The Politics of Redistribution and Recognition in the Wake of Natural Disaster: A Testimonio of Late-Life Grief and Loss

Background and Purpose: In September 2017, Hurricane María devastated Puerto Rico and in March, 2020, health officials identified the island’s first case of COVID-19. Cumulative traumatic exposures over the life course contribute to post-traumatic stress in older adults beyond other known predictors, and adulthood traumas appear more damaging than those of childhood. Traumatic losses are also more detrimental and difficult to resolve than more natural, less abrupt losses, and their lasting effects on emotions, cognition, and behavior may indicate complicated grief. Risk factors associated with complicated grief are typically personal (e.g., previous loss, psychiatric history, attachment style, and relationship to the deceased). We draw on Fraser and Honneth’s (2003) discourse on redistribution and recognition to illustrate how broader systemic risks associated with neocolonial sensibilities and practices affect personal grief and loss after a major natural disaster in Puerto Rico.

Methods: In 2019, we conducted a survey with 154 community-dwelling Puerto Ricans aged 60+ about their experience with Hurricane María. We also audiotaped and transcribed in-depth narrative interviews with 8 participants. In 2021, we completed a second study on the impact of COVID-19 with 213 older adults, including 10 individuals from the first study. A testimonio is a narration in which speaker(s) bear public witness to a situation of oppression or injustice on behalf of their community. We use narrative thematic analysis to examine a testimonio from 2019 with 2 women who were close friends/neighbors and who requested to be interviewed together. We also report on their status during the COVID-19 pandemic in 2021. Finally, we discuss our strategies to enhance the trustworthiness of our findings (i.e., credibility, dependability, confirmability, and transferability).

Results: The central theme of our analysis was that recovery from disaster-related personal grief can be affected by the ability and willingness of governments to preserve and protect the lives of citizens and, upon their deaths, to properly acknowledge their lives and their contributions to the body politic. The spouses of both narrators had died in the months surrounding Hurricane María, and they focused the dialogue on these losses. They emphasized the failure of the United States to meet its moral obligation to fairly and efficiently distribute the goods and services needed to preserve the lives and dignity of Puerto Ricans after the hurricane. For one narrator, the government had also failed to acknowledge her husband’s active military service, a point of pride and sacrifice, offering her a tattered flag from another grave during his funeral. Finally, our attempts to follow-up with the two narrators in 2021 suggested a poor course for both. One was too cognitively impaired for an interview and the other reported high levels of depression and isolation on standardized measures.

Conclusion: There is a tendency to focus disaster-related grief and bereavement interventions, including those for older adults, on personal attributes and relationships. In later life, perhaps particularly in collectivist cultures, it may be equally important to explore and acknowledge the significance of the roles they have played and the debts they are owed by society.