60 days after Hurricane Maria devastated Puerto Rico, I flew to San Juan to be with my parents, who had arrived a few weeks earlier, and to visit family and friends. My 80-year-old parents always spend the month of November in Puerto Rico and they weren’t going to let the hurricane stop them. They also needed to check our apartment and check on relatives and friends.
They had no electricity for most of the time they were there.
I wanted to see the destruction with my own eyes. I wanted to hear from my family and friends about the response from the mainland. And, I wanted to document it all to show others how fellow Americans were being forgotten after one of the worst natural disasters in our time.
I was born in Puerto Rico before my family moved to Arizona in 1976. I spent many summers in Puerto Rico with my grandparents who lived in Cidra and also had an apartment in San Juan. We have so many cousins that live there and they were all affected. Some remain without electricity today; the hurricane hit in September. It’s almost March as I write this.
This mini-documentary is my personal journey back to Puerto Rico. Thanks to Jason Weiss Video for editing what I shot and produced and to my sister, Ileana Giordan, for helping with the little bit of translation needed.
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