“We take them through the whole community, showing them the most historic things, because we have more history to offer,” Lopez said. Later, she explained that the community’s next project is to set up a small business offering guided tours. There is no monster here, no bogeyman, nobody is going to kill you, nobody is going to mug you.”Īs she spoke, the community board’s vice president, Lourdes Lopez, showed a group of tourists around. “But now you can go in and see that nothing will happen. “They always said it was a dangerous barrio because we’ve been saddled with a history that wasn’t the best,” said Gomez. (AFP/Ricardo Arduengo)īut that is changing thanks to the efforts of the community, which set up a communal baker, cultivated two vegetable gardens and raised $80,000 from private donors to paint 402 houses in vivid colours this year. Luis Fonsi and Daddy Yankee’s megahit Despacito has enhanced the island’s brand recognition. “Please don’t go there! It is NOT SAFE!” wrote user Gaby G in a three-year-old posting. On Yelp, reviewers comment on the dangers outsiders risk going there. Drug trafficking largely drives its economy, with the government trying in vain to clear it. With 1,600 inhabitants, it is one of the poorest communities in San Juan. Its residents have fought tooth and nail to preserve it, and artists like Calle 13, Ismael Rivera and Ruben Blades have dedicated songs to it. The little houses that make up La Perla are clustered on the other side of the wall, where the sea crashes against the rocks. Old San Juan, with its cobbled streets and colonial buildings, sits on a hill on a walled peninsula. The song’s success is a welcome coincidence that “fell from the sky,” said community board president Yashira Gomez. In fact, residents’ efforts to improve their barrio are independent of “Despacito.” “But the evolution of La Perla begins and ends in La Perla.” The residents of La Perla have fought tooth and nail to preserve it, and artists like Calle 13, Ismael Rivera and Ruben Blades have dedicated songs to it. What we did in essence was to go film in a barrio that had the qualities that supported what we wanted to do,” Perez said. “The key words were culture, sensuality, colour and dance. The video’s director, Carlos Perez, said Fonsi and Daddy Yankee “had a very clear vision of what they wanted.” “What’s important is the flavour, the rhythm, the music.” In a recent interview, Fonsi marveled at the song’s impact on the non-Spanish speaking public. Meanwhile, a Swedish woman took pictures of herself in front of Luis’s rocks and a Moroccan tourist ambled along “Despacito coast” - as the area around the sea wall has come to be known in tourist brochures. “I’ve seen the music video many times and I knew where I needed to go, I got pictures, I tried to dance.”Īs for Rivera’s sexy walk by the sea, she laughed and said, “I tried.” Her goal now is to learn the song’s lyrics so she can sing it in karaoke. “I totally came for the tourist video,” said Jennifer Adams, a 28-year-old middle school teacher from North Carolina.
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