SAN JUAN — Remember the famous line of the Rime of the Ancient Mariner: “Water, water everywhere, and not a drop to drink?” That’s what it felt like last week in Puerto Rico, a Caribbean archipelago, when a key water pipe that supplies the precious liquid to 15 municipalities broke, leaving nearly 190,000 clients high and dry.

Boricuas are used to going without the bare essentials, like water and electricity. It’s part of the extreme sport of daily life in Puerto Rico. But this time, what angered people the most — including me — was the continued lack of transparency and inability to tell the truth from the pro-statehood Partido Nuevo Progresista (PNP) administration and its Donald Trump-supporting Governor Jennifer González-Colón. 

For almost a week, hundreds of thousands of Boricuas in the northern and central parts of the main island had no water to drink, bathe, cook, or flush the toilet. Glued to the news, we watched as crews began repairing the broken section of the island’s water pipeline, part of the Superaqueduct (locally known as the Supertubo), but how long it would take to fix or when the water would return was a coin toss. While writing this piece, the water came back, left, and came back again. We hold our collective breaths because we know there is a high probability it will leave again. Such is life in this island paradise. 

“Vecina, se fue el agua de nuevo (Neighbor, the water went away again),” my next-door neighbor, Verónica, yelled at me from her terrace. That’s how I knew we had no water. No warning from the government about when the water would run out (mine stopped flowing the day before authorities said it would happen), no emergency broadcast, nada. And water trucks? I never saw one. 

Supermarkets were once again full of people buying water, and porta-potties dotted the central plaza in Old San Juan. Reporters tried to explain what had happened and who was responsible.

Was it LUMA Energy, the Canadian-American private company that manages the electrical grid, which the Puerto Rico Aqueduct and Sewer Authority blames for the break? Or was it a lack of maintenance from bad past administrations?

Meanwhile, González-Colón scrambled to appear as if she had the situation handled. As is her habit, she activated the Puerto Rico National Guard to help with water distribution. She went on a media tour, trying to look like a leader in her pseudo-Chanel suit paired with basketball shoes sporting the colors of the Puerto Rican flag. These optics were manna from heaven for her critics on social media.

“What is being done is not a temporary repair but a major repair,” she said. González-Colón insisted that her administration couldn’t risk allowing the situation to escalate just to get things moving and the break fixed in two days. The restorations will likely cost $250,000, possibly more. 

For those of us watching, a temporary fix is exactly what it looked like — a slapped-on chunk of metal welded over the break. Not too convincing, right? Let's not forget that last July, a water main break during road maintenance left almost 180,000 customers without water. González-Colón also brought out the National Guard then, named a “water czar,” and blamed the crisis on the lack of maintenance from past administrations. 

But here we are. 

And that's the thing, those quick fixes on the Supertubo are a reflection of what González Colón's nine-month administration has been: band-aids on problems and obfuscation of the truth. Since her first day in office, her biggest challenge has been convincing Puerto Ricans that she “represents a change” and not the worst version of prior PNP administrations. She has faced public outrage over a Cabinet full of the usual suspects, an environmental scandal targeting her in-laws, allegedly quashed by God, and her inability to fulfill campaign promises — the most important being to end the contract with LUMA. As independent Puerto Rican journalist Sandra Rodríguez Cotto wrote in a recent column: Sin agua y sin verdad (Without Water and Without the Truth). 

Puerto Rico desperately needs transparency from its leaders, especially now that the island is being used as a military staging ground by the United States and the federal government shutdown threatens to leave 1.2 million families dependent on PAN, the archipelago’s SNAP-equivalent, without food. Although there are few recent studies at the state level, about 33% of the adult population in Puerto Rico suffers from food insecurity, and 42% of residents rely on PAN, according to the nonprofit organization Espacios Abiertos. 

González-Colón’s administration will use local funds to extend PAN past the first week of November, but is still unsure where the funds will come from to cover the rest of the month. She has rejected dipping into the government’s Emergency Fund, a dedicated reserve to cover unforeseen and unbudgeted public needs, to the tune of $200 million, because it’s still hurricane season, which ends on Nov. 30. Where the money will come from if the federal government shutdown continues is anyone’s guess.

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Eventually, and without warning, a dark, brown sludge spurting out of the kitchen faucet announced the return of the water. Who knows for how long?

We gird our loins for the next water pipe to break. This latest incident is no accident. It's just another broken piece of a crumbling infrastructure and an administration incapable — or unwilling — to tell the truth. 

A former News Director for Univision Puerto Rico and conflict correspondent, Susanne Ramírez de Arellano is a Columnist for The Latino Newsletter.

Hurricane Update: From the Associated Press, “The rumble of large machinery, whine of chain saws and chopping of machetes echoed through communities across the northern Caribbean on Thursday as they dug out from the destruction of Hurricane Melissa and surveyed the damage left behind.”

La Gran Manzana Report: From Hispanic Federation, “a policy blueprint with recommendations on how the next Mayor and City Council can improve the lives of the nearly 2.5 million Latinos living in New York City.”

Carlos Berríos Polanco edited and published this edition of The Latino Newsletter.

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