César Pérez-Lizasuain, "The Collapse of Puerto Rico’s Colonial Regime and the American Multicrisis"

Description: Beginning with an examination of the resounding failure of the PROMESA Act, which is characterized by the intensification of the displacement and expulsion of Puerto Ricans, as well as by the escalation of economic and political violence, Dr. Pérez-Lizasuain proposes reversing the prevailing analytical framework by shifting the focus from the colonial periphery to the imperial core. He argues that Puerto Rico’s prolonged metacrisis has become a contemporary process of primitive accumulation that mirrors the contradictions increasingly visible within the United States itself. The Puerto Rican experience is not merely a postcard from the past and a photograph to be studied in the present; it is a living X-ray that enables critical analysis of the political, economic, cultural, and geopolitical crises that are redefining U.S. hegemony and the contemporary imperial order. 

Bio: César J. Pérez-Lizasuain is an Assistant Professor of Sociology and Criminal Justice at the University of Puerto Rico at Carolina and a sociologist of law. His research and teaching interests include political theory, sociology of law, colonialism, political economy, human rights, and the relationship between law, state power, and social transformation, with particular attention to Puerto Rico and the broader Latin American context. His most recent book, El malestar en la colonia, examines Puerto Rico’s contemporary crisis from a critical perspective.