Puerto Rico, still in limbo UNDERCURRENT JAMES CUSICK

The Jets and the Sharks, the rival gangs of New York's street, are back on the London stage in the 50th anniversary production of West Side Story. Theatre critics can't stop themselves from becoming pseudo-sociologists as they flash up the "alarming" relevancy of gangland warfare. Britain fi nds itself gripped by escalating knife crime and teenage killings where even the Home Secretary can't nip out for a kebab without putting her life at risk. Hence Riff 's gang, the Jets, born in America but of Polish origin, and Bernardo's Puerto Rican Sharks, all new immigrants looking to survive and unsure of why they've traded PR for NY, encapsulate the racist tensions that are a part of violent street culture in 2008 UK.

But beneath Leonard Bernstein's music and Stephen Sondheim's lyrics lies a deeper political unease. When the original Broadway production was still packing them in, the White House, the US State Department, the United Nations and the US Congress were all involved in political wranglings about what status Puerto Rico should have.

This fight - and here you can chose who are the Jets and who are the Sharks - is still going on, with nationalists in PR this year urging the UN to review the island's status and help it gather international support to pressure the US into giving it greater autonomy.

"There's a place for us" sing the characters in Somewhere, West Side Story's great love song, but the place many Puerto Ricans really want to be is inside the UN with a country of their own.

Christopher Columbus is said to have arrived in Puerto Rico in 1493. Spanish colonisation followed quickly. The Dutch and the English made efforts to take the island. But the Spanish held on, leaving only PR and Cuba as their main colonies after the Peninsular War.

During the Spanish-American War in 1898, the US invaded Puerto Rico, took control and have never let go.

US citizenship was given to Puerto Ricans in 1917. They have been in the US military since, from Vietnam to Iraq. Officially PR is an "incorporated territory" of the US where all its limited powers are "delegated" by the US. They get to elect their own governor, but inside the US Congress they only have a "non-voting" delegate. Despite US citizenship, those PRs living on the island can't vote in US presidential elections. In their own "primary" they could back Obama or Clinton, or McCain, but come November they can just watch. To vote, PRs need to be living in the US. It is a territory of the US, just not part of it. They get to pay some US federal taxes, of course.

The UN says it has no authority to change Puerto Rico's status. The fi ght, as they say in San Juan, goes on.

Copyright c 2008 Newsquest Media Group
Provided by ProQuest Information and Learning Company. All rights Reserved.