"Within Their Means?"

        Heard a comment last night which I just couldn’t let slide. It was regarding conditions in Puerto Rico post Hurricane Maria, and it went something along this line; “I don’t know what more we can do; ‘those people’ just won’t help themselves.”  As we all know, “those people” is an upper class (or so they believe themselves to be) euphemism for (insert personal bias here) Brown, Black, Asian, Female, Gay, Jew, Muslim, impoverished…whatever.

        After the comment lay there a second, I said, “Oh like those places in Kentucky where entire villages are on welfare, but ex-miners refuse to learn a new trade?  Or Flint, where the water still isn’t safe. How about Western PA where the mills have shut down and the coke factories are cold?"  To this person’s credit, of a sort, they allowed as how that was a valid question too.

       What I let slide was the fact that far more per capita was spent in Texas (lots of Red State voters!) post Harvey, than in Puerto Rico. Within six days of Hurricane Harvey, U.S. Northern Command had deployed 73 helicopters over Houston, which are critical for saving victims and delivering emergency supplies. It took at least three weeks after Maria before it had more than 70 helicopters flying above Puerto Rico. While the Houston region has about twice as many people as Puerto Rico, the severity and nature of the damage caused by Maria overshadowed that of Harvey, yet nine days after the respective hurricanes, FEMA had approved $141.8 million in individual assistance to Harvey victims, versus just $6.2 million for Maria victims. That’s 2200% more funding for less damage if you need the math.

        It is true that Puerto Rico has had financial issues related to various origins, from lack of industry, to Caribbean tourism competition to antiquated infrastructure. Of course, Puerto Rico, neither fish nor fowl, politically, is unique in several aspects. The island was “taken” (there simply is no better word) from Spain following the Spanish American War. Like the Filipinos, the   Boriqueños were judged by William McKinley and his jingoistic advisors as "incapable of self-government", a sort of code for, “We want an excuse to seize this territory.”

  

       The Puerto Ricans were relatively helpless, unlike the Filipinos, who promptly called “bullshit” on the idea, and resisted.  The Philippine-American War lasted three years and resulted in the death of over 4,200 American and over 20,000 Filipino combatants. As many as 200,000 Filipino civilians died from violence, famine, and disease. After US Army genocide calmed the islands, the Philippines, like Puerto Ricans, were helpless and were offered a special “protectorate” status. This was a bit similar to Guam and other Pacific islands, including the Hawaiian archipelago, which the US seized as coaling stations as we continued building a two- ocean navy.

        During the first decades of the 20th century, the sugar industry continued to develop and reached its peak. Despite the establishment of huge sugar trading businesses, some mills backed by Puerto Rican capital also showed considerable production capacity. The underlying fact, however, was that while sugar was profitable, it was so, essentially only for the owners and mill operators, the average sugar worker remaining uneducated and under paid, creating a replica of the Spanish dominion era, but created with American investment to a significant degree. This was little different than the current exporting of manufacturing jobs to China where labor is cheaper (for now).  By 1930, United States investors had replaced many of the established European investors on the island and there were 44 sugar mills in operation. In the 1940s, however, the mills began to weaken, due to various factors. The fall in the price of sugar, mismanagement by some administrators, the restriction of credit to independent farmers, as well as strikes by workers, who labored almost as serfs, created conflict and conditions that led to the decline and eventual closure of many of the mills in the subsequent decades.

       Following a record sugar cane harvest of 1952, the industry experienced an accelerated deterioration. Additionally, the production of sugar took a lower priority as the government undertook to industrialize the island. Even though the government had become the principal sugar producer in Puerto Rico, the mills, both privately and publicly funded, were shut down, one by one. In 2000, operations ceased at the last mills still functioning. Some of those mills also included refineries and packaging operations whose refined white sugar, with its fine grain, had in the first third of the century, built the reputation of the Puerto Rican sugar producers as true artisans. So, sugar dead, population largely uneducated, and those who were (educated) emigrating. Puerto Rico approached its current economic status.

       Unlike the Philippines, which were promised political freedom when they “earned?” it by their good behavior, which included US Naval basing in perpetuity, Puerto Rico has a status which affords relatively little political clout. In fact, it also has little clout compared to actual states with votes in Congress.  Puerto Rico, as a U.S. territory rather than a state, has just a single, nonvoting delegate in Congress, compared with the 36 representatives and two senators from Texas who loudly demanded proper resources for their state, post Harvey. Likewise, victims of Superstorm Sandy had six senators and dozens of U.S. representatives in the states of New York, New Jersey and Connecticut to demand extra disaster relief, including powerful lawmakers like Chuck Schumer, then the No. 3 Democrat in the Senate.  

       So, with no real lobbying power to entice industry, a feverish cruise line competition from the rest of the Caribbean, and essentially subsistence agriculture in many areas, Puerto Rico has a dilemma. Hurricane Maria was a storm, not a famine, but the response of some to her frantic pleas was reminiscent in the extreme cases to that of British MPs during the late 1840s. When Progressives in Parliament proposed measures to alleviate the incredible suffering the Potato blight had inflicted on Ireland’s poor Catholic peasantry, Conservatives blustered that, “By God, Sir, The Irish simply must learn to live within their means!” When “means” are non- existent, as they were in Ireland and as they are still approaching in some of Puerto Rico’s rural areas, that argument has no merit, regardless of statements like: “[They] want everything to be done for them and it should be a community effort. 10,000 Federal workers now on island doing a fantastic job.”  Any guesses who “tweeted” that?