The booklet Los Pueblos de la Región Centro Oriental y su Historia (Siglos XIX y XX), published by the Turabo University and sponsored by the National Endowment for the Humanities, contains a section dedicated to document the powerful elite of San Lorenzo  between 1873 and 1883. The booklet states that since 1873, one of the early mercantile firms established in San Lorenzo was Canals & Vilá, comprised of Catalonian immigrants from Gerona, Gerardo Canals Aspiell (1834-1874) and his nephew Jaime Vilá Canals (1851-1898).  After the death of Gerardo Canals in 1874, the firm was dissolved with Jaime Vilá retaining some of the firm's assets including Hacienda Felicidad. 

The booklet also states that in October 1875, Jaime Vilá sold six houses in the town of San Lorenzo to Méndez & Hnos. and used part of the proceeds to pay in full a three year 24,031 escudos (then a foreign coin used as currency) crop financing mortgage on Hacienda Felicidad owed to Alvarez & Cia. of San Juan.  Aa a result, Hacienda Felicidad became the sole property of Vilá, free and clear of any liens.  As a landowner and sugar planter, Vilá continued to acquire land in the area including the purchase in 1883 of one hundred fifty cuerdas in Barrio Navarro for the then respectable sum of $10,000. In this facebook page, Dr. Ovidio Davila documents a Hacienda Felicidad coin minted towards the end of the 19th Century.  He states that the lands of Hacienda Felicidad extended through Barrio Navarro and Barrio Rincón of Gurabo, Barrio Tomás de Castro in Caguas and Barrio Quebrada of San Lorenzo.  He makes clear that the coin face show the name Jaime Vilá and the town of San Lorenzo because although the sugar factory was in Gurabo, it was in San Lorenzo where Vila's mercantile firm and residence were located.

Ivonne Acosta in her book Santa Juana y Mano Manca states that since 1882 Pablo Marién was engaged in the harvesting and processing of  sugarcane with a blood driven sugar mill at Hacienda Felicidad in Barrio Navarro of Gurabo.  She also states that Marién sold the plantation to Jaime Vilá in 1896.  This information is in contradiction to the above contained in the booklet Los Pueblos de la Región Centro Oriental y su Historia (Siglos XIX y XX). Acosta also states that one of the initial colono agreements signed by Central Santa Juana in 1906 when the sugar mill was still under construction, was a five year agreement with Gerardo Vilá Santana (1877-1922), son of Jaime Vilá Canals and his wife Luisa Santana López, then the owners of the five hundred fourteen cuerdas Hacienda Felicidad.

According to the court case Estate of Ramírez v. Registrar of Property decided by the Supreme Court of Puerto Rico on April 29, 1910, at the time of Jaime Vilá's death in 1898, Hacienda Felicidad consisted of seven hundred seventy acres.  The remains of this sugar factory today lie within the boundaries of the Sabaneras del Rio subdivision in Gurabo just east of the Gurabo River near the southernmost boundary of the municipality of Gurabo with the municipality of San Lorenzo, in what is known as Barrio Navarro. The remains of this sugar factory were brought to my attention by Carlos Alemán who took the pictures below and graciously allowed them to be published here.