KNOW NOW:
Puerto Rico Needs Much More than Money
Desperate for Human Capital to Fix what Government Doesn’t
This is San Juan’s Martin Pena Channel, a narrow tidal flow between Puerto Rico’s Laguna San Jose and San Juan Bay. Estrella Perez knows every turn. The 31-year-old manager with ENLACE is part of a powerful public-private partnership to clean the polluted 3.75 mile stretch that floats her flat bottom boat. She’s part of something bigger, too: the thrust of Puerto Ricans digging in with grassroots solutions to problems long ignored by their elected officials. Here, locals living in the eight barrios surrounding the Channel battled the authorities for ownership over the land they occupy, and joint stewardship over this prized tropical estuary. They only gained traction after raw sewage and toxic waste, its build-up neglected by government for decades, ultimately blocked passage through the waterway.
There are many problems. Big ones. Of all American citizens in the 50 states and territories, Puerto Ricans are by far the poorest (twice as poor as Mississippians), have the highest percentage of single mothers, suffer a soaring school dropout rate, and poverty’s untreated mental and physical health illnesses.
What’s telegraphed as financial - the blight, the infrastructure decay, the ongoing debt crisis - is really political opportunism cum organized fraud. An awkward colonial remnant, the island has been a poaching ground for American banks and corporations, and self-serving local leaders. Controlled by the US, but not really part of it, Islanders see the constant flashing signs that neither statehood nor independence are in sight. The $100 billion debt is rooted in a complex US-Puerto Rico history and reflects an uncertain political identity, an absence of agency. That’s the island’s real deficit.
Voters in this self-governing commonwealth elect one governor after another whose corruption and incompetence have been matched only by the epic escalation of the island’s debt. Machinations of the greedy at the expense of the needy are well documented by analysts like the San Juan Center for a New Economy. Remarkably, there is no accountability, and arguably, that’s because Puerto Ricans have no status.
Battered by manmade and natural disasters, the damage keeps piling up. “It was bad before, it’s even worse now,“ says Eduardo Carrera Morales, CEO of Puerto Rico’s Boys and Girls Clubs. Born into San Juan public housing, he played ball as a boy near the Channel’s Las Margaritas projects, the site of last year’s celebrated 75-defendant drug trafficking bust. Public spaces, playgrounds included, draw drug trafficking gangs looking for sales and other recruits into the trade. A dozen Boys and Girls Clubs across the island offer essential alternatives. In urban and rural areas, Carrera and his team have tailored programs for students and parents, even five year strategies for the most at-risk families. But tactics turn into triage when staff end up trouble shooting for adolescents deprived of basics: nutrition, clean water, and a safe place from the raging narcotics trade, the competing gangs, and the sexual assault.
“This is a society that is highly traumatized, aggravated by storms, earthquakes, this virus pandemic,” says Carrera. Pre-COVID-19, over half the island’s population lived in poverty; the lockdown has pushed families deeper as they lost jobs in retail, restaurants, tourism. “That stress is managed at home, where students are now confined, of course.”
Lockdown reinforces remoteness that Carrera’s team managed to break through, but Boys and Girls Clubs are now shuttered, and many families lack technology to stay connected. He’s worried. Moving Club services online isn’t enough. “Our levels of violence are among the highest in the United States, and our low-income children are exposed to community violence.” Last year San Juan ran the second highest capital murder rate on the entire continent, quite a distinction in the intensely homicidal Americas. Insight Crime reports the conditions that Carerra says his families live in -- gender-based violence, juvenile delinquency and the drug trade -- all spiked last year, indicating a clear loss of government control.
The government callousness has had sordid consequences. Consider what drove Martin Pena Channel neighborhoods into targeted eco-activism. What began as encampment of destitute job seekers in the 1930s morphed into 2020’s eight barrios with thousands of residents. The early settlers filled dense wetlands with refuse, trash, whatever they could find to create firm areas for their shacks. Generations later, their descendants still fight hard for sewage treatment, fresh water, safe building materials, and dredging of toxic waste.
Long on motivation and short on resources, grassroots groups like those in the Channel’s barrios galvanize for infrastructure fixes, from rooftops to roads. A seasoned advisor to many nongovernmental organizations here, Mari Carmen Aponte marvels at their resolve. One shattering storm and seismic disturbance after another, local NGOs are more likely to step in when no one else does. "Their networks are larger, including the Puerto Rican diaspora, and their resources are greater," says Aponte, a diplomat with striking impact as former US ambassador to El Salvador. “NGOs now realize they can’t just be resilient, they have to be self-reliant.”
But many Puerto Ricans have simply given up, and the numbers show it with a steady one-way outflow to the US. There is plenty of churning – islanders traveling to the US and back. Yet Puerto Ricans are the second largest Hispanic minority in the US with Florida overtaking New York as their landing spot. Even skilled and degreed young professionals see more opportunity than what they left on the island. While lives on the mainland are substantially better off financially, they are not necessarily happier, finds the latest Pew Research survey.
Meanwhile, demographics driving economic growth on the island have been in a freefall. Hunter College’s Center for Puerto Rican Studies examined shifts after Hurricane Maria in 2017 and warned depopulation threatened economic recovery. The outflow has dramatically accelerated since and the Kinesis Foundation of Puerto Rico, which has historically prepared poor, talented teens and positioned them for college in the US, is changing course. Ten years after the first Kinesis-supported class graduated from US schools, nearly two thirds remain stateside. The Foundation now puts its premium on promising youth who stay on the island, and provides them academic support, technical certifications, college and career coaching, even leadership skills. If they can successfully scale the up-skilling of students for local employers seeking talent, this could radically change the current norm. Because now, once students reach working age, most have their sights on the US, laments Carrera. “That, or be sentenced to a life of poverty here," he quips. "The reality is, in 2.5 hours you could be in the US. A teacher here earns $24,000 and a teacher there earns $45,000.” Puerto Rico’s teachers haven’t seen salary increases in over a decade.
This week, another 5.4 earthquake crumbled buildings and wreaked havoc on the electrical grid, one of nearly a thousand tremors, large and small, since the major January earthquake that leveled so much of the island. Five months later, thousands of residents still live under blue tarps, in flimsy temporary structures, on the backs of trucks, or in cars. Governor Wanda Vazquez claims many of the homeless are emotionally distraught; citizens counter they don’t trust government inspectors who say dangerous buildings are safe. One thing is certain: the longer it takes for the island to recover, the stronger the surge in migration north. It seems the only thing stopping travelers in their tracks now is COVID-19.
On the canal, the morning’s breezy clouds have given way to piercing sun, but the water remains murky. Perez says she isn’t tempted by more opportunity or higher pay that’s been the US lure for Puerto Rico’s pool of young talent. “Oh, no, no, no…” she responds, her voice resonant with pride. Like the vast majority of children in poverty, Perez was raised by a single mother who worked hard for what she had, and shared her abundant love for the habitat. And, she adds, “for our country.” Six years into her own work with ENLACE, Perez says her civic engagement comes naturally.
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Support Puerto Ricans as the intensity of their needs grows.
Kinesis helps retool and redeploy women into the workforce. A startling majority of single mothers care for special needs boys and girls; COVID's school closures and job losses eliminated activities, lunches and household income. Mentor Puerto Rican startups and entrepreneurs who need your help with accounting, finance, legal, communications, crisis management: check out Grupo Guyacan. Dig in with the nonprofit San Juan Bay Estuary Program and plant grasses, mangroves, take water samples and more. Directed by Brenda Torres, who returned to San Juan after distinguishing herself with the New York EPA, the program is intensely enriching for locals invested in their environs. For a clear view into Puerto Rico’s governance, visit The Government Accountability Project. Click here to research outdated, debilitating US Congressional legislation. Follow Natalie Jaresko as she leads the Financial and Oversight Board of Puerto Rico. The Chicago native cut her teeth as Ukraine’s finance minister during the Russian invasion, mitigating risk in a volatile environment earned her the role of Puerto Rico’s chief financial monitor, overseeing university scholarship funds to electrical grid updates.
Amy Kaslow
K/NOW Senior Researcher and Assistant Editor: Jordan Lee