Vulture Capitalists Circle Above Puerto Rican Prey

I am moved to post this deeply important and illuminating interview again. There is so much that I am ignorant of. This certainly includes Puerto Rico. I am grateful for this excellent and well articulated interview with social anthropologist Yarimar Bonilla which helps make clear so much that I did not know. It is also my belief that we all need to inform ourselves and be committed to digging deeply in our research so that we are better able to engage as best as we can in standing up to the dehumanization, scapegoating, and victimization of others, including those who are suffering so profoundly in Puerto Rico. This article certainly makes it so clear that this suffering has also been going on for a very long time. We need to understand why. Another world is possible, but only as we inform ourselves, care, and act. - Molly

Over the weekend, San Juan Mayor Carmen Yulín Cruz made a spontaneous statement expressing her frustration with insufficient relief efforts in a video that went viral.

As the people of Puerto Rico suffer, President Trump lashed out at San Juan's mayor this morning. In this interview, I talk with social anthropologist Yarimar Bonilla about the history of the US in Puerto Rico and the challenges Puerto Ricans face in the wake of the storm.

By BILL MOYERS

Puerto Rico is devastated. Two hurricanes plunged the island into darkness and despair. Crops perish in the fields. The landscape of ruined buildings and towns resemble Hiroshima after the atomic bomb was dropped on it. Over 3 million people are desperate for food, water, electricity and shelter. 

After a slow start, the Trump administration is now speeding up the flow of supplies to the island. A top US general has been given command of the relief efforts. And, like so many others, Yarimar Bonilla watches with a broken heart as her native Puerto Rico struggles. This noted social anthropologist — a scholar on Caribbean societies — says the hurricanes have made an already bad fiscal and economic crisis worse, and she sees darker times ahead unless major changes are made in the structure of power and in Puerto Rico’s relationship with the United States. 

Last night on NBC, San Juan Mayor Carmen Yulín Cruz made a spontaneous statement expressing her frustration with insufficient relief efforts that went viral. Before you read my interview with Yarimar Bonilla please take two minutes to watch this video. You will understand even more clearly Ms. Bonilla’s explainer of what is happening in Puerto Rico.

— Bill Moyers  

San Juan mayor pleads for federal help after hurricane:

"We are dying here"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gA8Zx_RdcLc 

Bill Moyers: What’s the first thing you would want us to know about Puerto Rico? 

Yarimar Bonilla: That it is a US territory — as are the Virgin Islands, American Samoa and Guam. That it has a greater population than 21 other states — more residents than Utah, Iowa or Nevada — and is geographically larger than Delaware or Rhode Island.

However, rather than wanting folks to know something in particular, I would want them to ask why is Puerto Rico part of the United States, to investigate the question and come up with their own answers. I think it would be more interesting for people to start out wherever they are — be it with no knowledge at all — or people who grew up in Puerto Rico and have long lived this political relationship without fully understanding it, to ask themselves why the island is part of the United States and what explains the particular ambiguity of its situation today.

Moyers: What’s your personal connection to Puerto Rico, and how did you come to devote so much of your life to studying Caribbean societies?

Bonilla: I was born in Puerto Rico, although my mom says that I can choose if I want to be an Island Puerto Rican or a Diasporican because now I’ve spent pretty much equal time in the United States and in Puerto Rico proper.

Moyers: I dare say that until the hurricanes the popular image of Puerto Rico in this country was the epitome of prosperity. You know, all the ads on television and in magazines touting pleasure and escape — the resorts, the bright sun, the white beaches, the blue water, the rum and tonic, the sexy bikinis, the smiling locals.  

Bonilla: Well, it’s funny, I had a colleague, a fellow anthropologist, with whom I joked about wanting one day for us to write an ethnography of the Puerto Rico that exists in tourist ads. Because it’s a place that we’ve never really visited or known.

Moyers: But doesn’t this distorted view make it more difficult for regular Americans to connect to the devastation today?  

Bonilla: Perhaps. But I think even more than the tourist ads, what makes it difficult for Americans to connect is the deep ignorance that exists about the political relationship between Puerto Rico and the United States. Most folks in the US don’t even know how to orient themselves towards Puerto Rico. How should they feel about it? Should they support statehood, should they support independence? They’re unable to reconcile the political history of Puerto Rico with the history that they are taught in schools about the United States. 

Moyers: You’ve said that Puerto Rico was in trouble long before the hurricane.

Bonilla: Puerto Rico’s been in an economic recession for over a decade. The great American recession that was so debated in the United States during the early Obama administration after the collapse of the banks in the US — all of that started in Puerto Rico much earlier, and whereas the US is said to have recovered to some extent for certain populations, Puerto Rico’s recession has only deepened. That is in part due to the lack of a strong economic base and to tax incentives that were put in place to bring foreign — “foreign” meaning US companies — to Puerto Rico. After the crash a lot of companies left and a base of employment in Puerto Rico was gone.

So even before this last hurricane, already Puerto Rico had huge unemployment, huge poverty rates — poverty rates that double any poverty rate in the US, even that of the poorest states of the US — and a very neglected infrastructure that was not ready for the storms.

Moyers: Donald Trump tweeted, “Texas and Florida are doing great after their hurricanes, but Puerto Rico, which was already suffering from broken infrastructure and massive debt, is in deep trouble.” And that seems to echo what you’ve just said and what you wrote in The Washington Post — that a state of emergency existed well before the hurricane hit. 

Bonilla: I’m curious about that statement from Donald Trump. I wonder who in Florida and Texas is doing great and who is not. So that would be my first question. But you know, that’s for other folks to answer.

Moyers: Why was the inequality in Puerto Rico so great?

Bonilla: Because there’s been an erosion of the middle class. And so you have a lot of people at the bottom who can’t find work, who can’t start their own businesses. Many of them depend on government assistance, but there’s also a huge number who are working poor, who live paycheck to paycheck, who are supplementing their incomes with the gig economy. Retailers like Walmart offer no job security. Most of the people working for them can’t predict their shifts — their shifts change from week to week. They have to keep their schedules completely open. They are paid for part-time labor, but have to be available full-time.

And so all of this means that leading up to the storm, people already did not have enough money to prepare, to buy the supplies that they needed. Ideally, you would prepare for a storm of this nature by having a well-stocked pantry, plenty of water, lots of batteries, and if you can afford it, a generator. Also, your car would be full of gas and you would have a good amount of cash, because as can be expected and as we’re seeing now, ATMs are down. People who are just making ends meet, they don’t have the kind of money that is necessary to prepare for these storms.

There’s a lot of talk about the island’s environmental precarity and vulnerability. It’s true that the Caribbean is on the front lines of effects from climate change. But there are other forms of vulnerability, like socioeconomic vulnerability. And also a political vulnerability because Puerto Ricans don’t really have anyone in Congress advocating for them. They’re nobody’s constituents. They have no representation and no one who can leverage votes and trade deals with other states in order to get things expedited on the ground there.

Moyers: You’ve described these Caribbean societies, including Puerto Rico, as protected markets for national corporations.    

Bonilla: Yes. If you look at the Jones Act, the only goods that can arrive in Puerto Rico have to be on US-made ships, and owned by US citizens, with a US crew flying a US flag. So this means that if the Dominican Republic wants to sell food to Puerto Rico, which it does, it has to send that food first to Jacksonville, Florida, unload it, put it on another ship that is allowed to bring it to Puerto Rico. So this makes it very difficult for Puerto Rico to engage in trade with other countries. We’re not an independent nation, so we can’t make our own trade arrangements. And that means that we have to buy mostly from the US.

Please continue this interview here: http://billmoyers.com/story/vulture-capitalists-circle-puerto-rico-prey/