Mayagüez (pronounced Mah-yah-GWEHZ) is the third largest city of Puerto Rico. Also known as "La Sultana del Oeste" (The Western Sultana) or "Ciudad de las Aguas Puras" (City of Pure Waters), Mayagüez is located in the western part of the island of Puerto Rico.

Its area is of 197 km² with an estimated population of just over 100,000. Mayagüez is located 2 hours by automobile from San Juan.

Natives of Mayagüez are known as mayagüezanos.

History

Mayagüez was founded in 1760 by Faustino Martínez de Matos, Juan de Silva and Juan de Aponte, at a hill located about one kilometer inland from Mayagüez Bay and the outlet of the Yagüez River. "Yagüez" was the indigenous name for the local river (the word means "clear water" in the language of its original inhabitants, the Taíno indians). "Mayagüez" is a variation on this name, which means "Land of the Clear Waters" and eventually gave the city its nickname. The Taino indians had settled the area for hundreds of years before the town's founding, at the nearby settlement of Yagüeca (also spelled Yagueca or Yaweka), which sit near a larger river, the Río Grande de Añasco.

The Spanish crown granted the founders the right to self-government in 1763, formally separating the town from the larger Partido de San Germán. Originally the settlement was named “Our Lady of the Candelaria of Mayaguez”. Most of the town's settlers, including its founders, came originally from the Canary Islands, whose patron saint is the Virgin of Candlemas (Candelaria), hence the name.

In 1836, the settlement was elevated to the royal status of villa — at the time the principal industry was agriculture. The famous patriot, educator, sociologist, philosopher, essayist, and novelist Eugenio María de Hostos was born in Mayagüez in 1839.

In 1841 a fire nearly destroyed the villa. The town was rebuilt with some of its main roads widened as to prevent any future fires to spread quickly. The Spanish military governor of Puerto Rico, Gen. Santiago de Méndez Vigo raised funding through a subscription fund to rebuild the entire city; as a result one of Mayagüez's two main thoroughfares was named after him.

Mayagüez later became the cultural and political center of the western part of Puerto Rico. Due to its physical isolation from the rest of the island (the city was founded on a coastal valley surrounded by mountains) and its need for self-sufficiency from Puerto Rico's main government (which, some of its current inhabitants claim, lasts to this day) Mayagüez developed a peculiar local culture and a strong sense of regional pride that tends to distinguish its inhabitants from the rest of Puerto Rico's. Some historians claim that this strong, fiercely independent culture was responsible for breeding not only liberal thinkers such as Eugenio María de Hostos, but also radical ones such as Dr. Ramón Emeterio Betances, the father of the Puerto Rican independence movement and founder of Mayagüez's Municipal Hospital (currently known as Hospital San Antonio), Segundo Ruiz Belvis, the father of the Puerto Rican Abolitionism movement and a former city administrator, and José de Diego y Martínez, first president of the Puerto Rico House of Representatives and founder of the local College of Agriculture and Mechanic Arts. The Grito de Lares, Puerto Rico's first major pro-independence revolt, was planned at a farm in the outskirts of town. The September 23, 1868 revolution was chiefly remotely organized by Dr. Betances who, twelve years earlier, had literally saved the town from exticntion by a cholera epidemic that killed over 30,000 people in the island and decimated the town's population.

The Escuela Libre de Música or Free Music School was founded in 1894 and directed by Don Fernando Callejo. In 1896, a statue was raised in the main plaza to honor Cristopher Columbus. That same year the villa formally received its city charter from the Spanish royal crown and given its current formal title, "Excelente Ciudad de Mayagüez".

During the Spanish-American War, on August 11,1898, U.S. troops entered Mayagüez. Spanish troops encircled the city to fight a battle that never occurs. Baseball was first played in Puerto Rico on the main plaza that same day.

In 1911, the College of Agriculture and Mechanic Arts was founded in Mayagüez. Today it is known as the University of Puerto Rico - Mayagüez Campus (UPRM) — the Caribbean's leading science and engineering institution.

The city of Mayagüez was nearly destroyed again on October 11 1918 by an earthquake and a tsunami. In June 20 1919 a fire nearly destroyed the Teatro Yagüez, the town's main theater, killing 92 people. The Teatro was later rebuild and remodeled twice; it is now Mayagüez's municipal theater.

The city's main Roman Catholic church, “Our Lady of the Candelaria” was rebuilt in 1922. The original redesign by architect Luis Perocier sought to restore the building to its original splendor (not only the 1918 earthquake had destroyed the temple's ceiling, but a lightning bolt also struck and tore down a wedge-shaped corner of one of its two bell towers), but lack of proper funding and the extent of the damage in the original structure forced the actual rebuilding of the church to be scaled-down considerably. Pope Paul VI authorized the founding of the Diocese of Mayagüez on April 30, 1976, which led to the rededication of the church as a cathedral soon after. The first bishop of the city, Mon. Ulises Casiano Vargas led the drive for the cathedral's remodeling to Perocier's original plan; the remodeled cathedral was reopened on January 1, 2004.

Between 1962 and 1998 Mayagüez was a major tuna canning and processing center. At one time, 80% of all tuna products consumed in the United States were packed in Mayagüez. Mayagüez was also a major textile industry hub; until very recently, almost a quarter of all drill uniforms used by the United States Army were sawn in the city.

On May 12, 1975 a unit of the Cambodian Khmer Rouge seized a container ship, the USS Mayagüez, on the Gulf of Siam. The botched recovery of the ship's crew by armed forces of the United States off the island of Koh Tang -which occurred on May 15- became known as the Mayagüez Incident, considered by historians as one of president Gerald Ford's foreign policy setbacks. The container ship was actually part of the then government-owned Navieras de Puerto Rico, which explains why the city's name became entangled in such a major military international incident.

Mayagüez today

Although the city has seen its share of natural disasters, today it faces an economic downturn due to the closure of the needle factories and tuna industry, which where the principal industries of the city for the most part of the century. The city still continues to play an important role in the western part of the island.

Today, Mayagüez has become a major college town, due in part to UPRM, the Eugenio Maria de Hostos Law School and the Pontiff Catholic University of Puerto Rico, among other educational institutions located in the area. wow Mayagüez is also home to the Mayagüez Zoo.

Mayagüez's BSN professional basketball team, the Tainos de Mayagüez, are named in honor of the city's Indian heritage. Its LBPPR baseball team, the Indios de Mayagüez, honor both their Indian heritage and the home town's Cervecería India.

Mayagüez's airport, the Eugenio Maria de Hostos Airport, has had airline services for a long period of time. In the 1970s it had domestic service from Prinair. After 1985, both American Airlines (with American Eagle) and Eastern Airlines (with Eastern Metro Express) started flights there, but Eastern went bankrupt in 1991 leaving American as the only operator. Nowadays, Pan Am was said to be planning to start Mayagüez's first jet service ever, with Boeing 727s flying between Mayagüez and Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic, but the plans were never carried out. In addition, Fina Air flies from there to the Dominican Republic.

Well-known "mayagüezanos" include: singer (Armando Hipólito) Chucho Avellanet, his nephew, former Menudo Roberto Avellanet, late former governor Roberto Sánchez Vilella, late former Speaker of the Puerto Rico House of Representatives Ernesto Ramos Antonini, and the late former Mayagüez Mayor, Benjamin Cole, whom served for 24 years in a row as mayor of the city. Two major Latino television stars in the United States, singer and show host Rafael José (Diaz) and anchorwoman María Celeste Arrarás, were raised in Mayagüez.

The current mayor of Mayagüez is José Guillermo Rodríguez of the PPD.

Mayagüez is served by Eugenio María de Hostos Airport.

External links

• Municipality of Mayagüez (http://www.mayaguezpr.com)
• 1888 Map of Mayaguez Library of Congress (http://memory.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/r?ammem/gmd:@field(SUBJ+@band(Puerto+Rico--Mayaguez+)))
• 1918 Mayaguez Earthquake (http://redsismica.uprm.edu/english/Info/quake1918.php)

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