Puerto Rican Status Debate

Waning Support in 25th Year of Commonwealth

The Commonwealth of Puerto Rico will mark its twenty-fifth anniversary on July 25, under severe attack from critics on the left and the right. The present governor, Carlos Romero Barcelo, a partisan of statehood for the island, has said, “The days of glory of Commonwealth are past.”1 The leader of the Puerto Rican Independence Party, Ruben Berrios Martinez, calls the Commonwealth form of government “a political and economic anachronism.”2 Even the head of the Popular Democratic Party, which was responsible for creating the Commonwealth a quarter of a century ago, declares that it would be “very, very difficult” to take the position that Puerto Rico is not, in effect, a colony of the United States.3

Doubts ...