Letters

 Re: "Losing Jobs to 936," by Katherine Isaac (July/August 1993): There was something, well, slightly xenophobic and certainly historically and politically misleading about the article.

 A few reminders:

• In early 1897, after a long struggle, Puerto Rico won an automatic charter from Spain. The autonomous government began to function in July 1898. A month later, the United States "liberated" Puerto Rico - by invasion and cancellation of all autonomous rights that Spain had just granted.
• In 1917, the United States "granted citizenship" to Puerto Ricans. Actually, the United States declared as "automatic citizens" all Puerto Ricans save those who signed a document specifically refusing citizenship - a document that also deprived signers from many rights they had held (including the right to hold office) and made them what has been deemed essentially "illegal aliens in their own birthplace." U.S. citizenship did confer on them the right to become military fodder, however.
• Not until 1948 were Puerto Ricans for the first time granted the right to vote for their own governor - after a half century of 15 U.S. government-appointed civilian governors, not a one of whom mastered Spanish - and they still don't have the right to vote for President.
• In 1952, the island was designated a U.S. Commonwealth - in Spanish Estado Libre Asociado ("associated free state"), though the island's history has been anything but that.
• The U.S. government has economically and politically coerced Puerto Rico into accepting whatever industry has been most advantageous for the U.S. government and corporations, and discouraged domestic production that would have been manageable with local investment (and would have put Puerto Rico in the position of being able to demand the eventual independence it was originally promised). Sugar and rum supplier at first, place to test bombs and put military and spy bases next, Puerto Rico, beginning in the 1960s, was then pushed to accept petrochemical and pharmaceutical production, industries that have been quickly destroying what had been a tiny pristine island (30 miles by 120 miles in size and containing the now greatly diminished "only tropical rainforest in the United States."). Along with few jobs have come, as well, the pollution of the air and the poisoning of the water supplies of whole towns. U.S. military and other federal installations are even more extensive, and no one denies the fact that the F.B.I. and the Secret Service still abound to keep an eye on "radicals" pushing for nationhood and an end to this kind of forced and injurious dependence.
• The official unemployment rate in Puerto Rico has been running at about 20 percent for the past decade. (Estimates climb as high as 40 percent if including those no longer seeking work and those who are "under-employed.")
• Application for the "Free Zone" jobs to which you refer come mainly from women, single heads-of-households. They see no other choices (except starvation for themselves and their children) than to work where they are paid "piece rate," and can be hired and fired at will depending upon the weekly vicissitudes of the "free market" - or to leave their homes, language and culture to travel "freely" on their U.S. passports to the mainland (one right they didn't lose as citizens, and a right not open to Haitians, Dominicans, etc.), where I guess the Multinational Monitor would then consider them legitimate workers with legitimate jobs...

 Puerto Rico is part of the United States - if not a part of the mainland United States (a conditional acknowledged, but tucked into the article and negated by the headlines). Would the main head have been "Losing Jobs" if the jobs had been moved from Massachusetts to Michigan? Yes, Puerto Rico is not a state - but neither is the District of Columbia. Would the chart head have been "U.S. Jobs Lost Due to Transfer of Work" if the transfer had been made to D.C.?

 Puerto Ricans are U.S. citizens, too, though they get even more screwed, and the corporations get even more benefits off their backs, then others elsewhere. Are "mainland" citizens entitled to more "workers' rights" than others?

 "U.S. Jobs" were not "lost," - but workers in two parts of the United States all suffered because of corporate greed. It's not a new story, either. Workers all over this country can tell you how corporations shift factories from state to state, too, depending upon tax breaks, (lack of) environmental and safety standards or enforcement of same, and other "incentives."

 Please don't help them divide us to conquer. Don't frame the issue as worker against worker. Please do place blame where blame belongs - on those who control the workers' lives, who take away our jobs when we demand safe, healthy work at a decent wage, and then move those jobs to where they can take advantage of us in other places.

 Mary L. MacArthur
 Somerville, MA

The article "Losing Jobs to 936," by Katherine Isaac in your July/August 1993 issue details jobs lost to workers in the mainland when companies in the continental United States settle in Puerto Rico to avail themselves of incentives generated by a law enacted by the Congress of the United States.

 This legislation corrects, in part, the dislocation caused by nearly one hundred years of colonialism imposed on the Puerto Ricans by the imperialist practices of the United States when its invading forces landed on their island in 1989 during the Spanish American War. Puerto Rico, at that time, was on its way to become an independent country, like the other Latin American countries. Instead it became a colonial property of Uncle Sam who promptly pocketed it and forgot all about it. A succession of U.S. military and civilian governors ensued. Legislation was enacted in 1917 in Washington making the Puerto Ricans citizens of the United States who from that time on were conscripted into the U.S. armed forces. To their credit, the Puerto Ricans have participated in every war in which the United States has become involved in the twentieth century, but their colonial status prevents them from voting on legislation sending their men into battle for the United States, or putting it in other words, they are good enough to get killed for Uncle Sam but not good enough to participate on the discussions which will decide their fate. As a colony they do not rate representation in Washington, that is, no senators and no representatives. They are only allowed a commissioner, who has no voice and no vote on legislation being debated by the houses of the Congress of the United States.

Your article is a disservice to the Puerto Ricans, loyal citizens of the United States; it blames them for doing exactly what the states on the mainland do to each other, that is, offer inducements to investors so they can bring their business to their state. Add to this competition the attitude of people like Ms. Isaac who would deny the Puerto Ricans their place in the sun.

 Frank De La Rosa
 Brooklyn, NY

Vermont Quibble

 I have one quibble with the editing of my July/August Multinational Monitor article, "The Corporate Crunch in Vermont." On page 22, you inserted: "A VPIRG staff member told the Monitor that the organization could not make S1 a priority. æI would have liked time to put into the bill, but there were other competing issues: we were working on health care reform, telecommunications and air quality issues.'"

 1. I do not think the statement you printed from an unnamed person sheds much light. Several VPIRGers had told me they did not have the time to deal with S1. But everybody who is resisting corporations is short of time. The issue is: what criteria were Vermont organizations using to decide how to allocate scarce resources? Was VPIRG caught napping by S1 or did its staffers discuss it at length and decide to skip it? Was there a difference of opinion within PIRG? What were the various points of view? Did anyone on the board of directors play a role? Etc.

 The fact is, NONE of the groups I mentioned - groups one would suspect to be upset about S1 - decided to put time into S1. Their actions are consistent with those of other groups around the country, leading me to believe that citizen activists need to start talking about rewriting basic enabling laws which grant corporations more rights and powers than we people have.

 I did not investigate why these groups chose not to become involved in S1. That, obviously, was not the purpose of the article. But I learned enough in Vermont to suspect that rather strong, coordinated pressures were brought on behalf of S1. Maybe that VPIRG was a recipient of these efforts. Or maybe that VPIRGers found S1 too complex, or concluded that resistance would be hopeless.

 Perhaps self-censorship was operating here, staffers believing that if they got active on S1 they would have tougher times on health care reform, telecommunications and air quality issues.

 2. The quotation reflects special treatment. Neither the Vermont Business Association for Social Responsibility nor Bernie Sanders was given space to explain their decisions not to address this legislation so germane to the issues with which they are publicly identified.

 3. Your VPIRG insertion suggests the I was party to this special treatment, and moreover was willing to settle for a very weak excuse by an anonymous staffer that shed no light on what was really going on within VPIRG (and by extension within the public interest community in Vermont) around S1.

 I was not party to this effort, but the article transmits a different impression.

 If I HAD been searching for the reasons for hands-off on S1, I would have queried people from all the groups, and poked around the state. I would not have settled for mush from people without names.

 Richard Grossman
 Provincetown, MA

Burning Issues

 Having received the July/Aug. issue of Multinational Monitor; I am duly impressed. As one who has spent the past two years fighting Ogden Martin's incinerator in Lee County, Florida, I commend you for your factual report on O-M's bullying tactics and its money-ladened behind-the-scene maneuvers. We in Lee County will get a more than $200 million MSW incinerator just a few years before all MSW incinerators are banned because of dioxin pollution of the environment.

 W. Dexter Bellamy, PhD
 Fort Meyers, FL