The Scurvy Dog's Puerto Rican Blog, aka- Roberto's Puerto Rico

The Old Sugar Mills & Plan­ta­tions of PR, Part 3

As men­tioned in my 2 pre­vi­ous posts, the area in South East PR was home to the last Sug­ar­cane hacien­das (plan­ta­tions) and sugar mills.

If Guayama was the epi­cen­ter of this cli­matic chap­ter in PR’s his­tory, then Arroyo was its ‘port of call’ on the coast. The com­mer­cial port at Aguirre Cen­tral did not come into being until the early 1930’s.

The ‘Wel­come to Arroyo’ sign is a sculp­ture com­mem­o­rat­ing buc­ca­neers of the sea.

Prof­i­teer­ing & smug­gling were very much a part of its past!

As per the last post, we were there on a Thurs­day. It was hot and humid but there was a lit­tle bit of a breeze down by the sea. That did take the edge off the +90F heat.

Arroyo is a sleepy lit­tle town about 1/4 the size of Guayama. It was for­mally founded on Christ­mas day, 1855, but was a Span­ish set­tle­ment long before that. Its always been a pop­u­lar rest stop on the way to other des­ti­na­tions. How­ever, Arroyo has a check­ered past. Leg­end has it, that a ship wrecked indi­vid­ual washed up at Arroyo. They thought he had Cholera so they tossed him back into the sea. At the time, Cholera was wide­spread across the island. Another story claims a local known for his gen­eros­ity, came down with Bubonic plague and was report­edly burned alive to pro­tect its cit­i­zens. It was known back then as ‘Pueblo Ingrato’. These events have haunted Arroyo ever since. Hence its desire to clean up its rep­u­ta­tion and declare itself, Pueblo Grato.

Believe it or not– Samuel Morse set up the first tele­graph line on the island and all of Latin Amer­ica, here in Arroyo. It stretched from Hacienda La Enri­queta (his daughter’s home), a sug­ar­cane plan­ta­tion, down to the docks at Arroyo. Morse did this while vis­it­ing his daugh­ter and son-in-law in 1859. This event inspired the gov­ern­ment of PR to run tele­graph lines con­nect­ing the rest of the island and was com­pleted in the early 1870’s. Well before the Spanish-American War of 1898.

We drove on down to the boat har­bor in hopes of scor­ing a cou­ple of Cervezas (beers) to cool us off. As luck would have it, there were sev­eral bars to check out. We stopped at ‘Bar El Barco’. It had a juke box in the cor­ner blar­ing out up-beat Latin bal­lads. The Puerto Rican gal behind the bar spoke per­fect Eng­lish and seemed to be amused by our pres­ence. With all the doors swung wide open, there was a nice breeze through the place.

The mid after­noon sun is quite harsh. The locals always avoid this time of day.

As a gringo (well, Scurvy Dog) in Par­adise, it was a per­fect time to shoot. I had the place to myself.

The small shel­tered har­bor across from the bar looks like it’s slowly fill­ing in with sand. Thanx to Global Warm­ing, that may not be much of a prob­lem. Arrg!!! As can be seen in the wide shot, small fish­ing boats still tie up here. It was a beau­ti­ful spot.

There were signs of seri­ous infra­struc­ture improve­ments going on. A series of cement kiosks were being built along the board­walk, includ­ing a rather inter­est­ing cement sculp­ture down at the far end. I guess this area gets more traf­fic in the evenings.

Arroyo’s beaches are very pop­u­lar and draw large crowds on the week­ends too.

From here, we headed up Morse Street a cou­ple of blocks to the newly ren­o­vated U.S. Cus­toms Office. It’s a museum in its own right, Museo Antigua Adu­ana. We were some­what pressed for time, but I did stop and take the oppor­tu­nity to shoot it.  It has a gor­geous facade around the front door, an inter­est­ing steel sculp­ture in the front yard and a very nicely main­tained pri­vate gar­den in the back. The sculp­ture looked like a water foun­tain of sorts, but was not turned on. Just inside the entrance are sev­eral old black and white pho­tos from Arroyo’s past.

A few more blocks on up Morse was Arroyo’s cen­tral Plaza. It was on the small­ish side. There was a cen­tral water fea­ture with a cou­ple of bronze plaques. One of them was ded­i­cated to Morse by the Daugh­ters of the Amer­i­can Rev­o­lu­tion. Go fig­ure. Sev­eral large trees with park benches rounds out the Plaza.

On an adja­cent cor­ner is a most mag­nif­i­cent Catholic church. In fact, the grounds of the church are larger than the city’s Plaza. The small gar­dens out front were beau­ti­fully main­tained. Ser­vices are held here weekly.

As we headed out of town, Morse Street becomes Hwy 178. We took this to La Valentina, then a right onto ‘Camino Veci­nal’ which turns into Calle Can­gre­jos (street). I spot­ted yet another aban­doned sug­ar­cane mill so I stopped to check it out. Great shots!!

Fur­ther on down, we hit the open beaches. No facil­i­ties, but per­fect for a pic­nic or bar-b-que. By this time, it was start­ing to rain. We did run on down to the guard shack just out­side Faro Punta de las Fig­uras (light­house). Since the weather had gone bad, we decided to turn around and go home. There is a beach resort located a lit­tle fur­ther up the road. I’ll have to come back for that another time.

Rem­nants of the last nar­row gauge rail­road on the island can be found if you know where to look.

All the com­mer­cial travel guides make ref­er­ence to the ‘Tren del Sur de Arroyo’ sug­ar­cane train tour (estab­lished in 1984). They also state that its cur­rently sus­pended for ‘ser­vice’. I did get a peek at the facil­ity and it looks like it’s been aban­doned since it was shut down in 2005. Grass was grow­ing in the park­ing lot and shrubs were tak­ing over. One of the lit­tle nar­row gauge diesel elec­tric Ply­mouth switcher engines is on dis­play out­side the fence.

It was rain­ing pretty hard by the time we got there (on our way back home) so I was lim­ited with what I could do. You can just barely make out the train engine on the far right of the panoramic shot.  Of the many pho­tos I saw online from folks who did get to ride the train, it looked kind of ‘rugged’.

Not the ‘Six Flags” ride most folks are famil­iar with.  It still seems like some­thing worth res­ur­rect­ing, if only on a smaller scale.  Cur­rent plans are in play by the Insti­tuto de Cul­tura Puer­tor­riqueño to do just that.  I’ll update as I find out more.

Unfor­tu­nately things went bad after we hit the high­way on the other side of Guayama.

The Isuzu shred­ded a fan belt, over heated and blew a hose.

No kid­ding!

We were stranded on the side of the road until I flagged down a cop. He called a ‘Grua’ (tow truck) for us. It showed up about 40 min­utes later. All together, we lost 2 hours on the side of the road. The oper­a­tor was a real nice kid in his late 20’s. He was dri­ving an old Chevy wrecker from the late ’60’s. A real clunker.  The thought of a tow truck, tow­ing a tow truck crossed my mind. It took another hour to get home from there. It was a lit­tle after 8PM by the time we pulled into the dri­ve­way. The tow set me back a $100. I had all three fan belts replaced for a total of $60.

Cram­ming two towns into one trip was a bit much.

I plan to come back to Arroyo for a 2nd pass at the boat har­bor, beaches, light­house, museum and aban­doned sugar pro­cess­ing facil­i­ties.  Whew!  There is plenty to see if you make the time.

ARRGGG!!!!!

My Name is Earl: This post was made early on Mon­day, ahead of the the impend­ing arrival of Hur­ri­cane Earl. It should pass well North of San Juan so us folks on the South coast are pretty safe. That said, the power goes out in Puerto Rico on a weekly, almost daily basis (as does the water). I antic­i­pate it going off any time. Inter­net ser­vice will be spo­radic at best. Things should be back to nor­mal by the end of the week. The Scurvy Dog, Arrg!

The Old Sugar Mills & Plan­ta­tions of PR, Part 2

As men­tioned in my last post, the area in South East PR was home to the last Sug­ar­cane hacien­das (plan­ta­tions) and sugar mills. This is evi­dent by the numer­ous red brick struc­tures still stand­ing from its dis­tant past.

Guayama was the epi­cen­ter of this cli­matic chap­ter in Puerto Rico’s history.

Guayama as a set­tle­ment dates to before its found­ing in 1736 and boasted no less than 200 houses, a church and plaza by 1776. Guayama was also involved in the Span­ish Amer­i­can War of 1898. Two bat­tles were fought here, one in Guayama (August 5, 1898) and one North of town (August 9, 1898) as part of a cam­paign to move on Cayey, then on to San Juan. The war ended before that happened.

The nick­name comes from the fact that African folk­lore is still cel­e­brated today. This must not be con­fused with ‘black magic’ or Hait­ian rit­u­als. There is a week long fes­ti­val in March, the col­or­ful Brujo Car­ni­val.

There are sev­eral other fairs to see in Guayama, but the Dulce Sueño Fair is high on the local’s list. A cel­e­bra­tion to honor the esteemed Paso Fino horse. I’ve seen a cou­ple of these smaller horses out where I live. They are of Span­ish ori­gin and brought to Puerto Rico hun­dreds of years ago, how­ever the Paso Fino is unique to Puerto Rico as its a mix of 3 spe­cific breeds.  A sub­ject I will explore in the future.

The Rise and Fall of Sugar as King–

Sug­ar­cane was grown on the island from the ear­li­est days (using slave labor), but took off around 1830. Con­tra­band trade with the US in sugar and molasses can be traced to before this date. Spain real­ized it could not con­trol this illicit trade so in 1815, they sanc­tioned for­mal trade with the colonies. This opened the door for Cuba too. Slave labor, then cheap, unreg­u­lated labor after the US assumed con­trol of PR drove the sugar indus­try. It was not until PR gained it’s “Com­mon­wealth” sta­tus that the min­i­mum wage came to bear. Back then, the cul­ti­va­tion of sug­ar­cane required burn­ing the fields to rid the cane of leaves. Then it was cut down by hand with machetes. That was fol­lowed by crush­ing it in small local mills. Water and steam dri­ven mills did not come into play until late in the 19th century.

Very labor inten­sive to say the least.

All agri­cul­ture fell into seri­ous decline in PR as of “Oper­a­tion Boot­strap” (1940’s) which encour­aged man­u­fac­ture and phar­ma­ceu­ti­cal devel­op­ment through a series of heavy tax incen­tives.  Sugar could not com­pete with the wages paid to ‘fac­tory work­ers’ (as mea­ger as they were by US stan­dards) so the sugar indus­try relo­cated to Cuba and then to the Domini­can Repub­lic. It was all down­hill for sugar by the end of the 1940’s.

Today, ALL of the sugar used
to make Puerto Rican RUM
comes from the DR, but since
it’s dis­tilled and bot­tled here,
they don’t have to divulge
that lit­tle tid­bit of info.

Arrg!!!!

The 21st Century–

Greater Guayama is typ­i­cal of most Puerto Rican towns it’s size (about 44,000 per 2000 census).

Their econ­omy has adjusted with the times and sup­ports it’s self with some agri­cul­ture, live­stock and some com­mer­cial man­u­fac­ture includ­ing pharmaceuticals.

Jobos Bay National Estu­ar­ine Research Reserve (2,883 acres) and Aguirre fall within Guayama’s juris­dic­tion (pro­nounced Hobo). Jobo is an indige­nous fruit bear­ing tree sim­i­lar to Man­goes. The Estu­ary skirts the East­ern edge of Aguirre Cen­tral cov­ered in my last post. These Man­grove forests are a good place to go if you are scout­ing for birds. Man­a­tee can be spot­ted in the area too. I will make it back to this spot for more shots.

I took Hwy 53 off Hwy 52 to get to Guayama. It was a straight shot with­out any issues. Worth not­ing, at that turnoff is a giant steel struc­ture that resem­bles a bob­sled run.  Its actu­ally a huge tail fin sculp­ture for a grove of palms laid out on the ground like a big air­plane. You can eas­ily make it out from the GoogleMap image. We drove through it sev­eral times not know­ing what it was sup­posed to be.

We were there on a Thurs­day. It was hot and humid with lit­tle air cir­cu­la­tion. As hot as being in Ponce. In fact, the South side of the island, down by the coast is almost always hot. Beau­ti­ful, but hot. We always pack a small cooler and I was real glad we did today. I had done a pretty thor­ough job with GoogleMaps this time so I basi­cally knew where I wanted to go. Our first stop was the cool sculp­tured Wel­come sign to Guayama. A strange look­ing thing. But I liked it.. very whimsical.

Then we pro­ceeded to a set of ruins right off the high­way. The access to this site was very lim­ited. It was over grown well over my head. I did man­age to score a few good shots from the old wind mill used to grind up sug­ar­cane. I tried to hike over to the nearby syrup proces­sor (square chim­ney), but the growth was sim­ply too thick. I could not see more than a few feet in front of me.

A sec­ond set of ruins we vis­ited were back up the road from here. These were from the Hacienda Azu­car­era Vives. The grounds had a for­mal gate, but was not locked. The site was obvi­ously being kept clear by the city. I spent a good hour here shoot­ing the remains and plan to come back with bet­ter gear later. A small tree grow­ing out of the top of the old mill was like icing on the cake. Most fan­tas­tic! I was melt­ing at this point and downed an iced coffee.

From there, we headed on into ‘old town’ where the main Plaza was. I stopped off at the ‘Totem” first for a few shots. Up close, it’s rather phal­lic look­ing. A beau­ti­fully cut piece of steel sculp­ture ded­i­cated to Govenor Sila Maria Calderon (2001– 2004) for urban renewal work done in Guayama. From this van­tage point, you can see the Hacienda Azu­car­era Vives on the dis­tant hill.

The cen­tral Plaza fea­tures a very large water foun­tain (wish it had been on) sur­rounded by many trees pro­vid­ing shade from the noon­day sun.

Did I men­tion it was HOT?

As time went on, the haze got thicker and thicker. Off the Plaza was the May­ors office (being remod­eled), the Catholic church, an old movie the­ater con­verted into munic­i­pal offices, a Methodist church built in 1902, a local Chris­t­ian radio sta­tion, sev­eral stores and a Museum. The churches were beau­ti­ful. The Catholic church, Igle­sia San Anto­nio de Padua has a clock face painted on one tower set at 11:30 AM. The exact time it was orig­i­nally bap­tized. It is the only Catholic church on the island built in the clas­sic neoro­man­tic style. Though I did not go into the museum at Casa Cautino, it is a strik­ing exam­ple of late 19th cen­tury Cre­ole style archi­tec­ture. Absolutely stunning.

After this round of shots, we ducked into REX CREAM for some­thing to cool us off. It’s also right off the Plaza, on the cor­ner. There was just barely room to stand, but it was worth it. ALL of the travel guides make ref­er­ence to this place. Fla­vors are sea­sonal and more resem­bles sher­bet in taste and tex­ture. I had the Tamarindo and me 1st Mate had Pis­ta­chio. Arrg! Both were very good. The cafe next door is part of REX Cream so there is much more food and refresh­ments to be had.

The Plaza in Guayama was well worth the trip.

For Guayama and REX CREAM

Our trip con­tin­ues on to Arroyo, but I’ll save that for me next post… Arrg…

One of my favorite photo sub­jects is ruins and old run-down indus­trial build­ings. Great sub­jects for fine art images. See­ing his­tory with my own eyes is just too cool. To that end, I plan to spend sev­eral posts cov­er­ing the sugar, rum and rail­road his­tory of PR. This is the first install­ment in that effort.

I’ve spent a lot of time research­ing sugar pro­duc­tion and the rum (ron/Spanish) dis­til­leries of Puerto Rico.

Cof­fee, tobacco and sugar cane were the pri­mary income crops from the time the island was ‘set­tled’ until well into the 20th cen­tury.  Slav­ery, fol­lowed by cheap, unor­ga­nized labor was the dri­ving force behind all pro­duc­tion. As labor costs increased, the Span­ish and then Amer­i­can inter­ests pro­ceeded to mech­a­nize where they could. Some plan­ta­tions were still using ox drawn carts to trans­port the cane from the fields, up through the late 1940’s.

Prior to the inter­state high­ways, there was a rail ser­vice that cir­cled almost the entire island. What’s more, lots of plan­ta­tions (hacien­das) would have their own nar­row gauge trains work­ing the fields and local sugar mills. There were many of these small sugar mills spread out all over PR.

As of today, you can still see their red brick, square chim­neys dot­ting the landscape.

You can’t miss ‘em since they stand 40 to 50 feet tall. Most are in some state of decay. A few have been turned into his­tor­i­cal mon­u­ments to a bygone era like the one at the Botan­i­cal Gar­dens in Caguas.

The island wide pub­lic train ser­vice came to a halt in 1951. Local nar­row gauge sugar cane trains ended in 1958. Arroyo ran a small train for tourists from 1984 to 2005.  It was a guided 50 minute run around the last sur­viv­ing sugar hacienda. It closed for restora­tion and never reopened, but sup­pos­edly, the Depart­ment of the Inte­rior has picked up the project. I’ll be look­ing into that more in the near future.

In all fair­ness, there is a pair of diesel loco­mo­tives doing ser­vice at the Port of Ponce. They are used strictly for mov­ing tank cars in sup­port of the phar­ma­ceu­ti­cal biz. Oth­er­wise, there is no work­ing train ser­vice left. Too bad too! Tren Urbano in San Juan don’t count.

RUM.. ARRGGG!!!

Early Rum dis­til­la­tion in PR can be tracked back to the 16th cen­tury. It started out as a domes­tic prod­uct not suit­able for west­ern palates, but it did not take long before they were export­ing a refined, fil­tered prod­uct like we enjoy today.

Believe it or not, ExPats from Ire­land were instru­men­tal in expand­ing the sugar and rum indus­tries and ini­ti­at­ing the cul­ti­va­tion of tobacco. Between try­ing to avoid ser­vice in the “Queen’s Navy” circa 1585 (and for­ward) and the Potato Famine of the 1840’s, many Irish­men have set­tled here.  In 1823, 2 Irish broth­ers brought the first steam dri­ven sugar mill to Puerto Rico and set up shop near Ponce on their own plan­ta­tion. Baya­mon, out­side of San Juan has a com­mu­nity (urban­iza­tion) called Irlanda Heights ( Ire­land Heights). Yes, St. Patrick’s Day is cel­e­brated in many places. Luquillo hosts a St. Patty’s Day parade as well. Who knew?

I’ll be elab­o­rat­ing on sugar, rum and the RR’s in future posts.

Aguirre, a place lost to a Bygone Era

Because the area around Aguirre was the last area to sus­pend sugar pro­duc­tion (1993), I started my field work there. It’s off Hwy 3, east of Sali­nas and west of Guayama. It’s tech­ni­cally a bar­rio of Sali­nas so no plaza or mayor’s office.

Around Aguirre, banana and papaya groves stand where sug­ar­cane once grew.

Not quite a ghost town, but close. Its a small com­mu­nity of only a cou­ple hun­dred folks. The Post Office stands next door to the defunct mill. A sign warn­ing about Asbestos expo­sure was posted in the park­ing lot. I did not ven­ture into those ruins… maybe at a later date.

Most of the homes as well as the busi­ness struc­tures date from the early 1920’s There was evi­dence of new homes built of cement so there is some activ­ity going on. There is a golf course there, but I did not check it out. While dri­ving around, I found an old aban­doned 2 story cement hotel and the tiny rail­road depot of Aguirre. Both were dated 1926.

The lit­tle RR freight office was over­grown with grass well over my head, but that did not stop me from check­ing it out. The only posted warn­ing signs were about trash­ing it or shoot­ing off guns. Some­one had gone to a lot of trou­ble to plant dozens and dozens of small trees out in front of the place. I worked my way through the grass to get inside for a shot. The stairs to the 2nd floor were rot­ted out so I passed on that. Maybe next time. It was easy to see where the load­ing dock sat in ref­er­ence to the freight doors. It must have been a busy lit­tle place in the ’30’s and ’40’s.

Back track­ing to the aban­doned hotel, I was able to walk and shoot the entire struc­ture. It must have been quite a grand place as well. The 2nd floor had a com­mand­ing view of the old mill and the Caribbean Sea beyond. The struc­ture sat on a slight rise giv­ing it a major sense of pres­ence. Employee’s quar­ters could be seen off the back along with a giant well. Just off the hotel was what appeared to be a restau­rant or club con­nected via a cement walk­way. Also in a major state of decay.

I will come back to Aguirre with ‘other’ gear another time. The photo pos­si­bil­i­ties are fantastic.

Bahia Jobos

There is a nature pre­serve off the coast, near Aguirre so we pro­ceeded to check it out. The road quickly turned into a rut­ted mess with the locals packed around sev­eral seafood shacks and restau­rants. I wanted to check one out, but it was just too crowded for me. Park­ing would have been a pain. The end of the road came sooner than I was expect­ing with a chain strung across it. All of this is right at the water’s edge. Many homes, some quite expen­sive, lined the high side of the road. We made our way back to Sali­nas and on home to Coamo from there.

Arroyo is next on the list to check out.

I also located the Speed­way in Sali­nas where they run stock car drag races and oval track com­pe­ti­tion. It is open on Sun­days, Mon­days and Wednes­days. I look for­ward to check­ing it out as well.