Hacienda history in a nutshell...

I suppose before I go on talking about Unit this and Unit that, it might be good to give a brief summary of what this project is and why we’re digging here to put us in context, eh?

An acquaintance of mine from Temple University is doing her dissertation project at Hacienda La Esperanza, an historic sugar plantation located in Manatí, PR and is conducting both archaeological and ethnographic research in order to discern the social importance of class and race relations on the plantation during it’s heyday. The Hacienda is a 2,265-acre estate located in the fertile valley of the Río Grande de Manatí, about 35 miles west of San Juan Bautista, Puerto Rico’s capital city. It is bounded to the north by the Atlantic Ocean; to the west by the river; and to the east and south by haystack hills that are part of the Karst Region of Puerto Rico running eastward from Carolina to Aguadilla on the north-westernmost tip of the Island.

At its peak production, over 150 slaves worked the estate. It was their blood, sweat and tears in the fields that was the driving force behind the sugar industry boom and yet so much of their history has gone unnoticed. Some excavations and interviews were done in December so this season we are continuing to build upon that foundation of information.

Compared to other colonies, Puerto Rico was relatively late in importing enslaved Africans for plantation work. The Hacienda La Esperanza, however, once had one of the largest enslaved populations on the island. Founded in the 1830s by Fernando Fernández, a wealthy Spanish merchant and military man, la Esperanza was one of the most prosperous and mechanically advanced plantations of its time. It wasn’t until after Fernández’ death that the plantation really flourished and his son, José Ramón, joined with Philadelphian George C. Latimer to form Latimer & Fernández Co. Together became one of the most influential merchant firms in PR and by the 1860s José Ramón, named the Marqués de la Esperanza, was one of the wealthiest men not only on the island but in the entire Spanish Caribbean. 

With the abolition of slavery, however, production vastly dropped at Esperanza as it did on plantations elsewhere in 1873. José Ramón did what he could to make up for lost slave labor by mechanizing the Hacienda and installing a rare West Point Foundry steam engine sugar mill, but racked up considerable debt in doing so. Then after José Ramón’s death the plantation went bankrupt and was sold. The new owners could not recover from the financial devastation and by 1889 the sugar cane was gone completely, the property already transformed into a cattle ranch.

Plantation owners during the 19th century greatly impacted the social structure of the plantation’s cultural ecosystem by managing enslaved people’s space and behavior. 

Unfortunately many of the original structures on the plantation such as the slave barracks have not withstood time. Through excavation and analysis we hope to ascertain where the barracks were and gain more insight as to just how these socially differentiated spaces and management of goods and behaviors by plantation owners affected the enslaved people’s culture, identity and general way of life.  It is an interesting project because while there are some written records accounting for enslaved populations during this time, such as the Slave Census of 1870, there are still large gaps in understanding what their lives were like. 

The first two units we dug this season were located where the project director thought the barracks might have been based on an old 20th century map of the property and ground penetrating radar (GPR) done prior to excavations (within the red rectangles on the topographic map below).

The shaded figure in the lower right corner is the main house.

From what we can tell so far those units did not yield any evidence of occupation, but in examining the artifacts from Unit 4 we may learn some things. Next we will be opening units within structure ruins, known as Feature C, from which we hope to learn the building’s use and whether it was a kitchen or a workshop. Depending on how these excavations go, we hope to have time for one more unit and crack at finding the barracks.

The Fideicomiso de Conservación de Puerto Rico (Puerto Rico Conservation Trust) has restored some of the remaining structures of the plantation including the main house and the sugar drying house and offers tours to the public.  

The main house before and after restoration.

(Above) The original blood mill, powered by animals or slaves, which required people to manually place the cane into the rollers in order to press out the juice. All too often, hands or arms would accidentally (sometimes purposefully, for punishment) be crushed between the wooden rollers (hence the name).

Good links to peruse for my fellow nerds and history buffs:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jos%C3%A9_Ramon_Fern%C3%A1ndez  

http://www.fideicomiso.org/hacienda-la-esperanza-eng/

Days go by...

It feels so weird to be on a dig on an island and yet be completely connected via internet access and even working phone service. I can’t quite seem to get used to this setup. The past four summers I’ve worked on projects in other countries where I have had occasional internet access but it was not something I could really rely on to stay connected. I keep thinking, ‘I need to post entries! I need to post pictures!’ and, in fact I have such a backlog of photos and raw entries I very well could have posted more already without editing. I’m finding it hard to find the motivation to do anything after a full day in the field/sun and I’ll admit much of the energy I have left I use to go for a run or swim. On a typical day we leave the apartment in Vega Baja around 6-6:15 to get to the Hacienda in Manatí and are usually set up and ready to work by 7-7:15. Then it’s an 8 hour workday, we start packing up around 4:00, are on the road back to the apartment at 4:30 and usually get there around 5:00 or so. Add on an hour in the morning for breakfast, packing lunch and getting ready and your looking at a pretty solid, exhausting 12 hour day!

So Monday, June 30 was the first day of excavations at La Esperanza and it was a wash-out even though it’s been mostly dry since getting here two weeks ago. We got the first two units set-up and opened the first levels for each, meaning we removed the grass/vegetation mat on top of the soil and got all the walls squared off. The weather is calling for rain and thunderstorms the next few days, but hopefully they are just passing clouds. The winds here can be really strong along the coast which help to push storm clouds along or push them south to miss us altogether, but the weather changes so frequently on these coastal plains that it’s hard to keep up! Since then, we’ve about finished these two units and have started washing and processing the associated artifacts. The unit we were hoping to find a floor/foundation in, Unit 2E, turned out to be what looks like debris from a collapsed floor from further east and slightly uphill from the unit. It didn’t yield too many exciting artifacts, just crumbling mortar, brick and other construction materials. In Unit 4 we did have some pretty great finds before the soil started becoming more culturally sterile. There are two coins that look like the kind the Spanish issued for Puerto Rico, though they do not appear to be made of silver as they should be, a marble, a silver spoon, part of a perfume bottle, a crystal bead, a variety of buttons, and what appears to be a token or perhaps a game piece. This week we’ll be wrapping up these two units, start two more, and continuing to process the things we’ve found.