Just returned from Puerto Rico, where I spent the last few days on a trip to the Ponce area. I was very curious about what I would see on the news...how are folks I know there responding to President Obama, how do folks feel about HCR, what would be the focus of the nightly news stories "Las Noticias" on tv on La Isla de Encanta?
Much to my surprise, the nightly news was not dominated by discussion of concerns harshly debated in the US press, or here on Daily Kos.
The earth shattering news was the announcement (acknowledgment) finally that Ricky Martin has admitted on his website that he is gay.
As I sat on the patio watching the news with a group of family friends from the neighborhood in Santa Isabel, the announcement was greeted with much amusement. The overwhelming opinion of those gathered for a family event was "so?". "No importa". As news announcers hyped the story, they did a raft of "man and women on the street" interviews. Only one elderly woman seemed to be surprised and responded "I don't believe it". The rest - men, women, young and old took the news in stride and essentially said "so what?". "That's his business". "Won't change how I feel about him or his music."
I have to admit I was pleased, even though the "news" wasn't much of a surprise to me. I guess I was pleased by the matter of fact acceptance of his coming out, which indicates a change in certain anti-gay attitudes, grounded in machismo, that I've researched in Puerto Rico the past.
I waited for other major news items, but finally turned away from the tube, deciding that it would be much more interesting to listen in on local discussions of the weather (it's been too dry) and other neighborhood concerns.
I picked up the local papers to see what events were important to the island residents.
There is a heated debate about Windstar, and the governments decisions to introduce windmill turbine generators on the island.
Puerto Rico's government has approved a wind farm
Puerto Rico's government has approved a plan to build 25 wind turbines capable of generating electricity for 20,000 households in the U.S. territory. Puerto Rico's government has approved a wind farm (41 MW)The wind farm will be built by the Puerto Rico-based Windmar Renewable Energy Inc. and is designed to produce an estimated 120,000 kilowatts a year.
The Caribbean island of nearly 4 million people now gets nearly all of its electricity from oil-burning plants. The government-owned power utility is planning to boost investment in natural gas generators, wind energy, wave and other kinds of alternative energy, but has made little progress.
Morales said the turbines will be erected on a 45-acre (18-hectare) parcel of dry forest in the southern coastal town of Guayanilla. He said his agency had crafted a balance between sustainable development and conservation of natural resources, saying most of the developer's 290-acre (117-hectare) property will be set aside for conservation. Roughly "83 percent of the total property will remain always in its natural state," Morales said.
Most of the locals I spoke with were in favor - anything that could possibly reduce the cost of living, would be a good thing. Some environmentalists are opposed:
environmental activists have tried to block the project, arguing that several endangered bird species in nearby forest could lose some of their habitat. The land abuts Guanica State Forest, where endangered nightjars and other creatures breed and nest.
Francisco Saez, spokesman of the Pro Bosque Seco Ventanas Verraco Coalition, said the wind energy project belongs elsewhere and activists will try to block construction permits. "We are not going to yield," he said.
Skip Van Bloem, an assistant professor at the University of Puerto Rico's Department of Agronomy and Soils who has objected to the proposal, said the island has very little native forest left. He said a better option would be to build wind turbines alongside cultivated fields.
"If this were the only viable site for wind development on the island, it might be a different story, but wind farms and agriculture are compatible land uses," Van Bloem said in an e-mail. "Better yet would be for Puerto Rico to invest in solar systems."
Jobs, and anything that will provide them is an overarching concern for the majority of Puerto Ricans on the island.
Puerto Rico currently has 16% unemployment. An island which once had a flourishing agricultural economy, saw that ended during the period of Operation Bootstrap when light industry was substituted. Agricultural laborers, and small farmers were removed from the land and shipped out to the US to work in factories, forming the basis for the large Puerto Rican communities in the US.
Before I left New York I stuffed my bags with packets of Spanish coffee, to take to my host. It feels strange to carry coffee to an island once famous for its coffee production...but one trip to the local supermarket clearly demonstrated why guests and family members take coffee as the primary house gift.
Coffee is selling in Puerto Rico for over 7 dollars a pack - the same coffee that can be purchased in NY for 1.29 on sale.
"Platanos" (fried plaintains)and Mofongo are staples in the Puerto Rican diet, whether fried green (tostones) or yellow (maduros) they sell for 60 cents per plaintain and as high as 89 cents a piece.
I usually buy them in a Dominican market in the Bronx for the sale price of 10 or 12 for a dollar.
An island with rich soil where practically anything can be grown has been reduced to importing avocados from Florida.
Until 1955, agriculture constituted Puerto Rico's main economic sector. Sugar cane, mostly for export to the American market, was the main crop, followed by coffee and tobacco. Sugar cane production declined as prices remained low, agricultural labor migrated to the United States, and urban expansion took over much sugar cane land. Coffee production, taking place mostly in the mountainous areas away from the pressures of urban expansion and supported by guaranteed minimum prices, has remained stable. Tobacco production has virtually disappeared. Considerable expansion has occurred in the production of dairy products, beef, pork, eggs, and poultry, although significant amounts of these products are still imported, primarily from the United States. There is also production of fruits and garden vegetables as well as of starchy vegetables, such as bananas and plantains.
Today, agriculture accounts for only 3% of labor force and less than 1% of GDP, concentrating primarily to crops which can be sold in the United States. Coffee is the most valuable crop, followed by vegetables, sugar cane, fruits (pineapples, plantains, bananas), milk, eggs, and livestock (cattle, chickens, pork).
Food is one of the major concerns on the island, and
in 1989, Puerto Rico received 72 times more food stamps than Mississippi, half the island's population currently receives food stamps.
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For those of you not familiar with Puerto Rican food, one of the mainstays of island fast foods (local) are the plethora of small roadside stands selling local specialties like alcapurrias, and bacalaitos. We bypassed the proliferation of McDonald's, Wendy's and Taco Bells, to grab a bite to eat at "La Casa de los Bacalaitos"(I stuffed myself) served up hot by three local ladies.
Bacalao (salted codfish) was a staple of the plantation diet on the islands and is still served as salad or fried.
Discussion of high food prices turned to a discussion of where to find bargains, and one promising sign in the southern part of the island is an attempt to increase agricultural production. My host had heard that there were bargains to be had a a local "feria" (like a farmers market, so we headed there on Saturday.
While he bargained for eggplants, I headed to look at the floral offerings.
Puerto Rico is home to many varieties of orchids, and there were quite a few for sale.
My host was looking for "calabazas" (green pumpkin squash) but didn't like the prices. We heard that there were some local farmers growing and selling for export so we took a drive into the "campo" (countryside) to see if we could make a score.
It gave me a chance to observe farm production and the workforce. Men and women were arriving in shared cars to the "finca" (plantation), and loaded into "guaguas" (jitney buses) which dropped them off early for a long days work in the fields. Judging from the voices of the workers, they were a mixture of local Puerto Ricans, Dominicans and Mexicans. I saw quite a few women employed both in the fields and in the packing/processing area, putting together cartons and loading the fruits and vegetables.
Irrigation is a problem, and since rainfall has been sparse there have been quite a few fires, and many of the crops looked dried out. We rode past fields and fields of tomatos, squash, eggplants and groves of papayas, divided by stands of sugar cane.
We stopped briefly along to roadside to pick up bags of overripe mangos, free for the taking, before we arrived at the packing warehouse in the middle of one large farm, where I watched workers wash and pack papayas and mangos for export.
Young men rode past us on horseback as we whizzed down the dusty country lanes. I leaned for from the car to snap a picture of some egrets watering in a mud pond, and of a group of piglets who scurried across the lane, accompanied by some roosters.
After finally getting our prize of a sack of calabazas, I asked my host if we could find some "panapen" (breadfruit). None were available in the local market, so we drove into a working class "barrio" area (called "parcelas").
A parcel - was a small piece of land - distributed to the poor in Puerto Rico during the time of Munoz Marin. Parceleros is the name given to the thousands of landless Puerto Ricans who received plots as part of the government’s land reform program.
My host's auto mechanic is a parcelero, who lives in the home built by his father. His neighbors work odd jobs, or have no jobs, but many of the area residents have breadfruit (pana) trees, mango, plantain and other edibles, and are willing to share.
He got me 5 panas.
I walked down the road from his small home to the dead end of the street, where I could hear the sound of the ocean. I watched the waves for a while, and skirted debris and garbage on the shore to wade in.
Such beauty, surrounded by poverty. Lush rich soil lies fallow in many areas. Willing agricultural workers have little to do, save to tend their own small gardens.
Later on that evening I headed into Ponce, where my husband's family is from.
There is much talk of the Port of the Americas, and how it could bring about an economic revitalization to the area.
The Rafael Cordero Santiago Port of the Americas (POA) is a megaport currently under construction in Ponce, Puerto Rico. The project aims to convert the current Port of Ponce into an international shipping hub similar to, though not as large as, the megaports located in Singapore and Rotterdam.Port of the Americas is Puerto Rico's main Caribbean port.[2] The Port of the Americas Authority has reported that when completed the new port will have a storage capacity of 2.2 Million TEUs.
I was more interested in visiting the Museum of the Ponce Massacre, but it was closed by the time I got there.
The Ponce Massacre is a violent chapter in the political history of Puerto Rico. On March 21, 1937 (Palm Sunday), a march was organized in the southern city of Ponce, Puerto Rico, by the Puerto Rican Nationalist Party. The march, organized to commemorate the ending of slavery in Puerto Rico by the governing Spanish National Assembly in 1873, was also formed to protest the incarceration by the U.S. government of nationalist leader Pedro Albizu Campos on sedition charges.[1][2] The peaceful march resulted in the death of 17 unarmed civilians at the hands of the Insular Police, in addition to some 235 wounded civilians, including women and children. The Insular Police, a force somewhat resembling the National Guard of the typical U.S. state, answered to orders of the U.S. appointed governor of Puerto Rico, General Blanton Winship. Ultimately, responsibility for the massacre fell on Governor Winship, and he is considered to have, in effect, ordered the massacre. It was the biggest massacre in Puerto Rican history.
Next trip, in July I'll make it on time.
My time in the Ponce area was too short. But I'll be heading back in the summer, and hope to have some reports on the status of the complexities of Puerto Rican political parties.
Since this was a vacation of sorts, I did not drop by any political offices, and was content to spend a few days away from the cold and rain of upstate New York. I wistfully boarded a Jet Blue flight from Ponce at 5AM this morning, and arrived at JFK by 9. Bags stuffed with panas and small gifts.
Happy to be home but already missing the sun.
Hasta Luego Boriken bella.
I got home and read my email. A reporter from Spain had tried to reach me for a comment about Ricky Martin.
I'd rather talk about jobs for Puerto Rican's. But that's not news.
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