The trauma of displacement
The word displacement conjures up so many different visuals in my mind.
One, is the displacement of millions of people due to environmental disaster. Another is the displacement of people due to political strife or economic fallout of a nation or state. We are witnessing a neo-colonial displacement with affordable housing in the states and the Caribbean where hundreds of thousands of people are being displaced due to unsustainable housing prices, which leads to a lack of housing availability.
In the Caribbean for example, due to federal legislation, mainland Americans can go to Puerto Rico, buy property, displace as many Puerto Ricans as possible and get a tax writeoff for doing so.
The local Puerto Ricans are left with unaffordable housing costs, limited housing options, and a continued cycle of forced displacement that harkens back to the early days of colonialism, the great Puerto Rican migrations of the 1940’s and from Hurricane Maria.
In this article, I’m focusing on two major aspects of displacement specifically from a Puerto Rican diaspora perspective, while also inviting those who intend to go to Puerto Rico and displace locals, to read this article and think about the long term effects of such an act-22.
