Decision of June 16, 2025 regarding Puerto Rico

June 22, 2026

Good morning. My name is Alejandra Castrodad Rodríguez, I am an economist  specialized in equity and climate adaptation, and I appear before you on behalf of  Fundación Juan Mari Brás. We respectfully request that this Committee supports our  efforts for Puerto Rico’s decolonization.

Two years ago, before this Committee, we pointed to the acceleration of settler  neocolonialism, not only as part of the genocidal escalation in Palestine, but also in  Puerto Rico. Following 128 years of occupation, extraction and repression, our  occupying power resumes its supremacist intention of displacing and erasing us.

For decades, the US and Puerto Rican governments have transferred the goods and  services that sustain life (food, health, energy) to foreign corporations, whose  shareholders have little or no interest in guaranteeing our access to those lifelines. The  dispossession, that enables our displacement, started with the privatization of our  healthcare system (1990’s),¹and is sustained by two monopolies that provide one of  the most expensive and least reliable power systems across our hemisphere.²

In Puerto Rico, we import more than 80% of our food³at prices increased by colonial  rules that date back more than 100 years. ⁴ This regime, which evokes the “Gazan  diet” where subsistence agriculture is eradicated and commerce controlled in absolute  terms, leaves our food security in the hands of the occupying power. ⁵ More recently,  thousands of people have had their access to water interrupted, the direct result of  decades of austerity,⁶foreshadowing the privatization of the last of our lifelines.

Foreign control over our lifelines coupled with tax incentives for ‘outside investors’, ⁷ has led to a steep increase in the cost of life, jeopardizing access to housing.⁸ The  vision for development: luxury enclaves that advance autocratic governance models  like Prospera in Honduras and Destiny in Nevis. In Puerto Rico, dozens of  megaprojects on highly susceptible ecosystems, such as Esencia, deny us the  possibility of protecting and enjoying our resources, and managing the impacts from  climate change.⁹

Crucially, the policies incentivizing their¹⁰ relocation to Puerto Rico and the  reconfiguration of our planning frameworks emanate from governments in power  without a popular majority mandate, but with increasing donations from those  “investors”.¹¹ Their wealth exceeds that of Puerto Ricans by several orders of  magnitude, allowing them to exert a disproportional influence over political processes. 

The advance of settler colonialism exacerbates power asymmetries, threatening both  our right to participate in truly representative democratic processes, and our capacity  to collectively conceive our governance and emancipation.

It is for this reason that we request that this Committee: 

• Denounces settler colonialism and its interference over our full enjoyment of the right to self-governance.
• Reiterates our right to fully exercise Puerto Rican citizenship, and our inalienable right to independence.
• Petitions the urgent attention to the case of Puerto Rico’s decolonization by the United Nations General Assembly.

The transfer of our collective patrimony and control over our lifelines to colonizers,  not only interferes with our capacity to self-govern by choking our survival as a means  of repression. It constitutes the present and future denial of a self-determination  process for the people of Puerto Rico.

We request a clear and unequivocal resolution from this Committee, expressing their  unconditional support for the people of Puerto Rico in our decolonization.

Thank you.