Alondra Llompart was 8 years old when Puerto Rico entered the economic recession from which it is still struggling to emerge. She’s 22 now, so for most of her life she’s watched the island’s infrastructure crumble and endured an unending string of goodbyes to people leaving the island in search of work.
“Most of my family, unfortunately — to Florida, or Texas,” Llompart said. “So you’re just kind of trying to hold on to the few people that do stay, and hope that they never leave. And it just is really sad.”
The sources of Puerto Rico’s economic and social troubles are many, but prominent among them, Llompart believes, is a system in which the island’s two main political parties have spent decades fighting over one major issue – whether Puerto Rico should remain a commonwealth territory of the United States, or seek statehood.
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