Santa Isabel
Where two Taíno territories met, 24 archaeological sites remain. Central Cortada sugar mill (1901-1974) peaked at 20,265 tons; nearby Aguirre was last PR sugar production (1993). Ruins mark Operation Bootstrap's cost.
Santa Isabel exists where two Taíno cacicazgos once met—the boundary between Guaynia and Guayama—and where Puerto Rico's sugar industry went to die. Twenty-four pre-Columbian archaeological sites document millennia of habitation before Antonio Vélez led residents to separate from Coamo on October 5, 1842. The Spanish had already recognized the alluvial flatlands' potential: estancias cultivated rice, corn, beans, and root vegetables for local consumption.
Sugar transformed everything. Catalan settler Juan Cortada built the first trapiche on Estancia Descalabrado in the early 1800s; his descendants founded the Santa Isabel Sugar Company in 1918 to modernize the operation. Central Cortada peaked at 20,265 tons in 1930, introducing innovations like the Canus Case Loader (1907) before being absorbed by Central Aguirre Sugar Company in the 1930s. Operations continued under successive owners until 1974.
The region around Aguirre became the last place in Puerto Rico to suspend sugar production—1993. Today Central Cortada's ruins stand as monument and cautionary tale: what Operation Bootstrap's industrialization-over-agriculture policies left behind. The shift meant jobs migrated to urban centers while rural municipalities depopulated.
Modern Santa Isabel shares Puerto Rico's southern-coast identity: Caribbean beaches, tourism potential, agricultural remnants. By 2026, the municipality tests whether industrial archaeology and coastal access constitute economic future, or whether being last in sugar means remaining last in everything.