At the same time, the trope of the “emptying island” is politically and conceptually perilous in at least two core respects: One, the term conceives Puerto Rico and Puerto Ricans as isolated and vulnerable rather than as powerfully linked to other spaces, systems, and societies (not always islands) in a powerful “archipelagic” or networked political formation (Martínez-San Miguel 2017, 2018). Two, the “emptying” frame represents this geopolitical juncture as historically exceptional. Yet, the “emptying island” is not simply a recent calamity.[2] The phrase is a trope, threat, and colonial-capitalist practice of expulsion that is foundational, recurrent, and coterminous with the island’s three distinct forms of colonial-capitalist modernity (plantation, industrial, and neoliberal) from the fifteenth century to the present. Emptying is likewise a haunting memory for Puerto Rican collective identification throughout the last two centuries. To identify as a Puerto Rican is to continuously fear—and defy—disappearing.