Maria ¿qué es un huracán?

Hurricane María made landfall in Puerto Rico on September 20, 2017. The storm lasted hours. The disaster and recovery years. María struck an archipelago already weakened by centuries of colonial rule, a public debt crisis, years of austerity, and failing water, energy, health care, and food systems. When the winds passed, what followed was another kind of storm: delayed aid, a collapsed power grid, and a government response, on the island and from Washington, that left millions of people to survive on their own for months. For nearly a year, the official death toll stood at 64. However, a George Washington University Study estimated 2,975 deaths, while a Harvard study estimated that about 4,645 people died in the three months after the storm, many because they could not get medical care, medicine, or electricity. Most of these lives were not lost to wind or water. They were lost in the long aftermath. This exhibition looks at María through the archive and lived experience of Manolo López, a Puerto Rican chef, producer, and cultural organizer. His story leads into a much wider network of collective action across Puerto Rico and its diaspora. Where institutions failed, people cooked, cared for one another, organized, and moved resources to the communities that needed them most. The crisis also exposed the political structures that shape daily life in Puerto Rico. Food and fuel are imported. The Jones Act, a 1920 federal law, governs shipping and requires goods moving between U.S. ports to travel on U.S.-built, U.S.-owned, and U.S.-crewed ships. Puerto Ricans have been U.S. citizens since 1917, serving in every war since WWI, yet those living on the island cannot vote for president and have no voting representation in Congress. People they did not elect made decisions about their recovery. Nearly a decade later, this exhibition asks us to look past the storm itself. What if the hurricane is not only wind and rain, but the slow erosion of the systems meant to protect people? When does a hurricane end?