Who owns Puerto Rico’s beaches ? Law, extractivism, and the political economy of paradise

Puerto Rican beaches are central to sociolegal debates on economic development, tax policies, luxury real estate and climate change. Despite being constitutionally public, access to many of the 1225 beaches has been restricted since the 1960s, especially near hotels and affluent gated communities. Restrictions intensified after the 2006 financial crisis and Hurricanes Irma and María (2017), as wealthy US investors, incentivised by Act 22 of 2012 (now under Act 60 of 2019), began acquiring beachfront properties, leading to coastal gentrification and the displacement of marginalised and impoverished communities. Moreover, protests and legal mobilisations against beach privatisation and displacement in Puerto Rico have increasingly led to the criminalisation of activists. Simultaneously, climate change and rising sea levels are eroding public access to coastal areas, further exacerbating this exclusion. This article argues that the privatisation and enclosure of Puerto Rican beaches exemplify extractivism as exclusion – a process through which local communities are systematically and legally denied the enjoyment of shared resources. The transformation of islands into ‘paradises’ depends on the displacement and exclusion of local populations. This article examines the implications of constitutional extractivism and the legal strategies used to restrict public access to the coast.