Soccer, Anyone?

Well, the news out of Washington—or anywhere else in the world, it seems—is so abysmal, so frightening…well, wait. Stop using these puny adjectives: Barack Obama said it in two words in his most recent email to me—we’re finished.

Right—so what’s happening on the island? All going well in the Isle of Enchantment?

Doesn’t seem so. Though there is good news: the children of San Juan, in an imaginative plan, will have a place to play soccer!

Critics sniff at the proposal, of course, saying that the idea of renting out a couple of acres in a park to a developer, who will install three soccer fields and two beach volleyball courts, as well as provide a “deli juice bar” that also has beer—craft beer, that is—and wine is going to benefit only those people (hint, we don’t know them) who can pay 80 bucks an hour. In short, all of the kids in the projects are going to be left playing kick-the-ball in the parking lot.

There’s also a little question about the rent, which according to El Nuevo Día, would be only 2,500 bucks a month. But wait, cried the mayoress of San Juan, Carmen Yulín Cruz, the developer has promised to give the first weekend of the month, as well as one weekday night, free! This she deems “services in kind,” and so the real sum is a respectable 8,690 bucks a month. Great deal, right?

Predictably, the argument leaves some cold; here’s one critic:

González Costa señaló que en 25 años la empresa “habrá pagado apenas un millón de dólares y lo que va a generar Ecofútbol en un año es cinco  veces lo que generará el Municipio en 25 años”.

(González Costa pointed out that in 25 years the business would have paid scarcely a million dollars, and Ecofútbol would have generated five times in one year what the Municipality earned in 25 years.”)

“Ecofútbol,” you say? What’s so “eco” about soccer?

The plot, as it seems to in the tropics, thickens….

Ecofútbol sprang into existence in—no surprise here—July of last year, and was awarded the contract without a public auction. Why? Well, according to the paper, the matter was in “the public interest.” And the developer behind the project? A father / son team of guys named Víctor González Serrallés and Víctor González Barahona.

The first impression was good; here’s what Wharton School’s alumni magazine had to say about the father, Víctor González Barahona:

Gonzalez’ business ventures are grouped into three companies. Puerto Rico Land and Fruit Co. produces and sells organically grown coffee, manages ecological restoration projects and is involved in setting up a mitigation bank. The concept behind a mitigation bank, says Gonzalez, is to establish an inventory of restored and created wetlands which are then sold as credits to developers whom regulatory agencies allow to impact environmentally sensitive areas.

“No one else in Puerto Rico is doing this, although it is becoming more common in the U.S.,” he adds. “These mitigation banks are seen as a way of resolving the main conflict between the business and environmental communities by offering companies a way to both make money and protect our environment.”

But González is no stranger to controversy. There was the brilliant scheme to put a wind farm in Culebra, a plan that riled the residents, since the turbines…well, consider this source:

This project involves the construction of five wind turbines 390 feet high, four residences, an office structure, a maintenance shop, an electrical substation, and a water storage tank of 10,000 gallons, among other facilities, which are all visible from Flamenco Beach.

Flamenco Beach, by the way, routinely makes the ten-best-beaches-in-the-world list in travel magazines. Here, take a look….

Happily, the residents prevailed—not without a good deal of struggle—and González withdrew the project. But now, he’s back at it, because guess what? According to the print edition of El Nuevo Día of 24 April 2014, the son, Víctor González Serrallés is going to operate Ecofútbol, but papa is going to have “a part” by using solar and wind power to generate electricity.

Wonderful scheme, right?

There is, as always, a problem. We might have the sun, but do we have the wind? Because González put up twenty-five or so wind mills in a fertile valley of Puerto Rico, with the expectation of generating enough energy to sell back to the power company, and now…

…well, I’ve looked, and I can’t tell you. The last thing I remember is that the whole thing was shut down, and the contracts were being “renegotiated.” Oh, and that the whole affair was such an environmental mess that González Barahona had to cede 623 cuerdas (one cuerda is roughly an acre) of land to the Department of Natural Resources. What did he do? He gave up only 427 cuerdas, and then turned around and asked for a million dollar tax credit from the treasury department. Why? He claimed the land was a “donation,” when in fact it was part of a settlement…..

So the news about the wind project is scarce.  What I can tell you is that the company website is, well, unimpressive, and curiously incomplete. I have just spent—what’s time to a blogger?—ten minutes going through the site, and guess what? The Guayanilla project doesn’t appear there. What does? Photos of solar panels on private residences.

Guys? According to the print version of El Nuevo Día, Windmar was awarded six contracts worth 524.6 million dollars, and your company is showing me solar panels on rooftops? Somebody out there, tell me if there isn’t something just a bit screwy about this….

“Windmar has acquired extensive experience with the local government permitting process and has received several PPOA’s for wind and solar projects from the Puerto Rico Electric Power Authority (“PREPA”).”

That’s from the home page of the company website.

And it seems it’s not just “extensive experience with the local government permitting process” that Windmar has acquired. They also seem to know how to bamboozle the municipality of San Juan….

An alternative for the municipality….

More waiting….

Well, it troubled my day and vexed my night, that question of mine. So I asked Mr. Fernández at the dinner table.

“Where are the readers? I wrote a post today and left myself stranded on the side of the road, waiting for a público that might never come. And then I sat down with my cell phone in hand, expecting the calls of concern to come flooding in. And guess what! Not one! Nobody, but nobody, called.”

Mr. Fernández was patient, he frequently is. He explained that readers—more intelligent than I—would assume that if I were posting blogs (or blogging posts, don’t know which), I must have found my way to safety, or at least Wi-Fi.

Oh.

Well, the Remeron may not fully have kicked in. Or maybe it was just remembered dread. Let me explain. Getting off the island of Culebra was a breeze. For 2.75$ I got a ferry ticket, and sat in wonderful comfort and watched the ocean drift by. Culebra does that to you—puts you in such an alpha state that whitecaps become compellingly interesting.

Landing in Fajardo smashed all that!

Here’s the deal. The públicos are supposed to be just that—public. They’re not taxis, which are private. However, there are no taxis—just públicos. So guess what! There were all these públicos and about six of us who were not parked 500 hundred feet away. Right—six of us, five of whom saw the logic of paying ten dollars for a now-non-public público for a private ride to wherever they were going.

Guess who didn’t see that logic! And who, in the blazing heat of Fajardo Playa, forgot the words he had written: “arguing with a chofer is like arguing with a cat.”

Well, I was rescued, as I always am, by an old man who took pity on a ridiculous man and told me he would take me wherever…

…free!

The universe provides—though on its own timeframe.  

So I was sitting in comfort and listening to two other gringos practicing their Spanish and then I turned and saw it—a público marked Farjado to Río Piedras! Just what I wanted, I told my driver / friend / rescuer. 

No, that was Indio, and he’s going home for the day.

But then he saw another público. And that was the one for me.

But it was just going to Río Grande.

And that, Intelligent Readers, is how I came to be stuck in Big River.

Waiting on Highway 3—well, beside Highway 3—for a público that might never come.

Fortunately, I had company. The guy had lived in New Jersey for nine years and loved it. It was clean! It was orderly! You had a broken light on your car? Well, get ready, ‘cause the first cop you meet is gonna pull you over, take your license, and you’ll be at the station, next day, with your car repaired and your license back in your wallet! But here! Look at that car!

OK, it was more duct tape than car, but the guy driving it?

Wow!

And what about the status issue! Do you think this referendum is going to settle that? What do you think!

Puerto Rican readers will know, and will have tensed. Others won’t. Here it is: a group of Puerto Ricans favor statehood, a group favors independence, a group favors something called the Free Associated State, our current status.

This had puzzled me, those twenty years ago when I came unSpanished (I see you, you little red squiggly line, but I like it, it stays!) to the island. But even I could figure out Estado Libre Asociado.

But what did it mean?

“IT’S A LIE, A VICIOUS LIE!” screamed Mr. Fernández over the dinner table. I became alarmed—I had never seen him violent before. I removed trajectables (sorry, computer!) from reach.

Then I figured it out. The status issue had to be somewhere close-by.

“You’re a cultural genocidalist,” said Harry’s father to me, years ago. “It’s nothing personal. But your country has practiced genocide on my country. You therefore are responsible. And though I have nothing against you, I have to tell you that you are personally and individually responsible for the great wrong that has been done to my country.”

He was quite calm, but it seemed best to agree.

And he taught me a great lesson, which I—added value, as we used to say in Wal-Mart—will now teach you.

You are paying attention, right?

Never talk status.

The trick is to inquire what your interlocutor thinks, and then nod your head, appear thoughtful, and agree.

Were I in a classroom, I would have you practicing—it’s conversation / conversación 101.

Right, wow, good point / claro, estoy de acuerdo; muy buen punto.

“The whole thing is ridiculous,” my buddy of the bus stop was saying. Look around you—Walgreens, Sears, Wal-Mart! Statehood is already here!”

And then, we spotted the público. Instantly, we dropped the question and stood jumping by the road and flailing our arms—they were still sore the next day.

But relax, gentle reader. It slowed, we opened the door, we plunged our bodies through to our seats.

You can sleep easily tonight—I was rescued.

Culebra

“Culebra is a pretty good place to leave your stress behind,” said the lady who had stroked, caressed, pounded and pulled my body for a half hour.

Relax—it was all done in public.

And the lady, besides giving me a very good massage, was right. Culebra does induce relaxation. In fact, I arrived under the assumption that I was fine, rested, relaxed. And could barely get out of bed the next day.

It’s Puerto Rico’s version of Key West. It’s a tiny island between the main island and the Virgin Islands. And yes, it has a seriously good beach.

It’s a place I’m always a little suspicious of, son of a newspaperman that I am. Are the people really that cool? Is it that smooth—the relationship between the town people and the invaders? The gringos come and open chic little shops and hang at the beach, but what do the locals do?

Well, I first came to the place twenty years ago, when I was just new to Puerto Rico. And yes, it was magical: quiet, tranquil, relaxed. And the people seemed friendly, too. Would it be different now?

The answer seems to be no. Or so says Luis, the cab driver. I had just spotted a very upscale resort, and wondered how the town felt about it.

Well, it created jobs, both in the building of it and today. And he says the island doesn’t want anything bigger. A thousand-room hotel would swell the population from 2000 to 10,000—nobody can imagine that.

“But it’s still a very safe place. In fact, my door to the house is unlocked, and I have cash on the dining room table.”

OK—so what are they all doing?

The answer seems to be fixing the roads.

“The mayor’s got all this federal money—so he put ‘em all to work. Anybody who wants a job is working. If they don’t want to work, well—those days are over.”

True, I did see guys working on the roads. I also saw guys drinking beer in the morning in front of their ramshackle house. So I’d call it a draw.

“Guy hasn’t opened in six months,” shouted a guy driving by, beer can in hand. Well, everybody deserves a day at the beach, and at least he was adding color.

Of which there is quite a lot. Here’s the door to the guesthouse I was staying in…

Or what about this?

Walking the town, I came on an old gentleman carving ships out of cocoanut shells. He was also feeding banana kwits.…

Every morning he sprinkles sugar on the plate….

Well, it’s got its charm, this little island. What it doesn’t have is the pharmaceutical factory. In the days when I first came here, it was Baxter. Then it changed hands a few times, and is now shuttered.

So in a way, it’s an elusive island. The only thing here is tourism, and construction. Periodically, the state government will decide on a project, start to build it, and then go away. Even the city hall isn’t done. And there’s a huge complex by the airport that sits unfinished, open, and vandalized.

If you’re young and gringo, Culebra is great. But for the natives? Well, there are constant problems with the ferry. Prices are high—everything comes in from the main island. The “hospital” isn’t much more than a dispensary. And it’s hard to attract teachers to the island.

In one of the shops, I found myself translating for a gringa. She was buying food, and clearly had lived some time on the island. Why hadn’t she learned Spanish?

Luis—the cab driver—might be right. Maybe all is well. Why do I feel so unsure?