Juncos, Puerto Rico | A Town Of Contrasts 

Anto­nio R. Barceló Square (click on image to see it larger)

When I was a post grad­u­ate stu­dent, in the Busi­ness Com­mu­ni­ca­tions field, my writ­ing pro­fes­sor Dr. Luis López Nieves, who lat­er on end­ed up on my the­sis com­mit­tee, was famous for his writ­ing projects. He would assign you some insipid sub­ject and expect you to come up with a cre­ative piece of writ­ing. Well, Jun­cos Puer­to Rico is such a place.

Like all posts I did my key­word research before writ­ing this piece and all I could come up with was “Jun­cos, Puer­to Rico”. Not even Amgen, who has its world’s largest man­u­fac­tur­ing facil­i­ty in Jun­cos, showed up in my key­word list. So, Jun­cos, Puer­to Rico it is.

Puer­to Ricans refer to Jun­cos as “la ciu­dad del Valen­ciano” or “the city of the Valen­cian”, because of the orig­i­nal Hacien­da, owned by a man from Valen­cia, Spain, where the city was estab­lished on August 3, 1792.

But Jun­cos has anoth­er moniker. It’s also called “la ciu­dad de los mulos” (the city of the mules), which most peo­ple believe is because of their cel­e­brat­ed AA base­ball team “Los Mulos del Valenciano”.

What they don’t real­ize is that that moniker also comes from the orig­i­nal Hacien­da, as “los mulos de valen­ciano” actu­al­ly means “the Valencian’s mules”. Even the riv­er that goes by the city is called “el río valen­ciano”, a trib­u­tary of the Gurabo Riv­er, which even­tu­al­ly flows into the Río Grande de Loíza and out to sea.

Jun­cos is a small town on the cen­tral east­ern quad­rant of Puer­to Rico that used to pro­duce most­ly sug­ar cane, cof­fee and oth­er minor agri­cul­tur­al prod­ucts. It doesn’t hace won­der­ful beach­es, Span­ish forts or trop­i­cal rain forests either. What it does have is three indus­tri­al plants that pro­duce phar­ma­ceu­ti­cals and med­ical devices. One is the largest in the world.

When we reached the cen­ter of town we found a beau­ti­ful square cov­ered by well-pruned trees and with a great foun­tain in the cen­ter. It’s named the Anto­nio R. Barceló in remem­brance of a well known Puer­to Rican lawyer, busi­ness­man and politi­cian. Most of what you’ll want to see is around or close to this plaza.

Mon­u­ment to the fall­en sol­diers (click on image to see it larger)

On the south side of the square you’ll find the Mon­u­ment to the Fall­en Sol­diers. It’s a small obelisk (about 4 feet high) ded­i­cat­ed to Sergeant Felix Modesto Conde Fal­cón, who received a posthu­mous Medal of Hon­or from Pres­i­dent Bar­rack Oba­ma in 2014.

On the east­ern side of the square is the Immac­u­late Con­cep­tion Parish “Par­ro­quia de la Inmac­u­la­da Con­cep­ción”, a beau­ti­ful tem­ple, paint­ed in light blue —or what most peo­ple would call “baby blue”— that was built between 1794 and 1797.

When we entered the Parish there was lady —who turned out to be one of the church pas­tors— who asked us not to film her. So we didn’t. She also said that we could film what­ev­er we wished, except her, of course. So we did that too.

Immac­u­late Con­cep­tion Parish (click on image to see it larger)

Puer­to Rico has a large col­lec­tion of old church­es pep­pered through­out the Island, includ­ing some of the old­est in the west­ern hemi­sphere. So if you’re into that kind of tourism Puer­to Rico is a great place to explore.

Our Island has had its share of earth­quakes through­out the cen­turies and his­to­ry shows that this church has been dam­aged sev­er­al times. How­ev­er, it seems like the restora­tion work has been done care­ful­ly, cor­rect­ly and metic­u­lous­ly because the tem­ple is sim­ply beautiful.

If you’re com­ing to Jun­cos, or just dri­ving by on your way to some­where else, this is one place that deserves a vis­it. And the fact that the peo­ple are friend­ly and wel­com­ing does­n’t hurt either.

As I’ve explained in past posts, most Puer­to Rican towns found­ed dur­ing the Span­ish colo­nial years fol­low the same design as old Span­ish towns, where the church is at one end of the town square and City Hall is at the oppo­site side. Jun­cos used to be like that too. How­ev­er, today’s City Hall is at anoth­er loca­tion and there’s an Art School where the orig­i­nal City Hall used to be.

My wife and I walked around the square for a while and even took a cou­ple of min­utes to talk with the local patrons. There’s a feel­ing of despair among the towns­peo­ple because of the city’s sad state of affairs. Young peo­ple have sim­ply left town. You see rows of shut­tered build­ings where the town’s places of busi­ness used to be. There’s also an eire sense of silence and lone­li­ness. You can tell that the “cas­co” (the orig­i­nal town) is dying.

Old Build­ing in Jun­cos (click on image to see it larger)

I once heard a local archi­tect say that you can tell about a town’s his­to­ry by look­ing at it’s old build­ings. Well, in Jun­cos you can tell that it was once a pros­per­ous town. Now the pros­per­i­ty is some­where else.

On the flip side you have an indus­tri­al area just north­east of town, on road #31, next to the valen­ciano riv­er, where sev­er­al indus­tri­al indus­tri­al oper­a­tions have flour­ished on the town’s most fer­tile ter­rains. One of them in par­tic­u­lar is the company’s largest oper­a­tion in the world.

Just north of the indus­tri­al area is the old Jun­cos Sug­ar Mill, which appears on the Inter­net as one of the town’s tourist attrac­tions, but is actu­al­ly just a ruin. There’s noth­ing to see or do there.

Back in town there are still a few oth­er points of inter­est that you might want to take a look at. The “Teatro Jun­queño”, built in 1912, is on the south­east cor­ner of Barceló square, but it has been closed since hur­ri­cane María in 2017.

Behind the Teatro Jun­queño there’s a small ally with a stat­ue of Christ that —while nice— is at an awk­ward loca­tion, all by itself, where no one sees it or vis­its it.

El Mulo Mon­u­ment (click on image to see it larger)

As we left town we went by the “Mon­u­men­to Al Mulo” ded­i­cat­ed to that oth­er moniker that I men­tioned towards the start of this pro­gram. It’s a stat­ue of a mule, stand­ing on its hind legs. Sad­ly, it has a pole hold­ing up the stat­ue and the col­ors of the promon­to­ry are quick­ly fad­ing out.

Not all stat­ues of horse , stand­ing on their hind legs, have a pole sup­port­ing them. How­ev­er, this was some­thing that chal­lenged famous artists going back to the Roman Empire and lat­er Leonar­do Da Vin­ci him­self. If you want to learn how the over­came it watch our video about this town.

Jun­cos is a beau­ti­ful munic­i­pal­i­ty that illus­trates what’s hap­pen­ing through­out Puer­to Rico. You have an agri­cul­tur­al sec­tor that’s most­ly dead, a small town where most of the young peo­ple have left, one or more large shop­ping cen­ters that kill most of the small busi­ness­es in town and —in the case of Jun­cos— sev­er­al indus­tri­al oper­a­tions that pro­vide most of the employment.

At least you can’t call Jun­cos a dor­mi­to­ry town, because most of the employ­ment is pro­vid­ed by Amgen, Beck­ton & Dick­in­son and Medron­ic. That means that peo­ple don’t have to trav­el to work all the way to San Juan.

Jun­cos is def­i­nite­ly not the place to spend an entire day. But if you’re dri­ving by make a small detour and check out the church and the town square. You won’t be disappointed.

Oh, and by the way, the Jun­cos admin­is­tra­tion didn’t answer our email either, so every­thing in this video is based on our research, our vis­it and our opinions.

Sim­i­lar­ly, if you’re vis­it­ing Old San Juan, 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!

©2023,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