When Hurricane Maria hit Puerto Rico in September 2017, Alfredo Aponte Zayas took shelter in his grandmother’s house, which had been built to withstand strong storms. He spent two days inside consoling his eldest daughter as they watched water pouring in through the electrical sockets. When he finally ventured out, once the hurricane passed, he found a ruined landscape. What trees remained standing had been stripped to their trunks. Hundreds of cows lay dead in the fields; half-collapsed houses were everywhere.

Aponte, who is an agronomist, was employed by the U.S. Department of Agriculture. His expertise was animal forage. After the storm, though, his job was to gather food, water and fuel from department depots and, accompanied by armed guards, deliver it to other U.S.D.A. employees around Puerto Rico. As he crisscrossed the island, he was distraught by the sight of so many people begging for food and water. “I didn’t have enough to give everyone,” he told me this summer, tearing up at the recollection.

Aponte had a farm then in Toa Alta, just west of San Juan and about an hour and a half from where he lived. He had leased the land from the government of Puerto Rico. But, impeded by downed trees and a gasoline shortage, he couldn’t get to it for three months. When he finally made it there, he saw that it was destroyed, the plantain trees flattened, the yam fields flooded. By this point, he had already been served eviction papers: He owed about $3,000 in back rent that he was unable to pay. He had been farming for less than a year.