What you need to know about Puerto Rico to understand Hurricane Maria:
Sharing an essay posted to Facebook. Worth reading.
Yosem E Companys
8 hrs ·
Sex among Spaniards, native Taino indians, and African slaves produced the Puerto Rican people. As Taínos, we believed that the goddess Guabancex created and controlled the “juracanes,” or what is now referred to in English as hurricanes. Taíno leaders spent much of their time trying to pacify Guabancex by bringing offerings in the Chohoba ceremonies. Given the volatile temperament of the goddess, however, these efforts were in vain. When she became angry, Guabancex would spin furiously with her arms, making a spiral, picking up all the water from the land and sea in her wake, hurling it violently at our people, and causing mass destruction.
Under the Spaniards, we looked to the metropolis of Toledo (and later Madrid) to provide us with our basic necessities. For a while, nobody wanted to come to Puerto Rico, despite the fact that the islands were a strategic reference point for the Spanish defense in the Hispanic-American continent. Those who traveled to Puerto Rico did so with the idea of going to the continent to find gold, land, or some other fortune. It took a multitude of Spanish governors offering free land to visitors and, when necessary, confiscating their passports in order to populate a large portion of the islands.
When Americans took over Puerto Rico after the Spanish-American War in 1898, we looked to Washington, D.C., to pass the necessary laws for Puerto Rico to achieve socio-economic development. In return for our wartime contributions, Puerto Ricans were also granted U.S. citizenship. Of course, many laws were also passed that left Puerto Rico in political limbo, such as the law making Puerto Rico an unincorporated territory with limited self-governance, a so-called "commonwealth" with a voice but no voting power in the U.S. Congress and with Puerto Ricans being denied the opportunity of voting for U.S. President.
As a result, Puerto Rico's only power and influence came through the millions of dollars the local government gave to politicians in Washington, D.C. via lobbyists in exchange for their support of policies that would continue to spur Puerto Rico's socio-economic development. In this sense, we treated the U.S. government much like the mythical Guabancex, offering it our limited resources in exchange for the hope that it would not become angry with us. We even do so today with our Governor and Resident Commissioner who are forced to praise the U.S. President just so he would be in the right frame of mind to help us in the apocalyptic conditions in which we as Puerto Ricans live in the hurricane's aftermath.
Since being granted limited self-governance by the U.S. nearly half a century ago, we have also depended on Puerto Rico's government to provide for us, be it in the form of work or public assistance. And why not? During the years that Luís Muñóz Marín governed the islands, we successfully transformed our society from an agrarian to an industrial one with the help of U.S. tax exemptions.
Through the program known as "Operation Bootstrap," Puerto Rico achieved one of the highest rates of economic growth in the world. In fact, the program was so successful that it spurred the delegates from poor Asian countries and territories like Taiwan, Hong Kong, South Korea, and Singapore to come to Puerto Rico, copy its template, and become "Asian Tigers," wealthy high-tech industrialized developed countries. They even hired many of the managers of the Puerto Rico Industrial Development Company to assist them in their efforts.
What is forgotten in this history is the role that everyday Puerto Ricans played in Operation Bootstrap. For example, Puerto Rico's government helped solve the islands' housing crisis by giving Puerto Ricans the materials they needed to build houses and then letting the local communities decide how to build them. The local government also supported the efforts of Puerto Ricans to migrate to the U.S. mainland. It was individual Puerto Ricans who built those houses. It was individual Puerto Ricans who made the decision to migrate. All the local government did was give a helping hand.
Starting in the 1970s, however, Puerto Rico entered a period of economic decline just as the Asian Tigers succeeded at replicating Puerto Rico's policies. As manufacturing firms left Puerto Rico and the rest of the U.S. in droves for Asia, pharmaceutical companies took their place. But pharmaceutical companies were more capital- than labor-intensive. This means that whereas they were attracted by Puerto Rico's educated workforce they hired fewer workers than the departing manufacturing firms. Thus, unemployment rose sharply. At the same time, tax exemptions stimulated the flow of capital from the mainland to Puerto Rico, turning the islands into one of the Caribbean's major fiscal paradises.
With the fall of the Soviet Union, the U.S. government's interest in extending Puerto Rico's tax-exempt status waned. Upon winning the 1994 midterm elections, the Republican Congress began to dismantle the tax exemptions that had helped fuel the growth of the Puerto Rican economy. Many Republican Congress members asked themselves why was the U.S. government allowing the jobs of so-called "real" Americans to leave to the "foreign country" of Puerto Rico. Puerto Ricans are, of course, U.S. citizens and have no other citizenship. The misnomer, however, became a winning argument for Republican Congress members in states and districts suffering from the decline of the U.S. manufacturing industry.
Unfortunately, instead of looking for our own local solutions to the problems created by the U.S. government's policy change, we as Puerto Ricans continue to rely on the so-called "beneficence and generosity" of the U.S. government, including the U.S. government's maintenance of the outdated mercantilist Jones Act that allowed the U.S. shipping industry to hold a monopoly over the transport of goods to the islands, thereby representing a de facto tax on consumption, and the collection of a rum tax of which only a portion of the revenues was returned to Puerto Rico in the form of benefits granted to its residents. Because these sources of revenues are unknown to most Americans, the prevailing perception is that Puerto Rico is some kind of "welfare state."
Having no representation in Washington, D.C., and being unable to vote for U.S. President, Puerto Rico's politicians and business interests have had no choice in recent years but to spend millions of dollars to persuade the U.S. government, often successfully, to extend new federal programs to Puerto Rico. At the same time, Puerto Rico's political parties play the blame game, accusing each other of not fighting enough to obtain the beneficence and generosity of the U.S. government. Party leaders obsess over Puerto Rico's territorial status and conduct multiple local plebiscites, as though a local vote to change the status would miraculously result in the U.S. government's granting that status to Puerto Rico.
In fact, Puerto Rico's government has already spent millions of dollars on these fruitless endeavors: There was the enhanced commonwealth, a territorial status that would have let Puerto Rico maintain all the benefits of being a part of the U.S. and those of being an independent country without having to incur the costs of either. U.S. Representative Patrick Kennedy summed up the reaction of U.S. Congress members to Puerto Rico's request when he stated that if such a status were ever granted to the islands Rhode Island would be the next to request it. Then came a number of statehood "victories" that the U.S. Congress rejected because the pro-commonwealth faction abstained from the vote and because it disagreed with the process. Yet Congress has yet to pass a bill that would define Puerto Rico's status alternatives and request that Puerto Rico hold a binding plebiscite.
Puerto Ricans, however, continue to obsess over the status issue, partly because such a change is perceived as being the panacea to all of the woes afflicting us and partly because we as Puerto Ricans continue to struggle with an identity crisis as a result of being proud Puerto Ricans who are treated as second-class U.S. citizens. Polls show that among the widely acknowledged permanent resolutions to the status issue, support for independence in Puerto Rico is within the margin of error; that a small minority hovering around 20% support free association, a status of independence that would establish a temporary treaty that would maintain Puerto Rico's relationship with the U.S. for a number of years; and that a slim majority of Puerto Ricans support statehood. These numbers are strikingly similar to the ones for the State of Hawaii today.
To spend millions of dollars to lobby the U.S. Congress to resolve the status issue rather than to use those funds to solve Puerto Rico's immediate problems is unconscionable. Who really believes that the Republican Party under Trump would ever agree to grant Puerto Rico statehood even if the U.S. Congress ever agreed to hold a binding plebiscite and even if every single one of the U.S. citizens living in Puerto Rico demanded statehood? Moreover, who truly believes that Republicans would ever grant Puerto Rico free association? We as Puerto Ricans have a greater probability of having the Republicans grant us unilateral independence even if we rejected that status ourselves by massive popular vote.
Even if a bipartisan congressional coalition could be built to grant Puerto Rico statehood, the islands confront the challenge that no U.S. territory has ever been granted statehood alone. Territories have always been admitted as U.S. states in twos, with one state being Democratic and the other Republican to maintain electoral balance. The last two were Alaska and Hawaii. Given that the majority of Puerto Ricans have a conservative stance on abortion and LGBTQ rights, it is possible that Puerto Rico could enter the union as a Republican state with Washington, D.C., or some other territory being admitted as a Democratic counterpart. But again, Republicans who historically used to be the strongest supporters of Puerto Rican statehood have in recent years seemed less interested in having a Spanish-speaking state enter the union, especially given the growing power and influence of the party's xenophobic faction. In any case, Puerto Rico could not be immediately admitted as a state. It would first have to go from being an unincorporated territory with a degree of self-governance to an incorporated territory with an uncertain degree of self-governance to statehood. This process would likely take a decade or a quarter of a century or more. In the meantime, Puerto Rico's pressing problems would remain unresolved.
We as Puerto Ricans need to be more pragmatic; we need to stop dreaming about utopian status changes and instead build the institutions necessary to support and implement a new model for socio-economic development. Let us not forget that the mirage of status change would require massive structural reform before we would ever be in a position to resolve Puerto Rico's pressing problems. We need to stop blaming the lack of socio-economic development in recent years to the islands' territorial status. Were that the case, why has Hong Kong -- a quasi-island and colonial commonwealth of the British Empire -- overcome its territorial status and become one of the wealthiest territories on Earth?
More important, we need to stop looking to the U.S. and Puerto Rican governments to solve our islands' most pressing problems. If Hurricane Maria has taught us anything, it is that in times of crisis the U.S. and local governments may let us down. It has also taught us that we Puerto Ricans can come together in the absence of government to help solve our own problems.
Since the hurricane's landfall, Puerto Ricans on the mainland found creative ways to deliver the supplies needed by Puerto Ricans on the islands to survive long enough for the U.S. and local governments to help after having initially bungled the emergency relief efforts.
Meanwhile, Puerto Ricans on the islands have banded together to share resources and stop crime, among other achievements. As my friend José Ricardo Otero -- who had to weather the worst of hurricane Maria -- wrote so eloquently, the tattered remains of the hurricane present an opportunity to press the reset button and adjust our priorities for the better: “Our neighborhood has 550 houses, and we have already had a community meeting to plan the reconstruction process and designate leaders in each area of the neighborhood with the goal of establishing open communication and assigning tasks to all community members. We get together every day in the basketball courts at 3pm…we have all helped our neighbors clean their streets, repair their houses, and offered to share electricity from our generators. We cook and eat dinner together every night …This reset button has changed our priorities for the better.”
Upon reading my friend’s words, I immediately realized that they represented something new for Puerto Rico: The words were not tainted by the stains of a pro-statehood, pro-status quo, or a pro-independence or free-association perspective. Rather, his words came from a heart and mind focused on the union of the people, love of fellow man, and the desire to help our neighbors, characteristics of all Puerto Ricans, as well as a sense of optimism that is unfortunately rarely felt by our people. Upon reading my friend’s message, I realized that he was making an indirect call to develop solutions and reflect in a disinterested way on Puerto Rico’s future: a new "Operation Bootstrap" kind of politics.
We as Puerto Ricans need to forget the U.S. and local governments and engage in community organizing at the grassroots level to find innovative solutions to our problems. Regardless of what you may think of U.S. President Ronald Reagan, he made an inaugural address upon his election that is pertinent to the great challenges that Puerto Ricans face today:
"[We] are confronted with an economic affliction of great proportions... It threatens to shatter the lives of millions of our people... You and I, as individuals, can, by borrowing, live beyond our means, but for only a limited period of time. Why, then, should we think that collectively, as a nation, we're not bound by that same limitation?...The economic ills we suffer have come upon us over several decades. They will not go away in days, weeks, or months, but they will go away. ... In this present crisis, government is not the solution to our problem; government is the problem. ... Our concern must be for a special interest group that has been too long neglected. It knows no sectional boundaries or ethnic and racial divisions, and it crosses political party lines. It is made up of men and women who raise our food, patrol our streets, man our mines and factories, teach our children, keep our homes, and heal us when we're sick—professionals, industrialists, shopkeepers, clerks, cabbies, and truck drivers. They are, in short, 'We the people.'...Let us begin an era of national renewal. Let us renew our determination, our courage, and our strength. And let us renew our faith and our hope....How can we love our country and not love our countrymen; and loving them, reach out a hand when they fall, heal them when they're sick, and provide opportunity to make them self-sufficient so they will be equal in fact and not just in theory? ... The crisis we are facing today... require... our best effort and our willingness to believe in ourselves and to believe in our capacity to perform great deeds....And after all, why shouldn't we believe that? We are Americans."
San Juan Mayor Carmen Yulín Cruz echoed this sentiment: "People don't realize they have the power. People don't realize that if they come together, there are more of them than those who occupy the seat that I'm in right now."
In my next post, I will propose concrete solutions for a way forward...