Humacao, A Great Town Saddled By Puerto Rican Myopia 

The last time I was in Humacao was in August of 1971. I mean, I’ve gone through it hun­dreds of times, but to actu­al­ly walk its streets has tak­en that long. Back then I was a fresh­man at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Puer­to Rico’s Region­al Col­lege. How­ev­er, I didn’t com­plete my stud­ies there, because short­ly after the Region­al Col­lege in Bayamón opened its doors and I transferred.

Back then the Humacao Region­al Col­lege didn’t have a cam­pus. Class­rooms were scat­tered through­out town, so you got to explore it wether you want­ed to or not.

Like oth­er towns is this area, the expe­ri­ence this time was sweet and sour. As always, the peo­ple were nice. Hell, it had been years since any­one had stopped their car in the mid­dle of the street —any­where in Puer­to Rico— for me to take a pic­ture. Well, it hap­pened here twice: once in front of the Ángel “Lito” Peña Plaza Art Cen­ter (more on that in a minute) and anoth­er a cou­ple of streets uptown.

That said, like many oth­er towns in Puer­to Rico, Humacao is going through var­i­ous calami­ties. Some of them have been self inflict­ed and oth­ers have just fell in their lap. The most recent is the clos­ing of Roo­sevelt Roads Naval Sta­tion which has spelled the clos­ing of numer­ous busi­ness­es in the entire region. I dis­cussed this event exten­sive­ly in the Cei­ba and Naguabo posts, so I’m not going to repeat myself.

Click on image to watch the video

Then you have the strip malls, that grew like mush­rooms dur­ing the 80’s, and had an enor­mous­ly neg­a­tive effect on the small busi­ness­es in the cen­ter of towns. You see rows of shut­tered busi­ness estab­lish­ments where mom and pop stores once lent life to the city.

All this has com­pound­ed with the Island­wide emi­gra­tion of the last two decades to cre­ate ghost towns with a lop­sided pop­u­la­tion: lots of senior cit­i­zens and hard­ly enough young peo­ple. You see it every­where you look.

But why beat that dead horse fur­ther into the ground? After all, the pow­ers at be at the island­wide lev­el don’t seem to be worried!

HUMACAO IN CHRISTMAS

Luis Muñoz Rivera Square
(click on image to see it larger)

When my wife and I got to Humacao it was 9:30 in the morn­ing. Our plan was to park close to the Luis Muñoz Rivera Square, make pho­tographs and shoot video of the square, its sur­round­ings, the exte­ri­or of the “Dulce Nom­bre de Jesús Co-Cathe­dral” and then cov­er the inside of the temple.

Well, the city’s main­te­nance work­ers had oth­er plans. They were hard at work pow­er wash­ing the square and the church sur­round­ings in time for Christ­mas cel­e­bra­tions. So what can I say? I tried repeat­ed­ly, at dif­fer­ent times of the day, but the work­ers were still there. So I couldn’t get a clean shot (par­don the pun) of the square or of the church facade.

That said, the Luis Muñoz Rivera Square is nice and well kept. And guess what. It has four beau­ti­ful foun­tains and they all work! Yey!!!

Dulce Nom­bre de Jesus Co-Cathedral
(click on image to see it larger)

The orig­i­nal Dulce Nom­bre de Jesus Chapel was built in 1769. Since then it has been restored or expand­ed sev­er­al times through­out the cen­turies, includ­ing in 1825 to 1826, 1868, 1877, 1928, 1980 and 2008 when Pope Bene­dict XVI estab­lished the Dio­cese of Fajar­do-Humacao nam­ing both tem­ples co-cathedrals.

I’m not a Catholic so par­don my igno­rance. I always thought the whole “cathe­dral” thing was a mat­ter of size. But seem­ing­ly its a mat­ter of rank. In any case, the Dulce Nom­bre de Jesús Co-Cathe­dral is a beau­ti­ful tem­ple that’s among the nicest that I’ve seen in Puer­to Rico.

In a quick note, this tem­ple does have its altar point­ing east and the old City Hall build­ing is at the oppo­site side of the square like Span­ish tra­di­tion dictates.

As we exit­ed the tem­ple we walked east on Moya Hernán­dez Street. One of the patrons had told us about a beau­ti­ful muse­um towards the end of the street. He didn’t know what it was about, but we decid­ed to check it out anyway.

Ángel “Lito” Peña Plaza Art Center
(click on image to see it larger)

As we got to the cor­ner, we sud­den­ly saw this beau­ti­ful build­ing, paint­ed in shades of gray and white. It’s the “Cen­tro de Arte Ángel “Lito” Peña Plaza”. That would be the “Ángel “Lito” Peña Plaza Art Cen­ter in the king’s English.

I was spe­cial­ly intrigued because “Lito” used to be my neigh­bor back in the 60’s. I also used to watch him and his orches­tra “La Panamer­i­cana” on TV when I came home from school for lunch.

The build­ing is soon going to be 100 years old. That means that it was built in 1925. Dur­ing that peri­od it has served as the town’s Dis­trict Court, its City Hall and now and now the Art Center.

As for Ángel “Lito” Peña Plaza, let’s just say that he was a child prodi­gy. At the age of 9 he was already play­ing with the munic­i­pal band of the neigh­bor­ing town of Guaya­ma. This led to a life­time of suc­cess along­side some of the most rec­og­nized fig­ures in Puer­to Rican music.

Although the build­ing is ded­i­cat­ed to Ángel “Lito” Peña Plaza, and it has lots of his belong­ings and mem­o­ra­bil­ia (includ­ing his piano and sax­o­phone), it’s actu­al­ly a mul­ti-use facil­i­ty where the town­ship con­ducts exhi­bi­tions, book pre­sen­ta­tions and all sorts of cul­tur­al activities.

Case in point, the day of our vis­it there was an amaz­ing weav­ing exhi­bi­tion. Take a look at the Nativ­i­ty scene above. It’s actu­al­ly woven! Final­ly, above the stair­case there’s a huge paint­ing by renown Puer­to Rican artist and uni­ver­si­ty pro­fes­sor Ángel M. Vega San­tana remem­ber­ing the flash flood dis­as­ter of Sep­tem­ber 6, 1960, that killed 117 peo­ple, injured 136, left 30 miss­ing and basi­cal­ly wiped out the com­mu­ni­ties of “La Mari­na”, “La Vega”, “San Felipe” and “Maunez”.

Luis Muñoz Marín, gov­er­nor of Puer­to Rico at the time, is said to have been so affect­ed by the tragedy that he took off his shoes and walked bare­foot in the mud (as a sign of sol­i­dar­i­ty) as he inspect­ed the area.

After leav­ing the Ángel “Lito” Peña Plaza Art Cen­ter our plan was to vis­it Pun­ta San­ti­a­go Beach, the Pte­ro­car­pus For­est, a look­out point from the Sec­ond World War called El Moril­lo and the Humacao Nature Pre­serve. Well, thank God that we decid­ed to start at the Humacao Nature Pre­serve!

Humacao Nature Preserve
(click on image to see it larger)

As it turns out, the so-called Pte­ro­car­pus For­est is a swampy area, where you need a chest-high rub­ber jump­suit and a very sharp machete just to get in. Pte­ro­car­pus trees are of African or Asian ori­gin. They are val­ued for their tough­ness, sta­bil­i­ty in use, and dec­o­ra­tive­ness. Most have a red­dish wood.

Pun­ta San­ti­a­go Beach is in a sad state of affairs (and I’m try­ing to be kind here) and El Moril­lo is a look­out point with­in a 3,000 cuer­da plot of land called the Humacao Nature Pre­serve.

And the rea­son why I said “thank God that I start­ed at the Humacao Nature Pre­serve” is because that’s where I learned the truth about all the oth­er places. Hence, I saved myself (an my audi­ence) the trou­ble of going all the way there and dis­cov­er­ing that none of them were worth the trip. Either way, I’ve includ­ed the GPS coor­di­nates for all of them in the map below in case you would like to see for yourself.

And in case you can’t imag­ine 3,000 cuer­das in your head, think of them as 2,914 acres. It’s a biggggggggg chunk of land. So my wife and I weren’t about to embark on an aim­less walk, through unknown ter­ri­to­ry, just to find a World War II look­out point, no mat­ter how spec­tac­u­lar the view.

Final­ly, the lady at the Humacao Nature Pre­serve told us about a small­er Pte­ro­car­pus For­est with a board­walk that sits inside the Pal­mas del Mar Gat­ed Com­mu­ni­ty. So we drove all the way there only to be told that it too was closed.

Quite frankly, I couldn’t tell it that sec­ond Pte­ro­car­pus For­est was closed for every­one or just for “reg­u­lar Puer­to Ricans from out­side the gate”. But it was get­ting late and that uncom­fort­able feel­ing that we were “spin­ning our wheels” was start­ing to sink in. So we decid­ed to head for San Juan.

And talk­ing about San Juan, if you’re plan­ning to vis­it the Old City, save your­self the has­sle of tra­di­tion­al city tours. They’re expen­sive and you’ll be herd­ed along with peo­ple that won’t nec­es­sar­i­ly share your interests.

Instead, order The Old San Juan Walk­ing Tour. It’s packed with use­ful infor­ma­tion about all the main attrac­tions, as well as every GPS coor­di­nate and two hours of exclu­sive online video. That way you’ll be able to —vis­it before you vis­it— and hit the ground run­ning when you arrive in the Old City.

See you next time!

©2024,Orlando Mer­gal, MA
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Bilin­gual Con­tent Cre­ator, Blog­ger, Podcaster,
Author, Pho­tog­ra­ph­er and New Media Expert
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