Let's debate the future of Puerto Rico

Great Debates
21

Hey, we still produce very good coffee. And pineapples, mangos and citrons (though the citrons got badly wiped out by the last hurricane).
Sugar, though, is now dead, dead, dead. And good riddance. It’s no longer economically viable anyway.

Ag ain’t coming back as a mainstay, though it should be a bigger player. Our future economy has to be service/industrial whatever political direction we take. Ag doesn’t maintain 4 million people, at an over-1100/sq.mi (435/sq.Km) pop. density, living “wealthier” than the rest of Latin Am.

Actually our agriculture began a fast tailspin in the 40s when Muñoz and Moscoso brought in (a) the industrialization policy – industrialization based on US-Tax subsidies to low-wage industries but industrialization nonetheless (people LIKE regular wages) and (b) a huge do-everything, employ-anyone virtually social-democratic state apparatus where government corporations ran even a container-shipping line and the pineapple cannery. Yes, when Food Stamps arrived in the late 60s, that was the coup de grâce, but it was already sore wounded. (Moscoso also abetted an unspoken policy of incentivizing emigration to the continent).

Even before 1944, policies imposed during the period of US direct-colonial administration resulted in small farms being gobbled up by huge absentee-owner sugar estates. Interestingly, the owners and the workers were each the base of support for one or the other of two political/labor blocs that Muñoz wanted broken … and boy did he ever succeed.

It was really after the creation of USIRC Section 936 Tax Credits in 1974 that capital-intensive industries that states would find economically desirable (pharmaceuticals, technologicals) began emigrating into PR. Before that it had been mostly cheap-labor-intensive manufacturing (Sec. 931). It is at that point, when combined with making the Food Stamp program evaluate PRican incomes against the same scale as for the US at large – thus by definition making 2/3 of the population at the time eligible, whether or not they needed it to live – that the whole scenario ralph describes applies, with a dependency culture in the underclass; and for the middle class, US-subsidized (thru tax breaks) industrialization, but no real plan by anyone to turn it into something self-supporting, as if the subsidy would go on forever. The one government that attempted to partly dismantle the “do-everything” state (1993-2000) did not have the political guts to really cut the total payroll, every attempt to divest resulted in accusations that they were trying to “destroy our heritage”, and the privatization program they started ended up stained by some projects actually ending up costing MORE, and some others being overrun by corrupt practices.

On the plus side, the Welfare Reform laws passed in the US in the 90s do apply to PR (no more whole-life welfare) AND the 93-00 admin. didn’t fight the repeal of Section 936 – its phaseout ends precisely this Fiscal Year – in part because they indeed wanted to end the commonwealth (were pro-statehooders). So THAT cost to the US taxpayer has been cut.

Financial services, telecoms and transhipment industries (and even some of the technologicals!) seem to be handling well the phaseout of that tax break, if we avoid futzing them up we stand a fighting chance.

22

JRDelirious, it’s not clear from your posts: Do you personally favor statehood, independence, or continued commonwealth status for PR? Or do you think all these options are irrelevant to the island’s real problems?

23

I;d lik to see PR as a state for reasons of my own, but they could certainly keep doing things in Spanish. No one’s going to talk to them in that language on the Senate floor, but nothing keeps them from in in Puerto Rico.

24

Within the alternatives that meet my expectations I favor statehood. BUT I am also a realist and know that as of today the political will in DC and the majority votes in PR are not there for that final step to be taken. I am for the implantation of a non-territorial, non-colonial system where issues of ultimate sovereignty are clearly defined, and the exercisers of that ultimate sovereignty are accountable to PR.

I am against the “have it both ways” school of commonwealth. I respect Independence, and I respect the believers in Free Association as defined by the UN, wherein the parties explicitly delegate what components of sovereignty are to be shared/outsourced but the people of the associate territory retain ultimate right – except for some demagogues among them who claim that we can retain full funding, full access, full US citizenship, etc., and only delegate what’s convenient.

We already, for most intents and purposes, live as if we were in a state, except for the representation and taxation issues, and are heavily integrated into the US’s social, cultural and economic structures. By being integral part of a large, dynamic politico-economic body we, the people(), have better for social, cultural and economic opportunities, AND we’d bring into the US mix a good dosage of new stimuli for change and realignment of identity paradigms, just in time for the inevitable loss of white-anglo numerical majority.
((= I do not really believe in nationalism, be it American or Puerto Rican. “La patria” is a beautiful abstraction, but the nation/patria/Volk does not bleed, people do.)

IMMEDIATE problem solving should be independent of status outlook because it has to happen “with the system we have”, as Rumsfeld might say. BUT the issue IS relevant to the problems of long-term social and economic evolution of the PR people – because as long as it’s unresolved it contaminates the debate on steps to be taken to achieve that development. For example, Education policies will be debated not on the merits of the policy, but under the suspicion that there’s a hidden agenda to push nationalist or assimilationist ideas onto the next generation (God help us if someone comes out with a pamphlet claiming that Evolution is assimilistic and Creationism is nationalistic, and it becomes popular at the UPR faculty lounge…). The botched effort to dismantle the giant social-democratic state enterprises was fought in some circles as “the Governor is selling our children’s heritage so we won’t have anything to stand on our own! He’s trying to starve us into statehood!” (To be fair, many DID fight it as “Hey, don’t those buyers look a lot like campaign donors?”). And so on.

Also, even immediate policy is hobbled because the political parties are aligned on political-status lines, and that’s just about the only uniting component to each, you have a hard time proposing a coherent, decisive overall liberal or conservative or progressive or moderate-compromise policy program, when you got th eequivalent of a DLC-Southern-Democrat-Type Governor, a Kucinichesque Senate Majority Leader, a Newt Gingrich-Type Secretary of Economic Affairs, a Gephardesque Attorney General, a Delay/Lott-esque House Speaker, a Naderesque Labor Secretary – all under the same administration and political party just because they are all for statehood, for instance.

25

Yeah, I’ve never understood either the panic here about imposed assimilation (we’re *four &^% million in a 100x35 mile space! You can’t move enough Anglos here to dilute the culture if you tried!), nor the apprehension there about the linguistic difference. Unless of course, there are people there who believe that only English-speakers can wrap their minds around the concept of democracy, opportunity, rule of law, tolerance, constitionalism, federalism, etc… I mean, as it is, our Congressional delegate deals in English, the 20-some 'Ricans who have died in Afghanistan and Iraq wearing Stars-and-Stripes on their shoulder took and gave orders in English while writing home to Mama in Spanish.

Of course, in a fit of the realism I mentioned earlier, I must recognize that, for the time being, at least half the population see themselves as just fundamentally “not-Americans” at heart. That has to be dealt with before the decision is made.

FWIW, OTOH I am a firm believer that if one of us moves TO the US mainland, whether or not you identify yourself as an “outsider”, it behooves you to learn as much English as you can, quickly, and to avoid “enclaving” yourself in an exclusively PRican/Hispanic cocoon, isolated from the greater society. But that’s just common sense.

26

There are. There used to be even more.

27

We should probably put PR on a path to a a choice with no middle ground. Just two choices: independance or statehood. In 5-10 years from when we decide on this plan, citizens of PR (or maybe just those that lived in PR with US citizenship when the decision was made, to avoid gaming the issue) will be given this choice:

Choice 1: Statehood.
Choice 2: Irrevocable independance starting 2 years from when the vote was finalized. For a term 5-10 years from when independance is fully achieved, citizens of PR will have preference to emigrate to the US over other immigration-seekers (a la British Commonwealth members,) provided they pass security checks (as we will no longer have controlling authority over immigration INTO PR, it would be easier to go to PR if they themselves relax their security and then try to slip into the US that way.)

Does anyone like my temporary commonwealth plan? That way, if things get iffy in the new Republic, (economically, or even politically although I don’t see that as a major possibility,) people would have time to get out.

28

maybe it is just my opinion, but i see no reason that puerto rico could not become a state and retain its language and customs. omaha nebraska has a pretty large hispanic community, and we seem to be able to coexist in a reasonable fashion.

friend JRDelirious, my wife and i spent a week in your delightful city a few years ago. we remember it fondly, and very often.