BEYOND MARIA It is an initiative of the Museum of the Americas, sponsored by the Puerto Rican Endowment for the Humanities and the National Endowment for the Humanities, which arose from the need to graphically document scenes, reactions, attitudes, experiences and other feelings of the people of Puerto Rico after the passage of Hurricane Maria in 2017.   

This exhibition of forty photographs captures the state of homes, neighborhoods, and flora. It also highlights the creativity, capacity for improvisation, and new attitudes of our people toward things previously taken for granted: communications, food security, access to drinking water and gasoline, and solidarity among neighbors, as well as the exodus of children and the elderly, among other social consequences of the atmospheric phenomenon.

The natural—and even urban—environment changed: the landscape ceased to serve as a reference for location. Often, when moving from one place to another, we lost track of where we were, something that nature had previously provided us with, without us being fully aware of it.

Hurricane Maria left us a different country. Faced with this new landscape, we've had to ask ourselves: What are we going to do as a people? What are we going to do to emerge stronger and with a new direction that will allow us to face new adversities?

Mary brought us as a people to rock bottom in many ways. We must be grateful that she lifted an unspeakable veil from us and recognize the true face that allows us to demonstrate that we must organize ourselves as a community and have a plan and alternatives for any type of emergency caused by nature. We must hurry and respond as she herself has been doing, for she is already beginning to reveal a new landscape to us, new reference points for knowing where to stand.

The traveling exhibit opened at the Capitol on September 20, 2018. Dates and locations will be announced soon.