Miranda, the Pulitzer Prize-, Grammy-, Emmy- and Tony Award-winning actor, songwriter, producer, director and creator of “Hamilton” and “In the Heights,” among other works, was in Pennsylvania campaigning for Kamala Harris. En route from Philadelphia to Bethlehem (to see “if there was room at the inn,” he quipped), Miranda said that “it was a reminder of how poorly the Trump administration treated Puerto Ricans, both on the island and in the diaspora, in our darkest days after Hurricanes Irma and Maria.”
Miranda and his family’s foundation, conversely, were a light shining through those dark days, partnering with the Hispanic Federation to help raise more than $50 million for relief and recovery. In addition, Miranda reprised his role as Alexander Hamilton in a 2019 revival of his hit show in San Juan, bringing millions more to the beleaguered island.
The comic’s comments hurt many of Puerto Rican descent, said Miranda. “First of all, no one’s garbage.” (A point President Joe Biden should have heeded when he appeared to label Trump supporters “garbage,” although White House handlers, scrambling to quell the controversy that Republicans pounced on, said he was referencing the rhetoric, not the people. For her part, Harris rebuked Biden in clear terms.)
Puerto Rico “is this small piece of land in the middle of the Caribbean; it’s 100 miles across and has given you some of the greatest art in the world,” said Miranda, naming a litany of Latin pop and sports stars. “It’s given you countless contributions to every sector of American society, and it hurts to be dismissed in that way.”
The native New Yorker seemed more Midwestern modest in not including himself in that list. Instead, the “Hamilton” creator mentioned the founding father at the center of his show as a prototypical island striver.
“The connect-the-dots moment for me when I was reading Ron Chernow’s amazing book [’Hamilton’] about our founder who was not born on the mainland but was born in the Caribbean was that Hamilton got a scholarship to reach the mainland because of the prodigiousness of his writing and his intellect and came to the mainland before it was the United States in search of an education, in search of a better life. And that’s what most Puerto Ricans come here to do, too.”
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Publish date : 2024-11-01 15:31:00
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