Puerto Rico Gonzalez, Jose Luis.

Puerto Rico

Gonzalez, Jose Luis. Puerto Rico: The Four Storied Country. M. Wiener Pub., 1993.

When Jose Luis Gonzalez calls Puerto Rico the Four Storied Country, he is creating an implied critique of how the story of the island is usually told, a singular, narrow tale of the ascent of European, Spanish-speaking nationals who strove to win independence for the nation, who spoke with one voice for the entire Hispanic population of Puerto Rico. Gonzalez says this storyline undervalues the more significant contribution of Indian-African, mestizo natives in formulating a unique Puerto Rican identity and culture. These individuals made up the majority of the island's population during its formative years of development; they were the first true residents and cultural founders of the land.

Of course, the very first national inhabitants, the indigenous peoples, as a 'pure' culture and nation were wiped out during the 16th century. They were eradicated by disease and the brutality of the Spanish conquistadors. Those natives that did survive formed a new culture with Afro-Antilleans, the descendents of African slaves who were brought in by the Spanish colonists to do the work the conquistadors required to make money from the colonized territory. Up to the 19th century, Africans dominated the creation of Puerto Rican culture. Their intermixture of blood and culture with the native residents created the first story of Puerto Rico.

This story exhibited a great deal of cultural intermixture as well as intermarriage, except for the few, white residents who dominated the political life of the island. Blacks, mulattos, and poor whites had no say in the government or church as members of the working classes and despised races, but they influenced the island's development in other ways. There is a long-standing myth that the white j'baros, these working class people, were the first 'pure' Puerto Ricans. However really if there were ever substantial numbers of white jibaros, their culture was a mix of slave and native cultures, not a direct descendent Hispanic or European culture. The fact remains first true Puerto Rican culture, regardless of the exact racial composition of the individual, was at least partially made up of the cultures of the enslaved, runaway, or formerly enslaved Africans who had been owned by early Spanish colonists. The first jibaros, whether mulatto or African, wore the same clothes, ate the same food, and tended to live in the same areas -- the center of the island, to hide from those who would enslave them, or make them work for a mere pittance.

The coffee plantations that made Puerto Rico famous began to be organized in the 19th century after the next wave of immigration. The Spanish governing authorities had encouraged more European immigration, for fear of the colony revolting and becoming independent like Haiti. The falling price of sugar, then Puerto Rico's cash crop, economically destabilized the island and intensified the Spanish ruling authorities' direst fears. The first immigrants came with the intention of making it rich and then going back to their home country, but many stayed, which did create a more prosperous island, as more wealth was being circulated in the island's borders, rather than exported back to Spain. This second chapter of coffee prosperity was then followed by a third story told by the children of these agrarian people, who became professionals or bureaucrats. Most of them settled upon the coastline, where the cities necessary for Puerto Rico's trade were concentrated. The working classes continued to prefer the less securely controlled areas of the island, where vagrancy laws that mandated employment or landowning for all residents were less likely to be enforced.

The wealth of the developing wealthy, bureaucratic and agrarian populations enabled these immigrants to become a new kind of elite, educated capitalists. However, although many members of this did become nationalists later on, after the United States' annexation, these people were not proud democrats, intent upon enfranchising the entire population, and celebrating all of Puerto Rican culture. They had a particular point-of-view of what their nation's history should be read as, as white and Hispanic. History began with their incursion and settlement of the territory, not with the beginnings of the culture they had entered, or the beginnings of the land they now claimed as their own.

Thus Gonzalez is as interested in exposing the myths of a unified Puerto Rican culture created by these white elites who downplayed the African elements of Puerto Rican culture as he is in narrating the nation's history. He also attempts to expose what he sees as the hypocrisies of pro-independent activists like Jose de Diego, who only opposed the United States because it threatened his social position, not because he had any sympathy for the common populace or desire to create an inclusive national identity.