The truth about her trip to Puerto Rico. More than politics, it was about financing the campaign.
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| Secretary of Energy Jennifer Granholm, with Vice President Kamala Harris on Canóvanas (Photo by AFP) |
It is not precisely that today is the 151st
anniversary of the abolition of slavery in Puerto Rico, it is that these are
the ironies of living in a colony.
That the first female Vice President of the United
States, who identifies as black, without necessarily being so, comes to Puerto
Rico on a day like today, is a matter of mandatory reflection. This visit by
Kamala Harris deserves analysis and questioning.
First, because she is not black.She is
multiracial and multicultural, even though she identifies as black. Only in
America can the daughter of Jamaican and Indian immigrants grow up to become
the first female Vice president. Yet, her own election was a sign of how much
American politics and society are changing.
Harris is a testament of how demographic trends are
changing and reshaping America, yet the nuances of how people still struggle to talk
about multiracial people and understand the realities of life in underprivileged,
minority enclaves, still permeate the American fabric. This is particularly important
now with a real possibility of Donald Trump winning the election, and how his
MAGA voters feel and behave. And this is also important for us, here in Puerto
Rico.
Here the racial issue is also a difficult topic for
many sectors that deny that racism and sexism persist, but they do exist. The lack
of blacks in positions of power or in politics is a fact locally. We are also a
bastion of that systemic racism that is being challenged in the mainland.
Yet, what happened here is also different. Not only
because the abolition of slavery is commemorated today, but because today the Afro-descendants
week ended. That must be a mandatory part of the conversation, but it isn’t.
For us in the middle of the Caribbean, on this indebted, poor island, looted by so many corrupt politicians, it means so much more. What does Harris' visit really represent on a day like today? Simple. Her presence rubs us in the face that we are still a colony. Over 151 years ago we were a colony from Spain and now from the empire that she represents. And she came here to parade it in our faces, as a reminder that they are the ones in charge.
On
March 22, 1873, the Spanish National Assembly abolished slavery in Puerto Rico.
The owners were compensated with 35 million ‘pesetas’ (the Spanish coin) per
slave, and slaves were required to continue working for three more years. Slavery
was abolished here eight years after the US, just after the end of the
civil war. The abolition of slavery was passed by Congress on January 31, 1865,
and ratified on December 6, 1865 as the 13th
Amendment of the Constitution that abolished slavery in the United States.
On
June 30, 2016, then-president of the United States Barak Obama – a multiracial politician
himself – signed into law a new kind of slavery dressed up as economic freedom.
He signed the Puerto Rico Oversight, Management, and Economic Stability Act,
(PROMESA), stating it would allow the Island to restructure its debt and
achieve fiscal responsibility. This process will continue to affect us in
Puerto Rico for generations to come.
Precisely
because of PROMESA the conditions have been created to attract some of American
wealthiest investors. They come here to avoid paying US taxes, exploiting us Puerto
Ricans. They have created a massive housing bubble which is driving exorbitant
housing costs for locals. The likes of hedge-fund billionaires such as Nicholas
Prouty for the Democrats and John Paulson for Trump and the Republicans. Harris
kept quiet about all this.
She also didn’t acknowledge the fact that we are being
pushed out of our own communities, thrown from houses by short-term rental investors
and Airbnb-like tourism. We are driven away from our beaches for celebrity
crypto expats and hedge fund moguls who came promising to foster economic growth
but have turned the island into a tax haven. It is in that reality that Harris
arrived on a day like today. A day that should have been to reflect on the past
and plan for the future but was turned into a political fundraiser.
Harris
came, smiled for the cameras, said hello, went to a preselected house in the
town of Canóvanas, an impoverished community of people who had lost everything
in Hurricane Maria.
She
then moved on to a school and community center on Calle Loíza in Santurce,
where a few people were protesting. And then she moved on to her real
priority: a fundraiser where attendees were asked to pitch-in from $25,000 to $100,000
per person. Many of those attending and coordinating the event were investors
who were looking for ways to keep PROMESA, and slow down some IRS investigations.
In
that sense Harris is no different from other American politicians who come to
the island. Yet, her political fundraiser disguised as an official
visit from the Vice President with the previous subtext that of “Puerto Rico
matters to me”, is the imposed narrative.
As long as that political investment dressed up as an
official visit is the official story, the truth will be untold. That of a dying
democracy, where inequalities based on economic background, gender, and race
persist.
And how can the daughter of immigrants from Jamaica
and India, who is a multiracial and multiethnic woman from the power that
governs us, understand these Puerto Rican realities? I don’t know. I fear that
her political role prevents her from recognizing it.