Puerto Rico’s recovery from Hurricanes Maria and Irma, one month since Maria made landfall. This comes as residents desperate for drinking water have begun pumping water from the Dorado Groundwater Contamination Site, a hazardous waste Superfund site. The EPA warns the water contains chemicals that cause liver damage and an increased risk of cancer.
Rosa Clemente talking:
PR on the Map is an intergenerational, unfiltered group that I put together in less than 10 days, because I knew no one could tell the stories like we could tell.
So, look, the people of Puerto Rico are dying. They want a Puerto Rico without Puerto Ricans. So, from contaminated water to mothers who are not lactating, to babies having to eat mashed bananas because baby food cannot be found, to people getting on ice lines from 3 a.m. in the morning to 1 p.m. waiting for two bags of ice, this is massive violations of human rights. This is a colonial problem that began 119 years ago. And in my opinion, from what we’ve seen, the government has collapsed in Puerto Rico.
And we were able to get to places that the military said they couldn’t get to, in a Kia and a Hyundai Accent, all the way to Aguadilla, Moca, Utuado. People have not even seen one-tenth of what is happening in all these places. that’s the Superfund site in Dorado. That was a little easier to get to.
The water looks clean, but the hoses that they pick up are in the ground. It’s completely black. We had people—a veteran pull up to us and said, ”Mira, pull up your socks. You know, it’s chemicals.” He said he’s a veteran of Afghanistan and Iraq, and he has never seen the level of incompetence coming from the top all the way through the municipalities.
the newly elected governor, two days ago, he was at a concert in Miami with Jennifer Lopez and Marc Anthony, raising money for his wife’s fund. He also recently made an agreement with a private electrical company based in Montana, that has no record of how to build a power grid. Ninety percent of the island, Juan, is still without electricity. And much of what we see, too, is San Juan, who relatively is doing well.
First, let’s just say that 45 is a megalomaniac white supremacist, and that’s what we’re dealing with, plain and simple. But Carmen Yulín Cruz has been—has become de facto the leader of Puerto Rico. She’s also the voice for the mayors that, to this day, have not received walkie-talkies, People might not understand, there’s 78 municipalities in Puerto Rico. That’s a political problem. There’s 77 mayors, and Mayor Cruz has become kind of the leader of Puerto Rico. She gave us an audio interview the day before, while she was getting a respiratory breathing thing, because she’s so overworked. And that next day, she gave us over an hour, and that exclusive video will drop on Friday. But there have been a little bit of critiques from, I think, people in San Juan who are saying she’s going to other places. But when we have more an extended conversation, we go, “Well, maybe because the mayors are completely isolated.” There is no FEMA.
When we were in Utuado, we went to the FEMA location. They weren’t trying to tell us where it was. There’s no signage of how to get there. A national guard, off the record, said, “Go here, go here.” We got there. There were over 40,000 meals that had not been distributed to the people in Utuado, but there was a complete military occupation of that town. And people said, “Why?” We asked, “Why do you think?” They said, “There’s copper. There’s potential uranium in these mines. And they want to take this city, you know, this part of the island, for that.”
One of the many nurses that were there. One of the things that they’re saying is that they’re actually feeling a—fearing a cholera outbreak, the leptospirosis from all the rats, dead animals, that’s in the water. As well, they let us know that the U.S.S. Comfort, that is there, that can hold 3,000 patients.
The ship, the hospital, at the present moment, has 16 people in it. And from personal experience, my aunt was in a hospital in Bayamón. They let me in with a hazmat suit to see her for 10 minutes. And the nurse said, “Unless you’re dying, even if you have an infection that can kill you, we cannot have surgery, because we don’t have water.” People need to be evacuated, and the Comfort sits there now with less than 20 people out of 3,000.
I don’t think it’s as nefarious as a conspiracy. I think that, as Puerto Ricans, we’ve been some—an island and a people that they have extracted from us, and now they want to extract all of us from the island.
– President Trump, “We cannot keep FEMA, the Military & the First Responders, who have been amazing (under the most difficult circumstances) in P.R. forever!”
I saw them partying at the Sheraton one night with a DJ playing the “Macarena,” hundreds and hundreds of FEMA, military, everywhere, having a good time—two miles where people still don’t have food and water.
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Rosa Clemente
independent journalist, just back from Puerto Rico, and 2008 vice-presidential nominee for the Green Party.
— source democracynow.org 2017-10-19