Mark-Viverito discusses interwoven resolutions and extractive colonialism
Mark-Viverito says the resolutions are interwoven by extractive settler colonialism. She connects Act 22 to displacement and overdevelopment, Project Esencia to environmental destruction, and La Junta to anti-democratic control.
These individual resolutions are deeply interwoven, as some of the speakers have indicated, by one common thread, extractive settler colonialism.
Individuals opting to relocate to Puerto Rico to evade federal, state, and local taxes via Act 22 are bringing with them displacement, increased cost of living, and overdevelopment, thereby paving the way for projects like Essencia.
And projects like Essencia subsequently extract economic wealth via the destruction of Puerto Rico's environmental wealth.
This development, if allowed to be fulfilled, will cause unmanageable devastation and will open the door to other similar devastation across the island.
Finally, an anti-democracy construct in Puerto
by Congress, La Junta, reinforces the view that as a colonized people, Puerto Rico should not have agency over its future.
Constructs such as these must be abolished and La Junta must end.
And that is why these resolutions are important, because they are a statement of values in support of sovereignty and against the rapacious and corrupt systems that perpetuate economic insecurity by destroying the ability for economic self-sufficiency.