How Anarchist Organizers In Rural Puerto Rico Rebooted Their Power Grid After The Privatized Power Company

How anarchist organizers in rural Puerto Rico rebooted their power grid after the privatized power company abandoned them

After being hammered by hurricane Maria, the residents of the rural Puerto Rican mountain town of Mariana got tired of waiting for the bumbling, privatized, cash-starved power authority to reconnect them to the grid, so the anarchist organizer Christine Nieves founded Proyecto de Apoyo Mutuo, one of a dozen-odd cooperatives across the island to create their own solar grid; by the time the The Puerto Rico Electric Power Authority finally put in appearance, Mariana had had power for two whole months.

After Maria, Puerto Rico suffered the second-longest blackout in world history, ignored by both the federal government and the gutted, heavily privatized local government. So community organizers like Nieves took matters into their own hands.

Nieves’s group formed an alliance with the Katrina-inspired Mutual Aid Disaster Relief, which fundraised to send gear to Puerto Rico.

The island-wide efforts are rare bright spots in a year-long crisis with no end in sight. Naturally, they’ve faced police harassment and raids looking for “antifa.”

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