Ground level looks at Puerto Rican problems

How desperate is Puerto Rico? (See WORLD Magazine’s cover story.) Joe Milligan, who lives in Rio Piedras and co-founded the Alianza para la Proteccion de Libertades, told WORLD Magazine correspondent Ismael Hernandez that “frivolous government spending has continued unchecked. Last month they did a massive landscaping project in an already pristine plaza in front of my apartment and this past weekend they did a community vote to decide how to spend an additional $500,000 of city money on projects such as flower pots.”

Jon Perdue, originally from Georgia, moved to Puerto Rico so his wife could do her medical residency there. He said the likely default will make government bureaucracies “even slower and less responsive than they are now.” He and his wife have two daughters who will be “less safe” and will have “fewer opportunities for their futures.” They are seeing an increase in apartment vacancies and homes for sale as other residents of Guaynabo, their north coast municipality, head to the mainland.

Ismael also spoke with his brother, police officer Jorge Isaac Hernandez, 49, who said a default will make his job “very difficult,” adding, “We will have even less equipment than now and many officers will leave to the mainland. Many have done it and even more are considering it.” Hernandez speaks of “no salary raises, no extra hours, less money for retirement, and they will not pay back all the money they already owe us. I am owed money going back to 2004! No hope of getting it back.” And if he retired now he “would be living in abject poverty.”

That testimony is valuable, as are many hundreds of articles and reports about Puerto Rico’s fiscal problems. Here are some of the better ones, with links for WORLD members who want to read more: