CENTRO Journal: Spring 2023 | Volume 35 | Number 1

This special issue of CENTRO Journal brings together articles at the intersection of environmental, ecological, climate, energy, and social justice concerns in Puerto Rico and among Puerto Rican communities. The explicit use and study of environmental justice, environmental racism, climate justice, energy justice, and local ecological knowledge concepts in Puerto Rican social justice studies mark a significant, yet under-examined, critical space for praxis. These concepts resonate with the editors’ own scholarly research and activism in Puerto Rico and in the US Puerto Rican diaspora. From their different vantages, each of them considers the environmental and ecological harms of climate change, racial and neoliberal capitalism, energy colonialism, and the enduring regimes of extractivism on communities and livelihoods in Puerto Rico and among Puerto Ricans. Using the aforementioned conceptual frameworks, the articles in this collection focus on community grassroots organizing, energy and environmental justice, human rights, visual arts, decoloniality, climate change, disaster studies, and queer ecologies. Together, these pieces contribute to the growing literature on critical Puerto Rican environmental, ecological, climate, and energy justice studies and their entwinements with other social justice concerns.
Special Issue: Centering Environmental, Ecological, Climate, and Energy Justice in Puerto Rico’s Social Justice Praxis Editores invitados / Guest Editors: Hilda Lloréns, Carlos G. García-Quijano, Catalina de Onís, and Ruth Santiago
ESSAYSIntroductionCentering Environmental, Ecological, Climate, and Energy Justice in Puerto Rico’s Social Justice PraxisHilda Lloréns, Carlos G. García-Quijano, Catalina de Onís, and Ruth SantiagoDe la protesta a la propuesta: Articulations between Environmental Justice Movements and Community-Based Management of Protected Areas in Puerto RicoAlejandro Torres-Abreu, Gustavo A. García-López, and Carmen Milagros ConcepciónHistoricizing Puerto Rico’s Energy Present: A Political Ecology and Environmental Justice Approach to Energy Production in Puerto RicoAnaís Delilah Roque Antonetty Grassroots Energy Emancipation through Solar Energy Projects: Narratives from Jayuya, Puerto RicoYíamar Rivera MatosAccessing Environmental Justice in Puerto Rico through the Inter-American System of Human Rights: Are We There Yet?Verónica González Rodríguez and Annette Martínez-Orabona Puerto Rican Visual Arts in the Era of Superstorms: An Ecocritical and Decolonial Analysis of the Work of Frances Gallardo and Lionel CruetBettina Pérez MartínezBoricuir Trans-territorial Ecologies: Archipelagic Cimarronaje and Hemispheric Resurgence in Abya YalaAna-Maurine Lara, Alaí Reyes-Santos, RaheNi González Inaru, Myrna Cabán Lezcano, Toi Scott, and Sally Ortiz Castro
BOOK REVIEWSThe Lettered Barriada: Workers, Archival Power, and the Politics of Knowledge in Puerto Rico, by Jorell A. Meléndez-BadilloReviewed by José A. Laguarta RamírezCrossing Waters: Undocumented Migration in Hispanophone Caribbean and Latinx Literature and Art, by Marisel C. MorenoReviewed by Jossianna Arroyo4645, by Christopher Powers GuimondAgainst Muerto Rico: Lessons from the Verano Boricua/Contra Muerto Rico: Lecciones del Verano Boricua, by Marisol LeBrónPoéticas de la devastación y la insurgencia: María y el Verano del 19, by Malena Rodríguez CastroReviewed by Guillermo Rebollo-GilThe Caribbean Front in World War II: The Untold Story of U-Boats, Spies, and Economic Warfare, by José Bolívar FresnedaReviewed by Micah Wright Read more