Puerto Rico's contentious pact with the Financial Oversight and Management Board — the U.S.-appointed attempt to trim the island's oppressive debt — has been touted as a model for U.S. states and cities when bankruptcy threatens. But the deal has left the island with dim economic prospects and "unsustainable" billions still to pay, says Mairym Ramos-Salinas, a labor union official and ex-aide to the island's former governor.
And yet a shift away from Puerto Rico's old political parties has given her and other patriots some hope that a stronger economy can arise. That, plus the debt settlement may have cleared a path to finally address the island's status as our Caribbean colony of more than three million people, twice the population of Philadelphia, but still with no vote in Congress.
The island has long labored under a colonial status that U.S. presidents and many Puerto Ricans say promotes political and fiscal instability.
