Visualizing Decolonial Environmental Futures in Puerto Rico, Beyond Crisis

Climate change is expected to fundamentally alter the geography and lifeworlds of Piñones, Puerto Rico—a cluster of Afro-Puerto Rican communities located in the Río Grande de Loíza estuary. This essay asks how climate change is visualized by climate scientists versus how it is perceived by people living on the frontlines of the climate crisis. Piñones was once home to large coastal sand dunes and vibrant life-making practices that are slowly eroding, but here loss has been engineered, literally and figuratively, to create modern infrastructures for urban residents in San Juan, the capital city. Thus risk and how it is understood by Afro–Puerto Ricans in Piñones is crucially bound with seeing the racism and colonial violence embedded within the climate crisis and which often fall outside the purview of climate scientists. Here the future is the struggle, a struggle for the future of Piñones and all Puerto Ricans.

Capital (architecture) · Capital city · Climate change · Climate risk · Colonialism · Futures contract · Racism · Climate Change, Adaptation, Migration · Ecocriticism and Environmental Literature · Environmental Justice and Health Disparities