We owe Puerto Ricans our attention. They are, after all, Americans

Last Updated on September 20, 2022, 2:15 PM | Published: September 20, 2022

Puerto Rico is an American territory with American citizens living there — basically, all 3,252,407 of them are under the protection of and beholden to the United States. But as Hurricane Fiona slammed into the island, plunged its American citizens into darkness and wiped out power, American cable news channels were carrying wall-to-wall live coverage of a 96-year-old British citizen’s funeral.

Granted, Queen Elizabeth II is the longest-serving monarch in British history and reigned during an extremely consequential seven decades, but having 24 hours of airtime to fill means being able to cover more than one story. For most of Monday when the queen was laid to rest and Fiona ravaged Puerto Rico, that one story on cable news was not Puerto Rico. The contrast between the media treatment of a colonizer and the colonized shows just how ingrained our fealty is to crown wearers. 

News should not be entertainment, and yet news decisions are made on the basis of how many viewers turn on a story and keep it on. While some readers will undoubtedly question my characterization of a royal funeral as entertainment, the vast majority of cable news viewers were not watching the queen’s funeral as bereaved mourners. They watched to see who showed up and how people were dressed, to bask in royal lifestyle and deathstyle. 

My hope is that some serious calculus was being worked to determine the relative merits of covering the queen’s funeral versus over 3.2 million people losing power and their homes, but my fear is that the decision was easy.

In 2017, when Hurricane Maria killed more than 3,000 Puerto Ricans and wiped out the power grid, President Donald Trump made fun of the pronunciation of its name and threw paper towel rolls for those in need to soak up what was left of their lives. Within two years, as Trump’s obviously laissez faire attitude toward Puerto Rico proved disastrous for recovery efforts, he pivoted to calling it “one of the most corrupt places on Earth.” 

Due to Trump’s laziness in helping Puerto Rico, many of the roofs blown off by Hurricane Fiona were actually just blue tarps left over from Hurricane Maria. Yes, supply chains are hard to maintain for island dwellers, but half a decade should have been enough to get relief to Puerto Rico before the next catastrophic hurricane hit. 

Puerto Rico is essentially “out of sight, out of mind” for many Americans. Sure, they have been American citizens for 105 years, but somehow that is not common knowledge. During Hurricane Maria, many of Trump’s mouthpieces on Fox News seemed confused as to whether Puerto Ricans were, in fact, Americans, or they simply wanted to sow such confusion. 

In particular, Oklahomans should relate well to Puerto Rico. Oklahoma has between 3 and 4 million residents and regularly gets pummeled by weather phenomena. It is also widely misunderstood or ignored by people beyond its borders and was heavily colonized. 

But Oklahoma has two more U.S. senators and four more representatives than the unincorporated territory; Puerto Rico’s non-voting representative to Congress, Jennifer Gonzalez-Colon, is known as a resident commissioner. Gonzalez-Colon, a Republican, and Governor Pedro Pierluisi, a Democrat, both want statehood for the territory. 

Unfortunately, Monday’s news coverage shows that it is an uphill battle for millions of people to receive the protection and care that statehood provides. Let us spend more time on living people who need help and less on dead people who received everything they ever wanted in life. 

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