After Hurricane Maria, Puerto Rican Students find shelter at CUA
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Desiree Cordero is an 18-year-old student at Catholic University of America but she’s having far from the usual freshman year. Last September just after the start of the fall semester, Cordero and her family were 1,500 miles away, hunkered down in their Puerto Rican home while Hurricane Maria raged around them for 28 hours straight.
When the storm subsided and they were finally able to go outside, everything was different.
“We felt like we were in a different city,” she recalls. “Everything was gone. It felt like we had gone back to old times.”
A Category 4 storm, Hurricane Maria clocked sustained winds peaking at 155 mph as it made landfall on Puerto Rico on September 20, 2017. It rippled across the island and leading to at least 64 deaths, though some estimates put the number much higher. In its wake, the U.S. territory’s 3.4 million residents were left with massive devastation and the need for a cleanup expected to take years.
Storm damage was extensive at the Aguadilla City campus of the University of Puerto Rico where Cordero was enrolled. Many trees had been uprooted and scattered around the campus, she recalls.
Class cancellations and the general disruption caused by the storm made it difficult for Cordero to continue studying. After a month passed, she decided to move to Maryland and live with her aunt, while continuing her education.
After researching universities with programs for displaced Puerto Rican students, she settled on Catholic University and was accepted on Dec. 15. Three weeks later, she was starting her new life and a new semester in Washington.
The program “was created as way to allow students to stay on track by continuing their education and obtaining credits while their home institutions may not be able to operate,” according to James Dewey-Rosenfeld, CUA’s dean of undergraduate admission.
Each of these young people displaced by the storm can take up to 15 credits as “non-degree” students. The university waived tuition fees this spring and worked with students to find housing they could afford, Dewey-Rosenfeld said in a statement provided to Hola Cultura via email.
Cordero is among more than 135,000 Puerto Rican residents who had left the island in the six months following the hurricane, according to a recent report by The Center for Puerto Rican Studies at Hunter College. Many are college students like Cordero who have been able to take advantage of academic programs created to assist hurricane victims.
Prior to Hurricane Maria, Puerto Rico had been dealing with a financial crisis. The Caribbean island’s $70 billion-plus government debt and existing infrastructure problems have made the recovery efforts more difficult, experts say.
Months after Hurricane Maria, the Federal Emergency Management Agency continues to provide a level of aid and resources, however, many Puerto Rico residents feel that the efforts have been slow and no real change has occurred. According to a recent estimate, 150,000 homes and businesses were still living without electricity.
Cordero feels Puerto Rico’s story is being ignored and more action is needed.
“It is injustice,” says Cordero, who questions why FEMA exists if it isn’t capable of assisting even the people in the most dire need. “What is going to happen with those persons who don’t have a place to live yet?” she worries.
The slow progress on relief efforts has motivated Cordero and others to take matters into their own hands. While Cordero is using her time here to get an education, others are rallying in Washington to demand for more resources and aid for the island. Frustration with FEMA was on display here locally on Mar. 20, when about 250 people gathered in front of the FEMA headquarters in the District to protest the slow pace of relief efforts.
Cordero is now pursuing a degree in marketing and economics. While the CUA program is only a semester-long, she has enjoyed her time here this winter so much that she plans to apply to become a full-time CUA student and finish her degree here.
She remains positive and says she hopes to develop professional skills she could take back to Puerto Rico to help with its economic recovery, which experts expect to take many years.
“I think it is going to be better. After the hurricane, everyone appreciates things more. Hours after the storm you saw everyone lost a lot,” she says, “but people also united to help one another.”
— By Stephanie Lopez
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