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The Militant (logo)
Vol. 82/No. 7 February 19, 2018
(front page)
US rulers tell Puerto Rico: Squeeze working people to pay off bonds!
BY SETH GALINSKY
Hundreds of thousands of workers and farmers in Puerto Rico are still
without electricity five months after Hurricane Maria. Damaged schools
remain unrepaired across the island. Tens of thousands of homes have no
roofs. And thousands of jobs have evaporated.
What has been the response of Washington’s Federal Emergency Management
Agency and the Financial Oversight and Management Board for Puerto Rico
— what people in Puerto Rico call the junta? The board was given
dictatorial power over the U.S. colony’s finances by the U.S. Congress
in 2016 to maximize payment on the island’s $74 billion debt.
An immediate increase in aid and urgent measures to repair the damage?
Cut the people of Puerto Rico a break?
Not a chance. FEMA announced Jan. 29 that everything had improved and it
was ending its already too-meager food and water distribution. Two days
later, after an outcry of criticism, agency leaders backed off, saying
it was all a misunderstanding.
Half the population of the island lives in what is called “informal”
housing — homes they’ve built themselves with help from family and
friends with no legal title. More than 13,000 families have been denied
FEMA reconstruction aid, largely with this as the excuse.
And the oversight board? On Jan. 31 board Chairman José Carrión said
that despite the “radically changed” reality, serious “structural
reforms” — that is, finance payback to bondholders on the backs of
working people — must move ahead.
His demands? “A real labor reform that permits us to compete
effectively”; “tax reform that encourages investment”; and “‘welfare to
work reform.”
Translation: Keep cutting wages, pensions and benefits and laying off
government workers; cut taxes for the employers; and force people on
food stamps to work somewhere, no matter the wage, or lose their benefits.
“These have to be adopted now!” Carrión demanded. “So that our economy
grows again, generates more wealth and YES, allows us to pay a fair,
reasonable and sustainable part of the debt that we have to our creditors.”
“But the vulture funds have already recovered their investment many
times over,” Luis Aristud, an insurance adjuster and president of the
Association of Sports Fishermen in Canóvanas, told the Militant by phone
Feb. 2, referring to the speculators and bondholders who hold the debt.
“Really,” he said, “what everybody here would like is to cancel the debt.”
Washington pushes privatization
Taking advantage of widespread resentment over the bureaucratic
mismanagement by the bosses at the state-owned Puerto Rico Electric
Power Authority, the junta is pushing proposals to privatize and sell it.
The hurricane came on top of the economic and social devastation that
has ravaged the island and intensified since 2007 as a result of the
worldwide capitalist economic crisis and the anti-working-class measures
taken by Washington and the colonial regime.
To pay the debt, the Power Authority stopped modernizing its equipment
and electrical grid, laid off union workers and cut back on maintenance.
Fox News reported Feb. 1 that while most electric companies use three to
four different transformers in their network, Puerto Rico’s ancient
system uses more than 200. The hurricane was the straw that broke the
camel’s back.
After the storm the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and FEMA took control
of coordinating efforts by the Power Authority, U.S. electric companies
and private contractors to restore power. The Army Corps and Power
Authority bosses have traded accusations as to which one bears the most
responsibility for the disastrous lack of progress.
“The big fish eats the little fish,” Rev. Rufino Carrión said by phone
from Gurabo, Puerto Rico, Feb. 3. While U.S. officials and bureaucrats
at the Power Authority squabble, “it’s the working class, the poor
class, that is suffering the abuse.”
Carrión organized a protest in Gurabo in early January demanding
electricity. He said he knew about the Cuban government’s offer to send
brigades of electricians to help, which was cavalierly refused by
Washington and the government of Puerto Rico. Aid has also been offered
from Mexico and other neighboring nations. “Let them come from wherever,
it’s no problem,” said Carrión. “If Mexico, if communist Cuba, whoever,
want to help they should be allowed to do it.”
More than 50 supporters of independence for Puerto Rico protested Feb. 1
in front of the meeting of the junta in New York’s Wall Street district.
“Struggle yes, surrender no!” they chanted in Spanish.
Selling the electric company to U.S. capitalists would just deepen the
web of colonial exploitation and oppression of the people of Puerto
Rico, Lorraine Liriano, a spokesperson for Call to Action on Puerto
Rico, told participants.
“Puerto Rico is not just an issue for Puerto Ricans,” she added. “We
face the same questions in the U.S.”
Related articles:
Oscar López: ‘Crisis in Puerto Rico is colonialism’
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