THIS IS AN IMPORTANT READ FOR PUERTO RICANS …..
“Puerto Ricans have become too important to offend. Alongside electoral maths, there is another reason why mainland politicians may be reluctant to talk too much about Puerto Rico. It involves guilt. America is proud to be a superpower that never built an empire. But Puerto Rico was, in essence, grabbed as a colony in 1898, after a brief war ended four centuries of rule by Spain (islanders went from being “fervently Spanish” to “enthusiastically American” within 24 hours, grumbled one of the vanquished Spanish commanders at the time).”
Yes. Yet another article about “The Puerto Rico problem,” but I couldn’t bear to include only excerpts, so here is the full article—see link to the original in The Economist below. Very interesting, indeed.
POLITICIANS do love a morality tale. Just ask the Greeks. American political leaders, in common with so many around the world, relish casting Grecian agonies as an Aesop’s fable for modern times (pitting northern European ants against Mediterranean grasshoppers). That makes it striking—and revealing—that mainland political bosses seem reluctant to sermonise about a debt crisis much closer to home, in the autonomous American territory of Puerto Rico.
The island’s governor, Alejandro García Padilla, last month conceded that public debts of $72 billion are “not payable”. For politicians on the right, Puerto Rico’s fall looks like a ready-made parable. It is a tale of big government and policies that look kindly but instead trap the poor in…
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