The Mystery of Target Puerto Rico
For decades I've heard the same story.
It doesn't matter whether the conversation happens at a bar, at an office, or at a family gathering. In fact, just a few weeks ago the subject came up again at a family gathering — the same one we've been talking about in Puerto Rico for the past forty years.
Sooner or later someone always brings it up:
"Did you know there are no Target stores in Puerto Rico because a Target already exists here?"
And the reaction is almost always the same.
"That has to be a tall tale."
Because after all, we're talking about one of the largest retail chains in the United States. It's hard to imagine that a local company could stop it from using its name on a Caribbean island.
But then you discover something strange.
There IS a Target in Puerto Rico.
It doesn't sell clothes.
It doesn't sell TVs.
It doesn't sell cereal.
It rents cars.
The company is called Target Rent A Car.
And while I was trying to figure out how much of this story was true and how much was Puerto Rican folklore, I found a detail that made everything even more absurd.
The founder's name was Enrique Blanco Rojo.
Yes.
Blanco. White.
Rojo. Red.
The founder of a company called Target.
With a red-and-white bullseye as its logo.
At this point you start to suspect that Puerto Rico was written by Gabriel García Márquez and not by geologists.
If this were fiction, someone would probably say the name is too on-the-nose to be believable.
According to the company's history, Don Enrique founded Caparra Motor Service in San Juan in 1964 as a repair shop and gas station. Years later he began offering replacement vehicles to his customers. Eventually he discovered there was a much bigger opportunity in car rentals and launched Target Rent A Car in the late seventies.
So far, no mystery.
The interesting part is what happened next.
Over the years, a rumor began to circulate: the American chain Target couldn't enter Puerto Rico because the brand already belonged to another local company.
And this is where the story officially enters Puerto Rican territory.
Because nobody seems to know the exact details.
Everybody only knows the legend.
The small local businessman facing off against a giant corporation.
The Puerto Rican company with the same name.
The red bullseye.
And the man who, on top of everything, was named Enrique Blanco Rojo.
Over time, increasingly exaggerated versions of the story started to appear.
That Target Corporation offered him millions of dollars.
That he never wanted to sell the name.
That he dressed entirely in red and white.
I haven't been able to verify any of those stories.
But honestly, it doesn't surprise me that they exist.
Because this is exactly the kind of story that Puerto Rico adopts and transforms into collective folklore.
Especially when it involves a local businessman apparently winning an invisible battle against a giant American corporation.
And just when it seemed the story couldn't get any more absurd, someone mentioned another possible theory behind the name.
In English, the center of a target is called a bullseye.
In Spanish, hitting the bullseye is:
"dar en el blanco."
So now there's the possibility that a company called Target, founded by Enrique Blanco Rojo, using a red-and-white bullseye, was also a bilingual pun hiding in plain sight for decades.
Honestly, at this point I no longer know where reality ends and Puerto Rico begins.
And maybe that's the most interesting part of all.
It doesn't matter whether every detail is completely true.
The story survived because it feels true.
It has all the perfect ingredients:
An American megacorporation.
A local company.
A mysterious dispute.
Decades of rumors.
And a character with a name so perfect it seems invented.
Maybe someday someone will find documents that explain exactly what happened.
Maybe not.
But I suspect that by then it won't matter much.
Because some stories survive not because they can be verified, but because they're too good to disappear.
And this is one of them.
Because in the end, beyond trademarks, lawyers, and urban legends, what really keeps this story alive is how absurdly perfect it sounds.
A company called Target.
A red-and-white bullseye.
And a founder named Enrique Blanco Rojo.
Sometimes reality seems written by someone with too much free time.
And honestly, thank goodness Don Enrique wasn't named Ronald Rojo Amarillo.
Because then he probably would have ended up fighting an even bigger corporation.
It's not the first time I've sat with the question of which stories deserve to survive and why — I worked through it more slowly in a stone for tomorrow.
Don Enrique opened a repair shop in 1964 with no idea that the real life of his company would be this legend — I wrote something similar about the relationship with our creations.
The human pull toward fictions that feel true is something I worked from another angle in this is my 42.
📬 Enjoyed this article?
Subscribe for the stuff that doesn't make it onto the blog — half-finished ideas, what I'm reading and listening to, behind-the-scenes notes, and the occasional rabbit hole. No spam, just things worth your time.