Kamala Harris on the day of the abolition of slavery

The truth about her trip to Puerto Rico. More than politics, it was about financing the campaign.

Secretary of Energy Jennifer Granholm, with Vice President Kamala Harris on Canóvanas (Photo by AFP)

SUBSTACK

It is not precisely that today is the 151st anniversary of the abolition of slavery in Puerto Rico, it is that these are the ironies of living in a colony.

That the first female Vice President of the United States, who identifies as black, without necessarily being so, comes to Puerto Rico on a day like today, is a matter of mandatory reflection. This visit by Kamala Harris deserves analysis and questioning.

First, because she is not black. She is multiracial and multicultural, even though she identifies as black. Only in America can the daughter of Jamaican and Indian immigrants grow up to become the first female Vice president. Yet, her own election was a sign of how much American politics and society are changing.

Harris is a testament of how demographic trends are changing and reshaping America, yet the nuances of how people still struggle to talk about multiracial people and understand the realities of life in underprivileged, minority enclaves, still permeate the American fabric. This is particularly important now with a real possibility of Donald Trump winning the election, and how his MAGA voters feel and behave. And this is also important for us, here in Puerto Rico.

Here the racial issue is also a difficult topic for many sectors that deny that racism and sexism persist, but they do exist. The lack of blacks in positions of power or in politics is a fact locally. We are also a bastion of that systemic racism that is being challenged in the mainland.

Yet, what happened here is also different. Not only because the abolition of slavery is commemorated today, but because today the Afro-descendants week ended. That must be a mandatory part of the conversation, but it isn’t.

For us in the middle of the Caribbean, on this indebted, poor island, looted by so many corrupt politicians, it means so much more. What does Harris' visit really represent on a day like today? Simple. Her presence rubs us in the face that we are still a colony. Over 151 years ago we were a colony from Spain and now from the empire that she represents. And she came here to parade it in our faces, as a reminder that they are the ones in charge.

On March 22, 1873, the Spanish National Assembly abolished slavery in Puerto Rico. The owners were compensated with 35 million ‘pesetas’ (the Spanish coin) per slave, and slaves were required to continue working for three more years. Slavery was abolished here eight years after the US, just after the end of the civil war. The abolition of slavery was passed by Congress on January 31, 1865, and ratified on December 6, 1865 as the 13th Amendment of the Constitution that abolished slavery in the United States.

On June 30, 2016, then-president of the United States Barak Obama – a multiracial politician himself – signed into law a new kind of slavery dressed up as economic freedom. He signed the Puerto Rico Oversight, Management, and Economic Stability Act, (PROMESA), stating it would allow the Island to restructure its debt and achieve fiscal responsibility. This process will continue to affect us in Puerto Rico for generations to come.

Precisely because of PROMESA the conditions have been created to attract some of American wealthiest investors. They come here to avoid paying US taxes, exploiting us Puerto Ricans. They have created a massive housing bubble which is driving exorbitant housing costs for locals. The likes of hedge-fund billionaires such as Nicholas Prouty for the Democrats and John Paulson for Trump and the Republicans. Harris kept quiet about all this.

She also didn’t acknowledge the fact that we are being pushed out of our own communities, thrown from houses by short-term rental investors and Airbnb-like tourism. We are driven away from our beaches for celebrity crypto expats and hedge fund moguls who came promising to foster economic growth but have turned the island into a tax haven. It is in that reality that Harris arrived on a day like today. A day that should have been to reflect on the past and plan for the future but was turned into a political fundraiser.

Harris came, smiled for the cameras, said hello, went to a preselected house in the town of Canóvanas, an impoverished community of people who had lost everything in Hurricane Maria.

She then moved on to a school and community center on Calle Loíza in Santurce, where a few people were protesting. And then she moved on to her real priority: a fundraiser where attendees were asked to pitch-in from $25,000 to $100,000 per person. Many of those attending and coordinating the event were investors who were looking for ways to keep PROMESA, and slow down some IRS investigations.

In that sense Harris is no different from other American politicians who come to the island. Yet, her political fundraiser disguised as an official visit from the Vice President with the previous subtext that of “Puerto Rico matters to me”, is the imposed narrative.

As long as that political investment dressed up as an official visit is the official story, the truth will be untold. That of a dying democracy, where inequalities based on economic background, gender, and race persist.

And how can the daughter of immigrants from Jamaica and India, who is a multiracial and multiethnic woman from the power that governs us, understand these Puerto Rican realities? I don’t know. I fear that her political role prevents her from recognizing it.