Chapter VI: Manners and Customs

Let us examine briefly in the first place what has been the management of Porto Rico under Spanish rule, or, rather, perhaps we should call it mismanagement, for no one of Spain's colonies has ever been properly directed.

Porto Rico has been governed under a constitution voted by the Spanish Cortes in 1869. The government has been administered by a captain-general, assisted by an administrative council appointed at Madrid.

The revenue has been about four millions of dollars a year, considerably more than half of which has been derived from customs, and the rest from taxation, direct and indirect.

The captain-general was president of the superior tribunals of justice and of the superior juntas of the capital; but the fiscal administration had a special chief called intendant. The supreme judicial power lay in a royal _audience_. Justice was administered in the cities and in the country by judges of the first instance and by alcaldes. There were nine special tribunals: civil, ecclesiastical, war, marine, artillery, engineers, administration, probate and commerce.

Ecclesiastical affairs were presided over by a bishop chosen by the crown and approved by the pope.

For administrative purposes the island and its dependencies were divided into nine districts: Porto Rico, Bayamon, Arecibo, Aquadilla, Mayaguez, Ponce, Humacoa, Guayama and Vieques.

The Spanish administration in Porto Rico, although not so bad as in other colonies, has, nevertheless, been one of cruelty and oppression. The Spaniards, as will be remembered, began by exterminating the native Indian population in less than a century.

There was not a branch of the administration which was not conducted under a system of corruption. The law was constantly violated by the Spaniards, and the natives deprived of their rights.

When elections took place the Spanish or Conservative party always won, and this in spite of the fact that this party was in a large minority. No more corrupt and farcical elections have even been known to take place.

Such a thing as liberty of the press was utterly unknown. Articles that had been printed in the Madrid or other Spanish papers attacking the government could not be reproduced in any Porto Rican papers, without the editors being arrested and punished. And this occurred even if the article in question had not been considered as offering ground for the prosecution by the authorities in Spain.

The papers, by the way, were ridiculously inadequate in every sense of the word. Only one attempt was ever made to establish a magazine. This was about eleven years ago. It was called the _Revista Puertorriquena_ and was intended "to carry the highest expression of our intellectual culture to all the people of Europe and America where the magnificent Castilian language is spoken."

The magazine was conducted by a committee composed of a director, two editors, "and other illustrious persons" elected by the subscribers. The founder of the magazine lamented that the "race of artists" who first settled in Puerto Rico "were so overwhelmed by the exuberant and pompous beauty of the tropics that the natural means of artistic expression were exaggerated to the detriment of ideas," and that the crying evil of the periodical press of the island was "the abundance of sonorous and high-sounding articles having nothing to say to the understanding."

The founder of the magazine was Don Manuel Juncos, who is the author of several books of travel. He speaks of the Brooklyn bridge as "a magic vision of the Thousand and One Nights," while the smoke that rose from myriads of New York chimneys "formed the holy and blessed incense of a mighty and busy population, rising directly up to God from the fecund altar of labor." In the streets he was amazed at the "incessant avalanche of men, all having the purpose of certain or probable utility."

No more than nineteen persons, under the old regime, were allowed to meet in any place of the island, without special permission from the government, and the mayor of the town was obliged to attend the meetings to see that nothing was said or done against "the integrity of the nation."

Licenses were required for everything, even for an ordinary dancing party.

The manner of life in the large towns of Porto Rico is not dissimilar from that of European countries, with the exception of some slight differences due to the heat of the climate. The fashions for men and women alike are imported, especially from Paris and London. Those who are in comfortable circumstances dress just like people in European countries. The men wear woolen clothes all the year round. The young women dress very elaborately and all wear hats, the Spanish mantilla being adopted by elderly women only.

In the small towns, men dress after the fashion of the cities, except that their clothes are made of linen. Woolen fabrics are uncomfortable, and they are considered a luxury to be donned only on Sundays and holidays.

Laborers and farm hands wear neither coats nor shoes. They do not care to do so, in the first place, and, in the second, they could not afford to, as their earnings are very small.

In San Juan the streets are rectangular and are closely built with brick houses usually two or three stories, stuccoed on the outside, and painted in different colors. In one house live several families, and the degree of rent, as well as of social position, rises with the height of the floor above the ground.

The lower floors, as a rule, are very dirty, and are crowded in a most unhealthful way by negroes and the servants of those who live above.

Sanitary conditions, by the way, as in all Spanish possessions, are the very worst possible, and much will have to be done in this respect when the United States takes permanent possession.

There is one feature which strikes every foreigner, and that is the roof gardens. In many parts of the island, especially in the smaller towns, the whole population enjoys itself at night on the housetops. The houses are built a little off the ground, and they look not unlike castles in the air which have been built for pleasure rather than for living purposes.

In all tropical countries people have the habit of sleeping in the daytime, and do their shopping and attend to their social duties in the evening. In Porto Rico this custom is almost universal.

Every man of any means is the possessor of two houses, a town house and a country house. At carnival times, or when any special celebration is going on, he takes his family to town and brings them back again when the sport is over.

Poverty is almost unknown in Porto Rico, for almost every man owns his horse and every woman is the possessor of chickens. Horseback riding is an almost universal pastime. There are many fine horses on the island, and they are used daily by men and women.

The inhabitants have but few wants which are not satisfied by Nature without any effort on their part. They lead a _dolce far niente_ existence, swinging to and fro in their hammocks all day long, smoking cigarettes and strumming guitars.

Life at San Juan and the other principal towns is more or less monotonous, amusements being few. There is a _retreta_ or concert by the military bands twice a week and theatrical performances three or four evenings a week. Matinees are very seldom given. The theatres are owned by the cities and rented to European and American companies traveling through the island at so much an evening.

Unlike Cuba, there are no bull fights, but cock fighting may be called the national sport, and is universally indulged in. Game cocks are the greatest attraction of the markets. Every Sunday there are public fights in the cockpit, and these are invariably accompanied by betting, often very large amounts being involved.

Gambling, by the way, may be said to be universal. Every one, from the rich planter down to the lowest laborer and beggar, is given up to this vice, and will squander away every dollar if the mood takes him.

There is nothing but hospitality on the island. The people are exceedingly polite to strangers, and the traveler who offers money deeply offends his host.

A curious feature of the streets is the milk delivery, which is not unlike that prevailing in Cuba.

This takes place before and during the noon, or breakfast, hour, breakfast being taken here between 12 and 2 o'clock. Sometimes the milk is still being sold at 4 or 5 o'clock. The milkman drives from door to door from one to four or five cows, each branded with a number and usually one or more of them accompanied by a calf. The driver cries his approach, and the customer fetches sends out a pan, pail, bottle, or cup, which he hands to the milkman. The milkman puts into the receptacle the quantity of milk paid for, which he induces the cow to yield after the usual manner.

Mr. W. G. Morrisey gives an interesting description of how funerals are conducted in Porto Rico. He says that when a native dies preparations are immediately made for the burial.

No women are allowed to attend the funeral and the casket is carried on the shoulders of four natives. The cemetery being reached, the remains are deposited in one of the many vaults in the place, provided the sum of four pesos per year is paid to the authorities. If this sum is not forthcoming the corpse is placed in a corner of the graveyard and left there to decay. Mr. Morrisey said it was a common occurrence to see seven or eight funerals pass by every day.

Another thing that struck Mr. Morrisey was the railroad that runs from Ponce to Playo. The train is made up of an old-fashioned engine and three cars. There are first, second and third class coaches, the only difference between the first and second class being the seats in the first class coach, which are cushioned. It is first class in name only, and very few of the visitors and the better class of natives use it, because of the fact that the cushions are full of vermin. Everything seems to be filthy, from the Hotel Ingleterra, which is considered the best house in Ponce, to the most miserable of huts on the outskirts of the city.

Mr. Morrisey said that it is not a question of one place being cleaner than the other, but one place not being as filthy as another.

The facilities for lighting the city at night were investigated, and it was found that very little light is used. The stores are lighted with one or two incandescent lights, which are put in by the managers of a small electric light plant that has been in operation for some time. Kerosene oil cannot be bought for less than forty cents a pint, and consequently is not used to any great extent. An ice plant has also been established in Ponce, where they manufacture ice in small cakes about the size of a brick. This sells at $1.50 per hundred-weight.

There is no public school system, and a large number of even the white population can neither read nor write. The daughters of the well-to-do are sent to convents on the island, while the sons go abroad to be educated. Among this latter class there is considerable culture and refinement, and most of them speak English.

The women are of medium size, but exquisitely formed. They have all the coquetry which is typical of the women of the tropics, and no one who visits Porto Rico can fail to be impressed with their beauty, delicacy and grace.

It has been affirmed that Porto Rico has been in the past a perfect Mecca for fugitives from justice. At one time no less than one hundred of this description were traced there.

It is really possible to live on very little money there, and lives are prolonged to an incredible period. Fugitives therefore find it a haven in which to turn over a new leaf and begin a better life.

The Porto Ricans are naturally Roman Catholics and are very devout.

The manner of keeping Sunday would be apt to shock our New Englanders of Puritan descent.

A correspondent of the New York Sun, who was with the army in Porto Rico speaks of this as follows:

"Sunday at Ponce, if it continues as at present, will add still further variety to the somewhat different observances of the day which now characterize the territory of the United States.

"'To-morrow,' said a native last Saturday, 'to-morrow I shall go to the theatre.'

"'It's Sunday,' said his American soldier companion. 'You should be going to church.'

"An elevation of the shoulders.

"'The same thing,' said the native.

"The show at the theatre that day, by the way, was given by an American troupe that has been touring the Indies.

"There is, of course, nothing new in the custom in Catholic countries of giving Sunday mornings to church and Sunday afternoons to pleasure. In Ponce the merchants are not willing to close their stores for the religious observances of the day, but hold that it would be wholly wrong to mar the hours of pleasure by business attentions. The stores are all open Sunday mornings as on other days, but shut tight Sunday afternoons. Vesper services are all but unknown. There may be a change regarding services presently. The priests have not been paid since the arrival of the American army. It was the Spanish custom to pay them from the customs receipts. Colonel Hill has refused to give them any money since he has been in charge of the custom-house, and has told them that hereafter their people will have to support them voluntarily. What the people will say to this at the start it is hard to guess. They may not wholly understand it. Under existing laws they are taxed for the support of the church. What their voluntary support of it will be remains to be seen. Protestants have almost a clear field for mission work here. The only Protestant church on the island is at Ponce, and that was opened on the Sunday after the Americans' arrival, for the first time, it is said, in ten years.

"The chief service at the cathedral is held at 9 o'clock Sunday mornings, mass being said hourly from 5 o'clock until then. At the 9 o'clock service many Americans drift in. Even the Catholics among the soldiers who have attended have appeared to drift in rather than go with the purpose of doing their devotions. It may be that there seemed something inconsistent in kneeling before the altar with a row of cartridges girded around the body. One man crept into the nave behind the seats, took off his cartridge belt and laid it beside him, and, kneeling, bowed his head very low, while he joined in the prayers. When the service was over he carried the war belt in his hand to the door and there stopped and buckled it on. Fifty yards from the door a company of the Nineteenth Infantry was encamped on guard duty in the principal public square, on one end of which the cathedral stands.

"While the services were going on late comers of the native congregation edged their way in at the rear doors, and, passing round the screen beneath the choir loft, dropped to their knees on the marble floor, there remaining until the close. Noticeable among these worshippers were the old and widowed and the very poor. The last recked little or not at all of the filthy floor, trailed with dirt and spotted with tobacco juice. Some of the others brought with them prayer rugs, even though they were but ragged strips of carpeting."

The same correspondent has also this to say about the shops, which is interesting:

"One of the things revealed by a shopping tour is the absence from the shops of anything distinctly characteristic of Porto Rico. The tourist has not made the island a favorite stopping place, and the people seem to prefer when buying anything not edible to buy foreign-made articles. The only things that even bore a stamp indicative of Porto Rico found by several hunters after curios were fit relics of a Spanish city--case knives inscribed "Viva Ponce." Fortunate seekers after mementoes secured a few of the peculiar native musical instruments called guiros. It is straining courtesy as well as language to call them musical instruments, but they are used by the natives to make what to the natives is music, and one of them is included in each group of street or cafe musicians. The instrument is a gourd shaped like some of our long-necked squashes, hollowed out through two vents cut in one side, and the surface over half the perimeter slashed or furrowed so as to offer a file-like resistance to a metal trident, which is scraped over it in time to the music made by the guitar, or whatever other instrument or instruments make up the orchestra. There are times when the result is suggestive of the couchee-couchee music and scratching."

For nearly three centuries slavery existed in Porto Rico, but it was finally abolished by the Spanish Cortes in March 1873.

The New York Herald in its special correspondence has much to say about the inhabitants that is of undoubted interest, and from this article we have culled considerable that follows. The article in question was written after the virtual surrender of Porto Rico.

These people have been accustomed to military rule all their lives, and to withdraw it in toto and tell them to go in and govern themselves is an experience which many regard as dangerous. Of a race excitable, with blood that courses quickly and with wrongs of many years' standing, the natives are intoxicated with their freedom. Their delirium has but one course--revenge--and when the entire population is fully awake to the opportunity offered there may come a break from all restraint, and then it may be shown that the depletion of our army was a blunder.

Without the menace of the Spanish soldiery, without the fear of the Church, and without the guiding hand of a good American officer and wisely-located American army of occupation, there may be trouble ahead.

With the going of the soldiers comes the influx of the mercantile classes. Salesmen are arriving in large numbers and promoters and speculators abound. Everything is being boosted from its former lethargic tropical calm. Prices of commodities are rising. Land has quadrupled in value in the owners' minds, and even the street gamins now demand twenty-five cents American money for a single button alleged to be cut from the coat of a Spanish soldier, which they formerly had trouble at disposing of at the rate of twelve and one-half cents per dozen.

These commercial avant couriers are bright, active 'hustlers,' who make the native nabobs gasp at their breezy ways, but, all the same, these nabobs are pretty shrewd persons and know how to buy closely.

There is one thing the native merchants have to learn, and that is to display their goods and wares. Not a single show window exists, and if some enterprising Yankee will just tear out the forbidding front of one of these business houses, replace it with one on the showcase style and set forth a dazzling array of merchandize, arranged by the deft hand of the artistic window decorator, there will be a revolution in trade in this place.

Another portion of the business life to be renovated is the sugar industry. The crudest system exists for the transformation of the juice of the cane into the saccharine crystals of commerce. Machinery so ponderous that it requires a volume of steam all out of proportion to the energy actually needed, and wasteful methods in the extraction of the syrup residue after crystallization, obtain. Yankee machinery, coupled with Yankee push, will cause a wonderful difference in the cost of the finished product.

"At the same time the manner of herding the hangs on these huge plantations must surely be changed. Such conditions exist in the quarters that a mere recital would be unprintable, and from an examination I made of the quarters of a very large estate I came away ill mentally and physically."

Members of the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals have a great field before them in this island. The inhabitants are the most cruel in their handling of beasts of burden and, in fact, of all living creatures below the grade of mankind that could be imagined.

Oxen and bulls furnish the principal means of merchandise transportation. They are yoked together with a huge horn rising upon the neck just back of the horns and held in place by bandages around the forehead. The driver carries a goad about five feet in length, in the end of which is inserted a sharp steel point about one inch long. This is used so freely that it is common to see streams of blood running down the sides of the poor maltreated beasts. Not satisfied with using the sharp end, the inhuman drivers frequently deliver terrific blows with the butt across the tender noses of their charges.

Many an American soldier has knocked down these cruel drivers for their abuse of the patient beasts, but the drivers do not improve with the thrashing. The American military authorities have imported several American yokes and an effort is to be made to compel their use instead of the timber of torture which now obtains.

An author of the last century has this to say about the Porto Ricans:

"They are well proportioned and delicately organized; at the same time they lack vigor, are slow and indolent, possess vivid imaginations, are vain and inconstant, though hospitable to strangers, and ardent lovers of liberty."

Referring to the mixture of races, the same author continues:

"From this variety of mixture has resulted a character equivocal and ambiguous, but peculiarly Porto Rican. The heat of the climate has made them lazy, to which end also the fertility of the soil has conduced; the solitary life of the country residents has rendered them morose and disputatious."

A writer of more recent times declares that they are "affable, generous, hospitable to a fault, loyal to their sovereign, and will to the last gasp defend their island from invasion. The fair sex are sweet and amiable, faithful as wives, loving as sisters, sweethearts and daughters, ornaments to any society, tasteful in dress, graceful in deportment, and elegant in carriage. In fact, visitors from old Spain have frequently remarked their resemblance to the _doncellas_ of Cadiz, who are world-renowned for their grace and loveliness."

"The truth is that they all have the Spanish _cortesia_," says Frederick A. Ober, in the Century Magazine, when commenting upon the above opinions, "and are more like the polite Andalusians of the south of Spain than the boorish Catalans of the northeast. Even the lowliest laborer, unless he be one of the four hundred thousand illiterates, signs his name with a _rubrica_, or elaborate flourish and styles himself 'Don,' after the manner of the Spanish grandees, and the humblest innkeeper, when receipting a bill, will admit he 'avails himself with intense pleasure of this occasion for offering to such a distinguished gentleman the assurance of his most distinguished consideration!'

"This need not imply affectation, nor even insincerity, but merely a different conception of the social amenities from that of the all-conquering American, who, it is to be hoped, will not treat this foible with the contempt which, in his superior wisdom, he may think it merits."