Protests in Puerto Rico
Puerto Ricans are outraged, saying they’re fed up with Washington and want their governor to resign.
SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico — Karla Villalon has three elementary-age children and an 81-year-old grandmother.
Her kids have been uprooted twice in two years when first one school, then another, was closed by budget cuts under Gov. Ricardo Rossello. Her grandmother, a retired teacher, is anguished over the possibility of losing her pension in future rounds of cutbacks.
Villalon was outraged when Rossello’s former education secretary was arrested and accused of steering millions in improper contracts to politically connected contractors. Then hundreds of pages of online chats between Rossello and members of his administration leaked, revealing the men mocking women, the handicapped and victims of Hurricane Maria.
Villalon has had enough.
“It’s the final straw,” the 31-yearold homemaker said as she prepared to march with thousands of other Puerto Ricans from the capital to the governor’s residence Wednesday afternoon. “My kids’ classrooms have mold in them. There’s just so much outrage that’s been building over time.”
That feeling was rippling across Puerto Rico Wednesday — the feeling of a people fed up with neglect from Washington and the U.S. territory’s own government.
The island is mired in crises. It is struggling to emerge from a debt-driven financial failure and receive federal funding to help recovery from Hurricane Maria. The September 2017 storm left thousands dead in its wake due to the collapse of the island’s electrical system and a monthslong failure to provide care to the elderly and medically vulnerable. Since then, hundreds of schools have been closed to save money, and a wide range of social services and pensions are being cut back or are under threat.
“Puerto Rico has suffered so much and we can’t deal with the cynicism of these leaders anymore,” singer Ricky Martin said in a video message posted online. “Enough already. Enough already.”
Martin said he was flying to Puerto Rico to march along with other Latin music stars from the island, including singer/producer Benito A. Martinez Ocasio, known as Bad Bunny, and rapper Rene Perez, known as Residente, who released a song online Wednesday morning calling people to the streets.
“This is coming out early so you can eat it for breakfast,” Residente raps on the song, “Sharpening the Knives.” “Fury is the only political party that unites us.”
In comments to The Associated Press shortly before the protest was to start, he said, “The anger is so great that for the first time I’m seeing Puerto Rico rise up and take to the streets.”
In colonial Old San Juan, police were erecting concrete barricades and shop owners were covering store windows with metal sheeting or plywood as if a hurricane were coming. The multicolored umbrellas that form a photogenic awning over the street in front of the governor’s mansion were taken down.
The scandal erupted as Rossello’s former secretary of education and five other people were arrested on charges of steering federal money to unqualified, politically connected contractors. Starting Thursday, an anonymous person or people with access to the chats leaked dozens of pages of them to two local outlets. On Saturday, Puerto Rico’s Center for Investigative Journalism published 889 pages.
Nicole Howard Arroyo, a 36-year-old store manager, said the chats revealed “a total lack of political and social ethics on the part of a leader.”
“I think the chat has taken off the reins, it’s something bigger, across the island,” she said. “People are waking up.”