Paper short abstract:

This presentation features a curated playlist of music produced in Puerto Rico during the "#RickyRenuncia" protests. The music produced during the protests documents a shift in the terms of Puerto Rican political activism.

Paper long abstract:

This presentation will feature a curated playlist of music that was produced in Puerto Rico during the weeks of the "#RickyRenuncia" protests and contextualise these tracks in relation to emerging trends in Puerto Rican activism.

In July 2019, over a million people participated in island-wide protests demanding the resignation of Governor Ricardo Rosselló. The protests were an immediate response to a series of scandals associated with Rossello's administration responsibility in hurricane disaster profiteering, the FBI arrest of the Secretary of Education on corruption charges, allegations of influence peddling at Puerto Rico's Department of the Treasury and at the Governor's Cabinet, mismanagement of the public debt, and a string of neo-liberal policies. These allegations were compounded by social concerns regarding long held attitudes held by the Puerto Rican elite regarding race, gender, class, and colonialism.

This playlist represents a sample of the extraordinary amount of music that was produced in support of the protest movement. My presentation will contextualise this set-list in relation to broader traditions of Puerto Rican protest music and musical responses to Puerto Rican colonialism. I argue that these tracks document and represent a shift in the terms of Puerto Rican protest music from a narrative associated with romantic-nationalist traditions to a more nuanced message that acknowledges the heterogeneous character of the Puerto Rican franchise.