Posted on 09/21/2015 8:04:37 AM PDT by george76
LARES, Puerto Rico Ismael Rodriguez looked out on a nearly empty plaza from the clothing store he opened in 1960, now hemmed in by padlocked businesses in this mountain town in northwestern Puerto Rico... experiencing the deepest malaise of just about any community on this island in the depths of an economic crisis.
"I have seen the destruction of a town," Rodriguez, 67, said as he gestured toward the plaza. "Look at all the shuttered stores."
Lares has become emblematic of the economic stagnation that is overwhelming Puerto Rico, and those who live here believe it is a warning sign of things to come across the island
(Excerpt) Read more at foxnews.com ...
I'm sorry to hear that. I saw this ice cream store featured on Andrew Zimmern and wanted to visit in someday.
Your post on the wild horses of Vieques during a hurricane a month or so back got me researching the island, I read all the sites of private houses and villas/hotels for rent. Their availability is now about 85%.
Wonder what the PR people would do if asked whether to re-open the base. Maybe a little ‘private’ security is what’s needed to clean up the drug problem.
It’s a little off topic, but I recall going to an old coffee plantation in the mountains just outside of Ponce, PR. It was a beautiful place, now kept as a museum. It had a water turbine made in West Point, NY in 1840 that still ran perfectly and drove a huge millstone/crusher device. The power from the turbine came from a little water course not more than one foot wide or tall. There hardly seemed to be enough power in the water to run all that machinery, but there I was looking at it. The water from the plantation was diverted from a larger stream that ran through the site, and that was the doom of the whole enterprise. It seems that under Spanish law, the water belonged completely to whomsoever had possession of it, but when Puerto Rico came under U.S. jurisdiction, the water rights had to be shared with downstream property owners.
Yeah, my wife considered the presence of tiny ponies to be a bit magical.
I immediately identified them as a hazard to navigation. They do not flee from cars.
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