ABSTRACT

Soon after Hurricane Maria devastated Puerto Rico in September of 2017, its resultant humanitarian crisis prompted local and federal governments to respond to the island’s many infrastructural failures through a series of neoliberal proposals centered around the repayment of its $72 billion debt. Despite public disapproval, many such changes have passed, reducing Puerto Ricans’ access to resources and the quality of life across the island. Most infamous among these was the privatization of Puerto Rico’s electrical system from PREPA to LUMA, which has since led to worse outages and higher billing rates. Rather than resort to privatization, the governments could have instead opted for one of the island’s many renewable energy projects designed around the needs and conditions of Puerto Ricans and their archipelago. This paper looks at two such projects and seeks to emphasize the importance of alternative systems like these as crucial elements of both disaster mitigation and decolonization. Through interviews conducted with project leaders from Casa Pueblo, whose solar panels powered their community after Hurricane Maria and other island-wide blackouts, and from the University of Puerto Rico Mayagüez, whose work includes developing a community-based, distributed generation micro-grid, I compare their systems’ service distribution and priorities, environmental impact, and financial impact to those of PREPA and LUMA as described in archival sources. These comparisons show not only the neocolonial nature of the current electrical energy system but also the urgency of implementing an alternate model in the face of climate change and unnatural disasters.

Presented October 2022 at the Deconstructing Disaster/Reconsidering Relief conference through the School of Advanced Study, University of London.