Juan Bobo: A Folkloric Information System - how the controversial work of anthropologist J. Alden Mason, who collected Puerto Rican folklore, underscores the problem of authenticating folklore artifacts

Library Trends, Wntr, 1999 by Sarai Lastra

That the importance of oral history has been recognized in this culture can best be summed up by the words of Don Rafael Ramirez de Arellano (1926), a Puerto Rican educator-philosopher who collected samples of folklore eleven years after Mason completed his field project. Says Ramirez de Arellano: "the best preparation for the future is the complete and exact knowledge of the past" (p. 7).

FROM SPEAKERS TO READERS

   We have profound consideration for your national ideas; you must treat our
   local ideas with a similar consideration.

      --Luis Munoz Rivera, 1916(3)

A slight detour into some history on Puerto Rican children's literature is necessary for locating the position of printed folktales within the educational system. A chronicle of Puerto Rican children's literature has been given most notably by Ester Feliciano Mendoza (1969), Carmen Bravo Villasante (1966), and Flor Pineiro de Rivera (1987). Most chroniclers agree that a desire to provide Puerto Rican children with relevant literature emerged in 1882 when an educator, Eugenio Maria de Hostos, wrote "El Libro de Mis Hijos" (The Book for My Children). De Hostos's short stories were recommended as valuable literature because children received "wise advice" while decoding the text. However, Feliciano Mendoza (1969) noted that the book should not be considered as initiating a children's literature publishing trend because its intended audience was not children (p. 444).

It was not until 1898, when the United States assumed control over the island's educational system and found books unavailable, that a new publishing trend was established. The directives from the federal educational officer were that if in three months locals could not produce suitable Spanish books for children, then all instruction would be switched to English. Feliciano Mendoza describes how Manuel Fernandez Juncos, a Spaniard living in Puerto Rico, "created the miracle" by translating the text of and composing Spanish songs for Sarah Louise Arnold and Charles B. Gilbert's book First Steps in English into a Spanish version titled, Los Primeros Pasos en Castellano, within the required time. Afterward, Fernandez Juncos compiled "Antologia Puertorriquena" (Puerto Rican Anthology), which he described as stories written for a young adult audience. Subsequently, he wrote "Semblanzas Puertorriquefias" (Biographical Sketches of Puerto Ricans), stories which presented prominent locals in a "delightful way" (Feliciano Mendoza, 1969, pp. 445-46). Other local authors followed Fernandez Juncos's lead, and Flor Pineiro (1987, pp. 4-35) provides an extensive listing of children's titles and book awards received during the past 100 years.

While local authors were producing various remarkable works for adults and children (for a comprehensive history and chronology, see Rivera de Alvarez, 1983, 1970; Manrique Cabrera, 1982; Martinez Masdeu y Melon, 1970), local educators were dealing with a legacy of a Spanish-English rivalry that was converging on the public schools. Negron de Montilla (1975) details early controversies spanning the years of 1900 through 1930 and notes that most of the initial misunderstandings stemmed from the first six U.S. Commissioners of Education basing their policy decisions on the following 1899 war report: