Maurice Ferré: Cut medical costs for those about to die

miami herald ^ | 6/10/10 | GEORGE BENNETT

[AuH2ORepublican]

Don Luis’s full name was Luis Antonio Ferré Aguayo; his father moved from Cuba to PR in the late 19th century, while his mother was from an old Puerto Rican family that had actually moved to St. Croix in the 19th century but returned to PR soon thereafter.

Ferré’s first Aguayo ancestor to move to PR was a former soldier from Priego de Córdoba, Spain named José Tomás Aguayo del Rey, whose father was from the blue-blooded Sánchez de Aguayo family (José Tomás decided to shorten his patronimic surname when he moved to PR). José Tomás Aguayo del Rey married María Concepción de Lara Calderón in Puerto Rico in 1742, and they had several children. One of their sons was Don Luis’s great-great-great-grandfather; one of their daughters, Bárbara María, was my great-great-great-great-great-great-grandmother. Don Luis and my great-grandmother both lived in Ponce in the early-to-mid 1930s, and were well aware of their blood ties.

[AuH2ORepublican]

“Maurice, being from PR, was considered the “acceptable” Hispanic, due to antipathy towards the Cubans by the black and Jewish communities (Jewbans excepted) back in the early 1980s.”

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Of course, Maurice is white, and his grandfather was Cuban, so he was more acceptable to Cubans that your average non-Cuban Hispanic would have been.

[Clemenza]

Of course, Maurice is white, and his grandfather was Cuban, so he was more acceptable to Cubans that your average non-Cuban Hispanic would have been.

You are correct, but he was not seen as being Cuban outside of the community (aside from the usual suspects at the time who thought all Latinos in Miami had to be Cuban), and he was always referred to as "Puerto Rican" by the Herald (which was very much anti-Cuban exile during the 1970s and 1980s, especially when the Mariel boatlift hit). Maurice was able to get support from within the black and Jewish communities where other emerging Cuban American politicians could not.

I don't know much about Maurice's relationship with the CANF and Sr. Mas Canosa. I was, after all, just a child in New York at the time.

[fieldmarshaldj]

Heh, that’s interesting... Calderón, that doesn’t mean you’re also distantly related to the other ex-Governor ?

[AuH2ORepublican]

Probably not. I think I remember the ex-governor’s brother telling me that their Calderóns moved from Spain to PR more recently.

My closest blood relation that I know of with a governor of PR is with Diego Menéndez de Valdés, Spanish Governor of PR from 1582 to 1593, who was my 11-great-grandfather. Diego Menéndez de Valdés was the governor who approved the sale of supplies to the English colonists who had stopped in western Puerto Rico in 1587 (where they actually built a small fort, the first documented English building in the New World) on their way to settle Virginia in what ended up being the “lost colony” of Roanoke. Of course, Roanoke was not the first European settlement in the continental United states: Diego Menéndez de Valdés’s cousin, Pedro Menéndez de Avilés, had founded St. Augustine, Florida in 1565.

[fieldmarshaldj]

Does that mean you’re gonna be running for Governor before long ? ;-D

Menéndez... I hope that means you’re not related to that certain politico from NJ. :-P

[chris_bdba]

That ought to go over really well with the older voters in Florida. Would make an excellent commercial for Rubio....show a group of terminally ill children and then play him saying that with the question....do these teriminally ill children not deserve every chance at life?

[susannah59]

I don't know how some people sleep at night, nor how they face themselves in the mirror.

How do you put a value on a human life?

I know that sometimes there comes a time to say, stop, enough is enough, we are only prolonging death and suffering, not life, but that decision is not a financial one and should only be made by the individual, family, and the healthcare provider involved, not by an outside party and never based on cost.

[AuH2ORepublican]

Well, if we go back far enough, everyone of European descent is related to everyone else (through Charlemagne and everyone else who lived in Europe and left progeny 1,200 years ago).

Curiously, though, my great-grandmother was related through marriage to the great-grandfather not of Bob Menendez, but of Erik and Lyle Menendez . . . thank God it wasn’t a blood relation.

[Impy]

I think ever demorat voters with a dying loved one would like to slug this SOB.