Hurricane Maria, a Trickster?

The 2017 hurricane season held some major surprises that included two category 5 hurricanes – Irma and Maria. Irma reached wind speeds of 185 mph, and a pressure of 914 millibars. She tore through The Caribbean, British Virgin Islands
U.S. Virgin Islands, Cuba, and Florida. Maria’s winds reached 175 mph and a pressure of 908. She ripped through the Lesser Antilles, Virgin Islands, Puerto Rico, Dominican Republic, and the Turks and Caicos Islands

By comparison, Hurricane Wilma 12 years earlier, in 2005, had top winds of 185 mph and a pressure of 882 millibars, the lowest on record. That pressure made Wilma the most powerful hurricane ever.

Violent weather and its aftermath are covered so extensively by the media that what’s sometimes revealed is a dark undercurrent in American life that becomes glaringly obvious. This revelation often involves trickster synchronicities, as with Hurricane Maria.

Out of the 21 names for hurricanes in 2017, only two were Hispanic names – Jose and Maria. Jose was the longest-lived Atlantic hurricane since Nadine in 2012. It affected the Leeward Islands, Bahamas, Bermuda, brought rain to the east coast of the U.S., and to Nova Scotia. Its damage was minimal.

Maria was a different monster altogether. She slammed into Puerto Rico, an American territory and Hispanic culture, the first layer of the synchronicity. It wasn’t, after all, Irma or Harvey that slammed into  Puerto Rico, but Maria, a Latino named storm. Her winds were just under a cat 5 – 155 mph , cat 5 officially begins with 156 mph winds – and caused catastrophic damage. The humanitarian crisis that has followed, however,  is the result of an inept president who may not have known that Puerto Rico was an American territory and whose racism against Hispanics and other people of color is well-known – and documented.

FEMA is in Puerto Rico, supplies wait on barges, and a floating hospital with 250 beds and full services is just offshore. But in the 2 weeks since the ship’s arrival, only 13 percent of its beds are occupied. Since this post was written several days ago, those percentages may have improved marginally. But maybe not. This story is fascinating.

The problem seems to be coordination among the various agencies on the ground and the attitude of a president whose initial response to the disaster was to attack the island for its poor infrastructure and debt. Every time the San Juan mayor is on American TV, talking about the government’s poor response in the aftermath, trump blames someone else. The democrats. Obama. The mayor. The island itself. His latest tweet about it was that FEMA and the military can’t remain in PR indefinitely. Yet, 12 years after Katrina devastated New Orleans, FEMA is still there.

It took a hurricane with an Hispanic name that hit an island with an Hispanic culture to fully reveal trump’s bias against people of color. It’s a trickster synchro that addresses the pathetic state of the current administration and this country.

PS. A friend just sent this link about  the tiny power company awarded a $300 million contract for Puerto Rico’s power grid reconstruction. It’s linked to a major Trump donor.