Hurricane Maria Lingers at Puerto Rico’s Dinner Tables
The island’s culinary traditions struggle to rebound after the storm
By Salvador Gómez-Colón
Hurricane María wasn’t satisfied with tearing down homes, flooding our streets, and destroying families. She wanted to leave a long-lasting impact that would hide in plain sight.
Puerto Rico was distracted with the debris-covered streets and sheer darkness at night. And now, if we look at our dinner tables, we see that our meals weren’t what they once were.
The combined effects of Puerto Rico’s lack of food sovereignty and the scarcity of food resources post-María has radically redefined the cultural touchstone of Puerto Rican meals.
My favorite meal is arroz con habichuelas, churrasco, y tostones (skirt steak accompanied by rice, beans, and tostones). Making this dish was virtually impossible in the weeks after María struck Puerto Rico. There was no way of getting the plantains necessary to make the tostones, as María had wiped out most, if not all, produce in Puerto Rico. Rice and beans were staples of Puerto Rican meals that became only accessible as imports, but a backlog at the ports meant that access was severely limited.
The truth was clear: Crafting a traditional meal like this was on nobody’s priority list. The objective was to eat what we could find, regardless of its taste or cultural value. The lack of food supply, electricity, and refrigeration made all of us switch into scavenger mode.
Before the hurricane, I had gotten used to consuming organic, natural, local food items that represented the best of Puerto Rico. I yearned for the Wednesday trips to my grandparents’ house: special meals, music, and Abuelo’s jokes. They would make arroz con pollo y habichuelas guisadas or chuletón with tostones de pana. These were great times to share our experiences, stories, and perspectives. We’d talk about how school was going, my grandparents’ first jobs, and their invaluable life lessons. But amid the reality of scarcity, the days of enjoying meals like these were on pause.
With my mother, I ventured to the supermarket a few blocks from my house a few days post-María. Being at the supermarket felt far from ordinary. The supermarket had shut down its air conditioning system to save on generator fuel costs, and the stench of the air inside added to the sense of chaos.Walking through the hot and humid aisles was a travesty.
As I trudged through hordes of people, shelves once completely stocked with canned soup and beans were empty. It felt like a Black Friday sale, where everyone was desperate to get the items they were dreaming of. Shipments stuck at the ports left supermarkets, and people, unable to access food. The things that supermarkets did have were often rotten. The few jugs of milk that remained had gone bad, and looked yellow and yucky, while the expiration dates on eggs had already passed. Animal products like eggs, milk, and meat, were inedible.
To get enough food for the family, going to one supermarket would not suffice. We would scavenge for different items at various locations, as we could never find all that we needed at a single site. To secure three meals a day, it took five supermarket stops, lots of creative thinking, and countless hours of searching.
Shelves were empty across the island. In rural areas, where the closest supermarkets are often more than 30 minutes away, families rationed food among themselves to maximize their supply.
Instead of elaborate meals that satisfied our palates and hearts, Puerto Rico had to settle for canned items and processed foods. Consuming these did nothing but harm our health, economy, and culture. But the island would take anything that would satiate its hunger.
In this time of crisis, culture became a commodity. The effects of food scarcity were widespread. Puerto Rico only produced 15 percent of consumed food before María struck. Immediately after, that number grew closer to zero. Everything from plantains to coffee to bees was gone. The island became more dependent on imported foods than ever, and bringing in food was not going to get any easier.
After María, people got used to eating easy-to-make, less expensive, processed foods. We became accustomed to the lack of items like plantains, breadfruit, and fresh pigeon peas, and we created new menus without realizing the long-term impacts this behavior would have.
Conversations about natural disasters often focus on the crippled infrastructure and a lack of access to water and electricity. We overlook the effects natural disasters have on our culture and identity. To satisfy its needs in a time of crisis, Puerto Rico modified its menus. Most of us don’t realize how far we’ve strayed from how were our meals were nearly two years ago.
Two weeks after the hurricane, I was lucky enough to share my favorite meal alongside my grandparents at a hotel restaurant. We weren’t quite listening to their pleasant music or my grandpa’s lighthearted jokes. But we had each other’s company. Now, I think about all the effort it took to make a single plate of skirt steak with rice, beans, and tostones. A single plate of food could keep a family together.
Sharing meals with others is at the epicenter of family life, our identities, and our roots. In times of adversity, coming together is the best we can do. Nearly two years after María’s landfall, it’s about time to go back to our roots and foster the connection, community, and culture that our meals embody.
Salvador Gómez-Colón, 16, is a high school student from San Juan, Puerto Rico. He is the creator of Light and Hope for Puerto Rico, for which he has been recognized by Time Magazine’s as one of the Most Influential Teens of 2017, the President’s Environmental Youth Award, and the Diana Award for Social-Humanitarian work.
