About This Website
by Don Jibaro

As part of the Puerto Rican Diáspora, we take the Christmas, Easter and most holiday seasons too deep to heart. That's good. Our rich cultural traditions dominate the essence of our thinking... a cuatro... guiros... pasteles... La Plaza del Recreo...!!! Ah... We can't help but to have a couple of "pasteles" and maybe a cup of "coquito" in the back of our minds. Unfortunately, after January, all seems to fade away.

Some time ago, I was playing guitar in a restaurant in Los Angeles, where I met an intelligent young Puerto Rican man who, was we sipped some espressos, told me about his struggles with the duality of the ethnicity of Puerto Ricans in the United States. By the inflections of his speech, I understood that to be "what you appear to be" to society and "what you are in reality". From then on, I kept seeing the phenomenon of identity in the Boricuas in the USA as a virtual necessity to express that identity.

Like other ethnic groups, we, as Hispanic immigrants into the U.S.A., rely on that identity to establish our position in today's society. It's vital for us to accept it, since the world urges us to recognize ourselves as it recognizes us, not as we really are or anything else.

The many misconceptions, battles with stereotypes and individual struggles have made it essential for me to build this website. The majority of JIBAROS.COM readers are, evidently enough, outside of Puerto Rico... the majority of them are in the United States. That's why most of the data is in English with Spanish flavor rather than vice-versa.

Concerning the people involved in making this site, it's just me, Don Jíbaro, one person doing all the work from a small corner of my house. I am not saying that boastfully... it's just that there's no one to help and since I get no money from the website I can't hire anyone to help. Yes, I make pennies with some advertisers here and there, but I put those up to turn my readers on to a good deal, rather that making myself a lot of dough. I turn down a lot of advertisement from folks that are out to get you as consumers. ¡Anh, aah... not here!

I intend to train one of my children to learn the pandemonium of HTML and JAVA and continue the tradition, because I believe that I have hit something important here, something that must be declared. As Puerto Ricans, we've inherited a life with so much spice, flavor and wonderful color that many times it gets shadowed by our need to survive in today's society. The human race beckons: "We gotta work harder to stay afloat." Because of this, many times we forget to stop and taste the "mavi".

So, this website is for you to be transported to a "virtual" Borinquen... to tell the world that Puerto Rico and its people are not boring. That we are happy, creative and sharp folk and have more than meets the eye.

Jíbaros.com has become a web magazine (e-zine) that celebrates the humble Puerto Rican campesino , the one that makes mistakes but seeks resiliently to bounce back without missing a beat. He learns from his errors and will not allow history to repeat itself on him.

About me... My name is Orlando... Orly... Orlo, et al. Nobody knows Orlando the artist, writer, musician. They know Don Jíbaro Barbanegra, my pen name, nom de plume, literary double... a pseudonym adopted  to conceal my identity. A pen name is used if a writer's real name is likely to be confused with the name of another writer or notable individual, or if their real name is deemed to be unsuitable. Orlando was a furious warrior. Not my idea of a man. I am an artist...  A padawan.

Authors who write in fiction and non-fiction, or in different genres, may use pen names to avoid confusing their readers, as in the case mathematician Charles Dodgson, who wrote fantasy novels under the pen name Lewis Carroll. Some female authors use male pen names, particularly in the 19th century, when writing was a male-dominated profession. A pseudonym may also be used to hide the identity of the author, as in the case of exposé books about espionage or crime, or explicit fiction. Yikes!

I have admittedly considered myself somewhat of a curmudgeon.. a sensitive guy with a distaste for mediocrity who hides pain behind a somewhat thin layer of misanthropy. I mean, very thin. My kind can easily turn pain into humor while at the same time attack the shaggy-dog phony because it devalues genuine sentiment.

I also dislike the insincerely emotional such as hypocritical expressions of sympathy, mushy effusiveness, a schmaltzy Puerto Rican love song and definitely people who pretend to live their lives as a cheap sentimental soap opera.

To my detriment, people think that I have no hair on my tongue as not having a serviceable 'change of mind' mechanism. Yet some consider me as endowed with a somewhat keen perception and sly wit. For what it is worth, I thank each and everyone of them three. Yes, thanks!

We have a people to uplift and I am just doing my share.