Tree Debate Defines Fort’s Dual Identity

El Morro Castle, the fortress Spaniards built 400 years ago to keep out pirates, has become a battleground for tree lovers and defenders of historical authenticity.

Conservationists and a group of art students are protesting what they call the chain-saw massacre of trees by the National Guard since Hurricane Hugo struck here on Sept. 18. All 200 trees on the 21-acre site--not just those damaged by the storm--were chopped down and hauled away, leaving behind only stumps.

The National Park Service and Puerto Rico’s Commonwealth Historic Preservation Office, which control separate areas of El Morro, authorized the removal as part of a plan to restore what began as a treeless garrison.

About 100 students at the School of Plastic Arts, on El Morro grounds, have planted saplings and protest placards outside the school and have kept a vigil around the clock there since early October.

The art students, who once sketched and painted in the shade, have organized marches to the governor’s mansion, La Fortaleza, to demand new trees at El Morro.

Conservation groups have taken up the cause and a stream of letters have been written to The San Juan Star newspaper.

W. P. Crawford, the National Park Service superintendent in Puerto Rico, said that the hurricane’s 140-m.p.h. winds left only a few trees standing at El Morro, and most of those were too badly damaged to be saved.

Taking them out was only thing to do, he said.

Crawford also mentioned a 1983 general management plan, approved by the U.S. and Commonwealth governments, which says that the broad, grassy slope leading to the fort should be treeless, as it was originally.

“Maybe with a superhuman effort some of the trees could have been saved,” he said, “but because the general management plan calls for removing all the trees, I didn’t think it was worth the time and effort of nursing a dozen or so along.

“What we are trying to do is protect the historic scene,” as federal law requires for all historic sites, Crawford said. “The historical context has got to be No. 1, by law.”

Archeologist Guy Pantell, who has asked the presidential Advisory Council on Historic Preservation in Washington for an investigation, said the historical argument did not justify the destruction of trees not damaged by the storm.

“If this was so, parts of El Morro would have to be eliminated. Its construction occurred during several centuries,” Pantell said in an interview with the Star.

The walled fort, which overlooks San Juan Harbor, was built mostly between 1589 and the 1650s. Today it is Puerto Rico’s most popular tourist attraction, with 2.5 million visitors a year.

Tourists approach El Morro’s tiered batteries across a 200-yard esplanade that is a popular place for picnicking and flying kites. Historians say the esplanade was kept clear of vegetation to give the city’s defenders a clear line of fire.

During the 1940s, soldiers planted about 50 sea pines and coconut palms along the road in front of El Morro, which at that time housed a U.S. Army officers’ club. Other trees were planted nearby on land controlled by the Commonwealth government.

Gov. Rafael Hernandez Colon, who had endorsed the tree removal, has since changed his mind and appointed a committee to work out a compromise.

Committee member Enrique Marti, founder of the conservation group Pro Bosques Urbanos (Pro Urban Forests), said the panel had agreed to plant new trees but still keep the main esplanade clear. He said the landscaping would look better than it did before the hurricane.

But not everybody is satisfied.

“Our children will see the trees, but we won’t,” said Lourdes Quintero, 24.