Eugenio María de Hostos Square

plaza-euge­nio-maria-de-hos­tos

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As you con­tin­ue up the street between the Asi­lo de Benef­i­cen­cia and the Cuar­tel de Bal­la­já you’ll arrive at the “Plaza de los Niños”, a small square ded­i­cat­ed in 1998 to nine­teenth cen­tu­ry Puer­to Rican edu­ca­tor and inde­pen­dence advo­cate Euge­nio María de Hos­tos “Cit­i­zen of the Amer­i­c­as”, in behalf of the chil­dren of a grate­ful motherland.

The square is adorned with a beau­ti­ful stat­ue that evokes “de Hos­tos” sur­round­ed by chil­dren in a cheer­ful atmosphere.

Sad­ly, the square has fall­en prey to skate board­ers and graf­fi­ti van­dals. The pho­to before you took close to 8 hours to clean up in Pho­to­shop.  Nor­mal­ly this is some­thing that they won’t tell you in reg­u­lar tourism sites. But in Puer­to Rico by GPS we tell it like it is.

Puer­to Rico is a beau­ti­ful place but some­times locals don’t appre­ci­ate how rare and beau­ti­ful Puer­to Rico actu­al­ly is.

Orlando Mergal buys all his photo equipment at B&H

Dis­clo­sure of Mate­r­i­al Con­nec­tion: Some of the links in this post are “affil­i­ate links.” This means that if you click on a link and pur­chase an item, I will receive an affil­i­ate com­mis­sion. Regard­less, I only rec­om­mend prod­ucts or ser­vices that I use per­son­al­ly and believe will add val­ue to my read­ers. I am dis­clos­ing this in accor­dance with the Fed­er­al Trade Commission’s 16 CFR, Part 255: “Guides Con­cern­ing the Use of Endorse­ments and Tes­ti­mo­ni­als in Advertising.”

4 thoughts on “Eugenio María de Hostos Square”

  1. I went to Euge­nio Maria de Hos­tos Square last week (March 01,2020) and it was as clean as in the pho­to. Appar­ent­ly your pho­to­shop is so pow­er­ful it clean it up in real life…

    1. The fact is that the last time that I passed (about a month ago) it was clean as well. Maybe we shamed them into clean­ing it, or maybe the neigh­bor­ing fam­i­lies and busi­ness­es have adopt­ed it. Who knows? The thing is that it’s clean and that’s a good thing. What it’s miss­ing now is some veg­e­ta­tion. And with a lit­tle luck some flow­ers (I’m a suck­er for flow­ers). In my trav­els I’ve always been amazed at how some green­ery goes a long way in mak­ing places look more appealing.

  2. As a per­son that lives here I’ve nev­er seen it van­dal­ized in any form. Even dur­ing protest peo­ple don’t van­dal­ize the stat­ues. Indeed we have a beau­ti­ful island full of art and cul­ture, and very rarely you see van­dal­ism to pub­lic arts. Peo­ple here respect artists with pas­sion, includ­ing their works. If you’re mad that there are skaters in a recre­ation­al area with a broad street near the fortress that seems more like a per­son­al opin­ion than an objec­tive one.

    1. Thank you for your com­men­tary, although it’s obvi­ous that you must be talk­ing about a dif­fer­ent square. The pho­to that you saw on my blog took near­ly 8 hours to clean up in Pho­to­shop. There was graf­fi­ti all over the stat­ue. There were also beer cans and bot­tles from the home­less that use the square as their night­time stomp­ing grounds. To this date there is no veg­e­ta­tion, flow­ers or any­thing to make the place more attractive.

      If you don’t believe me I can pro­vide you with a copy of the orig­i­nal file.

      I don’t write this with the sole pur­pose of crit­i­ciz­ing. I do it because I believe Puer­to Ricans can do bet­ter. I trav­el quite a lot and I’ve noticed that these types of small plazas are usu­al­ly kept clean and adorned for peo­ple to enjoy. But not in Puer­to Rico. And my ques­tion is why? Why do we have to be such slobs as a peo­ple? Why do we throw trash every­where? I cer­tain­ly believe we can do bet­ter but don’t try to make me into the prob­lem here. I just tell it like it is.

      Besides, there should be a place for every pur­pose. I have noth­ing against skak­ers. But there should be a place for them. They should­n’t be allowed to dam­age pub­lic prop­er­ty in the name of “enter­tain­ment”.

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