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This isn’t the primary time I’ve expressed these needs and made resolutions. The following story is from
Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands—2017 assessment and backbone for 2018 and past
In 2017 many U.S. residents in Puerto Rico might be ringing within the new 12 months of 2018 by candlelight. Not as a result of it’s romantic or non secular—it’s as a result of they nonetheless have no energy. Living sin luz (with out mild) is just not some poetic reference—it’s a nightly actuality. A nightmare from which the daybreak of the next day brings no surcease. Citizens within the U.S. Virgin Islands (USVI) aren’t practically again to regular, are dealing with a significant lack of vacationer income and a funds disaster.
I’m not within the behavior of constructing New Year’s resolutions, nevertheless this 12 months I’ll make an exception. I resolve to proceed shouting, writing, tweeting, calling elected officers and doing something in my energy to maintain the untenable, unacceptable, disgraceful state of affairs dealing with our sisters and brothers in Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands in entrance of politicians and most people who’ve allowed the unimaginable to change into regular. Since when is it regular for a travesty like this to change into merely a matter of ticking off the variety of days that pile up, and shifting on in our minds to one thing of higher urgency?
In September of 2018, one 12 months after the devastation of Hurricane Maria, I attempted once more and wrote: “Make a promise to support Puerto Rico”
Where is the nationwide outrage?
More than a 12 months has handed since back-to-back Hurricanes Irma and Maria devastated Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands, killing 1000’s of individuals—not on direct impression, however within the days and months of neglect from their authorities and their “president,” aka Donald Trump, that adopted.
The scenario stays grave for the survivors. Contrary to a lot of the printed mainstream media reportage, not everybody has energy, greater than 60,000 individuals are residing below leaky tarps, faculties have closed, there’s a psychological well being disaster, and we’re in the course of hurricane season 2018. New storms kind every week and individuals who reside within the Caribbean reside with the every day anxiousness of climate watching.
On Dec. 29 of 2019 my plea was repeated.
My New Year’s promise to Puerto Rico. Mi promesa de Año Nuevo a Puerto Rico
You don’t must be Puerto Rican to offer a rattling about what is going on, proper earlier than our eyes, to Puerto Rico.
I’m not Puerto Rican. Sure, I’ve pores and skin within the sport since my husband, some cousins, my godkids and their kids, and plenty of of my former comrades from the Young Lords Party are Boricuas.
In September of 2017, after Hurricane Maria devastated the island of Puerto Rico, and the United States Virgin Islands as effectively, together with household and associates I watched a nightmare unfolding. It quickly grew to become patently clear that the U.S. authorities, below the failed management of Donald Trump, was botching aid and restoration efforts, and few mainland mainstream reporters have been bringing their A-game into the mess. I used to be struck by the truth that a majority of parents right here appeared to know subsequent to nothing in regards to the island and its fractured historical past as a U.S. colony. The New York Times reported, “Nearly Half of Americans Don’t Know Puerto Ricans Are Fellow Citizens.”
I made a promesa to my santos that I’d do what I might to amplify the skimpy mainstream media protection of the restoration efforts on the island—in addition to masking the Puerto Rican group right here on the mainland.
Same story for the three-year anniversary of Maria.
The energy grid on the island is under no circumstances steady, and one merely has to examine the net outage map to get a way of the frequency of lack of service. What could be very troubling is the sale of the state utility. Ed Morales, creator, journalist, and professor, lately wrote this illuminating piece for The Nation.
Privatizing Puerto Rico
On July 26, Ángel Figueroa Jaramillo, the pinnacle of UTIÉR (Unión de Trabajadores de la Industria Eléctrica y Riego), Puerto Rico’s electrical and irrigation employees’ union, tweeted from one of many island’s energy technology stations. From Costa Sur Unit 5, close to the southern coast, he posted a video of an open porthole that allowed individuals to look into an enormous boiler made from decaying metallic and see streaking blue and orange flames, the stuff of electrical energy technology. “This is the plant that failed on January 7th, 2020,” he wrote—referring to the day a 6.4 earthquake hit southwestern Puerto Rico—“the one José Ortiz said would take a year to repair.” Ever for the reason that quake, Ortiz, then the CEO of the government-owned Puerto Rico Electric Power Authority (PREPA), had been saying the company didn’t have the capability to get the broken plant again up and operating till then. (Ortiz stepped down from PREPA in August.) […]
Since 2016, when, in response to the island’s spiraling debt, the Puerto Rico Oversight, Management, and Economic Stability Act (PROMESA) was signed into regulation, lots of its main selections have been within the fingers of the Financial Oversight and Management Board (FOMB), which many name merely “the Junta.” The FOMB is tasked with restructuring the territory’s $72 billion debt; its principal device, a brutal austerity regime. Hundreds of faculties have closed, authorities employees’ pensions are threatened with cuts, municipalities are being defunded, and PREPA is slated to be totally privatized as a part of the answer to its $9 billion debt.
The destiny of PREPA, then, is deeply sure up within the destiny of Puerto Rico. The territory is in an exceedingly fragile state after a succession of political and pure disasters in recent times: devastating hurricanes in 2017; a political scandal that led to huge road protests and the resignation of the governor, Ricardo Rosselló, and several other of his colleagues final 12 months; and the huge earthquake and a sequence of aftershocks this January that knocked out the Costa Sur energy plant and brought on widespread injury. Figueroa Jaramillo’s confrontational stance towards the CEO of PREPA is due to this fact on the heart of a battle that reveals the methods multinational companies, aided by the federal authorities, are utilizing the precarious scenario to extract revenue via privatization. This privatization scheme, urged on by the unelected FOMB, is dashing up a harmful deterioration of democracy on the island at a time when it might little stand yet one more disaster.
This month can also be the anniversary of these earthquakes in 2020, which began in December 2019 and have continued.
A reminder.
Those earthquakes that toppled buildings and weakened main buildings and services on the island severely broken the Arecibo Observatory, which is now gone. This was one of many few latest well-covered tales that briefly put Puerto Rico again into the headlines.
Another merchandise that grew to become mainland newsworthy has been the continued situation of standing—principally considered from the angle of how Puerto Rican voters right here on the mainland have affected votes for or towards Democrats and Republicans.
The Puerto Rican vote is now being checked out in Georgia.
The different principal space the place there’s protection of Puerto Rico, to the exclusion of virtually all else, is the statehood situation. Thousands of individuals, lots of whom aren’t Puerto Rican or who’re mainland politicians and don’t reside on the island, proceed to “weigh in” with their ideas and opinions about Puerto Rican standing: statehood, independence, upkeep of the established order, or different alternate options. The voices of those that resist colonialism or who don’t have mainland media clout get the least quantity of consideration.
An instance is Roberto A. Fernández, who has written items excoriating each statehooders and those that embrace the present farce of “commonwealth.” His evaluation is rooted within the historical past of the United States’ acquisition of Puerto Rico.
Dissecting Puerto Rico’s Commonwealth Status
In late 1898, the Treaty of Paris established the situations below which Spain ceded to the United States its management over the Philippines, Guam, and Puerto Rico, whereas relinquishing sovereignty over Cuba. By then, American political actors and judges have been conversant with hierarchical notions rooted on the concept of “race,” utilizing it to elucidate and justify the domination of “whites” over the continent and its “non-white” inhabitants.
In 1901, the primary instances testing the validity of the colonial coverage over the brand new possessions reached the U.S. Supreme Court. In offering authorized benediction to colonial domination over peoples and locations, the Court relied on notions of racial hierarchy.
By then, the racialist discourse that the justices articulated had been in circulation for a number of many years. In essence, it mentioned that there’s an innate capability for institution-building and self-governance, which is denied to all races however the Anglo-Saxon inventory. Given that Puerto Ricans have been an “alien race,” i.e., not Anglo-Saxon, they have been to be ruled for their very own sake, and be given restricted measures of self-government, on occasion and in small doses.
I see a number of uninformed tweets just like the one under, which assumes that gaining two senators from a future Puerto Rican state would imply two Democrats in these seats.
This opinion doesn’t embody the fact that Jennifer González, the lately reelected non-voting Rep for Puerto Rico, is a Republican.
One of the issues that makes me loopy is that tons of people that chime in with opinions about Puerto Rico have zero clue who the gamers are on the island, they don’t know the names of the political events, they aren’t conscious of latest developments, and so they make assumptions {that a} get together with the phrase “progressive” in its title makes it so.
I haven’t hung out in Puerto Rico in years, and the Puerto Rican “left” I interacted with many years in the past has modified. There is a brand new forged of characters and I’ve tried to do my homework, however it’s onerous, and made extra so by having to do a lot of my studying in Spanish. (I’m not fluent in something however Spanglish.)
I did discover a translated article lately that helped.
Luis Fernando Coss, a professor at the School of Communication on the University of Puerto Rico, wrote: Puerto Rico 2021: A Shift in Perspective, A New Opposition
…it’s essential to mirror on the numerous progress of the Left in Puerto Rico within the 2020 election cycle. I suggest an optimistic outlook primarily based on the election outcomes, not mere fantasy. I’m a kind of individuals who feels the progress has been undervalued. Perhaps it’s because the outcomes have been considerably surprising for a lot of. In any case, the massive questions are: How will we view the brand new panorama on the Left? How will the opposition to the colonial and neoliberal regime alter going ahead?
I’m now referring particularly to these forces that place themselves in opposition to neoliberalism and colonialism in Puerto Rico—with out dropping sight of some essential variations amongst them. In different phrases, I’m not speaking a couple of single group, however slightly a pluralized “community” belonging to a really various motion that might establish as leftist within the sense described above. To be clear, I assume that the votes for independence and socialist candidates, for the MVC [Citizens’ Victory Movement] and the PIP, and for impartial candidate [José Antonio “Chaco”] Vargas Vigot are like-minded votes principally oriented towards some sort of transformation of the nation and social progress —whether or not by way of a gradual or decolonizing route— and never a mere “act of protest.”
What confuses issues extra is the difficulty of simply who can communicate for Puerto Rico.
The very small variety of congressional statehood supporters contains each Democrats and Republicans.
Rarely do any of the mainland “opinionators” and pundits know a lot, if something, in regards to the lengthy and painful colonial historical past of Puerto Rico, nor can any of them title the management of the assorted political events on the island, nor are they discussing present points with the fiscal management board, the island’s power grid, the medical infrastructure, the dearth of a hospital on Vieques, the privatization of the Vieques/Culebra ferry, the impression of the Jones Act, meals insecurity, FEMA failures, and femicide. I might proceed with my checklist, however frankly it’s miserable and I’m certain a number of individuals will present up at this time in feedback stating why Puerto Rico ought to change into a state (or not) whereas COVID-19 continues to kill off extra Puerto Ricans, there are nonetheless residents whose energy goes out every day, and there are far too many people with no roofs.
The latest “vote” for statehood in Puerto Rico generated a whole lot of social media warmth, which is ongoing. One of the extra fascinating analyses I’ve learn to this point was this op-ed from Efraín Vázquez-Vera, a full professor on the University of Puerto Rico and the previous assistant secretary of state of Puerto Rico’s State Department. He factors out:
…the turnout on this plebiscite was solely 50% of registered voters, which signifies that the 52% who voted sure to statehood symbolize solely 26% of all registered voters in Puerto Rico.
Within the sure and no votes, 38,000 ballots left the query clean. These non-voted ballots may very well be seen as an expression of people that didn’t want to validate one other rip-off plebiscite with their vote.
He concluded:
How lengthy can the United States keep away from its duty to deal with the difficulty of Puerto Rico’s future political standing? The territorial standing of Puerto Rico is unsustainable, being the primary cause for the current Puerto Rican disaster. If one factor could be mentioned to make certain is that Puerto Rico’s disaster will go from dangerous to worse in the course of the subsequent 4 years. A governor with two-thirds of the individuals towards him with an opposing legislature means a paralyzed Puerto Rican authorities for the years to return, when motion is most wanted.
This panorama means that, eventually, the United States might be confronted with the outcomes of one other plebiscite, in all probability with a real majority of Puerto Ricans who favor statehood for the improper causes: due to their poverty, their hopelessness and their desperation.
If the 2020 Puerto Rican Status plebiscite was a victory for the Puerto Rican pro-statehood motion continues to be an open query, however actually Puerto Rico and the United States misplaced.
There are individuals publishing essential tales about Puerto Rico and urgent points exterior of the status-wrangling. However, their voices want amplification. Follow them and share what you’ll be able to.
What I’m attempting to say at this time is what Erica González Martínez, the director of #Power4PuertoRico, lays out on this tweet.
I attempt onerous to be the kind of ally outlined in inexperienced. I’m just one voice—a small, non-Puerto Rican voice. However, I imagine one voice can attain just a few others, who in flip can educate another person.
I rise up each morning between 4 and 5 AM and make an try to collect information from or in regards to the island. I submit what I’ve discovered and shared each on Twitter and right here on Daily Kos each morning at round 7:30 AM within the Abbreviated Pundit Roundup (APR) and associated pundit tales written by ChitownKev. I submit an analogous roundup twice every week in Black Kos (which is at the moment on vacation hiatus till Jan. 8).
I observe not solely mainstream media retailers and island papers that submit in Spanish, but in addition key journalism teams on the island just like the Center for Investigative Journalism (CPI in Spanish).
I ask once more for you the reader to seek out a while in your day, or week, or month, to coach your self, just a bit, about what’s going on in our colony. (Yes, Puerto Rico is a U.S. colony.) Check out present information and knowledge, but in addition attempt to be taught a bit of historical past. Share a few of these tales to your social networks.
Join me in making a decision to pay extra consideration to Puerto Rico in 2021.
You don’t must be Puerto Rican to offer a rattling.
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