SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico (news agencies) — On a recent morning in an Afro-Caribbean community in northeast Puerto Rico, Dr. Pedro Juan Vázquez went door-to-door as part of his medical rounds. He greeted the elderly residents the town with a cheerful “Good afternoon!” and a smile and casually asked if they’d like their vitals taken.
Many were surprised at being approached with an offer of medical care. A man in a gray tank top opened his screen door and said, “Of course,” and took a seat on his porch to be checked out.
Though a physician, Vázquez is better known in Puerto Rico as a rapper who uses the stage name PJ Sin Suela.
The 34-year-old is trying to fulfill his passion for music while helping those in need — and raise awareness about a health crisis on the island of 3.2 million residents. The U.S. territory is facing power outages as well as a shortage of medical professionals, with many having fled to the U.S. mainland for better wages.
Puerto Rico lost over 8,600 doctors out of nearly 18,800 in just over a decade, according to a 2023 report by the think tank The Center for a New Economy. The problem is expected to grow more dire in coming years.
“We have a huge exodus of young people,” Vázquez told media. “In Puerto Rico, we have a crisis much bigger than people think.”
He travels from San Juan, the capital, to the island’s remote areas at least once a week to treat underserved communities struggling in the aftermath of hurricanes, earthquakes and a frail economy.
After hanging up his doctor’s scrubs, Vázquez spends his time producing and performing music that grapples with issues like social inequality, poverty and gun violence, with many deaths in Puerto Rico caused by domestic violence and stray bullets hitting innocent victims.
“A bullet is flying, lost like a child … the wind caresses it, seeks to make news, falling into a skull, without any kind of justice,” he raps in “Las Balas Lloran” (“Bullets Cry”).
In “Somos Más” (“We are More”) he taps into the distressing economic conditions on the island, singing: “The debt has been placed before the worker, the one who goes outside under the rain and the sun, public servers, teachers and nurses.”
His focus on social inequality resonates at home and with homesick Puerto Ricans abroad.
Vázquez comes from a background of leaving and returning to the island, a back-and-forth familiar to many Puerto Ricans since they hold U.S. passports. He doesn’t criticize those who have left Puerto Rico for the U.S. mainland, though he has done the reverse.
“You can’t judge anybody, everybody has their story,” he said. “I’m blessed to have two careers that I can do and live off of.”
He was born in the Bronx in New York City, but moved with his family to the southern town of Ponce, Puerto Rico. He later went to Pennsylvania, then returned to Bayamón, Puerto Rico, to study medicine, becoming a doctor in 2015.
Vázquez became a household name for a younger generation in Latin America in 2018 with the single “Cuál Es Tu Plan?” The song was a collaboration with Puerto Rican icon Bad Bunny and reggaeton singer Ñejo. The recognition he gained led to collaborations with Broadway star Lin-Manuel Miranda and René Pérez, known by the stage name Residente, the frontman of the former reggaetón duo Calle 13.
When the COVID-19 pandemic hit in 2020, he switched from holding a microphone to a stethoscope, working full-time at a hospital in Ponce for a year. As a general practitioner, he treated patients of all ages excited to be cared for by the popular rapper.
Vázquez said some doctors at first doubted his qualifications after years of touring and rapping, despite him keeping up his medical qualifications.
“After a month, everybody knew that this wasn’t a joke for me, and that I’m really good at what I do,” he said. “I shut up whoever doubted me.”
Dr. Carlos Díaz Vélez, president of Puerto Rico’s Association of Surgical Doctors, said Vázquez has helped put a spotlight on Puerto Rico’s health crisis.
“He’s expressed his criticism about what’s happening here because he himself knows what the problems are within the health system,” Díaz said.
United Arab Emirates Dirham Exchange Rate
