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For a lot of Puerto Ricans, together with myself, the pictures of the wildfires that tore by way of Maui hit exhausting.
The devastation dredged up painful reminiscences of Hurricane Maria, which ravaged Puerto Rico in 2017, ensuing within the dying of hundreds of individuals. Regardless of the grief and ache, it didn’t take lengthy, just like what we see in Lahaina, for tax evaders and rapacious speculators to descend on this Caribbean archipelago.
Listening to indigenous Hawaiians beg actual property predators to cease cold-calling Maui residents who misplaced ancestral lands and family members was gut-wrenching and echoed Puerto Ricans’ every day wrestle towards the disaster capitalism perpetrated by outsiders on the Island.
The scenes additionally raised a central concern for Puerto Ricans preventing the onslaught of gentrifiers, who now have extra authority to affect selections about Puerto Rico.
The apocalyptic pictures of Lahaina, the unique capital of the Hawaiian Kingdom, drove house an unsightly reality to Puerto Ricans: statehood didn’t carry native Hawaiians — the Kānaka Maoli — equality. It marginalized them in their very own land.
But, it’s additionally a story of two island archipelagos, every with similarities and variations in its relationship with the U.S. — one a state, the opposite its colony — each completely scarred by an an identical colonial branding iron.
Hawaii and Puerto Rico had been taken by power within the Eighteen Nineties to determine U.S. dominance within the Caribbean and Pacific. Each carry the legacy of sugar barons, the unlawful possession of lands, and the empty promise of democracy and financial prosperity.
And each proceed to undergo the consequences of colonialism and certainly one of its core features — huge displacement.
After Maria, the reactionary pro-statehood New Progressive Get together (PNP) opened up an Island on its knees to actual property predators and the ultra-rich by supercharging a tax incentive legislation, Act 60 (former Act 22). Because of this, Puerto Rican communities are being subjected to break-neck gentrification.
The act was the brainchild of PNP ex-Gov. Luis Fortuño and the present non-voting consultant of Puerto Rico in Congress, Jenniffer González as then-speaker, each rabid Republicans and vocal Donald Trump supporters. As a substitute of an financial development mannequin for the folks, they arrange juicy tax loopholes in 2012.
What this attracted had been dangerous actors like wealth supervisor Kira Golden, who crowed that Hurricane María was “wonderful” for enterprise, cryptobro Brock Pierce, who donated to Trump’s reelection marketing campaign and an anti-choice PAC, Kenneth Chesebro, a major co-conspirator in Trump’s Georgia indictments.
Act 22 people are exempt from nearly all native taxation on Puerto Rico-sourced revenue and, because of the Island’s territorial standing, additionally exempt from U.S. federal taxes. They solely should reside 183 days on the Island, donate $10,000 to a Puerto Rican charity, and show residency by way of voter registration in native elections or different means.
The IRS and U.S. prosecutors announced that not less than 100 rich people illegally took benefit of Act 22 tax breaks by violating residency or different necessities.
However for the hundreds who’ve but to be caught, a voter card may entitle them to take part in a referendum on Puerto Rico’s standing. Let that sink in.
Final yr, the Home handed the Puerto Rico Status Act. The invoice seeks to resolve Puerto Rico’s colonial relationship with the USA by way of a federally binding referendum. Puerto Ricans would select certainly one of three non-territorial standing choices: statehood, independence, or a free affiliation with the USA.
The invoice leaves out important data, comparable to whether or not Puerto Rico could be relieved of economically burdensome maritime restrictions below statehood — Hawaii was not — or get to maintain working authorities operations, courts, and colleges in Spanish. It additionally fails to put out who’s eligible to vote within the referendum.
This begs the query: Will Act 22 outsiders have extra rights to resolve Puerto Rico’s political standing and an open door to affect the social and financial cloth of the archipelago than Puerto Ricans displaced from the Island?
It might be signing the dying warrant of Puerto Rican nation’s existence as a folks if people like Golden, Pierce and Chesebro had a louder say in Puerto Rico’s future over Puerto Ricans pressured to go away an Island carved up by these land-grabbing fashionable colonizers and their enablers. The false narrative that denouncing this colonial oppression is by some means “xenophobia” is the peak of chutzpah.
It have to be Puerto Ricans who resolve how and in what route to decolonize Puerto Rico; not its oppressors. Permitting mega-rich outsiders and tax evaders to take part within the Island’s future could be the colonizer’s final insult and transform Puerto Rico right into a “Hawaii 2.0,” the place the natives are pressured to the margins. We can’t enable that to occur.
Mark-Viverito, a former speaker of the New York Metropolis Council, chairs the board of El Otro Puerto Rico, a social funding and anti-displacement initiative on the Island.
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