Plena Afterlives: Puerto Rican Music in the Wake of Irma and Maria

This paper examines the ways in which Plena—a Puerto Rican music and dance practice—is used to contend with environmental and political disasters brought about by the 2016 federal austerity measures and the 2017 hurricanes Irma and Maria. Drawing on fieldwork with Plena musicians conducted in 2018, 2020, 2023, and 2025, I use Christina Sharp's notion of the wake, and Yarimar Bonilla’s formulations of the various temporalities of disaster under colonialism to highlight how Plena performances are implicated in the temporal regimes imposed by federal austerity measures. At the same time, these performances serve as life- and future- sustaining practices through daily, weekly, and monthly enactments. Finally, I analyze the revival of improvised Plena poetry and its significance as a form of political resistance to the increasing privatization and co-optation of Puerto Rican culture in the wake of hurricanes Maria and Irma.