"Puerto Rico went through a tragedy but the real disaster happened afterwards... More than 5,000 people died because of government in action. We’re not equal to them."

The Pending Disaster of Pre-Existing Conditions

1. What do we usually see in onscreen depictions of climate disasters? How are these disasters typically framed and presented? When watching LANDFALL, did you notice a different approach? How does the film resist the typical ways of representing disaster?
2. Often hurricanes are framed through either a lens of climate crisis or as a natural disaster- “an act of God.” LANDFALL opens the dialogue to reveal other factors that led to the devastating aftermath of Mar a. What were the “preexisting conditions” in Puerto Rico that propelled such widespread damage?
3. In a blatant flex of their imperialist muscle, and under the auspices of controlling Puerto Rico’s outsized debt, Congress and former President Barack Obama instituted the unelected, undemocratically imposed control board ‘La Junta’ in 2016 through the Puerto Rico Oversight, Management, and Economic Stability (PROMESA) Act. La Junta adopted draconian austerity measures which led to a series of social and economic devastations. In one of the film’s scenes, a Puerto Rican man living in diasporic New York City discusses deaths post-Mar a as a consequence of Puerto Rico’s lack of infrastructure, debt and austerity. What are some of the other consequences of these overlapping conditions that are named in LANDFALL? How did Puerto Rico’s debt become a pathway to the exploitation of the people in the wake of Hurricane María?
4. Through the use of archival film footage, LANDFALL weaves history into the modern story unfolding in the aftermath of Mar a. These scenes, pulled from tourist footage that uses propagandist tactics, show resort golfing on old forts, Navy drills in Vieques, factories that transferred skills from “picking coffee, sewing tobacco leaves, swinging the machete” to rote factory work. What is the relationship between Puerto Rico’s financial crisis and its long history of colonialism?

Engage and Create: Diagnosing the Disease of Disaster

At the close of the film, we see a protestor on the megaphone gesturing towards law enforcement while saying, “These people aren’t the problem. They are just a symbol, a symptom of the colonial disease!” In Puerto Rico, the long history of colonialism—a man-made disaster—collided with the “natural” disaster of a hurricane (a phenomenon influenced by climate change, and the aftermath made more devastating by the actions of humans). How exactly did these two tangled events—one years long, one weeks—create a mega-disaster on economic, political and social levels?

Doctors and traditional healers know that arriving at a health diagnosis for patients can be a complex process, following multiple steps to arrive at a conclusion and treatment plan. Imagine this scenario: Post-Hurricane María Puerto Rico is a person (and your patient), you are a special doctor, one who takes cues from both ethnomedicine (traditional/cultural approaches) and biomedicine (Western approaches), seeking to discover the disease the country is inflicted with.

Using the following process inspired by the Canadian Medical Protective Association and Center For Practical Bioethics, create an invented—but researched—“diagnosis” for Post-María Puerto Rico. This process could also be applied to other natural disasters propelled by human actions.

• Take an appropriate history of symptoms and collect relevant data, what was out of balance and harmony?— Pre-Hurricane María, what “symptoms” or historical events led to the “disease” that followed the natural disaster? Use both knowledge from LANDFALL, and the Puerto Rico timeline on the LANDFALL website, to form a list.
• Conduct examination, consider emotions as a cause of illness, as well as religious and spiritual causes—Take notes on the physical state of the island after the hurricane. What does LANDFALL show us in terms of the physical/emotional devastation of both the community and individual? About the lack of attention to recovery? What was the impact and consequences of the austerity measures spoken of by people in the film? What resources went untapped? Which were exploited? Who failed to respond? What spiritual crises were inflicted upon the people of Puerto Rico throughout history?
• Generate a provisional (educated guess) and differential diagnosis (another possible theory)—Create two main theories of what caused the disaster. You may cluster ideas together to form each “new” diagnosis. Be creative in naming and inventing these “new diseases” based on lived experience and historical facts. Create a term that describes the impact and manifestation of these symptom clusters.
• Test (ordering, reviewing, and acting on test results)— Present and cross reference answers and research steps with other viewers of LANDFALL to compare and contrast information. If accessible, speak to friends and family who lived through the disaster and/or lived on the island in the past to capture their testimony.
• Reach a final diagnosis— Come up with a name for the condition Puerto Rico suffers under. What would you call this “disease,” given your above work in research, hypothesizing and testing.
• Consult (referral to seek clarification if indicated)— Conduct further research by reading articles presented in this guide. Does your diagnosis have reputable support?
• Provide discharge instructions, monitoring, and follow-up— Consider what a treatment plan for Puerto Rico might look like. For now, jot down ideas, thoughts and notes. Before coming to a conclusion, engage the remainder of this discussion guide, particularly the “In Pursuit of a Just Recovery” section. Then, return to prescribe a list of suggestions for actions that have been taken, or could be taken, to heal a community after disaster.