This Monday saw a session of the UN Special Committee on Decolonization, and the approval of a draft resolution that would call upon the U.S. to facilitate the island’s self‑determination.
Geography Archives: Puerto Rico
Understanding Puerto Rico’s debt crisis through Marx, monsters and a queer decolonial lens
Colorlines talks to Philadelphia poet laureate Raquel Salas Rivera about their new book, “lo terciario/the tertiary,” which revisits Karl Marx’s “Capital” to examine Puerto Rico’s debt crisis from a queer decolonial lens.
Hurricane Maria death count over 5,000–not 64, new study finds
A recent study published in The New England Journal of Medicine estimates the number of deaths caused directly or indirectly by Hurricane Maria in Puerto Rico at over five thousand.
Half a year on from Hurricane Maria, many Puerto Ricans lack running water and electricity
PUERTO RICANS marked six months today since the formation of Hurricane Maria, which devastated the island, causing about $100 billion (£72bn) in damage.
Oscar Lopez Rivera calls U.S. intervention in Puerto Rico ‘biggest experiment in neoliberalism’
Oscar Lopez Rivera, the anti-colonial leader from Puerto Rico, has criticized the United States’ callousness and “experimental” approach towards the U.S. colony.
There is no such thing as a natural disaster
“Policies aimed at aid and reconstruction became their own forms of punishment, leaving the island more indebted, unequal, dependent and polluted than it was before the hurricane hit.”
The crisis in Puerto Rico is a racial issue, here’s why
Last week, CNN’s Jake Tapper interviewed Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) and asked if he thought President Donald Trump’s punishing response to hurricane-ravaged Puerto Rico had something to do with “race or ethnicity.” Sanders hesitated a bit but ultimately said, “We have a right to be suspect.”
Politics of a parade
In a modern-day manifestation of the old colonial divide-and-rule tactic, corporations and New York City politicians, including the mayor, were recently caught trying to engage in backdoor deals to divide the city’s Puerto Rican community over a pro-Puerto Rican independence activist’s participation in the Puerto Rican Day Parade.
Interview with Oscar López Rivera: “Fighting is not a Futile Exercise”
While many of us could hardly concentrate on everyday matters as we thought obsessively about the fragile and unfortunate fate of Oscar López Rivera, the former political prisoner painted peacefully in the prison in Terre Haute Indiana. Then on January 17, at 3:30 pm a guard called him to let him know that he had […]
Puerto Rico’s $123 Billion Bankruptcy Is the Cost of U.S. Colonialism
Last week Puerto Rico officially became the largest bankruptcy case in the history of the American public bond market. On May 3, a fiscal control board imposed on the island’s government by Washington less than year ago suddenly announced that the Puerto Rico’s economic crisis “has reached a breaking point.” The board asked for the immediate […]
The Significance of the Protest Encampment in Puerto Rico
The Protest Encampment at the entrance of the Federal Courthouse in Hato Rey, Puerto Rico against the Puerto Rico Oversight, Management, and Economic Stability Act (cynically called “PROMESA”), as well as the Wall Street Junta that said law imposes, constitutes an important act of popular resistance. In addition to the dictatorial Wall Street Junta, PROMESA […]
We Stand with Palestine in the Spirit of “Sumud”
At a moment of growing resistance to state violence and injustice the world over, a delegation of nineteen anti-prison, labor and scholar-activists from the United States traveled to Palestine in March 2016. Our delegation included former U.S.-held political prisoners and social prisoners, former Black Panther Party members, prison abolitionists, trade unionists and university professors. We […]
A New Political Situation in Latin America: What Lies Ahead?
“Venezuela defines the future of the progressive cycle” In your work on South America, you speak of the duality that has characterized the last decade. What exactly is that duality? Claudio Katz: In my opinion, the so-called progressive cycle of the last decade in South America has been a process resulting from partially successful […]
Behind Puerto Rico’s Debt, Corporations That Drain Profits from the Island
The Phenomenal Drain of Profits Beginning in the 1970s, Puerto Rico’s economy began to suffer a drain of profits, to the point where the measure of total income produced in the island, the Gross Domestic Product, began to separate dramatically from the measure of income that residents own, the Gross National Product or GNP. […]
The Americas Summit on the Border of an Imperialist Abyss
Two features of contemporary imperialism are key to explaining the importance — or actually the relative unimportance — of the VII Summit of the Americas (organized by the OAS) recently held in Panama. One is that, in the post-World War II period, imperialism has operated in a context defined by the prevalence of relatively sovereign […]
