Summer 2026 in Puerto Rico: this isn't a scandal, it's a collapse that was always coming

When a government can't guarantee drinking water in peacetime, it loses the most basic argument for its own existence. What we're living through today doesn't explode all at once. It eats us from the inside.

Image generated using AI

SUBSTACK

By Sandra D. Rodríguez Cotto

There's an important difference between a scandal and an accumulation of failures. A scandal explodes, makes noise, and passes. An accumulation of failures eats you from the inside — slowly, until one day the floor gives out. In Puerto Rico, the floor is giving out.

Let's begin with the most basic thing: Water. As of today, hundreds of thousands of people in Puerto Rico have gone nearly a month without reliable drinking water. We're not talking about the aftermath of a hurricane or an earthquake. We're talking about ordinary times — no natural disaster, no emergency — and the government still cannot guarantee safe water.

That says everything. When a government cannot secure something as elemental as water, it loses the most basic argument for its own existence. And yet, if you look at what the mainstream media has been covering, the conversation isn't about water. It's about the feud between Francisco Domenech and Sebastián Negrón Reichard. A coincidence? I don't think so.

While they fight each other, no one is governing. And the water still isn't running — but the story those who control the narrative want told is simply that Puerto Rico's ruling party has an internal rift.

A party governing while divided against itself: Francisco Domenech, the Chief of Staff at the Governor's Office, is accusing Sebastián Negrón Reichard — former Economic Development Secretary — of waiting 30 days to request an ethics waiver after his wife processed a tax exemption decree for a newly created company. Negrón Reichard and his family deny the allegations.

This is serious. I won't minimize it. It points to the conflicts of interest that have consistently surrounded the New Progressive Party when it holds power. But it must be read in context: this is what happens when a party wins office already fractured — without cohesion, with rival factions competing over contracts and appointments. Domenech represents one faction. Negrón Reichard, another. And Governor Jenniffer González is caught in the middle, weakened, with no real authority over either of them. The cost to the island is that while they fight, no one is governing.

While they fight each other, no one is governing. And the water still isn't running. Some people are insisting that the summer of 2026 looks like the summer of 2019. I'd push back on that. What does echo 2019 are the street mobilizations. We've had three months of continuous citizen protests: against illegal construction projects harming the environment, against cell towers being imposed on communities, against violent crime, against femicides, against an economy that isn't working for ordinary people. These protesters aren't waiting to be organized from above. They're showing up on their own. Historically, that kind of grassroots energy is more powerful and harder for politicians to dismiss. But as I've been saying for weeks, there are critical differences.

In 2019, there was a clear villain — Ricky Rosselló — and a single concrete demand: for him to resign. The movement had direction and a finish line. Rosselló was the face of a callous government exposed through a private chat that our reporting revealed: he mocked the public, joked about the deaths of more than 4,000 people after Hurricane Maria, ridiculed political opponents, and made plain what his administration was about — money and power, not people. Not even his own party.

Today the crisis is more diffuse. There's no leaked chat from the governor, no single breaking point. There's water that isn't running, illegal projects moving forward, a government at war with itself, and a citizenry that's exhausted and protesting but without a clear target. That, paradoxically, could make this crisis longer and harder to resolve. Because it won't end with one resignation. It requires structural change — and this government is both incapable of delivering it and uninterested in trying.

Into that opening steps Juan Dalmau. The candidate who finished second in the 2024 elections — posting a historic result for the Puerto Rican Independence Party and its Alliance — recently released a video calling on the public to mobilize against corruption. He's not doing it for no reason: he knows the political space is wide open, that there's real discontent out there looking for direction, and that if no one channels it, it dissolves into noise. The question is whether his party has the organizational depth to turn that discontent into something durable. That remains to be seen.

Which brings me to the question I keep coming back to: where is Puerto Rico headed? I see three possible paths. The first: the government weathered this. Jenniffer González manages the internal scandals, the water comes back on, people run out of steam, and the status quo holds — but more weakened and discredited than before. The second: the crisis escalates. The pile of failures reaches a tipping point, whether through sustained public pressure, federal intervention, or the collapse of the governing coalition. And the third: political realignment. Discontent finds its shape, and the 2028 elections become a genuine inflection point.

I feel it in my bones and I'll say it plainly: Puerto Rico is not in the eye of the storm. We are in that tense stillness that comes right before it hits. And this government has neither an umbrella nor a plan.