Building a Puerto Rico 'Better than the One We Lost': Hurricane San Felipe II and the Puerto Rican New Deal

Abstract

Abstract This essay examines the connection between Hurricane San Felipe II (1928) and the Puerto Rican New Deal, an agrarian reconstruction plan initiated in 1933 to redistribute land, diversify agricultural production and create a more self-sufficient economy. I argue that San Felipe II played a critical role in intensifying and exposing the environmental conditions that gave rise to the Puerto Rican New Deal. In response, Puerto Rican workers, farmers and reformers used the hurricane to call attention to their plight, put pressure on colonial officials and initiate a series of reforms that laid the foundation for the more comprehensive measures of the New Deal era. I show how, in the aftermath of the storm, Puerto Ricans leveraged the specific impacts of the storm, what I call 'disaster populism', to defend their interests and demand agrarian reconstruction.