Frances Negron-Muntaner’s Community Currency Project featured in The Manhattan Times

Frances Negron-Muntaner, co-director of the CSSD working group Unpayable Debt and Professor of English and Comparative Literature at Columbia, along with artist Sarabel Santos Negron, has implemented a community currency program in towns across Puerto Rico. The project, named Valor y Cambio, is part of an initiative to recognize work and services that go unacknowledged or unpaid. Individuals can get bills or pesos from ATM machines by telling a story, and these bills can in turn be used to pay for goods at participating businesses.

The bills, which come in seven denominations, feature important Puerto Rican historical figures. As the educational system in Puerto Rico does not prominently feature its own history as part of the curriculum, the initiative is also attempting to connect people to the past. The full feature on the project can be read here in The Manhattan TImes.

Frances Negron-Muntaner Interviewed about Hometown San Juan

Frances Negron-Muntaner, Professor of English and Comparative Literature at Columbia as well as Co-Director of CSSD working group Unpayable Debt, was recently interviewed about her hometown San Juan in Worlds Without Borders.

In the interview she talks about the different neighborhoods of San Juan and how they all represent different sides of the city. She also discusses how the city and her memories there have influenced her work. The full feature can be read here.

Frances Negrón-Muntaner Publishes Article with the Hemispheric Institute

In “The Emptying Island: Puerto Rican Expulsion in Post-Maria Time,” Unpayable Debt co-director Frances Negrón-Muntaner discusses the recent exodus of Puerto Ricans in the aftermath of Hurricane Maria and its connection to a larger process of population expulsion policies in Puerto Rico over the last 525 years.

Negrón-Muntaner argues that “colonial emptying, rather than “normal” population growth, has been the most common experience in Puerto Rico” since Christopher Columbus claimed it for Spain in 1493. She traces back more than 100 years of US policies on the island that have efficiently exported hundreds of thousands of Puerto Ricans to the US mainland, highlighting the social, economic, and political implications of this “emptying island.”

Click here to read the article.

Frances Negrón-Muntaner is a filmmaker, writer, curator, scholar and professor at Columbia University, where she is also the founding curator of the Latino Arts and Activism Archive.

Frances Negron Muntaner Launches Social Currency Project in Puerto Rico

Unpayable Debt working group co-director Professor Frances Negron Muntaner, along with artist Sarabel Santos-Negron have created the social currency project Valor y Cambio set to launch in Puerto Rico. The project promotes the values of solidarity, equity, justice and creativity through the development of notes bearing the faces of different figures chosen for their commitment to a more fair Puerto Rico.

The creation of this social currency harkens back to discussions prompted at Unpayable Debt’s Reimagining Money workshop last October, where participants were asked to create their own forms of social currency.

To read the full article on the Valor y Cambio project click here
For more about the project visit the project website.
For coverage of the Unpayable Debt workshop visit our blog and twitter repcaps of the event.

Student Reflects on Max Haiven’s New Book and the Updated Caribbean Syllabus

On October 10th the CSSD working group, Unpayable Debt, held an event to launch Max Haiven’s new book, Art After Money, Money After Art, as well as the second edition of the Caribbean Debt Syllabus.

Following the event, Columbia College student Arianna Faria Scott wrote a reflection in which she shares the impression made on her by Haiven’s ideas. In addition, she shares her perspective on debt in the Caribbean drawing on her experience in Guyana growing up in a family descended from indentured laborers. Her full reflection can be read here on the CSSD blog.

Professor Ed Morales Writes a Follow-up on Hurricane Maria in the New York Times

About a year after Hurricane Maria devastated Puerto Rico, the Center for the Study of Social Difference’s Unpayable Debt working group faculty fellow, Ed Morales, revisits the humanitarian crisis still affecting the people of the island.

The article highlights the difficulties Puerto Ricans continue to face as well as their resilience in rebuilding in the wake of the hurricane. It also addresses the persistent healthcare crisis and debt affecting the island.

To read the full NYT article click here.

For Morales’ piece on Hurricane Maria last year, click here.

Professor Frances Negrón-Muntaner speaks with NPR

Frances Negrón-Muntaner co-director of the working group Unpayable Debt and Professor of English and Comparative Literature at Columbia University, spoke with NPR One year after Hurricane Maria made landfall in Puerto Rico.

As rebuilding efforts continue, they discuss how identity has changed on the island and explore questions of status, economic resilience and activism at the ground level.

Click here to listen to the interview.

Professor Frances Negrón-Muntaner publishes an article called "Our Fellow Americans" in Dissent Magazine

Co-director of CSSD working group Unpayable Debt questions terminology use in the aftermath of Hurricane Maria.

Professor Frances Negrón-Muntaner, co-director of CSSD working group Unpayable Debt publishes an article, titled “Our Fellow Americans,” examining why calling Puerto Ricans “Americans” will not save them from the current challenges they face. Her article discusses the rhetorical explosion of the use of the phrase “our fellow Americans” to refer to Puerto Ricans in the aftermath of Hurricane Maria and raises the question of why the sudden adoption of this phrase.

Click here to read the article.

Frances Negron-Muntaner Speaks with El Diario

Frances Negron-Muntaner, co-director of the working group Unpayable Debt and Professor of English and Comparative Literature at Columbia University, spoke with El Diario about the photographic archive that they recently donated to Columbia Libraries. The full interview can be read here.

She was also featured on The Takeaway, where she spoke with film critic Rafer Guzman about the film Sicario: Day of the Soldado. The full episode can be listened to here.

New Caribbean Syllabus from Unpayable Debt working group

CSSD working group “Unpayable Debt” has just published the first ever digital resource to study debt and the Caribbean, "Caribbean Syllabus: Life and Debt in the Caribbean." Frances Negron-Muntaner and Sarah Muir, co-directors of the Unpayable Debt working group, have contributed to the syllabus, as have many participants in the recent Frontiers of Debt conference organized by the working group.

Puerto Rico Underwater exhibition featured on NY1

Frances Negron-Muntaner, a project director of the CSSD working group Unpayable Debt, was on NY1 with several of the artists in the Puerto Rico Underwater exhibition that is on display now in connection with the Frontiers of Debt conference.

Puerto Rico Under Water features the work of five Puerto Rican artists, ADÁL, Huáscar Robles, Omar Z. Robles, Sarabel Santos, and Víctor Vazquez, reflecting on the island's debt crisis and its consequences, including mass migration, vulnerable infrastructure, and increased levels of personal insecurity. At the same time, the work serves as site of memory, humor, and hope as Puerto Ricans rebuild not only homes but a collective future.

The exhibition is on display at the same time as the Frontiers of Debt in the Caribbean and Afro America conference presented by CSSD working group Unpayable Debt. This two day conference brings together scholars, journalists, activists, and artists from across these two regions in order to interrogate their contemporary re-emergence as sites of new forms of capital extraction and opposition to debt regimes.

Unpayable Debt is a comparative research and public engagement project about the emergence and impact of massive debt on vulnerable polities and populations.

CSSD Project Co-Director Frances Negrón-Muntaner Publishes “Blackout: What Darkness Illuminated in Puerto Rico”

Frances Negrón-Muntaner, Co-Director of the CSSD Project Unpayable Debt: Capital, Violence, and the New Global Economy, recently published the essay “Blackout: What Darkness Illuminated in Puerto Rico” in both English and Italian as part of the exhibit “Blackout: Allora & Calzadilla” at the Maxxi Museum in Rome. Negrón-Muntaner’s essay additionally appeared in Politics/Letters.

Negrón-Muntaner’s essay points out that the aftermath of Hurricane Maria “revealed how the United States systematically dispossesses Puerto Rico”, arguing further that “in a world where the powerful routinely enact predatory acts under the brightest of lights, [the blackout following the hurricane] can serve to illuminate the unknown, clarify what has been obscured, ignite revolt, and, like in the theater, end one scene and begin anew.”

In addition to serving as a CSSD Project Co-Director and Executive Committee member, Negrón-Muntaner is Professor of English and Comparative Literature at Columbia and Former Director of the Center for the Study of Ethnicity and Race.  

Frances Negrón-Muntaner Interviewed by EuropeNow

Frances Negrón-Muntaner was interviewed by EuropeNow as part of their special feature on Diversity, Security, Mobility: Challenges for Eastern Europe.

In the interview, Negrón-Muntaner discusses her interest in creating archives, especially for marginalized groups, as sources for community building, collective memory, and the production of new knowledge and complex stories. She also details her work creating an archive in the digital space and discusses her contribution to the Roma Peoples Project, an initiative that spotlights Roma peoples and expands Roma studies.

Frances Negrón-Muntaner is co-director for the CSSD project Unpayable Debt: Capital, Violence, And The New Global Economy.

Professor Ed Morales publishes articles on The New York Times and The Nation

Professor Ed Morales, faculty fellow of CSSD project Unpayable Debt, published several articles on the humanitarian crises facing Puerto Rico in the wake of Hurricane Maria. His articles illustrate the catastrophic effects of the storm and the resilience of its battered, yet defiant, residents.

“With so much loss, there was a gain, though. The community organized so quickly, with brigades clearing the roads and tending to the elderly, the sick and those who’d lost the roof over their heads. Some time may pass before cell towers restore the virtual community, but now, more than ever, the actual community is resoundingly “presente.” – Ed Morales

Read Morales’ article “Puerto Rico in the Dark,” in The New York Times here.

Click here to read Morales’ article “In Puerto Rico, Disconnection and Chaos but Grace Under Pressure,” in The Nation.

Frances Negrón-Muntaner, Director of CSSD "Unpayable Debt" Project, speaks out on the racism and injustice underlying the crisis in Puerto Rico and the failure of the administration's response

Professor Frances Negrón-Muntaner, faculty director of CSSD project Unpayable Debt, and former director of CSSD affiliate Center for the Study of Ethnicity and Race, published several articles on the humanitarian crises facing Puerto Rico in the wake of Hurricane Maria, arguing that these crises are compounded by colonialist policies.

"Puerto Ricans can do without a reluctant visit by a president that they can't vote for and gratuitously attacks them. Instead, what the island needs is immediate life-saving resources, a comprehensive reconstruction package, equity in all federal programs, debt relief, and, at last, the abolition of the entire colonial apparatus." - Frances Negrón-Muntaner

Read Negrón-Muntaner's article "Puerto Rico was Undergoing a Humanitarian Crisis Long Before Hurricane Maria" in the Pacific Standard here.

Read her article "The Crisis in Puerto Rico is a Racial Issue - Here's Why" in The Root here.

Read her article "The Last Emperor," published by Univision, here.