Decolonizing Resilience: The Case of Reconstructing the Coffee Region of Puerto Rico After Hurricanes Irma and Maria

Abstract

The term resilience has saliency in the scholarship and policy on post-disaster management and disaster-risk reduction. In this paper, we assess the use of resilience as a concept for post-disaster reconstruction in Puerto Rico and offer a critique of the standard definition. This critique focuses on the primacy of Puerto Rico’s colonial relations with the United States meshed with decades of political mismanagement of the island’s economic and natural resources by local authorities and political parties. For resilience to be a useful conceptual device, we argue for decolonizing resilience and show the relevance of such an argument through a case study of the island’s coffee-growing region. Decolonizing resilience exposes power inequities and the individuating nature of post-disaster reconstruction to illustrate how collective action and direct participation of local actors and communities carves out autonomous spaces of engagement. Decolonizing resilience necessitates a contextualized analysis of resilience, taking into account “the politics of resilience” embedded in the island’s colonial history and the policy bottlenecks it creates.

Awareness of climate change's impacts and motivation to adapt are not enough to drive action: A look of Puerto Rican farmers after Hurricane Maria

“…This is evident in the Caribbean, given the region’s neocolonial dynamics, where many islands’ sovereignty resides on continental countries [ 22 – 24 ]. This is the case of Puerto Rico as an unincorporated territory of the United States.…”

“…This study focuses in Puerto Rico, an unincorporated territory of the United States that imports around 85% of the food it consumes, and that is going through a social-economic crisis because of its billion dollar debt and political situation [ 44 – 47 ]. In response to Puerto Rico’s debt crisis in 2016, the United States’ government created a Fiscal Management and Oversight Board that, alongside the local government, imposed austerity measures, and made visible Puerto Rico’s lack of political agency as a territory of the United States [ 22 , 23 ]. Simultaneous and previous to this change, the agricultural sector in Puerto Rico was experiencing positive changes, such as a rise in new farmers, production increases, and increased awareness of food security [ 17 , 48 – 50 ].…”

Puerto Rican Farmers' Psychological Awareness of Climate Change, and Adaptation Perceptions after Hurricane Maria

“…Farmers in Latin America [65,66], and the Caribbean [68,69] [6,23,24,49,51], and are localized in a region that still today is subject to colonial relationships and power dynamics that increase their vulnerability to natural hazards [28][29][30]. It is important to understand the degree to which psychological awareness (not distance) of climate change relates to other cognitive beliefs and decision-making, but this cannot be done through ignoring the circumstances in which farmers are embedded.…”

“…This study focuses in Puerto Rico, an unincorporated territory of the United States that imports around 85% of the food it consumes, and that is going through a social-economic crisis because of its billion dollar debt and political situation [46][47][48][49]. In response to Puerto Rico's debt crisis in 2016 , the United States' government created a Fiscal Management and Oversight Board that imposed austerity measures, and made visible Puerto Rico's lack of political agency as a territory of the United States [28,29]. Simultaneous and previous to this change, the agricultural sector in Puerto Rico was experiencing positive changes, such as a rise in new farmers, production increases, and increased awareness of food security [23,[49][50][51].…”

“…Nevertheless, given the heterogeneity of islands' sociopolitical systems, context-specific research is important to better understand adaptive capacity [12,27]. This is evident in the Caribbean, given the region's neocolonial dynamics, where many islands' sovereignty resides on continental countries [28][29][30]. This is the case of Puerto Rico as an Unincorporated Territory of the United States.…”