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<h1 id="reader-title">Puerto Rico’s One-Sided Class War</h1>
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<p><span class="dropcaps">by <a
href="https://www.jacobinmag.com/author/hugo-j-delgado-marti/"
title="Posts by Hugo J. Delgado-Martí" rel="author">Hugo
J. Delgado-Martí</a> - September 13, 2016<br>
</span></p>
<h3 class="entry-dek">Puerto Ricans are suffering from
intense exploitation and a lack of democratic control
over the island’s wealth</h3>
<p><span class="dropcaps">P</span>uerto Rico — a group of
islands in the center of the Caribbean and a colony of
the United States since 1898 — has recently come to the
attention of the United States Congress due to its
inability to pay over $72 billion dollars in <a
href="https://www.jacobinmag.com/2015/06/puerto-rico-garcia-padilla-debt-austerity/">public
debt</a>.</p>
<p>The passage of the Puerto Rico Oversight, Management,
and Economic Stability Act (PROMESA) in June — which
established a seven-member <a
href="http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2016/07/puerto-rico-promesa-debt/489797/"
target="_blank">federal oversight board</a> to
supervise the island government — did more than just
demonstrate Puerto Rico’s lack of sovereignty. It also
opened the door to the imposition of extreme austerity
measures on a territory already hard-hit by a
decade-long recession.</p>
<p>The oversight board has one priority — to ensure that
Puerto Rico makes good on its obligations to its
creditors, many of whom are private American investors.</p>
<h4>The Investors’ Colony</h4>
<p><span class="dropcaps2">O</span>f course, the oversight
board won’t do or say much about the social effects of
the crisis — like the disappearance of nearly three
hundred thousand jobs, the steep loss of population due
to emigration, and the ongoing <a
href="http://money.cnn.com/2016/02/21/investing/puerto-rico-foreclosure-crisis/"
target="_blank">foreclosure crisis</a> that affects
thousands of ordinary Puerto Ricans. Nor will it
accurately diagnose the problem — what’s really going on
in Puerto Rico is an intensification of the level of
exploitation, both of the workforce and of natural
resources.</p>
<p>This intensified exploitation has taken many forms —
layoffs; the expansion of low-wage part-time work; the
privatization of social services; and the dismantling of
the welfare state, to name a few.</p>
<p>Political elites justify austerity by appealing to the
government financial crisis and the public debt default,
and cutbacks are enforced by the receivership of public
authorities and the <a
href="http://www.cnbc.com/2016/05/01/puerto-rico-says-will-default-on-government-development-bank-debt-monday.html"
target="_blank">destruction</a> of the Puerto Rico
Development Bank. But the beginnings of Puerto Rico’s
predicament go way beyond the current crisis.</p>
<p>The financial crisis of the central government is, at
its root, the most recent and evident symptom of
hundreds of years of colonialism. Nowadays, talk about
the colonial status of Puerto Rico is commonplace. But
in some ways, the word “colony” has been deprived of its
meaning.</p>
<p>The commonplace definition of the term defines a colony
as a territory that does not hold sovereign power over
itself — instead, it is accountable to decisions made
elsewhere, generally in imperial centers. But this
definition of the term puts a heavy emphasis on the
legal and formal aspects of the colonial relationship.</p>
<p>Based on this definition, <a
href="http://www.theatlantic.com/notes/2016/03/the-state-of-puerto-rican-statehood/472599/"
target="_blank">statehood</a> can be interpreted as a
solution to the colonial problem. As members of the
fifty-first state, Puerto Ricans would participate in
the selection of the president, enjoy congressional
representation, and participate fully in the political
charade of Washington DC.</p>
<p>But while the lack of sovereignty is one aspect of
colonialism, it is not the only one. Although many on
the island want to achieve statehood, becoming a state
might only entrench and tighten the colonial
relationship even further.</p>
<p>Colonialism in Puerto Rico has always had a concrete <a
href="https://www.jacobinmag.com/2015/08/puerto-rico-debt-crisis-imf/">economic
meaning</a> — enormous amounts of wealth have been
produced in the colony over the last 118 years, but that
wealth has vacated the island as quickly as it has been
produced. That pattern continues today.</p>
<h4>Where’s the Money?</h4>
<p><span class="dropcaps2">N</span>et capital investments
in fixed assets in Puerto Rico averaged $11 billion per
year between 2000 and 2014, amounting to a total of $176
trillion. That investment returned well over $1.1
trillion during the same time period — but less than
$410 billion went toward employee compensation. The rest
was profit.</p>
<p>The profit rate in the manufacturing sector is even
more revealing: out of the $538 billion generated by
manufacturing in those fourteen years, only $40 billion
were paid to employees.</p>
<p>In other words, workers earned less than 8 percent of
the wealth generated. While the manufacturing sector has
increased its profits by a huge percentage since the
1990s, worker salaries have invariably fallen or
remained the same.</p>
<p>To make matters worse, corporations paid under $30
billion dollars in taxes to the so-called “commonwealth”
during that 2000-2014 time span. But taxes collected
from individuals during that time period sum $38
billion, not including an additional $28 billion in
excise taxes and another $5 billion since 2007 as sales
tax.</p>
<p>These taxes all tend to hit the poor the hardest by
increasing the cost of goods and therefore reducing the
purchasing power of the labor force. At the same time, <a
href="https://www.britannica.com/biography/Sila-Maria-Calderon">Sila
Maria Calderón</a>, the first female governor of the
island, actually <em>reduced</em> the corporate tax
burden in the early 2000s by lowering tax rates on
profit returned to the mainland United States.</p>
<p>In effect, working people pay to maintain the state,
while foreign corporations profit from Puerto Rico’s
human and natural resources.</p>
<p>Puerto Rico’s dismal <a
href="http://247wallst.com/economy/2015/06/30/puerto-rico-unemployment-at-12-6-poverty-at-41/"
target="_blank">employment record</a> paints an even
bleaker picture of economic prospects on the island. In
2000, less than one million people had jobs, out of a
working-age population of 2.8 million.</p>
<p>Employment peaked in 2007 — 1.2 million employed out of
a working-age population of 2.9 million. Since then, the
population of eligible workers has been estimated to be
decreasing at a rate of six thousand persons per year.
And unemployment has increased in recent years as the
economic depression has worsened.</p>
<p>In 2014 only 995,000 Puerto Rican workers were <a
href="http://www.bls.gov/eag/eag.pr.htm"
target="_blank">employed</a>. That’s a net loss of
269,000 jobs in seven years — and if we take into
account that low-wage workers often hold multiple jobs
(and so may be counted twice, or even three times) the
situation could be even worse. Circumstances are
especially dire for women workers — the only population
group with a majority employed are middle-aged male
workers.</p>
<p>Work in manufacturing has especially taken a major hit.
Manufacturing jobs peaked at 172,000 jobs in 1995 — when
Section 936, a tax credit for American businesses with
operations in Puerto Rico, was being dismantled by
Congress.</p>
<p>That number fell to 86,000 in 2014, a net loss of half
the total manufacturing jobs. The trend continues — in
March of this year, there were only 72,000 manufacturing
jobs in Puerto Rico.</p>
<h4>An Exploiter’s Paradise</h4>
<p><span class="dropcaps2">B</span>ut even during extreme
recessions, some still accumulate wealth. The question
is — who?</p>
<p>In Puerto Rico, <a
href="http://www.wsj.com/articles/puerto-ricos-pensions-2-billion-in-assets-45-billion-in-liabilities-1472156434"
target="_blank">personal financial assets</a> more
than doubled between 2000 and 2014. But personal debt
has also increased from $17 billion to $23 billion in
those fourteen years, and bankruptcy filings doubled
between 2006 and 2014.</p>
<p>The banking sector has consolidated at an extreme rate.
In 1996 there were twenty banking institutions in Puerto
Rico, but today all capital is concentrated in just six
banks.</p>
<p>So although total assets in banks fell from $96 billion
in 2005 to $55 billion ten years later, we shouldn’t
fall for the crocodile tears flooding <em>la milla de
oro</em> — Puerto Rico’s financial district. In that
same ten-year time-span, <a
href="http://www.thecerbatgem.com/2016/08/22/popular-inc-bpop-plans-quarterly-dividend-of-0-15.html"
target="_blank">Banco Popular</a> went from $13
billion in assets to $22 billion, and became the
island’s leading financial institution.</p>
<p>And in the past year, Citibank surpassed Popular as the
leading institution when its assets increased from $11
billion to $26 billion — likely thanks to the tax-haven
laws the current governor enacted for the benefit of
billionaires.</p>
<p>Combined with massive job loss, declining wages, and
the debt crisis of the state, all this suggests that
Puerto Rico is suffering the consequences of an
international crisis of capitalism.</p>
<p>The state has an <a
href="https://www.jacobinmag.com/2015/12/bill-gates-ted-talk-renewable-energy-research-development-government/">important
function</a> within contemporary capitalist society —
to guarantee the necessary conditions for the
reproduction of capital. The state accomplishes this by
building and maintaining the physical infrastructure
companies need to operate. The state also provides the
resources to maintain the workforce by working to ensure
health care, education, and housing.</p>
<p>The current situation is like a never-ending slide —
the economy keeps sinking with no end in sight. A
smaller, less productive workforce makes for a smaller
base of tax revenue for the state, while the increases
in the cost of living put high stress on the government
to fulfill its obligations.</p>
<p>A state — particularly a colonial state — has to
maintain social order and political stability to provide
a welcoming environment to foreign corporations. Food
stamps, public health insurance, and even forced
emigration become pressure release mechanisms that —
when combined with police repression and property
protection — turn the island into an exploiter’s
paradise.</p>
<p>This is not the first time Puerto Rico has seen a
situation like this. In the past, only massive capital
investments from the US government and multinational
corporations could save the day — but of course these
investments also drove new tides of colonial
exploitation.</p>
<p>Faced with the current conditions, Puerto Rico had to
mortgage itself. Now, <a
href="http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2016/business/dealbook/puerto-rico-debt-crisis-explained.html"
target="_blank">public debt</a> has reached over $72
billion dollars — and if the government’s internal debt
is added to the balance sheet, this figure could triple.</p>
<h4>Forty Years of Austerity</h4>
<p><span class="dropcaps2">A</span>usterity and the
neoliberal agenda have been present in Puerto Rican
politics since the late 1970s, when <a
href="https://www.loc.gov/rr/hispanic/congress/romerobarcelo.html">Carlos
Romero Barceló</a> of the <a
href="http://www.puertoricousa.com/english/pnp.htm"
target="_blank">New Progressive Party</a> (PNP)
privatized the first set of public hospitals and enacted
tuition hikes in the University of Puerto Rico (UPR).
Since then, Puerto Rico’s working class has experienced
a sustained attack on its rights and working conditions.</p>
<p>After the worst years of Romero’s so-called “spider
government” during the 1980s, <a
href="https://www.britannica.com/biography/Rafael-Hernandez-Colon">Rafael
Hernández Colón</a> was elected. He continued the
assault on public services by privatizing the Puerto
Rico Merchant Marine Authority (Navieras) and the
international calls branch of the Puerto Rico Telephone
Company.</p>
<p>Next, Governor Pedro Roselló González upped the ante by
attempting to enact the neoliberal agenda in full —
after his push to privatize public schools was defeated
by the teachers union, he <a
href="http://articles.chicagotribune.com/1998-07-17/news/9807170111_1_privatization-pedro-rosello-public-hospital"
target="_blank">privatized all the public hospitals</a>
on the island.</p>
<p>Nevertheless, a one-day teachers’ strike in 1993 marked
a significant victory for the anti-austerity movement,
managing to force significant amendments to the
“community schools law” which attempted to create the
basis for charter schools. The amended law — which
grants community control over public schools — has been
under constant attack since its passage, and its most
progressive aspects have never been fully implemented.</p>
<p>The twentieth century closed with the last great stand
against privatization in Puerto Rico — the strike <a
href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/politics/1998/07/08/puerto-rico-paralyzed-by-strike-over-phone-company-sale/f8dee1a1-84cb-46d7-87ba-8658b4a325ce/">against
the sale</a> of the Puerto Rico Telephone Company.
This “people’s strike” reached beyond the immediately
affected phone workers to unite many Puerto Ricans
behind common political demands. But in the end, the
strike was defeated. The Puerto Rico Telephone Company
was privatized.</p>
<p>Soon after, state retaliation intensified. In 1999, <a
href="http://www.lexjuris.com/lexlex/Leyes2013/lexl2013045.htm"
target="_blank">Law 45</a> granted public sector
workers the right to organize and bargain collectively,
but prohibited strikes. Far from strengthening Puerto
Rican unions, the law was used to tame union militancy.</p>
<p>Under the terms of the new law, almost any type of
worker resistance could be said to have an adverse
effect on public services — which made unions vulnerable
to decertification by the state. Even picket lines
during lunch time were forbidden by some unions.</p>
<p>To make matters worse, in 2002 the government launched
an attack on the independent teachers’ union — the <a
href="http://labornotes.org/2008/01/seiu-raid-union-representing-40000-teachers-puerto-rico"
target="_blank">Puerto Rico Teachers Federation</a>
(FMPR) — with the support of its longtime rival, the
American Federation of Teachers (AFT). The government
dismantled the FMPR’s health plan, citing an overdrawn
balance sheet, lack of liquidity, and bad administrative
practices.</p>
<p>The next year, rank-and-file teachers responded by
electing new, more radical union leadership. But even
with this new leadership, the FMPR was unable to
successfully resist the attacks from the AFT and the
colonial justice system.</p>
<p>Workers at the Puerto Rico Energy and Power Authority
(PREPA) were the next to come under fire, as the
government began purchasing energy from two private
power-generating enterprises that had recently entered
the market.</p>
<p>Privatization had wide-ranging effects at <a
href="http://blogs.wsj.com/bankruptcy/2014/10/07/the-examiners-prepa-restructuring-requires-time-liquidity/"
target="_blank">PREPA</a> — full-time repair and
construction workers were replaced by subcontractors;
administrative and commercial duties were assigned to
Banco Popular; and corrupt officials drove the authority
even deeper into debt.</p>
<p>Today, the Electrical Industry and Irrigation Workers
Union (UTIER) — once one of Puerto Rico’s most powerful
and respected unions — suffers from a diminished
workforce and a demobilized rank and file. Years of
repeating “the best strike is the one that never comes”
have destroyed the union’s will to fight, and, in the
absence of political organization, class consciousness
is almost nonexistent.</p>
<p>This assault on the working class intensified in 2004
with the election of <a
href="http://www.nytimes.com/2008/03/27/us/27cnd-puerto.html"
target="_blank">Governor Anibal Acevedo Vilá</a>, who
attacked unions and dismantled social protections in an
attempt to protect those who financed his campaign from
the now-foreseeable collapse of commonwealth finances.</p>
<p>Within days of his taking office, Acevedo hiked tuition
at the public university, a move that was met with
resistance from the small but highly politicized student
movement. But Acevedo’s <a href="http://ppdpr.net/"
target="_blank">Popular Democratic Party</a> (PDP) was
able to successfully forge an alliance with ruling-class
nationalists and independence advocates, putting the
party on good footing to absorb or defeat any
groundswell of working-class struggle that might emerge.</p>
<h4>One-Sided Class War</h4>
<p><span class="dropcaps2">I</span>ncreases in the cost of
water, power, and basic consumer goods were followed by
the establishment of a sales tax in 2007, in order to
create the <a
href="http://www.gdb-pur.com/investors_resources/cofina.html"
target="_blank">Puerto Rico Urgent Interest Fund
Corporation</a> (COFINA) — a new fund set up to issue
investment bonds as a way to refinance the public debt.</p>
<p>Many were opposed to the new tax, which would hit poor
Puerto Ricans the hardest. Still, a popular movement in
favor of the Sales and Services Tax emerged. But the
movement — known as “<a
href="http://noticias.terra.com/noticias/marcha_puerto_rico_grita_convoca_a_decenas_de_miles_de_boricuas/act394150"
target="_blank">el pueblo grita</a>,” or “the people
shout” — was really organized by the media and a few of
the AFL-CIO unions — or, as we like to call them in
Puerto Rico, “chupacuotas” (“quota-suckers”).</p>
<p>So the governor — facing a hostile Congress but
determined to pass the new tax — used public workers as
the cue ball in a game of political pool. He closed the
Department of Education for two weeks, citing concern
about the public debt.</p>
<p>The FMPR didn’t have the strength to respond — unable
to protest, many teachers ran to the unemployment
offices and began collecting food stamps. Still, a small
group of teachers and students fought back by organizing
civil disobedience and street resistance. In the end,
schools reopened and teachers were paid, but the
governor was able to successfully push the unpopular
sales tax through congress.</p>
<p>That process laid the groundwork for the <a
href="http://labornotes.org/2008/03/teachers-strike-stops-classes-puerto-rico"
target="_blank">2008 teachers’ strike</a>. The FMPR
had begun negotiating their new collective bargaining
agreement in 2005. But the negotiations stalled when the
union ran up against the government agenda — to
privatize schools and reduce the size of the Department
of Education.</p>
<p>In response, The FMPR began preparing to strike,
working to build widespread support for the union among
ordinary Puerto Ricans. Support for the teachers grew
with each passing moment. But then the union was
decertified in January 2008, two months before the
strike was scheduled to begin.</p>
<p>Today the FMPR is fighting for survival — once the
largest <a
href="https://www.solidarity-us.org/node/2104">working-class
force</a> in Puerto Rico, after years of attrition it
now represents only two thousand of Puerto Rico’s thirty
thousand teachers. Although the FMPR strike was
defeated, the example set by the teachers continues to
inspire resistance as students and workers find new ways
to push back against the neoliberal assault on their
living standards.</p>
<h4>Anti-Austerity, Anticolonial</h4>
<p><span class="dropcaps2">E</span>veryday life in Puerto
Rico has become increasingly political. The day-to-day
discussion in the media is about the economy, bonds,
unemployment, and the distribution of wealth. And
although the media is highly biased towards colonial
capitalist ideology, there remain some dissident voices
to be heard.</p>
<p>The <a href="http://www.independencia.net/"
target="_blank">Puerto Rican Independence Party</a>
(PIP) and the <a
href="http://www.pueblotrabajador.com/"
target="_blank">Working People Party</a> (PPT) will
each go into November’s gubernatorial election with an
anti-austerity agenda. But neither can offer a perfect
solution to Puerto Rico’s ongoing crisis. And since
PROMESA established a federal oversight board to
supervise the actions of the elected government, neither
party can even guarantee that they’ll actually be able
to fulfill their platform promises.</p>
<p>Of the two, the PIP presents the situation a bit better
— their position holds that colonialism is the root
cause of Puerto Rico’s crisis, and only in independence
can we seek to solve the problems that haunt us. The
PPT, on the other hand, aims to rebuild the benefactor
state with neo-Keynesian economic reforms, but evades
the so-called “commonwealth question” by advocating a
popular referendum on independence, but declining to
take a firm position.</p>
<p>The PPT’s view is full of contradictions, since
opposing colonialism without presenting an alternative
other than a referendum or a constituent assembly fails
to answer the question of how to solve the crisis
definitively.</p>
<p>Still, independence is not enough. A radical democratic
state — committed to finding collective solutions and
placing real power in the hands of the working -class
majority — is the best way to solve not only the
colonial crisis, but all the problems afflicting Puerto
Rico.</p>
<p>Nonetheless, principled anticolonialism is extremely
relevant to the anti-austerity struggle, and mounting a
meaningful challenge to austerity often means also
confronting Washington’s colonial influence over San
Juan.</p>
<p>For example, even in a situation as specific as <a
href="http://www.progressive.org/news/2015/11/188428/puerto-ricos-school-crisis"
target="_blank">public school administration</a>, the
outsized influence of United States policy — and the
inability of local authorities to influence or
circumvent it — poses severe problems for reformers. It
is no secret that Puerto Rican public schools have lost
the little prestige they had during the last sixteen
years. Teachers are demoralized, students don’t believe
in their schools, and parents have lost their faith.</p>
<p>In large part, this a legacy of the <a
href="http://www.ed.gov/news/press-releases/obama-administration-approves-nclb-flexibility-request-puerto-rico"
target="_blank">No Child Left Behind Act</a>. Since
Washington imposed this destructive legislation on
Puerto Rico, corruption has increased while education
has deteriorated and more and more school services are
privatized — and the island has no way of amending or
repealing the law.</p>
<h4>Which Way From Here?</h4>
<p><span class="dropcaps2">I</span> don’t claim great
powers of foresight. But some things are as predictable
as <em>telenovelas</em>.</p>
<p>Public-sector workers in Puerto Rico have been
expecting a lockout for some time, but so far the
government has managed to delay taking that step. Still,
the government will run out of money at some point, and
a government lockout of public workers could become the
basis for intensifying social unrest.</p>
<p>The economic effects of such a lockout will be
catastrophic. <a
href="http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2015/10/14/puerto-ricans-leave-in-record-numbers-for-mainland-u-s/"
target="_blank">Emigration</a> will increase even
further, as will crimes against property — and that will
have an effect on investments, as a larger fraction of
the island’s scarce capital resources will be diverted
to private security.</p>
<p>Organized labor has to recognize the political
situation it is in: there are no technical solutions
that could separately guarantee the security of each
sector of the workforce. Only by developing a political
working-class movement with class demands can we stop —
or at least slow down — the attacks on our standard of
living.</p>
<p>Frankly, people don’t care if it’s a foreign control
board or a local law that implements austerity — they
care about the negative effects austerity measures will
have on their lives. Those negative effects are what we
should be fighting against.</p>
<p>What we need in Puerto Rico is a mass movement that
goes beyond organized labor. If the situation right now
has shown itself clearly to be a political one, the
answer has to be political also. Technical solutions
only suggest imposing austerity on one or other branch
of the working class.</p>
<p>Unions and political organizations have to recognize
the structural changes in the working class and adapt to
them. We need another peoples’ strike or mass movement —
such as the struggle to remove the <a
href="http://nvdatabase.swarthmore.edu/content/puerto-ricans-protest-united-states-navy-presence-vieques-island-1977-1983"
target="_blank">US Navy base in Vieques</a>, the <a
href="http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/21/us/21students.html?_r=0"
target="_blank">2010 student strike</a>, or the 1999
Telephone Company <a
href="http://www.nytimes.com/1998/06/19/us/plan-to-sell-puerto-rico-phone-company-leads-to-strike.html"
target="_blank">strike</a>. We have to recognize those
events for what they were: small, local struggles that
became the igniting sparks of much larger movements.</p>
<p>Today, there are at least two social groups with the
potential to become sparks that ignite larger movements
in Puerto Rico. First, university students have often
been among the most militant participants in Puerto
Rican protest movements. And in the current moment —
during which college-educated young people must face the
choice to either leave the island or to accept precarity
and underpayment at home — they are natural opponents of
austerity.</p>
<p>Second, teachers, though weakened by the defeats
they’ve suffered, still have a lot of political
strength. And they haven’t received a single salary
increase in over eight years.</p>
<p>Of course, organizing a movement with its own specific
demands that is also conscious of the larger issues is
not an easy task. Anti-austerity forces in Puerto Rico
must maintain a double focus. It’s not enough to answer
only the immediate questions — we must also think in the
long term, asking, what could solve the problems that
persist in Puerto Rico?</p>
<p>As one first priority, we must fight to implement a
minimal program that can at least help us rebuild a
politicized working-class movement.</p>
<p>Left political organizations have formed a small but
relevant alliance against the oversight board, choosing
civil disobedience and direct action as their means of
struggle. Besides the obvious opposition to the
oversight board they have come up with some general
demands against austerity and colonialism — including
steps towards effective decolonization and radical
democracy; a constitutional referendum to vote on
whether to pay the debt or default; a full audit of the
debt; and a tax on the rich, particularly on the
corporate and banking sectors.</p>
<p>The <a
href="http://frentesocialistapr.tripod.com/organizaciones/mst.htm"
target="_blank">Workers’ Socialist Movement</a> (MST)
has proposed a few other demands that may go even deeper
into solving the problem — an end to ongoing
privatizations; the reversal of as many privatizations
as possible; an economic recovery program that
emphasizes diverse and technologically advanced
agriculture; a universal health care system and
universal pension fund; income-adjusted tuition rates
at public universities; a moratorium on foreclosures;
the seizure of any excess housing inventory held by
banks; and the protection of basic goods produced on the
island.</p>
<p>Many — if not all — of these demands may call into
question the colonial status of Puerto Rico. But that is
precisely the point. Without a fighting anti-austerity
movement, Puerto Rico will continue to fall victim to
the one-sided class war waged by its creditors and the
United States government. And in Puerto Rico, especially
since the passage of PROMESA, an effective
anti-austerity movement must also confront the colonial
roots of the debt crisis.</p>
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<div class="moz-signature">-- <br>
Freedom Archives
522 Valencia Street
San Francisco, CA 94110
415 863.9977
<a class="moz-txt-link-abbreviated" href="http://www.freedomarchives.org">www.freedomarchives.org</a>
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