Situating ‘Verano Boricua’ Within Puerto Rico’s Financial Debt Crisis and Hurricane Maria Recovery Process
Abstract as pdf
Corresponding Author:
Christopher Tharp
University of Delaware United States of America
ctharp@udel.edu
Author(s):
El Verano Boricua—specifically the island-wide strike and mass street protests which toppled Governor Ricardo Rosselló’s government—represents an agonistic moment in contemporary Puerto Rican politics. This moment is impossible to understand outside of a two-decade long economic recession, the decade-long “Debt Crisis,” austerity politics, and the long-term Hurricane Maria recovery process. The 2019 mass street protests emerged from the student strikes at the University of Puerto Rico, effectively organized boycotts of the referendum, political parties, labor union protests, feminist activism, anarchist and socialist collectives, environmental justice advocates, art, and many more sources that had become disenchanted with Puerto Rican politics and the promises of postcolonial sovereignty. Using historical research and interview methods, this paper will contextualize and historicize the contemporary emergency situation in Puerto Rico by situating it within these long-term processes.
In the moment of impact and in the wake of hurricanes and other disasters, the ability to recover is directly shaped by existing socioeconomic and racial inequalities. The risk‐prone environments of the marginalized and rural-poor magnify the impacts of catastrophic events like Hurricane Maria in Puerto Rico—exposing stark inequalities. Disaster‐vulnerability and exposure to risk are unevenly distributed throughout every community—the situation being especially dire in Puerto Rico in the context of “Debt Crisis” and imposed austerity measures. Puerto Rico’s “Debt Crisis” has its origins in the ten-year phase-out of Section 936 of the U.S. Tax Code which began in 1996 and ended in 2006—the year Puerto Rico’s current depression began. Many U.S. corporations were initially drawn to the island through the strategy of “industrialization by invitation,” and then kept on the island throughout the 1970s period of trade liberalization with incentives in a special tax regime under Section 936. The phase-out of Section 936 triggered a deindustrialization process (Caraballo-Cueto and Lara 2018).
Not everything in the aftermath of Hurricane Maria has been negative, however. Spaces of popular, agonistic sovereignty have emerged in People’s Assemblies throughout Puerto Rico and the U.S. mainland, challenging disaster neoliberalism (privatization) and austerity measures imposed by the Financial Oversight and Management Board. Hurricane Maria exposed poverty, environmental injustice, and differential vulnerability, but since El Verano Boricua, a debate has opened for the need for a transformation of the island based on popular sovereignty.
References
Caraballo-Cueto, J. and Lara, J., 2018. Deindustrialization and Unsustainable Debt in Middle-Income Countries: The Case of Puerto Rico. Journal of Globalization and Development, 8(2).
Disaster recovery in the long-term