Carmen Yuln Cruz, six months after Hurricane Maria: 'I did what had to be done'

[malaise]

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/mar/21/hurricane-maria-storm-san-juan-mayor-carmen-yulin-cruz-all-changed
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Hurricane Maria lifted a “veil from our eyes”, said Carmen Yulín Cruz, her broad smile and warm manner belying the steely edge to her voice. “We are awake to our inequity – and our inequality,” the mayor of Puerto Rico’s capital city of San Juan told the Guardian on a recent visit to a political summit in Baltimore.

The storm in September plunged Puerto Rico into darkness and tainted the drinking water. Homes were flooded, crushed or swept away. Debris blanketed the streets and people died, while aid delivery was slow to reach its shores.
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Six months later, the island, a commonwealth of the US, is struggling. Tens of thousands of Puerto Ricans still lack access to power, water and permanent shelter. The rate of suicide has climbed. Meanwhile, officials there warn of an exodus of Puerto Ricans abandoning the island for the mainland.

Cruz, who rose to prominence as an unsparing critic of the Trump administration in the hours after Maria made landfall, said the halting and, in her view, neglectful federal response to the crushing devastation on Puerto Rico was a glaring reminder of the island’s “status as a US territory”.