Ellen Degeneres and Leonardo DiCaprio have joined Martin to help raise funds on the hurricane relief campaign
For the past couple weeks, Latin superstar Ricky Martin has been putting all his effort on collecting funds to help his native country, Puerto Rico, after the catastrophic hit by Hurricane Maria.
The Caribbean island has been left without electricity, medicine, drinking water, food and diesel for generators, among other necessities.
The “Vente Pa’Ca” singer has created a hurricane relief fund to provide necessities to the victims. So far, he has raised over $1.3 million, which includes Ellen’s donation of $80,000.
“But, we need more,” said Martin, who is really concerned that there’s no diesel for generators to keep hospitals working. “People are dying,” he added.
Martin also announced that Hollywood superstar Leonardo DiCaprio has joined his movement to help raise funds for the victims.
Puerto Rico has been devastated by Hurricane Maria, and the island desperately need us. This is a humanitarian crisis affecting 3.5 million people. The power grid is destroyed, food and water are in short supply and we all need to work together now. For this reason, I created this page to collect funds and my donation of $100,000 is already in, as well as the generous donations from the Leonardo DiCaprio Foundation and many others.
The Ricky Martin Foundation team on the ground is already working with the local government, local volunteers.
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I do not own these images.
No intention of taking credit.
If anyone knows the owner of any, please advise and it will be corrected immediately.
~~Ricky Martin Visits Ellen to Talk About Helping Puerto Rico~~ TheEllenShow
~~Published on Sep 28, 2017~~
Superstar Ricky Martin made a surprise visit to Ellen to discuss how we can all help his homeland of Puerto Rico following the devastating hurricanes. Find out how you can donate on the Hand in Hand website.
I haven’t been able to contact all of them but slowly news are coming out.
My cousin Inés lives in the metro, San Juan area.
She wrote a message to the leader of the United States.
I think she specifies, word by word, what has been happening with Puerto Rico due to Hurricane María and to many events which took place before the devastating hurricane.
There are plenty of reasons why Puerto Rico is in the situation it is.
The hand of the mighty, imperialistic U.S. of A. can be seen everywhere.
Yes, Mr. President, you are absolutely right, infrastructure was not in very good shape to begin with.
(I think those were your precise words!)
María has put it bluntly.
There are no materials and no money to invest in infrastructure. A much reduced work force, 30k government employees fired with Law 7 many who worked for water and electricity. Forced or suggested early retirement for many thousands. Massive migration. Yes, that poor little Caribbean Island where you built and then declared bankrupt your mini golf playground.
Where are you playing now?
No more Dorado for you.
And then, PROMESA, H.R. 5278 , and your Supervisory Board, la ‘fucking Junta’, milking our people, putting your billionaire hedge fund holder friends before the our people. And then, our brilliant government, adequately stupid politicians working for their own benefits, years of blatant corruption making the same few richer and richer.
Meanwhile our retirement plans collapsed and our elders have to spend their little money on your lover-priced pharmaceutical products.
Our University in peril of imminent collapse and our working students enslaved by your $4.25 hour wage law.
By any chance, are you trying to strangle us?
Your 3.5 million brown skin, second class citizens that consume all your Walmart goods and make you want to dance Despacito?
Oh we’re good, because we take abuse submissively!
And then more, we give your dollar abundant Americanos the most beautifully attractive tax incentives to come and live in this exuberant island, little by little displace our city population and buy cheap property from desperate Boricuas. A trip to Supermax will clearly show the growth of this blond population.
Ah, such an amazing paradise, a fiscal paradise for your rich!
Mr. President, you and your abuses and your imperialistic, racist government are responsible for every single life lost, for every single fallen tree, for every coffee bean that will not feed a family any time soon.
I truly hope you don’t try to claim your debt anymore.
Every cent must go to our reconstruction.
All the repressed wrath of all the abused nations, all the frustration and anger and hunger and fear of the world will be knocking at your door.
Stop your senseless tweeting and GET TO WORK.
Show the world you are a worthy representative of your nation’s fathers’ principles of freedom and justice!
Or are you?
Inés M.
~~GRAPHICS SOURCE~~
Google Images
DISCLAIMER
I do not own these images.
No intention of taking credit.
If anyone knows the owner of any, please advise and it will be corrected immediately.
Antonio Rodríguez (EFE) reviews the documentary film by Sonia Fritz
“15 faros de Puerto Rico” – 15 Lighthouses of Puerto Rico.
He writes, “The lighthouses of Puerto Rico are the nineteenth-century legacy left by the Spaniards before the change of sovereignty from Spain to the United States in 1898.
These historical structures represent the desire to incorporate the Caribbean island into the era of modernity in the nineteenth century.”
13 THINGS YOU NEED TO KNOW ABOUT THE CRISIS IN PUERTO RICO
Any Latino on social media knows one thing:
There’s a crisis in Puerto Rico.
Headlines about the island’s almost decade-long recession, credit rating cuts and its residents’ mass migration into the U.S. mainland, fill Facebook newsfeeds, Tumblr dashboards and Twitter timelines alike.
It can be difficult to keep up, especially when this news involves complicated issues like taxes and investments. To help keep you in the loop, here’s 13 things on the critical matters happening right now on that tropical island just 1,150 miles from Florida’s waters.
FACTS
1. Puerto Rico is struggling to emerge from its recession. While the rest of the U.S. is experiencing economic growth, La Isla del Encanto has not been able to draw itself out of a 9-year recession. The U.S. territory has a 15.4 percent unemployment rate, with per capita income around $15,200 (that’s half of Mississippi’s, the poorest state in the U.S.).
2. This harsh economy is pushing thousands off of the island every year. Puerto Rico is experiencing the largest migration wave since the 1950’s. Rampant crime and a dwindling economy have pushed so many people out of the island that, for the first time in history, there are more Puerto Ricans living in the U.S. mainland than there are on the island.
3. Economists fear that this mass migration leaves little hope for the island’s economic recovery. Orlando Sotomayor, an economist at the University of Puerto Rico, told the New York Times that “the phenomenon is highly uncommon and underscores the lack of hope that the ship can or will be righted.”
4. The Caribbean island is more than $72 billion in debt. To put that in perspective, this is the U.S.’ third-largest municipal debtor, behind California’s and New York’s, though the island is both significantly smaller and poorer than both states.
5. Another major difference: Puerto Rico, unlike U.S. cities, cannot file for bankruptcy. To restructure debts, Puerto Rico must negotiate with investors.
6. Standard & Poor’s, a U.S. financial services company, slashed Puerto Rico’s rating to B, a non-investment grade. This has essentially frozen Puerto Rico out of the bond market. Over the last few years, investment companies like AllianceBernstein have sold their Puerto Rico holdings, with others hesitant to invest without a signpost of increased revenue.
7. The recent passing of a sales-tax bill can be that sign. Unfortunately, while the 4.5 percent hike in sales tax is expected to bring in $1.2 billion in new revenue, and generate more investments for the island, it’s bad news for the people of Puerto Rico, especially the poor, who will now have to pay a whopping 11.5 percent sales tax.
8. In an effort to pay the island’s utility investors, Puerto Rico is negotiating a restructuring of its public power company. The plan, which is likely to be approved by the end of the month, would definitely increase the electric rate for the island’s residents. Critics of the overhaul, like Puerto Rico’s delegate to Congress, Pedro Pierluisi, believe the increase “will not benefit anyone.”
9. Puerto Rico’s Gov. Alejandro Garcia Padilla also planned to implement a $166 million cut to public university budgets, but the decision was later reversed after thousands of Puerto Rican students protested the proposal. Go, millennials!
10. However, there still remains a healthcare crisis on the island. The Center for Medicaid and Medicare services will soon execute an 11 percent cut in Medicare Advantage reimbursements, which will cost Puerto Rico’s health-care system nearly $500 million. About 60 percent of the island’s population relies on Medicare, Medicare Advantage or Medicaid to pay for their health care. Last month, the Washington Post reported that doctors practicing in Puerto Rico are forced to get by with much smaller Medicare and Medicaid reimbursement rates than those received by others on the continental U.S.
11. Puerto Rico’s recession has also injured the island’s housing market. According to Fox News Latino, call for sales are expected to be just 15 percent of what they were a decade ago. President of the Puerto Rico Home Builders Association (ACH), Roberto Trapaga, said “when the time comes to buy a house, people don’t have the money,” adding that banks, which have also been hit by the crisis, have tightened the requirement to obtain a mortgage loan.
12. Whether Puerto Ricans own a home or not, water-rationing measures in San Juan have left thousands of islanders without water. The measures, imposed because of an ongoing drought that has lowered Puerto Rico’s main reservoirs, have limited access to water to just every other day for more than 160,000 people living in and near the capital.
13. Good news (kinda): Puerto Rico’s tax hikes and budget cuts are expected to assuage the island’s economic woes. Writing for NPR, economic reporter Greg Allen reminds us that both New York City and Washington, D.C. saw similar fiscal problems and eventually found stability. Unfortunately, fiscal recovery for both cities also brought along with it the process of gentrification, which has displaced much of the areas’ impoverished communities of color, a fate we are already seeing in Puerto Rican barrios like Santurce.
“As it appears in …. full and total credit of information and main graphic”
~Puerto Rico’s Financial Crisis: Is The Island The New Greece?~
~Published on Mar 12, 2014~
The island is in dire financial conditions and it is thousands of U.S. mom-and-pop investors that might lose a big part of their savings if the small territory goes bankrupt.
They were conquerors … They grabbed what they could get for the sake of what was to be got. It was just robbery with violence, aggravated murder on a grand scale … The conquest of the earth, which mostly means the taking it away from those who have a different complexion or slightly flatter nose than ourselves, is not a pretty thing when you look at it too much.
~Joseph Conrad, Heart of Darkness~
There will be a war to the death against all Puerto Ricans.
~E. Francis Riggs, Chief of Police of Puerto Rico~
When it won the Spanish-American War in 1898, the U.S. acquired Puerto Rico as a new “possession.” The American who led the invasion, Gen. Nelson A. Miles, promised “liberty” to Puerto Ricans. He also promised “prosperity” and “the advantages and blessings of enlightened civilization.”
This never occurred. Puerto Rico was stripped of her land and natural resources by U.S. banking syndicates. By 1934, the theft was so extreme that Puerto Ricans organized an island-wide agricultural strike.
In response to this strike the Yale-educated Chief of Police, whose father owned the Riggs National Bank, promised that “there will be war to the death against all Puerto Ricans.”
~Official website~
It documents the murder of innocent Puerto Ricans; the bombing of Puerto Rican towns; the blackmail of Puerto Rico’s governor; the beating, torture and execution of Puerto Rican prisoners; and the hiding of all this information from the American public.
In 1950, after fifty years of military occupation and colonial rule, the Nationalistic Party of Puerto Rico staged and unsuccessful armed insurrection against the United States.
Violence swept through the Island: assassins were sent to kill President Truman, gunfights roared in eight towns, police stations and post offices were burnt down.
In order to suppress this uprising, the US Army deployed thousands of troops and bombarded two towns, marking the first time in history that the US government bombed its own citizens.
Nelson A. Denis
I received my copy of this extremely well crafted, researched and documented book. I finished it last night … I couldn’t put it down.
A most important part of the history my country starring at me … confirmed with facts, eye witnesses accounts and declassified FBI documents proved what I felt in my heart had happened. This revolution started the year I was born. I surely missed all of it. But the facts remain.
The author, Nelson A. Denis, tells this powerful story through the controversial life of Dr. Pedro Albuzu Campos .. EL MAESTRO.
As I sit here and write, there’s a song, which is practically Puerto Rico’s anthem. “Preciosa”
“Preciosa” (English: Precious) is a 1937 patriotic composition by Puerto Rican composer Rafael Hernández Marín. Interesting to note that is was written in 1937 …. the year of the Ponce Massacre.
My heart hurts, my eyes are open …. there’s no way to hide this reality.
“It seems that owning one man made you a scoundrel but owning and entire country made you a colonial benefactor.”
Dr. Pedro Albizu Campos
~~GALLERY~~
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“Preciosa”
Marc Anthony
~~Published on Jan 10, 2015~~
Song written by Don Rafael Hernandez
~~Puerto Rico 2014~~
DJI Drone
~~Published on Jan 8, 2015~~
Puerto Rico visit in October 2014 and filmed with a DJI Phantom 2 Vision + Drone
~~Puerto Rico: A Bird’s-Eye View~~
~~Published on Feb 1, 2015~~
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