Karen Santos
Vieques, Puerto Rico
I arrived in Vieques, Puerto Rico, one week ago. I soon found out that two worlds exist within Puerto Rico: one is “la isla grande” (the big island, San Juan), and another one is Vieques – only 40 minutes ferry ride from each other).
Vieques has two supermarkets and a handful of colmados (similar to New York “bodegas”). Here, the prices are about 30% higher than in San Juan – according to several people I’ve met in the last few days. The median household income in 2020 was $14,040 (US Census). 52.6% of Viequenses live in poverty. Two families I have talked to these days told me they go to San Juan once or twice monthly to buy all they need in Costco or Walmart. Everything is urgent in Isla Nena (after Luis Llorens Torres’s poem): transportation, health, housing, to mention just a few.
Working the land is hard, but having land to work on is even more challenging in Vieques. Conversations about food sovereignty are impossible without talking about the right to land. The space La Colmena has, for example, is rented, a challenge they deal with every day. The work they do is beyond anything I anticipated. This first week has been busy for me. I help by doing some farm work in the mornings, and I focus on administrative tasks in the afternoon. There are several projects that I will be assisting with. First, I’m digitizing all the registrations and forms La Colmena uses. The plan is to transition all the existing materials to electronic form. They will be user-friendly and promote the use of new technologies. This will help improve specific processes and also address health concerns in a COVID era – soon each attendee can use their own devices to fill out registration forms. This step would particularly enhance the organization’s administrative responsibilities. I will also create inventories to register tools, equipment, seeds, and educational materials’ catalogs so they can be shared among the community.
