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An expression my father often uses to describe a strong relationship of trust and admiration is "Él no quiere cuenta conmigo." Literally it means "He doesn't want to have an account with me," but this Puerto Rican saying suggests good friendships are built on mutual trust and not indebtedness. However, in contemporary neoliberal economies, whether at the personal or national level, worth is assessed by how much debt one can incur, with the assumption that the more credit you are given, the more likely your income and sources of capital will allow you to repay it. Economic anthropologist David Graeber—whose book Debt: The First 5,000 Years (2011) became a bestseller after the 2008 financial meltdown and the rise of the Occupy Wall Street movement—argues that debt is the unspoken, misrecognized logic at the center of socio-economic relations, from the intimacy of family commitments to the abstract calculations that generate monetary systems and financial institutions. In the United States, consumers measure their level of financial security by means of their credit scores, and innumerable commercials and advertisements equate credit card accounts with personal freedom, success, and stability. Similarly, credit ratings agencies like Standard & Poor's, Moody's, and Fitch Group can impact local and national governments' ability to issue bonds, and a junk status can propel a national economy toward a debt crisis. Puerto Rico's debt crisis has been just one example of how global financial institutions and government policies create perverse incentives that can cripple an economy and politically disenfranchise those who already occupy the most precarious positions in society. Yet, as Graeber shows, the trillion dollar debts of government are never repaid, just recirculated and resold as speculative investment opportunities.
Indebtedness is also seen as a moral and ethical failing, an inability to live within one's means, and a lapse into debilitating dependency on others. This contradiction lies at the heart of how Puerto Rican playwright and novelist Edwin Sánchez portrays the experience of gay Latino men who emulate the upwardly mobile lifestyle associated with economic success and sexual liberation in New York City. His novel, Diary of a Puerto Rican Demigod (2015), uses various forms of subversive humor, particularly queer camp, in order to expose how the heightened visibility of gays...