Island of Poverty and Hospitality

My parents were married in 1945 in Puerto Rico.  My mother was 14 years old, my father was 19. It’s my understanding the two families knew each other.  It’s hard to  understand how this was considered acceptable.  Sadly, even today it still happens in parts of the world. 

In 1930, the year before my mother was born, The Brookings Institute, a Washington research and policy institute, sent researchers to the island to write a report on living conditions. The report was extensive and painted a bleak and heartbreaking picture of life on the island, particularly in the countryside.

 Most homes, it reported were simple thatched roof huts no bigger than 20 feet by 20 feet and were usually divided into two rooms with an average of 8 people living in the home.  Furniture consisted of a hammock for sleeping or a discarded oil can that was overturned for seating. Health problems were severe with contaminated water the leading cause of death. Typhoid was 5 times more prevalent than densely populated New York City.

Not surprising, the researchers noted that in the face of this harsh environment, the country dwellers or jibaros (pronounced hibaro) had a fatalism toward life. But they also found that the Puerto Ricans demonstrated an extreme hospitality even to strangers in the most dark and depressing circumstances. The researchers reported about one woman, whose dead husband’s body was being waked in the humble home.  She told them she feared for her future.  In the next breadth, she offered them a cup of coffee.

Although they thought highly of education, few of the jibaros had attended much school or sent their children simply because they couldn’t afford to buy them school clothes or afford the cost of transport, the report noted.  This would be the reason my grandparents gave my mother when she asked if she could attend high school in a neighboring town.  There was simply no extra money to pay for the bus fare.  Why bother to educate a girl further, they reasoned.  She would eventually get married and have babies anyway.  

My grandparents unloaded their daughter,  the second eldest of six children. When I got to know my grandfather years later, he was an amiable enough man who had a very friendly and happy nature. This made it harder to understand how he could just stand by and not fight for his daughter. My mother once told me that my father disappeared for two weeks shortly after they were married.  Why didn’t my grandfather hunt down my father and kick his ass?  Why did he look the other way when this emotional abuse began?  

My grandmother on the other hand never smiled and had a personality that was as cold and hard as armor.  There was no nurturing, never a kind or encouraging word.  

There wasn’t much emotional wholeness on my father’s side of the family.  He was one of 14 children born to a father who prayed and read  daily from Catholic devotional books. If his sons stepped out of line in any way deemed inappropriate for the time and culture, he disciplined them with a whip.   My grandmother was said to “have worn the pants” in the family.  She was domineering, involved in every aspect of her children’s lives, her loud opinions constantly being expressed.  

The attitude toward children in that era was that they were seen and not to be heard.  Also Latin culture, like many cultures around the world then and now, was very authoritarian.  The man was the head of the household.  Wives obeyed their husband, children obeyed their parents without question.  Unhappy feelings were bad.  Life was harsh. Happiness was a luxury for the wealthy.  You had to survive.