Puerto Rican politics has long been said to be the national sport of the country–maybe because of how closely Puerto Rican politics resembles a game.

In Volleyball, the ball is passed to the other side of the court when the team is out of moves to play when they’re in control of the ball; in baseball, the one team gets to bat when the other team reaches three strikes; and in tennis, the ball goes back and forth from one side of the court to the other in hopes that one player will outsmart or overpower the other player in order to score.

For the past six decades, politics in Puerto Rico have been a game of bipartisanship where one party is in control for an administration or two and once the other party is elected into office, the sole purpose of that administration is to undo the working of the previous one.

This game that Puerto Rico has endured for so long is one that the Puerto Rican people are tired of watching, now that the country has faced the largest social and economic crisis in its history. However, there is one person that has so fiercely and determinately stated is willing to stand up and fight against this dirty and corrupt political game that has slowly, but surely, made a mockery of the Puerto Rican electorate, and that person is Alexandra Lúgaro.

Alexandra Lúgaro has announced her candidacy for the highest office of our land, Governor of Puerto Rico, as an independent (unaffiliated with any political party) candidate. Lúgaro is a graduate of the University of Puerto Rico (UPR) with a Bachelor’s degree in Business Administration with a trip concentration in Finance, Marketing, and Economics, a lawyer after obtaining her Masters of Laws from the Universidad Complutense de Madrid, in which she is currently a student aspiring to receive her Doctorate in Financial and Taxation Law. She has worked as Executive Director of Metropolitcan New School of American and America Aponte and Associates, two corporations that work closely with the Department of Education in Puerto Rico.

Since the moment she announced her candidacy, Alexandra Lúgaro has been a beacon of hope to many Puerto Rican citizens who believe that enough is enough. She greatly represents the policies that Millennials consider to be most crucial in the efforts to bring Puerto Rico out of the social, economic, and educational crises that it faces. Lúgaro is what the country needs and wants; a highly educated, driven, and honest woman fighting for her country, while looking for support from the people of Puerto Rico and not through the affiliation of a political party or the donations of large, faceless corporations. The fight that Lúgaro has fearlessly decided to fight is one that will come with many obstacles and dirty politics, but she has stated multiple times that she has nothing to hide and has unrelenting faith in the Puerto Rican electorate to make an informed and educated decision on what the country needs. I truly believe, the Alexandra Lúgaro is what our country so desperately needs.

Alexandra Lúgaro has made Education and the Economy the two main pillars of her campaign and will stop at nothing to make sure that these issues are addressed during the election period. Lúgaro has provided her campaign platform multiple times through multiple sources and it is one that will help Puerto Rico progress. She has made it clear that all the issues Puerto Rico faces cannot and will not be fixed in four years, as most politicians promise. However, she has proposed policies that will surely get Puerto Rico much closer to its great potential than the political parties that have pushed us into crisis have ever done. The following are some of the main points the Lúgaro campaign has put on its platform that I felt were most important.

• Develop the arts, music, and cinematography industries of Puerto Rico because it is one of the country’s biggest fortes and richest areas, culturally.
• Develop tourism by taking Puerto Rico out of the Visa Waiver Program in order to have people of other countries, mainly Latin American countries, be able to visit Puerto Rico without the need of a visa. Help reduce the costs of Puerto Rican tourism in order to have better chances of competing with neighboring countries.
• Develop our agriculture by implementing the most cost effective and efficient techniques used in agriculture today. By doing this, Puerto Rican agriculture can learn the best techniques from other countries and even educate incarcerated prisoners with these techniques, giving them a chance of future employment.
• In addition to the development of agriculture, Lúgaro has advocated for the legalization and taxation of marijuana in order to increase revenue and minimize the costs of law enforcement and correctional procedures that are hindered by the criminalization of a product that could be cultivated very well with Puerto Rico’s climate.
• Restructure Puerto Rican social programs in order to give people more incentive to work, rather than remain unemployed and depending on social programs to sustain a family. She has stated this as a result of reports of which state that only 40% of Puerto Rico’s adult population is employed or seeking employment, not because Puerto Rico is a nanny-state, but because the system is set in such a way that it is more beneficial for people to be unemployed rather than employed.
• In addition to taxation of cannabis, Lúgaro believes that even the so-called “untouchables” should be taxed, such as churches and multinational corporations. She has acknowledged the great social importance of churches, but disagrees with the fact that they do not pay taxes even with the economic potential they have. Also, she has studied the numbers of how much multinational corporations profit in Puerto Rico and put rest to the fears that if multinationals are taxes, they will leave the island and never look back.
• Lúgaro advocated for the payment of the legally obtained debt of Puerto Rico and also advocated that civil and criminal charges should be filed against those individuals that increased the country’s debt illegally.

In addition to all of the policy platforms mentioned above, Lúgaro has also supported investment in small/medium sized businesses, the restructuring of Puerto Rico’s main governmental agencies such as the Department of Education, the electric and water companies, and maintaining the minimum wage in Puerto Rico. These are all issues that are usually ignored in the mainstream media because politics in Puerto Rico usually revolves around the issue of the political status of Puerto Rico. Lúgaro has acknowledged the importance of Puerto Rico’s political status, but has refused to make it a priority of her campaign simply because it is not a priority. Puerto Rico must solve its fiscal, educational, and social crises first, and then worry about the status issue, which is in the hands and control of the U.S. Congress. Recently, Lúgaro released a video-statement directed to the President and the Congress of the United States, asking for the United States to take their share of responsibility in regard to the economic crisis. Lúgaro requests that the United States eliminate or amend the Jones Act, which strongly affects the economic capabilities of Puerto Rico’s trading industries; include Puerto Rico in Visa Waiver Programs such as the one that Guam and the Northern Mariana Islands are part of; and advocated for the U.S. to take an active role in solving the financial crisis of Puerto Rico. Lúgaro states that Puerto Rico is not asking for money or pity, but for the U.S. to assume their responsibility and help us get back on our feet.

Alexandra Lúgaro is everything that Puerto Rico’s government is not, and that is why I strongly support her candidacy to the Governorship of Puerto Rico!

"Yo seré tu voz, déjamelo a mi."
"I will be your voice, leave it to me"
Lúgaro 2016!