Race and Nation in Puerto Rican Folklore

Franz Boas and John Alden Mason in Porto Rico

Rafael Ocasio

• Publisher: Rutgers University Press
• Year: 2020
• Print ISBN: 9781978810204, 9781978810211
• eBook ISBN: 9781978810228
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: Latin American & Caribbean History
• Index: History

Race and Nation in Puerto Rican Folklore:Franz Boas and John Alden Mason in Porto Rico, 1915 explores the founding father of American anthropology's historic trip to Puerto Rico in 1915. As a component of the Scientific Survey of Porto Rico and the Virgin Islands, Boas intended to perform field research in the areas of anthropology and ethnography there while other scientists explored the island's natural resources. Native Puerto Rican cultural practices were also heavily explored through documentation of the island's oral folklore. A young anthropologist working under Boas, John Alden Mason, rescued hundreds of oral folklore samples, ranging from popular songs, poetry, conundrums, sayings, and, most particularly, folktales. Through extensive excursions, Mason came in touch with the rural practices of Puerto Rican peasants, the Jíbaros, who served as both his cultural informants and writers of the folklore samples. These stories, many of which are still part of the island's literary traditions, reflect a strong Puerto Rican identity coalescing in the face of the U.S. political intervention on the island. A fascinating slice of Puerto Rican history and culture sure to delight any reader!

CHAPTER 1

Porto Rico as a Colonial Scientific Laboratory

DOCUMENTING PUERTO RICAN ORAL FOLKLORE

Porto Rico is the most eastern and the smallest of the Great Antilles, being 500 square miles less in area than Jamaica. It is 95 miles long, 35 miles wide, and has an area of 3,668. The coast-line is about 360 miles in length. Its area is 300 square miles greater than that of Delaware, Rhode Island and the District of Columbia combined, 300 square miles less than that of Connecticut. At the same time, it is the most productive in proportion to area, the most densely settled, and the most established in its customs and institutions.

—Robert T. Hill, “Porto Rico” (1899)

Among the sibaros [sic], or sallow people of today, one rarely sees a physical trace of Indian descent, although in their mode of living much of Indian character exists.

—A. D. Hall, Porto Rico: Its History, Products and Possibilities (1898)

After the Spanish-American War, Puerto Rico had a privileged position as a scientific laboratory that supported U.S.-sponsored colonial projects. Further, scientific publications had become rather popular in the United States, where readers were eager consumers of data available at affordable prices in print magazines like National Geographic. Scientific articles had a great impact upon congressional policies, often used in the legislation of a rising U.S. “Island Empire.” In addition to the dissemination of research findings, these publications covered scientific excursions to the newly acquired U.S. territories, which also yielded the first visuals of natives as prospective Americans. The handling of the images of the “colonized” was openly tainted, however, as part of a process that Guillermo Iranzo Berrocal considers to be the “marginalización del ‘Otro’ colonizado” (the marginalization of the colonized “Other”; 9). Through “omisión y selectividad” (omission and selectivity), it produced an “efecto de hacerle invisible frente a sus protagonistas y cualquier observador” (effect of making them invisible before their protagonists and any other observer; 9).

This chapter has a twofold purpose. First, it frames the anthropological and ethnographic components of the Scientific Survey of Porto Rico as part of the large and complex scientific exploratory trips that took place throughout the island. These explorations had clearly defined utilitarian purposes, as indicated by the active participation and support of the American-controlled Puerto Rican government. Second, it traces the initial, conceptual approach to Boas’s overzealous goal to produce one of the largest collections of oral folklore from Spanish native speakers on the island. He did not foresee, however, that this relatively enormous endeavor, which drew heavily from public schoolchildren as writers of the samples, intersected with ongoing ideological debates about the imposition of Spanish as the language of instruction. There was no acknowledgment of the impact of the current political scene upon the resulting oral folklore samples.

I argue that Boas’s project in Puerto Rico failed to attract national attention both in Puerto Rico and in the United States. His and Mason’s visit went largely unnoticed in the United States; while another, more attractive national figure involved in an international scientific expedition captured all of the national attention. Consequently, the resulting oral folklore publications remain effectively unknown.

THE ISLAND OF PORTO RICO IN THE U.S. PUBLIC EYE

This section highlights the island’s early positioning as a stage for scientific investigation. Although the Scientific Survey of Porto Rico attempted to characterize the island as a privileged place for rising twentieth-century sciences, the island was ultimately positioned as an untapped agrarian market. In particular, rural customs of the jíbaro peasants of the hinterland would capture the American imagination, a thematic preference that heavily influenced Boas’s and Mason’s ethnographical choices. Moreover, the failure of Boas’s trip to Puerto Rico can be partially attributed to a lack of a tropical exoticism more evident in other scientific enterprises, such as that of President Roosevelt, who coincidentally also became involved in a scientific trip to the Brazilian Amazon in 1914.

Puerto Rico as a Scientific Laboratory: National Geographic’s Publications

Scientific publications such as National Geographic featured articles on subjects related to the “American Island Empire,” as Susan Schulten proposed, that implied a strengthening of scientific fields, “just as a firmly grounded science might enhance the nation’s position abroad” (14). Their articles, Catherine A. Lutz and Jane L. Collins have indicated, contributed greatly to legal ramifications in the handling of “Our New Possessions”; traveling scientists often openly “discussed the benefits of colonialism” (18). In eleven articles published in 1899, Puerto Rico’s natural wonders attracted the attention of business entrepreneurs whose importation of American technology had an impact upon rather backward agrarian traditions. National Geographic often featured articles related to the management and financial worth of the so called U.S. Island Empire. The large number of articles in this magazine not only reveal the role of these new territories in the strengthening of key scientific fields but also reflect their impact upon a rising imperialist empire, “just as a firmly grounded science might enhance the nation’s position abroad” (Schulten 14). The articles were too outstanding components of the handling of “Our New Possessions,” as traveling scientists often openly “discussed the benefits of colonialism” (Lutz and Collins 18). Puerto Rico was a notable stage for such scientific explorations, according to John D. Perivolaris, “an object of scientific knowledge in the service of colonization” (200). Geographical knowledge of the island, Perivolaris argued, “not only showcases the scientific acquisition of knowledge that accompanied the physical acquisition of the island itself but also the redefinition of U.S. boundaries in relation to its imperial competitors and new ‘possessions,’ which are presented as supplementing U.S. territory and resources” (201).

Perivolaris has extrapolated that American scientific explorations of the island served as a rational measurement of “the potential fruits of colonialism in anticipation of the United States’ declaration, beyond its political interests, of its commercial hegemony in the Western Hemisphere, as enshrined in the Roosevelt Corollary to the Monroe Doctrine” (199). Schulten likewise argued that National Geographic “acted simultaneously as an organ of science and politics at the turn of the century, which suggests that the scientific enterprise of geography was itself bound up with national concerns” (7). This emphasis on physical geography was, as Schulten suggested, an important component of the colonial project: “To be relevant and useful to both the natural and human sciences, geographers widened their charge to include not just the physical landscape but also assessment of human progress in that landscape” (12). Within those constrictive parameters, National Geographic did not cover sociological data useful for readers’ formation of a Puerto Rican cultural profile that would be indicative of a perceived political maturity (Duany, The Puerto Rican Nation 42).

“Our New Possessions and the Interest They Are Exciting” (1898), the magazine’s first article about Puerto Rico, treated the island as a colony with a high potential for economic impact. Transformation into a profitable financial enterprise, the writer seemed to imply, would result in radical changes that could eventually transform the island’s identity: “The productive capacity of the island can, it is believed, be greatly increased by the construction of railroads and roads in the interior of the island, which has now few wagon roads at any distance from the coast capable of use for transporting agricultural products” (Austin 32).

Indeed, Puerto Rico quickly became a notable target for economic development. Articles published in National Geographic stressed news covering specific examples of the “human progress” in the Puerto Rican landscape and reported on the impact of American technology, which, in turn, led to the island’s commercial efficacy for U.S. commercial enterprises.

Jíbaros as Unsung Heroes of a Booming Agrarian Industry

An article published in 1906, “Prosperous Porto Rico,” reported that the railroad mileage “has about doubled since American occupation” (Grosvenor 712). There were significant examples of efficient American agricultural practices and technology: “Mules, traction engines, and automobiles have supplanted the oxen and carts. The trolley car has also been introduced” (712). But little attention was given to the human elements, mainly jíbaros, behind these successful American enterprises.

In 1913, William Joseph Showalter, writing for National Geographic, praised American technology for turning formerly impoverished peasants into healthier and thus more skilled peons. Jíbaros were responsible for the increasingly important American-financed business of exporting tropical produce that had, at the time of the article, dominated the production of other, larger Latin American countries: “Little Porto Rico is so small that it could be buried in a single Central American lake; it would take 57 islands of its size to equal Central America in area, and yet Porto Rico produces more foreign trade than all Central America together from Tehuantepec to Colombia” (227). Showalter saw proof of a growing industry in “sugar fields, where four tons of sugar are produced where one was a dozen years ago” (228–229). Other local produce with export value included coffee, oranges, pineapples, and grapefruit, leading many to believe that Puerto Rico was “destined to become a great competitor with Florida and southern California in supplying our tropical and semi-tropical fruits” (229).

Despite the positive media coverage of a booming agricultural industry in Puerto Rico, jíbaros were seldom described. Instead, positive descriptions of bountiful produce exported to the United States took center stage. An article by Secretary of War William H. Taft, “Some Recent Instances of National Altruism,” pointedly failed to mention the Puerto Rican peasant. Instead, he emphasized that “the wealth of the island was directly dependent upon the cultivation of the soil, to cane, tobacco, coffee, and fruit, for which we in America provide the market” (433). Puerto Rico’s value to this “American market,” Taft summarily concluded, was the result of “our fostering benevolence,” a seemingly vague reference to federal legislation concerning tax regulations of Puerto Rican exports to the United States (433).

This benign colonial platform did not produce, as an American reader might have thought, a better life for Puerto Ricans; rather, as Taft proudly concluded, it resulted in an increase in wealth for U.S. investors: “At the date of the American occupation the estimated value of all agricultural land was about $30,000,000. Now the appraised value of real property in the island reaches $100,000,000” (434). The secretary of war’s statement confirmed Puerto Rico’s wealth. Symbolically, it was booty from the war, a settlement, in part, of the Treaty of Paris (Soto 176).

The Scientific Survey of Porto Rico: Initial Organization

Scientific field research in Puerto Rico, which had significantly increased after 1901 with the visit of archaeologist Jesse Walter Fewkes (1850–1930), among the first American scientists to perform fieldwork on the island, initiated “an ideal opportunity to push the frontiers of social science beyond the mainland” (Duany, “Anthropology” 35–36 and The Puerto Rican Nation 43). Ultimately, as Pagán Jiménez and Rodríguez Ramos categorically concluded, these research trips produced reports that provided the federal government “sobre algunos aspectos estructurales de la sociedad puertorriqueña para así facilitar la administración de su nueva colonia” (knowledge on some structural aspects of Puerto Rican society in order to facilitate the administration of its new colony; 18).

The Scientific Survey of Porto Rico brought together a team of scientists organized by the New York Academy of Sciences. Founded in New York in 1817 as the Lyceum of Natural History, this long-standing scientific organization reestablished itself as the New York Academy of Sciences in 1876, seeking to accommodate the newest changes in American scientific societies (Baatz 118). As a mega multidisciplinary project, the Scientific Survey would establish the New York Academy’s strong influence on the local and national scientific community during the first part of the twentieth century.

Earliest Scientific Trips to Puerto Rico

The New York Academy of the Sciences had already been instrumental in facilitating the first scientific trips to Puerto Rico. Its first recorded trip was noted on March 26, 1902, at a meeting where L. M. Underwood reported on his reconnaissance trip to Puerto Rico and to Saint Kitts (“On River Banks”). By 1906, the Journal of the Botanical Gardens began publishing accounts of numerous exploratory trips to Puerto Rico. Four years earlier, however, Torreya: A Monthly Journal of Botanical Notes and News had already reported on botanical discoveries in Puerto Rico.¹

The chair of the Scientific Survey was Nathaniel Lord Britton (1859–1934), the first director of the New York Botanical Garden and the brains behind the project. He intended to encourage new research that differed from “the Academy’s ordinary activities” (Britton, “History” 1). Julio Figueroa Colón indicated that Britton’s idea catered to promoting more cutting-edge projects that would highlight the academy’s standing as “one of the most prolific sci...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Series Page
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• Introduction: Retention and Reinvention of Puerto Rican Oral Folklore Tales
• 1. Porto Rico as a Colonial Scientific Laboratory: Documenting Puerto Rican Oral Folklore
• 2. A Post–Spanish-American War National Identity: Editing Puerto Rican Folktales in a Sociopolitical Vacuum
• 3. Jíbaros’ Authorship through Literary Self-Characterization
• 4. Telling a Story about Class and Ethnicity through Fairy Tales, Cuentos Puertorriqueños, and Leyendas
• 5. An (Un)colored Puerto Rican Culture: Unpublished Negro Fieldwork in Old Loíza
• 6. Tropicalizing the Puerto Rican Racial Past: The Quest of an Indian Area
• Conclusion
• Acknowledgments
• Notes
• Works Cited
• Index
• About the Author