Carmen Yulia Cruz – Puerto Rico Politician

We just learned that the official count of 64 hurricane Maria deaths in Puerto Rico was a bit low.  A study published 2 days ago in the New England Journal of Medicine, revises the human cost of this deadly storm. “According to the study, approximately 4,645 “excess deaths” occurred between September 20th, 2017 – the day Maria made landfall on Puerto Rico – and December 31st. That makes Maria the deadliest natural disaster to hit the U.S. in 100 years, with a mortality rate twice as high as Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans in 2005.”

Why this discrepancy? What is the motivation for suppressing a true accounting of the death toll? Here is a speculative answer:

https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/puerto-rico-hurricane-maria-death-toll-w520914

And they are still dying. The new hurricane season begins tomorrow. To be sat out under tarps.

I spent my 60th birthday in Puerto Rico with the ones I love most. It was all orange sunsets, orange drinks, orange lilies in the carefully tended hotel garden and orange glow of the sun reflected on the plazas and the beaches. I had no clue about the history of the place and was in too festive a mood to really inquire.

I am making up for that now. I just started reading War against all Puerto Ricans  by Nelson Denis, a Harvard educated attorney, film maker and former member of the New York State Assembly representing the district of Harlem. The book explains how America took colonial control of Puerto Rico, a “liberation” that served corporate interests and fought any attempts at independence with state sponsored violence. It was recommended as a read that analyses how history repeats it self over and over again on the island, with shocking consequences that mainstream America continues to ignore.

https://waragainstallpuertoricans.com

The author has integrated multiple different sources to paint a picture of a brutal knock down of the national independence movement and imprisonment, torture and unresolved death of its leader, Pedro Albizu Campos. It is chilling to read. I have not yet gotten to the part where solutions are offered, just the announcement that obvious solutions are available but blocked by the U.S. I’ll keep you posted.

Below is a Democracy Now segment that speaks to the issues in a short and lucid discussion, the author among the panelists.

(Photographed lilies are Portland based, I lost all of my photographs from the Puerto Rico trip….)

There will be no obituaries for the ones who perished. We must honor their memory in other ways – perhaps by getting the vote out in November.