Yes, you’ve managed to describe “rural Puerto” to a tee. So how come, since it’s been part of the United States for what, 100 years, it’s still a third-world place? And don’t give us that $hit about the government not caring, because they are self-governing and they still manage to pick the worst of their lot to “govern” them! The truth is, looking around the Western Hemisphere, the countries inhabited and/or governed by folks from Spain and Portugal have never managed to run themselves successfully for more than a few years at a stretch. Here, only the United States and Canada have been able to develop relatively decent societies, and the Canadians have had to do it with a bunch of recalcitrant Frenchmen as their cross to carry.
The problem is that with the Commonwealth status, it makes it too easy for the productive class to leave for better opportunities on the mainland, so who is left behind?