Puerto Ricans call out ‘disaster capitalists’ taking advantage of their suffering – ThinkProgress
[ad_1] A government that fails to provide a plausible estimate of deaths from a disaster engenders little confidence in its ability to help the survivors. That’s the predicament Puerto Ricans find themselves in after their government put the official death toll from Hurricane Maria at 64 people . More than seven months after the hurricane devastated the island, neither Puerto Rico’s government nor the federal government has released an updated figure. News organizations and independent researchers have attempted to fill the void by calculating death counts on their own. “Time after humiliating time, Puerto Ricans have been sent that familiar message about their relative worth and ultimate disposability,” author Naomi Klein writes in her new book , The Battle for Paradise: Puerto Rico Takes on the Disaster Capitalists . “Nothing has done more to confirm this status than the fact than no level of government has seen fit to count the dead in any kind of credible way, as if lost Puer...