Puerto Rico’s governor, Ricardo Rosselló, resigned on Wednesday night, after a profane group chat between Roselló and his top aides was leaked to the press, launching a crisis that left the island’s politics in a state of suspension. The group’s members joked about the deaths of more than three thousand Puerto Ricans in Hurricane Maria, in the fall of 2017 (“Don’t we have some cadavers to feed our crows?”), made misogynistic and homophobic remarks, and insulted their political adversaries. In recent days, two members of Roselló’s government also announced their resignations, and the F.B.I. arrested two former cabinet officials for corruption; right now, Wanda Vázquez, the Secretary of Justice, is his most likely replacement.
The scandal is a recent one, but the roots of discontent go back much longer. Puerto Ricans have long chafed at the island’s poor governance and commonwealth status. Their concerns, though, became acute during the debt crisis of 2016, which led former President Barack Obama to appoint a federal board to oversee Puerto Rico’s finances, and after Hurricane Maria, which was catastrophically mismanaged by the Trump Administration. The combination of a decade-long recession, an enormous debt burden, austerity measures imposed by the federal board, and an American President with contempt for the island has prompted many Puerto Ricans to contend that they are neither free to govern their own affairs nor granted the respect and dignity of other Americans.
Rosselló’s decision to step down was met with widespread jubilation. But where does Puerto Rico go from here? To talk about this question, I spoke by phone with Yarimar Bonilla, a professor of Puerto Rican studies and anthropology at Hunter College and the Graduate Center of the City University of New York. She is in Puerto Rico conducting research on the hurricane-recovery effort, and has recently been interviewing protesters. During our conversation, which has been edited for length and clarity, we also discussed what has changed in Puerto Rican attitudes during the past several years, the ideological component of the protests, and why the question of sovereignty has been temporarily sidelined.
How much do you view this resignation as a direct result of the chat group leaking, and how much was this about long-festering anger, to the degree that the two can be separated?
I think the chat was the catalyst, and I think, within the content of the chat, a big part of it was corruption, but I think a big part of it was also mocking the dead of [Hurricane] Maria. It is visible in the placards and signs everyone is carrying. The fact that they mocked the dead was really something people could not tolerate after what they had gone through after Maria.
How much was Rosselló a symbol of a discredited élite? Was it important that his father was the governor, too?
I think so, because he represented a political dynasty and old-school politics, in a way, and those who have held onto power. It is important to note that this is a movement led very much by young people, and, for them, he represents the kind of voting processes that their parents engaged in. And for a long time people here have been saying, “We need to vote differently, we need to vote intelligently.” A lot of the young people that I am talking to say they are not going to vote the way their parents or grandparents did. They also want to get rid of the political class in general, and the political-party system.
To what degree have these protests had an ideological character, beyond a rebellion against the system?
I wouldn’t use the word “ideological” here, because, when people talk about political ideology here, they’re referring to Puerto Rico’s status—to wanting to be independent or being pro-statehood or pro-commonwealth. But, in terms of Roselló’s policies, the neoliberal austerity regime that he was implementing—of closing down schools, of shrinking the government—has definitely been central in people’s minds. There were over four hundred schools closed in Puerto Rico since Roselló started, and he had brought in the secretary of education, who came from Philadelphia. [Julia Keleher, Puerto Rico’s former Secretary of Education, resigned from her post in April and was arrested by the F.B.I. this week on a host of charges, including conspiracy and money laundering.]
In the past few years, you’ve had the federal oversight board, and you’ve had Hurricane Maria and the federal government’s response to the latter. In that time, have opinions on statehood changed?
A lot of the young people that I talk to feel that the imposition of the oversight board, the denial of the ability for Puerto Rico to declare bankruptcy, and Trump’s reaction to Maria have made the colonial status of Puerto Rico so clear. It’s been completely unveiled. Today, July 25th, is Constitution Day, when the commonwealth was established, in 1952, and, when that happened, we were promised that we were not a colony, that we had some kind of free association with the United States and a certain level of sovereignty. And so, in 2016, with everything that happened around the debt, which was under Obama, it became clear to everyone here that we were a colony.
And a lot of the young people that I talked to, they tell us the United States wants to keep us as a colony. They’ve told us since the debt that that’s what we are and that that’s not going to change. So we don’t want these political parties that distract us from what’s going on now. And they’re involved in corruption. They’re involved in their own personal gain while we’re voting for them and waiting for them to bring about this political change to the U.S. So I think the young people here are saying, “Let’s set aside the question of sovereignty, and let’s focus on the schools; let’s focus on health; let’s focus on a plan for Puerto Rico.” And I don’t think it’s because they don’t want sovereignty. It’s because they don’t see the U.S being willing to change the relationship that they have here. And so they want to tackle what’s going on right now and here.
Did the past three years strike you as a particular hinge in Puerto Rican history and its relationship to the mainland? Or are they consistent with the story that’s been going on since the nineteen-fifties?
I think what’s happened is the United States became much more open and overt about the relationship it wants to have to Puerto Rico. Before that, the U.S. would kind of cover up and euphemistically talk about the relationship to Puerto Rico, but, since the debt crisis, it’s been very overt about the limits of Puerto Rican power and local sovereignty. And then here, in Puerto Rico, there was also a shift that some people were describing as the death of the commonwealth, or the commonwealth status. Others were using the slogan “The end of the promises.” “Promise” referred to the name of the law [PROMESA, the Puerto Rico Oversight, Management, and Economic Stability Act] that the United States passed about Puerto Rican oversight that implemented the fiscal board, et cetera. But I think that idea of the end of the promises was also the end of that decolonizing promise that the United States had made in the fifties, where it had said, “This is the end of colonialism. You are now a commonwealth.”
And when that was established, Luis Muñoz Marín, [the first governor of Puerto Rico, after it became an American territory] saw it as a temporary status. He said, “This is about us getting on our feet and becoming financially stable enough to either become a state or become an independent nation.” The commonwealth status was never supposed to be a permanent relationship of continued colonialism. But that’s what it became. And so this is a turning point, and we don’t know what’s going to come next, but we know absolutely, without a doubt, that this is a historical moment, and that nothing’s going to be the same after this, in terms of politics and also in terms of how people here imagine their political capacity.
The other really important thing to remember here is that, given the history of colonialism, there has long been incredible repression against political movements here.
By the federal government or by the government of Puerto Rico?
Both. There was COINTELPRO [an F.B.I. surveillance project that targeted supporters of Puerto Rico’s independence movement], and then there were carpetas, local files that the government kept on anyone who was involved in any kind of nationalist movement. I’ve seen these. They’re incredible. There’s a photographer, Chris Gregory, who has been doing a visual project around them, where you see how they take note of anyone who even just goes to a public plaza to listen to a pro-independence politician speak. They would have a file against them. Some people have these huge files.
So, for a long time, a lot of people have been scared to protest, scared to show up at a rally, because they might be targeted for repression, and that could lead to losing a job, that could lead to the police coming after you, and there were also political activists who were killed through bombings and other efforts. Today is Constitution Day, but it also marks the anniversary of the U.S. invasion of Puerto Rico, in 1898, and it also marks the anniversary of cerro maravilla, the day, in 1978, when two independence activists were killed, and it was later found out that government agents pushed for that to happen.
We’ve seen here on the mainland in the last few years that anti-establishment politics or anti-élite politics can take on very unsavory forms. Is there any sense of that in this movement in Puerto Rico that you have concerns about?
I’m not worried about what you’re referring to, in part because this movement has been led by women. It’s very much been a movement against gender violence. It’s important to say that the group Colectiva Feminista en Construcción was protesting in front of the governor’s mansion long before the chats came out.
The governor was so inclusive about everyone that he insulted, even the overweight, that I don’t feel the fear that this will turn into a racist movement or anything like that, because, if anything, it’s totally combined with the movement for inclusivity, for L.G.B.T.Q. rights. Our anti-institution movement is also a movement against discrimination, against hate and lack of respect for the dead. It’s very different.
A lot of people are talking about how this is a movement against corruption and for democracy, but it’s important to ask, what are the stakes of that movement occurring in a colonial context? And so my fear is that this might be used to further entrench imperial rule here. There was a very disturbing editorial in the Washington Post that said, “O.K., since people have been protesting their governor, that means we should give more power to the oversight board.” Which is completely contrary to what people here are asking for. It’s true that people are saying we need more accountability, but that might look more like citizen oversight, not more colonial imposition.
Is there some place that you feel like the protests should go or are likely to go?
I have been amazed how this has just energized everyone, and you might think that people will say, “O.K., well we got rid of the governor. Great, let’s go back to business as usual.” But now people want to target exactly the politicians that are taking over the governorship. They also want to target the fiscal board. They’re also very concerned about auditing the debt that the current governor did not want to audit, nor did the fiscal board want to audit. People here want to keep cleaning house. They’ve become empowered, and now they want to take on everything that has been swept under the rug.
Is there a leader or a party that will you think become a vehicle for the protests?
I don’t see that. And I don’t know if that’s good or bad. Some of the young people I talked to weren’t able to vote in the last election. I asked them, “Well, who do you want to vote for? What do you want to see?” And part of their concern is that they don’t see anyone in the current political spectrum that they want to back. I know a lot of people in the U.S., they see the mayor of San Juan as this kind of foil to the governor. But she has not been present in this movement in a significant way. And that’s a good thing, because people here did not want any politicians to try to make this about specific political parties or political agendas.
This is Carmen Yulín Cruz, who sparred with Trump too, right?
Yes, yes. She’s very popular in the United States. And she did a good job of expressing the anger that we felt here at a particular moment in time. But she’s part of the status quo.
There is obviously a huge Puerto Rican community on the mainland. What has been their general reaction to this uprising? And, more specifically, how do the politics tend to differ, if they do, between Puerto Ricans in the continental United States and on the island?
This movement had all these echoes of Hurricane Maria for those who lived through it here, and also for the diaspora. Just like during Hurricane Maria, the diaspora was glued to social media and trying to live this moment with us. And they did, and they activated similarly in this moment: there were protests all over the United States in the expected places of New York and Florida, but also in Alaska, and anywhere there were a handful of Puerto Ricans.
So I think that it’s important to include them in this movement, because this is as much a movement about those who have been exiled and unable to live here because of the problems of governance here. There are tensions between island-based Puerto Ricans and those who are in the diaspora, but I think that might be part of what this new political moment allows, is to figure out how to come together as a spread-out nation and people to envision a new political future.
