Finca La Lluvia is a 34 acre piece of land located in Indiera Baja, Maricao, Puerto Rico, which my blacklisted parents bought in 1951.
My brothers and I were all born there, and my brother Ricardo and I grew up there during the late 1950s and early 1960s.
Indiera has a long history as a place of refuge and resistance. Its name means "place of the Indians" and it was one of the places to which the Taino people retreated from the rule of church and state. In 1868, rebel leader and secret Jew Matthias Brugman died near our farm in the aftermath of the Grito de Lares uprising. In the 1870s it became a coffee growing region, and wild lands became privatized plantations. After my parents bought the farm in 1951, Alabama communist Jane Speed, her mother Mary Craik Speed and her husband César Andreu Iglesias, also a communist, a labor organizer and journalist, built a house on the land , where they lived until Jane's death in 1958. My father and neighbor Gregorio Pla organized a small coffee farmers' cooperative, and my mother organized a women's group under the pretext of teaching household skills through the agricultural extension. My family left Puerto Rico in 1967, and now I'm going back.
In 2017, Hurricane María destroyed almost all of the coffee that is the main crop in Indiera, leaving people without livelihoods. There was no power for six months, and the roads remained largely impassible for even longer. Puerto Rico currently imports 90% of its food, leaving the population extremely vulnerable to famine. Rural communities like Indiera have been pushed into producing cash crops for export, and the small food gardens of my childhood have disappeared, so that when roads are closed, there's no food.
But disaster is also opportunity.
In December 2019 I moved back onto the farm with my tiny house, to work on food sovereignty and climate resilience, and to make my stand for our planet on the piece of land I love most on earth. Starting with my own garden on Finca La Lluvia, and in collaboration with agroecology organization Boricuá, I hope to promote a revival of food crops in the barrio, especially since global heating will end coffee cultivation in Puerto Rico within thirty years. I am also hoping to create programs that bring outside friends to come to Indiera to learn, work and share.
I'll post additional information about the project as it develops, but the best way to keep track of this project is by joining my Patreon community, where I'll post regular updates.
In 2017, Hurricane María destroyed almost all of the coffee that is the main crop in Indiera, leaving people without livelihoods. There was no power for six months, and the roads remained largely impassible for even longer. Puerto Rico currently imports 90% of its food, leaving the population extremely vulnerable to famine. Rural communities like Indiera have been pushed into producing cash crops for export, and the small food gardens of my childhood have disappeared, so that when roads are closed, there's no food.
But disaster is also opportunity.
In December 2019 I moved back onto the farm with my tiny house, to work on food sovereignty and climate resilience, and to make my stand for our planet on the piece of land I love most on earth. Starting with my own garden on Finca La Lluvia, and in collaboration with agroecology organization Boricuá, I hope to promote a revival of food crops in the barrio, especially since global heating will end coffee cultivation in Puerto Rico within thirty years. I am also hoping to create programs that bring outside friends to come to Indiera to learn, work and share.
I'll post additional information about the project as it develops, but the best way to keep track of this project is by joining my Patreon community, where I'll post regular updates.