PUERTO RICAN LANDS CONQUERED BY COLONIAL POLICY

Nichole Bodin
Published: 11/10/2024, 9:22PM EST
Updated: 11/17/2024, 4:29PM EST

   The reelection of President Trump has sparked a series of uncertain emotions worldwide towards the new upcoming politics view and has definitely brought unsettling economic concerns. And with the habitual delusional nature of Trump, who couldn't forget his childish remarks about trading Puerto Rico for Greenland. That insane proposition degraded the Island’s image immediately, reinforcing the debased reputation of the already accustomed crumbled economy. With the direct hits of multiple severe weather storms and the catastrophic aftermath of the socio-economic effect the Covid-19 pandemic, an isolated inhibition has deeply manifested among the locals in recent years.

   Puerto Rico has been hampered by debt and scandals regarding its infrastructure and power grid in shambles, and Trump’s delusional business remark could be closer by the day to become a frenzied trading. And with Rep. Jenniffer González winning the 2024 elections, distrust and hopelessness has extended the community of those who wanted a real change. The former Trump ally is a non voting delegate to the U.S. Congress and has planned to extend a small part of the pro-statehood party in control of the unincorporated territory.

   But since 2019 until today, Puerto Rico has been losing thousands of acres of valuable land with fraudulent skills that only a tight local brotherhood can accomplish along unlawful maneuvers executed by powerful politicians. The most pristine beaches, rivers, forests and protected mangroves have now ended up in the hands of opaque private, foreign and local "investors", either for personal use or for "tourist" or "commercial" projects that exclude Puerto Ricans.

   In most of these transactions, Jenniffer González name is mentioned, along with ex governor Ricardo Rosselló and current exiting governor Pedro Pierluisi. Their involvement usually portends relations with purchasing agents, realtors, architects or developers, and other names that curiously are also repeated in the lists of donors of high-level politicians of the New Progressive Party (PNP).

     It is no secret that environmental crimes and illegal exploitation of natural resources in Puerto Rico have proliferated in recent years. There is an uncontrolled urban development that is driven by the current economic government which enforces the individual monetary profit of this criminal activity, and the regulatory and institutional laws have failed to contain it, resulting in a privilege of impunity. In recent years, Puerto Rico's government corruption has drained valuable resources, inhibiting development, and undermining citizens' trust in their institutions. This recurring social problem is hit with high-profile operations and arrests that often scare off public officials, contractors, businessmen and other figures who might be tempted to commit these crimes. But after a “calm period', bribery schemes and public fund thefts, fraud and environmental crimes rise again. The high bribery scheme interests among those interested in power and money allows more public officials to bribe contractors. At some point, the scheme extends into the creation of "ghost employees", leaving more distrust in regards to the real role of the government.

   And with this catastrophic failure, an ongoing carelessness in environmental crimes and the lack of enforcement always seems to stand out. Environmental crimes committed in Playuela, Las Golondrinas Cave, Joyuda, the Luquillo wetlands, Dorado Beach, Peñuelas, Ocean Park, Jobos Bay and Los Almendros beach are the most recent episodes of environmental crimes whose perpetrators go unpunished. Places like Dorado and Rincón have changed completely. All of these criminal cases are suspended in the bureaucracy of the administrative agencies, out of the reach of Justice due to technicalities. There is no respect for public knowledge and the complaints against developers who are not respecting the processes raises a lot of concern among locals. 

   But the most controversial incident was the one that occurred on June 1st, 2021 at Sol y Playa Condominium in Rincón, when a series of protests began on the premises by self-convened citizens after learning of the illegal construction on a Maritime Terrestrial Zone. The protests prompted the governor to express himself through social networks and press conferences with no particular effect or credibility. A month after these protests, a Hawksbill turtle or "Carey", a protected species both locally and federally, was trapped in the construction. As a consequence, the Department of Natural Resources ordered a cease and desist from the Board of Directors of the Sol y Playa Condominium, who were promoting the reconstruction in order to protect the hawksbill habitat. Incredibly, this was not enough for the owners of the Condominium to comply with the demolition order.

 In short, it was the citizens who convened themselves and continued with the demolition of an illegal wall. Now Los Almendros beach is an open space, a public domain, where Camp Carey continues to have tents to periodically inform citizens about the threats posed by the development and construction of the MTZ and about the government's inaction to prevent it. In the face of public pressure exerted both on social media and in the beach camp, public hearings arose in the House of Representatives, under the command of the Committee on Natural Resources and Environmental Affairs to investigate the granting of the construction permit in Sol y Playa and the approved demarcation.

   Environmental activists like Eliezer Molina revealed and protested against the Sol y Playa Housing Complex in Rincón, where an illegal swimming pool was also built by stealing land in the MTZ and which Governor Pedro Pierluisi’s cousins were directly involved. Walter and Eduardo Pierluisi were later convicted at the federal level for a scheme related to public housing management contracts. As an ex independent gubernatorial candidate, Molina's efforts were not unnoticed. He had death threats in 2021 and in 2022 took his demands with a group of activists to the Puerto Rican parade to New York, carrying banners and chanting the slogan “The beaches belong to the people”.

     But the political persecution Molina had after all of this was undeniable. A stalking order was issued by Judge Melissa Soto of the Aguada Court House on September 14, 2023 in favor of the attorney, Ignaris M. Acevedo Rosario, resident of the aforementioned Condominium and vice president of the board of the committee of the Sol y Playa Condominium complex. 

 He was also decertified by the Court of First Instance in the case he filed against the State Election Commission (CEE). Allegedly, he did not comply with the required documents for the certification requested for the Commission, in addition to a supposed incomplete doping test done.

On Nov. 6, 2024, Eliezer Molina assured that he was elected for the Senate by accumulation in the Puerto Rican elections, after apparently receiving about 90 thousand votes by direct nomination, or "write in."

"The beaches belong to the people"

On March 4 2023, a heated demonstration at Sol y Playa Condominium in Rincón took place, in which a Tactical Operations Unit was deployed at the scene.

   The criminalization and consequent police persecution of demonstrators protesting for the ongoing environmental crimes in Jobos Bay and the Sol y Playa Condominium provoked a sharp contrast with the impunity granted to the perpetrators of these duly typified crimes. While the case of the Sol y Playa Condominium revealed a reckless government handling of an environmental crime, the handling of the Jobos Bay case stands out for its negligent nature.

  The Jobos Estuarine Research Nature Reserve is the second largest estuary in Puerto Rico, but it is the only one of its kind because of the diverse range of flora and fauna it contains; It is the only one that has coral reefs, islets, mangrove forests, seagrass meadows, hyper saline lagoons and xerophytic vegetation. It is part of the National System of Estuarine Research Reserves attached to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, and is administered by the Department of Natural Resources.

   The harmful effects of corruption are not only economic. It represents a gigantic weight on the cost of doing business with the local government, especially in times of crisis or natural disasters. Still, most could not forget when 16.5 million water bottles were found on a farmland two years after Hurricane Maria devastated Puerto Rico in 2017. According to a CNN reporter, even though the residual water was ‘nearing expiration or past its shelf life’, the need for immediate help arose one month after the hurricane when 1 million Puerto Ricans lacked access to running water. A year later, people still couldn't get access to running water due bacteria and waterborne diseases.

  Today's new and modern way for culture extermination executes a systematic enslaved persecution along with violent and abusive human tragedies. Author Dr. José Atiles Osoria in his article COLONIAL STATE TERROR IN PUERTO RICO: A RESEARCH AGENDA describes thoroughly how the state of colonial terror in political violence against anticolonial and social movements have been used to demobilize Puerto Rican anticolonial movements. Atiles acknowledges that a considerable number of authors have already tackled topics like repression, state violence and the criminalization of Puerto Rican anticolonial movements, while these approaches fail to address the complexity of the colonial state terror.

For that reason, there are no sufficient analyses of colonial conflicts that exhibit the relationship between colonialism, law, political violence, terrorism and the dynamics of a colonial state. One thing for sure, violence in colonial contexts have been legitimized through various discourses throughout ages, making it one of the most disregarded topics of all times.

SOURCES

16 millones de botellas de agua para víctimas del huracán María en Puerto Rico expiraron antes de que alguien pueda beberlas. (2019). Global Citizen. https://www.globalcitizen.org/...

Article: Crímenes ambientales impunes y su efecto erosivo sobre la confianza social en las instituciones públicas. (n.d.). https://derecho.uprrp.edu/inrev/2022/10/20/articulo-crimenes-ambientales-impunes-y-su-efecto-erosivo-sobre-la-confianza-social-en-las-instituciones-publicas/

Atiles-Osoria, J. (2016). Colonial State Terror in Puerto Rico: A Research Agenda [Review of Colonial State Terror in Puerto Rico: A Research Agenda]. JSTOR; State Crime Journal. https://www.jstor.org/stable/10.13169/statecrime.5.2.0220

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