“The simple act of walking outside of my household and seeing debris everywhere was surreal. The fabric of our everyday lives suddenly stopped,” Quijano told The Sun.
Today marks one year since Hurricane Maria made landfall in Puerto Rico. Maria immediately thrusted Puerto Rico into darkness as the electrical grid was devastated, cellular communication was rendered impossible and basic necessities such as food and water became scarce. Maria exacerbated the ongoing economic depression, with the poverty rate increasing to 52 percent (at least 3 times higher than the national average). Since then, the Trump Administration has displayed a blatant disregard for the needs of Puerto Ricans. For example, Trump praised how Hurricane Maria was not a “real catastrophe” like Hurricane Katrina, refused to extend Puerto Rico’s Jones Act waiver beyond ten days.
Looking back on her semester, UPR Belma Sandoval-Caraballo noted that “Cornell and UPR are two very different schools and the transition was not easy.”
Ficek began her lecture by asking the audience a simple question: “Everything was destroyed [after Hurricane Maria]. … [so we wondered,] what was taking so long?”
“There were many times I was doing my all to fight back the tears, [but] as a group, we knew we needed to fight our feelings and be as supportive as possible,” Aoife Casey ’19 said.
Cornell Puerto Rican Student Association’s secretary Julia Pagán Andréu ’19, who calls San Juan home, was eager to hear news from her family — including her mother, father, sister, cousin and grandparents — who waited out last week’s storm.