My mother is from an amazing and beautiful place: Puerto Rico. As a child, I remember visiting my grandparents, my aunt and uncle, their three children and huge extended family. I even met one of my great grandfathers, Juan Díaz, on a trip in 1986.
Every time we’d visit, we’d spend countless days visiting or hosting the whole family – meaning all 30? 40 of us? lol! -- caravanning to various parts of the island, and going to the beach (of course!) I’d end every trip boarding my flight in tears. I didn’t want to leave. Being able to eat my favorite foods, talk with my family late into the night, and take in the comforting sights and sounds of our beloved island – how could I wait another year or two to return?
Sadly, times are different. Some of my older family members, like my grandmother, have passed. Meanwhile, the family members who are my age that I’d grown up with, many have had to leave to the mainland United States to survive. The people of Puerto Rico are facing an economic collapse and a humanitarian crisis that I have never seen in my lifetime.
Recently I caught up with two of my mother’s cousins who remain on the island. What they shared with me is disturbing.
My cousin Sandra Castro said she knew something was terribly wrong when she underwent surgery for a brain tumor in January, and shortly after that, nurses and doctors began to leave for the United States in droves. They weren’t getting paid — including by private health insurance companies collecting premiums.
Another cousin, Mildred Merced, painted a very bleak picture of life for the island’s children. Mildred visits homes as part of her job as a child nutritionist. She is in charge of making sure that children who rely on feeding tubes receive the nutrition that they need to live. This is becoming increasingly difficult since funding for such assistance is pretty much non-existent.
More than 80% of children in Puerto Rico already live in high-poverty areas. Among the most vulnerable, Mildred has seen foster parents not getting paid. Therapists and childcare providers who serve children with special needs have either gone out of business or have left for the United States. She even knows of a mother who recently tried to surrender one of three foster children in her care due to lack of money. The state hadn’t paid her in seven months.
“We are all impacted,” Mildred told me. “But children don’t have a say in any of this.”
After poking around for an email outreach and petition, I’ve learned that vulture hedge fund managers bet against the island, continued to lend its government money knowing it did not have access to a bankruptcy court — a loophole in U.S. law -- and now these Wall Street financiers control up to a third of Puerto Rico’s $72 billion in debt. Even more galling is that they have fought any and all proposals to allow for Puerto Rico to restructure its debt because they want their payout…now. Here’s a recently released video by Brave New Films that most excellently sums up the havoc created by this greed:
Despite Puerto Ricans being our fellow U.S. citizens and the ongoing suffering on the island and the mainland, Congress’s response has been lackluster and disappointing. Most recently, Representative Paul Ryan patted himself on the back for a bipartisan “compromise” bill. Perhaps not surprising, the compromise works in the interests of the hedge fund managers who may not get all their money and right away. As for the Puerto Rican people? The colonialism continues.
The “PROMESA” proposal that passed the U.S. House of Representatives a little over a week ago, contains an oversight board — very much like that one in Flint, Michigan — unelected by the Puerto Rican people and makes people on the island continue to pay back Wall Street’s debts by further cutting basic infrastructure and reducing the minimum wage. U.S. Representative Luis V. Gutierrez, a native Puerto Rican and civil rights champion, had the best response to this “rescue”.
Let’s be clear here: the Puerto Rican people are not at fault for the predatory lending by hedge fund managers who betted against the island. The workers who are left on the island have carried on the Herculean task of working, contributing the highest sales tax in the nation, and yes, even providing services like healthcare and education for free, all while struggling to support their own families.
Rather than take responsibility for its actions, Wall Street wants a handout from the U.S. taxpayer – you and me.
“The economic crisis has brought health and social problems,” my cousin Sandra told me. “When you don’t pay people, who’s going to work? Even if you love what you do, you still need money to live. So now people are having to go to the mainland of the United States.”
Said my cousin Mildred: “The people leave crying. They don’t want to leave. It’s beautiful here and the people are good.”
No one should be uprooted from their homes due to Wall Street’s greed and recklessness. I crafted a petition on this and hope to deliver the signatures shortly. Please do sign and share in English and in Spanish.
I look forward to better days on the island. I am looking forward to a future trip, in which kids aren’t traveling for hours to get to a school and people aren’t dying because the one cardiologist in the country has had to leave for the mainland United States to survive. The Puerto Rican people deserve better than this. We ALL deserve better than this.