Versión español

Cover of Puerto Rico en el mundo

The night that Zuleyka Rivera was crowned Miss Universe, the charred body of a woman was found in the trunk of an abandoned car in Caro­lina. At first, detectives thought that it was a woman reported kidnapped earlier that morning. "You come with me or I kill that asshole that you''re with," the man had declared upon discovering his partner speaking to a friend. Later, the police informed that the burnt body was not the kidnapped woman, who was now safe and sound at "home."

That night on the news, the implacable and voracious lens captured the splendor of the "techno-body" of universal beau­ty. It also delighted on the other, still unidentified body reduced to ashes, and it showed us the res­urrection of the kidnapped body, an obese woman in her twenties. Inspired by Zuleyka''s victory, few Puerto Ricans would ponder the life —or lack there of— of the other two women, annoying residues of a society that val­ues "beauty" and obsesses over personal safety. What fate if not oblivion can life afford to those who cannot become successful people?

In the contemporary world, the individual has to take on the frailty of the institutions that used to assure his personal well-be­ing and his sense of belonging in a community. Unlike modem and industrial society, centered on work and community life, postmodernism is built on the immense power that digital technologies and biotechnology have in the production of bodies and subjectivities. People must be responsible for their own fate in an environment that calls for them as consumers; consumers that easily become sale products. According to Paula Sibilia, in contemporary society "a certain displacement of references is observed: subjects are defined less in function of the national State as the geopolitical terri­tory in which they were born or reside, and more by virtue of their relationships with the corpora­tions of the global market, those whose products and services they consume and those they sell their personal services to."

Others, those who cannot be educated in the arts of consum­erism —and of debt—or cannot become marketable products, are not necessary. They are out or are simply redundant. Consumerism, either in Plaza Las Americas or in Disney World, at the mega star concert in the Choliseo or on the Internet, is a sign of member­ship, as virtual and temporary as it may be. As Zygmunt Bau­man suggests in his book Wasted Lives, failed consumers generate suspicion and run the risk of be­ing declared criminals, as is the case with "illegal immigrants" and people displaced by wars. In a country where legislators mix with presumed drug deal­ers and the theft of weapons in police headquarters is an inside job, another perverse logic takes possession of souls and bodies: your success is guaranteed if you become a criminal.