Centros de Apoyo Mutuo Jíbaros
After the Puerto Rican and US governments failed the people of Puerto Rico, communities organized themselves to fill the gap. The Centros de Apoyo Mutuo Jíbaros (CAMs) work to achieve community sovereignty and collective democratic control of the archipelago through mutual aid and social action.
Centros de Apoyo Mutuo Jíbaros (CAMs) are part of the network of mutual aid centers that emerged from the community-based disaster response and radical self-management to Hurricane Maria. The Puerto Rican state and US colonial government neglected the population during Hurricane Maria, and communities filled the gap. The CAMs have continued since then to build community power for social transformation and to resist structural forces that displace people in rural areas.
CAMs are organized by community members and work to identify their own needs, organize their own rebuilding, and strive for long-term collective resilience. A concept of community sovereignty is at the center of their work. Through a process of grassroots power, inventiveness and resistance come together to create self-management initiatives to break the systems of domination that rural communities face. Some CAMs are combining instruments of social action coming from peasant jíbaros traditions with newer forms of organizing to the mountains – including subsistence agriculture, traditional medicine, cooperatives, and audiovisual media.
In post-hurricane Puerto Rico, there is a constant battle for control over resources between elites and communities. CAMs are successfully reviving the grassroots power necessary for Puerto Ricans to guide their own development and make sustainable livelihoods.
