Location: Guayama
Date Established: 1930
Date Ceased Operations: 1963
Annual Production Graph
Average Annual Production: 12,198 Tons
Best Production Year: 1934/15,773 Tons
Family Ownership: Cautiño, Gonzalez
Corporate Ownership: Guamaní Sugar Co.

The Sucrs. de José Gonzalez & Co. and Genaro Cautiño Insúa began plans to establish Central Guamaní in Barrio Jobos of Guayama in 1924. Construction was completed in 1929 ready for the 1930-31 grinding season.  However, the first year for which production figures are available is 1932. Central Guamaní owned some eight thousand four hundred acres of land and only 2% of its sugarcane was grown by local farmers or colonos.  It was located at Barrio Jobos of Guayama in the general area where there is a Cemex plant today, south of the PR-3 and PR-713 intersection.  Part of the original machinery installed was from Central Columbia which had ceased operations in 1928.  

Not much information has been found regarding Sucrs. de José Gonzalez & Co. except in the transcript of a hearing held February 13, 1924 by the Committee of Insular Affairs of the US House of Representative to amend the Organic Act of Puerto Rico of 1917.  The transcript lists partners who in association own more than five hundred acres and includes Genaro Cautiño of Scres. de José Gonzalez & Co. Genaro Cautiño Insúa (1881-1954) was the son of Spanish immigrants Genaro Cautiño Vazquez (1852-1910), Mayor of Guayama from 1915 to 1918 and his wife Genoveva Insúa Villar.  Cautiño Vazquez  was a wealthy Guayama landowner as well as a colonel of the Volunteer Battalion of the Spanish Army.  In 1887 he commissioned Architect Manuel Texidor to build his residence known as Casa Cautiño, today a museum dedicated to the town of Guayama and the Cautiño family.  Since 1896 Cautiño Vazquez leased and operated Hacienda Tuna in partnership with Manuel Gonzalez Martinez.  ​

In 1962 negotiations were under way for the sale of Central Guamaní to Central Aguirre, the sale closed just prior to the beginning of the 1964 crop season becoming the fourth central sugar mill owned by the Central Aguirre Sugar Co.  Central Guamaní closed down immediately and was dismantled and its machinery sold and installed at Central Aidsisa in Silay City in the in the Negros Occidental Province of the Philippines which is no longer in operation.  Aidsisa is the acronym of Agro-Industrial Development of Silay-Saravia.

The vintage photo below shows the sugar mill's administration building in the foreground.  The aerial photo in the second gallery, taken in 2024 and provided courtesy of Carlos Alemán, is clearly identifiable as the same structure, still standing from the sugar mill days.