Book Review
The Battle For
Paradise: Puerto Rico Takes on the Disaster Capitalists Haymarket Books (June 5, 2018)
Naomi Klein
It is not
common for Puerto Rico to be in the media and academic limelight, just like the
classic study about Puerto Rico’s political status vis a vis the United States Puerto Rico: The Trials of the Oldest Colony
in the World by Jose Trias Monge stated, Puerto Rico has been invisible in
the political imagination of the United States. Despite Puerto Ricans are
citizens of the United States since 1917, most in the United States imagine
them as foreigners. It was not surprising that after Puerto Rico was placed in
the limelight by the chaos caused by Hurricane Irma and Maria and the lack of
empathy evidenced by images of President Trump during his visit to the island, most
of the media discovered part of another Puerto Rico beyond the beaches, palm
trees and the piñas coladas.
In recent years
there are two factors explaining why there is more media and academic focus on
Puerto Rico, one, the colossal $73 billion debt the island has incurred in the
last decades and the worst human catastrophe unleashed by two hurricanes in
2017. But contrary to other catastrophic events this, the largest in the
history of the United States, occurred on its hidden colonial possession. A
recent study by Harvard University estimated that 4,645 Puerto Ricans died as a
consequence of the events revealed by the natural disaster has shocked many but
unfortunately much of the media coverage has just scratched the surface. While
there are other estimates which might deviate somewhat from this estimate the
reality is that it has been difficult for the media and even academics to have
a historically contextualized understanding of the depth of this disaster.
Since September
20 of 2017 the focus of the media has been on the ravages of the Hurricanes, first
Irma and then Maria, released in Puerto Rico. The electrical grid, completely collapsed
with people more than a year without electricity, hospitals shutting down, some
towns completely isolated from each other, a health crisis that is expressed in
deaths, suicides and the increasing gradual but perceptible depopulation of the
island. It is estimated that close to 500,000 people had left the island the
majority traveling to the United States. Since 2004 the population of Puerto
Rico has been on a decline, today 5.4 million Puerto Ricans live in the United
States compared to 3.4 million in the Puerto Rican archipelago. The early decline
was due to the worsening economic mic situation and the increasing indebtedness
of the colonial government.
Naomi Klein,
well known Canadian writer and social activist who popularized the concept of
the “shock doctrine” which describes how the insecurity, powerlessness that a
population experiences during economic depression, chaos allows the government
to impose unpopular policies that normally would not be possible in normal
circumstances. Naomi Klein in an accessible language, but rigorously factual, develops
a narrative that connects the various strands that underlie Puerto Rico’s
present tragedy Also, contrary to most of the mainstream media Klein weaves
some of the historical facts, connected to Puerto Rico’s colonial status with
policies by the US and the colonial government.
When the
natural disaster hit the Puerto Rican archipelago on September 20 2017 it
intensified, forces that in the last decades have left Puerto Rico’s economy,
its infrastructure in shambles. These forces are a combination of decisions
made by the colonial government of Puerto Rico in order to finance a bankrupt
economy and governmental institutions. But the forces and woven together by the
manner by which the United States has used, since Puerto Rico was conquered
after the Spanish-Cuban American War of 1898. Since the beginning Puerto Rico
was seen as a tabula rasa which allowed the United States to implement tax
policies, immigration policies, and later in the 20th century
military and medical and chemical experimentation.
Given the
complexity of the origins of Puerto Rico’s plight it is not possible to provide
an accessible diagnostic in a book whose goal is to reach broader audiences for
Puerto Rico’s narrative. There are a number of academic articles that have recently
provided excellent background for the role of US tax policies, for example Diane
Lourdes Dick, expert in tax law, 2015 provided an expert background to the
relationship between US tax policies and US imperialism in Puerto Rico.
“U.S. domination over Puerto Rico's tax and
fiscal policies has been the centerpiece of a colonial system and an especially
destructive form of economic imperialism. Specifically, this Article develops a
novel theory of U.S. tax imperialism in Puerto Rico, chronicling the sundry
ways in which the United States has used tax laws to exert economic dominance
over its less developed island colony. During the colonial period, U.S.
officials wrote and revised Puerto Rican tax laws to serve U.S. economic
interests.” (1)
More recently, Puerto
Rican economists Jose Caraballo and Juan Lara provided the most precise
diagnostic for the increased indebtedness of Puerto Rico. They provide a thorough
dismantling of the myth that Puerto Ricans basically, and irresponsibly placed
themselves in the critical situation that preceded the natural disaster brought
about by the hurricanes. In some sense most of the narratives, even the liberal
ones, have been rooted in the “liberal” framework of the “culture of poverty”
which essentially blames the victims for their plight. These exonerate the
empire from any responsibility.
“Using econometric
analysis, we found that PuertoRico’ s government indebtedness is, to a large extent,
connected to a sharp decrease in manufacturing employment (i.e. Deindustrialization)
suffered by this economy, and weak evidence that It was caused by an excessive government
payroll or overgenerous federal programs. In light of our empirical results, we
discussed how the consequences of deindustrialization ultimately led to increase
government borrowing.”
The
deindustrialization of the island was the outcome of congress’ decisions to
eliminate policies which provided incentives for industries like the
pharmaceutical and medical instruments to establish themselves in Puerto Rico.
After 2006 these incentives were eliminated creating a wave of industrial closings
and increased unemployment. The tax base was constrained and the government decided
to use the bond market to sustain medical services, law enforcement, education
etc. Puerto Rico had few fiscal powers to reform its currency, search for new
markets (Cabotage Law forces the island to use the inefficient and expensive US
merchant marine), 80 percent of all goods including food are imported.
These analyses
together with Klein’s book provide the best understanding of the chaotic
disaster that Puerto Rico is experiencing. But what Klein contributes because
of her involvement wit local social movements and informants is the warning
about the policies that are being implemented in Puerto Rico based on a
neo-liberal ideology which will increase the crisis and will lead Puerto Rico
to a process of depopulation that some have called genocidal. At the same time,
she is able to focus on the forces that from the ground up are resisting and
that will hopefully provide the basis for the reconstruction of a better more
just and self-sustaining society.
Congress
imposed another layer of colonial control when in 2016 it legislated Puerto Rico Oversight, Management, and Economic
Stability Act or PROMESA which cynically means promise in in Spanish. However,
the promise is the imposing a series of measures by a board appointed by
congress with mostly non-Puerto Ricans, or Puerto Ricans connected to the
finance markets, most republicans. The measures which include austerity
measures have led to the closing of hundreds of schools, a debacle in pensions
due to cuts, reduction of public workers including members of the publicly
owned electric company (who privatization has just been approved) which left
the agency with few resources to deal with the collapse of the electrical grid.
Klein talks
about how the governor of Puerto Rico, who favors statehood for the island and
other members of his government have created a vision of a future Puerto Rico,
that is like a blank slate where innovators (“job creators”), can come to the
island and create a neo-liberal paradise for investors. But this “paradise”
will be a hell for Puerto Ricans. One of the immediate outcomes is that the depopulation
of Puerto Rico continues and wealthy investors, are contributing to the gentrification,
not of a neighborhood but of an entire nation. Laws which provide generous tax
benefits to wealthy people who move to the island and invest have created a growing
population of what Klein calls Puertopians who will help pant the black canvas
of Puerto Rico into an investor’s paradise.
Recently (2018)
the colonial legislature, under threat from the Fiscal Control Board (with
power over fiscal affairs in Puerto Rico) was attempting to legislate a law
that would take away workers protection from being fired from their jobs. The
fiscal control board was blackmailing the legislature to pass this legislation by
threatening other measures which would reduce the government budget for things
like the Christmas bonus and other financial measures which have existed for
years. These measures are rapidly being implemented, which creates confusion
and a sense of powerlessness among the people impacted. The “shock therapy” is
alive and well in Puerto Rico.
The Fiscal
Control Board has a budget of $1.5 billion, its executive director has an annual
salary of $625,000 (more than the governor) and they have planned to set up a
surplus of $6.5 billion to pay creditors while Puerto Rico which will need $95
billion to rebuild will only get $57 billion from the US federal government.
This is a way of extracting money from an impoverished island with a colonized
voiceless population.
At the same
time, from the bottom up, despite the seemingly state of powerlessness that
pervades among Puerto Ricans, social movements are quietly developing a way of
resisting and indicating that there is another vision for what a paradise would
look like for Puerto Ricans.
She describes
the work of environmentalist organization Casa Pueblo, who was initially one of
the only places in the central mountains with access to electricity because of
it solar powered panels. Its radio station also was for many days the only
source of information for many in the island. This organization has been led by
a group of engineers and scientists who decades ago were in the forefront of a
national social movement to stop the open-air mining of copper and other
minerals located in the island’s central highlands. Hundreds of college youth
camped in the areas that were targeted by the US multinationals and contributed
to the change of plans which saved the mountain regions of Puerto Rico from
devastation. Arturo Massol Deya, a biologist and his family led the process of
transforming their movement into an environmental organization. His
organization was awarded the Goldberg award years back which helped propel
further their organizing efforts. Recently they have managed thousands of acres
of forests and provide training and education to youth.
Puerto Rico, because
of the colonial policies which limit the island being able to protect its
industries and agriculture imports 80 por cent of the food and goods consumed
in the island. Ironically, in the last few decades a group groups and
individuals began to buy land and set up sustaining ecological farms. After the
storm these disparate agricultural islands were growing tubers like cassava,
sweet potatoes, taro that were the only ones that were not uprooted by the
storms. These agricultural products had been the source of food for Puerto Rico’s
indigenous Tainos and the Africans who were enslaved in Puerto Rico but
interacted with the Tainos. The isolated islands of agricultural producers have
recently begun to networks and have created a movement that together with other
community organizations are beginning to imagine from the ground up another
vision of the paradise in Puerto Rico that is self-sustaining and which will
provide the basis for sustaining the island’s population.
Interestingly,
one large source of support, both financial and political for the resistance
efforts in Puerto Rico are the millions of Puerto Ricans in the diaspora. Hundreds
of Puerto Ricans have raised funds, volunteered to go to work in Puerto Rico.
In some sense the diaspora is providing a voice to Puerto Ricans in the island
since Puerto Ricans cannot vote in US elections. Many organizations in the US
are pressuring congress, together with the four Puerto Rican congresspersons
representing Puerto Rican communities. Many of those Puerto Ricans who left
recently are finding a connection with their homeland.
1.
U.S. Tax Imperialism In Puerto
Rico By Diane
Lourdes Dick* 65 Am.
U. L. Rev.1, 2015.
2.
Deindustrialization
and Unsustainable Debt in Middle-Income Countries: The Case of Puerto Rico By
Jose Caraballo Cueto and Juan Lara Journal of globalization and development,
Vol 8 Issue 2, 2018.
Victor Manuel
Rodriguez
Department of
Chicano and Latina/o Studies
California
State University, Long Beach
