Capitanejo is a rural, coastal barrio located in the southeastern section of the municipality, southeast of the city of Ponce. The toponymy, or origin of the name, makes reference to the proper noun of a local junior or lieutenant commander below a cacique, or a local junior commander subject to a superior authority.[6] The barrio formed from a community of tobacco plant growers dating back to the 1680s.[7]
Boundaries
Capitanejo is bounded on the north by Río Inabón and barrio Sabana Llana of the municipality of Juana Díaz, on the south by the Caribbean Sea, on the west by Río Inabón, and on the east by Río Jacaguas.[8][9]
In terms of barrio-to-barrio boundaries, Capitanejo is bounded on the north by barrio Vayas, in the south by the Caribbean Sea, in the west by barrio Vayas, and in the east by barrios Sabana Llana and Capitanejo of the municipality of Juana Díaz. Capitanejo has the distinction of being the only one of Ponce's 31 barrios that borders a barrio in another municipality with the same name.
Features and demographics
The communities of La Fe, La Plena, La Cuarta, Buyones, and Tiburones are located in barrio Capitanejo.[10]
Capitanejo has 3.95 square miles (10 km2) of land area and 0.88 square miles (2.3 km2) of water area.[11] In 2000, the population of Capitanejo was 1,404 persons, and it had a density of 355 persons per square mile.[12][13]
In 2010, the population of Capitanejo was 1,011 persons, and it had a density of 257.3 persons per square mile.[14]
The main roads serving Barrio Capitanejo are PR-1 and PR-510.
^Sunny A. Cabrera Salcedo. Hacia un Estudio Integral de la Toponimia del Municipio de Ponce, Puerto Rico. Ph. D. dissertation. May 1999. University of Massachusetts Amherst. Graduate School. Department of Spanish and Portuguese. Page 22.
^Eli D. Oquendo-Rodriguez. Los Barrios de Ponce: Noticias y Microhistorias de Ocho Comunidades Ponceñas en el Tiempo, Siglos XVI al XIX. 2019. p. 109.ISBN9781076759153
^Barrios de Ponce.Archived 30 September 2015 at the Wayback Machine Antepasados Esclavos.(From: Pedro Tomás de Córdoba. Memorias geográficas, históricas, económicas y estadísticas de la Isla de Puerto Rico.) Retrieved 28 November 2014.
^Government of the Municipality of Ponce. Periódico "El Señorial". Special issue: Carnaval Ponceño 2013. February 2013. Page 17. Ponce, Puerto Rico.
^Luis Caldera Ortiz. Nuevos Hallazgos Sobre el Origen de Ponce. Centro de Estudios e Investigaciones del Sur Oeste de Puerto Rico. 2019. p. 65. ISBN9781075058325