The Governor and the Singer

OK—in some places reality tends to be a dull, cold, lumpish thing: the existential version of a mild hangover. But here, in Puerto Rico? It’s a bird of paradise, flaunting one brilliant plume after another, flashing through trees, and at times disappearing altogether. So I can tell you that the island has been watching the governor fight for la crudita, which will raise the tax on petroleum from 9.25 to 10.50 per barrel. And that, of course, drew near panic on the island: what would it do to the price of gasoline? The governor assured us: it would increase the price by just 16 cents more a gallon. Did anybody believe him? Of course not.

So the Highway Authority was broke, and that meant that the bus system was broke, and then the governor said there was no money to pay the bus drivers, so tough luck, you 35,000 to 50,00 users of the Metropolitan Bus Administration—find yourself a ride to work or your medical appointment. If la crudita didn’t pass, he was taking his bus off the streets and locking them up—so there!

Chantaje! Or blackmail, cried the opposition, but the governor was adamant. Then the Feds wrote and pointed out that they had given funds to operate the buses, as well as to do some projects—and if those things weren’t happening? Well, completely unreasonably, they wanted their money back! Can you imagine?

And our dear governor was facing asps even in his own party, which controls the legislature and should therefore be a trifle more rubber-stampish than they turned out to be. There were three of such snakes, but at last, the governor was able to address the island on Sunday evening, and assure the anxious populace that all was well, the votes were there, la crudita was a certainty hovering on the horizon.

Well, was that good enough for the press? Of course not—ever eager to find and pick nits, the press called the three senators, all of whom said “no, I haven’t changed my vote!”

So Monday, would there be buses? Would the crudita pass? What deals were being struck in the Casa de las Leyes, or the House of Laws? So the crudita got modified and then sent to the other side of the House, and that got batted around, and the Independence senator alleged that the whole thing was illegal, and the opposition party murmured darkly about going to court. A normal state of affairs, in short.

In sails the mayoress of San Juan, and guess what? She’s against the increase too, and probably a little annoyed that she had to drop every and cook up a scheme to rent school buses and find drivers and try to get as many people around as possible. So the governor, having hallucinated the support of three senators, got it into his delusional head that Carmen Yulín Cruz was on board too. So Carmen Yulín whipped out the cell phone and showed everybody the text messages she had sent out to the three senators, urging them to remain steadfast in their opposition.

The island was busy watching—and commenting on—all this, when tragedy struck: Topy Mamery died! And that’s terrible news, because Yolandita is destroyed—utterly and fatally destroyed—and has vowed: the show is over, and never will she sing again!

Here—with all the operatic intensity of a Maria Callas—are her words:

"Quiero que ustedes lleven el mensaje que parte de la prensa de este país me lo mató. Ellos saben quiénes son y los quiero felicitar porque se salieron con la suya. Lo mataron a él y me mataron a mí, porque yo no canto más. Este circo se acabó. Yo me llevo de aquí (Puerto Rico) a mis hijos. Me voy. Yo estoy muerta".  

(I want all of you to take the message that part of the press in this land killed me. They know who they are and I want to congratulate them because they succeeded. They killed him and they killed me, because I will sing no more. This circus is over. I will take myself from here (Puerto Rico) to my children. I’m going. Now, I am dead.)

Right—so who are these people, and what had the press done?

“How do you say artista in English,” my students used to ask.

“Artist,” I initially said, only to discover that Ricky Martin was the example par excellence of the artista.

“Entertainer,” I then changed it. And Yolandita is such an entertainer, having sold out at the coliseums and appeared on Broadway and been nominated for a Latin Emmy. And Yolandita had been about to celebrate her 25^th anniversary with Topy Mamery, who had a massive heart attack while taking a shower in their home.

Fortunate, that, since the press had been publishing photos of—allegedly—Mamery in an “intimate encounter” with a model and television personality, who learned of the death while at the television station, and immediately fled, overwhelmed, strickened, utterly unable to go on.

“Yolandita’s never going to sing again,” I told Sunshine at the café.

“Bah, she’ll be out with a new album, Ahogada en Luto, or Drowning in Grief, in three months, and it’ll make her a couple more millions. Then she’ll find a guy twenty years younger and fly off to Spain with him….”

“Yolandita’s never going to sing again,” I told Elizabeth in the shop.

“Está completemente en choque,” she said, and went on to tell me that Yolandita was under 24 / 7 medical attention, and heavy sedation, since there was every likelihood—nay, probability—that she would kill herself, were she to realize the full horror of what had happened.

Farándula—or celebrity gossip, and it’s one of our minor talents on the island. So Yolandita’s voice has been muted, and she will leave the island of her birth, never more to return to a land where tongues become daggers, the moment one person—through sheer talent and immense hard work—managed to crawl out of the mediocrity and shine!  

Don’t cry for her, Puerto Rico!