‘Cultural Genocide’ in Puerto Rico Displaces Population, Destroys Heritage – Analyst
© AP Photo / Ramon Espinosa
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Quality of life has declined for much of the population of the US territory since Hurricane Maria in 2017. But many argue the roots of Puerto Rico’s problems go back much further.
Colonialism may seem like a phenomenon of the past, the stuff of dry documentaries, period films and college history lectures. But scholar Adriana Maí Garriga-López argues the exploitative practice lives on, with deadly consequences.
“Puerto Rico needs decolonization, not statehood,” said Garriga-López in an appearance on Sputnik’s Political Misfits program Wednesday.
The Associate Professor of Anthropology and Comparative Studies at Florida Atlantic University joined hosts John Kiriakou and Michelle Witte to discuss a series of recent news items demonstrating the deteriorating conditions in the US territory since Hurricane Maria wreaked devastation there six years ago.
On Tuesday, a US news outlet published a shocking analysis showing a sharp increase in excess mortality on the island in 2022. An excess of 3,300 people in Puerto Rico died last year than what historic patterns would ordinarily predict. That made last year’s death rate in the territory 11% higher than that of the United States overall.
A COVID-19 surge is partially to blame for the morbid development, but not entirely. A deteriorating health system on the island and growing economic strain are also placing an unprecedented burden on ordinary Puerto Ricans. The latter is driving a decline of traditional funeral ceremonies in the territory – something Garriga-López says is part of a “cultural genocide” taking place there.
All That is Solid Melts Into Air
“What is happening in Puerto Rico – and I’m not being hyperbolic when I say this – is cultural genocide,” insists Garriga-López, who was born on the island. “And that is what has been happening in Puerto Rico since the aftermath of Hurricane Maria and Irma in 2017, when people were simply ignored.”
“The people who survived Hurricane Maria, who were desperate for food and water for many days, were largely neglected. And we know because of congressional investigations that funds – recovery funds – were deliberately held up, and weren’t actually dispersed to Puerto Rico for many years until after the change of administrations in 2020. So we know that this is an ongoing process of population displacement, of gentrification.”
Families’ struggle to recover from the 2017 disaster – as well as rising inflation and a skyrocketing cost of living – have combined to create unprecedented economic difficulty according to Garriga-López. Puerto Rico has a rich tradition of elaborate funeral ceremonies, multi-day affairs where people on the island lovingly mourn and celebrate the lives of departed family members.
But the ritual is increasingly out of reach for bereaved Puerto Ricans, denying them the comfort and dignity of honoring their loved ones. Many are instead opting for cremation.
Housing is also becoming unaffordable in the territory. “We have seen an incredibly high – skyrocketing increase – in real estate prices, we have seen families literally not being able to find an apartment to rent,” says Garriga-López.
“So we have seen only increasing pressures on the population, which have pushed and driven hundreds of thousands of people to leave Puerto Rico, most of whom did not really want to leave, simply leaving as a response to the critical economic and political situation.”
Fleeing Puerto Ricans are often replaced by wealthy Americans from the mainland, according to Garriga-López, who take advantage of the situation to buy second and third vacation homes on the island. This creates a feedback loop where Puerto Rico’s economy is frequently molded by and oriented to serve the new, non-native population.
“This is a recreation of the colonial fantasy of a ‘terra nullius,’ where one can go and found a new society,” says Garriga-López. “And that’s what they think they’re doing in Puerto Rico.”
“So there is literally a genocidal imagination, where the people who are in Puerto Rico right now are going to be moved off the island, the labor force that can be productive is going to be siphoned into the United States, and the people who are left in Puerto Rico are going to be an aging population that’s going to eventually die out, and political power will be consolidated in the hands of these wealthy new investors and part time residents of Puerto Rico.”
‘I Saw the Future… There Are No Puerto Ricans’
Although the devastation of Hurricane Maria was unanticipated, the political response isn’t, according to Garriga-López.
“The so-called Puerto Rican recovery has been a bonanza for US companies looking for post-disaster expertise that then sets them up for future work in disaster-prone areas like Texas, Florida, Louisiana, etcetera,” she notes. “And that’s what we call ‘disaster capitalism’... These situations create these opportunities where then there’s an intensification of an extractive colonial mode that’s already in place.”
“We do know that a large part of this money has gone to US contractors who have been paid to do shoddy work in places that they are not familiar with, and being paid two and three times what local contractors are being paid.”
“They don’t see the personal, the individual cost that this has had on Puerto Rican families, on Puerto Rican people," said Garriga-López, noting the disastrous effect of the trend towards profiteering at the expense of individual Puerto Ricans.
“That story of the woman dying waiting for an ambulance… that’s not just one person,” said Garriga-López, referring to reports of an elderly Puerto Rican woman who died in her home while waiting over two hours for an ambulance to arrive. “There are so many dozens of stories that I’ve heard just like that one.”
Garriga-López decried the “ongoing maintenance of unjust, unjustifiable and really inequitable policies that create a situation of institutional insufficiency, where we have one neurologist – literally one neurological surgeon – operating in Puerto Rico for the entire population.”
The researcher notes that Puerto Rico is excluded by the US Congress from public healthcare funding available to America’s fifty states. Public education has also seen significant cutbacks in recent years, encouraging many young Puerto Ricans to simply leave the island.
“Young people who are entering the labor market, who are going to college, who are starting their professional lives, must leave the island in order to attain the education that they need, in order to attain the professional experience, the placements they cannot get in Puerto Rico, and so on and so forth” says Garriga-López.
“Once that happens, oftentimes people leave without the intent of staying away, with the intent of coming back – then there is no way to return, because there are no jobs, there’s no way to financially establish.”
The territory lacks a voting representative in Congress, meaning Puerto Ricans face taxation – and political domination – without representation.
The arrangement culminated in the passage of the PROMESA Act in 2016, after which economic policy in Puerto Rico has been dictated by an unelected board appointed by the US president. The economic body, often derided by Puerto Ricans as the “Junta of Control,” has imposed austerity on the island and sold off public institutions to private interests.
The situation has led to massive protests over the last several years, especially after a trove of private messages from government officials was leaked in 2019. The texts and emails confirmed people’s worst suspicions that policy is being enacted to serve outside investors rather than Puerto Rican families.
