[cll]

The money quote:

“The “callous exploitation” of Puerto Rico’s tired, poor and huddled, wrote the Daily Mirror’s Jack Lait and Lee Mortimer in 1948, “is one of the dirtiest crimes in the long and shameful record of practical American politics. None knows better than those who have primed and prompted and financed the exodus what they are doing to their victims and what they are doing to the city where they bring them. . . . These poverty-numbed, naive natives are sold a bill. . . . They are told that here fortunes await many and the rest can quickly go on relief. . . . The result is a sullen, disappointed, disillusioned mass of people.”

[wita]

I’m quite sure the passage of time has written an entirely different story, or has it?

[amnestynone]

I heard that Marcontonio was actually an easy going man of good nature. I read where him and Wm Colmer a Mississippi Congressmen of opposing points of view would each stand up and make speeches on the floor of Congress attacking each other in the most brutal way involving the worst of character assassination and ugly rhetoric which normally would not be allowed. But, what the country who rad about these attacks did not know is that Colmer and Marcontonio were the best of friends in reality and that the whole thing was a put on. Fishbait Miller in his book of memoirs stated that he knew for a fact that the speeches made by Marcontonio attacking Colmer were actually written by Colmer and vice versa the speeches by Colmer attacking Colmer were actually written by Colmer. Just goes to tell you how things can be fake!

[adorno]

They are told that here fortunes await many and the rest can quickly go on relief

Then, there were the proud, who would take whatever job existed, to take care of their families.

My mother was one of those proud ones, who I remember saying to her 4 children (including me), that she would never take welfare or any kind of public assistance. She did so for many years, working at several "factorias" as a seamstress and stuffed animals maker. She worked hard, and we could all see the pain in her body every time she came home in the late afternoons. We grew up poor, knowing that accepting some public assistance would have helped us live a bit better life. But, NO!!!, her pride was more important to her, and she made sure that we too learned what that pride was about. My sneakers had to last me one whole school year, even with holes in them everywhere, including no soles. It was embarrassing, but I learned to appreciate the lessons my mother impacted on all her kids.

None of her kids ever went on any kind of public assistance, unless one wants to classify social security as a handout.

We all ended up as middle-class workers and we all ended up with our own homes, and now, our own kids have a much better future than my mother's kids. The lessons we all learned from our mother, is being passed on to our kids.

I'm a very proud American. I'm also proud of my Puerto Rican heritage. My biggest source of pride is still my mother, who left us in 2014, but her memory and ideals are still with her kids and grand-kids.