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…

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