WNPC Puerto Rico The Breakdown Wall
The Breakdown Wall at La Clinica de Doc Weston is the first Breakdown Wall in the WNPC network where Spanish is the dominant language on the surface. At the Bronx, Boston, and Phoenix sites, Spanish is one language among many. In Mayaguez, Spanish is the language the wall thinks in.
The notes carry the island's particular grief -- a grief that the mainland sites' walls do not hold in the same way. "Maria se llevo todo menos el dolor" -- Maria took everything except the pain. "Siete doctores se fueron de la isla antes de que uno me creyera" -- Seven doctors left the island before one believed me. "Mi hijo tiene convulsiones y el neurologo mas cercano esta en San Juan" -- My son has seizures and the nearest neurologist is in San Juan. The grief is medical and it is structural and it is colonial -- the pain of being sick on an island that the country that owns it has decided not to fund.
The wall also carries something that the mainland walls carry less of: the particular anger of Puerto Ricans who are American citizens receiving less healthcare than Americans on the mainland. "Somos ciudadanos pero no somos iguales" -- We are citizens but we are not equal. The anger is not at WNPC. It is at the system that made WNPC necessary, and the wall holds it without flinching, because the wall holds everything.
There are also notes of gratitude that arrive with a force the mainland sites' walls do not produce, because the contrast between what Mayaguez had before WNPC and what it has now is starker than at any mainland site. "Primer doctor que me hablo en espanol y me creyo" -- First doctor who spoke to me in Spanish and believed me. In a US territory. In the twenty-first century. The first.