Río Piedras

As a Desert Flower Blooms in the Night

The sunset of my first day at the Harvard Puerto Rico Winter Institute (HPRWI) painted the sky with violet and magenta. It felt as if the day had just begun. I was getting acquainted with my roommate, Armando Román, a graduate student in Cultural Administration at the University of Puerto Rico, Río Piedras Campus: known by students as “la IUPI.” As fellow musicians, rhythm and musicality came to bond us quickly. Upon Armando’s request, we took off to “El Boricua,” or just “El Bori,” one of San Juan’s most well-known cultural spaces, with the prospects of listening to some Latin jazz. It was Tuesday after all. In two days, they would have Bomba, and on the upcoming Monday, the Plena group would be back. Concurrent with the jazz at El Bori, “El Refugio,” also known as “El Refu,” was hosting a night of bomba. There was an overwhelming quantity of options to choose from.

Bomba Drummers in Loíza 

As we trekked through the streets of Río Piedras, I noticed that nearly every shop was closed. Most lots seemed to be vacant. For a Tuesday night, I expected there to be more business. Earlier in the afternoon, I passed through Rio Piedras’s historic El Paseo Diego, a long narrow street decorated with beautiful murals and urban art. The clear blue sky was accompanied by a scorching sun. This seemed like the perfect weather to go out, enjoy a drink and meal and chat with friends. In my past travels, I found it common to see residents take advantage of the fantastic weather and perch themselves up on their balconies or yards to gossip and soak up the sun.

Rio Piedras, however, was a desert in the day. I understood that most university students were back home for winter break, but that didn’t change the fact that the barrio had its own residential population. Besides several pedestrians walking across the street, I was one of few sitting under the artwork. Oddly enough, almost no shops were open. Most were adorned with cardboard and chains. I couldn’t even look into any of the buildings on the strip, as most businesses were shut down. Even the plaza in front of the local cathedral was empty. This was not the San Juan that I had expected.

Rio Piedras During the Day

Regardless, that night, we had a splendid time listening to quality jazz at El Bori, where Armando introduced me to a number of his college friends. Some of them were also doing graduate work at the UPR, while others had relocated to the mainland United States in pursuit of new career opportunities. These links between the United States and Puerto Rico, inherent in Puerto Rico’s territorial status, intrigued me. Within the first weeks, I noticed significantly higher consumerism, frequency of English, and use of the imperial system of measurement in Puerto Rico compared to my familial Mexico, which shares a literal border with the United States.

This first night at El Bori, and my subsequent visits to listen to bomba and plena, piqued my curiosity in the general history and culture of the university neighborhood of Rio Piedras. How could it be that a barrio so culturally rich could turn into a ghost town during the day? Through course lectures and peer conversations, I learned about the shifting patterns of Rio Piedras life and how, over the decades, it went from being the largest municipality of Puerto Rico to a declining college town of the greater San Juan.

Rio Piedras was once its own municipality separate from San Juan. In 1951, Rio Piedras was incorporated into San Juan, quadrupling the size of the city. Rio Piedras had previously been the largest municipality of the island, housing a large population of boricuas and immigrants alike. Today, we can still see the plaza centers where people would congregate, like the plaza of the Parish of Nuestra Señora del Pilar and La Plaza del Mercado. La Plaza del Mercado is still busy to this day, bringing in residents of the neighborhood to purchase produce, religious items, and clothing.

My Puerto Rican colleagues, UPR graduates, shared stories of the bustling streets of El Paseo Diego, which before 1980 was la Calle Diego. Originally, the streets were open to cars and pedestrians. Streets were packed with people, much like the rush hours of today’s Old San Juan. This was the center of urban life throughout the region. Families hailing from Santurce to Bayamón would come down to Rio Piedras to run errands and meet with friends. This bustling city center propagated Rio Piedras’ rich culture of plena music.

Plena at El Boricua

A demographic shift has led to a massive residential exodus. Economic struggles, especially increased food and rent prices, have pushed many families out of their homes. With a $9.50 minimum wage, many residents are unable to keep up with the high prices pushed by the U.S. economy and the high frequency with which American tourists visit and invest in the island. Hence, many choose to leave for their most viable options, which tend to include relocation to metropolitan regions of the mainland, like Miami, New York and Boston. Currently, more Puerto Ricans are living in the United States than in Puerto Rico itself.

Furthermore, San Juan’s government has largely neglected the needs of the more inland Rio Piedras, instead allocating greater financial and political resources to the island’s more touristic coastal regions. This funding has encouraged U.S. businesses to invest in neighborhoods like Condado, Isla Verde, Old San Juan, and Hato Rey. The gentrification of these regions has also made its spread into other neighborhoods, such as the historically Dominican Santurce. As I trekked diagonally through Santurce on my way to the Old San Juan for the San Sebastián Street Festival ​​— known as “La Sanse” — I noticed how the typical residential area and bodegas gave way to modern highrises and boutique coffee shops. The two ends of the city did not look anything alike.

My classmates shared that even the nightlife of the region faced clear gentrification, with a prime example being La Placita of Santurce. Formerly a get-together spot for many boricuas seeking opportunities to listen to bomba and salsa classics, La Placita is now characterized by nights overrun with U.S. tourists, with some clubs playing entirely non-Hispanic U.S. music, such as the works of Taylor Swift and Drake.

Despite these trends, if there is one thing that I learned from the HPRWI, it is that boricuas put up a strong fight to preserve that special and beautiful essence of their culture, even when facing the pressures of assimilation and gentrification. La Sanse is a wonderful representation of this reclamation of space. Every January, for four days, this festival brings people in the hundreds of thousands to crowd the streets of Old San Juan. Although Old San Juan is an intense site of local displacement, festivals like these allow for boricuas to take control of their streets and proudly celebrate their heritage and capital city.

La Sanse

Back in Rio Piedras, at the end of the HPRWI and with the beginning of the UPR semester in late January, the streets were considerably fuller than during the winter break. Yet, the proportion of closed shops remained the same. Nonetheless, the nights were filled with the intense and joyful rhythms of bomba, plena and salsa, echoing from El Bori and El Refu. And, with each night that one sits down to listen to the entrancing barriles de bomba, Rio Piedras’s tradition and spirit live on.