Gustavo Alvarez

The mountains above Rincon, Puerto Rico, have been my home for longer than I care to count. I built this house with my own hands, plank by plank, when the world felt slower and the soil more forgiving. It was here, on this plot of land overlooking the sea, that I raised my family, planted guava and mango trees, and tended chickens whose descendants still strut across the yard. Yet, as I sit on my porch now, I hardly recognize the town below. Rincon, the place that once hummed with the quiet harmony of fishermen and farmers, has turned into something unmoored.

After Hurricane Maria, when I was already 83, the buying frenzy began. Outsiders swooped in, checkbooks ready, snapping up properties faster than locals could rebuild. My neighbors sold their land, one by one, tempted by offers they could not refuse. The Diaz family’s beachfront house became a vacation rental, complete with solar panels and a hot tub that glows blue at night. They moved to Orlando. The sound of coquis still fills the evening, but it feels different knowing the gringos renting these houses complain about them—those same gringos who preach about “sustainable living” while sipping $10 mojitos.

Maria was a beast, no doubt about it. I lost half my roof and spent weeks in darkness, cooking on a makeshift stove and drawing water from the well. But the storm wasn’t the end of my world—it was what came after. Disaster capitalism, they call it. I didn’t know the term back then, but I knew what it felt like: to watch the rich grow richer from our ruin, turning the island into their playground while we struggled just to stay.

I still live in my house, refusing to sell despite the many offers. A man came last year, all smiles and paperwork, offering a figure so high I could’ve moved to Miami and bought a condo by the beach. I told him I didn’t build this place to trade it for tiles and air conditioning. I built it because it’s mine, rooted like the old breadfruit tree out back. Some things aren’t for sale—not now, not ever.