The COVID-19 Pandemic in Puerto Rico: Exceptionality, Corruption and State-Corporate Crimes (original) (raw)
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Emergency powers, anti-corruption, and policy failures during the COVID-19 pandemic in Puerto Rico
Law and Policy , 2022
This paper explores how the use of emergency powers by the US and Puerto Rican governments exacerbated the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic and manufactured the conditions for furthering the multilayered economic, legal, political, and humanitarian crisis affecting Puerto Rico since 2006. The paper discusses three cases. First, it examines how the multiple declarations of the state of emergency, and its constant renewals, produced contradictory public health policies. Since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic in March 2020, the Puerto Rican government has issued over 90 executive orders aimed at addressing the emergency, producing an unclear, contradictory, and unequal emergency management policy. Second, the paper focuses on the impact of the passing of Law 35 on April 5, 2020, which imposed severe penalties on those who disobeyed executive orders. As a result, hundreds of Puerto Ricans were arrested, fined, and incarcerated for violating the issued order. Third, the paper studies how, citing the presence of corruption, the Puerto Rican government implemented anti-corruption and anti-fraud policies that made it more difficult for those most in need of itmainly poor and racialized individuals, as well as immigrants and working women-to access Pandemic Unemployment Assistance. Thus, the paper argues that emergency policies designed to address the pandemic, punitive governance, and anti-corruption and anti-fraud policies undermined Puerto Rico's capacity to handle the pandemic, exacerbated its impact, and created an unequal recovery scenario.
Critical Sociology , 2023
The US and Puerto Rican governments’ anti-corruption and anti-fraud legislation and policies exacerbated the socio-economic impacts of the coronavirus disease (COVID)-19 pandemic in Puerto Rico (PR). This article demonstrates how anti-corruption interventions prevented those in most need from receiving the economic benefits of the Pandemic Unemployment Assistance program and other unemployment insurance benefits. Analyzing this specific instance of anti-corruption and anti-fraud interventions amid the COVID-19 pandemic allows for a deeper examination of how colonial interventions undermined PR’s capacity to handle the pandemic, exacerbated its socio-economic impact and created an unequal recovery. Thus, the article illustrates the contradictions of anti-corruption as punitive governance and the way in which a specific notion of corruption is reproduced through governmental actions, legal practices, and policies. Altogether, this article aims to contribute to the discussion on how colonial and punitive anti-corruption interventions enhance social exclusion, disproportionately harm racialized communities, and undermine people’s capacity to address period of crisis.
OÑATI SOCIO-LEGAL SERIES, 2023
This paper engages in a sociolegal analysis of the anti-corruption legislation enacted by the Puerto Rican Government in the aftermath of hurricane María (2017). It pays particular attention to the implementation and sociolegal impact of Act 2 of January 4, 2018, entitled, "The Anti-Corruption Code for the New Puerto Rico" and the creation of a Registry of Persons Convicted of Corruption. The rationale behind the Act and the Registry is to enforce transparency, open governance, and help the Puerto Rican government in its efforts to eradicate public corruption. Conversely, this paper argues that these reforms have introduce a punitive approach to anti-corruption in PR. The paper suggests Act 2 and the Registry had have a dual outcome: 1) a punitive approach to corruption that harm people in precarious positions, and 2) normalize the structural dynamic enabling corruption of the powerful. Thus, this paper intends to illustrate the contradictions in anti-corruption as punitive governance, and the way in which a specific image of corruption is reproduced through governmental actions, legal practices, and discourses.
The Violation of Human Rights in Latin America Derived from the Covid-19 Pandemic Administration
There is no doubt at this stage of the solid evolving global relevance of universal human rights in a complex global scenario like everyone faces today. The COVID-19 pandemic and lockdowns have produced, and are still causing, an overwhelmingly negative impact on the standard citizens’ lives. As drastic as it is, such affirmation is sustained in the serious deterioration in a considerable number of democracies around the world, but especially reflected in Latin America, a region of six hundred (600) million inhabitants (Werthein & Abrantes, 2021). This research aims to assess the scope of the violation of individuals’ basic human rights caused by the COVID-19 pandemic administration in Latin American countries. Unreasonably extended lockdowns and other misleading and inappropriate measures implemented by different Latin American administrations have had unsurmountable and dramatic consequences for the region's inhabitants. Many Latin American governments have inadvertently put in place two (2) excluding options for their populations affected by the COVID-19 pandemic. It had to be either healthcare and fight against COVID-19, on the one side, or economic sustainability, on the other, but not the two (2) simultaneously. Losses of thousands of lives, economic devastation, thousands of business shutdowns, millions of job losses, and educational catastrophes have all affected essential freedoms and individuals’ basic universal human rights recognized by modern constitutions, including those in Latin America. As discussed, these are the resulting consequences of governments’ failure to build up necessary resources, be readily prepared to face catastrophes of this sort, and act with integrity and transparency in managing public funds. Both quantitative (i.e.numbers and statistics) and qualitative (i.e., secondary data) methodologies have been used to arrive at very relevant conclusions. Sustainable results of this research reflect how mismanagement of the pandemic, including corruption practices by certain Latin American governments, has led to catastrophic consequences in healthcare and the economic field.
Politics of prevention in the periphery: The initial response to COVID-19 on Barbuda and Puerto Rico
Island Studies Journal, 2022
The islands of Barbuda and Puerto Rico share a history of dispossession and exploitation, occupying a peripheric position in a core–periphery world system. Yet, each island's response to COVID-19, and the subsequent effects of the pandemic, could not be more different. This paper examines how colonialism and neocolonialism affected the islands’ ability to respond to COVID-19. Barbuda relied on community traditions of support and self-reliance and was able to restrict all travel to and from the island, including travelers from the diaspora and those participating in its informal economic sector. In doing so, Barbuda effectively isolated itself from infection. On the other hand, Puerto Rico, in a protracted economic crisis, was particularly vulnerable to touristic flows, diasporic movements, and a large informal sector. The Puerto Rican response was shaped by deep politicization in the mainland U.S., which complicated an evidencebased strategy to combat the emergency. These cases ...
The Sociological Review, 2023
This article introduces the concept of 'coloniality of anti-corruption' to help situate and describe contemporary US anti-corruption policies aimed at Puerto Rico. The aim of the concept of coloniality of anti-corruption is to underscore corruption's inextricable relationship to race, class, gender, and other colonial power relations. The article argues that US interventions with the Puerto Rican government, along with its distribution of disaster relief in the wake of Hurricane María (2017) and subsequent earthquakes (2020), are best understood against the backdrop of a long history of corruption narrative implemented by the US. This is a narrative that seeks to legitimate US's colonial and capitalist expansion in Puerto Rico. To demonstrate this, the article explores the application of anti-corruption narratives by the Trump administration to justify its disaster relief policies for Puerto Rico. In particular, the article focuses on Trump's tweets describing Puerto Rican politicians as 'corrupt' and Puerto Rico as 'geography of fraud.' In doing so, the article provides a theoretical account of the uses of corruption and anti-corruption discourses to justify colonial and capitalist's global endeavors. It also illustrates how anti-corruption policies reproduce the idea of the non-white other as the corrupt subject and denotes the humanitarian consequences of such policies.
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A 6.4 magnitude earthquake struck Puerto Rico on 7 January 2020, adding a new episode to the multilayered political, economic, and humanitarian crisis affecting the island since 2006. This article demonstrates how the recovery efforts and management of the emergency constitute a state crime. The analysis draws from governmental and journalistic investigation and engages with legal and critical discourse analysis to provide a criminological and sociolegal analysis of state crimes in Puerto Rico-which feature prominently in US colonial and racialized history and anticorruption policies in PR-and of the genealogy of colonial violence that generates these and other legalized and state-facilitated harms. The article analyzes legally contrived states of exception and executive orders used to manage the earthquake emergency, the cases of corruption and criminal negligence (so salient in the public conscience that structural critiques of incompetent, unethical, and extractive governance have been coalesced by popular movements under the hashtag #wandalismo), the legislative public hearing on the case of the government hoarding and stalling distribution of disaster supplies, and the anticorruption mobilizations of January 2020. The article articulates the timeliness and urgency of prioritizing research and theorizing of state crimes within the burgeoning field of Latina/o/x criminology.
Waves of Disaster: The Normalization of exceptionality and (In)Security in Puerto Rico
Puerto Rico's (PR) recent history (from 2016 to 2020) and its experience with a continuity of crises and disasters demonstrate the normalization of the use of the state of exception and executive orders to deal with threats to public safety and security. This paper looks at the United States and PR governmental imposition of the state of exception to: address the economic crisis; administer the aftermath of Hurricanes Irma and Maria (2017); police the anti-corruption mobilizations that ousted Governor Ricardo Rosselló in the summer of 2019; respond to the recent earthquakes (2019/2020) in the southern region of the Island, and to manage the COVID-19 pandemic. As a whole, my analysis shows how this normalization of exceptionality, and the militarization of policing during periods of "emergency" instead of guarantying public safety and security, creates the conditions for further waves of disaster.
Strategy, Technology and Society, 2021
In Mexico, recurrent corruption has harmed the most vulnerable groups experiencing poverty and socioeconomic discrimination. In the context of the COVID-19 pandemic, administrative procedures can present a number of obstacles and irregularities in the health sector that clearly demonstrate the challenge governments face in creating better strategies to deliver effective public services, foster citizen participation, and a culture of transparency to combat corruption, promoting good governance. During the pandemic, some sales of health materials at exorbitant prices and citizen lawsuits against certain health workers seeking sexual favors for medical care and respirators in some federal states have been reported. Therefore, the purpose of this article is to describe the role and intervention of public administration in public health during the pandemic. This is a qualitative descriptive research in which the biblio-hermeneutic methodology is used to interpret and explain the current situation. At the end of the work, various unfinished expensive works, favoritism and late operation due to poor economic and administrative management are exhibited. Resumen En México, la corrupción recurrente ha perjudicado a los grupos más vulnerables que experimentan la pobreza y la discriminación socioeconómica. En el contexto de la pandemia COVID-19, los procedimientos administrativos pueden presentar una serie de obstáculos e irregularidades en el sector salud que demuestran claramente el desafío al que se enfrentan los gobiernos para crear mejores estrategias para prestar servicios públicos efectivos, fomentar la participación ciudadana y cultura de transparencia para luchar contra la corrupción, promoviendo la buena gobernanza. Durante la pandemia, algunas ventas de materiales sanitarios a precios exorbitantes y demandas ciudadanas en contra ciertos agentes de salud solicitando favores sexuales por atención médica y respiradores en algunos estados federativos han sido reportadas. Por lo tanto, el objetivo de este artículo es describir el papel y la intervención de la administración pública en la salud pública durante la pandemia. Se trata de una investigación cualitativa de tipo descriptivo en la que la metodología biblio-hermenéutica se utiliza para interpretar y explicar la situación actual. Al final del trabajo, se exhiben las diversas obras costosas inconclusas, favoritismo y atraso de operación debido a deficientes manejos económicos y administrativos en México.