This website is not intended for commercial purposes, no products or services are promoted or sold here, its sole purpose is informative.  I am not a historian nor was I ever professionally or otherwise involved in any of the industries covered here except banking.  The main reason to create this website was to document in pictures the remaining structures of the central sugar mills that once operated in Puerto Rico.  That original concept evolved to include the sugar factories that preceded the central sugar mills as well as the coffee and tobacco* industries on the island.  In researching these industries it became evident that one of the big problems that affected their development was the lack of a structured financial system that allowed for a stable currency and a source of credit to finance their expansion. That is why a banking industry section is included, industry whose creation late in the 19th Century and development in the early 20th Century was closely tied to agriculture. A section on architecture was included due solely to my interest in the subject.   

As the project was taking shape, I saw the need to include a brief write-up describing what the pictures were about.  The write-up required some research in order to tell the story as close to actual history as possible.  In my research I found that a notable amount of information available on the internet regarding the sugar industry in Puerto Rico is incorrect, incomplete or distorted.  Its history, especially the reason(s) for its demise, is inconsistent and not supported.  There is a fair amount of misinformation due to people copying and pasting from websites without verifying its correctness or integrity.  Historians and so called historians distorting actual events and facts is not something new and has been a source of controversy for ages. To the claim that there are only facts in history, German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche said "facts is precisely what there is not, only interpretations”.  In other words, history is often told according to the beliefs, opinions and agenda of the person telling it.

As stated, the idea in creating this website was geared to photography.  My interest in photography started at an early age when my father taught me and my two brothers not only the basics of taking pictures but of developing and printing them them at a darkroom at home.  This interest in photography continued into my High School years where as a member of the photography club I took pictures of sports and other activities for the school's monthly bulletin and year book.  Photography was put on the back-burner during my time in college and afterwards during my professional career.  Now at retirement age, photography has become my hobby.

In addition to the sugar and coffee industries in Puerto Rico, this website includes to a lesser extent the sugar industry in Cuba, the West Indies and Florida.  The Tampa cigar industry is covered because of its contribution to the area’s development and the personality it still enjoys today and because it is where I live.  The cigar factory buildings that still stand, although all but one is today used to manufacture cigars, are an integral part of the city’s cigar industry history and a testament to the extent and importance it once had.  In addition, there was to a certain extent a relationship between the Puerto Rico tobacco industry and the Tampa cigar industry.

Why the sugar industry?  During my youth in the 1950's, Puerto Rico was the 7th largest producer of raw sugar in the world, the industry's presence was felt everywhere.  I grew up in Ponce, where Central Mercedita, Central Constancia and Central Fortuna were located, four more sugar mills were located in the adjacent towns of Juana Diaz to the east and Guayanilla to the west; Central Rufina, Central San Francisco, Central Cortada and Central Boca Chica.  A large number of families in my hometown had in one way or another ties with the sugar industry, many had a family member or friends whose family was somehow involved in the industry.  The neighborhood of El Vigía where I grew up, at the top of a hill overlooking the city, was where families directly related to Central Mercedita, Central Rufina and Central Cortada called home. 

Previous generations of my family on both sides were involved in the sugar industry as well.  On my mother's side, my 3rd Great Grandfather Antonio Francisco Negroni Mattei owned of Hacienda San Colombano, and Hacienda Florida.  My Grandfather Juan Antonio Negroni Antonmattei worked at the Guanica Centrale and my 1st cousin 2x removed Asunción Negroni Albelda was married to Arturo Lluveras Rodriguez de la Seda, owner of Central San Francisco.  On my father's side, my Great Grandfather Emilio Montilla Valdespino is listed as a producer of muscovado sugar from San Juan in the Exposition Universelle of 1889 Spanish Section Catalogue.  Emilio was at the time owner of the three hundred sixteen cuerdas Hacienda Santa Cruz in Bayamón.  According to the publication Las Haciendas de Arecibo; Expediente de la Visits a las Haciendas de 1841, that year my 4th Great Grandfather and St. Croix born Peter A. "Pedro" Watlington White was owner of Hacienda San Pedro in Arecibo, which was later named Hacienda Buena Vista and was one of the haciendas consolidated to create Central Cambalache.

Beginning in the 1930s, the Puerto Rican Government policies towards the agricultural industry changed.  They claim the change was needed to eliminate poverty, improve the livelihood of farm workers and the general living standards of all Puerto Ricans.  Another reason was to fight and eliminate the four American owned sugar corporations on the island (Central Aguirre Sugar Co., Fajardo Sugar Co., South Porto Rico Sugar Co. and United Porto Rican Sugar Corp.) who they claim had an unreasonable control over agrarian land.  Not only did they succeed in the closure of the four corporations but in doing so caused the closure of more than thirty locally owned sugar mills as well.  Part of the reason for the government actions was stopping the repatriation of profits, practice that existed during the Spanish colonial days most likely to a greater extent, and also existed afterwards during Operation Bootstrap and the subsequent "936" era. 

Andrés Ramos Mattei in his essay La Economia de Haciendas y el Progreso de las Centrales en Ponce Hacia 1900 addresses the issue of capital repatriation in existence during the Spanish colonial days.  He states that in 1893 Luis Muñoz Rivera addressed the economic stagnation of Ponce as, 

"...due to the fact that the producers of the fertile countryside take the path for Europe year after year, in which the mills remain next to the Portugués and the Inabón and the Bucaná, but the income is consumed in Paris, London and Madrid, or in Barcelona; in which the capitals emigrate and go to promote the luxury of other cities, in which palaces and gardens are raised that carry in their ashlars and in their greenhouses, the bitter juice of our coffee trees and the sweet juice of our sugarcane.  While the children of Ponce and those who built their wealth in Ponce drag their carriages on the Rambla, in the Bolonia Forest or in the City, Ponce misses the sap that they extract and the life they steal from it." 

The sugar industry all around the globe has shrunk in the last fifty years or so, but there is no reason why sugar, an essential product in the so important rum industry of Puerto Rico and in the everyday life of all Puerto Ricans, needs today to be imported instead of locally produced.  The idea of changing the Puerto Rican economy from agricultural to industrial was present already in 1934 when Carlos E. Chardón issued his plan for the economic diversification of the island, which included the dismantling of the sugar industry and an agrarian reform program.  The idea became reality when the Puerto Rican legisla­ture adopted the Industrial Incentives Act of 1947 which, as amended in 1948, granted private firms a ten-year exemption from insular income and property taxes, excise taxes on machinery and raw materials, municipal taxes, and industrial licenses.

Operation Bootstrap, was established to convert the island from an agricultural economy to an industrial economy.  It succeeded in changing the island's social, cultural and economic profile, but as a result of it, agriculture which was the main engine behind the island's economy for over one hundred years, was completely killed.  During the second half of the 20th Century, manufacturing became the main economic activity on the island, however, its predominance lasted only some forty to fifty years and today is no longer an important contributor to the island's economy. Rexford Guy Tugwell was the last appointed US born governor of Puerto Rico, served as such from 1941 to 1946.  Tugwell was instrumental in transitioning the local government to the present form of self-government.  His Wikipedia profile sates "He advocated agricultural planning (led by industry) to stop the rural poverty..."  The industrialization plan to change the economy began by Tugwell continued during the administrations of Governor Luis Muñoz Marín whose Popular Democratic Party was founded in 1938 on a platform of opposition to the sugar interests.  The essay Operation Bootstrap published by Lehman College is a good analysis of the effects, including migration, of the industrialization of the Puerto Rican economy.  In synthesis it concludes that "The 'modernization' of Puerto Rico did not bring about an absolute in­crease in manufacturing employment.  On the contrary, during the first fifteen years of Operation Bootstrap, total agricultural employment declined and total industrial employment also declined." 

Since the days of Governor Tugwell, Puerto Rico has sought provisions in the U.S. tax code that provide special incentives for US-based firms to operate on the island.  According to Tugwell, Muñoz Marín and several successive administrations, these provisions would create a basis for Puerto Rico to advance its economy, increase private employment (as opposed to government employment) in the total labor force and improve puerto rican's standard of living.  The principal of such provisions was Section 936 of the Federal Tax Code which allowed subsidiaries of U.S. firms operating in Puerto Rico to pay no federal taxes on their puertorican profits, even if those profits were returned to the US. The essay The Effect of 936 by Arthur McEwan published in 2020, concludes "Section 936 of the Internal Revenue Code was not an effective means to promote economic growth in Puerto Rico, and the emergence of the current and long-continuing recession cannot be attributed to the termination of 936.  Moreover, at this point, U.S. firms are able to operate in Puerto Rico as Controlled Foreign Corporations (CFCs), which provides them with virtually all the advantages of Section 936 (and does not impose some of the restrictions of 936).  Section 936 is a failed policy.  It would be the height of folly to reinstitute 936—or of a 936-like program—as a means for establishing economic expansion in Puerto Rico."

After all is said and done, today, agriculture and manufacturing are neither important contributors to the island's economy.  Currently, the island's economy is a service based economy predominantly centered on tourism and the service industries.

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* The pages on the tobacco industry in Puerto Rico are under construction