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Society, Environment, and Place
Kicking Off the Bootstraps: Environment, Development, and Community Power in Puerto Rico
While small communities in Third World countries usually seem at the mercy of central governments and foreign capitalists, local activists can help exploited peoples correct environmental abuses and social injustices and seize control of their own destinies.
Kicking Off the Bootstraps is a powerful case history of such an effort. It describes a grassroots activist movement that emerged in the Puerto Rican community of Salinas to counter the poverty and economic dependence experienced by its citizens in the wake of "Operation Bootstrap," a post-World War II industrial development program. Déborah Berman Santana examines the efforts of the community to develop its own economic strategy based primarily on environmentally and socially responsible uses of local natural and human resources.
Berman Santana shows how local activists are seeking to empower the Salinas community to make decisions concerning economic development. She evaluates present-day efforts to develop positive alternatives, examining the motivations of the activists, the nature of their projects, their efforts to mobilize the community, their dealings with government and other organizations, and the obstacles they face. In a closing chapter, she addresses the potential roles of community leaders, outside activists, local businesses, and government in actualizing these alternatives.
A testimony to one community's efforts to determine its own future, Kicking Off the Bootstraps deals with real issues such as control over productive resources, quality of life, and environmental health. It also extends an examination of community-directed activism to an exploration of policy implications for sustainable development. While this concept is often too vague to be applied to real strategies, the Salinas experience provides a clear idea of what sustainable development can—and should—mean in actual practice.
Kicking Off the Bootstraps is a powerful case history of such an effort. It describes a grassroots activist movement that emerged in the Puerto Rican community of Salinas to counter the poverty and economic dependence experienced by its citizens in the wake of "Operation Bootstrap," a post-World War II industrial development program. Déborah Berman Santana examines the efforts of the community to develop its own economic strategy based primarily on environmentally and socially responsible uses of local natural and human resources.
Berman Santana shows how local activists are seeking to empower the Salinas community to make decisions concerning economic development. She evaluates present-day efforts to develop positive alternatives, examining the motivations of the activists, the nature of their projects, their efforts to mobilize the community, their dealings with government and other organizations, and the obstacles they face. In a closing chapter, she addresses the potential roles of community leaders, outside activists, local businesses, and government in actualizing these alternatives.
A testimony to one community's efforts to determine its own future, Kicking Off the Bootstraps deals with real issues such as control over productive resources, quality of life, and environmental health. It also extends an examination of community-directed activism to an exploration of policy implications for sustainable development. While this concept is often too vague to be applied to real strategies, the Salinas experience provides a clear idea of what sustainable development can—and should—mean in actual practice.
224 pages, Paperback
First published December 1, 1996
18 people want to read
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Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews
December 14, 2008
This powerful book provides a case-study of struggles over sustainable development Salinas in Puerto Rico from an environmental justice perspective. Santana manages to contextualize the struggles in Salinas in a longer history of Puerto Rican struggles against colonialism. She discusses the larger and longer political and economic contexts of Puerto Rico as well as specific social struggles. I left the book feeling absolutely convinced that Puerto Rico was at the center of the struggles around global inequality, imperialism, capitalism, and environmental injustice.
The book is fairly accessible. The first chapter or two read to me as a little dry - a little too much like a dissertation - demonstrating how a case study is done. But keep with it and the text picks up the passion the author obviously feels for her subject matter.
One of the major points of the book is that sustainable development has become an empty term available to anyone and everyone and that reclaiming it means rooting the concept of sustainability in social justice and self-determination. I would absolutely include this book in a syllabus for a course on environmental justice.
The book is fairly accessible. The first chapter or two read to me as a little dry - a little too much like a dissertation - demonstrating how a case study is done. But keep with it and the text picks up the passion the author obviously feels for her subject matter.
One of the major points of the book is that sustainable development has become an empty term available to anyone and everyone and that reclaiming it means rooting the concept of sustainability in social justice and self-determination. I would absolutely include this book in a syllabus for a course on environmental justice.
October 22, 2016
By conducting a micro-study of environmental activist in Salinas, Puerto Rico, along with historical data and theoretical arguments, Berman Santana creates a useful guide for community activists. I enjoyed her detailed explanation of the situation in Salinas, which at many times made me feel hopeful for its future. Nevertheless, 20 years down the road, as someone who has been to Salinas it seems the goals and outcomes of these activist were not successful due to both external and internal forces that make it very difficult to accomplish long-term change.
This quote really touched me: “One woman� articulated the sadness and frustration of losing many of Salina’s most promising youngsters who, leaving in search of a better life, return only for holiday visits: “the ones that struggle to better themselves, leave to find opportunity and gain skills, but then they never come back, and we’re left worse off than before. Why don’t they come back home and help their own community?� The Salinas activist broke that pattern � they went back home.� (110)
This quote really touched me: “One woman� articulated the sadness and frustration of losing many of Salina’s most promising youngsters who, leaving in search of a better life, return only for holiday visits: “the ones that struggle to better themselves, leave to find opportunity and gain skills, but then they never come back, and we’re left worse off than before. Why don’t they come back home and help their own community?� The Salinas activist broke that pattern � they went back home.� (110)
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