The Puerto Rican Local Food Movement

The driver dodged the ubiquitous potholes and wove her way honking through the crowded intersections under the still broken and dangling stoplights leaving San Juan, Puerto Rico for the rural Central Mountains. When we arrived at the site of the work brigade to install a community garden, the older women who ran the mutual aid center (centro de apoyo mutual) in a former elementary school pointed out the overgrown weedy beds near the solar array outside what had once been the classroom walls. This school, like so many others, had been closed due to forced austerity measures imposed on the colonized island by a fiscal board appointed by the United States government. The closed school has served as a grassroots community center since the United States government failed to adequately address the staggering devastation of Hurricanes Irma and Maria in 2017. We were starting the work and sharing our grief and anger about the colonial neglect when a film crew hired by one of the donors to the mutual aid center arrived. After getting the footage they needed they shut off the cameras and headed out for a meal at a nearby upscale restaurant said to have fresh, local fish prepared authentically by a celebrated Puerto Rican chef. We returned to planting the gardens.