My parents, their relatives and friends from the mountains where they were born and raised, whenever they felt the need to establish the value of their identity, would take a deep breath, expand their chests and said loud -it often happened-, “Soy un jíbaro de pura cepa”. They knew it would annoy those other Puerto Ricans who felt very urban or saw themselves, worse, as “blanquitos”. My parents and their selected circle from Jájome didn’t know the history of the nomenclature, demonym, label, and its relationship to the caste theories, when it fist appeared during the 18th Century, to place those called “Jíbaros” as mestizos of a lower caste. The icon, brand, was going to be used later on by the "Partido Popular", without any sense of shame, to promote their politics; including the “Jíbaro” as the ideal Puerto Rican, and “whitened” by a certain type of narrative. Not only the colonial political party “nos encasquetó” the image of the man with a pava hat that is seen in every flag and homes of their loyalists, but it built on top of a mountain, next to the highway that crosses the island from north to south, a big statue of a “Jíbaro” couple. Anyone who goes to the middle and upper middle class Guaynabo and Caparra suburbs in the Metropolitan area of San Juan can see the results of those policies: who was able to move through class, color and social ladder in the island during the rapidly growing 1950-70’s economy: shades “created” by history and powers and desires. Decades later, in Brooklyn, during Christmas, I would go to visit my brother and listened to some powerful "Jíbaro" music, to share our common history, including its shades.
(from the book in .pdf, My Bilingual New York, June 2019)
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