Surviving hurricanes in Puerto Rico, Iowa City, Iowa, April 11, 2018

- [Sandra Morrow] I am Sandra Morrow, ICFRC board member, and host for today's program. The ICFRC hosts programs to address topics of international interest. We thank our members, our volunteers, and our interns for making these forums possible since 1983, the year that Disneyland Tokyo opened I want to acknowledge our university and community supporters, also, the University of Iowa's International Programs, the University of Iowa's Honors Program, the University of Iowa Center for Public Policy, and the Stanley-UI Foundation Support Organization, for their financial support. And I thank today's special sponsors, Alan Swanson, Blank and McCune Realtors, and Mike Carberry. I also want to thank City Channel Four for professionally recording our programs for cablecast on City Channel Four, or one one eight, dash two, and the UI library's digital archives. It is my pleasure to at this time, introduce Dr. Christopher Squire, who will introduce Mariola Espinosa. Ooh, something's going on with that. The mic, I think it's suddenly a little loud. - [Christopher Squier] Thank you. I'm very please to introduce Mariola Espinosa to you. She's a friend and colleague and the university's Associate Professor in the department of History, also Associate Professor Adjunct in the section of History of Medicine at Yale. She's a historian of medicine and public health in the Caribbean, and Latin America. Her current research looks at medical understandings of fever in French, British, Spanish, and US Caribbean empires. She teaches undergraduate and graduate courses on the history of Cuba and on disease, public health, and empire in Latin America and the Caribbean. She's also Director of the Global Health Studies Program at the university. The US territory of Puerto Rico has been devastated by a string of hurricanes in 2017, from which it is struggling to recover because of widespread damage to lives and infrastructure. Today, Mariola will speak about how her country has managed to cope with such adversity. Please join me in welcoming Mariola Espinosa. - [Mariola Espinosa] Thank you. Thank you for the introductions, and thank you for inviting me here to come again to speak about not just a place that I study but also the place that I'm from. It's always nice to be with this audience and see some familiar faces as well. Some of my most vivid childhood memories have to do with hurricanes. In 1979, I remember vividly when hurricanes David and Federico hit back to back, and in my mind we had an awesome sleepover at my aunt's house where we all slept in the living room. She lived two blocks inland, in contrast to us who lived with my grandmother right on the shore. When hurricane Hugo hit ten years later, we left our house for the safety of a different relative's home, where we stayed for a month, while the waters receded around our house. I also remember vividly the amount of sand all over the house. We had about a foot of sand in our backyard. Our walls were encrusted with sand. You could actually write with your finger, scrape off and Hugo was here. My grandmother told stories of how her family had lost their house, except for a single chair, which is still somewhere in my Aunt's house. As they huddled in a storage closet under their home during San Felipe, the second which hit in 1929, in San Ciprian in 1932. Hurricanes are part of life in the Caribbean. Ask anyone from the region and they remember at least two, if not more hurricanes in their lifetime. What is a hurricane? Scientifically, people talk about hurricanes as tropical depression, that is low pressure areas where The tropical depressions starts at 38 miles an hour. From this map that you can barely see, we see they're categorized by the National Oceanic and Aeronautic Association, the Saffir-Simpson, which is a wind-speed scale, And you have tropical depression storm and then categories categories one through five. Category one, 75 to 95 miles an hour, classified as very dangerous winds that produce some damage. And they get more detailed about specifically what type of damage. Category two is 96 to 110 miles an hour. Category three, 111 to 129. Four, 130 to 156. And five, 157 or higher. Catastrophic damage is how they describe it. And this is a scale that is about wind and wind speed. It doesn't really add to it the amount of rainfall, which varies depending on the type of hurricane. Some hurricanes have more rain than others. Hurricanes, like moments of crisis, bring to the surface the latent problems in society, and reveal the priorities of those who are in power. While living in the United States, I always thought about Katrina as a really good example that I use with my students, of when this was the most evident to me. In one hit, in one storm surge, we saw real images of the racial segregation and inequality that we all knew existed in New Orleans, but we didn't care to look at. As if the water had driven what we did not really see out into the open. In the Caribbean, hurricanes threaten islands of varying degrees of economic development and political status. And my work looks at the ways in which diseases shaped relations of power in this region. Here, we have a region where you have different European and US powers vying for islands, vying for territories and for empire. Puerto Rico had been a colony of Spain since 1493, when the United States intervened in the war with Spain, in 1898. The US troops who had captured Puerto Rico, during the war, and those sent to occupy the island afterwards were struck by what they observed and they noted to be the miserable state of the inhabitants of the countryside. They described people clothed in rags, people who wore no shoes. And even taking into account the poverty of these people, the jibaros as the mountain dweller of the island is referred to, were shockingly thin, pale, and innervated as depicted by a painter, Ramon Frade, here in the middle image. And these are images from 1903 and 1938 depicting the typical Puerto Rican hut, as it's labeled in the caption. In rural areas of the US South, where many exhibited similar symptoms, this anemic condition had long been blamed on malnutrition. Compounded, it was said in the US South by the sufferers regular habit of eating dirt or clay. In Puerto Rico as in the US South, many people succumbed to the anemia, or died of other diseases as result of their weakened state. In some reports, actually, noted that when people went out to talk to Puerto Ricans, they said, "Oh, my relative, they died "of anemia, of natural causes." At the turn of the century, approximately one third of all deaths on the island were officially attributed to anemia. And initially, it was not really a priority of the occupation government. The occupation government was prioritizing establishing an official military government, restructuring the municipalities, cleaning up some San Juan a little bit. There wasn't much fighting in Puerto Rico per se, compared to Cuba for example or the Philippines that continued fighting after the US intervened. But in August of 1899, a hurricane hit. Puerto Rico was struck by San Ciriaco, which was, according to accounts, the most destructive the island had yet experienced. It traversed the island from southeast to northwest. It was 60 miles wide and left few areas unscathed. If you imagine, you can picture the island. It's 30 miles, top to bottom; 100, east to west. So, a 60 miles storm pretty much covers the whole island. And when hurricanes hit Puerto Rico, you know that if you see the path that's predicted, if it's going to enter from the southeast corner, the island is going to be hit pretty strongly. The north northwesterly winds, those winds are the ones that are the strongest, the ones that are entering the island. The crudely constructed dwellings that I showed you before, the jibaros stood little chance against the winds and the torrential rains of this hurricane. Moreover, the hurricane destroyed roughly two thirds of the islands plantations, leaving most of the rural population, not only homeless, but also without employment. In the cities, extensive flooding left many structures uninhabitable. With widespread starvation threatening and desperation mounting, the US army rushed to erect camps that would feed and house the victims of the hurricane. On the left here is an image of Lieutenant Bailey K. Ashford, who was a young military doctor, who was charged with caring for the hurricane victims, surrounding the city of Ponce, which is in the south of the Island. Many of these refugees suffered from anemia. Following contemporary understandings of the condition, Ashford provided them with a full ration of red meat. If any of you have been anemic, eat some red meat. To his dismay, it didn't help. His weakened patients did not respond well to this healthy diet. Nor did they improve when he provided them with a more "traditional meal of rice "and beans and codfish." In fact, his patients were dying by the dozens. Upset and puzzled by this epidemic of killer anemia, Ashford started studying his patients more closely and drawing blood samples, as the image on the top-right shows. His examinations revealed symptoms characteristic of hook worm infestation. In his observations of the patients' feces confirmed his diagnosis. Now, hook worm is not a new parasite at this time. It had been the subject of intense research in Europe by scientists there, who had been following a series of epidemics among minors that had spread across the continent two decades earlier, following the construction of a railway tunnel in Switzerland, the Gotthard Railway Tunnel. It was already known that larvae hookworm entered the victims through the skin, preferably between the toes and travel through the bloodstream to the small intestine, where they attach themselves to the wall of the intestine and feed on the victims blood. They also mature and reproduce there. And I'm sorry if you're still eating. Some eggs are then passed out of the body. When they hatch, the cycle begins anew. People step on eggs and on larvae. A cure had been discovered in preventing the return of the condition, involved avoiding contact between the skin and infected human waste, that is sturdy shoes, sanitary facilities, or ideally both. Before Ashford discovered hookworm in the Puerto Rican jibaro, hookworm had been scarcely known in the Americas, except among immigrants from Europe. The listlessness and weakness that the US soldiers had observed among the people of the island, he established, was due not to malnutrition, not to some inherent inferiority or laziness, instead it was caused by a parasite that thrived in the destitute conditions, in which the majority of the island's population lived. Fewer than one in five Puerto Ricans regularly wore shoes, he noted. And toilets and latrines were rare on the island. The 1899 census found that fewer than one in three homes had any sanitary facilities at all. The circumstances of Puerto Rico's mountainous interior further insured that poverty would be met by hookworm. There, the three months of the coffee harvest coincided with the winter-rainy season, not like here, very rainy, and required so much labor that men, women, and children came from all over the island to augment the local population and to work and pick the ripe coffee berries. The muddy, wet soil of the coffee plantations at harvest time was ideal for hookworm maturation. And the nature of the work enured that the infected ground would be trodden heavily and repeatedly by barefoot workers. Once the harvest was complete, these migrant workers would then go home and take hookworm with them, to even those parts of the island, where the soil conditions were not conducive to the lifecycle of the parasite. His discovery of the cause of this endemic condition was prompted prompted the creation of a large-scale means to combat it. Fighting hookworm then was important to the colonial authorities when it had not been before, not simply as a means of improving the lives of many Puerto Ricans. It at the same time helped the establishment of a healthy workforce for US investors, drawn to the devastated islands. Numerous books are published during this time period, attracting investors to the island. Ashford began a campaign to educate local doctors, that hookworm was the cause of anemia and how to cure the disease. And he was soon placed as the head of a commission for the study and treatment of anemia, which focused on a medical approach, that is he and his colleagues produced a treatment that Puerto Ricans could take right away, administer themselves at home, and people, seeing the success of this, flocked the dispensaries where they would get the treatment. To provide access to the the rural population, they set up small stations, as the ones seen here in 1930, more field hospitals like the first one in Ponce, in the countryside, to administer these services and to study the extent of the disease. And as the benefits of this became known, people flocked these dispensaries, where their conditions could be diagnosed. Nearly 300,000 Puerto Ricans, of which is roughly about a third of the island population at the time, were cured of the disease within the first five years of the commission working. Now, in terms of priorities, hookworm disease threatened US interests in Puerto Rico as a site of investment, like I said. The abundance of opportunities available on the island, particularly in agriculture, for those with the necessary capital to exploit them had been celebrated in the United States from the moment the war with Spain was concluded, if not before. In taking advantage of these opportunities, however, required a productive and reliable workforce. As members of the anemia commission pointed out, the productivity of laborers of Puerto Rico was only at best half of that of healthy people, and the shortage of labor that resulted was a principle reason that so much attractive agricultural land had been left unimproved and uncultivated in the first place. So, for new US investments to prosper, they concluded the people of the island would have to be rid of hookworm. And it also served to These efforts also served to legitimate to those who are not pro-intervention, who are anti-imperialists, to show legitimacy, to kind of prove to the reluctant American that we were doing good things and that US rule over Puerto Rico was legitimate. National Geographic Magazine articles abound, characterizing the battle against hookworm. And this is a quote, "Another convincing instance "of the great work being done by our government "to help the people in our semi-tropical possessions." And there's numerous of these types of quotes. "The Puerto Rican is grateful," they say. "He is more than that, now that he is cured "of his enfermedad or sickness "and has good red blood coursing through his veins "and ambition restored, he is a staunch American." And Ashford becomes this Puerto Rican national hero. He's repeatedly honored for leading the fight against hookworm disease, both in the United States and in Puerto Rico. The main thoroughfare, a block away from where I grew up, in the prominent San Juan neighborhood the condado is renamed Ashford Avenue. And in 1979, the city's Presbyterian Hospital was renamed in his honor as well. And today, he's still counted among Puerto Rico's heroes, and in the defeat of hookworm greatly enhanced this legitimacy of colonialism on the island. What happened in Puerto Rico, what I call this laboratory of science, was then utilized to "fix the problem in the southern United States "after the Civil War." One of the first things done was to study the extent of hookworm infestation in the US South, and scientists like Charles Stiles had been in touch with Ashford and had helped identify the parasite as one that's American that's different than the one in Europe. And he goes and he visits different southern states and basically establishes the same type of dispensary that had been established in Puerto Rico as a model in the South, later with the help of the Rockefeller Foundation. What do we see when Maria hits Puerto Rico in 2017? And how is it similar or different than the reaction of those in power at the beginning of US control over the island? Puerto Rico had been suffering from an economic crisis decades before Maria hit. The economic situation before can be characterized as a deep, deep depression. Puerto Rico's relationship with the United States has been one of dependence since the US invaded the island. In the middle of the 20th century, the Puerto Rican government solidified the ways in which this relationship would be intertwined through government incentives, which encouraged the establishment of industries on the island to employ the Puerto Rican people and to move the island to the middle of the 20th century and industrialize. In order to promote US companies to move and invest in the island, the US government created a tax haven, if you will. First, with 931 incentives for industrialization, which were exempt from federal taxes, which promoted the financial sector on the island as well as pharmaceutical, textile, and other manufacturers like electronics. In the 1970s as the entire globe and the United States suffers from a global economic crisis, a new clause, 936, was enacted to reanimate the economy of the island and to allow for the repatriation of gains immediately without federal tax penalty. For the Puerto Rican people, this created a boom of employment, technical employment, construction in support of infrastructure. And incentives in local taxes for the US companies if they maintain their gains on the island and in local banks. Companies like Medtronic, producer of pacemakers, Astrazeneca, Ciba Vision, making contact lenses. By 1993, President Bill Clinton's government with the pro-statehood governor of Puerto Rico, Pedro Rosello, worked to eliminate 936. In the eyes of the United States government, it wasn't something that was working for the American people. In the eyes of the statehood government on the island, it was something that underlined the unequal relationship of the island with the others states, a political gesture to eliminate ties of colonialism. The economic crisis on the island was a longtime coming. The dependence on subsidies and lack of sovereignty in economic and political decisions created this dire situation. And we see the middle grayish area is the ten years of the phaseout of 936 companies. And the blue line is the loss of factory jobs. With the national and economic crash, the economy of Puerto Rico had no means of recovering. The government increased spending to support their campaign promises, and when faced with budget deficits went into increased debt for day-to-day maintenance. It starts with debts or selling government bonds in order to support special projects, but when it gets to actually selling government bonds to do payroll, it really gets deep and problematic. Salary payments, road maintenance, infrastructure, pensions, and the notorious Christmas bonuses that Puerto Ricans are due by law, which is the result of a campaign for governor. To maintain payroll and these types of day-to-day operations, the government went into debt between mutual funds and hedge funds. Puerto Ricans invested in government bonds as well. The Puerto Rican government bonds were guaranteed to be paid back. Puerto Rico is a territory of the United States, therefore its bonds are exempt from taxation, so they're very attractive investments, especially when they're guaranteed that you'll get the money back. The government made it law that they would be guaranteed under the Puerto Rican constitution. At the same time that we see a real estate market crash in the United States, we see it on the island as well. As the government continues to go into debt, the real estate market crashes, foreclosures abound. And people who can go elsewhere for better economic opportunities do so. Sociologist talk about an increasing brain drain. All this is going on before Maria. A reduction of minimum wage is enacted on younger people to try to figure out how to make payroll. What this does is that younger people are going to leave in order to get paid a minimum wage. We also see a health crisis coming out of this. Not only are hospitals not being funded the way they were before, but the government insurance plan, which started in 1990s, is a nationalized type of insurance that becomes a failure, because the government isn't paying for it. And the insurance companies that provide insurance to the government start pulling out. And so they start cutting services, and kicking doctors out of networks without telling them, so that when patients show up, they're their regular patient to do a CT scan, for example, they do the scan and then realize that their insurance company no longer considers that physician in network. And so the ones that are most able to leave are physicians. There is numerous opportunities for physicians in the United States. Being US citizens, the move is a lot easier than it would be. And that means that you have a loss of specialists. The number of specialists that leave the island hasn't been figured out, but it's become really a big crisis, where you can't find doctors to treat your conditions. And if you do, you have to wait three months to do so. And for those who stay, the insurance companies are not paying. In terms of health as well, Puerto Ricans are like US citizens. Their checks have reductions and funds for Medicaid as well as Social Security. However, the island gets a lot less than other states do, in terms of per capita income ranges. You can see from this chart that the Federal matching rate is fixed at 55%, whereas in other states it goes all the way up to 83. And federal funding is capped at 321 million, whereas it's uncapped in the rest of the 50 states. In terms of infrastructure, we have deferred maintenance and an aging electric grid, one of the last survivors of the privatization efforts of the 1990s when the telephone company was sold to the highest bidder, when the airport was sold to the highest bidder or maybe somebody's friend. The electric agency actually remained owned by the people and owned by the workers who work there. In order to try to figure out what to do with this deepening economic crisis, and the inability to declare bankruptcy under US law, in 2012, the government of Puerto Rico created new incentives to attract wealthy individual to invest on the island. The Ley 22 Ley 22, under this new law anyone who would move to the island and establish residency and run their company there, not physically move a building, you can run your company out of your phone, would, one, not have to pay federal taxes, and, two, only pay 4% of local taxes. In addition, incentives on purchasing property the government provided, if you were a first time homeowner on the island, you were given all kinds of subsidies. This was later amended, and later, I mean, in the last year or so, to require an annual $5,000 contribution to nonprofits, locally. In May 2016, the government of Puerto Rico defaulted on its debt payments after failure to negotiate with the creditors. In June, the Puerto Rico Oversight Management and Economic Stability Act, PROMESA, was signed by President Obama, establishing this oversight board for the island in order to figure out how to manage a growing debt that had reached $73 billion by that date. It establishes a junta, which is a problematic word in Latin America politics. Juntas are usually military dictatorship boards, but in this case we're talking about politically appointed by the president of the United States Oversight Board, which includes some Puerto Ricans and most of them people who are well versed in the finance industry that was probably responsible for part of the economic condition the island in at the time. Any budgetary decision goes through this appointed board. The junta allows the Puerto Rican government to enter a restructuring process and to stop litigation from creditors, so it doesn't allow for bankruptcy declarations, but it does give the island a pause button on litigation. And it includes very well-paid officers, the most notorious is the Executive Director Natalie Jaresko who was a Ukrainian economic official. And the first requirement is that it will have the government of Puerto Rico produce and submit a fiscal plan, a fiscal responsibility plan. And the newly elected governor, who was elected during 2016, starts in January. And he is told that he has until the end of the month to present a plan to restructure the debt, the $75 billion in debt. Now, granted, he could've started working on that plan as he had said "he had a plan," that's one of the quotes that people say, "I have a plan," My plan is that I have a plan, that it's a plan. That's his plan. Since then, the junta and the government have been in a back-and-forth, not agreeing on anything, not getting anywhere. The junta has veto power over laws, power of approval of any government construction permit. Its members have legal immunity. And so into Maria. Now, this hurricane is not the worst hurricane the island has suffered, but it's a different kind of hurricane, because it's like I was talking to a colleague who teaches Puerto Rican history at the University of Puerto Rico, and he calls it the perfect storm, because of everything that I just described. It's not only it's force, but the state of the island, the state of where the island was before Maria hits. And Maria hits in the same path as the first hurricane that the Americans had to deal with when they intervened on the island. Basically, it enters in Fajardo, in the southeast end coast and devastates the island completely. It enters as a Category 5. People say that it was Category 4 or 3, but the Doppler Radars ended up in somebody's backyard. In terms of what know is that it enters as a Category 5 and leaves as a Category 3. When this hits, I'm sitting in my living room, in Iowa City, and I'm sitting by the phone, 'cause my parents are there and my family's there. I have my computer on my lap, and I'm trying to see what's coming out, 'cause they don't have electricity, so that means the press doesn't have electricity, nobody's posting much on Facebook. And when they do, I'm kind of stalking Facebook people I don't know, but I kind of can figure out where they live and I need to figure out if they're near my brother, for example. The satellite towers are down or the cellphone towers are down. And I was able to stay in touch with my parents, who were huddled in the bathroom of their 10th floor condo, while their neighbor's windows upstairs were blown out. And they were trying to figure out how to reach each other, but nobody could call each other on the island, so they all called Iowa. And it was odd to be the hub of communication during a tropical hurricane in Iowa, in September, but it actually made me feel good 'cause I was worried about them, and I felt I was there with them somehow, and I was helping them out. Eventually, I got a hold of my brother after an entire 12 hours had gone by that nobody could reach him. His neighborhood, Main street, had all kinds of trees down, he couldn't get out, and there was one place in the whole neighborhood by a lamppost where about 40 people could huddle and get some sort of signal on their cellphones. And so they borrowed each others cellphones to make a five second call saying I'm okay, tell momma I'm okay. And eventually, I'm able to get a hold of him and advise him that whenever they cut that tree down he should get in his car and go to my aunt's house, 'cause she has a power generator before the river rises around his neighborhood. The rest of the news I got from the island, I didn't get from super official news sources, I got from these two guys. And you might recognize the one on the right. CBS News David Begnaud was there when it hit, and he became this one person who was He got access He got access to politicians. He got access to regular people, and he stayed on the island until he felt he could communicate where other people couldn't get in touch with each other. And then we have Jay Fonseca on the left, who's a local lawyer, a Puerto Rican personality, who becomes and still is the one person who is exposing all the corruption in the new contracts that the government has started working on since the hurricane hit. And I got a hold of them through Twitter and Facebook, because the newspapers weren't publishing. They had no electricity. The first priorities of people were to get power, electricity, and they do so by having power generators that require diesel or gas. And although the governor said, "Don't worry, we have reserves." People would stand in line, like this one, for six hours to get a couple of gallons of gas that will fuel their generators for a few hours, enough to be able to do some necessities and certain things at home before having to stand in line again the next day. Hospitals were out of electricity. Their generators were the first ones to get diesel fuel from the government supply to them, and their services were reduced greatly. Getting food to those in need, particularly those who were found to be without communication, where their roads were washed out and people couldn't get to them. And so you have this situation where people in the United States are starting to send power generators down to the island, which is good in one way, but in a different way, I can anticipate that it'll cause an environmental crisis. And for those who can't afford a generator and have a neighbor who has one, it's impossible to sleep at night with your windows open and get that breeze 'cause you get the fumes from the generator next to you. These types of images abound were for the helicopters that were flying by. People would write on whatever surface they thought was visible, SOS, water, food. And then people started trying to reach these communities in need. These are actual photos from My sister took them. We were trying to reach some friends up in the mountains, in Cayey. And it took quite a while to get there. And the roads don't look that different today than they did then. This is about a week after the hurricane. Many people asked me what to do, what they could do. Friends here asked me, "Who do I donate to?" The first foundation that came out of this was Unidos Por Puerto Rico, United for Puerto Rico, where millions of dollars were sent, run by the first lady of the island. It was the one that everybody assumed would be the most transparent, and we're still waiting to see where that's going. They have millions of dollars that they haven't disbursed. And they work on applications from non-profits. What we see though is a disaster, and this is a map from FEMA that marks the location of applications for FEMA support. It doesn't really tell you how many people have fled, but it does give you a sense of the concentration of people who have access to putting in a request from FEMA, since not everybody does. By six months later, I think, today, we get to see the reality of the status of the island. If you asked me two weeks into the hurricane, what the political inclinations of people were, this is a country that is very much into the politics, pro-statehood or pro-status quo, I would've said that the majority of people, even though it's usually divided evenly, would have said, "Let's just be a state "and get it over with. "We need the help." You ask people now and the amount of despair, and the fact that everything seems stalled on the island, and that the people on the island are not being treated equally as other US citizens who suffered hurricanes during the similar time is revealing that perhaps statehood is not a solution, that maybe we should start thinking of politics different rather than of political status. There's been a lot of talk about death estimates, and the fact that the government started giving some figures that were quite ridiculous, if you tell me if you ask me. So, we're trying to figure out what these unreliable numbers are telling us, and how to find out death that is related to the hurricane that might not be classified as such. And so the Puerto Rican government gave that grant to George Washington University, in January of this year to have an outside investigator on that count, but it's over a thousand deaths. As you can see much higher than the official death toll, which is 60, 70. Adriana Garriga-Lopez, an anthropologist in Kalamazoo, I was talking to her about this and she says, "Well, hundreds of thousands of Puerto Ricans are pushed "out of Puerto Rico, and neoliberal education reform "pretty much guarantees there will never be "in my lifetime an academic job for me "or others like me on my island." Bitcoin-rich-white men are given massive tax breaks and incentives to move to Puerto Rico. And the real austerity measures haven't even been implemented yet. There is a transfer of population taking place. The response to a crisis, like I said, reveals the priority of those in power. For the US government, what I see is neglect. This colony doesn't really give us agricultural opportunities anymore, that's not what empires are looking for. For the local government, we see an opportunity to advance the privatization of the island. Schools yesterday were reduced; 300 schools are going to be closed. Vouchers and magnets are going to be enacted. The electrical authority is going to be sold. The new director of it has been given a million dollar contract to do so. It's going to be sold, not to the highest bidder. It's going to be sold to the friend of the governor, or those who contract companies like Whitefish. The University of Puerto Rico is being defunded. Faculty are going to be asked to teach five courses a semester. This solidifies the relationship with the United States, even when the United States has provided all indications that they do not value the island and its people. What interest does the US have in having a colony anymore? What riches can it extract from this island that's devastated. It's now all a place of loss. New tax reforms, these Ley 22, 22 Law, leaves Puerto Rico out of the in-between-semi-favorite status. The new tax reform laws here means that North American companies physically in Puerto Rico are considered foreign, so they have to pay the 20% tax of production. How can an island recover after this with no real help when a government is so corrupt? And it's transparently so. And things on the island seem paralyzed. It feels like the normalization of chaos. Insurance companies take five months to do an assessment, so that you can repair your home. The port is full. It's full of equipment for FEMA. It's full of equipment for the Corps of Engineers and for the government. And what that means is that the supplies for the rest of the island, for those who are doing the repairs themselves cannot come in. From equipment to repair elevators in my parents' building to Brita water filters to boxed juices to crackers, things cannot come in. Seven months later, we still have people waiting for adjusters. And the junta and the government do not do a thing, except continue to pay themselves and their friends their six-figure salaries. It seem hopeless, but it's not. At the beginning of the crisis, seeing that no help was arriving, retired electric company employers formed the Pepino Power Authority. In the town of San Sebastian del Pepino, the mayor gave them the contract and they just rebuild their own grid. And we have this Red de Apoyo Mutuo, this Web of Mutual Aid for Puerto Rico, that has started establishing centers of mutual aid. And one of the organizers, Giovanni Roberto, told Al Jazeera, "Before this crisis, "the people that we are attending were already in crisis." What we are seeing right now is that crisis coming out of the background and being more public, just like Katrina. People already were starving. People already were not getting medicine or proper medical attention. The rich who have always wanted Puerto Rico are celebrating. They are starving people to force more migration, so they can reorganize the country for their interests. These centros are a concrete idea of how we can build institutions from below that are for and by the people. And they include Casa del Pueblo, which was just in the news yesterday, because they're providing solar panels to Dialysis providers. And then the map on the right is some of the centers that people can go to. We have here on the left, La Olla Comun, which is basically a series of places that it moves around, where you bring a bag of rice, or bring salt, or bring beans and we'll make a meal and feed everyone. It's the common pot. Taller Salud is an organization of women in Loiza, which is the Afro-Caribbean location that had been providing healthcare to women before the crisis, and then now they're expanding their services. And they had this movement on the Day Without a Woman, I think it was in March 8, were basically pointing out what we're doing. The left is we opened the streets. She's literally opening the street by machete-ing a tree. We feed the people. While the government ignores the women, we are constructing the country. What I see when I leave is and this is actually you see all these blue tarps I don't know if you can see them from here. This was my view from the plane this weekend. But I see hope, even though there are so many blue tarps, that people are taking care of themselves, that there's a deep frustration that those blue tarps will be there for a long time, that the government is awarding contracts to old friends and pals, and that patience is very thin, and that Puerto Rico will remain the oldest and most neglected colony today. Thank you for your attention. - [Sandra Morrow] First question is I leave next week for Puerto Rico as part of an environmental delegation representing National Wildlife Federation to bring focus on the infrastructure failures still. Where, what, or whom do you suggest make sure I'm sorry. Make sure we lift up like the difference between replacing electric utilities versus solving cycle of... - [Mariola Espinosa] Replacement placing underground. I found if you go to Red de Apoyo Mutuo, which is this, you can find me and email me and I'll give you their link. They have different types of organizations that are working locally, and they range from the type of organization that's feeding a bunch a people to the type that's providing water, or that's rebuilding a road. And I would start there if you want to get a sense of helping people right away. In terms of versus solving replacement... - [Audience Member] Keep patching up the phased - [Mariola Espinosa] Yeah, and it's a problem, right? So initially-- - [Audience Member] So, it costs more but in the end it's far more bad. - [Mariola Espinosa] Yeah, initially, people were talking about this is great opportunity. Tesla was going to go in and build a new, modern grid that was energy efficient as well as environmentally friendly. The government controls a lot, so there's all kinds of regulations as to what can we build. Also, before the hurricane, when people wanted to, say, put a wind turbine in their home, they would have to pay a fee. I mean, that happens in many states where you actually get penalized for doing good things. There has to be a balance. I don't know whether the the Department of Economic Development would be a place to link to, but definitely these local communities they would know who to work with. And if you're interested in more specifics, you can just let me know, and I'll give you the information. - [Sandra Morrow] Is the tourist industry coming back? - [Mariola Espinosa] The report last week was that it came back better than ever. That also doesn't say that a lot of the hotels they're still closed, so hotels are full. It's hard to get a reservation. And there's constant moving in and out. I was talking to people in hotel I was staying at last weekend, that there is new cruise ships coming in, so there's been a revitalization, I guess, of the tourism industry. A lot of people staying in those hotels are people who are donating their time to help the island. I don't think they would count as tourists, but I guess they're there buying food and helping the economy in other ways as well. But the report from that governor and from the government is that the tourism is back and better than ever, with closed hotels and people having a hard time driving, because the traffic lights are not working. - [Sandra Morrow] Do you want to move to back to Puerto Rico? And what would be your dream job in Puerto Rico, if you were to move back tomorrow? - [Mariola Espinosa] Who is here and can I be completely honest? Hmm. I would love to work at the University of Puerto Rico. There's no way I can work at the University of Puerto Rico. I love my job at the University of Iowa. This is a good place for me and my family. There is no opportunity for me there. I mean, I would love to go back home. I hopefully can go back home after I retire. - [Audience Member] It's a long ways off. - [Sandra Morrow] You started with epidemics and nutrition. Can you mention any current trends regarding either, and discuss indigenous outbreaks with or without food production? - [Mariola Espinosa] Let me see the card so I can keep memory of it. One of the first things that people are starting to worry about is water collection since people still don't have water, and the availability of mosquito breeding places, particularly because with the devastation of the rainforest, that also brings out or changes the ecosystem. People were reporting that there were more mosquitoes on the island after the hurricane, but we did not see because of the time it hit, we did not see an epidemic of Zika, for example, coming out although people were worried about it. Zika is still endemic there. I would advise people to keep that in mind, if you're considering a visit, to know the risks of Zika in any tropical island. In terms of nutrition, some of these organizations are using or working with the University of Puerto Rico's agricultural departments to try to encourage people to have home gardens, which is something that people had moved away from, but more and more people all over the island are moving back into, and to try to figure out ways in which they can be less dependent on the importation of food, to keep that going. And that's all the information I have really on those topics. Trying to find seeds that are good for the tropics and that are aimed at local production and subsistence farming. - [Sandra Morrow] This question has a little bit of information at the beginning to just set up the question, so I'll read that first. My brother-in-law in Ohio created a loose network of fellow Puerto Ricans statewide or stateside in order to create points of contact and communications. His family from Ponce gathered at a relative's house, where there were generators, food, and water. Those people who were prepared and connected outside of government became neighborhood hubs for communications and distribution to those in need. Was there a greater role for self-sufficiency and community involvement? - [Mariola Espinosa] Like that, yes. And you saw that happening pretty much all over the island, particularly in those places that remained not communicated, without communication with the outside world for more than the rest of the island. A lot of people visit, they stay in San Juan and things seem normalized there, but there's still people out there that are in those same situations, where they all get together in one house. Neighbors that would've never met each other are creating a community, playing board games instead of having video games, and sharing, a lot of sharing, not just food, but also stories and also resources, refrigerators, sharing the electricity. It's interesting because once people started getting electricity, and I saw it on my news feed in my Twitter, or my Facebook, there was a nostalgia for the community that was there before electricity came back. It's like, oh, we got to know our neighbors. I have friends who in Miami got together and started chartering airplanes, putting funds together to charter an airplane to get supplies in and then get patients that needed medical help out on the empty planes, so that the planes wouldn't be empty. And that was all organized by people like you and me in their communities, wherever in the United States they were. - [Sandra Morrow] Thank you so much Mariola. At this time, we now conclude our program. I know I want to give a big thank you again to our sponsors, the University of Iowa's International Program, the University of Iowa's Honors Program, the University of Iowa's Public Policy Center, and the Stanley-UI Foundation Support Organization for their generous support. And we also thank today's special sponsors: Alan Swanson, Blank and McCune Realtor, and Mike Carberry. And we also thank City Channel Four for making our programs available to viewing audiences. Now, Mariola, I think you're familiar with this. As a token of our gratitude, we would like to present you with the highly coveted Iowa City Foreign Relations Council mug. - [Mariola Espinosa] Thank you. - [Sandra Morrow] Thank you. - [Mariola Espinosa] This is one of the rare ambidextrous mugs, so yet another reason why I love it. Thank you so much.