"Last time there was a ‘we,’ my people died."

1. An unspoken question hovers over each scene presented in LANDFALL: after the collective trauma of Hurricane María, who has the right to decide the path forward for Puerto Rico? What are the various possibilities for community and economic repair that surfaced in the film, and who is advocating for each?
2. On the Orocovis farm, María discusses the colonialist impact of the period of 1950’s industrialization known as Operation Bootstrap. “They never said they wanted to improve things for us,” she says, “They wanted to create dependency.” She continues on to describe what makes a local community susceptible to outside forces: “And when you feel vulnerable, what do you do? You believe anything.” When and how do we see this dynamic surface in the film, in both scenes of past and present?
3. In the conference scene of LANDFALL, we watch Yaron Brook, Chairman of the Board of the Ayn Rand Institute, a libertarian think tank, deliver a speech extolling the virtues of privatizing everything. Brook moved to Puerto Rico to avoid paying taxes, and is a vocal proponent of Laws 20 and 22, the tax shelter laws established to attract high net worth people to the island. There’s a moment when Brook is speaking about Hong Kong and how great it is, and he asked the audience, what did the British do? Someone shouts ‘Free markets!’ In this scenario of Puerto Rico post-disaster, who succeeds under the promise of free markets—an economic system without government interference? Who is at risk of getting exploited?
4. Discuss the methods of communicating that the Blockchain representatives use in the film. Identify the various buzzwords used to sing the praises of cryptocurrency as a community-centered technology. Identify any language that mirrors Yaron Brook’s ideas. What are the plans for community engagement the representatives lay out? What are the conflicting ideas, motivations and intentions presented through their speeches?
5. To study Puerto Rico’s trajectory is to see the reflection of other disasters in the world, such as Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans, which was followed by exploitive economic “rebuilding” strategies that benefited investors with financial stakes, for example, schools turned to charter schools, public housing projects into condominiums. What parallels can be drawn between Puerto Rico’s post-María landscape and other disasters in recent past and present?