Is Puerto Rico victim of modern day imperialism?

Floodwaters inundate a home in Cayey, Puerto Rico on Sunday, September 18.

 Stephanie Rojas/AP

Last Sunday a class one hurricane given the name Hurricane Fiona reached the mainland of Puerto Rico. A class one hurricane means that wind speeds reach between 74 and 95 miles per hour and large amounts of rain to go along with the high wind speeds Class one is the lowest class for hurricanes. Despite this, hurricane Fiona has devastated the territory of Puerto Rico. Approximately 400 people had to be rescued due to flash flooding and the entire island lost power. Additionally the destruction and flooding has severely limited access to clean drinking water. As of Tuesday around 40 percent of the island had access to clean drinking water. Hurricane Fiona hit Puerto Rico around the five year anniversary of hurricane Maria which devastated the island and left the island without power for months. It took 11 months for everyone on the island to have their power restored and the electrical grid in Puerto Rico. Their electrical grid which was weakened by hurricane Maria could not withstand even a class one hurricane. As I have mentioned in previous posts, the increase of extreme climate events is just one of many effects that climate change has on the earth. 

The situation in Puerto Rico also deals with other aspects of human rights along with the impacts of climate change. Puerto Rico is a Territory of the United States. This is a complicated situation that is arguably the remnants of imperialism that is still going on in the US today but is often overlooked. Puerto Rico is a territory of the United States but their rights and citizen status is complicated. Puerto Ricans are considered US Citizens as of 1917 but the rights that are protected under the US constitution don't apply to Puerto Ricans. They were able to elect a non voting representative to have a seat in the house. While this may be helpful, it directly contradicts the rights to vote and participate in elections which are supposed to be extended to all us citizens under the constitution. The Supreme court has ruled limiting the constitutional right of Puerto Ricans. In 1901 the Supreme court ruled that the Uniformity Clause of the Constitution did not apply in Puerto Rico because it was not part of the United States. Following this the courts ruled that the sixth and seventh amendments of the constitution do not apply to Puerto Rico. Most recently the courts ruled that the Commerce clause does not apply to Puerto Rico. To this day people residing in Puerto Rico are still not able to register to vote in elections. 

Now bringing this back to the recent hurricane in Puerto Rico, Since they are a territory one would think that the US would be helping in the restoration of the grid, but history shows that we the US hasn't been much of a help. The US government just throws money at the problem. Following hurricane Maria, in 2020 the Trump administration approved almost 9.6 billion dollars to help restore the power grid in Puerto Rico. While this is a start, since then almost nothing has gotten done due to debates and disagreements between the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) and the Puerto Rican Government. In June of 2022 Manuel A. Laboy Rivera, the executive director of Puerto Rico's Central Office for Recovery, Reconstruction and Resiliency, discussed the amount of money FEMA has actually spent on permanent works, or permanent restorations to the power grid. It came out that only 0.05% of the money allocated by the federal government had been spent on permanent works. 

This all brings me to the conclusion of who we should be paying attention to when looking at violations of human rights. While there may be problems related to corruption and the lack of protections of human rights in Puerto Rico, There are larger factors at play. I would argue that in the case of Puerto Rico we need to be looking at the violations of human rights by the United States towards the citizens of Puerto Rico. The “western” and “more developed” nations may have some of the best protections for human rights at first glance but maybe it is important to dig deeper and look at their effects on other nations and on a global scale.

Sources

https://www.vox.com/energy-and-environment/2022/9/19/23360769/puerto-rico-hurricane-fiona-flooding

https://abcnews.go.com/Technology/puerto-ricos-power-grid-struggling-years-hurricane-maria/story?id=90151141

https://immigrationforum.org/article/foreign-in-a-domestic-sense-u-s-territories-and-insular-areas/