09-19-2020 , 10:55 PM
https://www.foxnews.com/opinion/geraldo-...uerto-rico Puerto Rico
Published 11 hours ago
Geraldo Rivera: Trump gives Puerto Rico 'esperanza' and a better future
$13B development package much needed for an island battered by storms, poverty and hopelessness
Geraldo Rivera
By Geraldo Rivera | Fox News "Esperanza" means hope for a place more associated with despair. President Trump this week drew our attention back to Puerto Rico with the first burst of good news about that troubled island in decades.
His announcement Friday afternoon of a historic $13 billion school aid and manufacturing development package has the potential to breathe life into a hurricane-battered, melancholy place.
Until his surprise announcement, which leaked Thursday night, thinking about Puerto Rico made me sad. The land of my father’s pride, La Isla del Encanto -- the Enchanted Island-seemed cursed. Don’t get me wrong. For visitors, the Commonwealth is again the gorgeous tourist paradise it was before the gut-wrenching devastation wrought by the twin killer hurricanes of 2017, Florence and Maria. Most of the seaside hotels and casinos and the white sand beaches still count among the best in the hemisphere. But a closer look reveals a hollow place, where hundreds of thousands of the young and best-educated have been leaving, headed for better opportunities in places like Florida and New York.
Puerto Ricans are American citizens, and they have suffered a near-constant barrage of storms, corruption, economic collapse and the ultimate insult, bankruptcy. Its population of about 3.2 million is down 3.9% from its peak in 1979, according to Pew Research Center. What the emigrants have been leaving behind is a storm-ravaged island where the poorest still live in shanties that mar the mountainsides, easily distinguished by the FEMA-issued bright blue tarps that serve as roofs.
Many of the public schools have been shuttered since the 2017 storms’ wrath.
Away from the tourist zones and the generators of the better off, the electric grid is held together by spit and duct tape.
Elevators in high-rise public housing are often inoperable. Drug use and resulting violence have soared.
The governor and dozens of public officials have been forced out of office, indicted, jailed and shamed.
Published 11 hours ago
Geraldo Rivera: Trump gives Puerto Rico 'esperanza' and a better future
$13B development package much needed for an island battered by storms, poverty and hopelessness
Geraldo Rivera
By Geraldo Rivera | Fox News "Esperanza" means hope for a place more associated with despair. President Trump this week drew our attention back to Puerto Rico with the first burst of good news about that troubled island in decades.
His announcement Friday afternoon of a historic $13 billion school aid and manufacturing development package has the potential to breathe life into a hurricane-battered, melancholy place.
Until his surprise announcement, which leaked Thursday night, thinking about Puerto Rico made me sad. The land of my father’s pride, La Isla del Encanto -- the Enchanted Island-seemed cursed. Don’t get me wrong. For visitors, the Commonwealth is again the gorgeous tourist paradise it was before the gut-wrenching devastation wrought by the twin killer hurricanes of 2017, Florence and Maria. Most of the seaside hotels and casinos and the white sand beaches still count among the best in the hemisphere. But a closer look reveals a hollow place, where hundreds of thousands of the young and best-educated have been leaving, headed for better opportunities in places like Florida and New York.
Puerto Ricans are American citizens, and they have suffered a near-constant barrage of storms, corruption, economic collapse and the ultimate insult, bankruptcy. Its population of about 3.2 million is down 3.9% from its peak in 1979, according to Pew Research Center. What the emigrants have been leaving behind is a storm-ravaged island where the poorest still live in shanties that mar the mountainsides, easily distinguished by the FEMA-issued bright blue tarps that serve as roofs.
Many of the public schools have been shuttered since the 2017 storms’ wrath.
Away from the tourist zones and the generators of the better off, the electric grid is held together by spit and duct tape.
Elevators in high-rise public housing are often inoperable. Drug use and resulting violence have soared.
The governor and dozens of public officials have been forced out of office, indicted, jailed and shamed.