On my way from work today, I went and bought this month's National Geographic to read the article on PR. I was unimpressed. It wasn't true to its title. It was good in the first page but it all went downhill from there. The same with the pictures. It was pretty much an introduction to those who know nothing about Puerto Rico, which is understandable, but it was too simply written. Many in Puerto Rico are screaming bloody murder, many think this is some pro-independence scheme. First of all, the writer and photographer are both Caucasion-Americans who love Puerto Rico, but only can view it from the outside looking in. They wrote and photographed what they saw, which was a fiercely nationalistic people who are subversive colonial subjects of the USA and which many like it that way. There's a crime problem, drug problem, urban sprawl problem, and corruption, and the writer tried to put that all in a few pages and it didn't work out and he didn't sum it up.
What I didn't like the most was that he skimmed through much of the historical value of all this, besides a few mentionings of Operation Boostrap, (No mention of Luis Muñoz Marín or the PPD by name) section 936, the Americanization campaign, and Las Carpetas. He didn't sum it all to make one complete article on as to why these people are so nationalistic, but subversive and what does all its problems have to do with that.
I know he wasn't trying to make a book, but I looked at the sources at the magazine's website and there are tons of books that would've been more helpful in the history of PR and its relationship with PR; "The Disenchanted Island" for one.
People are overreacting over this article, it did a semi-good job in potraying the problems we have from an outsiders view and our uncertain future, but it didn't do a good job in answering the questions it presented in the article.
<span style=\'color:red\'>"You can probably change more hearts and minds with one good film than with thousands of e-mail pamphlets...." - John Cusack</span>
