Opinion | In Puerto Rico, Rosselló Finally Hears the People

SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico — I heard that Ricardo Rosselló, the island’s governor, was going to resign around noon on Wednesday. I made my way to La Fortaleza, the governor’s mansion, around 10 a.m. in anticipation. As the day wore into night anticipation turned to frustration. The governor had not shown his face, which enraged people even more. But the crowd refused to budge.

As the streets swelled with protesters, it was clear that Mr. Rossello was running out of options. Just before midnight he finally addressed the island through a video published on Facebook Live. A wave of joyous and raucous screams erupted with the news that he would step down on Aug. 2.

For days I had been watching the news from my apartment in Washington Heights, feeling distraught to be so far from home. These were extraordinary times and I longed to be there. Last Saturday, I reached for my phone and booked a flight home that afternoon, praying all the while that he wouldn’t resign before I arrived.

The demonstrations arose after private chat group messages leaked on Telegram were published by Puerto Rico’s Center for Investigative Journalism. In them, Mr. Rosselló and his inner circle, all men, derided the deaths caused by Hurricane Maria and used vulgar, homophobic, and misogynistic language to disparage political opponents.

News of the leak came days after six people, including Puerto Rico’s former secretary of education, were arrested on federal fraud charges. These events catalyzed what we have long suspected, and they unleashed a collective wave of fury. We all knew that corruption ran deep here, we just didn’t have the proof.

I left Puerto Rico for New York a month before Hurricane Maria devastated the island in 2017, leaving an estimated 4,600 deaths in her wake. I never wanted to leave, but life here had become untenable for young people like me.

Decades of corruption and mismanagement has left the country saddled with debt. The cost of living has soared, choking the middle class. Education budgets have been slashed. Medical specialists have steadily left for greener pastures. I graduated with a degree in physics in 2017, but job prospects were dim. The future seemed bleak. So like many of my peers, I packed up and headed for the mainland to the continental United States in search of opportunities unavailable to me at home.

I remember watching in awe when a series of mass demonstrations, spurred by the rising cost of living and other economic woes, ousted President Omar al-Bashir of Sudan this year. I could not imagine that happening in Puerto Rico. I had grown up thinking that Puerto Ricans simply accepted their lot in life. Sure, university students or union groups broke out into protest from time to time, but eventually those protests would fade out.

I landed at San Juan airport Saturday evening. During the 20-minute ride from the airport to my sister’s apartment in Old San Juan, my driver told me how she planned to skip work and participate in the national strike scheduled for the next Monday.

Earlier that week the police had deployed tear gas to disperse protesters. My sister was among the thousands caught in the upheaval, suddenly unable to see or breathe. For the first time in five years she felt unsafe in the city. “It feels like the police are not on our side,” she said. So we filled a leather backpack with vinegar, bottled water, an old T-shirt and a solution of vegetable oil, water and liquid dish soap to rinse off chemicals just in case, and stepped out into the humid summer night.

Life in Old San Juan had come to a standstill. Restaurants were shuttered and the walls of the colorful colonial town were littered with protest graffiti. About 200 people were gathered around a drum circle in front of the governor’s mansion, chanting:

“Where is Ricky? Ricky’s not here. Ricky is selling what’s left of the country!”

“The people are holding up what’s left of the country!”

The next day I walked over to the 7 a.m. yoga session, organized as part of the protest in front of the governor’s mansion. The morning sunlight cast a glow over the cobblestone streets, and the smell of incense filled the air. The instructor said, “Let peace be in this place.”

I caught up with old friends in the afternoon. We wondered if Governor Rosselló would resign. We talked about what we had witnessed the past few days. We talked about how we felt.

By seven in the morning on Monday, people were already making their way to the March of the People at Hiram Bithorn Stadium. Parking lots were full; cars lined the shoulders of the roads along the city. Puerto Rican flags danced in the air. Music blared from cars with jacked-up sound systems. Vendors sold cold water and beer to offset the scorching midmorning heat.

I looked around and recognized faces from my past — people I had practiced yoga with in San Juan, university classmates from Mayagüez, cousins from Ponce, where I was born and raised. Amid the chaos we gave each other sweaty hugs and kisses and urged one another to be safe.

When I close my eyes I can see still see the throngs of people packed into both sides of Expreso Las Américas, a main highway in San Juan. By the time protesters reached La Fortaleza, most were soaking wet. The rains kept coming and the air smelled funky with sweat. But that did not stop them from cramming into the intersection of La Fortaleza and Cristo Streets.

The pueblo chanted protest songs and banged on pots until their shape was unrecognizable. As the clock approached 11 p.m., riot police marched in. The tension mounted as they warned citizens to clear the area. A young woman, known as Cacerola Girl, hotly banged her pot at police officers while screaming at them.

The importance of this movement is not lost on those who live on the front lines nor the thousands of Puerto Ricans outside the island. Citizens have come out in the morning to paint over graffiti. The streets are being cleaned by both protesters and municipal workers. Demonstrations have reverberated in the diaspora from Los Angeles to New York.

Mr. Rosselló was ushered into office in 2016 by a nation that had grown apathetic to politicians’ promises. The seeds of hope were planted then; Alexandra Lúgaro, the first female independent candidate to run for governor, finished in third place with 11 percent of the vote.

When I left Puerto Rico years ago, returning had seemed like a dim prospect. Now, for the first time I’m hopeful for the future. I want a political class that is for the people, not for their own interest. I want a Puerto Rico where my younger sisters won’t have to leave the island to access opportunities.

The political chaos here won’t be resolved with Mr. Rosselló’s departure, but it is a start. “Somos más y no tenemos miedo,” or, “We are more and are not afraid.”