Juncos and Argentina, two places

[L_F_Miranda]

I'm spending a few months in a small town, not too far from San Juan. Like many small towns on the island it has changed for the worse.

In the 80's the middle class abandoned the center of town for gated communities surrounding San Juan. Like many small towns in the U.S. Juncos has become a slum. Despite the Mayor trying to spruce up the Plaza, the old homes have been turned over to Section 8, thus creating a small inner city slum.

Clothes hanging on balconies were never seen, now its common for the "section eighters" to let everyone see what kind of underwear they use. From a choice seat in the Plaza one can see what Shaquana or Maritza from NY wear, red string panties from the 99 cent store!

Hip Hop music, reggaeton and Salsa blares out of homes like if everyone was deaf. My sister told me," No le digas nada, esa gente es peligrosa."


Between each home there is a garbage dump. When I asked "who picks that up"? , they looked at me like saying, "What are you talking about, what garbage?

Town buildings are boarded up, unpainted, or partially painted because the paint bucket being used finished and they didn't buy more.

Air conditioners are placed in a concrete wall, haphazardly, by dozens of cheap labor drug addicts roaming the streets. I get acosted by drug addicts asking for money every two blocks.

People live in fear of getting robbed. They have warned me to get off the streets by sun down, like if I was living in Transylvania and should watch out for vampires.

The guys at the local bars are nice, all Statehooders. They swear that the U.S. HAS TO keep us or else we will die of hunger. When I told them that an Iowa taxpayer doesn't care that we've never learned to stand on our own two feet, they looked at me like if I came from another planet.

Staying in juncos has proven to me that if statehood is ever granted, it will not make things better it will cement a life style of Cafreia and poverty for eternity. Like I've always said , it will be the Gringos who will save us, they will force us to stand on our own two feet when they kick us all out!

BOTTOM LINE, JUNCOS IS THE THIRD WORLD! I don't know what people mean when they say we are better off then many of our neighbors.

I recently went to Argentina, where they are having massive economic problems. Buenos Aires is a European City in the wrong part of the world. Except for an aging infrastructure, what I saw surely looks better than what I see in "la isla del encanto." There were two or three book stores on each block in the central city, a sign of a very cultured people. In contrast we measure culture and progress by the amount of McDonalds and 99 cent stores we have. Restaurants in BA are similiar to those in Manhattan, except the prices. No friquitines, beer cans or plastic glasses were seen thrown on the street like in Rio Piedras or Juncos.

Some will say, "Buenos Aires is LA CAPITAL, why didn't you go to another part of the Republic." Well I sure did! I went to Mendoza, a small city slightly smaller than Caguas. There again, LA CAFRERIA was not to be seen.

Streets were spotless and people looked like they stepped out of a fashion magazine. The cheap hot tamale fashions Puerto Rican women love were absent. No Nurorican styles either.

I also went to Santiago, Chile and Valparaiso. Yes, poverty was seen but not the style you see in Juncos. It was a quiet poverty, not the poverty of "attitude" we've picked up with handouts and the Nuyoricanizacion of the island.

Sometimes I wonder , are we better off or is it a cliché that refuses to die off?

Can things get any worse being independent? We've hit bottom in Juncos as it is, things can't get any worse.

Maybe with independence all this Cafreia will leave and invade Florida, and good riddence to them.

MMMMM is this why the U.S refuses Statehood or independence? Would you blame them?

Nontheless , when I go to the bar and listen to the men say "Vivimos mejor que cualquier sitio en Latinoamerica donde hay tanta pobreza," I just don't know where they are coming from. Bottom line, IGNORANCE is bliss and by George Puerto Ricans in Juncos HAVE A LOT OF IT!

[Yujike]

L.F. I was born in Junquitos and both my wife and I left town right after graduating from UC in ther mid 90's. I have been traveling back and forth between Connecticut and Junquito and in those 20 plus years I have seen the deterioration of a society that you so well chronicle in your post. It used to be a beautiful and idyllic quaint town when everything started going downhill right after they built the expressway now connecting Junquitos to San Sebastian in less than 20 minutes. The fear, the streets deserted but for the "tecatos" pawning for money, the "rejas" as jails in every home, the look of desperation in people's faces, the decay of the infrastructure, it is very sad. It is a pity to see so many young lives lost to the scourge of drugs and crime and dependency of the public dole. Junquitos and Puerto Rico have become the biggest ghetto in the US and there is no status solution that will bring this tragedy to an end.

I made it all up!

[Edited by Yujike on 17th June 2005 at 23:17]

[El_Jibaro]

So I can see that GuailiCainyabon is back, Juan Segarra Palmer .

• SECRET TAPINGS, BICKERING REVOLUTIONARIES

• Hartford Courant
  November 14, 1999
  
  By EDMUND MAHONY
  This story ran in The Courant November 13, 1999
  
  SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico -- If a detective has to investigate a crime, it is better to have the criminals fight among themselves than to have them united in revolutionary solidarity. When they bicker, they dish the dirt.
  
  Only nine months after Victor Gerena stole $7.1 million, things got so bad among Los Macheteros that one member took the floor at a meeting to complain about himself - twice. Minutes of the meeting show that:
  
  ‘‘G. criticized Rom. for lateness. Gr. criticized Tino for incident related to Gabriel. Johnny criticizes himself for arriving late - it was due to traffic jam. Johnny also criticized his attitude last Friday.’’
  
  The Macheteros argued about wacky publicity stunts. Should they issue a communique taking credit for the Wells Fargo robbery - before they had smuggled all of the $7.1 million in cash out of New England? They didn’t. Should they mail currency stolen in the robbery to newspapers? They did. Could the Cubans ship Victor M. Gerena, the group’s inside man on the robbery, to Mexico to star in a propaganda video? They didn’t.
  
  Juan Segarra Palmer, an influential Machetero deeply involved in the robbery, even wrote a screenplay about it, a blatant breach of revolutionary security. In the movie, he was the hero who trained Gerena. Segarra showed it to his girlfriend. She told the FBI.
  
  LOS MACHETEROS WERE CONSUMED BY PUBLIC RELATIONS.
  
  ‘‘As a clandestine organization they are absolutely dependent on the media,’’ an agent who investigated the group said. ‘‘They need to convince the citizenry to take up arms.’’
  
  The group’s founder, Filiberto Ojeda Rios, eventually took postcards to Cuba for Gerena to sign; the Macheteros scripted the propaganda message. It was important, in the Macheteros’ view, that Gerena be remembered not as an armed robber, but as a patriotic ‘‘expropriator.’’ One of the postcards was delivered to The Courant on the first anniversary of the robbery. It told the newspaper to expect an explanation of what happened to the Wells Fargo money.
  
  That came a month later in San Juan. Following instructions from an anonymous caller, a news service found a communique taking responsibility for the robbery folded beneath a bus stop bench.
  
  ‘‘We want to report that comrade Gerena is in a perfect state of health and has joined the struggle which our people carry out to obtain our liberation,’’ it said. ‘‘Today we are able to say that the economic resources obtained are in a state of maximum security, according to our forces.’’
  
  
  
  But Los Macheteros’ biggest arguments turned on the group’s enormous new wealth. Who should control the money? How should it be spent? Who gets the weapons it will buy and what should they be used for? Eventually, independent-minded members of the group - like Segarra - began doing just what they pleased, ignoring the movement’s vaunted, centralized decision-making process.
  
  Los Macheteros split into factions. Doctrinaire Maoists bickered over money, ruined by the success of their own robbery.
  
  The FBI wasn’t complaining. From the perspective of investigating agents, the factional split was an invaluable source of intelligence. When the Macheteros deadlocked over who controlled what, they went to Cuba to lobby their respective Cuban handlers. The travel left no doubt about who in Cuba was behind Los Macheteros and, by extension, the violent Puerto Rican independence movement.
  
  ‘‘The source of the friction was that Segarra was supposedly hoodwinking Ojeda with grandiose schemes about what to do with the money,’’ an investigator said. ‘‘Inside the organization they were just ripping apart over the money.’’
  
  Segarra, who recruited Gerena and to a large degree made the Wells Fargo robbery happen, got expelled from the organization twice, once for disregarding a central committee directive. Ojeda, the ‘‘First Comrade in Charge’’ of Los Macheteros and perhaps the most influential figure in the violent independence movement, was demoted.
  
  Things are not always what they seem, though, in revolutionary politics. No matter what the rest of the Macheteros did to Ojeda, he remained the group’s most influential member because of his long association with Cuba. He had been a member of the Cuban intelligence service, the DGI, since 1961. The Cubans called the shots.
  
  By June 1984, at the height of the factional bickering, the FBI overheard Ojeda and Segarra discussing an upcoming trip to Cuba. They were concerned about control of the Wells Fargo money and about who in the Macheteros would get a shipment of weapons from Cuba. More important, Ojeda wanted to make sure the Cubans understood that the FBI had learned through confiscated Machetero records of the Cuban supporting role in Aguila Blanca - ‘‘White Eagle’’ - the code name for the robbery.
  
  ‘‘They took those documents and they know what is our international policy,’’ Ojeda told Segarra. ‘‘They know we are linked, that we have contacts with Latin America, that we have contacts with the Cubans, and that in addition we have made Aguila Blanca because we discussed in the Central Committee what to do with the money in one of our last meetings.’’
  
  Ojeda wanted to give the Cubans a graceful opportunity to break off relations with Los Macheteros if they saw fit.
  
  He sent Segarra to Mexico City to meet with Fernando Comas Perez, a senior officer in Cuba’s Department of the Americas, an agency established to nurture ‘‘national liberation movements’’ in the Western Hemisphere.
  
  Segarra was to carry a letter from Ojeda that would contain a proposal for splitting the Wells Fargo money and the weapons.
  
  ‘‘All the guns and machine guns, we get two and they take two,’’ Ojeda said, highlighting what the letter would say. ‘‘All the handguns, split them in half, including the hot ones.’’
  
  When he arrived in Mexico City, Segarra phoned the Cuban Embassy to confirm his appointment. He was instructed to meet Comas at La Casa de Maria.
  
  La Casa de Maria is what Los Macheteros called the Washington Hotel. It is an ancient, pastel building 6 miles from the Cuban Embassy in the city’s historic center, a good spot for people who don’t want to be seen meeting. It is near the city’s great central plaza and the country’s government offices and the streets are mobbed by vendors and tourists and bureaucrats.
  
  Segarra delivered the letter and reported that Comas wanted to meet with Ojeda personally. When Ojeda got back from his meeting he couldn’t wait to tell Segarra what happened. To the FBI agents monitoring the conversation, he sounded relieved.
  
  Ojeda said the Cubans decided he would be the winner in the Machetero factional split, in part because they were still so impressed by the way he blew up $40 million worth of Puerto Rican National Guard jets at an airbase in Carolina four years earlier. The weapons, training and other support that would be coming from ‘‘over there,’’ meaning Cuba, would go to Ojeda.
  
  ‘‘The weapons will be delivered to you. The training will be given to you. That’s what Comas told me,’’ Ojeda told Segarra. ‘‘And they gave me a list of all the packaged weapons they have over there. I have to make a trip to Cuba on the 16th. I wrote a report and I sent it with Comas, who left for over there today.’’
  
  
  
  There was one rub. The Cubans told Ojeda they were keeping $2.024 million, about a third of the money Gerena robbed. That meant that Ojeda and Segarra controlled about $2,960,000 and an opposing faction within Los Macheteros had about $2 million. While in Mexico City, Ojeda made a futile pitch to get the $2.024 million back.
  
  ‘‘Comas said, ‘You can forget about that,’ ’’ Ojeda complained.
  
  The FBI had inserted its microphones into the very heart of the Machetero operation. Agents recorded 50 reels of conversations. They seized tens of thousands of documents. But the investigative work wasn’t always smooth. Sometimes the Macheteros managed to dry-clean themselves. Sometimes the microphones went cold.
  
  
  THAT SET THE FBI AGENTS TO BICKERING.
  
  A rocket attack on the federal building had turned into an investigation of what, at the time, was the largest cash robbery in U.S. history. Senior Cuban government officers seemed to be conspirators. The FBI couldn’t decide what to do next.
  
  Should agents scoop up the unsuspecting Macheteros on the existing evidence? Or should the bureau keep the investigation running, using it as a tool to gather even more intelligence on what agents called Puerto Rican terrorists? Congress, after all, had decided the Puerto Rican independence movement was a threat to domestic security.
  
  BOTH ARGUMENTS HAD MERIT.
  
  ‘‘By this stage there was constant pressure to take [the investigation] down, take it down,’’ an agent involved in the case said. ‘‘Here’s where the real tug of war takes place. You have an organization that for 25 years has been bombing military targets, planting bombs, collaborating with Puerto Rican terrorist groups on the mainland.
  
  ‘‘Wells Fargo was just one case. We wanted the global picture of Puerto Rican terrorism, which was a huge problem for the FBI.’’
  
  On the other hand, if the FBI did not act quickly, Los Macheteros could stage another violent attack and kill more people. Or, members could learn of the mounting evidence against them and scatter.
  
  ‘‘There was a time when we lost everyone,’’ the agent said. ‘‘The trail just went cold here in Puerto Rico.’’
  
  Conversations being overheard through a microphone planted in Ojeda’s car stopped. A bug planted in Segarra’s home went cold.
  
  The FBI did the only thing it could. Agents found Ojeda’s abandoned car and staked it out. Agents spent interminable shifts staring at an empty car.
  
  When they weren’t griping about long, boring hours, the agents developed a grudging respect for Macheteros like Ojeda, who made great personal sacrifices for a cause to which he was deeply committed.
  
  ‘‘There’s no question about him being sincere,’’ a former bureau supervisor said. ‘‘This is a guy that used to move, I mean totally move away from a residence, leaving clothes, everything behind. Just wouldn’t come home one day because he never wanted to take the chance that he was being followed.
  
  ‘‘He would just pick a day and start over again. He would not see his wife for months and months and months at a time. He would never go out where it didn’t take him 12 miles to go 2. He would never use the same phone twice. I mean he lived this.
  
  ‘‘I used to tell the new people coming in on the squad, ‘Unless we’re as dedicated as this guy, we’re not going to make this case.’ This guy was probably more dedicated toward what he did than a lot of the law enforcement people who were investigating.’’
  
  
  
  Eventually, one of the Macheteros picked up Ojeda’s car and the FBI picked up the trail. In November 1984, after two months of silence, the conversation in Segarra’s house also abruptly resumed.
  
  The FBI listened in to a group of revolutionaries still giddy over its spectacular robbery.
  
  Segarra had obtained a documentary film of the Wells Fargo job made by a Boston television station. He played it for an audience of his comrades. As the video opened with a film clip of a Wells Fargo armored truck, Segarra sputtered, ‘‘Do you remember? Do you remember?’’
  
  When the picture focused on Gerena’s battered green rental car, the narrator expounded on the weight - more than half a ton - and bulk of the stolen money.
  
  ‘‘I almost herniated myself,’’ one of the Macheteros cracked. ‘‘I don’t know how that man did that.’’
  
  ‘‘I don’t know how that compa did what he did,’’ another said.
  
  ‘‘There were rehearsals,’’ Ojeda answered. ‘‘Practices.’’
  
  Two months later, in January 1985, Segarra staged a daring public relations stunt, something he hoped would cast Los Macheteros in a Robin Hood role. The group gave out $12,000 worth of toys to poor children on Bedford Street in Hartford and in a poor San Juan neighborhood. Later the same month, Los Macheteros launched a second rocket attack on another federal building in San Juan.
  
  The screening of the documentary and the toy giveaway, at least, were celebratory moments. But the Macheteros’ luck was running out.
  
  The group’s leadership was indicted by a federal grand jury in Hartford in August 1985. Segarra somehow managed to learn of the pending indictment. He collected his wife and children and fled to Mexico City.
  
  HE SHOULD HAVE STAYED THERE .

[Ecuajey]

My family has lived in Juncos for well over a hundred years. Barrio Lirios Dorado is practically owned by my family, lol. I have many pictures of the town, which I have been visiting all my life, and a good understanding of it.

Juncos is a micronism of what's happening in small town Puerto Rico. It's a mix of everything; a huge mess. The central plaza and town, although not completely abandoned and can become busy at certain hours of the day, is a sad sight. However, it has never looked beautiful, as the nostalgists of this forum would like you to believe. There were prostitutes courting the men in the town's jail, children going barefoot through the pueblo, and youngsters dancing immorally close during carnavals where Ismael Rivera would perform, in the time of my grandparents. However, I agree, today these are worse, but at some views, better.

Now people move into the urbanizaciones around the pueblo, (The second urbanización built on the island was in Juncos) being constructed en masse, one of which being built right on the property once owned by my great-grandfather. Strip malls, such as Juncos Plaza I and II, with Walgreens, Supermercado Amigos, hair parlors...etc are very popular and further facilitating the sprawl. Tecatos roam around the oldest caserÃ*os, built on my great, great-grandmother's land, which she sold to the government (they were once beautiful and safe, according to my grandmother). Mini-expressways and caserÃ*os, as well as a coliseo has been built in recent years. Also, on the left side of the highway, if coming from Gurabo or Caguas, biotechnology plants are being constructed. Schools are also being repaired as well as el Teatro Junqueño, la plaza central, and La Biblioteca José M. Gallardo. The local hospital was shut down a few years back, due to Rosselló's "Reforma de Salud." As for Nuyoricans, the five that I did meet were contributing well to the town. One was a nurse, the other an English teacher, a college student, a National guardswoman, and another a respectable H.S. student - all were estadistas, but the town has been ruled by a popular, Alfredo "Papo" Alejandro Carrión, since 2000. Puerto Rico is an island of migration and transnationalism; the vast majority of the islanders have eitherlived in the mainland or have relatives there. This cultural exchange would have happened without massive migration, since almost everyone has Direct TV, shops or works at a U.S. corporate store and factory, and has the money to visit far away places. The obesity rate on the island is the highest in the world! Is that due to Nuyoricans too? LOL!

From one's point of view, some of these descriptions are positive, while others are negative. The town is experiencing sprawl and crime related to drug trafficing. With that, the town center is being left to the poor and the druggies, but experiencing resistance from the municipal government. However, supporting sprawl (in order to pay for these projects) while supporting the rehabilitation of the town center is contradicting. However, how will it pay for its projects? Any town with less than 50,000 people is left to the hands of fate by San Juan. The town sees money on how the island's been making it for decades: real estate and foreign invested industrialization.

For info on the slums of Buenos Aires, go here: The Villas.

[Edited by Ecuajey on 18th June 2005 at 10:11]

[EL_BORICUA]

It breaks my heart to read stories like this,sadly it is happening all too often as the americanization of my Borinquen continues,some think it common sense to finish the job by total annexation others want the slower method of colonialism others still want to emulate other cultures I say we must return to who we were.
By the way does anyone know why Jibaro goes off topic in his post?

[L_F_Miranda]

By the way does anyone know why Jibaro goes off topic in his post?

El Jibaro , like most Ultra Nazis inhabiting the hundreds of trailer parks around the U.S., subscribes to the Bush doctrine, IF YOU CAN'T CONVINCE THEM, CONFUSE THEM!

The problem with El Jibaro is that he can't even do that. He is so caught up believing that he's a gringo that its better to ignore him and leave him to his IGNORANCE!

Now back to Juncos........

I don't want anybody here to go with the idea that Junqueños are stupid. Like most colonial people , THEY HAVE JUST GIVEN UP! THEY WANT OTHERS TO SOLVE THEIR PROBLEMS!

They have handed the town over to the rabble, to the drug addicts and the hot tamales who have IMPOSED their ghetto culture on to the majority.

No one dares say a thing, everyone speaks low lest they unleash the wrath of the underclass who has taken over the town.

The attitude is that "LOS AMERICANOS ARREGLARAN ESTO." Little do they know that even the Gringos are having their own problems with a growing underclass who want to call the shots.

Gringos are running into gated communities and refuse to deal with the mess they've created in the 70's. Abandoned towns and cities , like Detroit dot the nation.

If Puerto Ricans were looking toward Statehood as the answer to fix their problems, we are in for a rude awakening.

In Las Republicas, that we make so much fun of, drug addicts and Iris Chacón look alikes don't run the show. Las Republicas have other problems, like the military and the elites who refuse to budge. But how is this different from what is happening in the United States under the Bush administration?

Juncos is just a microcosm of what is happening on the island. Colonialisn has made us into a useless people waiting for salvation from the gringos. Statehood is seen as the holy grail, the status that will put all together, make us Gringos, bring order and more WELFARE!

However is this what LOS GRINGOS WANT? To get stuck with this Black Widow spider on their chest? Do theu need another ghetto, and less with more political power than 26 states?

This mess and Gringo perceptions of us is what we never dare to discuss on these forums, it hurts.

[L_F_Miranda]

Ecuajey said:

The obesity rate on the island is the highest in the world! Is that due to Nuyoricans too? LOL!

You must agree, on the average Nuyorican women are certainly not the image of the present Miss Puerto Rico! LOL

Obesity, once an indication of affluence, is now an indication of POVERTY!

With a fast food restaurant every two feet along the roads of the island, what do you expect Puerto Rican women to look like, Paris Hilton?