Given this, rethinking emptying as a persistent but shifting form of colonial-capitalist governance is a vital step toward enacting a transformative political terrain in post-Maria time. It is also critical to interrogate the conceptual vocabulary of “population” that has been so central to colonial governance, and consider how groups form and maintain community networks across multiple borders, including in times of catastrophe. In this way, I propose to build on literary scholar Alexandra Perisic’s (2017) observation that catastrophes—a term derived from the “Greek katastrephein, meaning to ‘overturn’”—can be understood not as a “disaster” but as a moment of “overturning” in which collective reflection and action are still possible (118). A catastrophic reading of the “emptying island” then, does not assume that debt or hurricane-induced mobility will lead to a fatal end. Rather, it suggests that in the current context of rapid neoliberal restructuring and refusal to this process, the so-called “emptying island” may offer one way to imagine and enact alternatives to colonial-capitalist modernity.