Photo: The estuary at Penninsula de Cantera
On Tuesday, we took a trip to the community of the Peninsula de Cantera. This is a waterfront town which had a lot of economic and environmental challenges, particularly with trash and landfill contamination. After Hurricane Hugo devastated the area in 1989, some community members started to organize and created what would be a revolutionary initiative, resulting in a new law, Law 20, which allows the community to work together with government to make decisions about their own community. From there, they created Centro Comunitario Península de Cantera, including a massive trash cleanup effort, revitalization of the waterfront, relocation for those in need, and the creation of many community programs, as well as protection of the waterfront lands as an estuary and the creation of ecotourism for the area. The best thing about La Cantera is that all of neighbors are encouraged to give input and participate, including the children and teenagers, as they see them as the future leaders of their community. Law 20 has now been in effect since 1992 (and was renewed in 2012 for another 20 years) and is being studied by other communities and scholars for its success.
As for our visiting group, being that it was raining quite hard (which is a good thing, since there's been a drought going on recently in Puerto Rico) we were unable to get the full tour of the estuary. We did however, get to see some of the waterfront, as well as walk though the town of La Cantera.
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