They arranged to meet for a beer at a bar in Condado, and as Prieto made his way to the café, he took in the surreal state of the capital. This was his third trip since the storm hit nearly five weeks prior and the chaos of recovery had developed a rhythm of its own. He left his hotel air-conditioning—now powered via industrial-sized generators—and walked through the sun-baked streets where, unaided by FEMA or anyone else, residents had taken up the arduous task of cleaning the streets: removing stagnant water, gathering rubble, chopping wooden debris. Traffic lights still didn’t function, but a self-regulated system had developed that somehow kept order. There were still lines—for food, for water, for a patch of sky where your phone might get service—but an air of determination had somehow wedged its way into the despair. He passed a park, where a small crowd gathered around a group of pleneros, and smirked as he absorbed the lyrics of the song they were singing:
With his red hair he came to mock us,
go back to the White House, leave us in peace.
The café itself was crowded. People sipped cocktails, a salsa band played, and operations were in full swing, while at the building next to them, a work crew was making repairs to a roof. Across the street a group of men—civilians, not PREPA employees—aimed to repair a fractured utility pole while news crews filmed coverage in the foreground.
“Isn’t it crazy,” Mercedes offered, when she arrived, “how fast people can move when money is on the line?”
Prieto raised an eyebrow at her.
“The pace of recovery here is like nowhere else on the island, completely driven by the real estate developers repackaging this area. Haven’t you noticed how many gringos are here?”
Prieto had in fact noticed. The area was marked by several high-rises that looked as luxurious as anything he’d seen built in New Brooklyn and had suspected they were interrelated.
“The Puertopians. They’ve been coming for the tax breaks. Certainly no one wants to keep them waiting too long for their air-conditioning,” she said with a sarcastic laugh.
They ordered drinks and Prieto marveled at how together Mercedes seemed, despite the stress of documenting a disaster that she herself had been experiencing.
“Does this ever get you down?”
“Of course, but living here was Kafkaesque before Maria, so?” She shrugged her shoulders and raised her glass. “So, we have to keep laughing, drinking, dancing when we can, right?”
Prieto toasted her, and she continued: “Besides, here in San Juan, me and my family are fortunate. En el campo … people are washing their clothes in streams, rationing water. I talked to one woman living completely without a roof; every time it rains, she wades through water. It’s surreal. More than anything they are fleeing, but you know that.”
Prieto did indeed know that; an exodus of over two hundred thousand had already relocated to Florida, New York, Massachusetts. Who could blame them? Especially the college students, the people with school-age children. The lights were out, the schools were closed, and there was no way to know when they would open again.
“So, now,” Mercedes said as she leaned in, “why you’re here. I was really intrigued by what you saw that day in Maunabo—”
“About the Pan—”
“Yes,” she cut in, and he understood what should and shouldn’t be said. “As I’ve been traveling around the island reporting, I’ve been making some inquiries, in a more serious way. From what I’ve come to understand, this compound that they’ve built—”
“Wait, it’s real? Last time we spoke you said it was lore.”
“The last time we spoke, I hadn’t spent as much time in the mountains. I hadn’t seen the graffiti.”
Mercedes took out her phone and scrolled through some photos before handing it to him. Prieto lost his breath. The image was a black spray-painted stencil of a woman’s face, a beret on her head, her face concealed by a large bandana, but it took him just a second to recognize the eyes, even as rendered in a crude stencil. He had just seen them the day before he left, on Olga. His sister, who’d inherited them from their mother.
“What is this?” Prieto asked.
“Well, it’s their mark. They have been leaving it in all the rural towns where they’ve delivered supplies. Mainly water, but also rice, beans, dry goods that, with the water, the people can use to sustain themselves. They’ve managed to get to many places FEMA seems to have struggled to reach.”