Puerto Rico -- A lost home to locals

While being a popular vacation destination for many, Puerto Rico (P.R.) is still home to over 2.8 million residents on the island. Despite that high number of people who call the island their home, many from the mainland United States are buying houses and taking up land from locals.

There are many aspects of this issue that are all connected. First, it’s important to note that all beaches in Puerto Rico are public land. Yes, including a beach that happens to be right behind someone’s home.

However, many wealthy individuals who move to the U.S. territory are finding ways to ignore the rule. Using the rocks around them and even going as far as constructing cement blockades, wealthy individuals are doing anything they can to turn public into private.

The people have taken to the beaches and started protesting with their own “beach parties,” the message being plain and simple: they want access to the land that they are entitled to.

A flyer for one of the beach parties, where locals protest the blockades made by wealthy home owners.

The question is, though, why are wealthy individuals hogging up the beaches?

This is all due to Act 22. Act 22, officially known as the Individual Investors Act, hopes that by exempting new residents who move to PR on all passive income, the economy will get better. This is rather a big jump and revenue increase compared to the mainland, where a single worker would have been taxed at a rate of 22.4 percent.

The hope as of the past 5 years that was expected from this legislation, passed in 2012, was that wealthy people would move to P.R. and stimulate the economy. The economy on the island was, and is, very much struggling: declaration of bankruptcy in 2017, Hurricane Maria, also in 2017, and the COVID-19 pandemic have taken a toll on P.R.’s banks and people’s wallets.

Instead of the projected investors and big-name bankers, those who moved to the island ere social media influencers.

Among those is Logan Paul, who moved to Puerto Rico early last year. Making the announcement on his YouTube channel, others followed the move to more tropical addresses, like Hannah Meloche and Kinsey Wolanski.

Many Puerto Ricans compare the influencers’ move to the island, along with the blockade to beach access, to that of colonizers from the imperialism era.

While it is not officially declared as such, the exploitation of a no-tax system for the wealthy elite and a resource rich paradise, transforming public land into the private sector through unlawful means, and ignoring local peoples and their wishes surely does sound like colonization.

Seeking out assistance from the top one percent to solve an economic crisis in the country can only leave one to believe that the larger United States government has ignored and continues to ignore the needs of its number one territory. After former President Trump was seen playing basketball with paper towels in a hurricane-stricken island, the pattern appears once again, only now, lawmakers are playing with dollar bills.