Vulture Capitalists Circle Above Puerto Rico Prey

As people in Puerto Rico are dying and President Trump lashes out at San Juan's mayor, Bill Moyers talks with social anthropologist Yarimar Bonilla about the challenges Puerto Ricans face in the wake of the storm.

Puerto Rico is devastated.  Two hurricanes plunged the island into darkness and despair. Crops perish in the fields.  The landscape of ruined buildings and towns resemble Hiroshima after the atomic bomb was dropped on it.  Over three million people are desperate for food, water, electricity, and shelter. 

After a slow start, the Trump Administration is now speeding up the flow of supplies to the island.  A top US general has been given command of the relief efforts.  And, like so many others, Yarimar Bonilla watches with a broken heart as her native Puerto Rico struggles.  This noted social anthropologist – a scholar on Caribbean societies — says the hurricanes have made an already bad fiscal and economic crisis worse, and she sees darker times ahead unless major changes are made in the structure of power and in Puerto Rico’s relationship with the United States. 

Thursday night on NBC, San Juan Mayor Carmen Yulín Cruz made a spontaneous statement expressing her frustration with insufficient relief efforts that went viral.  Before you read my interview with Yarimar Bonilla please take two minutes to watch this video.  You will understand even more clearly Ms. Bonilla’s explainer of what is happening in Puerto Rico.

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