Puerto Rico’s Presidential Visit after 50 years! JUNE 14, 2011

In Visit to Puerto Rico, Obama Has Eye on Mainland!

SAN JUAN, P. R. — When President Obama arrives here on Tuesday — becoming the first American leader to visit officially since John F. Kennedy in 1961 — his feet will be planted firmly in San Juan’s historic district but his words will be aimed mostly at Puerto Ricans in Florida, New York and Pennsylvania.

Not that there is anything wrong with that, many Puerto Ricans say. After five decades of cold shoulders from a succession of presidents, most Puerto Ricans are primed for a presidential visit, even if it is brief and unlikely to sway the longstanding debate over Puerto Rico’s identity as a United States territory.

Here the short-term benefits of the visit are already evident: Spanish colonial buildings, including the governor’s residence, boast new paint, a major highway is pothole free (although not without causing major traffic jams and epic grousing), statues gleam after rounds of polish and rusty old signs have been dutifully replaced.

On his whirlwind stop, the president is expected to meet with Puerto Rico’s governor, Luis Fortuño, a Republican who supports statehood, attend a business round table, deliver a speech in Old San Juan and attend a quick fund-raising event. He will also encounter a throng of “Obama Go Home” protesters — Puerto Ricans who want the island to break free of United States control.

Other presidents have visited since 1961 but only on business unrelated to Puerto Rico. President Gerald R. Ford visited the island in 1976 to address the Group of Seven economic summit, and President Lyndon B. Johnson stopped at a military base in Aguadilla in 1968 to inaugurate a military aircraft.

“This is huge,” said Pedro R. Pierluisi, a Democrat and Puerto Rico’s nonvoting representative in Congress. “No president has been here in 50 years. It tells the world that he cares about Puerto Rico.”

“Some say he is coming here with political motivations,” said Mr. Pierluisi, who sat outside a local Starbucks. “I say, ‘So what?’ Presidents should care about us and come down here and familiarize themselves with our issues. It should be so. We should be treated fairly and responsibly.”

Mr. Obama will arrive at a vulnerable time for this Caribbean island of 3.7 million people. Hit hard by a recession that began here in 2006, Puerto Rico has an unemployment rate that remains stubbornly high, 16.2 percent in April, compared with 9 percent on the mainland. The island has also been rocked by a sky-high murder rate, much of it related to the drug trade, which has led to widespread anxiety.

Being careful to keep expectations in check, Puerto Ricans say they are nevertheless hopeful that Mr. Obama will speak about the economy and crime and make mention of Puerto Rico’s longstanding identity crisis regarding its political status. Few Puerto Ricans have forgotten that when Mr. Obama came here twice to campaign during the primary against Hillary Rodham Clinton (he lost), he promised to return to the island as president and to resolve Puerto Rico’s status during his first term.

About half of Puerto Ricans here advocate statehood. The other half are satisfied, more or less, with Puerto Rico being a commonwealth, mostly because they are concerned about keeping its cultural identity intact. A minority would like independence.

As members of a commonwealth, Puerto Ricans hold American citizenship and can be drafted. But the territory has no voting representative in Congress. And while Puerto Ricans in Puerto Rico can vote in a primary, they cannot do so in a general presidential election. That privilege is reserved for Puerto Ricans in the United States.

Mr. Obama has tried to hew to his pledge regarding the island’s political status. The President’s Task Force on Puerto Rico’s Status issued a report in March recommending that the island hold another plebiscite, actually two plebiscites, by the end of 2012. The first would ask whether Puerto Rico should be independent or part of the United States; the second one would narrow the options further.

The hope is that one position will garner a majority of votes, which has not happened with the two previous referendums. Mr. Fortuño, in the midst of drafting the first plebiscite, already faces charges that he is purposely sidelining commonwealth supporters.

Traditionally, American presidents have been loath to immerse themselves in the treacherous question of Puerto Rican status and prefer to take a neutral, do-no-harm stance.

“But President Obama will have to include some ideas on what is going on in that matter because his task force addressed it,” said Angel Rosa, a political science professor at the University of Puerto Rico’s Mayaguez campus and a radio talk show host on WKAQ. “If he doesn’t do it, it will represent a departure from his own public policy and his own administration.”

Mr. Obama also must keep a close eye on Puerto Ricans living on the mainland. Puerto Rico’s economic crisis has tilted the population away from the Caribbean island and toward the mainland, a reality that Mr. Obama will be keenly aware of as he arrives here. There are now more Puerto Ricans living in the United States than in Puerto Rico; 4.6 million reside in the United States and 3.7 million on the island, according to the 2010 census.

There was a particularly large population jump in Central Florida, especially in the Orlando and Tampa area. They now number 848,000, second only to the Puerto Rican population in New York. What’s more, many of the Puerto Ricans who have settled in Florida in the past decade are from the well-educated or professional middle class, a departure from those who set down roots in New York decades ago.

Politically, many more of them favor statehood for Puerto Rico than in New York. And unlike Puerto Ricans in the Northeast, they are not avowed Democrats. This has turned them into pivotal swing voters in a crucial swing state.

Andrés W. López, a lawyer in Puerto Rico and a member of the finance committee of the Democratic National Committee who has helped arrange Mr. Obama’s visits to Puerto Rico, said the president wanted to make good on his vow to return here and is well-versed on the island’s current troubles.

He said Mr. Obama also understands the importance of the Puerto Rican vote. Puerto Ricans in the United States care deeply about matters on the island and a visit here reinforces the president’s commitment.

“It’s a clear political reality that Puerto Ricans as a group are becoming more and more of a burgeoning force on the mainland,” Mr. López said. “For the first time you have more Puerto Ricans living outside of Puerto Rico, by a lot. It’s at a tipping point. And the issues that matter to Puerto Ricans include, of course, Puerto Rico so Puerto Rico is going to take on heightened importance.”

As workers moved urgently to beautify patches of Old San Juan and the government completed plans for the visit, Puerto Ricans, who pushed for a day off of work on Tuesday but failed, are mostly optimistic about the visit. Some would love for the president to be a more forceful advocate for statehood.

“Our children have fought in these wars and died,” said Miguel Angel Rivera, 65, a retired government worker who said he expects Mr. Obama to go home with a “little suitcase of money” for his re-election campaign. “We want to be citizens but not second-class citizens. We want to feel complete.”

Just a few steps away on the Plaza de Armas in Old San Juan, Jorge Sierra, a 58-year-old publicist working on his laptop, wanted just the opposite.

“I don’t want him to come,” Mr. Sierra said. “I don’t agree with his politics or how he treats Puerto Rico as a colony. I’ll be out there demonstrating.”

What most people here really want, though, is work, better schools and a sense of safety on the streets.

“What Puerto Ricans would like Obama to talk about is not political status; that is an issue for the political parties and the political class,” Mr. Rosa said. “Ordinary Puerto Ricans would like him to talk about jobs and crime. That is not different from the mainland. Basically, it’s the same problems.”