El poder mnemónico de los pies, El Nacional. 2022
There is a lot to know about Puerto Rico and there is a lot to know about Puerto Rico after Hurricane Maria. Fortunately, Puerto Rican writer and artist Huascar Robles has created a platform that prioritizes both. Catatonia, which premiered on New Year’s Day, is described as “a cultural podcast about Puerto Rico, trauma, and unscrewing ourselves out of post-Hurricane shock.”
That shock began on September 20, the day Hurricane Maria made landfall in Puerto Rico. Robles recalls watching from afar as the island was devastated by a category 4 storm. Two weeks later, his mother was among the thousands who left Puerto Rico to escape the dire conditions. Much of the first episode is dedicated to her experience, which Robles narrates in a sober yet vulnerable tone as the sounds of Harlem echo in the background.
Haití y Puerto Rico: Detrás de las ruinas en el Centro Cultural Barco de Papel el 25 de enero del 2020. Los escritores y periodistas Huáscar Robles, Ileán Pérez y Carmen Graciela Díaz discutieron la responsabilidad social luego de desastres naturales y el uso del cuerpo como forma de protesta. La mirada a Haití y a Puerto Rico sirvió como ejemplo de ineficiencia y pobre planificación ante las investigaciones recientes, como el hallazgo de suministros en el pueblo de Ponce que nunca fueron distribuidos a los damnificados. También entra en discusión el trabajo de la investigadora Dra. Lucy Jones quien ha estudiado los avances tecnológicos luego de desastres naturales como el método pombalino en Portugal luego del terremoto en Lisboa del 1755 y la reconstrucción del Depto. De Transportation en California luego del terremoto del 1994.
I’d like to invite you to the Haití y Puerto Rico: detrás de las ruínas discussion and book presentation. Journalists Carmen Graciela Díaz (Univisión, El Nuevo Día), Ileán Pérez (El Nuevo Día, Puerto Rico Review) and I, Huáscar Robles (The New York Times, Center for Investigative Journalism), will be at Barco de Papel Cultural Center in Jackson Heights at 7:00 p.m. on Saturday, January 25. This month Haiti observed 10 years of its 2010, 7.0-magnitude earthquake and Puerto Rico is still rattling with tremors that have uprooted its way of life. The reconstruction process, as several natural disaster have shown, may hurt instead of rebuild societies. Our discussion centers on Haiti’s aftermath and Puerto Rico’s recovery. The event will also be a reading from the second edition of the book Puertos príncipes: temblemos todos, about Haiti after the earthquake and published by La Cifra, in México.
Barco de Papel is a community-based cultural center focused on matters of our Latin American societies. Please join me in supporting this venue as well as our speakers.
It Starts with Words on a Page: Chatting with Huáscar Robles
Home / Idea Lab / It Starts with Words on a Page: Chatting with Huáscar Robles
The third installment of the Idea Lab series, free “teach-ins” on current issues about Puerto Rico, the setting of Recent Alien Abductions, is coming up this weekend! Huáscar Robles, Journalist, photographer and documentarian, will be leading The Impact of Hurricane Maria – How the devastation was not a “natural” disaster on Sunday, March 10 at noon. Huáscar spoke with us recently about his recent work and his relationship to Puerto Rico.
Conference | Narratives of Debt
Conference | Narratives of Debt
04/21 Friday | 10am
The Oikos working group at NYU’s Institute for Public Knowledge and the Unpayable Debt working group at Columbia University’s Center for the Study of Social Difference present “Narratives of Debt”, a one-day conference on the ways that people and groups have grappled with and against various forms of indebtedness. The morning session will feature speakers working on the ongoing Puerto Rican debt crisis from a number of disciplinary perspectives. The afternoon session will focus on how different kinds of debt are folded into relations of intimacy, kinship, and everyday interactions.
10AM-Noon: The Puerto Rican Debt Crisis
Yarimar Bonilla (Associate Professor of Anthropology, Rutgers)
Puerto Rico’s American Dream: Contemporary Narratives of Debt and Crisis
Huascar Robles (Journalist and Documentary Photographer)
The Echoes of Silence: Development, Debt, and Santurce
Sarah Molinari (Ph.D. Candidate in Anthropology, CUNY Graduate Center)
Contesting “Debt” Relations: Narratives and Activism During Puerto Rico’s Crisis
Miguel Luciano (Independent Artist)
Ride or Die
Moderated by: Frances Negrón-Muntaner (Professor and Co-Director of Unpayable Debt Working Group, Columbia)