"Despejando la niebla": el jíbaro en la escritura de Bailey K. Ashford

Abstract

This essay studies the written representation of the power relationship between the colonizer and the subaltern subject. It analizes A Soldier in Science, the autobiography of Bailey K. Ashford, and a report submitted to Congress in 1912, La uncinariasis en Puerto Rico: un problema médico y económico. In both texts the jíbaro is depicted as a anemia patient, seen through the lens of the microscope, and its identity defined in turn of numeric proportions encased in accordance to the degree of infection. Out through the identity of the iíbaro is seen from a medical perspective which, at the same time, is part of the social and cultural relationship established in the period following US invasion of 1898.