in Puerto Rico, where six days after Hurricane Maria slammed into the island, more than three-and-a-half million U.S. citizens remain without adequate food, water and fuel. The Category 4 storm brought record rainfall and catastrophic flooding, destroying power lines, left the entire island in the dark. Authorities warn some areas could be without electricity for six months. At least 13 people have died so far—at least that’s what’s known. Many parts of the island are cut off.
As the crisis in Puerto Rico became clear over the weekend, President Donald Trump failed to weigh in, instead lashing out at athletes who have joined a growing protest movement started by former 49ers quarterback Colin Kaepernick against racial injustice. It took President Trump five full days to respond on Twitter, with comments that drew criticism for what some called a lack of empathy, blaming the island itself. In a series of tweets, Trump appeared to blame Puerto Rico, writing, “Puerto Rico, which was already suffering from broken infrastructure & massive debt, is in deep trouble.. …It’s [sic] old electrical grid, which was in terrible shape, was devastated. Much of the Island was destroyed, with billions of dollars…. …owed to Wall Street and the banks which, sadly, must be dealt with. Food, water and medical are top priorities–and doing well.” That was the tweet. This comes as Trump has yet to visit Puerto Rico, even after he visited Texas and Florida after Hurricane Harvey and Irma. Both states voted for him.
This comes as hospitals that were flooded are depending on diesel generators to keep patients alive. Meanwhile, 70,000 people have been ordered to evacuate the areas around the Guajataca Dam, which was damaged by Hurricane Maria and is at risk of collapsing at any minute.
Yarimar Bonilla talking:
The devastation is—just challenges the imagination. There is no town in Puerto Rico that was not affected by the storm. Power is out everywhere. Communications are out. There is no water in about 80 percent of the island. And people were not—they were prepared for maybe one or two days of waiting for these services to come back, but they were not prepared for five, six days, a whole week that’s about to pass, without assistance.
And it’s not just a matter of them being citizens, it’s also a matter of them being an integral part of the nation, serving in the wars, being also deeply connected to their family members. The Puerto Rican nation spans beyond simply the territory. It’s also the many Puerto Ricans in the continental U.S., who haven’t been able to reach their family members.
And I think everyone has really lost their patience with the U.S. government, because, after Irma, Trump had said that he would visit Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands, because it’s important to remember that it’s not just one hurricane that has hit Puerto Rico. It’s two hurricanes, back to back. And already Irma caused significant devastation. And so, now, the second hurricane was a second blow that completely knocked out the island. And so, the last I saw from the government, they’ve had some FEMA personnel already arrive, but the long-term assistance, they say, won’t come until October, mid-October perhaps. And they’ve also not lifted restrictions for non-U.S. vessels to be able to take aid. So not only is the U.S. government not helping Puerto Rico, it’s also not allowing its neighbors to help Puerto Rico.
There’s already people from the Caribbean states that have traveled to Dominica, to other places in the Caribbean, to assess damage, to help. And our neighbors—our neighbors in the Caribbean want to help us, and they’re not able to because non-U.S. ships are not able to enter Puerto Rico. And also, the towers are down in the airport, the communication towers, so air travel is very limited, as well. And so, Puerto Rico is blocked.
And it’s important to know that there are—my mom is, fortunately, in a safe space that’s not flooded, but there are people who are trapped in their homes with flooded waters that are also contaminated waters, with diesel, with also sewers that have overflowed. There’s been cemeteries where, in the town of Lares, the dead cadavers are floating in the streets. I don’t know how to emphasize enough the severity of the situation. It really boggles the mind. And what boggles the mind even more is the lack of attention and the lack of really any kind of empathy towards these lives that are completely at risk.
when the hurricane first hit, there was really an attempt to have a kind of united front. And they had also—there’s also been an attempt to have a united front in Puerto Rico even before the hurricane season to deal with the debt. And the governor had brought politicians together from different spectrums to lobby Washington. And it seemed like that unity was going to continue, but Rosselló has recently criticized Yulín for turning people away at the evacuation centers. They’ve sent health inspectors to the evacuation centers that are working when there’s other evacuation centers that don’t have electricity. And so there’s—I think the rivalries that exist, because they’re from different parties, are now starting to show.
Puerto Rico was already in a state of emergency before the hurricane hit, already double the poverty rate of the poorest state in the United States. Forty-five percent of the population is in extreme economic risk. And these are folks who live paycheck to paycheck. I mean, there’s—people like to talk about the huge amount of folks on government assistance. But in addition to that, you also have a huge class of working poor, who live a gig economy, who live paycheck to paycheck, and they have not—a lot of them have not worked since Irma. They’ve not received a paycheck. So, our people are really frustrated, because you can’t get money out of ATMs right now in Puerto Rico, and that’s certainly a concern for huge amounts of people. But there’s people who have no money to withdraw, because they have not received any income since Irma. And so, right now, when all that is available is a scarce amount of food and water that you can purchase only in cash, there’s a lot of people who are simply going hungry and going thirsty.
The Jones Act limits the kind of trade that Puerto Rico can have, because it can only arrive on U.S. ships. And so, not only does it limit the ships that arrive, which is critical right now, it also makes the cost of everything that arrives much higher. And so, it makes basic necessities in this time, like batteries and generators—it makes them prohibitive.
– in the case of the hurricanes that hit Texas, for example, the EPA was busy rolling back all environmental—many environmental protections, saying, “We don’t want these regulations right now.” But when it comes to Puerto Rico, have they rolled back the Jones Act?
They specifically have said they they will not, that they don’t think it’s necessary, that they think the U.S. is doing all it can. And I really don’t understand that at all. When you had the instance of the earthquake in Haiti, there was a floating hospital that was brought to the shores of Haiti, where people were taken to to get medical attention. Nothing of that sort is happening in Puerto Rico. We need fresh water. There’s no water being brought to the island. There are not water reserves. You know, a lot of—there’s been a lot of talk about the electricity, but 80 percent of the population also don’t have running water or available drinking water.
that’s been one of the big questions, too: Where is the military? We’ve seen—we’ve seen the deployment of troops. Supposedly the National Guard has been activated, but people are saying on social media and on the local radio that they don’t see the presence of it. And, you know, there are military bases in Puerto Rico. As you know, Vieques was almost entirely a huge military base. The military has profited greatly from Puerto Rico.
Where are they? Where are they? That’s what people are asking. I mean, and it’s a complicated question because, on the other hand, nobody really wants to call for a military occupation, and we know what sometimes the deployment of these forces bring with them. But at the same time, I know—the woman that you showed on the tape, her daughter serves in the military. Puerto Ricans feel like they’ve contributed so greatly. They’ve lost lives fighting in the military. And so they do want to feel some kind of protection at this point. I think it’s to the point where people are ready for that kind of assistance, when you have old people who can’t get out to get drinking water for themselves.
there used to be a saying that Puerto Rico had the best of both worlds in this relationship. But I think, increasingly, people have come to realize that it has the worst of both worlds, because, on the one hand, it shares the same kind of environmental vulnerability to these kind of storms that the Caribbean nations face, but, at the same time, it is not able to rally with its neighbors. And in addition to the environmental vulnerability, it has economic vulnerability, as we discussed, with these high rates of unemployment. It has infrastructural vulnerability, because in its current economic crisis it has not been able to attend to its power grid, to its water supply, for over a decade.
And it also has great political vulnerability, because it has no representation in Congress. Puerto Ricans on the island are nobody’s constituents. Nobody is watching out for them. You have people like Luis Guitérrez and Nydia Velázquez who respond, in part, and partly because they have a great number of Puerto Rican constituents in their home states.
but Puerto Ricans have no one in Congress being able to leverage votes, to partner, to rally, to strategize with the other, you know, members that are there.
– Ricardo Ramos, the director of the government-owned Puerto Rico Electric Power Authority told CNN people would need to change the way they cool off. He said, “It’s a good time for dads to buy a ball and a glove and change the way you entertain your children.”
It’s offensive. It’s completely offensive, because this is not a matter of watching iPads and playing Nintendo. This is a matter of people needing to have their insulin chilled, people needing to have their asthma respirator therapy attended to. It’s a dire medical, critical human rights crisis. And so, to say that—to pretend that this is about people wanting to just entertain themselves and entertain their kids, I can’t imagine anything more offensive than that.
– Donald Trump said about Puerto Rico having to deal with their crumbling infrastructure and their debt, what they owe to banks.
To me, this was clearly a message to Wall Street. This was saying, “Don’t worry. We’re not going to forgive the debt. We’re not going to—you know, we’re going to take care of you.” That’s who Donald Trump is assuring. The debt will continue to be serviced. And I don’t know at what expense.
The PROMESA act already paved the way for privatization of all of Puerto Rico’s public services. And Donald Trump has tweeted, and also the oversight board in Puerto Rico had already tweeted also, or communicated, that they were going to expedite any kind of projects that would help raise Puerto Rico at this time. But those will probably be the privatization of public services at incredibly low rates or possibly even giving away these private services for other—for these public services, for private companies to manage. They’ll probably promise that they’ll make some repairs and make some improvements, and then Puerto Rico will completely lose all of its services. Not to talk about the huge displacement of population and the kind of gentrification that we can expect to happen, just as it happened in New Orleans.
People are saying this is Trump’s Katrina, but it’s Katrina times a hundred, because it’s Katrina in every town in Puerto Rico that is completely abandoned right now.
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Yarimar Bonilla
associate professor of anthropology and Caribbean studies at Rutgers University and visiting scholar at the Russell Sage Foundation.
— source democracynow.org 2017-09-28