Collapse and Transformation? Cuba, Puerto Rico and the Energy Crisis of “Showcase” Peripheries in World-Ecological Perspective

The rise of oil-fueled accumulation in the global North produced an energy regime that by the mid-twentieth century was being extended to the semiperipheral and peripheral zones of the world-system. There it took the form of petroleum-driven development. This is especially the case for peripheral “showcases” in the Caribbean region. In the context of the Cold War, these two islands became opposing models of global South development—Puerto Rico’s industrialization program functioning as the American empire’s “showcase” to the Third World and Cuba emerging as an example of successful antisystemic developmentalism allied with the USSR. At least since the 1990s, both countries have experienced a long period of recurrent crises. Proposing a world-ecological and world-historical explanation, this article argues that while these islands represented different politico-economic regimes, both were nonetheless dependent on the oil-fueled accumulation dynamics of the capitalist world-ecology. Puerto Rico’s export-led industrialization and Cuba’s agrarian-based state socialism were underpinned by decades-long access to cheap oil. Thus, the crises—which have had the energy sector at its core—are in part the product of the unsustainability of their oil-fueled developmentalist regimes. Lastly, the article reflects on the ways in which the ongoing crises—and the respective responses taking place in Puerto Rico and Cuba—might prefigure some of the dilemmas that will characterize future world-ecological trajectories.