COMMENTARY With reggaeton star Bad Bunny's support, and after seeing President Trump's terrifying start, independence movements in territories like Puerto Rico and Greenland look energized.
In the past, whenever the U.S. island territory of Puerto Rico held a referendum on its status, the independence option was a perennial also-ran, about as popular as day-old mofongo.
That’s changing.
In the last non-binding plebiscite in November, the independence and "free association" independence choices picked up more than 40% of the vote. Statehood won a majority, but making Borinquén (Puerto Rico’s indigenous name) a sovereign country appears to be gaining momentum these days — thanks in no small part to support from Boricua (Puerto Rican) reggaeton superstar Bad Bunny and his new, protest-infused album “DeBí TiRAR MáS FOToS.”
All of which, it turns out, dovetails with reports we’re hearing that even President Trump might be persuaded that creating la República de Puerto Rico is a good idea.
That’s right: The Donald and The Bunny could be hermanos de independencia Boricua!
READ MORE: C'mon, Latin America, you've seen Trump before: Look in the mirror
Last week, the Daily Mail reported that congressional Republicans and other MAGA militants are lobbying Trump to cut ties to the troubled Caribbean commonwealth — which they claim will save American taxpayers the DOGE-dream sum of $617 billion a year.
It’s not clear if that sum includes all the rolls of paper towels Trump would no longer toss at Puerto Ricans after the next major hurricane. And Trump himself has yet to comment on the idea.
Still, if the Grito de Lares-like celebrations that I’m seeing on social media in recent days from pro-independence Boricuas are any indication, news of the draft executive order that Trump is being urged to sign has given the movement another big bounce.
Who could blame Puerto Rico for reconsidering whether it could expect much better than Mexico or Canada or Panama from Trump's America?
Of course, no U.S. president — not even one as delusional about his executive power as Trump is — can grant Puerto Rico independence with the stroke of a Sharpie. That would currently require an actually binding referendum of Puerto Rican voters and then, if they do choose independence, approval by the U.S. Congress.
Should that opportunity for a binding referendum arise, though, you have to wonder if independence might not just overtake statehood. Why? Because Puerto Ricans are getting a good long look at the country that America promises to become under Trump.
Gunboat diplomacy
I’ve long supported statehood for Puerto Ricans, who are U.S. citizens by birth, because I believe it would result in better political and economic treatment for the island — which as a territory cannot vote in U.S. presidential elections and is subject to a great deal of unfair trade and financial restrictions that too often result in plagues like its decrepit electricity grid.
But Puerto Ricans, while listening to Bad Bunny’s edgy new tracks, have now watched the first two months of Trump’s second coming in the White House:
The erratic, hateful and dishonest way he’s betrayed close allies like Mexico and Canada on the trade and diplomatic fronts. His gunboat-diplomacy threats to mug Panama and seize the Panama Canal. His callous cancellation of deportation protection for Venezuelan and Haitian migrants facing brutal and disastrous dictatorships back in their home countries.
So who could blame pro-statehood Puerto Ricans if they’re now reconsidering whether they could really expect much better than that, even as the 51st U.S. state?
Granted, Trump’s Homeland Security Secretary, Kristi Noem, visited Puerto Rico last week and pledged to help it rebuild. We’ll see.
But if you’re a Puerto Rican who’s opted to stay in Puerto Rico — more than a tenth of the population has moved to the U.S. mainland in the past decade — Trump’s performance so far is likely to remind you instead of his presidential campaign rally last fall, when a comic he’d hired called Borinquén “a floating island of garbage.”
That’s perhaps a big reason pro-independence parties in Greenland, itself a territory of Denmark, scored an upset in general elections this week, finishing first and second.
Trump of course is also promising to turn that mineral-rich island north of Canada into a U.S. property — while at the same time sophomorically declaring Canada a U.S. state.
It makes sense, then, while watching Trump take an arsonist’s torch to the U.S. federal government and possibly the U.S. economy, Greenland decided maybe it’s best to become its own nation, rather than risk Trump hijacking it from Copenhagen.
Who’d have thought Trump would be the western hemisphere’s new independence hero?
