Sad, but true.  The last eight years of misery in Puerto Rico have cause so many people to leave the Island it's not even funny.  And it's getting worse.

Recession drives educated Puerto Ricans to South Florida

As a salesman for a health club in a suburb outside Puerto Rico's capital, Frank Oquendo saw up close how his earnings and the gym's membership base tanked along with Puerto Rico's economy.

Earlier this year, Oquendo's bosses cut his pay by 25 percent as a third of the Caguas club's members canceled their contracts because they were leaving Puerto Rico. After two years of soaring inflation and desperation, Oquendo finally packed up and joined his former clients, moving his family to Miami in July.

He joined thousands of middle-class professionals who have fled Puerto Rico in the past two years, becoming what some people are calling ``FloRicans.''

'Sometimes you feel like a traitor when people ask, `Why don't you stay here and work for your country?' '' said Oquendo, 35. ``How long are we supposed to sacrifice our families for unfulfilled promises? I want to help push Puerto Rico forward, but what about my kids?''

Emphasis added.  You just can't fault the guy.  I left because the opportunities in P.R. just weren't there.  And that was back in 1989, when things were nowhere near as disastrous as they are now.  Even back then, if you had a degree in a field where there was any kind of demand, your opportunities just were fabulously better in the U.S.  But there's more:

''We are committing collective suicide,'' said Elías Gutiérrez, who runs the graduate school of planning at the University of Puerto Rico. ``This is going to become a country of elderly and poor people.''

Census figures show at least 200,000 of Puerto Rico's 4 million people moved to Florida from 2000 to 2006, including 14,000 to Broward County and about 8,000 to Miami-Dade. About half of Florida's nearly 700,000 Puerto Ricans live in Central Florida, particularly the Orlando area.

But census figures do not reflect the wave that began two years ago, when a budget crisis forced the Puerto Rican government to shut down for several weeks. More than 70,000 people were temporarily furloughed, so it was not long before nurses, doctors and police officers joined the teachers and out-of-work public servants who headed for Florida.

Many of them found jobs before leaving Puerto Rico as recruiters from employers as varied as NASA, Disney World and the Baltimore Police Department went to Puerto Rico to find highly skilled bilingual labor. The shutdown was followed by an unprecedented increase in the sales tax to as high as 7 percent, which hit Puerto Rican wallets hard as a political crisis gripped the U.S. territory.

Then gas prices climbed, and people saw their electric bills reach as high as $1,000 a month. Government statistics show food prices have increased 12 percent this year, and housing 15 percent.

''People in Puerto Rico make around $24,000 a year,'' said Oquendo's wife, Wilma Nieves, 39. ``Day care centers and private schools cost $600 or $700 a month. Our car payment -- for a Suzuki -- was $500 a month. We were falling behind in our mortgage and other loans. You can't just stay behind and complain. You have to find opportunities.''

The sales tax actually was 6.6%.  It was supposed to eliminate a flat 6.6% tariff automatically imposed on all products entering the Island.  But a lot of the products in the market that had already been subject to the tariff were then subject to the sales tax.  So many of these products were actually taxed twice at an overall rate of around 13.6% (because you are imposing a sales tax on a product that already reflects the tariff, so it's not like adding them both).

Now, if you're Puertorican, this should piss you off:

University of Puerto Rico professor Jorge Duany, who coauthored a 2006 study of Puerto Rican migration patterns, said the island's government has largely ignored the dilemma, because it offers a much-needed safety valve for an economy experts say shrank by 2 percent last year.

''Unemployment is at 12 percent. If all those people had stayed, it would be 24 percent,'' Duany said. ``In the point of view of the individual who decides to emigrate, for the people looking for a job, it's a solution -- a way out. For Puerto Rico collectively, it's a problem.''

And so it goes.  We leave, and some come back.  But in the end, it's Puerto Rico who is impoverished by this pattern.

(edited)

The latest pride and national bandwagon award goes to Corona and their attempt to alcoholize Latinos. 

Right on...Rah-Rah!  Corona! Latinos!!!  "...que linda la botella."  Yeah.

That is Spanish for "folly" or "nonsense," which is precisely what the pro-Commonwealth party in Puerto Rico is trying to put forward as its political platform.

I will start with the usual disclaimer I make every time I discuss this issue at Telling Stories: when it comes to Puerto Rico, I am and have always been pro-Statehood.  I don't see Puerto Rico's status as a "cultural dilemma" or a matter of national identity.  When it comes to Puerto Rico's status, Puertoricans are being asked to make a political decision.  If P.R. votes for statehood, I'm fairly certain that the next day Puerto Rico won't have a majority white, blond, blue-eyed population, people won't jump out of bed speaking English, El Yunque won't be a snow-covered peak, and Puerto Rico won't be any more or less racist than it is now.

I also believe that if at any time I believed P.R. couldn't or shouldn't become a State, the only true alternative left is to become an independent nation where Puertoricans have full control of their affairs.  Again, not a matter of culture or nationalism, just a matter of political self-determination.

What I hate is the current colonial status.

And what I really hate is the idea the pro-Commonwealth party is now putting forth that there is room for "improvement" in this relationship.  Even the headlines don't make sense:

Soberanía bajo control federal

Which translates to "sovereignty under federal control."  If it doesn't make sense to you, welcome to the club.  That's nothing more than wanting to have the cake and eat it too.  And what's more, there's no room under the U.S. Constitution for such a creature:

Some in Puerto Rico have proposed a “New Commonwealth” status, under which Puerto Rico would become an autonomous, non-territorial, non-State entity in permanent union with the United States under a covenant that could not be altered without the “mutual consent” of Puerto Rico and the federal Government. In October 2000, a few months before President Clinton established the Task Force, the House Committee on Resources held a hearing on a bill (H.R. 4751) incorporating a version of the “New Commonwealth” proposal. William Treanor, who held the same position in the Office of Legal Counsel that I now hold, testified that this proposal was not constitutional. . .

The effect of this legal conclusion is that the “New Commonwealth” option, as the Task Force understood it, is not consistent with the Constitution. Any promises that the United States might make regarding Puerto Rico’s status as a commonwealth would not be binding. Puerto Rico would remain subject to Congress’s authority under the Territory Clause of the Constitution “to dispose of and make all needful Rules and Regulations respecting the Territory . . . belonging to the United States.” Puerto Rico receives a number of benefits from this status, such as favorable tax treatment. And Puerto Rico may remain in its current Commonwealth, or territorial, status indefinitely, but always subject to Congress’s ultimate authority to alter the terms of that status, as the Constitution provides that Congress may do with any U.S. territory.

What's even more interesting is that the pro-Commonwealth supporters don't even realize - or don't want to realize, since colonialism hurts - is that, from the beginning, the relationship between the U.S. and Puerto Rico is not a relationship between equals.  Here's what the governor proposes:

Lo que plantea el desarrollo del ELA, fundamentado en la soberanía del pueblo de Puerto Rico, es que nos sentemos de tú a tú . . . y que en ese diálogo franco, con ciudadanía americana, se tomen los acuerdos que se tenga que tomar de hasta dónde es que llega la jurisdicción . . . Que esté claro que el poder último de gobernarnos y tomar nuestras decisiones está en las manos de los puertorriqueños.

Which translates to,

What the development of the Commonwealth grounded in the sovereignty of the people of Puerto Rico proposes is that we [the U.S. and P.R.] sit down and negotiate as equals . . . and that as part of that earnest dialogue, with American citizenship, whatever agreements that must be made are made to determine how far the [federal] jurisdiction reaches . . . Let it be clear that the ultimate power of self-government lies with the Puertorican people.

So, what the pro-Commonwealth crew wants is for the federal government to (a) give up its control over P.R., (b) to reach an agreement where U.S. citizenship is non-negotiable, (c) to enter into an agreement about how far the feds can go to apply federal law, and (d) with the government of Puerto Rico having the ultimate say on whether those laws apply to it and its citizens or not.

You tell me: disparates, yes or no?

Cross-posted at Telling Stories

Well, the other shoe has finally dropped for Anibal Acevedo Vilá:

Puerto Rico's governor and four Philadelphians, including prominent fund-raiser Robert M. Feldman, were charged this morning in San Juan with federal campaign-finance related crimes, according to a Justice Department official in Washington.

The investigation of Gov. Anibal Acevedo-Vila, a Democrat who faces re-election this year, was triggered by the FBI's Philadelphia City Hall corruption probe in 2003.

Acevedo-Vila, who has called the investigation politically inspired, was expected to surrender to federal authorities and appear before a federal magistrate in San Juan later today.

This is the same guy who got elected partially on a promise of clean, transparent government.

Riiiiiight . . .