Fertile Fields

This being a decent blog, I can’t repeat what I said when I saw them, that day with Harry, but it was something like, “what the fuh…?”

Harry was driving; we were on the highway to Ponce, the island’s second largest city. And right there, where Santa Isabel should be, was this:

Yup, 44 windmills in a plain between two mountains. Quite a cite / sight it was, and a bit difficult to overlook.

“They’re completely worthless,” said Harry. “They’re not producing any energy, really. It was another stupid plan of your governor….”

It was a joke—OK, maybe the slightest of jabs. Harry favors independence, but fears gravely that I am a statehooder.

“I’m not surprised,” I said, “that it’s not producing any energy. I tried for years to get Wal-Mart to install windmills, and the sustainability guy told me there’s nowhere on the island with enough wind.”

Actually, if memory serves, the only place with enough wind was alongside of the expressway we were driving on. Cars moving at 65 miles per hour create a lot of air movement.

We had been talking, Harry and I, of the wonderful developments in Puerto Rico. The statue of Christopher Colombus, a monstrosity bigger than the Statue of Liberty, had been shipped off to Arecibo, a town west of San Juan, where it was to be erected. It had been offered to several cities in the US, but curiously, nobody wanted it. Could it be because it looked like this?

“Well, not every statue has to be beautiful,” I said to Harry. And he agreed: there has to be a place for diversity of aesthetics in our society. And went on to tell me that the windmill parts had been stored in his neighborhood, and that each blade was exactly one city block long. He even showed me the block.

“There are two over at Bacardi,” I said, “and one sitting on the municipal dump.”

Right, so Harry had to tell me the story on that.

The governor, wanting to promote this excellent scheme, had erected the windmill on the dump, and they had all watched breathlessly for the majestic white—symbolic for clean and renewable—blades to spin. They were as still as corpses.

Well, that was a problem, but not for long, and not for our governor. What did he do? Rigged it up with electricity, and we now have, as Harry explained it, an enormous fan slowly twirling in public view. See? Instead of producing any energy, it is in fact consuming it….

This made perfect sense, in a tropical sort of way; it was a precise example of a previous, also statehood, governor’s campaign motto: “¿Problema? ¡Resuelto!”

(Problem? Fixed!)

Well, it was a thing to know about, so I looked it up, after I got home. And found that a company, Pattern Energy, had invested 215 million bucks into this project, and were intending to sell the power company 95 MW, enough to power 33 thousand homes.

Yes, and this would be a savings of $13,000 per hour for the company, and thus for us!

Well, the news came out, a week ago. The windmills have been stopped, for the time being. And why? It seems that the turbines have an unfortunate habit—the blades are flying off. So, shut down until further notice.

Fear not, Readers, that we will be sitting in the dark, reduced to rubbing sticks to light the fires to heat our food. For the new director of the energy company—for we have a new governor, so everybody has to change, even the president of the University of Puerto Rico—has just stated what Marc and Harry knew that day in September.

There’s no wind.

The project, in fact, generates all of 3% of the energy on the island. And the turbines are working at only 20% of capacity, not the 40%-50% that is expected. So Pattern Energy, “one of North America’s leading independent wind and transmission companies,” according to their website, has just stuck in $215,000,000 to Puerto Rico, and is getting back…

…what?

“Did García Márquez really say that about Puerto Rico?” I asked Harry. He knew immediately the remark; it’s part of Puerto Rican folklore. When asked why he didn’t write about Puerto Rico, García Márquez said something like, “they didn’t believe me when I wrote about Macondo, so they really wouldn’t believe me if I wrote about Puerto Rico….”

“Absolutely,” returned Harry. 

Good to know. What would I write about, if I woke up and found everything normal?

When Size is Everything

I had written a post in this blog about them, the crustiest old men in Puerto Rico. And then I got to wondering—how much of Puerto Rico could I see by público? Could I get to all 78 towns on the island? What would I learn? What would I see?

And was it safe? Puerto Rico has a murder rate three or four times that of New York City. What about robbery? Curiously, you’re probably more likely to be robbed if you’re driving a Lexus than riding a público. But still….

But Puerto Rico is perhaps the most stratified place on earth. The rich only speak to the rich, the poor to the poor. They may pass each other in Plaza las Américas, but they don’t speak.

As well, I had spent 7 years inside a cold concrete box. Time to break out, break free, see something else besides cold white walls.

Well, it seemed like the right thing to do, so I made a test. Could I get to Bayamón? Sure, used to do it all the time when I was working at Bacardi, and then later Wal-Mart.  

Unfortunately, the way to Bayamón means passing through Cataño. And passing through is exactly what you should do. It is, frankly, the ugliest town in Puerto Rico, and has, as well, some of the least friendly people on the island.

And it produced—perhaps only it could—one of the island’s most colorful mayors. Called El Amolao, he never shied away from speaking his mind. Especially after someone gave him a few palmolives—his word for Heineken beer. (Explanation—both Palmolive soap and Heineken beer left you feeling soft and fresh, one on the outside, the other…oh forget it, it’s better in Spanish….)

Thinking spectacularly outside the box, he plunged into the fine arts. And somehow got hooked up with a Russian sculptor who needed to unload a monstrosity that was bigger than the Statue of Liberty. City fathers in New York, Boston, and Miami took one look, shuddered, and said no to it. (Baltimore deemed it “From Russia with Ugh”) But guess what! It was free! Wow! Who could say no?

Well, there was a little hitch—the municipality would have to pick up the tab for getting the thing to Puerto Rico. And that, curiously, came to 2.6 million bucks—though other shippers estimated that they could do the job for about half a million. But petty minds will always find something to carp about, right?

Well, the thing—or rather its 2700 parts—came. Now then—where to put it? Well, not a problem for Amolao. There was a little park, right there next to the rum factory—Bacardi (you may have heard of it….). Lots of folks go there to tour the factory—so they could see the largest statue in the world at the same time.

Great idea, right?

Errr…no.

Seems that the statue would be right in the flight path for the planes flying in to San Juan. And the FAA balked.

There may have been another problem, as well. The park was created with fill. And this monster weighs over 600 tons, so it presented a few engineering problems. Amolao flew off to Russia to speak with the sculptor. And came back to utter one of his best lines. How did he like Russia?

Just fine! Weren’t any niggers there!

Well, the sculpture languished in the park next to the Bacardi factory. And to protect the statue from metal thieves? Close the park and have 24-hour security!

And so I would peer at it, through the chain link fence when I was teaching at Bacardi. The guard, until he learned to ignore me, would have his hand on his gun.

Well, the most recent news is that a city 30 miles away has agreed to take on the monstrosity, and is spending 92 million dollars to do so.

Oh, and one last thing. Harry swears that it’s not even Christopher Colombus. Seems the sculptor really was doing Peter the Great. Then realized that the 500 anniversary of Columbus’s maiden journey was coming up. So he changed it at the last minute.

Wish it were true. But The Telegraph, following this saga from the saner shores of Britain, says it’s not true. Though the sculptor, described as “one of Russia’s best-known sculptors who has produced a string of works reviled the world over,” did produce a Peter the Great.

That one was so ugly that protesters threatened to blow it up!

I leave gentle readers of this blog with a final photo, and hope that they don’t see what I see in it….

One remembers Hugo Chávez, and his monologue of the gran papá in his pants….