Puerto Rico: Hurricane Maria and the Promise of Disposability

Puerto Rico,

My heart's devotion

Let it sink back in the ocean

Always the hurricanes blowing

Always the population growing

And the money owing … 

“America,” West Side Story (1961)

The storm(s)

It was almost the end of another Caribbean summer when Puerto Rico experienced one of the most destructive hurricanes in its history. The torrential rains lasted days and the winds reached speeds of more than 100 miles per hour. Hundreds of people died in the floods, the mudslides, the lack of proper medical care, and thousands were left without shelter, food, or work. One could see the destruction of the farmlands, in the mountains where the coffee plantations were located, and on the shore where entire communities were wiped out. The storm aggravated the social and economic situation of Puerto Rico, which was already in dire straits at the time, leading some to speculate that it would have serious repercussions in years to follow. The year was 1899, and the name of the hurricane was San Ciriaco.

In many respects the disaster San Ciriaco left behind would anticipate the destruction brought to the archipelago by hurricane Maria (September 20, 2017). Like San Ciriaco, Maria made landfall as a category 4 hurricane with sustained winds of 155 miles per hour. As the eye of the storm moved across the mainland, heavy rain and wind gusts produced catastrophic flooding – thousands of people died by its impact and aftermath, and losses are estimated at between $25 billion and $43 billion. A week after Maria, finding food, water and fuel was almost impossible, and since sectors of the population remained isolated, many resorted to drinking water from polluted sources. Maria, just like San Ciriaco more than a century ago, devastated the already moribund local agriculture, wiping out an estimated 80% of Puerto Rico's crop value (Robles and Sarduní 2017). But more on that later.

Returning to 1899, Puerto Rico had already spent a year under the sovereignty of the United States, since under the terms of the Treaty of Paris, following the Spanish American War, Puerto Rico, along with other Spanish colonies, became a possession of the United States. This being the case, it wasn't until 1917 that president Woodrow Wilson signed into law the Jones Act, which granted Puerto Ricans US citizenship and the ability to form a senate, and exempted Puerto Rican bonds from federal, state, and local taxes, irrespective of residence. Life under the US umbrella proved to be a mixed bag, however, and general disenchantment with American colonial policy eventually set in within sectors of the population. This frustration with the colonial system would inform nationalist leader Pedro Albizu Campos’ decision to advocate for the armed struggle – a decolonizing impetus that would be fed by anger after the Ponce Massacre of 1937 (20 dead and 200 wounded) – culminating with the nationalist revolts of the 1950s, including the attacks to the Blair House (1950) and the US Congress (1954). Albizu Campos, a Harvard-educated lawyer, was thereafter imprisoned for 26 years for seditious conspiracy. Despite the fact that for most of the latter part of the twentieth century, Puerto Rican politics has been dominated by two main political parties – the New Progressive Party, favoring statehood, and the Popular Democratic Party, which supports the current status – it is undeniable that the persecution of pro-independence ideologies and political parties has had a major impact on the fabric of Puerto Rican society.¹

Citizenship, moreover, did not give Puerto Rico access to financial instruments available both to states in the mainland and to sovereign nations. Instead, it curtailed its ability to conduct trade and business in an efficient fashion. Because of its status as an unincorporated territory, Puerto Rico was never truly part of the US, as the Supreme Court demonstrated in a series of rulings known as the Insular Cases (1901–1922). The rulings made a clear distinction between incorporated territories on the path to statehood and other possessions, the latter case being such that the Constitution would not entirely apply. The creation of the Estado Libre Asociado [Free Associated State] in 1952 would provide the illusion of political autonomy, and with the implementation of Operation Bootstrap the Puerto Rican economy was launched into a new era of development.² Under the administration of governor Luis Muñoz Marín, the architect of the ELA, Puerto Rico shifted from an agrarian society mainly based on an absentee owner sugar economy to an industrial one, with the creation of more than a 100 factories in the span of a decade. The Puerto Rican economy would get an additional boost from the establishment of section 936 of the tax code (1976), which exempted American companies on the island from paying federal taxes.³ Section 936 was in place until 1996, when it was repealed by president Bill Clinton with a 10-year phase-out plan. At the turn of the twenty-first century, just as they did in the 1940s and 1950s, thousands of Puerto Ricans had migrated to the US, while the manufacturing industry and big pharma slowly but surely abandoned ship in Puerto Rico itself. Concerned with keeping campaign pledges, the political class was resolute in its attempts to facilitate neoliberal policy, especially via the issuing of bonds to finance projects of little consequence. This chain of events would set the stage for the current Puerto Rican economic and financial crisis (2015), which in turn would be exacerbated by the arrival of hurricane Maria and the ensuing humanitarian crisis.

The debt crisis

As was the case for southern European nations like Greece and Portugal, Puerto Rico's financial crisis arose in part because of its incapacity to continue to finance its public debt. In effect, debt issuance via municipal bonds to fund the government’s operations became unsustainable, forcing then governor, Alejandro García Padilla, to admit that the $72 billion was not payable. Unlike other states and cities, Puerto Rico did not have the option of bankruptcy, putting it at the mercy of vulture hedge funds and speculators. In June 2016 president Barack Obama signed into law the Puerto Rico Oversight, Management, and Economic Stability Act (PROMESA). In principle this bill would provide a reprieve from debtors, but, through the creation of an unelected overseeing board, it also brings to mind the colonial administrations of the early twentieth century. The stipulations pushed by the board include major attacks on the already impoverished welfare state, including budget cuts to the University of Puerto Rico, severe reductions to labor rights and entitlements, and school closings.⁴ Needless to say, austerity measures put capital (not people) to work, creating new forms of debt and producing what I would call “indebted subjectivities” (see Lazzarato 2012, 104). Hence, the so-called American citizens inhabiting Puerto Rico would be burdened with dealing with the financial, humanitarian, and environmental disaster, and its consequences.⁵

These indebted subjectivities speak to the problematic notion of citizenship that informs the colonial relationship between the inhabitants of the Puerto Rican Debt State and the US government. Behind the promise of freedom and protections under the American flag lies a colonial debt, as the political abstraction of citizenship constitutes the colonial subjects as indebted for their liberation and economic subsistence. As a zone of disinvestment Puerto Rico claims a certain exceptionality within the Caribbean context, and yet it is marked by the spectacles that social debt and colonial violence produces, which, according to Evans and Giroux (2015), “materialize the neoliberal logic of containment and commodification” (51).⁶ This is precisely what the atrocious response and relief effort after hurricane Maria made evident in Puerto Rico.

The American president

Two weeks after Maria's landfall president Trump made his first appearance on the island, where he delighted in singing the praises of first responders, the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), and the military involved in the relief effort. Completely blind to the reality of the disaster, Trump went as far as to suggest that, unlike hurricane Katrina (2005) in New Orleans, hurricane Maria was not a “real catastrophe,” and he joked nonchalantly about the negative effects of the disaster on the federal budget. He said, “Every death is a horror, but if you look at a real catastrophe like Katrina, and you look at the tremendous hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of people that died, and you look at what happened here and what is your death count? Sixteen people, versus in the thousands.” He continued, “You can be very proud. Sixteen versus literally thousands of people” (see Landler 2017). The president, as usual, was more concerned with his ratings, not only seeking affirmation from governor Ricardo Roselló (who was too busy taking “selfies” during the press conference), but utilizing the self-congratulatory language he is so known for: “In Texas and Florida we get an A-plus. And I’ll tell you what, I think we’ve done just as good in Puerto Rico.”

One could argue, of course, that the insensitive nature of Trump's comments revealed, more than anything else, that the current American president is simply out of touch. His lack of understanding of such a critical situation and his feeble response ultimately betrayed the lack of leadership at the highest levels of the White House. Trump's comments could potentially be taken as just another instance of the clownish behavior we have come to expect from the current president; and this would perhaps be a convincing argument if it were not for the fact that two weeks after the passing of the storm only 7% of the population had power and less than half had drinking water. Also, at the time of his visit the official death toll was supposed to be 19 certified deaths (by the time he left it was 36), but a recent study by Harvard University researchers estimates the toll to be in the thousands.⁷ These details, in my view, underscore the fact that in the eyes of the US government, especially under the current administration, the Puerto Rican population, in its vulnerability, is bound by its disposability. Moreover, like many other areas in the Global South, the case of Puerto Rico demonstrates how savage capitalism produces “waste” (wasted lives) out of the most vulnerable segments of the population, cast as disposable excess and relegated to mass migration, disinvestment, and death (Bauman 2004). Clearly, the collapse of the current political model, the Estado Libre Asociado, as well as the infeasibility of the statehood project, challenges the emancipatory fantasies of citizenship, as the promise of a disposable future becomes ever present.

Perhaps no other action from Trump emblematizes Puerto Rican disposability more than an episode that took place during his visit to the island, “the hurling of the paper towels.” As part of his schedule, Trump visited the Calvary Chapel, an English-speaking evangelical church outside San Juan, where he proceeded to throw rolls of paper towels to the storm victims who were there to receive food and supplies. It shouldn't surprise us that the American commander-in-chief chose to toss disposable paper to disposable people. Not satisfied with the media spectacle during and following his visit to the hurricane-ravaged island, Trump took to Twitter to attack the Mayor of San Juan, Carmen Yulín Cruz. Yulín popped the media relations bubble by pointing out how the federal response in Puerto Rico was lackluster, especially as regarded the responses in Florida and Texas. In Trump's parlance, Yulín was just another “nasty woman” and, in the end, Puerto Ricans were “ingrates” who wanted “everything to be done for them.” Once again, the specter of colonial debt makes an appearance, as Puerto Ricans, really indebted citizens, should be grateful for their own colonization and oppression.

The environmental legacies of colonialism

What the Twitter-trolling president failed to recognize is how hurricane Maria exposed the critical connection between climate change, capitalism, and colonialism. It is no secret that climate scientists have directly linked the higher magnitude (and frequency) of hurricanes to an increase in ocean temperatures, triggered in large part by anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions. Unfortunately, it is precisely disposable populations, like the Puerto Rican, who carry most of the brunt for the global environmental crisis. The Trump administration, however, has turned a blind eye to these circumstances, proving once again that the accumulation of capital precludes any other set of priorities. In fact, just recently the president signed an executive order repealing environmental regulations on the Gulf coast, making it easier for oil refineries to drill off the US's shores – this despite the fact that oil residue still lingers in the Gulf's ecosystem after the Deepwater Horizon spill (see Irfan 2018). This is no small matter, especially if one considers the impact that the storm had on Puerto Rico's power grid, and that 65% of its electricity comes from oil. There is no point in denying that Puerto Rico has been going through an energy emergency for quite some time. That said, the legacies of colonialism and capitalism loom large here, as the efforts to quickly industrialize the island in order to make it into a showcase for capitalism in the Caribbean were undertaken via a path of dependence on oil. Other pernicious legacies abound, such as contaminated landscapes (Puerto Rico has 18 Superfund sites), negligent coal ash dumping by power companies, and a general disdain for renewable alternatives, which in turn raise serious questions about food insecurity and drinking water quality.

Maria devastated Puerto Rico's food supply and agricultural industry. Puerto Rico already imports 85% of its food, at prices almost double those of states like Florida and Texas, in large part thanks to the Merchant Marine Act of 1920, a cabotage law that rules the transport of goods to the island. Flooding destroyed barns and chicken coops, and food distribution was made difficult due to the damage to the infrastructure and supply chain. Food insecurity is still a major concern, as prior to the hurricane hunger was afflicting approximately 50% of the population, especially in the most vulnerable communities. In addition to the shortages of power and food, many lacked access to clean water. The drinking water crisis, in fact, preceded the disaster, since even before Maria Puerto Ricans had the worst drinking water quality of any state or territory in the US.⁸ Around 70% of all drinking water in Puerto Rico comes from sources that are not treated in accordance with federal standards, and because of the massive damage to the already fragile water system, there is great concern that there may be even more contaminants leaching into the groundwater, posing a health crisis for those exposed to contaminated water.⁹ Needless to say, both the local and federal governments’ response to these multiple crises has been dismal, and despite the resistance of a broad-based coalition of local community leaders, activists, and environmental justice advocates, capital accumulation dictates most of the decision-making, which will lead to the privatization of public services and more deregulation.

Here come the crypto utopians

Back in February The New York Times reported on the initiative of a group of cryptocurrency entrepreneurs to build a crypto utopia in Puerto Rico (initially Puertopia, later Sol), one with tax benefits and operating under the principles of blockchain technology (see Bowles 2018). The piece revealed the opportunism of the crypto utopians, while stressing the ever-present questionable aspects of disaster capitalism. Interestingly, it also revealed the ways in which crypto capitalism – even if the crypto utopians advocate bank decentralization – depends on the circulation of monetary, financial, and affective flows, that is, on an economy of transmission.¹⁰ This sort of economy, as one might expect, is deeply entwined with the collapse of the Puerto Rican Debt State, as well as with a post-capitalist age heralding the hastening of the neoliberal project in the archipelago. The speculative foundation of a “Puertopia” in turn evidences a new stage in Puerto Rico's dystopic displacement from the global political economy. It shouldn't surprise us that the currency used by the crypto utopians is called cryptocurrency, not only because it depends on secrecy, on a sort of new code mobilized by the global elites to further exclude the subaltern body, but also, as the name implies, it fundamentally lacks the possibility of futurity. Succinctly put, because of their status as indebted citizens and racialized subjects, for Puerto Ricans this “new” paradigm of marginalization is advanced via a clear alliance between the neoliberal ideologues that seek to multiply their riches at the expense of the battered US colony and the mostly white global elites whose interests are represented and protected by the metropolitan center. The underpinnings of a Puerto Rican indebted subjectivity, then, go beyond simply owing currency, assets or funds, as it responds to a disciplinary logic of loss, of death. I would argue that the citizens of the Puerto Rican Debt State, de facto inhabitants of a zone of disposability, have become the new “living dead,” specters inhabiting a crypt (a crypto island) that, following the humanitarian crisis caused by hurricane Maria, has become both a topography of encrypted secrets and a burial place.

Notes

1 The recent release of Puerto Rican freedom fighter Oscar López Rivera should be understood within this context. López Rivera was arrested on May 29, 1981 and tried for seditious conspiracy by the US government. He served 36 years in federal prison, several of them in solitary confinement, before being released on May 17, 2017. Last June López Rivera appeared before the United Nations’ “Special Committee on Decolonization,” which soon afterwards approved a draft resolution to call upon the United States to uphold the Puerto Ricans’ right to self-determination. Interestingly enough, like many anticolonial movements that historically have suffered persecution for defending the cause of Puerto Rican independence, environmental activists have also been the target of such criminalizing practices as surveillance and incarceration.

2 Operation Bootstrap promoted the process of industrialization through a system of incentives and tax breaks that attracted US private capital to Puerto Rico. The industrialization process was coupled with a program of agrarian reform to challenge the predominance of the sugar industry. When the constitution of the new Common­wealth of Puerto Rico came into effect on July 25, 1952, at least 152 fac­tories were in operation. With this came a massive migratory movement to the San Juan metropolitan area, and subsequently, due to government-sponsored programming, to the mainland.

3 Section 936 of the Internal Revenue Code provided incentives and tax exemptions for US corporations in Puerto Rico. It allowed the corporations, with subsidiaries on the island, to deduct a 100% of their revenues distributed as dividends.

4 Education Secretary Julia Keleher recently announced the closing of 283 schools (almost a third of all Puerto Rican public schools) to address the declining enrollment after Maria. Reminiscent of what happened in New Orleans after Katrina, back in March of this year governor Ricardo Roselló signed a school choice bill that will allow charter schools (which are publicly funded but independently operated) and voucher programs (which allow public money to be used for private schools) to be established.

5 It is important to note that Puerto Rico has a higher rate of income inequality than US states. This disparity has undoubtedly become more acute on account of current tax breaks and incentives that allow investors to avoid paying income tax if they make the island their place of residence for at least half of the year. Act no. 22, as the incentive is known, is responsible for the presence of vulture capitalists and “crypto utopians” on the island.

6 Perhaps no other spectacle of colonial violence emblematizes Puerto Rico's status as a zone of disinvestment better than the troubled relationship between the US Navy and the residents of the island municipalities of Culebra and Vieques. As part of its efforts to secure its hegemony in the Caribbean, in the 1940s the US Navy decided to build a major military complex called Roosevelt Roads Naval Station there. Since Culebra and Vieques were to become training ground for military exercises and bombing, the Navy seized land, water, and natural resources, causing severe environmental devastation. The Navy also tried to forcibly remove and resettle the population of both islands, but their attempts were not completely successful and, by 1975, due to the pressure of activists and the local government, it abandoned Culebra. Unfortunately, Vieques would have to wait another 28 years for the same. In 1999 David Sanes, a local employee of the base, was killed by a stray bomb. Under the slogan of “ni una bomba más” [not one more bomb], the Puerto Rican population and the international community mobilized to demand the departure of the US Navy. The US Navy finally left the island in 2003, but the legacy of violence, pollution, and disinvestment remains. Vieques has a much higher rate of chronic diseases than the rest of Puerto Rico, and even though more than 2,500 acres have been cleared of scrap metal and munitions, the ecological damage is incalculable (see McCaffrey 2002).

7 The Harvard study estimated that 4,645 deaths could be linked to the storm and its immediate aftermath. The Puerto Rican government contracted investigators from George Washington University to provide an accurate figure of human losses, but the report is yet to come (see Hernández and McGingley 2018).

8 99.5% of Puerto Ricans are served water the quality of which is in violation of the Safe Drinking Water Act, the federal law that protects public drinking water supplies throughout the US.

9 It is worth noting that at least 74 suspected cases of leptospirosis (a bacterial disease) were reported after the hurricane, including two deaths.

10 Cryptocurrency relies on eliminating the ledger-keeping role of centralized financial institutions and instead allocating the responsibility to an anonymous network, thus creating a decentralized system.