Puerto Rico: A U.S. Territory in Crisis | Hacker News Reader

Puerto Rico: A U.S. Territory in Crisis

cfr.org

83 pointseatonphil87 comments

Since my little island is hardly if ever mentioned in these parts I thought i'd throw out a few interesting tidbits.

1. It has three bioluminescent bays : https://www.discoverpuertorico.com/article/guide-to-explorin....

2. It has one of the top 10 beaches in the world: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flamenco_Beach

3. I can't find the stat now, but I think Puerto Rico produces a ton of engineers relative to it's population. Also has pretty good representation at NASA: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Puerto_Ricans_in_the_U...

DM if you want recco's on the island! I'm from Aguada so can help on the west coast :-)

Also it has the ONLY tropical rainforest in the entire US in el Yunque!

Puerto Rico is amazing in a million ways... Butttt, there is a lot of government corruption and misallocation of funds for infrastructure among other things. There is a burgeoning tech scene and a lot of well educated folks here to do the heavy lifting. The taxes on locals are too high and there is a massive hangover from government pensions of yesteryear.

The amount of grifting that goes on focusing on PR being a 3rd world hellscape for their own views/clicks/etc is insane.

Thank you for this comment! There are parts of Puerto Rico that are "3rd world hellscapes," but they are tiny and not the norm. It is a beautiful island with a ton of natural resources and hardworking people.

Where else can you drive 3 hours and go from dense rainforest to absolute desert, spend your morning snorkeling pristine reefs and your evening deep in the mountains, and see a mix of old and new everywhere?

But, do you want to go deep in the mountains? I lived in Morovis for about 4 months. I’ve never seen anywhere more infested with more cockroaches and rats in my life.

Jayuya is one of my favorite places in the world, but you are right the bugs are out of control. Especially at night, two screens on the windows and the buzzing all night.

You just needed a few cats and some chickens :D

I live outside the metro area and there are definitely 4x4 only areas as far as transportation and it becomes quite rural pretty quick in the hills. Not to mention the chupacabra.

Is it really like that? It sounds, truly, like paradise. There HAS to be a catch. How big are the mosquitoes, tarantulas, carnivorous ear worms, bees, ants, snakes, etc?

Lots of catches. Many places have bars on windows, those pristine reefs are surrounded by areas with unexploded munitions, tons of bugs, roads that are not necessarily safe for cars, etc.

But 100% worthwhile.

I grew up there in near rain forest area (just slightly short of the technical rainfall requirement). There aren't really any poisonous snakes on the island, just one type that has mildly irritating saliva (I caught and got bit by lots of these as a kid, barely noticed). Depending on which micro-biome you are in, there can be lots of mosquitoes, or not many at all. Where I grew up, there were very few probably because of all the predators (and most of the water was moving not standing). Caught a few tarantulas growing up, never got bit. There were some pretty giant centipedes where I lived but I rarely saw them, never got bit. A few bee stings, but nothing too bad- but wasps... hate those f**ers.

> Where else can you drive 3 hours and go from dense rainforest to absolute desert

I've never been to Puerto Rico. Rainforest I can imagine, but where on that island is there a desert, even a relative one?! When you say "absolute desert" I'm imagining, I don't know, something like the Sonoran Desert.

The southwest corner of the island is known as a "dry forest" but there are areas, especially the coastal region, that are rocky desert.

Wear a big hat, go before 8am, and stop by the salt flats.

I would love to visit one day!

Guánica Is technically a desert.

Ah, I see: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Puerto_Rican_dry_forests

Average annual rainfall of 24-39" is not exactly anyone's idea of a desert (I believe 10" a year is the typical definition), though looking at the photos it does appear to be more similar to the transitional area in Texas Hill Country, for example, with short trees and more shrubs. Certainly a far cry from the lushness that I expected to encompass all of Puerto Rico.

Yep! It's still very lush and forested though. It's very similar to Barton Creek back in Austin. Highly recommend hiking both if you can!

It's typical for Islands to have a wet side and a dry side. The wet side gets the brunt of the storms and rain carried by prevailing winds. And the dry side is in the rain shadow.

Offhand thought 24 inches in a hot climate doesn't go as far as 24 inches in a temperate one.

California

There's rainforest/jungle in California?

Yes. The redwood forests in Del Norte County have enough rainfall to meet the temperate rainforest definition (55 inches of annual rain).

And yes, you can get to the desert driving 3 hours east (albeit into Oregon)

> Where else can you drive 3 hours and go from dense rainforest to absolute desert

Washington!

> Where else can you drive 3 hours and go from dense rainforest to absolute desert

Hawaii, except I didn't drive, I walked; and it took half an hour, not 3 hours.

what struck me about Hawaii on my last visits though is the juxtaposition against Puerto Rico (the lost opportunities). Very similar in a lot of ways- but hasn't nearly leveraged the richness of its culture (history, music, cuisine, etc.) as much as Hawaii has.

many islands have similarly diverse environments packed closely together; doesn't make Puerto Rico any less beautiful though.

I can agree with you that Puerto Rico is an amazing place, but I really don't know what you mean by "heavy lifting" in this context.

The people in tech who live in Puerto Rico are practically a net negative for the locals and people who are actually from there. 90%+ of them are not local to Puerto Rico and rarely is anyone hiring locals for these tech jobs, they are working remotely or getting their more well off friends/family to come join them.

They outprice locals from living arrangements since they drive costs up but the amount locals make is nowhere near what these tech workers do. And in my opinion its even worse than what happens in mainland US, since they are stuck on an island uprooting and moving is even harder than what happens to people in the states.

There are a ton of locals that are born and raised here and are well educated and technically literate to do any tech work. Businesses relocating from abroad to pay 4% local taxes is not a net negative. A lack of real estate or extra foreigners is not the problem with Puerto Rico, there is a distinct lack of population and abundance of homes falling further in to disrepair. You are parroting political talking points by people who would love to push decades of failed policy and corruption on jake paul, and in doing so you're also managing to discredit the majority of professionals in puerto rico.

> focusing on PR being a 3rd world hellscape for their own views/clicks/etc is insane

Yep. I find it weird and annoying that Puerto Rico (and most of Southern and Central America and Mexico) are treated as 3rd world (read: "poor"/undeveloped). The only undeveloped countries (below 0.650 HDI) in the Americas are Haiti, Honduras, and Guatemala. It's just pure racism tbh.

Economic turmoil aside due to the shutdown of Naval Shipyards in the 90s, Puerto Rico is by every definition a developed country, and they are a massive player in both the financial and pharmaceutical manufacturing world.

P.S. Don't give me the pedantic Cold War 3rd world definition. No one uses that definition anymore

Agreed, I was born and raised there and lived until my late 20's and it's comparable to most of the US in terms of services you get. The issue is as you get older you notice that salaries are lower, a lot of goods such as gasoline are expensive, you get regular power outages, and the government is fairly incompetent and corrupt.

Most people who leave do so because it's like living in a bottom 50 state like Mississippi or Alabama, why stay when your quality of life will improve significantly just taking a 2 hour flight to another state? I was able to attend a top engineering school in the US and most of my high school friends were also able to get great jobs elsewhere too. We would love to go back but the drop in quality of life makes it a difficult choice.

Fun story: a lot of Puerto Rico's problems are linked to a mis-translation of the Constitution from Spanish to English [1]:

> The big spending was fueled by a translation error between Spanish and English in the island's 1952 constitution. It enabled Puerto Rico to issue debt to fund many activities, including day-to-day operations. It all comes down to the interpretation of the phrase "recursos totales" -- total revenue or total resources? It was interpreted as resources, which is a broader term allowing the government to fund regular operations (e.g. education, policing, health care, etc.) via bonds.

In Spanish "recursos totales" is better translated as "total revenue" not "total resources".

[1]: https://money.cnn.com/2016/05/12/investing/puerto-rico-debt-...

This is fascinating!

I've never seen recurso translated as "revenue", I've only see it translated as "resource".

The same can be see in this etymology dictionary: https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/recurso#Spanish

No mention of "revenue"-- not even in the latin root.

My Spanish isn't native, but my reaction was the same as yours. It may well be an archaic usage though, and etymology won't solve that for you. (All the same wiktionary is a perfectly good general-purpose dictionary).

I'm not a Spanish speaker so I'm reliant on these accounts. Here's a more detailed explanation [1]:

> The legal framework for a balanced budget dates back to Section 34 of the 1917 Jones-Shafroth Act, which states that “No appropriation shall be made, nor any expenditure authorized by the legislature, whereby the expenditure of the Government of Porto Rico during any fiscal year shall exceed the total revenue then provided for by law and applicable for such appropriation or expenditure, including any available surplus in the treasury, unless the legislature making such appropriation shall provide for levying a sufficient tax to pay such appropriation or expenditure within such fiscal year.” A provision in Puerto Rico’s Constitution, which was approved in 1952, contains similar language in English: The appropriations made for any fiscal year shall not exceed the total revenues, including available surplus, estimated for said fiscal year unless the imposition of taxes sufficient to cover said appropriations is provided by law. P.R. Const., art. VI, §7. The Spanish translation of the Constitution, however, translated revenues as “recursos” which can also be interpreted to mean resources. A 1974 ruling by Puerto Rico’s attorney general clarified the legal meaning of “recursos” to a broader general definition of resources available to the government, including proceeds of bond issuances. P.R. Op. Sec. Just. 1974-15, 19

The way this reads is backwards to what I previously read (and stated) where "revenues" was translated into Spanish later to "recursos" in 1952, which was interpreted to include debt, bypassing the original 1917 act for a balanced budget.

[1]: https://www.gao.gov/assets/700/691944.pdf

This was a very interesting article. I did not know about the special statuses of Micronesia with the US. Similarly interesting about Puerto Rico being the largest bankruptcy ever in US history and it being a potential model for NJ and IL (because of their massive pension debt [0]).

[0] https://www.pewtrusts.org/en/research-and-analysis/articles/...

> special statuses of Micronesia with the US

Yep. It's a holdover from WW2 - most of Japan's island territories in the Pacific were handed to the US, UK, France, NZ, and AUS by the UN to be managed and governed. Most of those territories were given independence and sovereignty in the 80s-90s, but because of their tiny size they still remain dependent on those countries, Taiwan (development grants for recognizing Taiwan), and China (development grants for not recognizing Taiwan).

Also reminds me about non-self governing territories:

https://www.un.org/dppa/decolonization/en/nsgt

Yep. The Special Committee on Decolonization was started specifically to help with giving soverignity to the various Pacific islands. The US gave soveriginity to most of it's former territories back in the 80s

Which is how/why the next summer olympics in Paris will hold the surfing part of the competition in Teahupo, Tahiti.

https://www.bbc.com/sport/olympics/50760437

That's a bit different. Tahiti's ties to France go back long before WWII as it was a French "protectorate" (colony) starting in the 1840s, and has been under French rule ever since, although now it (as part of French Polynesia) is an "overseas country" of France meaning it has a large degree of self-rule not unlike Puerto Rico's relationship to the US.

Fun fact - I’m a photographer in rural Minnesota and I photographed 3 different senior girls from Micronesia one winter. Apparently a town about an hour from me has a little community of people from there, which I’d never known before.

I bet that there is some sort of food processing facility there. That is why there is a Marshall Islands consulate in Springdale, Arkansas. <https://www.kuaf.com/ozarks-at-large-stories/2017-10-02/new-...>

GCP Gray has a nice quick overview of all territories and their overlapping, conflicting, and controversial statuese: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ASSOQDQvVLU (just six minutes)

There’s at least one thing in the article that I’m pretty sure is incorrect - it says $33 billion in debt obligations were cut down through the PROMESA restructuring. I think that vastly understated the magnitude of the debt; I believe it was more on the order of $130 billion.

I watched the restructuring pretty closely for a while but eventually lost interest after a series of will they/won’t they court decisions. I hope it delivers a sustainable outcome to the island. It’s a wonderful place and deserves better than what it’s been through in recent years.

I want to note two salient points which are missing from this writeup: (1) the PROMESA board is unelected (2) the Supreme Court has ruled that the board doesn't have to provide requested documents and transparency. This is the face of colonialism and tyranny.

Without knowing anything on the topic, what you’ve described definitely sounds like a good way to promote corruption and stall progress.

Not according to the UN.

https://www.un.org/dppa/decolonization/en/nsgt

They do call the USVIs a colony though, and I do accept that the US has outsize influence in these matters and has gotten off easy in the decolonisation game.

How many senators does the UN send to DC?

The same number as Puerto Rico. Not sure how that’s relevant, though.

Puerto Rico could be energy-independent if the US government changed the energy policy that it dictates to the colony with no say of the inhabitants. It's optimaly located for a 100% solar-PV system (see South Australia for comparison). As it stands, it has to import a lot of fossil fuel:

https://www.spglobal.com/commodityinsights/en/market-insight...

> It's optimaly located for a 100% solar-PV system (see South Australia for comparison)

How does it compare to South Australia? SA reaches from 38-26 degrees of latitude, with empty scorching desert in the north (towards the equator) suitable for mass solar generation.

Puerto Rich is just north of 18 degrees of latitude with a predominantly tropical climate, meaning lots of clouds and rain. San Juan, for example, gets just under 3000 hours of sunshine a year, which is similar to places like Memphis or Oklahoma City (vs. Las Vegas, for example, at 3800 hours).

It also has enormous hydro power potential. The environmental ramifications would probably make this a non-starter though.

Renewable energy ought to be a no-brainer for PR, though. I just wish the utility wasn’t stuck in a spot where it has to triage the basic delivery of electricity and a minimally functioning grid, and instead could focus on investing on rebuilding the overall generation and distribution system.

My family is from there (I was born there) and my parents just installed a solar roof and panels, I can't remember the metrics (sorry) but the house was consuming .5 of the energy and exporting over 3 to the grid.

My parents have batteries as well for the solar power. Sorry not super helpful...

Went there in Feb 1998 to take a cruise for the total eclipse and drove up to Arecibo and got a tour of the dish. Beautiful countryside everywhere although we didn't get out of the car much. The salsa(?) music in our hotel bar was amazing - the place was jumping all night.

I'm just glad there's no foreign power occupying PR with troops and backing separatist groups there. That would be a mess. Glad stuff like that doesn't happen in the 21st century.

It is interesting that the proposed act would allow PRcans to vote for independence, but Washington would get to shape the constitution.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com