Telling Stories That Inform and Help People Feel
Because my primary work is as an artist, and because I was raised to see how all injustices are connected, I have never focused my work on specific issues. But in 2019 I decided to focus more of my work on climate justice and return to Puerto Rico from the United States to do that work in my homeland.
Our two months of earthquakes and then the pandemic have slowed that work, but I am building relationships with people in the agroecology movement that addresses climate, colonialism, and food security.
I’m a storyteller. I’ve written pieces about the loss of a beloved spring when the forest around it was clear-cut to plant bananas. I’ve written about where the dried salt codfish we eat comes from and how its history is tied to slavery. I write about the soil and water, about changes in our diets, about what elders have told me of farming in the 1920s, about climate migrants who left for Hawai’i after hurricane San Ciriaco in 1899. I am writing about the old public car system that used way less fuel and created social time and space for people riding into town together.
As a returnee after fifty-two years in the United States, I am careful not to tell people what I think they should do. Instead I tell stories based on what community elders and other people have told me. I won’t start out talking about how deadly Roundup herbicide is. I’ll start with weed control in the early twentieth century, peanuts being used for ground cover in Guatemala, or the government taking away choice by giving or denying subsidies to farmers. My goal is to increase people’s pride in what they already know and to help them notice their own significance and their connections with the rest of the world.
I have found that the best way for me to work is locally and globally, not nationally. My best offering is my ability to tell stories that both inform and help people feel.
Maricao, Puerto Rico
Reprinted from the RC e-mail discussion list for leaders in care of the environment
(Present Time 207, April 2022)