DIASPORA OF BORIKÉN

Rematriate Stories

REWEAVING STORIES, RETURNING TO LAND, RECLAIMING MEDICINE AND WISDOM

To Rematriate in the most simple form is a Return to the land. 

This is not just a physical Return. It is the continuous process of connection through the mental, spiritual, and emotional reweaving of our individual and collective stories.

It can also be Returning to live in reciprocal relationship with the land and community of our lineage in order to contribute to a sustainable future for generations to come. It is the conscious shift away from the extractive, colonial ways of living and a movement toward a mutually beneficial endeavor between the land, environment, and people who live there.

Rematriate Stories is a worldwide network of DiaspoRicans committed to creating pathways of sustainable movement back to the archipelago of Puerto Rico.

Our Mission is to regenerate DiaspoRican connection to the land and heritage while reclaiming our stories.

Our Vision is to aid returning diaspora with the intention of integrating with communities for long-term sustainability and the mutual benefit of all, as well as offering immersive experiences with nature and our traditional medicines.

Our collective is centered on the diaspora answering the widening collective call to Return to Borikén (Puerto Rico) in order to be within integrated, Right Relationship with communities and ecologies of our lineage. We have a focus on uplifting our stories, medicines, and stewardship. We are aware of the current crises of our people: the most urgent being displacement and mass exodus in correlation with land grabs for private development that favor foreign capitalists, creating a dim future in which there would be a Puerto Rico without Puerto Ricans.

We acknowledge that this is a Return because our collective story is one of familial displacement; our families forced from our native and ancestral lands in order to survive and adapt under the regime of greed and extraction. Through this displacement, we have experienced collective susto, wounds of separation, cultural loss from trauma, and disassociation from our roots. We are aware that through this displacement, our diaspora has become multi-cultural, multi-racial, and that our identities have evolved to encompass something that we know is not the right of claim to indigeneity to Borikén, but rather the re-rooting work of tending to our lineage and gathering to reweave our stories, reclaim our medicines and wisdom, to cuidar (care) for communal remembrance work and healing.

We also have the goal of creating a multimedia storytelling project that weaves our individual Rematriation journeys. This includes the histories of our familial displacement and dispersal, to the work of reconnecting, reweaving, healing, and Returning on the spiritual, mental, emotional, and/or physical levels to Borikén, re-writing narratives through our collective storytelling, and the work we are tending toward the ancestral future. Follow us @RematraiteStories on Instagram as this project begins to unfold.

Meet the Organizers

  • Dezirae, a NYC native with roots in the Caribbean diaspora, is a passionate student of nature. For over a decade, she has delved into organic gardening, permaculture, herbal medicine, and mycology, all fueled by a desire to regenerate soil. She runs multiple gardens and businesses, advocating for natural healing and regenerative agriculture. Dezirae's mission is to build gardens on her ancestral Caribbean islands, making food and medicine more accessible while promoting a sustainable future.

  • Meg Tucker is the eldest child, grandchild, and great grandchild of Laura & Owen. Meg is white-presenting, of mixed race (mother’s ancestry is mixed Caribbean and European and father’s ancestry is European), and accepts all pronouns with strong preference for “We.” As the Eldest on their matriarchal line, Meg’s deep commitment to healing ancestral trauma has solidified their position as Cursebreaker in their family-of-origin. Profoundly committed to the mantra What’s Next Is New, Meg sees both their involvement with Rematriate Stories and their planned return to Boríkén as key milestones to a new era of healing, thinking, and being. Meg currently works as a scientific researcher and lab manager (field: biology, dept: ecology, evolution, & behavior) after their transition from a 16-year career in the hospitality industries.

  • Rebecca Echevarria uses any pronouns and is a food worker from New York. In their practice, they archive culinary experiments and study food preservation methods and traditions in order to explore our relationship to time, the power of documentation and how to form communities through praxis. Currently, she is earning her Master Food Preserver certification, writing articles on the intersection of food preservation and grief, and creating a community generated resource on food preservation. They dream of returning to Boríkén, working with the land and orienting their practice towards communal means by joining a collective, participating in a mutual aid network of food preservers, or contributing preserved goods to emergency disaster relief.

  • Nat Alecea Picone is a queer nonbinary trans masc biawaisa (2spirit) tender being. They are a descendent of the first people in the Caribbean. Taino Boricua and Sicilian from the diaspora born and raised on the East Coast. They are honoring their maternal grandmother’s, Áurea Alecea De Jesus, words to never forget that. Nat is a single parent of three unschooled children. Parenting their children consciously was an intentional choice. Little did they know it would allow them the opportunity to walk the never ending healing journey of intense inner child work. Nat has lived many lives in the last 25 years. It is through their own life experience and lots of training as a birth doula, self taught plant keeper, childbirth educator, dancer, massage therapist, somatic work, intuitive, that they bring a medicine, a calling, with the support of their souls ancestors of offering a strong held space for folks to take up and learn how to deeply listen to their body. Nat is a Somatic Experience Co-Liberator, Body Tender, Polyamory/ENM Coach and prodominately works with QTBIPOC here on Duwamish territory, Seattle WA. Their desire to rematriate to Borikén looks like visiting for long periods of time working on the land for existing farmers, communities, grass root orgs, offering workshops and retreats. They will always center the needs and wants of the Boricuas living there. To be a part of this beating heart, Rematriate Stories, is like returning home to one another and ourselves

  • Leo, The Hip hop Jibaro was born in Brooklyn, but traveled back and forth to Borikén, specifically to Abuelo's land his whole life. Leo helped Abuelo pick Aguacates and assisted mom in smuggling back fresh gandules. Leo’s career as a photographer brought him to the island in 2019 permanently to create a documentary about life after Hurricane Maria. While traveling back and forth to New York for photography gigs he tried to balance out cultivating his grandfather’s land to no avail because everytime he left everything would die. Leo got burnt out from photography and took sabbatical to focus on homesteading and natural healing full time. Two years later Leo returned to content creation with LandandLovePR, an educational and entertaining social media project aimed at capturing his journey and sharing the ancestral knowledge. He is fully rematriated and lives in Aguadilla!

  • Isa

  • Julia

  • Jasmine