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Puerto Rico has a unique history. For four centuries, from Columbus’s landing here in 1493 until the Spanish-American War of 1898, Puerto Rico was a Spanish colony, and the port of San Juan was the gathering place for its annual convoy of gold and silver from the Americas to Spain. Today, with 3.9 million people, it is the largest American territory—about the same population as Oregon; and about 4 million people of Puerto Rican descent live on the mainland. Sixty years ago, it was “the poorhouse of the Caribbean,” heavily populated, devoted almost entirely to sugar and coffee cultivation. Now it has a recognizably First World economy, with per capita incomes about half of those of the least affluent American states and among the highest in Latin America.

Puerto Rico has elected a resident commissioner to Congress since 1900 (the only member of Congress with a four-year term) and its residents have been American citizens since 1917, but it didn’t elect its own governor until 1948. In the 1940s, 1950s and early 1960s, Puerto Rico was transformed by Governor Luis Munoz Marin and his Popular Democratic Party. Munoz initiated “Operation Bootstrap” (called “Operation Hands to Work” by Puerto Ricans) to lure businesses to Puerto Rico with promises of low-wage labor and government-built factories and tax exemptions. Munoz also developed Puerto Rico’s commonwealth form of government—better understood in Spanish, Estado Libre Asociado (ELA): Free Associated State—approved by plebiscite in 1952. Under ELA, Puerto Rico is part of the United States for purposes of international trade, foreign policy and war, but has its own separate laws, taxes and representative government; it is not subject to federal income taxes and is not eligible for all federal benefits (though some have been approved by Congress). Some 200,000 Puerto Ricans have served in the U.S. military; 2,000 died in service and four were awarded the Congressional Medal of Honor. Puerto Rico has also developed its own political parties: Munoz’s Popular Democrats (the Spanish acronym is PPD), the New Progressives (PNP) who favor statehood, and two Independence parties.

The commonwealth solution, by its own terms, was open to amendment; ever since Munoz retired in 1964, the central issue in Puerto Rico’s politics has been status: Should this island continue or modify ELA, should it seek statehood, or should it seek independence? For many years there was gradual movement toward statehood. In the July 1967 referendum, conducted when the Popular Democrats were in power, Puerto Ricans voted for ELA over statehood by 60%-39%; in the November 1993 referendum, conducted with PNP Governor Pedro Rossello in office, the vote was 48% for ELA, 46% for statehood. In March 1998 the U.S. House voted 209–208 for a referendum setting terms for statehood; this was a project of Speaker Newt Gingrich, who hoped to attract Hispanic votes, and of Resources Committee Chairman Don Young, who saw in statehood backers’ demands echoes of Alaska’s fight for statehood. But the bill went nowhere in the Senate. Rossello ordered a referendum on his terms (which are unlikely ever to be accepted in Congress) in December 1998; 47% voted for statehood and 50% for “none of the above,” the option favored by the Popular Democrats. Independence has negligible support—4% in 1993, 3% in 1998—primarily from university students; nor are there many pro-independence abstentions, voter turnout in the enthusiastic politics of Puerto Rico is the highest under the American flag, higher than in even the most affluent, long-settled suburbs of the mainland. The election of two PPD governors, Sila Calderon in 2000 and Anibal Acevedo Vilain 2004, seemed to halt the move toward statehood. For years younger and more affluent voters have tilted toward statehood, but as they have aged and the island has grown more prosperous, support for statehood seemed to have stopped growing.

More recently the action on status has moved from the island to the mainland. In December 2005 a White House task force, originally set up during the Clinton administration, finally reported. It recommended a two-step referendum, with Puerto Ricans both on the island and on the mainland, first voting on whether to consider a change in the current ELA status, and then, if they favored a change, choosing between statehood and independence. A bill incorporating this recommendation was sponsored by Jose Serrano of the Bronx and Luis Fortuno, elected the PNP Resident Commissioner from Puerto Rico in 2004. Among its mainland supporters were Steny Hoyer, Roy Blunt, Nick Rahall and Don Young. This approach was criticized by Governor Anibal Acevedo Vila, the only PPD candidate elected in 2004. He argued that the two-step approach would frustrate the wishes of the majorities or pluralities which had voted for ELA in previous referenda and would produce a verdict for an option, statehood, which clearly lacked majority support. Acevedo called for “enhanced commonwealth,” under which Puerto Rico could set its own foreign and trade policies and opt out of federal law as negotiated with Congress. To advance this, Nydia Velazquez sponsored a bill authorizing a constitutional convention on the island in which delegates could decide on status and define Puerto Rico’s relationship with the mainland. This was supported by Luis Gutierrez, Jimmy Duncan, Richard Burr, Roger Wicker, Charles Rangel, John Conyers, Bob Menendez, Trent Lott and Edward Kennedy. Critics said that it was unconstitutional for Puerto Rico to be able to abrogate or modify federal laws and for the federal government to cede such powers to a territory. 

Both positions on status seem unrealistic. Congress is not likely to accept Puerto Rico as a state under the terms and conditions advocated by the PNP (Spanish as an official language, for example, and continuation of Puerto Rico’s eligibility under certain welfare laws). And it’s not apparent that it’s feasible or desirable to let Puerto Ricans on the mainland—how many generations removed?—vote on the state of the island. Nor is Congress going to allow Puerto Rico to remain American and yet have a separate foreign policy. As Fortuno says, “Three administrations have told you what you are proposing is unconstitutional. What part of no don’t you understand?” Status positions on the mainland have become a rallying point for partisan issues on the island. As for mainland politicians, Democrats and many Republicans assume that as a state Puerto Rico would be solidly Democratic (with five or six House members), though Fortuno, a Republican, and Puerto Rico Senate President Kenneth McClintock, a statehood backer and Democrat, argue that it would actually lean Republican. McClintock points out that in the 1950s almost everyone assumed that Hawaii would be Republican and Alaska Democratic, when it has turned to be the other way around; but Puerto Rico has no companion seeking statehood whose contrary leanings might balance it out.

As the debate over status has gone on, Puerto Rico’s economy has been evolving, and not entirely in a positive direction. Operation Bootstrap took advantage of the fact that Puerto Rico is part of the U.S. market and encouraged the growth of apparel and other low-wage manufacturing industries. It also capitalized on Section 936 of the Internal Revenue Code, which sheltered earnings of some Puerto Rico manufacturers from federal taxes; this was seized on especially by pharmaceutical companies which produce a large percentage of their pills in Puerto Rico. In the 1970s, as Puerto Rican income topped half the levels in the lowest mainland state, Congress extended welfare benefits at mainland rates to the island. More than half the residents went on food stamps (cupones) and work force participation fell, even as apparel jobs were threatened by competition from the Dominican Republic and Honduras. Section 936, though it generated local taxes and deposits for local banks, did not produce all that many jobs. In 1995 Congress voted to phase it out over 10 years; this made less difference than people expected, since the pharmaceuticals set up foreign-based subsidiaries to run their Puerto Rico operations and shield them from mainland taxes. In the 1990s Governor Pedro Rossello moved Puerto Rico away from socialism, by selling off the government-owned Navieras shipping line, telephone company and hospitals. Governor Sila Calderon moved a bit in the other direction in 2002, with a program investing $1 billion in the 700 poorest communities in the island, in infrastructure—water, electricity, roads—and education and health care programs. But none of this has spurred enough private sector growth: with welfare benefits available, Puerto Rico has some of the lowest male work force participation in the world. Crime rates are much higher than on the mainland, and there is a new movement of bilingual professionals—nurses, policemen, doctors, teachers—from the island to mainland locations where fluency in Spanish is an asset.

One issue that has been removed from Puerto Rico politics is the Navy’s bombing range and training ground on the island of Vieques. Established in 1941, it was an irritant to many in Puerto Rico. In June 2001 George W. Bush promised to halt all military exercises in May 2003; despite increased pressures after September 11, he kept his word. The base was closed and efforts were made to encourage local development; the Navy also closed the Roosevelt Roads base in San Juan Harbor, whose only mission was support of the Vieques bombing range.

Much of the political news out of Puerto Rico has come out of corruption charges against various high officials in the administrations of PPD Governor Pedro Rossello, elected in 1992 and 1996. Rossello was succeeded by PPD Governor Sila Calderon, who concentrated on getting the Navy out of Vieques and spurring development in Puerto Rico’s poorest communities; she also ran a voter registration drive among Puerto Ricans on the mainland, which probably helped Democrats in the Northeast but Republicans in Florida. She chose not to seek reelection in 2004. The 2004 election resulted in the election of new leaders and was the first time Puerto Rico elected a split ticket: the PPD’s Acevedo was elected governor over Rossello by a 48.4%-48.2% margin, after court battles over whether ballots should be counted on which voters marked the square for Acevedo and the square for the pro-independence PIP party. The PNP’s Luis Fortuno was elected resident commissioner, Puerto Rico’s non-voting member of the House, by a 48.5%-48.0% margin. The PNP won a majority in the Senate, and one PNP member resigned to allow Rossello to become a member. But Kenneth McClintock then resisted Rossello’s move to replace him as Senate President. The government was shut down briefly in May 2006 in a dispute between Acevedo and the legislature; a commission set up to solve the problem recommended furloughing 95,000 employees and closing 1,500 schools. A 5.9% sales tax was enacted, with a new levy on large corporations to repay a $531 million loan from the Puerto Rico Government Development Bank to cover employee salaries. In December 2006 Resident Commissioner Luis Fortuno announced he would run for governor in 2008; Rossello also appeared interested but had to answer questions about whether he had claimed too much on his pension.

Puerto Rico stands in uneasy equipoise. Its ELA status is a compromise, and a considerable achievement; Luis Munoz Marin was able to create enthusiasm for what was a middle-of-the-road position, neither full independence nor assimilative statehood. The Puerto Rican people did develop a polity that is tolerant of divergence of opinion, determined to uphold personal liberty, increasingly intolerant of corruption and capable of fostering sustained economic growth: an achievement worthy of respectful attention in Latin America and on the mainland. But there continue to be tugs in both directions on status. Independentistas, though few in number, still are full of enthusiasm for the nonagenarian Lolita Lebron, the nationalist who led the gunfire attack on the U.S. House of Representatives in March 1954, and protested when police shot the aging fugitive Filiberto Ojeda Rios in September 2005, who was guilty of a car bombing and armed bank robbery. Governor Acevedo seeks an enhanced commonwealth and Fortuno and the PNP statehood, both on terms Congress seems highly unlikely to approve. Over the last century Congress has only admitted new states when there has been a widespread consensus there for statehood; that is and has been lacking in Puerto Rico, where people are split nearly down the middle over status. The Puerto Rican economy, which jumped so far ahead of the rest of Latin America in the 1950s and 1960s, is now growing more slowly, burdened with an overlarge public sector and overgenerous welfare benefits which sap work incentives. Passage of CAFTA and other free trade agreements in Latin America could lead to greater trade and to a role for Puerto Rico as a helpful elder sister, with money to invest and expertise gained from its own economic development—and wisdom gained from its own political development. But first Puerto Rico needs to get its own house in better order.