"The land around the remnants of the house you are seeing belonged to Don Alfonso Vasquez. The Vasquez family lived here from the 1970's to 1988, and primarily farmed extensive amounts of corn, which they sold to the local Mennonite communities.
Farmers like Don Alfonso would practice the slash and burn type of cultivation...Under the scorching tropical sun reaching to 100 degrees in average, Don Alfonso would spend long, arduous days chopping and slashing the forest with a machete. Then he would leave it for a few days to dry, and subsequently would burn it before the onset of the rains. Typically, farmers would move into new lands after three years of using the same parcel. As they moved on, new areas of forest were cleared like a giant goat munching away the vegetation.
Vasquez House
The remains of the Vasquez House

Until 1988 the land at El Pilar was under constant smoke from the residents' fires, and was suffocated with fire annually. But now, as you can appreciate, the forest has begun to take over the entire area where homes and farms once existed and the scars created on the landscaped are slowly vanishing." -- EP Community Creek Trail Guide