Jennet Rodriguez Betancourt

nostalgia and a deep urgency to revisit, and record moments and places left behind. In
Advertencia a los lectores, he writes “Al escribirlo me propuse pintar la sociedad tal cual
existía en el año 1842, cuando me trasladé a aquella ciudad teniendo solo diecinueve
años” (Alonso xli).
This young author who published under the pen name of El Gibaro de Caguas
wrote El Gibaro, a collection of vignettes about customs (cuadro de costumbres) in prose
and verse which consist of 20 scenes, writings dedicated to several friends, and other
articles in two parts. An expanded 2 nd edition was published in 1847, where a more
mature Alonso continued to write about earlier themes, with more explicit criticisms, a
short story, Perico Paciencia, as well as a prologue written by Salvador Brau which
scholars today consider a valuable piece of literary criticism. Many of the vignettes
present portraits of Creole every day life, in which Alonso masterfully transcribes and
imitates rural speech patterns. This author not only gathers the customs and traditions of
the island’s modest rural folk, but as Acevedo points out
“… las enjuicia de acuerdo a criterios de progreso, originalidad, y utilidad económica y
social. El interés en los asuntos de Puerto Rico, el patriotismo critico y activo, la
intención didáctica de ensenar deleitando, el humorismo, el optimismo cauteloso y la
simpatía por lo popular son rasgos que se destacan en El Jibaro y que encaminan nuestra
literatura por la autorreflexión y definición de lo propio” (14)
Alonso was an educated Creole who assumed a peasant identity and voiced his
deep sentiments about the people, the island, and the traditions. Throughout the
enjoyable, humorous, and serious accounts the author depicts the activities of the
romanticized rural folk “que trabaja, canta baila, se diverte, se lleva su hambra a caballo o
se casa por la iglesia; que cree en brujos, hechiceros, y curanderos…” (Melendez Muñoz
9