Vol. 80/No. 17 May 2, 2016
US, Puerto Rican gov’ts squeeze workers for debt
But the temporary measure is simply a maneuver to win a better deal than a so-called rescue plan being debated in the U.S. Congress. Proposed by Republicans and backed by some Democrats, that plan would set up a U.S.-appointed fiscal control board, which would decide which debts get paid first and would have the power to impose “haircuts” on bondholders, the equivalent of bankruptcy.
García’s main demand is that more Puerto Rican capitalists be represented on such a board.
“A lot of the bondholders bought the bonds at half price,” retired hospital worker Luis Epardo said by phone from Aguadilla, Puerto Rico, April 9. “But they want to get paid 100 percent. Then there would be no money to pay the police, teachers, pensions. They don’t care about the people of Puerto Rico.”
Some bondholders who oppose bankruptcy because they are worried their competitors will get paid first are threatening to sue. But Investor’s Business Daily argued that Puerto Rico needs “debt relief,” saying the choice is “between order and chaos.”
An editorial in the Wall Street Journal April 7 called on the Congress to “impose tough love in exchange for relief” — a rather arrogant statement in light of Washington’s imperialist record on the island.
Ever since the U.S. military took control of Puerto Rico in 1898, U.S. imperialism has plundered billions from the island’s resources and labor of its workers and farmers.
Washington encouraged the expansion of U.S.-based sugar companies that drove many small farmers off the land. Today some 85 percent of the fruits and vegetables consumed there are imported from the United States.
In 1920 Congress passed the Jones Act, requiring all maritime cargo to Puerto Rico be carried on U.S.-owned ships, which doubles the cost of imports. During the late 1940s Washington began giving U.S. companies in Puerto Rico big federal and local tax breaks.
After the victory of the Cuban Revolution in 1959, Puerto Rico’s fame as “the Poorhouse of the Caribbean” was an embarrassment to the U.S. capitalist rulers. Washington extended federal minimum wage laws to the island and additional tax breaks to U.S. companies there, part of an attempt to transform Puerto Rico into its “Showcase of Democracy” to combat the attraction of workers and farmers in the region to the Cuban Revolution. In 1976 the federal government completely exempted U.S. companies there from corporate taxes.
From 1996 to 2005 Washington phased out many tax breaks, accelerating the impact of the worldwide economic crisis, and highlighting once again that Puerto Rico is a U.S. colony with no say in its own affairs.
While Puerto Rico is still a world center for pharmaceutical manufacturing, the drug companies slashed their workforce from about 20,000 in 2000 to less than 11,000 in 2014. Employment in manufacturing overall dropped more than 24 percent from 2007 to 2012.
Puerto Rico never recovered from a 2006 recession, its economy shrinking for nine of the past 10 years. The government laid off thousands of public workers, raised the retirement age, raised sales taxes, cut pensions and took out more loans to pay the debt.
Gutting pension funds
To keep paying the bondholders, the government also shorted its payments to pension funds. According to Reuters, the main pension funds for 330,000 workers and retirees “are virtually penniless … with about $1.8 billion in assets to pay $45 billion in liabilities.”More than 1,200 people are leaving the island for the United States every week, especially youth and middle class professionals.
“Industry is disappearing and young people can’t find work,” cattle rancher Armando Arcelay told the Militant by phone from Aguadilla, Puerto Rico, April 11. “In my neighborhood, out of 70 homes, 10 are abandoned. The young people are emigrating to Florida.” The official unemployment rate in Puerto Rico is 11.8 percent, more than double the U.S. average.
There are thousands of small cattle ranchers on the island, many with just 20 to 25 cows, Arcelay said, but slaughterhouses have begun delaying payment for their cows and credit is harder to get.
“As much as 20 percent of beef used to be produced here,” he said. “But now we’re down to 5 percent.”
Despite the mosquito-borne Zika virus epidemic, Arcelay said, the municipal government has stopped spraying pesticides. “They say there is no money to fumigate.”
“The government didn’t use the loans they got correctly,” Arcelay said. “But that’s not the fault of future generations.”