From bozal to boricua: Implications of Afro-Puerto Rican Language in Literature

John M. Lipski

Hispania, Vol. 84, No. 4. (Dec., 2001), pp. 850-859.

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http://www.jstor.org Tue Feb 26 16:26:18 2008 Prepared by John Lipski

From bozal to boricua: Implications of Afro-Puerto Rican Language in Literature John M. Lipski The Pennsylvania State University

Abstract :The nature of Afro-Hispanic language as depicted in literature is the subject of consider- able controversy. In addition to the fact that nearly all texts were literary imitations written by white authors, the documents themselves exhibit considerable heterogeneity and inconsistency. Central to the debate is whether Afro-Hispanic language used by African-born slaves and their immediate descendents ever coalesced into a stable creole-4.e. a restructured Spanish learned natively by subsequent generations-and whether such Afi-o-Hispanic language ever re-entered mainstream , leaving a permanent imprint. This study examines Afro-Puerto Rican literary texts, some well known, most quite obscure, and concludes that in most instances there are few signs of incipient creolization, only the speech of second-language learn- ers of Spanish. Moreover, in some instances other Afro-Caribbean creole languages brought to , for example Papiamento from Curacao, may have contributed creole-like traits to the Afro-Puerto Rican liter- ary texts.

Key words :Afro-Hispanic language, creole languages, Ah-o-Puerto Rican literature, contact languages, bozal language, restructured Spanish, Spanish-based Creoles

Introduction appearance in Spain early in the sixteenth century, and continues through the middle The African contribution to the Latin of the eighteenth century, being especially American Spanish is beyond question, par- prominent in Golden Age plays and poetry. ticularly in the Caribbean region, but as- Latin American was first de- sessing any further African influences on scribed by writers like Sor Juana Ines de la regional Spanish dialects is hampered by Cruz, at the beginning of the seventeenth conflicting theories, racial prejudice, and century. Other surviving seventeenth-cen- the scarcity of credible documentation. tury documents demonstrate the existence There exists a tantalizing corpus of literary, of bozal Spanish in the highland mining ar- folkloric and anecdotal testimony on the eas of Peru, Mexico, Colombia, Bolivia and earlier speech patterns of Africans, in Spain Guatemala. Few documents representing and . In contemporary Latin Afro-Hispanic speech remain from eigh- America, despite a considerable Afro- teenth-century Latin America; and American population in many regions, and Mexico are among the regions so repre- notwithstanding racial stereotypes in litera- sented (cf. Megenney 1985b, Lipski 1995). ture and popular culture, there is nowhere At the turn of the nineteenth century, the to be found an ethnically unique "Black last big surge of slave trading, spurred by Spanish," comparable to vernacular Black the sugar plantation boom and by increased English in the United States (Lipski 1985). urbanization of many coastal regions, re- The situation was different in the past, and sulted in an outpouring of Afro-Hispanic lit- there exists ample evidence that distinctly erary representations. The geographical Afro-Hispanic speech forms did exist, par- distribution of extant texts mirrors the pro- ticularly among the bozales, slaves born in file of the African slave trade in Latin Africa, who spoke European languages only America. The nineteenth-century texts with difficulty. Bozal language first arose in come principally from three regions: Cuba, the late in the fifteenth coastal Peru, and the Buenos Aires/ century; the earliest attestations come from Montevideo region. No credible bozal texts Portugal. Bozal Spanish makes its written come from the , where IMPLICATIONS OF AFRO-PUERTO RlCAN LANGUAGE IN LITERATURE 851 the population of African-born slaves dimin- Spanish find a facile explanation as im- ished greatly as the neighboring French ported crossovers, the road to an eventual colony of Saint-Domingue prospered and accounting is not as unobstructed as might eventually collapsed through the use of first appear. The debate is far from closed, slave labor. Prominent in "Afro-Dominican" and new evidence continues to come to light literature are imitations of the halting Span- as additional texts are discovered, and field- ish spoken by Haitians and subsequently by work and archival research uncovers more Creole English-speaking West Indian labor- evidence of earlier Afro-Hispanic speech. ers (Lipski 1994). Particularly in Cuba, many bozal texts appear to exhibit a degree 2. Africans in Puerto Rico of consistent restructuring so as to suggest that Afro-Cuban language may have been a And what of Puerto Rico, whose popula- stable , similar to Haitian or tion of African origin rivals that of Cuba, and Jamaican Creoles, and that the eventual in- whose regional Spanish dialect exhibits corporation of former slaves and their de- such similarities with neighboring Cuban scendents into Cuban society in general led and Dominican varieties? Only a handful of to the gradual decreolization of Afro-Cuban texts (little more than a dozen) represent Spanish, all the while leaving some traces the Afro-Hispanic speech of Puerto Rican on the most vernacular forms of Cuban bozales, and only three are long enough to Spanish (Granda 1968, 1971; Megenney allow even a glimpse into what Africanized 1984a, 1984b, 1985a; Perl 1989a, 1989b, Spanish might actually have sounded like. 1989c, 1989d). The majority of Afro-Cuban By the nineteenth century, when most lit- literary attestations, and even the memories erary bozal imitations were produced in of elderly or recently deceased Cubans, Latin America, the vast majority of black suggest that most bozal Spanish was simply slaves in Puerto Rico were island-born and a second-language-learners' variety, not speaking Spanish with no second-language substantially different than what is heard traits, although some ethnolinguistic mark- today when foreigners struggle to learn ers such as key words or pronunciation vari- Spanish with little motivation to attain per- ants may have remained: fection, except possibly that some regional African language traits may have shaped Es obvio suponer que en cuanto a los negros y las some of the deviations from natively spoken negras nacidos en la isla, su lengua se cimentaria so- Spanish. Lipski (l993,1998a, 1998b, 1999a) bre las bases del lenguaje popular puertorriqueiio, con sus variaciones. Los negros de tala o 10s trabajadores has suggested that those few Afro-Cuban de suelo adquirieron el espaiiol del campesino, mien- texts exhibiting incontrovertible Creole fea- tras que 10s de la casa grande tal vez desarrollaron una tures also reflect the presence of workers modalidad, mas refinada, de acuerdo con la manifes- from other Creole-speaking Caribbean is- tacion de 10s amos en el ambito domestico. (Ortiz lands imported to Cuba beginning in the Lugo 1995: 14) second half of the nineteenth century, and Several key Afro-Puerto Rican texts were speaking Afro-European languages with analyzed by the masterful Puerto Rican lin- considerable similarity with one another. guist Alvarez Nazario (1959,1974), who of- Papiamentu, the Afro-Iberian language of fered the most penetrating analysis of any Cura~ao,whence came many workers to variety of Afro-Hispanic language published the Spanish Caribbean, is among the Cre- to date. Some important additions to the ole languages so implicated in the debate corpus have come to light since Alvarez surrounding Afro-Cuban bozal language. Nazario carried out his research, and com- The distinction between spontaneous or parative Creole studies have also advanced locally creolized bozal language and considerably, all of which warrants an over- transplated Creole languages from else- all assessment of Afro-Puerto Rican literary where in the Caribbean is thus blurred, and language, and its relationship to the devel- while not all Creole-like features of bozal opment of Spanish in Puerto kco. - 852 HlSPANlA 84 DECEMBER 2001 The history of black slaves in Puerto Rico 3. The Most Creole-like Afro-Puerto is rather similar to that of Santo Domingo. Rican Text Puerto Rico remained as a backwater dur- ing most of the Spanish colonial period, and Depicting the lie and language of Afri- slave importation only became important can slaves and free workers never achieved towards the middle of the nineteenth cen- the status in Puerto Rican literature that it tury, as Puerto Rico took a small piece of the enjoyed in neighboring Cuba, and though sugar plantation boom that followed the black characters and references abound in uprising in French Saint-Domingue. Ac- Puerto Rican novels, stories, and poems, cording to Alvarez Nazario (1974: 72), some only the tiniest fraction of these works 6,000-8,000 African slaves were taken to yields any insight into the speech of Afro- Puerto Rico during the sixteenth century, , and even fewer documents some 8,000-12,000 in the seventeenth cen- reveal anything beyond brief accounts of tury, between 20,000 and 30,000 in the eigh- foreigners' blunders and malapropisms. teenth century, and between 20,000 and The Puerto Rican text which shows the 30,000 in the nineteenth century, for a maxi- greatest evidence of a systematically recon- mal total of 75,000 African slaves taken to structed Afro-Hispanic language is the skit Puerto Rico. These figures do not show the La juega degallos o el negro bozal by Ramon huge nineteenth century "boom" experi- Caballero, originally published in Ponce in enced by Cuba, although there were times 1852, and first brought to the attention of when the African population of Puerto Rico linguists by Alvarez Nazario (1974). Little is was considerable, particularly in some ur- known about the author of this play, other ban and agricultural areas. In Puerto Rico than the fact that he was born in , it is still possible to find remnants of Afri- and eventually moved to Ponce (Giron n.d.) . can cultural elements, but there is none of Nor do we learn about his familiarity with the ethnically homogeneous ceremonies the speech of African-born bozales, except and songs found, for example in Cuba, to note that the latter were certainly present where Yoruba, Efik and KiKongo in Puerto Rico during the time in which the carryovers survived slavery to form the ba- play was written. La juega de gallos com- sis for Afro-Cuban religious practices. The bines scattered structures reminiscent of demographic figures tell the story: there other Afro-Iberian creoles, set against a was never a large enough number of Afri- generally unremarkable bozal pidgin or can bozales, much less a group of slaves learners' variety: from a single ethnic or linguistic area of Ja, Nazaria, ~tumira sefiorita anoche c6mo taba Africa, for an African culture to be trans- miringando? Y nifia Fererica tarnbie ...q ue duce. planted to Puerto Rican soil. At any given Ah Nazaria, no son tu corazona. Tu siempre ta time, and particularly during the last cen- jablando a mi con grandisima rigo. Yo ta querC mu- cho a ti, grande grande asi son mi sufrimienta, aqui tury of the slaving period, from which yari yari mucho, si tu ta quere mi corazo.. . comes the only documentation of Afro- yo ba libeM a ti Nazaria. Yo ta trabajando, y ta juntan- Puerto Rican language, African-born bozales do dinero pa ti ... were always outnumbered by locally-born No Nazaria, no ta gritando asi hombe, lbrangaman blacks, and towards the end of the slaving Dio! Mira, yo tiene uno becero en casa fio Juan de Dio, yo period also by blacks from other Caribbean tiene dinero juntando y nifia Fererica ba a da a mi pa islands, who knew little or nothing of Afri- compra uno llegua. can languages, but who spoke languages Nazaria, brangaman Dio turu me ta morotifica. born in the . These demo- graphic facts account in part for the scarcity The play contains such attested Afro-Carib of Puerto Rican bozal texts, as well as the bean Spanish elements as the use of ta + appearance of elements from other Carib- IN~~NIT~VE(Lipski 1987b), the invariant bean creoles in some of the Afro-Puerto copula son (Lipski 1999b), the use of the Rican texts. bare infinitive minus final /r/ as invariant IMPLICATIONS OF AFRO-PUERTO RICAN LANGUAGE IN LITERATURE 853 verb, the West African Pidgin English form "ofrece pruebas de primera mano que yari yari ("cry"), and intrusive nasalization establecen el arraigo definitivo y claro en as in brangaman ivalgame (Lipski 1992). nuestro suelo por entonces de sectores These forms appear against the backdrop poblacionales usuarios del papiamento, con of imperfectly-learned Spanish such as raices que se remontan posiblemente en el might be found in any foreign language tiempo a 10s siglos XVII y XVIII.. .cuando classroom. On the basis of this text the este instrumento expresivo va definiendo y Spanish linguist and proponent of the Afro- consolidando historicamente sus caracteres Caribbean Spanish Creole theory Granda de lengua criolla del Caribe.. .." According (1968: 194, fn. 4) declared that ". ..es facil to him, the language in question represents demostrar el caracter igualmente 'criollo' de the vestiges of Papiamentu transplanted to la modalidad lingiiistica puertorriquena ...." Puerto Rico several generations prior to the From this point forward the claim that an attestation in question, and partially remod- Afro-Hispanic Creole was once spoken in eled through contact with evolving bozal Puerto Rico has never been seriously chal- and criollo Spanish of Puerto Rico. The most lenged, despite the fact that the case rests significant aspect of this discovery, amply on such a small corpus. In particular, since recognized by Alvarez Nazario, is the fact Ponce was the site of a large colony of that the language of thesegenti di Corsd was Papiamentu-speaking workers in the nine- familiar enough to observers in early nine- teenth century, the possibility that such teenthcentury Puerto Rico so as to require Creole-like verbs as yo ta querd might be no special introduction or translation. influenced by Papiamentu (which has iden- Alonso (1975: 57), in the classic work El tical constructions) warrants further explo- jibaro, also referred to the presence of "cri- ration. 0110s de Curazao" in nineteenth-century Puerto Rico, evidently an unremarkable 4. Papiamentu Language in Puerto phenomenon in his day. Giron (n.d.) also Rico describes the presence of Papiamentu- speaking natives in Puerto Rico (cf. also In the first demonstration of the former Vicente Rosalia 1992). presence of Papiamentu in Puerto Rico, Alvarez Nazario (1970, 1972, 1974) repro- 5. Other Afro Puerto Rican Texts duces a poem written in what is clearly a partially Hispanized Papiamentu, published Alvarez Nazario (1974) also gives frag- in Ponce. The text in question comes from ments of another skit, Tio Fele by Eleuterio a pamphlet describing festive activities re- Derkes, published in 1883. There are sev- alized in the south of Puerto Rico in 1830, eral scenes in which bozal fragments occur; celebrating the birth of the heiress to the these do not suggest a systematic Creole, throne of Fernando VII, who would become but rather the imperfect learning of Span- Isabel 11. Among the songs and dances de- ish: scribed in the pamphlet is the following song, attributed to the "mulatos holandeses Sali, seno. Mala cara pone mi. Yo no quisio di con que residian en el Sur" (Pasarell1951: 124): elle.. .l'olla acia y bota comia.. . Yo tiene calalu, java.. . Tutur genti de Corso Gassa, I'amo, ja! ja! gassa. Celebrado Rey Fernandu Mambatindu ha tambur These extremely brief fragments do little in Di contentu boy bailandu the way of reconstructing bozal language in Comparsa di Julandes colonial Puerto Rico, but they do indicate Celebra a Reyna Cristina Nan Princesa naroyna some awareness of Africanized Spanish Novo astro boy mire. during the nineteenth century. In 1883 Rafael Escalona published two For Alvarez Nazario (1970: 4), the text humorous skits, inspired by the Cuban lit- 854 HlSPANlA 84 DECEMBER 2001 erary stereotype of the negro catedratico. composition, one can only speculate as to The title of Flor de una noche (Escalona the authenticity of the language. 1883b) was intended to be a spoof of the There are a few other short Puerto Rican romantic Puerto Rican poem "Mi flor de un poems that purport to represent bozal lan- dia" by Jose Gautier Benitez, who in turn guage. The "Decima de negros" (Cadilla de had derived his title from the play by the Martinez 1953: Ill), which according to Catalan writer Francisco Camprodon Flor Degetau (1925: 44) was "una cancion de 10s de un dia. Escalona's play was first per- negros bozales," contains some non-agree- formed in 1881. Amor a la pompadour ing conjugated or infinitive verbs, as well as (Escalona 1883a) was first performed in popular non-Africanized Puerto Rican Span- 1882. The second play contains dialect imi- ish: tations ofjibarosand negros catedraticos; the yo se que siiio Rafe first, of catedraticos and bozales. The ej guardia de tu buji catedratico examples represent vernacular que ta namorao de ti , with typical phonetic y tu le correjponde.. . reductions and hypercorrections, together mi coraso sin feli with the heavy dose of malapropisms that por eso yo va muri.. . formed the basis for this literary stereotype. The poem "Yo so un negrito angolo" Some of the bozal examples from Flor de (Cadilla de Martinez 1953: 308) also con- una noche, spoken by Diego, the "negro tains a few suggestions of non-native bozal congo," are: Spanish, but not of a stable Creole:

Yo ta aqui, seiio ... y quiere mi amita blanca Eso cosa lee.. .Baron.. . pa onde yo quiere di. Yo te boy a trae uno traje pompadu ... si su merce a mi me vende Eso cosa no comprendo.. .Eso cosa dise a ml.. . yo de casa no me va. .. Lo corason se me safa, uno cosa grande me fata que yo compra mi liberti.. . me jase arremiya.. . si su merce a mi me juzga Mientra la suete perruna me yeba fuera de ti tu obida de la mala condicion a mi, Lola?... toca que toca, toca, toca Eso mimo dise yo. In the poem "Buscando dinero," Llanos In addition to the dramatic pieces, an odd Allende (1962: 31-3) offers a dialog between and completely unexplained dicima refer- a bmjo and a congo although the latter, pre- ring to the Spanish-American war of 1898 sumably an African-born bozal, in reality was published in a folklore collection (Ma- uses vernacular Puerto kcan Spanish de- son and Espinosa 1918: 361), containing void of specific second-language traits, for what appears to be Afro-Hispanic language. example, "(Y cuando benga Satan6 ande A few examples are: deb0 yo de dil?" Nanqui toy ma makinley.. . A little-known but important literary rep Negro nalla en Africa vivia resentation of Afro-Puerto Rican speech limbre como mariposa.. . comes in the story "Tate" by Maria Cadilla Nanlli Ian dia se curia de Martinez (1945: 49-60). The protagonist tran de tiguiri y lion, is an elderly black woman, a freed slave of limbre como el mismo sol. Vine aqui nan Poto Kico the writer's grandfather, who was appar- de una borega nanfondo, ently born on a Puerto Rican plantation of me llevaron lo nemonios, an African father captured on the African nontron se jicieron rico.. . coast and taken to the Caribbean by Euro- pean slavers. The author gives no further This poem contains a number of Afro-His- information about this presumably real-life panic elements, such as the use of the ge- character (including the background of the neric lan/nan (Lipski 1987a), but mother, who was supposed to have died given the lack of information regarding its when Tate was very young), nor does she IMPLICATIONS OF AFRO-PUERTO RlCAN LANGUAGE IN LITERATURE 855 comment on the unusual speech, except to Creole language , derived from give glosses of words which no Puerto KiKongo or similar Bantu languages. Rican or Spanish speaker from another re- A few Puerto Rican texts document the gion would recognize today. This lack of former presence of Creole French speak- metacommentary is itself suggestive that ers, particularly from the . bozal or hybrid bozal-Caribbean Creole For example in his novel La llamarada, speech was not unusual enough in Puerto Enrique Laguerre (1935: 323-4) has black Rico as late as the early part of the twenti- characters singing couplets with words in eth century so as to require extensive expla- French Creole (which, however, is not nation. Some fragments of this strange glossed in the text): quasi-bozal language, with the author's glosses interspersed, are: Agueda, dime lo que quieres; Dime lo que quieres, Agueda, Balao [buenos dias] siiioritos.. . Dime lo que quieres; Me mamba [mi vestido de cuadrosl cost6 tesorirrial Si es cunya dimelo. [tesoro real] Si es lerd dimelo. Quia ser [que ha de ser], niiio.. . Bella [tengo] mi cuento. Su merce el magarron [pa- Cunya is a fair realization of the Haitian (and tron] dona muchos bellos chicos isabelinos [dio mu- chos buenos medios pesos] pa el Patron nel la chimba lesser Antillean) French Creole word for [hacienda] e Montigrandi pa compralme dejpuej de "now"; lerd seems to mean "later," contain- cristiana. Nel jabeque [casa] de la chimba me dieron ing Creole French ld + heure, "time, hour." el Tate. Ma la Iglesia, ar cristiana, me apropio This is more indirect evidence of the pres- Monsirriate, com'me tocaya la Visne [virgen]. . . ence of Creole French among Afro-Puerto ~QuCparra (e)su me! [que dice su merced]. Ej Monsirriate achiquitao.. . Rican communities. The "Poema dedicado Mi paire jue bambi [oubanghi] coartao. Me prime a la gran recitadora senora Dominga de la megarron jue D. Andre. .. Cruz" by Victorio Llanos Allende (1962: 93) (Bamo! Parrar [hablarl de nobios! iQuere, nifioj?. .. contains the chorus: Oh danze'...mua .... La negra, banalde macucano megarron, parra al nobio This line, in a poem about dancing, appears [la negra, por detras del astuto amo, hablaba con el noviol. Eya taba zamuquita [enarnorada] e Damaso.. . to contain the Creole French elements Nel dentril e bombala, nel candungue.. .nel guateque danse "dance" and mua (i.e., French "moi," dej Santo Patron [these are different dances] more often mud) "I, me." The same poem also contains the lines: ~Que'importa que Tate then recites some coplas, which in- diga la gente que/yo baila bomba, ja, ja? clude verses such as: There appears to be a lack of subject-verb Me gusta la gente branca orguyosa como son tu.. . agreement typical of bozal speech as well as Tu dise, nego macumunao, que yo no pueo baila.. . of speakers of other Caribbean Creoles; Yo se que siiio Manue esth jabrando 'e mi que 'ta later in the poem the line is repeated, but enarnorao e mi y no le corresponde. with a subjunctive, which may mean that This language contains several legitimate one of the lines was misprinted, although Afro-Hispanic phenomena, as well as gen- the poem evidently intends to portray an eral learners' errors. Among the former are "African" : iQud importa que diga la (1)the form dona "give," essentially equiva- gente que/yo baile bomba! lent to Papiamentu duna; (2) the invariant During the nineteenth century, other copula son; (3) the reduction negro > nego, texts appeared in Puerto Rico that pur- a common process in much Afro-Hispanic ported to represent the speech of black and Afro-; (4) the shift slaves, although not using bozal language. branca < blanca, found in Portuguese, but An interesting series of articles appeared in also in early Afro-Hispanic language. More- the newpaper El Ponceiio in the period over, the word esu may not be a contraction 1852-53 (Curet 1986). The articles claimed of su merced, but rather a vestigial African to be "Dialogos grotescos," conversations pronoun; enu is the (now archaic) second between a white master and his slave Pablo person plural pronoun in Afro-Colombian Congo. Congo is portrayed as a sensitive, 856 HlSPANlA 84 DECEMBER 2001 thinking individual, and perhaps for this yo no puere aguanta ma eta via tan rastrera; reason is not depicted as speaking anything Si giiete trabaja, malo, si no trabaja, pio.. . Si lo da sueiio giiete lo jase fuete sesina.. . other than . The articles Nelle son mala cabesa y no se jaya remedio.. were published anonymously, although Curet (1986: 37f.) believes the author to This text contains the independently veri- have been one Benito Vdardell. The articles fied guetd for usted,the invariant copula son, are of interest more for their social value and the invariant third-person pronoun than for their linguistic content; at a time nelle,abundant in Afro- and when other authors, in Puerto Rico and still used among a few elderly Afro-Cubans Cuba were making full use of bozal lan- (Ortiz L6pe.z 1998). However, the most im- guage for humorous purposes, the author portant aspect of this text is the fact of its behind Pablo Congo found it appropriate to expurgation from the final edition of the have an African slave speak reasonable play, since its seeming authenticity would Spanish. be at cross-purposes with the author's de- piction of nobly suffering Africans. 6. The Afro-Puerto Rican Text That Never Was 7. Analysis: Earlier Afro-Puerb Rican Spanish Perhaps the most important bozal text from Puerto Rico was never published at all, The texts surveyed allow for some ten- but rather appears in an unpublished first tative conclusions regarding the speech of draft of an abolitionist play. In 1884, the African slaves and their immediate descen- poet/playwright Ramon Mendez Quifiones dents in colonial Puerto Rico. First, it is (1847-1889) wrote the play "jPobre Sinda!," clear that most if not all the authors in ques- which was never published. This neo-Ro- tion had actually heard some form of bozal mantic drama is set in Puerto Rico, in the Spanish, since their imitations are too con- "epoca de la odiosa esclavitud-1864." sistent both with one another and with at- Among the characters is an "esclavo viejo, testations of Afro-Hispanic language from congo," who in the definitive version of the other countries to be due to mere chance. manuscript speaks in normal, even sublime, Although some instances of imperfect Span- Spanish, as he delivers his impassioned ish could be attributed to general learners' denunciations of the cruelties of slavery. In speech, most cases point to authentic inter- unpublished notes, discovered by Giron ference from one or more African lan- (1991: 399-411), Mendez Quifiones gives guages, or-in a few texts--of other Creole his reasons for not having this African-born languages such as Papiamentu. Awareness slave use bozal language: "Hablando en su of bozal Spanish among the general popu- jerga, no convenceria, y en 10s momentos lation was not as high as in Cuba during the mas pateticos no haria sentir, produciendo same time period, since the proportion of con sus exclamaciones de dolor la hilaridad African-born slaves and free blacks in del publico" (Giron 1991: 400). To demon- Puerto Rico was much smaller. Imitation of strate his point, the author adds examples Afro-Cuban texts by Puerto Rican authors of several scenes that he had originally writ- is also unlikely, since the most telling Cu- ten in bozal Spanish, "y de las cuales ban texts, such as those of Lydia Cabrera, prescindi por 10s conceptos antes were written well after the Puerto Rican expresados." These fragments show great documents, while Cuban literature repre- similarity with bozal texts from elsewhere senting bozal Spanish contemporary with in Latin America, and when combined with the Puerto Rican works surveyed above the author's obvious concern for the situa- were obscure and probably unknown in tion of blacks in Puerto Rico, converge on Puerto Rico. Does this mean that Afro a positive evaluation of the linguistic value Puerto Rican Spanish was part of a larger of the unpublished notes: Caribbean Spanish Creole, as suggested by IMPLICATIONS OF AFRO-PUERTO RlCAN LANGUAGE IN LITERATURE 857 pro-Creole advocates? In general, the an- bozales' presumed ineptitude, as in the swer is negative, since the total Afro-Puerto former Cuban imprecation Tzi eres un negro Rican intertext exhibits too much variation de "yo va di, yo va veni,"referring to highly in its fundamental elements-verb phrases, non-standard and even non-native Spanish. noun phrases, agreement-to represent The few non-standard elements common to any completely coherent natural language. bozal Spanish in Cuba and Puerto Rico re- Found instead was a series of common de- flect geographical, social, and economic nominators forged in the collision between proximity during colonial times; the Afro- West African languages and Spanish, and Puerto Rican data are simply insufficient to reinforced by the fluent but ethnically warrant any more wide-reaching conclu- tinged speech of island-born slaves and sions. slavedrivers, the capataces, mayorales, contramayorales, and mayordomoswho con- 8. Conclusions stituted the linguistic and cultural interface between African slaves and their white mas- Despite the small size of the Afro-Puerto ters. A few special forms such as the pro- Rican corpus, these texts tell a fascinating nouns elle/nelle and the invariant copula son story of the formative period of Caribbean traveled freely between Cuba and Puerto Spanish in all its ethnic nuances. Puerto Rico, occasionally reaching other comers of Rico sat athwart the Caribbean slave routes, the Spanish Caribbean; in the absence of a all the while absorbing linguistic and cul- true pan-Caribbean Spanish Creole-and tural influences from neighboring Afro-Cre- available evidence overwhelmingly disfa- ole islands. Although deriving its origins vors such a hypothesis-the only plausible from captives' struggle to learn Spanish model for the appearance of these selected from their tormentors, Afro-Puerto Rican Afro-Hispanic words on more than one is- bozal language outlasted and outgrew sla- land is the transfer of slaves and very and oppression, to add its subtle touch slavedrivers. The presence on both islands to the life, literature, and language of all of speakers of other Creole languages such Boricuas. as Papiamentu and French Creole may have contributed to Afro-Hispanic common de- NOTE nominators not easily derived from regional Spanish, but these Creole language speak- ' This article is dedicated to Estelle Irizarry, a su- ers were few in number and regionally con- perb editor, colleague, and friend. Access to materi- als in the Puerto Rican collection of the [Jniversidad fined, while Afro-Hispanic bozal language is de Puerto Rico Rio Piedras Lbrary was facilitated by attested throughout Puerto Rico and Cuba. a Title VI libraw collections grant in July 1999. In any event, there is absolutely no evidence to suggest that any Afro-Hispanic language WORKS CITED was learned by Puerto Rican slaves prior to Alonso, Manuel. 1975.El jibaro. Barcelona: Editorial arriving in the Caribbean, e.g., as part of a vosgos. West African Creole Portuguese, as sug- Alvarez Nazario, Manuel. 1959."Notas sobre el hahla gested, e.g., by Granda, Megenney, and del negro en Puerto Rico durante el siglo XIX." Perl, among others. 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