https://themilitant.com/2018/06/07/2000-died-from-colonial-disregard-in-puerto-rico/
2,000+ died from colonial disregard in Puerto Rico
By Seth Galinsky
Vol. 82/No. 24
June 18, 2018
Harvard University researchers reported in the New England Journal of
Medicine May 31 that the death toll in Puerto Rico in the first two
months after Hurricane Maria was in the thousands, not the 64 government
officials have insisted for months. Then Puerto Rico’s Health Department
released new statistics showing nearly 2,000 died.
The death toll is an indictment of more than 100 years of U.S. colonial
rule and the plunder of the island’s resources, human and natural, to
enrich U.S. and Puerto Rican capitalists. And the refusal to acknowledge
the true scope of the social catastrophe visited on working people shows
the rulers’ callous disregard.
Under Spanish rule, the colonial masters raised coffee and sugar,
importing slaves from Africa to do the heavy lifting. Still, most of the
food consumed in Puerto Rico was grown there.
Washington’s imperialist plunder began in 1898 when U.S. troops wrested
control of Puerto Rico — and Cuba — from the Spanish crown, and began
twisting the island’s economy to meet their colonial needs.
U.S. capitalists bought up the land, expanded sugar cane and built huge
refineries for the home market. By the 1930s sugar production increased
1,200 percent, but less and less food for local consumption was grown.
During World War II, U.S. bosses saw Puerto Rico as a source of cheap
labor and a market for U.S. goods. In 1947 the U.S. and local government
launched Operation Bootstrap, granting across-the-board tax exemptions
to U.S. companies to set up there. The first pharmaceutical company, in
what became a $60 billion-a-year industry, opened in 1957.
The industrialization accelerated the decline of agriculture. Peasant
jíbaros were pushed out of the countryside to work in factories in
Puerto Rico and the United States. Today at least 85 percent of the food
consumed there is imported. It also marked the beginning of a massive
migration to the U.S., more than half a million from 1947 to 1960 alone.
With the rise of the colonial revolution around the world in the 1950s,
and then the Cuban Revolution in 1959, Washington’s propaganda machine
marketed Puerto Rico as a “showcase of democracy,” the alternative to
revolutionary Cuba. It claimed Puerto Rico was a “commonwealth,” not a
colony.
But working people have continuously resisted both the Spanish and the
U.S. colonizers. The first big rebellion — Grito de Lares in 1868 —
intertwined the fight for self-rule with the abolition of slavery. In
1934 tens of thousands of sugar workers went on strike for better wages
and conditions and asked Pedro Albizu Campos, the leader of the
Nationalist Party, the main pro-independence group, to be their
spokesperson.
Worried about the growing support for independence, the colonial regime
passed the infamous “Gag Law” in 1947, prohibiting the display of the
Puerto Rican flag, the singing of patriotic songs and any discussion of
independence. It wasn’t repealed until a decade later.
In October 1950, the Nationalist Party launched the Jayuya uprising.
With the help of the National Guard the rebellion was brutally put down.
Successive waves of courageous working-class and independence fighters
have been jailed by the U.S. overlords — from Albizu Campos to Rafael
Cancel Miranda and Lolita Lebrón to Oscar López, who finally won his
freedom in 2017.
U.S. corporations expanded their highly profitable operations in Puerto
Rico, fueled by tax breaks from Washington. But as the crisis of
capitalism has unfolded, the U.S. rulers phased out most of them. Then
the 2006 worldwide capitalist financial crash accelerated the decline.
The Puerto Rican government debt to wealthy bondholders mushroomed from
$43 billion in 2006 to $74 billion today.
To pay the debt, the colonial government has laid off thousands of
public workers, closed schools, raised sales taxes, cut pensions, and
cut so far back on maintenance and modernization of the electric system
that it was on the verge of collapse even before the hurricane hit. The
attacks have deepened after President Barack Obama and the U.S. Congress
imposed the unelected Financial Oversight and Management Board to run
the island in 2016.
Working people in the U.S. and Puerto Rico “have common interests and
struggles — to get the U.S. government and the capitalist ruling class
it represents off their back,” Osborne Hart, then Socialist Workers
Party candidate for mayor of New York, told the U.N. Special Committee
on Decolonization in 2017. “It’s their system that’s responsible for the
unprecedented world capitalist crisis we are living through. This
disaster comes crashing down harder today on Puerto Rico’s working
people and others because of its colonial bondage to Washington.
“Cuba’s socialist revolution shows us what workers and farmers can
accomplish when we organize ourselves to take state power out of the
hands of the capitalist class, transforming ourselves in the process,”
Hart said. “Along that road genuine independence can be won.”
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In This Issue
Front Page Articles •Workers in Puerto Rico respond to social disaster
•Truckers bring Brazil to a halt, force gov’t to cut tolls, prices
•2,000+ died from colonial disregard in Puerto Rico
•New York protest demands truth about deaths, debt in Puerto Rico
•Workers confront consequences of rulers’ wars in the Middle East
Also In This Issue •Fidel: Cuba backs fight for Puerto Rico independence
•SWP: Back Puerto Ricans’ fight for self-determination
•Cuba mobilizes to care for all as tropical storm hits
On the Picket Line •Locked-out Quebec aluminum workers win support
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