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April 6, 2023
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News puerto rico: Puerto Rico – latest news, breaking stories and comment

A nonprofit is training people to repair storm-damaged roofs in Puerto Rico : NPR

Construction apprentices prepare to replace a damaged roof in the town of Toa Baja, P.R. PRoTechos, the nonprofit they work with, was founded to fix the roofs of people who got little or no government help after Hurricane Maria devastated the island in 2017.

Erika P. Rodríguez for NPR

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Erika P. Rodríguez for NPR

SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico — When they meet the families whose damaged roofs they’re about to repair, Luis Marrero’s crews often ask which of the hurricanes was to blame. Was it Maria, which devastated Puerto Rico in late September 2017? Or was it Irma, which lashed the island two weeks earlier?

“A lot of them — about 10% — say neither,” Marrero said. “They say it was Georges that destroyed their roof.”

Hurricane Georges, a Category 4 monster, struck Puerto Rico in 1998.

It was a sobering truth for Marrero to absorb. He directs PRoTechos, a nonprofit that was formed after Maria to repair the roofs of families that didn’t get government help to do so. But the realization that some people were still living under roofs damaged by a hurricane that long ago drove home the monumental task they faced. The number of people coping with damage inflicted by the storms just five years ago remains vast.

The island’s government recently said roughly 3,000 homes damaged by Maria were still covered in the blue FEMA-issued tarps that became a symbol of residents’ interminable wait for assistance after the storm.

But no census has been conducted to determine how many roofs are truly still damaged, whether draped in a tarp or not. Marrero estimates – roughly, he said, but conservatively — that the number may be closer to 15,000.

Many are homes that were ineligible for government-funded repairs because they lacked formal title or other documents. But there are also roofs that government-contracted crews fixed so shoddily that their work is already coming undone.

The families beneath those roofs, often poor, usually have few options. They’re the ones PRoTechos tries to reach.

Making preparations to replace a roof in Toa Baja, Puerto Rico.

Erika P. Rodríguez for NPR

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Erika P. Rodríguez for NPR

Thousands of damaged roofs in Puerto Rico are still covered in the blue tarps the government issued after Hurricane Maria in 2017. Others display only the tattered remnants.

Erika P. Rodríguez for NPR

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Erika P. Rodríguez for NPR

Thousands of damaged roofs in Puerto Rico are still covered in the blue tarps the government issued after Hurricane Maria in 2017. Others display only the tattered remnants.

Erika P. Rodríguez for NPR

In the more than four years since a group of local architects and lawyers founded the nonprofit, it’s rebuilt about 130 roofs – six in the first year, and a growing number each year since. Its goal is to scale to 100 annually.

The wood, nails and steel and aluminum panels are often donated by the municipality in which the house they’re repairing is located. PRoTechos provides the labor, because building stronger roofs is only half of its mission.

It’s also a workforce-development initiative. Much of its funding comes from a federal grant to train the construction workers Puerto Rico will need to complete the billions of dollars’ worth of post-Maria reconstruction projects that have yet to begin.

The group’s crews are formed by apprentices who learn carpentry on the job and usually acquire enough skill after the three-month program to find work in the construction industry, should they want it.

In September, a crew that was fixing roofs in the northern coastal city of Toa Baja and in La Perla, a working class community at the edge of Old San Juan, spent some time speaking with NPR about their work. Hurricane Fiona would hit Puerto Rico just days later, damaging more roofs but, more significantly, flooding many homes. For weeks after that storm, PRoTechos’ teams shifted their focus to help families excavate mud, water, and ruined furniture from inside their houses, before turning their attention back to the structures overhead.

Luis Marrero, director of PRoTechos, at the center in San Juan where the nonprofit trains its roof repair apprentices.

Erika P. Rodríguez for NPR

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Luis Marrero, director, PRoTechos

“There’s a lot of funding coming from the federal government for the reconstruction, but construction firms are lacking workers, and especially carpenters. We go to marginalized areas where they don’t necessarily have the knowledge or materials to rebuild their roofs.

“So while we are fixing roofs, we also try to train people from those communities, so that maybe for the next hurricane, the recovery in that community will be faster because they have people already trained that know how to do roofs.”

Franceliz Trishkina, PRoTechos roof instructor and project coordinator.

Erika P. Rodríguez for NPR

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Franceliz Trishkina, instructor and project coordinator

“We try to look at these structures as more than just roofs. When we start working on a new roof, we like to think that what we’re doing is undressing it. We undress it, we examine its body, and we dress it again, with the clothes it actually needs.

“We ask ourselves – what does this roof need? Was it poorly dressed? Because if you live in the tropics, you don’t need a jacket. If you live in Alaska, you don’t want to be dressed in shorts. And we often find houses that need new or different clothes. And when our apprentices look at the house they’re working on in that way, they feel a greater responsibility to dress it for what it needs. To do the work well for the families that live there.”

Gé Castro Cruz, a PRoTechos apprentice.

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Gé Castro Cruz, apprentice

“I spent Hurricane Maria in a house that my grandfather built. We didn’t know how it was going to do, and we were kind of nervous, because it’s on stilts. But the house was so steady. We could hear the wind and see all the destruction outside, but the house was steady and we felt safe. I’m aspiring to build my own house. So this learning is going to help me out for that.

“I’ve also been dreaming to be a handyperson for the LGBTQ community. Because in the trans community, it’s often difficult to find a safe place to live. And many trans people won’t call for repairs because they’re scared to let someone into their house, so I want to be able to help my community in that way. But I won’t rule out the possibility of getting a job in this. I’m open to what this path brings.”

Sonia González Rivera with her husband, José Luis Adorno Sepúlveda, in front of their home in La Perla in San Juan.

Erika P. Rodríguez for NPR

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Sonia González Rivera, resident of La Perla

“Maria blew our roof away, along with a couple of the walls from our second story. And we’ve had leaks on the first floor ever since. Once we saw we weren’t going to get any help from FEMA, my husband and I started slowly acquiring the materials to repair the roof ourselves. We got them little by little. Eventually we had what we needed, but we didn’t have the money for the labor. And one day, a friend who comes to play bomba music in the neighborhood saw the materials on top of the house and he asked me about them. And he told me not to worry because he was going to connect me with someone who could help. So now we have eight people up there working on it, using the materials we’ve been storing for almost five years.

“Your home is so important, because each day you wake up and the first thing you do is look around at your surroundings. And if you don’t feel good about what you see, then you lose the motivation to go out and work to improve your life. “

Emily Alfred, project manager at PRoTechos.

Erika P. Rodríguez for NPR

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Emily Alfred, project manager

“We still see a lot of houses with blue tarps on them. And sometimes we see people with materials, but they don’t have any labor force to actually build their roof, or they don’t have the knowledge of a secure way to rebuild the roof. So they’re not really solving the problem, they’re just stopping leaks.

“The municipal governments provide some materials for people, but they’re not giving them a blueprint for how to build a more secure home. They’re not giving them the strongest hurricane ties that they should be using in this very hurricane-prone area. We put a bunch of ties on every roof that we’re working on. We maybe go a little bit overboard. But we see a lot of roofs when we open them up that don’t have any at all. So it’s something we do to ensure their roof is safe for a long time to come.”

Sebastián David Fuentes Castro, a PRoTechos apprentice.

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Sebastián David Fuentes Castro, apprentice

“Everything that wasn’t built to standards didn’t do well in the hurricane (Maria). So, that also shone a light that there was a lot of substandard work being done. I knew a lot of people whose roofs or sheds blew away and they had no way of putting them back together. Especially older people, who are more vulnerable.

“I think it’s very shocking that five years later there are still so many houses with damaged roofs. I would call it unbelievable if I wasn’t living through it and seeing it. It’s pretty upsetting. That was part of what also inspired me to apply and join. Because these communities, if they’re not centered or located in a specific place, they tend to be forgotten. Even the municipality might not pay much attention. This program is definitely filling a very important need for the island and for the community.”

Making safety preparations to repair a roof in Toa Baja, left. On the right, the building materials that Sonia González Rivera spent years acquiring to repair the roof Hurricane Maria blew off the second story of her home in La Perla. Though she eventually had all she needed, she couldn’t afford the labor to do the work.

Erika P. Rodríguez for NPR

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At a house that PRoTechos repaired in the town of Toa Baja, the owner had built a refuge to escape floodwaters that can surge up to 8 feet during large storms.

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At a house that PRoTechos repaired in the town of Toa Baja, the owner had built a refuge to escape floodwaters that can surge up to 8 feet during large storms.

Erika P. Rodríguez for NPR

At the Whitney, Puerto Rican Artists Reflect on the Tragedy and Transformation of Hurricane Maria

Art

Clara Maria Apostolatos

Jan 3, 2023 4:00PM

Sofía Gallisá Muriente, still from Celaje, 2020. Original score by José Iván Lebrón Moreira. Courtesy of the artist and the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York.

The first major survey of contemporary Puerto Rican art in nearly half a century, “no existe un mundo poshuracán: Puerto Rican Art in the Wake of Hurricane Maria” at the Whitney is a seminal event in the history of the self-proclaimed museum of American art. Coinciding with the fifth anniversary of the category-four storm that hit Puerto Rico in 2017, the show brings together 20 artists who actively interrogate the tragedy and transformation realized by Hurricane Maria. Altogether, the works foreground how the issues of land sustainability and social rupture that preceded the storm were brought to sharp relief by its catastrophic impact. The permanence of these continuing realities lends a sense of meaning and urgency to the exhibition.

The title, which translates to “A post-hurricane world doesn’t exist,” is borrowed from Puerto Rican poet Raquel Salas Rivera and frames the show’s central questions on the derailing effects of catastrophe: How can artists position themselves in relation to such a cataclysmic event? What does it mean to move forward from disaster? And how can such a journey be represented? This is a presentation in which the island’s ecological and social climates are deliberately conflated.

Installation view, from left to right, of Edra Soto, GRAFT, 2022; Gamaliel Rodríguez, Collapsed Soul, 202021; and Gabriella Torres-Ferrer, Untitled (Valora tu mentira americana) (Untitled [Value Your American Lie]), 2018; in “no existe un mundo poshuracán: Puerto Rican Art in the Wake of Hurricane Maria” at the Whitney Museum of American Art, 2022. Photo by Ron Amstutz. Courtesy of the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York.

Diagonally suspended from the ceiling, a wooden lamppost salvaged from the storm debris opens the exhibition. It bears a sign decorated with the symbol of the American flag, encouraging people to vote in favor of statehood for the contentious, nonbinding referendum held three months before Hurricane Maria made landfall. The work, Gabriella Torres-Ferrer’s Untitled (Valora tu mentira americana) (Untitled [Value Your American Lie]) (2018), shadows the storm’s collapse of the island’s already vulnerable and outdated electricity grid. The disaster resulted in the longest blackout in U.S. history, lasting 11 months, and destroyed much of Puerto Rico’s distribution infrastructure.

With an upended pole serving as a metaphor for the island’s structural dependency and obsolescence exposed by the storm, the message is simple but the biting irony is powerful and multilayered. We are reminded of how the island’s relationship with the U.S. is still deeply contested and continues to polarize Puerto Rico.

Installation view, from left to right, of Sofía Gallisá Muriente, B-Roll, 2017; Yiyo Tirado Rivera, La Concha, 2022; and Yiyo Tirado Rivera, Desplazamiento I (Puerta de Tierra) (Displacement I [Puerta de Tierra]), 2020; in “no existe un mundo poshuracán: Puerto Rican Art in the Wake of Hurricane Maria” at the Whitney Museum of American Art, 2022. Photo by Ron Amstutz. Courtesy of the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York.

A central theme explored in the exhibition is foreign ideation and consumption of the island, as seen in Sofía Gallisá Muriente’s video collage B-Roll (2017). Here, field recordings from the 2016 Puerto Rico Investment Summit play over promotional videos featuring familiar tropes of idyllic Caribbean beaches and first-rate resorts, parodying a capital paradise for foreigners. The underlying effect of tourism and foreign investment come into focus in Yiyo Tirado Rivera’s La Concha (2022), a sandcastle sculpture modeled after the iconic eponymous hotel in San Juan. The work’s gradual deterioration throughout the run of the exhibition alludes to both the risk of building Puerto Rico’s economy around foreign consumption and the island’s ongoing coastline erosion due to the global climate crisis.

Vast themes like fractured infrastructure, mass exodus, and the destruction of the Caribbean ecology are also handled in the context of individual histories. In Armig Santos’s haunting canvases, a group of men carry a wooden cross along a beach, referencing the religious procession held in honor of David Sanes in 1999 after he was killed in a civilian casualty by two U.S. military practice bombs. The paintings endeavor to capture a collective renewal—a certain regeneration or miraculous restoration of life—while fixed in sharp intimations of mortality and brutality.

Installation view, from left to right, of Gabriella N. Báez, stitched image from “Ojalá nos encontremos en el mar (Hopefully, We’ll Meet at Sea),” 2018–present; Armig Santos, Yellow Flowers, 2022; and Armig Santos, Procesión en Vieques III (Procession in Vieques III), 2022; in “no existe un mundo poshuracán: Puerto Rican Art in the Wake of Hurricane Maria” at the Whitney Museum of American Art, 2022. Photo by Ron Amstutz. Courtesy of the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York.

Meanwhile, Gabriella Báez’s “Ojalá nos encontremos en el mar (Hopefully, We’ll Meet at Sea)” (2018–present) memorializes the artist’s late father, who died by suicide a few months after Hurricane Maria. A myriad of ephemera, from an old t-shirt to a family photo album, are transformed into intimate gestures of remembrance. Hands and eyes in family photographs are stitched together by suspended strands of red thread, a meditation on generational bonds that animates the photographic material with immense personal affect. It is a kind of art that works close to life, texturing the show’s broad and complex ruminations on rupture with an intimate distillation of loss.

The exhibition culminates with Miguel Luciano’s Shields/Escudos (2020), protest shields made of sheet metal reclaimed from decommissioned school buses—a result of the hundreds of public schools in Puerto Rico closed by the Department of Education for financial reasons. The work is painted with black and white flags of Puerto Rico, a powerful sign broadly used by inhabitants of the U.S. territory for anti-colonial mourning and resistance.

Gabriella Torres-Ferrer, detail of Untitled (Valora tu mentira americana) (Untitled [Value Your American Lie]), 2018. Courtesy of the artist; Embajada, San Juan; and the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York.

If “no existe un mundo poshuracán” opens with an image of the American flag attached to an object uncovered from natural disaster, the exhibition concludes with a more actional message than it began. The patriotic red and white stripes found in both the U.S. and Puerto Rico flags turn grayscale in Shields/Escudos, and are reconstituted into protective tools of self-assertion and defiance.

As a whole, the atmosphere the show conjures is one of possibility, not only for survival, but also for collective renewal and resilience. As the title maintains, there is no possibility of returning to a time or reality before the hurricane. In this light, such an exhibition is more vital than ever.

Clara Maria Apostolatos

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