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Pathologizing the Jíbaro: Mental and Social Health in Puerto Rico's Oso Blanco (1930s to 1950s)
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 07 September 2020
Abstract
The jíbaro—the emblematic figure of Puerto Rico—has long been at the center of the archipelago's political and professional discussions. Building on the work of scholars who have traced the jíbaro's history, this article complicates the tension between the politically nationalistic definition of humble jíbaros working in the countryside and scientific observations of jíbaros within the confines of the criminal-legal system. By the mid twentieth century, mainstream understandings of jíbaros were increasingly fashioned by psychiatry, social science, and social work, all of which connected jíbaros to other rural identities. These projections of the jíbaro powerfully materialized in Puerto Rico's premier biosocial laboratory, the Insular Penitentiary at Río Piedras (popularly known as Oso Blanco). An analysis of the work of penitentiary psychiatrists and social health professionals with prison inmates reveals a more complex, troubling image of redeemable Puerto Rican men with rural roots and sensibilities than the idyllic representations of jíbaros circulating at the time suggest. Oso Blanco health practitioners pathologized the jíbaro to identify and mend his perceived psychosocial shortcomings, and to diminish any defiance he harbored. In so doing, they reinforced the notion that jíbaros were racialized living artifacts central to colonial-populist designs and constituency-building.
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- Copyright © The Author(s) 2020. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of Academy of American Franciscan History
Footnotes
For their patience and valuable advice, I wish to thank Sean Bloch, Mariola Espinosa, Pablo Gómez, Francisco Scarano, Steve Stern, Ann Zulawski, the Editorial Board of The Americas, and the anonymous readers for this journal. I feel privileged to have been able to work on different iterations of this article with this group.
References
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53. The Puerto Rican medical community had been emphasizing hookworm and anemia's links to nutrition and poverty since the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. While physicians made tremendous progress treating the civilian population, this health problem persisted in prisons until the 1940s. Francisco A. Scarano, “Doctors and Peasants at the Intersection of Empires: The Early Hookworm Campaigns in Puerto Rico,” unpublished manuscript; and Picó, El día menos pensado, 89.
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63. The link between juvenile delinquency and child psychology had been pondered in Puerto Rico as early as the 1910s, however. For instance, law clerk and scholar Luis Samalea Iglesias published several short essays about these issues in which he underscored the factors that produced criminals. Samalea Iglesias, El hamponismo en Puerto Rico (San Juan: Tip. Real Hermanos, 1919), 3–5, 8–11; La delincuencia infantil en Puerto Rico: notas para una conferencia (San Juan: Tip. Real Hermanos, 1916); and Trajinantes de sombra (San Juan: Tip. Progreso, 1936).
64. Maymí Nevares, “La higiene de la formación de habitos,” 322.
65. Expediente del confinado Gervasio Troche Torres, January 1943, AGPR, Fondo Oficina del Gobernador, caja 86.
66. Expediente del confinado Gervasio Troche Torres.
67. José R. Maymí Nevares, “Contribución del médico neuropsiquiatra al tratamiento individual del delincuente en un presidio,” Revista de Servicio Social 7:2 (April 1946): 43–44.
68. Maymí Nevares, “Contribución del médico neuropsiquiatra,” 44.
69. Maymí Nevares, “Contribución del médico neuropsiquiatra,” 44–45.
70. Maymí Nevares, “Contribución del médico neuropsiquiatra,” 45.
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72. Franqui, Víctor Gutiérrez, Report of the Attorney General to the Governor of Puerto Rico, for the Fiscal Year Ending June 30, 1951 (San Juan: Department of Justice, 1951), 123Google Scholar.
73. Departamento de Agricultura y Comercio, Almanaque agrícola de Puerto Rico (San Juan: Negociado de Materiales, Imprenta y Transporte, 1947), 175.
74. Meléndez Muñoz, Obras completas, vol. 1, 40–41.
75. Meléndez Muñoz, “El jíbaro en el siglo XIX,” 479, 483–486, 563–608.
76. Meléndez Muñoz, “El jíbaro en el siglo XIX,” 461. Italics in original.
77. Picó, Los gallos peleados, 178. References to the anawim abound in Scripture (in Psalms, Proverbs, Isaiah, Zechariah, Matthew, Luke, and James, for example).
78. Rosario, José Colombán, The Development of the Puerto Rican Jíbaro and his Present Attitude Towards Society (New York: Arno Press, 1975), 8–9Google Scholar.
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81. Expediente del confinado Ramón Hernández Pérez, December 1949, AGPR, FDJ, SEC, caja 481.
82. Expediente del confinado Ángel Miranda Ayala, August 1951, AGPR, FDJ, SJLBP, caja 300. US officials talked about Haitians in this way as well, saying that they were inclined to lose control despite their efforts to attain “civilization.” See Renda, Mary, Taking Haiti: Military Occupation and the Culture of U.S. Imperialism, 1915–1940 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2001)Google Scholar.
83. The Parole Board's convict histories were not always as extensive as the Classification and Treatment Board's, but they were just as layered. Importantly, both entities used similar assumptions and language to assess jíbaro prisoners. For example, see the case file of “jíbaro” convict Jorge Sánchez Román, July 1946, AGPR, FDJ, SJLBP, caja 1.
84. Fernández, Luis Negrón, Report of the Attorney General to the Governor of Puerto Rico, for the Fiscal Year Ending June 30, 1947 (San Juan: Real Hermanos, 1950), 32Google Scholar.
85. Expediente del confinado Rafael Muñoz Álvarado, December 1949, AGPR, FDJ, SEC, caja 481.
86. Expediente del confinado Santiago Nieves Orama, August 1949, AGPR, FDJ, SEC, caja 476.
87. Before the violence, Muñoz Marín challenged federal officials to let Puerto Ricans govern themselves, at least domestically, but he also left the door open for prompt federal intervention “if the people of Puerto Rico should go crazy.” The violence of 1950 was also preceded by the infamous “Gag Law,” which made it a crime to own or display a Puerto Rican flag, sing a patriotic tune, speak or write of independence, or hold an assembly in favor of independence. The law remained in force until 1957. Ivonne Acosta, La mordaza: Puerto Rico, 1948–1957 (Río Piedras: Editorial Edil, 1987); Ramón Bosque Pérez and José Javier Colón Morera, Puerto Rico under Colonial Rule: Political Persecution and the Quest for Human Rights (Albany: State University of New York Press, 2006); Miñi Seijo Bruno, La insurrección nacionalista en Puerto Rico, 1950 (Río Piedras: Editorial Edil, 1997); and Gil, Del tratamiento jurídico de la locura, 107.
88. Echoing and building on Morales's insights, in 1953 psychologist María M. Maíz de Meléndez deployed explosive language (terms like “bomb” and “dynamite”) to demonstrate the necessity of psychosocial hygiene in Puerto Rico. The mentally infirm, whether filled with interpersonal or political rage, represented a threat to public security. This meant that only the medico-legal apparatus of the state, eminently health care behind bars, could adequately deal with such issues when they emerged. Gil, Del tratamiento jurídico de la locura, 46–47, 52–53.
89. Troyano had been developing his model of labor therapy for quite some time. Before he arrived in Puerto Rico, he helped pioneer the treatment at the Nigua mental hospital (formerly the national penitentiary) in the Dominican Republic. Ortiz, “Redeeming Bodies and Souls,” chapt. 3.
90. Regarding treatments beyond labor therapy, Troyano mentioned the anti-syphilitic salvarsan, a synthetic chemotherapeutic and arsenic-based compound. Neosalvarsan became available in 1912 and superseded the more toxic and less water-soluble salvarsan as an effective treatment for syphilis. Because both treatments carried considerable risk of side effects, they were replaced by penicillin in the 1940s. Expediente del confinado Fernando Lassalle Concepción, August 1949, AGPR, FDJ, SJLBP, caja 171; and Expediente del confinado Santiago Santana Díaz, June 1949, AGPR, FDJ, SJLBP, caja 205. In general, Troyano's psychiatric evaluations are silent about psychotropic drugs. This is unsurprising given mid-century psychiatry's low success rate and the fact that psychiatric drug development was only beginning to gain momentum. Female convict records from the mid 1950s indicate that antipsychotics such as “thorazine” and “trilafon” were drugs of choice in Puerto Rican prisons. Thorazine (chlorpromazine) is an antipsychotic that treats mental illness, behavioral and blood disorders, tetanus, severe nausea and vomiting, and anxiety. Trilafon (perphenazine) is an antipsychotic that treats schizophrenia, nausea, and vomiting. Lydia Peña de Planas, Informe anual de la Escuela Industrial para Mujeres, 1956–57, 50–52, AGPR, FDJ, Subfondo Escuela Industrial para Mujeres (SFEIM), caja 24; and Informe narrativo del funcionamiento de la Institución en los pasados tres meses de enero, febrero, y marzo de 1958,” 33–35, AGPR, FDJ, SFEIM, caja 24.
91. Expediente del confinado Ramón Cruz Ruíz, June 1949, AGPR, FDJ, SJLBP, caja 135; and Expediente del confinado Julio Ramírez Cruz, September 1951, AGPR, FDJ, SJLBP, caja 201.
92. Expediente del confinado Paulino Vega Amaro, February 1951, AGPR, FDJ, SJLBP, caja 220.
93. Expediente del confinado José Luis Rodríguez Galarza, January 1951, AGPR, FDJ, SJLBP, caja 50; and Expediente del confinado Bernardo Cornier Rodríguez, January 1951, AGPR, FDJ, SJLBP, caja 175.
94. Expediente del confinado Eustaquio Pérez González, December 1950, AGPR, FDJ, SJLBP, caja 161.
95. Expediente del confinado Acasito García González, May 1949, AGPR, FDJ, SJLBP, caja 103.
96. Expediente del confinado Miguel Silva Fuentes, September 1951, AGPR, FDJ, SJLBP, caja 270.
97. Lloréns, Hilda, Imaging the Great Puerto Rican Family: Framing Nation, Race, and Gender during the American Century (Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2014), chapt. 3Google Scholar.
98. Expediente del confinado Miguel Silva Fuentes.
99. The Rorschach test dates to c. 1921. It interprets perceptions of inkblots, which are recorded and then psychologically analyzed. Psychologists believe that inkblot interpretations reveal a person's personality traits and emotional functioning. The test is named after its creator, Swiss Freudian psychiatrist and psychoanalyst Hermann Rorschach. Rorschach, Psychodiagnostics: A Diagnostic Test Based on Perception, Paul Lemkau et al., trans. (Berne: Huber, 1942); and Expediente del confinado Ángel Colón León, June 1951, AGPR, FDJ, SJLBP, caja 215.
100. Expediente del confinado Lady Rosado Mercado, September 1951, AGPR, FDJ, SJLBP, caja 210.
101. The most famous of these was social anthropologist Julian Steward's 1956 volume, The people of Puerto Rico, which introduced the world to Sidney Mintz and other students who went on to have enormous influence in the history of anthropology. Steward, The people of Puerto Rico: a study in social anthropology (Champaign: University of Illinois Press, 1956).
102. Méndez, Las ciencias sociales y el proceso político puertorriqueño, 91–92.
103. Expediente del confinado Marcelino Nieves Reyes, April 1950, AGPR, FDJ, SJLBP, caja 118.
104. González, José Luis, Puerto Rico: The Four-Storeyed Country and Other Essays (Princeton: Markus Wiener Publishers, 1993)Google Scholar; Kinsbruner, Jay, Not of Pure Blood: The Free People of Color and Racial Prejudice in Nineteenth-Century Puerto Rico (Durham: Duke University Press, 1996)Google Scholar; Rodríguez-Silva, Ileana, Silencing Race: Disentangling Blackness, Colonialism, and National Identities in Puerto Rico (Basingstoke, UK: Palgrave Macmillan, 2012)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Dungy, Kathryn R., The Conceptualization of Race in Colonial Puerto Rico, 1800–1850 (New York: Peter Lang, Inc., 2015)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Godreau, Isar P., Scripts of Blackness: Race, Cultural Nationalism, and U.S. Colonialism in Puerto Rico (Champaign: University of Illinois Press, 2015)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
105. Scarano, “The Jíbaro Masquerade,” 1404, 1415, 1423.
106. Expediente del confinado Ricardo Sánchez Cruz, April 1947, AGPR, FDJ, SJLBP, caja 63. On the culture of agregados in the mountainous interior, see Luther H. Gulick, “Rural Occupance in Utuado and Jayuya Municipios, Puerto Rico” (PhD diss.: University of Chicago, 1952), 19, 25, 37.
107. Examining the experiences of convicts with shanty backgrounds is beyond the scope of this article. I do so in more depth in Raising the Living Dead: Rehabilitative Corrections in Puerto Rico and the Caribbean (forthcoming). On Operation Bootstrap, see Alex W. Maldonado, Teodoro Moscoso and Puerto Rico's Operation Bootstrap (Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 1997).
108. Alegría, Ricardo E., El Instituto de Cultura Puertorriqueña, 1955–1973: 18 años contribuyendo a fortalecer nuestra conciencia nacional (San Juan: Instituto de Cultura Puertorriqueña, 1978–79)Google Scholar; and Dávila, Arlene M., Sponsored Identities: Cultural Politics in Puerto Rico (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1997)Google Scholar.