Race and Nation in Puerto Rican Folklore: Franz Boas and John Alden Mason in Porto Rico 9781978810242

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Race and Nation in Puerto Rican Folklore

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CRITICAL CA ­R IB­B EAN STUDIES Series Editors: Yolanda Martínez-­San Miguel, Car­ter Mathes, and Kathleen López Editorial Board: Carlos U. Decena, Rutgers University, Alex Dupuy, Wesleyan University, Aisha Khan, New York University, April J. Mayes, Pomona College, Patricia Mohammed, University of West Indies, Martin Munro, Florida State University, F. Nick Nesbitt, Prince­ton University, Michelle Stephens, Rutgers University, Deborah Thomas, University of Pennsylvania, Lanny Thompson, University of Puerto Rico Focused particularly in the twentieth and twenty-­first centuries, although attentive to the context of ­earlier eras, this series encourages interdisciplinary approaches and methods and is open to scholarship in a variety of areas, including anthropology, cultural studies, diaspora and transnational studies, environmental studies, gender and sexuality studies, history, and sociology. The series pays par­t ic­u ­lar attention to the four main research clusters of Critical Ca­rib­bean Studies at Rutgers University, where the coeditors serve as members of the executive board: Ca­rib­bean Critical Studies Theory and the Disciplines; Archipelagic Studies and Creolization; Ca­rib­bean Aesthetics, Poetics, and Politics; and Ca­rib­bean Colonialities. Giselle Anatol, The ­Things That Fly in the Night: Female Vampires in Lit­er­a­ture of the Circum-­Caribbean and African Diaspora Alaí Reyes-­Santos, Our Ca­rib­bean Kin: Race and Nation in the Neoliberal Antilles Milagros Ricourt, The Dominican Racial Imaginary: Surveying the Landscape of Race and Nation in Hispaniola Katherine A. Zien, Sovereign Acts: Performing Race, Space, and Belonging in Panama and the Canal Zone Frances R. Botkin, Thieving Three-­Fingered Jack: Transatlantic Tales of a Jamaican Outlaw, 1780–2015 Melissa A. Johnson, Becoming Creole: Nature and Race in Belize Carlos Garrido Castellano, Beyond Repre­sen­ta­tion in Con­temporary Ca­rib­bean Art: Space, Politics, and the Public Sphere Njelle W. Hamilton, Phonographic Memories: Popu­lar ­Music and the Con­ temporary Ca­rib­bean Novel Lia T. Bascomb, In Plenty and in Time of Need: Popu­lar Culture and the Remapping of Barbadian Identity Aliyah Khan, Far from Mecca: Globalizing the Muslim Ca­rib­be­an Rafael Ocasio, Race and Nation in Puerto Rican Folklore: Franz Boas and John Alden Mason in Porto Rico

Race and Nation in Puerto Rican Folklore

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Franz Boas and John Alden Mason in Porto Rico

R a fa e l O c a s i o

rutgers u niversity press new bru nswick, camden, and newark, new jersey, and london

 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Ocasio, Rafael, author. Title: Race and nation in Puerto Rican folklore : Franz Boas and John Alden Mason in Porto Rico / Rafael Ocasio. Description: New Brunswick, New Jersey : Rutgers University Press, [2020] | Series: Critical Caribbean studies | Includes bibliographical references and index. Identifiers: LCCN 2019043696 | ISBN 9781978810211 (hardback) | ISBN 9781978810204 (paperback) | ISBN 9781978810235 (mobi) | ISBN 9781978810228 (epub) | ISBN 781978810242 (pdf) Subjects: LCSH: Boas, Franz, 1858–1942—Travel—Puerto Rico. | Mason, John Alden, 1885–1967—Travel—Puerto Rico. | Folklore—Study and teaching—Puerto Rico— History. | Ethnology—Puerto Rico—History. | Oral tradition—Puerto Rico. | National characteristics, Puerto Rican. | Puerto Ricans—Ethnic identity. | Puerto Rico—Race relations. | Puerto Rico—Social life and customs. | Puerto Rico— Relations—United States. | United States—Relations—Puerto Rico. Classification: LCC GR47.P8 O23 2020 | DDC 398.2097295—dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2019043696 A British Cataloging-­in-­Publication rec­ord for this book is available from the British Library. Copyright © 2020 by Rafael Ocasio All rights reserved No part of this book may be reproduced or utilized in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without written permission from the publisher. Please contact Rutgers University Press, 106 Somerset Street, New Brunswick, NJ 08901. The only exception to this prohibition is “fair use” as defined by U.S. copyright law. The paper used in this publication meets the requirements of the American National Standard for Information Sciences—­Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI Z39.48–1992. www​.­rutgersuniversitypress​.­org Manufactured in the United States of Amer­i­ca

 In memoriam Judith Ortiz Cofer (1952–2016) Whose literary mentorship inspired this book. This is my tribute to her passion to preserve Puerto Rican oral folklore through her creative fábulas criollas that she heard as a child in Hormigueros from her abuela’s cuentos.

Contents

Introduction: Retention and Reinvention of Puerto Rican Oral Folklore Tales ​ ​ 1 Post–­Spanish-­American War U.S. Scientific Explorations ​ ​ ​1

1 Porto Rico as a Colonial Scientific Laboratory: Documenting Puerto Rican Oral Folklore ​ ​  15 The Island of Porto Rico in the U.S. Public Eye ​ ​  16 Identifying Porto Rican Folklore: The Compilation Pro­cess ​ ​ ​29



2 A Post–­Spanish-­American War National Identity: Editing Puerto Rican Folktales in a Sociopo­liti­cal Vacuum ​ ​  44

Arguing about La Raza and a Native Puerto Rican Culture ​ ​ ​ 45 Editing in a Sociopo­liti­cal Vacuum: Personal and Professional Differences ​ ​ ​ 55



3 Jíbaros’ Authorship through Literary Self-­Characterization ​ ​  70

A Countryside-­Inspired Folklore through Jíbaros’ Authorship ​ ​ ​ 72 Juan Bobo and Other Native Picaresque Characters: Surviving the Rural Campo ​ ​ ​85



4 Telling a Story about Class and Ethnicity through Fairy Tales, Cuentos Puertorriqueños, and Leyendas ​ ​  97 Expressing Jíbaro Cultural Values through Native Oral Folklore ​ ​ ​ 100 El Campo as a Site of Puerto Rican Identity in Cuentos de Encantamiento, Cuentos Puertorriqueños, and Leyendas Puertorriqueñas ​ ​ ​110

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5 An (Un)colored Puerto Rican Culture: Unpublished Negro Fieldwork in Old Loíza ​ ​ ​133 Loíza as a Site of an Afro–­Puerto Rican Culture ​ ​ ​134

Reconstructing a Post-­slavery Afro–­Puerto Rican Popu­lar Folklore: The Unpublished Field Notes ​ ​  153



6 Tropicalizing the Puerto Rican Racial Past: The Quest of an Indian Area ​ ​ ​165

Conclusion ​ ​ 181 Acknowl­edgments ​ ​  191 Notes ​ ​ ​193 Works Cited ​ ​ ​211 Index ​ ​ ​231

Race and Nation in Puerto Rican Folklore

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Introduction Retention and Reinvention of Puerto Rican Oral Folklore Tales Do you know what p­ eople mean when they speak of “Our New Possessions”? What are they? Where are they? Why are men, in the streets, in the shops, everywhere, talking about them? Why are the newspapers full of articles in regard to them? Why are lawmakers at the capital devoting so much time and attention to them? Can you tell? —­Marian M. George, A ­Little Journey to Puerto Rico for Intermediate and Upper Grades (1900) My principal work ­here is to collect the folk-­lore and I am getting an enormous pile, with the cooperation of the department of education. I have a pile sixteen inches thick now and prob­ably get as much more before I quit. What I am ever ­going to do with it I ­don’t know. —­John Alden Mason to Alfred L. Kroeber, January 21, 1915

Post–­Spanish-­A merican War U.S. Scientific Explorations When the signing of the Treaty of Paris on August 12, 1898, ended the Spanish-­ American War, large numbers of Americans flocked to “Our Possessions,” the newly acquired Ca­rib­bean islands of Cuba and Puerto Rico, and to the Philippines in the Pacific basin. Extensive press coverage had produced a rec­ord number of readers who for the first time eagerly followed a media-­dominated war through “reading newspapers (or looking at the pictures) more than ever before” (Collin 107).1 In search of an exotic geography, the first American civilian explorers wrote a large number of diaries and travelogues that served as formal pre­sen­ta­tions of ­these military-­occupied territories. Their views ­were not broad; they e­ ither focused on the islands as commercial wastelands with ­great financial potential for U.S. enterprises or took a paternalistic attitude in hopes that a rising twentieth-­century American-­ made technology would turn the “Spanish islands” into a showcase of modernity. 1

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In the early part of the twentieth c­ entury, technology also allowed for massive and complex proj­ects abroad, such as the Panama Canal, which, as Katherine A. Zien stresses, was hailed as “an example of social engineering’s triumph over tropical degeneration” (41). Along with Puerto Rico as part of the “Spanish Islands Empire,” the canal became a g­ reat symbol of the United States’ increasingly power­f ul geopo­liti­cal dominance. Indeed, Peter James Hudson has traced the intricate ways in which U.S. federal policies facilitated the emergence of American banking as a power­house in the Ca­rib­bean ­after the Spanish-­American War: “The War and State departments required fiscal agencies to support the infrastructure of US colonialism, and financial institutions ­were an impor­tant conduit of colonial policy and financial and commercial diplomacy” (6). Although the implementation of the Foraker Act in 1900 provided Puerto Ricans with a civilian government, it also imposed a governor appointed by the U.S. president. Thus, the island was subjected to congressional laws as “federal regulations pertaining [to] governing of Puerto Rico responded to economic needs of an American market” (García Muñiz 47). The numbers of the earliest American investors, as historian Andrés A. Ramos Mattei has documented, w ­ ere high. Some three hundred w ­ ere already on the island in 1898, even before Spaniards ­were mandated to evacuate the island (54). This early commercial interest in Puerto Rico may explain in part the high number of travelogues and diaries published in the United States. Intended to be more than literary texts, travelogues written about Puerto Rico emphasized the economic benefits of maintaining the island u ­ nder American po­liti­cal control. A newly constituted “Porto Rico” was an outstanding booty, as Murat Halstead observed in The Story of the Philippines and Our Possessions (1898): “[Puerto Rico] falls into our possession without the impoverishment and demoralization of the devastation of war—­one of the fairest gems of the ocean” (577).2 ­After Cuba’s in­de­pen­dence in 1902, Puerto Rico remained a colorful yet backward representative of an “island” culture, strikingly dif­fer­ent from U.S. modern practices that attempted to transform ancestral “Spanish” cultural practices (Anazagasty Rodríguez & Cancel, “Los textos” 38). Lured to the island as the only Spanish-­speaking Ca­rib­be­an U.S. possession, American travelers wrote about local traditions and often commented upon unique race-­based social types.3 Their curiosity led them to capture a native Puerto Rican identity doomed to dis­appear amid the aggressive Americanization campaign leading to an eventual annexation of the island.

The Scientific Survey of Porto Rico and the Virgin Islands as an Or­ga­nized Colonial Laboratory Notable American academic institutions performed scientific fieldwork in Puerto Rico. In 1913, the New York Acad­emy of Sciences, cohosted by the Puerto Rican government, started the Scientific Survey of Porto Rico and the Virgin Islands,

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a comprehensive study of the islands’ geology, paleontology, botany, zoology, and anthropology. The obtained data have been described “to this day, as one of the most complete descriptions of the natu­ral history of any tropical area ever attempted” (Figueroa Colón viii). The findings of subsequent scientific excursions w ­ ere published from 1919 ­until 1941 as Scientific Survey of Porto Rico and the Virgin Islands. Its multidisciplinary impact upon developing branches of science in Puerto Rico was long-­standing; however, it has also been labeled as part of an initial “fase de intervención cultural” (phase of cultural intervention; Iranzo Berrocal 21).4 The Scientific Survey included extensive documentation of anthropological and oral folklore components ­under the direction of Franz Boas (1858–1942). An outstanding anthropologist and ethnologist with an international reputation, Boas had become “the most impor­tant single force in shaping American anthropology in the first part of the twentieth c­ entury” (Stocking 1). He was also a pioneering scholar in the field of folklore studies (Darnell, “Franz Boas” 3; Krupat 82; White, Ethnography and Ethnology 5; Zumwalt, American Folklore 69). Boas arrived on the island in May 1915, staying for a period of about five weeks. His visit went unnoticed by con­temporary readers of Puerto Rican newspapers, including Puerto Rico Ilustrado, an arts and lit­er­a­ture weekly magazine that regularly documented the arrival of impor­tant international personalities. ­There are no surviving fieldwork notebooks, and most of his biographers have ­either ignored his trip to Puerto Rico or treated it as an afterthought in Boas’s busy international and national travel schedule.5 He was not in top physical condition, still recuperating from recent facial surgery to remove a cancerous tumor. Only close f­ amily members ­were aware of his weak physical condition. The survey included field research in the areas of botany and entomology, zoological reconnaissance and entomology, geology, and anthropology and archaeology. Boas chaired the anthropological component, supported by a team of young, rising scholars: Herman Karl Haeberlin, John Alden Mason, and Robert T. Aitken. Their most critical contribution was the mapping of Capá, as the remains of an indigenous Taíno ballpark site ­were known at the time. They are considered t­ oday to be part of the first wave of American anthropologists who arrived in Puerto Rico ­a fter the Spanish-­A merican War (Anderson Córdova et al. 15). Their research has been challenged, however; most of them lacked basic linguistic Spanish competency, knowledge of previous bibliographical documentation, and general knowledge of Ca­rib­bean history (Rodríguez López 30; Duany, The Puerto Rican Nation 60–61). Boas had given Mason specific instructions for the identification of a par­tic­ u­lar type of cultural in­for­mant. Mason’s whereabouts on the island put him in contact with jíbaros, peasants who provided a variety of expressions of oral folklore, including hundreds of stories, conundrums, sayings, and popu­lar poetry. They also uncovered samples of native musical forms, mainly décimas and aguinaldos

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(Christmas songs). The resulting collection, as Jorge Duany described, “enshrined the mountain jíbaro as the archetype of the folk. It thereby contributed to construct Puerto Ricans as a predominantly white population with strong ties to Eu­ro­pean traditions” (The Puerto Rican Nation 83).

Boas’s Fieldwork in Puerto Rico Boas’s proj­ects in Puerto Rico fall into two distinctive scientific categories. He excavated indigenous Taíno physical remains in Capá, located in the town of Utuado, on the island’s central highlands, reputedly at the heart of an “Indian” territory, which had already attracted the attention of fellow American anthropologists. ­A fter mapping and sketching complex courts for ball games and plazas skillfully connected through a street system, Boas made a formal proposal for turning Capá into a public educational park. His archaeological findings did not immediately catch the attention of the Puerto Rican government, however. A second area of scientific data gathering in Puerto Rico included anthropometric research, a crucial component of Boas’s ongoing campaign to debunk the strong international appeal of a “unilineal evolution” (Rohner and Rohner xvi). Writing to the American governor of Puerto Rico, Arthur Yager, on November 6, 1913, Boas explained his intention to produce controlled anthropometric ­mea­sure­ments in order to explore “the effects of race-­mixture with reference to form of heredity in man” and “the effect of tropical environment upon the development of man” (American Philosophical Society).6 With ­these data he also desired to address an unstated “number of exceedingly impor­tant and attractive prob­lems.” Boas could have considered Puerto Rico a permanent site for anthropological and ethnographical fieldwork. In 1910 he had been involved in the founding of the International School of American Archaeology and Ethnology in Mexico City (Hyatt 115). His research at vari­ous geo­g raph­i­cal Mexican sites produced “Notes on Mexican Folk-­L ore” (1912), among the first articles on Latin American oral folklore published by the Journal of American Folklore, of which he served as editor. Events surrounding the Mexican Revolution interrupted his work in Mexico in 1914 and led to the closing of the International School. While in Mexico, Boas worked alongside young scholars who served as his assistants in the field. John Alden Mason (1885–1967), a young archaeologist, linguist, and folklorist, a­ fter receiving his doctoral degree from the University of California, Berkeley in 1911, joined Boas in Mexico between 1911 and 1912.7 Mason was a student of Alfred L. Kroeber, who, in turn, had been Boas’s student at Columbia University.

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Mason’s Ethnographic Fieldwork: “Indian,” Jíbaro, and Afro–­Puerto Rican Folk Cultures Mason preceded Boas on his trip to Puerto Rico, where he arrived on an undocumented date in 1914. His first letter to Boas from the island, dated December 8, reveal an overly excited young scholar e­ ager to start tackling several complex proj­ects. He badly desired to serve his notoriously demanding mentor, who often ordered last-­minute changes to grueling work schedules and physically demanding field work protocols. His exploratory excursions (gathering oral folklore and documenting archaeological sites) around the island ­were literally exhaustive. Mason also identified numerous male volunteers for Boas’s anthropometric mea­sure­ments (mainly ­children and soldiers), and while performing that task he surveyed the rough mountainous areas of the Cordillera Central (Central Mountainous Range). At the time Mason wrote his first letter to Boas from Puerto Rico, he had already engaged in “a twelve days reconnoisance [sic] and field trip to Utuado” (APS). This picturesque pueblo, a rural town located in Cordillera Central, had become for Puerto Ricans, the sentimental home of a peculiar type of rural culture, known as jíbaro de la montaña (high ground peasant). The peasant culture of this iconic region was also well known for its rich oral folklore. Not surprisingly, Mason made Utuado his permanent home base. In his letters to Boas he frequently praised the Utuado Gibaro, his preferred spelling, while highlighting some local traditions and expressing admiration for the skillful abilities of jíbaros to deliver oral folk stories. The end result, as it has been charged, produced a collection overwhelmingly focused on “forms of verbal art [that] enshrined the mountain jíbaro as the archetype of the folk (Duany, The Puerto Rican Nation 83). Mason did, however, also come to Loíza, a predominantly Afro–­Puerto Rican fishing village on the northeastern coast, where he uncovered oral samples representative of a “Negro” type of culture. As he did throughout the island, in Loíza he collected oral poetry and songs, stories, and ­children’s rhymes and games. Of ­great historical value, he met a former enslaved individual, Melitón Congo, an old man who spoke to Mason about customs of the enslaved, mainly medicinal and religious practices that had survived a­ fter the abolition of slavery in 1873. Surprisingly, the final publications made no indication of geo­g raph­i­cal or racial origins of any of the oral samples. More puzzling, none of the Loíza material was published, nor w ­ ere the field notes made available to Puerto Rican scholars.

Mason’s Collection Pro­cess: Cultural In­for­mants as Writers The oral folklore proj­ect had the full support of Governor Yager, who was instrumental in helping Mason develop connections with administrators of the public school

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system, who provided him direct contact with c­ hildren in rural schools. Edward M. Bainter, Puerto Rican School Department director, facilitated the participation of hundreds of schoolchildren who ­were asked to write down oral samples as part of their school work. The decision to involve Bainter was controversial. He had pushed radical proactive mea­sures for the establishment of En­glish as the preferred language in the public school system, including a requirement that teachers develop working skills in the En­glish language as a condition for the renewal of their teaching licenses. ­These policies incited frequent boycotts by teachers and students alike, leading to his eventual decision to quit his post in 1915. Adults w ­ ere also commissioned to write oral folklore samples. They w ­ ere rural men of varying ages and from a variety of geo­g raph­i­cal locations. Mason’s preferred in­for­mants w ­ ere, however, jíbaro men from Utuado, as indicated in notations from surviving field notebooks. He also made transcriptions from reputedly well-­k nown storytellers, using his own type of phonetic script that highlighted the linguistic peculiarities of jíbaro speech. This interest in documenting jíbaro phonology was an impor­tant component of Boas’s ongoing collection of oral folklore among Antarctic Eskimo groups. Mason kept Boas abreast of his busy research schedule. His rather large correspondence with Boas details the multifaceted compilation pro­cesses (­children and adults as writers, as well as his own recording and transcribing of oral renditions of oral folklore) and some brief discussions about his own preferences in compilation. He was rather simplistic in his listing of his geo­graph­i­cal explorations; t­hose pueblos, although iconic in terms of rich regional oral folklore, remained mainly undescribed. His aloofness went against the American travelogues that often described with voy­eur­is­tic interest newly discovered cultural practices on the island. In the end, Boas’s arrival in Puerto Rico took place at an undetermined date in late May, 1915. He did not take part in Mason’s ongoing compilation of oral folklore. Instead, Boas worked industriously on anthropometric field research with male ­children and men and on an archaeological dig of Capá’s ballpark. His noticeable withdrawal from working on the oral folklore tier continued during the subsequent editing pro­cess, augmented by the addition of a dissenting copy editor.

Ignoring Ideological Differences during the Editing Pro­cess: The Language Issue Folklorist and Spanish professor Aurelio M. Espinosa (1880–1958) served as the editor of all of Mason’s field notebooks. A proud native Nuevo Mexicano, although a native speaker of Spanish, he had no experience with or knowledge of jíbaro linguistics. No scholar from Puerto Rico was invited to take part in ­either the collection or the editing of the oral samples, though. Nonetheless,

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Mason had had the support of Puerto Rican folklorists, whose recommendations fully enriched the compilation pro­cess. As a more significant oversight, in asking ­children to write in Spanish oral samples, the ideological implications of such a request ­were not considered. En­glish, as the language of instruction, had been imposed upon them. Americans traveling throughout Puerto Rico in the early part of the twentieth c­ entury often reported that the teaching pro­cess was convoluted at best, and, controversially, it also generated demeaning reports on the socioeconomic conditions of jíbaro ­children as members of an underprivileged social class. Indeed, neither Mason nor Boas was concerned about the po­liti­cal scene that they encountered on the island in late 1914 and throughout 1915. In 1914, José de Diego, as spokesman of the Puerto Rican legislature, managed to approve an official declaration stating the bound­aries of a Puerto Rican nationality. General elections on the island ­were followed by official concerns about the serious l­egal limitations of self-­governing placed upon Puerto Rico by the Foraker Act of 1900. Public discontent taken to the streets as po­liti­cal rallies and worker and teacher strikes, widely covered by newspapers, reflected a local preoccupation with expanding American po­liti­cal power over the island’s internal affairs. Although indicators of the island’s long-­standing colonial background could be pre­sent in the collected samples, such sociopo­liti­cal indicators w ­ ere completely ignored. The Puerto Rican oral folklore is composed of hundreds of samples—­riddles, Christmas carols, poetry, songs, and stories—­and was edited in standard Spanish. Appearing in nine volumes in the Journal of American Folklore from 1916 to 1929, ­t hese publications ­were among the first and largest oral folklore samples in Spanish published by this distinguished journal. Except for the riddles—­ published many years l­ater in book format as Folklore puertorriqueño: Adivinanzas (Puerto Rican Folklore: Riddles; Mason 1960)—­t he oral folklore proj­ect remains unpublished in Puerto Rico. The conclusion of such a monumental proj­ect took a toll on all participants. Although Espinosa maintained his commitment to edit all samples, his relationship with Boas was always formal, to the point that he never fully expressed his feelings about being a participant in this historical proj­ect. Espinosa did break up with Mason, whose professional relationship he never sought out. In a more public stance, Boas withdrew himself from his professional association with Mason. Writing in an editorial for the Nation on December 20, 1919, he accused four anthropologists of espionage in Central American countries during the First World War. Although the names of the accused individuals ­were withheld, Mason was immediately implicated, leading to a controversial censure of Boas by the American Anthropological Association. However, Mason did maintain a public admiration for Boas.

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Race and Nation in Puerto Rican Folklore reassesses Boas’s and Mason’s ethnographic and anthropological fieldwork in Puerto Rico within the context of ongoing American scientific proj­ects abroad and against the po­liti­cal arena that they encountered on the island. As Jorge Duany has articulated in his groundbreaking study of Boas’s trip, this reputable scholar’s intentions reflected “ethnographic imperative to rescue the Island’s Hispanic folklore before the onslaught of Americanization” (The Puerto Rican Nation 62). Indeed, as I ­w ill highlight, their ample correspondence reflects that Boas expected Mason to collect a significantly large amount of oral folklore samples within a relatively short period. Their detailed letters describe Mason’s preparation prior to his trip to Puerto Rico, his busy whereabouts on the island before Boas’s arrival, and his tedious dealings with governmental and public figures while performing fieldwork. The collection procedures, which included native in­for­mants, ­children and adult men from rural areas, w ­ ere also frequent subjects of their letters. In par­tic­u­lar, details pertaining to a well-­organized plan to have school c­ hildren draft their own renditions of oral samples are discussed ­here, including my analy­sis of the ideological implications that, for the first time in literary history, jíbaros ­were given the opportunity to act as writers of their own cultural practices. Although not originally targeted as an impor­tant source of oral folklore, Mason scouted surviving slave customs and a strong mulatto (Afro-­Puerto Rican) ethnographic heritage in the coastal town of Loíza. Neither Boas nor Mason was initially aware of Old Loíza (Mason’s preferred naming) which Mason targeted as his principal geo­graph­i­cal site of a representative Puerto Rican rich black cultural heritage. Mason’s letters to Boas describing his whereabouts around this predominantly black area are, however, rather bland. He ignored any descriptions of Loíza’s rich popu­lar traditions, such as manual artisan productions and musical per­for­mances. Mason’s most groundbreaking finding was his documentation of Melitón Congo, who as a former slave born in Africa, provided Mason with a rich data of local cultural practices, mainly religious-­based medicinal procedures and so called superstitions. My reconstruction of t­ hese data through Mason’s notes in surviving fieldnotes highlights the outstanding significance of Loíza as a notable cradle of a so called Afro-­P uerto Rican culture. The editing pro­cess was also well documented. Letters between Boas, Mason, and Espinosa clearly reflect not only their professional disagreements but ways in which they failed to understand the importance of the oral folklore samples as a reflection of a complex sociopo­liti­cal colonial history operating on the island. ­These letters provide an insightful look into a rather monumental task that, as I discuss, all parties po­liti­cally and critically mishandled in one way or another. I ­will also underscore ways in which local scholars, historians and ethnographers, ­were heavi­ly utilized as con­sul­tants of Mason’s fieldwork procedures, however, their impor­tant input remained unacknowledged in the serial publications of

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the oral samples. None of them w ­ ere ever invited to participate in the editing pro­cess, a decision that could have avoided most of the ideological disagreements that occurred between Mason and Espinosa. Within the ideological context of the earliest American scientific trips to Puerto Rico, I have two critical goals. First, this book documents a myriad of orga­nizational details b ­ ehind Boas’s historic visit to Puerto Rico. Although neither Boas nor Mason considered themselves travelers, at least not in the sense of ­those who came to the island in pursuit of experiencing a recently po­liti­cally constituted “Porto Rico,” they closely followed geo­graph­i­cal sites that American and foreign visitors had regularly commented upon. Indeed, first-­person travelogues, historical accounts, and Puerto Rican cultural artifacts brought to U.S. anthropological fairs initially informed Boas’s and Mason’s knowledge of certain types of cultural in­for­mants. In par­t ic­u ­lar, the jíbaro, as an emblematic inhabitant of the island’s campos, the untamed countryside, was designated as a repository of a vibrant identidad criolla, a Puerto Rican hybrid Spanish creole cultural identity. A second goal is to trace in representative folktales t­ hose specific types of geographic settings, character types, and plot lines that reflect expressions of a national identity through jíbaro culture. Folktales, which dominate the oral proj­ ect, highlight iconic characters immersed in social and cultural par­ameters that describe the island’s long colonial history, a sort of psychological profile of a stubborn Puerto Ricanness defying an American po­liti­cal intervention. In their documentation of jíbaro culture, Boas and Mason might have been following a similar intellectual proj­ect operating in Puerto Rico. Local literary writers, po­liti­cal analysts, and politicians ­were si­mul­ta­neously engaged with a pro-­nationalist proj­ect in which jíbaros, depicted as white ­people of Spanish descent, stood as representatives of a well-­developed Hispanidad. As descendants of rural Spaniards, a hybrid race, la raza, not only reflected unique expressions of a developed national identity but also highlighted Puerto Ricans as culturally and linguistically dif­fer­ent from the newly arrived U.S. Americans. In reappraising jíbaros as the uncontested symbols of a national identity, however, the Afro–­Puerto Rican ele­ments of the so-­c alled Puerto Rican raza ­were obliterated. Chapter 1, “Porto Rico as a Colonial Scientific Laboratory: Documenting Puerto Rican Oral Folklore,” highlights the ethnographical and anthropological components of the Scientific Survey of Porto Rico as part of the island’s increasing popularity as a stage for scientific exploration. Although without practical value for a fast-­developing, heavi­ly agrarian economy, ­t hese areas of investigation w ­ ere designed to increase the national reputation of the New York Acad­emy of Sciences through Boas’s public profile as an indefatigable traveling scientist. Indeed, “The Island of Porto Rico,” thanks to the Scientific Survey, took a forefront position in numerous U.S. scientific excursions a­ fter the Spanish-­American

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War. Popu­lar interest in the island was already high, with frequent articles published in learning publications, such as National Geographic. Within the popu­lar topic of racial connections with Puerto Rican cultures, Boas’s oral folklore stands out as the largest such proj­ect produced. It included a large number of in­for­mant adults and ­children from rural areas who wrote down their own material. Jíbaro traditions ­shaped not only the content but also the themes of the folk material. The proj­ect, which was exclusively supervised by Mason, managed to produce an overwhelming number of oral folklore samples. Chapter 2, “A Post–­Spanish-­American War National Identity: Editing Puerto Rican Folktales in a Sociopo­liti­cal Vacuum,” surveys the intellectual opposition that Mason and Boas w ­ ere exposed to, particularly through public statements by Puerto Rican politicians and intellectuals concerned about the negative influence of American ideological and cultural policies upon native cultural traditions. Unbeknownst to Mason and Boas, key Puerto Rican politicians and writers ­were heavi­ly involved in public debates concerning the impact of American po­liti­cal and social policies imposed on the island. One passionate topic in par­ tic­u­lar, the proposal to use En­glish as the island’s official language, had also been highly debated by locals and by American travelers alike. Nonetheless, such contested sociopo­liti­cal issues ­were not considered to have a potential influence on the compilation of the oral samples or during the editing pro­cess, given the impassioned partisan scene that both Boas and Mason encountered in Puerto Rico. ­There was yet another ignored fact. Mason would have come across a booming Puerto Rican nationalist lit­er­a­ture, which advocated for an emerging national identity through documentation of native folklore. Although some of ­these native folklorists actually served as his con­sul­tants, they ­were not invited to work on the rather convoluted editing pro­cesses that eventually followed. Chapter 3, “Jíbaros’ Authorship through Literary Self-­Characterization,” discusses the role of an emerging “jíbaro lit­er­a­ture” that, at the time of Mason’s visit, had become an integral component of the highly nationalistic discourse. Two critical ­angles explore outstanding characteristics of Mason’s oral samples. On the one hand, in serving as writers of oral folk samples, jíbaros performed such a task for the first time in literary history, indirectly joining in an ongoing literary trend known as criollista, which since the beginning of the twentieth ­century had been exploring jíbaro motifs while highlighting native creole ele­ ments. On the other hand, as writers, jíbaros drew from themes, characters, and subjects that spoke to them within the harsh socioeconomic environment of the Puerto Rican countryside. One outstanding iconic character is the picaresque peasant boy, Juan Bobo, a mischievous child who often finds himself involved in borderline criminal situations from which he escapes by sheer maña, or luck.

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Chapter 4, “Telling a Story about Class and Ethnicity through Fairy Tales, Cuentos Puertorriqueños, and Leyendas,” focuses on Mason’s compilation methodology, which was mainly Boasian in practice. It also included archiving jíbaro linguistic expressions and assessing oral deliverance techniques, documentation lost t­ oday that I reproduce from his reports to Boas and letters generated during the editing pro­cess between Boas and Espinosa. ­These stories feature local folk types who exemplify par­tic­u­lar cultural traits of the Puerto Rican campo, the countryside that was a setting of sentimental importance to the cultural in­for­mants. Traditional cuentos de encantamiento (tales that involve spells) display identifiable native cultural traits with plots that reveal local strug­gles against economic scarcity found in the countryside throughout the early part of the twentieth c­ entury, gracefully overcome by fantastic interventions. Rural cultural themes and motifs pertaining to religious practices are notable components of two categories of oral folklore narratives: cuentos puertorriqueños (Puerto Rican tales) and leyendas (legends). They clearly reflect a strong connection to jíbaro traditions, particularly religious belief systems. “Bad men” turned into folk legends are common characters, such as the infamous Puerto Rican–­born pirate Roberto Cofresí and other bandidos (bandits), a fixed, dangerous component of the Puerto Rican countryside throughout the nineteenth c­ entury and the early part of the twentieth. Chapter 5, “An (Un)colored Puerto Rican Culture: Unpublished Negro Fieldwork in Old Loíza,” explores Mason’s fieldwork in Old Loíza, home of the island’s predominantly African-­heritage population, located on the northeastern coast. At the time of his visit it was an iconic black geography, well known for its popu­lar cultural traditions, including seasonal cele­brations, referred to as afro-­puertorriqueño. Although Puerto Rico was a stronghold for slavery during the colonial period, neither Boas nor Mason considered performing ethnographical research on the island’s surviving slave-­based culture. Forty-­one years ­after the abolition of slavery on the island in 1873, Mason witnessed a type of a “Negro” oral folklore. His diaries of his transcriptions, which he described in letters to Puerto Rican anthropologist Ricardo Alegría in 1956 as “written phonetically in the local dialect,” included several poems in “presumably African Congo.” More importantly, he met an el­derly man, whom he identified simply as Melitón Congo, through whom he came to know about local popu­lar practices. He also documented generic data about religious customs, mainly the use of native plants that served not only as a type of green medicine but also as components of what he described as “witchcraft” rituals. None of this material was ever published, though I was able to reproduce it, thanks to his correspondence with Alegría. Nonetheless, as an in­ter­est­ing literary coincidence, Boas might have recognized his oversight in not fully exploring the historic relevance of Melitón Congo’s

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oral folklore and cultural testimony. In 1927, he served as Zora Neale Hurston’s mentor, supervising her oral African American folklore documentation, and according to Hurston, “I was to go south and collect Negro folk-­lore” (Hurston, Folklore 684). Chapter  6, “Tropicalizing the Puerto Rican Racial Past: The Quest of an Indian Area,” explores Boas’s two main disciplinary interests during his short stay in Puerto Rico. Although he was still recuperating from facial cancer surgery, as the letters from Mason reveal, Boas was physically engaged in field research excursions that took him to geo­graph­i­cal centers seen as iconic repre­ sen­ta­tions of the island’s racial past. He had come to Puerto Rico with the specific goal to identify an “Indian area,” as he referred to an ­actual geography that was presumably still harboring indigenous Taíno culture. This was in spite of concerted efforts—­during conquests and colonization—to efface it. As ­today’s official narrative highlights, through that physical search Boas came upon Capá, the outstanding ballpark and notable Taíno religious center, which he mapped for the first time in modern archaeological history. Nonetheless, Boas did not officially publish his findings at Capá. All data from that initial encounter, which took place “during the months of June and July, 1915,” ­were officially made public in publications by his field assistants, Mason, Aitken, and Haeberlin (Aitken 296). Indeed, Capá caught Boas’s critical attention even a­ fter his return from his trip to Puerto Rico. Inconclusive findings prompted Boas to ask Mason to return to Puerto Rico for a second trip, which lasted from September 8, 1915 through early December, 1915. As their extensive correspondence reflects, Mason kept himself heavi­ly involved in field documentation of Capá. ­These letters reflect a young scholar involved in a proj­ect that he clearly understood as groundbreaking in Ca­rib­bean archaeology and, most importantly, a key to his finding of his first professional academic job. Boas’s interest in Puerto Rican anthropology plausibly stemmed from his early exposure to Taíno archaeological collections at cultural fairs or­ga­nized in the United States. One such event of international exposure was the 1893 World’s Columbian Exposition, which took place in Chicago, where Boas had a central role as a rising anthropologist. He created exhibits that displayed indigenous artifacts, including the presence of a­ ctual natives, who performed a teaching function while making accessible to an ­eager public unknown details about U.S. and international indigenous groups. In Chicago, Boas might have come across Taíno archaeological pieces for the first time. Boas also had come to Puerto Rico ready to engage in a second scientific field proj­ect. He continued working rather feverishly on his ongoing anthropometric research, which had been an impor­tant field of study and one not without controversy, as indicated by his involvement with national discussions on the current effects of new migratory waves on the ethnic makeup of the modern

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United States. On the heels of his trip to Puerto Rico, Boas had been involved in a U.S. congressional commission, known as Dillingham, which from 1907 to 1911 considered the ge­ne­tic effects of newly arrived mi­grants, particularly ­those from Southern Eu­ro­pean countries, including Jewish communities, upon the con­ temporary American racial makeup. Ultimately, Race and Nation in Puerto Rican Folklore explores the po­liti­cal scene operating in Puerto Rico at the time of Mason’s and Boas’s visits, one intended to reconstitute Puerto Ricans as prospective American citizens. Indeed, ­until the granting of American citizenship through the Jones Act of 1917, local po­liti­cal parties ­were actively debating the potential impact of an American citizenship upon a well-­defined Puerto Rican nationality as individuals strongly identified with “Hispanic” cultural practices. Mason and Boas witnessed in late 1914 and throughout most of 1915 a convoluted and heated po­liti­cal scene, to say the least. Newspapers often covered the many strikes and acts of civil disobedience. Boas, on the other hand, rarely made references to his trip to Puerto Rico in his ample correspondence with ­family members and friends. With his colleagues, reports about his findings in Puerto Rico w ­ ere rather short and devoid of any excitement pertaining to his archeological or ethnographic findings. While on the island, Boas clearly kept himself marginal to the ongoing pro-­ nationalist and anti-­U.S. movements. His neutral stance would have seemed contradictory to Puerto Rican writers and politicians, who, a­ fter the instauration of the Foraker Act in 1900, ­were heavi­ly and publicly involved in po­liti­cal discussions centering around subjects of Boasian interest, such as la raza.8 Within ­today’s reassessment of Boas’s most lasting contribution, described as an institutional rejection of “nineteenth-­century racist-­evolutionist practices into a relativistic, culture-­specific science” (Jonaitis 28), my book highlights the lost historical importance of the Puerto Rican oral folklore. Mindful that Boas’s scientific practices and data reports are often reexamined (Baker, Anthropology 158; Cole 3; Williams 33), I place his Puerto Rican oral folklore as an outstanding proj­ect within the ongoing debates of the intersection of science and politics. In par­t ic­u ­lar, I examine its intended effect upon discussions of national identity in the context of the island’s colonial history. It is my hope that once such contested po­liti­cal issues are explored, the richness of the oral folklore collection ­w ill fi­nally be appraised, and more importantly, the fact that jíbaro cultural in­for­mants ­were writers ­w ill bring to the forefront this oral collection as one of tremendous relevance in a post–­Spanish-­American War Puerto Rican literary history. Fi­nally, within the field of Ca­rib­bean studies, this book reverberates in regional discussions about the U.S. economic and po­liti­cal influence on regional popu­lar cultures. Indeed, I was very mindful that in tracing the origins of Puerto Rican cultural icons I was treading in deep ­waters with multiple layers of colonial

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histories. Born to peasant parents and part of the first urban generation born in San Juan, I heard countless anecdotes about their upbringing in rural campos, seemingly untainted by U.S. cultural influences. Their memories of a natu­ral life exposed to the ele­ments, like the idyllic view of Mason’s, contrasted with their recognition that they too ­were exploited as destitute farmers, barely surviving in a plantation system that could be traced to Spanish colonial times. The ultimate goal of this book is to offer a personalized view of certain surviving cultural ele­ments pre­sent in ­today’s Puerto Rican raza. As was the case of the thousands of jíbaros who left for the United States throughout the late 1930s, my ­family brought to San Juan a type of jíbaro culture that as a child I came to both love and hate. To this day my m ­ other’s favorite meal includes boiled roots that, if given a choice, I forgo for a more “modern” dish. Through her stories of her f­ ather, whom she often described as “más negro que el carbón” (blacker than coal), I knew that not all jíbaros w ­ ere the traditional, white, Hispanic-­like figures often depicted by artists like Ramón Frade. Still imprinted in my mind is the jíbaro ­music that my ­father loved to hear—­behind closed doors, of course, ­because my siblings and I considered it so “pasada de moda” (old-­fashioned). All of t­ hese dissimilar ele­ments, as scholars and literary writers throughout the Ca­r ib­bean have denoted, make for a vibrant, trans-­Caribbean culture whose function transcends enjoyment of social leisure to provide vehicles of po­liti­cal expression, just like its initial models did.

chapter 1

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Porto Rico as a Colonial Scientific Laboratory Documenting Puerto Rican Oral Folklore Porto Rico is the most eastern and the smallest of the G ­ reat 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 p­ eople 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)

­ fter the Spanish-­American War, Puerto Rico had a privileged position as a 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, t­ hese 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 pro­ cess that Guillermo Iranzo Berrocal considers to be the “marginalización del ‘Otro’ colonizado” (the marginalization of the colonized “Other”; 9). Through 15

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“omisión y selectividad” (omission and selectivity), it produced an “efecto de ha­ cerle 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. Th ­ ere 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

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in the h ­ andling 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 t­ hese 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 h ­ andling 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 ser­v ice 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. bound­ aries 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 Roo­se­ velt 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 ­t hose 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).

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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). Th ­ ere ­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 l­ ittle attention was given to the h ­ uman ele­ments, mainly jíbaros, ­behind t­ hese 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 Amer­ i­ca 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

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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 a­ fter 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, t­ hese 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 or­ga­ nized 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 c­ entury.

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 b ­ ehind the proj­ ect. 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 scientific institutions of the time” (vii).

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Britton had traveled to Puerto Rico in 1913, and a­ fter meeting with faculty at vari­ous universities and with governmental officers, he was positive about his plans. Upon his return in October 1913, the acad­emy approved plans to start field research the following year, beginning a schedule of trips that would take place over a span of five years (Baatz 205–206). The first team to leave was a group of zoologists affiliated with the American Museum of Natu­ral History in the summer of 1914. A botanical expedition followed in the early part of 1915 (Baatz 209). A concrete example of a complementary use of scientific data for utilitarian purposes, Iranzo Berrocal stressed, was Britton’s 1915 trip to Mona island, where he discovered large quantities of guano. That source of organic phosphates was widely used by Americans during World War I (21).

The Involvement of the Porto Rican Governor Britton orchestrated a rather complex system of financial support, which included contributions from the Puerto Rican government. Following the model of Boas’s International School of American Archaeology, founded in Mexico in 1910, the Scientific Survey’s board involved the American-­controlled Puerto Rican government early on as a financial supporter. A letter addressed to Dr. Arthur Yager, governor of Puerto Rico (1913–1921), dated December  22, 1913, introduced the proj­ect as a “geological, anthropological and natu­ral history survey of Porto Rico . . . ​w ith a considerable collateral bearing on tropical biology and geology” (APS). The letter, clearly a commercial contract, requested “further appropriations of $5,000 a year for field-­work, reduction of observations and statistics, typewriting, illustration and printing, and supply some facilities for dredging by the use of a steam vessel for short periods of time.” In return, the acad­emy committed to publish within five years the results of a series of expeditions, expected to collect “many thousand specimens of rocks, minerals, plants and animals . . . ​, and the preparation of descriptive accounts of the geology, meteorology, archaeology, botany and zoology of the colony.” The specimens ­were to then be returned to the island to form the basis of a natu­ral history museum.

Setting Up the Oral Folklore Component of the Scientific Survey of Porto Rico: The Initial Role of Franz Boas A striking characteristic of the collection of papers on the Scientific Survey of Porto Rico at the New York Acad­emy of Sciences is the scarcity of documents on Boas’s role as the scholar in charge of archaeological and oral folklore fieldworks. The first reference to Boas’s trip to the island is a letter addressed to him on May 11, 1915, from H. W. Harvey, the Survey Board’s secretary, with information on how to document his travel expenses. Harvey was also concerned about Boas’s “physical trou­ble and operation,” in reference to his impending trip to the

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island. He also expressed plea­sure that Boas had remained on course, “in accordance with your original plans,” despite a recent surgical procedure on his face (NYAS).2 At a board meeting on January 28, 1915, Boas stated his intention to travel to Puerto Rico in May for a period of “about six weeks.” He also requested to be accompanied by an unnamed assistant, who would remain on the island ­until October. Boas’s official pre­sen­ta­tion letter to Puerto Rican and American officers was dated May 19, 1915 (APS). Boas also contacted Governor Yager. In a letter dated November 6, 1913, he detailed his proj­ect to the governor as an “investigation [that] would contemplate field-­work throughout Porto Rico and the smaller islands of the colony, including the collection of many thousand specimens of rocks, minerals, plants and animals, the study, determination and labeling of t­ hese specimens, and the preparation of descriptive accounts of the geology, meteorology, oceanography, archaeology, botany and zoology of the colony, accompanied by as much illustrations as funds would permit” (APS). Boas also made two proposals, presumably to be financed by the Puerto Rican government, as concrete advantages to the completion of the field research. One was the creation of “a natu­ral history museum” to ­house “the specimens obtained,” which would be returned to the island. The results of “the descriptive work” would be the second by-­product. His request of twenty-­five thousand dollars, “to be expended within five years for field-­work, typing, illustration and printing,” would presumably provide publications to “supply all Porto Rico schools and libraries” (APS). None of t­ hese proj­ects ­were ever again mentioned.3 The pace of work on the survey increased with the appropriation of five thousand dollars by the Puerto Rican legislature.4 Yager officially announced that his administration had committed five thousand dollars for the five-­year period of the survey. The text of the announcement was almost a verbatim copy of the previous letter from the Scientific Survey Board to Yager. In par­tic­u ­lar, he was hopeful that the survey could lead to the “descubrimiento de valiosos minerales, creando de ese modo una nueva industria, lo cual, en la actualidad, es asunto de gran importancia para Puerto Rico” (discovery of valuable minerals, creating in that way a new industry, which at this time is a ­matter of ­great importance for Puerto Rico; “Mensaje” 10). A formal letter from the Survey Board, dated May 15, 1914, thanked Yager for his effort to facilitate bud­getary approval from the Puerto Rican legislature (APS). Britton acknowledged the kind assistance of the acad­emy’s president, Emerson McMillin (1844–1922), and the cooperation of the American Museum of Natural History, the New York Botanical Garden, scientific departments of Columbia University, and unnamed “other institutions,” which already had some “collections” from Puerto Rico (“History” 1). He also expected help from two Puerto Rican university-­based experimental agricultural stations in Río Piedras

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and Mayagüez. The sequence of the field research was expected to follow this order: geology, paleontology, botany, zoology, and anthropology (1). The organ­izing committee, Columbia University professors Henry E. Crampton (1875–1956), James  F. Kemp (1859–1926), Charles  L. Poor (1866–1951), and Boas, w ­ ere tasked with setting up field trips to Puerto Rico, covering areas of botany and of entomology (Britton), zoological reconnaissance and entomology (Crampton), geology (Kemp), and anthropology and archaeology (Poor and Boas). The first scientist to travel was Crampton, “whose zoological reconnaissance” at the end of 1913 took him “over a large part of the island” (Britton, “History” 1). The research trips w ­ ere numerous and involved a large number of field researchers. Outstanding among some of the proj­ects most relevant to the economic development of Puerto Rico w ­ ere Britton’s plan of reforestation on the island, ­later presented to the Puerto Rican government, and a conclusive geological report that the “supposed petroleum oil shales in the western part of the island . . . ​do not exist in Porto Rico” (“History” 3–4).5

The Initial Scientific Recommendations to the Puerto Rican Government Governor Yager was particularly interested in Britton’s intention to develop a governmental plan for the island’s reforestation. He kept the governor informed ­after his first trip in 1906.6 Britton’s report recommendations w ­ ere enacted; in 1918–1919, Yager signed proclamations to protect selected areas that became incorporated into a “new insular forest system” (Sastre-­D.J. and Santiago-­ Valentín 326). Britton’s visits to the island created an extensive impact that endured u ­ ntil nearly the end of his lifetime. A publication by the Puerto Rican government, Trees of Coamo Springs H ­ otel (1927), stated that Britton had traveled to Puerto Rico for the first time in 1915, when he and his wife, Elizabeth, went to the southern town of Coamo, known for ­hotel facilities built on thermal ­water springs, where he identified “the kind of trees growing in 1927” (1). The Brittons, known in the area as El Doctor and Doña Isabel, frequented Coamo Springs H ­ otel beginning in 1918, spending “at least four months of e­ very year [­t here], making the ­Hotel their headquarters during scientific excursions over the island, which they loved so much” (3).7 They w ­ ere “much loved and admired by the peasants of the rural community surrounding Coamo Springs; their constant preachings for the conservation of our trees and flowers and their many kindly deeds to t­ hose in need, ­w ill long be remembered” (3). Their contribution was fully acknowledged in the book dedicated to them: “To their reiterated suggestions and painstaking care, we owe much of the pre­sent layout of the Coamo Springs park and garden” (3).

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Boas’s Team of Assistants in Puerto Rico: Herman Karl Haeberlin, John Alden Mason, and Robert T. Aitken A member of the acad­emy since 1896, Boas had given the acad­emy’s anthropology section “enormous visibility” (Baatz 196). Originally, Boas had been skeptical about the proj­ect and presumably agreed only ­after he “quickly realized that the survey would provide an ideal opportunity for fieldwork for his assistants and gradu­ate students at ­little or no expense” (Baatz 212). Puerto Rican scholars, however, have vocalized dif­fer­ent opinions, including statements that Boas had communicated interest in exploring Puerto Rican archaeology before the New York Acad­emy’s interest in the island (Alegría, “Archaeological” 258; Iranzo Berrocal 21). Boas chaired a team of anthropologists composed of Herman Karl Haeberlin (1891–1918), John Alden Mason, and Robert T. Aitken (1890–1977). Mason, as Britton unceremoniously pointed out, preceded Boas on the island and was merely acknowledged for facilitating the compilation of “an im­mense collection of folk tales, riddles, ballads and songs,” labeled as “the most impor­tant contribution of its kind made to lit­er­a­ture” (“History” 5). Britton significantly downplayed the importance of Mason’s scouting of archaeological sites, including prepping Capá’s indigenous ballpark remains in anticipation of Boas’s formal documentation. Britton made no indication of the complex fieldwork pro­cesses by which such an “im­mense collection of folktales” could have been documented during a short period. Further, he presented Haeberlin, Mason, and Aitken as mere “aides” of Boas in the field (“History” 4–5). Boas’s teamwork with younger scholars benefitted all involved; it facilitated Mason’s earning “first accolades” and Boas’s “advancing his already established professional ­career in a safe environment of a colonial American territory” (Duany, “Anthropology” 36–37). Their archaeological findings appeared ­under the names of Boas, Mason, Haeberlin, and Aitken individually.8 Mason, a fellow in anthropology at the University of California (Mason, “The Ethnology” 97), had started his own field research in 1910 at “the neighborhood of the old Mission of San Antonio in Monterrey County” (Mason, “The Language” 4). A year l­ater Boas became his mentor while the two performed field research in Mexico ­under the auspices of the International School of American Archaeology. His per­for­mance impressed Boas, as a letter of recommendation written at the end of 1911 indicates: “The applicant is personally known to me as a very promising student. He has the advantage of a good training in linguistics, and took up the subject of anthropology a­ fter a preliminary study of classical archaeology” (APS). Upon his return from Mexico, in his correspondence with Boas, Mason reflected on his passion for seldom-­documented Mexican oral folklore. He

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particularly lamented the absence of indigenous oral folktales: “The tales [are] of Eu­ro­pean origin, b ­ ecause the few natives ones [Mexican] are very fragmentary and in text, and ­w ill prob­ably eventually be published elsewhere” (APS).9 Boas may have been impressed by Mason’s fieldwork and by his subsequent translation into En­glish of a ­little known Mexican oral piece. Writing to Boas in 1911, Mason, as a rising young scholar, kept Boas abreast of “my work on Salinan linguistics reading up on Mexican ethnology and linguistics and improving my ­little Spanish” (APS). On September  20, 1912, Mason wrote to Boas describing his new En­g lish translations of “perdones” (­pardons). He also expressed confidence in his knowledge of “the structure of the language” (APS). He displayed a strong professional opinion about his En­glish translation: “One ­t hing which lends difficulty to the translation is the use of the 3d pers[on] for the 2d. in Spanish together with the similarity of the Tepehuan 2d. pers[onal] pro[noun]., ap(i) and the 3d. pers[onal] pro[noun] when combined with a common participle pu, -­a-pu. In the perdones many verbs are translated ‘haber de’ which I now take to be a ­f uture form though at first I did not give it a proper translation.” Mason’s field research, “The Ethnology of the Salinan Indians,” was published in 1912. As with Mason, Boas had an association with Haeberlin and Aitken prior to their work in Puerto Rico. According to Haeberlin’s obituary, written by Boas, they had met in 1913 while Haeberlin was a student in Berlin. Haeberlin presumably came to Columbia University to study ­u nder Boas. His theoretical approach, as Boas described it, was like his own research: “The character of his work was determined by a keen psychological interest founded on a broad philosophical and historical training. He was never a mere collector of facts, but the material of anthropology served him to understand the relations between the individual and society. Anthropological observations w ­ ere in­ter­est­i ng to him ­because they throw light upon the relations between individual thought, feeling, and action and social environment” (“In Memoriam” 72). As for Haeberlin’s research in Puerto Rico, Boas vaguely defined how it “gave impor­tant results” (73). The c­ areer of this promising scholar ended with his sudden death in 1918 as a result of diabetes. Prior to their trip to Puerto Rico, Boas and Aitken had also collaborated on an ethnographic compilation of oral folklore. Boas’s Kutenai Tales (1918) was the result of a summer field trip in 1914 with the Kootenay or Kutenai, located on the Kootenai country, dispersed throughout northern Montana, northern Idaho, and southeastern British Columbia (“Native American People/Tribes”). According to Boas, Aitken recorded one story told to him by native in­for­mant Felix Andrew (Kutenai Tales v).

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Boas’s Fieldwork in Puerto Rico Britton highlighted, in par­tic­u­lar, Boas’s field research on social issues that ­were highly debated at the time: “Professor Boas obtained data that caused him to doubt the general assumption that c­ hildren reach maturity e­ arlier in tropical regions than in the temperate zone, and other data which are impor­tant as regards the hygiene of childhood in the tropics” (“History” 5). He agreed with Boas’s conclusion that “the Porto Rican race has been influenced in its development by environment” (5). The reference to Boas’s ongoing large anthropometric study remained unmentioned. The most significant finding by Boas’s group was their archaeological digging of “the ancient village site at Capá,”10 which Britton attributed to having been located by Boas. Mason maintained this version of Boas’ discovery of the ancient site. In his 1943 article, he briefly wrote that Boas had “been informed,” presumably by native residents of Utuado, of a “large surface site” several miles from a cave where he had been directing archaeological work (“Franz Boas” 65).11 His claim that he was uncertain about the ways in which Boas had learned about Capá was ludicrous, given the fact that Mason had lived in the Utuado area for several months prior to Boas’s arrival. Nonetheless, Mason made Boas responsible for the scouting of Capá, which he recognized as “the largest and most impor­tant site known then” (65). Mason placed Boas as a frequent visitor, actively excavating ­t here ­a fter making rough trips on ­horse­back “of an hour or more” (65). As with previous research findings, the Puerto Rican government was informed of the extraordinary value of Capá. Boas himself arranged for the government to survey the plot, privately owned, and recommended its purchase to be preserved as an archaeological park of national notoriety. This action would have protected the area from illegal diggings that had already begun. Britton stated that, regretfully, t­here was no positive action from the government (“History” 5).

Mason’s Arrival to the Island and His Earliest Field Research Activities in Utuado, Puerto Rico’s Heartland Mason arrived in Puerto Rico in December  1914, five months before Boas’s arrival, perhaps on May 29. Unexpectedly, t­ here ­were no official receptions for Mason, a rather strange omission given the fact that Puerto Rico Ilustrado often welcomed visitors of all kinds to the island.12 Only one testimonial account has survived t­ oday. Major Basil H. Dutcher, who served as chaplain of the Military Hospital in San Juan, documented Mason’s dealing with the governmental bureaucracy in San Juan. Major Dutcher was well acquainted with the vari­ous field research assignments of previous scientists who had come to the island on behalf of the Porto Rico Survey. He had also accompanied Britton, chair of the

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survey and director of the New York Botanical Garden, on his field research exploration in March 1914 (qtd. in Sastre-­D.J. and Santiago-­Valentín 329). Writing about Mason, Dutcher confided to Professor Crampton on May 9, 1916, “I rather fear that B ­ rother Mason’s work was not entirely appreciated by the local authorities, but as a m ­ atter of fact in technical re­spects it is extraordinarily valuable. However, it is difficult to educate an official like some who might be mentioned so that they can see the real value of such results” (APS). In his letters to Mason, Boas seemed reluctant to go to the island, an indecision that troubled Mason greatly. Boas never reported to Mason, however, that he was scheduled to have surgery on his face for the removal of a potentially cancerous tumor. The operation took place shortly before Boas’s trip to Puerto Rico. Upon his return from Puerto Rico, on July 12, 1915, Boas confided his physical condition to the proj­ect’s editor, Aurelio Espinosa: “I am feeling better, although the operation that I have had to undergo has left me with a rather serious handicap, the left side of the face para­lyzed. However, that cannot be helped” (APS). Mason’s first letter to Boas, dated December 8, 1914, was written in Santurce, in the outskirts of San Juan, upon his return from Utuado. This letter is an outstanding report of his initial activities on the island in terms of the types of proj­ects that Boas expected to be completed before his arrival. The first tier of Mason’s field research, and already the most developed component, was the oral folklore. Located on the Central Mountainous Range, known as the Cordillera Central, Utuado had already been a central geo­graph­i­cal point of Mason’s oral folklore and linguistic research. He reported to Boas “twelve days [of] reconnaissance and field trip,” which proved to be “very successful as far as folk-­lore and philology are concerned” (APS). As in his ­f uture letters, Mason made no indication of the geocultural importance of Utuado, or any other towns for that m ­ atter, in the mapping of an oral folklore proj­ect. Regretfully, Mason also stated that the trip had been “fruitless as regards archaeology and anthropometry.” Th ­ ese would be the second and the third tiers of his field research activities. The archaeology was based on his search for “something aboriginal,” though he had yet to find proof. “Aboriginal” would eventually become “indigenous,” though never properly designated Arawak or Taíno. The last of Mason’s field research tasks was updates on Puerto Rican “dialectology.” To Boas he described Puerto Rican speech patterns as “quite peculiar,” a “type of island dialect”: “Even the most cultured classes use [it] more or less . . . ​ in their ordinary speech, though with them it is not noticeable.” His extensive notation of such peculiar “dialect” was not based, however, on that of “the cultured classes,” whose standard use of Spanish was clearly not of interest to Mason. Instead, Mason documented the distinctive Spanish of the peasant “Gibaro.”13 The proper documentation of linguistic patterns was difficult, mainly b ­ ecause

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in­for­mants attempted to neutralize their country speech while telling their stories: “A natu­ral tendency was [to] imitate the speech that they understood as learned Spanish.” As his dealings with jíbaros increased, so did his copious linguistic notations to Boas, including specific pronunciation traits and use of grammar structures. None of this extensive material was ever published, and Boas never commented on its usefulness to the Scientific Survey of Porto Rico.

Jíbaro Agrarian Traditions in Early Twentieth-­Century  U.S. International Fairs Completely absent from Boas’s concise reports to the Survey Board was any indication of Mason’s prior knowledge of Puerto Rican peasants. Jíbaro culture had traveled to the United States as part of the island’s participation in U.S. fairs. In 1901, at the Pan-­A merican Exposition (Pax) World Fair in Buffalo, New York (Duany, The Puerto Rican Nation 44, 47). An elaborate display hailed as “the Porto Rican Ranch,” was brought from the island as a physical repre­sen­ta­tion of the island’s rural culture (Official Cata­logue 34). This was a reproduction of a straw-­roofed wooden structure, mainly intended for the storage of produce or the drying of tobacco leaves, a common and inexpensive practice of impoverished Puerto Rican peasants. The rancho was the staging for rural “inhabitants” who came to represent key jíbaro cultural traditions. A “Porto Rican String Band” performed a fairly large number of shows for the fair. While playing for two months, the twenty-­piece band, including unnamed string instruments, was plainly advertised as “peculiar” (“Porto Rico at Buffalo Exposition” 4). Although this was a generic description, several years l­ater, in 1903, “string bands” from the island participated in the Saint Louis Exposition. At the time, the Puerto Rican Herald described the string instruments that delighted U.S. visitors to the Puerto Rican exhibit as “bordonúa, tiple, and bajo guitarrón” (qtd. in Dower 146). Along with the string instruments, the band must have also included a lead singer who would perform songs associated with peasant life. Jíbaro traditions ­were further pre­sent in the display of crafts, “embroidery, drawn and lace work,” praised as skills “in which ­women of the island excel” (Rand-­McNally Hand-­Book 143). Puerto Rican ­women seem to have attracted the attention of a curious public, who ­were served Porto Rican coffee “by charming Porto Rican señoritas” (143). “Porto Rican coffee,” understood to be a novelty in the United States, also caught the interest of President William McKinley (1843– 1901). On the day prior to his assassination, he made an unscheduled stop at the “Porto Rican exhibit,” where he enjoyed a cup of freshly roasted and brewed Puerto Rican coffee. Historically, the presence of Puerto Rican jíbaros in the United States preceded, however, the Pax 1901 fair. Beginning on November 22, 1900, some

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114 jíbaros (men, ­women, and ­children) left Puerto Rico for the United States with the ultimate intention to provide assistance on sugar cane plantations in Hawaii (Torres-­Robles 17). A total of 5,303 jíbaros had been displaced to Hawaii by the end of 1901, although many returned to the United States to establish themselves in California (16). Presumably such an impor­tant workers’ trade, which had been promoted by the Hawaiian Sugar Planters, would have been known in the United States by means of promotional advertisements or news releases about the arrival of t­ hese newly-­arrived tropical field workers.

Boas’s Failure to Gain National Attention as a Traveling Scientist: President Roo­se­velt’s Exotic Exploration in Brazil In the end, Boas’s exploratory trip to Puerto Rico failed to highlight his intended image as a dynamic traveling scientist for a U.S. audience who was thirsty for documentation of U.S.-­led adventures abroad. News coverage of Boas’s exploration of Puerto Rico was surpassed by a well-­k nown and more notorious personality whose exploration of a more exotic destination also involved rather dramatic threats. In 1913–1914, former president Theodore Roo­se­velt joined a Brazilian military explorer, Col­o­nel Cândido Mariano da Silva Rondon, in a long, strenuous surveillance trip that produced a chart of the thousand-­mile-­ long Río da Dúvida (River of Doubt), located in the Brazilian Amazon basin. Known as the Roosevelt-­Rondon Scientific Expedition, the trip was sponsored in part by the American Museum of Natu­ral History. Through Roo­se­velt’s already romanticized image as an indefatigable traveler, in addition to Brazil’s “exotic allure and potential riches” (Millard 54), the Roosevelt-­Rondon expedition dominated U.S. news coverage. ­After Roo­se­velt contracted a tropical disease that could have caused his death, media reports on his condition reached an impossible-­to-­ignore fever pitch. In a rather unusual historical coincidence, President Roo­se­velt had previously traveled to Puerto Rico. Upon his return from an official trip to the Panama Canal in November 1906, his visit to the island was significant on vari­ous levels. Historically, it was the first ever official visit to a country outside the United States by an American president while holding office (Bishop 451; Jaycox 249). For Roo­ se­velt, the combination of Panama and Puerto Rico was a demonstration of his plan for a firmly “established American hegemony in the Ca­rib­bean” (Chambers 208), a visual confirmation of the impact of American globalization (Schoonover 79). Roo­se­velt’s trip to U.S. colonial enterprises had a direct connection with the ideological platform that had produced the Spanish-­American War. The resulting colonial discourse had brought him into the presidency as a candidate who rode as a hero of this iconic war: “[Roo­se­velt] regarded the taking of Panama as a fulfillment of the most direct American strategic interest, as a way of denying

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Figure 1.1. ​“Pres. Roo­se­velt at R. R. Station, Arecibo, Puerto Rico.” Library of Congress Digital Collections. http://­w ww​.­loc​.­gov​/­pictures​/­resource​/­ppmsca​.­35984​/­.

Eu­rope a foothold in Central Amer­i­ca, and at the same time assuring full mobility for a two-­ocean navy” (Collin 103). Unlike Boas’s trip, President Roo­se­velt’s presence in Puerto Rico stressed his personal opinion about the island as “strategically impor­tant for the U.S. government’s defense against pos­si­ble Eu­ro­pean aggression against the Panama

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Canal and the eastern coast of the United States” (Grosfoguel 56). María Eugenia Estades Font observed that the United States had considered the Ca­rib­bean a stepping stone to continental access. She pointed out that Captain Alfred T. Mahan in 1884 had propelled the idea that placed the Ca­rib­bean as “una de las grandes avenidas del mundo, tal como históricamente lo había sido el Medite­ rráneo” (one of the greatest ave­nues in the world, just as the Mediterranean had historically been viewed, to be gained ­after the construction of a canal in Central Amer­i­ca; 27). Nonetheless, the visuals that Americans would see of President Roo­se­velt’s trip would be of not the island’s strategic potential for the military but rather its financial potential. The president toured the island via a route that took him through an iconic agrarian geography. On November 22, Roo­se­velt traveled by train from San Juan to Arecibo, a developing city on the northwestern coast. He continued by car, following rural roads to the villages of Utuado and Adjuntas at the heart of the Cordillera Central (Collado-­Schwarz 165). The predominantly agricultural “village” of Adjuntas, with breathtaking views of the Central Mountainous Range, was often photographed as an example of rural wealth contrasting with rampant poverty. One photo­g raph underscores owner­ship of a potentially wealthy colonial holding. Entitled “Pres. Roo­se­velt at R. R. Station, Arecibo, Puerto Rico,” the photo­graph features an immaculately dressed gentleman in a white linen suit posing symbolically as a foreman overseeing a colonial plantation, represented by the blurred sugar cane in the background (see image 1.1). The miniscule depiction of the agrarian workers, whose features are barely recognized, fully intended to minimize their protagonist role in a rising financial enterprise heavi­ly controlled by U.S. corporations.

Identifying Porto Rican Folklore: The Compilation Pro­cess Poverty is almost unknown in Porto Rico, for almost ­every man owns his ­horse and e­ very ­woman is the possessor of chickens. —­A. D. Hall, Porto Rico: Its History, Products and Possibilities (1898) I learned, for instance, of century-­old traditions, quaint folklore stories, pirate yarns and buccaneer tales. —­Frederick A. Ober, The Storied West Indies (1900) The Porto Ricans are a much-­mixed race, in which the Spanish and Indian blood predominates. In the interior the bulk of the ­people are of pure Spanish descent and the poor whites or “Jibaros” constitute the greater portion of the inhabitants of the island. Near the coast and in the larger cities, however, ­there are large numbers of negroes, both native born and from the French,

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British, and Danish islands, and e­ very shade and mixture of colour may be seen. —­A lpheus Hyatt Verrill, Porto Rico Past & Pre­sent and San Domingo of To-­Day (1914)

This section chronicles Mason’s compilation pro­cess of hundreds of samples, which heavi­ly concentrated on the identification of a rural jíbaro oral folklore. As their letters reflect, neither Mason nor Boas was aware of the po­liti­c al significance of the jíbaro prior to their trips to Puerto Rico. This was in spite of the large number of travelogues written by Americans immediately following the Spanish-­American War that fully documented a popu­lar jíbaro culture. Inadvertently, Mason came across an ideological dichotomy that characterized ongoing critical arguments about ­whether rural traditions w ­ ere the base of a national Puerto Rican identity. The jíbaro, an iconic figure and a by-­product of Hispanic (white) traditions, was celebrated as a repre­sen­ta­tion of the so-­called criollo (creole), a preferred prototype of a bicultural Puerto Rican identity. This positive characterization of the jíbaro as a repository of an ancestral cultural knowledge contrasted with a negative portrayal during the Spanish colonial period that arguably still persisted at the time of Mason’s arrival to the island. From the onset, Boas had designed ethnographic and oral folklore field research that Mason exclusively supervised. I describe Mason’s intense, self-­ imposed fieldwork schedule during which he procured hundreds of individuals, adults and ­children, from rural areas who ­were asked, as cultural in­for­mants, to write down their own material. Emphasis on the rural jíbaro culture determined not only the scope of the compilation pro­cess but also the ways in which Mason obtained the folk material. The compilation methodology, which also combined his own transcription of in­for­mants’ oral folklore, followed Boas’s concise, minute indications. In the end, Mason was left to his own devices not only in h ­ andling the compilation pro­ cess but also in dealing with local governmental officers. One such individual was the director of the public school system, who served an impor­tant role in getting teachers interested in facilitating schoolchildren as writers of an ample number of oral folklore samples. Unbeknown to Mason, teachers of the newly constituted “Porto Rican Department of Education” had strug­g led and w ­ ere struggling with internal mandates, such as the imposition of En­g lish as the language of instruction.

Failing in Training “Porto Ricans” as Prospective American Citizens In 1914, the year of Mason’s trip to Puerto Rico, Alpheus Hyatt Verrill published Porto Rico Past & Pre­sent and San Domingo of To-­Day, a comprehensive travelogue intended to fill a void of information about the island: “an American

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colony for the past sixteen years, yet the American public as a ­whole has but a vague idea of the island’s resources, condition, p ­ eople, or climate” (xv). The book’s introduction lamented the continued lack of interest in this “American colony,” which was mostly known as an insignificant geo­graph­i­cal reference: “To many the island seems a far distant and foreign land, a mere speck in the vast expanse of ocean, and simply one of the numberless other specks which on maps are collectively labeled the ‘West Indies’ ” (xv). Within a self-­serving conclusion illustrative of the book’s purpose, Verrill also commented that ­t hose publications produced a­ fter scientific expeditions to the island ­were not catering to the general American public: “Very l­ittle of general interest has been written about Porto Rico. Histories, government reports, steamship folders, and similar works are legion, but ­t hese are far from satisfactory or complete from the tourist’s point of view or are too technical, too full of data, or too evidently advertising ­matter to be of ­great value or interest to the prospective visitor to our West Indian colony” (xvii). Such descriptions of Puerto Rico as a rapidly developing territory—­most writers did not know how to classify the island politically—­were at the center of Verrill’s travelogue. The advances brought to the island a­ fter the American occupation had led to changes in social life and traditions, illustrated in the modernity associated with American technology: “Sanitary plumbing was made compulsory for all h ­ ouse­holders, electric lights replaced the candle and lamp, a telephone system was installed throughout the island, automobiles, motor cycles, and auto trucks hummed over the splendid roads, disease and dirt ­were stamped out, trolley lines and railways brought far distant towns within easy reach, schools w ­ ere established” (13). As a result of t­ hese technological advances, he celebrated “Porto Rico . . . ​busy, bustling, up-­to-­date, and modern country,—­far ahead of most American communities of equal size” (13). The ideological conflict of Verrill’s ­handling of Puerto Rico as a “country” would inform his viewpoint. Puerto Ricans had refused to incorporate En­g lish as the official and personal language, in spite of the fact that “many Porto Ricans have become so Americanized as to dwell in concrete h ­ ouses, with all the ugly, ornate, incongruous, ginger-­bread architecture of Northern homes” (18). The conclusion was categorical. A ­ fter sixteen years of po­liti­cal submission to American colonialist practices, Puerto Ricans ­were not behaving as Americans: “At heart the Porto Rican is a Porto Rican first, last, and all the time” (18).

Governor Yager’s Role in the Scientific Survey of Porto Rico The specific date of Mason’s arrival to Puerto Rico in December 1914 is not known. Coinciding with Mason’s visit, Governor Yager announced in an offi-

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cial message a proj­ect of the New York Acad­emy of the Sciences, a complete survey and analy­sis of the island’s geology, anthropology, and natu­ral history (“Mensaje” 10). Yager’s emphasis was on potential financial benefits from the survey of the island’s mineral resources, which might create “una nueva industria, lo cual, en la actualidad, es asunto de gran importancia para Puerto Rico” (new industry, which is ­today a ­matter of ­great importance for Puerto Rico; “Mensaje” 10). Yager did not mention the names of any of the scholars expected to conduct the research. Governor Yager remained heavi­ly involved with the survey throughout his term in office (1913–1921). He often provided material choices to facilitate the activities of the survey’s scientists. He expected from the Survey Board periodic reports about the scientific findings. The ongoing pro­gress of the scientists was on his mind even when he was not in Puerto Rico. On January 8, 1915, from the Shoreham ­Hotel in Washington, D.C., handwritten on the ­hotel’s stationery paper, Yager demanded an update from Dr. Edward D. Hovey: “I am at pre­sent especially interested in the results obtained as to economic materials to which subject you ­will doubtless remember I requested that special attention be directed during the pro­gress of the survey” (APS). ­These demands w ­ ere taken quite seriously and addressed in the periodic meetings of the Survey Board members. The minutes of the survey meeting of January 25 generated three long pages of information to be immediately communicated to Yager in response to his January 8 request. Governor Yager also saw the data collected from a “Scientific Survey” as an opportunity to bring technical knowledge about the island to the masses. While bragging about a recently constructed Car­ne­gie library in Puerta de Tierra on the outskirts of Old San Juan in a letter of August 16, 1916, he informed Britton of a plan. He was expecting to “place some of the collections and exhibits” resulting from the survey. This exhibit would serve both educational and promotional purposes: “I believe that their prompt installation would be helpful in the ­matter of securing an appropriation” (APS). Obtaining appropriations from the Puerto Rican legislature was not easy for the governor. Newspapers did not cover discussions, if any, about the reasons why the legislature hesitated to facilitate yearly appropriations. Board members also appealed to commercial firms in Puerto Rico, requesting financial support. The South Porto Rico Sugar Com­pany was approached on May 11, 1914. This com­pany in par­tic­u­lar was asked to make an unstated “financial contribution” or to furnish “a steam vessel for oceanographic investigations and dredging” (APS). Eventually, Governor Yager located the only vessel capable of performing the required tasks. No documentation survives to indicate which private enterprises supported the fieldwork of the researchers on the island.

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Po­liti­cal Implications of Rural ­Children as Writer-­Informants: Edward M. Bainter The oral proj­ect had the support of Edward M. Bainter, commissioner of the reconstituted Porto Rican Department of Education, who served his position for a short term (1912–1915). Bainter, a specialist in vocational and prevocational education, gave “the first real impetus to manual training, home economics and agriculture as subjects in the regular curriculum” (Osuna 226).14 He provided Mason access to public schools across the island, reaching out to regional school superintendents who became heavi­ly involved in the oral folklore proj­ect. On December 8, 1914, Mason reported to Boas that he had approached the superintendent of the Utuado district, who had also sent a “similar letter” to ­every principal in the area (APS). Mason did not identify that local superintendent by name, nor did he comment to Boas about the teachers’ reactions to Bainter’s request, other than his excited reports bragging about the large number of texts collected that way.

The Role of Teachers as Trainers of ­Children Mason also reported to Boas about the earliest stages of his plan to ask teachers to help as aides in his compilation of oral samples. In his initial letter of December 8, 1914 letter, he already described Puerto Rican teachers in a highly positive tone: “They seem to be earnest and trustworthy; a g­ reat number of them have studied in the States and absorbed American ideals and can be relied upon” (APS). They would remain, however, as anonymous collaborators. Mason might have been referring to Puerto Rican teachers that had traveled to the United States as part of professional development programs. In his 1910 travelogue, Down in Porto Rico, American traveler George Milton Fowles commented on the trip of five hundred Puerto Rican school teachers to the United States in 1904 for a “brief summer season of study and travel” (93). Fowles stressed that “most of t­ hese teachers had never been beyond the shores of their native Island. A new world was revealed to them and a truer conception of American life was formed in their minds” (93). The group was divided into two sections that spent the summer at Harvard and Cornell universities (Dower 69; Osuna 169–170). They also visited several cities, such as New York, Philadelphia, and Washington. The purpose ­behind the sightseeing visits, as Fowles indicated, “was of inestimable value to them in enlarging their vision and giving them a glimpse of the life in the g­ reat eastern cities of the United States, with few exceptions, it made them advocates of Americanism among the many thousands of school ­children who come ­under their instruction” (93–94).15

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Imposition of En­glish as the Language of Instruction No other U.S. regulations or laws imposed upon Puerto Rico had such an obvious colonialist objective as the establishment of En­glish as the official language of the newly reor­ga­nized Porto Rican Public School system.16 An early interpretation of the policy came from Victor S. Clark, speaking as the American chair of the Porto Rican Insular Board of Education. In his 1900 congressional report, while lamenting the slow pro­gress of En­glish acquisition by schoolchildren, presumably in rural areas, he openly revealed his dislike of the existing Puerto Rican culture, including his low opinion of the rural inhabitants: No parallel can be drawn between the Puerto Rican child and the foreign child learning En­glish in the United States. The former goes home to a hut, or hovel, as a rule, sees no books or pictures, and hears no conversation possessing any culture value outside of school. His ­simple range of ideas is expressed in a barbarous patois of a few hundred words, and he has a peasant’s linguistic conservatism. He hears no spoken En­glish, and sees no written En­glish in his play or home life; and he is not in any way committed to an English-­speaking ­career. Add to ­t hese adverse influences an imperfectly trained teacher, unfamiliar with the language, and pro­gress is slow indeed. (qtd. in Annual Reports of the War Department 234)

This classist characterization of rural life could have been applied to many similar areas of the United States at the time, but Clark chose to illustrate the shabby conditions of schools in Puerto Rico by describing a struggling peasant who would have had no need to be committed to an English-­speaking ­career. In fact, rural traditions, implied in his offensive reference to “any culture value outside school,” set peasant culture in direct opposition to “cultured” American teachings. The suggestion was clear: only a­ fter the eradication of the distinctly dif­fer­ ent and, by extension, anti-­A merican ways of life of the jíbaro would Puerto Ricans be worthy of American citizenship. A passing remark that ­t here ­were fewer “than a thousand qualified teachers on the island” may have inspired his most po­liti­cally charged statement: “If the schools are made American, and teachers and pupils are inspired with the American spirit, . . . ​the island ­will become in its sympathies, views, and attitude ­toward life and ­toward government essentially American. The ­g reat mass of Puerto Ricans are as yet passive and plastic. . . . ​Their ideals are in our hands to create and mold” (qtd. in Annual Reports of the War Department 656). Ultimately, as Fowles had strongly advocated, the new “American” schools in Puerto Rico would serve a sociopo­liti­cal role. In Clark’s opinion, ­children—­over “four-­fifths of the population”—­would awaken to an American “intellectual, social, and civic consciousness” (656).

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The imposition of En­glish into a reformed public school system was the first step in an attempt to produce “loyal subjects (­later ‘citizens’) of the colonial state apparatus as well as disciplined laborers” (Negrón-­Muntaner, “En­g lish” 258). César Ayala and Rafael Barnabé contended that although the language regulation did not lead to the official banning of Puerto Rican traditions, a “national proj­ect” arose in opposition to the U.S. congressional laws imposed upon the island’s po­liti­cal system (76). The plan for En­glish language immersion seemed to have worked. Fowles bragged that in 1909 t­ here ­were twelve hundred Puerto Ricans teaching at “common schools,” all of them with “some knowledge of En­glish” (158). Puerto Rican teachers had repudiated, however, Bainter’s managerial methods. While imposing the use of En­glish as the official language of the public school system, Bainter insisted that the overwhelming majority of Puerto Rican teachers, who ­were Spanish native speakers, must acquire En­glish skills in order to maintain their teaching licenses. B ­ ecause of nationwide opposition from teachers, which was often supported by po­liti­cal parties in public protests covered by the press, Bainter resigned his post one year short of concluding his term (Negrón de Montilla 154, 161).17

Identifying ­Children as Cultural In­for­mants and Writers of Oral Folklore Samples Unfortunately, Mason made no mention of meeting any of the Puerto Rican teachers trained in American pedagogy nor did he describe to Boas ways in which he trained his teachers’ aids. Simply put, ­these unidentified teachers would encourage their students to write up folktales. He did not explain how he provided such training to teachers, nor ­were any data collected about ­these ­children, including age, gender, or academic level (Guerra 130). Mason did, however, report to Boas about the extensive help that he had received from public school superintendents. Writing an overly excited letter, dated January  19, 1915, Mason reported to Boas on the initial submissions: “15 of the 41 [school] districts” had already submitted samples written by school ­children. By February 2, 1915, fewer than half of the districts had completed their assignments. As the stories written by c­ hildren started coming in, Mason immediately offered a preliminary analy­sis to Boas. In the January  19 letter, Mason mea­ sured the material in terms of its size: it “makes a pile 9 1/2 inches thick and possibly a third of the sheets are written on both sides. Sheets average 7 × 9.” In spite of foreseeable duplication, t­ here was a considerable amount of new material: “Some schools gave me fine material, e­ very story dif­fer­ent while ­others showed lack of interest.” Mason also reported to Boas certain features of the stories based on their geo­ graph­i­cal origins. An impor­tant detail available only in their correspondence is Mason’s detailed report to Boas concerning the geo­graph­i­cal areas that he most often frequented. On January 12, he acknowledged to Boas the first samples

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received through the mediation of a regional school superintendent. He briefly wrote about Guayama, a small fishing village on the southeastern coast, reporting that the superintendent had collected presumably from school ­children “twenty-­five [of the] best ones” (APS). He also lamented, unfortunately, that “duplicates and very poor ones” had been discarded before he had a chance to read them. Mason would often lament this indiscriminate editing by superintendents and teachers who often reported submission of samples that, in their estimation, ­were good examples in terms of written composition and thematic development of oral folklore. As time progressed Mason became more familiar with the island’s geography through his visits to iconic towns. Beginning with a letter to Boas dated January 19, he was more specific about the geo­graph­i­cal origins of the samples. As proudly reported, the majority of the samples collected from school ­children came from “the western half of the island” (APS). He also wrote about stories gathered “from the southwestern corner of the island, Maricao, Las Larias, Cabo Rojo, Lajas, Guayanilla & Peñuelas, comprise principally legends and traditions, mostly local, while from Quebradillas & Camuy in the northwestern corner, and Utuado, Adjuntas and Lares in the western interior I get my best collections of purely Spanish folk-­lore.” Although he was clearly mindful of thematic differences he did not ascribe them to the geo­graph­i­cal origins of the ­children in­for­ mants. Instead, ways in which teachers interpreted his instructions, may explain differences in the samples: “I am inclined to ascribe the apparent predominance of traditions in this south-­western region to the influence of the teachers who possibly conferred among themselves and de­cided that traditions ­were what I wanted.” Nonetheless, as a newly-­arrived and foreign to Puerto Rican regional ethnicities, Mason also suspected that t­ here could be, however, another plausible explanation that he was already exploring. While sharing his observation with Porto Rico Scientific Survey field researcher Crampton that the south western region seemed somehow dif­fer­ent, he communicated to Boas Crampton’s preliminary observations: “But I asked Dr. Crampton if he thought the island was homogeneous ethnologically and he remarked that the population in this region looked a ­little dif­fer­ent to him.” A point that, as a comment in passing, Mason entered as “I think I must go t­ here to investigate.” Nonetheless, Mason concluded this letter with another geographic-­bound statement. The biggest collection so far collected came from Aguadilla, on the western coast. He did not describe its content, however, nor the geo­graph­i­cal significance of this iconic town, reputedly among the pos­si­ble sites of Christopher Columbus’s disembarkation on the island on November 13, 1493. On January 30, 1915, Mason was elated to report that the circular letter of an unidentified school commissioner had brought forward the best written examples produced by c­ hildren: “They grasped exactly what was wanted and wrote a very fine collection of stories, practically all dif­fer­ent and traditional. They are

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very well written, in many cases the source of the story is given and in a few cases the pupils have even used the dialectic forms of their words. Many of them end the story with a customary couplet or saying” (APS). Although Mason did not detail which school district he was referring to, one must assume that it was Utuado, since the letter initially spoke about his activities ­there: “I expected better results from this place than any other b ­ ecause the authorities ­here have naturally taken a personal interest, but the results exceeded my hopes. And the results from the country schools are yet to come. If the responses from the remaining districts at all approach ­t hose from h ­ ere we s­ hall have a very big collection.”

Male Jíbaros as Preferred Cultural In­for­mants: Mason’s Explorations of Geo­graph­i­cal Sites Shortly ­after his arrival on the island, Mason reported to Boas that jíbaros had become his preferred in­for­mants. On December 28, 1914, he proudly wrote that he had collected “ten copy books full with prospects” (APS). He also bragged about his having trained good informers, whom he described for their skills: “who do not try to improve on their natu­ral speech when dictating” (APS). He had certainly kept himself extremely busy: “In about ten days of work in Utuado I got 198 pages of dialectic text and I can prob­ably get several times as much more if I stay ­t here long enough.” His description of Utuado’s jíbaros was, however, sparse: they ­were of “the lower class . . . ​better workers than in Mexico and willing to tell stories all day for half a dollar.” Social differences among jíbaros ­were, however, evident. On December  28, Mason introduced to Boas his dealings with a dif­fer­ent kind of jíbaro, “the more educated Gibaros [sic],” some of whom eventually wrote sample stories (APS). Nonetheless, Mason found no prob­lem in locating “a surplus of in­for­mants and have left some men quite disappointed ­because I ­didn’t have time to work with every­body.” Mason offered Boas l­ ittle information about his jíbaro in­for­mants, other than that they ­were “illiterate persons who have learned [the stories] from ­others.” He did not clarify w ­ hether they w ­ ere men or w ­ omen, though Mason’s letters never indicated a concerted effort to recruit w ­ omen as in­for­mants. As with the student in­for­mants, he did not offer other types of basic information, such as age or level of academic education. Mason’s compilation pro­cess moved quickly and intensely. By January 5, 1915, Mason wrote to Boas that his “taking stories in text” in Utuado was nearly complete: “My in­for­mants are beginning to have to wrack their brains for stories . . . ​ and many of the stories I have in several versions” (APS). His instructions had become more specific: “They all understand that stories de memoria [from memory] only are desired and I have not yet found any of suspicious provenence [sic]” (emphasis in original). On January 12, 1915, Mason proudly reported having gathered some 1,250 pages of stories: “Most of t­ hese are new, though of course t­ here is a fair number

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of stories which are duplicated ­either in the books themselves or in my own phonetic work” (APS). The stories w ­ ere produced, as he stressed again, “de memoria” and w ­ ere “pretty au­then­tic.” The in­for­mants w ­ ere working as a team, “making a real effort not to duplicate material.” He was satisfied with the work done: “The material on the ­whole is very well written, both as regards style and orthography. I think only three or four of the books are poor orthographically.” In spite of Mason’s carefully documented reports to Boas about his compilation pro­cess, his published accounts appeared murky at best. ­There was conflicting information about the sources of the original stories, w ­ hether ­children or adults had written them, or ­whether they w ­ ere Mason’s own transcriptions of oral samples told to him by undocumented in­for­mants (­children or adults).

Mason’s Preferred Geo­graph­ic­ al Sites: Folklore puertorriqueño: Adivinanzas In his 1916 introduction to the riddles, Mason provided poor coverage of the geographic areas that provided the oral folklore samples. According to this first published account, Loíza and Utuado yielded an unstated, higher number of stories (“Porto-­Rican Folk-­Lore. Riddles” 423). No explanation was offered as to the importance of t­ hese geo­graph­i­cal sites that greatly differed ethnically as well as historically. Loíza was a well-­k nown source of Afro–­Puerto Rican traditions, while Utuado, at the heart of jíbaro country, displayed a predominantly white culture with deep roots in Spanish agrarian practices. None of the samples was identified by geo­graph­i­cal region ­either. In Folklore puertorriqueño: Adivinanzas, published in Puerto Rico in 1960, Mason provided more information about his trip to the island. The proj­ect had been a “long and difficult task” sponsored by the Puerto Rican government as a “scientific study” (9, 10). In spite of the huge amount of work performed, Mason remembered his stay on the island as “uno de los más placenteros y memorables de mi vida” (one of the most pleas­u r­able and memorable [experiences] of my life; 9). Speaking of his complex and multidisciplinary field research, he described it simply as having collected “material folklórico, a estudiar las peculiaridades dialectales y a realizar investigaciones arqueológicas” (folkloric material in order to study peculiarities in dialects and to carry out archaeological research; 9). In light of his previous article describing his role in the anthropological fieldwork, he simply mentioned that upon the arrival of Boas and his assistants, Herman K. Haeberlin and Robert T. Aitken, research activities turned to other, unspecified “aspectos de la investigación antro­ pológica” (aspects of anthropological research; 9). The pro­cess of transcribing folktales essentially remained the same as described in the 1916 introduction to the riddle collection. Mason stressed his own taking down of the samples as “modificando la transcripción fonética” (modifying the phonetic transcription of an unstated number of notebooks of riddles, poetry, and folktales; 10). ­Children, not adults, ­were repeatedly acknowledged

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for their drafting of unspecified written texts. This was in response to a “requerimiento” (request) from Commissioner Bainter to all public school teachers. Their participation produced a massive collection that Mason summarized as riddles, poetry, and “muchas canciones populares, romances, cuentos cantados y otro material musical” (many popu­lar songs, ballads, sung stories, and other musical material; 10). Although Mason had conducted field research throughout a large number of towns representative of key geo­g raph­i­cal areas, however, in Folklore puerto­ rriqueño he maintained the polarized dichotomy of only two towns, Utuado and Loíza, which represented two ethnocultural traditions: “buenos centros de los folklores ‘jíbaro’ y ‘negro’ ” (good centers of “jíbaro” and of “black” folklore; 9). Nonetheless, he also mentioned two additional towns, San Germán and Coamo, that are geo­graph­i­cal areas often related to jíbaro traditions and are thus more representative of a mainstream Puerto Rican culture than its black (Loíza) counterpart (10). Surprisingly, even though Folklore puertorriqueño was a publication for Puerto Rican readers, his analy­sis of what he considered to be traits of a jíbaro culture remained undiscussed. More puzzling, as in the original publications in the Journal of American Folklore, Loíza’s so-­called black oral folklore remained completely unidentified.

Initial Disagreements: Mason Working Solo Mason was hoping that Boas would come to Puerto Rico at the earliest pos­si­ble date, as he considered his direct involvement to be of prime importance. Boas had distanced himself from the collection pro­cess, however. On December 13, 1914, Boas wrote that he could not travel to the island, informing Mason that Professor Crampton, “one of my colleagues ­here in Columbia . . . ​a very pleasant man,” was presumably g­ oing in Boas’s place (APS). Mason did not document having had a previous connection Crampton; the latter was given zoological and entomology fieldwork. Mason badly wanted supervision. On December 28, he requested from Boas a firm deadline for the time he would be expected to remain on the island. Once again, his plea to Boas indicated his concern that time was insufficient, given Boas’s expectations: “your instructions to me outlined work enough to take several years” (APS). Mason had been working u ­ nder “the impression” that he was to remain on the island “­until March or April.” Indeed, if that was the case, he assumed that he needed to start anthropometric and archaeological work, of which he had not “yet done anything.” The implication of a definite timetable was impor­tant for Mason, who was busy “taking folklore in text and phonograph.” He went on to explain that he felt overwhelmed with the amount of work that the oral folklore had generated: “It takes me a week to write upon my typewriter the text which I can secure in a day. But I do not think that any one e­ lse can read accurately my phonetic orthography. I have absolutely no idea how large a body of phonetic text you wish

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me to take or what you are ­going to do with it when I get [it].” If he was to stay for a few months (perhaps u ­ ntil April), he would rather stay in Utuado, “where I have made a good beginning and can get more good material.” Since “­t here is no difference ­either in content of folk-­lore nor in dialect anywhere in the island,” he felt assured that Utuado would yield more outstanding samples of rural oral folklore. Boas frequently answered Mason’s lengthy requests in short letters, however. Writing on January 2, 1915, he fi­nally indicated the type of transcription he was expecting from Mason: “I think it is necessary for you to write all the tales you are collecting with interlinear translation” (APS). He also spoke about the transcriptions in Spanish, “which [are] perfectly easy to read.” Thus, he was expecting an easy editing pro­cess, as Aurelio Espinosa had already done in his own publications, “to conform . . . ​to Romance usage.” Espinosa, a rising folklorist and professor of Spanish at Stanford University, was to be in charge of editing all samples. Nonetheless, even though Espinosa’s role had already been defined, he had no participation in suggesting Mason’s compilation field techniques, a fact that became highly contested during the editing pro­cess.

Boas’s Preferred Type of Oral Stories Mason was constantly uncertain about how to collect specific themes. Indeed, Boas’s only recorded answer indicated his own preference for a certain type of oral folktale. As Mason was beginning to identify oral in­for­mants, Boas wrote on December 16, 1914, requesting special attention to “any tales relating to the sun, moon, and stars, or origin tales, that deal with dialogues between animals” (APS). The letter might have stood out to Mason b ­ ecause it included a more detailed account of Boas’s intended use of the Puerto Rican oral folktales. Boas had come across ­t hese types of celestial stories “in Mexico, but are not known from Spain. The question is w ­ hether they are simply not known or w ­ hether they do not exist.”18 According to Boas, further research on the m ­ atter, as a type of comparative study, would be “of very ­great importance in regard to the relation of Indian and Spanish lore in Mexico, and therefore deserves par­tic­u ­lar attention.” He was also interested in documenting “serpent monsters that pursue ­people, [illegible] rivers, and so on.” Mason followed Boas’s lead, and he proudly wrote on January 30, 1915, “­There ­were no sun, moon stories, other than t­ hose with a Eu­ro­pean fairy tale background. Th ­ ere w ­ ere no stories of animals talking among themselves about the creation” (APS). Mason stated, however, that he did uncover tales about “serpent monsters that pursue p ­ eople.” A series of them w ­ ere published as part of tales of enchantment. Boas did not comment on the importance of ­t hese “serpent monsters” as part of Puerto Rican folklore, however. While discussing this request, Boas briefly spoke about the consequences of asking for specific types of stories, his only recorded theoretical indication sent to Mason: “Of course, you know that it is always a l­ittle dangerous to ask leading

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questions, but I presume . . . ​[illegible] you can introduce them without vitiating your results.” He offered no theoretical examples of how to properly ask. Instead, he proceeded to explain the type of story in which he was interested: “An example of the kind of story which I am thinking of is a conversation between a rooster and a bull who are discussing about the origin of the world, the one telling the other how every­thing was created.” In the end, Mason was left to his own devices pertaining to the most effective ways to inquire about specific types of stories.

Final Stages in the Compilation Pro­cess: Other Types of Rural Oral Folklore and Jíbaro ­Music On January 5, having exhausted the field of folk stories, as “my in­for­mants are beginning to have to rack their brains for stories,” Mason started “paying more attention of late to the other branches of folk-­lore, adivinanzas (conundrums), décimas (verses in regular rhyme and meter sung), Aguinaldas [sic], bombas, e­ tc” (APS). He pointed out to Boas that his favorite conundrum, “Oro no es, plata no es” (It’s not gold, it’s not silver), was “very common” on the island. Boas ignored this comment, although it was certainly meant as an attempt to engage him in a critical conversation. In the same letter Mason reported on another impor­tant component of the folklore research. He had started recording of folk songs, which Mason labeled as “my most in­ter­est­ing work of late.” He proudly reported having “found two very good singers who are e­ ager to sing (for a slight compensation).” The songs ­were recorded on wax rolls to be played on a ­little Gem Edison phonograph.19 The names of the men, some of whom Mason described to Boas as well-­k nown folk singers, unfortunately remained undisclosed. The singers kept Mason busy, completing “33 fine rec­ords in a ­couple of days . . . ​and are ready to sing as many more.” Mason ran out of wax rolls, which ­were scarce on the island b ­ ecause of a fire at the Edison factory in New York. He had hoped to continue recording a large amount, as indicated in his request to Boas that a hundred or two hundred blanks be immediately dispatched to the island. With regard to the songs, Mason commented, “Of course, I am not sufficiently familiar with Spanish m ­ usic to be certain that all of them are indigenous; they are all claimed to be so.” Mason de­cided to take a dif­fer­ent approach to compiling popu­lar types of jíbaro songs, mainly décimas, bombas, and versos. In his original proj­ect, he had proposed to attempt to compile a “complete” collection of all pos­si­ble examples. By January 22, 1915, he had realized that they ­were “innumerable . . . ​and have a short life” (APS). He equated the production of t­ hese to that of a troubadour’s songs, “quickly composed and quickly forgotten.” Boas agreed with Mason, however, on February 2 simply stated, “I think you are quite right that you cannot get all décimas, e­ tc. Still you must get enough to give an impression of their character” (APS).

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Mason’s Whereabouts around the Island Near Boas’s Arrival Mason’s intense and lengthy fieldwork schedule caused him g­ reat physical discomfort. He was frequently ill, and as he shared with Boas, he often suffered from tropical colds. In January 30, as he had finished transcribing 177 conundrums (still left undone 260), he reported having fallen ill with “a bad attack of dysentery which has overtaken me” (APS). Boas did not rec­ord having been concerned about Mason’s state of health. On March 19, a few months before Boas’s arrival on the island, Mason proudly described the collected proj­ect: “I have an im­mense mass of material already, a pile of copy books from Utuado 7  in[ches] high and from Loiza 13  in[ches] high. . . . ​The school results make a pile 22 in[ches] thick” (APS). He was expecting still more to come from the schools. He was working at full speed, hoping to capitalize on Boas’s visit to the island: “Yet the amount of folk-­lore ­here is so ­great that I can prob­ably keep collecting ­until you arrive and still get ­little duplication if I am careful.” The last letters to Boas before his arrival on the island in May reflect Mason’s feverish work pace. On March 27, he wrote about having almost finished his work in Utuado, hoping that he would “collect a few books of stories and to finish up a few uncertain points ­t here” (APS). He was organ­izing a major “horse­back trip with a friend through the mountainous region of El Yunque from Loíza to Humacao” as well as a “short trip through the center of the island.” He had been given the name “of a man in Coamo, who is much interested in folklore and archaeology.” A Mr. Suárez, who had been recommended by Britton, could presumably serve as a more solid in­for­mant for Boas’s short visit to archaeological sites. This trip also included par­tic­u­lar towns as part of a route that he clearly described for Boas: “Ciales, Morovis and Corozal, a region said to be the wildest and most mountainous on the island and where the inhabitants are the most retiring and primitive. . . . ​The balance of my time [is] in the southwestern quarter, around Maricao, Las Marías, Sabana Grande, Yauco, Lajas, Cabo Rojo.” As in previous letters, Mason did not indicate the geo­graph­i­cal importance of ­t hese towns. Boas’s arrival in Puerto Rico was rather anticlimactic for Mason. Although Boas had indicated in a letter on May 21 that “I expect to sail on May 29,” it appears that Boas made a sudden decision to travel to the island without having informed Mason of the specific date of his arrival. Mason, who was busily working with anthropologist Aitken in Utuado, welcomed Boas to the island in a letter dated July 4. He had found out about Boas’s visit from an interview published by the local newspaper El Tiempo, which remains ­today uncovered. The only existing letter from Boas to Mason written in Puerto Rico was dated July 18, and unfortunately it is illegible. The next most impor­tant core of their correspondence recounted their tense debates about the editing pro­cess of an overwhelmingly large oral collection.

chapter 2

•

A Post–­Spanish-­American War National Identity Editing Puerto Rican Folktales in a Sociopo­liti­cal Vacuum [Puerto Rico] holds the proud distinction of being the first island in the West Indies to come u ­ nder our flag, and, as the first of our possessions in the American tropics, it ­will prob­ably be the theater of events having more than local significance. —­Frederick A. Ober, The Storied West Indies (1900) Amad, puertorriqueños, a la raza y a la tierra y adquiriréis una personalidad y ésta será inconfundible (Love, Puerto Ricans, the race and the land and you ­will acquire a personality and this w ­ ill be unmistakable). —­Herminio Díaz Navarro (1914)

This chapter examines the reactions of Puerto Rican politicians and intellectuals to the policies that formed “Porto Rico” as an emerging American colony. The sociopo­liti­cal events that both Boas and Mason experienced during their visits should have warranted a discussion of the island’s past colonial history and current imperialist regulations and how t­ hese ­factors impacted the content of the compiled oral folklore samples. Indeed, as I discuss in the first section, “Arguing about La Raza and a Native Puerto Rican Culture,” Mason did not share details with Boas regarding ongoing po­liti­cal arguments on the island, including questions about the role of a strongly-­developed native culture upon a Puerto Rican national identity. Indeed, cultural practices, archetypal native characters, and socioeconomic issues that severely affected life in the rural countryside ­were pre­sent in a substantial number of the collected oral samples. That ideological disjuncture created a schism that was extensively debated between Mason and

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Espinosa, which is the subject of the second section, “Editing in a Sociopo­liti­cal Vacuum: Personal and Professional Differences.” “Arguing about La Raza and a Native Puerto Rican Culture” brings to the forefront the multithematic discussions led by cultural and po­liti­cal commentators, both Puerto Ricans and foreign visitors, who w ­ ere deeply engaged in subjects related to proving (or denying) the existence of a Puerto Rican national identity. An Americanization acculturation pro­cess, a requirement for a potential American citizenship, had given way to heated controversies centering on potential threats to native Puerto Rican cultural expressions expected to perish ­under the pressures of U.S. practices of economic consumerism. Two highly contested subjects ­were at the heart of t­hese heated discussions. First, extensive debates took place about the rightful place of Spanish as Puerto Ricans’ sentimental language and, thus, the only rightful option as a “national” language. Second, a more abstract concept, la raza (the race), was highly argued as the ethnic underpinning of such a Puerto Rican “nation.”

Arguing about La Raza and a Native Puerto Rican Culture Que parta a España el que nació en España y deje aquí, de susto y pena exento, al que le cupo este jardín por cuna, bañada en suave hamaca por la luna. (May he leave for Spain who was born in Spain and leave h ­ ere, f­ ree from fear and pain, he for whom this garden was a cradle, bathed by the moon in a soft hammock.) —(qtd. in Soto 192) The Puerto Ricans, as all men on earth, love national in­de­pen­dence. To all solutions they prefer that which would make them an in­de­pen­dent and sovereign nation. But they are an intelligent ­people; they are thoroughly acquainted with the obstacles that would bar the success of their paramount ideal. Actuated by their patriotism, they are at pre­sent moved to fight for practical reforms that may allow them to insure their predominance in the affairs of their country. —­Luis Muñoz Rivera (qtd. in Trías Monge 64)

Debates about national sovereignty and national identity w ­ ere part of a rich, enduring Puerto Rican tradition of activist, pro-­i ndependence lit­er­a­ture kept under­g round during the Spanish occupation. As indicated in an anonymous poem published in 1854, the desire for a geo­graph­i­cal rupture from Spain was

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represented as the first necessary step for the island to be symbolically ceded to its true ­owners. Thus, a “garden cradle,” as a privileged geo­graph­i­cal space, functioned as a national symbol for Puerto Rico, a struggling colonial territory aspiring for in­de­pen­dence. That yearning desire to achieve “adulthood” could be reached only with the immediate departure of unnamed Spanish oppressors. Cutting off a non­ex­is­tent geo­graph­i­cal connection was, in fact, a po­liti­cal ideology that sustained the pro-­independence movement. Further, the poem’s strong pro-­independence sentiment resulted in the forced closure of the newspaper El Ponceño, which had daringly attempted to challenge censorship that the Spanish colonial government had imposed upon the island (Soto 192). Puerto Rico’s po­liti­cal scene following the Spanish-­American War was convoluted by the implementation of the Foraker Act in 1900. The act eradicated the military government and allowed for a civilian governing body. It restricted the participation of Puerto Ricans in their own government, however, with the imposition of a federally-­appointed U.S. governor. It also established repressive commercial dispositions that gave rise to unfair trade agreements with private American corporations, further resulting in repressive agricultural practices in the treatment of field workers (García Muñiz 63). Th ­ ere was, most controversially, complete silence on provisions concerning an American citizenship. ­Until the granting of a partial American citizenship through the Jones Act of 1917, local po­liti­cal parties maintained debates about the potential impact of such a citizenship upon a strongly developed Puerto Rican national identity. Luis Muñoz Rivera (1859–1916), resident commissioner in the U.S. Congress for the newly baptized Porto Rico, debated his pro-­independence formula in 1910. He argued in ­favor of a sustainable adoption of selected American “practical reforms,” which would presumably create po­liti­cal maturity for eventual sovereignty. Indeed, Puerto Rican politicians heatedly discussed ­whether issues of assimilation into American cultural values ­were supposedly indicators of po­liti­ cal maturity to ­either demand annexation to the United States or, if deemed incompatible, grant in­de­pen­dence.1

Denouncing Illegal U.S. Intervention in Puerto Rico and Debating Spanish as the Language of the Puerto Rican Public School System Herminio Díaz Navarro (1860–1918), former secretary of justice ­under the American military government (1899), boldly declared Puerto Rico an invaded territory equal to other World War I occupied Eu­ro­pean nations, such as Poland, Alsace, and Lorraine (12). For Díaz Navarro, an impor­tant component of Puerto Rican nationalism, like that of the occupied Eu­ro­pean territories, was attachment to the native soil: “el suelo en que reposan las cenizas de todo nuestro ayer es el lugar sagrado en que se iergue [sic] triste y melancólica, pero adorada por nosotros, la tumba en que reposan los huesos de nuestros padres” (the soil in which rest the ashes of all our past is the sacred place in which rises sadness and

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melancholy, but adored by all of us, the tomb in which lie the bones of our parents; 12). Tierra (land) and Puerto Rico’s “condiciones geográficas y etnológicas” (geo­graph­i­cal and ethnological conditions) had already ­shaped a nation, which, along with “culture,” w ­ ere deemed as “las condiciones necesarias para que esa nación [Puerto Rico] culmine en un estado independiente” (the conditions necessary for that nation [Puerto Rico] to culminate in an in­de­pen­dent state; 12). Thus, having a defined geographic and cultural identity, “Puerto Rico debe ser un pueblo libre dueño de sus propios destinos” (must be a f­ ree p ­ eople in control of their own destinies; 12). The expected adoption of En­g lish as the official language was, indeed, the most contested po­liti­cal issue in Puerto Rican politics at the time of Mason and Boas’s visits to the island. In his 1910 travelogue, an American visitor, George Milton Fowles, had already demanded mandatory use of En­g lish in public schools as a necessary first developmental step in proving Puerto Ricans’ worthiness of American citizenship: “It is the desire of the Americans, and of many of the Porto Ricans, that this p ­ eople be Americanized as soon as pos­si­ble” (87). Taught in En­g lish through the use of patriotic American texts, Puerto Rican ­children would learn, presumably like any other mainland American child, “American ideas in t­ hese formative days of national life and spirit” (92). Fowles also stressed that by teaching the American ideology in En­g lish, ­children could learn about “patriotism and loyalty to our Republican form of government” (158). Ultimately, only through the adoption of En­glish as the primary language would the ideological differences between Americans and Puerto Ricans end: “The most prolific source of the misunderstandings that r­ eally exist between Porto Ricans and Americans is the inability to converse freely in a common language. That common language w ­ ill not be Spanish. Of necessity it must be En­glish. If the ­people learn to read American lit­er­a­ture and come to know our ideals of national life, if they are able to converse in an intelligent manner with the American officials and citizens who reside in Porto Rico, it w ­ ill not be long ­until this ­people ­shall be thoroughly American” (87–88). Fowles made no indication of the kinds of U.S. texts that would turn Puerto Rican c­ hildren into willing followers of vaguely put “American Republican ideals” and replace an unnamed nationalist ideology. Although he acknowledged changes in Puerto Rican po­liti­cal structures as part of a more comprehensive campaign to develop an American “national life and spirit,” he failed to discuss the expected role of Puerto Rico (as an unincorporated colony) within the U.S. federal administrative structure. He also failed to elaborate on a pro-­ independence movement that vehemently rejected such a proj­ect of “patriotism and loyalty” ­toward American ideals. His reference to an undefined “Spanish lit­er­a­ture” could have indicated, however, Fowles’s fears that a local literary production was fueling Puerto Rican nationalism. Such anti-­A merican texts, left unnamed, ­were at the heart of

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pro-­ i ndependence movements, which in turn highlighted and promoted Puerto Rican native cultural values (Negrón-­Portillo 47). An Americanization pro­cess, as Fowles preached, was seen as an indispensable component of a “unifying ideology of the new colonial government” (Guerra 22). A plausible (or not) American “character” would provide concrete evidence that Puerto Ricans could accept and, most importantly, understand the po­l iti­cal implications of a U.S. annexation.

A Defender of the Puerto Rican Nation: José de Diego on the Spanish Language and Defining La Raza No sólo nos separan los abismos del mar y el agrupamiento de nuestra población, sino otros más profundos abismos y más impenetrables agrupamientos (We are separated not only by abysses of the sea and the grouping of our population, but by other, deeper abysses and more impenetrable groupings). —­José de Diego, “El problema”

José de Diego represented the most radical of the nationalist tendencies in Puerto Rican politics and lit­er­a­ture that attempted to bring about “Puerto Rico’s national sovereignty” (Acosta Cruz 21). Hailed as “poeta y orador de altísimo renombre y patriota acrisolado” (a poet and orator of extremely high renown and a refined patriot), de Diego championed the defense of Spanish as the main language of instruction in the public school system from his post as chair of the Puerto Rican legislature (1904–1917) (“Honorable” n.p.). His platform, by extension, included the diplomatic right of Puerto Ricans to maintain Spanish as the official language of the island (Ayala and Bernabé 78, 88–89; Ramírez 43). At the 1913 International Conference at Lake Mohonk, de Diego publicly expressed his pro-­independence platform, based on greatly incompatible cultural traits, of which geo­graph­i­cal barriers reflected one of several physical and ideological obstacles to annexation. Indeed, for de Diego, a geo­graph­i­cal separation of Puerto Rico from mainstream United States reflected deeper “diferencias étnicas, históricas, sociales, jurídicas, de temperamento, de raza, de idioma, de costumbres” (ethnic, historic, social, judicial differences; differences in temperament, in race, in language, in customs; “El problema, 165”). ­Those “groupings” ­were, however, the result of a colonial past, of which Puerto Rico and the United States ­were the current protagonists: “cuerpos y de espíritus, que preceden de cien generaciones y treinta siglos” (differences in bodies and in spirits preceded by a hundred generations and thirty centuries, 165). The result of such legendary ethnic confrontations had given way to “hondas divisiones” (deep divisions, 165) between the United States and Puerto Rico. Any attempt by federal regulations to bypass such “resistentes núcleos” (nuclear re­sis­

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tances, 165) by means of po­liti­cal annexation would be a mere “frágil artificio” (frail artificial device, 165) bound to fail in its colonialist intention. Thus, due to ancient, insurmountable differences, de Diego rejected a plan of Senator Miles Poindexter, who in 1913 had proposed granting Puerto Ricans a special type of American citizenship, “ciudadanos de una clase, inferior y especial” (citizens of a class, inferior and special; “Carta” 221). De Diego considered the senator’s proposal anti-­constitutional, as such a type of citizenship would neither allow Puerto Ricans to fully join the American u ­ nion nor permit the possibility for in­de­pen­dence. In short, as de Diego brazenly pointed out, the senator’s proposal was inherently racist: Si no podemos ser uno de vuestros estados, ni formar nuestra propia nación, entonces tendremos que ser perpetuamente una colonia, una permanencia de los Estados Unidos. ¿Esa es la ciudadanía que nos brindáis? ¡Pues esa es la ciudadanía que rechazamos! ¡La rechazamos como una ofensa a la personalidad y a la dignidad del pueblo puertorriqueño y como una corrupción de la justicia y de la democracia del pueblo Americano! (If we cannot be one of your states, nor form our own nation, then we s­ hall have to be perpetually a colony, an extension of the United States. Is that the citizenship that you offer to us? Well, that is a citizenship that we reject! We reject it as an offense to the status and to the dignity of the Puerto Rican ­people and as a corruption of the justice and the democracy of the American ­people!; “Carta” 221)

Setting aside the illegality of granting a specially designed, ­limited citizenship, de Diego’s major point of contention was Senator Poindexter’s ignorance about the existence of an enduring Puerto Rican identity. That solid national personality, as de Diego argued, served as the ideological basis for his opposition to colonialist American regulations on the island. Thus, the use of the Spanish language (­whether in the public school system or in the government) became a central component of a highly pro-­nationalist proj­ect, or “the most evident marker of a distinct Puerto Rican identity” (Ayala and Bernabé 76). De Diego vehemently argued that the United States had unlawfully occupied Puerto Rico, a case of l­egal concern to international organ­ izations and certainly to Latin American countries apprehensive of aggressive American economic expansion plans in continental Spanish Amer­i­ca. De Diego naturally turned to Latin Amer­i­ca for support of his anti-­American proj­ect. As Puerto Rican intellectuals sought to develop a more defined nationalist cultural proj­ect, by ideological necessity, both the Spanish language and Latin American–­Hispanic culture came to signify re­sis­tance against American po­liti­cal practices on the island. Puerto Rican nationality was inherently connected with the Spanish language and shared similar cultural expressions with

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Latin American countries, presumably allies of Puerto Ricans in the fight against American imperialist practices.

The Loss of National Cultural Traditions: La Raza and Native Cultural Practices Puerto Rican po­l iti­cal thinkers repeatedly pointed out the harmful effects of American m ­ usic upon the traditional Puerto Rican danza. De Diego, through his poetic production, also hailed the danza as a representative marker of Puerto Rican identity. In his sonnet “La Borinqueña” (1914); Hymn to Puerto Rico, published in the pro–­Puerto Rican journal Puerto Rico Ilustrado, he proposed the danza, rooted in the classical musical genre of Spanish ballroom dancing, as the official national anthem and the medium for a demonstration of a Puerto Rican type of “Spanish-­Hispanic” sensibility (Aparicio, Listening 8).2 Indeed, de Diego stressed that the Spanish-­based melody of this iconic musical piece functioned meta­phor­ically as a Puerto Rican type of “accent”: “el acento multiple, anhelante / . . . ​que del nativo hogar la suerte implora” (the multiple accent, yearning  / . . . ​that fate implores from the native home; “La Boriqueña” n.p.).3 In clinging to the danza, a musical piece that often found its inspiration in Puerto Rican native ele­ments, de Diego called for Puerto Ricans to fully embrace a transatlantic Hispanicness, encapsulated in an abstract “alma de un pueblo” (soul of a ­people).4 Like other pro-­nationalists, Spanish-­born novelist and a longtime resident of Puerto Rico Ignacio López Merjeliza (1867–1943) documented the impact of En­glish upon Puerto Rican culture. In his essay “La raza en crisis” (Race in Crisis; 1914), he warned against the harmful effects of “el despojo del idioma patrio” (dispossession of the native language; n.p.). His attack revealed his fear that the ­battle to preserve the Spanish language and, by extension, Puerto Rican traditions had already been lost. Unlike the case in the Philippines, where Filipinos had fought against American intervention into their public school systems, Puerto Ricans had seemingly given up control to American pedagogical policies. Therefore, in López Merjeliza’s opinion, sixteen years a­ fter the Spanish-­ American War Filipino ­people ­were a more advanced, racially conscious group than Puerto Ricans: “es hoy más que ayer, si cabe, un pueblo español; siéntese orgulloso de deber a España su cultura, su vida toda” (they are t­ oday more than yesterday, if that is pos­si­ble, a Spanish ­people; they feel proud of owing their culture, their w ­ hole life to Spain; n.p.). Filipinos, unlike Puerto Ricans, had trea­ sured their Spanish culture, “no llegó a deshonrarla de palabra en ‘meetings’ por traidorzuelos que halagan ahora a sus opresores; allí el español es filipino y el filipino es español” (they did not come to the point of dishonoring it in words at “meetings” by gross traitors that now flatter their oppressors; t­ here the Spaniard is Filipino and the Filipino is a Spaniard; n.p.).

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Native traditions w ­ ere also ­under threat of po­liti­cal annihilation, including local musical forms that had been identified as on the verge of extinction. Eugenio Astol Bussatti (1868–1948), a Puerto Rican activist, playwright, short story writer, and poet, decried Puerto Ricans’ diminished desire to fight the damaging effects of American intervention upon Puerto Rican culture. A frequent collaborator of the cultural magazine Puerto Rico Ilustrado, Astol Bussatti was critical of the current state of cultural life on the island. In his article “Nuestra danza” (Our Dance; 1915), he offered a nostalgic farewell to the iconic and classical Puerto Rican melody. Preference for American ­music was not, however, deemed to be part of a cultural appropriation, but instead a generational division. The local “pollería” (young brats) and “muchos hombres maduros que se mecen en la ilusión de creerse todavía jóvenes” (many mature men who delude themselves into believing they are still young; n.p.) w ­ ere willing consumers of the newly arrived American musical exports. Astol Busatti’s attack, like that of López Merjeliza, addressed the ideological implications of such an easy ac­cep­tance of “el nuevo orden de las cosas.” This “new way of life,” as he pointed out, was also evident in Puerto Ricans’ willingness to “vivir de prestado, en aquellas cuestiones, como las ideas y los sentimientos, que deberían ser superiores e inaccesibles a todo préstamo” (live on loans from other p ­ eople, in ­t hose questions, like ideas and feelings, that o ­ ught to be superior and inaccessible to all loans; n.p.). The “loans” that Astol Busatti criticized ­were poorly ­adopted American cultural practices in post–­Spanish-­American War Puerto Rico. In his analy­sis of Puerto Rican–­American cultural “hybrid” practices, he produced a psychological profile in which Puerto Ricans ­were behaving like a “pueblo porífico” (highly porous ­people), through ­t hese so-­called cultural “loans”: “se reproducen materialmente, y no se reproducen psicológicamente” (they reproduce materially, and do not reproduce psychologically; n.p.). Indeed, Astol Busatti’s negative characterization described Puerto Ricans as more interested in obtaining financial commodities for themselves (no doubt inspired by recently imported American consumer practices) over the desire to preserve native cultural practices. The overwhelming majority of Puerto Ricans, Astol Busatti sadly charged, acted like Don Quixote’s sidekick Sancho Panza and, as such, went along for a “­ride” as long as “corra mucho dinero” (a lot of money keeps coming). Money, not native values, was the main concern of Americanized Puerto Ricans, who had started to disdain Spanish–­Puerto Rican culture as mere “romanticismo pasado de moda” (out-­of-­date romanticism). As mentioned ­earlier, a prime example of an “abandoned” cultural practice was the danza, which was being replaced by a local reinterpretation of recently imported American musical rhythms. Astol Busatti dismissed the American-­ inspired m ­ usic produced on the island as “míseros engendros de danza y de

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‘two-­steps’ ” (miserable hybrids born of the danza and the two-­steps; n.p.). ­Little effort was spent in describing the m ­ usic other than its repre­sen­ta­tion of the artificiality of Puerto Ricans: “la copia ridícula, y por lo mismo exacta, del puertorriqueño ‘snob,’ que queriendo a la par ser americano y portorriqueño, no es una cosa ni otra sino un títere sin distinción y sin alma” (the ridicu­lous, and therefore exact, copy of the Puerto Rican snob, who, wanting to be equally American and Puerto Rican, is neither, but a puppet without distinction and without soul; n.p.).

A Latin American Confirmation of the Puerto Rican Nation: José Santos Chocano’s Historic Visit to Puerto Rico He aplicado toda la atención de mi oído de Poeta, este corazón palpitante en dos lenguas; y sin desdoro de nadie, me ha parecido que, dentro de la concisión anglo-­sajona, ha prevalecido, acrisoladamente, la hidalguía castellana. . . . ​De esta manera, podría decirse que sois como un Hombre que sabe hablar en dos lenguas, pero que siente en una sola (I have focused all the attention of my ear as a Poet, this heart beating in two languages; and without disparaging anyone, it has seemed to me that, within the Anglo-­Saxon aloofness, Castilian nobility has prevailed, in a refined way. So one could say that you are like a man who can speak in two languages but feels in only one). —­José Santos Chocano, Discurso del señor Santos Chocano (1914)

In contrast to media silence about Mason’s monumental research program, Peruvian poet José Santos Chocano (1875–1934) received an overwhelmingly warm welcome to the island. His visit, also in 1914, was hosted by de Diego, who heralded Santos Chocano as an example of Latin Amer­i­ca’s support for Puerto Ricans’ fight for in­de­pen­dence. At the time, indeed, t­ here was in Latin Amer­i­ca a deep concern about the bold interventionist proj­ects of the United States throughout the continent. Santos Chocano himself was strongly involved in Latin Amer­i­ca’s po­liti­cal affairs, including his having fought alongside Pancho Villa’s army during the Mexican Revolution of 1910. While in Puerto Rico, Santos Chocano thoroughly discussed his mission through his po­liti­cal poetry, which he described as “un Arte representativo de nuestra Raza y nuestras tierras” (an Art representative of our race and of our lands; 5). In his farewell speech he stressed that his Ars Poetica was deeply connected with the Latin American landscape and the historic peculiarities of the continent’s history, which he had presumably experienced in Puerto Rico: “Mi Arte está hecho de Historia y de Naturaleza. La Historia y la Naturaleza tonifican la personalidad de los pueblos. La Raza y la tierra son el fundamento” (The sources of my Art are History and Nature. History and Nature set the tone for the personality of p ­ eoples. Race and land are the foundation; 5).

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As American travelers had reported, Santos Chocano focused on the language issue as a mea­sure of Puerto Ricans’ passionate degree of Hispanicness and, by extension, their rejection of American-­imposed cultural practices. For instance, he made a veiled reference to the invasive effects of teaching En­glish to three hundred thousand Puerto Rican ­children, whose rejection of the imposed language of instruction was viewed in highly sentimental terms: “se enseña inglés al pensamiento lo que el corazón traduce al castellano” (En­glish teaches to the mind what the heart translates into Castilian Spanish; 6).5 Thus, although Puerto Ricans, at least c­ hildren, w ­ ere already seemingly adapting to En­glish, that language became restricted to a practical realm, whereas Spanish was to remain for expressing a highly race-­based Hispanicness in opposition to the ongoing cultural program of Americanization. Santos Chocano’s message to his Puerto Rican readers was not unlike that of many American travelers. As an eyewitness, he documented that Puerto Ricans ­were culturally and, more importantly, racially dif­fer­ent from (white) Americans. Following the highly racial arguments that de Diego had already set forth, Santos Chocano proudly pointed out that in Puerto Rico a Hispanic heritage “es el signo revelador de la vitalidad de nuestra Raza . . . ​, [no] podría ser absorbida por ninguna otra” (is the sign that reveals the vitality of our Race, [that] could not be absorbed by any other; 6). Fifteen years a­ fter the invasion of Puerto Rico, Santos Chocano reaffirmed Puerto Rican identity while equating it to a Pan-­ American and Spanish-­Castilian race. Further, Puerto Ricans, “un millón doscientas mil almas” (one million two hundred thousand souls), had fought Americans at the level of opposition to cultural dominance. Although the ideological b ­ attle was hard to fight, Puerto Ricans remained “vigorosamente distintos de sus dominadores, aun reconocida la potencialidad de éstos” (vigorously dif­fer­ent from their conquerors, in spite of the strength of the latter; 6–7). In sum, Americans would merely be “dueños ocasionales” (occasional o ­ wners; 7) of the “Territorio de Puerto Rico” (Puerto Rican territory). The image of Americans as “occasional o ­ wners” was extended meta­phor­ically to imply that Puerto Rico had become an unlawful property, a claim that would not hold in proper ­legal channels. This was a basic fact that, as Santos Chocano stressed, true American “thinkers” would ­wholeheartedly agree with: “no se sentirían en justicia, regocijados de tenerse que entender con rebaños de esclavos, después de haber derramado en la guerra por la abolición de la esclavitud, más sangre que en todas sus luchas intestinas, todos los países latinoamericanos” (They would not feel justified in rejoicing for having to deal with flocks of slaves ­after having shed blood in the war for abolition of slavery, more blood than in all the internal fights in all Latin American countries; 7).

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A Racial Fight on Puerto Rican Soil: Battling against Foreign Cultural Aggression Besides Santos Chocano’s distinguished role as a poet, Puerto Rican politicians exalted his visit to the island as that of an emissary bringing news of a larger anti-­A merican proj­ect operating in Latin Amer­i­ca.6 Juan Hernández López (1859–1944), Puerto Rican l­ awyer and politician, declared Santos Chocano to be the spokesperson of a “nueva . . . ​latina . . . ​fraternidad y de la solidaridad moral hispanoamericana” (a new . . . ​Latin fraternity and of Hispanic American moral solidarity; 25). De Diego went a step further, stressing that Santos Chocano’s message had arrived in Puerto Rico at a historic moment, when an occupied territory foresaw an impor­tant role of “lo que debe ser y será la raza de España en América” (what must be and ­will be Spain’s race in the Amer­i­cas; “Discurso” 15). This expected new “race” in Puerto Rico, de Diego argued, had generated the dichotomy of two cultural traditions in a strug­gle for domination of “historia y tierra, nacionalidad y raza” (history and land, nationality and race; 17). For de Diego, pride of “the race” was the most evident marker of a solid Puerto Rican identity, defined not in terms of color lines but as a collective term encompassing Puerto Rican traditions. The call for action intended to oppose the foreign culture of American invaders: “la libertad de nuestro pueblo, la supervivencia de nuestra raza en nuestra historia y en nuestra tierra . . . ​dentro del concepto intensamente ibero, intensamente americano, intensamente nacional de todos los pueblos y de todas las razas” (the freedom of our p ­ eople, the survival of our race in our history and on our land . . . ​within the intensely Iberian concept, intensely American, intensely national of all p ­ eoples and of all races; 20). From Spaniards, Puerto Ricans had inherited their “asombrosa vitalidad” (astonishing vitality), the end result of Spain’s contacts with and fights with “otras razas meridioniales” (other Southern races; 16). The U.S. presence in Puerto Rico was the next historical chapter of a “lucha inevitable” (an inevitable strug­gle), a “resistencia” (re­sis­tance), in an Iberian fighting spirit, to an American cultural and po­liti­cal occupation. The po­liti­cal conflict was already taking place elsewhere in Latin Amer­i­ca, confirming the historical relevance of Santos Chocano’s visit to Puerto Rico. De Diego emphasized that the “Iberian spirit” was currently fighting against American colonialist impositions in Colombia, which had been forced to sign a treaty with compensation for their loss of Panama, and in the Dominican Republic, which was struggling against American control of its economy. In Puerto Rico, de Diego, as speaker of the Puerto Rican legislature, emphasized Santos Chocano’s special distinction as representative of “la fuerte y gloriosa unidad iberoamericana” (the strong, glorious Iberian-­American unity; 15). Given the American policies imposed upon Puerto Rico, de Diego warned, Puerto Ricans should be getting ready to fight ideologically for “el goce del anhe-

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lado bien de su independencia” (the plea­sure of the much desired benefit of their in­de­pen­dence; 19). Puerto Ricans had proven their po­liti­cal maturity, including an active intellectual life, which, “dentro de pocos años” (within a few years), would produce works of literary quality equal to that of more developed countries. Most importantly, however, Puerto Ricans ­were ready for in­de­pen­ dence: “la cultura moral ya lo está” (the moral culture is already ­t here). De Diego was ultimately unable to prove “the moral culture” of Puerto Ricans to the American Congress. He had hoped that his reference to po­liti­cal maturity would lead the island to a local government without federal intervention, and eventually to in­de­pen­dence. Puerto Rican politicians and intellectuals also failed to prevent the imposition of U.S. federal regulations that led to the Jones Act, which granted partial American citizenship to Puerto Ricans on March 2, 1917.7 In creating a particularly restricted citizenship, the U.S. Congress did not consider Puerto Ricans’ rights to be equal to ­t hose of continental American citizens. ­Those “racial” differences in language and culture that de Diego and Santos Chocano documented might have had an impact on federal decisions, though not the kind Puerto Ricans on both sides of the po­liti­cal spectrum w ­ ere expecting. Ultimately, de Diego’s own declarations in f­ avor of “nuestra alma nacional puertorriqueña” (our national Puerto Rican soul; “Discurso” 16) remained on an abstract plane, devoid of the po­liti­cal strength he had hoped would deter the federal U.S. colonialist platform.

Editing in a Sociopo­liti­cal Vacuum: Personal and Professional Differences Ahora por vez primera, y aquí en Puerto Rico, y para bien de la humanidad, la sangre y el alma hispánicas, nuestra alma y nuestra sangre del Sur están en íntimo contacto, frente a frente, con una raza del Norte, no en contienda armada donde puede vencer el súbito ímpetu de un bélico arrebato, sino en aquella otra más terrible y larga lucha de la convivencia, de la supervivencia (Now, for the first time, and ­here in Puerto Rico, and for the well-­being of humanity, Hispanic blood and soul, our soul and our blood from the South are in intimate contact, face to face, with a race from the North, not in armed conflict, where the sudden force of a military rage can win, but in that other more terrible and longer strug­gle of coexistence, of survival). —­José de Diego, “Discurso del Señor José de Diego pronunciado en el banquete celebrado en honor a Santos Chocano” (1914)

This section traces the rather convoluted pro­cesses involved in the editing of an enormous number of oral folklore samples. While Boas displayed ­little interest in directly overseeing editing procedures, major critical decisions ­were left up

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to Aurelio M. Espinosa (1880–1958), who edited the entire collection published in serial numbers as “Porto-­R ican Folk-­lore” in the Journal of American Folklore. Although Mason had requested time to perform work on his own field research on Mexican oral folklore, he openly resented the central role that Espinosa played, whose editorial decisions he often questioned. Likewise, Espinosa frequently expressed doubts about the accuracy of Mason’s fieldwork methodology, which was essentially Boasian, following field practices learned while working closely with Boas in Mexico. Aside from their professional differences, their quarrels w ­ ere clearly ideological in nature, as all three of them had been heavi­ly invested in national and international po­liti­cal affairs. The professional relationship of the trio barely survived the time that allowed for the final publications. The subtext of their disagreements was indeed a personal issue that went beyond Espinosa’s accusations of Mason’s sloppiness during the compilation pro­cess or his frequently negative view of relying on ­children as the writers of a considerable number of oral samples.

Setting Up Editing Procedures: The Central Role of Espinosa Setting up initial plans for the editing pro­cess moved along fairly quickly. Immediately upon his return from Puerto Rico, Boas contacted Espinosa to invite him to serve as editor of Mason’s oral samples. The letter, dated July 12, is rather succinct: “I hope that you ­will be able to co-­operate in the publication of [Mason’s] Porto Rican material. In fact I wish that you may be able to [do] it. We ­ought to bring out first of all his cuentas [sic], of which he has a large number of variants” (APS). Boas might have felt certain about a prospective positive answer from Espinosa. At his first meeting with the Survey Board a­ fter his return from Puerto Rico on July 8, Boas unveiled that Espinosa, a seasoned folklorist and linguist, had been asked to serve as editor of the oral folklore collection (APS). Boas and Espinosa had had a long professional relationship. Boas supported Espinosa’s initial stages as a folklorist with expertise in the historic Hispanic areas in the American Southwest. On October 8, 1912, Boas wrote George L. Kittredge (1860–1941), a notable folklorist and professor of En­glish at Harvard University, denying rumors from an identified Harvard scholar that Espinosa’s scholarly reputation was “not original and not good” (APS). Boas solidly affirmed, “It does not strike me so. On the contrary, I find it very suggestive in regard to a number of impor­tant questions relating to the general history of American lore.” Kittredge’s answer not only summarized his own opinion of Espinosa’s academic standing but indirectly provided a review of Espinosa’s character. He stated, not knowing the source of the rumor, “Whoever said this knows nothing about folk-­lore”; he proceeded to describe Espinosa as “however of a pundit he may be in other re­spects.” In the end, Kittredge did not address Espinosa’s allegedly poor scholarly track rec­ord. He chose to describe Espinosa’s “tales so

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far printed” as “­really valuable.” He offered no further explanations to substantiate his highly positive opinion. An answer quickly followed; on November 5, 1915, Boas proudly announced in a Survey Board meeting that Espinosa “had consented to edit the folk-­lore material collected by Mr. Mason during the past year” (APS).8 ­There was no praise of Espinosa’s previous collaborative editing jobs with Boas, which included editing the Mexican oral samples of Boas’s former student Paul Radin (1883–1959) and Mason’s Mexican collection, published as “Folk-­Tales of the Tepecanos” (1914).9 At the Survey Board meetings ­there ­were no discussions about the importance of the oral folklore collection, which remained rather undefined in all their reports. In an undated statement to the board, Boas briefly referred to the “folklore collection” as “many hundreds of folk tales, riddles, rhymes, ballads, songs, [that] . . . ​­w ill give us a clear insight into the traditional lit­er­a­ture of the island” (qtd. in Baatz 212). Although Boas viewed the collection of “­great value for the study of Romance philology,” a veiled reference to the language issue currently experienced on the island as the result of the American occupation, he also expected to initiate a study within the field of “comparative lit­er­a­ture” (Baatz 212). Indeed, Mason often followed up on this proj­ect. He repeatedly proposed to Boas that a study of the Puerto Rican samples would improve analyses of similar oral folklore material that he had gathered in Mexico. The addition of Espinosa, whose work had explored the impact of Spanish oral traditions on the folklore of the American Southwest, was intended to add yet another critical ­angle to a comparative analy­sis of the Puerto Rican oral folklore samples. A striking fact in Boas’s report was his strong opinion that the Puerto Rican oral folklore publications would have an impact upon f­ uture literary proj­ects on the island. He was hopeful that t­ hese publications would have a utilitarian value. While indirectly referring to his involvement with the Puerto Rican Department of Education as an impor­tant agent in the a­ ctual collection of the oral folklore pieces, Boas revealed his expectation that this material would “also furnish reading m ­ atter for the rural schools, attractive and in­ter­est­ing to the c­hildren” (Baatz 212). Th ­ ese plans ­were not further discussed, in spite of the fact that t­ here was money allocated for printing. Another impor­tant point conspicuously absent from Boas’s report to the board is a discussion about why the oral proj­ect, while compiled in Spanish, was ultimately left untranslated. Perhaps it was too soon a­ fter the compilation pro­ cess; however, ­because of the language issue heatedly debated in Puerto Rico, making this oral folklore proj­ect as a completely monolingual publication stands out as a rather significant statement. ­There is no documented rec­ord that Boas, Mason, or Espinosa discussed the reasons for leaving the samples untranslated into En­glish. Brian Swann has commented on Boas’s concerns about the accuracy of translations, however: “Style

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was difficult to translate, being bound up with peculiarities of language and culture, a position he shared with his famous student Edward Sapir” (xv). Boas did address the thorny issue of translations in 1914, a year prior to his trip to Puerto Rico. Nonetheless, earliest collections by Boas and Mason compiled in Mexico did offer translations, along with the original pieces transcribed ­either in Spanish or in native indigenous languages of the native in­for­mants. As he wrote in “My­t hol­ogy and Folk-­Tales of the North American Indians,” Boas warned that a translation is faulty on two accounts: first, “it gives a very inadequate impression of the tales”; second, the text reveals that “the interpreter’s inadequate knowledge of En­glish compels him to omit or modify impor­tant parts” (452). Boas’s resoundingly concluded that “even the best translation cannot give us material for the study of literary form” (452).

Mason’s and Espinosa’s Initial Professional Disagreements Mason met Espinosa in late January 1916. Writing to Boas on January 31, Espinosa described that meeting as “a delightful visit.” Indeed, Mason had impressed Espinosa, whom he considered to be “a serious investigator” (APS). They spoke about the Puerto Rican folklore collection, which Espinosa vaguely summarized as “much more abundant than I had supposed.” In spite of the unexpectedly lengthy nature of the proj­ect, Espinosa was ready to embark on the editing, although he mildly warned Boas that “the preparation of all the material for publication w ­ ill require some time.” Indeed, as Jorge Duany has stated, since the start of the proj­ect Espinosa had expressed lacking “the time or inclination to interpret the contents of Mason’s collection” (The Puerto Rican Nation 80). Thus, initially, Boas and Mason started collaborating on editing decisions. By February 7, 1916, Mason was anxiously expecting notification from Espinosa that he had received the “folklore material.” Mason had also warned Boas that he was “busy with other ­things . . . ​I ­can’t spare any time to help to sort and separate it” (APS). He was editing his own field research collected from the Tepecano indigenous group in Jalisco, u ­ nder the auspices of the International School of American Archaeology and Ethnology, while working alongside Boas in Mexico five years e­ arlier (Mason, “Four Mexican-­Spanish Fairy­-­Tales” 191). His field research among the Tepecanos included a linguistic component, which he described to Boas in a rather self-­assured attitude: “I want to get the morphology well worked out before I take the field or a short time to get more textual material and to clean up the few doubtful points.” His confidence in his ­handling of this material was high. In a follow-up letter to Boas on March 6, he summarized the intricacy of the proj­ect: “Not that it is morphologically complex but it has the appearance, so far at least, of being extremely irregular. Or if regular, the rules are most evasive and puzzling” (APS). In ­t hese early stages of the editing pro­cess, Mason was again inconsistent about w ­ hether his own role was to support Espinosa or to allow Boas to deal

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directly with Espinosa, as a February 7 letter indicates : “I presume you have sent the folklore material to Espinosa and I am expecting to hear from him ­every day that it has arrived. I suppose that if some clerical assistance is required, Espinosa w ­ ill take up the m ­ atter with you” (APS). This hesitation, which Boas never clarified, eventually ­shaped Mason’s and Espinosa’s antagonistic professional relationship. Mason’s position that Espinosa should take full control of editing eventually created major disagreements and critical confusion. On July  24, Mason wrote about the type of phonetic transcription that he used in Puerto Rico: “I am the only one who can read and transcribe [it]” (APS). Mason was angry with Espinosa; he wanted Mason to do a transcription of an unspecified type of documentation within a four-­month period. The amount of work was “an enormous bulk of material and ­w ill take me several weeks of steady work.” Mason insisted that he be left alone to work on “my Tepecano material.” As their correspondence increased, Mason continued to stress the complexities of developing a Tepecano grammar based on the transcript of the prayers that he had collected. He considered that proj­ect to be more intricate than the Puerto Rican oral samples, and he did not suggest to Espinosa a similar critical approach to his ongoing editing plans. Mason was also mindful that Espinosa was difficult to deal with and often did not accept suggestions without conflict. His first reference to Espinosa’s fiery personality took place in a letter to Boas on August 19, 1916. Having “heard murmurings of the explosion,” Mason had written a letter to Espinosa “trying to smooth m ­ atters over and telling him that you w ­ ere undoubtedly ­doing the best you could, that funds w ­ ere not at your disposal and had to be secured from the Acad­emy” (APS). Although t­ hose reasons for Espinosa’s “explosion” seemingly ­were financial (a fact that Mason himself often complained to Boas), nonetheless, Mason never knew about Espinosa’s profound dislike of Mason’s compilation techniques. Espinosa only expressed this negative opinion to Boas in rather fiery letters against Mason’s competency. Unlike Mason, who often expressed personal reasons for his slowness in completing tasks, Espinosa was a rather quiet person, rarely prone to verbalize personal reasons for his often heated letters. He was, however, rather busy with his own ongoing research proj­ects, which included editing oral samples from other scholars (such as Paul Radin) and his ­handling of teaching responsibilities at Stanford University. Nonetheless, in one occasion, he expressed to Boas his concern that the slowness of the editing pro­cess of the Puerto Rican samples and personal discrepancies between him and Mason w ­ ere severely affecting his health. Writing in August 17, 1916, he simply stated to Boas, “My health continues very poor and all my work has been in­def­initely postponed” (APS).

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Technical Difficulties and Disagreements in Editing Decisions The editing pro­cess was also plagued by technical difficulties, since the typist would not be a native Puerto Rican. Difficulty in finding a capable typist led to the first heated arguments between Mason and Espinosa. In August 19, Mason indicated to Boas that an initial typist was fired for being too slow. Mason’s solution for a replacement was not, however, professionally sound: “I feel quite certain that ­t here must be some Mexican refugees in town ­here who can typewrite Spanish quickly and well who are pre­sent[ly] out of a job and would be willing to do the work much more reasonably” (APS). He continued with an attack against Espinosa, who was “foolish to hire by the month instead by paying by the page.” Although Mason had made Espinosa responsible for hiring of typist, on August 22, 1916, Mason reported to Boas that he had hired someone whose qualifications for the job w ­ ere not specified: “The Remington Co[mpany] sent me a w ­ oman yesterday who claims to be able to do the work and is anxious to try it” (APS). Although the most common complaint from ­either Mason or Espinosa was about the typists’ slowness in fulfilling the allocated tasks, their difficulty with more complicated m ­ istakes remained completely uncommented upon. In August 22, Mason reported having interviewed “a w ­ oman yesterday who claims to be able to do the work and is anxious to try it” (APS). That typist’s responsibility was expanded on August 26. Her payment at fifteen cents for a double page included “to paragraph and correct errors as she goes along” (APS). The reference to “errors” was never qualified. The plan included other work for the typist “to rent a machine and do a few specimen pages as a test at twenty cents a page and then, if work is satisfactory, to do the balance of the material at fifteen per page.” Indeed, Mason’s vague reference of “errors” would be problematic given that Espinosa early on warned Boas about Mason’s potential misrepre­sen­ta­tions in his oral transcripts. This is the case, for example, of Espinosa’s earliest description to Boas on October 9 of his intended plans with the samples: “It has to be in correct Castilian or in exact dictated from taken by a trained linguist who knows the language or dialect perfectly” (APS). Mason eventually accepted some responsibility, as illustrated in his letter to Boas of August 26: “I had an idea that he would read all the material carefully, correct it and give it to the typist ready for publication, but he claims, and of course justly, that he is too busy to do this, so is merely classifying and leaving it to the typist to correct errors, punctuate and paragraph and interpolate any missing words.” Mason’s definition of such a typist was “a good person,” ignoring the implication of the complex linguistic tasks expected from such an individual not familiar with Puerto Rican linguistic patterns and, particularly, the use of a type of agrarian-­based Ca­r ib­bean Spanish.

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Aside from the clerical discussions, the most common arguments w ­ ere related to Espinosa’s editing procedures. On August 26, Mason reflected on Espinosa’s editing of another of Boas’s supervised proj­ects with his protégée, Paul Radin. He addressed his concerns about duplicate versions: “In the Radin material every­thing was published, duplicated or not. . . . ​That is Espinosa’s idea of your wishes and he rather agrees.” Mason went on to propose his preferred method, but he was still uncertain and clearly demanded direction from Boas: “I had the expectation that all duplicate incidents w ­ ere to be discarded and only one example of ­every varying incident retained. Or should similar stories with similar incidents be retained if the pre­sen­ta­tion is dif­fer­ent?” In spite of what it may appear, the question was not ­really academic but financial: “Please inform me your ideas on this point as it ­will make considerable difference in the bulk of the material and the cost of typing.” Mason’s letter on August 26 could have also been an attempt to help Espinosa, who eventually expressed to Mason his regrets about a “vigorous note” he had sent to Boas: “The work has given him a g­ reat deal of bother and annoyance and has affected his health; you must overlook his peevishness.” Espinosa, like Mason, would frequently express his dissatisfaction about what he considered getting paid slowly. Mason repeatedly reminded him that Boas had to negotiate financial arrangements through the Scientific Survey Board. Espinosa was not the only writer of contentious notes to Boas. Like Mason, Espinosa was often upset by what he considered Boas’s lack of interest in responding to his financial requests in a timely fashion. Mason’s serious disagreements with Boas concerned arguments about rather insignificant amounts of money. Indeed, financial need was a subject that Mason often touched upon, and at times he seemed particularly fastidious. One such example was Mason’s reaction to a tele­gram sent on December 8, 1916 from Boas demanding the immediate return of fifty dollars, an amount that Boas claimed that Mason had owed to the survey’s bud­get for some time. At first, Mason’s letter reflected strategic diplomacy. He bragged about his choice of typist, whom he considered better and cheaper than Espinosa’s ­earlier choice. The issue at hand was, however, Mason’s claim to have been left out of the loop in terms of the financial decisions de­cided between Boas and Espinosa: “You should not feel peeved at me for not understanding the financial arrangements as they have never been explained to me” (APS). As if hoping that this would move Boas to change his mind, Mason ­later requested that Boas wait for this payment ­u ntil Mason understood the reason for the request. Mason also reminded Boas that he had paid the typist from his own money and had taken care of other incidental expenses. A sudden change of mind was clearly stated in rather lengthy post data. Mason’s tone clearly showed annoyance: “I have changed my mind and am obeying ­orders and sending you a check for fifty dollars.” His own financial condition he described as so low that such payment “­w ill prob­ably cause me to borrow

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money.” His solution was a plea for mercy: “So if it is humanly pos­si­ble for you to return the check or at least not cash it for several months, it would be the greatest ­favor to me.”

Final Procedural Editorial Decisions Leading to the Publications: Expressing Disputes in Not a Civil Manner By November 2, 1916, Mason happily reported to Boas that Mason and Espinosa seemed to have come up with a work schedule of sorts. Espinosa had started “­doing the editing” of undescribed oral samples while Mason was in charge of “superv[ising] the typing” (APS). They had already de­cided, “acting on your request to prepare something for the next Hispanic issue of the [Journal of American] Folklore” to start editing the conundrums. Mason described the proj­ect as “the quickest and would be the most in­ter­est­ing, as they form a class rather apart from the stories and poetry.” This first publication of the oral samples, which Mason described having prepared “in a hurry on cards, nearly 1500 altogether,” almost did not happen, though. In the same letter Mason described a message from Espinosa “telling me he was so busy with [Paul] Radin material as well as with his personal publications that he could not get to them for time yet.” How this major issue was resolved was not discussed, given that, as Mason stressed to Boas, “Now I realize that he is very busy; I ­don’t see how he finds the time to edit my material at all, but I certainly h ­ aven’t the time to do it ­either.” The year of 1917 started well for Mason. He had taken a post as an assistant curator of Mexican and South American archaeology at the Field Museum of Natu­ral History in Chicago. A happier disposition reflected a more relaxed financial status and his relief upon having finished work on his Tepecano prayers, as he happily reported to Boas on February 13. He was also “ready to begin on the next job which I suppose ­will be some Porto Rican work” (APS). Mason was still, however, in desperate need of guidance from Boas: “Which phase do you consider the most urgent—­t he archeology, I suppose?” This perceived aloof reaction to Mason’s attempts to gain guidance from Boas reflected Boas’s own pedagogical approaches. Melville J. Herskovits, reputable anthropologist and former student of Boas at Columbia University, remembered his mentor as a “formidable teacher” (22). Boas was infamous for his teaching methods, and “Of individual direction, ­there was almost none” (22). As Herskovits stressed, Boas’s preferred teaching method was a seminar, a weekly discussion session where “Boas was a hard taskmaster, demanding and obtaining the best from the members of the group. Bibliography was assigned, at least in the ­earlier days, without regard for a student’s language competence. If a work in German or Italian or Swedish was relevant, it was the responsibility of the one reporting to find his own means of obtaining the aid he needed to master it” (22–23). Ultimately, a gradu­ate student was awarded “complete intellectual freedom” within a pro­cess clearly similar to Boas’s supervision of Mason’s and Espinosa’s work: “Methods employed in obtaining and h ­ andling data, and the

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determination of the ­matter in which they ­were to cast in final form, ­were the business of the student, to be worked out in­de­pen­dently by him; only results presented for appraisal” (23). Mason’s folk stories, written down in his own type of “phonetic text,” ­were still untyped as he described to Boas on February 13, 1917 (APS). He was u ­ nder the impression that a “report on the phonetic peculiarities of the [jíbaro] dialect” and “the songs to be transcribed” remained to be done. He was uncertain, however, about who would be in charge of ­t hese proj­ects. The mechanically recorded songs, which initially Mason had suggested his ­sister could transcribe, now w ­ ere made Espinosa’s responsibility as “a clerical friend t­ here in Palo Alto who does his work for him for the plea­sure of it,” could perform this duty. In a prior letter, dated August 21, 1915, Mason had briefly introduced his ­sister to Boas as, “my ­sister is anxious to try her hand at transcribing some of the phonograph songs. She has a good musical education and I think ­w ill do it satisfactorily” (APS). Mason was, however, expecting Espinosa to take charge of the songs: “It ­ought to be done ­under Espinosa’s supervision anyway. Espinosa is anxious to print the six or eight ballads I got in Porto Rico and as I have the ­music for several of them on rec­ords, they should appear at the same time.” It seems unclear ­whether Espinosa eventually included t­ hese musical recordings on the Edison wax cylinders as part of the published proj­ects.10 Mason would never again raise the issue of the possibility of writing down the musical script of ­t hese sung ballads. The first documented dispute between Mason and Espinosa over a published piece took place a­ fter the publication of the riddles in 1916. Writing to Boas on February 22, 1917, Mason expressed his dissatisfaction with the galley proofs: “I noted quite a few errors. . . . ​I am r­ eally so thankful to Espinosa for taking all this work off my hands . . . ​but I wish he had taken a ­little more time to it” (APS). Mason was very specific about his dislikes, beginning with “the strictly alphabetic arrangement according to the answer given by the writer.” He was more concerned, however, that some of the riddles had been removed b ­ ecause of “ ‘offense to good taste’ . . . ​some of ­t hose included are pretty raw.” Jokingly, he added, “I almost expect the Porto Rican authorities to get a­ fter us!” Nonetheless, he was truly concerned about Espinosa’s decision to eliminate t­ hose “raw” adivinanzas, which, as his reference to the postal official seemed to indicate, might have been of a sexual nature. Mason continued to warn Boas about Espinosa’s dis­plea­sure concerning the administrative financial arrangements. On March 5, 1917, Mason reported that Espinosa was upset and had complained to Mason that Boas “never answer[s] his questions or send[s] him postage money” (APS). At the time Mason wrote Boas, it seemed that Espinosa’s demeanor was particularly negative: “If it would not seem impertinent of me I would suggest that you conciliate with Espinosa a bit. He has the typical Spanish-­American thin skin and gets offended and his dignity ruffled rather easily.” In spite of their previous professional differences,

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Mason spoke positively of Espinosa: “He is a very hard worker and has many other interests which keep him on the jump all the time, and it would be a ­great loss if he severed connections with us.” Mason never s­ topped expressing dissatisfaction with the slow typing pace of the folktales, which on May 10, 1917, he described as “not always satisfactory as I should wish it to be, but I suppose it is the best we can do” (APS). His claim was partially unfounded. As he stated to Boas, the folktale collection was extremely large: “some fifteen hundred typewritten pages of folktales, and the ­whole may reach two thousand . . . ​one fifth w ­ ill have to be fi­nally discarded.” ­There was no explanation for that exclusion. He did provide detailed instructions to Boas, offering editorial procedural information that he may not have shared with Espinosa. By December 28, 1917, Mason had devised two major categories as part of his reflections of the dif­fer­ ent types of compilation methods. The first division comprised “myths, which are not in phonetic, i.e., ­t hose written by school ­children and by other persons for me” (APS). A second division included the oral material that Mason himself had transcribed using his own type of “phonetics.” A question to Boas included the only clarification about his child in­for­mants: “should Espinosa or some other man particularly interested in this field” offer the material that schoolchildren had written “for comparison and publication?” The scope of this comparative analy­sis was not discussed. A third type of written samples, the material obtained by means of jíbaros’ writing their own oral folklore material, remained undiscussed. Mason recognized that his samples “phonetically transcribed” would be undecipherable to anyone ­else. He was willing to do a two-­tier analy­sis: “Do you want me to make a study of Porto Rican folk-­lore in addition to the phonetics?” Mason described his transcribed phonetic texts, which included “interlinear translation in Spanish.” If Boas agreed to publish t­ hese phonetically transcribed texts, Mason asked ­whether he should write a “phonetic paper” or “leave the phonetics to Espinosa or someone e­ lse.” As proof that his phonetic text “would be incomprehensible to most persons without interlinear translation,” he included as a sample the opening paragraph of “Pedro Urdemalas,” a picaresque story.

A Hidden Po­liti­cal Agenda: Espinosa as an Activist Nuevo Mexicano Communication between Mason and Espinosa came to a halt in August 1917, ­a fter Mason left the United States to work for the Mexican government. As a result, Espinosa’s contact with Boas increased significantly. On September 3, 1917, Espinosa reported to Boas that ­there “still remains a lot of material of the Mason collection not typed.” Most of the material was folktales, “many of them no doubt, repetitions of material already typed” (APS). He was mindful that “as [it] happens always, ­t here may be impor­tant, new tales in it.” His tasks as an editor ­were still “impossible to finish before a year or two” ­because “I am simply del-

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uged with work, and my health has its limitations.” He preferred to go ahead with plans for a research trip to Spain, already scheduled for the next year. Without Mason as a sort of intermediary, Espinosa’s antagonizing attitude ­toward Boas softened considerably. They even relaxed enough to open up about their own f­ amily histories. On September 9, Espinosa wrote to Boas an unusually long and intimate letter. An opening statement intended as an introduction to his ­family background reflected the social impact of race upon the development of personal perspectives: “Our opinions are also often influenced by so many prejudices that the opinions themselves are frequently an accurate criterion of the conditions that have made pos­si­ble the opinions themselves” (APS). Perhaps he was referring to a previous exchange that generated “a ­little passion.” Espinosa proceeded to defend his f­ amily background: “For no one that re­spects his parents and their life can divorce himself spiritually from a deep veneration and devotion for their race of which he is one, their language, religion and ways of thinking and acting.” Following this peculiar disclosure, he spoke about his ­family: “I ­shall make an attempt to tell you the truth, for I am gradually approaching a spiritual epoch in my life when I s­ hall re­spect only the truth, regardless of consequences.” This cryptic declaration led to a proud disclosure: “I am pure Spanish and can trace my ancestry to the nobility of Spain.”11 Espinosa’s maternal great-­ grandfather, José Manuel Martínez, went to New Mexico in the last years of the eigh­teenth ­century and received “a royal land grant by Charles the III.” The parcel of land, “the richest and most impor­tant in New Mexico,” was lost ­a fter the Mexican War, without the f­ amily’s receiving “a cent for it.” The land, worth “over a million dollars or more,” became the personal property of Senator Thomas B. Catron (1840–1921), “one of the first and foremost Yankee thieves.” Against the criminal be­ hav­ ior of ­ t hese “carpetbaggers,” Espinosa again highlighted his ­family’s advanced background as “one of Spain’s noble families in New Mexico.” Espinosa may have intended to connect the post-­American history of New Mexico to the newly constituted “Porto Rico’s” own colonial experiences u ­ nder a U.S. federal-­controlled government. Discussing the historical pro­cesses of an “American” New Mexico, he had strong words of criticism: “Robbery, spoliation was the watchword of the Americanization of New Mexico.” To describe the results of this colonial imposition, Espinosa made his strongest denunciation: “The noble poor are then to contend with the new conditions; a few of us rise to the position where we can make a decent living and lead a respectable life, but the most of the Spanish Americans thus despoiled hardly ever rise again, and they are forever the poor and ignorant who could not cope with the new civilization and ideals.” The letter’s tone escalated to illustrate the rage concerning the current state of personal dynamics between “Spanish” and “En­g lish” speakers. In

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short, as Espinosa plainly put it, “They hate each other to the marrow of their bones.” This is in spite of “the hypocritical and flattering phrases of po­liti­cal conventions and vote-­catching oratory.” Contact with the English-­speaking Americans, including the Jews, who “make up a good part of the so-­called high class,” took place only as a ploy “to get their money.” The mention of Jews in passing seemed to reflect Boas’s Jewish background, of which Espinosa would have known. Ideologically, as Espinosa implied, Boas had aligned himself with other Jewish scholars, as did Jews in New Mexico a­ fter the Mexican-­A merican War.

Failure to View Puerto Rico as Colonialized State: Espinosa’s Earliest Nonpo­liti­cal Analy­sis of the Puerto Rican Oral Folktales As Puerto Rican pro-­nationalists feared in the case of Puerto Rico, Espinosa claimed that the imposition of En­glish in the New Mexico public school system had forced c­ hildren to “forget Spanish altogether.” Just as it had been determined for Puerto Rico, the teaching of En­glish was a policy intended to Americanize “­t hese Spanish speaking p ­ eople” as “the first requisite of American citizenship.” Taking a strong nationalist stand, Espinosa proudly defended New Mexican identity: “The Spanish speaking inhabitants of New Mexico did not come to ask for the American civilization. They w ­ ere conquered and forcibly annexed, and the En­glish language, American institutions and ideas are being gradually forced upon them.” To describe the result of this linguistic clash, Espinosa made his harshest declaration about the current state of the racial disharmony in New Mexico: “Race antagonism has always been very pronounced.” Further, Espinosa repeated that cultural imposition by En­glish speakers created a two-­tier society in which the Spanish-­speaking inhabitants of New Mexico and Colorado “are looked upon as an inferior race.” Espinosa ended the letter in a rather pessimistic tone. Categorically, he expressed his opinion that, if given the chance, “Spanish speaking p ­ eoples” would “vote to belong to Spain, the old country whence their ancestors came.” Racial and cultural ties would weigh heavier than current po­liti­cal differences, “in spite of the fact that we have a republic and Spain is a Monarchy.” It was, however, a symbolic choice. Given a choice, “they would have their own in­de­pen­dent republic.” ­W hether Espinosa’s strong po­liti­cal reading of “Spanish-­speakers” in New Mexico was inspired by his work with the Puerto Rican folklore collection cannot be ascertained. The issues he raised might have been intended as examples of the po­liti­cal complexities b ­ ehind exploring popu­lar oral folklore in similar militarized and l­ ater colonized settings. It is striking that, in spite of his heated letter, Espinosa never raised similar concerns about Puerto Rico’s clear imposed Americanization by means of federal laws.

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By April 17, 1920, Espinosa was glad to indicate to Boas that he had finished “the first part of the Porto Rican folktales” (APS). Drawing from his previous experience with other proj­ects, perhaps the Paul Radin collection, he indirectly indicated a more positive stance ­toward Mason’s collected stories: “I have taken special care this time.” He categorized them using eight thematic classifications: “Cuentos picarescos” (Picaresque Stories), “Cuentos de fuerza y valor extraordinarios” (Tales of Extraordinary Force and Courage), “Cuentos de encantamiento” (Stories of Enchantment), “Cuentos del Diablo” (Stories of the Devil), “Cuentos de brujería” (Stories of Witchcraft), “Cuentos de animales” (Stories of Animals), “Cuentos puertorriqueños” (Puerto Rican Stories), and “Cuentitos, anécdotas y chistes” (Brief Stories, Anecdotes, and Jokes). His comments on ­t hese categories ­were sparse. About “Stories of Enchantment,” in par­tic­u ­lar, Espinosa returned to the core of previous disagreements with Mason: “­There are so many confused, distorted, copied tales, that one is often bewildered.” W ­ hether the distortion of t­ hese samples was due to the methods of compilation was not clearly stated. Against his ­w ill, he did transcribe all of the Juan Bobo tales, the “dummy” child character whose unusual adventures constitute a large component of the picaresque stories. Speaking indirectly about the importance of Juan Bobo as a local iconic character at the heart of jíbaro culture, Espinosa promised a “comparative study” of the picaresque stories, but only if “duties w ­ ill allow me.” He did not keep his promise. Espinosa’s last comment to Boas about the collection indirectly refers to Mason’s excellent job in locating untapped Puerto Rican folklore. He highlighted “Puerto Rican Stories” and “Brief Stories, Anecdotes, and Jokes” as “rather in­ter­ est­ing.” The “Brief Stories” category, in par­tic­u­lar, was for Espinosa relevant to a racial exploration of Puerto Rican oral folklore, since the sample revealed “undoubtedly African ele­ments.” ­There was no clear intention, however, to start such a critical discussion of the importance of t­ hese racial components. Espinosa’s dreamed research trip to Spain also took place in 1920. The Puerto Rican oral proj­ect must have still been fresh in his mind. Writing to Boas from Soria on September 15, he stressed his preference for researching Spanish oral folklore material: “I found a much more fertile country for folklore” (APS). His optimistic description of his ongoing proj­ect went in contrast to his lukewarm critical enthusiasm for the Puerto Rican folklore collection: “­There is a field ­here [in Spain] for careful exploration and I am in hopes that I may return again.”

The Unspoken Po­liti­cal Agenda: Boas’s Interest in First World War Affairs This false love for the fatherland other p­ eople call patriotism. They are forgetting that ­e very country with its special features has to work together with other countries in order ­really to fulfill its duties and to be of use. —­Franz Boas, letter to Henry (Heini) Herbert, August 15, 1914 (qtd. in Collins 273)

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The state of the international po­liti­cal arena was also very much pre­sent in Boas’s mind. Three months ­a fter his trip to Puerto Rico, Boas wrote a letter to his son, Heini, from St.  Eugene, Cranbrook, British Columbia in which, although he made no reference to his experiences on the island, he indirectly reflected upon the highly polarized po­liti­cal environment that he must have experienced ­t here. Indeed, Boas had been notably reticent in documenting his trip to Puerto Rico, unlike his fuller descriptions of his many other research trips, particularly to the Arctic zone, that he shared with friends, relatives, and colleagues. He briefly expressed to Heini his heartfelt lamentation about the current state of Eu­ro­pean politics, consumed in the raging events pertaining to the First World War. Nonetheless, Boas did not elaborate on what he perceived to be the reasons ­behind the events leading to World War I. Simply put, Boas made patriotism, which he defined as a “false love for the fatherland,” fully responsible for the Eu­ro­pean ideological differences at play during a devastating conflict. Puerto Ricans had been closely following events during World War I. Coincidentally, in 1914, as Mason arrived in Puerto Rico, de Diego had managed to have the Puerto Rican legislature approve a document that officially stated the bound­aries of a Puerto Rican nationality. In spite of the po­liti­cal spectrum at play, all po­liti­cal parties agreed upon a concrete definition, although legally worthless, and thus defined in rather abstract terms: “Nosotros, puertorriqueños, hispanoamericanos, de alma latina, imaginativos, nerviosos, ardientes por el sol de nuestro clima y por la sangre de nuestras venas” (We, Puerto Ricans, Hispanic Americans, of Latin soul, imaginative, ner­vous, burning by the sun of our climate and by the blood in our veins; “Memorial” 243). General elections on the island also took place in 1914, followed by the drafting of a “remarkable document” by the two top po­liti­cal parties (Trías Monge 71). In it they addressed to the U.S. Congress their concern about the serious ­legal limitations of self-­governing placed upon Puerto Rico by the Foraker Act of 1900. The document boldly requested “more fundamental changes to the Foraker Act,” especially sovereignty in the ­handling of internal po­liti­cal and ­legal issues (Trías Monge 71). Mason clearly avoided any discussions or reports of the specific conditions that he had witnessed while performing field research around the island. Public discontent often took to the streets in po­liti­cal rallies and as part of workers’ and teachers’ strikes (García and Quintero Rivera 61). Indeed, Mason made no attempt to warn Boas about the tense po­liti­cal conditions affecting jíbaros, some of whom became well-­k nown leaders of workers’ ­unions.12 A strike against the Porto Rico American Tobacco Com­pany in 1914 alone lasted four months (García and Quintero Rivera 60). In his contact with jíbaros, Mason would have come to experience their strug­g les as landless peons working for large American-­

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owned sugar cane plantations and refining centers (Whalen 7). Th ­ ese im­mense factories negatively impacted the social fabric of a rather traditional peasant culture (Ayala and Bernabé 36; 49–50; Guerra 27; Mintz 25). A series of worker strikes had led to the founding of the Partido Socialista in 1915 (Negrón-­Portillo 49; Quintero Rivera, “El desarrollo” 40, 42, 43). Its leader, Santiago Iglesias Pantín (1872–1939), a well-­k nown ­labor or­ga­nizer, maintained close ties with the American Federation of L ­ abor’s founder Samuel Gompers (Fernández Méndez, El tabaco 70–71, Trías Monge 72).13 Coverage of a strong a pro-­union movement was readily available through the work of activists turned writers: Ramón Romero Rosa (1863–1907), Eduardo Conde, José Ferrer y Ferrer, and Manuel Rojas (Ramos 13).

Failure to Attract Attention of a U.S. Reader Ultimately, the Porto Rican Oral Folklore Proj­ect failed to attract national interest in the United States b ­ ecause its editorial team lacked cohesion in shaping the unusual, complex linguistic and literary endeavor. Lack of knowledge of Ca­rib­bean folklore also may have deterred any of the researchers from claiming for themselves the most critical approach in this huge oral proj­ect. Other than the concise narrative introductions published as part of the edited collections in the Journal of American Folklore, ­t here was no attempt to produce more in-­depth critical analy­sis. Espinosa, for example, did not produce the “comparative” analy­sis that Boas so proudly had announced to the Survey Board. More surprising was Boas’s almost complete obliteration of Puerto Rican data from his f­ uture publications, in spite of the fact that he had become heavi­ly involved in arguing against race superiority in scientific and popu­lar discussions common in the United States throughout the early twentieth c­ entury. In the end, like Mason’s lukewarm memories of Boas, Espinosa made l­ittle mention of his professional relationship with the famous anthropologist and folklorist. Although Espinosa interacted with Boas directly for a considerable amount of time, he made no statement about his impressions while working on the Puerto Rican oral folklore proj­ect. Espinosa dedicated his Cuentos populares españoles (1967), Popu­lar Spanish stories to Boas, whom he positively recognized as the founding f­ ather of oral folklore research: “Gracias a su talento y a su amplia visión científica los estudios de folklore americano se van desarro­ llando de día en día de una manera maravillosa y los estudios comparativos del folklore de las regiones donde la tradición española ha dejado sus influencias han sido favorecidos por él por todos los medios posibles” (Thanks to his talent and to his ample scientific vision, studies of American folklore are developing from day to day in a marvelous way, and ­because of him comparative studies of the folklore of regions where the Spanish tradition has left its influences have benefited in ­every pos­si­ble way; Cuentos populares 16).

chapter 3

•

Jíbaros’ Authorship through Literary Self-­Characterization At a few of the large plantations, the lot of the poor is hard. They are not much better than slaves. . . . ​­These p­ eople are perhaps among the most unhappy of the Island, for while their poverty may not be so severe, they feel themselves in the hands of a master. —­George Milton Fowles, Down in Porto Rico (1906) Tenemos una clase más infortunada, me refiero a los campesinos. Ellos han permanecido, centurias tras centurias, encerrados en los viejos moldes tradicionalistas, recibiendo una educación puramente religiosa, con los ojos cerrados a los fulgores de la inteligencia, a los rayos esplendentes de la civilización moderna (We have a more unfortunate class, I am referring to peasants. They have been kept, centuries ­after centuries, shut in ancient traditional molds, having received only a religious education, with their eyes closed to the emerging rays of modern civilization). —­Manuel Rojas, Cuatro siglos de ignorancia y servidumbre en Puerto Rico (1914)

A mere sixteen years ­after the Spanish-­American War, within the context of an emerging pro–­Puerto Rican lit­er­a­ture, neither Boas nor Mason understood the significant roles that jíbaros served as both native in­for­mants of regional cultural practices and, most importantly, as writers of a considerable portion of the oral folklore samples. In his asking jíbaros (­children and male adults) to write down oral folklore samples, Mason simply did not realize that they ­were acting as formal “authors,” indeed, for the first time in Puerto Rican literary history. While in Puerto Rico, Mason came into contact with a booming jíbaro-­ inspired cultural movement, an extensive production that included formal artistic (graphic arts and ­music) and literary expressions. At the heart of ­t hese artistic creations lay a strong pro-­nationalist activism, as some of the authors themselves ­were heavi­ly involved in local politics and their work responded to 70

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their views of U.S. cultural and po­liti­cal impositions. A recovery proj­ect of oral folklore was also ongoing and, likewise, closely reflected fears that U.S. consumerist practices could result in the demise of a Puerto Rican popu­lar culture. The commonalities between Mason and other Puerto Rican folklorists ­were indeed striking; both intended to collect oral folklore samples with themes and characters representative of a Puerto Rican national identity. Mason had a tremendous advantage, however. Through the support of officers of the Puerto Rican Public school system, he had access to a large number of ­children in rural areas who acted as writers of hundreds of samples of oral folklore. Other cultural in­for­mants, including an undetermined number of male jíbaros, some of whom ­were well-­k nown storytellers, did not strike Boas, Mason, or Espinosa as a fact of notable historical importance. Indeed, ­t hese documents would have been the first such literary pieces written by jíbaros themselves, not by trained folklorists or literary writers, who w ­ ere outsiders to rural jíbaro communities. Mason also met local scholars who ­were longtime oral folk collectors. They provided Mason with insightful information about rich geo­graph­i­cal centers of oral folklore and directed his attention to themes and characters that ­were popu­ lar subject m ­ atters of oral folktales. In his correspondence with Boas, Mason fully discussed the identity of t­ hese scholars; however, their influence on Mason’s compilation techniques remained totally unknown to Espinosa, nor did he seem aware that t­ here was a well-­developed cultural and literary movement on the island that drew heavi­ly from the a­ ctual documentation of native Puerto Rican oral folklore. Their generic categorization of the samples as “fundamentally a Spanish transplant” (Duany, The Puerto Rican Nation 76) would determine subsequent editing decisions. More contentious, as I discuss in this chapter, such an ideological stand may have determined ways in which certain types of thematic samples ­were collected. The first section, “A Countryside-­Inspired Folklore through Jíbaros’ Authorship,” sets Mason’s oral samples against a national literary movement, known as criollismo, which positioned the jíbaro as a criollo or the native Puerto Rican, a character that reflected issues pertaining to national identity. Criollista writers, some of them deeply involved in the local po­liti­cal scene, had a rather open preference for Puerto Rican popu­lar folklore, and, in par­tic­u­lar, they sought to document jíbaro lifestyles while overwhelmingly ignoring an equally strong black culture. Throughout rural Puerto Rico, Mason had the support of governmental officers of the Public School system who greatly facilitated identifying a large number of schoolchildren who wrote a considerable amount of the oral samples. Thus, the role of ­children as both cultural in­for­mants and writers is documented within the rising national criollista literary production. Fi­nally, I uncover the identity of two scholars who served as Mason’s main advisors while on the island: American and longtime resident Robert L. Junghanns and Puerto Rican historian Cayetano Coll y Toste, both of whom w ­ ere

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actively developing collections of native oral folklore samples. Their impact on Mason’s compilation methodology was notable. More importantly, Espinosa’s lack of knowledge about the participation of ­t hese intellectuals who affected Mason’s decisions to research specific geo­graph­i­cal sites and explore certain cultural character archetypes and subject ­matters may account for the root of some of their most heated professional disagreements. A second section, “Juan Bobo and Other Native Picaresque Characters: Surviving the Rural Campo,” dwells on jíbaros’ preference for iconic characters well known to them, such as bandits or pirates with a local reputation, or even common peasants, easily ­imagined as “one of them,” subjected to the same dire conditions of extreme poverty found in the countryside. In par­tic­u ­lar, although a fictional character, the mischievous boy or young man Juan Bobo stands out even ­today as a sort of local personality who personifies universal traits of ­human resilience ascribed to the Puerto Rican jíbaro.

A Countryside-­Inspired Folklore through Jíbaros’ Authorship Criollista-­Jíbaro Lit­er­a­ture as Foundational Ground for the Documentation of a Puerto Rican National Identity: Writers as Po­liti­cal Activists At the time of Mason’s visit, Puerto Rican intellectuals and politicians w ­ ere investigating key aspects of rural living and jíbaro folklore as part of a highly nationalistic discourse, ­whether pro-­independence or in ­favor of statehood. Readers had easy access to a formal jíbaro-­inspired lit­er­a­ture, published in newspapers or distributed in publications associated with po­liti­cal parties. It often explored the ideological implications and radical changes of newly arrived American companies’ l­abor stratagems to the rural social fabric and, by extension, the island at large. Thus, the jíbaro became a marker against which to compare transformations in cultural practices attributed as reactions to official pro-­U.S. governmental policies. Jíbaro character archetypes, motifs, and geo­graph­i­cal settings gave shape to a formal literary movement. Known as a criollismo, this popu­lar trend produced in Latin Amer­i­ca throughout the early part of the twentieth c­ entury was an exaltation of lo criollo, creole or native traits that reflected upon social types and local traditions as part of an exploration of a national identity. In Puerto Rico, criollista writers exalted the jíbaro as representative of a distinct Puerto Rican national identity. Criollista plastic artists and writers made profound po­liti­cal statements praising rural workers while demanding radical reforms to the appalling work conditions of American-­owned agricultural companies, such as the large ingenios (sugar cane plantations and sugar cane refining centers). La gleba (Peons; 1912) by Ramón Juliá Marín (1878–1917) explores the negative impact of American ingenios upon traditional jíbaro ways of living (Rodríguez Juliá 122). The novel’s

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inherent tone of protest is further stressed with its incorporation of an art piece, El genio del ingenio (The Genie of the Plantation; 1910), as part of the front cover. Painter Julio T. Martínez (1878–1954) depicts a deformed, mechanized genie-­like character gruesomely steaming from the refinery chimney while it cannibalizes the bloody corpse of a jíbaro worker. In the foreground, relegated to an insignificant corner, stands the idyllic bohío, the s­ imple dwelling of the Puerto Rican campos, miniaturized in contrast to the gargantuan, mechanized ingenio, the modern, American-­imported refining center. The background, set against a sea of sugar cane, displays the ­actual plantation that has displaced a chewed-up jíbaro’s minimized bohío. Art repre­sen­ta­tion of jíbaros was, however, often part of a highly impassionate narrative that emphasized their physical rural surroundings. Beginning in 1904 Ramón Frade (1875–1954) started a series a jíbaro-­inspired paintings that highlighted the country living style of the peasant as “un ícono emplazado en el altar de la montaña” (an icon sited in the altar of the mountain; Delgado Mercado 132). In 1913, Miguel Meléndez Muñoz (1883–1966), well known for his newspaper articles, published Yuyo, with an explanatory title: Novela de las costumbres puertorriqueñas (A Novel of Puerto Rican Customs), which further scrutinizes inequalities in rural Puerto Rico while documenting “las costumbres y el modo de ser y hablar del campesino del centro de la isla, en la primera década del siglo veinte” (the customs, way of being and speaking patterns of peasants living in the center of the island during the first part of the twentieth c­ entury; “Nota” 12). The cultural magazine Puerto Rico Ilustrado in early 1914 included a short promotional announcement that underscored the novel’s highly poetic language, however, devoid of critical content: “una novela netamente portorriqueña, con olor a campiña florida, con almas y sentimientos criollos, con paisajes de nuestras montañas, tan alegres y tan bellas” (a truly Porto Rican novel, with the scent of a blooming countryside, which reflects Puerto Rican soul and feelings, through the cheerful and beautiful scenery of our mountains; “La novela” n.p.). Yuyo, a young peasant w ­ oman, is the protagonist, who exemplifies gender inequalities as part of a case study that procures a strong “interpretación sociológica” (so­cio­log­i­c al interpretation) of dating practices among jíbaros (Laguerre 11). On the other hand, Meléndez Muñoz, who l­ater gained national notoriety for his academic study Estado social del campesino (Social Condition of the Peasant; 1916), developed a portrait of an awkward and superstitious jíbaro, a basic characterization that most other literary writers frequently imitated. Meléndez Muñoz presented jíbaros as victims of colonial (Spanish) historical circumstances. But he also harshly criticized that certain cultural traditions kept them living in a socially backward condition: “No proviene de la raza nuestra notoria incapacidad para el progreso moderno, sino del caudal de supers­ tición viejas que nos hacen inadecuados para las ideas y los sentimientos

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­ odernos; no de la sangre sino de la fábrica moral, del ambiente espiritual” m (Our inability to join modern pro­gress is not the result of our race but of plentiful, ancient superstitions that make us unprepared for modern ideas and sensibility; nor of our blood but the result of a lack of a moral fabric and of a poor spiritual one; Estado 100–101).1 This polarized dichotomy of opinions, jíbaro culture as both a positive and negative asset to the development of a post–­ Spanish-­American War Puerto Rican national identity, would be descriptive of a ­f uture jíbaro-­criollista lit­er­a­ture. Puerto Rican criollista writers had also fallen for the more colorful ele­ments of jíbaro popu­lar folklore: “Their ­music, dances, and customs assumed a pastoral veneer that greatly contrasted with the cultural changes that ­were taking place ­under U.S. rule” (Negrón-­Portillo 48). A type of a rural “cultural essence” found in jíbaro traditions had become an “impor­tant ele­ment of the nationalist imaginary in Puerto Rico” (Negrón-­Portillo 48). Published the year of Mason’s arrival, Pablo Morales Cabrera’s short story collection Cuentos populares (1914); Popu­lar Stories stands out for its exaltation of country life and for its ­handling of a jíbaro character who serves as the narrator of a number of rural popu­lar beliefs (Gordon 56). Morales Cabrera (1866–1933), who drew from his firsthand experiences as a teacher-­farmer, praised the countryside as “el alma de nuestro país” (the soul of our country; Laguerre 13).2 This pseudo-­testimonial account of rural ways of life makes the collection a notable exception in a rather large jíbaro Costumbrista literary corpus produced by individuals foreign to rural backgrounds and thus producing rather voy­eur­is­tic images of the rural countryside.

Jíbaro Folklore as a Teaching Tool: Mason’s Use of Rural Public Schoolchildren as Cultural In­for­mants and as Writers of Oral Samples Reinterpretations of jíbaro folklore ­were compiled in textbooks produced for the Puerto Rican Public School Department. Manuel Fernández Juncos (1846–1928), writer of Lecturas escogidas (1910), among the first primers written in Spanish in Puerto Rico ­after the Spanish-­American War, was responsible for halting the imposition of American textbooks as teaching tools for reading and comprehensive skills for Puerto Rican ­children.3 His prose collection Cuentos y narraciones (Short Stories and Other Stories; 1907) is noteworthy for its h ­ andling of jíbaro motifs for pedagogical purposes. As indicated, high-­ranking officers of the Puerto Rican Education Department greatly facilitated Mason’s access to schoolchildren in remote countryside schools. Public School system commissioner Bainter, as Mason detailed to Boas on December 8, 1914, first approached this endeavor via “a letter to e­ very principal of a school,” describing Mason’s intended oral folklore proj­ect (APS). Circular-­letter number 45, dated December 10, requested that principals identify “folklore of Porto Rico . . . ​traditional and legendary knowledge of the natives

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of Porto Rico.” Bainter’s instructions specified stories that reflected “an insight into the life of the ­people” (APS). ­Children from third grade and above ­were expected to write stories in Spanish “as naturally as pos­si­ble, in the style generally used in story telling and not in an elaborate and artificial style.” They ­were also to be encouraged to write songs, proverbs, and riddles, including “not only the usual fairy tales involving royalty and witchcraft, but also s­ imple stories, animal stories like ­Uncle Remus tales of the negroes, and local traditions are very wanted.” Bainter displayed some knowledge of Puerto Rican oral folklore; he highlighted the titles of key local “traditions”: Juan Bobo, La Zorra (the fox), El Conejo (the rabbit), Los Compadres, Juan el Oso (John the Bear). He also emphasized several times that the stories must be original to the island: “It should be impressed on the pupils that no book stories are wanted.” Teachers ­were also instructed about another type of proj­ect. ­Children could also transcribe oral samples “from the verbatim dictation of a person who has lived many years in Porto Rico and is acquainted with some old legend or tradition.” Bainter also described c­ hildren’s ideal in­for­mants as “old illiterate p ­ eople [who] oftentimes can tell stories which are not found in books.” As a final request, the source of the samples was to be documented and “[they] should be traced back as far as pos­si­ble.” This last requirement remained unexplained. Teachers could have students ­either produce this work at home as assignments or write it “during school hours.” No pedagogical recommendations w ­ ere given for the incorporation of this major writing proj­ect that, as Bainter mentioned in passing, was expected to produce a rather large number of samples: “Teachers should mark t­ hese stories as an incentive to endeavor, but they should mark on quantity rather than quality.” In order to generate “a large number of dif­fer­ ent stories,” as part of a request from Mason, Bainter stated that “it is necessary that the ­children write in­de­pen­dently of each other.”

Previous Use of ­Children as Writers of Oral Folklore ­ hildren from the public school system had already been utilized as writers C of oral folklore. On June 2, 1911, commissioner of education Edwin Grant Dexter had approached teachers with a similar request. Mrs. F. R. Hoisington, wife of the president of the Cayey-­Caguas Tobacco Com­pany, among the largest American-­owned tobacco growers and cigar makers on the island, offered money for the three “largest and most meritorious collections of ‘canciones antiguas de España y Puerto Rico’ ” (ancient songs from Spain and Puerto Rico, 438). The low amounts of money—­twenty-­five, fifteen, ten, and five dollars—­ reflected that the contest was to be circumscribed to schoolchildren. As in Bainter’s directions, the material “must be old and must be of Puerto Rican or Spanish origin” (438). Two types of in­for­mants w ­ ere particularly sought ­a fter: “Especially wanted are the songs sung by the blind men of Puerto Rico to the

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guitar and guichero [sic] accompaniment” and “songs sung by m ­ other and nurses to ­children” (439).4 Boas had had prior knowledge of additional interest in Puerto Rican folklore culture by American commercial companies. Writing to historian Aby Warburg (1866–1929) on December 17, 1913, Boas briefly mentioned the existence of “prob­ ably the best collection from Porto Rico in existence” (APS). It belonged to Mr. Minor C. Keith, vice-­president of the United States Fruit Com­pany, at Babylon, Long Island. Boas was certain that Keith intended to keep the collection “as long as he lives,” but he felt that “ultimately it ­ought to become the property of the American Museum of Natural History.”

Mason’s Whereabouts on the Island: The Compilation Method Barely Unveiled and Discussed Mason traveled extensively throughout the island with regional school superintendents who had approached local teachers with Bainter’s circular letter.5 School superintendents took it upon themselves to serve as editors as well. Reporting to Boas on January 12, 1915, a­ fter having received “his best” schoolchildren’s stories, Mason lamented that a district superintendent had also discarded duplicates and “very poor ones” (APS). He was not pleased, however, with this unexpected turn of events: “I am afraid this w ­ ill be done often; I am anxious to see what the outcome ­will be.” Nonetheless, seven days l­ater Mason reassured Boas that the pro­cess would work fine. On January 19 he reported a preliminary examination of the ­children’s returns from fifteen school districts. In spite of an expected “considerable duplication,” he ensured Boas that “­t here is not as much of it as I expected” (APS). He concluded, “But on the ­whole I am agreeably surprised at the result.” He was indeed pleased with the generated texts: “Some schools gave me fine material, ­every story dif­fer­ent.” As with his lack of disclosure about the identity of the ­children writers, Mason did not indicate the names of t­ hese schools. When Boas invited Espinosa, freshly arrived from Puerto Rico on July 12, 1915, to serve as editor of the Puerto Rican samples, he shared his pride in the fact that the material (left unquantified) had been “largely written by young Porto Ricans” (APS). Their ages would remain unknown. In one instance, on December 28, 1914, Mason wrote to Boas that “higher pupils” had written stories (APS). Mason was pleased with ­t hese samples in par­tic­u ­lar, perhaps ­because of their age: “They grasped exactly what was wanted and wrote a very fine collection of stories, practically all dif­fer­ent and traditional. They are very well written, in many cases the source of the story is given and in a few cases the pupils have even used the dialectic forms of their words. Many of them end the story with the customary couplet of saying.” Mason did not discuss with Boas the methodology for his training of the schoolchildren as in­for­mants and as writers. Boas referred in passing to this

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procedure, however, which he had used in his own compilation among the Inuit indigenous groups. In his article “My­thol­ogy and Folk-­Tales of the North American Indians” (1914), he declared “the most successful method” to be “the first rec­ord made by natives who have been taught to write their own language” (452). He had trained George Hunt, a Kwakiutl native who served as his in­for­mant and advisor, on linguistics during his trips the Arctic zone beginning in the 1880s. Boas did not go into detail about the type of training he devised for the native in­for­mants, mainly stating, “­After they have acquired sufficient ease in writing, the diction becomes satisfactory” (452).6 In order to avoid “a certain one-­ sidedness,” Boas also recommended employing several writer in­for­mants. As Espinosa expressed early on during the editing phase, he was privy to Boas’s use of native in­for­mants as writers. In October 9, 1916 he communicated to Boas his serious concerns pertaining to the structural solidity and ethnological value of their oral samples: “­Children and uneducated persons do not write down a story as they tell it any way. They add and distort the tale. I have positive assurance in my own experiences that the same person can tell a tale in good form and distort it when he writes it down” (APS). A year l­ ater, on April 24, 1917, Espinosa categorically expressed to Boas his opinion that the Puerto Rican collection was inherently faulty and imperfect, blaming the c­ hildren for the poor quality of the samples: “The tales are too short, unfinished or incomplete; fragmentary, not b ­ ecause the ­children did not know them but b ­ ecause they forgot to write parts of them; or simply ­because they got tired. It is too bad” (APS). As if contradicting himself, though, he expressed that t­ here ­were exceptions: “Short stories and mere anecdotes are well told; simply ­because the school ­children could easily remember them and had time and patience to write them.” This opinion is striking, ­because Espinosa was working ­u nder the impression that ­children had mainly been in charge of writing all samples. In his characteristically extreme position, he concluded, however, “It is too bad so much money and time is wasted on such a collection.”

“Illiterate” Jíbaros as Preferred In­for­mants Mason also demonstrated severe inaccuracies in his identifying the jíbaro adult male in­for­mants with whom he started working soon ­a fter his arrival in the highlands of Utuado. Writing to Boas on December 8, 1914, Mason enthusiastically reported having found “three very good in­for­mants in the neighborhood of Utuado who claim to know many more stories” (APS). B ­ ecause ­these men w ­ ere “illiterate,” Mason was seeking “to have their stories written out by o ­ thers.” Such a statement remained unexplained, ­whether he meant that ­either other literate peasants or Puerto Rican scholars could write samples from t­hese illiterate in­for­mants. A search for prospective illiterate jíbaros should have been fairly short, given the high rural illiteracy rates. In his 1912–1913 annual report, at the conclusion

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of his first year as commissioner of the Puerto Rican Department of Education, Bainter had stressed to Governor Yager the seriousness of the prob­lem at hand. ­There was a po­liti­cal agenda at work, too. Quoting from a 1910 federal census, he emphasized that 168,477, or 68.2 ­percent, of the island’s 246,018 male population was illiterate (“Report” 319). The gravity of the m ­ atter went beyond developing proper pedagogical programs that would successfully deal with such an “enormous army of illiterates.” A literacy campaign was also intended to ideologically train “illiterate voters [who] hold power in all elections” (319). Bainter made no references to the general public’s dislike of his pedagogical policies, particularly the imposition of En­glish as a principal language in public schools; his call for social justice on behalf of the rural population was placed within an abstract ideological plane: “To wait for a generation of illiterate men, ­women, and ­children to pass away without endeavoring to carry them over the dark line of illiteracy into the class of literates would be a crime” (319).7 Illiteracy was also a concern for W. A. Barlow, acting commissioner of education ­after Bainter’s resignation of his post in 1915. Barlow, who continued Bainter’s literacy campaign in the countryside, lamented the dire physical conditions and poor intellectual opportunities found in rural communities. Although he praised the island’s generic “Spanish” traditions, including potential achieving of bilingualism, as national cultural assets, Barlow also perpetuated a negative image of a rural lifestyle. While introducing that a high illiteracy rate was at the core of the “magnitude of the prob­lem to be solved,” Barlow followed in the footsteps of previous American and foreign travelers. He named jíbaros as ultimately responsible for the backward rural environment and, symbolically, of the country: “That enormous mass of illiterates, in its primitive, uncured condition, is not safe timber to build the good ship of state” (316). Eradication of illiteracy could be reached only by means of “heroic mea­sures,” through a program that, as commissioner Bainter had stressed, would lead to self-­r ule: “The p ­ eople of Porto Rico can assume in full the duties and privileges of self government” (316). An expansive literacy program was also the core of Paul G. Miller’s administration. Appointed as official commissioner of education on August 26, 1915, Miller enforced Bainter’s and Barlow’s policies in revamping the previous literacy campaign as part of a “a rural campaign which soon came to be called the rural uplift” (“Report” 354). The program, designed specifically for an “ignorant peasantry,” was intended to “help the peasantry to improve living conditions; to put ­t hese p ­ eople in touch with a world beyond their huts, giving them a taste of the ­t hings that make life more pleasant” (354). The “rural uplift” campaign included “eve­ning classes for adults” as well as a refurbished curriculum for ­children, which included training in “story telling” (356).8 Miller also targeted an area of training for both jíbaro adults and ­children: “instruction in gardening and rural industries” (354). This type of learning pro-

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gram caught the attention of the Puerto Rican press, which published photographic depictions of instructional activities in the countryside.9

Espinosa’s Objections to the Validity of the “Oral” Samples None of the data on illiteracy rates or the public discontent of the literacy campaign’s pedagogical policies w ­ ere communicated to Boas or Espinosa. Boas seemed impervious to Espinosa’s criticisms of the validity of the collection, as indicated in his idea that Espinosa should produce a comparative study of the types of oral folklores collected from Latin American countries and from Spain. Indeed, as Jorge Duany pointed out, such an analy­sis was deemed critically sound: “­Because Puerto Rico had been in continuous contact with the ‘­mother country’—­more so than any other Latin American nation except Cuba—­Spanish folklore was conserved more ‘purely’ on the Island than in other parts of the New World, such as in New Mexico, Argentina, or Chile (The Puerto Rican Nation 76). Boas’s initial plan for Espinosa to embark on such a comparative proj­ect using the Puerto Rican collection was communicated in a letter dated September 15, 1915. Boas clearly understood that it would be a major task: “It ­w ill be a very heavy work to arrange all this material and to get all the Eu­ro­pean variants” (APS). Thus, Boas invited Espinosa to consider instead a critical analy­sis that could explore “the relation of Spanish American Folklore to the Amer­i­cas.” Espinosa had developed his own compilation methodology and, like Mason, had experience collecting samples in the field. According to his son, also a folklorist, Espinosa’s “folklore fieldwork in New Mexico and Southern Colorado was carried out extensively and continuously between 1902 and 1911, frequently between 1912 and 1932, and on occasional short visits to the region in the 1930s, 1940s, and early 1950s” (“Espinosa’s Folklore” 35). Between 1908 and 1910, Espinosa compiled in New Mexico “some twenty-­five short stories and anecdotes which I have classified with the folktales” (“New-­Mexican Spanish Folk-­lore” 397). His methods of a close interaction with his in­for­mants and his transcription format, although simply expressed, went against Mason’s field practices in Puerto Rico: “The stories h ­ ere given, therefore, are practically in the very words of the narrators; not absolutely, however, since, in order to express the pronunciation exactly, the words would have to be spelled with the phonetic symbols exployed [sic] in my ‘Studies in New-­Mexican Spanish’ ” (397). A curious historical coincidence is the fact that a considerable number of Espinosa’s stories have equivalents in Mason’s Puerto Rican oral samples. In par­t ic­u ­lar, young men (often ­brothers) who leave home in quest of adventures are common protagonists (such as Juan sin Miedo, Fearless John, and Juan del Oso; John the Bear). Espinosa did comment on such reverberations, which would have been easily the beginning of Boas’s suggested comparative study against other Latin American folk stories.

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Boas had also previously published stories in traditional Spanish. In 1912 he published folk stories from Pochulata, Oaxaca, which had been dictated to him “by and el­derly man, Pedro Marcelino Pastor, and by his d ­ aughters” (“Notes on Mexican Folk-­Lore” 204). Although the stories ­were published in “the original Spanish” (204), they are obviously heavi­ly edited to conform to modern grammar and orthography. Another notable ele­ment is the fact that Boas documented the name of his in­for­mant, information that is absent in all of the published Puerto Rican oral publications.

Jíbaro Speech Patterns as a Marker of Cultural Authenticity Espinosa did not comment on the quality of Mason’s in­for­mants’ reproduction of their own jíbaro speech patterns. In his reducing rural vernacular to standard Castilian Spanish, Espinosa was ­going against an impor­tant aesthetic literary component of the material. Puerto Rican prose writers and poets and criollista writers had begun a reproduction of what they perceived to be the most common linguistic characteristics of jíbaro Spanish, delving into colorful phonetics and peculiar grammatical flourishes. More importantly, some of the writers involved, such as de Diego, actively utilized jíbaro Spanish as part of a po­liti­cal statement in ­favor of an indisputable Puerto Rican identity.10 Espinosa was inflexible in his dealing with linguistic accuracy. On December 5, 1914, while editing Radin’s Mexican oral folklore manuscript, he made statements similar to his opinion of Mason’s Puerto Rican samples: “It is in very poor shape. The periods and commas are scattered promiscuously h ­ ere and ­there in such confusion that it often takes as much as ten or twelve minutes to look over a half page. The language and construction is very poor and I have to do a good deal of thinking before I fi­nally decide on the proper construction” (APS). Two years ­later, fully committed to Mason’s material from Puerto Rico, he maintained a similarly abrasive attitude. ­Those critical letters, always addressed to Boas, such as one dated October 9, 1916, read as scientific manifestos with detailed indications of his preferred field methodology: “In collecting and printing popu­ lar folk-­lore t­ here are only two real scientific ways of g­ oing at the m ­ atter, as I believe: to have a real expert or trained phonetician take the material from dictation as I did in the case of my New Mexican material” (APS). Even Espinosa’s mention of “dictation” as the best scientific method of compilation did not bring Boas out of his passive silence. In his 1914 article “My­t hol­ ogy and Folk-­Tales of the North American Indians,” Boas had stressed, however, the “importance of the rec­ord in the original language” (452) of ethnologists while working on the field. Furthermore, dictation by an in­for­mant to a researcher, as Boas pointed out, did not necessarily imply the recording of a particularly better sample: “The difficulty of taking down accurate rapid dictation from natives, and the difficulty which the natives encounter in telling in the traditional manner sufficiently slowly for the purpose of the recorder, almost

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always exert an appreciable influence upon the form of the tale” (452). Thus, according to Brian Swann, Boas “lamented what he called the unnatural simplicity of dictation resulting in something that even he, who ­wasn’t concerned with the literary quality of translation, found inadequate” (xvi–­x vii). As if in reference to his e­ arlier difficulty in editing the Radin collection, Espinosa also expressed his critical opinion that the final version of the Puerto Rican proj­ect should appear in standard Spanish: “Popu­lar material must be corrected and printed in good Spanish form, as long as no real facts are changed. The story has to remain exact, but the language must be standard Castilian. ­There is no half way about the m ­ atter. It has to be in correct Castilian or in exact dictated form taken by a trained linguist who knows the language or dialect perfectly.” Thus, ­t hose linguistic patterns proper of jíbaros, which Mason often praised his in­for­mants for transcribing, w ­ ere fully eliminated from the printed version.

Lack of Linguistic Competency and Absence of Active Participation of Puerto Rican Scholars In his dealing with language issues, Espinosa often indirectly expressed to Boas his opinion of Mason’s faulty knowledge of Spanish. On April 24, 1917, Espinosa even doubted that material transcribed by Mason was accurate: “[He] did not hear them right or did not understand them” (APS). Indeed, Espinosa was also aware of his unusual position as the only native Spanish speaker in a proj­ect that involved “my intimate knowledge of Spanish & the dialects.” Thus, as he frequently stressed in his editing of the Puerto Rican oral samples, Espinosa had aimed to produce versions “in correct Castilian as pos­si­ble.” Neither Boas nor Mason doubted Espinosa’s ability to transfer into “correct Castilian” obscure jíbaro wording, colloquial phrases, and peculiarities of oral delivery and grammar structure. Nor did they question Espinosa’s reasons for turning jíbaro’s speech patterns into mainstream Spanish. To be fair, Mason also frequently communicated to Boas his insecurity in ­handling Spanish. While traveling in Mexico, he wrote Boas a letter on June 29, 1911, communicating his cheerfulness in “improving my l­ittle Spanish” (APS). This was a common courtesy, however, a humbling position that characterizes his correspondence with Boas. He often wrote to Boas in g­ reat detail about Mexican-­Spanish grammar nuisances with the competency of a linguist. Mason’s letters from Puerto Rico reveal his confidence in describing at length peculiarities in linguistic “island” pronunciation patterns, drawing from his observed differences in Mexican rural variants. Given Espinosa’s frequent doubts about the scientific integrity of Mason’s oral collection, it is puzzling that Mason did not discuss the role of Puerto Rican folklorists during the compilation pro­cess. In his correspondence with Boas, Mason indicated the names of two Puerto Rican scholars who had served as his

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con­sul­tants. On March 15, 1917, he sent Boas a list of “persons who assisted in the collection of the Porto Rican work or whose acquaintance was made at that time” (APS). (That list is lost ­today.) He was expecting that each person could receive a complimentary copy. Th ­ ese intellectuals had provided valuable information about prospective geo­graph­i­cal areas rich in oral folklore. According to his testimonial account in Folklore puertorriqueño: Adivinanzas (Puerto Rican Folklore: Conundrums), published in 1957 by the Institute of Puerto Rican Culture, Mason had received help from local researchers of “reconocida reputación en el conocimiento folklórico” (renown in knowledge of folklore), presumably Puerto Ricans with advanced knowledge in regional forms of folklore (10).11 He acknowledged that ­t hese unnamed scholars had helped in the transcription of his innumerable “muchos cuadernos” (many notebooks), as he indicated in a vague statement: “Pude obtener para esta transcripción la colaboración en el conocimiento folklórico” (For this transcription I managed to secure collaboration in folkloric knowledge; 10). They ­were rather deeply involved in the pro­ cess, they potentially identified prospective sites for field research, and they could have revised and corrected written samples. The ways in which t­ hese individuals helped in the transcription remained undiscussed.

Behind-­the-­Scenes Contributions of Local Folklorists: Cayetano Coll y Toste and Robert L. Junghanns Mason did acknowledge to Boas the names of two local scholars as major supporters of his field research on the island: Cayetano Coll y Toste (1850–1930), the official historian of the Puerto Rican government, and Robert L. Junghanns (1871–1947), an American and longtime resident who was among the first collectors of Taíno archaeological pieces in the early part of the twentieth c­ entury. Coll y Toste and Junghanns w ­ ere themselves actively involved in the compilation of popu­lar oral folklore and, in the case of Coll y Toste, successfully published on the island. Mason met Coll y Toste immediately upon his arrival to the island, as Mason wrote to Boas on December 8, 1914, an indication that he may have already known about his importance as a folklorist. Coll y Toste, who had been an advisor to the Department of Revenue of the first American governor Charles Herbert Allen (1900), was well acquainted with issues pertaining to local politics (Coll y Cuchí ix). He was trained as a medical doctor in Spain in 1874, and upon his return to the island he started to collaborate on Revista Puertorriqueña (Puerto Rican Magazine), directed by Manuel Fernández Juncos, who had also been actively involved in the documentation of rural folklore: Tipos y caracteres (Types and Characters; 1882), Costumbres y tradiciones (Customs and Traditions; 1883), and Semblanzas puertorriqueñas (Puerto Rican Sketches; 1888). In 1913, upon his appointment as official historian of Puerto Rico, Coll y Toste began to publish

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short historical essays known as Boletín Histórico de Puerto Rico (Puerto Rico’s Historical Bulletin; Coll 19). The content of Boletín was assembled from a variety of firsthand historical documents (letters, diaries, colonial laws and regulations, police reports) about “puntos oscuros de nuestra historia” (unknown items in our history; Morales Carrión 117). Coll y Toste also had literary aspirations: at the time of Mason’s arrival, he was publishing his legends, adaptations of historical events as folktales in the well-­k nown informative magazine Puerto Rico Ilustrado.12 Anthropologist and founding f­ather of the Institute of Puerto Rican Culture Ricardo Alegría considered t­ hese chronicles as historical rec­ords of “episodios del pasado” (episodes from the past; “Introducción” n.p.).13 This was a rather monumental proj­ect that, as Puerto Rican novelist Enrique Laguerre indicated, unearthed “una legión de personajes y situaciones de nuestra historia y un verdadero desfile de tipos populares nuestros” (a legion of characters and scenes from historical incidents that reveal the presence of a large number of popu­lar characters; 10). Within the po­liti­cal trend associated with Costumbrista-­related national types, Coll y Toste’s legends documented an emerging national “conciencia histórica” (historical consciousness; Morales Carrión 117). Mason came to meet Coll y Toste not in his capacity as Puerto Rico’s official historian but b ­ ecause of his close ties with Puerto Rican intellectuals d ­ oing work on local oral folklore. In a letter to Boas on December 8, Mason briefly described his visit with Coll y Toste in reference to a consultation on proverbs that Mason had already collected (APS). That conversation was succinct; Mason proudly reported to Boas that it was Coll y Toste’s opinion that “all the proverbs in use are native, not Spanish.” A likely impact of Coll y Toste upon Mason’s oral folklore proj­ect might have been his discussion that oral folklorists w ­ ere performing similar work. Coll y Toste was also a linguistic researcher. In his earliest publication, “Clínica jíbara” (A Peasant Clinic; 1896), he offers a comical portrait of jíbaro speech patterns, though framed within a sociopo­liti­cal view of their dire rural conditions. Of par­tic­u ­lar interest to Mason would have been more formal dialectal articles: “El idioma castellano en Puerto Rico” (The Spanish Language in Puerto Rico) and “¿Por qué el jíbaro es arisco?” (Why Is Jíbaro So Rough?). As Isabel Cuchí Coll has pointed out, Coll y Toste had traced the origin of jíbaros’ speech to linguistic forms brought to the island beginning in the sixteenth and seventh centuries, with an “influencia de los conquistadores y pobladores” (influence of conquistadors and other settlers; 12). Coll y Toste’s most impor­tant contribution to Mason’s research was his referral of “a Mr.  Yunghauns [sic] . . . ​, who is interested in folk-­lore.” Junghanns, who had made Puerto Rico his home in the early part of the twentieth c­ entury, was indeed among a small group of individuals performing informal field

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research in oral folklore. Mason met Junghanns mere days ­after his initial meeting with Coll y Toste. An amateur ethnologist and folklorist, according to Mason, Junghanns had accumulated “a small collection of archaeological objects.” A December 13 letter to Boas reported that Junghanns’s strongest asset and “principal interest” was his “very large collection” of oral folklore: “Fortunately he has paid the most attention to t­ hose branches which I would find the hardest to investigate, viz., riddles, proverbs, comparisons, conundrums, vari­ous ballads, songs of several dif­fer­ent types, lullabies, and every­t hing in this line” (APS). The collection, in Mason’s estimation, was well put together; it was “already typewritten, assorted, well digested and filed away.” Indeed, Mason was impressed with its expansive size, “some 1,500 comparisons (más verde que) [greener than] and other data in proportion.” Junghanns’s samples included a “fair collection” of stories, “among them several versions of the coyote or the fox cycle.”14 Mason’s positive report to Boas ended with an indication that in 1913 Junghanns had concluded collecting, and he was planning to produce “a thorough and complete collection of folk-­ lore of the island.” At the time he met Mason he was at the beginnings of an “interpretative phase,” of which he had “done ­little.” Mason had proposed to Junghanns to have his oral collection published as part of the Scientific Survey. Junghanns, who had not yet published on the island (nor would he ever), suggested another approach: “He thinks it ­w ill be more to his advantage to wait ­until my material is out and use it as comparative data to continue his own work.” Junghanns never explained his reasons for rejecting Mason’s generous offer, and he left Mason ­under the impression he might consider it l­ ater on: “But if the proper influence w ­ ere brought to bear upon him and good facilities for publication offered him he might consent to publish what he has now, though it might be better to let him continue a complete collection.” Nonetheless, Mason’s initial assessment of the stories was extremely positive. He highlighted “several versions of the coyote or fox cycle.” Although t­ hese stories ­were not representative of Puerto Rican regional oral folklore, Mason’s curiosity was perhaps in reference to t­ hose themes of par­tic­u ­lar interest to Boas. As Mason embarked upon his oral field research, he became heavi­ly dependent upon Junghanns’s advice. Writing to Boas on January  22, 1915, Mason acknowledged that Junghanns “had become a very useful interpreter of the content of the stories” (APS). Junghanns was suspicions that some of Mason’s stories could “be the result of a series of cheap prints of fairy­tales in vogue twenty years ago.” The presence of this ­earlier unmentioned foreign literary source “complicates the prob­lem considerably,” Mason initially concluded. Indeed, Junghanns stated that the origin of the source was serial publications of fairy tales for c­ hildren printed in Spain. Mason became even more excited about Junghanns’s “scientific ability.” His admiration, as he characterized him

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to Boas, was evident: “He knows more about P[orto] R[ican] folklore than any one e­ lse on the island and has a good scientific feeling.” Mason’s dealings with Junghanns grew to the point that he would not mention any other intellectual whom he would expect Boas wanted to meet: “I am anxious to have you meet Junghanns as I am much impressed with his knowledge and ability as a student and investigator of Spanish-­American folk-­lore.” Junghanns did meet Boas, eventually. On June 15, 1915, Boas sent Junghanns a tele­gram inviting to have lunch with him two days ­later at ­Hotel Eureka in Santurce, on the outskirts of San Juan (APS). He made a point to indicate it would be a short visit, though. Boas was due to leave for New York that after­noon at five and was extremely busy performing anthropometric mea­sure­ments on Puerto Rican military personnel. Mason came to perform research on Loíza at Junghanns’s recommendation. A coastal fishing village with a strong African cultural influence, Loíza was Mason’s preferred black ethnic location, completing the island’s triad of racial repre­sen­ta­tion, along with Taíno indigenous and white-­mountain jíbaro cultures. Although Junghanns’s critical impact on Mason’s initial analy­sis of the Puerto Rican oral folklore samples was indeed extraordinary, it is puzzling, however, that neither he nor any other Puerto Rican folklorist, such as Coll y Toste, was asked to take a more active role in the physical compilation pro­cess or to participate in the editing phase. Participation of Puerto Rican scholars could have helped in dealing with the ideological shortcomings involved in an inherently po­liti­cal proj­ect, or they could have provided him access to other types of in­for­ mants, including professionals involved in oral research. In this he went against Boas’s own procedures that included using multiple native in­for­mants and other ­people who had direct contact with Kwakiutl cultural practices and language use (Codere xxvi; Müller-­Wille 104). Nonetheless, Junghanns fulfilled such a role as a “learned cultural in­for­mant,” and Coll y Toste, to a lesser extent, while Mason was on the island. Their g­ reat contributions w ­ ere obliterated in the editing and publication pro­cesses.

Juan Bobo and Other Native Picaresque Characters: Surviving the Rural Campo [Jíbaros] tristes e infelices pálidos de la altura, que forman incuestionablemente, el músculo y el nervio de nuestro organismo colectivo (Sad and unhappy jíbaros, unfortunate and sickly pale from the heights, undoubtedly form the muscles and nerves of our collective organism). —­Francisco M. Zeno, El obrero agrícola o de los campos (The Agricultural or Field Laborer; 1922)

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This section examines Mason’s documentation of rural oral folklore through his close work with “Gíbaros in the hills,” mainly from Utuado, who became, as his many letters to Boas and Junghanns indicate, his favorite cultural in­for­mants. Indeed, the mountainous heartland of the Cordillera Central, the Central Range, had an impor­tant role in the development of a jíbaro oral folklore. Jíbaros’ preference for certain types of oral narratives, legends, and fables became the object of Mason’s curiosity, including the use of stories as a source of popu­lar entertainment during wakes. Th ­ ese stories had too been uncovered by Puerto Rican folklorists turned into activists, such as Rafael Ramírez de Arellano, who openly highlighted their importance as notable weapons in the counterdefense of Puerto Rican traditions against newly imported U.S. cultural practices. One jíbaro type of character attracted Mason’s attention: the mischievous Juan Bobo, a young boy or adolescent and prototypical rural figure whose tricks facilitated his financial survival. Los cuentos de Juan Bobo ­were among the most commented upon stories between Mason and Espinosa during the editing pro­ cess. Espinosa’s often adversarial perspective and negative comments on ­t hese iconic stories further highlighted the absence of a Puerto Rican scholar in the pro­cess, one who would presumably have prevented the resulting expurgation and overcorrection of the published pieces.

Puerto Rican Oral Folklore as a Po­liti­cal Tool: Rafael Ramírez de Arellano (1854–1921) as a Folklorist and an Activist Like Mason, Puerto Ricans ­were embarking on similar oral folklore proj­ects, however theirs embodied a po­liti­cal agenda fueled by an ongoing re­sis­tance to American ideological influences. In 1915, the commissioner of the Department of Public Education, W. A. Barlow, attacked “certain po­liti­cal agitators” who “would have the p ­ eople believe that the scheme of education now in force is an insidious attempt to eliminate Spanish, the thin, entering wedge calculated to destroy the personality of the ­people of Porto Rico” (343). Indeed, the Department of Education’s ongoing curricular policies elicited a strong public opposition; Puerto Rican folklore became the counterrevolutionary ideological stance opposing Barlow’s pro-­American curriculum with its own ideological goals. Mason’s interest in examining local reinterpretations of oral folklore should have led him to contact Rafael Ramírez de Arellano, who had been working on an oral folklore proj­ect for twenty years. Published in Madrid in 1926 as Folklore portorriqueño: Cuentos y adivinanzas recogidos de la tradición oral (Porto

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Rican Folklore: Tales and Riddles Collected from Oral Tradition; 1926), Ramírez de Arellano’s oral folklore collection supported ongoing po­l iti­cal discussions pertaining to the pro-­nationalist values of native folklore as a basis for literary productions and as an ideological repre­sen­ta­tion of Puerto Rican identity. In his introduction to Folklore portorriqueño, Ramírez de Arellano presented himself as a vocal activist expressing deep concerns about American cultural interference in Puerto Rico. His warning succinctly and indirectly summarized the impact of the new American curriculum: “A los antiguos cuentos legendarios siguen hoy otros del mismo carácter pero procedentes de regiones sajonas que van introduciendo nuevas ideas, nuevos mitos, y suplantando aquéllos que sirvieron para formar el ideal racial, por así decirlo, de las pasadas generaciones” (Following the old, legendary tales are t­ oday ­others of the same character but products of Saxon regions that are introducing new ideas, new myths, and supplanting ­t hose that served to form the racial idea, so to speak, of past generations; 7). Thus, he also attacked the mandatory use of En­glish in the Puerto Rican public school system. While stressing the values of Puerto Rican folktales, he warned against similar cultural forms imported from the United States, presumably as part of the American-­based curriculum in the public school system: “Con la publicación de este libro no tratamos de oponernos, ni mucho menos, a que la riqueza espiritual se enriquezca con toda clase de influencias. Lo que sí deseamos es que se conserve en Puerto Rico todo aquello que es digno de conservarse de nuestra vida pasada, como se ha hecho en los Estados de la Unión Norte Americana, cuyo origen no fue puramente inglés” (With the publication of this book we are not trying to oppose, at all, the enrichment of spiritual trea­ sures by all kind of influences. What we do want is the preservation in Puerto Rico of all of our past life that is worthy of preservation, as has been done in the States of the North American Union, whose origin was not purely En­glish; 7). In common with Mason, Ramírez de Arellano documented a variety of folk manifestations: tales, conundrums, songs, and proverbs. His proj­ect also included customs, c­ hildren’s plays, superstitions, word origins, legends, and traditions (8). Unlike Mason, however, Ramírez de Arellano’s oral folklore collection was an extensive ethnographical compilation gathered from a variety of in­for­mants of “las diferentes escalas sociales, y de todos los pueblos y ciudades de la isla” (dif­ fer­ent social classes and from all towns and cities of the island; 7). ­These folk pieces served Ramírez de Arellano in supporting two ideological purposes: they reflected “el completo y exacto conocimiento del pasado” (complete, exact knowledge of the past), and they offered a portrait of “un pueblo ya formado, con historia digna y noble, con fe y con ideal” (a p ­ eople already defined, with a worthy and noble history, with faith and ideals; 8). In his portrait of “our p ­ eople,” Ramírez de Arellano underscored jíbaros as his preferred in­for­mants, who shared with him “tantas y tantas horas contándonos cuentos, recitándonos romances, cantándonos coplas, décimas y aguinaldos”

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(so many hours telling us stories, reciting poems [romances], and singing songs [coplas, décimas and Christmas carols]; 8). He, like American travelers and Puerto Rican scholars in the first de­cade of the twentieth c­ entury, highlighted rural folk traditions, particularly the jíbaro culture of the highlands that became Mason’s home base.

Utuado as the Heartland of a Jíbaro Nation: Rural Cultural Practices Mason fell for the charms of Utuado’s rural traditions closely associated with ancient Hispanic heritage. Located at the heart of the island’s central western mountain range, el pueblo de Utuado was founded in 1739 by Puerto Rican creoles from neighboring northern Arecibo (Picó 20), the island’s fourth oldest town that had proudly resisted a British invasion in 1702. In his Porto Rico: The Land of the Rich Port (1908), a descriptive travelogue, Joseph B. Seabury discussed how racial components also reflected the island’s changes in geo­graph­i­cal topography. About Utuado, for instance, Seabury observed that “many Castilian families have lived ­t here” (144). Utuado had played an impor­tant role in the development of a distinctive type of rural Puerto Rican culture. Scholars have identified it as early “símbolo de la criollidad y de la puertorriqueñidad” (a symbol of Puerto Rican creole culture and Puerto Ricanness; Alicea Ortega 54), geo­graph­i­cally isolated from other cultural influences, particularly from the coast. Utuado was a rich agricultural region. Fernando Miyares González (1749– 1818), a Cuban native who had served as secretary to the Spanish governor in Puerto Rico beginning in 1769, a post he served for ten years (Fernández Méndez, “Apuntes” xvi), highlighted in his travelogue Noticias particulares de la Isla y Plaza de San Juan Bautista de Puerto Rico (News about the Island of Puerto Rico and the City of San Juan) Utuado’s isolated geo­graph­i­cal location as “tierra adentro” (inland) with a “clima fresco” (cool climate; 68–69).15 He had been impressed with Utuado’s “fértiles campos que producen con abundancia arroz, maíz y café” (fertile fields that produce in abundance rice, corn and coffee; 69). He also remembered Utuado’s renowned “muchos ganados” (many ­cattle; 69). Trumbull White, an American traveler ­after the Spanish-­American War, also verified Utuado’s economic importance. In his Our New Possessions (1898), while praising the productivity found in the interior of the island, he portrayed Utuado as one of the “many prosperous towns which are the center of agricultural districts of ­great fertility” (371). ­W hether Mason arrived in Utuado b ­ ecause of his previous knowledge of this iconic area is not known. As his surviving field notes reveal, however, he displayed an interest in documenting the peculiarities of rural agricultural customs as they w ­ ere practiced in Utuado. His lengthiest field notes are on the linguistic characteristics of jíbaro usage of Spanish. He mainly notated medicinal practices, such as his earliest notation on December 1914: “The bite of the poisonous spider is cured by soaking the same spider in rum and drinking

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it.”16 He also recorded information about the peculiarities of Puerto Rican tropical produce. A curious example, Mason made an early note of a fact still true t­oday throughout Puerto Rico. He recorded that the word “naranja,” although for most Latin American countries stands for orange, means a sour orange in Puerto Rico. The sweet orange, a puzzled Mason commented, is known in Puerto Rico as “china.” Mason’s attraction to the rural specificity found in Utuado was also part of Boas’s interest in embarking on comparative ethnic studies tracing the impact of Spanish culture upon rural traditions. He had asked Mason to be on the lookout for a grinding tool that “greatly interested” him (Mason, “Franz Boas” 64). A quirn, perhaps still in use “by the mountain Gibaros” (64), would prove to him a connection to a “remote Mediterranean origin” (Fernández Méndez, “Franz Boas” 114). ­W hether Mason or Boas found evidence of such cultural “Hispanic” survival was not documented at the time of their visit to the island.17

Jíbaro Wakes as Centers of Entertaining Cuentos Rural traditions surrounding the transmission of oral folklore ­were of overwhelming importance to Mason. He noted that in­ for­ mants had learned “muchos cuentos” (many stories) in “beladas [sic]” (all-­night soirees), where stories ­were told “para quitar el sueño” (to keep ­people awake). In such communal gatherings, the stories w ­ ere passed down from previous male storytellers. On only one occasion did the in­for­mant report that “some p ­ eople say that this [story] is from a book.” The man reported that he had heard the story at a wake, or a “velada.”18 Wake cele­brations w ­ ere well known throughout the island, having produced in lit­er­a­ture a type character: “el hombre velorio,” a man who made his profession identifying and crashing the best cele­brations with fine foods and alcoholic beverages.19 Mason did not rec­ord, however, any specific traditions observed during wakes, nor any that he attended.20 The colorful traditions of rural wakes had already attracted the interest of foreign visitors to the island. Teodoro Guerrero, a Spaniard who served as a judge in Puerto Rico in 1867, also described a “jíbaro velorio” as “se baila para despedir alegremente al difunto” (they dance to happily bid farewell to the deceased; 27). The assumption ­behind such a positive description is the fact that it was a typical Puerto Rican tradition not practiced in the Spanish mainland. Wakes ­were also associated with regularly observed religious practices, which Puerto Rican historian Fernando Picó cata­logued as components of a “catolicismo popu­lar” (popu­lar Catholic practices), in­de­pen­dent from regular church attendance but based on observance of “ciclo santoral del calendario litúrgico” (the liturgical calendar of ecclesiastical cele­brations), such as devotion to Mary and the saints and rites and observances, like the ­handling of the ­water, rosaries, wakes, and observance of Holy Week traditions (Picó 143–144).

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Utuado’s “Gíbaros in the Hills” as Cultural In­for­mants and as Writers Folk stories gathered in Utuado, which Mason transcribed in his own phonetic system, also served as the basis for copious annotations of jíbaro pronunciation patterns. Th ­ ese stories are the only surviving Mason field notes; t­here are no surviving notebooks written by male adult or c­ hildren jíbaros. Mason recorded his first sample on December 4, 1914. All stories ­were documented with the name of the in­for­mant and some kind of identifying information, such as age or racial constitution, facts that w ­ ere obliterated in the published versions. Some of them w ­ ere drafted in a special coded phonetic transcript, a practice that he had in common with Boas. It has been noted that Boas himself designed “a type of shorthand, with indigenous terms transcribed phonetically” (Bouchard and Kennedy 26). The resulting product, as in the case of Mason’s notes, was a “difficult to interpret” text readable only to Boas (28). Mason’s special “shorthand” proved to be a contested issue with Espinosa. All of Mason’s storytellers whom he transcribed w ­ ere male adults, except in two cases. He wrote down the story told to him by a “young school boy, very bright,” who had learned it from his grand­father. Another “­little boy” narrated a story that he had “learned from a teacher.” Indeed, Mason was frequently in the com­pany of boys. One of the photo­graphs that accompany his article “Excavation of a New Archaeological Site in Porto Rico” has a child posing on top of a Taíno petroglyph (see image 3.1). Mason did not indicate the exact ages of any of his in­for­mants, ranging from “young men” to “­middle aged men.” His oldest two in­for­mants ­were introduced as a man in his sixties to seventies, “but he looks ­middle aged and intelligent” and a “senile old man.” Neither did Mason make any major observations of the storytellers’ ethnicity. ­T hose individuals identified from Utuado ­were identified as “practically white.” This statement would support a l­ater assessment of racial differences throughout the island via hair coloring; Boas would, in fact, request that he collect samples of hair. On March 19, 1915, Mason described for Boas “the Gibaros in the hills”: “[they] pre­sent greater variations as the negro blood is less, the white blood predominating with traces of Indian blood” (APS). Mason did not offer an estimate of the population that fit such a white description. He did not disclose the reasons b ­ ehind his decision to seek out mainly white male in­for­mants. Jíbaros from Utuado served Mason well. Writing to Boas on January 12, 1915, he described the collected material ­t here as “on the ­whole is very well written, both in regards of style and orthography” (APS). Following Boas’s fieldwork practices, Mason paid some of his field in­for­mants (Codere xxix). He had also paid the generous amount of thirty-­five dollars to an undisclosed number of men

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Figure 3.1. ​John A. Mason, “Excavation of a New Site in Porto Rico.”

for a “­g reat quantity of adivinanzas [conundrum], décimas [rhymed musical poems], aguinaldos [carols], corridas [ballads], bombas [short poems], e­ tc.” In his pointing out that this amount might sound “a ­little too much,” he insisted, “I doubt if I would have got as much material if I had paid less.” Boas also remunerated his Kwakiutl with money and other material goods, such as tobacco and cotton (Bouchard and Kennedy 27). He also frequently hosted generous gatherings, which, according to local tradition, included monetary gifts for all attendees (Codere xxiv–­x xv). Mason did not document w ­ hether he maintained such a social relationship with his jíbaro in­for­mants. Mason might have also realized that fees could have sounded like a waste of money to Boas, since he was also reporting getting a large amount of ­free material from schoolchildren. Th ­ ese highly paid in­for­mants ­were certainly dif­fer­ent from other participants. Mason stressed to Boas that they had traveled about thirty miles, while another rode even a longer distance, in order to bring to Mason their “new stories.” The men might have been sought-­out storytellers who charged for their ser­v ices in the vari­ous communal activities. Jíbaros willingly participated in the proj­ect in large numbers. Early on, in his first letter from Utuado on December 8, 1914, Mason bragged to Boas about having at his disposal “a surplus of in­for­mants . . . ​w illing to tell stories all day for half a dollar.” The number of volunteers was so large that “some men” left “quite disappointed ­because I did not have time to work with every­body.”

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Initial Discussions of Outstanding Themes and Characters of Oral Stories Mason’s own compilation of folk stories, which had started on December 8, 1914, as he reported to Boas included thirty-­seven stories with working titles that pointed to Spanish traditions, such as “La corrida de San Antonio” (The Bullfighting in San Antonio; APS).21 Mason also listed stories titled a­ fter traditional Spanish literary characters, male protagonists of popu­lar stories also well-­known throughout Latin Amer­i­ca, such as “Pedro Arnimalas [sic].” He could have been actively working on showing proof of a direct Spanish cultural connection as evidenced in t­ hese jíbaro rural folktales. Seven titles w ­ ere animal stories, some of which he considered local adaptions of Aesop’s fables: “El sapo y el grillo” (The Frog and the Cricket) and “La raposa y el cuervo” (The Dove and the Raven).22 At this early stage, Mason summarized for Boas that, collectively, t­ hese stories represented a unifying oral folklore found unchanged through the island: “The general opinion seems to be that ­t here is no difference ­either in content of folklore nor in dialect any where on the island.” Even ­after Mason extended his research outside Utuado, he maintained his opinion about a presumed monolithic type of island oral folklore. Nonetheless, a study on the geo­graph­i­cal differences of the material’s origin was part of an initial plan. On January 22, 1915, writing from Utuado, Mason corroborated with Boas his duties as collector of the oral samples: “I w ­ ill then personally, e­ ither ­here or at some ­f uture time, prepare this collection for publication, eliminating all duplicates with a mention of the localities in which they occur and annotating for variant forms” (APS).23 ­There are no reasons why this part of the critical analy­sis was eventually dropped, nor was Espinosa made aware of the geo­graph­ i­cal origins of the samples.

Rural Tradiciones in Puerto Rican Oral Folklore: Juan Bobo in Formal Lit­er­a­ture and Popu­lar Culture One notable title on Mason’s earliest list of folklore stories was “Juan Bobo.” Mason’s jíbaro in­for­mants overwhelmingly gave preference to key rural character archetypes, many of whom Ramírez de Arellano had also documented. This character, well known in Puerto Rican oral folklore, is represented as a “bobo” or “dummy.” His name has a double connotation; he can be a witty boy or adolescent who, while pretending to be a simpleton, emerges triumphant from adventures, many of them with ­either a comical or a tragic ending. The figure of the bobo, as Meléndez Muñoz—­novelist of jíbaro-­related themes—­documented, was also a common inhabitant in most rural villages, one who also frequently turned into an assassin (Estado 71). Mason’s Juan Bobo is also portrayed as a boy with an acute case of intellectual disability, thus the nickname Bobo. This Juan Bobo is rough, rather violent,

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and confrontational. He is not the sweet, kind Juan Bobo that most Puerto Ricans remember from their grammar-­school years.24 In ­either case, Juan Bobo finds himself involved in events that end badly for t­ hose unfortunate characters with whom he comes in contact, and Juan Bobo is sometimes punished badly for his tricks, too. Mason did not indicate the reason for jíbaros’ attraction to Juan Bobo, though it seems that Mason might have considered ­t hese stories as a part of a rural oral tradition of which Juan Bobo was a central personage. Mason had to be aware of the popularity of this character throughout the island, even in the higher intellectual circles. For instance, “Semanario Juan Bobo” (Juan Bobo Weekly), which had started in 1915 by multifaceted writer and politician Nemesio Canales (1878–1923), elected to the House of Representatives in 1908, became his organ to express po­liti­cal discontent. In his rancid critical essays, Canales adapted Juan Bobo’s pseudo–­“nonsensical talk,” known colloquially in Puerto Rico as “boberías,” into articles that stand out for their “una gran carga de ironía” (highly ironic content; Montaña 249). Th ­ ese boberías, a type of a childish mischievous be­hav­ior, are examples of the natu­ral po­liti­cal ability to express discontent and to resist disruptive impositions to their intricate social fabric. Mason recognized the sociopo­liti­cal relevance of Juan Bobo as a folk character. On December 8, 1914, he reported to Boas that he had started collecting an undisclosed number of Juan Bobo stories in Utuado (APS). He eventually came across a large number of variants throughout the island, including many that Espinosa eliminated from the published versions.25 In spite of the fact that Juan Bobo was a distinctively jíbaro character immersed in geo­graph­i­cal coordinates very similar to t­ hose of the Puerto Rican countryside, Espinosa classified him as a protagonist in the section of “cuentos picarescos” (picaresque stories). Indeed, like the traditional literary pícaro (scoundrel), this Puerto Rican trickster often escapes trou­ble by means of ingenuity or a type of rural knack; however, most Juan Bobo stories are set in an unnamed tropical-­ like rural setting. Direct references to an ­actual iconography of the Puerto Rican countryside (mentions of viandas, or root vegetables, as well as other rustic cultural practices) often set the stories in the overwhelmingly poor campos of Mason’s cultural in­for­mants. It is also a menacing geography that, as in the case of other picaresque protagonists, Juan Bobo must overcome, often performing quite impossible physical tasks. Espinosa commented on the Juan Bobo stories more than almost any other oral folklore samples. Writing to Boas on November 1, 1919, he first described in positive terms the richness of the Juan Bobo stories, stressing that ­t here ­were “vari­ous hundreds of variants, but of course, only a l­imited number of classes or cycles” (APS). He had identified about “150 short versions” and had “discarded about 100.” The remaining versions, according to Espinosa, could be narrowed down to “some one dozen episodes, which could be told in two or three good

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versions.” He also reported that he eliminated an undescribed number of versions b ­ ecause of their crude sexual content. But Espinosa was working ­under the impression that ­children had written the Juan Bobo stories. “The poor c­ hildren” had been exploited; they “simply told 1, 2, 3, 4, or 5, 6, ­etc, episodes in one version ­after another.” He summarized his prob­lem as an editor: “The details are dif­fer­ent but is it worth while printing 150 versions of a few brief episodes just ­because the details differ?” The additional material made up for a significant amount: “A total of some 300 typed pages to tell a tale of some 12 episodes, which certainly could be told in a ten page typed tale.” He pleaded with Boas for guidance: “­Shall we only prepare the impor­tant variants and throw out the rest?” Although Espinosa made no direct reference to the content of the discarded material, Mason had already informed Boas that he too had eliminated “prob­ ably original compositions” found in the ­children’s written texts. On January 19, 1915, he reported that a “small number, a very few” of the school stories “consist of essays, personal experiences, accounts of customs and superstitions in­ter­est­ ing in themselves” (APS). That original material differed significantly from the rest of the samples, which Mason classified as “practically all of it is pure folk-­ lore and ­t here are only a very few which I suspect of being taken from published sources.” As late as March 19, three months a­ fter having started the collection pro­cess, he maintained his positive opinion that the island’s “amount of folk-­ lore ­here is so ­great” (APS). He intended to continue performing fieldwork with confidence that “still l­ ittle duplication” would be achieved. Espinosa did not agree with Mason’s assessment, particularly in regard to the purity of the c­ hildren’s texts. Referring specifically to the Juan Bobo series and the fairy tales, on May 9, 1920 Espinosa expressed his “always displeased” opinion: “I am never satisfied with the classifications I make, and always in doubt about the amount of the copying the pupils have done” (APS). Neither Mason nor Espinosa ever commented on the possibility that the large number of variants could be attributed to dif­fer­ent thematic approaches to the Juan Bobo stories that ­children and adult jíbaros had taken, respectively. Male adults presumably might have taken a more sexual approach in stories that offended Espinosa’s sensibility.

Juan Bobo as a Central Character of a Native Oral Jíbaro Folklore The Juan Bobo stories appeared in 1921 as the leading and sole stories of the first of two issues devoted to “picaresque stories.” The introductory remarks cowritten by Mason and Espinosa w ­ ere succinct, almost rushed, and offered pretty much the same facts already stated in the opening remarks for the riddle collection. Th ­ ere was acknowl­edgment of the schoolchildren as the sole in­for­mants, whose participation as writers of the samples was stressed as an explanation for the “often fragmentary” condition of some of the stories. The collection as a

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­ hole was praised, nonetheless, as “the most abundant and impor­tant Spanish w folk-­tale material collected in Latin Amer­i­ca” (143). Deeming the folktale collection as “inestimable” for comparative analy­sis of “American-­Spanish folk-­lore studies,” Mason and Espinosa merely pointed out that the Puerto Rican versions of picaresque stories echo undisclosed influences of Eu­ro­pean sources (143). The “main ele­ments” of the Puerto Rican picaresque stories w ­ ere cata­logued as “traditional,” an indirect reference to their connection with “many versions of Eu­ro­pean folk-­tales” (143). Thus, Juan Bobo was equated to other pícaros in the Hispanic tradition, such as Juan Sin Miedo, Juan Tonto, and Pedro Urdemalas, including Mano Fashico, a popu­lar picaresque character in New Mexico, where a version of Juan Bobo persisted, “practically identical” (143–144).26 The Puerto Rican Juan Bobo offered, however, a unique a­ ngle with “many new and impor­tant developments” (143). Th ­ ese ele­ ments, “traditional Spanish” and “African origin, at least in part,” ­were left undefined (143). Readers of the Juan Bobo stories would have certainly noticed the plentiful rural ele­ments, such as the notable geo­graph­i­cal backdrop of the Puerto Rican campos. Jíbaro is often given as a synonym for other more “Spanish” terms used indistinctly through the stories, such as campesino and aldeano (peasants), words rarely used in Puerto Rican rural jargon. Indeed, Espinosa fulfilled his promise to heavi­ly edit the stories, producing a text in standard Spanish easily understood outside the constrictions of jíbaro dialectical forms. He also eliminated most typical phonetics proper of rural Puerto Rican Spanish variants. Nonetheless, ­whether in order to retain some of the local color or ­because the term had no equivalency in modern Spanish, jíbaro terms w ­ ere occasionally used.27 The native rural vocabulary describes e­ ither agricultural practices, produce harvested, or peculiar items in the Puerto Rican countryside.

Juan Bobo as a Jíbaro Activist Juan Bobo is nonetheless clearly a Puerto Rican jíbaro, a term that was not completely foreign to American readers. With the rising of Puerto Rico as a potential impor­tant agricultural export to the United States, Americans had known about jíbaros through numerous travelogues and financial reports published throughout the first part of the twentieth c­ entury. Collectively, Juan Bobo stories can be read as a portrait of a rural trickster, a type of “culture-­hero” that Boas documented in Inuit oral folklore (“My­t hol­ogy and Folk-­Tales” 474). The similarities of the kind of trickster’s games would have been of interest to Boas, including an almost verbatim story that narrates an ingenious way that Juan Bobo escapes death to the detriment of an innocent man (Boas, “Dissemination” 438). “Los cuentos de Juan Bobo,” as they are still known throughout Puerto Rico, are often published as revamped editions from previous field researchers.28 The

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stories stand out as rich examples of Puerto Rican culture.29 Overwhelmingly, Mason’s jíbaro in­for­mants saw themselves as mere peasants f­ ree from a specific ethnic background. Jorge Duany has criticized Mason’s idealized view of jíbaros who ­were kept unconnected to the national po­l iti­cal scene as “basically envisioned as transplanted Spanish peasants” (The Puerto Rican Nation 62). Further, Mason’s relationship with his jíbaro in­for­mants has been described as “limitadamente como in­for­mantes de la tradición oral y musicológica” (restricted to their role as in­for­mants of an oral and musical tradition; Iranzo Berrocal 37). Like previous American travelers, Mason presumed in his documentation of rural ways of living as detailed in Juan Bobo stories that hybrid Puerto Rican–­ Hispanic cultural practices would be short-­lived, destined to fall prey to American cultural practices. He was following in the footstep of Boas, whose ethnological field research of the Antarctic indigenous populations throughout the 1880s intended to document native Inuit oral traditions: “Having lived among them as one of them, I could gain a rather satisfying insight into their religious beliefs, customs, and mores and collect something of the im­mensely rich trea­ sures of tales possessed by this ­people who not only strug­gle with the desolate nature for their livelihood, but also understand to embellish their existence by cheerful com­pany, ­music, and dance” (qtd. in Müller-­Wille 68). The most striking negative ele­ment of the Porto Rican Oral Folklore proj­ect is the lack of ethnographical reproduction of rural cultural and religious traditions as observed by jíbaros at the time of Mason’s visit to the island. This silence was in contrast to previous Spanish and American travelers who eagerly documented a myriad of socioethnic aspects found in rural populations. In a contradictory stance, Mason gave a chance to jíbaros to act as recorders of their own cultural practices. The importance of this fact went unnoticed by all parties involved in the editing pro­cesses. This in spite of the fact that Boas must have certainly considered a similar ideological perspective in his dealings with George Hunt, both as his in­for­mant of Kwakiutl oral traditions and as intellectual collaborator and coauthor. Puerto Rican schoolchildren in­for­mants also worked as ethnographer-­writers of their own “oral” folklore, a task that they performed in a tenuous po­liti­cal environment, such as that of the literacy campaign designed by the Puerto Rican Department of Education. This is the po­liti­ cal edge that might have become too contested for Boas. Their documentation of certain types of rural themes and local characters, such as Juan Bobo, was left unanalyzed in spite of the national debates both in Puerto Rico and in the United States about the island’s f­ uture po­liti­cal status.

chapter 4

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Telling a Story about Class and Ethnicity through Fairy Tales, Cuentos Puertorriqueños, and Leyendas A very numerous class of the ­people are shepherds, and ­these live upon mutton and the kind of highland rice, already alluded to, which is very easily prepared for food. —­A. D. Hall, Porto Rico: Its History, Products and Possibilities (1898) Due to their Spanish traditions, geo­graph­i­cal location, and their po­liti­cal relations with the United States, the p­ eople of Porto Rico have an unusual opportunity to acquire the two most impor­tant languages spoken in Amer­i­ca, to take an active participation in the exchange of ideas and products between the two American continents and to derive a share of the profits resulting from such an exchange. —­W. A. Barlow, “Report of the Commissioner of Education” (1915)

This chapter examines the role of jíbaro culture, including the documentation of a rural dialect, as reflected in the published subcategories of specific types of Puerto Rican oral folktales: fairy tales (cuentos de encantamiento), cuentos puertorriqueños (Puerto Rican Stories), and leyendas puertorriqueñas (Puerto Rican Legends). Linguistic ele­ments of jíbaro oral practices had impressed Mason upon meeting his first rural in­for­mants in Utuado’s rural hinterland. He was mindful, however, that he was not a trained linguist, a fact that he often reminded Boas of, and on occasion he even doubted his ability to speak Spanish at the masterful level of a native speaker. Nonetheless, Mason begrudgingly undertook such a descriptive analy­sis of this so-­called jíbaro dialect. His efforts w ­ ere in vain. Boas did not comment on ­t hese reports, nor did he report to the Survey Board 97

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on their scientific worth as part of the overall scientific proj­ects. More importantly, in his dealing with the Puerto Rican government, he made no reference to this intended linguistic component, unlike his reported positive opinion of the applications of the folktales as pedagogical tools and reading materials for the school system’s curriculum. None of Mason’s linguistic material was ever published. The data would have complemented the work of Puerto Rican scholars who ­were actively performing a similar type of fieldwork. A compilation of jíbaro speech traits went beyond a curious exploration of their distinctive ele­ments to explore ways in which Puerto Rican folk stories communicated socioeconomic issues experienced in the countryside. Class, ethnicity, and religious beliefs are themes that dominate Mason’s thematic native folk stories. Indeed, el cuento puertorriqueño, the story life of the jíbaro, is communicated through specific narrative subgenres: cuentos de encantamiento (the enchantment story that often places the fantastic within a rural sociogeographic context) and legends, short stories that memorialize historical events, native popu­lar characters, and religious practices, which often supported beliefs in super­natural occurrences. Collectively, ­t hese stories stand out for their strong connection with rural cultural patterns that, for Mason, defined a social profile of the Puerto Rican countryside and, by extension, a Puerto Rican national identity. The first section, “Expressing Jíbaro Cultural Values through Native Oral Folklore,” traces Mason’s fieldwork procedures in his gathering samples of jíbaro speech, data that he systematically reported to Boas and mentioned to Espinosa during the editing pro­cess. They too w ­ ere performing similar proj­ects at other international geo­graph­i­cal areas. Indeed, the initial work plan included a comparative study of the orality of Puerto Rican jíbaros with other rural Spanish variants as spoken in Mexico and the U.S. Southwest, through available samples previously collected by Mason and Espinosa. Puerto Rican scholars w ­ ere likewise involved in a similar linguist field proj­ect; however, none of t­ hese data seemed to have been of interest to Boas or Espinosa. Mason’s pro­cess of documentation was mainly of Boasian conception and designed to provide ample samples. The material was earmarked for publication in the Journal of American Folklore, of which Boas served as editor. This reputable journal was actively seeking to expand its geo­graph­i­cal focus to incorporate more publications on Latin American oral folklore. Last, I reconstruct details of Mason’s observations of a so-­called island dialect through his letters to Puerto Rican anthropologist Ricardo Alegría, who invited Mason back to Puerto Rico forty-­t wo years ­after his historic trip. A second section, “El Campo as a Site of Puerto Rican Identity in Cuentos de Encantamiento, Cuentos Puertorriqueños, and Leyendas Puertorriqueñas,” examines representative stories of enchantment and Puerto Rican cuentos and legends as subnarrative categories that encapsulate remarkable aspects of rural

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traditions as repre­sen­ta­tions of traits pertaining to a Puerto Rican national identity. Cuentos de encantamiento, although within the line of traditional fairy tales, are inscribed as part of a counternationalist narrative that preserved local folkloric practices, often expressed in fantastical terms associated with incantations or religious stories. One such iconic character that ­faces fantastic occurrences is Cinderella, which the Puerto Rican rural tradition renamed as Cenizosa, an adolescent girl who successfully navigates issues of gender and class, although through the aid of super­natural characters. Indeed, perhaps b ­ ecause of the unique approach to the fantastic, cuentos de encantamiento represent a considerable portion of the Puerto Rican folk stories, and during the editing pro­cess, their content generated the most extensive critical discussions pertaining not only to their originality but also to the intention of the cultural in­for­mants as writers of t­ hese samples. That a number of stories refitted international stories for local consumption was a ­matter of heated discussion between Mason and Espinosa, who was ­u nder the impression that ­children had just copied t­ hese tales from foreign sources widely available to them. In par­t ic­u ­lar, they argued about the plausible impact of t­hese materials distributed by the Spanish publisher Saturnino Calleja, known throughout Spain and Latin Amer­i­ca as the prime producer of cheap publications. I highlight representative Puerto Rican encantamiento stories that re-­create jíbaro superstitions. Of par­tic­u ­lar relevance is the concept of encantados, enchanted characters turned into animals through a spell by a mean-­spirited individual, often a witch or a disappointed parent. Enchanted characters are at the mercy of kind-­hearted individuals, willing to take on impossible quests while wandering through ­either a rural setting or a super­natural geography to prove their worth, both physically and emotionally, and to break the terrible spell. As in the traditional fairy tale, their reward is a handsome prince or a beautiful princess. Repurposing international enchantment stories within a rural framework was also a common jíbaro narrative practice.1 Just as with Cenizosa, notable c­ hildren’s lit­er­a­ture characters like Hansel and Gretel are subjugated to the dangers inherent to the Puerto Rican countryside. Some of the potential harms, closely related to complex super­natural menaces, become part of lessons in surviving unsurmountable tasks. This resilient tendency to observe nonmainstream, superstitious creeds was a pervasive trait of jíbaros well documented by Puerto Rican and international writers. A last impor­tant type of oral folktale is the legend. ­These stories are outstanding examples of native ingenuity, rejoicing in local characters as notable personages of social importance. They are cleverly inserted, however, within the ­fantastic trend of cuentos de encantamiento, ­whether the figure stems from orthodox religious practices, or an a­ ctual historical figure, such as the iconic

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pirate Roberto Cofresí, whose extraordinary physical abilities are often seen as super­natural.

Expressing Jíbaro Cultural Values through Native Oral Folklore An impor­tant component of Mason’s field research was his recording oral samples as part of a proj­ect that he referred to as “Spanish dialectology” (“Franz Boas” 64). For that purpose he had brought to the island a rather bulky Edison wax cylinder rec­ord player and numerous wax recording cylinders. He often described to Boas that in his gathering of the oral samples he was also identifying prospective in­for­mants who demonstrated advanced storytelling skills. A handful of them ­were well known in their communities as storytellers who performed in communal social events. But the vast majority of the oral samples came from ordinary individuals whose oral Spanish characteristics ­were initially targeted as part of linguistic study. At first, Mason was not on board with work for which he felt underprepared. His frequent claims in letters to Boas that he was not a trained linguist may imply that another researcher was initially given that task. In spite of that hesitation, however, he often wrote lengthy descriptions of the key linguistic patterns of his jíbaro speakers, intended to introduce Boas to the type of rural Spanish heard throughout the island.

Documenting Jíbaro Speech as a Linguistic Innovation Mason continued to research Puerto Rican dialectology ­after the compilation pro­cess was completed. Through mediation of Junghanns, Mason acknowledged to Boas on December 13, 1914, that he was in possession of a copy of Teófilo Marxuach’s El lenguaje castellano en Puerto Rico (Castilian Spanish in Puerto Rico; 1903) (APS). Boas had ­grand plans for a formal linguistic analy­sis that he originally proposed to Espinosa. On September 15, 1915, he offered to Espinosa a rather generic description of Mason’s “phonetic study of the Porto Rican dialect,” which had been supported by “certain tales taken down by dictation” (APS). Espinosa, also a reputable linguist, may have considered them worthy of professional analy­ sis, taking into consideration that he was documenting similar linguistic trends among native Spanish speakers in New Mexico. Espinosa had yet to actually read Mason’s transcripts. No communication between Boas, Mason, and Espinosa indicates, however, Espinosa’s interest in performing a linguistic analy­sis. The first part of a planned comparative study of the Puerto Rican folklore did take place, however. On October 16, 1919, the minutes of a meeting of the Survey Board indicated that Boas had managed to secure money for Espinosa’s field trip to Spain to take place in 1920 (NYAS).2 The proj­ect was briefly described as “a

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comparative study of the folk-­lore documents.” Boas also reported receiving research money from an undisclosed source. Espinosa never performed that type of comparative study using the Puerto Rican folktales. Eventually, in an article published in 1943, Mason regretted that “the comparative study has never been made, nor have the data on dialectology been prepared” (Mason, “Franz Boas” 64).

Rescuing Unpublished Data: The Role of Ricardo Alegría as a “Re-­discoverer” of Mason’s Field Notes Forty-­two years ­after his historic trip, Mason uncovered details about unpublished data, including references to his field notes. As part of cele­brations of the founding of the Institute of Puerto Rican Culture, its director, Alegría (1921–2011), invited Mason to Puerto Rico to participate in the opening ceremonies of the recently purchased Capá, the Taíno ballpark (Duany, The Puerto Rican Nation 68). Redesigned as a research museum, Centro Ceremonial Indígena de Caguana (Indigenous Ceremonial Center of Caguana) was intended to expose Puerto Ricans to Taíno archaeological artifacts, including the a­ ctual grounds, for the first time ever. This proj­ect, which had been among the few recommendations to the Puerto Rican government by Boas at the end of his trip in 1915, was fi­nally made pos­si­ble ­after the Puerto Rican government’s purchase of the once privately owned land. On July 31, 1956, Mason wrote to Alegría, proudly reporting that, although much older, he was still performing fieldwork; he had just returned from “a most enjoyable trip to Durango, Mexico” as part of a Southern Illinois University archaeological team.3 He was elated to be back to “old Borinquen”: “I s­ hall be delighted to spend a week ­there, and return to Utuado and see the old juego [ballpark], and possibly some of my old workmen.” Mason traveled to Puerto Rico the following month, accompanied by Florence, his wife. The week ­after their return from Puerto Rico, writing to Alegría on November 23, Mason expressed his heart-­felt gratitude for “a week which—­ specially for my wife—­has been full of pleasant memories of a delightful week on the lovely island.” He fondly remembered Puerto Ricans’ “kindness and hospitality,” which contributed to “an impor­tant event in our lives, and one that we appreciate greatly.” The trip was difficult for the aged anthropologist’s health, however. Mason became sick with a bad cold that was at “its worst” the day he traveled to supervise the work in pro­gress at Capá, a name he continued using to refer to Caguana in all his correspondence with Alegría. But Mason maintained a sense of humor. He jokingly indicated another reason that he and his wife remembered their trip: “I had forgotten about the ticks in tropical underbrush, but we both remembered them a few days ­later; we are still itching and scratching!”

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Recording Jíbaro Voices: Mason’s Field Notes from the Campos Although Mason’s visit to the island would bring national attention to the Institute of Puerto Rican Culture, Alegría had an ulterior motive in befriending him. The institute had started a series of major proj­ects to encourage the preservation of Puerto Rican traditions and cultures. With its own publishing ­house, the institute also printed cheaply and in large quantities historical, anthropological, and literary texts on Puerto Rican folklore and culture. Alegría had plans to republish in book form all issues that had appeared in the Journal of American Folklore. Mason was, however, more excited about the possibility of publishing data that had been left untouched. Alegría was particularly interested in recovering the wax phonograph cylinders that Mason had recorded while in Puerto Rico. Mason was able to clarify the location of the rec­ords, and he eventually facilitated the transference of the recordings onto modern listening formats. The recordings w ­ ere initially deposited at the American Museum in New York City, an institution that had also lent Mason the recording machine, “an old Edison type,” and had supplied the blank wax cylinders.4 Eventually the cylinders went on loan to the Archives of Primitive and Folk ­Music at Columbia University. ­There, Dr. George Herzog (1902–1983), who was performing research on linguistics and primitive m ­ usic, presumably intended to transcribe them.5 When Herzog took a post at Indiana University, a portion of the collection, which Mason described as some fifty cylinders, “went with him.”6 Mason also communicated that another unstated number of recordings ­were sent to Dr. Richard Waterman (1914–1971) at Northwestern University.7 Mason eventually claimed that no one could ­really know the exact number of ­those cylinders or if they could be played again. The recorder, according to his description to Alegría, had very odd characteristics: “It had a very unusual worm drive of 200 grooves per inch. To play them for reproduction it is necessary to use a machine with the same grooving.” Mason stressed that a machine that could play the cylinders would be difficult to locate in 1956. That type of recording device was “long obsolete and hard to get, and apparently 200 grooves per inch was very unusual even in 1916.”8

Mending Fences: Mason’s Attempts to Reach Out to Espinosa Alegría also desired to republish Mason’s folklore collection, but his interest did not include any reference to the linguistic reports. He was mainly interested in ascertaining that ­there was no material left unpublished. This was a request that Mason could not immediately confirm. In that pursuit, on November 23, 1956, Mason felt compelled to write to Espinosa for help. This letter also served as Mason’s attempt to mend their old quarrel: “I see by Who’s Who that y­ ou’re only

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five years older than I, and so, like me, are prob­ably looking forward to a ­couple of de­cades more of research.” Although retired at seventy, Mason described himself as extremely active: “I am busier than I ever was and c­ an’t find enough hours in the day to do all the work I have to do.” Knowing that their differences had been due to incompatible research styles, he added, “I’m sure e­ very time that I write to you I say how much I appreciate all the work you did on my Puerto Rican folklore forty years ago—­and gave me most of the credit for it. I ­didn’t appreciate it sufficiently at that time.” The true purpose of Mason’s letter was, however, to inquire about the material left unpublished ­because of Espinosa’s objections to its content. He reminded Espinosa about the “twenty copybooks of miscellaneous folklore in hasty phonetic text for the purpose of making a study of the island dialect” that Mason had produced. From a ­humble position that lauded Espinosa as the true intellectual brain ­behind their proj­ect, Mason continued to describe his own intellectual limits: “My knowledge of Spanish was never ­great enough to do a good job of this.” Mason’s recollection was that “apparently I did not get the folklore material transcribed into standard Spanish and sent to you in time for you to incorporate it and edit it with the rest of the material.” Mason was hoping that Espinosa had kept this material and that it contained data not previously published. Mason had found in his own rec­ords a transcription of some poetry that had been prepared “for publication, prob­ably about 1917.” The “transcript, which I had forgotten but just found among my old material on the subject,” would be part of his second request to Espinosa. Then Mason went directly to the point: “I thought of sending this direct to Alegría, to be edited by someone on the island familiar with Spanish and with folklore, but if you are interested and would like to see and to edit it, I’ll send it to you, just as it is.” He reminded Espinosa of the rich content of the samples: “about a dozen good octosyllabic décimas, and a large number hexasyllabic décimas de Aguinaldo [Christmas carol], and aguinaldo proper.”9 In spite of Mason’s appeal to reestablish their professional and personal relationship, Espinosa did not answer this letter. In desperation, Mason reached out to Aurelio Espinosa Jr., Espinosa’s son, who had also followed in his ­father’s footsteps as a linguist and folklorist.10 On January 14, 1958, Mason wrote to Espinosa Jr. at Stanford University. The letter was almost a copy of the text written to Espinosa’s f­ ather. Mason repeated his anxious request to rescue the “many copybooks full of folklore in quasi-­phonetic text with the proj­ect of studying dialectology.” As he remembered, he had lent the notebooks to Dr. Otis Green at Stanford’s Spanish Department. Mason claimed that he never had seen t­ hose notebooks again. Like his f­ather, Espinosa Jr. did not answer Mason’s letter, ­either.

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About the Missing Field Notebooks: Uncovering New Data A year l­ater, Mason lamented that he had lost, as indicated to Alegría on October 22, 1957, a “number of notebooks in which I wrote folklore in a quasi-­phonetic script showing the insular peculiarities of dialect and phonetics.” He did remember that a partial transcription was done at the time and lent to the head of a Spanish Department, perhaps at Stanford, where Espinosa was also teaching at the time. This list was “lent to a student who took them somewhere where they ­were destroyed during the war.” He did not indicate the name of the war to which he referred. He did not state why an unidentified student was asked to intervene in the proj­ect, e­ ither—­particularly odd, since no other Puerto Rican scholar was ever called in to serve as a con­sul­tant. Contradicting himself, however, he wanted to send to Alegría an unstated number of notebooks: “I’ll never make any use of them, and you prob­ably read the quasi-­phonetic script a­ fter you get used to a bit of it.” If Alegría was unable to understand them, “send them back to me if t­here are any places that you c­ an’t make out, for me to see if I can figure out what it is. Other­wise you could keep them for your rec­ords.” Confusingly, he added, “I think I have ­those notebooks at home.”11 A day l­ ater, on October 23, Mason wrote to Alegría, describing his discovery of a “quasi-­phonetic script”: “They are so difficult to read that I doubt if you could understand them; I have ­great difficulty with them, and often ­can’t make it out myself.” Two days ­later, the overexcited Mason reported to Alegría that he had found “eigh­teen more copy books full of folklore. . . . ​Mainly folktales, but some poetry, notes in En­glish, ­etc. ­These are big copybooks of 50–60 pages each, and most of them full, quite a lot” (emphasis original). ­Because Alegría had expressed his desire to publish unpublished adivinanzas, Mason stressed that he was certain that most of ­t hose contained in the notebooks ­were published. He was not so sure, however, about the poetry and the folktales. Not having heard from ­either of the Espinosas, Mason had a dif­fer­ent proposition for Alegría. Doubting that Alegría “would be able to read” his notebooks, Mason was willing to perform a transcription, but for payment: “I need to earn more money and I could get it done some time this winter.” Alegría was willing to pay, as he indicated to Mason on a letter dated October 28, 1957. Mason seemed to have kept busy in a scavenger hunt for his notebooks in spite of the fact that he had previously reported having them in his possession. Writing to Alegría on January 15, 1958, Mason expressed having spent “a number of days transcribing folklore from my quasi-­phonetic text.” He had chosen to start the proj­ect with the black poetry collected in Loíza. This material, to Mason’s surprise, was quite large: “­great deal of it, much more than I thought.” Unfortunately, if he sent this material to Alegría, it has been lost ­today. In spite of Alegría’s seeming interest in publishing Mason’s entire oral folklore, the proposal never developed beyond a reprint of the adivinanzas.

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Emerging Latin American Oral Folklore: The Journal of American Folklore The riddles ­were also the first segment of the folklore proj­ect that appeared in the Journal of American Folklore in 1916. Throughout the 1910s popu­lar ­music and oral folktales ­were the two most covered subjects in the journal.12 Although the publications had a worldwide appeal, an early publication indicated a ­par­tic­u­lar interest in documenting Latin American folklore utilizing native in­for­mants. “Spanish-­American Folk-­Songs” (1911) stands out ­because Carlotta Manuela Corella, presumably a Mexican national, “had heard them in vari­ous parts of Mexico and the Southwest” (Hague 323). She was interviewed, however, in Los Angeles in the spring of 1911. Boas may have recognized that using Latin American native in­for­mants ­living in the United States was not the best option for proper ethnographic documentation. In 1912, while working with Herman K. Haeberlin for the International School of American Archaeology and Ethnology in Mexico, Boas collected oral folklore samples in Mexico City that he labeled as of “Mexican” indigenous origin (“Ten Folktales” 345). The material was not, however, dictated; two in­for­ mants wrote down folktales in Nahuatl, with translations into Spanish performed “on the spot” with the help of the same in­for­mants (345). Mason, who had also performed ethnographic and archaeological research in Mexico with Boas, was among the earliest contributors of Latin American–­ based oral folklore for the Journal of American Folklore. In his “Four Mexican-­ Spanish Fairy­-­Tales from Azqueltán, Jalisco” (1912), he documented oral folklore collected in Western Mexico among the Tepecano indigenous ­people, in which he established the importance of his rescue proj­ect: “The aboriginal culture of the p ­ eople [the Tepecano] has been greatly changed u ­ nder Spanish influence, practically all phases of primitive material culture having almost entirely dis­ appeared, and native language, my­t hol­ogy, and religion being on the verge of extinction” (191). ­Until the publication of the Puerto Rican riddles in 1917, the Journal of American Folklore relied heavi­ly on Mexican folklore as representative of Latin American culture.13 In 1912, Eleanor Hague traveled to an undisclosed location in Mexico where she transcribed texts of Habaneras, a “familiar danza-­form,” including musical spreadsheets (“Mexican Folk-­Songs” 261).14 Also in 1912, William H. Mechling published “Stories from Tuxtepec, Oaxaca,” oral samples gathered near the border with Veracruz. Mexican and southwestern U.S. oral folklore was a central research area of Espinosa’s, who had served as associate editor of the Journal of American Folklore beginning in 1914. Espinosa was a prolific researcher and published numerous articles on New Mexican Spanish folklore in the Journal of American Folk­ lore beginning in 1910. He also served as editor for Mason’s Mexican Tepecano

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f­olklore in 1914 and in 1915 for Paul Radin’s short story collection compiled in Oaxaca.

Boasian Field Practices: Collecting Oral Folklore Boas had a notable influence over the thematic categories of the Puerto Rican oral folklore proj­ect. In “Notes on Mexican Folk-­Lore” (1912) he set up a theoretical format that closely followed his analytical documentation of his previously published Arctic oral folklore. An outstanding ele­ment is the importance of geo­graph­i­cal data, information that Espinosa, Mason, and Radin also recorded in their own collections. Boas’s “Notes on Mexican Folk-­Lore” was the result of his fieldwork in Pochutla, “a village in the Southern part of Oaxaca, not far from Puerto Angel on the Pacific coast, and about one hundred miles west of Tehuantepec” (204). As in the case of the Puerto Rican oral folklore, however, in spite of his indication of ­t hese specific geo­graph­i­cal markers, Boas did not dwell on the historical importance of this par­tic­u­lar area. In southern Mexico Boas explored Zapotecan oral folklore, including the area’s native language, which he defined as “a dialect closely akin to the Mexican (Nahua) of the valley of Mexico” (“Notes” 204).15 Although his field research was extensive—­“The dialect is almost extinct, but I was able to collect enough to show its close relation to the Mexican dialects of southern Veracruz, and prob­ ably of Tabasco” (204)—he left this linguistic proj­ect unpublished.16 Leaving the material that captured indigenous variants of Zapotec dialects undescribed, Boas gave preference to the oral folklore collected in Spanish: “The ­people of Pochutla to-­day speak Spanish, and their folk-­lore is based largely on Spanish sources” (204). All other types of collected oral folklore—­“verses which are sung to the accompaniment of the guitar, riddles, and ‘decimas’ [popu­lar poetry] such as are presented by young men to the girls whom they court” (204)—­supported this categorically resounding determination of a Spanish origin. Boas served as recorder of material dictated to him in Spanish by “an el­derly man, Pedro Marcelino Pastor, and by his d ­ aughters” (204). The samples, in “the Spanish original,” appeared published alongside En­g lish translations by an unidentified translator.

Puerto Rican Scholars on Jíbaro Folklore and Religious Practices Puerto Rican scholars had already started classifying oral folklore as short stories inspired by daily aspects of rural life or fantastical accounts of imaginary worlds. In his Estado social del campesino (Social Conditions of the Peasant Novelist; 1916), Meléndez Muñoz underscored characteristics of the jíbaro belief system. As part of his demonstration that Puerto Rican rural inhabitants ­were inherently superstitious (86), Meléndez Muñoz characterized jíbaros as believers of “hechizos y encantamientos” (spells and curses) and the super­natural, including their sightings of dreadful apparitions from the dead (85–66). In short,

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jíbaros’ beliefs in “milagros, en lo maravilloso y sobrenatural” (miracles, in the marvelous and super­natural; 87) was the norm in the countryside and the main reason for extensive cultural backwardness. At the time of Mason’s visit, proper ethnographic documentation of religious customs in the Puerto Rican countryside by Puerto Rican scholars was sparse. In Conversao en el batey (Conversations from the Hut’s Front Patio), Ernesto Juan Fonfrías collected basic ethnographic religious data from Don Florito, a jíbaro born in 1833 who chatted freely about religious traditions of his youth. Fonfrías’s portrait of Don Florito as a “temeroso de Dios, y bajo el respeto de la Iglesia” (God-­fearing man, living ­under the tenants of the Church; 29) nonetheless displayed an extensive fear of “cosas del más allá, y se resguarda con amuletos, baños de yerbas, pociones de tubérculos y hojarascas hervidas, oraciones y esencias baratas de penetrante perfume contra los malos espíritus” (­matters dealing with afterlife, and he protects himself with amulets, herb baths, prayers, and cheap fragrances with camphorous scents to keep the evil spirits away; 30). Olga Orench, a jíbaro ­woman born in 1933 “en las lejanas Indieras de Maricao, aisladas tierras ubicadas en la Cordillera Central” (in the faraway Indian Land, in Maricao, an isolated land in the Central Mountain Range; 5), also remembered bountiful examples of nontraditional rural religious practices and superstitions from her childhood. Common, strongly held miraculous beliefs included prayers that brought super­natural beings out of their hideout places, such as rivers (74), witches that danced to m ­ usic heard by all (74), and apparitions of the dead, often narrated as almost normal daily events (75).17 A local apparition of a man wandering endlessly with the help of a torch was also recorded in Mason’s folk-­tale versions of a popu­lar rural legend (76). Unlike Boas’s extensive research among Arctic indigenous populations, Mason did not rec­ord a rich source of common rural superstitions. Orench related, for example, the belief that some w ­ omen gave birth to a “manta,” a black shadow that, a­ fter attaching itself to the newly born, would kill the child instantly (76–77). She also remembered numerous “prácticas espiritistas” (Spiritist practices), such as seeing past events in a glass of w ­ ater (74).18 Other super­natural events taking place during Spiritist gatherings had an impor­tant role in rural religious customs, r­ unning counterpart to popu­lar observances of Roman Catholic rites.

Boas’s Approach to Popu­lar International Indigenous Cultural Practices Before his trip to Puerto Rico, Boas was also heavi­ly involved, as Isaiah Lorado Wilner has traced, with documenting “Indian medicine practices” (175). In 1900, in­for­mant and friend George Hunt had started recording for Boas examples of “shamanic forces” (175). In a February 24, 1900, letter, Boas explained to Hunt the par­ameters of his desired field research: “The tale about the method of calling the north west wind pleased me very much, and I beg to ask you to go ahead

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collecting this kind of material, that is to say, all sorts of charms, no ­matter what they may be used for,—­for curing sickness or for obtaining the love of ­women, or for luck in hunting or for d ­ oing harm to one’s enemies. Every­t hing of that kind w ­ ill be very welcome, and the more you can get of it, the better” (qtd. in Wilner 175). That same year, Boas published “My­t hol­ogy and Folk-­Tales of the North American Indians,” which established his most current theoretical findings on North American indigenous folktales. He considered folktales t­ here to be carriers of “essential features of their life—­t he village, its h ­ ouses, the sea and land hunt, social relations” (475). Such par­tic­u ­lar “expression of the cultural life of the p ­ eople contained in their tales,” in turn, reflects “a marked individuality, no ­matter what the incidents constituting the tales may be” (476). Within the par­ameters of the folk story as a “faithful picture of the mode of life” (477), Boas warned against the current practice of requesting in­for­mants “to dictate descriptions of the events of everyday life” (453). Given that task, even good in­for­mants “often break down completely,” claiming that “they are well able to tell stories that have a fixed form, but that the slow dictation of descriptions to be made up is too difficult for them” (453). That “fixed form,” he concluded, created “many native tales,” which “contain, besides the connected narrative, ste­ reo­t yped formulas, which are always told in the same manner, and which are undoubtedly always given in correct form” (453). Boas’s influence upon Mason’s oral field practices emerged during their shared ethnographic work in Mexico. Indeed, although Boas gave preference to certain types of Arctic indigenous folklore alien to the Puerto Rican oral tradition, such as a “recorded my­t hol­ogy” that was part of his proj­ect of “reconstruction of the life of the Tsimshian” (475), Mason performed a similar proj­ect in Puerto Rico. Following Boas’s division of folk stories, Mason’s Puerto Rican oral tales highlighted incidents pertaining to “­human society” (475). “­Human” tales, as Boas described them, placed emphasis on a plot that allowed the narrator to develop “a certain amount of characterization of individuals, of their emotions,—­like pity and love,—of their courage and cowardice” (478).

Documenting Hispanic Cultural Practices in Puerto Rican Campos: Local Pioneer Scholars on the Oral Puerto Rican Folklore Found in Campos: Juan Angel Tió Nazario de Figueroa Puerto Rican scholars since the early part of the twentieth ­century had already stressed the strong Hispanic influence on Puerto Rican oral folklore. Critic Francisco Manrique Cabrera pointed out “la caudalosa herencia hispánica” (the large Hispanic heritage; 6) in Puerto Rican folklore. It is within this context of surveying a Hispanic collection that Manrique Cabrera partially recognized Mason’s oral folklore proj­ect as among the earliest documentation of “pervivencias culturales” (cultural survivals; 4).

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Esther Feliciano Mendoza also placed Mason as part of the earliest group of folklore scholars, including Rafael W. Ramírez de Arellano, Aurelio Espinosa, and J. Junghanns (4). Nonetheless, for Felicano Mendoza, Mason was a “mero coleccionista interesado en materia folklórica” (a mere collector of folklore samples; 13). She preferred Ramírez de Arellano’s fieldwork as the product of a “puertorriqueño interesado en conservar parte de la herencia cultural que le legaron sus antepasados” (a Puerto Rican interested in preserving the cultural legacy inherited from their ancestors; 13). Among the pioneer scholars of oral Puerto Rican folklore in rural fields, the so-­called campos, an exceptional case is worth mentioning. A rising young scholar, Juan Angel Tió Nazario de Figueroa (1906–1934?), performed oral research in San Germán, located on the southwestern part of the island, between 1920 and 1921 (Tió 9). The work was submitted to a literary contest that Peter J. Hamilton, judge of the Puerto Rican Supreme Court, hosted in 1921. The piece remained unpublished ­u ntil 1967, when it appeared as Esencia del folklore puertorriqueño. Although the book is a brief oral folklore collection, the material in Esencia displays themes similar to the findings of Mason, who, perhaps not coincidentally, also performed fieldwork in San Germán (Tió 16).19 Like Mason, Tió Nazario de Figueroa documented popu­lar poetry (coplas, bombas, décimas, and aguinaldos) “de puro sabor jíbaro” (of genuine jíbaro flavor; 12) and Christmas carols. He also documented sayings, proverbs, c­ hildren’s songs, and games. One of Tió Nazario de Figueroa’s in­for­mants was Juan Anaya, a jíbaro who in his youth witnessed slave dances in Sabana Grande Abajo, an area in San Germán where sugar cane haciendas and mills abounded (12). ­After the abolition of slavery in 1873, freed blacks established themselves in Trujillo, a marginal barrio where Anaya continued to enjoy their musical traditions. Although not stated, Anaya was a white jíbaro, which would explain his voy­eur­is­t ic view of slave-­ related dance folklore. As in Mason’s case, Tió Nazario de Figueroa merged the vari­ous types of black material into the collection as a ­whole to the extent that the racial indicators are completely obliterated. Due to space constrictions, Tió Nazario de Figueroa did not include any samples of the collected oral folktales. He referred to them as part of three main types, following divisions observed by other Puerto Rican writers: fairy tales or Puerto Rican “marchen,” fables, and legends or myths. He categorized Puerto Rican fairy tales as local versions of the Grimm b ­ rothers’ and Hans Christian Andersen’s stories. He highlighted how some of ­t hese local adaptations utilized native ele­ments that made them “de una manera o de otra” (one way or the other; 29) known in Puerto Rico as “del país” (creole). Only “very few” unidentified stories, according to Tió Nazario de Figueroa, could be considered of Puerto Rican origin (29). All oral folklore was deemed “native,” however, ­because “son parte de nuestra rica herencia cultural española

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que es también puertorriqueña” (they are part of our rich Spanish cultural heritage, which is also Puerto Rican; 29). Tió Nazario de Figueroa included two short samples from his oral folklore collection: brief tale versions of Juan Bobo and Pedro Animala, presumably examples of “cuentos típicos del país” (“native stories”; 20).20 Like in Mason’s work, eliminated from the study ­were stories already published, perhaps in book form and, consequently, known by the storytellers (55). ­These learned sources remained unnamed.

El Campo as a Site of Puerto Rican Identity in Cuentos de Encantamiento, Cuentos Puertorriqueños, and Leyendas Puertorriqueñas Mason followed Boasian thematic divisions in his compilation of the Puerto Rican oral folklore. In “Notes on Mexican Folk-­Lore” (1912), Boas had established specific genre divisions for his documented indigenous Mexican folklore, beginning with cuentos (folktales), “adivinos” (riddles or conundrums), songs, and décimas (rhymed poetry sung in the countryside). During that trip he partially favored certain themes and characters: animal fables, religious stories with moral, Christian, or superstitious undertones (God, the devil, or apparitions as primary protagonists), and anecdotes. He also displayed an interest in “character types,” such as the “Charcoal-­burner,” a man who barely survives from producing and selling coal for home consumption. Mason’s documentation of Puerto Rican oral folklore fit his mentor’s methodological approach, stories being “the core of Boas’s ethnographic legacy” (Wickwire 138). Boas’s indigenous folktales w ­ ere filled with specific primal characteristics, which would become the basis for his ­f uture articles on the “mind of primitive man”: “With his focus on the deep past, however, ­these ­were not everyday stories of the time (about epidemics, missionaries, deaths, floods, ­etc.), but rather specialized stories—­‘legends,’ ‘tales,’ ‘myths’—­about animals, origins, migrations, and so on set in the deep past” (Wickwire 138).

Jíbaro Spiritual Practices through Incantation Stories It is significant that, although none of the jíbaro stories of incantation can be considered mythological recordings of “the deep past,” many of ­t hese tales do reflect aspects associated with religious belief systems or as components of cultural customs that Mason witnessed in rural Puerto Rico. In his article “The Religion of American Indians” (1910), Boas defined the par­ameters of spiritual practices as “concepts and acts which spring from the relation of the individual to the outer world, so far as ­t hese relations are not considered as due to physical forces the action of which is accounted for by purely rationalistic considerations” (257). Th ­ ose so-­called superstitious beliefs—or the “scope of religious concepts,”

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in Boasian critical language—­are dependent upon “the knowledge of the laws of nature; and, since the border-­line of the natu­ral and the super­natural, as conceived in the mind of the primitive man, does not coincide with our view of this subject, ­t here ­w ill be marked differences between the scope of religion among civilized nations and that among less advanced ­peoples” (257). Legends or myths are, thus, a reflection of “­those concepts that spring from the relation of the individual to the outer world, and the form of which depends on imagination and emotion, may be said to form the tenets of religion” (258).

Public Schoolchildren as Interpreters of Their Own Fairy Tales: The Calleja’s Publications for C ­ hildren Espinosa did not display Mason’s enthusiasm for the series of enchantment or incantation stories, an undetermined number of them written by c­ hildren. He often described them as short, choppy, and poorly written. Early on he had also expressed suspicions that many of the stories had been copied from printed texts easily available to ­children as part of their school readings. On January 22, 1915, Mason dealt directly with this issue. Junghanns reported about one potential source of literary plagiarism (APS). Some twenty years prior serial publications, “cheap prints of fairy­-­tales” produced by Editorial Calleja, ­were widely available in Puerto Rico. A Spanish publishing h ­ ouse specializing in ­children’s lit­er­a­ture, Editorial Calleja, had been founded in Madrid in 1798 as Librería de Calleja (Fermín Pérez 9), which by 1830 was boldly promoting the purchase of ­children’s lit­er­a­ture: “Acuda a la librería de Calleja el que quiera adquirirse una colección de cuentos maravillosos que se han publicado con el título de Barba Azul o la Llave encantada. “¡Qué fruslería [se dice en el anuncio] venírsenos ahora con cuentos de niños! (Come to Calleja Bookstore to purchase a collection of wonderful stories published u ­ nder the titles of Bluebeard or The Enchanted Key. How silly [reads the ad] to promote c­ hildren’s stories!; qtd. in Fermín Pérez 10). A ­ fter 1870, u ­ nder the direction of Saturnino Calleja Fernández (1853–1915), the Calleja publications reached a rather large readership through the production of cheaply made publications (Fernández de Córdoba y Calleja 26). Indeed, the Calleja c­ hildren’s materials flooded the Spanish and Latin American markets with more than three thousand titles published, selling up to three and a half million copies (Fermín Pérez 14). Their small size—­easily handled by the small hands of young readers—­considerably low prices, some merely “perra gorda,” or pennies, and richly illustrated color drawings by over 140 illustrators (Fernández de Córdoba y Calleja 91, 92) made the issues extremely popu­lar (Fermín Pérez 13). Calleja’s stories w ­ ere widely available in Puerto Rico.21 On February 16, Mason wrote to Boas more extensively about the Calleja’s publications. The “cheap editings [sic] of fairy tales” (no indication of titles) ­were still sold on the island. The fairy tales appeared published in three series of about three hundred stories, each

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set selling for two dollars or each individual story for one cent, “all stories being dif­fer­ent” (APS). Junghanns had also identified, however, another potential unnamed source: “older editions by other publishers.” The names of ­t hese publishing h ­ ouses remained anonymous. Nonetheless, Mason categorically declined the possibility of much cross-­pollination: “I am inclined to think that they have had comparatively ­little influence on folklore h ­ ere.” Eventually, a hesitant Espinosa partially agreed with Mason and indirectly with Junghanns, who had gathered an extensive collection of ­children’s oral stories. Writing to Boas on April 24, 1917, Espinosa conceded, “Not many are copied from Calleja, but very few are complete” (APS). The shortness of t­ hese texts was not, however, explained. Unable to identify the original source, he merely concluded, “I am sure copies, almost verbatim from Calleja” (emphasis original). ­Those texts suspected to be copies w ­ ere “thrown out & destroyed,” but he estimated they w ­ ere “very few versions, not more than a dozen.” Nonetheless, Espinosa did express that the number of copied versions could potentially be higher, although he could not prove his case: “But the real difficulty lies in the fact that I believe some are copied, but I cant [sic] prove it” (emphasis original). Not being “acquainted with the printed lit­er­a­ture of Porto Rico,” Espinosa felt he was unable to produce a thematic analy­sis of the fairy tales, whose authorship he repeatedly adjudicated to ­children. Only in one exception did he attempt to produce a literary analy­sis of a sort. Stylistically, he saw in the stories the prevalent “use of the second person plural . . . ​a dead give-­way, but in some cases even that is not a sure sign of copy.” Mason considered rural ­children as impor­tant in­for­mants. In fact, he more frequently wrote to Boas about them than about his adult male oral in­for­mants or writers of folklore samples. Almost immediately a­ fter his arrival to the island, Mason pointed out that ­children had already been busy. On December 28, 1914, he described to Boas their “very fine collection of stories, practically all dif­fer­ ent and traditional” (APS). Collectively, he described the stories as “very well written”; he also added that “in many cases the source of the story is given.” His reference to “the source” was not discussed, but in his own field notes Mason often noted w ­ hether the piece had come down from another storyteller or from a printed untitled “a book.”

Cuentos de Encantamiento: Jíbaro Spells in the Puerto Rican La Cenizosa Mason was impressed by the quantity of tales of encantamiento, featuring incantations or spells, often curses, including local Cinderella versions, a character widely known in the countryside as La Cenizosa. Worldwide versions of folktales, as Roger Sale has indicated, show “dif­fer­ent twists and emphases, just as each ­people also developed distinctively native or local tales” (24).22 ­These vari-

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ants, as the traditional folktale does, “give form and shape to [society’s] hopes and fears, reassurance for its doubts, and answers for its questionings” (Russell 148). Espinosa had also been interested in documenting Cinderella adaptations as part of the oral folklore in Spanish in the American Southwest. Writing to Boas in July 15, 1913, he joyfully reported his finding in Southern California of “a precious version of the Cinderella legend” (APS). His choice of term, “legend,” seems to imply that Espinosa was also exploring ways in which the traditional storyline could have been adapted to local lore.23 Mason had already encountered other Latin American variations of Cinderella stories. In 1912, he uncovered a Tepecano version that he titled “Cinder-­Mary (Cuento de Maria Ceniza).” He did not note in his correspondence with Boas or Espinosa w ­ hether he was interested in surveying local alterations reflected in Puerto Rican versions of international fairy tales as a way to document a “culture’s belief system” (Russell 148). As in traditional fairy tales, Mason’s stories seem to continue to “reinforce cultural practices” (148), which include a direct moralistic ending with a specific massage within the cultural constrictions of the Puerto Rican rural environment. In par­tic­u­lar, Mason may have approached the Puerto Rican Cenizosa as a type of legend, a rising literary format that was extremely popu­lar as a pedagogical tool in the public school system. “Tales of Enchantment” opens with seven Cinderella versions titled “La Cenicienta,” although the preferred names in the plotlines for this emblematic protagonist are Cenizosa (from cenizas, or ashes), María Cenizosa, and Rosa, sometimes affectionately referred to as Rosita. The first and the second versions are closer to the original fairy tale plot: a fatherless young ­woman at the mercy of an evil stepmother is magically saved by means of a fairy godmother. The ending, fitting the original story, is framed within the traditional moral lesson: Cinderella forgives the past actions of her stepmother and stepsisters and marries her charming prince. ­There are few geo­graph­i­cal indications that the setting may be rural Puerto Rico. In one of the versions, “María La Cenizosa,” her escorts are “seis legartijos [sic]” (six lizards) turned into “seis pequeños hombrecitos” (six l­ittle men; 507). ­There are, however, farm animals, some of which are key ingredients in local cuisine. More importantly, they would be impor­tant components of miraculous events that f­ avor Cenizosa’s luck. Other Cenizosa versions display more ele­ments common of country life, which are integrated within the realm of the “enchantment.” One such outstanding rural tradition that opens the plotline is the mundane cleaning of animal intestines, or mondongo, in a river, tripe being the main ingredient in several key dishes at the heart of rural Puerto Rican cuisine. This rather mundane custom gives way, however, to the beginning of an unusual, magical subplot totally foreign to the traditional Cinderella story.

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An idyllic countryside setting is in contrast to Cenizosa’s grueling h ­ ouse chores, which include, as in the traditional fairy tale, taking care of the personal needs of her evil stepmother and one stepsister, the upkeep of the h ­ ouse, and the maintenance of a finca, a farm. Forced to allow her pet, a talking goat, to be sacrificed, Cenizosa is washing its tripe (in another version, pork’s) in the overflowing ­water of a river. A piece of tripe escapes from her careful, ner­vous hands, rapidly floating away. Afraid of her evil stepmother, who had warned her of a terrible punishment that would befall her if she lost any of the precious food, she sets out to chase the floating tripe down the river, chanting a demand to get it back at once.

Fairy God M ­ others’ Symbolical Gifts Cenizosa’s incantation works; she finds herself in an under­g round cave that ­houses an unkempt palace, including a dirty female dog, and she begins to feverishly clean the space. Three encantadas, bewitched ­women, arrive to discover an immaculately clean ­house. ­These w ­ omen, who also possess super­natural powers, appear as rather normal characters to Cenizosa, and thus to a Puerto Rican reader, who seems not to need an explanation for their origin. In other tales of enchantment, however, the concept of encantamiento is fully disclosed. Th ­ ese ­women w ­ ere ­under the spell of malevolent witches who sentenced the encantadas to live in the subhuman conditions of a messy under­ground c­ astle. The spell could be ended in two ways: in several versions ­t here is a time limit for the spell as an imposed punishment; in o ­ thers, it can be lifted by a kind character, such as Cenizosa, who, through benevolent actions, rescues enchanted ­people from their suffering. Cenizosa lifts the encantadas’ curse, and they reward her with fabulous gifts. One gift is to produce rubies and diamonds ­every time she speaks; the second, to drop pearls whenever she combs her hair; the third, to precipitate rain if she cries. They also give Cenizosa a magic wand, described as “la varita de la virtud” (a virtuous wand).

Always a Lesson to Be Learned: Cenizosa’s Unusual Everlasting Ending The ending also contains a notable deviation. Cenizosa happily goes back home, perhaps hopeful that her gifts would satisfy her greedy stepmother and distract her from the lost tripe. The stepmother is indeed impressed with Cenizosa’s gifts and at once inquires how she came to be the recipient of such a potential fortune. Cenizosa tells her story with a hidden twist. Following Cenizosa’s detailed instructions, her stepsister finds herself in the under­ground ­castle, still tidy from Cenizosa’s hard work. She has been tricked, however; instead of cleaning, she dirties the place. The consequences for this act are linked to the core of a moralistic ending. The encantadas curse the evil stepsister, who is now an encantada, forced to live with terrible afflictions. She returns

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home defeated, an ugly horn in the center of her forehead, unable to speak u ­ nless she wants to regurgitate frogs and serpents, and with one foot longer than the other. ­There is also another notable change to the ending. No prince comes to rescue Cenizosa, who the reader must assume leaves the h ­ ouse with her trea­sured magical gifts, including the varita de la virtud. With the stepmother and stepsister alone and defeated, the story ends, as in the traditional fairy tale, with the mandatory moral caption: “Y esto les pasa a las niñas que son egoístas y envi­ diosas y a las madres que quieren más a un hijo que a otro y todo lo quieren para él” (And this w ­ ill happen to egotistical and envious girls and to their m ­ others who love one sibling more than the o ­ thers, wishing all for their preferred one; “La Cenizosa” 513).

Making Sense of an Unruly World: Enchanted H ­ umans Turned into Animals in Cuentos de Encantamiento Espinosa also maintained that jíbaro ­children preferred fairy tales as their narrative device of choice, although he never discussed reasons b ­ ehind such a distinctive preference. Dennis Butts has described the appeal of fairy tales as “the most potent form of story-­telling they [­children] experience in their childhood” (xii). The genre’s clearly defined par­ameters, such as an “identifiable hero or heroine, and its familiar patterning of narrative events, such as the loss of parents, the acquisition of a faithful companion, an educational initiation, a quest, and a triumphant conclusion” (xii), would have been appealing to young storytellers. “The won­der folk tale” or the “magic tale, [i]mmersed within a fantastic super­natural world that collides within specific rural coordinates,” as Jack Zipes has indicated, “generally focuses on miraculous transformations that enable disadvantaged protagonists to gain advantages and succeed in life” (“Origins” 27). Story lines with such iconic, culturally based characters, such as Cenizosa’s encantadas, condemned to live in a filthy under­ground palace, may be partially connected to the many cave systems that Mason eventually visited in his quest for “aboriginal” remains. The stories also retained the moral purpose of their original sources, a sort of “educational tool for preliterate socie­ties, passing on knowledge essential for survival” (Russell 148). Most of the enchantment stories, w ­ hether or not they involve c­ hildren, display a strong didactic goal, particularly in ­favor of a status quo that maintains rural characters as marginal to mainstream society. Mason recorded numerous examples of cuentos de encantamiento that center around innocent individuals turned into animals. Although the encantados come from all walks of life, royal figures like princes and princesses appear as the most common targets for animal encantamientos. As in traditional c­ hildren’s lit­er­a­ture, “fairy tale animals are usually enchanted and live in a world of ­human beings” (Sale 77); however, ­t here is ­little personal background about them, and

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often the reasons b ­ ehind their enchantment are not disclosed. Other than the fact that the enchanted characters seem to be “willing to put up with faithless, inconsiderate, and rude ­human be­hav­ior in order to regain ­human form” (78), they are second to the true protagonists. The crux of the plot circles around their rescuers, who, unbeknownst to them, come in contact with the human-­animals and break the spell through acts of kindness. ­There are two types of encantamientos. One is the result of a magical spell, cast by an evil ­woman often characterized as ugly or as a witch. The other is the result of a parent or a se­nior citizen who, feeling mistreated, curses a much younger individual. Princes turned into animals are common motifs, such as “The Enchanted Prince.” ­These stories w ­ ere titled according to the curse that turned the men into animals, for instance “The Calf Prince” or “The Bird Prince.” Both of t­ hese stories have in common an innocent adolescent girl, a commoner, who sets out on a long and rather magical journey to find a way to break the terrible animal spell of a majestic character with whom she has fallen in love. Though Puerto Rican encantados exemplify a strong connection with “the folk stories of the Eu­ro­pean past” (Lerer 210), they also reflect the interests of native informant-­w riters who place them both in traditional settings of forests and ­castles but also within vari­ous loci of the island’s countryside. Native folk tales also maintain “the social purposes” inherent in the formal Eu­ro­pean fairy tales of the late eigh­teenth and early nineteenth centuries, which “ask questions about national origin, linguistic development, and personal and public psy­chol­ ogy” (211).

Turning an Encantado Animal into a Handsome Prince: Heroic Deeds for Love A strong, repetitive motif in the Puerto Rican tales of enchantment is ­family relationships. ­These stories reflect a large number of ­children or young characters interacting with authority figures close to them. Zipes has argued that “the fairy tale may be the most impor­tant cultural and social event in most c­ hildren’s lives,” serving a distinctive function “to soothe the anx­i­eties of ­children or help them therapeutically to realize who they are” (Fairy Tales 1). In short, the fairy tale for c­ hildren becomes, according to Zipes, “a symbolic act infused by the ideological viewpoint of the individual author” (3; emphasis original). A child’s quest for individuation becomes a literal travel motif in the Puerto Rican tales of enchantment. In “The Calf Prince,” a busy traveling man unknowingly gifts his youn­gest ­daughter with an enchanted flower, which commands her to journey to a mysterious h ­ ouse to which her ­father was also lured by a rosebush. The brave girl enters the mansion and without hesitation sits down at a dining ­table covered in sumptuous dishes. The room is completely dark, and a mysterious voice warns her not to use any type of light source.

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This type of warning is also common in other stories. Although the girl initially obeys, prompted by her own curiosity, she agrees to follow instructions by an envious character who commands her to light up the room. At once, her mysterious host is revealed, an encantado prince turned into a calf, who sadly reveals that ­because she did not follow his instructions, he w ­ ill remain enchanted for a longer period. Only she can break the spell; however, she must discover his whereabouts while she travels wearing a heavy bronze dress. Having fallen in love, she does not hesitate and at once sets out on a long and dangerous adventure. Stories of “young ­women in love” share the common plotline of determinedly completing rather impossible trips through fantastic worlds. Similarly, the protagonist of “The Carnation Prince” does not hesitate to follow an enchanted carnation. ­There is, however, a slightly dif­fer­ent change in the plot development. The enchanted carnation sought out the pious girl who recognized a jumping carnation as a spell and thus follows its instructions to the letter: get a dress, a hat, and a pair of shoes u ­ ntil they wear out. Only then would she have arrived to his magical kingdom. Both protagonists willingly set out on a long journey without any fear for their safety. The stories become “road narratives,” detailing their whereabouts within a fantastic geography that they successfully navigate through their interactions with unusual characters. In addition to walking endlessly, the young w ­ omen also have to make use of their wit in order to survive such tiresome adventures. In both stories, for example, the young w ­ omen walked so much and so far that they eventually stumble upon the ­houses of the sun and the moon, whose m ­ others provide them with resources that come in handy at the end of their quests. The “­mother of the sun” in “The Carnation Prince” gives the young w ­ oman the first in a series of magical objects: a golden chicken, followed ­later by a golden comb, a gift from the “­mother of the moon.” A third most unusual gift is that of a bird strong enough to fly her to the hideaway place of her beloved enchanted prince. As the “­mother of all birds” carefully instructs her, the bird must be constantly fed while in flight with food that she supplies to the girl. Nonetheless, the ­mother of all birds miscalculated the amount of food that the gluttonous bird would consume; the bird eventually demands more food, threatening to drop the girl to her demise. Unable to provide any food, she feeds the bird her arms and legs, limb by limb. The end of ­these stories reveals the usefulness of the magical objects as bribes for the heroine to gain access to the enchanted prince. Upon hearing the gruesome details of their journey stories, the princes are convinced of their repentance for not following their initial instructions, and most importantly, they recognize that the young w ­ omen had indeed been in love with them in spite of their animal shapes. At that point the spells are reversed, revealing handsome, royal men who make claim of their kingdoms.

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­There are notable variations within ­t hese “animal shifting” stories. In “The Bird Prince,” following a similar motif, a flower gives way to a magical event. A traveling f­ ather fulfills his youn­gest ­daughter’s request for three roses of Alexandria, but the flowers prompt the young ­woman’s stepmother to take action against her stepdaughter. Thus, the storyline blends Cinderella-­like plot ele­ments with an agrarian setting that centers on a well-­mannered young jíbara. The girl cultivates the roses, which turn into beautiful blooming bushes and attract a talking bird. The busy peasant protagonist seems not to hear it, even though it speaks directly to her. ­Because the jealous stepmother wants her stepdaughter out of her life, she claims to the king that the d ­ aughter has been boasting about being skillful enough to wash and iron the dirty clothes of the kingdom’s army without any help. The king then threatens to put the girl to death ­unless she fulfills this promise. So desperate was she that she failed to hear the bird’s claim that it could complete such an overwhelming task, and indeed he did. The storyline becomes a testament to the bird’s ability to overcome the king’s increasingly difficult tasks imposed on the disconsolate girl, who still ignores the talking bird that constantly comes to her rescue, freeing her from terrible death sentences. The end comes swiftly as the girl fi­nally acknowledges the bird, sweetly speaking to him, and thus removing the enchantment to reveal a “handsome figure,” the son of the king. In reparations for the stress imposed upon the peasant girl, the king allows his son to marry her.

The Dangers of Curses by an Angry Parent: Fantastic Quests through the Aid of Divine Intervention Curses are also common motifs in animal-­shifting stories, particularly evil wishes uttered by angry parents or by mistreated se­nior citizens ­toward disrespectful, mischievous rascals. “The Seven Crows” highlights the power of a ­father’s curse voiced in a moment of blind anger. Set within the countryside environment of a rancho, a farm far away from an inhabited pueblo, a pious c­ ouple lives with seven sons who dutifully tend the f­ amily’s plots. To the c­ ouple’s surprise, they w ­ ere blessed by the birth of a girl, who unfortunately was born deathly ill. Without a doctor nearby, the f­ ather o ­ rders their sons to set out on a quest for ­water from a magical fountain. The boys find the fountain, and, boys being boys, they drop the jar of w ­ ater, which shatters into pieces. Afraid of the consequences, they decide not to return home. Their angry ­father curses them, wishing they would turn into seven crows. At once he realizes his ­mistake, remembering the power of a f­ ather’s curse. This is where the plot truly pivots to a quest story. The baby girl survives and grows into a loving d ­ aughter who takes care of her el­derly parents. The peaceful home is disrupted when a neighbor tells the girl of the existence of her ­brothers. In spite of her parents’ opposition, she sets out immediately to find them.

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Like other animal-­shifting stories, the quest takes the dutiful ­daughter into magical worlds whose inhabitants gladly help the kind-­hearted girl. An angel provides her with a key to a c­ astle where she is told her crow-­brothers live, though she ultimately loses the key. True to her caring nature, she does not hesitate to cut off one of her fin­gers, intuitively knowing that it ­will open the gate. Like other stories, a pure-­hearted character finds a solution to a seemingly impossible obstacle without the help of magical objects. Once inside the fabulous mansion brimming with riches, the plot takes yet another familiar turn. She enters the dining room, where a fabulous spread awaits the arrival of seven dinner guests. Without hesitation, she drinks from each one of crystal cups and drops a ring inside the last one. The dénouement is rather self-­explanatory. The brother-­crows come in and at once realize the intrusion of a stranger. The seventh crow, puzzled by the ring in his cup, which he recognizes as belonging to his m ­ other, confirms t­ here is an intruder. Their s­ ister then makes her presence known and, as in other encantamiento stories, reveals to her astounded ­brothers her dangerous whereabouts and sacrifices to get to them. At once, the curse is lifted and the siblings happily return home, carry­ing the riches that they had accumulated in the enchanted ­house. The happy ending that is so characteristic of all other encantamiento stories. “The Seven Crows” ends with a final statement that spells out a concrete lesson: “El padre jamás volvió a intentar lanzar una blasfemia porque había sido tan desgraciado, por su propia causa” (The f­ather never again uttered a curse, ­because he had been so unfortunate by his own d ­ oing; 566). The strong sentimental connection between the siblings ultimately triumphs over the evil curse, a social comment about the importance of f­ amily in many cuentos de encantamiento. Such a warning lesson has indirectly addressed the adult “readers” of the story. It seems to be, however, an addendum written by an individual in a position of power, such as the school teachers who supervised their pupils in the drafting of the oral samples. Indeed, a large number of the enchanted stories reflect basic lessons of survival, often framed within a rural setting mired with financial strug­gles. ­There is an inherent po­liti­cal intent in this, as Peter Hunt has explored: “­Children books have a long history around the world, and they have absorbed into themselves ele­ments of folk and fairy tale, and the oral tradition. In many places, such as part of Africa, they have a postcolonial tinge, and an uneasy relationship with indigenous culture” (5). ­W hether a strong moralistic message that argues that unselfish acts of kindness w ­ ill always be rewarded over greedy be­hav­ior indirectly feeds the traditional social control of colonial and religious institutions, this theme overwhelmingly dominates the samples of short stories with enchanted animal characters. One popu­lar motif is the enchanted fish that grants wishes without asking ­favors in return. In “El pececito encantado” (The Enchanted L ­ ittle Fish) and “La niña y el

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pez” (The Girl and the Fish), a teenage girl finds a fish in a nearby river and starts feeding it her meager food allowance. Differences in versions have a thankful fish that turns into a “gallant prince” who promises a reward “sooner or ­later.” The prince-­fish, however, turns back into a fish. In both versions the teenage girls continue feeding the fish ­u ntil their greedy f­ ather discovers them and traps the fish. The act of catching the fish, which in one story is witnessed by the teenage girl, triggers a depression crisis that leads to their suicide by drowning in the river. The stories end with a strong touch of the fantastic. The girls do not drown but instead turn into princesses. In one story a golden coach takes the princess “del brazo del pez, convertido en príncipe” (on the arm of the fish changed into a prince; 616), who on dry land takes his bride to his real kingdom. Another version, “El pececito encantado,” with a more fantastic ending, maintains the girl under­ground, where she “se encontró en un palacio encantado” (found herself in an enchanted palace), the domain of “un príncipe que era el pececito” (a prince who was once a ­little fish), who eagerly awaits her arrival. At once, they get married and live happily ever. As in “The Seven Crows,” the lesson of the story clearly is stated as “El bien que hacemos hoy, tarde o temprano será recompensado” (The good that we do t­ oday, sooner or l­ ater w ­ ill be rewarded; 616). This lesson is, however, considerably less accusatory in its tone, and clearly ambiguous in its intended audience. In contrast with the kind-­hearted teenage girl, “La mujer codiciosa” (The Greedy W ­ oman) features an older w ­ oman whose extreme greediness is severely punished. A fisherman at sea on an extremely quiet day, “sin pescar ni una sola cucaracha” (not having pulled out even a cockroach; 611), fi­nally catches a rather tiny, insignificant fish. As a narrator explains, the fish was an enchanted prince who begs for his life and promises the kind man, “le concedería todo lo que quisiera (that he ­will grant him all he wanted; 611). Indeed, extreme poverty dominates the story. The poor fisherman, in spite of the fish’s statement, does not ask for any rewards, though his wife, upon hearing the story, becomes upset that the man chose to not claim for himself any financial rewards. She proceeds to demand that her husband ask for financial remuneration. ­These gifts reflect her concept of material possessions that indicated wealth within the Puerto Rican underclass. Her first request is for a “wooden ­house with a zinc roof,” characteristic of “affluent” peasantry who could afford building materials for a more stable dwelling than a traditional straw hut, or bohío. The w ­ oman is seemingly content with her newfound material wealth, u ­ ntil she tells her husband of a second wish for the enchanted fish. Simply put, she wants to become a duchess. The plot does not dwell on the richness that comes with the royal position she is granted. “Cuando hacía tiempo que ella era duquesa” (­After some time as a duchess; 612), the w ­ oman is both­ered by a l­ ittle beam of light while standing at a win­dow. In a

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conceited regal manner, she commands her husband to order the fish to make the ray of light stop bother­ing her. The angry fish has fi­nally had enough of “faithless, inconsiderate, and rude ­human be­hav­ior” (Sale 78), and he takes back all of his previous gifts, unlike other enchanted characters more willing to acquiesce to such demands. The message of the story is encapsulated in the conclusive last sentence, a hard learned lesson for a ­woman who let her greed overcome her best judgement: “Cuando él llegó a su casa encontró a su mujer en la chocita vieja arrancándose las greñas de coraje” (When he returned, he found his wife in the old hut angrily pulling out her hair; 612).

Beware of Strangers: No One Can Be Trusted, Not Even Your Own Relatives Hard-­earned lessons are indeed an integral part of moral stories that reflected the pervasive distrust of strangers in jíbaro culture. Tales of enchantment often warned naïve protagonists of the evil of innocent-­looking strangers who should not be trusted, even if they are seemingly harmless, weak or even el­derly. A striking characteristic of t­hese stories is the frequency of warnings against one’s own ­family members: parents and siblings, in par­tic­u­lar, can be foes. In “La mata de ají” (The Sweet Pepper Plant), for instance, a jíbara ­mother leaves her ­daughter in charge of her ­house, cautioning her to keep an eye on three beautiful figs ripening on the dining ­table. Before leaving the ­house, the ­mother utters a terrible warning: if any of the figs are missing upon her return, she w ­ ill kill the ­daughter. Shortly ­after, an old ­woman shows up unannounced to the ­house, tricking the girl into fetching her some salt so she can steal a fig. Twice old ladies came into the ­house with similar requests, leading to the disappearance of the remaining figs. Upon her return and a­ fter finding her three figs missing, the angry m ­ other does not verbalize her disappointment. She merely digs a deep trench in a field ready for cultivation and, a­ fter throwing her ring into it, o ­ rders her d ­ aughter to fetch it. While the girl is busily digging for the ring, her ­mother fills the trench, successfully burying her alive.24 ­After a few minutes, a pepper plant magically springs up, marking the place where the girl had been buried. When he returns from the fields, the girl’s f­ ather asks for his d ­ aughter, whose whereabouts are flippantly dismissed by the ­mother. The ­father then notices the lush, mature pepper plant that was not pre­sent hours ­earlier. Puzzled, he ­orders his son to inspect the plant. The series of events that follow are reminiscent of similar stories in which protagonists are buried alive and turned into plants that immediately produce lush fruits or flowers. They are also samples of “singing” stories, displaying choruses that serve the buried protagonists as their way of denouncing the person responsible for their demise. When the b ­ rother plucks a ripe pepper, the plant bitterly sings, warning him to stop pulling his ­sister’s hair. The plant also names the m ­ other responsible for her murder.

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Horrified, the b ­ rother returns home and tells his ­father about the information gathered from his ­sister–­pepper plant. Upon hearing the anecdote, the livid ­mother leaves the ­house in order to confirm her son’s story. Following her son’s example, a­ fter she serves herself a pepper, the singing chorus directly implicates her in the murder: “tú misma me has enterrado por tres higos que han faltado” (You yourself have buried me ­because of three missing figs; 558). The moral of the story is reflected in the sudden dénouement of the plot. The ­father hurriedly begins digging at the root of the pepper plant finding that “resultó que por casualidad la muchacha no había muerto” (by chance the girl had not died; 558). The punishment of the murderous m ­ other is also the end of the story: “él montó a la señora en cuatro mulas, les pegó para que se fueran y todavía no se sabe su paradero” (he mounted his wife on four mules that he beat to make them run away and even t­ oday nobody knows their whereabouts; 558).

Jíbaro Versions of International Enchantment Stories within Rural Cultural Settings Indeed, although stories that warn ­children about unsuspected foes do not often contain direct moral sentences, the plots are geared ­toward disturbing situations that smart protagonists successfully overcome. Similar to witty ­children like Juan Bobo, orphaned c­ hildren must endure mistreatment at the hands of their caretakers. In line with versions of “Hansel and Gretel,” in a series of “Los niños huérfanos,” an evil stepmother physically mistreats her stepdaughter Anita and stepbrother Pepito u ­ ntil she successfully convinces their f­ ather to abandon them in “las selvas más lejanas del mundo” (the world’s most remote forests; 598). Having overheard his parents’ sinister plan, Pepito outsmarts the f­ather by dropping small pebbles and thus marking the route back to the h ­ ouse. The switching of bread crumbs to “piedrecitas blancas” (small white pebbles; 598) poetically reflects the countryside’s influence on the cultural in­for­mants: “Las piedrecitas que Pepito habia echado por el camino brillaba como monedas de oro” (The small white pebbles that Pepito had thrown along the way shone like gold coins; 599). A more complex version of “The Orphaned ­Children” takes the classic story line into a more “island country” setting. Following the instructions of a cold-­ hearted stepmother, a sorrowful ­father takes his ­daughter and son into the forest. Unbeknownst to him, the boy had heard the conversation and designed a plan of action. Upon leaving the ­house, Rafaelito gathered a bit of ashes in his hands, creating a path that unfortunately failed its purpose due to the inclement tropical weather: “pero llovieron unas llovisnas y se borró el camino” (but showers came and erased the ashes; 599). Left to their own devices, the c­ hildren stumbled upon the hut of an old witch. Indeed, as Espinosa often pointed out, the plot of the stories produced by ­children is rather succinct and devoid of much detail. The narrator remains quiet about

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the details surrounding the witch’s successful entrapment of the c­ hildren, who had already targeted Rafaelito as her next meal. Rafaelito, as the story’s hero, reflects the bold and conning be­hav­ior of previous picaresque characters. He effectively tricks the witch into showing him how to stand in front of a blazing hot oven. D ­ oing so, “y él le dio un tremendo empujón que fue ella a caer dentro del horno y se quemó” (he gave her a tremendous push and she fell into the oven and was burned up; 599), a terrible death by fire reminiscent of the original story. With her death, Rafaelito and his other unnamed sibling collect the ­woman’s belongings and quickly return home to their repentant, newly widowed f­ ather. ­W hether ­children ­were responsible for ­t hese stories, the witch’s motif set within a distinctively Puerto Rican setting is evident in yet another version of “Los niños perdidos.” The plot has siblings Mariquita and Juaniguillito disoriented in the forest while innocently playing on their way to fetch w ­ ater. Irremediably lost, they take refuge in a cave, keeping a safe distance from an old ­woman that Juaniguillito recognized as a h ­ uman flesh-­eating witch in disguise. W ­ hether such witches w ­ ere herbateras, ­women with extensive knowledge of the herbs and plants used for medicinal purposes in a country setting often far from traditional medical doctors, the narrator of the story pre­sents her as a menacing antagonist. The focus of the story is, however, the c­ hildren who follow their unsuspecting victim to her ­house. The w ­ oman starts cooking a delicious meal of arroz blanco y habichuelas guisadas (white rice and stewed kidney beans), a staple of countryside cuisine. The hungry ­children at once start tricking the poor-­sighted ­woman, who thought she was feeding her hungry dogs. When she discovers her m ­ istake she turns the trick on them, freely feeding the c­ hildren ­until they faint in an after-­dinner stupor. Right then, as in the traditional witches’ stories, she entraps them in a cell, announcing that once they are fattened up, she ­w ill eat them. The scarce details leading to a revised dénouement confirm that the ­children authors w ­ ere drawing from the traditional Hansel and Gretel sources. The trapped ­children keep showing the poor-­sighted old ­woman a rat’s tail ­every time she crudely demands, “Enseñenme sus deditos para ver si ya están gruesos” (Show me your ­little fin­gers so that I can see if they are plump; 595). For a while they successfully trick the blind old w ­ oman while showing her the dried-up tail of a dead rat. C ­ hildren being c­ hildren, they lose the rat’s tail and are forced to show their fin­gers, which are considerably fatter from the many delicious creole dinners of arroz y habichuelas. At once she starts preparing for the big feast, sending the c­ hildren out into the forest to collect wood to fuel an outdoor kitchen. Departing from the traditional ending, the c­ hildren follow her o ­ rders, and, while picking the wood, they come across an old man who warns them about the w ­ oman’s plan: “les va a decir que ella quiere que ustedes le bailen un son para virarles la tabla para que se que se quemen, para comérselos” (she is g­ oing to tell you that she wants you to dance a son on a board for her, but she intends

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to turn the board, so that you burn up and she w ­ ill eat you up; 595). The mention in passing of the son montuno, the traditional dance of the highlands, known for choreographed step combinations that require skillful dancers, serves as the introduction to a rather cruel ending. The seemingly innocent image of an old blind ­woman dancing a son on a suspended wooden plank hiding a burning pit becomes, however, a central component of her punishment. Alerted to the mean intentions of the old ­woman, the ­children return home with the requested wood, having devised an escape plan. As the old man had indicated, the witch o ­ rders the ­children to dance on the plank of wood, but the ­children innocently reply, “May vieja, baile usted para que nos enseñe como lo hemos de hacer” (Ma’ old lady, forget your old age, dance to show us how to do it; 595). Although a statement indicative of the c­ hildren’s maña, the “know it all” of certain mischievous c­ hildren, the end is also an implicit joke. The old w ­ oman, forgetting her age and that she is also visually impaired, immediately climbs up on the plank: “Ella bailó y a la última vez los muchachos le viraron dentro de la hoguera y se quemó” (She danced and at her last step the c­ hildren turned the board, she fell into the fire and burned; 595). ­After her death, departing from the traditional storyline, the ­children claim for themselves “every­t hing the old ­woman had,” including her hut, which becomes their permanent home.

Puerto Rican Oral Folklore Reflective of Jíbaro Religious Practices Mason’s interest in Puerto Rican traditional folktales as reflections of a Boasian type of indigenous “imagination and emotion” is mainly observed in religious belief systems. L ­ ater, testimonial memoirs by jíbaros remembering their childhood in remote rural hamlets have confirmed jíbaros’ complex cornucopia of popu­lar religious practices. Olga Orench detailed such jíbaro religious traditions in her self-­published memoirs, Saboreando el dulce amargo del pasado (Enjoying the Bittersweet Memories of the Past). As in Mason’s stories, her description of rural devotional traditions would be contextualized with anecdotes, many of which can be classified as leyendas (legends), narratives that remain ­today popu­ lar throughout the island. Perhaps b ­ ecause Mason specifically asked ­children and adult in­for­mants to narrate such types of stories, his collection of Puerto Rican oral folklore does display a significant number of short tales, mainly anecdotes that rationally presented dealings with super­natural occurrences. The anecdotes covered a variety of subjects: ghosts of all kinds, and h ­ umans and animals, who come to the rescue of kind individuals or who punish guilty wrongdoers, often unbeknownst to their unsuspecting ­family members and friends. As discussed, stories reflect a dif­fer­ent way of communicating with the dead. A common plotline has characters turned into plants a­ fter e­ ither being murdered or suffering a spell, a result of bad be­hav­ior. As plants (they can be pepper plants or tropical fruit trees), they communicate with the living, complaining whenever

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­ eople pluck a piece of them or reach out to serve themselves a delicious ripe p fruit. The seemingly normal plant chants a cryptic riddle that makes no sense to anyone but to the guilty partner responsible for the unusual punishment.

Beware of Super­natural Foes: Jíbaro Ghost Stories In “El Palmar de las ruinas” (The Palm Grove of the Ruins), ghosts appear as “ánimas,” departed souls in purgatory who descend upon earth to “reclamar lo suyo” (to claim what’s theirs; 398). Ánimas grant special ­favors in return to t­ hose who fulfill their promises. This agreement is potentially a dangerous commitment that “según la abuela, es la peor promesa que se hace” (according to my grand­mother, is the worst pos­si­ble promise that one can make; 398). Animal ghosts, particularly dogs, must have been commonly feared in remote countryside areas. In “Los tres amigos” (The Three Friends), the story’s title men had been good friends in life ­until one seemingly silly disagreement turned them into foes. A ­ fter their deaths, they w ­ ere condemned to return to earth as mean-­ spirited dogs perpetually engaged in bloody confrontations. Ghostly fighting dogs are also protagonists in a similar tale with a more didactic ending about the dangers of not working out differences with close friends. “La leyenda de los compadres” (The Legend of the Compadres) stresses the link of compadrazgo established between two men as coparents through the baptism of a child. As the story stresses, this is a sacred commitment that should not be broken.25 In “Los tres amigos,” two compadres end their friendship a­ fter a misunderstanding that leads them to constantly engage in terrible physical fights. As they did in life, they come back to earth fighting as rabid dogs, a sight that is a frightful apparition u ­ ntil a third party, the ghost of the faithful son, is perpetually condemned to break them up. Brave men, silly enough to think that they may stop the fighting apparitions, can also be punished. Legend has it that ­people who do not stay away from ­these ghosts ­will have their meager vegetable plots destroyed overnight. As proof of the identity of the perpetrators, the frightened victims may also find that their doors have been badly scratched with “tremendos arañazos, como señal de que estuvieron buscándoles” (enormous scratches, an indication that they had been targeted; “Los dos compadres” 338). Ghosts can take hybrid shapes as half-­human, half-­a nimal monsters, such as in an incomplete story, “El fantasma” (The Ghost). The title character was a terrible apparition of a “buey con cara de hombre” (an ox with a man’s face; 400). In life, a “very rich man” who had buried his money at the edge of a country road is condemned to return e­ very night wandering the road while shouting “muchísimo” (a lot; 400), presumably in search of his money. Ghost stories remain, however, without the customary printed moral message, a fact that may explain Espinosa’s frequent comment that stories w ­ ere often left unconcluded.

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Tales about Los Muertos: Death or Apparition Stories Seeing apparitions, like witnessing the jacho, a mysterious type of light that suddenly appears at night in open fields, is a common motif of folktales, visual proof of an afterlife punishment for an ill-­lived life. Orench also remembered horrific stories of the jacho, which in her childhood served a moralistic purpose, par­tic­u ­lar to highly impressionable ­children (76). Mason’s story “La luz del muerto” (The Light of the Dead Man) describes the after-­life punishment for a fisherman who had dared to burn up a cross left on the field as part of a memorial for a departed. Condemned to haunt the countryside with the aid of a light, he is perpetually looking for the ashes of the cross that he burned (395).

Wakes as a Place of Entertainment Closely associated to ghost stories are wakes, impor­tant social venues of entertainment and a place where many of Mason’s oral tales would have been told, anecdotes fitting the circumstances of the person’s life. Some of ­these stories read as “jokes,” and perhaps they ­were: funny situations that place wakes as central scenes in super­natural stories. One such humorous practice is that dead ­people ­were often placed in coffins a­ fter rigor mortis had begun. In “El muerto y las piedras de moler maíz” (The Dead Man and the Corn Grinding Stones), the grinding stones w ­ ere not heavy enough to keep the deceased from springing out of his confinement, to the horror of all pre­sent. ­There is no narrative value to this anecdote, other than being a text that mocks both death and the social construct of the wake as a “cele­bration” of a life in which the main protagonist (the dead person) is unable to partake. The same funny anecdote appears in “Un muerto” (A Dead Man), about a man who, a­ fter ­dying of catalepsy, is shut into a coffin that springs open at his wake. Although he was dead, ­t hose brave enough to stick around got to hear his story about what heaven is like. Th ­ ere is not much to tell, however. Heaven is an extension of the Puerto Rican countryside, where ­people play native games, eat “sopitas de calabazas nuevas” (soups of young pumpkins) and drink “guarapo” (sugar cane juice; 116). The terrible poverty of the rural countryside, including tropical diseases, is notably absent from this heavenly jíbaro daydream, though. Perhaps b ­ ecause ­children preferred witch and demon stories, they are significantly impor­tant samples in Mason’s cuentos de encantamiento, like the ghost stories. Orench remembered that she and her neighbors often heard loud singing to the ­music in “fiestas para espiritistas y brujas y le llamaban aquelarre” (festive gatherings for witches and prac­ti­tion­ers of Spiritism; 74), which they called witches’ co­vens. Very much like in Mason’s stories, Orench pointed out that witches mingled with ­people, especially during the so-­called witches’ co­vens, arriving to t­ hese parties “por el aire y la gente las esperaba para bailar” (by air, and ­people waited to dance with them; 74).

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Beware of Witches and Incantations Witches in Mason’s folktales are less festive, although they frequently come in direct contact with ­humans, ­either as evil w ­ omen or as w ­ omen who foretell ­people’s fortunes. Without exception, rural witches are ­women determined to gain immediate financial benefit or to escape from dire conditions by means of incantations, primarily by turning unsuspecting victims, especially unsuspecting white ­women, into animals. Overwhelmingly, the witches are black, often described as ugly ­women, prone to engage in minor witchcraft activities. They are always found out and condemned to death. The rather technical mentions of witches’ co­vens and of espiritismo point to more con­temporary religious concepts, but it is also significant that, as Orench documented, jíbaros thought ­t hese super­natural events (such as flying witches) ­were, in fact, real.26 Summoning death apparitions is also related to Spiritist rituals in a syncretic pro­cess that merged popu­lar Catholic practices and rural curanderismo, or green medicinal practices (Hernández Aponte 457). Orench remembered that at ­t hese spiritual sessions, as prescribed by the manuals of the founding f­ather of Spiritism Allan Kardec, ­t here occurred unordinary events, such as “seeing” past actions reflected in a glass of ­water and mediums who could communicate with the dead (74). Spiritists’ primary convictions, mainly communication with the dead, ac­cep­tance of reincarnation, and laws to achieving spiritual pro­g ress, took strong hold in Puerto Rico, especially in rural areas (Hernández Aponte 21). Indeed, Kardec’s publications had become a sort of bible for protection against evil spirits, prayers that produced results without the mediation of mediums. On one occasion, ­after a heated argument with her husband, Orench’s m ­ other had wished the devil would come to take her away. Immediately, unusual, menacing noises ­were heard in the ­house. The screeching racket immediately ceased ­after Orench’s f­ ather recited Kardecian-­designed prayers that rid the h ­ ouse of the evil presence (5).27 Prescribed prayers and incantations also find their way into Mason’s folktale collection. Orench recalled a prayer that, if recited while standing across a river, would bring out “un indio con plumas en la cabeza” (an Indian with feathers in his head; 74). Rivers, plentiful in the Puerto Rican rural geography, are, as in Orench’s anecdote, home to “cosas de otro mundo” (creatures from another world). In Mason’s “El hombre valiente” (The Brave Man, a mistranslation by Espinosa of “un hombre que se hacía guapísimo” [a man who acted like a bully]; 404), a jíbaro protagonist pays with his life ­after defying a local belief that a super­ natural being exerted control of a presumably haunted river bank. His confrontation with a ghost, “una mujer vestida de blanco” (a w ­ oman dressed in white; 404), is brief. He was not as brave as he had boasted, and at the sight of this apparition

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he panics and dies from “gran espanto” (a huge fright; 404). He leaves ­behind a buried trea­sure, still waiting for the true “brave man” who can find it in a ravine, appropriately known by locals as “El Tesoro” (The Trea­sure), near the town of Quebradillas.

Puerto Rican Legends as National Myths: Local Heroes and Religious Patron Saints “Myths” ­were another source of oral folklore, as Mason described to Boas on December 28, 1914, a type of story that school c­ hildren and “other persons” wrote in considerable numbers (APS). “Myths,” left undefined as a literary genre, are classified as part of “a ­great mass” of oral folklore, identified as “exclusively Spanish in origin.” ­After his listing of some thirty-­seven stories collected in Utuado, he would insist that they ­were “purely Spanish,” a fact that he supported with his lamentation of having found no remnants of Taíno oral folklore: “I hope to get something aborigional but have not yet.” Mason’s reference to myths must have been referring to a narrative genre well known in Puerto Rico as leyendas.28 Legends, short stories with highly nationalistic themes and native characters, reflect a rural “psicología, sensibilidad y cultura populares” (popu­lar psy­chol­ogy, sensibility and culture; Canino Salgado and Chiesa de Pérez x). They are concise in structure, displaying a handful of barely developed characters who are connected to “raíces de nuestra común he­ rencia: indígena, lo español y lo negro” (roots of our shared heritage: indigenous, Spanish and black; x). ­Children would have been fairly familiar with ­legends, both as a favorite type of oral folklore and as a rising literary genre that had been adapted for pedagogical use in public schools.

The Legend of Roberto Cofresí: A Puerto Rican Pirate Supernaturally Protected Mason’s legends of local heroes combine historical documentation of iconic events with data available through popu­lar oral sources. A modern Puerto Rican reader t­ oday may recognize many of ­t hese legends that document national episodes, preserved e­ ither as factual historical accounts or as testimonial anecdotes of super­natural happenings with religious or cultural relevance to the development of a Puerto Rican identity. Such leading public figures of national attraction w ­ ere bandits, like Roberto Cofresí y Ramírez de Arellano (1791–1825). A Puerto Rican–­born pirate of creole descent, Cofresí was well known for his robbery adventures that took him from his operation base on Cabo Rojo’s western coast to nearby ports in the Dominican Republic and the surrounding islands of the Lesser Antilles and as far as Lima, Peru.29 He was known as Aguila Negra (Black Ea­gle), and his disruptive attacks both by sea and by land provoked in 1825 an entrapment arranged by the Spanish governor of Puerto Rico and aided by the American Navy, leading to his public

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execution in San Juan.30 As the subject of several legends in Mason’s collection, Cofresí’s whereabouts reflect the island’s colonial status, including the economic restrictions imposed as a Spanish colony that led to his rise as a notorious thief with a popu­lar Robin Hood–­like appeal.31 Cofresí, a pirate and a smuggler, opposed the tight Spanish commercial control of the island, attaining the po­liti­cal status of a national hero. He was in Mason’s legends “el mayor rey, el valeroso pirata Cofresí” (the bigger king, the brave pirate Cofresí; “Cofresí” 85), who often teased the local police authorities in Cabo Rojo by coming into town in public view. On one such occasion, according to one of Mason’s legends, Cofresí was forced to defend his honor ­after a local gentleman of Spanish descent offended him by way of a snarky comment about Cofresí’s short height. A duel took place, which corresponds to a considerably lengthy description of fighting styles with swords. The fight ends with the appearance of the town’s priest, who carried a blessed host and ordered the men to stop fighting. He made them promise never to engage in violent encounters with each other, which they both humbly agreed upon, as they understood that the real e­ nemy was the po­liti­cal system that kept Puerto Rico a Spanish colony. Beliefs in orthodox religious tenants or superstitious components have a strong role in Mason’s Cofresí legends, which intersect with similar narrative ele­ments displayed in previous fantastic stories. His incredible escapades, as ­t hose of other mighty classical heroes, can be explained only through means of super­natural intervention. One legend, for instance, describes the reasons ­behind Cofresí’s ability to find clearly impossible burial grounds for his allegedly im­mense booties. The story has Cofresí coming into a beautiful, prosperous ­house with a golden balcony, whereupon entering he was welcomed by four beautiful young ­women. When he attempted to caress them, they mysteriously dissolved into thin air. A horrified narrator clarifies that he had entered the ­house of the devil. Cofresí is, however, a brave man; he leaves the mysterious h ­ ouse empty-­handed, though shaken by this super­natural experience. He continues mugging another opulent palace, carry­ing out plenty of money, so much that he needed seven mules to drag out his booty. As he travels through a thick forest he is disoriented by encountering the haunted, “demonic” ­house again and again. When he fi­nally approaches the ­house, one of the beautiful young ­women, wearing a richly decorated silk green dress and gold rings on all of her fin­gers, speaks softly to him. She invites him to leave his booty in her h ­ ouse for safekeeping. Cofresí happily agrees ­a fter she tells him that the ­house ­w ill forever travel to wherever he is at; she assures him that his trea­sure ­will forever be safe ­under a subterranean cave. This fantastic hideout, as a faithful narrator stresses, is the reason why t­ here is money buried all over Puerto Rico, unaccounted for but impossible to find ­because of this super­natural covenant.

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As some of Mason’s legends stress, Cofresí’s image as a folk hero survived a­ fter his capture and subsequent military execution. In fact, Cofresí took on a mythological dimension that still reverberates ­today in frequent mentions of him as a legendary figure. The most unusual legends are not historical accounts but super­natural stories that stress eyewitness accounts of the strange sounds of barking dogs and “cadenas arrastrándose por el suelo” (chains dragging the ground heard in remote places; 95), presumably ­those used as Cofresí’s trea­sure hideaways. In one legend, as in previous ghost stories, Cofresí’s spirit has a ­human interaction with a devoted fan. A young man, Ricardo, who had become obsessed with Cofresí ­after hearing about the pirate’s adventures, daydreams about meeting his dead hero. One anecdote in par­tic­u­lar fueled his admiration. As an adult, Cofresí traveled to the United States in order to avenge his f­ ather, who was affronted by an American captain many years before, an act that impacted Cofresí as a child. As another of Mason’s legends stresses, that episode had haunted Cofresí and was the reason he eventually became a pirate. Ricardo’s impossible dream of meeting his hero comes to be true. While walking through a thick forest, very much like the landscape where legend has it Cofresí had buried trea­sures, Ricardo suddenly comes across a mysterious man. He was, of course, Cofresí, who praised the young man for his strong desire to meet him, thus bringing him to life. As a reward, Cofresí reveals the secret hideaway of one robbery excursion: the money that he stole from the American captain who had wronged his f­ ather. Ricardo follows Cofresí’s specific instructions: he finds the trea­sure but takes only the amount that could fit in four sacks, leaving the rest buried. As a rich man, beloved by all, he fulfills his hero’s second wish: like Cofresí, he continued to support many charities.

Legends on Religious Apparitions: National Patron Saints and Public Punishments for Transgressors of Canonical Beliefs A common trait in Mason’s legends is their shared interest in explaining history by means of perceived fantastical occurrences. The inclusion of marvelous incidents may reflect the storytellers’ desire to produce new material; as Mason pointed out to Boas, they took pride in maintaining a fresh repertoire. Not surprisingly, a large number of t­ hese modern legends have a close connection with religious practices. ­There are stories of orthodox religious apparitions, with the ecclesiastical approval of the Catholic Church, such as that of Our Lady of Monserrate, Puerto Rico’s unofficial patron saint, whose sanctuary is a mandatory visit for the island’s devout Catholics.32 A creole-­looking Madonna, La Virgen de la Monserrate has close ties with the town of Hormigueros, an area that is also often associated with early Spanish colonial settlements. Two divine apparitions, as Mason’s legends stress, indicated the specific place where she wanted her church to be built, on

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the spot where a bull almost killed a man, who screamed for the Madonna’s protection. That sanctuary made Monserrate’s church “muy famosa en aquellos lugares por su lujo y gran devoción que allí existía” (very famous around that area due to its luxury and the ­great devotion of her followers; 395). Devotion of religious icons, as allowed in Catholic rituals, is also the subject of legends that highlight the miraculous nature of venerated images. Two legends explain the origin of a religious statue, popularly known as San Pío, which contains ­human relics of Saint Pius I, the ninth pope. According to ­t hese legends, Pío was a brave soldier who, ­after being falsely accused of wasting bread (a crime u ­ nder military law), was sentenced to death. Many years ­later his body was found uncorrupted. Proof of San Pí­o’s holiness, concludes a believer-­narrator, is that “todavía se dice que le cortan las uñas y la barba que le crecen y además le sale sangre por las heridas” (even ­today it is said that they cut his nails and that his beard grows and his wounds still bleed; 393). His legend is alive in Puerto Rico through a statue of a dead San Pío, located in San Juan’s Cathedral, which suggests a perpetually uncorrupted body.33 Religious legends outside of official ecclesiastical approval are the largest samples in Mason’s collection of Puerto Rican religious-­based legends. Like the traditional fairy tale with its pedagogical foundation, t­hese stories also display a strong moralistic undertone closely following orthodox ritualistic Catholic practice. “El milagro de la Cruz” (The Miracle of the Cross), for example, describes the miraculous event that saved a young w ­ oman from getting raped and murdered. Chased by a criminal man, she sought refuge in a local shrine, home of a cross revered by young p ­ eople; clinging desperately to it, her mean pursuer attempted to pull her from it in vain. He was immediately struck by a lightning, which killed him instantly, “quedando la joven salvada de las garras de aquel malvado” (leaving the young w ­ oman f­ ree from the claws of that evildoer; 400). Although evildoers’ crimes may take dif­fer­ent forms, punishments always come to them in marvelous ways. Mason’s legend “La cabeza” (The Head), like in other miraculous legends, sets out to explain the origin of a site’s name, in this case La Cabeza Street. It is not an episode of historical importance, but rather a story with an ending that has a moral, super­natural twist. A man who had committed a murder that had gone unresolved for ten years returns to the scene of the crime on an unnamed street. He enters a butcher’s store and buys a calf’s head. He walks happily down the street, thinking how he would like his cook to prepare the animal’s head, when he starts noticing that ­people look at him in horror. Suddenly, a policeman stops him and, unwrapping the meat package, he discovers a bloody ­human head, “un gran reguero de sangre, como si en aquel momento la hubiera separado con su espada del cuerpo de su amigo” (a messy trail of blood, as if in that same moment his sword had slit his friend’s head from his body; 414). This is taken as a super­natural message that fi­nally solved the

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murder mystery, very much in a way that may remind readers t­ oday of similar magical realist endings. As a ­whole, Mason’s Puerto Rican super­natural fairy tales and historical legends display a more concrete, almost utilitarian, approach to local folklore and cultural traditions. Completely absent are the overromanticized descriptive views of the rural landscape that the initially trained folklore writers often utilized as part of their literary craft that gives published legends their characteristically nostalgic tone. Mason’s in­for­mants, as writers of prolific ethnographical stories, may have been following his instructions to dwell on specific cultural markers. They took a testimonial approach with stories that are realist and overwhelmingly connected to jíbaro customs, mainly as defined by the geo­graph­i­cal restrictions of tierra adentro (the highlands), the traditional cradle of Puerto Rican agrarian ethos. Although published legends seem to indicate other­wise, traditions, including religious beliefs, are not a “­t hing of the past.” Rather, they are vibrant, often adverse components of rural life.

chapter 5

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An (Un)colored Puerto Rican Culture Unpublished Negro Fieldwork in Old Loíza Our judgment of the abilities of the black race is determined by our knowledge of the Negro in North Amer­i­ca; and the principal fact that impresses itself upon our minds is the backwardness, inertia, and lack of initiative of the ­great masses of the South, which cannot be outweighed by the achievements of exceptional individuals but by the slow but steady pro­gress of the race as a ­whole. In our general impression we are not inclined to lay much stress upon the evil influences connected with the removal of the Negro from Africa to the shores of our continent. —­Franz Boas, “Industries of the African Negroes” (1909) We believe that the pre­sent population is very largely an amalgamation of white, black and Indian blood. Mr.  Salvador Brau seems to have a like opinion, for he states in his book, Puerto Rico y su historia, that the Porto Ricans to-­d ay have inherited the following characteristics from their ancestors: “Indolence, taciturnity, sobriety, disinterestedness and hospitality from the Indian; physical endurance, sensualism and fatalism from the negro; and love of display, devotion, perseverance and chivalry from the Spaniard.” —­George Milton Fowles, Down in Porto Rico (1906) A Siña Ana, santa mujer de tez negra pero de alma blanca, de cuyos labios aprendimos los primeros cuentos y rimas en nuestra infancia (To Siña Ana, a saintly w ­ oman with black skin but with a white soul, whose lips taught me the first stories and poems of my childhood). —­Rafael Ramírez de Arellano, Folklore portorriqueño (1926)

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Although no geo­graph­i­cal area in par­tic­u ­lar was originally targeted as a source of black oral folklore in Puerto Rico, Boas and Mason did explore the island’s slave and mulatto ethnographical heritage. This chapter examines Mason’s whereabouts in Loíza, a sleepy fishing village that became representative of a native “black culture,” with distinctive features including oral folklore, religious practices, and linguistic expressions. The first section, “Loíza as a Site of an Afro–­ Puerto Rican Culture,” examines Boas’s hesitation to incorporate Mason’s field data of this iconic African-­based population as part of his ongoing ethnographic research, which dwelled on the impact of African-­based traditions that survived the slavery period upon U.S. cultural traditions. Boas’s “pro-­Negro” writings ­were, however, highly activist in nature, a stance that often pulled him into an ongoing po­liti­cal discourse pertaining to ­legal segregation and, most controversially, scientific discussions on the perceived inferiority of the black race. Indeed, Mason’s fieldwork in Loíza uncovered a rich oral folklore that would have been groundbreaking in Puerto Rico as a component of an emerging “Afro-­Puerto Rican” national identity, reflected in formal artistic (musical forms) and literary expressions. Boas himself visited Loíza, where he performed extensive anthropometric mea­sure­ments. The second section, “Reconstructing a Post-­slavery Afro–­Puerto Rican Popu­ lar Folklore: The Unpublished Field Notes,” traces never-­before-­published correspondence between Mason and Puerto Rican archaeologist and folklorist Ricardo Alegría ­after Mason’s visit to Puerto Rico in 1956. This field material is extremely rich, including documentation of oral folklore and popu­lar religious traditions that survived a­ fter the abolition of slavery for some forty-­t wo years at the time of Mason’s and Boas’s visit to Loíza. Unlike his practice in other geo­ graph­i­cal sites, Mason documented the identity of his main cultural in­for­mant in Loíza. Referred to simply as Melitón Congo and identified as an el­derly man who had survived slavery, he provided Mason a rich narrative of religious practices discussed as “witchcraft,” part of common local traditions that included the wide use of plants as an extended type of “green medicine.” He was also responsible for a lexicon of African-­based words that Mason labeled as “Congo” in origin.

Loíza as a Site of an Afro–­Puerto Rican Culture Franz Boas’s Pro-­Negro Scientific Activism: On Demonstrating the Existence of Black Culture At the time of his trip to the island, Boas had already started a vocal pro–­equal rights campaign for the U.S. Negro that stressed two impor­tant ideological ele­ ments. Since the 1890s he had strongly opposed the ongoing critical scientific stance that ge­ne­tics, as reflected in physical differences among races, particularly brain size and cranial shape, could account for superior intellectual

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development (“­Human Faculty as Determined by Race” 232). Furthermore, and ­going against prevailing racist attitudes that perceived worldwide African contributions as menial at best, Boas was among the earliest archaeologists and emerging cultural studies scholars to document a strong historical presence of highly developed types of cultures in Africa with far-­reaching influences. With his detailed historical and cultural descriptions of advanced ancient African cultures, “The Negro and the Demands of Modern Life” established Boas’s trailblazing contributions to an emerging field of African studies. He reconstructed a rich pa­norama for an American public who knew about Negro cultural practices only through visual examples, mainly of abject poverty, that had persisted in the United States a­ fter the abolition of slavery. Such poor samples had, in turn, given rise to “the tacit assumption of the physical and m ­ ental inferiority of the Negro” (85). Instead, Boas underscored complex, geo­graph­i­ cally and ethnically diverse African civilizations and their broad manual productions (for example, detailed and highly sophisticated ornate use of iron and wood) and “power of organ­ization” that had allowed for the establishment of extensive and complex kingdoms (86). Other nonvisual examples of an advanced African intellectual ability included an extensive use of proverbs, which, as Boas accentuated, reflected “the homely practical philosophy of the Negro which is often proof of sound feeling and judgment” (86). He inferred that the “traits of African culture as observed in the aboriginal home of the Negro are ­those of a healthy primitive ­people with a considerable degree of personal initiative, with a talent for organ­ization, and with considerable imaginative power, with technical skill and thrift” (86). At the core of his pro-­Negro research, Boas’s bold condemnation stands out ­today as among the first of scholars who openly argued that the devalued condition of the American Negro was a direct result of slavery: “The tearing away from the African soil, and the consequent loss of the old standards of life which ­were replaced by the de­pen­dency of slavery and by all it entailed” (87). He challenged scholars to uncover slavery’s yet undocumented methods of social coercion upon “the pre­sent status of the African and American Negro,” research that would “explain the inferiority of the status of a race without falling back to the theory of hereditary inferiority” (87). On May 31, 1906, Boas attempted to take his pro-­African campaign to a more activist-­i nclined audience. As a guest speaker at the Atlanta University commencement exercises, Boas delivered a speech, published as “The Outlook for the American Negro” (1906), which continued his ethnological documentation of superb examples of African cultural practices. Addressing graduating African American students, rising intellectuals and activists in their own rights, he instilled in them pride in their in-­depth knowledge of a highly developed culture in Africa, “a picture . . . ​[that] ­will inspire strength, for all the alleged faults of your race that you have to conquer h ­ ere are certainly not prominent t­ here”

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(313). That picture would have to be a m ­ ental trip to classical times, however, and Boas lamented the lack of an ethnological African museum in the United States at the level of t­ hose in Paris, London, or Berlin. Boas attempted to establish a museum of African anthropology and ethnology on American soil. On November 30, 1906, he wrote a short letter to Andrew Car­ne­gie requesting half a million dollars for the establishment of an African Institute, which could bring to a general public “the best products of African civilization” (“Changing the Racial Attitudes of White Americans” 317). More importantly, Boas had a specific social purpose; he believed that an African anthropological museum would directly improve the currently severed race relations in the United States. He insisted to Car­ne­gie that this was an issue that went beyond a scientific boom in the field of black anthropology, that “[it] was not only a m ­ atter of concern from a humanitarian point of view, but entails serious dangers to the Commonwealth” (316). Boas also formulated as an institutional goal, although barely described, “statistical inquiries of the Negro race in this country” (318). That type of research at the core of his previous fieldwork could put an end to a generalized but unscientifically tested racist opinion: “The endless repetition of remarks on the inferiority of the Negro physique, of the early arrest of development of Negro ­children, of the tendency of the mulatto to inherit all the bad traits of both parental races” (317). He was, however, mindful that this aspect was to be an uphill ­battle: “[it] seems almost ineradicable, and the pre­sent state of our knowledge can just as ­little be repudiated as supported by definite evidence” (317). A second goal of Boas’s proposed African Institute called for public displays of artifacts representative of advanced African manual skills as tangible proof that “the inferiority of the Negro in Amer­i­ca is entirely due to social rather than to racial ­causes” (316). He was speaking as a rising pro-­Negro activist; holistically, such physical evidence could inspire a positive change in the racial tensions euphemistically referred to as “the w ­ hole attitude of our ­people” (317). In a hardly discreet critical stance, Boas also proposed that detailed examinations of complex designed African artifacts would confirm the impact of a racial hybridity on the African continent, and, by extension, in the United States, with an increasingly large mulatto population: “Mixture of races in Africa has always been concurrent with the establishment of ­great and power­f ul states and the production of strong individualities, who put their stamp upon the culture of large areas and long periods” (317). His rather vocal analy­sis described the impact of slavery upon modern African American and, by extension, American cultural practices at large. Again, the issue at hand went beyond the enrichment of scientific knowledge to the use of applied so­cio­log­i­c al and ethnographic data that intended “to make the relations of the two races more ­wholesome, and to decide by unprejudiced scientific investigation what policy should be pursued” (317).

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The Locus of an Afro–­Puerto Rican Culture: Mason’s Discovery of Loíza In letters to Boas, Mason’s first reference to a predominantly black area came early a­ fter his arrival on the island. On January 19, 1915, Mason wrote about “Old Loíza,” a small fishing population on the island’s northwestern coast. He came to hear about the area through Professor Henry Crampton, the zoologist for the Survey of Porto Rico and the Virgin Islands who had traveled extensively throughout the island since 1913. Crampton impressed Mason with his initial description of Loíza, which he underscored as “the most in­ter­est­ing town on the island from the point of view of folk-­lore” (APS). Mason did not expand upon the meaning b ­ ehind Crampton’s reference of Loíza being an “in­ter­est­ing town.” In fact, the striking ele­ment of Mason’s correspondence with Boas is his rather bland descriptions of Loíza’s rich ethnographical black culture, including a rich artisan production related to popu­lar cultural cele­brations. If Boas was interested in Mason’s gathering of creative pieces from Loíza, ­t here is no indication that Mason collected ­t hose artifacts in an area that was well known for crafts, such as colorful masks known as vejigantes. It is also plausible that Mason came to hear about Loíza through documentation by American anthropologist Jesse Walter Fewkes, who had performed anthropological research in Puerto Rico from 1901 to 1904 (Duany, “Making Indians” 65). Although Fewkes’s goal on the island was to rec­ord Taíno indigenous archaeological sites, as Jorge Duany has uncovered, Fewkes also came across a strong hybrid Afro–­Puerto Rican culture that he often noted with disparaging comments in his unpublished field notes. In a reference to Loíza, for example, Fewkes expressed his overall opinion about the island’s black culture: “Loíza is very primitive” (qtd. in The Puerto Rican Nation 70). Writing on his initial trip to the island in 1902, Fewkes articulated similar biases as t­ hose expressed by the first American travelers immediately a­ fter the Spanish-­American War concerning the strong visual presence of a Negro culture on the island: “­There are streets in both Luquillo [sic] and Rio Grande, which reminded one of an African or Phillipine [sic] town: Nothing but small homes with palm coverings; no nails employed in the manufacture of ­t hese ­houses” (70). ­There is no recorded answer from Boas giving Mason permission to extend his research to Loíza, which in his letter dated January 19, he had already scheduled as his next site to be explored. Mason’s plans to start fieldwork w ­ ere, however, considerably slowed down; he was getting over a “bad attack of dysentery.” On January 30, he expressed to Boas his excitement about his forthcoming first trip to Loíza, which he described as: “Old Loiza where t­ here is a rather homogenous and isolated negro population and said to be practices of voodooism.” He made no references about the source of that data, however, he indicated that he

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was hoping to consult with Professor Britton, who was on the island performing research as part of the Porto Rican Survey. Britton, a botanist and director of the New York Botanical Garden, also provided Mason a plan “regarding methods of pursuing work.” If ­t here was fieldwork protocol for his trip to Loíza, it was not described to Boas, however. Mason’s initial visit to Loíza took place during a brief reconnaissance trip on February 2. His documentation of the trip, unlike any other pueblo, except Utuado, was carefully recorded in his first (and subsequent) letters to Boas. It was a short trip, perhaps lasting only a day, as implied in his statement, “I ran down to Old Loíza” (APS). He did not go alone. Basil H. Dutcher, chaplain of the Military Hospital in San Juan, escorted Mason. Dutcher, who had previously served Mason as guide throughout the island, was also a key participant in Boas’ anthropometric proj­ect. He accompanied Boas in his procuring of men and male ­children and he even helped Boas in the ­actual mea­sure­ment of t­hese individuals. At this first visit Mason was already elated about his preliminary findings in Old Loíza, which he described rather enthusiastically: “[I am] much impressed with the anthropological possibilities t­ here.” He had gone to Old Loíza with an eye to procure an ethnographical account as indicated in his preliminary ethnographic description of its inhabitants: “The population is almost entirely negroid and entirely dif­fer­ent from the Gibaro population of Utuado and the other interior towns.” Even though it was a mere visual examination of Loíza’s black ethnography Mason was, however, greatly impressed: “If an African ele­ ment is to be found anywhere on the island it w ­ ill be t­ here.” He de­cided on the spot to return for a “continued stay of several weeks as the field looks very good.” In spite of other populations, Loíza remained as his main source of Afro–­ Puerto Rican oral folklore, an iconic area that, as he emphasized to Boas, he had already de­cided to be his cradle of Puerto Rican black culture. Upon conclusion of his field research in Loíza he intended to consider his oral folklore fieldwork done: “When I finish work in Old Loíza I think I ­will consider my field work completed as I w ­ ill have worked intensively both the fields of the mountain Gibaro who is prevailingly white, and the negro of the shore.” Mason was, however, still waiting for some “isolated and individual districts, possibly by looking over the returns from the schools.” Th ­ ese other “isolated” geo­graph­i­cal areas remained undisclosed.

Initial Field Reports from Loíza: “Negroid” Oral Folklore As he had promised Boas, Mason quickly returned to Old Loíza on February 7. Two days l­ater he wrote to Boas, the first of three letters dated February 9, 16, and March 2. Loíza’s potential as the ideal site for Negro oral folklore was short-­ lived, though. On February 9, a­ fter only two days in Loíza, Mason sadly expressed to Boas that he was “a l­ ittle disappointed at the prospects” (APS). He voiced his

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concern that “­t here is no dearth of material ­here and it can be gotten very easily.” That “material,” which he did not describe, was “practically the same as elsewhere, almost entirely of Spanish origin.” Anticipating that Boas might suggest a comparative analy­sis using material uncovered elsewhere in Puerto Rico, Mason added, “Naturally I expect to find local differences but such ­w ill be comparatively unimportant.” He maintained repeatedly that Loíza was primarily very much like the culture of the jíbaro highlands. The Spanish spoken, which Mason labeled as a “dialect,” was “practically the same as in Utuado but it is in­ter­est­ing that it is not exactly the same.” He underscored one example, a certain pronunciation trait that is still common in modern Puerto Rican pronunciation: “the rr is given its proper trilled quality ­here, not palatalized as in Utuado.” Other noticeable differences between Utuado’s dialectical traits and ­t hose in Old Loíza’s w ­ ere: “I think I notice even more confusion of the l and r ­here and possibly more voicelessness of the final vowel, but the difference is comparatively unimportant.” Mason also made a handful of notations to Boas about the presence of a distinctive local popu­lar culture as reflected in the oral folklore samples. Nonetheless, overall, he described on February 9, Old Loíza’s oral folklore, “the ­g reat majority of stories, adivinansas [sic]; riddles, e­ tc.,” in rather plain terms. Old Loíza’s oral popu­lar stories had failed a rather basic litmus test: “I have inquired for stories concerning the spider, such as are the bulk of the tales from Jamaica but I am told they are unknown ­here.” He did indicate that he had found samples of “some animal tales like ­t hose of ­Uncle Remus.” He was quick to point out, however, that they ­were not unique to Loíza: “but no more than everywhere on the island, everywhere they are in the minority, fewer than ­t hose purely fairy tales.”

African-­Inspired Oral Tales: Cuentos de Encantamiento with Black Witches Almost immediately upon his arrival on the island, writing from Utuado on December 8, 1914, Mason reported that he found a “cuento negrito” (­little black story, APS). Mason never explained the ideological significance of Utuado: that a presumably white area could produce a black story. Unfortunately, Mason did not describe the content of this “cuento negrito,” which, judging by the rather demeaning inference of the use of the diminutive, he considered as an insignificant finding.1 Now in Old Loíza, writing to Boas on February 9, Mason highlighted “a considerable number of witch tales:” “­These seem to be entirely local and most of them of topical interest.” He was not, however, very impressed with them. Overall, he concluded with his most solid, however, unsubstantiated opinion: “I think you w ­ ill agree that t­ hese are African in spirit if not in ­actual content.” He gave no examples to support his statement of the first of two of his most outstanding oral folklore findings in Loíza, nor did he explain his use of the term “witch.” Again, in his letter of February 16 to Boas, he referred in passing to

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“witch tales” as the “principal characteristic” of the oral folktale already documented in Old Loíza (APS). A handful of “cuentos de brujas,” which appear published as part of the cuentos de encantamiento (tales of enchantment), are poor examples of a leading black character, perhaps the same protagonist in Mason’s “cuento negrito” from Utuado. The witch in t­ hese tales of enchantment is an ugly black w ­ oman who, as in other versions of cuentos de encantamiento, pretends to be a kind old ­woman and offers her ser­vices to her innocent, rather naïve, victim. She transforms a beautiful white w ­ oman, often a princess, into an animal, ­later to convince the w ­ oman’s husband that, in spite of her blackness, she is his loving wife. This lie is presented as a crude racial joke: the witch claims that long exposure to the sun had turned her black, ugly, and wrinkled, which, although suspecting foul play, the prince accepts at face value. In a thematic connection with other tales of “animal transformation,” the white ­women ­were turned into encantadas, through a magical means that recalls a favorite devious method of other witches in cuentos de encantamiento. The black w ­ oman stabs the ­woman’s head with a pin, while combing the vain and lazy princess’s hair. At once, they become birds. The bird-­princess must find a way to communicate with her saddened prince, who is now living with the “darkened” sun princess in their royal palace. The way to achieve communication is the main core of the plot, turning the black witch into a subordinate character to the white w ­ omen’s heroic efforts to reach their disconsolate husbands, who in their hearts never believed the witches’ stories. In the end, the charming princes lift the curses, returning their beloved wives to their original, pristine beauty. With the black witches condemned to death, normality returns to the kingdom. Thus, a divisive ele­ment (black race) was physically eradicated from a (white) kingdom to restore normalcy—­-a­ less than subtle takeaway.

Cuentos Cantados: Mason’s Unpublished Finding The second type of native Old Loíza’s oral folktale that caught Mason’s critical attention was “cuentos cantados” (singing stories), which in his initial letter on February 9, Mason briefly introduced as “stories in which part of the dialogue was sung.” The musical component did not impress Mason much, however: “The melody is generally very s­ imple and does not have the auditory impression of Spanish m ­ usic.” He might have already made plans to perform a comparative analy­sis based on material from other Ca­rib­bean islands with stronger African connections. Mason reminded Boas of the existence of similar musical folktales: “You w ­ ill remember that the majority of the Jamaican tales have certain parts of the dialogue sung.” Thus, Mason categorized cuentos cantados as African in origin: “I am inclined to believe this, therefore, an African characteristic.” He was also quick to add

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that an unnamed source had indicated to him that “such stories are not confined to this locality but are found in at least as ­great numbers among the mountain Gibaros of the east of the island.” As for potential structural differences between cuentos cantados and regular folktales, he promptly concluded, “I have not heard enough of ­these to express an opinion as to ­whether the content is markedly dif­ fer­ent from the usual run of stories ­here or not.” He also wondered: “it is in­ter­ est­ing that I got none in Utuado.” Ultimately, ­t hese cuentos cantados failed to attract much of Mason’s critical attention. On February 16, he simply described them to Boas as “rather pointless stories accompanied with part of the dialogue in song as in Jamaica” (APS). Unlike t­ hose in Jamaica, “where the tales concern animals almost exclusively,” however, Loíza’s cuentos cantados “concern persons.” He also indicated that ­t hese cuentos cantados shared other characteristics “with the majority of the Porto Rican stories.” Unfortunately, Mason did not describe the plot of any of Loíza’s cuentos cantados.

On Loíza’s “Witchcraft” Practices In terms of ethnographical field research, on February 16 Mason referred in passing to “considerable superstition and belief in witchcraft h ­ ere, more so than among the mountain Gibaros (APS).” He did not offer any descriptive examples of this local type of “witchcraft” practice, which in a prior letter, dated January 30, he referred to Boas as “voodooism.” His switch to “witchcraft” seemed to indicate that Mason had, as he performed field research in Old Loíza, came to understand that this hybrid religious belief system could not be categorized as akin to Haitian vodou, but he made no clarification to that effect. Fewkes also saw Loíza’s black religious practices in a similarly negative light. He referred to it in comparable generic terms as Mason’s: “Sorcery is found among the negros of Porto Rico” (qtd. in Duany, The Puerto Rican Nation 70). Fewkes did not seem to have been a participant in any ceremonies. He was ­limited to casual use of paraphernalia indicative of popu­lar ac­cep­tance. He wrote about unnamed visual indicators that “appear in several dif­fer­ent forms” that gave him the impression of extensive popularity. He noted one example, “the witch collar,” which he left undescribed (qtd. in Duany, The Puerto Rican Nation 70).2

Loíza’s “Coastal Spanish” and the Influence of a “Congo” Language: The Contributions of Melitón Congo Mason’s most impor­tant ethnographical finding in Loíza took place on February 16. He happily reported to Boas having met an “old slave born in Africa” who provided him with “a vocabulary of several hundred words, unmistakably African.” To Mason’s disappointment, the unnamed old man knew “no African stories or songs which would be of interest in tracing Negro influence h ­ ere.” The black in­for­mant told Mason of “another old African in the suburbs of San Juan

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who knows African tales.” Mason seemed not to have tried to locate this former slave, adding that t­ here ­were “­little hopes in finding him.” He was more informative about another impor­tant aspect of his fieldwork in Old Loíza. Writing to Boas on March 2, he reported on his linguistic transcription of “local Spanish dialectical pronunciation patterns,” which he described as his “­little phonetic work” (APS). In “about 210 pages” Mason documented a type of “coastal Puerto Rican Spanish.” He was extremely positive about Old ­Loíza’s linguistic characteristics, which he classified as “the dialect spoken on the coast.” He went a step further; for Mason, such a coastal variant was “considerably better Castilian than that used by the Gibaros in the mountains.” “That,” he concluded, was “an in­ter­est­ing fact.” He did not offer Boas any explanation to support his position of a privileged “coastal Spanish” thriving in Loíza. Mason also informed Boas that many words used in Old Loíza “seem to be of native origin.” Presumably this was a passing reference to his unlisted “Congo” lexicon. Mason did not indicate ­whether t­hese words came from the West-­ Central African area. He merely reported to Boas that Melitón had helped him to document a list of an unnoted number of words. W ­ hether the man himself was originally from the Congo region was not corroborated, e­ ither. ­W hether Mason suspected that local “witchcraft” practices remained under­ ground (a way to survive the official censorship imposed during colonial times) or restricted to the uninitiated or the nonbeliever, such as himself, was not clarified. He did document for Boas, however, “the names of some thirty odd plants used medicinally and in magic and specimens of them for identification.” Mason did not indicate ­whether this list (which Boas did not acknowledge having received) was his ultimate example of Loíza’s black practices with an African influence. The Congo vocabulary proj­ect was never discussed, nor was it reported to Espinosa.On March 13, one day ­after his return from Loíza, Mason informed Boas that his work ­t here had been finished. Although still physically exhausted and recuperating from “a very bad cold,” he summarized the extensive results of his fieldwork (APS). He had recorded fifty “very good rec­ords in short order,” mainly popu­lar ­music and folk poetry that “comprise specimens of e­ very kind of native song as far as I am able to judge and makes a very in­ter­est­ing collection.” ­These songs ­were, however, within the same genres as other musical samples collected in the jíbaro highlands. Their final publication merged as part of the collection of “Décimas, Christmas Carols, Nursery Rhymes, and Other Songs.” As in his fieldwork in jíbaro territories, Mason had heavi­ly depended on in­for­ mants in Old Loíza, who also wrote their own material. Unlike his frequent comments about jíbaros, Mason never reported to Boas his methods in the se­lection of literate in­for­mants, nor did he convey any information about the schoolchildren who wrote down oral samples. He did account, however, for having collected seventy-­five “copy books full of folk-­lore in Loiza,” an indication

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that, as in other rural areas, local schoolchildren produced a large number of ­t hese samples. He was certainly pleased with the amount of material collected per copy book, which he estimated as an “averag[e] I suppose [of] 35–40 pages.” His own transcription of oral samples, which amounted to “about six to eight notebooks,” was produced in his “own phonetic work.” As Mason had previously assured Boas concerning the folk material collected from other rural areas, the majority of Loíza’s oral folklore was “traditional and not repeated.” The letter fell short as a conclusive report, however. Mason did not expand on the characteristics of Loíza’s folklore, which he summarily categorized as “extremely rich.” He ended by simply saying, “The supply ­here seems to be almost inexhaustible.” The statement could, however, refer to the sample of local songs, of which Mason recorded about “fifty very good rec­ords in short order.” As he had previously informed Boas, the amount of typical ­music everywhere on the island was indeed infinite. Any reference to the types of songs or descriptions of their subjects was never discussed.

Loíza as a Minor Site of Costumbrista Literary Inspiration Only one type of Costumbrista literary essay centering in Loíza was published the year of Mason’s visit. “De Loíza” (Of Loíza, September 1914) is a striking example of a bucolic approach to an emerging, modern “New” Loíza (Alonso). The piece has a highly celebratory tone. It heralds the end of the summer, symbolized by the arrival of a multitude of butterflies, as c­ hildren come to town for the beginning of an academic year. Schoolchildren descend in droves upon a New Loíza, where, as hungry butterflies, they w ­ ill become “las nuevas siminentes donde ha de descansar mañana la cultura y civilización de los pueblos” (the new seeds that the culture and civilization of countries ­will tomorrow spring; n.p.). New Loíza appears, however, characterized as a mere sleepy town, devoid of any racial reference, a “pintoresco pueblo, sumido ya hacía algún tiempo, en las ondas del silencio de la monotonía” (a picturesque town, immersed some time back in the monotonous waves of silence). That silence, a hopeful narrator praises, ­w ill soon be broken by the presence of schoolchildren: “Ellos representan la alegría, la armonía, el encanto y los preliminaries del adelanto progresivo” (They are the promise of a happiness, harmony and enchantment of progressive advancements; n.p.). New Loíza w ­ ill thus soon be, presumably like the rest of the island, a “progressive” town. This article is also a notable exception in the author’s perception of a New Loíza, a land that is presented as a type of a promised land, a locus amoenus that forecasts the development of a modern f­ uture. This may be the reason for the omission of any reference to race or even a hint of the area’s rather “wild” coastal landscape. Indeed, New Loíza stands out as a carefully planned garden, tended by the loving hands of a teacher, in preparation for the arrival of schoolchildren whose racial identities remain unstated.

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Such an abstract, highly romanticized view of Loíza contrasts with a unique photo of a black man selling coconuts from a wooden cart that was published as the cover of a Puerto Rico Ilustrado issue in June, 1914. The photo­graph sets up an unnamed coastal town as the setting for an exploratory day trip. Titled “¡A tres centavos el coco!” (Three Cents for a Coconut!), it depicts a black “cultural type,” a fruit vendor, who symbolizes the ethnic accruements associated with his low-­key societal role. “¡A tres centavos el coco!,” as the title stresses, depicts a commercial transaction between a black man and his customers. They are white ­children, who stand across a rustic wagon moments before the salesman is ready to use a machete to open up a coconut. At the socioeconomic level, the photo documents a variety of ethnographic details. Dressed in a heavy long-­sleeved coat and baggy dark slacks, the middle-­aged black man’s ethnicity is notable, complete with a turban-­like hat to keep safe from a burning, tropical sun. This type of heavy garb goes in direct contrast with the c­ hildren’s light clothes. They are certainly enjoying a day away from the city and, as such, are dressed in a white outfit that, unlike the black man’s clothing, is ideal for playing on the nearby beach hinted at in the background. Ethnicity is further stressed by the presence of a black girl, who shyly stands at a safe distance from the ­children, keeping close to her presumed ­father. She follows with curiosity the gaze of the photographer, however. In fact, although she is not physically part of the c­ hildren’s group (though she is clearly their age), she looks at the camera like some of the other c­ hildren who are playfully posing for the photographer. Thus, not only does the girl make her presence known symbolically, but with her sustained gaze she seems to challenge the subservient role as “black vendor in training” to claim for herself a childhood that has been taken away from her. Poverty is an overwhelmingly impor­tant visual component in “¡A tres centavos el coco!” Other than the obvious differences in clothing, it is striking that the black man is barefoot while the white ­children are not. His ­daughter, who is standing ­behind the cart, is partially shown; the simplicity of her white blouse contrasts with the sport-­like outfits of the white c­ hildren. Judging by the excitement conveyed in the exclamation marks of the title, the price of the coconuts is a steal, which makes even more striking the abject poverty of ­these black characters, forced to work ­under hard physical conditions for ridiculously low wages. A stark landscape also underscores the wild atmosphere, positing that this rural geography is a foil to the civilized origin of the fancily dressed white ­children who are ready for an exotic adventure. The presence of coconut trees in the background hints at the fertility of the area, providing fresh coconuts for the delight of thirsty white costumers. It is, however, a blurred physical stage,

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unlike the romanticized New Loíza of the previous piece; this is a mysterious area that is seemingly kept out of the ­children’s reach. They remain symbolically restricted to the civilized area marked by the selling cart. Other than the white ­children customers, the commercial transaction soon to take place is the only gesture of a civilized world.

Puerto Rican Scholars on Loíza’s Native Black Culture In Loíza, Mason came across a visually rich black culture with living conditions that ­were reminiscent of slavery practices, such as the straw dwellings that ­were formerly impoverished living quarters for enslaved workers. He might have also encountered heated local opinions about the island’s black heritage. For example, Cayetano Coll y Cuchí (1881–1961), l­ awyer and politician, publicly denounced demeaning photo­g raphs of members of lower Puerto Rican social classes. In 1902, writing for Periódico Jurídico Literario (Literary ­L egal Newspaper), Coll y Cuchí protested such hyperracialized photo­graphs with a rather disparaging attitude t­oward the black subjects: “La mayoría de los americanos de acá, es decir, los que viven de nuestros presupuestos, se la pasan retratando negritos en miserables bohíos y así ocultan nuestras virtudes y exageran nuestros más insignificantes defectos” (The majority of Americans h ­ ere, that is, t­ hose who live off our economy, spend their time photographing darkies in their miserable huts, thus, hiding our virtues while exaggerating our most insignificant defects; qtd. in Santos 55). Puerto Rican scholars had also showed l­ ittle interest in documenting surviving African musical oral folklore. As late as 1940, Francisco Manrique Cabrera, while exploring the ethnicity’s “aportaciones folklórico-­literarias de nuestra isla” (contributions to the literary folklore on our island), performed field research on key coastal areas in Loíza, Guayama, and Ponce, where he observed black musical folklore (5). Left undocumented, he also witnessed “ancestral bailes negros” (ancestral black dances) still performed in Cataño, on the outskirts of San Juan. Songs accompanied ­these dances, which, according to Manrique Cabrera, revealed “ciertos monótonos cantares que obviamente revelaban sa­ bores africanos” (a type of monotonous chant that clearly revealed an African flavor; 5).3 His critical position was, however, harsh; he gave ­little value to this type of black musical folklore, considered to be the expected by-­product of an abject poor black barrio. Manrique Cabrera markedly concludes that the “máximo de nuestro haber folklórico” (the highest folkloric asset) widely available on the island was a “bagaje de entronque hispánico” (heritage of Hispanic origin; 6). In terms of an outstanding type of black oral folktale, Mason’s “cuentos negros,” w ­ hether “witches stories” or animal fables, their publication as a separate classification would have been groundbreaking. U ­ ntil his trip to Loíza, t­ here existed no documentation of black stories recorded anywhere in Puerto Rico.

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Ramírez de Arellano, who was also conducting a similar type of field research, symbolically made his black nanny his informal transmitter of oral folklore, including stories that he heard from her as a child. His collection of oral folklore, Folklore portorriqueño: Cuentos y adivinanzas recogidos de la tradición oral (Puerto Rican Folklore: Tales and Conundrums Compiled from the Oral Tradition; 1926), did not gather, however, any story with a markedly clear black origin or black protagonist characters.4

Cayetano Coll y Toste’s Black Leyendas The importance of Mason’s oral folklore from Loíza stands out even more when contrasted against the handful of black-­t hemed historical legends that w ­ ere so popu­lar at the time of his trip to Puerto Rico. ­Today ­t hese leyendas are considered the first narrative repre­sen­ta­tions of black types, clearly defined within the social constrictions of former slavery practices. Coll y Toste, who had served as Mason’s con­sul­tant on Puerto Rican folklore, was also a pioneer writer of legends. He would have certainly made available to Mason his research on black Puerto Rican cultures, including his own black legends. Coll y Toste was writing, however, from a privileged perspective; although he intended to uncover incidents pertaining to the island’s black history, his ideological focus remained attached to a heightened view of the plight of slaves with a tone reminiscent of that of former abolitionist writings. His black legends, based on a variety of governmental documents and social institution rec­ords (Roman Catholic Church annals), develop highly prescribed black character types, mainly fixed figures constricted to their role u ­ nder slavery. He remained on the side of the slavery laws; his contestation of brutal physical be­hav­ior against enslaved workers was not against the unfairness of such a system but a demonstration that l­egal loopholes accounted for the misapplication of socialization methods. His documented examples of black characters stress the antisocial ele­ments of certain types of blacks who opposed a faulty system. In his first type of rebellious character, Coll y Toste discussed the earliest historical documentation of slaves in San Juan accused of witchcraft. The case was an ecclesiastical trial in 1591 of a group of “negros brujos,” black witches who openly performed unorthodox religious practices for the white urban community. The legend of “Los negros brujos” traces their profitable business, providing San Juan citizens with such ser­v ices as love potions sold to gullible w ­ omen who worried about their husbands’ alternate objects of affection (often black ­women). The Church took prompt actions to put a stop to such “evil” practices. Guilty negros brujos w ­ ere executed as an example to ­those willing to openly challenge orthodox Roman Catholic rituals.

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Indeed, Coll y Toste’s legends reveal a marked pro-­activist social platform aimed at demonstrating the effects of loopholes in slave laws, particularly the flaw of the system related to white men’s proclivity to engage in sexual misconduct. This is the case of the legend “La negra azul” (The Blue-­Skinned Black ­Woman) that develops a second black type: the beautiful slave wronged by a mean, oversexed master. Milagro (Miracle), a beautiful black slave girl, also known as Campanita Azul (Blue Bell) b ­ ecause of the blue tint of her deeply black skin tone, was the joy of fellow enslaved workers on a plantation. Her story was similar to that of many other rural slave girls: upon reaching puberty, tradition had it she was to become her master’s lover. Her lustful master, in an unexpected incident of rage, violently raped her, instantly killing her. The climax of this domestic incidence was, however, dif­ fer­ent from many other such undocumented cases of overt sexual misconduct. It also introduced a third black literary type. Simplicio, Campanita Azul’s ­brother, ­until then loyal to an undeserving master, avenged his ­sister’s death by unexpectedly killing the rapist. The end of the story, as documented in the ­legal case set against Simplicio, is also reflective of Coll y Toste’s overall ideological intentions. According to civil laws, Simplicio was executed, in spite of popu­lar (white) demand that had attempted to get him clemency from the island’s governor. Coll y Toste’s last notable black character type is the rural runaway slave, or cimarrón, who often found refuge in the wilderness surrounding remote sugar cane plantations. In “Carabalí: El Esclavo Rebelde,” an unnamed rebellious slave simply named Carabalí, as African natives from the Nigerian region of Calabar ­were known and feared for their rebellious character, barely escapes his persecutors into the safety of a cave. The shift in literary setting from the prison-­like atmosphere of the sugar cane plantation to a natu­ral backdrop stands out for its surrealism, dominating the tone of Coll y Toste’s legend. As subsequent events emphasize, Carabalí became head of a guerrilla army of other runaways, not only ­because caves offered runaway slaves a perfect hideaway, but ­because local superstitions also placed super­natural beings as inhabitants of such gloomy under­ ground settings. In a curious coincidence, Mason also visited such cave formations. Writing to Boas on May 14, 1915, shortly before Boas’s arrival on the island, Mason notified him of his anthropological trip to San Germán, a town located in the southwest, known for extensive under­ground cave systems with a local reputation for having h ­ oused surviving Taíno runways. He was visiting the area with Mr. Hamor, the local supervising principal, who “had been very considerate of me and we have ridden into the hills almost e­ very day of this time on the trail of archeological sites” (APS). Mason found “nothing of ­g reat interest,” but he

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noted “traces of occupation, potsherds, animal bones and marine shells.” In line with Coll y Toste’s descriptions, the caves w ­ ere extremely difficult to navigate: “But it is ­really extraordinary to note the ­great distance from the mouth of the cave that such are found, and the ­great difficulties of entrance to some of the chambers.” ­Because of the physical disposition of the caves, Mason ruled them out “as places of permanent habitation.” This is in spite of the fact that “some of t­ hese caves show a few pictographs also.”5 Thus, he concluded that Taínos had used the caves as emergency shelters: “I am inclined to think that t­ hese ­were used as refuges in case of attack from Caribs or in the last days of their pursuit by Spaniards.”6 He made no conjecture that runaway slaves might have made a similar use of ­t hese caves, though.

Black Historical Figures as Literary Protagonists Coll y Toste’s strong delineation of blacks as fighting characters, ­whether they physically defied aggression or through their re­sis­tance to social acculturation, reflects his ideological intention that went beyond the mere creation of stories based on documented ­legal cases.7 Julia Cuervo Hewitt, writing about “Carabalí: El Esclavo Rebelde,” underscored Coll y Toste’s h ­ andling of such a contested figure: “The cimarrón also survives in the collective memory of the Ca­rib­bean, as a significant meta­phor for colonial re­sis­tance” (224). Although Coll y Toste presented ­t hese black characters as rebels fighting against social evils, his ideological position remained in ­favor of a system that merely failed in its acculturation methods of an ethnic population, left as a marginal component in a developing Puerto Rican national identity. In the end, although the first literary productions highlighted black protagonists, t­hese enslaved individuals remain devoid of personality traits, and as in their l­egal cases, they ­were sanitized of personal details. As Marie Ramos Rosado has traced, prior to Coll y Toste’s black-­t hemed legends, only a handful of white writers had developed literary characters. Midway through the nineteenth c­ entury, Manuel A. Alonso underscored a black female character in a “sketch of customs”; although a comical figure, she stands as a repre­sen­ta­tion of island’s complex racial dynamics. The story, “La negrita y la vaquita” (The Cute Black Girl), appeared in 1882 as part of the second revised edition of Alonso’s masterpiece El Gíbaro (1849). It openly criticized the injustice of a post-­slavery social system, still mandated by laws that maintained the colonial status ­under Spanish control (11). The under­lying message was also pro-­ independence, as Spanish colonial structures had been responsible for slavery, a system of oppression maintained on the island ­until a rather late date, in spite of local and international opposition. Indeed, slavery and post-­slavery racial divisions supported po­liti­cal colonial impositions, including freedom of dissent expressions. A censorship of sociopo­

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liti­cal subjects effectively operated on the island to such an extent that it l­ imited the participation of blacks as writers. As Roberto Ramos Perea has underscored, during the slavery period only one black writer managed to publish lit­er­a­ture on the island. Eleuterio Derkes (1836–1883) wrote poetry beginning in 1867, in the overly sentimental romantic tradition. A ­ fter the abolition of slavery in 1873, he transitioned to playwriting (Ramos Perea 13). Derkes was influential to post-­abolitionist Puerto Rican black authors who joined ongoing po­liti­cal movements, including rising pro-­workers and pro-­ unions movements. A disciple of Derkes, Manuel Alonso Pizarro (1859–1906) joined the black workers’ plight with anarchist plays that called for social reforms (Ramos Perea 16). A number of black activists who had been actively fighting a complex po­liti­cal colonial scene before and ­a fter the Spanish-­A merican War wrote for local worker newspapers (Ramos Perea 5).8 Their literary production is still unpublished in book form.

The Merging of the Samples of Loíza Oral Folklore during the Editing Pro­cess In a more noticeable lack of communication, ­there would not be any critical conversations between Boas, Mason, and Espinosa during the editing pro­cess that could illuminate the reasons ­behind the merging of the Old Loíza’s oral samples with the overall oral folklore proj­ect. Such a critical silence is indeed rather strange, since correspondence between Boas and Espinosa denotes an overall interest in an “African oral folklore.” Boas had expressed to Espinosa his desire to develop a comparative type of analy­sis pertaining to the influence of black oral folklore in Latin American black oral stories. On November 7, 1919, as Espinosa was getting ready to embark on a field research trip throughout Spain, Boas recommended to him, “We are naturally particularly interested in the question of the animal tale in Spain in its relation to negro [sic] and American Indian folk-­lore, and I trust that you ­w ill be able to obtain material relating to this point” (APS). Several years l­ ater, Espinosa extended his research to Cuba. Upon his return from a trip to Havana, on January 29, 1928, Espinosa wrote Boas to recommend the work of Fernando Ortiz, a leading Cuban anthropologist who was “­doing wonderful work in the study of the Negro” (APS).9 Espinosa also encouraged Boas to provide support for Herminio Portell Vilá, a “pupil of Ortiz who is collecting the Cuban folktales and who needs badly our financial assistance.”10 According to Espinosa, Portell Vilá intended to travel throughout Cuba collecting oral folklore of African origin, much in line with the work of other reputable scholars such as Lydia Cabrera, who had been recording oral testimonies from formerly enslaved in­for­mants (1899–1991).11 In a follow-up letter to Boas on February 12, Espinosa insisted that Portell Vilá’s stories should be published, presumably in the Journal of American Folklore: “In view of the almost total

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absence of many popu­lar folk tales from Cuba . . . ​I urge you very strongly to do the best you can for us” (APS).12 Espinosa made a rather vague statement to Boas that implied that only with the publication of Portell Vilá’s stories, “so badly needed for the completion of the fourth volume,” could such a proj­ect come to fruition. Espinosa did not indicate to which volume he was referring, although the last volume of the Puerto Rican folktales, “Cuentos portorriqueños” (1929), was still unpublished.

Boas’s Whereabouts in Loíza ­ hether Boas was influenced by Mason’s decision to make Old Loíza the repW resentative locale of black oral folklore, he also performed part of his anthropometric study t­ here. Preparation for the identification of prospective candidates took Mason a considerable amount of time. Writing from Utuado on December 8, 1914, Mason indicated to Boas that he had already started working on the “physical anthropology” that required the “mea­sure­ments of families” (APS).13 Already at this early stage, Mason proposed Utuado as the perfect area for the task: “The general opinion seems to be that it ­w ill be perfectly easy to find ­house­holds consisting of several generations.” In terms of ­legal confirmation of births, Mason saw no prob­lem, since “marital infidelity is said to be rare and the general opinion seems to be that the exact parentage of any given child w ­ ill be at once admitted.” Identification of accurate reports of birth data would consume a considerable amount of Mason’s time, though. If Utuado was the perfect area for the research of Spanish racial influences, Loíza served the same purpose for the documentation of black ethnicity. On March 2, 1915, Mason reported to Boas the possibility of training local teachers in Loíza to serve as aides in the mea­sure­ment of individuals. The purpose of the letter was, however, much less positive. Confirmation of the ­children’s real ages was not as easy as Mason originally thought: “Ages are required to be registered but the law is said to be honored principally in the breach” (APS). As in Utuado, Mason reported that in Loíza “illegitimacy seems to be the rule rather than the exception.” Unlike Utuado, however, Mason was not so certain to find “families consisting of three generations.” He did not further explain this comment, which perhaps had a direct connection to the fact that a considerable number of families in Loíza could be composed of former enslaved individuals from dif­fer­ent parts of the island. Mason was also heavi­ly involved in providing Boas samples “of hair color and hair-­forms found in Puerto Rico.” On March 12, Boas requested a “few samples of the lightest colors of hair and of the darkest, and of dif­fer­ent degrees of curliness” (APS). Boas also inquired about the types of “reddish hair that may occur.” He also wanted from Mason a report of the “kind of eye-­color you find. Does light brown occur, and particularly do you find any gray or blue?”

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Mason was not certain about Boas’s potential use for his anthropometrical findings. On March 13, upon returning from his final trip to Loíza, Mason timidly suggested, “I suppose you have thought of it already: it strikes me that a place where t­ here is such a varying mixture of blood as ­here and consequently so ­little race feeling, and therefore practically equal opportunities given to ­either race, would be an ideal place to make a thoroughgoing scientific investigation of racial intelligence of the negro [sic] and white.” Mason’s direct query, “Has this ever before been attempted on a big scale?,” remained unanswered.

The Anthropometric Proj­ect: Tracing the Puerto Rican Raza On March 19, 1915, Mason reported to Boas that he had sought the help of Robert Junghanns in identifying “some red-­haired individuals” from Bayamón, a geo­graph­i­cal reference that seemed not to have any racial significance other than that it was Junghanns’s home and an area where he had already collected a good portion of oral folklore. Junghanns was doubtful, however, of “securing of hair samples, due to superstition of natives” (APS).14 In lieu of such samples, Mason proceeded to offer Boas an overall description: “Individuals are found of practically ­every type of hair color and form and of eye color, though of course, in greatly varying proportions.” Racial types, according to Mason, concentrated on specific geographies, such as blacks on coastal areas: “On the coast nearly all the individuals are negroid, varying from native Africans with very kinky hair, black, gray or white according to age to wavy or curly.” His data must have been based on his observations from Loíza, from which he had recently returned: “The hair ­here is almost always black, but I have in mind individuals of the ruddy and flaxen types even at Loiza.” As for eye coloring, he added “[all] are almost entirely the opaque dark-­brown negro eye.” Following that geo­graph­i­cally based racial profile, Mason highlighted ethnic differences found among the “Gibaros in the hills.” They, as previous travelers visiting the highlands stressed, “pre­sent greater variations as the negro blood is less, the white blood predominating with traces of Indian blood.” Although “red and flaxen hair is sometimes found,” “the usual hair-­type is prob­ably black and dark brown and wavy but many blond and ruddy types” could be found. He also documented the presence of “pure negro and approximations to the Indian type,” although he did not dwell on the number of highland inhabitants that fit ­t hese “approximations,” perhaps a reference to long-­ established mulatto communities. Eye coloring in the highlands was “the majority of course black or dark brown, but light brown and greenish are, I think, not rare.” Answering Boas’s previous request, Mason added that “gray and blue eyes are very rare, but I think you can expect to find some instances.” Mason summarized the Puerto Rican population as a w ­ hole: “You ­w ill undoubtedly have to deal principally with dark color of hair and eyes, ranging

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from the purest negro up, but you should also be prepared to find blond types even to flaxen and albino, but in rare cases.” With his reference to “the many diverse physical types” found on the island, Mason made a final ethnographical description. Puerto Ricans’ types of hair reflected “all types from pure negro and apparently Indian to golden, flaxen and reddish.” Red hair was “comparatively rare,” but “found among the mountain Gibaros, reddish I think more commonly than yellow.” Jíbaros’ blonde shades ranged from “frequently a tawny yellow . . . ​ streaked with darker shades.” During his last reconnaissance trip in Utuado, he became “rather surprised at the number of blue eyes among the Gibaros.” Mason estimated that 25 ­percent of the population had “vari­ous indescribable and watery colors, blue-­green, yellow-­green, hazel, ­etc.” Boas did not make use of ­t hese racial data in his only article on Puerto Rican anthropometry: “The Anthropometry of Porto Rico” (1920). He did, however, explore the impact of black ethnicity on the question of “the similarity of the Porto Rican type and the Spanish type” (247). Although Boas mentioned in passing his knowledge of some unnamed “locally pure negro colonies” (248), their racial influence was noticeable outside the geo­graph­i­cal restrictions of such all-­black communities, as “mulattos are easily distinguished in all parts of the island” (248). He noted the presence of mulattos everywhere, a mobility that came “along the highways of communication” (248). It seemed that in light of the dire absence of data on African and mulatto cultures published in Puerto Rico at the time of Boas’s and Mason’s visits, they failed to properly document Loíza’s black oral folklore, material that could have even served as support for Boas’s ongoing national campaign promoting positive examples of surviving black cultural practices. Nearing the final stages of his field documentation in Loíza and a­ fter three months on the island, Mason should have certainly realized that Old Loíza’s black, hybrid mulatto culture had been kept marginal to a rising ideological proj­ect that highlighted the jíbaro as the sole representative of a post–­Spanish-­American War Puerto Rican national identity. Further, Mason’s fieldwork in Loíza could have boosted Boas’s vocal activist call for documentation of surviving examples of African or Negro “beliefs.” Mason’s referencing Old Loíza as his preferred targeted “black location” was left uncontested during the editing pro­cess, in spite of the fact that he had visited other coastal areas on the island, such as Ponce, with a strong black popu­lar culture.15 Nonetheless, as in the case of the written oral folklore samples by jíbaros, Mason’s use of Old Loíza’s blacks as in­for­mants and writers was an impor­tant critical decision. It was the first time that blacks wrote about subjects pertaining to black oral folklore. Unfortunately, the specific instructions that Mason conferred to his black in­for­mants leading to producing the oral folklore samples ­were also left undiscussed.

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Reconstructing a Post-­slavery Afro–­Puerto Rican Popu­lar Folklore: The Unpublished Field Notes Instituto de Cultura Puertorriqueña’s Proj­ect of Documentation of National Identity through Exploration of Race The unpublished data gathered in Loíza w ­ ere partially reconstructed a­ fter Alegría, as newly appointed director of Department of Puerto Rican Culture contacted Mason in 1956.16 As indicated in his letter dated June 14, Alegría expressed his gratitude to Mason who was willing to turn over original fieldnotes and other materials related to his historic trip in 1914–1915: “I am glad to hear that you are ­going to see if you can help me in obtaining a transcription of your old rec­ords.” On February 19, 1957, Mason reported that he was in possession of four field notes taken in Loíza. ­These amounted to about half the notebooks that he had tallied as part of his final report to Boas on March 13, 1915: “about six to eight notebooks.” Mason described to Alegría that the material was “folklore that I had collected, written down myself in quasi-­phonetic text,” still unpublished. As he repeatedly stressed, this type of unscientific “quasi-­phonetic” shorthand eventually proved to be an obstacle for the transcription of the notebooks’ content. He l­ ater mentioned to Alegría on November 23, that he had identified several notebooks written by schoolchildren (no indication of their geo­graph­i­cal origin) and a “Congo” vocabulary list from Loíza. Mason’s surviving notebooks written in Loíza are dated February 1915. On January 15, 1958, Mason was working hard on the transcription: “I have spent a number of days transcribing folklore from my quasi-­phonetic text.” He bragged to Alegría having “almost finished the poetry from Loíza and t­ here is a g­ reat deal of it, much more than I thought.” The notebooks also contained “many cuentos, yet to be transcribed” (emphasis original). He intended to start working on a fourth notebook, “almost all poetry,” a seemingly easy task that he expected to “take me a ­couple of days.” Halfway through the letter, however, Mason contradicted himself. Given the fact that “in frequent cases I ­can’t make out from my phonetic text what was meant in good Spanish,” he wanted to bring in as a collaborator Ramón Fina, “a very cultured and educated Spaniard,” who was president of the Pan American Association of Philadelphia and perhaps Mason’s friend.17 Fina’s role, as Mason described it, was “to read it over to him and he could have a good idea what was intended.” Fina would not charge “much,” and he could be paid from Mason’s own stipend. Fina must have declined the offer. On March 1, Mason suggested to Alegría the participation of another con­sul­tant, Dr. Reina, an Argentine in the Department of Anthropology of the New World Archaeological Foundation, where Mason was serving as editor and archaeological advisor.18 ­There is no recorded answer by Alegría indicating agreeing with Mason’s suggestion.19

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Mason did not have the time to perform the tedious task of transcribing all four notebooks. Also on March 1, he informed Alegría that he had taken up a full-­time position with the New World Archaeological Foundation, “digging in Chiapas, Mexico as Scientific Editor and Consulting Archaeologist.”20 Mason had transcribed “thirty pages or so of poetry,” which he “transliterated, and that’s only the beginning.”21

A “Congo” Language Surviving in Loíza: Alegría’s Fieldwork in Loíza Mason managed to transcribe gathered materials from his personal archives without any external help. On November 23, he wrote Alegría about a “Congo vocabulary” that “I got in Loíza in 1915 [and] is much larger than I thought.” The terms ­were phonetically recorded with translations in Spanish. The list is three single-­spaced pages, titled “Phonetics of African (Congo?).” The interview took place in February 1915. Writing to Mason on November 29, Alegría expressed that “the Congo vocabulary is very in­ter­est­ing and good aid to our research in Negro folklore.” Alegría had planned to have “Dr. Hans Wolf, a linguist ­here at the University, [who] has done research in West Africa and w ­ ill help me along with it.”22 At this early stage, Alegría expressed no other plans: “I hope to work with the vocabulary and check it with other words I had collected.” Alegría’s seemingly modest interest in Mason’s unpublished black folklore did not match his experience as both an anthropologist and ethnographer who had already performed extensive field research in Loíza. In 1948, Alegría dug well-­ known La Cueva de Loíza (Loíza’s Cave), where he uncovered remnants of an “una cultura arcaica, pre-­agrícola, de cultura muy primitiva” (archaic, preagricultural culture, with a very primitive development) that preceded the development of Taíno civilization (Alegría, “Actividades” 131). The ideological implications of Loíza as a cradle of African-­based slave and mulatto cultures and also home of a primal indigenous homeland might not have been lost to the budding native anthropologist. Alegría started ethnographical research of Loíza’s “folklore negro” (black folklore) in 1949, placing emphasis on the popu­lar art and religious beliefs (Alegría, “Actividades” 131). He was interested in documenting popu­lar artistic production, described as “imaginería popu­lar” (popu­lar carvings) and religious musical per­for­mance such as “los velorios de angelitos” (funereal wake practices for dead c­ hildren).23 An impor­tant component of Mason’s field notebooks is the copious notations of material that he transcribed for Alegría as “Materia médica and witchcraft.” Listed as “Medical m ­ atter,” a number of the herbs w ­ ere used as components of religious practices. The subject of Loíza’s so-­called “witchcraft,” as Mason had touched upon with Boas, was not discussed with Alegría.

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Such unorthodox black practices had barely been explored at the time of Mason’s visit to Loíza. Tió Nazario de Figueroa, while performing oral research in San Germán from 1920 to 1921, indicated that “El portorriqueño es por lo común supersticioso. Esto proviene, generalmente, de su carácter sencillo e impresionable, y de su más o menos estrecha relación con la raza negra” (Puerto Ricans are more commonly superstitious. This ele­ment comes out, basically, from his ­simple and highly impressionable character, and from their rather close contact with the black race; 23). He ignored such “negro” practices, in spite of the fact that one of his in­for­mants, a white jíbaro, had been witness to slave dances and presumably to their religious practices.

Mason’s Only Identified Cultural In­for­mant: Melitón Congo Mason barely documented Melitón Congo, his most impor­tant black in­for­mant in Loíza. Melitón Congo, a surname that Mason did not explain, was identified as e­ ither “an old man” or an “old Negro.” He “claimed to have been brought to Puerto Rico on the last slave ship,” although he also “insisted that he was not a low-­down Sierra León Negro, but was from muy adentro” (inland; emphasis original). Mason believed Melitón’s account; he also noted that the slave ship must have arrived in 1875, although this date appears as a question. Melitón Congo was also well known in Loíza. One of the local songs transcribed by Mason, a bomba, mentions Melitón Congo by name. The bomba was considered of African origin. In his travelogue written in 1833, Spanish visitor to the island Pedro Tomás de Córdova had already identified “las bombas y otros instrumentos [como] propios en los bailes de morenos” (bombas and other musical instruments proper of black dances; qtd. in Alvarez Nazario, “Historia” 61). Mason’s bombas do not make a connection with the area’s black folklore, however.24 Mason made no indication of his procedural approach to his interview with Melitón Congo. Simply put, Melitón Congo provided Mason “words from childhood memory.” Phonetic transcription of the vocabulary was also a relaxed pro­cess, justified by Mason with the conclusion that “careful phonetic work was not necessary.” Melitón Congo also offered a Spanish translation for most of the words, although “in many cases he [Melitón Congo] was uncertain of the translation.” Some of the translations are Mason’s, perhaps ­t hose handful terms that appear in En­glish.

The Congo Vocabulary as a Sample of Local Loíza’s Cultural Traditions The Congo vocabulary reveals an internal thematic organ­ization, as if prompted by a series of subjects that flowed freely in an informal conversation. With the exception of a few phrases, most of the words are nouns; the majority of them are ­house­hold items, almost as if Melitón Congo was looking around actually

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naming the objects described (fire, wood-­burning stove, iron pots). ­There are also words pertaining to nature (stones, sun, stars) and agricultural paraphernalia (dagger, knife). Numerous mentions of local items such as produce (cotton, potato, plantain, avocado, and pumpkin) and domesticated animals found in the Puerto Rican countryside or even in a rural backyard (pig, ­horse, donkey, goat) seem to indicate that Melitón Congo described for Mason Loíza’s agricultural practices.25 ­There are also ­simple questions and phrases. ­These might have been part of mini-­dialogues between two ­people in which they ask each other their whereabouts and final destinations. This ele­ment suggests that Melitón Congo’s linguistic skills w ­ ere, as Mason indicated, at the basic level of proficiency of “giving words from childhood memory.” Of par­tic­u­lar ethnographical interest, Melitón Congo remembered specific aspects of his native Africa. ­There are mentions of wild beasts (rhino, lion, elephant, alligator, vultures). He also spoke about a “king,” possibly as part of his discussion about African social systems. Within the range of a vocabulary related to f­ amily structure he also pointed out to familial nouns (­brother, son, ­daughter) and friendship terms (guy, gal, friend). Melitón Congo mentioned work activities related to fishing methods (fish trap) in Loíza. The grouping of words goes beyond the mere listing of expected terms (such as fish). More outstanding is Melitón Congo’s mentions of African terms for local types of fish: mojarra and guabina, both words with deep connections to the Taíno indigenous lexicon. A significant number of words relate to religious practices, an indication that Melitón Congo was also Mason’s in­for­mant for data resulting in his list of “Materia Médica and Witchcraft.” References to “hechicero” (male witch), prophet, medicine man, “maestro de brujo” (master sorcerer), and “bruja” (witch) appear in extensive discussions about individuals involved with African-­based worships in Loíza. A striking detail is the fact that, with the exception of bruja, all terms related to high priest prac­ti­tion­ers refer to men. Another large grouping of words that may have an association with local religious practices relate to animals such as snakes and víbora (viper). The sentence “Mataron una culebra” (a snake was killed) also implies that they sustained a conversation about ­actual religious rites. Other words that at first glance may suggest plain h ­ ouse­hold objects (cauldron, iron pots, and needle) or farm animals (doves, goats, chickens) are also impor­tant components of local ceremonies, including the rites of animal sacrifices. The citation to a “dios que sale de noche” (a god that comes out at night) also indicates it was part of a discussion concerning vari­ous types of divinities. Mason failed to trace, however, any popu­ lar beliefs in Loíza based on local adaptations of Roman Catholic rituals, including references to divine entities or concepts pertaining to mainstream catechism. Neither did he expand on the area’s so-­called “witchcraft.”26

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Melitón Congo on Local Religious Practices: “Materia Médica,” Medical Subjects, and “Witchcraft” A more concrete location might have prompted Melitón Congo to expand on his conversation about religious practices. His list includes several words pertaining to a “cave,” perhaps in reference to the well-­k nown “Cueva de Loíza.” He included phrases that indicated asking for permission to enter into a cave and the word for rope, perhaps as part of a ceremony in which individuals, a­ fter receiving divine approval, continue exploring the space. Mason transcribed for Alegría a second list, “Materia médica” (medical subjects), which briefly described native plants that served not only as a type of “green medicine” but also as components of “witchcraft.” Some of the plants are mainly used as ingredients of spiritual cleansings (popularly known as baños) with ulterior needs, ranging from obtaining good luck to finding new love, breaking up spells, and avoiding the “mal de ojo” (evil eye). Solutions to prevent mal de ojo highly impressed Mason. He also listed other alternative ways of personal protection. ­These included the wearing of “cuenta[s] de asabache [sic] . . . ​black (glass) bead brought from Santo Tomás (St. Thomas, Virgin Islands).” The beads, “round, like a pepita seed,” ­were arranged in a certain manner: “Put 3 or 9 in a cabalita (string) and make a necklace.” The individual had, however, to “put [it] around the neck or wrist where it cannot be seen,” as a condition to “prevent all evil to the wearer.” “Magical” remedies, ­under the category of “librar de brujería” (avoiding witchcraft) and “librar de chiso [sic]” or to break an hechizo (spell) are also common ­recipes. Menta (mint), anamú, albahaca, moriviví, Santa María, and altamisa are herbs recommended for spiritual baths. Santa María was a widely used herb; it is also recommended to be placed around the h ­ ouse, “y no llega la brujería” (to prevent witchcraft from entering). Other components in the baths include common ­house­hold items, such as rum. ­There are no indications, however, of prescribed quantities, which is the core of the expertise of so-­called curanderas. ­These w ­ omen, who made ends meet as providers of spiritual ser­vices, might not have agreed to share their knowledge without payment from Mason. Curanderas also worked on issues of the heart. A bath with sandalwood ­water was recommended for “conseguir muchacha” (procuring a girl). This was the only mention of a prescription with a sexual purpose. Th ­ ere is no indication of remedies for improving female health conditions, including issues related to pregnancy, reasons for which w ­ omen with low financial resources often visited curanderas. As expected, the majority of the herbs and plants fall into the category of “green medicine.” Th ­ ere are tonics for many illnesses or physical conditions such as stomach and toothaches, asthma, common cold and fevers, ulcers, and general body aches.27 Some of the recommended plants (such as ruda and sanguinaria) are still widely used in Puerto Rico t­ oday (Nuñez Meléndez 80, 82).28

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Obvious Missing Notations on Local Cultural Practices: Previous Foreign Travelers’ Accounts on Loíza A notable absence in Mason’s notes is two impor­tant components of ethnographical information that foreign travelers throughout the nineteenth c­ entury frequently documented as part of cultural practices among Puerto Rican slaves. On the one hand, Mason made no reference to orthodox Catholic devotions, e­ ither observances of religious feasts or seasonal cele­brations in Loíza, for which this area was well known throughout the island.29 On the other hand, in spite of the fact that he eventually documented hundreds of local songs, Mason made no reference to local musical per­for­mances. Charles Walker, writing in 1836 to relatives in the United States, documented certain types of orthodox religious slavery traditions that ­were permitted for enslaved individuals in Puerto Rico as impor­tant components of their partial socialization pro­cess. Walker, who eventually became an owner of a sugarcane plantation in Guayama, on the southern coast, commented on the slaves’ observance of Catholic rituals, including days of obligation, in accordance to Spanish laws: “They [slave ­owners] cannot work them on Holy days of the church, and t­ hese average three e­ very month and they are compelled to have them christened and a funeral when they die, and Mass said on stated times” (qtd. in Scott 40).30 Religious catechism was, as Walker stressed, an integral component of the hardening of an enslaved mind-­set, creating subjugated individuals to their social periphery as slaves: “The religion taught the slave has a tendency to make him contended [sic]. He is christened and therefore made sure of Heaven at death. His c­ hildren are all regularly christened also, and all the dead have a mass said for the benefit of their souls and are buried in the same consecrated ground with the rich and power­f ul of the land” (43). Walker also commented on leisure activities at sugar cane plantations. M ­ usic and dances ­were marked by “the African drum,” as “the dance of their native land and they accompany the m ­ usic with songs in the Congo language” (43). The cele­brations, Walker accentuated, ­were well or­ga­nized: “I have seen four of ­these drums beaten at the same time for the dance and the ladies and gentlemen accompanying them with the voice, the sounds of which w ­ ere deafening, and ­those dancing who had steadily worked in the field from day dawn to dark” (43). ­These types of popu­lar, massive cele­brations would survive ­after the abolition of slavery, becoming part of national seasonal feasts.

Mason’s Black In­for­mants about Local Cultural Traditions Mason made no references to public religious cele­brations taking place in Loíza, ­either. Th ­ ese seasonal festivities w ­ ere associated with orthodox “fiestas de santos” (observances of ceremonies dedicated to patron saints with the official approval of the town’s Roman Catholic church). Although Mason might not have

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been pre­sent for any such public festivities, he would have known about them through references to festive costumes that kept local seamstresses and artisans busy throughout the year in preparation for rather huge street cele­brations. One festival in par­tic­u ­lar, La fiesta de Santiago Apóstol (The Feast of St. James the Apostle) even ­today is known for fanciful masks made of coconut shells and other natu­ral materials. They are truly pieces of art.31 ­W hether Mason recognized the strong presence of surviving enslaved cultural practices in Loíza, he did understand the strong role that ­music had in the area. His collection of poetry and musical compositions, as he stressed, displayed the same range of structural arrangements and themes found in the samples collected throughout the island. Décimas are the most numerous samples taken in Loíza, with subjects that make references to politics or to perhaps ­actual crimes of passion. A listing of three of the in­for­mants (Juan Sanjurjo, Candido Ferrel, and Víctor Ago[s]to) curiously makes no references to their race. The fact that they ­were white in­for­mants may explain that all other musical styles, such as the seis, aguinaldos, danzas, and coplas, reflected subjects of mainstream interest and made no mention of Loíza’s black heritage. Aguinaldos, Christmas carols, although a popu­lar tradition throughout the island, could have had a stronger significance among Loíza’s black population as a day of obligation, part of mandatory cele­brations in plantations.32 As noted in his field notebooks, Mason’s in­for­mants in Loíza w ­ ere all male. Two of them ­were “negro boys,” Jacinto Díaz Díaz, twelve years old, and Pedro Ortiz, fifteen years old. They might have been responsible for descriptions of local games, one of which, “Juego de Baquiní [sic], de velorio de angelitos,” about a wake for l­ ittle angels, was named a­ fter a popu­lar tradition that was a special religious observance for dead ­children. Although the baquiné was commonly observed outside of racial lines throughout the island, Mason might have inferred that the game in Loíza reflected basic entertainment practices allowed during slavery.33 A more obvious absence in Mason’s field notes is his documentation of local religious practices as part of oral folktales. ­There is, however, one notable exception: the devil or demonic entities as a protagonist of a super­natural story. The untitled story has a ­woman of undefined racial origin making a pact with the devil in order to get pregnant with a girl. The devil agrees, only if she gives the child away on her fifteenth birthday.34 How the w ­ oman eventually manages to fool the devil is, unfortunately, the portion left untranscribed.

Zora Neale Hurston’s Negro Ethnographic Field Practices ­under Boas: The Role of Cultural In­for­mants Boas had a dif­fer­ent approach to training folklorists, particularly field researchers, a­ fter he met Zora Neale Hurston (1891–1960). A student at Barnard College, Hurston came in touch with Boas in 1925, and he ultimately “became the most

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impor­tant figure in her academic life, not only ­because of his ­great magnetism, but also ­because he recognized her genius immediately and urged her to begin training as a professional anthropologist, concentrating on folklore” (Hemenway 63). A year ­later, Hurston joined Boas’s anthropometric research, mea­sur­ ing “Harlem physiognomy” (88) in support of Boas’s ongoing proj­ect “to disprove claims of racial inferiority” (Boyd 114). Their professional relationship included Boas’s mentorship of Hurston’s initial research trip to Eatonville, Florida, beginning in 1927, where she set out to document Southern African American folklore, including “stories, superstitions, songs, dances, jokes, customs, and mannerisms of the black South” (142). One of Hurston’s most notable black in­for­mants was Cudjo Lewis, a former enslaved individual living outside Mobile, Alabama, who provided data of his life in Africa, and most controversially, he revealed details about the involvement of tribal leaders in the entrapment of fellow Africans targeted for the slavery trade. He was well known among ethnographers; in fact, Radin, Boas’s mentee, was also “hot on Lewis’s trail” (154). Hurston successfully gained Lewis’s confidence and permission to rec­ord his life story. Hurston’s manuscript, not published ­until 2018 as Barracoon: The Story of the Last “Black Cargo,” was indeed too graphic, according to Alice Walker: “It resolutely rec­ords the atrocities African ­peoples inflicted on each other, long before shackled Africans, traumatized, ill, disoriented, starved, arrived on ships as ‘black cargo’ in the hellish West” (xii). Hurston also proudly reported to Boas having participated in religious ceremonies. She engaged in total immersion in the cultural milieu of her black in­for­mants, which she described in her 1931 preface of Barracoon as such: “He has been permitted to tell his story in his own way without the intrusion of interpretation” (4). This is certainly at odds with Mason’s total silence about his findings in Loíza, with its predominantly local black population. Whereas Hurston wrote to Boas in 1929 that she joyfully joined her cultural in­for­mants in their observance of popu­lar cultural practices that produced “story material, a collection of c­ hildren’s games, conjure material, and religious material” (Zora 137), Mason’s ethnographic reports to Boas lack recognition that he had participated in similar Puerto Rican culture-­bound festivities. Indeed, ­whether Mason targeted jíbaros as his prime cultural in­for­mants before the trip, as travelers to the island had emphasized, jíbaros w ­ ere actively resisting American cultural practices. As he described to Boas, however, Mason did recognize the importance of rural social gatherings, such as the cele­bration of wakes.

Surviving Black-­Themed Anecdotes and Black Stories in the Published Oral Samples ­ ere are only a handful black-­t hemed anecdotes, which mainly constitute a Th humorous approach to enslaved workers living ­under the restrictions of slavery.

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“El negrito bruto” (The Crude Black Man), for instance, was “un negro que era muy bruto” (the most ignorant of the black slaves; 108), believing the statues of saints and of Jesus Christ are real and can speak to them, ­u ntil one day the church’s sexton plays a game on the naïve enslaved man. As the ignorant man is asking permission of a statue to dip communion bread in the sacramental oil, the sexton throws him a rock. The alarmed man, believing it was an angry answer to his request, leaves the church in a hurry, never back to drink the oil of the Most High. Although certainly a racist joke, the mention that the enslaved man was forced to drink the oil and steal the communion bread (the reason why the sexton is angry) is a reference to the terrible need and hunger of this enslaved individual. Another example that demonstrates the financial need of enslaved workers is “El negro del calabazo de melado” (The Black Man with a Bowl of Sugar Cane Juice). In a similar “dumb joke” format, an enslaved worker manages to get from his master a bowl of sugar cane (he had asked him for a peseta coin that the stingy man claimed he did not have). Happy with his menial gift, the enslaved worker sets out to market while daydreaming about selling the bowl for a meager two reales that he could augment through gambling. The story ends with the black man stumbling and dropping the bowl, thus awakening him to the crude real­ity that he would remain poor and, worse, still an enslaved worker for a penny-­pinching master. A short anecdote has, however, a more sympathetic view of enslaved workers, presenting mischievous characters who triumphantly play games on authority figures. Two versions of “El negro y el rey” (The Black Man and the King) provide a distinctly optimistic characterization of enslaved workers. The first version takes an activist stance, occurring on “una de las centrales de Puerto Rico había muchos esclavos” (one of the sugar mills in Puerto Rico [with] many slaves), “los cuales eran tratados de tan mala manera que no les daban alimento” (who ­were treated so badly that they ­were not even given food; 121). One such hungry enslaved worker, Francisco, as part of a dare, devises a plan to fool his master; his machinations would allow him not only to sit at his master’s ­table, but to eat a bountiful meal with him. The ruse pre­sents the enslaved worker as a trickster and, most importantly, as the main character of a funny story. Although the deception scheme is basic, it draws from the targeted victim’s psychological makeup. When Francisco innocently asks, “Amo, ¿cuánto vale una bolsa repleta de oro?” (Master, how much is a purse full of gold worth?; 122), his greedy master leaves his query unanswered but invites him to join him at his dining ­table. Once well fed, the seemingly innocent enslaved worker asks the question again. This time his master dares to produce an answer that, as a trickster himself, attempts to entrap his enslaved work: “Vente ahora que has comido para que me la des, para decirte cuanto vale” (Now that you have finished eating, come and show it to me and I w ­ ill tell you

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how much it is worth; 122). Francisco’s answer, “Todavía no la he encontrado, mi amo, es para cuando la encuentre” (I have not found it yet, master; it’s for when I may find it; 122), leaves his master s­ ilent. The joke was on the greedy master. The end of the story openly mocks his greediness: “Así fue que comió bien y se ganó la apuesta que había hecho” (Thus it was that he ate well and earned the bet that he had made; 122). This playful story was likely well known. Another version has an identical plotline, except that the mocked figure of power is a king. As in the previous plot, a black man is challenged, “A qué tú no comes en casa del rey” (I bet you ­won’t eat in the king’s ­house!; 122), a dare that the man immediately accepts. The black man heads to the ­castle and plainly asks, “Mi rey, ¿cuánto vale una pelota de oro?” (My king, how much is a golden ball worth?; 122). Like the previous slave master, the king remains s­ ilent, proceeding to invite the hungry man to eat lunch with him. Having finished eating, the king breaks his silence, inquiring about the whereabouts of the golden ball, to which the black man simply answers, “Cuando me la halle, mi rey” (Whenever I find it, my king; 122). The smarty-­ pants answer, which in the previous story left a fooled master speechless, earns this black man severe punishment: “El rey lleno de cólera mandó que le dieran unos palos y lo mandaron para su casa” (The king, very angry, ordered them to give him a beating and sent him home; 122). The abrupt ending, as in the previous version, is a not so subtle criticism of per­sis­tent racist attitudes.

Failure to Highlight Loíza’s African-­Based Traditions Ultimately, Mason and Boas purposely followed the Puerto Rican ideological stance to obliterate Old Loíza as an ethnic site, another cradle for a rising national identity. Attenuation of a slave-­based culture, as Duany has observed, was, however, common among the earliest American anthropologists, who restrained from publishing data of African components in Puerto Rican culture in an open attempt to “ ‘whiten’ the Island’s population” (The Puerto Rican Nation 62). It is also notable, however, that Puerto Rican politicians had similarly ignored the strong colonialist undertones of the impact of slavery in their discussions while opposing (and, on occasion, welcoming) the newest sociocultural impositions, including legislation, that eventually converted the island into an American territory. For Mason, the island’s coastal areas, home to predominantly black and mulatto populations, did not have the same allure of the highlands as a sentimental home of a Puerto Rican national identity. ­There would no mentions to Boas of romantic promenades in Loíza, unlike his numerous mentions of his feeling at home in Utuado. In fact, in his entire correspondence with Alegría, not even once did Mason make an inquiry about the current conditions in Loíza, nor did he won­der about former in­for­mants. He did ask Alegría about the current living condition of jíbaros and w ­ hether they had remained true to their rural traditions.

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In spite of Mason’s preferential treatment of jíbaros, however, the issues published in the Journal of American Folklore barely provided scientifically sound introductions to the ideological importance of Puerto Rican rural folklore in the development of a modern national identity. The preferred image of a native type of “Puerto Rican” was that of a race-­less jíbaro, whose cultural practices w ­ ere deemed as un-­ethnic, as opposed to equally vibrant black and mulatto traditions. Indeed, this decision to exclusively highlight jíbaros was puzzling, given the fact that the Journal of American Folklore had also showed interest in U.S. black oral folklore. Throughout the 1910s the journal published ­music (hymns), poetry, and folktales from the “Negro South” (Georgia, South Carolina, Tennessee, Alabama, Mississippi, and Louisiana). Boas, who had served as editor of this reputable journal, may have considered t­hese samples as reflections in “Negro folklore,” indicative of high inductive cognitive abilities. At the time of Mason’s visit to Loíza, black folklore remained mostly uncollected. Grosfoguel has identified local scholars’ rejection of black cultural markers as an integral part of a multifaceted ethnic Puerto Rican identity as such: “Nationalist discourses and intellectuals reproduce a colonialist discourse that underestimates and subordinates the heritage of African cultures in Puerto Rico. For many nationalists, the ‘Madre Patria’ is Spain” (62). Indeed, Mason was witness to abundant examples of a Hispanic heritage, defined within the cultural context of a highland culture, in which the jíbaro as “light-­skinned peasant living in the mountainous interior, seized the Puerto Rican imagination” (Torres 289). This was in spite of the fact that a number of local bands had made key Afro–­Puerto Rican musical tunes extremely popu­lar throughout the island. Indeed, as a reaction against a post-­slavery past, Boas had emphasized the unique traits of U.S. blacks. In his article “The Anthropological Position of the Negro” (1907), for example, he boldly proposed that “the character of the negro may differ from our own” (47). His chosen examples dwelled upon current black cultural practices that he underscored as “his musical talent; his gift of expressing his thoughts in terse, homely wisdom; his humor and his adaptability” (47). Boas maintained a strong anticolonialist stance in his analy­sis of an American black artistic production. In “Industries of the African Negroes” (1909), he openly denounced slavery’s destructive effects as “the detrimental effect of the break with their historic past” (220). The impact of slavery, Boas continued, was akin to modern time’s intervention in Africa by Eu­ro­pean powers, including American economic effects as commercial traders upon radical changes in the area’s ancient traditions (221). Eu­ro­pean cultural intervention had produced a rupture of traditional native lifestyles, fueled by acquisition of “cheap foreign goods” (221). As ancient ways of life collapsed, “fostered by the disregard of native law by the Eu­ro­pean invaders,” so did the “­whole social fabric” (221). As a result, “the beliefs, and the sacred customs of the ­people, are lost in the shortest pos­si­ble of time” (221–222).

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Lack of critical conversations between Boas, Mason, and Espinosa clearly indicates that they did not recognize the historical importance of the black oral folklore samples from Loíza, an iconic area that even ­today is an impor­tant geo­ graph­i­cal site for Afro–­Puerto Rican identity. Mason might have taken into account, however, that the ongoing national undertaking hailed jíbaros as national figures whose power­ful visual impact had also inspired a popu­lar nativist-­like artistic movement. The Boas, Mason, Espinosa team missed that the “stubbornly-­attuned-­to-­creole-­culture” jíbaro was also praised as a fighting example of a native Puerto Rican character opposed to the U.S. cultural influences at play on the island a­ fter the Spanish-­American War.35 That lack of ideological analy­sis eventually proved to be the downfall of Mason’s “Porto Rico oral folklore” proj­ect, as reflected in a complete silence from the island’s intellectuals, who obviously rejected Mason’s findings.

chapter 6

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Tropicalizing the Puerto Rican Racial Past The Quest of an Indian Area Every­thing is very crude about [jíbaros’] life; few know how to read and write and [they] are astonished to find that one could read what is written. ­There are said to be many idols in this region [of El Yunque]. —­Jessie Walter Fewkes, qtd. in Duany, The Puerto Rican Nation on the Move (2002)

This chapter highlights Boas’s anthropological and anthropometric proj­ects in Puerto Rico, leaving Mason solely responsible for wrapping up the compilation on the field and in written form of hundreds of oral folklore samples. Boas’s interest in Puerto Rico as a potential site for ethnographic and anthropological studies was not, however, a recent proj­ect of his. It may have started at Chicago’s World’s Columbian Exposition where he had an impor­tant role in setting up ethnographic exhibits. Puerto Rico’s presence at this and other international fairs, as Jorge Duany has pointed out, still awaits “a detailed analy­sis of how the U.S. government represented Puerto Rico at such public occasions (The Puerto Rican Nation 41). The  U.S.-­controlled Puerto Rican government fully supported the field research of the myriad of American scientists extensively who traveled extensively throughout the island in the early part of the twentieth c­ entury. In par­ tic­u­lar, the Scientific Survey of Porto Rico and the Virgin Islands had full access to the island’s natu­ral resources and their scientists w ­ ere f­ ree to take advantage of them. Boas had the support of the Puerto Rican governor and of U.S. military personnel, such as Officer Dutcher, whom he acknowledged for his “kind assistance” in obtaining permission to perform anthropometric mea­sure­ ments on soldiers in San Juan and in his assisting in the “taking and recording” of the results (“Anthropometry” 247). Mason documented Boas’s feverishly work 165

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­ roductivity, which followed a similar pattern of his other ongoing anthropop metric proj­ects.1 The year before his trip to Puerto Rico he lived among the Kootenay in northwest British Columbia for a month in 1914, where he collected indigenous oral folklore and built up data of anthropometric mea­sure­ments (Rohner 194). Boas did not live in close proximity with his jíbaro in­for­mants. He left Mason in charge of developing such personal relationships with his sources of vari­ous types of oral folklore, particularly male individuals (adults and c­ hildren) in the hinterlands of Utuado. Unlike Boas, however, Mason did not keep detailed reports of having participating in jíbaro’s cultural cele­brations. I also trace Mason’s anthropological digging and mapping of the Capá ceremonial ballpark, a task that he performed following Boasian field practices, as part of an “Indian” narrative. The proj­ect, which in the documentation of Mason and of other field researchers appears as a rather monumental task, could have been explored with the intention to bring to Puerto Rico a research center similar to the School of International Anthropology that Boas had led and abandoned at the onset of the Mexican Revolution. At the end of his trip, Boas left Puerto Rico as quietly as he had arrived, however, his proposed plan to turn Capá into a teaching museum left unheard by the Puerto Rican government. More significantly, the incipient Puerto Rican anthropology was seemingly left untouched, and the ideological significance of his anthropometric work failed to appear in his f­ uture publications. Fi­nally, Boas’s long-­t ime mentorship of Mason, the young scholar who so badly worked to impress his larger than life mentor, came to an end in a rather public scandal. The incident at the core of the potential dangers of scientific research as a tool for po­liti­cal purposes is still a ­matter of heated discussions.

The Role of International Fairs as Means of Cultural Dissemination The discovery of the “Island of Porto Rico” can be traced through promotional publications of international fairs held in the United States throughout the latter part of the nineteenth c­ entury. Beyond their entertainment value, t­ hese elaborate public events promoted traveling to such iconic U.S. cities as Philadelphia (1876) and Atlanta (1895) “as a ­matter of plea­sure or professional curiosity” (Trommler 5). A pedagogical component, which included “combined features of trade and industrial fairs, carnival, m ­ usic festivals, po­liti­cal manifestations, museums, and art galleries,” supported the dominant ideology of the United States as an emerging and culturally supreme world power (Corbey 339). This grandiose image of cultural domination set against barbarian international cultures was successfully sold to millions of ­eager, paying visitors. Puerto Rican cultural items w ­ ere exhibited in Chicago during the World’s Columbian Exposition of 1893. An international fair with U.S. congressional support, it celebrated the four hundredth anniversary of the discovery of the

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Amer­i­cas, with the proclamation of the “germinal influence in American culture and industrial pro­gress” (Adams 45). Through dynamic exhibits, over 21.5 million paying visitors enjoyed worldwide cultural artifacts (Badger 109). Items from the Spanish colonies—­Cuba, Puerto Rico, and the Philippines—­ were part of the Spanish headquarters (Cameron 288). Americans “visited” t­ hese exotic islands both as observers and as imaginary travelers of sorts, ones who experienced the same kind of “subjective travel experiences” as an a­ ctual traveler (Burton 8). Promotional publications, such as guide brochures and exhibit descriptions, acted, therefore, as ipso facto travel guides, revealing “the enduring conventions of the journey and adventure tale, default paradigms with which writers continue to contend in seeking narrative strategies for representing cultural exchange in globalized contact zones” (Burton 8).

Boas Meets Puerto Rican Taíno Anthropological History: The World’s Columbian Exposition The World’s Columbian Exposition depended heavi­ly on ethnographic exhibits, which had proven to be popu­lar in previous international and national fairs. Ethnography, as a developing science, supported the deeply rooted “unpre­ce­ dented discovery and exploration” that took place worldwide throughout the nineteenth ­century (Michie and Thomas 1). The viewing of indigenous or aboriginal cultural heritage, in terms of both artifacts and representative individuals, was well put together. Frederick Ward Putnam (1839–1914), who had been working on his projected exhibits since 1890, anticipated producing “a perfect ethnological exhibition of the past and pre­sent ­peoples of Amer­i­ca” (qtd. in Cole 152). Putman put Boas in charge of a department of physical anthropology, whose anthropometric survey proposed to survey “Indians and mixed bloods . . . ​t hrough gathering of thousands of individual mea­sure­ments” (Cole 152). Other displays included craniology, neurology, and psy­chol­ogy (Brown 44). Through a popu­lar approach to basic ethnographic and anthropological knowledge as “practical science,” Lee D. Baker underscores that “Boas offered fairgoers an interactive experience with a new science” (Anthropology 92, 94). Putnam and Boas intended to collect ample comprehensive archaeological and anthropological samples to be brought to Chicago by field workers sent out on reconnaissance and collection trips abroad. Some forty-­five to fifty researchers traveled extensively throughout the U.S. Southwest, the G ­ reat Plains, Alaska, Yucatán, and Perú (Cole 154; Fagin 249; Freed 123; Hinsley 348). Seven agents went specifically to Latin American countries: Venezuela, Mexico, Peru, and the Dominican Republic (Brown 58–59). During the Christmas week of 1891, U.S. traveler Frederick A. Ober visited Puerto Rico on an official trip sponsored by the organizers of the Columbus Fair. Ober (1849–1913), a seasoned travelogue writer, bore an official invitation from

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the American government to the Spanish governor, encouraging the island’s participation in the upcoming international fair. A reputable naturalist, Ober had previously visited the Lesser Ca­rib­bean islands as part of ornithological explorations. Identification of an indigenous anthropology was Ober’s official reason for his. He was particularly interested in identifying collections of anthropological artifacts that could be transported to Chicago for the fair. Ober successfully fulfilled his intended field task; he identified a private collection that he vaguely referred to as “owned by a learned doctor residing at Bayamón” (In the Wake of Columbus 403).2 The surviving cata­logs do not detail w ­ hether this Taíno collection eventually traveled to Chicago.

Looking for Corporeal Proof of an Indian Area At the Chicago Columbian Exposition, Boas could have come across another impor­tant Taíno archaeological collection. The Smithsonian had also joined efforts with the Bureau of Ethnology and the United States National Museum as providers of anthropological and ethnological exhibits. Drawing primarily from permanent collections, the Smithsonian exhibit displayed “a narrow interpretation of American anthropology, the combination of culture areas and languages among North American Indians” (Fagin 263). Although outside the geo­ graph­i­cal scope of the “North American Indians,” representative Taíno pieces, known as the Latimer Collection, could potentially have traveled to Chicago. Anthropologist Otis T. Mason (1838–1908) supervised t­ hese exhibits. Mason had extensive expertise in cata­loguing Puerto Rican and Ca­rib­bean Taíno artifacts. Since 1876 he had been working on documenting the George Latimer Collection, which had been donated to the Smithsonian beginning in 1869 (Iranzo Berrocal 17).3 Latimer, a former U.S. consul in Puerto Rico, collected anthropological pieces throughout undocumented zones on the island (Alegría, “Archaeological” 257; Duany, The Puerto Rican Nation 42; Iranzo Berrocal 17). In 1899, Mason prepared the first of two cata­logs of this collection (Iranzo Berrocal 18). A g­ rand public exhibition of the Latimer Collection followed during the Buffalo International Fair in 1901 (Iranzo Berrocal 18) and traveled to other world’s fairs and in American museums (Duany, The Puerto Rican Nation 61; Iranzo Berrocal 18). Boas never indicated, however, if he had been aware of the Latimer Collection, through ­either Mason’s cata­logs or his ­actual viewing of the artifacts at the Smithsonian.

The Anthropometric Study: Jíbaro de la Montaña C ­ hildren Upon his arrival in early December, 1914, John A. Mason’s archaeological and anthropometric field activities immediately started in Utuado, where he explored a specific type of jíbaro culture, frequently referred to as “Taíno mountain jíbaro” culture (Dávila 43). Although ­today ­t here are no documented sources regarding

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Mason’s decision to start anthropological field research in Utuado, U.S. anthropologist Fewkes’s knowledge of Taíno anthropology would have also been practical to Mason’s earliest field explorations while documenting an “aboriginal area” in Puerto Rico.4 Fewkes had visited the Utuado area in 1901, following Puerto Rican historian Salvador Brau’s references to “Indian mounds” in the area (Duany, The Puerto Rican Nation 67). Fewkes also explored an area known as Indiera, on the highlands region in the Cordillera Central, following a hunch from his reading of Brau’s research (Duany, The Puerto Rican Nation 68). Although one of Fewkes’s goals was to locate Indiera, which he noted in his unpublished journals as “one of the last places where the Indians (puer) lived” (qtd. in Duany, The Puerto Rican Nation 69), he never did so. In fact, according to Duany, he often misrepresented its location as “near” other regions of strong indigenous background. Eventually, Fewkes “relentlessly sought the Island’s Indian legacy” in Utuado, but also in other areas not connected geo­g raph­i­cally to Utuado, such as San Germán, Luquillo, Río Grande, Manatí, Yauco, and Ponce (The Puerto Rican Nation 68). Like Spanish travelers, Fewkes wrote in his unpublished field notes of the presence of “Many almost pure types of Indians,” Puerto Ricans whom he visually categorized as of indigenous descent (qtd. in The Puerto Rican Nation 68). They ­were, like their presumable Taínos ancestors, “very conservative and have many of their old arts and customs” (qtd. in The Puerto Rican Nation 69). A common trait of Fewkes’s and Boas’s research proj­ects is that both of them w ­ ere in pursuit of specific ethnological samples of certain cultural traditions among rural inhabitants. Fewkes, like Boas, was interested in an “old mill,” which he attributed “to t­ hose no doubt formerly used by the Indians” (qtd. in Duany, The Puerto Rican Nation 69). Other local traditions of interest to Fewkes included techniques for making canoes and hammocks, “supposedly an ancient Carib custom” (Duany, The Puerto Rican Nation 69).

Boas’s Whereabouts in an Indian Area While on the island, Boas worked exclusively and intensely on the anthropometric proj­ect. On June 13, 1915, writing from Utuado, Mason described to his former professor Kroeber the hectic pace that Boas was keeping: “We are all over our heads in work ­here and thanking our stars that the boss has not quite recovered his pristine vigor. So far Boas, Aitken and myself have been busy mea­sur­ ing the school ­children ­here. Did 202 last week, including photo­g raphs and impressions of teeth” (Mason Collection, University of Pennsylvania). The preliminary finding, according to Mason, was, “The most in­ter­est­ing result so far is that the cranial indices run high, considerably higher than t­ hose of Spain, from where at least 75 per cent of the blood. Environmental influence?” It would also be the basis for Boas’s own conclusion. This would be Boas’s only published essay using Puerto Rican field data.

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In a letter to Commissioner of Education Bainter on February 5, 1914, although Boas introduced himself as the scholar in charge of “the anthropology of the island,” he mainly described the anthropometric component as “a first step in this investigation, an inquiry into the physical development of men ­under tropical conditions” (APS). Its focus would be the “growth of ­children according to the racial descent,” requiring “follow up [with] the same ­children for quite a number of years.” He formally requested his assistance in identifying a group of “investigators,” perhaps teachers, who would be responsible for the gathering of “data in the schools of the island.” B ­ ecause t­ hese investigators would be familiar with their subjects, “­every effort to put themselves into friendly relations with the families, so as to supplement this material by mea­sure­ments of the parents and of their young ­children.” Bainter’s assistance was expected to go beyond mobilizing teachers as prospective participants. Boas also asked him for help in contacting the island’s police forces, who “may be in a position to overcome some of the difficulties that might be in the way of getting at the parents and their young c­ hildren.” Overall, Boas was planning the field research to begin “when the schools are in full session,” in January 1915, a month following Mason’s arrival in late December 1914. Teachers’ participation, as he ended his letter to Bainter, was more complex. Boas stressed that they would become part of a working team: “a number of observers . . . ​for the first set of observations,” to be followed by “the observations on length of body and weight that would be required made by teachers.” The tasks of mea­sur­ing male c­ hildren and “soldiers of the garrison” fell upon Boas, Mason, and Aitken (Boas, “Anthropometry” 247). In a letter to Mason dated December 16, 1915, Boas described to Mason a fourth participant, Dr. Felix Von Luschan (1854–1924), who was to be in charge of traveling to “Porto Rico for the purpose of taking up the anthropometrical work” (APS). Boas regretfully added that “it is doubtful w ­ hether we s­ hall succeed.” At this point Boas considered Von Luschan highly impor­tant, to the point that he even intended to cancel his own participation in the proj­ect: “I practically gave up the idea of g­ oing down t­ here, on account of this possibility; but it looks very doubtful what the ­whole outcome ­will be.” Although Von Luschan’s visit to the island never took place, Boas informed Mason on March 19 that he was planning on traveling to Puerto Rico, “and I hope that you ­w ill assist me in my work” (APS).5

Mason’s Exploration and Contributions to the Digging and Mapping of Capá Mason provided the most detailed description of his findings at Capá in his pre­ sen­ta­tion, “Excavation of a New Archeological Site in Porto Rico,” at the Nineteenth International Congress of Americanists in December 1915. The article is outstanding for its use of photo­graphs that highlighted six “series of courts, or

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plazas . . . ​used for the ceremonial ball-­game which was a feature of insular Arawak religion” (220). Mason’s photo­graphs that documented the a­ ctual physical features—­for example, the ­actual ball courts—­a lso included samples of the large petroglyphs depicting ­human and animal figures (see image 6.1).6 One photo­graph shows Mason proudly posing as he views the results of the “extensive” excavations, presumably the result of his hard work with a handful of local men who served him in cleaning up and excavating the overgrown site (220) (see image 6.2). Although the other two field researchers, Aitken and Haeberlin, explored dif­fer­ent archaeological sites, both of them w ­ ere rather impressed with Capá’s “enclosures popularly known by the natives as ball-­courts (juego de bola)” (Haeberlin 214). Haeberlin described the site as rather overgrown, which had been partially used for planting corn and coffee. He also pointed out that several of the iconic petroglyphs had already been displaced by “the natives who remembered that t­ hese stones had been removed by them from the northern row of vertical stones in order to make a rude pavement over the wet and swampy soil of the valley” (216). Concurrently with the compilation pro­cess of the oral folklore samples, Mason clearly recognized the historic importance of Capá, including his “excavation in some caves around Utuado” which he detailed to Boas in a letter dated January 12, 1915 (APS). A mere month a­ fter his arrival in Puerto Rico and a­ fter settling down in Utuado as his semi-­permanent living quarters, Mason had already performed extensive digging of local caves “around Utuado . . . ​one which it was claimed no scientific had never entered.” The site, “an admirable place for ­human habitation, a wide tunnel open at both ends extending for a hundred yards or more from one side of a hill to the other,” yielded “quite a quantity of skeletal material.” A more exciting discovery was of a “juego-­de-­bola [a ball court] at the foot of the cave.” News about such a groundbreaking finding was followed by a statement that reminded Boas of an already verbalized need for direction: “I have already told you that I think the best we could do in a archeological line this winter would be to carefully excavate one cave, one ‘ball-­ground’ and one shell heap.” As a young scholar breaking performing his solo first digging, Mason eagerly awaited for Boas’s further instructions: “I expect to receive a letter from you with some good advise.” By the time Mason was officially done with his gathering oral folklore in Loíza, as he indicated to Boas on March 2, he was eagerly awaiting for Boas’s arrival. Mason headed back to Utuado, where he was hoping to finish archaeological work ­t here by March 20. He again was inquisitive about how to proceed: “I am not sure if more field work would be more profitable or not. It might be worth while [sic] to visit the area which Fewkes states to be Indian though his statement has been denied by most of the persons I have asked.” Mason closed the letter pleading for Boas’s professional “advice.”

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Figure 6.1. ​“Pictograph Incised on Large Bowlder [sic].”

The Prospect of an International School of Anthropology in Puerto Rico At the time of Boas’s trip to Puerto Rico, he had ended his association with the International School of Anthropology in Mexico due to the country’s po­liti­cal upheaval following the Mexican Revolution.7 An international school of anthropology had been a dream of Boas’s since prior to World War I (Baker, From Savage 147). In 1910 he managed to perform fieldwork in linguistics and archaeology (Darnell, And Along 208); through the support of the University of Mexico he “commenced the organ­ization of work on the native languages of Mexico” (“Summary” 385). Structured as a type of reciprocal exchange of se­nior scholars and training on rising investigators, Boas had the opportunity to supervise the fieldwork of young anthropologists (“Summary” 387; Godoy 235). Indeed, Boas trained Mexican scholars, including Manuel Gamio (1883–1960), who studied u ­ nder Boas at Columbia University through a Mexican governmental fellowship that funded his travel to New York City (Zumwalt, Franz Boas). Gamio’s research on “the g­ reat diversity and quantity of pottery fragments found in the Valley of Mexico” was highlighted through Boas’s supervision of “systematic stratigraphic techniques for the first time in American archaeology” (Godoy 234).8 In Mexico Boas trained ju­nior American anthropologists and ethnologists, including Mason and Radin, who produced groundbreaking research ­under his

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Figure 6.2. ​“Limestone Slabs on Eastern Side of Square Plaza.”

supervision. Mason, who had started working with Boas in 1911, initially collected oral samples among the Tepecano indigenous group in Jalisco, Mexico. In agreeing to continue working with Boas in Puerto Rico, Mason hoped to prepare himself for an academic job or gain professional experience attractive to other learned institutions, such as anthropological museums. It was through his work with Mason that he came in contact with Espinosa, who also served as editor of Mason’s and Radin’s uncovered oral folklore in Mexico. On July 3, 1913, Boas offered Espinosa the position as director of the International School of American Archaeology. Espinosa accepted the offer at once, expressing his desire to engage in the “the dialects . . . ​as you know Phonetics (Spanish) is one of my specialties” (APS). Espinosa had failed to land external financial support that could lead to the creation of a “Spanish Folklore society” in support of “the vari­ ous investigations in Spanish Dialectology and Folklore.” He was not too hopeful, but he lamented that grant institutions, such as Car­ne­g ie, provided large funds only for the hard sciences: “[­There is] money only for the study of the stars, marine biology and mosquitos.” Indeed, Espinosa was very satisfied with Boas’s financial offer: “So you see, ­those of us who are studying the material which interprets the thoughts and ideas of the past have to steal the bread from our families to do our work.” Unfortunately, the school’s activities, which ­were suspended in 1914 a­ fter a U.S. intervention in Veracruz (Godoy 236), left Espinosa without this post. Nonetheless, on November 5, 1915, Boas’s invitation to Espinosa to edit the Puerto Rican oral

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folklore proj­ect may have been a consolation prize ­after the closing of the International School. Rosemary Zumwalt also suggests that Boas had already started looking outside Mexico for plausible archaeological sites (Franz Boas). In his file titled “Anthropological, Porto Rico,” Zumwalt noted, Boas’s urge to dwell on “the investigation of the ancient aboriginal inhabitants and their civilization and the development of the modern population of the island.” Zumwalt detailed Boas’s plans for extensive field research, “the anthropological study of the modern of Porto Rico,” as part of a two-­fold proj­ect: the “effects of race-­mixture with reference to form of heredity in man” and the “effect of tropical environment upon the development of man.” At this earliest stage, he had suggested “an experienced anthropologist.” This individual would “or­ga­nize anthropometrical and psychometrical studies of families, and similar observations in schools.” How Mason came to fulfill this role, in spite of his inexperience, which Boas himself acknowledged, is at the center of Zumwalt’s detailed review of Boas’s field research in Puerto Rico: “With all hopes in for the International School left in ruins, Boas turned his face east ­toward Porto Rico.”9

In a Quest of La Indiera: Boas’s Anthropological Field Research in Puerto Rico According to Mason’s memorial tribute, an article titled “Franz Boas” (1943), the longest surviving published account of his teamwork in Puerto Rico with his famous mentor, Mason recalled that Boas’s purpose in traveling to Puerto Rico was predominantly anthropological and anthropometric. The combined proj­ ects ­were reduced, however, to a mere two paragraphs. Although Boas was aware that the Puerto Rican “aborigines” had been extinct since 1550, he had instructed Mason to keep “an eye open for aboriginal cultural survivals, and even for archaic Eu­ro­pean ones” (64). Mason left unidentified the geo­graph­i­cal area that would reveal such “aboriginal cultural survivals.” In his article “The Anthropometry of Porto Rico” (1920), published long ­after his trip to Puerto Rico, Boas was more specific, identifying the island’s Central Mountainous Range, and the town of Utuado in par­tic­u­lar, as his preferred rural site for field research. Boas acknowledged a Mr. Blanco, identified as the superintendent of the Utuado schools, as the local contact responsible for identifying a number of male c­ hildren to be part of the anthropometric study. This statement corresponds to Mason’s detailed accounts in letters to Boas of his work with ­children from that area as in­for­mants for his oral folklore proj­ect. Documentation in letters between Boas and Mason confirms only male ­children from the Utuado w ­ ere part of Boas’s field study. The focus of work in Utuado, as Mason described to Junghanns on June 14, 1915, was “so far principally in anthropometry,” keeping a busy schedule mea­sur­ing “school ­children of the town.” Nonetheless, Mason described the scope of Boas’s anthropometric proj­ect simply as

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the documentation of “the physical characteristics of the population and on the prob­lem of growth in tropical countries” (“Franz Boas” 64). At the end of the school year, Boas left for San Juan, where he kept “measur[ing] the soldiers of the regiment ­t here.”10 He was expecting to leave the island on July 6, with ­little time to spare for any other type of activity, ­either scientific or social. Boas may have considered Utuado an impor­tant center of his anthropological research, b ­ ecause Puerto Rican scholars had already established it as a geo­ graph­i­cal area with higher incidence of indigenous traces. In “The Anthropometry of Porto Rico,” Boas stated that at the time of his arrival in Puerto Rico he had not denied the “probability of the survival of Indian blood in the island,” which he thought, following local tradition, to be found “in the mountainous region of the western interior” (248). ­A fter some basic calculations, he roughly estimated the surviving ge­ne­tic “Indian blood” on the island to be 14 ­percent (248). He categorically doubted, however, that in rural Utuado this percentage would be “more than is ordinarily assumed” (248). In his article “New Evidence in Regard to the Instability of ­Human Types” Boas was even more adamant in accepting “a popu­lar belief in Puerto Rico that in certain parts of the island, in the so-­called ‘Indiera,’ Indian types have persisted to a greater extent than elsewhere” (81). He reluctantly left open a possibility, however, that his mea­sure­ment in field research was not as comprehensive as he would have liked: “I have not been able to find any definite indication of a difference in type; but I have mea­sured only a few individuals from ­t hese [Indiera] districts” (81). Tangentially, Boas referred to the island’s cultural mixture as “the effect of the importation of negro slaves,” concluding that t­ hose cranial changes that he had registered in his anthropometric data ­were akin to a “phenomenon similar to the change in head form, which he had documented among Eu­ro­pean immigrants who settled in North Amer­i­ca” (253). Mason displayed a less enthusiastic approach to Boas’s findings. He left undefined his most significant comment: “Our most in­ter­est­ing discovery ­here is that the population is considerably more brachycephalic than the populations of Spain, a discovery which points in the same direction as Boas’s investigations on the immigrants in New York. But we are proceeding carefully with our deductions.” Boas’s anthropometric research in Puerto Rico was geared ­toward investigating the “growth in tropical climate” (247). He documented that t­here ­were indeed marked differences in the cephalic indexes between parents of Spanish origins and their ­children born in Puerto Rico. He ruled out, however, the possibility that t­ hese changes could be due to black influence, even though he had also recorded “a certain number of negro ele­ments” as illustrated in other physical attributes (a similar African fin­ger reach pre­sent among Puerto Rican men that did not show evidence of negro descent) (248). In the end, Boas left open the possibility that the cranial changes w ­ ere “a phenomenon similar to the change

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in head form which has been observed among Eu­ro­pean immigrants who settled in North Amer­i­ca” (253). The Puerto Rican data supported Boas’s conclusion in “New Evidence in Regard to the Instability of H ­ uman Types”: “We are compelled to assume that the form which we observe is due to physiological modification that has occurred ­under the new environment” (80). About the growth rate in tropical environments, an area of interest for Boas, he dismissed any notable differences as compared with Eu­ro­pean counter­parts, such as Sicilian c­ hildren mea­sured in the United States. Although he did rec­ord a “­little lower” growth rate among Puerto Rican ­children, he concluded that such a difference could be due to “poor nutrition, and prob­ably also pathological ­causes,” conditions easily remedied by “better hygienic conditions” (81).

Boas’s Recommendations to Governor Yager For his efforts Boas promised Governor Yager a series of publications, “Memoirs,” produced in ­house at the New York Acad­emy of Sciences. In terms of the anthropological and additional scientific fieldwork, like the botanical and geological expeditions, ­t hose specimens, once cata­logued in New York, “could be returned to Porto Rico to form the basis of a natu­ral history museum” (APS).11 Boas’s most concrete recommendation to the Puerto Rican government was that Capá should be bought from a private owner to thus preserve it for controlled public display. His concept of turning the site into a teaching anthropological park did not take place, however, u ­ ntil many years l­ ater, in 1956, ­under the administration of Luis Muñoz Marín, the first Puerto Rican governor elected by popu­lar vote. ­A fter Mason’s return trip to the island that year, he released to Alegría a plethora of documents originally produced at Capá during his trip, including his maps that surveyed the topography of the area as he had found it, drawings of the site, and photo­graphs.12 A noticeable missing ele­ment in their correspondence is Mason’s complete silence about Boas’s activities at Capá, since only Boas, not any other of the rising anthropologists who performed digging duties, was highlighted as the main field worker.

Boas as Spokesperson of the Dillingham Congressional Commission At the national level, Boas had been deeply involved in anthropometric research that contested l­egal immigration restrictions of prospective immigrants, particularly arriving from Southern and Eastern Eu­ro­pean countries. His scientific methodology was fully intended to “significantly weaken restrictionist arguments for excluding certain types of immigrants” (Zeidel 87). The Dillingham Congressional Commission, established by President Roo­se­velt in 1907, set out to “[study] the impact of immigration on all levels of society and [decide] ­whether a literacy test was the best legislative approach to what Progressive Era Americans termed the ‘immigrant prob­lem’ ” (Petit 6). In short, as Jeanne D. Petit

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plainly states, the purpose of the Commission was to inquire ­whether “par­tic­u­ lar races [­were] incapable of national belonging” (9). In 1908 Boas was charged by the Dillingham Congressional Commission to perform “an investigation of the physical characteristics of immigrants” (Boas, “Changes” 1). Through Boas’s extensive anthropometric research, also financed by the commission, Boas successfully noted “the power of environment fundamentally to destabilize and alter racial types” (Jacobson, Barbarian Virtues 150). Boas’s findings ­were indeed groundbreaking; he “questions the w ­ hole notion of racial difference and instead postulated that environment and culture had more to do with differences among groups of p ­ eople than inherent racial traits” (Petit 9). As he vehemently stated in his formal report, “Changes in Bodily Form of Descendants of Immigrants” (1912), t­here ­were marked bodily generational changes, though not determined by racial differences: “If ­t hese traits change ­under the influence of environment, presumably none of the characteristics of the h ­ uman types that come to Amer­i­ca remain stable. The adaptability of the immigrant seems to be very much greater than we had a right to suppose before our investigations w ­ ere instituted” (2). In the end, Boas’s findings ­were completely ignored in the drafting of the commission’s recommended policies, reduced to “only a part of the full set of commission reports” (Zeidel 100). One of the commission’s recommendations, the institution of a literacy test, could be read as the need “to protect the nation’s economic and social standard from low-­wage immigrants” (Petit 56).

The Erasure of Local Anthropologists Unlike what had been his professional practice in Mexico, Boas did not seek association with local anthropologists who w ­ ere also involved in modern field practices while in Puerto Rico. As Duany stated, “American scholars displaced an incipient native tradition of academic research on the Island’s archaeology and folklore” (The Puerto Rican Nation 61). Boas’s visit remained, however, mostly anonymous, ­whether ­because Puerto Rican scholars had no previous knowledge of his work or rejected his findings as insignificant given that the oral folklore remained critically undocumented.13 Mason did, however, come in contact with a notable Puerto Rican anthropologist, Adolfo de Hostos, who served as Mason’s companion and guide through remote rural areas. De Hostos (1887–1959), son of Puerto Rican nationalist Eugenio María de Hostos, had graduated with military training in Chile in 1898, joined the American-­founded Porto Rico Regiment of Infantry, and served as aide-­de-­camp of Governor Yager. He was also a noted collector of Taíno archaeological pieces. When he met Mason in 1914, de Hostos was busily at work on archaeological field research, a proj­ect that, according to an autobiographical essay, he had started the same year he met Mason in Puerto Rico (“Historia” 20).14 Writing to Boas on February 22, 1917, Mason identified Lieutenant de Hostos as a person who should receive a copy of the adivinanzas

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publication. Meeting Mason did not seem to have made an impression on de Hostos, who never acknowledged having met him. Given the heated discussions in Puerto Rico concerning racial issues as they pertained to a plausible incorporation of Puerto Ricans as citizens of the United States, Boas clearly remained marginal to the heated Puerto Rican po­liti­cal scene. But this attitude went against his national profile to utilize his anthropometric proj­ect in order to affect social change. In “The Negro and the Demands of Modern Life” (1905), for example, an article written for the general public, he boldly placed his anthropometric field research within the ongoing heated controversies in the United States: “In discussions of the economic and social conditions of the Negro the advocate of larger opportunities for the race is constantly met by arguments based on the tacit assumption of the physical and ­mental inferiority of the Negro” (85). He was very clear in pointing out that the significance of ­t hose physical differences had gone untested, however: “No reason has been brought forward to show why a fiat shinbone, a long heel, a marked curvature of the limb bone, or thickness of the lips should necessarily be related to inferior vitality or inferior ability” (85). Boas might have considered that data from his trip to Puerto Rico could be misused. Matthew Frye Jacobson argues that travelogues served as a medium for a “rhe­toric of empire,” an impor­tant component in the United States’ emergence as a rising po­liti­cal power in the twentieth ­century: “Exotic lands became lovely commodities to be desired and possessed; by rendering indigenous ­peoples as mere fixtures of that landscape, the very language and logic of a travelogue effaced the ‘natives’ as sentient agents in their own right, and denied the import of their own languages, laws, customs, mores, intellects, histories, and world-­ views” (Barbarian Virtues 110). Boas did not denounce the United States’ po­liti­ cal dominance of Puerto Rico, including the possibility that anthropological work performed on the island could influence American “law and policy from the Philippines to Puerto Rico” (Baker, From Savage 9). He had, however, denounced American imperialist practices in the Philippines and elsewhere in Latin Amer­i­ca (Lewis 291). More puzzling, his distancing from the Puerto Rican sociopo­liti­cal scene was not in keeping with his notable influence upon African American activists such as Booker T. Washington, W. E. B. Du Bois, Monroe N. Work, George W. Ellis, Car­ter G. Woodson, George E. Haynes, Alain LeRoy Locke, Charles S. Johnson, Charles H. Thompson, and Abram Harris (Williams 6). Ultimately, such a clear apo­liti­cal stance would be the main reason for Puerto Ricans’ lack of interest in Boas’s proj­ects and, by extension, Mason’s monumental oral folklore collection.

The Abrupt End to a Mentorship Relationship Given the fact that Boas kept himself marginal to the Puerto Rican po­liti­cal scene, it is telling that his professional relationship with Mason came to an abrupt

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end b ­ ecause of a heated national controversy concerning the U.S. anthropologists’ work for American military units during World War I, that Boas himself initiated. Rosemary Zumwalt has traced the chain of events, which started ­after Mason’s field research in Puerto Rico. Upon his return from Puerto Rico, Mason, who had found a stable position at Chicago’s Field Museum of Natu­ral History thanks to Boas (Godoy 237), had gone missing when Boas contacted him on July 31, 1917, for the purpose of proofreading one of the forthcoming Puerto Rican proj­ect publications (Zumwalt, Franz Boas). A ­ fter getting no response from Mason, Boas reached out to a personal contact at the Field Museum; he learned, to his surprise, that Mason had been deployed to an unknown Central American country on a special mission. Through a flurry of correspondence with colleagues in the United States and in Mexico that Boas’s biographer Zumwalt has carefully documented, he came to ascertain that Mason had left for Mexico as part of “espionage work” for the U.S. Office of Naval Intelligence (Browman 10). He was not a terribly effective spy. Mason found himself involved with the law when his traveling companion, William Hubbs Mechling (1888–1953), also a Boas mentee, was arrested by the Mexican police. Mechling’s release from jail took place only through the direct intervention of Gamio, who had also been a former student Boas at Columbia University and the former director of the International School of Archeology in Mexico (Browman 10). Gamio had developed po­liti­cal clout in Mexico, “increasingly involved with official indigenist policies” (Godoy 237) and was the first national director of anthropology u ­ nder the Secretaría de Agricultura de México (Zumwalt, Franz Boas). As Zumwalt stresses, “Boas felt even more responsible for any pos­si­ble misrepre­sen­ta­tion to Gamio of their undertakings.” Two years l­ater, ­after concluding his lengthy investigation, on December 20, 1919, Boas published an op-ed letter, “Scientists as Spies,” in the Nation, accusing four unnamed American anthropologists of performing fieldwork while “employed as government agents” (27). His twofold warning, that this practice not only was unethical but also posed a potential danger, ­because “­every nation ­will look with distrust upon the visiting foreign investigator who wants to do honest work, suspecting sinister designs” (27), went unheard by the professional community in the United States. Boas was overwhelmingly criticized in public and through private correspondence; eventually the American Anthropological Association officially censured his letter on December 30. The reasons for this overwhelmingly open national opposition to Boas are still debated. Price is inclined to point out “extraneous ­factors . . . (chief among ­these being institutional rivalries, personal differences and possibly anti-­Semitism).” Browman has pointed out, however, the highly politicized environment due to the war: “Patriotism that was rampant, the fact that many of the anthropologists had been actively involved in the war, and the general xenophobic isolationism that was building in the country in the late teens and early twenties of the twentieth ­century” (14).15 Joe Nalven

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shares this opinion that Boas was taken as anti-­American, and that his letter was “seen as an unfair criticism of President Wilson.” This event sourly terminated Boas and Mason’s professional relationship. As Zumwalt traced, Mason privately reached out to Boas. Mason had received a letter from Boas, as well as other colleagues, which Zumwalt supposes, “likely this was a copy of ‘Scientists as Spies.’ ” Mason’s answer to that generic letter is dated February 18, 1920. The letter is succinct and direct. Indeed, Mason had been asked to gather “accurate information concerning the activities of their enemies.” He had no regrets in agreeing to perform such duties (he carefully left out ­whether he eventually came to fulfill them): “Trust I s­ hall never be called upon again for such work, but if I ever am, I s­ hall prob­ably again fulfill it to the best of my ability. I may say to you personally that I found both the work and the com­pany distasteful and was very glad to be recalled.” He ended the letter with a hopeful plea that their professional relationship would continue: “No one regrets more than I that this disagreement has caused you a moment’s distress and hope that it w ­ ill cause no rift in our cordial relations.” The young scholar was obviously not afraid to maintain a professional relationship with Boas, who was experiencing ostracism and openly harsh criticism. Given the opposition to his op-ed letter, it is not surprising that a rather infuriated Boas answered Mason at once on March 1: “Your letter was a g­ reat disappointment to me. I expected that when the point at issue had become clear to you that you would have seen that your action cannot be defended on any basis. I am glad to see that you appreciate, at least, that the kind of work is nasty.” He closed with a scathing statement that maintained his censorship against Mason, in spite of his young age, that his inexperienced dealings with deeply ingrained po­liti­cal issues could not be ignored: “A young man at a time when he lacks careful deliberation and without appreciating what the work ­really means, might get involved in a ­matter of this sort, but how anyone can excuse in any way, actions which in ordinary life would be considered dishonorable, b ­ ecause they are based on lying and deceit.” Th ­ ere is no recorded answer of Mason to this letter. Mason did not hold a grudge against Boas, nor did he publicly address the issues raised in the op-ed letter. He continued to regard Boas as his earliest mentor. On July 20, 1936, from the University Museum, University of Pennsylvania, where he was employed as curator of the American Section, he wrote Jules Henry about plans in cele­bration of Boas’s retirement at Columbia University. The statement in f­ avor of Boas was telling of a se­nior scholar mindful of the impact of a reputable professional on the earliest stage of his ­career: “I regret that the tone of this reply seemed to indicate that I did not feel that I should be included among the students of Dr. Boas. Quite to the contrary I feel that while I never took any formal instruction u ­ nder him my work u ­ nder his guidance in Mexico and Porto Rico entitled me to consider myself a student of his and I take considerable pride in this sentiment.”

Conclusion El que escucha y no comprende este punto que yo toco, será que pena de loco o será que no me entiende. Si en la historia se desprende que después de ser indianos españoles y africanos, basta con que se nos diga que estamos envueltos en liga de sangre los borincanos. They who listen and do not understand this issue that I sing about ­here, perhaps you may sadly be crazy or clearly you ­don’t get it. From history we can determine that with having been indigenous Spaniards and Africans, enough is to be said that t­ here is mixture of blood in all Puerto Ricans. —­Popu­lar Puerto Rican octosyllabic poem (qtd. in Canino Salgado 225)

The Outstanding Relevance of the Oral Folklore: Jíbaros as Writers In their uncovering of numerous samples of oral folklore, Boas and Mason sought to produce the largest such collection from a Spanish-­speaking country or territory. Unlike any other similar proj­ects that they had previously overseen, the compilation pro­cess in Puerto Rico included large numbers of locals who served both as oral in­for­mants and, most importantly, as writers, for the first 181

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time in national literary history. They w ­ ere overwhelmingly jíbaros, peasants whose abilities to produce a variety of oral folklore formats w ­ ere well known throughout the island and had been praised by Spaniards u ­ nder the colonial period and by American travelers right a­ fter the Spanish-­American War. The intense pro­cess of compiling hundreds of samples was pos­si­ble through the facilitation of the American-­controlled Puerto Rican government. The support of Governor Yager, who initially arranged procedures leading to multiple scientific explorations of the island’s natu­ral resources, included approval of Boas’s anthropological, anthropometric and the oral folklore proj­ects. Although presumably within the scientific par­ameters of a survey, however, ­these scientific-­ based components did not seem to fit the utilitarian function of the remaining technical explorations of the island’s bountiful natu­ral resources. Boas’s decision to perform archaeological field research in Puerto Rico might have been directly related to the closure of the International School of American Archaeology and Ethnology in Mexico, which ended operations in 1914. ­W hether he intended Puerto Rico to become a replacement for Mexico as the site of an archaeological school is not known; however, as their correspondence indicates, Mason often pointed out the large amount of work still to be done in the uncovering of Capá. Boas was extremely satisfied with Mason’s work, whose findings w ­ ere published u ­ nder his name in the United States. Boas’s formal recommendation to the governor that Capá’s site should be bought from a private owner and turned into a teaching park was, however, ignored. Most puzzling of all, Yager seemed to have been left mostly in the dark about the result of Mason’s oral folklore proj­ect. Although he had been initially responsible for providing Mason with direct contact to Bainter, director of a newly reconstituted Porto Rico Department of Education, ­t here would be no official reports about the importance of this monumental proj­ect that consumed Mason’s attention for a period of about five months, beginning in December of 1914. The implications of asking schoolchildren to write the oral samples, given the imposed regulations to use En­glish as the language of instruction, ­were never discussed at the Survey Board meetings nor during the lengthy editing pro­cess. Indeed, in Mason’s ­handling of c­ hildren from the Public School system he also ignored ongoing policies intended to facilitate their “Americanization” through the use of En­glish. It is apparent that, in spite of public opinion, in its cohosting Mason’s proj­ect the Department of Education had not totally curtailed the use of Spanish among schoolchildren. The Department of Education presumably was interested both in the documentation of a “jíbaro Spanish” through the ­children’s written samples as reflected in surviving instructions that particularly called for the transcription of stories as heard from old acquaintances. Nonetheless, the Department Education failed to publish Espinosa’s edited samples, a surprising decision given

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the amount of time it must have taken teachers to train students. And, most importantly, the ­children ­were not awarded for their efforts, in spite of the fact that similar, previous proj­ects as contests had offered monetary rewards. An all-­male team of jíbaros who wrote oral folklore samples of vari­ous types of genres completed Mason’s lineup of rural in­for­mants. Their personal information was not published, in spite of the fact that Mason often described to Boas his interaction with men well known for their oral deliverance abilities. He likewise remained quiet about the current conditions operating in rural communities, particularly in Utuado, the iconic pueblo in the fertile Central Mountainous Range that, at the time of Mason’s visit, had become the sentimental cradle of jíbaro culture. In Utuado he came to know rural traditions through the oral folklore “del Jíbaro de la altura” (the jíbaro of the highlands) that dominated the collected samples.

Jíbaro Socioracial Traditions as the Sole Reflections of a Puerto Rican National Identity The documentation of racially bound cultural ele­ments representative of a Puerto Rican national identity was a pervasive ele­ment of po­liti­cal and literary movements throughout the early part of the twentieth c­ entury. Th ­ ese proj­ects, mainly uncovering rural oral folklore and documenting jíbaro traditions, aligned with one of Mason’s interests: highlighting jíbaro traditions over an equally rich Afro–­ Puerto Rican cultural practices. The jíbaro became the principal iconic repre­ sen­ta­t ion of a national identity facing imposed American traditions. Puerto Ricans collecting similar oral folklore samples also heralded the jíbaro as the supporter of criollo (native cultural customs), with a strong connection to ancient established Spanish traditions that would successfully resist American influences. I have read Mason’s report letters to Boas as personal documents within the trend of travelogues that American travelers produced as visitors in Puerto Rico following the po­liti­cal takeover of the island ­after the Spanish-­American War. ­These trips, which fall in the category of reportage, extensively covered information pertaining to the post–­Spanish-­A merican War’s Island Possessions. While in Puerto Rico, American travelers wrote profusely about typical native traditions, easily observed through public activities (­women washing clothes in rivers and funeral pro­cessions, for example) and without the need of a language exchange. As Frederick Ober clearly established in the early twentieth-­century travelogue Our West Indian Neighbors (1904), the cultural transference of a newly acquired “Porto Rico” would be expected to have an impact upon American affairs: “[Puerto Rico] holds the proud distinction of being the first island in the West Indies to come ­under our flag, and, as the first of our possessions in the American tropics, ­will prob­ably be the theater of events having more than local

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significance” (232). Nonetheless, as Ober lamented, Puerto Ricans w ­ ere holding on to native traditions, in spite of “restraints of American rule, the natives still hanker for the pleasures of the bull-­fight and cock-­pit” (247). Americans travelers often misinterpreted Puerto Rican traditions, or they merely concentrated on the economic potential of the island (Luque de Sánchez 32–33). Puerto Ricans ­were subjected to cultural impositions through American sociopo­liti­cal and economic practices. As colonial subjects, Puerto Ricans ­were, on the one hand, exotic in their complex racial constitution and, on the other, primarily “esencial e irremediablemente distintos” (essentially and inevitably dif­ fer­ent; Anazagasty Rodríguez, “La plusvalía” 102). Emphasis upon the peculiarities of the Puerto Rican social system propelled classification of ethnic “types” that illustrated seemingly deep cultural differences. Puerto Ricans w ­ ere represented as subservient components of a colonial power structure expressed in terms of “binary oppositions between colonizer and colonized” (Duany, The Puerto Rican Nation 61). Eyewitnesses reporting from the island frequently viewed cultural traditions in conflict with the modern rising economic power of the United States. The strongly demeaning stance ­toward Puerto Ricans’ ability to self-­govern (as reflected in certain social traditions) may account for the passing of U.S. federal po­liti­cal regulations that applied only to Puerto Rico. Such a negative and tainted view was balanced, it seemed, by travelers’ attempts to create more w ­ holesome views of Puerto Ricans. Their views ­were not very broad, however; they ­either focused on the island as a commercial wasteland or took a paternalistic attitude in hopes that the United States would turn Puerto Rico into a showcase of modernity.

The Unexplored “Language Issue” in the Pro­cess of Gathering Oral Folklore Samples Puerto Ricans ­were heatedly discussing the impact of En­glish upon schoolchildren, as it was imposed as a language of instruction. In par­tic­u­lar, in asking students from the public school system to write oral samples in Spanish, Boas and Mason discounted the impact of their request within the language controversies widely covered at the time. Moreover, local politicians w ­ ere debating highly contested definitions of national identities, which included favoring Spanish as the official language of the island, as the sentimental component of a “national” character. Indeed, in their approach to Puerto Rican oral folklore, the uncertain po­liti­cal status of the island, first subjected to a tight Spanish ruling and, at the time of their travel, to a vague colonial relationship ­under U.S. federal regulations, was not considered to be a f­actor that could have impacted the final product. The “language issue,” as debated by Puerto Rican politicians from all ideological ranges, e­ ither for or against U.S. incorporation, should have caught Boas’s critical attention. Discussions pertaining to the role of Spanish as the language

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of cultural expressions, such as poetic forms (décimas, for example), reverberated in the definitions of Hispanidad, as Puerto Ricans saw themselves as inheritors of ancient Spanish traditions. Thus, in Mason’s interest to document the “island Spanish” of his cultural in­for­mants, he joined in similar local research proj­ects that, besides their linguistic aspect, explored the role of Spanish as the language of jíbaro oral traditions. Mason’s extensive documented linguistic material was deemed devoid of sociopo­liti­cal relevance during the editing pro­ cess. Unfortunately, the critical basis for that decision was not much discussed, veiled by the fact that Mason’s linguistic skills in understanding the nuances of jíbaro Spanish ­were rough at best. Mason’s linguistic data ­were indeed rather simplistic, essentially ­limited to phonetic descriptions of the peculiarities of rural Puerto Rican Spanish. His jíbaro oral samples did not trace examples of key words with historical, ethnic, or racial components. Even though Mason and Boas ­were interested in documenting physical remnants of surviving indigenous cultural traditions, they both failed to recognize the impact of the Taíno language on rural jíbaro speech. Mason should have been aware of such strong impact through e­ arlier documentation by American anthropologist Fewkes, who recorded examples of surviving Taíno cultural practices. Jíbaros had maintained indigenous cultural customs of Taíno origin, including the use of native vocabulary adapted to Spanish pronunciation patterns. In fact, ­because of their geographic isolation, jíbaros had also kept a lexis of Spanish variants, tracing back to the Peninsular regions that historically populated Puerto Rican rural areas. A rich surviving oral folklore of Taíno origin was not tapped, perhaps b ­ ecause Mason was specific in his interest in material of Spanish origin. At the national level, a minor trend during the romantic period had found inspiration in the island’s Taíno historical past. A lack of historical specificity might have been the reason for Espinosa’s rejection of Mason’s jíbaro linguistic data, which, ­after all, ­today merely reads as a list of curious examples taken down without an indication of their social relevance. Nonetheless, Espinosa himself, although he often bragged about being a native speaker of Spanish, did not himself have any prior experience with the type of rural Ca­r ib­bean Spanish that characterized the linguistic usage of Mason’s jíbaro in­for­mants. Mason’s compilation of Puerto Rican folktales was clearly informed by his close relationship with jíbaros, whose oral folklore themes and subjects clearly dominate the published samples. They also reported rural customs and religious traditions that are often central components of folktales categorized as Puerto Rican. Curiously, in his correspondence with Boas, Mason kept references to his witnessing or participating in ­actual cultural activities so characteristic of the Puerto Rican countryside to himself. For example, having started field research in early December, Mason did not report to Boas any details about la Navidad

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Jíbara de la Montaña that even ­today make Christmases High in the Mountain iconic cele­brations of a Navidad criolla.1 Indeed, as part of Utuado’s parrandas, Christmas fiestas, Mason would have first been introduced to local va­ri­e­ties of a rich musical tradition, particularly décimas and aguinaldos, Christmas carols that make up a large number of the published poetic samples.

An Inconclusive and Apo­liti­cal Proj­ect The quest through an “Indian area” included Boas’s extensive anthropometric field research. The initial research was rather extensive as he proposed to the Survey Board in an undated memorandum. It included “anthropometrical and psychometrical studies of families,” to take place within a five-­year span, “if pos­ si­ble ten, and would require regular supervision” (APS). The proj­ect, which already had the support of the Puerto Rican governor, through the intervention of the Public school superintendent, sought “inquiry into the physical development of men ­u nder tropical conditions,” focusing on the “growth of ­children according to the racial descent” (APS). Boas predicted a lengthy proj­ect, he anticipated a “follow up [with] the same c­ hildren for quite a number of years.” His formal request to superintendent Bainter included his assistance in collecting “data in the schools of the island.” A group of “investigators,” perhaps teachers, would be asked to make “­every effort to put themselves into friendly relations with the families, so as to supplement this material by mea­sure­ments of the parents and of their young ­children.” Given the extension and the complexities of the fieldwork specified in the original proposal, ­today the reasons the proj­ect was never concluded are puzzling. The a­ ctual published article, Boas’s only paper on his historic trip to the island, is t­ oday almost a mere footnote in the academic progression of this gigantic scholar. More importantly, the po­liti­cal implications of the racial data that ­were actually collected ­were never considered within the heated controversies pertaining to the prospective incorporation of Puerto Ricans as American citizens. Through his conversations with jíbaros, Mason was immersed, however, in their strug­gles to achieve workers’ rights. The rural landscape that Mason came to know was experiencing radical changes that ­were direct results of American technological upgrades of Puerto Rican industries. Mechanization of agrarian practices had already provoked radical changes in rural communities. Highly technological plantations, such as larger sugar cane refineries, brought strife when new work regulations disturbed an ancient Spanish-­based agrarian system. Puerto Rican ­labor activists often charged that ­t hese American companies openly v­ iolated workers’ rights, and pro-­nationalists denounced them as a direct cause of the loss of ancient farmland traditions. Policies a­ fter the Spanish-­ American War had allowed for “cambio de una economía semi-­feudal, de haciendas, a una economía dominada por la agricultura de plantaciones capitalistas

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(a change of a semi-­feudal economy of privately owned haciendas into an economy where cap­i­tal­ist plantations dominated the economy; Quintero Rivera, “El desarrollo” 33). Sugar cane and tobacco plantations required large numbers of rural workers who w ­ ere lumped into crowded, makeshift housing. L ­ egal regulations allowed for such new living quarter arrangements (35). Of par­t ic­u ­lar historical importance was Mason’s witnessing of events surrounding the establishment of the Puerto Rican Socialist Party in 1915 (Negrón-­ Portillo 49). Its leader, Santiago Iglesias (1872–1939), was a l­abor or­ga­nizer who kept close ties with the American Federation of ­Labor (Trías Monge 72). Mason would have been aware of the impact of drastic changes in the island’s agricultural infrastructure leading to increased production for U.S. exportation. The installation of “huge grinding centrales,” American-­owned sugar cane plantations and refining centers (Whalen 7), for example, had already negatively impacted the social fabric of rural culture (Ayala and Bernabé 36; 49–50; Guerra 27). Nowhere did Mason report to Boas on the popu­lar discontent that was covered by local newspapers so often and in ­great detail.

Uncovering a Negro Folklore through a Former Enslaved Worker: The Missing Racial Component Mason’s memories of his time living among jíbaros remained strong in his mind many years ­after his trip to the island. He only inquired about them in his initial correspondence with Alegría, who as the first director of the Institute of Puerto Rican Culture, contacted Mason in regards of his historic mapping of Capá. Alegría had, however, a less romanticized view of rural life. On November 26, 1957, in response to Mason’s query, Alegría reported on the current cultural conditions of rural life, distressing Mason’s rather nostalgic memories of his life among jíbaros (University of Pennsylvania). Their correspondence is of notable importance, ­because, for the first time, Mason described his whereabouts in Loíza, the small fishing village on the northeastern coast that had already established itself as the sentimental cradle of a black Puerto Rican culture, mainly referred on the island as cultura afro-­ puertorriqueña. Indeed, t­hese traditions greatly captured Mason’s ethnographic attention as he explored “Old Loíza” during at least three field research visits. During t­ hese extended stays, as he detailed to Boas, he came to experience, in his own words, a rich “Negro” folklore. Boas de­cided not to produce a formal review of all components of Puerto Rican ethnicity. The Negro material gathered in Old Loiza, as the face of a black Puerto Rico, was completely obliterated. Mason’s most extraordinary finding was in his working with a local in­for­mant, Melitón Congo, whom he simply described as an “old African” and a former slave. He spoke to Mason about the local use of green medicine practices and, as Mason referred to them, “witchcraft” observances. I have yet to find a rationale from e­ ither Mason or Boas to explain their

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reasons for not publishing this outstandingly rich material. More perplexing is the fact that Alegría, who had also performed anthropological research in Loíza, did not show much interest in Mason’s black ethnographic and linguistic material, nor was it deemed worthy of publication. In his field notes Mason did not state ­whether his black collaborators served as writers. Given Loíza’s racial makeup, however, Mason clearly failed to recognize the historical significance of allowing black in­for­mants to be writers of their own folklore material. ­These samples (lost ­today) would be among a handful of writings produced by blacks within a literary scene that had been dominated thematically and racially by white writers, although self-­identified as racially hybrid u ­ nder the racially-­neutral label of criollo. It is also evident that, as a team, Boas, Mason, and Espinosa lacked in-­depth knowledge of the island’s African history. Throughout the colonial period, particularly during the slavery era, Spaniards and foreign visitors had started documenting the island’s enslaved workers’ cultural traditions, t­ hose pertaining to Loíza, in par­tic­u­lar. Mason experienced extremely popu­lar public musical cele­ brations of African origin. In the French ethnographer Andre Pierre Ledrú’s scientific research on the island, published as Viaje a la Isla de Puerto Rico (1797), he discussed his visits to Loíza, where he witnessed local dances known as bomba, which he named ­after a local type of drum, an integral component of an African-­ based m ­ usic. Ledrú, considered t­ oday as a “testigo fundacional de nuestra criollidad en el siglo xviii” (a witness to the foundation of our creole identity in the nineteenth c­ entury; Rodríguez Juliá 40), commented that blacks and whites mixed at ­t hese dances.

A Lopsided View of Puerto Rican Identity: The Thematic Dominance of a Jíbaro Narrative As reflected in the editing pro­cess, ­there w ­ ere no discussions concerning the impact of race on the collected samples. W ­ hether the decision was made before his trip to Puerto Rico is not known, but it is evident that Mason arrived on the island with the jíbaro highland areas as his targeted destinations. His choice of the jíbaro as representative of a creole Puerto Rican culture not only determined the scope of the oral proj­ect, but it also ­shaped the ways in which he uncovered the folk material. In identifying Puerto Rican folklore as jíbaro-­based, Mason clearly favored “countrified” characters, such as the iconic Juan Bobo, as central components of a rather massive oral folklore universe. This unresolved disjunction of the predominately rural jíbaro as indicative of the only type of Puerto Rican culture led to the downfall of the collection as a true expression of Puerto Rican folklore. Having cultural in­for­mants write down their own samples was never discussed throughout the editing phase. Besides the obvious question pertaining to the kind of instructions given to jíbaro schoolchildren and male adults, their participation as writers was not recognized as a historical first. Indeed, jíbaros

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from the semi-­illiterate, lower classes (judging by Espinosa’s negative comments about linguistic characteristics of Mason’s transcriptions) reproduced ­actual rural dialectal forms without the pretended, almost mocking format that had characterized the formal jíbaro cultural Costumbrista literary movement with its notable emphasis on jíbaro customs. Notably absent in the editing pro­cess is the absence of Puerto Rican scholars, such as historian and writer of sketches Cayetano Coll y Toste and folklorist and writer of oral folktales Rafael Ramírez de Arrellano, who could have brought an expertise and a broader view of oral folklore associated with Taíno and black characters, themes, and cultural motifs.

The Impact of Boas’s Trip: The Sociopo­liti­cal Importance of Capá as a Site of Con­temporary Puerto Rican National Identity Boas’s anthropological proj­ect in Puerto Rico was symbolically completed several years l­ ater. Dr. Froelich Rainey (1907–1992), an Arctic and Ca­rib­bean anthropologist who had developed a professional relationship with Boas, traveled in 1934 to Puerto Rico as part of a trip or­ga­nized by the New York Acad­emy of Sciences, Peabody Museum of Natu­ral History at Yale, and American Museum of Natu­ral History in New York. Rainey’s anthropological field research exposed distinctive migrations from South Amer­i­ca that preceded the arrival of more advanced pre-­A rawak groups. Through Rainey’s connections in Puerto Rico, which included teaching a summer course at the University of Puerto Rico in 1935, Boas kept abreast of the ongoing archaeological proj­ects on the island. Rainey completed archeological fieldwork of “four ball-­courts or ‘juegos de bola’ in Orocovis, ‘at the center of the island in the high mountainous region’ ” (97). Like his mentor, Rainey was hopeful that his findings would become part of a “proposed archeological museum” to be hosted at the grounds of the University of Puerto Rico (97). Boas’s dreamed archaeological park had taken on a national relevance beyond his original concept of a mere teaching site. Beyond his scientific expectations, the eventual restoration of Capá directly impacted a community of Taíno descendants who have come to consider Centro Ceremonial Indígena de Caguana as their rightful ancestral home for the per­for­mance of religious cele­brations. El Caney del 5to Mundo (Caney 5th World), a sovereign Taíno nation still unrecognized by the Puerto Rican government, has claimed ­free access to the grounds as part of the basic rights of a full-­fledged indigenous homeland: “Ready to protect, reclaim and defend its Sovereign rights to all Sacred Sites. The Indigenous Ceremonial Site at Caguana is one our most impor­tant known Sacred Sites, to which we have an ancestral duty and right to caretake [sic], hold ceremony in, and protect from outside, ignorant influences, who misunderstand its purposes and by their actions disrespect and defile our Sacred Sites” (Sague). Although inclusion of a Taíno identity as an ele­ment of an encompassing Puerto Rican nationality brings a dif­fer­ent perspective to issues pertaining to

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con­temporary Puerto Rican politics, it seems a blatant omission that Boas and Mason failed to identify such strong surviving indigenous cultural practices, including the prevailing so-­called Afro–­Puerto Rican traditions as part of a strong national identity. Boas and Mason chose to ignore the ongoing imperialist discourse reflected in federal regulations imposed upon the island ­after the Spanish-­American War seeking to facilitate a po­liti­cal control of native traditions, as reflected in the attempted imposition of teaching En­glish in the public school system. Arguably, a ­great number of texts, mainly travelogues and historical accounts, could have contributed to their knowledge of Puerto Rico prior to their visits, and ­t hose politicized views may also have influenced their exploration of specific types of Puerto Rican natives. Mason’s par­tic­u ­lar se­lection of themes and characters highlighted specific rural types and plotlines exclusively related to a jíbaro agrarian culture, whose dominance over an equally rich African–­P uerto Rican tradition was never explained. W ­ hether a pro-­ independence trend among some Puerto Rican intellectuals inspired his decision to highlight the jíbaro as a representative of a rising national identity was not discussed ­either. In their lack of recognition of the oral folklore’s complex sociopo­liti­cal context, which included the scrubbing of samples to fit a mainstream Spanish linguistic format, Boas and Mason irremediably affected the oral folklore collection, rendering it po­liti­cally in­effec­tive and thus neutralizing its ideological connection with a post–­Spanish American Puerto Rican national identity.

Acknowl­edgments

In memoriam, I recognize Eloise Herbert, Spanish professor emerita at Agnes Scott College, whose readings of an early manuscript made for a much stronger book. I w ­ ill forever miss my weekly Thursday visits at her home, where over a ham and cheese sandwich (sometimes pimento cheese), I tried out on her some of the critical a­ ngles argued ­here. I am indebted to Dr. Rosemary Zumwalt, dean of the college emerita and professor emerita of anthropology at Agnes Scott College, whose expertise on Franz Boas helped me clarify minute details about his busy whereabouts in Mexico and in Puerto Rico. She also brought to my attention some key documents on Boas’s professional relationship with John Alden Mason, including his correspondence with key scientists involved on the Scientific Survey of Porto Rican and the Virgin Islands. She also allowed me to read chapters of her forthcoming critical biography on Boas, a fascinating view of a seemingly indefatigable scholar. A Holder Fund for Faculty Innovation at Agnes Scott College grant (Summer 2014) allowed me to spend time at the American Philosophical Society, and a Gladden Award (Spring 2016) provided me with a course release for preparation of a campus-­w ide pre­sen­ta­tion that tested some of the ideas presented in this book. I am grateful for both of ­t hese means of support. In researching Franz Boas’s multiple professional activities, I came in contact with a number of individuals at vari­ous research institutions. Sumru Aricanli, se­nior scientific assistant of Mexican, Central, and South American Archaeology in the Division of Anthropology of American at the Museum of Natu­ral History, supplied via email information on Boas’s Taíno collection as part of his historical trip to Puerto Rico in 1915. Eric Schnittke, assistant archivist, University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology, was instrumental in releasing Mason’s existing papers and notes from his field research in Puerto Rico. Carrie Beauchamp, data man­ag­er and museum specialist 191

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at the Collections and Archives Program for the Department of Anthropology at the Smithsonian National Museum of Natu­ral History, addressed my questions about the George Latimer Collection. Many thanks to Douglas Braaten, executive director, Science Publications and editor-­in-­chief of the Annals of the New York Acad­emy of Sciences, and to Steve E. Bohall, proj­ect man­ag­er at the New York Acad­emy of Sciences, who gave me ­free access to documentation pertaining to the Porto Rico Survey. I am grateful to the personnel of the American Philosophical Society, Washington, D.C.—­Martin Levitt, library director, Valerie-­Anne Lutz, and Lydia Vázquez-­R ivera—­who made my research of the Boas’s collection such an exciting and easy task, in spite of the gigantic number of papers. Muchas gracias to librarians Hilda Mercedes Chicón and Pedro Roig Alvarado at the Biblioteca Nacional de Puerto Rico, who made pos­si­ble my examination of the Junghanns collection. At the Biblioteca de Centro de Estudios Avanzados de Puerto Rico y el Caribe Ricardo Alegría, Dr. Francis J. Mojica García, director, and Jazmín Castillo Ramos, auxiliar de biblioteca, always cheerfully answered my many questions on early twentieth-­century Puerto Rican lit­er­a­ture. Special thanks goes to Isabel Pérez, former secretary of the late Dr. Ricardo Alegría, for her generous invitation to peruse his uncata­logued correspondence. Isaías Pecho Murazzi, head librarian, Oficina de Gerencia y Gobierno de Puerto Rico, and Lourdes Oliveras, Analista en Gerencia Pública, Oficina de Gerencia y Presupuesto, generously shared financial documents related to payment for the Porto Rico Survey. Minerva Rodríguez at the library at Ateneo Puertorriqueño brought to my attention key literary pieces written in Puerto Rico in the early part of the twentieth ­century. Debbie Adams and Stephanie Kurth, access ser­v ices/interlibrary loan coordinator at the Agnes Scott College, provided indefatigable help in locating many obscure titles. Former student and rising poet Paige ­Sullivan effectively cleaned up my grammar. Thanks to my ­sister Edna Ocasio-­Medina, who helped me focus my discussions of key folktales and who helped me navigate in-­depth details about the fascinating geography of our beautiful Borinquén. Although not in this world, my late cousin Ramón (Ju­nior) Negrón took me into a promenade around Parque Caguana, at the heart of his native Utuado, where I heard his own stories as proud jíbaro de tierra adentro. To my parents, the late Samuel Ocasio Aponte and Julia M. Medina Marrero, I owe my love for la cultura criolla puertorriqueña. Their many anecdotes as jíbaros truly inspired this book. Fi­nally, many thanks to my partner in life, Charles Wesley Harper, who for several years patiently heard my stories about the whereabouts of Boas and Mason in Puerto Rico, and who bravely drove the curvy roads leading to Caguana. He has truly become un gringo-­boricua.

Notes

introduction Epigraph credit: J. Alden Mason Collection, University of California Archives, Department of Anthropology, Bancroft Library, University of California at Berkeley. 1. Mainstream newspapers such as the New York Times, for instance, offered readers insightful views of correspondents writing from war sites. Most controversial w ­ ere the so-­called yellow reports in the Hearst and Pulitzer presses that prematurely called for war (Chambers 46; Secunda and Moran 11–12). 2. Although the choice of spelling the island’s name as “Porto Rico” seems to have been a way to promote the incorporation of Puerto Rico into the American mainstream (Duany, The Puerto Rican Nation, 62), the federally controlled Puerto Rican government also officially used the “Porto” spelling. I have kept that spelling only when an author used that form in an original text. For a review of U.S. debates concerning the spelling of the name, see García 49–51. 3. Outside the scope of this book is the presence of religious travelers on the island, who came as missionaries and as part of a socioeducational campaign intended to Americanize the lower classes (Cancel and Feliciano Ramos 320). 4. U ­ nless other­w ise indicated, all translations are mine. 5. A notable exception is Melville J. Herskovits, a former student, who offered more extensive coverage of the trip (57–72). 6. Subsequent documents archived at the American Philosophical Society’s Franz Boas Papers ­w ill be cited parenthetically as APS. 7. Boas had prepared major linguistic research while in Mexico. Writing to Roland B. Dixon, a former student of his at Harvard University, on June 8, 1911, Boas indicated his research intentions for Mason and William H. Mechling, a rising scholar: “My plan of work at the pre­sent time is to take up a thorough study of language and folk-­lore of Mexican (Nahuatl). Mason and Mechling ­ought to be pretty well prepared to do that work; and I should plan, ­a fter a short time of work in the city, to divide our party for some time and to take up dif­fer­ent dialects. In case conditions in northern Mexico are too much disturbed, I propose to take up the region near Tehuantepec in the same manner” (APS).

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8. This Organic Act was highly contested on both sides of the po­liti­c al spectrum. Although it ended the island’s military regime, it imposed a l­imited government with an American-­appointed governor and a House of Representatives of thirty-­five elected members. The most controversial part of the act was its complete silence concerning prospective American citizenship.

chapter 1 ​—­ ​porto rico as a colonial scientific laboratory 1. See Britton’s “A New Mouriria from Porto Rico.” 2. On May 17, 1915, Boas’s wife wrote a friend about her husband’s surgery: “He had a growth in his parotid gland, and this had to be removed resulting in paralysis of the facial nerve. He is terribly depressed b ­ ecause he cannot move his left eyelid and the left side of his mouth. His trip to Porto Rico is postponed to the 29th of this month” (APS). The operation, which removed a cancerous growth, left Boas with “some contortion of his face and difficulty pronouncing certain words” (Lewis 291). See also Herskovits 63. 3. According to the Acts and Resolutions of the Second Regular Session of the Seventh Legislative Assembly of Puerto Rico, recorded between January 12 and March 14, 1914, the Puerto Rican government allocated five thousand dollars “for the expenses incident to conducting a survey of the natu­ral resources of Porto Rico and the collection of exhibits thereof in cooperation with the New York Acad­emy” (67). An equal amount with a verbatim statement was approved the following fiscal year at the Eight Legislative Assembly on January 11 to March 11, 1915 (101). 4. F ­ uture allocations by the Puerto Rican legislature would be difficult to approve. References to the type of governmental mea­sures taken, if any, ­a fter the Puerto Rican government received reports from the New York Acad­emy are not known ­today. 5. In 1934, four years before his death, a 3,200-­foot peak in the Luquillo Mountain Range was named for Britton in “appreciation of his many years of ser­v ice in developing our biological and geological knowledge of Porto Rico” (Merrill 157). 6. See Sastre-­D.J. and Santiago-­Valentín for Britton’s detailed plan for a “forestry policy” for the island (326), described in their correspondence in 1915. 7. Elizabeth G. Britton was a reputable scientist. A competent bryologist fluent in Spanish, Mrs. Britton accompanied Britton on all his trips to Puerto Rico from 1906 ­until 1933 (one year before their deaths). She published widely on her findings on the island (Sastre-­D.J. and Santiago-­Valentín 322). In his reports published in the Journal of the New York Botanical Garden, Britton highlighted his wife’s active participation on the trips (“Botanical Exploration” 102; “Recent Botanical” 125). 8. Aitken presented his archaeological findings at the International Congress of Americanists in 1917, published as part of the conference’s proceedings (“Puerto Rican Burial Caves”). 9. In 1912, Mason published “The Ethnology of the Salinan Indians,” a paper on Salinan phonology, linguistics, and local traditions, such as traditional foodways, hunting, fishing, and dress. 10. Mason also referred to the archaeological field as Capá, named ­a fter a hardwood tree that was part of the local folklore. El de los Cabos Blancos (1957), a film by the División de la Comunidad, Department of Public Education, Puerto Rican government, described the tree as an integral part of the area’s landscape: “El Capá se mantiene firme en la tierra de aquí abajo y ningún viento fuerte puede doblarlos” (Capá trees grow strong ­here in the low lands and t­ here is no wind strong enough to make them bend). According to the

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captain governor of Puerto Rico, Juan Melgarejo, in his Memoria y descripción de la Isla de Puerto Rico (1582), the trees known as capá—­a Taíno word—­were used to make “nabíos, ­ ouses and other types of works, almost casas y otras obras, es á modo de encina” (ships, h like encina trees; 84). 11. The same version appears as part of the request that the Puerto Rican government filed with the U.S. federal government to include Capá Ballpark Park (Centro Ceremonial Indígena) on the National Register of Historic Places. A proposal to the U.S. Department of the Interior’s National Park Ser­v ice on November 10, 1992, gave Boas owner­ship of Capá’s discovery while he was performing fieldwork in the summer of 1915 with “a group of anthropologists.” His discovery was random, however. According to this version, Boas had stumbled upon Capá ­a fter the site was “brought to their attention by local coffee planters in the region of Utuado” (“Registro Nacional Utuado”). 12. In 1910, Puerto Rico Ilustrado, a weekly section of the newspaper El Mundo, began documenting a variety of cultural and social events throughout the island, often with photo­graphs. It also published short literary pieces, short stories, essays, and poetry by notable writers. 13. Mason preferred to use this nineteenth-­century spelling, which at the beginning of the twentieth c­ entury had been changed to the current “jíbaro” spelling. Mason’s original spelling has been maintained. 14. See Bainter’s published article on his changes to the physical education curriculum in Puerto Rican public schools: “The Betterment of Physical Training and Playground Activities for Porto Rico” (1917). Originally his pre­sen­ta­tion had taken place in Ponce, Puerto Rico, in 1913. 15. ­There had been another, similar immersion program, according to Victor  S. Clark, head of the Puerto Rican Insular Board of Education (1899–1900). In 1899, forty-­eight “native teachers” had traveled to the United States for a summer session “to study En­g lish and American school methods” (qtd. in Annual Reports of the War Department 235). They ­were kept apart from each other “as much as pos­si­ble, with a view to securing a better mastery of the language.” For this immersion into American culture, some of the teachers went to live with American families, paradoxically serving “as Spanish tutors.” Clark did not report w ­ hether the experience resulted in the improvement of teachers’ proper use of En­g lish in the classroom. He seemed to be fearful, however, that Puerto Rican teachers might have witnessed weaknesses in the U.S. educational system: “They are as a rule bright and intelligent, as quick to detect our deficiencies as our good qualities, and often possess a good breeding and a native refinement that are very agreeable” (236). 16. Puerto Ricans fighting the imposition of En­glish on the island ­were aware that other occupied Eu­ro­pean territories during World War I ­were struggling with similar issues. See Epifanio Fernández Vanga’s “Inglés y castellano.” 17. Newspaper and magazine coverage of ­t hese strikes was extensive. See Puerto Rico Ilustrado’s “La protesta de estudiantes” in regard to a strike at La Alta Escuela, in Santurce, on March 13, 1915. For a complete analy­sis of Bainter’s regulations and of his dealings with teachers’ and Puerto Rican politicians’ opposition to their implementation, see Negrón de Montilla 145–161. 18. Boas extended his interest in “celestial” folktales into his field research in the New Mexico pueblos. “The Origin of the Morning Star” is a translation into En­glish of a Zuni tale, “retold by Franz Boas” (19).

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19. According to Todd Timmons, Edison’s earliest phonograph machines “utilized a stylus (needle) to make indentions on a cylinder, which, when played back with another needle, reproduced the original sounds” (65). By the time Mason traveled to Puerto Rico, the Edison phonograph was outdated, a fact that years ­later he recognized as an obstacle to transferring his recordings to more modern formats. As Timmons has traced, “By the 1910s, new technology began to displace Edison’s invention. By then, many of Edison’s visions for the phonograph had come true: Dictation machines, ­music boxes, and recorded books ­were just a few of the novel technologies spawned by the phonograph” (65).

chapter 2 ​—­ ​a post–­spanish-­american war national identity 1. José Trías Monge (1920–2003), Puerto Rican scholar and former chief justice of the Supreme Court of Puerto Rico (1974–1985), carefully traced the reasons ­behind Puerto Rican po­liti­cal parties’ uneasy ­handling of their demands or their refusal to accept American citizenship (see Trías Monge 67–76). 2. De Diego’s inspiration was, as he described it, the “himno popu­lar” (popu­lar hymn), or “La Boriqueña.” Composed by Spanish-­born writer Manuel Fernández Juncos in 1903, “La Boriqueña” praises the natu­ral Puerto Rican landscape in a highly romantic narrative. This version replaced a previous revolutionary poetic text composed in 1868 by pro-­i ndependence activist Lola Rodríguez de Tió. The fighting spirit so characteristic of most national anthems may have been too radical for an American-­controlled government. 3. De Diego did not show interest in exploring the po­liti­cal and racial (black) undertones that danza songs often reflected as social commentaries of the times (see Díaz Díaz and Manuel). 4. Well-­k nown Puerto Rican historian Salvador Brau (1842–1912) documented in his article “La danza puertorriqueña” (1885) that this musical genre had captivated the Puerto Rican musical scene. It was an example of transculturation, a hybrid melding of transatlantic Spanish and Ca­rib­bean rhythms, equated to ele­ments of a Puerto Rican identity in rather hyperbolic language: “Así se funden en esa danza todos los caracteres; así modifica ella todos los temperamentos; así roba su nota dominante a todas las sensaciones, alongándolas, corrompiéndolas, amoldándolas a su enervadora complexión” (From that dance all the characteristics emerged; thus it modifies all temperaments; all the dominant note is stolen, all the sensations, stretching them, corrupting them, adapting them to a weakening constitution; 90). 5. In spite of such assumptions, Americans ­were not the first to bring En­glish to Puerto Rico. At the time of the Spanish-­American War, a number of Puerto Rican professionals ­were already proficient in En­glish, and according to Robert Lawrence Packard, “A large number of the boys w ­ ere sent to Eu­rope and the United States for education” (918). ­Under the Spanish government, the teaching of En­glish was not seen as a threat. According to Puerto Rican historian Cayetano Coll y Toste, the Sociedad Económica Amigos del País offered the first En­glish class in San Juan on August 1, 1844, taught by Enrique Herman and Arturo O’Neill (“La primera” 63). He did not indicate ­whether this in­de­ pen­dent learning association strug­gled to receive approval from the Spanish authorities, though. See also Gutiérrez del Arroyo 193. 6. Santos Chocano continued to write po­liti­cally engaged poetry while in Puerto Rico. His poetry collection Puerto Rico lírico was published on the island in 1914. Local politi-

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cians and intellectuals heralded it as an impor­tant component of a booming pro-­ nationalist literary production in confrontation with the Americanization proj­ect. 7. Among t­ hose writers who actively participated in local politics, Luis Lloréns Torres and Manuel Zeno Gandía ­today are considered cornerstones of modern Puerto Rican lit­er­a­ture. Like de Diego, Puerto Rican writers publicly supported the po­liti­cal parties of their choice (Trías Monge 65). 8. At a Survey Board meeting on June 1, 1916, Boas officially requested an appropriation of $250 for Professor Espinosa for the “copying of the folk-­lore rec­ords obtained by Dr. J. Alden Mason” (APS). Even outside the bureaucratic constrictions of board meetings, Boas continued to appeal for money for Mason and Espinosa. On July 16, 1916, for example, addressing H. E. Crampton in a barely legible letter, Boas seemed to raise an issue on behalf of Espinosa. A small number of letters from Boas to the board’s secretary continuously requested reimbursement money for Mason and Espinosa in response to many such requests from Mason and Espinosa themselves. 9. Radin, a student of Boas’s at Columbia University, did oral folklore research among the Huave and Zapotec indigenous groups in Oaxaca, Mexico (1912–1913) (Krupat 83; Du Bois xi). In 1912, Radin had done field research among Ojibwa indigenous communities in southwestern Ontario, described as a compilation of “social organ­ization, my­t hol­ogy, and religion, the larger part of the my­t hol­ogy having been obtained in text” (MacCurdy 144). Radin worked closely with Boas ­until January 7, 1915. Radin documented the breakup in a letter, making a strong accusation against Boas: “It is far from my intention to show the slightest disrespect to you. I believe none of your pupils entertained as deep and sincere a re­spect for you as I did. I believe however that I owe it to myself to be frank and direct to you. I hardly suppose you realize that by adopting the skeptical attitude ­toward my work which you do, you put your activity on my behalf in securing the fellowship for me two years ago, on a charity basis” (APS). He is often recognized as one of Boas’s “early students, whom we now esteem as elder statesmen” (Du Bois xi), some of whom eventually became “virtual masters themselves” (Krupat 83). 10. In a letter on March 5, 1917, Mason provided Boas small examples of ­t hese recordings, including his suggested titles. As was customary, Mason did not include any identifying information about t­ hose songs, such as the geo­graph­i­cal origin or identity of the singers. 11. J. Manuel Espinosa, Aurelio M. Espinosa’s son, fully documented their f­ amily’s noble roots (APS). See his article “Espinosa’s New Mexican Background and Professional ­Career, pp. 3–25, a biographical essay about his ­father’s heritage published in The Folklore of Spain in the American Southwest, which is also collection of edited essays previously published by his f­ ather. 12. See, for example, activists Juana Colón, peasant tobacco grower (Medina Báez 64–168), and Luisa Capetillo, who had an impor­tant role in a national campaign, Cruzada del Ideal, which promoted u ­ nions by means of strikes (Ramos 35). 13. Months before Mason’s arrival on the island, Samuel Gompers had a series of workers’ meetings in Puerto Rico beginning on March 21, 1914, attended by large crowds of up to 100,000 workers (Córdova 70–71). A year ­later, Cruzada del Ideal or­ga­nized a strike that lasted two months and mobilized 17,625 workers (García and Quintero Rivera 60). Also in 1915, ­t here ­were acts of sabotage in Fajardo on January 4 and March 1, when a worker activist was killed at a rally led by Santiago Iglesias in Ponce (Bird Carmona 96, 110–111).

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chapter 3 ​—­ ​jíbaros’ authorship through literary self-­characterization 1. Meléndez Muñoz also published Cuentos de la Carretera Central (Stories about the Central Highway), with strong jíbaro motifs, in 1914. 2. Morales Cabrera in Cuentos criollos (Creole stories; 1925) further develops a Puerto Rican criollista trend. 3. For a review of the handful of primers and textbooks printed in Puerto Rico during Spanish colonial rule, see José G. Rigau Pérez. 4. Guicharo or güiro, a basic instrument in jíbaro ­music, is a hollowed gourd with indentations that produces a distinctive sound when a fork-­like ­handle scratches its surface. Although rather rudimentary in appearance, they w ­ ere and are still t­ oday popu­lar, and their skillful musicians are regarded as master players. 5. Although the proj­ect involved several superintendents throughout the island and teachers who trained a considerable number of c­ hildren as writer-­informants, Bainter made no mention of it in his 1914 annual “Report of the Commissioner of Education.” 6. Hunt had a longtime working and personal relationship with Boas. His name appears as co­w riter of Boas’s publications. For more information about Boas’s working dynamics with Hunt as coauthor, see Codere (xii, xiv, xxvii). 7. Bainter, who was appointed as commissioner of education on July 1, 1912, quit his post ­a fter having completed almost three years of his four-­year term. He left the island on April 28, 1915. 8. Miller also wrote a history book, Historia de Puerto Rico. 9. See “Enseñanza de la agricultura” (Teaching agriculture). 10. See José de Diego’s “Glosas jíbaras” (Jíbaro vocabulary), a group of poems in Cantos de pitirre (Songs of a Puerto Rican Bird; 517–33) that underscores rural semantic peculiarities in understanding the social fabric of Puerto Rican identity. Published posthumously, t­ hese poems ­were written between 1913 and 1918, at the peak of his pro-­ independence debates as a legislator (Arce de Vázquez 694). 11. El Instituto de Cultura Puertorriqueña (Institute of Puerto Rican Culture) was created in 1955, on the heels of the Puerto Rican Commonwealth’s formation in 1952, as an official institution in charge of preserving and promoting Puerto Rican culture. 12. In the period between 1914 and 1915, Coll y Toste published the following legends in Puerto Rico Ilustrado: “La sortija de rubí” (The Ruby Ring; August 1914), “La leyenda del café” (The Coffee Legend; December 1914), “La casa encantada” (The Enchanted House; April 1915), “El grillete” (The Shackle; May 1915), and “El grano de oro” (The Grain of Gold; June 1915). 13. Early American travelers to Puerto Rico ­were also interested in local legends. See Lewis Miller, The Haunted Sentry Box of Porto Rico (1916). 14. Junghanns’s oral collection at the Archivo General y Biblioteca Nacional is cata­ logued as “tradiciones orales puertorriqueñas, cuentos, entre otros” (Puerto Rican traditions, tales, among o ­ thers). It has remained unpublished, still unknown by most Puerto Rican scholars t­ oday. 15. Miyares González’s travelogue was left unpublished. According to its editor, Eugenio Fernández Méndez, Miyares González was writing it in 1775 (“Apuntes sobre la vida” xvi).

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16. All references to Mason’s field notes are from surviving notebooks, part of the J. Alden Mason Puerto Rican Survey Rec­ords at the University of Pennsylvania, Penn Museum Archives. 17. Julio Vázquez, in his memoir Journey of a Puerto Rican Jíbaro, described his childhood in the 1940s in a rural and hard-­to-­reach community in the southern town of Guayama. He remembered having seen “a set of molinos for grinding corn” (96). ­These mills had been abandoned in his community of Cerro Tumbao, ­because, as it was located on a cleared portion of a hill, corn was no longer grown t­ here. 18. Mason did not recount how he identified ­these male storytellers. In a series of interviews with Estaquio Zayas Alvarado, alias Taso, beginning in 1948, American anthropologist Sidney W. Mintz traced the life of this jíbaro sugar cane worker, who was born in 1908. Taso referred to men who w ­ ere well known in their communities as storytellers, central to activities during wakes that took place over several days: “I recall that t­ here was a man ­here called Manuel and I heard him many times telling the story of Samson in velorios [wakes] that way. And so the ­people entertained themselves during the night ­until it grew light, and sometimes they would continue ­until time to leave for the burial” (53). The subjects w ­ ere varied: “Then they used to tell stories a lot at the velorios—­stories that the ­people would tell, stories that they knew. And I heard many Biblical stories; that’s why I say that ­t here are ­people who have heard the Scriptures with ­t hose ends in mind, some to be able to sing and o ­ thers to explain them as stories as velorios” (53). 19. See “El hombre velorio” (1879) by Julio L. Vizcarrondo (1829–1889), an article of customs that Manuel Fernández Juncos considers an early example of documentation of “rasgos pintorescos” (picturesque characteristics) of Puerto Rican society during the nineteenth ­century (Fernández Juncos 96). 20. The traditional wake is a central component in the testimonial narrative of the late Judith Ortiz Cofer’s The Cruel Country. This notable autobiography highlights her ­mother’s death on the island, ­a fter which Ortiz Cofer was responsible for ­handling and organ­izing the burial of her beloved ­mother. In her faulty management of cultural practices, Ortiz Cofer harshly came to learn that the wake is part of multiple funereal practices and still maintains the strong sense of community and orality that so much impressed Mason: “I ­will have to familiarize myself with ­these Catholic rituals. The velorio is the viewing and wake, but held for longer periods of time ­here; ­a fter the velorio ­there ­will be a funeral ser­vice and then the novenas, which ­will take place over nine nights and ­will require contacting the rezadoras, the ­women who ­will lead the prayers—so much to plan when all I want to do is sit still” (Ortiz Cofer 101). 21. I am also mindful that corrida can be translated as ­horse race, a popu­lar tradition in Puerto Rico throughout the nineteenth ­century and subject of well-­k nown estampas (traditional sketches). 22. As he entered in his field notes, raposa is a type of large bird, bigger than a dove, that can barely fly. This information was not communicated to Boas. 23. In addition to his notes from Utuado, available at the University of Pennsylvania’s Penn Museum, ­t here are field notebooks from Coamo, on the south-­central region, San Germán, near the southwestern coast, and Loíza, the predominantly black fishing village on the northeastern coast. 24. Juan Bobo has also been a literary character of interest to reputable Puerto Rican writers. Two notable examples are René Marqués’s theatrical farce Juan Bobo y la Dama

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de Occidente (1955) and novelist and short story writer Rosario Ferré’s compilation of stories Los cuentos de Juan Bobo (1981). 25. An analy­sis of the geo­g raph­i­c al differences in the variety of Juan Bobo stories has not yet occurred. Carmen Marrero mentions in passing the prevalence of cuentos de Juan Bobo in the towns of Ponce, Guánica, Arecibo, Fajardo, and Humacao (127–128). 26. I have found two cases of identical development of versions of Juan Bobo in the Chilean version of Pedro Urdemalas, spelled as Urdemales ­t here (Pérez and Rojas). 27. One example is the word chillera, which appears following a clause that clarifies its utility: an object to store vegetables. 28. See Los cuentos de Juan Bobo by José Ramírez Rivera, who adapted stories that María Cadilla de Martínez Rivera (1884–1951) had collected throughout the 1930s and 1940s (Raíces de la tierra). 29. A positive outlook on rural Puerto Rican culture is also pre­sent in the En­g lish translations of Juan Bobo short story collections published in the United States. See Acevedo-­Feliciano and Wrenn, Bernier-­Grand and Ramos Nieves, Chardiet, Mike and Reasoner, Montes and Cepeda, and Pitre and Hale.

chapter 4 ​—­ ​telling a story about class and ethnicity through fairy tales, cuentos puertorriqueños, and leyendas 1. The pro­cess of literary adaptations of iconic characters such as Cinderella continues in Puerto Rico. See La Cenicienta puertorriqueña, a modern story “recontado y escrito” (retold and written) by Julia Cristina Ortiz Lugo. 2. Espinosa’s son, J. Manuel Espinosa, stated that an extensive trip throughout impor­ tant areas of folklore in Spain took place “thanks to the interest of Franz Boas and the generosity of Elsie Clews Parsons . . . ​­under the sponsorship of the American Folklore Society” (“Espinosa’s Folklore Fieldwork” 40). 3. All references to Mason’s correspondence with Alegría are part of the J. Alden Mason Puerto Rican Survey Rec­ords available at the University of Pennsylvania. 4. According to ordering correspondence between the Thomas A. Edison Com­pany in New Jersey and Survey Board members, the cylinders recorded up to four minutes (NYAS). 5. According to Daniel Reed, Herzog “was trained in Boasian theories and methods, which included the concept of diffusion and extensive fieldwork method” (70). 6. At Indiana University, Herzog started the Archives of Traditional M ­ usic (Reed 70). The collection, “Puerto Rico, 1914–1915,” according to the Indiana University Cata­log, contains 174 cylinders and Spanish transcripts of the song texts by Hugo Viera Vargas and Pedro Hernández. The collection remains underanalyzed. See Viera Vargas for a brief survey of its content, including a discussion of its most impor­tant themes. 7. Waterman, who had received a doctorate from Northwestern University, became well-­k nown in the field of transatlantic African ethnomusicology in the Amer­i­cas. He performed fieldwork in Puerto Rico (Bascom, “Richard Alan Waterman” 76). 8. This portion of the collection is available at the Centro de Estudios de Puerto Rico y el Caribe (Center of Puerto Rican and Ca­rib­bean Studies in San Juan). Some of t­ hese recordings are also available at the Museo de la Música Puertorriqueña (Museum of Puerto Rican M ­ usic), as part of items that Ricardo Alegría donated to this institution. Available on YouTube are two samples of songs. Recently, Desde Cero (From Point Zero),

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a Puerto Rican musical group whose goal is to recover native Puerto Rican musical rhythms and lyr­ics, on the a­ lbum Semilla de identidad (Seeds of Identity), reproduced modern versions of Mason’s recordings. 9. In Puerto Rico, a décima combines ten verses of eight syllables that generally rhyme in a fixed pattern: “the first, fourth, and the fifth; the second and third; the sixth with the seventh and tenth; and the eighth with the ninth” (Escabí and Escabí 4). See Cadilla de Martínez Rivera’s La poesía popu­lar en Puerto Rico, a groundbreaking study on Puerto Rican popu­lar poetry. 10. Espinosa was proud of his son, whose training and academic achievements he communicated to Boas in a letter dated January 6, 1930: “My older son, Aurelio Jr. is making a wonderful rec­ord in Spain with [Ramón] Menéndez Pidal” (APS). He also bragged that the young scholar “has been appointed one of the investigators of the Atlas Lingüístico ­ nder the direction of Ménende España now being prepared by the Spanish Acad­emy u dez Pidal.” 11. Alegría did not document in his letters if Mason sent over ­t hose notebooks. They do not appear, ­either, as part of the Alegría collection of personal papers at the Centro de Estudios de Puerto Rico y el Caribe. 12. The Journal of American Folklore also supported research performed outside the United States: A. T. Sinclair’s “Folk-­Songs and M ­ usic of Cataluña,” Alexander F. Chamberlain’s “The Chilian [sic] Folk-­Lore Society and Recent Publications on Chilian [sic] Folk-­L ore, ­etc.,” and Robert Lehmann-­Nitsche’s “Clasificación de las Adivinanzas Rioplatenses.” 13. Th ­ ere ­were exceptions. Rudolph Schuller published two pieces on Southern Cone indigenous groups. In “Paraguay Native Poetry” he transcribed Guaraní poetry, “mostly improvisations,” from an unpublished original manuscript in the Library of the British Museum in London (338). He performed field research in San Salvador, a small town on the “triangle formed by the River Uruguay and its tributary the Río Negro” (358). He is also the author of “Native Poetry of Northern Brazil,” without an indicated method of recompilation. 14. Hague published several numbers on Mexican musical folklore. See “Five Mexican Dances,” “Mexican Folk-­Songs,” and “Five Danzas from Mexico.” 15. Boas wrote about his Nahua research in a letter to Hermann Wagner (1840–1929) dated February 15, 1914, “I know about the Nahua translation of the Aesopian fables, and I have also myself collected quite a number in village schools of the country.” 16. Boas’s expertise in the languages of his native in­for­mants, including his own linguistic competency, has been widely discussed, however. Mrs. Tom Johnson, ­daughter of George Hunt, Boas’s primary Kwakiutl in­for­mant, asserted Boas’s advanced fluency in the local Native language: “Oh, he was talking—­sometimes talk our language. He learned it very much” (qtd. in Rohner, “Franz Boas Among the Kwakiutl” 217). 17. The importance of rivers as centers of religious practices also caught the attention of Spaniards. According to captain governor of Puerto Rico Juan Melgarejo in his Memoria y descripción de la Isla de Puerto Rico (1582), still vis­i­ble on the bank of the Toa river ­t here ­were “algunos zemies pintados en piedras allí cercanas” (some zemies painted on nearby stones; 80), which the indigenous ­people “adoraban en este río” (worshiped in this river; 80). 18. U ­ nder the auspices of the University of Puerto Rico in 1947, a team of Puerto Rican and American anthropologists documented observances of alternative religious practices

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in rural areas. Researchers documented similar traditions, such as belief in witches and super­ natural apparitions of the dead or nonhuman entities (Steward et  al. 217, 307–308). 19. The shortness of the collection was due to the limit of twenty-­five pages imposed as part of the regulations that the contest had established. 20. According to Francisco Manrique Cabrera, Pedro Animala (or Pedro Urdemalas) is more common in the southwestern section of the island (23). 21. See, for example, Puerto Rican scholar Concha Meléndez, who kindly remembers as a child reading a variety of Calleja’s stories, which she bought for five cents, “eran para mí gran deleite” (much enjoyed stories): “ ‘Los polvos de don Perlimlín,’ ‘Los príncipes encantados,’ and ‘Blanca Nieves y los siete enanitos’ ” (11). 22. In Mason’s preference for fairy tales, he was ­going against the local preference for more Puerto Rican types of tales, such as local reinterpretations of legends. Esther Feliciano Mendoza, in her introduction to Literatura infantil puertorriqueña (Puerto Rican ­children’s lit­er­a­ture), denied the existence in Puerto Rican lore of “cuentos de hadas nativos” (native fairy tales; 8). She saw them as mere “adaptaciones de cuentos extranjeros” (adaptations of foreign stories; 8), like the available versions of “La Cenicienta,” “Las tres hadas” (The three fairies), and “algunos otros que mantienen su par­tic­u ­lar fisonomía” (some ­others that maintain their peculiar features; 8). 23. The phenomenon of local alterations to the main Cinderella storylines in non-­Western countries has been explored. See R. D. Jameson’s “Cinderella in China,” William Bascon’s “Cinderella in Africa,” James Danandjaja’s “A Javanese Cinderella Tale and Its Pedagogical Value,” Margaret A. Mills’s “A Cinderella Variant in the Context of a Muslim W ­ omen’s Ritual,” and A.  K. Ramanujan’s “Hanchi: A Kannada Cinderella.” 24. Carmen Luisa Justiniano in her autobiography, Con valor y a como dé lugar: Memorias de una jíbara puertorriqueña remembers her childhood as a jíbara in a remote barrio of the Cordillera Central. Writing about her ­mother’s disciplinary methods she described a dreaded “pela . . . ​de veinte cantazos, ni uno más ni uno menos (a whipping . . . ​ of exactly twenty blows, not one more or one less, 86). She also recalled an unusual punishment at the hands of her ­mother that echoes the plot of “La mata de ají.” Her angry ­mother ordered her husband to lock up Orench in “la oscura letrina” (the dark out­house, 86), where the girl panicked, “Yo, más gritaba y gritaba, por temor no sólo a la oscuridad, sino también a las lagartijas y cucarachas que cundían la hedionda letrina (I, screamed louder and louder, not only ­because I hated the darkness, but ­because I was scared of the lizards and the many cockroaches that dominated the smelly out­house, 86–87). 25. The relationship established through the baptism of one’s child between two men is known as compadrazgo. Both partners, the f­ ather of the child and the godfather of the child, refer to each other as compadres, or coparents. 26. Espiritismo was inspired by the metaphysical practices of Hippolyte León Denizard Rivail (1804–1869), better known as Allan Kardec, whose books on the h ­ andling of spirits as part of scientifically controlled meetings had a tremendous impact on Puerto Rican popu­lar religious practices throughout the second part of the nineteenth ­century. As in most Latin American countries and in Spain, espiritismo took hold in Puerto Rico with neighborhood gatherings that frequently took place as early as 1860 (Hernández

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Aponte 26). The first officially inscribed Spiritist organ­ization dates to 1884 (19) and followed internationally prescribed ritual instructions ­until 1907, when theosophy, also a spiritual-­based trend, took hold on the island (26). 27. Kardesian books of prayers and instructional practical manuals w ­ ere worldwide best sellers. A translation, “El Evangelio según el espiritismo” (The Gospel according to Spiritism), sold more than thirty-­five thousand copies at a bookstore in San Juan in 1935 (Hernández Aponte 22). 28. Even ­today, Puerto Ricans still refer to “Taíno mountain jíbaro” culture with a distinctive language and folktales. See Haslip-­Viera, 43–44. Charles  M. Skinner, among the first American visitors a­ fter the Spanish-­American War, also wrote about two well-­ known Taíno legends, “The Deluge” (55–56) and “­Water Caves” (61–65), in his Myths and Legends of Our New Possessions and Protectorate (1900). Walter Murray Chiesa, in his introduction to Nelson Rafael Collazo’s anthology of Taíno-­t hemed stories, Cuentos de la raíz indígena a la conciencia (Stories of Indigenous Origin and of the Conscience; 2004), praises the author’s literary treatment of native ­peoples, “a pesar de la poca atención que recibe este tema tan atractivo, de nuestros escritores contemporaneos” (in spite of the ­little attention that con­temporary writers have paid to this very attractive topic). 29. For a brief study of Cofresí’s presumed creole hybridity as the son of a German Jewish ­father and a Puerto Rican ­mother of distinguished Spanish ancestry, see Quintero Rivera, ¡Salsa! 260–261. 30. The ominous nickname, according to the title of a biographical novel by Bienvenido G. Camacho, El Aguila Negra o Roberto Cofresí. 31. The first documented, published Cofresí-­inspired work is Cofresí (1876), a novel by Puerto Rican foundational writer Alejandro Tapia y Rivera. Salvador Brau, a notable historian, premiered a play in 1877, La vuelta al hogar; Returning home, and published a novel by Ricardo del Toro Soler, Huracán, Novela basada en la leyenda del pirata Roberto Cofresí, awarded a prize by Círculo de Lectores de Ponce in 1936. Del Toro Soler interviewed ­people, mainly jíbaros, who had come in contact with Cofresí (Quintero Rivera, ¡Salsa! 260). 32. Nuestra Señora de la Divina Providencia (Our Lady of the Divine Providence), a white Madonna, was officially named the island’s patron saint in 1969. Devotion t­ oward her has never reached the popu­lar fervor of other native divine apparitions, such as that of our Lady de la Monserrate. 33. A viewing of San Pí­o’s statue, with his long hair and long nails, remains a mandatory stop for the devout exploring the colonial churches in Old San Juan.

chapter 5 ​—­ ​an (un)colored puerto rican culture 1. Fewkes also briefly mentioned that jíbaros of the highlands had spoken to him about black culture. In his field notes from his first trip to the island, he noted: “They (the gíbaros) tell me that life at Loisa [sic] is very primitive and that it would be a good place for ‘stones’ ” (qtd. in Duany, The Puerto Rican Nation 70). 2. This “collar,” a necklace with beads of dif­fer­ent colors worn in honor of deities (orichas), would have been a striking object of admiration. In his passing reference to “the witch,” Fewkes might have been talking about a practitioner in a higher position, perhaps that of a “high priest,” whose collar would have been more colorful and visually arresting than any of the other types worn by regular prac­ti­tion­ers.

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3. Manrique Cabrera’s transcription of the song was: María Salomé ¿Qué tú tienes? Ay, ¿qué tú tienes, María Salomé? Calentura, eh Aé, ¿qué tú tienes? Arriba Lové Arriba Loyansé (5–6)

4. Even ­today in Puerto Rico, the documentation of any surviving black stories remains of lesser critical importance. “El cuento folklórico en Carolina,” Ana María Cruz de Osorio’s 1972 thesis, traces the oral folklore of Carolina, a coastal town on the northeastern coast of the island with a predominantly black population. Like Mason, Cruz de Osorio also uncovered “cuentos tienen una parte cantada y estos cánticos son sumamente rítmicos con coros que resultan muy fáciles de recordar. Los narradores dramatizan los cuentos con movimientos y pasos de bailes en algunas ocasiones” (stories that have a singing section and t­hose songs are highly rhythmic with choruses that are very easy to remember. Storytellers occasionally dramatize the stories with body movements and steps; 126). Cruz de Osorio transcribed an example of a cuento cantado: “El baile de los ratones” (A mice dance; 604–506), which features choruses of four rhymed verses with words of distinctive African origin. Th ­ ere is no reference as to the type of arrangement or the type of dance that would support the musical per ­for­mance. 5. Mason did not consider the caves proper sites for anthropological research. As he detailed to Boas in his May 14, 1915, letter, they had been extensively “excavated for guano and most of the archeological objects removed.” Destruction of artifacts was also serious prob­lem: “We are constantly hearing of very fine objects which have been found and since dis­appeared or broken.” Mason did not find “evidence of internments,” although he did not rule out that they existed. He did take out of the island “quite a good sized archeological collection, prob­ably some twenty odd celts of dif­fer­ent sizes, two small figures, a fine three-­pointed stone (zemi) and a massive collar besides innumerable pottery heads and pieces of sherd.” 6. Such a view that Taínos survived the destructive impact of Spanish colonization by seeking refuge in caves continues to inform an artistic production on the island. The film ­ hole indigenous Taínos (2005) places in modern times the accidental discovery of a w community of individuals who are direct descendants of Taínos. Like their ancestors, they have kept themselves racially pure by living in the same subterranean cave systems that served as refuge to their persecuted ancestors. 7. Coll y Toste started a thematic critical trend that placed runaway slaves as the earliest figures representative of a “rebellious” national identity. Cuban historian José Luciano Franco, for example, also l­ ater explored the “rebelliousness of Afro-­Cubans” through his research of runaway slaves (Childs 12). Alegría also documented the historical importance runaway slaves. His El Rey Miguel offers a portrait of a Puerto Rican slave who displaced to Venezuela and initiated in that country the first slave rebellion in 1552. He is also the author of Juan Garrido: El conquistador negro en las Antillas. 8. Puerto Rican anarchists published poetry, “complete with calls for revolutionary uprisings,” and plays and short stories that “highlighted class antagonisms, promoted

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worker revolts, and promoted revolutionary vio­lence to destroy the last vestiges of bourgeois society while planting the seeds for a new egalitarian f­ uture” (Shaffer 1). 9. In his review of Archivos del Folklore Cubano, Espinosa demonstrated his admiration for Ortiz’s ethnographic work; Ortiz founded this journal in 1924, dedicated to the publication of Cuban folklore (“Archivos”). 10. According to an obituary published by the New York Times, Herminio Portell Vilá (1901–1992) was a well-­k nown historian. He was a member of Havana’s city municipal council and a professor at the University of Havana, where he taught Fidel Castro. ­A fter the Revolution of 1959, prompted by Castro’s imposed restrictions upon ­free speech at the University of Havana, Portell Vilá left the island for exile in the United States (“Herminio Portell Vilá”). 11. Cabrera, an ethnologist turned creative writer who was Fernando Ortiz’s wife’s ­sister, also documented Afro-­Cuban folklore. Cabrera’s Cuentos negros de Cuba (Black stories from Cuba), originally published in French in France (1936), is a set of formal short stories inspired by the patakí, or a religion-­based oral story of West African origin. Cabrera had a long c­ areer as an ethnologist, and many of her publications on black Cuban ethnography ­were produced in Miami, where she resided ­after her exile in the United States in 1960. 12. A “Selective Bibliography of Other Works Relating to the Study of Hispanic and Hispanic-­American Folk Lit­er­at­ ure” in The Folklore of Spain in the American Southwest, a collection of Espinosa’s writings edited by his son J. Manuel Espinosa lists “Cuentos populares” (Popu­lar Stories) by Portell Vilá, a manuscript available at Hispanic Foundation in New York (294). 13. It seems that only c­ hildren from Utuado w ­ ere mea­sured for Boas’s anthropometric study. According to Leslie Spier, whose article, “The Growth of Boys: Dentition and Stature,” explains delayed growth rate patterns in Puerto Rico ­children, in 1915 Boas collected “dental arches and mea­sure­ments of some three hundred and fifty school-­boys of Utuado” (37). 14. Mason never fulfilled this task, which, judging by the frequent times he apologized to Boas, must have been an impor­tant component of the anthropometric proj­ect. Mason’s last mention of the “hair specimens” was in a letter to Boas on May 14, 1915: “You must be prepared for ­every shade of texture of eye, hair and skin from the blackest negro actually born in Africa to the blondest Teutonic or ruddiest Celtic type.” 15. Ponce was the birthplace of the plena, which has been defined as “un ritmo musical costero y mulato genuinamente puertorriqueño” (a mulatto, coastal musical rhythm, genuinely Puerto Rican; López 16). 16. All references to the correspondence between Alegría and Mason, including Mason’s field notebooks drafted in Porto Rico, are from the John Alden Mason Papers (B:M384) University of Pennsylvania. Exceptions w ­ ill be noted in separate footnotes. 17. As indicated on its website, Mason had cofounded the Pan American Association in 1940 with the goal of promoting “cultural, educational and economic activities designed to increase understanding and cooperation among the ­peoples of the Amer­i­ cas.” See www​.­panamphilly​.­org​/­about​-u ­ s​/­history. 18. Rubén E. Reina (1924–), a cultural anthropologist, emeritus professor of anthropology, and curator of ethnology, taught at the University of Pennsylvania and at Penn’s Museum of Archeology and Anthropology (1957–1990). Early in his c­ areer he taught anthropology at the University of Puerto Rico (Rubén Reina Papers). 19. This letter is part of the personal papers deposited at the Centro de Estudios de Puerto Rico y el Caribe, still unavailable to the public.

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20. As indicated on its website, the New World Archaeological Foundation Research and Study Center, affiliated with Brigham Young University, is located in San Cristóbal de las Casas, Chiapas, Mexico, as “an archaeological and teaching entity whose principal objective is the study of the earliest origins and subsequent trajectory of civilization (complex socie­ties) in the New World.” https://­nwaf​.­byu​.­edu​/­Pages​/­Contact​-­Info. 21. The four notebooks used at Loíza and several o ­ thers produced throughout the island are ­today available at the Penn University Museum. 22. At Columbia University Wolf had studied u ­ nder Boas’s former student Ruth Benedict. Also at Columbia University Julian H. Steward or­ga­nized a major anthropological field research trip to Puerto Rico (1948–1949), in which Wolf participated as a gradu­ate student. This became the basis for Wolf’s 1951 doctoral dissertation (“Eric Wolf”). Another indirect connection with Boas, Steward had studied u ­ nder Alfred Kroeber, a former student of Boas’s, at Berkeley University. Steward’s multiauthored proj­ect, The ­People of Puerto Rico: A Study in Social Anthropology, is considered a cornerstone of Puerto Rican anthropology. 23. Alegría’s ethnographical proj­ect of Loíza’s popu­lar belief system was published in 1954 as “La fiesta de Santiago Apóstol en Loíza Aldea” (The feast of Saint James the Apostle in Loíza Aldea). This popu­lar street festival is dedicated to Santiago Apóstol and celebrated July 26–28 in honor of Saint James, the Moor-­slayer; the festivities include three days of dances, food, and parades of curiously dressed dancers, known as vegigantes. ­These dancers wear extravagant masks, clever disguises as warrior types that echo the perennial clash between good and evil. Songs and dances are an impor­tant part of the cele­brations. As Alegría pointed out, the ethnographic background was of “African origin” (“Fiesta of Santiago Apostol” 131). Presumably, native words would have survived as part of ­those African songs, perhaps in reference to Alegría’s passing mention of “other words I had collected.” 24. Puerto Rican folklorist Marcelino J. Canino Salgado in El cantar folklórico de Puerto Rico (Folkloric ­music in Puerto Rico) took a similar approach. Though a chapter subtitled “Cantares sobre negros, mulatos y trigueños” (Songs about blacks, mulattoes and light-­skinned blacks) does trace poetry samples denouncing racial discrimination, it does not reproduce examples produced by black in­for­mants (224–233). 25. Animals as protagonists in oral folk stories are still ­today uncovered as part of a rich Puerto Rican black folklore. See, for example, Araña y el buey, a story about a spider and an ox, recontado y escrito by Julia Cristina Ortiz Lugo. 26. Mentions of almighty, divine powers, such as God or Jesus Christ, are common subjects of in­for­mants in The American Slave. George Briggs, age eighty-­eight, displayed enormous faith: “On de pathway of life, may you allus keep Christ in front of you and you ­w ill never go wrong” (Turnage, “George Briggs” 88). 27. The use of medicinal herbs and plants was also common among U.S. southern slaves: “Grand­mother used herbs fo’ medicine—­black snake root, sasparilla, blackberry briar roots—­a nd nearly all de young’uns she fooled with she save from diarrhea” (Green 92). 28. ­There are also connections between enslaved individuals in the United States as well. Sylvia Cannon, age eighty-­five, also recalled the extensive use of “herb medicines” by blacks in South Carolina: “De ­peoples use herb medicines for dey cures in dem days dat dey get out de woods. I make a herb medicine dat good for anything out de roots of three herbs mix together” (Davis, “Sylvia Cannon” 193).

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29. Enslaved individuals in the United States also professed strong orthodox religious affiliations. See, for example, the testimony of Samuel Boulware, who at age eighty-­t wo remembered, “I was christened fust a Methodist, but when I growed up, I jine de Presbyterian Church and has ’mained a member of dat church ­every since” (Grant 69). Boulware also referred to black superstitions: “My mammy say she see haunts pass her wid no heads but ­t hese old eyes has never seen anything lak dat. If you has done somebody a terrible wrong, then I believe dat person when they die, ­w ill ’pear to you on ‘count of dat’ ” (69). 30. Catechism was restricted to Catholic rituals, w ­ hether in a­ ctual churches or as devotional activities in plantations led by a priest or any devout individual. 31. Central to the Feast of St. James the Apostle are vegigantes who wear ugly, devilish-­ looking coconut masks while dancing and playing tricks on innocent bystanders. 32. Christmas cele­brations ­were also commonly held on southern plantations, occasions when white residents (masters and their families) shared with their enslaved crews: “And Christmas, it am de day for de big time. A tree am fix, and some pre­sent for every­ one. De white preacher talk ’bout Christ. Us have singin’ and ’joyment all day. Den at night, de big fire builded and all us sot ’round it. Dere am ’bout hundred hawg bladders save from hawg killin’. So, on Christmas night, de chillen takes dem and puts dem on de stick. Fust day is all blowed full of air and tied tight and dry” (Grice 99). 33. Charles Walker, an American visiting Puerto Rico, described in 1836 a baquiné celebrated in San Juan in the context of a traditional (white) ritual held in a city church (qtd. in Scott 45–46). 34. The presence of the devil was also part of the belief in super­natural occurrences among U.S. southern enslaved individuals: “I hear de p ­ eople say dere such a ­thing as ghost, but I don’ know en I ain’ de kind to speak bout de devil business. I hear talk dey could be walking righ along wid you en dere some p ­ eople could see dem en den dere o ­ thers could look wid all de eyes dey got en couldn’ see dem” (Davis, “Martha Kelly” 87–88). 35. For a more extensive analy­sis of the impact of the Spanish-­American War upon Puerto Rican psyche, which Puerto Rican intellectuals on the island often refer to as a national “trauma,” see Negrón-­Muntaner, “The Trauma of Lit­er­a­ture, the Shame of Identity” (Boricua Pop 33–57).

chapter 6 ​—­ ​tropicalizing the puerto rican racial past 1. A former student, Melville J. Herskovits (1895–1963), described Boas’s anthropometric work as a “stupendous task,” which he performed in the United States and elsewhere, including Sweden, Bavaria, Italy, Holland, South Africa, Canada (39). With his anthropometric data in Puerto Rico, Boas presumably intended them to become part of what Herskovits labeled an “im­mense” data collection, a component of an initial “mathematical formulation” that supported Boas’s “most controversial research” on “a pro­cess of biological se­lection rather than environmental influences” (Herskovits 38, 43, 39, 41). 2. The owner of the collection was Dr. Agustín Stahl, a medical doctor who resided in Bayamón, a rural area in the outskirts of San Juan. Stahl also performed anthropological research, a pioneer of this barely emerging science on the island (Iranzo Berrocal 15). The Stahl collection is available at the American Museum of National History in New York City. 3. According to the Smithsonian Museum online databank, two Taíno pieces, “Hatchet or Chisel” and “Rubber or Muller [Zeme] for Crushing Tapuca [sic],” are given 1869 as

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the accession date. Iranzo Berrocal’s reference to 1876 as an acquisition date refers to an internal Smithsonian report written that year that described the collection’s contents. This may not have been the earliest of such impor­tant purchases of Taíno artifacts by an American scientific center. Stanley A. Freed found that in 1873 the American Museum purchased “a collection of rare implements made by the aborigines of Puerto Rico for $873.00” (73). 4. Scientific field research in Puerto Rico, which significantly increased a­ fter 1901 with the visit of archaeologist Jesse Walter Fewkes (1850–1930), initiated “an ideal opportunity to push the frontiers of social science beyond the mainland” (Duany, “Anthropology” 35–36). See the works cited for a sample of Fewkes’s publications prior to Boas’s trip to Puerto Rico. 5. Von Luschan was caught up in the politics surrounding World War I. Writing on December 19, 1914, to sociologist W. I. Thomas (1863–1947) at the University of Chicago, Boas presented von Luschan as a stellar researcher “who has done so much work on physical anthropology, and who was the first to recognize the laws of inheritance in man.” Boas regretted that von Luschan could not leave New York: “I had arranged the ­whole ­matter in such a way that he should go to Porto Rico and investigate the prob­lem [of mulattoes] t­ here; but it turns out that the British search our vessels plying between New York and Porto Rico, and for this reason this ­matter fell through too. I cannot use the Porto Rico money for any other purpose, so I am balked” (APS). As a f­ avor, Boas asked Thomas if he could explain the situation to philanthropist Julius Rosenwald (1862–1932), “who is so much interested in negro education.” 6. The petroglyphs make Caguana a site of admiration for Puerto Ricans visitors from all over the island. Reproductions of t­ hese petroglyphs are very popu­lar on jewelry, clothing, and personal accessories such as purses, billfolds, key chains, and home decorations. 7. Boas often shared his opinion about the ongoing warfare with scholar friends. On November 21, 1913, he wrote to Ezequiel Chávez, expressing his dissatisfaction with the U.S. diplomatic h ­ andling of the upheaval: “I cannot see what business we have to dictate to Mexico what is to be done; and, furthermore, the demands made seem to me to [be] based on a complete misunderstanding of conditions”(qtd. in Zumwalt, Franz Boas). He conveyed a similar sentiment to colleague Dr. Eduard Georg Seler (1849–1922), who also performed field research in Mexico: “I do not understand our policy in Mexico at all, and I fail so far to find any American who does understand it. I do not see how, if intervention should ultimately come, we can escape the reproach that first we created untenable conditions, fostered insecurity all through the country, thus making intervention necessary. I do not believe for a moment that this is Wilson’s policy, but it is very liable to be the result of his policy” (qtd. in Zumwalt, Franz Boas). 8. See Gamio’s article “Las excavaciones,” a report of his professional field work ­a fter the closure of the School of Anthropology. 9. Zunwalt’s forthcoming manuscript is also a prime source for the b ­ ehind the scene events that led to the publication of the field data from Capá. Indeed, according to Zumwalt, “Boas was pleased with Mason’s work.” On the other hand, Puerto Rico served Boas right. According to Zumwalt, “Boas’s time in Mexico and in Porto Rico provided an opportunity to undertake archaeological excavations. Save for the work that Boas sponsored with the JNPE [Jesup North Pacific Expedition] in the Northwest Coast, Boas had been seemingly indifferent to engaging in archaeology prior to his time in Mexico.”

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10. In “A Large Archaeological Site” Mason wrote that Aitken and he had performed a large number of mea­sure­ments “on school c­ hildren in Utuado” and ­were ­later joined by Boas, who performed work “on soldiers in San Juan” (210). 11. The reasons for not establishing this learning center, presumably a type of museum of natu­ral history, are not known. Boas took from undetermined sites archaeological samples that are t­ oday available at the American Museum of Natu­ral History (AMNH) as the Boas Collection from Puerto Rico. My thanks to Sumru Aricanli, se­nior scientific assistant, Mexican, Central, and South American Archaeology, Division of Anthropology at AMNH for providing me with information about this collection. 12. As indicated in letters to Alegría dated January 15 and March 1, 1958, Mason contributed to the museum original documents, such as reports and ­a lbums of photo­graphs, from his field exploration in 1915. Th ­ ese letters are part of the personal papers deposited at the Centro de Estudios de Puerto Rico y el Caribe, still unavailable to the public. 13. Boas’s ideological influence, particularly his theories pertaining to cultural relativism, according to Iranzo Berrocal, eventually reached Puerto Rican lit­er­a­ture. Antonio S. Pedreira (1899–1939) took courses with Boas at Columbia University (28). His essay “Insularismo” (1934) is ­today a canonical text concerning “la naturaleza y el destino de nuesta nación” (the nature and destiny of our nation; López Baralt 16). 14. American anthropologist Froelich Rainey, who in the mid-1930s performed extensive field research in Puerto Rico, wrote about de Hostos’s “impressive collections of elaborate stone collars, carved stone figures known as ‘zemis,’ and pottery figurines known as ‘adornos’ ” (39–40). 15. I have not found any reactions in Puerto Rico to this controversy of anthropologists serving as spies for the U.S. government. I am mindful, however, that both Mason and Boas sustained field work activities with the support of officers of the Puerto Rican government and also of U.S. military personnel stationed in San Juan.

conclusion 1. See, for example in Memorias de Abuela Fela, a detailed description of la parranda de los Reyes Magos, a rather complex serenade in honor of the Magi on Epiphany Day, which included a parade through the neighborhood while singing aguinaldos de los Reyes, religious songs dedicated to the Wise Men (Velázquez Lara 96–103).

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Index

Acts and Resolutions of the Second Regular Session of the Seventh Legislative Assembly of Puerto Rico, 194n3 Africa, 8, 119, 133, 135, 136, 141, 154, 156, 160, 163 Aguila Negra, 128, 203n30. See also Cofresí, Roberto Aitken, Robert T., 3, 23, 24, 43, 170, 171, 194n8 Alegría, Ricardo, 11, 83, 98, 101, 134, 153, 200n8, 206n23. See also Mason, John Alden Allen, Charles Herbert, 82 Alonso, Manuel A., 148 American Anthropological Association, 179 American Federation of ­Labor, 69, 187 American Museum (New York City), 102 American Museum of Natu­ral History, 20, 21, 28, 189, 207n2 Andersen, Hans Christian, 109 Anthropological Position of the Negro, The, 163 Anthropometry of Porto Rico, The, 174, 175 Archives of Primitive and Folk ­Music (at Columbia University), 102 Astol Bussatti, Eugenio, 51 Atlas Lingüístico de España, 201n10 Bainter, Edward M., 6, 34, 36, 75, 78, 195n14, 198n7. See also Mason, John Alden Baquiné, 159, 207n33

Barlow, W. A., 78, 86, 97 Barracoon: The Story of the Last “Black Cargo,” 160 Betterment of Physical Training and Playground Activities for Porto Rico, The, 195n14 Blanca Nieves y los siete enanitos, 202n21 Boas, Franz accuses fellow anthropologist as spies, 179–180 anthropometric mea­sure­ments, 4, 85, 134, 150, 160, 167, 169, 170, 178, 186 breakup with Mason, 166, 178–180 field research in Capá, 25, 166 field research in Mexico, 41, 80, 105, 106, 108, 193n7, 201n15 field research in New Mexico, 195n18 field research in Puerto Rico, 3, 4, 6, 25, 174 field work with Antarctic indigenous groups (Inuit, Kwakiutl, and Kootenay), 6, 77, 80–81, 85, 91, 96, 107–108, 166, 201n16 as a folklorist, 41–42, 56, 106, 110, 195n18 health condition in Puerto Rico, 3, 26, 194n2 influence upon U.S. African-­A merican activists, 178 International School of American Archaeology, 4, 20, 23, 105, 166, 172, 173, 182, 208n7 involved in the “anthropologist spies controversy,” 7, 179, 180, 209n15 in Loíza, 134, 150, 152, 162, 187

231

232 I n d e x Boas (cont.) as a member of the Dillingham Committee, 13, 176–177 mind of the primitive man, 110, 111, 135 negro activism and research, 133–136, 151, 163 “old mill,” 169 plans for a natu­ral history museum in Puerto Rico, 21, 176, 209n11 plans to turn Capá a teaching museum, 25, 182, 189 politics, 68, 178, 190 quirn, 89, 199n17 researching black heritage in Puerto Rico, 175–176 scouts a prospective site for a school of anthropology in Puerto Rico, 174, 175 in search of “aborigines” and “Indian blood” in Puerto Rico, 4, 12, 90, 133, 151, 152, 168, 169–170, 174, 175, 186 teaching pedagogy, 62–63 translation of folk samples, 57–58 in Utuado, 4, 25, 152, 166, 174, 205n13, 209n10 work with Felix Von Luschan, 170, 208n5 work with Frederick Ward Putnam, 167 at World’s Columbian Exposition, 12, 165, 166, 167, 168 and Zora Neale Hurston, 12, 159–160 Boas, Henry (Heini) Herbert, 67–68 Bohío (hut), 73, 120, 145 Boletín Histórico de Puerto Rico, 83 Boriqueña, La, 50, 196n2 Brau, Salvador, 169, 196n4, 203n31 Britton, Elizabeth, 22, 194n7 Britton, Nathaniel Lord, 19, 20, 21, 22, 23, 25, 33, 43, 138 field researcher in Puerto Rico and director of The Scientific Survey, 20, 22, 194nn5–6 Buffalo International Fair, 168 Bureau of Ethnology, 168 Cabrera, Lydia, 149, 205n10 Calabar, 147 Calleja, Saturnino, 99 Calleja Fernández, Saturnino, 111 Campesino, 73, 95, 106 Campo (countryside), 9, 14, 73, 85, 88, 93, 95, 102, 108, 109 Canales, Nemesio, 93 Caney del 5to Mundo, 189 Cantos de pitirre, 198n10

Capá, 3, 4, 6, 12, 101, 166, 170, 176, 187, 208n6. See also Centro Ceremonial Indígena de Caguana Capetillo, Luisa, 197n12 Carabalí: El Esclavo Rebelde, 147 Caribs, 148, 169 Car­ne­gie Library in Puerta de Tierra, 33 Car­ter, G. Woodson, 178 La casa encantada, 198n12 Catron, Thomas B., 65 Cayey-­Caguas Tobacco Com­pany, 75 Centro Ceremonial Indígena de Caguana, 101, 189, 192, 195n11 Petroglyphs, 208n6 Chamberlain, Alexander F., 201n12 Changes in Bodily Form of Descendants of Immigrants, 177 Changing the Racial Attitudes of White Americans, 136 Charcoal-­burner man, 110 Chávez, Ezequiel, 208n7 The Chilian [sic] Folk-­Lore Society and Recent Publications on Chilian [sic] Folk-­Lore, ­etc., 201n12 Cimarrón, 147, 148 Cinderella and La Cenicienta, 99, 112, 202n22. See also Puerto Rican Oral Folklore, The, Cenizosa Cinder-­Mary (Cuento de Maria Ceniza), 113 Clark, Victor S., 35, 195n15 Clasificación de las Adivinanzas Rioplatenses, 201n12 “Clínica jíbara,” 83 Cofresí, Roberto, 11, 100, 128, 203n29. See also Puerto Rican Oral Folklore Coll y Cuchí, Cayetano, 145 Coll y Toste, Cayetano, 71, 82–83, 196n5, 198n12 black legends, 146–147 on cimarrones, 148, 204n7. See also Mason, John Alden Colón, Juana, 197n12 Columbia University, 172, 179, 180 Columbus, Christopher, 37 Compadrazgo and compadres, 202n25. See also Puerto Rican Oral Folklore, The, La leyenda de los compadres as a ghost story Conde, Eduardo, 69 Conundrum, 3, 41, 42, 43, 91. See also Puerto Rican Oral Folklore, The, riddles

Index Con valor y a como dé lugar: Memorias de una jíbara puertorriqueña, 202n24 Cordillera Central, 5, 26, 30, 86, 107, 162, 169, 174, 183 Córdova de, Pedro Tomás, 155 Corella, Carlotta Manuela, 105 La corrida de San Antonio, 92 Costumbres y tradiciones, 82 Costumbrismo and costumbrista, 74, 83, 143, 189, 199n19 Crampton, Henry E., 22, 37, 40, 137, 197n8 Criollismo or criollista lit­er­a­ture, 10, 71, 72, 74, 80, 198n2 Criollo, 31, 71, 72, 183, 188 Cruzada del Ideal, 197n13 Cuba, 1, 79, 149, 150, 167, 205n11 Cuenta[s] de asabache [sic], 157 Cuentos criollos, 198n2 Cuentos de encantamiento, 11, 67, 97, 98, 99. See also Puerto Rican Oral Folklore Los cuentos de Juan Bobo, 86, 95. See also Puerto Rican Oral Folklore Los cuentos de Juan Bobo, 200n24, 200n28 Cuentos de la Carretera Central, 198n1 Cuentos negros de Cuba, 205n11 Cuentos populares, 74 Cuentos populares españoles, 69 Cuentos y narraciones, 74 Danza, 50, 51, 159 La danza puertorriqueña, 196n4 Deluge, The, 203n28 Derkes, Eleuterio, 149 Dexter, Edwin Grant, 75 Díaz Navarro, Herminio, 46 Diego, José de and host of José Santos Chocano, 52, 53, 54 as a poet, 48, 80, 197n7, 198n10 politician, 7, 68, 196n3 pro-­independence, 48, 49, 50, 55 Dillingham Congressional Commission, 13, 176, 177 Dios que sale de noche, 156 Dominican Republic, 128, 167 Du Bois, W. E. B., 178 Dutcher, Basil H., 25–26, 138, 165 Edison wax cylinders, 42, 63, 100, 102, 196n19, 200n4 Editorial Calleja, 111 Ellis, George W., 178

233 Encantados, 99, 114, 115, 140. See also Cuentos de encantamiento Esencia del folklore puertorriqueño, 109 Espinosa, Aurelio M. animosity against Mason, 56, 57 Cinderella, 113 editor of The Puerto Rican Oral Folklore, 6, 7, 8, 56, 61, 62, 65, 77, 80, 81, 188 field research in Mexico and U.S. South West, 79, 100, 105 field research in Spain, 67, 100–101, 149 folklorist and linguist, 41, 100, 173 Nuevo Mexicano, 65–66 professional relationship with Boas, 56–57, 69, 76, 173 professional relationship and disagreements with Mason, 58–59, 63–64, 72, 102–103, 149, 164, 173 Espinosa Aurelio Jr., 103, 197n11, 201n10 Estado social del campesino, 73, 106 Estaquio Zayas Alvarado (Taso), 199n18 Excavation of a New Archeological Site in Porto Rico, 170 Fairs, scientific and anthropological, 9, 12, 27, 165, 166 Fairy tales, 41, 99, 109, 113, 114, 115, 116, 119, 131. See also Cuentos de encantamiento Fernández Juncos, Manuel, 74, 82, 199n19 Ferré, Rosario, 200n24 Ferrer y Ferrer, José, 69 Fewkes, Jesse Walter, 19, 137, 165, 165, 169, 208n4 field research on Jíbaros, 203n1 field research in Loíza, 141, 203n1 field research of “Indian mounds” and Taíno anthropology, 168, 169, 171, 185, 208n4 Field Museum of Natu­ral History, 179 field research on black culture, 203n2 Fiestas de santos, 158 Fina, Ramón, 153 Folklore portorriqueño: Cuentos y adivinanzas recogidos de la tradición oral, 86, 87, 133, 146 Folklore puertorriqueño: Adivinanzas, 7, 39, 40, 82 Folk-­Songs and M ­ usic of Cataluña, 201n12 Foraker Law, The, 2, 7, 13, 46, 68 Fowles, George Milton, 34, 36, 47, 70, 133 Frade, Ramón, 14, 73

234 I n d e x Gamio, Manuel, 172, 208n8 El genio del ingenio, 73 El Gíbaro, 148 Gíbaros in the hills, 38, 86, 89, 90, 141, 142, 151, 152, 203n1. See also Navidad Jíbara de la Montaña La gleba, 72 Glosas jíbaras, 198n10 Gompers, Samuel, 197n13 El grano de oro, 198n12 Green, Otis, 103 El grillete, 198n12 Grimm ­brothers, 109 The Growth of Boys: Dentition and Stature, 205n13 Guerrero, Teodoro, 89 Habaneras, 105 Haeberlin, Herman Karl, 3, 23, 24, 105, 171 Hague, Eleanor, 105, 201n14 Hall, A.D., 97 Halstead, Murat, 2 Hansel and Gretel, 99, 122, 123 Harris, Abram, 178 Harvey, H. W., 20 Haunted Sentry Box of Porto Rico The, 198n13 Hawaiian Sugar Planters, 28 Haynes, George E., 178 Henry, Jules, 180 Herman, Enrique, 196n5 Hernández, Pedro, 200n6 Hernández López, Juan, 54 Herskovits, Melville J., 62 Herzog, George, 102, 200nn5–6 Hoisington, F. R., 75 El hombre velorio, 89, 199n19 Hostos, Adolfo de, 177, 209n13 Hostos, Eugenio María de, 177 Hovey, Edward D., 33 ­Human Faculty as Determined by Race, 135 Hunt, George, 77, 96, 107, 198n6, 201n16 Huracán, Novela basada en la leyenda del pirata Roberto Cofresí, 203n31 El idioma castellano en Puerto Rico, 83 Iglesias Pantín, Santiago, 187, 197n13 Indian territory (and Indieras), 4, 12, 90, 107, 166, 169, 175, 186 Industries of the African Negroes, 133, 163 Ingenios, 72, 73

Institute of Puerto Rican Culture (Instituto de Cultura Puertorriqueña), 82, 83, 101, 102, 153, 187, 198n11 International Congress of Americanists, 194n8 International School of American Archaeology and Ethnology, 20, 23, 105, 166, 179 Jacho, 126. See also Puerto Rican Oral Folklore, The, La luz del muerto as after-­life punishment Jíbaros, 9, 16, 31, 35, 38, 71, 85, 155, 160, 163 crafts, 27 décimas, 3, 42, 87, 91, 103, 106, 109, 142, 159, 185 de la montaña, 5, 85, 89, 138, 141, 142, 168, 183, 186 illiteracy rate and literacy campaigns, 38, 75, 77–79, 189 in Hawaii, 28 mechanization of agrarian practices, 186, 187 música criolla, 14, 27, 42, 74, 76, 87, 106, 109, 159, 186 poverty, 30, 72, 120, 126, 135, 144, 202n24 religious practices, 27, 86, 107, 114, 123, 126, 141, 156, 185, 199, 202n26, 203n27 social discontent and ­labor activists, 186, 197n12 as strikes against American-­owned companies, 68, 187, 197n12 Johnson, Charles S., 178 Jones Act, 13, 46, 55 Journal of American Folklore, 4, 7, 62, 69, 98, 102, 105, 149, 163, 201n12 Journal of the Botanical Gardens, 19, 194n7 Journey of a Puerto Rican Jíbaro, 199n17 Juan Bobo y la Dama de Occidente, 200n24 Juan Sin Miedo, 79, 95 Juan Tonto, 95 Juego de bola, 101, 171, 189 Juliá Marín, Ramón, 72 Junghanns, Robert L., 71, 82, 83–84, 109, 112, 198n14. See also Mason, John Alden Justiniano, Carmen Luisa, 202n24 Kardec, Allan, 127, 202n26 Keith, Minor C., 76 Kemp, James F., 22 Kittredge, George L., 56

Index Kroeber, Alfred L., 4, 169, 206n22 Kutenai Tales, 24 Latimer collection, 168, 207n3 Lecturas escogidas, 74 Legends, 75, 99, 110, 124, 128, 132, 198n12. See also Puerto Rican Oral Folklore, The, Leyendas Lehmann-­Nitsche, Robert, 201n12 El lenguaje castellano en Puerto Rico, 100 Lewis, Cudjo, 160 La leyenda del café, 198n12 Lloréns Torres, Luis, 197n7 Locke, Alain LeRoy, 178 Loíza Black medicinal and religious practices, 5, 11 bomba, 42, 91, 109, 155, 188 Congo language, 134, 141–142, 154 crafts, 137 cuentos cantados, 140–141, 204n4 cuentos de bruja, 140 Cuentos de brujas, 140, 145 cuento negrito and black stories, 140, 141, 145, 149, 153, 160, 204n4 La Cueva de Loíza, 154, 157 La fiesta de Santiago Apóstol, 159, 206n23, 207n31 green medicine and herbal remedies, 134, 142, 157–158, 187 Materia médica and witchcraft, 154 ­music, 142, 143, 155, 158, 159, 163, 188, 206n24 poverty, 144–145 racist stories, 161–162 religious practices and voodooism, 134, 137, 141, 142, 154, 157, 187 site of afro-­puertorriqueño culture, 11, 134, 138, 143–144, 149, 154, 158, 187 surviving slavery customs, 145, 155, 206n23 vejigantes, 137, 206n23 velorios de angelitos, 154 López Merjeliza, Ignacio, 50 Luis Lloréns Torres, 197 Maña (wit), 10, 117, 124 Mano Fashico, 95 Marqués, René, 199n24 Martínez, Julio T., 73 Marxuach, Teófilo, 100 Mason, John Alden at Capá, 166, 170–171, 187, 194n10

235 collector of hair samples, 90, 150, 151–152, 205n14 collector of oral folklore in Puerto Rico, 23 dealing with Edward M. Bainter, Puerto Rican School Department director, 6, 31, 34, 40, 71, 74–76, 170, 182, 186 differences with Boas, 61–62, 164 exploring caves, 148, 171, 204n5 at Field Museum of Natu­ral History in Chicago, 62 as field researcher in Mexico, 4, 24, 58, 62, 101, 113, 154, 173, 194n9, 206n20 as field researcher in Puerto Rico, 3, 5, 23, 62, 208n9 on Gíbaro [sic], 5, 26, 138 Jíbaro dialectology and phonetics, 26–27, 64, 80, 90, 97, 100, 185 in Old Loíza, 5, 39, 85, 104, 137–140, 151, 162, 168, 171, 187 rec­ords black ­music, 42, 63, 102, 142, 143, 196n19, 197n10. See also Edison wax cylinders as researcher of green medicine, 157, 158 as researcher of “Phonetics of African (Congo?),” 154 as researcher of Materia médica and witchcraft, 154, 155, 156, 157 Spanish language fluency, 81, 103 training in Mexico u ­ nder Boas, 4, 23, 56, 58, 81, 108, 173 transcription of oral samples, 31, 41, 59, 79, 142, 153, 155, 182 training teachers, 34, 36, 75, 150, 170, 186 in Utuado, 25, 40, 41, 43, 86, 88–89, 150, 171, 183, 199n23 work with Adolfo de Hostos, 177–178 work with Cayetano Coll y Toste, 83, 85 work with Jíbaro musicians and singers, 42, 197n10 work with jíbaros as cultural in­for­ mants, 5, 13, 31, 38–39, 68, 86, 90, 181, 187 work with local in­for­mants in­for­mants, 159, 188 work with Melitón Congo, 5, 8, 11, 134, 141–142, 155–157, 187 work with Puerto Rican public school ­children, 6, 31, 34, 37–38, 64, 70, 95, 111, 174, 182 work with Ricardo Alegría, 101–102, 103, 104, 154, 162, 176, 187–188

236 I n d e x Mason (cont.) work with Robert L. Junghanns, 71, 82, 84–85, 86, 111, 112, 151, 174 work with school superintendents, 34, 36, 37, 38 Mason, Otis T., 168 McKinley, William, 27 McMillin, Emerson, 21 Mechling, William H., 105, 179, 193n7 Meléndez Muñoz, Miguel, 73, 92, 106, 198n1 Melgarejo, Juan, 195n10, 201n17 Memoria y descripción de la Isla de Puerto Rico, 195n10, 201n17 Menéndez Pidal, Ramón, 201n10 Miller, Paul G., 78–79, 198n8 Mintz, Sidney W., 199n18 Miyares González, Fernando, 88, 198n15 Morales Cabrera, Pablo, 74, 198n2 Muñoz Marín, Luis, 176 Muñoz Rivera, Luis, 45, 46 Museo de la Música Puertorriqueña, 200n8 My­t hol­ogy and Folk-­Tales of the North American Indians, 108 Myths and Legends of Our New Possessions and Protectorate, 203n28 National Geographic, 10, 15, 16, 17 articles about Puerto Rico, 17–19 Native Poetry of Northern Brazil, 201n13 Navidad Jíbara de la Montaña, 186 La negra azul, 147 La negrita y la vaquita, 148 El negrito bruto, 161 Negro and the Demands of Modern Life, The, 135, 178 El negro del calabazo de melado, 161 Los negros brujos, 146 El negro y el rey, 161 New Evidence in Regard to the Instability of ­Human Types, 176 New World Archaeological Foundation, 154 New York Acad­emy of Sciences, 2, 9, 19 and The Scientific Survey of Porto Rico and the Virgin Islands, 19, 20, 23, 32, 59, 176, 189, 192 New York Botanical Gardens, 19, 21, 26, 138 New York Times, 193n1 Noticias particulares de la Isla y Plaza de San Juan Bautista de Puerto Rico, 88 Nuestra Señora de la Divina Providencia, 203n32

Ober, Frederick A., 167–168. See also World’s Columbian Exposition O’Neill, Arturo, 196n5 The Origin of the Morning Star, 195n18 Ortiz, Fernando, 149, 205n9 Ortiz Cofer, Judith, 199n20 Our New Possessions, 88 The Outlook for the American Negro, 135 Panama and Panama Canal, 2, 28, 29–30 Pan American Association of Philadelphia, 153, 205n16 Pan-­A merican Exposition (Pax) World Fair, 27 Paraguay Native Poetry, 201n13 Peabody Museum of Natu­ral History, 189 Pedreira, Antonio S., 209n13 “Pedro Arnimalas” [sic], 92, 110. See also Puerto Rican Oral Folklore Periódico Jurídico Literario, 145 Philippines, 1, 137, 167, 178 Picaresque stories, 10, 64, 67, 72, 85, 93, 94, 95, 123. See also Juan Bobo y la Dama de Occidente Pícaros (scoundrel), 10, 72, 85, 93, 95, 123 Pierre Ledrú, Andre, 188 Pizarro, Manuel Alonso, 149 Poindexter, Miles, 49 Los polvos de don Perlimlín, 202n21 Ponceño, El, 46 Poor, Charles L., 22 Portell Vilá, Herminio, 149, 150, 205n10, 205n12 Porto Rican Department of Education, 31, 34, 35, 86, 96, 182 Porto Rico: The Land of the Rich Port, 88 Porto Rico American Tobacco Com­pany, 68 Porto Rico Regiment of Infantry, 177 Los príncipes encantados, 202n21 Puerto Rican Oral Folklore, The, 4, 6, 7, 8, 13, 23, 37–38, 39, 40, 42, 57, 67, 69, 77, 181 African influences, 67, 95, 139, 140, 149 Aguinaldos, 3, 42, 87, 91, 142, 159, 186, 209n1 The Bird Prince, 116, 118 The bird-­princess, 140 La cabeza as a miracle, 131–132 The Calf Prince, 116, 117 The Carnation Prince, 117 Cenizosa, 99, 113, 114–115 Cofresí as a notable fighter, 128, 129, 130

Index Comparative study and Latin American and Spanish oral folklore, 41, 57, 67, 69, 79, 89, 95, 100, 139, 149 Cuentos de Calleja, 111–112, 202n21 Cuentitos, anécdotas y chistes, 67, 77, 110, 124, 128, 140, 160, 162 Cuentos cantados, 40, 121, 125, 140–141 Cuentos de animals, 67, 75, 115, 206n25 Cuentos de brujería, 67, 75, 146 Cuentos del diablo, 67, 110, 127, 129, 159 Cuentos de encantamiento, 11, 67, 97, 98, 99, 110, 111, 114, 121, 122 Cuentos de fuerza y valor extraordinarios, 67 Cuentos picarescos, 64, 67, 93, 94, 95 Cuentos puertorriqueños, 11, 67, 97, 98, 110 The Enchanted Prince, 99, 116, 117, 118, 120 El fantasma as a half-­human, half-­ animal monster apparition, 125 El hombre valiente as defying a local superstitious belief, 127–128 Juan Bobo, 10, 67, 72, 92, 96, 110, 188, 199n23 Juan el Oso, 75, 79 Leyendas, 11, 75, 97, 98, 110, 124, 125, 128, 146 La leyenda de los compadres as a ghost story, 125 La luz del muerto as after-­life punishment, 126 La mata de ají warning against evil parents and encantados, 121–122, 202n24 El milagro de la Cruz as a miracle, 131 El muerto y las piedras de moler maíz as a funny death story and idea of heaven, 126 Un muerto as a funny death story, 126 La mujer codiciosa as a greedy w ­ oman, 120–121 Myths, 64, 86, 87, 109, 110, 111, 128, 203n28 La niña y el pez as encantado story, 120 Los niños huérfanos warning against evil parents, 122–123 Los niños perdidos deceiving a witch, 123–124 Nuestra Señora de la Monserrate as a miraculous apparition legend, 130–131, 203n32 The Orphaned ­Children. See Puerto Rican Oral Folklore, The, Los niños

237 huérfanos warning against evil parents El Palmar de las ruinas ghost story, 125 El pececito encantado encantados, 119 Pedro Urdemalas, 64, 95, 200n26, 202n20 riddles, 7, 23, 39, 40, 57, 63, 75, 84, 87, 105, 106, 110, 139 San Pío as a miraculous statue, 131, 203n33 The Seven Crows as the result of a curse and encantados, 118, 119, 120 Los tres amigos as a ghost story, 125 Typist of transcripts, 60, 61 Puerto Rico Abolition of slavery, 5, 11, 53, 109, 134, 135, 149, 158, 207n30 Americanization of, 2, 8, 9, 45, 48, 53, 66, 182, 197n6 Anarchists, 149, 204n8 Hispanidad (Hispanic and Hispanicness), 13, 31, 49, 53, 68, 88, 96, 145, 163, 185 and La Raza, 9, 13, 14, 44, 45, 52, 53, 54 Imposition of En­glish as language of instruction, 7, 31, 35–36, 47, 49, 53, 182, 184, 190, 195n15, 196n5 National identity, 31, 53, 71, 80, 98, 128, 148, 162, 183, 190 Partido Socialista, 69 Pro-­independence, 45, 46, 47–48, 52, 55, 72, 148, 190, 196n1 Pro-­statehood and annexation, 2, 46, 48, 49, 72, 190 Religious travelers and missionaries, 193n3 Spain po­liti­cal control of the island, 45, 163 Spanish travelers, 169, 181, 188, 201n17 Spanish American War, 1, 46, 70, 149, 164, 181, 190, 207n35 Teachers touring United States, 34, 195n15 Teachers and student protests and strikes, 7, 36, 68, 195n17 U.S. travelers, 2, 10, 53, 78, 88, 96, 137, 182, 184, 193n3 U.S. citizenship, 13, 35, 45, 46, 47, 49 U.S. scientists in Puerto Rico, 8, 9, 16, 165, 208n4 Workers’ u ­ nions and protests, 7, 13, 68, 69, 197n12, 197n13 Puerto Rico Ilustrado, 3, 25, 50, 51, 73, 83, 144, 195n12, 198n12

238 I n d e x Puerto Rico lírico, 196n6 Putnam, Frederick Ward, 167 Radin, Paul, 57, 59, 61, 62, 80, 81, 106, 172, 197n9 Rainey, Froelich, 189, 209n14 Ramírez de Arellano, 86, 92, 109, 133 black folk stories, 146, 189 Folklore portorriqueño, 87–88 treatment of jíbaros, 87–88 Ramírez Rivera, José, 200n28 La raposa y el Cuervo, 92 Reina, Rubén E., 205n18 The Remington Co[mpany], 60 Revista Puertorriqueña, 82 Rodríguez de Tió, 196n2 Rojas, Manuel, 69, 70 Romero Rosa, Ramón, 69 Roo­se­velt, Theodore, 176 member of Roosevelt-­Rondon Scientific Expedition, 28 traveling in Brazil’s Amazon, 16, 28 traveling in Puerto Rico, 28–30 Saint Louis Exposition, 27 Santos Chocano, José visit to Puerto Rico, 52–53, 55, 196n6 El sapo y el grillo, 92 Schuller, Rudolph, 201n13 Scientific Survey of Porto Rico and the Virgin Islands exploration of the island’s natu­ral resources, 20, 22, 137, 138, 165, 182, 186 initial stages, 3, 16, 19, 197n8 involvement of Governor Yager, 20, 32 Seabury, Joseph B., 88 Seler, Eduard Georg, 208n7 Semanario Juan Bobo, 93 Semblanzas puertorriqueñas, 82 Semilla de identidad, 201n8 Silva Rondon, Cândido Mariano da, 28 Sinclair, A. T., 201n12 Sketckes, 199n21 Skinner, Charles M., 203n28 Smithsonian (museum), 168, 207n3 Sociedad Económica Amigos del País, 196n5 La sortija de rubí, 198n12 South Porto Rico Sugar Com­pany, 33 Southwest (U.S.), 167 Spanish Islands Empire, 2, 15, 16, 17 Stahl, Agustín, 207n2 Steward, Julian H., 206n22

Stories from Tuxtepec, Oaxaca, 105 Sugar (cane), 18, 161, 187 Sugar cane plantations, 18, 28, 30, 73, 158, 187 Sugar cane workers, 73, 199 Sugar mills and refineries, 73, 161, 186 Supporter of The Scientific Survey, 20, 21, 22, 32–33, 176, 181, 186 Taíno (Arawak), 3, 4, 12, 26, 137, 154, 156, 167, 171, 189, 195n10, 195n13, 201n17. See also Capá Taíno mountain jíbaro, 168, 203n28 Taíno oral folklore, 128, 203n28 Taíno runaways, 147 Taínos, 204n6 Tapia y Rivera, Alejandro, 203n31 Tierra adentro, 88, 132, 155, 192 Tió Nazario de Figueroa, Juan Angel, 109 ­earlier field folklorist in Puerto Rico, 109–110, 155, 202n19 Tipos y caracteres, 82 Toro Soler, Ricardo del, 203n31 Torreya: A Monthly Journal of Botanical Notes and News, 19 Las tres hadas, 202n22 United States Fruit Com­pany, 76 United States National Museum, 168 United States slavery-­based black culture, 206nn26–28, 207n29, 207n32, 207n34 University of Mexico, 172 University of Pennsylvania Museum, 180, 205n18 University of Puerto Rico, 189, 201n18, 205n18 U.S. Office of Naval Intelligence, 179 Varita de la virtud, 114 Vázquez, Julio, 199n17 Verrill, Alpheus Hyatt, 31–32 Viaje a la Isla de Puerto Rico, 188 Viera Vargas, Hugo, 200n6 Vizcarrondo, Julio L., 199n19 Von Luschan, Felix, 170, 208n5 La vuelta al hogar, 203n31 Wagner, Hermann, 201n15 Walker, Charles, 158, 207n33 Warburg, Aby, 76 Washington, Booker T., 178 Waterman, Richard, 102, 200n7 White, Trumbull, 88 Witchcraft, 67, 75, 127, 146

Index Witches, 107, 116, 126, 202n18 Wolf, Hans, 154, 206n22 Woodrow, Wilson, 180 Work, Monroe N., 178 World’s Columbian Exposition, 12, 165, 166, 167, 168 World War I, 46, 68, 195n16

239 Yager, Arthur, 5, 177 Yunque, El, 43, 165 Yuyo: Novela de las costumbres puertorriqueñas, 73 Zemies, 201n17 Zeno Gandía, Manuel, 197n7

About the Author

Rafael Ocasio (PhD, Latin American lit­er­a­tures, University of Kentucky, 1987) is Charles A. Dana Professor of Spanish at Agnes Scott College, Decatur-­Atlanta, Georgia. He is the author of two books on dissident writer Reinaldo Arenas: Cuba’s Po­liti­cal and Sexual Outlaw (2003) and A Gay Cuban Activist in Exile (2007). His other books include Lit­er­a­ture of Latin America (2004) and Afro-­ Cuban Costumbrismo: From Plantations to the Slums (2012). His book, A Bristol, Rhode Island, and Matanzas, Cuba, Slavery Connection: The Diary of George Howe, examines archival documentation of administrators as participants of an active commercial trade between Cuba and Rhode Island throughout the early part of the nineteenth c­ entury. He teaches upper-­level courses on Latin American lit­er­a­tures and film, as well as Spanish-­language courses.