In 2019, 47.53 million metric tons of liquified natural gas (LNG) valued at $12.4 billion dollars were exported from America to points all across the globe. Despite importing over $557 million of LNG in 2019 from as far afield as Oman, why did Puerto Rico only import 0.02 percent of their LNG from the United States of America?
Pause for a moment to ponder the language of colonialism that saturates the politics of Puerto Rico. There is a famous mural along the main freeway in San Juan that declares, “WE SEE OUR FUTURE AND ITS FREE OF COLONIZERS.” If we are to suppose then that this is an extractive colonial relationship with America as the oppressive colonizer and Puerto Rico as the oppressed colony (55 percent of the residents of Puerto Rico are on some form of federal economic assistance), then is not the colony supposed to help the empire? Why is Puerto Rico not being flooded with American LNG?
The truth is that both mainlanders and Puerto Ricans have been getting a raw deal for decades due to crippling federal and island legislation, underinvestment, and neglect. Past performance is not and does not have to be indicative of future performance.
Making America Great Again should also include Puerto Rico, where over 3 million U.S. citizens live. Strategically located at the northern edge of the Eastern Caribbean, Puerto Rico serves as a vital logistics hub linking the Eastern Seaboard, South America, and the Panama Canal. By its geopolitical birthright the island should be the booming advanced economic powerhouse of the Caribbean and America’s Latin American counterweight to the failed and corrupt regimes of Central America and what was once the Spanish Main. One only has to look to jurisdictions like Singapore or Hong Kong to imagine what should have been here—and can still be. Puerto Rico should be a free zone, a place of investment, growth, innovation, and economic pride for mainlanders and Puerto Ricans alike.
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