Willie Colon, Bronx-born of Puerto Rican grandparents, has fused his musical talent, his passion for humanity, and his community and political activism into an extraordinary, multifaceted career.
His achievements in all his activities are widely recognized. As musician, composer, arranger, singer, and trombonist, as well as producer and director, Colon still holds the all time record for sales, he has created 40 productions that have sold more than thirty million records worldwide.
El cantautor puertorriqueño Draco se enfrenta a la batalla más dura en su vida: un diagnóstico de cáncer.
Su promotor y representante Angelo Medina, a través de un comunicado de prensa, confirmó la noticia.
"En el día de hoy me toca informar una de las noticias mas difíciles que he tenido que comunicar en mi carrera de mas de treinta años. Desde hace varios meses, Draco ha tenido diversos padecimientos y quebrantos de salud. Luego de una búsqueda constante y tras visitar varios médicos especialistas en Estados Unidos existe un diagnóstico. Se le encontró un tumor canceroso en el abdomen cerca de su hígado: Non-Hodgkin Lymphoma. En este momento, se encuentra en un tratamiento especializado en la clínica Burzynski Clinic en Houston, Texas", cita.
De acuerdo con Medina, el artista de 40 años se encuentra muy positivo y optimista ante la enfermedad. Desde hace seis meses, Draco comenzó a realizarse diversos exámenes médicos, pero no fue hasta el jueves que recibió el diagnóstico.
"Él está muy combatiente y optimista. Él es un hombre muy sensible y lo vi como todo un guerrero", sostuvo Medina, con la voz entrecortada a El Nuevo Día.
Asimismo, añadió que el cantautor, ya entró a la Burzynski Clinic en Houston donde recibirá un tratatmiento alternativo por los próximos meses.
Por ahora el artista ha pedido a sus admiradores que se unan en oración.
I met Robi around ’94-’95 at the Mayflower Hotel near Columbus Circle; he was working with a prolific manager of Mexican rock bands who were also staying there, but he was a man apart, his mind and field of perception racing past me yet still allowing me to speak to him. Instead of the hotel lounge rock stars prefer he motioned me into Central Park to sit in the grass with him like he was someone I went to high school with, and in a way I did, because the story he would tell me about his early adolescent move with his family to Puerto Rico from New York was so much like the one my parents once planned for me. They had taken me to Bayamón somewhere where we had family and my cousins or second cousins took me to play basketball in the neighborhood and I didn’t like the way people played there and in general the soft-as-dew suburban sights and smells didn’t agree with me and I said no and my parents for some strange reason listened to me. Robi’s parents didn’t listen to him and he wound up back en la isla, where he found unimaginable fame, glory, and this kind of inexplicable look of shock and sadness, tempered by that slow smile that never seems to leave his face even when he’s not smiling. It’s not like I think I would have turned out just like Robi if my parents forced me to move like his did, because there’s no way I could sing (and certainly not dance) like he does, but there have been times when I felt he was a kind of amazing alternate version of someone I could have been, someone more willing to face the raging ecstatic love and pathos that burns inside our imaginary nation.
I found out today that Robi was sick and we should all pray for him. So he can be there for his family and so he can finish all the work that’s still stored up inside him.
(Robi prefers to be called Draco and I respect that but when I met him he was Robi and I still remember him that way.)
Here is an excerpt from an interview I did with him in 1999:
I was born in New York and my mom used to listen to one kind of music and my dad listened to a totally different kind of music. Mom was born in Mayaguez but went to live in New York. She loved the Beatles, she gave me the White Album, she came home one day with Led Zeppelin, a crushed velvet poster. She came home with the Who, and then I heard about the Doors, so she got me the Doors, I was a big fan of Jim Morrison, and that’s how that whole thing evolved with my mom. My dad was a big salsero. Until this day, he just listens to the old school. But back then they used to get together Saturday nights downstairs and listen to the old school salsa. I listened to it, I wanted to hang with my Dad, and he closed the door, there was good music down there. My dad also listened to the crooners—he had his take on Julio Iglesias and he listened to Camilo Sesto. But with the boys it was always about la Fania All Stars. He was always into salsa, the dark kind, the one that was tough. The aggressive side of salsa. Mom was like what she was all about. My mom used to work in Hempstead in a predominantly black neighborhood. She used to hang out at a YMCA type place. I used to go every Thursday night and that’s when I got my first boombox. That’s when I first heard Sly, and I was like wow, listen to this. That lasted for two years. I was like 7 or so. Neither of my parents were musicians. But both of their families had people that played cuatros. My dad didn’t because we ran into some real tough times and he was the one that was responsible to take care of the whole family, so he went in another direction.
Menudo comes cause one day my pop just comes home and says, we’re going to give you another week, and then we’re going to Puerto Rico. At this point I was having a little trouble getting along with my dad, getting along, standard stuff, you know. So I wasn’t too happy about going to Puerto Rico, at the time I was so upset with him and I got really close to my mom’s brother, and he was the one who said, hey why don’t you come stay with me in San Juan, because we were in Ponce. He said there’s this group, Menudo, he showed me this article, I didn’t know, I just came from New York. Menudo, what is that? I said. He hooked up an audition, I didn’t get the job, it came down to nine finalists. Then they hired me to do background music, ironically enough. When I was in Ponce I had a heavy metal band. I was a little too tall at the time. I went with them. It was a little tough decision at the time because some of the boys were saying, “porque te vas a tirar pa’ alla?” I’m thinking about this. Do I stay at home and shoot a basket all my life or travel because I paid attention to what Menudo was doing—they were traveling around the world, and then I had my dad, he was annoying me, so I said, you know what, I’m getting out of here. That was my break. I was 12.
Este es uno de los letreros colocado a orillas de varios expresos alrededor de Puerto Rico en el que se anuncia el día del juicio final. (END / Juan Ángel Alicea Mercado)
Cada cierto tiempo, una profecía con tono sombrío y respaldada por señalamientos bíblicos o hasta supuesta evidencia científica vaticina la fecha exacta del fin del mundo.
La más reciente, divulgada a través de enormes letreros a orillas de algunas vías de rodaje en la Isla, asegura que el día del juicio final será el próximo 21 de mayo. Las entidades detrás de la teoría, entre ellas Family Radio y la Electronic Bible Fellowship, aseguran que dentro de exactamente un mes desparecerán misteriosamente miles de personas como parte del arrebatamiento, momento en que los elegidos serán llevados junto al Señor.
¿Los demás? Pues se quedarán sobre la Tierra hasta el próximo 21 de octubre, día en que Dios acabará con el mundo.
El catedrático de teología en el recinto Metropolitano de la Universidad Interamericana, el doctor Rubén Pérez Torres, indicó que la teoría sobre el juicio final en el 2011 es “teológicamente un disparate” pues se basa en unas supuestas pistas bíblicas mientras ignora puntos claves del Nuevo Testamento.
Según el portal www.familyradio.com, partiendo de las instrucciones que Dios le dio a Noé para construir el arca, plasmadas en el libro del Génesis, se puede determinar la fecha del día final. A base de cálculos sobre la fecha del aquel diluvio (en el año 4990 antes de Cristo) y los alegados mensajes de Dios en los que indica que pasaran siete días antes del próximo desastre, los seguidores de la teoría aseguran que el 2011 es el año seleccionado.
“Jesús dijo muy claramente cuando los discípulos le preguntan en Hechos 1:6, ‘Señor, restauraras el Templo de Israel en estos tiempos’. La respuesta de Jesús fue bien clara, ‘no os toca a vosotros saber los tiempos que el Padre puso en su sola potestad’”, manifestó Pérez Torres.
El catedrático señaló que existen numerosos versículos que indican que nadie, ni siquiera los ángeles, saben la fecha exacta del juicio final.
“Tristemente hay personas que utilizan esa teología de la escatología inminente para meter miedo porque el miedo vende. Y lo que hacen es perjudicar el cristianismo, porque nosotros los cristianos creemos en que Jesús regresará, pero cuando no suceda nada el mes que viene, siempre habrá gente que dejará de creer”, sostuvo Pérez Torres.
Esta no es la primera vez que grupos religiosos desarrollan campañas para anunciar el alegado fin del mundo.
El fundador de la Iglesia Adventista, William Miller, aseguró que el fin del mundo llegaría el 20 de marzo de 1843. Mientras, el fundador de La Sociedad de la Torre del Vigía (grupo que luego evolucionó hasta convertirse en los Testigos de Jehová), Charles T. Russell, indicó que Jesús regresó a la Tierra en 1874 y que el mundo terminaría en el 1914. Cuando esto no sucedió, cambió la fecha para el 1915.
Asimismo, alrededor del mundo surgieron numerosos grupos -que luego fueron bautizados como sectas milenaristas- que aseguraron que la Tierra terminaría con la llegada del año 2000.
Opinión No es justo que ahora hasta Willie Colón, que ni siquiera conoce a los Nule, los insulte por Twitter desde un trancón de la 26. Daniel Samper Ospina
Sigo en mi empeño de defender a los Nule, a Tomás y Jerónimo, a los muchachos que inventaron Agro Ingreso Seguro y a cuanto joven emprendedor sea perseguido por la justicia colombiana. Podría detenerme en el caso del exviceministro de Agricultura, a quien esta semana, y de forma infame, la Fiscalía sindicó de celebración indebida de contratos: al parecer firmaba un contrato y celebraba hasta altas horas de la madrugada, de manera francamente indebida. Pero mis labores investigativas me han llevado a conseguir un nuevo correo privado que prueba la bondad infinita de los Nule. Lo publico en la versión web de esta columna para deleite de todos. La semana pasada veíamos a un trío de primos en busca de sus verdaderas vocaciones. Esta vez vemos a un Guido mitad Anthony de Melo, mitad gamín de La vendedora de rosas, que, a la vez que reivindica hipocresía, procura que sus primos se quieran con amor filial así deba acudir, para tal fin, a un lenguaje un poco soez; a un Guido místico, a un Guido ascético que nos lega el testimonio de su fe: "Cuando pienso en ustedes solo viene a mi mente la imagen de la Virgen María bañada en llanto, y esta termina convirtiéndose en mi tía Graciela llorando por unos niños, que son ustedes". Vamos por partes. Si esto no conmueve a las autoridades, en especial al procurador, no sabría ya cómo más demostrar que estamos ad portas de que se cometa una grave injusticia. ¿Quién, al observar a Miguel y Manuel Nule, no ve a la Virgen María bañada en lágrimas? A mí también me pasa. Y algo más: a veces la misma imagen de la Virgen se convierte ante mis ojos, súbitamente, en la tía Graciela, sobre todo si he inhalado opio previamente. Y ese es mi primer consejo para Guido: que se aleje de las drogas. Uno puede ser actor, como es su sueño, pero no por eso debe contagiarse de los vicios del medio. Pero la sociedad, cada vez más corrompida, ya no cree en la Virgen Santísima; mucho menos en los jóvenes marianos en que ella elige reencarnar. Hemos perdido los valores. Casi todos se los llevaron ellos. Quién sabe en qué paraíso fiscal los tienen. Hemos perdido la fe y, a la vez, nos hemos vuelto malas personas. Miren la forma en que algunos apátridas tratan de vincular desesperadamente a miembros del gobierno de Uribe con los Nule, con el perverso fin de enlodarlos. A los Nule, se entiende. Para desprestigiarlos, RCN publicó que los primos habían ingresado a Palacio 19 veces. No sean mezquinos. No se salten el contexto. En ese momento mucha gente iba a Palacio, aun a proponer negocios legales. Nadie, ni Job, sabía que visitar la Casa de Nariño quitara tanto prestigio. Por esa época, Edmundo del Castillo, Bernardo Moreno y compañía eran muy bien aceptados socialmente: ¿quién iba a dudar entonces de toda la banda presidencial? ¡Si hasta Mauricio Vargas entraba a Palacio! Además, como constructores, ¿no tenían derecho los Nule a cotizar un arreglo para el cuarto de Tomás, a estucar las materas que Yidis dejó con filtraciones? Caracol Radio, por su parte, estableció que Edmundo del Castillo ayudó a que Rina de Nule ganara unos contratos de interventoría para que no rindieran la Bienestarina con ácido sórbico. Pobre Rina: no pueden ver que una mujer de cartera Louis Vuitton y nariz operada -parece que se hizo la ‘rinaplastia’- haga esfuerzos por la niñez desamparada sin acabar con su honra: sepan todos que si permitió preservativos a la Bienestarina fue para evitar embarazos en las niñas. En Colombia suceden cosas increíbles: el ponente de la ley de inteligencia es Juan Manuel Galán. Bautizan una ley con el nombre de Vargas Lleras, lo cual hace suponer que le mocharán varias partes: por lo menos el índice. Pero nada ha habido tan insólito como lo que pasa con los Nule: miren cómo les ponen unos chalecos antibalas que parecen fajas adelgazantes y se los quitan a los 12 minutos porque hace calor; miren cómo los trastean de un lado al otro sin saber siquiera en cuál cárcel ponerlos. Y miren cómo tratan al cuarto Nule, al pobre Mauricio Galofre: siempre lo dejan de lado, lo editan de las fotos, lo quitan de los titulares. Exijo respeto para él, que ha hecho todos los méritos para ser tenido en cuenta como los demás: ha sido tan corrupto como sus cuñados como para que ahora lo conviertan en el Ringo Starr de la banda. No, señor, lo respetan. Si quieren un Ringo, ahí está Miguel, el Nule baterista. No permitamos que se perpetúe esta infamia contra los Nule. Son personas de honor: de ahí su gusto por los honorarios. No es justo ahora que hasta Willie Colón, que ni siquiera los conoce, los insulte por Twitter desde un trancón de la 26. Me duele por Mane, el Nule caddie: cuando le dijeron que lo llevaban de vuelta al búnker, creyó, entusiasmado, que le hablaban de golf. Y por Guido, el Nule actor, que, luego del papel de víctima que hizo en una entrevista de RCN, ya tenía listo un chaleco antibalas de falso terciopelo para recibir un TV y Novelas. Por eso, en esta Semana Santa rezo por ellos. Cierro los ojos y viene a mi mente la imagen de la tía Graciela bañada en llanto, y esta termina convirtiéndose en Guido, en Manuel, en Miguel mientras la Virgen María llora por las penas irrisorias que les van a asignar. Ver correo
I have to thank my buddies Ed Morales, Felipe Luciano and Angelo Falcón for this piece.
Lately, I have been feeling exactly the same way. It seems that most island Puerto Ricans see us as less than or some sort of aberration. We are irrelevant, when ironically, in most cases AmeRicans have been the force that has protected Puerto Rico from Washington.
Artistically, very few AmeRicans are supported on the island. If you are from anywhere else you can command a handsome fee but with the exception of Mar/J-Lo there are few of us that can earn a living on the Island. Even though everyone else that I have worked with has reached a mythical status (ie: Hector LaVoe, Celia Cruz, Ruben Blades). I am not able to command the respect or empathy with the majority of my Island brothers.
One example is that I am revered throughout Latin America; filling stadiums with my concerts, doing TV appearances and press conferences but whenever a positive piece is published in a Puerto Rican paper’s blog, I am immediately devoured by a legion of trolls who will post the most shocking filth and mean spirited comments. While an article for Ruben Blades (Panamanian) or Juan Luis Guerra (Dominican) engenders affection and support.
When someone rumored that I was thinking of running for office in Puerto Rico I became a target for the left and the right. Yet in New York most Puerto Rican elected officials are island born.
Sadly, I feel defeated and am resigned to the reality that I have been living a lie. In my mind and heart I thought I was Puerto Rican but obviously I am not. I am something else.
I have come to love Latin America for the warm and support I have received from Chile to Dominican Republic. Colombia, Venezuela, Peru, Ecuador and Mexico have given me so much in knowledge and self esteem that like Angelo Falcón, with the Institute, I feel it’s time to rename myself as a Latin AmeRican.
Podía ser que estuviera en La Fonda Boricua Lounge -el semi-famoso Latin jazz antro del Barrio de Nueva York- para olvidarme de algo. Pero no fue así. Cuando los hermanos Andy y Jerry González, el corazón del conjunto llamado Fort Apache, se botaron interpretando el "Nefertiti" de Miles, y quizás más importante, el "Evidence" de Monk, se hizo claro que esta noche no era una para olvidar, sino para revivir la historia, y re-hacerla a la misma vez.
Andy is always the bass, the interpolator between Barretto-Palmieri and bebop, cool, walking bass, and Jerry is two people at once. Jerry is the height of modernist blues, the cool jazz superstructure breathing through the flugel horn like someone at the midpoint between eternal life and slow death, like Miles at Birdland, only Birdland was in Spanish Harlem, and when he cradles the congas it’s because the rumba guaguancó needed to be imported from La Habana by way of New Orleans and all the way up the Mississippi to 106th Street, and the express train was not running -it never does on weekends.
Hasta acá llegó la nación imaginaria de Puerto Rico.
Typical Nuyorican, is what my friends from la isla sometimes say when they don’t understand why so much of our nation, speaking English and fighting with the marginalization of exile into El Barrio and El Bronx, wave those flags en la parada puertorriqueña -which should be el desfile puertorriqueño- gritando yes I’m proud y qué?
Just last week Felipe Luciano -once a leader of the Young Lords, who (without Felipe’s approval) made that naive attempt in 1971 to bring independence to the island while trying to be Marxist-Leninist Maoist bugaloo salseros bilingues and redefining hybrid Latino identity in the middle of a "revolution"- had sent out an open letter asking for new ways to restore solidarity in nuestra nación imaginaria:
PUERTO RICO! Let’s be perfectly frank with each other. We’re not getting along. Most of the time we live in myopic isolation regardless of how many times we visit each other.
For the most part, the message reads like a letter to an estranged family member. He touches on the misunderstandings over language, the brain drain, the elitism of the professional classes. He employs the term AmeRican (probably first used by Nuyorican poet Tato Laviera) to acknowledge that the diaspora has spread far beyond Nueva York. Finally, he sounds this alarm:
We’re at a crossroads now. AmeRican children are not identifying with the island as much, and, we, here, are fighting a last ditch battle to keep them from falling into the abyss of white, corporate American values or the opposite, the lack of purpose or committment to family and community associated with a permanent, marginalized underclass.
It would be wonderful if we could do this together. But, we see ourselves as distant cousins, friendly, but, hardly close or intimate. And it’s time, we let you, on the island, know that.
I called Angelo Falcón, the head of an organization called the National Institute for Latino Policy (formerly the National Institute for Puerto Rican Policy), to ask him about this. He said that when he started publishing findings from the census that the majority of Puerto Ricans lived outside the island, he got the same kind of resistance from academics as when he published figures that whites were no longer the majority population in New York. He felt that institutional relationships between mainland Puerto Ricans and island Puerto Ricans took a turn for the worse when Rafael Hernández Colón’s Department of Puerto Rican Affairs was abandoned for Pedro Roselló’s "lobbying operation" the Puerto Rican Federal Affairs Administration.
Falcón thinks that what is lacking is an institutional commitment to encourage different aspects of political, cultural, and economic interaction to happen.
In his message, Luciano proposes a "Puerto Rican Fresh Air Fund, that plucks kids from the streets of New York, every summer, and plants them in the campos of the island," as well as bringing children from Puerto Rico to live with families who are "politically, culturally and spiritually active in their communities." He also proposes the development of a museum that celebrates the diaspora, as well as la herencia africana, and a yearly conference that brings thinkers and activists from the island and the mainland together.
An art show called "Sorta Rican" at Taller Boricua, a few blocks down from La Fonda Boricua, reminded me of the last time there was a sustained feeling of interaction between the diaspora y la isla. Vieques was the kind of issue that got everybody together-it created a dialog between la poeta Mariposa ("Yo no nací en Puerto Rico; Puerto Rico nació en mi") y el poeta Gallego ("Yo no nací en Nueva York; Nueva York nació en mi"). The Nuyorican Café thrived in Nueva York y San Juan, reggaetón linked Tego and 50 (Cent), and the Yankees were no longer Yanquis. Many would agree that Viento de Agua did their best playing in the Bronx and Miguel Zenón his best thinking in Washington Heights.
Adál Maldonado, a visual artist who recently moved back to la isla after living in New York or California for most of his life, and who has an exhibition that just opened at Museo de Arte de Puerto Rico, is still trying to figure out why there is even una discusión.
We are so multi-dimenesional as a group that many sources haven’t even begun to be explored and people are hung up on a Puerto Rican Canon. I personally don’t get it, the Canon should be based on the multiplicity of cultural, gender, social and political experiences available to us within our own culture.
Que hacer? Luciano has a problem with the most popular phrase in Puerto Rico: Eso es así. "It is not that way," he insists "If we accept a secular pragmatism we will lose the magic and essence of who we are. We were under attack. We saw the blood on the street. We fought back."
Recently, NYU and the Julia de Burgos cultural center in El Barrio showed support for the striking UPR students. They sure fought back. Falcón expressed surprise about Nueva York’s fascination with issues outside of the immediate challenges we face here. But while there is every bit of solidarity with the strike’s basic issues, the inflammatory nature of the Fortuño/NPP repression of the strikers may have struck a chord with those of us who remember names like Diallo and Giuliani. With those of us who see the unfettered violence in word and deed that characterizes the hard Republican right. The kind of politics that makes us wonder why anyone on the island would want to become a part of what the increasingly undemocratic United States calls "America."
But, in the end, as Luciano admits (and we all know) Spanish is the only way to a Puerto Rican heart.
Yo casi ni pienso en español. Yo lo busco en mi alma, y a veces lo encuentro. Está lleno de pena y nostalgia, música y alegría. A veces de repente me salen disparates que se interpretan como gestiones. No se puede reducir la naturaleza de la isla a algunas palabras, a algunos sentimientos. Pero no sé si alborotar en el malecón ni encontrar el corazón en una placita donde se compra viandas y velas es la esencia de esta nación. Pero cuando oigo el canto de Andy y Jerry, el ritmo me cuenta que cultura es textura y la vida es fricción. Que siga el diálogo.
Make Collision Avoidance Equipment Mandatory For All Aircraft
Sign the Petition : 68 Letters and Emails Sent So Far
We call upon Congress and President Obama to direct the FAA to make collision avoidance equipment mandatory for all aircraft.The technology is here and it is inexpensive enough to be built in to all aircraft being presently built and retrofitted into all older aircraft.
Collision Avoidance capability will help reduce pressure on Air Traffic Controllers and increase safety in uncontrolled air spaces.
We also wish Congress and President Obama to direct the FAA to establish VFR Corridor monitoring in cities with multiple airports with complicated heavy traffic patterns.
Presently Collision Avoidance Units start at approximately $600 six hundred dollars. With greater demand and mass production the costs of these units should become even more accessible. This is a small investment that will pay off in saved lives.
Opinión No es justo que ahora hasta Willie Colón, que ni siquiera conoce a los Nule, los insulte por Twitter desde un trancón de la 26. 
