At a Trump rally in New York’s Madison Square Garden on Sunday, a comedian described Puerto Rico as an “island of garbage.” While offensive, it was not surprising. After all, as president, Donald Trump threw paper towels to people at a relief center and casually mused about trading us for Greenland.
The remarks may well spur Puerto Ricans residing in the 50 states to the polls. But those on the island, who have no vote in U.S. presidential elections even as they must live with their consequences, are flexing their power in the local elections, with the aim of charting a new chapter in the island’s history.
While many Americans head into election week with fear or resignation, Puerto Ricans are experiencing something unfamiliar: hope. For the first time, in the governor’s race a progressive pro-independence candidate, Juan Dalmau, is virtually tied with a pro-statehood candidate, Jenniffer González-Colón. If elected, he would be the first pro-independence governor in Puerto Rico’s history, which is significant, given the island’s painful history of nationalist surveillance and repression.
And yet what has made his campaign so powerful and even groundbreaking is that it doesn’t center on changing Puerto Rico’s colonial relationship to the United States. Mr. Dalmau’s platform focuses on making Puerto Rico livable for its people. It’s about reclaiming dignity amid relentless crises — financial, infrastructural and environmental. It’s about rejecting the idea that we must flee our homeland in order to thrive. And it’s about tackling corruption to put our own house in order before reckoning with our relationship to the United States.
Mr. Dalmau is running as part of a new alliance between the Puerto Rican Independence Party and the Citizen’s Victory Movement. The two have united in a progressive coalition that seeks to break with the usual tribalism of Puerto Rican politics. Their platform spotlights tackling corruption, restoring the electric grid as a public utility and prioritizing local entrepreneurs over foreign investors and opportunistic tax dodgers.
If elected, he has promised to establish a National Status Assembly, where elected delegates would negotiate directly with Congress to establish transition plans for each status option and a binding referendum. Meanwhile, Ms. González-Colón, who aligns with MAGA Republicans and downplays their offensive language, pledges to advocate solely statehood.
Not since 1948, when Luis Muñoz Marín became Puerto Rico’s first elected governor, has the island faced an election with such high stakes. He forged a deal with the United States that was sold to Puerto Ricans as decolonization. This was a diplomatic win for the United States, allowing it to mask Puerto Rico’s colonial condition while retaining control over the island’s affairs. Under the commonwealth, he brought federal welfare programs like Medicare to the island. He also began an industrialization program that aimed to turn Puerto Rico into a Cold War showcase for U.S.-backed development.
For a time, it worked. Tax incentives lured multinational companies, boosting G.D.P. and employment. The government used these gains to expand public education, build modern infrastructure and extend public utilities to rural areas. But by the mid-1990s, lawmakers in Washington began rolling back these tax breaks. Factories closed, jobs vanished, and Puerto Rico’s government, aided by Wall Street, turned to massive borrowing to cover shortfalls. By 2016, the model had collapsed. When Puerto Rico tried to declare bankruptcy, the Supreme Court denied it the right.
Since then, a federally appointed Financial Oversight and Management Board has driven the island deeper into austerity, effectively leaving it in ruins. Shuttered schools, crumbling roads, a university gutted by budget cuts, a collapsing health system and relentless blackouts have become a part of daily life. Meanwhile, the island’s government bets on a visitor economy of tourists, remote workers and transplants who drive up the cost of living while benefiting from tax breaks not available to Puerto Ricans.
This is what the Puerto Rican megastar Bad Bunny has described as a place of stunning beauty plagued by exasperating dysfunction that is crying out for “something better.” For the first time in decades, something better feels within reach. Mr. Dalmau calls this vision La Patria Nueva, or the New Homeland.
The term resonates not only with pro-independence supporters but also with cultural nationalists, those disenchanted with the commonwealth and pro-statehood voters fed up with corruption. It also resonates with the many Diasporicans who have been forced to make their living abroad but whose hearts remain firmly rooted in the island. La Patria Nueva isn’t just a political slogan; it’s a bold reimagining of what it means to call Puerto Rico home.
On Sunday, Bad Bunny shared a video of Vice President Kamala Harris talking about Puerto Rico on Instagram. It was interpreted as an endorsement, but as a resident of Puerto Rico, he can’t vote for her. He has poured hundreds of thousands of dollars into billboards and ads targeting Ms. González-Colón, and his song “Una Velita,” released on the eve of Hurricane Maria’s anniversary, has become the soundtrack of the moment. Hopes are high that he will be at Mr. Dalmau’s closing rally on Sunday.
No matter what happens on Tuesday, a new generation, shaped by disaster and debt, is determined to reclaim the island’s future. For decades we’ve been told our island is garbage, but Puerto Ricans are remembering that they come from a place where legends are made. And they are daring to imagine a future where staying on the island is a viable choice, not an act of sacrifice.
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