San Juan Roots

San Juan Roots You already carry this. We just bring it back to you. San Juan Roots — the history, culture, and soul

Central Aguirre, Salinas. Not just a sugar mill. A whole town.A Boston company built the modern mill starting in 1899. P...
10/25/2026

Central Aguirre, Salinas. Not just a sugar mill. A whole town.

A Boston company built the modern mill starting in 1899. Production began with the 1900 harvest and ended in 1990. Around it grew housing for the workers, a hospital, a school, a social club and a movie theater.

Ninety years of zafras. Our grandparents cut the cane, ran the machines, sat in that school and watched movies in that theater.

Still here. Still us.

Send this to your dad if his people came from Salinas or Guayama. Did your family ever live in a company town?

Casa Blanca, the white house on the wall above San Juan Bay, photographed in 1901.Work on it began in 1521 as a home for...
10/25/2026

Casa Blanca, the white house on the wall above San Juan Bay, photographed in 1901.

Work on it began in 1521 as a home for Juan Ponce de León. He never lived in it. He died after his Florida expedition, and his family moved in instead. The first house was wood. After a fire, it was rebuilt in stone.

Generations of San Juan grew up looking at this house from the bay.

Still here. Still us.

Send this to your prima from Old San Juan. What is the oldest house anyone in your family ever lived in?

Cerro de Punta. At 1,338 meters, about 4,390 feet, it is the highest point in Puerto Rico.It sits in the Cordillera Cent...
10/25/2026

Cerro de Punta. At 1,338 meters, about 4,390 feet, it is the highest point in Puerto Rico.

It sits in the Cordillera Central, right on the line between Ponce and Jayuya. Near the top grows an elfin forest, small twisted trees shaped by wind and cloud. On a foggy morning like the one in this photo, you are standing inside the cloud.

The roof of our island, and it belongs to all of us.

Still here. Still us.

Send this to your cousin from Jayuya. What is the highest place your family ever lived?

Caguana, in the mountains of Utuado. Rows of carved stones line the plazas where the Taíno held their games, dances and ...
10/25/2026

Caguana, in the mountains of Utuado. Rows of carved stones line the plazas where the Taíno held their games, dances and ceremonies.

About 13 bateyes have been identified here, built around the year 1270. Some of the carved monoliths weigh more than a ton and were likely hauled up from the Tanamá River.

In 1993 Caguana was named a U.S. National Historic Landmark. Our land kept this place for more than 700 years.

Still here. Still us.

Send this to your son who loves history. Has your family ever walked the bateyes at Caguana?

Barranquitas, 1941. A farmer working a to***co field on a mountainside so steep it looks like it could tip over.Jack Del...
10/25/2026

Barranquitas, 1941. A farmer working a to***co field on a mountainside so steep it looks like it could tip over.

Jack Delano photographed to***co country all around Barranquitas that year. Most of the island's to***co was planted by local growers, not the big companies. Families like this one grew the leaf that rolled into ci**rs across the island and up north.

Still here. Still us.

Send this to your abuelo from the mountains. Did anyone in your family grow to***co or roll ci**rs?

Míriam Colón was born in Ponce. She went to New York on scholarships to study acting, including at Lee Strasberg's Actor...
10/25/2026

Míriam Colón was born in Ponce. She went to New York on scholarships to study acting, including at Lee Strasberg's Actors Studio.

In 1967 she founded the Puerto Rican Traveling Theater, and through it she helped bring up young Latino actors and writers. Plenty of people know her as the mother in Scarface. Fewer know she built a theater company so the rest of us could get on a stage.

This publicity photo is from a 1962 NBC broadcast.

Still here. Still us.

Send this to your niece who wants to act. Who in your family could make the whole room laugh?

Hacienda La Esperanza, Manatí. Its sugar mill ran on a steam engine built in 1861 by the West Point Foundry in Cold Spri...
10/25/2026

Hacienda La Esperanza, Manatí. Its sugar mill ran on a steam engine built in 1861 by the West Point Foundry in Cold Spring, New York.

That engine is the only West Point Foundry beam engine known to survive anywhere. In 1979 it was named a National Historic Mechanical Engineering Landmark. In 2014 the restorers got steam running through it again.

The cane that fed it was cut and carried by our people. This photograph is from a 1977 federal survey of the hacienda.

Still here. Still us.

Send this to your tío from Manatí. Did anyone in your family work at a central or a hacienda?

Jesús Colón was born in Cayey in 1901. At seventeen he hid aboard the SS Carolina and came off the ship in Brooklyn.It w...
10/25/2026

Jesús Colón was born in Cayey in 1901. At seventeen he hid aboard the SS Carolina and came off the ship in Brooklyn.

It was 1918. He had come to live with his older brother, Joaquín. He stayed in New York the rest of his life, and he wrote. In 1961 he published A Puerto Rican in New York and Other Sketches, our people's life in the city, told by one of us.

This photograph from around 1918 shows the two brothers.

Still here. Still us.

Send this to your older brother. Who in your family went first and made room for the rest?

Cayo Santiago, a small island off Humacao. In late December 1938, scientists released about 450 rhesus monkeys there.Pri...
10/25/2026

Cayo Santiago, a small island off Humacao. In late December 1938, scientists released about 450 rhesus monkeys there.

Primatologist Clarence Carpenter brought them from the Lucknow region of India, by ship to New York and on to San Juan. The Roig family provided the island to the University of Puerto Rico's School of Tropical Medicine.

That colony became one of the most studied free-ranging monkey populations in the world. A little piece of Humacao that scientists everywhere know by name.

Still here. Still us.

Send this to your cousin from Humacao. Did anyone in your family ever see the monkeys from a boat?

Porta Coeli, San Germán. The Dominican friars built a church on this hill in the early 1600s. It is counted among the ol...
10/25/2026

Porta Coeli, San Germán. The Dominican friars built a church on this hill in the early 1600s. It is counted among the oldest church buildings in the Americas.

In 1960 Ricardo Alegría opened it as a museum of religious art, the first of its kind on the island. The collection was built around religious paintings and wooden santos from the 1700s and 1800s.

This postcard view was published in 1913.

Still here. Still us.

Send this to your abuela who kept a santo on the dresser. Who in your family carved, painted or prayed to the old santos?

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