Poor Puerto Rico

So how does any land associated with wealthy successful America become so poor? Why isn’t Puerto Rico America’s premier resort island paradise? The place doesn’t have any devastating volcanoes like Hawaii has. Why isn’t America supporting the island instead of ignoring the beautiful place? Puerto Rico has had a sad history that contributed to all its financial problems.

The recent hurricane in Puerto Rico didn’t even get as much attention as the hurricanes in Texas and Florida got Hurricane Harvey and Irma was even more popular than hurricane Maria. Puerto Ricans aren’t shocked.  They are used to being treated poorly. For 400 years Puerto Rico was a Spanish colony until 1897. In 1898 Spain granted Puerto Rico automate. They formed their own elected government. Sounds good but then the place became a football in the Spanish American War. When all that fighting was over Puerto Ricans were told that they were part of America. That meant that their peso currency value was reduced by 40%. Within 10 years United States banks and corporations took over most of Puerto Rican land. In 1902 the people were getting poorer and poorer.

In 1917 the United States granted Puerto Ricans American citizenship just in time to have most of the men die in World War I. And so began Puerto Rico’s hundred year history of getting screwed with their pantalones (pants) on by the United States. The average pre-hurricane income of Puerto Ricans was only about $15,000 per year. That is less than half that of Mississippi, the poorest American state. Meanwhile food in Puerto Rico costs twice as much as it does in Florida. How did all this injustice happen? There was a thing called The Jones Act that was passed in 1920 after World War I that was to protect the shipping industry. The Act requires all trade between   United States ports be done on American Merchant ships to the United States and manned by American sailors. So everything supplied to the island has to be shipped by boats. Puerto Rico can’t even benefit from other countries products from their ships.

Add all that sadness to a thing called Operation Bootstraps in 1976 that made the island full of debt. Yeah! Really poor. The program gave tax advantages to companies who would locate to Puerto Rico compounded with another law that would allow companies to re-patriot earnings TAX FREE so what that all meant as a result is that manufacturing flooded to Puerto Rico and Puerto Rican dollars flooded back into the United States that had NO requirement to put ANY money back into the Puerto Rican economy. The place was still poor.

Bill Clinton tried to come to the rescue and revoked a multibillion-dollar tax break for American mainland companies operating in Puerto Rico in 1993 but all that did was encourage all the companies and jobs leave the island. So, they were left with high debt and no jobs. How can the people be always dancing all the time? By 2006 the island was left without the manufacturing and pharmaceutical jobs. Why wasn’t the place filled with tourism? The economy never recovered by 2011. Trump in 2017 threw the mayors of the region paper towels. Literally!

If you are disgusted with all this hardship you can still donate to a great organization called AYUDA a los Pueblos, a Hispanic federation. Donate on line or call (866)HF-AYUDA. Trump could pass some kind of Bill to encourage corporations to develop there again and allow the economy to at least tax them but nah. He won’t do anything unless he could personally profit from it.