Puerto Rico and Hawaiʻi are usually sold as paradise, beaches, culture, escape. But behind the postcards is a dark reality: debt, unaffordable living, mass displacement, and political systems designed far from the people who live there.

Puerto Rico is a U.S. territory with no voting power, governed in part by an unelected fiscal board. Hawaiʻi is a U.S. state, built on the overthrow of the world’s first internationally recognized Indigenous kingdom.

This video starts in Puerto Rico, then moves to Hawaiʻi, to show how American policy, debt, and land speculation are reshaping island societies, and who benefits when paradise becomes unaffordable.


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📚 Sources:
Puerto Rico
docs.google.com/document/d/1RFP6Ow0MVrDl0f9orQ9NSp…
Hawai'i
docs.google.com/document/d/1tjyOVB1QswICQ6JJdnuJ3i…

🎵 Music by Epidemic Sound: epidemicsound.com/creator
📽 Video/Images: Getty Images, Archive.org, Reuters
🗺 Maps: MapTiler