https://themilitant.com/2018/09/29/puerto-rico-one-year-after-hurricane-maria/
Puerto Rico: One year after Hurricane Maria
Social disaster is result of capitalism, colonial rule
By Seth Galinsky
Vol. 82/No. 37
October 8, 2018
Lucila Cabrera, 86, sits on porch of her house near Barceloneta, Puerto
Rico, still covered with plastic tarp. One year after Hurricane Maria,
tens of thousands of homes still have not gotten funds or help to build
a new roof. FEMA has denied one third of requests for aid.
Reuters/Carlos Barria
Lucila Cabrera, 86, sits on porch of her house near Barceloneta, Puerto
Rico, still covered with plastic tarp. One year after Hurricane Maria,
tens of thousands of homes still have not gotten funds or help to build
a new roof. FEMA has denied one third of requests for aid.
One year after Hurricane Maria made landfall in the U.S. colony of
Puerto Rico last Sept. 20, the U.S. and local governments continue to
display their class disregard for the lives of working people there.
Most, but still not all, of the country has electricity and drinking
water — most of the time. But 60,000 homes still have only blue tarps as
roofs and tens of thousands more were destroyed or severely damaged.
Many roads and bridges have not been repaired.
Under dog-eat-dog capitalist rule, all serious natural disasters turn
into social catastrophes for working people. But Puerto Rico’s colonial
status made the catastrophe worse.
After insisting for nearly a year that only 64 people died as a result
of the storm, Gov. Ricardo Rosselló finally admitted that at least 2,975
had perished.
“The government makes promises and more promises, but the people are
still suffering,” retired teacher Mildred Laboy, a leader of Arecma, a
community group in Humacao, said by phone Sept. 22. And few believe the
government is better prepared for when the next hurricane hits. When
tropical storm Isaac passed south of the island earlier in September,
with winds at 35 mph, electricity went out across the country.
Faced with government inaction, Arecma set up a community center where
area workers organized daily meals and other help after the storm.
The U.S. imperialist rulers have plundered Puerto Rico’s resources and
labor since they seized the island in 1898. Colonial exploitation has
decimated agricultural production. The “isle of enchantment,” which at
the beginning of last century produced most of its own food, now imports
85 percent from the U.S.
Residents of Caguas protest in San Juan, Jan. 15, demanding return of
power four months after Hurricane Maria. Thousands joined protests in
face of slow pace restoring electricity as well as against closing of
schools. “Many had never joined a protest before,” said Wency Bonilla.
Reuters/Alvin Baez
Residents of Caguas protest in San Juan, Jan. 15, demanding return of
power four months after Hurricane Maria. Thousands joined protests in
face of slow pace restoring electricity as well as against closing of
schools. “Many had never joined a protest before,” said Wency Bonilla.
With the onset of the worldwide capitalist economic and financial crisis
in 2007, the colonial government stepped up its anti-working-class
measures. The electric company cut back on maintenance and didn’t
replace antiquated equipment and systems. Maria’s winds decimated the grid.
Much of the rebuilt system is just as bad. The government admits that 20
percent of the repaired network needs to be torn out and redone. U.S.
contractors were brought in, and made big profits while workers for the
state electrical company often couldn’t get needed supplies.
Despite layoffs of tens of thousands of workers, jacked-up sales taxes
and cuts in pensions, the government’s debt to profit-hungry bondholders
by the time Maria struck was estimated at $74 billion.
The lack of the most elementary preparations by U.S. and local officials
to prepare for the storm and their disregard for working people
afterwards has deepened workers’ distrust in all the bourgeois parties
on the island and created greater awareness of colonial oppression among
the Puerto Rican people.
‘Advance in consciousness’
“Now everyone is aware that Puerto Rico is a colony,” Wency Bonilla, an
occupational therapist, told the Militant by phone from Caguas Sept. 22.
“Even the pro-statehood people, for whom ‘colony’ was almost an
obscenity, now say it.”
Bonilla recently graduated from the University of Puerto Rico in
Humacao. With his new job he travels to some of the regions hardest hit
by the hurricane.
After the storm thousands of working people joined protests against the
slow pace of restoring electricity and the closing of schools.
“These were people who had never joined a protest before,” he said. “On
one side we see an advance in consciousness, but most people still don’t
see a sovereign Puerto Rico as a solution.”
The Federal Emergency Management Agency has disbursed or committed $1.3
billion to individuals and $3.4 billion in public grants to aid in
repairing the damage from the hurricane. But so far FEMA has denied
nearly a third of people’s 1.1 million applications for aid.
As working people in the U.S. battered by recent hurricanes from Texas
to Louisiana to the Carolinas can attest, the “aid” FEMA gives is always
inadequate. In the U.S. colony it’s even worse.
The Miami Herald reports that as of June 1 Maria survivors in Puerto
Rico who were able to qualify for aid got an average of $1,800 for
repair assistance, less than one-fifth of what survivors of Hurricane
Harvey in Texas received.
“In Puerto Rico it seems that if you’re driving every 20 minutes there’s
a Walmart, Best Buy or Costco,” Cándido Santiago, a businessman, said by
phone from Humacao Sept. 22. “The big chains are doing fine, but not the
local businesses.” As many as 8,000 of the island’s 44,000 small
businesses have shut down since the storm.
“And the money the big chains make doesn’t stay here, it goes to the
U.S.,” he added. “And their employees, they don’t work a full day, they
just get four hours so the company avoids paying benefits.”
The Department of Education has shut down 254 schools in the last year,
despite numerous protests, claiming there was no choice because of
declining enrollment. By 2010, with so many people fleeing the island’s
deteriorating conditions, there were more Puerto Ricans in the U.S. than
in Puerto Rico. As many as 200,000 more left after the storm, although
many have returned.
Santiago notes that after months of waiting and protests he helped
organize, electricity was restored in most of Humacao in July.
“We have electricity, but streets still don’t have traffic lights,” he
said. “It’s like in the old days.”
The Financial Oversight and Management Board, appointed by President
Barack Obama to guarantee payments to the bondholders and given veto
power over all financial decisions of the Puerto Rican government,
continues to insist on steep cuts in government services, health care
and pensions, more layoffs, and privatization of the electrical system.
Vieques: ‘Colony of a colony’
On the island of Vieques off Puerto Rico’s eastern coast conditions are
harsher. People there say they live in the colony of a colony. The
government-owned electric utility hasn’t restored an underwater
electrical cable connection and the only electricity there comes from
generators.
The dialysis center on Vieques shut down after the storm. Now the only
way for patients to get the three-times- a week treatment they need to
stay alive is to travel to the main island by ferry or plane.
At least five of the patients have died since the storm. The government
has promised for months to provide a mobile dialysis unit, but hasn’t
delivered.
Ismael Guadalupe, a retired school teacher and long-time activist in the
successful fight to force the U.S. Navy out of Vieques, told the
Militant he was lucky he no longer needs dialysis, after getting a
kidney transplant before the storm. Like everything under capitalism, he
said, “it’s just a business. They take advantage of our tragedy.”
With the onset of the worldwide capitalist economic crisis, many
U.S.-owned factories shut down. But U.S. capitalists depend on the
relatively cheap labor in Puerto Rico to make billions of dollars in
superprofits.
There are some 50 pharmaceutical factories in Puerto Rico, a key part of
the U.S. and global drug supply chain, including Amgen’s largest
facility in the world, with 2,700 workers in Juncos. Johnson & Johnson
has 3,700 workers in six plants in five towns. And 11 of the top 20
medicines sold worldwide, including Viagra, have components manufactured
in Puerto Rico.
Amgen is investing $40 million to build its own cogeneration plant to
provide heat and power no matter what storms bring in the future.
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