13. who is jenniffer gonzález? PART 1
Who is Jenniffer González Colón? PART 1
Jenniffer Aydin González Colón is the current gubernatorial candidate from the PNP (Partido Nuevo Progresista, or New Progressive Party) in the upcoming Puerto Rico November 2024 elections. The PNP has been the ruling party since 2016, with the exception that in the 2020 elections it lost control of the Puerto Rico legislature, in both the Senate and House of Representatives. The PNP is centered on (allegedly) advancing the annexation of Puerto Rico by the United States as its 51st state. It is an extremely collaborationist, conservative, pro-US military party, despite the party trying to hold an alliance of convenience of “liberal” and “conservative” statehood supporters. The terms “liberal” and “conservative” are used in the general sense they are utilized in the United States, as in a fairly narrow spectrum of “liberal” and “conservative” capitalist parties.
Before we attempt to more fully answer the headline question, Puerto Rican independence supporters (independentistas) must examine, and quickly dismantle Jenniffer González’s record of 22 years (!) in Puerto Rico electoral politics from a leftist, anti-colonial, anti-imperialist perspective. We also need to clearly articulate a vision, which must include an economic vision, so proposals aren’t hijacked and co-opted into reformism.
We need to stop “winning” brief, symbolic battles, but losing the war. But it’s not about winning for winning’s sake. This is a do or die moment. The goal is advancing MATERIAL GAINS for Puerto Ricans, who are under attack, while making electoral advances for the independence movement. We can’t squander the inroads the PIP (Partido Independentista Puertorriqueño or Puerto Rico Independence Party) made electorally in 2020, when its gubernatorial candidate Juan Dalmau received 13.54%, the highest percentage a PIP candidate has ever (?) received. But the goal isn’t just to match the numbers from 2020, it’s to win, and not just in the governor’s race. Gains in the legislature and other races are important too.
The traditional media landscape in Puerto Rico is dominated by reactionary discourse. You might casually be able to tune in to some liberal-leftish perspectives on the UPR radio station, but to get any real glimpse of alternate perspectives, you have to go out of your way and seek out independent media like podcasts, specific writers, and social media like Twitter and TikTok. We can’t rely solely on the official PIP discourse to challenge the current gubernatorial candidate from the ruling PNP Party. The strongest and most consistent politician from the PIP on the topic of the colonial debt/Junta is María de Lourdes Santiago Negrón, the PIP’s sole member in the Puerto Rico Senate.
Jenniffer González’s is not some sort of “outsider” of the PNP as she is currently presenting herself — she has been in politics since her teenage years. Of the 22 years in elected office, she spent 14 years in the Puerto Rico House of Representatives, and the subsequent 8 years as the U.S. House of Representatives Non-voting Member from Puerto Rico (“Resident Commissioner”) in Washington DC, the sole “representation” the empire grants its colonial territories. She has held this post since elected November 8th, 2016-present. She cannot vote in the US House of Representatives, but she can vote in the committees she is on, and can co-sponsor legislation. While these votes and co-sponsorships are symbolic, they do reveal her priorities and alliances. She held the presidency and vice-presidency of the local Puerto Rico Republican Party. She is not some sort of casual member of the US Republican Party (GOP).
The appeal of Jenniffer González’s fake populism persona on an oppressed populace should not be underestimated. She was right there, directly involved, when harmful policies in the past that are the direct cause of miseries of today were being enacted.
There are many issues, but THE most critical material issues at this political crossroads are the ELECTRICITY CRISIS, DISPLACEMENT, and a hostile ANTI-WORKER AGENDA. The displacement entails a literal loss of property, land and housing, to SETTLER COLONIALISM.
Jenniffer González was Majority Leader of PR House of Representatives during former PNP Republican governor Luis Fortuño’s term, a SHOCK DOCTRINE PERIOD during 2009-2013 when LAW 7 and ACTS 20/22 were passed, + shady AEE/PREPA BOND debt emitted. It is not an exaggeration to say that she was Luis Fortuño’s right hand woman.
“Gobierno pide $4,000 millones - A pesar del alto endeudamiento del País, vuelve a recurrir al crédito” El Nuevo Día, enero 2009
LEY 7 (LAW 7) (2009)
During this period hostile anti-worker policies were conducted on Puerto Ricans, while incurring massive AEE/PREPA electric public utility debt that is a direct cause of the bankrupting of PR and the electricity crisis to this day. Early neoliberal “public-private partnership” privatization structure is set up during this period.
AEE/PREPA DEBT/ELECTRICITY CRISIS: HAVING YOUR CAKE AND EATING IT TOO
Older AEE (PREPA) debt was refinanced under fraudulent odious terms and Luis Fortuño cronies wasted money on a terrible LNG project that thankfully never materialized, called Via Verde (Green Way, aka Gasoducto del Norte, Northern Gas Pipeline). This involved a “natural gas” pipeline through an environmentally sensitive, mountainous and earthquake-prone region.
During the Luis Fortuño term there were 10 PREPA bond issuances in 2 years! Power Revenue Bonds, Series XX (2010), Power Revenue Bonds, Series EEE (Issuer Subsidy Build America Bonds) (2010), Power Revenue Bonds, Series ZZ (2010), Power Revenue Bonds, Series YY (Issuer Subsidy Build America Bonds) (2010), Power Revenue Bonds, Series AAA (2010), Power Revenue Bonds, Series CCC (2010), Power Revenue Bonds, Series BBB (2010), Power Revenue Refunding Bonds, Series DDD (2010), Power Revenue Bonds, Series 2012A and Series 2012B (2012).
The 2012 and Power Revenue Bonds, Series 2013A (bonds issued by Fortuño successor from the PPD, Alejandro García Padilla) received the most attention, but the entire Fortuño bond issuances should have been thoroughly audited and cancelled. These were part of the bonds that AEE/PREPA that BlueMountain Capital (and others vulture hedge funds) bought for pennies on the dollar and sued for full repayment, a matter that is still in dispute in federal bankruptcy court to this day.
In 2011, Jenniffer González, as PR House Majority Leader, introduced a bill, which passed, for the AEE/PREPA public electrical utility to take out a credit line. The bill also had measures to downgrade the quality of gasoline to one with higher sulfur content and to convert the Costa Sur electricity plant to LNG (“natural” methane gas).
ACT 22 (Ley Núm. 22-2012 7 de Enero de 2012)
Jenniffer González is the author of the original ACT 22, the Act to Promote the Relocation of Individual Investors to Puerto Rico, which she introduced as House Majority Leader of PR House of Representatives (Presidenta de la Cámara de Representantes, PC3657). It is a settler colonialist law Puerto Ricans have been screaming about as it has created massive displacement via rising rents, eviction, and criminal behavior. The law was later expanded to include crypto currency capital gains tax evasion and has attracted the worst people to Puerto Rico, including characters like Brock Pierce, Logan Paul, among others. The extra fucked up layer to this law is that it requires decree holders to buy property locally. This results in Act 22 (now rolled into the newer Act 60) decree holders buying properties cash. Most local Puerto Ricans looking to buy a house or an apartment can’t possibly compete with this type of speculation, especially if financing with a mortgage. Even if you qualify for a mortgage, a seller is going to prefer a cash buyer, obviously. There’s also been a massive wave of investors (not exclusively Act 22 or Act 60 decree holders) buying properties to evict long-term Puerto Rican renters to convert apartments to short-term rentals. Renter’s rights are very weak in Puerto Rico, even if you have the resources to fight back. Another factor that is not mentioned as frequently, is that inheritance of family homes that Puerto Ricans may pass down to their children can get very complicated legally if not dealt with promptly when parents or grandparents pass away. This can result in family homes stuck in a bureaucratic legal limbo that can often only be resolved by being abandoned, especially with many Puerto Ricans moving away to the US for economic reasons.
Pain & Profit: The Act 22 Donors Influencing Puerto Rico’s Elections 22 May 2024
Dolor y Lucro: La Influencia de Las Donaciones Bajo La Ley 22 en Las Elecciones Puertorriqueñas
Jenniffer González with crypto colonizer Brock Pierce
Colonialism, by definition, involves the systematic extraction of capital from a colony in the form of land/real estate theft/exploitation/speculation, financialization, “human capital” degradation of labor rights and destruction of local workers unions and jobs, income inequality, plantation economy, environmental degradation, etc. The ELECTRICITY CRISIS is not just a mere “mismanagement” or “corruption” problem. Its root causes are imperialism and colonialism. The electricity crisis is multi-layered, intentional — a US laboratory experiment for installing a undemocratic Junta for geopolitical interests but on its own colony. The results of this experiment will be used elsewhere with modifications.
It’s difficult to assert this reality without sounding like apologia for colonial administrators. This is not the intent. The colonial administrators are accomplices and collaborators. Their inability, incompetence, deliberate unwillingness, feeds on the colonialist structure, and in itself, this feed their corruption — because that is the corruption — this feedback loop. The only extenuating excuse is the macro reason that colonies exist in this debt trap that it can only take loans from the US-Western private capital. It is not an insignificant detail. It absolves the US from colonialism to pretend it doesn’t exist.
The sellouts (vendepatrias) in BOTH the PPD (Partido Popular Democrático or Popular Democratic Party) and the PNP (aka Partido Nuevo Progresista, or New Progressive Party) collaborated to privatize the AEE/PREPA (“Autoridad de Energía Eléctrica”/Puerto Rico Electric Power Authority) to implode the public system on purpose, for malicious or incompetent self-serving reasons.
So because political opportunism is such a large part of the dynamics, for the PNP, there was the added bonus of exploiting the Puerto Rico debt crisis to implode the PPD and the sham Commonwealth status via the federal courts and ultimately, at the US Supreme Court in 2016. People from both the Puerto Rico “left” and the “right” celebrated the implosion of the Commonwealth by SCOTUS, but for very different reasons.
Whether the PNP thought this would truly advance US statehood for Puerto Rico annexation agenda is still unclear. But it helped them to become, in essence, the sole ruling party since 2016, but beneath the US-Congress-imposed FOMBPR (“Financial Oversight Management Board” aka La Junta or Fiscal Control Board), under a raw form of territorial federalism.
What has emerged is total energy imperialism driven by the privatization imposed by La Junta. Under the FOMB AEE privatization, an even more bloated, corrupt, extremely restrictive, ideological federalization has been created. Federal funds are linked to FEMA and the USACE (“US Army Corps of Engineers”), “Private-Public-Partnerships” with little oversight or accountability, the private LNG (“liquid natural gas”) industry via New Fortress Energy/Genera PR and LUMA, the electrical distribution and transmission private company whose parent companies are Houston-based Quanta Services and Canadian-based ATCO. The bondholder/hedge fund class have essentially gotten everything they wanted and more.
Long-forgotten is the fact that Bill Cooper, a former oil and LNG industry lobbyist, was the point person for Rob Bishop, the chairman of the Natural Resources Committee at the time, the committee PROMESA emerged from. So the railroading of Puerto Rico’s entire electrical system to a privatized LNG dependency is by design, with the bonus of destroying the local public workers’ union, the UTIER.
The acronym USACE and the term “Cuerpo de Ingenieros” more commonly used in Spanish in Puerto Rico local media instead of the full name el “Cuerpo de Ingenieros del Ejército de Estados Unidos,” minimizes the connection that the electrical system has not only been federalized, but militarized, and probably always has been, if you dip into the history and the geographical locations being re-militarized.
Jenniffer González was the running mate in 2016 of ousted governor Ricardo Rosselló, who was forced to resign in disgrace in 2019 after massive protests but some factions of the PNP are still trying to rehabilitate his image.
LEAD UP TO PROMESA/JUNTA (2014-2016)
There’s a lot of revisionist history out there, but Jenniffer González’s own behavior, coupled with the behavior of one of her biggest allies in the Republican Party, Florida Senator Marco Rubio, was instrumental in blocking any bankruptcy process for Puerto Rico without a federal Junta. Before the passage of the PROMESA law, her position on the Puerto Rico debt crisis (and the position of her running mate Ricardo Rosselló) was that the entire quantity of the colonial public debt was payable — that there was no need for bankruptcy/debt restructuring. This was the most absurd, pro-creditor stance possible on the debt. When it became more obvious that some sort of bankruptcy process was inevitable, she insisted the federal government had to be involved, so in essence, she collaborated with the hedge funds and other bondholder groups wanting to strike down Puerto Rico’s locally-passed bankruptcy law. She wanted to prevent the AEE/PREPA bankruptcy from being handled in Puerto Rico’s jurisdiction. Marco Rubio’s eventual public backtracking on Chapter 9 bankruptcy created a “Third Way” centrist triangulation effect which facilitated the passage of the neoliberal PROMESA law.
To be clear, PROMESA was pushed by an ample bipartisan consensus on the Democratic Party side including the Barack Obama - Joe Biden admin, Hillary Clinton, Obama’s Treasury Secretary Jack Lew (the current US ambassador to Israel) to support a creditor-friendly (hedge funds) Republican bill. Lazard hedge fund financier Antonio Weiss was instrumental in pushing PROMESA for the Obama-Biden admin.
US HOUSE VOTE June 9, 2016
Yes: 139 Republicans, 158 Democrats
No: 103 Republicans, 24 Democrats
US SENATE VOTE June 29, 2016
Yes: 68
No: 30
Yes: 36 Republicans, 31 Democrats
No: 18 Republicans, 11 Democrats
Abstain: 2
It’s quite possible the 2015 US presidential politics spectacle regarding the debt was always going to settle on the bipartisan colonialist PROMESA, and that all posturing was performative, “a dog and pony show.” We’re simply recounting the narrative as it was presented for public consumption.
Now she says “Yo quiero gobernar sin la Junta de Control Fiscal. Quiero terminar de radicar los presupuestos balanceados que necesitamos para salir de la Junta.”
POPULISM:
Jenniffer González is Luis Fortuño 2.0 but with a slick veneer of “populism.” It’s unwise for the left (or left-liberals) to dismiss likability, approachability, competence, and a cultivation of “middle class” personality in a politician, whether it’s authentic or not. Her “middle class girlboss” vibe is very different from Fortuño and Pedro Pierluisi, who have clearly a more typical Puerto Rican comprador elite class vibe. This is her selling point, that she will be a good colonial manager, and loyal to US interests.
Important to note that Pierluisi, the current governor she just defeated in her party’s primary was never that popular. No Puerto Rican governor has been re-elected for 2 terms since 2001, so this is a deep pattern. In addition, La Junta, the fiscal control board installed under Public Law 114–187 114th Congress (PROMESA), was first appointed in August 2016, so there have been 3 governors who have had to “govern” under an entity that can completely overrule them, Ricardo Rosselló Nevares, who was forced to resign in 2019; an unelected interim governor Wanda Vázquez Garced, who served for 1 year and 5 months; and Pedro Pierluisi Urrutia.
For her Puerto Rico audience’s consumption, González has been extremely careful to publicly portray a persona as a “moderate conservative.” (Yes, I understand this is a misnomer, that is why I used scare quotes “”.) Again, one of her closest allies, Luis Fortuño, is friends with Santiago Abascal from Spain’s fascist Vox Party. He has hosted Argentina’s Mauricio Macri at his Atlas Network think tank, Centro CRECE. Fortuño endorsed Argentina’s US-backed, so-called anarchist-capitalist Javier Milei. Milei is currently enacting a similar “Shock Doctrine” economic terrorism program in Argentina. (Photo on their Who we are page has a group photo with Venezuelan antichavista Leopoldo López.) (For now, I have not found direct appearances of JG with Vox, or statements on Milei.) Luis Fortuño’s nephew, Roberto Lefranc Fortuño, was very involved in campaigning for her during the recent primary. She has close ties to the Puerto Rico Republican Party and its main donor, the Fonalledas family.
Her past and current campaign manager, Francisco Domenech, was an at-large member of the Democratic National Committee (DNC) and a Hillary Clinton superdelegate. He was forced to resign the DNC in disgrace in 2018 over domestic violence charges. He also heads “government affairs and consulting firm” Politank, that represented Puerto Rico COFINA bondholder creditors. Politank, according to Open Secrets, has donated to Jenniffer González’s campaigns $28,983 during her career. This includes only direct Politank donations, not any donations donated through SuperPACs or hidden in any other manner.
https://littlesis.org/org/108074-Politank_Corp
Bill Clinton with Jenniffer González’s campaign manager, Francisco Domenech.
Local members of the Puerto Rico Democratic Party leadership with Bill Clinton. From left to right, Roberto Prats Palerm, Bill Clinton, Francisco Domenech and Kenneth McClintock.
The most accurate descriptors for González are imperialist neoconservative (neocon) federalist. She went through the motions of supporting Donald Trump’s “Latinos for Trump” campaign in 2020, with former Junta chairman and fellow Republican, José Carrión. In 2015, she initially supported Jeb Bush. Currently, she prefers Nikki Haley. Haley is a neocon Zionist, and Paul Singer is one of her major donors, like he was for Marco Rubio in 2015. So she is not a “natural Trumpist,” which has fueled accusations from MAGA (“Make America Great Again”) types of her of being a RINO (“Republican In Name Only”), but that is probably not terribly consequential (yet) in terms of local politics.
All these factors illustrate she has the backing of powerful and well-funded interests. The possibility she could become governor should not be taken lightly. She would collaborate heavily in future phases of La Junta Shock Doctrine and an even more overt US re-militarization of Puerto Rico, the so-called “reconstruction” and “revitalization” phase driven by La Junta-FEMA-USACE.
STAY TUNED — TIMELINE, ADDITIONAL DETAILS, AND RESOURCES TO COME.
