Today, Explained - #RickyRenuncia

Episode Date: July 23, 2019

Hundreds of thousands of Puerto Ricans are demanding Governor Ricardo Roselló resign. David Begnaud from CBS News reports from San Juan. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Before we get into the show, a quick note about Stitcher. You've heard me mention that Stitcher is a co-producer of the show, along with Vox. Stitcher is also a free podcast app for the iPhone and Android devices. Stitcher is home to over 260,000 podcasts, including Pod Save America, Fake the Nation, Factually with Adam Conover. Check it out on your telephone. Download Stitcher for free right now in the App Store, the Play Store, or visit stitcherapp.com slash today to learn more. Life has been tumultuous in Puerto Rico

since Hurricane Maria in 2017. But over the past few weeks, things have been insane. And it all kind of culminated yesterday. David Begnaud has been covering this movement in Puerto Rico for CBS. And at times, he's even found himself right in the middle of it. We connected from his hotel in San Juan this morning, and he told me how it all got started. Well, it all got started when these chats leaked, right? So the Center for Investigative Reporting in Puerto Rico published 889 pages of chats in Spanish between the governor and 11

people who he's associated with, some of whom are in his cabinet. And it blew up. Tonight, more protesters are on the streets of San Juan demanding Puerto Rico's governor resign. Why should the governor resign? Because he isn't worthy of being the governor of Puerto Rico. And it's laced with conversations that are homophobic, racist, misogynistic, and just plain mean. Just like mean. One of them even appearing to make a death threat against the mayor of San Juan, Carmen Yulín Cruz. Puerto Rico CFO texting the governor, quote, I'm salivating to shoot her up. Governor Rosselló responding, quote, you'd be doing me a favor.

But beyond that, there are conversations in there that many observers believe can amount to corruption. And as I speak to you now, the Department of Justice here on the island is actually serving search warrants in order to force the governor and the 11 people in the chat room to turn over their cell phones. Now, that may give people confidence, like, all right, the Justice Department's after it. Well, let me give you the context you'd be hard-pressed to find someone here on this island that trusts the justice department what do they hope to find in investigations of these cell phones that they don't know from what's already been released one of the things that i think they want to know is have any of the chats been deleted right is there any kind of obstruction here? But also, you have to

remember what else may be on the phone that was not in the chat but could be found in the course of an investigation, right? I mean, listen, the governor nor anybody else who was doing that is not going to be prosecuted for being mean. But is there anything else involving a conversation with a lobbyist or an energy entity or another government official that could turn into some kind of corruption investigation? And I just don't want to miss the fact that some of these texts were actually about you. What did you do? How did you feel about this? We came here with Lin-Manuel Miranda because he was bringing his musical Hamilton to the island. So we came here and one of the stories we did, we did, you know, several bits about Hamilton, but we also wanted to talk about what was going

on on the island news-wise. And so at the time there were, there was some incredible videos that were surfacing of just some of the most brazen murders you have seen. And I was getting so many messages from people who are concerned about safety. And I had started using social media to solicit story ideas. So I went and I said, what do you guys want to know more about? What should we cover when we're there? And overwhelmingly, crime was the story. So we did a story. Douglas Leff is the top FBI official in Puerto Rico. He says the island is facing a crisis of violence. What percentage of homicides here on the island are gang related? Sadly, it's pretty close to 100%.

Left told us the motives behind almost every killing are money, survival, and drugs. And the governor's staff hated it. Well, I didn't know at the time. So the chats come out and come to find out, they basically took a picture of me while the story was airing, took a picture of the story and said, we need to go after him on social media because he's going to kill tourism on the island. And that was one interesting element of the chats is that the governor was orchestrating a troll network of people on social media to discredit journalists and critics of his administration and of him. Does this really all come down to like some controversial text messages? Is that what this is really about?

No, it's a final straw. What it's about is years of mismanagement, a debt crisis, a devastating hurricane, mismanagement of the aftermath of the hurricane, and then the chats. But those chats were the final straw. I remember one woman saying to me as she was marching a week ago, she said, those chats confirm for me what I always thought, that this government is corrupt. And that's really what it is. It's like a verifying in your face proof of what they were saying. Like saying things like, don't we have some crows that we need to feed, referring to the bodies backing up at the morgue in San Juan that are still awaiting autopsy. There's a woman from Las Vegas who's still waiting on her father's autopsy report and cause of death. He died a year ago. A year ago.

Now, you would assume people say bad things behind the scenes, but you would also assume that those people would be smart enough to know that maybe it might get out. And the real question is, who leaked those chats? Who threw the governor under the bus with this? And so how has the governor responded to all of this? I mean, if the culmination was yesterday, did it change his position at all? No. This young governor is just really digging his heels in. And you know what? Maybe he's nervous behind the scenes. Maybe he thinks the end is near in terms of his staying in the governorship. But I got to tell you, the guy's not showing it when he goes in public. And every time he talks, every time he opens his mouth, it seems to be

like pouring fuel on an open flame. I mean, he gave that interview to Fox News where Shepard Smith asked him, Governor, who's come forward to support you in the middle of this chaos? There are folks that have supported me. Who specifically is supporting you today? There are people. Could you give me one name? You just have to see them out there. There is a protest. Well, it's it's I've talked just one name, Governor, from different groups. A lot of people from the administration. You're not able to give me the name of one person in Puerto Rico who supports you continuing as governor. Is that correct? I can.

So the mayor of San Sebastian, for example, supported this effort. Whose name is? From different municipalities. Javier Jimenez, for example. Well, we called the mayor of San Sebastian and the mayor says he doesn't. And you're now starting to run into Puerto Ricans who are like, I feel bad for the guy. Like he just looks pitiful when he speaks or talks.

So he thought that when he spoke on Sunday and said he wasn't gonna run for reelection and when he was gonna resign as the head of the party, that it might quell some of the protests, right? People went crazy. If anything, it was more insulting to them that he said, well, I won't run again, but I'm here for another year and a half. It fired them up even more. And listen, the governor was a novice when he came into office, but his father was a legendary former governor,

served two terms, not saying he got it because of his daddy. But at the end of the day, people said from the very beginning, the guy has no experience. Now, full disclosure here, let's be fair, okay? He was dealt a disastrous hand in the way of Hurricane Maria, which is one of the strongest storms of our lifetime. Lifetime. And there was a complete and total collapse of everything on this island. But the people will tell you he was not prepared for it. The decisions he's made in dealing with it have been disastrous in their own way. We don't even know how many people died because they did a terrible job even keeping track of that.

But despite all the failures, he's unrelenting. How does this end? What do the protesters say? There is no ending for them. This story doesn't end without the resignation of the governor. That's what we have been told. Now, college is out, kids are out for the summer. When school starts to back up, does this dwindle? Maybe. Might the governor try and wait them out for that? Maybe. But I just don't get the sense that that's going to happen.

I know you've been covering Puerto Rico for a while, David, and every time I see you doing reporting over the past few weeks, you're surrounded by crowds of people. What are the more surprising things you've heard talking to them? I don't know that I've been surprised by what they said. I've been surprised by who they are. The demographics. I've been surprised by a 70-year-old teacher

who walks into a DMV office and takes a picture of the governor off the wall and puts it on the ground face down. I've been surprised by the 14-year-old who was so articulate, who was there when it comes to, you know, the top elements of what it means to be either left or right, how both sides are united under the same umbrella, marching together, chanting together, walking together, and demanding together that the governor go. ¶¶ When was the last time your toothbrush impressed one of your friends? I remember speaking to a colleague, Malachi Brodus, about his Quip electric toothbrush. He said he took it to Las Vegas for like a four-day long weekend situation, popped it up on the mirror there in his group rental. And people were like, Mac, what's that thing? He was like, that's my Quip electric toothbrush. You can find the Quip electric toothbrush at getquip.com slash explained. It starts at just $25 and your first set of

refills is free. Maybe you're thinking what the heck would impress anyone about a toothbrush? Maybe the fact that it runs for three months on little batteries, you don't have to charge it all the time. Maybe it's the fact that it has a mount that sticks to the mirror and it comes with it. Maybe it's the fact that it's just designed a little better than your current electric toothbrush, or certainly your old-school manual toothbrush. Check it out, getquip.com slash explained. Thanks for listening.

Yarimar Bonilla, you teach and focus on Puerto Rico's economic crisis at the City University of New York. It's clear that many people on the island would like to see Governor Rosselló step down, but I'm curious what they want for the future of the island. Let's start with Puerto Rico's relationship with the United States. Where does it stand right now? Well, so Puerto Ricans are U.S. citizens. You know, a lot of people in the U.S. don't know that. We are citizens, but we have a different kind of citizenship when we reside in the territory versus if we move to one of the 50 U.S. states. So a Puerto Rican person without need for a

passport or anything can get on a plane and move to the United States. When they arrive in the U.S., they have a series of rights that they didn't have on the island. They can suddenly vote for president. They suddenly have representation in Congress via the state that they didn't have on the island. They can suddenly vote for president. They suddenly have representation in Congress via the state that they're in. And they also have a whole different set of rights in terms of Medicare benefits, Social Security, food stamps. All these kind of federal programs apply differently in the United States versus on the territory.

We pay Social Security. Some people pay federal taxes if they receive payment from federal sources. Otherwise, we pay local taxes. And, you know, the taxes here, and especially the sales tax, are higher than anywhere else in the United States. So this is one of the costliest places to live, even though at the same time, the average wages are much lower than anywhere in the United States. Most federal programs have restricted funding here. Are people angry about that, too?

So some people have said that that is discriminatory against Puerto Ricans. But the government has said, no, it's not, because any Puerto Rican who travels to the U.S. will have those rights. So it's not discriminatory against Puerto Ricans. It's discriminatory against residents in the territory. And that's true because anyone from Montana or Kansas who decides to move to Puerto Rico, they will lose all those rights once they arrive here.

They can no longer vote for president, and they will no longer have the same access to federal programs. Governor Rosselló, who as of this morning is still the governor, has been pushing for statehood as a solution to this sort of secondary status Puerto Rico has. I support statehood because as an American citizen, I cannot fathom that we're in the 21st century and that the nation of liberty, of opportunity, of freedom still has a colonial territory within its grasp. Is that a viable political platform in Puerto Rico? Well, he's a member of the PNP party.

They tend to represent statehood as a civil rights issue. They compare it to, for example, the struggles of African Americans in the United States to obtain voting rights and to obtain full civic rights. And that it's also a human rights issue because we don't have representation. And so those are the terms in which they often talk about the desire for statehood, especially when speaking to a U.S. audience. When speaking to a Puerto Rican audience, they talk more about colonialism, about the lack of access to federal programs, and the need for economic

parity with the United States, as well as the need to have a kind of sense of pride in not being a colony. And this is true of both pro-statehood arguments and pro-independence arguments, where people talk about the need to no longer feel that we are a colony, that we are colonial subjects, you know, ruled by this empire. So by either becoming our own nation or by having an equal place in that empire. You mentioned Governor Rosselló's party promotes statehood. Do all of the parties support it? The political parties here in Puerto Rico, they're not defined as Republicans or Democrats. All of the parties have people who are from both sides of that U.S. political spectrum.

Here, the parties are organized by the relationship that they desire with the United States, be it statehood, independence, or the current status quo, which is a commonwealth status. What about the people there? I saw there was this referendum on statehood where 97% voted for statehood. Is that a fair representation of the sentiment on the island? No, the last referendum was not representative at all. People who don't support statehood boycotted the whole referendum. And you could tell the boycott because it had

such a low rate of participation. So in previous plebiscites where you had high levels of participation, you tended to have about 40% of voters voting for statehood. That still means that the majority of Puerto Ricans don't want statehood. They want something else. And that something else varies greatly. For some people, it's still some kind of relationship to the United States, but a relationship that still recognizes Puerto Rico's cultural distinctness and allows it some level of autonomy. For other people, it's full independence. And there are also people, you know, small fringe groups who come up with all sorts of different ideas. Some people say that we should go back

to being a colony of Spain, that they were a better empire than the United States. Other people want to see a Caribbean federation. So I think that there's a definite consensus that the colonial relationship we have is no longer desired. But what we want after that is still being defined. And I think this political moment is key to that redefinition. It sounds like part of the problem might be that a lot of Puerto Ricans just want a lot of different things. Is that an issue here? Well, yes and no. I mean, for a long time, U.S. politicians have claimed that Puerto Ricans don't know what they want. And they just say, well, we support self-determination, but we're not sure what that means. But here, I think there is a consensus that we don't want to be a colony, that we want something else. The problem is that the options that the U.S. puts on the table don't necessarily represent local desires because

statehood, if statehood means not being able to speak Spanish, not being able to have our own cultural traditions, to not be able to feel a sense of identity that is different from the rest of the United States, local people here do not want that, you know. And if independence means being in further debt instead of to Wall Street, then maybe to the IMF, you know, then people certainly don't want that. So I think that part of the problem in redefining a new political project here is that the political projects available to former colonies at the present moment are not satisfactory to folks here or elsewhere. It seems like there's a real chance now to redraw the status and future of the country. Are any of the people leading this protest against the current leadership

hoping to step into leadership? I don't think they're going to step into the leadership void in the sense of then taking over office and running things, you know, the way that this governor has been running things. But I do think that they are becoming important players who can, you know, bring other people to the table. So, for example, Ray Charlie, he's a motorcycle enthusiast who has a repair shop in Bayamón, Puerto Rico. He was able to bring 8,000 motorcycle lists to drive in a caravan into Old San Juan. And he has been celebrated for his ability to carry out that peaceful but very spectacular protest. And people like Bad Bunny also, who, you know, a rap singer who some people thought had questionable lyrics with profanity, etc.

He has also joined the movement and been able to bring people together peacefully. So I think these folks, it's not about them running for office, but it is about them, you know, being seen as political actors, as folks who can contribute to the development of a new Puerto Rican agenda, a new understanding of who is Puerto Rico too, and that it includes these different players and that it's not just a kind of middle class or upper class political project. Has the tumult of the past few weeks and these protests and so many people banding together for a common cause, has that made any of these options clearer? A newly defined relationship with the United States, independence, statehood, any of these sort of movements, have they become more sort of concrete in the past few weeks? I don't think that any of the previous options on the table

have become more concrete because they were already undesirable. I think what has happened in the past week is that there is a clearer sense of our political capacity, of our ability to come together despite ideological divides, and of the possibility of bringing about change. You know, and that's something that we haven't felt in a long time in Puerto Rico. For a long time, we thought that we were in a kind of dead end politically. You know, people were so divided in their desires for statehood or independence or a commonwealth that we couldn't come together on a common agenda and goal. And so the ability to come together, to march together, to have a united voice and to affect change, I think that that's going to be really fundamental for then moving

towards the next step of redefining what our relationship to the United States could be. Yarimar Bonilla is a political anthropologist. She spoke to me from the suburbs of San Juan, Puerto Rico. I'm Sean Ramos for him. This is Today Explained. Y al otro día voy a la iglesia pa' que me perdonen. Mejor no quieras probar de qué estamos hechos. Aquí en el monte heredamos el mismo pecho. Tus disculpas se ahogan con el agua de la lluvia en las casas que todavía no tienen techo.