Conquistadora - Esmeralda Santiago [117]
“I’m not good at this,” he despaired to his wife. “You were right all along. Let’s sell Marítima Argoso Marín and go back to Spain. Why should we stay and—”
“My sons are buried here,” she reminded him.
“But it would be better to raise Miguel near our family, in our village.”
“I won’t leave our sons alone on this island,” she replied with such sadness that Eugenio didn’t have the heart to argue further. He requested an appointment with Vicente Worthy, the sober, Boston-born lawyer/banker whom Rodrigo trusted and upon whom Eugenio had come to depend.
Newly minted from Harvard Law School, Vincent Worthy was working for Richardson, Bodwell, Cabot, a prestigious firm in Boston, when he met María del Carmen y la Providencia Paniagua Stevens, nicknamed Provi. She was visiting her aunt Sally and would be in Boston only six weeks—or as she so charmingly pronounced it “seeks wicks.” Everything Provi said and did was charming to the love-struck young man. When he shook her hand as they were introduced, her warm fingers melted twenty-five Boston winters from his heart. Her father agreed to their marriage, but only if the couple lived in Puerto Rico. The Paniaguas and Stevenses were well-respected merchants and businessmen on the island. They expected their adult children, who’d inherit their fortunes, to live near their money.
Vincent married the delightful Provi and established his practice in San Juan. He soon learned that he had to overcome the mistrust of the families who owned most of the businesses in the city. Spain and its royalists were uneasy about the United States’ expansionist strategies. The War of 1812 had proven that the estadounidenses were determined to seize as much territory as possible, obliterating the native populations as they trekked toward the Pacific. The phrase “Manifest Destiny”—coined in 1845—defended the relentless movement west as inevitable, obvious, and ordained by God. While the government appeared to be focused toward the west, the elites of the Greater Antilles, particularly Cubans, knew the archipelago to the east was in the peripheral vision of the United States. Estadounidenses already owned major stakes in vast Cuban sugar and tobacco plantations, and were investing in the burgeoning Puerto Rican sugar and coffee industries.
As soon as he arrived, Vincent noticed that most industrial heavy machinery in Puerto Rico and the islands was imported from Britain, including grinders and steam engines for sugar processing. The engineers who ran and maintained them, mostly Scots, had become, over time, hacendados themselves and continued to trade with Great Britain. Shrewd local businessmen, even those distrustful of the estadounidenses’ motives, however, began to look toward markets in the United States and to the technological advances coming from its foundries and factories. Vincent saw an opportunity as an intermediary.
Upon Provi’s suggestion, he Hispanicized his first name to make himself less foreign. With dogged diligence, he learned Spanish quickly, so by the time his father-in-law introduced him to don Rodrigo and his varied enterprises under the aegis of Marítima Argoso Marín, Vicente could speak to the canny businessman in his own language. His discretion, acumen, and commitment to his clients earned Vicente the esteem of even the most skeptical anti-yanqui. In thirteen years he’d become one of San Juan’s most influential citizens.
Eugenio walked to Mr. Worthy’s offices in a new building overlooking San Juan harbor. Rain had slicked the cobblestones and cleansed the narrow sidewalks, but had also washed the open sewers in the streets closer to the docks down to the sea. Mr. Worthy had offered to come to the Argoso house, but Eugenio preferred to meet him in his offices. He admired the diligence of the clerks toiling on high stools pulled up to long-legged tables in the center of the main room, and the serenity inside Mr. Worthy’s office overlooking the ships, docks, and warehouses that made San Juan—at least to all appearances—as wealthy and busy as any major port city in Europe.