From Anti-Corruption to Decolonial Justice: A Sociolegal Analysis of the Puerto Rican Summer of 2019

The Puerto Rican Summer of 2019, or the popular uprising that ousted Governor Ricardo Rosselló, exemplifies how anti-corruption policies and discourses have become central to Puerto Rican politics and sociolegal practices. In this context, there are three general understandings and definitions of corruption and anti-corruption policies: (1) colonial corruption, and anti-corruption discourses and policies implemented by the US government in Puerto Rico; (2) corruption as a form of government, and/or Puerto Rican government anti-corruption policies that focus on petty corruption, while ignoring the corruption of the powerful; (3) and decolonial approaches to corruption, and/or the Puerto Rican Summer of 2019 as a form of decolonial justice. By looking at these three understandings of corruption, and anti-corruption policies and discourses in the context of the Summer of 2019, this paper proposes a sociolegal analysis of the ways in which anti-corruption shaped the recent Puerto Rican history.