From August 12 to 25, 2018, I accompanied twenty-nine students from Old Westbury and other SUNY campuses on a service-learning trip to Puerto Rico, as part of the NY governor’s initiative “New York Stands with Puerto Rico.” This initiative involved massive coordination between SUNY and CUNY systems, individual campuses, the governor’s office, UNICEF (a major funder), and disaster relief organizations in order to send hundreds of outstanding students to contribute to reconstruction efforts in Puerto Rico.
Prof. Llana Barber works on sealing a tin roof.
Our group was hosted by NECHAMA: Jewish Response to Disaster, an organization working in Puerto Rico to reconstruct roofs damaged by Hurricane Maria in September 2017. Working in Cataño, Toa Baja, and surrounding areas, we spent two weeks with NECHAMA repairing and sealing both concrete and tin roofs, and remediating the damage to ceilings caused by nearly a year of leaks. Students prepared for the trip by reading and reflecting on service-learning, Puerto Rico’s history, and the impact of the hurricane.
As a historian who researches the Puerto Rican diaspora, it was important to me that students recognized that the devastation caused by Maria was not solely the result of the hurricane’s natural power; Puerto Rico’s colonial history and complicated political-economic circumstances rendered it uniquely vulnerable. And, unfortunately, Puerto Ricans’ U.S. citizenship did little to ensure they received adequate support from the federal government. I also wanted to be sure that students were informed about the tremendous grassroots organizing and mutual support centers that formed in Puerto Rico after the hurricane. Puerto Ricans were not passive victims awaiting our aid; our work, rather, was to stand in solidarity with Puerto Ricans who were already working to reconstruct their communities, and organizing to address the roots of the island’s precarious situation. Many of the students on the trip were themselves either Puerto Rican-born or of Puerto Rican descent, so this emphasis on mutual support was resonant.
Students after their work day.
The work itself was demanding. We broke into four teams, and most students spent their days manually scraping damaged material off of concrete roofs, exposing the cracks in the concrete with power tools, then filling those cracks with concrete, before priming and sealing the roof. There was an array of other work to be done as well, and many students came with extensive professional or volunteer construction experience. Homeowners were often eager to share their stories with us as we worked, and provided meals, refreshments, or other forms of hospitality. A number of homeowners worked alongside us.
Although we finished most days exhausted, students made time to travel and explore the island, and to continue the academic part of the trip: reading and reflecting on Naomi Klein’s The Battle for Paradise: Puerto Rico Takes on the Disaster Capitalists (generously provided by Old Westbury’s Academic Affairs). In their reflection assignments and in our group dialogues, students tied their experiences in Puerto Rico to what they learned about the predatory and colonialist roots of the island’s debt crisis, the impact of austerity and disinvestment on infrastructure and education, and the array of efforts to push through unpopular neoliberal economic reforms while the island was in a state of crisis. In our discussions, they envisioned what real sovereignty or self-determination might look like for Puerto Ricans – what true democracy might create on the island – and how they could stand in solidarity with Puerto Ricans who were trying to live that vision.
