Puerto Rico Already Knows the Grief of Being Abandoned by the Government
Elected officials have mismanaged the coronavirus pandemic, and it feels like the worst type of déjà vu
If you’ve ever wondered what it feels like to be abandoned by your government, let me explain: You spend months feeling as if you’re going mad because elected officials are downplaying the scope of a crisis, while your loved ones beg for help because the circumstances are life-threatening. The government response is infuriatingly slow and inadequate, so you try to find roundabout ways to do something. Your efforts, however, are a drop in the bucket. There is no way to shame lawmakers into doing better because it seems they just don’t care. You think a lot about how you are powerless to stop the wave of death.
The crisis America is undergoing today — as more and more people fall ill, struggle financially, and die due to the novel coronavirus — has brought back the grief and anger I felt in the year after Hurricane Maria devastated my homeland, the U.S. territory of Puerto Rico. Puerto Ricans were left to fend for themselves by both the local island and federal U.S. government. We were horrified for months at how lawmakers’ ill-fated decisions were literally costing people their lives, and no amount of alarm-sounding by those on…
