FIRST DECADE 1893 a 1903

Puerto Rico

  • The decade 1893 to 1903 was transcendental. For 400 years, Puerto Rico had belonged to Spain; our language, our daily life, traditions, religions… everything was done in the Spanish custom.
  • Sugarcane was the principal source of sustenance of the economy, although tobacco, coffee, and various other crops were cultivated.
  • Poverty was extreme for most residents, and usury was common on the part of unscrupulous lenders who would tie the borrower to debt without end.
  • In 1898, because of the Spanish-American War, Spain ceded Puerto Rico to the United States, and shortly after there was a currency devaluation that put Puerto Rico and its institutions on the brink of bankruptcy.
  • In 1899, hurricane San Ciriaco caused devastation across the island.
Puerto Rico map

Banco Popular

  • There were several Spanish banks operating in Puerto Rico. The biggest was Banco Español.
  • On October 5, 1893, the Caja de Ahorros y Préstamos Banco Popular was founded during a meeting at the Ateneo Puertorriqueño, with an initial investment of 5,000 provincial pesos.
  • The new institution sought to help the poor to save and not fall victim to usurers.
  • The name would later change to Banco Popular de Economías y Préstamos, which in its first year operated in a small space in Grato Tinaud’s jewelry store on a corner of today’s Plaza de Armas).
  • A year later, it occupied an office at City Hall. It would remain there for 20 years.
  • In 1895, the Banco Crédito y Ahorro Ponceño was born in Ponce.
  • With the change of sovereignty in 1898, Spanish currency lost 40% of its value, and Banco Popular saw its capital of 30,000 provincial pesos reduced to 18,000 dollars.
  • Banks on the island faced serious difficulties, and some were forced to close. Popular managed to stay afloat. Banks from the United States began to operate on the island.
Banco Popular logo

Music

  • On the island, people sang and danced to music by local composers and adaptations of folklore.
  • Another popular genre was traditional jíbaro music, bomba and plena, while in the city people listened and danced to waltzes, mazurkas, danza, and contradanza.
  • Manuel Gregorio Tavárez and Juan Morel Campos were acclaimed danza composers.
  • The aguinaldos, lullabies, rosary prayer songs… all were part of our Spanish traditions. Others, like the baquiné, came from African influences.
  • Whenever possible, upper class islanders would send their children to study in Spain.
  • The tenor Antonio Paoli was the first Puerto Rican artist to reach international fame in classical music when he sang in the Paris Opera in 1897.
Musical notes

Christmas Tree

  • The custom of making Christmas trees originated from present day Germany and introduced to the United States in 1804, but the first printed image of a Christmas tree in the United States dates to 1836.
  • In 1895, a tree was placed in the White House, illuminated by electricity.
  • In Puerto Rico, Dr. Agustín Stahl, an Aguadilla native with a German father and Dutch mother, installed the first tree in Puerto Rico in 1866, after returning from his medical studies in Germany and moving to Bayamón. He decorated his tree outside his house for Christmas; the townsfolks called it “Doctor Stahl’s tree”.

Until the 1890s, in the Victorian Era, many Christmas trees had wax ornaments in the shape of angels and children. They also had ornaments made of cotton and wool, with paper in relief that formed human faces, along with glass and crystal ornaments blown in Germany. By the end of the decade, people began to use glamor and place a star at the top of the tree. The first Christmas lights were invented in 1882, in Thomas Edison’s assistant’s home. They were mass produced for the first time in 1890, and in 1985 they were available in color.

Banco Popular blueprints