Cristina Sanchez is one of thousands of Puerto Ricans fleeing their hurricane-ravaged island for Florida, a mass migration set to shape the southern US state as much as migrants from communist Cuba in the late 20th century. As her flight departed the capital San Juan, she glanced out the window at what she was leaving behind: a sun-drenched Caribbean island turned into a hellhole by Hurricane Maria. On September 20, powerful Maria tore across Puerto Rico, destroying homes, shattering the island’s rickety power grid and phone network, and leaving its 3.4 million residents in the dark and incommunicado.
