Coming In October – Puerto Rico 1897

Board games often reflect history and life, which is good for the theme of games but can sometimes cause us to almost glorify atrocities. For example, slave trading is an awful practice and has been outlawed for a long time, but historically it happened. In many parts of the world, humans were a commodity to be bought and sold, they were a thing to own. The argument comes where you shouldn’t have a game designed where exploiting humans as a resource and commodity to be bought and sold is the way to win. Equally though you can’t wash it out of history either and so to be historically accurate you do need to acknowledge it happened.

This is a topic that has been splashing over the BoardGameGeek front page recently with the discussion surrounding the reworking of Puerto Rico into Puerto Rico 1897 with ideas from Jason Perez for the recent Alea edition.  The original game was set in Puerto Rico during the 1500s when it was colonized by the Spanish. You play as a colonial merchant and workers are unpaid during the game. Everything is shipped off out of San Juan and in general, the theme is celebrated rather than anything else.

In the remake that Alea commissioned, the theme and setting of the game have instead been changed to be more respectful and enjoyable to play. The game is no longer set in the 1500s but in 1897, the year of independence in between Spanish and American rule. You no longer play as colonial capitalist merchants, but instead as independent farmers. So instead of plantations, the player boards are set on small local farms. Instead of building up San Juan, more emphasis is given to lesser-known cities with all the major trading happening on the road to San Juan.

These changes do not fundamentally change the mechanisms that make the game fun and so revered, but they make the theming more palatable. In fact they make the game into a game celebrating a time of independence rather than a game about oppressing and exploiting people. If you want to explore more there is a detailed blog post on the BoardGameGeek website here.