Wednesday, 20 February 2013

John Vachon: Peligro (Puerto Rico, February 1973)


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A village street, Ponce
 

Song 3
 
There was still no central heating
in the tenements
We thought that the cold was
the oldest thing on the planet earth
We used to think about my Uncle Listo
Who never left his hometown
We’d picture him sitting around
cooling himself with a fan
In that imaginary place
called Puerto Rico.
 
Victor Hernández Cruz (b. 1949, Aguas Buenas, Puerto Rico): Song 3, from Three Songs from the 50s





Mountain farm, Ponce


Mountain area, Ponce, Puerto Rico


A mountain farmhouse


Father and son fill their containers at the community water pump, mountain farming area, Ponce




Wild flowers, mountain area



Sugar cane field and refinery, Ponce


Petrochemical plant in coastal area, Ponce


Oil refinery in the sunset, Ponce


Oil pipeline on the beach


Sign on bridge near PPG plant protesting air pollution, Ponce


Luquillo Beach condominium, San Juan


On the coast


Bayamón housing development, San Juan


5 P.M. traffic on Route 2 in Bayamón


Bayamón housing development, San Juan




Atlantic Beach, Arecibo


Garbage-strewn Atlantic beach, Arecibo


Caribbean coastline, Santa Isabel, Guayama


Caribbean harbor outside Salinas, Guayama




Industrial area, San Juan


Industrial area, San Juan


Luquillo Beach, San Juan


Luquillo Beach, San Juan


Luquillo Beach, San Juan


Luquillo Beach, San Juan


Boat launching from Luquillo Beach, San Juan



Mayagüez-Aguadilla, Puerto Rico


Fishing from the dock at Playa de Playuela, Mayagüez


Burning garbage at an open dump on Highway 112 north of San Sebastian, Mayagüez



Burning garbage at an open dump on Highway 112 north of San Sebastian, Mayagüez



Burning garbage at an open dump on Highway 112


Abandoned car under a palm tree at Rincon, Mayagüez


Sugar cane and refinery near Mayagüez


Sugar refinery, Mayagüez


Sugar refinery. Trucks bring in freshly cut cane, Mayagüez


Sugar refinery and drainage ditch


Guaynabo River south of San Juan


Road near San Juan


A farmer clears his land with a machete


Abandoned car off highway in Rio Grande




Abandoned autos, near San Juan





New apartment buildings, San Juan


New apartment buildings, San Juan



High rise apartments on southern outskirt of the city, San Juan

 


Father and son fishing on Isla de Cabras, San Juan


Smoking chimneys of a cement plant in industrial area of San Juan


Palo Seco electric power plant across the bay from San Juan

 

Catano industrial area, across the bay from Old San Juan

 


Palo Seco electric power plant in the background, San Juan

 


Reservoir dam under construction, south of the city, San Juan



New toll road under construction between San Juan and Ponce; this section at Cayey


Aerial view of body of polluted water, Puerto Rico


Aerial view of body of polluted water, Puerto Rico
Photos by John Vachon (1914-1975), February 1973, for the Environmental Protection Agency's Documerica project (US National Archives)
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7 comments:

  1. Unknown20 February 2013 at 07:30

    mucho gracious for this. it tricked and triggered a memory when my father would go down to puerto rico in the winter to work on his corn. i recall he couldn't find any food he liked. now isn't that trouble in paradise?

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  2. Nora20 February 2013 at 08:15

    My eyes at first refused to make sense of those new apartment buildings. They seem so thin and hollow from a distance.

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  3. STEPHEN RATCLIFFE20 February 2013 at 08:46

    Tom,

    Yes, "that imaginary place called Puerto Rico" -- comes alive in JV's beautiful Kodachrome glimpses. . .


    2.20

    light coming into sky above still black
    plane of ridge, red-tailed hawk calling
    in foreground, sound of wave in channel

    yellowish tinged with black,
    orange with blue hand

    so that, thus brought forth
    in this, then must be

    grey of rain cloud against top of ridge,
    drops splashing into grey green channel

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  4. Hazen20 February 2013 at 08:48

    Thanks, Tom, for researching and putting up this later Vachon. He still had the eye, right up to the last.

    One of my fondest memories is of La Parguera, a tiny, remote fishing village (back then, anyway, mid Sixties) on the south coast. There was a motel with a dining room and bar built out over the water, where you could sit at night and eat red snapper and watch the shimmering, phosphorescent sea. ¡Bello y asombroso! Otro Borinquen.

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  5. Mose2320 February 2013 at 09:24

    Poverty and all those lures for tourists - always a troubling mixture. Vachon misses nothing here.

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  6. TC20 February 2013 at 09:47

    A history of the oppression and exploitation brought to the New World by Europeans would have no better paradigm than the story of this island, from the time Columbus found it and called it "a rich port" and nearly four centuries of slavery began, down through its acquisition by the US as a vast sugarcane plantation and, following the Great Depression, the implementation of a late New Deal plan called Operation Bootstrap, which created the new industries -- petrochemicals, then later pharmaceuticals, and always of course tourism -- with the attendant developments of a new middle class, awful environmental pollution, and the continuing impoverishment of the large majority of the island's people.

    John Vachon was a great photographer, standing out from many other fine photographers by virtue of his unique understanding of the complex interrelations between people and the places in which they live and work.

    Visiting at a critical point of transition from the old agricultural economy to the new industrial/tourist economy, he saw right through those "thin and hollow" high-rises, the latest stage sets of a grand historical deception in many acts.

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  7. vazambam (Vassilis Zambaras)21 February 2013 at 02:31

    Peligro yes but despite the dangers, some natives will always be more than willing to tap into and exploit a more musical, lucrative vein.

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