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