What you are looking at is progress. Throughout the Isla and in San Juan as well, wires are what you see when you look up. These wires represent enormous change on this island.
It was not many years ago that telephones were quite scarce; the few phones in Rincon had two digit numbers and one had to wait years after applying to receive service. Electricity in the home... was something for the rich. Now, these things and more, such as cable TV, internet access and in many municipalities... free WIFI in the Plaza, are standard. I took this photograph up in the hills above Rincon. You can also see in the picture a blue plastic cistern sitting on the roof of the cinder block (Caribbean style) home. The wires and the cistern are both a form of progress. In the living memory of most grand parents here in the west, a wooden house on stilts used to be the norm. Now homes are built of more storm resistant concrete, have electricity, indoor pumbing and most, a large blue plastic water cistern.
Puerto Rico certainly enjoys its prosperity but is not enslaved by it. The heart of life on the Island is family and the continuity, connectedness and security a family brings. The people on this Island have it right. They have a balance in their lives and they understand what it takes to live a humane life. So, those wires, concrete buildings, and internet are great and becoming the norm, but still, unfailingly, family is steadfastly first.
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