Regulating belonging: Contradictions in Puerto Rico’s agricultural land-use policies

Zoning regulates which land uses belong on land. Also, zoning ordinances signal the local government’s intent for land use regulation and its consequent exclusion of land uses, activities, and people. Exclusionary zoning has been well studied in urban settings, but less is known about its impact on farmlands. The archipelago of Puerto Rico serves as an important case to examine recent land-use policy changes and the government’s intent on agricultural lands. This paper examines the 2010, 2015, 2019, 2020, and 2022 Joint Permit Regulations to ask: What rhetorical work do these five regulations employ for agricultural land? What insights do each of the Joint Permit Regulation offer about the government’s intent for agricultural land? How do these regulations shape Puerto Rico’s agricultural landscape and whose interest do they serve? To answer these questions, I employ two policy analytical methods, policy archeology and genealogy, along with five key subject-matter experts’ interviews to assess how municipal-level zoning policies articulate territorialized politics of belonging on agricultural land zoned as productive agriculture (agrícola productivo, in Spanish). Theoretical thematic analysis from interviews with subject-matter experts shows how the official planning discourse in Puerto Rico uses the cover of disaster recovery and sustainable development to foster land dispossession and exclusion of farmers on Puerto Rico’s most valuable agricultural land.