On September 20, 2017, Hurricane María struck Puerto Rico, unleashing catastrophic destruction. But María did not create our vulnerability. It exposed and magnified years of governmental disregard, underinvestment, and failures in infrastructure and essential services. As the anniversary of Hurricane María approaches, we are once again confronting other compounding crises.
Water systems are failing. Drought is deepening vulnerabilities. Infrastructure remains in disrepair. The cost of living rises while opportunities dwindle. The burden falls hardest on economically marginalized and historically underserved communities, particularly our elders and those living in rural areas.
The water crisis makes this painfully visible. People spend hours finding, waiting for, carrying, and storing water. Access depends on transportation, mobility, physical ability, and the ability to absorb additional costs. The organizations our communities depend on are struggling to keep essential services moving.
The deeper crisis is colonialism — and the systems it has produced and continues to reproduce. We are asking the government, philanthropy, and the media to act differently.
With Dr. Marta Moreno Vega, president and founder of the Creative Justice Initiative, we are deepening connections among academics, artists, activists, and community organizers in Puerto Rico and across the mainland United States. Our challenges require sustained relationships, shared knowledge, and collective action. We need those connections between crises to strengthen networks, share resources, build trust, and work proactively toward lasting change.
For too long, we have celebrated Puerto Rico’s resilience without asking what it costs us to be resilient again and again.
The government must fulfill its responsibility to the public. Political interests cannot come before the basic needs of the people. Our communities cannot be expected to organize indefinitely around failures that public institutions have a duty to address. Infrastructure and essential services are not acts of generosity. They are public obligations.
The government must be transparent in its decisions and use of public resources, accountable to the people it serves, and responsive to the conditions our communities face. It must invest in infrastructure, protect essential services, and address systemic failures that leave us vulnerable, long after the disaster passes.
Philanthropy has a different but equally important role. It must move beyond emergency response. Funders should build collaboration into their practices, support organizations by working together rather than competing for scarce resources, and provide flexible, multiyear support.
Trust, relationships, and community knowledge are infrastructure. They must be funded as such.
Our communities have built networks of care and collective action for generations, often with limited resources. Philanthropy can strengthen those networks rather than fragment them — sharing resources, supporting collaboration, and creating conditions for trust between crises. It can also convene, advocate, amplify community knowledge, and press for public investment and accountability. It cannot substitute for the government, but it can strengthen the civic capacity we need to demand that the government meet its obligations.
The media has a responsibility, too. We need sustained support for independent journalism — not coverage that arrives with the next disaster and disappears when the headlines fade. Puerto Rico needs journalists with the time, resources, and independence to stay engaged, build relationships, follow stories over time, and hold institutions accountable.
Follow the money. Ask who makes decisions, where public resources go, who benefits, who bears the costs, and who is accountable.
We know how to respond to crises. We know how to care for one another. What we need now is a sustained commitment to addressing the conditions that keep producing crises.
To learn more, contact the Creative Justice Initiative at https://creativejustice-initiative.org/contact/
Neyda Martínez Sierra is an associate professor of professional practice in the Media Management Graduate Program at Parsons School of Design.
