Hamacao, Puerto Rico, submerged: aerial view of the devastation in the greater San Juan area after hurricane Maria ravaged the island of Puerto Rico. Carol Guzy/PA Images. All rights reserved.Two days ago, eleven days into the aftermath of Hurricane Maria in Puerto Rico, a typically divisive tweet from Donald Trump struck a very sensitive cultural and political chord when, in response to the Mayor of San Juan’s plea for help, he said that islanders “want everything to be done for them [by the US] when it should be a community effort”. As we have come to expect, his words, which followed Homeland Security Secretary Elaine Duke’s injurious claim that this was “a good news story” because of a low number of reported deaths (so far), reproduced and inflamed historically racist tropes that have devalued Puerto Rican lives as second-class, undeserving, geopolitical waste.
His words reproduced and inflamed historically racist tropes that have devalued Puerto Rican lives.
These tropes grow from cultural narratives that run deep through the island’s life. Firstly, these words offend by making explicit Puerto Rico’s all-too familiar colonial condition and its shackled status, breaking the islander’s silence – an everyday taboo – and shattering a performance of autonomy. Exposing the ugly truth of the colonial order and the disdain with which Puerto Ricans are treated, the tweet has created a fraught situation, which the local conservative government has attempted to assuage by suggesting it was an isolated comment directed solely at the mayor.
