14. El Jíbaro de Puerto Rico
El Jíbaro de Puerto Rico
Cynthia Pelayo
“What we committed in the Indies stands out among the most unpardonable offenses ever committed against God and mankind and this trade [in Indian slaves] as one of the most unjust, evil, and cruel among them.”
“Spirits, as we have seen, are beings like ourselves, and constitute a population environing us on every side, though invisible to us in our normal state; we say, our normal state, because, as we shall see, this invisibility is not absolute.”
—ALLAN KARDEC, French educator, writer, translator and founder of the Spiritism movement, The Book on Mediums, 1861
“Great is the empire we face but greater is our right to be free.”
—PEDRO ALBIZU CAMPOS, former president and spokesperson of the Nationalist Party of Puerto Rico
There is no death. There is no beginning. There is no end. There is just this continuation of us all. I wish I could describe it clearly to you. I will try. It’s almost like memories that challenge our current perception, and it becomes difficult to distinguish where I am.
Am I here, right now, with Abuelo? Or am I somewhere else entirely?
There are days and there are nights, and there is the lullaby of sweet little green tree frogs. Coquis. In the evening, their pretty song lulls me to sleep: Co-kee, co-kee, co-kee.
When rain falls here, there is a soft hush as the droplets fall against the thick green vegetation, purple orchids, and gigantic ferns that surround our home. I imagine shooting stars in the heavens above make the same sort of sounds as our rainforest home.
Great palm and magnolia trees and coffee shrubs cover every stretch of our land, except the very hilltop on which we live.
It’s like a little pocket on top of the universe from which I enjoy watching shimmering golden sunsets.
I also know that just not too far away, in any which direction, lies a great blue expanse, the ocean. We are surrounded by mystical beauty.
I believe we shall never be truly separated from those we love and from the place we call home. For no matter what anyone attempts to do to try to systematically separate us from our light by renaming, stripping, erasing, or dehumanizing us, what they fail to realize is that we are forever.
Eternity is this island that sits on the equator, that imaginary line halfway between poles that divides the Earth into North and South.
We are that great in-between place.
This island is ocean breeze, the taste of sea salt on your tongue, warm sand beneath your feet, the gentle sway and dance of palm fronds. Birdsong. And these are the reminders that here we are. Here we exist.
The people who came before me on this land, the Tainos, told stories about the beginning of existence. They claimed the sun emerged from the Cave of Iguanaboina. The moon, too.
These tales swirl in my head, racing around my mind like the powerful winds of a hurricane. Even that name hurricane, juracán, is Taino in origin, and hurricanes are conjured by our ancestral spirit Guabancex, who controls the weather. She summons these storms when she’s upset.
See, there’s no true erasure. All this remains here.
These legends and folktales; they are ways to prevent forgetting.
They are memories in the form of stories.
They are gold, set deep within mines just waiting to be excavated.
Sometimes all we need to recall who and what we are is to be rustled awake, and to accomplish that, all that’s required is someone with faith and love to guide us out of the darkness.
I hear a knock, three times, and Abuelo calls my name.
“Victoria, wake up.”
I open my eyes and stare at the white ceiling. Just outside, our rooster, Cacao, crows mightily. Soft blue light peeks in through the slats of the window. The arrival of dawn.
“Abuelo,” I call from behind the door. My head is foggy. I’m unsure what day of the week it is. “Are you going to Pellejas today?”
Central Pellejas, the sugar mill where Abuelo works.
In the mornings I usually wake up before Abuelo, get ready, and slip outside.
I’d gather dried corn and scatter it in the chicken coop, saying good morning to Beatrice and Yesenia and Xiomara and Lucy and Yarelis.
By this time Diego and Linda—our two goats—would have awakened, too, and they’d press their wet snouts into my hands, searching for grain.
I’d give each of the goats kisses on the top of their heads, fill their food dishes, and sit on the front step of our small wooden house waiting for the sun to rise.
Mami and Papi used to live here, too, a long time ago, but now it’s just me and Abuelo.
I like the quiet, but I do miss them very much, and I’m starting to worry about Abuelo.
He coughs late into the night sometimes.
He’s getting very old, and I worry about him working in the sugar mill all day, so this is why I help out here as much as I can.
Once all the animals have been fed and the sun has risen, that’s usually the time I go inside and it’s then that I often find Abuelo in the kitchen. There he’ll be standing over the stove, preparing coffee and singing to himself.
I miss the days, long ago, when Abuelo would sit outside with Mami and Papi on cool evenings with all their friends.
There they’d play música jíbara late into the night.
There would be the plucking of the strings of the cuatro, bright and melancholic; the sharp, quick strumming of the tiple; the rattling of maracas; the scratch, the scrape of the güiro; and the rhythmic beating of bomba drums. The songs they sang were so joyful, and so many people from the pueblo nearby would gather here, too, clapping in a rhythmic pattern and singing along. It’s sad that those days ended.
Most mornings I’d find Abuelo wearing his regular clothes, brown pants, and a long-sleeved button shirt. The clothes he wore all day in the field, topped by his pava hat.
I notice this morning, however, that his pava hat and his machete both remain hung by the door.
Abuelo would spend most days in the sugar cane fields, machete in hand, cutting and clearing away rows of those tall, green, swaying stalks.
Most stood twelve feet high, towering over him.
The leaves, razor-sharp, would cut his knuckles and hands.
He’d return home, fingers covered in new calluses, his shoes caked in mud, but no matter how exhausted he was, he’d always be in such a good mood, with a dear smile on his face.
Abuelo always greeted me with cheer: “?Cómo estás, mi Victoria querida?”
He’d get cleaned up and prepare dinner. Most days we’d have arroz con habichuelas.
Sometimes we would have arroz con gandules.
On special occasions, he’d make us mofongo, mashing up green plantains and adding pork cracklings, or bacalaitos, fritters with codfish.
He did the best he could with the money he made at the mill.
Sometimes during dinner Abuelo would tell me ghost stories or folktales he’d learned when he was a little boy.
He’d also tell me about the way things were a long time ago, about the coffee and sugar fields his family once owned.
He said many families had their own farms here, but that the United States kept changing things.
He’d rattle off names of laws I wasn’t familiar with: the 1917 Jones Act and Operation Bootstrap.
America, he said, liked to attach these benign titles to laws that were really intended to do more harm to the island.
It was all tyranny shrouded in trickery.
“We are the oldest colony in the world,” he said one day after dinner as he washed the dishes.
After he prepared his evening cup of coffee, he stood at the doorway, the steam rising from his aluminum coffee cup.
His eyes were directed over the sloping shape of the Sleeping Giant, a mountain formation that takes the shape of a man asleep.
It was at that moment I really noticed how tired Abuelo looked.
Deep lines marked his sun-darkened face.
Yet his eyes, while tired and cloudy, still sparkled with so much wisdom.
He pointed his cup in the direction of the mountain.
“They say Yúcahu, the god of the Taino people, dwells in the peak of El Yunque.” I thought about a god existing at the top of a mist-covered rainforest peak, surrounded by streams, rivers, and waterfalls.
He took a sip and then shook his head. “Not many people recognize how important the Sleeping Giant in Adjuntas is. Everyone knows about him. He can be seen from so many parts of the island. We see him. He’s there.
Some legends claim he’s dead, but I don’t think so.
I think he’s asleep and one day he will awaken. ”
I open my mouth to say something but realize this is the haze of a memory.
I hear Abuelo call again.
Three knocks.
“Victoria, wake up.”
I drift back to sleep, to thoughts. To the work of my Abuelo.
There was something in that methodical yet brutal work he did for years.
Although, that’s the place where I think he was able to find some peace.
Maybe it was in that rhythmic, precise motion, repeatedly swinging his machete, trimming away leaves, and sorting sugarcane stalks by size.
I’d imagine it must be like putting oneself into a hypnotic trance state.
Abuelo once told me how he’d speak to himself out there, in low whispers.
Beneath the buzz of insects, his skin darkening by the sun and sweat.
He told me how he’d talk to my mami and papi and me out there.
“Abuelo,” I say, standing in the dark hallway, rubbing at my eyes.
The casita is small, and I can see directly into part of the living room that faces the kitchen. I move slowly, confused, unsure of what time it is exactly.
I find him at the stove. He’s wearing black slacks and a clean white guayabera shirt. The wisps of gray hair on his head are still a little wet, but nice and clean and combed over.