Introduction: Decoding Crypto-Paradises: Fraud, Crypto-Colonialism, Climate Crisis, and Dispossession in the Global South

Jose Atiles is an assistant professor of sociology at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. His research and publications focus primarily on the sociolegal and criminological implications of US colonialism in Puerto Rico. Currently, he is working on his book manuscript, “Law in/as Crisis: Emergency Powers, Corruption, and Resistance in Puerto Rico.” The book analyzes the role of law, the state of emergency, and anticorruption mobilizations in the current multilayered crisis of Puerto Rico: economic instability and insurmountable debt since 2006, devastation generated by hurricanes Irma and María in 2017, a swarm of earthquakes in January of 2020, and the COVID-19 pandemic.