Vacationing on a Tax Haven: Law, Visitor Economy, and Resistance in Puerto Rico

• In Event: 30662 - Section on Crime, Law, and Deviance Roundtables
  In Refereed Roundtable (60 minute): Table 8: Crime & Deviance

Abstract

Puerto Rico (PR) has emerged as a major US tourist destination in recent years- benefiting from stricter COVID-19 travel restrictions elsewhere in the Caribbean. This surge aligns with government efforts to promote tourism to revive an economy weakened by decades of financial crises and socioenvironmental disasters. Central to this transformation is the Puerto Rico Incentive Code or Act 60 of 2019, specifically Chapter V, which allocates substantial tax incentives to the visitor economy. Act 60 exemplifies how legal frameworks embed tourism within PR’s broader transformation into an Offshore Financial Center (OFC). By channeling resources into luxury tourism megaprojects, hotels, air travel, and marketing campaigns, the PR government and private sector have sought to align tourism with OFC diversification strategies. This article interrogates the sociolegal and political-economic processes underpinning this shift, arguing that law and tax incentives policies promoting tourism deepen cycles of value extraction, displacement, and socioenvironmental degradation. Grounded in analyzing grassroots mobilizations, the article underscores the resistance to legal frameworks that entrench PR’s visitor economy within the OFC. Situating tourism within PR’s colonial-capitalist trajectory, the analysis exposes its legal entanglement with tax haven policies, highlighting the enduring impacts on local communities and ecosystems.

Author

• Jose Atiles, University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign