6 | MONDAY, JULY 29, 2019 THE NEW YORK TIMES INTERNATIONAL EDITION
world
The uprising that toppled Puerto Rico’s
leaders might be traced to a day earlier
this month, when the governor, Ricardo
A. Rosselló, was not even on the island.
He was on vacation in Europe, curating
his Instagram feed with smiling pictures
of him and his wife savoring Paris.
The political legacy that he and his fa-
ther — a former governor — had built
began to show the first signs of crum-
bling a few days into the trip, when two
top former members of his administra-
tion were indicted on federal corruption
charges. A day later, several nasty text
messages that he and his close circle of
powerful friends had written — one call-
ing a prominent female politician a
“whore” — were leaked. Mr. Rosselló
frantically cut his vacation short, hop-
ping off a cruise ship at a port of call and
onto three different planes, leaving his
family behind.
The Colectiva Feminista en Construc-
ción, a women’s group that had long
been at odds with the governor, had al-
ready sprung into action. When Mr.
Rosselló walked off a plane on July 11,
looking bleary-eyed and distracted, he
found nearly 100 people brought in by
the feminist collective and other activist
groups, waving protest signs and de-
manding that he step down.
“We went to the airport so that he
would see the country that he was com-
ing back to,” said Shariana Ferrer, one of
the organizers. “This wasn’t just about
words. This wasn’t because they called
us whores. This was a governor who
abused his power.”
In an extraordinary turn of events,
some of the same people who had been
privately denigrated by Mr. Rosselló
and his confidants — journalists, femi-
nists, musical performers and L.G.B.T.
organizers — turned the tables on the
governor. With anger already festering
over the territory’s weak economy, graft
scandals and a callous response to Hur-
ricane Maria, the small demonstration
at the airport turned into a series of
mass street protests that toppled his
government in just two weeks.
Mr. Rosselló, a 40-year-old M.I.T.-edu-
cated engineer and scion of a political
dynasty, announced on Wednesday that
he would step down — left virtually
alone after the departure of many of his
top aides and officials. “My mandate is
over, and the most I wish for is peace and
progress for our people,” he said.
His dramatic ouster, and the furious
rejection of the corruption that Puerto
Ricans perceive as deeply rooted in
their government, shook the island to its
core and challenged a long-entrenched
political system. All the more remark-
able was that the people who made it
happen came from outside the establish-
ment that until now comfortably ruled
this island of 3.2 million.
“Nobody can claim credit for this mo-
ment, because there are no leaders in
this movement. This is an organic move-
ment,” Ms. Ferrer, of the Colectiva Femi-
nista, said this week. “But it’s not spon-
taneous. This is the culmination of years
of grass-roots work, community work,
and social political organizations.”A CRISIS DEVELOPS
In many ways, the turbulent events that
caused the governor to resign had their
beginnings in late June. That is when
Raúl Maldonado Gautier, the secretary
of the Treasury and a former chief ofstaff to the governor, told a radio inter-
viewer that there was an “institutional
mafia” operating a profit-making busi-
ness in his department. Some of them
had threatened him and tried to extort
him, he said.
He was fired. “We cannot allow people
in the government who are not loyal to
the governor or the central administra-
tion,” Erik Rolón, Mr. Rosselló’s deputy
chief of staff, told reporters.
Mr. Maldonado’s son, Raúl Maldon-
ado Nieves, took to Facebook to de-
nounce Mr. Rosselló as “corrupt.” In
short order, the police showed up at his
house, purportedly to investigate
whether he had the proper permits for a
cache of firearms he owns, and his law-
yer declared that a political war was un-
derway.Evidence of the kind of corruption Mr.
Maldonado Gautier was talking about
became shockingly apparent on July 10,
when the federal Justice Department
unveiled a wide-ranging indictment ac-
cusing the former education secretary
and the former executive director of the
Puerto Rico Health Insurance Adminis-
tration of unlawfully steering about
$15.5 million in federal contracts to polit-
ically connected consultants.
The same week, Sandra Rodríguez
Cotto, a local blogger, was releasing
some of the first eye-opening messages
from the chat group the governor had
shared with 11 top-ranking officials,
friends and lobbyists on the Telegram
messaging app. Even the few messages
initially released showed that the
smooth, polished image that the gover-nor displayed in public disappeared
when he was among friends; he and his
associates talked in private with open
contempt about those around them.
Ms. Rodríguez Cotto herself did not
escape their commentary. “They
mocked me for being a woman, for being
black, for being fat,” she said.
The governor, after hurrying home
from vacation, apologized for the leaked
texts immediately. “Yes, I use bad lan-
guage, I send memes, I send sarcastic
things,” he told journalists. “I’m not
proud of that and when these things
happen I start by saying that I apolo-
gize.”
But people already had begun to
gather on the streets.
The next day, the governor holed up in
La Fortaleza, the opulent 16th-centurypalace that serves as the official gover-
nor’s residence. From early morning
into the night, he held meetings with the
top ranks of his New Progressive Party.
First came state lawmakers. Then may-
ors. Then members of his Cabinet. Then
Representative Jenniffer González-
Colón, Puerto Rico’s nonvoting resident
commissioner in Congress.
Puerto Rico’s Center for Investigative
Journalism, a group of reporters that
had started up 11 years ago with crowd
funding and donations from various
foundations, managed to get a copy of a
full two months of the chat — 889 pages
of it.
The reporters divvied up the pages
and read through the trove. In San
Juan’s blistering heat, the reporters
stayed in their newsroom until 6 p.m.,
when the air conditioning was turned
off. Then they worked in their cars. The
gasoline ran out, so they decamped to a
colleague’s house.
What they found was shocking: Mem-
bers of Mr. Rosselló’s inner circle
boasted about unleashing trolls against
their critics on social media. They ex-
changed one meme after another mim-
icking President Trump, a colossally di-
visive figure in Puerto Rico. The gover-
nor mocked a poverty-stricken woman
who had torn down a photograph of him
in a government office after being de-
nied food stamps. There were texts
about using the government’s advertis-
ing budget to assert control over news-
papers.
“There’s no other way to describe it:
It was an atomic bomb,” Benjamín Tor-
res Gotay, a prominent Puerto Rican
journalist, wrote in El Nuevo Día of the
scoop published by his competitors.
“For the first time, the country could see
the ruling class without their masks on.”
Women’s groups, unions, musical per-
formers and L.G.B.T. organizers began
to muster supporters and flowed into
the streets.On the morning of July 13, the story
about the chats and its accompanying
archive spread like wildfire across the
island and out to the Puerto Rican dias-
pora on the mainland. It was as if hell
had broken loose in Puerto Rico’s poli-
tics.
Luis Rivera Marín, the secretary of
state, a member of the chat group and
next in line to succeed the governor, said
he would step down, calling his resigna-
tion a “moral obligation.” Christian So-
brino, another chat group member and
the governor’s representative to the fed-
eral board overseeing the island’s fi-
nances, also resigned.THE FALL
Despite the turmoil, Mr. Rosselló vowed
to remain in power. That first weekend
back from his vacation, Mr. Rosselló was
alone at La Fortaleza, without his family.
He went to an evangelical church on
Sunday for public contrition — and to
shore up his political base among con-
servatives, who make up a key voting
bloc of his New Progressive Party.
But at the same time, activists on the
streets were digging in, organizing one
protest after another in front of Mr.
Rosselló’s residence. They described
many of the demonstrations as “auto-
convocados,” which translates to “self-
convened.” These events blended the
staging expertise and the expansive
networks that longtime advocates have
cultivated with the raw energy of the
public.
After several clashes between police
officers and protesters, for example,
Nicole Curet, 32, a feminist activist, be-
came interested in hosting an event at
La Fortaleza focused on constitutional
rights. On Monday, July 22, she put out a
call about such an event on Facebook
and people immediately responded, of-
fering to help.
Word of the event also spread through
social media and messaging services
like WhatsApp, where people had been
circulating calendars of the protests,
and activists from other groups offered
to join in.
“One person, I don’t even know his
name, he contacted me and was like, ‘I
have the audio equipment, I just need a
place to plug it.’ Then people from
nearby businesses offered to let us run
an extension cord,” Ms. Curet said. “At
the same time somebody else had a very
similar idea and he posted it on Twitter,
and so we teamed up.”
By Tuesday night, Ms. Curet was
standing outside the governor’s resi-
dence reading the Puerto Rico Constitu-
tion to hundreds of cheering protesters.
Alejandro Santiago Calderón, an
L.G.B.T. advocate and a friend of Ms. Cu-
ret, read a section of the Constitution on
equal rights while holding a large
L.G.B.T. pride flag.
On Tuesday, several key aides, includ-
ing the governor’s chief of staff, quit.
By that afternoon, word began to
emerge from La Fortaleza that Mr.
Rosselló was preparing to announce his
resignation.
Ms. Curet, the activist, said that when
the machinery of protest first kicked
into gear after the leaks, she and many
others had doubts that the anger over
the chat messages would amount to
much beyond a few news cycles. But the
general public, she said, was not only
sympathetic, but eager to join in their
demonstrations.
One after another, people said they
had had enough. Finally, 15 days after
the first texts had surfaced, Mr. Rosselló
had had enough, too.
Near midnight on Wednesday, the
governor appeared in a recorded mes-
sage to announce that he would resign
on Aug. 2. The streets of San Juan
erupted in celebrations.Protests shook the halls of power in Puerto Rico
SAN JUAN, P.R.Simmering frustrations
over graft and other issues
toppled the governorBY SIMON ROMERO,
FRANCES ROBLES,
PATRICIA MAZZEI
AND JOSE A. DEL REALAlejandra Rosa and Edmy Ayala contrib-
uted reporting from San Juan, P.R. Alain
Delaquérière contributed research.Celebrating outside La Fortaleza, the colonial-era palace that serves as the governor’s residence in San Juan, after Gov. Ricardo A. Rosselló announced his resignation.ERIKA P. RODRIGUEZ FOR THE NEW YORK TIMESShariana Ferrer, of the Colectiva Feminista en Construcción, a
women’s group, said the uprising was the result of years of work.VICTOR J. BLUE FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES
Nicole Curet, an activist, organized a live reading of the Puerto
Rico Constitution outside the governor’s residence.VICTOR J. BLUE FOR THE NEW YORK TIMESSix days after Democrats swept to
power in the House, a quartet of newly
elected women of color met in Washing-
ton for the first time. Somebody
snapped a picture, and one of them — Al-
exandria Ocasio-Cortez — posted it on
Instagram with a one-word caption:
“Squad.”
Today, that foursome — Representa-
tives Ocasio-Cortez of New York,
Ayanna S. Pressley of Massachusetts,
Ilhan Omar of Minnesota and Rashida
Tlaib of Michigan — may be Washing-
ton’s best-known political clique. But
their forceful brand of progressive poli-
tics and command of the spotlight ran-
kles some fellow Democrats, including
the most important Democrat in Wash-
ington: Speaker Nancy Pelosi, who on
Friday appeared to make peace with
Ms. Ocasio-Cortez — at least for now.
“In a family, you have your differ-
ences, but you’re still family,” Ms. Pelosi
told reporters after the two met pri-
vately for 30 minutes, at Ms. Ocasio-
Cortez’s request.
She acknowledged “some personalityissues” in the caucus, but called them
“minor.”
Lionized by the liberal left and vilified
by President Trump — who is waging a
relentless campaign to attack them as
anti-American — Ms. Ocasio-Cortez and
the others roared into Washington in
January as part of the most diverse
freshman class in American history and
quickly emerged as a proxy for the de-
bate over the future of the Democratic
Party, exposing its ideological and gen-
erational divisions.
Tensions between the quartet and Ms.
Pelosi erupted into public view this
month in a fight over humanitarian aid
to the border. The women blasted the aid
package as insufficient and voted
against it. Ms. Pelosi dismissed them as
“four people” who “didn’t have any fol-
lowing.” Then Ms. Ocasio-Cortez and
her chief of staff, Saikat Chakrabarti,
took shots at the speaker on Twitter — a
stunning breach of protocol for a young
lawmaker and an unelected aide. Ms.
Omar infuriated many veteran Demo-
crats this year with remarks many
deemed anti-Semitic. Ms. Tlaib gained
notoriety on Day 1 with her off-color
promise to impeach Mr. Trump.
But fences are being mended. Ms.
Omar is joining Ms. Pelosi on an official
trip this week to Ghana. Ms. Tlaib ap-
peared at a fund-raiser with Ms. Pelosi
earlier this month; when the speaker
was in Detroit a week ago, she was
greeted by protesters chanting, “Sup-
port the squad!”They do not always vote the same
way. Ms. Pressley broke with the others
last week to vote for a resolution con-
demning the boycott Israel movement.
Just two of them — Ms. Ocasio-Cortez
and Ms. Tlaib — voted for a two-year
spending package that passed on Thurs-
day. But people close to the women say
they have forged genuine friendships
and a close bond. They communicate
regularly via a private text chain, as do
their chiefs of staff and their communi-
cations directors.
On occasion, their offices plot strat-
egy together and coordinate media ap-
pearances, including a joint news con-
ference earlier this month and an inter-
view with Gayle King of CBS News to
push back against Mr. Trump. All de-
clined interviews for this article.
“What we are, are four women who
have an alignment of values, shared pol-
icy priorities, who have repeatedly hap-
pened to land in the same place on the
issue of immigration,” Ms. Pressley told
Ms. King. “That is it. There is no insur-
gency here. There’s nothing conspirato-
rial.”
Mr. Trump’s attacks — in a tweet this
month he told the women to “go back” to
their home countries, even though only
one of them, Ms. Omar, a Somali refugee,
was born outside the United States —
prompted Democrats to rally around
them. The House voted to condemn the
president’s comments as racist, and
even moderates like Representative
C.A. Dutch Ruppersberger, a centristfrom Maryland who had trouble remem-
bering Ms. Omar’s name, stood behind
them. “I said, ‘Look, you don’t know me;
we’ve only met once or twice,” Mr. Rup-
persberger said, recounting a conversa-
tion with Ms. Omar after Mr. Trump’s
tweet. “But I can tell you this: ‘I’m be-
hind you 100 percent.’”
Still, Mr. Ruppersberger said he and
other moderates were wary of the wom-
en, fearing they would push primarychallengers to run against them. And
while progressives view the four as
some of the most exciting figures in the
Democratic Party, they did not make a
good impression with some of their
more senior colleagues when they
showed up for work in January.
“I think when the new generation
comes in, sometimes they don’t under-
stand what it is to be in the majority,” Mr.
Ruppersberger said.All four landed in Washington as
firsts. Ms. Pressley, 45, a former mem-
ber of the Boston City Council, is the first
black woman to represent Massachu-
setts; Ms. Ocasio-Cortez, 29, a former
bartender and onetime organizer for
Senator Bernie Sanders, is the youngest
woman ever elected to Congress and the
first Latina to represent her district.
Ms. Omar, 36, is a former state legisla-
tor and the first woman to wear a hijab
on the House floor. She and Ms. Tlaib, 43,
a lawyer and former state legislator who
is of Palestinian descent, are the first
two Muslim women in Congress. Both
have been the subject of fierce criticism
for their views on Israel.
The foursome’s one unquestionable
good for the party is fund-raising; Ms.
Ocasio-Cortez, for instance, has already
raised $2 million this cycle. But with Mr.
Trump determined to make the women
the face of the party, some Democrats
say they need to tone it down — or at
least be more careful with their words.
“They have been thrust into the mid-
dle of a debate about the heart and soul
of this country, and that does carry with
it a unique set of responsibilities,” said
Representative Tom Malinowski, a cen-
trist Democrat from New Jersey. “He
has now put them in a very special posi-
tion. It would be my hope that all of us,
wherever we fall on the ideological spec-
trum, will advance our agenda while
embracing in every possible way the pa-
triotism that we share with all of our fel-
low Americans.”Democrats address ‘minor’ tensions in House
WASHINGTONFreshman-class ‘Squad’
irritates some, but party
makes peace for nowBY SHERYL GAY STOLBERGFrom left: Representatives Ayanna S. Pressley, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Ilhan Omar
and Rashida Tlaib, all newly elected Democrats, are commanding the spotlight.ANNA MONEYMAKER/THE NEW YORK TIMESРЕЛИЗ ПОДГОТОВИЛА ГРУППА "What's News" VK.COM/WSNWS
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