It took Yahaira Santiago two years to fix the roof that Hurricane María ripped off her home at the La Playa de Ponce sector in the South coast. She had returned home only a few weeks before, when the Jan. 7 earthquake opened the earth in her backyard and left the structure unlivable once again. She didn’t even have time to paint what was built.
That same day, she and her husband, both municipal police officers, sought shelter and then joined the encampment that was built around the art installation that spells Ponce at one of the town’s entrances in the middle of the highway. They returned to their neighborhood after 22 days.