LA LUCHA CONTINUA: CONFLICTING CONSTITUTIONALISM AND TERRITORIALITIES OF COMPETING SOVEREIGNTIES IN THE CARIBBEAN

Abstract

Today, academic frameworks regarding classical notions of sovereignty are being challenged by empirical perspectives emerging from different parts across America. Ongoing debates are currently focusing on illiberal forms of hybrid governance arrangements assuming that sovereignty is not a claim which is exclusively expressed by state actors alone, but rather involves diverse arrangements with non-state actors, suggesting a questioning of the legitimacy of the state’s claim to represent citizens’ rights. My contribution to this conversation is to add new understandings of the notion of Sovereignty by focusing on the socio-political relationship of Puerto Rico-United States. Searching locations for naval training range bases during the 1940s, the U.S. Navy expropriated lands in Vieques-Culebra. After uprisings against bombing target practice in the 90s, military operations ended in 2001, with the Navy completely leaving the area in 2003. Eighteen years later, the aftermath of that occupation is still present. The territory that was owned by the Navy was ceded to the National Fish and Wildlife Reserve System, setting a precedent for competing sovereignties over contested land in the United States territories. My thesis is looking at the role of urban development patterns of the federal occupation in Vieques-Culebra because there’s an ongoing exertion towards land in the sense of how is being preserved, bought, sold, and exploited through regulations that benefit the more advantaged demographic, in order to make visible resistance efforts by non-state actors that currently exist against the tensions over land sovereignty, the inefficiency of the state and its social infrastructure.