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.
I must confess that, at minimum, this distressed me. I’d seen the others candidates who were under consideration. Like the election results, I, again, never thought this would be the pick.
The short words, included below, about “The Choice” is the short version.
The mailmanbrings this magazine to my house.
I won’t renew the subscription.
However, I found an article which explains a major meaning behind the details of the picture itself.
These observations helped me breathe better.
It’s not what I thought.
It’s even better.
I know, there’s a lot of reading but, if the choice boggled your mind, it’s worth the read.
I strongly believe that the selected choice has no idea that he could have been played except for Trump being upset Time named him ‘Person of the Year‘ instead of ‘Man of the Year‘.
This is the 90th time we have named the person who had the greatest influence, for better or worse, on the events of the year.
So which is it this year: Better or worse?
The challenge for Donald Trump is how profoundly the country disagrees about the answer.
It’s hard to measure the scale of his disruption. This real estate baron and casino owner turned reality-TV star and provocateur – never a day spent in public office, never a debt owed to any interest besides his own – now surveys the smoking ruin of a vast political edifice that once housed parties, pundits, donors, pollsters, all those who did not see him coming or take him seriously.
Out of this reckoning, Trump is poised to preside, for better or worse.
For reminding America that demagoguery feeds on despair and that truth is only as powerful as the trust in those who speak it, for empowering a hidden electorate by mainstreaming its furies and live-streaming its fears, and for framing tomorrow’s political culture by demolishing yesterday’s, Donald Trump is TIME’s 2016 Person of the Year.
The 2016 Person of the Year is Donald Trump, the President-elect of the divided states of America.
Person of the Year is one of the best-known and most-followed franchises in journalism. TIME selects the person who for good or ill has done the most to influence the events of the year.
~Why Time’s Trump Cover Is a Subversive Work of Political Art~
By: Jake Romm
December 8, 2016Time Magazine’s annual “Person of the Year” announcement is, year after year, grossly misunderstood.
Time Magazine is clear on its sole criterion – “the person who had the greatest influence, for better or worse, on the events of the year” – yet, do a simple search on Twitter and you will find countless people who seem to think that the “Person of the Year” selection is tantamount to an endorsement.
Previous winners have included Joseph Stalin (1939, 1942), Ayatollah Khomeini (1979), Adolf Hitler (1938), and other figures who I think it is safe to assume the Time staff does not endorse.
Photo was shot by Jewish photographer Nadav Kander.
For clues as to how Time feels about that question — is it “for better or worse?” — we can look to the image chosen for the cover of the issue. The decisions that Time made regarding how to photograph Trump reveal a layered, nuanced field of references that place the image among, in this viewer’s opinion, the magazine’s greatest covers.
In order to deconstruct the image, let’s focus on three key elements (leaving aside the placement of the ‘M’ in ‘Time’ that makes it look like Trump has red horns): the color, the pose, and the chair.
~THE COLOR~
Notice how the colors appear slightly washed out, slightly muted, soft. The palette creates what we might call a vintage effect. The image’s sharpness and detail reveal the contemporaneity of the picture, but the color suggests an older type of film, namely, Kodachrome. Kodachrome, the recently discontinued film produced by Kodak, was designed to create accurate color reproduction in the early 1900’s.
This visual-temporal shift in a sense mirrors a lot of the drives that fueled Trump’s rise.
Trump ran a campaign based on regressive policies and attitudes – anti-environmental protection, anti-abortion, pro-coal, etc. This election was not just about regressive policy choices, but also about traditional values (defined primarily by the Christian right), about nostalgia for American greatness and security, about nostalgia for a pre-globalized world.
~THE POSE~
Trump’s pose can be read as a subversive play on a traditional power-portrait pose.
Trump’s turn towards the camera renders the tone conspiratorial rather than judgmental. There are two images at play here – the imagined power-image taken from the front, and the actual image, in which Trump seems to offer the viewer a conniving wink, as if to say, look at how we hoodwinked those suckers in the front (both Trump and the viewer are looking down on those in front).
By subverting the typical power dynamic, Time, in a sense, implicates the viewer in Trump’s election, in his being on the cover in the first place.
By choosing not to shoot Trump head on, the Time cover almost offers us a “behind the scenes” glimpse of the man who has spent so much of his time in front of the camera – heightening the conspiratorial tone and complicity of the viewer. The highly posed and processed nature of the photograph offers yet another level of irony.
Finally, we must note the ominous shadow lurking on the backdrop.
It’s a small, but important and clever detail.
Just as this image provides us with two theoretical points of view, it also provides us with two Trumps – Trump the president-elect, and the specter of Trump the president, haunting in the wings, waiting to take form.
~THE CHAIR~
The masterstroke, the single detail that completes the entire image, is the chair.
Trump is seated in what looks to be a vintage “Louis XV” chair (so named because it was designed in France under the reign of King Louis XV in the mid 18th century).
It’s a gaudy symbol of wealth and status, but if you look at the top right corner, you can see a rip in the upholstery, signifying Trump’s own cracked image. Behind the bluster, behind the glowing displays of wealth, behind the glittering promises, we have the debt, the tastelessness, the demagoguery, the racism, the lack of government experience or knowledge (all of which we unfortunately know too well already).
Once we notice the rip, the splotches on the wood come into focus, the cracks in Trump’s makeup, the thinness of his hair, the stain on the bottom left corner of the seat – the entire illusion of grandeur begins to collapse.
The cover is less an image of a man in power than the freeze frame of a leader, and his country, in a state of decay. The ghostly shadow works overtime here – suggesting a splendor that has already passed, if it ever existed at all.
Taken together, these elements add up to a profound portrayal of anxiety for the coming years. We have the implicit placement of Trump in the mid 1900’s. We have a suggestion of the scheming, sordid underside of power.
We have the crumbling facade of wealth, which, like “The Picture of Dorian Gray” suggests more than just a physical deterioration.
As a photograph, it’s a rare achievement.
As a cover, it’s a statement.
These are only excerpts.
There’s more to it.
Again, I encourage you to read TIME’s complete article.
It Is What It Is 