Stampede Warning

Well, we’re about to get festivalled, and all the indications are that it will be bad.

The Fiestas de la Calle San Sebastián (sometimes nicknamed SanSe) as we know them today started out life in 1970 with 30 people in attendance, and it was charming, quaint, picturesque. Now? It’s an impending disaster.

The day-time stuff is not so bad—there are lots of artisans selling their wares, and some of it can be very fine. Puerto Rico has a nice tradition of carving santos de palo—here’s a nice example….

Then there’s the silkscreen art, of which Puerto Rico has a long and proud tradition. There’s music, too, at least in the eyes—or ears—of everybody but me.

So what’s the problem?

Well, the festival that started out so sweetly got highjacked by the beer companies, and the whole affair, at night, becomes extremely crowded, loud, and chaotic.

Emphasis on the chaotic: if you lifted your feet, you’d still be moving. It’s an annual experiment of turning a colonial small town into an anthill.

And last year, how many people crammed into Old San Juan, which is about seven streets by five streets? Half a million. And how many left? 499,999—since one guy got killed for the outrageous crime of bumping into someone. A fight ensued, and honor dictated that the matter be settled thus.

Enter the Mayor of San Juan, Carmen Yulín Cruz, who announced extreme security for this year’s event, at which 600,000 people are expected to attend. And extreme it is—the event will require passing through a checkpoint, presumably with metal detectors. Oh, and backpacks will be checked.

In fact, what the mayor has done is to erect barricades everywhere—as I write, I and every other sanjuanero is in a cage. Nor are the barricades a flimsy affair—suggestions at crowd control. Have a look:

Oh, and to add more insult to the situation, stages have been erected in all parts of the city, so that everyone can be blasted equally.

“Leave town,” said my brother Eric, “that’s what we did for Mardi Gras…”

We did last year, and had planned to do so this year. Then two things happened: Raf’s adored cat requires a special diet, and also requires Raf to be there encouraging him to eat. I know—it’s crazy: we’re animal people.

And now Raf is in bed, suffering from a humongous cold. Or maybe it’s the flu—who knows? And in the meantime?

The refrigerator decided to die….

The festival will last four days, unless of course what I greatly fear happens.

I think we’re gonna have a stampede.

Plus ça change...

Well, well—time to dust off the high school French, which I did by consulting, as always, Wikipedia. So here it is: plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose. Or I suppose I could tax my brains a bit and figure out who said—in Latin—that there is nothing new under the sun.

Certainly not the Caribbean sun, shining so brightly on tourists and dropping conveniently away when it’s time to do what we do very well down here.

Smuggling.

Here’s how it works. We send up the drugs. You send down the guns.

That white powder that isn’t talc but is occasionally mixed with it has to come through somewhere. It used to be Mexico, but then things got a little hot up there. So the game changed to Puerto Rico, which famously, in the words of an early 20^th century US Supreme Court decision, is not the United States but “pertains” to the United States. (Anybody up there who can explain that, please give me a call. Been wondering for years….) In other words, no customs. If you can get the drugs in, you can send them in any aircraft, cargo container, or package through the US mail or FedEx.

So the drug traffickers have recreated the Middle Passage, though in this case it’s South America to the Caribbean, not Africa, and now it drugs, not slaves. But don’t imagine that it was Sam Walton who dreamed up logistics, though he did further it a bit. Nobody loves an empty ship.

And here, I take a deep breath and concede—maybe—a point to the NRA. “Outlaw guns and then only the outlaws will have guns!” they cry. (Nice turn of phrase, hunh? Great little marketing slogan….) Because Puerto Rico has probably the strictest laws in the nation about guns.

For one thing, they’re not considered a right. But let the Orlando Sentinel tell the story:

Buying a gun legally in Puerto Rico takes six to 18 months to complete paperwork and convince a police board that the applicant needs a gun. Puerto Rico does not consider gun ownership a right, said Edgardo Nieves, Rossello's spokesman.

By comparison, Florida residents only need to turn to a flea market, gun show or their newspaper's classified advertising section to buy without restriction.

And happily for everyone but the victims, it’s quite profitable. You buy a gun from Craig’s List for three hundred bucks, and you can sell it for three or four times as much on the streets of San Juan.

Well, with a deal like that, everybody wants in, right? So you’ve got your own little business started and established—a punto that is selling cocaine and heroin and god knows whatever else. And then some punk decides to move in on your territory. You gonna let that happen?

Fortunately, there are people who can help you. Sure, it costs, but money is not a problem. This is a business expense.

Now there used to be a little honor—the hit man killed in the punto, not stores or restaurants, or anywhere they could find the intended victim. So if you weren’t suicidal, you stayed away from the puntos. Now, if you’re not suicidal you stay home.

Two points. I may not be ready to concede the logic of “only the outlaws will have guns” to the NRA. It may be if the rest of the nation had our strict gun laws, there wouldn’t be the price difference that makes trafficking them into Puerto Rico so attractive. It might also be that there would be far fewer guns in the fifty states.

Second point—I read yesterday about the Mayors Against Illegal Guns. They are a significant group of 800 mayors; the mayors of Clairon, Clarks Summit, and Felton—to name three towns in Pennsylvania—have all signed a pledge. They’re gonna fight illegal guns, which make up the vast majority of weapons in Puerto Rico.

Well, we have a new mayor in San Juan, a lady who is busy trying to come up with the 800 million dollars that she needs to run the city. That’s daunting.

But what about the old mayor? The guy that put up all the signs announcing the projects that never got the money to get done? He’d been around for 12 years; in that time, why hadn’t he signed on? The group, by the way, is headed by the mayors of New York City and Boston. So they found the time…..

I’ve written about two of the three ingredients in this explosive stew. Here’s the third…

…money.