It was a flash moment, but all the more potent for that. I was looking for the oldest guy in town.
OK—it wasn’t a bar, and I wasn’t buying him his cigarettes and beer. But the process was pretty much the same.
“Yo busco a Chan,” I said to the three guys lounging on the boardwalk.
“Pa’ matarlo?” returned one. To kill him?
I must have passed, because they led me to him.
Guess it’s in the genes. My eye had been drawn to two large decaying towers. Gotta be sugar cane, I thought. But most of the chimneys I’ve seen were taller and thinner. So I asked a guy, who in turn asked me for a buck for a flask of wine. Helps him get through the day….
That’s how I got to Chan….
Who was a nice guy, gave me a seat in front of his fish shop, and told me the story of the area. Seems the area—Fajardo Playa—was originally mangrove swamp, “rescued” by his grandparent’s generation. It came there because there was work—a limestone (cal) mine on the nearby island of Icacos. The limestone came by ship, was packed and sent to the hardware stores around the island. In fact, they built a special pier just for the limestone. Called muelle de cal—limestone pier—it was nicknamed muelle de lambeojos—brownnose pier.
Now all the limestone comes from Mexico.
And it was Icacos limestone that was used to build the two towers that—yup—were for refining sugar. Called a central—it got the sugarcane from a valley behind a mountain that the wine-seeker pointed out in the distance. Came by rail—a special train used just for transporting the cane.
OK—knew about that. There’s a famous one down south somewhere. Well, the Central started up in the early 20th century. Closed down in the mid 70’s. The sugar cane would come, be processed, then transported in sacks by ships to a larger ship anchored at sea. Harbor in Fajardo Playa wasn’t deep enough.
And local guys would work the ships—standing on one and heaving sacks of sugar to go to the other ship.
Hard work, and Chan said the guys had muscles for days. Still do. There are two of them surviving, and they’re both sharp as machetes, mentally. One of ‘em is 95.
Well, the Central closed down in 1977. It had been the biggest employer in town for decade. But it was cheaper for the gringos to bring it in half a world away. So what to do? Well, a lot of the guys turned to the sea. Took to fishing, which is also a hard life. Hour after hour under the sun, and indeed it’s hot here, in this corner of the island. And they could go for a couple of days without catching anything.
So the kids in town? Where are they working?
Answer—elsewhere or they’re not. In 1997, the unemployment rate was 22-25%. And that was the nineties—good years, good times. Now? Curiously, it’s lower. Just 19%, the highest in Puerto Rico. The census tells the story—4000 people left town in the first decade of the 21st century.
Most of the local businesses have closed. On the outskirts of town, there are the malls, the chain stores. Puerto Rico’s most expensive hotel, El Conquistador, sits rather smugly on a nearby mountaintop. Designed to face the sea, it also turns its back on the town.
And yes, two pharmaceuticals—the backbone of the 1950’s Bootstrap miracle—still remain. Estamos sobrevivendo por la misericordia de Dios. We’re holding on by the mercy of God, said Chan. Times are bad.
And Chan has about 20 fishermen who supply him with the red snapper, conch (when it was legal), and lobster he sells.
Well, Chan had given me half an hour of his time, and the name of a book—El Grito de Silencio, The Shout of Silence—which would tell me the story of the Central. So I gave him my hand, thanked him for his time, and for the information. We’d passed half an hour chatting and looking out over the sea, remembering or learning the old days, when guys had jobs and produced stuff, instead of lingering in bars or flipping hamburgers.
Memories are selective and often defective. But nothing about Fajardo Playa, today, spoke of good times.
