Pulling Strings

First published 2006

ISBN 1-4116-6884-7

This publication has been released under the following Creative Commons Deed:

Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 2.5

You are free:

To copy, distribute, display, and perform the work Under the following conditions:

1. You must attribute the work in the manner specified by the author or licensor.

2. Noncommercial. You may not use this work for commercial purposes.

3. No Derivative Works. You may not alter, transform, or build upon this work.

4. For any reuse or distribution, you must make clear to others the license terms of this work.

Any of these conditions can be waived if you get permission from the author at pedro@veraperez.com

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

Foreword

Writing the first book was easy. Editing it was ten times harder and a lot more frustrating. The worst part of writing that first book was the hopeless procrastination that would kick in after just reading two or three pages.

A year later and I aimed to once again nailing National Novel Writing Month (http://nanowrimo.org) in three weeks or less.

I failed miserably.

After 10,000 words I was done. Not exactly an ego booster.

Another year passed and here I am: National Novel Writing Month 2005! And this time I did not chicken out! I wrote nonstop, and even had enough energy left to document my daily frustrations with my writing at one of my web logs.

The frustrations this time are a bit different. For example, procrastination is less of a factor than before. For the first time my problem is that my attention wanders and I waste my time in things that have nothing to do with the writing. For example, on my first day of NaNoWriMo 2005 I spent no less than two hours testing the layout and typesetting of the final book, and this was without having written the very first sentence yet!

On my first weekend I had planned to spend both days alone with my son PJ, him watching PBS and myself writing a few feet away (Ivette had to work both days). It did not happen. PJ is autistic, and he craves routine. Ivette had to come home halfway through her workday on that Saturday, and it totally threw off his schedule for the day. He spent the rest of the day trying to run away to find his mom, and I spent the rest of that day chasing him throughout the neighborhood and bringing him back home before he had an accident. I spent that Sunday childproofing all my doors and windows, but still I managed to write my quota.

On weekend two I had a rare migraine attack that cost me half the afternoon. I recovered and came out ahead by about two or three days, which let me take it easy for the next few days.

Week three came and went and I almost did not notice. By Thanksgiving I was pretty much done. It is much easier to enjoy the writing when there is no external pressure. I could afford to write 100 pages per day for the last week, knowing I had already hit my minimum. I also got my first volunteers to read the raw draft, something that was much harder the first time.

Overall the experience was very different from my first book. Shining Star went through at least three full revisions before I was happy enough to sell it, and it still went through four more minor revisions since I published it. Pulling Strings went through two revisions. Also, the procrastination element is almost completely absent, since I now understand the self-publishing process and I got a much better idea of what I want to do with my writings.

Prologue

Puerto Rico (“rich port”) is a clump of volcanic rock both blessed and cursed by geography. The island is a little over 100 miles long by about 40 miles wide, and it sits in the middle of one of the greatest riches in the world: the Caribbean Basin. The Spanish were smart enough to realize this, which is why they struggled to keep control of it until the very end of the Spanish American War of 1898.

The Spaniards understood that controlling Puerto Rico meant having the ability to control access to the sea routes to the Caribbean and the Gulf of Mexico. The Americans knew of this too, which is why they stuck around for as long as they did. It took them 50 years of foot dragging to let the naturals of the island to vote to approve a commonwealth with the United States.

It took another 60 years for an American president to screw it all away by opening a loophole that allowed Puerto Rico to become an independent republic for the first time in its history. What the "lame duck'' American president did not know was that Puerto Rico sits on huge reserves of sweet crude oil, which is much easier to refine than sour crude oil. The Puerto Ricans, led by democratically-elected president William Roth, were now sitting on a fortune. Even the most conservative estimates claimed that these fields (most underwater but well within the internationally-recognized water boundaries) were bigger than all of the Saudi Arabia and Alaska fields combined.

The Americans were not thrilled.

President William Roth was a popular self-made billionaire and philanthropist, and he quickly turned the tiny island nation into an economic powerhouse. He orchestrated strategic deals with the United States, Germany, Israel and Japan that revitalized the high technology manufacture sectors of the island, all in exchange for discounted oil. Roth invested these profits in socially progressive programs to improve the standard of living of all of his citizens.

Now on his second elected term, President Roth must find a way to share Puerto Rico’s newfound wealth with her sister nations in the Caribbean and Central and South America while at the same time keeping the United States from mistaking their goodwill with something bad, like for example, imperialistic intentions.

The Americans are very unhappy. They feel cheated for the way their rich former colony slipped away from them. They feel nervous as hell because of the way the Republic of Puerto Rico spreads its power base by throwing cash at pretty much anyone in the Western Hemisphere with little regards to politics.

This was of course bullshit.

What really made the Americans nervous was Cuba and Mexico. Cuba because they wanted to pillage her the second that Fidel Castro kicked the bucket. The Americans felt like they paid their dues for the “Bay of Pigs” fiasco, and it was time for their payback. With Fidel dead they could easily take over. Cuba would become another Puerto Rico literally overnight.

At this pace, there was no way in hell for Puerto Rico to pass on Cuba. It was reported that Fidel Castro and William Roth were on speaking terms, which was much more than what the current President of the United States could claim about either of the men.

The Americans felt that if Roth got his hands on Cuba, it would spell disaster for Florida, since it would take a nasty hit on one of their richest tax bases.

Mexico was a little different: The United States depended on Mexico for cheap (if illegal) labor. The worst kept secret in American politics was that the Southern United States economies were too dependent on “illegal” laborers from Mexico and elsewhere.

If the Puerto Ricans started to open factories in Mexico and paying a good competitive wage, suddenly Mexicans would stop immigrating to the north. Who the hell would want to go north to work three 4-hour part time jobs with no benefits, for minimal wage? The Puerto Ricans could afford to open factories all over Mexico, pay a decent, middle class wage with benefits and workers would have a 40-hour week. Puerto Rico makes a profit, and the median wages in Mexico suddenly mimic those of much richer countries.