Christmas Time In Puerto Rico

Every person who has spent Christmas time In Puertop Rico knows theer is no better place to spend the Holidays, Puerto Rico's Holiday time traditions are so fun, family oriented and the food is so good that once you've had a Puertorrican Christmas, you'll never see Christmas time the same way again. :) So here's a little something for all of you out there who want to have a glimpse of what I am talking about.

“T’was the night before Christmas, Boricua Style”

Era la noche antes de Navidad en Puerto Rico y en todos lados se podía apreciar
a las familias boricuas de camino a parrandear
Titi Carmen se quedo atrás, ella velaba el lechón,
Mientras Tío Cuco custodiaba el coquito sin compasión.
Y después de la parranda, a lechonear todo el mundo!
Hasta los más viejos, en andador, llegan en un segundo.
Había arroz, lechón, pasteles, arroz con dulce y rones muy variados
Garantizado que saldrías con par de botones reventados.
Y fue entonces cuando abuelo dijo “Esperen un segundo,
sé que algo falta aquí, el lechón está muy bueno, el arroz con dulce,
riquísimo esta, y comería mas tembleque con coquito pa’ bajar.
Pero aun así una Navidad boricua realmente no es Navidad, sin que
saquen el pitorro así que vamos! A Pitorrear!”
Y así el reloj dio las doce, Y la Navidad llego.
Y todavía fiestando la luz del día los cogió.
No hay mejor Navidad que la que se celebra en Puerto Rico,
Musical, en familia, se baila mucho y se come rico.
-Yalitza Santos

Chain Reaction

Puerto Rico has turned in a place of violence. This weekend alone (from Friday to Sunday) there have been 10 cases of murder reported. The once “Island of Enchantment” has turned into a place where people are afraid to come out of their houses because they know that now more than ever it is more of a possibility to die waiting for a traffic light to change, picking up an order in a fast food restaurant of jumping back into your car after a day of shopping. What ever happened to sense of community that moved people to take care of each other of the codes of the streets where no innocents, women or children were to be hurt in the process of “taking care of a situation”?

 While the public slowly marinates in the panic, government official and political parties focus on smear campaigns and playing a “tag blame game” amongst themselves. Red senators blame blue ones and those blame red district representatives and those blame blue mayors and those blame red senators and those then go back to blaming blue Governors and so on so forth they continue to play tag while women are being battered to death by their abusive partners, children are being physically, sexually abused and murdered, senior citizens rights are violated by badly trained and psychologically unstable police officers and citizens are being murdered and robbed in their own homes.

 Meanwhile, in the United States political parties and government officials are focused on denying people the right to public health insurance and women the right to choose whether they want to have children or not. Instead of focusing in the education and economy problems of the country they just “want to show those second class citizens who’s boss.”

 As we can appreciate here our socio-economic situation is not only our own, but it is a chain reaction. The worst part of it is that it will continue to get worse if we don’t pay attention to the social components of the problem. People need help. Not only in the economic sector, but also access to objective information, quality education, to know that they have a choice and that they will treated with respect and dignity. Otherwise these situations will only get worse; which is a shame because it is those who are innocent the ones who end up paying for the sins of the guilty.

On restaurants and Translations

The new restaurant trend in Puerto Rico, is that restaurants want to have bilingual menus (which is not abad thing considering Puerto Rico is a very popular touristic destination). So what they do is that they have the name of the specialty in Spanish and right next to it a translation in “English” Why do I write English inside quotation marks? Because sometimes the word chosen to represent the concept in the menu is not exactly the right word given the culinary context of the word. People underestimate the value of a good translation. To be respected as a bilingual destination where tourists can have  a good time in their own language is not limited to just be able to translate a few words and be able to say “Yes” “No” and “Give a moment” until you can find someone who is actually fluent in the language. It is also about choosing the right vocabulary according to the represented context. A very good example is a well known restaurant that has enjoyed a well reputed name for years in the northwest area of Puerto Rico, if you order from their menu; you can always enjoy the “Parmesan Chicken Chest” as your main course, it’s bound to be delicious even though its choice in vocabulary is disastrous.

On Animal Sanctuaries and Puerto Rico

I’ve always thought that a man’s character is defined by the way he treats animals, but I never thought that it would actually come to define not just one man, but a whole country. Puerto Rico is coming to be defined by their constant abusive, unpleasant and elitist behaviors of abandoning the weak and innocent while feeding the arks of the rich and rotten. 

Not so long ago, it made it made headlines all over the world how a bag full of live dogs was dumped over a bridge and into a crowded street here in the island of Puerto Rico, well, what is happening now with the animal shelters and sanctuaries feels exactly like that is happening all over again. Thousands of animals are suffering a cruel and uncertain fate because of the ignorance of the human race.The political parties and the government are so entangled in their own shady amoral agendas that they are forgetting who they work for and why were they placed in their stations in the first place. Animal shelters flooding and losing everything, the government ignores them, animal sanctuaries being used as pet dumpsters, the authorities do nothing. Laws to protect animals are passed but not acted upon. Illegal breeding mills and dog fights happening all over the island, the authorities prefer to ignore them. And then we dare to have a tourism slogan that reads "Puerto Rico does it better".

 But I don’t wish to dump all the guilt unto the government’s hands; that would be like blaming the sun for being hot and lethal for I believe the key element here is people. Our actions as individuals are defining and marking the image and fate of our beloved country. Pet owners who are constantly acting in irresponsible ways, treating animals as is they were property that can be bought and disposed of at will when you no longer feel like owning it.  He who owns a pet and is capable of disposing of it like disposing of a bag of garbage is capable of abandoning a child at any moment, no remorse felt.

More than sad I believe it to be shameful, and it takes to say that I am ashamed to live in a country where life is not respected, where humans think themselves superior to any other creature in the planet, but treat each other like scum. a place where animals are not respected but humiliated, mistreated, abandoned and killed without hesitation. It is time to stop worrying about political affiliations, if X candidate visits sex shops or if Y candidate loves to eat donuts, and start thinking about quality of life, the state of our morality, of our souls  and whether or not we have lost of our true purpose on Earth.

You're not a 100 dollar bill, not everyone is going to like you.However...

 Regardless of who you are and how you act, people will always have their awkwardly fantastic (as in fictitious) opinions about you. I mean, you could be a declared saint and there will still be people that will find something wrong with who you are, what you do, what you wear and more importantly, what you think. Why do I say this, well let’s just say that just now for no specific reason I started reflecting upon a situation that happened to me a while ago with a certain person that for anonymity’s sake I will call, DUH!. DUH! was seen by everybody as a happy go lucky person filled with the knowledge of traveling the world, to me, DUH! Seemed like an ok person, so I decided to be-friend DUH!. One time when we were having what I considered an academic, open minded argument, I told DUH! that I considered war an unnecessary thing, responsible for destroying so many lives and yet, soldiers became soldiers because it was their decision, so whatever happened next to them once enrolled it was not only the government’s fault for creating conflict, but also the soldier’s fault for becoming soldiers. My point was of course personal responsibility; don’t blame unto others what is a consequential misfortune of your fully aware, conscious decision taking. DUH! Took it in such a personal way that up to this day it (will refer to the person as it to maintain full anonymity) will not speak to me, it won’t even acknowledge my presence in a room and has told people horrible things about me, my personality and my personal believes. So I guess it really doesn’t matter what you do to try to make other people be friendly with you, they will still paint the picture of you in their minds that better suits their perspective of reality, so might as well just keep walking and enjoying life being who you are and not who anybody wants you to be.

Common Sense, apparently not that common anymore

     As some of you may know, in Puerto Rico it's illegal to transit the main roads in unauthorized vehicles and methods of transportation such as four tracks, bicycles, roller-skates, skate boards and unregistered scooters (just to name a few, you would be surprised the kind of vehicles I see on the road sometimes). However this does not stop some people, apparently born and raised in "hillbilly county" to "stick it to the man" and transit through the mentioned main roads not only in unauthorized vehicles but also without any type of protective gear.
     People don't think that, when they do stupid stuff like this they are not only augmenting the odds of damaging themselves; but also endangering the lives of innocent people who have nothing to do and should not have to pay the consequences of  their limited brain capacity.It is when I read news articles like this, that I sit for a moment and wonder: What could have gone through the mind of these individuals the moment they agree to these kind of life threatening decisions? In my mind it goes more or less like this:
"Uhmm, you know what girlfriend?
"What girl?
 "I'm feeling super douchy today, so I'm gonna' go put some lives at risk, including my own, to prove to my momma that I'm a grown up [and that I'm super cool of course ;)] and I know what I'm doing. Wanna join me?"
"Sure, why not? I mean, it's not like we could die, or kill someone or something with our majestically stupid behavior."
"Hell no girl, let's go."

     It is because of intelligent decisions like this one that so many  lives end up so tragically, so early. Hello! Extraordinarily smart girls in the vehicle, why can't you just take a moment to acknowledge that decisions have consequences; that you are not alone in the world and that unless you live in a deserted island, your decisions affect everyone around you? Maybe it's too much to ask because apparently, common sense, is not that common anymore.

Here's the link to both the article and the video:
http://www.elnuevodia.com/videos-noticias-transitanenfourtrackencarreteradecaguas-1483733185001.html