San Sebastian

San Sebastian is located South of Isabela and Quebradillas, North of Las Marias, Southeast of Anasco and Moca and West of Lares. Its territory consists of 24 neighbourhoods and the inner city people are sub-divided into two smaller districts: Urrejola and Norzagaray, in which sits the town’s administrative centre and capital.

It has an area of 185 square kilometres and a population close to 45,000 people.
It is called San Sebastian del Pepino or “Cucumber” or the “Cradle of the Hammock,” and sometimes “Patrol”.

Pre-Columbian
Under the auspices of the Institute of Puerto Rican Culture archaeological explorations are conducted in the Pepiniano area and most noted is the archaeologist Ramon M. Pepiniano Estrada Vega.

Found near rivers and in caves are remains of indigenous materials in approximately 8 districts and local archaeologists refer to these objects as mostly found objects and are homed in the Arawak and Taino archaic periods.

The districts of Alto Sano, Cibao, Culebrinas, Aeneas, Guajataca, Guacio, and Saltos Hoyamala have provided much archaeological material. It remains to be seen whether some of these neighbourhoods, finding a site, could be proved that there was some yucayeque or Indian villages.

The truth is that for days before the European discovery of the Taino chiefdoms of Otoao, Aymaco, Yaguecax Guajataca converged on the Pepiniano territory. The famous Camino de Puerto Rico, which originated north of the mouth of the Guaorabo, was one of the many trails used by the Tainos to communicate with the rest of the island.

These findings are a clear pointer to a presence of indigenous persons in what is now the territory of Pepino. Taino names have been awarded to some neighbourhoods, such as Aibonito, Bahomamey previously spelt Babumamey, star apple, Cibao, Guacio, Guajataca and Guatemala.

The rivers and streams also have these names Tainos: star apple, Capa, Coalibina Culebrinas, Guam, Guatemala Goatemala Emajagua and others.
For several centuries, Native Americans inhabited Boriquen before the Spanish arrived. Coming from North America, Central America and along the Rio Orinoco in Venezuela, they established in the Antilles and Puerto Rico and the population was in the thousands.

The Puerto Rican Taino race was slowly decimated by forced labour, Spanish abuse, diseases and genocide to which they were subjected. The remainder of Indianness took refuge at the height of the mountains, between Adjuntas Indieras, near Maricao and Mayaguez.

When Don Andres Mendez Liciaga describes the lifestyle of the first Pepinianos in the hamlet of Pepino he tells how the Taino were living in huts, slept in hammocks and cultivated for subsistence. They lived a sedentary lifestyle of little activity; diet was almost vegetarian and hard liquor and spirits, were taken in moderation.

There is no doubt that to survive in the tropics had to imitate the experts in survival, and these, unquestionably, were the Tainos.

Foundation Stage
The permission to found the town was officially granted in 1752 by Governor Captain Esteban Bravo founder, Don Cristobal Gonzalez Aguada de la Cruz, who along with other neighbours had the interest of making a settlement of cattle ranches in a farming town with own territory and administration.

The founding of Las Vegas del Pepino, from the ecclesiastical aspect, was consummated in December 1762 with the blessing of the Bishop of the Island, Mariano Martin, who came to inaugurate the first temple and to install the first priest; Don Josef Feliciano Gonzalez and he held the first confirmation ceremony.

In 1691, San Sebastian was a distant neighbourhood and the Aguada dedicated their time to the raising of different herds of cattle on their ranches. The herds were owned, largely by residents of Aguada in Las Vegas that according to oral tradition was an old ranch located on the northern banks of a river in the neighbourhood that is now known as Guatemala or Goatemala.

Moreover, one of the herds at the time was called Pepinito, was located on the promontory of what is now the centre of town. Cucumber was known as a low hill that showed white patches of limestone through the green leaves.

A look into the legend history shows the Hoyamala cucumber of the San Sebastian Formation appears on the coat of arms for the population.

After 1763, letters from the local priest Don Josef Feliciano Gonzalez, asked for help from the authorities to rebuild the ancient temple due to the poverty of the inhabitants of the new party and the movement’s founder and captain resident of the Las Vegas party.

In the 1770 Don Cristobal Gonzalez de la Cruz was proof of the conflict between agriculture and the herders and the conflict was real resulting in the destroying of herds for agricultural land.

Consolidation Stage
From the early 1800s, wealthy families and landowners with their slaves and machinery arrived in El Pepino, fleeing the revolutions of independence of Venezuela and the Dominican Republic and claiming the benefits of the Real Cedula de Gracias of 1815.

The benefit of this decree was a patriotic prize for loyalty in these former Spanish colonies and other Europeans and Spaniards took advantage of these incentives for industrial investment as their own.

Massive capital injection put Pepino on the map of developed nations. After taking power from the municipal administration, immigrants were given the funding and development tools to develop the coffee industry. The business prospered and the Creole peasantry were considered Pepino. The hillock of Pepinito was flattened and preparations for a population centre with modern urban characteristics were made.

Subsequently, a number of factors limit the growth of new farmers and landowners, giving occasion for the big landowners, who financed the crop, to obtain more land by foreclosures getting greater gains in land and machinery.

Stage of Decadence
By 1850, as many new immigrants arrived and among them many Spaniards who came directly from Catalonia and the Basque country and it was them who, after increasing the towns capital, were threatened by the Grito de Lares and finally experienced the decline of the coffee industry.

It is interesting that the Spaniards resident in the municipality of El Pepino in 1869, changed the towns name to the municipality of San Sebastian for reasons due to the devotion of the martyr Sebastian Basques and the attempt to erase the martyrdom of five revolutionaries in the Plaza of Pepino on the occasion of the Grito de Lares in 1868.

San Sebastian Martin, the patron of archers, has been the inspiration of the population from their various origins and the first settlers who erected the first chapel. Then vacos was confirmed as a new name for the population , however the natives of San Sebastian are still called pepinianos today.