Over the past three years, hundreds of schools have closed across Puerto Rico. Their ruins are among the most visible evidence of the island’s vicious circle of poor governance, neglect by Washington and environmental catastrophe.

During the blazing summer of 2019, Puerto Rico was in tumult. Thousands of the islands’ residents marched shoulder to shoulder through cities. They sang, danced and demanded the ouster of the commonwealth’s negligent governor, Ricardo Rosselló — and, with him, the federal control board that holds economic power over the United States’ oldest remaining colony in the Americas.

The crowd’s ire was fueled in part by a sense of absence. Away from the echoing drums, down forgotten streets and across green mountains, the islands are emptying. Decades of abuse, austerity, corruption and now the ravages of climate change have triggered an exodus of people and money. As the summer wet season gives way to the wary hurricane watch of an ever-warmer fall, no evidence of this decline is more powerful than the islands’ hundreds of abandoned schools.

The photographer Diana Zeyneb Alhindawi and I spent weeks touring these monuments to neglect. Books and blackboards rotted in the humidity. Stray dogs made their beds beneath teachers’ desks. Some of the buildings had been left to addicts and thieves. In others, neighbors had refashioned empty classrooms into stables for horses, rabbits and pigs. Even in schools that remain in use, mold creeps, roofs are torn and gymnasiums sag like wet shoe boxes. Landslide-prone slopes loom, unrestrained, behind buildings filled with students.

Most of the damage is the result of the catastrophic 2017 hurricane season, when Hurricanes Irma and Maria blasted through, wrecking homes and destroying the islands’ archaic electrical grid. The Trump administration’s dismissive federal response to the storm — punctuated by the hiring of Whitefish Energy, a small and inexperienced Montana-based contractor with ties to the administration, to oversee reconstruction of the electrical grid — helped leave Puerto Rico in the dark for months. The lag compounded the economic damage and contributed to the deaths of anywhere from 2,650 to 3,290 people.

I asked a teacher at one partially destroyed school in the central mountains if she felt abandoned by the government. “Well, look at this roof,” she replied. Another elementary school we saw, in the western city Mayagüez, had reopened a formerly vacant wing to take in students from nearby shuttered schools. On the second day we visited, the school was closed. It was a clear, sunny day, a year and a half after the hurricanes, but the neighborhood was in yet another post-storm blackout.

Carlos Conde Marín School Location: Carolina Carlos Conde Marín was closed at the end of the 2016-17 school year despite protests from the community. As with many schools closed during the tenure of the former education secretary of Puerto Rico, Julia Keleher, the shuttering was sudden and swift. School materials were left to the elements, stray animals or anyone passing by. The school is seen here in May 2019, after the building was vandalized and also heavily damaged in Hurricane Maria. Gym buildings (directly above) were hit particularly hard because of their lightweight walls and roofs. Diana Zeyneb Alhindawi for The New York Times

The hurricanes weren’t the beginning of the story, though. The disasters compounded a social and economic calamity that has been brewing for over a century. It arguably began in 1898, when United States forces invaded Puerto Rico, then a colony of Spain, during the Spanish-American War. Before the war, Spain had grudgingly granted Puerto Rico limited home rule, an attempt to forestall an independence movement. But with the advent of American rule, Puerto Rico fell deeper into colonial status. The islands’ people could not elect their own governor until 1947. They still cannot vote for president and have no voting representation in Congress.

Puerto Rico’s economy grew for decades, thanks to a series of tax breaks for companies from the mainland. Washington allowed the territorial government to borrow money by issuing tax-exempt municipal bonds and repay them with the rising revenues. When the last of those tax breaks ended in 2006, the economy stalled, leaving its government overleveraged and with few options. The commonwealth’s leaders began issuing riskier bonds that may have circumvented constitutional protections. Major lenders including UBS, Citigroup, Goldman Sachs, JP Morgan and Santander have since been sued multiple times — some have settled — for underwriting them. In 2015, with $120 billion in bond obligations and unfunded pensions, the governor was forced to declare that Puerto Rico would stop making many debt payments.

Under an agreement signed by President Obama, Puerto Rico gained protection from lawsuits filed by creditors seeking repayment. In exchange, its economy fell under the control of a seven-member Financial Oversight and Management Board with offices in New York and San Juan. Puerto Rico’s debt was not forgiven, and the financial oversight board implemented a strict austerity regime, which has grown steadily more draconian.

Ramón Valle Seda Elementary School Location: Mayagüez After Ramón Valle Seda Elementary School, near downtown Mayagüez, was closed in 2016, neighbors began using it as a stable and an animal sanctuary. Police and education-department officials have tried repeatedly to kick out the animals. But the parents and children using the building want official permission, saying that will keep it from turning into a drug haven like the closed school across the street. This horse was taking a break from the sun in May 2019. Its name means ‘‘hurricane’’ in Spanish. Diana Zeyneb Alhindawi for The New York Times Theodore Roosevelt School Location: Mayagüez The Theodore Roosevelt School opened in 1900, two years after Puerto Rico was occupied by the United States, as the first U.S.-style high school in the western city Mayagüez. The school was renamed on the occasion of a visit by Roosevelt, who played a leading role in annexing the islands during the 1898 war with Spain. It later became an elementary school. It was ordered closed in 2018 and converted into a depot for books and equipment from other shuttered schools in the area. Diana Zeyneb Alhindawi for The New York Times Don Ignacio Dicupe González Elementary School Location: Lares Nature is reclaiming the classrooms at Ignacio Dicupe González Elementary School in Lares, in the mountains of western Puerto Rico, seen here in April 2019. Lares is known as the cradle of Puerto Rican independence for its role in an 1868 uprising against Spain and still proudly flies the revolutionary flag. But it has lost nearly a quarter of its population in the last decade, one of the highest percentages of any municipality. The school, which closed right before the hurricanes, sits in an almost monastic silence; the only sounds the songs of birds in a red flamboyant tree in the courtyard and the occasional blast of reggaeton from a passing car. Diana Zeyneb Alhindawi for The New York Times

As conditions worsened, the trickle of people leaving for the mainland turned into a flood. Between 2009 and 2017, the population declined 12 percent, from 3.9 million to 3.4 million, according to the Center for Puerto Rican Studies at Hunter College. The “Great Depression of Puerto Rico” had begun, José Caraballo-Cueto, an economist and associate professor at the University of Puerto Rico-Cayey, told me. “We have to acknowledge that the stock of human capital is decreasing,” he said.

Puerto Rico’s public-school closures since September 2017. Student enrollment and teacher employment, 2006-2018.

The exodus of money and people, including children, placed immediate pressure on Puerto Rico’s schools. Soon after taking office in 2017, Rosselló brought Julia Keleher, the founder of a small Washington education consultancy, to take over the fragile school system. Keleher, who is from the Philadelphia area, had a reputation as an expert at winning government grants. Indeed, her firm had recently obtained a $231,000 contract with the department she was about to head.

Keleher quickly embarked on a two-pronged mission to overhaul the school system. She pushed for the creation of semi-privatized charter schools and private-school vouchers. At the same time, she shut down hundreds of still-functioning public schools. Defending her actions, she later said: “Somebody had to be the responsible adult in the room.” Keleher, who is white, also likened the fury she received from Puerto Rican parents and the islands’ well-organized teachers’ union to the experience of being a racial minority.

Ramón Torres Rivera Elementary and Middle School Location: Morovis As in many schools across the country, the teachers at Ramón Torres Rivera Elementary and Middle School often have to buy their own classroom materials. Several classrooms remain in ruins after Hurricane Maria hit two years ago; one building (above, left) is missing its roof. Department of Education officials say storm damage like this will be repaired when funds from the Federal Emergency Management Agency become available. If this school is shut down, teachers say, children will have to go even farther on a bus across dangerous mountain roads, crossing rivers prone to flooding. Some already get up at 5 a.m. to make the journey to school. Below, inside the building with the missing roof. Diana Zeyneb Alhindawi for The New York Times

At the end of the 2016-17 school year, Keleher ordered 183 schools shuttered, according to the Asociación de Maestros de Puerto Rico, the territory’s teachers’ union and Keleher’s most implacable foe. The hurricanes hit soon after. As homes flooded, food spoiled and the islands plunged into darkness, millions more faced a decision: stay or go.

A few weeks after the storm in 2017, I sat in a powerless, partially flooded living room two miles in from the coast in Toa Baja with a woman named Idania Torres. She had decided to leave the house where she was born, and the community she loved, to move to North Carolina. “I have two school-age children, and right now there is no set date for classes to begin,” she told me through tears. “My priority is that my children do not miss a year of school. My priority is to give my children a better quality of life. So right now, though I love my homeland, this quality of life that I want for my kids, I can’t give them that here.”

An estimated 160,000 more Puerto Ricans — another 5 percent of the population — have left since the storm. Keleher took the opportunity to further shrink the school system: Of the roughly 1,100 public schools left in Puerto Rico at the time of the storms, more than 250 simply didn’t open again. Most of those abandoned were elementary or middle schools. Some children who remained have since been forced to travel longer distances to attend classes, sometimes on dangerous mountain roads.

Manuel A. Barreto School Location: Mayagüez School is in session but the lights are out at the Manuel A. Barreto School in March 2019. Blackouts were still common a year and a half after the storms. Children from other shuttered schools in the area, including Theodore Roosevelt, have been funneled into this school. This little girl (above) was waiting for her parents to pick her up after her teacher did not show up. Other students and teachers went ahead and conducted class in the heat and dark (below). Diana Zeyneb Alhindawi for The New York Times

The territorial education department was promised $589 million in federal aid to reopen damaged schools, but as of March had received only 4 percent of the money; the rest expires at the end of April 2020. A United States Department of Education inspector general found that Keleher’s department lacked effective controls to prevent “fraud, waste and abuse.” Backlash from parents and the teachers’ union finally forced Keleher to resign in April. Three months later, she was arrested by the F.B.I. in Washington and charged with conspiring to steer contracts to associates at another consulting firm. She pleaded not guilty; the case is proceeding.

Fury over Keleher’s alleged corruption, and the gutted system she left behind, helped fuel the protest movement that brought down Rosselló in August. It could remake the islands’ relationship with the rest of the country.

Though it sits on the nation’s periphery, with a unique history and culture, Puerto Rico is in many ways a representative case of America in the 21st century. Look past the tropical climate and language, and you will see a landscape of fast-food restaurants, Interstate-style highways and emptying strip malls that resembles nothing so much as the Upper Midwest. There, too, jobs have vanished because of predatory policies that favored the flow of money over people’s lives, with no accountability to show for it. In Fajardo, as in Flint, for many the only way up is out.

But for all those leaving, far more are being left behind; for every empty classroom, there are children left disadvantaged, families stranded and teachers and staff pushed aside. These images represent what has been lost and what more could be lost with them, but also what — as the protest movement in the streets represents — could still be gained. They are a prelude to a story that has not been written yet. Schools are always about the future.

Luis Muñoz Marín High School Location: Barranquitas When a landslide partially engulfed Luis Muñoz Marín High School during the hurricanes in 2017, teachers initially had to dig out their classrooms themselves. The government finally assisted with a cleanup, and teachers said officials promised to build a concrete wall to protect the school from future landslides. Nearly two years later, there was still no wall — and the danger of a landslide still looms (above, left). Diana Zeyneb Alhindawi for The New York Times Padre Rufo Fernández Middle School Location: Bayamón This classroom at Padre Rufo Fernández Middle School in Bayamón was used as a set for a music video by Xander El Imaginario, a local reggaeton artist. The song’s name, “Enferma” (“Sick”), is written on the blackboard. Diana Zeyneb Alhindawi for The New York Times

Diana Zeyneb Alhindawi is a Romanian-Iraqi photographer based in Brooklyn. She documents conflicts and social issues around the world, with a particular focus on Central and East Africa and more recently the Americas. She is currently working on a book about Puerto Rico. Jonathan M. Katz is a New America fellow and author of “The Big Truck That Went By: How the World Came to Save Haiti and Left Behind a Disaster.” His next book is on Smedley Butler and the Marines who helped create America’s empire.

Additional design and development by Danny DeBelius.