Every country, every town, has a road or a building or a park to which a name of historical significance has been attached. As the years pass, the number of locals who remember what the name means dwindles and the transplants to the community just call it what it is, thinking little, if at all, about its name. The place becomes part of the landscape, the taken-for-granted background upon which disappearing stories are inscribed and daily life is lived.

For me, a temporary resident of Puerto Rico, 65 Infanteria, or la 65, was just a road. It was the traffic-choked highway between San Juan and our friend's home tucked away in the damp and wild green hills of Rio Grande. It was an eyesore, evidence of all that has gone wrong with the island: too many cars and car dealerships, too many mega-stores, too much cross-cutting, too many subdivisions with too many cutesy names, too many bulldozers, too much black smoke, and too little thoughtfulness. It was a vendors' makeshift mobile mini-mall. From 4 to 6 PM, la 65 was chock-a-block with young men darting between cars at red lights, selling bottled water, cocos, cangrejos, quenepas (if the season was right), and all other manner of edible wares. Permanent installations on the shoulder of the road included metal drums turned into improvised grills and fogatas where a variety of foods were fried and served piping hot and still dripping with oil to hungry hands that rolled down windows for this local fast food, and the lonely looking older man who sold homemade bizcocho out of the bed of his pick-up. And if appetites weren't satisfied, la 65 also offered up any number of bars and sex shops where a lonely driver could get a fix.

I knew what "infanteria" meant, of course--infantry--but it never occurred to me to wonder why the road was named 65 Infanteria or what the significance of la 65 was. It wasn't until last week--in New York--that I learned who and what la 65 was, and it wasn't because I sought out the information. In the documentary, "The Borinqueneers," directors Noemi Figueroa Soulet and Raquel Ortiz resurrected the not-so-distant but largely forgotten history of the 65th Infantry, the U.S. Army's all-Puerto Rican unit that was responsible for guarding U.S. installations in Puerto Rico and Panama--both strategic locations for U.S. military operations--until the 1930s. La 65 was also one of the first Army units sent to the war in Korea, its members fighting passionately--and, Army officials, said, valiantly and most expertly--for a country that was (and remains) happy to enlarge its troop force without ever conceding the full rights, privileges, and responsibilities of U.S. citizenship upon them. 61,000 "Borinqueneers" fought in Korea, and one of every 42 soldiers who died in service during the Korean War was Puerto Rican.

The story was moving, but it has particular resonance at this moment, poised as we are between the news that the 4,000th American soldier has been killed in Iraq and the impending presidential primary vote, which takes place in Puerto Rico in early June. Puerto Ricans are not permitted to vote in the final presidential election--just the primaries, which makes the loss of between 60 and 80 Puerto Rican soldiers in the war* all the more maddening.

The veterans of 65 Infanteria held a range of political perspectives: Some asserted that Puerto Rico should be incorporated, once and for all, into the United States as the 51st state. Some argued that the status quo of the commonwealth is confusing but functional, the best of both worlds. And some, especially those who were bitter about the way they were treated as soldiers who gave their all, advocated independence. I don't know if I'll ever drive on la 65 again, but if I do, I'll think of these men and all the Puerto Rican soldiers who continue to fight for the United States. La 65 isn't only the worst of the island; it's the best, too.

*Figures documenting the deaths of Puerto Rican soldiers serving in Iraq and Afghanistan vary. According to a blog written by El Nuevo Dia journalist Jose Delgado, Pentagon figures state that as of March 2008, 68 Puerto Ricans have died in service in the war, while the Puerto Rican activist group, Madres Contra la Guerra (Mothers Against the War), have counted more than 80 deaths.