The Daily - The Political Crisis in Puerto Rico

Episode Date: July 19, 2019

Hundreds of leaked text messages revealed the governor of Puerto Rico mocking his own citizens. For many Puerto Ricans, it was the last straw. Guest: Patricia Mazzei, the Miami bureau chief for The New York Times, spoke with us from San Juan, P.R. For more information on today’s episode, visit nytimes.com/thedaily. Background reading: Tens of thousands of people from across Puerto Rican society have united in nearly a week of protests that reveal deep dissatisfaction with how the island is governed.

From The New York Times, I'm Michael Babarro. This is The Daily. Today, hundreds of leaked text messages revealed the governor of Puerto Rico mocking his own citizens. For Puerto Ricans, it was the last straw. For Puerto Ricans, it was the last straw. It's Friday, July 19th. Hi, Patty.

Hello, Michael Barbaro. Hello, hello. How are you? I've been better. How are you? I'm okay. Why have you been better? What's the matter? Oh, I'm just tired. It's been really long nights, but that's okay. You've been staying up late covering the protests. Yes, sir. There's a meme in Puerto Rico of people saying, okay, I'm going to bed. And a friend telling them like, but what if the governor resigns?

And like the person lying in bed with their eyes wide open, like they don't want to miss that moment. And so. Right, right, right. Like the one moment you doze off is the moment it all happens. That's what we live in fear of. I reached Patti Mazzei, a national correspondent for The Times, in San Juan. Patti, for most listeners, I suspect the story of Puerto Rico sort of hits the pause button in October of 2017. Hurricane Maria hits.

The island is thrown into darkness and into chaos. And President Trump's response is seen by many as insensitive and insufficient. Yes, but the story came back in April of this year. When members of Congress were considering a disaster aid bill. Nature's forces have battered the United States in the past half year. Storm winds, floodwaters, and deadly wildfire. To those natural disasters, now add a man-made one. Not just for Puerto Rico, but for a bunch of states on the mainland that had suffered various natural disasters. A dispute between

President Trump and Democrats over hurricane relief for Puerto Rico is threatening disaster relief funding for California's wildfire victims. The president wanted to hold up the bill just because he did not want to send money to Puerto Rico. So this were billions of dollars that would have gone to Florida, Texas, states in the Midwest that were suddenly at this impasse because the president said, I'm not sending more to Puerto Rico. President Trump accused Puerto Rico's leaders of misspending money they had already received. He said the government can't do anything right,

that the place is a mess and nothing works there. Here's part of the tweet. The Pauls are grossly incompetent, spend the money foolishly or corruptly, and only take from the USA. And therefore he did not trust Puerto Rican leaders to manage new funds well. The best thing that ever happened to Puerto Rico, the tweet says, is President Donald J. Trump. And what's the response in Puerto Rico this time?

So Puerto Ricans still don't like being called out by the president. They find that offensive. But that doesn't mean that some of them at least don't agree with some of the substance of his criticism, which is that the leaders on the island haven't always been very good fiscal stewards of public funds. always been very good fiscal stewards of public funds. Puerto Rico has suffered financial troubles for years and has had corruption scandals for decades. And so people on the island were wary that once again, some of this might come up with billions of dollars in recovery aid flowing into the island. So Puerto Ricans don't entirely disagree with the president that perhaps the island can't be trusted with the money. No, and that's what made some of their response nuanced, right?

You can be mad that the president, the only time he talks about you is to say bad things and still think he's got a point in that our leaders haven't always done well by us. I mean, in fact, Puerto Rico is effectively bankrupt. They're in a 12-year recession and they have a debt crisis. Their leaders borrowed until they couldn't anymore and the island ran out of money. So, Patty, what happens next? Desafortunadamente, se han expandido a funcionarios que han tratado de extorsionarme. Ya me lo mencionó. So, three weeks ago, Puerto Rico's treasury secretary says in an explosive radio interview that he has gone to federal authorities to report this institutional

mafia, he calls it, within the government that is trying to extort him. In a matter of hours, the governor asks the treasury secretary for his resignation, saying he can't trust him because the secretary didn't go to the governor to tell him what he had found. He went straight to the feds. He's firing the treasury secretary for reporting an alleged extortion attempt to the United States government. As you can imagine, that doesn't sit well with some of the governor's critics and also with some of the secretary's family members. The son of the former Secretary of the Treasury, Raúl Maldonado, made strong statements about Governor Ricardo Rosselló.

His son takes to social media to criticize the governor, and then the son gets investigated by police. And this starts turning into a real drama. Six people, including two former Puerto Rican officials, were arrested for allegedly diverting millions in federal funds to unqualified, politically connected contractors yesterday. In the middle of all this, last week, the U.S. Attorney's Office in Puerto Rico

announces six high-profile arrests, including of the former education secretary and of the former executive director of the island's health insurance administration agency. The alleged scam involves $15.5 million in federal funding allocated since 2017. The feds say they were defrauding the federal government. Here's what is really so disappointing. Julia Kelleher, she was impressive. She was driven. She seemed like someone who could do some good things.

It's such a slap in the face for an island that needs so much to see her go down, if this is true. And what I was thinking, too, is that, you know, Puerto Rico, PR does not need any bad PR. And to top it all off, the governor is on vacation in Europe. He calls off his vacation, leaves his wife and children on a cruise ship in the Mediterranean, and flies back to get back to the island as quickly as possible. And then while he's flying back, there's a new wrinkle. Someone leaks bits and pieces of a group chat on the messaging app Telegram between the governor and 11 of his closest aides. And in this leak are offensive and profane comments that they make about some of their political opponents. There is a snapshot that the governor posts of a tweet

by the former speaker of the New York City Council, Melissa Mark-Viverito, who was originally from Puerto Rico, where she's criticizing Tom Perez, the president of the Democratic National Committee. And the governor's response is, which, in English,

means, our people need to go out and defend Tom and go after this whore. So, well, first of all, good afternoon. Thank you all for being here. So by the time the governor lands in San Juan, briefly, I wanted to come to the press. The entire press corps has assembled and is ready to pounce. What strategy are you using to continue the operations of government and the economy,

for the economy to continue? So good question. There's been some calls for your resignation from your political position. Do you have a decision or answer to that call? So I'm moving forward with all of my elected positions. You were the leader of this chat room that conspired to discredit people you didn't like. Why would you do that? Again, I've already mentioned I am not proud of what I did. Those were merely comments, but they were

hurtful comments. So I apologize for what I've done. And how does that explanation go over? Not particularly well. The people who were insulted in the chat say that this is unacceptable behavior by their leaders. And Puerto Ricans in general who have been seeing these bits and pieces come out are sort of just waiting for the next one to drop. And then it's not that there's another bit that drops. Governor Ricardo Rosselló has been under fire since nearly 900 pages of a private group chat were leaked and published this weekend by the Center for. It's 889 pages published on Saturday morning by Puerto Rico Center for Investigative Reporting, detailing two months of this chat in full.

The leaked chat room conversations between the governor and 11 others are laced with profane, homophobic, and sexist comments. And what is in the second batch of messages? The second batch of messages has more insults where not only are they targeting critics of the governor and his administration, but also their allies. For example, a young man who is overweight, who met with the governor, and there's a picture in the chat of the two shaking hands and the governor making a crack about, no, no estoy más flaco, es la ilusión óptica. No, I'm not thinner. It's an optical illusion. And then saying, genera un campo de gravedad muy fuerte. You know, he generates his own gravity field. I mean, he generates his own gravity field.

I mean, things that are just really inappropriate. Yes. But in addition to that, there is the bigger picture, which is that there are people in this chat who are no longer members of the government, including a lobbyist who has his own business interests. And he is getting fed sort of inside information from his buddies, with the governor being aware of it. So weeks after President Trump calls the government of Puerto Rico corrupt, there are all these indictments that basically say he's right. And then there are these leaks that cast the Puerto Rican government as completely insensitive to everyday Puerto Ricans. Yeah. If you thought cynically that these people were more concerned about how they look than what

they do, if you thought that maybe they didn't really respect people, even if they pretended outwardly that they did, and if you were concerned that there was, if not real corruption, then the perception of corruption, that it could be happening, that people were really cozy with their friends, with lobbyists and business leaders in their inner circle, then what the chat did was confirm your worst fears and prove that you were right. And so people started taking to the streets spontaneously and they're very fed up. And so that's when I get on a plane and come because we're starting to wonder if this is going to force the governor to resign. Is this going to be a moment that changes things?

We'll be right back. So Patty, walk me through the last few days in San Juan. The streets of Old San Juan are narrow and colonial. They're cobblestone streets lined with shops that are painted in colorful red and pink and green and purple. And they have been deserted during the day and packed at night. Not because people are going to bars or there's a bunch of tourists here, but because the protesters come down. They come with flags in hand,

and they're wearing black and white T-shirts with political messages. And they are just standing for hours, sometimes starting in the middle of the day under the scorching sun, in front or as close as they can get in front to the governor's mansion, La Fortaleza, which means the fortress. And they start chanting. And, you know, this is the Caribbean, so the percussion is great. They find these great rhymes. With the governor's nickname, Ricky.

And so they just keep saying, Ricky, renuncia, you know, resign, resign. People were not just mad about these chats. I mean, some of the signs were about that. Some of the chants were about that. But one of the things that was really stunning was the number of protest signs that just listed the number of people who have been estimated could have died under Hurricane Maria. So some signs just said 4,645, which is sort of the upper end estimate. These people have suffered not only through hurricanes and a power outage that lasted, you know, a year, but also with major economic hardships and layoffs and school closures and people leaving the island en masse to move to the mainland. And it all just was pent up and it exploded all at once.

and then you know the celebrities joined the people and on wednesday night there is ricky martin and the rapper Residente and the trap musician Bad Bunny and the singer Ile. And they're standing on the platform of this truck as the sun is setting and they're in front of the ocean, the Capitol behind them. And Ile looks out over this crowd between the Capitol and the palm trees and the ocean. And she says it was about damn time to wake up. La libertad, la libertad, la libertad. So it's clear that a lot of this frustration is landing at the doorstep of the governor. But my sense is that because of the complicated relationship between Puerto Rico and the United States, that the governor is not all that powerful, right? It's interesting that you mention that, Michael,

because one of the other chants that we heard was, Ricky resign and take the board with you. And that refers to this federal oversight board that Congress created to handle Puerto Rico's finances after it essentially went bankrupt. And that is another big target of these protests, because the board's role is to tell Puerto Rico what it cannot spend. role is to tell Puerto Rico what it cannot spend. And that involves layoffs and school closures and university tuition hikes and possibly targeting public pensions. And so the board, which is unelected and comes from Washington, has made Puerto Ricans feel powerless. To a lot of them, it's just another example of how they have been colonized, first by Spain and then by the United States. And it reminds them that they can elect their

governor, they can elect some of their leaders, but they cannot elect the president. They are not a state. They are not a country. And a lot of this is out of their hands. So the mismanagement by Puerto Rico's own leadership leads the federal government, a government that Puerto Ricans don't think really sees them as equal to the mainland, to step in. And it's sort of this vicious cycle

where the worse Puerto Rico's leadership behaves, the more the federal government intervenes and also is sort of proven correct in this argument that Puerto Rico doesn't deserve or can't quite properly handle this federal funding. Right. And in the middle, the people of Puerto Rico keep suffering. Patty, what happens now? Well, the people on the streets want the governor to resign, but he says that he's not going to go. There's talk in the legislature that they might impeach him, but they have not decided if they're going to yet. Even if he goes, then there's a whole new set of questions. Can his replacement in that case govern? Many Puerto Ricans would like more autonomy to govern themselves, but who can they trust when the federal government is not inclined to give them more autonomy? The island government has not proven to be all that effective. How can the next person lead an island under these circumstances, under this sort of federal oversight, without any money, recovering from a hurricane.

And basically, the biggest question is, is this island governable? Is this place a place that can be effectively run? And I don't know the answer to that. Heidi, thank you very much. Thank you very much. Thank you, Michael. Thank you. We'll be right back. Here's what else you need to know today. On Thursday, the U.S. Navy shot down an Iranian drone in the Strait of Hormuz, not far from where Iran shot down a U.S. drone several weeks ago.

The Trump administration said that before it was struck, the unmanned Iranian drone had ignored multiple warnings that it was straying close to an American ship, the USS Boxer. The attack is expected to inflame tensions between the two countries. And when your supporters last night were chanting, send her back, why didn't you stop them? Why didn't you ask them to stop saying that? Well, number one, I think I did. I started speaking very quickly. President Trump on Thursday tried to distance himself from supporters who chanted, send her back, at a rally the night before when he mentioned Congresswoman Ilhan Omar of Minnesota, a reference to his own tweet about Omar and

three of her Democratic colleagues. I disagree with it, by the way, but it was quite a chant, and I felt a little bit badly about it. But contrary to the president's claim that he tried to quickly end the chant, video shows he listened on for 13 seconds as the crowd repeatedly yelled it. Send her back! Send her back! Send her back! On Thursday afternoon,

a large crowd greeted Congresswoman Omar as she returned to Minnesota. Welcome Home, New York. Our theme music is by Jim Brunberg and Ben Landsberg of Wonderly. Special thanks to Sam Dolnek, Michaela Bouchard, Julia Simon, Stella Tan, and William Rashbaum. That's it for The Daily. I'm Michael Bavaro. See you on Monday.