Jíbaro (Spanish: [ˈxiβaɾo]) is a word used in Puerto Rico to refer to the countryside people who farm the land in a traditional way.

Traditional jíbaros were also farmer-salesmen who would grow enough crops to sell in the towns near their farms to purchase the bare necessities for their families, such as clothing.

"[1] Under Operation Bootstrap, in the middle of the twentieth century, Puerto Rico experienced an island-wide shift from an agrarian to an industrial society.

[3] In the political arena, when Luis Muñoz Marín ran for office, he often invoked the jíbaro as a means of uniting the working class of Puerto Rico under a populist party.

Muñoz Marín also adopted as the symbol of his party the silhouette of a Puerto Rican farmer with a pava,[4] the straw hat that field laborers often wore.

[9] A 1930 Brookings Institution report on Puerto Rico stated, "In spite of his fatalism the jíbaro is kindly, friendly and courteous, and hospitable to the last degree.

"[10] Here is how J. T. O'Neil described the 1850s jibaro in his 1855 book "The Spanish West Indies: Cuba and Porto Rico: geographical, political, and industrial":[11] The poor tenant of a hut built entirely of the palm-tree, and bound together with the strong and pliable bejuco, whose only habiliments are a check shirt, osnaburgs pantaloons, straw hat and an innocent machete strapped to his waist; who spends most of his time in his hammock smoking and playing on the triple (a small guitar), doing nothing, or sleeping; divested of care for the future by the present possession of a few coffee and plantain trees, a cow, a and the indispensable horse, and anticipating the pleasures of the next holiday cock-fight or dance, will extend the most cordial and polite welcome to the benighted traveler, set before him the best of his plantains, milk, and cheese; relinquish to him his rustic bed; unsaddle and feed his horse, which at break of day he will have in readiness, and dismiss his guest with a vaya usted con Dios, refusing with a gesture of pride or offended delicacy all proffer of payment.Jíbaro culture is also characterized by its own typical Puerto Rican folk music, commonly termed "jíbaro music".

(...'Los Secos' sought to kill all the Peninsulares and that him [Celestino Aponte, representative of the Republic of Puerto Rico in Aibonito] has picked up a document written in jíbaro which has not been possible to decipher.

But the notion that this custom was also true for girls, or that jíbaro boys went to school naked, was debunked by over 3,000 pictures that Townsend took throughout Puerto Rico in 1900.

Unlike the birds in the United States which were outfitted with metal razor-sharp blades strapped to their legs, Puerto Rico jíbaros fought their cocks with their own gaffs.

Their crops would consist of whatever the land would grow, including bananas, plantains, avocados, ñames, yautías, batatas, yucas, malangas, and apio.

Even after that revolution failed, jíbaros were credited with keeping the spirit of Puerto Rican freedom alive through other revolts including the 1897 Intentona de Yauco.

A jíbaro can mean someone who is considered ignorant or impressionable due to a lack of formal education, as are many country or "hillbilly" people of several other nations.

[34] Despite this negative connotation, the primary image is now that of a person representing the idea of a "traditional Puerto Rican": simple but hard-working, independent but prudently wise.

Colloquially, the jíbaro imagery serves as a representation of the roots of the modern-day Puerto Rican people and symbolizes the strength of traditional values such as living simply and properly caring for the family and the homeland.