Ever since Hurricanes Irma and Maria devastated Puerto Rico in September 2017, leading to underreported death counts, months without power and billions of dollars in damages, the 3.2 million people there and 5.8 million Puerto Ricans stateside have gone through a soul-searching about where Puerto Rico will go next. The biggest question is whether the island and its people will ever be treated fairly by the federal government.
A federal audit found that only $1.8 billion of the $23 billion earmarked to help the island recover from the 2017 hurricanes and from earthquakes in 2019 and 2020 has been spent.
There’s good reason for that question: A federal audit released this month found that only $1.8 billion of the $23 billion earmarked to help the island recover from the 2017 hurricanes and from earthquakes in 2019 and 2020 has been spent. That’s barely 8% of the allocated money, a figure so minuscule it confirms what most Puerto Ricans already know. The federal government’s relationship with the island is downright colonial.
The response to Maria began with then-President Donald Trump throwing rolls of paper towels to those in need and despite some slight improvement during President Joe Biden’s administration, FEMA’s track record is one of utter failure, mismanagement and cultural ignorance.
“A mere 8% in recovery spending is a reminder that so many leaders do not see the urgency in protecting the well-being of Puerto Ricans,” Erica González, director of the Power 4 Puerto Rico coalition, told me. The coalition lobbies for greater legislative interest in the island.
Given the supposed lessons FEMA learned from its failures in responding to Hurricane Katrina in 2005, why, more than six years after Hurricane Maria, are the people of Puerto Rico still waiting for more than 90% of money that’s been allotted to the island? A FEMA spokesperson sent a lengthy email to this and other questions I sent, saying that “our commitment to the recovery of Puerto Rico continues strong.” This month’s audit, that spokesperson wrote, notes that there’ve been some improvements in how funds are being disbursed.
FEMA deserves lots of blame, but as Rep. Nydia Velázquez, D-N.Y., points out, not all of it. She said officials in San Juan have a history of ignoring other parts of the island.
“Government centralization has had the disadvantage of leaving municipalities behind. This is unacceptable,” she said. Velázquez, who is of Puerto Rican descent, has served New York’s 7th Congressional District since 1993. González of Power 4 Puerto Rico said “local special interests have been prioritized over the critical infrastructure and essential services Puerto Ricans need.” Puerto Ricans deserve more transparency and deserve government officials whose rebuilding projects benefit “the most vulnerable Puerto Ricans,” Velázquez said.
In part because of failures by FEMA and Puerto Rico’s government, there is growing movement devoted to Puerto Ricans leading their own resurgence and reconstruction, including a just recovery from recent natural disasters. The movement also promotes transparency and open government.
One nonprofit group, Sembrando Sentido (loosely translated as “Planting Common Sense”), recently announced the creation of a Federal Funding and Impact Tracker that the group hopes “would provide information to become a powerful advocacy instrument, by helping communities understand where the funding is directed, what achievements have been made, and where changes are needed.” Given the supposed lessons FEMA learned from its failures responding to Hurricane Katrina in 2005, why, more than six years after Hurricane Maria, are the people of Puerto Rico still waiting? Such efforts are in their early stages, and it is uncertain if this level of transparency will lead to more answers from the Puerto Rican government’s own transparency portal, which Velázquez cited as being “limited” in what it reports out to the public. It also doesn’t help that several elected officials keep getting convicted for corruption while in office. Despite the FEMA spokesperson’s claim that this month’s audit shows improvement, that audit doesn’t absolve FEMA. The agency needs to do more, but it might take legislation to make it do more. A bill introduced by Velázquez in December that addresses how FEMA’s administrator should respond in Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands could be an answer. That legislation would create “a new program requiring the administrator to periodically identify the limitations of public and private entities in the U.S. territories in performing recovery activities.” But given our do-nothing Congress, Velázquez’s bill is, for now, just a piece of paper. There is plenty of blame to go around for why Puerto Rico’s recovery is so far behind. The core of the problem seems to be that our government doesn’t regard the people there as citizens. According to a statistic from 2022, 41.7% of Puerto Ricans on the island live in poverty. By comparison, the poorest state in the nation, Mississippi, had a poverty rate of 19.1% in 2022. The least that can be done is getting those citizens the money they need to rebuild their lives. Eight percent of $23 billion is a travesty.
Julio Ricardo Varela is the founder of The Latino Newsletter. 
