The dynamic leader ‘with no time for red tape’ drew the president’s ire for criticizing US efforts to help hurricane-hit Puerto Rico but is unlikely to be cowed

With her city in near ruins, and facing the most profound crisis of her political career, San Juan mayor Carmen Yulín Cruz made it clear she had no patience for, or interest in, a personal row with Donald Trump.

Trump attacks Puerto Rico mayor: 'They want everything done for them' Read more

“I have no time for distractions. All I have is time for people to move forward,” she told MSNBC’s Joy Reid on Saturday morning. “This isn’t about me, this isn’t about anyone. This is about lives that are being lost. This is a time where everyone shows her true colors.”

Trump showed his the next day, referring in a tweet to “politically motivated ingrates” who have criticised his response in Puerto Rico’s hour of need.

According to those who know her, Cruz certainly seems to be showing hers: as a no-nonsense leader with a talent for empathy to match.

“She goes head first, chest first. She’s not going to let anybody do what she’s not willing to do,” said Luis Vega, a legislator in the US territory’s house of representatives. “She has no patience for red tape and that’s what we need right now,” Vega added.

Now the two-term mayor has become perhaps the most visible communicator of the commonwealth’s challenges in the wake of Hurricanes Irma and Maria, which devastated the island leaving virtually all of its residents without electricity and access to drinkable water and food.

“What we are going to see is something close to a genocide,” Cruz said of what many have decried as a delayed and inadequate response to the urgent humanitarian needs of the island. “Mr Trump, I am begging you to take charge and save lives,” she added, pleading for a more robust federal response.

Trump, as he has tended to during his brief political career, took Cruz’s comments personally and on Saturday morning responded via Twitter, decrying Cruz’s “poor leadership” and accusing her of being “nasty to Trump”.

“I was asking for help. I wasn’t saying anything nasty about the president,” Cruz retorted.

Cruz was a late, surprise candidate in the 2012 election but won handily, defeating a three-term incumbent to become San Juan’s third female mayor. The mainland political action group Our Revolution described her election as “the result of a grassroots effort which united in an unprecedented alliance groups which have traditionally been excluded from the democratic process”.

Born in San Juan in 1963, Cruz has been a leader and a competitor since childhood. President of her high school student council, Cruz set track and field records as a teen before she went to the mainland US for college in the 1980s.

In 2012, Cruz ran on a platform that emphasized progressive change on issues of gender equality, LGBT and disabled rights, and a municipal plan for universal healthcare. Citizen participation has been at the core of her administration, and the city has begun trialling a participatory budgeting process since she’s been in office. Cruz is a member of the centrist/centre-left Popular Democratic party, which favors Puerto Rico retaining that relationship with the mainland US, as opposed to full independence or statehood as other political parties advocate.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Carmen Yulín Cruz: ‘She is a force of nature.’ Photograph: Carlos Barria/Reuters

In 2016 she dedicated her election win to Oscar López Rivera, a controversial figure in Puerto Rican politics, and a former member of a radical Puerto Rican independence group that committed several terrorist attacks on the mainland during the 1970s.

“She’s a feisty one. I’m her friend and her ally and I’ve also fought with her because we’re both very opinionated,” Vega said. “I’ve never ever been prouder of her.”

She was no stranger to the mayor’s office when she was elected in 2012. Cruz spent 20 years in Puerto Rican politics before her run, starting off with a stint as an adviser to Mayor Héctor Luis Acevedo in 1992. Before that Cruz spent 12 years on the mainland, much of that time at Boston University and Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh. There she was the first student to win the “spirit award” now presented annually to “the student with the greatest positive impact on the quality of life of their peers”.

“She is a force of nature,” Jon Nehlsen, an associate dean at the school told the Pittsburgh Gazette. “She’s probably not 5ft 2in, but she’s this ball of energy, very charismatic. You can just tell she exudes leadership qualities.”

A bit of that was on display at the Roberto Clemente Coliseum, which is being used as a staging ground for relief efforts, on Friday. With tears in her eyes, Cruz greeted a stream of residents warmly, but was also candid about her frustrations with how the recovery efforts had been going so far. She hadn’t eaten lunch until 3.30pm, just before she delivered the speech that ultimately drew Trump’s ire.

But there’s little reason to believe that Cruz will adjust her tack in light of Trump’s tweets. “I am done being polite,” she said on Friday. “I am done being politically correct. I am mad as hell, so I am asking the members of the press to send a mayday call all over the world.”