As a Puerto Rican living in Vermont, I was deeply disturbed by the President’s recent tweet denying Puerto Rico's hurricane Maria revised death toll of two thousand nine hundred and seventy five.
The new count was part of a reputable report on the devastation of Puerto Rico issued just a few weeks before Maria’s one-year anniversary. The president’s rejection of these updated numbers was not well received by many. But apart from the implied disregard for Puerto Ricans on the island itself, I’m afraid it may signal a danger for all American citizens living on the mainland as well.
We know that in order to start coming to terms with the death of a loved one we first need to recognize the reality of that death. This applies to individuals as well as to collective entities. If the death of almost three thousand Puerto Ricans is not acknowledged by our national leadership, it will be harder for Puerto Ricans to feel validated in their pain, their mourning, and their humanity. And their path to healing from this tragedy will be much more difficult.
We also know that denial of a collective death, as in the genocide of a people, has terrible consequences for both victims and perpetrators. And while what happened in Puerto Rico doesn’t fully fit the definition of genocide, by not accepting the revised death toll, our leaders appear to be dodging our national responsibility to facilitate recovery.
In fact, the revised death toll in Puerto Rico turns out to be higher than that of Katrina and roughly the same as 9/11. So the danger for all Americans inherent in denying this is to miss or seriously compromise crucial lessons for the preparedness, response and management of future disasters.
We should use our citizen power to demand that the responsible government agencies honor the revised Puerto Rican death toll and approve a comprehensive aid package to spur recovery from this devastating disaster.
A federal commission to investigate why so many died and how to prevent such losses in the future would also be a wise and timely investment - especially now that so much of the East Coast is facing yet another long and difficult recovery from a catastrophic weather event.
