Approaching a mansion, seeing the large stone columns supporting the building; what a sight. The marvelous yard surrounds the mansion, and as you look up to realize that the house towers over you, you dream of what is inside. The magnificent, wooden doors swing open to reveal that there is nothing inside; it is empty. You are shocked to realize there are no beautiful paintings, no giant couches. You are so surprised that it is hard to enjoy the amazing exterior of the house, hiding what is inside, or what is not inside. My family trip to Puerto Rico was similar to this mansion. Puerto Rico and the resorts within it try to hide their extreme poverty within by smothering tourists with attractions such as the giant rainforest, the expansive caves, and the bio-luminescent lakes; these attractions are very charming; however, to get to these places, you have to drive through the impoverished towns and cities, looking at the tiny one story houses.
It was as if Puerto Rico had a cover on it, an illustration trying to depict the story but hiding the secrets within. Traveling through the caves was like staring at the massive columns supporting the mansion; it was as if you were in a different world underneath the island. It was amazing how such an impoverished territory could have such beautiful landmarks, yet be so poor. When we arrived back to the hotel after a long day of exploring and conquering, I asked my dad, “if Puerto Rico makes so much money on their attractions, how come everyone is so poor?” The answer I received from my dad was short and simple, “government.” For the rest of the trip I pondered upon how the government could make everyone so destitute. Spending its money in all the wrong places the government of Puerto Rico, P...
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...ed that there was a stage in front of the room and I began to wonder if there would be anyone to perform. About halfway through the meal a man walked up to the stage and introduced himself as the owner of the restaurant and then he began to sing in Spanish. As his voice cut through the air everyone in the restaurant stopped eating and paused their conversations, purely to hear this man sing. Everyone in the restaurant who knew the words to the song stood and began to sing with the man, including the restaurant staff. After the shock of opening the doors to the mansion, I realized that something so beautiful and so large on the outside, so appealing to the public could be so empty on the inside or so poor, yet within the poverty there were sparks of hope, leading to an entire community coming together, sometimes an empty mansion can be an inspiring structure.
The author illustrates the “dim, rundown apartment complex,” she walks in, hand and hand with her girlfriend. Using the terms “dim,” and “rundown” portrays the apartment complex as an unsafe, unclean environment; such an environment augments the violence the author anticipates. Continuing to develop a perilous backdrop for the narrative, the author describes the night sky “as the perfect glow that surrounded [them] moments before faded into dark blues and blacks, silently watching.” Descriptions of the dark, watching sky expand upon the eerie setting of the apartment complex by using personification to give the sky a looming, ominous quality. Such a foreboding sky, as well as the dingy apartment complex portrayed by the author, amplify the narrator’s fear of violence due to her sexuality and drive her terror throughout the climax of the
Immigrants come to America, the revered City upon a Hill, with wide eyes and high hopes, eager to have their every dream and wild reverie fulfilled. Rarely, if ever, is this actually the case. A select few do achieve the stereotypical ‘rags to riches’ transformation – thus perpetuating the myth. The Garcia family from Julia Alvarez’s book How the Garcia Girls Lost Their Accents, fall prey to this fairytale. They start off the tale well enough: the girls are treated like royalty, princesses of their Island home, but remained locked in their tower, also known as the walls of their family compound. The family is forced to flee their Dominican Republic paradise – which they affectionately refer to as simply, the Island – trading it instead for the cold, mean streets of American suburbs. After a brief acclimation period, during which the girls realize how much freedom is now available to them, they enthusiastically try to shed their Island roots and become true “American girls.” They throw themselves into the American lifestyle, but there is one slight snag in their plan: they, as a group, are unable to forget their Island heritage and upbringing, despite how hard they try to do so. The story of the Garcia girls is not a fairytale – not of the Disney variety anyway; it is the story of immigrants who do not make the miraculous transition from rags to riches, but from stifling social conventions to unabridged freedom too quickly, leaving them with nothing but confusion and unresolved questions of identity.
In order to understand the current situation of Puerto Ricans one must look at their history and retrace the sequence of events that led to the current formation of the Puerto Rican people. An important component of this history is the time Puerto Rico spent under Spanish rule. Studying this portion of Puerto Rican history forces us to acknowledge the contribution the Spaniards, European immigrants, and African slaves had on Puerto Rican identity as we consider it today. This also addresses contemporary debates on Puerto Rican identity. An example of this is evident in an essay written by Jose Luis Gonzales entitled "Puerto Rico : Th Four Storied Country". In the article Gonzales points out what he feels is a disregard toward the African contribution to the Puerto Rican identity. He argues that the first Puerto Ricans were black , based on his interpretation that Africans were the first group to come to Puerto Rico and reproduce who did not have ties to a "motherland" because they were slaves. This is unlike the Spaniard elites and Criolles that demonstrated their commitment and loyalty to Spain. Since they had no other place to go, Puerto Rico was their motherland. Gonzalez also points out that the culture of a region is always the culture of the elite, not the popular culture.
Gonzales, Jose Luis. Puerto Rico: the Four Storeyed Country and Other Essays (Princeton: Markus Wiener Publishing Inc.)1-30.
Hearing of the newly finshed public housing projects for financially disadvantaged families, LaJoe's parents packed up the family and moved to one of the new buildings. When the family first arrived in their new home, they could not believe their eyes. It looked like a palace. Outside there were yellow flowers and lamp posts. The exterior of the building was made of sturdy, dark-red brick.
The intention of this essay is to demonstrate to a vision rational, concordant political leader to the Puerto Rican, American and worldwide reality. It responds to the necessity that to the statehood it is necessary to imagine it and to expose it with all the evidence available, since many Puerto Ricans, including many political leaders, do not know like defending it or exposing it before the peculiar ones or our adversaries.
Today I bring to your forefront of thought, the island of Hispaniola. This island is the namesake for the two countries who run the land, the Dominican Republic and Haiti. Both nations hail from a joint introduction into the world market and post-European colonization, but as time progressed, each one had a different outlook to the world stage. The present day Dominican Republic and Haiti are worlds apart on an island which keeps them together. Their culture is separated by the colonial residuals that lay imbedded into their communities. They are on different sides of the spectrum of structural growth due to the resulting outcomes from decades of political ruling and policy making. On one side we have the second independent state of the Americas,
As Bourgois was trying to understand how segregation and racial oppression fuels poverty and underground economy, he found out that the ethnic and racial prejudice of people led the Puerto Ricans to isolate themselves from the society. This aversion and isolation by the rest of the society influence the living conditions of El Barrio inhabitants. As a result, in order to find a decent living in the society, they chose to sell crack to at least survive. For the purpose of getting a more humanistic and holistic view of this community, through participant observation, Bourgois put himself in direct contact with drug dealers. He found out that the social perception of Puerto Ricans inhibits them from success and makes them to street in order to make a living by illegal activities. Apart from that, as mentioned in the book that Puerto Rico is a country financially liable to the United Sates, and it has not ever bee...
Puerto Rico is a Commonwealth of the United States which makes it easy for natives to travel back and forth. Puerto Ricans first began to arrive in the United States to fill the work void left but those who went on to fight in World War I. Operation Bootstrap was a series of projects that attempted to turn Puerto Rico; a known agricultural economy to one that would concentrate on industrialization and tourism. Puerto Rico enticed many U.S companies with tax exemptions and differential rental rates on industrialized properties and so the shift in the economy had commenced. The shift however did not help the high unemployment rate on the island. Rather than having to deal with the droves of people seeking work they noticed the active recruitment of Puerto Rican workers by U.S. employers. The government began to encourage the departure of Puerto Ricans to the U.S. by requesting the Federal Aviation Administration to lower the airfares between Puerto Rico and the United States. This was an attempt to ch...
Thesis: I am here to day to convince the class, why Puerto Rico deserves to be a state, by explaining the faults in its health care, declining financial status, and their limited involvement in the government
Filban said the home had a yard that was overgrown. “The trees and bushes were overgrown, and the house was dark,” Filban said. “And the windows were covered.” She and her sister slept in the front bedroom of the house. She remembers the bedroom having a large, floor-to-ceiling window. She said you could look out and see the wra...
Esperanza's family has been moving a lot throughout her whole life. Her family consists of six; which is her Mama, Papa, Carlos, KiKi, Nenny and herself. The house on Mango Street is their new home, which is the first house they owned and didn't have to pay rent. The house had a yard they did not have to share, no landlord and no worries of the being too loud. It was a big improvement from the apartment they just moved out of, but it wasn't the dream house they had always talked about getting one day. Esperanza's parents always talked about a house they would have one day that would be all their own. The house on Mango Street was not that, it was small and rundown. Esperanza dreams of a day when she will leave this house to live in her own.
Puerto Rico is a small island in the Caribbean that holds a vast, and rich culture. Due to its accessible geographical location, it is often called the key to the Caribbean. Puerto Rico enriched its people with one of the most innate and unique culture different from the rest of the world. The colonization of Spaniards left us not only with myriad architectural heritage, but also with language and cultural traditions that beholds Hispanic imagery and representations. Our music, our love of dancing and festivities, as well as our practice of Catholic beliefs represents
Every day , Puerto Rico is slowly adapting into the American way of life and is gradually losing what is left of their culture. Perhaps this is because Puerto Rico is a commonwealth of the United States. The poem “ Coca Cola and Coco Frio” by Martin Espada is a great example of someone who encounters the Americanized culture of Puerto Rico. Puerto Rico is struggling to preserve their own identity.
Jamaica Kincaid is the author of “A Small Place”, a book about her real-life homeland Antigua, a struggling island. This island is doing poorly for a variety of reasons, such as the corrupt government, the economy being in shambles, the infrastructure crumbling, lack of resources. Almost all the people in Antigua are poor, with the few exceptions being privileged by the government.