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When littering was at it's peak on the mainland US in the 50's-60's the media bombarded the public through radio, television and billboards about changing the practice. Public school programs did the same with children and in several years it became very un-cool to litter. Certainly the majority of funds supporting the effort were gov't grants but even in this economy funds are still available for programs like this... but someone has to take the lead.
When littering was at it's peak on the mainland US in the 50's-60's the media bombarded the public through radio, television and billboards about changing the practice. Public school programs did the same with children and in several years it became very un-cool to litter. Certainly the majority of funds supporting the effort were gov't grants but even in this economy funds are still available for programs like this... but someone has to take the lead.
It is more than media campaigns. PR had its anti-litter campaigns (i.e.: Pítale a la basura), but some people just don't care. The same thing can be seen in the ghettos of the CONUS.
We already know PR is a failed state due 100% to its inability to decide its political status. What do I mean by that? One party gets into office, the statehood party for example, and they simply unravel everything the prior administration has accomplished (the commonwealth party), assuming anything was done with all the bickering and fighting. And that cycle repeats every 4 years....2 steps forward, 1.75 steps back...over and over again, all due to the inability to move forward either as a state or independent country.
Until PR decides one way or the other, all other social and economic issues will never, ever be resolved...and it will continue to exist circa 1980.
We already know PR is a failed state due 100% to its inability to decide its political status. What do I mean by that? One party gets into office, the statehood party for example, and they simply unravel everything the prior administration has accomplished (the commonwealth party), assuming anything was done with all the bickering and fighting. And that cycle repeats every 4 years....2 steps forward, 1.75 steps back...over and over again, all due to the inability to move forward either as a state or independent country.
Until PR decides one way or the other, all other social and economic issues will never, ever be resolved...and it will continue to exist circa 1980.
The NPP status committee will soon be deciding which of the two options they want to ask Congress: a straight vote on the Act of Admission to the Union, or to hold a second Federally sanctioned binding referendum (which the Democrats will probably require that the status quo be included putting us back to square one).
How dangerous is PR when compared to other islands in the Caribbean?
Hi all,
There has been several posts lately regarding the safety of Puerto Rico. I have seen a robbery in a store in the tourist district and more than one shooting outside of my house. That said, how does PR match the violence and dangers found on other similarly populated islands? Is Jamaica worse or better, Bahamas, Haiti, Trinidad, USVI, etc.
I'm really curious...
My first assumption would be that all islands given their gateway to the waters bring drugs and subsequently un-welcomed violence over money and drugs. However, I would assume that islands like the Cayman Islands, which are quite wealthy, would not suffer the same level of violence as perhaps other larger islands, like PR.
There are protests over many things in PR, this is life and death. Our today and tomorrow, take to the streets in protest. In todays Puerto Rico there is hardly a better cause than to feel safe for ourselves and children. If the government cannot handle it then broader powers should be given to the FBI. This should be the Puerto Rican governments number one priority and it is not.
There has been several posts lately regarding the safety of Puerto Rico. I have seen a robbery in a store in the tourist district and more than one shooting outside of my house. That said, how does PR match the violence and dangers found on other similarly populated islands? Is Jamaica worse or better, Bahamas, Haiti, Trinidad, USVI, etc.
I'm really curious...
My first assumption would be that all islands given their gateway to the waters bring drugs and subsequently un-welcomed violence over money and drugs. However, I would assume that islands like the Cayman Islands, which are quite wealthy, would not suffer the same level of violence as perhaps other larger islands, like PR.
Does anyone know? Gracias.
Depends on the island...from everything I've been reading, Puerto Rico is starting to reach the levels of Jamaica, which has long been the most violent island in the Caribbean. Jamaica was a big stopover for cocaine in the 1980s and has too many guns on the island from back in the day when political parties armed their constiuents in the ghetto. T&T is supposedly getting worse, and people tell me the crime is happening all over, not just the ghetto areas like most cities. Barbados is safer for the most part, probably because it's more prosperous.
USVI, like Puerto Rico, has a high homicide rate compared to the mainland US. I think St. Thomas had a higher per capita murder rate than anywhere else in the US or its territories a couple years back.
I am going to be broader here so please don't close this thread.
I have already described the geographical beauty of my island, and that is never going to change. Well at leasy while the island stands where it is and does not suffer a physical change due to unpredicted circumstances.
But everything else... The politics, the society, the government, social issues, intolerance, crime... It stinks. Yesterday a woman who was in a gas station was kidnapped and killed, I mean the violence is basically turning the tropical paradise into a criminal inferno in which people are not safe ANYWHERE.
I think even "quiet" island Culebra finally saw its first murder in many years when a woman was found dead near a pier close to the seaport. Although it is still not known what caused the death but it looks like murder.
The west is also losing its status as a safe place. It is still low, but things are not looking good for the west coast.
San Juan, Caguas and the metro area is unbelievably dangerous, with San Juan reporting about 3 murders DAILY.
I had no clue San Juan was a dangerous place, you make it sound like its Chicago or Baltimore...Is it really that bad?
I am so sad to hear the state of Puerto Rico, my mother's homeland, and where my older brothers were born.
I have not visited since I was a child, and even then I remember my parents talking about how much things had changed (for the worse) since they lived there in the 60's and 70's.
I made a long post in another thread explaining my theory of how PR came to be the way it is now. Perhaps I will re-post it here.
But the main reasons IMO, that PR has declined so severely are:
- The illegal drug trade. The War on Drugs is an infernal disaster, but it continues to this day and as long as it goes on, PR will be Ground Zero. PR is a major shipment route for cocaine and heroin into the US. This, on its own, creates violence at street level, as gangs fight for control of the trade. But the worst effect of the drug trade on PR is the large amount of drugs that stay on the island for local consumption. I don't deny that drugs like cocaine and heroin can be harmful, but the criminalization of these drugs is what causes the bulk of the problems, because a) the price of these drugs is hyper-inflated b) the legal risks of dealing in the drugs result in organized crime being the main players in its distribution c) the hyper-inflated costs of these drugs makes it difficult for addicts to pay for their habits without engaging in theft, robbery, etc. d) the enormous profits that drugs promise result in massive corruption at all levels of society.
As a result of these issues, PR has a huge drug addiction problem, with many addicts injecting both cocaine and heroin, and increasingly an extremely dangerous drug known as anastesia (a horse tranquilizer called Xylozine that dealers cut low-grade heroin with). While city streets filled with junkies is bad enough, the high cost of the drugs means that many turn to crime to get the money for the drugs they are addicted to, which leads to a very high rate of property crime and armed robbery. This creates an atmosphere of lawlessness that pervades all of PR, but especially cities like San Juan.
The criminal element that sells, smuggles and traffics the drugs are constantly at war for territory. This has lead to a murder rate higher than anywhere on the US mainland.
The corruption of politicians, cops and judges ensures that the drug activity continues, along with all its negative effects.
Puerto Rico faces many problems, including a flagging economy and problems with illegal immigration from the DR, but IMO the problems that stem from the traffic in narcotics (and specifically The War on Drugs) are among the greatest problems PR faces.
Here is the post I mentioned that I originally made several weeks ago in another thread on this forum. The post was a brief explanation of why I thought the mass migration of Puerto Ricans to the mainland US during the middle of the last century was a bad thing for the island, generally speaking. I have edited the post slightly from its original form:
"I am half Puerto Rican on my mother's side. She was born in Santurce, San Juan, a neighbourhood that she remembers fondly but has changed so much it is completely unrecognizable nowadays. When different parts of my family visit the island, all they can talk about is how terrible it is compared to the idyllic place they grew up in.
I can certainly tell you that the American experience has not been a positive one for many Puerto Ricans, all things considered. A lot of Puerto Ricans left the island in the 50's and 60's (like my mother and eventually the rest of my family) and came to the large cities of the US for economic opportunities. For people like my mother who were middle class, spoke perfect English, had college degrees and street smarts, places like New York were good to them. Unfortunately, as my mother tells it, many of the people who left Puerto Rico were the poor campesinos who knew very little of city life and had some major culture shock when they got to places like New York.
In many American cities, Puerto Ricans fell victim to prejudice and predatory practices like redlining, where they were sold homes for many times their value in neighbourhoods the realtors were purposely devaluing by scaring previous residents into selling for almost nothing. Of course, these mostly rural Puerto Ricans could not get good enough jobs to pay the exorbitant loans, their mortgages went into foreclosure, and large tracts of Northeastern cities became depopulated ghettos. Poverty and lawlessness followed, and often the Puerto Ricans were at Ground Zero.
Unfortunately, these experiences meant that some Puerto Ricans picked up some very bad habits in the US. As travel and communication between the island and the mainland is very fluid, these bad habits were very quickly adopted in Puerto Rico by returning migrants who introduced their new "American" lifestyle into their old communities. At the same time, South American drug trafficking routes were opening up in the Caribbean, and crime quickly became a fact of life for the island. It continues to be like that today. All of my remaining relatives living there have had experiences with crime: homes burglarized, cars stolen, robbed, shot, etc.
Even now the ramifications are still felt. This post simplifies the situation more than it should, and does not take into consideration many other contributing factors, but according to my family members who saw what happened on the island and the mainland in real time, the mass migration to America was not a good thing for PR, all things considered. The problems there seem to me like the problems of the rest of the US, but amplified.
There are other similar parallels - Salvadoran migrants to LA in the 80's being bullied by Chicano street gangs and forming gangs to protect themselves. When these newly minted gang members commited crimes in the US and got deported back to El Salvador, MS-13 was born, creating a plague that has made Central America the most violent place on earth right now outside an active combat zone.
Similarly, the Mexican migration experience has some general similarities with the Puerto Rican one, with the American domestic drug problem and the War on Drugs as a common denominator, fomenting violence far beyond US borders. Agains, poor prospects for unskilled rural peoples who are not white Europeans cause a ripple effect which eventually resonates back to Mexico from the streets of American cities and migrant worker camps where they live and is then magnified by corruption and poverty, producing the terrible scourge of Mexican drug cartels and the terrible violence they perpetrate with guns smuggled into the country from the US (the same is true of PR, where many of the weapons used in street crimes are smuggled on to the island from the US mainland).
Ultimately, America itself is often to blame. But for reasons that are too complex to discuss here and now. Generally speaking, a group of people go to America with wide eyes and big dreams. Some are mistreated and abused, are forced to adapt, becoming predatory or parasitical, and then introduce the new norms of behavior back into their communities. The behavior becomes a coping strategy, spreads, and is amplified in the indigenous population in various ways by culture and circumstance."
So many of Puerto Rico's troubles can be traced back to the US in one way or another. This doesn't exonerate the Puerto Rican people of responsibility for what happens on their island; it simply demonstrates how America's troubles can very quickly spread beyond its borders.
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How dangerous is PR when compared to other islands in the Caribbean?
