President Joe Biden recently visited Puerto Rico and Florida in an effort to reassure the people there that the U.S. government would help them in the aftermath of Hurricanes Fiona and Ian. But a key difference between those two places—Puerto Rico is a “commonwealth” and Florida is a state—means each faces a very different path to recovery.
Days after Hurricane Fiona struck Puerto Rico, the writer Jaquira Díaz flew back to her home to check on her family and see the storm’s devastation. In our November 2022 issue, Díaz makes the case for Puerto Rican sovereignty. In this episode of Radio Atlantic, she talks about how the hurricane’s impact does not change her mind about wanting an independent Puerto Rico, even if the island requires immense help to recover. Robinson Meyer, author of The Atlantic’s Weekly Planet newsletter, also talks about the island’s electrical infrastructure and what stands in the way of Puerto Rico modernizing its power grid.
The following transcript has been edited for length and clarity.
Claudine Ebeid: You’re listening to Radio Atlantic. I’m Claudine Ebeid. More than two weeks ago, Hurricane Fiona hit the island of Puerto Rico. This week, President Biden visited the commonwealth, pledging money and promising to restore the island’s fragile power grid.
Many Puerto Ricans have yet to recover from Hurricane Maria, which hit five years ago, calling into question how quickly recovery can actually happen. Jaquira Díaz writes for The Atlantic. Her most recent article is “Puerto Rico Needs Independence, Not Statehood.” And she joins us today on Radio Atlantic. Jaquira, thanks for talking with us.
Jaquira Díaz: Thank you so much for having me on the show.
Ebeid: You know, Hurricane Fiona hit Puerto Rico more than two weeks ago. You flew in there shortly after. So tell me a little bit about what you saw.
Díaz: One of the reasons why I flew into Puerto Rico right after Hurricane Fiona is because I have family there. And during Hurricane Maria, we lost touch with a lot of our family, but especially my uncle who lives now in Yabucoa and who’s older. We didn’t hear anything about him for weeks and weeks. And I just thought this time I can’t just sit around and wait for him to get in touch. And so I’m just going to get on a flight and go and try to help and take care of my family.
During Hurricane Maria, I felt so helpless watching everything on the news from the States. And I also did not know whether or not the help, like boxes of supplies, that I was sending were actually going to get to my people. And so I thought, I’m just going to go.
I flew in the Thursday after Hurricane Fiona. I flew in at night. And as soon as we’re approaching Isla Verde, where the airport is, I’m looking at Puerto Rico from the sky in the dark and seeing that everything is dark except for San Juan, except for the hotels and casinos, the lights. And it’s almost as if the hurricane happened to the rest of the archipelago and not San Juan. I was in the sky close to tears, thinking there are tourists there now. There are people, wealthy people, foreigners and Americans who get tax breaks and use Puerto Rico as a tax haven. And they’re not affected.
They have power and they have water and they’re partying. And there’s a concert happening right now, while I don’t know if my family is alive, how they’re surviving. And so it kind of filled me with rage and sadness because it feels like … I mean, during Maria, we all saw the lack of response from the Trump administration, the deliberate blocking of relief funds. And then five years later, it feels like, you know, the wealthy people are still partying while the poor and the elderly and the people who live in rural towns are suffering and are ignored.
Once I landed, I was privileged enough that I stayed in a hotel, that I could afford to stay in a hotel and that I had power and water. And I rented a car and I drove to Yabucoa to see my uncle. He was the first person I went to check on. He’s a priest, and he was running the parish office on a small generator without air-conditioning, without water, and still there because he felt like he needed to show up for his people.
Ebeid: What can you tell me about how much—maybe even in particular where your uncle was living—how much the people that were living there were still dealing with the effects of Hurricane Maria from five years ago? Have they recovered from that at this point?
Díaz: No, they haven’t recovered. My uncle at the time when Hurricane Maria struck Puerto Rico was living in Comerío, which is in the center of the island. Comerío was one of the hardest-hit communities. It’s a small town. Their bridges collapsed and their houses, during Hurricane Maria. So a lot of them were destroyed and they were flooded, and people were digging mud out of their living rooms and bedrooms and kitchens for weeks after.
When I went, I want to say a year ago, the bridges were still not completely reconstructed. There was a bridge that was just, like, one lane where people were still waiting for construction to happen. It felt like everything was moving very, very slowly. I got a sense that people were still, in a way, living in survival mode.
I mean, the Econo supermarket was open and the parish was open, but you can still see the destruction. You can still see the devastation in places like Comerío and the earthquakes right after Maria.
In 2019, we had earthquakes hit Puerto Rico. They’re still dealing with the multiple disasters, not just this hurricane, Fiona. And there’s a sense not only that they’ve been ignored, but that whatever help comes is going to come too late. There may be another hurricane before they even actually see any kind of progress.
Ebeid: While we’re taping this there’s, I think, more than 100,000 people without power in Puerto Rico. But when, you know, Fiona hit the island initially, it knocked a third of the commonwealth off its power grid, which we should say is pretty antiquated and is clearly not standing up to the hurricanes in the way that it needs to, or bouncing back, I guess I should say. And this week, President Biden, he headed to Puerto Rico, and he had some promises.
President Joe Biden: As we conveyed to the governor, I’m ready to deploy and expedite more resources from the Department of Energy and other federal agencies, not just … I don’t usually talk this fast—it looks like it’s moving quickly … to help transform the entire system of Puerto Rico. The Puerto Rican people can get clean, reliable, affordable power they need in. The power stays in homes and hospitals when storms like Fiona strike. That includes mini grids, which you can begin to deploy soon so we are less dependent on transmission lines across the long distances and more redundancy when the storms hit. The goal is lower energy bills and more reliable power for Puerto Rican households.
Ebeid: Jaquira, I wonder what goes through your mind when you hear President Biden talking about new modernized energy infrastructure for Puerto Rico.
Díaz: My feelings about anything that … coming from any U.S. administration are complicated. Of course, the Puerto Rican people would welcome much-needed funds and relief and any kind of help if it ever arrives. I didn’t think the president would arrive, to be honest.
Hurricane Fiona hit well more than two weeks ago. For me, I have very little confidence in this administration or any U.S. administration for that matter, considering that so many people in Puerto Rico have had to live in survival mode for so long. This is something that should have happened years ago.
When I think of President Biden’s remarks, I think of how long it took for this to happen, how long it took for Puerto Rico to get a waiver of the Jones Act. Time is of the essence when you’re talking about people’s survival. This was just performative to me. So people who have family living right now in survival mode, this feels like it’s not enough.
Ebeid: I feel like we should just let people know what the Jones Act is. Basically, they’ve given a waiver to this act that would not permit non-U.S. tankers coming to the island. Is that right?
Díaz: Yes. Recently there was a tanker full of diesel that was trying to deliver diesel to Puerto Rico. And the areas that didn’t have power were running using generators that need diesel to power those generators, specifically hospitals, facilities for elder care that need generators in order to run in order to take care of people. And so the Jones Act prevented that ship from delivering that diesel, because the Jones Act makes it so that any deliveries have to be made to Puerto Rico from U.S. ships—from American ships built by the U.S.—while hospitals are waiting for fuel to power their generators and can’t perform surgeries or care for patients. It felt like the administration was just taking its sweet time considering this.
Ebeid: I hear your frustration and your skepticism in government help. But I’m also wondering: Is it possible for Puerto Rico to modernize without government help?
Díaz: I don’t know if it’s possible at this point for Puerto Rico to actually rebuild without government help, and yet they’ve been waiting for government help. I do think that the best thing for Puerto Rico is self-determination and eventually independence, but that also comes with a certain responsibility from the U.S. I think no matter the outcome, whether or not Puerto Rico gains independence, that the current relationship—Puerto Rico as a colony—is only causing more death and destruction for Puerto Rico.
Ebeid: But it sounds like there’s kind of like an order of operations that needs to happen.
Díaz: Yeah.
Ebeid: It makes me wonder, like, when you think about Puerto Rico’s vulnerability to hurricanes in this, especially in this particular moment, does it make you lean in further towards independence or does it give you pause?
Díaz: It absolutely makes me feel like independence is necessary now more than ever. But I also want to emphasize that independencia, what we think of as independence and self-determination, also needs to come with an extensive reparations agreement that is not just reparations for the harms done, but that is actually addressing the most immediate concerns of Puerto Ricans today, meaning getting aid and care to the people now. Not in five years, not in 10 years. Building hospitals in Vieques and Culebra, and actually fixing the power grid now, liquidating the massive debt, and then starting to deal with the kinds of reparations that are addressing what has happened in Puerto Rico historically because of its colonial status.
Ebeid: So if the promises that President Biden is making now and the money that he’s promising for a stronger grid, modernization of the grid, infrastructure fixes to Puerto Rico—do you consider that in part reparations to the island?
Díaz: Absolutely. I think it’s much-needed reparations. It wasn’t just, you know, natural disasters or climate disasters. There’s a direct relationship with the United States that has prevented Puerto Rico from taking care of itself. And, I mean, there are other things that the Jones Act causes in Puerto Rico, which is in part the debt and how anything that’s shipped to Puerto Rico has to come through the U.S. before it gets to Puerto Rico. So it definitely, to me, feels like this debt that has prevented Puerto Rico from getting relief and from actually seeing some progress has to be addressed. Some of those reparations right now have to come with addressing those most immediate concerns.
Ebeid: Robinson Meyer writes the newsletter The Weekly Planet for The Atlantic, focusing on climate change and climate policy. We’re going to turn to him now to get more detail on what it would take to upgrade Puerto Rico’s infrastructure, especially its power grid. Hi, Rob.
Robinson Meyer: Hey, thank you for having me.
Ebeid: President Biden has talked about modernizing the grid. We hear this term a lot and not just about Puerto Rico, right. We hear about making our power grids more resilient. What does modernizing a grid mean?
Meyer: It’s kind of like modernizing an IT system. It’s like when you hear the president say it, there is a set of technological improvements, you know, new infrastructure to be built and cleaner energy to be added that kind of all fall into a bucket of modernizing the grid. And so when you hear about modernizing the grid, what it tends to mean is making the grid more resilient, more efficient; you know, less likely to go down during natural disasters; and easier to repair when it does.
Because I think one thing that Fiona and Maria both made clear is that when a hurricane comes through, it is not atypical for the tower to go down. I mean, in Florida this past week when Ian made landfall, millions of people in Florida lost power. The difference is that they then quickly regained power because linemen come from around the country or the grid is built to be able to go back up after a disaster like that. It’s very, very rare to have a natural disaster where days and days and days later, hundreds of thousands of people or tens of thousands of people are still losing power.
Ebeid: When did conversations about modernizing the grid in Puerto Rico first start? I guess it’s fair to say it’s been an ongoing conversation. This isn’t brand new.
Meyer: It’s certainly not brand new since Fiona and, of course, has been happening to some degree. There has been ongoing reform, mostly unsuccessful, of the Puerto Rican electrical system and who controls the grid. This has been an ongoing theme, certainly since the the large blackouts of Maria. But at the same time, a lot of the questions around the debt crisis that has been so destructive for the island’s government and has led to pretty destructive regimes imposed by the U.S. federal government on the island have been related to kind of critical infrastructure debt. So it, in some ways, precedes Maria.
Ebeid: One of the things that President Biden talked about in reforming the power grid in Puerto Rico was what he called mini grids. They’re usually called “microgrids.” Rob, what is a microgrid, and does it actually make sense for the island?
Meyer: So a microgrid is, I mean, exactly what it sounds like, right? So it’s a, you know, most of the electrical grid that Americans in the continental U.S. deal with every day is a macrogrid, right? There is the power that we get in Washington, D.C., comes from all around us, comes from Virginia and West Virginia and Pennsylvania, New Jersey and and even as far south as Tennessee. And that’s because there’s giant infrastructure, giant transmission infrastructure that connects all those power plants to local transformers which connect to our distribution lines and the power ultimately winds up at our house.
Well, in some places, it doesn’t make sense to run that transmission infrastructure over a long distance to get to then a relatively concentrated amount of electricity demand. What if you just could generate electricity on-site and store it on-site and then have a very small grid that serves just those local customers? And that way, too, if there is a disaster and you were to wipe out … there was damage in a fairly remote part of that transmission network. The electricity never passes that remote, remote part. It’s generated locally and it’s used locally.
Part of a technical challenge in Puerto Rico is that you do get transmission passing through fairly dense tropical vegetation—you know, hard to do maintenance on once you get there. If the technical issue alone was standing in the way of having a working grid in Puerto Rico, I think that would make a lot of sense. And I think it probably will ultimately be part of the mix that works in a kind of long-term sustainable basis for Puerto Rico. But of course, that’s not the only reason that Puerto Rico has faced chronic underinvestment in its electricity system.
And so, you know, you can fix some political problems with technology, but you can’t fix them all. And chronic underinvestment is one of those problems that you’re never going to get a better technology that lets you solve that problem, if you’re not willing to spend on infrastructure or, in the case of Puerto Rico, if you’re completely unable to spend because of externally imposed debt-upkeep requirements and debt-payment requirements.
Ebeid: And you know, Biden has promised $700 million to Puerto Rico. Where is that money coming from? The new climate bill?
Meyer: So there’s a lot of different money that’s on offer. And, you know, the president mentioned some of it in his speech. So I think the biggest number he said was the $700 million number, which is for all Puerto Rican infrastructure that is all mustered by the bipartisan infrastructure law, the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act.
That’s why the president, I think, could make that very big commitment, because, in fact, that money was committed the moment the law was signed.
Ebeid: And the commitment. Is it just a promise? And does the Biden administration have to follow through with committing this money?
Meyer: I should add that the $700 million the president committed is all infrastructure spending.
None of this has anything to do with the electrical infrastructure problems that we’re talking about. With the 60 million for coastal resilience that the president pledged, the Biden administration has the ability to spend that money. What we have not yet seen is any plan about how it’s going to be spent or whether it would be reversible if it isn’t spent during the administration. So, you know, if the president loses in 2024, would a future administration be locked into spending that money? Or if, say, the White House has only—or the, you know, federal agencies and the Puerto Rican government have only—spent, let’s say, $20 million of that $60 million by 2024. Is it possible that the remaining $40 million could be rescinded?
Ebeid: So let’s talk about that—what are the ramifications—right? Because I think for a state, there are political ramifications to doing something like that.
Meyer: What I have been thinking about is at the state level, when you have a chronically failing grid, even a grid that is perceived to be chronically failing, there are often political consequences that ripple up to the national level. And so the classic example here is that in the early 2000s, California suffered from chronic blackouts and brownouts. And so in 2003, the Republican Party in California led a successful recall effort against then-Governor Gray Davis, got him recalled and replaced with Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger. And that’s actually how Arnold Schwarzenegger became governor of California.
And that had, you know, national political ramifications—that California, a fairly blue state, was so fed up with the state of its electricity grid that it elected a Republican. What we see time and time again is that if a U.S. state can’t deliver a critical public service to such a large share of its citizens—there are counterexamples here, but by and large—if you just can’t keep the lights on and you cannot bring the lights back on after a major storm, there are political ramifications and political consequences.
What is so striking about Puerto Rico’s situation is that it is restricted by its status and by its lack of representation in the federal government in the current form. If it was independent, it would be the master of its own fate. But in its current form, there’s no way for these kinds of failures to ripple up. There’s no lever in the same way that there would be if, say, California had chronic power outages again, or, let’s say, if Texas’s grid kept failing in the same way that it failed early last year.
Ebeid: Yeah, I also think that we have sort of gotten to a place with climate change that something that felt so far removed from our everyday needs in life, the power grid, is something that is closer and closer to us, right? In a real way. And for Puerto Ricans, I think that’s been true for much longer. And because it is inherently in a place where it is getting pummeled more than other places when hurricanes come. And so this is why I feel like this is a hard conversation, right? Because there is a very human, everyday toll of this, and then there is this, like, very-far-removed utility conversation.
Meyer: Right, but this is always why the utility stuff is so hard is because, like, look, we all interact with the electricity system every day. I think you could say it’s a human right to have electricity, that we deserve electricity at this point. We deserve it in the same way, you know, people deserve shelter and water, right? It is just a basic part of our lives. It is a basic part of the economic bill of rights that exists between the government and the people. Unwritten, but nonetheless real.
And yet the electricity system is an enormous, enormous mass of steel and copper and wire and highly technical systems that people who are mostly more expert than us with very technical degrees manage and run. And so these are always the questions we run into when thinking about it. How does this system that seems so warm that comes into all of our homes that we all rely on every day, but which also relies on really complicated physics around resistance and, frankly, college-level electrical engineering—right?—what is the proper way for a democracy to govern that kind of infrastructure and for us to think about it? Those are really challenging questions everywhere.
What’s so striking here, I think, is that Puerto Rico is not even given the democratic dignity to kind of resolve these questions on its own. At the end of the day, President Biden went home. You know, he went back to Washington after the trip. And he may care a lot about Puerto Rico in that moment. But under its current status, it doesn’t need a malevolent or nefarious story for the president to simply have many, many other obligations on his desk and many other priorities. And the ones that affect his job can rise to the top and determine what actually gets done.
Ebeid: Robinson Meyer writes the newsletter The Weekly Planet for The Atlantic. Thank you, Rob.
Meyer: Thank you.
Ebeid: For Puerto Ricans, the long-hoped-for improvements to their power grid and the political wrangling that might somehow get the island to a more stable place all remain to be seen. In the meantime, two weeks after Hurricane Fiona, Jaquira describes what people in Puerto Rico are doing to move forward.
Díaz: So one of the things that has always been true of Puerto Ricans is that when there’s a natural disaster, when there’s any disaster in any crisis, they rely on each other—they turn to their neighbors, they turn to friends and strangers, just people who live close by. And that those are the people that they rely on. We saw that during Hurricane Maria. We’re seeing that now, that there are a lot of local, small, nonprofit mutual-aid groups that are either taking donations to buy supplies for people or actually showing up at people’s houses to deliver supplies.
Some of these are not even organizations. They’re just people in the neighborhood who are looking out for each other. Here are people who live in another town who have the luxury of having a car and will drive somewhere to make sure that people have help, who are going door to door just to check on people and say, “Is there anything you need? You need water. Do you need diesel?” I think that’s always been the case in Puerto Rico.
One of the things that I saw myself is, when I visited Yabucoa in the four days after hurricane Fiona, was that everybody in town—everybody—they all knew each other. They knew each other’s names. They asked each other if they had power, yet they actually acted as if—whether or not they were strangers, by the way—they acted as if they were all in it together. And so part of what you feel when you go into these towns like Comerío is that we are all taking care of each other, because there is no government coming to take care of us.
I was in a bakery trying to buy a coffee, and they didn’t have power and they were working with a generator. And there was a man who said he didn’t have cash and he wanted to use his ATM. He said, “I have money in the bank, but I just don’t have cash.” And a stranger came up and gave him a couple of dollars so that he could buy something to eat. And to me, that is indicative of what’s been happening in Puerto Rico since I’ve been alive, which is that the people are out there taking care of each other, and that is very real.
Ebeid: Jaquira Díaz writes for The Atlantic. Her most recent article is “Puerto Rico Needs Independence, Not Statehood.” Jaquira, thank you for talking with us today.
Díaz: Thank you so much for having me. I really appreciate it.