Puerto Rico needs massive rebuilding but won’t get it
By all accounts, Hurricanes Irma and Maria have left the already depressed and debt-ridden Puerto Rican economy in a complete state of infrastructural and humanitarian devastation. The island is once again a “stricken land,” to borrow the phrase coined in 1947 by Rexford Tugwell after having served for five years as governor under President Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal.
Dams, bridges, and roads — many built 50, 60, 70 or more years ago, and poorly maintained since — are either failing or unserviceable. Government offices, schools, and businesses are shuttered. Food, critical medicines and medical care are in short supply. Transportation and communication is disrupted.
Conditions of life island-wide are so bad — and the outlook for improvement so bleak — that the Puerto Rican diaspora will undoubtedly escalate. Today, more Puerto Ricans live in the continental U.S. than on the island of 3.5 million; more Puerto Ricans live in Orlando, Fla., than in San Juan, the island’s largest city and capital.
The underlying causes of this diaspora lie in the total failure of the economic development scheme initiated by Tugwell in the 1940s and expanded in subsequent decades by Luís Muñoz Marín and the Popular Democratic Party, resulting in the island’s emergence in the 1960s as a Caribbean “showcase” of liberal economic development.
The scheme’s unraveling and ultimate collapse lies in a complex tangle of political and economic factors and competing interests inherent in Puerto Rico’s asymmetrical relations with the U.S. metropolis. Blame lies with mismanagement, corruption, opportunism and lack of vision of the public good in both Washington, D.C., and San Juan, as well as the private and public sectors.
Also at play is Puerto Rico’s insularity. Even though containerized shipping and air freight have been innovatively deployed in the Puerto Rican case, insularity undeniably complicates the movement of commodities and people and, therefore, the conduct of business as usual and the achievement of sustainable economic growth.
Congressional repeal of sections of the 1917 Jones Act, which still regulates 21st-century shipping to and from Puerto Rico with now irrelevant early 20th-century concerns, would surely provide an important stimulus to Puerto Rico’s maritime transport sector and to post-Maria economic development.
U.S. citizenship for Puerto Ricans living on the island is of the “second class” variety. As U.S. citizens since 1917, island-based Puerto Ricans have had to migrate to the continental United States to exercise their right to vote in federal elections and to qualify for civil rights protections of the 14th Amendment of the U.S. Constitution.
Consequently, most Puerto Ricans over the decades — through a combination of choice and circumstance — have literally voted with their feet to achieve and enjoy full rights of citizenship and a better quality of life in the continental U.S.
Nothing short of a massive New Deal-inspired program is required to put Puerto Rico back on its feet. But this time, I fear, that will not be forthcoming.
More likely, there will be a FEMA-led reconstruction effort that, apart from providing short-term help to hurricane victims, will facilitate the capitalization of commercial construction projects — resort hotels, high-rise apartment complexes and condos — targeting middleand upper-class, part-time residential and tourist markets. There will be minimal support of local businesses, agriculture, and industry unrelated to tourism; no overall improvement in wages and benefits for workers; and, hence, no prospect of economic development for Puerto Ricans.