“A Better place to live”

Edwin Rosskam's Shack in Puerto Rico (figure 13.1), taken for the Puerto Rico Office of Information between 1944 and 1946, shows a bohío (rural cabin) with one set of the twin wooden doors shut, another open; the latter implies a gesture of invitation perhaps, but to what? Shadows and vague definitions; such are the spaces of beginnings and speculation. In the distance, barely visible at the photograph's left edge, is a deep valley with vegetation, and at the right, a partial view of another, perhaps better-maintained bohío. There is a poster in the center of the main bohío's exterior that presents the straw-hatted profile of a jíbaro, the rural laborer of Puerto Rico, which became the symbol of the Partido Popular Democratico (Popular Democratic Party, or PPD). The other poster announces the candidacy for senate of one of that party's members, Ernesto Juan Fonfrfas, who was to write much on the life of the jíbaro. ¹ The elections of 1944 would be a prelude and key to those of 1948 when the island elected its first Puerto Rican governor. Before that date, and since 1900, two years after the Spanish American War when Puerto Rico became a possession of the United States, and its inhabitants “subject peoples” ² of yet another government in that Caribbean island's lengthy colonial history, all governors (save one interim) had been North American appointees of the US President. The jíbaro symbol and the bohío in Rosskam's photograph, therefore, point not only to important cultural and political icons, but also to a watershed moment in the history of Puerto Rico.