The Opinions - Ricky Martin, Lin-Manuel Miranda and Rita Moreno on Puerto Ricans’ Votes

Episode Date: November 2, 2024

After Trump’s Madison Square Garden rally, three Puerto Rican icons — Ricky Martin, Lin-Manuel Miranda and Rita Moreno — shared a collective message in a Times Opinion essay: “Our vote won’t be a reaction to racist jokes. We’ll be voting for the future of a country that could be majority-minority by midcentury,” they wrote. In this episode, Miranda reads the trio’s essay.Thoughts? Email us at [e-mail]. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

This is The Opinions, a show that brings you a mix of voices from New York Times Opinion. You've heard the news. Here's what to make of it. I'm Vanessa Mobley, and I'm an editor for the New York Times Opinion section. After Trump's infamous Madison Square rally last Sunday, artistic luminaries, Ricky Martin, Lynn Manuel Miranda, and Rita Moreno shared with us a guest essay clapping back. Here is Miranda, reading the essay. be surprised who some people consider trash. The most streamed musical star of this decade so far was born and raised in a small

Puerto Rican town called Vega Baja. It's possible that Benito Antonio Martinez-Occasio, known to the world as bad bunny, could have captured the world's imagination if he'd been born and raised somewhere other than Puerto Rico, also now known as a floating island of garbage, according to the comedian Tony Hinchcliff, but it's unlikely. You see, the next town up the road is called Vega Alta. where the Miranda family hails from. It turns out the view from Vega Alta

is a great perspective for writing a musical about one of our nation's founders who grew up on another island in the middle of the same ocean. If you drive 30 minutes east from Vega Alta, you're in San Juan, where one of us would start a very different music career and end up selling more than 70 million records.

You could fill Madison Square Garden every night for several decades with all the American fans of the artists born in, raised in, or nurtured by Puerto Rico. As the singer Lucecita Benitez has said at her concerts, if you pick up a rock in Puerto Rico, an artist comes out. Our small islands have a rich artistic culture and history that was overlooked and undervalued for too long.

Like us or not, and it's obvious that some people really don't like us, the threads of Puerto Rican culture are woven into our shared American story. That story speaks loudly and proudly to tens and millions of Americans. It wasn't always this way. The face of Puerto Ricans in our culture, was until recently distorted into a caricature that still lingers in some minds. You might not appreciate the creativity and generosity of Puerto Ricans if you only knew us as the sharks from West Side Story. Even after one of us won an Oscar, the first Latina to do so,

for that 1961 movie, Hollywood's idea of a career after Anita was a succession of barefooted Lolitas and Conchitas in westerns and gang movies. So we have seen this movie before, and we have millions of reasons to believe the audience has moved on. The challenge is facing us go far beyond a racist joke. When Hurricane Maria devastated Puerto Rico in 2017, the same year Luis Fonzi topped the charts in 47 countries with Despacito, President Trump reacted with a level of disdain that had deep roots in decades of racism. They want everything to be done for them when it should be a community effort, he tweeted. That attitude played a significant role in the mangled response to the hurricane and the more than 4,600 unnecessary deaths of American

citizens. Puerto Ricans did not lose their loved ones because of laziness or a lack of community spirit. They lost family because of a lack of medicine, electrical power, and empathy. We're not ignorant of the very real failings of Puerto Rican leadership. In fact, we were outspoken in the mass protests that led to the resignation of the scandal-plagued Procedo administration, which played a part in the botched response to the hurricane. Against all those odds, it has taken resilience, smarts, and hard work to survive and thrive in a colony by any other name. It takes these same qualities to move to the mainland, to build families and careers that expand our economy, our culture, and our communities. But it takes a willful ignorance of American

history, law, and politics to blame Puerto Ricans for their own woes. In Puerto Rico, more than three million American citizens rely on a power grid suffering from decades of underinvestment that has left it at the mercy of extreme weather. The islands also need investment in our people, more doctors, nurses, teachers. And Puerto Ricans surely deserve the same access to food assistance and Medicaid as their cousins on the mainland. Puerto Rico might not have a vote in the electoral college, but Puerto Ricans will be voting in states such as Pennsylvania, where we could tip the result of a close election.

Our vote won't be a reaction to racist jokes. We'll be voting for the future of a country that could be majority minority by mid-century. that isn't so far away. It's 25 years since we started singing about living la vida loca. The United States is changing, as it always has. Changing what it looks like, what it listens to, what it eats.

Those changes help explain why the pushback in support of Puerto Rico and Latinos has been so forceful. Mainstream audiences love our culture in ways that make racist jokes sound as archaic as they are offensive. The country's changing sense of self is unsettling for some,

and their backlash is part of our American tradition too. Our capacity to change is our American superpower. The core energy that drives our entrepreneurs, our artists, are visionaries. It's a beautiful, creative force, and it comes from a people who are young at heart, seeking no ideas and questioning old ways. Never mind the noise. Listen to the harmony, because history has its eyes on us. If you like this show, follow it on Spotify, Apple, or wherever you get to. your podcasts.

This show is produced by Derek Arthur, Sophia Alvarez Boyd, Vichaca Derba, Phoebe Lett, Christina Samuelski, and Jillian Weinberger. It's edited by Kari Pitkin, Alison Bruzek, and Annie Rose Strasser. Engineering, mixing, and original music by Isaac Jones, Sonia Herrero, Pat McCusker, Carol Saburo, and Afim Shapiro. Additional music by Amin Sahota. The fact check team is Kate Sinclair, Mary Marge Lacher, and Michelle Harris. Audience Strategy by Shannon Busta, Christina Samuelski, and Adrian Rivera.

The executive producer of Times Opinion Audio is Annie Rose Dresser.