On Sunday June 11, Puerto Ricans will vote on whether or not to remain an Associated Free State of the United States. Photo: AFP

SAN JUAN.— In San Juan, chants of “the debt is illegal” and “colonial dictatorship” fill the morning air, as students from the University of Puerto Rico block a palm-lined avenue.

Across the street, a board of overseers imposed by Washington is meeting with student representatives to hear their demands as they mull ever deeper cuts to pull this “Greece of the Caribbean” out of bankruptcy.

To some, it’s a necessary corrective to get a stumbling Puerto Rico back on its feet.

But to others like Mariana de Alba, a 27-year-old law student at the protest, it all smacks of colonial subjugation.

“What they’ve come to do is to cut back the public budget and the island’s public services to give it to the big bond holders, to pay off a debt that we don’t even know whether it is legitimate,” she says.

The Financial Oversight and Management Board for Puerto Rico — made up of seven members appointed by the US president and one by the island’s governor — is tasked with getting a handle on the territory’s crushing $74 billion debt.

But in an island proud of a cultural identity expressed in its language, food and music, the board is widely seen as having an intolerable stranglehold on Puerto Rican life.

As in Greece, where the arrival of the European “troika” repulsed much of the population, Puerto Rico had long shrugged off the dangers of unrestrained borrowing — until the crash.

But unlike its Mediterranean counterpart, Puerto Rico is not independent.

A former Spanish colony that became an American territory at the end of the 19th century, the island of 3.5 million has had its own government since 1952 when it became a “free associated state,” or commonwealth, of the United States.

On Sunday June 11, its inhabitants will vote on its relationship with the United States, in a non-binding referendum.

Puerto Rico declared bankruptcy in early May.

The bankruptcy — the largest ever by a local US government — caused barely a ripple in the United States, but in Puerto Rico, it has fueled joblessness and protests.

At the University of Puerto Rico, closed since the end of March by student protests, chairs and desks have been chained to its gated entrance.

“They have to stop making blind cuts,” said Alba.

In the face of this financial morass, the two parties that have alternated in power since the 1950s — Governor Ricardo Rossello’s New Progressive Party and the opposition Popular Democratic Party — are blaming each other for the mess.

But relaunching the island’s economy is likely to be more difficult under US President Donald Trump, who is pushing for deep cuts in food assistance and medical insurance programs for the poor. (Excerpts from AFP)



