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Published Quarterly at: 180 Hostos, B-904, Hato Rey, Puerto Rico, 00918


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Spring 1971, Vol. 3, No. 1


Haitian Market, photo by Barry B. Levine


SIn this issue...

An Anatomy of Caribbean Vanity, by Gordon Lewis.
Autobiographies of three Caribbean leaders Ijagan, Burnham. and
Williams) are critically examined. In this wide-ranging analysis
(which compares them with such leaders as Mufioz and Castro) the
author concludes that magnanimity is still possible in Caribbean
politics. Gordon Lewis is author of three books on the Caribbean
including: The Virgin Islands: A Caribbean Lilliput. soon to be
published by Northwestern University Press. Page Two
('arhliean Economic History. by Thomas Mallher's. A survey of the
variouss studies of the economic history of the Wert Indies covering
1385-191U. Tom Mathews is the author of Puerto Rican Politics
and the New Deal and contributed a survey of general historical
writing in the Caribbean to Vol. 2, No. 3, of C.R. Page Four
P.irihco Remembered. by Tino Villanueva. Mexican-American
poet Tino Villanuea offers a poem about the clash of two cultures.
Page Five
D,,ninican Patrimony. by Harmannus Hoetink. The description of
19th century Santo Domingo begun last issue with a discussion of
its culture continues with an analysis of its power structure. Har-
mannu- Hoetink is the author of books on Santo Domingo.
Curacao, and on Caribbean race relations. Page Si%


Let Us Construct a Watercioset: Selections from the First Annual
Report of Charles H. 4lien. Governor of Porto Rico. Selected ex-
cerpts from the first American civil Governor of Puerto Rico
demonstrate some interesling things about the island in 1901 as well
as about how the island was viewed from non-natihe e)es.
Page Eight


77T Leper. by Jaime Carrero. Puertorrican poet Jaime Carrero
offers a poem dedicated to "los revolucionarios de Santo Domingo."
Page Ten
7The Poor Man's Bass Fiddle, by Donald Thompson. Take some old
springs from a victrola and some wood put together like a suitcase
and you have the Caribbean marimbula, an instrument related to
the African sanza according to U.P.R. music professor Donald
Thompson. Page Eleven
Peasants Considered, by Carlos AM. Rama. Uruguayan sociologist
Carlos M. Rama discusses the 13th International Congress of
Historical Sciences which was held last August in Moscow. Of
special concern was the problem of peasant movements, particularly
those of Latin America. Rama is the author of some 30 titles in-
cluding the just published La Idea de la Federacion Antillana en los
Ind-'pendentistas Puertorriquenos del Siglo XIX. Page Thirteen
Haiti' Primitive Painting, by Hervd Mehu. A note on the un-
polished and spontaneous art of Haiti. The author is the owner of
the Galerie d'Art in Peliondile where the paintings reproduced in
this issue were found. Page Fourteen
A Puerto Rican History of Puerto Rico, by Juan Rodriguez Cruz.
Puerto Rico's history has been written by people who lean too much
in favor of Spain or too much in favor of the US. says historian
Juan Rodriguez Cruz. He examines Loyda Figueroa's new history
to see if it provides the needed perspective. Page Fourteen
R cent Books. Caribbean Review continues to introduce its readers
to new books about the Caribbean, Latin America, and their
emigrant groups. Page Fifteen
Letters. Howard Wiarda. The author of The Dominican Republic:
Nation in Transition protests what he claims to have been an unfair
review of his book in an earlier issue of C.R. Page Sixteen


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Caribbean Review begins its third
year with a change. Business in Buffalo
forces co-founder Kal Wagenheim to
leave as co-editor. Fortunately ,
however, he will still be with us as a
contributor.

Next issue his new book, Puerto
Rico: A Profile, will be under review.
We will still call upon him to do reviews
for the magazine and he has promised
to dig up some more "juicy historical
pieces" similar to the one we ran last
issue, "Puerto Rico in 1834."

As tasks he performed as co-editor
are redistributed,it will be our pleasure
to announce the new participants.
Caribbean Review is still by and large a
volunteer effort except for business
services Isuch as the actual printing of
the magazine, etc.) all efforts are
contributed for the pleasure of it. Most
of our income is from subscribers and
all of it goes for those services that we
must pay for.

This non-commercial nature of
Caribbean Review is reflected in its
tone and spirit. And our subscribers
must know it -- we probably have the
highest rate of resubscriptions of any
magazine around these parts. And who
knows, someday we may even come out
on time! Maybe. . .
B.B.L.


Advertising Rates
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Additional data
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very minimal) will be added to the
invoice for space.
eCirculation is guaranteed at
between five and ten thousand
copies per issue.


CAMBBAN FEW
Spring 1971, Vol. 3, No. 1
Editor: Barry B. Levine .
Caribbeen Review, a books-oriented
quarterly journal, is published by
Caribbean Review, Inc., a non-profit cor-
poration. Mailing address: 180 Hostos,
B-904. Hato Rey, Puerto Rico. 00918.
Caribbe"n Review is listed in Abstracts of
English Studies. Available by subscrip-
tion only: 1 year. S3; 2 yeas, $5.50; 3
years. $7.50; lifetime. $25. Advertising
accepted (see rates elsewhere in this is-
aue). Unsolicited manuscripts (book re-
views translation, says. etc.) are wel-
comed, but should be accompanied by
selfddrsined stmnped envelope.


THE WEST ON TRIAL MY
FIGHT FOR GUYANA'S
FREEDOM. Cheddi Jagan. 471 pp.
Michael Joeseph, London. 1966. 63
Shillings.

A DESTINY TO MOLD. Forbes
Burnham. compiled by C. A.
Nascimento and R. A. Burrowes. 275
pp. Africana Publishing Corp., New
York, 1970. $7.95.

INWARD HUNGER, THE
EDUCATION OF A PRIME
MINISTER. Eric Williams. 352 pp.
Andre Deutsch, London, 1969. 42
Shillings.
These three mainly autobiographical
volumes by leading politicians of the
former British West Indies area are
particularly welcome since there is a
real dearth of published memoirs in
Caribbean politics. The colonial
politician, fighting for political sur-
vival, rarely enjoys those periods of
enforced idleness which enables the
British or the American actor on the
political scene to turn to authorship,
nor is he tempted, as is the American
ex-President or ex-Cabinet Secretary,
by the existence of a million-dollar
mass-media complex willing to serialise
him at enormous expense. He still
remains, too, the victim of the colonial
mentality which drives him into self-
exculpatory autobiography, as the
Williams and Jagan volumes
demonstrate, or persuades him to get
his party hacks to prepare a sort of
official biography, of the sort which
British authors in the old da)s used to
put out on members of the Royal
Family: it is not unfair to say that the
Nascimento-Burrowes eulogy of Mr.
Burnham falls into that latter category.
The result of the drive to justify oneself
means that, in all of these three
volumes, there is little of what Lord
Rosebery once called the Tom, Dick
and Harry aspect of politics. There is
the feeling that all three are composing,
as it were, from newspaper files, so that
we miss the vivid detail of what the
main actors of the West Indian drama
after, say, 1950 said to each other in
the successive crises of the period, and
which only the insiders like Dr. Jagan,
Dr. Williams and Mr. Burnham could
provide. Politicians, like movie stars,
are enormously complicated persons.
Yet because Dr. Jagan is too anxious to
demolish the imperialists, Dr. Williams
to castigate his local enemies and Mr.
Burnham to make out Dr. Jagan to be
the arch-villain of the Guyanese
struggle, there is little of that
psychological complexity that emerges
in these books. These are defensive
exercises. We still await the West
Indian Saint Simon or Croker who, in
private diary form, will strip the actors
of their rationalising postures and, with
adroit cynicism, describe to us the deep
psychological roots of their behavior.
Politics is the anatomy of vanity. The
vanity, certainly, is imprinted on every
page. What we miss is a key to the
understanding of the vanity.
The central theme of the Jagan
volume is that the ,Guyanese tragedy
has been brought about by the reac-
tionary alliance of British colonial
Governors, American agent-
provocateurs, local business groups and
Negro.creole racialists; all aided and
abetted by the British Labour Party. Of
the essential accuracy of the charge
there can be little doubt; the in-
tervention of the CIA in the local
union-labor movement has been more
than sufficiently documented. Mr.
Burnham's present position of power is
- let it be bluntly said the creature of
that interventionism; and it is to the
lasting credit of Dr. Jagan that he
throughout fought it with valor and
dignity. What disturbs the reader,
rather, is that the thesis of evil im-
perialists breaking up the racial united


An Anatomy of


Caribbean Vanity


by Gordon Lewis .


front of Indian and Negro seems too
simplistic an interpretation of the
complex relationships between race,
class and status in the Guyanese poly-
ethnic society. Dr. Jagan recognizes, of
course, the early historical roots of
racialism. He can see that occupational
differentiations within the structure of
the colonial prison generated racialist
feelings and that such feelings have
indigenous roots. He also recognizes the
deep power of the creolisation process,
creating an aggressive Indian com-
mercial bourgeoisie demanding entry
into Negro strongholds like the civil
service. But he prefers to subordinate
these elements to the thesis of an im-
perialist conspiracy to destroy the
natural union of Indian peasant and
Negro town worker. So to argue is, of
course, in part true; Dr. Jagan has no
difficulty in annotating the process of
how successive British Royal Com-
missions have in fact contributed to the
construction of the hostile ethnic
stereotypes.


But the thesis at the same time
perhaps underestimates the deep power
of race as a component in the total
situation -- as, indeed, a pamphlet like
that of Philip Reno's, looking at the
matter from the viewpoint of Marxist
class rationality, manages the feat of
hardly mentioning race at all. Yet it is
at least possible that the Negro
working-class racialist possesses his
own internal rationalisations for his
anti-Indian bias, just as it is arguable
that the wealthy Indian rice-miller who
joins the Indian nationalist movement
of Dr. Jagan's party does so not
because, as Dr. Jagan seems to believe,
he sees himself as a member of a
colonial-nationalist business class
fighting against the imperialist business
class but because he sees the. Jaganite
political force as his best insurance
against the Negro danger. Similarly, it
can be urged that the Indian peasant,
fiercely individualist, is hardly a good
candidate for a land collectivisation
program. Like the French peasant
voting for the Communist Party, his
electoral behavior must be seen as a
protest vote rather than as evidence of
his adherence to Marxism. For race, as
much as class, is as much a psychological
refuge as it is a psychiatric delusion.
Retreat into one's race group may
become, under stress, as legitimate a
defense-mechanism as retreat into one's
social class. The ghetto, this is to say,
can be seen as a protective cocoon, not
merely a cage. It is another way of
saying all this that Dr. Jagan's or-
thodox Marxist approach may blind
him as indeed classical Marxism was
blinded to the importance of race as a


separate variable in the total situation.
The Burnham version of all this is,
without doubt, far less plausible. Dr.
Jagan does at least possess a degree of
theoretical credibility. His premises
once accepted, his argument becomes a
coherent whole. Mr. Burnham, by
contrast, is not of an intellectual cast,
despite Martin Carter's introductory
insistence to the contrary. He is, by
nature, an orator. And, like all orators,
he is concerned less to present a tightly
sustained argument than to move his
audience. The tremendous speech,
then, read in cold blood, frequently
seems uninspired. The magic that locks
speaker and audience together is lost.
Inevitably, as a collection, they become
an essay in apologetics. Mr. Burnham
portrays himself as the protagonist of
Guyanese nationhood fighting the
divisive factionalism of his opponents.
His editors describe his alliance with
the d'Aguiar forces in the 1962 crisis;
they fail to note that the alliance was, in
fact, an appeal for popular disorder


calculated to upset a constitutionally
elected government. They refer to the
Commonwealth Commission of
Enquiry report on that episode; but
they fail to quote that report's
castigation of Mr. Burnham as a
politician who saw in Dr. Jagan's
downfall the opportunity for his own
elevation. There are the usual speeches
in defense of "nation building," but it
is evident that they see it simply as a
Negro-dominated mainstream culture
with which the Indian and Amerindian
sectors are expected to cooperate. The
1968 election is noted; but nothing is
said of the widespread trickery that
accompanied it on the part of the
Burnham political machine, and fully
attested to by the independent in-
vestigations of the London Granada
television team.
There is a final section of speeches
eulogising world leaders. One is on
Martin Luther. King; Mr. Burnham
quite fails to note the irony of a
situation in which, vilified by white
society during his lifetime, Dr. King
becomes their darling after his death.
There is another eulogy on Sir Winston
Churchill. It is, in truth, an astonishing
exercise. For here a Guyanese leader
praises a die-hard imperialist whose
gunboat diplomacy in 1953 destroyed
the unity of the Guyan'ese anti-colonial
forces. He credulously accepts the
legend that Churchill, singlehandedly,
brought England through the crisis of
1940, a piece of simple-minded
romanticism comparable to the myth
that John Wayne won the war for the
Americans. He reminds his audience
that, in that crisis, Churchill quoted the


Spring 1971


"Banquete Sobre un Cabrito from "Aqui en la Lucha" by Lorenzo Homar
Cuadernos de La Escalera (Box 22576, U.P.R., Rfo Piedras, P.R.), 1970, $6.50








CAff"ANrcWW


famous poem of the Jamaican Claude
McKay; he fails to note that the poem
grew out of McKay's gathering hatred
of English imperialism in the interwar
period between 1920 and 1939 and
that it was in grossly bad taste, to say
the least, for an English Tory leader to
quote it in support of a cause about
which McKay might have had his
doubts. This is the process whereby
revolutionaries become canonised by
the very forces they fought in their own
lifetime.
It is hardly surprising, after this, that
there is also included a speech that
likewise embraces the romanticised
legend that has grown up around the
figure of President Kennedy. For there
was a dark side to that legend: no
Caribbean leader ought to forget, as the
New York Times has recently revealed,
in discussing papers released by the
Har ard Kennedy Library, that for all
his very real liberalism the President
was prepared to discuss with a close
political intimate the possible
assassination, in the best James Bond
fashion, of Premier Castro. It must be
noted, finally, that Mr. Burnham has a
penchant for grandiose concepts such
as the "cooperative republic." But it is
yet to be seen whether a cooperative
movement will revolutionise the
economic structure of Guyana any
more than it has been able since the
1840s to revolutionise the economic
structure of Britain.
With Dr. Williams we are, of course.
as the American phrase goes, in a
different ball game. Inward Hunger is
the record of the leading Caribbean
historian who brings to its telling all of
his formidable gifts: a massive
historical scholarship, style, sardonic
wit. He is the Island Scholarship boy
relating how he "'made the grade" in
the colonial educational system, ending
with the final conquest of Oxford. It is
the story of the colonial Jude the
Obscure, taking the white metropolitan
citadels by storm. As such, it is a life-
history of which Dr. Williams can be
legitimately proud; it scotches, once
and for all, the while racialist myth of
black mental and intellectual in-
feriority. It is a monument, too, to the
culture of politics in a plural society like
Trinidad. By contrast, Anglo-American
politics are still pretty puritanical in
their anti-intellectal bias. To be an
intellectual in British politics is still to
be popularly suspected as being "too
clever by half," while the tragedy of
Adlai Stevenson sufficiently demon-
strates how intellectual wit continues to
be a serious handicap in American
politics. There is a quality of classical
politics about a new society like that of
independent Trinidad where a
nationalist leader can at the same time
be a serious academic historian.
Yet, that being said, the Williams
autobiography is ultimately disap-
pointing. A whole generation of
American liberals were brought up on
the Education of Henry Adams. Yet
although the education of Eric
Williams has been in many ways the
education of the West Indian people his
memoir does not match the quality of
the Adams classic. It would have been
rewarding to have heard how Williams
arrived at the various stages in his
intellectual development, his transition,
for example, from the neo-Marxism of
his Capitalism and Slavery volume to
the anti-colonial nationalism of his
lately-published history of the
Caribbean. What we have, rather, is
the story of his passion for the Oxford
magic in his undergraduate period
there in the 1930s; and even there the
reader is bemused by the fact that,
curiously, he seems to have been quite
insulated from the radical leftwing
currents of English political thought of
that time. Temperamentally, he is the
intellectual recluse, the professional
historian obsessed more with the ar-


chival data than with the present-day
human drama. Even in his period of
political involvement he has sustained
that isolationism of temper. He is
always more interested in statistics than
in people. That is why his characteristic
style, as a historian, is the sedulous and
relentless compilation of facts, which in
.the end-result constitutes an almost
perverse reduction of human ex-
perience to a mass of statistics about
sugar, or the slave trade, or peasant
cultivation. There is missing the
humanist note, perhaps because, in his
ideological statements, Dr. Williams
consistently mistakes humanism for
what he contemptuously dismisses as
the "idealist" theory of history.
The main note, altogether, is as one
of his local critics has pointed out -- a
kind of triumphant pettiness which
rings embarassingly near to the core of
the colonial psyche. It is the record of
the colonial's daydream of humiliating
the white master-class; and in Dr.
Williams' hands it becomes a for-
midable mixture of bitter revenge and
ironic wit. No one can read the endless
accounthere of his battles with colonial
officials, Oxford dons, local politicians,'
and the rest, without a sad recognition
of what colonialism does to its victims.
He is invariably right, they are in-
variably foolish or naive or malicious.
He is the schoolmaster, they are the
recalcitrant students. The consequence
is that it all adds up to a view of looking
at things that is historically
questionable and psychologically
unsatisfying. For it is surely a
profoundly un-Marxist procedure to see


the imperialists as consciously evil
persons working a system they know to
be wrong, rather than seeing them as
agents of a system in which they in all
conscience sincerely believe because
their position in the total class situation
has so shaped them. Dr. Williams is
thus driven to painting them in the
blackest colours possible. That is why
there is hardly a mention of the great
Moyne Commission Report of 1945 on
the West Indies, surely the most
damning indictment 6f English rule in
the Caribbean. He is thereby unjust, for
such reports, the Victorian Blue Books,
for example, were used earlier by Marx
himself as ammunition to feed his
argument in Capital. English
colonialism, on any showing, was bad,
and had to be destroyed. But it was not
all undiluted evil.
What is the lesson that emerges out
of a reading of these three apologetics?
It is, I think, to prove that Burke -
himself no mean critic of English
colonialism, especially in India was
eminently right when he insisted that
magnanimity in politics is not the least
of virtures. To weigh and understand
the vast complexity of motives that
make men behave as they do, to be
compassionate of human weaknesses,
to be fair to a defeated enemy: these
are the qualities that distinguish the
statesman from the mere politician.
Lincoln had them; so did Gladstone.
They are qualities regrettably rare, so
far, in the new world of the Caribbean
independent nations.
Dr. Jagan, it is true, has a gift of
genial humor that saves him from


merely hating his opponents. His main
defect, perhaps, has been too ready a
willingness to believe in the moral
purity of the Soviet Union. He might
read with profit the volume of his
fellow-Guyanese, Jan Carew's Moscow
is not my Mecca, which demonstrates
how black students in Russian
universities have to face a Russian
negrophobia as objectionable as
anything in American white society.
Mr. Burnham is a lawyer by training;
which means that he suffers from the
disabilities of the legal mind in politics,
the temptation, particularly. to build
up a brief for the defense instead of
constructing a positive philosophy. Dr.
Williams lacks, perhaps, the gift of
intellectual hospitality, the readiness to
listen graciously to the ideas of others;
one is reminded of the complaint of
C.L.R. James that, during the period of
his political alliance with the Peoples'
National Movement, he could not
remember having a conversation with
Dr. Williams about the topic of
socialism that lasted more than three
minutes.
It is possible to argue that all this is
inevitable, that as V.S. Naipaul has
argued in The Middle Passage the
Caribbean society, colonialist at heart,
is incapable of producing generosity.
But this is not so. Naipaul can argue
thus because all of his books are
negative, pessimistic, anglophile,
obsessed with the pathology, as he sees
it, of colonial failure. There is a
brighter side to Caribbean politics. It is
true that the late Norman Manley did
not have the quality of Burkian


Spring 1971


V i. ,r?" .. Wd
4^ ^ 4' 7 .A4i-* .',d&/


Haitian Town,
painting by
Gilbert Daird








CA-WBBA ftVW


magnanimity. Like Williams, he went
to Oxford as a Rhodes Scholar; and it
is possible to argue that in that ghetto-
world of entrenched snobbery and
tradition the gift of generosity falters
and arrogance flourishes. But Grantley
Adams also went to Oxford, but the
Oxford of an earlier period, when it was
permeated with the gentle humanism of
great scholars like Gilbert Murray and
T. R. Glover; and he brought back
with him what in the West Indies we
call the quality of the gentlemen of the
old school. The same quality was there
in Marryshow of Grenada, even in the
splendid figure of Bustamante in
Jamaica.
And, more latterly, the quality is
evident enough in the leader-figures of
the present generation. There is
Betancourt in Venezuela, with his
capacity to yield up power to his
constitutional successors (if his Black
Power opponents- are to be believed,
Dr. Williams has yet to prove that he


can do this in Trinidad). There is Jose
Figures in Costa Rica, whose equally
solid constitutionalist sense is summed
up in his well-known dictum that a bad
government is preferable to a good
revolution, so long as the electoral path
is open. There is Juan Bosch in the
Dominican Republic, the professor in
politics, like Woodrow Wilson before
him in the United States. His capacity
to grow in office, his critics argued, was
frustrated by his naive belief that
organised structures of power will
collapse if you deliver a professorial
lecture. It would be more correct to say
that it was frustrated by the 1965
exercise of the United States in im-
perialist adventurism.
There are, finally, of course, Mufioz
in Puerto Rico and Fidel himself in
Cuba. They are poles apart
ideologically. Yet both are cast in the
mould of greatness. Both are men of
action in the sense that they are ex-


troverts, they think, as we say, on their
feet, they shun away from the large
architectonic schemes. Both have
generous instincts. Both have a rare
capacity for self-criticism, both are
ready listeners. Both have a passion for
the easy-going bull session with friends
and comrades, with the liquor and the
cigars circulating freely. Mufioz, as one
of his admirers has put it, is the poet in
the fortress. There is, of course, a defect
in the virtue, for Mufioz is notorious for
his capacity to distort reality with the
flow of his rhetorical imagination.
Fidel, in his turn, is the populist in-
carnate, and his public style, magically
invoking the general will of the Cuban
masses in the vast plaza meetings, has
set an indubitably Cuban stamp upon
the revolution. So long as Caribbean
society can breed such leaders it is a
long way from its 1984.
There is, palpably enough, no
general recipe for the production of


effective leadership in any society, least
of all in Caribbean society, with all of
its racial-cultural variety. Leaders will
naturally reflect the peculiar par-
ticularity of their own island: the harsh
belligerency of Dr. Williams' character
clearly reflects, as does the savage
cynicism of the calypso, the Byzantine
individualism of Trinidadian society.
But beyond that it is pretty much a
matter of the accident of personality.
Both Guyana and Trinidad, thus, are
mixed Indo-African societies. Yet it
would be difficult to explain why -- to
take only a single example Dr.
Williams responds to the Black Power
movement by banning Stokely Car-
michael from entry into Trinidad, while
Mr. Burnham, more prudently, invites
him officially to dinner. Perhaps this is
just as well. For politics, like sex,
becomes more exciting when the
participants cannot be certain of what
the final outcome of the adventure is
likely to be.


Caribbean




Economic History


The Caribbean region, more:
culturally heterogeneous than any other'
area of Latin America, is lacking a
general economic history. Indeed there
is only one general history of the region
which makes a serious effort to bridge
the national boundaries and treat the
history of the area as a unit. This is not
surprising since historians tend to
follow national orientations and ignore
more natural regional divisions. Within
the Caribbean the colonial rivalry
between four and sometimes more
European powers established artificial
divisions between island communities
which had no other alternative but to
follow a common pattern of
development imposed by the
geographical conditions of the region in
spite of the influence of Spanish or
French national interest. Thus the
area's economic history is characterized
by the production of sugar often to the
extent of being identified as the "sugar
isles." The system set up to produce
sugar in all of the islands was the
plantation system with its ac-
companying institution of slavery.
Trade organized in one form or another
tied the local Caribbean units of
production into the larger industrial
systems-of Europe or North America.
For the most part however, present day
historians have limited their studies to
monographs on one particular French,
Spanish, or English sub-division of the
sugar industry or, as in the case of the
plantation, to one specific island.
Comparative studies or general studies
even in the area of trade are few since
they would require knowledge and
competence in two or more national
milieus. The early work by Clarence
Haring on the bucaneers (The
Bucaneers in the West Indies in the
XVII Century) is an attempt to bridge
the confines of national boundaries
while his study, Trade and Navigation
Between Spain and the Indies in the
Time of the Hapsburgs, is limited to the
Spanish commercial system.
The general history of sugar by Noel
Deerr (History of Sugar) which en-
compasses much more than just the
Caribbean is one of the few exceptions
to the observation. In this general study
Deerr who went beyond the pioneer
work of Irene Wright limited his efforts
to bringing together a wide collection of
facts and statistics which provide a
chronology of the development of the


sugar industry in the Caribbean from
its origin to present day. More
analytical monographs of a com-
parative nature simply do not exist. For
example Richard Sheridan's study of
the' plantations and the industrial
revolution (The Plantation Revolution
and the Industrial Revolution) is
limited almost exclusively to the
English islands' plantations. Francisco
Morales Padrdn in one of his more
general essays on economics and society
in the antilles (Economia y Sociedad de


las islas Antillas) limits himself to the
Spanish islands, although his ob-
servations in many cases would apply
to the other islands of the Caribbean.
Eventually there should exist enough
monographs to allow an economic
historian to write with reliability a
general economic history of the region
relying upon specialists working within
the many varied nationalist states.
Until then the comparative study is
limited to works such as that compiled
on the plantation by Vera Rubin
(Plantation Systems of the New World)
which bring together under one cover
diverse monographs which focus on one
aspect of economic history.
A superficial scanning of the works
of economic history on the different
islands of the Caribbean and the
Guianas show only a few unexpected
weak spots where the quantity is not
sufficient to provide a reliable coverage.
Puerto Rico, Trinidad, and the
Guianas have been neglected by the
economic historian. As could be ex-
pected Cuba and Jamaica have a
number of works which are available.
In the case of Cuba, as Martinez


Sanchez demonstrated (Vida y espiritu
de la Sociedad Economica Amigos del
Pais) the Sociedad Econonmica de
Amigos del Pais were able to create in
Havana a favorable climate for the
preparation of economic studies about
Cuba. In Kingston, the Institute of
Jamaica has achieved a similar pur-
pose. One would have expected more on
XVIII century Haiti and also on the
Dutch areas. The, works of Gabriel
Debien have brought into exceptional
prominence the French islands of the


Caribbean.
Most of the works concerning the
different islands are limited to the
XVIII and XIX centuries and the
previous two centuries are neglected
and unattended. Such distribution is
natural and obvious. The activity of the
non-Spanish powers in the Caribbean
do not commence in earnest until the
XVII century and even then it was not
until the end of that century that the
islands were little more than coves for
pirates or refuges for unwanted
Europeans. In the XVIII century the
French islands and St. Dominigue
developed into flourishing sugar
colonies. Jamaica and Barbados along
with some of the lesser antilles
produced sizable quantities of sugar for
England. Cuba after the 1763 English
occupation did show signs of significant
production which contrasted markedly
with the economic abandonment in
which Santo Domingo, Puerto Rico
and Trinidad had been held for cen-
turies by the Spaniards. Thus, as could
be expected the distribution of the
works o0 economic history follow the
pattern of development and mark the


by Thomas Mathews J
periods of greatest economic activity.
In several countries there are one or
two outstanding economic historians
who are contributing valuable studies
for the student. In Cuba, Julio Le
Riverend has written extensively on
almost all areas of economic history of
his country (La economic Cubana
durante las guerras de la revolucidn
francds -- 1790-1808). His work is
sharp and analytical and devoid of the
zeal and passion which sometimes
marred the work of his former
colleague Emilio Roig de
Leuschsenring (La Enmienda Platt,
consecuencia y ratificacidn de la
inalterable political seguida por el
estado norteamericano contra Cuba
desde 1805). Jamaica has an out-
standing economic historian in the
person of Douglas Hall whose work on
the XIXth century (The Ap-
prenticeship Period in Jamaica) is vital
to an understanding of the history of
that island. Mention has already been
made of Debien and his studies of the
French areas of the Caribbean. These
works are mostly on the islands of
Guadeloupe and Martinique but there
are some works also on the French
colony of St. Domingue.
However, Debien falls into the
category of historian who is more in-
terested in the colonies of the Carib-
bean as adjuncts or parts of the
commercial system of an European
power. The work of Lowell Ragatz for
the British islands of the Caribbean is
in someways comparable to that of
Debien on the French islands. Richard
Pares, although more concerned with
trade and commerce than plantation
production is also a candidate for this
category. In contrast, the work of Eric
Williams, which deals also with the
British commercial system as it effected
the Caribbean and particularly the
slave trade (Dutch-Spanish Rivalry in
the Caribbean Area: 1594-1609),
takes a highly critical view of the
materialistic motivations determining
imperial policy in the West Indies.
Thus one sees that when the Antillean
or West Indian studies the commercial
system in contrast to the French,
British, or Spanish economic historian
there is introduced an element of
judgement and a critique which has
hitherto been absent. In another area
the work of C.L.R. James (The Black
Jacobins) provide? a further example of


Spring 1971


Photo by Orlando Canales, San Juan.







CAMWBBANPOW


this important contrast.
The Dominican Republic has no
clearly identifiable economic historian
although the young Franklin J. Franco
has shown some interest in this
direction with his Republica
Dominicana, Clases, Crisis y
Comandos which was awarded a prize
by Casa de las Americas in 1966. The
recent publications by H. Hoetink
dealing with the republic during the
late XIXth century (Materiales para el
studio de la Republica Dominica en la
segunda mitad del Siglo XIX) are of
basic importance to an understanding
of the economic factors behind the
social structure of dominican society in
the twentieth century.
In the case of Puerto Rico there is
very little economic history available
for the period under study. Strangely
enough there is not even any study
available of a coffee or sugar plan-
tation. Only the very capable historian
Adam Szaszdi, better known for his
recent study on Ecuador, has turned
out an occasional economic study on
Puerto Rico (Credit-without-banking
in Early XIXth Century Puerto Rico).
Concerning the Lesser Antilles two
distinguished historians, Elsa Goveia
and Woodville Marshall of the
University of West Indies have made
valuable contributions to history of the
Windward and Leeward English
speaking islands of the Lesser Antilles.
There is very little on the Dutch
Windward islands but the French
Antilles has a group of historians
concerned with the economic aspects of
the historical development of the
French speaking islands. Worthy of
special mention is the Marxist-oriented
mayor of Point-a-Pitre, Henri Bangou,
a medical surgeon who has turned his
able hand to the re-writing and re-
interpretation of the history of the
island of Guadaloupe (La Guadeloupe
1492-1848 ou L'Histoire de la
colonisation I'ile liee a L'esclavage noir
des ses debuts a sa disparation). This
new 'and radical orientation has not
rested well with the more conventional
French historians but obviously such
Caribbean-oriented (as opposed to
Paris-oriented) writing of history is
essential to an understanding of the
history of the region.
As could be expected the topic of
sugar production through the centuries
on the various islands of the Caribbean


has received ample attention. The
monumental work of Ramiro Guerra y
Sanchez (Azucar y Poblaci6n en las
antillas) which has recently been
translated and republished by Yale
Univ. Press stands out as an ex-
ceptional work because it is one of the
few which endeavors to take a com-
parative view of a Spanish style
plantation system in Cuba and an
English style sugar plantation system
on the island of Barbados. The striking
similarities and the lesser evident
contrasts are for the first time touched
upon by a very capable historian.
Cuban sugar has been the attention
of many local and non-local economic
historians. Roland Ely, although an
American, trained and teaching in the
United States, has drawn upon family
resources and relations within Cuba to
prepare a series of economic studies
which evolve around the production of
sugar and the commercial world of
which it was a part (Comerciantes
Cubanos del Siglo XIX). Some ex-
cellent monographs of the early sugar
production under the Spaniards in the
XVI century by Irene Wright (The
History of Sugar) and more recently by
Mervyn Ratekin (The Early Sugar
Industry in Espaiiola) have provided
the basic outline of the establishment of
the industry in the Caribbean. Still to
be examined adequately is the early
decline of this industry within the
Spanish colonies.
Jamaica, St. Kitts, Barbados are the
more prominent English sugar
producing islands to which some at-
tention has been paid by economic
historians interested in the production
of sugar and the plantation economy.
However, Antigua or Montserrat are
other sugar-producing islands about
which next to nothing has been written.
St. Croix which was sold by the French
to the Danes in the mid-seventeen
hundreds is another sugar island which
has been neglected by both the French
and Danish historians. We have
already referred to the absence of
material concerning Puerto Rico,
which became a prominent sugar
producer in the late XIX century.
Hopefully the efforts of Arturo Morales
Carrion who is currently working on an
economic history of the island will
remedy this omission.
Little attention has been paid to the
other products of commercial value


which the Caribbean islands produce.
Douglas Hall has told the story of the
organization of the bannana and fruit
trade in Jamaica (Ideas and
Illustrations in Economic History). But
a similar history is awaited for the
Dominican Republic where the
monolithic United Fruit Corporation
had some of its early holdings! There is
little pre-XXth century history con-
cerning the fruit trade of the Lesser
Antilles and Puerto Rico. The spices
which are prominent in the Windward
islands have not been studied. Ginger
production in early XVI century
Puerto Rico was of great importance
but from then until now in Trinidad or
any of the lesser Antilles no history of
the important spice trade has been
written.
Fernando Ortiz and others have
written about the production of tobacco
in Cuba but elsewhere in the Caribbean
tobacco was a very important product
particularly in the early stages of
settlement in the Lesser Antilles and yet
little or nothing has been written
directly about this stage of development
of agricultural development. The in-
dustry is also important in the
Dominican Republic (which used to
export much of its tobacco through
Curacao commercial houses to Europe
in the XIXth century) and in Puerto
Rico (where American interests early in
the XXth century established a
monopolistic control over the industry
which had been characterized by small
land holders and their outletters).
Coffee has been fortunate to find.
several historians who have been in-
terested in writing about the production
in Jamaica, St. Domingue, and
Surinam. The most delightful work on
coffee has undoubtedly been turned out
by the Cuban'historian Francisco P&ez
de la Riva who has done for Cuban
coffee (El Cafe: historic de su cultivo y
explotacion en Cuba) what Ortiz did
for Cuban sugar and tobacco. In Perez
de la Riva's work one feels the milieu of
a coffee plantation with all its social
and economic problems. More should
be available than just the brief work of
Debien on coffee in St. Domingue ("Le
plan et les debuts d'une cafetiere a
Saint Domingue") where the slave was
forced to labor in a climate entirely
inappropriate to his previous ac-
climatimization either in Africa or in
the coastal sugar plantations.


Closely connected to the agricultural
products of the Caribbean communities
is the study of land patterns and the
development of the economic and social
institution known as the plantation.
Here again there is a scattering of
.material with most of the studies
belonging to St. Domingue, Cuba, or
Jamaica; the key French, Spanish, and
English colonies in the Caribbean. The
other smaller areas are either ignored or
neglected. The omission of any study
on the plantations of the Guianas
except for one work by Debien (Sur une
sucrerie de la Guyane) may indicate my
oversight but, if it is not, then it is a
laguna which historians should hasten
to fill. Certainly if one is to judge from
the novels of Edgar Mittleholtzer the
plantation in the Guianas played an
extremely important role throughout
the economic history of those fertile
lands separated and fed by abundant
rivers. Robert Moore of the newly
established University of Guyana and
Rawle Farley a noted economist who
has turned frequently to history may be
kept in mind as persons who will
remedy this void.
The economic aspects of slavery have
concerned numerous Caribbean
historians but often these studies are
interwoven with material concerning
the social and political aspects of the
abominable institution. An example or
two of this observation can be found in
the work of Elsa Goveia concerning the
English Leeward islands or in that of
Luis Di'az Soler (Historia de la
Esclavitud Negra) on the institution of
slavery in Puerto Rico. One of the more
thought-provoking articles on the
economic aspects of slavery has ap-
peared in Social and Economic Studies,
the journal of the University of the
West Indies ("Slave Profitability and
Economic Growth: an Examination of
the Conrad-Mayer Thesis").
Most of these studies look upon the
trade systems which operated and
operate in the Caribbean as merely
adjuncts of a more all-encompassing
commercial policy which was deter-
mined by the interests of those
economic advisors 'of the European
powers which claimed colonies in the
region of the Caribbean. As the
Caribbean people begin to write their
own history and study and define their
own past in accord with purely
Caribbean criteria it has been popular


Pachuco



Remembered

by Tino Villanueva





iEse!
Within your will-to-be culture,
incisive,
aguzado,
clutching the accurate click &
first-warm slash of your filero
(hardened equalizer gave you life,
opened up counter-cultures U.S.A.)

Precursor.

Vato loco alivinado a legend in your
own time flaunting early Mod, sleazy,
but rigid,
with a message,
in a movement of your own,
in your gait sauntering,
swaying,
learning the wrong way
in assertion.


Baroque carriage between
waving-to-the-wind ducktails &
double-sole calcos
buttressing street-corners as any would-be
pilar of society.
Esthetics existencial:
la lisa unbuttoned,
zoot-suit withpegged tramos,
a thin belt holding up the
scars of your age -
a moving target for la jura brutality;
brown anathema of high-school principals.
Your fierce stance
vs.
starched voices:
"Take those taps off!"
"Speak English damn it!"
"Button up your shirt!"
"When did you last cut your hair?"
"Coach, give this punk 25 licks!"
Emotion surging silent on your stoic tongue;
machismo-ego punished, feeling your fearful
eyes turn blue in their distant stare.

Day to day into the night, back to back grief,
& the railroad tracks a /Meskin/D)in/Iine
hyphenating
the skin of your accent.
Sirol, you heard the train on time
tearing
through every map of hope SW USA.,
but your poised blood, aware, in a
bitter coming-of-age: a juvenile la causa
in your wicked
stride. .


Spring 1971







AI Ir0w Spring 1971


to follow the patterns of the
metropolitan economic historians
adding only the original critical and
caustic commentary which underlines
the exploitive nature of any mer-
cantalistic system. By far the best of
these works is the provocative study on
Capitalism and Slavery by Dr. Eric
Williams, Prime Minister of Trinidad
and Tobago, who before he turned to
politics was the most original and
perceptive economic historian the
Caribbean had produced.
It is somewhat strange to observe the
absence of studies of the various
commercial companies which served
the Caribbean and provided the
continual contact .between the
European powers and the new world
colonies. Only Waldemar
Westergaard's study of the Danish
West Indian Company has appeared.
There is about to be published a work
in English on the rise and fall of the
Dutch West Indian Company in the
Caribbean which will supplement the
Dutch study by W. R. Menkman.
From a perusal of the manuscript it
appears that the author, C. Goslinga,
has emphasized as did Menkman the
political and military aspects of the
activities of that important trading
company to the neglect of the economic
aspects. The work, however, will be a
great value to Caribbeanists
nonetheless. Following the important
classic study by S. L. Mims published
in 1912 (Les Antilles Francaises sous
I'ancien regime), several French works
such as tha,. by Vignols could be
mentioned. Others, like those of Herve'
du Halouet and H. Robert, however
emphasis the economic effect felt by the
mother country. Much more could be
done concerning Spanish commercial
companies following Haring, Morales
Padron (El Comercio Canario-
Americano), and that on the Barcelona


company by Marcos Aurelio Vila (La
Real Compailia de Comercio Barcelona
y Venezuela). This last work limits
itself to relations with Venezuela but
the Barcelona company along with
other Spanish companies had official
permission to visit various Spanish
islands in the Caribbean. The English
side of this topic hlas not been neglected
and the work of Richard Pares (The
London Sugar Market, 1740-1769) is.
particularly worthy.
In recent economic thought and
studies models have been more and
more widely utilized with varying
degrees of success. Certainly the use of
models is not new to the historian since
many concerned with the colonial
history of Latin America have referred
to the different types of colonial en-
terprises which have characterized
different sectors and areas of Latin
America. The mining settlements, the
agricultural settlements, the extracting
colonies or the sedentary colonies are
just a few of the different terms used in
the most common typologies. However,
the more exacting economic historians
have not been satisfied with the im-
portant but limited results of these
typologies. Some have persisted in
carrying the use of economic models
further. However, the economist is
usually concerned with modern
societies and their economic
organization, and as Dudley Seers has
pointe out in his now famous "The
LimitAtions of the Special Cases," not
only are those models not necessarily
applicable to certain developing
economies but even the recognition of
exceptions departing from the original
models is of questionable utility.
There is a group of students who are
delving into the field of economic
history with a series of provocative
studies. They argue that if the so-called
in-put out-put models are to be useful


they must undergo a radical tran-
sformation to take into account the
realities of the historical circumstances.
Indeed some would argue that such
models are not applicable at all and
that completely new models should be
devised for the exceptional conditions
of the sugar colony. Lloyd Best, one of
these students, has argued that an in-
put model can't be applied since these
"economies are externally oriented,
they get their in-puts from abroad, and
they sell their but-puts largely abroad.
There is very little interdependence
and, therefore, the typical in-put out-
put exercise is not necessary."
Having had serious questions about
the applicability of conventional
models or even their special cases Best
and his associate K. Levitt have
proposed a different type of model
known as the Pure Plantation
Economy. In analysing his economic
system Best is concerned with such
vital questions as whether the locus of
decision-making on economic matters
be in the metropolitan center or within
the producing center of the colony; the
question of whether the division of
labor in the perfection of the final
product takes place in the Caribbean or
in the consuming country; the question
of determining the accessibility of
financial means for operation involving
the availability of banks and access to
local capital; and among others, the
question of the network for marketing
the product in areas distant from the
source of the coffee, sugar, ginger, or
even metals such as the gold of the XVI
century or the bauxite of the XXth.
The Pure Plantation Economy
model is flexible enough to provide for
variations; such as, the factor of
scarcity of land as is the case on some of
the islands or the abundance of land as
in the case of the Guianas; or the factor
of controlled source of labor under the


restrictions of slavery or even later in
the XIXth century when controlled
migration of the East Indians brought a
new source of labor to places like
Trinidad and Surinam. Working in
these and other terms which are
peculiarly Caribbean, Best and his
associates have apparently set up a
framework which can accommodate a
realistic economic analysis of all the
different economic systems in operation
in the Caribbean.
Thus far only one article has been
published ("Current Development
Strategy and Economic Integration in
the Caribbean") but the uniqueness of
the approach is attractive and the
promise of fruitful application is
worthy of future attention. While there
are weaknesses and problems still to be
solved the group's work has been
favorably received so far. The coverage
of the Spanish colonial sector of the
Caribbean is weak and seems to have
more direct application to Cuba and
much less application to Santo
Domingo. Weak also is the ability of
the model to handle areas such as
Puerto Rico in the XVII century or
Haiti in the XIX century where and
when economic activity is not directly
tied to any impressive metropolitan
economy but left in utter abandonment,
languishing in neglect because of the
lack of local organizational resources.
Clearly this type of economic
analysis applied to the various stages of
historical development of the com-
munities of the Caribbean should
produce a fruitful flow of important
articles dealing with the economic
history of the Caribbean and hopefully
place this area of study within the high
level modern scientific analysis
comparable to that which is being done
by other economic historians in other
areas of Latin America like Venezuela
or Mexico.


Mexican Maize Goddess. Photo by Jorpe Rodrfguez Beruff


Dominican



Patrimony
by Harmannus Hoetink .


Max Weber speaks of a patrimonial
authority structure when the political
leader has a personal governmental
staff and apparatus at his disposal. A
patrimonial authority' structure is
sultanistic, when the acts of govern-
ment move primarily in the sphere of
untraditional arbitrariness. Weber
considers this untraditional form of
authority to belong to the traditional
type!, observing that in reality it is not
untraditional; why this is so, he does
not explain.
He speaks further of a patrimonial
authority structure based on "estates,"
when certain political powers and
functions of the leader including their
economic benefits, are allocated to
members of the governmental staff.
The eventual expenses which this
allocation brings with it, are being paid
by the staff member both out of his own
means, as well as out of special funds
the leader provides him with; in
practice these two are not separated,
just as the leader himself makes no
distinction between his own and the
public financial means.
For the maintenance of his
household, the patrimonial servant can
sometimes count on cash-money on
goods or land or on the permission
from the leader to collect and keep
certain taxes. When these latter
allocations are in principle not tran-
sferrable by inheritance, Weber speaks
of prebendalism. The Dominican
political structure could be described in
Weber's terms as an approximation of a
prebendalistic sultanistic patrimonial


authority structure based on estates.
As you may remember, his ministers
referred the President to himself. I
suggest that in this way the concept of
Government as a Gestalt in an
aristocratic culture is maintained as a
fiction or a mere speech-reaction by the
political insiders. The phenomenon
can, however, also be explained as a
true reflection of the patrimonial power
structure: the ministers are merely
personal staff-members of the leader,
and only the latter is invested with the
power of government; he is, in the most
literal sense, government itself. It was
also observed that both the legitimation
of political leadership by History, and
the awareness of being patron of people
and country facilitated the iden-
tification of the dictator with the land;
the country is his: "Tomorrow I will
meet the President of Haiti in the
Manzanilla Bay, in my waters," wrote
Heureaux. Nowhere is the absence of
distinction between private and public
means more clearly to be observed than
in the report in the little notebook of the
Ministry of Commerce, according to
which, the President had borrowed
300,000 Mexican pesos from a local
banker, in order to be able "to pay
debts of the Public Service and other
personal expenses."
Government lands were liberally
given away; political clients also
received commercial concessions or
administrative posts, which permitted
them to sell their services to the public
for their own benefit. For the observer
to speak of corruption in such a system







CAffBREAN MW


could easily betray an ethnocentric
evaluation. Both the patrimonial
structure as such, as well as the un-
certain duration of political favours led
to the approved exploitation of all
financial opportunities a job can offer.
When the hero in one of Jose Ramon
Lopez's short stories gets a job at the
customs office, he says: "my mother,
my saintly mother, so honest in all her
life, also heard of my appointment and
came over to congratulate me: make
use of it, my son, she said with a voice,
veiled by tears, make use of it. God
does not present us many opportunities
in life... Think of the future, think of
your children."
Weber sees as characteristics and
conditions of the patrimonial structure
in its pure form the absence of a
rationally organized administrative
hierarchy, as well as the absence of
professional specialization as a norm
for appointment and promotion. These
conditions match well to the humanistic
ideal of Western aristocratic culture,
the harmonious, versatile, many-
faceted man whose good acquaintance
with the classics certainly is sufficient
to qualify him for politics in which he
does not work, but with which, of
course, he only occupies himself. Even
today a poligrafo, somebody who writes
much about many subjects, is con-
sidered in Iberian culture as having a
most honorable occupation. In the
language of Holland, where versatility
is now about synonymous to lack of
solidity, the translation of poh'grafo has
a strongly pejorative connotation.
In the Dominican patrimonial
system, an obvious lack of objective
qualifications for a job could therefore
sometimes easily be compensated for by
personal loyalty or indispensableness in
the patronage system: "You tell me
that you are not qualified to head
Ministry, but you don't mean to say
that I have come from France, do you?
We all grew up together and in our
country we even serve as a remedy,"
writes Heureaux to a friend. And
Luperon, who describes this same man
as "an undisciplined, insubordinate,
arbitrary and violent, hardheaded and
crude, cruel and disastrous ad-
venturer," adds: "in order to avoid
that he would harm the others, I ap-
pointed him as Minister of Foreign
Affairs."


Both the absence of clear ideological
motivation, as well as the rapid suc-
cession of most of the 19th century
Dominican regimes created a sense of
uncertainty and instability, which was
reflected in the key-words of the
political vocabulary of those days.
There is 'the word situacion which
meant both government and period of
government, and which conveys
something of the fluidity of political
alliances and formations. One was
friend or enemy of the situation, one
formed a situation, one spoke of the
first days of a situation. There is further
the word opportunist, which had no
disapproving connotation: a politician
had to be opportunistic, and this
quality was openly praised. It falls in
the same category as the word con-
veniencia. one decides, accepts or
denies, one flatters and betrays on the
basis of lo que mejor convenga, what is
most convenient, on every level, in
every circle.
The term reaccionario, was not at all
ideologically colored. It fitted in the
neutrally mechanistic interpretation of
political activity, that everyone who
acted against the situation, the
government, belonged to the reaction.
Not only did a politician need to be
opportunistic, he was also praised if he
showed sufficient "suspicion,"
"simulation," and "malice" to stay in
power. And since in the political
turbulence everyone tried to keep his
head above water, making friends with
new protectors when the old ones had
lost their power, and acquiring new
clients when the old ones had deserted
you, these qualities of suspicion,
simulation, and malice were actually
part of the nation's psychology.
Heureaux, who liked classification,
might divide his political alliesintd'real
friends," "friends for money," and
"friends for convenience's sake," (just
as he classified the rich Dominicans in
"onorables with an o, honorables with a
small h, and Honorables with a capital
H"). But such ad hoc cataloging could
not bring him peace of mind: "we
cannot do without suspicion in a
country where real loyalty is scarce
amongst most politicians," and
besides: "also towards the political
adversary do we need simulation; it is
necessary to have a smile on the lips so
as to bring him to the Judas kiss."


The frequent changes of government
in so many parts of 19th century Latin
America may, in Weber's term, be
labelled traditionalisticc revolutions"
since they did not change the
patrimonial structure as such; yet they
implied frequent changes in the actors
within that structure; this, plus the
circumstance that so many caudillos
.came from the lower strata of society
confirms the conclusion that vertical
mobility, must in fact have been a
general phenomenon.
A stable national social elite could, at
least in a number of countries, only
establish itself during what Gino
Germani calls the "unifying
authocracies." Such authocracies, like
that of Heureaux in the Dominican
Republic, Porfirio Diaz in Mexico, and
Guzman Blanco in Venezuela, lasted
long enough to improve, with the help
of foreign capital, the infrastructure to
such a degree, that communication and
interaction became possible on the
national level, and thus the formation
of national pressure groups, starting
with those from the upper strata. The
elite which consolidated itself in this
period, did not only consist of the nuclei
of older well-to-do families and of newly
rich immigrants, but also of a number
of the socially risen proteges of the
caudillo, who during this relatively long
period of government had sufficient
time and opportunity to make their
families culturally and socially ac-
ceptable.
It was in the name of democracy (but
in fact, to borrow Germani's term, a
democracy with limited, oligarchic
participation) that this elite of mutually
connected landowners, merchants and
intellectuals, began, with changing
success, its struggle for political power.
The period of authoritarian unification
also accelerated the growth and for-
malization of administrative and
military organization, in which the
patronage-system, however, main-
tained its force. This expansion of
government bureaucracy and military
establishment provided new channels
of social mobility and increased the
numbers of those who, at least in terms
of income and occupation, belonged to
the middle class. Where the social elite
on ethnic and or cultural arguments
refused to accept, in the sphere of


While in the former century it was
still considered perfectly normal for a
group of urban intellectuals to formally
invite a political leader to accept a
dictatorship (which was carefully
distinguished from tyranny), such a
public invitation today would be
considered ridiculous, which does not
necessarily mean that political
procedures have materially changed
that much, but only that the outward
appearances have been adapted even
more closely to what the "civilized
world" expects them to be. Such a
double political frame of reference, one
for external and another for internal
use has of course existed since the early
days of Latin American Independence;
it has only been affirmed and
strengthened by the more intensive
international communication of recent
decades. Its accompanying political
schizophrenia is nicely illustrated by
President Heureaux's remark. "I have
honoured the republican and
democratic principles and I respect
them; but in certain specific cases I do
marriage and intimate social contact,
those who had risen highest in army
and bureaucracy, objective reasons for
social resentment were created.
Whether this resentment is also sub-
jectively experienced and to what kind
of eventual political action it leads are
key questions of Latin American
politics today.
Since their answers depend on each
country's particular configuration of
factors like :the depth and breadth of
'aristocratic culture' in all social strata,
the concurrent measure of influence of
non-aristocratic modern ideology and
the way it is assimilated, and the
recruitment of political leadership, it
would be unwise to attempt any
generalization here. In this context it
may be worthwhile to observe that in
several Latin American countries
aristocratic culture has been rein-
forced by migration waves from the
Mediterranean area. On the other
hand, the ideology of political
democracy has become "modern" in
the last 75 years or so, "modern" in the
sense that it is now being propagated
forcefully by a foreign powerful
culture area, and taken over, either as
merely a "speech-reaction," or with
idealistic sincerity, by a sophisticated
part of the population.


Spring 1971


Haitian Street Scene, - --
painting by Raymond Jacques







8 CASHM AN It Spring 1971


not apply them."
There are not only democratic
modernists, but, as you well know, also
authoritarian modernists and like the
former, inspired by an admired and
powerful foreign area of political
culture. I will not dwell upon the
relative success of this ideology, as far
as it might be explained as a reaction to
the United States' material and
political preponderance, or as a
reaction of the younger elite or the
middle groups against the hypocrisy of
the quasi-democracy, which the
established higher strata adhered to in
defense of the structural status-quo;
nor shall I refer to the demonstration-
effect of some authoritarian political
system outside Latin America, as far as
rapid economic development is con-
cerned.
Since all these factors are as well-
known as they are important, I would
prefer to draw attention to the apparent
paradox, that, ceteris paribus, a
patrimonial political system within an.
aristocratic culture might change more
easily into a special variant of modern
authoritarianism, either of the right or
the left, than into a special variant of
'egalitarian', private enterprise,
democracy. In the first place, in both
systems the role of government as
patron and protector is clearly
recognized and legitimate; in the
second place, the emphasis on distance,
characteristic of aristocratic culture, is
not at all irreconcilable with the
modem one-party state: the distance to
the Party and to the Government might
lead to a similar Gestalt-like conception
as we met in an aristocratic system.
Formalism and even culturally con-
ditioned narcissism are easier to be
maintained in a modem authoritarian
system centered around one leader than
in a so-called 'democratic culture'. The-
ideological justification for the stress on.
distance and formalism would have to
change, but not the behavioral pat-.
terns. Finally, the aristocratic concept
of a select inner circle to which truth is
revealed would likewise need hardly,
any modification. However, this may
be, it is not without reason that I spoke
of special variants of either democracy
or modem authoritarianism, for deep-
rooted cultural-structural complexes
will, in Latin America as well as
elsewhere, always color and reform any
political model invented in other
climes.
Let me end by enumerating some
points that I have tried to make:
1. An aristocratic culture as defined
by Mannheim need not go together
with a rigid stratification, nor need
such a culture be confined to a
certain segment of the population;
2. This being so, it becomes much
more difficult to assume that changes
in economic structure will
automatically lead to a complete
disappearance of aristocratic models
of thought and behaviour;
3. Patrimonial structure, patronage
and ritual kinship systems do not by
definition impede social mobility and
social dynamics; they seem to be
sufficiently elastic to be functionally
adapted to changing socio-political
conditions and ideologies.
4. It would therefore seem advisable,
not to project the future development
of a culture-area like Latin America,
as a rectilinear revolution from one
type of society, based on ascription to
one based on achievement, or from
dictatorship to democracy, but to
design different models, in which
possible alternatives in development
are elaborated, based on the
elasticity of Ibero-American in-
stitutions.
In this way our conclusions would not
be burdened by the dogmatic certainty
that politicians cannot do without, but
which the scholar had better avoid.


The following selected excerpts are
from the First Annual Report of
Charles H. Alien, Governor of Porto
Rico (submitted May 1, 1901 to
William McKinley, the then president
of the U.S.). The reader may note the
conflict between the governor's desire
to help and the fact that he does so in
function of standards exogeneous to
those living on the island. The whole
thing reminds us of a speech of one of
the characters of James Joyce's Ulysses
who offered that: "The Roman, like
the Englishman who follows in his
footsteps, brought to every new shore
on which he set his foot. . only his
cloacal obsession. He gazed about him
in his toga and he said: 'It is meet to be
here. Let us construct a watercloset'."
B.B.L.
Porto Rico, the loveliest island
washed by the ocean's waves, lies
between the Atlantic and the Carib-
bean, 1,380 miles from New York City.
It is in round numbers about 100 miles
long from east to west and about 36
miles broad from north to south. Porto
Rico is approximately three times as
large as Rhode Island, one and eight-
tenths larger than Delaware, three-


fourths the size of Connecticut, nearly
one seventy-eighth the size of Texas,
being almost exactly equal in area to
four counties of the regular dimensions
in that gigantic State.
The annual rainfall varies greatly in
different parts of the island, being
generally smallest in the west and south
and greatest in the north and east. No
matter how violent the downpours they
never last very long, and run off
rapidly; and the skies, which were
weeping copiously at noon, long before
sunset, like children's faces, are smiling
brightly again, as if there had never
been a cloud above the horizon. The


heavens are clothed once more in
purple, gold, and violet, and the sun
pours his slanting beams in radiant
beauty on land and sea.
The hills are capable of cultivation to
their very summits, and coffee, the
principal crop of the country, thrives
better on the slopes under the
protecting shades of the open forests
than in the alluvial lands of the valleys.
The mountains, to their very crests, are
covered with a rich detritus, forming a
soil well adapted to the growth of
tobacco, corn, potatoes, and all kinds of
tropical fruits. The alluvial plains along
the margin of the larger rivers and on
the seacoast furnish the best of all soils
for the growth of sugar cane, and it is
raised there in abundance. With such a
geographical situation, and such a soil
and climate, surely this island has little
to be vainly looked for by the con-
tinental seeking a winter residence or
an ideal spot for the successful pursuit
of horticulture or agriculture in its most
pleasing aspects.
The sanitary condition of the island
and the public health has received
especial attention from the civil
government ever since it went into


operation. This board *has been
unremitting in its efforts, and ever
wakeful in its vigilance as the guardian
of the public health.
The prevailing diseases in Porto Rico
are anemia, tuberculosis, dysentery,
and malaria. The first of these is un-
doubtedly caused by the untidy habits
of the poorer classes, the impure water,
and the inferior and insufficient food on
which many of them subsist, especially
since the hurricane of August, 1899.
Tuberculosis, which exists to a greater
extent in the more populous towns,
results from overcrowding in the damp
and unventilated habitations where


these poor people sleep. They do not
seem disposed to be at all friendly with
fresh air. Dysentary and malaria spring
from the usual causes underlying those
diseases. The former is usually severe in
its ravages, but the latter is very rarely
of a violent type.

The water supply is, of course, of the
very first importance in connection
with the health of any people. And
although there is probably no better
watered island on the planet than this,
yet the twelve hundred streams that
find their way from the crest of the
central cordillera to the surrounding
sea are not utilized to give pure, fresh
water to the inhabitants. The sources of
the water supply, here as elsewhere, are
fourfold: (1) Cisterns, (2) springs and
wells, (3) creeks and rivers, (4)
aqueducts. There are estimated to be in
the island 158,305 dwelling houses. Of
these 55,093 draw their water from
cisterns which have caught the rain
water as it fell from the clouds; 7,896
houses are supplied from springs or
wells on the premises; 85,348 from
natural streams, brooks, or rivers, and
9,393 from artificial aqueducts. The
last, of course, are situated in the larger
towns only. It readily appears that most
of the country people drink river water
from the streams flowing in their
natural channels. Many of these
streams are used, says Dr. Smith, "not
only as public laundries but as common
sewers from the surrounding country."
The disposal of garbage does not
seem to have, ever received serious
thought from any of the municipal
authorities. There is no regular system
adopted. In some places they bum the
dump when it accumulates, but this is
by no means usual. Not more than one-
eighth of the dwellings are provided
with any municipal means of disposing
of garbage. In more than 70 per cent
this important matter is left entirely in
the hands of private householders and,
of course, receives very scant attention.
Of the 150,305 dwellings occupied
by the people, only 1,181 have modern
appliances used in the latrines; 34,829
use the old-style Spanish cesspools, and
the remaining 114,295 have no
provision made for such necessary
conveniences. This neglect in the use of
modem closets is in itself a dangerous
menace to public health and a standing
invitation to pestilence. There is
nothing approaching a sewer system in
any city, town, or hamlet in the whole
island. A few isolated sewer pipes
connect an occasional dwelling with the
sea or some other outlet, but natural
drainage is the only resource at present
available, and sewerage must await the
arrival of more funds in the treasury.
On coming to Porto Rico the
American authorities found the
cemeteries crowded to overflowing, and
interments were conducted in such a
manner as to be a grave menace to the
health of the living. Military orders
were issued that new cemeteries should
be opened, but poverty prevented their
immediate enforcement. But during the
past year a marked improvement in
these matters is discernible. In many
sections branch cemeteries have been
laid out in the remote districts, to the
great convenience of the poorer classes.
Acts were passed by the legislative
assembly making the municipal burial
grounds free to all and authorizing the
local authorities to condemn lands for
the use of cemeteries when necessary.
Charnel houses and bone heaps no
longer display their piles of human


Let Us Construct


El Filtsofo, line drawing by Augusto Marin, P.R.


a _____-







CA-Nm m


a Watercloset


bones, and grinning skulls have ceased proportion holds against the un-
to salute the visitor to the city of the fortunate colored race. It must be
dead. The time may yet come when further remembered, when reviewing
some insular necropolis may rival these figures and' comparing the races
Greenwood or Arlington. in regard to the relations between the
In this particular, as in many others, sexes, that slavery was not abolished in
bountiful nature has shown herself an this island until ten years after the
indulgent mother to these children of signing of the emancipation
the sun. And in these matters, too, they proclamation by the immortal Lincoln.
have learned to rely too much on the Thus, after -the lapse of a generation,
kindness thus extended, and have we can trace the blighting effects of this
suffered their energies to become latent baleful curse of the human race. Those
and their natural abilities to slumber, who have felt the galling weight of its
But when they once awaken to the fetters should not be judged too har-
importance of preserving health and shly.
realize the methods dictated by modern In regard to occupations, as may be
science, they will quickly put them in readily supposed, the great majority of
practice, and the sun, in his daily the working people of Porto Rico are
circuit through these tropic skies, will engaged in agriculture. About half a
smile on no healthier spot than this million people are of an age at which
little sea-girt isle. some useful employment should or-
The total population of Porto Rico is dinarily be followed. Of these 198,761
not quite a million souls, or in exact are engaged in agriculture, mining, and
figures 953,243. Of these 941,751 are fishing. Very few, however, follow the
natives and" 11,492 are foreigners, latter two occupations, probably not
including 75 Chinese. The females are more than 1,000..So it may safely be
slightly in excess of the males: there estimated that there are 197,761
being 480,982 of the former and agriculturists in the island. There are,
472,261 of the latter. Among the races besides, 64,819 laborers, who are
or colors the division stands as follows: supposed to be engaged in other
Whites, 589,426; mestizos, 304,352; pursuits than tilling the soil. In
negros, 59,390; and Chinese, 75; the' manufacturing and mechanical trades
whites being in the majority over all the there are enumerated 26,515; in
rest combined that is to say, the white commerce and transportation, 24,076.
population amounts to 589,426 and the The professional class is limited to
colored 368,817, or 61.8 per cent white 2,194, of whom 124 are clergymen,
and 38.2 per cent colored. This is a 206 lawyers, 219 physicians, and 809
larger per cent of white people than any teachers. The rest are engaged in
other island in the West Indies. various other professions. The great
Much has been said to the army of the unemployed has a corps
disparagement of the people of these amounting t- 183,635 in this tropical
tropical countries on account of the island. Of these about one-third are
loose relations of the sexes and the large men and two-thirds women.
number of illegitimate children among Illiteracy has been reported at a very
them. It must be said in extenuation of high rate. It is said that in 1860 over 90
this state of morals that, under former per cent of the population were unable
conditions and the administration of to read; and some of the commissioners
Spanish marriage laws, a wedding was and travelers who have visited this
a very expensive ceremony, entirely island since American occupation place
beyond the pecuniary means of or- the number of illiterates at 85 per cent.
dinary laboring people. The almost Considering a person to be illiterate
universal testimony of those who have who can not both read and write, the
carefully examined this question is that last census shows the illiterates in this
those people living together in con- island to be 79 per cent of the
cubinage are generally quite as faithful population more than 10 years old.
to each other as those who are legally Taking into consideration the relative
married, and there is ,just as much numbers of the two races, by far the'
affection for their children, ,and the larger percentage of these illiterates is
family ties are almost if not quite as colored. This is of course to be expected
strong among them as among those of from existing conditions. Poverty and
their own class who have a legal ignorance in the Tropics go hand in
sanction to their union. In the first hand; and slavery, which existed here
place, for the purpose of considering within the memory of persons still
the conjugal relation, we must exclude young, was the handmaid of both these
from the total population of the island evils.
418,008 single persons under 15 years At the present time about 40,000
of age, thus reducing the population of children are in the free public schools of
953,243 to 535,235 over 15 years old the island. Religious societies maintain
that is to say, of marriageable age in schools for many thousands more. The
this climate or already married under influence of schools is felt in many.
that age. Of these there are 158,570 homes. It is safe to say that illiteracy
married, 40,052 widowed, 246,069 has decreased at least 6 per cent, and'
single, 84,242 living in concubinage, perhaps 8 per cent, during the present
and 302 whose conjugal status is year, reducing the percentage to about
unknown. Of those persons living in 72. It must also be borne in mind that
illicit relations 41,400 are white and many children who knew but one
42,842 are colored. As is to be expected language a year ago now use two
from their relative poverty and fluently, and while this is no gain in the
ignorance the proportion of those thus percentage of literacy, it is a tremen-
living is far greater among the colored dons gain in general intelligence, and
than the white people. During the last especially in the power of the people to
eleven years previous to 1899 there grasp and.enjoy free civil life under
were 40,335 marriages in the island, an American ideals. There is an almost
annual average of 3,666. With more universal demand among children and
liberal laws and a reduction of the fees parents for the English language, and
there will doubtless be many more in many American teachers are employed
the next decade. There are also upon constantly in giving extra lessons in
the island 148,605 illegitimate English. Thousands of children now
children of whom 66,855 are white read and speak the English language,
and 81,750 are colored. Here the same and thousands more are learning it


by Charles H. Allen -


rapidly.
The industrial possibilities of the
island of Porto Rico, considering the
fertility of its soil, the mildness of its
climate, the abundance of its rains, its
insular position, and its teeming
population can scarcely be viewed with
anticipations, too optimistic. While at
present, as it has been since Columbus
first set foot upon its shores, its chief


Mayan designs.

reliance is agriculture and stock raising,
there is no reason why manufactures
should not flourish here, and an ocean
commerce spring up not only with the
North American continent but with all
the world. It is perfectly feasible that,
while developing the immense
agricultural resources of the island, at
every seaport factories may be
established and nothing leave our'
shores but the finished products. We
can sell to the world not only coffee'
ready for the consumer's use, but'
refined sugar and molasses, rum, cigars
equal to those purchased in Habana,
cotton goods of all descriptions, fine
leather, shoes and harness, chocolate
and all its products, canned fruits equal
or superior to the best preserved in
California, and many other necessaries
and luxuries which will bring in returns
sufficient not only to support in comfort
the million of people which we now
have, but five times as many.
The three principal crops are coffee,
sugar, and tobacco; cattle also and
other live 'stock are raised successfully
and in considerable abundance. The
coffee plantations cover with their
green foliage, their jasmine-like flowers,
and cherry-like berries 7 per cent of the


Spring 1971


whole area of the island and 36 per cent
of its cultivated lands. However, it is
perfectly obvious that four times as
much land as at present could be used
in growing coffee were the market to be
found for its exportation. There are
now 21,693 plantations, averaging
27% acres each.
Although the sugar planting is
confined to the seacost plains or playas,
and to the alluvial bottoms along the
margins of the larger streams, yet there
is no doubt that a large acreage of such
lands, which are now devoted to
pasturage, could, under proper con-
ditions, be devoted to the culture of
sugar cane. The 2,336 sugar plan-
tations now existing on the island cover
an average area of about 35 acres each.
This amounts to only 31/ per cent of
the insular area, and to only a little
under 18 per cent of the lands under
tillage. In the year 1897 there were
produced about 66,154 tons of sugar,
worth $4,467,000; and to this amount
57,649 tons were exported and sold for
$4,008,000.
Many valuable sugar estates have
been converted into pasture lands, on
account of the changes in the process of
manufacture from the Jamaica train to
the grand central, and the want of the
necessary capital incident thereto.
Reliable statistics show that the yield of
sugar per acre is greater than in any
other cane-growing country in the
world, except Hawaii and Java, and it
approximates those. However, the cost
of production is $10 per ton cheaper
than in Java, $11 cheaper than in
Hawaii, $12 cheaper than in Cuba. $17
cheaper than in Egypt, $19 cheaper
than in the British West Indies, and
$47 cheaper than in Louisiana or
Texas. With these advantages of
greater production at less cost, the
sugar planters of Porto Rico ought to
be able to compete with"the rest of the
world in any open market.
Although the 13,704 acres covered
by the tobacco plantations in the island
may seem insignificant, yet when we
see that the crop of 1897, after having
been partially converted into cigars and
cigarettes, was exported and sold for
$1,194,318, it can not be regarded as
unimportant. From the earliest times
the raising of live stock has always been
a favorite pursuit in this island. It is
still of great importance, as all animals
increase, thrive, and fatten on the
luxuriant pastures watered by the clear,
running streams in every section.
Doubtless the maguey, which is
indigenous to the island, could be
cultivated with considerable profit. Its
products are the pita, or sisal, hemp,
which is manufactured into linen,
ropes, nets, and hammocks; also,
pulque, an intoxicating liquor much
used in Mexico. During the Spanish
direction it has been observed that the
exportation of beeswax amounted to
considerable proportions. This would
indicate that bee culture could be made
a very profitable industry here. With
the Italian bees and American hives,
added to the accessories of the business
in use on the Continent, the flowers of
the coffee plant and the refuse of the
sugar mills could be laid under con-
tribution, and, combined with the
sweetness of the myriads of natural
flowers which deck the landscape from
the peak of Yunque to Cape San
Francisco, tons of the most delicious
honey would be produced and yield a
golden reward to the industry of the bee
and the skill of the bee farmer. It is
useless to mention molasses and rum,
the incidental products of the sugar
cane, though they themselves are
sufficient to pay all expenses of the
sugar planters and leave the returns
from his sugar as clear gain. The so-
called minor crops, which embrace
corn, rice, beans, potatoes, and the like,
are raised solely for home consumption.


UI







10 Spring 1971


A large amount of rice, which forms the
principal food of the poorer people, is
imported every year. It is unnecessary
to import a pound of rice, the island
being capable of producing more than
enough for the use of all its million of
people. Very little attention has
heretofore been given to the culture of
fruits. Though excellent oranges,
bananas, plantains, mangoes,
aguacates, guavas, grapes, lemons,
zapotes, mamayes, nisperos, cocoanuts,
and other tropical fruits, grow wild in
the greatest profusion. Proper culture
would improve the quality and enlarge
the yield, and with cold-storage
transportation the markets of New
York and all the continental cities could
be stocked with them the year round. A
10-acre orange grove, when once in
bearing, gives a comfortable income,
sufficient to support a family in the best
country style of Virginia or Ohio.
According to the latest statistics,
there are 39,021 farms in this island of
an average size of 45 acres. More than
three-fourths of the superficial area is
included within the farms and nearly
20 per cent of the entire area of the
island under actual tillage. Of all the
farms, fully 93 per cent are tilled by
their owners, and of these 71 per cent


are white and 22 per cent are colored.
Seven per cent are renters. The larger
farms are generally owned by the white
farmers and the smaller ones by the
colored. The principal crops of coffee,
sugar, and tobacco are cultivated and
produced by the white farmer, while
the colored farmers devote themselves
to the minor crops.
The possibilities of agriculture in
Porto Rico can be estimated roughly
from the foregoing discussion. There is
no reason why this island should not
become in the near future a real garden,
as carefully and closely cultivated as
Holland and as productive as the valley
of the Teche. With American capital
and American methods, the labor of the
natives can be utilized to the lasting
benefit of all parties and the general
good of the commonwealth.
The mining possibilities of Porto
Rico are inconsiderable. It is said that
considerable gold was sent to Spain
from this province in the first half
century after the voyages of Columbus,
but it would seem that the deposits
were soon practically exhausted.
However, small quantities of this
precious metal are found in the beds of
some of the streams flowing from the
Sierra de Luquillo. Yet these sterile


players are worked by about 400
families, and they derive a scanty
subsistence from the product.
Iron has been found in quantities on
the surface, though as yet no thorough
exploration has been made, and the
mines which have been located are
altogether undeveloped. Copper .has
also been found in sufficient prospects
to justify application for the location of
some claims. Salt mines are possible all
along the coasts, and could, if properly
worked, produce enough for home
consumption, as well as a larger
amount for export; but a large quantity
of salt is imported annually.
There can scarcely be said to be in
Porto Rico a class of persons following
the calling of fishermen exclusively for
a livelihood. There are, according to a
recent estimate, about 800 persons
occasionally engaged in this industry,
but they also now and then occupy
themselves as longshoremen and farm
laborers. There are however a large
number of species of good fish to be
found in the rivers and bays and in the
adjacent seas, yet there is no great
quantity exposed for sale in the market
and those bring high prices. Not more
than three or four hundred sailing boats
and rowboats are used for fishing along


the whole coast line. The appliances are
of the most primitive description, and
poverty is apparent in all the details. If
capital were invested in boats, nets, and
traps, this business would soon become
lucrative. Not only could the local
market be well supplied, but an ex-
tensive canning trade is within easy
reach of a little money and enterprise.
Manufactures in this island, aside
from the production of sugar, molasses,
and rum, and the making of cigars and
cigarettes, with a few hats are almost
unworthy of mention. There are four
factories for the making of matches;
soap, shoes, and bay rum are produced
in small quantities, and entirely for
domestic use; but anything like
production on a large scale is utterly
unknown. The possibilities are great.
Cotton can be grown here economically
and in great abundance, and labor is
very cheap; so that if capital were
invested in cotton factories, in some
place convenient to shipping, the
enterprise would certainly flourish. Of
course, oil mills should be built in
connection with the cotton gins and
mills, to ultilize all the products of the
cotton plant. The same oil mills, when
not engaged in making cotton-seed oil,
could be used for extracting the oil from


The Leper


by Jaime Carrero


I remember a story about a tribe -
subtropical land of no ice-
of blue sea and deep sky
(with its resources: sugar, cacao, molasses, rice,
coffee, corn, tobacco. .)
I don't know if it really happened yes or no -
did or not -
in this land of the tribe
or in their consciousness
more or less.

In the story there's a leper
inherited by the people
sent to them by the gods -
they sinned -
so it happened or so
they said the tribe
(with its resources of iron, salt, rum,
whites, mulattoes, negroes. .)

His face-the lonely face of the leper was beautiful.
But not his body -
it was a question mark of "hoy",
of "later", of "mahiana", of "whys" -
a question mark -
a lonely face of drink-less flowers: the tribe -
(with its resources of anguish and suffering -
and the Marines came in 1916
until the last hour of 1924...)

His eyes-the questioning eyes of the leper
were thrown deep into the sockets -
he smiled to the tribe
with the crib-like-form of his sight
asking for help, asking for help.
His wounds were dressed by the tribe
with their resources:
with camel hair
with grease of saints
with Ocean air
(and the tribe fought the Spaniards, the French and Haitians..)
A telegram-angel brought the words:
"The gods have given you the leper.
One generation will dress his wounds
and the next generation will dress his wounds;
the leper is yours, your medal,
the eternal leper will live in you".
And so the angel-friend has said.
And so the story goes
that each generation dress his wounds
with camel hair
with grease of saints
and Ocean air


The young saw the leper in his seat
at the plaza -
they smiled at him -
the young turned old.
The pillows for the old, the leper on his seat
and from far away-Marine's Headquarters? -
another telegram-angel came, a star on it:
"Dress the leper with something hard,
with our resources -
(labels, forget-me-nots, plaster. .)
with medals
with medals /
with medals

The face-that of the leper was radiant. '
The tribe had a hundred years to save
themselves from looking into his wounds -
a kind of vacation to the eye;
the head was beautiful.
They had a hundred years to save.
The young turned on their lightest old
and the old could'nt see the leper's smile
when they died. And so the story goes
the very young didn't know.

One day, one afternoon they say
a girl of ten or so
decided to go beyond the smile
of the leper.
She wanted to see his body or so they say.
Those who drank their orange juice and sat
on tables sipping coffee
came to see the body of the leper.
They were dreaming for something soft to happen:
for camel hair
for grease of saints
for Ocean air
Another angel-telegram came: "Stop the kid, don't let her see".

And the Marines came again
to save the leper or so they said -
or to save their own misguided monster
with their resources:
(bullets, Navy, Bread, words, and Red Cross...)
They were dreaming for something soft to happen -
"to kill the ten-year-old if necessary
or if we must".

Inspite of that and so the story goes
with chisels BANG! and Off!
with chisels Bang! and Off!
Off.
The plaster was no more.
The young could not believe their eyes.
The old didn't know.
They saw a lot of plaster
but no forget-me-nots.

The leper showed his smile -
West of Puerto Rico East of Cuba -
the tribe was dreaming for something soft
maybe some camel hair
maybe some grease of saints
maybe some Ocean air.







Spring 1971 UlIA INYUM MW


cocoanuts of which the sandy lands
along the playas and beaches produce
the greatest abundance.
Ametican occupation, therefore,
found the island inhabited by a race of
people of different language, religion,
customs, and habits, with no
acquaintance practically with
American methods, and 'with the
commerce and trade in the hands of the
Spaniards. With a beautiful island,
indeed, but with its natural resources
practically undeveloped, and its
population so trained during a period of
some four hundred years as to be, as a
people, unfitted to at once assume,
without careful training and
preparation, the management of their
own affairs.
As to the future of the people. In
seeking to impart information on
unfamiliar subjects we should speak
plainly. Experience has shown that
under past conditions but little real
progress has been made here, judged by
comparison, by the people themselves.
While the more educated and cultured
possess qualities of great usefulness,
there has been so little future for the
masses that they have never realized
what opportunities for development
their native land possessed. Part of this
is due, no doubt, to climatic conditions.
Nature has done so much for these
people and has required so little in
return that the problem of life has been
free from those terrible anxieties which
possess the soul of the toilers of other
climes and by their very inexorable
demands develop those qualities of
thrift, industry, and perseverance
which underlie individual as well as
national prosperity. In a climate where
the temperature ranges between 70 and
85 degrees day and night, week in and
week out, where little clothing is
required and shelter means protection-
from the tropical sun rather than
*climatic changes; where a man can lie
in a hammock, pick a banana with one
hand, and dig a sweet potato with one
foot, the incentive to idleness is easy to
yield to and brings its inevitable
consequences.
The introduction of fresh blood is
needed, and when the American
capitalist realizes as he soon will, if he
does not already that property is as
well protected here as in the United
States, that his own forms of court
procedure prevail here as at home, that
there is a surplus of labor accustomed'
to the Tropics and adapted to the kind
of work likely to be undertaken here,.
that the return to capital is exceedingly
profitable, it is my feeling that he will
come here not only with his capital, but
with the push and energy which always
accompany his undertakings, and, with
the cooperation of the native, will
proceed to make at least five spears of
grass to grow where one has grown
before, to the immense and permanent
prosperity of the island.
Porto Rico is really the "rich gate" to
future wealth, and it will add to our
national pride to see its riches
developed and made of benefit to the
world at large, by that indomitable
thrift and industry which have always
marked the pathway of the Anglo-
Saxon, and which, if applied to Porto
Rico, will make good indeed the
sentiment inscribed upon its shield,
"Prospera, lux oritur."
As I go over these topics in final
revision, I can not withhold my tribute
of grateful acknowledgment to the
heads of departments and their
deputies, and especially to Judge J. H.
McLeary, the assistant secretary of
Porto Rico, to whose painstaking,
careful research is due most of what is
of greatest interest herein. Happy a
people whose cause can be ad-
ministered by officers of such charter,
capacity, and diligence.

-Chas. H. Allen


African music, along with African
diets, religions, languages, and other
facets of life, has had a profound in-
fluence on the culture of the Caribbean.
As the majority of the area's present
inhabitants are descendants of Africans
brought to the New World as slaves
during a period of three and a half'
centuries, it is not surprising that
Caribbean musical instruments often
reflect the same African origins as
many other aspects of daily life and
labor. The humble marnmbula (also
called manimba, marimba, and a
variety of other names) is widely known.
in the Caribbean, but its close con-
nection to an African proto-type has
seldom been noted.
The instrument is approximately the
size and shape of a small suitcase.
Mounted vertically on the front is a set
of tuned metal tongues; above these the
surface of the hollow instrument is
pierced by a sound-hole. The
marimbula rests on the ground like a
piece of hand luggage, and the
resemblance is often heightened by the
presence of a carrying handle atop the
instrument. The player sits upon the
instrument, facing forward with his
knees apart, while leaning down to
reach the keyboard with the fingers of
one hand or both. The basic playing
technique is simple:. the player presses.
the upper end of the tongues laterally
toward the body of the instrument, then
releases them to vibrate freely.
The marimbula is a plucked
idiophone identical in many ways to the
African sanza, which is widely known
by names which were bestowed upon it
by early European travelers: African
thumb piano, Kaffir finger piano, etc.
Like its Caribbean counterpart, the
sanza (also known in Africa as mbila,
inbira, and other names related to
these) consists basically of a set of
vibrating tongues or lamellae. These,
which may be of metal or fiber, are
arranged in parallel fashion in a
horizontal plane. One end of the set is
held tightly against a rigid base by a
retaining bridge, while the other end of
each tongue, facing the player, is free to
vibrate when it is depressed and
released by the player's fingers and/or
thumbs.
Characteristically, the African in-
strument is small. Most specimens
range from a size which can be held
comfortably in one hand while being
played by the fingers of the other, to
types which must be held on or between
the knees. The most frequently
described form of the sanza is small
enough to be held in both hands while
the thumbs alone, or thumbs and index
fingers, are used in depressing the
tongues. The number and tuning of the
tongues vary considerably, as do
provisions for resonance. Some sanzas
consist of nothing more than tongues
mounted on a board, while others
employ devices ranging from the ad-
dition of gourd resonators to the
construction of the base itself in the
form of a resonating chamber.
Specimens which employ a human
skull as resonator have been described,
as have instruments which are mounted
or held inside a large empty gourd
during performance.
Several types of sanza have been
found in both North and South
America, most of them corresponding
closely to African models in size,
playing technique, and the number and
disposition of keys, while small


specimens have been known in the
Caribbean until recent times. Fernando
Ortiz in (Los instruments de la masica
afrocubana) and Israel Castellanos
have described Cuban sanzas which
were specifically designed to be held
between the hands or on the lap of a
seated performer, and small in-
struments have recently been seen in
Puerto Rico and Haiti as well.
The music of the sanza is medium to
high in pitch (say, mezzo-soprano
range), rapid in motion, and rhyth-
mically contrapuntal in function. In its
home territory, the instrument func-
tions melodically, within the general
context of rhythmic counterpoint which
is characteristic of African music
generally. The large Caribbean


marimbula, in contrast, serves a very
different purpose. Here, the instrument
functions as a harmonic bass in folk-
popular or commercial-popular dance
music. As the forms and styles of these
species are closely associated with
European models, the marfmbula's
function nicely represents the blend of
European and African elements which
is characteristic of a great deal of
Caribbean music.
The universally preferred material
for the marnmbula's tongues is steel cut
from discarded wind-up phonographs.
This spring steel is usually from 1" to.
V" wide and a little less than 1/32"
thick. When cut into short pieces it is
stiff yet flexible, and retains the useful
curve of its previous function.
With phonograph springs becoming
difficult to find, makers have turned to
other sources. Clock springs of various
widths have been found useful, for-
example, although they are likely to be
too narrow, too thin, and too flexible
for the deep pitches of the larger in-.
struments. Rum cask hoops have


Poor Man's



Bass Fiddle


The extremes are probably the in-
struments described at second hand by
Fernando Ortiz and Harold
Courlander. Ortiz relates having heard
of a two-tongue marfmbula being used
in a Cuban ensemble of marimbulas
and other instruments, and Courlander
(in Haiti Singing) quotes a source as
having seen a Haitian instrument with
five complete octaves. The latter must
have been an experimental model, for
the expression "five complete octaves,"
implying tuning to the complete
diatonic cycle, is foreign to the in-
strument's traditional function in folk-
popular music.
Several dispositions of pitches are
found. Instruments with only three or
four tongues often have the pitches in
an ascending series beginning at the
player's right. From five tongues
onward, however, the more common
method is to place longer tongues in the
center of the set, extending outward on
both sides to successively higher pit-
ches. In the larger sets there is a ten-
dency to divide the series in half by-


by Donald Thompson J
reportedly been used in Jamaica, while
often mentioned as a source of metal is
the steel strapping from lumber
shipments. Instrument makers will go
to great lengths to secure satisfactory
substitutes for phonograph springs. A
marimbula in a folk instrument
collection in Curacao has tongues made
of a long saw blade from which the
teeth have been removed by grinding,
while several informants in Spanish-
speaking areas report the use of the
chaveta de zapatero, or shoemaker's
knife, in marmbula keyboards.
The number of tongues varies
widely; Haitian and Dominican in-
struments are likely to have only three
or four, while Cuban and Puerto Rican
examples are likely to have ten or more.







CAmBBA IEwW


tuning to the essential basses, plus
other useful notes, of two different
tonalities. Thus, a marmbula may
have the series C, c, g, extending
outward from the center for the right
hand; and E-flat, e-flat, a-flat, ex-
tending outward for the left. Another
may display a right-hand series con-
taining only a-flat's and e-flat's and a
left-hand series of f's, c's and g's.
Thanks to this bitonal tuning, the
more elaborate instruments offer the
possibility of borrowing between the
halves of the keyboard, the player
catching a note in one series which falls
euphoniously into the harmony of the
other. Due to the tolerance which is
accepted in marmbula tuning, such
options extend beyond the realm of
enharmonics, becoming a matter of the
ear accepting a vague low pitch in place.


of an absent neighbor. Other more-or-
less subtle relationships often occur
between elements of the two halves of a
keyboard, which tempt the analytical
faculties of a trained musician. There is
no evidence, however, that keyboards
are laid out to profit by such
possibilities. The general practise of
marmbula makers is to start with a
good low note or two in the center, then
tune outward in two separate series.
Any benefits to be derived from
borrowing notes from one series or the
other are the player's concern not the
maker's, and will dependon his "ear,"
his dexterity, and the harmonic scope of
the piece being performed.
The marfmbula's playing technique
is similar to that of the ancestral sanza,
with the adaptations which are,
required by the keyboard's shift from


horizontal to vertical disposition.
Instead of the thumbs, the player's
index and middle fingers, held slightly
curved, are used in depressing the
tongues. The thumbs, being con-
siderably shorter than the other fingers,
are almost useless in the marfmbula
hand position. They are available,
however, for playing secondary rhyth-
ms against the wood of the box itself.
Players of three- and four-tongue
marimbulas tend to use only the right
hand on the keyboard; the left is used
for striking the front and the side of the
instrument. This percussive art is
highly cultivated; indeed, the rhythmic
elaborations of a marimbulero's left
hand on the variously resonant sections
of the instrument's body are often more
highly praised than the ostinato basses
which his right hand plucks from the


Design by Jos6 Maria Mijares, Alcaran Azul (Box 3153, Miami, Fla.).


Spring 1971


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keyboard.
Other percussive effects have been
reported in connection with the
marimbula. Castellanos described
occasions of excitement during which
the instrument had simply been placed
face down on the player's lap and used
as a wooden drum, and there are
reports in Puerto Rico of marimbuleros
striking their heels against the front of
the instrument as an additional per-
cussive supplement.
Fernando Ortiz has described the use
of small sanzas in Afro-Cuban religious
and fraternal ceremonies. This usage,
demonstrating the continuity in the
New World of African ritual and its
implements, has been limited to
African slaves and their descendants.
The large marmbula has lost all of
these elevated and occult associations,
while even its racial connections have
been all but swept away by the fun-
damental shift in function which has
accompanied the instrument's descent
in pitch and growth in size. The
marnmbula has become simply an
inexpensive and easily portable bass
instrument, used in many styles of folk-
popular music. It is, in effect, the poor
man's bass fiddle.
The string bass is used in large dance
orchestras, in hotel and recording
ensembles, by jobbing combos, and for
other purposes connected with com-
mercial-popular music; the marimbula
appears in rural communities and in
the less prosperous sections of the cities,
where it provides the bass for the
music-making of neighborhood con-
juntos. In Haiti it can be seen in the
streets during popular festivities, while
a conjunto tipico of accordeon, drum,
guiro, and marfmbula often greets
arriving tourists at the Dominican
Republic's principal airport. In Puerto
Rico, the instrument appears during
Christmas asaltos, the roving neigh-
borhood parties which wind up and
down the steep streets of mountain
towns. For many of these purposes a
string bass is neither available or
practical; the sturdy and manageable
marmbula is the nearly ideal bass.
The instrument's tonal limitations
are at most only mildly bothersome in
the milieu for which it is appropriate
and in which it is cultivated, for much
of the music which it is called upon to
perform is limited to the tonic-
dominant cycle. A three-tongue in-
strument tuned to the tonic, supertonic,
and dominant scale degrees serves
nicely for the non-modulating
Dominican merengue and for other
simple folk-popular species. More
elaborate marinbulas, such as the ten-
tongue models seen in Puerto Rico, can
provide tolerable basses for even the
freely modulating boleros which the
country folk have learned from the
ubiquitous television and phonograph.
Naturally, the basses are not always the
ones which the harmony demands nor
those which the performer would like to
produce, but on one half of the
keyboard or the other there is likely to
be a note which is close enough to serve.
The usual method of launching a
piece illustrates the tolerance with
which other instrumentalists view the
marfmbula's limitations. After deciding
what piece will be played, the per-
formers may attempt to pitch it in a key
for which the marimbulero has some
basses available. If agreement cannot
be reached, due to a guitarist's
limitations or to strictures created by a
singer's range, no regrets are. felt.,The
piece will be played anyway, the
marimbula providing a cycle of basses
perhaps.a vague second or third off the
true key. While true basses are good to
have if they are available, they are by
no means essential. A Puerto Rican
instrument maker has summed up the
pofsion most accurately: "what you
need is a low note, a higher note, and
one not so high. The ret is ,hythm."








Spring 1971 CANAN 13


Peasants



Considered


Historians, particularly those who
specialize in economic or social history,
can be of enormous help in un-
derstanding contemporary agricultural
societies. In dealing with societies
currently in crisis one often finds that
study of the past is the key to the
resolving of one's questions. It would
be interesting to evaluate the extent of
such a contribution in the case of Latin
America, an area where tremendous
conflicts join with a rich and complex
historical tradition.


The occasion of the 13th In-
ternational Congress of Historical
Sciences, sponsored by UNESCO, in
Moscow (August, 1970), presents us
with such an opportunity. The
Commission Internationale d'Histoire
des Mouvements Sociaux et des
Structures Socailes represents the
culmination of an important worldwide
survey of peasant movements from the
end of the 18th century until the
present. (Neither the annals of the
Congress nor of the Commission have
yet been published. The main reports,
however, have been collected in a
volume published by Editions Naouka -
Dirdction de la Litterature Orientale,
Moscow, 1970 and it is from there
that we quote.)
Some 140 specialists from all over
the world worked on the project for two
and one-half years under the direction
of a committee with headquarters in
Paris that consisted of professors Ernst
Labrousse (U. of Paris), Domenico
Demarco (U. of Naples), J. Dhondt (U.
of Gante), V. Troukhanovsky (U. of
Moscow), Silvio Zavala (U. of Mexico),
and Mme. Denise Fauvel-Rouiff
(CNRS, Paris).
The survey studied 33 countries on
three continents paying particular
attention to Latin America. On the
basis of eight national studies a sort of
regional balance was obtained and
coordinated under the direction of
Professor Pierre Vilar (U. of Paris).
Unfortunately, at the Moscow
Congress, Latin American presence
was difficient and Latin American
professors did not participate, so we are
missing a critical evaluation by the
Latin Americans themselves.
The material on Latin America
covered only 30 percent of the coun-
tries. However it did cover some 70
percent of the population of the region
and does reveal a general picture.
Vilar's report discusses the following
general historical tendencies: peasant
movements against slavery, or against
certain feudal institutions such as


by Carlos M. Rama J
servitude, etc., Though these practises
do go back to a colonial reality they
have also manifested themselves
surprisingly recently in countries such as
Bolivia and Peru. For example, in 1962
the press in Lima brought to light that
vassalage ceremonies were held in Valle
de la Convencijn where rebelliousness
was punished by mutilating an arm.
A second'group of Latin American
peasant movements, this time more
comparable to patterns such as those in


Western Europe, are those for the
defense of collective rights, the
"revueltas fiscales," and those
disturbances due to subsistence
problems. If these movements seem to
be defensive and short-ranged there
also is the offensive aspect in the
peasant's desire to have property.
There is the case of squatter claims to
badly cultivated lands in Brazil. These
are the famous sitiantes, typical of the
expansion of a subsistance agriculture
oblivious to market laws. Moreover,
according to Eric Hobsbawm in
Colombia the peasant takeover of lands
that is even more significant than the
often spoken about rural violence.
These take-overs also occur in other
Andean countries such as Peru,
Bolivia, and Chile. It would, however,
be erroneous to believe this to be a
generalized movement throughout all
of Latin America. In countries where
the economy is based on livestock, such
as those in the Rio Plata region, or
countries of a great number of in-
dustrial plantations, as in the tropical
region, the peasants are more interested
in security and protection of their jobs
than in obtaining their own piece of
land.
Vilar points out that:
"Paradoxically, Latin America, where
one can so easily find traces of an
archaic peasant conscience, is
nevertheless one of the foremost regions
of speculative farming; plantations are
prepared for far-away markets and are
therefore precociously modern, not
technically or socially, but
economically." This dichotomy:
peasant social backwardness versus
economic advancement, is in principle
exact. But a reading of the literature
about plantations, such as in the
Caribbean (as in the work of the
American, Sydney Mintz or the Cuban,
Julio Le Riverand), shows that in the
Latin American export agriculture the
technological aspect has been as
modern as the economic one. Thus,
what one should consider (using, e.g.,


the cases of Peru, Colombia, and
Uruguay) is the conflict between the
two forms of agricultural production:
the archaic one for subsistence and the
modem one for exportation to the
world market.
In the last International Congress of
Historical Sciences (Vienna, 1965) the
topic which intrigued Vilar so much
had already been touched upon: that of
the integration of these Latin American
peasant movements into the heart of
national political and social
movements. Sub-topics discussed by
Vilar's team include the following: 1)
the relation between the peasants and
the wars of independence (from Haiti
in 1804 to Cuba in 1898); 2) the ways
in which military service provided a
way for peasants to gain their hbery, 3)
indigenismo as a political expression in
Peru and Mexico, and 4) the in-
tegration of the peasants in the so-
called anti-imperialist battles.
Vilar notes that "Recent passionate
discussions throughout Latin America
have asked: 'How do we unite the
peasants' aspirations and the masses of
Indians to a revolutionary anti-
imperialist strategy, either national or
international?' In Moscow, French
professors Albert Soboul and Jacques
Droz brought out that such was the
program of revolutionary Jacobinism in
the 18th century. In a sense, these
authors insist that the case of Latin
America, as that of China in this
century, demonstrates the idea of the
peasantry as a politically revolutionary
class. But if we see such possibilities in
the actual world, we must also realize
that this mission comes to them in the
twilight of their journey as a social
group. "The end of the peasants" as
Mendras notes, is also coming about on
American lands.
One of the merits of the Vilar study is
that, it more than simply describes
peasant movements but rather points
ahead to a fundamental crisis. In some
countries (such as Argentina and
Uruguay) the peasants are disap-
pearing rapidly and the index of this
primary sector in the national labor
market is as low as in the U.S. and
other highly urbanized European
countries. In others, such as Mexico
(according to Meyer's report) the idea
of "letting the man survive by killing
the peasant" dominates i.e., the in-
troducing of a production system by the
modernization of technology and of the
market economy that reveals recent
Mexican agrarian movements to be a
sort of revolt of the "internally
colonized." Even in Cuba, where the
peasant has had such an important
political role in the revolution, he has
tended numerically to disappear
before the ultra-rapid modernization of
agriculture, what Prof. Kuckzynacki
has nevertheless called "the Cuban way
to socialism."
Latin America, the world -- par
excellance of the peasant, the seat of
great contemporary agrarian reforms:
will it dispossess the peasant or tran-
sform him into a productive
agricultural worker? According to
these social historians, after three
centuries of revolts and struggles by the
agricultural proletariat we are now
coming to the perceivable dawn of the
social and economic transformation of
Latin America and particularly her
agrarian society.
These and other topics come from
Vilar's paper and from other's prepared
for specific countries: Boliva (Huizier),
Brazil (Lisanti), Chile (Barria Serdn),
Colombia (Hobsbawm), Mexico, Peru,
Uruguay (Rama) and Venezuela
(Huizier). The materials presented
should be of use in many areas,
especially Latin America itself.
Lamentably, Latin America was once
again absent from the discussion of her
own problems.


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public:
the developing of films
and transparencies, the
enlarging of photographs;
the photographic and/
or movie coverage of any
social activity desired.
We are located at:
Tapia No. 276, Santurce,
Puerto Rico and can be
reached by mail at:
Box 4668; San Juan,
Puerto Rico 00905.

PLANNING FOR
HEALTHY
POPULATIONS
Health and the
Developing World

By JOHN BRYANT, M.D.

Based on the work of a survey team
sponsored by the Rockefeller Foun-
dation, this forthright book is ad-
dressed to the task of providing
adequate health care for entire
populations. l)r. Bryant examines
health programs and the obstacles they
must overcome, mainly in Africa, Latin
America, and Asia. His recom-
mendations for realistic solutions to
world health problems are essential
reading for anyone concerned with
public health and with the future of
emerging countries.
.hi ipageis. illustrations. tables. $10.00

Cornell University Press
ITHACA and LONDON



THE CUBAN

EXPERIENCE
Acutely aware of the problems in
his native Jamaica, playwright and
journalist Barry Reckord went to
Cuba with some very basic ques-
tions: Is Cuban socialism working?
Are the people really better off than
before Castro? What's happening
in the areas of health, housing, and
education? Is there any freedom
and popular participation or is
Castro an iron-fisted Stalin? What
is replacing traditional capitalistic
incentives-and does it work? To
get the answers, Reckord moved
freely and spoke to the people
themselves-to street cleaners,
farmers, mechanics, students,
teachers,-doctors, and factory
workers as well as government
officials. His remarkable report on
these interviews, spiced with the
language of the people, cuts
through all the myth and propa-
ganda (from both sides) to give us
the first on-the-spot, grass-roots
picture of the total Cuban expe-
rience. $6.95

DOES FIDEL EAT
MORE THAN
YOUR FATHER?
ConversatlonS
In Cuba
Barry Reckord







I I
At all bookstores

111 Fourth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10003







cMUBEAN ~W


Haiti's



Art
by Herve Mehu
The first thing a foreign visitor to
Haiti will do is visit an art gallery to see
the primitive paintings he has heard
about for so long. He will look at them
with mild curiosity, eventually select
one and buy it, and leave contented.
Returning home he will proudly display
his painting to his astonished friends.
But his knowledge of Haitian painting
ends here, and it is from this limited
view of the artistic reality of our
country that he concludes we are a
primitive people.
In fact, the naive or primitive
painting of Haiti is a recent develop-
ment. Until 1944, it was ignored not
to say unknown by the Haitian people
themselves. The growing interest in
Haitian primitives was brought by a
truly accidental and providential event.
In 1944 an American named DeWitt
Peters came to Haiti to teach English.
The son of a painter and a painter
himself, Peters opened an art gallery
called "Le Centre d'Art" whose
purpose was to expose young Haitians
to all aspects of art. One day he
received a unusual picture which had
no relationship to conventional,
classical painting. It fascinated and
perplexed him and served to interest
him in the primitive art of Haiti.
Thereupon he undertook to
disseminate interest in this art among
both Haitians and foreigners. Reac-
tions all around were various;
foreigners at first were intrigued
without understanding what they saw,
but soon they were won over by these
pictures which seem to defy proper
artistic sensibility through a confused
and illogical vision of the world. The.
foreigner could sense the vibrations of
the works without having to judge
them. His cultural background, unlike
that of a Haitian, leads him to a dif-
ferent kind of response to these naive
and maladroit work so different from
the formal syntax of Poussin or David.
The primitive artist is generally a
man of the people, without training in
complex pictorial techniques. When he
paints he looks selectively at the world
and he isolates just those aspects that
interest him: forms and colors. He will
characteristically ignore or reject all
meticulous detailing, which would
necessitate too much technical research
- after all, does the primitive want to be
a sophisticated craftsman? His vision
has to remain crude, unfinished, un-
polished; his work is spontaneous and
intuitive, and its suggestive awk-
wardness yields its own marvelous
effects. No perspective, no modelling,
no sense of correct color values: is the
result a mess, or is it strangely char-
ming? Without a troubled conscience it
is impossible to disengage ourselves
from the childlike clumsiness of the
medium. Painting thus ceases to be a
technique and becomes simply an
assimilation of all the immediacies of
life, an act without the efforts of
transformation or the intervention of
man. Painting is pure creation, man's
yearning for an instantaneous ap-
prehension of the world, which he
wants to express in spontaneous forms.
Primitive painting may be compared
to a communion between man and the
world; a reconciliation between the
artist and life without the hiatus of an
intellectual mind interjecting all sorts of
dehumanized values. The primitive
painting of Haiti may be a last chance
for man because it may be a last chance
for art.


A Puerto Rican

History of Puerto Rico


BREVE HISTORIC DE PUERTO
RICO. Loyda Figueroa. 2 vols.
Editorial Edil, Rio Piedras, 1969. Vol.
I, 165 pp., $2.95; Vol. II, 349 pp.,
$3.75.
For a long time Puerto Rico has
needed a history of her past written
from a Puertorrican perspective. Most
of those who have studied the island's
history have done so using the text of
Paul G. Miller, the Commissioner of
. Education from 1915 to 1921. His goal
. was to further the Americanization of
the island and consequently in his eyes
P.R. looks bleak before 1898 and
formidable afterwards. Another history
that has been relied on is the very
limited one by Vivas, a book unlimited
only in the number of errors com-
mitted.
On the one hand, Puertorricans
writing about the island's history have
been unable to overcome the
stereotypes taught to them in their
childhood; while, on the other hand,
foreigners have also relied on ideas such
as Miller's since they have not had
access to primary sources. It is only in
this decade that Puertorricans have had
the opportunity to scrutinize primary
sources located in various parts of the
world and slowly, if not painfully, they
are overcoming Miller's biases and
slants. Among those undertaking the
new research Lidio Cruz Monclova
stands out with his monumental six
volume history, the product of a
lifetime of research of public and
private records in and out of P.R. But
because his work is so voluminous and
so well documented its use is essentially
that of a reference work.
Still needed was a practical work that
synthesized the island's past from a
Puertorrican point of view without
either nostalgic hispanofilia or inbred
yancofilia. The Breve historic de
Puerto Rico comes closest to meeting
these needs. Unfortunately, it does not
meet them completely it could have
developed even further some of those
events that are so important to our
present self-image as a people. Some of
these episodes have even been omitted,
others have been narrated from a
perspective which hides part of the
truth. Many incidents have been
distorted ex-profeso creating self-
images which do not correspond to the
historic reality.
But in spite of this harsh critique the
merits of the work still outway the
faults. There is, e.g., a pleasant unity in
the author's narration of events. The
book is well documented and makes use
of that which has been recently
discovered by both the author and
other historians. In order to achieve the
praiseworthy pleasantness the author


carefully resorts to everyday language
thus taking history out of the realm of
dead subject matter while at the same
time eliminating stereotypes, abstract
phrases, cliches, and other tombstone
terms. Her simple vocabulary also
allows easier understanding of tran-
slated concepts.
The author covers the evolution of
the island from its discovery to the
culmination of the 18th century in her
first volume and from the ninteenth
century until 1892 in the second
volume. She stops at that date rather
than in 1898 to demonstrate that
Puertorrican history does not stop with
the 1898 American invasion. The
emergence of an autonomous Puerto
Rico in 1897, the economic, social,
cultural, and educational progress of
the end of the 19th century have been
postponed until a third volume. The
proposed volume, already in progress,
will cover the time from 1892 until the
present.
Dr. Figueroa's great merit consists in
having advanced a giant step toward
the conception of the history of Puerto
Rico from a Puertorrican perspective.
Yankophiles see Spain typified only
in its despotic governors, cruelty, and
tragic tortures of 1887. Among many
people, even educated ones, this tone is
carried through up to the time of the
American invasion. Thus, e.g., the
names of the governors who carried out
positive programs during the colonial
administration are never even men-
tioned.
The work under review would have
been even more meritorious if the
author would have explained more fully
those events that are usually neglected
or slighted: e.g., the various separatist
movements, the periods of Spanish
liberalism, the labors of those Spanish
governors who did distinguish
themselves for their desire to rule justly.
A more detailed examination of the
componte tortures would have been
especially welcome.
A case is the infamous General
Palacio. His activity should be credited
to his being half-crazy rather then to
the policy of the Spanish government
(which dismissed him as soon as it
discovered his unhealthy behavior). On
March 23, 1887, Palacio came to P.R.
just after the Partido Autonomista was
organized in Ponce. At the same time a
secret organization of Puertorricans
was organized *to boycott and harass
Spanish commercial and other in-
terests. Their activity included
boycotting and arson in areas such as
Aguadilla and Juana Dfaz. In the latter
town the conspirators' acts culminate in
bloody events. On August 19, 1887 a
detachment of the civil militia, headed
by Policarpo Echavarria, was.
dispatched. These unfortunate events,
involving the arrest and torture of anti-


Iby


y Juan Rodriguez Cruz .


Spanish elements, lasted for two
months and 21 days. On November 9th
Palacio was dismissed and replaced by
Contreras Martmnez who attempted to
heal the wounds. At this point the
Audiencia Territorial made
praiseworthy attempts to end the ar-
bitrariness of Palacio.
It should be understood that the
punishment was not simply inflicted
upon "poor and peaceful" Puer-
torricans. They were the repressive
reactions of a particular governor to a
well-planned conspiracy against
Spanish interests. Puertorricans are not
as submissive and peaceful as has been
propagandized. The abuses only lasted
less than three months and when
another Spanish governor tried to do
the same thing the Puertorricans took
justice into their own hands and
returned attempted beatings in kind.
Most histories, unfortunately, never
discuss such contracompontes. It must
also be understood that the Spanish
government acted quickly and justly.
By cable they fired Palacio and sub-
stituted one of the best governors to
rule for Spain: Contrera Martmnez.
Compare the above situation with
that of Governor Colonel Blanton
Whinship who ruled under a reign of
terror for five years (1934-1939) -
during the presidency of Franklin D.
Roosevelt, the most liberal of American
presidents! This reign culminated in
the horrible Ponce massacre. In spite of
the popular outcry, including a never-
filled request by the American Civil
Liberties Union for an investigation,
Whinship was never removed from
office./Figueroa could have helped our
understanding by having dealt further
with the Palacio events. She also could
have contributed to our understanding
by offering more details on the con-
spiracy by the Asociacidn Liberal
Separatista of Utuado. When
discovered in 1891 by the Spanish
authorities, 70 of its members were
tried and sentenced (Jose' de Diego
defended the accused). One very in-
teresting discovery that the author does
reveal is that Juan Rius Rivera, when
young, took part in the Lares revolt of
1868. This fact was unknown until
now.
Dr. Figueroa's work could give the
impression that it was written from a
very personal point of view. But those
of us who know her are aware that she
is committed to a cause: the
development of a national history to
spur the creation of a national con-
sciousness so that the young may be
stimulated in their efforts to liberate
Puerto Rico. Her conviction precludes
her giving the false impression of
objectivity, a quality no author ever
has. The work as a whole is of great
merit and value.


Spring 1971


..-
.. .;, .-'ii ?'.',. ^ ..-.' f -
zr' .;** ..-:. S,".- .'
*. ":. .
, ..^ .- .. '*


From the dustjacket design of "Race and Class in Latin America", edited by Magnus M6rner, Columbia U. Press, 1970.








Spring 1971


CAM ffm KVKW


I. GENERAL

Biography

NINO: CHILD OF THE MEXICAN
REVOLUTION. Andres Iduarte. Trans. by
James F. Shearer. 144 pp. Praeger, 1970. $5.95.
Autobiographical account of a boy's reactions to
the Mexican Revolution in the early years of this
century.
THE COMPLETE BOLIVIAN DIARIES OF
CHE GUEVARA AND OTHER CAPTURED
DOCUMENTS. Ed. by Daniel James. 330 pp.
Stein & Day, 1970. $6.95.
THE DEATH OF A REVOLUTIONARY: CHE
GUEVARA'S LAST MISSION. Richard Harris.
219 pp. Norton, 1970. $5.95.

THE DIARY OF CHE GUEVARA. Ed. by
Robert Scheer. 192 pp. Bantam, 1970. Paper
$1.45.

THE GREAT REBEL: CHE GUEVARA IN
BOLIVIA. Luis J. Gonzalez and Gustavo A.
Sanchez Salazar. Trans. by Helen R. Lane. 245
pp. Grove, 1970. Cloth $7.95. Paper $1.45.

General Works

BRAZIL. Photos by Fulvio Roiter. Texts by
Hugo Loetscher, etals. Drawings by Carybe.
Viking (Studio Books), 1971. $22.50.

History and Archaeology

A DOCUMENTARY HISTORY OF THE
MEXICAN-AMERICANS. Eds. Wayne Moquin
and Charles Van Doren. 448 pp. Praeger, 1970.
$12.50. These documents span more than four
hundred years of Mexican-American history.
A HISTORY OF BRAZIL. E. Bradford Burns.
449 pp. Columbia U. Press, 1971. $11.95. This book
highlights the struggle between tradition and
modernization in contemporary Brazil.
Professor Burns believes that Brazil, because of
its size, location, potential, and example of racial
fusion, is destined to play an important in-
ternational role.
A HISTORY OF EDUCATION FOR
LIBRARIANSHIP IN COLOMBIA. Richard
Krzys and Gaston Litton. 203 pp. Scarecrow
Press, 1970.

DE CRISTOBAL COLON A FIDEL CASTRO:
EL CARIBE, FRONTERA IMPERIAL Juan
Bosch. 740 pp Allaguara, Madrid, 1970 $7.95.
The ex Dominican President discusses the
changing frontiers and conquests of the Carib-
bean.
FROM COLUMBUS TO CASTRO: THE
HISTORY OF THE CARIBBEAN 1492.1969. Eric
Williams. 576 pp Andre Deutsch. Ltd., 1970. An
important text by the Prime Minister of
Trin.dad.

HANDBOOK OF MIDDLE AMERICAN IN-
DIANS. VOLUME TEN: ARCHAEOLOGY OF
NORTHERN MESOAMERICA. Eds. Gordon F.
Ekholm and Ignacio Bernal. U. of Texas Press,
1970. $15. Illustrated.
HANDBOOK OF MIDDLE AMERICAN IN-
DIANS. VOLUME ELEVEN: GUIDE TO
ETHNOHISTORICAL SOURCES (part I).
VOLUME TWELVE (Part II), VOLUME
THIRTEEN (Part III). Ed. by Howard F. Cline.
U. of Texas Press, 1970. $15 each. Illustrated.
LAND AN D SOCIETY IN COLON IAL MEXICO:
THE GREAT HACIENDA. Francois Chevalier.
Trans. by Alvin Eustis. 334 pp. U. of California -
Press, 1970. Paper $3.25.

MEXICAN AGRARIAN REVOLUTION. Frank
Tannenbaum. Macmillan Company, 1971. $25.50.
(Reprint of1929 edition). The author explains the
rationale of the land reform in Mexico during the
1910 revolution.

TEXAS IN THE MIDDLE EIGHTEENTH
CENTURY. Herbert Eugene Bolton. U. of Texas
Press, 1970. Cloth $8.50. Paper $3.75. Studies in
Spanish colonial history and administration.

THE PREHISTORY OF THE TEHUACAN
VALLEY. VOLUME THREE: CERAMICS.
Richard S. MacNeish, etals. U. of Texas Press,
1970. $15.

SLAVERY IN THE AMERICAS. A COM-
PARATIVE STUDY OF CUBA AND VIRGINIA.
Herbert S Klein. Quadrangle Books, Inc., 1971.
Paper %2.95
Reference

A BIBLIOGRAPHY OF BRITISH HONDURAS
1900 1970 Clarence W. Minkel and Ralph H.
Alderman. 93 pp. Latin American Studies
Center, Michigan State U., 1970. Paper $2.

BLACK LIST: THE GUIDE TO
PUBLICATIONS & BROADCASTING OF
BLACK AMERICA, AFRICA, CARIBBEAN. 289
pp Panther House, 1971. $12.50. Reference.
CURRENT CARIBBEAN BIBLIOGRAPHY.
VOL 19 1969. 270 pp. Biblioteca Regional del
Caribe. CODECA, 1970. 1626 listings about books
and articles published in or about the region.
LATIN AMERICA IN TRANSITION.
PROBLEMS IN TRAINING AND RESEARCH.
" .Ed by Stanley R. Ross. State U. of N.Y. Press,
11971. $1.50 Collection of Interdisciplinary papers
i


Recent



Books


focusing on research problems in Latin America.

LATIN AMERICAN SCHOLARSHIP SINCE
WORLD WARII. TRENDS IN HISTORY,
POLITICAL SCIENCE, LITERATURE,
GEOGRAPHY, AND ECONOMICS. Eds. Robert
Esquenazi-Mayo and Michael C. Meyer. U. of
Nebraska Press, 1971. $10.

URBANIZATION IN TWENTIETH CENTURY
LATIN AMERICA. Denton R. Vaughan. U. of
Texas Press, 1970. Paper $3. A working
bibliography.
11. THE ARTS

Art, Architecture, and Music

CUBA, ARQUITECTURA DE LA
REVOLUCION. Roberto Segre. Editorial
Gustavo Gill, Barcelona, 1970. An analysis of
architecture in present day Cuba by an Italian-
Argentinian architect who now teaches at the
Universidad de la Habana.

THE ART OF REVOLUTION, CASTRO'S CUBA
1959-1970. Douglas Stermer and Susan Sontag.
McGraw Hill Book Co., 1970. $7.95. A large-size
collection of ninety-six posters from Cuba.
IMAGE OF MEXICO II. Ed. by Thomas Mabry
Cranfill. Photos by Hans Beacham. U. of Texas
Press, 1970. $7.50. Depicts second half of the
General Motors of Mexico Collection of Mexican
Graphic Art.

Language and Literature
ANTOLOGIA POETICA. Violeta Lopez Suria.
262 pp. U.P.R., 1970. $3.50 A collection of the
work of the Puerto Rican poet.
BECQUER IN MEXICO, CENTRAL AMERICA,
AND THE CARIBBEAN COUNTRIES. Orline
Clinkscales. 216 pp. Editorial Hispano-
Norteamericana, Madrid, 1970. Paper.

CASA CON DOS PUERTAS. Carlos Fuentes.
Editorial Joaquin Mortiz, Mexico, 1970. A
collection of critical essays written by the
famous -Mexican novelist.
DIARIO DEL CUARTEL. Carlos Maria
Gutierrez. 109 pp. Casa de las Americas,
Havana, 1970. Written by the Uruguayan poet
who won the 1970 Casa de las Americas prize for
poetry.
EL LIBRO. Juan Garcia Ponce. Siglo XXI,
Mexico, 1970. A novel.
ESCRITORES PLANTENSES: FICCIONES
DEL SIGLO XX. Eds. Ernest Lewald ,and
George E. Smith. Stories by Borges, Cortazar,
Sabato, and nine others. Collection of con-
temporary Rio de la Plata literature.
ETERNIDAD DEL POLVO. Elias Nandino.
Joaquin Mortiz, Mexico, 1970. Poetry.

ISLANDS IN THE STREAM. Ernest
Hemingway. Charles Scribner's Sons, 1970. $10.
The novel is set in the mid-1930's on Ihe island of
Bimini.
NERUDA AND VALLEJO: SELECTED
POEMS. Ed. by Robert Bly. Beacon Press, 1971.
Cloth $8.95. Paper $2.95. Bilingual selection.
NUEVA POESIA PERUANA. Augusto Tamayo
Vargas. Ediciones Saturno, Barcelona, 1970. A
collection of Peruvian poetry including that of
Carlos German Belli, Washington Delgado,
Francisco Benedezu, Juan Gonzalo Rose, Arturo
Corcuera, Winston Orrillo, Javier Heraud and
Antonio Cisneros.

OCTAVIO PAZ EL SENTIDO DE LA
PALABRA. Ram6n Xirau. Joaqufn Mortiz,
Mexico, 1970. A study of the poetry of Mexico's
Octavio Paz.
POESIA: 1915-1956. Luis Pales Matos. 304 pp.
U.P.R., 1971. Fourth revised edition of the work
of the famous PuertoRican poet with an in-
troduction by Federico de Onis.

RAJATABLA. Luis Britto Garcia. 263 pp. Casa
de las Americas, Havana, 1970. Written by the
Venezuelan author who won the 1970 Casa de las
Americas prize for short stories.

RELATO DE UN NAUFRAGO. Gabriel Garcia
Mirquez. Cuadernos Marginales, Barcelona,
1970. A novel about a man who gets fame after
suffering for ten days aboard a raft without
food or water and then is forgotten.
RUBEN DARIO. Eds. George D. Schade and
Miguel Gonzalez-Gerth. U. of Texas Press, 1970.
$5.00. Centennial Studies.

SACCHARIO. Miguel Cossio Woodward. 249 pp.
Casa de las Americas, Havana, 1970. The 1970
winner of the Casa de las Americas prize for the


Promotion literature for Peru's agrarian reform.


best novel. About the sugar harvest in Cuba.
THE BREACH. Renato Prado. Doubleday, 1971.
$4.95. A novel about the participants in a
guerrilla action in Bolivia.

THE CONQUEST. Lysander Kemp. U. of Texas
Press, 1970. $3.75. Poetry.
TODOS LOS GATOS SON PARDOS. Carlos
Fuentes. Siglo XXI, Mexico, 1970. Another novel
by the famous Mexican novelist.

Performing Arts
SHANGO DE IMA. Pepe Carril. Doubleday &
Co., 1970. $2.95. English translation of the Cuban
play.
III. THE SOCIAL SCIENCES

Anthropology and Sociology
A SEPARATE REALITY: FURTHER CON-
VERSATIONS WITH DON JUAN. Carlos
Castaneda. S & S, 1971. $5.95. The author revisits
his friend, and old Indian brujo (sorcerer), in the
hope of deepening his own spiritual un-
derstanding through the use of peyote and
mescal.

CITY AND COUNTRY IN THE THIRD WORLD.
ISSUES IN THE MODERNIZATION OF LATIN
AMERICA. Ed. by Arthur J. Field. 303 pp.
Schenkman Publishing Company, Inc., 1970.
Paper $4.95.
HEALTH IN THE MEXICAN-AMERICAN
CULTURE: A COMMUNITY STUDY. Margaret
Clark. 253 pp. U. of California Press, 1970. Paper
$2.45.
ILNUOVOMARXISMO LATINO AMERICANO.
A. Gunder Frank, etals. Feltrinelli, Milan, 1970.

LA IGLESIA REBELDE DE AMERICA
LATINA. Alain Gheerbrant. Siglo XXI, Mexico;
1970. A French professor traces the
radicalization of the church in Latin America.
LA OPINION PUBLICLY LAS ASPIRACIONES
DE LOS PUERTORRIQUENOS Luis Nieves
Falcon. 337 pp Social Science Research Center,
U.P.R., 1970 A comprehensive opinion poll of Ine
aspirations, perceptions, and opinions of the
Puerto Rican population

LORD AND PEASANT IN PERU. A
PARADIGM OF POLITICAL AND SOCIAL
CHANGE. F. LaMond Tullis. 295 pp. Harvard U.
Press, 1970. $10.50. A study of Peruvian social
structure that attempts to answer the question:
Why do peasants rise?

LOWER-CLASS FAMILIES: THE CULTURE
OF POVERTY IN NEGRO TRINIDAD. Hyman
Rodman. 400 pp. Oxford U. Press, 1971. Cloth
$7.50. Paper $3.75.

MIRACLE ATJOASEIRO. Ralph della Cava. 336
pp. Columbia U. Press, 1970. $9.95. The political
history of a popular religious movement which
flourished between 1889 and 1934 in the hin-
terlands of Brazil's impoverished Northeast.
RELIGIOUS CULTS OF THE CARIBBEAN:
TRINIDAD, JAMAICA, AND HAITI. George
Eaton Simpson. 308 pp. Institute of Caribbean
Studies. U.P.R., 1970. Paper $4.00. Includes the
author's previously published, The Shango Cult
in Trinidad plus eleven other papers.
REQUIEM POR UNA CULTURAL (ENSAYOS
SOBRE LA SOCIALIZACION DEL PUER-
TORRIQUENO EN SU CULTURAL Y EN AM-
BITO DEL PODER NEOCOLONIAL). E. Seda
Bonilla. 201 pp. Editorial Edil, 1970. $3. A
collection of essays in whidh the author decries
the disintegration of the Puerto RIcan culture in
the face of Americanization of the island.
THEGROWTHOF LATIN AMERICAN CITIES.
Walter Haffis. 460 pp. Ohio U. Press, 1971. $15.00.
Examines the problems of urban growth in
various regions of Latin America.


THE THRICE SHY: CULTURAL AC-
COMMODATION TO BLINDNESS AND OTHER
DISASTERS IN A MEXICAN COMMUNITY.
John L. Gwaltney. 219 pp. Columbia U. Press,
1970. $6.95. An anthropological field study of a
Mexican village that is located in a zone where a
form of blindness is widespread.

SOUTH AMERICA OF THE POETS. Selden
Rodman. 272 pp. Hawthorn Books Inc., 1971.
$9.95. A sociological study of South America.
UNIVERSIDAD, DEPENDENCIA Y
REVOLUCION. Hector Silva Michelena y Heinz
Rudolf Sonntag. Siglo XXI, Mexico, 1970. A
discussion by members of the Universidad
Central de Venezuela about the relation between
economic and cultural dependence and the
university.

VENEREMOS BRIGADE. Ed. by Sandra
Levinson and Carol Brightman. S & S, 1971. Cloth
$8.95. Paper $3.95. Collection of letters, journals,
interviews, and poems that deal with the ex-
periences of some 40 young Americans in Cuba
during Castro's sugarcane-cutting campaign of
1969-70.
VISTA PARCIAL DEL FOLKLORE DE
PUERTO RICO. Ed. by Pedro Escabi. 396 pp.
U.P.R., 1971. $5.00. A study of the people of
Morovis, P.R., and their fiestas, poetry, and
music. Includes a 45 RPM record of four songs.
Economics
CUBA: ES SOCIALIST? Rene Dumont. 261 pp.
Editorial Tiempo Nuevo, Caracas, 1970. A
translation of Cuba Est -il Socialiste? (Editions
du seuil, 1970). Agricultural economist Dumont,
a former advisor to Castro, criticizes the
militarization of agriculture in Cuba.

ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT: A LATIN
AMERICAN EMPHASIS. John Raymond
Hildebrand. 154 pp. The Pemberton Press, 1970.
Cloth $6.95. Paper $3.95.
FISHING FOR EXPORT. EXPORT-LED
DEVELOPMENT IN PERU, 1950-1967. Michael
Roemer. 208 pp. Harvard U. Press, 1970. $8.00.
Demonstrates that primary.product export
industries can stimulate rapid and sustained
growth.

LA AYUDA EXTERNA. Belisario Betancur. 174
pp. Tercer Mundo, Bogota', 1970. 25 P. Col.
Discussion of the relation between foreign aid
and development by the Colombian presidential
candidate.
LABOR, AND DEVELOPMENT IN LATIN
AMERICA. Joseph R. Ramos. 281 pp. Columbia
U. Press, 1970. $12.50. An analysis of the role of
the labor force in Latin American development
since WWII.

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BOOKSTO7R


409 San Francisco

Plaza de Col6n

Old San Juan



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LATIN AMERICA AND ECONOMIC IN-
TEGRATION: REGIONAL PLANNING FOR
DEVELOPMENT. Water Krause and F. John
Mathis. 120 pp. U. of Iowa P-ss, 1970. Cloth $4.
THE ORGANIZATION OF SPACE IN
DEVELOPING COUNTRIES. E.A.J. Johnson.,
452 pp. Harvard U. Press, 1970. $15.00. The book,
on the economics of development, uses Puerto
Rico as an example of progress achieved by
spatial restructuring to relate town and country.
THE WORLD COFFEE ECONOMY: A STUDY
OF OLIGOPOLY. Thomas Geer. Dunellen Co.,
1971. $8.50.
Politics
ANTOLOGIA DE MARCH 1939. Biblloteca de
Marcha, Montevideo, 1970. Hugo Alfaro (ed.). A
collection of articles published during 1939 in the
Uruguayan weekly, Marcha.
COMMUNIST CHINA AND LATIN AMERICA,
1959-1967. Cecil Johnson. 324 pp. Columbia U.
Press, 1970. $9.95.
CONVERSATION CON ALLENDE. Regis
Debray. 150 pp. Siglo XXI, Mexico, 1971. Paper
$1.50. Famed Marxist writer R gis Debray in-
terviews the newly-elected president of Chile.
DIEZ ANOS DE REVOLUTION CUBANA.
Montaner Villar, etals. Editorial San Juan, 1970.
Proceedings of a 1969 conference held by I.A.U.
concerning 10 years of Castro in Cuba.
DOES FIDEL EAT MORE THAN YOUR
FATHER? CONVERSATIONS IN CUBA. Barry
Record. 192 pp. Praeger, 1971. $6.95. A look at
present-day Cuba by a young black Jamaican
playwright who recently spent three months in
Cuba.
EL LIDERATO LOCAL DE LOS PARTIDOS Y
EL STUDIO DE LA POLITICAL PUER-
TORIQUENA. Angel G. Quintero Rivera. 163 pp.
Centrode Investigaciones Sociales, U.P.R., 1970.
ESCRITOS DESCONOCIDOS DE JOSE MARTI.
Carlos Ripoll. Eliseo Torres & Sons, 1971. An
anthology of 125 newspaper pieces by Martf that
are not included in his "Complete Works."
GUERRILLAS IN POWER, THE CUBAN
REVOLUTION. K. S. Karol. 634 pp. Hill &Wang,
1970. $12.50. An analysis by a European jour-
nalist of the political and ideological aspects of
the Cuban revolution. Translation of
Guerrilleros au pouvoir: L'itineraire politique de
la revolution Cubaine, (Robert Laffont, Paris,
1970).
HIJO DE HOMRE. Augusto Roa Bastos. 221 pp.
Editorial Revista de Ocidente, 1969. $2.80.
Essays by the Paraguayan writer about the
guerra del Chaco.
LA GUERRILLA TUPAMARA. Marra Esther
Gilio. 247 pp. Casa de las Americas, Havana,
1970. 1970 winner of the Case de las Americas
prize for the best testimonial. About the
Uruguayan urban guerilla movement.


LA IDEA DE LA FEDERATION ANTILLANA
EN LOS INDEPENDENTISTAS PUER-
TORRIQUENOS DEL SIGLO XIX. Carlos M.
Rama. 53 pp. Libreria Internacional, 1971. About
the 19th century idea to unite Puerto Rico, Cuba,
and Hispaniola as expressed In the work of
Betances and de Hostos.
LA OLIGARQUIA EN EL PERU. Francois
Bourricaud, etals. Editorial Diogenes, Mexico,
1970. An analysis of the Peruvian oligarchy.
Writteh before the military took control, the
author searches for reasons for the changes in
internal and external policy that took place.
NUEVO ENFOQUE SOBRE EL DESARROLLO
POLITICO DE PUERTO RICO. Andres Sanchez
Tarniella. 161 pp. Editorial Edil, 1970.- An
analysis of the political realities affecting Puerto
Rico over the past 100 years by a U. of Puerto
Rico professor.
POLITICAL MOBILIZATION OF THE
VENEZUELAN PEASANT. J.D. Powell. 255 pp.
Harvard U. Press, 1971. $8.50. The author writes
about the alliance between Betancourt's
Democratic Action Party and the Venezuelan
peasant masses.
POLITICAL POWER IN LATIN AMERICA:
SEVEN CONFRONTATIONS. Richard R. Fagan
and Wayne A. Cornelius, Jr. 419 pp. Prentice-
Hall, 1970. Cloth $7.95. Paper $4.50.

STUDENT POLITICS IN ARGENTINA.
Richard J. Walter. Basic Books, N.Y., 1970.
$7.50. Examines the historic development of
student political activity in Argentina from the
University reform movement of 1918 through the
1960's.

STUDENT POLITICS IN CHILE. Frank Bonilla
and Myron Glazer. 367 pp. Basic Books, N.Y.,
1970. $8.50.
THE UNITED STATES AND THE CARIB-
BEAN. Ed. by Tad Szulc. 224 pp. Prentick-Hall,
1971. Cloth $5.95. Paper $2.45. Articles by Gordon
Lewis, Tony Maingot, Gerard Latortue, and five
others: explores the consequences of the rise of
the independent Caribbean.
THE WEST INDIES TODAY. D. Sinclair
DaBreo. 117 pp. Letchworth Press Ltd., Bar-
bados, 1971.
WHICH WAY OUT? AN ANALYSIS OF THE
VENEZUELA GUYANA BOUNDARY
DISPUTE. Leslie B. Rout, Jr. 130 pp. Latin
American Studies Center, Michigan State U.,
1971. $2.

Psychology and Psychiatry
PSIQUIATRIA EN LA AMERICA LATINA.
ANALES DEL V CONGRESS
LATINOAMERICANO Y VIII COLOMBIANO.
656 pp. Tercer Mundo, Bogotd, 1970. 170 P. Col.
130 papers examine all areas related to
psychiatry in Latin America.


Letters


Sir:
I wish to call your attention to the review
by Thomas Matthews, in the Fall, 1969
edition of C.R. of my book, The Dominican
Republic: Nation in Transition (New
York: Frederick A. Praeger, Inc., 1969). I
welcome honest, scholarly, serious, and
critical evaluations of it. However, the
review in question satisfied none of these
criteria.
The book was meant to serve only as an
introduction to the Dominican Republic, to
provide a brief overview of 'te country
and its politics and certainly not the last or
definitive word on them. Though it was
hoped that the specialist might find parts
of it of interest as well (they have, judging
from other reviews) it was aimed
primarily at the general introductory
reader. In his review, however, Matthews
fails to mention the limited aims and
purposes of the book, all of which are
expressly stated in the preface, and, in-
stead, distorts beyond at least the author's
own recognition many of the ideas and
themes presented in it.
Of the review's ten paragraphs, six
contained statements that misrepresented
the book's aims or, seemingly purposely,
distorted its contents. There is a single
paragraph (the second out of ten, recall)
of what I considered fair summary, and
there are four brief instances of what I felt
were honest and constructive criticisms.
There are no less than seven personal
attacks in the review which have nothing
whatsoever to do with the merits of the
book itself. In addition, there are four
paragraphs containing an irrelevant
"speech" by the reviewer in which he
presents some of his own not-very-well-
dnformed knowledge about the Dominican
political system. Of course some of the
paragraphs are mixed, composites of
diatribe, honest criticisms, and personal
smears. I would be the first to admit the
book has faults and could be improved
upon and I am of course eager to accept
any constructive criticism, since I hope to
incorporate this into a rewritten edition as
well as into a larger more scholarly work
that I am currently preparing for
publication by the University of Chicago
Press. But I cannot understand or accept
Matthews' deliberate misrepresentation
and distortion of the book.
At one point Matthews criticises the
book for allegedly discussing Dominican
politics in terms of the familiar liberal-
conservative division -- when in fact these
are his terms and not mine, and that kind
of continuum is expressly repudiated in
the book as not telling us very much about
the realities of social and political power in
the country. At another, Matthews states
that the author's "puritan bias" leads him
to deplore prostitution, widespread male
infidelity, and illegitimacy when it fact
the point of the book was simply to note
that the family as an institution is
somewhat more precarious -and unstable
in the Dominican Republic than elsewhere
in Latin American and that this carries
certain social and political implications.
At another point Matthews hints rather
broadly that the book's treatment of the
Santiago oligarchy was determined by
my having friends among that group an


Spring 1971

absurd statement that will be recognized
for what it is by anyone who has read my,
work. He goes on to say that my analysis of
political forces is passed off as a behind-
the-scenes view of Dominican politics -
when in fact no such claim is ever made.
He mistakenly interprets my concern for
the downtrodden Dominican masses as
"condescending pity from a member of a
trouble-free, superior civilization" -
again, all his words and certainly not
mine. He states that nowhere in the book
are we given the factual information to
appreciate the enormous problems of the
Dominican Republic when in fact that is
what the entire book is all about, as
Matthews acknowledges and emphasizes
earlier in his review. And he hints darkly
that because of a lack of emphasis on mass
or lower class culture, I must have spent
most of my hob-nobbing with the oligarchy
-when in fact (1) this is simply untrue I
believe I have done perhaps as much
research on lower class mass movements
in the Dominican Republic as just about
any other scholar, (2) Matthews
acknowledges as much earlier in the same
paragraph, and (3) it was precisely my
point that the relative absence of a com-
mon and articulated cultural tradition is
one key reason why the country lacks the
underlying common basis of un-
derstanding and cultural "cement" that
could help hold it together.
I am at a complete loss to explain why
Matthews' review was as intemperate, as
distorted, as personal, and as unfair as it
was. Though I have briefly met Matthews
on two or three occasions, I cannot recall
having insulted him or, for that matter,
having done anything else that would call
forth such a biased and unjust review.
Whatever the reason, however, it seems to
me that it is incumbent upon any writer
with the kinds of personal prejudices
exhibited in the Matthews' review either to
state them honestly and openly or else to
exert every effort to keep them from in-
terfering with and distorting scholarly
analysis and evaluation. For only in this
fashion can the goals of serious discussion
and criticism and of a greater un-
derstanding bf the Dominican Republic be
achieved. Howard Wiarda
University of Massachusetts, Jan. 1971


CARIBBEAN STUDIES

Quarterly Journal devoted to the Social Sciences, Arts and Humanities
relevant to the Caribbean and circum-Caribbean areas.
MANAGING EDITOR: SYBIL LEWIS



Volume 11 April, 1971 No. 1


I. Articles

Gordon K. Lewis, An Introductory Note to the Study of Race Relations
in Great Britain
Lloyd W. Brown, The American Image in British West Indian Literature
C. H. Grant,, Company Towns in the Caribbean: A Preliminary Analysis
of Christianburg-Wismar-MacKenzie
Vernon Mulchansingh, The Oil Industry in the Economy of Trinidad


II. Book Reviews

Gordon K. Lewis, The Growth of the Modern West Indies, reviewed by
Sir Philip Sherlock
Manuel Maldonado Denis, Puerto Rico: Una Interpretaci6n Hist6rico-
Social, reviewed by Juan Rodriguez Cruz
E. J. B. Rose and associates, Colour and Citizenship: A report on British
Race Relations, reviewed by Sheila Patterson
Joseph Cooper, The Lost Continent, or Slavery and the Slave-Trade in
Africa, 1875 ... reviewed by Joseph Borom6
Enid M. Baa, compiled by, Theses on Caribbean Topics, 1778-1968, re-
viewed by Frederick E. Kidder
Lloyd Searwar, editor, Co-op Republic-Guyana 1970, reviewed by Robert
H. Manley

III. Book Notes
IV. Current Bibliography
V. Contents and Index to Volume 10
VI. Ten Years of Caribbean Studies

Published Quarterly by: THE INSTITUTE OF CARIBBEAN STUDIES
University of Puerto Rico, Rio Piedras, Puerto Rico 00931
Annual Subscription: U.S. $ 6.00
Single Numbers: $,1.50


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CRUCIFIXION BY POWER re".


Essays on Guatemalan National Social Structure,
1944-1966
By Richard Newbold Adams

xiv, 553 pages $10.00

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