Cooperativism as Contestation to Crypto-colonialism in Puerto Rico

Abstract

Increasingly, blockchains and distributed ledger technologies (DLTs) are posed to impact economic futures and urban governance. New forms of human settlement are emerging as a result of and in service to cryptocurrency, curiously concentrating in areas with colonial ties such as Latin America and the global South. Technologists and those who can pay them are largely driving these discourses and decisions forward, while regulators and regular citizens struggle to catch up. If the buzz around blockchain opens the power to dream new techno-economic futures, who has the power and privilege to dream? This paper explores the intersection of digital technology with alternative economic visions in Puerto Rico, using principles of commoning and cooperativism in contestation to venture capitalism, US imperialism, and new crypto-colonialism. We echo Hardt and Negri (2017: 111) in calling advocates for alternative economies to “immerse ourselves into the heart of technologies and attempt to make them our own against the forces of domination that deploy technologies against us.” The goals of this collaborative research are to inform more equitable tech policy legislation in Puerto Rico, to caution against potential co-optation and techno-fixes, and to establish frameworks for cooperative experimentation using digital technologies including DLTs.

Blockchain urbanism: Evolving geographies of libertarian exit and technopolitical failure

“…While cryptocurrency has not forced the dissolution of the nation-state system, it has facilitated attempts at exit in particular spaces. Puerto Rico was cast “as a blank slate after Hurricanes Irma and Maria” (Crandall, 2019) and positioned as a place to build a crypto-Utopia, attracting cryptocurrency investors hoping to rebuild the island according to their libertarian visions with serious consequences for the local population (Atiles, 2022; Crandall and Vázquez, 2022). Elsewhere, blockchain projects in Pacific Island countries have been seen to weaken the sovereignty of local states (Jutel, 2021).…”

Living on the block: How equitable is tokenized equity?

“…Digital platforms alone cannot replace strong policy support around affordable housing cooperatives. However, digital technologies could possibly supplement and make more efficient the management of coops, if they adhere to the Rochdale Principles (Crandall and Mercado-Vázquez, 2022). Specifically, distributed ledgers pose a way to record and facilitate coordination and consensus among members in cooperatives locally but also offer a way to connect different coops with each other in mutually beneficial ways.…”

“…Where this is occurring in Puerto Rico, for example, the technological sovereignty movement could intersect with the existing agroecology and food sovereignty movements (Diaz and Hunsberger, 2018). Platform cooperativism could intersect with the robust cooperative network in Puerto Rico in a carefully orchestrated DLT Coop (Crandall and Mercado-Vázquez, 2022). For many Puerto Ricans, Hurricane Maria exposed the inequity of access to FEMA recovery funds for citizens living on "family land" without any formal, legally recognized deeds and title documents.…”