The Common Fight

The Common Fight
By Jonathan Morales Rosario

The common fight, there are things that the Puerto Rican “ Jibaro” has been fighting since the Island was a colony of the Spanish Empire and the Spanish conquistador, that is the identity. The Puerto Rican has a need and a right to feel his or her identity, because we are proud of the mix of races that we have: the Spaniards, the Indians and the Africans, this mix makes the Puerto Ricans an even prouder race. Who we are and where are we going? That is a question that the Puerto Ricans have in mind always. We know the answer of one of them, we are Puerto Ricans but we don’t know where we are going. I put the title of common fight because we have an internal fight amongst our people. Every four years we fight for what we think is right, for what makes us proud and for our identities. Politics, an event that changes the history of the “Jibaro”; puts families in position to fight, makes people lose their jobs, helps other people get jobs and makes people go mad. In the quest for our identity we have created political parties, these political parties have become what we were trying to find and this is bad, because now we are like three tribes, each one trying to control the other two. Between the disagreements that the main political parties have in the island, we can say that they have a common fight which is not ideological, but we can say that they are both looking for the progress of Puerto Ricans. We have had bad leaders in both parties and there has been good leaders in La Fortaleza from both parties trying to seek out a common identity between the people, uniting the people and trying to work as one, even though we know that there are more than one. We know that the focus of the political fight that we see in the streets, the senate and almost everywhere in the Island are based on the political status - Where are we going? -, we need to step aside of this matter and star to look at the important things that need the attention or more attention. Things that need attention such as the economical problem that the Island is facing, the educational problem and the social problem; these are things that are going from bad to worse in the Island. We are now facing a national recession that puts Puerto Rico in a really bad position; the educational situation is worse every day, the students aren’t learning anything, and socially we are so bad, last week a man killed his’ wife and cut her entire body up and put the pieces in baskets, what kind of psychopath can do something like this. I believe that we need to refocus on what is important to us as people, as “Jibaros”, as Puerto Ricans and forget, for the moment, about political issues and start working as a team no matter what is your color or your political party.