ABSTRACT

Hurricane Maria barreled through the Caribbean in September of 2017 towards the end of a violent, record-breaking hurricane season. Maria caused unprecedented flooding, infrastructural damage, and an island-wide blackout on the United States island territory of Puerto Rico, and left torrential rainfall and months of recovery in its wake. The destruction Maria inflicted strained Puerto Rico far beyond its capabilities, especially as the island had already been contending with a crippling $72 billion debt crisis. Scholars have found that “environmental shocks” like hurricanes, while occurring at similar rates around the world, become disasters because of human forces and are particularly susceptible to economics, with poorer nations enduring more natural disasters than wealthy ones.  However, as a U.S territory, Puerto Rico does not have self-determination. Its economic development, and in turn its disaster risk, is instead often the product of decisions made in Washington. As such, Hurricane Maria can be used to understand Puerto Rico’s economics and its relationship to the United States. This dissertation seeks to contextualize Hurricane Maria within the greater framework of Puerto Rico’s economy by observing the storm’s preparation and aftermath and Puerto Rican economic history. The contemporary debt crisis and the events of the hurricane are synthesized to contextualize Hurricane Maria not just as a catastrophic natural disaster, but also as a part of a broader economic context. Considering that climate change will likely bring more storms of similar or greater magnitude to Maria, having an idea of their potential human impact can influence how societies react to, prepare for, and mitigate disasters through local action and deep reflections on the effect of politics and economics.