On September 18, 2022, in the flood plains of Cayey, Puerto Rico, a two-story blue-gray house stood surrounded in over ten feet of river water. On the second floor, a trapped family of three awaited rescue. Members of the Bureau for Emergency Management and Disaster Administration (NMEAD) never arrived at the scene, and the National Guard confirmed they could not rescue the family without a helicopter, which they did not have. Neighbors and family friends had no choice but to power their personal boats and execute an impromptu rescue mission.
This was but one of many accounts of damage from Hurricane Fiona, which brought 30 inches of rainfall to Puerto Rico. The family was rescued with no injury and have since called on their municipal government to dredge the river to prevent dangerous flooding. Although Hurricane Fiona was a Category One hurricane, severe flooding caused property damages and civilians “had to throw everything away,” said Carmen Santiago, co-founder of Mi Patria Puerto Rico. In rural areas, access to electricity and access to clean water was cut for as long as one month.
In the face of limited institutional support and disaster relief, grassroots organizations quickly mobilized on the scene to support civilians. Days after Hurricane Fiona hit, 850 families in the city of Caguas shopped for food at Super Solidario Coop (Super Solidary Co-op), a cooperative supermarket built by Comedores Sociales de Puerto Rico, an organization dedicated to combating food insecurity. On the opposite side of the island, in the coastal region of Isabela, members of Mi Patria led reconstruction efforts, conducted wellness checks on the elderly, and distributed supplies. Two members of Despierta Boricua, the Puerto Rican student organization at Yale, compiled a list of organizations like Mi Patria and collected donations. Their fundraising went viral on Twitter and allowed them to send over $7,000 directly to the organizations. Each organization contributes the unique skills of its members to tackle a specific issue that affects Puerto Ricans.
The work of grassroots organizations has proven necessary in the face of worsening climate change impacts, bureaucratic inefficiency, budget cuts by Puerto Rico’s government, and the constraints associated with Puerto Rico’s status as a commonwealth under the US. Grassroots organizations have been on the rise since Hurricane Maria, a Category Five storm, struck the island in 2017. The hurricane resulted in over $90 billion in damages and prompted a mass exodus. Since then, organizations such as Comedores Sociales and Mi Patria have been hard at work to create an alternative and sustainable source of disaster relief for when another hurricane inevitably strikes. Five years later, the work paid off. Organizations were better able to address the needs of civilians after Hurricane Fiona.
While grassroots efforts have been crucial for disaster response, their work has been increasingly vital during periods between disasters to address structural issues—especially food insecurity. After World War II, Puerto Rico executed a series of projects collectively known as Operation Bootstrap to industrialize the island. As a consequence, the island lost a majority of its agricultural production. Today, Puerto Rico imports 85 percent of its food.
In 2013, Marisel Robles and Ian Suárez helped found Comedores Sociales, an organization dedicated to connecting Puerto Ricans with affordable, quality food. After Hurricane Maria in 2017, the organization’s efforts shifted from serving students at the University of Puerto Rico to creating a community kitchen called Centro de Apoyo Mutuo (Center for Mutual Support) in the inland city of Caguas. The kitchen distributes food to the elderly, single mothers, and college students through their Compras Solidarias (Solidarity Purchases) project. Each Saturday, the organization hosts a fundraising event called Sábado de Restaurant (Restaurant Saturday), complete with live music, for their community. The group also adopted a supermarket model for food distribution through their Super Solidario Coop to allow civilians to choose products for themselves. Collectively, these projects have benefited over 26,000 individuals.
Grassroots groups have also addressed ways in which Puerto Rico’s status as a commonwealth within the U.S. hinders efforts to build a sustainable and resilient Puerto Rico. “Puerto Rico is a colony that has been denied a colonial status,” said Ariadna Godreau, a human rights lawyer and the founder of a non-profit called Ayuda Legal Puerto Rico. “It’s an invisible colony. We’re not part of the United Nations. We are not part of many conversations.”
Such conditions make Godreau’s work on providing accessible legal information to Puerto Ricans crucial. Ayuda Legal’s website provides lists of legal terminology and a directory for finding legal aid. The organization’s guide on applying and appealing for Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) funds to repair homes or damaged property became especially relevant after Hurricane Fiona, when many Puerto Ricans suffered flood damage and even risked homelessness.
As a human rights lawyer, Godreau not only navigates U.S. and Puerto Rican central government laws, but also ongoing legal disputes with municipal governments on displacement cases. Across the board, Puerto Ricans and grassroots organizations have a complicated relationship with municipal governments. There are 78 municipal governments on the island, and each operates differently. “The government has the primary responsibility to respond for the human rights of the people in the island, and they are failing to do so willingly and consciously,” Godreau said. The owner of the blue house in Cayey was disappointed that his municipal government failed to keep his family safe.
Municipal governments face financial challenges in responding to natural disasters and providing social services. “The majority of municipalities have economic issues due to demographic reasons,” said Dr. Hector Manuel Martinez Ramirez, a professor of political science at the University of Puerto Rico. “There are some municipalities that have suffered from emigration more than others in the last 15 years. That also coincides with a recession since 2006. When they lose their population, there are fewer citizens that can contribute their taxes.” Martinez asserted that mayors “se desviven por su pueblo [they go out of their way for their community],” and municipal governments that have a less-than-shining reputation are likely under-resourced. In 2016, the Puerto Rico Oversight, Management, and Economic Stability Act (PROMESA) established a financial oversight board to restructure debt. According to Martinez, the board imposed austerity measures of which municipal governments have borne the brunt. “There are some municipalities where mayors must decide daily whether they will use their gasoline to power the bus that transports the elderly to the care center or to power the landscaping equipment for the municipality,” Martinez said.
A non-governmental organization’s relationship with a municipio is a determining factor in its success. Military veterans Carmen Santiago and Raymond Collazo founded Mi Patria when they repatriated to the island to help with disaster relief following Hurricane Maria. “When Hurricane Maria destroyed the island, I felt I needed to do something,” Collazo said. For months, Mi Patria had been fundraising to repair the home of Guillermo Mercado Rodriguez, a 91-year-old Korean War Veteran, and his extended family. After Hurricane Fiona, the organization had to briefly reallocate their resources to help clear debris, distribute water, and cut trees off houses. Mi Patria’s work in Isabela has been met with support from municipal governments, although there have been instances when “leaders didn’t work well under pressure,” Santiago said, and Mi Patria had to give “consejo [advice]” on how to address structural issues.
Part of Mi Patria’s mission is to prevent property destruction in moments of crisis that prompt Puerto Ricans to flee. As of 2020, about twice as many Puerto Ricans reside in the continental U.S. (about six million) than on the island (about three million). Mi Patria aims to end this cycle by creating the conditions for Puerto Ricans to return to the island through sustainable infrastructure and reliable access to social services. “Our vision is to do something that empowers the community, the individual, el ciudadano [the citizen], el Puertorriqueño [the Puerto Rican], el Boricua [a colloquial term meaning Puerto Rican],” that wants to move back and see a better Puerto Rico,” Collazo said.
The closure of 44% of Puerto Rico’s schools after Hurricane Maria is a key example of how cutting resources incentivizes families to leave, justifying further budgetary cuts. In Isabela alone, 11 schools have been shut down, some of which Collazo and Santiago hope to rehabilitate and turn into community centers ultimately to revitalize their barrios (neighborhoods).
The sheer destruction that followed Hurricane Maria forced over 130,000 civilians to flee the island. Members of the diaspora and islanders connected with urgency to support each other through this time. Puerto Ricans who already resided in the U.S. (affectionately refer to themselves as “Diasporicans”) welcomed islander family members who left behind destroyed homes and kept up more frequently with the needs of relatives who remained on the island.
Many, like Santiago and Collazo, questioned whether they should return and join efforts to address the challenges Puerto Rico faces. Diasporicans have also been a strong source of support for grassroots organizations that led reconstruction efforts. “Hurricane Maria forced us to have a relationship with Puerto Rican groups in the diaspora,” Robles said. Diasporican support helped Comedores Sociales start their projects with small funds and later gain traction through social media promotion and donations from abroad.
After Hurricane Maria, the island’s power distribution and transmission was privatized under LUMA Energy, a joint venture between two American and Canadian companies, with the expectation that the private sector would better equip the island’s electrical grid than the government had. Since LUMA’s power takeover, the island has experienced power outages, dangerous explosions, and steep increases in energy costs. Just before the peak of hurricane season this year, the governor announced that the island was “prepared” to resist power outages after a hurricane. However, after Hurricane Fiona hit, Puerto Rico experienced an island-wide power shutdown and severe delays in power restoration. In practice, these power outages have shaped how organizations pivot to meet the needs of the communities they serve. In a survey Comedores Sociales sent to its community, the organization found that the power outages prevented people from refrigerating their food. As a result, grocery deliveries by Comedores Sociales were required twice as frequently.
As Puerto Rico experiences an increased likelihood of heavy rainfall due to climate change, it is not only important to prioritize material support to civilians, but to make those decisions with Puerto Rico’s environment in mind. The dangerous flooding in Cayey is exactly the kind of event investigative journalist Marcos Pérez-Ramírez, founder of ecological publication Marea Ecologista, has been warning against. In recent years, private actors have been building closer to rivers and the coast than is safe. These properties and their inhabitants are at greater risk as storms hit the island with greater intensity.
Marea Ecologista launched this year in an effort to counter corruption and illegal activity that harms Puerto Rico’s environment. For example, the group has denounced the extraction of sand from a reef marine reserve in Isla Verde for deposit in a nearby private beach club and an illegally-established quarry near the Camuy River, the world’s third-largest underground river. After Hurricane Fiona, Marea Ecologista received tips and reported on how municipal efforts in Añasco to deposit debris in a local stream exacerbated subsequent flooding when torrential rains hit. Pérez-Ramírez asserted that human actions like these have exacerbated damage in the aftermath of Hurricane Fiona. He says that these environmental issues should be cause for concern on par with political and economic factors.
The frustration of observing from afar led Mariana Vargas ’23, vice president of Despierta Boricua, Yale’s Puerto Rican student organization which celebrated its fiftieth anniversary last year, and Rebeka Cabrera ’24, another member of Despierta Boricua, into action. After noticing several grassroots organizations circulating on Twitter, Cabrera and Vargas decided to compile a document and distribute funds that the public donated for hurricane relief to the grassroots organizations. Their efforts helped bring money to organizations on the ground and created a document that can be used after future natural disasters.
Santiago, like many Puerto Ricans, ultimately aims not just for disaster relief, but for the island to build a thriving future for itself. “We are resilient, but I don’t want to be resilient anymore,” said Santiago before continuing a repair on a civilian’s roof. “I don’t want to keep surviving, I want to thrive. I want Puerto Rico to be able to sustain itself.”
Links
To support Ayuda Legal Puerto Rico click here.
To support Comedores Sociales de Puerto Rico’s Campaign Against Hunger click here.
To read Marea Ecologista click here.
To support Mi Patria Puerto Rico click here.