Jose Atiles - Profile on Academia.edu (original) (raw)
Books by Jose Atiles
Stanford University Press, 2024
Devastating hurricanes, deteriorating infrastructure, massive public debt, and a global pandemic ... more Devastating hurricanes, deteriorating infrastructure, massive public debt, and a global pandemic make up the continuous crises that plague Puerto Rico. In the last several years, this disastrous escalation has placed the archipelago more centrally on the radar of residents and politicians in the United States, as the US Congress established an oversight board with emergency powers to ensure Puerto Rico's economic survival—and its ability to repay its debt. These events should not be understood as a random string of compounding misfortune. Rather, as demonstrated by Jose Atiles in Crisis by Design, they result from the social, legal, and political structure of colonialism. Moreover, Atiles shows how administrations, through emergency powers and laws paired with the dynamics of wealth extraction, have served to sustain and exacerbate crises. He explores the role of the local government, corporations, and grassroots mobilizations. More broadly, the Puerto Rican case provides insight into the role of law and emergency powers in other global south, Caribbean, and racialized and colonized countries. In these settings, Atiles contends, colonialism is the ongoing catastrophe.
Editora Educación Emergente, 2019
Como secuela y complemento de Apuntes para abandonar el derecho, Jugando con el derecho profundiz... more Como secuela y complemento de Apuntes para abandonar el derecho, Jugando con el derecho profundiza el cuestionamiento de José M. Atiles-Osoria al derecho como dispositivo del poder colonial para neutralizar y despolitizar los movimientos anticoloniales puertorriqueños, aun a pesar de victorias esporádicas en los tribunales. Con minuciosidad teórica e histórica, y nutriéndose de la gran aportación metodológica de entrevistar a 46 luchadoras y luchadores por la descolonización de Puerto Rico, este libro detalla los múltiples modos en que, en un escenario de excepción colonial, el derecho incumple sistemáticamente su promesa de justicia, avalando con impunidad la estela de sangre que el colonialismo estadounidense en Puerto Rico, junto a sus cómplices locales, ha dejado a su paso para mantener la hegemonía. Asimismo, Jugando con el derecho constituye una significativa aportación a los estudios históricos sobre las luchas anticoloniales en Puerto Rico y la región caribeña, cubriendo el período que va desde la invasión estadounidense en 1898 hasta las dos primeras décadas del siglo XXI. Al tiempo que analiza comparativamente instancias institucionalizadas (los partidos), autónomas (los diversos movimientos u organizaciones) y efímeras (acciones específicas o alianzas temporeras) de lucha anticolonial en Puerto Rico, este libro se caracteriza por el reconocimiento de que "la historia de oposición y confrontación no es lineal ni progresiva, sino que durante los 120 años de colonialismo estadounidense ha habido períodos de mayor confrontación, de distenciones y de transiciones". Dicho reconocimiento permite calibrar de manera más justa las aportaciones y limitaciones de una inmensa multiplicidad de colectivos y agentes políticos, dando al traste con la generalizada idea en el Puerto Rico de hoy de que la descolonización radical nunca ha sido un horizonte apoyado por las mayorías en nuestro país. Jugando con el derecho forma parte de la serie Otra universidad. Idóneo para cursos de filosofía del derecho, de sociología del derecho, de historia de Puerto Rico y de derecho decolonial, entre otros.
Papers by Jose Atiles
This article interrogates the impact that the codification of the International Crime of Ecocide ... more This article interrogates the impact that the codification of the International Crime of Ecocide may have in addressing and curtailing the environmental harms produced by the chemical industry in Latin America and the Global South. We contend that the International Crime of Ecocide should challenge the historical narratives that have informed international law and its relationship with colonialism. The role that Monsanto/Bayer plays in ecocidal practices such as the development, testing, and use of Agent Orange as war technology is examined, and we demonstrate its connection with current uses of Glyphosate in the war on drugs. At the center of this reflection are the connections between the chemical corporation, state crime, war, and ecocide. This allows us to offer a broader picture of the sociolegal and criminogenic practices that have historically contributed to ecocide and the normalization of corporate impunity in the Global South, specifically after World War II.
Dialogues in Human Geography , 2024
Corruption and anticorruption are ubiquitous in late capitalist global political discourses. Corr... more Corruption and anticorruption are ubiquitous in late capitalist global political discourses. Corruption narratives emerge in diverse contexts, carrying multiple meanings assigned by a variety of actors and employed to achieve various sociolegal and political objectives. Corruption is a central theme in today's US presidential election campaigns, just as it was prominently featured in recent elections in Brazil, India, Spain, Guatemala, and South Africa. Additionally, corruption dominates social mobilizations and activism, as illustrated by Puerto Rico, where popular anticorruption demonstrations pressured the governor to resign in 2019 (Atiles et al., 2022; Atiles, 2023). The entrenchment of corruption in political discourses has also driven the emergence and rapid growth of corruption and anticorruption scholarship. This body of work is often characterized by disciplinary isolation, limited multidisciplinary engagement, theoretical and epistemic provincialism, and a predominant focus on law enforcement, and punitive Book review forum Dialogues in Human Geography
Verfassungsblog, 2025
Trump announced via Truth Social retaliatory measures against Colombia following President Gustav... more Trump announced via Truth Social retaliatory measures against Colombia following President Gustavo Petro's refusal to allow US deportation flights. These included a 25% emergency tariff on Colombian imports, escalating to 50% within a week; travel bans and visa cancellations for Colombian officials and allies; enhanced US Customs inspections of Colombian nationals and cargo; and financial sanctions under the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA) of 1977. President Petro imposed reciprocal tariffs on US imports, rising to 50% in response. By Sunday night, January 26, both sides claimed victory upon agreeing to resume deportation flights.
Regulation & Governance, 2025
Secrecy jurisdictions play a crucial role in the legal framework perpetuating climate change. Thi... more Secrecy jurisdictions play a crucial role in the legal framework perpetuating climate change. This paper demonstrates how these jurisdictions sustain the dynamics of climate change by enabling capital accumulation rooted in environmental degradation. A regulatory approach to law and climate change must address the global nature of the legal structure that upholds exploitative and ecocidal social relationships. This paper argues that secrecy jurisdictions are a pivotal yet under-analyzed element of the global legal architecture that facilitates climate change. It, therefore, proposes the term regulatory havens to describe their purpose more adequately. Our analysis includes a case study of the Caribbean, as this geographical region operates as the epicenter for externalizing legal liabilities and extra-legal activities that contribute to climate change while also disproportionately suffering its impacts. The paper outlines how the corporate organizational structure prevalent in regulatory havens enable fossil fuel companies to shield themselves from liability, thus allowing them to detoxify fossil fuel assets. It then sets out a typology of "mechanisms of avoidance" that enable fossil fuel companies to secure key commercial advantages and operate under the radar of regulatory constraints. It briefly analyses the need to dismantle regulatory havens as a prerequisite for building a sustainable economy.
Crime, Law and Social Change, 2025
The Paycheck Protection Program (PPP), established as part of the CARES Act to address the econom... more The Paycheck Protection Program (PPP), established as part of the CARES Act to address the economic and financial impact of the COVID-19 pandemic, distributed $813.7 billion in forgivable loans between April 2020 and May 2021. While oversight offices and public accountability organizations initially raised concerns about fraud and mismanagement of PPP funds, this article argues that the focus should extend beyond individual fraud cases. It argues that the PPP, examined through the framework of the colonial regime of permission, served to uphold existing power structures of value extraction and capital accumulation during the COVID-19 pandemic. The article delves into the case of Puerto Rico, where PPP funds were used to finance and sustain the operation of the colonial tax haven economy in this US territory. Recipients of PPP loans included financial institutions, international banks, wealth management firms, and law firms that facilitated the transformation of Puerto Rico into a tax haven. Using publicly available data, this article examines how lenders and borrowers of the PPP benefited from tax haven policies developed by the US and PR governments. By scrutinizing the criminogenic dynamics of PPP funds distribution, this article sheds light on the political economy of emergency economic legislation and how this reinforced the pre-existing power structure of capital accumulation rather than mitigating the pandemic's social impact.
British Journal of Criminology , 2025
This paper argues that US unilateral economic and financial sanctions on Latin American countries... more This paper argues that US unilateral economic and financial sanctions on Latin American countries constitute state crime. Although critical scholarship on sanctions has shown that these coercive measures contravene international law and harm the populations of targeted countries, criminological scholarship has neglected the analysis of sanctions. Focusing on sanctions as structural violence, this paper explores how the power dynamics in imposing unilateral sanctions on Latin America align with understandings of state crimes and imperialism. The paper engages with the theoretical frameworks of state crime and the criminology of empire, provides an overview of US unilateral sanctions on Latin American countries, and suggests a research agenda for studying economic sanctions as state crime.
The Sociological Review, 2023
This article introduces the concept of 'coloniality of anti-corruption' to help situate and descr... more This article introduces the concept of 'coloniality of anti-corruption' to help situate and describe contemporary US anti-corruption policies aimed at Puerto Rico. The aim of the concept of coloniality of anti-corruption is to underscore corruption's inextricable relationship to race, class, gender, and other colonial power relations. The article argues that US interventions with the Puerto Rican government, along with its distribution of disaster relief in the wake of Hurricane María (2017) and subsequent earthquakes (2020), are best understood against the backdrop of a long history of corruption narrative implemented by the US. This is a narrative that seeks to legitimate US's colonial and capitalist expansion in Puerto Rico. To demonstrate this, the article explores the application of anti-corruption narratives by the Trump administration to justify its disaster relief policies for Puerto Rico. In particular, the article focuses on Trump's tweets describing Puerto Rican politicians as 'corrupt' and Puerto Rico as 'geography of fraud.' In doing so, the article provides a theoretical account of the uses of corruption and anti-corruption discourses to justify colonial and capitalist's global endeavors. It also illustrates how anti-corruption policies reproduce the idea of the non-white other as the corrupt subject and denotes the humanitarian consequences of such policies.
Latino Studies
A 6.4 magnitude earthquake struck Puerto Rico on 7 January 2020, adding a new episode to the mult... more A 6.4 magnitude earthquake struck Puerto Rico on 7 January 2020, adding a new episode to the multilayered political, economic, and humanitarian crisis affecting the island since 2006. This article demonstrates how the recovery efforts and management of the emergency constitute a state crime. The analysis draws from governmental and journalistic investigation and engages with legal and critical discourse analysis to provide a criminological and sociolegal analysis of state crimes in Puerto Rico-which feature prominently in US colonial and racialized history and anticorruption policies in PR-and of the genealogy of colonial violence that generates these and other legalized and state-facilitated harms. The article analyzes legally contrived states of exception and executive orders used to manage the earthquake emergency, the cases of corruption and criminal negligence (so salient in the public conscience that structural critiques of incompetent, unethical, and extractive governance have been coalesced by popular movements under the hashtag #wandalismo), the legislative public hearing on the case of the government hoarding and stalling distribution of disaster supplies, and the anticorruption mobilizations of January 2020. The article articulates the timeliness and urgency of prioritizing research and theorizing of state crimes within the burgeoning field of Latina/o/x criminology.
Sociology Compass, 2023
The scholarship on crimes of the powerful encompasses a critical examination of social harms, and... more The scholarship on crimes of the powerful encompasses a critical examination of social harms, and crimes perpetrated by privately or publicly operated businesses and corporations, the state, international organizations, elites, as well as the state-mediated administrative and political responses to these crimes. Going beyond state-centric definitions of crime and deviance, this scholarship emphasizes studying power and the harmful and criminogenic operations of the neoliberal-capitalism. However, this scholarship has overlooked the systemic examination of these crimes in the Global South, Latin America and the Caribbean, and their impact on racialized, gendered, and other marginalized communities. This article aims to contribute to this scholarship by providing an overview of the current developments in the scholarship on crimes of the powerful and proposing some future research areas for Latin America and the Caribbean. Thus, the article aims to demonstrate that the Latin American and Caribbean experiences with crimes of the powerful can expand our understanding of the social harms generated by powerful organizations and actors and magnify the analytical and methodological reach of this critical scholarship.
Critical Sociology , 2023
The US and Puerto Rican governments’ anti-corruption and anti-fraud legislation and policies exac... more The US and Puerto Rican governments’ anti-corruption and anti-fraud legislation and policies exacerbated the socio-economic impacts of the coronavirus disease (COVID)-19 pandemic in Puerto Rico (PR). This article demonstrates how anti-corruption interventions prevented those in most need from receiving the economic benefits of the Pandemic Unemployment Assistance program and other unemployment insurance benefits. Analyzing this specific instance of anti-corruption and anti-fraud interventions amid the COVID-19 pandemic allows for a deeper examination of how colonial interventions undermined PR’s capacity to handle the pandemic, exacerbated its socio-economic impact and created an unequal recovery. Thus, the article illustrates the contradictions of anti-corruption as punitive governance and the way in which a specific notion of corruption is reproduced through governmental actions, legal practices, and policies. Altogether, this article aims to contribute to the discussion on how colonial and punitive anti-corruption interventions enhance social exclusion, disproportionately harm racialized communities, and undermine people’s capacity to address period of crisis.
OÑATI SOCIO-LEGAL SERIES, 2023
This paper engages in a sociolegal analysis of the anti-corruption legislation enacted by the Pue... more This paper engages in a sociolegal analysis of the anti-corruption legislation enacted by the Puerto Rican Government in the aftermath of hurricane María (2017). It pays particular attention to the implementation and sociolegal impact of Act 2 of January 4, 2018, entitled, "The Anti-Corruption Code for the New Puerto Rico" and the creation of a Registry of Persons Convicted of Corruption. The rationale behind the Act and the Registry is to enforce transparency, open governance, and help the Puerto Rican government in its efforts to eradicate public corruption. Conversely, this paper argues that these reforms have introduce a punitive approach to anti-corruption in PR. The paper suggests Act 2 and the Registry had have a dual outcome: 1) a punitive approach to corruption that harm people in precarious positions, and 2) normalize the structural dynamic enabling corruption of the powerful. Thus, this paper intends to illustrate the contradictions in anti-corruption as punitive governance, and the way in which a specific image of corruption is reproduced through governmental actions, legal practices, and discourses.
Governmental responses to the COVID-19 global pandemic have generated numerous constitutionals, p... more Governmental responses to the COVID-19 global pandemic have generated numerous constitutionals, policy, legal, and political-economic debates. Scholarly engagements with the sociolegal and policy consequences of the COVID-19 pandemic have been dominated by discussion on the role of emergency powers, the suspension of individual civil liberties, the suspension of economic rules in order to guarantee economic survival, and social regulation of public spaces and of workplaces. This paper aims to explore how a critical sociolegal scholarship can contribute to a more sophisticated understanding of the role of law in creating the unequal conditions that propitiated the COVID-19 pandemic and that might enable further crises. This introduction offers a roadmap for theorizing the limits of law, the operationalization of emergency powers and the different policies implemented by global south and north countries in response to the pandemic. This introduction is structured as follow: (1) provides a general overview of the law and society tradition and its engagement with the COVID-19 pandemic; (2) engages with three key consequences of the pandemic, labor, and the lockdown; colonial implications; and the limits of law; (3) introduces the papers in this special issue; (4) sketches a proposal for the critical sociolegal scholarship of law and crises. 1 | INTRODUCTION What is the role of law in establishing the conditions that produce pandemics? Can law help prevent future pandemics? At a most obvious level, these questions direct our attention to
Law and Policy , 2022
This paper explores how the use of emergency powers by the US and Puerto Rican governments exacer... more This paper explores how the use of emergency powers by the US and Puerto Rican governments exacerbated the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic and manufactured the conditions for furthering the multilayered economic, legal, political, and humanitarian crisis affecting Puerto Rico since 2006. The paper discusses three cases. First, it examines how the multiple declarations of the state of emergency, and its constant renewals, produced contradictory public health policies. Since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic in March 2020, the Puerto Rican government has issued over 90 executive orders aimed at addressing the emergency, producing an unclear, contradictory, and unequal emergency management policy. Second, the paper focuses on the impact of the passing of Law 35 on April 5, 2020, which imposed severe penalties on those who disobeyed executive orders. As a result, hundreds of Puerto Ricans were arrested, fined, and incarcerated for violating the issued order. Third, the paper studies how, citing the presence of corruption, the Puerto Rican government implemented anti-corruption and anti-fraud policies that made it more difficult for those most in need of itmainly poor and racialized individuals, as well as immigrants and working women-to access Pandemic Unemployment Assistance. Thus, the paper argues that emergency policies designed to address the pandemic, punitive governance, and anti-corruption and anti-fraud policies undermined Puerto Rico's capacity to handle the pandemic, exacerbated its impact, and created an unequal recovery scenario.
Critical Criminology
This paper shows how the Puerto Rican government has used punitive governance to deal with three ... more This paper shows how the Puerto Rican government has used punitive governance to deal with three important reactions to the multilayered crisis affecting Puerto Rico since 2006: socioenvironmental mobilizations; anti-austerity mobilizations; and anticorruption mobilizations. The paper proposes a threefold analysis. Firstly, it provides a brief overview of the Puerto Rican economic and financial crisis, the neoliberal solutions to the crisis, and its consequences. Secondly, the paper expands on the intertwined / intertwining relationship between punitive governance, colonialism, and criminal law. Thirdly, the paper analyzes the process of criminalization of the socioenvironmental, anti-austerity, and anticorruption mobilizations resisting colonial abandonment. Two strategies will be discussed: (1) the uses of criminal law to limit freedom of speech and protests and (2) repression and the systemic deployment of state violence against protestors. The state's violent reactions to sociopolitical mobilizations are part of a long history of criminalizing and repressive practices that must be understood against the backdrop of US colonial history in Puerto Rico.
Diálogos de Saberes, (53), 181-204, 2020
This paper analyses the role of law in the mobilizations for reparation, restoration, and recogni... more This paper analyses the role of law in the mobilizations for reparation, restoration, and recognition of historical injuries and violent legacies caused by colonialism, slavery and racism in the State members of the Caribbean Community (CARICOM). By emphasizing on the CARICOM requests for reparation and restitution, this paper addresses the following three objectives: 1) to expose how the effects of colonial violence are interpreted; 2) to identify who are the main actors and what are the claims arising from these Caribbean mobilizations; 3) to analyze the uses of law implemented by this mobilization and the legal and political positions assumed by the European states. The paper proposes a sociolegal analysis of the legal mobilizations in postcolonial Caribbean countries. This overview of the CARICOM mobilization for reparation and justice will allow us to establish a dialogue about the role of postcolonial states in the process of memorialization of a violent colonial past and about the possibility of decolonial justices in postcolonial Caribbean states.
This article provides a criminological analysis of the extraction, consumption, and disposal of c... more This article provides a criminological analysis of the extraction, consumption, and disposal of coal in the Caribbean and the global south. It looks at how the transnational corporation Applied Energy System (AES) and its 454-megawatt coal-fired electric power plant in Puerto Rico has manufactured a transnational network of environmental harm and violence. The paper aims to demonstrate how coloniality, law, and state-corporate deviance enable the coal sector-a habitual environmental offender-to engage in systemic harm across different jurisdictions and states of the global south. To do so, we engage with the work of scholars in the green criminology (treadmill of production), state-corporate crimes (crimes of development), and crimes of the powerful (Ecocide and Carbon Criminal) traditions. Furthermore, this article briefly describes the stories of resistance taking place in Puerto Rico. In doing so, the article describes the criminogenic practices behind this fossil fuel industry, and how it has taken advantage of colonial practices, thus enhancing the historical harm manufactured by modernity and replicated within the neoliberal economy.
The South Atlantic Quarterly
of the key advocates of crypto-economics in PR who is working to transform the archipelago into a... more of the key advocates of crypto-economics in PR who is working to transform the archipelago into a crypto-paradise named Puertopia, 3 has been informally advising Adams on cryptocurrency and blockchain economy. Adams has vowed to make NYC "the center of the cryptocurrency industry." One could only imagine that the meeting dealt with blockchain technology, crypto-economics, and tax policies as it took place while the PR Blockchain Trade Association 4 was holding a series of seminars about the future of cryptocurrency on the archipelago. All of this took place while Puerto Ricans struggled with an unreliable electric grid, 5 the COVID-19 pandemic, and an accelerated process of displacement (Espada 2019) as a result of crypto-investors, venture capitalists, and other techno-capitalists relocating to the archipelago in order to take advantage of PR's tax incentives. 6 Unlike the meeting between Adam, Pierce, and Pierluisi, the transformation of PR into an offshore financial center (OFC), or tax haven, has been an open and transparent process. While capital gains tax on cryptocurrency can be as high as 37 percent in the US, long-term holders can avoid taxes altogether on digital assets in PR. This explains why, in recent years, several cryptocurrencies and blockchain publications, 7 newspapers, and news out
Stanford University Press, 2024
Devastating hurricanes, deteriorating infrastructure, massive public debt, and a global pandemic ... more Devastating hurricanes, deteriorating infrastructure, massive public debt, and a global pandemic make up the continuous crises that plague Puerto Rico. In the last several years, this disastrous escalation has placed the archipelago more centrally on the radar of residents and politicians in the United States, as the US Congress established an oversight board with emergency powers to ensure Puerto Rico's economic survival—and its ability to repay its debt. These events should not be understood as a random string of compounding misfortune. Rather, as demonstrated by Jose Atiles in Crisis by Design, they result from the social, legal, and political structure of colonialism. Moreover, Atiles shows how administrations, through emergency powers and laws paired with the dynamics of wealth extraction, have served to sustain and exacerbate crises. He explores the role of the local government, corporations, and grassroots mobilizations. More broadly, the Puerto Rican case provides insight into the role of law and emergency powers in other global south, Caribbean, and racialized and colonized countries. In these settings, Atiles contends, colonialism is the ongoing catastrophe.
Editora Educación Emergente, 2019
Como secuela y complemento de Apuntes para abandonar el derecho, Jugando con el derecho profundiz... more Como secuela y complemento de Apuntes para abandonar el derecho, Jugando con el derecho profundiza el cuestionamiento de José M. Atiles-Osoria al derecho como dispositivo del poder colonial para neutralizar y despolitizar los movimientos anticoloniales puertorriqueños, aun a pesar de victorias esporádicas en los tribunales. Con minuciosidad teórica e histórica, y nutriéndose de la gran aportación metodológica de entrevistar a 46 luchadoras y luchadores por la descolonización de Puerto Rico, este libro detalla los múltiples modos en que, en un escenario de excepción colonial, el derecho incumple sistemáticamente su promesa de justicia, avalando con impunidad la estela de sangre que el colonialismo estadounidense en Puerto Rico, junto a sus cómplices locales, ha dejado a su paso para mantener la hegemonía. Asimismo, Jugando con el derecho constituye una significativa aportación a los estudios históricos sobre las luchas anticoloniales en Puerto Rico y la región caribeña, cubriendo el período que va desde la invasión estadounidense en 1898 hasta las dos primeras décadas del siglo XXI. Al tiempo que analiza comparativamente instancias institucionalizadas (los partidos), autónomas (los diversos movimientos u organizaciones) y efímeras (acciones específicas o alianzas temporeras) de lucha anticolonial en Puerto Rico, este libro se caracteriza por el reconocimiento de que "la historia de oposición y confrontación no es lineal ni progresiva, sino que durante los 120 años de colonialismo estadounidense ha habido períodos de mayor confrontación, de distenciones y de transiciones". Dicho reconocimiento permite calibrar de manera más justa las aportaciones y limitaciones de una inmensa multiplicidad de colectivos y agentes políticos, dando al traste con la generalizada idea en el Puerto Rico de hoy de que la descolonización radical nunca ha sido un horizonte apoyado por las mayorías en nuestro país. Jugando con el derecho forma parte de la serie Otra universidad. Idóneo para cursos de filosofía del derecho, de sociología del derecho, de historia de Puerto Rico y de derecho decolonial, entre otros.
This article interrogates the impact that the codification of the International Crime of Ecocide ... more This article interrogates the impact that the codification of the International Crime of Ecocide may have in addressing and curtailing the environmental harms produced by the chemical industry in Latin America and the Global South. We contend that the International Crime of Ecocide should challenge the historical narratives that have informed international law and its relationship with colonialism. The role that Monsanto/Bayer plays in ecocidal practices such as the development, testing, and use of Agent Orange as war technology is examined, and we demonstrate its connection with current uses of Glyphosate in the war on drugs. At the center of this reflection are the connections between the chemical corporation, state crime, war, and ecocide. This allows us to offer a broader picture of the sociolegal and criminogenic practices that have historically contributed to ecocide and the normalization of corporate impunity in the Global South, specifically after World War II.
Dialogues in Human Geography , 2024
Corruption and anticorruption are ubiquitous in late capitalist global political discourses. Corr... more Corruption and anticorruption are ubiquitous in late capitalist global political discourses. Corruption narratives emerge in diverse contexts, carrying multiple meanings assigned by a variety of actors and employed to achieve various sociolegal and political objectives. Corruption is a central theme in today's US presidential election campaigns, just as it was prominently featured in recent elections in Brazil, India, Spain, Guatemala, and South Africa. Additionally, corruption dominates social mobilizations and activism, as illustrated by Puerto Rico, where popular anticorruption demonstrations pressured the governor to resign in 2019 (Atiles et al., 2022; Atiles, 2023). The entrenchment of corruption in political discourses has also driven the emergence and rapid growth of corruption and anticorruption scholarship. This body of work is often characterized by disciplinary isolation, limited multidisciplinary engagement, theoretical and epistemic provincialism, and a predominant focus on law enforcement, and punitive Book review forum Dialogues in Human Geography
Verfassungsblog, 2025
Trump announced via Truth Social retaliatory measures against Colombia following President Gustav... more Trump announced via Truth Social retaliatory measures against Colombia following President Gustavo Petro's refusal to allow US deportation flights. These included a 25% emergency tariff on Colombian imports, escalating to 50% within a week; travel bans and visa cancellations for Colombian officials and allies; enhanced US Customs inspections of Colombian nationals and cargo; and financial sanctions under the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA) of 1977. President Petro imposed reciprocal tariffs on US imports, rising to 50% in response. By Sunday night, January 26, both sides claimed victory upon agreeing to resume deportation flights.
Regulation & Governance, 2025
Secrecy jurisdictions play a crucial role in the legal framework perpetuating climate change. Thi... more Secrecy jurisdictions play a crucial role in the legal framework perpetuating climate change. This paper demonstrates how these jurisdictions sustain the dynamics of climate change by enabling capital accumulation rooted in environmental degradation. A regulatory approach to law and climate change must address the global nature of the legal structure that upholds exploitative and ecocidal social relationships. This paper argues that secrecy jurisdictions are a pivotal yet under-analyzed element of the global legal architecture that facilitates climate change. It, therefore, proposes the term regulatory havens to describe their purpose more adequately. Our analysis includes a case study of the Caribbean, as this geographical region operates as the epicenter for externalizing legal liabilities and extra-legal activities that contribute to climate change while also disproportionately suffering its impacts. The paper outlines how the corporate organizational structure prevalent in regulatory havens enable fossil fuel companies to shield themselves from liability, thus allowing them to detoxify fossil fuel assets. It then sets out a typology of "mechanisms of avoidance" that enable fossil fuel companies to secure key commercial advantages and operate under the radar of regulatory constraints. It briefly analyses the need to dismantle regulatory havens as a prerequisite for building a sustainable economy.
Crime, Law and Social Change, 2025
The Paycheck Protection Program (PPP), established as part of the CARES Act to address the econom... more The Paycheck Protection Program (PPP), established as part of the CARES Act to address the economic and financial impact of the COVID-19 pandemic, distributed $813.7 billion in forgivable loans between April 2020 and May 2021. While oversight offices and public accountability organizations initially raised concerns about fraud and mismanagement of PPP funds, this article argues that the focus should extend beyond individual fraud cases. It argues that the PPP, examined through the framework of the colonial regime of permission, served to uphold existing power structures of value extraction and capital accumulation during the COVID-19 pandemic. The article delves into the case of Puerto Rico, where PPP funds were used to finance and sustain the operation of the colonial tax haven economy in this US territory. Recipients of PPP loans included financial institutions, international banks, wealth management firms, and law firms that facilitated the transformation of Puerto Rico into a tax haven. Using publicly available data, this article examines how lenders and borrowers of the PPP benefited from tax haven policies developed by the US and PR governments. By scrutinizing the criminogenic dynamics of PPP funds distribution, this article sheds light on the political economy of emergency economic legislation and how this reinforced the pre-existing power structure of capital accumulation rather than mitigating the pandemic's social impact.
British Journal of Criminology , 2025
This paper argues that US unilateral economic and financial sanctions on Latin American countries... more This paper argues that US unilateral economic and financial sanctions on Latin American countries constitute state crime. Although critical scholarship on sanctions has shown that these coercive measures contravene international law and harm the populations of targeted countries, criminological scholarship has neglected the analysis of sanctions. Focusing on sanctions as structural violence, this paper explores how the power dynamics in imposing unilateral sanctions on Latin America align with understandings of state crimes and imperialism. The paper engages with the theoretical frameworks of state crime and the criminology of empire, provides an overview of US unilateral sanctions on Latin American countries, and suggests a research agenda for studying economic sanctions as state crime.
The Sociological Review, 2023
This article introduces the concept of 'coloniality of anti-corruption' to help situate and descr... more This article introduces the concept of 'coloniality of anti-corruption' to help situate and describe contemporary US anti-corruption policies aimed at Puerto Rico. The aim of the concept of coloniality of anti-corruption is to underscore corruption's inextricable relationship to race, class, gender, and other colonial power relations. The article argues that US interventions with the Puerto Rican government, along with its distribution of disaster relief in the wake of Hurricane María (2017) and subsequent earthquakes (2020), are best understood against the backdrop of a long history of corruption narrative implemented by the US. This is a narrative that seeks to legitimate US's colonial and capitalist expansion in Puerto Rico. To demonstrate this, the article explores the application of anti-corruption narratives by the Trump administration to justify its disaster relief policies for Puerto Rico. In particular, the article focuses on Trump's tweets describing Puerto Rican politicians as 'corrupt' and Puerto Rico as 'geography of fraud.' In doing so, the article provides a theoretical account of the uses of corruption and anti-corruption discourses to justify colonial and capitalist's global endeavors. It also illustrates how anti-corruption policies reproduce the idea of the non-white other as the corrupt subject and denotes the humanitarian consequences of such policies.
Latino Studies
A 6.4 magnitude earthquake struck Puerto Rico on 7 January 2020, adding a new episode to the mult... more A 6.4 magnitude earthquake struck Puerto Rico on 7 January 2020, adding a new episode to the multilayered political, economic, and humanitarian crisis affecting the island since 2006. This article demonstrates how the recovery efforts and management of the emergency constitute a state crime. The analysis draws from governmental and journalistic investigation and engages with legal and critical discourse analysis to provide a criminological and sociolegal analysis of state crimes in Puerto Rico-which feature prominently in US colonial and racialized history and anticorruption policies in PR-and of the genealogy of colonial violence that generates these and other legalized and state-facilitated harms. The article analyzes legally contrived states of exception and executive orders used to manage the earthquake emergency, the cases of corruption and criminal negligence (so salient in the public conscience that structural critiques of incompetent, unethical, and extractive governance have been coalesced by popular movements under the hashtag #wandalismo), the legislative public hearing on the case of the government hoarding and stalling distribution of disaster supplies, and the anticorruption mobilizations of January 2020. The article articulates the timeliness and urgency of prioritizing research and theorizing of state crimes within the burgeoning field of Latina/o/x criminology.
Sociology Compass, 2023
The scholarship on crimes of the powerful encompasses a critical examination of social harms, and... more The scholarship on crimes of the powerful encompasses a critical examination of social harms, and crimes perpetrated by privately or publicly operated businesses and corporations, the state, international organizations, elites, as well as the state-mediated administrative and political responses to these crimes. Going beyond state-centric definitions of crime and deviance, this scholarship emphasizes studying power and the harmful and criminogenic operations of the neoliberal-capitalism. However, this scholarship has overlooked the systemic examination of these crimes in the Global South, Latin America and the Caribbean, and their impact on racialized, gendered, and other marginalized communities. This article aims to contribute to this scholarship by providing an overview of the current developments in the scholarship on crimes of the powerful and proposing some future research areas for Latin America and the Caribbean. Thus, the article aims to demonstrate that the Latin American and Caribbean experiences with crimes of the powerful can expand our understanding of the social harms generated by powerful organizations and actors and magnify the analytical and methodological reach of this critical scholarship.
Critical Sociology , 2023
The US and Puerto Rican governments’ anti-corruption and anti-fraud legislation and policies exac... more The US and Puerto Rican governments’ anti-corruption and anti-fraud legislation and policies exacerbated the socio-economic impacts of the coronavirus disease (COVID)-19 pandemic in Puerto Rico (PR). This article demonstrates how anti-corruption interventions prevented those in most need from receiving the economic benefits of the Pandemic Unemployment Assistance program and other unemployment insurance benefits. Analyzing this specific instance of anti-corruption and anti-fraud interventions amid the COVID-19 pandemic allows for a deeper examination of how colonial interventions undermined PR’s capacity to handle the pandemic, exacerbated its socio-economic impact and created an unequal recovery. Thus, the article illustrates the contradictions of anti-corruption as punitive governance and the way in which a specific notion of corruption is reproduced through governmental actions, legal practices, and policies. Altogether, this article aims to contribute to the discussion on how colonial and punitive anti-corruption interventions enhance social exclusion, disproportionately harm racialized communities, and undermine people’s capacity to address period of crisis.
OÑATI SOCIO-LEGAL SERIES, 2023
This paper engages in a sociolegal analysis of the anti-corruption legislation enacted by the Pue... more This paper engages in a sociolegal analysis of the anti-corruption legislation enacted by the Puerto Rican Government in the aftermath of hurricane María (2017). It pays particular attention to the implementation and sociolegal impact of Act 2 of January 4, 2018, entitled, "The Anti-Corruption Code for the New Puerto Rico" and the creation of a Registry of Persons Convicted of Corruption. The rationale behind the Act and the Registry is to enforce transparency, open governance, and help the Puerto Rican government in its efforts to eradicate public corruption. Conversely, this paper argues that these reforms have introduce a punitive approach to anti-corruption in PR. The paper suggests Act 2 and the Registry had have a dual outcome: 1) a punitive approach to corruption that harm people in precarious positions, and 2) normalize the structural dynamic enabling corruption of the powerful. Thus, this paper intends to illustrate the contradictions in anti-corruption as punitive governance, and the way in which a specific image of corruption is reproduced through governmental actions, legal practices, and discourses.
Governmental responses to the COVID-19 global pandemic have generated numerous constitutionals, p... more Governmental responses to the COVID-19 global pandemic have generated numerous constitutionals, policy, legal, and political-economic debates. Scholarly engagements with the sociolegal and policy consequences of the COVID-19 pandemic have been dominated by discussion on the role of emergency powers, the suspension of individual civil liberties, the suspension of economic rules in order to guarantee economic survival, and social regulation of public spaces and of workplaces. This paper aims to explore how a critical sociolegal scholarship can contribute to a more sophisticated understanding of the role of law in creating the unequal conditions that propitiated the COVID-19 pandemic and that might enable further crises. This introduction offers a roadmap for theorizing the limits of law, the operationalization of emergency powers and the different policies implemented by global south and north countries in response to the pandemic. This introduction is structured as follow: (1) provides a general overview of the law and society tradition and its engagement with the COVID-19 pandemic; (2) engages with three key consequences of the pandemic, labor, and the lockdown; colonial implications; and the limits of law; (3) introduces the papers in this special issue; (4) sketches a proposal for the critical sociolegal scholarship of law and crises. 1 | INTRODUCTION What is the role of law in establishing the conditions that produce pandemics? Can law help prevent future pandemics? At a most obvious level, these questions direct our attention to
Law and Policy , 2022
This paper explores how the use of emergency powers by the US and Puerto Rican governments exacer... more This paper explores how the use of emergency powers by the US and Puerto Rican governments exacerbated the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic and manufactured the conditions for furthering the multilayered economic, legal, political, and humanitarian crisis affecting Puerto Rico since 2006. The paper discusses three cases. First, it examines how the multiple declarations of the state of emergency, and its constant renewals, produced contradictory public health policies. Since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic in March 2020, the Puerto Rican government has issued over 90 executive orders aimed at addressing the emergency, producing an unclear, contradictory, and unequal emergency management policy. Second, the paper focuses on the impact of the passing of Law 35 on April 5, 2020, which imposed severe penalties on those who disobeyed executive orders. As a result, hundreds of Puerto Ricans were arrested, fined, and incarcerated for violating the issued order. Third, the paper studies how, citing the presence of corruption, the Puerto Rican government implemented anti-corruption and anti-fraud policies that made it more difficult for those most in need of itmainly poor and racialized individuals, as well as immigrants and working women-to access Pandemic Unemployment Assistance. Thus, the paper argues that emergency policies designed to address the pandemic, punitive governance, and anti-corruption and anti-fraud policies undermined Puerto Rico's capacity to handle the pandemic, exacerbated its impact, and created an unequal recovery scenario.
Critical Criminology
This paper shows how the Puerto Rican government has used punitive governance to deal with three ... more This paper shows how the Puerto Rican government has used punitive governance to deal with three important reactions to the multilayered crisis affecting Puerto Rico since 2006: socioenvironmental mobilizations; anti-austerity mobilizations; and anticorruption mobilizations. The paper proposes a threefold analysis. Firstly, it provides a brief overview of the Puerto Rican economic and financial crisis, the neoliberal solutions to the crisis, and its consequences. Secondly, the paper expands on the intertwined / intertwining relationship between punitive governance, colonialism, and criminal law. Thirdly, the paper analyzes the process of criminalization of the socioenvironmental, anti-austerity, and anticorruption mobilizations resisting colonial abandonment. Two strategies will be discussed: (1) the uses of criminal law to limit freedom of speech and protests and (2) repression and the systemic deployment of state violence against protestors. The state's violent reactions to sociopolitical mobilizations are part of a long history of criminalizing and repressive practices that must be understood against the backdrop of US colonial history in Puerto Rico.
Diálogos de Saberes, (53), 181-204, 2020
This paper analyses the role of law in the mobilizations for reparation, restoration, and recogni... more This paper analyses the role of law in the mobilizations for reparation, restoration, and recognition of historical injuries and violent legacies caused by colonialism, slavery and racism in the State members of the Caribbean Community (CARICOM). By emphasizing on the CARICOM requests for reparation and restitution, this paper addresses the following three objectives: 1) to expose how the effects of colonial violence are interpreted; 2) to identify who are the main actors and what are the claims arising from these Caribbean mobilizations; 3) to analyze the uses of law implemented by this mobilization and the legal and political positions assumed by the European states. The paper proposes a sociolegal analysis of the legal mobilizations in postcolonial Caribbean countries. This overview of the CARICOM mobilization for reparation and justice will allow us to establish a dialogue about the role of postcolonial states in the process of memorialization of a violent colonial past and about the possibility of decolonial justices in postcolonial Caribbean states.
This article provides a criminological analysis of the extraction, consumption, and disposal of c... more This article provides a criminological analysis of the extraction, consumption, and disposal of coal in the Caribbean and the global south. It looks at how the transnational corporation Applied Energy System (AES) and its 454-megawatt coal-fired electric power plant in Puerto Rico has manufactured a transnational network of environmental harm and violence. The paper aims to demonstrate how coloniality, law, and state-corporate deviance enable the coal sector-a habitual environmental offender-to engage in systemic harm across different jurisdictions and states of the global south. To do so, we engage with the work of scholars in the green criminology (treadmill of production), state-corporate crimes (crimes of development), and crimes of the powerful (Ecocide and Carbon Criminal) traditions. Furthermore, this article briefly describes the stories of resistance taking place in Puerto Rico. In doing so, the article describes the criminogenic practices behind this fossil fuel industry, and how it has taken advantage of colonial practices, thus enhancing the historical harm manufactured by modernity and replicated within the neoliberal economy.
The South Atlantic Quarterly
of the key advocates of crypto-economics in PR who is working to transform the archipelago into a... more of the key advocates of crypto-economics in PR who is working to transform the archipelago into a crypto-paradise named Puertopia, 3 has been informally advising Adams on cryptocurrency and blockchain economy. Adams has vowed to make NYC "the center of the cryptocurrency industry." One could only imagine that the meeting dealt with blockchain technology, crypto-economics, and tax policies as it took place while the PR Blockchain Trade Association 4 was holding a series of seminars about the future of cryptocurrency on the archipelago. All of this took place while Puerto Ricans struggled with an unreliable electric grid, 5 the COVID-19 pandemic, and an accelerated process of displacement (Espada 2019) as a result of crypto-investors, venture capitalists, and other techno-capitalists relocating to the archipelago in order to take advantage of PR's tax incentives. 6 Unlike the meeting between Adam, Pierce, and Pierluisi, the transformation of PR into an offshore financial center (OFC), or tax haven, has been an open and transparent process. While capital gains tax on cryptocurrency can be as high as 37 percent in the US, long-term holders can avoid taxes altogether on digital assets in PR. This explains why, in recent years, several cryptocurrencies and blockchain publications, 7 newspapers, and news out
The South Atlantic Quarterly , 2022
Fraud Crypto-Colonialism, Climate Crisis, and Dispossession in the Global South This dossier exam... more Fraud Crypto-Colonialism, Climate Crisis, and Dispossession in the Global South This dossier examines the current sociopolitical, economic, and legal experiences with the implementation of blockchain technology and cryptocurrency in Latin America and the Caribbean. This dossier looks at how the Puerto Rican and Salvadorian governments, in their efforts to insert their countries into global financial markets and capitalist circuits to tackle economic crisis and poverty, have implemented a series of neoliberal legislation, deregulations, and tax and monetary policies to attract techno-capitalists to their respective countries. The policies' sociopolitical and economic consequences are hidden within often embellished tropes of tropicality and paradisiacal lands of endless opportunity for entrepreneurs and techno-capitalists. The aim of this dossier is to critically interrogate how legislation and policies promoting the establishment of blockchain technology and cryptocurrency in El Salvador and Puerto Rico have exacerbated already existing population vulnerabilities, socioeconomic and financial crises, and the climate crisis. Thus, the papers in this dossier demonstrate the contested nature of the implementation of these technologies in the global South, and how they have become unsuccessful technological fixes to long-lasting economic and financial crises, inequalities, and natural disasters. Blockchain technology and cryptocurrency are relatively new technologies. Cryptocurrencies emerged in the aftermath of the global 2008 financial crisis and are a digital representation of economic value (Crandall 2019).
Puerto Rico's (PR) recent history (from 2016 to 2020) and its experience with a continuity of cri... more Puerto Rico's (PR) recent history (from 2016 to 2020) and its experience with a continuity of crises and disasters demonstrate the normalization of the use of the state of exception and executive orders to deal with threats to public safety and security. This paper looks at the United States and PR governmental imposition of the state of exception to: address the economic crisis; administer the aftermath of Hurricanes Irma and Maria (2017); police the anti-corruption mobilizations that ousted Governor Ricardo Rosselló in the summer of 2019; respond to the recent earthquakes (2019/2020) in the southern region of the Island, and to manage the COVID-19 pandemic. As a whole, my analysis shows how this normalization of exceptionality, and the militarization of policing during periods of "emergency" instead of guarantying public safety and security, creates the conditions for further waves of disaster.
State Crime Journal , 2021
The CoVId-19 global pandemic brings about a new episode in the multi-lay- ered political, economi... more The CoVId-19 global pandemic brings about a new episode in the multi-lay- ered political, economic and humanitarian crisis affecting Puerto Rico since 2006. The 14-years-long crisis has been marked by the U.S. and P.R. governments’ imposition of a permanent state of exception to deal with an economic crisis, bankruptcy, hurricanes, swarms of earthquakes and a pandemic. This paper argues that uses of the state of excep- tion and executive orders created a regime of permission for corruption, state-corporate crimes and human rights violations, while exacerbating the impact of the pandemic, and manufacturing the conditions for further disasters. The paper engages in a sociole- gal analysis of the cases of corruption and state-corporate crimes in the procurement of CoVId-19 test-kits and medical equipment, and the role of the pharmaceutical corpora- tions in undermining PR’s capacity to react to the CoVId-19 pandemic.
Walter Benjamin y el estado de excepción verdadero: Aproximaciones a una teoría de la Justicia ex... more Walter Benjamin y el estado de excepción verdadero: Aproximaciones a una teoría de la Justicia explora el desarrollo del estado de excepción en los trabajos de Walter Benjamin. Para ello, el texto propone un análisis en dos partes: 1) expone el paradigma del estado de excepción normalizado y sus articulaciones como dispositivo para el manejo de la economía (vida), el derecho (excepcionalidad) y la política (violencia) y 2) expone el paradigma del estado de excepción verdadero como dispositivo que propicia la ruptura con las formas de hacer y pensar la Política. Así, mostramos que el estado de excepción verdadero comienza a ser comprendido cuando se lee desde la experiencia de la tradición de los oprimidos.
[Giorgio Agamben, State of Exception and Colonialism : Remarks on the Ontopolitical Dimension of ... more [Giorgio Agamben, State of Exception and Colonialism : Remarks on the Ontopolitical Dimension of Exceptionality]. In Insatuti, Xabier, Nogueroles, Marta and Vergara, Jorge (eds.) Nuevos diálogos de Pensamiento Crítico. Madrid: Ediciones Universidad Autónoma de Madrid, 31-57.
in Poynting, Scott and Whyte, David (eds.) Counter-terrorism and State Political Violence: The 'War on Terror' as Terror. London: Routledge, 156-177. , 2012
Of course, the good terrorists are those who respond to the interests of the State, those who bec... more Of course, the good terrorists are those who respond to the interests of the State, those who become allied with them. Bear in mind that the governments of Puerto Rico and the U.S. very much feared the development of Puerto Rican independence movements in the 1960s and the 1970s. They were afraid because the independence movements were very strong in those years. Then, these other right wing groups -paramilitary, death squads-that feed off of Vietnam veterans, people from the PNP and Cuban exiles were the base that the State had there, on the street, and obviously they were operating according to the interests of the State. Then, the State looked at them with sympathy because they took a bit of pressure away. Because the State did not have to set the bombs, these people set them against the independence movements. (Interviewee) 1 J. M. Atiles
in Nina, Daniel (ed.) Lo común: postcolonialidad y derecho. San Juan: Isla Negra Editores y Editorial Barco de Papel, 150-170., 2011
![Research paper thumbnail of “Introduction” in Fitzpatrick, Peter (2011) El derecho como resistencia: modernismo, imperialismo, legalismo [Law as Resistance: Modernity, Imperialism and Legality] (translated by Gustavo José Rojas Páez and María Carolina Olarte). Bogotá: Siglo del Hombre Editores; Universidad Libre, 83-103.](https://attachments.academia-assets.com/34779416/thumbnails/1.jpg)
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Insularity, Excrement, Imperialism and Law: The case of Guano Islands (In Spanish). Cruce: Contemporary Socio-Cultural Critrique. September 7, 2018, 64-78.
Aunque con frecuencia se consideren nimias, las islas ocupan un lugar central en la historia de l... more Aunque con frecuencia se consideren nimias, las islas ocupan un lugar central en la historia de la modernidad euro-estadounidense. Alternadamente representadas en multiplicidad de tradiciones y medios como espacios aislados, salvajes, paradisíacos e incivilizados, en las islas encontraron su alteridad los procesos “continentales” modernos de colonización, juridificación y expansión capitalista. Si a ello añadimos la comodificación del excremento, estamos ante un panorama fundamental para comprender la relación entre el imperialismo euro-estadounidense y el tabú, lo indecible y lo descartable. Se trata de las Islas de Guano, experiencia poco conocida de la historia reciente en Latinoamérica, el Caribe y el Pacífico, que permite mostrar la conjunción entre derecho, colonización, capitalismo y representaciones de la insularidad en el siglo XIX. La historia de dichas islas denota el afán incesante por la producción de riquezas, el control geopolítico, la explotación del medioambiente y del trabajo humano, y la redefinición de la espacialidad insular, todo trastocado en ley. Nuestro trabajo se organiza en tres apartados: (1) los procesos que convirtieron al guano en el fertilizante por excelencia del siglo XIX; (2) las estrategias jurídicas aplicadas por EEUU para legitimar la toma de territorios en el Caribe, el Atlántico y el Pacífico para explotar depósitos de guano; (3) los efectos sociopolíticos de esta experiencia en la política colonial estadounidense en Puerto Rico y el Caribe.
This paper aims to apply Frank Pearce's (1976) critical methodology and Marxist theoretical frame... more This paper aims to apply Frank Pearce's (1976) critical methodology and Marxist theoretical framework to the development of the concept of colonial state crimes. By doing this, the paper will show how, even though Pearce does not develop a colonial perspective in his analysis of the crimes of the powerful, his theory and his methodological emphasis in the study of what has been normalized and naturalized constitute a foundational contribution to the development of the colonial perspective in the analysis of state crimes. This colonial approach will be developed in three sections: 1) an exposition of the concepts of the crime of the powerful and state crimes; 2) an exploration of the relation between the anticolonial tradition and state crimes; 3) a discussion of how the concept of colonial state crimes can illuminate the global south's experiences with regards to state violence and criminality. The intention is to show how Pearce has contributed to the development of the colonial state crimes concept, allowing for a better understanding of colonial violence.
Law and Society Review, 2025
In a time when mass deportations are framed as sound migration policy and Haitian communities bec... more In a time when mass deportations are framed as sound migration policy and Haitian communities become focal points in racialized political debates in the United States, and Haiti endures a prolonged multilayered humanitarian, political, and economic crisis, Jeffrey Kahn's Islands of Sovereignty: Haitian Migration and the Borders of Empire (2019) emerges as a critical text. Kahn offers a profound contribution to our understanding of the juridico-political dynamics shaping U.S. immigration policies, the mechanics of the U.S. "liberal empire," and the colonial frameworks that underpin US-Haitian relations. The book explores the legal and extralegal formations of the U.S. empire in the Caribbean and their enduring consequences for the racialized representation of Haitian migrants. Kahn situates Haiti's precarious condition within a historical continuum of Western imperialism and U.S. interventionism. The book underscores how Haiti's current challenges-from its governance crisis to its economic instability-are deeply rooted in the legacies of U.S. and Western imperial interventions. Decades of U.S. occupation and Haiti's forced isolation from global financial systems have left the Haitian state incapacitated, unable to serve its citizens adequately. Chapter 3 highlights the enduring and complex entanglements between Haiti and the United States, emphasizing how the first U.S. occupation of Haiti in 1915, ostensibly justified as a mission to maintain law and order, in reality served to solidify U.S. geopolitical control over the Caribbean. This occupation paralleled interventions in Cuba, Puerto Rico, Nicaragua, Panama, and the Dominican Republic, cementing imperial domination across the region. Through meticulous legal and historical ethnography, Kahn unravels the legal architectures and political cosmologies underpinning U.S. policies of maritime interdiction of Haitian migrants. Islands of Sovereignty is remarkable in its methodological scope and ability to focus on Haitian asylum-seekers journeys to the United States between the 1970s and 1990s. The structure of the book mirrors the complexity of its subject. Organized into six chapters, it weaves together historical narratives, legal analysis, and theoretical insights. The opening chapters provide a historical account of Haitian migration, detailing how U.S. support for the Duvalier dictatorships fueled
Law and Society Review , 2024
Over the past decade, Puerto Rico (PR) has become a focal point for US media, politics, and acade... more Over the past decade, Puerto Rico (PR) has become a focal point for US media, politics, and academia. Since 2014, PR has endured an economic crisis, bankruptcy, hurricanes, earthquakes, and the COVID-19 pandemic. In 2016, the US Congress enacted the Puerto Rico Oversight, Management, and Economic Stability Act (PROMESA), imposing the Financial Oversight and Management Board (FOMB), which curtailed PR's selfgovernance and internal limited democracy. PR has also faced intense judicial scrutiny, with the US Supreme Court (SCOTUS) issuing five opinions since 2016 and denying review on additional cases, making it one of the most litigated unincorporated territories in recent years. These developments highlight a profound transformation in PR's sociolegal, political, and economic structures -a transformation meticulously examined by Mónica Jiménez in Making the Never-Never Land: Race and Law in the Creation of Puerto Rico. Jiménez's work, at the intersection of legal history, Puerto Rican studies, and law and society, emphasizes the central role of race in shaping and reconfiguring PR. The book argues that race and law have been key organizing principles in the US-PR relationship from the start, urging a broader view beyond the early twentieth-century Insular Cases to include the history of US settler colonialism and racial exclusion. Jiménez asserts that federal policies, SCOTUS decisions, and congressional actions carved out states of exception for racial undesirables, granting the federal government plenary power over these groups. In the introduction, Jiménez poses questions often faced by Puerto Rican scholars: what does PR do for the US? What good is a bankrupt colony to the US? Why does the US keep it? The book suggests that PR produces debt -both individual and collective -fueling wealth extraction and financial capitalism. As a captive space for debt production, PR generates billions in revenue for banks, hedge funds, and investors. This is particularly relevant considering the archipelago's prolonged economic crisis, which Jiménez argues has persisted for a century. Thus, crisis is the
Dialogues in Human Geography
Recent Puerto Rican history has been marked by a continuity of disasters and a multilayered polit... more Recent Puerto Rican history has been marked by a continuity of disasters and a multilayered political, financial, economic, and humanitarian crisis. From the public debt crisis in 2006; to the Puerto Rico (PR) government's bankruptcy in 2016; to the approval of the Puerto Rico Oversight, Management, and Economic Stability Act (PROMESA) by the US Congress in 2016; to the devastating Hurricanes Irma and María in 2017; to the earthquakes in 2020; to the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, PR's recent history is defined by an "economy of catastrophe or a catastrophe by attrition" (Zambrana, 2021, p. 54). It is precisely in this context, that Rocío Zambrana's Colonial Debts aims to provide a decolonial and feminist reading of the public debt crisis, and the political economy of coloniality in PR. To do so, Zambrana engages with critical theory, decolonial feminist thought, the work of Maurizio Lazzarato, and various Puerto Rican scholars and activist groups. Debt is described as a social, economic, political-and I would add legal-relationship. According to Zambrana, debt operates as an apparatus of capture, predations, Book review forum Dialogues in Human Geography 1-4
Crime, Law, Social Change, 2021
Journal of White-Collar and Corporate Crimes, 2020
Nixon, Rob (2011), Slow Violence and the Environmentalism of the Poor. Cambridge, MA/London, Engl... more Nixon, Rob (2011), Slow Violence and the Environmentalism of the Poor. Cambridge, MA/London, England: Harvard University Press, 353 pp.
Reflections on Transitional Justice: For the Return of Politics and Searching for Other Epistemologies
![Research paper thumbnail of Colonialismo, Estado de Excepción y Resistencia: La criminalización de la lucha armada en Puerto Rico. [Colonialism, State of Exception and Resistance: The Criminalization of Armed Struggle in Puerto Rico]](https://attachments.academia-assets.com/33321354/thumbnails/1.jpg)
](Oñati International Institute for the Sociology of Law: , 2009
