Puerto Rican Lives in Debt and Disaster

Session Submission Type: Panel

Abstract

This panel explores the intersections between colonialism, race, vulnerability, and debt in contemporary Puerto Rico and its diaspora. This panel situates the contemporary debt crisis within the ongoing colonial relationship between Puerto Rico and the U.S. and the hierarchies of belonging and difference that it generates. At the same time, the panelists work to highlight the new power relations and subjectivities that have emerged in the context of Puerto Rico’s austerity regime. Laura Briggs traces the ways in which discussions about the debt crisis reproduce raced and gendered tropes focused on Puerto Ricans’ family structures and reproductive habits rather than the structures of colonialism and neoliberalization that have caused the archipelago’s financial collapse. Examining what she terms the “bankrupt racial state,” Isar Godreau argues that Puerto Ricans are developing new conceptualizations of race and racial subjectivities that challenge existing ideas about Puerto Rican inclusion within the U.S. imperial project. José I. Fusté and Marisol LeBrón consider the relationship between the debt crisis and the deadly effects of Hurricane Maria on marginalized Puerto Ricans. In his paper, Fusté argues for a nuanced understanding of how engineered disasters associated with both the colonial debt and climate change create differentiated vulnerabilities on multiple scales throughout the archipelago and diaspora. In her paper, LeBrón argues that the effects of the storm not only worsened the already existing vulnerabilities produced by colonial capitalism and racial inequality but also unleashed devastating effects that confound simple attempts to quantify harm. Mónica Jiménez will offer comments on the papers.

Sub Track

• Latinx Studies

Session Organizer

• Marisol Lebron, University of Texas at Austin

Chair

• Mónica A Jiménez, University of Texas at Austin

Discussant

• Mónica A Jiménez, University of Texas at Austin

Individual Presentations

• Debt, Crisis and Racial Identity: Interrogating the Bankrupt Racial State of Puerto Rico - Isar P Godreau, University of Puerto Rico/Cayey

• Debt imperialism and paper towels, or, how to blame Puerto Ricans for the debt - Laura J Briggs, University of Massachusetts

• María’s Uncounted: Accounting for Boricua Subalternities in the Face of (Un)natural Disasters and (Il)legitimate Debt Colonialism - Jose Fuste, University of California, San Diego

• Debt, Death, and What Life is Worth in Puerto Rico - Marisol Lebron, University of Texas at Austin