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This podcast uses government documents to illuminate the workings of the American government, and offer context around the effects of government agencies in your everyday life.
N. Rodgers: Hey, Aughie.
J. Aughenbaugh: Good morning, Nia. How are you?
N. Rodgers: I'm excellent. How are you?
J. Aughenbaugh: Well, I'm on my second mug of coffee, so the day.
N. Rodgers: How is well in the world?
J. Aughenbaugh: I can't be too bad.
N. Rodgers: Well, can I just say welcome folks to the next episode in our series of US Territories?
J. Aughenbaugh: Correct.
N. Rodgers: We are going to talk about Puerto Rico. Can I just tell you I love Puerto Rico? I love visiting Puerto Rico. People are so nice and the food is so good. It's beautiful. It's physically beautiful. It's got a rainforest and a beach. It's amazing place.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yes and Mountains.
N. Rodgers: It is all the things, man. Every time I go, I think, I want to retire here. Then I think, I bet I can't afford to retire here.
J. Aughenbaugh: I've been there a number of times, both for work and pleasure. One of my professional conferences has Puerto Rico and it's a regular cycle of destinations. But I've also been there for pleasure and like you, I've always enjoyed my visits. The people are just so friendly. I love the architecture. There's multiple types of architecture there.
N. Rodgers: It's clear that there's been a lot of different influences and a lot of different.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yes.
N. Rodgers: Unfortunately, Puerto Rico has changed hands a lot of times.
J. Aughenbaugh: Times. Yes.
N. Rodgers: There's been a lot of stuff that goes along with that. As a side note for those among us who consume alcohol. The Hilton Caribe is the home of the, what's the drink with the coconut and the rum? Pina colada.
J. Aughenbaugh: Pina colada.
N. Rodgers: It's the home of the Pina colada.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yes.
N. Rodgers: Just in case you were wondering where you should go to find the first Pina colada, it was at the Hilton Caribe in San Juan.
J. Aughenbaugh: The various establishments I've been to also do a wonderful job with mojitos.
N. Rodgers: What's really fantastic is there's this sobao bread, which is so good. Oh, my goodness, so good. The plantain. Anyway, we can talk about the food and the drink forever, but that is not what we are here for.
J. Aughenbaugh: No, because Puerto Rico, as Nia mentioned listeners, is the next US territory in our series. Officially, it is the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico, and it is located very close to the Continental United States.
N. Rodgers: It is approximately a plane flight from Florida to Puerto Rico.
J. Aughenbaugh: That's right. It's about 1,000 miles southeast of La Florida. It has a little over 3.2 million residents.
N. Rodgers: Easier to get to then Hawaii, no offense intended.
J. Aughenbaugh: That's right, particularly for those of us on the East Coast of the United States from where Nia and I are reporting. It has two dominant languages English, but the main language is Espanol, Spanish, and not surprising because it was first settled by the Spanish, first Columbus and then Ponce de Leon.
N. Rodgers: Columbus, isn't it where he arrived in Puerto Rico and said, "I have found the Indies."
J. Aughenbaugh: Yes.
N. Rodgers: The natives in Puerto Rico went, "No, you haven't."
J. Aughenbaugh: No, you haven't, dude.
N. Rodgers: Try again. Ponce de Leon, who was looking for the Fountain of Youth.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yes. He was misguided because not only did, he once think it was Puerto Rico, but then he also thought it was Florida. But, hey, good try.
N. Rodgers: For effort.
J. Aughenbaugh: The Spanish had it as a colonial territory for nearly four centuries until Nia, the United States acquired Puerto Rico because of what war?
N. Rodgers: The Spanish-American War.
J. Aughenbaugh: That is correct.
N. Rodgers: Which really should be referred to as the Spanish lose everything to the Americans, including all their territories. They probably would be offended by that.
J. Aughenbaugh: An unwieldy title.
N. Rodgers: It's an unwieldy title.
J. Aughenbaugh: But alas, very accurate. But Puerto Rico was actually settled before 430 BC. It had an indigenous culture.
N. Rodgers: So 430 BC, they had to arrive by boat?
J. Aughenbaugh: Yes.
N. Rodgers: They get there, and they're like, "This is lovely." For several hundred years nothing happens in terms of
J. Aughenbaugh: Almost 2,000.
N. Rodgers: Weirdos from other places showing up and making demands.
J. Aughenbaugh: Almost 2,000 years. Yes. Because if you do the math, well, about, 1,900 years.
N. Rodgers: Imagine you're just going along and all of a sudden some dude shows up and like, "We have conquered you." You're like, "Wait, what?"
J. Aughenbaugh: The indigenous culture was that of the Tainos, and that population became almost extinct by the latter half of the 16th century because of the various infectious diseases that were brought to Puerto Rico by the Europeans in the warfare.
N. Rodgers: Not to mention the fact that when the Spanish conquered a place. Wait, let me back up and say, when the Romans conquered a place, as long as you paid Rome you got to keep a lot of your culture. You got to keep your language. You got to keep a lot of your culture. Because the Romans didn't care about that. They just wanted their pay. If you paid them, if you paid your taxes.
J. Aughenbaugh: Well, the tribute. You had to pay tribute to the Crown.
N. Rodgers: They pretty much left you alone. Whereas when later colonists when later countries that colonized England, Spain.
J. Aughenbaugh: Portugal.
N. Rodgers: Denmark, when they conquered places, they stamped out the local.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yes.
N. Rodgers: Culture as much as they could and put in their culture because they wanted to "civilize" people.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yes.
N. Rodgers: They perceived the older cultures as non-civilized. They would destroy the local culture.
J. Aughenbaugh: They also wanted to, if you will, disincentivize their agents from going native.
N. Rodgers: This way, yeah.
J. Aughenbaugh: Puerto Rico, because of its location, became extremely important.
N. Rodgers: Well, it's a gateway to South America. It's a gateway to Central America. It's a gateway to Southern United States.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yeah. As a major military post for a number of wars. I stopped counting the number of wars where Puerto Rico was used as a military post in regards to the 16th, 17th, and 18th centuries. Again, Nia, because as you pointed out, its geographic location was essential.
N. Rodgers: As a stopping point on your way to kicking butt somewhere.
J. Aughenbaugh: Where else? That's right. For the Spanish, however, Puerto Rico was invaded during the Spanish-American War and subsequently became a possession of the United States as the result of the Treaty of Paris in 1898. Almost immediately, the United States Congress made it a what?
N. Rodgers: Territory.
J. Aughenbaugh: Territory. For Raker Act actually had to look up that law passed in 1900, established.
N. Rodgers: There was a law you didn't just automatically know.
J. Aughenbaugh: I did not know.
N. Rodgers: Listeners, we win. He had to be like us where he had to Google something.
J. Aughenbaugh: I looked it up, and I was just like, wow. But it established a civilian government ending once again, the Department of War running Puerto Rico, and almost immediately, the United States Supreme Court issued a ruling in the Ortega versus Lara case in 1906, said that the Island was an "acquired country," and affirmed that the US Constitution applied within the territory and any domestic Puerto Rican laws which did not conflict with it could remain in force.
N. Rodgers: As long as your law doesn't buck the Constitution.
J. Aughenbaugh: Or any laws passed by Congress, you're good. A subsequent law. This one I did know, the Jones Act of 1917, made Puerto Rican citizens US citizens, and it eventually led to Puerto Rico drafting its own Constitution, which was approved by Congress and Puerto Rican voters in 1952. However, Puerto Rico, like the other four territories in our series, does not have direct representation in the United States federal government. They're US citizens, but they have no representation in the United States Congress.
N. Rodgers: When I'm president, I will fix that.
N. Rodgers: Seriously, Puerto Rico's fabulous, and if they want to have full statehood, then I'm here to grant it.
J. Aughenbaugh: I'm in general agreement with you Nia. The interesting thing about Puerto Rico is the citizens of Puerto Rico a number of times have participated in non binding referendum. Good Lord, have they.
N. Rodgers: It goes all over the place.
J. Aughenbaugh: All over the place.
N. Rodgers: We want to. We don't want to. There's a lot.
J. Aughenbaugh: In some of the referendums, they're actually given multiple choices. Do they want statehood? Do they want to remain a territory or do they want independence?
N. Rodgers: It comes over.
J. Aughenbaugh: All over the place.
N. Rodgers: Although in fairness, I don't know, given their economic issues, if they could stand independently.
J. Aughenbaugh: We're going to get into their economic issues here in just a few moments because that's a big, if you will data point in the current history of Puerto Rico.
N. Rodgers: Weirdly it is a big data point in the discussion about statehood because some people in the United States government don't want Puerto Rico because of its debts. There's all interesting now. Is it gets murky quick when you get to Puerto Rico.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yes.
N. Rodgers: In terms of its economics.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yes. As I pointed out Puerto Rico has a non voting representative to the Congress. Guam, residents of Puerto Rico can participate in presidential primaries. The United States Congress oversees Puerto Rico because of the Federal Relations Act of 1950.
N. Rodgers: Can all of the people in all of the territories travel back and forth between Mainland US and wherever, North Mariana, are they citizens in the sense that they can go back and forth without visa or without problems?
J. Aughenbaugh: Once they become territories, they typically do receive US citizenship, which means they can move freely from their home territory to mainland United States. Yes.
N. Rodgers: There's a fair number of folks who leave Puerto Rico and move to the mainland, aren't there?
J. Aughenbaugh: In fact that has actually been somewhat of an issue for Puerto Rico. Because Puerto Rico's population has been declining.
N. Rodgers: As young people are leaving.
J. Aughenbaugh: As recently as 2020, Puerto Rico had nearly 3.3 million residents. That was an over 11% decrease in a ten year period of time. Its population peaked in 2020 when it had 3.8 million. But economic difficulties and natural disasters and a low birth rate has severely impacted Puerto Rico's population. We're going to get to those economic difficulties in natural disasters in just a few moments. But since we're talking about population, the overwhelming majority of the Puerto Rican population is made up of Hispanic or Latinos. 95%, nearly 96 are Puerto Rican, 3.4% are Hispanic of non Puerto Rican origins. Only 1% of the population is non Hispanic. Emigration, particularly to the United States after World War II, has been a significant issue in Puerto Rico, because Puerto Rico has gone through periods of extreme poverty. You have cheap airfares between Puerto Rico and Florida in the Southern United States, and when the economy.
N. Rodgers: For a while wasn't the Puerto Rican government saying, go to the mainland. You'll love it. It's great. You're promoting?
J. Aughenbaugh: Go to the United States, get educated, and then we want you to come back.
N. Rodgers: That's not how that works generally. Then they get embroiled. Either they marry somebody who's on the mainland and they don't go back or they get the home or debts, whatever.
J. Aughenbaugh: They get an education and they notice or make a calculation that there are greater opportunities.
N. Rodgers: On the mainland.
J. Aughenbaugh: In continental United States versus Puerto Rico.
N. Rodgers: That thing almost always backfires when the government's you should go and come back. They just go. Don't come back.
J. Aughenbaugh: Nia you and I have seen this in our hometowns in Mainland, United States. The population of my hometown in North Central PA has declined, and it was never robust even when I was a child. But the really talented folks they go to colleges and universities or they go to big cities, and they're.
N. Rodgers: Why would I move?
J. Aughenbaugh: Wherever.
N. Rodgers: But what's happening in some cities in the US is also what's happening in Puerto Rico, which is that once they get to a certain older age where they're not having children and they've done all their stuff, they want to go home. Now they're nostalgic for the place that they were. But that hurts your population growth because they're old. They're not having babies.
J. Aughenbaugh: That's right.
N. Rodgers: Puerto Rico. They're coming back to Puerto Rico as older people.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yes.
N. Rodgers: In some ways that's good because they have economic stability that they didn't have when they were younger, but they're not growing the population because they've had their babies and their babies are on the mainland. Cause their babies are grown up. By the time they decide to do that.
J. Aughenbaugh: When they return Nia, they oftentimes are about ready to enter retirement. As far as economists are concerned, retirees don't generate a lot of positive.
N. Rodgers: Are useless.
J. Aughenbaugh: Positive.
N. Rodgers: I like babies are not particularly.
J. Aughenbaugh: I was going to be a little bit more diplomatic. I was going to go and say, they don't generate as much positive economic activity. Nia just cut right to the chase. They're basically useless.
N. Rodgers: Economists to economists. Not as people.
J. Aughenbaugh: Let's go back to Puerto Rico.
N. Rodgers: Because economists really care about you when you're 18 to about 60.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yes.
N. Rodgers: They really care about you in those years. Same with advertisements for luxury goods. They care about you in those years. Then they don't care about you before that and they don't care about you after that. I see how this works in a capitalist society.
J. Aughenbaugh: Well even in government budget offices.
N. Rodgers: You're a drain at the beginning.
J. Aughenbaugh: In a drain at the end.
N. Rodgers: A drain at the end.
J. Aughenbaugh: You're not producing taxable, if you will, income and wealth that the government can then draw tax revenues from. Well, then all the government's doing is paying for your various services, which are drains on the budget.
N. Rodgers: From the government point of view, useless. I'm just saying.
J. Aughenbaugh: Let's go back to Puerto Rico. Puerto Rico it's really difficult to not talk about the Puerto Rican government without talking about two rather significant variables affecting Puerto Rico this century. We're talking about the 2000s.
N. Rodgers: Can I guess?
J. Aughenbaugh: What are those two, if you will variables or phenomenon that have had a huge impact on Puerto Rico?
N. Rodgers: Weather.
J. Aughenbaugh: Weather and.
N. Rodgers: I'm not coming up with anything other than weather. I'm sorry.
J. Aughenbaugh: Well, we just mentioned it, the economy slash budget. They're intertwined.
N. Rodgers: They got serious weather problems Puerto Rico. Puerto Rico regularly is just standing around minding its own business and a hurricane wampes it. Just completely destroyed. Where's the infrastructure.
J. Aughenbaugh: Puerto Rico's location is directly in the path of the Atlantic Ocean, if you will hurricane season.
N. Rodgers: Think tornado alley, but for hurricanes, the same way that Oklahoma shouldn't build any structure that's over six feet tall. Because it's going to get knocked down by a tornado at some point. The similarly Puerto Rico. Every hurricane just about. Touches Puerto Rico in some way.
J. Aughenbaugh: Even those that don't hit.
N. Rodgers: Even the ones that go south to Mexico or go or whatever or.
J. Aughenbaugh: Veer north east back into the Atlantic.
N. Rodgers: They brush up again against.
J. Aughenbaugh: Puerto Rico, 2017 was the classic example. For many of our American listeners, this was the first full year of the Trump administration. I'm not making a connection.
N. Rodgers: Trump is involved in many things, but he does not control the weather.
J. Aughenbaugh: Weather.
N. Rodgers: Even if he did, he would not make hurricanes hit Puerto Rico. Even Trump would not.
J. Aughenbaugh: But for Americans.
N. Rodgers: Mochi Billing as he occasionally can be would do that.
J. Aughenbaugh: The reason why I mentioned this was that for American listeners, this was the first full year of a new presidential administration.
N. Rodgers: His first tests this thing.
J. Aughenbaugh: Puerto Rico within a two week period got hit by first a category five Hurricane, that was the infamous Irma, and then a category four Hurricane Maria.
J. Aughenbaugh: The effect of those two hurricanes was that 95% of all cell service was knocked out. All power was knocked out. Forty-three percent of wastewater treatment plants were inoperable. For our Richmond listeners, if you're listening to this, we're encountering something very similar but that was only for a couple of days. For Puerto Rico, you're talking about nearly a half a year.
N. Rodgers: Months and months of no water boil advisory. No power. No way to call anybody to tell them you have a problem.
J. Aughenbaugh: Over 40,000 landslides because again, yes, Puerto Rico has a lot of beautiful beaches.
N. Rodgers: But it has mountains.
J. Aughenbaugh: The center part of Puerto Rico is mountainous.
N. Rodgers: Most highlands, it came from a volcano.
J. Aughenbaugh: When you get a lot of heavy rain from a hurricane, the mud and debris slide downhill. Ninety-seven percent of roads were blocked. Twenty-eight percent of healthcare facilities were damaged. Over 90% of the population for the next year and a half required government assistance.
N. Rodgers: Yeah, and it was devastating.
J. Aughenbaugh: You couple those hurricanes with what had become a growing debt crisis. Not surprisingly, the population of Puerto Rico decreased by half a million people just in the last, if you will, 20-plus years. The debt crisis has been growing.
N. Rodgers: Well, a huge number of people who could leave after the hurricanes did leave because the infrastructure was so damaged. If they could financially afford to get to the mainland, they did. I don't blame them. If people can get away from a disaster.
J. Aughenbaugh: But the debt crisis in Puerto Rico had been, if you will, brewing for decades.
N. Rodgers: Hasn't there been some accusations of mismanagement?
J. Aughenbaugh: Puerto Rico like most US territories, relies a lot on other people generating economic activity. As we mentioned in our Guam episode, Guam generates a lot of economic activity because of tourism in the United States Department of Defense. Likewise, Puerto Rico generates a lot of its income based on tourism, conferences. Mainland Americans going to Puerto Rico for vacations, work conferences, and the like. But in terms of economics, if the rest of the world is tightening its belt, it means it's not going to Puerto Rico.
N. Rodgers: Then you put in a pandemic with that, where nobody can travel anywhere for any reason under any circumstances. But also, Puerto Rico is wildly underdeveloped. Occasionally, I would imagine that Mississippi thinks. Yes, let's add Puerto Rico so we don't have to be the last in everything. That is, by the way, a slam against Mississippi. Come for me, Ole Miss, if you want to.
J. Aughenbaugh: But Puerto Rico is poorer than Mississippi.
N. Rodgers: A lot of people live under the poverty line. Isn't it some huge amount of people in Puerto Rico?
J. Aughenbaugh: Yeah. Mississippi is the poorest United State in the United States. Forty-one percent of the population below the poverty line. But it has a higher gross domestic product per capita than Puerto Rico. What's interesting is Puerto Rico is doing better than most countries in Latin America.
N. Rodgers: Well, how sad is that?
J. Aughenbaugh: The major economic sectors for Puerto Rico's economy are manufacturing, primarily pharmaceuticals, petrochemicals, and electronics, followed by services, which is mainly tourism and hospitality.
N. Rodgers: But you can only have tourism and hospitality when the hurricanes haven't knocked down the hotels.
J. Aughenbaugh: That's right.
N. Rodgers: Knocked them out of power.
J. Aughenbaugh: Knocked them out of power or tourists wanted cell service.
N. Rodgers: They are funny that way.
J. Aughenbaugh: They want to be able to travel roads.
N. Rodgers: They want to be able to land at the airport.
J. Aughenbaugh: They want to get to the beaches. If all that is basically not available, it's pretty hard to advertise your work in Puerto Rico.
N. Rodgers: Help us dig out of the mud. That's not how it works. The other thing, too, is I'd like to revisit something about the economy. A government sells bonds. Hey people, if you will lend the government money to do things, infrastructure stuff, we will pay you back at a certain interest rate. Isn't that basically what a bond is?
J. Aughenbaugh: Yeah.
N. Rodgers: It's great as long as you can pay the money back. As long as the infrastructure that you build generates the money you think it's going to generate in order to pay back the bonds.
J. Aughenbaugh: Other economic activity, yes.
N. Rodgers: But if for some reason, hey, loan me some money, Aughie so that I can build this bridge. You say, "Sure, Nia, I will loan you that. I will give you the money to build the bridge." I build the bridge, and the next week, somebody blows up the bridge. Or more importantly, a boat slams into the bridge and breaks it. Now I don't generate the economic activity from the bridge, so paying you back becomes a hardship because now I don't have any way to pay you back. But you're like, dude, I need the money. I only lent it to you, I didn't give it to you. It wasn't a gift, it was a loan. That's the thing that Puerto Rico has gotten itself into in terms of it's like many debt and its economic problem.
J. Aughenbaugh: It's like many underdeveloped nations turning to developed nations for loans. They borrow the money which is designed to generate new economic activity. In this case, Puerto Rico, if those bonds don't generate the necessary economic activity, now they are stuck with that obligation. By early 2017, Puerto Rico had over $70 billion of bond indebtedness.
N. Rodgers: I put to you that Puerto Rico cannot pay that back.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yes.
N. Rodgers: That is what is known as a wanking lot of money. The way this works in a lot of underdeveloped countries, it didn't work this way in Puerto Rico for them, thank goodness, because they borrowed that money from the American federal government in large part.
J. Aughenbaugh: In large part, yes.
N. Rodgers: But in other countries, like, for instance, the African countries that are poor, that are borrowing that money from China, when they can't fulfill a bond to China, the small fine print in their deal says, then China gets territory. China gets land from you.
J. Aughenbaugh: Or claims the asset.
N. Rodgers: Or claims the assets. I now own this road. I now own this crumpled bridge and when I rebuild it, it's mine.
J. Aughenbaugh: Or this school or this education system or this mineral mine.
N. Rodgers: You have to be really careful about who you borrow money from.
J. Aughenbaugh: That's right.
N. Rodgers: Because they might pull out a baseball bat and whack you in the knee. I am beginning to think of Russia and China as loan sharks in the world in terms of their bonds. Now, fortunately for Puerto Rico, a lot of their bonds belong to the US, but part of the argument on the US side for not making them as stake is, then we have to pay off all that or let all that bond go. There's a weird relationship with that.
J. Aughenbaugh: It's one of the things that a number of members of Congress have said as to why they will never vote for Puerto Rico to become a state, which is Puerto Rico has not demonstrated in the years that it's been a territory of the United States that it can manage its own finances. It's also one of the arguments that sometimes is used against the District of Columbia for becoming a state, because in the history of the District of Columbia, the United States Congress has had to bail out the district the District of Colombia's government. Now, the District of Columbia, just like the Puerto Rican government has complained. Well, one of the reasons why we can't manage our finances is that we don't have the authority to make those decisions. It's a chicken egg.
N. Rodgers: Exactly chicken and egg.
J. Aughenbaugh: Which comes first here. But nevertheless, yeah, go ahead, Nia.
N. Rodgers: But that's what's bad about Puerto Rico? What's beautiful and wonderful about Puerto Rico? Puerto Rico averages temperature of 85 degrees.
J. Aughenbaugh: Freeze, yes.
N. Rodgers: It's like San Diego, in that sense. It's got beautiful weather, generally speaking, in the lower elevations and the mountains that are not that cold. They're like, 70 degrees.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yes, it is Tropical.
N. Rodgers: I was talking to somebody last time I was there, who owns a house in the mountains. He said, yeah, when it's hot, we just put the windows down.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yes.
N. Rodgers: That's that. I'm like. Oh, how wonderful and fabulous is that? They have a rainy season, but their rainy season isn't super rainy. It's not 98 inches the way as we discussed in our last episode about Guam.
J. Aughenbaugh: Guam yes. With Puerto Rico, a significant percentage of its rain comes from hurricanes. If it is a particularly, shall we say unactive hurricane season. Puerto Rico isn't going to get a lot of rain.
N. Rodgers: It's just beautiful and the people are lovely. But it does have some baggage, does it?
J. Aughenbaugh: Yes, it does.
N. Rodgers: I don't know that you could live in Puerto Rico without being hyper aware of the constant hurricane threat. Because it really does. It just gets hit every year.
J. Aughenbaugh: But there are a number of other fascinating things about Puerto Rico. Puerto Rico, much like Guam is Christian dominant. Over half of its population is Catholic and education is an issue for many Puerto Ricans. About 60% have attained a high school diploma or higher.
N. Rodgers: Really?
J. Aughenbaugh: Yes.
N. Rodgers: People just go to work in the hospitality industry?
J. Aughenbaugh: Fewer than 20%?
N. Rodgers: Well, if you're really poor education is not what you're worried about. What you're worried about is food on the table.
J. Aughenbaugh: Table that's right.
N. Rodgers: If you can help your parents put food on the table that's what you're going to see.
J. Aughenbaugh: That's why you see many of the younger Puerto Ricans going to the United States for educational opportunities. Their parents do what a lot of first and second generation immigrant families do in the United States, which is the first generation will work the blue collar, very physically demanding jobs to provide for educational opportunities.
N. Rodgers: So that their kids don't have to.
J. Aughenbaugh: Most Puerto Ricans are bilingual. English is taught in public schools. But in well over a majority of Puerto Rican households, Spanish is what is spoken at home.
N. Rodgers: That makes sense. Well, no, I would imagine that a huge number of the tourists that come to Puerto Rico are probably American. I don't know what the percentage is, but it's probably pretty high and or European, all of whom are going to speak English first or second language.
J. Aughenbaugh: That's right. Yeah.
N. Rodgers: It's in their best interests to be able to communicate.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yes.
N. Rodgers: Yeah
J. Aughenbaugh: Puerto Rican culture, as Nia and I mentioned at the beginning of this episode, is rich and varied.
N. Rodgers: Architecture is stunning.
J. Aughenbaugh: Architecture is stunning. The music, okay, is just phenomenal.
N. Rodgers: Literature?
J. Aughenbaugh: There literature? Nia is already waxed on at length about the cuisine and the adult beverages. It does reflect, shall we say, a very rich combination of influences. You're talking about the native Tayanos European American culture, and you just got this great Mosaic.
N. Rodgers: It's just amazing.
J. Aughenbaugh: Of course, for me, the national sport of Puerto Rico is baseball.
N. Rodgers: Baseball. Haven't we had some pretty awesome Major League baseball players come out of Puerto Rico?
J. Aughenbaugh: Oh, my goodness, yes. Puerto Rico produces a very significant percentage of major league baseball players much higher than its overall population. Most major league baseball teams today have at least four or five native born Puerto Ricans on their roster.
N. Rodgers: Is that seen as a way to get out of the poverty of Puerto Rico?
J. Aughenbaugh: Yeah.
N. Rodgers: There are sport in the United States has seen that way. A lot of Southern states where there's a lot of poverty, people play a lot of football. Because football can get you into college. Football can change your life. Because even if you're the star of you're not Tom Brady or whatever, if you're on a football team in the NFL, even if you're low key chill football player, you're still making a decent wage.
J. Aughenbaugh: If you can get off the island, and this is an expression if you've ever visited Puerto Rico, you will sometimes hear Native Puerto Rican say this. If you can get off the island, okay, you might be able to become comfortable.
N. Rodgers: Isn't it twice the number of Puerto Ricans live off island as opposed to on island? Is it something like that.
J. Aughenbaugh: The estimates varied. That's, if you will, contested notion in the research that I did, but there are some urban areas in Mainland United States that have a significant, if you will, percentage of Puerto Ricans. But many of them are second or third generation and they no longer consider themselves Puerto Rican. They consider themselves American. Again, immigrant populations, the first gen or the first wave are hey, I'm Italian American. But by the time you get to the third generation, it's no longer Italian American. It is American.
J. Aughenbaugh: But again, absolutely fascinating. One last thing I wanted to mention, Puerto Rico, much like our previous territory that we discussed Guam is set up much like the United States federal government, separation of powers. You have a governor, you have a legislature, you have a judicial system. They have three political parties that are pretty active, and they're not democrat or republican. They are basically driven by their view of what Puerto Rico should become, either a State, remain as a territory or should Puerto Rico be independent?
N. Rodgers: I appreciate the independent viewpoint, but I don't know if Puerto Rico can make it on its own.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yeah.
N. Rodgers: When you think about one, how the founder set up the United States, but two, how much the United States struggles to be its own thing. That is not an easy thing to do. It's not an easy thing to be out there in the world on your own.
J. Aughenbaugh: I think the federalists who wanted the proposed Constitution as a way of binding the nation together makes it really difficult for not only States but territories to become independent once they're part of the United States. You and I talked about this Nia when we did a couple episodes late last year in regards to secession. We talked about how a number of US States, not only during the Civil War period, but of recent vintage, States like Texas, California, Alaska, have made noise about seceding. Then we started identifying the cost of becoming an independent nation.
N. Rodgers: Right.
J. Aughenbaugh: Okay. There are things that are born collectively by the nation. That if Puerto Rico, for instance, as a territory, decided to go independent, they would have to go ahead and bear by themselves.
N. Rodgers: Good like rebuilding 97% of your infrastructure.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yes.
N. Rodgers: After hurricane. The Bahamas called, they'd like for you to think twice about that.
J. Aughenbaugh: Again, many Puerto Ricans complained that post Hurricane Irma and Maria, they were left to the vagaries of Congress and Donald Trump as president, blah, blah, blah.
N. Rodgers: Yeah. He had a couple of press conferences there that didn't make anybody happy or anybody look good.
J. Aughenbaugh: I get that. On the other hand, a lot of the rebuilding occurred out of the US treasury.
N. Rodgers: Right.
J. Aughenbaugh: A lot of the demand for manufactured goods in Puerto Rico, like the pharmaceuticals, like the petrochemicals, are the result of American corporations. Right?
N. Rodgers: Right, and American tourism.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yes.
N. Rodgers: When people could go back, they did.
J. Aughenbaugh: So it's an interesting cost benefit analysis experiment, okay? Again, I can understand why, there are some in Puerto Rico who are like, well, this doesn't seem to be a really good relationship. Maybe we should just break out on our own.
N. Rodgers: You're going to need $70 billion to start.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yeah.
N. Rodgers: That's just to pay your debt.
J. Aughenbaugh: It's like the conversations many of us have when we're about ready to leave our parents' house, right? All of a sudden, one or both of our parents starts identifying costs that they have been picking up and that either we were tangentially aware of or not at all, right?
N. Rodgers: What's your plan for paying your power bill? My power bill?
J. Aughenbaugh: Right.
N. Rodgers: Yeah, you're going to get one, and you're going to need a deposit. See, I discovered deposits when I was. I thought you just started paying your rent when you moved in, you pay your rent. No, you have to secure that place with a deposit. Wait, what? I have to give you extra money.
J. Aughenbaugh: It's like the first time I bought my own car, and my mom sat me down and said, okay, how much money can you set aside every month to cover filling the tank, regular maintenance.
N. Rodgers: Insurance.
J. Aughenbaugh: Insurance, etc. I was just like, oh right?
N. Rodgers: It's like the first time somebody sits you down you say $10,000 car. I know, there's no such thing as a $10,000 car, but bear with me, $10,000 car. Then somebody sits you down and actually shows you with the math that if you pay for that car for four years, it's actually going to be a $14,000, $15,000 car. You're like, wait, what? They're like, yeah, that's called interest.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yeah, right.
N. Rodgers: So it's not the cost that they tell you on the commercial. Only this amount of money. No, not even close. It's not even close to that. The flip to that is we want to be our own thing and do our own thing, and we have our own culture, and we want to be independent. I understand that.
J. Aughenbaugh: Oh, sure.
N. Rodgers: I just personally think that boat has sailed. I just don't think. Something we didn't mention is that Guam is close enough. If you want to know about our last episode, go listen to our Guam episode. But Guam is close enough to other places that it could conceivably join with other places and be like, the independent Micronesia State of Guam.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yes.
N. Rodgers: North Mariana or whatever. Like, it can join with something else. Puerto Rico's out there by itself. It's not able to join with anything else.
J. Aughenbaugh: Or would they want to? Are they going to want to join the Dominican Republic or Cuba?
N. Rodgers: They maybe.
J. Aughenbaugh: But again.
N. Rodgers: But how is that different than being with the United States? It doesn't help your situation anymore.
J. Aughenbaugh: What benefits would you be getting from a nation say like Cuba, okay, that its power grid.
N. Rodgers: Right before Christmas turned off.
J. Aughenbaugh: Is worse than Puerto Rico's, right? The Dominican Republic has been wiped out by hurricanes with more regularity than even Puerto Rico.
N. Rodgers: Right. Dominican Republic also shares an island with Haiti. Nobody wants to get involved in that.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yeah. Do you want to go ahead and bear the cost of the domestic insurrection in politics of Haiti?
N. Rodgers: We are saying to you, Puerto Rico, we love you and we would like you to stay.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yes, and, if anything, you probably have two voters who would vote for your admittance into the union as a State.
N. Rodgers: I don't even care what it does to the flag. If you want us, with Aughie and I are president and vice president, then we will help you get stated if you want.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yes, I'm willing to go ahead, go to the Capital and cut deals with a whole bunch of members of Congress, okay? Because I got your back, Puerto Rico.
N. Rodgers: Hopefully we will see you again soon.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yes. Anyways, thanks, Nia.
N. Rodgers: Thank you, Aughie.