Abstract
This essay examines how contemporary Puerto Rican art contests the island archipelago's twenty-first-century public debt crisis and its effects on the government's failed response to the devastating 2017 hurricane season. Puerto Rico's colonial status makes life on the island inherently unstable because its residents are subject to fiscal, social, and environmental laws not of their own making: the island's finances have been dictated since 2016 by an unelected Fiscal Oversight and Management Board. Perhaps because of this lack of democratic representation, contemporary art has flourished as a space in which Puerto Ricans can make their voices heard. Traditional gallery installations, public murals, community art projects, and digital media have all emerged as sites in which Puerto Ricans resist colonial disaster capitalism and its disregard for the lives and landscapes of the island. This essay considers how the art of Daniel Lind-Ramos, the organization Beta-Local, and the project Valor y Cambio challenge differing forms of indebtedness, asking who owes what to whom given Puerto Rico's history of occupation, enslavement, and economic exploitation.