“Ten Cuidado Con Mi Gente”
By:Brianna Valentin
On September 16, 2017, Hurricane Maria struck the island of Puerto Rico. Not only were the people stripped of their resources, but they lost what was remaining of their lives. President Trump has made it clear that he lacks empathy towards the people by verbally demeaning their situation.
To a stranger on the street, I may appear to be the most Caucasian person they’ve ever seen. Sometimes, even my own don’t recognize that I’m one of them. They don’t realize that I too come from a background of brown, blistered hands. Hands that spent days on end, picking coffee beans and fruits. Calluses growing like moss on the bottom of their feet. Their fingers slowly morphing into crooked talon-like appendages. Till this day, their knees buckle when they think of all the heavy things they carried.
My eye twitches and my lip curls with disgust when I hear Donald Trump speak about my people. I imagine him digging the sharp heel of his loafer into the wrinkled back of my grandma or grandpa. I can imagine their screams and cries being muffled by the dirt. Choking. They try to push themselves up with their arthritis infested joints, but they cannot.
You must be thinking, “Damn, this girl really hates the president.” Well, it’s kind of hard to like him when all he’s done is degrade your culture. Mexico. Puerto Rico. The motherlands of where I descend from, have been ravaged verbally by Trump. My people being labeled as lazy, ungrateful, selfish, criminal rapists.
Don’t get me wrong, I am extremely proud to be an American citizen. It’s a blessing to live here. However, I would’ve not been able to even be born into American soil if it wasn’t for my Mexican and Puerto Rican grandparents. They broke their backs to not only give their children the lives that they never had, but they did it for the future generations of their family.
So, it’d be an understatement to say that I have a personal bone to pick with the president.
In Professor Tanya Rawal’s class, “Literary Response to Disasters and Repression”, we have discussed how race plays a role in government response and how power dynamics are strategically planned.
For instance, one incident I want to touch on (which may not be so surprising to you), is Hurricane Maria. On September 20, 2017, Hurricane Maria put my people under water. It took away their homes, food, drinking water, electricity, and even their loved ones. It stole away their resources, leaving them to gather all that they could and wait for further help from the United States. Sadly, this sounds all too familiar. In the 1940s, around the time when Puerto Rico had just become a commonwealth to the United States, the people of the island took major blows from the Great Depression. The Great Depression evolved in the 1930s. In Alvita Akiboh’s “Puerto Rico’s Relationship with the United States: It’s Complicated.”, she shares “…relief did not arrive in Puerto Rico until the appointment of Governor Rexford G. Tugwell in 1941”. With this, we start to make the connection, that because Puerto Rico is a commonwealth to the United states, it is easily neglected. Puerto Rico is extremely dependent on the United States, especially in natural disasters, such as Hurricane Maria. So, why is it that the response is so slow when it comes bringing aid to those on the island? According to German Lopez’s article on Vox, he states, “A 2009 study similarly found that when participants looked at images of people in pain, the parts of their brains that respond to pain tended to show more activity if the person in the image was of the same race as the participant”.
To say that this is a problem is an understatement. It is extremely concerning already, seeing that many of us are aware of Trump’s obvious negligence of minorities and their circumstances. In the case of Hurricane Maria, Trump’s slow reaction to the depressing statehood of Puerto Rico should raise numerous red flags. Why is it that it took Trump so long to deliver aid, water, and food to Puerto Rico? At the end of the day, PUERTO RICANS WHO LIVE IN PUERTO RICO, ARE INDEED US CITIZENS, so why aren’t they getting immediate attention? Trump on many occasions has voiced that America and its citizens should come before any other. So, not only were millions of US CITIZENS left without these resources, but it is the administration to blame for their slow progression. Today, 7 months after Hurricane Maria, 16 % of the island remains without electricity. What’s the hold up?
Although the administration is also to blame for the state that Puerto Rico is currently in, but Trump worsens the situation with his lack of empathy for the island. For instance, Carmen Cruz, the mayor of San Juan, stated, “We are dying here…if we don’t get the food and the water into the people’s hands, we are going to see something close to genocide.” In response to Mayor Cruz’s “dramatic” use of words, Trump had the audacity to tweet: “Such poor leadership ability by the Mayor of San Juan, and others in Puerto Rico, who are not able to get their workers to help.” This is extremely upsetting, considering that the power of community has prevailed more than ever after the disaster. So, for Trump, an outsider, to come in the picture and tell the people of Puerto Rico that they aren’t doing enough is a heartless and cowardly thing to do. As a very proud Puerto Rican, I can say that my people to do not give up. Our love for each other is like no other. In times of distress, our faith in God is the only thing that keeps us going.
In Naomi Klein’s “The Shock Doctrine”, she explains how people who have undergone a natural disaster are most vulnerable to the vultures within our government. When these victims are most traumatized, it is an open door for new policies and decisions to be made, right before their eyes. She mentions Michael Bruno, a chief economist of development economics, who explains how “…international agencies needed to do more than just take advantage of existing economic crises to push through the Washington Consensus — they needed to preemptively cut off aid to make those crises worse…” (259).
If I’m being completely honest, this doesn’t phase Puerto Rico. The system can try to capitalize off them as much as they’d like, but they will continue to love one another and help each other. If Trump thinks that throwing toilet paper rolls at my people will show them how generous he is, he’s mistaken. Sure, my people will take them, but they won’t ever forget how the US left them in deep water.
Works Cited
· Akiboh, Alvita. “”Puerto Rico’s Relationship With The United States: It’s Complicated.” Ushistoryscene.com. N.p., 2018. Web. 24 May 2018.
· Lopez, German. “The Research On Race That Could Explain Trump’S Slow Response To Puerto Rico.” Vox. N.p., 2018. Web. 24 May 2018.
· Klein, Naomi. The Shock Doctrine: the Rise of Disaster Capitalism. Vintage Canada, 2008.
