Puerto Rico has overwhelmingly voted to become the 51st state of the United States, in a referendum which promised enormous change, yet in reality is likely to make little difference.
Ricardo Rossello, the governor of the US territory, told supporters numbering a few hundred people that he would now press Washington to respect the vote.
“The United States of America will have to obey the will of our people!” he yelled to the crowd, clutching US flags and dancing to a tropical jingle that promoted statehood.
Over half a million people voted in favour of the territory becoming a full state, with only 7,800 votes for free association or independence, and 6,800 votes for the current territorial status.
But eight out of ten voters did not bother to cast their vote – a sign of apathy unlikely to help Mr Rossello’s cause.
The referendum coincided with the 100th anniversary of the United States granting US citizenship to Puerto Ricans, although they are barred from voting in presidential elections, and have only one congressional representative with limited voting powers.
An island about the same size of Connecticut, and with 3.4 million people, Puerto Rico is exempt from federal income tax, but it still pays Social Security and Medicare and local taxes, and it receives less federal funding than US states.
“We have been a colony for 500 years,” said Mr Rossello, elected in January on a platform of achieving statehood.
“We have had US citizenship for 100 years, but it’s been a second class one.”
But he knows well that this vote on statehood – the fifth of its kind – is unlikely to sway the Trump administration.
The island has $70 billion in debt, a 45 per cent poverty rate, woefully under-performing schools and near-insolvent pension and health systems. Last month, the territory filed for the biggest municipal bankruptcy in US history.
Furthermore, Puerto Ricans tend to vote Democrat.
Nearly half a million Puerto Ricans have fled to the US mainland to escape the island’s 10-year economic recession and 12 per cent unemployment rate. Those who remain behind have faced new taxes and higher utility bills on an island where food is 22 per cent more expensive than on the US mainland, and public services are 64 per cent more expensive.
Jose Rosa, a 62-year-old retired corrections officer, said the island’s situation is the reason he voted for the first time in such a referendum.
“We need a change in the way we’re living,” he said. “You can see the crisis.”
But voter turnout was just 23 per cent – significantly lower than the last time Puerto Ricans were asked to decide, in 2012.
Alejandro Garcia Padilla, the previous governor, who did not seek re-election last year and whose party supports the status quo, rejected Sunday’s results.
“Whoever claims that statehood triumphed is being intellectually dishonest,” he said. “The boycott defeated statehood.”
Carolina Santos, a single working mother, struggling to pay her bills, gave a more pragmatic reason as to why Mr Trump is unlikely to welcome the island to full statehood.
“We’re bankrupt and 85 percent of us don’t speak English,” she said.
“Why would the US government want to take on a problem like Puerto Rico?”
(Harriet Alexander, New York)
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