If the only way you read The Militant is through the articles I post
here you may not realize this, but the Militant web site has undergone
some changes in format starting about a week ago. Earlier there was a
link on the landing page for the text version of The Militant. I always
clicked that link the very first thing and read and copied articles from
there. That link seems to now be missing. The articles are still
readable enough with a screen reader, but the text version was a lot
easier and I prefer it. I have also noticed that the articles themselves
have gotten a lot longer with more detail and analysis and are more
theoretical. They seem to live up to the concept of propaganda better as
opposed to agitation. This is good in a number of ways, but if you don't
have much time the shorter agitational articles were more attractive.
https://themilitant.com/2018/06/07/workers-in-puerto-rico-respond-to-social-disaster/
Hurricane catastrophe is result of capitalist rule
By John Studer
and Martín Koppel
Vol. 82/No. 24
June 18, 2018
May 7 protest in Humacao, Puerto Rico, demanding government finally take
action to restore electricity 8 months after Hurricane Maria. Protests
have had an impact, “but most of Yabucoa is still without electrical
service,” Lenis Rodríguez told the Militant there. “We’re still fighting.”
WALO Radio
May 7 protest in Humacao, Puerto Rico, demanding government finally take
action to restore electricity 8 months after Hurricane Maria. Protests
have had an impact, “but most of Yabucoa is still without electrical
service,” Lenis Rodríguez told the Militant there. “We’re still fighting.”
YABUCOA, Puerto Rico — “We were hit by two hurricanes. One was Maria.
The other was the social hurricane. It’s much worse than the natural
one, and it’s still with us.”
This is what person after person told us during a fact-finding reporting
and solidarity trip to Puerto Rico in late May by the Militant editor
and a reporter for the paper, both members of the Socialist Workers
Party. We visited towns and rural communities in the southeast as well
as the capital, San Juan. What they described is the result of
capitalist rule in a nation under the U.S. colonial boot.
More importantly, workers told us the ways they have begun to organize
to confront the social catastrophe that unfolded after the storm
devastated the island last September. Protests have been organized by
people who had never been involved in such activity — demanding the
government restore electric service and provide aid, and opposing the
closure of public schools.
The big-business media has portrayed working people here as helpless
victims. “Yabucoa Lives Amid Resignation and Darkness,” was the
front-page headline in the May 28 El Nuevo Día, a major daily.
But the picture we saw was quite different. In face of the collapse of
services essential to daily life and the callous indifference to what
working people faced from capitalist authorities — from Washington to
San Juan — what comes through is resilience and increased confidence, as
thousands join together in working-class and rural neighborhoods across
the island to fight, rebuild and take care of each other.
And there’s a thirst to know why this happened to them and how they can
make sure it never happens again.
“I like the word solidarity, because that’s what we’re doing here,” said
Lenis Rodríguez as he took us around his hometown of Yabucoa, on Puerto
Rico’s southeast coast. Rodríguez works afternoon shifts at a nearby
pharmaceutical plant and spends much of his free time organizing
together with other residents to help meet basic needs, both in the city
and surrounding rural areas.
In March, after six months without electricity, he and others in the
Jardines de Yabucoa neighborhood organized a “march of the flashlights”
to protest the government’s inaction. It was covered live by reporter
Yeidy Vega, who herself lives in an area of Humacao that still lacks
service. She told us, “I try to cover all the demonstrations I can get to.”
“The next day I got a call from engineers at the electric company,”
Rodríguez said with a smile. “That’s how our neighborhood got power
back. But most of Yabucoa is still without electrical service, and we’re
still fighting.”
Today, tens of thousands of people remain without power, especially in
Humacao and Yabucoa, where the hurricane made landfall, and in Utuado
and other towns in the mountainous interior.
‘A disaster waiting to happen’
“It was just a matter of time before a disaster like this was going to
happen,” said Raúl Laboy, a retired electrical worker in the Mariana
neighborhood, located in the hills overlooking Humacao. “We’re a U.S.
colony, and the priority of the colonial rulers is to enrich U.S.
corporations at our expense. We are not the owners of our own country.”
Since Washington invaded and seized Puerto Rico in 1898, U.S.
capitalists have warped its economy to serve their profit interests.
They have turned the island into an export platform based on
superexploited labor, maintaining a large reserve of unemployed workers,
keeping wages and living standards much lower than in the United States.
Puerto Rico’s economic decline, which began in the world capitalist
depression in the mid-1970s, has taken a nose dive since 2006, as the
global crisis further battered the island. To pay the debt owed to U.S.
bondholders — now at $74 billion — the colonial government has slashed
30,000 public employee jobs, cut retirement pensions, hiked sales taxes,
closed more than 100 schools and put 266 more on the chopping block, and
changed laws to make it easier for bosses to fire workers at will.
U.S. junta: more attacks on workers
“Today the U.S. capitalists are imposing their decisions even more
directly on us,” said Angel Figueroa Jaramillo, president of UTIER, the
electrical workers union. “We’re fighting the fiscal control board,
which now makes the economic decisions in Puerto Rico. To pay the
bondholders, they want to carry out even more drastic cuts in social
benefits and eliminate rights workers have won.” The board, or junta, as
it’s commonly known here, was appointed by President Barack Obama in 2016.
Speaking with us at the UTIER hall in San Juan, Figueroa and union Vice
President Freddyson Martínez said the junta and colonial authorities are
stepping up pressure to sell off the state-run Puerto Rico Electric
Power Authority to private owners. They are seizing on widespread
resentment of government mismanagement of the utility, which accounts
for $9 billion of the total debt.
Above, fisherman Luis Velázquez, center, describes what fishermen face
from government neglect after Hurricane Maria destroyed their dock to
Lenis Rodríguez, right, leader of Yabucoa Support Group, and John
Studer, editor of the Militant.
Militant/Martín Koppel
Above, fisherman Luis Velázquez, center, describes what fishermen face
from government neglect after Hurricane Maria destroyed their dock to
Lenis Rodríguez, right, leader of Yabucoa Support Group, and John
Studer, editor of the Militant.
“It’s not a surprise the electrical grid collapsed,” Figueroa said. “Our
union had been warning for a long time that more blackouts were bound to
happen because of decades of lack of maintenance and reductions in
personnel. They let the whole system go downhill.”
“The power authority had reduced inventories to a bare minimum and sold
off equipment in order to make debt payments,” Figueroa said. After the
storm, they were short of electric poles, cables and other equipment,
sharply slowing the process of restoring power.
The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and the electrical company awarded
billion-dollar contracts to Cobra Energy and other U.S. contractors to
import supplies and deploy line crews. In mid-May, however, the Army
Corps suddenly announced it would withdraw its 700 line workers from
Puerto Rico, claiming their work was done. That outraged many workers we
met in Humacao and Yabucoa, who still had no power.
The social catastrophe and anti-labor attacks have generated mounting
anger among working people. Both of the ruling colonial parties
responsible for these attacks are deeply discredited.
“We saw the mood of the working class in the May Day marches both this
year and last. They were much bigger than in past years, with tens of
thousands of marchers,” said José Rodríguez, a union representative for
the Solidarity Union Movement (MSS). The union represents workers at a
Pepsi bottling plant. Fernando Santiago, a Pepsi delivery truck driver
and MSS president, told us the union is involved in an effort to
organize 1,800 Coca-Cola distribution workers.
The May Day marches also drew university students, who are also feeling
the ax. Gabriel Díaz, one of the University of Puerto Rico students who
helped lead last year’s student strike, reported that, at the behest of
the fiscal board, university tuition will double in August.
“If you’re taking 15 credits, your tuition will jump from $850 to more
than $1,700 per semester,” he said. “And they’re closing down some
student housing that working-class youth from out of town rely on,” said
Verónica Figueroa, another University of Puerto Rico student. Díaz and
Figueroa are among seven youths who face felony and other charges filed
against them by U.S. authorities because of their role in the student
protests.
In Humacao: ‘We helped each other’
Our two-day visit to the island’s southeast corner was especially
striking, both by how naked the face of the capitalist crisis has become
to millions and by working people’s response to it — the resistance,
solidarity and creativity.
Hurricane Maria devastated Humacao, a municipality of 52,000 that
encompasses the main town and rural communities. When we arrived May 26,
thousands of residents and small businesses were still without
electricity. Many homes had blue tarps where the roofs had been ripped
off, the owners still waiting for aid to rebuild.
We were invited by local residents to visit the neighborhood of Mariana,
reachable by narrow roads that wind up and up the hills.
Left, Annette Aponte shows how containment wall broke behind her house
in Yabucoa after storm. Above, Mildred Laboy, left, and Rosalina Abreu,
leaders of Recreational and Educational Community Association of Mariana
Neighborhood.
Militant photos: left and above left, Martín Koppel
Left, Annette Aponte shows how containment wall broke behind her house
in Yabucoa after storm. Above, Mildred Laboy, left, and Rosalina Abreu,
leaders of Recreational and Educational Community Association of Mariana
Neighborhood.
“For the first week after the hurricane, not a single government
official showed up here,” Mariana resident Ivette Díaz told us. Her
house was damaged when a neighbor’s home was torn off its foundation and
slammed into hers.
“We got no help from the government,” she said. “So neighbors just got
together and started to clean up everything.” They cleared debris to
reopen the roads. They cleaned up their homes and those of their neighbors.
By the second week some federal agencies showed up, offering each home a
few bottles of water.
“The mayor of Humacao came to Mariana a month later. The governor of
Puerto Rico arrived in town to inaugurate the Walmart when it reopened,
but he’s never come here,” Díaz said.
Her phone service was finally restored in January. She now has
electricity; many others in Mariana don’t. “After the storm, if you
tried to buy a generator, it could cost $1,000 to $2,000,” she said.
“The diesel fuel costs $15 to $20 a day. It’s just too expensive.”
The leaders of ARECMA, the Recreational and Educational Community
Association of Mariana Neighborhood, had offered to take us around the
area. We followed Rosalina Abreu, the group’s president, by car to the
top of the hill, which offers stunning views of the lush countryside
below. She proudly showed us their facilities. One wall is decorated
with a mural depicting Julia de Burgos, one of Puerto Rico’s foremost
poets, that was painted by New York artist Molly Crabapple last October.
Abreu and Mildred Laboy, another leader of ARECMA, told us a little
about the organization’s work in Mariana, a neighborhood with 3,200
residents. “Everything this community has was won through years of
struggle, not handouts,” Abreu said. ARECMA was founded in 1982 but
community struggles go back to the 1960s, as they successfully battled
to get the government to provide drinking water, electrification and
paved roads.
Top right, May Day demonstration, San Juan. Right, <i>Militant</i>
correspondent Martín Koppel describes solidarity and reporting trip to
Puerto Rico at June 2 New York Militant Labor Forum, along with John
Studer, right.
Top, Elizabeth Yeampierre, inset, Mike Shur
Top right, May Day demonstration, San Juan. Right, Militant
correspondent Martín Koppel describes solidarity and reporting trip to
Puerto Rico at June 2 New York Militant Labor Forum, along with John
Studer, right.
“After the hurricane everything collapsed,” said Laboy, who like Abreu
is a retired schoolteacher. “For months, like much of the country, we
had no electricity, water, communications, or medical services. And no jobs.
“Because of our past experience, we weren’t surprised that we got no
help from the government. We were ready and began to organize
ourselves.” People pushed aside debris to look for their neighbors. They
patched up damaged roofs and broken windows.
Abreu proudly showed us the community kitchen they set up, where
volunteers serve meals every weekday to people who have no power to
cook. At the high point they provided 500 lunches a day. They appealed
for and received donations from Puerto Rican communities in the United
States.
They showed us the eating area and the water-filtration equipment they
set up to provide drinking water. They have raised money for solar
panels to run the kitchen and become a little more self-reliant, while
fighting for the government to restore service to all. They built
recreational facilities with musical and other cultural activities for
the children.
Laboy pointed to the class bias of the government’s priorities in
Humacao. They first made sure to restore power for the luxury villas in
the Palmas del Mar resort and the Ex-Lax and other U.S. pharmaceutical
plants in the area.
Protests across island demand power
Abreu said there have been numerous demonstrations in Humacao demanding
restoration of electrical service. “There was a torchlight march, and a
march on the bridge between Humacao and Las Piedras,” she said. “Some
people went to San Juan to demonstrate in front of government offices.”
Similar actions took place across the island. In just one week in
December, the press reported 17 marches, picket lines, road blockades
and other actions, from San Juan to Isabela in the west, Salinas in the
south, and Caguas in the center of the island.
“Just in Mariana they closed four schools, and we have one elementary
school left. Now some kids have to travel 5 kilometers [3 miles] to and
from school. Transportation is more difficult in rural areas,” Abreu said.
Laboy took us to another part of Mariana where her brother Raúl “Ruly”
Laboy was helping rebuild another brother’s house whose roof was ripped
off and windows shattered by the storm.
The retired electrician explained that many who applied to the Federal
Emergency Management Agency for aid to rebuild their homes have been
turned down. The U.S. agency demands property deeds and other documents
that many in rural areas don’t have. “If you don’t have a deed you have
to hire a land surveyor and go to court. It can take 10 years and a lot
of money to get legal documents to prove you own a house that belonged
to your grandfather,” he said.
Despite the challenges, said Raúl Laboy, “I’m not going anywhere. I’m
staying right here. We rely on working-class solidarity and that makes
me happy.”
He was excited to meet two members of the Socialist Workers Party from
the U.S. Like many others we met, he subscribed to the Militant and
purchased some books we brought by SWP leaders on revolutionary politics.
While Raúl Laboy is a veteran socialist, a supporter of revolutionary
Cuba and an advocate of independence for Puerto Rico, we got a similar
response from other workers who didn’t have a political background. They
were interested to hear about the recent wave of teachers strikes across
the U.S. They were open and in many cases attracted to the revolutionary
working-class perspective we discussed with them. Is Socialist
Revolution in the US Possible? was the most popular book we showed people.
Struggles in Yabucoa
The next day we went to the coastal town of Yabucoa, 20 minutes south of
Humacao. You can see the island of Vieques — for decades a target of
U.S. Navy practice bombings and of protests by residents that finally
stopped them. It’s where Hurricane Maria made direct landfall and where
some 60 percent of homes still had no electricity when we were there.
Lenis Rodríguez organized a full day of visits for us in different rural
neighborhoods.
Rodríguez has been a leader of Yabucoa Support Group, a community
organization, for the past 13 years. After the storm hit, he and others
in the group went into action to recruit volunteers to help bring food
and supplies to neighbors and residents of other communities. In March
he organized the “march of the flashlights,” which inspired similar
protests in Humacao and other areas demanding the government restore power.
“You can see a class bias here,” Rodríguez said. “People in these areas
don’t get attention that other classes get.”
In the neighborhood of Tejas, in the hills above the main town, we were
invited into the home of Annette Aponte, a teacher. We also met her
brother Bedwin, a manufacturing worker, and her elderly parents, Mario
Aponte and Justa Serrano. They were eager to talk to Militant reporters
“so people in the United States can hear what we’re going through,”
Annette said.
Mario is a living history of the Puerto Rican working class. Today he is
in frail health, but he came alive telling us how as a teenager in the
early 1960s he had cut sugarcane with a machete when the big Roig sugar
mill in Yabucoa was still running. Then, like tens of thousands of
Puerto Ricans in the 1950s, he migrated to the United States and got
jobs as a farmworker in New Jersey. He also worked at the Union Carbide
electrode plant in Yabucoa that later closed.
Serrano described what happened last Sept. 20 when the hurricane
barreled into Yabucoa. Their front gate and windows were blown out and
the house, which sits on a hill, was shaking. Shortly after the storm,
the containment wall behind the house broke and slid down the hill. They
were afraid the house would follow it.
“Two or three days later, when the road was reopened, we were able to go
down to the town and ask for a tarp to reinforce the ground behind the
house. But the mayor’s office refused us any help,” Annette Aponte said.
Finally a pastor gave them a tarp.
She was out of work and without income for three months after the storm.
“We went to FEMA to ask for financial help to rebuild the containment
wall,” she said. “They turned us down twice but we kept appealing. The
third FEMA inspector asked for documents, then more documents, to
certify that it was my father’s house. We gave them the papers. We’re
still waiting for FEMA to reply.”
The Tejas neighborhood was still without power when we visited. “My
father has diabetes and we need ice to keep his insulin supply
refrigerated,” she said.
“But the mayor of Yabucoa hasn’t even bothered to come up here, and he’s
been slow in responding to our needs,” Aponte said. She told us she
thinks part of the reason is that he represents the Popular Democratic
Party while most Tejas residents voted for the rival, pro-statehood
party. Patronage politics by both colonial parties has a long history in
Puerto Rico.
Actions against school closures
Aponte said that the government in Yabucoa had announced that five
schools would be closed. “Parents and students went into the streets to
protest, and they were able to save two of the schools.”
As she waved goodbye to us from her front entrance, next to her was a
large Puerto Rican flag hanging on the outside wall. Since the storm
working people across the island have displayed the flag on their homes
and cars. It means: “We survived, we’re determined to rebuild, we’re
staying here in our country.”
June 3 protest against government threat to close school in Yabucoa,
Puerto Rico.
Victoria 840 Radio
June 3 protest against government threat to close school in Yabucoa,
Puerto Rico.
Next we visited Orlando and Aida Ramos in the neighborhood of Ingenio,
which is “sugar mill” in Spanish. Born in the Bronx and moving here as a
child, Orlando worked in the mid-1970s at the nearby Roig sugar mill;
earlier we had stopped to see the long-abandoned buildings that sit
today as giant rusting hulks. He later worked hanging chickens in
poultry plants. Aida worked in poultry plants in Massachusetts and
garment shops in Puerto Rico.
Aida Ramos reported that just two days earlier the first repair crews
from Cobra had arrived in the neighborhood, installing electric poles.
We saw them driving around. But eight months without power has taken a
toll on working people here.
“A neighbor who was in ill health died yesterday,” Orlando said. “Not
having electricity has an impact. It means no air conditioning. Food
spoils and ice melts. It means no oxygen machines. And no TV to relieve
the mental stress everyone has been going through.”
Several other workers told us of relatives or neighbors who had died
over the past months as a result of similar conditions, either at home
or at medical facilities crippled by the storm.
Like others we spoke with, Orlando appreciated the discussion about the
capitalist crisis we face both in Puerto Rico and the U.S., and how
workers can unite to fight more effectively today. He said he looked
forward to us coming back. “Let me know when and I’ll fire up the
barbecue,” he said.
Fishermen’s struggles
Lenis Rodríguez introduced us to Luis “Cheverito” Velázquez, a local
fisherman. Velázquez told us that fishermen, who are organized into
associations in many coastal towns, have had to fight for basic things
like getting the local government to build a small dock.
Hurricane Maria destroyed the little dock — along with fishing traps and
other equipment — and now Velázquez and others have to launch their
boats from the beach. A fellow fisherman who has electricity makes his
refrigerator available so they can store their catch.
Cheverito, as everyone calls him, goes fishing on his 16-foot boat with
two other crew members at least once a week. He also works full time as
a janitor at the school in Punta Santiago and is active in the union.
“It’s a poor neighborhood where most of the kids come from families of
fishermen,” he said.
After the hurricane wiped out the school, Cheverito and other janitors,
joined by parents and volunteers, worked overtime to clean it up,
turning it into a place people could gather in and use.
Velázquez sometimes fishes off nearby Vieques. “The water is still
contaminated with shells and other waste left from when the U.S. Navy
used Vieques for target practice until we forced them to stop,” he said.
He’s a veteran of those battles, pioneered by fishermen, that eventually
led the U.S. military to leave Vieques in 2003. “It was truly David and
Goliath — the fishermen with their little boats and their slingshots
standing up to the Navy with their giant ships and resources,” he said.
“And we won.”
He says when we come back he’ll take us to meet fishermen in Vieques.
Rebuilding after the storm is one more battle. “I’ve been fighting all
my life, Cheverito said. “And today I’m still fighting. I’m staying here.”
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