July 22, 2025
David Martin wrote:
Latin American lawlessness and economic lunacy comes north.
I first encountered the squatter phenomenon living in San Juan, Puerto Rico, in the mid-1980s. It was all over the island, and no one seemed to be able to do anything about it. I don’t know if anything has changed, but the most outstanding example of it at the time was on Rt. 187, the Atlantic Ocean waterfront road that runs behind San Juan International Airport all the way to a ferry crossing at a river mouth that takes you to the small town of Loiza Aldea. I used to go on weekend bike rides on the road because it was virtually free of traffic. The government, I was told, owned the land, and only a few squatters’ houses were beside it here and there. The value of that waterfront property so near to Puerto Rico’s population center is hard to overestimate, but the concept of opportunity costs (income foregone) seemed to be totally foreign to the island’s leadership. A couple of prime examples of that phenomenon is that the old city airstrip in the heart of the port of San Juan had been taken over by some routine government administration buildings that could have been located anywhere in the city, such as the office for drivers license renewal, and a long stretch of waterfront property heading into San Juan from the international airport had been chosen as the site for a very large public housing project.
As a footnote on the story, an elementary school classmate of my oldest son, lived with his parents, a Cuban exile insurance executive and his younger German second wife, a few steps away from their appropriately named private school, San Juan School by the Sea, where English was the medium of instruction. The parents and son lived rent free in a house that the government owned, but had lost track of. The school and the house and much of the neighborhood were later destroyed by Hurricane Hugo, and the international trio moved to South Carolina.
