In July of this year, former Governor Ricardo Rosello was forced to resign when leaked chats of his revealed expressions of racism and homophobia between him and members of his staff. Since then, Wanda Vázquez Garced holds the governor positions.
Amid an economic crisis in Puerto Rico that has only been intensified by the past few hurricanes, Congress established a control board to oversee Puerto Rico’s debt restructuring. However, hedge fund Aurelius, which owns Puerto Rican bonds, believes the board is overreaching the power that the federal government has over Puerto Rico. However there is legal precedent for this through the Appointments Clause which grants the US president to appoint public officials for a board. The decision has not come yet.
Ultimately, this Supreme Case frames Puerto Rico’s relationship with the United States -- “separate but equal” as upheld in Plessy v Ferguson as Puerto Rico technically is self-governing. So, the big question is: Should Puerto Rico be independent?
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It's actually supper interesting, because basically the only reason that Roselló was trying to stay in office after the hundreds of pages of chats were leaked was because he had to stay for at least one more year in order to receive pension. However, because of protests that included shutting down entire sections of the main highways in Puerto Rico, Expreso Las Américas, he felt a lot of pressure to resign as threats of impeachment were happening.
ReplyDeleteAnother big problem with the economy in Puerto Rico, is that a lot of the younger generations aren't staying in their birthplace after finishing their education, or leaving to the States for college and not returning. This kind of puts the advancement of businesses and the economy on pause.
Overall, July was a wild time for the island, because in the beginning of the month multiple high ranked authorities in Puerto Rican government were arrested by the FBI because of misusing funds given to them for hurricane relief. It was recovered that more than 15 million dollars were used in contracts that had private and personal agendas instead of trying to help the territory as a whole.
I liked the points you made, Angelina!
This blog post is really interesting and well written! I learned a lot about Puerto Rico's relationship with the US and about the economic hardships which Puerto Rico is facing. I love the connection you made to the Plessy v Ferguson case. This really emphasizes how, even though Puerto Rico is technically part of the US, citizens of the territory do not receive equal rights to the rest of the nation. After some more research, I found out that Puerto Rico even gets significantly less Medicaid funding than the US states. As a result, the territory has to take more loans (and fall into more debt) in order to fund its health care system.
ReplyDeletehttps://www.usatoday.com/story/money/2017/10/04/puerto-rico-debt-crisis-bankruptcy-donald-trump/731091001/
This post does a great job of examining the ethical issues relating to US involvement in Puerto Rico. The mention of Plessy v. Ferguson isn't quite relevant because it wasn't addressing the issue of self-determination of an entire people. Plessy v. Ferguson's "separate but equal" argument is referring to racial segregation which isn't the issue in Puerto Rico. Interesting argument though!
ReplyDeletehttps://www.history.com/topics/black-history/plessy-v-ferguson