Through social media, I was learning about the island-wide power outage and the collapse of communication systems, about blocked roads, lack of water and food shortages. Rumors of death. I didn’t see the devastation immediately, but I imagined it as an apocalyptic scene: the roaring wind, the cries of trees as they fell, my brother driving through dark roads littered with fallen trees, wires, and traffic lights, trying to reach my sisters.

Apocalyptic imagery had become oddly compelling—not as a prediction of what would come, but as an available idiom for expressing what had already happened, what had been happening.

After María, news outlets described the events as an “apocalypse.” Titles like “Making It in the Apocalypse,” “Apocalypse and the Aftermath,” “An American Apocalypse in Puerto Rico,” and “Puerto Rico a month later is ‘post-apocalyptic,’ ” were typical.³ The dramatic headlines were often followed by analyses of the economic policies that had weakened the infrastructure, turning disaster into catastrophe, as well as the lessons to be learned about the future, for the future of other people, in other places.

Local writers and scholars emphasized different dimensions of the catastrophe.

They described the devastation using the Greek sense of “apokalypsis,” that is, lifting of a veil. Their language did not point to predictions of future events, but rather to a revelation of realities hidden from view: the ecological consequences of a long history of political and economic dispossession.

Yarimar Bonilla explains:

Since Hurricane María, I have been trying to think and write about how this storm ripped the veil off Puerto Rico’s colonial status, as much for those observing from afar who had perhaps never stopped to contemplate Puerto Rico’s relationship to the United States, as well as for local residents who were forced into an affective reckoning with the kinds of structural violence they had been enduring for decades. . . . My focus is thus not on what Hurricane María has caused, but on what it has revealed.⁴

The sudden destruction associated with the storm could only be understood in relation to the past, as an event in the “unceremoniously archived procession of our catastrophes,” to use Édouard Glissant’s words.⁵ Five hundred years of colonial history in which Puerto Rico has been a laboratory of economic and social experiments have materialized in soil and sea, as much as in our flesh.

María and the discussions that followed it prompted me to reflect on the ideas that gather themselves around this old term “apocalypse,” especially in times of ecological crises. I will share with you here some of my exploration, seeking to surface sensibilities expressed in stories of those wrestling with the linked legacies of social and environmental catastrophes.

First, I will talk briefly about the biblical book of Revelation, to remind us of its most striking images. It is a trailer of sorts, just enough to inflect my engagement with contemporary renditions of the story. I will then turn to the work of Puerto Rican painter Patrick McGrath Muñiz, whose paintings depict different perspectives on apocalypse, as denunciation of the harms of colonialism, extractivism and economic injustice. Finally I will turn to a discussion of apocalypse as lament, as a way of expressing the value of the things we may lose, including the non-human beings in our community.

Climate crisis gives new meaning to revelation’s ecological scenes. Its procession of catastrophes commingles with our collective imaginaries about what is happening and is expected to happen as a result of climate change. When I read in the New York Times that fires in Australia had “Turned the Skies like Blood,”⁹ I conjure the sounds of trumpets.

There might be some historical connections beneath this resonance.

Commentaries on Revelation suggest that the community behind this strange, violent book had some inklings of the relationship between imperial iconography, economic practices, and environmental destruction. Like us, the author(s) of Revelation borrow much of its imagery of ecological disaster from previous apocalyptic literatures. “Apocalyptic unveiling is a practice of memory,” Jacqueline Hidalgo observes.¹⁰

For its representation of political and economic power, Revelation uses the symbols of the Roman empire—mirroring and mocking the claims of Roman emperors to rule over “earth, land and sea,” countering them with proof of God’s own power over the cosmos.¹¹ This mirroring of the empire’s ideology, with all its violence, makes this god an “alter-imperial” figure, as Hidalgo argues.¹²

The book denounces the empire’s economic exploitation by associating its commercial activities with fantastic creatures dressed in luxury. As Catherine Keller explains, “She is revealingly clothed in the luxury products of antiquity: ‘in purple and scarlet, adorned with gold and jewels and pearls’. . . . To lambaste the imperial excess of power, violence, and greed, to capture in particular its economy of instability—brutally destructive and inevitably self-destructive—John has dreamt the body of a woman.”¹³

Revelation represents economic injustice as one of the earth-destroying horseman, who protects luxury goods above livable wages. “The wealth Rome squanders on luxuries from all over the world was obtained by conquest and plunder,” Richard Bauckham observes.¹⁴ It portrays the merchants weeping because no one buys their cargo anymore. And it singles out the “kings of the earth,” the “merchants” and the mariners to be punished.

Historians describe the ecological devastation that accompanied the empire’s economic and military practices. Some of its effects would be familiar to those who study the ecological dimensions of colonialism: “deforestation for new crops, water and air pollution from mining, habitat destruction,” territorial expansion once the soil is depleted, and so on.¹⁵ Perhaps the community of the Apocalypse of John had already experienced a similar devastation and projected it into the future as the agency of extraordinary beings.

From this perspective, the Apocalypse of John shows the hidden side of the Roman Empire and reveals what had been happening. Revelation expresses a desire to bring it all to an end—the imports, the merchants, and even the sea by which they all arrived.

Despite its complexity and ambivalence, this text is often interpreted as a prediction of what will befall humanity. Some have dreamt of the new world that can spare us the troubles of this messy one, renouncing responsibility for whatever happens to air, trees, or sea. But many others have appropriated it as judgement.

Caribbean literature has at times adopted apocalyptic genres.¹⁶ But Caribbean authors do not assume divine figures commanding the natural elements or dispensing justice, rather they deploy it as critique of the present world-order for its injustice and destruction.

This tradition of apocalyptic imagination informs Juicio Capital (Capital Judgement) by Patrick McGrath Muñiz.¹⁷ The visual representation allows us to approach apocalypse here, not so much as the movement of a story from beginning to climax to end, as the unveiling of the structures underlying long-lasting patterns of destruction. Modeled after altarpieces, the painting follows the classical pattern of the Last Judgement.¹⁸

Juicio Capital demarcates the universe—Heaven, Earth, and Hell—using horizontal and vertical lines to mimic the traditional form of a triptych-altarpiece with three panels and a predella underneath.

The script above the predella reads (from left to right): “To the heavens the first worlds”; “We made our paradise and hell on this earth;” and “To hell the third worlds.”

The artist re-imagines the fire in traditional iconography of hell, in relation to both industrial animal farming and the burning of fossil fuels—both humans and animals have been condemned by its flames.

At the top of the triptych panels, at the highest level of the hierarchy of being, are representatives of global political and economic powers: Christopher Columbus sits next to Pope Alexander VI, who holds two papal bulls. The first grants the kings of Castille and León and their descendants “all . . . dominions, cities, camps, places, and villages, and all rights, [and] jurisdictions, all islands and mainlands found and to be found.”¹⁹ The second bull asserts that Amerindians do have souls. Columbus and Alexander VI are joined by Samuel Jackson (nicknamed “Indian killer”), Uncle Sam, and Burger King.

On the opposite corner, Superman sits next to Milton Friedman, Coca Cola’s Santa Claus, John Adams, and a figure wearing a gas mask evoking World War II.

There is no One like jasper or carnelian in this throne; there is no lion, ox, or eagle either; there is no emerald rainbow. If this throne is dazzling, it is based on these historical actors’ claims of dominion over earth, land, and sea.

In the ascending column, a ladder connects heaven and earth, money insures upward movement. The frame is marked by logos from Apple and Starbucks, recognizable symbols of capitalism and its plunders. Yet cartoon characters, like Richie Rich and Mr. Monopoly, suggest that elements of this system are make-believe. The angel in the left panel is depicted in an ascending pose, about to lift a child higher into the heavens. In the right panel, the angel keeps immigrants away, the Statue of Liberty barely visible in the background.

The landscape in the central panel is reminiscent of the mountains in the southern region of Puerto Rico, where the artist lived. At the center are the seven trumpets and the notorious horsemen. Instead of animal beings full of eyes (as in Revelation), we find an angel crowned with surveillance cameras—watching. The sound of the trumpet is amplified. And yet if we pay attention, beyond the loud sounds and scrutinizing cameras, we can see protesters articulating different visions.

Juicio Capital represents the planetary scope of the catastrophe, but it emphasizes the unequal distribution of its effects. The temporal perspective is just as encompassing. It places ecological catastrophe in a continuum with the old cataclysms of colonialism and its economic and ontological legacies, compressing the temporal distance between Columbus, Samuel Jackson, and Burger King to foreground the continuities between the conquest of a territory, the genocide of native peoples, and global capitalism.

Juicio Capital returns us to a tradition of visual interpretations of Apocalypse. But it places Revelation squarely in the realm of human affairs, foregrounding its often-forgotten economic and ecological concerns and re-activating its affective charge. It does all of this not to single out some for punishment, but to shake viewers out of our complacency with the world as it is. It denounces the authorities that claim mastery over the cosmos, as Rome once did,²⁰ but also the systems and the patterns-of-life that have been destroying the world.

The unveiling itself is the judgement.

The outraged tones of this and other adaptations of Apocalypse—with their loud sounds and striking images—may lead us to miss the deep sense of loss from which they spring. The Apocalypse of John utters its cry through the voice of an eagle: “woe to the inhabitants of the world” and perhaps most poignantly as an eerie silence in heaven.

In the aftermath of María, Puerto Rican writer Eduardo Lalo experienced this closer to the ground. “I remember going into Rio Piedras . . . and feeling the silence,” he wrote. “It was not because there weren’t people around: in fact, there were. But there were no birds, and it’s the most uncanny feeling you can have, because that’s the sound of death. Everything was dying.”²¹

This eerie silence impinges upon our intellectual practice today. Lalo adds, “the real object of the literary world is the unnamable. You could put into words all the government’s irresponsibility and its corruption. And people do that every day. But you cannot use words to capture pain, especially collective pain. Our pain is not only a personal but also a historical pain.”²² I wonder if this longing to express what is ultimately unnamable, makes the return to religious imagery not just understandable, but necessary.

Depictions of Apocalypse may depart from the familiar genre of last judgement. That is the case of Alba’s Dream, also by Patrick McGrath Muñiz. Catastrophe is just as central in Alba’s Dream as it is in Juicio Capital, but in Alba’s Dream the mood is starkly different.

Rather than dismissing apocalyptic genres—as I had often done—we may see their potential as critical interventions. Apocalyptic genres can help us see the destructive forces at work in the world as it is—forces that may operate slowly, quietly, until we find ourselves on the brink of a catastrophic event (or many!). Apocalyptic genres may describe the drama of planetary history as if from a distance—spatial or temporal—and confront us with the troubling persistence of injustice. They may disrupt and disturb us, shaking our complacency and breaking our enchantment with the systems that destroy the earth.

Yet other genres of revelation may be intimate and subdued, attentive to the weight of the present; they can express lament at what we already lost, at all we cannot save—acknowledging all beings in their precious particularity. And they can invite us to acts of care, beyond the usual calculous of returns.

Theological imagery may remind us of the generative power of retelling old tattered stories in new contexts, allowing us to see differently; that looking through the rubble of ancient metaphors and relics, we can reactivate the power of religious symbols to speak to crises that our everyday languages seem barely able to reach. Like icons, theological images and stories can turn us toward the unnamable.

Mayra Rivera is Andrew W. Mellon Professor of Religion and Latinx Studies at Harvard Divinity School and author of Poetics of the Flesh (Duke University Press, 2015). Her work explores the relationship between discursive and material dimensions of existence in shaping human embodiment and socio-material ecologies. This is an edited version of a talk she delivered on January 29, 2024, as part of the public, online series “Religion in Times of Earth Crisis,” sponsored by Religion and Public Life and The Center for the Study of World Religions at Harvard Divinity School, The Salata Institute for Climate and Sustainability at Harvard University, The Constellation Project, and HarvardX.