Should We Still Visit Puerto Rico?
A special message from Liz & Steph
We’ve been sitting with a question lately: Should we still visit Puerto Rico?
A few weeks ago, Puerto Rico made its way into our news cycle because parts of the island began rationing water. As two white folks from the United States who have had the privilege of traveling to different regions of Puerto Rico multiple times, and who are planning to bring a group there for a retreat, we felt it was important to pause and ask some uncomfortable questions.
What does it mean for us to travel somewhere experiencing a serious water and infrastructure crisis? Who are we, as people from the country that colonizes Puerto Rico, to arrive as tourists and use precious resources?
Should we cancel the retreat? We don't think there is a simple answer.
Puerto Rico has been dealing with infrastructure problems for a very long time. A significant amount of treated water is reportedly lost through aging and leaking infrastructure, and these problems aren't new. They exist within a larger history of colonialism and political disenfranchisement: Puerto Rico is a U.S. territory, and people living there do not have voting representation in the U.S. presidential election despite being governed by the United States.
And climate change, tourism, aging infrastructure, and political decisions all intersect with one another. This isn't just a story about a drought, it's also about who has access to resources, who gets to make decisions, whose infrastructure gets maintained, and whose communities bear the consequences when those systems fail. (Let’s not forget to also look within our own borders, seeing what just happened in Geary, Indiana with a blackout that lasted two weeks. We can’t pretend that if that same thing had happened in say… Boston, MA or even Portland, ME, it wouldn’t have been fixed within a couple days. Anway…)
We've experienced some of these infrastructure issues ourselves when visiting San Juan, PR including power outages and water interruptions. At the same time, those experiences aren't representative of the entire island. The current water situation is particularly acute in the San Juan metropolitan area, while the west coast is experiencing very different conditions. So what do we do with all of that?
We could fall into a very familiar binary:
If we go to Puerto Rico, we're bad tourists because we're knowingly contributing to pressure on limited resources.
If we don't go, we're responsible tourists because we're avoiding adding to that pressure. We get to check out of this conversation. Nothing changes.
But we don't think either of those tells the whole story or makes any significant impact.
One of the things we value most at Electric Cottage Collective is listening to the people most directly affected by an issue rather than assuming we know what is best from a distance.
So we reached out to our connection in Rincón, a local studio that we have been planning to collaborate with during our visit, and asked what they thought. Their response gave us a much more complicated picture. They explained that the current water crisis is primarily affecting the San Juan metro area, that Rincón has been receiving significant rain, and that infrastructure—not simply a lack of rainfall—is a major part of the problem.
They also shared something that really stayed with us: they want visitors to come.
Tourism is an important part of the local economy, and a dramatic drop in visitors can have very real consequences for the people and small businesses whose livelihoods depend on them. At the same time, they pointed out that tourism itself can put enormous pressure on infrastructure in smaller communities, particularly during the dry season. It's a catch-22.
And that's exactly why we don't want to pretend there is a perfectly ethical, uncomplicated answer. So, are we still going? For now, yes, but we want to be intentional about how we go.
We'll fly into Aguadilla rather than San Juan, and we'll spend the majority of our time on the west side of the island, where our local connections have told us the current water situation is very different. More importantly, we're thinking about what it means to bring our tourism dollars into a community in a way that aligns with our values.
We're committing to three things:
1. Spending locally. We'll put our money directly into local businesses, restaurants, artists, guides, and community-based organizations rather than large chains or corporations.
2. To keep learning and talking about the bigger picture. We don't want to travel somewhere, enjoy its beauty, and ignore the systems that shape people's lives there. We'll continue learning about Puerto Rico's history, colonial relationship with the United States, infrastructure, environmental challenges, and the impacts, both positive and negative, that tourism can have on local communities.
3. Putting some of our tourism dollars toward environmental action. Before the water crisis made national news, we had already planned to donate 15% of retreat ticket sales to the Surfrider Foundation Rincón Chapter, a local chapter working to protect oceans, waves, beaches, and coastal communities through grassroots environmental action and we still plan to do so.
We're not sharing this to convince anyone that traveling to Puerto Rico is inherently good or bad. We're sharing it because we think ethical travel requires more than checking a box that says “responsible tourist.” It requires curiosity, humility, listening to people who live in the places we visit, and being willing to examine the systems that make our travel possible in the first place.
We also don't believe that the answer to a community's infrastructure problems should automatically be to withdraw from that community. For now, we're excited to return to Puerto Rico, learn from the people we're collaborating with, move our bodies outside, spend time together, support local businesses, have fun, connect with nature, and contribute where we can. If you'd like to join us, you can find all the details about our upcoming Puerto Rico retreat here. Registration closes December 1st.
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