State’s Puerto Ricans push for change
Reforms sought beyond seeking governor’s removal from office
For the past two weeks, citizens on the island of Puerto Rico fed up with the leadership of their governor, Ricardo Rosselló, have chanted the same refrain in the face of rain, tear gas, and rubber bullets: “Ricky Renuncia,” or Ricky Resign.
Now, Rosselló could resign, according to El Nuevo Día, the island’s newspaper.
However, it is not certain that protests will end if Rosselló leaves office. Many walking in the streets of Puerto Rico and elsewhere in the nearly 6 million-strong Puerto Rican diaspora in the United States have made it clear that Rosselló is just the first domino in what they hope will be a toppling of a government that they believe has not done its job representing the people of the island.
Here in Florida, there are over 1 million Puerto Ricans. Many of them have taken to the streets of Miami, Palm Beach, Orlando, Ocala, and other counties in recent weeks to chant in solidarity with Puerto Ricans on the island, as well as wield their political power as voting constituents to help influence the island’s political and economic future.
In Miami on Monday, a third protest in as many weeks formed in an empty grass lot near the I-95 expressway in Wynwood.
Nearly 300 people gathered by 8 p.m., creating a sea of Puerto Rican flags. Many brought pots and pans to clang alongside the sounds of salsa streaming from radios. Others brought signs that read “Garage Sale: Ricky Rosselló, for free” or “Somos mas y no temenos miedo,” which translates to “We are more and we are not afraid.”
In between music, the crowd chanted for Gov. Rosselló to resign. At one point, they grew somber and broke into singing a rendition of “En mi viejo San Juan” or, “In my old San Juan” — a song capturing the feeling of nostalgia for one’s motherland.
Tabatha Gonzalez took the lyrics to heart. She was raised in Puerto Rico until she was 10. Today, she lives in Miami.
Gonzalez said the recent protest was the second she has attended in Miami. “I am here just to be supportive,” she said. “Being part of the diaspora, you can do something by supporting the island and coming out to events.”
Like many of the protesters Monday, and those who have attended similar events across the state, and others in cities as far flung as New York, Los Angeles and Barcelona, Gonzalez believes rebuilding the island’s infrastructure, economy and political leadership will be a long process. However, she also believes the process starts with getting rid of the governor.
“It’s clear that a lot of steps need to be taken, but this is one of the biggest ones,” she said.
Many Puerto Ricans have been frustrated with Rosselló since he took office in 2016.
Some will tell you it is because of his lack of political experience aside from being the son of a former governor. Others believe he was incompetent in handling the aftermath of Hurricane Maria, which claimed the lives of nearly 4,000 — the vast majority of whom died in the days and months after the hurricane passed because of a lack of access to food, water and medical care.
But for most, the final straw was the leak of nearly 900 pages of chat messages released on July 13 that jump-started the protests on the island and led to federal indictments for government officials and resignations within Rosselló’s party.
In the chats, Rosselló and other members of his administration insulted women and mocked victims of Hurricane Maria, among other things. For those who followed his administration in the last three years, the messages only revealed corruption and ambivalence that they have long suspected.
“I’m glad the chats came out and exposed their true faces,” said Mariola Rosario, also in attendance at the Wynwood protest.
Rosario left Puerto Rico five years ago, a choice she said she was forced to make because of the lack of jobs on the island due to a debt that was nearing 100 billion dollars even before Hurricane Maria arrived. “I didn’t want to leave,” Rosario said. “But people have been leaving for a long time, and corruption is one of the reasons.”
In the last two decades, Puerto Rico has witnessed thousands of residents flee the island due to a lack of jobs and severe cuts to the university system, among other things.
Since Hurricane Maria, the pace of that exodus has only increased. According to research from University of Central Florida, Puerto Ricans in the state of Florida alone increased in population from less than 500,000 to 1.2 million between 2000 and 2017.
Joseph Martinez II wore a cape made from a Puerto Rican flag at the Miami rally. He said the increase in the number of Puerto Ricans in the United States has the potential to become a force for change for the island moving forward.
“We have the advantage of being able to organize those of us that have been displaced and really have deep conversations about the colonial context we have lived in,” Martinez said.
Martinez’s family is from Puerto Rico and he was born in Wisconsin.
He moved to Miami five years ago and said he had never seen a gathering of Puerto Ricans in the city like the one Monday.
Like others in attendance, he said he was energized by seeing pictures on social media of the nearly 500,000 protesters in Puerto Rico who had taken to the streets earlier that day. At one point Monday, the hashtag #RickyRenuncia was trending worldwide.
Martinez wafted his hand to the rambunctious crowd behind him, saying he had never seen so many Puerto Ricans on and off the island gather for something. “You have a united front,” he said. “We know what we stand for. We just need to figure out how we move forward.”
According to Frances Colón, one of the organizers of a protest that took place in downtown Miami on Sunday, considering the next steps should Rosselló resign will be important for the island.
“What we don’t want is that as a result of all this, the people of Puerto Rico lose more power in what happens to them,” Colón said.
Colón has lived in Miami for two years. For a decade before that, she worked for the State Department in Washington, D.C.
Colón said she worries that the fact that Rosselló has been portrayed as corrupt might give politicians in the United States a free pass to reduce the amount of federal aid promised to help rebuild the island after Hurricane Maria, as well as expand the powers of fiscal oversight currently gripping the island.
Under President Obama, an oversight board of U.S. appointed officials was established to help restructure Puerto Rico’s debt and approve the island’s expenditures. Since then, there have been massive cuts to health care, pensions and education in order to repay debtors.
On Monday in Wynwood, some in the crowd altered the popular refrain to remove Rosselló to address the oversight board. “Ricky renuncia y llevate la junta,” they chanted, which translates to Ricky resign and take the board.
On Tuesday, the oversight board released a statement on the protests saying they represented a “justified crisis of confidence in government institutions.”
They said elected officials on the island must understand that their job is to serve the people, “not insiders, special interests or their own political careers.” The board’s statement affirmed their mission to “ensure fiscal balance that prioritizes critical needs in government,” and said they hoped the situation involving the governor would resolve quickly so that Puerto Rico could “rebuild trust.”
However, Colón believes the resolution of the current crisis involves more than just replacing one governor with another and allowing what she sees as restrictions on the island’s people to continue — or grow stronger. “If even more power is taken from Puerto Ricans to decide their own fate, then that would be a bigger tragedy than we’ve ever had,” she said.