PORTO
RICAN SLUMS
The Peon Class
Forms a Large Proportion of the Population
A
FACTOR TOO LARGE TO BE OVERLOOKED
Always
in Debt to Either Planters of Merchants of the Island
CHARACTER OF THEIR HOMES
IN CITY AND COUNTRY
TERRIBLE SIGHTS WITNESSED ON A JOURNEY WITH A PHYSICIAN AMONG THE POOR AND SUFFERING NATIVES. — ABSENCE OF HOUSEHOLD EFFECTS. — PRIMITIVE MANNER OF LIVING. — OPINION OF ARMY OFFICERS. — HOSPITALITY OF THE ARISTOCRATIC CLASSES. — POTO RICIANS APPRECIATIVE OF FAVORS
By Emma Shaw Colcleugh
The Providence Journal, 1900
Transcribed from the original by Amanda Selvidio
San Juan, P.R., April 28. — Difficult of solution indeed is the problem confronting any one who attempts, during a brief sojourn in Porto Rico, to settle in his mind the industrial and economic status of the great mass of its people. "Dirty, lazy creatures, fit only to be wiped off the face of the earth," is the judgment many, while, on the other hand, those who have had equal opportunities of knowing whereof they speak pronounce them exactly the reverse in all save the "dirty;" in this respect it must be confessed most are agreed. If one strives, be personal investigation, to decide the vexed question for himself, he will be torn by conflicting emotions. On the one hand, his indignation is roused to the highest pitch, as favors proffered are taken as a matter of course by those who, apparently, think it beneath their dignity to perform even a slight service in payment for food , the receipt of which is considered certain, and, on the other hand, the patient, tireless industry of those who gladly spend months in discharging — little by little — some trifling indebtedness wins a respect approaching admiration.
It were worse than useless to attempt denial of the fact that it is impossible to go through the streets of and Porto Rican town without encountering scores of idle men and women. As "the worst wheel of the cart makes the most noise," so the idle and untidy are always in evidence, while the diligent workers are housed. The poor, hived as they are, scores of them living in one dark narrow court, swarm out upon convenient doorsteps, the street, the sidewalk, in fact anywhere where a bit of light or air can be obtained. Custom has, in years gone by, prevented the women of the better class from appearing too frequently in public unattended. Thus it happens that, even now, a visitor encounters few except the laboring class, unless, by letters of introduction, he is received into some of the homes.
No American
would wish a foreigner to judge of his countrymen by what could be learned
in the slum sections, and it is equally unjust to judge all Porto Ricans from
the same standpoint. Still, the laboring or the peon class forms so large
a proportion of the island population that no consideration of the industrial
conditions would be at all complete that failed to recognize in this class
a factor too prominent to be overlooked.
The word peon, in Spanish-America, under old laws, defined a person who
owed service to his creditor until the debt was paid. While those laws are
now obsolete, the condition of these poor people remains much as before. So
great in their poverty that they are always in debt to either planters of
merchants. In the cities they are crowded into filthy courts, with no sunlight,
no fresh air, nothing but noisome vapors and unpleasant odors. In the country
they live in huts made of sticks and poles covered with thatches of palm leaves
— shelters infinitely inferior either in construction, neatness or furnishings
to the dwellings occupied by Fijians, Samoans or Tahitians. A family of from
six to a dozen may be crowded into the one room which frequently has only
a dirt floor. Most of them own a machete, a few a hoe, but domestic utensils
are conspicuously absent. In one my horseback journeys into the interior I
stopped — with the doctor who was my escort — at a hut where, upon
a pile of rags in one corner, lay a man with an ill fever; in another corner
was a woman who for weeks had suffered with a terrible abscess on her breast.
A daughter with three naked little ones completed the family circle. All these
crowded into a room not exceeding eight by ten feet. Everything was open;
no cupboards concealed household treasures, and as I waited for the doctor
to complete his ministrations I took an inventory of the only utensils, which
consisted of a square kerosene can, into which a string had been put to serve
as a bail. This was used to carry water. A few spoons made from small gourds;
one or two rudely fashioned calabashes and as many cups made from cocoanut
shells; a rude stool, a box serving the purpose of a table just outside the
door, and a little charcoal furnace — this was the sum total. I stood
aghast at the revelation, thinking, "Surely there are few such desolate
places as this!" but further investigation proved this the rule, not
the exception.
The next place visited was even worse. Here the children numbered 14, and as they literally swarmed out of the hovel as we rode up, naked little imps with their hair bleached to blondness by the tropic sun, I exclaimed, "What is that?" as what appeared a double-headed object evolved itself from the wide-eyed multitude. Riding nearer, my question needed no answer. A girl of 5 years (according to my cicerone) entirely nude carried astride her hip a 7 months old babe, alike guiltless any covering save dirt and complexion. Anything more uncanny, more convulsive to a belief in the Darwinian theory, it has never been my lot to encounter. Viewd from our standpoint, this would indicate most distressing poverty, a condition which many attribute without hesitation to the late hurricane. That to this disaster is due much destitution and want is true enough; but it is also true that the absence of household effects and the primitive manner of living antedate that. In Hill's book upon "Cuba and Porto Rico," published months before the hurricane, he refers to the poorer class of country people (who he terms "gibaros") as living "as nearly in a state of nature as the laws will allow, for the simple reason that it pleases them best and is comfortable. The children generally don the garb of civilization at or near the age of 10 or 12. In the interior districts the laborer is paid in plantains. Fifty plantains are a day's pay. On this he feeds he feeds his family and then sells the rest, losing one day in the week in going to the market, often 20 miles away. *** Some cabins have doors, others have none. There is nothing to dread from robbers, and if there were bandits poverty would protect the people from violence. A few calabash shells and earthen pots, one or two hammocks made of the bark of the palm tree, two or three game cocks and a machete form the extent of their movable property."
An earlier historian, Col. Flinter, notes similar conditions, which it will be seen differ little from those at present. Dinwiddie, too, quotes the walls of the cabins, "hung not with decorations, but with various eating calabash, though the richer element sometimes proudly dangles a tin cup against the wall. Cooking is done on the outside of the house in dry weather, on a sheet of iron or in a small badly battered iron kettle, and the foods are served in gourd-dishes and eaten with gourd-spoons. The powdered rice, corn meal and coffee are ground in wooden mortars or broken between stones."
For these people there is work but four of five months in the year at the best of times, as the planter does not hire his laborers by month or year, but secures assistance as needed. This fact should be recalled before denouncing their apparent inclination to idleness, and, possibly, it would not be amiss to reflect at the same time upon one's own inclination (?) for the violent exertion in the day's when the thermometer records a temperature nearing 90 degrees. Ground down by centuries of oppression, and entirely without ambition, what incentive to exertion has there been for Porto Ricans when the fertile soil came almost spontaneously all needed to support life, when, under the tropical sun, only the merest shelter was all that they desired, while clothes were a burden rather than a necessity — something to be omitted from the list of essentials whenever it was possible? Dinwiddie sums up the situation: "As a story-book life of primitive simplicity, in which the human needs are few and rapidly met with a minimum amount of labor, it is idealistic, but as an existence for civilized man, it is a horrible fantasy." Add to all this the dense ignorance of this class, and it will not be difficult to see how — thanks to the omnipresent agitator — an idea has come to prevail among many that not only has the United States come to give them a better government, but that is had come to give them a great many other things without their doing anything themselves.
The opinion of the army officers varies greatly. Lieutenant Blunt calls them ‘lazy and dirty, but very sharp and cunning, and the introduction of American ideas disturbs them but little, they being indifferent to the advantages offered." Captains Macomb and Mansfield report, the former, "The people, and I discuss the poor working class, are upon the whole a gentle, patient, uncomplaining lot, living in ignorance and penury, generally polite and willing to work in a plodding, undemonstrative way. Their very gentleness has permitted the unjust scale of wages they receive to become the custom." Capt. Mansfield said: "The people seem willing to work even at starvation wages, and they seem to be docile and grateful for anything done for them. They are emotional, apt to make idols of some one of their number, and be led about by him." To this latter trait may be attributed the late unfortunate strikes in San Juan. Following a leader who almost compelled them to desist in work, and, in their ignorance, failing to realize their unfitness to earn the same wages per day as others employed, these facts may in some small degree palliate what could hardly fail to prejudice against them anyone aware that they were receiving already far higher wages than ever before, and for work to which they were entirely unaccustomed.
Capt. Mansfield, however, expressed the belief that when American ideas are once inculcated into them they will never let go of them, and will benefit from them, adding: "It will be hard to eradicate the evils of centuries in a few years, and it will require a long time. They must be educated not alone by books, but by coming more in contact with the rest of the world."
Of the upper class, which Hill states "forms the distinctive feature of the population" — notwithstanding appearances to the contrary — he says they maintain the pride of their descent with all the stateliness of grandees, have had the time and taken the trouble to acquire an education, and are a good-looking, happy people. They constitute the commercial, professional and planter classes. All of these classes were affected by the stagnation incident to tariff delay far more than the general mass of the poor people, although all suffered indirectly.
The few visitors who are so fortunate as to be received into the homes of the aristocratic classes in Porto Rico will, I am sure, agree that the hospitality proffered leaves little to be desired. Several times during my visit to the interior I knew of a new house elegantly furnished being placed at the entire disposal of comparative strangers. With the host, horse, servant and house were alike "A la disposicion de usted" — "at your command."
This is the class from which came the strongest opposition to having its present full control pass into the hands of the natives.
Education, and education along many different lines, is the one thing which will fit the mass of any people to fulfill the duties of citizenship. That Porto Ricans are not now indifferent to the advantages of education has been proven by the experiences of the past year. Gen. Davis says: "It was difficult for them to conceive of a reign of law without display or constant exercise of force. Obedience to law for the common benefit of all seemed to them incomprehensible, and the inculcation of this doctrine had been far from easy. But notwithstanding the unfavorable conditions much progress has been made, though the advance from day to day and from month to month has been scarcely perceptible. But comparing the past with the present, it is not difficult to recognize the general advance and progress."
Dinwiddie predicts that, while it may take a long time to teach the average Porto Rican the duties of "a self-respecting, useful, franchised citizen of the United States, it can be done, for the reason that he is docile, obliging, appreciative of favors, and, best of all, possesses and equability of temperament which permit him to readily absorb new ideas. The American nation has been to him in the past the synonym of all that is just and grand and righteous, and if we do not abuse our power Porto Rico may be made a 20th century Garden of Eden, in which the native, trained in new methods of freedom, may for the first time in three centuries enjoy the sweets of liberty."
That to education in the schools and in all that pertains to the duties of "a franchised citizen" should be added an instruction which will lead up to a higher moral standard than the island has ever known is painfully apparent to every visitor, but it seems not too much to expect that the next generation will see a vast change in this direction.
