Part 10: And Safety for All
Update 9: And Safety for All
Greetings, people of the world! This is Juanito. Perhaps you have heard Tropico mentioned in the international news lately? Some very interesting things have happened lately, but first, I shall mention our international news.
It seems to be the fashion these days to fire things at the moon. What has the moon done to the US and the USSR, I wonder? Russia even threw a rocket at Venus for good measure! Meanwhile, Egypt has become angry at the UN Peacekeepers and made them leave, only to fall to Israeli forces after six days! With only ten soldiers on the island, Juanito can only wish that our wars might take so long!
In more local news, nearly all the Latin American and Caribbean nations have signed the Treaty of Tlatelolco, which prohibits nuclear weapons from being built anywhere in the region. El Presidente considered it a small sacrifice to make to ensure his neighbors do not build nukes, especially as there are no uranium deposits on our island.
Something I did not mention before was that a second sugar farm was in production as 1965 ended. The factory workers have become able enough to handle the production of one farm, so two should give us much more rum.
Also, even before the power plant was manned, El Presidente commissioned two electric substations, which together almost double the range of the power grid.
El Presidente also decided that it was time for the logging camp to go. Our island never had very many trees to begin with, and now that we had many tourists to come and look at them, the camp had to go. It was also in the way of the expanding downtown area, which needed more room to build over the forest the loggers were cutting down!
Some of them seemed to get the message late, though.
El Presidente also destroyed the other bunkhouse by the clinic so a new tenement could be put up. You can also see in this photo that our construction workers cannot afford actual demolition plungers, so we have someone pretend to push down while another one lights a fuse and runs like hell.
By May of ’66 we finally had an engineer for the power plant, and Tropico now has power for the first time in our history! This is very good news for TNN, as our generator was starting to smoke very badly during the Very Special Broadcasts.
Also, in anticipation to TNN’s broadcast, Juanito asked El Presidente why all engineers are female. Mr. Pizzaman explained that it was because he made all inspections of industrial buildings personally. I hope that answers everyone’s questions.
In June of ’66, Tropico suffered an earthquake. This is the major news you may have heard about already.
Fortunately, only two buildings suffered catastrophic destruction, and the international aid almost managed to cover the loss! We are a very lucky island. In fact, since professor Rutkowski took the moment to join the college, our education rate sped up significantly!
Since the earthquake was depressing people, El Presidente decided to cheer everyone up by spicing our rum with coconut! I can tell you personally that it tastes very good with our pineapple now. He also took the moment to build electric-powered mulching machenery, which sped up production by 20%. Perhaps you will see the changes this made to the factory the next time it is in a photo.
One of our college graduates decided to join the military, so now we finally have generals again! It has been over 16 years since we last had one.
To celebrate, El Presidente had a guard outpost built next to our power plant, commanded by General Jonked. Never again will Tropico have to worry about its industrial buildings!
And now that the military had generals and adequate soldiers, the Militarists were finally happy again.
We have even rebuilt the botanical garden, headed now by Professor William the Elf!
¿Quién?
William el elfo.
Yo no había oído hablar de este.
Amigo del presidente. ¿Te acuerdas?
No.
Oh sí, se me olvidó.
My apologies, people of the world! It seems I did not tell you about William the Elf before. He is a personal friend of El Presidente, and asked to be allowed on the island right from the very start. I am told the name refers to a joke between the two, but I personally do not understand it.
It was also around this time that the potential assassin was brought to El Presidente’s attention. Because of the quick thinking of the people of the world, no expense was spared in finding an even better assassin to take him down. Mr. Pizzaman hired a strange American to take down the rebel agent, as we believe the USSR provided them with their killer. Our agent was strange indeed, as in spite of being a large, bald, and very white man, he managed to find and infiltrate the rebel base and shoot the other assassin without being caught! At least El Presidente got his money’s worth.
Later in the year, El Presidente finally got around to issuing an edict: wiretapping! It has been a long time since I counted the ballots, but I am sure El Presidente chose correctly. Sadly, I have not yet found my tap, so I cannot say what kind of drink it is full of.
With so many new graduates from the college, El Presidente decided to open a bank right next to the college campus.
Banks can be dedicated to different things, like lowering the cost of buildings, treasury accounting, and offshore banking, which you can see here. El Presidente knows that rich tourists often have very important money they can only trust in places like Tropico, where we do not even know what an income tax is.
Is it a tax where you have to pay every time you come in to a restaurant? Juanito would hate that.
Two college graduates were found among the miners, so they were “persuaded” by El Presidente to take up new positions. Now we have two fat new bankers!
Work has also begun on our new skyscraper hotel. The hotel as it is planned will be the tallest building by far on Tropico, and will nearly double the number of tourists we can support! El Presidente certainly loves his foreign visitors.
He loves them so much, in fact, that today’s Adopt a Tropican Corner will not be about Tropicans at all!
Instead, I would like you to meet Good-Natured Filth, a Frenchman and recent visitor to our beautiful island. You can see him here checking into his hotel room, along with his wife on the left.
Tourists find different things to be important while they are on Tropico. As opposed to all the things which Tropicans have to worry about, tourists only worry about how good their hotel is, how nice are the places they visit, how many times they get mugged, and how pleasant all of the trees look. M. Filth had only just arrived on the island at this point, so he had not yet made up his mind.
It is important to keep track of where any given tourist is and where he has placed his bags.
It is so important that we have devoted this entire page to writing down where he has gone and what he thought of it while he was there.
We have also made a rating system for tourists, listing the places they might go and asking them to list their three most preferred locations.
As you might guess from reading the previous chart, M. Filth’s first place to go was the cabaret. Here you can see him here walking there from his hotel. His wife also seems to enjoy the dancing girls, as that is her on the other side of the street.
It is hard to see in the shadows, but we managed to take this picture of M. Filth walking out the convenient back door of the cabaret without his wife.
After changing his clothes at the hotel, M. Filth decided to go to our local restaurant for a bite to eat. Since it is far away, he is going to the car park to hail a taxi. We at Tropico find that taxis are much easier to find when you always know where to find them.
Juanito does not think the restaurant is a very good place for tourists to go, as the natives tend to hang out there too often.
M. Filth seems to agree with me, as he did not like having food at the restaurant. I am thinking that a gourmet restaurant would be much more attractive to the tourists, especially since we can now build them thanks to the power plant.
For the last part of his vacation, M. Filth decided to take a walk over to our local mine. You can see it just behind the trees in this picture. No one is very sure why Good-Natured wanted to take a walk to the mine, but we also did not want to ask him.
As he was both pleased and disappointed by our attractions, M. Filth left with mixed feelings. We hope your next vacation goes better, Filth Frenchman!
The second Superpower to Meet is, of course, the USSR!
Unlike the US, the USSR does not really care how democratic our island is. Instead, assuming that we keep our heads down regarding foreign politics, the only thing the USSR cares about is how well we treat our Communists, as well as whether we orient ourselves towards them or the Capitalists. And with both of them as pleased as can be, our island does not need to fear anything from the foreign powers! Assuming we do not talk too much about our greatness, of course.
Today’s vote is about what Tropico should focus on in the next two years.
First, we can focus on industry, building an oil rig and a cannery to bring in the money.
Next, we could build up the tourism by making even more attractions like the gourmet restaurant, childhood museum, and casino.
Last, we can try to increase the feelings of liberty in the people by building the news outlets and passing a police sensitivity edict. We are feeling more oppressed than ever thanks to the extra soldiers and police officers on the island, but I suppose it can wait another two years. After all, we all finally live in houses and can go to church whenever we want.
What do you think, people of the world?