LeBrón
The conceptual and physical distancing of Puerto Rico from the
United States allowed for the perception that these violations of dem-
ocratic principles were not already occurring under the U.S. flag and
were only possible in the supposedly retrograde space of the Third World.
while it was the initial violent interventions associated with Mano
Dura—the “Rescue” stage, in official parlance—that often grabbed
headlines, the ensuing privatization of Puerto Rico’s public housing
under military occupation was ultimately of equal interest to U.S. tech-
nocrats. In many ways, privatization was always imagined as a desired
outcome of Mano Dura’s efforts to “cleanse” public housing of drug use
and trafficking. Rosa Villalonga, manager of HUD’s Caribbean Office,
referred to the early morning sieges on public housing as providing a
glimpse at “the light at the end of the tunnel” for the long-term goal of
privatizing public housing. For Puerto Rican technocrats, Mano Dura
was understood to be the muscle necessary for privatization to succeed.
Obviously, it was not possible to justify privatization in such explicit
terms. Instead, the official narrative played upon familiar tropes of a
culture of poverty within low-income communities. Public housing
residents’ alleged lack of proper work ethic and values were to blame
for the precarity that marked their lives. According to housing officials,
the dangerous and deteriorating conditions that many public housing
residents faced were due to the fact that they had no proprietary claim
to their housing units, which contributed to their destructive behaviors.
Privatizing public housing and encouraging homeownership among
residents would instill residents with a new sense of ownership and
pride in their community. There was a catch, however: most residents
of public housing had no interest in buying their units. The rents were