In April 2018, somebody painted over a mural in the "Julia de Burgos" public school's cafeteria, turning the wall into a blank, off-white slate. The mural's erasure symbolically encapsulates a combination of forces that are behind the radical transformation of public schools and colleges in Puerto Rico: the colonial relationship the island has with the United States after the latter took possession of it in 1898; Puerto Rico's unpayable debt, partly triggered and exacerbated precisely by its colonial condition; and the takeover of the island by disaster capitalism in the wake of the debt default and hurricanes Irma and Maria.