HOLYOKE — Sitting behind the front desk at the community organization Nueva Esperanza on Tuesday, City Councilor Nelson Roman was in his element, discussing a local park project with a nearby resident who had dropped in.
The bags under Roman’s eyes and his hoarse voice, though, were subtle signs that community-organizing work has kicked into overdrive for the local Puerto Rican community.
Nueva Esperanza has been functioning as a donation center for hurricane relief efforts ever since Hurricane Irma dealt a blow to Puerto Rico earlier this month. Those efforts have now taken on a heightened urgency and scale after Hurricane Maria devastated the U.S. territory last week. Millions have been left without food, water, fuel and phone service, and downed power lines have left the entire island dark. Gov. Ricardo Rosselló has warned the island is teetering on the edge of a “humanitarian crisis.”
“We burst at the seams with people showing up and wanting to give,” said Roman, who has had hardly any contact with his own family on the island. “I’m going on little to no sleep, but it’s a labor of love.”
Nueva Esperanza’s lobby was filled mostly with water bottles, which organizers are now discouraging people from donating because of the logistical challenges of getting them to the island. Next door, the organization’s warehouse is stacked with more than 1,000 cases of water, and some supplies Roman said they need more of — batteries, first aid supplies, flashlights, canned food and water-purifying tablets.
Carmen Ocasio, the president of the South Holyoke Neighborhood Association, on Tuesday was lugging boxes of supplies around the office, where she has been serving as the donation center’s logistical manager.
“This is the first hurricane I’ve been involved in,” Ocasio said. “I’m learning as I go along.”
Puerto Ricans across the state’s large diaspora community have been affected by the disaster and are organizing relief efforts. Massachusetts has the fifth-largest Puerto Rican community on the U.S. mainland, and almost a third of that community resides in Springfield and Holyoke alone, according to a 2016 study from Hunter College’s Center for Puerto Rican Studies. In Holyoke, almost 45 percent of the population identified as Puerto Rican in the 2010 census, making it the city with the highest percentage of Puerto Rican residents on the U.S. mainland.
Nueva Esperanza’s Main Street office has become Holyoke’s donation drop-off location for Western Massachusetts United for Puerto Rico, a coalition of local political, religious, nonprofit, business and community leaders.
There are seven other drop-off points in Springfield, and Roman said residents and organizations in Amherst, Northampton and Westfield have contacted him wanting to coordinate efforts. Freedom Credit Union has also established a regional relief fund for Puerto Rico. Nueva Esperanza will soon cease collection efforts as it shifts its focus to delivery of supplies to those in need.
Many, like Ocasio, continue to volunteer their labor as they wait with anxiety to hear any news from loved ones. She hasn’t been able to contact her uncle and aunt in the town of Cataño, where some 60 percent of its 27,000 residents are now homeless.
Last year, her grandmother was buried in the town’s cemetery, which Ocasio said is now completely flooded.
“I keep myself busy so I won’t be crying,” she said as a red Ford F-150 pulled up outside the Nueva Esperanza building, the bed filled with water bottles and diapers to donate. “It keeps us busy, it keeps our minds occupied.”
The Puerto Rico Federal Affairs Administration in Washington said people can call 202-778-0710 to check on loved ones. The agency also has a website outlining how people can help.
Locals are also organizing their own collection efforts in the Pioneer Valley. On Tuesday, a group of nine Puerto Ricans from Hampshire and Hampden counties met at the Holyoke Public Library to discuss how they could best help.
“Our plan is that any time we go out to buy anything, we buy something extra,” Northampton journalist Natalia Muñoz, who attended that meeting, told the Gazette. If they go out to get milk at the store, for example, they’ll also pick up packs of batteries. “What we’re all going to do individually is keep buying them, and putting them in boxes in our own households.”
As the donations roll in, however, there remain big logistical and political hurdles to jump in order to get that aid delivered. Muñoz said the Northampton post office told her packages still weren’t being delivered.
Federal restrictions prohibit foreign ships from bringing cargo to Puerto Rico, and the Trump administration has ruled out temporarily lifting that prohibition, despite having done so when hurricanes Harvey and Irma hit the U.S. mainland.
Nueva Esperanza applied three weeks ago for official status as an organization that can funnel donations directly to the military for delivery, and in the meantime is hoping political pressure will lead to more federal help for Puerto Rico.
“It’s heartbreaking. We’re in the middle of an economic and fiscal crisis,” Manuel Frau-Ramos, founder and editor of the bilingual local newspaper El Sol Latino, said. “There was one hurricane, and now another one and the hurricane season is not over.”
The U.S. territory is saddled with around $123 billion in debt and pension obligations, and has been put under the control of a financial oversight board that is implementing austerity measures. Puerto Rico recently became the first U.S. state or territory to essentially declare bankruptcy under a new federal law, called Promesa.
The economic crisis and environmental destruction have many worried that Puerto Ricans will leave the island in droves. Puerto Rico’s population has already dropped more than 8 percent since 2010, and Gov. Rosselló has warned of a “massive exodus” to the mainland if adequate aid isn’t provided.
“I am preparing my home to receive people, we all are,” Muñoz said. “There are the children and the youth who have to finish the school year, there are people who lost their homes, who lost their jobs. So we are all preparing for a greater influx of our friends and family to our region.”
“You’re going to see a migration wave again, no doubt about it,” Roman said. Nueva Esperanza is planning to advocate for Holyoke renters who, by taking in family and friends, may run afoul of their landlords. “We have to start coming up with preparedness plans.”
In the meantime, any show of support is more than welcome, some say. At Leeds Elementary in Northampton, for example, Principal Sal Canata urged students and staff to wear red earlier this week in a show of solidarity with Puerto Rico.
“He’s taking into consideration us as a community, and acknowledging the fact that he has students in his school, and employees in his school, that are from there and are feeling that loss,” said Vanessa Rodriguez, the parent of a kindergartner at the school and a Puerto Rican who grew up in Northampton.
Rodriguez called the Gazette to praise the effort, no matter how big, to show empathy with those affected. “It’s tough not knowing if your family is OK, not hearing from them.”
Dusty Christensen can be reached at dchristensen@gazettenet.com.