How Puerto Rico has changed 2018-2023
(I previously wrote about “Why Puerto Rico” but this is more focused on what I’ve seen change since moving here in 2018.)
I first visited Puerto Rico when I was living in Anguilla in the late 1990s. San Juan was a major American Airlines hub and most flights from BOS-AXA either went via SJU on American, or to Sint Maarten (SXM) and then a ferry ride. AA pricing was fairly high, so I usually flew to SXM, but visited San Juan a few times, often with a long layover or overnight. I explored Viejo San Juan, mostly (which is probably the most unique part of Puerto Rico, at least for the Western Hemisphere), tried local Puerto Rican food, and got to see the state of Puerto Rico’s economy and infrastructure in the window between legislative end of Section 936 and the end of the 10 year sunset.
I came back to Puerto Rico in 2018 after Hurricane Maria. I knew about the tax incentives and burgeoning crypto/expat community developing here, saw the NY Times article with Brock Pierce about “Puertopia”, and attended a couple crypto conferences held during Puerto Rico’s first blockchain week. Met lots of great people (local, expat, and visitor), explored Condado (Puerto Rico’s “Miami Beach” style neighborhood), and then did something wonderful — rented a car, and with my lawyer/friend/cypherpunk from New York (who spoke minimal but passable Spanish from when he lived in Guatemala), drove around 3/4 of the island’s perimeter (we couldn’t do a full circuit because the southeastern roads were still washed out from Hurricane Maria…).
In 2018, Hurricane Maria reconstruction and recovery was still the big thing. Lots of traffic lights were down, roads were wrecked, many businesses were closed, etc.
Then, 2019 was still a “recovery” year, and a lot of the difficulty was
Puerto Rico took Covid “very seriously”. I’d say it was absurdly seriously after the initial uncertainty period. Essentially almost China-level lockdown on paper, but people didn’t actually comply in practice. Stores were closed (except grocery, gas, medical), then they later rolled out extreme capacity limitations. I spent much of 2020 and 2021 not leaving my apartment except for a weekly trip to Costco (although, to be fair, I did that before and after the restrictions as well…).
Next, 2021 had a bit of a reopening, but Puerto Rico was then flooded by tourists from other places (since international travel was still restricted), and the combination of people who really wanted to go to other places instead, plus $19 fares, led to some pretty rough tourist behavior — lots of public drunkenness, fights, etc.
Overall, 2020-2021 killed most of the smaller stores, restaurants, bars, etc. which didn’t have other sources of capital. Both federal and local aid did carry some through, but it was more damaging than Covid in Florida or Texas by far, and many of the businesses here had a lot less saved capital to weather the downturn (unlike California). I took advantage of Europe opening to vaccinated Americans to do some European tourism (with the advantage of far fewer other tourists) — Italy was amazing to visit.
For me, 2022 was the real return to normalcy. For me, that means travel. But also in Puerto Rico — lots of businesses were reopened, but generally new ones, or relaunches from multiple years of closure. It seems like the ongoing bankruptcy and bankruptcy resolution process, which has hurt Puerto Rico far more than Maria economically, started to really get resolved in 2022.
There have been regulatory changes, not particularly positive, to make Act 20/22/273/etc. into a new merged Act 60 with similar but somewhat different requirements. Increased fees, increased employment requirements, but primarily the worst changes were the rebranding and confusion introduced. Gun laws got a LOT better in 2021 (basically, it’s now a shall-issue permit for $200 including concealed carry). I think marijuana liberalization has continued (I don’t care).
Airlines massively cut back their schedules in 2020 and 2021, started to restore flights in 2022, and seasonal 2022/2023 as well as lasting improvements have happened. We have nonstops to Madrid again, and Frontier is now launching flights to more US cities, plus there are nonstops to Toronto and Montreal. Still no flights to LAX or anywhere west of Texas.
Electricity was partially privatized in 2022 — Luma Energy took over the distribution network, and this has broadly improved quality for billing and customer service, and seems to have improved the distribution network itself, although that continues to be affected by long-term underinvestment and lack of maintenance, as well as high costs of generation and running the network. If I lived in a detached house, I’d try to be grid independent through solar. Puerto Rico privatized communications back in 2000, and just like electricity privatization, it was massively opposed by leftists here, but improved service quality dramatically. Puerto Rico energy costs continue to be very high, though, and the grid isn’t amazingly reliable in storms, but it’s far better than the post-Maria situation.
Banking is probably the worst sector here. I’m required to use a local bank for personal banking, which I do, and they’ve not really gotten worse since 2018, but they’re pretty crappy. I use Mercury (online banking provider) for my business accounts and they’re dramatically better. There was a coop bank being created here a couple years ago but it got shut down, and there’s been consolidation of the incumbent banks here.
Amazon is down from 1 month latency to deliver packages (with Prime) to 2-5 days. I see Amazon Prime Air planes landing at SJU frequently. It’s wonderful.
Otherwise, while there have been changes, it’s hard to tell how much is reversion to the 2015-2019 mean, vs. something in a new direction. It generally feels like things are improving (vs. places like San Francisco, where they are getting worse), but 2018 was such a low base that anything is probably an improvement.
Over the next couple years I’d like to try to improve Puerto Rico in some very narrowly targeted ways (ending the Jones Act on construction of ships for LNG transport to Puerto Rico would be my dream; otherwise, helping out with some of the existing makerspace efforts, and apprenticeships and jobs for youth so they don’t need to leave for their early career, helping with new business formation, and improving how Puerto Rican residents are treated by non-Puerto Rican businesses and institutions, plus animal welfare for cats), but ultimately I don’t really want to get involved in local politics or Politics at all — that seems like a bottomless pit of pain and misery. I’ll probably build a house (and maybe a small community; I have an idea for this, but it’s both time and capital intensive), but for now I’m pretty focused on a lot of tech stuff, and I really only care about having a desk, a bed, a small kitchen, my land cruiser, my guns, Internet, and a decent airport — the true essentials of life.