This is the point where I should say I am friends with Mr. Conzo, who belongs to a group of Puerto Rican photographers who came of age when the Bronx was burning. In some ways, his mother helped us form the group, because she safeguarded her son’s photos of activism, hip-hop and salsa when drug use had sidelined him. She had a similar devotion to thousands of struggling Bronx residents who were helped by United Bronx Parents, the social service agency she helped found with her mother, Evelina Antonetty, in the mid-1960s.

The agency — which provided educational services to children and families, supportive housing that allowed mothers in recovery to live with their children, as well as services to older people — emerged when New York City had little interest and even less money to tackle the blight that devastated the South Bronx.

Her death comes at another time of crisis and abandonment after the storm flattened the island, reducing trees to skeletal piles of timber, leaving large parts of Puerto Rico still without electricity or enough food and potable water. Even more alarming are reports that the death toll is much higher than authorities have admitted.

Despite the humanitarian crisis affecting the island’s 3.5 million American citizens, Mr. Trump has shown little empathy. The few tweets he has devoted to Puerto Rico — when he was not busy criticizing football players or NBC — have enraged people, most recently when he blamed the island for its infrastructure problems and suggested that he may withdraw relief workers there. And though the island faces a crippling debt crisis, the White House has offered only $5 billion — in loans — to help with short-term needs.

Those who knew Ms. Montenegro are sure of two things: that she would have spoken out loudly against the inadequate relief efforts and that she would have given of her own time, talent and (modest) treasure to ease the suffering of her people. It was in her DNA, since she comes from a family of activist women who made their mark in education, the arts and literacy. She — and they — did so despite indifference from officials and, at times, resentment from the men who ruled the Bronx’s political scene.