Debt crisis spurs Puerto Ricans nationalists to seize the day

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María de Lourdes Santiago, Puerto Rico’s lone pro-independence senator, remembers when her parents tried to dissuade her from nationalism. They argued that independence would bring unemployment, crisis, poverty and emigration.

“Well, that’s what’s happening now,” she said in a phone interview with Equal Times.

The island’s US$72 billion debt crisis has revealed the historical problems surrounding commonwealth—or as independence activists call it, the colony.

Unemployment is over 12 per cent in Puerto Rico compared to a national average of 5.3 per cent, a third of the island receives food stamps and migration to the US mainland has steadily increased.

But this situation has been building for some time. A budget shortfall in 2006 led to a temporary shutdown of the island’s government. Twenty thousand government workers have been laid off since then in order to cut costs and university fee increases led to student strikes in 2010 and 2011.

For independence activists, this has placed Puerto Rico dead last when ranking the quality of life in US states. That’s because its commonwealth status has made it impossible for the island to do the things a nation must do to achieve economic stability.

Its import/export rules are tightly controlled by a century old US law that makes it nearly impossible to expand its presence in the market.

Currency manipulation is out of the question and a court recently ruled that the island couldn’t use bankruptcy protection to handle its debt burden.

Nationalists have long believed that the colonial relationship has led to this unsustainable arrangement.

In a phone interview, Wilma Reveron Collazo of the left-wing Hostosian National Independence Movement described the historical relationship between the island and the mainland in this way:

“When [the US] needed sugar, they made the island a sugar factory. When they didn’t need sugar, they left those plantations to their own luck. They brought in manufacturing, but when labour was cheaper elsewhere, they went there. Our local businesses have been completely destroyed by the multinationals, like Walmart. That’s the infrastructure of the economic development of Puerto Rico, it has been historically controlled by US decisions for US profits.”

 

Independence movement gains popularity

Senator Santiago has put forth a bill that would call on the US government to honor the 2012 plebiscite that resulted in 54 per cent of the island wanting to change the island’s status.

“That has been ignored by the US Congress and local authorities,” she said.

But the call for statehood still remains more popular — independence has never scored more than 5 per cent in past plebiscites—although Senator Santiago describes joining the Union completely a “perpetuation of poverty and dependence.”

Furthermore, it’s unlikely that US Republicans would accept the idea of a new state that is majority non-white and carries a huge debt burden.

Senator Santiago also sees a generation shift. Older Puerto Ricans remember a time when advocating for independence was a crime, where many outspoken nationalists served lengthy prison sentences, leaving the cause to revolutionary insurrectionist movements.

These days, nationalism is no longer a felony, and with the current status of the island making it impossible to address Puerto Rico’s structural problems, Senator Santiago and other independence activists believe that her cause can become more attractive to a population yearning for change.

And the US might not want to fight to keep the island anymore; in fact, it might be inclined to no longer have to deal with the debt-burdened island.

Last year, Puerto Rico promised to hold another plebiscite by 2016.

“Things are sort of unfolding by themselves,” said Senator Santiago.

“Things are already happening, we just need to build up our presence in the United States, not only about what’s happening in Puerto Rico and the United States, what’s happening in Latin America. The fact that the United States and Cuba are beginning a new stage of diplomatic relations, and Cuba has been an ally of Puerto Rican independence, that means our ally is now sitting at the same table with the United States and we’re sure that Puerto Rico is an issue that they must have been talking about it.”

“The stars are aligning,” she added.