SAN JUAN — As I watched the coverage of Monday’s Puerto Rico visit of U.S. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and Air Force Gen. Dan Caine, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, as part of the spectacle of ramped-up military operations in the Caribbean, allegedly to combat Venezuelan drug cartels, all I could think of was: what a gift from on high for the cratering administration of Governor Jennifer González-Colón and the statehood movement of her party, the Partido Nuevo Progresista (PNP) when both need it most.

The Hegseth and Cane road show came more than two weeks after hundreds of ship-bound U.S. Marines, stealth fighter jets, and other military hardware arrived in Puerto Rico for “training exercises” (or what Hegseth called the “front lines” of a counter-narcotics mission — take your pick), and after the U.S. blew up an alleged Venezuelan drug boat and killed 11 people that President Donald Trump deemed were drug traffickers. 

González-Colón welcomed the “American warriors” like returning heroes and thanked Trump for “recognizing the strategic importance of Puerto Rico to U.S. national security and for their fight against drug cartels and the narco-dictator Nicolás Maduro.” 

But what she was actually welcoming was a political lifeline. 

Nine months in, her administration is failing — plagued with an inability to deal with a fragile electrical system, a crumbling health and education system, a Cabinet full of the usual suspects, environmental scandals involving her in-laws, a pro-Trump agenda on immigration and federal funding cuts, continued gentrification, corruption, and a PNP split in two and already looking for her replacement come the next election. 

It’s important to note that González-Colón won the 2024 election by only 39.45%. The pro-Independence candidate Juan Dalmau came in second with 32,7%, the first time in modern Puerto Rican political history. 

And just last month, ex-PNP governor Wanda Vázquez made history by becoming the first Puerto Rican governor to plead guilty to a campaign finance violation for accepting in 2020 a promise of a campaign contribution from a Venezuelan banker, no less. 

González-Colón hopes that dancing with the Big Boys again and claiming that Puerto Rico has renewed strategic value as the United States’ ”most southern border” in the Caribbean will make people forget the rocky start, breathing new life into her (and the party’s) ability to convince voters that — in their hands — statehood is a real possibility. 

Puerto Rican political analyst Ángel Rosa said it best in a radio broadcast, equating the Maduro “threat” to a much-needed distraction for the  González-Colón administration and a gift to the PNP. 

“While people are going after the buzzing fly of Nicolás Maduro, they don’t think about the problems with hospitals, they don’t think about the problems with violence, they don’t think about the problems with the electricity,” he said. “What they do think about is there is the might of the United States, which Jenniffer González represents, and it is coming to save us [Puerto Ricans] of all our ills.”  

For me, watching the display of all this GI Joe paraphernalia felt more like a second invasion — as if General Nelson A. Miles was back in town and it was 1898 all over again. 

Not everyone feels this way. 

For Puerto Ricans who believe in statehood (and the reopening of shuttered military bases such as the Naval Station Roosevelt Roads, one of the largest U.S. naval bases in the Caribbean, closed in 2004), the military proceedings were cause for celebration and were greeted with tumescent glee. For them, the cavalry had arrived. 

Yet, for so many others, it brought back dark memories of Vieques, an island municipality of Puerto Rico located on its eastern coast, that the U.S. Navy used as a firing range for more than six decades. Following years of local and international protests, the Navy was forced out of Vieques in 2003, leaving the “isla nena” (as Vieques is known) with the highest incidence of cancer in the entire archipelago of Puerto Rico due to contamination with heavy metals such as lead and arsenic. 

“Governor González-Colón never misses an opportunity to throw Puerto Ricans under the bus and sacrifice our people on the altar of annexation [making Puerto Rico the 52nd U.S. state after DC],” political consultant Federico de Jesús, a former Obama administration and Puerto Rican government official, told me when I asked about González-Colón goal in embracing re-militarization. 

And, contrary to what Puerto Rican superstar Bad Bunny sings in “LO QUE LE PASÓ A HAWAiii,” González-Colón is banking on what happened in Hawaii after World War II —when its strategic military importance influenced a path to statehood — eventually happening in Puerto Rico. And that would secure her re-election. 

But Puerto Rico is not Hawaii, and the blowing up of a small boat in international waters is not Pearl Harbor. The reopening of bases and an enhanced US military presence will not mean the economic bonanza that has many on the island applauding GI Joe’s return. According to a study done by the University of Puerto Rico, employment in Vieques and Culebra actually went up after the bases left.

But that will not bring statehood. 

“Puerto Rico is a U.S. colony and its people do not want or need to be reoccupied by the same military that bombed Vieques to a 30 percent higher cancer rate than the rest of the island,” De Jesus said. 

I agree with him. No one in Puerto Rico wants that.  

In the end, this military display will probably amount to nothing more than Trump's saber-rattling and posturing in the region (his version of Manifest Destiny). But for Puerto Ricans, it has reopened deep wounds that have never healed.

A former News Director for Univision Puerto Rico and conflict correspondent, Susanne Ramirez de Arellano is now a cultural critic and writer based in Old San Juan.

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