Canóvanas: Puerto Rico’s Second Youngest Municipality 

Canó­vanas City Hall (click on image to see it larger)

At Puer­to Rico By GPS we start­ed 2023 on a mis­sion: “to vis­it all 78 munic­i­pal­i­ties in Puer­to Rico (one every two weeks). The objec­tive was to pro­duce a video about each one and at least one blog post. In many cas­es we’ve writ­ten more than one. At that rate it should take us a lit­tle over 37 months to com­plete our goal. We’ll also end up with a moun­tain of infor­ma­tion, thou­sands of pic­tures and footage cov­er­ing every cor­ner of the Island. This time it was Canó­vanas’ turn and we spent two whole days there to bring you a pic­ture as com­plete and hon­est as possible.

There are two ways to do what we do. You can go at it on your own and Google your way through, or you can con­tact each munic­i­pal­i­ty hop­ing they’ll assign some­one to show you around. We’ve tried the lat­er and end­ed up doing the for­mer. Why, because most town­ships don’t seem to care for inter­na­tion­al tourists.

They fig­ure that it’s much eas­i­er to attract peo­ple from oth­er towns. They even have a name for this behav­ior. They call it “tur­is­mo inter­no” (inter­nal tourism). But sad­ly, it’s a zero-sum game when it comes to the Island as a whole.

Our orig­i­nal plan was (and still is) to cir­cle San Juan, once and again until we cov­er the larg­er Island. Then we’ll vis­it the island munic­i­pal­i­ties of Vieques and Cule­bra. Final­ly, we’ll return to San Juan.

Why? Because San Juan is where we start­ed, and we have a lot more cov­er­age of San Juan than of the rest of the Island.

The first cicle includ­ed the towns of Car­oli­na, Tru­jil­lo Alto, Gurabo, Cagues, Aguas Bue­nas, Bayamón, and Cataño. We left Guayn­abo out because we weren’t able to con­tact any­one at City Hall and most of their attrac­tions were closed. You can tell which munic­i­pal­i­ties were the most acco­mo­dat­ing because they were the ones to get the most coverage.

Now we’re on the sec­ond cir­cle and once again we attempt­ed to con­tact each and every one of the munic­i­pal­i­ties. The results were dis­mal. No one answered. So, from now on we’re going to do what reg­u­lar tourists do. We’re going to vis­it on our own and voice our hon­est opin­ion, good or bad.

Canó­vanas is the sec­ond youngest munic­i­pal­i­ty in Puer­to Rico (clcik on image to see it larger)

The first town in the sec­ond cir­cle was Loíza, a small­er poor­er munic­i­pal­i­ty that’s most­ly about beach­es, local cui­sine and folk­lore. Loíza is a beau­ti­ful area where the beach­es main­ly cater to the locals. You can catch our cov­er­age about this won­der­ful town in our pre­vi­ous post.

This week we’re going to tell you a lit­tle bit about Canó­vanas, a larg­er munic­i­pal­i­ty to the south that was actu­al­ly part of Loíza for almost 300 years until it was split apart back in 1969. That’s right!!! Canó­vanas is the sec­ond youngest munic­i­pal­i­ty in Puer­to Rico.

The “Cliff Notes” His­to­ry of Canóvanas

Canó­vanas was orig­i­nal­ly a part of Loíza. We’ve already estab­lished that. But what we haven’t said is that Loíza was a huge munic­i­pal­i­ty, that extend­ed from the north­ern coast of the Island all the way to Jun­cos and Las Piedras to the south, Río Grande to the east and Car­oli­na to the west. In fact, I would argue that it was almost the size of Car­oli­na; maybe even larger.

Loíza was set­tled by mem­bers of the Yoru­ba tribe that were brought to Puer­to Rico from Africa to serve as slaves back in 1692. How­ev­er, it was for­mal­ly declared a town by the Span­ish gov­ern­ment in 1719.

Believe me, I don’t mean to give this post racial over­tones, but the fact of the mat­ter is that the Spaniards brought black slaves to Puer­to Rico after they dis­sem­i­nat­ed the Taíno pop­u­la­tion. Those slaves set­tled most­ly in the coastal towns, while the white folks set­tled most­ly in the moun­tain­ous regions.

Don’t believe me? Look around you. There are still towns in the cen­ter of Puer­to Rico where black peo­ple are rare. That’s not racism. It’s plain demographics.

Back in 2010, accord­ing to the U.S. Cen­sus, 64.3% of the “loiceños” were black, while only 26.5% were white. I would ven­ture to guess that most of those white folks lived in the south­ern part of the munic­i­pal­i­ty, near the coun­ty lines with Las Piedras and Juncos.

And there was anoth­er sit­u­a­tion. Things weren’t going too well on the Island after the U.S. inva­sion. The new colo­nial pow­er deval­u­at­ed the Puer­to Rican peso by 50% send­ing most of the criol­lo land own­ers straight into bank­rupt­cy. So in 1902 the Island’s Leg­isla­tive Assem­bly approved a law for the con­sol­i­da­tion of cer­tain munic­i­pal­i­ties. As a result, Loíza (includ­ing what is known today as Canó­vanas) was incor­po­rat­ed into the neigh­bor­ing munic­i­pal­i­ty of Río Grande.

Two years lat­er, in 1905, the law was revoked and every­thing returned to the way it was before. In 1909 the entire admin­is­tra­tion of Loíza was moved to mod­ern day Canó­vanas. Why? Because it had a bet­ter loca­tion and the area was doing bet­ter economically.

Some­where along the way Puer­to Ricans start­ed call­ing the orig­i­nal town “Loíza Aldea”, a neg­a­tive moniker that didn’t sit well with the peo­ple of Loíza. After all, the word “aldea” means “vil­lage”; and a poor one at that.

Final­ly, on June 30th, 1969, then gov­er­nor Luis A. Fer­ré signed the law that con­vert­ed Canó­vanas into a full-blown munic­i­pal­i­ty. That made it the sec­ond youngest munic­i­pal­i­ty on the Island (Flori­da, on the north­west coast was estab­lished in 1971).

It also turned Loíza into a poor munic­i­pal­i­ty, most­ly res­i­den­tial in nature, with hard­ly any indus­try or busi­ness sec­tors to this day.

Canóvanas as a tourist destination.

Canó­vanas is one of those towns that you most­ly pass through on your way to some­where else. This isn’t to say that it doesn’t have pos­si­bil­i­ties. It’s just that at this point in time they haven’t been real­ized. Let me give you a cou­ple of examples.

The Old Canóvanas Sugar Mill

Canó­vanas Sug­ar Cane Mill (click on image to see it larger)

Most Puer­to Ricans have mixed feel­ings when it comes to the sug­ar cane era. When the U.S. took over the Island back in 1898 Puer­to Rico had a diverse agri­cul­ture. Dur­ing the 18th and 19th cen­turies Spain pro­mot­ed an export-based agrar­i­an econ­o­my, cen­ter­ing on the pro­duc­tion of sug­ar­cane, cof­fee, tobac­co and oth­er small­er scale prod­ucts. That said, few —if any— funds were ever allo­cat­ed to improve the island’s infra­struc­ture (roads, rail­roads, ports) or social con­di­tions. That’s the truth. It wasn’t peach­es and cream like some pseu­do his­to­ri­ans would want to have you believe.

When the U.S. took over things got worse; at least at the begin­ning. The new rulers deval­u­at­ed the Puer­to Rican peso by 50%, which in turn sent most local busi­ness­men into a tail­spin. The econ­o­my went from a some­what diverse mod­el (to be fair) to one cen­tered on sug­ar cane pro­duc­tion. This was the case dur­ing most of the first half of the 20th century.

In many cas­es sug­ar mills wouldn’t even pay their work­ers with real mon­ey. Instead, they used vouch­ers that the work­ers could only use at the sug­ar mil­l’s store. And —of course— every­thing there was scarce and over­priced. The entire oper­a­tion was one of exploita­tion and sub­sis­tence. All this changed dur­ing the sec­ond half of the 20th cen­tu­ry, as Puer­to Ricans reached high­er lev­els of edu­ca­tion and entered an econ­o­my based on man­u­fac­tur­ing and high technology.

So, as you can imag­ine, the sug­ar cane era doesn’t bring back the best of memories.

But hey, it hap­pened and you can’t ignore his­to­ry or change it. So why not turn that old dilap­i­dat­ed struc­ture into a giant muse­um, where vis­i­tors could learn about every aspect of this bygone era and even try some “guara­po de caña”. Maybe even some raw sug­ar cane?

Don’t know what “guara­po” is? It’s the raw juice of the sug­ar cane that’s extract­ed by crush­ing it. It’s pure sug­ar like God made it!!! On the oth­er hand, if you’re a dia­bet­ic, stay away, because it could send you straight to the ICU.

The “Villarán” Bridge.

A bridge is a bridge, is a bridge, is a bridge. Right? Wrong!!!

The “Vil­larán” Bridge (click on image to see it larger)

The Vil­larán Bridge is a truss bridge, that was import­ed from Europe and installed in the town of Loíza in 1892, on the old road that used to con­nect the old town of Río Piedras with the neigh­bor­ing town of Río Grande. Remem­ber, Canó­vanas didn’t exists in 1892.

Gus­tave Eif­fel (click on image to see it larger)

And why is it so impor­tant, you might ask? Well, it’s the best-pre­served exam­ple of an Eif­fel pony truss bridge in Puer­to Rico and the Unit­ed States. That’s Eif­fel, like the guy that built the tow­er in Paris!!! Yeah, that guy.

Eif­fel was a fan of truss struc­tures. So much so, that if you look care­ful­ly at the bridge in Canó­vanas and com­pare it to the tow­er in Paris, you’ll notice that they both are based on the same struc­ture. It’s also part of the Nation­al Reg­is­ter of His­toric Places, so that doesn’t hurt either.

Sad­ly, when we went there we noticed sev­er­al “improve­ment oppor­tu­ni­ties”. First and fore­most it was closed. You can’t brag about some­thing and then have it closed off.

Sec­ond, it looks like it could use some ten­der lov­ing care. The land­scap­ing could use some work, it’s miss­ing sev­er­al bricks and it could cer­tain­ly use a coat of paint.

And third, it has a children’s park right next to it. So what’s the prob­lem with that? The prob­lem is that the park is also next to a major high­way. How the smog from the cars and the kid’s health go togeth­er is beyond my comprehension.

The Center of Town

I’m just going to take the lib­er­ty to jump over City Hall, the “Nues­tra Seño­ra del Pilar” Parish and “Fran­cis­co Arroyo Salamán” town square. Why? Because all three were built dur­ing the ear­ly 20th cen­tu­ry, which hard­ly makes them “his­toric” in my opin­ion. How­ev­er, I will say that all three seemed well kept.

Jesús T, Piñero Museum

Jesús T. Piñero Muse­um (click on image to see it larger)

At the out­skirts of town, on road num­ber 3 return­ing towards Car­oli­na, is the Jesús T, Piñero Muse­um. It’s a beau­ti­ful house, paint­ed in pink, that always seems to be emp­ty. Grant­ed, I don’t dri­ve by it every day. But let’s say that dur­ing the last 10–15 years I must have passed by it 100 times and I’ve nev­er seen it open.

Upon fur­ther research I dis­cov­ered that the muse­um is run by the “Uni­ver­si­dad del Este”, which in turn belongs to Ana G. Mén­dez University.

So what did I do? I called!!! Sev­er­al times. And every time I went straight to an auto­mat­ic atten­dant that sent me straight to voice mail.

Jesús T. Piñero was the first gov­er­nor born in Puer­to Rico that was appoint­ed by the pres­i­dent of the Unit­ed States. And accord­ing to the lit­tle infor­ma­tion that I was able to gath­er (yeah, I googled it) there’s a great deal of doc­u­ments and mem­o­ra­bil­ia in the museum.

So here’s my ques­tion? Do these peo­ple even care if any­one sees this muse­um? Do they real­ly expect vis­i­tors to leave a mes­sage and “sit on their hands” (I’m try­ing to be nice) and wait to be called? No won­der it’s always closed!!!

Camarero Race Track

Camarero Race Track (click on image to see it larger)

Then you have the Camarero Race Track. “Race Track” as in “horse rac­ing”. I’ve nev­er been a fan of the “ponies” but expe­ri­ence has taught me that there’s a cus­tomer for every­thing. So I called them and spoke with a young lady at their mar­ket­ing department.

I told her who I am, how long I’ve been pub­lish­ing Puer­to Rico by GPS and that I want­ed to include the race track in our video about Canó­vanas and on this blog post. I told her that it wouldn’t cost them a dime and that all I need­ed was some­one to show us around and per­mis­sion to shoot some pic­tures and footage.

That was on April 3rd and at the time of this pub­lish­ing I’m still wait­ing for the return call.

So what did I do? I couldn’t just ignore the only horse rac­ing track in Puer­to Rico! Well, I went by, shot a cou­ple of sec­onds of the build­ing facade (which looks pret­ty run down, if you ask me) and sup­ple­ment­ed the rest with B‑Roll from Pix­abay. And just in case you’re not up on your ‘video edit­ing terms” B‑Roll is gener­ic footage that you use to fill a void.

So, in the end, the only thing real in our video about the Camarero Race Track is the ugly facade.

Years ago, when I was com­plet­ing my mas­ter’s degree in com­mu­ni­ca­tions I learned nev­er to ignore the media. Why, because the media is always going to do what the media does. And what’s that, you might ask? To inform!!!

When you coop­er­ate with the media you’ll always have the chance to influ­ence the out­come. But when you don’t, then they’ll write what­ev­er they will.

So, is Canó­vanas worth vis­it­ing? Maybe. Espe­cial­ly if you like old bridges, designed by one of the most impor­tant engi­neers in his­to­ry, or old sug­ar mills that tell the sto­ry of the ear­ly 20th cen­tu­ry in Puer­to Rico.

And if you don’t, well… it’s still the short­est way to get to El Yunque.

See you soon,

©2023,Orlando Mer­gal, MA
____________________

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