Putting an End to the Never-Ending Debate: Puerto Rican Youth on What It Means to Look Past Status Politics

Abstract

Over the past several years, Puerto Rico has faced numerous crises: an ongoing debt crisis, a Category 5 hurricane, government corruption scandals, and now a worldwide pandemic. These events and more have left many on the island thinking about how they reached this point and what they can do to move forward. This thesis explores what this political moment means for youth in Puerto Rico who have been at the forefront of recent movements to pave the way for legitimate change. Building off the electoral shifts seen in the 2020 election in Puerto Rico, this work asks what these changes mean for the dominance of status debates in the political landscape and how they point to the emergence of a new political movement whose anticolonialism rests on the refusal to continue engaging with status.