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.
