²⁹ I begin with a word of gratitude to the editors of Horizons for devoting this symposium to my book and, in doing so, demonstrating an act of solidarity with the Puerto Rican community on the first anniversary of Hurricanes Irma and Maria.

³⁰ Sheri Fink, “Nearly a Year after Hurricane Maria, Puerto Rico Revises Death Toll to 2,975,” New York Times, August 28, 2018.

³¹ https://glimmerglass.org/events/west-side-story/. I wrote an essay for the 2018 Glimmerglass Festival program book that contextualized the play, using the lyrics of “America” as a starting point to deconstruct the false imaginary that has been ascribed to the Puerto Rican experience since the musical's debut in 1957.

³² As referenced by María Teresa Dávila in her essay and for which she served as moderator.

³³ Hebrews 11:1: “Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen” (NRSV).

³⁴ See Massingale, Bryan N., Racial Justice and the Catholic Church (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 2010)Google Scholar; Copeland, M. Shawn, ed., Uncommon Faithfulness: The Black Catholic Experience (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 2009)Google Scholar.

³⁵ Pagán, Luís N. Rivera, Evangelizacion y violencia: La conquista de América (San Juan, Puerto Rico: Editorial CEMI, 1991)Google Scholar.

³⁶ See Lewis, Nantawan B. and Fortune, Marie M., eds., Remembering Conquest: Feminist/Womanist Perspectives on Religion, Colonization, and Sexual Violence (New York: Routledge, 2012)Google Scholar.

³⁸ Pagán, “Puerto Rico Forum,” 72.

³⁹ Ibid.

⁴⁰ Bill Moyers, “Venture Capitalists Circle above Puerto Rico Prey,” Bill Moyers, September 30, 2017, https://billmoyers.com/story/vulture-capitalists-circle-puerto-rico-prey/.

⁴¹ This colleague (who will go unnamed) serves at the rank of full professor.

⁴² The Iona College mission statement is found at https://www.iona.edu/about/history-mission/mission-vision-values.aspx.

⁴³ See Rebecca Onion, “America's Lost History of Border Violence,” Slate, May 5, 2016, http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/history/2016/05/texas_finally_begins_to_grapple_with_its_ugly_history_of_border_violence.html; Carrigan and Webb, Forgotten Dead.

⁴⁴ Jorge Juan Rodríguez V, in a conversation about the different ways we, as Puerto Ricans, actualize “freedom,” September 8, 2018.

⁴⁵ “Freed Puerto Rican Political Prisoner Oscar López Rivera on U.S. Colonialism after Hurricane María,” Democracy Now! October 18, 2017, https:// www.democracynow.org/2017/10/18/freed_puerto_rican_political_prisoner_oscar.

⁴⁶ Jorge Juan Rodríguez V, “Foreword: Puerto Rican Backpacks and Living Room Dreams,” in Delgado, A Puerto Rican Decolonial Theology, ix.

⁴⁷ See Althaus-Reid, Marcella, The Queer God (New York: Routledge, 2003)Google Scholar; Thelathia “Nikki” Young, , Black Queer Ethics, Family, and Philosophical Imagination (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2016)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Young, , “Queering the Human Situation,” Journal of Feminist Studies in Religion 28, no. 1 (2012): 126–31CrossRefGoogle Scholar; https://irobyn.com/.

⁴⁸ Yara González-Justiniano, ABD, Boston University School of Theology, is completing her doctoral dissertation, “Hope in Practice: Public Presence of the Church in Puerto Rico,” anticipated May 2019.

⁴⁹ Jorge Juan Rodríguez V, conversation, September 8, 2018.

⁵⁰ Ezekiel 37:14 (NRSV).