A joke about Puerto Rico at a Trump campaign rally this past Sunday has left many Puerto Ricans feeling insulted and has focused national attention on the archipelago and its diaspora. To help sort the implications of the incident and place it in context, WPR’s Wisconsin Today turned to Aurora Santiago Ortiz, assistant professor of Gender and Women’s Studies and Chican@ & Latin@ Studies. In a brief but wide-ranging conversation, Santiago Ortiz discussed the long history of disparagement and neglect of Puerto Rico by mainland US politicians and analyzed the joke’s possible effects on the Puerto Rican vote in the Presidential election. She also highlighted new political movements seeking to chart a new course for the archipelago as it seeks to rebuild from recent hurricanes and manage its government debt. Aurora Santiago Ortiz’s work focuses on antiracist feminisms, decolonial perspectives, and participatory action research. She is currently in San Juan conducting field research for a book project titled Circuits of Self-Determination: Mapping Solidarities and Infrastructures of Resistance in Twenty-First Century Puerto Rico, which focuses on anticolonial, feminist, and antiracist organizing in Puerto Rico.