A letter sent by the representatives of Utuado to the newspaper La Correspondencia said: “The pueblo asks for work and bread. Tomorrow thousands of campesinos from twenty-five barrios will arrive in Utuado, calling for trabajo y pan. How can we provide that when in all of Utuado there aren’t provisions enough for eight days?”
Vicente and Valentina read that the United States didn’t have a special budget for calamities, but that the two million dollars that had been collected from taxes on Puerto Rican products imported to the US since the military occupation would be returned to the island to help the Puerto Rican people. The newspaper El Diario de Puerto Rico wrote that because the US government shouldn’t have charged the tariffs in the first place, the money returned was justice, not charity.
Then, on August 22, 1899, another tropical storm hit the island, causing extensive damage in the capital of San Juan.
They didn’t know that only a week after the hurricane, President McKinley ordered the military in Puerto Rico to pass out rations. The military government didn’t know how to help—they’d never before had such a human catastrophe on their hands. They came up with a plan for charity and offered a sweet deal to the planters. All they had to do was make sure that the hurricane victims worked for their food and clothing, which the charity board would provide from funds donated by the American people. The planters would get free labor to repair their properties and plant and harvest their crops. With the help of the military government, in September 1899, less than two months after the hurricane, the plantation owners had reestablished Puerto Rico’s centuries-old feudal society.
Raúl Vega told Vicente that the best thing that ever happened to the owners of the big coffee haciendas and sugarcane plantations was Hurricane San Ciriaco.
CHAPTER THIRTY
LOS FLAMBOYANES
Valentina prayed it would never come to this—that she would be back in Raúl Vega’s house.
It was dreadful that Angelina had vanished in the hurricane. And Inés—Valentina had to put away the bolillos and the cushion for mundillo to keep from crying for Inés. One day, Lourdes had taken an antimacassar from la sala and pinned it to her hair, and Valentina burst into tears, scaring the poor child.
At first, she refused to believe Vicente when he said that their own house was uninhabitable, that it needed repairs that wouldn’t be possible for a while, not until las cosas se mejoren, and who knew when that would be.
“Mujer, you’re better off here.” Gloria slapped at a mosquito on her arm.
“But our house is empty.” Valentina swatted a mosquito on her thigh. “Our things are there.”
“¡Malditos mosquitos!” Gloria looked at the new red mark on her arm, only one of many.
Valentina rolled up her sleeve. “Look! They feed on me in my sleep even with the mosquito netting.”
“We’ll look for peppermint or some other plant for the mosquito bites,” Gloria said.
“You better wait until the weather gets better,” Vicente said.
“But Vicente, what about our things?”
“You should go get your things,” Gloria said.
“I’ll get them for you, Valentina,” Raulito said.
She smiled at him. “We’ll go together.”
They started off early in the morning on foot. Raúl’s horse had been found in a nearby pasture, but not Vicente’s. She didn’t recognize the route home. The once-lush vista was a barren yellow and brown. The red flamboyanes that had turned the road into a blaze of fire had disappeared.
Vicente took her hand. “Querida, you must prepare yourself.”
She cried out when she saw the palm tree sticking out of their house.
“I didn’t want to tell you—” Vicente put his arm around her.
Valentina shook her head. “A palm tree. There weren’t any palm trees near the house.”
Valentina picked her way around the palm tree and entered where once there had been a wall. She looked down at the table in disbelief; this was where she served her family their meals, where she and Vicente lingered over their coffee, where she had written her letters to Elena and Dalia. She had sat at this very table nursing her children.
Vicente came up behind her. “Querida, it was only a table. One day, I’ll build you another.”
Valentina couldn’t speak without bawling, so she didn’t. She walked around the tree to their bedroom to view the damage and decide what could be salvaged.
They took the linens off the beds and tied the sheets together like sacks. Javiercito filled them with the kitchen things like pots and pans, while Lourdes was instructed to take the pillows and mosquito netting. The men took apart the beds. Valentina went to her trunk and examined the contents. Everything was soaking wet—her wedding dress, her letters, and the stationery Elena had sent her. She took everything out and laid them on the floor to dry. What they couldn’t carry, they would return for tomorrow with Raúl’s horse.
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
HAPPY 1900!
Vicente had picked up the newspapers in town after trying to appeal his taxes to the American at the government office. Was it his fault that the hurricane had taken all his coffee trees? How could he pay his taxes if he didn’t have coffee to sell? The American had told him through his translator to return with his land deed. Vicente wasn’t sure what would happen next, but he did know he still wouldn’t be able to pay his taxes.
It had become a habit for the adults to gather at the table at the end of the day and read the newspaper aloud by the light of the kerosene lamp. This time, Vicente read while Valentina lengthened the hem of Javier’s pants. Raúl smoked, Raulito whittled a tiny horse from a scrap of wood for Lourdes, and Gloria rested in a chair with her eyes closed.
Vicente read that President McKinley had signed a new law especially created for Puerto Rico, called the Foraker Act, that would allow for civil government.
“What’s the catch?” Raúl Vega took a drag on his cigarette. “No way the Americans are going to let the Puerto Ricans run our own island.”
“It could happen,” Valentina said.
Raúl smiled at her through the cigarette smoke.
Vicente read: “ ‘The governor and officials will be Americans and appointed by the president.’ ”
“What did I say, Valentina?” Raúl tapped the ashes into a glass.
The Congress of the United States had decided that the US Constitution gave them the right to levy taxes on Puerto Rico—taxes on food and land and what-have-you—taxes that would pay for the appointed administrators and schools and infrastructure.
Valentina had looked up from her sewing.
Vicente read: “ ‘The Foraker Act is named after its sponsor, Joseph Foraker, a Republican senator from Ohio. Senator Foraker reported that the committee decided against the proposal from US General Davis for free trade with Puerto Rico. “We are here to legislate for the whole United States, not only the island of Porto Rico,” Senator Foraker said.’ ”
Vicente smacked his hand against the newspaper.
“What’s that?” Raulito looked over Vicente’s shoulder and pointed to a black-and-white drawing in the newspaper.