Puerto Rico: The Future In Question

Abstract

This essay is based on ethnographic fieldwork carried out from December 2017 to August 2019. In it, I reframe the condition of disaster that Puerto Rico faced after Hurricane Maria through a consideration of the political economy of the post-hurricane crisis. I consider the ways that Puerto Rico has become a highly active extractive zone on the periphery of US empire and the role of Maria in these transformations, including in terms of the politics of knowledge production. I investigate the notion of auto-gestión for the ways it acts as both a mode of survival within the permanent crisis, and as a quandary of decolonisation that sometimes buttresses colonial state power. I also document some of the autonomous efforts that were part of the recovery, questions that people who survived the storm continue to confront in their everyday lives, and the importance of resource sharing strategies that exist outside the commodity market. Ultimately, enacting food sovereignty within a colony is a paradox, but one that harbours transformative potential. What is transformed after Maria? What changes lie ahead? What role will small farming and climate change play? Puerto Rico’s future remains in question.