CODA XIV: The fallen men (from March 10, 2019)

University of Puerto Rico, photographer unknown from Humanidades UPRRP.

(First shared via private list serve on Sunday, March 10, 2019.) Andrew Bacevich, was a guest on Democracy Now early this week. Look him up if you don’t know him. During his interview, he ended up describing how we, the people of the U.S. don’t care. It was something in his tenor and his delivery, subtle, and though hurtful, it is a truth, and his concern over our inhumane ways is the central crux of his writings. That same day, 7 March, Mr. David Brooks’(no less!) op-ed piece “The Case for Reparations” appeared in The Times. I was indeed taken aback, as I never expected Mr. Brooks to offer such an acknowledgment. The consequences of our worst mistakes are in our backyard sinking in our soil and growing roots. It’s a mad-house of gigantic and catastrophic proportions out there. Other recent alarming reads, news of the closing of the University of Puerto Rico (UPR) in April 2019 - a few of the Spanish language articles I read, METRO PR, El Nuevo Dia, 80 Grados. To say that this imminent closure is barbaric is an understatement. In a nutshell, the Middle States Commission on Higher Education did not approve accreditation of the UPR. That decision made it easy for the fiscal control board to make and share their determinations on the future of the country’s only higher education public university system.

This week, in particular, I can’t shake away that we are being led and drowned by fallen men. I’m looking for clearings to stay the course and I remembered Mr. Fernando Ferrer’s share for Episode 54. What I wrote about him then, still stands. So unassuming, un hombre sencillo, his time was also being drowned and he to a chance and made a difference. This UPR thing and the fallen men somehow connects to Hostos Community College for me, its history and its reason for being. He has something to say about all that, his life does. And, because it is Women’s History Month I share all three programs of the women Presidents of Hostos Community College - Flora Mancuso, Isaura Santiago Santiago (part I of II) and Dolores Fernández (Part I of II). Without education, you kill a place slowly, the cruelest way to die.

Sol