Aguirre Puerto Rico
The town of Aguirre in Puerto Rico is a living anachronism. While it is here today, it really exists 60 years ago or more. Aguirre was a sugar processing center on the southern coast of Puerto Rico. Its history goes back before the turn of the last century, and represents the rise and fall of sugar industry on the island. I was lucky enough to get a guided tour of the town led by Carmelo Dávila, an industrial archeologist at the Jobos Bay National Estuarine Research Reserve. Aguirre Central was a company town, built to support the production of sugar at the local refinery. The houses and businesses were all owned by the company, and the workers in the plant lived in the company owned housing, their lives pretty much controlled by their employer. You can find a good history of the sugar industry in Aguirre here . The Aguirre Central Sugar Mill was the first sugar mill developed by investors from the United States after the Spanish American war. It mainly produced su...