Section 10
Guest Curation: Black Feminist Approaches to the Debt Crisis
curated by Ashley Coleman Taylor
Image Credit: Colectivo Moriví, “Libre y Peligrosa.” Detail from mural, 2019. Humacao, Puerto Rico.
Black feminism and the concept of intersectionality;
a Black feminist approach considers how race, gender, sexuality, class, colonial status, ability, and/or ethnicity, among other axes of difference, inform the impacts of the Puerto Rican debt crisis on the everyday lives of Black women and other marginalized people who navigate these realities.
Although popularized by Black women in a U.S. context, diasporic Black feminism reminds us that Black communities in the post-slavery Americas have shared (but not identical) experiences of multiple and overlapping forms of oppression such as racism, classism, and sexism. In this way, it is important to situate and contextualize Puerto Rico’s debt crisis within a broader framework that understands not only Black women’s subjugation and their resistance to such conditions, but also those who have various experiences of nonnormative gender.
A Hemispheric Introduction to Black Feminism
One of the key contributions of Black feminism is intersectionality. Intersectionality considers that ways that intersecting social locations (e.g. race, gender, class, or ability) inform access to or denial of power through oppressive systems. Specifically, in the case of Puerto Rico and other sites of debt colonialism, we can consider how Black women’s experience of the debt crisis as already marginalized citizens compounds its impacts. The readings in this section have been selected to provide learners with a foundation in key texts to analyze the other sections in this module alongside Black feminist issues in the Americas.
Ultimately, the texts in this section shows that Black feminism is not merely the study of Black women, but rather a method and approach to the study of power and lived realities of marginalization compounded by issues such as racism, sexism, etc.
READ: Combahee River Collective, “Combahee River Collective Statement”/”Manifesto Rio Combahee”
READ: Audre Lorde, “Age, Race, Class, and Sex: Women Redefining Difference”
WATCH: Kimberlé Crenshaw, “What is Intersectionality?”
WATCH: Angela Davis on Intersectional Feminism
READ: Christine Miyazato, “Intersectional Feminism 101”
WATCH: Yolanda Arroyo Pizarro, “Afrofeministamente: este es el momento de ser prietagonistas de la historia” or READ: Yolanda Arroyo Pizarro, Afrofeministamente
READ: Tanía Ramirez, “Las claves del Feminismo Afro en América Latin y la potencia de la manitud”
READ: Ochy Curiel, “El dilema de las feministas negras”
READ: Bárbara I. Abadía-Rexach “Afrosanando heridas”
Foundations of Race, Class, and Gender Hierarchies in Puerto Rico
Contemporary phenomena like racism (as antiblackness), classism (as elitism), misogynoir (misogyny directed at Black women), homophobia, transphobia, and other oppressive ideologies in Puerto Rico have their root in history. The colonialization of the Caribbean took shape as European imperialism demanded territorial expansion at all costs. African enslavement emerged from imperialism and colonial control emerged the system of African enslavement, rooted in the economic system of capitalism and espousing the belief in the inferiority of darker peoples. During the Transatlantic Slave Trade, African peoples became the capital used for economic expansion in the Americas. As units of sale and production, enslaved Africans in colonies like Puerto Rico became commodities in the expansion of capitalism. The Spanish colony of Puerto Rico under Spanish rule was built on the extraction of labor (enslaved peoples) and resources (goods and property).
The post-slavery 20th century found Puerto Rico under the weight of U.S. imperialism. This led to the establishment of detrimental economic policies and an Americanization project rooted in extractive colonialism control and undergirded by racist ideologies. The current debt crisis in Puerto Rico is a direct result of the practices of expansion of capitalism, American imperialism, and colonialism. A Black feminist approach to the histories of imperialism, colonialism, and the expansion of capitalism in Puerto Rico critically examines ideas about issues like racism, classism, sexism, ethnocentrism, and colonial status as intersecting issues that contributed to the direct oppression of Afro-Puerto Ricans. It further asks, how did these histories of colonialism impact the livelihood, embodiment, and livelihood of Black women during and after slavery? How do these ideas about race (specifically) created during the age of European, and subsequently American, colonialization become embedded in Puerto Rican popular ideas?
Part 1: Enslavement Under Spanish Colonialism
READ: Kim Kelly, “What Capitalism Is and How It Affects People”
WATCH: Andrew Kahn and Jamelle Bouie, “The Atlantic Slave Trade in Two Minutes”
READ: Bound to History: Leoncia Lasalle’s Slave Narrative from Moca, Puerto Rico, 1945
READ: Luis A. Figueroa, Sugar, Slavery, and Freedom in Nineteenth Century Puerto Rico (Intro, Ch. 1. Ch.2)
READ: Francisco Scarano, Sugar and slavery in Puerto Rico: the plantation economy of Ponce, 1800-1850 (Ch.1 Ch. 6)
READ: Ileana Rodriguez-Silva, Silencing Race: Disentangling Blackness, Colonialism, and National Identities in Puerto Rico (Intro, Ch.1, Ch 3)
READ: Isar Godreau, Scripts of Blackness: Race, Cultural Nationalism, and U.S. Colonialism in Puerto Rico (Intro, Ch.1, Ch. 2)
Part 2: Imperialism Under American Colonialism
READ: Marisabel Brás, “The Changing of the Guard: Puerto Rico in 1898”
WATCH: Jorell Melendez Badillo, “Puerto Rico, Puerto Ricans, and Puerto Ricanness: Historical Roots and Today’s Challenges”
WATCH: Rosario Méndez Panedas, “Coloqueo: Historias de Mujeres Puertorriqueñas Negras” or READ Rosario Méndez Panedas, Historias de Mujeres Puertorriqueñas Negras
READ: Eileen J. Suarez Findlay, Imposing Decency: The Politics of Sexuality and Race in Puerto Rico, 1870-1940 (Intro, Ch. 1, Ch. 2)
Race, Class, and Gender in Contemporary Puerto Rico
Black Puerto Ricans face considerable societal inequalities rooted in historical contexts. In the last section, we examined the roots of issues like racism, sexism, classism in the archipelago. A Black feminist lens may critically examine the ways that racism (as antiblackness), classism (as elitism), or sexism (as misogynoir) impacts the everyday lived experiences of Black women or others who face gender discrimination compounded by the intersection of these issues. In this section we specifically explore how Black women’s marginalization is only amplified by the debt crisis and the effects of disaster capitalism on colonialism. The sources ask you to explore how multiple intersectional oppressions (e.g. racism, sexism, or classism) impact Afro-Puerto Rican women. As you read, consider the impacts of marginalization on Black women who experience multiple forms of oppression as they navigate their daily lives.
READ: Hilda Lloréns, “Racialization works differently here in Puerto Rico, do not bring your U.S.-centric ideas about race here!”
LISTEN: Mayra Santos Febres, María Elba Torres Muñoz, Jessica Gaspar Concepcion, and Modesto Lacén Cepeda (Negras Broadcast), “Afrodecendencia y racialidad in Puerto Rico”
READ: Agustin Lao-Montes, “Afro-Boricua Agency: Against the Myth of the Whitest of the Antilles”
READ: Maritza Quiñones Rivera, “From Trigueñita to Afro-Puerto Rican: Intersections of the Racialized, Gendered, and Sexualized Body in Puerto Rico and the U.S. Mainland”
WATCH: Black Diasporic Saberes
READ: Gloriann Sacha Antonetty y el equipo editorial de Revista étnica, “Ser una mujer negra en un pandemia u otras interseccionalidades”
Disaster, the Debt Crisis, and Resistance
This section focuses on the direct Puerto Rican resistance to the debt crisis and disaster capitalism. From everyday practices of resistance to large-scale and ongoing protests, on-the-ground actions serve as a force that pushes back against economic imperialism and colonialism. Protesters fight back against the conditions worsened by the debt crisis and further exacerbated by the damage of hurricane María. Direct actions like mutual aid, planning demonstrations, and feeding community members keep them safe and supported. As you read and listen to these sources, consider how Black feminism and other intersectional racialized approaches continue to inspire direct actions of resistance in Puerto Rico. How might Black feminism inspire change as communities in Puerto Rico resist governmental responses to disaster and debt? How does Black feminism as a method inform community and activist efforts to effect change for a better future?
READ: Hilda Lloréns, “The Race of Disaster: Black Communities and the Crisis in Puerto Rico”
READ: Laura Briggs, “Debates in the Field: Debt and Transnational Feminist Analysis”
WATCH: Rocío Zambrana, “On Debt: Neoliberal Coloniality in the Colony of Puerto Rico”
READ: Rocío Zambrana, “Black Feminist Tactics: On La Colectiva Feminista en Contruccion’s Politics without Guarantees”
READ: Fernando Tormos-Aponte and Shariana Ferrer-Núñez, “Intersectional Synthesis: A Case Study of the Colectiva Feminista en Construcción”
READ: Bárbara I. Abadia-Rexach, “Verano 2019: La gran familia puertorriqueña racializada protestando en la calle sin miedo”
READ: Rafael Bernabe, “Puerto Rico: Economic reconstruction, debt cancellation, and self-determination”
READ: Isa Rodríguez Soto, “Colonialism’s Orchestrated Disasters in Puerto Rico”
READ Hilda Lloréns, Making Livable Worlds: Afro Puerto Rican Women Building Environmental Justice