The Indianapolis journal. [volume] (Indianapolis [Ind.]) 1867-1904, 1898-07-17
ODD THINGS IN SAN JUAN
PORTO RICAN GIRLS KEPT UNDER
GUARD BY UGLY DUENNAS.
Graves Rent by the Year i'm the Gem
etery, and Bodies Tossed Out When
the Rent Is Overdue.
Boston Globe.

Not a gunshot from the great MORO OF
San Juan, Porto Rico. in the center of the
city, you will find the central plaza Dur
Ing the day it is hot and vacant, at night
cool and populous When the music begins,
at O'Clock In the evening, out from their
prison dwellings troop the fair ladies Of
San Juan. Some are blonde, most are bru-
nette. All, as seen in the dim light of the
hickering lamps. seem beautiful All are
bareheaded; all carry fans, which remind
one OF the flicker of butterflies wings as
they fit and start, half opening and shut
ting, as If about balancing themselves on
bank of flowers
They are bareheaded save for the graceful
mantllla, which often hangs across their
bare shoulders instead of adjoining their
night-black tresses. The ladies flock by
themselves mostly, or, if they have male
escorts are invariably accompanied by
duenna, who has been young so long ago
that she has forgotten all about it, and
Keeps sharpest watch over her charge. Two
hours thus they revel in the music of the
band from Cadiz, and when the musicians
have started for their barracks with that
light, swinging pace peculiar to the Span
ish infantry, then the fair senoritas and
the less attractive duennas return to the
seclusion of their dwellings, while the men
dIsperse to the cafes to gossip and smoke.
RMS the men do every night, band concert
OF no panu concert; but the ladies do not
emerge again until the next ''retreta," or
perchance to go shopping some forenoon,
under rigid surveillance.
In the country districts the social regula-
tons are not so rigid, but even there it will
not do to give Spanish girls the freedom of
American young ladies, because-well, be-
cause they have never had it, and might
not know what to do with it when they got
1t; The simple maidens of the country re-
gion dance all night to the harsh music of
great gourd rubbed with a stick to which
penetrating noise, sounding something like
the sharpening of knife on stone, they
of the Spanish "valses."
They told a pretty story recently about
tain general, Pauline Macias. who went out
into the streets of San Juan and tried to
rouse her countrymen and women to the de-
tense or their city. This may or may not
have been true but if true 1t was in con-
travention of the Spanish code of conven-
uonahtles Rarely does Castilian Joan
a. Arc venture out to lead Spanish troops,
either in defense Of to charge, for, no mat
ter how much her service might be valued,
her act would surely be misconstrued.
But no matter: whatever the freedom that
the future may bring to Porto Rico and the
women of San, Juan, at present they are
hedged about by the strongest chains of
doors unattended and. like the Moorish
women, they visit oftener the cemetery
side wall of the Notifications, with massive
walls rising above it on the south, and the
ocean surges laundering to the northward,
lies the great Campo Santo' of San Juan.
A sentry turret guards the cemetery gate,
beyond which, disturbed by the roar neither
of waves nor, artillery; many thousands
last sleep. This spot is not large, but, ow-
ing to the peculiar methods of interment,
every b inch of ms Is occupied not once
In the first place the graves dug in the
level are rented only for a term of years.
At the expiration of the lease, out go what
remains of the occupant of any grave, un-
less his or her friends put up the "needful''
for a renewal.
over to the angles of the walls. and there
you will find, piled in every corner, heaps
of moldering bones, mingled with tattered
ming, CHASTITY skulls. Many of the graves
may still be seen yawning widely for other
to inspire cheerful thoughts nor to impress
one with the idea that Spaniards and Span
ish descended colonsts are overcareful of
their departed friends remains.
Still, there are numerous fine stones and
marbles here, mortuary urns and portrait
busts, but these adorn the graves of the
more fortunate rich, and are leased in per-
Spection for their beauty of carving and
their wealth of imagery in epitaph, since
here, as in other places, the virtues of the
dead and gone are recited and their vices
ignored
Against the frowning fortress walls are
the columbariae-to speak literally, the
pigeon holes-into which the Weather peo-
pie are thrust feet foremost, after they have
given up the ghost. The columbarium is
long, and deep, and narrow, like an old
fashioned brick oven, with marble slab
for a door, which, after the body has been
placed within, is Theoretically sealed. and
there the dead are left to simmer in the
dreadful tropical heat; but that may seem
vastly better than to be planted in shall
low grave, with the dread certainty of be-
ing "resurrected" within three four or five
years and what there is left of one tossed
into an angle of the walls.
Grief with the Spaniards Is short-lved, if
we may judge from the condition of their
cemeteries. In the tropics, particularly,
where one might expect greater care on the
part of the authorities, if only from sanitary
consideration, attention to the departed is
more lax than In the north. Except in large
cities. such as Havana and the City of
Mexico, the spots selected for internent of
the dead are in state of woeful neglect.
The graves, mostly indicated by plain wood
en- crosses, painted black. and leaning to
while the open pits from which those whose
terms have expired have been removed are
numerously interspersed.
Decay soon sets in, within the tropics, not
alone Of the mortal frame but of the ar
tif1Cial environments of wood and the YES
lures. The cadaver is hardly out of sight
before the destructive forces of nature are
at work, and externally the graves are SUBJ
ject to swift change; in few days they are
covered with a carpet of green, quick-grow-
ing plants and in the course of a season,
if left to itself, the place of sepulture is
hidden out of sight.
This general neglect of cemeteries is no.
ticed throughout the West indies, and par
ticularly in the Spanish islands; though in
and Barbados, one finds a pleasant con-
trast, in the country churchyards, which,
adjacent to neat little places of worship.
are carefully and devoutly cared for and