Santa Isabel, From Sugar To Sustainability 

Most peo­ple trav­el­ing to Puer­to Rico will nev­er vis­it San­ta Isabel. It’s one of those sleepy towns that you dri­ve by a hun­dred times on your way to Ponce or Mayagüez. That was cer­tain­ly my case, as I have lived in Puer­to Rico since 1963 and had nev­er vis­it­ed San­ta Isabel.

Well, that changed last Mon­day. My wife and I arrived in San­ta Isabel around 9:39am, on the morn­ing of Mon­day, Feb­ru­ary 3rd, eager to explore this lit­tle gem of only 77 square miles, on the south­ern coast of Puer­to Rico.

San­ta Isabel is a qui­et lit­tle town that’s still strug­gling with the effects of hur­ri­cane María. The storm plowed through Puer­to Rico on the morn­ing of Sep­tem­ber 20, 2017, pack­ing winds of over 155 mph. You can still see the scars every­where: poles lean­ing at 45° angles, miss­ing win­dows, bro­ken roofs and even entire struc­tures that where blown to smithereens.

How­ev­er, what the storm could­n’t blow away was the people’s spir­it. We found friend­ly, out­go­ing peo­ple eager to show us their town with pride and enthusiasm.

When we got to San­ta Isabel our first order of busi­ness was to vis­it “Par­ro­quia San­ti­a­go Após­tol” (Saint James the Apos­tle Parish, in the King’s Eng­lish). It’s a small, twin bell tow­er struc­ture that sits on the east­ern side of “La Plaza de los Fun­dadores” (Founder’s Square).

In Span­ish colo­nial times Catholic church­es were gen­er­al­ly built on the east­ern side of the town square and City Hall was most­ly on the west­ern end. And, of course, both the church and city hall were built when the town was found­ed, so there weren’t any land imped­i­ments to speak of.

This is pre­cise­ly why I always won­der when I find a Catholic church that’s not on the east­ern end of the square. Why? Didn’t the builders have a com­pass? Didn’t they observe the sun in the morning?

Thank­ful­ly “Par­ro­quia San­ti­a­go Após­tol” is not one of those odd­i­ties. It’s on the east­ern side of the square and “accord­ing to the locals” it’s beau­ti­ful inside. Yes, accord­ing to the locals, because my wife and I were nev­er able to see the inside.

You see, the main rea­son why my wife and I arrive so ear­ly at every town is to increase our odds of catch­ing the Catholic church open. Many Catholic priests cel­e­brate mass ear­ly in the morn­ing and lat­er close their tem­ples for the day.

Years ago tem­ples would be open ’round the clock. But crime, van­dal­ism, bud­getary and per­son­nel restric­tions have all forced eccle­si­as­ti­cal author­i­ties to close some church­es dur­ing the day. We even tried the parish office, to see if there was any­one who could show us the inte­ri­or of the tem­ple, but that too was closed.

You might be ask­ing your­self: “why don’t these peo­ple plan ahead”? Well, let me tell you.

Back in Jan­u­ary of 2023, when I embarked in our present series vis­it­ing all 78 munic­i­pal­i­ties in Puer­to Rico, I start­ed with an email/phone cam­paign ask­ing town offi­cials to pro­vide us with some­one who could show us around town. That way we could cov­er each town under the best pos­si­ble light.

But, as gov­ern­ments will often do, most of them ignored us. Only two munic­i­pal­i­ties out of the ini­tial 40+ that we approached ever answered at all. So we decid­ed to do what reg­u­lar tourists will do. We sim­ply drop by, inform our readers/viewers about our find­ings and let the chips fall where they may.

No con­tacts, no priv­i­leges, just the fact-based experience.

Think about it! Isn’t that what real tourists do? They just drop by, expe­ri­ence what­ev­er a place has to offer and com­ment on Yelp! Sim­ple! So, in a way, I guess what we’re doing is a lot more authentic.

Back to our story.

After find­ing the church closed our next stop was City Hall. We’ve found that, in small towns like San­ta Isabel, City Hall is where it all hap­pens. They’re the one’s in the know.

And I was right. The young lady at the front desk referred us to Mr. Jaime Romero, who spent the bet­ter half of his morn­ing telling us about the his­to­ry of San­ta Isabel and show­ing us around town.

As it turns out, San­ta Isabel has a long and rich his­to­ry. In fact, it pre­dates the Span­ish colo­nial era alto­geth­er. One of the old­est Taíno set­tle­ments in Puer­to Rico was found in San­ta Isabel back in 1904, at a coastal point south of town called “Cay­i­to”.

There was also a time when most of the dis­cov­er­ies made at Cay­i­to were on exhib­it at the San­ta Isabel Indige­nous Muse­um. But guess what. That muse­um no longer exists, in spite of the out­dat­ed infor­ma­tion that pre­vails on the Inter­net. What used to be the muse­um, and pre­vi­ous­ly a school, is now a bat infest­ed ruin.

And the pieces. Those were trans­ferred to the Puer­to Rico Insti­tute of Cul­ture, which in turn has been con­stant­ly under attack by the right-wing pro-state­hood par­ty. So who knows where those arte­facts are today.

I could go fur­ther down that rab­bit hole and talk about how there’s an intent to erase any­thing Puer­to Rican from the col­lec­tive mem­o­ry of our peo­ple. But, that’s not the pur­pose of this post, so let’s get back to San­ta Isabel.

San­ta Isabel was found­ed on Octo­ber 5, 1842 when it sep­a­rat­ed from the neigh­bor­ing town of Coamo, Puer­to Rico’s third old­est town. Dur­ing its ear­ly years San­ta Isabel was an agri­cul­tur­al pow­er­house, com­bin­ing slave-dri­ven sug­ar plan­ta­tions and small­er hacien­das that pro­duced minor crops.

With the abo­li­tion of slav­ery on March 22, 1873, and the arrival of the Unit­ed States just 25 years lat­er, sug­ar cane became pret­ty much the only crop on the Island and the entire munic­i­pal­i­ty slow­ly moved to a more monop­o­lis­tic town com­pa­ny model.

 

Even though both the slave-dri­ven Span­ish mod­el and the more sub­dued com­pa­ny town mod­el —brought by the Unit­ed States— are essen­tial­ly both forms of slav­ery, it’s still inter­est­ing to see how many locals rem­i­nisce about the sug­ar cane era with a cer­tain degree of nostalgia.

And, in case you’re not famil­iar with what a town com­pa­ny is, it’s a town where every aspect of social and eco­nom­ic activ­i­ty is con­trolled by a pri­vate eco­nom­ic enti­ty. Case in point, the Aguirre Sug­ar Plan­ta­tion that we cov­ered in our Sali­nas post. They even print­ed their own mon­ey. So the eco­nom­ic activ­i­ty that took place in Aguirre ran par­al­lel to that of Sali­nas and had no real ben­e­fit for township.

In the case of San­ta Isabel it wasn’t as bad, but the mono­cul­ture mod­el that came with the arrival of the Unit­ed States in 1898 destroyed entire sec­tors of the town econ­o­my and fur­thered pover­ty amount its inhab­i­tants. And yet there are those that see the plan­ta­tion smoke­stack as some sort of reminder of bet­ter times.

As we walked around the “Plaza de los Fun­dadores” (San­ta Isabel’s main square) with our new found friend Jaime Romero, we could see that there’s a lot of his­to­ry in San­ta Isabel that doesn’t meet the eye.

For exam­ple, many of the huge build­ings sur­round­ing “La Plaza de los Fun­dadores” were once giant homes owned by the town’s well-to-do. Today, many of those struc­tures lan­guish under the hot Caribbean sun. And, like in most towns, huge shop­ping cen­ters “suck the eco­nom­ic life” out of town centers.

But that’s noth­ing new either. We’ve seen it in towns like Humacao, Jun­cos, Guaya­ma and many oth­ers around the Island. Large shop­ping cen­ters go up and the orig­i­nal towns go down. You would think that may­ors would know bet­ter by now, but it keeps hap­pen­ing. So I guess they don’t.

Come to think of it, I didn’t hear any noise in San­ta Isabel. You know, the kind of noise that you have when there’s a bustling econ­o­my. Instead we had slow traf­fic, hard­ly any pedes­tri­ans and an eire silence. I also saw clean streets, well kept pub­lic spaces and hard­ly any graf­fi­ti. So that’s good.

“La Plaza de los Fun­dadores” is a huge square that used to be cov­ered in trees. But accord­ing to our host hur­ri­cane María destroyed most of them and the rest were removed dur­ing the lat­est remodelling.

Today, only a few small­er trees remain and the rest of the square is cov­ered in tile and con­crete. Being that it was the 3rd day of Feb­ru­ary the tem­per­a­ture was around 80°F. But I can’t imag­ine what it would be like in the mid­dle of August.

Final­ly, on the south­east end of the square there’s an obelisk hon­or­ing the towns heroes, who have died dur­ing dif­fer­ent U.S. wars. It also hon­ors Cap­tain María Inés Ortiz San­ti­a­go, a town nurse killed dur­ing the Iraq con­flict of 2003.

And in case you’re won­der­ing, City Hall is on the north­east cor­ner of “La Plaza de los Fun­dadores”. It’s a recent­ly restored build­ing that I can only asume was built dur­ing the late 19th cen­tu­ry or ear­ly 20th cen­tu­ry. And I’m quite aware of what they say about “assum­ing”, but believe me, I looked every­where and I couldn’t find the year when it was built. I also tried dial­ing the San­ta Isabel switch­board but the calls wouldn’t go through.

After leav­ing town my wife and I drove to the Malecón area. By now you must know from pre­vi­ous arti­cles that the word “malecón” means water­front in Span­ish. It’s a walk along the shore, pep­pered with restau­rants and a great ocean view. Well, sort of…

Like many oth­er coastal towns in Puer­to Rico, the gov­ern­ment has allowed uncon­trolled (even ile­gal) urban sprawl along the coast, to the point where you can’t even see or reach the water.

A lit­tle after you pass the Malecón there’s a sec­ond water­front area that was sup­posed to become a “fisherman’s vil­lage”. But, instead, it has become anoth­er urban sprawl with expen­sive hous­es lin­ing the seashore.

And the fish­er­men? Very well, thank you!

Oh, and in case you’re won­der­ing. The Malecón area is a week­end thing. Thank God that we brought a cou­ple of sand­wich­es in our cool­er, because every sin­gle place was closed.

After leav­ing the Malecón our next stop was Playa Claveli­na, a seclud­ed beach that sits behind a res­i­den­tial area. In our video you can get a bet­ter taste of what I thought about “Playa Claveli­na”. There were peo­ple with blar­ing car stere­os play­ing lurid music in the pres­ence of lit­tle children.

So, instead of vent­ing my frus­tra­tion, I sim­ply played the clip and let the view­er arrive at his/her own con­clu­sions. Oh, and in case Span­ish isn’t your thing, get a lati­no friend to tell you what the lyrics were all about.

Click on the thumb­nail to watch the video

By now you must be feel­ing like San­ta Isabel isn’t a “touristy” town. And if you are, you’re prob­a­bly right. It’s not that there’s any­thing wrong with it. It’s just a place where peo­ple go about there lives and enjoy the “sim­ple life”.

There were two places left that we want­ed to see in San­ta Isabel. One was the ruins of Cen­tral Cor­ta­da (where most of San­ta Isabel’s sug­ar cane his­to­ry took place) and the oth­er was the San­ta Isabel Wind Farm.

But, our host in town had told us that most of the sug­ar cane plan­ta­tion had been destroyed by hur­ri­cane María, so we decid­ed to pass on the sug­ar cane mill and go straight to the wind farm.

Of course, at the wind farm we couldn’t just walk right in unan­nounced. So instead I decid­ed to fly the drone.

The San­ta Isabel wind farm is cur­rent­ly the largest oper­a­tion of its kind in the Caribbean. It has 44 wind tur­bines pro­duc­ing 2.3 megawatts each. That totals a capac­i­ty of 101.2 megawatts.

Back in 2012, when the project began, I remem­ber ask­ing a friend of mine —who’s an expert in these things— about the via­bil­i­ty of the project. After all, we were all taught in school that the trade winds hit Puer­to Rico most­ly from the north­east. Giv­en that the Island has a cen­tral moun­tain­ous region that splits it in two east to west, it would stand to rea­son that the moun­tains would actu­al­ly block the wind and keep it from hit­ting the tur­bines on the south­ern coast.

Well, as it turns out, most wind on the Island is a com­bi­na­tion of east­er­ly and north­east­ern cur­rents, and the moun­tains actu­al­ly act as a fun­nel that steers the wind straight into the turbines.

But, there’s a fly in the oint­ment. The Puer­to Rican pow­er grid is inca­pable of sup­port­ing that amount of incom­ing renew­able pow­er. So the peo­ple from the San­ta Isabel Solar Wind Farm are forced to dumb-down their sys­tem to avoid blow­ing out the Island’s obso­lete pow­er grid.

Believe me, I don’t derive any plea­sure from men­tion­ing these absur­di­ties. And some­times it even sounds like I’m mak­ing things up. Buy, it’s just one more exam­ple of life in Puer­to Rico.

As for San­ta Isabel, I guess it start­ed as a farm­ing town and it’s once again “a farm­ing town”. Only now they farm the wind instead of the land, most­ly. There are still small farm­ing efforts, even under the tur­bines. But the major crop is “elec­tric­i­ty”.

After fly­ing the drone and cap­tur­ing some nice aer­i­al shots, we gath­ered our stuff and head­ed back to 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!

©2025,Orlando Mer­gal, MA
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Bilin­gual Con­tent Cre­ator, Blog­ger, Podcaster,
Author, Pho­tog­ra­ph­er and New Media Expert
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