The Governor of Puerto Rico, Jenniffer González-Colón, stated on Tuesday that the 'Free Associated State of Puerto Rico is closer' to becoming the 51st state of the United States, as it 'has proven to be a strategic place and I believe we are already ready for that transition.' 'We have shown that we want to be a state and we will continue to fight for it. It is the will of the people,' assured the Governor at the United States Congress during the Second Puerto Rico Equality and Statehood Summit, after recalling that Puerto Ricans have voted in four plebiscites in favor of becoming a state. González-Colón recounted that she met with the President of the United States, Donald Trump, two weeks ago, and although she assured that 'I am not going to breach the confidentiality of my conversations with him, I can say that so far everything I have asked for, he has granted me.' 'We talked about many things, and I will leave it at that,' she concluded. The Governor, who took office on January 2, 2025, is one of the central figures of the statehood movement on the island, which aims for Puerto Rico to become another state of the United States and to have rights such as the presidential vote and to have senators and representatives with full voting rights in Congress. Puerto Rico has been an unincorporated territory since 1898, with U.S. citizens but without full federal voting rights. González-Colón, who considers statehood a 'public policy priority' and a 'democratic mandate,' defended that 'Puerto Ricans are prepared to become a state.' She attended Congress on Tuesday to 'ask it to respect the mandate of Puerto Rico's voters' and remembered that 'there are more Puerto Ricans living in the continental nation, more than five million, than on the island where there are 2.8 million inhabitants.' The Governor considered that 'what happened in Venezuela creates an opportunity for Puerto Rico, due to the new situation in the Caribbean' and concluded that 'our next step is to be a state of the nation.' The U.S. military presence in Puerto Rico was key in the operations to capture the Venezuelan president, Nicolás Maduro, who faces drug trafficking charges in New York.
