La Peninsula de Cantera

Cantera has stray horses. Apparently people just get horses from wherever and try to take care of them for awhile until they run out of money, time, or motivation to do so. Then when they stop caring for them, the horses are left to fend for themselves. One of the locals was telling us with dogs or cats getting in the way of your car on the road you can just honk at them and they'll run away. But with horses you have to approach them slowly and ease them out of the roadway because you never know how they'll react. Since all of us gringos think this is so weird/interesting, there's probably going to be more pictures/videos documenting these horsey loners.


The other boat we took out into Laguna Los Corozas,
Laguna San Jose, through Canal Suarez and into
Laguna la Torrecillas. The guy hanging off the side is
a professor, testing for the salinity of the water.


One of the homes on the water in Cantera. They have a lot of
contamination problems with the water from years of trash
buildup, disallowing them from using the water.


Sunset photo from the highest point in Cantera

The van/shack thing we got our lunch from...one of the
community leaders, Chago, helped us find this diamond
in the rough (it's in the housing projects in Cantera).
The thick, footlong, meaty sandwich and a drink cost
us $3. Best value in Puerto Rico so far.

















Psalm 23 written on a wall in one of the barrios in Cantera.


Jon took the initiative for telling our readers about our upcoming work at Centro Buen Pastor in Caguas. So now I'm going to try to explain a similar project in La Peninsula de Cantera (that means the Peninsula of Cantera, and if you didn't pick up on that already this whole blog thing is going to be a struggle for the both of us) which is the other alternative tourism project we will be volunteering for.

Last Thursday was essentially our orientation for this "Proyecto Peninsula de Cantera." In a short day of 13 hours, we learned about the history of the place they call Cantera, about the people who now occupy that peninsula of land, about their pollution and water contamination problems, and about their stray animals: cats, dogs, horses, roosters, etc.

I'm going to use some of the information from the website of La Compañía para el Desarrollo Integral de la Península de Cantera (the organization we will be complementing as volunteers-it means the Company for the Internal Development of the Cantera Peninsula) because...well, just because. Soooo once upon a time (around the 1930's) the main economic activity of the peninsula was a quarry owned by the Corporation Rexach, which engaged in mining, processing and the sale of stone and other aggregate materials. After an extended time of people referring to the "cantera" or hanging out at the "cantera," the name stuck and became the official name of this plot of land. By the early 1930s, economic activity generated by the quarry began to transform the Peninsula area, which until then contained mostly vacant land, mangroves and hills. As they were removing the stone hills, people took their piece of land, and families (especially those of the quarry workers) started to get nice and cozy in this area.

Today they have problems in the Cantera community ranging from crime, drug trafficking, lack of education, and very low standards of living to name a few. See now you all didn't know about this kind of Puerto Rico, did ya? You just thought it was all Viejo San Juan with lush beaches, cheap food, and hand rolled cigars in the street. Yeah well, so did I...ha just kidding-I knew what kinds of communities we'd be working in for the most part. Although it is an eye-opener to see first hand how simply these people live in Cantera's housing projects and how poor they really are. A lunch on the porch means eating on a 4x4 piece of concrete slab in 100 degree heat, watching stray dogs, cats and horses walk by while chicklets and roosters peck at the crumbs by your feet. It makes you think twice about the things that really matter in life...things like A/C, my 2 golden retrievers, close toed shoes, etc. Just a broma... take it easy, everyone.

Spanish lesson numero uno: BROMA (bro-mah) = JOKE.

Anyways, they also have a lot of flooding problems because, with exception to the public housing projects, the people living there built their own homes with what they had at the time (which was mostly an abundance of trash.) Dejame explicar...the people from Cantera who built their own homes didn't view trash in the same way that we typically would as smelly, dirty, and gross. Rather they saw it as a resource, as a replacement to soil or gravel; they knew trash was the cheapest, most efficient way to build a foundation for their homes. So when the government gave them access to the land and let them essentially build their own infrastructure, they did so on a pile of trash. In addition to this, the lack of a cost-effective solution to disposing of trash to get it out of the community has led to more and more contamination in the water, as you saw in the video. This is just one of the deep-rooted cultural aspects of the community that our organizations are trying to work with as we aim towards a higher quality of life for the Cantera community, less contamination in the waters around Cantera, a higher quality of education, socio-economic improvement and opportunity, etc.

K, that's a lot of info for now...more to come on Cantera later because it's an extremely interesting community development project and hopefully you're as intrigued by its potential as I am...if you're not there yet, maybe you will be soon after I keep the updates coming (hopefully).

BTW, who else can't wait for Notre Dame's thrashing of Nevada on Saturday? Go Irish, baby.