Puerto Rico Then and Now
Reading Thompson’s accounts of Puerto Rico in the late ’50s and early ’60s, you get a portrait of a place already caught between beauty and exploitation. His descriptions are biting, decay tucked beside paradise, the island struggling under forces bigger than itself.
Half a century later, I can’t help noticing how much has stayed the same. Puerto Rico is still wrestling with its identity, still weighed down by outside control, still battered by economic storms and literal ones. The backdrop has changed (hurricanes, debt crisis, gentrification) but the themes echo like a refrain.
It’s tempting to throw up our hands and say, “Nothing ever changes.” But that would dismiss the resilience of the people who keep building, singing, resisting. The more things stay the same, the more we need to acknowledge those who refuse to give up on better.
Thompson captured a restless, uneasy moment in Puerto Rico’s history. Listening now, I wonder what he’d write if he walked San Juan’s streets today. Probably the same mix of wonder and rage. Maybe that’s the truth of it: the island has always been both.