YOUR DONATIONS BRING UNTOLD STORIES TO LIGHT
Thanks to contributions, the Herald can publish crucial news about Puerto Rico
My name is Syra OrtizBlanes. I’m the Puerto Rico and Spanish Caribbean reporter for el Nuevo Herald and the Miami Herald, as well as a corps member for Report for America — a program that places journalists in local newsrooms to cover underrepresented beats.
It was because of Puerto Rico, my homeland and my north star, that I landed in journalism. When Hurricane Maria devastated the island in September 2017, I was a recent
college graduate living in Philadelphia. From the diaspora, I bore witness to the storm-induced migration of nearly 160,000 Puerto Ricans. Many arrived in the city with nowhere to go.
I created “Las Voces de María,” a multimedia project profiling storm evacuees in the city to offer them a platform to tell their stories and to amplify their plight before city residents, authorities and media. Readers donated thousands of dollars and supplies. The Cabreras, a family of four living in a musty basement, rented and furnished an apartment with a stranger’s donations.
Hurricane Maria — like many other events in Puerto Rican history — was undercovered by American media. But working on Las Voces solidified my commitment to telling nuanced Puerto Rican and Caribbean stories that honor our humanity, culture and history. It taught me about the potential and power of journalism, which gave a family a roof to build a life under and warm beds for wintertime.
Through Report for America, the Miami Herald and el Nuevo Herald, I have pursued my lifelong dream of sharing community-driven, rarely told stories that center the voices and experiences of my home. Every day, I wake up grateful to deliver local news to the island and the region and to provide its residents a medium to share their stories with broader audiences.
I’ve had the privilege of recording historic moments of joyful celebration—like the arrival of the first COVID-19 vaccine to the island — and moments of cosmic sadness — like the fall of the Arecibo Observatory. I’ve tracked billions of dollars in federal hurricane relief — work we are uniquely equipped to do with a network of reporters in Florida, Puerto Rico, and Washington, D.C.
But some of my favorite reporting has been smalltown deep dives that tell larger stories. Last June, during my first weeks at the Herald, I wrote about how George Floyd’s death was all too familiar in the mostly Black town of Loíza. Only weeks later, residents in the coastal municipality of Guánica shared what simultaneously experiencing a pandemic, a tropical storm and an earthquake was like — a confluence that embodies the island’s impossible emergency scenarios. In March, I saw firsthand how the government offered the island of Vieques, which hasn’t had a hospital since Hurricane Maria, priority access to the coronavirus vaccine.
Another highlight of my time at the Heralds has been assisting with wider Caribbean coverage and learning from colleagues who dedicate themselves to the region. I’ve written about how Cubans used Google Maps to protest the government and shed a light on the human costs of Hurricanes Eta and Iota in indigenous areas of Central America.
And thanks to the support of my editors, I am exploring gender violence in Puerto Rico — an urgent topic on an island where one woman is killed every seven days — as an investigative sub-beat. We were among the first to break a comprehensive story about the government’s declaration of emergency over violence against women in Puerto Rico. I have delved into the lives of women killed by their partners, including 29-year-old nurse and mother of three Angie González, whose opportunity to escape abuse was complicated by the pandemic. I also have covered recent high profile femicides that raised questions of the official handling of domestic violence, even as the cases were chased by police at lightning speed.
I love writing about Puerto Rico and the Caribbean. I will continue to do so until the day I put my reporting notebooks away. Journalists are recordkeepers, chroniclers, sideline observers. But my choice to write about this island and this region, a place that hasn’t historically been covered with regularity or context, or through local eyes — is a decision to visibilize stories that deserve to be told with power and intention.
It is also a choice I am able to make because of readers like you. Many of the stories I have written this year, and hope to continue writing, would have never seen the light of day without community support. They are stories that matter from San Juan to South Florida — an area intimately connected through immigration, history, and culture to the latitudes below.
I, alongside with my editors and colleagues, want to keep covering Puerto Rico and the Caribbean, and all the people who live here.
But we need your help.
Syra Ortiz-Blanes: @syraortizb