Welcome to the Empire Files podcast. This is Abby Martin. This is the audio version of each episode of the Empire Files hosted on Telesaur English. You can watch every episode at the Empire Files. TV.

Everyone has been made abundantly aware that Puerto Rico is in debt to Wall Street and needs to pay up. What's left out of its debt

story is that Puerto Rico has been colonial property longer than any nation in the world.

And for over a century, their economic path has been mandated by the very same government,

now demanding they pay for the problems they caused. It doesn't see many perks of being in the

clutches of the beast. Unemployment and poverty rates in Puerto Rico are double that of the poorest states in the U.S.

And there isn't much they can do about it with no real political representation. The recent debate over the bailout package known as Promeza is one illustration.

Yes, the Territorial Clause of the Constitution of the United States says that they are territory

and that therefore they are property of the United States of America.

The Jones Act imposed on the people of Puerto Rico the most expensive merchant marines in the world,

imposed on the people who cost $500 million a year.

Why don't we lift that from them?

I mean, we believe in democracy.

We believe they should be free.

Why don't we lift that from them?

You are imposing a junta, because that's what they're calling it.

There will be no difference between this junta and the junta

finocet in Chile, as far as the international

community is concerned. To find out more about Puerto Rico's crisis, I sat down with Professor

Luis Barrios, former chair of Latin American Studies at John Jay College. A recent UGov poll showed

that a majority of Americans actually think that Puerto Ricans are Puerto Rican citizens, not American citizens. Luis, can you first describe the legal status of Puerto Rico?

What autonomy does it have and what sort of political representation does it have?

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