Discover Top Posts Tagged with #penuelas

Popular Recent

Flamboyanes en Peñuelas, Puerto Rico

Penuelas, PR $65,000

#puerto rico #real estate #househunting #houses #homes #buildings #penuelas

#puerto rico #penuelas #latina #vacaciones #vacation #family vacation

“Libertious Kisssing”, a poem inspired by Peñuelas

Original:

Me pregunto si alguna vez has sentido el sensual rozar de la Tierra ¿Has caminado sobre su piel con tus pies desnudos?

¿Has caído en sus brazos y te has quedado con su aroma, aroma a lluvia, a cálido, a húmedo?

¿Tu piel se ha marcado con sus leves golpizas provenientes de la grama?

¿Te has manchado la cara con sus sucios secretos?

¿Hay rastros de ella en tu pelo luego de su deleitoso encuentro?

¿Has guardado algunos detallitos debajo de tu almohada, detalles que te recuerdan a ella? ¿Has notado el contraste entre su color y aquel de la manta que la cubre, el cielo?

¿Has observado los dulces colores que ven tus ojos?

¿Has logrado nombrar todas las multitudes que habitan en ella?

¿Has sentido su aliento en la parte de atrás de tu cabello?

¿Alguna vez has tomado tiempo para escuchar sus lamentos?

¿Has escuchado sus silenciosos sonidos cuando ella descansa?

¿Te has dado cuenta de lo bella que resplandece su cara cuando la Luna sale y el Sol se esconde?

Traduction:

I wonder if you have ever felt the sensual touch of the Earth.

Have you walked on her skin with your bare feet?

Have you fallen into her arms and stayed with that sweet scent of rain, of warmth, of humidity?

Has your skin been marked by the light strokes of grass?

Have you stained your face with her dirty secrets?

Are there traces of her in your hair after your delightful encounter?

Have you kept some little details under your pillow, details that remind you of her?

Have you noticed the contrast between her color and that of the blanket that covers her, the sky?

Have you observed the bright colors your eyes see?

Have you managed to name the multitudes that inhabit her?

Have you felt her breath on the back of your neck?

Have you ever taken the time to listen to her laments?

Have you heard the silent sounds she makes when she rests?

Have you noticed how beautiful her face shines when the moon rises and the sun hides?

#poem #poetry #puerto rico #penuelas #poema #earth #nature #beautiful #poems on tumblr

The River & I

Every day I had to walk for two hours to get to school. Even though it sounds tedious, it was fun. I’d hurry up my sisters and brothers so that they would get ready. We would devour breakfast, usually eggs and toast, to leave home as fast as possible. After about fifteen minutes, we would meet up with our friends down the hill. Sometimes we’d run to see who would give up first. We’d play games of how many lizards we could count, but we’d always give up halfway as there were too many. We’d get up in “jaguas” (semi-dry palm leaf sheaths) and slide down hills when we got tired of walking or felt like having an adrenaline rush. Nevertheless, what we looked forward to most was bathing on The Riverside. We’d go to school, always paying attention but wishing the day was over so that we could visit our sacred place. When we got home, we helped around the house with chores, hoping our parents would send us off for the day. And so, we’d walk.

Nothing felt better than that cold running water touching your skin after walking back home for hours. Nothing could beat the excitement and happiness on my friends’ faces when we’d finally come to our safe-haven. Nothing compared to the view, the smell of humidity and freshness, the graze of grass and wet soil beneath our feet. To us, this was truly heaven. We would always take our clothes off, but not our undergarments. We would get up from the rock and jump into the river, feeling the fishes swimming around us, trying to escape from our forceful movements. We would wet ourselves, laugh, try to drown each other playfully.

Sometimes we would walk alongside the river to see where it would take us. Usually there was nothing, but we still walked along. We would rest on the ground, looking up at the sky, the wonderful vegetation, the colorful butterflies that danced only for us. We did flower crowns, we’d carve our names on rocks. We would eat the mangoes from trees nearby. When the skies started darkening, we would run back home, hoping our parents wouldn’t ground us for staying out so late. Then we’d go home exhausted, but with memories that would last a lifetime.

I think nature is the planet’s never-ending gift. It’s a place where we find out the world’s much bigger than we might think. It allows us to expand our mentality and to find ourselves. The times spent there won’t ever compare to the rest of my life. Back then everything seemed much simpler, much more kind. Now it’s the world vs me; back then it was the river and me.

#puerto rico #puerto rican #country #countryside #penuelas #reality #childhood #childhood memories #photography

Justina

On Sunday, 20th of September of 1927 a tiny baby girl with big black eyes and dark hair was born. Her name was Justina Caquias Melendez. She was born in her house, her delivery assisted by a midwife from the area. Her home was in the neighborhood called Barreal in Peñuelas, the place in which she would meet the love of her life and their children would eventually grow up. It was a poor community located on the countryside of town.

The first time Justina ever faced against death she was almost a year old. The category five hurricane San Felipe hit Puerto Rico on September 13, 1928, leaving a devastating wreckage behind. The hurricane left 500,000 people homeless, the people from the Barreal being part of these digits. As the strong winds and waterfall approached Barreal, the houses from the poor community, made of palm leaves and wood, were quickly destroyed. During the chaos, her family, at that time composed of two sisters and their parents, had to hide underneath the house in the hopes of protecting their lives. Nevertheless, the river that passed nearby started ascending. Her mother, trying to help her other daughters, accidentally left Justina unattended and she, a little baby, almost drowned that night. Thankfully, her mother noticed just in time and could save her.

Life in the countryside was difficult. Children generally didn’t go to school. They had to assist their family’s farms to survive, so education was thought of as secondary, a luxury. In addition, because of the localization, it was difficult to travel from the countryside to the city to study. There was no transportation available, as it was only obtainable for the wealthy, high class. Justina, like many from her country, was analphabetic. From a young age, girls were taught domestic chores such as cooking, cleaning the house and taking care of their smaller siblings. Justina had to particularly learn how to do so because her stepmother passed away at a very young age, leaving her younger siblings Ramón, Antonia and Olga without a caretaker. She had to grow up at a very young age to help her father around the house. She bathed them, fed them and taught them manners and values as if they were her own children.

At the age of 15, coming back from the supermarket, Justina saw a young man working on a farm. His skin was pale and reddish from the exposure of the sun. He had grey blue eyes and a charming smile. Immediately, Justina fell in love. For an entire year, she would volunteer to go to the supermarket in hopes of stumbling upon this man’s enchanting beauty. Her friends quickly noticed the infatuation and one day forced her to talk to the man. His name was Agustín Maldonado, and he was 24 years old. He worked in his own plantation and tried to maintain a seven-year-old kid he had had with a woman much older than him. He had also noticed Justina’s strength and the love that irradiated from her. From that day forward, their fate had been sealed.

Not only was the eight-year gap a difficulty. Agustín was a direct descendant from Spaniards. They were attempting to maintain their heritage as “clean” as possible, and Justina was a threat in their eyes. She was a beautiful mulata, with African and Spanish blood running through her veins. Agustin’s parents never approved of her, even in their deathbeds as she was taking care of them, because of her ancestry, something that she couldn’t change. Nonetheless, she always took the high road, taking care of them as only a daughter ever could, showing them love and compassion were much stronger.

At the age of 17, Justina started living with Agustín. To be able to survive they had to work exhaustive hours on their fields. They would cultivate mangoes, pigeon peas and coffee, and would take care of chickens, pigs, cows, horses and bulls to maintain their harvests and sell them in the city’s market. Three times a week, they would travel for hours, crossing rivers and forests, looking to generate money. It about two years later that Justina got pregnant for the first time. She had decided to not limit herself to housework, as they needed the money now more than ever to be able to sustain a child. Working on the plantation, she had loosely tied around her belly a rope so that one of the cows would go running. As she had started to pick up some chicken eggs, the cow started running, tightening the noose around Justina’s body and dragging her across the farm. She managed to set herself free, but felt a very sharp pain across her abdomen. When she went home, she had noticed she had started bleeding through her pants. She silently cried on the bathroom floor, perhaps out of regret or guilt, as she had a miscarriage. She would feel the same fear during her last child’s pregnancy when she slipped and fell on the river while cleaning clothes.

After this experience, she continued working tirelessly on the farm. After approximately a year, Justina got pregnant again. Her firstborn, Noelia, was born on 1949. When giving birth, her neighbor Juana served as a midwife. The woman came in drunk to deliver the baby. She would smoke tobacco and spit constantly while on duty, as well. Despite her eccentric antics, Juana was the midwife of all of Justina’s children. Two years after Noelia’s birth, Justina gave birth to her first son, Uricles. Her intention was to name him Oroclides, but the man entrusted to solicit the birth certificate at the city’s offices couldn’t remember the name. When Uricles was two years old, Ángel was born. It was at this time Agustin decided it was best for him to go a few months to Connecticut. His brother had gotten him a job at a plantation where they paid him more than what he was paid for in Puerto Rico. Every year he would leave, never knowing when he might come back. Sometimes, he’d even stay for six months. Even though he wasn’t that present in the first years of his children’s lives, every two years Justina and Agustin would conceive a child, thus Benjamin, Herminia, Israel, Hector and Angélica, Gladys, William and Marilu came to life.

Above, Marilu and Uricles are standing in front of the remains of their childhood home.

Her most difficult birth was Gladys’s. She was fainting and losing a lot of blood, so the midwife decided to take her to the nearest hospital. Because the doctors put Justina on medication, Gladys couldn’t be breastfed. This was difficult for the family because they didn’t have the money to afford formula for the infant. Nevertheless, a neighbor who had also just given birth offered to be the child’s wet nurse, feeding the infant her breastmilk.

With the birth of the first three children, Agustin’s behavior had started to get aggressive. He would go late at night to drink on Fridays and would return very drunk and hostile. As a father, he wasn’t a very expressive man and he was very protective. He had a very strong character, and was very strict. He wouldn’t allow his daughters to go to town alone, so he would always send his sons to keep an eye out for them. When his daughters visited the doctor, he would go right in with them. Somehow, during these years, Agustin’s drinking got worse, to the point where he would get so violent he would physically assault Justina in front of her children. One night, when he came back from drinking, Agustin had started to beat up Justina. She grabbed a hold of a machete that was lying nearby on the floor and took Agustin by surprise.

“If you ever touch me again, I swear I will cut your balls off”, she screamed.

Agustin immediately calmed down and went to sleep, mumbling the usual gibberish he he would talk every night. He would pray and curse at the same time. This event didn’t stop him from abusing her. If anything, it made him warier and more cautious. The altercations that happened around the house affected the children’s lives as they got older. While Uricles didn’t feel like it was his right to step in to defend his mother, his brother Ángel couldn’t help but do just that. Every time he would see his father turn aggressive towards Justina, he would challenge his father to a fistfight, sometimes leaving him hurt and swollen. His mother would take care of his wounds, telling him to please not intervene in their discussions, but Ángel, as hot-headed as his father, couldn’t bear to do so. In Ángel’s eyes, his father disliked him. Nonetheless, when he decided to move to the United States at eighteen, his father took him to the airport. As he left the car saying goodbye, his father also got out and ran to him in tears. He hugged him, kissed him and wished him the best, revealing to Ángel a side of his father he had never seen.

Regardless of his son’s sudden departure, Agustin’s character didn’t soften with the rest of his family. He would still beat up Justina, sometimes without being drunk. On an occasion, he had told his children they could stop working on the plantation early, so they had gone off to play. However, Israel had stayed behind and was going to ask his mother a question when he saw his father brutally hitting Justina with a broomstick. Israel, like his brother, stepped in and challenged his father.

“You can’t challenge me, I’m your father”, Agustin said incredulously.

“But she’s my mother and you’re hitting her.” Israel answered shakily.

Agustin walked out of the house. He didn’t speak a single word to Israel, who was 17 at the time, for three months. In addition, he didn’t hit Justina during this period. The first thing he asked him was why he dared speak to his father the way he did. He immediately followed up by telling Israel that when he turned 18 he had to move out of the house. On his 18th birthday, Israel did just that. Agustin was the one who took him to the airport, and once again, when seeing his son leave, he cried, kissed him, gave him a hug and wished him the best. Perhaps it was the shock of having two of his children stand up to his insensible behavior, perhaps it was an epiphany Agustin had about his aggressiveness and the negativity it was bringing to him and to those around him, perhaps he had recognized the sensibility and humanity of the woman he had created a family with, but after this time Agustin never laid a hand on Justina ever again.

After the birth of their twins, Agustin and Justina married legally and by church. Agustin stopped working in Connecticut and instead found a job at the Petrochemical Plant in Peñuelas. They rebuilt their home, this time with wood. While their older children moved out of their childhood home, the younger siblings took their places. They would walk for two hours, through rivers and muddy roads, to go to their school. After school, they would go back home to pick up peas, coffee and other goods harvested on their plantation. For cooking, the girls had to go to the wells nearby to gather potable water. Afterwards they would either study or go back to the river with their friends to bathe and play games. Because gas was expensive and the family had little resources, they usually cooked with bonfires, the children also having to look for firewood.

When their youngest daughter, Marilu, moved out of their home to study at university, the parents found themselves living alone once again. Their daughter Herminia, along with her husband José, built a house for them in their backyard so that her parents could move in with them to Arecibo. In return, they took care of their granddaughter Jennifer and their grandsons Jorge and Eliezer. They taught them values and gave them a lot of love. It was an unexpected surprise to the whole family when Agustin, aged 77, died of a heart attack. All their children traveled to give their father one last goodbye. Justina, after almost fifty years of sharing their life together, felt heartbroken. Even though he had been intense during the early years of the marriage, he had been a good father that had protected his children and made them strong. During his last years he had redeemed himself, showing his wife the appreciation and love he felt for her.

Unpredictably, Justina handled the sudden death with ease. For years, Agustin had handled all the finances from the house and kept everything in order. Justina, always watching like a silent apprentice, knew exactly what had to be done and how, despite her lack of formal education. She moved out of her parents’ house to move in with Agustin, never having that chance to take charge of herself economically. Like a role she was meant to play all along, she became independent immediately even though she had depended on someone her entire life. Out of concern, the children decided to leave Gladys in charge of their mother, and so she did until Justina passed away.

During the latter years Justina suffered various heart attacks and strokes. She was also diabetic and she had hypertension. From being a very active woman that worked on fields and in the house, she had been cursed, not being able to move her legs. She had become unhappy, as she felt she was a nuisance to her daughters when they took care of her. Nonetheless, their daughters were simply repaying the love and care she had raised them up with.

Now I am here, in the mortuary. It’s February 15th, 2018. Yesterday, Justina, my grandmother, passed away. The jíbaritos from Peñuelas have traveled from the mountains to say goodbye to one of their finest. They praised her strength, her charisma, her wisdom and, most importantly, the love with which she had always treated everyone. They remember her as a young teen walking the streets shoeless with a giant bucket of water on her head. They remember her as a mother that always gave her all to ensure her children’s wellbeing. They remember her as a grandmother that taught them a lot about strength and respect. I remember her as the woman that taught me how to love and always treat others with kindness. I remember her smile, her laugh, her soft, curly hair, her wrinkles, the touch of her hands as she caressed my hair, the love that flowed through her veins, the contagious peace that emanated from her heart.

“When my mother died I went straight into Justina’s house and cried on her shoulder. She gave me a hug, advice and gave me a reassuring smile that I will never forget. That woman, she always smiled regardless of the situation, regardless of her pain.”