You asked in your last letter what you might send me. Clothes for the children are always much appreciated, but if you could also send me a primer of mathematics and one for Spanish grammar so that I might teach Javiercito. Vicente was taught by a maestro ambulante, but no teacher has come this way seeking work. I’m sure that I can manage, especially if I have the proper books. You never saw me as a teacher, did you? You would be surprised at what your little sister has had to do since you last saw her. This new Valentina has vowed to devote herself to her family and to put away all childish dreams.
Siempre,
Valentina
Utuado
June 11, 1897
Dear Elena,
Vicente can’t stop worrying about coffee—every day, it’s the coffee prices this, the coffee harvest that—will it rain?—why won’t it rain?—why is it raining so much? Vicente does his best pero a cada santo una vela, always the creditors. To think that I once thought a farmer’s life one of leisure! What a foolish child I was! Pero no te preocupes. Next year, our harvest will be better, and the year after that will be even better. We’ll survive as long as Cuba, España, and other European countries continue to drink Puerto Rican coffee. In the meantime, I’ve learned la economía (Mamá would be proud!), and with your gifts of clothing, etc. (hint, hint), we are able to sobrevivir.
Kisses to our parents, your family, and especially to you,
All my love,
Valentina
San Juan
October 7, 1897
Dear Valentina,
I hope you and the family are well? There is much excitement in the capital with the expectation that Spain will give Puerto Rico autonomy. We went to hear Don Luis Muñoz Rivera speak on how Puerto Ricans are capable of governing themselves. The newspapers are full of the coming war with the United States. Have you heard that en el campo, too? (We think that is why there are more beggars than ever in San Juan. You can’t walk out the door without a dozen people holding out their hands!) I’ve begun to take an interest in politics, particularly when it concerns women. Our parents and Ernesto aren’t too pleased! There are some damas here who are suffragettes. Have you heard of suffragettes? (They believe that we women should have the right to vote, etc.)
Valentina, I’m going crazy with boredom! Ernesto has plenty of help in the store because you don’t have to pay clerks very much. I can’t be like our mother and live for the marketing and economizando. Must go now. I have been invited to a meeting of damas to discuss the woman’s place in the Puerto Rican home.
As always much love,
Elena
P.S. I am sending you a parcel of canned goods and a bottle of Spanish olive oil. Mamá can’t believe how the prices of groceries have skyrocketed!
CHAPTER NINETEEN
DROUGHT
In 1898, Raulito failed to find work as a sharecropper. He didn’t know that his great-grandfather Juan Cortés had once been a sharecropper, too. At seventeen years old, Raulito had nothing to offer a landowner except the labor of a malnourished peón, and there were thousands of malnourished peones like him. Raulito wandered the countryside, oblivious to the fact that some of the land had once belonged to his family.
All his life, no one would tell him about his ancestors—that his great-grandfather Juan Cortés had gone from landowner to agregado to jornalero forced to work for a plantation. Or that his grandfather Alegro Villanueva had been a freed slave with a gift for picking coffee; or that his grandfather had been shot in the back by the Guardia Civil on his way to the penitentiary for stealing a few apples for his hungry children. Raulito’s mother didn’t want to bring up the past. His brother Vicente could have told him that on their father’s side, their grandfather Luis Manuel Vega had bought the land cheap from the family of Juan Cortés, but eventually sold most of it to pay off debts. And because he read the newspapers and talked politics with his father and other men whenever he went to town, Vicente could have told Raulito how it was an especially bad time to be poor in Puerto Rico. Spain was preparing for war with the United States, and while it wanted to keep Cuba, the Philippines, and even Puerto Rico, their tiny island was not as important—it was an afterthought. Vicente could have told his brother about the newspaper editorials denouncing the terrible economic conditions on the island. Or that no group—political or professional—was able to solve the hunger crisis. If the island’s mayors or leading intellectuals had ideas, they didn’t know how to get money to implement them. He could have told Raulito that the Spanish crown had granted governing concessions to the Puerto Rican and Cuban criollo intellectuals who had agitated for years for autonomist rule, and so now Puerto Rico was on its own to manage its problems.
All this and more Vicente could have told his brother Raulito. But even Vicente didn’t quite understand that in the early months of 1898 when the new autonomist government began under the leadership of the Honorable Luis Muñoz Rivera, Puerto Rico had no gold in its coffers. Spain still required its island subjects to use tax money to pay for necessities like horses, saddles, and uniforms for the Spanish soldiers who would defend Puerto Rico from the United States, “el Colosal Norte.” So there wasn’t money to hire laborers like Raulito to repair the neglected bridges and roads or to provide medical care to the sick or food for the starving. There was no money for Puerto Rico or Puerto Ricans.
The drought began with the dawning of 1898. Merchants refused credit to farmers, and workdays were cut or workers fired “por economías.” They were told, “No hay trabajo.”
Everywhere Raulito sought employment—the sugarcane plantations, the alcaldía, etc., he heard the dreaded phrase, “No hay trabajo.” At first, he thought it might have been because he was black, but then he heard it everywhere, and blancos heard it, too. It was the cry of the countryside, “No hay trabajo,” and in every single town on the island nation of Puerto Rico.
As Raulito walked through the countryside, he met many people who from a distance he mistook for specters. In town, there were hundreds of these skeletal people, holding out their bony hands for a piece of bread.
In February 1898, only a month after the new autonomist government of Luis Muñoz Rivera took office, fewer Spanish supply ships arrived in Puerto Rico, and when they did, they carried only a fourth of what was needed. Until the government worked out deals with other countries, there were limited supplies of everything. Unscrupulous merchants seized the opportunity and doubled the prices of their goods, cheating the poor—it was common knowledge that no store gave sixteen ounces for a pound. Milk and wine were doctored, causing harm to those who drank them. Merchants refused credit to the poor because they feared they wouldn’t be able to pay their debts. Everyone agreed it was a war against the Puerto Rican people, and surely the new government would take action against the Spanish merchants and the homegrown crooks. Small fines and even shaming the culprits by publishing their names in the newspapers did little to deter the practice, especially when some of the guilty were members of the town councils. Los hacendados reverted to the plantation feudalism of the past four centuries and paid their workers una miseria in paper or copper tickets redeemable at their stores for rotten meat and spoiled bacalao. Many of the desperate killed themselves or turned to alcohol or gambling; children were abandoned on the street and in the countryside.