FEATURE
She is Water:
Unveiling Women in the Interpretation of Historic Sites
BEHIND THE ARTICLE
San Juan Waterworks (from left to right): Pumping and boiler house, Chemical and Mechanical Filter’s House, and Engineer and Caretaker’s Residence and Settling Basins. Photo by Para la Naturaleza.
Every day, I have the privilege of introducing visitors to the first aqueduct that provided water to San Juan, the capital of Puerto Rico. Situated in the former municipality of Río Piedras, the San Juan Old Waterworks premiered in 1898 as the leadoff public system that distributed water to thousands of citizens living in the growing intramural city. Discarded in the last quarter of the twentieth century, today the San Juan Old Waterworks remains as the only known standing aqueduct from the Spanish period in the United States and its territories. The importance of this designated National Treasure extends from its acclaimed historical, heritage, and patrimonial framework to its ecological significance, as it remains standing in an irreplaceable river ecosystem.
The first time I visited the aqueduct was in 2012, when a professor of the University of Puerto Rico invited my class on a field trip to the Aqueduct where we had the opportunity of meeting Dr. Aníbal Sepúlveda Rivera, distinguished planner and historian in charge of assembling the history of the Aqueduct. Even though my bachelor’s and doctoral dissertation focused on drinking water systems, and despite living four minutes away from this gemstone, it took me almost seven years to find it.
The pumping and boiler house stored the steam engines, boiler, and coal for pumping treated water to a reservoir and then the city of San Juan. Photo Para la Naturaleza.
Today I work as an interpreter with Para la Naturaleza, a nonprofit organization under the Conservation Trust of Puerto Rico, which oversees efforts for the historical and natural preservation and protection of the designated natural area encompassing the Aqueduct. And, like me, I often meet visitors that express their astonishment at being unaware about the existence of this place.
The Aqueduct irrigated a growing city and its neighborhoods, brought health and sanitation to thousands of citizens, and kept expanding its horizons for almost three quarters of a century. Despite its accessible location—encompassed by the first botanical garden in the island, reachable by the first asphalted road known as Central Highway or “Carretera Central” as well as by three stations of the automated rapid transit system—the Aqueduct stands forgotten, as if it never existed. The aqueduct exists right next to the University of Puerto Rico in Río Piedras, the oldest and largest higher learning institution in the Caribbean—yet keeps falling into oblivion.
How can the first provider of a resource so valuable as water can be left aside, veiled and forgotten? How are its history, struggles, contributions, and triumphs not shouted to every person on the Island? As now I acknowledge, as a female interpreter, just as the Aqueduct has been set aside, veiled, and forgotten, so has the role of women in the history of water in San Juan.
For almost three centuries before developing the water system, people living in the capital of Puerto Rico lacked sustainable and reliable access to water and sanitation. Access to water at the household level was determined mostly by social and economic status. The wealthy population had the necessary resources to construct private cisterns to collect rainwater inside their homes. On the contrary, those with limited resources lacked the necessary infrastructure to construct cisterns and relied on unreliable water sources, such as public cisterns, brackish water wells, and fresh water sources located in distant places far away from the city. The disparity in water access led to an array of activities and occupations directed to ease the water situation of people living in San Juan, and most of these activities and occupations were imposed upon and delegated to women.
As one of my interpretation techniques, I often invite people to imagine living under these circumstances in the 1800s, with the expectation of creating connections between visitors and the resources framed in the historical site of the San Juan Old Waterworks. The rationale behind the exercise is that water is an imperative resource that everyone uses in their daily activities; and despite gender, race, and age, anyone can relate to these challenges. As Lisa Brochu and Tim Merriman state in their book Personal Interpretation: Connecting Your Audience to Heritage Resources: “[Interpreters]…are there to reveal important stories behind the resources so that audience members can formulate their own opinions and take responsibility for their actions.” Once people feel engaged with the resource (in this instance, water), their actions could be translated into efforts for the resource’s conservation and protection.
A woman washing laundry in an open stream in Puerto Rico (1903). Photo by the Library of Congress.
When talking about the wealthy families living in houses inside the intramural city, I often tell visitors about the male owner of the “Hacienda” with sufficient monetary resources to construct a stone cistern to collect rainwater in his house. However, when talking about poor families and their endeavors to secure necessary water, I talk about the woman that had to walk long distances with a bucket on her head to bring water to her household. Inside the history of water in San Juan, this is one of the few times, not to say the only time, that a female character plays a part. I use a similar approach when telling visitors about the main characters involved in the design, construction, and functioning of the Aqueduct. Answering questions such as, “Who were they?” and “What were their contributions?” is a way to connect everyone with the Aqueduct—or at least that was my understanding. Just as the example stated before, all characters featured are male.
The fact that female characters are missing in popular stories of the Aqueduct should not pardon the exclusion of their involvement, achievements, and contributions. The National Trust for Historic Preservation offers an example of how we can rediscover history by identifying, recognizing, and honoring the role of women in order to enhance places with cultural value across the country and its territories. Also, more importantly, telling the whole story can make space for a future where everyone can see themselves reflected in a more inclusive narrative. The National Trust’s Women’s History in America: Where Women Made History Project can serve as a blueprint for evaluating how female roles can and should be unveiled and incorporated in the history of water in San Juan.
The original interior of this building included three subdivisions to house three employees and their families. Photo by Para la Naturaleza.
Women were in charge of essential roles for the sustenance of households, food provision, agriculture, and even tobacco and sugar industries. In the 1800s, women were part of a growing profession inside and outside of the intramural city: laundresses or lavanderas. As stated in Aníbal Sepúlveda’s book Aqueduct: History of water in San Juan, these lavanderas were part of a women’s collective in charge of transporting, laundering, and drying clothes using primarily public water sources. As described by Sepúlveda, an important event took part in the history of water in San Juan involving the lavanderas, showing not only their roles as workers but also as active citizens with rights to demand public services. In 1815, the lavanderas submitted a formal complaint to the council stating that a private landowner prevented access to a public water source. Based on evidence, one month after placing the complaint, the municipality of San Juan determined that the petition was correct and the private owner was preventing a common service. It would be honorable to investigate the names of those women in charge of this petition and incorporate their stories in the interpretation of the Aqueduct—one of my tasks for this year.
Inside the Waterworks historic precinct, there is a historic building designed and constructed to serve as the house of the employees and their families. The Aqueduct functioned by manually burning coal for the pumping of water using steam machines and the opening and closing of mechanical valves in the dam located in the Piedras River. In 1899, stated in Sepúlveda’s book, records show the names of the three employees working in the Aqueduct at the time. These men, described using their first
and last names, probably lived in the precinct with their families. Who were those women living in the Aqueduct? What were their first and last names? What activities did they perform? Did they replace employees when absent? This is an intriguing and promising story that I would be honored to investigate and incorporate when telling the story of the first Aqueduct of San Juan and the women that were part of it.
As of today, there are people, including women, who dedicate their professional and personal lives to preserving and protecting the resources encompassing the San Juan Old Waterworks historical precinct. Every day, I meet wonderful, strong, and virtuous women engaged with the conservation and protection of the river that once fed an entire city and the ecosystems connected to the natural areas that generate essential ecosystem services for the population of San Juan and Puerto Rico. Teachers, community leaders, interpreters, mothers, sisters, daughters—each one with a story to tell and each one with a story to be honored.
In due time, in the first quarter of 2024, it is expected that the San Juan Old Waterworks will finally witness the restoration of the historic buildings. These buildings have been deteriorating in the aftermath of natural disasters, such as hurricanes and earthquakes, since the Aqueduct’s inauguration in 1898. This restoration process presents an invaluable opportunity to unveil the imperative stories of women and carve in history those over-sighted actions that gave life to the San Juan Old Waterworks.
