Puerto Rico has experienced a remarkable week, culminating in mass protests that have received wide coverage in the US media. All sectors of Puerto Rican society have united in an attempt to unseat Governor Ricardo Rosselló. More than 10 percent of the entire population of the island marched in the streets of San Juan on July 17, and more than 14 percent on July 22, with another massive day of national protest scheduled for July 25 — a veritable revolution if it were to happen in any of the fifty United States. Nothing like this has occurred in living memory.

Calls for Roselló’s resignation came not just from unions, women’s rights organizations, students, and other civil society groups, but from members of all political parties, former governors, US congressional representatives, an association of policemen, Puerto Rican armed services stationed abroad, and the private sector.

Puerto Rico has been in chaos since July 13 when the Puerto Rico Center for Investigative Journalism released an 889-page series of chat messages between Governor Rosselló and his inner circle, in which they managed to insult virtually the entire population with misogynistic and homophobic remarks, a joke about dead bodies piling up after Hurricane Maria, as well as taunts aimed at journalists, artists, politicians, and prominent members of Puerto Rican society. The chats also revealed the sharing of confidential government information with lobbyists and pointed to possibly corrupt contracting practices. The latter would come as no surprise given the arrests on corruption and fraud charges by the FBI earlier that same week of six individuals, including the former secretaries of Education and the Health Insurance Administration. The Puerto Rican treasury secretary was also fired after referring to his department as an “institutional mafia.”