Hurricane Maria’s Effect on the Future
During the second half of September 2017, Puerto Rico was hit with one of the worst storms in its history: Hurricane Maria, and in The Battle for Paradise, Naomi Klein does an analyses of Puerto Rico’s potential future pre-Maria verses post-Maria. In the novel, Klein discusses how the cryptocurrency millionaires that saw Puerto Rico as a safe haven from high US corporate taxes. Post-Maria, the people started to realize they needed an independent economy in terms of energy and food. Naomi Klein contributes to the change because of her involvement with local social movements and warning people about the policies that are being implemented in Puerto Rico based on capitalistic beliefs, which will increase the crisis and will lead Puerto Rico to a process of depopulation. At the same time, Klein is able to concentrate on the forces that from the ground up are resisting and that will hopefully provide the basis for the reconstruction of a better more just and self-sustaining society.
Hurricane Maria produced the longest blackout in US history yet small and less industrialized self-sufficient communities in Puerto Rico had electricity restored quickly. At the beginning of the novel, Klein details the work of an environmentalist organization Casa Pueblo, who initially was one of the only places in the central mountains with access to electricity due to its solar powered panels. Many other communities aside from Casa Pueblo relied on the Federal Emergency Management Agency for power, and because of Puerto Rico's overwhelming dependence on imported fossil fuel, one catastrophic storm had the ability to wipe out all power, thus taking the Agency weeks to bring back power.
Later on, in the novel, Klein talks about how the Commerce Secretary of Puerto Rico, Manuel Laboy Rivera, promotes statehood for the island and other members of the government have created a vision of a future Puerto Rico, where cryptocurrency millionaires and billionaires can come to the island and create a neo-liberal paradise for investors. But this “paradise” will be a hell for the colonized Puerto Ricans. One of the immediate results is that the depopulation of Puerto Rico continues and wealthy investors, are contributing to the renovation, not of a neighborhood but of an entire nation. Laws which provide generous tax benefits to wealthy people who move to the island and invest have created a growing population of what Klein likes to calls "Puertopians," who will help pant the black canvas of Puerto Rico into an investor’s paradise.
Post-Maria, San Juan, the major port of Puerto Rico, was shut down, thus causing supplies to take much longer to reach the Puerto Ricans. The disparate agricultural island started growing tubers like yucca, taro, sweet potato, yam, and several other root vegetables that were nutrient-rich staples of the Puerto Rican diet, and because they grow underground most were entirely protected from storm damage. Organizacion Boricua has been an organization that had been connecting different farming islands and promoting that Puerto Rico is capable enough to grow and distribute enough food to feed the entire population. Also, Organizacion Boricua also promoted solar-power oases like Casa Pueblo, making the colonized more self-dependent rather than relying on imported fossil fuel.
Naomi Klein uses “shock doctrine” to describe the situation that occurred in Puerto Rico. Shock doctrine refers to how the insecurity, powerlessness that a population experiences during an economic depression, and the chaos allows the government to impose unpopular policies that normally would not be possible in normal circumstances. Even before Hurricane Maria, in May 2006, much of the government, including all the public schools, was temporarily shut down. That was the first punch. The second came when the global financial system melted down less than two years later, dramatically deepening the crisis already well underway. Klein describes the shock doctrine in 4 stages: desperation, distraction, despair, and disappearance. Desperation was caused by the sluggish and corrupt efforts the country made, causing the current situation feeling like it could not get any worse, referring to electricity. The people would get constant threats from their governor saying that they could go dark any time because they could not pay the bills. Distraction was directly referring to the destruction caused by Hurricane Maria. Maria caused severe damage to many homes, work, and religious buildings causing the people to not work, causing them to not pay the bills, distracting them from the island-wide chaos to their personal chaos. The third stage, despair, was caused by this chaos. People bombarded the 24- hour mental health hotline because they couldn’t cope with the chaos happening around them. The final stage is disappearance. Hundreds of thousands of Puerto Ricans started to leave the island to places like Florida and New York.
Puerto Rico’s future has a possibility to change because of Hurricane Maria. In a sense, both utopian projects, one with no corruption in a democratically governed Puerto Rico, and the other with a society dictated by billionaires to get away from taxes, had a potential chance before Hurricane Maria. But after Hurricane Maria, the people of Puerto Rico realized that they could not always rely on the government. They needed to have a self-sustaining economy, thus, having to provide food and energy for the population to live on.