Percy Bartelt, staff writer

When Hurricane Fiona reached Puerto Rico on Sept. 18, it was considered a Category 1 storm – only to quickly worsen to Category 4. The island was left with terrible flooding, destroyed buildings, over 13,000 people displaced and millions left without power – which has yet to be restored for many even today. Now take a guess as to who is not helping Puerto Rico recover, despite owning the territory. That’s right: Puerto Rico is an unincorporated territory of the United States, and Puerto Ricans have had U.S. citizenship for over 100 years.

President Biden announced on Sept. 23 that he approved an official disaster declaration for Puerto Rico, which basically means that the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) is able to send assistance if the governor deems it necessary. Which seems amazing, right? Wrong. A close friend of mine who was born and raised in Puerto Rico and still lives there today has informed me that things may not be as they seem.

FEMA has had a strong presence in Puerto Rico ever since 2017, helping areas affected by Hurricane Maria. However, some recent publicly available data from government reports have shown that incoming resources from FEMA end up benefiting mainland American companies more than Puerto Rico! In other words, FEMA officials are helping their political allies’ companies rather than having the goal in mind of actually delivering assistance to the whole of Puerto Rico. And coming from their conservative governor at the moment, who’s exactly surprised by this outcome? 

Alongside the displacement, suffering and loss of Puerto Ricans, the governor has been selling their electricity to a private company called Luma. There’s been a push to further privatize their resources, thus displacing even more of their citizens should this be successful. Though this is more about the conservative politics of their governor, who some Puerto Ricans do indeed oppose, it still has the ability to make matters worse — if and when a large storm hits the area. If their resources are privatized, it limits the use by more Puerto Ricans, and if FEMA is only helping their political allies, it limits aid for Puerto Ricans who need it.

We should be helping more than we actually are — there’s a dangerous snowball effect for Puerto Rican citizens and the U.S. doesn’t seem to be helping the territory that, I’m sure as many American conservatives don’t know, we actually own. Matters will only get worse with the hurricane season developing and increasingly bad storms stretching resources thinner and thinner. We’ve already seen Hurricane Ian — another Category 4 — make landfall in Florida barely one week after Fiona hit Puerto Rico. There was an uproar for aid when the devastating Category 5 Hurricane Katrina hit in 2005, so where is the help for Hurricane Fiona? It’s honestly heartbreaking to see how many political factors — both at the hands of the federal U.S. Government and the local government in Puerto Rico — are affecting this decision to help people desperately in need of assistance.