Isla del Encanto???
After spending a couple of weeks in my homeland, I am back in the Nasty Nati. Overall, I had a great trip and enjoyed spending time with friends and family. I'm not going to write about what all I did, cause most of my time was spent just chillin with my best friend, but you are more than welcomed to ask. The reason for this post is to answer a question that has been asked to me so many times...If you love Puerto Rico so much, why don't you move back and look for a job there? Upon my recent visit to my beautiful island, it became more evident to me why it is difficult for me to move back. Many people view Puerto Rico as a nice place to go visit and spend some beach time. Like this perfect little island where we don't have to worry about paying taxes or putting up with President Bush. Sure Puerto Rico has a lot of beautiful things and is a great place to go visit, but it's not until you live there, that you realize the hardships of the country and why more and more Puerto Ricans are leaving the country to live elsewhere. Over the past 5 years or so the crime in Puerto Rico has increased consistently and most of this crime is due to drugs. When crime started becoming a problem in PR, as long as you weren't involved with drugs or weren't with anyone that was involved, then you could just mind your own business and go your merry way. Today, you have to watch out wherever you go, cause most of those crimes are people who happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. Young lives are being taken every day because they happened to drive by a "tiroteo" or gun fight. The "puntos" or drug points are pretty much everywhere and it's pretty hard to drive past them without noticing. A couple of blocks from my neighborhood there is a drug point that I have to drive by every day in order to get to my home, and I just drive past minding my own business and praying that a gun fight doesn't break out while I'm driving past there. Robberies are a part of every day life, and usually after they rob you, you are either dead or severely injured. And even if you manage to escape you can't go to the police with info because you fear for your life! Drugs aren't the only contributors to the high crime rate. It seems like everyone has a gun and if you say something or do something to upset them, they will just bust a cap on your ass and keep walking. The other day a guy got murdered because he was saying hello to a girl he went to high school with. Apparently her ex-bf saw them talking and killed him because of jealousy! The guy wasn't even dating the girl, he was just saying hello to her. Domestic violence is at a high. It seems like the people in Puerto Rico have lost respect for each other, like everyone is an enemy. Our government is awful. It seems that everyone that gets elected ends up embezzeling funds. There are debts everywhere and the only solution the government has is to raise prices in order to pay these debts. Electricity is going up, water will go up 100%, tolls will be going up, and of course, gas will be going up. You would think that by raising these prices we would get better service but that's not the case at all. The water in Puerto Rico is not the best, nor is the power. Our roads are all fucked up and the money that is supposed to be used to fix these roads is nowhere to be found. Everyone is going on strike against the government. While I was in Puerto Rico, there was a strike by truckers. They basically didn't go to work, meaning that gas stations ran out of gas and there was no trucks supplying gas to these stations. Those trucks who wanted to keep working, were threatened by the truckers union and some truckers had to be escorted by police in order to get to their destinations. When the strike was announced people in the country went crazy, going to the nearest gas stations to fill up the tank, as if the gas had run out in the island. Some people spent 2 and 3 hours in line just to try to get some gas. There were many different incidents of people going at it in gas stations because someone cut in front of the other. In one incident, this guy busted a womans windows because he said that she cut in front of him. In another incident and old lady who was filling up one of those plastic container gas tanks had it yanked from her hands by a guy who felt like he needed it more than her. He filled up his car and threw the empty container back at her. To make matters worse, unemployment keeps increasing, and the educational system is in need of teachers. But it's hard to be a teacher and get payed the lousy salary that they get payed because as prices keep rising, salaries stay the same which means that the salary that once was enough to do pay for the things you needed is now coming up short. These are just some of the daily struggles of the average Puerto Rican. We love our country and it is filled with so much beauty and great things, but unfortunately it is hard to live and raise a family in a country like this. So for those of you wondering why I'm trying to look for a job in the US and not in my homeland, I hope this answers your question. I hope I didn't scare you and make you change your opinion about visiting Puerto Rico, because that was not my intention at all. I still go home every summer and winter because I have family there and I have so much fun there, but I realize that Puerto Rico isn't what it used to be and each day it just keeps getting worse. May God bless my beautiful island and make it a better place to live in.