![]() ![]() They endure obstacles created by the U.S. They wait for FEMA.įor months, they live in survival mode, dealing with an archipelago-wide mental-health crisis, a shortage of drinking water, delayed or unavailable medical services. They clean and clean, but the job never stops. People clear fallen trees, bamboo, garbage. All over the sloped back garden: children’s clothing, toys, shingles from a nearby roof. In a bedroom is someone else’s desk lamp, a neighbor’s charcoal grill. The storm carried so much away, dropped other people’s things inside their homes. They try to salvage family pictures, wedding albums, birth certificates. They shovel mud out of their living rooms, their kitchens, their bedrooms, their bathrooms. When people stand on a terrace watching the town below, they see an ocean of blue-covered houses. Every day, more tarps go up, house after house. ![]() The people work with their neighbors to secure blue tarps onto roofs. They watch that same president deny that many people have died, even as thousands never come home. ![]() Eventually he will propose trading Puerto Rico for Greenland.Īs the days become weeks, there is more rain there are more floods. They endure President Donald Trump, who spends the weekend after the storm at a golf tournament, tweeting that his critics in Puerto Rico are “politically motivated ingrates.” They watch him toss paper towels at hurricane survivors when he finally does visit, in early October-a performance before the world, meant as a humiliation. They desperately hunt for drinking water, collecting it from wells and natural springs and any other source they can find. The days following María bring only more misery, and there is a general understanding that everyone is up against something bigger than a storm. Read: Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands brace for Hurricane Irma It passes through Yabucoa and Humacao and Comerío, and the water levels in Río de la Plata begin to rise. On September 20, the storm makes landfall, knocking out the electrical grid and leaving the entire population in the dark. And then, two weeks later, Hurricane María approaches the archipelago. When Irma moves north of Puerto Rico and across the Caribbean, it brings heavy rains, flooding, power outages. They refill their prescriptions and then fill the gas tank after waiting in an hours-long line at the Puma station. They get what they can: some food, a few gallons of water, a portable gas-powered hot plate in case they lose power. They try to stock up, but by the time they arrive, the lines are long and most of the shops are running low. The Latin America fundraiser shows how it has struggled to find clear new footing and stick to it.I n 2017, as summer ends, when news anchors first mention the oncoming Hurricane Irma, the people go to the big-box store or the Econo supermarket just a few minutes from home. When the delta variant ebbed, it wound down much of its ground-level staffing in Los Angeles and other US cities and started looking for new challenges. Through the pandemic’s darkest days, CORE administered millions of tests and vaccines and saved lives. It raised close to $200 million put 3,000-plus people on its payroll, more employees than the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and co-ran the testing site at Dodger Stadium, among the largest in the US. During the pandemic, CORE transformed with incredible speed from a Caribbean-focused disaster relief charity with around a dozen employees into the de facto Covid response team for Los Angeles. ![]() The backdrop for the event was a massive map showing where CORE promised to put the money to use.īesides being a fundraiser, this was a sort of victory lap for Penn’s nonprofit. A CORE employee involved in the fundraising says Anitta hosted the event on the condition that some of the money would go to her home country of Brazil, the only place in the region where CORE had any Covid relief programs of note around that time. All told, the party raised $1.6 million for Penn’s nonprofit, CORE Response, that invitations and promotional materials said was earmarked for its Covid relief efforts in Latin America. Later in the evening, Anitta sang Girl From Rio, and a charity auction raffled off NFTs and an Andy Warhol sketch. The beachfront venue was packed with around 200 of the actor-turned-activist’s friends and acquaintances, including Leonardo DiCaprio, pop star Anitta and Delphine Arnault, heir to the biggest fortune on Earth. A little over a year ago, his party at Soho Beach House, a private club in Miami Beach, was the hottest event at Art Basel, the annual international fair. His biggest supporters and detractors can agree on that. ![]()
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