A Tale of Two Superports: Oil, Empire, and Anti-Colonial Environmentalism in Puerto Rico and Palau

Abstract How did activists on the colonial “margins” of the United States and the domestic environmental movement fight environmental battles? And how did these contests relate to the politics of decolonization? This article takes up these questions through a comparative exploration of two environmental movements at opposite ends of the U.S. overseas colonial empire during the 1970s. In Puerto Rico and Palau, plans for two petroleum “superports” threatened massive environmental destruction in service of state programs of energy security and industrialization. This article examines how Puerto Rican and Palauan activists developed novel environmental critiques and movement strategies to oppose them. Through an examination of these two anti-superport movements, this article reveals the innovative ways that activists waged environmental campaigns from the colonial “periphery” of both the U.S. polity and its domestic environmental movement.