Jennet Rodriguez Betancourt

concerns about the needs of more theatres and cultural events so as to advance in the
appreciation of the arts and not chiefly to concentrate on cock fights and dances which
are events which he believes contribute little to the future progress of the island.
Besides Alonso’s respect and affection for the jíbaro’s popular culture, he was
also extremely attentive and caring to the peasant’s needs especially when it was related
to mental health conditions. It is evident that he is a doctor concerned with the health and
above all, the human dignity of the patient. In Scene X, Los Sabios y Los Locos En Mi
Cuarto, he uses the literary technique of dreams and of appropriating characters in this
dream in order to diverge suppression while masterfully voicing his sentiments about the
neglect and abuse in Puerto Rico’s mental institutions.
Alonso uses a 1 st person fictive narrator who has a dream in which four celebrated
French men that worked with mental patients appear in his room. One of these men was
Pinel, a wise, well known, older character, joined by four mental patients from France
who call themselves “la comision de locos”. One patient affirms that some institutions
in France are of high-quality “…buenas camas, buenas comidas, buenos baños, no nos
maltratan los guardias, un profesor sabio dirige el establecimiento y nada se le olvida
cuando se trata de nuestra comodidad y pronta curación…” (Alonso 84). At the same
time, other patients are disturbed because all patients do not enjoy equal and fair care and
many institutions do not even count with a director to oversee and defend the patient’s
innumerable needs. One patient describes his contrasting experience and Pinel is
outraged when he hears about the deplorable conditions and treatment.
“A nosotros no se nos tratan con tanto cumplido como allá en su tierra de usted;
nos tienen encerrados y en completa incomunicación en unas habitaciones
húmedas y hediondas; nuestra cama es una poca de paja; no tenemos salas de
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