Esta ley otorga una pensión vitalicia mensual de $2,000 a la destacada actriz puertorriqueña Carmen Belén Richardson, en reconocimiento a sus contribuciones a la cultura y sociedad puertorriqueña y para ayudar a sufragar los gastos médicos relacionados con su enfermedad crónica. La ley también asigna fondos para el pago de dicha pensión a través del Instituto de Cultura Puertorriqueña.
(Approved February 20, 2004)
To grant an annual lifetime pension of two thousand $(2,000)$ dollars per month to the outstanding Puerto Rican actress, Carmen Belén Richardson, and to provide the appropriation of funds for compliance with this Act.
The national and international prestige that Carmen Belén Richardson has given to Puerto Rico makes all our people very proud. Carmen Belén, illustrious theater and television personality, begins her artistic career at the early age of nine in radio station WNEL, participating in radio soap operas. Later, she joins the cast of El Colegio de la Alegría with Tommy Muñiz, which was broadcast on radio station WIAC.
In 1954, also with Don Tommy Muñiz, she appears on television to delight children and adults for several decades with her unforgettable character, Lirio Blanco. Before long, she became a comedy and drama star of Puerto Rican television. At the same time, she remains active in theater presentations of several genres, including musicals. She has worked in more than 20 soap operas in Puerto Rico, as well as in other important locations abroad. Through Televisa de México, which contracted her for three years to perform starring roles in the soap operas El Maleficio, El Hogar que yo Robé, and Guadalupe, she reached millions of Latin American homes, earning prestige with her dramatic art for both Puerto Rican artists and Puerto Rico.
Her last professional work was on the magazine style program Ellas al Mediodía, which she was forced to leave on its seventh year of continuous presentations due to intolerable chronic pains that she felt all over her body, which severely limited her ability to work. After medical consultations and treatments in Puerto Rico and New York, she was finally diagnosed with fibromyalgia, a condition which causes chronic pain in different parts of the body, as well as lack of sleep, weakness of the immunological system and a tendency to contract other illnesses.
Scarcely seven months ago, she began to suffer episodes of lack of oxygenation which caused her to fall on several occasions. She required hospitalization and frequently needed to use an oxygen tank. Due to lack of oxygenation, she suffered several strokes which have caused permanent damage, such as loss of recent memory, mood swings, and motor coordination problems that force her to use special equipment to be able to rise and move around.
Without any doubts, Carmen Belén Richardson is an outstanding personality of Puerto Rican theater, film and television. She regaled us with the opportunity to enjoy the highest delights of art with her extraordinary performances in comedy, drama and musicals for decades during the golden era of our show business industry. Unfortunately, this remarkable lady of television and theater who represented Puerto Rico with such dignity in other countries now depends upon very limited and insufficient income to defray the costs of the expensive medication and therapy she requires, to at least ease the pain caused by the chronic illness she suffers.
The Legislature of Puerto Rico recognizes and greatly appreciates the valuable contributions made by Carmen Belén Richardson to our culture and to Puerto Rican society in general. Now that she is so seriously ill, it is only fair to somehow
repay the art, love and civic service she gave to her people by means of granting a lifetime annuity to help in the economic burden her illness has imposed upon her.
Section 1.- An annual lifetime pension of two thousand $(2,000)$ dollars per month is hereby granted to the outstanding Puerto Rican actress, Carmen Belén Richardson, to be paid by the Institute of Puerto Rican Culture no later than the fifth day of each month, as of the date of approval of this Act.
Section 2.- The amount of twenty-four thousand $(24,000)$ dollars from unencumbered funds in the Commonwealth Treasury is hereby appropriated to the Institute of Puerto Rican Culture, for the payment of the lifetime annuity authorized in Section 1 of this Act during the year 2004. In subsequent years, the necessary funds for compliance with this Act shall be annually appropriated in the Operating Budget of the Institute of Puerto Rican Culture.
Section 3.- This Act shall take effect immediately after its approval.
I hereby certify to the Secretary of State that the following Act No. 62 (S.B. 2554) of the $7^{ ext {th }}$ Session of the $14^{ ext {th }}$ Legislature of Puerto Rico:
AN ACT to grant an annual lifetime pension of two thousand $(2,000)$ dollars per month to the outstanding Puerto Rican actress, Carmen Belén Richardson, and to provide the appropriation of funds for compliance with this Act, has been translated from Spanish to English and that the English version is correct.
In San Juan, Puerto Rico, today $2^{ ext {nd }}$ of June of 2005.
Luis E. Fusté-Lacourt Director