PUERTO RICO REVIVAL
I rode shotgun in a pickup truck headed inland from the coast.
My guide, Alex Camacho, and I snaked up past the edge of town into farmland, the mountains a huge green wall in the distance. It was a beautiful Caribbean day, sunny with a few dark clouds that would either drench us or pass quietly by. We were going into El Yunque, on the eastern side of Puerto Rico, the only tropical rain forest in the U.S. national forest system.
Alex is in his early 30s, with long curly hair and a quick smile. He said, “Welcome to my backyard,” motioning toward our destination. “I come here in the early morning or evening when no one is here, and it is the most peaceful place in the whole world. It’s my therapy.”
I wanted to ask him about the hurricanes that devastated this island in September 2017, just over two years ago. I was surprised by how good everything looked—at least to my outsider’s eyes.
“Were you here during Irma and Maria?” I asked.
His voice, so far, had been warm, but it changed temperature now. “It was terrible, terrible. The only luck is that the storm came during the day, so we were awake and could see.” He described watching the door to his home fly open in the wind; a neighbor ran over to help him force it closed to keep the house from being flooded.
Alex told me that before the storms he didn’t really know his neighbors. After, they were together all the time, gathered around whatever food anyone had or appreciating the moments when there was gas for the generator. There was no communication with the outside
