Promoting the Puerto Rico Emergency Relief Agency

Background: Justo Pastor Rivera served as deputy director of the Puerto Rico Emergency Relief Agency. Established in 1934, the PRERA addressed the economic health of the island and its residents. Formed in response to the Great Depression, the PRERA provided short-term emergency aid for residents. It also aimed to address long-standing problems related to unemployment, public health, agricultural production, and infrastructure. In order to bring positive attention for the agency within Puerto Rico, the PRERA promoted its activities in local print media and on the radio. This excerpt from a 1935 article by Rivera was originally printed in El Mundo, a daily newspaper published in Spanish from San Juan.

La labor de la rehabilitación hacia una renovación  de nuestra vida como pueblos que no solamente consiste nuestra labor en la inmediata necesidad de vestir, albergar y alimentar a los muchos miles de familias necesitadas que hay  en Puerto Rico sino también, en proveer medios de acción a los desocupados que aún son hábiles, para ganar el sustento; de los suyos: por medio de trabajo.

Las actividades de la PRERA son la extensión a Puerto Rico, traducido en hechos, de los ideales que encauzan la filosofía del Nuevo Trato. Y esta actividad es algo nuevo: pero debido al esfuerzo de los dirigentes de la PRERA se ha conseguido hacerla realidad en un tiempo relativamente corto, hasta el extremo de que quizás en Puerto Rico tengamos hoy una  de las más completas organizaciones dentro de la Administración de Auxilio de Emergencia.

Translation:

The work of restoration towards a renewed life as a people consists not only in the immediate need to clothe, house, and feed the many thousands of destitute families in Puerto Rico, but also in providing a means of assistance to the unemployed who are still able to earn a livelihood for their own: through employment.

PRERA’s activities are an extension of the ideals that encapsulate the New Deal philosophy,  transformed into action, all across Puerto Rico. And this work is rather new: but due to the efforts of PRERA’s leaders, it has become a reality in a relatively short time, to the extent that perhaps we, in Puerto Rico, now have one of the most comprehensive organizations within the Emergency Relief Administration.

Source: Justo Pastor Rivera, “Explica los Planes de la PRERA,” El Mundo, 6 de junio de 1935.