At the Tradition's Core: Roque Navarro                                                 
por Heriberto Torres Vázquez
Publicado originalmente en la Revista del Instituto del Cuatro Puertorriqueño
Junio 1978


The mountain. The coffee fields. Rain, a lot of rain. Dirt roads. Clay and mud. Torrential rivers. Humidity and cold. Neighbors are distant and few. Families dispersed. Open fields. Work abounds, but pay is meager.

The rural schoolhouse is made of wood, it's roof covered in zinc, unpainted. A teacher arrives only when it doesn't rain, and it rains almost every day. A pair of old books is all there is for more than thirty kids that crowd into four or five wooden benches, around three tables, also of wood, with the tops scratched and scribbled, unpainted. The patio is all dirt, unkept. The children, between 8 and 12 years old, play with colored crystal marbles. The children are barefoot. By the one corner of the patio, a narrow path crosses over the red clay, where people and beasts pass by slowly and silently. The landscape is very rugged. The path twists between guaraguao and guava trees, until it stops at don Cornelio's little store, where one can enter through either of two narrow wooden doors.

Rustic planks make up the floor, covered with clay from the path. The counter is also made of wood. Cleanliness left there a long time ago. The air smells of bacon, herring, codfish, sausage, blue soap, twisted leaves of tobacco, cane syrup, and at times, the presence of moonshine can be discerned. At each side, two windows. At the left, the path towards Adjuntas can be seen. The town beyond the mountains. To get there is the almost everybody's rosy dream. For this 1920s barrio Portillo ["hole" or "hatch"] is a dead end. What future there is, is dissolved within the coffee fields, behind a mule, in the charcoal pile, and if one is lucky, in the sawmill.

José Roque Navarro Jiménez was eight years old when he looked back for the last time to say goodbye to his familiar Tanamá river. He was the eldest of four brothers. His father, a small farmer, went to the outskirts of the town--but the town nevertheless--to look for a more secure source of support for his family.

Adjuntas promised him--at least in his own mind--all the work opportunities that never got to Portillo. The road was slow and sad, and he twisted in anguish as he watched them leave. But his bale of hope was greater than the pain of the move, and it bumped up against the grassy ravines along the path.

For Roque, what was left behind was the third-grade school, his uncle Pedro Jiménez and his grandfather Eugenio. Next to them, he learned to like, and at times even produce the vibrant notes of those rustic cuatros, so slowly extracted from the trunks of the Guaraguao or Cedro tree. How he delighted in the memory of those times when his uncle and grandfather ordered him to care for the house while they worked the nearby fields--and took advantage while they were away, searching the cuatro all day long for the notes he wanted! How happy he was when he discovered the sound he hoped for! Now and then his father, singer of décima poems, tore him from his meditations, with his hoarse and moaning voice, dragging a cadena [a chain, or traditional sad song].

The narrow path, the slow trudge up the hill with no shortcuts and the earth, hard and slippery, seemed to anticipate the rest of his life. Everything was prologue. For Roque Navarro life would not be easy.

In reality, he never reached the town, he only got as far as barrio Saltillo. There he went to the went to fifth grade and was skipped to the seventh at the Escuela José Julián Acosta. But his poverty did not allow him to finish seventh grade. The country suffered under a terrible social and economic crisis, worsened by the hurricane named San Felipe. Roque had to work as an errand boy and as a laborer's assistant, to help his father obtain what they needed to survive.

As a reward for this life of hardship and sorrow, Roque met Rafael (Fife) Medina, one of the most privileged players of the Puerto Rican cuatro that the center of the Island has known. Roque was turning into a man. Looking at himself in Fife Medina's mirror, he polished his skills on the cuatro. He accompanied him to dances, and when Fife rested, he would play the instrument. Soon he became a complete cuatro player. With Fife Medina's encouragement he formed his own group and often livened up those dances and rosarios cantaos [events where the rosary is sung] when his maestro could not attend. There was always great cordiality between master and disciple.

Meanwhile, to survive through that period of depression and poverty in the country, Roque became a carpenter and later a cabinetmaker. He also gained prestige as a maker of cuatros.

In 1950, he arrived in San Juan, where nobody knew him, but soon it seemsed everyone began to discover him. He played on several radio stations with his group. When he was not busy as a carpentry subcontractor for housing projects, he was in his shop fixing and making musical string instruments.

In 1953 he graduated to a first prize from don Rafael Quiñones Vidal's widely respected Tribuna del Arte [Tribune of the Arts] program. Also graduating were Cristóbal Santiago, Toñito Vélez and Arturito Avilés. Don Rafael Quiñones Vidal contracted him to play cuatro on the Tribuna del Arte program for eight years.

In 1959 he obtained first prize in the Instituto de Cultura Puertorriqueña´s [Institute of Puerto Rican Culture's] Tiple and Cuatro Making Contest  As a cuatro player his contribution is significant to the history, growth and spread of our folkore. He has received numerous prizes and awards that express this. Its worth mentioning the plaque awarded to him by the Puerto Rican Tourism Office and during eight years running he was awarded by the Codazos festival as the best cuatro player in Puerto Rico.

Although in his waning years he has continued working as an automobile painter and sheet metal worker, he has never left the music behind. On working days, during the evening hours he occupied himself of a cuatro and guitar teacher for eighty students in the Multiple Services Center in Puerto Nuevo.

Roque Navarro is the author of numerous musical compositions, but his humility is the cause for his not being acknowledged on recordings where he has played, or where his original music appears. For example en the Casa Ansonia LP titled Danzas con Julita Ross Roque Navarro's name cannot be found anywhere, but he is playing the cuatro in the orchestra directed by Moncho Usera. For that same trait of his personality, most of his music--and the best of it--has remain unpublished.

Roque Navarro, the man, is reserved, like the people of his country and his neighborhood. If the interlocutor hasn't participating in or is not familiar with the environment where the musician took root, communication with him is difficult. But once the curtain of wariness is pulled aside, the man appears as communicative, frank, brutally frank, but while remaining prudent. He is an easy friend, very accomodating, generous, and hardworking, but resentful of the neglect shown to the national instrument and its music. His love of the instrument has not permitted him to make a living from his cuatro, but he has lived for his cuatro.

[Note: don Roque passed away in 2002]