Puerto Rico is one of those places you can be as quiet or as crazy as you want, because there's so much nightlife. I have to take the craziness carefully.
In historical and constitutional terms, the recent political status vote in Puerto Rico was a necessary but obviously not decisive step on the road of self-determination leading to full self-government.
Internal self-government under a local constitution was authorized by Congress and approved by the residents in 1952, but federal law is supreme in Puerto Rico and residents do not have voting representation in the Congress.
You want a lesson? I'll give you a lesson. How about a geography lesson? My father's from Puerto Rico. My mother's from El Salvador. And neither one of those is Mexico.
Puerto Rico loses out on billions of dollars annually because it is treated unequally under a range of federal programs, including tax credits available to millions of households in the States that do not pay federal income taxes.
In Puerto Rico, we have a lot of traditions. We eat a very typical thing that's called 'pasteles' - it's almost like a tamale made of bananas, and we make it all together. Like, all the women of the family unite, and it's a very big deal, a very big ...
I never thought anything was strange in Puerto Rico other than the big mosquitos; because I was born there, nothing was really foreign to me. I think what I saw strange coming to L.A. was that a lot of people are a little bit two-faced. In Puerto Ric...
There were a lot of kids from Puerto Rico at my high school in Florida; people always assumed I was Puerto Rican. Even now in California, I get talked to on the street in Spanish constantly!
To be the first Puerto Rican to win a world title in four divisions would be an achievement. Gomez, Benitez, there have been a lot of good fighters from Puerto Rico before me. When I started boxing, Tito Trinidad was our big star.
I know Spanish pretty well. I'm half-Puerto Rican - my mom is from Puerto Rico - so I have a lot of family there, and my mom's first language is Spanish. But growing up in the States, and with my dad being from the States, I'm kind of just like this ...
When I left Chicago, people said, 'Careful with that Texas heat'. I'm like, 'I'm from Puerto Rico. I know heat.'
That is why, with optimism instead of fear, all those who want to see Puerto Rico's status resolved should seek the truth about each option, including the upside and the downside of each.
If Congress does its job in this regard, the residents of Puerto Rico will be empowered to act in their own self-interest and express their future political status aspirations accordingly.
I was very skinny and very lanky and kind of awkward. In Puerto Rico, everybody is a little more voluptuous, with these beautiful bodies, and there I was, the skinny, lanky girl.
I did not feel 'evil' when I wrote advertisements for Puerto Rico. They helped attract industry and tourists to a country which had been living on the edge of starvation for 400 years.
Apparently tired of waiting for clear direction from Congress, the people of Puerto Rico have used the tools provided by their own local constitution to schedule a vote for Dec. 13 on the status of the island.
Yet, Puerto Rico's economic convergence and political integration with the rest of the nation is in a state of arrest - even though the island has been within the national borders, political system and customs territory of the U.S. for a century.
Puerto Rico is the perfect meeting place between Spain, the country I come from, and America, the country where I now belong. The meeting point of two worlds where magic can happen.
Puerto Rico has a stray dog problem. Tens of thousands of homeless canines - hundreds of thousands, by some estimates - live and die on the streets and beaches all over this Caribbean island of almost four million people.
I don't want to be named myself as one of the elite boxers of Puerto Rico. That's for the fans and for the people that know about boxing. I just want to do my job the best I can, and I am going to do that the rest of my career.
I was ballet dancing at four, playing piano by six, and doing commercials by 12. When I was 21, I was on the number one live comedy show in Puerto Rico. I told my parents, 'I'm going to New York to become a performer.' And I left.
