Maunabo, Puerto Rico: History
Maunabo was founded in 1799. Maunabo derives its name from a Taino name Manatuabón for the Maunabo River.
Life in Maunabo was difficult for early settlers. In 1800 Maunabo registered a population of just 712 residents of whom 180 were slaves. The population was dedicated to subsistence farming in animal husbandry, minor fruits and crops for sustenance. The population was widely dispersed throughout the newly formed jurisdiction. The town center was just 4 hectares in area and consisted of 30 houses and 15 bohios according to an 1824 report to the Governor. Trade with neighboring towns along the southern coast of Puerto Rico and Saint Thomas was conducted through the port of Maunabo which was built in 1812. The wooden port facilities were primitive and frequently destroyed by tropical storms. Hurricanes Santa Ana in 1825 and San Jacinto in 1827 destroyed both agriculture and the housing stock. In addition the population faced periods of drought and the spread of communicable diseases such as smallpox. One early institution the Church of San Isidro Labrador y Santa Maria de la Cabeza was established in 1799. The Casa del Rey was the seat of municipal government. The leading landowners exercised political influence as mayors and counselors but the pace of economic development remained slow.
In the mid-nineteenth and early twentieth century Maunabo was a town heavily influenced by the development of the sugar industry. The three largest plantations were the haciendas Garonne, Bordelaise and Orleanaise. The names were French due to their founding by the Clauzel family and other French settlers to the region in the 1840s. The principal labor force of the early plantations consisted of enslaved Afro-Puerto Ricans. The population of enslaved people doubled as sugar lands were developed. By 1869 the slave register for compensation of the slaveowners at the time of abolition documented over 250 names of enslaved Afro-Puerto Ricans in Maunabo. Labor relations were characterized by intermittent conflicts and ongoing exploitation throughout the era of the sugar industry's rise. By the 1920s, the average wage of a cane cutter was approximately a dollar a day. The nineteenth century sugar planters were unable to modernize effectively due to a lack of available credit, international competition from the sugar beet industry, managing the transition from slavery to a wage labor system and the ever-increasing tariffs of the US market. The period from abolition (1873) to the Spanish American War (1898) marked a significant decline in the profitability of sugar. After the United States takeover in 1898 Maunabo experienced a period of record sugar production through the Great Depression.
In the wake of Hurricane San Ciriaco which destroyed the plantations in 1899 the owners of the three largest plantations decided to combine forces and develop a modern sugar factory, The Central Columbia Sugar Company (1901-1929). The factory site was 6.2 acres and located alongside the Maunabo River on land ceded to the new company by the Hacienda Garonne. Opened fully for business in 1901 the factory's first harvest was 20,000 sacks of sugar, the fifth highest total in the island. Thereafter the Columbia was a medium sized factory that served as an economic focal point for Maunabo but its growth was constrained by geography. Small and medium sized colonos were responsible for transporting clean sugars to the factory and paid a 5% charge for processing. …