The Women of Torres de Francia

Meet the Women of Torres de Francia. After Hurricane Maria devastated the island of Puerto Rico in 2017, a small group of women from a local housing project in San Juan rushed into action by organizing community soup kitchens and feeding hundreds of families. They saved lives and their efforts became a model that was replicated across the country. 

Transcript

It's been more than five years since Hurricane Maria struck Puerto Rico in September, 2017. But for those of us who lived through Maria and its aftermath, it still feels like yesterday. The category four storm devastated our island. It led to unimaginable hardship and misfortune, but in every taleof suffering there is another story, one of overcoming.

When I recently returned to Puerto Rico, my home, Maria was at the forefront of my mind, and so were a group of women who still inspire me. 

 I visited the women at their home, a public housing project called Torres de Francia, located in a very poor neighborhood in San Juan, the capital of Puerto Rico. The day Hurricane Maria struck and the days that followed still haunt the residents of that community.

It was raining very late at night. It was also windy, but when the water began to pour in through the windows, I went into a state of panic. My apartment was completely filling with water. I didn't know what to do. I couldn't get the water out. The more I tried to push the water out, the more the water came in.

Maria turned public housing projects like Torres de Francia into human prisons, potential death traps. But the women who lived there quickly turned panic into action, setting up a makeshift kitchen to feed hundreds in their community. When I saw these brave women again, I remembered why they have remained tattooed on my soul from the moment I met them five years ago.

Their passion towards the wellbeing of others, their relentless pursuit of what was right for their community, even when faced with disaster is still palpable.

When there is a crisis and people's lives are at stake, there are only two options. You either stand up and speak up and take on whatever, or whomever you must, or you stand down and be quiet and allow yourself to become complicit to a narrative that will only end up costing more lives. So standing up is not only something that has to be done, it is something we have to be committed to doing.

The women of Torres de Francia never thought they had an option, a plan B. They just did what had to be done. They knew after Maria hit their community faced starvation if they did not act quickly. Sometimes doing the most ordinary thing, like cooking, is the most heroic thing that can be done under extraordinary circumstances, and it begins with a simple act of will. 

We're going to start from scratch, but we are starting.

Welcome to Sheroics, a new podcast from Ozy. I'm Yulín Cruz. I was the mayor of San Juan when Hurricane Maria tore across Puerto Rico. In my career as a public servant, I've been fortunate to witness what it takes to fight today's battles for social change. Sheroics, it's about women creating transformational change for the world, and they're doing it one community at a time.

Each episode, we will meet an activist, advocate or citizen working to make her corner of the planet a better place. These are the stories of women who lead from the heart. Stories we hope might inspire you to take action when your time comes.

I wanted to begin this series with a personal story that is very near and dear to my heart. I realized during Hurricane Maria that as long as a tragedy touches another human being, it's also touching me and that I had to use my platform and my voice to help others be heard. I've learned that leadership is not an issue of titles or positions.

Leadership can be found in the most unexpected places. You don't have to be on the six o'clock news to be a leader. Every day in every community, there's almost always a woman or a group of women who are the ones who push things forward and change their corner of the world. The story of the women of Torres de Francia still lives in my heart.

These women exercise the most powerful leadership ever: the power of love.

We had to deal with what we had, and we had to move on, and we got ahead.

The world begins counting with Hurricane Maria, which hit Puerto Rico on September 20th, 2017, but we can't forget the two weeks earlier, Puerto Rico was also hit by Hurricane Irma. 

Hurricane Irma, plowing through the Caribbean with 185 mile per hour winds leaving a wake of destruction in her path. Puerto Rico slammed with the one two punch pounding rain and howling winds sent residents searching for cover. 

Power was already out in most of Puerto Rico after Irma, but it was slowly, very slowly but surely coming. We had already set up the largest shelter in Puerto Rico, which was at the Roberto Clemente Coliseum in San Juan. Then after everyone in the shelter had found a place to stay or gone back to their homes, that's when we hear another hurricane is coming. 

Hurricane Maria, a powerful category four storm is now barreling towards Puerto Rico. We are very, very, very, uh, um, worried. Today in San Juan, a frantic scramble for supplies again just days after Irma. Maria has rapidly intensified. The government now declaring a state of emergency rationing basic provisions like water and baby formula.

The radar showed that Puerto Rico would disappear completely under Maria. We had about 16 hours of total silence as the storm swallowed the island.

Then, around seven o'clock that night, I went out with some members of the Emergency Management Office to explore the damage. There were still tropical storm winds. Because I don't weigh very much, they had to strap me to a car with a rope so that the wind would not blow me away.

I've never seen a war zone. I've only seen pictures. And in those pictures of wars, you see the desolation, the stillness, and that's what I saw. It was eerie. The silence, the total silence is only broken by the cry of someone who needed help. And that's when we knew we needed to go out every night to search for those who needed us.

Late that night, we started doing exactly that. We would find people that needed help and we brought them back to the shelter. 

The first pictures now coming in from Puerto Rico after taking a direct hit. Hurricane Maria slamming into the island. And as you heard one official saying the island is destroyed. 150 mile an hour winds, ripping buildings apart, knocking out power everywhere.

All of the electricity is out tonight. 

Things got worse by the hour. There was no running water, no communications, no working elevators. Buildings were becoming human cages, especially for people with mobility issues. It was tough to get help. It was even tough to get news. And on top of that, we were not getting much help from FEMA, the Federal Emergency Management Agency, even though Puerto Rico had been a US territory, a colony of the United States since 1898. People had to become the first line of response.

Puerto Rico's in need of many things, massive amounts of food and water being delivered, but getting them distributed certainly is a challenge on that island. 

Let me tell you what FEMA thought was food. I keep a photograph of that FEMA care package, and I still get mad just looking at it. The package had potato chips, beef jerky, chocolate pudding, apple sauce, and I will never forget this, a perfectly wrapped package with a plastic fork, knife, spoon, salt and pepper. What the heck were we going to need the salt and pepper for? FEMA would come and leave the food packages with the local leaders and then leave. It was soon evident that the US government was not going to do more.

I had had enough. 

I am mad as hell. I beg you to take charge and save lives. We are dying here and I cannot fathom the thought that the greatest nation in the world cannot not figure out logistics for a small island.

Fortunately, relief started to pour in from other sources. Volunteers arrived from New York, supplies from the diaspora in Chicago Operation Blessing, food and water from Florida and from Goya, Chobani, Tres Monjitas, Suiza Dairy,

Core and other companies and non-governmental organizations. We formed a massive food collection and distribution center in the Coliseum with beans, rice, milk, Chocolate Cortes, and other vital supplies.

Thanks to this relief, we were able to give breakfast, lunch, and dinner to about 65 elderly homes across San Juan. I happened to visit one of these homes a couple of weeks after Maria hit. They had run out of water and out of diesel for their generators. While I was out in front of the home, a woman approached me on the street.

She said, "we're from Torres de Francia", and she pointed to the public housing building behind her. "We need your help". I thought so does everybody else. But there was something about the way she looked at me. Most people that we saw had given up. You could tell it in their eyes. They have that glazed stare that looks at nothing. But Luz Griselle Vasquez Rodriguez had this sharp look on her face. They say the eyes are the windows of the soul. Well, she took the windows out and shot right through my soul, and I could tell that she wasn't gonna give up and she wasn't gonna take no for an answer. I could tell this was a woman with a mission and that nothing was going to distract her from that mission.

I saw some of myself in her. I saw some of my mother in her, some of my grandmother in her, so I told her I would be there soon. She told me, "I am going to hold you to it."

At first, the inhabitants of Torres de Francia, like everyone else in Puerto Rico had been knocked off their feet by Maria. 

There were a lot of people crying, a lot of people who were sad, and it was tough to see. It was very hard what we went through. 

Everyone in the community faced the same level of devastation. 

No one can say I'm worse than you because we're all living in the same situation.

You have to be able to put yourself in someone else's shoes. If I feel like this, how would a person that doesn't have anything feel? 

Luz Griselle took me around the building where the women of Torres de Francia had begun to build a community kitchen, just outside. They had scavenged anything they could find from the rubble.

They had taken wood from the debris to build fires to cook over making sure the wood was dry before using it. These are the little details, the thousands upon thousands of small acts of logistics that make a difference. Soon, the women had the ability to cook for over 400 families. Lunch and dinner, large plots, cooking over wooden fires.

They didn't wait for anyone to help them. They asked around for anything people could spare, that they could cook. Beans, sauce, rice, meat. They put together their own community kitchen.

Five years later talking to them, I can see the tears welling up in the women's eyes. And I tell you, I get teary myself thinking about what they accomplished. These women said, we're gonna do what comes natural to us. We're not only gonna feed our family, we're gonna feed everyone's family.

My mom taught me never to give up. My mom was not the easiest, but when she wanted something done, she would do it no matter what. She never gave up. She said, I'm going to do this. I'm going to do it. I am going to do it. I'm going to do it! 

And in a situation of life and death, it means a lot when you're taking the bread from your mouth and giving it to someone else that you recognize as more vulnerable. It is a lifeline. You put someone on the path to life and take them away from the path of death. These women did it without missing a beat. There was a rhythm to it. There was a let's get it done attitude all the time. Every single day. Every single day. And that type of perseverance is contagious.

It breeds hope.

I always say the same thing. Better times will come. The world doesn't end here. 

Very quickly, the women of Torres de Francia became an example of how to weather the storm literally, and how to move forward. Whatever you do, just look ahead. There's no time for tears, although they shed tears. There's no time for emotion, although what moved them with pure and raw emotion.

There's no time for weakness.

We must keep moving forward. We have to be resilient. We must reinvent ourselves. We have to keep on going because it's not like the kids know that they don't have food.

Not long after I met the women of Torres de Francia I took them to the Coliseum. When they saw the food that we had collected, I remember them holding each other and crying. They knew that they were going to be able to continue to do good in their community, to give a lifeline to people in need. I don't think there's anything more important to a woman than making sure her family eats and survives, and here these women are not just helping their immediate families, they're taking the word community and giving it a whole different spin, saying, not on my watch.

You're not going to go hungry on my watch. You're not going to die on my watch.

And that strength and resilience will help guard their community against future disasters and setbacks.

The need is there and we will have the need again, because Maria is not going to be the only storm that is going to pass through Puerto Rico.

And they were right. As of this taping Hurricane Fiona brought devastating losses and historic flooding to Puerto Rico. An island wide black out struck. Many people were cut off from services and had no access to clean water.

It was evident we had wasted five years in the reconstruction process. And that we were no further ahead than on that September of 2017.

The state of emergency in Puerto Rico. At this hour, hurricane Fiona is slamming the island with 85 mile per hour sustained winds. The governor of Puerto Rico is calling the damage catastrophic.

The women of Torres de Francia showed us that people are not waiting for the government to do everything people need.

If they have the raw material to do it themselves, they do it. Sometimes we think helping people means giving them what we think they need, but often helping is just about being a platform for them to achieve what they know they need. When other people and organizations came over to us and said, we need help in the community, I would respond, do you have a place where you can cook.

I would talk to the women of the community and say, all right, if you can cook, I can give you the food. Using the model set up in Torre de Francia, we put together 26 additional community kitchens around San Juan and a 27th for the students of the University of Puerto Rico. It was amazing. The organization was impeccable.

What happened as a result of those women at Torres de Francia was that communities began to understand that the strength was within them and that they didn't need to look outside of the community. Their heroes were living amongst them. They were already there.

I asked the women of Torres de Francia if they consider themselves to be heroes.

No, not at all. I understand that what I did, I will always do because I will help those in need.

But to do what they did, you need a good heart. And the most powerful tool these women had was their ability to love and lead with an open heart. When all there is around you is darkness, literal darkness, then acts of love are like sparks of lightning.

In a situation like that, when we're all having problems with our necessities, I believe it's not thinking about taking credit for being the hero, but how to help each other as a community. 

For me, this isn't the story of women cooking to feed people. This is a story of women using food as a platform to redirect desperation and instill hope.

They used food to engage and they engaged because they love. And as a result, they did what FEMA couldn't do. And I often wonder to this day, how can the experts not get it done, when these women did get it done? That's what, to me, makes them sheroes. They took a very difficult situation and they brought life out of the clutches of death.

They took care of one another. They became the ultimate relief organization.

People often ask, so how are things in Puerto Rico? And of course they're hoping for the good answer. They're hoping for, oh, every home is fixed. The electrical grid is working fine. The problem is that this is the crisis that just keeps on going. The electrical grid remains unstable, we had a political unrest, two earthquakes, and then the pandemic, and of course, hurricane Fiona after that.

This morning across Puerto Rico, an urgent power struggle, frequent blackouts at times impacting hundreds of thousands of people.

We are having, practically weekly shutdowns. Four years ago, hurricanes Irma and Maria slammed into the island decimating Puerto Rico's already crumbling infrastructure. Now, officials say the island's power grid is in critical condition. 

There are also more than 200 schools that could not open at the beginning of the school year because of the poor conditions they are experiencing. So this is a crisis that has not been fixed.

My grandmother used to say, did you start the fight? She expected the answer to be no. She would then ask, did you finish the fight? I learned that you may not start the fight, but you must always, always finish it no matter what. No matter what the odds are or the price you must pay, you must always finish the fight.

And these women of Torres de Francia, these sheroes, they keep on fighting. They fight every day for their children and their community, and they are determined to finish this fight.

We find heroes in every community, and I'm sure everyone listening knows one that they can talk about. Think about it. We want to hear from you. We want you to tell us about those sheroes that change your community every day. Maybe they're not on the six o'clock news, but they should be because they do extraordinary things.

So email us at [email protected] with your story. Who knows? Maybe their sheroics will be featured on an upcoming episode.

Sheroics is an Ozy production. I'm your host, Yulín Cruz. This episode was produced and engineered by Pamela Lorence. And written by Sean Braswell. Special thanks to Tim Rogers, Roberto Tito Terro in Puerto Rico and Bev Watson. Make sure to follow Sheroics on Apple Podcasts and subscribe on Spotify, iHeartRadio, or wherever you get your podcasts.