While the deeper roots of the present migratory wave are in the world capitalist crisis of the early 1970s, which resulted in a new model of accumulation (Muñiz Varela, 2013), its immediate trigger on the island was the ten-year phase-out (1996–2006) of Section 936 of the US Internal Revenue Code. Passed in 1976, the measure was designed to guarantee high profit margins by extending tax breaks to American corporations that operated in Puerto Rico. But in 1996, Congress abolished the tax exemptions to fund an increase of the minimum wage stateside inducing a wave of plant closings, the loss of over 100,000 jobs, and a deeper recession in Puerto Rico than the one experienced in the United States (Matthews 2017, 4–13). In response, all island administrations turned to another tax option to fund government operations and corrupt contracting: selling “triple-exempt” bonds issued by Puerto Rico’s main public utilities and municipalities that are not subject to local, state, and federal taxes and are largely held by US financial investment firms and so-called “vulture” hedge funds (Cintrón Arbasetti 2015).