Disturbances and Riots in Puerto Rico
Since last week, Puerto Rico has been in turmoil. It all started early last week with a release of 11 pages of a Telegram chat from a group composed by the Governor Ricardo “Ricky” Rosselló and some of his closest advisors and members of his cabinet. This rocked the current PR administration. There was another release of several pages by the middle of the week.
Then the whole 889 pages were dropped on Saturday.
The revelations on the whole chat has caused a huge unrest on many people in PR, with riots happening in front of the Fortaleza, the Governor’s house, with calls for Rosselló to resign and for the Legislative branch to lead the impeachment.
One fellow Puerto Rican wrote this excellent summary of the events.
To all my American, English-speaking friends,
The riot in Puerto Rico that you’re hearing about is over a Telegram (a chatting app, similar to WhatsApp) conversation that was leaked a few days ago. In it, the governor of PR and other members of his administrative team held conversations of insensitive, misogynous, homophobic and criminal nature, to say the least.
A read through the leaked conversation history reveals how throughout the aftermath of Hurricane Maria and its apocalyptic death toll, aids that were sent to PR -such as water and other provisions- were WITHHELD from people that desperately needed it and left to spoil or become unusable for the sake of political moves that would make the current administration seem benevolent and thus earn them the 2020 re-election.
Yes, there were many politically incorrect, hateful, cruel and abhorrent messages about people such as David Begnaud (a CBS reporter whose coverage of Hurricane Maria and the aftermath brought the world’s eyes to our tragedy), the city of San Juan’s mayor, Ricky Martin, and many others in the messages they exchanged, but it’s not the sole reason the people have reached the boiling point.
I’m very tempted to copy & paste the whole post because it doesn’t waste any words.