Puerto Rico may at last be relevant this political season. Its primary on June 1 has 63 delegates at stake, and Sen. Hillary Clinton has said she will campaign all the way through Puerto Rico.

That should be good news for Puerto Ricans. It’s a time to flash a spotlight on the island’s increasing economic woes, and to have the candidates come up with proposals to address them, as well as the legacy of colonialism.

Unfortunately, many in Puerto Rico are taking the occasion only to gush with cultural pride about our newly acquired “poll power” — though we still don’t have the right to vote in the actual presidential election.

We need a reality check.

Puerto Rico, colonized more than 500 years ago by the Spanish, has been in the hands of the United States since 1898, when Spain surrendered it as war booty.

For the people of the Caribbean, the Spanish-American War was actually the struggle for the independence of Cuba and Puerto Rico from Spanish colonial rule. At the end of war, however, while Washington gave Cuba its freedom, it reneged on its promise of independence to the people of Puerto Rico.

Puerto Ricans are still suffering from that broken promise. For 110 years, Washington has exploited Puerto Rico’s natural resources and violated its political and economic domain. Puerto Ricans have been used as fodder for foreign wars and cheap labor for mainland corporations. And the Pentagon even tested radioactive weapons on Vieques.

The legacy of colonialism is clear. Today, the Puerto Rican economy is still below that of Mississippi, the poorest state in the nation. Puerto Rico’s per capital personal income is approximately one-third that of U.S. citizens on the mainland. More than 45 percent of Puerto Ricans live below the poverty line. Eighty-seven percent of Puerto Rican children are on the National School Breakfast and Lunch Programs — which gives you a good idea of how horribly high child poverty is.

Such poverty prevails on the island despite a recent U.S. Treasury Department report that indicates the return on capital for corporations in Puerto Rico is five times higher than for those on the mainland.

Along with the political status of Puerto Rico, these are the issues that Sens. Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton ought to address when they campaign in this primary.

It’s a shame that many Puerto Ricans are content to have them visit the island and that the debate, so far, has largely fallen along the same shallow lines as on the mainland. Namely, which candidate serves up the better rhetoric, and whether it is Clinton or Obama who is less stained by shady political or personal acquaintances.

Amid all this “rebolu,” as we often say in Puerto Rico, we are letting Clinton and Obama off the hook.

So a new realm of exploitation seems to have emerged — the seduction of the Puerto Rican vote. Puerto Rico continues to live out its function as booty, only this time in the electoral war.

Antonia Darder, a Puerto Rican activist-scholar, is at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, in Education and Latino Studies. She can be reached at pmproj [at] progressive [dot] org.