{"id":338918,"date":"2017-12-11T11:21:47","date_gmt":"2017-12-11T10:21:47","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/newswire\/the-invisibility-of-poverty-in-puerto-rico\/"},"modified":"2017-12-11T11:21:47","modified_gmt":"2017-12-11T10:21:47","slug":"the-invisibility-of-poverty-in-puerto-rico","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/newswire\/the-invisibility-of-poverty-in-puerto-rico\/","title":{"rendered":"The Invisibility of Poverty in Puerto Rico"},"content":{"rendered":"<div itemprop=\"articleBody\">\n<div id=\"attachment_98165\" style=\"max-width: 520px\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-98165\" src=\"https:\/\/uziiw38pmyg1ai60732c4011-wpengine.netdna-ssl.com\/wp-content\/dropzone\/2017\/12\/Screen-Shot-2017-12-10-at-9.14.05-PM.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"510\" height=\"378\"  \/><\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-caption-text\">Photo by Juan Cristobal Zulueta | <a href=\"https:\/\/creativecommons.org\/licenses\/by\/2.0\/\">CC BY 2.0<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<p>It has been more than two months since Hurricane Mar\u00eda, a catastrophic category four hurricane, took a heavy toll on Puerto Rico\u2019s infrastructure and dismally affected its local residents. People in the mainland saw pictures and videos of entire communities being physically disconnected due to bridges collapsing and roads being covered with debris. The news cycle kept repeating how extremely difficult it was to send rescue teams and aid to these heavily hit areas. And it is pretty common to know by now that any form of communication was basically inexistent\u2014due to cellphone towers being torn down by strong winds\u2014and that 100 percent of users were left without electricity right after the storm. Although some improvements have occurred, to this date, not much has changed. Only a little over half of the island has recovered electrical power\u2014mostly intermittently.<\/p>\n<p>Even though it has lost its persistent media coverage, what this dire aftermath and the subsequent relief and recovery effort have revealed is the island\u2019s century-old unequal colonial relationship with the United States, and the local elites\u2019 role in sustaining it. Recent controversy over the mishandling of the humanitarian crisis after Hurricane Mar\u00eda should not surprise anyone. In the territory, as subaltern subjects, Puerto Ricans have been continuously subjected to a capitalist and <a href=\"http:\/\/www.francesnegronmuntaner.com\/the-crisis-in-puerto-rico-is-a-racial-issue-heres-why\/\">racial<\/a> hierarchical system.<\/p>\n<p>These unjust core-periphery relations are a&#8230;<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.counterpunch.org\/2017\/12\/11\/the-invisibility-of-poverty-in-puerto-rico\/\">Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Photo by Juan Cristobal Zulueta | CC BY 2.0 It has been more than two months since Hurricane Mar\u00eda, a catastrophic category four hurricane, took a heavy toll on Puerto Rico\u2019s infrastructure and dismally affected its local residents. People in the mainland saw pictures and videos of entire communities being physically disconnected due to bridges [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[519],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-338918","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-newswire"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/338918","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=338918"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/338918\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=338918"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=338918"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=338918"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}