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It was 10:00 am, and the room was already full of artist-activists and student collaborators from Comerío and Loíza, Puerto Rico. They were excited about their upcoming exhibition in Miami, Florida, featuring their photos depicting the social and health impacts of environmental emergencies like hurricanes and flooding in their communities, which they had been preparing for two years under the auspices of a National Science Foundation funded project for which I served as a doctoral research assistant. They listened attentively to a pre-exhibition panel on government and civil society collaboration that the chief organizer of the event (an expert in disaster management) at Florida International University (FIU) had convened. Many of them were taking notes, though others seemed confused by the English-to-Spanish simultaneous translation. Then a panelist from the Miami-Dade County government spoke optimistically about “bridging the gaps” between government agencies and citizens to deal with environmental crises. Narrating a story about his department’s approach to a case of environmental toxins in Florida public waterways as an example of successful multisectoral collaboration, he concluded, “And this is how, through the partnership between scholars, activists, and the government sector, we disclosed what had caused the Fish Kill in Miami-Dade back in 2020.” But the audience—mostly Spanish-speaking—looked puzzled. Was it disbelief? Fatigue from traveling to Miami the day before? Or was the message simply getting lost in translation, tangled in the back-and-forth of simultaneous interpretation? Janice, head of a feminist community-based organization in Puerto Rico and a powerful voice throughout the project, finally stood up and responded in Spanish, explaining that “things” in Puerto Rico work differently—that their challenges are tied to a deep distrust of government. “In Puerto Rico, we first have to deal with government corruption. We’ve been through Irma and Maria… We learned we cannot trust politicians to prioritize communities during nor after disasters. We’ve always had to lead recovery ourselves despite governments of any party.” Then she rapidly listed a series of pressing structural challenges including housing, brain drain, and dependency on ineffectual US agencies that aggravate the impact of climatic crises. But the translator’s words fell short, dulling the weight of her critique. The ensuing tearful discussion among the members of the Puerto Rican delegation expressed a deep frustration that their perspectives, and their trauma, often remained unheard.
The moment revealed a deeper tension: What gets heard, and what gets lost? Who controls the narrative in conversations about crisis, and how do communities push back against official explanations? The project—based on vivid images and evocative captions by disaster-affected community members—offered a chance to examine these questions critically. And the resulting gallery showcases not only local artistry and wisdom, but also how some community messages are able to break through, to sway public opinion or policy decisions, while others, such as the emotional trauma of relocation and frustration with ineffectual political leadership, are drowned out by the noise of disaster recovery policies and resilience strategies that systematically erase these voices.
Ethnography of a PhotoVoice Exhibition
The visit of twenty-one Puerto Rican community members to FIU in October 2024, was the culmination of a project based on the community-based participatory methodology known as PhotoVoice, and was a much-anticipated event. For many of the activist-artists—a term our team uses to refer to both aspects of the community members’ roles—it was the culmination of a process that began in 2022 in two resource-poor communities vulnerable to disasters: the rural mountainous town of Comerío and the coastal municipality of Loíza. Months of participatory photography and visual analysis workshops had resulted in local and national exhibitions of community members’ photographs that vividly documented the slow emergencies—the ongoing disasters wrought by climate events under conditions of coloniality—that these communities were facing. The mosaic resulting from the photo gallery focuses viewers on the effects of political-economic abandonment and community struggles for belonging amidst multiple structural shocks, such as Puerto Rico’s crisis of out-migration to the mainland United States and local policies aimed at relocating residents from their generational homelands in disaster-prone areas. The PhotoVoice project makes multiple calls to reinvigorate communities through infrastructural investment, public participation, and mutual aid. For these activist-artists, the trip to Miami represented an opportunity to be honored and heard by mainland policy makers, as well as a chance to learn from and engage in cross-cultural activities.
After a morning busy with allocutions by faculty and panels on governance and disaster resilience, I helped Humayra and other fellow students to place the ribbon that was to be cut ceremoniously to mark the exhibition opening. The gallery was finally inaugurated after an FIU guitar ensemble played a set of Caribbean folk songs, during which Elizabeth, one of the activist-artists from Comerío, surprised everyone in the public when she spontaneously produced a güiro (a traditional percussive instrument used in Puerto Rican folk music) from her purse and, with a broad smile, added a distinctively Puerto Rican element to the song. Her joyful disruption asserted puertorriqueñidad into a rather academic discussion of disaster recovery policy making.
Credit:
Samuel Olah Velez
Elizabeth with her güiro.
After the ribbon-cutting, artists from Loíza and Comerío had a chance to look at the eighty-one captioned photographs from both communities all together in their first joint exhibition. For me, it was a chance to view the photographs through an ethnographic lens, and to speak with the activist-artists as they witnessed the public viewing of their work. Here, I reflect on my interactions with some of them during the exhibition, informed by what I learned of their lives over the two years of working together regarding the tensions between signal and noise in disaster and relocation policy discussions.
Lydia
I was eager to speak with Lydia about the recent changes in her neighborhood. After serving us a cup of coffee, she told me the story behind one of her photographs. Although she was raised in Brooklyn, New York, and attended high school in Miami, Lydia would come back to her family’s house atop the mountains of El Cielito neighborhood in Comerío every year, especially during the summer vacations that she was able to enjoy as a schoolteacher. After her divorce, Lydia devoted herself to refurbishing the old family home in El Cielito, repairing doors, drawers, and windows in preparation for her upcoming retirement. She yearned to finally come back to the town of her memories and looked forward to being closer to family. In Comerío, as in many rural areas, neighbors tend to be relatives as a result of previous generations of land parcelization and familial settlements, often lacking official escrituras (land deeds). Looking at the photograph she took of her now-dilapidated house, she recalls how during Hurricane Georges in 1998, she volunteered to go with FEMA teams as an interpreter.
Credit:
Lydia, Puerto Rico PhotoVoice Project
A place of so many joys turned into rubble. What seemed to be the end was the beginning of something new, although homesickness remains. Also the joy that resurfaces and the possibility of supporting those who live in the same mourning.
One day, she tells me, she invited the FEMA engineers for breakfast before doing their rounds, and to her disillusionment, one of them warned her not to put another new nail in the house. With resignation, she shows me the rubble overtaken by vegetation in her photograph, entitled “My Relocation,” and sadly acknowledges how right they were: “They told me the whole backside where the ravine leads, where the kitchen was, would sink.” The FEMA engineers bluntly advised her to alert her niece who lived below, and to prepare for relocation. After Hurricanes Irma and María, both Lydia’s and her niece’s houses are now buried by the mountain, with few remains here and there to recall where the hearth of the home used to be.
Like Lydia, several inhabitants of El Cielito and other neighborhoods in Comerío have seen their housing compromised—many have endured years with ‘temporary’ nylon tarps as roofing after the 2017 hurricanes. Lydia was finally relocated by FEMA. In her image for the gallery, she acknowledges the emotionally fraught implications of relocation for her sense of belonging, even with the prospect of “safety.” Her contribution to the gallery highlights the deep scars of rootlessness that can result from relocation policies and personalizes the resistance to such policies expressed by many activist-artists. The trauma of these relocation measures is rarely showcased in policy discussions, leaving voices such as Lydia’s wholly unheard, while conversations about relocation policy solutions proceed as if human lives and homes are not deeply implicated.
Carmelo
Like Lydia, Carmelo sees his camera lens as a means to make everyday realities visible. Whenever he addresses the topic of disaster resilience, his narrative invites discussion about trauma. Was it resilient when Carmelo spent eight hours crouching under a TV satellite dish to shield himself when the 2017 hurricanes blew away the roof of his house in Comerío? In late September of that fateful year, La Plata River overflowed, forcing Carmelo to move from the first floor of the house to the second floor where their son’s family lived.
While showing the “home he built,” as he calls it, Carmelo reflects on the tolls taken by the disaster and the government’s inadequate response. He is glad he was able to relocate permanently to the second floor now that his son migrated to the mainland US. Still, every hurricane season, he confesses, he is reminded of the excruciating hours he spent to survive and must mentally prepare for the worst. In his view, his generation is better equipped to deal with blackouts and being disconnected during disasters, but he mentions that climate events are becoming more destructive and fears for the time when he is too weak to endure such stressful and life-threatening situations. His eventual relocation was a relief, but he stresses how the government is not considering more substantial mitigation measures like dredging the river to prevent future flooding.
Ever since my visit to Comerío, Carmelo knows how much I like boleros and other “old music.” He is prone to spontaneously start singing whenever he sees me—in fact, he made me feel like I was the one being welcomed when I first saw him at the airport the day before the FIU exhibit. During lunch a couple of days later, after a series of workshop sessions, he tells me that he was quite inspired by a photo gallery produced by Haitian artists the group had visited as part of the cultural exchange experience in Miami. He did not expect to find such a blend of politics and art in Miami, and felt his values as a pro-independence student in the 1970s are not dead. He confides in me that both their exhibit and the Haitian artists connect to the pressing issue of relations between the US and Caribbean nations. He is hopeful that such artistic expression can help to break through policy barriers and foster greater support for Caribbean-based communities in crisis.
Credit:
Carmelo, Puerto Rico PhotoVoice Project
Loss of the roof by hurricane winds, the constructions of the roof of my house have been displaced, the roof no longer exists, only my sadness remains, my anguish and a bent zinc plate.
David
Located forty minutes away to the east of the capital, Loíza lies in the San Juan Bay estuary. Passing San Juan’s international airport, the highway imposes over this Caribbean landscape, leading to the Piñones State Forest with its mangroves—the last bastion against coastal erosion. David chose to depict the roots of a mangrove tree in the malecón (shore) of Loíza, which is prominent in his photograph because this is, as he says, “where my roots lie.” Even though he moved away from the shore years ago, he visits his older siblings near the coastal malecón almost every weekend. Sometimes he accompanies his sister to church, the same one where he volunteered during Irma and María to distribute disaster aid. His siblings are the last of his roots to remain in Loíza as his children moved to the mainland U.S. some years ago. He recalls that his daughter was born on the same day that Hurricane Hugo hit Loíza (September 11, 1989). “Since Hugo happened, they just have [this] ready whenever cyclonic tides hit and that’s why they don’t leave,” he says, pointing to a picture on his phone of a small boat in a backyard. Other residents in Loíza have small boats and canoes ready for when the flooding comes.
The 64-year-old tells me he was born, raised, and became an adult along this street. Pointing to the photograph, he indicates where the houses of the last five residents are located and shares with me their stories and resistance to relocation policies. The house next door is occupied by an elderly couple that refuses to leave the home they have lived in for more than fifty years. Their next-door neighbor became famous on local news when in a TV interview he said that the only way he would leave his house was “in a coffin.” During the height of the flooding from María, an army team had to evacuate him when more than two feet of water entered his house. David empathizes with the refusal to move out but, with some resignation, says that ultimately this becomes a greater risk for residents and rescue teams. But the pain and ambivalence are evident on his face.
Credit:
David Ojeda, Puerto Rico PhotoVoice Project
The emotional attachment to the little piece of land that is their home prevails despite the natural attacks that do not stop and that continue to cause land wear, these circumstances put their lives at risk.
The house on the opposite corner, David indicates, is occupied by a middle-aged woman living on the second floor who takes care of her parents, both with Alzheimer’s, living on the lower floor. “The old man is bed-ridden, how can you move out like that?” David tells me. He has experienced this with his mother-in-law, who also suffered from Alzheimer’s. He recounts how difficult it can be to deal with elderly relatives who fear their houses might be pillaged or lose their remaining social networks if they accept relocation.
For activist-artists like Lydia, Carmelo, and David depicting daily realities of disaster recovery and the impact of relocation policies is a cathartic process, and one that opens possibilities to break through the noise with the power of their images. At the same time, there is hope in dissemination efforts through projects such as PhotoVoice. Since the PhotoVoice exhibit was displayed locally in Comerío, for example, some abandoned buildings that had been pictured were targeted by municipal leaders who attended the galleries to be repurposed for displaced community members, elderly housing, and public parks, as described in a recent article by our team. Nevertheless, most of the PhotoVoice participants are reserved about their hopes for breaking through, given Puerto Rico’s dependence on both federal and domestic administrations with poor records on disaster response and recovery on the archipelago, which remains a US territory with disproportionately fewer resources to cope with impending environmental crises. Revisiting their memories of disaster trauma through their pictures, they visually explore the emotional costs of relocation and the abandonment of meaningful US aid at a moment that is now marked by budget cuts and institutional uncertainty. For them, narratives about disaster resilience coming from above can obscure the deep roots, symbolized by the mangled mangroves in Carmelo’s image, of Puerto Rico’s multiple crises amidst the noise of humanitarian emergency management strategies that often efface the emotional toll on human lives. Their captions tackle alternatives led by the communities themselves and entail a deep but skeptical hope that their voices will break through.
