This Just In From Puerto Rico

It’s one of those things about Puerto Rico—while the rest of the world is occupying themselves about other things (Syria, governmental spying, even a royal birth) we are completely obsessed with our own affairs.

I tell you this because the world into which I woke, this morning, was devoted to three issues, which the morning radio repeated endlessly. First, Pablo Casellas is in a coma.

You may remember this guy, who is the son of Salvador Casellas, a federal judge, whom colleagues describe as completely recto or straight. Allegedly, Pablo Casellas returned home on the morning of 14 July 2012 and saw an intruder jumping over a ten-foot wall by the pool. Casellas, who is an expert marksman and has (or had at the time) 33 guns, went back inside, got a gun, and fired several shots. He then discovered his lifeless wife sitting at the poolside; she’d been shot.

What did Poppa do? Well, the judge rushed to the house to be with his son, and to ensure that the investigation is done properly. The press arrived at about the same time and caught the judge scurrying under the yellow “do not cross—police investigation”—tape. Made a great photo—the judicial rear end bumping up against the tape….

But that was only the beginning. There were bloodstains in Pablo Casellas’s car; the grass on the other side of the wall showed no sign of being trampled; the shots in the wall were from a special gun that Casellas reported stolen in a “carjacking” close to the shooting range where Casellas had been practicing. Except that it was closed, that day; it was Fathers’ Day.

Well, it’s taken a year of legal screwing around to get this case to court, and the trial was to have started next Monday, so what does Casellas do?

The family isn’t talking—do they have to? “Sources” are saying that he’s in very, very delicate shape, and that they will start a process akin to dialysis to cleanse his blood. The next 24 to 48 hours are critical….

So where’s Poppa now? Sitting by the bedside, presumably on the taxpayer’s dime. And morning radio is speculating—is it suicide? Did Casellas fils swallow pills? A guy with all those guns has to do the one spectacularly poor way of offing himself?

I know ‘cause I was a nurse. Every time one of our regular patients presented at the ER with an empty bottle of Tylenol in her hands, the ER nurses had instructions: don’t buy in, be utterly matter-of-fact, and tell the patient, “just sit over there, hon—we’ll take you when we can.”

So Casellas is in the anteroom of death, and the island is hanging on its ears. But what else is going on?

Coffee—the price is going up 40%.

Coffee, according to The New Day, is doing about as well as Pablo Casellas, at the moment. Costs of fertilizer, electricity and everything else have gone up. The farmers are being squeezed out of business—which is serious, because we drink 300,000 quintales (no idea what that is, but sounds impressive) of the stuff but only produce 80,000 quintales annually. So we import the majority of our coffee.

You might ask—isn’t there land for coffee in Puerto Rico?

Of course there is—plenty of it, and in fact there is lots of coffee that goes unpicked. So what’s the problem?

Nobody wants to pick it.

Be fair—it’s a pretty rotten job. You’re standing (hopefully—otherwise you’re sliding) on a wet, muddy mountainside with branches slashing your face and insects stinging you and carrying a sack into which you are putting more and more coffee—thus adding more and more weight as you get more and more tired.

Now it begins to rain….

Second scenario—you can go to the Departamento de la Familia and get the Tarjeta de la Familia and that gets you free food, which you can munch on around noon, when you get up.

Well, fortunately the next island over has never dreamed up the idea of the Departamento de la Familia—so guess what? The mountains are filled with Dominicans (from Santo Domingo—not the religious order), according to a student from Jayuya, deep in the center of the island.

OK—Casellas in coma, coffee in crisis…what’s next?

Well, the island has 14 people who are still in shelters—down from the 88 people who were in shelters last week, when a tropical wave dumped 9.15 inches of water on the island. And now the mayor of San Juan wants the governor to declare San Juan a disaster, since the city has 300 cases of damage to examine.

But there’s a problem.

According to The New Day, the entire island is in a permanent state of emergency. Why? Because the planning has been so wretchedly bad that any rain can cause chaos. We have built on flood plains; squatters have built on flood plains; we have given no maintenance to whatever systems we had to drain water.

Nor is it entirely the government’s fault.

“You can’t be serious,” I said to my student, after she had described her flood-plained community’s creative approach to financing redecoration.

Their practice—before the advent of a serious storm—was to throw a few sofas into the Rio Cañas just before the storm. The sofas would block the culvert down by the bridge; the water would rise wonderfully. Soon, it would be swirling deliciously through their house, delightfully whisking away all that stuff the eyes had grown tired of seeing. The press would come, the neighbors would stand woefully in front of their houses, and then FEMA would send the check.

See?

Well, it makes sense down here….