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The United States waged a revolution to throw off its colonial status, a history which even school children are aware of. So it’s amazing that our government displays a strong resistance to using the word “colony” for Puerto Rico, instead substituting the word “territory” to define the U.S.’s relationship to the island nation.
The Trump administration’s recent efforts to meddle with the island’s economy should be anathema to any U.S. leader espousing the virtues of “democracy.” But there is nothing democratic about our past and present rule of the island.
Puerto Ricans were granted half-assed U.S. “citizenship” as a result of the signing of the Jones Shafroth Act:
President Woodrow Wilson signed the Jones-Shafroth Act (1917) on March 2, 1917, giving Puerto Ricans U.S. statutory citizenship. This act also separated Puerto Rico’s government into Executive, Judicial, and Legislative branches, and endowed Puerto Ricans with a bill of rights. Additionally, the act established an insular bicameral legislature with 19 elected Senate members and 39 elected House of Representative members. It also stated that Puerto Rico’s Governor and the U.S. Executive branch possessed authorization to veto or override any law enacted by that legislature.
Puerto Ricans cannot vote for president, have no representation in our Senate, and the island’s lone nonvoting delegate to Congress is called the Resident Commissioner:
Puerto Rico is a territory of the United States. Because it is not a state, it has no senators and its representative in the House of Representatives is a delegate, called the Resident Commissioner, with limited voting privileges. Delegates have a marginalized role in Congress and their constituents are not represented in Congress in the same manner as most citizens.
Puerto Ricans do not control their own economy. Thanks to PROMESA, or the Puerto Rico Oversight, Management, and Economic Stability Act of 2016, economic control was grifted (oops, “gifted”) to an appointed board, officially named the Financial Oversight and Management Board for Puerto Rico.
Here’s their official job description:
The Financial Oversight and Management Board for Puerto Rico was created under the Puerto Rico Oversight, Management and Economic Stability Act of 2016. The Board consists of seven members appointed by the President of the United States and one ex officio member designated by the Governor of Puerto Rico. The Board is tasked with working with the people and Government of Puerto Rico to create the necessary foundation for economic growth and to restore opportunity to the people of Puerto Rico.
For those of you who are unfamiliar with this history and present situation, please take four minutes to view this brief explainer from the Coqui Report:
From the Coqui Report video notes:
The Financial Oversight and Management Board for Puerto Rico (also known as la Junta) was created by the United States Congress in 2016 to address Puerto Rico’s ongoing debt crisis. The board has the power to oversee the island’s budget, enact fiscal reforms, and negotiate with creditors on behalf of the Puerto Rican government. The issue is that this Junta has dictator powers over the economics of the island. Critics charge that this Junta makes decisions without having to notify or explain to the people.
Donald Trump made recent headlines for firing the majority of board members on Aug. 5. This move got major Spanish-language news coverage on the island, but I will be posting news in English here and include some of the Spanish-language reports in the comments section below.
The AP’s Dánica Coto wrote an article titled “Trump administration dismisses majority of federal board overseeing Puerto Rico’s finances”:
The Trump administration has dismissed five out of seven members on Puerto Rico’s federal control board that oversees the U.S. territory’s finances, sparking concern about the future of the island’s fragile economy. Four of the five are Democrats.
A White House official told The Associated Press on Tuesday that the board “has been run inefficiently and ineffectively by its governing members for far too long and it’s time to restore common sense leadership.”
Those fired are board chairman Arthur Gonzalez, along with Cameron McKenzie, Betty Rosa, Juan Sabater and Luis Ubiñas. The board’s two remaining members — Andrew G. Biggs and John E. Nixon — are Republicans.
[…]
Sylvette Santiago, a spokesperson for the board, did not immediately return a message seeking comment on whether the board members would fight the decision.
Meanwhile, Rep. Nydia Velázquez, a New York Democrat, criticized the dismissals though she acknowledged what she said were “serious and longstanding concerns” about actions the board has taken, including implementing austerity measures.
Here is Velázquez’s statement on the firing of Puerto Rico Fiscal Board members:
“There are serious and longstanding concerns with the Fiscal Board, its expansive interpretation of PROMESA, and the austerity it has imposed which has devastated Puerto Rican communities. Unfortunately, when Puerto Rico declared its bankruptcy there was no legal path to orderly restructure its debt. Congress sought to fill that gap in 2016, but the process has been far from perfect. Since then, I’ve fought for years to rein in the Board’s power and hold it accountable to the people it was never elected to represent.
“But this sudden purge by Donald Trump is not about justice or reform. It doesn’t dismantle the Board or change PROMESA. It simply creates an opening to stack the Board with even more extreme, pro-bondholder appointees who will continue to put the needs of hedge funds over the Puerto Rican people. If Trump appoints creditor lobbyists to the Board, as he did in his first term, Puerto Ricans will end up paying higher energy bills for decades and facing deeper service cuts, all to boost profits on Wall Street.
“It’s also concerning that an unfortunate exchange during a recent Natural Resources Committee hearing ended up in the hands of bad actors, which may have helped set this chain of events in motion.
The Centro de Periodismo Investigativo, or Center for Investigative Journalism in English, weighed in with a most comprehensive and in-depth look at the board and its history.
Here’s an excerpt from the Center’s article titled “Post-Mortem on the Fiscal Control Board: ‘Make Puerto Rico Great Again’:
The phrase “The show must go on” originated in 19th-century circuses, where performances continued despite setbacks. Similarly, Puerto Rico’s Fiscal Control Board (known locally as “la Junta”) is attempting to carry on its ‘show’ despite the removal of six of its seven members.
On Wednesday, August 6, a day after confirming the first five dismissals by President Donald Trump, the entity created by the federal PROMESA Act in 2016 announced that Andrew Biggs and John Nixon, the only two members remaining in their positions, would ensure continuity for the operations of the Oversight Board.” A week later, Trump also dismissed Biggs, leaving Nixon as the sole active member, which raises significant questions about the Board’s viability and authority.
Since the dismissals, the Board has approved several budget requests, including disbursements to municipalities for a housekeeping program for the elderly, pushed for changes to an employee classification plan at the Cardiovascular Center of Puerto Rico and the Caribbean, and raised questions about a newly signed law that separates the Police Bureau from the Department of Public Safety. It also updated its website, removing information about Arthur González, Betty Rosa, Juan Sabater, Luis Ubiñas, Cameron MacKenzie, and Biggs, the six ousted members. Two of them had been appointed by Trump during his first term in the White House.
“The operations of the Oversight Board continue following its mandate under PROMESA,” the entity told the Centro de Periodismo Investigativo (CPI). It added that it “expects the incorporation of new members before the certification of the next budget and fiscal plans” and that it “is firmly committed to continuing its work.”
The Board is undergoing a political earthquake — an unprecedented moment. For the first time, a president has removed members before their terms expired. Trump dismissed six, five of them at once, in an email sent on a Friday afternoon. He did so without consulting Governor Jenniffer González, which he is not required to do. Nor would he need to consult her when choosing replacements, although Gabriela Boffelli, director of the Puerto Rico Federal Affairs Administration in Washington, told news website Metro that the Trump administration has consulted them about the new appointments.
The reshaping of the Board represents a significant shift, with implications across multiple fronts, from the bankruptcy of the Puerto Rico Electric Power Authority (PREPA) and the reconstruction of the power grid to the daily functioning of the government.
The entire piece is worth a read.
Alberto Medina, president of Boricuas Unidos en la Diáspora, had this commentary:
From the BUDPR video note:
BUDPR president Alberto Medina provides analysis of Donald Trump’s firing of the majority of members on the Financial Oversight and Management Board—the federal entity that rules Puerto Rico.In summary: This will be an utter disaster for Puerto Rico, as Trump gets ready to appoint new right-wing overlords to govern the island. And it’s a consequence of colonialism that will only end with Puerto Rico’s independence!
He also wrote this opinion piece for Jacobin:
From “Trump Is Launching a Hostile Takeover of Puerto Rico”:
No one should shed a tear for members of the board — or La Junta, as Puerto Ricans not-so-lovingly call it. The FOMB was created by federal law (PROMESA, signed by President Barack Obama in 2016) to address Puerto Rico’s financial crisis and oversee its debt restructuring process. It was given near-unlimited power by Congress to set Puerto Rico’s budget, veto local laws, and overrule the elected governor.
For the past decade, the board has used that authority to implement a draconian austerity regime in Puerto Rico. It has slashed pensions, cut funding for public education, and pushed for privatization of the island’s electrical grid to companies that charge Puerto Ricans more money for a poorer service.
While Puerto Ricans feel the pain, bondholders swim in profits. The board’s members, and its army of lawyers and consultants, are handsomely paid as well. Executive director Robert Mujica Jr, who was Andrew Cuomo’s former budget chief in New York, makes $625,000 a year — more than the president of the United States. As of 2022, McKinsey had raked in $120 million for consulting on the island’s debt restructuring. By now, that figure is surely higher.
[…]
We do not yet know who will replace the five dismissed members of the FOMB, but Trump and the Republican Party will get to handpick the new appointees. They will almost certainly be even friendlier to the hedge funds that have already crippled Puerto Rico’s finances and social fabric since the debt restructuring began. We can now expect more austerity and vulnerability in a place that, by the FOMB’s own admission, is experiencing a demographic death spiral due to low birth rates and outmigration.
But a board full of Trump acolytes may do far worse than give bondholders a nice payday: the power of the purse will allow them to reshape Puerto Rican society. The FOMB might decide that the University of Puerto Rico is a den of diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) wokeness and demand curricular changes before approving its budget. It can choose to deny funding to Puerto Rican agencies and programs that do not comply with Trump’s English-only policy.
[…]
The only moral and meaningful solution to this undemocratic fiasco is to end Puerto Rico’s colonial status. And there is only one way it could feasibly end: with sovereignty. Republicans soundly reject statehood, which they are convinced would result in more Democratic members of Congress. Democrats, for their part, are both too divided on statehood and too disinterested in expending the massive political capital it would take to overcome Republican opposition. As with statehood for Washington, DC, the notion that Puerto Rican statehood could get sixty votes in the Senate is a complete fantasy.
But many American policymakers and citizens alike continue to indulge that fantasy and operate under the delusion that statehood is a realistic outcome. In doing so, they merely perpetuate Puerto Rico’s colonial status — and are not-too-indirectly responsible for whatever their president, whom Puerto Ricans cannot even vote for, is about to unleash on the island.
It’s clear to me that the word “democracy” doesn’t apply to colonies, no matter what bureaucrats decide to call them. Join me to discuss this issue in the comments section below, where I also post a weekly Caribbean News Roundup.