The Rum Diary...

The movie The Rum Diary helped me a lot to visualize how a lot of Americans that lived in Puerto Rico really saw us Puerto Ricans. Shows how the Americans treat badly the Puerto Ricans and like if the island were of their own. This caused the Puerto Ricans to have a bad aspect of the Americans and to treat them the same way, which in turn caused a violently and criminality view of the local people. But they also show at the beginning a manifestation of Puerto Ricans in front of the San Juan All Star (the newspaper), which I found good in a sense that we don't let people do with us whatever they want, but at the same time is bad in a sense that they showed us as violent people.

We can see another perspective that many Americans have about Puerto Rico in how in the scene of the carnival they drank all the time like if it was something they couldn't do in any other place. That was interesting because as you can see with only the title of the movie, everything was about alcohol and things that had to do with it. Puerto Rico was seen as a place where everyone drank and party all night long. When Paul Kemp (Johnny Depp) made an interview to some Americans that were staying in Puerto Rico for a bowling tournament, they talked about how beautiful it was and how much they liked it. The funny part was when they said that they don't leave the hotel because is not safe.  Well how do you expect to know about a place when you don't even go out of the hotel? It is unexplainable how they show their ignorance and don't even care.

This film also shows how the Americans had in mind that Puerto Rico was a "sea of money" and how they planned to take the most advantage they could have of it.  They also called Puerto Rico "The American Dream" which I found odd.  I really liked when one of the characters said that Puerto Rico was like "someone you fuck and is still here", because he really showed his thoughts and feelings of the aspect he had.  In conclusion the movie really showed a perfect example of the relationship between Puerto Rico and United States and at the end they also show that even though it wasn't such a bad experience to be in Puerto Rico, to find a good future you have to get out of the island. I really liked the movie and I would recommend everybody to see it to learn a little bit more of how some Americans see us Puerto Ricans and our island.

Here is a trailer of the movie if you want to watch it!