The Power and the Money

Puerto Rico is not following the Tennessee Plan, but it may work regardless

In 1790, North Carolina ceded its western territories to the federal government in payment for the federal assumption of its revolutionary debts. In March 1796, the Southwest Territory unilaterally declared that it was now a state. The legislature elected two senators and organized a popular vote for two representatives. The delegation showed up in Washington and demanded to be seated. After a few months of confusion, Congress passed a joint resolution admitting the Southwest Territory as the State of Tennessee. Congress seated the two senators, who had been constitutionally selected by the legislature, but insisted on a new election for the House of Representatives. 

That was before the 17th Amendment, however. But in 1959, the Alaska Territory tried the same thing. The state organized elections for two senators and a representative, who went to Washington and asked to take their seats. Congress agreed to seat the representatives in 1959, as part of a deal that also admitted (then Republican) Hawaii. 

But such a plan is not a sure shot at success. Did you know that  the District of Columbia has been electing shadow senators since 1990? I discovered this fact on March 13, 2016.

I was stuck at a red light on an exit ramp from Rock Creek Parkway onto Massachusetts Avenue, when I saw that the Chrysler 300M ahead of me had the strangest license plates. They were D.C. plates, but instead of a number there were the words “US SENATOR” in an unusually small font. 

So I took a photo.

To my surprise, the Chrysler dropped behind me and started to tail my car. This went on for about two miles. Annoyed, I pulled onto a side street, stopped the car, and walked over to car now tailing me. I knocked on his window. “You’re following me.” It wasn’t a question. 

The driver, a bearded white man, responded with no hostility in his voice. (That will be hard to believe when you read the words, but it is true.) “You took a picture. Was there something you didn’t like about the car?” 

My voice likely showed some irritation. “I’ve never seen a license plate like that. I took a picture. Are you a Senator I don’t recognize?”

He didn’t answer my question. Instead he said, “I’m sorry, there’ve been incidents.”

“What incidents?” I responded. “What senator do you work for?” But he drove off. 

And that was how I discovered that he was Paul Strauss, one of D.C.’s shadow senators, elected by the people of the District to lobby Congress for statehood. So far, Strauss and his colleague, Mike Brown, have accomplished precisely nothing.

Puerto Rico is now trying what it claims to be the same strategy. Appoint shadow senators and representatives and lobby Congress to have them seated. But:

1. Problem #1 with the plan is that the would-be congresspeople haven’t been elected. So poof, none of the legitimacy that the representatives from Tennessee (and later Alaska) brought to the table. 
2. Problem #2 is that Puerto Rico will be highly Democratic. Despite impressions, that was not true as of September 20, 2016 2017. But now, after the Trump administration decided that it did not care about the island, whatever conservative leanings the electorate might have had have been destroyed. Republican strategists know this. But the Puerto Rican delegation has no plan (a la the paired admission of Alaska and Hawaii) to counterbalance.
3. And problem #3 is that D.C. has been trying the serious version of the strategy for 27 years, to no avail. 

Which means that I should be here saying that this strategy has a snowball’s chance in Hell of succeeding. But I actually think the reverse. In fact, I would bet on statehood happening very fast the next time that Democrats win both houses of Congress and the presidency.

Once upon a time admitting two states (D.C. and P.R.) on a party-line vote would have been seen as a sort of unconscionable gerrymandering. But that time is passing. The norms of American political life have been going out the window for some time, maybe since Robert Bork, certainly since Texas decided to carry out its intercensal redistricting in 2003. (The redistricting violated political norms, but despite all the liberal outrage, it actually made Texas politics fairer and more democratic. Really.)

I do not see the political penalty for the Democrats from shoving through statehood for both jurisdictions at the next chance they get. Plus side: four extra senators. Minus side: some loss of control over the District on the part of Democratic representatives from Maryland.

Which leaves only one reason not to admit either or both the District and Puerto Rico: fear of a voter backlash at the following election.

Is that likely? 

How is Argentina like Puerto Rico?

Mostly, it isn’t.

But there is a sign of a disturbing history deep in the genetic heritage of most Puerto Ricans. And contrary to the popular belief, there may be some trace of the same history in Argentina. 

Some background. Over on Twitter, the great Pseudoerasmus and the great Gabriel Mathy began a debate over why North America saw relatively little intermarriage between Europeans and Native Americans compared to elsewhere. Pseudoerasmus argued that it was all about initial conditions. The Iberians migrated in smaller numbers to areas with bigger indigenous populations and in a heavily male-heavy environment. Gabe, conversely, argued that it was all about cultural norms. The English did not intermarry in significant numbers even in places with high numbers of indigenous and skewed sex ratios. 

It was an interesting discussion which I hope is put into a blog post. I participated for a bit but dropped out; Pseudoerasmus and I get along brilliantly, but in the heat of tweeting innocent responses can come across as more than slightly hostile. Moreover, the long threads are impossible to follow, quite unlike comment threads on a blog or the old newsgroups. (or ... gulp ... Reddit.) These are two of the reasons why I think Twitter is useless (at least for me) and am leaning towards quitting the platform, but I digress. If you must, try here and here. 

What does any of this have to do with Puerto Rico? Well, early DNA studies, from back when such things were new and neat, showed something a bit creepy. Mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA), which is passed down through the female line, skewed Native American. But Y-chromosomes were entirely European and African. The implication is that something awful happened to the entire male Taino population; they were either killed or denied the possibility of procreation. Likely both.

Later studies upheld the results. Here is one from 2014, which sampled 326 people and found mtDNA that was 60% indigenous, 25% African, and 15% European, whereas the male Y-chromosomes were 85% European and 15% African.

Argentina is typically thought of as a European settler offshoot, and with good reason. In 1895, 25% of the population was foreign-born, overwhelmingly from Europe and the Levant. By 1914, that figure was up to 30%. Gross immigration between 1857 and 1914 came to 4.6 million people; net immigration ran about 3.0 million. (Pages 201-02 of the 1914 census.) All this with a population of only 7.9 million in 1914! Add in the Argentine-born children of those 3.0 million post-1857 immigrants, and you have a veritable transformation of the population. You might reasonably expect Argentines to have a similar genetic makeup to, say, white people in the northeastern United States or Ontario.

But there is some evidence that you would be wrong. 

A 2010 study found that 54% of Argentine mtDNA came from indigenous sources while 94% of Y-chromosomes traved to Europe. These results are strikingly close to Puerto Rico (minus the large African admixture on the island) ... shockingly so for a country which received mass immigration from Europe in relatively recent times.

So what explains the result?

Well, first, maybe it is wrong. It is one study of 246 individuals and sampling issues are not small. I suspect that the prevalence of indigenous mtDNA it is more-or-less correct; the result has been corroborated in multiple studies. The Y-chromosome part is dicier.

Second, another study added a wrinkle: half of the indigenous South American DNA appears to have originated outside the modern borders of Argentina. That opens up the possibility that at least half of the result may be driven by migration from Paraguay, Bolivia, and Peru. As the authors write, “We did not collect bio-geographic information for most of the donors of our samples, and this is information was not available for most of the data collected from the literature; therefore, some donors could be in reality Native American immigrants (or descents form parents) from neighboring countries.”

Finally, European immigration to Argentina skewed male. (See page 271; it goes to CICRED 1974.) In 1869-1914, 1.7 males arrived for every female. That could explain some of the disproportionate prevalence of European Y-chromosomes compared to mtDNA without the specter of a Puerto Rican style past holocaust.

Nonetheless, the prevalence of native American ancestry in Argentina — and its apparent concentration in maternal ancestral lines — is a bit of surprise! There is a lot we do not know about the Argentine past ...

The Jones Act is stupid, but not colonialism

The Merchant Marine Act of 1920 reserves shipping between American ports to American-built vessels with American crews. The reason was to protect the merchant marine from British, Norwegian and (especially) Japanese competition. After all, the U.S. wanted to be sure that it would have a merchant marine in wartime; that meant protecting the industry in peace. The same logic was later applied to airlines.

The problem? Well, the U.S. industry collapsed despite protection. Railroad dieselization and the interstate highways drove down the cost of land transport. The result was the collapse of the merchant marine despite the act. A tiny fleet of 93 Jones-Act-qualified ships schlumps on by having a high-priced lock on transport between the Lower 48 and Alaska, Hawaii, Puerto Rico, and the other insular territories.

This is perverse on multiple levels. First, it forces more U.S. domestic cargo onto the roads. The European Union has no Jones Act equivalent and moves 40% of its domestic freight via coastal shipping (page 22); the U.S. would likely move more considering how close our population centers are to the water. 

Second, it advantages foreign producers in the insular markets. It is cheaper to import from Europe than from the mainland United States.

Finally, it really does screw over exporters from the insular possessions. It is way easier to build up a supply chain when you are in the same country, but the Jones Act cripples Hawaiians and Puerto Rican firms that might want to plug themselves in. 

So we are in the worst of all worlds: high shipping costs but no serious domestic industry. (At least airline protectionism got us a lot of airliners.) Ironically, Malcolm McLean used Puerto Rico to test out containerization back in the day, but now there are no modern container vessels shipping between U.S. ports. One might claim that Puerto Rico is screwed because it is a territory instead of a state ... but Alaska and Hawaii are equally screwed, whereas the U.S. Virgin Islands has somehow wrangled a permanent exception.

So the Jones Act is stupid, but not, as Carlos Yu has pointed out, colonialism. Nor is it the biggest problem right now: supplies are reaching Puerto Rican ports but cannot be distributed due to lack of ground transport. 

What is stupid and colonialism is the refusal by the Trump administration to waive the act in the face of Hurricane Maria, despite such waivers being routine in other disasters. Such disasters include hurricanes which just hit Texas and Florida. Even if the Jones Act is only a marginal contribution to the suffering on the island, the different treatment is unconscionable.

For a small fee in America: Hurricane Maria and Puerto Rico’s debt burden

Hurricane Maria has devastated Puerto Rico. The worst part is the power system: as of right now, all generation assets are offline. All of them. The Puerto Rico Electric Power Authority (PREPA) says it is going to resume normal functioning on Monday, but nobody knows what that means. The (outdated and expensive) power plants appear to have survived the storm, but the main transmission cables are out. (You can get DOE updates here.) That is why power barges, while useful, won’t solve the problem until the transmission network is back up: the distribution network cannot move the power to the load centers. Besides which, there are not a lot of power barges sitting around ready to go.

Unless the Trump administration allocates an entirely-unexpected sum of money, Puerto Rico is going to need to borrow massive amounts for reconstruction. (In a past America, the GOP might think $10 billion in emergency aid enough to cement Republican control over the island for a generation. We no longer live in that America.) 

The hurricane is going to permanently damage Puerto Rico’s ability to repay. Work by Leah Boustan (Princeton), Matthew Kahn (USC), Paul Rhode (Michigan) and Maria Lucia Yangua (UCLA), using a century of data, shows that natural disasters increase out-migration and permanently raise poverty rates. The latter, of course, is because wealthier people are more likely to move out. Puerto Rico, according to their estimates, will lose around 4 percentage points more of its population over the next decade than it would have otherwise; roughly 140,000 people and the associated economic activity.

That said, the hurricane is also likely to reduce Puerto Rico’s current debt burden. Title III of the Oversight Act (aka “PROMESA”) created a bankruptcy-like procedure for Puerto Rico. Under that procedure, judges and the Oversight Board have a lot of leeway. They will take into account that the island now needs more money and has less ability to repay.

What really needs to happen now is a fast resolution so that Puerto Rico can go back to the capital markets. Investors have short memories; the island will be able to borrow the $10 billion it needs for full recovery. But the existing debt needs to be written down. My worry is not that the debt won’t be written down enough, it is that it won’t be written down fast enough to speed hurricane recovery. 

The hurricane has made it a little bit more likely that the courts will quickly write down debts. PREPA bond prices here; graphed below. They are falling. Puerto Rican general obligation bonds, which are much less likely to be restructured, are not falling; think of them as a control. 

Privatizing PREPA could speed recovery by opening access to the capital markets. But there are two problems. First, in order to unlock the full value from a sale ($3½ billion is credible), you need to restructure the debts first. Second, in order to insure that the new enterprise gets the system in shape fast, you need enforceable performance targets. Many governments have screwed up power privatizations on both counts, so color me skeptical, although in this case the hurricane has likely left no alternative save more time with the lights out. 

In short, the debt burden is going to slow Puerto Rico’s recovery from the hurricane and slow it a lot. But at the same time, the hurricane is also going to speed resolution of Puerto Rico’s debt crisis. Note that these things are not contradictory; better for everyone had the hurricane never happened. For a small fee, indeed.

Puerto Rico is still a pretty nice place

A long time ago, I had a debate with my friend (and sometimes co-blogger) Doug Muir about Puerto Rico. Was it really that much better off as a territory of the United States? He mentioned that Costa Rica was not all that bad off. I said, yes, true ... but the place is not in the same league as Puerto Rico.

How big is the difference?

Well, the nominal median household income in Puerto Rico in 2014 was $18,928. Meanwhile, the middle quintile of Costa Rican households earned between $3,597 and $5,933 per year. The human development index for Costa Rica is about 0.77, versus 0.87 in Puerto Rico. Crime is higher in Puerto Rico, which in 2015 clocked in at 16 homicides per 100,000 versus 12 in Costa Rica, but both places are in the same league. 

Even if you use a generous purchasing power parity adjustment for Costa Rica, the place is still dreadfully poor compared to Puerto Rico. The OECD uses a PPP exchange rate of 370 colones per dollar: at that rate, the middle quintile in Costa Rica earns between $5,202 and $8,581 per year. (Note that while costs in Puerto Rico are not much less than on the mainland, they are less than on the mainland. But people who tell you otherwise are not crazy: milk and vegetables are far more expensive for reasons which I do not understand while electricity is far pricier for reasons that I understand full well. Those three items are highly visible and can easily make the island feel more expensive the mainland.) 

And Puerto Rico lacks the kind of horrible rural poverty that you can easily find in Costa Rica.

In short, Puerto Rico is facing an economic crisis of biblical proportions. It has a very difficult decade ahead of it. Puerto Ricans have a lot to dislike about the institutions that link the island to the rest of the United States. But the residents of that island are still far better off than they would be had those links never existed.

ColoradoCare

 Speaking of health care, does everyone know that Colorado has single-payer on the ballot this November? 

The big problem is rising health care costs. You can come up with a program that covers its costs now, only to have it fall into the red as those costs continue to increase. I hate to cite Megan McArdle, simply because she likes to say things like, “Not that I'm saying single payer would work well at the federal level, because I don't think it would,” despite, you know, Canada. 

But on this one, she is right: Colorado would be taking a big risk. After all, health care costs are a big part of the Puerto Rican story.

I am not sure how I would vote. I would want to see more about cost control and escalator clauses on the tax bill. Just telling readers that something interesting is afoot out west. 

Puerto Rico is no longer foreign in the domestic sense, it is domestic in the domestic sense

 In another post, J.H. and I had an interesting discussion about Puerto Rico’s political status. Is it a colony in which the U.S. constitution does not apply — what American law calls an “unincorporated territory”? Or is it an old-fashioned territory, like Alaska and Hawaii before 1959 or Arizona and New Mexico before 1912?  

I am going to argue that Puerto Rico is in fact a de facto incorporated territory, just like the area covered by the Northwest Ordinance or Colorado before 1876. Bit by bit, in scattered pieces of legislation, Congress has fully extended the Constitution to Puerto Rico. Sure, Congress could pass an organic act and declare the Commonwealth to be an old-fashioned territorial government, but that would change nothing. It is now just an old-fashioned territory, like Arizona used to be.

Some history: the United States annexed Puerto Rico along with the Philippines in 1898. For purely racial reasons, there was zero support for taking over the Philippines as an ordinary territory, thereby bringing 7 million “Malays” into the American polity. Congress therefore created a special colonial status for the Philippines, under which the U.S. government would exercise sovereignty but within which the U.S. Constitution would not apply. That status was extended to Puerto Rico (essentially by default) and the Supreme Court ratified it in the infamous insular cases, which ruled that Puerto Rico was “foreign in a domestic sense.”

After 1898, however, Congress  and the Supreme Court slowly but surely extended the Constitution to the island. In 1917, Puerto Ricans became American citizens. In 1947, Congress extended Article IV, Section 2 of the Constitution to the island. In 1952, it went further, declaring that anyone born in Puerto Rico (regardless of parental citizenship) would be a citizen. The Supreme Court then extended the First, Fourth, Fifth, Eleventh and Fourteenth amendment to the territory; extending the latter brought along the Sixth and Eighth amendments with it. 

The Seventh Amendment, which guarantees a jury trial in civil cases, does not apply to Puerto Rico. But it does not apply to any state, either: in 1877, in Pearson v Yewdall, the Supreme Court held that the 14th Amendment does not impose the Seventh upon the states.  

What about criminal law? Didn’t the Supreme Court recently rule that someone could not be tried separately in federal and Puerto Rican courts? Well, yes it did, but the logic of 2016’s Puerto Rico v. Sanchez Valle stated only that Puerto Rico was not a state, sovereign under the 11th Amendment. Rather, it was a creation of Congress. But that gives Puerto Rico the same status as any pre-1959 territorial government; nothing in the reasoning derives from Puerto Rico’s original colonial status. 

Puerto Rico is indeed treated differently in terms of federal funding — a big part of the recent crisis is in fact due to Congress’s decision to fund Medicaid at a far lower rate on the island. But is that because Puerto Rico is unincorporated? No: Alaska was similarly shortchanged for federal highway money before statehood.

That leaves the income tax exemption. (Alaskans paid income taxes before statehood; the District of Alaska was incorporated in 1912, around the time of the 16th Amendment.) It seems fair that Puerto Ricans don’t pay those taxes on the basis of “no taxation without representation,” but the courts haven’t held that. Rather, they don’t pay because of 48 U.S. Code § 734. In other words, Congress exempted the island in 1917. Could it have done that with an incorporated territory? I have no idea and I would love to have a lawyer weigh in ... but I suspect that the answer is yes. After all, nobody doubts the constitutionality of the Empowerment Zones, which provide tax exemptions for investors and businesses that set up shop inside them. 

Finally, what about citizenship? Reader J.H. worries that Congress might strip Puerto Ricans of their citizenship should it so choose. (Or, more realistically, should Puerto Ricans vote for independence.) That, however, seems unlikely. The courts have defined Puerto Ricans as natural-born American citizens. It is extremely hard to strip a natural-born American of their citizenship. The courts have ruled that taking out a foreign nationality will not do it; hell, not even serving in the armed forces of another state will do it. (My uncle Eddie served in the IDF; he kept his citizenship.) The law now recognizes the SCOTUS decisions. Note the italics: “A person who is a national of the United States whether by birth or naturalization, shall lose his nationality by voluntarily performing any of the following acts with the intention of relinquishing United States nationality.”

That is, of course, only a law. It could be changed, but the change would only apply to naturalized citizens (maybe): the courts have been clear that the 14th Amendment protects natural-born citizens unless they explicitly declare that they intend to renounce their citizenship. 

There is a peculiar court decision from 2008 that argues that Puerto Rico has effectively become an incorporated territory. Consejo de Salud Playa de Ponce V. Rullan concluded, “Actions speak louder than words. Although Congress has never enacted any affirmative language such as ‘Puerto Rico is hereby an incorporated territory,’ its sequence of legislative actions from 1900 to present has in fact incorporated the territory.” 

No other courts have cited this ruling, but the logic seems to hold: Congress could pass an organic act incorporating Puerto Rico tomorrow, and it is not clear that anything would change. 

(Statehood, of course, is an entirely different thing.)

To conclude, I am honestly not sure that Puerto Rico’s “unincorporated” status amounts to anything. I suspect that it doesn’t. 

ADDENDUM: This piece in the The Atlantic came to my attention after I wrote the above. It is accurate in the particulars but misses the point: SCOTUS ruled against Puerto Rico on the grounds that it has no independent sovereignty, just like Alaska or Arizona or Minnesota or anywhere else before they became states. The insular cases have nothing to do with it!

(Note: Some states were sovereign before statehood: the Thirteen Colonies, Texas, and maybe if-you-squint Vermont. Hawaii was sovereign but lost it in 1898, 61 years before it became a state.)

Paul Ryan has a tough job with the Puerto Rico oversight bill

 To recap, the Puerto Rico Oversight Act as it currently stands will:

1. Give Puerto Rico a six-month stay on all debt payments;
2. Require the Governor to create 5-year fiscal plans and submit them to an appointed Oversight Board for approval;
3. Require the Legislature to submit all passed budgets to the Oversight Board for approval;
4. Allow the Board to unilaterally cut budgets if the Governor submits a budget that does not comply with the fiscal plan;
5. Allow the Board to negotiate with creditors to restructure debts (which usually means reducing them in net-present value terms);
6. Allow the Board to suspend certain federal labor regulations on the island, including the federal minimum wage;
7. Grant bankruptcy protection to Puerto Rico (without using the term) and give the Oversight Board the ability to intervene in litigation against the island.

Without (1) and (7) the island goes to pieces right quick. You can see a (rather misleading) summary of what Republican supporters say the bill will do here.

My worry about the Oversight Board is not that it will cut budgets more drastically than an elected Puerto Rican government. The examples of Portugal, Spain, and Greece are pretty clear: when they cannot borrow anymore, elected officials do a fine job of imposing austerity. Maybe too fine a job. Rather, I worry that they won’t negotiate as hard as the government would. On the other hand, as Felix Salmon points out, the Board will consist of seasoned professionals who may be able to drive a harder bargain than Puerto Rican officials. So it is a bit of a wash.

But ... weirdly ... Republicans kept trying to neuter the bill in committee! (The link takes you to a blow-by-blow of the action.)

Consider the McClintock amendment. (Rep. McClintock, R-California, has in fact offered several amendments.) It would clarify that the bill would not apply to Puerto Rico debt obligations that are supported by a pledge of “full faith, credit and taxing power,” meaning, like, all of them. It would also clarify that nothing in the bill would alter debt holder rights or guarantees under Puerto Rico’s constitution or other laws. Which would, in effect, nullify bankruptcy protection by insuring that creditors could sue under Article 6, Section 8, of the Puerto Rican constitution.

Pretty blatant. Rejected 12 to 27. 12 Republicans in support, 16 Democrats opposed, 11 Republicans opposed.

Which Republicans opposed the amendment? Well, there was the committee chair, Rob Bishop (R-Utah). Good for Rob! The other Republicans that opposed it consisted of a collection of retirees on their way out (so under no political pressure), Raúl Labrador (R-Idaho, but born in Puerto Rico), Amata Radewagen (R-American Samoa), and a handful of others.

For most of the markup the Chairperson Bishop has been able to beat back amendments with points of order, but the more senior Republicans (including McClintock, obviously) lined up behind these poison pill amendments. The final vote was 29 to 10 and basically split the Republicans.

You gotta wonder what it will look like on the floor. If Paul Ryan lets it move without the majority of the caucus behind it, then he will have earned my respect. Sure, I may be a little disgusted at his resorts to magic asterisks to justify his silly budgets, that cut social insurance not because we have to but because he wants to ... but hey, reasonable people can disagree. If he gets this bill through and refrains from helping the Drumpfster this year, well, then the man will deserve to be the GOP nominee in 2020. Honorable opposition indeed!

Good luck with that, Paul.

I hope Bernie Sanders is talking cheap about Puerto Rico

 Short version: PROMESA would grant bankruptcy protection to Puerto Rico. (Since I hate these cutesy names Congress loves, I will henceforth call it the Puerto Rico Oversight Act.) But the bill would also put P.R. under a fiscal receivership. An Oversight Board appointed by the President of the United States from lists submitted by Congressional leaders. The Board would essentially take control of the island’s budget process. In return, the Board would get the power to take Puerto Rico’s creditors to bankruptcy court, including the holders of general obligation debt. (That suspends a provision of the Puerto Rican constitution.) The board would also have the power to suspend federal minimum wage laws.

The Oversight Act is a less-than-great deal, but it is also less than it seems. First, without it Puerto Rico’s creditors will tie the place up in lawsuits. Nobody wants a board forcing budget cuts, but it’s better than a bunch of vulture funds making the decisions. Second, Puerto Rico will have to cut its budgets in any case: it can’t afford to borrow any more. The Board might make stupid decisions, but austerity is sadly already backed in the cake. Third, Puerto Rico will be able to restructure general obligation bonds. That is more than most plans involved; in fact, it gives Puerto Rico a power that most states lack. (Although to be honest, the law on that is less than clear. Start with the 11th Amendment and go from there.)

Senator Sanders opposes the bill, calling it colonialism. And he’s right! It is.

But what’s his legislative strategy to replace it and replace it quickly? Because the bill is way better than the status quo. 

I don’t think he has a plan. I think this is an easy way to score political points, same as Senator Rubio did back when he was running for President. If it’s cheap talk, then I’m okay. But if he’s really mobilizing Democratic opposition, then he’s doing immense damage to the people of Puerto Rico and giving lots of power to hedge funds and their lawyers, aka “Wall Street billionaires.” 

It would be ironic if actual livelihoods weren’t in the balance. 

I would like to believe that the Senator from Vermont does indeed have a secret plan to get a better bill through, but I don’t.

Background on my disillusionment with Marco Rubio

 OK, now I am little more free to mention that I spent a chunk of the past year doing paid analysis on Puerto Rico.

During that time, Senator Rubio went from an extremely helpful proponent of extending U.S. public bankruptcy law to the island  to a complete opponent.

His opposition made no sense. The bill would not have protected the island government; only counties and public corporations. In other words, it would have given Puerto Rico the same treatment as any U.S. state. Considering as Senator Rubio supports making them a state, it is hard to see the rationale behind denying them the same protection now. Other than, well, the recent receipt of campaign contributions from creditors to the island government.

That point marked when I got off the Marco Rubio bandwagon. (Not that I was a supporter; I am a Democrat. But I thought he was a very reasonable conservative.) His October tax proposal pushed me further away. And now, it seems, that he advocates giving away the store to the financial industry. Click the link; it is very good. And it draws some comparisons with Jeb Bush from which  Rubio comes away looking pretty bad.

I am tempted to say, in fact, that with a GOP congress, Donald Trump might make a better president. 

OK, talk me out of that. 

Leave Puerto Rico alone

 Puerto Rico has its troubles, but I like the place.

 
Below is the text of H.R. 2499, which just made it out of the House. I am not strongly opposed, but I do not think it is a good idea.

SECTION 1. SHORT TITLE.

This Act may be cited as the ‘Puerto Rico Democracy Act of 2009’.

SEC. 2. FEDERALLY SANCTIONED PROCESS FOR PUERTO RICO’S SELF-DETERMINATION.

(a) First Plebiscite- The Government of Puerto Rico is authorized to conduct a plebiscite in Puerto Rico. The 2 options set forth on the ballot shall be preceded by the following statement: ‘Instructions: Mark one of the following 2 options:

(1) Puerto Rico should continue to have its present form of political status. If you agree, mark here XX.

(2) Puerto Rico should have a different political status. If you agree, mark here XX.

(b) Procedure if Majority in First Plebiscite Favors Option 1- If a majority of the ballots in the plebiscite are cast in favor of Option 1, the Government of Puerto Rico is authorized to conduct additional plebiscites under subsection (a) at intervals of every 8 years from the date that the results of the prior plebiscite are certified under section 3(d).

(c) Procedure if Majority in First Plebiscite Favors Option 2- If a majority of the ballots in a plebiscite conducted pursuant to subsection (a) or (b) are cast in favor of Option 2, the Government of Puerto Rico is authorized to conduct a plebiscite on the following 3 options:

(1) Independence: Puerto Rico should become fully independent from the United States. If you agree, mark here XX.

(2) Sovereignty in Association with the United States: Puerto Rico and the United States should form a political association between sovereign nations that will not be subject to the Territorial Clause of the United States Constitution. If you agree, mark here XX.

(3) Statehood: Puerto Rico should be admitted as a State of the Union. If you agree, mark here XX.

SEC. 3. APPLICABLE LAWS AND OTHER REQUIREMENTS.

(a) Applicable Laws- All Federal laws applicable to the election of the Resident Commissioner shall, as appropriate and consistent with this Act, also apply to any plebiscites held pursuant to this Act. Any reference in such Federal laws to elections shall be considered, as appropriate, to be a reference to the plebiscites, unless it would frustrate the purposes of this Act.

(b) Rules and Regulations- The Puerto Rico State Elections Commission shall issue all rules and regulations necessary to carry out the plebiscites under this Act.

(c) Eligibility To Vote- Each of the following shall be eligible to vote in any plebiscite held under this Act:

(1) All eligible voters under the electoral laws in effect in Puerto Rico at the time the plebiscite is held.

(2) All United States citizens born in Puerto Rico who comply, to the satisfaction of the Puerto Rico State Elections Commission, with all Commission requirements (other than the residency requirement) applicable to eligibility to vote in a general election in Puerto Rico. Persons eligible to vote under this subsection shall, upon timely request submitted to the Commission in compliance with any terms imposed by the Electoral Law of Puerto Rico, be entitled to receive an absentee ballot for the plebiscite.

(d) Certification of Plebiscite Results- The Puerto Rico State Elections Commission shall certify the results of any plebiscite held under this Act to the President of the United States and to the Members of the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States.

(e) English Ballots- The Puerto Rico State Elections Commission shall ensure that all ballots used for any plebiscite held under this Act include the full content of the ballot printed in English.

(f) Plebiscite Costs- All costs associated with any plebiscite held under this Act (including the printing, distribution, transportation, collection, and counting of all ballots) shall be paid for by the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico.

The intention is blindingly obvious. Hope that independence voters will plump for option (2) in the first round, only to see themselves get slaughtered by the statehood proponents in the second. The rub? People vote tactically. Independentistas will vote for the status quo in round one, and all we will have had is another pointless election.

Besides which, the bill does not bind Congress to accept the referendum results. Translation: sovereignty-association might be accepted, were it not for the fact that any reasonable agreement would increase fiscal costs. The argument is worth repeating. The 14th Amendment makes it essentially impossible to strip Puerto Ricans of American citizenship against their will. That means that the Puerto Ricans currently collecting federal entitlements or individual benefits would continue to do so in an independent republic. The simple arithmetic is an increase in net federal costs of $600 million per year, as tax revenues from the island dried up. The more complex arithmetic might allow for savings of $2 billion in Medicare and $1.8 billion in food stamps and school lunches ... but based on the model of free association worked out in the Pacific, the federal government would probably continue to pay those benefits for some time in under sovereignty-association. In other words, a vote for sovereignty-association would be a vote for the status quo.

Statehood is even less likely to be accepted. First, it would also increase fiscal expenditures. Second, and more important, it would give the Democrats an advantage in the Senate and electoral college. That would not have been true 12 years ago, but Puerto Ricans voted against statehood in 1998. Of course, they voted for “none of the above,” which is kind of amusing ... but which should not be taken as a great grass-roots upwelling in favor of a nebulous sovereignty-association. Anyway, the island would be rather unlikely to vote for GOP candidates at the national level (although you never know) and so it seems equally unlikely that Congress would accept the results of the referendum.

In short, a bill that would accomplish nothing, and pick at one of the great unheralded victories in decolonization. France and Algeria shoulda been so lucky. Heck, if Congress hadn’t been so stone-cold racist, the Philippines and the United States coulda been so lucky.

There are a lot of federacies in the world. The U.S. is one. There is nothing wrong with this. Situation unbroke, no need to fix. Plus, making Puerto Rico a state would destroy my sinister plan to annex Iceland. Think it through, people!

Sotomayor, soccer, and all that

  I’m all for ethnic solidarity and all that, but Senator Jeff Sessions is taking it to a whole ‘nother level at the Sotomayor hearings.

Anyway, interesting as the linked story is, I just wanted to post a picture of me in this shirt, which I wore to the World Baseball Classic games in Mexico City.  (The picture above is at my favorite bistro in the D.F.)  I will not be wearing it to the U.S.-Mexico World Cup qualifier in Azteca Stadium on August 12th.  In fact, while I will be rooting for the U.S. team, I also want to live, and so will dress in green and red. 

Patrick, Mike, Carlos, what think you?  Am I wimping out?

War and remembrance, American version

  The story of the Finnish Guard has been fascinating.  And it has one excellent modern parallel.  In the South End of Boston, in a formerly Puerto Rican area (now filled with native-born Americans pushing baby carriages) you can find the following monument:

Monument to the memory of the 65th Infantry of Puerto Rico

This monument is dedicated to the heroic Puerto Rican soldiers who made up the glorious 65th Infantry Regiment, whose actions on the battlefield surpassed the standards of bravery and determination. 

They said to us, “We will have peace even though we have to fight for it,” and so we fought in the mountains of Heartbreak Ridge and marched from Inchon.  We froze in the winter and broiled in the summer.  There were moments when we were completely outnumbered but we kept fighting and many of us gave our lives for liberty, justice, and peace.

The 65th Infantry Regiment played a key role in the most heroic episodes ever seen, showing the courage, valiance, and heart of the Puerto Rican soldier in the person of Ángel Luis García Ledesma, the most decorated Puerto Rican soldier in history.  This brave fighter sacrificed his life to cover an enemy grenade with his body, absorbing all its explosive power, thereby saving his compatriots.  For this heroic deed, he was decorated with the Congressional Medal of Honor, the Purple Heart, and monuments have been erected in memory of this transcendental moment of contemporary history.  Today we honor with pride the 65th Infantry Regiment, an example of valor and determination in defense of liberty.

What words aren’t in the monument? 

Nobody likes my shirt

One way of telling a Boricua isn't always accurate.

My fiancee, my father, nobody else likes it.  No clue why.

Interlude: Sovacar

It's always a great thing when you see the next generation give props to the older one ... and out-do them in the process.  I therefore present to you, direct from the island of Puerto Rico, the World's Greatest Video:

And here, for completeness sake, not-so-straight outta Brooklyn by way of Los Angeles, I present the Former World's Greatest Video:

This interlude brought to you by K Mal Goosto, the vidja king.  Enjoy!

Interlude: Querido FBI

Yes, there are still two more posts in the Trinidadian series.  (Any guesses as to what they'll be titled?)  But right now let's take a step back to Puerto Rico.  In September 23, 2005, the FBI shot Filiberto Ojeda Ríos in a house outside the town of Hormigueros.  Ojeda was a leader of the independence movement; he was also wanted for a 1983 bank robbery in Connecticut.  In point of fact, he'd been caught for that heist, but his lawyers managed to tie the courts up in knots and keep his case from coming to trial for seven years, at which point they got him released on bail.  Ojeda cut off the monitoring bracelet and skipped town.  From hiding, he claimed responsibility for a 1998 bomb blast outside a branch of the Banco Popular, but many observers think he was just fronting --- the blast (which didn't hurt anyone) was most likely set off by angry workers protesting the phone privatization deal I alluded to in ¡Acuérdese del Álamo!

Anyway, witnesses reported that the FBI fired first, and the coroner's reports indicated that Ojeda bled to death over several hours.  This did not make people happy.  Better yet, the FBI managed to pick the very same day in 1868 that a group of independentistas launched a failed rebellion against Spain with the Grito de Lares. 

One result was this video.  You can see Puerto Rican independence flags with the ugly sky-blue canton and the flag of the 1868 rebels.  It's also got flow, and if you speak Spanish you can tell that these guys are the greatest thing to hit hip-hop since Eminem.  Hell, since the Fu-Schnickens.  Enjoy.

A Personal Warning from Che Guevara

The University of Puerto Rico could mostly be in California.  The architecture is not unlike that found on the campuses of Stanford, Santa Clara, UCLA, Caltech, and even parts of Berkeley.  But there are some things with little Cali equivalent:

Good advice?

The Never-Ending Story

 

I suppose I have to talk about the status debate at some point.

If you stroll out of the old city, the boulevards broaden and you’ll pass the impressive white dome of the Capitolio and its associated government buildings.  There’s a memorial to World War 1 veterans right to the south, where you can see Puerto Rican status debate in living color.  Quite literally. 

The Capitolio flies the flag that’s been official since 1995, whereas the monument flies the flag that was official between 1952 and ’95. 

Between 1952 and 1995, the canton on the Puerto Rican flag was the same navy-blue as the American flag.  Independence supporters, however, flew a flag with a lighter blue canton designed by Antonio Vélez Alvarado in 1892 at his apartment at 219 West 23rd Street.  That flag reversed the colors of the Cuban rebel flag. 

In 1995, the pro-statehood governor, Pedro Roselló, played an act of political jiu jitsu when he made the Vélez flag official.  Now anyone who flew the U.S.-blue flag was indicating that they favored statehood, while flying the Cuban-blue flag lost political significance.  Some nationalists started to fly flags with an even-lighter blue canton reminiscent of Ferdinand Marcos’s Philippine flag redesign.  That hasn’t exactly proved to be popular:  I've seen exactly one, in Bayamón, and I’m still not sure if it wasn’t an official flag that had simply been left out in the sun too long. 

None of it means that Puerto Rico is any closer to statehood.  Unless Congress forces the issue, I doubt that Puerto Rico will ever become a fully United state, even if it loses every single special benefit that its  Freely Associated status bequeaths.

What are those advantages?  Well, not a whole lot these days.  Corporations have lost their tax-exemption from investing here.  Individuals retain their exemption from federal income taxes, but the overall tax burden is only slightly lower, because Puerto Rican income tax rates are not low.  It collects a smaller percentage of GDP from those taxes than the federal government does on the mainland, but that’s because Puerto Ricans are poorer than mainlanders. 

Since Puerto Rican tax rates are not low, imposing federal taxes would create a very large fiscal burden.  Income taxes provide the island’s government with about 21 percent of its income, and would be difficult to replace. 

On the other hand, the problem is solvable.  First, the federal deduction for state taxes would eliminate about a quarter of the additional hit in total, and more for upper-income residents. 

Second, other taxes in Puerto Rico are lower than in most U.S. states, although a recent fiscal crisis prompted the imposition of a 5.5% state sales tax. 

Third, a State of Puerto Rico that lost the adjectives of "associated" and "free" would receive more federal revenue sharing.   (To be fair, the island already does pretty well on that tip.  Its "resident commissioners" don’t vote on the House floor, but they do in committee, and they’ve used their leverage quite effectively.) 

How much more is unclear.  The big gain would be come from Medicaid.  Puerto Rico Medicaid enrolled 938,000 people in 2004, 2.2 percent of the U.S. total, but the island received only 0.1 percent of the federal spending.  In theory, Puerto Rico could get up to $4 billion, gross.

In practice, it's net gain would be rather less than $4 billion, probably an order of magnitude less. The reason is that the Free State can define its own poverty line.  Puerto Rico’s eligibility requirements for Medicaid are therefore much tighter than on the mainland.  Bringing those rules in-line with the rest of the U.S. would force the state formerly known as "freely associated" to increase its own Medicaid spending, and therefore the taxes to pay for it.

Finally, under statehood individual Puerto Ricans would be able to benefit from the Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC).  For the Britons reading this blog, the EITC is the U.S. equivalent of the working tax credit.  For non-gringo non-Brit readers, the EITC is a negative income tax that subsidizes workers who make below a certain threshold—currently around $7,000 for a single individual and $15,000 for a family with two children. The maximum benefit for a single person is $412; the maximum benefit for a family with two kids is $4,536.  (I managed to qualify in 1996.  I received $36.)  Above the threshold, the credit is phased out at a marginal rate of 7.7% for a single person and 21.1% for a family.

Given how low incomes are in Puerto Rico, a lot of people would qualify.  The estimates are that the EITC would almost wipe out the island’s net federal income tax liability.  (With a few small exceptions, mostly excises, Puerto Ricans already pay other federal direct taxes.) 

The catch is that there would be distributional effects.  Rich Puerto Ricans would lose.  (So would foreigners who own investments in Puerto Rico.)  Poor working Puerto Ricans would gain.  American taxpayers would see pretty much a wash, give or take a billion. 

It’s rarely wise to bet against the interests of rich people. 

But why aren’t poor working Puerto Ricans clamoring for a change in status?  The reason isn’t economic.  Rather, it’s that Puerto Ricans have managed to pull off the postmodern hat trick of being loyal to the United States while still not feeling American.   

Consider that the island, after proper vetting through the courts, has just re-introduced the rather meaningless category of Puerto Rican citizen.  Also consider, however, that any U.S. citizen resident on the island is eligible.  In the same vein, the Popular Democratic Party just submitted a bill to the Puerto Rican legislature would would require the island’s Secretary of State to inform Washington that Puerto Rico no longer wishes the federal government to represent it in international organizations.  Will it pass?  No.  Does the Popular Democratic Party want to it pass?  Hell, no.  Do they think that it’s a worthy bit of posturing?  Oh, yeah.  Does it mean that the Popular Democratic Party supports independence?  Absolutely, categorically, and unequivocally not. 

I suspect that Puerto Rico will remain an associated free state unless and until Congress tells them, "Become a full state or f—k off."  At which point they’ll become a state. 

The readers of this blog are an eclectic and intelligent bunch.  I’d really like to know what you think should be done about Puerto Rico's status.  A choice between independence and statehood?  A "compact of free association" a la the former Trust Territory of the Pacific Islands?  Nothing?   

Let's Talk about Roads

 

We have readers!  Chido, ¡y bienvenido!

For a person of my tastes, the photograph below is best appreciated to Mötley Crüe.  In a pinch,  Steppenwolf works.  And when feeling less Jurassic, most pop-punk will suffice, as will Kid Rock's "Son of Detroit" or anything from the Donnas’ first album.

So, roads.  In a blatant attempt to whomp up comments, I’ll start by quoting Jonathan Edelstein: 

[Super]highways have come to Puerto Rico in the past generation, and the main intercity routes are well maintained, but once you get off the autopistas, things get wiggy in a hurry. The two-lane roads that aren't quite wide enough for two cars, and the signs in all the wrong places and none of the right ones, are the least of it. Roads in Puerto Rico have a way of suddenly ceasing to exist or being closed without a warning or detour sign, and changing their names without apparent reason.

The city streets are even worse, with many of them built before automobile traffic and the shortage of off-street parking (even the hotels have postage-stamp lots) choking things off even further. The method of choice to control urban traffic - one-way streets - has been implemented without a great deal of rhyme or reason, giving urban driving a distinct similarity to a maze from the rat's point of view.

These were his first impressions.  Do they match mine? 

The rural roads, yes; the urban streets, no. 

Rural roads first:  they can get ridiculously narrow, just as Jonathan says.  Sometimes these tiny roads run through densely-populated exurbs, which can make for some amusing situations.  Now, not all the roads are like that.  In fact, most are not.  But plenty are, and that's not something you'll see much of in the continental United States. 

The signage isn’t particularly good, although it's not particularly bad either.  I only had trouble at that Route 10 detour that I mentioned in the last post.  I, however, have two advantages.  First, I’m accustomed to (if not quite skilled at) driving in signage-deficient situations.  Second, Amma is a truly excellent navigator.  In addition, you can easily buy superlative road maps in Puerto Rico (or download them into a GPS system), which is not true for many other places. 

I didn’t think the roads were that badly maintained.  We drove around the island quite a bit—not hard to do, since the entire place is only about 2½ times the size of Long Island—and there aren’t many potholes you could use to shelter a small family. 

That said, "good maintenance" is a relative concept, and I have very low standards.  I’ve driven in Trinidad, where the roads are worse.  I’ve also driven in Chiapas, where they are much worse—and often unpaved.  In fact, I’ve driven in Afghanistan, parts of which take "worse" to a whole 'nother level: imagine driving an armored pickup truck to the Pakistani border along a "road" consisting of the rutted tracks of the jingle trucks that preceeded you.   

My experience of the urban roads, however, is the diametric opposite of Jonathan's.  I thought that they were as good as New York and better than Boston. 

My guess is that Jonathan was talking about Old San Juan, not the rest of the city.  The thing is, Old San Juan is small.  You can walk across it in ten minutes:  by the time you hit Puerta de Tierra, the streets are as broad and modern as any American metropolis.   

The lesson, I suppose, is this:  when travelling to cities in the Western Hemisphere, you’ve got to visit to the suburbs.   

I have a request for our readers:  Any good road stories from outside your home country? 

Dáme mas Carolina

Roadside diners are fun. 

So is driving off-the-interstate in rural Puerto Rico.  At least for the driver.  Passenger, not so much.  Amma got carsick, which is not surprising considering the combination of the winding road and my driving.  I’m not a very good driver. 

I’ve wrecked two cars, one just recently.  In addition, Carlos has ridden with me across Mexico.  So we have evidence and witnesses to keep me from fronting on the Mario Andretti tip.

As a result, we detoured to the far straighter Route 10.  Unfortunately, Route 10 isn’t quite done yet, so we had to get back on 123 for a while at a jury-rigged intersection near a strip mall.  I missed the sign the first time around, but it was blindingly obvious on the second pass.

The cool thing was passing under the viaducts that will eventually turn Route 10 into an interstate-quality road.  Sadly, we couldn’t get pictures, but I’ll give you Amma’s reaction:  "A wonder that human beings can build such things!"

That was the beginning, but not the end, of our off-the-Interstate adventures around Puerto Rico.  I won’t go into all the details.  There are only a few highlights, anyway.  Roadside diners in Puerto Rico—they’re not diners, really, much smaller and usually open air—are great places to meet people, all of whom seem to have spent time in Brooklyn; the cows in the central cordillera are very well fed and very hostile; Arecibo is something every American should see before they die; and I drive like a chilango when I’m on the island. 

Puerto Ricans don’t like the way chilangos drive.  Being polite and patient people themselves, at least on the road, they don’t appreciate illegal left turns or the way I barging ahead to change lanes in stop-and-go traffic, and they don’t understand using your blinker to pass. 

Truth be told, I don’t like the way chilangos drive either.  I wish I knew what’s triggering my Mexico City driving instincts, because Puerto Rico doesn’t look like Mexico; Puerto Ricans don’t sound, act, or drive like Mexicans; and we’re not, you know, in Mexico. 

I’ve heard other Americans claim that Puerto Ricans are risk-taking, rude, and aggressive on the road.  I live in Boston, so my reaction to those claims is an unprintable two-syllable word beginning with the letter "p."   It's simply not true. 

Maybe it's living in Boston what's the problem.

We ended our road tripping in Carolina, a very nice suburb of San Juan.  To be fair, Carolina is a big place and it’s got some not-particularly-pleasant caseríos, but what’s not to like about hanging at the beach in Isla Verde? 

An African-American couple was getting married on the sand right in front of the hotel when we arrived.  It was a pleasant little ceremony; very few people, very good music. 

Amma enjoyed watching it, too, but she turned to me as I munched on (bad) ceviche and sipped a girlie drink of some sort, and said, "The preacher is wearing a maroon shirt [under a cream-colored suit] and a big gold chain."

And I'd been thinking that I kinda liked the idea of having the preacher wear that same outfit at our wedding.  Note to self:  thank God at least one of you has taste.   

¡Acuérdese del Álamo!

O sea lo más que cambia, lo más que queda igual. 

Just outside Ponce you can see a Cemex plant, one of the largest in Latin America.  Cemex, in a scheme to destroy one of rural Puerto Rico’s most unique roadside features, is trying to get permission to burn used tires for power.  The locals, as you can imagine, aren’t thrilled with the idea.  After all, the law mandates recycling tires—not burning them.      

In fact, it gets worse.  Not only have Mexicans taken over cement manufacturing and intend to steal the island’s valuable abandoned tires, they’re planning on taking over the phone company.  The phone company!  Privatized and sold to Verizon (then GTE) in 1998 under the Roselló administration, the company has patriotically failed to upgrade its DSL lines—or even install them—and has managed the all-American miracle of getting fixed-line penetration to decline from 74 to 61 percent.  All that and higher rates too! 

Now Verizon has sold the phone company to América Móvil, a Mexican operation.  The "América" is fooling nobody.  These are the same people who run Teléfonos de México—are you going to trust Carlos Slim to burn your tires and run your telecoms?  Not in Puerto Rico you’re not!  The business press is all over this Mexican malfeasance, this evil imperialism, this southern menace.  (Actually, I think it’s more like a western menace, since Puerto Rico is at about the same latitude as Cuernavaca, but close enough.)

Where’s Lou Dobbs?  The local press could teach him a thing or three, rhetorically-speaking.  Or, well, it could, if Lou Dobbs spoke Spanish.   

Crime and Punishment

 

We headed south from Ponce's central square—not helpful.  Dullness, and then burbs.  Might as well be in the crummier parts of northern California, except for the emancipation monument, the plaque commemorating the Ponce Massacre of 1937, and the Masonic temple.

Heading east was worse.  Dullness, then run-down burbs.  (Albeit clean!  This city is incredibly clean.  Have I mentioned how clean it is?)  A convenience store attached to a gas station—dimly visible in the left of the below photograph—was manned by bored female teenagers who doled out gum and Gatorade from behind thick metal bars.  The good thing was that the charming old façades hadn’t all been bulldozed, giving some parts of the near east side of downtown a friendly postapocalyptic charm.

But we also headed northeast in search of the Cross of El Vigía, a dramatic giant cross on a hill overlooking the city.  And so we wound up in the neighborhood of El Vigía.  And there we found a place that made the entire trip worthwhile.

 

El Vigía isn't bad, as slums go.  The houses are a hair short of actually falling down and have both electricity and indoor plumbing.  Kids rollerblade while housewives watch the streets.  They also brazenly spray paint their names on dumpsters, but who cares about dumpsters?  The ever-watching housewives do not appear to care about the dumpsters, and private property is not tagged.  The stray cats are scrawny and the dogs don’t bite, and in what other urban slum in America are you going to run into two kids riding a horse?  Plus, the cops lounge around outside a dinky pool halls and schmooze with the locals. 

It’s lively enough that you can kinda sorta forget the rattletrap construction or the abandoned buildings or the lack of anything remotely resembling a proper grocery store.  Now, I don’t want to exaggerate its liveliness—El Vigía is not East L.A.—but it lacks the depressing heat-death-feeling of, say, Bridgeport, Connecticut. 

In fact, it’s a lot like Belmont, Trinidad, where Amma grew up, only with far more street life and a bit more graffiti.  Plus a WIC office.  And here I’m invisible, while Amma is the American tourist who gets glances.  Which may of course also be related to the fact that she’s beautiful.   

I can’t help it, I’m an American.  Some cultures, men would fight those who dare scope their woman.  Others, they’d pretend nothing was happening.  Mine, though, well, we smirk right back.  Once, when I was in Mexico, I couldn't help noticing a scantily-clad passing woman at a café in the Condesa neighborhood. My acquaintance sitting across from me, an Anglo dude from West Texas, elbowed me and said, with a big proud shit-eating grin on his face, "That’s my wife!"

Americans.  We’re like that.

Thankfully, Puerto Ricans are like that too. 

Ironically, when we spotted the cops outside that run-down pool hall, I got nervous and started to cross over to the other side of the street.  Amma grabbed my arm and said, "Pumpkin, we’re not in Mexico.  This is the United States.  Relax." 

This tiny island with 1.3 percent of the American population manages to produce 10 percent of federal corruption convictions, but the end result of all that vigilance is that it enjoys an American-style police force.  Frex, officers offered to help guide us when they spotted us sitting at the Bayamón metro station, something unlikely to happen in Mexico.  Police professionalism explains the adherence to parking regulations—better than South Boston, I’ll tell you that—and the good driving. 

On the other hand, with 18,000 state police, 5,000 municipal cops, and 56,000 (!!!) private security guards, I’m not sure why Puerto Rico still has a homicide rate of 21 per 100,000.  Even Louisiana, where the NOPD was involved in a murder-for-hire scandal and pays less than the Puerto Rican State Police, only hits 13 per 100,000. 

We can add a serious mystery to Puerto Rico’s ugly architecture, incongruously-placed slum, and metric gasoline sales:  high crime.   

Any thoughts as to why that is?  I'm quite puzzled myself.

La Otra Perla

What, nobody was surprised at the "typical San Juan street scene"?  I don't believe it.

Well, it's time see Puerto Rico outside the San Juan metropolitan area.

"All else is parking," is what people from Ponce say about the rest of the island.  I call bullshit.  "Pearl of the South" works, if La Perla is your point of comparison.  Ponce is a life-sucking town.  All good humor sucked into a miasmatic sink of sadness and gloom.  Maybe it’s the tourbooks making you think it’s gonna be a charming place with a festive Latin center, rather than another all-American town whose suburbs have drained out its lifeblood. 

More below the fold, which I'm sure I've inspired you to click.  You know you want to. 

Quiero estar en América

   For reasons very clear to me, suburban houses in Puerto Rico are clustered more closely together than they would be in, say, South Florida.  For reasons not very clear to me—no snow, yeah, but that applies to lots of places—the houses all have flat tar roofs, making buildings that look fine from street level look pretty crappy from a passing elevated train.  Anyone have an explanation for this?

Exxon is called "Esso," and they sell gasoline by the liter.  Equally confusing.

So those are San Juan’s mysteries.  a small beachfront slum, crappy roofs, and the metric system. 

Me, I could live here.  Yes, indeed.

Below the fold is a thoroughly typical San Juan street scene, for your enjoyment and edification:

The End of the Line

The Urbantrain passes through Hato Rey, San Juan’s business center.  Hato Rey is a little reminiscent of Tyson’s Corner without the charm.  It manages to pack large numbers of office workers into a tiny space and make it unpleasant to walk more than 20 feet.  Miami tried to do the same thing, but they couldn’t build anything charmless enough to pull it off.

The route ends in Bayamón, in what will be a very cute town center someday.  Right now, not so much.  "Downtown" Bayamón is thoroughly American, but it’s the America of the 1970s.  Sort of like downtown Sunnyvale back in the day.  Parking lots, brightly-painted buildings, frighteningly clean sidewalks, a nearby mall, and an almost complete lack of human activity.  (The latter probably explains the clean sidewalks.)  The presence of two WIC offices, while a good use of my tax dollars, are a sign that land rents aren’t as much as they could be.

The action in Bayamón is at the mall, of course, or the suburban strips full of cutesy Swiss pastry shops and Condom World stores.  (No, really.) 

But like Miramar, I say give it time.  Downtown Bayamón is too cute not to be boutiqued, once Puerto Rico moves past it’s current position in the Yuppie stage of human history and arrives at the Bobo. 

That’s a Brooklyn Cyclones hat, by the way.  Nothing to do with the Commie stockings watching the forces of might and right gain on them in the A.L. East.  Only four games behind! 

Good Coffee, Great Music … It’s the Urbantrain!

Ah, the subway.  It’s only a subway for a brief stretch around the university, but whatever.  "Urbantrain" just sounds stupid.

The northern end is in Sagrado Corazón, near the ferry terminal to Old San Juan, and surrounded by empty lots.  In a burst of good sense that Boston would have done well to emulate, they use Metrocard machines straight outta Brooklyn instead of designing a brand new system that doesn’t work half as well. 

F—k you, MBTA!

Apologies.  But if you’ve ridden the T, you’ll understand.

The subway is a white elephant so far, with ridership running at about 30% of projections.  The fare is reasonable—$1.50 per ride—but that is twice the cost of the bus, and for those who can afford it, well, like the lady said in Singles: "I still love my car." 

Mayor Jorge Santini of San Juan (his name is omnipresent on billboards across the city) and Mayor William Miranda of the exurb of Caguas (the creator of the "Willie Tax") have approved a high-speed feeder line to run from Caguas down the median of Highway 52.  The line will then directly connect to the subway at the Cupey station.  The idea is to lure people coming in from the southern exurbs out of their cars.  That, they hope, would ease congestion on Highway 52 (or at least provide an alternative to sitting in traffic) and boost subway ridership, relieving the Urbantrain of its current boondoggle status.

What are your thoughts?

Dude, Where’s My Island?

Did you know that if you click on the pictures, a bigger sharper version will pop up in a new window?  I didn't.  FYI.

Above is a view of Santurce.  Or Miramar.  I'm fuzzy on the boundary.  Anyway, the moral of the picture seems to be, "buy now, if you can." 

Or not.  Did the Fed really directly purchase mortgage-backed securities yesterday?  Not a good time to invest in any sort of real estate.  Armageddon is a step closer.  Then again, socialism, in the form of central banks, will probably save us. 

But that's not the point of today's missive.  Today's missive is about why the Dominican Revolutionary Party has an office in San Juan.

It turns out that Santurce is ground zero for Dominican immigrants to Puerto Rico.  There are 33,000 Dominicans in San Juan, and an additional 28,000 in the rest of the Free State.   Since overseas Dominicans can vote, the PRD maintains a presence here.  The PRD got crushed in the 2004 election, so it needs all the support it can get, but in point of fact the Liberation Party and the Social Christians also have overseas offices here and on the mainland.   

The U.S. and the Dominican Republic have deep links, all the way back to President Buenaventura Báez's almost-successful attempt to sell his country to the U.S.  We invaded the place as recently as 1965.  (Foreign occupations never succeed?   You sure about that?)  And nowadays CAFTA has granted the U.S. almost total control over the D.R.'s trade and investment policies.  Combine the D.R.-U.S. relationship with Puerto Rico's geographic location, and the presence of a growing Dominican community on the island shouldn't surprise anyone. 

Tropical Walkabout

I guess Mexican politics isn't that interesting.  Back to Puerto Rico!

San Juan has a subway.  Strangely, it doesn’t quite make it into the old city.  It’s the best way to get to the University of Puerto Rico campus, however, so we’ve done a lot of walking (or bus riding) through the intervening neighborhoods of Miramar and Santurce. 

They’ve cleaned up the prostitutes from Miramar, at least while the sun is out, but the place has seen better days.  Much better days. The old hotels either either falling apart or abandoned, and the height of fine dining seems to be a Pizzería Uno shoehorned into a misbegotten attempt at urban renewal, Fort Lauderdale-style.  (Next to a Taco Maker, of course.)  The architecture is not-quite-Art-Deco tropical, so it’s easy to imagine a future Miramar in which the buildings have been rehabbed, the gang graffiti erased, and the offices of the Partido Revolucionario Dominicano represent a club-owners sense of irony rather than … well, why does the PRD have an office in San Juan?

It could happen.  Miramar is a neighborhood where old women and teenagers greet the bus driver by name as it meanders between the old city and the Sagrado Corazón subway stop.  It’s even got a little movie theater playing indie flicks.  But it ain’t there yet.

Same goes for Santurce.  It’s a little nicer, but not by much, and there are some abandoned buildings.  The Plaza de Mercado was disappointing.  It turned out to be small and utterly unfunky, populated by day by beer-drinking older fellows who claimed to be retired construction workers.  (Which, in fact, they probably are.  Many employees here retire at 55; and about one in eight people live on a pension of some sort.)  The fruit for sale was just fruit, like you can find in any Cambridge convenience store.  And the market was spotless.  Being in a country where the health and safety regulations are ruthlessly enforced is a good thing, of course, but it takes some of the romance out of food shopping. 

Welcome to Earthport!

And now, for the second installment in our continuing series about el Caribe.  Hopefully, this will keep you entertained and edified as the real owners deal with, well, life. 

 

Outside the walls of Old San Juan lies, well, mostly ocean.  But go east along the island, past the grandeur of the Capitolio, and you enter the unpleasantly named "Puerta de Tierra."  It sounds like something out of a science fiction movie.  It isn’t, unless the movie in question is Class of 1984.  It’s a run-down area full of housing projects, homeless shelters, and a Catholic school with a grand building in dire need of reconstruction.  But the Archivo General de Puerto Rico is there, and so am I.

Over on the north side of Puerta de Tierra there are a bunch of nice hotels.  A massive tourist complex is going up on the northeastern edge.  There are also a lot of signs advertising new high-rise condos but not a whole lot of condos themselves. 

The south side is mostly housing projects.  The first one on the island, El Falansterio, was built in 1937 and could be in Miami Beach ... architecturally-speaking, at least.  El Falansterio aside, Puerto Rican housing projects, called "caseríos," mostly look like they were built on an assembly line somewhere in central California and shipped here in a pod.  Most of the ones in Puerta de Tierra don’t look all that bad, until you notice the bars on all the balconies and windows. 

At least they demolished the tower projects back in 2000, as part of an urban renewal program that’s still underway.

In other words, the government got rid of the arrabales by building caseríos, and now they’re replacing the caseríos with condos. 

Viaje al Morro

Hi there.  Noel here.  I'll be guest-posting here from the Caribbean, while the rightful blog-owners are busy.

"I want to go back to San Juan … I know a boat you can get on!"  Most likely a ten-story tall gas-powered cruise ship these days.  Or, in our case, a packed American Airlines 757 out of Logan.  Strangely, it was an old 757:  scratched windows, frayed seat covers, worn rugs, and foam erupting from the interstiches of the overhead compartments.  It presaged San Juan.

San Juan looks modern from the air, but so do a lot of places.  The plane swoops in from west to east across the metropolis, but once you’ve stopped oohing at the roads—in most of the places I’ve been recently, the roads aren’t so great, if they exist at all—you start to notice the roofs.  Lots of corrugated tin.  Even more flat discolored tar.  Even the nice houses and the high-rises have crappy roofs.  Clumps of what was clearly once squatter housing line the river.  You can tell by the fact that the roads aren’t quite straight, and the houses not quite lined up:  they look quite solid in other respects. 

The airport is fine, functional, clean … but not quite modern.  In other words, it perfectly matched the plane we flew in on.  Tile floors, bare walls, and a fake colonial façade by an American info counter elicit chuckles rather than a sense of style or place.  It had been raining, and water gushed down from the upper level onto the sidewalk by the arrivals taxi stand.

The taxi, on the other hand, was a bitchin’ Chrysler 300M with a blinged-out grill and every mod-con you could want, thus proving that while I don’t like SUVs I am not immune to the siren call of environmental destruction, provided that it’s packaged correctly.  I want to make some sort of deep Galbraithian observation about the contrast between private affluence and public penury, but I can’t think of anything new to say.  Anyway, the driver was too funny.  He came straight from central casting, wearing a guayabera and a taxi-driver hat of the type that no mainland taxi driver has worn since 1982.  He made an endless series of unintelligible jokes and liked to yell "¡Ladrones!" whenever we passed a government building.

And so, along the crowded Route 26 freeway to Old San Juan.  Good road, by most standards.  (No shoulders in spots, and the traffic for the exit to the Minillas Tunnel backed up onto the main road.)  It doesn’t go quite all the way to the old city, but you wouldn’t notice the difference.  The road passes along the north side of the small island that contains Old San Juan on its western tip.

Once you get to the old town, among the narrow cobblestoned streets and the colonial buildings, with the occasional group of white-clad nuns and men in Panama hats, surrounded by the mellifluous sound of Caribbean Spanish, there, there you know, beyond any possible doubt, that you’re in the United States.