When I was a little girl, a few times a year, my mom would get hands on some pasteles from the island. She would unpack them from the box and pull them out excitedly. Wrapped up like little presents for your senses in wax paper and a simple string bow. She would then place them carefully in her pressure cooker, close the top and warn me to STAY AWAY... if I got too close it could burst and burn my face off. (Well at least that's what came to mind from her warnings.) I can still remember the sound of the cap bristling from side to side and the whistling of the condensing steam seeping out. And so I did. I stayed away but I also stayed away from those pasteles. To think back on all I missed by avoiding that pressure cooker makes me wince a little bit.
Puerto Rico now is that pressure cooker. The pot of boiling water is full and so so many are backing out of the kitchen. Puerto Ricans are leaving their homes and cars and family to fly to the mainland United States to find jobs that pay a good living wage and schools for their children. For all the years that Puerto Rico has belonged to the US, people have been flying back and forth with some who stay and many who return to live, to retire or just for summer vacation. But with the older, land-owning generations dying, businesses and the military leaving the island and jobs along with it - it seems that many are no longer going back. On the streets of Bayamón so many vacant houses sit...paint peeling, driveways crumbling, weeds overgrowing the shuttered metal window shades. Medical professionals are leaving for better pay and opportunities, college students are leaving to American universities and staying... the island is sitting, waiting for something to happen. My heart hurts watching my cousins leave and begin new lives in Florida, Texas, Massachusetts while their mothers worry on Facebook missing their grandchildren, wondering how their family disappeared. The issues plaguing the island are many and the politics of it can be heated, the solutions are not simple yet I feel a sense of responsibility to those who are sticking it out, those who are in for the long haul, and those who are choosing to stay until their end because that is their home, their land. I'm still figuring out what it is I can do, how I can support the island in its time of crisis. This time, although I hear the whistle of the pressure cooker, I feel called to go in with no fear but of what I might miss if I ignore what's inside.
Puerto Rico now is that pressure cooker. The pot of boiling water is full and so so many are backing out of the kitchen. Puerto Ricans are leaving their homes and cars and family to fly to the mainland United States to find jobs that pay a good living wage and schools for their children. For all the years that Puerto Rico has belonged to the US, people have been flying back and forth with some who stay and many who return to live, to retire or just for summer vacation. But with the older, land-owning generations dying, businesses and the military leaving the island and jobs along with it - it seems that many are no longer going back. On the streets of Bayamón so many vacant houses sit...paint peeling, driveways crumbling, weeds overgrowing the shuttered metal window shades. Medical professionals are leaving for better pay and opportunities, college students are leaving to American universities and staying... the island is sitting, waiting for something to happen. My heart hurts watching my cousins leave and begin new lives in Florida, Texas, Massachusetts while their mothers worry on Facebook missing their grandchildren, wondering how their family disappeared. The issues plaguing the island are many and the politics of it can be heated, the solutions are not simple yet I feel a sense of responsibility to those who are sticking it out, those who are in for the long haul, and those who are choosing to stay until their end because that is their home, their land. I'm still figuring out what it is I can do, how I can support the island in its time of crisis. This time, although I hear the whistle of the pressure cooker, I feel called to go in with no fear but of what I might miss if I ignore what's inside.