The “Life” Of A Statue In Old San Juan… Part 2

Isabel de Trasta­ma­ra. Click on the image to see it larger.

After you pass “La Prince­sa Prom­e­nade” and the “Raíces” foun­tain there’s a walk­way that bor­ders the San Juan city wall all the way to the base of Fort San Felipe del Mor­ro.  How­ev­er, today we’ll only be fol­low­ing this walk­way to San Juan Gate, where vis­i­tors to Puer­to Rico would dis­em­bark dur­ing ear­ly colo­nial times.

A few steps before reach­ing San Juan Gate there’s anoth­er bust that most vis­i­tors miss.  It is ded­i­cat­ed to “Isabel de Trasta­ma­ra”, bet­ter known in his­tor­i­cal terms as Queen Isabel­la I of Spain, and also known as Isabel­la the Catholic.

Queen Isabel­la I mar­ried Fer­di­nand II of Aragon and togeth­er they lib­er­at­ed Spain from Moor­ish rule in 1492, the same year that Christo­pher Colum­bus went on his first voy­age of dis­cov­ery.  What’s more, it was Isabel­la who con­vinced Fer­di­nand to finance Colum­bus’ voy­age, thus open­ing the doors to a new world and the rich­es that came with it.

The bust of Queen Isabel­la II is in a small square that sits about 100 feet before San Juan Gate, right next to the city wall.  It’s cov­ered by dense veg­e­ta­tion that dou­bles as an excel­lent place to rest for a while before con­tin­u­ing on your own lit­tle voy­age of discovery.

Right after enter­ing San Juan Gate you will notice a nar­row tree-cov­ered walk­way lead­ing uphill to your left that extends diag­o­nal­ly along Clara Lair street.  It leads to “La Plaza de la Rog­a­ti­va” which would loose­ly trans­late as “Pro­ces­sion Square”.

La Rog­a­ti­va, Click on the image to see it larger.

The sculp­ture in the cen­ter of the square was com­mis­sioned in 1971 by a group of Puer­to Rican busi­ness­men to com­mem­o­rate Ralph Abercromby’s failed siege of the city of San Juan.  After fail­ing to take San Juan in 1797, the British Lieu­tenant-Gen­er­al ordered a naval block­ade to cut off Span­ish reinforcements.

After wit­ness­ing the anguish of his troops and cit­i­zens for weeks, the Span­ish gov­er­nor called for a pro­ces­sion or “rog­a­ti­va” to implore for divine inter­ven­tion.  The women of San Juan orga­nized a pro­ces­sion and marched through the streets car­ry­ing torch­es and rus­tic instru­ments.  Appar­ent­ly, Aber­crom­by mis­took the pro­ces­sion for the arrival of Span­ish rein­force­ments and fled the Island fear­ing that he would be out­num­bered and defeated.

“La Plaza de la Rog­a­ti­va” offers an excel­lent view of the north side of  San­ta Catali­na Palace as well as the por­tion of the city wall lead­ing to Fort San Felipe Del Morro.

After pass­ing “La Plaza de la Rog­a­ti­va” you will see an iron gate to the west.  Fol­low that road until you reach a fork where there’s a colo­nial struc­ture paint­ed in bright pink.  It’s called “la casa rosa­da” and it’s cov­ered else­where on this site in great detail.  Take the road on the right (the one that goes uphill) and fol­low it until you reach a small round square at the entrance to the El Mor­ro Grounds.

We already cov­ered Fort San Felipe del Mor­ro in a pre­vi­ous post, so we’ll be turn­ing right at his corner.

Bal­la­já. Click on the image to see it larger.

If you look on your left you will see a huge three-sto­ry build­ing paint­ed in beige and light brown with a beau­ti­ful stat­ue right at the cor­ner.  That’s the Bal­la­já Mil­i­tary Bar­racks build­ing and it’s cov­ered in great detail else­where on this site.  The stat­ue —how­ev­er— was unveiled in 1992 dur­ing the Quin­cen­ten­ni­al Cel­e­bra­tion of the Dis­cov­ery of Amer­i­ca and it com­mem­o­rates the res­cue of the Bal­la­já Ward by the Puer­to Rican people.

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

Con­tin­u­ing up the street, to the right of the Bal­la­já Mil­i­tary Bar­racks, there’s anoth­er small square ded­i­cat­ed to Euge­nio María de Hos­tos.  This is the square that I men­tioned in Part 1 of this post.  And I wish I could say that this square is clean and well kept, but it’s not.  The place is filthy, smelly, cov­ered in graf­fi­ti and rid­den with teenagers on skate­boards and home­less peo­ple.  And then, the plac­ard below the stat­ue cyn­i­cal­ly says that it’s ded­i­cat­ed to the “Cit­i­zen of the Amer­i­c­as” on behalf of a grate­ful home­land.  Yeah right, very grateful!

Turn­ing left at la “Plaza de los Niños” you’ll see San José Church at the very end of the street.  This church has been closed for restora­tion for many years.  How­ev­er, right next to the church is a beau­ti­ful square with a stat­ue of Juan Ponce de León in the center.

Juan Ponce de León. Click on the image to see it larger.

The met­al for this stat­ue report­ed­ly came from the melt­ed canons and guns that were recov­ered from the Eng­lish ships destroyed dur­ing a failed attack on el Mor­ro dur­ing the 16th Century.

The Stat­ue was orig­i­nal­ly placed at “Plaza de San­ti­a­go”, which was right behind the now demol­ished San­ti­a­go Gate on the east side of the city.  On Jan­u­ary 23rd, 1894 it was replaced by the now famous Christo­pher Colum­bus stat­ue and the square was renamed as Plaza Colón.  Since then, the stat­ue of Juan Ponce de León has adorned the beau­ti­ful Plaza San José.

There are lots of bench­es for peo­ple watch­ing and many cafes and restau­rants all around where you can expe­ri­ence Puer­to Rican cui­sine at its best.

Tite Curet Alon­so. Click on the image to see it larger.

From Plaza San José we’ll con­tin­ue east on Calle San Sebatián to the cor­ner with San José Street.  We’ll go down San José Street until we reach “Plaza De Armas”, the beau­ti­ful square that’s right in front of City Hall.  On the south side of the square there’s a stat­ue that actu­al­ly does­n’t look like a stat­ue at all.  It’s ded­i­cat­ed to Tite Curet Alon­so, a world famous Puer­to Rican “sal­sa” com­pos­er who wrote over 2,000 songs dur­ing his long and illus­tri­ous career.

But “Tite” does­n’t stand tall and mighty for all to see.  Instead he’s just sit­ting there, wait­ing for you to sit by his side and have your pic­ture tak­en.  And you know why?  Because that’s who “Tite“ was; hum­ble, friend­ly, open and invit­ing.  A true gem among all Puer­to Ricans.

And I?  Well, I could­n’t resist.  After all, that’s what “Tite” would’ve wanted.

As far as a plac­ard goes, I did­n’t see any.  Most peo­ple sit next to “Tite”, have their pic­ture tak­en and nev­er get to know who he was.  A sign to the side of the bench with a lit­tle infor­ma­tion would be nice.

From there we’ll walk east down San Fran­cis­co Street until we reach “La Plaza de La Barandil­la”.  I was there last Sun­day and I felt like a lit­tle kid with a new toy.  They fixed it!!!

What on earth am I talk­ing about?  Well, sev­er­al months ago I was very crit­i­cal about how this square had been severe­ly van­dal­ized.  Some of the bronze rail­ings were miss­ing or bent out of shape and oth­ers had sim­ply been cut off to be sold as scrap met­al.  It was a sad spectacle.

Well, this time I was pleas­ant­ly sur­prised.  All of the rail­ings have been fixed and the place was gleam­ing clean!  And when I say gleam­ing I do mean gleam­ing.  I don’t know what they used exact­ly, but they applied some sort of chem­i­cal to the bronze that made look shiny and beau­ti­ful. Yes!!!

Patri­cio Rijos “Toribio”. Click on the image to see it larger.

At the north­west cor­ner of this square there’s a bust ded­i­cat­ed to Patri­cio Rijos, King of the Puer­to Rican “Güícharo”.  “Güicharo” is what the Puer­to Ricans call the instru­ment com­mon­ly known as a güiro.

“The güiro (Span­ish pro­nun­ci­a­tion: [Gwiro]) is a Latin-Amer­i­can per­cus­sion instru­ment con­sist­ing of an open-end­ed, hol­low gourd with par­al­lel notch­es cut in one side. It is played by rub­bing a stick or tines along the notch­es to pro­duce a ratch­et-like sound.

The güiro is com­mon­ly used in Puer­to Rican and oth­er Latin-Amer­i­can music, and plays a key role in the typ­i­cal rhythm sec­tion of impor­tant gen­res like cumbia and son. Play­ing the güiro usu­al­ly requires both long and short sounds, made by scrap­ing up and down in long or short strokes.” Wikipedia

Well, when it came to play­ing “güícharo”, “Toribio” was the pre­mier per­former among all “güireros” on the Island.  Believe me, this guy could play.  Sad­ly, the last time that I went by this bust (June,2013) some clown has paint­ed a bright red kiss on one of his cheeks.  But last Sun­day I was hap­py to see that once again it’s back to a pris­tine state.

Sal­vador Brau. Clicjk on the image to see it larger

Right next to “La Barandil­la” there’s a small­er square that’s right in front of the entrance to San Fran­cis­co Church.  It is ded­i­cat­ed to Sal­vador Brau, a Puer­to Rican jour­nal­ist, poet, writer and historian.

And final­ly, con­tin­u­ing down San Fran­cis­co Street you’ll arrive at Plaza Colón where there’s a huge stat­ue of Christo­pher Colum­bus.  Orig­i­nal­ly this square was called Plaza San­ti­a­go because it sat direct­ly behind San­ti­a­go Gate, one of the five orig­i­nal gates of the city wall.  But in 1897 city offi­cials ordered the demo­li­tion of a por­tion of the wall to allow the city to grow to the west.

At that time the stat­ue that stood in the mid­dle of San­ti­a­go Square was the one in hon­or of Juan Ponce de León.  The same one that’s present­ly at Plaza San José.  When the Plaza was rechris­tened as Plaza Colón the Ponce de León stat­ue was moved to Plaza San José and the new Colum­bus stat­ue took its place.

Christo­pher Colum­bus. Click on the image to see it larger.

Last Sun­day I noticed that the square was recent­ly cleaned and paint­ed for the Christ­mas sea­son.  I loved it.

Some­times I feel like I’m a lit­tle too hard on the City when I see places that are dirty or in poor con­di­tion.  But I don’t crit­i­cize just to crit­i­cize.  I do it because Puer­to Rico is my home and Old San Juan is my favorite city.  So I enjoy show­ing it off to the world.

And I know that I have said this before, but what the heck, I’m going to say it again.  I believe that every coun­try has cer­tain God-giv­en advan­tages. And in the case of Puer­to Rico it’s the island itself.  This place is great!!!

I tru­ly believe that if Puer­to Ricans put their minds to it the Island could become one of the great­est tourist des­ti­na­tions in the world.  I mean… the place has every­thing.  And of all the great things there are to see and do in Puer­to Rico Old San Juan is by far the crown jewel.

So that’s why I do it; because I want Old San Juan (and Puer­to Rico as a whole) to get bet­ter and better.

Oh, and I almost for­got.  Yes­ter­day I saw in the news that there’s a huge cold front in the main­land that’s going to cov­er the entire east coast in bright white.  Now would be a great time to spend a cou­ple of weeks in sun­ny Puer­to Rico.  Come on over.  The sun is great!!!

Enjoy Puer­to Rico,

©2013,Orlando Mer­gal, MA
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Bilin­gual Con­tent Cre­ator, Blog­ger, Pod­cast­er,
Author, Pho­tog­ra­ph­er and New Media Expert
Tel. 787–750-0000, Mobile 787–306-1590

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