Puerto Rico, a US cousin, mulls its status and identity

SAN JUAN, June 8, (AFP): “How pretty is the flag, is the flag of Puerto Rico!”

The salsa lyric blasts out of a little ice cream stand outside the Capitol building, so loud and catchy one barely notices the US flag flying alongside Puerto Rico’s banner atop the seaside legislative palace.

Torn between their American citizenship and Puerto Rican pride, the Caribbean island’s inhabitants will express themselves on the complicated relationship with Washington on Sunday.

A referendum proposing “the immediate decolonization of Puerto Rico” has sparked controversy and is likely to be boycotted by the opposition.

Even though the bankrupt island is being thrashed by a crisis of historic proportions, Ricardo Rossello — who took office as governor in January promising to make Puerto Rico the 51st American state — doesn’t want to lose time.

Staggering under more than $70 billion in debt, the US territory has just declared the biggest bankruptcy ever by a local US government, placing the island’s finances under a largely USappointed control board.

Not the best way to persuade Washington to welcome Puerto Rico into the Union, say critics who also complain about the cost of financing a referendum that is not binding on the United States.

Proponents of independence and advocates of the status quo alike dismiss it as a farce. But for Puerto Rico’s young governor, the referendum has everything to do with the crisis.

“The reason the control board exists is because Puerto Rico is in an inequitable relationship with the federal government,” says Christian Sobrino, Rossello’s top economic adviser.

“If Puerto Rico were a state, or if it were an independent country, there would be no opening for such a junta.”

A former Spanish colony taken over by the United States at the end of the 19th century, Puerto Rico has enjoyed broad political autonomy since 1952 as a commonwealth or “free associated state” of the United States.

As US citizens and often proudly so, Puerto Ricans can enter the United States freely and its economy is closely tied to the mainland.

But they don’t have the right to vote in US presidential elections; instead, they cast ballots for their own government. They are represented in the US Congress by a resident commissioner, who has a voice but not a vote. Washington has the ultimate say over the territory’s affairs.

During the last referendum in 2012, a majority said they were dissatisfied with the current status. But nothing changed under the previous Popular Democratic Party, and Rossello and his New Progressive Party want to try again.

In the streets of San Juan, one sees the occasional poster in support of statehood, but few other signs of public interest in the referendum, the fifth on the island’s status since the 1950s.

Walking past a sun-splashed government building, Deborah Martinez says she intends to vote for statehood, because she wants to be able to vote for president.