Puerto Rico’s Summer 2019 Uprising and the Crisis of Colonialism

• DOI: 10.1177/0094582X20906509
• Published date: 01 May 2020
• Date: 01 May 2020
• Author: Pedro Cabán
• Subject Matter: Commentaries

https://doi.org/10.1177/0094582X20906509

LATIN AMERICAN PERSPECTIVES, Issue 232, Vol. 47 No. 3, May 2020, 103–116

DOI: 10.1177/0094582X20906509

© 2020 Latin American Perspectives

103

Commentary

Puerto Rico’s Summer 2019 Uprising and the Crisis of

Colonialism

by

Pedro Cabán

July 22, 2019, was a watershed moment in Puerto Rico’s history. On that day

Puerto Ricans by the hundreds of thousands marched and demanded the res-

ignation of Ricardo Rosselló Nevares, the colony’s inept and ethically bankrupt

governor. On August 2 the pro-statehood governor became the first elected

governor of Puerto Rico to resign his office.

In the summer of 2019 Puerto Ricans repudiated the entrenched and self-

perpetuating political class for its unfathomable venality, incompetence, and

hubris. Puerto Rico’s political institutions were shaken, many of its leaders

were discredited, and the legitimacy of the entire colonial regime rapidly

eroded. Ironically, the Obama and Trump administrations may have embold-

ened the popular uprising. On June 30, 2016, President Obama signed into law

the Puerto Rican Oversight, Management, and Economic Stability Act

(PROMESA), a law designed to maximize the extraction of wealth from Puerto

Rico to pay down the massive debt (estimated at US$74 billion) accumulated

by successive Puerto Rican governments. PROMESA stripped the colonial gov-

ernment of its fiscal powers and created a financial control board (hereafter the

junta) that is reviled by the populace for imposing crushing austerity that is

impoverishing the archipelago. PROMESA was in effect a declaration that

Puerto Rico’s political class could not be trusted to manage the colony in the

interests of U.S. capital.

The United States also had serious management issues of its own in dealing

with the colony. The botched response of the Federal Emergency Management

Administration (FEMA) to the disaster caused by Hurricane María revealed

that the Trump administration was incapable of managing Puerto Rico’s recov-

ery. FEMA was beset by the same unpreparedness, incompetence, and lack of

planning that Trump insisted was uniquely Puerto Rican. It was lambasted for

its failure to provide timely relief and for a callously bureaucratic emergency

response to the devastation caused by the hurricane on September 20, 2017. An

internal investigation in fact documents the agency’s numerous failings

(Sullivan, 2018). FEMA ultimately bears much responsibility for nearly 5,000

deaths (Kishore etal., 2018). Through sheer braggadocio and outright fabrica-

tions, Trump triumphantly proclaimed that FEMA’s response was an “incred-

ible success” (Gambino, 2018). In characteristic fashion, he tweeted that Puerto

906509LAPXXX10.1177/0094582X20906509Latin American PerspectivesCabán/Commentary

research-article2020

Pedro Cabán is a professor of Latin American, Caribbean, and Latina/o studies at the University

at Albany.