Statue of Juan Ponce de León, San Juan, Puerto Rico

Description

Juan Ponce de León stands on a pedestal at the center of la Plaza San José. He wears his typical conquistador armor and points South, possibly towards Caparra, the first colonial settlement in Puerto Rico which he founded. There are four inscriptions, one on each side of the pedestal. They read:

EL EXCMO AYUNTAMIENTO A JUAN PONCE DE LEÓN

CONQUERERO AND CONQUISTADOR OF PUERTO RICO

24 DE JUNIO 1882

COMPANION OF COLUMBUS IN HIS SECOND VOYAGE

DISCOVERER AND FIRST EXPLORER OF FLORIDA AND THE BIMINI ISLANDS

VISITS THE ISLAND IN 1508

RETURNED TO POPULATE IT IN 1509

FINISHED HIS CONQUEST IN 1511

WOUNDED IN GLORIDA IN 1521

DIED AS A RESULT SOON AFTER ARRIVING IN CUBA

Context

In 1882 a statue of Juan Ponce de León arrived on the Island from the United States (see images below). According to the newspaper La Correspondencia, the statue was made using melted cannons from British captain Ralph Abercromby’s failed invasion of 1797. This was the last attempted invasion by a European power in Puerto Rico and is considered to be one of the defining moments of the Island’s history. During this attack, free blacks defended the coasts of Cangrejos and women in San Juan lit their torches to fool the British into thinking San Juan was heavily guarded. The defense of San Juan is considered to be a foundational moment in the development of Puerto Rican identity because victory was due to organized local militias composed of creoles, mulatos, and blacks. The statue was originally erected in Plaza Santiago (today Plaza Colón) in 1882 but was replaced by a statue of Christopher Columbus in 1895. Juan Ponce de León’s statue was moved to the Plaza San José where it currently stands.

Juan Ponce de León invaded Borikén (Puerto Rico’s indigenous name) in 1508, founded the first European settlement in Caparra, and conquered the island, becoming its first colonial Governor. He owned numerous African slaves and subjected Taínos to the encomienda which was a system of forced labor where Taínos worked for Spanish colonists in “exchange” for protection and European acculturation. He defeated the Taínos during their rebellion of 1511, and raided dozens of villages through the now infamous cabalgadas. When colonial officials decided to move the colonial capital to the islet of San Juan, Ponce de León resisted. He vehemently opposed the move and refused to leave his settlement. He would eventually move on to Florida where he met his death in 1521; a year later the move to San Juan was completed. It is unclear whether he ever set foot in San Juan and his opposition is well documented. Regardless, his body was buried (probably against his wishes) in the Church of San José, the second oldest church in the Americas (and later transferred to the Cathedral of San Juan in the 19th century) and his statue was erected in the adjacent plaza that bears the same name.

Critique

On the 11th of April 1877, the Boletín Mercantil, the official newspaper of the Conservative Party (Unconditional Spanish) of Puerto Rico published a column clamoring for the construction of a statue dedicated to Puerto Rico’s conquistador, Juan Ponce de León. The author proclaims that,

We can still erect a monument, even a small and humble one in the first Spanish town of the island (Caparra), with the inscribed names of the valiant Spaniards who lived, worked, and struggled there, with many succumbing to death; just like its tender commoners, due to its mortiferous climate and poisonous arrows courtesy of the savages.

The column expresses the gratification the people must feel towards Spain “under whose protective shadow they have lived for three hundred and sixty eight years of internal and uninterrupted peace” and who also introduced “the good intentioned religion of Jesus Christ and the seeds of civilization and well being which we presently enjoy.” Citing a conflict that occurred in in Mexico over the erection of a monument dedicated to Hernán Cortés, who for some at the time “represented violence and oppression,” the author reminds the reader that the Mexican press “in the most complete uniformity” declared Cortés as the father of the Mexican nation, “the Mexican Moses.” In the absence of “a written book from the destroyed Aztec Empire” or the victory of the “despotic Moctezuma” Mexicans have no choice but to accept being heirs to his heritage. In this context that precedes Enrique Rodó’s (1900) Ariel, San Juan’s elite proclaim that its San Juan’s duty to “raise a monument that will serve as a signal for those who succeed us to identity the first stage in the Hispanic-Christian civilization of this Borinquen Island.

Juan Ponce de León is undoubtedly important parts of our history, but it is unquestionable that his accomplishments were all mostly violent and genocidal. His statue represents the Spanish conquest of Puerto Rico, and the European conquest of the Americas in general; it represents the decimation of the Taíno people and the native populations of the Americas. It commemorates the modern colonial racial system and its violence. Removing it from San Juan wouldn’t be enough, as the city itself is a vestige of this very system, from its colonial houses, streets and churches to its iconic military forts of San Felipe and San Cristóbal. Its mainstay for over a century in the Plaza San José reflects Puerto Rico’s elites unquestionable adherence to their Spanish root and white European identity. Juan Ponce de León’s statue demonstrates a Latin American “country” that lacks its own founding fathers, yet commemorates those of its colonizer through school names and national holidays.

Yet symbols are important and they quite probably influence a people’s collective conscience and mental health. Its difficult to determine the effect images on TV, school textbooks, and commercial propaganda have on the psyche of a people, but it would be difficult to argue against the need to generate visual and artistic media that presents Puerto Rico’s history, people, and culture in a positive light, especially for our youth. Is it possible that the transformation of our symbols and imagery is a requirement or at least an important factor in the development of a decolonial mindset? Or can and/or should symbolic and aesthetic transformations only occur as a consequence of real and tangible social justice? I believe we need to generate new symbols, and I am not referring to men and women who represent resistance and perseverance, though I do not discard these either. The problem with this is that it only serves as a reformulation of the same anthropocentric model that celebrates the values incarnated in mankind, in the monolithic ego. Nature and its universe are full of icons that deserve our praise and emulation, and they are not subject to revision or historical reinterpretation, unless one day we eventually find out that, as in the popular Puerto Rican saying, “every hawk has its kingbird” because birds are apparently racist.

Lastly, the use of the metal extracted from the British cannons used in the 1797 attack by Ralph Abercromby reveals the fidelity this monument seeks to exalt. Historian Mario Cancel highlights how the defense of San Juan has generated contradictory interpretations:

The Spanish authorities recognized the heroism of the defenders whether they were peninsular or insular, but they interpreted the event as a reaffirmation of their fidelity to the Spanish flag. In 1799 a Royal decree ordered that San Juan’s coat of arms include the phrase ‘For her constancy, love and fidelity, this very noble and Loyal city. Nationalist historiography has interpreted those events as a sign of national Puerto Rican pride because of the fact that many of the military heroes were not Spanish. (Cancel, 2013, translation my own).

The Crown emphasized Spanish fidelity but local historiography tends to portray this event as a foundational moment in the formation of the Puerto Rican identity, an identity separate from that of Spain. The fusion of the foreign and defeated cannons of 1797 together with the figure of Ponce de León, turn this monument into a symbol of loyalty and defense of Spanish imperialism and Hispanic identity.

So, what is to be done if anything? Remove the statue? A mere symbolic act. Ignore it and recognize  its role in our history? But recognition and celebration are not synonymous. Should we continue celebrating colonialism and violence? Perhaps we should place it in a museum (in one of few on the Island) as a relic of the past to be contextualized and historicized? Another alternative is to historicize the monument where it stands, and develop in the Plaza San José a space where collective memory can grow through different perspectives.; an outdoor classroom of contested histories. The Church of San José suffered damages on the 12th of May of 1898 during the bombardment of San Juan at the hands of the US Navy. Contextualized together with the statue of Puerto Rico’s first conquistador, the plaza could serve as a pedagogical space for anticolonial conscience building. There is no one size fit all solution, but we should act in order to decolonize our public spaces. Symbols, whether they be statues or street names, will be transformed when the collective consciousness of the people confront their colonial past and present; the transmutation of our symbols can be both the consequence as well as the genesis of this process of decolonial memory.

Referencias y lecturas sugeridas / References and suggested readings

Dacres, P. (2004). Monument and meaning. Small Axe 16, pp. 137-153.

Murga Sanz, V. (1971). Juan Ponce de León: fundador y primer gobernador del pueblo puertorriqueño, descubridor de la Florida y del Estrecho de las Bahamas. San Juan, PR: Editorial Universitaria.

La Correspondencia. La estatua de Ponce de León…fue fundida con el bronce… https://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/sn91099747/1892-12-27/ed-1/seq-2/#date1=1777&sort=date&rows=20&words=de+estatua+Le%C3%B3n+Ponce&searchType=basic&sequence=0&index=7&state=&date2=1963&proxtext=estatua+de+ponce+de+leon&y=0&x=0&dateFilterType=yearRange&page=1

Rodó, J. E. (1968 [1900]). Ariel. Editorial Porrúa. (Originally published 1900)

Cancel-Sepúlveda, M. (2013). La invasión inglesa de 1797. Puerto Rico: Su transformación en el tiempo. Web: https://historiapr.wordpress.com/tag/ralph-abercromby/