WARRING AGAINST... EVERYBODY

Pictured here is a little island in the northeast Carribbean Sea. Do you recognize this internet map image? For those of us who have visited it, we certainly wouldn't recognize how it looks looks in person today. This is Puerto Rico.

Puerto Rico has been on my mind a lot lately as its people continue struggling to survive 2 months after the destruction by Hurricane Maria. Even before this natural disaster took out its infrastructure, this U.S. territory was suffering from bankruptcy and its treatment of residents as second class citizens. It didn't just start with Donald Trump showing up 2 weeks after the disaster and mocking the severity of the island's devastation. But his attitude and treatment of people being without vital necessities like clean drinking water certainly didn't help. 

We can pretty much live our daily lives without acknowledging the suffering our country's actions have caused/continue to cause elsewhere and even within our own country. Is it that we choose not to know what our country has done/are we as citizens deceived of the truth/perhaps both? 

Unfortunately, the more I learn about our presence worldwide it is much less than a rosy picture of good will. Perhaps our patriotic naivete doesn't allow skepticism regarding incentive. Before calling ourselves global economists we were imperialistic and before that colonists. 

Doubting our presence and involvement in wars that aren't ours in the name of humanity when closer viewed expose underlying interests of our capitalism. 

Nelson Denis, award winning screen director, former New York State Assemblyman, writer and author of War Against All Puerto Ricans was a guest speaker at Viterbo University thanks to the D.B. Reinhart Institute for Ethics and Leadership just a little over a year ago. Nelson Denis didn't mince words as he spoke about the demise of Puerto Rico, a U.S. territory. 

Denis is a first generation American raised by his Puerto Rican grandmother and mother. His mother came to this country at 16 and worked in NewYorks's garment district as many other immigrants for 20 cents/hr, $8/wk. Her 23 years of savings enabled her son to go to Harvard College and then Yale Law school. He did practice law in addition to being a prolific writer.

Starting with the Spanish American War Denis illustrated how the U.S. made sure this country's statehood's power and wealth were usurped. By law, Puerto Rico could/can not even choose their own governing body, it has been appointed for them.  U.S. mega million dollar companies i.e. Colonial Bank owned half the island. Companies like American Fruit, took over businesses including sugar, coffee and tobacco.  forcing the businessman both small and large out of business, minimum wage salaries, property taxes sky rocketed, no employee benefits,  their economy plummeted into insurmountable debt with the help of natural disasters, bonds, etc. Today that debt totals 72 billion dollars.

Need we wonder how we have failed and continue to fail our own citizens in Puerto Rico? Shame on us because this is the government we elected whose policies we have allowed...