Jacobin Radio

 Suzi looks at the rising in Puerto Rico with professor, activist, and author Rafael Bernabe in San Juan, Puerto Rico where two weeks of massive protests brought down the corrupt government of Ricardo Rosselló, and continue amid uncertainty about what comes next. The protest movement took off after the Center for Investigative Journalism released nearly 900 pages of chat messages between Rosselló and his inner circle, revealing their misogyny, homophobia, and the contempt they held for the population. But it wasn’t just the most recent events that brought the people’s anger to the boiling point: the economic meltdown of 2008–2009 hit a Puerto Rico already ensnared in a never-ending debt crisis engineered by vulture funds, and when natural disaster hit following economic disaster, conditions went from bad to worse. Bernabe helps us understand this trajectory, and we get his view on what direction he sees for Puerto Rico after the success of the mass movement.Asli Bâli, UCLA law professor and Middle East expert