Ponce glows at Yuletide

Author: By William A. Davis, Globe Staff

Date: SUNDAY, December 13, 1998

Page: N1

Section: Travel

A beloved traditional Puerto Rican handicraft that flourishes in Ponce is the carving of ``santos'': wooden religious figures, mostly of saints of the Roman Catholic Church, to which a majority of Puerto Ricans belong. The most popular santos of all, however, represent the three wise men, or magi, who in Spanish-speaking countries are known as ``the three kings.'' During the Christmas season, almost every Puerto Rican house is decorated with images of the three kings, and their feast day, Jan. 6, rather than Christmas Day is the traditional gift-giving time.

One of Ponce's best known santos carvers, or ``santeros,'' is Domingo Orta. Now 56, Orta has been a carver since he was 10 years old, making musical instruments as well as religious figures. ``All five of my sons are also carvers,'' he says proudly. His small workshop in the village of El Toque, on the outskirts of the city, is filled with santos of all sorts and sizes.

``I do all the major saints such as St. Anthony and St. Francis,'' Ortega says, ``but more than anything else, I do the three kings.'' He also carves images of the Blessed Virgin, including those of the dark-skinned ``black virgin'' of Montserrat, an object of particular devotion by Puerto Ricans of African descent. Santos made by esteemed craftsmen such as Ortega are collectors' items, and he gets as much as $2,500 for a set of hand-carved and hand-painted figures of the three kings, about 10 inches high.

Ponce is at its liveliest during carnival, which begins with a huge bonfire Feb. 2 and ends with ``the burial of the sardine,'' a hilarious mock funeral procession through the town marking the end of merrymaking and the start of the somber 40-day Lenten fast. Carnival revelers in Ponce -- called ``vejigantes '' -- wear large and colorful papier-mache masks that are frequently folk art masterpieces.

One of the most famous mask-makers in Puerto Rico is Miguel Caraballo of Ponce, whose remarkable creations are in many museums and private collections. Three or four feet high, Caraballo's masks usually represent fanatastic multicolored creatures that have fearsome features and covered with horns and scales and sport extravagant antlers. ``They just come out of my imagination,'' he says modestly.

All signed by their proud maker, Carbello's well-crafted masks will last 20 or 30 years if taken care of properly. Simple ones cost as little as $60, the more elaborate and imaginative ones up to $700.

Only 75 miles southwest of San Juan but with a range of high hills in between, a more tropical climate, and a distinctly slower pace, Ponce seems far removed from the metropolis. It is a very different Puerto Rico from the bustling cruise-ship docks of San Juan or the tourist-crowded resort hotel strips of Condado Beach and Isla Verde.

Almost as colorful as one of Carbello's masks and a symbol of Ponce's distinctive and joyful civic character is the ``parque de bombas,'' the city's eye-catching old firehouse. Sited on a corner of Plaza de las Delicias (Plaza of Delights), the main square, the firehouse was originally one of the pavilions of an exposition held on the plaza in 1882 to promote Ponce's industries and attractions.

Painted in broad red and black stripes on the outside and with a green and yellow interior decor, the old firehouse -- now a firefighting museum and tourist information kiosk -- is impossible to miss. Unique as the firehouse appears, Ponce actually boasts an entire neighborhood with the same gaudy color scheme.

Until comparatively recently, the local fire department was an all-volunteer force. One of the inducements to volunteer was an annual lottery at which a lucky firefighter won a newly-built bungalow, one always painted in the same red and black stripes as the firehouse and with the fire department crest on the facade. There are some 60 such small houses, all on or just off a street called Twenty-Sixth of January the date of a fire in 1899 that would have destroyed the city but for the volunteer firemen who risked their lives to extinguish the flames.

The people of Ponce are extremely fond not only of their former firehouse but also of the prosperous turn-of-the-century era that it represents, a time when sugar was king and the city -- surrounded by sugar cane fields and the island's chief Caribbean port -- was a boomtown.

Founded in 1692, the city is named for its first governor, a grandson of Ponce de Leon of Fountain of Youth fame. As part of its tricentennial observance, Ponce spent more than $400 million to restore the historic district around the Plaza de La Delicias, where most of the landmark buildings are concentrated.

Among other nostalgia-enhancing improvements, modern streetlights were replaced with old-fashioned cast-iron lampposts, overhead wires were buried, and sidewalks were trimmed with local pink marble. Today, Spanish colonial streets such as Isabela Reina, Paseo Atocha, and Christina look much as they did early in the century.

Sightseeing trolleys give tours of the district during the week, and on weekends there are horse-drawn carriage tours as well. Tours last over an hour, depart from near the Parque de Bombas, and are free.

Many of Ponce's public buildings and handsome mansions are in a local architectural style known as ``Ponce Creole.'' Characterized by red tile roofs and framed balconies called ``rejas,'' they make Ponce seem more like a Mediterranean town than a Caribbean one.

Several interesting museums occupy characterful old buildings that are worth visiting for themselves as well as their contents. Among them is the Museum of the History of Ponce in Casa Salazar, an ornate mansion built for a local doctor in 1911 and a wildly eclectic (but impressive) mix of neoclassical, Moorish, art nouveau, and colonial styles.

The museum traces Ponce's history from pre-Columbian times, when the area was inhabited by Taino Indians, to the present with interactive displays, changing exhibits, and many evocative photographs. Among the odder artifacts: a large marble bathtub custom-made for Samuel F.B. Morse, inventor of the telegraph, whose daughter and son-in-law had a plantation outside town.

A similar although more subdued mansion, also built in 1911, now houses the Museum of Puerto Rico Music. Exhibits include Indian, Spanish, and African instruments and memorabilia of beloved Puerto Rican performers and composers.

Ponce's most dramatic-looking museum, without a doubt, is Serrales Castle, which stands near the crest of El Vigia Hill, looking down on the city. Built in the 1930s as the home of the wealthy family that owned the Don Q rum distillery, Puerto Rico's oldest, it is a romanticized version of a Spanish castle. As a museum, the castle displays the Serrales family's large collection of antique furnishings and also has exhibits on the sugar and rum-making industries that paid for them.

Sharing El Vigia Hill with Serrales Castle is the remarkable ``Cruz del Vigia'' (Virgin's Cross), a 100-foot-high reinforced concrete structure with lateral arms 70 feet across. Built in 1984 to replace the traditional wooden cross that had stood on the hill for more than 200 years, the Virgin's Cross has an observation deck on top (accessible by elevator) with a panoramic view of Ponce and the lush green countryside around it.

When agriculture rather than tourism was Puerto Rico's main industry, Ponce -- the port through which much of the island's sugar, coffee, and rum was exported -- rivaled San Juan as the island's commercial and intellectual center. It still has an unusual number of cultural institutions for a city of 200,000 people, including the Catholic University of Puerto Rico, a School of Fine Arts (housed in a building once local Spanish Army headquarters), and the Ponce Museum of Art, the largest in the Caribbean.

The Museum of Art was founded by Luis Ferre a wealthy art collector and former governor of Puerto Rico. Located across from the main gate of Catholic University, the museum is a large and impressive building with roomy galleries lit by hexagonal skylights. It was designed by Edward Durrell Stone, the architect who also designed the Museum of Modern Art in New York.

Ferre's artistic taste was definitely Eurocentric, and the collection covers five centuries of mostly Western European art, with emphasis on Renaissance, Baroque, and pre-Raphaelite painting and scupture. There is a good deal of repetitive religious art and a number of unfashionably sentimental Victorian paintings but also some first-rate works by Reubens, Gainsborough, Reynolds, Velazquez, Van Dyck Cranach, Murillo, and other masters.

There are also galleries devoted to Latin American art, including paintings by Mexico's Diego Rivera and Puerto Rico's own Jose Campeche. The museum has an attractive gift shop that besides the usual postcards, prints, and art books has a large selection of handicrafts from both Puerto Rico and elsewhwere in Latin America.

A good place to buy local handicrafts in downtown Ponce is Mi Coqui, a gift shop on Christina Street across from the firehouse. Named for the tiny whistling frog who is Puerto Rico's mascot, the shop has an entire wall covered with carnival masks and also has a large stock of santos. Prices of handicrafts are generally much lower in Ponce than in San Juan.

Cooking is also a folk art, and Ponce is noted for its traditional creole-style seafood. El Ancla (``The Anchor''), a popular restaurant in a former warehouse on the Ponce waterfront, for instance, serves seafood with a definite Caribbean flair.

Specialties include ``mariscada'' (a lobster, shrimp, octopus, and conch combination,) ``mofongo relleno con langosta y camarones'' (mashed plantain stuffed with lobster and shrimp), and ``filete de salmon en salsa de alcabarras'' (salmon filet in capers sauce). El Ancla is one of the 43 restaurants on the island the government of Puerto Rico has designated a ``mesone gastronomico,'' that is, a family-run restaurant serving authentic regional Puerto Rican cuisine.