“Cuando Colón baje el dedo”: the role of repair in urban reproduction

Abstract

ABSTRACT In contrast to personal bankruptcy, which provides debt relief without loss of essential life-sustaining properties such as housing, vehicles and basic furnishing, processes of municipal insolvency wield devastating impacts on everyday patterns and properties of social reproduction at the urban level. Part of the municipal debt restructuring process being enacted in Puerto Rico includes the privatization of major public infrastructures, including elements of the water system and the entire electric grid – processes that have impacted personal finances and affected public health outcomes for residents. This paper uses document analysis, participant observation, and the lens of embodiment to examine the relationship between urban forms of social reproduction, repair, and bankruptcy in Puerto Rico, United States. It ultimately reveals two very different imaginaries of Puerto Rican futurity at work: one dominated by the maintenance of colonial debt relations, while a nascent other works to build new spatialities of collective self-determination and social healing.