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205 Sovereignty for Development September 24, 2009 Puerto Rico’s economic model froze in the 1950s. Corporations operating under Section 936 [of the US Internal Revenue Code] gave it some oxygen and managed to keep it going until the 1990s. Public debt and food stamps have kept the people from taking to the streets in massive protests. During the past three years, the economy of Puerto Rico has contracted by 10 percent, and the official unemployment rate has risen to 16 percent. The labor-participation rate (the number of people who are able to work and who are employed or actively seeking a job) is 42 percent. In other words, more than 50 percent of Puerto Ricans are not even in the labor market. Puerto Rico has lost its ability to attract new jobs; the government and the private sector are increasing layoffs; the construction industry is paralyzed for lack of financing; real-estate values are falling; 90 percent of the value of the Puerto Rico Stock Index has vanished; the government has increased taxes; energy costs are rising; social services are deteriorating; drug trafficking and rampant criminality are undermining quality of life; and the state of mental health continues to worsen. Just as with the $1 billion sent by the [George W.] Bush administration some years back, the funds assigned by the Obama administration will not solve our economic and social crisis. This “unincorporated territory that belongs to but is not a part of the United States” is not equipped to handle its own problems. The colonial power and the resident commissioner hope to solve Puerto Rico’s problems 206  Newspaper Columns by increasing dependency. That is much like a father giving money to his drug addict son instead of providing him with a cure for his disease. The economy of the twenty-first century is different from the one we had when the industrialization program was established in Puerto Rico, sponsored by the federal government, the US Navy, and the local government . The world has changed, and Puerto Rico is resisting the change. The world’s economy has gone global. This world is now one of interactive networks with treaties among sovereign countries, a world in which Puerto Rico cannot take part. Moreover, our colonial power— which imposes its own laws on us and stipulates our transportation and immigration policies—has lost its economic hegemony and is impotent to halt the rise of China in the world economy and the dramatic growth of the European Union and India. One example of the new international economic order is the US company Applied Materials of Silicon Valley, which has reinvented itself to manufacture solar panels. In the past two years, it has established fourteen new manufacturing plants: in Germany (five), in China (four), and the rest in Spain, India, Italy, Taiwan, and Abu Dabi—but none in the United States, much less in Puerto Rico. All of these countries have aggressive policies for the use of renewable energy. Germany generates almost half the solar energy produced in the world and is becoming the world center for research, engineering, manufacturing, and installation of solar-energy systems. A sovereign Puerto Rico, with a better climate than Germany, would be able to establish international agreements with that country to develop solar energy and grant visas to professors and professionals to create a world research center at the University of Puerto Rico at Mayagüez. It would also be able to regulate and promote the development of the industry following the best models in the world; and it would be able to use the most efficient and economical maritime transportation services. These are only a few of the many projects and ideas that might be developed. The powers that would be inherent in a sovereign Puerto Rico are fundamental for its development. The other choice we have is to continue to languish, waiting for manna from Washington while our quality of life deteriorates. ...

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