HOLYOKE — A small crowd gathered on Main Street on Monday to commemorate the fourth anniversary of Hurricane Maria, one of the most devastating hurricanes to hit Puerto Rico, which caused the deaths of more than 3,000 people in part due to a poor government response.
“As Puerto Ricans, Sept. 20 is a day that none of us will ever forget,” said Jossie Valentín, a former Holyoke City Councilor who emceed the event. “We remember where we were. We remember the calls that were coming in and not coming in and what our families were experiencing on the island.”
Speakers at the commemoration included acclaimed poet and University of Massachusetts Amherst professor Martín Espada, and former San Juan mayor Carmen Yulín Cruz, who was mayor at the time of the hurricane and is now the Harriet L. Weissman and Paul M. Weissman Distinguished Fellow in Leadership at the Weissman Center for Leadership at Mount Holyoke College.
The event took place outdoors next to the community development organization Nueva Esperanza, which organized the commemoration along with El Corazón de Holyoke, the City of Holyoke, Holyoke Community College and Mount Holyoke College.
Espada is the son of the Puerto Rican community organizer and activist Frank Espada, and at the commemoration, he read his poem “Letter to My Father,” in which he speaks to his father’s ashes about “Hurricane Maria and Hurricane Trump.”
In the poem, Espada speaks about the devastation that the hurricane wrought upon his father’s hometown of Utuado.
“In Utuado, a man who cultivated a garden of aguacate and carambola, feeding the avocado and star fruit to his nieces from New York, saw the trees in his garden beheaded all at once like the soldiers of a beaten army, and so hanged himself,” reads part of the poem. “In Utuado, a welder and a handyman rigged a pulley with a shopping cart to ferry rice and beans across the river where the bridge collapsed, witnessed the cart swaying above so many hands, then raised a sign that told the helicopters: Campamento los Olvidados: Camp of the Forgotten.”
In her remarks, Cruz described emerging from the shelter of the Roberto Clemente Coliseum after the hurricane had passed and seeing the devastation it brought to the island.
“Nothing could have prepared us for the apocalyptic sight we witnessed,” she said “The San Juan and the Puerto Rico that I knew and loved would be there no more.”
She also forcefully condemned the loss of life in the aftermath of the hurricane.
“The truth is they killed us,” Cruz said. “They may have not pulled the trigger, but their neglect killed us the same.”
Cruz also spoke about honoring the lives of those lost by standing up for one another and cited the struggles of the LGBT and immigrant communities.
“Let us truly care about one another and show the world that when one of us hurts we all hurt,” she said. “Let us make solidarity our common purpose.”
Cruz finished with a thank you to the city of Holyoke, and her voice cracked as she did so.
“When we were hungry you fed us, when we were thirsty you gave us water, when we had no medication, you brought it to us. But most of all let me thank you for opening the city of Holyoke, your homes and your hearts,” she said. “Without you, more people would have died a senseless death: Hungry, thirsty, alone in the dark and gasping for air.”
In speaking after the event, Cruz laid the loss of life in the wake of the hurricane at the feet of former President Donald Trump.
“It has been proven by the federal government that he withheld aid that would have been instrumental in making sure that people did not die,” Cruz said.
The event also highlighted the contributions of western Massachusetts in aiding the island.
Valentín, the former city councilor, spoke about how 285 care packages were delivered from Holyoke to communities around Puerto Rico, as part of the Boricua Care Packages Project.
“Our kitchen became an assembly line,” Valentín said, speaking of her and her wife’s kitchen.
The work of Western Mass United for Puerto Rico was also cited, which delivered $100,000 to organizations on the Island.
Another speaker at the event was Jonathan Soto, who was in Puerto Rico during the hurricane and relocated to western Massachusetts a month later.
“I had a lot of survivor guilt,” Soto said. “I remember being able to take a hot shower in October while I knew my family couldn’t. When I knew my friends and co-workers couldn’t.”
He also said that he wants to continue to be part of the Holyoke community and that getting to work with students in its school system has been rewarding.
“I’m very happy to be here,” he said.
Antonio Quiñones-Albino relocated to western Massachusetts shortly before the hurricane hit, and he described at the event how he broke down crying in the classroom where he was teaching in Springfield when he got a call from his family informing him they were safe — after a week without hearing from them post-hurricane.
“I heard my daughter. She said ‘Papi, estamos bien,’” he said. “I crumbled.”
Quiñones-Albino’s wife and children have now joined him in western Massachusetts, where they’ve chosen to make their home and are homeowners with a little dog.
The event concluded with the lighting of electric tealights to commemorate the lives lost in Puerto Rico, after which a documentary was shown.
Speaking after the event, Espada said that the Puerto Rican community in Massachusetts is a forgotten one.
“We have to remind people … here we are and here we stay,” Espada said.
He also said that while his poem started as a way to give people the news of what was happening in Puerto Rico, it now serves as a memorial.
“I read the poem because I don’t want people to forget,” he said.
Espada also said that climate change will mean that other communities can expect to face what Puerto Rico faced.
“The United States, this government, better be ready,” he said.
Bera Dunau can be reached at bdunau@gazettenet.com.