Fueling and delinking from energy coloniality in Puerto Rico

ABSTRACT

In September 2017, Hurricane María rattled Puerto Rico and its Caribbean neighbors. To study this US colony’s post-hurricane crises, long-time histories and present experiences with what I call ‘energy coloniality’ and ‘energy privilege’ must be foregrounded. This approach allows for an understanding of this unnatural disaster as just one of countless systemic colonial and neoliberal entwined cruelties, driven by disaster capitalism. Informed by fieldwork and years of ‘e-advocacy,’ I critique four rhetorical problems that shape everyday and extraordinary emergencies in Puerto Rico. While I focus on this archipelago, hegemonic emergency discourses are widespread and linked to what I term the ‘emergency manager effect.’ This shock doctrine outcome is constituted by neoliberal and colonial governance and discourses, whereby undemocratically appointed overseers manage local places and peoples, who are perceived as anachronistic and incapable of solving problems independently. Delinking from these exploitative strategies and systems requires intervening in the entanglements of energy coloniality, energy privilege, and neoliberalism, as reckless extractivism continues to disproportionately target frontline communities.

KEYWORDS:

• Disaster capitalism
• emergency management
• energy coloniality
• energy privilege
• Puerto Rico

Acknowledgments

This article is derived from the author’s dissertation, which received the National Communication Association’s 2017 Top Dissertation Award in the Environmental Communication Division. The author would like to acknowledge her committee members for their support, especially Phaedra C. Pezzullo. She also thanks the editor, anonymous reviewers, and José Castro Sotomayor for their helpful suggestions, as well as the groups and individuals who inspired this project, including the Instituto Nacional de Energía y Sostenibilidad Isleña and Coquí Solar members.

Disclosure statement

The author volunteers with one of the groups studied in this essay.

ORCID

Catalina M. de Onís http://orcid.org/0000-0002-4281-1739

Notes

1 While other island nations also were hard hit, this essay focuses on Puerto Rico, given my research in this area.

2 I do not italicize Spanish words, given my ‘decolonial aim’ that resists privileging English (Holling & Calafell, 2011, p. 21).

3 Two of my elderly relatives died within three months of the storm. The local government’s official death toll underestimated the actual number of dead by at least 70 times, with 4645 ‘excess deaths’ uncovered from September 20 to the end of 2017 (Kishore et al., 2018, para. 2). The Puerto Rico Syllabus documents the ‘Politics of Counting the Dead’ (https://puertoricosyllabus.com/hurricane-maria/the-aftermath/).

4 The 1920 Merchant Marine Act requires Puerto Rico to import goods using US flag-carrying and -staffed ships. This relationship of compulsory dependency persistently has hindered Puerto Rico financially over the years and impeded recovery efforts (de Onís, 2018a). Also furthering dependency, mishandled governmental dealings relied on bonds to cover for budgetary overspending. With the downgrading of bonds to junk status, hedge fund investors and vulture capitalists have exploited Puerto Rico’s debt. As many Puerto Ricans migrated to the US mainland for financial relief, the tax base and the government’s ability to pay its growing debts dwindled (Wolff, 2016).

5 FEMA’s ineptitude, lack of transparency, and other problems frequently are reported (Acevedo, 2018; Delk, 2017).

6 Joining numerous scholars and practitioners, I mark Puerto Rico as a US colony to name its political reality.

7 As I have written elsewhere, ‘Informed by environmental and climate justice, energy justice is concerned with how people of color and poor communities are impacted by global climate disruption, energy poverty, energy vulnerability, and decarbonization (i.e. transitioning from high-carbon energy sources, such as petroleum and coal, to low-carbon energies, such as wind and solar). Energy justice also struggles against the exploitation of indigenous lands and communities for high-risk and toxic energy development, from nuclear to fracked gas, and also recognizes the importance of sustainable jobs in the renewable energy sector and achieving energy security and sovereignty in relation to infrastructure, distribution, and access. Furthermore, this movement discourse strives for direct community participation for deliberating and making decisions (i.e. procedural justice) to advance sustainable practices, including considerations of how, where, and for/by whom energy is produced, installed, distributed, used, maintained, and disposed of’ (de Onís, 2018a, p. 2).

8 de Onís (2016) provides a detailed discussion of my methods and ethical considerations.

9 To locate interviewees, I began with a few initial recommended contacts. I then asked collaborators to suggest other potential individuals. Interviews were conducted in locations most convenient for interviewees and in their preferred language (i.e. Spanish or English), although many exchanges included code switching and Spanglish. Conversations were documented with a digital recorder, while I took hand-written notes that were later transcribed.

10 Venator-Santiago (2015) discusses Puerto Rico’s sovereignty struggles and the deep divisions based on political status.

11 Heavy deforestation and wetlands draining was carried out by the sugarcane industry to make the land ‘productive’ (Valdés Pizzini, 2006). While a detailed discussion of this industry exceeds this essay, the environmental injustices facing former sugarcane communities are significant for examining past and present energy coloniality in Puerto Rico, including slavery.

12 These incentives evaporated in 2006, prompting a decade-long recession.

13 An additional overseer was placed in control of board-determined critical energy projects: former Air Force Colonel Noel Zamot (Scurria, 2017). In October 2017, this ‘revitalization coordinator’ was selected by La Junta for another management role as ‘PREPA’s Chief Transformation officer.’ In response to this emergency manager position, Yulín Cruz tweeted: ‘This may be an excuse to privatize our energy services. That means our economic future will be in private hands’ (Johnson, 2017). Governor Rosselló’s administration claimed that, under the right conditions, the position held such overreaching powers, that the officer could effectively rule as governor. Agreeing with these concerns, a US District judge denied Zamot’s PREPA appointment (Bases, 2017; Junta, 2017; Ruiz Kuilan, 2017).

14 Puerto Rico complicates existing communication scholarship on resilience at ‘the nation’ level. Studying resilience and this ‘stateless nation’ requires considering its fluid relationship with the US diaspora and the impacts of US-colonial government relations (Duany, 2002, p. 5).

15 Bonilla (2018) argues that Puerto Ricans are ‘guinea pigs’ for crypto-colonialism, which involves digital ‘mining’ transactions that require a large amount of electricity per transaction (Yarovaya & Lucey, 2018).

16 Decentralization is not inherently liberatory, as evinced by cryptocurrency.

17 Similar efforts are underway by Casa Pueblo (de Onís, 2018b). Klein’s new book (2018) and documentary, The Battle for Paradise, features this organization.