Ángel Pacheco Alvarado

Ángel Pacheco Alvarado, known as “El jíbaro de Peñuelas,” was a musician, composer, and troubadour from Peñuelas who played guitar and especially tiple, his greatest skill. Born in 1878 during Spanish rule, he was the son of Juan Pacheco and Vicenta Alvarado and was married to Antonia Delgado Jácome. He became known as one of Peñuelas’s best musicians and was considered a titan of the décima despite having little formal schooling, replying to such comments, “What do nightingales know about grammar and music?” He wrote the book El Tiple Puertorriqueño, the only published book on that subject, and also wrote El Aguinaldo, Al Son de Mi Tiple Doliente, and a farce entitled El Negrito Caledonio. For more than seventy years he composed décimas and aguinaldos. He died on September 17, 1972, at age 94 and was buried in the municipal cemetery of Peñuelas. In 1990, a statue of him, sculpted by Luis H. Vega Rodríguez and featuring a cuatro in reference to the fame of Peñuelas’s cuatristas, was unveiled in the public square and is now located on the south detour at the Quebrada Santo Domingo Bridge.

Peñuelas, Puerto Rico · United States