Maritza Stanchich: Obama in Old San Juan

Maritza Stanchich is an associate professor of English at the Río Piedras campus of the University of Puerto Rico.

A MONTH of steady rain has brightened the cobblestones of Old San Juan. Now they are as blue as the crabs hawked alongside the coastal roads of this Caribbean territory of the United States. Public employees must have been relieved that nature cooperated, after weeks spent sprucing up the city for Barack Obama’s arrival here on Tuesday morning.

His visit aggravated the city’s already grim traffic jams, called tapones, prompting some cynical reactions. A taxi driver named Reina Blanco waved her arm at the highway and told me: “Once again I’m going to be hearing tourists say they’ll never come back here because of the traffic.”

Nevertheless, most people consider the traffic a worthwhile inconvenience for the rare occasion of an official presidential visit, the first since John F. Kennedy came here 50 years ago. Welcome banners throughout the city picture the two presidents side by side with the words: “We are proud to be part of history, Kennedy 1961, Obama 2011.”

But how much do we have to celebrate?

A referendum on the future of Puerto Rico — independence, statehood or the status quo — will be held sometime in the next year or so, and Puerto Ricans are divided....