Seniors displaced by Maria attend fete

Puerto Ricans celebrate traditional Christmas

Hints of pride fill Dora H. Rodriguez’s voice as she flips through photos on her phone of barren trees and hills from hurricaneravaged Puerto Rico.

“That’s how we were over there,” said Rodriguez, 76, swiping back and forth between the images she saves like amulets, as evidence of what she lived through during Hurricane Maria in mid-September.

Rodriguez was among more than 100 people, mostly Puerto Rican, who came to Latino Leadership’s 9th annual “A Golden Christmas” lunch for seniors Wednesday at the Renaissance Community Senior Center in southeast Orange County.

Marytza Sanz, the founder and president of Latino Leadership, said the holiday event took on special meaning this year because tens of thousands of Puerto Ricans fled the island after Maria and headed to Central Florida.

“For some people, they think they were punished because of Maria, and we want to remind them that ... it was not a punishment and they have to keep the faith,” Sanz said.

“In Christmas, many people think about children, and not too many people think about seniors, and that’s why this event is so important for them.”

Shortly after the natural disaster that has brought more than 200,000 people to the state, according to recent figures from the Florida State Emergency Response Team, Rodriguez and her husband, Andrés Carrasquillo, 79, came to stay temporarily with his sister, 73-year-old Carmen I. Perez.

“I come every year. They call

me, I come,” said Perez, who has lived in Orlando for 27 years. She’s also housing another sister-in-law from Puerto Rico, 83-year-old Terin Reyes.

Volunteers passed around plates of traditional Puerto Rican food: chicken, rice and pigeon peas, macaroni salad and rice pudding. The audience stood and clapped every so often as a live band played instrumental versions of Puerto Rican folk songs. At one point, a volunteer pulled out a Puerto Rican flag and waved it over people’s heads.

“For them, it’s going to be forgetting all the things that were happening there — carrying water, no electricity, putting on that generator,” Sanz said.

Elotis Santos, 73, has lived in Orlando since 1982. She arrived as a single mother of a 9-year-old and invested in a small mobile home, where she lived for years until she could afford her own home.

“It’s not the same for you to arrive with your own property than when you’re coming with another person,” said Santos, a mother of three adult children. “I made a life out of nothing.”

The many stories she has heard from evacuees, she says, are reminiscent of when she left the island for the first time. “It hurts me because I know what it’s like,” she said.

It’s been more than two months since Perez’s guests first arrived. She admits that in the first few days, it was difficult to console her traumatized family members who were forced out of their home.

“It was not easy for them. It was very hard, especially my brother,” Perez said. “It is OK for them now . ... They’re looking forward to going back home.”

Back in San Juan, Carrasquillo lives on the eighth floor, which makes walking up and down the stairs a chore because they still don’t have power. They check in regularly with their neighbors and are itching to return.

Adding to the matter is the passing of one of Carrasquillo’s aunts, who was 94. She flew with Rodriguez from Puerto Rico to Orlando on Nov. 11.

“I promised she would be returning to our island with me,” Rodriguez said. “She’s coming back with me — in another sense, clearly — but she’ll be coming back.”