The Last Colony...Yawn

Over at Kickstarter, a dazzling example of Web-based business development that transcends computers and broadband, a man by the name of Juan Agustín Márquez is seeking $77,000 to do a political documentary about Puerto Rico, to be titled "The Last Colony."

Now Márquez is a successful non-fiction filmmakerhttp://juan.mixform.com/, an Emmy-winner for his documentary "100,000," on Our horrible plague of abandoned dogs. He also did "Los 17," a film about 17 students , along with teachers, parents and the community, taking on the challenge of saving their public high school from closure by dramatically raising their test scores. This film and its story was a presentation at the San Juan TEDx conference in November 2011.

So Márquez has the chops to go on Kickstarter and make a decent effort at collecting the $77,000 he's budgeted for the documentary. In his favor, using Kickstarter shows self-confidence and frees him up from "strings-attached" money which normally comes from corporate sponsors, and in the case of political topics, pinheads.

It is obvious that Márquez is blazing his own path and looking to do important projects, developing his skills and occupying ever-higher plateaus in his chosen fields. Good. That's what he should do and I believe his future successes will greatly exceed his current impressive successes. But as for "The Last Colony"...

I don't care. Not a whit.

Hope he makes it happen, which means I hope he gets enough pledged money by September 22nd to go out and do the documentary he wants to do. But I won't give him a dollar and when--I firmly believe when--he finishes it, I won't care to see it.

To Me, the bottom line about the documentary topic--and rest assured, We are a colony--is that it's importance is disconnected between reality and opinion. In reality, Our status is important: it underlies the fundamental positions We can have as a nation on the geopolitical stage. But in Our minds, in Puerto Rico and the U.S. of part of A.--Our status is unimportant, merely an ugly tool used by pandering thieves to whack other idiots over the head with.

And since reality is ultimately created by Our minds, Our status is thus--yawn--unimportant.

Because We and "They" don't care about it.

We don't care 'cause We got dollars and welfare and a false sense of security and Wal-mart and Burger King and flat-screen TVs and don't need passports to "know" Disney and the Bronx and...whatever.

And "They" don't care because they make dollars off of Us by making an island client use only their shipping and buy primarily their products from their stores and their companies while employing Us at lower wages and keeping Us from dealing with anyone else...whatever.

Can We change that? Hell yeah. We could have--We can--anytime since the Jones Act of 1917, that made Us conditional U.S. of part of A. citizens (Congress can revoke Ours, but not "Theirs") and locked Us into economic straitjackets in exchange for Our men being sent to the front lines in World War I and every war since.

We could have changed that before We "negotiated" a status with all the trappings of a colony but the name, stretching the term "commonwealth" (that Massachusetts uses) to disguise "colony," a bit like saying "politician" to disguise "crook."

We could have changed it with any referendum--including the one coming up in November--by insisting that it be binding, bringing "Them" and Us to the table as equals. We could have changed it by voting overwhelmingly for one "solution" or another, understanding that the current status is a colony, statehood is ONLY up to "Them" and that independence is not suicide, as too many of Us stupidly believe.

We could have changed it simply by having the courage, dignity and vision to say to "Them": Enough. This is Our time to take the world stage on Our own terms. And if they balked, We could have changed that by simply having the courage, dignity and vision to assert a simple: You can't stop Me.

We could have, We can, but We haven't and We won't. The status will remain a faux issue in the hands of microcephalic and immoral dirtbags that so many of Us cheer on because they are "My side", failing to grasp that the vermin are only out for themselves.

A documentary to make Our status "part of the national conversation"? Noble goal, but ultimately out of the reach of anyone, be it Márquez, Fellini, Welles or Kurosawa. It's not a matter of talent: it's a matter of indifference. Unless a documentary shows a hideous injustice of torn and mutilated bodies, broken buildings and abject despair, it won't evince the emotional reaction needed to launch a truly meaningful discussion.


Our status doesn't have the torn and mutilated bodies of a genocide or war zone...but it has murder victims in the thousands. Our status doesn't have broken buildings from bombs and bullets, but it has broken buildings housing poverty unlike any in the U.S. of part of A. And in Our status, the faces of abject despair are not the beaming slack-jawed bovine squeals of party supporters waving a blue, red, green or some other colored flag en masse like crazed monkeys, but the scattered thoughtful miens of Our folks who know We are trapped and don't have the collective will to escape.

So good luck, Mr. Márquez. You won't need it to make the documentary; you'll need it--and much much more--to achieve your ultimate goal.

Yawn.



The Jenius Has Spoken.