Gamaliel Rodriguez, Collapsed Soul, 2020–2021

Gamaliel Rodríguez: Hi, my name is Gamaliel Rodríguez.

Narrator: Rodríguez titled this large painting Collapsed Soul. 

Gamaliel Rodríguez: I have always been fascinated by ships. The voyage, the challenges they face. That in particular was a very interesting thing. In 2015, I did an artist residency called the Long Road Projects in Jacksonville (2015 was some time before the hurricane), and I was looking into Puerto Rico’s problems with the food situation. We are not producing enough food, whether it’s bananas, vegetables, all types of food. So, we have a big problem with nutrition, which we have to think about for our future. Puerto Rico used to produce approximately fifteen percent of its food before Hurricane Maria. Right now, since Hurricane Maria, we only produce seven percent. That is, ninety-three percent of our food comes from here in the United States, with the main port being Jacksonville. What happened? In 2015, there was a disaster when the ship El Faro sank on October 1, 2015, after being destroyed by Hurricane Joaquin. They sailed from Jacksonville on September 29 with foodstuffs, it was called a—what is known as a roll-on/roll-off or lift-on/lift-off cargo ship. They’re ships specifically for carrying anything from food, lumber, nails, everything. The ship is basically a traveling Costco or Walmart or Home Depot. And we live on an island, which is completely isolated. If you don’t have those products, you’re not going to be able to eat.

So, when I analyze it, the most impressive thing about the ship, built in 1975, is that it was originally called the Puerto Rico, and it’s really interesting how a ship in many ways has a very close—a very big connection to Puerto Rico. First, Puerto Rico is like a ship in the middle, between the Atlantic Ocean and the Caribbean. I see that it is adrift, that we sadly do not have a captain capable of, or that there haven’t been the captains we need to be able to have a vision or take a country from point A to point B. Just like a ship, they are in deplorable condition, like the corruption in Puerto Rico that has destroyed the country for the past forty or fifty years.

And that was before Hurricane Maria. After Hurricane Maria, things were three or four times worse than we had ever imagined would happen.