Beyond Colonial Entrapment: The Challenges of Puerto Rican “National Consciousness” in Times of Promesa

Abstract

In 2016 the Congress of the United States approved the Puerto Rico Oversight, Management, and Economic Stability Act (PROMESA), with the stated purpose of creating an oversight board that would address the restructuring of Puerto Rico’s debt, and facilitate the rapid creation of critical infrastructure. This board, locally known as “La Junta,” has been challenged by heterogeneous resistance comprising organized political movements, intellectual discussions, and practices of everyday resistance. I argue the current political imaginary is filled with arguments and actions that are going beyond the national liberation frame (or colonial entrapment) towards a decolonial “national consciousness.” This essay has three aims. First, by discussing different colonial norms and discourses established throughout the twentieth century, I will introduce the concept of “colonial entrapment” as the dominant paradigm of PR-USA colonial/racial relations. Second, drawing on Fanon’s work on colonial violence, revolution and decolonization, I will discuss how it seeks to overcome colonial entrapment and thus how it may provide effective theoretical and practical tools for a resistance movement with a wider intersectional approach as provided by the lens of national consciousness. Thirdly, I will conclude by underlining the post-Hurricane Maria scenario and how it reflects the continuity of colonial entrapment.