I spent a lot of time there in the 80s and 90s.Chizzang wrote:May I calmly say:
Puerto Rico is one supremely **** up place
That has spent a huge amount of ink and advertising blaming everybody else for their problems
And I'm not talking about the hurricane
They should have had a revolution in 1972 (FALN)
There should have been a revolution there in 1997 /1998
You can't help people that are unwilling to help themselves (Period)
That island is exactly as **** up as it has decided to be...
and somehow it's everybody else's fault
(especially America)
In 1991 there were still people living in shanties as a result of Hurricane Hugo - two years after the storm
They cobbled together a rickety grid infrastructure to replace the old rickety grid infrastructure, and there haven't been any moves since then to upgrade or harden against these storms
Roads were in worse shape a month ago than they were after Hugo. There were ZERO pre-positioned goods or emergency supplies ANYWHERE in the country, except for what was already in the container port in San Juan -
and now that stuff is stuck there because, as Jon so eloquently pointed out, there's no cell service to call truck drivers <chuckle chuckle>.... because all the Puerto Rican truck drivers are sitting at home thinking, "I wonder when the port of San Juan will call me?"
Puerto Rico is a hard case. They complain about colonialism, resist statehood, and unfortunately the only tenable solution is to leave them as they are. Independence will be a problem because it will be an independent country where every citizen is also a US citizen (and therefore all their children not yet born will be also). Statehood will be a problem because it will kick off an immediate rebellion by anti-US groups, which will then be an absolute morass
At the end of the day, PR is our rebellious goth stepson - we aren't going to change him, and every other holiday he's going to show up at the family gathering, start fights over how we don't respect him, and then storm out of the house until the next holiday (after getting Mom to loan him enough cash to get him through to his next sales job at the mall)