Susanne Ramirez de Arellano

Love them or hate them, they are not going away.

Puerto Rico, in order to progress as a people and a society, must choose leadership that understands the times we are living and works to divest police brutality, corruption and racism in our culture and advance the island towards its better self.

Silencing of the press is concerning at any point in the life of a nation, but it is alarming in the middle of a pandemic and with an administration that puts its political and economic life over the safety of its own people, and in an election year.

The #MeToo movement arrived in Puerto Rico in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic like a sonic boom that has uncovered the dark side of the island’s machismo culture.

The whitewashing of the summer of 2019 began just as soon as Ricky resigned.

After an exceptional summer, during which massive civil protests ousted pro-statehood Governor Ricardo Rosselló, the Ancien Regime, like Rasputin, refuses to die. Instead, it spins the truth and mutates—right back into itself.

Trump’s odiousness towards Puerto Rico could prove to be the mallet that will crack open the party and the gift that keeps on giving for the San Juan mayor.

The colony’s most difficult hour might very well turn out to be its finest.

“Same shit,” a Puerto Rican lawyer told Latino Rebels.

“Our letter to AMPAS is just part of the struggle of Puerto Ricans trying to keep our culture alive, because culture and language defines us as a nation,” Juan Esteban Suárez told Latino Rebels.

“I will continue to use every available platform to ensure that we are treated fairly and with respect,” she said in an interview with Latino Rebels.

Today I grieve for the fallen, but I also grieve for us, that must continue to live in a world plagued by intolerance.

The truth is moribund in Puerto Rico. She is gasping for breath, starved, beaten and left for dead on the Baldorioty.

When I lived in Old San Juan —en la calle San Fransisco— there was an old man who walked the streets of that grande dame for hours with a bullhorn, waving a huge Puerto Rican flag. Like a town crier, he yelled again and again: “La colonia se va, se va. Se va la colonia.” It […]

Kelly, mi’ja, la cagaste. Mate, you cagated it royally. And no amount of mealy-mouthed, yo-no-soy-racista-mea-culpas are going to be enough. Apologies not accepted. Not in my house. This was not a misspeak, or a foot in mouth, not a slip, nor a verbal stumble. This was a spectacular fall. Let’s go back to the particulars, […]

We have arrived at the Mamey Hour. Se nos llenó el cuarto de agua. Pa’ tras ni para coger impulso. Al carajo albañiles, se acabó la mezcla. Nos llegó la dolorosa y no la podemos pagar. Más claro no canta un gallo. El gobernador Alejandro García Padilla finalmente encontró un buen par de pantalones y […]

The prison door creaks open and history is made. Cold turned lukewarm in a spy swap worthy of a Graham Greene novel. Church bells rang in the Cuban capital as President Raúl Castro, dressed in a military uniform and not his usual guayabera, announced the thaw in relations with the United States. Simultaneously, President Obama […]

The plane lands at Luis Muñoz Marín Airport. The passengers erupt in spontaneous applause. No matter how many times I go back home, it never ceases to amaze me. Puerto Ricans so happy that in only minutes they will walk out and, like returning sons and daughters, defy the ending of the tearful national anthem […]

I seem to be choking a lot on my Smoking Loon these days. First it was watching Sofía Vergara rotating like a Christmas lechón at a Vega Alta party. The #lechonasadogate. This time, I lobed invectives and inanimate objects like hand grenades at my computer screen. Target? The Dickensian face of El Gordo y la […]

I nearly choked on my Chardonnay. Colombian comedian Sofía Vergara rotating on a pedestal like an overstuffed lechón asado while a smirking power that bespoke about how great they were at diversity. At the point that the head of the Television Academy pronounced with much glee: “Television has and always will be about storytelling,” and Vergara […]

It seems that we have never really overcome. Ferguson. When I watch the images and the blaring graphics coming out of my television, the soundtrack that plays in the back of my skull like napalm is Buffalo Springfield’s “For What It’s Worth”: There’s something happening here. What it is ain’t exactly clear. There’s a man […]