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But Puerto Rico did not aspire to emancipation. It never had been a colony, there was no creole class, and the only indigenous population the "jíbaros," the mixed descendants of Indians, negroes, and Spaniards were too poor, too illiterate, too ignorant of everything concerning the outside world to look with anything but suspicion upon the invitations of the insurgents of Colombia and Venezuela to join them or imitate their example.
To this considerable part of the population of Puerto Rico the name of "jíbaros" is applied; they are the descendants of the settlers who in the early days of the colonization of the island spread through the interior, and with the assistance of an Indian or negro slave or two cleared and cultivated a piece of land in some isolated locality, where they continued to live from day to day without troubling themselves about the future or about what passed in the rest of the universe.
Here was an opportunity for the reactionists to visit on the heads of all the members of the reform party the offense of a few misguided jíbaros, and they tried hard to persuade the governor to adopt severe measures against their enemies; but General Pavia was a just and a prudent man, and he placed the rebels at the disposition of the civil court.
It was taken by the Duke of Cumberland four years later, but abandoned again on account of the epidemic that broke out among the English troops. When the Hollanders laid siege to the capital in 1625 there were only 330 men between citizens and jíbaros that could be collected for the defense. In 1646 there were 500 citizens and 400 houses in San Juan, and 200 citizens in New San German.
The other is the sleeping room, where the father, mother, and children, male and female, of all ages, sleep, promiscuously huddled together on a platform of boards or bar bacao. The majority of the jíbaros are whites. Mestizoes, mulattos, and negroes are numerous also.
Colonel Flinter gives the following description of the jíbaros of his day, which also applies to them to-day: "They are very civil in their manners, but, though they seem all simplicity and humility, they are so acute in their dealings that they are sure to deceive a person who is not very guarded.
Horse-racing and cock-fighting remained the principal amusement of the populace. Every house and cabin had its game-cock, every village its licensed cockpit. The houses of all classes were built of wood; the cabins of the "jíbaros" were mere bamboo hovels, where the family, males and females of all ages, slept huddled together on a platform of boards.
Behind us and as a reserve legion will come down from the highlands like a raging storm, if it is necessary, the jibaros, our fields' brothers, the most accomplished exemplar of abstinence, probity and bravery; the same that formed the urban militia; the same that were sent to Santo Domingo to defend gentile honor; they, who in number of more than 16,000, covered the plains of the north shore of the island, and compelled the Englishmen in 1797 to re-embark hastily, leaving their horses and artillery park.
"We have no means of knowing," says the New York Sun, in commenting upon this precious effusion, "whether Senor Jose Reyes, Senor Celestino Dominguez and Senor Genaro Cautino actually grasped their guns and immolated themselves upon the altar of four centuries and in the presence of the ostentatious and vociferous invader; or whether they prudently joined the light fishermen, merchants, lawyers, musicians and jibaros of Porto Rico, to whom they had vainly appealed in the name of Spain in yelling themselves hoarse as the Stars and Stripes went up in town after town.
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