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<a class="gmail-domain gmail-reader-domain" href="https://peoplesdispatch.org/2021/10/20/puerto-ricans-resist-austerity-measures-and-corporate-corruption/">peoplesdispatch.org</a>
<h1 class="gmail-reader-title">Puerto Ricans resist austerity measures and corporate corruption</h1>
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<a href="https://peoplesdispatch.org/2021/10/20/puerto-ricans-resist-austerity-measures-and-corporate-corruption/">October 20, 2021</a> by <a href="https://peoplesdispatch.org/author/monica-cruz/">Monica Cruz</a>
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<div class="gmail-moz-reader-content gmail-reader-show-element"><div id="gmail-readability-page-1" class="gmail-page"><img src="cid:ii_kv9y2yhq0" alt="image.png" width="452" height="254"><br><br><p>Protestors shut down Puerto Rico Highway 18 in San Juan on October 15, 2021.
Photo: Twitter / @devilette
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<p>On October 15, protestors shut down Puerto Rico’s Highway 18 in the
capital San Juan chanting “Fuera Luma!”, our “Out Luma”, demanding an
end to the government contract with the private energy company, Luma
Energy. Their cries were echoed at protests on the same day in New York
City, Miami and Philadelphia. Three days later, protestors also rallied
at the Capitol in San Juan to call for the stoppage of cuts to the
public university, social services and public pensions.</p>
<blockquote>
<p dir="ltr" lang="en">Puerto Rico take to the streets in what looks like 90% of the country they are protesting against Joe Biden and the American government taking full control of their power grid.<a href="https://twitter.com/CherokeeOwl?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@CherokeeOwl</a> Telegram <a href="https://t.co/5AS7zuSodh">pic.twitter.com/5AS7zuSodh</a></p>
<p>— 𝓛𝓪𝓭𝔂 𝓟𝓲𝓮 (@LadyPie4U) <a href="https://twitter.com/LadyPie4U/status/1449840320317906945?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">October 17, 2021</a></p></blockquote>
<p>A worsening economic crisis, compounded by brutal <a href="https://peoplesdispatch.org/2020/02/04/puerto-rico-between-neoliberalism-and-natural-disasters/">neoliberal policies</a>,
has ushered in a new wave of resistance in Puerto Rico. Nearly half of
the population lives below the poverty line. More and more Puerto Ricans
are leaving<i> la patria </i>(the homeland), in hopes of a better life
in the United States. The archipelago has faced an onslaught of natural
disasters, including the catastrophic Hurricane Maria in 2017 and a
series of earthquakes throughout 2020.</p>
<p>On paper, Puerto Rico is a “commonwealth” of the United States, a
term that implies a kind of shared prosperity between the two places. In
practice, Puerto Rico is a nation struggling to breathe under centuries
of colonialism. It’s economy is dictated by an unelected Fiscal Control
Board composed of hedge fund managers and vulture capitalists, known as
<i>la junta,</i> which saw its power enshrined into law with PROMESA in 2016.</p>
<p>“After four years of the passage of Hurricane María, the crisis that
the country has experienced is one that has been very difficult to
overcome,” Jocelyn Velazquez Rodriguez, an organizer with <i>Jornada Se Acabaron Las Promesas </i>said
about the deterioration of conditions in Puerto Rico. “And once the
hurricane passed, a country that had all these difficulties to recover
from encountered two other calamities: the earthquakes of early 2020 and
then the pandemic that has hit the whole world … the housing crisis
continues, the infrastructure crisis continues, school shortages,
schools destroyed and devastated by earthquakes, homes that lost their
roofs and never recovered them.”</p>
<h3><b>The electric grid disaster</b></h3>
<p>Puerto Rico’s electric grid, a key element of the most recent
protests, has undergone minimal repairs since Hurricane Maria caused
boundless destruction. <a href="https://www.vox.com/identities/2018/8/15/17692414/puerto-rico-power-electricity-restored-hurricane-maria">80% of utility poles and transmission lines</a>
throughout the islands were destroyed. This damage was exacerbated by
the series of earthquakes which battered the main island all throughout
2020 and early this year.</p>
<p>Since June, tens of thousands of Puerto Ricans have taken to the
streets calling for the cancellation of the government’s $1.3 billion
contract with the US-Canadian consortium Luma Energy. The 15-year
contract was negotiated behind closed doors and wasn’t announced to the
public until after it was signed last year. Puerto Rico’s House of
Representatives voted unanimously against the contract, but that vote
was overruled by la junta.</p>
<p>The publicly-run Puerto Rico Electric Power Authority (PREPA) retains
ownership of its assets and continues to run power generation for the
3.3 million people that live in Puerto Rico. Luma Energy took over the
distribution of energy across the archipelago from PREPA in June. In the
days following, over <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2021/10/19/us/puerto-rico-electricity-protest.html?referringSource=articleShare">a million Puerto Ricans</a> lost power in rolling blackouts. On June 10th, an <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-57437347">explosion at a main electrical substation</a> in the San Juan suburb of Monacillo left an additional 800,000 people without power.</p>
<p>As of October 18, the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) is <a href="https://truthout.org/articles/puerto-ricans-fight-privatization-of-energy-and-demand-democratic-ownership/">set to fund</a> almost $10 billion toward Puerto Rico’s energy infrastructure. The cost of power in Puerto Rico is <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2021/10/19/us/puerto-rico-electricity-protest.html?referringSource=articleShare">higher</a> than that in any of the 50 states.</p>
<p>At a recent US House Committee on Natural Resources hearing, Luma
Energy CEO Wayne Stensby refused to answer questions about how many
company executives earn over $200,000 and over $500,000 salaries.</p>
<blockquote>
<p dir="ltr" lang="en">This is how you expose a fraud. <a href="https://twitter.com/RepRashida?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@RepRashida</a> THANK YOU. <a href="https://t.co/rWZq9d4LQV">pic.twitter.com/rWZq9d4LQV</a></p>
<p>— Félix, la aceituna (@Una__Aceituna) <a href="https://twitter.com/Una__Aceituna/status/1446158997636009984?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">October 7, 2021</a></p></blockquote>
<p>A member of Puerto Rico’s House of Representatives and head of the
energy commission Luis Raúl Torres Cruz sued Luma Energy over the summer
in an effort to get this info. Luma appealed it in court.</p>
<p>The privatization of public services, rising costs for basic
necessities, and less than transparent deals worth millions in public
funds has become the norm in Puerto Rico. The damage wrought by
Hurricane Maria created the perfect excuse for the islands’ Wall Street
overlords to privatize what they could and shut down anything they
couldn’t, or didn’t deem profitable enough. The electric grid is not the
only essential service to be targeted by privatization, the housing,
education, and healthcare to the water system and communication networks
have all been under the threat of, or all-out attack, of privatization
and debilitating austerity measures.</p>
<h3><b>The disaster created by Wall Street</b></h3>
<p>In 2016, President Obama signed the Puerto Rico Oversight,
Management, and Economic Stability Act or PROMESA into law, creating a
legal framework to restructure the commonwealth’s $74 billion debt. It
established the unelected Financial Oversight and Management Board known
as <i>la junta</i> and gave it total control over Puerto Rico’s economy.</p>
<p>The Board has consistently made cuts to funding for the University of
Puerto Rico as well as for Medicaid and Medicare. Hundreds of public
schools and hospitals across the islands have closed. Puerto Rico’s
historically public beaches are now under <a href="https://www.huffpost.com/entry/puerto-rico-beaches-privatization_n_6160a321e4b0cc44c50c93e3">historic threat</a>.</p>
<p>The wreckage of Hurricane Maria allowed foreign investors to buy up
land for cheap and take advantage of the laws giving them generous tax
breaks. Rising property costs in cities like San Juan and Ponce are
fueling gentrification and locals are getting pushed out.</p>
<p>The median household income in Puerto Rico is $20,500 and the 9% unemployment rate continues to rise.</p>
<p>Jocelyn Velazquez Rodriguez described the impact PROMESA has had on
the political consciousness of the Puerto Rican people: “PROMESA has
been a mechanism that has revealed the true face of US imperialism. It
is a law created for a colony, to serve of the imperial interests of the
United States, and many Puerto Ricans who refused to accept that
between Puerto Rico and the United States there has never been a
contract, nor an agreement, nor a convention on this.”</p>
<p>She continued, “Now they have had to accept that we are a simple and
mere colony, that we are at the disposal of the whim and the needs of
the United States Senate and that our voices do not have any kind of
value. PROMESA has definitely served to make people see in a more cruel,
more bloody, and crude way, the serious problem of colonialism in which
we live.”</p>
<h3><b><i>Pa’lante siempre pa’lante</i></b><b>, forward always forward</b></h3>
<p>The people of Puerto Rico demonstrated their power back in 2019, when
a popular movement to oust then-Governor Ricardo Rosselló was
successful. Rosselló, the son of a former Puerto Rican governor,
perfectly exemplified the corruption and greed of the archipelago’s
misleadership. Two years after his <a href="https://peoplesdispatch.org/2019/07/25/puerto-rican-governor-ricardo-rossello-resigns-after-a-week-of-massive-protests/">resignation</a>, a victory <a href="https://peoplesdispatch.org/2019/07/17/massive-protests-in-puerto-rico-seek-governors-resignation-and-an-end-to-colonization/">won by and for the people</a>, Puerto Ricans are rising up once again to continue the work of dismantling neoliberalism and neocolonialism on the islands.</p>
<p>Velazquez Rodriguez emphasized, “These demonstrations, both during
the [last year’s gubernatorial] elections and in the summer of 2019,
with the ousting of Ricardo Rosselló, as well as the popular
demonstrations that have consistently taken place in the country, are a
sample of an awakening of a people that are tired of imperialism, the
colonialism, the persecution and the suffering that it has caused us for
so many years.”</p>
<p><b><i>Monica Cruz </i></b><i>is a reporter with US-based media outlet Breakthrough News.</i></p>
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