Susanne Ramirez de Arellano

The plane lands at Luis Muñoz Marín Airport. The passengers erupt in spontaneous applause. No matter how many times I go back home, it never ceases to amaze me. Puerto Ricans so happy that in only minutes they will walk out and, like returning sons and daughters, defy the ending of the tearful national anthem […]

I seem to be choking a lot on my Smoking Loon these days. First it was watching Sofía Vergara rotating like a Christmas lechón at a Vega Alta party. The #lechonasadogate. This time, I lobed invectives and inanimate objects like hand grenades at my computer screen. Target? The Dickensian face of El Gordo y la […]

I nearly choked on my Chardonnay. Colombian comedian Sofía Vergara rotating on a pedestal like an overstuffed lechón asado while a smirking power that bespoke about how great they were at diversity. At the point that the head of the Television Academy pronounced with much glee: “Television has and always will be about storytelling,” and Vergara […]

It seems that we have never really overcome. Ferguson. When I watch the images and the blaring graphics coming out of my television, the soundtrack that plays in the back of my skull like napalm is Buffalo Springfield’s “For What It’s Worth”: There’s something happening here. What it is ain’t exactly clear. There’s a man […]

The other night I was watching “The Butler”, a movie loosely based on the life of a Black butler who served in the White House for 34 years and lived through the cathartic events of the Civil Rights Movement. The movie was not bad, but there was one moment that made me take particular notice. […]

The other day my friend Laura Homar posted on her Facebook page something that only the members of the Boricua diaspora will understand the Proustian significance of: Mallorcas to Go! She was celebrating the fact that the Panificadora Pepín had just created a website where we, the ones who left, could now order a tiny […]

Can you see Vanity Fair doing a callout to its female readership, inviting them to write an essay on their body parts they liked the most? You really can’t see Graydon Carter putting pen to paper to ask for pictures of his readers best features—all this accompanied by an image of a “hot” Latina, can […]

Sitting at my desk in Brooklyn, I read with sadness and anger the news coming out of Murrieta, California. I watch the raw video—the contorted grimaces of hate, the chants of “USA, USA,” the misspelt racism aimed at a busload of undocumented immigrants from Central America, mainly women and children. My thoughts drift back 26 […]

We have arrived at the shores of the Rubicon. The credit rating agency Standard and Poor’s dealt a body blow to Puerto Rico’s distressed economy by downgrading its general obligation bonds to junk level. Governor Alejandro García Padilla floundered in his response, stating that he will increase revenue and decrease costs, but has not explained […]

Editor’s Note: As we prepared this opinion piece by Susanne Ramirez de Arellano, it came to our attention that the headline for the Fox News Latino piece cited in her piece has changed to read, “Puerto Rico’s Governor Says Despite Criticism, Island’s Economy Is On The Mend.” Here is what the current FNL page says: […]