What to Read on a Puerto Rico Vacation

Understanding Puerto Rico After Hurricane Maria

Naomi Klein's book, The Battle for Paradise, addresses the challenge of transforming Puerto Rico after Hurricane Maria. — Naomi Klein’s book, The Battle for Paradise, addresses the challenge of transforming Puerto Rico after Hurricane Maria.

If your whole neighborhood were to somehow blow down, say via hurricane, who would get to decide how, and if, to rebuild? You probably would like to think that you would, of course, but your insurer might have an opinion, your town board might be revamping building requirements in light of the catastrophe, and no doubt the state and federal governments would weigh in. Oh, and real estate developers, banks, and environmentalists just might have a viewpoint, too. Whose timeline will be followed? Who is going to pay for it all? Who ultimately be leaving, and who will stay? Or arrive shortly? What opportunity is there to make it all better than it was before? And who defines ‘better’? And shouldn’t it all become more economically and environmentally sustainable?

Anyone who happens to be on a Puerto Rico vacation in the post-Hurricane Maria world cannot help but wonder just that. Visitors just trying to assist by spreading around their tourist dollars on the island might begin to learn some of the nuances of Puerto Rico politics by picking up a copy of a small but succinct book, Naomi Klein’s The Battle for Paradise: Puerto Rico Takes on the Disaster Capitalists (Haymarket Books 2018).

Klein, a journalist and a writer for The Intercept, introduces the casual reader to all that makes Puerto Rico a dizzying blend of tourism, capitalism, environmentalism, agriculturalism, colonialism, grassroots activism, and what Klein calls ‘Puertopianism,’ the notion that Puerto Rico should evolve into a tax haven and business center along the lines of a sunnier, more blissful Hong Kong.

That’s a lot to take in if one just happens to be searching for a bit of understanding of the place while indulging in some beach reading during a Puerto Rico vacation. Even so, this reader appreciates Klein’s introduction to some of the nuances and undercurrents that make Puerto Rico what it is today and what it may well evolve into tomorrow. Having visited Puerto Rico just a couple of months after the hurricane, when power was still in short supply, many venues remained closed, and ConEd trucks lined the streets of Old San Juan, I gathered even then, from talking to locals, that Puerto Rico’s recovery was a complex task impacted, of course, by politics, its colonial past, desires for or against statehood, outdated infrastructure, and occasional incompetence.

As Klein points out, any number of stakeholders happen to have an interest in Puerto Rico’s reconstruction, but whose interests will ultimately prevail remain to be seen.