SOUTH HADLEY — Rebuilding from a natural disaster like Hurricane Maria is a slow process, but where the American government has fallen short, the American people have stepped up, the mayor of Puerto Rico’s largest city said Thursday.
Carmen Yulín Cruz, the mayor of San Juan and a prominent critic of President Donald Trump, was speaking at Mount Holyoke College. Yet in both her remarks to the media and in a speech at the college, Trump’s name was not foremost.
Instead, Cruz focused on the devastation that the September hurricane wrought on her home island, the rebuilding effort, her leadership in that enterprise, and the partnerships that have been formed to accomplish this between people in the United States and those in the United States’ largest territory.
“We are grateful to the American people,” said Cruz.
In her talk at the college, Cruz addressed a packed and dynamic crowd in the Chapin Auditorium, which featured more than one Puerto Rican flag.
Cruz was brought to the college thanks to the efforts of Sofia Rivera, a Mount Holyoke student who is set to graduate from the college this spring and who is from San Juan. At a Weissman Center for Leadership dinner, hearing an admiring remark about Cruz, Rivera blurted out a fateful statement.
“I’m going to bring her here,” she recalled, in her introductory remarks for Cruz.
Rivera followed through with her statement by reaching out to Cruz, who agreed to come.
In her remarks, Rivera praised her city’s mayor effusively. And when Rivera called her an honorary Mount Holyoke woman, Cruz went onstage ahead of schedule.
“I have to hug you I’m sorry,” she said, to cheers.
A theme of both Cruz’s media remarks and her speech to the college was how the American people have stepped up and succeeded in recovery efforts where the federal government has failed.
“Where FEMA was failing, the American people were thriving,” she said.
She pointed to the clean water systems donated with the help of the American Federation of Teachers, Hispanic Federation and Operation Blessing; the AFL-CIO workers who came down to help with the rebuilding, and the planeload of supplies that Chicago Mayor Rahm Emmanuel and Congressman Luis Gutiérrez, D-Chicago, helped to get to Puerto Rico.
“We’ve learned a lot about communities coming together,” she said.
Cruz, who frankly stated that climate change is a reality, said that Puerto Rico will continue to get hurricanes. This hurricane season, which starts in June, will have at least one hurricane hit Puerto Rico, according to all the models, she said.
Cruz also noted that Puerto Rico is far from recovered from Maria, citing the 500,000 people who have left since November and the 500,000 without a permanent roof on their homes.
“We were in the belly of hell, now we’re at the gates of hell,” she said. “But it’s still hell.”
In her talk at Mount Holyoke, Cruz took listeners to the heart of that hell, speaking about walking in San Juan in the immediate aftermath of the storm.
“I think about it and I try to be strong and I can’t,” said Cruz. “Because we knew that … people were going to die.”
In describing her post-hurricane philosophy, Cruz highlighted the saving of lives as its central feature, noting that she had delayed debris cleanup in San Juan in order to use trucks for tasks like clearing roads, and food and water and medicine delivery.
“I’m going to choose life,” she said.
She also talked about the copious amount of spam she ate after the hurricane, as she chose to eat the same food as those living in shelters.
“What kind of a leader would I have been if I would have been playing golf at Mar-a-Lago?” she said, a line that prompted thunderous stomping and applause.
Additionally, she described wading through water with human excrement, and speaking with a young man who siphoned gas to drive to San Juan from his community to return with food.
In her media remarks, Cruz had some strong words for the Financial Oversight and Management Board for Puerto Rico, the board created under the Obama administration that has tremendous power over Puerto Rico’s economy. The board is not elected, and Cruz noted its efforts to reduce the island’s minimum wage for those under 25, increase the cost per credit at Puerto Rico’s universities, and cut pensions.
Another target of her criticism was the Jones Act, which makes it so only United States ships can deliver supplies from the United States to Puerto Rico. Cruz said that this hindered international aid efforts for the rebuilding of the island.
Cruz also said that hundreds of millionaires have moved to Puerto Rico, and warned against the danger of gentrification.
Asked by the media about what she would say to Puerto Rican youth in Holyoke who see her as a role model, Cruz denied being a hero. Instead, she said she did what she had to do, and said one can do one of two things when faced with injustice.
“You either step up and speak out,” she said. “Or you step down and become an accomplice.”
In her speech, Cruz talked a lot about leadership, noting the importance of leading by example and knowing when to step back, while at the same time not staying back.
“Leadership isn’t all about glamour,” she said. “It’s about human life, it’s about changing the human condition.”
Cruz was recently named as one of Time magazine’s 100 most influential people, and picked up the award prior to coming out to western Massachusetts. In addition to visiting Mount Holyoke on this trip, she also picked up the Ridenhour Prize for Truth Telling.
The day before her Mount Holyoke visit Cruz gave a speech in Holyoke. She is also set to be given the key to the city there Friday.
Bera Dunau can be reached at bdunau@gazettenet.com.