Jennet Rodriguez Betancourt

jíbaro speech and ways, different from Alonso’s jíbaros; but nonetheless, different from
how city dwellers of the island expressed themselves in the mid-twentieth century. In
addition, when she experiences internal migration to the city, she records how she was
labeled a jíbara by classmates and even by one of her teachers because she was louder
and exhibited a different manner of behavior. Throughout her narrations there is an
extremely interesting female gaze at this national icon who has been at times both
idealized and scorned.
My interest in how the jíbara sees herself arises from the realizing that this female
figure has been defined in relation to the male peasant and primarily by elite male writers.
“Although Dávila, Meléndez Muñoz, Llorens Torres, and Muñoz Marín did formulate an
image, their contributions were only partial ones …” (Guerra 111). The project of the
elites both in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries was one of “…centralizing the jíbaro
in the national identity of Puerto Rico was exactly that, one which concentrated almost
entirely on the construction of a jíbaro-centered myth, not a jíbara-centered myth. This
does not mean, however, that a jíbara myth was not developed. It was. What it does
mean is that the jíbara myth was dependent on that of the jíbaro, not only for its defining
characteristics but also its mere existence” (Guerra 110).
The topic of the jíbara definitely motivates further research because the diverse
appropriations of this symbol of national identity in Puerto Rican literature during two
colonial periods, both in Spanish and English, “desde aquí y desde allá” is a fascinating
and an incredibly interesting literary subject for further study.
22