The “Life” Of A Statue In Old San Juan… Part 1

Being a stat­ue isn’t easy, espe­cial­ly in Old San Juan.  Most peo­ple walk right by you like you aren’t even there.  Oth­ers might be curi­ous, but since you don’t even have a plac­ard below you —or it’s so worn out that it’s unread­able— they sim­ply go about their life and ignore you com­plete­ly.  What a life!!!

Yes­ter­day I was in Old San Juan.  And since I know exact­ly where each stat­ue is locat­ed, I thought I might tell you a lit­tle bit about them and about the peo­ple that they actu­al­ly honor.

But before I do, I thought I might men­tion sev­er­al pos­i­tive changes that I noticed in the old city.  First, there’s sur­veil­lance every­where.  Yes!!!

In the past I have crit­i­cized how van­dals in Old San Juan seemed to have “carte blanche” to deface pub­lic prop­er­ty and even destroy many of the city’s mon­u­ments and plazas.  Well, yes­ter­day it was notice­ably bet­ter.  Their were city offi­cers every­where.  Some were city police­men, oth­ers wore blue and yet oth­ers wore white shirts and black pants.  But regard­less of their uni­form you could tell that some­one was mind­ing the store.

Old San Juan is get­ting clean­er by the minute, although the pres­sure wash of the city wall was pure heresy! Click on the image to see it larger

Sec­ond, the city is get­ting clean­er.  There’s still a lot of work to do, but there were city work­ers sweep­ing and clean­ing everywhere.

And final­ly, the repaving of the city streets con­tin­ues.  For­t­aleza Street is almost fin­ished and it’s look­ing great.  Now, if they would only con­vert it to a pedes­tri­an walk­way that would real­ly be something!

In Europe, most his­tor­i­cal cities like Old San Juan are closed to vehic­u­lar traf­fic.  Most have some sort of microbus sys­tem that moves res­i­dents between their homes and an adja­cent park­ing area.  And deliv­ery vehi­cles are only allowed for brief peri­ods dur­ing a cer­tain time of the day.

But in Old San Juan it’s dif­fer­ent.  On one hand city offi­cials are talk­ing about repaving the entire city in “ado­quines” (pavers) to return it to its for­mer glo­ry and on the oth­er they’re allow­ing cars back into those same fresh­ly paved streets to destroy them once again.  I don’t get it!

If you ask me I’d close the city draw­ing an imag­i­nary line, from north to south, from the cor­ner of San Fran­cis­co and Norza­garay to the docks.  From there on every­body would move on foot or on microbuses.

But enough about my thoughts on urban­ism, let’s talk about statues.

Ricar­do Ale­gría. Click on the image to see it larger.

Many peo­ple enter­ing old San Juan arrive on cruise ships.  They walk towards the city par­al­lel to the Cov­adon­ga park­ing struc­ture and turn left on “Paseo Cov­adon­ga” towards the Old City.  Right there on the cor­ner, in front of the Ban­co Pop­u­lar branch, is a stat­ue of Ricar­do Ale­gría, a pres­ti­gious 20th cen­tu­ry Puer­to Rican arche­ol­o­gist and his­to­ri­an who was the first to pre­side the Puer­to Rican Insti­tute of Culture.

Don Ricar­do, like most Puer­to Ricans used to call him, was instru­men­tal in res­cu­ing and renew­ing many build­ings in old San Juan that today are con­sid­ered archi­tec­tur­al trea­sures, includ­ing the world famous Hotel El Con­ven­to.  Lat­er on in his life he was also the Direc­tor of the Cen­ter For Advanced Stud­ies About Puer­to Rico And The Caribbean.

At first I thought that this stat­ue did­n’t have a plac­ard.  Then I dis­cov­ered that it has an entire sign.  The prob­lem is that it’s so far away that most peo­ple nev­er see it.  At least it should have a small plac­ard below the tor­so with his name.

Arturo Somo­hano. Click on the image to see it larger.

As you con­tin­ue up “Paseo Cov­adon­ga” you will find a small set of steps on your right.  Going up those steps you will find a small square with the stat­ue of Arturo Somo­hano in the cen­ter. Arturo Somo­hano was a 20th cen­tu­ry Puer­to Rican piano vir­tu­oso who was best known for his inter­pre­ta­tions of the works of “dan­za” com­posers Manuel Gre­go­rio Tavarez and Juan Morel Cam­pos.  He was also the con­duc­tor of the San Juan Sym­pho­ny Orches­tra, which was renamed after his death as The Arturo Somo­hano Sym­pho­ny Orches­tra in his honor.

The plac­ard under the stat­ue is cor­rod­ed and most­ly unreadable.

Manuel Gre­go­rio Tavarez. Click on image to see it larger.

Con­tin­u­ing west on “Recin­to Sur Street” there is a bust at the cor­ner with “Tan­ca Street” in hon­or of Manuel Gre­go­rio Tavarez.  Tavarez was a 19th cen­tu­ry Puer­to Rican piano vir­tu­oso who is con­sid­ered the father of the “Puer­to Rican Dan­za”, a for­mal dance genre that was the craze among high soci­ety cir­cles of the time.

His bust sits in a tiny square, with only a cou­ple of bench­es, that is well kept and clean.  The plaque beneath is com­plete­ly leg­i­ble; prob­a­bly because its engraved in mar­ble and part of the structure.

Con­tin­u­ing west on “Recin­to Sur”, on the cor­ner with “San Jus­to Street”, there is yet anoth­er small square with a small bust of Euge­nio María de Hos­tos, a 19th cen­tu­ry Puer­to Rican edu­ca­tor, philoso­pher, intel­lec­tu­al, lawyer, soci­ol­o­gist and inde­pen­dence advo­cate.  Like the larg­er stat­ue of Hos­tos, locat­ed at “Plaza de los Niños” on “Boule­var del Valle” Street at the north­west quad­rant of the city, this bust is sur­round­ed by filth and decay.

Euge­nio María de Hos­tos. Click on the image to see it larger.

Maybe it could have some­thing to do with the fact that Hos­tos was an “inde­pen­den­tista”, but the fact is that Euge­nio María de Hos­tos is con­sid­ered by many to have been a true genius and staunch pro­po­nent of many edu­ca­tion­al philoso­phies that even today are con­sid­ered to be lead­ing edge.

In 1938, the 8th Inter­na­tion­al Con­fer­ence of Amer­i­ca, cel­e­brat­ed in Lima, Peru, posthu­mous­ly paid trib­ute to Hos­tos and declared him “Cit­i­zen of the Amer­i­c­as” and “Teacher of the Youth”.  His remains are buried at “El Pan­teon de los Héroes Nacionales” in the Domini­can Repub­lic.  His final wish was to remain buried in the neigh­bor­ing island until the day Puer­to Rico gains its independence.

Oh, and yes, the bust still has its bronze placard.

“Al Imi­grante” Stat­ue. Click on the image to see it larger.

A lit­tle to the west of the “de Hos­tos” bust is a small stat­ue ded­i­cat­ed to “El Emi­grante”  (the immi­grant), which could prob­a­bly be all of us because even the Taíno Indi­ans that pop­u­lat­ed Puer­to Rico at the time of Colum­bus’ arrival in 1493 came from the area of present day Venezuela.  So I guess we’re all immigrants.

The stat­ue is clean, adorned with a nice land­scap­ing and placed in the mid­dle of a high traf­fic area where it can’t be missed.

You’ll have to look close­ly to find the next and last stat­ue in this post.  I’m refer­ring to the stat­ue of Felisa Rincón de Gau­ti­er, the Major of San Juan from 1946 to 1968, and the first woman to be elect­ed May­or of a cap­i­tal city in The Americas.

Felisa Rincón de Gau­ti­er. Click on the image to see it larger.

The stat­ue sits behind a met­al fence, on the right hand side, about 100 feet into Paseo de la Prince­sa.  Of course, most peo­ple nev­er see it.  Just ask any­one in Old San Juan where the stat­ue of “Doña Fela” is and watch for the bewil­dered look in their face.  Most of them won’t know!

And yet “Doña Fela”, like most Puer­to Ricans like to remem­ber here, was one of the most illus­tri­ous and respect­ed women in Puer­to Rican his­to­ry. She worked togeth­er with Ricar­do Ale­gría to restore and con­serve his­tor­i­cal struc­tures in Old San Juan.  Long before she was major, Rincón was also a key fig­ure in the Puer­to Rican Suf­frag­ist move­ment, moti­vat­ing many women to go out and vote when the law was passed in 1929.  And she estab­lished a net­work of pre-school cen­ters called “Las Escue­las Mater­nales”, which John F. Kennedy used as the mod­el to cre­ate the Head Start pro­gram in the Unit­ed States.

But ask any of the old “san­juaneros” about “Doña Fela” and you’ll be sur­prised to learn what she’s actu­al­ly remem­bered for.  It’s some­thing a lot less “polit­i­cal”.  Doña Fela was the first and only Puer­to Rican offi­cial to bring plane loads of snow just so the poor­est chil­dren of the city would know what it was like to play in it dur­ing Christ­mas season.

Regard­less of all the great things that she did for San Juan, and for Puer­to Rico as a whole, most peo­ple will say: “yeah, she was the one that brought snow to San Juan”.

Well, in my hum­ble opin­ion her stat­ue should be in a promi­nent place in her beloved “Old San Juan”.  Not behind a met­al fence where nobody ever sees it.  I’m just saying…

There are many more stat­ues in the old city.  Some are beau­ti­ful and well kept and oth­ers are in a sad state of keep.  But hey, I’ll tell you about all of them.  How­ev­er, this post is get­ting kind of long, so next time I’ll show you the rest.

In the mean time take a minute to explore Puer­to Rico By GPS.

Enjoy Puer­to Rico,

©2013,Orlando Mer­gal, MA
____________________

Bilin­gual Con­tent Cre­ator, Blog­ger, Pod­cast­er,
Author, Pho­tog­ra­ph­er and New Media Expert
Tel. 787–750-0000, Mobile 787–306-1590

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