[Many thanks to Peter Jordens for bringing this item to our attention.] Roberto Sirvent (editor of the Black Agenda Report E-book Discussion board) interviews Marisol LeBrón, writer of In opposition to Muerto Rico: Classes from the Verano Boricua (Editora Educación Emergente, 2021). Listed here are excerpts:
On this sequence, we ask acclaimed authors to reply 5 questions on their ebook. This week’s featured writer is Marisol LeBrón . LeBrón is an Affiliate Professor in Feminist Research and Essential Race and Ethnic Research on the College of California, Santa Cruz. Her ebook is In opposition to Muerto Rico: Classes from the Verano Boricua/ Contra Muerto Rico: lecciones del Verano Boricua, translated by Beatriz Llenín Figueroa.
Roberto Sirvent: How can your ebook assist BAR readers perceive the present political and social local weather?
Marisol LeBrón: In In opposition to Muerto Rico, I attempt to contextualize the huge protests that erupted in Puerto Rico in the course of the summer season of 2019 and resulted in Governor Ricardo Rosselló’s resignation generally known as the Verano Boricua. For almost two weeks Puerto Ricans within the archipelago and within the diaspora took to the streets, day after day and evening after evening, to demand that the governor and different corrupt members of his cupboard resign. The protests began after a non-public chat between Rosselló and quite a few high-ranking officers was leaked to the general public. The chat revealed Rosselló and his inside circle exchanging homophobic, transphobic, racist, classist, and misogynist messages and even making jokes about useless our bodies piling up on the state morgue after Hurricane María. Within the ebook, I present that the chat was a spark wanted for the widespread and long-simmering discontent felt by Puerto Ricans to blow up. Relatively than simply protesting the vulgar and disrespectful language utilized by the governor and his cronies, the protests of the Verano Boricua encompassed a large set of calls for aimed toward rejecting a governing logic structured by colonial capitalism that renders Puerto Rican life nugatory past serving as gasoline to generate revenue.
One of many key arguments I make is that the Verano Boricua’s successes lay with its intersectional method which was fostered by Black, feminist, queer, and anti-colonial activists who’ve been mobilizing in recent times to reply to the a number of crises confronting the archipelago. These organizers present how the crises created by colonialism, capitalism, sexism, queer antagonism, heteropatriarchy, and racism are fostering hurt and demise within the lives of Puerto Ricans. The work of those organizers to coach the general public about how the present political financial system negatively impacts the lives of Puerto Ricans was instrumental to the unbelievable cross-section of those who we noticed within the streets demanding a radical restructuring of Puerto Rican society by an finish to austerity, extraction, and colonial violence. Finally, the huge rejection of efforts to rework the archipelago into Muerto Rico that passed off in the course of the Verano Boricuaoffers us a sequence of classes to assist us to consider what a Puerto Rico that’s extra simply and life affirming would possibly appear to be and the way we’d get there. And though the case of Puerto Rico might sound distinctive due to its colonial standing, I feel the occasions of the Verano Boricua have lots of resonance with different actions which might be working to upend relations of domination and extraction.
What do you hope activists and neighborhood organizers will take away from studying your ebook? The ebook is a brief, accessibly written and absolutely bilingual textual content that I hope might be helpful as a political schooling doc. The arguments within the ebook are deeply influenced by and in dialog with social actions in Puerto Rico. The phrases within the ebook come from a spot of deep admiration and appreciation for individuals who are on the frontlines struggling for a extra liberated and life affirming future for Puerto Ricans. My conclusions within the ebook are impressed not solely by what I noticed in the course of the Verano Boricua but in addition by what I’ve seen whereas researching struggles in opposition to the growth of punitive governance, debt colonialism, and catastrophe capitalism in Puerto Rico for greater than a decade. In that sense, it’s not essentially what I would like activists and organizers to remove from the ebook as a lot as I hope that I precisely captured their labor. I hope that they see their work – the exhausting and slow-going work of true political schooling – mirrored within the ebook and that it will possibly support that work in some small means.
We all know readers will study loads out of your ebook, however what do you hope readers will un-learn? In different phrases, is there a specific ideology you’re hoping to dismantle? One of many classes from the Verano Boricua that I focus on within the ebook is that La policía ≠ el pueblo, or thepolice doesn’t equal the individuals. Through the Verano Boricua we noticed instance after instance of protesters trying to cause with the police with a purpose to cut back antagonism and violence and as a substitute being met with violence and harassment. Through the demonstrations protesters repeatedly made appeals to the police current asking them to depart their posts and be a part of them as a result of they too had been struggling beneath the austerity regime put in place by the colonial authorities and defended by native elites. The repressive actions of legislation enforcement in the course of the summer season protests, nevertheless, served as a reminder that the police will not be abnormal members of the working class. As an alternative, they’re “violence employees,” as Micol Seigel places it, important to the upkeep of colonial, racial, and capitalist buildings in Puerto Rico. [. . .]
Who’re the mental heroes that encourage your work? I’ve all the time been in awe of students who’ve the flexibility to create work that speaks to the urgency generated by moments of disaster, and who achieve this in a means that’s directly rigorous and accessible. I feel the writing of Stuart Corridor, Ruthie Gilmore, and Robin Kelley all have that high quality – their work is electrical in the best way that it will get you enthusiastic about social transformation. The activists that I focus on in In opposition to Muerto Rico have all had an enormous affect on my pondering, particularly round how structural forces equivalent to colonial capitalism are felt in individuals’s on a regular basis lives in methods which might be usually dismissed by these in energy. [. . .]
For full interview, see https://www.blackagendareport.com/bar-book-forum-marisol-lebrons-against-muerto-rico
For extra data on the ebook, see https://www.editoraemergente.com/index.php?id_product=114&rewrite=prueba&controller=product&id_lang=1