The cultural consultant behind the new anti-colonial version of the Puerto Rico board game, due out in 2022, has rejected the title as “not real inclusion.”
The original Puerto Rico was released in 2002 and has players taking on the role of Spanish colonial governors who profit from the sale of crops from the plantations they manage. From the 15th to the 19th century, Puerto Rico was a Spanish colony. The arrival of Christopher Columbus led to the country falling under the colonialist rule of the Spanish Empire.
The colonization of Puerto Rico resulted in many indigenous people being forced to abandon their lands by the Spanish colonizers, as well as being forced to work as slaves and die from infectious diseases spread by the European invaders. Later, in the 16th century, Spanish colonizers began bringing African slaves to the country to work on various plantations from which they profited. Slavery remained legal in Puerto Rico until an uprising in the late 19th century led to an independence movement that abolished the practice; the country eventually separated from the Spanish Empire and became part of the United States in the early 20th century.
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Puerto Rico is set during the era of Spanish colonizers, in which players worked as slaves and plantation owners to increase their profits, construct new buildings, and grow their maritime trade. The title features brown wooden discs representing workers, who are referred to as “colonists” rather than slaves. The original game was released without any commentary or engagement with the obvious racial issues surrounding that era of the country’s history, choosing to ignore the moral issues its concept raised in favor of its empire-building gameplay.
Puerto Rico 1897 is a remake of the original Puerto Rico in which players take on the role of members of the newly independent country, now freed from the shackles of the Spanish Empire. In the game, players become Puerto Rican farmers attempting to establish their own successful businesses by growing and selling agricultural products, as well as building parts of the city's infrastructure. Players still perform similar actions as in the original version of Puerto Rico, but the remake reframes the historical context of the series to focus on the people of Puerto Rico rather than the Spanish colonizers.
Jason Perez, a Puerto Rican board game creator and critic who runs the YouTube channel Shelf Stories, worked as a cultural consultant on Puerto Rico 1897. Earlier this week, Perez posted a video titled “I created the Puerto Rico 1897 theme. Now I reject it” on his YouTube channel, in which he talks about his experiences working on the board game. an answer In his initial post on X where the video was presented, Pérez explained that during the making of Puerto Rico 1897 “a lot of things happened that I didn’t like, and I want to warn other creators about those pitfalls we can blind ourselves to due to our enthusiasm. However, the responsibility here is ultimately mine. I will learn and move on.”
Perez continued in another response that “ultimately, it's about inclusion. Whatever PR1897 is right now, it's not real inclusion. […] “Any discussion or new knowledge my video can promote about real inclusion will be worth it.”
Perez later deleted the video and posted a additional statement On X, the video and people’s reactions to it were discussed. Perez explained that while the creator was “happy that people saw it and were mostly supportive,” they felt the need to take down the video due to “some of the misinterpretations.”
“My feelings haven’t changed. I created the Puerto Rico 1897 theme and now I reject it,” Perez said. “I wanted to go beyond a simple solution to the PR problem of the old theme (pun intended). I was driven by a broader vision of inclusion that would reach out to existing players, new players, and my own Puerto Rican heritage. However, it turned out that wasn’t the focus.”
Perez went on to state that “true inclusion means elevating creators, not just their creations. In this case, creator and creation have been separated in a way I never intended.” The cultural consultant concluded that “while I have heard other players refer to the issue as ‘fixed,’ I invite people to reflect on what that really means.” […] “I think our industry still has a long way to go.”