Locked In, Locked Out: Gated Communities in a Puerto Rican City

Epilogue. The Gated Library

E p i l o g u e The Gated Library If you saw the old library, situated as it was, in a big, old wooden building painted a shade of yellow that is beautiful to people like me, with its wide veranda, its big, always open windows, its rows and rows of shelves filled with books, its beautiful wooden tables and chairs for sitting and reading, if you could hear the sound of its quietness (for the quiet in this library was a sound in itself), the smell of the sea . . . the heat of the sun . . . the beauty of us sitting there like communicants at an altar, taking in, again and again, the fairy tale. —Jamaica Kincaid, A Small Place In 2010, Ponce’s municipal library—Biblioteca Municipal e Infantil Mariana Suárez de Longo y Archivo Histórico de Ponce—was finally finished. I was visiting family that January, and I was excited to find a place where I could write, with free wi-fi and silence. My mother, my aunt, and my cousin had been searching for alternatives for days: the McDonald’s in Santa Isabel, the Burger King in Avenida Las Americas, the public plaza in the center of town, but none were places for contemplation. I could see gates everywhere. But the library offered peace. The Gándara residents had complained, years ago, that the abandoned courthouse building in the lot where the library now stands was ugly and dangerous, a shooting clinic: “un pasto, [con] basura y el residencial está al ladito. La gente pasa por ahí y dicen ‘qué feo es eso al lado del pasto’” (a field, full of trash right next to the project. People go by there and say “that project next to the field is horrible”).1 By August 2007, the courthouse had been razed and the new library had Epilogue 143 been built but only gradually opened to the public.2 It reminded me in appearance of colonial government houses: it was massive, immaculate, painted in pale peach with complementary brick and white trimmings. A staff person described it to me: “preciosa, hermosa” (precious, beautiful). Giant square pillars and manicured green grounds fronted a symmetrical architecture. At the center of two horizontal extensions, a peaked triangular ceiling provided a stately quality. A manicured green lawn, modest flowerbeds, and bushy palm and tropical trees framed the front, with a footpath, bordered by lawn lighting , curving to the door. But then I saw fences around the front perimeter, a seemingly endless row of green iron poles linked by spaced ten-foot-high cement pillars protecting the lawn. There is a gate at the front, locked when the library is closed (and sometimes, even, when it is open). An about ten-foot cement wall (also peach) with complementary square pillars, separates the public housing of Gándara from the access road to the library’s drop-off rotunda and parking lot. The road at the side of the grounds is interrupted by a sidewalk with green iron bars on one side and the trees and cement wall of Gándara on the other side. From outside to inside, navigation is intricate. From the back drop-off rotunda, the pedestrian entry is hidden by a tower. Inside, right and left walkways lead around the periphery of a square garden—a secret garden—that is three steps down, sunken in the middle of an open pillared terracotta-tiled hallway, adorned with planters. (A library staff person told me the garden had recently been used by the French Alliance for a cocktail reception.) Green shutter doors off the open hallway lead to three air-conditioned library halls, with framed glass windows. To the north, a majestic triple-arched entryway faces the street that leads to Ponce’s city center. On each side of the entryway, brown and gold plaques credit the mayor, government officials, architects and builders, and they recognize Mariana Suárez de Longo, for whom the library is named, as the first female Superintendent of Schools in Puerto Rico. To the west of the garden is a hall intended for the municipal archives, not yet transferred from the city center; in early 2010 it was a tax orientation center. To the south is a small Exposition Hall, sometimes used for student art exhibits or for book presentations. The director said that any who request it may use it. Behind the hall is a colorful but small rincón de lectura (reading corner...