Puerto Rico as we know is a American Territory. It’s citizens are American citizens, however, cannot vote for president. Because it is not a state, it has no senators or representatives in Congress. Instead, it sends a delegate to the House of Representatives, called the Resident Commissioner, with essentially no voting privileges. Although the people of Puerto Rico have no voice, congress may pass laws that affect them even though they have no way to properly represent themselves. Since 1898 it has been effectively a colony of the U.S.
Recently the worrying economic situation has prompted the drafting and passing of Puerto Rico Oversight, Management, and Economic Stability Act (PROMESA). There was Billions of Dollars of debt, Crushing poverty getting worse, empty buildings, and population decreasing rapidly. The colony has been at bad economic standstill since 2011. Poverty is three times as severe as it is in the continental U.S. Despite the over 70 Billion dollars of debt, Puerto cannot declare bankruptcy due to an old law (sources below). This is were PROMESA comes into play. This bill established a seven-member federal over site board to supervise the island government, all decisions made by the local government need to be approved by this board before going into action.
“The oversight board has one priority — to ensure that Puerto Rico makes good on its obligations to its creditors, many of whom are private American investors.”
One of the effects of PROMESA is the lowering of the minimum wage from $7.25 to $4.25 an hour. One cannot see how this will affect the poorest Puerto Ricans but will put the already suffering, into a even worse situation. This will affect many students that need to pay off the already expensive student loans. This will only affect new jobs… this means that employers can lay off older workers and employ younger people in need of a job under the new minimum wage. The exploitation of the workers are being highlighted and this PROMESA bill is only in the benefit for the elite and wealthy of society.
Not only are the poor and needy getting screwed over, but this bill, handing over their sovereignty had amazing amount of support from both of the main parties. The people had no choice in this so-called “democracy”. Obviously democracy means nothing to the elite bourgeoisie because it is not their livelihood at stake. In PR, the rich got richer and the poor got poorer.
sources:
Minimum wage in Puerto Rico will be lowered to $4.25 per hour
Modern Marxism 