Puerto Rico is facing a massive humanitarian crisis after being hit by two super-strong hurricanes, a glancing blow by Irma and then a direct hit by Maria, both greatly strengthened by warmer ocean water caused by climate change.

The crisis is still unfolding two weeks after Maria hit, and the full picture and extent of the damage to life, health, infrastructure, buildings, trees and much more will not be known for some time.

Trump took five full days while playing golf before even acknowledging that something had occurred, then blamed the Puerto Ricans themselves for the incredibly slow and inadequate response of Washington to immediately bring desperately needed fuel, water, food, and medicine to its colony.

This slow and grudging federal response, unlike that for Texas and Florida following Harvey and Irma, itself reflects a racist attitude to the largely Latino population of Puerto Rico. Trump also said in effect with “dog whistles” that the Puerto Ricans were lazy, refused to pitch in with the recovery effort, and were waiting for a handout from Washington – also reflecting time-honored racist views in the U.S. about Blacks and other peoples of color.

After waiting for almost two weeks, Trump finally made a short visit to the island. He took the occasion to play down the extent of the devastation, saying that it was not a “real catastrophe,” implying that recovery will not take much money in face of estimates of tens of billions or more.

Electricity was completely shut down across the island, and only five percent has been restored, and it will take over 10 months (officials say) to get it back to even the miserable state it was in before the hurricanes hit. Hospitals have been forced to operate with their own generators, and fuel (diesel) for them is difficult to come by, placing patients in need of things like dialysis and surgery in immediate danger. Medicine is in short supply.

Communications are difficult within the island and between the colony and mainland Puerto Ricans. The emergency 911 phone system, inadequate to begin with, is down.

Some aid that did get in remained on the docks for two weeks because of the difficulty of making roads with downed trees and debris passable, of finding stranded truck drivers, and lack of fuel for the trucks to move the aid to where it is needed. A bit is now moving. (Trump also blamed Puerto Rico for the difficulty in reaching drivers.)

TV reporters were able to rapidly get on the scene, but the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) was slow to turn up and hasn’t reached most of the island outside the capital, San Juan.

We saw TV shots of San Juan Mayor Carmen Yulin Cruz just after the storm passed, wading chest-deep in flooded streets, joining fellow citizens in rescue efforts. Trump notwithstanding, Puerto Ricans are energetically helping each other as best they can.

When the mayor went on TV to castigate Washington for its wholly inadequate response, emotionally appealing for aid because “we are dying,” Trump attacked her as a “poor leader” and doubled own on his assertions that Washington was doing “a great job,” echoing then President Bush’s comment during hurricane Katrina that FEMA was doing a “heck of a job” while bodies were floating down the flooded streets of New Orleans in 2005.

Trump resisted for over a week temporarily lifting a maritime law that made it much more difficult for aid from other countries reaching Puerto Rico, a law that in normal times greatly increases prices in the poor island country. For example, before the storms food prices in Puerto Rico were double those in Florida.

Before Maria smashed the island, there already was a huge crisis in Puerto Rico caused by the exploitation of the colony by U.S. imperialism, that had greatly weakened the country’s electrical system, its medical facilities and much infrastructure so that when the hurricanes hit the damage was far worse.

Puerto Rico became a U.S. colony, as did Cuba and the Philippines, when the U.S. defeated Spain in the war of 1898, which Lenin called the first modern inter-imperialist war. These were Spanish colonies before then. The U.S. tried to hide the fact that Puerto Rico is its colony by calling it a “commonwealth” or a “territory,” but this was only a verbal fig leaf to cover the reality.

Soon after the U.S. captured the island, the Supreme Court made certain rulings, still in force. One of these was that only those parts of the U.S. Constitution apply to Puerto Rico that Congress choses to apply. This ruling also stated that Puerto Rico belonged to, but was not part of, the United States. All major decisions involving the island are dependent on acts of Congress as interpreted by U.S. courts.

U.S. capitalists have exploited the island since. For the first 50 years this was done by U.S. corporations that set up sugar plantations worked by low-wage labor on much of the island. After the second World War, the form of exploitation changed.

In the face of the rise of the colonial revolution worldwide, and the rise of anticolonial nationalism in the island, some concessions were made. A limited form of self-government was enacted. It was no longer a crime to display the Puerto Rican flag or to speak Spanish in the public schools. Puerto Ricans could elect their own governors and legislature, but still under the control of Congress.

Economically, a new form of imperialist exploitation was established, industrialization, using low cost labor. U.S. corporations were encouraged to invest by turning the island into a huge tax haven. Mass migration to the mainland of unskilled labor was encouraged, to alleviate poverty somewhat, while still retaining a reservoir of cheap labor.

In the 1960s, faced with the victory of the Cuban Revolution and the rise of revolutionary movements in Latin America, these policies were intensified to turn the island into a “showcase” of the supposed benefits of U.S. comtrol. This was coupled with severe repression of pro-independence activities, and the building of U.S. military bases.

For a time these policies did improve conditions in Puerto Rico. Annual growth rates jumped six percent in the 1950s, but gradually dropped to four percent in the 1970s. They were stagnant in the 1980s. By then Puerto Rico had become the most profitable place in the world for corporations. But soon the cheap labor model started to find greener pastures in China, Bangladesh, Vietnam, etc.

In 1996 Congress began to phase out the tax breaks, which were completely gone by 2005. Big U.S. corporations pulled out, the economy collapsed, and the island has been in a recession for the past 11 years.

The pro-imperialist capitalist politicians in Puerto Rico turned to borrowing from U.S. financial capitalists to keep the country afloat. Then more loans were necessary to repay earlier loans, in a vicious cycle that led to a crisis where Puerto Rico could not repay its loans any more by 2014. Shades of Greece!

An example was the government-run power company, which became insolvent. Equipment could not be modernized, and repairs were neglected. The electrical system was so fragile that when Irma and Maria hit, it completely collapsed.

Huge cutbacks to social services, education, health care, etc. were implemented as the crisis deepened. The health system was in dire straights before the blows it has taken from the hurricanes.

The island was in debt to the U.S. financial lenders to the tune of $73 billion. As the debt could not be paid, its price fell. Vulture capitalists moved in buying up the cheap debt and then demanding it be paid at its face value price.

Taking advantage of the crisis, in 2016 Congress, the executive under Obama, and the judicial system ripped the fig leaf off, exposed for even the most ignorant that Puerto Rico was and is a colony, by directly taking control. With bipartisan support, including from the “liberals,” a law was passed called PROMESA. It created an un-elected seven-person financial board that has sweeping powers over the economy.

The Supreme Court made two rulings that underscored the point. One concerned a criminal procedure, and explicitly stated that Puerto Rico is not sovereign. The other ruling voided a law passed by the Puerto Rican legislature that allowed the island to use bankruptcy procedure to reduce the debt and extend the time for payments on the rest until the island’s economy recovered. The Court reaffirmed a 1986 Congressional law that prohibited Puerto Rico from declaring bankruptcy, unlike the 50 states and US. cities that have that right.

Supreme Court Justice Soto Mayor, who is Puerto Rican, dissented from both decisions. She wrote that without being able to restructure its debt through bankruptcy, Puerto Rico and its utilities “will be unable to pay for fuel to generate electricity, which will lead to rolling blackouts” – now to a complete blackout. Other vital services “will be imperiled,” she continued, “including the utilities ability to provide safe drinking water, maintain roads and operate public transportation” – and this was before Maria.

At the time, San Juan Mayor Cruz said, “What the Congress has done, what the president of the United States has done, what the judicial system has done, is that they have unveiled to everyone, the international community and everyone in Puerto Rico, that we are a colony of the United States. PROMESA is a broken promise to the people of Puerto Rico. They have turned their backs on the rights of the Puerto Rican people, and they will not move forward an agenda which will help the development of the Puerto Rican economy.”

She added, “While in the U.S. people are fighting to increase the minimum wage to $15 an hour, this colonial control board will lower the minimum wage in Puerto Rico for people 25 or under to $4.50 an hour. [It] could sell our national resources…. and have sovereign power to revoke anything our next governor, our next legislature or any public official of the Puerto Rican government… will do.”

This board will oversee Puerto Rico’s economy in the aftermath of the hurricanes. Any federal aid for recovery will have to be repaid by Puerto Rico. Already, moves are afoot to utilize the crisis to further privatize the island’s economy. As Naomi Klein has explained in “The Shock Doctrine,” such crises are used by the capitalists and their government to further, not decrease, the exploitation of the workers and oppressed.

That’s what’s in store for the people of Puerto Rico.

Barry Sheppard

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