Day Five: Frankie, Kat, and Kade

 We started the day with breakfast at our hotel, (Hotel Guajataca), and met our new tour guide, Melina, who is from West Puerto Rico. After breakfast, our group ventured toward Abolición y Revolución in our van. 

During the ride there, our tour guide Melina, discussed the brief history of Quebra Dillas, which is the location of where our hotel is located. QuebraDillas is known as the “Pirate City.” The area is a big tourist attraction because of the stories of pirates hiding there and the caves that populate the island. She also spent some time explaining the history of sugarcane on the island. Sugarcane arrived on the island 1523 and for a while it was one of the island's greatest sources of income. With the slave trade beginning to grow more and more and the push for more and more sugarcane, the amount of slaves on the island started to grow. Unfortunately a series of natural disasters would wipe out almost all of PR’s supply of sugarcane in the 50s and the island would switch over to the production of coffee as its main crop. One thing she brought up was that Puerto Ricans are slowly starting to lose their connection to the land. With the amount of lush fields that we’ve seen on the trip it’s kind of sad that people who call this place home are starting to lose all their history and connection to agriculture. She explained how the idea of switching back to a more agricultural based life might help the economy as it can create jobs in areas where there are no jobs as well as give families a more sustainable food source. It was also noted that it would also bring in money from trading. 

(Kade): Today I was able to relate a lot about what she said during the drive in the morning to my project. I’m writing about agriculture and climate change, and she talked a lot about how people who live on the island are slowly stepping away from living off the land. She explained how this is due to the challenges with hurricanes especially hurricane maria. One thing I found interesting that actually answers a couple of my questions was “what do farmers do during hurricanes”? She talked about how they stay on their land and do their best to recover. “They stay and kinda figure it out”. 

Finally, we arrived in Mayagüez and we went inside a  church. There are many stories of how the church was formed. The two main stories are: a man was being attacked by a bull and then he prayed and the bull stopped going for him, a child was lost and after a few days was found by her family and they asked how she didn’t die from dehydration or starvation and she said she was protected by a women. Then they built the church on the spot where both of those miracles took place. This church is different because usually people get together and decide they are going to build a new town and then they decide to make a church and politics, but here the church came first. 

The second church we visited was La Candelaria, which is a cathedral. There are only 9 cathedrals in Puerto Rico. La Candelaria started as a church destroyed in 1918 by earthquake, then rebuilt bigger. The paintings at the altar are usually only seen in cathedrals, every church in Puerto Rico has the stations of the cross. Our tour guide Melina discussed how the cathedral created an association to baptize slaves' children because if you are baptized you are free. The exact basin where many slaves had been freed has become a tourist attraction now the story of slaves being freed is still told today by direct descendants of slaves that still live on the island.

I (Kat) found this part of the tour interesting. It didn’t connect to my research project but the idea that the association idealized that slaves who were children could be baptized and become free was perplexing.  There were a lot of slave revolutions over the island, most were destroyed by opposing groups— one slave group was semi successful as they got independence but only for one day before the spanish stepped in 

Today has helped me with my (Frankie) project because our tour guide talked a bit about how this year is the 150th anniversary of the abolition of slavery on the island. Because of this milestone there are a lot of bomba events and parties happening on the island. Music is used in every celebration that happens in Puerto Rico and is ingrained in their culture. 

Puerto Rico is under US law so there is separation of church and state, in order to have a town you have to have a church and the church is in the town square where you also have to have the mayor's house so church and state, although legally separate, are very physically close. back when the spanish were here you had to be catholic to acquire land, when the US invaded they made little sections of the island devoted to different religious groups 

although in the US we have recognized that christopher columbus is not a good person, and renamed his former holiday as indigenous peoples day, his statue is still in some plazas in puerto rico, there were a lot of discussions of which town should be the “christopher columbus town” and even recently (10 yrs ago) the town of Arecibo made a huge monument to christopher columbus. 

after meeting the interim mayor of Mayagüez, we ate lunch at a local bakery and then we got a police escort by a few people that work in the mayor's office to see the worlds biggest plena (traditional puerto rican drum instrument) and the upr Mayagüez campus, it’s known for its STEM programs. UPR Mayagüez has a 49% acceptance rate, but also only a 48% graduation rate. This is probably because of students pulling out of the university due to financial reasons. They are actively recruiting international students. This year they received ≈3,000 applications and ≈120 of them were international. mainly from the US, but some from South america. The admission officer said that most of the applications they get from the states are from children of alumni. 

After our tour we had some free time at the pool at the hotel and then headed to dinner at Travesia, a local restaurant where many of us were invested in the Baseball game on the TV, where Puerto Rico is crushing the Dominican Republic