Opinion

Manuel A. del Río’s farm was never going to be easy to find. There’s little GPS service in the hills of Morovis, a mountainous municipality in central Puerto Rico. I drove past the entrance the first time because the kilometer sign marking the spot had not been replaced since it blew away during Hurricane Maria. 
Del Río said not to worry, he’d had a hard time finding his own ancestral home when he first arrived a few days after the hurricane. The turnoff and steep dirt path was covered in fallen trees and greenery. But his longtime neighbor, Pejel, was already there, struggling with a machete to hack through the debris. Pejel was crying. 
Del Río, 66, who lives mostly in San Juan, insisted we meet in person before I tried coming out to the Morovis farm, because he wanted to give me a hand-written map. The map was methodically designed, unsurprisingly for a man who drives around Puerto Rico selling medical appliances for a living. We had dinner at a Sizzler franchise in San Juan, surrounded by families celebrating birthdays. Slightly hard of hearing, del Río sometimes struggled with questions. He arrived at the restaurant earlier than our agreed upon time and I found him standing alone, a little out of place in the chaos of the nighttime mall, the realm of teenagers like malls at such times everywhere. 
But in Morovis, despite the storm’s remnants, del Río seemed grounded. It felt as though everyone he passed was a cousin or friend. Maybe the comfort came from his family’s long roots in the area: his grandfather had been one of the region’s largest landowners and a former mayor. Among the mountains, del Río seemed buoyed by love for the densely green land. And he, like other Morovis residents, was driven to bring things back to the way they were. 
Maybe you heard about Morovis right after Hurricane Maria: The storm swept away a crucial bridge there leaving several thousand residents stranded — the only way into town required a more-than-two-hour trip around the mountain. The situation perfectly illustrated the logistical nightmare the hurricane wrought. But though the world’s attention has largely moved elsewhere more than four months after the storm, for Morovis, as for much of Puerto Rico, not much has changed. 
<h2>‘People are desperate for power’</h2> 
I had been introduced to del Río by a colleague of a friend of my mother’s. It’s not hard to find New Yorkers with connections to Puerto Rico — a vast migration in the 1950s established what is still the mainland’s most vital Puerto Rican diaspora. Plenty of New Yorkers introduced me to relatives on the island to bring back stories of Puerto Rico’s continued plight. But when I reached out to del Río, he was the most welcoming and the most insistent. I had to see Morovis, he explained. And it was true: Morovis embodies some of the key hopes and challenges for Puerto Rico now and in the coming years. 
For example, the town was economically troubled long before the storm, with nearly 15 percent unemployment in August, according to the mayor’s office. The entire island’s finances have been precarious for nearly a decade and the hurricane only made things worse. The commonwealth is more than $70 billion in debt and has faced stark austerity from a control board. There has been an outflow of migration for years. 
Electricity, provided by the teetering power authority, PREPA, has always been expensive in Puerto Rico. Now imagine no electricity at all. 
Walking around Morovis’ quiet urban center observing shuttered stores, we ran into a man with a wrinkled face and slouched walk who I assumed was at least two decades older than del Río. But they had gone to high school together. 
“How’s everything?” del Río asked in Spanish. “Damn the hurricane,” the man answered. 
In Morovis, some 20 percent of the urban zone was receiving power in January, but it wasn’t reaching almost any of the countryside including del Río’s farm. Unemployment stood as of January at close to 50 percent. 
Morovis Mayor Carmen Maldonado channeled that sentiment when I got in to see her. “People are desperate for power,” she said in Spanish. 
We spoke over the weekend that the federal government had shut down in Washington, lots of speechifying and excuses, but Maldonado was on the job. She’d recently gone with 30 mayors to the governor of Puerto Rico to complain about the slow speed of recovery. Late that afternoon, she’d be giving out solar lamps. This is the predicament for Puerto Rican mayors, from small towns to <a href="https://www.amny.com/opinion/columnists/mark-chiusano/new-york-has-puerto-rico-s-back-says-san-juan-mayor-carmen-yulin-cruz-1.16292811">big city San Juan</a> — raise voices and try to get their people some help. Particularly regarding the return of power. 
Across Puerto Rico, I asked people what part of electricity they missed most — what they hadn’t had for nearly half a year. For some, it was being able to do homework at a desk, not by the light of a running car. Or having home-cooked meals, or going to the bathroom at night without a flashlight. If you did have a generator, you were running it for hours in the daytime, the drone of the machines an anthem to these months of chaos across the island. 
Power is coming back slowly. After inexplicably trying to hire a small utility company, the infamous Whitefish, to spearhead the power repair, PREPA called on mutual aid agreements with mainland utility companies to get down to business. New York, with its historic ties to the island, had more than 450 workers on the job in January. In San Juan, I watched New York-based crews <a href="https://www.newsday.com/opinion/columnists/mark-chiusano/puerto-rico-electricity-hurricane-maria-recovery-1.16303467">turning the lights on</a> for eager households. I also visited PREPA offices where harried engineers expressed gratitude for the visiting New Yorkers. Now, approximately a third of the island remains powerless. 
New York officials estimate a mid-March return to full power for the San Juan region. Maldonado said that for Morovis, the wait would be at least until May. 
Del Río came to my interview with the Morovis mayor (“How should I call you,” he asked her. “Whatever you want,” she said graciously.), both to help translate and also to say various times what a great job he thought she was doing. Still, when we walked into the empty town square, he said: “Morovis was left behind.” 
How so, I asked? To answer, he took me to the bridge. 
<h2>‘Is it one way?’</h2> 
A quick-flowing river separated our vehicle from the neighborhood of San Lorenzo. There were a few construction vehicles picking up wire-mesh cylinders and poles, placing them in the water. Four months later, there was no bridge. 
This was where the hurricane swept the previously sturdy span away. 
Without it, people have been driving, when they can, over a rocky strip in the river next to the construction site. That’s what del Río wanted to do. “Is it one way,” I asked? “Yeah sure,” del Río laughed. 
I should be clear that this was little more than fording the river. If you went a few inches off-track, you’d be sunk. Our truck bounced around and I’m not sure what would have happened with a nighttime attempt. But this was as good as it got four months after the hurricane. 
On the other side of the river, we passed dozens of houses wrapped in blue tarps. Thousands in this neighborhood had lost roofs in the storm. Landslides relandscaped people’s backyards and the surrounding hills. Del Río pointed at them, now green like much of Puerto Rico. 
The hills had been white, he said, because all the leaves had blown off. It was maybe the most recovery that had been achieved in Morovis, and it was entirely natural. 
This is the great challenge for Puerto Rico at the moment, and at times it seems almost impossible: The island is being asked to pull itself up by the bootstraps while balanced on the unstable shores of previous economic hardship; all while still searching for federal help. 
An $81 billion federal disaster aid bill, for example, has been stalled in the U.S. Senate by government shutdown talk and will now perhaps be included in the continuing resolution to be debated along with DACA and other urgent business. 
The more distant future doesn’t look bright, either. The Republican tax bill hammers the island with penalties on Puerto Rican-located businesses, an act which Gov. Ricardo Rosselló called a “crippling blow.” And Puerto Rico will need to see if its creditors are in the mood to forgive. 
You’ll find plenty of Puerto Ricans who assign blame more locally, too — for political corruption, bad management, and a lack of planning to upgrade key infrastructure and prepare for natural disasters. Still, for the world’s wealthiest nation, it sure seems like a hell of a long time to allow a part of that nation to wallow. 
Small wonder people are leaving — some 300,000 to Florida alone. According to Edwin Melendez at Hunter College’s Center for Puerto Rican Studies, final numbers could end up rivalling the great migration of the 1950s, when hundreds of thousands stayed on the mainland, and the similar migration of the past 10 years, when recession prompted another flight to the mainland in search of a future. 
Maria del Río, Manuel’s niece, left the island years ago. Born and raised in Puerto Rico, career ambitions as a psychologist led her to establish herself on the mainland. She has been in New York City since 2003 and is a professor of school counseling at Brooklyn College. 
But she says she sometimes thinks of returning. “For most people in the diaspora, there’s always an idea that you’re going to go back,” she said in a phone interview. 
Though she didn’t grow up in Morovis, it was the site of family get togethers and traditions: the “heart of the island” both physically and for her forebears. So it was difficult to watch the pictures of a swamped Morovis appearing on social media in the days after the storm. And there was the added irony that she and others in New York might be seeing more of the destruction than their old friends in Morovis. Few were checking Facebook there. 
But the pictures and stories of Morovis’ woes were spreading around the country anyway, first via those social media posts and then through news accounts. The world was seeing Morovis brought low. Surely, it wouldn’t be long until all that sharing made things right again. 
<h2>‘A way of saying thank you’</h2> 
While the wait continues, family members aren’t the only connections Morovis has to the outside world. 
Manuel and I stopped for lunch at a roadside spot called Don Juan’s, whose owner had served in the U.S. armed forces in Vietnam and met his wife there. She now cooks in the restaurant’s kitchen. 
Del Río himself became a national guardsman in the Vietnam era, though he didn’t see active duty. His eldest son did — as an infantryman in Afghanistan, one among Puerto Rico’s long history of service in the U.S. armed forces. 
Today, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers has contractors in the area working to restore power, just as the New York utilities are working to do the same in and around San Juan. In what I observed and heard of their interactions, Puerto Ricans tend to be gracious to the power workers, even if they are frustrated with the pace of work. They bang pots and pans in celebration at the workers’ arrival and offer food and drinks. They also take to social media, the governor’s office, and Washington, D.C. to ask for more help. It’s a strange yin-yang situation, not unlike the island’s halfway status: almost America, but statehood arguments and miles of water between. 
We drove from the unfinished bridge back to del Río’s farm, where he showed me in meticulous detail the hurricane’s fury — the collapsed giant shed, the wooden posts that had been blown out of their holes, the trunks of the chopped up trees he and Pejel had been working to gather and then, ultimately, roll down into the valley and out of sight. 
But as we drove, we passed a quiet-looking property with an empty front yard but for a giant American flag flapping in the wind. I said I hadn’t seen many, as opposed to the proliferation of Puerto Rican flags, and the ubiquitous “Se Levanta” island pride campaign brandishing the island’s capacity to rise. 
Del Río didn’t say anything for a moment, and then he added quietly as the flag passed into our rearview: “That’s a way of saying thank you.”

News

AMEXPRESSMANUELPR

Visiting Morovis is a challenge without the bridge that washed away during Hurricane Maria

Chiusano: Waiting for a bridge in rural Puerto Rico

Columnist Mark Chiusano explores how Puerto Rico is recovering from Hurricane Maria

Newsday

SAN JUAN — The trucks rolled onto Calle Diamante with New York plates and American and Puerto Rican flags flying out the back. Utility workers in hard hats and reflective vests were at work around 8 a.m. on Sunday, swarming the sidewalks, being lifted by buckets. They were joined by residents of this neighborhood on the border between San Juan and Carolina, because this was the day the residents would get electricity. 
The power went out in this part of Puerto Rico when Hurricane Irma’s powerful Category 5 eye passed just north of the island in early September. Then Hurricane Maria landed about two weeks later, carving a path of destruction and setting back the recovery. For Flavio Rivera, 77, that’s meant more than four months of going to the bathroom with a flashlight at night. With no generator, and therefore no ability to cook or run a refrigerator, Ruth Asencio, 47, and her family have gotten used to eating breakfast, lunch and dinner at Burger King or KFC.
But for a couple hundred households, that was all going to change on Sunday. 
<h3>Men at work</h3>
More than 450 Empire State utility workers have been detailed to aid Puerto Rico’s beleaguered power infrastructure, tasked specifically with restoring power to San Juan. Working street by street, seven days a week — 12, 14 and even 16 hours a day — they’ve been slowly turning on lights.
Still, San Juan and the surrounding area isn’t expected to be electrified in full until early spring. For the rest of the island, it will take even longer. 
The workers — native Brooklynites, upstate New Yorkers, Long Islanders, many of them working for a Hauppauge company, Hawkeye — shook their heads at the thought of back home being powerless that long. In New York, “they call if it’s out ten minutes,” one joked. 
But it was a festive atmosphere on Calle Diamante, people out on their porches in this neighborhood of one-story houses against a densely green hill. Music played. A woman took a picture with three safety-vested workers.
Suddenly the call went out: “Main line is hot!” Just a few more pieces to connect, and the juice of modern life would return. 
It happened for a few houses. Dogs barked. House alarms went off. A fan turned. 
But down the road, all was not well. A worker muttered to himself. One of the first house’s “weatherheads,” the piece connecting the house to the electrical line, had started smoking. Homes on that side still didn’t have juice. The power had to be shut down to make more repairs. Just another obstacle in returning power to 3.4 million people who have depended on an aging system for too long.
Despite the setback, no one despaired. What’s a few minutes after months? “They’re working well,” said Edgardo Cuadrado Santana, 54. 
Then, Santana and his neighbors set up a table outside his house, just next to a lifesize Roberto Clemente picture. And soon there appeared plates of rice, chicken, avocados, bottles of 7 Up. “Eat, eat,” the residents said, granting the workers an unscheduled break.
The workers acknowledged that you don’t see this in New York. Maybe, you get coffee. But this is what it has come to for the Puerto Ricans living in hard-to-imagine conditions for nearly half a year. They are angry — at the local power authority, at FEMA, at the federal government and at Puerto Rico’s— but not at the professionals who are working to restore normality. There was always a closeness between Puerto Rico and New York, born of decades of migration. Now, with the New York power people working since days after the storm, nothing but thanks. 
<h3>A hard job, but worth it</h3>
New York is “the land of plenty,” says one Hawkeye mechanic, who gave his name as Dennis. In Puerto Rico, there are shortages even of electrical tape, he said. 
But the residents were patient. They broke out a little rum and tried to push it on the utility workers, who refused. 
Dragging picnic chairs in view of the pole where workers installed a new transformer, the residents tried to chat in English. 
Did Dennis go to the big fiesta in San Juan on Saturday?
“Yeah,” he said, looking at the ground. 
Did he like it? 
“What I remember of it.”
Did he drink? 
“Oh, yeah.”
Ice cubes were brought outside, for glasses. The New Yorkers stayed in the heat. 
And then, it was upon them. “Uno momento,” Dennis tried. Everyone watched. A fuse clicked into place. 
María Del Mar, 19, was one of the first to check. She ran inside to the empty fridge, opened its door. The light was on. She screamed. She danced to the door and flipped the light switch before going outside. It worked. 
“That’s what it’s all about,” said Dennis, heading back to his truck. For Del Mar, it was still sinking in. From time to time she screamed again. 
What would she do now that electricity was back? “Wash clothes,” she said in Spanish. “And look at the lights.”

AMEXPRESS0123

Bringing the light back to Calle Diamante

Chiusano: LIers bringing power back to San Juan

AMEXPRESS0123_WEB

SAN JUAN – You might recognize the name of Carmen Yulin Cruz, the San Juan mayor who repeatedly sparred with President Donald Trump after Hurricane Maria destroyed complete towns in Puerto Rico four months ago. 
In the aftermath, she took to the airwaves to describe a “life or death” situation&nbsp;on the island and to decry FEMA’s response. Trump became very critical of her, tweeting about her “poor leadership.” Since then, she has found allies around the country, but especially in New York. 
I&nbsp;sat down with the mayor in San Juan on Wednesday, to discuss what Puerto Rico still needs, why she calls our mayor “Bill,” and how New York was there from the beginning. 
<h2>On a particular moment that stood out from the days after the storm:</h2> 
“There were three people drinking off a creek in a town called Comerio and this child…his grandmother had him sort of held to one side on her hip, and we gave them a bottle of water, and the child realized…it was cold when he touched it. And the desperation in the child’s face, just trying to grab on and touch the bottle, it just showed me that there was a lot of need. And I’ve said this many times and still: [Storms] Irma and Maria were devastating for Puerto Rico. The botched effort of the Trump administration has been at least as equally devastating.” 
<h2>On interactions with Trump since his Twitter comments:</h2> 
“He shook my hand, and he said, ‘Oh you.’ And I said, ‘It’s not about politics Mr. President, it’s about saving lives.’” 
That was…before he threw paper towels at us.” 
<h2>On her decision to criticize the federal government, as opposed to the early reticence shown by Puerto Rico Gov. Ricardo Rossello:</h2> 
“The governor decided that he was gonna play nice with President Trump basically because he thought, ‘Well if I stay quiet, maybe he will help.’ . . . And what basically happened was it gave President Trump the opportunity to look the other way. 
So now the governor is saying, ‘Well, we didn’t get everything we needed.’ Well, you know, I’m with him. We all knew that from the beginning.” 
<h2>On her relationship with New York:</h2> 
“I sum it up in this: I used to love New York. Now I adore New York. 
Mayor Bill de Blasio and then-Speaker Melissa Mark-Viverito were outstanding…From the second week [after the storm] until December, eight teams of New York [City] Emergency Management people came to San Juan, just to San Juan, and helped us set up our distribution system. They helped us navigate the very difficult and bureaucratic FEMA-land, which we’re still navigating…They even helped us with opening our, what we call our Central Park, which is Parque Luis Muñoz Marin. They actually sent tree specialists.” 
<h2>On de Blasio saying that NYC couldn’t provide housing for displaced Puerto Ricans:</h2> 
“From what I heard and read, that wasn’t what he said. What he said had somewhat of a concerned undertone, not a rejection undertone. [Asking,] does it make sense for people to go from a shelter here to a shelter somewhere else? Probably not. So, what I heard Mayor de Blasio said, and I call him Bill, is let’s make sure that the people that come here are well taken care of. Let’s make sure that the living conditions are good living conditions.” 
<h2>On what New Yorkers can do for Puerto Rico:</h2> 
“Well first of all, New Yorkers have done a lot…The satellite phone that I got first, this gentleman… from the Emergency Management office said, ‘Mayor Cruz, this is from New York.’ And it was the first chance we had to communicate. 
It was New York, it was Chicago, Miami-Dade, and now the people that have moved from Puerto Rico to New York specifically, they have a center where people go to get help, even go to get coats. And I was very touched by that because they aren’t old clothes, they aren’t discarded coats. They are coats that still have their tags on and that’s a very dignified way of helping those who have had to leave their environment. 
A couple of things [to help]: make sure that Congress doesn’t forget us. Make sure that you retweet, even this interview just keep at it and ensure that [you]…don’t believe what most of the members of the Trump administration are saying: ‘Everything is OK.’ Everything is not OK…1.5 million of us still don’t have energy…Children are still going to school half a day. Our economy is still shattered. And don’t forget us. Don’t forget us. 
There’s lots of foundations that you can give your money to. We have a municipal foundation called somebodyhelpus.org. 
And come to visit us. Take a cruise, take a plane, come down here and support us. And make sure that you take a little video and show people that we are resilient, we are fighting, and that Maria and Irma may have tried and put us down, but they just made us dizzy for a little while. We’re coming back and we’re coming back strong.”

New York has Puerto Rico's back, says San Juan Mayor Carmen Yulin Cruz

Chiusano: New York has Puerto Rico's back

Carmen Yulin Cruz

amExpress went to Puerto Rico last week to check in on storm recovery and the fate of an island tied by strong familial and cultural bonds to NYC. Other dispatches from the trip about <a href="https://www.amny.com/opinion/columnists/mark-chiusano/puerto-rico-electricity-hurricane-maria-recovery-1.16303467">electricity</a>, <a href="https://www.amny.com/opinion/columnists/mark-chiusano/san-juan-is-searching-for-reasons-to-celebrate-1.16233733">partying</a>, and the <a href="https://www.amny.com/opinion/columnists/mark-chiusano/new-york-has-puerto-rico-s-back-says-san-juan-mayor-carmen-yulin-cruz-1.16292811">San Juan mayor</a>&nbsp;have already appeared in the newsletter. Another update appears if you're interested, we've also posted about&nbsp;<a href="https://www.newsday.com/opinion/live-from-puerto-rico-1.16228105">San Juan traffic</a>, the New York utility contingent’s <a href="https://www.newsday.com/opinion/islands-in-your-stream-1.16245755">beachside headquarters</a>&nbsp;and <a href="https://www.amny.com/opinion/columnists/mark-chiusano/puerto-rico-rebuilding-1.16261287">some of the people we met along the way</a>. 
SAN JUAN — You might call Orlando Montañez, 32, a serial entrepreneur. A video yearbook business went well. A tutoring endeavor didn’t. Eventually, he hit on coffee expositions, tapping into a hundreds-year-old Java-drinking tradition in Puerto Rico. He preferred Vespa scooters and good food to coffee, but he liked the business opportunity. 
The success of ventures like those will be crucial to build the economy and keep young Puerto Ricans on the island. But that has been a problem, before and after Hurricane Maria’s devastation. 
For Montañez’s expo, for example, which had grown to include chocolate, last year’s timing couldn’t have been worse: the weekend after September’s storm. “We had to cancel it,” he says. “It was a huge loss.” The convention center in San Juan, which Montañez uses for his event-planning business, became a headquarters for storm recovery. 
Montañez says he and his business partner had to let two employees go, with Christmas bonuses and severance. But when he wanted to move forward again, those employees were no longer available. They had moved to the States, along with tens of thousands of other Puerto Ricans. Their move is part of trend that started about 10 years ago — many leaving for Florida, Texas and New York. The depletion of the workforce and the outflow of young entrepreneurial talent — in part due to Puerto Rico’s economic crisis and governmental mismanagement — make the recovery of an already weak island economy more difficult. 
Florida officials have said more than 200,000 Puerto Ricans have come to their state since Maria. It’s unclear how many will remain, but a December study by Hunter College’s Center for Puerto Rican Studies found that 10,324 Puerto Rican students have enrolled in Florida school districts since Sept. 20, a possible measure of families remaining permanently. 
The exit could rival the scale of the historic migration of Puerto Ricans in the 1950s, when hundreds of thousands settled in the United States. 
“It’s one thing on top of another,” says Kenneth Rivera, president-elect of the Puerto Rico Chamber of Commerce. The economy often means relatively low salaries. The commonwealth is grievously in debt, sometimes nickel-and-diming its people. Energy is ridiculously expensive. 
Then the hurricane hit. Even for those who were physically safe, schools were hugely disrupted. And four months after the storm, nearly half the island is still without power. Small wonder people are buying plane tickets. Rivera, a CPA who also teaches accounting, estimates some 30 percent of his students, whose profession allows mobility, are leaving for the mainland. 
What might keep them? The cultural pull of family? 
“I moved 20 minutes away from my dad,” Rivera, 50, says, “and I felt like an outcast.” Even a short distance felt far away. 
There is the warm weather and sense of home, and for some, the idea that maybe the bad weather is a chance to cast off old mistakes: to build a stronger energy grid, to diversify the economy, to ignore the sleights of the mainland. Those thoughts come on good days. 
Montañez says he sometimes worries, “Am I investing in my youth where I’m supposed to?” He knows he’ll have to follow business where it goes, but wants to remain rooted close to home. There is plenty of uncertainty, but he’s doing his best to ride through it. 
There will be a coffee and chocolate exposition in San Juan in 2018, but in the spring, out of hurricane season. 
Mark Chiusano is a member of Newsday’s editorial board.

OPCHI0121

Puerto Rico’s other crisis: Can it keep its young people?

Chiusano: Can Puerto Rico keep its young people?

OPCHI0121_WEB

Puerto Rico after Hurricane Maria

Puerto Rico -- cropped

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