Schoelcer and the Jibaro

One of the interesting contrasts in the French perception of the jibaro of Puerto Rican can be found in the works of Victor Schoelcher and Adolphe Granier de Cassagnac. Approaching the Caribbean from opposed perspectives on race and slavery, both shared a view of the jibaro as a biological and cultural mestizo with significant indigenous features. However, in the case of Schoelcher, the jibaro's bare subsistence and meager lifestyle demonstrated an example of non-black Caribbean populations languishing economically, socially and politically. In fact, Schoelcher actually visited peasant bohios and collected goods produced by them, meaning he was able to gather more information. Adolphe Granier de Cassagnac, on the other hand, wrote more impressionistically of Puerto Rico's jibaros. To him, they were mestizos who shared the general disdain of blacks found among the red-skinned races. In addition, they were excellent laborers and gladly hunted runaway slaves in the colony. The account of Schoelcher, undoubtedly based on more research and personal experiences with the free peasantry of Puerto Rico, was more perceptive about the nuances of race among the jibaros. After all, included among the jibaro were the pardos who shared a similar culture, suggesting that the free peasantry of partial Amerindian ancestry was very much one that also included people of African origins. Overall, Schoelcher, the abolitionist, probably saw in the racially mixed free population of Puerto Rico an example of non-black Antillean indolence. Indeed, Schoelcher apparently favored attempts by the Spanish governors of the island to coerce the jibaro to work, something similar to post-emancipation apprenticeship programs implemented elsewhere in the Caribbean. Nonetheless, the diametrically opposed interpretations of the jibaro from these two French authors, both writing in the 1840s, illustrates how the personal racial biases of the writer can lead to drastically different conclusions. 

The Cacique of Yunque

A legend of the mountain peak, Cacique, quoted in full by Fewkes in The Aborigines of Porto Rico and Neighboring Islands, is said to represent Indian retentions in Puerto Rican folklore. Indeed, according to Fewkes, the folklore of the peasantry in Puerto Rico and the Dominican Republic was a rich area of research into Indian cultural survival in the region. While the jibaros living in the region of Yunque are not described in any ethnographic detail by Fewkes, the legend, first recorded by "Federico Vall y Spinosa" in a San Juan newspaper, may indeed represent a fragment of Indian belief or traditions. 

In the case of this modern legend, the mountain peak called El Cacique is said to have what is considered a cave. Popular legend or tradition claims this area was once inhabited by King Cacique, who ruled the northern coast of the island in the days when spirits wandered the land. Through a deal from the devil, or El Enemigo, he was later trapped in the cave at the peak of El Cacique, with his wife and daughter. This story includes supernatural events such as the flight of the the cacique and the devil to the mountain peak, where the former is trapped by the latter. The moral of this story seems to be a warning to avoid those who seek to distract one from one's path or labor, which the cacique failed to do this one time. However, trapped in the mountain cave, he at least received the company of his wife and daughter. The daughter, a princess, escaped through a hole in the cave and received honey from a man named Juan. Later, when the devil discovered this, he tried to close the aperture but compromised, allowing the princess to, one day per year, talk to a Juan on the feast day of Saint John. 

The above legend clearly features elements drawn from Catholic and perhaps European folklore. The "Indian" element, however, seems significant due to the ritual importance of caves in Taino mythology and legends. This cacique or King Cacique appears to have lived in some distant past when spirits still wandered the earth, or before historic times. However, his daughter was able to interact with a man named Juan, suggesting the legend probably should be considered to describe conditions in the 16th century. The devil, represented by El Enemigo, and the moral of the story, seems to be rather Christian in nature, too. Nonetheless, the fact that the king is considered a cacique trapped in a cave could be representing, through a Christianized peasant understanding, how the devil (perhaps a cemi) had misguided the Indian leader into a sinful path. Consequently, the chief was trapped in the cave and could not escape. His daughter, however, one day per year, gets to speak and this legend might explain why some heard voices (or what they considered voices) speaking from this cave. 

So, while this legend may reflect Indian traditions, it's probably an example of a Christian interpretation of Taino religion. Since we know caves were important in Taino mythology and sometimes the site of rituals, the fact that King Cacique was led by the El Enemigo is probably an example of a Christian interpretation of the cemis as demonic entities corrupting Indian life. Intriguingly, another traveler who visited Cacique in the 1800s also wrote about a "Cueva de los Indios."In 1870, Jose Maria Gutierrez de Alba's Apuntes de Viaje de San Juan de Puerto Rico a la sierra de Luquillo was published. Although not reporting legends of the jibaros in the area, he described a certain cave of the Indians, possibly the El Cacique peak. On page 25, he wrote, 

Habíanme asegurado con toda la buena fé del mundo, que en aquella cueva encontraría restos muy notables de antigüedades indias, que sus paredes conservaban aun gravadas ciertas figuras alegóricas que 'nadie podia descifrar ; que al rededor de la gruta, había asientos tallados en la roca, donde sin duda los habitantes primitivos debían celebrar sus misteriosas asambleas, y por último, que hasta hallaría restos de sepulcros de aquella época remota, que no podrían menos de darme alguna luz sobre una dé las manifestaciones que mas carácter suelen tener, entre los pueblos salvajes.

However, upon investigation of the cave, he found no evidence of Indian artifacts or human presence. However, knowing what we know of caves as important, sacred places in Taino mythology, and that Taino artifacts were discovered by peasants in caves, the legend of the King Cacique and his daughter may have been inspired by similar cave sites elsewhere in Puerto Rico. Sites with evidence of petroglyphs, seats or duhos, sculptures and other finds. Indeed, according to Fewkes, peasants in Puerto Rico associated Indian cave pictographs with gods or spirits, suggesting that peasants viewed the cave site at El Cacique as a similar abode for spirits. Thus, the actual Taino religion, by this time long gone except for elements that merged with European and African traditions, was an influence on peasant folklore in a way that both maintained and demonized aspects of indigenous belief. 

The Jibaro Inheritance

Although Jose Colomban Rosario's 1935 MA thesis, The Development of the Puerto Rican Jibaro and his Present Attitude Towards Society is rather dated and relies on a problematic framework, it is actually a worthwhile read for strong legacy of the indigenous peoples of the island. Despite viewing the jibaro as a problem in need of solutions for Puerto Rico to achieve true progress, there are number of interesting observations on the historical development of the jibaro to support the theory of significant Amerindian (cultural) survivals. While the author often neglects or treats the African inheritance as an afterthought among the jibaro and he occasionally posits that the jibaro is mainly of Spanish "racial" stock, there are even allusions to indigenous phenotypical features and miscegenation that suggest the jibaro culture was very much an "Indian-Spanish" one with African influences.

First, the biological and cultural inheritance. Rosario alludes to the 1530 de Lando census's enumeration of 14 vecinos who were married to Indian women. Of course, there must have been a far higher number of Spanish males involved with Indian women as concubines due to the paucity of European and African women in those days in the colony. Evidence such as the mestiza heir of Antonio Sedeño also suggests that many mestizo children were born in the first century of the colony. These mestizos, in addition to indigenous survivors of the colonial conquest wars and encomienda system, bequeathed much of their culture (and genes) to what later emerged as the Puerto Rican people. Africans, according to the occasionally racist perspective of Rosario, who often quotes extensively from Bryan Edwards, were less influential due to their low status as slaves and their quick assimilation into this "Indian-Spanish" hybrid culture. Colonial society, with the decline and imperial neglect of the later 1500s and the remainder of the colonial period, saw the spread of the population across the island in isolated patterns with Spanish settlers (and their descendants) adopting Indian customs and practices of domestic architecture, agriculture, musical instrumentation and other aspects of material culture. Indeed, a jibaro bohio without hammocks, music without guiro and maracas and the use of the machete to serve the same function as the coa of the Taino was rather rare. 

Intriguingly, yucca was not a major staple of the jibaro diet. Instead of yucca and the old Taino casabe, the jibaro as encountered by Rosario was more likely to rely on rice, beans, green bananas, codfish, sweet potato and yams with only rare consumption of meat or eggs. In this respect, the jibaro diet was probably less nutritious than that of their indigenous forebears, despite the addition of European domesticates in the island. The high rates of disease, lack of medical care, insufficient diet, and low wages and lack of land ownership ensured the jibaro family operated at subsistence levels. In temrs of family structure and relations between the sexes, the jibaro practice of concubinage may also, in part, stem from indigenous influences. While the Spanish and African inheritance also included concubinage and polygamy, the relatively wealthy jibaro with a woman or two on the side may also be a product of their indigenous ancesetry. After all, caciques and some nitainos had multiple wives. In addition, records from the encomienda era point to Indian men at the Real Hacienda de Toa who had more than one woman as a sexual partner and marriage was not widely practiced. This same feature was noted among the jibaro by Rosario, as consensual marriages were still very common. 

In addition to the adoption of much of indigenous cultures and practices, actual biological descent from the indigenes was even remembered in oral traditions by some jibaros interviewed by Rosario. The father of one child in Utuado with conspicuous "Indian" features reported that the great-grandmother of the boy was an Indian woman from the mountains of Lares, seized by a Spaniard and having a number of "half-breed" children with him. Lares, not far from Maricao and other regions which were documented as having "Indians" as late as the early 19th century, when the boy's great-grandmother probably met the Spaniard, must have had a sizable population of "Indians" or people who considered themselves as such, to be remembered by jibaro descendants in the early decades of the 20th century. The jibaro man reporting this "Indian" ancestor was probably not alone. This means that perhaps many jibaro of that region of Puerto Rico remembered indigenous ancestry. Furthermore, Utuado was one of the regions of the island noted by Fewkes to possess a significant number of people with marked "Indian" features. This suggests that the tale of Indian ancestry reported by Rosario from one jibaro family was likely common among other jibaros of the region of Utuado, which combined with cultural survivals of the indigenous past, point to the significant "mestizo" element of jibaro origins. It is unfortunate that more oral traditions were not collected from jibaros of this region of the island to collect more family histories of Indian ancestry. Perhaps these oral traditions and folklore could have some bearing on our understanding of cultural identity, race, and popular culture in colonial Puerto Rico. 

While the indigenous legacy is most evident in the material culture of the jibaro, Rosario's study hints at possible legacies in religion and spirituality. The jibaro, for example, frequently consulted the spirits through mediums for cures or solutions to their problems. Of course, some of these practices also have European and African influences, but the Taino traditions of behiques, cemis and ritual healing likely influenced this. Similarly, Salvador Brau's report that the jibaro believed that spirits of the dead roamed the Earth at night could also be, in part, a remnant of Taino belief (despite obvious parallels with African and European beliefs and superstitions). Due to the promotion of Roman Catholicism by the colonial government for centuries, the official religion of most jibaros was Catholic. However, they rarely went to mass, lived isolation from churches, and seemed to associate religious celebrations of the saints with less pious festivities. Indeed, jibaros loved the celebrations on the feast days of particular saints, often providing time for dances, banquets, racing, "sinful profanities" and and celebrations. However, the celebration of the saints was possibly also a survival of Taino and Spanish religious practices. Instead of God, the jibaro prays to the saints for intercession and assistance. These saints may have replaced the cemi just as the Spanish traditions of venerating the saints undoubtedly influenced Puerto Rican Catholicism. In the Puerto Rican context, Rosario cites an interesting example from the colonial era that may reflect Indian-Spanish fusion of belief. In this case, festivities and masses for Saint Patrick were believed to protect yucca from worm infestations. The process in which this saint was chosen to protect the cassava from infestation was believed to be a miracle or result of divine intervention and was actually decided upon by the episcopate of the island. Nonetheless, in 1641, worms attacked the cassava crop after less than enthusiastic festivities for Saint Patrick, so a grand festival was held in his honor to protect the cassava. This anecdote from the 17th century possibly hints at a spiritual blending of ancient Taino and Spanish Catholic customs. We know from Hispaniola in the 1490s that some Taino used wooden images of Catholic saints to promote the growth of crops, an earlier instance of Taino adoption of the Catholic saints in their own framework. Perhaps the jibaro also believed that Saint Patrick required faithful veneration and tribute in order to earn his protection or assistance, a legacy of the indigenous past.

Last, but certainly not least, music and dance among the jibaro suggest indigenous survivals. Rosario quotes Manuel Alonso on the "Indian" features in the garabato dances. We already know that the guiro and maraca were of Indian origin. While the Spanish guitar, decima, and "African" cuatro and bailes de bomba were very much a part of musical culture, the Indian areito or areyto may have survived in the long dances of the jibaro. The Indian dances of the pre-Hispanic past were known to persist for several hours and to be associated with recording history of caciques and for major festivities. The jibaro dance similarly could last all night and could be associated with religious celebrations or secular purposes. The jibaro dance used some of the same instrumentation as those of the areyto and, according to Agustin Stahl, probably represents a remnant of the areito. Naturally, the jibaro dance lost some of the grandeur of the areito, but their length, mixture of secular and religious motivations, maintenance of indigenous instruments, and function as a major pole for bringing people together could also represent indigenous legacies. In addition, the function of decimas and oral poetry that described events and people, while a Spanish legacy, could also have adopted aspects of indigenous areitos and oral history. Perhaps the early campesinos, as Spanish became the dominant language, found it more expedient to adopt Spanish forms like the decima as the lavish areitos of the indigenous past were less common and harder to organize as campesinos lived further apart and lost the village life of the yucayeque. The batey, too, once associated with the ballgame and areito, became just the area cleared of weeds in front of one's house, no longer the center of a community in which community-wide events took place. 

In summation, Rosario's study presents evidence from historical and ethnographic observations that support a significant Indian influence on the jibaro. Some of this evidence points to biological inheritance, which is further supported by genetics and genealogical research. Cultural continuity from the indigenous past to the present can be seen in material culture, music, spirituality and family structure. Of course, to properly address this question of Taino influences upon the jibaro, modern scholars would have to collect more oral traditions. In addition, a serious consideration of African influences is also necessary to avoid the racial bias and omissions of past scholarship. The African influences in this work are usually an afterthought, and this in spite of the author pointing to African survivals in the funeral practices, music, and regard for parents and elders among the jibaro. In order to properly ascertain, to the extent possible, our indigenous legacy, one must not reject the African root. Furthermore, a detailed study of spirit mediums, healing, and popular Catholicism must also be undertaken to fully investigate the matter. 

Myth of Indigenous Caribbean Extinction

Tony Castanha's The Myth of Indigenous Caribbean Extinction: Continuity and Reclamation in Borikén (Puerto Rico) is an infuriating and exciting read. For anyone interested in the neo-Taino movement and indigenous reclamation among Puerto Ricans, this book is full of rich details from oral history and everyday Jibaro culture. These do support the author's contention that the indigenous population of Puerto Rico is not extinct. This is now clear from the combination of genetic, historical, and ethnographic evidence supporting a major indigenous component in the making of Puerto Rican culture. Indeed, even in the 1800s, foreign writers noted an "Amerindian" element in the Puerto Rican peasant population's culture and physical appearance. Furthermore, Castanha uses the word Jibaro (and imaginative etymology) to designate the indigenous people of Puerto Rico. They were Jibaros and part of the "Carib" culture of the Antilles. Instead of buying into theories of Taino-Carib dichotomies, Castanha appears to prefer a cultural unity of the two while rejecting the idea of Carib ritual cannibalism (one of the other myths, according to him). 

By drawing on non-mainstream research by Puerto Rican intellectuals like Lamourt-Valentin and numerous local informants, Castanha basically argues against most of the conclusions of mainstream academics in academic "Taino Studies." Instead of primarily South American origins, Castanha believes the indigenes of Puerto Rico were of Mesoamerican origin. Lamourt-Valentin, Fernandez Mendez, and some of his informants support this notion of a Mesoamerican, Mayan influence on the Jibaro. While there may indeed have been a Central American origin for some of the "Archaic" population of the Antilles, and perhaps a Mesoamerican influence on the batey ballgame, the academic mainstream researchers present far more convincing evidence of a South American origin. The Taino dependence on yuca, linguistic evidence, the corpus of myths and religious practices recorded in the Spanish chronicles, and archaeological evidence does seem to support a much stronger origin for the "Taino" along the Orinoco. For example, the numerous similarities between Taino myths as recorded by the Spanish and a number of Amazonian indigenous myths clearly supports a South American link. Unfortunately, until we can locate a copy of Lamourt-Valentin's Cannibal Recipies Fernandez Mendez's study of Taino art and its Mesoamerican affiliations, we have the unconvincing work of Castanha to evaluate. 

Since Castanha borrows heavily from Lamourt-Valentin's work and alternative, non-mainstream paradigms for the study of the indigenous Caribbean, it is no surprise that he also reaches questionable conclusions about the nature of indigenous survival in post-conquest Puerto Rico. While the indigenous population definitely survived, Castanha believes in an alternative on colonial demography for the island. According to him, the Jibaro fled to the mountainous interior of Puerto Rico relatively early in the 16th century. Other historians, such as Sued Badillo, suggest the population movement into the mountains during the colonial era occurred later. Castanha also asserts population numbers that are unbelievably high for the precolonial and colonial eras. Despite the careful estimates of scholars, Castanha accepts estimates that are unbelievably high for the Greater Antilles before conquest. More disturbing, however, is the analysis of late 18th century censuses. Based solely on local informants, the author somehow reaches the conclusion that the actual population Indian origin of La Indiera (which was supposedly much larger than the later Indieras of the 19th and 20th centuries) was in the hundreds of thousands. The colonial censuses were undoubtedly flawed and many regions, especially in the mountainous interior, were undercounted. However, Castanha's estimates appear to be significantly inflated and would suggest Puerto Rico's population in the late 18th century was several times larger than the recorded population of the island. Even if one accepts the idea that most of the pardos designated in the censuses were people of partial indigenous origin, in addition to the nearly 2,000 recorded for the San German area, Castanha's figures are implausibly high. 

Despite our problems with some of the conclusions of the author, this is still worth reading. By drawing on the family histories and traditions of his informants, one can see how family narratives of Indian origin and certain customs do reflect indigenous heritage. The oral histories also refer in surprising detail to 19th century events, an era in which the Spanish conquest of the interior was finally completed. For instance, family traditions of the tortures inflicted on the population during the compontes are a powerful demonstration of how descendants of 19th century Jibaros remember the Spanish colonial era. Traditions of Espiritismo, healing, and syncretic Catholic rituals likewise suggest the maintenance of some indigenous traditions in Puerto Rico. Just as interesting is the case of the Puerto Rican diaspora, which is largely left out of this study. However, Arroyo's research on Puerto Ricans in Hawaii refer to traditions of Indian descent or origin that would be fascinating to explore further. Are there Puerto Rican Diasporic communities in other states of the US with similar traditions of specific Indian ancestry and heritage? Oral history and folklore indicate the indigenous legacy was and is more significant than we initially thought. Perhaps that should be one of the areas of concentration for future researchers. A systematic collection and analysis of these traditions, one more meticulous than that offered here, could shed light on the ways the largely unlettered Jibaro defined themselves and related to the colonial state.