November 5 will see elections not just in the United States but in Puerto Rico, the island that has been a colony of the United States for 126 years. Throughout much of the twentieth century, opposition to the deeply unequal economic system that has predominated within Puerto Rico has been easily dismissed as anti-Americanism by critics who seek to provoke islanders with threats of economic isolation. However, in the last year, Puerto Rico’s left-wing parties, some of which are pro-independence, have cobbled together a loose bloc. This alliance now threatens to win at the upcoming election, a possibility that Puerto Rico’s ruling elite are terrified of.

On September 24, hundreds of billboards flooded Puerto Rico’s capital, San Juan, bearing messages critical of the pro-statehood New Progressive Party (PNP) and its candidate for governor, Jenniffer González. Later in the day a tweet with photos of the billboards appeared, declaring that they were “paid for by Benito Antonio Martínez Ocasio,” better known by nom de plume Bad Bunny, a Puerto Rican rapper, singer, and producer. A couple of days later, another well-known artist, René Pérez, aka Residente, appeared in a video interviewing and endorsing González’s main rival in the November election, Juan Dalmau. Dalmau is the candidate for governor for the Alliance, a progressive electoral coalition comprising the Puerto Rican Independence Party (PIP), to which Dalmau belongs, the Citizens’ Victory Movement (MVC), and several other organized political and religious organizations.

The Alliance, which was recently endorsed by Democratic congressmembers Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Nydia Velázquez, seeks to oust the PNP and the Popular Democratic Party (PPD) from their decades-long stronghold in electoral politics, political discourse, and the management of the finances of the colony. Status-wise, the coalition is interested in developing bilateral and binding mechanisms for solving Puerto Rico’s colonial status, as an alternative to the millions of dollars continuously wasted on sterile referenda on status formulas (i.e., independence, statehood, or commonwealth) that the traditional two-party system has provided so far.