The challenge

For the people of Puerto Rico, pollution is not a disposable problem; island living imposes its own limits. What might be absorbed or hidden on a larger landmass can be immediately devastating on an island. Juan Rosario believes that developing an ecologically sustainable economy is dependent on developing a sustainable sense of community. “Too many people have learned to behave like victims. They think the solution to their problems will come from outside. Also, many do not often have the technical, organizing, and legal knowledge to fight back or to create better alternatives.” As a result, many developers and polluting industries have long ignored or skirted laws meant to protect society from environmental pollution and other abuses.

Seeds of commitment

When Rosario’s father left Puerto Rico to work in the United States, he and his siblings were put in the care of grandparents and an extended family. There, he grew up realizing that his neighborhood functioned like a family. “I learned that, if people are going to care for each other, differences should not only be tolerated, but welcomed," Rosario says. That sense of acceptance and solidarity is central to his organizing work today. “My grandmother was a powerful influence. No matter what you did, you were never wrong with her. She used to have this saying: ‘Does it have a solution? No? Then why worry? Yes? Then do it.’ She also taught me that people only learn by doing, by taking responsibility, by making mistakes. We tell people: You cannot blame circumstances; don’t wait for someone else; if you see a solution, do it. You may do it wrong, or it may take a long time, but you must do it. Start!”

Accomplishments

In 1989, Rosario joined Misión Industrial de Puerto Rico, an environmental organization founded in 1969. In the capital city of San Juan, he helped assemble a wide alliance of groups from a half-dozen communities to stop construction of a massive municipal garbage incinerator, which was expected to burn more than 1,000 tons of waste a day. The alliance included communities in the Puerto Nuevo area of the city, various churches, and labor-union leaders. It brought together Catholics and Methodists, many of whom had never been in each other's church -- although they worshiped within walking distance from one another.

"When we started, we could not find a single person who thought we could win," Rosario says. "Not even our colleagues believed the incinerator could be stopped" because it had the blessings of federal, national, and municipal governments. The partners in this collaboration decided it was not enough just to fight a polluting project; they needed to develop alternative waste-disposal solutions and work for their adoption as well. The campaign, which promoted conservation, succeeded: The incinerator project was shelved, and a new law — the first of its kind in Puerto Rico – established waste reduction and recycling as first choices for waste management. Rosario and colleagues also proposed the development of nonprofit cooperatives to create recycling businesses; a dozen recycling enterprises since have been created. “It is very easy to start a movement against something, but it’s very difficult to keep it moving unless you also fight for something,” says Rosario. “We asked: why not mix environmental solutions with community development?”

Later, when he and local leaders decided to develop a community network to fight pollution in the Cataño Air Basin, Rosario and his fellow leaders built on their past experiences. For 40 years, the region downwind from the San Juan metro area had been the most polluted area of Puerto Rico. Residents of four of the five municipalities in the basin suffered from high rates of several types of cancers. Providing the technical, organizing, and legal knowledge necessary to fight back, Rosario and other activists created Communities United Against Pollution (CCUCO), with delegates from more than 20 communities in five municipalities. As a result of CCUCO’s pressure, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency required the Puerto Rican government to conduct hundreds of inspections and hand out heavy fines to polluters – actions overdue for decades. As a result, air quality in the basin improved. “The process continues, with a new generation of community leaders,” he says. Rosario also has collaborated with communities to fight sewage floods, unwanted housing developments, proposals to build 17 mega-landfills, and the spread of chain stores and mega-malls that are destroying Puerto Rico’s open spaces. But Rosario considers his greatest accomplishment to be a legacy of leadership across the island: “Leaders were already there, but they often didn’t define themselves or were not recognized as leaders,” he says.

Leadership style

“The first time I met Juan Rosario was during a TV report (about a polluting incinerator),” recalls one activist. “During the interview, I said that we wanted the incinerator relocated. After I finished, he called me to the side and asked me, ‘Why, if the incinerator is so bad, do you want it to be sent to another community?' ” Rosario not only focuses on immediate problems but calls for “a new vision of inclusion and participation” and new systems to promote social and economic justice. “It is not only what you get but how and by whom it is done,” Rosario says. “In the long run, democracy is what we are fighting for.” He sees leadership development as the first step in any community-justice campaign. When someone requests his help to organize a campaign, he immediately encourages the person to build a team of concerned neighbors and friends into a group to define their needs or problem, and articulate solutions and alternatives. Rosario then offers these new community leaders methods and tools to accomplish their goals.

He avoids the word “help.” “We don’t help them – that suggests a relationship that reduces their responsibility,” he says. “A good leader, as the saying goes, is one that makes himself unnecessary as soon as possible.” He works with people “from the inside out,” as he puts it, challenging their attitudes and patterns of behavior. He earns the respect of government agencies by being knowledgeable, consistent, strong, and honest. Above all, he is a consistent champion for Puerto Rico's ecologically sustainable future. He often says, "What is bad for one community is bad for all communities."

The future

He and colleagues are creating a nonpartisan forum for the exchange of strategies and ideas to address sustainable-development issues. "[Puerto Ricans] have to build a vision for our island, from the ground up," Rosario says. Without a vision, strategies are useless. In our country, this has been our pattern: we have let someone else define the vision. Then we either adopt that vision or fight against it – and we don’t define what we’re for. We must take some time to think about the future; we must organize our heads, our vision, before we organize the people on the road. A strong opinion is a strong opinion, not a vision. We need more than that. We need a principle-based vision, consistent with natural laws.”

More about Juan E. Rosario and Misión Industrial de Puerto Rico, Inc.
Juan Rosario "is sharp, astute, strategic, scrupulously honest, generous, and an extraordinary human being. ...The thing about our [community] group is that after a while we didn't need Juan anymore, and I think that's what he is most proud of."
– Mary Axtman, professor of environmental education, University of Puerto Rico

"He has taught us a very important lesson – not to fight against people, but against problems."
– Loiz Delgado, member of Communities of Caguas in Defense of the Environment