The
Battle for Paradise by Naomi Klein, 2018, Excerpts
“Puertopia” is a sweeping
vision that sees Puerto Rico transforming itself into a ‘visitor economy,’ one
with a radically downsized state and many fewer Puerto Ricans living on the
island. In their place would be tens of thousands of high-net-worth individuals
from Europe, Asia, and the U.S. mainland, lured to permanently relocate by a
cornucopia of tax breaks and the promise of living a five-star resort lifestyle
inside fully privatized enclaves, year-round.
Aggressively advanced by Gov.
Ricardo Rossello in meetings with bankers, real estate developers,
cryptocurrency traders, and the Financial Oversight and Management Board, an
unelected seven-member body that exerts ultimate control over Puerto Rico’s
economy, Puertopia is being conjured up in the
ballrooms of luxury hotels in San Juan and New York City. In February 2018,
Gov. Rossello told a business audience in New York that Maria had created a
“blank canvas” on which investors could paint their very own dream world.
It even seems to have its own
religion: an unruly hodgepodge of Ayn Randian wealth supremacy,
philanthrocapitalist noblesse oblige, Burning Man pseudo-spirituality, and
half-remembered scenes from watching Avatar while high.
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