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Melissa Harris-Perry: Thanks for being with us on The Takeaway.

On Wednesday, the Puerto Rico Status Act cleared a House committee. The bill does not determine the status of Puerto Rico. Instead, it lays out a process for a popular vote of Puerto Rico residents, which could allow them to choose independence, full US statehood or sovereignty with free association with the US.

To understand more I sat down with Alana Casanova-Burgess, host of La Brega podcast from WNYC Studios and Futuro Studios. Alana talked to me a bit about how to think about the Puerto Rico Status Act.

Alana Casanova-Burges: Already there's a lot of misinformation and there has been, or maybe I should say misframing about this bill. There are headlines referring to it as an independence bill, as a statehood bill. It's really a status bill and it lays out three options and none of them are the current status, what we call the status quo, the colonial status, the ELA. It sets up this vote next year and tries to lay out a process for that. When you step back and look at what's been going on with the bill winding its way through Congress, these options and the process being in the hands of the US Congress because of the colonial relationship, we can walk away with a lot of questions about what it would mean for self-determination to really sit in the hands of Puerto Rican people.

This is a question that's been chewed over for 100 years already, but there's still questions outstanding like do people understand what statehood would really mean? What would independence really mean? Can we understand about the future economic ties or the role of citizenship or the official language in any of these options? What does free association with the US actually mean?

Melissa: Now today the House of Representatives is set to vote on the measure, but even if it passes it will still have to garner 60 votes in the US Senate and a presidential signature. Those are high hurdles, with very little time left in this lame duck session. Still I wanted to know if Alana thought that this congressional action could serve as an agenda setting tool. She gently pointed me to the more critical question, whose agenda?

Alana: This is a conversation that's happening all the time in Puerto Rico. There are these plebiscite referenda votes every few years and there're always super controversial. Because the way that you frame a question, we know the way people answer a question really depends on how you frame the question. What are the options that are laid out in that vote? What is the information that people have or don't have going into the voting booth? The process in Puerto Rico is always gummed up by questions about the process and the vote. In terms of your question about agenda setting, how interesting that we do have this conversation and have had this conversation all year.

I wonder how much a lay person in the US is really following the twists and turns of this bill. For that matter, I wonder how much everyday people in PR are following it. It isn't something that we're talking about all the time in a more abstract way?

Melissa: Puerto Rico has been a US territory since the turn of the 20th century and has held six referendums on the issue of independence since the 1960s. All were non-binding because only the US Congress can grant statehood. Still, there is a lot at stake in the potential move to statehood or independence. Much of what is at stake for Puerto Rico has been concretely focused in recent years based on the failed responses to the devastation caused by Hurricane Maria in 2017 and bu inadequate capacity of Puerto Rico's infrastructure to withstand Hurricane Fiona earlier this year.

On Tuesday, the Puerto Rican Electric Power Authorities Board renewed a contract with LUMA Energy, the private company who first took control of the island's electricity back in 2021. Since the LUMA takeover, Puerto Ricans have had to endure a frustrating and often dangerously unreliable power grid. It's something Alana's podcast La Brega has regularly discussed.

Alana: I've been in Puerto Rico when there's been enormous blackouts. Anecdotally, is so common. There was a huge one in April as a result of an electrical fire, but there has been an extension on this temporary contract. Simply about electricity, there's so much frustration. Also because there's been something like seven price hikes in a year. It's one thing to be getting stunningly unreliable service, it's another thing to be paying something like twice the rates of what people in the states pay for electricity. It is really stunning to hear from my friends and my colleagues, if you can imagine what your workday would be like if the power just went off constantly and you had to be thinking, "How much longer is my laptop going to be working for? What do I do with my Wi-Fi?"

Just the way that you have to plan your day around that, what happens to your local grocery store and their food, local businesses. It's just such a difficult situation in terms of the electricity.

Melissa: One more beat on the contract extension in part because we've been talking about process around status and self-determination. You're trapped in whatever provider, but I'm also just wondering about how that monopolistic sense about infrastructure around electricity also plays into a sense around, again, politics and process and self-determination.

Alana: What's interesting to me about watching this LUMA situation unfold from where I sit in Brooklyn is that you can see sometimes public officials like the governor, like the resident commissioner, who's the non-voting member of Congress, come out and say things that are slightly critical of LUMA, but then at the same time then they end up signing the contract again. You can also see these protests that have been happening all year where people take their damaged appliances to town squares or to LUMA offices and say, "Every time the light comes on and off--" Melissa, do you know this? There's a circuit breaker issue and sometimes your fridge can get damaged.

They take their defunct non-functioning fridges or microwaves and it's just you can see how this is a real pocketbook issue, but you're right in that comparison is that you feel so hemmed in by it. You feel like, "I can't cancel this contract and these people who say that they're upset about it also won't cancel the contract and also don't say that the contract is quite as flawed as we think it is." There's a real disconnect there and a lot of frustration also about where and what the governor is doing versus what life is like for a lot of people. My aunt this year after Fiona, she lived for a few weeks without electricity and as a cancer patient, she passed away shortly after that. I can't help but think what the power situation meant for her life and for the end of her life.

Melissa: I appreciate that and in certain ways you brought us where I wanted us to go, which is so much of the work that you do on La Brega is to bring us the humanity. There are these political stories, there are these headlines, but you are bringing us something quite different and I know you all have been renewed for in next season. Give us a little sense of what we'll be hearing on La Brega.

Alana: This season we are trying to really think also about what joy looks like and how we can celebrate Puerto Rican-ness. We are focused on music, so every episode is about a different Puerto Rican song and we are using those songs to look at serious issues, yes, but also looking at the way that Puerto Rican excellence is spread around the world. Bad Bunny right now is the top of the charts all over the place. We can be very proud of him. We can be very proud of Tite Curet Alonso. We can be very proud of Mark Anthony. We can be very proud of all these singers and all these songwriters who have shaped our culture and just brought us to the talk of the world.

Melissa: Our thanks to Alana Casanova-Burgess, host of La Brega.

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