Caguas, Puerto Rico | Seven Smiles And A Frown

“Our Experiences Exploring The “Center And Heart Of Puerto Rico””

San­ti­a­go R. Palmer Square

Today we’re going to talk about Caguas, Puer­to Rico, “cen­tro y corazón de Puer­to Rico” (cen­ter and heart of Puer­to Rico). Well, let’s just set the record straight, I’m all for moti­va­tion and “pep­per uppers” but, for those of you vis­it­ing from the main­land, the geo­graph­i­cal cen­ter of Puer­to Rico is actu­al­ly in the “Pelle­jas” ward of the town of Oro­co­vis, GPS coor­di­nates: 18.222300, ‑66.430300. That’s way to the west of Caguas. As for the heart part, I guess that if you’re a “cagueño” you have every right to love your hometown.

In any case, Zorai­da and I spent a whole day in Caguas and vis­it­ed a great deal of the net­work of muse­ums that they call “La Ruta del Corazón Criol­lo”. “Criol­los” is how us Puer­to Ricans refer to the peo­ple of Caguas. And since the muse­ums are meant to bol­ster a sense of pride among the peo­ple of Caguas as well as edu­cate them about their ori­gins, tra­jec­to­ry and accom­plish­ments as a peo­ple I guess the word “heart” is cer­tain­ly appropriate.

The fact is that Zory and I spent a day’s worth of time but we vis­it­ed the town twice. The first time we got there about 1:00pm and the cathe­dral was closed. I had heard about how nice the cathe­dral was and I cer­tain­ly want­ed to see the inside. But, I learned that it only opens ear­ly in the morn­ing. So we returned a sec­ond time, this time ear­ly in the morning.

I don’t know what’s going on with church­es in Puer­to Rico. When I was a kid they used to be open 24/7.  Now they most­ly open for ser­vices, so it’s very hard to shoot pic­tures of the inte­ri­or because most of the times we find them closed. I guess it has to do with the ris­ing crime rate.

Be advised that the events con­tained in this post didn’t nec­es­sar­i­ly hap­pen on the same day or in the order that they are pre­sent­ed. The rea­son for doing it was to present the dif­fer­ent attrac­tions in a log­i­cal order. I also cre­at­ed a 21-minute video cov­er­ing our adven­tures in Caguas that you can watch in the video sec­tion of this site or on our YouTube chan­nel. It’s exact­ly the same video so you might as well watch it here.

William Miranda Marín Botanical and Cultural Garden

William Miran­da Marín Botan­i­cal and Cul­tur­al Garden

I had heard about the William Miran­da Marín Botan­i­cal and Cul­tur­al Gar­den from a friend of mine that vis­it­ed right after the place opened in April of 2007. Her remarks weren’t nice. I’ll try not to para­phrase but, as I recall, she said: “it’s pret­ty, but it has no busi­ness call­ing itself a botan­i­cal gar­den”. Well, that’s still the case today.

Zorai­da and I spend about two hours there. The place is clean, well groomed and cer­tain­ly beau­ti­ful. Kudos to the archi­tects and design­ers. They did a great job. But that’s about all. Call­ing this place a botan­i­cal gar­den is cer­tain­ly a stretch, to say the least, espe­cial­ly after hav­ing vis­it­ed the ones in Wash­ing­ton, DC, Brook­lyn, NY, Dal­las, Texas, Okla­homa and Flori­da, just to name a few.

Accord­ing to the munic­i­pal­i­ty of Caguas’ web­site “The William Miran­da Marín Botan­i­cal and Cul­tur­al Gar­den is a liv­ing muse­um, that extols Puer­to Rican cul­ture in rela­tion to nature and trop­i­cal agri­cul­ture”. They also add that: “it offers beau­ti­ful trails to explore, edu­ca­tion­al tours, and spaces for spe­cial activities”.

Well, we didn’t see them!!! The place looks nice. Grant­ed. But as far as “tours”, “edu­ca­tion” and —above all— sig­nage, I’d be gen­er­ous to say that it was lack­ing. I mean, come on, being that it’s sup­posed to be a “botan­i­cal gar­den”, aren’t you sup­posed to know what you’re look­ing at? Fur­ther­more, aren’t you sup­posed to learn about the dif­fer­ent plants? After all, they’re call­ing it a “botan­i­cal garden”.

Our first neg­a­tive impres­sion came at the very entrance, when we paid the $4 per per­son admis­sion. I know. Four dol­lars is noth­ing. But the lady had a brochure stuck to the counter with scotch tape and she told us to pho­to­graph it with our phones “so we’d know what we were look­ing at”. Real­ly? Come on, for $4 at least they should give you a 5¢ pho­to­copy of the map. Don’t you think?

I’ve nev­er been one to crit­i­cize with­out giv­ing pos­si­ble solu­tions, so in the video I give sev­er­al rec­om­men­da­tions. So here’s my final remark about the place. If you con­sid­er it a park you’ll have a great time. The place is nice, clean, well groomed and beau­ti­ful. That makes it a great place for relax­ing and peo­ple watching.

The Old Town Of Caguas

Itin­er­at­ing Farm­ers Market

Caguas is one of the largest munic­i­pal­i­ties in Puer­to Rico, but most of it is urban sprawl. Like most towns on the Island, the orig­i­nal town is way small­er. And that’s what I refer to when I say “the old town of Caguas”.

When we got to the old town they were cel­e­brat­ing a “mer­ca­do agrí­co­la famil­iar”, which I guess you could call an “itin­er­at­ing farm­ers mar­ket” in Eng­lish. There was a time when each town on the Island had a farm­ers mar­ket. It was called “la plaza del mer­ca­do”. But the num­ber of “plazas del mer­ca­do” has dwin­dled and small farm­ers have a hard time sell­ing their products.

To alle­vi­ate the sit­u­a­tion many munic­i­pal gov­ern­ments cel­e­brate “itin­er­at­ing farm­ers mar­kets”, gen­er­al­ly once a month. Farm­ers set up their tents, peo­ple come and buy their prod­ucts and everything’s gen­er­al­ly over by noon. That account­ed for the greater dif­fi­cul­ty find­ing parking.

Santiago R. Palmer Square

Most towns in Puer­to Rico have a town square with the church on one end and city hall on the oth­er. We inher­it­ed the mod­el from Spain, who in turn inher­it­ed it from the Roman Empire. In fact, it’s called the “roman mod­el” among “con­nois­seurs”. Some squares are nice and oth­ers “just are”. The one in Caguas isn’t just nice. It’s beautiful.

The San­ti­a­go R. Palmer Square is one the largest and nicest in Puer­to Rico. It dates back to the 18th Cen­tu­ry, when the old vil­lage of San Sebastián del Bar­rero became the orig­i­nal town of Caguas.

It has excel­lent tree cov­er, bench­es every­where for peo­ple watch­ing and even a pair “per­ma­nent res­i­dents” called Hugo and María, like two of the most vicious hur­ri­canes that have rav­aged Puer­to Rico in decades past.

One promi­nent fea­ture is a giant clock that sits across the street from the town’s “Dulce Nom­bre de Jesús” Cathe­dral”. The clock is beau­ti­ful and cer­tain­ly draws atten­tion, but don’t set your watch to it because it doesn’t work.

Dulce Nombre de Jesús Cathedral

Dulce Nom­bre de Jesús Cathedral

Right across the street from the clock, we vis­it­ed the beau­ti­ful “Dulce Nom­bre de Jesús Cathe­dral”. This majes­tic struc­ture was built in the same place where the “Dulce Nom­bre de Jesús” her­mitage once stood. In 1830 it became the church of Caguas vil­lage and its facade had only one tow­er. Dur­ing the 1930’s it was remod­eled once again, only this time they added the sec­ond tower.

In the inte­ri­or of the Cathe­dral are the remains of Puer­to Rico’s beat­i­fied Car­los Manuel Rodríguez, a native son of Caguas that we’ll cov­er later.

Now here’s some­thing that’s strict­ly my opin­ion. You know how many church­es —of all denom­i­na­tions— can some­times seem dark and musty? Well, not this one. It has beau­ti­ful large stained glass win­dows every­where, mak­ing the inte­ri­or bright and love­ly. I don’t know if it’s my astig­ma­tism, but I grav­i­tate towards bright places. I love it!!!

Old City Hall | Caguas Muse­um Of History

Caguas Old City Hall

Leav­ing the Dulce Nom­bre de Jesús Cathe­dral we walked across San­ti­a­go R. Palmer Square to what used to be City Hall, “la Casa Alcaldía” or “La Casa Del Rey”, like they use to say dur­ing Span­ish colo­nial times.

Today’s City Hall is at a dif­fer­ent loca­tion alto­geth­er and the old city hall build­ing hous­es the Caguas Muse­um of His­to­ry or “Museo de His­to­ria de Caguas”. Like the name sug­gests, the Caguas Muse­um of His­to­ry takes you on a his­toric jour­ney from pre columbian Caguas to the 20th Cen­tu­ry. There’s also a room ded­i­cat­ed to for­mer gov­er­nor Luis Muñoz Marín with impor­tant doc­u­ments and photographs.

On the sec­ond floor there’s a gallery with paint­ings of every Caguas may­or since 1898.

We only got to see half of this muse­um. We didn’t see the Luis Muñoz Marín room or the paint­ings on the sec­ond floor. Even so, we spent well over an hour going through every stage in the devel­op­ment of this inter­est­ing city.

The one thing that caught our eye the most was the work of Edwin Báez Car­rasquil­lo, an artist that com­bines paint­ing, mod­el­ing, sculpt­ing and wood­work­ing to cre­ate life­like minia­tures that are sim­ply breath­tak­ing. The dio­ra­mas that are in the first room and the extend­ed col­lec­tion that’s in the sec­ond one —that is ded­i­cat­ed exclu­sive­ly to his work— are absolute­ly stunning.

And appar­ent­ly Báez has won the hearts of “los Cagüeños” because his work is present in many oth­er muse­ums through­out the city. The man is sim­ply a genius.

Herminio Torres Grillo Tobacco Museum

Her­minio Tor­res Gril­lo Tobac­co Museum

After leav­ing the Caguas Muse­um Of His­to­ry we walked a could of blocks to the “Museo del Taba­co Her­minio Tor­res Gril­lo” , (Her­minio Tor­res Gril­lo Tobac­co Muse­um). In the video I give you the exact coor­di­nates to each attrac­tion on screen, but here it’s imprac­ti­cal and cum­ber­some. Hence, there’s a map at the end of the post with the coor­di­nates for each one of the places mentioned.

The Her­minio Tor­res Gril­lo Tobac­co Muse­um is part of a net­work of muse­ums pep­pered through­out the old city of Caguas called “la ruta del corazón criol­lo” (the route of the cre­ole heart). It was the brain­child of the late William Miran­da Marín, for­mer may­or of the city and father to the present may­or William Miran­da Torres.

We explored the ones that most caught our eye and left those that were either closed or we couldn’t find. After all, we did approach city offi­cials twice and nev­er received an answer. So, we did it like any oth­er tourist; on our own and as best we could.

After all, tourists don’t have the ben­e­fit of hav­ing some­one from the City show them around. They just jump on a plane, grab a car and drop by your town. If they like what they find the might post it on Yelp, and if they don’t they def­i­nite­ly nail you on Yelp.

When we con­tact a munic­i­pal­i­ty we give them the oppor­tu­ni­ty to show the best of their city. But some peo­ple don’t con­sid­er that impor­tant. And since our promise to our read­ers has always been that “we tell it like it is”, well that’s what we do. Back to the old town of Caguas…

The Her­minio Tor­res Gril­lo Tobac­co Muse­um is the only one of its kind on the Island. Regard­less of your views towards towards tobac­co —and the act of smok­ing as a whole— the fact remains that this was one of the most impor­tant agri­cul­tur­al crops of the 19th and 20th centuries.

This lit­tle muse­um is filled to the brim with infor­ma­tion and relics from this bygone era. There are even minia­tures —once again by Edwin Báez Car­rasquil­lo— illus­trat­ing the process of tobac­co farm­ing and cig­ar mak­ing. There’s even real live cig­ar mak­ers that pro­duce actu­al cig­ars right before your eyes.

Like in all the oth­er muse­ums that we vis­it­ed, the atten­dant was knowl­edge­able and pleas­ant. But the oper­a­tive word here is “atten­dant”. The fact is that we only detect­ed one atten­dant per muse­um. I won­der if we got the wrong impres­sion or if that’s actu­al­ly the case? If it is, what hap­pens if sev­er­al tourists show up at the same time, or if the atten­dant calls in sick? I con­fess that I didn’t ask.

Caguas Museum Of Popular Arts

Caguas Muse­um Of Pop­u­lar Art

After leav­ing the tobac­co muse­um we went straight to the Muse­um of Pop­u­lar Arts (“Museo de Artes Pop­u­lares”), which is just across the street from the Her­minio Tor­res Gril­lo Tobac­co Muse­um. There too there was only one atten­dant who was pleas­ant, knowl­edge­able and went out of her way to cov­er every detail of the museum.

This is one place where you could spend sev­er­al hours, as there are mar­velous pieces and lots of infor­ma­tion. The muse­um is ded­i­cat­ed main­ly to Caguas born artists. but there are some pieces by artists from oth­er parts of the Island.

Caguas Art Museum

Caguas Art Museum

From the Muse­um of Pop­u­lar Art we walked about two blocks to the Caguas Art Muse­um or (Museo de Arte de Caguas), where we were lucky to see a mar­velous col­lec­tion by the late Luis Manuel González, anoth­er Caguas great that left his mark in expres­sion­ism. The Caguas Muse­um of Art has a per­ma­nent col­lec­tion that it com­bines with itin­er­at­ing col­lec­tions to present a con­stant­ly chang­ing mix of fresh offerings.

Among the pieces belong­ing to the per­ma­nent col­lec­tion, there were four huge paint­ings by the late great Puer­to Rican painter, from the town of Coamo, Domin­go Gar­cía. Gar­cía was a painter, sculp­tor and print­mak­er with a career span­ning six decades.

Our host explained the four paint­ings, and in doing so cov­ered sev­er­al impor­tant aspects of Puer­to Rican his­to­ry. Like Rubén San­tos, in the neigh­bor­ing town of Gurabo, he used the paint­ings as a tool to teach history.

As in all the the pri­or muse­ums the atten­dant was knowl­edge­able and friend­ly. But once again, there was only one.

When we were just about to leave our guide intro­duced us to a unique piece of art that’s hid­den towards the back end of the muse­um. It’s a com­bined piece by painter Artemio Rivera Casil­las and wood­work­er Edgard Rodríguez Luig­gi, both from the town of Areci­bo, on the north­west­ern coast of the Island.

At first sight it sim­ply looks like a mur­al with a wood­en house placed in front of it. The mur­al depicts the Turabo Val­ley, where the town of Caguas is locat­ed. The house illus­trates the old-style wood­en shacks where Puer­to Ricans used to live.

But there’s much much more to this exhib­it. The house is actu­al­ly a time cap­sule cre­at­ed in 2002. It con­tains draw­ings, from ele­men­tary school chil­dren of the time, who were asked to imag­ine Caguas in the year 2025 and pro­duce a draw­ing. The cap­sule is set to be open on May 1, 2025. Many of those “chil­dren” —adults by now— will be present dur­ing the event.

Casa Rosada | Carlos Manuel Rodríguez Museum

Casa Rosa­da | Car­los Manuel Rodríguez home

Upon leav­ing the Caguas Art Muse­um we walked to the oth­er side of the San­ti­a­go R. Palmer Square to “Casa Rosa­da” (the pink house), the place where Car­los Manuel Rodríguez, known to his friends as “Char­lie”, lived most of his adult live. So, who was “Char­lie”, and why was he so impor­tant for Caguas and for Puer­to Rico?

On April 29, 2001, Pope John Paul II beat­i­fied Car­los Manuel Rodríguez, the first and only Blessed of Puer­to Rico: a lay Bene­dic­tine ter­tiary and Catholic the­olo­gian who stood out, not only for his aca­d­e­m­ic career, but also “for his love of Christ and the Holy Eucharist”, as stat­ed by those who knew him.

In oth­er words. He’s the first Puer­to Rican on his way to be named a saint by the Holy Catholic Church.

The Pink House is a recre­ation of his time on earth and the moment when he was beat­i­fied in Rome. The atten­dant showed us through­out the house and gave us detailed infor­ma­tion about this dis­tin­guished “cagueño”.

It was get­ting late. But we want­ed to squeeze in one more attrac­tion. We want­ed to vis­it “The Green House”, the house where Abelar­do Díaz Alfaro used to live.

Abelar­do Díaz Alfaro was a Puer­to Rican author who achieved great fame through­out Latin Amer­i­ca dur­ing the 1940s. His book “Cam­po Ale­gre” is a text that has been stud­ied at schools in Aus­tria, Aus­tralia, Cana­da, Eng­land, New Zealand and all over the Americas.

Sad­ly, we couldn’t find the place. We even asked a local police­man and ran around town to no avail. So we head­ed home at around 4:30.

Caguas is one of those places where you could spend a week if you want­ed to. The city is clean and well kept. Its net­work of muse­ums and pub­lic spaces offer an excel­lent oppor­tu­ni­ty to learn about the his­to­ry of the town as well as Puer­to Rico’s.

There are also great enter­tain­ment places and restau­rants. Of course, by now you’ve prob­a­bly noticed that we don’t gen­er­al­ly cov­er those places. The rea­son is because those are com­mer­cial endeav­ors. In my mind, if they want to appear on our media they should pay.

Fur­ther­more, there’s the whole “tell it like it is” angle. I would feel oblig­ed to tell you if a place is no good, even if they did pay. So we’ve opt­ed to steer clear of them alto­geth­er. Who knows. Maybe in the future.

Our next stop is Aguas Bue­nas. Here’s a lit­tle town that I know very lit­tle about. So it will be an adven­ture for us as well as for you.

Come back in a cou­ple of weeks to learn all about it.

©2023,Orlando Mer­gal, MA
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