Thousands of Puerto Ricans besiege embatled governor
SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico — In the Spanish colonial fortress that serves as his official residence, Puerto Rico Gov. Ricardo Rossello is under siege.
Motorcyclists, celebrities, horse enthusiasts and hundreds of thousands of ordinary Puerto Ricans have swarmed outside La Fortaleza (The Fort) in Old San Juan this week, demanding Rossello resign over a series of leaked online chats insulting women, political opponents and even victims of Hurricane Maria.
Rossello, the telegenic 40-year-old son of a former governor, has dropped his normally intense rhythm of public appearances and gone into relatively long periods of near-media silence, intensifying questions about his future.
For much of his 2 1/2 years in office, Rossello has given three or four lengthy news conferences a week, comfortably fielding question after question in Spanish and English from the local and international press. And that’s on top of public appearances, one-on-one interviews and televised meetings with visiting politicians and members of his administration.
But since July 11, when Rossello cut short a family vacation in France and returned home to face the first signs of what has become an island-wide movement to oust him, the governor has made four appearances.
New protests began Friday afternoon, with unionized workers organizing a march to La Fortaleza. Horseback riders joined them with a self-declared cavalry march, while hundreds of other people came from around the city and surrounding areas. A string of smaller events was on the agenda across the island over the weekend, followed by what many expected to be a massive protest on Monday.
The chorus calling for Rossello’s resignation was joined Friday by Puerto Rico’s non-voting member of Congress, Jenniffer Gonzalez; U.S. Sen. Rick Scott of Florida; and New York congresswomen Nydia Velazquez and Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez.
Rossello’s secretary of public affairs, Anthony Maceira, told reporters Friday that the governor was working on signing laws and filling posts emptied by the resignations of fellow members of the leaked chat group.
The head of Rossello’s pro-statehood political party said a meeting of its directors had been convened for coming days, although the agenda was not disclosed.
Rossello offered a press conference on July 11 to address the arrest of two of his former department heads on corruption charges. He also asked the people of Puerto Rico to forgive him for a profanity-laced and at times misogynistic online chat with nine other male members of his administration, short selections of which had leaked to local media. Two days later, at least 889 pages of the chat were published by Puerto Rico’s Center for Investigative Journalism, and things got much, much worse for Rossello.
In the chats on the encrypted messaging app Telegram, Rossello calls one New York female politician of Puerto Rican background a “whore,” describes another as a “daughter of a bitch” and makes fun of an obese man he posed with in a photo. The chat also contains vulgar references to Puerto Rican star Ricky Martin’s homosexuality and a series of emojis of a raised middle finger directed at a federal control board overseeing the island’s finances.
Until now, Rossello’s greatest challenge was Hurricane Maria, a Category 4 storm that struck the Puerto Rico on Sept. 20, 2017, destroying the island’s power and communications systems. Rossello came under heavy criticism for mismanaging the crisis, particularly for understating the deaths from the storm. While some of his deputies were vilified, Rossello seemed to emerge relatively unscathed, perhaps due to his friendly and non-confrontational manner with critics, opponents and journalists alike.