Kamala Harris arrived in San Juan, Puerto Rico, final Friday for her first official go to as vice chairman. The journey was meant, partially, to spotlight the Biden administration’s dedication to aiding the island’s restoration. What unfolded as an alternative was a revealing tableau of Democrats’ missteps and misjudgments.
Ms. Harris’s roughly five-hour go to started locally of San Isidro, within the municipality of Canóvanas. There, she visited María Ramos de Jesús, an 86-year-old whose house was solely just lately rebuilt with funds from a program of the Division of Housing and City Improvement.
It was a curious alternative. Most of the residents lack land titles, which made them ineligible for the Federal Emergency Administration Company packages she aimed to advertise. The realm was initially an off-the-cuff settlement constructed on public wetlands by these displaced after Hurricane Hugo in 1989. The HUD funds come hooked up to a brand new FEMA flood map, which implies that greater than 250,000 houses like these throughout the island are recognized to be at excessive threat of flood are ineligible for reconstruction.
The truth that it took seven years for Ms. Ramos’s house to be reconstructed after Hurricane María is indicative of how the federal authorities repeatedly fails Puerto Ricans, irrespective of which social gathering is in cost.
Whereas the Trump administration might have left Puerto Ricans at the hours of darkness after the hurricane, it was the Democrats who set the stage for the storm’s disastrous aftermath. Issues may need turned out totally different had the Obama administration pretty confronted Puerto Rico’s monetary disaster by providing debt reduction, addressing historic injustices and defending important companies, somewhat than saddling residents with a federally appointed fiscal management board that has solely triggered extra hurt.
Whereas on the marketing campaign path, Joe Biden pledged to reverse the austerity insurance policies imposed by the fiscal board and to assist an audit of Puerto Rico’s debt to determine any illegally issued debt. These guarantees, nonetheless, fell by the wayside as soon as he was in workplace.
Regardless that the board acknowledged that a lot of the island’s debt is invalid, it dismissed citizen calls for for a complete audit. As a substitute, it centered on privatizing and dismantling public companies, which in flip triggered dwelling bills and utility prices to soar, at the same time as important companies like electrical energy, water, well being care and training turn out to be more and more unreliable or inaccessible.
The board operates with a chilling lack of oversight. The Supreme Court docket dominated that its members are exempt from normal federal appointment procedures, given the “territorial” nature of their duties. The courtroom additionally dominated in opposition to native journalists who sought entry to the board’s inside information. This, as Justice Sonia Sotomayor wrote in an opinion, has left the board in “a twilight zone of accountability.”
Whereas working-class Puerto Ricans endure the blows of austerity and second class citizenship, tax incentives have attracted a wave of buyers and distant staff, additional straining the island’s assets and displacing its residents. Underneath the tax incentives consolidated beneath Act 60 in 2019, rich buyers obtain breaks on native and federal taxes so long as they purchase property in Puerto Rico and reside there half the yr. This has led to a lack of billions of {dollars} in revenues for the island’s coffers and a land seize that has considerably raised housing prices.
Native activists had hoped to voice these issues to the vice chairman when she visited La Goyco, a authorities closed faculty in San Juan reclaimed as a neighborhood middle. Different worthwhile public lands have been offered or leased to rich buyers for pennies on the greenback solely to be was unique personal faculties or luxurious trip houses.
Ms. Harris’s go to to La Goyco was contentious. A number of activist teams staged protests, denouncing the federal authorities’s insurance policies, not simply in Puerto Rico but additionally in Palestine and Haiti. Some teams chanted “Yankee, go house” or “U.S.A., U.S.A., we wish statehood.”
In a scene paying homage to the HBO present “Veep,” the vice chairman clapped haplessly alongside to the Spanish protest songs that greeted her, apparently not realizing the lyrics have been important of her go to.
After briefly experiencing the native tradition, Ms. Harris moved on to a fund-raising occasion with rich “expat” donors. The occasion was held on the upscale residential and industrial advanced Ciudadela, owned by an Act 60 beneficiary named Nicholas Prouty, whom Ms. Harris acknowledged as a very good pal who saved her up to date on the state of affairs in Puerto Rico after Hurricane Maria.
Ciudadela can be an emblem of Act 60, with a working-class neighborhood having been cleared to construct luxurious flats and a canine park. It additionally performed a task within the corruption trial of Puerto Rico’s former secretary of training, Julia Keleher, who pleaded responsible of fees associated to signing a letter ceding to builders the appropriate to construct on land adjoining to a public faculty in alternate for a reduction on an condominium within the Ciudadela advanced.
The Authorities Accountability Workplace is scrutinizing the Act 60 tax breaks, and the Inner Income Service is investigating those that have tried to profit from the regulation whereas skirting its necessities. Ms. Harris left Puerto Rico with what was reported to be almost half 1,000,000 {dollars} in donations for President Biden’s re-election fund.
Moderately than looking for picture ops, the vice chairman would have finished higher to hear extra carefully to her social gathering’s Puerto Rican Home members, together with Nydia Velazquez and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, who’ve lengthy been calling for better federal oversight over Act 60 beneficiaries, better scrutiny of the anti-democratic fiscal oversight board and a real federal dedication to addressing Puerto Rico’s standing.
Ultimately, Ms. Harris’s go to encapsulates the contradictions of U.S. coverage towards Puerto Rico. On one hand, there’s a perfunctory nod to grass-roots empowerment; on the opposite, a cozying as much as the very forces which can be driving gentrification and displacement. Whereas she didn’t toss paper towels, her go to was what Puerto Ricans name a papelón — an embarrassing spectacle.
