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The world speaks, from Hawaii to Puerto Rico, through the music of Bad Bunny: a song that reveals the legal context of the territories. Susana Serrano, professor of law, shares her vision.
Daniel Rivera Vargas
A law professor from the University of Hawaii explained the legal context in which residents of this state live, a jurisdiction that recently became the subject of public debate in Puerto Rico through a song by the artist Bad Bunny.
“Others have said the same thing, in Palau, Micronesia, Samoa, that they don’t want to be like Hawaii. I think there are a lot of parallels in what happened in the territories,” explained Professor Susana Serrano, associate director of the Center for Excellence in Native Hawaiian Law and professor of social justice at the William S. Richardson School of Law at the University of Hawaii.
The song “What Happened to Hawaii”, part of Bad Bunny’s “DeBÍ TiRAR MáS FOToS”, has the following chorus:
“They want to take both the river and the beach
They want my neighborhood and they want grandma to leave
No, don’t let go of the flag and don’t forget Lelola
I don’t want them to do to you what happened to Hawaii.’
In an interview with Microjuris via video call from Hawaii, Serrano explained that the US legal regime established in these Pacific islands more than a century ago took measures that greatly affected the ancient natural resources used by the natives, violently toppling the government that ruled the country . islands and went so far as to ban the use of the native Hawaiian language in public places, including schools.
Interestingly, Puerto Rico also had an attempt to replace the dominant language, Spanish, with English.
Hawaii’s legal framework began to transform in 1893, when a group of Americans led the overthrow of the queen who ruled Hawaii at the time. When asked about the parallels between this date and the US invasion of Puerto Rico in 1898, Serrano clarified that although they were not part of the same conflict, both situations reflected the same type of political vision that prevailed in that time in the federal government.
This group, led by sugar businessmen, began the process of annexing Hawaii to the United States, which was legally completed in 1897, Serrano explained. Half a century later, in 1959, the territory was included in the union state.
The changes with the arrival of the American government changed the ecosystem so much that it contributed to the physical destruction of the ancient capital of the kingdom of Hawaii, Lahaina, according to Serrano.
“There was a small island in the middle of a long fishing boat, Lahaina was called the Venice of the Pacific,” Serrano said.
“When the whites, Americans and Europeans arrived, they monopolized the natural resources like Puerto Rico, with haciendas to sow the land with gray. And they filled the reservoirs to make this crop, they diverted the reservoirs that the native Hawaiians used to fish for their crops, and they made Lahaina very dry, to the point that years later we have situations like fires… some called it is disaster capitalism or disaster plantation capitalism.
The community of Lahaina, located on the island of Maui, was partially devastated by the deadly fires that occurred in this state in August 2023.
Currently, only 20% of Hawaii’s population identify as native, Serrano said. According to the US Census Bureau, Hawaii has a total population of 1,435,138, which means about 287,000 people identify as Native.
Serrano explained that the native Hawaiian population declined for a variety of reasons, including diseases brought by white immigrants that caused large numbers of deaths among Hawaiians. This in turn led American settlers to begin importing cheap labor from other parts of the world to work in the cane industry, including Puerto Ricans.
Although there is still a small community of Puerto Ricans in the state, part of it is made up of former military personnel who have decided to settle on the islands.
Serrano explained that she has Puerto Rican ancestry not through that migration wave, but rather through her father, Pedro Serrano, a native of Villalba, who moved from the island to work in California, where the teacher was born.
Similar to what happened recently in Puerto Rico, most Hawaiians no longer live in their homeland, but in different parts of the United States in search of better job opportunities and because of the high cost of living in the archipelago, Serrano explained. .
For decades, Hawaiians have been victims of legal abuses, but beginning in the 1970s, changes began to be made to protect the rights of native Hawaiians. When asked whether these pro-Hawaii statutes have been challenged in court for equal protection, Serrano noted that there have been legal challenges, including in the US Supreme Court, which has ruled against the protectionist measures. However, legislation and legal protections in favor of Hawaiians remain even within the state constitution.
“State law is very protective of the rights of Hawaiians. Federal law, on the other hand, was not,” Serrano said.
He added that at the state level, the Office of Hawaiian Affairs was established and continues to operate. According to the website of this Hawaiian government agency, the agency seeks to protect, among other things, “Native Hawaiian culture.”
Serrano identified some of these pro-Hawaiian laws as those that protect traditional fishing, gathering food or flora in the mountains, some for religious purposes and others for medicinal purposes, as well as those statutes that establish that beaches are public.
The center where Serrano works is doing its part in this fight. According to the professor, this structure of the University of Hawaii aims to help train new lawyers who can protect the rights of communities in this state.
“The state law is very protective because it recognizes the traditions and values of Hawaii. “Communities and lawyers, many of them young Native Hawaiians, are pushing the state to pass these laws to help repair the damage, to help manage human resources in a way that protects Native values,” he said.
“Native Hawaiians really fought … to protect the interests of Native Hawaiians,” he said. “The Americans tried to destroy Hawaiian culture, but there is a resurgence of protection of these rights, and these young people are coming with the knowledge, with the desire to push these leaders to do the right thing with the laws to undo the damage of colonization, but it’s a constant struggle,” he said.
When Serrano was asked what she thought of Bad Bunny’s What Happened to Hawaii theme song, the teacher said, “It’s hard because I live here (in Hawaii), but I can understand the regret that people in Puerto Rico don’t.” Let them take away their beaches, their culture, their identity, because that’s what happened here.”
