Puerto Rico's political status is being revisited
As Puerto Rico prepares to celebrate the 52nd anniversary of commonwealth government, some here say that Washington is signaling an end to the island's unique relationship with the United States. Statehood advocates and independentistas have been trumpeting what they say is a growing bipartisan consensus on the mainland that commonwealth - the preferred status of the ruling party here, and the one consistently favored by referendum voters - is only a temporary stage in the island's development. The bitter divide over political status is the central organizing principle to politics in this territory of 3.9 million, where each of the three major parties defines itself by the option it supports. But Washington, which approved commonwealth in 1952, has been reluctant to revisit the issue. [
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