These past two days have been filled with planning, messages, and errands. I’ve mainly been contacting the various community leaders and orgs I’ll be visiting next week and reading up on current proposals and articles written by PR scholars.

Yesterday was a day filled with calls, conversations, and messages and more planning. I decided to head out for lunch and I went to a local bakery called La Ricomini which I always loved going to growing up. Their bread is my favorite along with their tres leches. I would mainly stop by here with my mom after school or for a snack when out around the town doing errands. Anyways, I wound up running into one of the Puerto Rican scholars I’ll be referencing in the next entry in relation to the state of Puerto Rico’s current economic climate, the economist Dr. José Alameda, and we sat down and chatted for a while about the project. We had a very interesting talk on Puerto Rico’s history and how past legislation has continued to pile up, creating very difficult obstacles Puerto Rican’s must confront when attempting to recover. He provided me with a few of his articles and presentations where he goes in depth into the nature of Puerto Rico’s debt and where it came from and through conversation, he detailed to me how this debt mixed with every major event since Hurricanes Irma and Maria, leaving Puerto Rico with the dire situation which continues to worsen through decisions imposed upon Puerto Ricans by La Junta. Some things to keep in mind for the next entry:

• Ley Foraker 1900
• Ley Jones 1917
• Ley 600 1950
• PROMESA -> La Junta
• “Calamidades”: Hurricanes Irma and Maria, the earthquakes of 2019, COVID 19.

This is a lot of information to process, but we’ll briefly discuss this so moving forward, the realities lived after disasters can be better understood.

While at the bakery, the power went out. The bakery has a generator, so some power was restored while there. Of course, that’s a luxury that mainly businesses have. The majority of residents just have to wait it out. The failing electrical system has been making power outages in municipalities pretty common since before Hurricane Maria, but with the total collapse of it after the event, it’s only gotten worse. It appears that the outage mainly affected the central area of the municipality; I’m staying with my aunt and she lives towards the outer portions, nearing the next municipality, so when we got home, there was still power.

Today, I drove up to Santurce to pick up the bass I’ll be using to practice while I’m away. Santurce is a lovely district in San Juan, known for being essentially an art center in Puerto Rico. The buildings are bright and colorful and unique murals are in almost every direction, with lovely shops and interesting architecture. Since I had the bass in the car, I couldn’t get out to walk around, so I’m very tempted to go back before I leave and take some pictures for the blog. I don’t recall ever walking around that district when visiting San Juan before. On our drive back to Mayagüez, we stopped to get some food. It was dark when we arrived and I noticed some streets that last I recalled, were struggling for lighting after the hurricane.