Hurricane Maria

Jael Pimentel and Yara Liceaga-Rojas interviewed by Dorian B - Socialist Worker, October 3, 2017

WHAT ARE conditions like on the ground in Puerto Rico? How severe is the humanitarian crisis?

Jael: There are many parts of the country outside the San Juan metro area that are completely without electricity, without any form of communication. Their roads are blocked and in many cases their situation is unknown.

Yara: There are massive infestations of mosquitos and rats because of the accumulation of rotting garbage. There were many animals killed during the storm, and they haven't been removed. At several cemeteries that were badly flooded, bodies have been forced from their graves by the water and are now just lying out in the open. Conditions are seriously unsanitary.

Many people are ill. The lack of air conditioning in the hospitals is leading to the spread of bacteria and bacterial infections. There are many hospitals in really bad condition, so much so that family members of patients are no longer being let in because it's unsafe.

Jael: Not only that, but people have no food. I have a cousin who waited in line for four hours. She was given three cans of spaghetti for five people.

Yara: Supermarkets are empty. Gas is being rationed out. You have to wait up to seven or eight hours in your car to get gas, only to be sold $10 to $15 of gas.

Jael: There are endless lines for everything. I really want to stress this because someone like my father, who is 85 years old, has tried to wait in lines twice already, but has had to leave because of his physical condition. He woke up at 3:30 a.m. one day to cue up for five hours to get gas. The elderly simply cannot stand in line for five hours. There are many people who are unable to access a lot of basic supplies.

HOW MUCH do we know about the loss of life so far?

By Stan Cox and Paul Cox - Green Social Thought, October 2, 2017

Donald Trump’s sadistic attacks on the people of Puerto Rico got most of the headlines, but it is colonial exploitation that created the unnatural disaster that continues to play out.

Many, including Trump, predict that the debt burden will make it extremely difficult for Puerto Rico to rebuild after Hurricane Maria. That much is true, but we should be drawing from that the logical conclusion: Maria has revealed that forgiveness of Puerto Rico’s debt is a moral necessity.

The economic vulnerability that set the territory up for an unnatural disaster unprecedented in U.S. history was a hybrid between mainland hedge-fund managers’ greed and the island colony’s political powerlessness. Writing a year before Maria, legal scholar Natasha Lycia Ora Bannan argued,

The colonial status of Puerto Rico both contributes directly to the economic crisis as well as inhibits comprehensive solutions that would address short-term concerns and long-term economic policy changes. The United Nations Special Committee on decolonization issued its annual resolution on the colonial status of Puerto Rico in early 2015, noting that the island needs to be able to make decisions in a sovereign manner to address its urgent economic and social needs, including its twelve percent unemployment rate, marginalization, and the widespread poverty of its residents. The

Committee recognized that the economic vulnerability of Puerto Rico is a direct consequence of its colonial status and that Puerto Rico’s lack of political power to affect decision-making in the United States is reflected in the policies and politics that shape and ultimately cripple the island’s economy.

Ora Bannan and other legal experts have maintained, based on the doctrine of “odious debt,” that continuing to compel Puerto Rico to repay bondholders is legally and morally indefensible, because national governments “have an obligation towards their citizens to provide their basic needs for clean water, health and education and at least not to frustrate their citizens’ attempts to meet their needs for food, clothing and shelter. The freedom of the population to pursue the meeting of these needs is a fundamental human right.”

In Puerto Rico over the past decade, the struggle to make debt payments, along with the economic decline related to that struggle, had already led to increasing poverty, a home-foreclosure epidemic, involuntary migration, and relentless contraction of public services, all well before the storm hit. According to Ora Bannan, pre-Maria Puerto Rico was spending more on debt service than on education, health, or security. Results included the shuttering of 150 schools, the gutting of health care, increased taxes, splitting of families between the island and the mainland, and increased food insecurity.

Therefore, by the time Maria came hurtling across the Atlantic, Puerto Rico stood out as a textbook illustration of disaster vulnerability. Debt service was already strangling the island. Now with an unnatural disaster still in progress, and if our nation has any shred of humanity left, we must relieve the storm’s victims of their debt burden. To expect Puerto Rico to rebuild while at the same time it’s bailing out Wall Street financiers is to condemn its residents to a permanent state of crushing hardship and impoverishment.

By Sean O'Torain - Facts For Working People, September 30, 2017

The editors of this site wish to emphasize that the IWW does takes no position on the strategy of organizing a workers' political party. Members are free to choose to follow this strategy (or not) independently of the IWW, but the IWW takes no active role in supporting or organizing any political party and chooses, instead, to build one big revolutionary union. 

Hurricanes, flooding, destruction, from Texas to Louisiana to Florida and worst of all, now in Puerto Rico and other Caribbean islands.. These catastrophes are destroying the lives of millions of working class people. On top of this suffering we have the Predator in Chief attacking Mayor Carmen Yulin Cruz and saying the people of Puerto Rico want everything done for them. Meanwhile he plays golf. This creature in the White House thinks only of himself and related to this feeding the backward racist and tightening ideas of the people who support him. He is n a monstrous person. 

The cause of these catastrophes in Texas, Louisiana, Florida, Puerto Rico and the other islands of the Caribbean must be identified. Sure there have been storms and hurricanes in the past. But so many and so powerful? Never.  Add to this the rising sea levels and global warming and the conclusion is inescapable. Climate change/global warming is at the root of these crises. 

Again in relation to the creature in the White House. He says climate change and global warming has been dreamt up by the Chinese government. That is what he says to his audience in the US. But Trump has a golf course in the west of Ireland. Near the sea. He is trying to get government grants there to shore up the coast line against raising sea levels. No talk of climate change and global warming there. What a liar and hypocrite. 

At the root of global warming/climate change is the mad addiction of the international capitalist class to profit. These catastrophes are not acts of some imaginary god or natural disasters as the capitalist mass media claims. They are the result of global warming/climate change and capitalism is the cause of global warming/climate change.  It is to the capitalist class and the capitalist system that we must place the blame. 

By Bill Moyers - Common Dreams, October 1, 2017

Puerto Rico is devastated. Two hurricanes plunged the island into darkness and despair. Crops perish in the fields. The landscape of ruined buildings and towns resemble Hiroshima after the atomic bomb was dropped on it. Over three million people are desperate for food, water, electricity and shelter. 

After a slow start, the Trump Administration is now speeding up the flow of supplies to the island. A top US general has been given command of the relief efforts. And, like so many others, Yarimar Bonilla watches with a broken heart as her native Puerto Rico struggles. This noted social anthropologist—a scholar on Caribbean societies—says the hurricanes have made an already bad fiscal and economic crisis worse, and she sees darker times ahead unless major changes are made in the structure of power and in Puerto Rico’s relationship with the United States.

Last night on NBC, San Juan Mayor Carmen Yulín Cruz made a spontaneous statement expressing her frustration with insufficient relief efforts that went viral. Before you read my interview with Yarimar Bonilla please take two minutes to watch this video. You will understand even more clearly Ms. Bonilla's explainer of what is happening in Puerto Rico.

—Bill Moyers

By Richard Heinberg - Post Carbon Institute, September 28, 2017

News reports tell of the devastation left by a direct hit from Category 4 Hurricane Maria. Puerto Ricans already coping with damage from Hurricane Irma, which grazed the island just days before, were slammed with an even stronger storm on September 20, bringing more than a foot of rain and maximum sustained winds of at least 140 miles per hour. There is still no electricity—and likely won’t be for weeks or months—in this U.S. territory of 3.4 million people, many of whom also lack running water. Phone and internet service is likewise gone. Nearly all of Puerto Rico’s greenery has been blown away, including trees and food crops. A major dam is leaking and threatening to give way, endangering the lives of tens of thousands. This is a huge unfolding tragedy. But it’s also an opportunity to learn lessons, and to rebuild very differently.

Climate change no doubt played a role in the disaster, as warmer water generally feeds stronger storms. This season has seen a greater number of powerful, land-falling storms than the past few years combined. Four were Category 4 or 5, and three of them made landfall in the U.S.—a unique event in modern records. Puerto Rico is also vulnerable to rising seas: since 2010, average sea levels have increased at a rate of about 1 centimeter (0.4 inches) per year. And the process is accelerating, leading to erosion that’s devastating coastal communities.

Even before the storms, Puerto Rico’s economy was in a tailspin. It depends largely on manufacturing and the service industry, notably tourism, but the prospects for both are dismal. The island’s population is shrinking as more and more people seek opportunities in the continental U.S.. Puerto Rico depends entirely on imported energy sources—including bunker oil for some of its electricity production, plus natural gas and coal. The Puerto Rico Electric Power Authority (PREPA) is a law unto itself, a monopoly that appears mismanaged (long close to bankruptcy), autocratic, and opaque. Over 80 percent of food is imported and the rate of car ownership is among the highest in the world (almost a car for each islander!).

To top it off, Puerto Rico is also in the throes of a debt crisis. The Commonwealth owes more than $70 billion to creditors, with an additional $50 billion in pension obligations. Puerto Rico’s government has been forced to dramatically cut spending and increase taxes; yet, despite these drastic measures, the situation remains bleak. In June 2015, Governor Padilla announced the Commonwealth was in a “death spiral” and that “the debt is not payable.” On August 3 of the same year, Puerto Rico defaulted on a $58 million bond payment. The Commonwealth filed for bankruptcy in May of this year after failing to raise money in capital markets.

A shrinking economy, a government unable to make debt payments, and a land vulnerable to rising seas and extreme weather: for those who are paying attention, this sounds like a premonition of global events in coming years. World debt levels have soared over the past decade as central banks have struggled to recover from the 2008 global financial crisis. Climate change is quickly moving from abstract scenarios to grim reality. World economic growth is slowing (economists obtusely call this “secular stagnation”), and is likely set to go into reverse as we hit the limits to growth that were first discussed almost a half-century ago. Could Puerto Rico’s present presage our own future?

By Joel Schor - Facts for Working People, September 27, 2017

The recent extreme weather events effecting the Carribbean have made clear the humanitarian situation in Puerto Rico is dire and in stark contrast to Trump’s drab belittling comments about the National Football League opposing him on the conduct of the players during the national anthem.

As a merchant seaman for over 15 years I am very familiar with the law which protects both the rights of seaman while signed on American flagged Vessels and at the same time grants further monopoly powers to shipping companies that register and flag their vessels in the United States.

The Jones Act enacted shortly after WWI to resurrect what was thought of as a dying Merchant Fleet in the United States at the time, went along with a massive subsidy program whereby the overproduction of Navy bottoms were sold at fire sale prices to private shipping companies who had previously established themselves mostly in the highly monopolized and unregulated coastal trade.

As the era of anti-trust legislation was coming about, the big shipping lines needed a way to secure the lucrative coastal trade as foreign operators came in. The Jones Act basically provides that 1) A seaman is entitled to a certain portion of wages earned during a voyage (foreign or domestic ) whenever a vessel arrives at a U.S. port as well as the right to leave the ship, and also sue a shipping company for any injuries the seaman has incurred.

This first part of the Jones Act law pertaining to seaman's rights came about after a series of legislative efforts were made over two decades by the head of the West Coast section of the Seamans’ Union, a man by the name of Andrew Furuseth, who's cause was to take the seaman "out of slavery" or the conditions which were more akin to indentured servitude at one time.

By Lance Selfa - Socialist Worker, September 26, 2017

THE SOCIALIST German playwright Bertolt Brecht once wrote that "famines do not simply occur; they are organized by the grain trade."

A similar observation could be made about Puerto Rico today. Replace "famine" with "natural disaster," and the "grain trade" with "U.S. colonialism," and you have a succinct summation of the human disaster that is unfolding on the island today.

Puerto Rico is reeling in the aftermath of landfalls by two huge hurricanes, Irma and Maria, in the space of a few weeks. As this article was being written, most of the island remained without electricity, and 70,000 residents could be in danger if the damaged Guajataca Dam failed. People all over the island are contending with flooding and food shortages--malnutrition and outbreaks of disease are real possibilities.

Any area that suffered the blows of two powerful hurricanes in succession would face major challenges.

But Puerto Rico isn't just any area. It is a colony of the United States--its oldest, in fact.

Over the last two decades, Puerto Rico's economy has been systematically degraded while Wall Street and European capital loaded up its public sector with more than $70 billion of unpayable debt.

As a result, the basic infrastructure of the island--its health care, water and power systems--were already in the grips of a desperate crisis before the hurricanes hit. For ordinary Puerto Ricans, life under successive austerity regimes had become increasingly intolerable--and it will only become more so now.

By Samantha Winslow - Labor Notes, September 25, 2017

You have to hand it to Big Business and their minions: in every storm cloud they find a silver lining.

The hazards faced by residents of Texas and Florida (and now Puerto Rico) come not just from the flooding but from business interests eager to take advantage of the crisis to toss out the rules—“it’s an emergency”—and squeeze workers.

Days after Harvey hit Texas, Grover Norquist’s right-wing think tank Americans for Tax Reform was already calling for suspending Davis-Bacon on the Houston clean-up and rebuild. That’s the law that requires prevailing wage standards (read: living wage) for businesses getting federal contracts.

With Trump as president, companies are hoping for a permanent repeal.

The precedent is there. After Katrina, President Bush suspended Davis-Bacon for six months, allowing contractors to drastically lower their wages. When Davis-Bacon was reinstated, existing low-wage contracts were grandfathered in.

Bush also suspended OSHA’s enforcement of health and safety standards and had the EPA waive standards for emissions and fuel refineries.