Journalist Bianca Graulau interviewed Mayor Zohran Mamdani (D) of New York City during his visit to Puerto Rico for the Somos conference. He came out against Esencia, the luxury project proposed in Cabo Rojo, and against the tax breaks Puerto Rico offers wealthy investors who move to the islands:
I am opposing this project because it is clear that this is yet the latest example of an attempted displacement of Puerto Ricans from their own land.
Well, I think tax justice is tax justice wherever we’re speaking of it, right? You look at Esencia. It’s financed through about $500 million in tax breaks. Tax breaks that even in and of themselves were intended to finance the construction of hotels.
I think it’s a bankrupt model of development. It’s part of the reason why we created a new position in our administration called the deputy mayor for economic justice because we wanted to reframe what development should be. Development should be something that a working person can feel in their wallet, not something that they open the newspaper and they can only see in a graph about the strength of the economy. And that is true in New York City. It’s true in Puerto Rico.
Context
Esencia is something we’ve covered before. The Centro de Periodismo Investigativo found that the Puerto Rico Tourism Company approved nearly $498 million in tax credits for the project’s hotel component, even though its 1,132 planned residences outnumber its 520 hotel units. In the interview, Mamdani also said he would add his voice to a New York City Council resolution against the project.
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