Hey, Hollywood, Boricuas need you.
On Friday, more than 180,000 households and businesses across San Juan and six neighboring municipalities woke up to dry faucets. For 48 hours at a stretch, on a rotating schedule with no end date, they will go without water. Roughly half a million people are being asked to live without the most basic need of a functioning society, and the silence around it is heartbreaking.
The images coming out of the island should stop social media users in their tracks. Residents are filling buckets and jugs before their windows close. Elderly neighbors are depending on others to haul five-gallon jugs up apartment stairwells in punishing heat. Gov. Jennifer González calls the situation “out of our hands” and warns that the shutoffs could stretch to 72 hours if the rain does not come. July was the driest month San Juan has recorded in more than 120 years.
This is not an “act of God,” but you already knew that.
The island’s water authority loses well over half the water it treats before it ever reaches a tap, much of it bleeding out of pipes that have gone decades without adequate investment. Communities in and around the capital logged more than 100 days of outages this year before the rationing even began. The San Juan mayor sued the water authority in the spring. Residents have taken to the streets because they know that water is a right.
A milder hurricane season is forecast, which sounds like mercy until you remember that the rain that refills the reservoirs often travels inside those storms. So, no, the cavalry is not coming from the weather.
Which brings me to the burning question … where is Hollywood?
I have spent my career watching the entertainment industry decide what deserves the world’s attention, and I have seen this community show up for Puerto Rico before. In 2017, days after Hurricane Maria left the island in the dark, Lin-Manuel Miranda wrote the benefit song “Almost Like Praying” and pulled in Jennifer Lopez, Marc Anthony, Gloria Estefan, Luis Fonsi, Rita Moreno, Rubén Blades, Camila Cabello and John Leguizamo, among others, naming all 78 of the island’s municipalities so none of them could be forgotten. It was a “We Are the World” of the moment. Every dollar went to the Hispanic Federation’s relief fund.
Five years later, when Hurricane Fiona hit, Bad Bunny, Rauw Alejandro and others took relief into their own hands rather than wait for a slow federal response.
Bad Bunny’s residency last year, “No Me Quiero Ir de Aquí,” reserved its first shows for locals, ran for more than 30 nights at the Coliseo de Puerto Rico and pumped an estimated $200 million into the economy during what is normally the island’s slow season.
This proves that a star’s platform is not just a charity megaphone. It can be an economic engine.
The uncomfortable truth is that a water emergency is a hard story to sell in an attention-seeking economy. This tragic story can die without amplification. And amplification is the one thing Hollywood knows how to manufacture better than almost anyone.
Puerto Rico needs its entertainment allies again, and it needs more than a repost.
WILL TRENT — “He Lives!”
Disney
One who is not staying quiet is Ramón Rodríguez. The Puerto Rican star, executive producer and director of ABCs “Will Trent” brought the show to the island this past season, and he has used his platform to say plainly what too few in the industry will do.
“People in Puerto Rico should not have to fight for the basic necessities of life,” Rodríguez tells Variety. “Water and electricity are not luxuries, they are essential. This is a humanitarian crisis, and it demands immediate action and lasting solutions.”
Rodriguez also points to an organization, Plenitud PR, that could be supporting the efforts.
“How can this be happening to this amazing community, and no FEMA or emergency help from this administration,” actor John Leguizamo asks bluntly. “These are citizens of the USA!”
The island needs an event, a benefit, a telethon, anything that channels real money and real water to the people who need it. And should I remind everyone that Puerto Rico is part of the United States? Would another state be made to wait like this?
Because we have seen the alternative before. After Hurricane Maria in 2017, a federal watchdog later found that billions in congressionally approved recovery funds were unnecessarily delayed by bureaucratic obstacles, and that officials obstructed the investigation into why. By one estimate, the holdup set the island’s recovery back years.
This time around, the White House and Donald Trump have said … nothing. Even as hospitals, businesses and families brace for shortages that officials warn could last weeks or months, Puerto Rico has not been mentioned on any Truth Socials or tweets. But don’t worry, an incorrect use of an apostrophe (“America’s”) in Trump’s Truth Social post to talk about Michigan Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed was evidently a weekend requirement.
The island’s resident commissioner has already put a five-point plan in front of the federal government and urged the governor to request an emergency declaration that would unlock FEMA support. Millions of American citizens are left to navigate a system that years of neglect had already hollowed out. The island also needs the Puerto Rican and Latino talent who have built billion-dollar franchises and sold out arenas to point their cameras at a leaking pipe and refuse to look away until Washington and the local government take action.
The Emmys are quickly approaching, and Oscar season is a monthslong broadcast of some of the most-watched, most-quoted humans on earth standing at microphones. Every film festival is a chance to invoke Puerto Rico before a screening. Every one of those awards podiums is a chance to say the words “water” and “help” and “give” to an audience that might otherwise never hear about a reservoir running dry.
None of this is a substitute for the government doing its job. The pipes are a public failure and they demand a public fix. But 3.2 million American citizens are living through a humanitarian crisis in real time, and the people with some of the loudest platforms in our culture have a documented, proven ability to force the rest of us to care.
The people don’t need your thoughts and prayers. They need action.
Do your part, please.
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