2 Wednesday, July 6, The San Juan Daily Star

(1)

Wednesday, July 6, 2016

(2)

By MARIA MIRANDA SIERRA mirandasanjuanstar@gmail.com

S

an Juan Mayor Carmen Yulín Cruz on Tuesday said “there will be severe consequences against several workers” at the Casa Cuna in San Juan, after a toddler drowned in a plastic pool Monday afternoon that had been set up without the munici-pality’s or the Family Department’s permission.

Casa Cuna is government-run home for abused children, or children who have been removed from their homes by the Family Department for diﬀ erent reasons. The children’s ages range up to three years old, and most under the home’s care have been abused or neglected.

According to an Inter News Service report, Cruz said pools in this specifi c municipal unit “are not authorized and I am very meticulous about it.”

“I am very strict about the care that is given to these children and I am always checking up on any situation [that happens at Casa Cuna],” the mayor said, reiterating that plastic pools like the one

in-volved in the drowning are not authorized.

“Last year we had a situation with some of the tiny [plastic] pools and they were removed,” Cruz said. “It was in the middle of the drought.”

She said “these are decisions that people take to another level and could end in tragedy.”

“There will be consequences against several employees, the most severe [consequences],” Cruz said.

The Family Department’s Children and Fami-lies Administration (ADFAN by its Spanish acro-nym) Director Irisel Collazo, meanwhile, noted that the agency has initiated an investigation into the toddler’s death.

“We initiated an investigation. We always put the word out, and now during the summer, because of the heat, the outdoor activities that use water, or when [people] go to rivers, beaches or pools, to al-ways be seriously aware and vigilant when super-vising minors,” Collazo said in a radio interview with NotiUno.

Collazo insisted that when it comes to minors, especially toddlers, supervision must be dou-bled.

“The younger they are, the harder it is for them to ask for help,” Collazo noted.

The children at Casa Cuna have been re-moved from their homes for their own safety after being abused or neglected by their par-ents, mothers or caregivers.

Police said Tuesday that Emiliana del Valle Colón, who was only one year and four months old, drowned in a plastic pool that was set up in recent days without permission amid a heat wave.

Police said prosecutors are evaluating whether to fi le negligence charges.

Family Secretary Idalia Colón also said the pool had been put into use without the agency’s or the municipality’s permission, and that criminal charges for negligence could be

fi led.

“It all depends on what we fi nd through the investigation process,” Colón said, adding that the Family Department probe is indepen-dent from that of the police authorities.

3

GOOD MORNING

The San Juan Daily Star, the only paper with

News Service

in English in Puerto Rico, publishes 7 days a week,

with a Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday edi

Ɵ

on, along with a Weekend Edi

Ɵ

on to cover Friday, Saturday and Sunday.

INDEX

Local

Mainland

Business

Interna

Ɵ

onal

Viewpoint

Entertainment

Fashion

No

Ɵ

cias en Español

Legal No

Ɵ

ces

Sports

Games

Horoscope

Cartoons

3

11

16

19

24

26

27 Mayor Vows Severe Measures Against Those

Responsible for Toddler’s Drowning at Casa Cuna

28

31

41

45

46

47

(3)

By JOHN McPHAUL jpmcphaul@gmail.com

C

andidate for governor and Popular Democratic Party President David Bernier said Tuesday that under no circumstances would he implement the mea-sure included in the Puerto Rico Oversight Management and Economic Security Act (PROMESA) that would reduce the mini-mum wage for people under 25 years old to $4.25 an hour.

“All the candidates must commit our-selves to not exercising this prerogative,” Bernier said. “Our youth can rest assured that their minimum salary will remain the same.”

Bernier said the law clearly establishes that such a decision would be in the hands of the governor.

“The current minimum wage allows the generation of income that, in the best of cases, is still at the poverty line,” he said. “Reducing it would condemn the worker to living very much below the poverty line and stimulate

informal economic activity and emigration.” He pointed out the fact that nearly 50 percent of those migrating out of Puerto Rico are people below the age of 25, young people who have the greatest probability of emigrat-ing, according to the United States Census Bureau.

Bernier was responding to the clause in the federal PROMESA law that permits the governor to reduce the minimum wage to $4.25 an hour for youths under 25 years old who enter the workforce for a period of fi ve

years.

Also, Bernier asked the candidates to commit themselves to giving priority to the protection of pensions to teachers and public employees.

He said “the pension is a state contract with these Puerto Ricans who have served the country well with very low wages, but the promise that once they are retired they will receive this income.”

“To reduce these benefi ts would be to go

back on a commitment of Puerto Rico toward these 120,000 good Puerto Ricans,” Bernier said. “You don’t develop a country by deliv-ering misery upon the youth and those who have served it well.”

He called on his opponents to “resist the temptation of easy discourse and the noise of ideological fanaticism and let’s have a conver-sation in which we identify the points where we defend the country and its people beyond partisan or ideological consideration.”

4 The San Juan Daily Star

Bernier Calls on Candidates to Close Ranks Around PROMESA Provisions

Aerial Fumigation Seen as Short-Term Zika

Remedy at Public Hearing on Health Risks

By JOHN McPHAUL

jpmcphaul@gmail.com

T

he House Health Committee held a public hearing on Tuesday to discuss aerial fumigation methods as a means of combating the propagation of Zika in Puerto Rico.

“One thing that causes a lot of damage is the hysteria and the lack of information,” said House Speaker Jaime Perelló in a press release.

He said the public hearing presided over by Committee Chairman Lydia Méndez Silva should provide peace of mind and provide information to the Puerto Rican people on any plan the government devises for the use of aerial fumigation.

Perelló said mass fumigation is a rem-edy to the immediate situation facing the island, but that more concerted action is required to manage the matter in the long term. He pointed out that to opt for aerial fumigation, every agency must exercise its responsibility so that the public, fauna, vegetation and bodies of water are not ad-versely aﬀ ected.

The speaker asked for more details from state and federal authorities, with the purpose of creating a better informed public on the op-tions that have been discussed for addressing the problem that has created the propagation of the virus and, thus avoid hysteria.

“The country has to be at peace with what we propose to do and, at the same time, know that the system used will not cause

damage,” Perelló said.

The island Health Department said aerial fumigation is a fast and eﬀ ective alternative for controlling and reducing the population of mosquitos that transmit the Zika virus.

The director of the Health Department’s Oﬃ ce of Epidemiology, Dr. Brenda Rivera, noted that the government is considering the possible impact of aerial fumigation on the environment and on people.

“We are doing this, keeping in perspec-tive the risks of not being proacperspec-tive against the threat that this virus presents for the health of our citizens,” Rivera said.

Puerto Rico’s State Department has said authorization of aerial fumigation with the pesticide Naled would come only following the recommendations of state and federal agencies.

“Neither the coqui nor the bees will be aﬀ ected by this fumigation,” he said.

Meanwhile, the director of the State Emergency Management Agency, Ángel Crespo, said that if the administration deter-mines to use Naled, “it is because it has over-come all the possible confl icts of interest and has favored this method, because it believes that the country is faced with a public health emergency and we have to take measures to control it.”

Agriculture Secretary Myrna Comas said all determinations will be made public and that she will be exercising her role of watch-dog for the good use and management of the pesticide with the goal of avoiding risks to health and the environment.

(4)

C

onsumer Aﬀ airs (DACO) Secretary Nery Ada-mes on Tuesday signed Order 2016-05, which regulates the display of the price of liquefi ed gas.

“The price of liquefi ed gas for the consumer has experienced clear drops that, in some cases, can not be appreciated accurately due to the poor or lack of labe-ling of this essential item,” Adames said in a written statement, according to a report by CyberNews. “It’s important that the consumer easily knows what the prices of the competition are to then be able to deci-de where they are going to make the purchase. It is of equal importance to know the net content with which each gas cylinder is fi lled, to be able to select the cylin-der that has the best price and the most gas.”

Adames said the order demands that all whole-salers and retailers that sell liquefi ed gas to consumers

indicate the price of the cylinder and its net content with a label on the shelves where they are being dis-played for sale. The label should include the price of the cylinder and if it can be “exchanged or not,” and its size should be of two and a half inches or greater, labeled with a letter style that can be distinguished or that “stands out.”

The order, won’t permit for any ad that represents a diﬀ erent weight than the one contained in the net content of those cylinders.

The DACO secretary added that his agency’s we-bsite (www.daco.pr.gov) will publish the average price of 20-pound gas cylinders.

“Through the DACO website, Puerto Rican con-sumers can know every day the average price of regu-lar gasoline to make the most economical selection,” Adames said. “We want to reproduce this same suc-cessful experience in the case of liquefi ed gas, for the 20-pound cylinders. Based on the price of liquefi ed gas that will appear on the DACO website, the consumer

will have an informed idea on the average price, which will mean an intermediate cost between the most ex-pensive and the lowest prices.”

DACO Order Regulates Display of Bottled Gas Price

By JOHN McPHAUL

jpmcphaul@gmail.com

N

ew Progressive Party (NPP) gubernatorial candidate and President Ricardo Rosselló Nevares said Tuesday that his party’s polls show a “generalized displeasure” with what he ca-lled “the García Padilla-Bernier administration.”

In a press conference after the monthly meeting of the party directorate, Rosselló Nevares said “our polls demonstrate that there is a generalized displea-sure in Puerto Rico against the García Padilla-Ber-nier administration” and what he described as “the mistaken path.”

Gov. Alejandro García Padilla decided not to run for a second term in October and the then-Secre-tary of State soon launched his candidacy.

To questions from the press on the strategies the NPP will adopt for the Nov. 8 elections, the candida-te for governor poincandida-ted to a series of activities that must culminate with the closing of the campaign Nov. 6 in a place to be determined.

On July 31, the NPP will hold a ceremony in ho-nor of statehood party founder José Celso Barbosa, in Bayamón, that should draw a large crowd and will serve as the beginning of the electoral campaign.

On Aug. 20, the party will hold a radio mara-thon to collect funds for the election, and Sept. 9-11 a convention will be held where an assembly must

ratify the Political Plan for Puerto Rico, which in the two months to follow will be heard in public hea-rings. In early November, the campaign will close.

Rosselló Nevares also said the party will redo-uble eﬀ orts on the status issue, promoting stateho-od as an alternative and reiterating the contrasts of public policy and governmental action between the two parties.

The gubernatorial candidate said the Popular Democratic Party lacks alternatives to the territorial problem of the island.

Meanwhile, he said he will continue to articu-late his proposal for social and economic develop-ment.

“It has been a directorate [meeting] in which we could establish the pattern for the next 125 days befo-re the elections,” he said.

At meeting, new members were ratifi ed, 14 regional members, 14 presidential delegates, six at-large members, the director and the subdirector of the Misión Estadista ideological wing, Joan Vélez and Giovanni Ojeda, respectively, and the deputy secretary of the party, Tomás Fantauzzi. The deputy secretary of treasury post remained vacant for the time being.

In addition, the NPP committed itself to esta-blishing various ethical workshops, the next one be-ing this Friday, in which the majority of the oﬃ cials will participate.

The party agreed on a series of resolutions, among them creating an ethics committee that will oﬀ er workshops to prevent and identify corruption, as well as prepare an anti-corruption agreement for all the candidates, similar to that which had already been agreed to during the primary election cam-paign, the candidate said.

The group must identify all those types of co-rruption and that which the public identifi es as co-rruption. The committee is made up of former judge Juan R. Melecio, a former director of the Tourism Co., and former judge Luis Rivera Marín, engineer Emi-lio Colón and former Secretary of Education Edward Moreno.

Rosselló Cites Public Displeasure in Polls

Nery Adames Alejandro García Padilla and David Bernier

(5)

N

ew Progressive Party (NPP) guberna-torial candidate Ricardo Rosselló Ne-vares on Tuesday described the recent crime wave on the island as “unacceptable to our people,” while noting that “it’s the failure of a government that only knows how to im-provise and is lacking public policy that in-tegrates eﬀ ective strategies for fi ghting drug traﬃ cking.”

“The majority of the murders and the violence that are taking place in the streets are linked to drug traﬃ cking,” Rosselló Ne-vares said in a written statement. “The gov-ernment response to the crime wave demon-strates improvisation and a lack of will to face drug traﬃ cking.”

The NPP president added that the “gov-ernment can not turn over the streets and areas of commercial and tourism activity to drug traﬃ cking.”

“The justice system, respect for life and enforcement of the law should be the norm and not the exception in our society,” Rosselló Nevares added. “The death of children in the middle of shootings linked to drug traﬃ cking

is outrageous and shameful to our society.” Rosselló Nevares added that the crime wave is a consequence of the economic crisis, which drug traﬃ ckers are taking advantage of to expand their operations under the nose of a government that is lacking the

appropri-ate strappropri-ategies to address it.

“Unfortunately, to address both the eco-nomic problem, and the public safety prob-lem, at this time the government is practically non-existent,” he said.

Meanwhile, Police Superintendent José Caldero said on Tuesday the shooting that took the life of a 10-year-old boy Monday night at the Caribe Hilton Hotel in San Juan took place between guests staying at the hotel and that gunmen did not enter the hotel from the outside and started shooting.

“We ruled out that someone entered, as had been speculated at fi rst, that someone en-tered shooting,” Caldero said in a radio inter-view with NotiUno. “So far, reconstructing what happened there, it appears that the [the subjects] did not enter [the hotel shooting]. The incident occurred among people who were [already] there.”

Earlier Tuesday, San Juan Police Com-mander Col. Reinaldo Bermúdez confi rmed that the child who was wounded in the shooting, which took place near the hotel’s pool area, died at San Jorge Hospital and that two adults were also injured. Police haven’t oﬀ ered details on the condition of the men.

“One of the persons, one of the injured, had two rooms at the Caribe Hilton Hotel and has an ample criminal record,” Caldero said, adding that the man’s criminal record is related to drugs and weapons violations.

He noted, however, that “we need time to collect the information, reconstruct the

scene and work with the camera systems in-stalled at the Caribe Hilton.”

He added that police found a gun at the scene that had not been fi red.

Caldero said authorities continue to conduct interviews and are still in the initial phase of the investigation. He said the hotel’s security staﬀ is working with police.

The San Juan Criminal Investigations Unit will be requesting security camera vid-eos as part of the investigation.

The San Juan Criminal Investigations Unit will be requesting the videos in the se-curity cameras as part of the investigation.

Police later identifi ed the boy who was killed as Michael Romero, who was staying with his family at the hotel, including his father, José Javier Romero, 35, who is one of the injured men and who allegedly has a criminal record.

The second injured man has been iden-tifi ed as José Juan Cruz, 29.

The police chief described the crime scene as complex.

“There were a lot of people there,” Cal-dero said. “We have been working on the case since last night [Monday night]. As happens in these kinds of incidents, everybody starts running and they leave. Now we have to rec-reate the scene, look for the people who were there and interview them.”

In another radio interview with WKAQ oﬀ ered a few hours later on Tuesday, Caldero said Romero is not cooperating with authori-ties.

“The father said he has nothing to say to the Police, that he fi rst wants to speak with his attorney,” Caldero said in a radio interview with WKAQ.

Romero and Cruz are both currently at the Río Piedras Medical Center under police guard, Caldero said.

“The agents who are at the Medical Cen-ter told me that the father of the boy who was killed doesn’t want to oﬀ er details to the po-lice and the other [man, Cruz,] says he doesn’t know what happened,” Caldero said, adding that both men are from Toa Alta, are unem-ployed and paid for the hotel rooms in cash.

He said that although Romero has a criminal record for weapons and drug vio-lations, he was out of jail because he had al-ready served time for the crimes.

Caldero added that anyone who has any information or was present when the crime took place Monday night should call police authorities at 787-343-2020.

Killing of 10-Year-Old in Hotel Shootout Illustrates

Gov’t Failure on Public Safety, Rosselló Says

6 The San Juan Daily Star

COMMERCIAL REAL ESTATE SERVICES

MANAGEMENT INCOME PRODUCING

PROPERTY

A. ZEPEDA REALTY

Please Contact Atilio Zepeda

Lic. #2095 • 787-616-1038

atiliozepedarealty@gmail.com

(6)

(7)

U

niversity of Puerto Rico (UPR) Governing Board Student Repre-sentative Gilberto Domínguez on Tuesday requested in an open letter that the audit report on the presidential schol-arships awarded at UPR to be made public immediately.

The audit report was drafted and turned in to the governing board last week investigating

In a letter addressed to UPR Govern-ing Board Interim President Carlos Pérez Díaz, the student leader said “our univer-sity community is waiting for the publica-tion of this investigapublica-tion, not on a mere whim, but because it is their right to have access to public information in the hands of the government.”

He said that for example, the judicial branch “has taken steps in the right direc-tion” regarding transparency by allowing the live broadcast of the preliminary hear-ing in an appeal in the case of the people vs. Luis Rivera Seijo.

“The [government] agencies and in-strumentalities need to move in that di-rection, not backwards,” Domínguez said, according to an Inter News Service report. “I know it has been established that the

reason for the report to be [classifi ed] as confi dential is to not violate the due pro-cess of law for those who may be subject of sanctions, and a legal opinion hasn’t been produced supporting this for the benefi t of members of the board.”

He added that “we have in our hands a defi nitive version that would cease any undue speculation and close this dark chapter in the history of the university as soon as possible.”

“Not doing so supports the

unfor-tunate climate of uncertainty in our insti-tution,” Domínguez said. “That is why I am calling for the report that is object of this controversy to be published immedi-ately.”

Domínguez adds in the letter that “I don’t accuse you of keeping the report pri-vate for the reasons that have been public-ly outlined, but I do invite you to reclaim the name of the UPR’s board of directors and of our university in a defi nitive way.”

He said a sub-committee created by

the UPR board of directors to evaluate the report and issue recommendations on how the board should proceed was slated to meet on Tuesday. Domínguez said he ex-pected an answer to his request after the meeting concluded, and hoped that they would agree and make the report public.

Last week, the Senate passed a peti-tion by New Progressive Party Sen. Larry Seilhamer and Popular Democratic Party Sen. Mari Tere González to require the UPR governing board to provide a copy of the original report rendered by the in-vestigation commission designated to look into the presidential scholarship awarding process.

“The Senate has the duty to super-vise, even more so when the UPR receives public funds and the report in question was paid for with money from the Treasury,” Seilhamer said in a written statement.

Seilhamer added that the granting of the presidential scholarships “is a mat-ter that has not been made clear and there are many doubts that need to be clarifi ed, such as the participation of relatives of this administration.”

“In an eﬀ ort to respect the transpar-ency that should prevail at the University of Puerto Rico, that report should be de-livered and published immediately,” Seil-hamer said.

By PEGGY ANN BLISS Special to The STAR starrrbliss@gmail.com

T

he long parade of burials of 49 people who died in a terrorist act at a gay discotheque in Orlando, Fla. is mostly over now, but the legacy of these sad events has generated many ongoing projects so no one will forget the dead, most of whom were Latino, with 23 of them of Puerto Rican descent.

Although Puerto Rico has already erected a low-cost, artistic memorial to the victims, the city of Orlando has its eyes on a more ambitious one.

Orlando will erect a permanent memorial to member the shooting June 12, the Orlando Sentinel re-ported.

Mayor Buddy Dyer said the monument will pay tribute to the victims, survivors and relatives of the

massacre, which also left 53 injured.

Orlando City Hall will set up a committee to su-pervise and create the memorial, Dyer said, noting that the monument will be a way to “preserve the memory of those who lost their lives and honor the spirit, the love and honor of our great city.”

It will also have a Latin theme because the major-ity of the dead were Hispanic, mostly of Puerto Rican origin.

The Orange County Regional History Center will have the task of collecting and preserving the painful memories that will become part of the memorial, includ-ing notes left in public places throughout the city.

So far, the place where most of the pain of neigh-bors, friends and family of the victims and the 53 wound-ed -- most very young -- has been concentratwound-ed is Sneﬀ Arts Plaza, in front of the Dr. Phillips Performing Arts Theater Center, where all kinds of objects, from fl ags to

Student Rep on UPR Board Requests Immediate Publication of Scholarships Audit Report

Orlando Dead to Be Honored in Monuments

Pulse Victims Recalled in Endless Ways

8 The San Juan Daily Star

(8)

such attacks, such as Oklahoma City and Newtown, Conn. have their own perma-nent memorials.

Puerto Rico’s fi rst LGBT monument, located in San Juan’s Third Millennium Park, comprises seven rectangular col-umns in rainbow colors, and sits at the entrance to the Sixto Escobar Stadium, reports Noticel. At the base of the monu-ment is a plaque highlighting the names of the 23 Puerto Rican victims killed in the massacre, with the additional 26 vic-tims listed below.

Alongside the names, the Spanish text reads: “This tribute to life strength-ens our commitment to fi ght hate -- the product of homophobia -- with love and respect. Our slogan resounds in all our hearts: Love is love, is love, is love …”

The phrase is an apparent reference to Puerto Rican playwright Lin-Man-uel Miranda’s speech at the 2016 Tony Awards, just hours after the Pulse shoot-ing. Miranda performed a moving sonnet he had written for the victims.

“Today, we celebrate life,” said San Juan Mayor Carmen Yulín Cruz at the _{monument’s dedication. “We must work} together to eradicate discrimination and homophobia. We must raise our voices for justice, and the equality of each of us who are human. We must aspire to have a country (sic) where everyone is equal, and no one is judged for whom they love.”

The monument, designed by Alber-to de la Cruz, cost an estimated $9,000 in public funds.

According to EFE, participants in the dedication carried signs that read “We are not whole: 49 of us have been lost,” while others worked photos of the victims into their attire.

The event took place close to a year after a federal judge in Puerto Rico ruled in favor of marriage equality. Although another judge tried to halt that ruling, a federal appeals court determined in April

was also binding in Puerto Rico, an unin-corporated territory of the United States. Some stories will never be told, but many sad anecdotes, not all verifi able, have circulated in social media, such as the Puerto Rican whose body was not claimed by his father, who according to the OrlandoLatino.org blog was ashamed of his son’s sexual orientation.

The young man’s body was even-tually turned over to relatives in the Or-lando area, according to the blog, which cited information by Pew Research Cen-ter that the great majority of islanders op-pose homosexuality and same-sex mar-riage. The subject caused a great uproar on social networks.

The gunman, according to one blog, had also reportedly confessed to a former homosexual lover that he hated Puerto Ri-can gays, who he said refused to acknowl-edge him when he visited the popular dis-cotheque where the shooting took place.

Eddie Sotomayor

Stanley Almodovar III Franky Jimmy de

Jesús Velázquez

(9)

10 The San Juan Daily Star

In Puerto Rico, these themes have caused great debate in the past few years and several laws have been passed to pro-tect the rights of the LGBT community.

Lighting Up an Arena

It took an arena in Sarasota to cel-ebrate the life of Eddie Sotomayor, 34, na-tional brand manager of an LGBT travel agency.

Sotomayor was in Orlando with his partner, Luis Rojas, to launch another gay cruise to Cuba, according to Al Ferguson, Sotomayor’s friend and employer at Al-andChuck.travel

The popular tour guide received tributes from singing star Lady Gaga and Duchess of Cambridge Kate Middleton.

During the fi rst cruise to Cuba in April, Ferguson reported, Sotomayor sent himself a postcard with the Cuban and American fl ags.

“Hello world,” it started, adding this was the fi rst communication from Cuba to the United States in 50 years.

“It took seven weeks,” Ferguson said, noting that it arrived just before the shooting.

While Sotomayor was in Cuba, he befriended Cuban artist Santiago Hermes,

who spoke at the celebration through an interpreter.

An act of bravery

To honor Stanley Almodovar’s memory and his actions the night of the shooting, Clermont Mayor Gail L. Ash of Lake County, Fla., released a proclama-tion declaring “Stanley Almodovar III Day.”

The 23-year-old pharmacy tech was a graduate of East Ridge High School in Clermont.

Ash called the shooting “cowardly.” Almodovar, on the other hand, was the opposite, the proclamation said.

“Stanley Almodovar III heroically saved lives on June 12 by shielding oth-ers at Pulse nightclub and putting him-self in harm’s way, ultimately sacrifi cing his life,” it said.

The oldest victim dancer Franky Jimmy de Jesús Velázquez, 50, was re-membered by his many friends and rela-tives in his hometown of Caguas. He had been all over the world, with the pres-tigious dance troupe, Gíbaro de Puerto Rico, but he never lost his humility, said his friend Wanda Soto “Wherever Jimmy would go, Jimmy had people loving him. He was an uncle, a brother, best friend. Jimmy was Jimmy.”

A native of San Juan, he graduated from Josefi na Barceló High School and attended Inter American University at its Metro campus. In Orlando, he was a visual merchandiser for clothing retailer Forever 21. His sister, Sheila D. de Jesús, lives in San Juan, as does their mother, Aida.

Samí Haiman-Marrero, an Orlando business owner and a part of the core team of Somos Orlando (“We Are Orlan-do”) connected families with resources such as housing or grief counseling in Spanish.

“We’re talking about large groups of family members trying to come,” Haiman-Marrero noted. “It’s a really tight knit community and so the mourn-ing transcends beyond the typical nucle-ar family.”

She described one family of 25 who traveled from Puerto Rico to Orlando and needed help with housing.

Funeral services, the shipping of re-mains, and church services among other costs can run from $5,000 to $8,000, said Mariela Atkins, oﬃ ce manager at Robert Bryant Funeral & Cremation Chapel in Orlando.

Airlines also stepped in to help, in-cluding United Airlines and Southwest with the transportation of remains at no cost. JetBlue has oﬀ ered complimentary travel for immediate family and domestic partners of victims.

Pedro Julio Serrano, who runs the LGBT program in Puerto Rico, under-stands a deep cultural problem that some families face.

“It’s a very touchy subject, but some of the victims’ families found out that their victim was LGBT when this hap-pened, so they will have to do deal with that,” he said.

Some of the Puerto Rican victims moved to the U.S. mainland because they wanted to live in an environment that was more accepting of the LGBT commu-nity, he added.

He harked back to the island’s his-tory of violence, referring to the slaying 27 gay men by a lone killer in the 1980s.

The people who live on, be they writers, activists, artists or just regular people, are constantly looking for ways to remember the victims.

Television commentator and animal rights and environmental activist Jane Vélez-Mitchell, who considers herself an islander, came out as gay in 2007. The au-thor of several best sellers has also been an active voice for the LGTB community in Puerto Rico and in the United States, as a commentator on HLN, CNN, TruTV and E!.

Her mother, journalist Anita Vélez, -- who died last year at age 99 -- was a na-tive of Vieques, and an important fi gure in the theatrical and dance community.

She promotes her causes on her blog janeunchained.com, especially that of an-imals as “the voice of those who cannot speak.”

With the horror of Pulse on her mind, she urged people to go to the polls in November, to vote for the woman she said would never encourage these “hor-rors.”

Jane Vélez-Mitchell

Pedro Julio Serrano

Samí Haiman Marrero