This is part of a series of originally reported stories from Daily Kos on the impact of Hurricane Maria on Puerto Rico’s infrastructure, communities, children, and more.
There are only two ways on and off the island of Vieques from Puerto Rico’s capital of San Juan. One is a 25-minute flight on a charter plane from San Juan-area airports. The other is a 90-minute ferry ride. Yet ferry service has been dramatically impacted in the months after back-to-back hurricanes Irma and Maria, with many aging boats sustaining irreparable damage, leading to frequent cancellations and unpredictable schedules.
I chose to take a flight.
Vieques is a municipality of Puerto Rico located eight miles off the coast of the main island. If Puerto Rico has been forgotten in the media in the four months since Hurricane Maria, Vieques is the child that the adults forgot to care about. I found it difficult to find mainstream coverage about recovery efforts on Vieques, so last week I climbed aboard a tiny Cessna —it fit seven people, including the pilot—and headed there. I had started hearing bits and pieces about how the island’s residents felt abandoned by both the federal government and the government in San Juan. It is a sad truth that a large part of the recovery efforts to date have been because of individuals and private citizens who have stepped up to provide support to their fellow community members.
I had no idea what to expect when I arrived. But I was there to meet one resident: Eva Bolivar, owner of Restaurante Bili in the neighborhood of Esperanza. And it was her story that gave me my first clue that this tiny island is powered by the strength and hope of its people.
Surviving the storm
Vieques has a complicated history. The U.S. Navy, which used the island to test military weapons for decades, departed in 2003 after the death of an employee and years of peaceful protests by residents, political leaders, and celebrities. Aside from that, Vieques is known for its beaches, wildlife, and lack of development. It is rural, quiet, and calm—making it a perfect getaway for tourists. It has about 9,000 inhabitants and quite a few of those are Americans from the mainland who have retired and/or have property on the island.
Originally from Ponce, Eva Bolivar has been traveling back and forth to Vieques since childhood. She decided to make it her full-time home as an adult. She has owned her restaurant for 15 years. It is in a central location, right across from the malecón (sea wall) on the mainstreet in Esperanza. Hurricane Maria was unrelenting and took the restaurant’s roof, flooded it, and stripped it of some of its tables, chairs, and, of course, its power. Instead of re-opening her business, Bolivar decided instead to work with Chef Jose Andres’s World Central Kitchen and has been feeding hungry residents in the community for the last four months. Though she is scaling back now, at the height of their operations, Bolivar and her staff were making 1,400 meals a day.
Fighting back tears, Bolivar described to me how she and her husband were not on Vieques when the hurricane hit. After Hurricane Irma (which also caused damage on the island), they decided to move forward with their vacation plans to travel to Thailand. Since they’ve lived through many hurricanes before, they didn’t think the damage would be that bad. They were a few days into their trip when they heard a local weather forecaster say, “After this storm, there will be Puerto Rico before Maria and Puerto Rico after Maria.” They knew it would be bad. And so, they tried to return back home. They made it back to New York, when JetBlue told them there was absolutely no way that they would be able to fly back into San Juan. After much pleading and some tears, Bolivar was able to convince the airline that they needed to return home immediately. They returned on the very first flight of relief workers making their way to the island. Because of the reports of overwhelming destruction and hysteria spread through social media, Bolivar was certain she would return to an island full of dead friends and loved ones. She did not. She did, however, return to a home and restaurant that were destroyed: ripped-of roofs, destroyed possessions, and soaked clothes.
“I bought my business 15 years ago and was supposed to pay it off next year ... everything disappeared in a day,” she said.
Bolivar and her husband now live in their guesthouse while they wait for repairs. But right now there are practically no building materials in Puerto Rico. Because of Maria, an order for new windows alone is estimated to take four to five months. So perhaps it is fitting then that Bolivar spends her time helping people instead of sitting around waiting for repairs and assistance that may take months or even years to come.
‘No one was prepared to do this’
Though the restaurant is closed, it’s hard to tell from all that is happening inside it on this Monday morning. One by one volunteers stream in. They speak in Spanish at first, greeting everyone with a customary “Buenos dias” and hug and kiss on the cheek. Some of them continue on to speak with Bolivar in Spanish. Others switch to English. By looking at them and hearing them speak, it’s pretty easy to make assumptions about who are the native Puerto Ricans and who aren’t. But they certainly don’t appear to have any divisions among them. They move about the tiny portion of the restaurant that is open with purpose. Everyone seems to know what is needed and how to do it. The volunteers are mainly women and, when I am done counting, I realize that there are two cooks and about 12 people putting food into to-go containers and loading them into trays (24 per crate) to be put in cars for delivery. Bolivar has not stopped moving. She is back and forth, liaising between the kitchen, organizing logistics, counting food containers and trays, and helping volunteers find whatever supplies they need.
One of the volunteers stops to talk to me. Her name is Linda Quinn and she is a retiree who has lived on the island for four years. Quinn and I bond over the fact that she has come to Vieques from Syracuse, New York. I went to school there. We joke about the cold weather and snow. She is a dietician by training and is concerned about the nutrition and health needs of the older residents of the island. She tells me that since the hurricane, she has been teaching free classes that focus on movement and muscle strength so people can have some physical release. It’s her hope that they feel better than they did the day before. Linda is reflective about how the hurricane has brought people together and forced them to put aside their differences.
“The island is really surviving all on its own. No one was prepared to do this[...] But since the hurricane, I’ve met all these new people. It makes us feel good that we can deliver food to our neighbors,” Quinn said. “You always hear ‘We the people’ back home. But you really feel it here. We feel like such a part of this place, because of the hurricane.”
This is a sentiment that Bolivar also shares. She tells me that, though things have been tough, on New Year’s Eve, she and her husband hosted a pot luck dinner. They had a DJ and invited people from every business along the malecón. She says that the sense of community has come in part because people don’t have anything else to do.
“People are starting to fix what was wrong before. I think people are going to be nicer. People are learning to be more humane.”
Every day, new people in need
It’s finally time to deliver the food. Bolivar’s team has this down to a science. But the menu is a work of art. At first, everything was cooked from bulk food and simply came from what was available: ground beef, chicken, various starches. But as more food became available, the menu became increasingly sophisticated—pork loin, turkey breast, mahi mahi. Bolivar tries not to repeat the same meal twice during the week and always tries to make the meals healthy with a vegetarian option. She has traveled to the main island to go grocery shopping and find fresh produce and fruits. She notes that nutrition has deteriorated among residents because of the hurricane. She tells me about weight gain from eating canned foods and deaths related to diabetes and heart conditions exacerbated by lack of medicine and lack of nutrition. This caused her to work with a nutritionist to try to find healthier ingredients—items that are low salt, low sugar, and low fat. She is proud of the work she has done because she knows that for some residents, this will be the only hot meal they get on a given day.
“We started out making the food here and having people come get it. But we’ve diversified. The most major need is people who can’t come here to get food. So we go to them. Every day there are new people in great need.”
And go to people is exactly what this volunteer team does. They have compiled lists of areas with coordinates and pictures of houses. They have given this information to local government agencies to try to get people assistance. But they are Vieques’ own version of Meals on Wheels. They use their own cars to deliver food. World Charity Kitchen has, at times, provided them with gas but they are mainly covering the cost on their own. And their cars are suffering the consequences from having driven down unpaved roads for months on end. Each person has a designated route that they cover. One person is assigned a random route. They don’t have forms or need paper to write down how many meals they need or how many they give out. They know the area so well that they just take exactly how many they need.
Once all the meals are loaded into various cars for transport, I go on a delivery with Donna Duffy, another volunteer and expat living on the island. Donna has lived all over the Caribbean for 50 years, and in Vieques for the last five. As we drive, she talks about the history of Puerto Rico and how it’s been abused throughout its history. When I ask her about the hurricane response on Vieques, she tells me that the failure is multi-faceted but it all results in the same thing: Viequenses feel abandoned by the government. According to Duffy, there was FEMA aid and the Army Corps of Engineers had a presence on the island. But the local mayor told FEMA that services were fine and that Vieques didn’t need help. This is not the first time I have heard this story. The end result is that FEMA has been on the island doing inspections for home repairs, but people have largely been on their own. This would explain why Viequenses are doing so much for themselves, including debris clean-up and feeding their neighbors. I recall how Bolivar told me that all of the debris clean up and new lights that have been strung up along the malecón were all done by individual private citizens. It was funded by a fundraiser started by Bolivar’s niece where people could buy hats and the money would go toward the light bulbs. It is very much a community coming together to do for themselves where government has failed them. It is the complete opposite of Donald Trump’s opinion that Puerto Ricans “want everything done for them.”
The parts of Vieques that I see are underdeveloped. Donna tells me that a good number of people on the island are poor and on food stamps. This adds another layer of complexity. Food stamps are processed by the government in San Juan. If you can’t get to San Juan (remember the ferry service is unpredictable), you may not be able to get your food stamps. Additionally, while many businesses in Vieques have reopened, they have reopened as cash only. But there is only one functioning ATM on the island. So if you don’t have cash, you can’t buy food or supplies. This just underscores why Eva and her teams work is so important.
Duffy and I drive through various neighborhoods. There is a lot of debris—branches, mattresses, old refrigerators. There are also wires everywhere. There is a marked difference between what the island looks like and what I’ve seen in San Juan. It is obvious that Vieques was really hard hit by the hurricane. We go door to door, literally yelling from the car in Spanish “Good morning! We have lunch. Would you like to eat?” People slowly come to their front doors and we ask how many lunches they want. Then we take them from the flats in the back of Duffy’s SUV and hand them out. Most people take enough for everyone in their household. No one seems to take more than they need. One woman doesn’t take any for herself but takes two for her parents. Duffy knows this route well so she chats with each person—asking how they are, talking about their families. They ask her how she is doing and how fellow volunteers are doing too. One volunteer was recently bit by a dog as she was delivering food. Someone asks Duffy if she is okay. It is a small community and people are kind to each other. It is apparent that everyone is grateful to be receiving the help. Of all the houses we visit where someone is home, only one turns down the food.
We give away 72 lunches in all.
Duffy tells me that she has been writing haikus and poetry for fun and to pass the time in the days since the hurricane. She shares one with me.
“Hurricane spa—
Half the food
Twice the sun.”
She says it’s a bit of a joke since people have seen her since Hurricane Maria and told her that she looks great. She notes that people lose weight following a hurricane and that they get more sun because they stand in gas line for four to six hours at a time. It is the exact opposite of a spa—but you’d have to live through it to understand it. Still, people are in relatively good spirits so it doesn’t surprise me that Duffy can joke about it. The silver lining in all of this is that people are incredibly resilient and they are stepping up in incredible ways to transform their circumstances. If the federal and local government won’t save Vieques, there is no doubt that its people will.
Bolivar plans to end the food service on Friday, Feb. 2. She knows she needs to reopen her restaurant and get back to her life. But she doesn’t plan to leave people without an option. She plans to prepare packages of canned goods and potatoes so that people have some food to eat. When I ask her what’s next for her, she talks about reopening the restaurant in addition to working with local vendors to sell island products like homemade coconut bars and hot sauces. She wants to share Vieques with the world, it seems. When asked about the future, she says:
“Birds, trees, beaches are all starting to be beautiful again. The island is starting to get better. It will come back slowly … This is my home. I’m not going anywhere.”