Beyond John Oliver’s and Lin-Manuel Miranda’s poignant commentary on Puerto Rico’s debt crisis on Oliver’s Last Week Tonight (HBO), lies the hard and unfunny truth that the economic situation in the island is not only an economic crisis, but primarily a political one.

In fact, this political crisis is unveiling for many the trappings of the colonial status of the “unincorporated territory,” the perceived general indifference of the federal government to the well-being of Puerto Rico and Puerto Ricans, the rapacious economic relationship between the mainland and the island, and the need on the island and the diaspora to take drastic action to avert the worst from a crisis that has already provoked the greatest exodus of people in the island’s history.

This is a political crisis that has all the built-in ingredients to turn violent: a fact that has not escaped to the federal authorities.

On April 22 a federal judge in Puerto Rico (un)surprisingly ordered three pro-independence former political prisoners —Juan Segarra Palmer, Orlando González Claudio and Norberto Cintrón Fiallo, whose sentences were commuted by President Bill Clinton— to take DNA tests. This was the imperial thing to do, but very little is actually known about why the federal judge ordered these tests, and the federal government has neither denied nor confirmed if the three were involved in any kind of conspiracy.

The general feeling among those who favor Puerto Rico’s independence from the United States (and many others who don’t support independence) is that this action by the federal government amounts to a warning shot to those that are actively critical and unhappy with how the current situation is unfolding: a very clear “Big Brother is watching you” move. After all, these three former political prisoners, who were arrested in the 1980s for “conspiring to overthrow the U.S. government their fight for independence” and for the spectacular no-deaths no-injuries 1982 robbery in Hartford of $7 million from a Wells Fargo depot, are widely considered to be already under constant monitoring. And they have mostly remained out of the public’s view (and definitively out of trouble) for more than 20 years.

What led to this forced DNA tests?

Is the U.S. government preparing for political violence in Puerto Rico?

By now, most readers have a rough idea of the situation in the island. After decades of irresponsible and unsustainable management, the government owes billions of dollars in debt to predatory vulture-fund investors that are demanding their returns take precedence over the payment of retirement pensions, the island education’s budget (10% of schools have already being closed), healthcare and other essential services. These investors have also advanced the idea of reducing the applicable federal minimum wage in the island. On its side, the island’s government has no ability to pay, and in fact has already defaulted on millions of dollars.