Months after Maria, Puerto Ricans take recovery into their own hands
Gloria Cotto stands in an abandoned elementary school in this mountainous town in central Puerto Rico, stirring a giant silver pot of beans. It’s 7:30 a.m., and the blue flame of the donated gas stove is the brightest light in the room since the country plunged into darkness six months ago.
“You can only eat so much sausage and canned tuna,” says Ms. Cotto, teetering on top of a plastic milk crate, her hairnet sliding back around her graying topknot. “You can only eat so many meals alone.”
Cotto and a core group of volunteers have been filling this former public-school cafeteria with donated food and home-cooked meals three days a week since Nov. 6, joining hundreds of volunteers across the island who are heroically helping communities survive after an unprecedented natural disaster and epic power outage. Without them, hundreds in this town would go hungry.
The winds of hurricanes Irma and Maria felled trees, cut off water supplies, and pulled the plug on the island’s power last September. Tens of thousands of families are still without electricity, requiring them to adapt to a situation everyone believed would be temporary but has proved to be a punishing new normal. That means studying by candlelight; using generators for things once taken for granted, such as keeping medications cold or chilling fresh meat; and coping with family separations that have accelerated in the aftermath of the tragedy.
Yet, across the island, individuals are coming together to take charge of a situation the government has yet to resolve. Over the past decade, as Puerto Rico’s economic crisis has deepened, residents have gained more of a reputation for leaving the island in pursuit of jobs than for confronting the many challenges at home. Now that perspective may be changing post-Maria, as more communities unite around taking their survival – and
