From San Juan to Santiago

Only 674 miles.

Happy for all those Puerto Ricans of Cuban descent, who get to visit.  And everyone else.

En Mi Viejo San Juan

Hope President Obama had a nice time in Puerto Rico, today.  Even if it was only for five hours.



Enjoy!

The Latest From The University of Puerto Rico

A story that has been going on for months and months, barely covered here on "the mainland":

The New York Times:

Months of unrest at the University of Puerto Rico seemed to be reaching a finale over the last 10 days. Scores of students were arrested or injured by riot police officers. Faculty and staff members held a two-day walkout. The president of the university resigned Friday, the police who had occupied campus were withdrawn Monday and an interim president arrived Tuesday.

But there were only three days of peace.

On Thursday morning, students blocked the stairs to classrooms in the social science department with trash cans and chairs, and also closed down the humanities department. At the social sciences building, students said only one professor had tried to get through the blockade.

The spark for the university’s problems was a budget cut that required students to pay a new $800 fee, increasing their costs by more than 50 percent.

You can find some of the best coverage over at The Huffington Post on Dr. Maritza Stanchich's blog. She is an Associate Professor at the University of Puerto Rico, Río Piedras. Take a read.

Tuition at the University of Puerto Rico is cheap. And there are campuses all over the island. You can live almost anywhere, and be within a commuter's distance of an excellent higher education.  Young people can go to school and if they don't have the means to live on their own, commute while continuing to live with their parents. And given the lack of jobs on the island, it is not uncommon for people to go to graduate school because they can't find jobs. The result is a lot of very well-educated people in the work force. Many jobs that only require a college degree are filled with people who have an MA degree or a PhD.

Campuses of the University of Puerto Rico

I have visited many Head Start centers all over Puerto Rico, and can honestly say staff qualifications are much, much higher than those working in the lower 48. Some of the most highly educated early childhood professionals. True of health and social service staff as well.

From Dr. Stanchich's latest blog entry:

"I'm conservative and I work for this government," said one woman wearing a floppy hat to protect herself from identification and reprisals. "But I grew up in a small town, and I owe my economic betterment to my UPR education, and my children were also educated here," pointing to the campus where heavily armed policemen were stationed. "What the government is doing is just plain wrong."

Glad some people still remember their roots.

Childhood Asthma In Puerto Rico

An interesting story from The Washington Post about the high incidence of asthma in Puerto Rico.

Puerto Rico is a U.S. Caribbean territory where children are nearly 300 percent more likely to have the respiratory ailment than white non-Hispanic children in the continental United States. And this year, Puerto Rico has seen a jump in asthma cases, which health officials suspect might be linked to the heavy rains that have unleashed millions of spores.

The island, with a population of 4 million, already has 2.5 times the death rate stemming from asthma as the mainland, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Puerto Ricans in the U.S. also have been hit hard by asthma, with an asthma attack rate 2.5 times higher than for whites. 

I had no idea this was such a huge problem on the island.