‘Like going back in time’: Puerto Ricans put survival skills to use as days drag on
SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico — A grandmother turned a school bathroom sink into a bath. Neighbors are piling into a garage for communal meals prepared on an old gas stove. A 79-year-old man made a bonfire out of fallen tree branches to cook.
More than a month after Hurricane Maria tore through Puerto Rico on a path of destruction that spared no region, race or class, residents of the island have found their creativity stretched to the limit as they try to function without many amenities of the modern world.
Learning to make do
It is not just water and electricity that are in scarce supply. Cellphone service ranges from spotty to nonexistent. Cars are damaged and roads blocked. For many, work and school still have not resumed, so they wander the streets, play board games and sit around telling stories by candlelight.
“It’s like going back in time,” said Kevin Jose Sanchez Gonzalez, 25, who has been living in darkness since Sept. 5, the day before a previous storm, Hurricane Irma, damaged Puerto Rico’s electrical grid.
Crammed into homes three or four families at a time, living on canned and freeze-dried food without any means of turning it into a hot meal, and sleeping in shelters, Puerto Ricans have been learning to make do, sometimes in extreme ways.
As the sun set in the shantytown of La Perla in Old San Juan, Ramon Marrero, 79, slumped onto the unwashed cot inside his brother’s tool shed, where he had lived since Maria claimed his home.
A single light bulb illuminated the other contents of the bare, musty room: two plastic chairs piled with clothes, canned fruit and vegetables, and a single gas burner.
Marrero, a community elder known to his neighbors as Don Ramon, draped a towel over his bare back to fend off the mosquitoes. Earlier, he had walked to the post office to charge his cellphone and mobile battery pack.
The only electricity he had seen since the storm came from an extension cord connected to a shared generator donated by Luis Fonsi, the Puerto Rican pop singer who filmed the video for the hit song “Despacito” in La Perla.
Marrero was hesitant to plug in the light bulb or his electric fan — only one could be used at a time — because he was afraid to overheat the machine or take energy from his neighbors.
Residents of the barrio say they were left to clear garbage and other debris on their own.
Lorel Cubano, the director of a local nonprofit, said most of the aid the neighborhood had received was from private citizens and celebrities like Fonsi. “The government hasn’t arrived here,” she said.
The storm also revealed what had been carefully hidden cracks in the upper echelons of Puerto Rican society, which has been imploding during a decadelong recession.
‘This is living in hell’
Inside her two-story home with multiple balconies and a pool, Maria Julia Martinez’s stainless-steel refrigerator, espresso machine and toaster oven have been gathering dust. The family’s flooring business had tanked in recent years, and they could not use the appliances because they did not have $2,000 to fix their broken generator in the backyard.
They have a much smaller generator that could support a couple of small appliances at a time, but to save gas money and prevent it from breaking down, the family runs the machine only at night. They use a propane camping stove and a barbecue to prepare food.
A small air-conditioning unit in the room provided a respite from the rest of their home, which felt like a dark and steamy cave.
“This is living in hell,” Martinez said. She acknowledged that despite their discomfort, her family was still much better off than most people on the island. “I feel bad for feeling bad.”