Puerto Rico Picture
Equal Justice Magazine - Feature
Yet amidst the vibrant colored picture of the island’s most marketable attributes is a darker reality. Traveling inland into the modest communities where most natives reside reveals a more sobering picture: that of a people struggling with the day-to-day problems of poverty. Despite the rambunctious demeanor of a citizenry always ready for a festival (there are more than 500 a year here), life on the island is no tropical paradise for many of Puerto Rico’s 3.8 million inhabitants. Forty-five percent, or roughly 1.8 million people, live at or below the poverty line. The unemployment rate, which has not dipped below double digits in this millennium, currently hovers above 11 percent. By some estimates, as many as 100,000 Puerto Ricans are homeless, living on the streets and in the island’s cramped shelters. The drastic change in scenery can be an eye-opener for tourists and the small, elite circle of island residents with the disposable income to buy expensive cars, high-end second homes ... [Read More]
Caribbean --- Coastal and Marine Geology Program - U.S. Geological Survey
Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands are located at an active plate boundary between the North American plate and the northeast corner of the Caribbean plate. Plate movements there have caused large magnitude earthquakes and devastating tsunamis, but scientists have so far failed to explain the deformation of this complex region in a coherent and predictable picture, and this has hampered their ability to assess the seismic and tsunami hazards. It is as if we would try to assess earthquake hazards in California without knowing of the existence of the San Andreas Fault system and its rate of motion. The risk to life and economic infrastructure is high, because 4 million U.S. citizens live along the coastlines of Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands. The objective of this project is to provide the understanding needed to approach the problem of assessment, education and mitigation of tectonic hazards in Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands. By determining the likely hazards and their causative ... [Read More]
Puerto Rico at the Dawn of the Modern Age: Nineteenth- and Early-Twentieth-Century Perspectives
For their part, American authorities sought to bring order to what was perceived as a less-developed and inferiorsociety. Their objective was to bring "modernity" to a foreign people in a foreign land. American journalists andphotographers commissioned by U.S. authorities produced graphic reports of a people incapable of ruling themselves,creating a picture of Puerto Ricans as foreign that lives still in the minds of many mainland Americans. Puerto Rico'sSpanish language, its food, its Spanish traditions and paradise-like scenery reinforced American perceptions that thisland and its people were exotic, foreign, and different. Such misperceptions about Puerto Rico and its people duringthe early 1900s are captured in works such as ... [Read More]
Archived:Puerto Rico
The Reading Enrichment Program in English, for Title I students, provides supplementary reading materials such as big books, picture books, and informational texts to enrich and ensure equal access to literacy opportunities for all students. This is accomplished by creating a literate environment in which participating students have access to a variety of reading and writing materials and multiple opportunities for sustained reading practice in a variety of formats. Instructional level texts were carefully chosen from a variety of materials linking reading and writing activities. Parents are encouraged to participate in the project by reading aloud and sharing reading experiences at home using the supplementary reading material. A representative sample used for evaluation purposes revealed that seventy (70) percent of the participants demonstrated improvement in their reading and writing skills. For further information, contact: ... [Read More]
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