As Puerto Rico’s debt has grown, its population has shrunk. In numbers that rival the last great exodus from the island during the 1950s, young professionals with families are leaving to start over in Florida, resulting in Puerto Rico losing roughly 10 percent of its population over the last decade.
But what about those who can’t leave? For them — often older residents with fixed incomes who rely on government-funded pensions or health care — the future is unsettling. Unable to declare bankruptcy without Congressional approval, the island, a United States territory, is obligated to pay its creditors before almost any other bills, even if that means cutting essential services.
So, while others were leaving the island, Joseph Rodriguez decided it was time to make some return visits. In recent years he has gone to Puerto Rico to document the effects of the economic crisis, something that is etched in the faces of the people he has encountered who, for one reason or another, are staying.
“Most of them are older,” said Mr. Rodriguez, a veteran photojournalist who first made his mark in 1990 with a National Geographic cover story on East Harlem. “There is constant buzz about the hedge fund managers coming in and making things worse as they demand Puerto Rico pay off its debts to them first. Meanwhile, these older people have their own debts and basic needs: paying for electricity, food and medicine.”
His recent work — done with a grant from the Economic Hardship Reporting Project — complements an earlier piece he did on the island’s beleaguered middle class. This time around, he traveled to several different cities but focused on Maricao, which according to a 2014 government report was among the poorest of the island’s municipalities, with an unemployment rate of 21 percent.
Among those he encountered was a 94-year-old man who still worked for the town’s mayor and whose after-dinner routine was to play a slot machine in hopes of easing his financial situation. Another woman — she said she was 101 — told him the crisis had just left her stressed.
Similar jitters are evident in other parts of the island. At Gloria’s, a bodega in Santurce, people gathered each night to drink and relax while playing dominoes. One of their big worries was crime. Mr. Rodriguez — who has documented young offenders and gang life in California — also noticed the presence of homeless addicts.
“During the day time you’d see old people going to Gloria’s to relax,” he said. “But at night they would not venture out because the junkies took over the street.”
Elsewhere, shuttered commercial strips were ghost towns, he said. If anything, the prevailing mood was pessimism. “The question that comes up is whether or not the island should be independent,” he said. “That is the conversation that goes on in every place. The other one is why can’t Puerto Rico claim bankruptcy.”
The images he made have an intimate feel, partly because of his decision to eschew 35 mm in favor of a square-format camera that forced him to take his time and engage his subjects. But he also has a personal connection to the island: His father, whom he never knew, was from Ponce. His curiosity was piqued when he was a young photographer and discovered the work of Jack Delano, the Farm Security Administration photographer who settled on the island and produced a rich archive of its life.
“I’m looking at Jack’s work and thinking ‘Oh, this is how my people look. This is where my father was from,’” Mr. Rodriguez recalled. “I used photography to go out and learn about my own roots.”
His search is far from over. His plans for the future are ambitious, with a nod to the medium’s past, too.
“The way August Sander photographed the German people would be my dream to photograph Puerto Rico that way,” he said. “His work was portrait-driven, and that’s the reason I went to the Rolleiflex — to slow it down, to look at the face. I feel the eyes always tell the story. They carry the history, the pain, the love.”
By David Gonzalez
Staying Put Amid Puerto Rico's Economic Crisis
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