather well-bred, even where little
chance for breeding exists. As a race they have kept many of the
peculiarities of their Spanish ancestry. They are still Latin Americans
in their over-developed personal pride and their lack of a sense of
humor. Moorish seclusion of women still raises its head among the “best
families.” The horror in the slightest suggestion of manual labor, of a
lowering of caste, still oppresses the “upper” class. Few of them would
dream of carrying their own suitcase or a package from a store, even
though they must abandon them for lack of a peon. Though they are far
more polite than our own club-swingers in superficial matters, it has
required persistent training to get the insular police to forget their
high standing and help across the street women or children of the
socially inferior class. Finally, Porto Ricans are little to be depended
upon in the matter of time; _mañana_ is still their watchword despite
twenty years of Anglo-Saxon bustle. But, for that matter, Americans get
hopelessly irresponsible on this same subject after a few years in the
tropics.
* * * * *
The unprepared visitor will find Porto Ricans astonishingly white,
especially in the interior. There are few full negroes on the island;
sixty per cent. of the population have straight hair. Yet there is a
motley mixture of races, without rhyme or reason from our point of view.
Mulatto estate owners may have pure white peons working for them; a
native octoroon is frequently seen ordering about a Gallego servant from
Spain. There is still considerable evidence of Indian blood in the Porto
Rican physiognomy, for the aborigines, taking refuge in the high
mountains, were wiped out only by assimilation. Then there are Japanese
or Chinese features peering forth from many a hybrid face. The Spaniards
brought in coolies to work on the military roads, and they mixed freely
with all the lower ranks of the population. Yet pure-blooded Orientals
are conspicuous by their absence; so overcrowded a community does not
appeal even to the ubiquitous Chinese laundryman. For the same reason
Jews, Syrians, and Armenians have not invaded the island in any great
numbers, though one now and then meets an olive-skinned peddler tramping
from village to town with a great flat basket filled with bolts of
calico and the like on his cylindrical head.
Small commerce is almost entirely in the hands of Spaniards, thanks to
whom the mixture of races that made Latin-America a hybrid is still
going on—to say nothing of an exploiting of the simple _jíbaros_ that
would have been scorned by the old straight-forward, sword-brandishing
conquistadores. The modern Spaniard, especially the Canary Islanders,
come over as clerks, live like dogs until they have acquired an interest
in their master’s business, and eventually set up a little store for
themselves. Sharp, thrifty, heartless, utterly devoid of any ideal than
the amassing of a fortune, they resort to every species of trickery to
increase their already exorbitant profits. The favorite scheme is to get
the naïve countrymen into a gambling game, _manigua_, the native
card-game, for instance, and to urge them on after their scanty funds
are exhausted with a sweet-voiced “Don’t let that worry you, _Chico_,
I’ll lend you all you want. Go ahead and play,” until they have a
mortgage on “Chico’s” little farm or have forced him to sign a contract
to sell them all his coffee at half the market price. Then when his
fortune is made, the wily Iberian leaves each of his concubines and her
half-breed flock of children a little hut, goes back to Spain, marries,
and bequeaths his wealth to his legitimate offspring. Many a little
plantation is still encumbered with these “manigua mortgages.”
To the casual observer there seems to be no color-line in Porto Rico;
but in home life and social matters there is comparatively little
mingling of whites and blacks above the peon class. In the Agricultural
College at Mayagüez, for instance, this question is left entirely to the
pupils. The students draw their own color-line. Clubs are formed that
take in only white members, though a few of these might not pass muster
among Americans. The colored boys do not form clubs because they cannot
afford to do so. In the early days the teachers gave a dance to which
all students were invited without distinction. But the darker youths
brought up all sorts of female companions from the _playa_ hovels, and
the experiment was never repeated. Yet it is no unusual sight to see a
white and a mulatto youth sharing a textbook in the shade of a campus
mango-tree.
There remain few strictly insular customs to distinguish Porto Rico from
the rest of Latin-America. The native musical instrument is a calabash,
or gourd, with a roughened surface over which a steel wire is rubbed,
producing a half-mournful, rasping sound almost without cadence. Thanks
perhaps to American influence, the church bells are musical and are rung
only by day, in grateful contrast to the incessant, broken-boiler din of
other Spanish-settled countries. The _Rosario_, a kind of native wake,
consists of all-night singing by the friends and relatives of the recent
dead. Possibly the most universal local custom is that of using
barbed-wire fences as clothes-lines, to the misfortune even of the linen
of trustful visitors. The panacea for all rural ills seems to be the
tying of a white cloth about the head. Doctors seldom go into the
country, but let the sick be brought in to them, whatever the stage of
their illness. More than ten thousand, chiefly of the hut-dwelling
class, died of “flu” during the winter of 1918–19, largely because of
this inertia of physicians.
One must not lose sight of their history in judging the present
condition of the Porto Rican masses. It is only fifty years since slaves
over sixty and under three were liberated, and later still that slavery
was entirely abolished. No wonder the owners were glad to be rid of what
fast breeding had made a burden, especially with free labor at twenty
cents a day. Yet they were indemnified with eight million dollars from
the insular revenues. Nor was servitude confined to Africans. Spain long
used Porto Rico as a penal colony, and when public works no longer
required them, the convicts were turned loose to shift for themselves.
Most of them took to the mountains where the “poor white” population is
numerous to this day. Yet the later generations are no more criminal
than the Australians; if there is much petty thieving, it is natural in
a hungry, overcrowded community.
The insular police established by the Americans have an efficiency rare
in tropical countries. Their detective force rounds up a larger
percentage of law-breakers than almost any other such body in the world.
The insular character of their beat is to their advantage, of course;
few Porto Ricans can swim. The island has long since been “cleaned up,”
and the unarmed stranger is safer in its remotest corners than on
Broadway. In olden days the Porto Rican was as fond of making himself a
walking arsenal as the Dominican; ten thousand revolvers were seized in
nine years, and miscellaneous weapons too numerous to count have been
confiscated and destroyed. To-day, except in the rare cases when a
desperado like “Chuchu” breaks loose, or strikers grow troublesome, the
spotlessly uniformed insular force has little to do but to enforce the
unpopular laws that have come with American rule.
Porto Rico voted herself dry in 1917. Three varying reasons are given
for this unnatural action, according to the point of view of the
speaker. Missionaries assert that, thanks largely to their work with the
populace, the hungry rank and file determined that _their_ children
should not grow up under the alcoholic burden that had blasted their own
success in life. Scoffers claim the people were misled by psychological
suggestion. The majority make the more likely assertion that the result
was largely due to a mistake on the part of the ignorant peons. The
“dries” chose as their party emblem the green cocoanut, a favorite rural
beverage. Their opponents decorated the head of their ballot with a
bottle. Now, the bottle suggests to the _jíbaros_ of the hills the
Spaniards who keep the liquor shops, and they hate the Spaniards as
fiercely as they are capable of hating anything. Whatever the workings
of their obscure minds, the unshaven countrymen came down out of the
mountains to the polls, and next morning Porto Rico woke up to find
herself, to her unbounded surprise, “bone-dry.” The mere fact that the
politicians and the “influential citizens” almost in a body, and even
the American governor, who saw insular revenues cut down when they sadly
needed building up, were against the change had nothing to do with the
case. Since then the insular police have confiscated hundreds of
home-made stills and thousands of gallons of illicit liquor. It is
rumored that they would like to indict the Standard Oil Company as an
accessory before the fact, for virtually all the stills that languish in
the police museum in San Juan are made of the world-wide five-gallon oil
can, some of them ingenious in the extreme.
Cockfighting was forbidden by American edict soon after we took over the
island—and in retaliation the Porto Rican Legislature forbade
prize-fighting, even “practice bouts.” But there is no law against
keeping fighting-cocks, and where there are game-cocks there is bound to
be fighting, at least in Latin-America. The police are on the constant
lookout for clandestine _riñas de gallos_. One point in favor of the
sleuths is that, though they cannot arrest people for harboring prize
roosters, they can bring them up on the charge of cruelty to animals if
they pick and trim the birds as proper preparation for battle requires.
Americans who have lived long in Porto Rico assert that cock-fighting
and the lottery are so indigenous to the island that there is little
hope of really stamping them out. Indeed, even the police are in
sympathy with the sport, though they may not let that sympathy interfere
with doing their duty. High American officials sometimes ask what there
is wrong in running a lottery, so long as other forms of gambling are
permitted, especially as the old government lottery kept up many
benevolences. Why, they ask, should not the poor man be allowed to “take
a chance” as well as speculators on the stock exchange? Roosters and
_billetes_ are two things that are sure to come back if Porto Rico wins
her autonomy during the life of the present inhabitants. Possibly the
next generation will be like-minded; one of the absorbing tasks of the
insular police is to keep street urchins from gambling on the numbers of
passing automobiles.
It is not surprising that Porto Rico has more than her share of juvenile
offenders. Sexual morality is on a low plane in the island. Though there
is less public vice than with us, the custom of even the “best citizens”
to establish “outside families” is wide-spread. Even the “Washington of
Porto Rico,” who is pointed out as the model man of the island, always
kept two or three _queridas_, and lost none of his high standing with
the natives for that reason. Estate owners are well-nigh as free with
the pretty wives of their peons as were old feudal lords. Women of this
class are often more proud to have a son by the “señor” than by their
own husbands. The latter are easy-going to a degree unknown among us;
they may be cajoled by presents or threatened with discharge—and where
else shall they find a spot to live on?—or at worst they can seek
consolation in the arms of their own _queridas_. The men usually
acknowledge their illegal children without hypocrisy, but they
frequently abandon them to their own devices. Homeless children are one
of the problems of all Porto Rican cities; in San Germán a gang of
little ruffians roost in trees by night. The cook of an American
missionary family openly gave all her wages, except what went for the
rent of her hovel, to her “man,” who was married to another. It was not
that he demanded it; there is little of the “white slave” attitude in
Porto Rico, but she was proud to do so and it is _costumbre del país_.
Much as they deplored such an employee, the missionaries endured her,
knowing only too well by experience that they might look farther and
fare worse. Few Porto Ricans of the better class permit their women to
go to confession, however strictly they keep up the other forms of
religion. Out of church the priests are frankly men like other men, and
seldom have any hesitancy in admitting it. One famous for his pulpit
eloquence brazenly boasts himself “the most successful lover in Porto
Rico.”
* * * * *
It is natural that there should be a certain political unrest in Porto
Rico. The island does not know, for instance—nor does any one else,
apparently—whether it is a colony or a possession of the United States,
or whether it is an integral part of it. A bit of history is required to
explain the situation. The island was under the jurisdiction of Santo
Domingo from its settling to the end of the sixteenth century, when a
royal decree made it an independent colony. For a long time it was not
self-supporting—thanks, no doubt, largely to the dishonesty of its
governors. Its government became such a burden that Spain assigned a
certain proportion of the treasure it was drawing from Mexico to support
it. Incidentally this came near making Porto Rico British, for ships
bringing funds from Mexico were repeatedly made the objects of attack,
and the commander of one of these fleets once attempted to occupy the
island, but disease among his soldiers forced him to abandon the
enterprise, taking with him only such trophies as he could tear from
churches and fortresses. When, a hundred years ago, the wave of
rebellion swept over all the Spanish colonies, Santo Domingo declared
her independence and offered to coöperate with Porto Rico in winning
hers also; but a majority of the inhabitants remained loyal to the
crown. In 1887 a popular assembly in Ponce, while acknowledging
allegiance to Spain, demanded a certain measure of autonomy. There was
danger that the Cuban insurgents would send an expedition to Porto Rico
to join the malcontents there. Hence on November 28, 1897, Spain granted
Porto Rico local government in so far as internal affairs, budgets,
customs, and treaties of commerce were concerned. She was to have an
elective legislature, an upper house appointed by the governor, and a
cabinet composed of residents of the island. The following February such
a cabinet was appointed, and on March 27—note the date—elections were
held. In other words Porto Rico had won autonomy without recourse to
bloodshed, and was on the eve of exercising it when the _Maine_ was
blown up. Moreover, she had never in her history asked to be separated
from Spain.
When the Americans came, a postal system was organized, the government
lottery was suppressed, freedom of speech and of the press was restored,
a police force of natives under American officials was established,
strict sanitary measures were adopted, free schools were opened,
provision was made for the writ of habeas corpus and jury trials, the
courts were reorganized, imprisonment for political offenses, chains and
solitary confinement were abolished, the foreclosure of mortgages was
temporarily suspended, Spanish currency was replaced by American, local
officials were elected, and a civil government was established on May 1,
1900. Note, however, that with all this Porto Rico did not get as much
autonomy as it had already won from Spain. Gradually the island has
almost reached the point politically where the Spanish-American War
found it, but meanwhile there had been much discontent. Then along came
the “Jones bill.” This provides for an elective legislature, extends the
appointive judiciary system, admits a delegate to our Congress, and
grants American citizenship to Porto Ricans. But the acts of the insular
legislature must be approved by the American governor, and six of the
heads of departments that make up the Executive Council are Americans.
The Porto Ricans chafe at citizenship without statehood. The island
complains that it is an organized but not an incorporated territory of
the United States. Though it enjoys many of the rights of territories,
and a larger exemption from federal taxation than ever did any other
American territory, it is not politically happy.
[Illustration: The place of pilgrimage for pious Porto Ricans]
[Illustration: Porto Rican children of the coast lands]
[Illustration: The old sugar kettles scattered through the West Indies
have many uses]
[Illustration: A corner in Aquadillo]
There are four political parties in Porto Rico. The Republicans, who
have little in common with our “G. O. P.,” though they send delegates to
its conventions, want immediate statehood. The Unionists, contrary to
their title, demand independence. There is a strong socialist and labor
party, and a minor group that desires a return to Spanish rule. These
divisions are not so definite as they seem, if we may believe an
unusually informative native postmaster of the interior.
“The people with small government jobs,” he asserted, “many school
teachers among them, secretly long for independence, chiefly in the hope
of getting more graft. The Spaniards still mix secretly in politics and
are really _independentistas_, though pretending to want statehood.
Porto Rico would be wholly Americanized now if the governors had not
ignorantly put in anti-American _políticos_. There has really been only
one competent governor since the Americans took Porto Rico. We are
decidedly not yet ready for jury trial; there was one of the most
serious mistakes. It was also a mistake to make us American citizens
collectively. We should have been given individual choice in the matter.
Now if you accuse a man of not acting like an American citizen he cries,
‘Pah! They _made_ me an American citizen. _I_ had nothing to say about
it.’ The best people think we need twenty years of military rule before
we are given even local liberty. A plebiscite would give a false opinion
because the politicians and the small-estate owners, who are chiefly
Spanish, would send their peons down to vote for independence without
any notion of what it means. And the best class wouldn’t vote. Do you
think I would have my photograph and thumb-print taken, like a common
criminal, in order to cast my ballot? The people do not know how to be
free, after centuries of Spanish slavery. If independence were signed at
eight o’clock to-morrow morning, I should leave Porto Rico at nine!” he
concluded, vehemently.
There is, of course, no more reason why Porto Rico should have her
independence than that Florida should. That she is entitled to be made a
fully incorporated territory now, and a state in due season, seems the
fitting course. But she is decidedly not yet ready for statehood. For
one thing she must first know English. The partial autonomy she already
enjoys shows her far from prepared for self-rule. Uncle Sam is always in
too big a hurry to give his wards local government; also we listen
perhaps too much to Latin-American criticism. We are not used to the
sob-eloquence of the race, which at bottom means very little. The
legislature and native insular officials are by no means free from
intrigue, graft, and dishonesty. Towns with $100,000 incomes spend half
of it in salaries to the mayor and his colleagues. Teachers were forced
to pay ten per cent. of their wages into political funds, and the native
court found that “they can do what they wish with their salaries.” The
great socialist senator himself, rumor has it, bought land in Santurce
at a dollar an acre, had public streets put in, and sold out at three
dollars, though that, to be sure, might have happened in Trenton or
Omaha. Even the post-offices are said to be corrupt with local politics.
So long as there is a great apathetic, illiterate, emotional mass of
voters self-government can be no more than a farce, in Porto Rico or
elsewhere. No Anglo-Saxon party leader can hope to keep pace with the
suave machinations of Spanish-American politicians. They can think of
more tricks overnight than he can run to earth in a week. Some years ago
a youthful American was approached by a Porto Rican political leader
with a request to come and address a public meeting.
“But I don’t know a word of Spanish!” he protested.
“All the better,” replied the politician; “we want you to speak in
English.”
“I never made a speech in my life,” continued the American.
“Talk about anything whatever,” pleaded the other, “the weather, the
scenery, baseball.”
The youth, who was not averse to a “lark,” mounted the platform and
began to expound in choppy words the glories of baseball. At the end of
each sentence the politician silenced him with a gesture and
“interpreted” his statements to the crowded peons, who, to the speaker’s
astonishment, greeted each well-rounded Spanish phrase with howls of
delight. Not until the meeting was over and one of his hearers had
addressed him by a name that was not his own, did the youth awaken to
the fact that he had been introduced as the son of the governor, and
that the Spanish portion of his speech had been an explanation of how
anxious his “father” was to have the “interpreter” elected to the office
he sought. “_Dice el americano_ (the American says)” is still one of the
by-words of Porto Rican politics.
* * * * *
But after all one does not visit so beautiful and fascinating a country
as Porto Rico to chatter of its problems, but to meet its curious people
and to marvel at its glorious scenery. More mountainous than even Haiti
and Santo Domingo, the island is such an unbroken labyrinth of hills,
ranges, and high peaks, of deep valleys, perpendicular slopes, and
precipitous canyons, that its rugged beauty seems never-ending. That
beauty, too, is enhanced by the great amount of cultivation, by the
character it gains over the often uninhabited island to the westward in
being everywhere peopled, by the great variety of colors that decorate
it especially in this tropical spring-time of February. Even along the
rolling coastal belt the highways are lined with the green- and
red-leaved _almendras_, or false almond-trees, which here and there
carpet the roads with Turkish rugs of fallen leaves. Higher up comes the
_roble_, or flowering laurel, with its masses of delicate pink blossoms,
then the _bucaré_-trees, used as coffee shade, daub the precipitous
hillsides with splotches of burnt-orange hue; still farther aloft come
beautiful tree ferns, symbolical of high tropical altitudes, and
everywhere stand the majestic royal palms and the dense, massive
mango-trees, in sorrel-colored blossom at this season, to crown the
heavy green vegetation that everywhere clothes the island. For although
almost every acre of it was denuded of its native forest growth by the
tree-hating Spaniards, nature and the necessities of man have replaced
its unbroken verdure.
It would be hard to say which of the several splendid roads across the
island offers the best glimpse of this scenic fairyland. Some swear by
the Ponce-Arecibo route, through the magnificent Utuado valley; others
find nothing to compare with the stretch between Comerio and Cayey, the
heart of the tobacco district; the most traveled certainly is the great
military highway of the Spaniards, from San Juan to Ponce, the first
half of it rivalled now by an American-built branch through
Barranquitas. Perhaps the most beautiful bit of all is the journey from
Guayama up to Cayey, that, too, by a route that antedates our
possession. One unconsciously compares these achievements of the old
Spanish engineers with our more recent efforts, and the comparison is
not always favorable to the Americans. The Spaniard built in that
leisurely fashion of European highways, which prefers wide detours to
over-steep grades; his successor here and there betrays the impatience
of his race by a too abrupt turn or a sharper slope. Yet the works of
both are splendidly engineered, with never a really dangerous spot to a
sane driver, for all the hairpin curves, the precipitous mountain walls
above and below, the lofty bridges over profound canyons at the bottom
of which insignificant brooks meander or roaring torrents tear seaward
as if fleeing from the wrath of the towering peaks above, according to
the season. There are reminders of Europe at every turn,—crenelated
bridge-parapets, kilometer-posts and white fractions of them at every
hundred meters, squatting men wielding their hammers on roadside
stone-piles, _caminero_ huts every few miles. It is the latter, in
particular, that explain the unfailing near-perfection of Porto Rican
highways. Brick or stone dwellings for the _capataces_, or road foremen,
who must proceed at once to any broken roadbed, rain or shine, are
interspersed with the too miserable huts of the _peones camineros_, who
toil unceasingly day after day in the up-keep of the highways, like
scattered railroad section-gangs. This system, a direct legacy from
Spain, would be the answer to our own road troubles, were it possible to
find men in our country willing to spend their lives at low wages in
such an occupation.
Travel is unceasing along these splendid island roads. Automobiles,
creaking ox-carts and massive tarpaulin-covered freight wagons drawn by
several teams of big Missouri mules, mail-busses and crowded _guaguas_,
horse carriages and now and then a string of pack-animals to contrast
with the flying motors, make endless procession along the way, while
countless barefoot pedestrians flank the blurred roadsides. Only the
horsemen so frequent elsewhere in Latin-America are conspicuous by their
scarcity. In contrast to carefully tended highways are the constant
successions of miserable huts, built of anything that will hold
together, some of them so close to the precipitous edge of the road that
the front yard sometimes comes tumbling down into it in the rainy
season. Others are pitched up the mountain sides to the clouds above,
many of the slopes so sheer that the little garden patches stand almost
on end. A case once actually came to court of a man who sued his
neighbor for pushing his cow off his farm, entailing great labor to
hoist her up again. Little American-style schoolhouses, the Stars and
Stripes always flying above them, the whole interior from teacher to
pupils visible through the wide-open doors, flash past. Lounging men are
frequent, women everywhere making lace or drawn-work squat like toads in
the doorways of their patched hovels, no one of which is insignificant
or inaccessible enough not to have the census-enumerator’s tag tacked in
plain sight on its bare front wall.
From Guayama almost at sea-level the old Spanish _carretera_ climbs
quickly into the cooler air, in snaky fashion, the town and the
cane-green valley below diminishing to a picture framed by the white
beach-line and the fuzzy mountain-slopes, then mounts by tortuous curves
and serpentine loops around the brinks of dizzy precipices to a height
of three thousand feet. For a time it clings along the cliff of a
magnificent little valley, giving an endless succession of vistas,
panoramas of mountains, ravines, and forested slopes, enhanced by
frequent glimpses of the deep-blue Caribbean. No one of these highways
is twice alike; morning or evening, under the blazing tropical sun or
veiled with mountain showers, there is always a different aspect. Then
suddenly it bursts out high above the valley of Cayey, the roof-flecked
red of the town surrounded and packed as far as the eye can see with
cloth-covered tobacco-fields, the crowning beauty of Porto Rican
scenery. As we drop downward by more hairpin curves and climb again into
the hills beyond, the steep mountainsides are everywhere covered in
enormous patches with what look like the snowfields and glaciers of
Switzerland, transported to the tropics. All through the region the big
unpainted wooden barns of the American Tobacco Company bulk above the
shade-grown immensities, as if half buried by drifted snow, until the
entranced beholder finds it hard to remember that he is in a land of
perpetual summer, despite the royal palms that here and there spring
aloft from the white landscape. Elsewhere the unclothed fields are
planted in endless rows of tobacco, on, up, and over hill after
mountain, some of them so steep as to make cultivation seem impossible,
and all looking as if their velvety green fur had been put in order by a
gigantic comb.
Here one meets wagon-loads of tobacco plants and men carrying them in
baskets on their heads, tiny plants in the transplanting season, great
clusters of the full-grown leaves in cutting-time. He is a simple
fellow, the stubby-footed toiler of these regions, so naïve that he
often tucks away for years the checks with which the company pays for
his produce, instead of cashing them. They are always “good,” he argues,
and easily concealed, and he seems never to have heard of the word
interest.
“Where does all this stuff go?” demanded an American tourist who had
been motoring for hours through these tropical glaciers, “I have never
seen much Porto Rican tobacco in the States.”
“Ah, but when it reaches New York it becomes Habana,” explained the
tobacco agent. “You see, we mix it with the Cuban.”
“About one leaf of Habana to a bale of this,” suggested the tourist.
“Well, something like that,” admitted the tobacco-man.
* * * * *
The holy place of Porto Rico—for it would be a strange Latin-American
country without one—is the old church of Hormigueros, a yellow church
high on a hill, conspicuous afar off and with the inevitable cane of the
coast lands stretching away from it as far as the pilgrim can see. The
pious still climb its great stone stairway on their hands and knees,
though rarely now except during the big fiesta in September. The story
is that, some time back in the days of legend, a bull attacked a man in
the field below. The man prayed to the Virgin, promising to do something
in her honor if she would save him, and at the very instant his life was
about to be gored out the bull dropped dead at his feet. There is a
colored picture of that miracle in the church on the hill, which was
built by the grateful man, who also entailed the estate he owned below
to support it in perpetuity. To-day the lands are producing sugar cane
for the Guánica _Central_, which pays rent to the church—and which also
hastens to contribute when the parish priest suggests that money is
needed for a fiesta or for some other purpose. For if the company does
not respond, the priest calls a holiday, digging up some old saint out
of the church calendar, and the fields round about go begging for
laborers.
There is at least one other “sight” which the visitor to Porto Rico
should not miss, for it throws a striking side-light on Latin-American
character. In the hilly little town of Barranquitas is the birthplace of
Luís Muñoz Rivera, often called the “George Washington of Porto Rico.” A
cheap, thin, little clapboarded building, uninviting by our standards,
though almost palatial to the simple country people, it has been turned
into a museum to the dead insular hero, such a museum as cannot often be
seen elsewhere. At the back of the house a lean-to garage has been built
to accommodate the expensive touring-car in which his remains were
carried to the cemetery. Not that Rivera owned an automobile; he was too
honest a servant of his country to have reached that degree of
affluence. It was loaned for the funeral by one of the dead man’s
admirers, a senator and the owner of a large sugar _central_. When the
mourners returned, it was decided to make a Porto Rican “Mount Vernon”
of the humble residence of the departed statesman, to which end the rich
senator not only contributed generously in money, but added the
improvised funeral-car. There it stands to this day, its brand new tires
lifted off the garage floor by wooden horses, the license of four years
ago still on its blunt nose, the plank framework that was built out the
back of it to hold the coffin still intact. Inside the house is the
narrow spring cot on which the hero died, covered with those poetically
lettered purple ribbons of which the Latin-American mourner is so fond,
and a score of other belongings, similarly decorated. These include a
tin bath-tub on wheels, a leather valise, the high-hat box indispensable
to diplomats, several photographs of the deceased, death-masks of his
face and of his hands, his last umbrella—one almost expects to find his
last toothbrush, with a purple bow on the handle—all of them more or
less covered with cobwebs. On his writing-table lies a specially bound
volume of his book of poems, called “Tropicales,” and, most striking
tribute of all, an elaborate bit of embroidery done in the various
shaded hair of his female admirers.
Rivera differed from most politicians in being strictly honest. Not only
did he live within his government salary; he gave a large share of it to
the poor. Bit by bit hatchet-and-cherry-tree stories are already growing
up about his memory. As the leader of the Unionist party he was
violently anti-American, went to the United States to fight for the
independence of the island—and came back ardently pro-American. His
admirers assert that “he would have been the salvation of Porto Rico had
he lived,” though exactly what they mean by the statement they probably
have little notion themselves.
* * * * *
There are two drawbacks to walking in Porto Rico, though the ardent
pedestrian will not let them deter him from his favorite sport. For one
thing an American attracts attention, and loses the incognito that makes
walking in Europe, for instance, so pleasant. Then the roads are too
good. The hard macadam surfaces which are the joy of the motorist are
not soft underfoot, and the rushing automobiles have small respect for
the mere foot-traveler. There are, of course, many unpaved trails in and
over the mountains, but they were scarcely passable at the time of our
visit, for Porto Rico seems to have no definitely fixed wet and dry
season.
I rambled about several sections of the island on foot. There was the
trip to and about Lares, for instance, in the heart of the coffee
district. The men of the over-developed big toes are less in touch with
the outside world than either the cane or tobacco planters. The coffee
industry is the only one that suffered by the island’s change of
sovereignty. Though it was not introduced into Porto Rico until more
than two centuries after the sugar-cane, the Arabian berry was the king
of the island when General Miles landed the first American troops at
Guánica. The loss of their free markets in Spain and Cuba, however,
caused the coffee men to succumb under a discouragement from which they
have not wholly recovered to this day. It is this, no doubt, which
accounts for the careless methods of the _cafetales_, where jungle,
weeds, and parasites often choke the bushes, while the berries are dried
on half-cured cowhides laid in the open streets or on hut floors, with
chickens, dogs, goats, and naked children, to say nothing of pigs,
wandering over them at will. Such conditions will of course improve when
the United States, the greatest coffee-drinking nation on the globe,
finally learns that a berry equal to any in the world can be produced on
American soil.
In Lares region the crop is taken a bit more seriously. There are brick
coffee-floors in many a yard, and the bushes cover even the crests of
the mountains, though the stranger might not suspect it, hidden as they
are by the sheltering trees. They are pretty in their white blossoms in
the February season, and the _bucaré_ trees flame forth everywhere on
the steep slopes. The Spaniards, who own many of the estates, pay fifty
cents “flat” a day to their peons. The more generous Porto Rican
growers, if their own assertions may be taken at par, pay sixty cents,
with the right to eat the oranges and _guineos_, or small bananas, that
fall from the trees, the rent-free possession of an acre of ground on
which to build a hut and graze a cow, a pig, or a few chickens, and
plant a garden, and such free firewood as may be picked up on the
estate. Formerly they paid thirty cents and gave two meals a day, but
the cost of food has caused them to “advance” wages instead. The women
and girls of the region spend most of their time making lace or
drawn-work, as elsewhere, unless they are attracted to the _cafetales_
in picking season by the higher inducement of forty cents a day.
I paused to talk with a youth who kept a roadside “shop.” It consisted
of a few plantain leaves and pieces of boxes laid together into a kind
of shelter and counter. He rarely made a half-dollar daily profit, he
admitted, but that was all he could earn in the coffee fields, and there
he wore out his shoes, which cost much money. He was an ardent friend of
Americans, like many of the country people. Asked to explain his
friendship, he based it chiefly on the fact that they required the
police to speak politely to everyone, did not allow beating, and
punished their own people as well as Porto Ricans, whereas the Spaniards
always used to be let off free. Then the Americans gave free schools. He
had gone to one himself, “but he was not given to learn.” It is a
familiar refrain all over Porto Rico, even from persons who have every
outward evidence of being bright as our average. Doctors say there is a
special reason for this backwardness.
[Illustration: The priest in charge of Porto Rico’s place of pilgrimage]
[Illustration: One reason why cane-cutters cannot all be paid the same
wages]
[Illustration: A procession of strikers in honor of representatives of
the A. F. L.]
[Illustration: “How many of you are on strike?” asked Senator Iglesias]
The peons of the region, silent-footed, listless, are often pure
Caucasian in type; indeed their pasty-white complexions frequently
contrast with the tanned faces of northern visitors. Now and again one
wanders by looking startlingly like a three-day corpse. They are victims
of the hookworm. There is more hookworm in Porto Rico, those who should
know tell us, than in any other country on the globe, with the possible
exception of India and Ceylon. The disease was brought by African
slaves—along with most of the troubles of the West Indies—and while it
does little harm to negroes, it is often fatal to the whites. The
population in the rural areas makes no sanitary provisions, and soil
pollution is wide-spread; they invariably go barefooted, with the result
to be expected. Ninety per cent. of the laboring class was infected with
hookworm when we took over the island. An active campaign was waged at
once and had good results, but with partial autonomy the populace has
fallen back almost into its first pitiable condition. The Rockefeller
Foundation has recently offered three fourths of the preliminary expense
of a new attack on the disease, if the insular government will bear the
rest. For the cure is simple; it only requires persistence. Drafted
soldiers were treated for it, and one may easily detect the superiority
in energy of the _camineros_ and laborers who are still to be seen in
remnants of their old uniforms. In a way it is Porto Rico’s most serious
problem. Even a light infection causes serious mental retardation, and
much money that is spent on schools is lost because of this defective
mentality.
The hookworm is troublesome chiefly in the rural districts. The poor of
the cities, who are bread eaters, have sprue instead. Of late only
certified yeast from the United States has been permitted on the island;
moreover, sprue may be cured by vaccination. A more serious thing is the
prevalence of “t. b.”—which missionaries on the island dub “tin box.”
Since the Americans came, there has been a constant increase in zinc
roofs and sheet-iron houses over the old open-as-wool thatch hovels, and
as the countryman persists in closing by night even the single tiny
window, like that in the end of a box-car, up under the eaves of his
shacks, weak lungs are increasing.
Fruit is abundant along the roads of Porto Rico. Mere bananas are so
plentiful that they are often abandoned to the goats and pigs; in Lares
a man with a wheelbarrow full of them was selling the largest and best
at seven cents a dozen. Wild oranges, sweet, and juicy, for all their
seeds, line the highways in what seems quantity sufficient to supply the
entire demands of the “Mainland.” Most of them never reach the market.
Here and there one runs across a crude packing-house among the hills,
but the fact that a box containing an average of one hundred and fifty
oranges, picked, sorted, crated, and hauled to the coast, sells for
fifty cents answers the natural query. In the trade these are known as
“east-side oranges,” and are generally sold by pushcart men in the
tenement districts of our large cities—at how many hundred per cent.
increase in price purchasers may figure out for themselves.
Vegetable growing has never been favored by the inhabitants of our
strictly agricultural little West Indian possession. Like all
Latin-Americans, they are content to do as their forefathers have done,
and stick to the yams, _yautías_, and _ñames_, a coarse species of sweet
potato, which grow almost wild, and will have nothing to do with Yankee
innovations, though radishes mature in twelve days, and even Irish
potatoes may be grown in the higher altitudes, and the market price of
such vegetables is high. Bit by bit the _jíbaros_ may be coaxed to
improve their opportunities. Clusters of beehives are already common
sights in the island, which can be said of no other section of tropical
America. The Federal Agricultural Experimental Station at Mayagüez is to
be thanked for this improvement. The old legend that bees lose their
custom of laying up honey after a few seasons in a winterless land was
found to be a fallacy, though they mix with the wild black bees of the
island and the queens have to be killed and replaced periodically to
keep the swarms from following the example of tropical man and refusing
duty. Dyewoods, cabinet woods, and timber for building are wholly
lacking in Porto Rico. Imported lumber costs $100 a thousand square
feet. No wonder huts are made of _yagua_, thatch, and odds and ends.
Indeed, the Federal institution mentioned above finds it can get better
lumber out of packing-boxes than it can buy on the island. Porto Rico’s
peculiar condition, a tropical country in which practically all that the
people produce is shipped out of the country, and nearly all they
consume shipped in, makes eventual improvement of these conditions
imperative. It strikes the casual observer as extraordinary, for
instance, that there are no large manufacturing industries on the
island, with its excellent sources of water-power and its unlimited
supply of cheap labor.
* * * * *
I drifted out along the road from Aguadilla southward one day. The first
man to arouse my interest was a little _peon caminero_ clearing the
highway edge of weeds, who was so pretty he would have made a charming
bride in proper garments. His wages were $27.60 a month. He rented a
“house” at $1.50 monthly, so large a house because he kept his wife’s
mother and two sisters, “for they have no other shelter.” He said it
casually, as one speaks of the weather, without the faintest hint of the
boasting an American of his class could scarcely divorce from such a
statement. A bit farther on a diseased old beggar sat on the edge of the
road, the bottom of the dirty old straw hat on the ground before him
sprinkled with copper cents—“chavos,” they call them in Porto Rico,
though the beggars soften their appeal by using the diminutive
“chavito.” There is a suggestion of India in the island’s prevalence of
alms-seekers,—blind men led by a boy or a dog, distressing old women
publicly displaying their ailments, cripples and monstrosities wailing
for sympathy from the passer-by. Scarcity of land and employment,
abetted by the bad Latin-American custom of giving alms indiscriminately
even to children, has brought a plague of professional beggars. One such
fellow in Mayagüez has pleaded himself into possession of a twenty-acre
_finca_—and is still begging. A mendicant of San Germán complains that
the time-table is so badly arranged that he has to run to meet two
trains. An American medical missionary offered to remove the cataracts
from his eyes free of charge, but he declined to have his means of
livelihood cut off. One of our Porto Rican hosts was responding to the
appeal of an old woman for a “chavito” when a boy rushed up and cried,
“Don’t give her anything, señor, she has a cow!” The crone dashed after
the urchin with an astonishing burst of speed, and returned out of
breath to wail, “It is true, caballero, I admit it is true. But I have
no pasture, and I must beg now to support the cow.”
A long row of men were hoeing new sugarcane for the “Central Coloso,”
the tall stack of which broke the almost flat horizon behind them. They
watched my approach, plainly suspicious that any man wearing shoes might
be a company spy, and worked with redoubled energy. They were paid $1.50
for a nine-hour day, except two who were “sick” and a boy of seventeen,
at two thirds that amount, and the _capataz_, who differed from the
others only by the lack of a hoe, at $1.80. As I turned away, the latter
asked in a soft voice if I could tell him the time. Then he drew from
his pocket an Ingersoll watch and, apologizing for his _atrevemiento_
(“daring”), requested me to show him how to set it, the men under him at
the same time protesting that “he should not make so bold with
gentlemen.” A stout, pure-white peon patching the road farther on,
snatched off his hat as I spoke to him. His wages had gone up during the
past year—from seventy-three to eighty cents a day! But he could earn
little more than half that in the coffee estates at home, so he had been
glad to come down to the coast to work. I drifted upon and strolled for
a while along the railroad. The section hands were getting a dollar a
day, which sets Porto Rico thirty years back in that regard, for I
remember that like wages were paid then on the branch line that passed
my birthplace. Perhaps the island’s laborers earn no more than they
receive; a gang of ten men were loading a cane-cart in a neighboring
field a single cane at a time. The two old women who were picking up
rubbish beyond them had never been married, but they had three and four
children respectively. They had always been paid forty cents a day, but
now they had been promised a dollar. Whether or not they would get it
only pay-day could tell. They accepted with alacrity the cigarettes I
offered. At noon I stepped into a shop-dwelling to ask for food. The
lunch that was finally prepared would not have over-fed a field laborer,
yet the cost was eighty cents. The family was moderately clean, and
energetic above the average. The four children all went to school. On
the wall of the poor little hovel, surrounded on all sides by
cane-fields, the oldest boy had chalked in English, “We have no sugar
because we have sent it all to the poor people of Europe.”
Along the soft-dirt private road to the _central_ I met an intelligent
looking man of thirty or so, capable in appearance as any American
mechanic, Caucasian of race, his hair already turning gray. He begged
for a _peseta_. I opened my mouth to ask why a big, strong fellow in the
prime of life should be asking for alms, when my eyes fell upon his
left-leg. It was swollen to the knee with elephantiasis, both the
trouser-leg and the skin having burst with the expansion. A year ago, he
said, he had been out on a Sunday excursion in the country, and had
stopped to wash his feet in a creek. They smarted a bit on the way home,
but he thought nothing of it until, some time later, his left foot began
to swell. He was a cigar-maker by trade, and the _Sanidad_ had refused
to let him work in such a condition, yet the government would not take
care of him. So he wandered about the country, where the people were
more kindly than in the towns. The leg did not exactly hurt any more,
but it seemed to drag all his left side down with its weight. He would
gladly go and have it cut off, if he could find a place to have it done,
though people said even that would not do much good. Tears were near the
brim of his eyes, but they did not well over. Hopeless cases of this
kind seem much more pitiful when one can talk to the sufferer and find
him a rational human being, of some education, than when they are merely
the dog-like wretches of India, who seem scarcely capable of thought.
One morning I stepped off the night train to Ponce and struck out across
the island by the Utuado road. It was an hour before I had emerged from
the populous suburbs of the town. Automobiles snorted past without once
offering a “lift.” Not that I wanted one, but one gets an impression of
selfishness in a community that passes a foot-traveler without a
suggestion of help. It was not universal here, however. Before I had
climbed a mile into the foot-hills a man in a rattletrap buggy pulled
his packages together in the seat and invited me to jump in. It was hard
to explain my refusal. There were many little wayside “restaurants”
where one would least expect any demand for such accommodations. But
people must win a livelihood somehow, as one of the keepers explained.
Then came a string of “villas,” of Porto Ricans, Americans, and a few
Englishmen, modest little summer homes set where they could look down
the valley upon the blue Caribbean. Here and there were the
creeper-grown ruins of old Spanish country houses. Finally—a joke? I
hardly think so, for the Latin-American countryman has as little sarcasm
as sense of humor—a miserable little tin hut, in the yard of which the
owner and his boy were forking manure, was elaborately announced in
large letters as “Villa Providencia.”
At the first miriametro-post the coffee began, bananas and guayaba-trees
shading it. There passed much freight in tarpaulin-covered wagons, the
big brakes badly worn. A crowded _guagua_ rumbled by, the chauffeur and
most of the passengers staring at me with an air that said plainly,
“Look at that stingy _americano_ saving money by walking!” Staring is
universal in Porto Rico, at least outside the larger cities. Even the
“schoolmarms,” always well-dressed in spotless but cheap materials,
pause in their lessons to gaze at the sight that has drawn the pupils’
attention.
Three hours up I had an extended view of the Caribbean, still seeming
barely a rifle-shot way. A boy of eight, living a few yards from a
school, had never attended it, “because he had to take care of a sick
mare at home.” In the hovel-store where I had lunch three little girls
read English to me from their textbooks. I could understand them, but
only by giving their curious pronunciation the closest attention. Of the
information in their Spanish textbooks they had a moderate knowledge for
their years. The houses were constant; one was never out of human sight
or sound. The scarcity of dogs was in contrast to other Latin-American
countries; during an outbreak of bubonic plague some years ago seven
thousand were killed in Ponce alone. In a spot where the roadside grew
precipitous a sad-eyed peon stood looking at the little garden before
his house, which had fallen into the highway, more than fifty feet
below, during the night’s rain. Higher still the road reached its point
of greatest altitude and descended, more or less abruptly, through
artistic tree-ferns and clumps of bamboo to Adjuntas. All I remember of
the flat little town are the oranges heaped up at the roadside, the
drying coffee laid out on burlap sacks before the sleepy little shops,
and that “Ponce de Leon Brothers” kept one of the clothing stores.
Many big auto-trucks were carrying bags of coffee in the direction of
Ponce, as others like them carry tobacco from the region of tropical
glaciers. The road forded a river, but so many stepping-stones had been
laid across it that I needed to take off only one shoe. A new highway to
Lares chewed its way upward into the almost chalky hills to the left. We
certainly build good roads in Porto Rico; the Spanish influence seems to
have survived the change of sovereignty. The highway under my feet
followed a rock-tumbled river all the rest of the day. Census-tags
decorated every hut. The enumerators did not skip their political
opponents, as in Cuba, and though the date had passed after which the
tags might be removed, not one of them had been touched. Most of the
people could not read the printed permission to do so; besides, they
would not dream of meddling in a government matter. Sunset came early
between the mountain walls piled high above me on either side. Then fell
the quick darkness of the tropics, and there began a constant creaking
that suggested young frogs. For an hour I plodded on into the warm
night, the road barely visible under a crescent moon, in the faint rays
of which the feathery bamboos that lined the highway for a mile or more
before reaching Utuado, looked weirdly like faintly moving gigantic
fans.
Utuado is a large town for its situation, and piled up the first slopes
of the hills about it in a stage-setting effect. Dense masses of
fog—strange sight in the West Indies, where the fog-horn never breaks
the slumber of sea passengers—lay in its very streets until the tropical
sun wiped them away toward nine. Great precipices of limestone on either
side, a boiling river below, mountains of bold broken outline ahead,
marked the journey onward. The road climbed frequently, even though it
followed the growing river. Patches of tobacco, as well as coffee,
covered the steep hillsides; vegetation and mankind were everywhere.
Here and there the highway clung by its finger-nails and eyebrows, as
sailors say, along the face of the cliff. Then it regained solid footing
and broke out into a broad, flat coastland, hot, dusty, and
uninteresting, with cane and smoke-belching sugar-mills, and hurried
across it to Atlantic-washed Arecibo.