Puerto Rico’s Summer 2019 Uprising and the Crisis of Colonialism
July 22, 2019, was a watershed moment in Puerto Rico’s history. On that day Puerto Ricans by the hundreds of thousands marched and demanded the resignation of Ricardo Rosselló Nevares, the colony’s inept and ethically bankrupt governor. On August 2 the pro-statehood governor became the first elected governor of Puerto Rico to resign his office.
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In the summer of 2019 Puerto Ricans repudiated the entrenched and self-perpetuating political class for its unfathomable venality, incompetence, and hubris. Puerto Rico’s political institutions were shaken, many of its leaders were discredited, and the legitimacy of the entire colonial regime rapidly eroded. Ironically, the Obama and Trump administrations may have emboldened the popular uprising. On June 30, 2016, President Obama signed into law the Puerto Rican Oversight, Management, and Economic Stability Act (PROMESA), a law designed to maximize the extraction of wealth from Puerto Rico to pay down the massive debt (estimated at US$74 billion) accumulated by successive Puerto Rican governments.
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