Vol. 81/No. 40 October 30, 2017
Colonial rule turns storm damage into social disaster
One of the biggest problems in the colonies is that they don’t control the key decisions that affect their lives — these are in the hands of their colonial overseers. It’s not much better in the former colonies, which remain economically dependent on the imperialist powers.
More than three weeks after Hurricane Maria devastated Puerto Rico, some 83 percent of the U.S. colony’s residents were still without electricity and nearly 30 percent had no drinking water.
The collapse of the electrical grid and much of the water system was guaranteed before the hurricane made landfall. Blackouts were increasingly common as the government and electrical utility’s management cut back maintenance to free up funds to ensure payments on their $74 billion debt to wealthy bondholders.
It’s little different in the U.S. Virgin Islands and the British Virgin Islands, colonies that are still mostly without electricity and other crucial infrastructure after the storms.
Even before the hurricanes, working people in the U.S. Virgin Islands faced a deep social crisis. The colonial regime’s debt of $2 billion to bondholders is higher per capita than Puerto Rico’s. Public hospitals were in such bad shape that plumbing had collapsed and doctors stopped implanting pacemakers and heart defibrillators because there wasn’t enough money to pay for the devices.
U.S. Virgin Islands Gov. Kenneth Mapp announced Oct. 12 that he was ending government distribution of food and water and that residents would have to rely on themselves and private charity.
The social disaster working people face throughout the region stands in sharp contrast to what workers and farmers face in Cuba, also hit hard by Hurricane Maria.
Cuban Revolution sets example
Cuba’s revolutionary government organized working people to prepare for the storm and minimize damage. They evacuated 1.8 million people to comfortable and provisioned housing. Within weeks electrical power was restored to nearly 100 percent of the island. Workers are getting help to rebuild their homes, including free building materials if needed. And at the same time they sent doctors, electricians and other volunteers to help wherever they were invited, from Barbuda to Dominica.
The Cuban government sent 12 volunteer electrical workers to former British colony Barbuda to restore the electrical system. Some 90 percent of the buildings were destroyed there by the hurricanes along with its entire electrical system. With the aid of the Venezuelan government, the entire population of 1,800 was evacuated, and some have started to return.
There has been little other international aid, Chester Hughes, deputy general secretary of the Antigua and Barbuda Workers Union, told the Militant by phone Oct. 13.
In contrast, the local capitalists, as well as the imperialist powers, see the storm as an opportunity to reap bigger profits. Antigua and Barbuda Prime Minster Gaston Browne said that now is the time to eliminate the centuries-old communal land system in Barbuda. He wants to turn the land into a commodity and sell residents plots of land to rebuild on. That would pave the way for mortgages, home insurance schemes, and similar instruments of capitalist exploitation. “Build an ownership class,” Browne told the Los Angeles Times.
Barbudan hurricane victims evacuated to Antigua rallied to protest the plan. “If we’re not careful, it’s going to be uninhabitable for us, but habitable for somebody else,” former member of Parliament Trevor Walker told the rally.
‘Discontent’ in Puerto Rico
Unlike in Dominica, a former British colony, where dozens of Cuban doctors are helping to provide medical care after the island was battered by Maria, the U.S. government has not accepted the offer of Cuba’s revolutionary government to send a mobile hospital and 39 medical workers, as well as four brigades of electrical workers. The refusal “is criminal,” Luis Rosa said by phone from Aguadilla, Puerto Rico, Oct. 16. “The government of Venezuela’s offer to send aid has also been rejected.”
Rosa served 19 years in jail in the U.S. for his activities in support of independence for Puerto Rico. He moved back to Aguadilla after his release in 1999.
“The presence of the government has been terrible,” Rosa said. “Communities are organizing themselves. They’re the ones who have been cleaning and opening up the roads, machetes in hand to remove the fallen trees.” And getting aid to individuals in the countryside the government has passed by.
The situation is worse in more remote areas. In Charco Abajo, where the hurricane took down the main bridge and no one from the government showed up to help, Carlos Ocasio and Pablo Perez Medina, a welder and retired handyman, crossed the Vivi River, walked miles to a hardware store and returned with a cable and harness.
They built a pulley system and attached a shopping cart, and everyone in the town uses it to bring food, water and supplies across the river, the New York Times reported.
The two workers, both 60 years old, put up a sign to describe their territory, “Campamento de los Olvidados,” Spanish for “Camp of the Forgotten.”
“We’re still without water and light,” retired electrical worker Miguel Sánchez said by phone from La Florida in the western part of the island. “If you have a vehicle, you can go get water. If you don’t, what do you do?
“The aid is not being distributed equitably,” he said. “Some areas get a bottle or two of water, others get a whole case. Those with a connection to the government, they’re hooked up with water, air conditioning, supplies from FEMA. For the rest of the people, it’s difficult.
“There is a generalized discontent,” Sánchez said.
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