A Mighty, Delicate Fortress

Here's the travel writing piece I did for my Puerto Rico class/trip back in May. It's over the Spanish forts of Puerto Rico. My first stab at the travel genre. It's a tricky style to break into I think. But here she is, cheesy title and all...

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“That had a cost of about 40 million,” Michelle Mattick, a park ranger for the San Juan Historic Site, says to me sheepishly, trailing off at the amount to a mere whisper. I stand at a circle opening in the sheer limestone wall, held back by a small railing. A hundred feet yawn below me and the San Juan Bay glistens in front. I have arrived — the Spanish fort of El Morro.



Mattick points far below at the piles of boulders skirting the beachfront near the lowest walls of El Morro’s six stories. “All these rocks they put around the fortress are protecting it from the sea,” she says. The U.S. Corps of Engineers completed the project in the 1980s, the gray stones signifying the costliest preservation measure on record, Mattick says. Centuries of waves slamming the coastline had washed away precious sediments, threatening the structure’s lower foundation, and necessitating the need of bolstering rock.

Mattick, a San Juan native, says preservation is ongoing. The historic heritage is timeless. The forts are not.
When gazing across the green field leading to El Morro’s mighty front gates, I’m transported in time. The fort seems the same now as in its adolescent 18th century years.

Standing in the moat bordering San Cristobal, El Morro’s nearby companion fort, I could be a 17th century invader, peering up the sheer walls of what appears a freshly built fortress.
But laying down my entrance bills and striding beyond the structures’ open gates, my focus changes to the micro details from the macro. The distance-induced illusion deflates. I see every laugh line, every aching joint and every wrinkle on the stone giants. They strain with age, afraid to show weakness. To do so would violate their mission, their ideals for existence.
Strength. Duty. Protection. These are the forts’ heritage.

In a broad scope, the forts are here. Independent. Living. Thriving. In a strict inspection, however, the forts cry for attention. Moaning for the work of caring hands. The wide-angle view is not an accurate one. All is not well within the forts. They need.

Centuries-old steps in El Morro show huge divets on their frequented surfaces. Each footfall furthers the impressions. The walls at San Cristobal, though once absorbing heavy canon-ball blows, now groan with time’s deformation. A hand’s pressure removes matter, crumbling the sediments in various sizes from pebble to dust.







Brick and wood — the most feeble of materials on the forts, give their age without inquiry. Cracked, dry, wooden doors sag tiredly on rusty hinges, their impending replacement imminent. Sections of original Spanish brickwork, though once flat, are now ridged. The dilapidated brick remaining after the mortar weathers away.

Climbing the ramp to the top tier of El Morro, I look one mile southeast along the Atlantic coast. The pointed, faded spires of El Morro’s formidable companion fort, Castillo de San Cristobal, jut above the bright modern structures surrounding them, a symbol of Spain’s former military glory.

Adjusting my view closer, I see acres of rolling green glacis leading to El Morro’s tired front door. The broad, open glacis, meant to expose attacking enemies to defensive fire, now serves pedestrians.

Locals dot the expanse, picnicking and flying brightly colored kites in the stiff sea breeze.

Though their history is not lost, the forts now serve recreate purposes. Crisp Spanish uniforms turned to Saturday-afternoon casuals. Bugle calls and canon booms give way to the wind’s ruffling of kite tails and the laughter of playing children.



This is a different Old San Juan than the Spaniards knew.

The San Juan Historic Site encompasses several structures in Old San Juan, forts Castillo de San Cristobal and El Morro, and three-quarters of the old city wall. The SJHS boasts the largest and oldest Spanish fortifications in the New World, and is part of the National Park Service.

Providing a majority of the funding, the National Parks Service contributes $3 million to the SJHS’s annual budget of nearly 5 million, says Felix Lopez, cultural resources specialist and acting chief of cultural resource management for the SJHS.
Lopez, who oversees, in part, the site’s preservation projects, says adequate funding is a constant struggle.

“It’s never enough, because preservation is costly,” the 29-year-old historian says.

“It is also an indefinite. It’s never enough. It’s difficult. For example to do all the maintenance on the walls here we estimate it will cost the Park Service between $100 and 150 million dollars.”

To help with budget shortfalls, in the mid-‘90s, the SJHS began charging an entry fee to the forts, Lopez says. Eighty percent of the $3 per person entry fee goes into the SJHS budget, with the remaining 20 percent going to the National Parks Service. The entry fee generates about $1.5 million of additional funding annually, Lopez says.

Though funding is a complication, several projects are taking place at the forts. Workers are preserving brickwork at San Cristobal, along with performing stucco restoration. At El Morro, workers are improving the walkway leading to the front gate, and plans are in motion for future work on the fort’s lighthouse.

In addition to the cost, preservation is very time intensive, Lopez says. Because the restorative nature of work, training is a must. Instead of merely conserving the forts, Lopez says workers train for many months, perfecting specific restoration techniques, before performing the delicate procedures on the forts.

“On any given project we could spend a year and a half or two years on the training,” Lopez says. “And then a half year or year to actually do the project.”

Though the restoration performed on the forts is a priority, Lopez says the public must also be educated on the significance of the structures.

“Education for us is really important," says Lopez. “We’re trying to do better programs. We’re trying to get them to know the forts better and give them a better appreciation of the forts themselves. The forts reflect part of our history. They are icons of how our history developed throughout the years. They give the very character of the Spanish colonization on the island.”



But with all the education programs and restoration efforts being done to the forts, Lopez says one of the primary threats to the forts is people. Heavy traffic in Old San Juan and defacing graffiti are constant detriments.

“Last year we estimated that we spent $30,000 dollars on cleaning graffiti,” Lopez says. “At a park like this, every cent counts. That is $30,000 that we didn’t spend on preservation.”



Because of the special machinery used and the time involved, every cubic foot of graffiti cleaned costs the Parks Service $200.

Two years ago a portion of the wall surrounding Old San Juan crumbled because of the high-density traffic on nearby streets, Doris Andino says. An SJHS park ranger of eight years, she says the aged Spanish structures were never designed to handle so many cars.

“Because Old San Juan was not built for this heavy traffic, a portion of the wall collapsed,” Andino says to me as I tour fort San Cristobal.
“And it was just less than a year ago that it was reopened for buses to travel from the entrance to El Morro.”

With traffic-related problems mounting, a proposal to make Old San Juan completely pedestrian is gaining support.

“The opinion is almost half and half divided,” Andino says. “You have to take into consideration residents, salespersons — it’s a whole gamut.”

Though it would affect some local Old San Juan residents, Andino approves of the proposal.

“Yes, because always for preservation you know,” she says. “Even at some point El Morro had a parking space inside the Esplanade and a paved road and all of that was removed because it was affecting the historical walls. Now people have to walk there.”

Andino, 54, who grew up in San Juan, began her tour guide career in Washington D.C., once guiding tours for former President Bill Clinton, Tony Blair and Japanese Prime Minister Hashimoto Ryutaro. She returned to Puerto Rico in 1998 and began working as a park ranger at the SJHS.

Preservation measures at the two forts are carried out in major and minor projects. Recently, SJHS workers at fort San Cristobal have turned their attention to the stucco on the fort’s external walls, a seemingly minor project.

Andino points across San Cristobal’s open courtyard to a prominent bleach-white building rising 40 feet into the cobalt Caribbean sky. Following the Spanish-American war, U.S. troops took control of the Spanish forts in 1899. But without proper knowledge of preservation, the American soldiers’ attempts at wall maintenance proved inadequate compared to the Spanish techniques before.

“The façade of this two-story building was totally removed because poor cement was used not knowing that poor cement and stucco do not mix,” Andino says while motioning at the building.
“It was starting to crumble creating a safety hazard. So our staff removed it and all of that done by hand took a year and a half, just to give you a scope of all the time it takes to do little things.”



Though SJHS workers have available numerous modern materials and preservation techniques, history proves the best teacher for ongoing wall maintenance, Andino says.

Seventeenth and 18th century techniques prevail: the walls are stripped of external layers before being restuccoed according to a centuries-old Spanish formula, she says.

A walk around San Cristobal’s upper tier reveals angular scaffolding and blue protective tarps shrouding delicate stonework — signs of current preservation. Though the forts receive careful, purposeful care, Andino’s mission as a park ranger is clear for insuring the continuing history of the irreplaceable structures.

“My goal would be that visitors from all over the world could understand the importance these structures had as part of the defense system when Puerto Rico was a colony of Spain, but now, as historical jewels for the world in general to see and value the courage it took and persistence to build them. And our main challenge is to preserve them for future generations.”

San Juan native Caleb Nazario, 42, first saw El Morro on a day trip with his dad in 1973. “I was, like, 7 or 8, about that age,” Nazario told me on a Memorial Day weekend. “I came over here with my father. We used to fly kites like everybody does over here.”

Nazario moved to Orlando in 1979, and now works for Jet Blue Airways, frequenting his homeland and the forts with his own family. He is especially proud of El Morro.

“It’s one of our treasures that we have on our island,” Nazario says. “It’s the best destination you can see. It’s part of our heritage — we cannot forget about it. Every time I come to Puerto Rico, I gotta stop and see it.”

The upkeep of El Morro and San Cristobal is an ongoing process. With El Morro’s 2 million annual visitors, the task of minimizing tourist impact alone is formidable.

Hours of labor and immense expense go toward preserving the unique structures for future generations. Employees can train for years, mastering intricate preservation techniques, before even beginning a project.

In a testament to the preservation efforts of SJHS employees, Nazario gave his reason for visiting El Morro during each Puerto Rico visit.
“It never change. It’s always going to be the same,” Nazario says tranquilly. “It sounds kind of ironic, but it’s something you can count on. Time will pass but El Morro will stay here.”



Five hundred years ago, Spanish ships dropped anchor on the shores of what is now Puerto Rico. Though originally discovered by Columbus in 1493 on his second New World voyage, Juan Ponce de León labored to make the island’s first establishments.

Eager for a key fortified port in the Greater Antilles, Spain found the “rich port” a critical stop-off point. Ships taking gold, silver and jewels from Mexico, Central America and South America anchored in the San Juan Bay to replenish necessary supplies before venturing back to the Spanish mainland.

Puerto Rico’s deep harbor and ideal Caribbean location attracted the attention of many competitors, most notably the French, the Dutch and the English.

In 1528 French ships destroyed a Spanish outpost on the western coast of Puerto Rico. This attack coupled with the broadening network of enemy traffic in the Caribbean spurred King Charles V to action.

Insistent on protecting the Caribbean outpost from potential destruction and foreign dominance, the king laid plans to increase San Juan’s fortifications.

The first of these plans became a reality in 1539 with the groundbreaking of Castillo del Morro — El Morro for short. Purposefully stationed on San Juan Bay’s headland, which is what El Morro means, the fort provided the harbor with necessary protection.

El Morro’s security proved adequate throughout the 16th century. However, with the land-based Dutch attack of 1625, the heated battle suggested additional fortifications were needed for just such land-launched assaults.

Spain drafted plans for a second fort and construction began in 1634 on fort San Cristobal.
Though construction of the forts dragged on for about 250 years to complete El Morro and nearly 150 to finish San Cristobal, the structures guaranteed three and a half centuries of Spanish dominance in the Caribbean from, 1539 to 1898.



Jose Morales, a 17-year tour guide for San Juan-based Rico Suntours, says the forts carry a unique heritage vital for residents and tourists to understand.

“It’s important because like in Mexico they have the pyramids,” Jose says. “In the United State you have something you want to preserve in The Alamo. So for us El Morro represents the culture of the Spaniard in Puerto Rico. It’s something that belongs to us. It’s ours.”

Though Morales, a 42-year-old Puerto Rico native, thinks the forts are being sufficiently preserved, he cites education as the primary key to ensuring the structures’ continued availability to further generations.

Morales says Puerto Ricans need to know about their Spanish heritage and value that heritage as evidenced in the forts.

“In old days remember they no used to teach in the school history, like the real history,” Morales tells me.

“When you’re a tour guide then you understand the real history of things. Cause in the school they give you the basics and when you’re a tour guide you have to learn more than the teacher can give to you. I think they need to improve their education here. We always say, I always say, if you don’t know where you come from you don’t know where you go. If you don’t know your history, you are lost.”