http://themilitant.com/2018/8220/822005.html
The Militant (logo)
Vol. 82/No. 20 May 21, 2018
(front page)
Rulers’ disdain, anti-working-class attacks fuel protests in Puerto Rico
Elorientalpr.net/Esteban D. Rodríguez Flecha
April 30 protest in Humacao. Second sign from the left says, “Being old
is not a crime. Enough already of the lies and deceit.” The sign next to
it reads, “Lights for everyone, stop ignoring us.”
BY SETH GALINSKY
Officials of the government-run electric company in Puerto Rico claim
that 98 percent of the U.S. colony now has electricity, eight months
after hurricanes Irma and Maria ravaged the island, and just a month
before the next hurricane season begins. But almost nobody believes
them, especially the tens of thousands still without power.
“We have entire towns in the center of the island still without light,”
Marimer Castro told the Militant by phone May 7.
Castro helped organize a demonstration April 30 attended by more than
100 residents in Humacao and a May 7 evening torchlight march of
hundreds there to demand electricity.
“It’s the first time I ever did anything like that,” Castro said. “It
began as a conversation among neighbors.
“We went to the radio station and they interviewed us and broadcast the
announcement for our meeting. The Catholic Church let us use a room,”
she said. “So many people came that they didn’t fit. We decided to hold
a march to the energy company offices.”
At the April 30 action one woman carried a bucket and washboard on her
head, symbolizing the eight months they have had to wash clothes by
hand. Another waved canned goods, because they can’t store fresh food.
One carried a sign with the receipts for fueling her gas generator.
It’s not just the electricity, Castro said. “Water service is erratic.
Wooden houses were totally destroyed, others lost their roofs. Yet the
government is still just ‘evaluating’ the damages.
“There is no plan, it’s been a disaster,” she said. “We are still a
colony. We depend on the U.S. but we don’t have the same conditions.
There are pluses and minuses for statehood or for independence. But
being in the middle, not one or the other, doesn’t work. We have to lose
the fear that we can’t survive if we are independent and discuss it as
an option.”
It is the U.S. capitalist rulers, not the hurricanes, that caused the
crisis. Since U.S. troops wrested control of Puerto Rico from the
Spanish government in 1898, Washington has plundered the natural
resources and labor of the Puerto Rican people. The conditions of
working people worsened in 2006, when the worldwide capitalist economic
crisis began battering the island.
Scores of factories have shut down since then, while the debt to wealthy
bondholders has mushroomed to at least $74 billion today.
To get the funds to pay on the debt, the colonial government has cut
retirement benefits, increased sales taxes, laid off 30,000 public
workers and closed more than 100 schools.
The public electric company also laid off workers, cut back on
maintenance and halted any plans to improve the deteriorating power
grid. Transmission towers were corroded, power plants covered in rust
and spare parts in short supply. By the time the hurricanes hit, it was
a disaster waiting to happen.
U.S.-based capitalist contractors have made a killing on contracts to
repair the electrical grid. The New York Times reported May 6 that
because of government red tape and poor coordination they often got paid
for doing nothing. Lakeland Electric had a contract to work in Puerto
Rico for 22 days, but its crew only carried out repairs for two and a
half days. The bill — $820,271.
U.S.-imposed financial board
In August 2016 President Barack Obama signed a bipartisan bill that
appointed the Financial Oversight and Management Board for Puerto Rico,
known in Spanish as the junta, to take over the island’s finances and
ensure payment on the debt.
In late April, the junta released its own labor “reform” bill, which it
insisted be voted on by the Puerto Rican Senate. If approved it would
cut the number of paid vacation and sick days in half and eliminate laws
that prevent bosses from firing workers without cause.
“It’s a control board,” said Luis Epardo, a retired electrician in
Aguadilla. “We’ll never get ahead until we stop hoping that the
Americans are going to get us out this mess.”
On May 1 tens of thousands marched in San Juan, including large union
and student contingents, to protest the anti-working-class measures.
Many workplaces, especially in the capital and other large cities, were
shut down for the day.
One march of thousands went to the Capitol and then continued on to La
Fortaleza, the residence of Gov. Ricardo Rosselló. A second protest,
with five feeder marches, converged on the Milla de Oro commercial and
banking center.
Protesters carried signs against the planned shutdown of nearly 300
public schools, deeper cuts to pensions, the junta’s proposed labor
“reform” and the transfer of hundreds of workers incarcerated in Puerto
Rico to prisons in the United States.
Cops and SWAT teams used the excuse that a small group in one of the
feeder marches were wearing masks and might become violent to stop it
from getting to the rally site. As the protest was winding down the cops
attacked with tear gas, pepper spray, rubber bullets and billy clubs.
“The cops attacked everyone, young and old, there were pregnant woman,
too,” said Lenna Ramírez, a student at the University of Puerto Rico and
a leader of the Hostosiano Youth, a pro-independence organization.
Front page (for this issue) | Home | Text-version home
