Naguabo, The Town Of The “Dripping Wet” (los enchumbaos) 

OK, local Puer­to Ricans are going to have my head for this one. What’s that about the “drip­ping wet”? On the Island, peo­ple from Naguabo are called “los enchum­baos”. In fact, if we are going to express it cor­rect­ly it would be “los enchumba’os”, because the apos­tro­phe replaces de “d” that’s actu­al­ly miss­ing in the moniker.

You see, in Span­ish the word “enchum­ba­dos” is col­lo­qui­al­ly pro­nounced “enchum­baos”. And guess what? It means “drip­ping wet”. More on that in a minute.

Click on image to watch the video

Naguabo is a small town, of a lit­tle over 23,000 peo­ple, that sits on the south­east­ern coast of the larg­er island of Puer­to Rico. It’s neigh­bors are Cei­ba to the north­east, Río Grande north, Las Piedras west and Humacao south. To the east it has the island munic­i­pal­i­ty of Vieques across the Vieques Passage.

So Why “The Dripping Wet”?

So why the “drip­ping wet”? Well, this lit­tle town of a lit­tle over 60 square miles receives over 130 cubic inch­es of annu­al pre­cip­i­ta­tion. It also sits on the south­east­ern quad­rant of El Yunque Nation­al Rain­for­est and has six rivers, includ­ing “Río Pri­eto”, “Río Ica­cos”, “Río Blan­co”, “Río Cubuy”, “Río Sabana” and “Río San­ti­a­go”. In case you hadn’t guessed it, the word “río” means “riv­er” in Spanish.

All in all, Naguabo has no short­age of water. In fact, it’s one of the wettest towns in Puer­to Rico and prone to fre­quent flood­ing. Hence, the moniker “enchum­baos” is more than fitting.

Naguabo And The Navy

Naguabo is also one of the towns that “ben­e­fit­ed” from the pres­ence of the U.S. Navy at the Roo­sevelt Roads Naval Sta­tion in near­by Cei­ba. How­ev­er, through­out the years the rela­tion­ship between the U.S. Armed Forces and the local Puer­to Rican cit­i­zen­ry became tense, because of the con­tin­u­os bomb­ing prac­tices over a 60-year stretch that took place at the neigh­bor­ing islands of Vieques and Culebra.

After con­tin­u­ous strug­gles by the Puer­to Rican peo­ple, the Navy final­ly aban­doned Cule­bra in Decem­ber 1975 and Vieques on May 1, 2003.

But the prob­lem didn’t end there. The Unit­ed States Navy left behind large areas of con­t­a­m­i­nat­ed land and a year lat­er they closed down the Roo­sevelt Roads Naval Sta­tion in the town of Ceiba.

Roo­sevelt Roads had over 1,200 active-duty offi­cers, sev­er­al hun­dred sailors, 2,000 troops, hun­dreds of civil­ian work­ers from near­by towns and over 1,000 pri­vate con­trac­tors. Accord­ing to experts the clos­ing of Roo­sevelt Roads Naval Sta­tion was faster than any oth­er base on the main­land, lead­ing to mas­sive unem­ploy­ment in the area and hard times for all the sur­round­ing towns.

Back in August my wife and I vis­it­ed the neigh­bor­ing town of Cei­ba, where Roo­sevelt Roads Naval Base actu­al­ly oper­at­ed. Back then many read­ers com­plained about the stark real­i­ty that I paint­ed in my writ­ing. But hey, like they say in the news­pa­per busi­ness: “I don’t make the news. I just report it”.

Well, this time we vis­it­ed the town next door. And like Cei­ba you could hear a pin drop at its main square at 10:30 in the morning.

Maybe there was some­thing we missed. After all, when I start­ed this series I approached var­i­ous mayor’s offices and was ignored in most cas­es. So we decid­ed to do what any tourist would do. We sim­ply drop by unan­nounced and tell our read­ers what we actu­al­ly found.

We arrived in Naguabo at 9:30am on the morn­ing of Sep­tem­ber 23, 2024. By the time we put togeth­er our equip­ment it was clos­er to 10:00am.

A Beautiful Square But…

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

We start­ed by walk­ing around the main square, named after Luis Muñoz Rivera, Puer­to Rico’s sec­ond Res­i­dent Com­mis­sion­er in Wash­ing­ton after Fed­eri­co Dege­tau, who we cov­ered in our Aiboni­to post and video.

The first thing that caught our eye at the Naguabo square were the trees. There are dozens of large lus­cious trees that are in pris­tine con­di­tion and care­ful­ly pruned. The walk­ways are clean and in good con­di­tion. So are the bench­es and the lamp posts.

The only eye­sore were the water foun­tains, which didn’t work and —in many cas­es— were noth­ing more than glo­ri­fied trash bins.

Not a sin­gle water foun­tain was working.
(click on image to see it larger)

On the north side of the square there were sev­er­al seniors shoot­ing the breeze like seniors will do. There weren’t many. Five or six at the most. No that I think of it, those were the only humans that I saw dur­ing the entire time that we spent in Naguabo.

In all fair­ness, the Munic­i­pal­i­ty of Naguabo is hard­ly to blame for the town’s dwin­dling pop­u­la­tion and dis­pro­por­tion­ate amount of senior cit­i­zens. That’s most­ly caused by Puer­to Rico’s finan­cial dis­as­ter, the clo­sure of Roo­sevelt Roads Naval Sta­tion and the result­ing mass migra­tion of our younger gen­er­a­tions to the Unit­ed States.

Back in the ear­ly 2,000’s I wrote an arti­cle for anoth­er blog that I titled “Vagos y Vieji­tos”. That was when the Island’s gov­ern­ment offi­cials actu­al­ly asked Con­gress to kill Sec­tion 936, a fed­er­al finan­cial pro­vi­sion that was actu­al­ly the back­bone of Puer­to Rico’s econ­o­my. Like many oth­er things on the Island, the moti­va­tion was pure­ly polit­i­cal, but the Island has been in a steady eco­nom­ic decline ever since.

I always smile when I hear peo­ple talk about the Island’s “20-year reces­sion”. Well, there isn’t such a thing. In econ­o­my terms any­thing over two reces­sion­ary peri­ods in a row is called a depres­sion. But keep in mind that econ­o­my and com­mu­ni­ca­tions are two dif­fer­ent ani­mals. In the world of com­mu­ni­ca­tions the word depres­sion is a lot more fright­en­ing. But I digress…

Our Lady Of Rosary Parish
(click on image to see it larger)

On the west side of the square you have the “Our Lady Of Rosary Parish” (Par­ro­quia Nues­tra Seño­ra del Rosario). Its’s a beau­ti­ful, sin­gle-bell-tow­er, Roman Catholic Parish built in 1856.

The tem­ple is one of those few on the Island with the altar point­ing west. From the out­side it looks nice, but sad­ly that’s all we were able to see, because it was closed. We asked around, but to quote one of the locals: “they open it sometimes’”.

Ramón Rivero “Dip­lo” Munic­i­pal Theater
(click on image to see it larger)

On the oppo­site end of the square, on the south­east cor­ner, there’s a the­ater ded­i­cat­ed to Ramón Rivero, a local come­di­an bet­ter known by his stage name “Dip­lo”. Dip­lo lived between the years 1909 and 1956 and is con­sid­ered Puer­to Rico’s best come­di­an of all time.

Ramón Rivero “Dip­lo” Statue
(click on image to see it larger)

He was also a human­i­tar­i­an. In 1953, he orga­nized the world’s first known WalkAThon and walked 80 miles, from the city of San Juan on the north of the Island to the town of Ponce in the south and back. He did it to raise mon­ey for the Puer­to Rican League Against Can­cer. Three years lat­er he died of an aneurism.

Well, Diplo’s the­ater is closed, with a sign in front announc­ing that it’s being “remod­eled”. On the south­east end of the square, across the street from the the­ater, there’s a stat­ue hon­or­ing his mem­o­ry. Sad­ly, the plaque beneath it is hard­ly readable.

Signs And Procrastination

And that brings me to the signs. Announce­ments, rather. Local politi­cians have dis­cov­ered a way to get by with­out doing much at all. Not that they’ve ever been too pro­duc­tive, albeit it some hon­or­able excep­tions. But late­ly they’ve ele­vat­ed pro­cras­ti­na­tion to an artform.

Just one of the hun­dreds of signs that we’ve seen while vis­it­ing the east­ern half of Puer­to Rico.(click on image to see it larger)

How? By plac­ing signs. Allow me to elab­o­rate. One of the things that I’ve dis­cov­ered while pro­duc­ing these blog posts and videos for Puer­to Rico By GPS is the enor­mous amount of signs that you see every­where around the Island. They most­ly announce fab­u­lous projects that nev­er get done. Or, to leave some wig­gle room, let’s just say that most of them nev­er get done.

Why? Because our gov­ern­ment offi­cials have dis­cov­ered that the sign itself is enough to cre­ate a “feel­ing of well­be­ing” among their con­stituents. Peo­ple see the signs and they some­how con­clude that some­thing is being done. It’s a per­cep­tion thing: like “work per­ceived, work achieved”, if you will.

Well, the prob­lem with that is that years lat­er the only thing that you still have is the sign. No real progress.

And believe me, it isn’t my pur­pose to rag on Naguabo, but they too are suf­fer­ing from “sig­ni­tis”. You can tell, just by look­ing care­ful­ly, that the signs have been there for a looooooong time.

City Hall
(click on image to see it larger)

Final­ly, City Hall is a boxy yel­low build­ing on the east end of the square that sits next to the Ramón Rivero Theater.

There was very lit­tle left to do in the cen­ter of town so we decid­ed to go by “El Malecón”. “El Malecón” is a water­front area that’s pep­pered with seafood restau­rants and small bars. Of course, at 10:30 in the morn­ing, on a Mon­day, the place was bare­ly wak­ing up, so we drove by and returned home.

Naguabo water­front
(click on image to see it larger)

The “malecón” area has a beau­ti­ful board­walk with the clean turquoise waters of the “Pasaje de Vieques” as a back­drop. The “Pasaje de Vieques” is the water­way between south­east­ern Puer­to Rico and the Island munic­i­pal­i­ties of Vieques and Cule­bra that was once con­trolled by the Roo­sevelt Roads Naval Station.

Our next town is going to be Humacao. And, by the look of things, you’ll prob­a­bly be able to bun­dle all three (Cei­ba, Naguabo and Humacao) into a sin­gle day trip. Oh, and to quote an Humacao munic­i­pal employe, that I met at a recent con­ven­tion, none of the three towns has any decent beaches.

It was still around 11:30 so we decid­ed to head back to Sand 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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