Crítica

In Puerto Rico, Emergency Has Become a Business Model

Israel Melendez Ayala — Fri, 04 Sep 2026 16:07:36 GMT

On August 18, the Puerto Rico Electric Power Authority (PREPA) terminated a 10-year, $5.887 billion contract with a consortium consisting of Power Expectations LLC, Reyes Contractor Group LLC, and Enchanted Rock LLC. These companies were selected to temporarily provide between 700 and 850 megawatts of energy, because Puerto Rico’s fragile electrical system—even with ongoing modernization projects—still lacks sufficient megawatts capacity, increasing the risk of recurring power outages.

PREPA’s cancellation of this agreement comes after the consortium failed to provide a required financial guarantee, and the Fiscal Oversight and Management Board found strong allegations of fraud after Enchanted Rock’s name and signature had been used without authorization.

Puerto Rico’s Water Crisis Has Revealed Who Gets Heard

Israel Melendez Ayala — Wed, 19 Aug 2026 11:03:34 GMT

The drought Puerto Rico is experiencing isn’t the first. During the 1994 drought, metropolitan San Juan spent months receiving water only every second or third day based on the rationing plan established. In response, the government committed roughly $1 billion to build a mega pipe, the Superacueducto, which carries water originating in the Caonillas–Dos Bocas reservoir system, through the Río Grande de Arecibo and the Dr. Antonio Santiago Vázquez filtration plant, before traveling approximately 43 miles eastward toward metropolitan San Juan. La Plata is a separate, interconnected reservoir system serving much of the metropolitan region; its interconnections and the dredging of Carraízo enhance its capacity. The project was presented as a long-term solution to metropolitan shortages and began operating in 2000. Yet severe rationing returned in 2015 and now, again.

A year in 2016, Puerto Rico’s own water-resources plan acknowledged a fundamental problem: the additional water delivered by the Superacueducto had not sufficiently reduced withdrawals from Carraízo and La Plata. By 2019, sediment had reduced Carraízo’s storage capacity to about 15 million cubic meters, just over half its original capacity. Engineers also calculated that the reservoir was routinely being asked to provide more water than it could reliably sustain during drought. In 2020, rationing returned again.

Puerto Rico’s Drought Did Not Create Its Water Crisis

Israel Melendez Ayala — Fri, 14 Aug 2026 13:30:21 GMT

On August 5, the Puerto Rico Aqueduct and Sewer Authority (PRASA)—the public entity responsible for operating Puerto Rico’s water supply and wastewater systems—turned scarcity into a schedule. Beginning August 7, communities served by the Carraízo reservoir were divided into two zones, alternating between 48 hours with water and 48 hours without service…

America Has Found Many Uses for Puerto Rico, But Equality Isn’t One of Them

Israel Melendez Ayala — Thu, 30 Jul 2026 13:33:56 GMT

As a Puerto Rican, historian and working as archivist, I know an image can preserve history and that power can also strip an image of its meaning. On July 22, the White House revived the infamous photograph of President Trump tossing paper towels to Puerto Ricans at a church in Guaynabo after Hurricane Maria. “POTUS knows ball,” the post declared, turni…

When the State Lets Memory Rot

Israel Melendez Ayala — Wed, 08 Jul 2026 14:03:01 GMT

Palestine and Puerto Rico are not facing the same danger. In Palestine, archives, libraries, museums, universities, family papers, photographs and cultural sites are threatened by war, occupation, displacement, and direct destruction. In Puerto Rico, archives are not being bombed; they are being weakened by something slower but also political: neglect, austerity, failing infrastructure, blackouts, water problems, mold, lack of staffing, and a central government that too often treats culture as decoration rather than public evidence.

The comparison, though, reveals a shared truth: archives survive only when societies decide that memory deserves infrastructure.

In Palestine, the Palestinian Museum Digital Archive has become a model of archival survival under threat. The project now includes more than 500,000 digitized photographs, identification papers, diaries, maps, films and letters, many gathered from families whose personal records might otherwise disappear. Its strategy is not only digitization but distribution: multiple backups around the world so that no single building, server, checkpoint, raid or cyberattack can erase the whole archive. Amer Shomali, the museum’s director, describes it as an “unlootable archive.”

Could Degrowth be the answer for Puerto Rico?

Israel Melendez Ayala — Wed, 24 Jun 2026 14:01:43 GMT

Puerto Rico is living inside a cruel contradiction: people need homes, the government owns abandoned buildings, communities are surrounded by vacant properties, and yet public policy continues to treat new luxury construction on vulnerable land as “development.”

Degrowth offers a useful language for this crisis. Puerto Rico has already endured a brutal, imposed version of contraction: debt, migration, school closures, blackouts, water shortages, disinvestment and displacement. What degrowth asks is something different. Giorgos Kallis defines it as a challenge to “the dogma of economic growth,” arguing that humanity must “extract, produce and consume less” and “do it all differently.” For Puerto Rico, that should mean a politics of repair: reuse vacant buildings, rehabilitate abandoned homes, protect agricultural and coastal land, fix water pipes, modernize the grid, and stop confusing luxury projects with public prosperity.

The Water Crisis Did Not End. It Spread

Israel Melendez Ayala — Wed, 17 Jun 2026 13:31:07 GMT

Read previous part.

The first stage of Puerto Rico’s water crisis was measured in uncertainty: low pressure, empty cisterns, businesses waiting for trucks, and the Autoridad de Acueductos y Alcantarillados (AAA) promising service would return gradually. The second stage is worse. It is measured in closed restaurants, improvised buckets, emergency purcha…

Water Is Puerto Rico’s New Crisis

Israel Melendez Ayala — Wed, 10 Jun 2026 11:01:13 GMT

On June 1, as hurricane season began, Puerto Rico’s government declared itself ready. The message was meant to reassure an archipelago still haunted by Hurricane María and living with a fragile electrical grid. Autoridad de Acueductos y Alcantarillados (AAA) president Luis González Delgado offered the clearest evidence of confidence: the agency now had …

Colonización y la evolución consumidora de la carne en Puerto Rico

Israel Melendez Ayala — Wed, 27 May 2026 11:03:35 GMT

El pasado sábado, 23 de mayo, participé en la tercera edición de En Mesa: “La comida como cultura: diálogos de sobremesa.” En mi diálogo, hablé sobre la historia de la carne desde la colonización y la evolución del consumo de carne en Puerto Rico.

An English translation and the presentation slides are below the paywall.

Aquí presento, en forma de ensayo, mi investigación y presentación. Al final, los slides de la presentación.

La historia de Puerto Rico también puede contarse a través de la carne. El cerdo y la res no son solo alimentos: permiten hablar de colonización, trabajo, abasto urbano, desigualdad, fiesta, escuela, supermercado y dependencia alimentaria. La carne llegó como parte del orden colonial, se convirtió en objeto de deseo y escasez durante el siglo XIX, y terminó asociándose con progreso, nutrición y modernidad en el siglo XX. Desde una mirada constructivista, el gusto por la carne no fue natural ni inevitable: fue aprendido. Se formó mediante instituciones, discursos, prácticas económicas y experiencias cotidianas.

“El Velorio”, obra del pintor puertorriqueño Francisco Oller y Cestero (1833-1917) completada circa 1893.

Antes de la colonización, los pueblos indígenas del Caribe ya consumían proteína animal, aunque no cerdo ni res, porque esos animales no eran nativos de la región. La evidencia arqueológica sugiere que los taínos y otros pueblos indígenas consumían manatí, hutía, iguana, peces, tortugas, aves, moluscos y cangrejos.

Esencia and Puerto Rico’s Old War Over Land

Israel Melendez Ayala — Wed, 20 May 2026 11:03:37 GMT

This Saturday, May 23rd at 10 AM I will be speaking at EN MESA about meat, colonization and consumption. Location: https://share.google/kF5U7dOPskDkOwty5

The march against Esencia on March 28 was not just another environmental protest. It was a reminder that in Puerto Rico, fights over land are never only about land. They are about power, belonging, class, and the right to remain. That Saturday, thousands marched in San Juan to denounce Esencia, the luxury megaproject planned for Cabo Rojo, as a threat to the environment and the social future of the southwest.

Esencia has been marketed by its backers as a high-end destination on Puerto Rico’s southwest coast, a polished mix of resort living, luxury residences, golf, hospitality, and “sustainability.” But the planning record tells a more revealing story. The project would include 530 hotel units, 1,132 tourist residences, a private school with 500 dormitory beds, golf courses, and areas for recreation, health care, agriculture, commerce, and entertainment. This is not a boutique intervention. It is the remaking of a major stretch of Cabo Rojo.

The Hidden Routes of the Puerto Rican Table

Israel Melendez Ayala — Wed, 06 May 2026 11:02:16 GMT

Reading, rereading, and researching about meat and the history of certain animal proteins in Puerto Rican gastronomy for my presentation at En Mesa on Saturday, May 23, what I’ve read continues to reaffirm that Puerto Rican cuisine is often described through the familiar and comfortable formula of the constructed identity by elites of the three races; a Taíno, Spanish, and African mixture.

But that formula can become too normalized. It can make conquest sound like exchange, slavery sound like influence, and migration sound like seasoning. A more honest starting point is this: “Puerto Rican gastronomy is also the product of constant exoduses, of the coming and going of people and food, of culinary memories remade in new geographies”, said Cruz Miguel Cuadra. The Puerto Rican table was made by movement, but not all movement was voluntary. It was made by Indigenous survival, Spanish conquest, African enslavement, Andalusian inheritances, plantation hunger, coastal economies, and later U.S. colonial modernity.

Cruz Miguel Ortiz Cuadra’s food history makes this clear: Puerto Rican cuisine absorbed precolonial foods such as yuca, yautía, batata, maíz, juey, and ají; an Arab-Andalusian taste for aromatics and sweets; Castilian and Extremaduran livestock traditions; and West African foods and techniques such as plátano, guineo, ñame, majado, hervido, and cooking in leaves.

A War of Strategic Self-Sabotage

Israel Melendez Ayala — Wed, 22 Apr 2026 14:31:41 GMT

The Trump administration has sold its war with Iran as a display of American strength. Judged by its actual effects, it looks less like a demonstration of power than an exercise in geopolitical self-sabotage.

The public case for this conflict is familiar: restore deterrence, weaken Iran’s ability to threaten the region, and demonstrate that the United St…

RaiNao, “La Borinqueña,” and Puerto Rico’s unresolved colonial memory

Israel Melendez Ayala — Wed, 08 Apr 2026 12:30:03 GMT

The Puerto Rican singer RaiNao, who has 8.2 million monthly listeners on Spotify and featured with Bad Bunny on the song “PERFuMITO NUEVO,” performed the original version of “La Borinqueña”, for others the “revolutionary”, at a local basketball game on Saturday the 28th at the Cangrejeros de Santurce game against the Mets de Guaynabo, the backlash was immediate. The Baloncesto Superior Nacional (BSN) responded by saying that in official contexts there must be “uniformity, solemnity and respect,” insisted that the league does not endorse political or religious proselytizing in its official acts, and said it had already circulated an internal protocol for such ceremonies. The Cangrejeros, for their part, said RaiNao had been invited to sing the national anthem not the one previously discussed. The controversy then spilled into politics: Representative Jorge “Georgie” Navarro demanded disciplinary measures and pushed a legislative resolution calling for only the official anthem to be performed at league events.

Puerto Rico’s Economy for Others

Israel Melendez Ayala — Wed, 25 Mar 2026 17:01:19 GMT

Puerto Rico has been running the same economic experiment for more than two centuries, and it keeps failing in the same way. The slogans change and the party in power changes, but the governing reflex remains intact: when the economy weakens, offer more incentives to outsiders and hope prosperity eventually reaches everyone else. That was the logic behind the Real Cédula de Gracias in 1815. It resurfaced under the New Deal, hardened under Operation Bootstrap better known as Operación Manos a la Obra, expanded under Section 936, and survives today in Act 60. Again and again, economic policy has been built around what empires, corporations, and mobile investors want from Puerto Rico, not around what Puerto Ricans need to live well and build wealth at home.

Selling the State

Israel Melendez Ayala — Wed, 11 Mar 2026 12:31:54 GMT

Read my latest post in TIME: Federal Energy Policy Is Deepening Puerto Rico’s Power Divide

A History of Movement Part II

Israel Melendez Ayala — Wed, 25 Feb 2026 11:02:47 GMT

Read the first installment of this series.

The U.S. invasion of Puerto Rico in 1898 and the island’s designation as an unincorporated territory under the Foraker Act of 1900 reshaped Puerto Rican migration patterns. From the outset of the new colonial regime, U.S.-appointed governors promoted the emigration of agricultural workers as a strategy to alleviate widespread poverty on the island. The devastation caused by Hurricane San Ciriaco in 1899 further weakened the agricultural sector, intensifying unemployment and worsening already dire social and economic conditions. Migration came to function as a “safety valve,” supplying low-cost labor to U.S. agricultural and industrial enterprises while reducing unemployment pressures in Puerto Rico. This approach would become a recurring policy framework in subsequent decades.

A History of Movement

Israel Melendez Ayala — Wed, 11 Feb 2026 17:02:33 GMT

The Super Bowl LX broadcast reached an estimated 124.9 million viewers, while the halftime performance by Bad Bunny drew approximately 128.2 million. The performance offered a stylized narrative of Puerto Rican history and Latin migration, staging a series of visual scenes that referenced labor, diaspora, and cultural survival. The set opened on a sugar plantation, with jíbaros cutting cane, followed by a domino table, a piragüero, coconut water vendors, and the appearance of boxer Xander Zayas. The staging included broken electric poles, evoking the archipelago’s fragile infrastructure, and concluded with a hemispheric framing of “America” as a continent rather than a nation-state. References to the Puerto Rican diaspora appeared through the recreation of a bodega and the presence of Toñita, a long-standing cultural figure in New York City.

The Caribbean Social Club in Williamsburg, Brooklyn—widely known as Toñita’s—has for decades served as a gathering place for Puerto Ricans seeking a sense of continuity with Puerto Rico. Visitors encounter familiar foods and drinks offered by María Antonia Cay, known to the community simply as Toñita. The space has functioned as a cultural bridge, where music, food, and conversation reproduce everyday forms of Puerto Rican social life in a diasporic setting. The club has been referenced in popular culture, including in Bad Bunny’s song “Nuevayol,” which invokes the affective geography of New York as a site where Puerto Rico feels emotionally near despite geographic distance.

In Puerto Rico, Justice Bends to Power

Israel Melendez Ayala — Wed, 04 Feb 2026 16:32:19 GMT

When Puerto Rico’s former governor Wanda Vázquez Garced received a pardon from President Donald Trump on Jan. 16, many Puerto Ricans reacted with anger and disbelief. “WHAT?” wrote one Instagram user in response to the news posted by the local newspaper El Nuevo Día. Another called Trump “the savior of corruption.”

This pardon is not just about Wanda Váz…

Who Owns the Jíbaro?

Israel Melendez Ayala — Wed, 21 Jan 2026 13:31:29 GMT

Recently, walking through Viejo San Juan during the last “Fiestas de la Calle San Sebastian” and even in the mall, I have noticed a striking change: young boys wearing pavas, the traditional straw hats long associated with the jíbaro. Until recently, this was unheard of outside of folkloric contexts, perhaps worn during Puerto Rican Identity Week at school, but never as casual fashion. The shift has coincided with the release of Bad Bunny’s new album, DeBÍ TiRAR MáS FOToS, a work that pays tribute to Puerto Rico’s music and culture while offering sharp critiques of the social problems facing the archipelago.

Bad Bunny’s concert residency in Puerto Rico, part of his record-breaking world tour, has been more than a musical celebration, it has become a cultural event saturated with symbolism and layered commentary on Puerto Rican identity. With over 82 billion streams and 2.6 million tickets sold across 18 countries, the artist leveraged his immense global platform to stage not just a performance of music, but a performance of Puerto Rican pride. Each night at the José Miguel Agrelot Coliseum, more than 14,000 attendees experienced not only infectious rhythms but also deliberate gestures to cultural heritage. His wardrobe wearing in some songs a modern guayabera shirt and the iconic pava hat, invoked the image of the jíbaro, a figure steeped in both pride and controversy.

Puerto Rico’s Energy Transition From Renewable to Fossil Fuel

Israel Melendez Ayala — Wed, 07 Jan 2026 13:30:55 GMT

In Puerto Rico, blackouts are routine. Residents endure an increasing number of outages, averaging 19 per year and nearly 27 hours without service while paying approximately $0.275 per kilowatt-hour, prices driven by oil. Yet the archipelago remains overwhelmingly dependent on fossil fuels, which generate more than 94 percent of its electricity.

Despite billions of dollars allocated for reconstruction and improvements in generation capacity, Puerto Rico’s power grid has not been fully rebuilt since Hurricane Maria in 2017. It remains fragile and prone to failure. Progress toward long-term modernization and resilience has been painfully slow.