 Hi everyone. Welcome to Code Pink's What the F is going on in Latin America. This is our weekly webinar of 20 minutes of hot news out of the region, Latin America and the Caribbean. Today, I'm really happy and honored to share the next 20 to 30 minutes with you with Natasha Bannon, who I have had the pleasure of working with through the National Lawyers Guild and through different solidarity projects in Latin America. And let me tell you a little bit about Natasha before we start our conversation. She is Senior Counsel at Latino Justice Pearl Deaf. She focuses on exploitation and discrimination against low-wage Latino immigrant workers. And as she was discussing with me prior, that she likes to describe it as intersectional work between racial justice, immigrant rights, economic rights, and gender-related rights. She also offers legal support in the face of economic and humanitarian crises in Puerto Rico, which is going to be our focus today, and international human rights. And she is also past president of the National Lawyers Guild. So welcome, Natasha. So happy to be in conversation with you this evening. Thank you, Teri. It's great to join you today. So today, we want to talk about, Natasha has a lot of experience in Puerto Rico. And so we've asked her to join us in conversation today, specifically to put an emphasis on the development of our Latin America team here at Code Pink with the understanding that Puerto Rico is part of Latin America and the Caribbean, as well as the citizens of the island being U.S. citizens and how they're treated and made differently than those of us on the mainland in many ways. So it's really important to share that context, that it is Latin America and the Caribbean, but these are U.S. citizens and some of the differences in their life there versus ours on the mainland. So, Natasha, why don't you give us a little background on the history of your work with Puerto Rico? Sure. And actually, first, I really appreciate the opportunity to bring Puerto Rico into the conversation and to situate ourselves geographically, because as you said, Puerto Rico is a part of Latin America. It has a geographic and cultural and linguistic identity that is situated within the Caribbean and within Latin America. And even though we often think about it because the point of reference in the context in the United States is one of a territory. In fact, it really is part of a whole other continent and region. And there's two things that you just said that we often hear that I want to just kind of call attention to, to be really intentional about how we think about the center language, which is one we usually hear. Well, you know, Puerto Ricans are U.S. citizens. Therefore, they merit a different kind of treatment or the United States is acting discriminatory towards its own citizens instead of realizing that that's an imposed citizenship. You know, it's a citizenship that was imposed on the evil World War One that was really intended to recruit Puerto Ricans forcefully to go serve in this war and basically be kind of cannon fodder for testing landmines and sending them out before before troops actually went out. So the citizenship isn't what necessarily guarantees human rights or or equal treatment. The other point that I just want to mention is that we also often hear the United States being referred to as the mainland. You know, there's the island and there's the mainland. And what we like to think of it is really Puerto Rico is the mainland. They have their own mainland that this isn't their mainland. They have their own island and their own their own nation and culture. And those are it just really shows how so much of even those of us that do work on behalf of Puerto Rican Liberation and self determination often find ourselves in this co-op. Yeah, and this course myself included that we grow. Yeah, by spending 40 years in and out of Latin America. There are those paradigms that that we learn from a very, very young age. Absolutely. Yeah. No, absolutely. And that discourse has really been co-opted. And we see it often now talked about. And, you know, that the issue around self determination for Puerto Rico is one of civil rights, that is the right to vote or people should be able to vote for the president or, you know, that that's what's going to solve the issue. And what we know is that, in fact, it's been one hundred and twenty two years of US colonial rule in Puerto Rico. And prior to that, four hundred years of Spanish colonial rule that for five hundred years, Puerto Rico has lived as a colony. And we know that that is not a dignified state that has been not only morally rejected and repudiated by the international community, but legally as well. And for over 60 years, that continues to be the position of international bodies like the United Nations that continue to call upon the United States year after year to initiate a process of decolonization for Puerto Rico and one that leads to self determination so that they can decide what type of political relationship they would like to have with the United States. And that political question, that political crisis is really at the heart of what we often hear talked about in the context of Puerto Rico, which is the economic crisis or what gets called the humanitarian crisis, which is also a human rights crisis and is inherently a political one, too. The lack of people's ability to exercise autonomy over their decision making and deciding and making sure one that they can live, that they have access to water, to food, to safety mechanisms, to schools that won't collapse on them when there's a natural disaster, to energy sources that aren't just focused on non-renewable energy, to be able to govern their ports, their air, their borders, all of that. Those decisions that are taken out of their hands and leaving them extremely vulnerable and in precarious conditions that continue to expose them to not only natural disasters, kind of quote unquote, but really the manmade disasters of disaster capitalism, which is what we're seeing ravish the island right now, particularly in the last decade. Let's talk about disaster capitalism and how that's affecting the population of the island to make autonomous decisions, how they can solve their debt crisis or how they're prohibited from solving their debt crisis and what options can be pursued by them. Yeah, so Puerto Rico has been in the news, I'd say in the last three or four years, for a couple of reasons. The first is what gets called a fiscal or debt crisis and in fact is really kind of an economic depression. And that came to a point, at least in the news cycle, about three years ago or so, three or four years ago where the debt, 72 billion dollars approximately, was declared unpayable by the former governor and that led the US Congress to pass the law, given that Puerto Rico had no other access to any other bankruptcy protections, debt restructuring mechanisms, they tried to pass their own laws and the United States Supreme Court rejected that attempt. They as a colony can't access regional or international financial institutions or banking mechanisms or engage in, you know, types of trade or lending practices with other sovereign nations directly. And so really they were at the will of US Congress to fashion some type of legislative remedy for them. That remedy is known as the law called promeson, the Puerto Rico Oversight Management Economic Stability Act, which does provide a debt restructuring mechanism but comes at a very, very high cost, which is a congressionally appointed delegated fiscal control board. It's a board of about seven members of individuals who serve in their private capacity. They all come from the financial sector, many of them from the very same institutions responsible for indebting the nation and have serious conflicts of interest they meet in private, they meet on Wall Street, they have explicitly said that their primary goal is to make sure that Puerto Rico access the markets and to pay back creditors and they have made that goal. In fact, visible in the policies that they implement, including a fiscal plan that they impose on the elected government and people of Puerto Rico that is based on austerity measures. It's based on the closure of hundreds of public schools of cutting the University of Puerto Rico's the largest higher education institution in the Caribbean slashing their budgets, slashing healthcare and medical needs for an increasingly aging population, forcing migration out of the island. So the Puerto Rico now has the lowest population that it's had in decades, about three million. And, you know, and but I'm I says what we're stuck with and instead of responding to the economic crisis, in fact, it's deepening it. It's really creating, as we talked about this disaster capital, it's after the after Hurricanes and Inma devastated the island two and a half years ago in 2017, the control board really ran through with the compliance, complicity of the Puerto Rican government, long term projects and policies that are going to have devastating consequences on the island for generations. You know, they're they're closing debt deals that are not going to just affect me or or you or anyone was visiting the island or living on the island. It's going to affect family and friends, you know, their children, their grandchildren. These are generational policies that we often see not only in in colonies, explicit colonial situations, but neocolonial situations. I was going to you mentioned austerity measures and we're seeing this throughout Latin America, but really across the globe, attached to IMF and World Bank loans with the objective, ultimately, of privatizing entire economies as we have saw the attempt in Chile, which is erupted finally and and then Honduras being pretty much a Petri dish of full blown privatization of an economy. Do you think that's the objective here in Puerto Rico as well? That's to drive I know that's been the explicit objective and the control board has been very honest about that. One of the members of the control board said that their their goal is to turn Puerto Rico into the Singapore or Hong Kong of the Caribbean, which is what we know is kind of an elite playground for the ultra wealthy and this luxury space kind of an extension of what I think of as Miami Beach, right? So it's a Puerto Rico. That's not for Puerto Ricans. If you're Puerto Rican and live in Puerto Rico, then you're going to be in a service economy serving foreign capital, serving a wealthy class of individuals who are the owners of that land of the resources of the institutions. That is not a model that centers Puerto Ricans and privileges that means their own autonomous decision making that centers the needs of Puerto Ricans and thinking about what a just recovery looks like after the worst natural disasters in a century to hit the island. And this was before the recent earthquakes that have been devastating the southern part, particularly of the island. And it's intended so, you know, the first 60, 70 years of Puerto Rico's colonial existence under the U.S. regime was really about military attention in the region and particularly in making sure that there was a U.S. presence to keep an eye on Cuba and to keep an eye on the Caribbean and parts of Latin America. And that's really shifted to economic interest now. And we see the policies that are being imposed on Puerto Rico directly and directly really serving U.S. capital interests and making sure that even if at some point there's no longer direct colonial rule, that as we've seen in neocolonial context, there will always continue to be control of the economic institutions and the political ones that respond to those economic interests on the island. So that these policies that we see being implemented now, which include and heavily depend on the privatization of public goods, Puerto Rico has a long history of having a robust role of government of government in providing public goods and services and even have some of them explicitly protected in their constitution, which was vehemently fought by the United States to get some of those economic and social protections removed from their constitution. But they have, for example, the right to education. And what we see is the closure of nearly 600 public schools in Puerto Rico is attacked on the higher on the University of Puerto Rico, the the public education system there. And we're seeing privatization of schools, privatization of healthcare, privatization of infrastructure of energy. And the disaster capitalist model heavily depends on that. Not only is it that we're going to ram through these privatization, you know, ventures when nobody's looking because they're literally in the throes of survival and trying to make sure that they're able to sustain themselves and to survive and to remain in Puerto Rico, but that they're going to have they're going to be done in a way that's not transparent because there's no public hearings because there's no public notice because we're not giving opportunity for that because we're resting people who come to the Capitol who try to participate in hearings because we're cramming through votes in 24 hour periods because we're not issuing notices. All of that is happening with with the deep complicity of what I call the colonial government in Puerto Rico that really serves the the interests of a foreign capital. And it's being sold as a model of economic development because but it's not unique to Puerto Rico. We see this replicate throughout Latin America on a constant basis is exactly the same while that's happening in Afro-Columbian communities in Colombia. It's happening in Honduras. It's happening, you know, through throughout the region, throughout the world and certainly throughout the region, which has been since someone wrote doctrine, you know, the place where the United States has has with impunity really implemented this. And it's just that in Puerto Rico because they have colonial cover that they're doing it much more explicitly. So there's a couple things you mentioned. And I guess the first I want to just touch on is you mentioned people being arrested for for trying to figure out what's going on with with the debt servicing. What we are not hearing that at all. Oh, that's yeah. Whenever that's a real nature. Oh, yeah, there's been numerous folks arrested any time they try to attend. You know, what are supposed to be public hearings when in fact there are hearings that are being held at the local legislature and folks try to attend and either they're told that they're closed even though they're being held in the legislature by the legislature, they're inherently public. We you know, not only have they been arrested, folks have been tear gas. And there's a long practice of that by the Puerto Rican Police Department, which is one of the most violent and largest police departments in any U.S. jurisdiction. So second largest after the NYPD that it often receives its training from. And there's very tight and long and historic ties to the FBI and to federal law enforcement. So it's not it's it's by design. It's it's not at all coincidental that those who are trying to disrupt the this process are often targeted. We know that's usually activists. That's also why we see since the summer of twenty nineteen is as we call it. But I don't mean the same way when I think of Puerto Rico really beginning to to initiate the eruption, the Puerto Rican insurrection of people saying, you know, we can't take this anymore. So much of the decisions being made for us are not being made by us and they're made behind our backs in the way people talk about us, the way they're making decisions about us, including their former governor as revealed by the chat, which is the tipping point. There is the it was it was made everything roll over. Yeah, I was really last summer to see so many people in the streets demanding a change and actually at least getting him out of office, the system didn't change. But it was a profound example of public pressure by millions of people exacting a result. And it was very inspiring. It it didn't go much out with with with those of us living, you know, in the United States, but it was a really profound example. And we've seen that since throughout Latin America and throughout the world. It really was, you know, there was the the Arab spring. There was the Puerto Rican summer and and that summer gave gave birthing to and fueled not a movement because in reality, people were already protesting the exact same issues of corruption, of austerity, of neoliberal policies, of being imposed without consent, without transparency, without autonomy, without self-governance in some form or fashion around the world, right? So whether that was, you know, Lebanon or or Turkey or Chile or Haiti or Mexico or Ecuador, what we saw was collective uprising. Yeah, people collectively, you know, rising up and in Puerto Rico, it was a historic moment. You know, a million people in the street, a third of the of the Highlands population at this point who people who had never protested in their lives whose dignity was on the line and who said like, this is it. This is where I draw the line. Like you're making fun of our debt. You're making fun of women. You know, you're denigrating and humiliating us. You're talking about people's body shapes and sexual orientation. And these are the people that were elected to serve our interests, to serve us. And yeah, what we see is deep invasive corruption is the prioritization and privileging of their buddies and granting multimillion dollar contracts with a minimum wage on Puerto Rico's 725 an hour still and was authorized to be reduced to 425 an hour for young people when the average salary is 18,000 a year and more than half of the island lives at the federal poverty line, which we know is already seriously poor. And that's at the line. That was before the hurricane. Now, you know, it's likely much more than that. And so you have these politics of austerity and policies of austerity that are placing the burden of really criminal practices of indebted 73 billion dollars. You don't get to that level of debt without there being criminality. And yet who's being forced to pay for that is the people who have not only no responsibility for that but also the least capacity to bear the financial burdens. And so it's driving them into forced migration. It's driving them out of their homes, away from their families into low precarious labor with the elimination of additional workplace protections that we see come also at the expense of this debt. And as I was saying, like this isn't a new model. It's not just Puerto Rico and it's really important to remember that what is unique about Puerto Rico is that it's accepted. It's accepted as legitimate US interest in US policy that what's happening there is legal. It's fully legal under at least domestic law. It's totally rejected under international law, which we know the United States isn't abide by, but it isn't that we should just have a moral, morally repudiate this and be offended by this. We should be offended because it's our government that does this in our name and does it under the cover of legitimacy. And we need to constantly call that out. We need to call it out as a colonial practice, as an imperial practice, as an illegitimate and criminal practice and to actually begin to hold criminally responsible, those who are responsible for indebting the nation, not just the governor, the various governors in government of Puerto Rico, but also the financial institutions were the same ones that were responsible for the foreclosure crisis that's also targeted black and brown communities. We just see these cycles be repeated globally every decade or so. I keep thinking two things, Greece and the debt and the price that they've had to pay and sacrificing natural resources. Argentina, and as you're describing Haiti for 300 years, you know, you were describing what is happening to Puerto Rican citizens and how they're being forced to leave their homes, to migrate and the reasons. And it's the same. And I agree with you, there was not the attention on it. The same thing under very, very similar reasons that's happening in Central America. And those people and their stories are getting far more media coverage here than what we're hearing from Puerto Rico. And it's a very, very similar story created by the same. Yeah, definitely created by the same actor. They're all policies of violence, but even so really the stories that we don't hear, that we hear about Central Americans, we don't hear their stories until they reach our border. There's really very superficial understanding of the conditions that cause that forced migration and the role of the United States historically in funding, providing the strategy for implementing, planning the political violence that was responsible and continues to bear out, you know, the aftershocks in the region that is promoting that violence, that institutionalized systemic political violence in Central America and sustain in Puerto Rico. Initially there was, you know, the first 80 years of political violence is really now led to deep economic violence that's pushing people out of their homeland because they can't afford to live there. Poor Puerto Ricans can't afford to live in Puerto Rico, but rich Americans can, right? They're being incentivized to go there. They're being incentivized to buy land, to privatize spaces, to not even have to live there, but to invest, which actually doesn't translate to any local wealth, you know, $30 billion is generated in Puerto Rico and profits, but none of that stays there. It's a place, it's a tax haven for rich people to get richer and to transfer their wealth outside of the island, whereas, you know, Puerto Ricans who live there continue to suffer under the economic and political violence that the United States maintains. And we just happen to have an administration in the White House that's very honest for the first time in a very long time about what he and this country and the government feels about Puerto Rico and the burden that it's been ironically when in fact it really is the United States that's responsible directly and indirectly responsible for what we see happening on the island. It isn't just local corruption. Corruption doesn't just sit at one level only. We know that actually it's in Washington where, you know, most of the corruption comes from and gets planned and plotted and seated throughout Latin America. Well, so listen, I've asked you to speak with us for 20 minutes and we're going on 30. And I'm so thankful that you've had the time to have this conversation. And so I would like to ask, is there anything that we should specifically mention to our viewers that we haven't talked about that you feel we should specifically mention? And I'd also like you to give us a short list of reading resources that are listed. And if you can't do it now, email them to me and I'll share in the comments for our viewers that, you know, some maybe give people something to read in historical context, disaster capitalism and, you know, to reinforce our conversation this afternoon. It'd be great. Sure, well, I'll say a couple of things. One is that we all need to include Puerto Rico in our discourse about Latin America, but also when we are thinking of imperialism and a war which lately and heavily focuses on rhetoric engaged at the Middle East, understandably so, but we have a colony, right? And that colony, we don't talk about it in those terms, we talk about it as a territory, as a US jurisdiction, they're US citizens. And I think that we actually need to challenge that rhetoric and that language to refer to the Puerto Rican nation, to begin to build out a solidarity movement the way that we see and have recognized other nations who also seek their own self-determination processes that have been legitimized, whether it's, you know, Palestinians or Saffatistas or other autonomous nations. And yet ironically in the United States, we don't have many institutions or organizations dedicated to Puerto Rican solidarity that stand in support with Puerto Rican liberation struggles, the way that we see for a lot of other issues, even though the United States, we live in the colonizing nation. And so it is really contingent upon all of us to stand at this critical moment with our Puerto Rican brothers and sisters and not let this be their burden alone, the same way that no matter where we go, you know, we take the causes of self-determination and liberation struggles with us from around the world. It is incumbent upon all of us to think about building out Puerto Rican solidarity, whether it means inserting it into the activism work you're already doing, surfacing it, whether it's around climate justice and environmental justice, gender, racial, immigrant traits, whatever it is, there's a space to make sure that what's happening at Puerto Rico, which is really the convergence of what I call kind of the three evil seas, colonialism, you know, disaster capitalism and climate disaster. All of that is taking place on Puerto Rican bodies and land. And so we need to really bring that into the United States and to our activist spaces as much as possible and surface it and to demand change policies and a process of decolonization for Puerto Rico. And in terms of ratings, I would suggest for sure, if you're interested in what the disaster capitalist piece looks like post Hurricane Maria, you can definitely read Aftershocks by Professor Jenny Madmonias and Anthology. There's a number of us with pieces in there that really go through this month, our 20, 30 minute conversation and much more depth. There's also a website called Puerto Rico Syllabus. I think it's dot net or dot blog. And it's a curated collection of readings on each one of these issues, much more in depth. And so that's a great place to start. Terrific, thank you so much. You know, we were talking about, you know, making sure that Puerto Rico is included in our solidarity work on the same level and with the same amplification as other nations and people and movements we work with. You know as well as I do, when you travel throughout Latin America very often, you hear the phrase United States and Puerto Rico. And those are the movement people that you and I work with so closely and they clearly understand when they say that what the situation is for Puerto Rico. And I think that that's probably a phrase we should all adopt, United States and Puerto Rico. So that is- Well said. So thank you, Natasha. I'm so pleased to have had this conversation with you. It was really great to talk with you today and to see you again and to work a little bit with you this afternoon. Likewise and thank you all for also carving out a space specifically to talk about Puerto Rico in the context of Latin America. Oh, well, it's really important. Oh, thank you. And thank you for reinforcing that with us. So we'll talk again, I hope. Yes, anytime. Okay. Yeah, Viva Puerto Rico Libre. Yeah, Viva. Thank you so much. Take care. Bye-bye. Bye everyone and be sure to join us next Wednesday at our regular time, 12 p.m. Eastern for our next edition of what the F is going on in Latin America. Thank you again, everyone. Bye-bye. Bye, Natasha.