Puerto Ricans are on the lookout for solutions to the worst economic and social crisis on the island in a protracted time.
Unprecedented levels of debt are creating widespread uncertainty about employment and the state’s capability provide essential services. This crisis is not going to pass in the near futurehowever the solutions could also be closer than we predict.
As cultural anthropologists, now we have spent over a decade studying the way it pertains to people’s on a regular basis lives broader social and economic processes and documented negative effects inequality. In doing so, now we have also witnessed people in Puerto Rico who “refuse to follow the rules” of capitalism. Some scholars they even argued it Caribbean individuals are experts live with the negative effects of modern capitalism and resist because one form of capitalism existed there first tested. There have been sugar plantations in the Caribbean for the reason that 18th century early models of factory labor management and capitalist trade with a European metropolis.
People living on the rural coast of Puerto Rico live the great life without necessarily accumulating material wealth and climbing the socioeconomic ladder. Examining the lives of those that have been “left behind” by the mainstream economy can provide examples of live well in turbulent times.
Diversity in times of instability
Working full-time for pay with one employer can be a superb survival strategy in times of prosperity and stability. However, this comes at the fee of reduced flexibility and resistance conditions of scarcity and uncertainty. Poor and rural people, like many coastal Puerto Ricans, have long been reliant on aid various sources of income AND income streams adapt to prolonged scarcity and uncertainty.
Puerto Ricans sometimes mix formal and informal work, taking advantage of advantages offered by the state. Take Juana, a single mother and resident of Arroyo, Puerto Rico, whom we interviewed for: 2016 study. Because our interviews are frequently conducted under a confidentiality agreement, we use pseudonyms as an alternative of the interviewees’ names.
Until her retirement, Juana worked on and off as a brief clerk at a neighborhood hospital. When she was unemployed, she cared for the youngsters of working moms in her community. Nowadays, Juana often trades produce from her small fruit and vegetable garden with neighbors in exchange for his or her work: for instance, the mechanic who repairs her automobile. One of her nephews, whom she took care of as a baby, is a spear hunter who delivers some fish or lobster to Juana’s refrigerator. Juana said:
“I don’t need or need anything. I often have greater than I do know what to do with.
Hilda Llorens, The writer provided
Central to those arrangements is investing in social relationships through gift giving, bartering and knowledge sharing.
In our work, now we have documented repeated cases where people he gave away beneficial goodsakin to fresh fish or shellfish, relatively than keeping or selling them to build up wealth. Recent research found that greater than 90 percent of fishermen on Puerto Rico’s southeastern coast routinely separate part of their catch and donate it to family, friends or neighbors in need. They select to speculate in the community relationships and solidarity.
This a form of reciprocity takes place in communities where people recognize that their well-being is dependent upon the well-being of others, not on precarious labor markets.
Building on community
In Puerto Rico, as in other places akin to New England, fishermen are likely to have relatively low incomes, but great cultural significance in their communities. Fishermen have an iconic image of independent employees who lead adventurous and arduous lifestyles to offer for his or her communities.
A fisherman from Salinas, Puerto Rico explained that he wanted to offer his grandson and grandson with an honorable occupation.
“Who will employ these children if not me? I almost never pay for boat, engine or net repairs. People fix them for me because I bring them food. I often give away fish for free or on credit, and I also provide employment to members of the commune.”
These communities often have centers that organize initiatives for residents, akin to community gardening, solar energy, home improvement workshops and summer camps for about 100 children. In 2016, Carmen, current community board chair in Salinas, Puerto Rico, told us about her summer camp:
“We charge a monthly fee of five dollars per child. We are recruiting volunteers to conduct workshops for children. We get free breakfast and lunch through the Department of Education. Otherwise, we finance the camp with our own money and donations from local companies. Community board members and parents help run the camp.”
When we asked why she thought it was necessary to prepare a summer camp for youngsters, Carmen replied, “We are a ‘poor’ community, but when we pool our time and resources, we are able to provide children with a good summer camp and teach them good values.”
Lessons from the margins
Idea from these examples it just isn’t intended to glorify poverty or lack of access to income. Instead, our work indicates that individuals in such situations were exercising their free will, learning to outmaneuver the “game” by changing the foundations and goals in order that that they had a greater likelihood of winning.
People living in the depths of a modernizing world have long realized the unreliability of jobs in industries akin to pharmaceuticals, energy and corporate tourism, where jobs come and go along with economic cycles. Local employees are sometimes the last hired and the primary to be fired and have the so-called the bottom paid and more dangerous jobs.
Perhaps it’s time to listen to individuals who have been considered outcasts or “backward” – Caribbean fishermen and rural farmers, mid-Atlantic fishermen and pine tar collectors, Appalachian farmers and coal employees – to grasp how they’ve created wealthy lives on the margins of the mainstream economy. Perhaps we can apply their strategies to survive in these turbulent times.