Amid crisis, support grows for Puerto Rico statehood

The bill, which President Barack Obama is expected to sign, allows Puerto Rico to restructure some of its debt as U.S. cities and counties can.

Though the bill is intended to help Puerto Rico, the outside oversight board and a provision to cut the minimum wage for some workers have fed into the sense of many that islanders are second-class citizens, forced to beg Congress for help in a time of need.

The shift in sentiment is dramatized by the woes of the governing Popular Democratic Party, the standard-bearer for the island's current status as a commonwealth.

Many of the problems stem from the end of a federal tax break for manufacturers that prompted many factories to close, as well as massive public pension liabilities and the high cost of energy.

The territorial government, its municipalities and utilities accrued about $70 billion in debt that the governor finally declared "unpayable," last year, setting off a chain of defaults.

Puerto Rico has been a U.S. territory since 1898 and it gained limited political autonomy when the U.S. approved its constitution in 1952.

The territorial status has helped the island to preserve some its cultural identity, allowing it, for example, to send its own athletes to the Olympics and to keep Spanish as an official language.

While islanders are citizens, they can't vote in presidential elections and have no voting representative in Congress.