Puerto Ricans look to the future
SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico — Puerto Rico’s streets have remained so quiet since Wanda Vázquez took over as governor following weeks of turmoil that one can again hear the island’s famous coquí frog singing at night.
The protests that led to the resignation of Gov. Ricardo Rosselló on Aug. 2 and continued on a smaller scale until the Supreme Court removed his chosen successor have dissipated. Also gone are the sounds of cow bells and whistles, as well as the angry graffiti that covered streets in the colonial district of Puerto Rico’s capital that was ground zero for the demonstrations.
“Many people rose up, and after they accomplished what they did, they’re asking, ‘Now what?’” said Mario Negrón Portillo, retired head of the school of public administration at the University of Puerto Rico. “In the next few weeks, we’ll really see if that sense of consciousness that was generated ... is sustained and how it will be sustained.”
A protest was scheduled for early Friday evening in front of the governor’s mansion, though Vázquez has said she would not live there, preferring to stay in her own house. Such conciliatory statements — and her earlier insistence that she was not interested in becoming governor — have led many Puerto Ricans to go into wait-and-see mode, activists say.
Some of those protesting politics as usual are also more worried about the alternative. Leaders of the pro-statehood New Progressive Party have suggested replacing Vázquez with Puerto Rico’s congressional representative Jenniffer González, a heavyweight in the PNP as well as being head of the territory’s Republican Party.
González said on Thursday that she was available for the governorship if Vázquez decides to step down, even as Vázquez said she would not do so.
“There’s somewhat of a hiatus in the fight because there is still speculation whether Wanda Vázquez is passing through as governor or actually plans to finish the term (which ends next year),” said Ricardo Santos Ortiz, spokesman of the Socialist Workers’ Movement, which helped organize some of the demonstrations. “As that becomes more defined, people will be reacting in the streets.”
Ortiz planned to join Friday’s protest and said more demonstrations could materialize in upcoming days.
Rosselló and more than a dozen other officials resigned following anger over corruption, mismanagement of funds and the leak of an obscenity-laced chat in which they mocked women, gay people and victims of Hurricane Maria, among others.