In the opening lines of “Nuestra Apatía,” Jesús Colón wrote, “Una de las grandes faltas del puertorriqueño de hoy día es que casi nunca le da coraje, no se entusiasma por nada, todo lo toma como venga” [One of the greatest flaws of today’s Puerto Ricans is that they never get angry, they do not feel passionate about anything, and they react to everything that comes to them in a passive way] (70). Countermeasures against these flaws greatly influenced the work of Jesús Colón and “Castor Oil: Simple or Compound?” is no exception. This autobiographical text is found in The Way It Was and Other Writings by Jesús Colón, which was published posthumously by the Center for Puerto Rican Studies in Hunter College, New York in conjunction with Arte Público
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He moved to New York at the young age of seventeen in the quest for better economic opportunities (Edna Acosta-Belén 13). Edna Acosta-Belén notes that “all of the men and women who succumbed to the lure of the continental shores sought to make a better life for themselves than what was promised in the homeland […] the common ground in each of their experiences was rooted in the Island government’s inability to provide a future for an impoverished population” (13). Colón had a humble upbringing among the tabaqueros1 of his neighborhood. Despite the illiteracy of most cigar makers, many cigar factories at the time had a lector2 who read to the workers during the day. Colón grew up listening to the lector because of his house’s close proximity to the cigar factory. In “A Voice through the Window” Colón expresses how he enjoys listening to the writings of “Zola, Balzac, Hugo […] Kropotkin, Malatesta or Marx” (“A Voice through the Window” 11). These critical writers fostered a love for communism within Colón that would shape his life. The bulk of his writing took place in the aftermath of Operation Bootstrap, which was a period wherein “Puerto Rican writers, from the Island and those living in New York, turned their attention to lending fictional representation to the migration and resettlement experience” (Flores
He moved to New York at the young age of seventeen in the quest for better economic opportunities (Edna Acosta-Belén 13). Edna Acosta-Belén notes that “all of the men and women who succumbed to the lure of the continental shores sought to make a better life for themselves than what was promised in the homeland […] the common ground in each of their experiences was rooted in the Island government’s inability to provide a future for an impoverished population” (13). Colón had a humble upbringing among the tabaqueros1 of his neighborhood. Despite the illiteracy of most cigar makers, many cigar factories at the time had a lector2 who read to the workers during the day. Colón grew up listening to the lector because of his house’s close proximity to the cigar factory. In “A Voice through the Window” Colón expresses how he enjoys listening to the writings of “Zola, Balzac, Hugo […] Kropotkin, Malatesta or Marx” (“A Voice through the Window” 11). These critical writers fostered a love for communism within Colón that would shape his life. The bulk of his writing took place in the aftermath of Operation Bootstrap, which was a period wherein “Puerto Rican writers, from the Island and those living in New York, turned their attention to lending fictional representation to the migration and resettlement experience” (Flores