January 17, 2016

            The Puerto Rican government officially defaulted on some municipal bond obligations due on January 4, 2016. This is not surprising – the idea of default had been mentioned several times and in particular every time a bond payment became due. The Governor, Alejandro Garcia Padilla, again asked the US Congress to allow Puerto Rico the authority to restructure its debt.

The required payment for all bond obligations was $902 million dollars, and the government paid all but $37.3 million. Bond repayments are subject to a number of constraints – some obligations have higher priorities than others. For example, I believe general obligation bonds are repaid before other types of bond obligations. Governor Garcia Padilla stated the Puerto Rican government would repay the following bond obligations on January 4:

• $328 million of general obligation, of which $163 million comes from transfer from other sources, a process known, rather dramatically, as ‘clawback’,
• $9.9 million owed by the Government Development Bank,
• $15.4 million owed by the Sales and Use Tax Financing Corporation (COFINA) bonds,
• $8.7 million owed by the University of Puerto Rico,
• $9.5 million owed by the Puerto Rico Convention Center District Authority,
• $101 million in bonds from the Highways and Transportation Authority,
• $13.9 million in bonds owed by the Retirement System Administration, and
• $10.1 million owed by the Puerto Rico Industrial Corporation.

Actually, the situation is worse than this repayment suggests. Some payments (e.g., Retirement System) came from monies in their trust fund. Since those funds have been depleted and not replenished, the Retirement System is technically in default, although not yet to its bond holders. All told, the total default was about $174 million.

It seems nothing is easy in Puerto Rican politics. You would think the government would get some credit for producing such a modest default to bondholders, $37.3 million in default versus $902 million owed. Financial analyst Daniel Hanson doesn’t think so. Hanson, who works for Height Securities, in Washington, D.C., said “When a debtor repeatedly claims they have no cash but then pay more than $900 million in debt service, the credibility of the debtor must be called into question. The governor repeatedly blamed the U.S. Congress for PR’s plight during his remarks, but when Congress returns from its recess, the lack of credibility and commitment to reform within the PR government is likely to push Congress closer to imposing a federal control board over the territory.”

I’m not sure of the role of Height Securities in all this. Height Securities apparently specializes in political intelligence as it relates to investments. It is under SEC investigation for allegations of insider trading. It allegedly released information to selected clients, before the official government announcement, about an impending decision regarding health insurance, thus allowing recipients to benefit by investing in the health insurance companies before their stock prices went up.

The debt issue is complex. Bonds have been issued by 17 different issuers; there are thousands of creditors (Conflict of interest statement: I do not think I own any of these bonds. Just in case you were curious). When bonds are issued and sold, there are rules for repayment. There are undoubtedly embedded inter-creditor conflicts throughout the bond debt structure. This is one, perhaps the principal, reason why the Puerto Rican government is seeking from Congress the authority to restructure its debt burden.

Entities that buy large amounts of bonds can purchase insurance. In the event of default, the insurance companies pay the bond holders. As you might suspect, these insurance companies have not been silent. In particular, the Ambac Insurance Corporation, in conjunction with the Financial Guaranty Insurance Company, wrote a letter to Governor Padilla questioning the legality of the ‘clawback’. Last month, Governor Garcia Padilla, in an executive order,directed the Secretary of the Treasury of the Commonwealth to ‘clawback’ revenues pledged to the Puerto Rica Infrastructure Financing Authority (AFI in Spanish).

The two insurance companies have a considerable stake in this – they insure $863 million in bonds issued by AFI. They claim that the AFI enabling act requires the transfer of the Rum Taxes, the most important of the excise taxes here, to AFI before any other entity. That these Rum Taxes were ‘clawed back’, diverted for other uses by the government, is the basis of their claim.

It is, as I have noted before, an interesting time here. But I think I see a way I can help – I’ll drink more rum. Mojitos, here I come!

Sources: This has been distilled (another rum reference) from several articles in the San Juan Star. an English-language daily newspaper here.

January 10, 2016

The holiday season has ended for this year. Municipal workers are taking the decorations down and getting ready for the San Sebastian Festival, which starts this Thursday. I’ll have more to day about SanSe16, as it is called, in a later post.

The unofficial start of the holiday season is the annual parade of decorated yachts, proceeding from the yacht club at the Miramar marina to the piers in Old San Juan and back. Thousands of people come and line the shore to see the yachts. I went in to Old San Juan last year for the event but could not make my way through the crowds to get near the piers. This year, I decided to stay on our balcony and watch the event from there.

The yachts started parading down the channel towards Old San Juan just before sunset. They were guided by San Juan police boats and US Coast Guard vessels.

Yachts proceeding to Old San Juan, December 12, 2015. The sailors on the freighter had an excellent spot from which to watch the yachts.

Once by the piers, the yachts moved more or less in line around the piers. We’re a little less than two miles from there so my pictures don’t do justice to the parade.

Yachts parading around piers in Old San Juan, December 12, 2015.

The yachts made their way back down the channel towards the marina. By this time it was dark, and the extent of the decorations became apparent.

Yachts returning to the marina, December 12, 2015.

A few days later, I walked into Condado. The small park there had gotten the Christmas treatment, with the trees covered with lights and a Christmas tree as well.

Christmas decorations in Plaza Antonia Quinones, in the Condado section of San Juan.

Some Puerto Ricans had decorated their vehicles and drove through Condado. I’m told the guy on the motorcycle is retired. He decorates his bike for the holidays. By the way, his passenger is a mannequin.

Christmas tree in Condado, and a motorcyclist celebrating the holidays.

The Plaza d’Armes is in the middle of Old San Juan. This is where the men of San Juan would muster and draw their arms for the defense of the city. (Apparently, the Spanish did not have open carry laws). For the holidays, the fountain is turned off and covered with plywood, thus creating a stand for a Christmas tree. The fountain’s four statues, illustrating the human aging process, are eerie guardians of the Christmas tree, The other trees are all covered with lights as well.

Three images from the Plaza d’Armes, Old San Juan, December 2015,

Plaza Colon (Columbus, in English) also gets lights and a tree. Plaza Colon is at the foot of Calle Fortalezza and close to Castillo San Cristobal, one of the two historic forts in Old San Juan.

Decorations in Plaza Colon, Old San Juan, January 2016.

Puerto Ricans celebrate Three Kings Day. The night before, children fill bowls with hay for the King’s camels, and place them under their bed. They wake up to find the hay gone and gifts left by the Kings.

The Three Kings, Old San Juan, January 2016.

As I mentioned, the decorations are coming down now. Old San Juan is preparing for SanSe16. More on that later.

January 7, 2016

Puerto Rico’s fiscal difficulties, well reported in the press, have once again called into question the relationship between the island and mainland United States. I say once again because the relationship has evolved over time in complex and perhaps unanticipated ways.

The central question has always been how to afford Puerto Rico (and, for that matter, the other US territories) political autonomy while still maintaining a close relationship with the US. Luis Munoz Rivera and other Puerto Rican statesmen sought autonomy from Spain in the decade just before the Spanish-American War, and then found themselves in the same discussions with the United States. The Jones-Shafroth Act of 1917 allowed Puerto Ricans to choose US citizenship (the vast majority did), and established a local government subject to US oversight.

The authority for US oversight emanates from the Property Clause (also called the Territorial Clause) of Article 4 of the US Constitution, which reads:

The Congress shall have power to dispose of and make all needful Rules and Regulations respecting the Territory or other Property belonging to the United States; and nothing in this Constitution shall be so construed as to Prejudice any Claims of the United States, or of any particular State.

Several Supreme Court cases in the early twentieth century, collectively called the Insular Cases, determined the role of Congress in governing the so-called insular areas, i.e., the island territories obtained as a result of the Spanish-American War. The Court established that the territories belonged to, but were not part of, the US, and therefore Congress could determine which parts of the Constitution applied to the territories. Puerto Rico, Guam, and the Philippines, as unincorporated territories, were therefore granted a status different than the incorporated Alaska and Hawaii, for which the Constitution fully applied.

In 1922, the Supreme Court, in Balzac v. Porto Rico (sic), clarified the distinction between incorporated and unincorporated territories. The Puerto Rican jurist Juan R. Torruella, appointed to the First District court by Ronald Reagan, studied the Insular Cases and, in his book The Supreme Court and Puerto Rico: The Doctrine of Separate and Unequal (University of Puerto Rico: 1988), described the distinction as follows: “an unincorporated territory is a territory as to which, when acquired by the United States, no clear intention was expressed that it would eventually be incorporated into the Union as a State”. Torruella showed his status as a moderate jurist in 2012, when he helped declare the Defense of Marriage Act unconstitutional. (I wonder what Reagan would have thought of that).

The Insular Cases (seven or nine, depending on who does the counting) were all decided in 1901; six of them related directly to Puerto Rico. They echo to this day in that recent decisions affirm their logic. For example, in Harris v. Rosario (1980), the court held that providing less aid to Puerto Rican families with dependent children (as compared to mainland families) was not in violation of the Equal Protection Clause, since, in US territories, Congress can in effect discriminate against its territorial citizens. Justice Thurgood Marshall wrote a strong dissent, noting that the Insular Cases were questionable and reminding the Court that Puerto Ricans are US citizens.

In fact, Jose Trias Monge, a Chief Justice of the Puerto Rico Supreme Court from 1974 to 1985, wrote that the Insular Cases were based on ideas that could only be considered bizarre by current standards. These include:

• Colonialism and democracy are “fully compatible,” and

• There is “nothing wrong when a democracy such as the United States engages in the business of governing other” subjects that have not participated in their democratic election process.

The comments of Torruella and Trias Monge, and the Balzac case, came after an important change in status between the US and Puerto Rico, a change that reverberated into the United Nations and has implications to the current fiscal crisis. The change was caused in part by the actions of the sometimes violent Nationalist Partisans.

The Nationalists sought complete independence from the US. They sometimes resorted to violence to achieve their political ends In April 1932, Nationalist partisans marched to the Capitol to protest the adoption of the current Puerto Rican flag. In 1935, a confrontation between Nationalist supporters and police at the Rio Piedras campus of the University of Puerto Rico left five dead, including one police officer, in what became known as the Rio Piedras massacre. In 1936, Colonel Elisha Francis Riggs, the highest police officer on the island, was assassinated in retaliation for the massacre. The perpetrators, Nationalists Hiram Rosado and Elias Beauchamp were subsequently arrested and summarily executed at the San Juan police station. In Ponce, in 1937, a march by Nationalists celebrating Emancipation turned violent and 17 unarmed citizens died, as well as two territorial policemen. This event lives on as the Ponce Massacre.

The Nationalists, in spite of their activist policies, did not gain meaningful political power. The more practically minded Luis Munoz Marin founded the Popular Democratic Party (PPD) in 1940, with social and economic reforms as their primary agenda and independence a longer term goal. Six years later, dissidents who saw the PPD moving away from the goal of independence, founded the Puerto Rican Independence Party.

The Truman administration found itself in a difficult position. Puerto Rico was in effect a colony, and Truman, both publicly and privately, opposed colonialism. (One deviation: Truman did assist the French in their efforts to regain control over their former colonies in Indochina. The effects of that decision led directly to my year in Viet-Nam, 1968 69. But that’s another story).

The PPDs move away from independence was noted, and Congress responded, in June 1950, with PL 81-600, which allowed Puerto Rico to draft its own constitution, subject to two stipulations: the constitution had to create a republican government and had to include a bill of rights. A Constitutional Assembly was formed, and worked, starting in September, 1951 and into 1952 to draft the Puerto Rican constitution. The Puerto Rican electorate overwhelmingly ratified the new constitution on March 3, 1952, and Congress approved it, subject to some changes in wording in two sections, via PL 82-447, on July 3, 1952. Truman said, at the signing ceremony: “H.J. Res. 430 is the culmination of a consistent policy of the United States to confer an ever-increasing measure of local self-government upon the people of Puerto Rico. It provides additional evidence of this Nation’s adherence to the principle of self-determination and to the ideals of freedom and democracy.”

The Constitutional Assembly was reconvened and agreed to the wording changes. The Constitution defined the structure of the government (bicameral, with an Assembly and a Senate), courts, elections, powers and responsibilities, and other features. Governor Munoz Marin inaugurated the new constitution of July 25, 1952, and Puerto Rico officially became a Commonwealth (Estade Libre Asociado). Puerto Rico thus joined Kentucky, Pennsylvania, Massachusetts, and Virginia, as well as Dominica, the Bahamas, and Australia, as political entities with that name. And, by the way, July 25 became a Puerto Rican holiday.

The Nationalists did not accept the idea of a constitution, and, in 1950, began a series of protests that became known as the Puerto Rican Nationalist Party Revolts of the 1950s. In October 30, 1950, several uprisings occurred, notably at Utuado, Jayuya, and San Juan. Truman described these as “incidents between Puerto Ricans.”

Grisello Torresola and Oscar Collazo, Nationalists living in New York City, rejected Truman’s characterization of the October 30 uprisings, and planned to assassinate Truman to bring attention to their cause. Truman, living at the Blair House while the White House was undergoing renovations, survived the attack, but Torresola and one police officer died. Collazo was convicted in federal court; Truman commuted his death sentence to life, and President Carter released him for time served, in 1979. Collazo returned to Puerto Rico and died there, in 1994.

Nationalists struck again in Washington, on March 1, 1954, when four Nationalists ( Lolita Lebron, Rafael Cancel Miranda, Andres Figueroa Cordero, and Irving Flores Rodríguez) unfurled a Puerto Rican flag in a visitors gallery in the US Capitol and fired 30 rounds into members gathered on the floor of the House of Representatives, where they were debating an immigration bill. Five members were wounded; all survived. The four were captured, convicted, and sentenced to long sentences. Over the objections of the Puerto Rican governor, President Carter pardoned all four in 1978-79 and they returned to Puerto Rico. Figueroa Cordero died in 1979, of cancer; Flores Rodríguez in 1994, of a brain tumor. Lebrón and Cancel Miranda remained active in the liberation movement. Lebrón died in 2010, at age 90, after leading protests against the US Navy’s presence in Vieques. Cancel Miranda was awarded a medal from the Cuban government in recognition of his anti-colonial efforts.

The new constitution and status as a Commonwealth allowed the US to argue that Puerto Rico was no longer a colony, since it had the ability to govern its own internal affairs. The United Nations General Assembly, during its 8^th session, in 1953, passed Resolution 748 (VIII) which removed Puerto Rico’s classification as a non-self-governing territory as defined under Article 73(e) of the UN Charter. The vote, even with considerable US pressure, was anything but overwhelming, with 20 votes for, 16 against, and 20 abstentions.

Puerto Rico’s political status is still being debated. In 1960, the United Nations General Assembly passed Resolution 1541 (XV) which lists the factors for determining when a colony achieved a full measure of self-government. However, the General Assembly did not apply the criteria to Puerto Rico. Cuba, starting in 1971, introduced annual resolutions to the UN’s Decolonization Committee asking for a reconsideration of the Puerto Rico case. The US consistently blocked General Assembly action, arguing that Resolution 748 removed Puerto Rico from the jurisdiction of the Decolonization Committee, and that the matter should be decided between Puerto Rico and the US.

The relationship between the US and Puerto Rico comes down to three alternatives: independence, statehood, and a continuation of territorial status, perhaps with mutually-agreed changes. Various plebiscites and referenda have never shown more than 4-5% of those voting in favor of independence. A referendum in the most recent election, November 6, 2012, found 54% of respondents rejected the current status under the Territorial Clause; a second question showed 61% of respondents favored statehood as the preferred alternative. There were, however, procedural issues with the wording of the questions, and so the results are ambiguous. As for the second question, 61% of those who voted on the question voted for statehood, but, for some reason, many voters did not address the question, and therefore the question did not get a majority of the total vote.

The ambiguities in the 2012 referendum notwithstanding, Pedro Pierluisi, the Puerto Rican Resident Commissioner to Congress, filed HR 727, the Puerto Rico Statehood Admission Process Act. If adopted, Puerto Rico would become the fifty-first state on January 1, 2021, if a majority of the electorate in Puerto Rico votes in favor of admission via a federally-sponsored vote. Congress has not yet taken any action of HR 727. By the way, if Puerto Rico ever does become a state, it will be the twenty-ninth or thirtieth most populous state, with a population similar to Connecticut, and be represented by 2 Senators and 4 or 5 Congressmen.

Puerto Rico thus remains in a political limbo, where the US Congress can determine whether or not, for example, the Puerto Rican government can declare bankruptcy so as to restructure debt, an opportunity afforded to US states and cities which, of course, are not subject to the Territorial Clause. Congress ducked the issue at the end of the session last December, much to Governor Padilla’s dismay, and in spite of his testimony before Congress.

This is an interesting time here – stay tuned.

Sources: I pulled together information from several Wikipedia entries for this piece. For more information, see Wikipedia entries on the Puerto Rican Constitution, Nationalism, general history, and political history, and several links in each of those entries.

The first image is the frontispiece from Thomas Hobbes’ The Leviathan. It has no particular relevance to this post other than that Hobbes’ treatise is an early discussion of social contract theory, and that Hobbes discussed the idea of commonwealth as an ideal for a political entity.

Citation for frontispiece: “Leviathan by Thomas Hobbes” by Unknown – http://www.loc.gov/exhibits/world/world-object.htmlhttp://www.securityfocus.com/images/columnists/leviathan-large.jpg. Licensed under Public Domain via Commons – https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Leviathan_by_Thomas_Hobbes.jpg#/media/File:Leviathan_by_Thomas_Hobbes.jpg

November 17, 2015

The Almirante Saboia was back in port the weekend before last. I did not see here enter port, but I suspected something was going on. I saw a few groups of young men wandering around Old San Juan. Their heads snapped around every time a nice looking woman walked by. Since this behavior is typical of sailors who’ve been at sea for too long, I figured some kind of ship was making a port call. I walked down to the port and found her docked at Pier 1.

You recall I wrote a little about this ship last year. See my post Two Warships in Port to refresh your memory. She is a landing ship, built to support amphibious operations. She was originally built for the Royal Navy, and saw duty in the Falklands.

I wonder what the purpose of a port call is. It is probably in some part ceremonial, with official welcomes and greetings. There are probably meetings with US Coast Guard and Navy officials, going over protocols of various sorts. I suspect the sailors look forward to a bit of shore leave.

Of course, the port call may have been unplanned. Tropical Storm Kate was brewing in the Atlantic, near the Bahamas, and perhaps the Almirante Saboia came into port to avoid the storm. Kate formed on Monday, November 9, near Cat Island in the Bahamas. That Kate formed so late in the season is unusual in an El Nino year. She is the eleventh named storm of the year, just below the average of twelve, but high for an El Nino year.

By the way, the Great Lakes steamer Edmund Fitzgerald sank forty years ago, on November 10, 1975, with all 29 of her crew. She sank during a strong mid-latitude storm that passed over Lake Superior near the Fitzgerald, subjecting her to winds of more than 50 knots. Pressure at the center of the storm was as low as 975 mbs. See the figure below, and recall that Hurricane Patricia’s central pressure was 879 mbs, indicating again just how powerful that storm was (see my post Joaquin, Patricia and Chapala – Oh My!).

Surface weather map valid for 6 am CDT  Monday, November 10, 1975. Note the very strong low pressure over the western Great Lakes. This is the storm that generated ‘the gales of November’ that caused the sinking of the Edmund Fitzgerald. The storm’s central pressure soon fell to 975 millibars. Image credit: CIMSS Weather Blog from the University of Wisconsin – Madison.

The Canadian songwriter Gordon Lightfoot was motivated to write his song The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald because he thought the event was underreported. He was, in particular, disturbed by contemporary newspaper accounts that gave her name as the Edmond Fitzgerald. Lightfoot’s song was released in 1976 and reached number 2 in the US; the number one spot was defended by Rod Stewart’s Tonight’s the Night. The event even made it into a Seinfeld episode – I’ll leave it to the TV buffs to figure out which one.

The Great Lake iron ore carrier Edmund Fitzgerald. Image from adhemar-marine.blogspot.com.

            November 14, 2015

Republican presidential candidate Ben Carson was here in Puerto Rico this past weekend. He actually made sense when asked about statehood. He pointed out that the last two states to enter the union – Alaska and Hawaii, back in the mid-50s – had financial difficulties then, and have since prospered. He thought the same thing could happen here. The debt problems here, he said, are the result of unfair treatment of Puerto Rico as a territory. Puerto Rico is currently trying to manage $72 billion dollars in public debt and the issue, as you can imagine, is contentious.

The current fiscal difficulties here in Puerto Rico have many people talking about the Jones Act and its effects on the economy. The problem is that there are really two Jones Acts, both passed about the same time. They both, in their way, relate to the current economic conditions.

The Jones-Shafroth Act, signed into law by President Woodrow Wilson in 1917, was written to establish a system of government on the island, and to clarify the citizenship status of Puerto Ricans. Section 3 of the law also stipulated that Puerto Rican municipal bonds would be triple tax exempt – no federal, state, or local taxes – no matter where the bondholder lived.

The Spanish American War of 1898 occurred as Puerto Ricans were seeking greater autonomy from Spain, at a time when the Spanish government was itself in turmoil. Luis Munoz Rivera, born in Barranquitas in 1859, was a leader of the autonomy movement. He was born to Luis Munoz Barrios and Monserrate Rivera Vazquez and, by Spanish custom, took both his parents’ names. Barranquitas, then a small rural town, offered few educational opportunities. Luis was home-schooled at first, then finished the town school, first in his class, at age 10. He showed great interest in Cervantes, especially Don Quixote. By age 14, unable to continue his education in either Cuba or Spain, he was helping with legal documents for his family’s business, and also writing poetry.

In 1883, presumably against his father’s wishes, Munoz Rivera joined the Liberal Party, which, in 1887, at a meeting in Coamo, splintered into a new party, the Autonomists. In this, he became associated with Román Baldorioty de Castro, José Celso Barbosa and José de Diego. The Autonomists pursued a separate government for Puerto Rico, while keeping some relationship with Spain.

Their influence grew rapidly, and the Conservative Party responded by closing newspapers. Governor Palacio, an appointee of the Spanish monarchy, soon caused the arrest of more than 100 liberals. In spite of a travel ban, the liberal politician Juan Arrillaga Roque travelled to Madrid and made the situation known. King Alfonso XII responded by replacing Palacio with Juan Contreras Martinez, and political tensions eased somewhat.

Luis Munoz, in 1893, travelled to Spain to learn of its political system. While there, he met Praxedes Mateo Sagasta, president of the Spanish Fusion Party, and realized he was the Autonomists best ally within the Byzantine Spanish political system. Upon his return, he found the Autonomist Party in disarray, with Barbosa and his followers (the Barboistas) rejecting any ties with Sagasta, thinking he was a Royalist.

Munoz Rivera and his followers (the Munocistas) drafted the Plan de Ponce and, after much debate, agreed to send four members, including Munoz Rivera, to Spain. Sagasta proposed that, should he become Premier, he would grant a Chapter of Autonomy giving Puerto Rico the same degree of sovereignty as any other Spanish province. Sagasta became Prime Minister after the assassination of Antonio Canovas del Castillo and granted, in December 1897, the promised autonomous government.

Munoz Rivera’s accomplishment was short-lived. An on-going revolt in Cuba had garnered American interest, in large part because of the lurid yellow journalism of William Randolph Hearst’s newspaper empire. On February 16, 1898, the battleship USS Maine (Remember the Maine!) exploded and sank in Havana Harbor. This became the pretext for the Spanish-American War of 1898. Military operations in Puerto Rico began with a US Navy bombardment of San Juan on May 12, 1898, and a land invasion, in Guanica, with 3,300 American troops, beginning on July 25. The military campaign ended with the signing of the Treaty of Paris on August 13, at which time Cuba and Puerto Rico came under US military government.

I believe this building was a hospital during the US Navy bombardment of San Juan, in 1898. It is said that a shell landed in the hospital but did not explode, thus allowing an orderly evacuation.

The arrival of the Americans led to another split among the Barboistas, who generally welcomed the Americans, and the Munocistas, who feared becoming an American possession. Munoz Rivera retired to his family home in Barranquitas and published a poem, Sísifo, which related Puerto Rico’s politics to the eternal struggles of Sisyphus.

Munoz Rivera was persuaded to return to San Juan, but the discussions between the Americans, the Barboistas, and the Munocistas became bitter. In 1900, the Barboistas formed the pro-statehood Republican Party of Puerto Rico. Munoz Rivera wrote scathing denunciations of the pro-statehood movement in his newspaper El Diario, which led to rumors of assassination attempts, actual exchanges of gunfire, and, in 1901, attacks on the newspaper’s offices.

Munoz Rivera moved his family to New York City where he continued his criticism of the US position on Puerto Rico via his bilingual newspaper Puerto Rico Herald. He travelled back and forth and, with the help of Rosendo Matienzo Cintron, Antonio R. Barcelo, and Jose de Diego, founded the Union of Puerto Rico party, which won the election in 1904. Munoz Rivera was elected to the House of Delegates.

In 1910, he ran for and was elected as Resident Commissioner to the US House of Representatives. He befriended influential Congressmen, including Henry L. Stimpson and future Supreme Court justice Felix Frankfurter. In 1915, he proposed equal rights for Puerto Rico, without statehood, with greater autonomy in Puerto Rican affairs. This evolved into the Jones-Shafroth Act, signed by President Woodrow Wilson on March 2, 1917.

Munoz Rivera was not alive to see the signing. He died on November 16, 1916, from complications of a gall-bladder infection.

The complicated relationship between the US and Puerto Rico thus had its roots in a revolt against Spanish rule in Cuba, a sunk battleship, yellow journalism, an American naval bombardment followed by invasion, and the efforts of impassioned Puerto Rican statesmen.

Puerto Ricans honor the statesmen of the Autonomists in various ways. The park across the street from our building is Parc Luis Munoz Rivera, and Avenida Luis Munoz Rivera is a major highway in the Hato Rey section of San Juan. The expressway to the airport is the Baldorioty de Castro; there are Avenida Barosas in San Juan, Catano, and other cities and towns. Avenida de Diego goes south through Condado to Santurce.

I’ll have more to say about the Jones-Shafroth Act in an upcoming post. Stay tuned.

Notes: First image is statue of Luis Munoz Rivera in the park that bears his name.

See the Wikipedia entries for Luis Munoz Rivera, the Jones-Shafroth Act, and the Puerto Rican campaign of the Spanish American War for more information.

Tropical storms – cyclones, hurricanes, typhoons – are elaborate mechanisms by which heat energy is transferred from the tropics to the northern latitudes. Puerto Rico is under threat from hurricanes each season. In fact, the word hurricane is derived from ‘huracan’, a Taino and Carib (West Indies natives) storm god. The Spanish modified the word to hurricane, and it is now used to describe Atlantic and Eastern Pacific storms that meet hurricane criteria.

Historically, Puerto Rico has suffered damage from hurricanes, notably Betsy in 1956 and Hugo, in 1989. Betsy destroyed 15,000 homes in Puerto Rico and caused 16 deaths. Both Betsy and Hugo started as tropical waves off the African Coast. Puerto Rico has been spared in recent years, although it has had several close calls, in particular Gonzalo in 2014.

The 2015 tropical storm season will probably be considered relatively quiet as no major storms struck the US mainland. Tropical waves and depressions formed but strong winds aloft created shearing forces which prevented storm formation. These shearing winds are a feature of El Nino events, and explain in part why hurricane activity diminishes during El Ninos, a condition we’re in right now. The winds counteract the effects of warmer than usual surface waters which act to promote storm formation by providing energy to the developing storm. By the way, the information I present here has been distilled from the excellent blog entries of Dr. Jeff Masters, of the Weather Undergound, at www.wunderground.com. Refer to his entries for detailed and lucid explanations of these complex events.

Map showing surface temperature excursions during September, 2015. Note especially the warm temperatures (indicated by shades of red) in the Atlantic off Florida, the Pacific off Mexico, and the Arabian Sea.

To think the 2015 hurricane season was uneventful represents a mainland-centric and thus skewed version of this season’s meteorology. There were in fact several remarkable weather events this season. Hurricane Fred struck the Cape Verde islands, close to the coast of Africa, at the end of August. The last time that occurred was in 1892. The islands (now more properly known as the Republic of Cabo Verde) are desert like, with average annual rainfall of about 10 inches. Fred delivered about that much rain in a day, thus causing extensive flooding.

The shearing winds died down in late September and Tropical Storm Joaquin grew explosively into a Category 3 hurricane. From the very beginning, Joaquin was unusual. Eighty-five per cent of strong Atlantic hurricanes originate with low pressure waves off of Africa – Joaquin did not. Joaquin apparently started as a wave off the South Carolina coast that established a warm-core tropical cyclone northeast of the Leeward Islands. This area is normally too far north and therefore too cold to produce strong tropical cyclones. This year, the warmer than normal surface water temperatures (see the temperature figure, above) allowed for storm development.

And it is not just surface water temperatures that are important. The cyclonic winds churn the waters and cause surface waters to sink, and deeper waters (perhaps to 50 meters in depth) to come to the surface. Since these deeper waters are now as warm as the surface, a brewing storm gains energy, allowing it to intensify.

Hurricane Joaquin, October 2, as photographed from the International Space Station. The lights at the top of the image are Miami and Miami Beach.

Joaquin intensified rapidly, going from a Category 1 storm (85 mph sustained winds) to a Category 3 (115 mph) in only six hours. The day before (Tuesday, September 29), the top winds were only 70 mph. Joaquin thus became the second major hurricane of the season (Danny was the first), unusual for a strong El Nino year. By October 3, Joaquin had grown into a Category 5 storm, also unusual in an El Nino year.

The rapid intensification led to a tragedy related to Puerto Rico. The container ship El Faro left Jacksonville early in the morning of September 30, on her way to San Juan. At that time, Joaquin was a tropical storm, with top winds of 70 mph, expected to grow in to a minimal Category 1 storm centered in the Bahamas. El Faro’s course would take it with 200 miles of Joaquin, with expected winds of 35 mph and 10 feet seas. Joaquin intensified rapidly and the El Faro, for some reason without power, found herself, in the morning of October 1, right in the northwest eyewall. The El Faro sank with all hands (28 Americans and 5 Poles); the Coast Guard yesterday (October 30) located her hull and hopes to retrieve her data recorder soon.

Joaquin contributed to, but did not cause, exceptionally heavy rainfalls- 20 inches or more in a 2 to 3 day period – and consequent severe flooding in South Carolina. These rains actually resulted from a Nor’easter fed by copious amount of moisture from the warm off shore waters.

On Tuesday, October 20, Tropical Depression 20-E formed in the Pacific, 445 miles east-southeast of Acapulco, Mexico, under conditions of light wind shear, warm waters (86 F) and a moist atmosphere. While poorly organized at first, TD-20-E was in ideal circumstances for rapid intensification. This in fact happened. TD-20-E morphed into Hurricane Patricia and became the fastest intensifying Western Hemisphere hurricane ever observed. Her central pressure was 980 mb (mb -millibar – a unit of atmospheric pressure. Typical atmosphere pressure is about 1,000 mb) at 5 am Thursday, October 22, and 880 mb 24 hours later – an astonishing drop of 100 mb in one day. Her winds intensified by 100 mph in 24 hours, from tropical storm to a Category 5 hurricane. By the next day, Patricia’s pressure was measured at 879 mb, with sustained winds of 200 mph, maintained for twelve hours. This was the lowest pressure ever observed in an Eastern Pacific hurricane, and also the highest reliably measured wind speeds for a tropical cyclone anywhere on earth.

MODIS satellite image of Hurricane Patricia, October 22. Patricia was a Category 4 storm at that time.

Fortunately, Patricia struck the Mexican Pacific coast in a rugged, relatively unpopulated area and dissipated its energy in the mountains of Central Mexico. As a tropical depression, she carried moisture into Texas and added to an already wet month. In fact, the Dallas – Fort Worth area recorded one of the wettest Octobers on record, with over 20 inches of rain. Remnants of Patricia were sufficiently strong so as to generate strong wind warnings and heavy rains in Upstate New York, and cause wind-related delays at Newark and other east coast airports as late as October 27 and 28.

As I write this (November 1), another very rare event is occurring – a Category 4 tropical storm in the Arabian Sea, heading for the Yemen coast. Tropical Cyclone Chapala, the second strongest storm on record for the Arabian Sea, is a rare event because the Arabian Sea is small, with a short tropical storm season, May – early June, and then late October through November, on either end of the Southwest Monsoon. Furthermore, typically high wind shears and dry air from the Middle East deserts hinder storm formation. Tropical Cyclone Chapala will be only the third cyclone to hit Yemen since the 1960s.Coastal Yemen typically gets about two inches of rain per year. Even the mountains there get only about 10 inches per year. Chapala will likely deliver several years’ worth of rain in a short time. Destructive flooding is a distinct possibility. If landfall is near the mouth of the Gulf of Aden, as expected, maritime commerce (400 ships per day pass through the Gulf of Aden) will be affected.

Tropical Cyclone Chapala nearing Yemen, October 31, 2015.

Quiet year in the Atlantic? I don’t think so. Consider:
• Hurricane Fred striking the Cape Verde islands.
• Two strong hurricanes in the Atlantic (Danny and Joaquin), rare for an El Nino year.
• The strange genesis of Hurricane Joaquin, near the Leeward Islands, and its rapid intensification to a Category 5 storm, again rare for an El Nino year.
• The huge rainfall event in South Carolina, and
• The exceptional rainfall totals in Texas, both in May and again in October.

Add to that the rapid intensification of and amazingly powerful Hurricane Patricia and the most unusual Tropical Cyclone Chapala. And did I mention the unusually large number of hurricanes near Hawaii this year? Or the very active Pacific typhoon season? The record heat in South Africa? The drought-induced wildfires in Indonesia, and the US west?

Last February, during a cold spell in Washington, James Imhofe, Republican from Oklahoma, tossed a snowball onto the floor of the US Senate and offered it as part of his case for why global warming is a hoax. Imhofe is the author of the book The Greatest Hoax: How the Global Warming Conspiracy Threatens Your Future.

I would have to believe, if Senator Imhofe were to read this blog entry, even he would be impressed. Probably not. I suspect Senator Imhofe suffers from epistemic closure: one who lives in a bubble into which inconvenient facts can’t penetrate.

I think it was Mark Twain who wrote “Reader, suppose you were an idiot. And suppose you were a member of Congress. But I repeat myself.”

Notes: As noted in the text, most of the information here has been taken from Dr. Jeff Master’s blog entries on www.wunderground.com.

The three storms in the top image are three named storms in the Pacific -Kilo, Ignacio and Jimena, in August 2015. Three named storms at one time is unusual.

March 31, 2015 

It is April, 1797. The British are at the gates of San Juan. They are led by General Ralph Abercromby (sometimes spelled Abercrombie), the hero of the invasion of Trinidad. Things look bleak for the defenders. It will take a miracle to repel the invaders.

Spain had until recently been an ally of the British, but was defeated by the French in War of the Pyrenees, in 1795. The Peace of Basel, which ended that war, led, in 1796, to an alliance between France and Spain, and thus a state of war with England. France, after the French revolution of 1792, had been fighting the so-called French Revolutionary Wars, which pitted the French and allies against the European monarchies. The wars took on a global character as the wars continued. As had often been the case, the Antilles, Leeward and Windward Islands became pawns in the broader European struggles.

Arercromby was the military commander of the British forces in the West Indies. He had begun his military career in 1756, as an officer with the Third Dragoon Guards, serving in Europe during the Seven Years War. While there, he was able to study the tactics of Frederick the Great, studies which served him well in his career. By 1781, he had become colonel of the King’s Irish Infantry. Dissatisfied with his government’s treatment of the American colonists, he retired, at half pay, and became a Member of Parliament, representing his district of Clackmannanshire.

Abercromby was recalled to active duty when France declared war on England, in 1793. He served in the Netherlands, commanding a brigade under the Duke of York. He was wounded at Nijmegen and, after medical treatment, was appointed, in 1795, the commander of British forces in the West Indies. He began his Caribbean escapades by, in 1796, invading Grenada. This action was to put down a revolt by slaves and former French colonists, led by Julien Fedon, against British rule, which had been restored from the French under terms of the Treaty of Versailles, in 1783.

After a brief excursion to the Dutch settlements of Demerara and Essequibo in South America, the British West Indies forces turned their attention to Trinidad. Rear Admiral Henry Harvey was in command of a fleet of four sail of the line, several frigates and sloops, and transports carrying the invasion troops, commanded by Abercromby.

Trinidad had been a Spanish colony since the third voyage of Christopher Columbus, in 1498. The population was largely French, from Martinique. For whatever reason, Trinidad lagged behind other islands in adopting the plantation system, especially as compared to nearby Tobago and the larger Jamaica. It was, in 1797, defended by a naval force about the same size as the British invaders, with troops in fortified positions around the island. In particular, the Spanish naval forces included four ships of the line and one frigate: San Vincente (84 guns), Gallardo (74 guns), Arrogante (74 guns), San Damaso (74 guns), and Santa Cecilia (36 guns), under the command of Rear-Admiral Don Sebastian Ruiz de Apodaca.

Now, anybody with any military knowledge at all will agree that landing troops on a hostile shore is one of the most difficult tasks a military force can undertake. One need only recall the World War Two landings at Salerno, Omaha Beach, Tarawa and Iwo Jima to be reminded of that. It should also be noted that the Spanish were proficient at amphibious warfare, both on offense and defense. In fact, Spain, under Philip II, was the first European power to establish specialized troops trained in landing operations, complete with barges to land horse drawn artillery, and special row boats equipped with small cannon. The Spanish used their Royal Marines in the 1560s to recover Malta from the Ottoman Turks and, in 1583, in the Azores against an Anglo-French-Portuguese garrison.

The Spanish were no slouches on defense, either. In 1741, a smaller Spanish garrison repulsed a British invasion force of 24,000 men, 2,000 guns, and 186 ships, at Cartagena de Indias, in present day Colombia.

Rear Admiral Harvey and General Abercromby thus had every right to expect a robust Spanish defense of Trinidad. Harvey maneuvered his fleet to block the Spanish ships, and Abercromby’s forces scouted for potential landing sites. They were both surprised to see the Spanish ships begin to burn. The Spanish torched them, and in addition withdrew their forces from the fortified Caspar Grande battery. The next day, the 14^th Regiment of Foot occupied the island, without opposition, and on February 20, 1797, Governor Don Jose Maria Chacon surrendered the island to Abercromby without any effort at defense.

The British thus gained a new Crown Colony, with Spanish laws and a French speaking population. Of course, the Spanish might have known what they were doing. Trinidad never fully embraced the plantation n system, and grew slowly compared to other British possessions, in part because of a chronic labor shortage. At the time of abolition in the British colonies, in 1834, Trinidad had, according to her census, about 17,500 slaves, while Jamaica, twice the size of Trinidad, counted 370,000 slaves.

In any case, Harvey and Abercromby turned their attentions to Puerto Rico. The Puerto Ricans observed the British invaders off the northern coast on the morning of April 17, 1797. The Puerto Rican Governor, Brigadier General Ramón de Castro, called his military leaders together and they enacted their defensive plan, placing troop contingents at several points along the shore. The defenders were Puerto Rican militia, with no main force Spanish troops available. The British forces, which included German mercenaries, did manage to land, but the navy could not force their way into the harbor against the guns of Castillo San Felipe el Morro. The Spanish destroyed the San Antonio Bridge connecting Miramar to San Juan, on Friday April 21, and the British began their siege from the land. On April 24, Sergeant Francisco Diaz led a party of 70 men to attack a British battery. They forced 300 British soldiers to retreat and captured fourteen prisoners before they were forced back by a British counter attack.

Fighting, including artillery duels and infantry skirmishes, continued for the next several days and conditions within the walls of San Juan were getting desperate. Juan Bautista de Zengotita y Bengoa, the Bishop of San Juan, ordered Rogativa (prayer processions) to be conducted around the island asking for God’s help in defeating the British. On the night of April 30, the Bishop, and the women and children remaining in San Juan, conducted a Rogativa which, with torches and accompanied by church bells, wound its way through the streets of San Juan. According to long standing legend, Abercromby, watching from a ship off shore, thought the procession represented reinforcements from the interior of the island to San Juan. In any case, the British re-embarked their troops, set sail, and disappeared over the horizon. One of the largest invasions of Spanish territory in the New World was thus defeated by the Puerto Rican militia and, legend has it, the effects of a prayer procession.

What would the British do with a military leader who managed to conquer an undefended island and then leave his siege of San Juan at the sight of a prayer procession? Promote him, of course! Abercromby was promoted to Lieutenant General and appointed Commander in Chief of the forces in Ireland, and then Scotland. He travelled with the Duke of York to try to regain Egypt from France, and was wounded during the Battle of Alexandria, on March 21, 1801. He died seven days later.

I wonder if Gilbert and Sullivan had Abercromby in mind when they wrote of a Major General in their opera buffa, The Pirates of Penzance, in 1879.

I am the very model of a modern Major-General,
I’ve information vegetable, animal, and mineral,
I know the kings of England, and I quote the fights historical
From Marathon to Waterloo, in order categorical;
I’m very well acquainted, too, with matters mathematical,
I understand equations, both the simple and quadratical
About binomial theorem I’m teeming with a lot o’ news;
With many cheerful facts about the square of the hypotenuse.

In 1971, the New Zealand artist Lindsay Dean completed four bronze statues commemorating the prayer procession. They are located just inside the walls of Old San Juan, near the San Juan gate, in an area now known as the Plazuela de la Rogativa. It is said the artist buried toys under the statues in honor of his child, who died at an early age.

Apparently, in late April, San Juan stages a recreation of the siege, with participants in period uniforms. I’ve not seen that, as we head back up north before then.

The images in this post are all mine, doctored to varying degrees with Adobe Photoshop®.

March 19, 2015

San Juan hosted a professional ironman competition last Sunday. It was actually a half ironman – 1.2 mile swim, 56 mile bike ride, 13 or so mile run. It began with the swim in Laguna Condado, with transitions to bike and then run in Stadium Sixto Escobar. These are all close to my apartment so I spent the morning watching and taking pictures.

The swim began with groups entering the water at five minute intervals. The elite, professional athletes started first, at 6:50 am. I’m not sure of the criteria used to place competitors in subsequent starts, or waves as they are called. In any case, when I got there, most of the 1500 or so athletes had at least started their swim, and the professionals had completed theirs.

The swimmers were close to the end of the first leg when they came under Puentes Dos Hermanos.

It was a beautiful morning for a swim.

 A ramp had been placed in the lagoon, near the Caribe Hilton. The swimmers were helped up the ramp to begin their short run to the transition zone.

Volunteers in bright orange t-shirts helped the swimmers up the ramp.

The athletes next ran about a quarter of a mile, often in bare feet, to start the bike event. Note that they are wearing some kind of ankle bracelet. I suspect this is an electronic tag of some sort to help with timing the different legs of the event.

Athletes are running to start their bike event.

The athletes ran into the arena, usually used for soccer or track and field events, to get their bikes. It was closed to the public so I went to the exit. They had to reach a line outside the stadium before they could mount their bikes and start their ride. The route took them to Dorado and back, and traffic was controlled the whole way to allow them an unhindered ride.

The bikers rode out of the Park on Calle San Agustin on their way to Dorado and back.

At the completion of the bike ride, the athletes dismounted before a specified line, and ran with their bikes into the stadium. They then put on their running shoes and began the run, essentially three laps to Old San Juan and back.

The end of the bike ride.

These are the elite competitors, and they look comfortable starting the run.

The runners made three trips to and from Old San Juan, so there were runners going and coming along Avenida Munoz Rivera.

Runners going to and coming from Old San Juan.

The runners, after their third lap, entered a chute to the finish line. Here are some of the elite athletes finishing the event.

Runners nearing the finish line.

The winner, Igor somebody (I have to check) from Brazil finished the event in under four hours.

I have to wonder about the event’s name, though. I mean, it is here in San Juan. The Spanish word for iron is some form of ferro, from the Latin ferium. How about translating Ironman to Spanish, at least for this event? I propose FerroHombre. If you want something a little more genteel, how about FerroCaballero?  That even has a bit of poetry to it, don’t you think? I can see the t-shirts now.

If you want me to follow up on this, send a check for $10,000 or whatever you can afford, and I’ll get right on it.

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February 28, 2015

 Wednesday February 25 was a record setting day in Old San Juan. Six large cruise ships were in port, and they brought 18,000 passengers to town. This is the most for any one day since records like this have been kept, at least according to El Dia, a Spanish language newspaper I try to read every morning. Four of the ships came in  early – between 6 and 7:30 am; the last two came in about 1 pm.

I was in Old San Juan in the morning and it was, as you can imagine, crowded. What do 18,000 visitors do? Well, they certainly visited the stores catering to tourists, and bought t-shirts. And they used the trolleys to get around the city and visit the two forts. And, if they were in Plaza d’Armes, they had the chance to learn the salsa.

Salsa party in Plaza d’Armes, February 25, 2015.

An agency promoting tourism in Puerto Rico had hired a salsa band, and an enthusiastic young woman was counting the rhythm and teaching the steps. In a short while, several people were in the Plaza, dancing the salsa, with varying degrees of proficiency.

They were joined by young people on stilts and in various costumes.

Salsa on stilts? Why not? These two made it look easy.

 Now, for me the idea of learning how to do the salsa is daunting enough. I suspect I would have injured myself severely had I attempted to learn while on stilts. But these two were having fun, and in an infectious way. Even I began to feel the rhythm.

I’m not sure what some of the other costumes were all about. Take, for instance, the distinguished gentleman’s head. Is this an important figure in Puerto Rican history? Perhaps it is meant to be Luis Munoz Rivera, a statesman who negotiated a degree of autonomy for Puerto Rico during the last few decades of Spanish rule. Or maybe he is a Baccardi, of the rum family. Or the owner of a coffee plantation. Whoever he is, he can do the salsa.

He can do the salsa, whoever he is.

 Finally, there were one or two dancers in brightly colored robes, wearing colorful effigies on their heads. I believe these are masks are called vejigante, and are a common feature of carnival parades in Ponce and Patillas and other towns along the Caribbean coast.

So, how do you deal with 18.000 tourists in one day? Teach them to salsa. It seemed to work on February 25.