WASHINGTON: President Barack Obama is set to make history today as the first US president to make an official visit to Puerto Rico in nearly 50 years.
The previous such visit was made by John F Kennedy in December 1961, an image not lost on Obama, who has sparked Kennedy-esque comparisons since he first appeared as a leading Democrat on the national scene.
Since then, Lyndon Johnson was in Puerto Rico in 1968 and Gerald Ford in 1976, but neither visit was directly related to the Caribbean island itself. Johnson launched a military airplane at the Ramey US Air Force Base in Aguadilla, while Ford attended an economic summit.
The White House kept a strikingly low profile ahead of Obama’s trip to Puerto Rico, which is set to last only a few hours.
While some have criticised the fact that Obama devotes so little time to such a historic visit, Resident Commissioner Pedro Pierluisi - Puerto Rico’s representative to the US Congress, albeit without the right to vote - stressed its “huge” significance.
“No (US) president has been here in 50 years. It tells the world that he cares about Puerto Rico,” Pierluisi told reporters.
Obama already knows Puerto Rico, since he visited it twice as a presidential candidate. His current agenda appears to have a similar backdrop of elections 2012.
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