Since Hurricane Maria hit on September 20, 2017, there’s been what the media has described as “ an exodus” from the island, with many making new homes in Florida. The graffiti, ever-topical, calls out the gringo colonizers who’ve left the island without the money or infrastructure to cope with destruction: “El Desastre Es La Colonia.” “ FEMA Es El Problema.” Where’s the lie? Abandoned buildings and storefronts don’t lie, either, but those have dotted the urban landscape of the San Juan metro area for as long as I’ve been traveling to the island of Puerto Rico. You can see in their wear, their violent bends, that they’ve been through hell.
Andrés Neuman, How to Travel Without Seeing: Dispatches From the New Latin America “Colonialism is neither created nor destroyed, only transformed.