CENTRO Journal: Summer 2022 | Volume 34 | Number 2

CENTRO Journal Summer 2022 Volume 34 Number 2

SPECIAL ISSUE. Beyond Corruption: From Colonial Practices to Emancipatory Futures

Editores invitados / Guest Editors: José Atiles, Gustavo A. García López, and Joaquín Villanueva

This special issue of the CENTRO Journal seeks to open a critical space for understanding and debating corruption in Puerto Rico, away from neoliberal, colonial, and legalistic representations, offering new questions, narratives, and political imaginaries. Building on critical scholarship, anticolonial and postcolonial traditions, and on conversations that emerged during and after the summer of 2019 anti-corruption protests, this issue frames corruption and anti-corruption as a narrative mobilized across time and space with varying effects, shaped by colonial and racist structures. Rather than providing a narrow definition of corruption, this critical approach aims to center the analysis of sociopolitical implications of corruption narratives in a colonized, impoverished, and racialized country enduring the consequences of colonial capitalism for the past two centuries.

ENSAYOS / ESSAYS

Introduction

Beyond Corruption and Anti-corruption Narratives: Introducing A Critical Research Agenda for Puerto Rican Studies

José Atiles, Gustavo A. García López, and Joaquín Villanueva

The Criollo Bloc: Corruption Narratives and the Reproduction of Colonial Elites in Puerto Rico, 1860–1917

Joaquín Villanueva

Instruments of Colonialism: Historicizing Corruption and Abuse in the Puerto Rico Police

Mónica A. Jiménez and Marisol LeBrón

Exploring How Colonialism Blames Puerto Rico for its Corruption

Cristalís Capielo Rosario, Hector Y. Adames, and Nancy J. Muro-Rodríguez

Framing Corruption: The Ley de Reforma Educativa and Puerto Rico's Education Scandal

Patricia M. Virella

The Imperious Rule of Julia Keleher: Gender, Race, and Colonialism in the Corruption of Public Education in Puerto Rico

Karrieann Soto Vega

In the Name of (Private) Progress: Intimidation and Harassment in Guaynabo’s Corrupt Practices to Displace Vietnam’s Residents

Jean Paul López-Cepero Virella and Mayra Vélez-Serrano

Environmental Corruption and the Colonial Growth Machine in Puerto Rico

Gustavo A. García López

La captura del estado: apuntes para estudiar grupos de poder y el uso de recursos públicos para beneficio privado

Iyari Ríos González

Political Discrimination as a Facilitator of Corruption: The Case of Puerto Rico

Elizabeth Pérez-Chiqués

Development and Decay: Political Organization and Municipal Corruption in Puerto Rico, 1952–2015

Gustavo J. Bobonis, Luis Raúl Cámara Fuertes, Harold J. Toro, and Julie Wilson

Clientelism and Corruption in the Wake of Disasters

Fernando Tormos-Aponte, Wendy Prudencio, Mary Angelica Painter, and Brevin Franklin

Disaster Fraud Prevention by Exclusion: Property, Homeownership, and Individual Housing Repair Aid in Puerto Rico

Sarah Molinari

From Anti-corruption to Decolonial Justice: A Sociolegal Analysis of the Puerto Rican Summer of 2019

José Atiles

“What do the doves say?” The Revolt Against Colonial Corruption in the Verano Boricua

Christopher Powers Guimond