BY LILY REAVIS ’21
Photo courtesy of Joanna Chattman and Mount Holyoke College
“This is a great time to be an activist and a great time to be a woman,” Carmen Yulín Cruz, mayor of San Juan, Puerto Rico, said at Mount Holyoke on Thursday, Nov. 7. “And a better time to be a woman activist.”
Yulín Cruz was on campus to celebrate the Weissman Center for Leadership’s 20th anniversary last week. This was the second time she has visited the College; last spring, she gave a talk on leadership and helped launch a program for Mount Holyoke professors to teach science to young girls in San Juan, creating an annual month-long summer camp in Puerto Rico.
During her visit last week, Yulín Cruz spoke to the importance of strong female leadership, especially during times of crisis.
Since Hurricane Maria struck in 2017, Puerto Rican citizens have struggled to recover from the destruction. Yulín Cruz, who has served as Mayor of San Juan since 2013, has been openly critical of President Trump and his response to the disaster.
“You don’t let the people suffer because the government isn’t doing their job,” she said.
Now, Yulín Cruz is running for Governor of Puerto Rico on an empowerment-based campaign. One of her main focuses is on reforming climate change policy.
Yulín Cruz said that Hurricane Maria’s prolonged devastation is, in part, because American media and government have stopped paying attention.
“The Puerto Rican example is an example of how lives are lost … when governments look the other way — when racism and bigotry take over,” she said. “When we don’t understand that governments are the platform for people to be looked after when they have nothing.”
Yulín Cruz emphasized the importance of believing in climate change and teaching young generations about its perils.
“For us, climate change is no longer something you talk about, it is something you survive,” she said.
Yulín Cruz stated that Puerto Rico has received only $14 billion of the $42 billion disaster relief budget allocated by Congress after Maria. She also said that federal housing officials admitted to purposefully missing deadlines to provide funding to the island at a congressional hearing in October.
“There is a human cost to all of this, and when governments don’t do their jobs in a crisis, people die,” she said. “Three thousand Puerto Ricans did not open their eyes this morning because they died in the aftermath of Hurricane Maria.”
After mass citizen demonstrations this summer, resulting in the removal of Puerto Rico’s former governor, Ricardo Rosselló, the island is in political and economic flux. Yulín Cruz called this summer’s protests a “revolution that happened in Puerto Rico.”
According to her, the demonstrations removed party lines and therefore eliminated the need for political leadership.
Instead, Yulín Cruz supported protestors from her mayoral seat.
“We made City Hall be an oasis. We tended to the wounds of those that were chased by the police,” she said. “Cracked heads, holes in bodies with rubber bullets, people that couldn’t breathe because of pepper spray and so forth.”
The central government police reportedly asked Yulín Cruz to release camera footage from City Hall during the protests, which she refused. The police claimed that they needed to view the footage to ensure that the demonstrations remained peaceful. Yulín Cruz, however, believed that they would use the footage to profile protestors.
“I refused to allow the municipal police to participate in activities that would hinder or curtail or [harm] civil rights,” she said.
Yulín Cruz currently faces a democratic primary in the gubernatorial race in Puerto Rico, which will take place on March 29. Her campaign maintains an anti-privatization stance, especially in regards to public education, a topic Yulín Cruz holds close to her heart.
In her eyes, the University of Puerto Rico is the island’s greatest asset. The University spans 11 campuses, and Yulín Cruz emphasized its ability to act as a platform for major social change.
“The young people are really so aware of what they can accomplish — so resourceful in how they go about accomplishing it,” she said.
The value her family placed on education throughout generations has helped shape Yulín Cruz’s role in public service.
She explained that her great-grandfather, a sugarcane plantation worker in Puerto Rico, ensured that her great-grandmother received an education, despite the difficulties their family would face because of it.
Photo courtesy of Joanna Chattman and Mount Holyoke College
“He went with the non-obvious choice,” Yulín Cruz said. “The obvious choice was to have another pair of hands picking crops and putting food on the table. He went for the longer-term choice.”
Yulín Cruz, who attended Boston University for her Bachelor of Arts degree before completing a Master of Science at Carnegie Mellon, framed college as “the best time of your life” and encouraged Mount Holyoke students to be activists while receiving their education.
“Find out what makes your blood boil, what unfair things you want to change, what you can just not live with,” she said. “Now, be prepared to pay the price. Because unfortunately still for women, there are some things that you have to deal with.”
“I say, ‘To hell with that, be who you are and chips will fall where they may,’” she continued. “No one has to make us feel inferior without our consent.”
Following former Governor Rosselló’s removal in August, the island saw three different governors over the span of a single week. Currently, Wanda Vázquez Garced is serving, but the position is up for election in 2020 – and Yulín Cruz intends to fill it.
To Yulín Cruz, public service is the “great equalizer.” As governor, she plans to “get us all to the starting line with, pretty much, the same level of skills.”
She announced her candidacy in March, before Rosselló left office, while wearing a shirt that said, “¡Sin Miedo!” — Spanish for “without fear.” During her announcement speech, she said, “The day after the hurricane, it was clear that President Trump and his Republican government were going to leave us to die.”
Yulín Cruz said that, as governor, she will continue to fight against the fiscal control board, an unelected body that she says has control over most decisions in Puerto Rico. As a known adversary of Trump, Yulín Cruz stated that she dislikes Puerto Rico’s status of a colony of the United States. She promised that, during her first days in office, she will take steps toward a constitutional assembly regarding the island’s political status.
“Change is coming,” she said, at Mount Holyoke. “It started already. We know that we are the resolve of the efforts and the path of others before us, but right now … the world is there to be changed.”