Eating Through Disaster: Food Insecurity in Puerto Rico
Recently, the University of Puerto Rico, Mayagüez campus received a grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) for our digital humanities project, “Listening to Puerto Rico: The Promise of Oral History On-Campus and Beyond.” Soon after that, the UPRM Oral History Lab (OHL) was created in collaboration with three campus programs—the Department of English, General Library, and Film Certificate. This oral history Lab is a multidisciplinary space dedicated to recording and sharing stories about Puerto Rico, focusing on the environmental issues that the archipelago has faced in recent years and supporting mutual aid efforts and citizen scientist organizations that served communities post hurricane Irma, María, and the COVID pandemic. We’re constantly asking, “how can we continue serving our surrounding communities and adapt our strategies to new situations?”
As part of the OHL’s efforts to address food insecurity in Puerto Rico, a graduate student, Yaritza Sanchez (left), and Bryan Ramos (right) have collaborated on creating “Eating Through Disaster: Food Insecurity in Puerto Rico“, a Zine focused on paving avenues for possible food sovereignty. Funded by the Humanities Action Lab (HAL), the Zine encompasses the necessary historical context to understand our island’s importation crisis and lack of food security while also providing individuals the chance to re-envision the current food security infrastructure. In this endeavor, they highlight the ever-growing amount of mutual aid efforts striving for a fair, and sustainable food system as we continue to face the repercussions of previous and ongoing economic and environmental disasters.
Incorporated in the Zine are also specific mutual aid efforts in response to COVID and after, and how these groups have transformed and adapted their work for food security in the wake of a global pandemic. Efforts such as those from Come Colegial, a UPRM student association providing thousands of students annually with food stability in the way of non-perishable food supplies; Comedores Sociales de Puerto Rico, a non-profit organization that seeks to eradicate hunger in Puerto Rico through collective work strategies and resource socialization in favor of the majority of our people; Brigada Solidaria del Oeste, a self-managed community initiative comprised of individuals from various organizations, creative spaces, and social struggles; and Alacena Feminista, a feminist mutual aid group focused on the solidary exchange of foods and the advocacy against gender violence in all its forms and Plenitud P.R., a non-profit organization that supports individuals and communities in their development. All these organizations and individuals have, in one way or another, adapted to the circumstances of the Pandemic, offering their help to local communities that suffer from a lack of food security only worsened by COVID.
This Zine wishes to represent the ways in which these initiatives have risen above the pandemic to continue providing their respective communities with sustainable food ways, focusing more on the amplified representations of community-led efforts. The content created and recollected in the Zine furthers our bigger project’s aim to amplify the unheard voices of the unsung heroes of our island—the local and the community.
To access the digital version of the zine, click here.
NEH Policy Statement:
Any views, findings, conclusions, or recommendations expressed in this Zine, do not necessarily represent those of the National Endowment for the Humanities.