Chronotopes of the hurricane in Puerto Rican comics from both sides of the Caribbean Sea

Spatial-temporal configurations in María, Pasitos Grandes, Bohío Girasol 2050, and Thirty Years After

Abstract

This article examines the comics María (Colón, 2018), Pasitos Grandes (Tarwater and Santos, 2018), Bohío Girasol 2050 (Yeampierre and Williams, 2018), and Thirty Years After (Román and Harris, 2018) as aesthetic-political expressions that reconfigure representations of environmental disaster in Puerto Rico from decolonial, feminist, and ecological perspectives. These works construct “eco-chronotopes” of the hurricane, intertwining memories of devastation, dynamics of historical and contemporary colonialism, and fractures of gender and ethnicity.

The analysis shows how Puerto Rican graphic narratives from both shores generate alternative imaginaries that challenge media discourses on disaster and reconstruction. These comics function as cultural and political devices capable of reinterpreting Hurricanes Irma and María as turning points and imagining decolonial futures in post-disaster contexts.

The critical approach draws on Malcolm Ferdinand’s decolonial ecology, ecofeminist reflections, and Mikhail Bakhtin’s concept of the chronotope, which helps identify the spatiotemporal configurations shaping these graphic narratives. Thus, contemporary Puerto Rican comics transcend mere disaster representation, articulating proposals for memory, resistance, and critical reconstruction in the Caribbean.

Keywords: Puerto Rican comics, chronotope, Hurricane María, decolonial critique, graphic narrative, ecofeminism, Caribbean.