Puerto Rico’s Journey After the Storm

In 2019, amidst waves of protests against scandal and corruption, Puerto Rican Governor Ricardo Rosselló stepped down from office. In addition to the corrupt administration, Puerto Ricans took to the street to protest decades of mismanagement, economic recession, and the inadequate government response to Hurricane Maria — the worst natural disaster to ever hit the island. In this Q&A from The Fifth Draft — the National Fellows Program newsletter — 2021 New America National Fellow Cecilia Aldarondo discusses her film on the life of Puerto Rican people in the aftermath of Hurricane Maria, the role of community and solidarity, and the larger connections to colonialism, capitalism, and climate change. Sign up for The Fifth Draft to hear how the world's best storytellers find ideas that change the world.

Your Fellows project, the documentary Landfall, premiered at the Tribeca Film Festival on June 13th. What drew you to explore the aftermath of Hurricane Maria in Puerto Rico, what stories from the film particularly hit home for you?

Like millions of Puerto Ricans in the diaspora, I watched Hurricane Maria unfold from afar while cut off from loved ones; my grandmother died just six months after the storm. Those of us outside Puerto Rico had the doubly horrific experience of not being able to reach our families while simultaneously being subjected to the constant media fascination with Puerto Rican suffering. This media narrative was incredibly distorting and painful. While Puerto Ricans had sprung into action, with communities literally saving one another in the face of total abandonment by the federal and local governments, the media portrayed us as victims. Landfall is full of affirming stories of Puerto Rican autonomy and mutual aid. From an abandoned school turned community living experiment, to the historic popular protests that removed Governor Rosselló from office in 2019, Landfall is a portrait of Puerto Rican solidarity and agency in the midst of crisis.

... Puerto Ricans are not to be pitied; we are to be learned from. Puerto Ricans have been setting the bar for sophisticated, creative, even ingenious forms of recovery.

Since Hurricane Maria made landfall in Puerto Rico in September 2017, the U.S. political landscape has transformed. How have these shifts, especially the change between administrations, affected the documentary and your telling of the story?

There’s a common misconception that shifts in federal party politics make a big difference in Puerto Rico, when the reality is that Democrats and Republicans alike tend to favor the status quo of colonialism. Regardless of who is president or which party controls Congress, Puerto Rico continues to limp along under the Puerto Rico Oversight, Management, and Economic Stability Act (PROMESA), the legislation that gave seven unelected people dominion over Puerto Rico’s finances in 2016. Under this draconian, federally imposed law, hundreds of schools have been closed, university tuition raised, the electric grid recently privatized, and the pensions of working Puerto Ricans threatened. We must remember that it was President Barack Obama who signed PROMESA into law. With zero congressional representation, unfortunately, no one is advocating on Capitol Hill for what Puerto Rico really needs—the abolition of its debt, the revocation of PROMESA, and the elimination of Puerto Rico’s tax shelter status for the ultra-wealthy. Those of us living stateside can all push our elected officials on these fronts.

You’ve described your documentary style as “kaleidoscopic.” Can you describe briefly what that means, and how it’s shaped your telling of Puerto Rico’s experience of Hurricane Maria’s aftermath?

Very early on in the development of Landfall, I could sense that Puerto Rico’s situation was so complex, and the stateside information on Puerto Rico so lacking that the film needed to take on a holistic, intersectional scope. I didn’t think I could do this moment justice otherwise. So the film operates like a series of refracting episodes that play off one another, demonstrating the connections between issues we’re conditioned to think of as separate. How does something like climate change rub up against tax breaks for the wealthy? What does government debt have to do with the everyday lives of regular people? How does a hurricane become an economic opportunity for disaster capitalists? My hope is that viewers will begin to connect the dots between these issues in surprising ways, and start to appreciate the global importance of Puerto Rico’s current reality.

The aftermath of the hurricane affected people on the island in myriad ways, from farmers to activists, real estate developers to long term residents, and even the governor at the time, Ricardo Roselló. What do you hope Americans stateside learn from the nuanced stories you tell in Landfall?

Since I began making this film I have been insisting to anyone who will listen that Puerto Ricans are not to be pitied; we are to be learned from. Puerto Ricans have been setting the bar for sophisticated, creative, even ingenious forms of recovery. I want viewers to see how, just as with the COVID-19 pandemic, in Puerto Rico it is the communities who are most immediately affected by disaster who know the most about how to respond in times of crisis. I also hope viewers will see that any just recovery policy must be led by communities rather than politicians or big NGOs. To me, watching Landfall is an emotionally resonant opportunity for solidarity and allyship, and I hope viewers will see a chance to listen, learn, and bear witness.

How has your experience directing and producing Landfall translated into your role as a professor? What advice would you give your students about telling stories of intensely traumatic moments in time?

My teaching and filmmaking always develop in symbiosis with one another, and I often create new courses as an outcome of the research I do for my films. Landfall generated a course entitled “Art in Times of Crisis,” which asked the fundamental question: What does it mean to make art in response to and amidst disaster? Given the pandemic, this course took on a new relevance that was intense, but really meaningful. One of the things I centered most in that class was the importance of ethics; I want my students to constantly question their power and privilege when dealing with traumatized populations, and to ensure they are centering the needs and desires of the people with whom they are collaborating.

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