Comparative anatomy of Puerto Rico and our neighbors
Published on Sunday, August 8th 1999 on The San Juan StarIf you read the papers, listen to the radio, watch television, or if you are attentive to the ping-pong political argument here, you must be in a sad state of severe and deep depression by now. I can recommend an excellent psychiatrist. However, if you get on a plane and travel to one of our Spanish-speaking neighboring countries, you might become very interested in making comparisons between the country where you are at and the island where you live. For fear of provoking too many letters for Readers' Viewpoint, I will not mention the names of countries.
Let's start with the police. Right now our police force is in the doghouse because of a possible rotten apple, or apples, where some officers are suspect of having dealt with the possible execution and hiding the body of a young woman. Sad case. But the majority of our police force consists of excellent and noble individuals. When I was abroad, policemen there were known for a fruit the color of their uniforms, and also for having a propensity to "bite." This meant "biting" into your wallet if stopped for, say, a traffic infraction. Some locals, in order to expedite the due process, keep their drivers licenses wrapped in bills, so that, when asked to show their licenses, the "bite" can be as unobtrusive and as procedural as possible.
We condemn the Puerto Rico Planning Board, sometimes with just cause. But if you see planning in some of our neighbors backyards, you must realize that, though our planning may not be perfect, it is much better than that of many of our neighbors.
And our airport, have you checked that out? I have landed in some airports nearby that leave much to be desired regarding passenger care, aircraft care, runway care, terminal care, luggage care, and how you get out of the airport in some form or fashion.
However, in some things we may lag a bit behind. I may be wrong, but I have seen more common respect, towards me and towards others, in some other places. In one country in particular I almost witnessed a mob at the airport when a passenger, obviously not of that nationality, tried to sneak into a place in line ahead of those who were already there. Wow! They almost killed him!
At another country I saw when a young man snatched a lady's purse. All who saw him snatch chased after him, grabbed him, brought him down, returned the purse to the lady, and then the police had to come to protect the delinquent from the angry citizens. Talk about a beating!
Ah! And taxis. Did you know that there are cities where you don't really need to own a car? Just step outside and in less than five minutes, a taxi would cruise by.
We should all be grateful for one thing: our dearth of news. Our news today mostly consist of what El Amolao did with Palmolives, how Hernández Mayoral is chopping at the ankles of Acevedo Vilá, how Sila does not want to emulate Pesquera in exposing her income tax returns, how David Rosa refuses to budge from the Toa Alta mayor's chair, and, of course, Vieques. Aside from the Vieques issue, the rest of the news are mostly anecdotal. In other places the news are often more serious, more pathetic, more poignant, and sometimes of greater historic value.
Regarding our education, two things stand out. Our mastery of English as compared to our neighbors, and their mastery of general knowledge as compared to ours. To us, countries other than the United States seem unimportant. To them, their grasp of geography is better, as is knowledge about world leaders and world history. However, most of them cannot speak English as we do. In most places they speak better Spanish than we do.
We often lock ourselves in the Puerto Rican microcosmos and become impervious to the world around us. It may be healthy to compare notes. We may discover that we are not the only ones with problems, that out problems are not all insurmountable, and that our politicians are not all that bad. All in all, this is still and island in the sun.
But with a heck of a lot of islanders.