Puerto Rico

In These Times -   Nearly nine years after Hurricane Maria tore through the island, a dangerous myth persists: that Puerto Rico’s ongoing humanitarian crisis is a failure of local resilience or an unavoidable consequence of climate change. This is a lie.

What the island is suffering from is not a lack of fortitude, but a manufactured financial chokehold. While Congress has technically allocated over $42.5 billion in disaster relief to the island, the federal government’s bureaucratic neglect — and restrictive conditions — have actively broken the infrastructure meant to sustain human life.

There is a vast gulf between money being promised on a spreadsheet and cash actually hitting the ground in Puerto Rico. According to data from Puerto Rico’s Central Office for Reconstruction, Recovery, and Resiliency, of the $42.6 billion allocated across all recovery programs, only roughly $13.1 billion has actually been disbursed.

…Of the $11.1 billion FEMA obligated to completely overhaul the island’s brittle electrical grid, less than 25% has been distributed. The rest remains trapped thanks to a calculated bureaucratic trap: FEMA requires Puerto Rico to pay for massive infrastructure project costs up front and seek reimbursement later.