Award of Excellence: Here I Dreamed
More than half of Puerto Rico’s public schools have closed their doors in the last 10 years. Government officials justified the “consolidations,” saying hurricane damage and declining student enrollment necessitated them. In the years since, some schools have found new life as community centers, while others have been leased or sold. The majority of buildings, however, decompose like rotting corpses, their bones swaddled in nature’s eerie embrace, remnants of past lives slowly disintegrating into earth.
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At Escuela Jose de Diego in Vega Baja, mold proliferates on the surfaces of desks and chairs. Amid haunting silence, life still abounds. Trees stretch their limbs through old windows while flowers blossom in the crevices of crumbling school walls. Crabs make their homes in bathroom sinks and iguanas rest on cold cement floors. Nature has begun to reclaim the classrooms in the years since the school’s closure in 2016.
