Santurce
Santurce - The First Barrio of Puerto Rico
The Layout
European Settlement
Natives
Taino Libraries
Colon y Ponce
1800's
US Modernization
Native Discoveries
Capitol Hill
Bahia Urbana
Escambrón
The Layout
Old San Juan East refers to the "Puerta de Tierra' subbarrio that makes up the Eastern 2/3 of La Isleta de San Juan. It is technically outside of the Viejo San Juan District, that makes up the Western 1/3 of the Isleta, but became a historic neighborhood as recently as 2019 and today the entire Isleta is a historic community. We may use La Isleta, Antiguo San Juan, Viejo San Juan and Old San Juan interchangeably in this article but we are referring to this Islet itself, while most people refer to just the Walled City.
This outline highlighted a Crab with claws at top right, created by building a Fort on either side of the bay and then landfilling the bay with boulders to stop ships from landing, where they were easy picking for both forts. Puerta de Tierra is everything East of the City Gates but is also the name of the 3rd of 4 neighborhoods in the area, the residential center, with Bahia Urbana (Ports), Capitol Hill (Capitolio) & Escambron (Beaches, Parks, Resorts).
The historic City of San Juan, pre-1950's expansion, consisted of La Isleta de San Juan, and a nearby man-made island, about 4x its size, that was divided from the mainland by a canal. This island was known as Santurce and contained the original suburbs of San Juan. Santurce was the FIRST Barrio/Borough.
Old San Juan is totally separated from the island of Puerto Rico by the Laguna Condado, El Boqueron, Cano de San Antonio & Bahie de San Juan. San Juan city continues off La Isleta into the suburbs of Santurce. The first subbarrio upon arriving is Condado (The County, but today refers to Condos). Santurce stretches along the coast to Carolina at SJU airport. Today, the city limits include an area about 16 times the size of La Isleta or about 50 times the original walled city.
In the mid 1900's, San Juan annexed an area on the mainland of Puerto Rico, known as Hato Rey and Rio Pedras, which are about double the size of Santurce. An area roughly twice the size of Hato Rey & Rio Pedras continues south and ends at a place called Caimto at the tri-country border of Trujillo Alto, Caguas & Guaynabo, roughly 27 KM from La Fortaleza on the West End of Viejo San Juan.
La Isleta is considered the Historic City Center, Walled Fortress & State Capitol section, and is densely packed inside of the Fortress and spread out widely outside of the City Walls. Santurce has the closest suburbs and is much denser and has the only Walmart in San Juan.
Condado, directly across from Puerta de Tierra at the NW Coast of Santurce, is a hip trendy place with nightclubs, beaches, tree-lined streets, boutique shops & luxury condos,
Santurce also has the local Metro 'El Tren", which will take you through the denser suburbs of San Juan through Guaynabo and into Bayamon, which has Casinos. Hato Rey has the two major sports stadiums, Hiram Bithorn & Coliseo Roberto Clemente Walker. Santurce & Hato Rey host the major area hospitals and universities.
For the purposes of this article, just acknowledge that La Isleta de San Juan is Historic and disconnected from the mainland where most of the heavily populated areas are, and that Puerta de Tierra was outside of the City Gates and was used as strategic defenses until the City Walls were torn down in late 1800's.
European Settlement
Settlement of Santurce can be traced back to 1760 when it was founded as 'San Mateo de Cangrejos"(Saint Matthew of the Crabs).
Santurce was seperated from Old San Juan by water on all sides. They remained very isolated and was severely underdeveloped until the later 1800's. It consisted of some 'Strategic Lines of Defense" like Fortin San Antonio, Fortin Escambron and Fortin de San Geronimo de El Boqueron (St. Jerome's Fort, my namesake!)
The Forts were ultimately built to protect San Juan from foreign invasion by the Dutch & British, not against native uprisings, which they had quelled long ago. For more information on the History of the Spanish Forts & Spanish Wars Click Here.
Natives
The Tainos were a group of Arawak natives, originally from Amazonia in Brazil. They would travel from island to island in canoes and make trips to what we call North, Central & South America. Their name for the island of Puerto Rico was "Borinquen", which is where we get "Boricua" from. Modern Puerto Ricans use Taino & Boricua as expressions of Native pride against their Spanish & American occupiers.
The Tainos inhabited different islands at different times and avoided certain islands altogether. There were islands of Giants, dog-headed men, cyclopes, etc but this could have been Spanish explorers telling tall tales. The Tainos believed they were created by the Huracan Gods and spawned in a cave on a Sacred Mountain on Hispaniola (D/Haiti)
They were at odds with another group of Amazonians named the Caribs. The Taino natives introduced several words to the Spanish & English languages like "Juracan" (Hurricane) & Barbacoa (Barbecue). They referred to the Caribs as Cannibales, people who wanted to eat them for Barbacoa.
The term Taino is possibly a Spanish word for "Good Guys". Either the Natives told the Spaniards they were "The Good Guys" when describing the bad guys "Cannibales", or the Spanish were "The Good Guys" and either called themselves Tainos to convince them, or the Natives called them Tainos (Good Guys) to thank them.
It is estimated that the Tainos & other Caribs lost about 90% of their population through various diseases, slavery, colonization, famine etc. after the Europeans arrived.
Eventually that 10% developed immunity to these diseases and the Spaniards "accepted" them. It is very likely that most of the Natives died from disease, rather than total genocide, because when the first European colonizers came over to attack San Juan, they would lose about 90% of their men to disease also.
La Encomienda would play a major role as well, because it allowed Spaniards to treat "Non-Christians" as subhuman and to use them for slave labor. Bartolomeo De Casas estimated that between his arrival in 1508 and his return in 1560 over 3 Million Natives had perished, leaving behind only 60,000 Natives on the island of Puerto Rico.
However, the Tainos trusted the Spaniards enough that they lived right outside of their city walls and traded with them, and the Spanish tolerated them enough that they were allowed to live right on La Isleta. The Caribbean Islands have no animals bigger than a dog, and have various lizards and birds, and toxic berries etc so the Natives couldn't hunt for game. They preferred to live off of the Sea, compared to the tough terrain of the jungles and mountains inland. Here they could pick fruit from the trees, or when it washed up on shore, and they could trap lobsters, oysters and more while fishing and crab-picking. Some brave souls would get in the water and wrestle with manatees and giant sea turtles after spearing them.
Taino Libraries
One thing never mentioned about Native Americans is that these "savages" had written language before the "civilized" Europeans arrived. During an early battle at San Juan, a city library dating back to BEFORE EUROPEAN ARRIVAL was burned to the ground during an attack at La Fortaleza. WRITTEN LANGUAGE IN A LIBRARY BEFORE 1492!
We could have lost written records of journeys throughout the Caribbean, up the Amazon & Mississippi Rivers, and even portage across Panama to the Pacific, long before Europeans even realized there was a continent there at all. There could have been records of Aztecs, Mayans, Incas, Seminoles, Mississippians, Choctaws, Apaches and more. What a shame. This is why I am such a fan of preserving history.
1800's
By the 1800's, many countries all over the world were feeling rebellious, after the American, French & Haitian Revolutions were successful, and Nationalism spread far and wide. The Puerto Ricans were no different and were actively lobbying for independence from Spain after 300 years of Colonization.
Unfortunately for them, they were the Crown Jewel of the Spanish Empire and 1st Line of Defense for the Spanish Main, which still consisted of most of everything west of the Mississippi River and everything west of Brazil.
They were granted premier status and allowed to govern themselves locally while observing protection from the Spaniards in the event of invasion. It was the best situation they could hope for, for now.
The Walled City held mostly upper-class Spaniard socialites and government class, while the "Boricuas" in the San Juan area lived in various settlements across the northern coast of the main island, or inland along the rivers. Many of them moved to Puerta De Tierra to be near the city for trade and commerce, and opportunities. They built various shanty towns and drove out most of the Taino Native who lived there previously.
"Puerta de Tierra" aka Land Gate closed off the Walled City of San Juan and its Castillo San Cristobal to the rest of the Isleta, through 20-foot thick walls.. Just on the other side of the gate is Plaza de Colon, known then as Puerta de Santiago, Gate of St. James, opposite of Gate of St. John at Bahia de San Juan on the West side of the Isleta. One could imagine all sorts of vendors lined up for business, much like today's Brooklyn Bridge in NYC hosts dozens of vendors. Citizens could venture outside of the gates for cheaper prices than those inside the gates.
The 1867 Virgin Islands Earthquake severely damaged the Southeastern section of the wall.
Taking advantage of the opportunity, the locals destroyed this section of the wall and removed the gate, opening the city of mostly upper-class Spaniards to outsiders for the first time in over 200 years.
La Puerta de Santiago (St. James Gate) was removed and turned into a public square, Plaza Santiago, and the locals put up a statue of their founder, Juan Ponce de Leon. In 1893, it was turned into Plaza Colon for the 400th Anniversary of Columbus landing at Puerto Rico, and Ponce was moved to the NW Side at Plaza San Jose near La Ballaja & El Morro.
US Modernization
When the Americans occupied Puerto Rico in 1898, they chose to keep San Juan as its State Capitol.
Prior to the annexation of Puerto Rico, the strip of Puerta De Tierra had a main road, El Camino Real, which went SW from San Juan to Ponce on the other side of the Island. The Americans chose to modernize everything north of the main strip going from La Isleta to Condado.
Condado was turned into a luxury resort town & downtown shopping district adjacent to the historic colony & new State Capitol.
Condado as seen from above El Boqueron over the Dos Hermanos (Two Brothers) Bridge. Laguna Condado at right and the Atlantic Ocean at left. The Santurce neighborhoods of Parque & Ocean Park Beach continue until Punta Las Marias, before turning inland towards the SJU Airport in Carolina at Isla Verde. Condado, Ocean Park & Isla Verde have some of the nicest beaches you will find in San Juan off La Isleta. Just 150 years ago Native Tainos lived here with Los Boricuas in Shanty Towns on this premier strip of land near Viejo San Juan.
Native Discoveries
It wasn't up until the mid-1900's that modern governments began an effort to preserve history and create landmarks and hire people to regularly maintain them. Also, the US had a poor track record of preserving Native American history, and while Puerto Rico was one of its first attempts at colonization, most colonizers were known to destroy native cultures.
When the Americans started re-designing their new territorial Capitol, they were mostly concerned with removing the shanty towns of "poor people" and making space for their new construction, rather than honoring and preserving history.
It is unknown how much of the Native Taino settlements were destroyed when modernizing Puerto Rico in the 18/1900's but there are some discoveries documented during that time.
When the Puerto Rican National Guard Museum was built, excavations discovered a native fishing village, likely dating back to before the 1800's. This would be only a 15-minute walk from the Puerta de Santiago, Land Gate.
One way to look at this is the Puerto Rican House of Government literally sits exactly where their native tribes were known to gather before and after Spanish colonization.