Fantasy Island: Colonialism, Exploitation, and the Betrayal of Puerto Rico

A vital, clear-eyed accounting of Puerto Rico’s 122 years as a colony of the US.

Since its acquisition by the US in 1898, Puerto Rico has served as a testing floor for probably the most aggressive and exploitative US financial, political, and social insurance policies. The devastation that ensued lastly grew unimaginable to disregard in 2017, within the wake of Hurricane María, because the bodily destruction compounded the infrastructure collapse and trauma inflicted by the debt disaster. In
Fantasy Island, Ed Morales traces how, over time, Puerto Rico has served as a colonial satellite tv for pc, a Chilly Battle Caribbean showcase, a dumping floor for US manufactured items, and a company tax shelter. He additionally exhibits the way it has turn out to be a clean canvas for mercenary experiments in catastrophe capitalism on the frontlines of local weather change, hamstrung by inside political corruption and the US federal authorities’s prioritization of out of doors monetary pursuits.

Taking readers from San Juan to New York Metropolis and again to his household’s house within the Luquillo Mountains, Morales exhibits us the machinations of monetary and political pursuits in each the US and Puerto Rico, and the resistance efforts of Puerto Rican artists and activists. Via all of it, he emphasizes that the one strategy to cease Puerto Rico from being bled is to let Puerto Ricans take management of their very own future, going past the statehood-commonwealth-independence debate to finish decolonization.