A Brief History of Bloodshed and Hurricanes (excerpt)

Abstract

A Brief History of Bloodshed and Hurricanes (excerpt) Catherine Carberry (bio) UNNAMED HURRICANE, 1507 The history of hurricanes is a history of names. The history of names is a history of conquest. Before Columbus arrived, the Tainos called their island Borinquen. Columbus renamed the island after a saint, but by the time the first recorded hurricane struck, Spanish traders had begun to call it after their own interests: Puerto Rico, meaning rich port. When the unnamed hurricane began to churn over the island, the Tainos prayed for protection from the violent god Jurakán, whose name to Spanish ears became huracán—in English, hurricane. Back then, the Spaniards did not conduct tolls of the dead Tainos, whose god would betray them once again. In the Spanish records it is written: The hurricane was forceful. Many Indians died. HURRICANE SAN MATEO, 1565 A month before San Mateo, the Spanish founded the settlement of St. Augustine in Florida and were protective of their stronghold in the New World. The French naval officer Jean Ribault ordered the attack on St. Augustine, despite reports of a storm. When the hurricane hit, four French ships were destroyed and the shipwreck survivors were slaughtered by the Spanish upon reaching land. The port of St. Augustine was a wreckage of broken ships, the bodies of French soldiers left to bloat. But the hurricane weakened before reaching Puerto Rico; when it crossed the island, Spanish traders only noticed rains heavier than the usual afternoon showers, an unthreatening wind. HURRICANE SAN MATEO II, 1804 The son of the first San Mateo, or its ghost. One hundred were dead in the Virgin Islands before the second San Mateo reached Puerto [End Page 160] Rico on the same day as the first, over two hundred years later. The hurricane thrashed the Spanish ships, sinking at least eighteen. The second San Mateo ripped through the fields, pulled mango trees like weeds. In the village that would become Jayuya, the subsequent flooding killed two young boys and their horses, giving name to the street Calle de los Niños Perdidos. HURRICANE SAN CIRIACO, AUGUST 8, 1899 At first, the hurricane was nameless. Later, meteorologists would call it San Ciriaco after a saint who was said to have coaxed demons from the bodies of two young girls. But as it churned over the Caribbean, carrying salt water and palm fronds and wood stripped from a shipwreck off the coast of Santa Lucia, the hurricane was only a quick-whirling shadow, anonymous. As it reached Puerto Rico, this is what it saw: The lace fringe of sea-foam skirting the coastline; swaths of coffee-colored earth; rainforest flowers blooming ivory and blood-orange; sugar cane reaching skyward, the canopy of tangled stalks. The hurricane saw American soldiers in their new posts at El Morro fortress, only months after replacing the Spanish flag with their own. It saw the marble tombs of Spaniards on a cliff facing the sea. And then closer, above the city of Ponce, the hurricane saw Fernando Zayas about to lose his wife’s house and inheritance in a game of cards. The hurricane saw Elsa Morales Girol as she ran from the rain with a newspaper above her head. It saw the newspaper’s headline about the world’s first motorcycle race, recently held in New York. The hurricane saw domino tiles scattered as men hurried from plazas, saw the three thousand bodies that soon would be trapped and drowned. But hurricanes have no choice. They see but cannot decide. They can only exhale and surrender to themselves. JAYUYA, 1950 She was not supposed to be here. As Soledad waited for the fight to begin, she listed the reasons she should leave: there was a storm coming and the rain would turn the path home into a muddy [End Page 161] stream; she had lied to her mother; she was the only girl at the fight. But the birds were waiting too, and they had no option of escape. Their owners had placed the crates on either side of the small sand ring, and soon the men would slap their beaks, hurl them at each other, and wait to see...