 Welcome to things three things cell phones turn them off please second there are more feedback forms on the membership table if you want to pick one up on your way out the program committee really really values your input and speaking of the program committee we know that our the head of the committee Beth is not with us right for this semester she'll be back next semester but she is very much with us in as far as planning for the next semester and being involved in everything that's going on so she's still with us at the end of November the week after Thanksgiving is our lunch and we have a wonderful lunch there is a cost it's $15 and it's going to happen right in here we set up tables and it starts at 1230 in the back of the room is a sign-up sheet you can sign up and bring your money next week and after the luncheon it will be at 2 o'clock a regular lecture so now where is our yes here she is going to introduce our speaker my name is Sandy and I'm here and I'm happy to introduce Professor John Waldron from the Department of Romance Languages at UVM Professor Waldron graduated from universities in California he has his PhD from the University of California at Irvine correct and his undergraduate degrees and master's degree degrees from the University of California at Santa Barbara he is the author of many books and articles he has recently done a book on globalism globalization edited a volume globalization in Mexico and he is also a teacher of film studies and this spring we hope he will be teaching a film class in Havana Cuba at the University of Havana so if anybody's interested in that please sign up and come with us and under the continuing ed program here's Professor Waldron know to speak about the other wing of the bird Puerto Rico the two wings are Puerto Rico and Cuba hello I'm not used to using one of these and I'm also not used to lecturing usually my when I talk to my students it's a lot more interactive so if you feel you know like asking me a question or something feel free to you know jump in so thanks for that introduction that was fantastic and thanks for this invitation I really appreciate the opportunity to come and talk to people outside the UVM bubble maybe it'll you know make a difference and it's also a beautiful fall day love the the leaves the late fall we're having so when I talked to Sandy about this I think she I don't remember exactly what she wanted but it was something about port something about Puerto Rico she said and because Maria had just happened and I'm teaching a course kind of on this topic I thought well let me talk about Puerto Rico Maria Maria and a thing called coloniality like coloniality is not exactly colonialism for many people for most of us colonialism is over it was over a long time ago but Puerto Rico as some of you may know is considered the law the oldest colony in the world from the time of Columbus's arrival in 1493 until many people would consider legally it still is a colony today but coloniality is the continuation of colonialist practices in the present day so it's the continuation of the imposition of capitalist structures the imposition of racist gender bias and in short heteronormative practices throughout the world and so the subtitle is the shock doctrine and the oldest colony in the world and some of you may be familiar with Naomi Klein's work on the environment and shock doctrine she came to Puerto Rico shortly after Maria and gave several talks did a lot of work there she has a great book if you're interested in more about Puerto Rico the shock doctrine called the battle for paradise the shock doctrine is essentially what we see happening in Puerto Rico which is after a collapse after an event that causes an extreme disruption in society neoliberal governments and other entities move in and try to impose neoliberal reforms and that's precisely what's happening in Puerto Rico today the governor took it who's a Republican governor took took the the tragedy of Maria as the time to begin to try to privatize everything from education to the electric system to the telephone system public works etc so this is what the shock doctrine is and anyway so let me get started here as some of you may know Puerto Rico was inhabited by a group of indigenous peoples before the arrival of Columbus this group of indigenous peoples and inhabited most of the islands of the greater Antilles and some of the lesser Antilles and these people were called tahinos if you go to Puerto Rico you can still see places like this this is considered a ceremonial ground but they and on these rocks a lot of times you'll see carved images from I guess the gods and the Spanish keeps coming out sorry the gods and other entities of their of their religion not but not much is known about them because for the most part they were they and their culture were eradicated because of disease overwork etc that happened as a result of the invasion of the Spaniards into in Puerto Rico the other thing that but but recently they've done a lot of genetic studies on people who are of Puerto Rican descent and they found that I think something like 60% of all Puerto Ricans have some genetic genetic linkage to the Taino Indian so they're you know the argument is oh no they're still here so you know whatever you want to do with that so so here's where Puerto Rico is located in terms of you know geographically and so one of the reasons I mean Puerto Rico is kind of an interesting thing be interesting in a lot of different ways but one of the things is is that you know it's a small and kind of forgotten island and yet it ends up being super important there's some reason why the Spaniards wanted to conquer it and wanted to keep it even though it didn't have vast reserves of gold or other types of things that they could extract for easy wealth the same thing Theodore Roosevelt prior to 1898 when the United States invaded Puerto Rico during the Spanish-American War Theodore Roosevelt said the United States must have Puerto Rico we have to have it and one of the reasons for this is that Puerto Rico occupies a strategically important point in the Caribbean Theodore Roosevelt had as his you know theater what I'm sorry about the sound it was Theodore Roosevelt wanted to you know they were constructing the Panama Canal at that time and Puerto Rico was seen as the gateway to the Caribbean for that and also you know and for the same reasons the Spaniards wanted it I mean it's a very small island so you can't really grow tons of sugar or coffee on it it didn't have a lot of gold but strategically it's always been seen as of military importance and so if you go to Puerto Rico if you haven't already been there yeah I'm sure you will take a visit of this incredible place which has actually been renovated recently in the last 10 years or so when I first went there longer ago than I care to admit it was not it was not it was cool but it wasn't as great as it is now it's a really incredible historical site to see but this is called El Morro and this sits out on the point that guards the entrance to this is the bay the entrance to the bay over here but that's sort of I put that there is sort of a symbol right of Puerto Rico is is usually seen as a military base by the people who own it and want it and for no other reasons so what happened so the Spaniards in you know they colonized Latin America they controlled most of Latin America except for Brazil and Haiti and other places and then in the early part of the 1800s there were independence movements throughout Latin America for a lot of different reasons Spain began to lose power the Napoleonic invasions in Spain etc and and so the Spanish Empire begins to lose power and the Criollos the the wealthy ruling class in Latin America say well why are we paying money to this crown that doesn't really have any power and they took over that's kind of a very simplistic version of what happened so the result the result of this and also the and also this is you know after the Haitian Revolution which was also very important the result of this is to fold in Puerto Rico one thing that happens is that the more conservative people in Latin America who did not want to become free from the Spanish Crown migrated to Puerto Rico because Puerto Rico and Cuba were the only two colonies in Latin America that did not become independent the result of the Haitian Revolution which happened earlier was that there was a decline in sugar production so you know Haiti was for a lot of different reasons the most productive colony in the world for sugar in part because the French were such brutal colonists they went through they worked their slaves literally to death and they also had you know vast extensions of land that they used for sugarcane production and so after after the Haitian Revolution and after the Haitian Revolution in Latin America you have an influx of more conservative typed people and also an increase in sugar production so you have an increase in sugar production and also an increase in coffee production so what what happens as a result of this is Puerto Rico becomes more wealthy but at the same time it's it's no longer just a military base it's now the lands of Puerto Rico which you know some historians say people Puerto Rico was sort of self-sufficient in terms of agriculture it now becomes a monoculture or a bicultural entity and their their economy becomes more and more dependent on export so they become kind of dependent on this sort of colonial capitalist relation with Europe right being able to export sugar export coffee and so they then need to import slaves where before Puerto Rico did not have that many slaves the they increase substantially the number of slaves so so what happens in around the during the middle to late part of the 1800s is we have independence movements one of the independence movements is led by this guy who I'm sure most people may know already Jose Marti who was exiled from Cuba was a Cuban independence leader and he met up actually with these other two guys over here this is a material bethances Ramona material bethances and Eugenio Maria de Ostos both independence leaders in Puerto Rico and they devised a plan to what they wanted to do was to unite the Caribbean or at least unite the Spanish-speaking Caribbean under the same flag so they devised a thing called they were going to have their own screams or gritos right el grito de lares and el grito de yares yares in Cuba the Cuban one was a little bit more respect a little bit more successful I think it lasted it it it resulted in what what's called the ten years war the one in Puerto Rico lasted only a few months and impart and part of that is in part because of the you know the more conservative people who came to Puerto Rico didn't want Puerto Rico to be independent and so they were they were outed they were you know by spies here we have this is the flag from el grito de lares and it's also a flag that a lot of the people in favor of independence today will use so this is so in 1898 in 1898 the United States invades Puerto Rico and Cuba and here we have a picture of that invasion the invasion was not met with a lot of resistance in Puerto Rico was not was not met with a lot of resistance in Puerto Rico in part because Puerto Rico a lot of people in Puerto Rico at the time had looked to what had happened when the United States had invaded other lands and territories for example just recently historically just maybe 50 years before they had invaded huge extensions of Mexico what was then Mexico that resulted in the 1848 Treaty of Guadalupe Helgo which gave the United States what is now Texas California Nevada color all those western states with sort of Spanish sounding names that that was all part of Mexico and after the invasion of 1848 those all became well after you know many years of course they all became states so Puerto Rico thought well you know won't be so bad you know we'll have a demo we'll become a democracy you know it'll be alright this didn't happen and I'll talk about more I'll talk about that a little bit later for about reasons why but here is kind of an interesting thing so there was actually you know they say that Puerto Rico is the longest oldest colony in the world but there's actually you know a couple weeks when it wasn't right there's a week or two in between the invasion of the United States and the Treaty of Paris that gave Puerto Rico to the United States's war prize when it was not it was not a colony it was actually in terms of hostos free so here is my really awful translation of what hostos says in his diary during those weeks he says I missed the fervent play place a good job I miss I miss the fervent pleasure with which I breathed what I called the breeze of the nation which seemed the purist to me the most regenerative of all the possible breezes I miss the effective force that I loved from my land in reality I missed the patria I was disgraced at the same time after years of efforts when I thought I would see the force of native society native society raised them I saw them faint and fall by the same force I had believed in so he here is talking about that you know and here we see this you know the transition here he's feeling free you know this incredible regenerative breeze my I loved my land I missed my homeland but then I was disgraced instead of my people raising up and fighting the way that I thought they would they were fallen by by the same force I had believed in which I'm not sure exactly what that means but but they fall and he's really upset so there's a period of time there's a period of time that that happens between 1898 and 1917 when Puerto Ricans essentially have no recognized identity so there were their stories of people of an artist for example who's in Paris and he can't travel he can't leave France because he doesn't have an officially recognized passport nobody knows who we officially has no status there are other stories like that like people who are living in New York at the time and they can't leave the United States because they don't have papers that let them leave so this became a problem for the US they didn't know what to do with these people all of a sudden they have you know this whole island of people and they don't they they're trying to figure out what to what to do so this resulted in a really really weird thing and I have Tim you're out to thank thank for this because many years ago he directed me toward a book called foreign in a domestic sense which is it resulted in this in this series of things of court cases called the insular cases so these cases were used to determine what the status of Puerto Rico would be like would would they become citizens would they not become citizens would Puerto Rico become a state would it remain independent and the problem was because people I think constitutionally we can't have a colony it's illegal for us to have a colony or at least people thought so so this resulted in a decision that's really weird and resulted in kind of the weird political status status that Puerto Rico occupies until today called foreign in a domestic sense if anybody can figure out what that means exactly please let me know I'd love to hear it but but essentially what happened was that Puerto Rico Puerto Ricans were given US citizenship and this happened in 1917 with a thing called the Jones law but they were not considered the Puerto Rico itself is not considered part of the United States so it's part of the United States in some respects but not part of it and others one of the reasons why they were given citizenship precisely during that year was because you need a United States needed people to go to war right they're involved in World War one and they needed people to conscript so the deal was okay we'll give you a citizenship you'll be able to travel but you have to send your men to the war so that's that's kind of what happened so one of the questions that comes up a lot is well why like why was it that that before you know for Puerto Ricans and everybody else is like well why was it that before you were you know you invaded these other lands but you and you let them become states and why not us what's the deal why are we so special and part of the thing that happened it has to do with some really complex stuff that's happening in the United States at the time and it's kind of led by this guy Henry Cabot Lodge who you the name may ring a bell and he he and others I mean it seemed kind of hard to believe but maybe not that that the that the Civil War was still on everybody's mind and so they were trying to figure out ways to bring the country together ways to unite the country and one of the ways they came up with was with this sort of myth that they created called the two two tonic consult consitutionalism which was this idea that people and that's why I have a picture that of the German forests here that people who emerged from the German forests were genetically predisposed to democracy I'll send you the article it's there I mean it's it's written down he argues this legally and he got other people to believe him Henry Adams was actually the first proponent of this idea so it was an idea that that like okay so we can we you know people who come out of the emerged from these forests we are capable of democracy but these other people aren't right and so that's what that's different that's what separates us from them so Cabot Lodge's argument for keeping Puerto Rico out of the United States was we can't have all these these people who aren't from two tonic forests coming into our country because they don't know what democracy is they will not be able to participate in a democracy right are there any questions it's weird it's weird and my students I mean I taught about this in my class and they're just like this is science fiction right and I'm like no look it's there and and one of the reasons I teach this is because I'm not a history teacher I'm a literature teacher and one of the reasons I teach this is to show the importance of literature and show the importance of cultural images that we use right so they created they use this myth right a fantasy a story and this fantasy or story became law and it shaped law and it shaped the ways that laws were written it also resulted in a couple of severe things so in Puerto Rico in 1938 Puerto Ricans are like I don't like this a lot of them were I this is not good I don't know I want to be independent and so there was a group of nationalists people who were in favor of the independence of the country who are in favor of nationalism and they had a march in Ponce in south of Puerto Rico on the day of come on Sunday so and they're just walking I mean that some of them I think may have had wooden guns I don't know they're walking and at the time the you during that time the US decided who would be the rule the governor of the island during that time this guy Blanton Winship who's got you know if you read his history he's really well known for you know having a very hard hand and putting down any kind of opposition he called in the military and the police and told them to open fire so this resulted in a thing called a masacre the masacre in Ponce which is a really important moment in Puerto Rican history but it is also a moment curiously enough that if you talk to a lot of Puerto Ricans of the gender of certain generations many of them don't know about it because it wasn't something normally taught in school and it isn't taught in our schools of course but and here interesting talk about the way news you know we're all worried about fake news these days and how you know news is kind of manipulated here is the the man himself Blanton Winship who goes to Ponce because the the story that they developed was oh there were snipers up on the balcony and they were shooting at us and that's why we we started fire so here he is looking up at the balcony from which they fired which and you know it was a total fabrication that did not happen but here we see you know the dead you know the bloodied police officer who was killed no I wasn't pleased though that's a protester there were no police officers killed there we have it fake news so so in in this you know environment emerges this person don Pedro Pedro Vizucampos who's in favor of nationalism he's in favor of Puerto Rico becoming independent and he becomes a very sort of stern and even sometimes violent voice in favor of Puerto Rican independence he has a connection to Vermont he went to the University of Vermont for for a semester and then and then went to Harvard after that and became a lawyer so here's don Pedro and then we have the other person the other pole is Luis Muñoz Marine so if you ever go to Puerto Rico you probably fly into the Luis Muñoz Marine Airport the airports named after him he was in favor of he was in favor of sort of the status quo of Puerto Rico his his philosophy was one that Puerto Rico is not yet economically ready to be independent we aren't you know because and also I mean Puerto Rico had a lot of economic problems they illiteracy rate was very high etc because of all their years of coloniality under Spain so he's like well Puerto we're not ready yet so we need to develop ourselves economically and socially culturally before we can be independent so those are the two people who sort of duked it out so in 1948 they have a very key election the election will be to decide who is going to be the first elected governor of Puerto Rico who ends up being Luis Muñoz Marine and whether what Puerto Rico's status should be should be so Puerto Ricans were actually going to vote and they do sometimes from time to time in a thing called a plebiscite to decide should they be be independent or should they should the status quo of I think it's now officially called Estado Libre Asociado a free associated state should they do that so that's great right they're gonna have a democratic election fantastic that's good we like democracy but what was happening at the time was also McCarthyism starting to rise Pedro Alviso Campos along with his nationalism is in contact with quote-unquote rebel quote-unquote revolutionaries throughout Latin America the US sees him as a threat because they think he's communist and so they want to put it they don't want him to win obviously so they institute a law called la de Mordaza a gag law this law makes it illegal to speak in favor of independence it makes it illegal to speak against the United States it makes it illegal to speak in against for the free associated state it makes it illegal to have a Puerto Rican flag a man was actually arrested for having a Puerto Rican flag inside his house a poet who I actually had the opportunity to meet Francisco Matos Paoli was imprisoned in this place ironically called La Princesa or the princess and he wrote poetry on the walls of his prison cell which were later whitewashed over by the guards and then he wrote the paper he wrote them on like rice paper that was secreted into him and they folded it up in rice and coffee bags out to his wife who then ironed the poems and later published them I actually got to see those that was really fantastic and he eventually kind of slowly became you know mentally unstable and remained so for the rest of his life the other thing that happened was that because of court he was imprisoned because he gave a speech in favor of independence the other thing that happened of course is that Pedro Alviso Campos of course he's imprisoned for many many years and subjected in the prison in a prison in Georgia to radiological experiments so we see the effects of those experiments here on his body so he died shortly after being released from prison so here's some key I guess historical moments the 1917 Jones law the 1938 Massacre de Ponce 1948 Le Mordazza Luis Muñoz Maninas elected the first government Puerto Rican government by the Puerto Rican people and in 1950 Operation Bootstrap before I talk about Operation Bootstrap I'd like to talk like to talk about another thing that happened with not the 17 Jones law but a one I think was in 1924 also called the Jones law excuse me that affected what happened in Maria and that is that and also has an incredible economic effect on the people of Puerto Rico and that is that anything that is imported into Puerto Rico has to come to Puerto Rico on a US flagged ship so that means it has to pass through a port usually passes through a port in Savannah and so everything has to be offloaded then unloaded this drives up you can imagine the price of anything that's coming to Puerto Rico is driven up incredibly it also after Maria had an incredible effect because other countries wanted to send aid to Puerto Rico but were unable to because the things they wanted to send had to be loaded on to American flagged ships Trump suspended that lie I think for maybe three weeks and then because of the shipping law he got so upset he let it go back so that's what okay now Operation Bootstrap operations Bootstrap is really important as it happens in 1950s 50s is a real pivotal year so the thing with Operation Bootstrap is it begins a thing called developmentalism or disarrayismo and it is in order to solve the grinding so Puerto Rico suffered the same effects of the Great Depression as anybody else suffered about worse and they didn't end it was still going on in the 1950s so they Institute Munoz mining institutes a thing called Operation Bootstrap with the United States Teodoro Moscow so if you go across this bridge after leaving the airport that has Puerto Rican flags on either side I think that's the Puente Moscow so named after him and Operation Bootstrap brought factories to the United to Puerto Rico it brought industry it brought technology it made it easier for for factories to do work because they you know they had tax breaks and things like this and it completely in many ways it completely transforms the landscape of Puerto Rico because now the Puerto Rican laborer rather than working his plot of land or her plot of land is now encouraged to go to the city and work in the factories Ray Marquez has an incredible play called La Carreta which details this this movement of the Puerto Rican people into the city it didn't really do a whole lot I mean there are a lot of studies about it and it essentially what the effect was was to move people from the country to the city in terms but the people weren't really paid a livable wage working circumstances were very difficult so it didn't do a whole lot as far as helping the environment of the economic environment but it did do some things this model up and this is another thing that happens like if you study Puerto Rican culture a lot the model of Operation Bootstrap is then employed by the United States and other and not the United States but companies throughout Latin America and throughout the global South and we see one of the the effects in Mexico with the Machiadoras the Machiadoras is an idea that that's spraying from Operation Bootstrap and this is something that that happens in Puerto Rican Puerto Rico is as many times seen as sort of this experiment a laboratory for things that the United States and companies want to see if they'll work there and then they go and use them elsewhere so another really important thing is the island of Vecas so this is kind of very symbolic in many ways so you have this incredible island and you'll notice that this half has roads on it but this half doesn't and it's called restricted area anybody know why the United States all the military people over there right what bombing range yeah it was a bombing range it was used the US used it for to practice to practice air land air land and sea assaults yep so that happened that was that way for many years until until the early 2000s when people protested and got rid of the the Marina got rid of the Navy so here's some other really important historical events the mass sterilization of women to reduce population and therefore economic problems in the 1970s El Caso Cerro Maravilla in 1978 there was a thing called the Cerro Maravilla case where these two young kids both of them were actually sons of famous writers were part of a group called the macheteros and they were convinced by a spy or a like a double agent that they needed to go up to this mountain called Maravilla and bomb a communications tower that this would be a revolutionary act and they really needed to do that and they went up there and did it and the police of course were waiting for them right because they were you know the police were kind of involved in it even happening to begin with and they killed them killed the two kids and this was called a this was called a terrorist act and it happened again during a time when the governor at the time Barcelo who was in favor of statehood was kind of losing in popularity so there was some in the most people to this day believe that he had a hand in orchestrating it because it gave him it kind of created this panic in the people that oh no we can't go for independence or we can't you know we need to go to go for statehood because you know Barcelo's in favor of statehoods we have to vote for him because of these terrorists that want to destroy our country and we're afraid of them kind of you know the same kind of thing we see happening all the time so in 1998 David Sanchez Rodriguez was killed by a quote-unquote fatal mistake in Vieques and this resulted in a worldwide actually protest people from all over the world came to Vieques to protest it resulting in the the Navy leaving and in 2005 these are just some highlight so this is in 2005 Filiberto Jeda Rios who was a leader of the Macheteros was assassinated in Lares, Puerto Rico, near Lares, Puerto Rico on precisely the anniversary of El Grito de Lares by the FBI he was and admittedly he was a criminal he was a fugitive from justice he was given a an ankle bracelet that he cut off and he had been on the run for many years and they found him in his home they surrounded his home and waited for him to come outside and killed him the person in charge of that operation was Robert Mueller so here I don't really I'm not an economist but I know people and they try to explain to me exactly what happened but essentially in the years in the especially in the later later 90s in the 2000s Puerto Rican economy started to tank precipitously as we can see from these graphs part of the problem was is that they weren't bringing in enough money to pay off bond holders so their bonds were reduced to junk status and then there's something with a with one of these yeah so and that and that kind of resulted in and so they had they can't pay off their debt they and they have all these people who are retiring they have pensions they have to pay they're not bringing enough money and the bonds aren't bringing them any money either so they're incredibly awful economic status so that was going on right before Maria struck so there's Maria flying over Puerto Rico and then of course I'm sure you all know this picture and then here's some pictures that I took in January after Maria so a year ago January this was many months after Maria this Maria hidden September October November December January so four or five months later this is a major intersection the lights aren't working there's nobody out there directing traffic this is a shot from my in-laws house looking out so San Juan the city of San Juan has power but you can see how dark it is we only have light here because he had a generator they were without power until May they are just telling some people in the back they were without internet service which you know like I guess it sounds like I mean I think of that as kind of a luxury but I it's so we need it so badly now they were without internet service until August electricity and water is still very intermittent as a result one of the things that he and other people did was they started putting solar panels up but one of the things that's happening because the governor wants to privatize the electric electric company and he wants to make the electric company look like it has value so somebody will buy it they actually charge them for producing solar power so like if they're not like like in California it used to be that I don't know if it's still that way but when a long time ago when I live there if you produce produce enough solar power you kind of fed it back out on the grid it would make your electric bill go down in this case it's like if your bill goes too far below what you normally pay they charge you so it's really not very great these are some more pictures this is this is Louisa so this is probably a place where not many people go this is a community that's historically a community of runaway slaves that is now very Afro-Portoican community but you can see these are cement electric poles that were fallen like toothpicks here is this was in July of this year this is heading out to Luquillo Beach which is up by a Yulke the rainforest impassable roads still so in this in this environment right so it was already economically Puerto Rico is already in really tough shape and then things got really worse well much worse after the hurricane and in this environment what's happening on one side you have a bunch of people like the governor and a lot of others who are very in favor of privatization right and Obama put in during the economic crisis that was before the hurricane a thing with the ironic name in Spanish called promesa which means promise which was basically they they I think there's might be one Puerto Rican on the board but they're they're deciding you know how to make Puerto Rico more economically viable and so this results in a lot of you know extreme cuts like they're cutting public public education they're reducing the payments to police and things like you know any kind of public service that they can to save money so this got even worse after the hurricane but I also kind of wanted to end on a note of hope there are a lot of great responses to what's happened one of them is this fantastic place which was an amazing place even before the hurricane called Casa Pueblo and Arjunas Puerto Rico they make some of the best coffee in the island and this guy Arturo Masol what they did even before the hurricane is they had this idea of self-sustainability so they they you know have read their history books and read at least what to many today may seem a myth that Puerto Rico can be self-sustainable and they thought well let's see if it's true so they started growing their own food and they put solar panels on their roofs and started producing their own electricity and they put cisterns many people in Puerto Rico already have cisterns but they put cisterns up to collect rain water and just regular water and so they become it's kind of more or less self sustainable Naomi Klein calls these things happening in Puerto Rico he's not the only one he they call them she calls them islands of sovereignty so like these little groups these sort of micro units of people and groups sort of become self-sustainable and they start interacting with each other like Masol has you know some products that say another group doesn't have so they sort of trade products right so one of the great things that happened not great things but one of the interesting things that happened after after after the hurricane was of course the it wasn't interesting but awful that they lost electricity but one of the things that happened in Arjunas is the people came to Casa Pueblo it's like if people with with you know medical machinery that they needed to use for whatever reason whether respirators or I don't know what else they came to Casa Pueblo and could plug them in and use them whereas if they lived in other parts of the island if they're without solar energy a lot of people died because of that because hospitals didn't have power they couldn't get to hospitals and this is why the death toll is so high from Puerto Rico wasn't you know that what happened immediately after but it was the result of the loss of all these facilities they also have a solar cinema so people come in and watch movies right they give them coffee they give them water and things like this and so it kind of creates this really lovely kind of community of hope I would say that people you know if they can come together and work together the way that muscle is doing that you know there could be a positive thing that comes out of this muscle a couple I think it was in September was arrested by the police he he had picked his daughter up from I think band practice or dance practice something like that and they had a pizza a piece of pizza in the local pizza parlor and he got in his truck and drove away and immediately he was pulled over by the police and he said he admitted you know it's an old truck everybody knows it's my truck everybody the town knows me by my truck and he had let the Marbet they the the registration and so he thought oh that's why they're pulling me over the cop pulls him over and says you're drunk did not he had not had a beer the guy in the pizza parlor testifies he know he doesn't drink much at all and he definitely didn't have anything that night and my soul's like I'm not drunk I didn't I'm not signing anything and so he tried to give him a breathalyzer there and it didn't function the cop said so they took him into the police station and gave him a test and I think he was the test resulted in what's the legal limit like point yeah I think it was point five oh point five oh yeah exactly he should be dead yeah resulted in point five oh and he said that this is just something just just sort of the the culmination of sort of an ongoing harassment that he's feeling from the local authorities from the governmental representations the police and he doesn't know why that's happening but that's what I want to end with which is hope I mean I think that there are many reasons to hope Puerto Rico could be a better place I think maybe the destruction of Maria could you know create these you know networks islands of sovereign sovereignty there's another fantastic group called junta gente if you're interested I can send you the website that are also creating these types of islands of sovereignty so anyway thank you very much for paying attention hello I just wondered what you know about US faith-based organizations of various denominations who are trying to work in Puerto Rico and relative success or lack I haven't heard of any I'm sure there are but I I mean the the groups that I've heard of are the ones that I've already mentioned I'm sure there are I'm sure there are there I just there are so many that it's hard to keep track and I'm sorry I don't know about them sorry is there one that you know of that I should know of but give her the microphone she's gonna ignore me well just the only one I have personal knowledge of is the American Baptist Church's USA who operate in the United States and and Puerto Rico in terms of their own home missions and they're sending quite a lot of relief and have been since the storm that's fantastic and I know that there are a lot of organizations right here in in Burlington who are doing that also that's that's great thanks for telling me that great what's the what's the status of Puerto Ricans as to US income tax do you mean what do you mean do you mean personal income tax or I remember reading somewhere of that there was some controversy over whether Puerto Ricans would be subject to US income tax and I don't know whether they are or aren't but there was some controversy about that and I don't know what the outcome was well from my understanding they're not I mean on the island they're not but if you if you take that in the context to the I mean what happens as a result of of the Jones law the things being you know having to come to Puerto Rico on US flagged ships I and there are other ways that they that also kind of you know cuts into you know maybe they don't pay personal income tax but that's one way that I think they are taxed yeah I believe that they don't pay personal income tax and that's why they're not allowed to vote when they're on the island okay and then as soon as they you know move somewhere else then they are pay tax and are given the right to vote right question is what exactly was the beef with who the last gentleman that you showed oh with my soul like what's hit what's the beef with him yeah like what did the government exactly have against him besides you know he doesn't even he doesn't even know I mean he I would I mean you know read in the content I mean I don't want to get all conspiracy theory on people here but but I think that you know he's not doing he's he's having tremendous success doing what he does which is not which kind of goes against what the government wants to happen which is instead of privatization he's making people independent and self-sufficient and so that's a result you know that's kind of not what the government wants to happen the government wants privatization from what people are telling me yeah that's that's what's happening yeah good afternoon my question is I'm right here I just wanted to ask if those sanctuaries that you had mentioned except volunteers yes some of them are overrun so you might want to I mean you could if you went there's a there's one called junta gente so Ju NTA GE NTE they that's the one that everybody knows about so everybody's going to them but if you got in touch with them they might be able to tell you where else you could go and also I don't know what the ladies name I mean that might be another great great way that I didn't know about that that you could also work and also if you contacted Casa Pueblo they might be able to they'd be maybe happy to accept your help or you know feed it into somebody else who they know of who needs the help thank you yeah in 1998 the world you know that's the that's the really that's the really kind of strange thing that I haven't completely unraveled yet because the relation why was it not okay with Puerto Rico but you know their attitude to the Hawaiian Islands was also different why did we make Hawaii a state and also our relationship with the Philippines I think is somewhat different and I haven't fully unraveled those questions yet so maybe looks like somebody here has so oh okay what I yeah well that's the beauty of teaching is I always learn how much I don't know so that's great it may not be on okay so in 1898 when the Spanish-American war happened why was not Cuba considered the same way as Puerto Rico how did Cuba end up on their own Sandy I mean mostly this is my opinion but I think Cuba was in a very unusual status after the war of 1898 as well they were a little more free than Puerto Rico and they established a little bit more of a national domestic system however they had to agree to certain restrictions in order to win that and one of them was the Platte amendment and the Platte amendment was put on Cuba which meant that they could not determine for instance their own foreign policy they had to submit to the foreign policy of the United States which is one of the reasons that they got in trouble when they made a quasi-alliance with the Soviet Union so and they had to accept all those restrictions and they had to accept really the fact that their economy and the corporations of the United States basically took over the economy of Cuba so Cuba was not really independent at all although slight it wasn't like Puerto Rico it wasn't totally a colony but it wasn't free either and it isn't really to the day this day really because they suffer under the embargo of the United States at one point during that period when Cuban or the Puerto Rican economy had growth and manufacturing drug manufacturers really were a significant part of that growth and the home of I agrar I mean yeah yeah and I my understanding is that growth has stopped and actually reduced the move to off-island do you have any sense about what the circumstances or conditions are that that would happen yeah I'm there was I think was the law I think was the law 128 which gave corporations huge tax breaks to exist in in Puerto Rico and that law was rescinded and as a reason and that was another way that that that was another sort of hit to the Puerto Rican economy and to labor yeah in my estimation or a recollection the Puerto Ricans voted many times whether they wanted to become US citizens or not you mean a state a state a state of us yeah and what are you still doing that what's the reason one okay one of them was extremely close well most of them been very close the the the one they just had one recently but the one before that there was a thing on the ballot there so usually they have three options that the option is statehood status quo or independence and on this particular ballot there was also another option called none of the above and and I believe none of the above one and in the last in the last election in the last election most people who were not in favor of statehood did not vote because they felt that it was a complete travesty what the governor was trying to pull off so statehood one and people who are in favor of independence generally don't vote because they feel that you because if going back to the the gag law in 48 they feel that they are not in a in a situation that is allows for a free and independent vote so they think it's a complete ruse and a sham so they don't vote so it's hard to say I mean some people there's some authors who write about this very complicated situation because during during the whole thing that happened with Vieques during the protest that happened in Vieques there was a the governor at the time was in favor of statehood but he came out in favor of the protesters in Vieques which who were mostly you know was run and promoted by the independentistas the people in favor of freedom and so some poets started writing these interesting lines about how if you scratch a Puerto Rican deeply enough you'll find in an independentista you'll find somebody in favor of independence right so it's hard to say I mean it's also kind of psychotic because even the people who like Rosario who's in favor of independence he'll say oh no we can become a state but we can still maintain our traditions so we can still maintain our language you know all of our cultural traditions that make us who we are which I don't see that I don't know how that would happen but so it's kind of thanks what do you see as the future of Puerto Rico considering how unpopular self-determination is I try to be hopeful I try to be hopeful about a lot of things these days and finding it more and more difficult I think ultimately I think if if Trump our I mean our current administration if they were fully aware that Puerto Rico existed I think you know that it's not just a place covered around surrounded by big water that that they that they would they would probably cut it loose I don't really see any reason I don't see any reason for Puerto Rico to be part of the United from the US perspective I don't see any reason for Puerto Rico to be part of the United States and Patrick Buchanan many years ago who's very much you know to the right has written wrote several essays saying that Puerto Rico should be independent so I that's I mean but I have no idea I you know it's probably just gonna continue the way it is for you know forever I don't know given everything that's happened to Puerto Rico both economically and by other by us and the weather and whatnot do you think an independent Puerto Rico would be economically viable see that's always the problem isn't it I mean I mean that's you know I mean would it end up like like Haiti would it end up like the Dominican Republic I don't know is it but what I mean also to be on the island now to look at the way things are now economically it's not in very good shape I mean and culturally is not I mean culturally is fine but I mean in terms of economics I mean most of it used to be that 50% of the Puerto Ricans 50% of Puerto Ricans lived on the island 50% lived here that was another thing I didn't mention was that another tactic used by politicians to sort of in the 50s especially but throughout time and we see it happening again in the in the 2000s to sort of ameliorate the the difficulties that they're having is to use this thing called an escape valve which is to encourage people to to leave the island and the example I always like to give is West Side Story right because when Bernstein when Bernstein and Sondheim originally imagined that play that musical which I love they imagine it between Irish and Italians and then Bernstein went and visited the the neighborhood again that he wanted to write about and the and it was Puerto Ricans why well because they had left the island they were you know it was cheap to come to the United States the flights were very inexpensive the boat rides are very inexpensive manufacturing there were jobs were more plentiful so people were encouraged actually by Luis Muñoz money to leave the island same thing was happening in the 2000s people were leaving the island in droves to come to Orlando right and everybody's talking about how's was how's this gonna affect the elections right and then after the after the hurricane was even worse so so if you take that into consideration and then you drive around the island and you see the how devastated it is and how nothing's happening I mean nothing very little is happening to make things better I mean if you go to old San Juan or the tourist areas things are starting to come back I had actually almost cried when I was there in January because I walked through the streets of old San Juan and I had it felt like I was in a ghost town but things now are much better but in the tourist areas so I don't I mean it's hard to say what things are so bad now I'm not sure if becoming independent would make things that much worse I don't know I was just wondering if you would recommend a book about the history of Puerto Rico yes there's a really hair-raising book by called the war against all Puerto Ricans which will curl your hair if it isn't already and that one is pretty good up until 1950 there's one another one by Jose Trias Monke called Puerto Rico the oldest colony in the world and if you can't find those you can any of you can email me and I'd be more than happy to yeah I've got something that's positive as people in New England could be very proud of the fact that some of the best baseball players in the world come from Puerto Rico I think I'm not sure if I fell in love with Puerto Rico because my wife's Puerto Rican or because my favorite baseball player growing up was Roberto Clemente I'm not really sure but um I have a I've actually had another funny story about that when right after 9-11 my in-laws mother came to visit and we went to Montreal and we're coming across and and she didn't have a passport all she had was a burst not a birth certificate either then she had a baptismal certificate which is something that counts down there and we're trying to get across the border when they had just changed the law that you need a passport and she's from a little town called Cuamo now Roberto Clemente is from Rio Piedras which is not Cuamo so we're coming across the border and they gave us a hard time and she's getting all upset because she's thinking oh my you know the first time she'd ever left the country in her life you know and and you see she was shaken and the guy comes back and he said well my boss says that that you can come in to the country as long as you tell me the most famous baseball player from your from your town not from your country your town and so she's like I don't even know no baseball player ever came out of my town and I looked at her I said Roberto Clemente and that's what she said and we got we were able to come in the United States because of because of that yeah thank you so very much