Solidarity with siblings in Puerto Rico

LOUISVILLE — Speaking during Tuesday’s installment of the Presbyterian Hunger Program’s “Solidarity Hour,” the Rev. Edwin González-Castillo waxed eloquently and at times nostalgically on the topic of Puerto Rico, the Caribbean archipelago where he was born and raised. Watch his presentation here.

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González-Castillo, the director of Presbyterian Disaster Assistance, hails from a San Juan neighborhood “where famous baseball players and salsa singers came from,” he said.

Webinar host Eileen Schuhmann, PHP’s Associate for Global Engagement and Resources, noted that last month’s Solidarity Hour focused attention on Bad Bunny’s historic Super Bowl halftime performance. She asked González-Castillo: what’s key to understand about Puerto Rico’s history and current reality?

San Juan was founded in 1521, nearly a century before the founding of Jamestown, the first English settlement in North America, González-Castillo pointed out. Indigenous people lived there well before Europeans arrived. Because San Juan was “a doorway to trade routes,” it was for centuries “one of the most fortified cities in the Americas,” he said. “It was a treasure, a place that gave access to other places.”

Puerto Rico became a U.S. colony in 1896, a result of the Spanish-American War. Since then, Puerto Ricans have served in the U.S. military during every major conflict since World War I, even though Puerto Ricans living on the island can’t vote during presidential elections — only in primaries. Puerto Ricans living on the U.S. mainland can vote. 

When the United Nations determined in 1946 that member nations could no longer have colonies, the United States started calling Puerto Rico a territory. “We have taxation without representation,” González-Castillo citing a line from the time of the Boston Tea Party. Still, Puerto Rico is “a small island in the Caribbean with a with a big impact all over the world.”

Just about anything one can purchase in Puerto Rico by law comes from the United States, “or at least a ship from the U.S.,” he said, thanks to the Jones Act of 1920. One effect of that law has been to drive up prices in Puerto Rico, González-Castillo said. When he and his wife shipped their car from Puerto Rico to their new home in Louisville, Kentucky, a few years back, a vehicle registration clerk wanted to verify the taxes on the car they’d paid in Puerto Rico. When González-Castillo showed the statement to the officials, “they were surprised how high the taxes were,” he said. “They thought I was giving them the price of the car, not the taxes.”

Following a catastrophe such as Hurricane Maria, many Puerto Ricans had to wait for weeks for building materials and other goods to arrive. “We needed special permission from the U.S. to receive goods from other countries,” González-Castillo explained. On top of that impediment, since 2016, a U.S.-imposed oversight board, PROMESA, established by the Puerto Rico Oversight, Management and Economic Stability Act in a deal designed to reduce Puerto Rico’s crushing debt, makes all of Puerto Rico’s significant money decisions.

“Their interest is the people we owe money to,” González-Castillo said. “They are the ones who make decisions about budgets and how the money is spent.”

Schuhmann asked him: for U.S.-based Presbyterians, what might solidarity look like?

PDA received “a lot of volunteers” following Hurricane Maria, González-Castillo said. “People really wanted to help the people of Puerto Rico.” To help those who were helping others, PDA put together a training on decolonizing volunteerism.

“Everything comes down to the relationships we have,” he said. “That meaningful solidarity has to be less about charity and more about relationships and partnerships.”

“The people of Puerto Rico know how to help themselves and attend to their needs,” González-Castillo said. “We welcome expertise and knowledge, but we really value people who support local efforts.”

When Protestant denominations came to Puerto Rico to establish churches, they sliced the island “like a cake,” he said. Most of the 78 Presbyterian churches are on the western side. “The Presbyterian Church has a long-standing presence there — even before the missionaries arrived,” González-Castillo said. “Part of the relationship has to come with the recognition that we are here to learn and not come with the mentality that we are here to tell you how to do things.”

González-Castillo is the son of a mother from the Dominican Republic and a Puerto Rican father. Many families in Puerto Rico have a connection with the Dominican Republic as well as Haiti, Mexico and Colombia, he said. “People in Puerto Rico are hospitable. They like to welcome people and establish good relations,” he said. “They like to show off their island.”

But some live in fear of immigration authorities. “People are arrested even with their papers and even though their [citizenship] process has started,” he said. “Weeks will pass before they are freed or the situation can be resolved.”

Schuhmann asked González-Castillo about his reaction to Bad Bunny’s iconic performance last month.

“Oh — you mean the concert surrounded by the [football] game,” González-Castillo said with a grin.

Friends from Puerto Rico took in Bad Bunny’s performance at the house González-Castillo shares with his spouse, Flor Vélez-Diaz, the PC(USA)’s manager for Judicial Process. “Listening to something in Spanish in an amazing and wonderful place that was the center of everything that day was incredible,” he said. “To think about [an island] that was devastated by a hurricane just a few years go being represented — a beautiful thing was we were able to see that sense of solidarity.”

Those viewing Bad Bunny’s performance took in sights that were familiar, including a child falling asleep in a chair waiting for her parents to finish dancing at a quinceañera and Bad Bunny falling through the roof, a reminder there’s still recovery work in Puerto Rico that needs to be completed.

“We look for just and fair participation and treatment,” González-Castillo said.

The next “Centering Partners’ Voices” webinar offered by the Global Solidarity Collective, an initiative of the Presbyterian Hunger Program, will be from noon-1:30 p.m. Eastern Time on March 17. Register here.