Fantasy Island: Colonialism, Exploitation, and the Betrayal of Puerto Rico

Description

For the last century, Puerto Rico has served as a testing ground for the most aggressive and exploitative U.S. economic, political, and social policies. The devastation was laid bare by Hurricane Maria in 2017, which exposed how the island as a whole was deteriorating, and the merciless path of destruction created by the island's debt crisis could no longer be covered up. In Fantasy Island, journalist Ed Morales uncovers the roots of the crisis. The island has been a colonial satellite, a dumping ground for U.S. manufactured goods, a tax shelter, and now a blank canvas for disaster capitalism on the frontlines of climate change. The suffering and struggle of Puerto Ricans is colossal evidence of the colonial wound the U.S. has inflicted on much of Latin America, and a nagging harbinger of the potential fate of the rest of the United States. Morales takes readers from San Juan to New York City and back, showing us both the machinations of financial leaders and politicians in the U.S. and the resistance efforts of activists in Puerto Rico. The fate of Puerto Rico depends on how it survives the critical years ahead, and Fantasy Island is a necessary account of the forces that brought the island to its knees.

Ed Morales is a journalist who has investigated New York City electoral politics, police brutality, street gangs, grassroots activists, and the Latino arts and music scene. His work has appeared in Rolling Stone, The New York Times, Miami Herald, San Francisco Examiner, The Los Angeles Times, The Guardian, Jacobin, and The Nation. Morales has also appeared on CNN, Hispanics Today, Urban Latino, HBO Latino, CNN Espanol, WNBC-TV's Visiones, WABC's Tiempo, BBC television and radio, and the Fox Morning News in Washington D.C. He has lectured at Bowdoin College, Vanderbilt University, University of New Mexico, West Chester College in Pennsylvania, Columbia University, Hunter College, Wooster College of Ohio, NYU, and the University of Connecticut. Ed Morales is currently an adjunct professor at Columbia University's Center for the Study of Ethnicity and Race, and occasionally appears as a host on WBAI-FM. He lives in New York City.

"[An] eye-opening economic and political history... [Morales's] technical yet impassioned polemic will persuade those with a keen interest in the subject."--Publishers Weekly "Ambitious, intimidating, and beautiful...This book will be particularly important to readers with a connection to Puerto Rico and useful and thought-provoking to anyone else seeking to understand capitalism's past, present, and future."--Library Journal "Ed Morales has put together a compelling indictment of U.S. colonialism in Puerto Rico, based on journalistic and academic sources as well as his personal experiences as a New York-born Puerto Rican who cares deeply about his ancestral homeland. His work is an engaging, compassionate, well-documented, and crisply written analysis of the political, economic, and demographic downturn of the Island, after more than a decade of economic recession and almost two years since hurricane Maria."--Jorge Duany, author of Puerto Rico: What Everyone Needs to Know "The hurricanes, the debt, the depopulation. Ed Morales has written an urgent, fascinating, and impassioned portrait of Puerto Rico, the world's oldest colony."--Daniel Immerwahr, author of How to Hide an Empire: A History of the Greater United States