Puerto Rico is Beautiful!

by Pa Rock

Tourist 

Tony Hinchcliffe is a not-so-funny, mean-spirited comedian who finally managed to get noticed while doing a stand-up set at Trump’s Madison Square Garden rally Sunday night.   During his comedic tirade, Hinchcliffe took direct aim at the US Territory of Puerto Rico and its citizens.  “I don’t know if you guys know this, but there’s literally a floating island of garbage in the middle of the ocean right now,” he said.  “I think it’s called Puerto Rico.”  Before his set ended, the unfunny comedian had also made, according to ‘Fortune’ magazine, “lewd and racist comments about Latinos, Jews, and Black people.”
 
In addition to Hinchcliffe and Trump himself, the rally contained several speakers whose racist remarks seemed designed to make decent cringe or perhaps even feel threatened.    The tone of the event was so White-centric that it invited comparisons with a Nazi rally held at the Garden in February of 1939.
 
I have been to Puerto Rico twice in my life and would jump at the chance to go again.  It is one of the places that I seriously considered as a retirement option.  Last Friday night while we were in New York City, my friend, Carla, and I had our evening meal at “Junior’s,” a nice restaurant in the theatre district and only a block or so from our hotel.  While we were waiting on our meals, we struck up a conversation with our waiter, a man who appeared to be somewhere in his late thirties or early forties.  He asked where we were from, and we, in turn, asked where he was from.  “Puerto Rico,” he said proudly.
 
I told the man about my visits to Puerto Rico, a week each time, and how much I liked the massive Spanish fort, Old San Juan, and the rain forest.  “El Yunque,” he said – the name of the national rain forest that takes up much of the center of the island, and with that he seemed to visibly drift away toward another place and time.  “Si, it is very beautiful.”
 
El Yunque is very beautiful.  Both times that I was on the island I drove up into the forest passing through thick, lush foliage, waterfalls cascading down the mountain sides, and a cacophony of nature sounds weaving their way through idyllic vistas.  It is a beautiful natural reserve that is just minutes from the  picturesque beaches and commercial hubbub of San Juan.
 
The island also has many smaller towns and attractions that bring in the tourists who prime the pump of the local economy.  It was badly neglected during the two big hurricanes that occurred during the Trump presidency, neglect which, in hindsight, appears to have been intentional.   One of the ugliest scenes of those four awful years under Trump was him standing above a throng of storm-ravaged hurricane survivors in Puerto Rico playing the “Great White Father” as he threw rolls of paper towels to people whose homes had just been destroyed and lives upended.   They may have not had food, water, electricity, or shelter, and many did not, but by God they had paper towels – and Donald Trump to thank for it!
 
(After Hurricane Maria in 2017, one of the deadliest natural disasters in US history, the Trump administration blocked the delivery of massive amounts of hurricane relief – up to $20 billion – to the US Territory of Puerto Rico, and the island is still suffering from that intentional neglect and abandonment to this very day.)
 
But I digress.
 
Puerto Rico is enduring hard times which are rooted in actions – or non-actions – of the Trump administration, but the people of the island are proud and self-reliant – and they are survivors.  They are many things, but they are not “garbage” and neither is their island.
 
The Trump campaign staff realized immediately that Tony Hinchcliffe had made a strategic error in attacking Puerto Rico and its citizens, and the campaign quickly released a memo which said that he was not speaking for Trump and that Trump does not see the island and its inhabitants that way.  BUT, as of late Monday evening, Donald Trump has not bothered to make such a declaration himself.   Trump, in fact, seems to like the sound of the word “garbage,” and has recently described the United States as “a garbage can for the rest of the world.”
 
So, with Trump’s views on immigration and immigrants already so well known, Tony Hinchcliffe probably had no qualms at all about describing Puerto Rico as “a floating island of garbage.”
 
There are surely some people who would describe Trump Tower as a floating island of garbage in New York City, and I would be hard-pressed to argue with them.  
 
But Puerto Rico is beautiful, go and see for yourselves.  You will be glad you did!