PESOS FOR PUERTO RICO

IN OTHER U.S. COLONY NEWS PARA SÅBALU.09 FIBRERU 2019

“What Are You Worth?” Puerto Rican artists Sarabel Santos Negrón and Frances Negron-Muntaner, who’s a professor at Columbia University in New York City, ask that question with the introduction of a new social currency, Pesos for Puerto Rico.

Their project, VALOR Y CAMBIO (VALUE & CHANGE) comes amid a worsening fiscal crisis for the US colony and reassess the prevailing economic values system, wherein a growing majority of islanders are marginalized with each passing generation.

“Cada figura provoca una conversación sobre lo que estas personas hicieron por un Puerto Rico más justo y equitativo y qué hace falta para continuar el cambio por el que ellas trabajaron”, explica Frances Negrón Muntaner, cineasta, curadora y profesora universitaria, estudiosa de políticas económicas y de la deuda de Puerto Rico. Credits: Foto (facebook), Quote (80Grados.net)

The new social pesos feature Puerto Rican talent and personalities, and is already accepted by a growing number of small businesses and entrepreneurs.

The pesos are available from February 8 to 17 at participating businesses and organizations, through an ATM-like machine.

Participants simply answer a few questions posed by the machine about what they value. The machine will record responses, and in exchange offers them pesos that participating businesses will accept like cash.

Santos Negrón says Valor y Cambio’s collective historical and narrative component will later be used in an exhibition and a documentary about the project.

Six distinct images grace the new pesos, including, the Celestina brothers, Gregoria and Rafael Cordero; Ramón Emeterio Betances; Luisa Capetillo; Julia de Burgos; beloved sport idol Roberto Clemente; and the communities of Caño Martín Peña.

The dire economic situation in the US colony, driven and dominated by multinational companies, corrupt elected officials, and financial vultures, assumes that the assets and talents of poor and moneyless Puerto Ricans have no value, according to professor Negrón Muntaner.

The artists’ pesos project questions that premise and suggests that the crisis offers an opportunity to rethink how the unjust economic system works for and against most Puerto Ricans.

Social currencies are already used in different communities around the world. This creative new currency recognizes the value of work and the talents of people who are unemployed and/or stuck in poverty. It does not replace official currencies (like the dollar); rather, it makes it easier to exchange work, time, and resources, while also addressing the needs of Puerto Ricans marginalized within the colonizer’s economic system.