Off Broadway: US-Puerto Rican actor composer Lin-Manuel Miranda. Photo / Supplied, Discover Puerto Rico
Off Broadway: US-Puerto Rican actor composer Lin-Manuel Miranda. Photo / Supplied, Discover Puerto Rico
He's revived Mary Poppins, inexplicably made American revolutionary history popular again with his Broadway hit Hamilton and helped bring Disney to the South Pacific with Taika Waititi and Jermaine Clement – it seems there's nothing that Broadway wunderkind Lin-Manuel Miranda cannot do.
The rapper, lyricist and composer has become a musician for all times and all locations, but is this latest travel-themed project his most difficult sell to date?
Lin-Manuel Miranda has teamed up with the Puerto Rico tourism board to convince tourists to visit the beloved home country of his parents.
The Puerto Rico tourism economy stalled during Hurricane Maria: Loizas beachfront barrio. Photo /
The Washington Post, Getty Images
In an eight-part web series Miranda invites us to explore his favorite parts of the island in this promotional travel series.
The Caribbean the island has had a difficult time recently. Puerto Rico was hit hard in 2017 by Hurricane Maria. With parts of the island without power for months and damaged the island is still recovering deadly category 5 hurricane.
Its stained relation to the US has also caused difficulties. As a US dependency, Puerto Rico has always been something of an overlooked destination.
In spite of not needing a passport visa to visit the country, it has always struggled to attract as many visitors as the nearby Dominican Republic. The recent opening up of Cuba saw the previously off-limits destination eclipse its Caribbean neighbour for US visitor numbers as once again Puerto Rico was left in the lurch.
Then there is the troubled relation of Puerto Rico to its unelected Commander and Chief. While Donald Trump declared himself the "best thing that ever happened to Puerto Rico" he was unwilling to bail out the island after the disaster, instead blaming the island for inflating the scale of the relief needed as "massive and ridiculous."
Hurricane Maria was one of the worst disasters to befall the country and with limited support from Washington the US commonwealth member was forced to take matters into its own hands.
The people of Puerto Rico are wonderful but the inept politicians are trying to use the massive and ridiculously high amounts of hurricane/disaster funding to pay off other obligations. The U.S. will NOT bail out long outstanding & unpaid obligations with hurricane relief money!
....The best thing that ever happened to Puerto Rico is President Donald J. Trump. So many wonderful people, but with such bad Island leadership and with so much money wasted. Cannot continue to hurt our Farmers and States with these massive payments, and so little appreciation!
The newly coined Discover Puerto Rico tourism board was founded las year in part to help the island's recovery efforts.
Armed with a $25 million budget secured from local government, which according to Skift is well above the average state tourism budget and on par with Texas. Brand USA also jumped in to help the new tourism board, waiving its normal fees for destination promotion. With chief strategy and communications officer Anne Madison telling Skift it was "part of what the organization does to support destinations in recovery."
With the blockbuster budget secured and the budget green-lit, all Discover Puerto Rico needed next was a star.
Who better than the musician and actor Lin-Manuel Miranda?
Through the web-series he visits the Island's coffee farms, beaches and the colonial old town of San Juan from which his paternal Grandfather came.
Throughout the series the composer is accompanied with a bevy of theatre types with connections the island including singer-songwriter Lucecita Benítez, actress Denise Quiñones.
The musician has been particularly vocal in his support for his family's home country, especially since Maria.
He has recently partnered with the US budget carrier JetBlue and NYC&Company to shift tourists off Broadway and into Puerto Rico. At the beginning of the year Miranda starred in a two-week charity run of his biggest hit Hamilton in San Juan.
He described the sell-out run as "an opportunity to revitalise the arts on the island, which, like so many other areas, have been devastated since Hurricane Maria."
