On January 18, Judge Taylor Swain of New York’s Southern District confirmed Puerto Rico’s eighth amended Plan of Adjustment (POA), setting into motion the closure of the largest municipal debt restructuring deal in the history of the United States. The POA modifies approximately $33 billion of the central government’s debt as part of Title III — the bankruptcy-like process established under the Puerto Rico Oversight, Management, and Economic Stability Act (PROMESA) — which has already cost Puerto Ricans $1 billion.
The POA was announced in the wake of five years of structural adjustment. For instance, Natalie Jaresko, executive director of the unelected Financial Oversight Board that has dictated Puerto Rico’s finances since 2016, celebrated the POA as a “new chapter in Puerto Rico’s history.” Gov. Pedro Pierluisi suggested that while the POA is “not perfect,” it ultimately protects Puerto Rico’s vulnerable public sector. The multisectoral coalition that includes teachers, labor, pensioners students and activists is the opposite. expressed immediate rejection of what they call the “plan del tumbe” (the shakedown plan). These groups have long been demanding a comprehensive debt audit, calling attention to the POA’s everyday implications, and resisting its confirmation by mobilizing online, in the streets, the legislature and the courts.
Rather than a “new chapter,” the POA affirms a debt that has not been meaningfully auditedThat bans legal action against banks, underwriters, and other financial institutions. debt illegalitiesThe Financial Oversight Board has been challenged in court. Despite the rhetoric of powerful political and financial elites in Puerto Rico, the POA will not provide relief for Puerto Ricans who are struggling under the weights of austerity in an archipelago that is increasingly geared toward attracting foreign capital and incentivizing settlement of wealthy North Americans in Puerto Rico to boost an already weak local economy. Meanwhile, Puerto Ricans are being forced to migrate to seek economic stability.
The Plan of Adjustment impacts Puerto Rico’s general obligation bonds (a type of municipal bond backed by the general revenue of the issuing entity), the Public Buildings Authority, the Employee Retirement System and the Convention Center District Authority bonds. The restructuring agreement reduces public debt by $33 billion to $7 billion and allows for the exchange of bonds. However, this supposed “80 percent cut” is misleading because certain bondholders will receive a $7 billion immediate cash payout as well as additional payments through a “contingent value instrument” based on future economic improvement measures. The POA is a large majority. does not make significant cuts to bonds held by “vulture” investors who bought up Puerto Rico’s distressed debt for pennies on the dollar in the hopes of a lucrative payout — another example of how the restructuring process has privileged Wall Street’s speculative desires.
The confirmed POA was established as a result of public pressure. does not cut public retirees’ pensions It does not freeze defined benefit pensions for active judges and teachers of public schools, as the earlier versions had. Additionally, despite Governor Pierluisi’s comments that the POA protects the public sector, there is no doubt that since the passage of PROMESA, Puerto Rico’s public sector has been significantly scaled back and weakened in order to service the debt in a process that the POA upholds and enshrines. Hundreds of the archipelago’s public schools have been closed and the public university’s future remains uncertain, while teachers, police, doctors and nurses have been leaving in record numbers for the continental U.S. due to stagnant wages, cuts to benefits and dwindling resources. For example, in Puerto Rico lost nearly 12 percentBetween 2010-2020, the population of the country. Although the slow-motion fall of the public service sector predates PROMESA and the POA, it is important that the POA does NOT rebuild or stabilize the public service sector. The destruction of the public sector and failure to address it again shows that the POA does not aim to improve the daily life of Puerto Ricans through protection from austerity or predatory debt. Rather, it is about protecting Puerto Rico’s profit-generating capacity (mostly for those outside of the archipelago and a small class of Puerto Rican elites — the “criollo bloc”) and (eventually) restoring its ability to borrow unencumbered.
Many people on the ground doubt the possibility of fulfilling an estimated $3.4 billion in annual debt servicePension obligations and climate-related crises, which can make daily life difficult for many working people, are all part of the POA. Puerto Ricans face ongoing precarity as the new year begins, and the POA will take effect in March. wave of public school closures, 16.8 percent hike in domestic electric billsAnd an increase in road tolls. An influx of wealthy investors — particularly cryptocurrency enthusiasts — have contributed to local displacement and real estate speculation as they acquire property and use Puerto Rico as a tax havenIncentives such as Acts 20, 22 and 60.
A “Resolution”?
The projections of debt service depend on a combination of structural and fiscal reforms (austerity), and an economy that is supported by the anticipated disbursement of federal fundsPuerto Rico government cannot control the effects of earthquakes, hurricanes, and pandemics. Economic indicators indicate that Puerto Rico will return to its former self. budgetary deficits by 2036. All this throws into question the sustainability of a POA projected 25 years into the future and Puerto Rico’s ability to fulfill basic public services. Nonetheless, mainstream media portrayals present the POA as a necessary “resolution” to the bankruptcy and a step toward Puerto Rico’s recovery. A quick search of news related to the POA will show headlines peppered with laudatory phrases proclaiming the imminent end of Puerto Rico’s financial woes. It has even been framed as a crucial step towards Puerto Rico’s political and financial sovereignty.
In an op-ed for the Wall Street Journal, Natalie Jaresko and David Skeel, the executive director and chairman of the Financial Oversight Board, position the POA not only as a resolution to Puerto Rico’s bankruptcy but also its indeterminate political status. According to Jaresko and Skeel, “Congress is unlikely to step in to make a determination on status until Puerto Rico gets its financial house back in order. Puerto Rico’s crushing debt load has been one of the biggest obstacles to achieving this. That obstacle now has been removed.” Behind the façade of benevolent concern, Jaresko and Skeel’s op-ed makes clear the POA is part of a colonial infrastructure that simply hands down decisions that shape Puerto Rico’s future seeks to strip Puerto Ricans of their political agency. The imposition of mechanisms for financial capture and debt coercion is not a way of resolving Puerto Rico’s colonial status — it is its continuation.
The POA’s greatest flaw, which should not be overlooked in discussions about whether it will lead to a financial recover for Puerto Rico, is that it charts a future without the input of Puerto Ricans who will most be impacted by its devastating consequences for generations to follow. The POA was conceptualized by the Financial Oversight Board, or “La Junta” as locals call it, and facilitated by the Puerto Rican legislature.
The POA contradicts everything that Puerto Rico’s most vulnerable populations — those most likely to be affected by austerity related to debt servicing — have demanded in order to make life more livable, healthy and safe in Puerto Rico. And this has been made clear during the countless protests that have often accompanied La Junta’s meetings in both Puerto Rico and the diaspora where Puerto Ricans and others in solidarity have attempted to make their voices heard in the rooms where Puerto Ricans’ futures are being decided without them. Judge Swain was appointed to oversee debt restructuring, despite not having any experience in Puerto Rico. He has not shown any willingness to listen to the concerns of Puerto Ricans regarding the debt restructuring process.
Every step in the path to the POA’s confirmation has functioned to further remove decision-making power from the hands of Puerto Ricans. The POA’s failure to listen to, let alone address, Puerto Ricans’ very real concerns contributes to the feelings expressed by many that the debt, the failed disaster recovery and all of the financial chicanery devised to lure millionaires to the archipelago have seemingly combined to create a Puerto Rico without Puerto Ricans. In other words, the POA helps bring into being a future where if Puerto Ricans aren’t actually absent, their ability to have a say politically has been severely curtailed.
The Plan of Adjustment offers Puerto Ricans more uncertainty and resolution, especially since the temporality of debt does not resolve — but rather complicates — the relationship between past, present and future obligations. The POA renders impossible a comprehensive debt audit or an economic plan that responds to working people’s needs, all while endorsing illegal debt and failing to hold the individuals and institutions responsible for indebting the public accountable. The POA is ultimately dead. colonial, social and environmental debts unresolved and fails to bring a true people’s “resolution” to the debt crisis. Rather than technical solutions adjudicated in the courts among consultants, unelected overseers and lawyers, real resolution might take shape through a reckoning process that interrogates what is owed to whom and the United States’ debt to Puerto Ricans for more than a century of colonial violence and exploitation. A true resolution to Puerto Rico’s so-called debt crisis would include debt cancelation and reparations for historical harms, not payouts for Wall Street vultures who treated the archipelago like a casino.
