Water, Colonialism, and Climate Justice: The Struggle for Survival in Puerto Rico and Panama

By Janvieve Williams Comrie

In June 2026, thousands of Puerto Ricans found themselves without running water. Residents carried buckets up flights of stairs, purchased bottled water they could barely afford, and waited for water deliveries from National Guard trucks. Elderly residents reported injuries from hauling water into their homes. Families continued receiving utility bills for a service they were not receiving. Government officials acknowledged that decades of neglect had left the island's water infrastructure in crisis.

Many will describe this as a water shortage. Others will call it a climate crisis. Both descriptions are true, but neither goes far enough. What is unfolding in Puerto Rico is also the legacy of colonialism.

Climate change is making droughts more severe, rainfall less predictable, and infrastructure more vulnerable. Yet climate change did not create the conditions that left thousands of people without reliable access to water. Those conditions were built over generations through systems that extracted wealth from territories while underinvesting in the communities that lived there.

Puerto Rico offers a stark example of what happens when colonial governance, economic dependency, aging infrastructure, and climate instability converge. The result is a crisis that appears natural but is deeply political.

Across the Caribbean and Latin America, similar struggles are unfolding around a resource that should never be a privilege.

WATER

In Panama, the national debate surrounding the future of the Cobre Panamá mine has once again placed water at the center of public discussion. Government audits have produced multiple preliminary reports while officials weigh the mine's future. Environmental organizations, community leaders, and residents continue to raise concerns about the long term impacts of large scale extractive industries on rivers, forests, watersheds, and surrounding ecosystems. At the same time, government officials and industry representatives emphasize economic considerations and environmental management plans.

The public conversation often focuses on copper, jobs, and economic growth.Yet for many communities, the question is much simpler.

¿Habrá agua limpia?

La lucha en torno a la minería no trata únicamente de lo que se encuentra bajo la tierra. También trata sobre los ríos que sostienen a las comunidades, los ecosistemas que regulan los ciclos del agua y el derecho de las futuras generaciones a heredar un entorno habitable.

Estas preguntas son especialmente urgentes en una región que ya experimenta las consecuencias del cambio climático. El aumento de las temperaturas, tormentas más intensas, sequías prolongadas y la erosión costera están ejerciendo una presión sin precedentes sobre los sistemas hídricos en toda la cuenca del Caribe.

The struggle over mining is not only about what lies beneath the earth. It is also about the rivers that sustain communities, the ecosystems that regulate water cycles, and the right of future generations to inherit a livable environment.

These questions are especially urgent in a region already experiencing the consequences of climate change. Rising temperatures, stronger storms, prolonged droughts, and coastal erosion are placing unprecedented pressure on water systems throughout the Caribbean basin.

For AfroResistance, these concerns are not theoretical.

Over the last several years, our work in Nuevo Colón has documented the ways environmental injustice shapes everyday life in Afro-descendant communities. Located in Colón Province on Panama's Caribbean coast, Nuevo Colón sits within a region whose history is deeply intertwined with the movement of people, goods, and empire. Colón was shaped by the construction of the Panama Railroad and later the Panama Canal, projects built largely through the labor of tens of thousands of Afro-Caribbean workers recruited from Jamaica, Barbados, Martinique, Trinidad, and other islands.

UNESCO - MOWLAC, 2020 / Documentary Heritage of Latin America and the Caribbean. Memory of the World Regional Register, 2000-2018

Many remained in Panama after the canal's completion, establishing communities whose descendants continue to shape the cultural, political, and economic life of the country. Today, Colón remains one of Panama's most important provinces, serving as a gateway to the Canal and global commerce, while also reflecting some of the country's deepest inequalities.

The irony cannot be ignored, a province that helped make global trade possible and whose Black workers built much of the infrastructure that transformed the modern world continues to struggle with environmental neglect and inadequate public investment. In Nuevo Colón, residents shared stories of flooding, contaminated water, failing septic systems, and chronic public health concerns. Our community research found that 73 percent of residents reported flooding, 77 percent reported septic system failures, 91 percent identified significant garbage accumulation, and 87 percent reported diarrheal illness within their communities.

These numbers tell a story that statistics alone cannot capture. The people of Nuevo Colón are not waiting for climate change to arrive.

They are already living with its consequences. Too often, discussions about climate focus on emissions targets, carbon markets, and international conferences. Those conversations matter, but they can obscure a fundamental truth

.

What we witnessed in Nuevo Colón echoes the experiences currently unfolding in Loíza, Puerto Rico, one of the island's most historically Black municipalities and a community whose identity has been shaped by centuries of African resistance, cultural preservation, and survival. Located along Puerto Rico's northeastern coast near the mouth of the Río Grande de Loíza and historically connected to maritime routes that brought enslaved Africans to the island, Loíza has long occupied a central place in Puerto Rico's Black history.

Today, that same community finds itself at the center of the growing water crisis. News reports have documented children expressing frustration because they cannot bathe before school, families rationing water, and entire neighborhoods relying on emergency deliveries while government agencies struggle to restore service. Residents have spent days, and in some cases weeks, without reliable access to water, forcing families to carry buckets, purchase bottled water, and reorganize every aspect of daily life.

https://video.wixstatic.com/video/b5ba19_f1b0004cdf7f4e7887a4f72930e60299/360p/mp4/file.mp4

The images coming from Loíza reveal how environmental injustice often follows familiar racial and geographic patterns. Communities that have historically contributed so much to the cultural, economic, and social fabric of a nation are too often the communities left most vulnerable when essential systems fail. In Loíza, as in Nuevo Colón, the issue is not simply access to water. It is the ability of families to maintain their health, dignity, and daily routines. It is whether children can arrive at school clean and ready to learn. It is whether elders can safely remain in their homes. It is whether communities can depend on the most basic infrastructure required for life.

The parallels between Loíza and Nuevo Colón remind us that water injustice is not confined by national borders. Across the Caribbean, Black communities continue to confront the overlapping consequences of environmental neglect, inadequate public investment, and climate vulnerability. What appears as a temporary service interruption is often the latest chapter in a much longer history of exclusion and unequal development.

Colonialism transformed land, forests, minerals, and water into commodities. Climate change is exposing the devastating consequences of that worldview. The water crisis in Puerto Rico, the ongoing mining debates in Panama, and the environmental conditions facing communities in Colón are not separate stories. They are chapters of the same story.

A story about extraction. A story about neglect. A story about whose communities are protected and whose communities are treated as expendable.

The future of climate justice in the Americas will not be determined solely in government offices or international summits. It will be determined in communities demanding clean water, healthy ecosystems, and the right to live with dignity.

Water is not a luxury. It is not a commodity.

It is not a privilege reserved for those with political power or economic influence.Water is life. And the struggle for climate justice begins by defending it.