Meet Our Mothers
Jíbara Kombucha
Stephanie Monserate
“This is much more than just farming. There are climate struggles, social struggles, and environmental struggles that are part of agroecology.”
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Stephanie Monserrate started learning about medicinal plants as a bartender. Her plan wasn’t to stay in Puerto Rico; it was to travel the world and work in restaurants. But when she took a trip to Costa Rica and started learning more about agriculture, hydroponics and aquaponics, someone said to her: “Isn’t it true that the most amazing agroecological farm is in Puerto Rico?”The farm they were referring to was Josco Bravo, located in the Mucarabones neighborhood of Toa Alta. Intrigued, she returned home and took their course on agroecology. Agroecology is an agricultural practice that unites science and ancestral wisdom to promote soil health and protect the ecosystem.
It was while she was learning about agroecology when she was introduced to kombucha, an ancient beverage made from fermented green or black tea. At the time, she was struggling with stomach issues and liked that kombucha offered a natural way to consume probiotics. The first time she sold it at a market was two days before hurricane María hit Puerto Rico. “And I don’t know why, in the worst possible moment, I decided ‘I’m going to do this’,” she says as she laughs at her own courage. Her brand is called Jíbara Kombucha. Jíbaro is a word that references the farmworkers in the rural areas of Puerto Rico. There are three reasons she chose this name. “First, I wanted to change that image of the Puerto Rican jíbaro, who is always seen with disdain, as a dumb person,” she said. Secondly, she wanted to make it feminine to emphasize the role of women farmers. And third, she dreams of one day exporting the product so that “a Puerto Rican, who knows where” gets a surprise and recognizes it was made in Puerto Rico.
Aside from kombucha, in 2020, she began creating incense and smudging tools, made with plants that are burned to generate smoke for therapeutic or religious purposes. “We’ve been trying hard to rescue what is our own ancestral medicine,” she explained regarding how she started questioning the use of sage. She says she began to investigate which plants were used by the indigenous peoples of Puerto Rico. Then, she saw what her own grandmother used as a natural remedy. "All of our grandmothers had a small branch of vetiver. We have our own sage that we grow here”. She lists other plants like malagueta and cinnamon that were used in ceremonies.
Jíbara Kombucha is meant to be a way for the Guakiá Agroecological Colective to sustain themselves and have the freedom to keep farming. Stephanie says that the biggest challenge the group faces is balancing work on the farm and finishing the proposals needed to keep it going.
Taller Escuela Pescantil
"We need prosperity in our town of Loíza. And if we have the resources, why not take those resources and turn them into an economic incentive for ourselves?"
Anabela Fuentes
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Anabela Fuentes found the ideal place to teach sustainable fishing to children in Loíza, one block away from a deserted fishing village. The structure is an abandoned building with white walls. Its interior is full of dry leaves because it lacks a roof to protect it from wind or rain. Anabela looks at the ruins and only sees the potential. “We have that hope, that marine biologists are going to come out of here; that their interest in the environment, in nature, in the resource [of the] sea is going to increase,” she says with a convincing smile.
She wears her braids tied in a bun, and a black T-shirt that says, "You can do anything". The community raised the money to buy the building, and now a sign announces the services that will be offered by three community organizations.
The idea of turning it into a community center came about after neighbors organized a cleanup. They opened up the space and got rid of the debris left behind by Hurricane Maria, which caused destruction in Puerto Rico during September 2017. At the end of the cleanup, her perspective of the space changed: that obstacle, through which she had walked so many times, had the potential to bring together the children of Loíza at the Taller Escuela Pescantil, a project she had been developing with her daughter to rescue the fishing industry in Loíza. "We need prosperity in our town of Loíza. And if we have the resources, why not take those resources and turn them into an economic incentive for ourselves?," says the 58-year-old grandmother.
Anabela recently received seed funding from an allied organization in Puerto Rico to design and begin building her dream community center, at the heart of the community she loves.
Amigxs del M.A.R
"If we start seeing ourselves as part of nature, we can let go of the things that continue to hold us back and sadden us because they are things that come from the political and economic systems. The hurricane is not to blame."
Vanessa Uriarte
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“I’m happy here”, says Vanessa Uriarte as she looks around the ceiba and palm trees of the coastal forest known as Playas Pa’l Pueblo—Spanish for Beaches for the People. Uriarte is the co-director of Amigxs del M.A.R., an organization whose purpose is to protect Puerto Rico's ecosystems and communities through education and advocacy. They were an integral part of protecting the five acres of land that, in 2005, were completely deforested to expand a hotel with pools and an underground parking lot. Amigxs del M.A.R., along other activists and organizations, started acts of civil disobedience that lasted 14 years. “And we sowed this coastal forest and [restored] all of this ecosystem as a counterproposal of how our beaches should look to [not only] defend ourselves from climate change but also so we can see that there are other alternatives.”
The slogan “las playas son del pueblo” (in English, the beaches belong to the people) has been popularized in the last years as communities in Puerto Rico fight against constructions on the coast. However, as Uriarte aptly states, the slogan “has a history that starts before us.” The " Playas Pa'l Pueblo" campaign has its origins between 1969 and 1971, when pro-independence and socialist groups in Puerto Rico denounced the privatization of beaches caused by foreign corporations and military bases. The protesters, according to professor Érika Fontánez, protested at the Caribe Hilton in San Juan. This hotel owns the only private beach recognized by the government. However, there are several beaches in Puerto Rico that, for all practical purposes, have been privatized, contrary to the law of the archipelago which states that all beaches are public spaces.
Amigxs del M.A.R. is advocating for a law that would create a moratorium of construction on Puerto Rico’s coast. “That’s what we’re missing: uniting as towns, to protect our coastal communities and articulate a solution that changes what there is so we don’t keep repeating the same pattern.”
Fi.Ti.CAS
Mariolga Reyes Cruz
“My dream is that we have fertile soil where we can grow roots.”
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Mariolga Reyes Cruz meets us at the Farmer’s Market in Río Piedras, her hometown. The market is located in the old city center of what was during the beginning of the 20th century the most populated and fastest-growing town in Puerto Rico. “I grew up with the mentality of that time (from the 70s to the 90s): to put a lot of effort into my studies, and thus, to make a comfortable place for myself in society, among black women, Maroon women who were trying to have a dignified life.” Marronage refers to the people who were enslaved that escaped and liberated themselves from systemic oppression. For Mariolga, being a Maroon woman in the 21st century means “that one has to juggle to live in systems that are trying to prevent you from living in dignity. [...] One simply has to make escape routes, and flee, and work from the outside; build other lives outside the systems of exploitation.”
Her work in recent years has centered on food sovereignty in Puerto Rico; this has allowed her to escape and become a Maroon woman. That’s why she wanted to be photographed in front of a mural in the market that alludes to a Ramon Frade painting, Our daily bread where a jíbaro—Puerto Rican farmer— holds a banana bunch. In the mural, the jíbaro is surrounded by the abundance of the harvest framed by lines from Rafael Hernández’ song Lamento Borincano. While she says the image idealizes the hard work of farming, “it also speaks to us of possible futures where there are other types of economy, based on our relationships with the land.”
After working in the continental United States, Mariolga returned to Puerto Rico in 2005. Six years later she began collaborating with JuanMa Pagán Teitelbaum documenting the lives of agroecological farmers in Puerto Rico. Behind the scenes, they learned more about the farmers’ struggles. That personal discovery of national and colonial history led them to produce the award-winning film Serán las Dueñas de la Tierra, which premiered in theaters in 2022.
Mariolga and JuanMa then went on to create the Fideicomiso de Tierras Comunitarias para la Agricultura Sostenible (FiTiCAS), the first community land trust dedicated to ecological agriculture in Puerto Rico. In May 2023, FiTiCAS received their first land donation: a 32-acre farm in Ciales. They are currently working on designing the best ways to support farmers on common lands and integrating more farms. Part of the work, according to Mariolga, is having conversations that deconstruct and decolonize our relationship with the land. “In my family, for generations we have had to leave and return, leave and return, always looking for the material conditions to stay. But to grow roots, you need fertile soil. That is what we are doing, protecting and tending the soil, so we can stay in our land and grow roots.”
CRES
Yvette Nuñez Sepúlveda
“They say: ‘you can be a doctor’, ‘you can be a lawyer’, but they never say ‘you can regenerate an ecosystem’, ‘you can grow trees.’”
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Yvette Nuñez is fascinated by the relationship between humans and the ecosystems they form part of. Her studies in Anthropology and Urban Planning has given her a different approach to environmental issues. “Everything I’ve learned, I’ve implemented in my day-to-day life in community and in restoration work through that harmonious blend of what the human component is within an ecosystem”, she describes while in a coastal forest adjacent to a skatepark in Punta las Marías, Puerto Rico.
The Coastal Forest of Punta Las Marías was rescued by the community decades ago. “There was a struggle so that this space wouldn’t be closed to the public.” By law, beaches in Puerto Rico are public domain, but the construction of condominiums and hotels often obstruct access to them. Neighbors rallied to prevent this from happening after learning that a developer had begun construction by appropriating a public street leading to the shore. Although they managed to stop the construction, to this day, the waves continuously crash against the project’s huge rusted foundations in the sand.
In 2013, Yvette joined a group of neighbors to pick up trash and debris at the Coastal Forest. A year later, she co-founded the Coalition to Restore Santurce’s Ecosystem (CRES, in Spanish) with marine biologist Juan David Murcia Eslava. CRES is dedicated to restoring dunes and coral reefs in Santurce—what was once known as San Mateo de Cangrejos. They have taken care of the forest, created trails and planted native and endemic tree species. "We were pruning the [trees] that are not native, and we realized that the hurricane [María] took them [the introduced trees] away, and the native ones were the ones that survived," she added.
The forest is now a recreational zone where people walk their dogs, bird watch, pick fruits and can enjoy a natural space in the midst of an urban area. Many people in the neighborhood discovered the space during the pandemic, Nuñez observed. “This is also therapy for people, just being here is therapeutic.”
Finca la Malcría
Ada Ramona Miranda
“We are coming out of being poorly raised… of being poorly raised by the patriarchy”
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Ada Ramona Miranda describes her childhood as beautiful. She grew up in Aguirre, a neighborhood in the southern municipality of Salinas. She says her family had food security because they raised chickens and pigs, and raised a vegetable garden. She also remembers that the school and movie theater were within walking distance —however, the Aguirre she showed us in 2022 is very different from the one she remembers. The school and theater are now closed, many houses are abandoned, and a huge decaying iron structure reminds us of Puerto Rico’s sugar production past and the economic inequalities it exacerbated for the population. Aguirre developed as a company town in 1899, a year after the United States invaded Puerto Rico.
Within this context, Ada has decided to learn practices to promote health, including agroecology, renewable energy and regenerative tourism, which seeks to nurture a destination instead of extracting resources from it. She is putting all her learning practice into her own project in Adjuntas, Hacienda Las Malcriá.
The independent legislator from the municipality of Salinas offers workshops and grows coffee trees. Recently, she won first place in the eighth La Taza de Oro competition, in the category of natural or unwashed coffee, a technique where coffee is dried with its pulp.
To invest in the property, she had to take on other jobs and dedicate less time to farming, but that hasn’t stopped her from chasing her dream. Ada wants Hacienda Las Macriá to be a space where women can connect with nature and with their own self-worth. Malcría comes from the word malcriada in Spanish, which directly translates to “badly raised.” “We are coming out of being poorly raised… of being poorly raised by the patriarchy”, Ada says while explaining that her dream is to create “a healing space for women.” She opens up about the fact that she still has a lot to learn, but that her community sustains her.
Comedores Sociales
Marisel Robles Gutiérrez
“Colonization has taken away the power we had about our health, about our food.”
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Marisel Robles greets us wearing an orange neon shirt that reads “I don’t eat austerity”—a slogan of Comedores Sociales. Under a moringa tree at the organization’s headquarters, the Caguas Mutual Aid Center, she begins describing the state of the space in 2017, days after Hurricane María. “[It was] an opaque color. It didn’t have any of the roofs you see in the exterior that create terraces. Inside it was a mess of cubicles because this used to be an office.” Her description contrasts the bright murals in the space, kitchen, and co-op supermarket filled with fresh, local produce. The kitchen was the first room that was built after occupying the space. The aftermath of Hurricane María brought a food insecurity crisis because ports closed and food was scarce in supermarkets. During the pandemic, they built a warehouse. “Necessity makes you build and create new opportunities”, she adds.
Comedores Sociales originated from a group of university students who wanted to organize based on people’s needs rather than their own ideas, says Marisel who now works as coordinator. In their discussions, they identified food security as a major need, even among their own peers. They began by setting up tables where they served meals in exchange for donations or volunteer time. Over time, their project and its impact have grown. Marisel claims that part of their success has been their quick disaster response. As soon as Puerto Rico declared lockdown, they began organizing and used the money in their bank account to buy people food. That’s how the initiative Compras Solidarias (Spanish for Solidarity Groceries) began, continued in operation from April to September 2020 and distributed 700 bags of groceries a week. However, their aim has always been long-term solutions and systemic change. This direction is what inspired Súper Solidario Coop, an emerging cooperative supermarket that offers local, fresh groceries at affordable prices. “For us, food sovereignty is at the core of our work, it is a tool, a strategy for working towards self-determination and the right that people have to develop themselves and to give their best.”
Mujeres de Islas
Dulce del Río-Pineda
“When you bring the community together, it's like putting a match to gasoline and fua! It lights up, and people start asking, talking, questioning and proposing. And that is our commitment: to bring [people] together, to continue encouraging citizen participation."
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When she was 23 years old, Dulce del Río Pineda arrived in Culebra, an island-town on the east of Puerto Rico, to work as a teacher at a summer camp for kids with intellectual disabilities. Forty years later, she not only made Culebra her home, but constantly returns to the now community-occupied school. “This space was created by the working hands of our community”, she says about the school, baptized as the Sede de Experiencias Vivas de Aprendizaje (in English, Living Learning Experiences Center). The organization Mujeres de Isla, of which she is a member, operates from here. The area has an interior courtyard, integrated with nature, where one can feel the breeze. Chickens roam freely in the gardens and on the cement floor. The former school is a resilient center with solar panels, a community kitchen, composting stations and a plant nursery.
From this site, Mujeres de Isla manages multiple projects to promote the health and prosperity of Culebra; among them, the Siembra Project, which began in 2014, thanks to a grant from Americorps, a U.S. government agency. Dulce explains that they have been working "for a little while now" toward food and nutritional security. "It's not just that we want food; [but] we want nutritious food," she said.
Since 2019, they have been promoting economic development through the Sede de Incubadora Solidaria (in English, Solidarity Incubator Center), where they offer training to promote entrepreneurship in Culebra.
The women also have a partnership with the Culebra Fishing Association. After Hurricane Fiona, which hit Puerto Rico on September 18, 2022, Mujeres de Isla bought all the fish from local fishermen to yield its shelf life. Each week, they prepared a fish stew and served it to the people, to create a comforting place where they could eat and process the atmospheric event. "When you bring the community together, it's like putting a match to gasoline and fua! It lights up, and people start asking, talking, questioning and proposing. And that is our commitment: to bring [people] together, to continue encouraging citizen participation," she adds.
Finca Güakiá
"Food liberates people. Food production is part of the liberation context that any country needs to prosper.”
Marissa Reyes Díaz
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"Food liberates people," says Marissa Reyes, under a gazebo that was built by members of the Guakiá Agroecological Collective in Dorado.
When you see the abundance of bok choys, pickles, amaranth and wildflowers on this Dorado farm, it's hard to think that this place was a hidden dump. In the summer of 2017, the group reached a collaborative agreement with the owners of the space, the Dominican Sisters of the Holy Cross. As soon as they arrived, they explained their intention to create a farm to the San Carlos community in Dorado . They chose the name Guakiá, which means "we" in the language of the indigenous people of Puerto Rico.
After clearing the space, Hurricanes Irma and Maria struck in September 2017. "Then, we paused any potential farm operations and focused on seeing how we could work with the community to get out of despair, anxiety, depressions, lack of food, lack of water," she explains, and added that they gave food, led cleaning brigades and even organized a meet-up in the farm with psychologists and psychiatrists.
In 2019, they resumed farming, but other problems soon appeared. The site began to be used to dispose of cars that had been used in criminal activities. On one occasion, the farmers discovered a corpse inside one of the vehicles. The collective built a gate, but, in a short time, it was knocked down and a burning car was brought in. The situation had escalated so much that the group decided it was time to relocate.
Returning to the ancestral practice of agriculture has been arduous, especially in a society that values profit more than sustainability. "It is a life project to be a farmer and produce food. And large corporations and industrialization have separated us from this [way of] remaining and being part of the ecosystem... Agroecology came to rescue what was already ours," she concludes.
At the time of publication, Guakiá found a new location for its project and is looking for funding to buy it with the support of partner organizations.
Sierra Club
Hernaliz Vázquez Torres
“When I talk about sustaining about sustainability… It’s not just spaces to talk about the problems we’re facing, but also spaces to dream a different world.”
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Hernaliz Vázquez Torres witnessed environmental justice organizing early in her life. As a young girl, she saw the adults around her rallying against the construction of the Applied Energy Services power-plant, known colloquially as “la carbonera”, in Spanish. Hernaliz was photographed for this series in the territory she defends, right in front of a coal-fueled company in Guayama, a coastal town in the South of Puerto Rico. “As a girl I remember my classmates playing basketball and getting tired quickly. We were kids, no one understood what it was. And now, ten years later, we know it’s all related to the contamination of water, soil and air from the coal-plant”, says Hernaliz, who currently works as an organizer and planner with the Puerto Rican chapter of Sierra Club. This experience made her reaffirm her commitment to fight for social, racial, economic, environmental and gender justice in the archipelago. “One of my priorities is [to fight so] that there is a just and economic transition and reparations before the coal plant closes,” she adds.
Hernaliz was a key figure in passing a law against single-use plastics and, through Sierra Club, continues to generate grassroots efforts for a just climate policy—that is, a public policy that addresses the needs of the most vulnerable people in society. "Energy, as a sphere of power, exploits the bodies in the same way that it exploits the territory. That is why I am proposing to upend economic models, prioritizing economies of care from an ecofeminist perspective," said Hernaliz while inviting people to join Climate Action Now, a campaign to demand that the government take action to address the climate crisis.