The 1912 Bubonic Plague Epidemic in San Juan, Puerto Rico

In June of 1912 health authorities in San Juan, Puerto Rico reluctantly admitted there were cases of bubonic plague in the city and that the disease was taking on epidemic proportions.  Most of the cases of the disease, as well as the first ones diagnosed, were in a working class neighborhood in San Juan known as Puerta de Tierra.  The neighborhood had long been known for its unsanitary, overcrowded housing and high rates of infectious diseases, which health officers frequently decried.  Yet, through the years, officials had little compunction about using Puerta de Tierra, and the waters that surrounded it, as places to dump garbage, house people with infectious diseases, allow unsanitary stables, quarantine sick animals and dispose of animal carcasses.

Bubonic plague apparently spread from the docks in one sector of the neighborhood and had been imported from abroad, although nobody was sure from where.  The epidemic caused alarm bordering on panic which focused on the residents of Puerta de Tierra, especially Afro-Puerto Ricans who lived in the poorest section of the modest neighborhood. The island’s governor, U.S. health officials, their Puerto Rican counterparts, the organized labor movement and many others now called for the demolition of the poorest people’s homes and the destruction of their property. Residents of other cities on the island demanded that people from San Juan, and especially those from Puerta de Tierra, be prevented from leaving the city. This paper examines how the years of medical neglect and environmental abuse of the zone came back to torment the government and people of Puerto Rico in the form of bubonic plague, and how the epidemic exacerbated class and racial divisions. It is based on Puerto Rican archival materials, U.S. and Puerto Rican public health bulletins, and Puerto Rican newspapers.