Above photo: Many islanders who fled to the mainland are being treated shabbily, says Mayra Calo (third from left). Michael Moore Jr. | The Crow’s Nest
By Michael Moore Jr.
Five months after Hurricane Maria devastated Puerto Rico, immigration lawyer Mayra Calo can speak about the politics of the issue and the way the news media has covered it.
But she speaks from the heart.
“I apologize if I get weepy or emotional,” Calo said Friday during a panel discussion at the sixth annual St. Petersburg Conference on World Affairs at USF St. Petersburg. “The rebuilding and the change will only come if we provoke outrage.”
The Category 4 hurricane hit Puerto Rico with 150 mph winds on Sept. 20, just 13 days after Hurricane Irma passed just north of the island.
Even now, a third of the population is still without power – a crisis that a Newsday editorial on Feb. 3 attributed to a “scandalously inadequate” response by the federal government.
The months since the hurricane have been an emotional time for Calo, a Puerto Rican native who practices law in Tampa, and her family, some of whom still live on the island.
Every night, she said, she worries about her son, who went there to volunteer.
Hurricane is a Taino word, she said, referring to the indigenous people of Puerto Rico and the Caribbean. “We are always ready for hurricanes.”
The problem, according to Calo, is that Hurricane Maria came shortly after Irma and was “more ferocious than any hurricane in history.”
Now, Puerto Rico is suffering, with many of its residents flocking to the mainland to escape the chaos brought by the storm.
Calo laments the way those Puerto Ricans are being treated in the states.
“In this era the others are treated as enemies,” Calo said. “They’re being treated like they’re not U.S. citizens.”
She said she wants to dispel the idea that “Puerto Ricans are a bunch of moochers” who “want to have their cake and eat it too” by being a territory and not a state.
Puerto Ricans are U.S. citizens. According to The New York Times, they pay federal taxes such as Social Security and Medicare, but not federal income tax.
Calo calls this “taxation without representation.”
Calo spent her teenage years in New York before moving to Florida, where she earned a bachelor’s degree in international studies at USF and a law degree at Stetson.
On Friday, she was joined on the panel by Pinellas County Judge Myriam Irizarry, journalist Renata Sago of National Public Radio and C. Knox LaSister, a real estate development expert who has been involved in numerous disaster recovery efforts.
