we actually invented pina coladas so i shouldn t be talking bad about pina coladas. hermes: even before we were getting [ bleep ] over by laura: vultures hermes: a lot of vultures, people of puerto rico are good people and i think that we are going to get pass this. anthony: the situation here is truly grave. so how exactly did puerto rico find itself so deeply, and seemingly irrevocably screwed? in the early 70 s, things were looking pretty good for puerto rico. a tax incentive was introduced which helped lure dozens of major companies to the island, employing significant numbers of people. but when that incentive expired in 2006 concurrent with a major
pedro: yeah under the table because they were not inspected by the usda. anthony: can you use entirely puerto rican products? pedro: i m in the process. i use the pork shoulder and there is nobody in puerto rico that produce that. anthony: now that s [ bleep ] up. i mean correct me if i m wrong the spanish generally brought pigs with them. you can certainly raise pigs here no problem, there is the land for it. why is no one raising pigs in puerto rico? pedro: 90 percent of the pork atico comes from the states. the prices are very hard to compete. that is changing. we still have the resources and the talent that is the most powerful tool that we ve got the talent to see an opportunity and working forward to that. we have a great generation of young agriculturists that instead of going from the countryside to the city to work in a bank or some big companies they are going back to the
agriculture, manufacturing, trade have all shrunk drastically. the island is dependent on us exports for just about everything. anthony: so where are we? pedro: we are in loiza. after the liberation of the slave of the island this is where all the africans and slaves get together and established themselves. anthony: despite, or maybe because of economic turmoil, pedro alvarez- cortez saw an opportunity to make something. pedro: we keep working the formula until my grandmother
said whoa, this is very good. give me more. using the tradition as a weapon that s what made us successful. anthony: at a local beach in loiza, about 45 minutes outside san juan, a crab shack that is one of his favorites. pedro: oh my god, look at that. excellent. anthony: what do we have here land crab? pedro: land crab, this is a coconut arepa. anthony: what do you think, just bang the [ bleep ]? pedro: yeah just knock it open like a lobster, there you go, you see? anthony: ahh there we go. pedro: they are very sweet the meat. they just leave it a few weeks in the cage. feed it with grains to take away the flavor of the mangrove. anthony: why did you think sausage? pedro: i had the experience as a chef in puerto rico. i knew the necessity that there was in the restaurant for good quality sausages. so i put my little kitchen to make the experiment and i worked well with that. anthony: where were they getting their sausage before you? pedro: yeah from the moun
and say hey we are more than a fast food. we got to go back to farming. anthony: because you don t want to be buying from imports. xavier: we shouldn t! of course my restaurant i started 6 years ago with just 2 farmers. now we have more than now we have more than 15, 16 farmers. it s like a chain, you go to many farmers and you ask them this type of root vegetables and they don t have it because people stop buying the local root vegetable because the imported one is a whole lot cheaper. and that s all they have in their mind. but if you go to the farmer and you tell the farmer i m going to buy your product. the farmer is going to start having the product. anthony: pay more is a hard argument to make when people are struggling. xavier: but if we don t change our mind i don t know what is going to happen with the island. anthony: do people listen if you say look it s not particularly patriotic, you re not helping the country by eating mcdonalds or shopping at walmart? xavier: