Maritza González Cintrón has not slept in her home in the Quebrada de Guayanillas neighborhood since the earthquake on January 7th, one of the thousands in the sequence of tremors that have impacted southern Puerto Rico since Dec. 28, 2019. She fears the quake has damaged the structure of her home leading to its collapse.
Since that same date, Gonzalez Cintrón has made her backyard a camp for at least 60 people in her neighborhood, and for herself. During the day they go to work; at night they return to sleep in their 14 tents, Sara Marrero Cabán reports for Voces del Sur. They share the fear that their homes will collapse.
González Cintrón is a visual artist and a community leader. She is 57 years old. She founded the NGO Creando Consciencia: Mi Tierra Grita, which is dedicated to education in environmental preservation; training new visual artists from the age of two; and training young people in scientific photography.
González Cintrón is recognized for her work. Right after Hurricane María, in September 2017, she activated on behalf of her neighbors: she acted as a spokesperson and liaison for her community with the authorities in the face of the shortage of drinking water and electricity that remained afterwards, Mildred Rivera Marrero writes for El Nuevo Día.
From that experience, according to the Voces del Sur article, González Cintrón and her family designed a contingency plan for themselves and their neighbors, in anticipation of a similar event to come. On January 7th, they activated it. They set up cars as an exit route, stocked with whistles, and had people protect the elderly and children.
The El Nuevo Día report says that within 15 minutes of the earthquake that day several people arrived at González Cintrón’s house, “because it had been determined that this was the meeting place.”
“We were practically all disoriented, waiting for other aftershocks to come. It was an intense day. Typically, we used to look for the neighbors to see if everything was okay, if something happened to them, and when we did the census, we realized that it was more the emotional health that was affected. Even that night we made the decision – the family – not to go back inside the house, because we didn’t know what was going to happen. Well, then, as part of the inventory that we have as an ecologist, we [took out] some campaign booths, which are our property, to be able to pass these seismic values outdoors and we activated the protocol,” González Cintrón told Sara Marrero Cabán.
So she distributed the tents among the neighbors. Since then, the camp has been set up in her backyard. People cook together in “the community pot”. Retired workers, secretaries, doctors, biologists, mechanics, psychologists, social workers have volunteered to help, as well as the NGO Veteran’s Response, the American Red Cross and local businesses, according to Voces del Sur
However, Gonzalez Cintrón told El Nuevo Día’s Rivera Marrero that there is a need for “emotional support and mental health services” for the refugees in her backyard, the elderly and their caregivers, and the leaders.
“We realized how fragile it was that, in a matter of seconds, we could be left with nothing. And it’s been hard to deal with these situations of attachment, of you having your housing unit and so many sacrifices and so forth, and then being in the uncertainty that we’re here and that at some point it all might fall apart,” says Gonzalez Cintron, quoted in Las Voces del Sur report.
“I myself have not had time to tell people how it happened because I prefer to keep it to myself to give people strength,” she said to El Nuevo Día. “But I need to express what I felt. I felt that I had fallen into an abyss. The doors of my closet fell on me and on my bed. I was paralyzed. Emotionally I don’t feel able, for a while, to sleep in my bed again. The earthquake of the 7th marked me for life. I have to go into my house to clean, but when I get to my room I am scared. My life, like for many people, has changed completely.”
The president of the United States, Donald Trump, signed on January 15th the declaration of major disaster for Puerto Rico, due to the earthquakes, and the release of $8.5 billion of the resources that his government had withheld after Hurricane Maria. Congress had approved $18 billion in aid since the hurricane but, as CNN recalls, the Trump administration blocked it “because they said they wanted to make sure it was spent properly.”
A group of Puerto Ricans from the Respeta Mi Gente coalition demonstrated in Florida on Tuesday to demand the whole of the resources is unblocked.
On January 18th, residents of Ponce, in southern Puerto Rico, found a warehouse full of supplies possibly intended as Hurricane María relief that were not delivered. This triggered further protests on the island. Governor Wanda Vasquez dismissed several officials after the discovery. The protesters have also asked for her resignation.
Image: Screenshot from a video in Maritza González Cintrón’s Facebook profile