by: Hilda Lloréns, Ruth Santiago, Carlos G. Garcia-Quijano,and Catalina M. de Onís
Hurricanes are thought of as natural disasters, but the social and environmental devastation wrought uponPuerto Rico by Hurricane María last September is really an unnatural disaster resulting from a long history of colonial subjugation, economic hardship, environmental injustice, infrastructural neglect, and, at the local level,a broken rule of law. Hurricane María affected all of Puerto Rico to some degree, but in doing so the disaster also exposed the vulnerabilities created by ubiquitous socioeconomic inequality and the differential neglect of the island’s rural regions.