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Puerto Rico

Massive Blackout Hits Puerto Rico

September 28, 2016 Talia Tirella, www.pix11.com ,
By Talia Tirella for PIX 11 - PUERTO RICO — Classes at public schools has been canceled for the second day in a row in Puerto Rico as power is slowly being restored following a massive blackout that struck the island Wednesday. About 375,000 customers throughout the island have power restored, Gov. Alejandro Garcia-Padilla said in a news conference Thursday night. Since some Puerto Ricans remain in the dark on Friday, the governor has canceled classes for public schools for the second day in the row.

Protests Against ‘Colonial’ PROMESA Debt Plan Rock Puerto Rico

September 4, 2016 Staff, www.telesurtv.net , , , ,
By Staff for Telesur. Hundreds of protesters took to the streets in San Juan Wednesday to block the first scheduled conference on the installation of a financial control board to remedy Puerto Rico’s crippling debt crisis but slammed by critics as an anti-democratic, neo-colonial policy that will redistribute wealth from the island nation to Wall Street. Demonstrators formed protests lines and blocked roads with rocks and bricks to disrupt the conference at San Juan’s Condado Plaza Hilton. They carried signs and shouted slogans against the federal control board, whose authority will supercede that of Puerto Rico’s democratically-elected governor, effectively handing budgetary decision-making over to unelected appointees, many of them bankers. The U.S. law creating the control board, known by its acronym PROMESA, grants the oversight panel the power to cut pensions, labor contracts with civil servants, and social services, to restructure its US$73 billion debt load. Despite lines of riot police and occasional use of pepper spray, the protests managed to block conference-goers on their way to the venue and forced organizers to re-arrange the meeting agenda, local media reported.

Fiscal Board Protestors, Riot Police Clash On San Juan Bridge

September 3, 2016 Staff, www.caribbeanbusiness.com ,
By Staff of Caribbean Business - SAN JUAN – A group called Concertación Puertorriqueña Contra la Junta de Control Fiscal Federal began just after 6:30 a.m. a series of protests and demonstrations near the Condado Plaza hotel, where the Puerto Rico Chamber of Commerce was holding its first conference on the Puerto Rico Oversight, Management and Economic Stability Act (Promesa). Shouting slogans and carrying signs against the establishment of the Financial Oversight & Management Board, which Promesa creates, protesters blocked Ashford Avenue, prompting the intervention of police in the area.

Black Flags And Debt Resistance In America’s Oldest Colony

August 4, 2016 Max Haiven, www.roarmag.org , ,
By Max Haiven for ROAR Magazine - Sunday midnight in Santurce, the old downtown working-class neighborhood of Puerto Rico’s capital San Juan which, like seemingly all such neighborhoods around the world, struggles with the uneven brutalities and gifts of gentrification. Old men sit on decaying swivel chairs outside small bars pumping local music, faded newspapers line the insides windows of shops long-shuttered by the island’s ongoing economic crisis. Yet here and there new businesses and experimental social spaces are also flourishing

Puerto Rico: 500 Years Of Colonial Bondage & Resistance

June 30, 2016 AbMartin, www.mediaroots.org ,
By Abby Martin for Tele Sur - Puerto Rico’s massive debt has been discussed at length in Congress and the media, all omitting the most important fact: the history of being a colonial subject for over 500 years, still owned and controlled by the United States. Abby Martin talks to two professors of Latin American studies, Luis Barrios and Danny Shaw, about the long struggle of Puerto Rico to break the shackles of U.S. and Spanish colonialism—from indigenous resistance to the Young Lords in Harlem.

The Takeover Of Puerto Rico

June 27, 2016 Jose L. Flores, www.counterpunch.org
By Jose L. Flores for Counter Punch - The Island of Puerto Rico is currently in the midst of an economic crisis. It has been reported that Puerto Rico’s government owes over 70 billion dollars in debt, mostly to investors holding state issued bonds, living in the continental United States. Unable to repay such a huge sum of debt Puerto Rico has appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court attempting to restructure its financial obligations. This appeal was quickly denied, thereby provoking the U.S. Congress to step in and attempt to resolve this dilemma.

Puerto Rico Students Shut Down University Over Austerity Cuts

March 18, 2016 Staff, www.telesurtv.net , , , ,
By Staff of Tele Sur - The students are calling for people all over the country to join the protest against "unpayable debt" and austerity. Thousands of college students from the University of Puerto Rico (UPR) approved a three-day, full-campus shutdown Tuesday to protest recent austerity measures, which they say endanger the higher education system. The students held a general student assembly, after which they marched through the university and closed all entrances to the campus.

Permanent Protest To Free Oscar Lopez Rivera

February 9, 2016 Jose Manuel Lopez, www.todosunidosdescolonizarpr.com , , , ,
By Jose Manuel Lopez of TodosUnidosDescolonizarPR. Bayamon,Puerto Rico - Our partner, reporter and political activist Edwin Chungo Molina is promoting an interesting campaign to force the United States (US) government to release Puerto Rican political prisoner Oscar López Rivera. Oscar has served 34 years in a US prison for exercising his inalienable right to use all means necessary to decolonize Puerto Rico. The US government is the criminal for ignoring 34 United Nations (UN) resolutions asking it to immediately decolonize Puerto Rico. In 1960, the UN determined democratically that colonialism is a crime against humanity because it threatens world peace.

Puerto Rico Proposes Harsh Austerity To Solve Debt Crisis

September 10, 2015 Alice Ollstein, www.thinkprogress.org , ,
By Alice Ollstein in Think Progress - The government of Puerto Rico put forward an official plan on Wednesday to tackle its looming $72 billion debt crisis. In exchange for demanding some concessions from the island’s hedge fund creditors, the government is promising to pay workers less than the minimum wage, slash retirement benefits, limit collective bargaining, cut funding to universities, and shut down more K-12 schools. In a speech Wednesday, Puerto Rico’s Governor García Padilla said the hedge funds and other creditors had a moral obligation to meet them halfway, otherwise the island will run out of money next summer. “That path…will result in years of litigation and defaults and a major humanitarian crisis,” he said. “It will force us to choose between paying a creditor, a teacher, a policeman or a nurse.”

Puerto Rico Defaults On Debt Repayment

August 5, 2015 Dominic Rushe, www.theguardian.com , , ,
By Dominic Rushe in The Guardian - Puerto Rico missed its first debt repayment on Monday, the first time the troubled US commonwealth has failed to pay its bills. The island paid just $628,000 toward a $58m debt due to creditors of its Public Finance Corporation. While the default was expected, it is likely to worsen the financial situation for the island as it struggles with debts estimated at $72bn. “This was a decision that reflects the serious concerns about the Commonwealth’s liquidity in combination with the balance of obligations to our creditors and the equally important obligations to the people of Puerto Rico,” the territory’s government development bank president, Melba Acosta Febo, said in a statement. Late last month Víctor Suárez, chief of staff for governor Alejandro García Padilla, warned that the government did not have the money for the $58m of principal and interest due on Public Finance Corporation bonds.

Hedge Funds Helped Destroy Puerto Rico’s Economy, Poor Pay Price

August 3, 2015 Alice Ollstein, www.thinkprogress.org , , , ,
By Alice Ollstein in Think Progress - Angry graffiti scrawled across the brightly colored buildings of San Juan tells the creditors of the world exactly where they can stick their plan to extract roughly $73 billion in debt from the struggling U.S. territory. “Puerto Rico comes first. To hell with the debt,” reads one wall. “Don’t play around with my retirement,” says the side of a major freeway. Down by the University of Puerto Rico, the walls and sidewalk are filled with laments — “Look into my unemployed face” — and calls to action: “Study and fight!” Depending who you ask in Puerto Rico, the debt crisis was caused by neo-colonial and imperialist policies from the U.S., the Puerto Rican government’s wasteful overspending and corruption, or the cadre of hedge funds that are currently profiting from the island’s woes.

Hedge Funds Demand Austerity In Puerto Rico

August 2, 2015 Rupert Neate, www.theguardian.com , , ,
By Rupert Neate for the Guardian -- Billionaire hedge fund managers have called on Puerto Rico to lay off teachers and close schools so that the island can pay them back the billions it owes. The hedge funds called for Puerto Rico to avoid financial default – and repay its debts – by collecting more taxes, selling $4bn worth of public buildings and drastically cutting public spending, particularly on education. The group of 34 hedge funds hired former International Monetary Fund (IMF) economists to come up with a solution to Puerto Rico’s debt crisis after the island’s governor declared its $72bn debt “unpayable” – paving the way for bankruptcy. The funds are “distressed debt” specialists, also known as vulture funds, and several have also sought to make money out of crises in Greece and Argentina, the collapse of Lehman Brothers and the near collapse of Co-op Bank in the UK. The report, entitled For Puerto Rico, There is a Better Way, said Puerto Rico could save itself from default if it improves tax collection and drastically cuts back on public spending.

Hedge Funds Want Education Slashed In Puerto Rico

July 30, 2015 Mark Karlin, www.truth-out.org , , , ,
By Mark Karlin in Truth Out - According to a July 28 article in the Guardian, the financial vultures of the US are circling over Puerto Rico's skyrocketing debt, which totals more than $70 billion dollars. It is an austerity-driven death watch that by now is common practice among predatory "debt distress" consolidators: Billionaire hedge fund managers have called on Puerto Rico to lay off teachers and close schools so that the island can pay them back the billions it owes. The hedge funds called for Puerto Rico to avoid financial default - and repay its debts - by collecting more taxes, selling $4bn worth of public buildings and drastically cutting public spending, particularly on education. The group of 34 hedge funds hired former International Monetary Fund (IMF) economists to come up with a solution to Puerto Rico’s debt crisis after the island’s governor declared its $72bn debt "unpayable" - paving the way for bankruptcy.

Newsletter – Culture Of Deception

July 18, 2015 Margaret Fowers and Kevin Zeese, www.popularresistance.org , , , , , , , , , ,
By Margaret Flowers and Kevin Zeese. A recent report by the Union of Concerned Scientists, "The Climate Deception Dossiers," proves that the corporations which profit from the burning of fossil fuels knew about global warming decades ago, knew their industries contributed to it and responded by funding propaganda to deny global warming and pushing policies that increased their profits at the expense of a livable future. In "We are all Greeks Now," Chris Hedges connects corporate capitalism to the many crises we face. He writes, "Corporate profit is God. It does not matter who suffers." When profit is worshiped, truth is sacrificed and all manner of deception is justified."

Puerto Rican Plan To Make Workers Pay For The Island’s Debt Crisis

July 16, 2015 Rafael Azul, www.globalresearch.ca , , ,
By Rafael Azul in Global Research - Puerto Rico’s non-voting member of the US House of Representatives, Pedro Pierluisi of the pro-statehood New Progressive Party, is sponsoring a bill to grant Puerto Rico bankruptcy protection while it negotiates with its creditors and restructures its economy. The bill envisions a bankruptcy process for the island similar to that imposed on the city of Detroit in 2013. The House Judiciary Committee has sidelined Pierluisi’s bill. A statement issued jointly by the chairman of the committee, Bob Goodlate, and committee member Tom Marino, both Republicans, declared the general consensus on the committee to be that providing “Puerto Rico’s municipalities access to Chapter 9 of the Bankruptcy Code would not by itself solve Puerto Rico’s problems, which are associated with underlying structural problems.”
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