For the last century, Puerto Rico has served as a testing ground for the most aggressive and exploitative U.S. economic, political, and social policies. The devastation was laid bare by Hurricane Maria in 2017, which exposed how the island as a whole was deteriorating, and the merciless path of destruction created by the island's debt crisis could no longer be covered up. In Fantasy Island, journalist Ed Morales uncovers the roots of the crisis. The island has been a colonial satellite, a dumping ground for U.S. manufactured goods, a tax shelter, and now a blank canvas for disaster capitalism on the frontlines of climate change. The suffering and struggle of Puerto Ricans is colossal evidence of the colonial wound the U.S. has inflicted on much of Latin America, and a nagging harbinger of the potential fate of the rest of the United States. Morales takes readers from San Juan to New York City and back, showing us both the machinations of financial leaders and politicians in the U.S. and the resistance efforts of activists in Puerto Rico. The fate of Puerto Rico depends on how it survives the critical years ahead, and Fantasy Island is a necessary account of the forces that brought the island to its knees.

Un recuento crucial y preciso de los 122 anos de Puerto Rico como colonia de los EE. UU. A dos anos del huracan Maria, Puerto Rico aun sigue recuperandose de la destruccion fisica de la tormenta y el colapso de la infraestructura resultante. La devastacion agravo los efectos daninos de mas de un siglo causados por la explotacion de Estados Unidos con sus politicas economicas, sociales y de asuntos politicos, incluido el trauma infligido por su crisis de deuda de 72 mil millones de dolares. En La isla de la fantasia, el periodista Ed Morales describe como, a lo largo de los anos, Puerto Rico ha servido como un satelite colonial, una vitrina de la Guerra Fria del Caribe, un vertedero de productos manufacturados en Estados Unidos y un refugio fiscal corporativo. Emprendiendo al lector en un viaje ida y vuelta de San Juan a la ciudad de Nueva York, La isla de la fantasia es un relato crucial y claro de los 122 anos de Puerto Rico como colonia de los Estados Unidos.

"Latinx" (pronounced "La-teen-ex") is the gender-neutral term that covers the largest racial minority in the United States, and the poorest but fastest-growing American group, whose political empowerment is altering the balance of forces in a growing number of states. In this groundbreaking discussion, Ed Morales explains how Latinx political identities are tied to a long Latin American history of mestizaje, translatable as "mixedness" or "hybridity", and that this border thinking is both a key to understanding Latinx cultures and a challenge to America's infamously black-white racial regime.

Chicano. Cubano. Pachuco. Nuyorican. Puerto Rican. Boricua. Quisqueya. Tejano.

To be Latino in the United States in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries has meant to fierce identification with roots, with forbears, with the language, art and food your people came here with. America is a patchwork of Hispanic sensibilities-from Puerto Rican nationalists in New York to more newly arrived Mexicans in the Rio Grande valley-that has so far resisted homogenization while managing to absorb much of the mainstream culture.

Living in Spanglish delves deep into the individual's response to Latino stereotypes and suggests that their ability to hold on to their heritage, while at the same time working to create a culture that is entirely new, is a key component of America's future.

In this book, Morales pins down a hugely diverse community-of Dominicans, Mexicans, Colombians, Cubans, Salvadorans and Puerto Ricans--that he insists has more common interests to bring it together than traditions to divide it. He calls this sensibility Spanglish, one that is inherently multicultural, and proposes that Spanglish "describes a feeling, an attitude that is quintessentially American. It is a culture with one foot in the medieval and the other in the next century."

In Living in Spanglish , Ed Morales paints a portrait of America as it is now, both embracing and unsure how to face an onslaught of Latino influence. His book is the story of groups of Hispanic immigrants struggling to move beyond identity politics into a postmodern melting pot.

The Latin explosion of Marc Anthony, Ricky Martin, and the Buena Vista Social Club may look like it came out of nowhere, but the incredible variety of Latin music has been transforming the United States since the turn of the century, when Caribbean beats turned New Orleans music into jazz. In fact, we wouldn't have any of our popular music without it: Imagine pop sans the mambos of Perez Prado and Tito Puente, the garage rock of Richie Valens, or even the glitzy croon of Julio Iglesias, not to mention the psychedelia of Santana and Los Lobos and the underground cult grooves of newcomers like Bebel Gilberto. The Latin Beat outlines the musical styles of each country, then traces each form as it migrates north. Morales travels from the Latin ballad to bossa nova to Latin jazz, chronicles the development of the samba in Brazil and salsa in New York, explores the connection between the mambo craze of the 1950's with the Cuban craze of today, and uncovers the hidden history of Latinos in rock and hip hop. The Latin Beat is the only book that explores where the music has come from and celebrates all of the directions it is going.