Entry Questions
What topics and sources would you like to see included in the semester-wide exam?
Draft a preliminary question based on one source from the class that impacted you.
Context
The Puerto Rican crisis of the twentieth-first century includes an economic recession, an illegal (non-audited) debt, climate disasters, an extended energy blackout, aid mismanagement and neglect, a massive shutdown of schools, the defunding of public education, the privatization and deterioration of public services, a wave of femicides and queer-phobic crimes, forced migration to the US, internal displacement due to a tourist-US investor led economies, land-grabbing and 126 years of US colonialism that denies Puerto Rico to this day the right of choice to either statehood and full citizenship or independence.
In the last chapter of his book Puerto Rico: A National History, historian Dr. Jorell Meléndez Badillo examines why Puerto Rico arrived at its current juncture and how Puerto Ricans imagine possible futures in the face of austerity, failing infrastructures, and the rubble left behind by colonial neglect.
Beatriz Llenín Figueroa is an independent writer, editor, and translator. She is also an Associate Editor at Editora Educación Emergente (EEE). In her piece “The Maroons are Deathless, We are Deathless,” she argues that driven by an ideology of privatization, government deregulation, and endlessly increasing debt for “development,” neoliberalism is “at once the motor and proposed savior of the current humanitarian and fiscal crisis in Puerto Rico.” However, she says the #RickyRenuncia protests demonstrate that amid this “dire situation, Puerto Ricans ‘on the ground’ and in the commons are illuminating the way toward another, and better, country.”
Maroon Communities in the Americas
The institution of slavery was threatened when large groups of Africans escaped to geographically secluded regions to form self-emancipated communities, often referred to as maroon communities. Such communities were established throughout the Americas, particularly in the Caribbean and Brazil. They developed their culture, government, trade, and military defense against their European and American oppressors. In short, they attempted to live as free people beyond the planters’ or colonial officials’ sight and control.
What does the figure of the “maroons” and the descriptive word “deathless” signify in Llenín Figueroa’s piece?
“We honor the submarine corals made from the bodies of our enslaved, our migrants, our poor, our women, our queers, our dispossessed, our freedom-seekers. In and through them, we, Antilleans, islanders, and Caribbean peoples, stand united. The maroons are deathless. We are deathless.”
-Beatriz Llenín Figueroa
Presentation (s):
Analytical Work In Pairs:
Compare and explain these arguments by Llenín Figueroa and Meléndez Badillo. Expand your discussion and include examples presented in each reading.
(1) “The hashtag [#MeCagoEnLaIsla meaning “I take a shit on the island” or “fuck the island.”] is intimately connected to the forms of hatred insofar as it reenacts a longstanding ideology of loathing toward our insular geography. Originally deployed by the very empires that, ironically, were built on the blood and resources of the Caribbean archipelagos they revile, [this] ideology has been consistently reproduced by the local elites of complicit, neocolonial criminals. -Llenín Figueroa
“The future without Puerto Ricans [is] a political project that sought to make Puerto Rico a disappearing archipelago. As many Puerto Ricans struggle to survive or make ends meet, a new class of wealthy US foreigners has arrived in the archipelago to take advantage of the government’s tax incentives… For many in Puerto Rico… this is just another form of colonialism (205)”- Meléndez Badillo
(2): “In light of these recent developments in the country, and now trembling with expectation, I can confirm that there is an even more intense, and equally longstanding, love for the island, as opposed to its loathing.” -Llenín Figueroa
“The younger generations are enacting politics and other forms of participatory democracy beyond the ballot box… For many of the people who participate in these projects, decolonization is an urgent matter. Since they cannot continue to wait for elected officials to help them, they rely on themselves to do so. The phrase “sólo el pueblo slava a pueblo” (only the people will save the people) acquires power in this context (211-212).”
Bad Bunny and the politics of everyday life
.Benito Martínez Ocasio, aka Bad Bunny, came to fame during an (ongoing) intense socio-political-ecological collapse in the archipelago of Puerto Rico- a colonial territory since the US invaded in 1898.
.Keeping a balance between his reggaeton/trap/pop persona (a carefree sexual adventurer- now burdened by fame), he has also used and shared his platform to discuss issues regarding political corruption, gender politics in music, queer and trans rights, and visibility, the visitor economy, ecological deterioration, and the displacement of local communities.
. You can find the original lyrics and English translation here.
The repeated phrase “Puerto Rico ‘ta bien cabrón”(Puerto Rico is fucking awesome) discusses the importance of a Black music lineage (bomba, salsa, reggaeton), sports dominance, local knowledge/saberes, Caribbean solidarity (shout out to the Dominican Republic!), activism, political resistance to colonialism (through its images of political leaders and protests), neoliberalism, and corruption. “Cabrón” also means fucked-up, demanding, and challenging.
.The video is interrupted by a “breaking news” story by independent journalist Bianca Graulau about the power system’s vulnerability after the government privatized the company. The report gives context to understand the economic increase in utilities and how the many blackouts are taking lives and affecting the locals daily. The song then “performs” a blackout, a “maldito apagón.”
.Bad Bunny identifies an appropriation problem due to reggaeton’s popularity on a global scale. He says everyone mimics the genre and the Puerto Rican/Latino slang. For him, this cultural issue mirrors the dynamics of colonialism. He warns people, “welcome to el calentón,” you are going to burn, “cuidao con mi corillo,” beware of Puerto Ricans because we don’t stand for shit/fakeness/ political abuse.
.The party scene could be read as a sequence that plays or reproduces tourist’s expectations about the island. At the same time, it is also portraying Puerto Rican queer joy and pleasure as resistance.
.The song ends with a femme voice declaring that she doesn’t want to migrate or be displaced. They (the tourists/the US investors/ the privatizers/the fake appropriators) are the ones who must go because they are taking what belongs to us.