Resistance & Resilience: Responses to the Climate Crisis from Cuba & Puerto Rico

October 1, 2020

Resistance & Resilience: Responses to the Climate Crisis from Cuba & Puerto Rico, was an online forum held on September 23 as the first event of a new conference series, sponsored by CLAIS, Fundación Antonio Núñez Jiménez, YSE, The Caribbean Agroecology Institute, and Ciencia PR.  

This first installment of the series sought to explore the impacts of the climate crisis across Cuba and Puerto Rico by privileging the voices of experts in different fields from both islands and their stateside diasporas. Moderated by noted environmental historian and former visiting professor at Yale, Reinaldo Funes Monzote, their conversation explored the concept of resiliency and featured Leidy Casimiro, from Universidad de Santi Spíritus & Finca del Medio, Cecilio Ortiz Garcia, from Macalester College and the RISE Network, Yale alum Bruni Pizarro from Junta, Roberto Pérez Rivero from Fundación Antonio Núñez Jiménez, and Arturo Massol-Deyá from Casa Pueblo. The event was held primarily in Spanish to honor the panelists’ language and culture, and to foster a more open and honest discussion of the issues.  

Professor Funes posed four broad questions, ranging from how is resiliency defined and what are its components or attributes, to what are the environmental challenges faced by Cuba and Puerto Rico, and how can practitioners in both islands learn from one another. Another important topic discussed was how their populations are responding to the current crisis of COVID. In their answers, the participants tried to approximate the impacts of climate change on their work, as well as to evaluate the disparate ways in which colonialism has shaped and continues to impact the lives of its peoples and the way they relate–and not related–to one another across the Greater Antilles, including Jamaica, Haiti and the Dominican Republic.  

Written by

Devin Osborne, YES MEM Candidate ’20-’21

edited: Javier Ramon Nieves, YSE MEM ‘19