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

by Ed Morales

Overview

A crucial, 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 ground for the most aggressive and exploitative US economic, political, and social policies. The devastation that ensued finally grew impossible to ignore in 2017, in the wake of Hurricane María, as the physical destruction compounded the infrastructure collapse and trauma inflicted by the debt crisis. In Fantasy Island, Ed Morales traces how, over the years, Puerto Rico has served as a colonial satellite, a Cold War Caribbean showcase, a dumping ground for US manufactured goods, and a corporate tax shelter. He also shows how it has become a blank canvas for mercenary experiments in disaster capitalism on the frontlines of climate change, hamstrung by internal political corruption and the US federal government's prioritization of outside financial interests.

Taking readers from San Juan to New York City and back to his family's home in the Luquillo Mountains, Morales shows us the machinations of financial and political interests in both the US and Puerto Rico, and the resistance efforts of Puerto Rican artists and activists. Through it all, he emphasizes that the only way to stop Puerto Rico from being bled is to let Puerto Ricans take control of their own destiny, going beyond the statehood-commonwealth-independence debate to complete decolonization.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781568588995
Publisher:	PublicAffairs
Publication date:	09/10/2019
Pages:	352
Sales rank:	122,156
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.30(h) x 1.30(d)

About the Author

Ed Morales is the author of Latinx, The Latin Beat, and Living in Spanglish. His work has appeared in Rolling Stone, The New York Times, The Village Voice, The Washington Post, The Los Angeles Times, The Guardian, and The Nation, among other national publications. He has also appeared on numerous television programs, is currently an adjunct professor at Columbia University's Center for the Study of Ethnicity and Race. He lives in New York City.

Table of Contents

Introduction 1

1 A Brief History of US Colonialism in Puerto Rico 19

2 Clear and Present Danger: Prelude to the Crisis 49

3 The Diablo in Derivatives: Borrowing to Meet Basic Needs 74

4 Bond Emissions, Corruption, and Betrayal: How Two Governments Failed Puerto Rico 104

5 PROMESA = Pobreza 139

6 Status Update? 167

7 Hurricane Maria Destroys the Commonwealth Fantasy 197

8 The Trump Factor: Vultures, Lobbyists, and Disaster Capitalism 227

9 The Art of Resistance 253

10 Fantasy's End 282

Acknowledgments 305

Notes 309

Index 323

Editorial Reviews

09/09/2019

Journalist Morales (Latinx: The New Force in American Politics and Culture) begins this eye-opening economic and political history by asserting that when Hurricane Maria hit Puerto Rico in September 2017, the Category 5 storm did more than down power lines and flatten homes—it “laid bare the racist colonialism with which the United States has often administered” the island. Morales traces the history of that colonialism to the Insular Cases, a series of Supreme Court rulings issued in 1901 that codified Puerto Rico’s status as an unincorporated territory, and to the 1917 Jones Act, which granted Puerto Ricans a limited form of U.S. citizenship while exempting the island’s bonds from federal, local, and state taxes, effectively setting the stage for the rampant speculation that helped to create the debt crisis a century later. Morales’s high-level economic analysis will be heavy lifting for nonexperts, but he argues persuasively that federal interventions such as Operation Bootstrap, a mid-century program to industrialize the local economy, and the 2016 Puerto Rico Oversight, Management, and Economic Stability Act, which created a White House–appointed board to oversee the island’s debt restructuring, have been disastrous for Puerto Ricans. Morales’s preferred solution is “independence with reparations”; his technical yet impassioned polemic will persuade those with a keen interest in the subject. (Sept.)

Publishers Weekly

"The hurricanes, the debt, the depopulation. Ed Morales has written an urgent, fascinating, and impassioned portrait of Puerto Rico, the world's oldest colony."—Daniel Immerwahr, author of How to Hide an Empire: A History of the Greater United States

"Ed Morales has put together a compelling indictment of U.S. colonialism in Puerto Rico, based on journalistic and academic sources as well as his personal experiences as a New York-born Puerto Rican who cares deeply about his ancestral homeland. His work is an engaging, compassionate, well-documented, and crisply written analysis of the political, economic, and demographic downturn of the Island, after more than a decade of economic recession and almost two years since hurricane Maria."—Jorge Duany, author of Puerto Rico: What Everyone Needs to Know

"Ambitious, intimidating, and beautiful...This book will be particularly important to readers with a connection to Puerto Rico and useful and thought-provoking to anyone else seeking to understand capitalism's past, present, and future."—Library Journal

"[An] eye-opening economic and political history... [Morales's] technical yet impassioned polemic will persuade those with a keen interest in the subject."—Publishers Weekly

From the Publisher

09/01/2019

The unincorporated U.S. territory of Puerto Rico is a political, economic, and social conundrum. Or, as Morales (Living in Spanglish) argues in his new nonfiction epic on the archipelago—it's a fantasy. This work is ambitious, intimidating, and beautiful. With detailed historical research, well-supported arguments, and the occasional sparkling anecdote, the author deconstructs Puerto Rico's legacy as "the oldest colony." Yet a colony's history cannot be understood without examining its colonizer, and detailing the rapidly changing situation on the islands, Morales glimpses a bellwether for what is to come if neoliberalism is left to run its course. His investigation dives into the policies that positioned the area to churn out wealth for foreign investment while leaving very little to support its own infrastructures and people. By getting granular with the facts of this "dispossession," Morales does an outstanding job of illustrating how the "racialized logic of capitalism" works—and doesn't—on the islands. VERDICT This book will be particularly important to readers with a connection to Puerto Rico and useful and thought-provoking to anyone else seeking to understand capitalism's past, present, and future.—Sierra Dickey, Ctr. for New Americans, Northampton, MA

Library Journal

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