Puerto Ricans celebrate Thanksgiving today, due to American custom, but with variations and limitations when sharing and dining with family, among them, the lack of electricity on the island after Hurricane Maria.
Due to the lack of light in the residences due to the fall of thousands of poles and towers due to the excessive winds that hurricane Maria brought to the island on September 20, families went to various restaurants that had lunch offers or met in the home of a family member with an electric generator.
The electric generator, however, had to be of great power because the ovens where the traditional turkey is burning consumes a lot of fuel, which can be gasoline, gas or diesel, for the hours when the animal had to finish preparing and ready to eat.
However, due to the lack of electricity in the homes, the smell of baked turkey was limited to early morning hours, which was when a member of the family placed the bird on the grill for several hours until the time was up. to share and eat.
In Puerto Rico, Thanksgiving Day officially marks the beginning of the Christmas holidays, which extend eight days after the Day of Kings on January 6 and coincide with the traditional Fiestas of San Sebastian Street in Old San Juan .
Similarly, the turkey was also displaced in some homes by whole chickens or pork, the typical meat in Puerto Rico during the Christmas season.
The turkey could be accompanied with rice with gandules -the main rice dish of the Christmas holidays-, with onions, cranberries with cilantro, with bacon, with vegetables, among others, as well as salad of lettuce and tomato, salad of potatoes or coditos (type of pasta), ground beef or sweet potato.
The restaurants, which mostly offer a more local or Creole menu, served various lunch offers of turkey breasts sprinkled with different sauces, such as mushrooms, blueberries, mango, guava or stuffed with churrasco and manchego cheese, attached with the accompaniments before mentioned.
These dishes also include a variety of desserts, including pie, pumpkin pie or pudding, three milks or apple pie.
All these opportunities were achieved while hundreds of brigades of the Electric Power Authority and other US companies try to lift the service on the island.
So far and according to the official page of the local government, status.pr, the generation of electricity in Puerto Rico is at 51.4 percent.
Not only the lack of electricity limited the time of sharing and eating of Puerto Ricans, but also the decrease of family members at the tables because many of them have left Puerto Rico for the United States for various reasons, mostly, the lack of employment.
As reported several days ago in a statement by the Department of Labor and Human Resources, the participation rate or active population in Puerto Rico stood at 38.6% after Hurricanes Irma and Maria passed through the island last September, the lowest in at least 27 years.
Similarly, but without offering official data, more than 100,000 Puerto Ricans have emigrated to the United States after the devastating passage of Hurricane Maria on September 20 looking for job opportunities or medical services.
