The MBI is providing another year of funding to the Jíbaros Mutual Support Centers (CAMS), part of a larger network of mutual aid and support centers within Puerto Rico. Born in the wake of Hurricane María in 2017, the grassroots project seeks to establish conditions that provide long-term autonomy for vulnerable local communities.

With funding received last year, CAMS conducted workshops regarding local autonomy in four key areas: medical, economic, political/organizational, and food. The workshops’ approach centered on recovering ancestral practices in these areas and seeking pathways to livelihoods outside of the dictates of an exploitative international capitalistic economic system.

With the new funding received for this coming year, CAMS will focus efforts on bringing comprehensive health services to rural communities, which are often isolated and underserved due to a lack of available transportation options there. To this end, CAMS will purchase a van to be able to better reach and serve these areas. Services to be brought to these communities will include acupuncture clinics, herbal medicine preparations, seedlings for home gardens, primers on ancestral holistic medicines, and workshops on medicinal plant cultivation and use. CAMS also anticipates being able to incorporate political organizing of the people as part of these workshops.