Landscape and Cartographic Sovereignty
Case Study: Puerto Rico
Case Study: Puerto Rico
I can talk specifically about the image of a landscape in Puerto Rico and how it has been represented visually in very limited ways—mostly in terms of the military, nostalgic, agricultural representation of the 1930 to 1940s. Now most representations are dominated by tourism and the service industry. And we embody them and reproduce them as well. These are specific ways of seeing that have to do with domination and ownership; a landscape that is always portrayed almost as a pristine landscape, even when it has been bombed for 60 years. If you swim you will see lobsters and seashells living on missiles. If you don’t, then you see nothing. You just see the beautiful surface of the ocean.
- Beatriz Santiago Muñoz
This webpage will trace the landscape and lack of cartographic sovereignty in Puerto Rico by Puerto Ricans, beginning with the indigenous Taíno people, through a plantation and military economy, and up until the contemporary post-Maria moment in order to unpack the violence and legacy of colonial planning and the territoriality of ecology. An island fixed under the jurisdiction of the United States, this text is interested in the work of contemporary artists who visualize and conceptualize the daily landscape of Puerto Rico and its lack of sovereignty and self-determination over itself. This text will look at three artists / artist groups (Natalia Lassalle Morillo, Beatriz Santiago Muñoz, and Jennifer Allora & Guillermo Cazadilla) who render such violence currently not evident within the current cartographic machine.
Keywords
Cartography: Cartography engenders ways of visualizing and reading images of the world. It is the practice of making maps which can create new ideas regarding spacial and border politics. Cartography is defined by physical, emotional, social and political perspectives.
Sovereignty: Sovereignty is a form of power that is assumed to be autonomous and authoritative. Those who hold sovereign power, whether an individual or a state, have full power over themself and not from outside entities.
Landscape: Landscape is a characteristic of both the "natural" and built environment that defines a spacial perspective. Landscape can be a visual symbol but also a cultural and political practice.
Taíno Landscape
Before Columbus first set foot on the island of Puerto Rico in 1493, it was inhabited the Taíno peoples, whom Columbus characterized as friendly, generous and gentle people. The Taíno lived in organized villages called yucayeques, which varied in size depending on the location. Typically, there was a plaza at the center of the village that was used for public social activities and ceremonies. They heavily relied on agriculture and fishing and had no interest in private property. They planted crops such as yucca, corn and cassava with complex irrigation systems, and practiced the slash and burn technique for the harvest which allowed for new, fertile soil to be produced through natural permaculture processes.
The Taíno revered the goddess Atabey, who represented the earth and all water systems. This in turn influenced their respect for other living creatures because they considered all people, creatures, and environments to be connected. Such wholistic concepts of the world and equality among species were in distinct contrast to the European binary of man and nature, or even between human and human as can be seen via the sovereignty of one race over another (i.e. white supremacy).
Irving Rouse, "The Ancestries of the Tainos." In The Tainos: Rise and Decline of the People Who Greeted Columbus. (Yale University Press, 1992), Pages 26-47.
Indigenous activist and scholar Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz argues in her An Indigenous Peoples’ History of the United States that “according to a series of late-fifteenth-century papal bulls, European nations acquired title to the lands they ‘discovered’ and the Indigenous inhabitants lost their natural right to that land after Europeans arrived and claimed it”. But these landscapes were not boundless wildernesses, they were organized and cultivated with respect to other living things.
Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz, An Indigenous Peoples’ History of the United States. (Beacon Press; Reprint edition, 2015), Page 3.
Spanish Colonization, Plantations, and Mapping
Early colonization at the end of the 15th century set an anthropocentric culture in motion through a delineation and definition of cartography. After Columbus’ formation of Puerto Rico as an extension of the Spanish crown, many Spanish peoples immigrated to the island and continued to change the landscape and statecraft.
The first Spanish settlement in Puerto Rico was founded in 1508 by Juan Ponce de León, a conquistador under Columbus, who later became the first governor of the island. His explorations of the island had confirmed the presence of gold and gave him agency to explore the island further in the name of the Spanish crown. Ponce de León began building his home on the island, Casa Blanca, in 1521, which served as protection from attacks by the Taíno who were rebelling against the Spanish colonization. The house is a traditional Spanish Colonial style and many other buildings in Old San Juan were built in this similar style, imported from Europe.
Ponce de León and other Spanish settlers spent most of their time searching for gold while forcing the native Taínos into a system of feudal labor known as encomienda, where they would do most of the physical labor in planting crops such as corn, tobacco, plantains, cocoa. Sugarcane cultivation was not realized until the 18th and 19th centuries, and required great funding for human and mechanical labor. The Spanish introduced diseases which took a severe toll on the indigenous population. Spanish immigration to the island caused the population to grow rapidly into the 19th century. And while the development of private property grew, the Taíno population diminished. The landscape was being transformed through slave labor (both Taíno and through the African slave trade) constructing new trading routes, mines and crops all for private interests. Nature was raw material for producing commodities.
Robert H. Fuson, Juan Ponce de León and the Discovery of Puerto Rico and Florida. (McDonald & Woodward Publishing Co, 2000), Page 3.
- Beatriz Santiago Muñoz
This webpage will trace the landscape and lack of cartographic sovereignty in Puerto Rico by Puerto Ricans, beginning with the indigenous Taíno people, through a plantation and military economy, and up until the contemporary post-Maria moment in order to unpack the violence and legacy of colonial planning and the territoriality of ecology. An island fixed under the jurisdiction of the United States, this text is interested in the work of contemporary artists who visualize and conceptualize the daily landscape of Puerto Rico and its lack of sovereignty and self-determination over itself. This text will look at three artists / artist groups (Natalia Lassalle Morillo, Beatriz Santiago Muñoz, and Jennifer Allora & Guillermo Cazadilla) who render such violence currently not evident within the current cartographic machine.
Keywords
Cartography: Cartography engenders ways of visualizing and reading images of the world. It is the practice of making maps which can create new ideas regarding spacial and border politics. Cartography is defined by physical, emotional, social and political perspectives.
Sovereignty: Sovereignty is a form of power that is assumed to be autonomous and authoritative. Those who hold sovereign power, whether an individual or a state, have full power over themself and not from outside entities.
Landscape: Landscape is a characteristic of both the "natural" and built environment that defines a spacial perspective. Landscape can be a visual symbol but also a cultural and political practice.
Taíno Landscape
Before Columbus first set foot on the island of Puerto Rico in 1493, it was inhabited the Taíno peoples, whom Columbus characterized as friendly, generous and gentle people. The Taíno lived in organized villages called yucayeques, which varied in size depending on the location. Typically, there was a plaza at the center of the village that was used for public social activities and ceremonies. They heavily relied on agriculture and fishing and had no interest in private property. They planted crops such as yucca, corn and cassava with complex irrigation systems, and practiced the slash and burn technique for the harvest which allowed for new, fertile soil to be produced through natural permaculture processes.
The Taíno revered the goddess Atabey, who represented the earth and all water systems. This in turn influenced their respect for other living creatures because they considered all people, creatures, and environments to be connected. Such wholistic concepts of the world and equality among species were in distinct contrast to the European binary of man and nature, or even between human and human as can be seen via the sovereignty of one race over another (i.e. white supremacy).
Irving Rouse, "The Ancestries of the Tainos." In The Tainos: Rise and Decline of the People Who Greeted Columbus. (Yale University Press, 1992), Pages 26-47.
Indigenous activist and scholar Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz argues in her An Indigenous Peoples’ History of the United States that “according to a series of late-fifteenth-century papal bulls, European nations acquired title to the lands they ‘discovered’ and the Indigenous inhabitants lost their natural right to that land after Europeans arrived and claimed it”. But these landscapes were not boundless wildernesses, they were organized and cultivated with respect to other living things.
Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz, An Indigenous Peoples’ History of the United States. (Beacon Press; Reprint edition, 2015), Page 3.
Spanish Colonization, Plantations, and Mapping
Early colonization at the end of the 15th century set an anthropocentric culture in motion through a delineation and definition of cartography. After Columbus’ formation of Puerto Rico as an extension of the Spanish crown, many Spanish peoples immigrated to the island and continued to change the landscape and statecraft.
The first Spanish settlement in Puerto Rico was founded in 1508 by Juan Ponce de León, a conquistador under Columbus, who later became the first governor of the island. His explorations of the island had confirmed the presence of gold and gave him agency to explore the island further in the name of the Spanish crown. Ponce de León began building his home on the island, Casa Blanca, in 1521, which served as protection from attacks by the Taíno who were rebelling against the Spanish colonization. The house is a traditional Spanish Colonial style and many other buildings in Old San Juan were built in this similar style, imported from Europe.
Ponce de León and other Spanish settlers spent most of their time searching for gold while forcing the native Taínos into a system of feudal labor known as encomienda, where they would do most of the physical labor in planting crops such as corn, tobacco, plantains, cocoa. Sugarcane cultivation was not realized until the 18th and 19th centuries, and required great funding for human and mechanical labor. The Spanish introduced diseases which took a severe toll on the indigenous population. Spanish immigration to the island caused the population to grow rapidly into the 19th century. And while the development of private property grew, the Taíno population diminished. The landscape was being transformed through slave labor (both Taíno and through the African slave trade) constructing new trading routes, mines and crops all for private interests. Nature was raw material for producing commodities.
Robert H. Fuson, Juan Ponce de León and the Discovery of Puerto Rico and Florida. (McDonald & Woodward Publishing Co, 2000), Page 3.
"Mapa topográfico de la Isla de San Juan de Puerto Rico" by, Tomás López de Vargas Machuca, 1791. Library of Congress, Online Map Archives. Source: https://www.loc.gov/item/99463770/
An early map of Puerto Rico by the Madrid-based Tomás López de Vargas Machuca from 1731-1802 shows the denseness of the island through topography distances. We also see several distinct roads being built almost grid-like across the island. Names of rivers and ports are nearly all in Spanish, but there is some evidence of a Taíno language distinguishable through a creolization of languages . For example, Arecibo comes from the Taíno Arasibo.
An early map of Puerto Rico by the Madrid-based Tomás López de Vargas Machuca from 1731-1802 shows the denseness of the island through topography distances. We also see several distinct roads being built almost grid-like across the island. Names of rivers and ports are nearly all in Spanish, but there is some evidence of a Taíno language distinguishable through a creolization of languages . For example, Arecibo comes from the Taíno Arasibo.
"Mapa topográfico de la isla de Puerto Rico" by G.W. & C.B. Colton & Co., 1886. Library of Congress, Online Map Archives.
Source: https://www.loc.gov/resource/g4970.ct000305/?r=-0.267,0.004,1.338,0.738,0
Source: https://www.loc.gov/resource/g4970.ct000305/?r=-0.267,0.004,1.338,0.738,0
Another map from 1886 is attributed to G.W. & C.B. Colton & Co., a New York based mapping firm. Although this map was made right before the Spanish American War of 1898, we can see there was much American interest and investment in the land through the act of a more complex and detailed mapping. American ideas and structures around territorial expansion were already in play. The divisive roads seen in the map by López de Vargas Machuca have given way to regions on the island: Ponce (named after Juan Ponce de León), Mayagües (named after the Yagüez River) and so on. These mapped territories are only a few of many representations of power on the island. These two in particular map the battle for empire and the colonization of indigeneity of the land. And although they map the land, they are tied to more intangible forms of empire, law and jurisdiction that continue to reign today.
In Yarimar Bonilla and Max Hantel’s “Visualizing Sovereignty: Cartographic Queries for the Digital Age” the authors argue that geography “reveal[s] that the visualizing power of the map preceded the formation of sovereign states and created the conditions of possibility for colonial expansion.” Maps not only shape our understanding of political authority, they reaffirm colonial violence through a process of naturalization. “The map is ‘a technology of possession’ as Anne McClintock argues, “promising that those with the capacity to make such perfect representations must also have the right of territorial control.”
For the full Yarimar Bonilla and Max Hantel article, and for more images regarding the discourse of mapping the Caribbean, continue here: http://smallaxe.net/sxarchipelagos/issue01/bonilla-visualizing.html
The growth of the plantation economy on the island, most commonly sugar, had created a greater need for labor. The Taíno population was nearly decimated by the Spanish by this time, through disease, enslavement or murder. In the mid to late 1700s, the Spanish began bringing enslaved Africans to the island to work the new sugar plantations. However it took until the mid-19th century for the island to become a recognizable producer and exporter of sugar, and by then, the number of African slaves on the island has grown to 30,000. This new sugar landscape greatly changed the island, new roads and factories were built in order to accommodate the growth in industrialization.
"Spanish Rule, Sugar and Slaves: Haitian Slave Revolt, sugar cultivation, Cedula, subsistence crops, mulattos" Countries Quest. http://www.countriesquest.com/caribbean/puerto_rico/history/spanish_rule/sugar_and_slaves.htm
In Yarimar Bonilla and Max Hantel’s “Visualizing Sovereignty: Cartographic Queries for the Digital Age” the authors argue that geography “reveal[s] that the visualizing power of the map preceded the formation of sovereign states and created the conditions of possibility for colonial expansion.” Maps not only shape our understanding of political authority, they reaffirm colonial violence through a process of naturalization. “The map is ‘a technology of possession’ as Anne McClintock argues, “promising that those with the capacity to make such perfect representations must also have the right of territorial control.”
For the full Yarimar Bonilla and Max Hantel article, and for more images regarding the discourse of mapping the Caribbean, continue here: http://smallaxe.net/sxarchipelagos/issue01/bonilla-visualizing.html
The growth of the plantation economy on the island, most commonly sugar, had created a greater need for labor. The Taíno population was nearly decimated by the Spanish by this time, through disease, enslavement or murder. In the mid to late 1700s, the Spanish began bringing enslaved Africans to the island to work the new sugar plantations. However it took until the mid-19th century for the island to become a recognizable producer and exporter of sugar, and by then, the number of African slaves on the island has grown to 30,000. This new sugar landscape greatly changed the island, new roads and factories were built in order to accommodate the growth in industrialization.
"Spanish Rule, Sugar and Slaves: Haitian Slave Revolt, sugar cultivation, Cedula, subsistence crops, mulattos" Countries Quest. http://www.countriesquest.com/caribbean/puerto_rico/history/spanish_rule/sugar_and_slaves.htm
"A plantation of a prosperous planter, Guayama, Porto Rico" by Strohmeyer & Wyman, circa 1899. Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division Washington, D.C.. Source: http://www.loc.gov/pictures/resource/stereo.1s15945/
US Colonization: Military & Pharmaceutical Landscape
After the Spanish-American war, Puerto Rico came under the United States’ rule in 1898. In The Puerto Rican Diaspora: Historical Perspectives, Carmen Teresa Whalen and Victor Vázquez-Hernandez that “the United States obtained Puerto Rico in place of monetary compensation for its costs in prosecuting the war. Puerto Ricans were not consulted with on terms of the treaty. Thus began the United States’ colonial rule of Puerto Rico”. Under the Foraker Act, military rule replaced and rewrote any last vestiges of Puerto Rican self-rule that the Spanish may have allowed. The United States Congress and President were now in control over sovereignty and representation of the island within United States politics, there would be no voting rights allowed for Puerto Rican citizens. Puerto Rico’s main crop was still sugar at the time and so many United States-based corporations invested heavily by buying up and privatizing land. “Land concentration and an economy based on cash crops reduced households’ abilities to meet their sustenance needs. Instead of households growing food for consumption, food was now imported”.
Carmen Teresa Whalen and Victor Vázquez-Hernandez, The Puerto Rican Diaspora: Historical Perspectives. (Temple University Press, 2005), Pages 5-7.
The United States also literally implemented a landscape of violence through the development of military bases on islands and by using Puerto Rico and its adjacent Vieques for bombing practice. "In the sixty years of its use as a base and bombing range, Vieques was pummeled with more than 300,000 munitions, totaling more than half a million pounds of aerial drops a year. These were often live bombs, including everything the Navy wanted to test from the end of World War II until not that long ago: napalm, depleted uranium, and maybe, residents suspect, a little Agent Orange."
Sarah Hill, "Beaches and Bombs", Boston Review, July 21, 2015. Accessed April 28, 2019. Source: http://bostonreview.net/world/sarah-hill-vieques-puerto-rico-bombs
After the Spanish-American war, Puerto Rico came under the United States’ rule in 1898. In The Puerto Rican Diaspora: Historical Perspectives, Carmen Teresa Whalen and Victor Vázquez-Hernandez that “the United States obtained Puerto Rico in place of monetary compensation for its costs in prosecuting the war. Puerto Ricans were not consulted with on terms of the treaty. Thus began the United States’ colonial rule of Puerto Rico”. Under the Foraker Act, military rule replaced and rewrote any last vestiges of Puerto Rican self-rule that the Spanish may have allowed. The United States Congress and President were now in control over sovereignty and representation of the island within United States politics, there would be no voting rights allowed for Puerto Rican citizens. Puerto Rico’s main crop was still sugar at the time and so many United States-based corporations invested heavily by buying up and privatizing land. “Land concentration and an economy based on cash crops reduced households’ abilities to meet their sustenance needs. Instead of households growing food for consumption, food was now imported”.
Carmen Teresa Whalen and Victor Vázquez-Hernandez, The Puerto Rican Diaspora: Historical Perspectives. (Temple University Press, 2005), Pages 5-7.
The United States also literally implemented a landscape of violence through the development of military bases on islands and by using Puerto Rico and its adjacent Vieques for bombing practice. "In the sixty years of its use as a base and bombing range, Vieques was pummeled with more than 300,000 munitions, totaling more than half a million pounds of aerial drops a year. These were often live bombs, including everything the Navy wanted to test from the end of World War II until not that long ago: napalm, depleted uranium, and maybe, residents suspect, a little Agent Orange."
Sarah Hill, "Beaches and Bombs", Boston Review, July 21, 2015. Accessed April 28, 2019. Source: http://bostonreview.net/world/sarah-hill-vieques-puerto-rico-bombs
A common version of a map of the United States that does not include its territories. Courtesy of Smart Vector Pics.
Despite these claims to territory - when has there ever been a map of the United States that includes Puerto Rico? The map typically seen is one of the United States that sometimes inlcudes Alaska or Hawaii, but not always. This continental and uniform map does not include all the US territories (including Guam, Americans Samoas, Virgin Islands and Puerto Rico) and it is a political tool used to suggest a union of states. This is a key argument of Daniel Immerwahr in How to Hide an Empire: A History of the Greater United States. While the US was initially willing to claim these islands in the Pacific and Caribbean mostly as strategic military bases, or for raw materials and plantations, these places were never fully considered to be part of the projected American image of a willful unity of states. The populations of these territories are also predominantly non-white, and so there becomes a racialization of these territories and their lack of incorporation into statehood or as part of this American ideal. This lack of cartographic visibility is intentional and important.
To listen to Immerwahr speak about this book on Democracy Now, please listen here:
Despite these claims to territory - when has there ever been a map of the United States that includes Puerto Rico? The map typically seen is one of the United States that sometimes inlcudes Alaska or Hawaii, but not always. This continental and uniform map does not include all the US territories (including Guam, Americans Samoas, Virgin Islands and Puerto Rico) and it is a political tool used to suggest a union of states. This is a key argument of Daniel Immerwahr in How to Hide an Empire: A History of the Greater United States. While the US was initially willing to claim these islands in the Pacific and Caribbean mostly as strategic military bases, or for raw materials and plantations, these places were never fully considered to be part of the projected American image of a willful unity of states. The populations of these territories are also predominantly non-white, and so there becomes a racialization of these territories and their lack of incorporation into statehood or as part of this American ideal. This lack of cartographic visibility is intentional and important.
To listen to Immerwahr speak about this book on Democracy Now, please listen here:
Puerto Rico's lack of sovereignty also means that certain laws pertaining to states do not extend into the territories. Certain federal regulations meant to create safety for citizens are not applicable. In Testo Junkie: Sex, Drugs, and Biopolitics in the Pharmacopornographic Era, author Paul Preciado traces the harmful and shocking testing of birth control on women in Puerto Rico. Large, human trials were necessary to bring birth control to market and Puerto Rico had no anti-birth control or chemical testing regulations on par with the US states at the time. Because of its lack of protection, these women were put in clear harm and treated less-than-human. GlaxoSmithKline, another big pharmaceutical company with a plant in Cidra, "sold 20 drugs with questionable safety that were made at a huge plant in Puerto Rico that for years was rife with contamination." The British company was one of many pharmaceutical companies that moved their plants onto the island because of easy access to testing populations, relaxed tax laws and relaxed civil regulations. GlaxoSmithKline, Pfizer, Bristol-Myers Squibb, Merck and many others starting opening plants which began to pepper the landscape of the island. Cidra, for example, is a city centrally east and inland on the island. It was in the eye of Hurricane Maria where many mudslides occurred, which of course caused much distress for these companies and their privatized property.
Paul Preciado, Testo Junkie: Sex, Drugs, and Biopolitics in the Pharmacopornographic Era (The Feminist Press at CUNY, 2013).
Gardiner Harris and Diff Wilson, Glaxo to Pay $750 Million for Sale of Bad Products. New York Times. Source: https://www.nytimes.com/2010/10/27/business/27drug.html
Paul Preciado, Testo Junkie: Sex, Drugs, and Biopolitics in the Pharmacopornographic Era (The Feminist Press at CUNY, 2013).
Gardiner Harris and Diff Wilson, Glaxo to Pay $750 Million for Sale of Bad Products. New York Times. Source: https://www.nytimes.com/2010/10/27/business/27drug.html
Allora & Calzadilla, The Bell, the Digger, and the Tropical Pharmacy, 2013. Video Still. Courtesy of the artists. This image is a still from a 24 minute video in which an industrial digging machine is rigged with a large bell attached to its head. It demolishes the interior of an abandoned GlaxoSmithKline pharmaceutical lab in Cidra, Puerto Rico.
Depictions of a post-Maria Puerto Rico
Hurricane Maria was one of the most violent storms ever to hit the Caribbean. It descended on the island of Puerto Rico in September 2017. The storm gathered in intensity before tearing through the Dominican Republic and the U.S. Virgin Islands, ending in Puerto Rico. Those who survived continued to struggle with its aftermath. Food and water shortages were pervasive throughout the island, power was virtually wiped out, hospitals were closed because of extensive damage, and basic services all but collapsed.
In Blackout: What Darkness Illuminated in Puerto Rico, Frances Negrón-Muntaner (a Puerto Rican writer, teacher and filmmaker herself) describes a culture where lightness and darkness have opposing connotations that can be sued to describe Puerto Rico, and Puerto Ricans, after the hurricane. Lightness typically refers to a kind of goodness, awakening, and knowledge while darkness refers to the unknown, the evil, the dangerous. This can be applied in racial terms as well, the lighter someone's skin the closer they are thought to be associated with such traits, the same with darkness and skin color. When Puerto Rico suffered from a blackout after Hurricane Maria, these cultural connotations because ever-more obvious. "In exposing widespread poverty and failing infrastructure, the darkness also revealed how the United States systematically dispossesses Puerto Rico." She continues, "Maria exposed the predatory violence of late modern colonial capitalism, or a logic of extraction justified by a legal apparatus that does not require direct settler rule. In other words, whereas Puerto Rico’s economic precariousness is not unique in the global economy, how and why it persists is related to its colonial status as an American “unincorporated territory” that “belongs to, but is, not part of” the United States and is considered “foreign in a domestic sense.” The darkness and lack of infrastructural support helped to shed light on the policies that the US has implemented in order to insufficiently support it's territory and its own people.
Blackout: What Darkness Illuminated in Puerto Rico: http://www.francesnegronmuntaner.com/blackout-what-darkness-illuminated-in-puerto-rico/
Hurricane Maria was one of the most violent storms ever to hit the Caribbean. It descended on the island of Puerto Rico in September 2017. The storm gathered in intensity before tearing through the Dominican Republic and the U.S. Virgin Islands, ending in Puerto Rico. Those who survived continued to struggle with its aftermath. Food and water shortages were pervasive throughout the island, power was virtually wiped out, hospitals were closed because of extensive damage, and basic services all but collapsed.
In Blackout: What Darkness Illuminated in Puerto Rico, Frances Negrón-Muntaner (a Puerto Rican writer, teacher and filmmaker herself) describes a culture where lightness and darkness have opposing connotations that can be sued to describe Puerto Rico, and Puerto Ricans, after the hurricane. Lightness typically refers to a kind of goodness, awakening, and knowledge while darkness refers to the unknown, the evil, the dangerous. This can be applied in racial terms as well, the lighter someone's skin the closer they are thought to be associated with such traits, the same with darkness and skin color. When Puerto Rico suffered from a blackout after Hurricane Maria, these cultural connotations because ever-more obvious. "In exposing widespread poverty and failing infrastructure, the darkness also revealed how the United States systematically dispossesses Puerto Rico." She continues, "Maria exposed the predatory violence of late modern colonial capitalism, or a logic of extraction justified by a legal apparatus that does not require direct settler rule. In other words, whereas Puerto Rico’s economic precariousness is not unique in the global economy, how and why it persists is related to its colonial status as an American “unincorporated territory” that “belongs to, but is, not part of” the United States and is considered “foreign in a domestic sense.” The darkness and lack of infrastructural support helped to shed light on the policies that the US has implemented in order to insufficiently support it's territory and its own people.
Blackout: What Darkness Illuminated in Puerto Rico: http://www.francesnegronmuntaner.com/blackout-what-darkness-illuminated-in-puerto-rico/
Blue tarps cover damaged roofs in San Juan, Puerto Rico seen from above on March 4, 2018. The tarps are meant to last 30 days yet many damaged houses are still covered by them. To qualify for a Blue Roof, a home must have less than 50% structural damage. Image courtesy of Lorie Shaull's Flickr account.
The images that circulated in the aftermath of the hurricane showed a disaster, and to some extent engendered a kind of disaster tourist gaze. Little was shown of important moments of resilience among the people of Puerto Rico. One way to shift ownership of cartographic sovereignty is to shift the cartographic gaze. Those who are holding the camera, the pens, the technology and the maps, are able to change the narrative. Along with journalists and scientists, artists are also able to convey a new landscape through rendering new representations in ways traditional maps and borders cannot. Through their work, we can see new power dynamics at play while avoiding the maps and technologies of the oppressor.
Two recent video installations by female Puerto Rican artists unpack the violence and the politics of ecology in post-Maria Puerto Rico. The two projects are Gosila, 2018 by Beatriz Santiago Muñoz and La Ruta, 2018/19 by Natalia Lassalle Morillo. Key to both these works are a non-linear video component of crossing the island after the hurricane in 2017. The Panoramic Route (Ruta Panorámica) is a 167-mile network of roads that traverse the island from east to west along its Central Mountain Range. It was developed in the 1970s as a scenic route for tourism by Luis Muñoz Marín, the first democratically elected governor in 1948, a year before the end of his 16-year term. But Natalia Lassalle Morillo argues that the road was also a way to industrialize the land, to move laborers away from rural areas and to the city to create a labor force for foreign companies. Through interviews and single panoramic shots, the artist investigates how “progress is defined by the inhabitants of the route and examines the spaces that comprise it.” By filming during and after the hurricane, she documents the now abandoned route, its legacy and the natural landscapes that eventually grew back over the manmade.
Two recent video installations by female Puerto Rican artists unpack the violence and the politics of ecology in post-Maria Puerto Rico. The two projects are Gosila, 2018 by Beatriz Santiago Muñoz and La Ruta, 2018/19 by Natalia Lassalle Morillo. Key to both these works are a non-linear video component of crossing the island after the hurricane in 2017. The Panoramic Route (Ruta Panorámica) is a 167-mile network of roads that traverse the island from east to west along its Central Mountain Range. It was developed in the 1970s as a scenic route for tourism by Luis Muñoz Marín, the first democratically elected governor in 1948, a year before the end of his 16-year term. But Natalia Lassalle Morillo argues that the road was also a way to industrialize the land, to move laborers away from rural areas and to the city to create a labor force for foreign companies. Through interviews and single panoramic shots, the artist investigates how “progress is defined by the inhabitants of the route and examines the spaces that comprise it.” By filming during and after the hurricane, she documents the now abandoned route, its legacy and the natural landscapes that eventually grew back over the manmade.
Excerpt of Natalia Lassalle Morillo's La Ruta via Vimeo.
Natalia Lassalle Morillo, La Ruta, 2018. Video Still. Courtesy of the artist.
Beatriz Santiago Muñoz’s Gosila (2018) is a film that was made through the hurricane. The film traces the flooding, rain, and confusion via quick cuts and blurred footage as we begin to understand how the storm became a metaphor for colonial power. The film is presented on the wall as a projection through a broken Fresnel lens, a piece of a lighthouse from Maunabo that the artist found during the storm. This relic of a colonialist gaze, the lighthouse, creates a blurry and uncertain image when the film passes through it. Like Frances Negrón-Muntaner, Beatriz Santiago Muñoz is interested in the connotations of light as symbolic, in this case, the light is the messenger sending us warning signal, but it is already too late.
Beatriz Santiago Muñoz, Gosila, 2018. Video Installation Stills at Der Tank. Courtesy of the artist.
Para la Naturaleza: Art in the Landscape
Para la Naturaleza is a non-profit organization working to conserve Puerto Rico’s natural ecosystems through working with different entities across the island. Its goal is “to ensure that the percentage of protected natural areas in Puerto Rico is 33% by the year 2033. Para la Naturaleza provides each person and community with transformative experiences that inspire and motivate concrete actions in favor of nature, such as voluntary work, the donation of funds and land, or the establishment of conservation easements.”
The mission statement on their website states:
The total amount of land protected in Puerto Rico by both government and private entities is only 8 percent. Our goal is ambitious and long term, but we believe we can make it possible if it becomes everyone’s common goal. We integrate the volunteer work of citizens in collecting environmental data around Puerto Rico. Its main goal is to obtain information that can help us in designing specific management plans for natural protected areas and in creating conservation strategies at regional scale.
The organization has become extremely important in trying to balance fragile ecosystems in a post-industrial era. By purchasing or having land donated back to the trust, they are able to conserve and rebuild these areas to attempt to reach their indigenous homeostasis. The organization also recognizes how education and awareness about the situations which change the landscape is extremely important. From 2016-17, they partnered with artists Jennifer Allora & Guillermo Calzadilla on a site-specific installation called Puerto Rican Light (Cueva Vientos). The project was installed in a cave at El Convento Natural Protected Area, outside of Ponce. For tourists to see this much publicized installation, they had to cross the island by car from San Juan, thereby surveying the post-industrial landscape through the center of the island. The work brought American artist Dan Flavin’s light sculpture Puerto Rican Light (to Jeanie Blake) to a natural site where it was powered with solar panels (literally, with Puerto Rican light) mounted to the cave’s exterior. The original artwork was produced by the American Minimalist artist Dan Flavin who is known for his fluorescent light sculptures. Minimalism was a movement that tried to remove the artist's mark from the work as much as possible through outsourcing materials, often industrial and mass produced ones. But by erasing the author you also erase the author's identity. Flavin, who had never been to Puerto Rico, named this red, orange and yellow light sculpture after a sunset he imagined he would see on the island. The artists Allora & Cazadilla recontextualized the piece while exploring postcolonial dislocation and power. They put the work into the landscape for which it was named, in a cave, preserved by Para la Naturaleza. In order to see the sculpture in this new context, one must also traverse the forrest and walk about 1 hour to get to the base of the cave. The artists wanted this journey to be part of the piece, enabling viewers to see and feel the natural ecosystems with a trained guide from Para la Naturaleza. While art in caves is nothing new (Lascaux for example, is known for the oldest human writings) Puerto Rican Light (Cueva Vientos) creates an extreme visual and intellectual juxtaposition within the landscape. What one can hope from this experience is more awareness of the work of Para la Naturaleza and the ways in which the landscape both reflects and is indicative of colonial history still at play.
Para la Naturaleza is a non-profit organization working to conserve Puerto Rico’s natural ecosystems through working with different entities across the island. Its goal is “to ensure that the percentage of protected natural areas in Puerto Rico is 33% by the year 2033. Para la Naturaleza provides each person and community with transformative experiences that inspire and motivate concrete actions in favor of nature, such as voluntary work, the donation of funds and land, or the establishment of conservation easements.”
The mission statement on their website states:
The total amount of land protected in Puerto Rico by both government and private entities is only 8 percent. Our goal is ambitious and long term, but we believe we can make it possible if it becomes everyone’s common goal. We integrate the volunteer work of citizens in collecting environmental data around Puerto Rico. Its main goal is to obtain information that can help us in designing specific management plans for natural protected areas and in creating conservation strategies at regional scale.
The organization has become extremely important in trying to balance fragile ecosystems in a post-industrial era. By purchasing or having land donated back to the trust, they are able to conserve and rebuild these areas to attempt to reach their indigenous homeostasis. The organization also recognizes how education and awareness about the situations which change the landscape is extremely important. From 2016-17, they partnered with artists Jennifer Allora & Guillermo Calzadilla on a site-specific installation called Puerto Rican Light (Cueva Vientos). The project was installed in a cave at El Convento Natural Protected Area, outside of Ponce. For tourists to see this much publicized installation, they had to cross the island by car from San Juan, thereby surveying the post-industrial landscape through the center of the island. The work brought American artist Dan Flavin’s light sculpture Puerto Rican Light (to Jeanie Blake) to a natural site where it was powered with solar panels (literally, with Puerto Rican light) mounted to the cave’s exterior. The original artwork was produced by the American Minimalist artist Dan Flavin who is known for his fluorescent light sculptures. Minimalism was a movement that tried to remove the artist's mark from the work as much as possible through outsourcing materials, often industrial and mass produced ones. But by erasing the author you also erase the author's identity. Flavin, who had never been to Puerto Rico, named this red, orange and yellow light sculpture after a sunset he imagined he would see on the island. The artists Allora & Cazadilla recontextualized the piece while exploring postcolonial dislocation and power. They put the work into the landscape for which it was named, in a cave, preserved by Para la Naturaleza. In order to see the sculpture in this new context, one must also traverse the forrest and walk about 1 hour to get to the base of the cave. The artists wanted this journey to be part of the piece, enabling viewers to see and feel the natural ecosystems with a trained guide from Para la Naturaleza. While art in caves is nothing new (Lascaux for example, is known for the oldest human writings) Puerto Rican Light (Cueva Vientos) creates an extreme visual and intellectual juxtaposition within the landscape. What one can hope from this experience is more awareness of the work of Para la Naturaleza and the ways in which the landscape both reflects and is indicative of colonial history still at play.
Author’s personal photograph from the interior of the cave installation, looking back out into the landscape. This was taken three weeks before hurricane Maria in August 2017.
SOURCES:
Allora & Calzadilla, Puerto Rican Light (Cueva Vientos). (DIA ART FOUNDATION, 2016)
Beatriz Santiago Muñoz and Ionit Behar, “BEYOND BEAUTY: BEATRIZ SANTIAGO MUÑOZ ON HOW TO TRULY PERCEIVE A PLACE” (Artslant.com, 2016) (https://www.artslant.com/sf/articles/show/45765-beyond-beauty-beatriz-santiago-mu%C3%B1oz-on-how-to-truly-perceive-a-place)
Carmen Teresa Whalen and Victor Vázquez-Hernandez, The Puerto Rican Diaspora: Historical Perspectives. Pages 5-7 (Temple University Press, 2005).
Daniel Immerwahr, How to Hide an Empire: A History of the Greater United States. (Farrar, Strause and Giroux, 2019).
Frances Negrón-Mutaner, “Blackout: What Darkness Illuminated in Puerto Rico”, 2018.
(http://www.francesnegronmuntaner.com/blackout-what-darkness-illuminated-in-puerto-rico/)
Gardiner Harris and Diff Wilson "Glaxo to Pay $750 Million for Sale of Bad Products". New York Times. (https://www.nytimes.com/2010/10/27/business/27drug.html)
Irving Rouse, "The Ancestries of the Tainos." The Tainos: Rise and Decline of the People Who Greeted Columbus. Pages 26-47 (Yale University Press, 1992)
Para la Naturaleza (https://www.paralanaturaleza.org/)
Paul Preciado, Testo Junkie: Sex, Drugs, and Biopolitics in the Pharmacopornographic Era (The Feminist Press at CUNY, 2013).
Robert H. Fuson: Juan Ponce de León and the Discovery of Puerto Rico and Florida. Page 3 (McDonald & Woodward Publishing Co, 2000).
Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz, An Indigenous Peoples’ History of the United States. Page 3 (Beacon Press; Reprint edition, 2015)
Sarah Hill, "Beaches and Bombs", Boston Review, July 21, 2015. Accessed April 28, 2019. (http://bostonreview.net/world/sarah-hill-vieques-puerto-rico-bombs)
Spanish Rule, Sugar and Slaves: Haitian Slave Revolt, sugar cultivation, Cedula, subsistence crops, mulattos (http://www.countriesquest.com/caribbean/puerto_rico/history/spanish_rule/sugar_and_slaves.htm)
Yarimar Bonilla and Max Hantel, “Visualizing Sovereignty: Cartographic Queries for the Digital Age,” (Small Axe.)(http://smallaxe.net/sxarchipelagos/issue01/bonilla-visualizing.html)
Allora & Calzadilla, Puerto Rican Light (Cueva Vientos). (DIA ART FOUNDATION, 2016)
Beatriz Santiago Muñoz and Ionit Behar, “BEYOND BEAUTY: BEATRIZ SANTIAGO MUÑOZ ON HOW TO TRULY PERCEIVE A PLACE” (Artslant.com, 2016) (https://www.artslant.com/sf/articles/show/45765-beyond-beauty-beatriz-santiago-mu%C3%B1oz-on-how-to-truly-perceive-a-place)
Carmen Teresa Whalen and Victor Vázquez-Hernandez, The Puerto Rican Diaspora: Historical Perspectives. Pages 5-7 (Temple University Press, 2005).
Daniel Immerwahr, How to Hide an Empire: A History of the Greater United States. (Farrar, Strause and Giroux, 2019).
Frances Negrón-Mutaner, “Blackout: What Darkness Illuminated in Puerto Rico”, 2018.
(http://www.francesnegronmuntaner.com/blackout-what-darkness-illuminated-in-puerto-rico/)
Gardiner Harris and Diff Wilson "Glaxo to Pay $750 Million for Sale of Bad Products". New York Times. (https://www.nytimes.com/2010/10/27/business/27drug.html)
Irving Rouse, "The Ancestries of the Tainos." The Tainos: Rise and Decline of the People Who Greeted Columbus. Pages 26-47 (Yale University Press, 1992)
Para la Naturaleza (https://www.paralanaturaleza.org/)
Paul Preciado, Testo Junkie: Sex, Drugs, and Biopolitics in the Pharmacopornographic Era (The Feminist Press at CUNY, 2013).
Robert H. Fuson: Juan Ponce de León and the Discovery of Puerto Rico and Florida. Page 3 (McDonald & Woodward Publishing Co, 2000).
Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz, An Indigenous Peoples’ History of the United States. Page 3 (Beacon Press; Reprint edition, 2015)
Sarah Hill, "Beaches and Bombs", Boston Review, July 21, 2015. Accessed April 28, 2019. (http://bostonreview.net/world/sarah-hill-vieques-puerto-rico-bombs)
Spanish Rule, Sugar and Slaves: Haitian Slave Revolt, sugar cultivation, Cedula, subsistence crops, mulattos (http://www.countriesquest.com/caribbean/puerto_rico/history/spanish_rule/sugar_and_slaves.htm)
Yarimar Bonilla and Max Hantel, “Visualizing Sovereignty: Cartographic Queries for the Digital Age,” (Small Axe.)(http://smallaxe.net/sxarchipelagos/issue01/bonilla-visualizing.html)