A Curse Upon Puerto Rico

My older sister refuses to go back to Puerto Rico. It is not out of lack of love for the island we were born in, for it will always be the place our childhood formed, but a fear born from trauma. We have always carried a sense of guilt about leaving our homeland. We were both under ten years old when we moved permanently to the United States and without a doubt have lived better lives since.

There were layers to the privilege. A sense of inadequacy walked hand in hand with a sense of luckiness. When we would visit family and friends over the years, we would feel out of place for simple silly things. For example, not understanding the latest slang being spoken or getting sunburned for the first time and being told it was because we had been away for so long. Even our skin was Americanized. No one tried to exclude us, but it was a difficult matter to accept that we were no longer on the same path.

We loved to go though and soak in that burning sun, play in the white beaches, speak a broken Spanish with the people we still cherished. Puerto Rico to us was an escape that held something warm and familiar like a childhood lullaby you had forgotten the words to but not the melody. There had always been problems of crime and corruption and we were always aware of them, for we moved away from the island because of those issues, but they never dulled the nostalgic shine.

Puerto Rico has had an influx of tragedy in the last couple of years. Hurricane Maria devastated the island in September 2017 taking 2,975 lives with it.

I recall seeing the path of the storm descending upon the outline of the island weather satellite image and thinking of the hurricanes I had experienced there before. They had been loud and destructive in their own right but this was like nothing Puerto Rico had ever faced before. Hurricane Maria is widely considered as the worst natural disaster in recorded history for the island.

We couldn't contact family, we couldn't send supplies because everything shut down on the island. We watched helplessly as the little slice of paradise we had always loved disintegrated. Somehow the aftermath was worse than the storm itself.

My mother eventually found a flight to take her there to go help her parents, my grandparents, and she described seeing the already terrible roads torn up so badly that no one could drive through them. The entire power grid had been fried and no one had electricity. It was a struggle to get clean water and medical supplies. Puerto Rico is a fairly lush and leafy place but she told me the storm had literally blown the trees away. Everything was left barren and destroyed. It was not a place any of us recognized anymore.

We did not lose anyone in the storm and for that we were lucky. Some family came to live with us for a time to escape the devastation. We sent endless boxes of supplies to those we could not offer sanctuary to. The political dramas were endless and exhausting.

Nearly a year after the storm I got to go to Puerto Rico. Even then, parts of the island I visited still did not have power. There was still debris piled up that had never been cleaned up, houses still destroyed and never rebuilt, roads that were never going to be accessible again. The island was slowly recovering from all it had lost.

There are incredible stories of perseverance and unity from that time. What the U.S. government did not provide in aid the people gave to each other. Cynically, I would usually say that was a nice story to tell the masses to sanitize the ordeal but I saw it for myself. The sense of community was strong in Puerto Rico and there was hope that things would eventually get better.

That was the last time I visited the island. Not by choice but because of circumstance. In 2019, I had gone to Spain to teach abroad. I was three or four months into it when I got a call that my grandmother was not doing very well. I had thought I should cancel my Christmas plans and find a flight to Puerto Rico to go see her but my mother and sister assured me they would go visit her and take care of her.

I wanted to be there, and sometimes I regret not being there, but that is a story for another time. Days after my mother and sister landed in Puerto Rico the first earthquake began to shake the island. My family had been through an earthquake before. In 2011, there had been a 5.8 earthquake that hit the Virginia area but was felt all the way to where we lived and worked in Maryland and D.C. respectively.

I recall seeing the floor look like it was rolling as if it was a wave. Likely it was a fear exageration coupled with a chronically overactive imagination but I remember how scared I was. What my sister and mother described to me was much worse. They were with my grandparents, my grandmother was bedridden, and they couldn't go anywhere else. They all had to endure it, that terrifying shaking as everything crumbled and cracked around them.

This was the first of a series of earthquakes that would continue to terrorize the people of Puerto Rico.

My sister cannot forget the horror of it. Despite all the terrible things that have befallen Puerto Rico before this is why she cannot see herself ever stepping foot on our beloved island again.

The Earthquakes have not stopped. They have been a steady terror upon the citizens of Puerto Rico since December 2019. All of 2020 the island shook and it does not seem to be ending any time soon, even in this month, March 2021, there was another shake.

As you can imagine, adding in the pandemic to this already brewing set of problems did not help the level of crisis subside.

The people of Puerto Rico feel abandoned. Their mental health issues only grow. Many years ago, I got involved in the LGBTQ fight for rights in Puerto Rico. Pedro Julio Serrano is one of the active island leaders in that struggle. Though he has made headlines for many of the issues LGBTQ people face in Puerto Rico it is his fight against the growing violence upon Trans people that has always stood out to me as exceptional.

In January 2021, a state of emergency was declared on the island for gender-based violence. This was focused mostly on the violence done to women but did include the growing violent threat to trans women. Violence has always been an issue in Puerto Rico but in the wake of all these natural disasters everything is growing more desperate and dangerous. LGBTQ people have little space to voice their concerns and protect themselves in a society that still considers them mistakes.

I want to go back to Puerto Rico. I want to help in any way I can. I feel both too far away from this problem to be of any use and too close to not be pulled into the maelstrom tide of it.

There is no telling what is on the horizon for Puerto Rico. Many have lost their sense of hope. In March 2020 we lost our grandmother. She was already sick but it still came as a shock to the family. Though she was burried, with covid issues in full effect we still have not been able to have a proper funeral for her. My grandfather came to live with us in the U.S. and despite having a better life here longs to return to Puerto Rico.

He has not lost his sense of hope. He wants to be in his home. Only time will tell when he will be able to live there again.

Below are some sources in case you have the means to donate:

Hurricane Relief

Earthquake Relief

Puerto Rico Education Initative

LGBTQ Issues in Puerto Rico