Photo by Alex Barth | CC BY 2.0
On Tuesday, Donald Trump followed up his sadistic attacks on the people of Puerto Rico with a comment out of the blue regarding the territory’s $73 billion debt: “… we’re going to have to wipe that out.” Whether or not Trump can be taken any more seriously on that than he can on any other issue, Hurricane Maria did reveal in the starkest possible way that forgiveness of Puerto Rico’s debt is a moral necessity.
The economic vulnerability that set the island up for an unnatural disaster unprecedented in U.S. history was a hybrid between mainland hedge-fund managers’ greed and the island colony’s political powerlessness. Writing more than a year before Maria, legal scholar Natasha Lycia Ora Bannan argued,
The colonial status of Puerto Rico both contributes directly to the economic crisis as well as inhibits comprehensive solutions that would address short-term concerns and long-term economic policy changes. The United Nations Special Committee on decolonization issued its annual resolution on the colonial status of Puerto Rico in early 2015, noting that the island needs to be able to make decisions in a sovereign manner to address its urgent economic and social needs, including its twelve percent unemployment rate, marginalization, and the widespread poverty of its residents. The
Committee recognized that the economic vulnerability of Puerto Rico is a direct consequence of its colonial status and that Puerto Rico’s lack of…