On Tuesday, the FBI raided the IT offices of Doral Bank in Puerto Rico, citing an ongoing investigation. The officials didn't reveal much more, but given Doral's checkered past, which includes fraud and the fatal shooting of one ...
SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico (AP) – Puerto Rico police say they have seized a record 110 weapons as part of a one-day crackdown on crime across the U.S. territory. Police Chief Jose Caldero says officers also are serving arrest ...
From the United States District Attorney's Office for the District of Puerto Rico: SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico – On Thursday, December 11, 2014, a federal grand jury returned a 17-count indictment against former Lieutenant and ...
This statistic hasn't stopped the NRA from setting up shop, establishing their 51st chapter in the tropical US territory. Puerto Rico's sky-high murder rates prevail, despite its extremely strict gun laws, which have only ...
Professor Flores also studied Dominican and Salvadoran communities in New York. But his primary focus was on the experience of Puerto Ricans, reflecting his own heritage. Puerto Ricans, he said, are unique Americans on ...
Latino Rebels | Scapegoating Puerto Rico's Poor: Moving Away ... by Harry Franqui-Rivera
I also write this response to not favor any specific political solution to Puerto Rico's colonial situation. I favor decolonizing the island in a process in which Puerto Ricans have the power to decide—a process in which ...
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The offices of Doral Financial in San Juan, Puerto Rico, were raided as part of aninvestigation into the struggling bank.
The mysterious killing of a top executive is one of many troubles that have shaken Doral Financial and unnerved investors.
Puerto Rico has logged more than 4,000 confirmed cases of infection with the Chikungunya virus this year, the Health Department said Wednesday.
Thirty-three suspects in custody at a police station in the capital municipality of Chacao escaped through a hole in the wall, Venezuelan authorities said Wednesday.
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Puerto Rico expects to receive more than 1.5 million visitors from cruise ships docking during the fiscal year that ends on June 30, tourism director Ingrid Rivera said.
On the sidelines of the inauguration of Brazil’s President Dilma Rousseff at the Planalto Palace seat of Brazil’s Government, U.S. Vice President Joe Biden met briefly with Venezuela President Nicolas Maduro in a hand-shake facilitated by Uruguay President Jose “Pepe” Mujica.
Venezuela’s Nicolas Maduro said on Friday that he took the opportunity of an encounter with U.S. Vice President Joe Biden during Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff’s second inauguration to ask that Washington “respect” his country.
The Florida Keys, in the extreme southeast of the United States, will practice mosquito control with the aid of drones, which for the first time were approved for the task by the Federal Aviation Administration, or FAA, local media said.
Obama made Bush's foreign policy errors worse
Florida Keys Keynoter Now we have not only Russian nuclear armed bombers and submarines playing war games from the Arctic to the Gulf of Mexico and Caribbean, Chinese naval and airfield expansions in China seas in the middle of international shipping lanes challenging the ... and more » |
2015: ¿Año Nuevo? by Grupo CNE
Por: Sergio M. Marxuach
Confieso que siempre he encontrado rara la celebración del “año nuevo”. Simplemente, la tierra habrá terminado otra vuelta alrededor del sol en un periodo de 365.2425 días. Eso de acuerdo con el calendario Gregoriano, que reemplazó por razones litúrgicas al antiguo calendario Juliano por orden del Papa Gregorio XIII, y que fue adoptado por los países Católicos en 1582 cuando Felipe II de España ordenó que el jueves 4 de octubre de 1582 fuera seguido por el viernes 5 de octubre de 1582. Vale la pena señalar, según me lo recordó una amiga historiadora, que los países protestantes y otros cristianos del rito ortodoxo no adoptaron el nuevo calendario hasta mucho después. Por ejemplo, Inglaterra no lo hizo hasta 1752, Grecia hasta 1923 y la Unión Soviética hasta 1929. Además, aun algunos países que habían adoptado el calendario Gregoriano continuaron por años celebrando el comienzo del año nuevo en fechas diferentes.
Así que, después de todo, la diferencia entre el 31 de diciembre y el 1 de enero es básicamente ninguna. Más allá del cambio de un número en el calendario, todo sigue igual: los países en guerra siguen en guerra, los enfermos siguen enfermos, los ricos siguen acumulando riquezas, los pobres siguen siendo pobres y Puerto Rico sigue estancando y quebrado moral y financieramente. Igual que el año pasado y el anterior.
Sin embargo, los seres humanos hemos insistido en imbuir con un significado especial la conclusión de un año y el comienzo de otro. Muchas personas, familias, empresas y gobiernos utilizan esta época para concluir proyectos, terminar tareas pendientes, cambiar de trabajo, o poner en marcha nuevas iniciativas.
Puede ser que ese deseo de cambio sea algo natural, ya que tiene sentido, de manera intuitiva, aprovechar el cambio de calendario como excusa para llevar a cabo cambios en nuestra vida personal y en nuestra sociedad. Ahora bien, si ese deseo de cambio, ese propósito de enmienda, no está anclado firmemente en un análisis profundo de nuestra realidad, entonces no estaríamos haciendo otra cosa que entrando en el reino del pensamiento mágico, de la alucinación, de la enajenación de la realidad.
Por eso me preocupan las expresiones recientes de ciertos miembros de la clase gobernante y empresarial del país sobre como lo que hace falta en Puerto Rico es sencillamente “una dosis de optimismo” o “darle espacio a la esperanza”, entre otras simplezas, para que todo cambie mágicamente y volvamos a “ponerle el rico a Puerto Rico” en el 2015.
Me parece que sí de verdad queremos cambiar las cosas en Puerto Rico nos hacen falta tres cosas. Primero, capacidad para reflexionar. El diccionario de la Real Academia Española define “reflexionar” como “considerar nueva o detenidamente algo.” En el caso de Puerto Rico tenemos que reflexionar detenidamente sobre como llegamos aquí; ¿como surgió esta crisis?; ¿que lecciones podemos deducir de los triunfos y los fracasos del pasado?; ¿cuáles políticas fiscales, económicas y sociales funcionaron y cuáles no?
Segundo, necesitamos claridad de pensamiento. Santo Tomás de Aquino, antes de ponerse a escribir o dar una conferencia, rezaba una oración conocida como “Ante Studium”. En esa oración, Santo Tomás pedía la iluminación divina de los “rincones más oscuros” de su mente, además “de agudeza en el entendimiento, capacidad para recordar, facilidad en el aprendizaje, lucidez para la interpretación, y elocuencia al hablar”. Esa claridad de pensamiento es la que nos hace falta en Puerto Rico y no el discurso trillado, reducido a estribillos como “no hay otra alternativa”, “que paguen los ricos”, o “ni un impuesto más”, clichés que podrán sonar bien en una entrevista de radio o de televisión pero que no son más que un refugio cómodo para evitar el pesado trabajo intelectual que tenemos por delante.
Necesitamos pensar claramente sobre los cambios que tenemos que ejecutar. ¿Qué instituciones y organizaciones hay que reformar para diseñar una política económica racional en Puerto Rico? ¿Qué arreglos institucionales innovadores son posibles dadas las limitaciones políticas a las que nos enfrentamos? ¿Cuáles sectores económicos generan la mayor cantidad de conocimiento que podemos utilizar para movernos hacia la producción de bienes y servicios más complejos? ¿Qué política económica fomentaría esas actividades?
Finalmente, nos hace falta valentía moral para, como decía Vaclav Havel, dejar de vivir dentro de una mentira y vivir dentro de la verdad. Eso significa actuar cuando sea necesario actuar, hablar cuando haya que hablar y exigir cuando haya que exigir. No saben cuantas veces se nos acerca alguien al Centro para una Nueva Economía y nos dice ¿por qué ustedes no dicen esto o lo otro? Y mi respuesta usualmente es ¿y por qué usted no se atreve?
En Puerto Rico vivimos con una gran cobardía intelectual, con un profundo miedo existencial a hacer preguntas, a cuestionar lo que hacen nuestros gobernantes, y a dar la impresión de que estamos “creando problemas” a los poderes que son. Sí, en Puerto Rico hace falta más diálogo, pero no aquel que busca la reconciliación de diversos intereses económicos, políticos, sociales, o de clase basándose en el menor denominador común, sino ese diálogo, en palabras de Albert Camus, entre personas que se mantienen firmes en lo que son y que no tienen miedo de decir lo que de verdad piensan y tienen en la mente. Necesitamos el diálogo que derrota al silencio contundentemente, como la verdad a la mentira.
En suma, si de verdad queremos cambiar las cosas en el 2015, tenemos que reflexionar profundamente, pensar claramente, y actuar con valentía moral. Tenemos que ver las cosas como son, en su forma y color precisos y, parafraseando al escritor francés Roger Grenier, tenemos que descomponer nuestra realidad y recomponerla de otra manera que nos permita entenderla mejor y aprender algo sobre el mundo y la vida. De lo contrario nuestra caótica y pobre entendida existencia seguirá siendo incomprensible. Y el 2015 será igual que el 2014, que fue igual al 2013, que fue igual al…
El autor es Director de Política Pública del Centro para una Nueva Economía. Esta columna fue publicada originalmente en El Nuevo Día el 4 de enero de 2015.
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- Antigua movie draws Caribbean crowd at UK premiere
- Woman journalist fired in Haiti for reporting sexual harassment
- US Coast Guard rescues man in Bahamas after plane crashes in ocean
- Twelve former Puerto Rico police officers sentenced to prison
- Billion-dollar investment opportunities seen in Cuba
- Haitian president appoints new interim prime minister
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250 exotic animals seized in PR
Authorities in Puerto Rico have seized some 250 exotic animals they say were bou ...
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Carrión wants Banco Popular in Cuba
The chief of Puerto Rico’s biggest bank said Friday he’s interested in opening a ...
 PR unemployment rate holds at 14%
Puerto Rico’s nonfarm payroll jobs edged up in November on a year-over-year basi ...
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Doral selling off another $205M in assets
Doral Bank, a wholly-owned subsidiary of Doral Financial Corp., is selling off a ...
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Deep US policy shift on Cuba renews debate about potential impact in PR
Washington’s profound shift in is Cuba policy outlined Wednesday revived a long ...
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PR economy ‘bouncing along bottom’ into the new year, analysts say
Puerto Rico’s economy continued to “bounce along the bottom” in 2014 and conditi ...
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Big changes coming to Cuba tourism with US opening
HAVANA — U.S. tourists are roaming the streets of Old Havana, listening to lectu ...
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FBI agents raid Doral headquarters
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Key PR economic index drops again; 2.1% fall is third deepest of 2014
A key gauge of Puerto Rico’s economy posted another drop in November, marking ne ...
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PR eyeing local sale of iguana meat
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PR monkeys remain vital to research
CAYO SANTIAGO -- Scientists hope findings from a new research project involving ...
 PR expects record 1.5M cruise visitors
Puerto Rico expects to receive more than 1.5 million visitors from cruise ships ...
 San Se festival organizers slap City Hall with $1.5M lawsuit
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Stabroek News |
US-Cuba rapprochement exposes Venezuela's Maduro
Stabroek News Also speaking at the Mercosur summit, Ricardo Patino, the foreign minister for Ecuador – another leftist member of the regional ALBA bloc – said he hoped the U.S-Cuba change would provoke a re-think over sanctions on Venezuela. “President Obama's ... |
Jerusalem Post |
Venezuela's role in warming Cuba - US relations (+video)
Christian Science Monitor Bolivia's President Evo Morales (center l.), Cuba's President Raul Castro (center r.), and Venezuela's President Nicolas Maduro attend the closing ceremony of the 10th Bolivarian Alternative for the Americas (ALBA) alliance summit in Havana December 14. Cuba shift is long overdue and marks the end of anachronistic policyDallas Morning News (blog) Raul Castro welcomes renewal of relations with USNorthwest Georgia News all 7,858 news articles » |
The Guardian |
As US-Cuba relations warm, fuming Venezuelan president left in the cold
The Guardian Also speaking at the Mercosur summit, Ricardo Patino, the foreign minister for Ecuador – another leftist member of the regional Alba bloc – said he hoped the US-Cuba change would provoke a re-think over sanctions on Venezuela. “President Obama's ... Venezuela's role in warming Cuba - US relations (+video)Christian Science Monitor Latin America cheers US-Cuba rapprochementDaily Mail all 195 news articles » |
This article is a joint-publication of NACLA and edmorales.net.
Map of the Caribbean Islands (John Pinkerton, 1818 / Wikimedia Commons)
Cuba y Puerto Rico son / Cuba and Puerto Rico are
De un pájaro dos alas / Two wings of the same bird
Reciben flores y balas / They receive flowers and bullets
Sobre el mismo corazón / With the same heart
—Lola Rodríguez de Tío
The “momentous” yet seemingly long-planned announcement that the United States and Cuba have agreed to re-establish diplomatic relations was an odd end to a chaotic year of crises and strife. From the summer of renewed violence in Gaza and the surge of unaccompanied children on the Mexican border to the anguish of Mike Brown/Ferguson and Eric Garner/Staten Island and the disappearance of 43 students in Ayotzinapa, there seemed to be no end to conflagrations of long-stirring conflicts that expose the myth of American exceptionalism. The cost of freedom in the first-est of First Worlds that we live in is the increasing precariousness of life outside our borders—a carnage that is often not connected to our comfort, yet is a result of the burgeoning inequality created by the gospel of globalization. Yet now, perhaps one of the sorest points of contention in the hemisphere, the 50-year U.S.-imposed embargo of Cuba, is finally being acknowledged as a mistake.
But what will come now, with the embargo still largely in place? Even as talking heads and pundits from MSNBC to Fox News, Breitbart to The Nation, are weighing in on the political and economic fallout of the rapprochement between Barack and Raúl–one that may yet culminate in the tearing down of the commercial wall between free-trade capitalism and the socialist experiment of the United States’s closer-than-close neighbor—there is uncertainty and confusion about what it all means. That’s why today, on holiday in my second home, the unincorporated island territory, de facto colony, and imaginary nation of Puerto Rico, I’m going to engage not in a North-South cloud of speculation, but a Caribbean sea of questions from one eastern wing of this archipelagic bird to its western other.
The advent of Obam-apertura, the great “opening” that the U.S. neoliberal narrative holds as a form of liberation for a suffering people, is also something its internal corporate banking cabal sees as a way to recapture a lost market. While there is much to celebrate as a victory for the Cuban people—the release of the remaining members of the Cuban Five, for example—the opening creates the possibility of a sudden windfall of previously unexploited consumers and a workforce accustomed to even lower wages that are foisted on places like Mexico, India, and Vietnam. For an American economy that has been largely stagnant—aside from a recent spurt sparked by falling gas prices and temporary holiday season hires—the opening up of Cuba has the look of a last-ditch opportunity to stave off looming worldwide economic disaster. And for a president reeling from bad press—even his accomplishments are neutered by right-wing media’s echo chamber—and a disastrous midterm election, it serves as an instant legacy-making machine, like Nixon’s engagement of China and Reagan’s hollow triumph over the Soviet Union. Much has also been said about how the move seeks to repair relations with the rest of Latin America, which had decided to invite Cuba to the next Summit of the Americas despite U.S. opposition.
The implications for U.S. politics are striking, of course. In one fell swoop, Obama has defused several attacks from a triumphant Republican Party gearing itself up to attempt to end Obamacare, impeach him for his executive action on immigration reform, and otherwise gum up the works with threats of closing down the federal government again. He has placed several of his most hysterical critics–notably the increasingly apoplectic Cuban-American senators Ted Cruz and Marco Rubio–on the wrong side of the issue, hurt Jeb Bush’s chances at a presidential run and possibly destroyed the Republican strategy of winning the presidency through Florida (remember the hanging chads of 2000?). The home base of rabid anti-Communism that Republicans have been banking on since Reagan won in 1980 has begun to crumble on its own, as Democratic-leaning Puerto Ricans havebegun to populating the Orlando area and successive Cuban American generations have become more moderate. But this now may be the death blow. Obama’s Latino-friendly moves have already made him the “First Latino President” in Politico’s eyes, anyway, further damaging the Republican brand.
Yet as much as this has all the earmarks of a shrewd Obama move, this is clearly not just about politics. Despite their denials, The New York Times editorial board seems to have been in on this whole scheme, having published a series of editorials beginning in October calling for normalization of relations with Cuba. While on record with The Washington Post as denying any advance knowledge, the shocking speed of their carefully crafted narrative about the secret talks, the “18 months of furtive diplomacy,” had the feel of those notorious Times obituaries—prepared sometimes months in advance—when famous figures who have long suffered health problems finally pass away. Deriving their agenda from neoliberal economists who see Cuba’s ultimate goal as transitioning away from communism and into the global capitalist economy, the Council on Foreign Relations has had Latin America expert Julia Sweig speculating on “Cuba After Communism” for quite some time. Could it be that an institution that lists Nicaraguan Contra pal Elliot Abrams as an “expert” and Citibank/Goldman Sachs hedge fund king Robert Rubin on its board might be part of a broader neoliberal agenda to put Obam-apertura on the front burner?
All of this was presaged, of course by Raúl’s 2013 relaxation of Cuba’s migration laws, neoliberal-esque shrinking of government employment rolls, and allowing a limited expansion of small businesses. These policy changes were more bold than this December’s rapprochement, but received considerably less attention in the mainstream press. Yet as Castro tried to structurally change the Cuban economy, the United States is completely unwilling to change course from its orgy of deregulation of finance capital transactions, despite the fact that it continues to go down the road of freewheeling high-risk banking and investment activity as its main profit-making engine. On December 14, three days before Obama’s announcement, a Times Op-Ed, entitled “Cuba’s Economy at a Crossroads,” argued that “Cubans, who have been subjected for decades to a centrally planned economy that is among the world’s most dysfunctional.” But was it really more dysfunctional than an economy like that of the United States, stripped of governmental regulation and with a banking system turned into a high-stakes gambling casino? And how “functional” do Obama and the U.S. economy look when two days later, December 16, Obama signs a spending bill that rolls back banking regulations and allows a return to the corrosive banking practices that caused the 2008 recession in the first place?
Clearly, the Cuban revolution is far from perfect. A different kind of class system, based around party membership rather than material wealth is as ossified as ever, and a new “minority” class of those who have prospered through outsized remittances and involvement in licensed small business have intensified resentment from below as well as eroded the social contract of Cuba’s socialist egalitarianism. Black Cubans have not benefitted as much as lighter-skinned Cubans and there is persecution of dissidents and a raft of political prisoners. While freedom of expression is clearly limited in ways not typical of capitalist democracies, isn’t Cuba an example of how state control is just more overt, not carefully concealed by being funneled through market forces? In the “free” world we have plenty of political prisoners, and the captivity of pro-independence leader Oscar López Rivera—whom Telesur is claiming is the subject of negotiations for imminent release, in another Obama-the-Latino-president gambit—is a sore point for Puerto Ricans.
In Cuba, the Internet is largely unavailable and media is tightly controlled; in the United States we have censorship through market forces, which rarely promote art and culture with progressive political content, and media that elide many stories that conflict with the agenda of corporate ownership. We have a simultaneously sophisticated and crude way of policing ourselves—depending on what neighborhood we live in–and unlike Cuba, we don’t have a sustained commitment to public education, medicine, and the cultural expressions of non-elite communities. Perhaps most disappointing is the fact that in public discourse it is almost impossible to have serious discussions about economic systems that are alternatives to free-market capitalism.
If we did have those sort of discussions, we would be able to see that the future of Cuba is not just about how its tentative annexation into the free trade zones the United States seeks to establish across the hemisphere will affect foreign investment and local consumption patterns. That is, ask not how you can become a tourist in Varadero or sell tractors there—ask how Cubans themselves will balance their desire for more access to goods and material wealth with their desire to preserve the social safety net that free-market capitalists hope to make a distant memory by mid-century. Ask, how much further can Cubans seek to democratize their own workplace, create decision-making space and establish autonomy from party ideology as their aging, as Cuba’s sluggish state framework makes concessions to neoliberism?
These are questions that Puerto Ricans might want to ask about Cuba, since, as Lola Rodríguez de Tío, proto-feminist and fierce nationalist suggested in her 1893 poem, “A Cuba” (For Cuba) we are two wings of the same bird. While pouring through the various analyses of the Cuban economy over the last two weeks I noticed a few similarities between the two islands. Both—although Cuba seems to be far ahead in this project—are pushing major new seaports in the hopes of handling shipping commerce between the United States, Europe and Latin America; both feature an aging population whose needs will be a major consideration in future budget projections; and both, unlike state capitalist model China, have economies heavily centered on services rather than manufacturing.
Yet Puerto Rico and Cuba might also represent two widely divergent historical points on the free-trade timeline. Puerto Rico–whose agricultural economy was gutted to create a light-manufacturing model in the 1950s that featured a hefty dose of external investment capital–was a dry run for free-trade policies like NAFTA. U.S. corporations experimented with off-shore operations using a non-English-speaking, lower-wage work force in Puerto Rico long before Burger Kings and Walmarts invaded Mexico. It was the vastly lower wages that U.S. corporations found in Mexico after NAFTA that helped spin Puerto Rico into its current debilitating fiscal crisis, one immeasurably worsened by atoxic package of credit default swaps cleverly manipulated by, among others, Robert Rubin’s old shop, Goldman Sachs.
While in the short run, Cuban wages are so low that Cuba’s immediate entry into the global capitalist economy could even raise them. But in the long run, what would Cuba lose by submitting itself to the neoliberal plan? Puerto Rico, and other economies that have bought into the foreign investment, export-driven model ultimately see most of the wealth they create getting sucked into predatory banking structures, and their governments forced to go into debt to provide basic services. By 2012, the ratio of government debt to the island’s GNP rose to 100.6%. Now at around $73 billion, Puerto Rico’s debt has become the obscure object of desire for hedge funds, whose mom and pop investors are more concerned with the fate of their 401Ks than the island’s slowly declining and increasingly poor population.
If Cuba were to take a deep breath and look at what’s happened to an island it has shared such a deep history with—going back as far as the late nineteenth century when leaders of Cuban and Puerto Rican independence movements met in New York and designed flags that were each other’s inverse—and if Cuba were to see Puerto Rico as the beginning of the free-trade economic era we’re living in now, it would have to ask itself, are we the end game? I have faith they are already ahead of this game. No doubt the Cuban people, who are well versed in discussions of production and consumption, of capitalism, socialism, and workplace democracy, will know what’s at stake and find a way to make Obam-apertura work for them.
Ed Morales is a freelance journalist and author of Living in Spanglish (St. Martin’s Press). He teaches at Columbia University’s Center for the Study of Ethnicity and Race, and is a NACLA contributing editor.
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WAPA TVPuerto Rico has restrictive firearms laws. Getting a concealed carry permit to legally tote a handgun is an arbitrary affair that largely comes down to a matter of knowing the right people. As with all laws that give government officials the authority to dispense favors, this creates an opportunity for a market—and Lieutenant Sergio Calderón-Marrero, head of the Puerto Rico Police Department's Bayamón Criminal Investigations Corps, is just the sort of guy to introduce supply to demand. Unfortunately, federal officials don't care for those sort of shortcuts, and the former police lieutenant has been arrested and indicted.SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico – On Thursday, December 11, 2014, a federal grand jury returned a 17-count indictment against former Lieutenant and head of Bayamón CIC, Puerto Rico Police Department Sergio Calderón-Marrero for conspiracy to commit identity fraud, unlawful production of identification documents, aggravated identity theft, attempted witness tampering and attempted obstruction of justice, announced Rosa Emilia Rodríguez-Vélez, United States Attorney for the District of Puerto Rico. The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and the Puerto Rico Police Department (PRPD) are in charge of the investigation.Calderón-Marrero would obtain forged firearms handling course certificates, forge signatures of his clients, and use the notary seal of a deceased Attorney and Notary Public to circumvent the appropriate legal process and obtain Concealed Carry Weapons Permits illegally for his clients.
The feds say that over the course of two years, from 2012 to early 2014, Calderón-Marrero pulled in $105,000 from his extracurricular business activities. They, rather unkindly, want to deprive him of his proceeds.
Officials like Calderón-Marrero who lubricate the wheels of restrictive regimes and intrusive laws with the grease of corruption make life more livable for many people in a multitude of jurisdictions. Admittedly they're a second best to not having restrictive regimes and intrusive laws to begin with.
But officials like Calderón-Marrero are certainly preferable to honest and sincere enforcers of authoritarianism, as C.S. Lewis noted:
Of all tyrannies, a tyranny exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It may be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron's cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end, for they do so with the approval of their own conscience.
Spare us the tyranny, please, but if we can't be spared that, let it be enforced by the likes of Calderón-Marrero, from whom a little breathing room can at least be purchased.
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Murders in Puerto Rico at the close of 2014 numbered 680, the lowest figure since 2000 and a drop of 23 percent compared with the year before, something that police attribute to better crime detection and citizens' cooperation.
The chief of the Puerto Rico Police Department, Jose Caldero, said Tuesday in a statement to Efe that the reasons for the significant decline in the number of murders are to be found in those two points plus the commitment of all the cops on the force.
"The crime rate continues to drop as we get better at arresting criminals, dismantling their organizations and taking them to court. These achievements are thanks to the commitment of our police officers together with the Department of Justice and its team of prosecutors," Caldero said.
The police chief said that "citizens' cooperation has also been fundamental," because "every day we get tips that help our investigations."
"Our plan of operations focuses on three main objectives: detection, prevention and citizen service," the top officer of the PRPD said.
Caldero noted that the creation of a high-profile investigative division has been key to driving the crime rate down, and an example of that is the percentage of cases solved of Type 1 crimes - including murder and rape - which has now risen to 78 percent, compared with 68 percent at the end of 2013.
The drop in the number of crimes this year was 30 percent compared with 2012 and 41 percent compared with 2011, the year when 1,164 violent deaths marked the highest number since such statistics began to be kept in Puerto Rico.
Murders on the Caribbean island went on an upward curve starting in 2000, though it was after 2008, with the effects of the economic crisis still suffered in the U.S. commonwealth, when the numbers went through the roof to make security Puerto Rico's biggest problem.
Caldero became police chief last April 29 after five other chiefs had "paraded" through that office in recent years, and who for different reason weren't on the job long enough to carry out long-term prevention policies.
The decline in murders has coincided with the internal conflict taking place within the island's security forces due to the discontent of policemen over their wages.
For several days during the past two weeks, cops made good on their threat to carry out a somewhat undercover walkout, with an absenteeism almost five times greater than usual.
The policemen's ill feelings originated with the Legislature's approval of a reform of public employee pensions, which in general were bad news for both their working conditions and their retirement. EFE
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MGN
SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico (AP) – Puerto Rico police say they have seized a record 110 weapons as part of a one-day crackdown on crime across the U.S. territory.
Police Chief Jose Caldero says officers also are serving arrest warrants for 87 suspects accused of drug trafficking and weapon violations. Puerto Rico police and U.S. federal agents have arrested 63 suspects so far.
He said authorities also seized 47 cars during the island-wide sweep that began early Tuesday.
A spokesman for the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives said about 90 percent of the guns seized came from Florida.
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SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico - A Puerto Rico police officer assigned to protect the U.S. territory's governor accidentally ran over two American tourists, authorities said Friday.
Police said agent Orlando Rodriguez hit the couple with a Harley Davidson motorcycle late Thursday as they crossed a poorly lit street in the capital of San Juan. Authorities identified the couple as 78-year-old Robert Hedley and 64-year-old Harriet Power of Pennsylvania. Public records show they live in Bala Cynwyd, in suburban Philadelphia.
Both are theatre professors. Hedley teaches at Temple University and Power at Villanova University, according to Peter Reynolds, head of musical theatre at Temple University. Both universities are in Pennsylvania.
Police said Hardley has a hip fracture and his wife has a pelvis fracture. Both also have head injuries but are expected to recover.
Authorities said Rodriguez tested negative for alcohol in a breathalyzer test.
An investigation of the accident is underway. Jorge Hernandez, director of the police department's traffic division, said Rodriguez apparently swerved to avoid the couple but they ran in the same direction.
Hernandez said the couple arrived in Puerto Rico on Christmas Eve.
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Marc Levy in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, contributed to this report.
© Copyright 2014 Prince George Citizen
Puerto Rico has logged more than 4,000 confirmed cases of infection with the Chikungunya virus this year, the Health Department said Wednesday.
Lab tests confirmed 118 new cases during the Nov. 12-Dec. 9 period, chief epidemiologist Brenda Rivera Garcia said, which brought the total to 4,185, pending data for the rest of December.
"Most of the cases confirmed in this report are in the western area of the island," she said in a statement. "It is important that residents in this region's municipalities take steps to protect themselves and to eradicate mosquito breeding sites both around houses and work areas."
Chikungunya, like dengue fever, is spread by the Aedes aegypti mosquito.
Rivera Garcia urged residents to continue using insect repellants and wearing clothes that limit exposure to mosquito bites.
The Chikungunya virus is responsible for five deaths on the island this year, according to the Puerto Rico Health Department.
Puerto Rican authorities declared a Chikungunya epidemic in July.
First detected in Africa in the 1950s, Chikungunya did not appear in the Americas until 2013. There is no vaccine for the virus. EFE
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Puerto Rico picks developer for former naval site
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FBI Searches Doral Financial's Offices in Puerto Rico
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Roosevelt Roads U.S. naval station
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| Puerto Rico The Department of Economic Development and Commerce photo |
The Associated Press
Published: December 24, 2014
SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico — Puerto Rico's government has chosen a U.S. real estate company to redevelop an abandoned U.S. naval station on the island's eastern coast.
The Economic Development Department announced in a news release Monday that Virginia-based Clark Realty Capital is expected to invest $3.2 billion as part of a 30-year project that would include hotels, offices, residences, schools and a cruise ship port. The project is expected to generate 28,000 jobs over the length of the project.
The department said it expects to finalize the deal by June 2015.
The former Roosevelt Roads U.S. naval station closed in 2004 after the military stopped using the nearby island of Vieques as a bombing range. Attempts to redevelop the site have been stalled in part because of the island's sluggish economy.
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SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico (AP) — Federal authorities said Tuesday they have dismantled a ring that imported tons of drugs from South America and invested most of the billion-dollar proceeds in construction projects across Puerto Rico.
Among the 17 suspects facing drug-trafficking and money-laundering charges are local businessmen and lawyers, according to U.S. Attorney Rosa Emilia Rodriguez.
The suspected leader of the group, Carlos Morales Davila, had been arrested in 2011 and ran the organization from prison, where he is currently serving a 12-year sentence, said Pedro Janer, acting special agent in charge of the Drug Enforcement Administration's Caribbean division.
Janer said he believes the organization has been dismantled with the 17 arrest warrants issued Tuesday following a federal grand jury indictment. Some of the suspects were already in prison while others were arrested in Puerto Rico, officials said.
The group is suspected of transporting large amounts of cocaine and heroin from South America to Puerto Rico since at least 2008, using the nearby island of Vieques as the entry point, Rodriguez said. The suspects are accused of using the commercial ferry from Vieques to Puerto Rico to help transport the drugs, she said.
Rodriguez said the organization invested the money in properties including 65 homes, 15 cars and several luxury boats. A portion of the money also financed construction of a building for a local university, with a developer among the suspects charged, she said.
Rodriguez said a court will ultimately decide what happens to those properties.
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