On Friday in San Juan, an impromptu memorial of shoes sprung up at the Puerto Rican capitol building to honor victims from Hurricane Maria, whose death toll the government has yet to finalize. NPR's Adrian Florido reported there were more than 400 pairs of shoes outside the capitol building. The anger and demand for government accountability that led Puerto Ricans to leave shoes in memoriam at their government's feet were thrust to the forefront on May 29. That's when the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health released a study saying more than 4,600 "excess deaths" occurred in Puerto Rico between Sept. 20 and Dec. 31. The study's methodology of surveying 3,299 random households in Puerto Rico led them to an estimate of 4,645 "excess deaths", which is much larger than the official government toll of 64. One Puerto Rican, Luis Vázquez, told NPR he left his own shoes in memory of his father. "We already threw all of his shoes away," Vázquez told NPR. "So I put my own, and I'm going to leave them there." Another Puerto Rican, Mercedes Rodríguez, wrote in Spanish on Twitter that she went to the memorial for "love and justice" of those represented by the hundreds of pairs of shoes. Late on Friday, the Department of Health in Puerto Rico released data that found in the months after Hurricane Maria there were at least 1,400 more deaths when compared to the previous year. According to the Chicago Tribune, the Puerto Rican Department of Health reported a 14 percent increase in deaths from September to December in 2016 versus 2017. The agency's count was 11,459 deaths from September to December 2017, but as the newspaper reported, that number was not directly or indirectly attributed to the hurricane's destruction. The Puerto Rican government partnered with investigators from George Washington University's Milken Institute of Public Health for estimating the death toll, but those results aren't expected until the summer, according to NPR. One group is through waiting and took the government to court to get answers. On Friday, NBC News reported the Puerto Rico Institute of Statistics filed a suit against Secretary of Health Rafael Rodríguez Mercado and the Director of the Demographic Registry Wanda del C. Llovet Díaz. According to the news outlet, the agency, which works to collect accurate and independent data, wants the government to comply with an April request that urges publishing preliminary and daily death updates about the storm in Puerto Rico in a transparent manner. "Despite this, both the Secretary of Health and the Director of the Demographic Registry have ignored the information request order,” the lawsuit reads, according to NBC News. “The omission of both officials has caused that, to this date, the Department of Health is in breach of its obligation to deliver data and statistical information that the Institute has required from them.” The lawsuit by PRIS joins that from Puerto Rico's Center for Investigative Journalism (PR CIJ), which filed a lawsuit in February "after multiple attempts to get the agency to offer information about the deaths that occurred on the island," according to Remezcla. PR CIJ's lawsuit was filed against the director of the Puerto Rico Demographic Registry, and the last court date in late May had yet to provide substantial answers. Puerto Rico Gov. Ricardo Rosselló seemed to suggest a lack of transparency in his own government's handling of the data in an interview with CNN. Rosselló said "there will be hell to pay" if government officials withheld data, but that the assesment from George Washington Univeristy researchers is forthcoming later this summer.<doc-sep>SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico -- A memorial outside of Puerto Rico's capitol building contains more than a thousand pairs of shoes to honor the thousands feared dead as a result of Hurricane Maria.The memorial began Friday as an impromptu display but has since grown rapidly. It comes just days after a Harvard study suggested there could have been as many as 4,645 deaths related to the September 2017 hurricane.The official death toll from the storm is 64. "Now is the time to say goodbye to the relatives. It is the time for sorrow, it is the time to hug each other, it's the time to really say goodbye in honor and in dignity. This is a sacred place right now," organizer Gloribel Delgado said.Several mourners arrived at the memorial with signs; one visitor's sign said her father was among the dead, while another woman held a sign with the word "genocide" in Spanish.Puerto Rico's Institute of Statistics said it has sued the U.S. territory's health department and demographic registry seeking to obtain data on the number of deaths following Hurricane Maria as a growing number of critics accuse the government of lacking transparency.<doc-sep>If you were to walk up to the capitol building in Puerto Rico this weekend, you might notice hundreds of shoes displayed in rows atop the marble plaza. As noted by NPR, the growing display serves as a memorial to the many people who have died as a result of Hurricane Maria and its aftermath — but who have yet to be included in the official death toll. On May 29, the New England Journal of Medicine published a Harvard-funded study that indicated that at least 4,645 people had died as a result of the hurricane and its destruction — more than 70 times the government's earlier official tally of 64 fatalities. Following that report, Puerto Rico's Department of Health released new data on Friday, June 1, that showed there were at least 1,400 additional deaths compared with this time last year, the Washington Post reports. CNN reports that Gov. Ricardo Rosselló recently announced that he did not stand by the government's previous death toll, but claimed that officials did what they could at the time. "We had established that this number was going to be much, much higher than what we had as an official tally," Rosselló said on Thursday, May 31. "It's not sticking with the number. It was just establishing that the process that we had prior led us to that number, which is what we got from doctors and death certificates." But for the people of Puerto Rico, those missing numbers are crucial. "Perhaps the first way they counted was wrong, but these people have to be counted and they have to be acknowledged," Ani Sanchez told NPR when she donated a pair of her old sneakers to the memorial in San Juan. "Because if you were here and you saw your neighbors die because they couldn't go down the stairs, and old people left behind, we have to let them know that they were not forgotten." Migdalia Dueño agreed, adding: "The governor said he was going to have a transparent government, a government in black and white. What he has is a gray government." Hurricane Maria struck Puerto Rico in September, 2017, leaving the majority of the island without power. According to The Independent, approximately 11,000 people still remain without electricity as of June 1, 2018, and officials say that it could still take another two months before power is fully restored to all residents. The outages caused by Maria are considered the worst blackout in U.S. history, and the storm's impact also destroyed homes and left many more without clean water. And Puerto Rico wasn't the only island affected by the storm; other islands including Barbuda, the US Virgin Islands, and Dominica dealt with damages, power outages, and fatalities. The widespread damage, combined with slow relief efforts, have left many residents feeling like "forgotten people," as Victor Manuel Belen Santiago told CNN, adding: "It's like we don't exist." Let us slide into your DMs. Sign up for the Teen Vogue daily email. Related: Puerto Ricans Are Using #4645 boricuas to Remember Those Lost to Hurricane Maria<doc-sep>
Puerto Rico residents began leaving pairs of shoes outside the island’s Capitol building in San Juan on Friday after learning this week that the death toll from last year’s Hurricane Maria might have been 70 times higher than the official government tally of 64. The shoes, arranged in neat rows, formed an impromptu memorial for the dead as people held protest signs nearby. The island’s government is facing criticism from residents angry at the lack of transparency surrounding the official death toll, which remains murky. Nearly six months after a New York Times report suggested 1,052 deaths may have been linked to the hurricane, a research team led by Harvard University put the figure even higher, at 4,645. Late Friday, the Puerto Rico Department of Health released data that showed a sharp year-over-year increase in fatalities in the months after the hurricane hit. There were at least 1,400 additional deaths from September through the end of December 2017 compared to the same time period in 2016. “The government doesn’t even know how to count the dead,” read one man’s sign, according to NPR. “4,645 dead and my daddy was one,” read another. One woman held a sign simply reading “genocide.” Maria’s devastation was not limited to drownings and debris. The storm knocked out power to nearly the entire island, with repair efforts stretching several months, and it cut off access to clean drinking water for more than half the population. Researchers say many of the deaths resulted from inability to access medical care, particularly affecting those who were elderly or sick. Puerto Rico Gov. Ricardo Rosselló said his government is still awaiting results from a study on the death toll commissioned from George Washington University.