La isla de la fantasia

September 1, 2019

The unincorporated U.S. territory of Puerto Rico is a political, economic, and social conundrum. Or, as Morales (Living in Spanglish) argues in his new nonfiction epic on the archipelago--it's a fantasy. This work is ambitious, intimidating, and beautiful. With detailed historical research, well-supported arguments, and the occasional sparkling anecdote, the author deconstructs Puerto Rico's legacy as "the oldest colony." Yet a colony's history cannot be understood without examining its colonizer, and detailing the rapidly changing situation on the islands, Morales glimpses a bellwether for what is to come if neoliberalism is left to run its course. His investigation dives into the policies that positioned the area to churn out wealth for foreign investment while leaving very little to support its own infrastructures and people. By getting granular with the facts of this "dispossession," Morales does an outstanding job of illustrating how the "racialized logic of capitalism" works--and doesn't--on the islands. VERDICT This book will be particularly important to readers with a connection to Puerto Rico and useful and thought-provoking to anyone else seeking to understand capitalism's past, present, and future.--Sierra Dickey, Ctr. for New Americans, Northampton, MA

Copyright 2019 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

September 9, 2019
Journalist Morales (Latinx: The New Force in American Politics and Culture) begins this eye-opening economic and political history by asserting that when Hurricane Maria hit Puerto Rico in September 2017, the Category 5 storm did more than down power lines and flatten homes—it “laid bare the racist colonialism with which the United States has often administered” the island. Morales traces the history of that colonialism to the Insular Cases, a series of Supreme Court rulings issued in 1901 that codified Puerto Rico’s status as an unincorporated territory, and to the 1917 Jones Act, which granted Puerto Ricans a limited form of U.S. citizenship while exempting the island’s bonds from federal, local, and state taxes, effectively setting the stage for the rampant speculation that helped to create the debt crisis a century later. Morales’s high-level economic analysis will be heavy lifting for nonexperts, but he argues persuasively that federal interventions such as Operation Bootstrap, a mid-century program to industrialize the local economy, and the 2016 Puerto Rico Oversight, Management, and Economic Stability Act, which created a White House–appointed board to oversee the island’s debt restructuring, have been disastrous for Puerto Ricans. Morales’s preferred solution is “independence with reparations”; his technical yet impassioned polemic will persuade those with a keen interest in the subject.

September 15, 2019
Journalist and author Morales (Latinx, 2018) presents a fascinating and nuanced discussion of the roots of the crisis in his parents' native Puerto Rico in this solidly researched look at a place outsiders actually know little about. Covering the entire history of the green island as a Spanish colony and a territory of the United States since the Spanish-American War of 1898, he methodically tracks and clearly condemns the trajectory of U.S. discrimination and exploitation that has led to the current unstable political and financial situation. Morales maps the events that led to Puerto Rico's debt, debt forgiveness, and reparations, bringing a fresh perspective to complicated issues and enlivening his study by recounting his family's journey through this history, one shared by all members of the Puerto Rican diaspora. Weighing arguments for the island becoming a state or a sovereign nation, Morales makes the case that it is the Puerto Rican people, on the island and off, who should determine Puerto Rico's future. A timely and essential look at the troubled relationship between the U.S. and this Caribbean territory.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2019, American Library Association.)