Maritza Hernandez—Urbe Apie
Bio:
Maritza Hernandez Colon lived in Caguas most of her life, and loves her city. In 1975 she left her hometown to attend Yale University in New Haven, CT where she studied languages, anthropology, and Latin American Studies. Life interfered and she left college in her last year, not graduating until 20 years later from Columbia College in Caguas. A single mother that supported her 2 sons, she did all kinds of odd jobs (teller, waitress, substitute teacher, secretary, accounting, you name it), and worked as a production planner in pharmaceutical companies for 15 years. Due to the financial situation in Puerto Rico, she left the island in 2009 and worked at the University of Texas in Arlington as Research Coordinator for the Bioengineering Department and later as Grants Manager for Plexon, Inc. In 2014, she worked several months with Battleground Texas in Field Operations and as a Community Organizer. That year, she helped start a new R & D company, Nerves Incorporated, where she became its Executive Manager and Sponsored Projects Manager. In February 2017 she decided to move back to Puerto Rico, since she wanted to help her community in the financial crisis it was living. She arranged with her company to work remotely from Puerto Rico. That’s when she started working as a volunteer with Urbe Apie. A few months later, Hurricane Maria hit, and she got even more involved in the work of the organization, mainly helping to write proposals for funding, and helped represent the organization in forums and collaborations (she had a car). In 2020 she got married and moved to Salt Lake City, Utah but continues collaborating with the organization remotely. She hopes (and dreams) she can move back soon.
Abstract:
From abandoned buildings to community activism in Caguas, Puerto RicoIn 2015 a group of residents in downtown Caguas, Puerto Rico formed a community organization to deal with the problem of abandoned buildings and transform them into active spaces for the community. They called the organization Urbe Apie (city on foot) and defined it as an invitation to walk, and live, the city. The group was diverse –men, women, LGBTQ+, afrodescendants, different ages, all residents of the community. The group painted murals, organized street fairs, with the vision of not only creating community spaces for everyone, but also creating economic development and jobs. In 2017, when Hurricane Maria hit, and all systems failed Urbe Apie started a collaboration with Comedores Sociales to give warm meals to the community. Comedores Sociales runs amutual aid feeding program at the University of Puerto Rico, and the same concepts were applied in Caguas, thus the Centro de Apoyo Mutuo de Caguas was born. Urbe Apie’s programs have been expanding as the needs of the community and our awareness changes. We have an art gallery, a performing arts cabaret style theater, a second hand store, a risk reduction program, a community garden, an occupied building for permanent and transitory residency that also houses a museum, and a newspaper. We rent, and occupy. We are moving towards a cuadra social (social block) and distrito social (social district) with democratic community participation, creating a city within the city.
https://www.facebook.com/urbeapie
https://www.facebook.com/galeriaurbeapie
https://www.facebook.com/huertofelizcaguas
https://www.facebook.com/ElReflejodelpueblo
https://www.facebook.com/vallegarita