In Puerto Rico

I've been in my beautiful patria since Thursday when I arrived to spend a few days with my mami before the holidays. It has been strange being here, at my parents' home, without my papi and his absence is felt keenly. But my mami has made changes in the apartment that make it welcoming and cozy, and which help her cope with her new life as a widow.

Yesterday, after spending part of the morning in Old San Juan, we went to our favorite inn by the beach and had fruit frappes, reminiscing about the many times the entire family spent at that beach and how we watched my nieces and nephews grow up chasing the tide and "jumping" the waves, always with my dad, who loved the sea and the beach until he became too sick and frail to enjoy it.

For the past few mornings, I've been able to peruse the newspapers, no longer all cut up by my dad, who used to get up very early to read and underline stories in four different newspapers and then he would clip them to file in voluminous file folders where he kept tract of the island's history as it unfolded (he was a political analyst so he saw this as his job). Now that I can read the papers whole, not in tatters as it used to be when I slept in and didn't get to them before my father's handy news clipping tool was put to use, I found several stories that I know I'd be discussing with him, if he was still here.

The first one is about a pro-commonwealth legislator, accused of domestic violence, who has been asked by the party president to step down but who refuses, stating that he has "committed no crime," even as his party begins the process to kick him out of the Legislature. While the legislator sticks to his guns and refuses to resign, there appears to be enough evidence to process him legally, something that should give him a clue that being publicly humiliated in court is never a good idea for a political career. But, perhaps, like many abusive men, he simply doesn't perceive what he allegedly did to his wife as a crime since there is a machista cultural code that still considers such behaviors as "normal," and not just in my culture.

The other story that struck me refers to the continued fallout of statements made by the pro-statehood Governor's Chief of Staff that he would "forcibly kick the students out" (los sacaría a patadas) of the public university, referring to students who are threatening another strike because the administration wants to impose an $800 fee on them. On an island where almost 70% of the population lives under the federal poverty line, that amount seems beyond ridiculous. On the other hand, the public university is now on probation by the accrediting institution and went through a prolonged strike earlier this year, which makes threats of another strike seem like the throwing out of the baby with the bath water, especially when it is rumored that the current administration wants to privatize the more than a century-old institution.

As if the situation wasn't incendiary enough, in comes the Chief of Staff to make ill-advised and violence-inducing comments and defends himself in today's paper as "having the right to call things as they are, without euphemisms (decir las cosas como son, sin eufemismos)" and to "give the alert, in my own way, directly and with truth as a guide and calling things by their names (dar la voz de alerta, de la manera en que yo soy, directo, con la verdad de frente y llamando las cosas por su nombre)." Since when is shooting first and asking questions later a smart move by or a virtue in a political official? I can't think of any Chief of Staff in the States (or anywhere else for that matter) who would keep the job if he went on a radio show and spoke off the cuff to say things that made the administration look bad. Didn't that much-hailed U.S. general in Iraq lose his job because he did a similar thing? Why would the Puerto Rico governor condone his Chief of Staff, arguing that the latter was just "frustrated" when he made the statements? Because of his position, the Chief of Staff should set the example of moderation and professionalism. But I guess that's not the standard that this administration is following, which begs the question of why do they expect more from the students when the norm they set is one of confrontation and violence?

Many years ago, when I was a newspaper editor and a reporter here, such happenings were the bread and butter of my life. Now, those years are far away but I can still feel the frustration that many of those who live here feel on a daily basis. Still, also on a daily basis I see and feel the promise of not only a gloriously beautiful country but of its beautiful, intelligent and committed youth, who, hopefully, will give us all a better future.