The Multiple Relationships Among Locals and the Southwest Coasts in Puerto Rico

Anthropologists and other scholars have a renewed interest in “space,” “place,” and “landscape.” They recognize that one of the greatest challenges in social theory involves identifying the multiple social relationships that occur simultaneously in a geographic area. While sociocultural anthropologists have focused on meaning-making processes to study multiple social relationships, cultural and critical geographers have paid attention to issues of scale and time to explain the centrality of social spaces. This ethnographic research examines how the on-site activities of different groups of residents based on their social backgrounds relate to a beach and a phosphorescent bay on the southwest coast of Puerto Rico. Three groups of residents, technical experts, and short-term visitors are compared based on age, employment, place of residency, and education. Ethnography is both a method and a theory building tool that supplements the frameworks of uneven geographic development and of the global sense of place. Over 17 months of fieldwork, I conducted participant-observations in sea-based events and chosen coastal locations, completed 20 life-story interviews, and did archival research of science, history, and literature. Different groups of Puerto Ricans use and experience Manglillo beach and the phosphorescent bay of Bahía Fosforescente in qualitatively different ways -- constantly affected by power dynamics and inequality. Three main findings explain these complex and long-standing issues of access and use. First, Manglillo beach and Bahía Fosforescente transformed from open-access areas in protected areas into recreational hubs with multiple uses. These areas have attracted residents as a major segment of visitors over the past 40 to 60 years, since the 1970s for the beach and the 1950s for the bay. Second, I observed variation in the local spatial understandings among residents informed by their on-site activities of sea bathing and gathering in groups, which I recognize as “recreation as socializing.” Third, other communicative strategies beyond language use help residents explain the changes occurring on the material and social attributes of these areas. An important contribution of this study is the finding that the social uses change the characteristics of the geographical areas, or “social spaces.” Another involves finding openings or possibilities in the political realm to work from the premise of the “social spaces” informed by the qualities of heterogeneity and relationality. Additionally, the political and economic context of Puerto Rico highlights that the coastal property rights are unique, and these have influenced the transformations at Manglillo and Bahía Fosforescente. In times of “crisis,” this kind of anthropological research is urgent. Since 2015, Puerto Rico has been facing a series of legal, social, and political-economic issues that have resulted in a large out-migration, high public debt, and a potential humanitarian crisis that may reduce basic services for residents. These issues may additionally impose limits to, or even erase, the multiple uses of and access to the Puerto Rican coasts by residents and others.