Aftershocks of Disaster: Puerto Rico Before and After the Storm PDF
Preview Aftershocks of Disaster: Puerto Rico Before and After the Storm
© 2019 Yarimar Bonilla and Marisol LeBrón Published in 2019 by Haymarket Books P.O. Box 180165 Chicago, IL 60618 773-583-7884 www.haymarketbooks.org [email protected] ISBN: 978-1-64259-086-9 Distributed to the trade in the US through Consortium Book Sales and Distribution (www.cbsd.com) and internationally through Ingram Publisher Services International (www.ingramcontent.com). This book was published with the generous support of Lannan Foundation and Wallace Action Fund. Special discounts are available for bulk purchases by organizations and institutions. Please call 773-583-7884 or email [email protected] for more information. Cover artwork, Pentagramas (Staves) series, detail, 2012, 18 x 12 in, paper cutout, by Frances Gallardo Cover design by Rachel Cohen. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication data is available. TABLE OF CONTENTS Foreword Arcadio Díaz-Quiñones Introduction: Aftershocks of Disaster Yarimar Bonilla and Marisol LeBrón PART I: OPENINGS The Trauma Doctrine A Conversation between Yarimar Bonilla and Naomi Klein ¡Ay María! Mariana Carbonell, Marisa Gómez Cuevas, José Luis Gutiérrez, José Eugenio Hernández, Mickey Negrón, Maritza Pérez Otero, and Bryan Villarini; translated by Carina del Valle Schorske PART II: NARRATING THE TRAUMA WAPA Radio: Voices amid the Silence and Desperation Sandra D. Rodríguez Cotto María’s Death Toll: On the Crucial Role of Puerto Rico’s Investigative Journalists Carla Minet (note for a friend who wants to commit suicide after the hurricane) Raquel Salas Rivera “I’m Quite Comfortable”: Abandonment and Resignation after María Benjamín Torres Gotay Narrating the Unnameable Eduardo Lalo If a Tree Falls in an Island: The Metaphysics of Colonialism Ana Portnoy Brimmer This Was Meant to Be a Hurricane Diary Beatriz Llenín Figueroa Another Haphazard Gesture Sofía Gallisá Muriente PART III: REPRESENTING THE DISASTER Our Fellow Americans: Why Calling Puerto Ricans “Americans” Will Not Save Them Frances Negrón-Muntaner US Media Depictions of Climate Migrants: The Recent Case of the Puerto Rican “Exodus” Hilda Lloréns Accountability and Representation: Photographic Coverage after the Disaster Erika P. Rodríguez Lifting the Veil: Portraiture as a Tool for Bilateral Representation Christopher Gregory The Importance of Politically Engaged Artistic and Curatorial Practices in the Aftermath of Hurricane María Marianne Ramírez-Aponte Si no pudiera hacer arte, me iba: The Aesthetics of Disaster as Catharsis in Contemporary Puerto Rican Art Carlos Rivera Santana Art and a Threshold Called Dignity TIAGO (Richard Santiago) Picking up the Pieces Adrian Roman PART IV: CAPITALIZING ON THE CRISIS sinvergüenza sin nación/sinvergüenza with no nation Raquel Salas Rivera Puerto Rico’s Unjust Debt Ed Morales Puerto Rico’s Debt Is Odious Natasha Lycia Ora Bannan Dismantling Public Education in Puerto Rico Rima Brusi and Isar Godreau Puerto Rico’s Fight for a Citizen Debt Audit: A Strategy for Public Mobilization and a Fair Reconstruction Eva L. Prados-Rodríguez Rhizomatic Ana Portnoy Brimmer PART V: TRANSFORMING PUERTO RICO Looking for a Way Forward in the Past: Lessons from the Puerto Rican Nationalist Party Mónica Jiménez Psychoanalysis as a Political Act after María Patricia Noboa Ortega Authenticating Loss and Contesting Recovery: FEMA and the Politics of Colonial Disaster Management Sarah Molinari The Energy Uprising: A Community-Driven Search for Sustainability and Sovereignty in Puerto Rico Arturo Massol-Deyá Community Kitchens: An Emerging Movement? Giovanni Roberto Building Accountability and Secure Futures: An Interview with Mari Mari Narváez Marisol LeBrón Afterword: Critique and Decoloniality in the Face of Crisis, Disaster, and Catastrophe Nelson Maldonado-Torres Acknowledgments Contributor Bios Index FOREWORD Arcadio Díaz-Quiñones Long before Hurricane María, the fiscal and political crisis had invested all things Puerto Rican with increasing urgency. The threat of total collapse continues to raise major themes of discussion in a global context: colonial capitalism, human rights, gender equality, democracy, unpayable debt, climate change, migration and citizenship, environmental policies, education, and health care. And yet for many, the newly discovered US “territory” and the millions of second-class American citizens remain mysterious, or rather invisible, right before our eyes. Fortunately, there are signs that Puerto Rico’s and the United States’ long, transnational history—often silenced in the American mainstream—now commands serious attention from those trying to come to a better understanding of the legacies of colonialism and of Puerto Rican resistance. The willingness to ask a huge array of new questions inspired the organizers of the conference entitled “Aftershocks of Disaster—Puerto Rico a Year after María,” held at Rutgers University in New Brunswick, New Jersey, in September 2018. I attended the Rutgers colloquium, and what I saw and listened to in the give-and-take of conversation that day has stayed with me. The fact that this event was held in New Jersey—and that other colloquia animated by a similar spirit have been held in New York, Massachusetts, Connecticut, Illinois, and Washington, DC—shows, first, the strength of the ethos of solidarity among diverse diasporic communities and the institutions they have created as well as the moral sensibility of their allies at universities and research centers. Second, and equally important, it shows how the full extent of the disaster is driving the research, writing, and activism of a new generation of scholars and journalists. This is all particularly encouraging, especially in view of the drastic budgetary cuts that are proving so destructive for the Universidad de Puerto Rico at the worst possible time. Like other islands in the Caribbean, current struggles in Puerto Rico have roots deep in colonial history, dating back to the old Spanish colony and the
The list of books you might like
