{"id":119793,"date":"2018-01-03T13:00:44","date_gmt":"2018-01-03T18:00:44","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/?p=119793"},"modified":"2018-01-02T15:45:31","modified_gmt":"2018-01-02T20:45:31","slug":"puerto-rico-sketchbook-elders-island","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2018\/01\/03\/puerto-rico-sketchbook-elders-island\/","title":{"rendered":"Puerto Rico Sketchbook: The Elders of the Island"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><em>In November, the artist and writer Molly Crabapple spent a week in Puerto Rico documenting grassroots efforts by communities to rebuild after Hurricane Maria. Here are excerpts from her sketchbook.<\/em><\/p>\n<div id=\"attachment_119796\" style=\"width: 1010px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/01\/mariana031.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-119796\" class=\"size-full wp-image-119796\" src=\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/01\/mariana031.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"1000\" height=\"654\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/01\/mariana031.jpg 1000w, https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/01\/mariana031-300x196.jpg 300w, https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/01\/mariana031-768x502.jpg 768w\" sizes=\"auto, (min-width: 62.5em) 67vw, 100vw\" \/><\/a><p id=\"caption-attachment-119796\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">All images \u00a9 Molly Crabapple.<\/p><\/div>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>Puerto Rico is an elderly island.<span class=\"m_-4611757361709585694gmail-Apple-converted-space\">\u00a0<\/span>A quarter of its population is over sixty-five.\u00a0<span class=\"m_-4611757361709585694gmail-Apple-converted-space\">\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"m_-4611757361709585694gmail-p4\"><span class=\"m_-4611757361709585694gmail-s2\">This is due to the last of a series of great migrations.<span class=\"m_-4611757361709585694gmail-Apple-converted-space\">\u00a0<\/span><\/span>Poverty, gifted to the island by Spain and then exacerbated by American colonization, sent able bodies abroad.\u00a0First, in the early twentieth century, they went to roll cigars in Ybor City, Florida, and to till plantations in Hawaii, then they went to basic training (Puerto Ricans fought and died in both world wars), then, in the fifties, they went to sew garments and get cancer in the factories of New York.<span class=\"m_-4611757361709585694gmail-Apple-converted-space\">\u00a0<\/span>These workers kept the island close. Many returned, after decades of labor, to buy their\u00a0<i>parcela<\/i>,<i>\u00a0<\/i>a bit of land on which to resurrect a half-fictitious childhood on the green and generous earth, but this time with American modernity and the conveniences that was meant to imply.<span class=\"m_-4611757361709585694gmail-Apple-converted-space\">\u00a0<\/span>They looked with shame at the outhouse, the well, the mosquito net.<span class=\"m_-4611757361709585694gmail-Apple-converted-space\">\u00a0<\/span>In the early twenty-first century, the pattern continued. The island\u2019s bankruptcy, unemployment, and the savage budget cuts imposed by the U.S. financial-control board\u2014<i>la junta<\/i>\u2014again forced working-age adults to leave the island, and their elderly parents,\u00a0behind.<\/p>\n<p class=\"m_-4611757361709585694gmail-p4\"><!--more--><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/01\/mariana034.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-119798\" src=\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/01\/mariana034.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"1000\" height=\"652\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/01\/mariana034.jpg 1000w, https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/01\/mariana034-300x196.jpg 300w, https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/01\/mariana034-768x501.jpg 768w\" sizes=\"auto, (min-width: 62.5em) 67vw, 100vw\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p class=\"m_-4611757361709585694gmail-p5\"><span class=\"m_-4611757361709585694gmail-s3\">In many cases, after Maria, it was the Puerto Rican elders who saved their neighbors and rebuilt their barrios.<span class=\"m_-4611757361709585694gmail-Apple-converted-space\">\u00a0<\/span>When the bridge collapsed at Utuado, it was men in their sixties who waded through the waters and strung a wire across the river.<span class=\"m_-4611757361709585694gmail-Apple-converted-space\">\u00a0<\/span>For over two months, a shopping cart slid back and forth along that wire to deliver food to the people still in the barrio.<span class=\"m_-4611757361709585694gmail-Apple-converted-space\">\u00a0<\/span><a href=\"http:\/\/nymag.com\/daily\/intelligencer\/2017\/12\/hurricane-maria-man-made-disaster.html\" target=\"_blank\"><i>New York Magazine<\/i><\/a> wrote about\u00a0<\/span><span class=\"m_-4611757361709585694gmail-s4\">Ernesto Matos Santana, a seventy-nine-year-old fisherman who got in his boat and rescued fifteen people stranded by the floodwaters.<span class=\"m_-4611757361709585694gmail-Apple-converted-space\">\u00a0<\/span>I met elderly men who cleared the hurricane debris in Paloma Abajo with chains, wheelbarrows, and shovels, and women in their sixties and seventies who fed their neighbors each day at\u00a0<i>Proyecto de Apoyo Mutuo\u00a0<\/i>in Barrio Mariana. These were tough women, with strong arms and easy laughter, like Rosalina Abreu Gonzalez, leader of the\u00a0Communal Recreational and Educational Association of Mariana, the community organization that harvested the breadfruit and successfully fought the U.S. Navy for control of the barrio\u2019s water supply.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/01\/mariana030-1.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-119795\" src=\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/01\/mariana030-1.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"1000\" height=\"658\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/01\/mariana030-1.jpg 1000w, https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/01\/mariana030-1-300x197.jpg 300w, https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/01\/mariana030-1-768x505.jpg 768w\" sizes=\"auto, (min-width: 62.5em) 67vw, 100vw\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p class=\"m_-4611757361709585694gmail-p8\">At the bar in Mariana, the old men played their eternal rounds of dominos, slamming down the last winning\u00a0piece on the table, crowing over who would buy the next round of drinks.<span class=\"m_-4611757361709585694gmail-Apple-converted-space\">\u00a0<\/span>Some sat drunk in the corner, silent as kings, surveying the crowd in the golden heat of the mountains that Maria had cut off from the world.<span class=\"m_-4611757361709585694gmail-Apple-converted-space\">\u00a0<\/span>If you ignored the beer ads, the scene could be from the 1930s, or even the 1890s.<span class=\"m_-4611757361709585694gmail-Apple-converted-space\">\u00a0<\/span>There will not be power till May, at the earliest, despite Governor Rosell\u00f3\u2019s optimistic lies about restoring electricity in time for Christmas.\u00a0 \u00a0<span class=\"m_-4611757361709585694gmail-Apple-converted-space\">\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"m_-4611757361709585694gmail-p8\">The wrecked economy and closed schools have forced countless younger people to the mainland, but the older men and women stay.<\/p>\n<p class=\"m_-4611757361709585694gmail-p9\"><span class=\"m_-4611757361709585694gmail-s5\">A few weeks after Maria hit, my aunt wrote to tell me that her eighty-seven-year-old mother was still on the island.<span class=\"m_-4611757361709585694gmail-Apple-converted-space\">\u00a0<\/span>\u201c<\/span><span class=\"m_-4611757361709585694gmail-s4\">She will not leave her spot,\u201d my aunt told me.<span class=\"m_-4611757361709585694gmail-Apple-converted-space\">\u00a0<\/span>\u201cShe said, In my time, we did not have any lights and water flowing. We will survive and we will pick up again, so don&#8217;t worry, my dear. I&#8217;ll be fine.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<div id=\"attachment_119797\" style=\"width: 1010px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/01\/comerio_dominic_rios.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-119797\" class=\"size-full wp-image-119797\" src=\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/01\/comerio_dominic_rios.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"1000\" height=\"1337\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/01\/comerio_dominic_rios.jpg 1000w, https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/01\/comerio_dominic_rios-224x300.jpg 224w, https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/01\/comerio_dominic_rios-768x1027.jpg 768w, https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/01\/comerio_dominic_rios-766x1024.jpg 766w\" sizes=\"auto, (min-width: 62.5em) 67vw, 100vw\" \/><\/a><p id=\"caption-attachment-119797\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">\u201cI like the states to visit only, not to live,\u201d Dominic Rios told me, who worked for years in Connecticut and North Carolina.<\/p><\/div>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p><em>Molly Crabapple is an artist and author of the memoir\u00a0<\/em>Drawing Blood<em>. Her next book,\u00a0<\/em>Brothers of the Gun<em>, cowritten with the Syrian war journalist Marwan Hisham, will be published by Random House in May 2018.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>In November, the artist and writer Molly Crabapple spent a week in Puerto Rico documenting grassroots efforts by communities to rebuild after Hurricane Maria. Here are excerpts from her sketchbook. &nbsp; Puerto Rico is an elderly island.\u00a0A quarter of its population is over sixty-five.\u00a0\u00a0 This is due to the last of a series of great [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":502,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[419],"tags":[32083,32358,32356,32360,31979,32353,32357,32359,32355,32354],"class_list":["post-119793","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-arts-culture","tag-arecma","tag-barrio-mariana","tag-ernesto-martos-santana","tag-governor-rosello","tag-hurricane-maria","tag-la-junta","tag-proyecto-de-apoyo-mutuo","tag-rosalina-abreu-gonzalez","tag-utuado","tag-ybor-city"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO Premium plugin v25.4 (Yoast SEO v25.4) - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Puerto Rico Sketchbook: The Elders of the Island<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"In many cases, after Maria, it was the Puerto Rican elders who saved their neighbors and rebuilt their barrios.\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2018\/01\/03\/puerto-rico-sketchbook-elders-island\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Puerto Rico Sketchbook: The Elders of the Island by Molly Crabapple\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"January 3, 2018 \u2013 In November, the artist and writer Molly Crabapple spent a week in Puerto Rico documenting grassroots efforts by communities to rebuild after Hurricane\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2018\/01\/03\/puerto-rico-sketchbook-elders-island\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"The Paris Review\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:publisher\" content=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/parisreview\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2018-01-03T18:00:44+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:image\" content=\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/01\/mariana031.jpg\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:width\" content=\"1000\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:height\" content=\"654\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:type\" content=\"image\/jpeg\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Molly Crabapple\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:creator\" content=\"@parisreview\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:site\" content=\"@parisreview\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Written by\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"Molly Crabapple\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:label2\" content=\"Est. reading time\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data2\" content=\"3 minutes\" \/>\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\" class=\"yoast-schema-graph\">{\"@context\":\"https:\/\/schema.org\",\"@graph\":[{\"@type\":\"Article\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2018\/01\/03\/puerto-rico-sketchbook-elders-island\/#article\",\"isPartOf\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2018\/01\/03\/puerto-rico-sketchbook-elders-island\/\"},\"author\":{\"name\":\"Molly Crabapple\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#\/schema\/person\/04a2dd8d2e08cab27d120e3d514e84c5\"},\"headline\":\"Puerto Rico Sketchbook: The Elders of the Island\",\"datePublished\":\"2018-01-03T18:00:44+00:00\",\"mainEntityOfPage\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2018\/01\/03\/puerto-rico-sketchbook-elders-island\/\"},\"wordCount\":670,\"publisher\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#organization\"},\"image\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2018\/01\/03\/puerto-rico-sketchbook-elders-island\/#primaryimage\"},\"thumbnailUrl\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/01\/mariana031.jpg\",\"keywords\":[\"ARECMA\",\"Barrio Mariana\",\"Ernesto Martos Santana\",\"Governor Rosell\u00f3\",\"Hurricane Maria\",\"La junta\",\"Proyecto de Apoyo Mutuo\",\"Rosalina Abreu Gonzalez\",\"Utuado\",\"Ybor City\"],\"articleSection\":[\"Arts &amp; 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