A Steamy Night of Live Music at El Boricua in Río Piedras, Puerto Rico

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If you checked out my last few post, you’d know that me and my ladyfriend Serena were in Puerto Rico for a week of work and play. On our last night on the island before heading home, we were looking for a good local live music venue and were directed to a place called El Boricua, an unofficial landmark disguised as a dive bar in PR’s most famous college town, Río Piedras.

Raices Negra bandleader Enrique Hernández

Raices Negra: El Boricua

El Boricua is where locals have come to hang out and dance to live music since 1979. The venue draws a mixed crowd thanks to an eclectic mix of live music (including a weekly “Lunes de Plena”) that features salsa, bomba, jazz, DJs and more. This particular evening’s entertainment was a rumba band called Raices Negras. They put on a dynamic set that almost matched the heat and humidity of an August night in Puerto Rico (yeah, even at night it’s brutal).

As for the town of Río Piedras where El Boricua located, it’s seen better days.

Río Piedras was founded in 1714 as El Roble and proclaimed a municipality in 1823. The town is also the principal campus of the University of Puerto Rico (UPR), which was founded in 1903 and is the oldest and largest higher learning institution in the Caribbean. The Plaza Mercado de Río Piedras is still the largest public food market on the island.

The municipality of Río Piedras became part of the capital city of San Juan on July 1, 1951, helping make San Juan the largest city in Puerto Rico. But Río Piedras has experienced economic strife coupled with a significant population decline over the past decade plus.

Since Hurricane Maria, more than 239,000 people moved to Florida with the Florida Puerto Rican population topping one million. The storm followed a decade-long economic decline as evidenced by population loss, business closures, and abandoned homes, leading to abandoned commercial and industrial properties, school closings due to fewer students, and shuttering of multi-family residential complexes.

The Coronavirus epidemic and Hurricane Fiona has only exacerbated the situation leaving storefronts and homes abandoned. Residents who remained or returned have been recovering from a decade of losses and are enduring a difficult job market with dozens of employers unable or unwilling to reopen businesses after the economic decline.

Oh, and 44.5% of Rio Piedras residents live in poverty compared to 14.1% in the U.S. (2020 ACS). Unemployment and poverty drive crime and the crime rate in Río Piedras’ is 22X higher than in the Municipality of San Juan as a whole (Puerto Rico Police Dept., 2021 crime statistics).

The good news is that Gov. Pedro Pierluisi Urrutia recently enacted new laws, including House Joint Resolution (HJR) 450, authorizing the Department of Economic Development and Commerce to design a “Strategic Plan for the Revitalization and Development of the Urban Center in Río Piedras.”

Just this past May, the municipality of San Juan has launched a tender to reconstruct Avenida Universidad, the first of seven projects to revitalize the Río Piedras sector. The reconstruction of the renowned avenue, which connects the busy Luis Muñoz Rivera Avenue, the University of Puerto Rico, Río Piedras Campus and the urban area of the capital city, marks the start of a $50 million project to bring life back to the entire Río Piedras area.

But on this night, none of that mattered. What mattered was that the music was live (and smoking!), the crowd was chill, and despite the sweltering heat and humidity (and lighting that put my 35mm f/1.4 lens through a high intensity workout!), it was the perfect place to be. Put El Boricua on your list of cultural places to visit while in or around San Juan (and be patient at the bar).

Enjoy the photographs…